Reflection on 1600+


Reflection is an essential component of living a fulfilling life. If we do not take the opportunity to reflect, we tend to enter ruts, develop detrimental habits and, ultimately, miss out on a lot of what our lives have to offer. If we do not challenge our assumptions, we will never grow as human beings. Ideas that go unchallenged make about as much sense as marrying the first person you ever dated. Doing things over and over that are self-destructive to our selves or to others does not make much sense either.

Reflection comes to us in several ways, and there is not a generic way to gain introspectiveness as we are all different, all individuals. Personally, I find that my Yoga and meditation practise, supplemented with a lot of reading in various spiritual and psychological texts ranging from the Dhammapada and Bhagavad Gita to Jung and De Bono are essential to my reflective process. Equal to these are moments when I sit and smoke my pipe and listen to music, or play my guitar, accompanied by a dram of fine single malt. Running through the river valley with my two dogs or going to the gym are also excellent opportunities to reflect. Ultimately, there is no excuse in our lives to not find a way to reflect, it's just a matter of making the effort. The means to this end are extensive: prayer, knitting, painting, etc. Still, many people are so caught up in the high-speed, 24/7 world in which we live that we fail to do this.

This Blog which I started a few years ago has just surpassed 1600 viewers. How many actually stopped and read what I have written is unknown as folks seldom leave comments. Regardless, with this many people potentially checking out what I written is exciting and terrifying. It truly causes me to reflect on why I do this. It's definitely not for fame as this site is a microscopic molecule on a piece of lint stuck to the back of a very small ant in the infinity that has become the blogesphere. I have no desire to become some sort of guru, counsellor or leader – it's simply not something I aspire to in the least. My reasons for writing are simply (1) I have a need to write; be creative in some capacity, and (2) based on my punk rock roots, want to be a provocateur. I do not care what people think of what I write, but do hope to elicit some sort of synaptic reaction (preferably for the universal good). Much of what attracted me to Buddhism was based in the Buddha's message which, paraphrased, stated: these are the truths and way I've found, but do not take my word as truth, but rather, find your own. It comes down to Newton's theory of actions and reactions, as I try to live by Gandhi's words of "be the change that you wish to see in the world". I do not care to be idealised because I am simply like everyone else with darkness in my past, who can be a hypocrite and makes all the other mistakes characteristic of any human being. In the end, I am venting, developing my own sense of things through my words, while, sometimes, just having a laugh… So, in the end, this blog is a bit like my reflectiveness on steroids... and I could be wrong about everything I have ever written....

Namaste.