Month: February 2022

the sounds outside my house tonight. we had a pretty heavy shower in the late afternoon. some locals sound very excited about it. crickets? frogs?

https://lyricstranslate.com/en/preciso-me-encontrar-i-need-find-myself.html-0

late night walking

sunflower happiness

new season, new words. still Brené

the band’s visit to Southbank, Melbourne.

20755 is my number

the lego truck Sid built. the delicate art of posing with a smile.

enjoying the tail end of the pool season

sewing lessons bringing some happiness

serious live stream delivering serious magic from Abel Selaocoe on youtube.

harvesting before the mice.

and this.

also. this message Andy sent me this morning. priceless.

Re-reading old journal entries. This one, very insightful, from January 24th, the day I set up a temporary pool in the carport.

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24.1

My life has always been one of easy decisions. I don’t feel the strengh of making really deliberate actions. However I have the courage to act upon very strong callings. In this way I feel big decisons always take themselves for me. Come to me. Studying law. Traveling. Claire. Children. Migrating to Australia. Moving to Yandoit. Baking and pastry cheffing. All that have just merged onto me. Like layers of skins added to my core.

Confusion is a really strong indicator of the necessity to not take any decision. This mix of laissez faire and radicalism has brought me here today.

Benoît. 43 years old. Single dad. Australian. French. Pastry chef. Musician.

I dad. I plant. I grow. I sometime shed limbs. Sometimes I’m the limb and I fall.

Music comes to me pretty easily. Writing too. Both feel very healing and give me a voice.

To sit with sadness without trying to adress it. To explore it and fully aknowledge that I wasn’t been wronged, it arises from no cause and carries no values nor judgement is a skill I am constantly learning. I don’t need to turn towards anyone to seek any answers. All necessary answers have been provided. I need to accept them.

Tonight I feel sad for not being able to share that pride I get for making my children’s day so special. Get the plaudit, or just share the joy with another adult. This feels like a need for confirmation, and it seems intimately linked with my fear of being alone/ single/ not seen/ unloved.

So to resolve this sadness is to accept my own worth, my own judgement on my day, reinforce that feeling of worthiness.

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veggie jungle affirmations

yes i overplant

yes it’s kinda lazy and wasteful

yes i could get more produces with less plants and more tending

yes it is extremely pleasing to the eyes

yes that’s just my way

for now

“If hope doesn’t include a plan for change, it is actually hoplessness and avoidance of change. What we do not change, we choose.”

D. Richo, how to be an adult in relationships

“We all have what it takes to feel, but to experience our feelings fully and safely, they need to be “validated” by someone who mirrors them. Mirrorring happens when someone accurately reflects our feelings back to us with a warm welcome. We then know we are understood and it is safe to have and show our feelings. (…)

The opposite of mirrorring is shaming. The less mirrorring we have received, the more ashamed of ourselves we may be. (…)

Shaming is a form of abandonment, and holding onto our shame is self-abandonment. Now we begin to see why we fear abandonment so much. It is the absence of mirrorring, and we need mirrorring to survive emotionally.

We also see why we fear the loss of our partner. To grieve is to feel keenly isolated and bereft of mirrorring. To grieve with supportive others, however, is mutual mirrorring. This si why funerals are public events: our fellow mourners mirror grief to us and we to them. Grief is healed by letting go and by contact.”

D. Richo, How to be an adult in relationship

“Finally, keep in mind that it is always acceptable not to know what something is or mean. This ability to allow for mystery is what John Keats called “negative capability”, or “being in uncertainties, mysteries, and doubts without irritable reaching after fact and reason”. It is in mindfulness that we act just in that way: enduring our unknowing yet sitting serenely. From that position some unique meaning is allowed to ripen over time, in its own time.”

D. Richo, How to be an adult in relationships

of the importance of sometimes, meandering within the aisles of a public library. my visit this afternoon to Castlemaine’s yielded this book. the quotes down there were taken from the five pages introduction. buckle on, and get some tea.

“Love is experienced differently by each of us, but for most of us, five aspects of love stand out. We feel loved when we receive attention, acceptance, appreciation, and affection, and when we are allowed the freedom to live in accord with our own deepest needs and wishes. We show love in the five same ways. […]

Intimacy at its best means giving and receiving the five A’s which are the joys and wealth of a relationship. These five elements or aspects of love also describe our destiny of service to the world as mature spiritual beings. […] Through our spiritual practice we come to know a power greater than our ego and that power nourishes us by granting us the graces of attention, acceptance, appreciation, affection and allowing.

There is a touching and encouraging synchronicity – meaningful coincidence – built into our very being: the five A’s are simultaneously the fulfillment of our earliest needs, the requirements of adult intimacy and of universal compassion, and the essential qualities of mindfulness practice. In the splendid economy of human and spiritual development, the same keys open all our evolutionary doors.

Thus the five A’s come to us as gifts in childhood. They are then bestowed to us as gifts to ourselves and to others. They are not the result of efforts but are the automatic overflow of love we receive. We do not have to try; we simply notice that we are attentive, appreciative, affectionate, acceptant, and allowing towards those we love. Showing the five A’s is “heartfulness’, a spiritual practice.

Is there a way to increase our capacity to give and receive these essential elements of love? Yes. […] The work and practice I recommend here are not aimed at making your life together smoother but at helping you relate to its inevitable roughness with humor, ease and generosity. An untamed ego cannot pull that off. Only an awakened heart can do it. Then intimacy is best approached on a spiritual path. As a bonus, our limited personal work can heal the wider world.”

David Richo, How to be an adult in relationships