I am a version of you and you are a version of me...

'one of many'

photography by sweetmango

Lets explore this idea a little further. Yesterday I opened the topic with a broad base of discussion revolving around the idea that our dreams and desires are a result of our fears. I loved the plethora of comments and emails sent to me, such a diverse body of thought, wonderful!

First of all I am no different to any of you out there. We are the same. I believe that with my whole heart.... yes, I am sweetmango and yes I look, speak and act differently to you all but that just makes me merely a version of you, although we share different thoughts, tastes, ideas etc I am still merely a version of you. Because here is the thing, I am just like you in the most fundamental of ways. My basic needs and desires are the same as yours.

I need food, water and shelter.

I desire love, security and happiness.

and I also need to feel that I make a meaningful contribution to 'Life' in some significant way because you see the thing is this; People need to feel like they are valued, like they are relied upon to make a positive difference in the lives of others, in this world ... their 'reason for being'.

Now tell me you do not have those things as your fundamental basis on this journey called life?

So when I concede that we are all fundamentally the same, just versions of each other I am then able to view my world and the people around me in a much different way. I am able to view every living thing on this planet with loving compassion. I want you to have what i need, I want you to have what I desire .... because we are the same. If you have those fundementals, if each and every one of you is able to be provided with, or to provide yourselves with those basics, then there would be no aggression .... so long as each of us understands that we all need and desire the same things.... so long as each of us understands that we are all versions of each other ... so long as we all view the world and those who inhabit it with unconditional love and understanding.

I know, I know .... I can hear some of you saying, "but that will never happen, there will always be aggression in the world, fighting, wars etc." Here is the thing, I truly believe with my whole heart that we are all capable of non violence, even the most violent amongst us. I believe in this very strongly because of the precept of unconditional loving compassion. How? Like this....

Some may see the hardened criminal behind bars, we hear the crime and cringe and thank god he is locked away and thank god it did not happen to us.
I see not that moment in time but ALL the moments that lead up to the present moment and I see a young child, a little 4 year old boy, who had terrible things perpetrated to him, in dark rooms behind closed doors. Or the little boy who was neglected in the most horrible of ways, or the little boy who was told over and over that he was useless that he would amount to nothing, or the little boy who's only real role model was a violent person (violence begets violence, anger begets anger etc) . Then, when I see the child of the man, the path that was traveled to this point in time I am able to understand with loving compassion. That does not mean that I agree with the violence or aggression, it just means that I am able to understand to some degree how this all really began.
When a persons basic needs and then their basic desires are not being met they react with anger. They have angry mannerisms, angry speech, angry actions. The person who has the needs and desires met is much more likely to be able to handle the crises in their lives with much more calmness and from a much more centred state of mind, state of being and therefore a much more centred state of doing.

Perspective is my very best friend, well next to Stellan :)
Perspective is what gets me through every thing, good or bad, big or small etc. Once you have perspective you will gain gratitude, real gratitude. The thing with perspective is this ... you really understand that every single second of every single day no matter what is happening to you, regardless of your circumstances, no matter how wonderful or how devastating ... it could always be better or worse. Thats it.

You see right now, I am in bed typing this on a laptop, I have a beautiful room, I am full from dinner, I am drinking a herbal tea made from clean water, the children and animals whom I love and who love me in return are sleeping in various rooms around my house, my ears are filled with the sounds of beautiful music and the gentle snores of Stellan as he dreams his way into tomorrow, I feel safe, loved and I feel needed, I know that I am affecting in positive ways certain people in this world and that those people want me and need me and love me....I am respected and needed and loved.

Well first of all, if I am honest with you, right now as I type this part, I literally had to stop for a second and give thanks, I really did, I mean WOW, even when I write it down I am dumbfounded by my fortune, I am GRATEFUL.
I even say that to people, I mean it on the deepest level when i tell them that "I am so, so grateful to have you in my life, as a part of my journey". I even say it out loud when i am by myself, "I am grateful" I will say to myself and whichever Gods are listening at that time, "I am grateful, for all that I have, for all that is yet to come and for all of the lessons that unfold in my life, I am grateful".

and I really am, really to the core, grateful.

