Here's a track I enjoyed off Ringlets debut self-titled album -- Boundless Heart.
Album review in this video. 5 minutes.
Tuesday, 4 April 2023
Sunday, 21 February 2021
Non-striving
odays Highlight
Practising non-striving — a foundational concept of mindfulness, in which, there is no need to rush ahead or do something other than what one is already doing — it's simply enough to 'be' present, and connected in mind and body with oneself, without unnecessary thoughts taking place.
'Being', as opposed to 'excessive doing', is a healthy form of conscious awareness — because, in such a state we realise we are complete and lack nothing.
'Striving-doing' is different, in such a state, we feel compelled to do and be more than we already are, as we feel incomplete and not enough in the present.
In plenty of modern Western societies, it is easy to end up constantly feeling a need to 'do' something; otherwise, how will any of us ever be enough?
'Non-striving', by contrast, allows us to 'let go', and celebrate our 'Beingness' as humans, who are free, joyful and happy — just as we are.
In a state of non-striving or 'Being', we also tend to perceive reality more clearly and at a deeper resolution.
We glimpse butterflies flying in the wind; see abstract, wistful changing clouds forming; fully open our hearts up to smiling children and love them unconditionally; take long, slow breaths, that are savoured and remembered as life-giving; in truth — our love for everything and all persons, comes to the fore, helping us embrace reality exactly as it is without judgement.
What a blessing non-striving is. It opens us up to the beauty of the world, where countless moments of happiness are effortlessly ours.
Thursday, 21 January 2021
Don't Slump My Friend
Today, I saw a rather sad looking man. He was slumped over at the bus stop, and looked utterly miserable. I surmised this simply by looking at him for all of one minute. He had a box on his stomach that may have accounted for his awful posture. He wore nice enough clothes, but his head and neck were all wrong. It's a bad idea to have your neck and head doubled so they're hanging out with your knees. It's not what mother nature wants. The man's posture was the complete and physical manifestation of resignation and defeat. It was like looking at Picasso's Guernica (a giant painting of a horrendous war scene) flailing about in the wind on my local street corner. My god, it made me ill just looking at him. But, I don't blame him. I have no idea what he was going through. I just wanted him to sit up and be steadfast in defeat. There is honour in having a straight back and not being curled over, even while experiencing the profound depths of human misery. I felt like running up and prodding the man in the side. I wish I had stopped to talk to him. His posture. It was a cry for help. It's too easy, too seductive, to drop ones head and give into sadness and misery. It's one of the most popular games in town - not worth playing - ever. If you are feeling defeated, stand up straight, push your chin out, put your f$&king hands in the air like you've just one the superbowl. Choose to feel better, choose to feel more powerful, choose to kick butt. Hey you, unslump your ass. Good things are coming your way.
Thursday, 14 January 2021
Outside, Obie - Hard as nails dive bar on Dominion Rd - Only the Drunk Survive
'Outside, Obies', on Dominion Road is a bloody institution when it comes to drinking, drunkery and debauchery. It opens earlier and closes late, later than any bar I know of on Dominion. The establishment is named after the owners dog Obie, he's a cute, furry little thing, and always smells of hard liquor. The bar is as real as they come, the kind of bar Charles Bukowksi would've haunted while alive like the veteran barfly he was. If you haven't seen Bukowski's film that goes by his drinking moniker, do it, he wrote the script and it shows. The film is a masterpiece — no hyperbole. The only downside about Obies is the never ending line of regulars making a beeline for the slot machines at the back of the bar. One elderly Chinese women charged in and went straight to the addictive machines like a long lost lover. An elderly Polynesian women slowly walked in like a zombie 10 minutes later and looked like she was clocking in for one hell of a night shift, a second one. Another gentlemen wearing a fedora, sipping an rtd, withdrawed cash from the machine inside the bar and was flicking 20 dollar bills between his fingers. He didn't look like the type of man who could afford to lose too much (no one really can), but I don't think he was going to let his lack of funds hold him back much, no sir. Knowing people were going to lose money for rent and food made me feel a bit sad, sober in fact. After I finished a beer, one man came out of the pokies and it was clear he had lost money, instinctually, he slammed his hands into his pockets to rummage around, nudaa. Its a mixed bag, its unvarnished reality, its a hell of an experience. It's 'Outside, Obies' mutaf$&ker, a place where only the drunk survive.
#outsideobies #divebar #dominionrd #harddrinking #toughbar #auckland #onlythedrunksurvive
Sunday, 3 January 2021
The Mindful Practice of Non-striving:
'If you are focused on the end goal of changing yourself, it’s implying that you aren’t good enough as you are today. This is unhelpful and inaccurate because you are enough.'
Trying less and being more.
Nothing to do, nowhere to be. A simply little kind of free.
When we are strongly attached to a particular outcome, such as relaxing or clearing the mind or becoming a better person, striving toward these goals actually interferes with the ability to accept what is here.
Open your heart to who you are, right now,
Not who you would like to be,
You are already more and less
Breathe out, Touch in, Let go.
Cultivating the attitudinal foundation of non-striving is challenging for many of us, yet essential to the development of mindfulness practice. In our culture, the possibility of non-striving is radical, given much of our lives are spent trying to achieve something. The word (v.) strive comes from the old French word estrife and means to “quarrel, dispute, resist, struggle, put up a fight, compete.” Contrary to this, in mindfulness practice the invitation is to sit and do nothing. The very thought of this notion of non-doing turns people’s noses up in disgust, conjuring up feelings of anxiety, and making even the most open-minded folks wonder how anything will get accomplished.
