Doing the Honourable Dance!!


I went to my friends Jules Mojo Trance Dance on the weekend. Its a dance where you change partners each song and dance to a theme. This month it was on being Honoured, not a subject that I think of much when it comes to Conscious dance. Jules is a beautiful, beautiful soul who’s commitment in life is to empower people’s souls and build community. Here’s the link to her Facebook page – Perpetual Mojo.

So how do you honour one another at dance. You follow the two signals, I want to dance with you, but I don’t want to be touched, there are a lot of Contact Improv people among the attendees who just love being touched and the other signal that I want my own alone time. You always get so much out of the night and the group Hug at the end is worth the money alone.

So what do we as human beings have to say about honouring one another. No Oprah again but some quality insights among the fifteen I have chosen. here we go :

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1. We go way back to 400 B.C. for our first look at honour. Sophocles is one of the three surviving Ancient Greek playwrights, imagine out of such a prolific era that only three people made it through. His message is simple, Honour is all that matters, corrupt success is bad for the health.

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2. Our school system seems to be focusing more and more on the three R’s, turning out corporate clones. What matters later in life is how you relate to others not your ability to know the 12 times table.

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3. Samuel Langhorne Clemens is Mark Twain’s real name. He lived by this famous quote above, a true man of honour.

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4. Remembered for saving England and smoking Cigars Winston Churchill was meant to be a man of simple tastes and it seems simple words – freedom, justice and of course Honour.

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5. Back to the 400 B.C. time frame Socrates is held to be one of the founders of Western Philosophy. This cute and pithy quote points to how to live a great life, be who you say you are going to be, Astronaut or President or Postman. it doesn’t matter, the joy is in the honouring.

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6. Winston again, He had a profound belief in the fact that if you kept your word that you could do anything, but that honour and good sense were vital ingredients in the recipe required. He helped save a country with this belief. 

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7. I have several of Martin’s speeches on audio. They go for over 15 minutes but you are riveted the whole time. One of the most honourable men of all of history he made a race of people believe they weren’t  niggers, they were proud African Americans.

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8. Balastar is a cool name, he is a Spanish Jesuit prose writer. He was also known for his insightful quotes, why say something with more words that necessary. Balastar points to the value of keeping your words in the face of pleasing others is what counts.

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9. Looks like this has been taken off a graffiti installation, How many of us create our present moment to moment. I know I’m guilty of not doing this 24 hours a day.

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10. The Law of Abundance, always remember that abundance does not mean more possessions. In fact most awards are given to those who have contributed the most to society, get out there and be abundant by giving of yourself.

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11. Taking us back to the the fact that Honouring oneself not be so significant is well known screen hero Chewbacca. I could’t find the language on Google Translate but I’m sure it is profound.

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12. Prepared to die, not many people live by this creed. Nelson Mandela was one such inspirational being. I remember singing Free Nelson Mandela in our singing group Soulsong and how much we were moved by it each time we sang it. Here is the Specials great version of the song The Specials.

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13. Off to ancient Egypt for this one, 1300 B.C. Akhenaton was a Pharaoh. I suppose the Pharaohs words got saved before anybody elses. Interesting that the soul had importance way back when.

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14. I have been a bit male centric this Blog, and unfortunately this is by an other man. But it is about our mothers. Sai Baba, eccentric Indian Hindu guru from the 1970’s made a promise that we would come to no harm if we honoured our mothers.

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15. Misunderstood critical thinker Werner Erhard, founder of the Landmark Forum, the mainstreams rite of passage into Transformational work came up with this classic. I did his work back in the 80’s and 90’s when he was still around. We did courses led by out there Americans who shocked us naive Aussies, so much that I went to the States and did two of their advanced course and ran the Moscow Peace Marathon the year before the Berlin Wall came down.

So I promise that my Blog on Thursday will be focused on that the wild women of our society have to contribute. Namaste until next time my dear friends.

Namaste

Passion, Power or Fruit?


I have recently been getting a lot of articles in my News Feed about how the education system is letting our children down, that they learn very few practical skills for later in life and definitely do not look at what are you passionate about. When they begin at the age of four or so they are astronauts Prime Ministers, League footballers, Rock Stars but this is soon crushed out of them as impractical and everybody is taught from the same book.

So how do we get our Passion back? For me it was a journey of  lots of workshops, long periods of mental health issues, running marathons, drug taking , singing in choirs etc. I found it attending a film night at the end of my last period of Mental Health issues. A Colombian film at the Darebin Intercultural Centre in Preston, Victoria, Australia I was impressed by the sense of community. I asked if I could volunteer and that is when my love of Interculturalism began.  Here are the links to the Facebook group I created called Interculturalism, a place people can post their examples of the ethos, Love and Respect for All, Everyone Included Interculturalism.