...because although it could always be better.... oh my, it could always be worse .... and should it happen to get 'worse', well then folks it could always be, well ... worse!

But if we tie in yesterdays post then we take our basic needs and basic desires and lets say for instance that we do not have enough money to provide adequate food and shelter, this would leave us living in a state of fear would it not? So we have some immediate options, we can hold that fear close to our chests and continue living in fear and doing nothing about it, except complain and bemoan our state of affairs or we can hold that fear close to our chests and react with anger at this injustice laid upon us and direct anger all around us ... or .... we can take that fear and use it to bring into our lives what it is that we require, use it as our incentive to gain what is missing. Use it as a tool that drives us forward and in doing so, it takes us further away from the state of being that left us minus a genuine need or desire.

This can be applied to any part of our lives, not just the basic needs and desires. Your dream job, a new direction, serious illness, anything and everything. You use the fear to propel you forward, you look at the fear as being the complete opposite of your actual need or desire, that in order to leave the fear behind it must be replaced and the only thing each fear can be replaced with is the opposite of that fear, nothing more and nothing less will do.

So, do we still require fight and flight? Yes we do, there are people out there, those little boys and girls who were mistreated and never given a fair go, they were never offered a hand and they never had anyone tell them that they were needed, that they had a vital and important role in this world and so their fears see them reacting and acting out in anger. So yes we do need to continue to carry fight or flight with us, however we also need to carry equal amounts of unconditional loving compassion on our journey, so that in our encounters with others along our path, those we know and those who are complete strangers, we are able to look at them through unbiased eyes, we are able to look them in the eye, smile at them and notice them and wherever possible encourage them or thank them and be grateful for them ... you really just don't know how big a difference you can make in a moment in the life of another person, even a stranger.
Because lets face it, in the end, we are not strangers we are just versions of each other and we all need to be encouraged to be our very best.

I am grateful for each and every one of you, i really, really am, you all give me more than you know, you are all making a wonderful contribution in my life, ALL OF YOU.
You are all loved.
Namaste
sm

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Fear is the Foundation of my Castle...

"Castles in the Air"

Photograph by Sweetmango

Yesterday I wrote something to someone I love. It was a kind of incomplete sentence and after I wrote it I realised that beyond its literal meaning there lay hidden a truth for myself. So, what I wrote was along these lines, that sometimes our deepest desires, our dreams are in fact distortions of our greatest fears. Ok, so I have tidied that up a bit and in reality it was originally written regarding an actual dream, a dream that occurred during sleeping, but, here is the thing, it was later on during a meditation that I started to see the true meaning of what I had written.

I love that our fears and dreams are so intricately woven together that in some instances in our lives they are transmutable, inseparable.

You see, we have this in built mechanism within ourselves that helps us survive fear. Back in our hunter gatherer days it was all about the 'fight or flight' response, but that is no longer really needed in the present day, it was a survival mechanism of our very very very distant ancestors.

Now, obviously there are instances where fight or flight still exists, I am not saying that the actual reactive response of fight or flight has gone the way of the dinosaurs, what I am referring to is personal fears as opposed to external fears, although as I write that line I challenge its validity, really what I write applies to almost all fears.

Those circumstances where fight or flight really does present itself, those circumstances are also based solely on fear. Not just the fear that the person on the receiving end of an attack feels but also the aggressor. The aggression, the anger that they are directing at an innocent has all come about because of their own fears, so in those instances fear is an immediate and present danger in the lives of both the attacker and the attacked. Therefore in a perfect world, if the attacker, before attacking, looked at themselves in the manner I am about to discuss then we would have far less abuse, be it verbal, emotional or physical. If this was to happen then we would all see that ALL aggression is based upon a deep underlying fear that resides within us and that this fear is really the mirror that reflects what it is that we are missing in our lives, it reflects our deepest desire, our longing for what we have not yet received or experienced in our life.

