It's All Water Under the Bridge

The Brisbane River seen from The Goodwill Bridge,
as it never will be again

One saying that really grates on me is "It's all good!".

I can see that the intentions behind the saying are "all good" by the people who use it, but it is "all wrong" ... or half wrong, anyway. 
Because things are neither all good, nor all bad - they are a mixture of both.
Some things can change according to how we perceive them, that's true, but some things are just bad no matter how you want to paint them.
All things in life are lessons, but that doesn't make them "all good". 
Some are extremely tough and quite painful from where we stand ... and some just can't be understood from our perspective in this life, no matter how much we philosophize as to whether they are good, or bad.

I finally finished reading a book that I purchased (above) and wrote about a year ago in this post;

“The Twelfth Insight”?  
I have since read all of the books and watched the DVD featured in that post and would recommend them all ... with the exception of  
The Twelfth Insight, maybe?

The Brisbane River flowing beneath the Victoria Bridge

Chapter 8 of this book Taking the Leap I liked so much that I felt I just had to quote the following passage from it in length, as it explains why I like to sit and meditate on life near bodies of water like rivers, lakes and oceans. 

From chapter 8, Uncovering Natural Openness from  
Taking the Leap by Pera Chodron;
"Nothing is static and permanent. 
And that includes you and me.
We know this about cars and carpet, new shirts and DVD players, but are less willing to face it when it comes to ourselves or to other people. 
We have a very solid view of ourselves, and also very fixed views about others. 
Yet if we look closely, we can see that we aren't even slightly fixed.
In fact, we are as unfixed and changing as a river. 
For convenience, we label a constant flow of water the Mississippi or the Nile, very much the way we call ourselves Jack or Helen.  
But that river isn't the same for even a fraction of a second.
People are equally in flux - I am like that, and so are you.
Our thoughts, emotions, and molecules are constantly changing.
If you are inclined to train in being open - endedly present to whatever arises - to life's energy, to other people, and to this world - after a while you'll realize you're open and present to something that's not staying the same. 
For example, if you are truly open and receptive to another person, it can be quite a revelation to realize that they aren't exactly the same on Friday as they were on Monday, that each of us can be perceived freshly any day of the week. 
But if that person happens to be your parent or sibling, your partner or your boss, you are usually blinded and see them as predictably always the same. 
We have a tendency to label one another as an irritating person, a bore, a threat to our happiness and security, as inferior or superior; and this goes way beyond our close circle of acquaintances at home or at work.
This labeling can lead to prejudice, cruelty, and violence; and in any time or place when prejudice, cruelty, and violence occur, whether it's directed by one being toward another or by groups of beings toward other groups, there is a theme that runs through: 
"This person has a fixed identity, and they are not like me."
...There is a whole other way to look at one another - and that is to try dropping our fixed ideas and get curious about the possibility that nothing and no one remains always the same.
This starts, of course, with getting curious and dropping the limiting stories we've created about ourselves. 
Then we have to stay present with whatever is happening to us.
What I find helpful is to think of whatever I am experiencing - whether it's sadness, anger, or worry; pleasure, joy, or delight - as simply the dynamic, fluid energy of life as it is manifesting right now.
That shifts the resistance I have to my experience.
Because I've been practicing this approach for some years now, I've come to have confidence in the capacity for open receptivity, for wakefulness and nobility, in all beings. 
And I have seen that how we regard and treat one another can draw this nobility out....
...Usually when we're all caught up, we're so engrossed in our story-line that we lose our perspective.
The painful situation at home, in our job, in prison, in war, whatever we might find ourselves caught in the difficulty, our perspective usually becomes very narrow, microscopic even.
We have the habit of automatically going inward.
Taking a moment to look at the sky or taking a few seconds to abide with the fluid energy of life, can give us a bigger perspective - that the universe is vast, that we are a tiny dot in space, that endless, beginingless space is always available to us.
Then we might understand that our predicament is just a moment in time, and that we have a choice to strengthen old habitual responses or to be free.
Being open and receptive to whatever is happening is always more important than getting worked up and adding further aggression to the planet."

Something that I will be pondering on my next trip to, or over a large body of water ... or even a pond, for that matter.

It may not be "all good", but it is all just water under the bridge that we can observe flowing past us without the urge to go swimming, or drowning ourselves in.
And let's not forget clouds are mostly bodies of water floating right by us, too.
But how many of us take note of those bodies of water floating by us, while our mind is focused on the river water? 
Sometimes ... well, always really ... there is more happening around us than we care to observe. 

Freedom, Just for the Birds?

I've been thinking about the word FREEDOM quite a bit lately, especially when it comes to having to make a living to keep the payments going on my mortgage.  
Well, it's not hard to keep that word in mind when I look out the window of my workplace and see the word staring back at me.

It's the name of a furniture store that has it's logo painted on the side of the building, much like the one above. 
It's like the word is there to specifically taunt me.
The funny thing is that in a few months, the company I work for is building a new warehouse just down the road and when I look out the window in that building I will be looking at the words  
"Great Wall (of China?)".