When is the last time you did something just to be there doing it, fully immersed in the moment to moment experience? Close your eyes and see if you can recall the frame of mind that was present while engaged in a recent activity. Gardening, watching a movie, cooking a meal, making love. You may likely find that you were heavily invested in the outcome of the event and paid little or no attention to the process as it was unfolding.
In mindfulness meditation we cultivate our capacity to pay attention to process, witnessing the unfolding of our lives and ourselves, moment to moment.
Let go of any outcome and just enjoy what we are doing, in the
moment.
Flow - action, immersion, energy, focus, involvement, enjoyment
Non-striving is a radical practice that takes patience and non-judging to cultivate. Begin by becoming familiar with the way striving feels in the body and seeing how what you feel changes when you practice non-doing. This clear seeing will begin to loosen the grip of attachment to outcome and allow you to have more moments of flow. You may consider choosing one activity a day where you focus on process, with no concern for outcome. Stay curious and be creative! Reflect on your universal intentions as well as any intentions for specific goals and begin to integrate them in to your daily life. Finally, remember what Laozi said, “Do non-doing, strive for non-stiving, savor the flavourless, make much of little, repay enmity with virture; plan for difficulty when it is still easy, do the great while it is still small.”
Non-striving isn’t about giving up aspirations and goals, it’s about letting-go of control, of needing things to be a certain way. Recognising this is a process of disillusionment. Disillusionment in a positive sense, the illusion – the bubble of believing that we are in control and can have things our way, is burst. Now we can ‘wake-up’ to reality, to see things as they actually are. We can take response-ability for attending to the ways in which much of our stress and suffering arises from our refusal to accept life as it is in any moment.
The only safety lies in letting it all in –
the wild and the weak; fear,
fantasies, failures and success.
When loss rips off the doors
of the heart, or sadness veils your
vision with despair, practice
becomes simply bearing the truth.
In the choice to let go of your
known way of being, the whole
world is revealed to your new eyes.
Sources:
Saturday, 2 January 2021
New Year's 2021 in the Coromandel with the Boys
For the first time, I went to the Coromandel, to welcome in the New Year. I travelled with my brother Gabriel and friend Tom, who both live in Wellington. We met our extra friend Fletch on route. We were lucky to find a place to stay — a humble campground. The whole of the Coromandel was booked up and heaving with excited party-goers, all of whom, had travelled from the far reaches of NZ, to excercise their right to party, doing so in staggering numbers. After arriving, we gobbled some food, set-up our tents, and went straight to the beach. It was relaxing, floating up and down in the water at Hotwater beach. The squishy sand beneath my feet wasn't bad either. After swimming, and some guitar playing on the beach, we returned to the camp-site and ate wood-fired pizzas with beer battered chips. The sun then set for the last time on dear old 2020. A new year beckoned. 😉🎉🎊#coromandel #newyear #2021 #beaches #nz #roadtripnz #friends
Saturday, 19 December 2020
A Confession of Sorts
I'll tell you something that happened tonight, that taught me a short and sharp lesson - on how to be a better person. It all began when I went for a walk up Mt Eden while grumpy and out of sorts. When I reached the summit - a beautiful, young couple - asked me to take their photo.
I chose not to. I didn't want to. I was under no obligation to do so, and in fact, I was a bit rude, when I said, no. The young man asked me politely, almost divinely willing an act of generosity out of me. I bluntly refused, saying unceremoniously: 'I'm good' - in a low and menacing voice (well, that's what I thought I sounded like). Despite my spanner in the works, the couple managed to get their pretty, little photo taken.
All was not lost in the stakes of romance and love, which disappointed me.
Another far more amiable, young man snapped a photo of the couple. I bitterly watched the photographer, my fill-in, move about, up and down, trying to find the best lighting and angle, as the sun rapidly set behind the Bombay hills. I despised him - for capturing the sickly sweet moment of the young lovers. His act of accepting caused my act of rejecting to weigh heavily on me.
As soon as I had acted, I knew I had done wrong. Somewhere, something had fallen out of alignment, I could hear God groaning with dismay as I acted with menacing selfishness.
Usually. I’m happy to take photos of others and even enjoy doing so. But, I couldn't stand this couple, to be close to them, to enter into their bubble of love would be like willingly exposing myself to Chernobyl like levels of radiation. I didn’t feel like being a ‘boyfriend of Instagram’. I didn’t feel like being humbled - so naturally, I was brought to my knees by a power far greater than me.
After the ordeal, I was overwhelmed with sadness. In trying to avoid my suffering, I had unwittingly doubled it, and how the interest compounded. I felt like going back to the young couple and apologizing, groveling for forgiveness. It was from my finest hour. Sure, there was a part of me that didn't want to take the photos, and that's fine. It's just how I said no, nay, it was more than that, I felt inconsolable, a monster, about the fact - that I couldn't be happy for them.
It was as if I had devolved from a human into a living slug.
For my sins, I was engulfed in a haze of negative thoughts. I descended the mountain crestfallen and sullen. My actions had not pleased God, the universe, or even myself. What profound stupidity, and for my folly, the faintest self-inflicted scar was grazed upon my battered heart. With God's grace, thoughts of atonement surged like a river through my mind, only then was I released from the vice-like torture of my own making.
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