I refer to them as the "inbetweens" but "gaps" is better, so I'm adopting it.
Having been delivered tough times from politicians, I learned to appreciate small things unless I lose them. Sun on my face in Winter, or a cool breeze in Summer, is to be thought about to be appreciated. Beach sand between my toes, and actually listening to the surf break is music. What I most notice are birds. Don't know most of their names, but their beauty is the colour in my concrete world. Sure, I'm getting older, supposedly wiser, but most older people I meet still don't see.
Living in the air is a romantic notion, and romanticism is to cherished, but, as Steven Wright once asked, what would happen if none of the dead birds came down?
Damn Mike, there you are again! What Caitlin wrote and your comment are beautiful. I bought a few field guides so I could learn the identities of the birds around me, the reptiles and the fish.
I've been to nursing homes. My sister is in one. When ever I visit her I ask if she's okay. She's adapted and is content. As a teenager I took the assignment from my Priest to visit a nursing home each week and befriended a man wounded grievously in Vietnam. Looking back on it I'm so glad I took that assignment.
You and Caitlin are in my top five writers I read and I'm so happy to know you.
Plenty of bugs still around here in the southeastern USA. Their lives are so short. I don’t even kill the scary looking ones anymore. Heck, they couldn’t help being born that way.
Wish there were more spiders. They've mostly vanished. 20-40 years ago, one wouldn;t be able to drive in South Africa at night without gaining interesting smears on your windscreen. Doesn't happen anymore. Even rare to see a worm or ant in the garden. But I kill mosquitoes.
This brought tears to my eyes. I know exactly what that woman meant, and it's not appreciated. I tell people that I'm so very lucky because I find all the beauty around me all the time in the tiniest places irresistible. Thanks so much for sharing this. It's so true!
There comes a point in time when, having sought for years the voices of your spirit guides and mute and disappointed before their silence, that you surrender. You have given up, and the rest of your life stretches out like a prison sentence with no parole, something you must endure and from which the only release is death.
At some further moment, just then, it dawns upon you - in the literal, elemental sense of the Dawn - that the voice you thought was your own was really the voice of your guides all along, and that you were never abandoned or lost.
The shock of that recognition is overwhelming , and beautiful.
You are standing in and on the Beauty Way.
A sense of cognitive vertigo overcomes you; you have suddenly lost all your bearings and the familiar points of reference in your life. You are seemingly in endless free fall, to the point where even walking across a room must become a calculated act.
At first slowly, then with a tumbling fractal rush as when the lens of a kaleidoscope arranges itself, the actual arrangement of the true dimensions aligns itself in your inner and outer sight.
You become complete with that which you always were, but never realized.
John Salskov - Iversen
05 February 2012 through 28 November 2023 and continuing
All your things, trophies, accomplishments, awards and the like cannot be transferred into the eternal. They are all considerations invented by man which he uses to pretend he is important or worthy or better than someone else. The gaps are the spaces between the never ending current of thoughts where the true self lies.
It's always amazing to me to hear the silly saying...live life to the fullest. What exactly is the fullest? Who really knows how best to live a life? Certainly not all the experts who think having things and doing things is the end-all-be all of living. While you were pretending to be living and alive, your boat of truth sailed past and you were left to drown in your arrogant abyss. Always chasing after something or the next thing.
The happiness and contentment you seek lies in the gaps.
As you get older and wiser (this doesn't apply to everyone :) ) you can appreciate more and more the things you used to ignore, nature, your granddoughter's laughter, enjoying your garden, or how happy you are that your fruit trees sprouted and produced beautiful bunches. At that time, when I was young, the roar of my racing motorcycle made me feverish, now it's the chirping of birds and the soft sounds of the forest, or you sit on the beach and listen to the murmur of the waves for hours ! As the time approaches for the final reckoning, you will appreciate more and more everything that you looked at indifferently until then !
A little personal comment... This is what shamatha-vipassana meditation is about—the gaps. The gaps in your busy monkey mind. So basically what you do is minding the gaps. There you’ll find the door to peace. Can I dwell in that gap, peacefully abiding? No! Because I don’t know how to relish the wars, the child trafficking, the political madness, the medical health abuse the totalitarian take over and the censorship. I don’t know how to relish that, so I cannot dwell in the gaps for long...
Quite wonderful, and absolutely true. What is given to all of us, life itself, is the most important thing. Individual lives are reflections, emanations of the universe and we are all connected through empathy and sympathy. Developing this attitude is spiritually, emotionally and intellectually enriching, and a good way to start is by helping those who are virtually helpless. Even houseplants which can't take care of their needs, is a simple but effective way to develop empathy. Animals in shelters could be cheered up a little with a treat and pat. We all share the same DNA, plants, animals, the bad, the good and the great, the works. And go on from there to the big problems. Any problem can be solved or ameliorated, if we have the will.
