Letter to Granny:
Here I am again writing to you, Mum is on the speaker-phone in the next room and if I concentrated hard enough I could make out every word. It is getting dark inside, but the light is still lingering outside, making the large smoky clouds look insubstantial and smudgy in the sky. The sun was hot today but the wind was quite cool, and balanced the effect. Now the sun is gone so the wind feels colder, but still light. The shadows in my bedroom are gently making shapes and objects blend into the darkness and the light grows dimmer through the large front windows.
Do you have a picture in your head now of me in my bedroom, sitting in front of the bright computer screen, bathed in luminescence from in front, but shadowed by the night behind? Good, because now the focus is changing, now the eye of your mind should concentrate on my head, and narrow down to meet my eyes. The eyes full of mystery, mirroring the wonder and complexities of the universe beyond. The eyes that translate the tellings of the soul into the stories of the moment, and the lessons to be told...
Today shall be the first time I give you a meditation to follow. To take the choice and choose to follow me is for you to decide. The meanings you shall find within the apex of your journey is for you to discern. To share the meanings of your journey is also your own choice. But to follow, or lead, one must take the first step, and decide.
Once upon a time there was a merry little brook, and within this brook lived many many fish. These fish sought nothing but contentment and fulfillment within their own little world until one day through many hard journeys they discovered a small brook leading into their underwater stream. This brook came down from a long mountain far away, where the ice melts into rivets and streams, and this one little brook was all that was left of a great rushing river of ice. Now the fish had never felt anything as cold and as icy as the rushing brook, feeding their great stream and shuddered and shook with the alternate temperatures. The fish followed each other and together they left the little brook and swam far away, frightened at the new and different sensations the brook caused them to feel.
But one of the fish stayed and watched the brook pouring out it’s icy water into the stream and wondered a while. The new sensations caused the fish to wonder instead of fear, at the new and different things it could feel. The wondering in turn caused the fish to think of things and possibilities outside of it’s own stream and he wondered how he could venture outside of his world. These strange new thoughts did not worry the fish as he trusted in a larger ideal that the other fish had forgotten in their haste and fear. For everything in life has it’s purpose, and every thing in life has it’s place.
Up until now the little fish had thought that the greater ideal meant that the fish had their place in life and their purpose, but now he wondered about the stream before him. Where did it come from? What was it’s purpose? Where was it’s place in his world? What else did he not know about? For the stream in itself spoke to him of things unknown. If this stream could exist outside of his knowledge for so long, then how many other things did he not know about?
How many things were there outside his own little world?
This for you is my meditation. The icy stream speaks of things new and things different and unknown. But the things unknown do exist, and the fear of differing things from our stream should not be feared, but questioned, and learned from. Differences in our lives are to be treasured for this valuable lesson it gives us.
Now my child, you are to take the journey through the stream of your own life, picture yourself as the fish living among the crowd of others, all wearing the same coloured scales and marks, and know that you are one of many similar fish. You are faceless and nameless, and you swim with the others trusting in the ideal, you have a purpose in life and a place and this is your place.
Now travel down the stream, feel your body swish and sway with the current of life, feel yourself swim between and beneath the rocky burdens placed in your path and become one with the path and the stream.
Now slowly up ahead you feel a difference in your life, a small change in the flow of the stream and know, not panic, but an inquisitiveness, and a curiosity about what lays ahead. Allow the reactions of the other fish to flow around you, even through you, but you do not feel any of their panic, or fear. You float and swim feeling the temperature lower and lower, and feel only a slight discomfort to your fish body. The water rushes over you, the current sways differently, but not unfamiliar to you, after all other brooks and streams have flowed into your life before. But this stream up ahead, is something new and different in your life, something you have never experienced before, and allow yourself to feel the difference sensations to wash over your body.
Here, as all the other fish flee and run away, feel yourself float closer to the stream. The stream is a newness in your life, a feeling, sensation, or energy that you have never felt before. I want you to stay there awhile and receive the message the stream has brought to you from the far away mountain, from the distant plains of another life, another world, another place.
