Keep Moving Forward

Forgiveness is fickle when trust is a chore.

Sacred Vision, Iron & Wine is Samuel Ervin Beam

I suspect my tinfoil hat is about to grow even taller, but oh hell, I am The Cat Who Walked by Himself. I was born to be this way, and I have long surrendered to this lonely position. It turns out I would not be bribed into the cave, even for a bowl of cream and a safe warm fire to get you through the cold nights.

There are nefarious ways afoot. I have looked in many directions and it appears to me that this fire was lit by the West/US and the people, already in heightened fear, are fanning the flames for them. That is not to say that invading another independent country is ever the way forward. But there might well be a case that supports the behaviour of a leader of a major nation whose back has been pushed up against an ‘unscaleable’ wall with no-where else to go. And no-one can deny that Ukrainians, where one in three still have Russian language as their first language, are Putin’s people, and therefore the heart is involved for him, either for better or for worse. Of course, we all believe we live in the good half of the globe. But the cracks are appearing in even this view of ourselves. There is no situation that doesn’t require two to tango. I have never seen flames jump so high so quickly!

Ukraine! Only interesting to the West because it sits up against Russia’s border. Reactions have been lightening fast—you have to know surely that no-one has taken time to consider what might be the repercussions of this. We never make good decisions when we listen to our shaking knees. Regime changes, coups supported by the West/US, arming ‘freedom fighters‘ that become Al Queda, and ISIS, and perhaps now, neo-nazis in the Ukraine, invading Afghanistan and Iraq, being involved in wars all over like in Yemen, Sudan, Syria and Libya – how did that work out for us and the world?

I can’t help wondering where the bleeding hearts all around are for those of our own who have taken a bullet to protect Granny. Those who survived the injurious shot are not even permitted to speak, never mind get medical help and restitution from the companies who caused it. Everyone turned the other way from families where the shot was fatal because it is not comfortable to think about it. Where is the outcry? And why would we stand idly by and allow shots to be fired at children? I can only believe the majority truly are now in an even heightened psychological state of mass psychosis. Anybody who sat glued to the TV news over the last number of years never had a chance of emerging unscathed.

I am grateful to be the cat that stays outside of the cave – much more of a free and peaceful place from which to watch what is happening from the outside rather than the inside. There are dangers to be had from finding oneself distanced from the picture, and lack of compassion is one of them, but with experience one learns to keep an eye on them. Stepping back always helps one to see more clearly. The loneliness is tempered by being out in the sunshine by day and under the stars and moon by night. Come and join me. Or alternatively, you could pray for a knight in shining armour on a white horse with a long flowing mane. Not sure though that there is room for him to fit though the cave entrance. And really, we all know that they don’t exist. At the end of the day we only have ourselves to rely upon.

I had no idea when I read the story to my first daughter (about 35 years ago, The Cat Who Walked by Himself by Rudyard Kipling, The Just So Stories), why it hit me square in the solar plexus. I also wondered why it was never one of the stories chosen by our teacher to read to us kids—probably the one story that carried the most meaning. Although I have always remembered the story, yesterday I experienced the memory with deeper understanding. How the world helps to reveal who, why and what we are, if we pay conscious attention to living. I am never bored of life and I am grateful for every minute and all the opportunities it gives me to learn more about its reasons for why things are just so. I also know that there are two ways of travel – just as there is two of everything, whether opposites like love and fear or suffering and grace, or even what we see as one—our line of progress towards our future. We can and do go forwards and backwards—the cycles that only a blind reader of history would miss. Standing still is never an option—too much energy in our closed system this side of the veil.  That is all there is to Free Will. No body is interested in whether we choose a strawberry ice cream or a coke, only when it comes to making money from us.

In this life, I was born a simple cat of a soul and never destined for high ground. Once I embraced this fully, I also learned that no matter who we are, we are loved and already forgiven when we trust. And really, we are each one of us a butterfly whose flapping wings are felt on the other side of this world.

My blogs for a while are going to be short and quick to prepare so that I have time to be in the world of my new book—a more beautiful world where we have finally arrived at the moment in time of wanting to keep moving forward, and what this requires from us. Well, at least the children recognise this. Am I a fool to have faith?