I have chosen 15 quotes on Passion and of course, one of them is from Oprah, here we go.

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!. Oprah, loved or hated. I’m part of the former group. A newsreader who has created an empire based on possibility and sharing it. One passionate individual.

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2. It is said that your dreams often reveal your passion in life to you. I have been remembering mine more and  more lately and it looks like it includes travel.

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3. I recently posted that Ghandi, Martin Luther King and Mother Teresa had the same 24 hours as we did. What made the difference is their level of passion, I think. My brother went ape-shit at it, is saying I was being arrogant. Not arrogant, passionate.

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4. I receive a post called The Daily Flame from my friend Lissa Rankin who I met in Byron Bay. My friends think I write it. It is empowering your Inner Pilot Light, her latest book is about it The Fear Cure. If your Inner Pilot Light is aflame people will notice.

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5. Beauty is one thing that attracts our attention. It interrupts the mundane. How to transform the mundane into beauty is live a life of  passion fulfilling your dreams.

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6. Passion begins now. You don’t have to know how it s going to be fulfilled, that’s called perfectionism , one of life’s booby prizes.

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7. I find that as I get into filling my life with things I am passionate about this rings true. Don’t know about no sleep though. A different time and space continuum  I’m thinking.

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8. Deepak Chopra, doyen of the Spirituality genre, says Always, yes lets repeat that again, Always go with your passions, Are You doing this?

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9. Vincent Van Gogh, In just over a decade, he produced more than 2,100 artworks, including 860 oil paintings and more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings, sketches and prints. This is passion, to me boredom is a made up concept that covers our profound laziness.

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10. Love this, the Drunkenness of the mind, when we have lost control of our senses. Being sensible and being passionate do nor correlate in my world.

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11. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, one of the great philosophers of the 1700’s was a poet, novelist, playwright, diplomat and civil servant as well. He points to you see the world as angry or sad if you have an angry heart, but it is just as easy to have a happy and passionate one. Its your choice after all.

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12. Our hearts, the lifeblood for our bodies. Why are more and more people dying from heart attacks in our heavily compartmentalised world. I think its time we etched Passion on them at birth.

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13. Dennis Waitley is a founding member of the Council for Self Esteem, the old chestnut of make you life about what lives in your heart , not your wallet. Love the image as well.

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14. I see the sun come up most days. This is a new occurrence over the last few years. For most of my life my sleep was a sacred site as it filled up my day as relevantly as what I was doing to fill up the rest of the day. No alarm clock for me.

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15. Novelist Galen Watson combines the two things that will have you live an extraordinary life, Passion and Love in his moving quote.

Passion turn to the left, Passion turn to the right or whatever direction you need to to fulfil your dreams. Namaste until next time my dear friends.

Namaste

The one Life we Know we Have


I am doing a personal development course Sunday run by two of my friends called NOW – The Art of having it All. They start the event blurb with the following line – Do you sometimes feel like a 40, 000 year old sage in some areas…And a shit scared 4 year old in others?.

A fantastic question. How would it be to live life full out in all areas. Here’s an explanation of what living life full out means for one person, Nancy Solari, life coach , radio host and best selling author who happens to be legally blind. Here’s the link to her webpage Living Full Out

I have been part of a group of runners who had the main street of Leningrad, Nevsky Prospekt interrupted on a Friday Afternoon for us to run down with the mayor of Leningrad and other dignitaries to support Ending World Hunger. I have also been hospitalized for major depression five times. Is this having it all. I couldn’t keep up the commitment that saw me run down that promenade and make a huge difference to world relations, I also ran the Moscow peace Marathon when I was there and after a few years my knees told me that they didn’t like  me running 100 kilometres a week anymore.

here are the fifteen quotes I have chosen on the subject, some from the famous, others quite unknown.

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1. We have an official retirement age, in out country it is 65. People live to their 80’s in retirement. Wayne Dyer tells a story where a passenger on an airplane asked him how long he had been retired when he was about 70 years old. Wayne replied why do you think I am retired. I will retire the day they put me in a box. He lived up to this touring Australia the week before he recently passed away.

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2. Leonardo Da Vinci left many a great gift to the planet. One of his obsessions was flight, he created designs for helicopters and gliders centuries before they came into being. This quote has also survived from his time. This link is to some other amazing things he did Why the sky is blue.