When you have taken the message inside of you, you are free to swim away and join the other fish and soothe away their fears. Slowly return to your present self in time and bring back with you the memory of your journey, and the message you carry within.
That is my meditation for you. May you journey safely and whole. Many thanks to you all.
21:14hrs
Here I am, waiting for you to finish so that I may begin. This life brings so many different wonders, it is amazing you have time for them/us all. Where to begin? Oh the differences in is us all!
For now let me tell you of a time when I was a young lad and playing with my sister, Joycelyn. We were playing a game of ball, or catch as you would, and the ball had become a competition. Who could throw it the highest, or the fastest or the longest. And I must admit that sometimes it could be quite the competition, she was always a better sport than I though. One day we had thrown the ball such a height that it had landed on the roof of the belfry, and so one of the two of us had to fetch it back before the Father found us out. (We weren’t supposed to be playing around the yard at the time), so we tossed up a coin and decided who it was to be sent.
There we were, so innocent at the time it is a wonder at all that we grew up. The Father was away on his visits so it was safe to go up straight away, and up we both went to the top of the stairs where my sister waited for me to go and fetch the ball. The ball was balanced just so at the edge of the roof and a good knock would have loosened it up enough, but the adventure was not to knock the ball down but to go out onto the roof and fetch it down. The excitement you see was the ticket. We had got ourselves up to the small window at the top of the stairs which lead onto the roof and out and up I went.
Creeping out on to the roof it was frightening in the extreme, we had barely managed to make the roof at all with our throwing, but there it was. So off I went, crawling out very slowly keeping my balance always. The bright red ball was just off to my right and the brick wall was on my left, the roof sloping gently down. It didn’t seem gently when I was out on the roof though, everything suddenly became more dangerous and exciting. My pulse raced and my heart beat could be heard as a pounding noise. My sister kept calling to me to be careful and go slowly, but the sound was distant and the bright red ball filled my vision.
I edged closer and closer until finally I reached the very edge of my prize, the ball. It was wedged on a small outcrop of weeds that had found a place to grow, although it wasn’t stuck. More balanced than anything. So I reached out to the very tip of my reach, as I was much too frightened to push any more, or I was sure to fall off and crash to my death.(Such are the thoughts of the boy at the time), and so when I thought I could not reach any further and was going to have to give up the ball all together, I stretched out and reached that extra bit more and nudged the ball gently.
It moved slightly and very very slowly began to roll away from me and descend down onto the courtyard below. I could hear the ball land in the yard below and I wondered if that would be how I sounded to my sister if I fell. The thought did very little to warm me on the chilly rooftop. As I was about to turn around and edge back to the window I heard the voice of the Father rise up from below, but I could not hear the words he was using.
It was at that very instant I knew that I was in fact more afraid of the Father finding out what I had done than falling off the roof after my ball. I scrambled around and raced back to the window, forgetting all fear of heights and falling, and focused so intently on the Father and the fear of punishment. Thus I had shocked my sister soundly at my apparent bravery and lack of caution upon my return that she was speechless and humbled. For a small while after that I had the advantage on my childhood play games, but as with most things in life the memory is distorted with time and detail lost to embellishment. So you will forgive an old man his flatteries.
The lesson in my story is very simple. Sometimes the smaller fears are lost in the bigger ones, and when this happens we begin to see that perhaps the small fears were not really big enough to fear, without the thought that the bigger fear might also be smaller, or perhaps not even big enough to fear themselves.
Fear is only the minds way of focusing itself and truly not more than an illusion at best.
Consider wisely what one chooses to fear, lest the little fears distort the bigger ones.
Well that was interesting! Two channels in one go! Wow! (I just bet you can tell the difference straight away between me and them! ) Not that it is a bad thing or anything, I just prefer layman’s terms to zippidity do daa kind of nonsense. If I have a thought or an offering, may as well use a form that makes other people feel comfortable with! (My philosophy anyway). Well I guess I could go on and on with this letter and make other different things to add in, but I think I will just leave it at that for this one and send you another letter with more stuff in it later on in the week, or on Sunday (my usual post day).
So, best of luck with this one!
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