I also have the signed novel by Jonathan Franzen called FREEDOM sitting on my bedside chest of draws, along with his other two, that I bought from the Brisbane Writers Festival last year,

The Corrections and The Discomfort Zone.
I love the design of the cover of FREEDOM at the top of this post, with the birds flying over the ( probably mortgaged ) house spelling out the word FREEDOM. 
It also contains the colours of my favourite Rugby League team - 
The Cronulla - Sutherland Sharks.

And Franzen's name appears to be written across a crow feather 
(one of my favourite birds).
But that is not the cover design I have. 
Mine is totally different to that design ... I'll come to that in a minute.

Jonathan Franzen in Brisbane last year

I wrote about seeing Jonathan talk in Brisbane last year here,
Jonathan Franzen in Brisbane

That's when I bought his three books that I mentioned above.

I had always planned on reading The Corrections or  
The Discomfort Zone first and Freedom last. 
At no time had I ever planned on reading Freedom before the others ... until the other day, that is, when the universe threw a sync at me I just couldn't ignore.

The bird that flew on to Mike's wife, Karin's hand

Mike Perry had the above photo on his blog post called  
Attracting Birds Coincidence.
I decided to read the one, of about ten books that were in front of me on my desk, because of this sync.
The book was called The Healing Wisdom of Birds by

Lesley Morrison.

I wrote about all the syncs related to Mike's birds and that book here, especially once I started reading it,
The Cosmic Egg and the Dragon 
But the 600 page book resting on my bedroom chest of drawers 
titled Freedom was the one that really got my attention.

I couldn't help thinking that the bird on the cover of Franzen's (the one I owned) book was the same type of bird on Karin's hand. 
According to the back of the novel's cover the bird on the front is a Cerulean Warbler. 
I had never heard of them before and I wanted a clearer picture of this type of bird to see if it was at all like Mike's bird.
So, I Googled up some pictures and info on the bird.

Cerulean Warbler

I found this picture of a Cerulean Warbler (above) and thought it had similar wing markings to Mike's bird.
But even if they are not the same type of bird, they are close enough for me to take the hint, and start reading the novel.

Looking though the three books I bought on the day, I couldn't help thinking that Jonathan Franzen had written me a medical prescription.
Each book seemed to be a message to me about where I was/am  and where I should be heading, as far as making a living goes.

Hopefully it will be freedom for Daz after a few corrections get me out of the discomfort zone;- )
Jonathan himself is a keen bird watcher by all accounts.
To quote him from this site;
Bestseller author Jonathan Franzen is a Birder 
"Finally, in the mid-1990s, I made a conscious decision to stop worrying about the environment. 
There was nothing meaningful that I personally could do to save the planet, and I wanted to get on with devoting myself to the things I loved. 
I still tried to keep my carbon footprint small, but that was as far as I could go without falling back into rage and despair.

BUT then a funny thing happened to me. 
It’s a long story, but basically I fell in love with birds. 
I did this not without significant resistance, because it’s very uncool to be a birdwatcher, because anything that betrays real passion is by definition uncool. 
But little by little, in spite of myself, I developed this passion, and although one-half of a passion is obsession, the other half is love.

And so, yes, I kept a meticulous list of the birds I’d seen, and, yes, I went to inordinate lengths to see new species. 
But, no less important, whenever I looked at a bird, any bird, even a pigeon or a robin, I could feel my heart overflow with love. 
And love, as I’ve been trying to say today, is where our troubles begin.

Because now, not merely liking nature but loving a specific and vital part of it, I had no choice but to start worrying about the environment again. 
The news on that front was no better than when I’d decided to quit worrying about it — was considerably worse, in fact — but now those threatened forests and wetlands and oceans weren’t just pretty scenes for me to enjoy. 
They were the home of animals I loved.

And here’s where a curious paradox emerged. 
My anger and pain and despair about the planet were only increased by my concern for wild birds, and yet, as I began to get involved in bird conservation and learned more about the many threats that birds face, it became easier, not harder, to live with my anger and despair and pain."

I found this still from The Simpson's featuring Jonathan Franzen and Michael Chabon.
I hope the universe is not telling me to read his book that I bought and is sitting on my shelf still unread.

How many books can I read at a time? 
Please ... give me a break!;-)

Touchy Subject?

Compare the 2012 artwork for Fox's TV show "Touch" with Alan Abbadessa Green and friend's 2010 artwork for "Squares that TOUCH".

Alan Abbadessa-Green from Look At All The Happy Creatures brings up a very good point in his latest post;

wtf Touch?!?
as to whether somebody involved with Fox's new show Touch has deliberately pinched his ideas, or whether it is just one more example of the synchronious universe at work.
I know which way Fox's lawyers are going to argue, and it would probably be the first win in a court case where synchronicity is legally recognized officially;- )

From Alan Abbadessa-Green's 
The Squares That Touch

Oh, and to one of my other blogging buddies, Mike Perry at

67 Not Out and Coincidence and Synchronicity, guess what? 

The two pages of Alan's  book, The Squares That Touch, that image above is from are pages, 6 & 7.

P.S.

You might also find Alan's post before this one worth viewing, if you make the time?
Everything is a Remix
"Thanks to Antoine Charvet for sharing these videos with me.
For old school sync heads there probably isn't too much new here, but the production quality is strong and the case is well argued (I don't agree with all his points, but I do support many of them).
I highly recommend watching all four parts." 
Alan Abbadessa-Green
Very educational  and enlightening viewing in my opinion.