I don't see it that way: everyone has the right to defend themselves if they have no other option, but even the law insists you not retaliate in kind if you can avoid it. On another level, when you treat people the way they have treated you, you simply become what you hate. I'm not religious and take some of Jesus' sayings as philosophy: do not become what you hate. Makes sense to me.
Doris: You take my comment too literally, or perhaps not literally enough. If you want to have empathy with someone's pain or situation, you have to know it yourself.
Empathy can go too far. There is a story in "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury. A Martian has empathy and becomes whatever being the Earthlings wish him to become. A dead child e.g.
The Martian eventually dies as dozens of Earthlings push and pull him into being this person or that.
I didn't't mean that you give up your self- identity, well being or principles; we think and feel on many levels, mostly unconsciously, or not completely consciously. I didn't mean you have to suffer idiots, the cruel and exploitative. I was talking about an emotional and psychological disposition to accept that people are what they are, and you can only deal within certain parameters. You can only play a very limited part, for instance, in world affairs, but that doesn't spell despair. In personal matters and relationships, avoid those you really have problems with - if you can- and be tolerant towards all others. Otherwise you are in a constant state of agitation, or, alternately, become almost comatose. It's called angst, and many suffer from it.
Doris Wrench Eisler: There is a new show on NBC called "Irrational". It is very good. The show main character is a behavioral scientist. He solves crimes by knowing what makes people tick.
Tolerance and empathy are too different things. I can do both with people if:
Beautiful... But there are still US bipartisan war criminals responsible for senseless and “unprovoked” continuing dying of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians...
Phantasms of the Living "Borderland" Cases V1, Chap. IX.
Mrs. Brooke of Woodlands, Kenford, Exeter - June 29th, 1884.
"I have a very vivid recollection that, towards dawn on the morning of August 3rd, 1867, I was roused from my sleep to find my brother, an officer in the 16th Lancers, then quartered in Madras, standing by the bed. My impression is that he bent over me, kissed me, and passed quietly from the room, making signs to me not to speak, and that I was full of joy, thinking he had returned home unexpectedly, and lay awake till the maid called me, when my first words to her were that my brother had come home and I had seen him. I remember my bitter disappointment when at last made to believe that this was not so, and that it was quite impossible I could have seen him; also that I was scolded and silenced for holding to my story.
"I cannot remember how much time elapsed before the news came by telegram that my brother died suddenly of jungle fever on August 2nd; full particulars did not reach us for weeks later, and it was not till long afterwards that I put two and two together, as the saying is, and, found that, as I then and now firmly believe, my favourite brother came to me at the hour of his death.
"The date I fixed by reference to a childish diary I then kept, long since destroyed, but I cannot give you the exact hours. I know by letters that my brother died soon after 10 o'clock p.m. on August 2nd, and I know that my room was not quite dark when I saw him, and that I did not fall asleep again before morning on August 3rd. "M.A. BROOKE."
The Army List confirms Aug. 2, 1867 as the date of death. The vision seems to have followed the death by 9 or 10 hours.
Valerie: Thanks for subscribing to my substack. Hope my stories give you a laugh.
I find that I have to keep a dry pair of underwear available at all times. My time in public is limited to about 45 minutes. Which, no doubt, the public breathes a sigh of relief over.
Mind the Gap was the most prominent sign in London's Tube. Possibly because their best laid plans didn't quite line up, cutting off many a limb, until they went to I Told You So.
She went into the Gap.
I refer to them as the "inbetweens" but "gaps" is better, so I'm adopting it.
Having been delivered tough times from politicians, I learned to appreciate small things unless I lose them. Sun on my face in Winter, or a cool breeze in Summer, is to be thought about to be appreciated. Beach sand between my toes, and actually listening to the surf break is music. What I most notice are birds. Don't know most of their names, but their beauty is the colour in my concrete world. Sure, I'm getting older, supposedly wiser, but most older people I meet still don't see.
Mike Hampton: Birds are freedom. A short free life is better than a long life of slavery IMO.
Living in the air is a romantic notion, and romanticism is to cherished, but, as Steven Wright once asked, what would happen if none of the dead birds came down?
Mike: I'm no romantic. LOL. Birds get to fly and don't pay taxes or go through TSA.
What would happen if dead mammals didn't fall down? Or dead whales go to the bottom of the oceans?
Steven Wright has a good sense of humor.
