CHAOS

We all think we want security, certainty and stability in life but actually chaos, uncertainty and change are the only true certainties.

Change happens all the time. We can either cling to the myth of security or choose to feel exposed, like a baby, born naked staring at our bright, vivid life.

Chaos is a powerful teacher but we predictable humans love to avoid discomfort. If we don’t like someone, somewhere or something, we run, hide or attack. We need to learn to be brave, to be ok with uncertainty, to be ok with chaos, to be ok feeling unsure and to be ok not knowing what to do, say or think.

By letting ourselves feel raw, tender, open we begin to learn the meaning of life, the meaning of each moment.

Problems tend to make us small. We feel miserable, feel like we are victims, pathetic, hopeless cases. But if we drop the complaints about ourselves, our situation and others, problems have the power to wake us up & make us happy.

So, the next time chaos makes your ground feel unstable, don’t consider it an obstacle, consider it a stroke of luck, an opportunity to feel and embrace the movement of life.

Go to places that scare you, make poison your medicine, stop trying to avoid chaos and regard what arises as energy, the energy that has the power to change you, the power to change your life.

#beinghuman #energy #teacher

TOGETHER

One thing makes us happy, so why are most of us are doing the complete opposite?

Some humans are dealt a good genetic hand, predisposed to being happier, less neurotic and nicer to be around. Many humans believe in karma, some fate, some that money buys happiness and some believe in ‘throwness”, that our experience is determined by where we're thrown into the world…

But even if our genes are bad, we land in a bad place, we were bad in our past lives or the Gods have dealt us a bad hand, even if we are rich yet miserable, we still have a possibility for happiness… as it is human connection, that makes us happy.

The Harvard Study of Adult Development, the longest-running study on happiness, states humans are an intensely social species. It's literally a matter of life and death.

In our ancestral past, if we were pushed out by the tribe, we died. So, we are designed to have social connections to survive but modern life is getting in the way of our genes.

Ironically, we literally carry more knowledge than ever in human history yet we are more miserable than ever. Through technology, we are spending more time alone than ever before and it's making us unhappy, very unhappy. 

It's estimated that humans in hunter-gather societies spent the majority of their time together: working, eating, playing, prating, hunting and gathering … humans lived and died... together. In contrast, nearly a third of people in “developed Western countries” live alone, literally alone for about 8-10 hours of the day, every day. For people who live with others, it's about 5-7 hours every day. As people get older, they spend nearly half their waking time alone. This is making us all sadder than at any time in human history as we lose the patience, compassion, kindness and skills needed to cooperate and be happy.

Humans can survive only by connecting with each other. We need to build technology, societies and cultures that preserve our genetic urge to connect and belong. Otherwise, our “advanced” society will stay a sad, lonely place to dwell.

#beinghuman #happiness #technology

COP

From protesters to pacifists, politicians to parents, policymakers to populations we all need to stop the collective insanity that is our collective dependency on fossil fuels.

As yet another COP conference comes to an end, there
still does not seem to be a real plan of action that acknowledges the emergency or the full recognition that many of the world's problems, not only global warming, stem from our dependency on fossil fuels, all of our collective dependency on fossil fuels.

In the conversation around the current “cost of living crisis,” we are not naming the crisis correctly; it is a fossil fuel crisis, driven by ignorance and greed, we should all start to call it that.

Though BREXIT, COVID, war and austerity all have roles to play in our current state, our collective addiction to fossil fuels are at the wheel, driving the crisis and humanity to the edge.

So, the next time someone mentions the “cost of living” crisis, remember it is a climate justice, social justice, poverty and extinction crisis and if we do not act now we humans, the planet and all who live here in all our uniqueness and diversity are endangered.

Basically, you, me, all of us need to stop copping out and cop in...

#beinghuman #cop27 #climateemergency

POLLUTION

Humanity has a new form of pollution, digital pollution or world, wide waste.

Digital technologies have a serious carbon footprint, not just the making and disposal of the devices, but also their digital use.

Technology is ubiquitous and from morning to night we are digital dependents also pollute our minds, beliefs and collective ability to act with wisdom and compassion.

We have a pandemic of data and 90% of it is crap. Storing the crap on a cloud is 200 times more energy intensive than storing it on a hard drive and with digital pollution creating 3.7% of CO2 emissions globally, 50% more than air transport, we all need to change.

If you are reading this, you, like me are helping to pollute, harm, and warm our world.