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3. I have found that I feel the most full and content when I am doing good deeds that assist people and the planet. Focusing on myself takes me down a path that is not a great place to be.

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4. How often my mind has said to me that you can’t do that, or no one will listen to you is uncountable. When I have achieved my greatest  triumphs is when I have said thank you for sharing and ignored it allowing for me to breakthrough and get it done.

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5. The joy and imagination of youth where nothing is impossible. Oh but if we could bottle this and drink its essence when the naysayers said to behave ourselves as we got older.

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6. The story we tell our-self about how we are travelling in life is what makes possible apathy or success. Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King had stories just like us. Change yours if you want to live life more fully.

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7. Popes and dying. The Eastern philosophies teach that you cannot really live until you realize that you are going to die one day. Our whole society in the west is focused on denying this until the moment it happens.

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8. I love these 4 things. The lines that you can barely read say like no one is watching you, like you have never been hurt, like no one can hear you and as though heaven was on earth. 4 prescriptions to live full out without excuses.

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9. Postscript , you cannot change that which has gone before, write your dreams down and go at it full bore, the past won’t care.

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10. Ever had those days were you laugh and smile uncontrollably. They are the special ones. Replicate them as often as possible and you will live a fantastic life.

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11. My friend Emeli has a saying, Get real, Get it Done. It is a fantastic way to look at life, because living it through another’s ideals or wishes is fake as it can be, your heart will shatter into a million pieces eventually.

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12. We actually are living our lives full out moment to moment. Just that a lot of the time we know we could do better. Seek out resources to help you break through when you become blocked in your creativity.

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13. We all have this silly assumption that we will wake up tomorrow, some people don’t and really we never know when it will be our turn. Big dreams full out, action like we only have this moment to fulfill them

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14. I had a friend at high school who I wrote The Boston Gobbler, a satirical look at our life in a rural Victorian town. it lasted three episodes because the thrusting horses in the letters to the editor offended our conservative Christian head master. I gave up having my words in print for 40 years because i let the opinion of someone else define who I became. I love writing with a passion.

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15. Whoever and whatever you believe about being brought to this mortal plane, it was for a purpose or it would not be your turn. make it a brilliant one.

I am looking forward to Sunday, Jules and Clare are brilliant facilitators and live their lives full of purpose more than most.

until next time Namaste my dear friends.

Namaste

Live More Awesome, Jamgrass Music Festival, People Matter.


What do these three statements have in common? They are the stickers on my music folder that contains the songs I sing at the Moons a Balloon, the community choir that I am a member of led by the inspirational Kavisha Mazzella. We are a Mental Fellowship of Victoria initiative so a lot of our members are in different stage of recovery from the dark times we have had in our lives.

When I was recently in The Melbourne Clinic for 28 days my friends in the choir offered to come and sing me some songs, I was nowhere near being in the space for them to do it but the offer made my heart shudder, that they would consider giving up their time to come and care for me was illuminating to say the least.

What songs do we sing? We have several standards, Tell Me Why by the ever awesome Neil Young, Somewhere over the Rainbow because its a beautiful song, The Moons A Balloon written by the choir when the chirpy Alicia Egan replaced Kavisha for a few weeks while she was off learning a new Tai Chi movement, but thats another story. My Island Home, a song by Christine Anu that should be Australia’s national anthem and Geckoe Song , one of Kavisha’s tunes, by the way did I mention that I have followed Kavisha and Her musical journey for over 20 years and once paid her $50 to sing my favourite song at a benefit at CERES environmental park in Brunswick. She is to me the worlds greatest singer songwriter and has the voice of an angel because Kaviisha is one.

But my favourite moments are when we sing the rounds Like Eagle Flying, another tune by Kavisha, Here are the words, when this song is sung in different harmonies you are moved to tears by its simplicity and power:

As I walk this Country, As I walk this land, I feel you watching over me

As I walk this Country, As I walk this land, I feel your spirit healing me

Eagle flying , Eagle Flying, Keeper of our Dreams

Another favourite is There is so much Magnificence by Peter Maken, simple words, awesome beauty.

Thers is so much magnificence here beside the ocean, waves are rolling in…Waves are rolling in…

Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia, Alleluia,

Ahhh Lehhh Luhhhh Yaaaaaa

Ahhh Lehhh Luhhhh Yaaaaaa

Often Basil brings his nieces along and its OK to have a cry if its tough out there on the roads of life because we are a family and we love each other, Thanks Kavisha for making our lives more worthwhile by having the choir be on fire.

Namaste till next time my friends

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