"What if a politician quit lying? Would he lose his ability to speak?"
Excellent.
Thanks, Mike. I appreciate your comments.
Damn Mike, there you are again! What Caitlin wrote and your comment are beautiful. I bought a few field guides so I could learn the identities of the birds around me, the reptiles and the fish.
I've been to nursing homes. My sister is in one. When ever I visit her I ask if she's okay. She's adapted and is content. As a teenager I took the assignment from my Priest to visit a nursing home each week and befriended a man wounded grievously in Vietnam. Looking back on it I'm so glad I took that assignment.
You and Caitlin are in my top five writers I read and I'm so happy to know you.
Blessings brother.
Hey, you're the one with "trail" in your name :)
So few bugs left, no use getting a Bug Guide.
Sister's prognosis?
It's bad that I've always thought that I should read to someone old, but haven't done it.
That's a helluva kind compliment. Thank you.
This was a wonderful read today.
Plenty of bugs still around here in the southeastern USA. Their lives are so short. I don’t even kill the scary looking ones anymore. Heck, they couldn’t help being born that way.
Wish there were more spiders. They've mostly vanished. 20-40 years ago, one wouldn;t be able to drive in South Africa at night without gaining interesting smears on your windscreen. Doesn't happen anymore. Even rare to see a worm or ant in the garden. But I kill mosquitoes.
Mosquitoes and ticks are the only ones on my kill list. Probably scorpions if we had em here.
Tarantulas used to cover rural roads in some parts of Central California. Couldn’t get around splatting some of them.
Now you're splattering the homeless on the highway? :)
My pleasure.
What a gem. Time is precious. I have never regretted spending some of it reading your work. Wonderful job.
This brought tears to my eyes. I know exactly what that woman meant, and it's not appreciated. I tell people that I'm so very lucky because I find all the beauty around me all the time in the tiniest places irresistible. Thanks so much for sharing this. It's so true!
Thank you. 💚 That was beautiful, something to savor for sure.
Becoming
There comes a point in time when, having sought for years the voices of your spirit guides and mute and disappointed before their silence, that you surrender. You have given up, and the rest of your life stretches out like a prison sentence with no parole, something you must endure and from which the only release is death.
At some further moment, just then, it dawns upon you - in the literal, elemental sense of the Dawn - that the voice you thought was your own was really the voice of your guides all along, and that you were never abandoned or lost.
The shock of that recognition is overwhelming , and beautiful.
You are standing in and on the Beauty Way.
A sense of cognitive vertigo overcomes you; you have suddenly lost all your bearings and the familiar points of reference in your life. You are seemingly in endless free fall, to the point where even walking across a room must become a calculated act.
At first slowly, then with a tumbling fractal rush as when the lens of a kaleidoscope arranges itself, the actual arrangement of the true dimensions aligns itself in your inner and outer sight.
You become complete with that which you always were, but never realized.
John Salskov - Iversen
05 February 2012 through 28 November 2023 and continuing
I love this. Brilliant
I know your guide.🕊️
We spend way too long in our lives learning to live in the moment.
Andrea: Living in the moment is what sets us free.
Beautiful story. Stay in the now. Cherish the moment. Always.
What a beautiful way of teaching us to live in the moment!
All your things, trophies, accomplishments, awards and the like cannot be transferred into the eternal. They are all considerations invented by man which he uses to pretend he is important or worthy or better than someone else. The gaps are the spaces between the never ending current of thoughts where the true self lies.
It's always amazing to me to hear the silly saying...live life to the fullest. What exactly is the fullest? Who really knows how best to live a life? Certainly not all the experts who think having things and doing things is the end-all-be all of living. While you were pretending to be living and alive, your boat of truth sailed past and you were left to drown in your arrogant abyss. Always chasing after something or the next thing.
The happiness and contentment you seek lies in the gaps.
Nice!
As you get older and wiser (this doesn't apply to everyone :) ) you can appreciate more and more the things you used to ignore, nature, your granddoughter's laughter, enjoying your garden, or how happy you are that your fruit trees sprouted and produced beautiful bunches. At that time, when I was young, the roar of my racing motorcycle made me feverish, now it's the chirping of birds and the soft sounds of the forest, or you sit on the beach and listen to the murmur of the waves for hours ! As the time approaches for the final reckoning, you will appreciate more and more everything that you looked at indifferently until then !
A little personal comment... This is what shamatha-vipassana meditation is about—the gaps. The gaps in your busy monkey mind. So basically what you do is minding the gaps. There you’ll find the door to peace. Can I dwell in that gap, peacefully abiding? No! Because I don’t know how to relish the wars, the child trafficking, the political madness, the medical health abuse the totalitarian take over and the censorship. I don’t know how to relish that, so I cannot dwell in the gaps for long...