Big tech and users of Big Tech, all of us need to adopt more sustainable, cleaner, greener practices in our digital lives. We need to face the fact that digital life, like real life, involves death and dying. At some stage data must die and believing we all can live forever is not wise.

Digital pollution is real and we humans need to find a way to purify our digital minds, body and souls from our digital addiction.

#beinghuman #technology #sustainability

WISE

Intelligence without wisdom is dangerous and destructive.

We do need intelligence, be it logic, concepts or abstract thought, but from weapons to war, business to bitcoin, concrete to chemicals, plastic to pandemics, AI to agriculture … intelligence without wisdom is demonically dangerous and destructive.

Without wisdom, there is no compassion and without compassion, our race simply will not survive.

Wisdom does not come from thinking or knowledge but comes from awareness. Yet our institutions, universities, economies and politicians still shun wisdom to worship at the altar of intelligence.

And our intelligence is destroying us.

But this human habit of worshipping intelligence is relatively recent. We still have time to remember our innate wisdom, heal and change.

Wisdom, learning to surrender to impermanence, befriending change, understanding nature, be it human, global or universal, in all its paradoxical glory, will save us.

Being wise will save us.

#beinghuman #intelligence #ai

RIVER

When we relax and let the river of life carry us, life is beautiful.

The river is a simple yet powerful metaphor for life, with twists and turns, rocks and boulders, fast and slow, the river is reliable but it is not stable.

We cannot catch the river or stop the river, the river is always moving, never the same and there is no need to try to dam the flow.

But when we cling to our could have, should have and would haves. When we are too attached to our conceptions, misconceptions and preconceptions. When we fight the flow, we fight the river and life is exhausting.

So, if you are happy be happy. If you are sad, be sad, if you are lonely feel lonely. The wild, weird and wonderful ways we humans feel do not define who are we but how we are, now.

And how we are changes.

Like the river our feelings flow and who we think we are, flows too.

So, get naked, dive in, feel and trust the ebb and flow and let the river carry you to the ocean.

#beinghuman #creativeprocess #mindfulliving

GURUS

I have had many gurus in my life. Some kind, some wrathful and some boring, banal even yet essential.

The role of my many great, genuine, generous gurus has been at the heart of every stage of my life.

Gurus have been a haven, a place of refuge, sheltering and protecting me from my own ignorance.

My experiences have not always been easy but a lineage of authentic, authoritative, astute gurus have passed on their wisdom and powered my personal evolution.

So, it is with gratitude and grace that I thank @BAFTA and all the amazing gurus at #gurulive this weekend.

Thanks to all my gurus, old and new whose minds, memory and magnanimity continue to help me learn, love and live my life

#beinghuman #bafta #gurulive

HUSTLE

Hustle culture, working relentlessly, taking on side hustles and freelance gigs for many people, especially Millennials and Gen Z, is a way of life.

Hustle, burnout or grind culture and positive depictions of rise-and-grind culture on social media have normalized working harder, faster, and longer.

Elon Musk, is famous for saying, “Nobody ever changed the world on 40 hours a week.” And research shows though many hustle out of necessity, many also choose to hustle.

But hustle culture is toxic and makes you sick, literally mentally, physically and emotionally sick.

According to a WHO study, overworking is dangerous. Working 55 hours a week kills more than 745,000 people a year. Working too much increases the risk of a stroke by 35 per cent and heart disease by 17 per cent. And the problem is only getting worse as more and more people work longer hours.

Other research shows overworking is detrimental to companies: Employees who work long hours tend to sleep less, make more mistakes and end up costing businesses more.

Burnout culture pushes people over the edge, making them lose sight of what is important in life.

More research is being done into the benefits of taking vacation time and working fewer hours. Iceland piloted a shorter workweek, finding that workers’ happiness increased while still maintaining high productivity levels.

So, post the ‘great resignation’ of 2021 avoid comparing, get a hobby, know your limits and remember you can always quit be it quiet or loud.

#beinghuman #happiness #socialmedia

FREAK

In these times, our times, it is easy to become consumed by fear. It is hard to think about the challenges facing our planet and not freak out.

Bombarded with news about political, humanitarian, and environmental problems, we constantly witness our human habits of violence, greed and ignorance. It never lets up.

Life is wild and when global and personal overwhelm combine, who is not tempted to freak out?

But we humans have gone to war, struggled to survive, faced injustice and been overwhelmed by events beyond our control forever.

If we can own our disappointment with ourselves and others, own our personal and collective stupidity, it actually can help us wake up. When we genuinely feel sorry about our contribution to the problem, be it personal, local or global, then our desire, our determination to find a solution grows.

When we drop the fantasy of searching somehow, somewhere for a perfect world and instead accept and engage with the world as it is, complex, chaotic, crazy… When we face the pain of our human condition, we also embrace the beauty and value of life in all its forms.

Our world is messy, maddening, moody yet magical and if we don’t freak out, we have got this...

#beinghuman #environmental #help

MIND

Our minds can turn our lives into an endless social media platform as we constantly scroll, searching for likes, love or outrage.

Our minds then struggle to replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts. This is ultimately an exhausting way to live and die.

But if we can stop scrolling, we can let our likes, loves and outrage escape and fly, like birds in the sky.

We then can then relax and watch the sky, watch the birds as we observe and extract wisdom from our feathered friends, from our thoughts and our feelings.

Our mind can escape our likes, love and outrage and find freedom.

#beinghuman #socialmedia #like

FACE

We begin life seeking out our mother’s face, and until our last breath, whether we know it or not, we carry this longing for intimate connection.

No one seeks to suffer, yet sooner or later we all do… suffer…

Life can teach us to withdraw and protect ourselves from suffering but we humans are wired to connect and if we become over-sensitive, over-protective, too withdrawn we become deeply unhappy.

So, the challenge is to develop curiosity rather than fear about the people, places and problems that cause us to suffer.

When we gently slow and pause our breath, when we touch and stroke our skin, we regulate our nervous system, our mind takes cues from our body, feels safe and relaxes. Our bodies help us trust our ability to stay connected to our experience, even to suffering, even when it is hard.

When we suffer, we feel disappointed and lose trust in ourselves and others. But if we can see our shared humanity, especially when it is hidden by our differences, if we can be patient, open, loving, kinder to ourselves and others we feel less disappointed, less lonely and more trusting. If we focus more on helping alleviate others’ suffering rather than our own, this selfless act is actually the most selfish thing we can do.

We all want to withdraw and protect but if we can stay open, stay present and feel more, we and our future can survive and thrive.

#beinghuman #mindfulness #kindness

LAST

I was with Russell Brand at BAFTA last night...

I am name-dropping as I want as many people as possible to read this post and then go and watch one of the most moving, beautiful, emotional and important documentaries I have ever seen.

The film is called, 'Last Flight Home', it documents the last 15 days of Eli Timoner and is a stunning verité account of an amazing life and a courageous family confronting life and death.

Made by his daughter Ondi Timoner, whom Russell interviewed after the screening, the film literally had everyone in the audience moved to tears, torrents of tears.

The reason I think it is so important to watch this film, is it challenges so brilliantly and personally our society's attitudes, our legal systems and our medical structures around death and dying and actually shows us how to reconnect with the process through love, pure love.

Our Western society's death norms and practices are sadly being exported across the globe. Death has become more and more removed from life as it is monetised and industrialised. But this film, models a different way to live and die with spirituality, belief, respect and bravery. It is about family, friends, and making peace with whatever and whomever you need to before you pass.

It also honours the amazing carers, nurses and doctors who work daily, diligently with death in a system that feels broken.

But mostly this film is about life, a life well lived, a life of love.

When Eli's grandson asks him for advice about how to live, he simply replies, "Respect those you don't know and love those you do"

#beinghuman #film #love

DREAM

Night and day, all life is like a dream.
 
Past, present and future are like a dream, elusive, imaginary and hard to hold onto.
 
The past is a memory of a dream we try to grasp in the here and now.
 
The future is a projection of a dream, of our hopes and fears.

The present vanishes like a dream whenever we try to catch it.

So be vigilant, aware and present as you watch your dream as, night and day, all life is like a dream and we all need to dream.

#beinghuman #future #spirituality

WEIRD

We all spend a lot of time trying to be normal, to look normal, talk normal, act normal and find other normal people to be normal with.

But the world is a weird and wonderful place and we are all weird and wonderful people. When we cultivate our weirdness, celebrate our weirdness and embrace our weirdness, life is …wonderful.

We all know how easy it is to get caught up in the monotony of daily life, moving from one habit to another, only to do it all over again tomorrow. Being weird is a perfect antidote, reminding us there is so much more to life than normal. Being weird is exciting, energising, enjoyable, enlightening…

Being weird shocks us out of the habits that make us close off to life. When we embrace our weirdness, we become fascinated by our differences as we also embrace how weird who we think we are, what we do, what we think and what we believe actually is!