Quite wonderful, and absolutely true. What is given to all of us, life itself, is the most important thing. Individual lives are reflections, emanations of the universe and we are all connected through empathy and sympathy. Developing this attitude is spiritually, emotionally and intellectually enriching, and a good way to start is by helping those who are virtually helpless. Even houseplants which can't take care of their needs, is a simple but effective way to develop empathy. Animals in shelters could be cheered up a little with a treat and pat. We all share the same DNA, plants, animals, the bad, the good and the great, the works. And go on from there to the big problems. Any problem can be solved or ameliorated, if we have the will.
Doris Wrench Eisler: Empathy is when you kick a man in the nuts and he kicks you back.
Empathy.
I don't see it that way: everyone has the right to defend themselves if they have no other option, but even the law insists you not retaliate in kind if you can avoid it. On another level, when you treat people the way they have treated you, you simply become what you hate. I'm not religious and take some of Jesus' sayings as philosophy: do not become what you hate. Makes sense to me.
Doris: You take my comment too literally, or perhaps not literally enough. If you want to have empathy with someone's pain or situation, you have to know it yourself.
Empathy can go too far. There is a story in "The Martian Chronicles" by Ray Bradbury. A Martian has empathy and becomes whatever being the Earthlings wish him to become. A dead child e.g.
The Martian eventually dies as dozens of Earthlings push and pull him into being this person or that.
I didn't't mean that you give up your self- identity, well being or principles; we think and feel on many levels, mostly unconsciously, or not completely consciously. I didn't mean you have to suffer idiots, the cruel and exploitative. I was talking about an emotional and psychological disposition to accept that people are what they are, and you can only deal within certain parameters. You can only play a very limited part, for instance, in world affairs, but that doesn't spell despair. In personal matters and relationships, avoid those you really have problems with - if you can- and be tolerant towards all others. Otherwise you are in a constant state of agitation, or, alternately, become almost comatose. It's called angst, and many suffer from it.
Doris Wrench Eisler: There is a new show on NBC called "Irrational". It is very good. The show main character is a behavioral scientist. He solves crimes by knowing what makes people tick.
Tolerance and empathy are too different things. I can do both with people if:
THEY LEAVE ME ALONE!
But they never do.
Timmy Taes I apologize for taking your remark too seriously: you were right. "Facetious" was spelled all over it. I do get a little preachy, Sorry.
Beautiful... But there are still US bipartisan war criminals responsible for senseless and “unprovoked” continuing dying of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians...
Phantasms of the Living "Borderland" Cases V1, Chap. IX.
Mrs. Brooke of Woodlands, Kenford, Exeter - June 29th, 1884.
"I have a very vivid recollection that, towards dawn on the morning of August 3rd, 1867, I was roused from my sleep to find my brother, an officer in the 16th Lancers, then quartered in Madras, standing by the bed. My impression is that he bent over me, kissed me, and passed quietly from the room, making signs to me not to speak, and that I was full of joy, thinking he had returned home unexpectedly, and lay awake till the maid called me, when my first words to her were that my brother had come home and I had seen him. I remember my bitter disappointment when at last made to believe that this was not so, and that it was quite impossible I could have seen him; also that I was scolded and silenced for holding to my story.
"I cannot remember how much time elapsed before the news came by telegram that my brother died suddenly of jungle fever on August 2nd; full particulars did not reach us for weeks later, and it was not till long afterwards that I put two and two together, as the saying is, and, found that, as I then and now firmly believe, my favourite brother came to me at the hour of his death.
"The date I fixed by reference to a childish diary I then kept, long since destroyed, but I cannot give you the exact hours. I know by letters that my brother died soon after 10 o'clock p.m. on August 2nd, and I know that my room was not quite dark when I saw him, and that I did not fall asleep again before morning on August 3rd. "M.A. BROOKE."
The Army List confirms Aug. 2, 1867 as the date of death. The vision seems to have followed the death by 9 or 10 hours.
Thank you Caitlin, that was a beautiful thought, old now, life rushed past but will try to relish the gaps.
Valerie: I just try to reach the toilet in time. But I know what you mean.
Valerie: Thanks for subscribing to my substack. Hope my stories give you a laugh.
I find that I have to keep a dry pair of underwear available at all times. My time in public is limited to about 45 minutes. Which, no doubt, the public breathes a sigh of relief over.
Mind the Gap was the most prominent sign in London's Tube. Possibly because their best laid plans didn't quite line up, cutting off many a limb, until they went to I Told You So.