Being weird helps us challenge what we think we like and what we think we don’t like. We become more alive, aware and attuned to our own needs and the needs of others.

Being weird helps us become better, bigger, braver people and to live better lives.

We all can find wisdom in weirdness as we wonder and wander in our wonderful, wise and weird world.  

#beinghuman #create #philosophy

TOTAL

The practice of experiencing everything, totally, releases massive energy, energy that is repressed & wasted if we constrict & withdraw from totally experiencing life.

The enormous release of energy can be scary, but if we are open to fear, welcome fear, just as a sensation, a feeling that passes, we can cut through the barriers we create by our emotional habit of restraint.

We don’t need to strain, control or force when we relax, totally we experience totally

The universe is big, really big and we can experience how it feels to open up to the whole universe, to the endless, available & unobstructed phenomena that are there waiting for us if we see how free it feels to totally feel, everything.

#beinghuman #experience #energy

MASKS

Post-COVID our physical masks have been easy to remove but our invisible masks are harder to recognise and release.

Our masks feel comfortable, safe, and reliable a part of who we think we are and how we like to be seen.

Our masks protect us, help us feel safe, guarded but to experience everything, to be present we need to stop hiding and be brave enough to take our masks off.

When we drop our masks of self-protection, we open ourselves to whatever happens. We see how open and unobstructed the universe is and how everything is mutually interdependent.

We start to develop an openness to all situations, a carefree acceptance of life without the limits of our masks.

Openness becomes a playground of our emotions and we relate to people without artificiality, manipulation or strategy.
We see and can be seen just as we are.

#beinghuman #experience #strategy

MEMORY

Memories are as varied as human experience. We feel memories, own memories, use memories and find it hard to let go of our memories.

But memory is a faculty of our minds. Data and information that is encoded, stored and recalled when needed. Memory and our memories influence our thoughts, feelings and actions. Influence what we think, feel and do.

We, humans, choose how, why and when to use our memories and which memories are important to us. We design our memories to suit our beliefs, our habits, our present and our future

Memories can be a shelter, warm, safe, secure but if we use our memories to bias how we see the here and now, our memories can be a prison, stopping us from seeing the beauty of the bigger, wider, freer world.

So, remember, memories are not what they seem, like a Wikipedia page we constantly update our memories to suit our here and now, to suit our futures

We curate our memories as we curate our lives.

#beinghuman #data #design

ASSETS

In the bank balance of life, we often audit our visible assets but what about our invisible assets?

We value visible assets like property, possessions or cash but we don’t always appreciate the invisible assets like love, peace of mind, friends, family or a connection to nature.

There are so many aspects to abundance and success but our culture tends to have a very narrow definition. We’re hyper-fixated on fame, power and money.

In our culture, if we make a lot of money even if we are a terrible, miserable, lonely person we are respected. But while one person may have an abundance of money, others may have an abundance of talent or friendships. An abundance of talents may bring the gift of others' appreciation or an abundance of friends may bring the gift of support.

If you have done a life audit of your visible and invisible assets, you don’t have to trade peace of mind, love, friendships, talent or connection to make money. You just need to widen your focus and cultivate gratitude to become a truly successful human.

To become true masters of abundance we need to redefine what abundance means and develop a more holistic approach to our assets and our life.

#beinghuman #success #money

DELUDED

Every human inherits an innate ability to be happy.

Every human also inherits an ability to feel a whole range of big, beautiful, brave beliefs supported by endless, elaborate, exuberant emotions.

But often our emotions and beliefs though transitory cover up this innate ability to be happy as we grasp onto them under the delusion they are solid, real, eternal…

Most of us hold on so tight that we lose sight of the happiness that is our birthright.

But none of us can hold on forever and sooner or later we have to let go…

#beinghuman #happiness #minfulness

LIGHT

We all want love, peace and happiness and we all have what we need to be loved, peaceful and happy.

But we need to learn to let go, release and relax… to stop trying too hard, to stop grasping and develop happier and healthier attitudes.

Like detectives, super sleuths we need to watch our minds, our thoughts and our actions in order to find and uncover what is already there hidden in plain sight.

Enlightenment is not some unreachable, impossible goal it is actually our true nature, there, available, innate in us all and when we relax and stop grasping, we all can see the light.

#beinghuman #mindfulness # #happiness