Just as a side note here, I would also like to point out that all longing, all desire all of our dreams are all, each and every single one of them a distortion of love....but that is a whole other blog post :)

So, it has been a long time since we lived in caves and had to run from dinosaurs. Now we have a new weapon we are developing, evolving in order to do battle with our fears....we take these fears and very sneakily, very subtly and quietly we turn them into dreams, goals and desires. We do it so quietly that we are usually completely unaware of this process going on and that is, I believe, because it has been an evolutionary process to some extent.

In order for us to survive in the modern day world it is not the weapons of rock and iron that are required or so much the fleetness of foot, it is the ability to adapt quickly in daily lives, to recognise a fear grab it with both hands, smell it, touch it, look into its eyes, listen to it and then using every tool at our disposal mold this dark heavy fear into something light and beautiful and golden ... we turn it into a desire. We take one thing that hunts us, haunts us and we create an image a vision of the complete opposite and then we go about laying plans and goals to manifest this dream into our lives.

Now, the real trick, the sign of the master, is that when the vision of the dream slips as it is sometimes prone to do and the fear sitting behind that vision, feeding it, suddenly rears its ugly head, it is then that we have to really 'fight', for it is then that we have to look at the fear, the ugly thing that lurks in our hearts and perches on our shoulders whispering negative and nasty dialogue into our ears, it is then that we have to see it for what it really is...... it is incentive....ahhh yes... incentive my friends that is all that fear is. It is the thing that if used properly will keep driving us toward our goals, our desires and our dreams. Fear is not a gate, a pit, a high wall, a deep chasm fear is incentive, the driving force behind what we do, what we achieve.

Embrace fear for it is actually your wildest dreams dressed up in the rags of longing.

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The Ocean calls to me...

photography by sweetmango

Today was a good day. It is winter over here, but today had a touch of spring to it which gave the day a feeling of hope. I am not a winter person, I am a all summer long, sand between my toes, onshore breeze, beach girl. I am hopeful that this is my last year in a small 'landlocked' country town. More than anything, the change that I require in my life right now is distance....literally distance from where I am at.

I need the ocean, I need it to feed me, nourish me, I need its endless horizon so that my soul may play in large open spaces, sunlight sparkling on the shimmering surface of the deep blue. Moonlight creating pathways for the soul to explore its own depth and desires. I am starved for the early morning breeze blowing in off the waves and through an open window, brushing against my arm, my cheek, my lips, the leg that has escaped the covering of the blankets upon my bed.

Yearning sits within me, begging me to take it for long, long walks, feet upon the sand which is caressing and massaging with each step and with each step my load becomes lighter and more transparent until finally I start to float and drift on the currents of air that carry the freshness of being that only the ocean can offer me.

I want to know once more the feeling of sinking below the waves, the weightless joy of being immersed in her, the ocean, to feel her hold me, rock me below the surface, to remember as I dive down, to remember my own power and strength, the agility of my body a joy I have too long forgotten. I want to walk back up the shore, salty wet hair blowing in the breeze, all natural in my beauty, the only adornments I wear are the smile upon my lips and the hand of my lover-friend entwined with my own hand.

I want to return home,

I want to return home to the ocean.

and that is what I am thinking about today, right now.

Love to each and everyone of you.

sm

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What is on my mind today?...

"Love" photo by sweetmango

I'm in Love,

I'm in Love,

I'm in Love with Stellan.

(but i guess you already knew that didnt you!)

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Cat Tales...

Those of you who have been readers of my blog for a while now will remember the cat that I rescued a few months ago. I had been keeping an eye on him for sometime and finally intervened and took him home with me when after not seeing him for two weeks when the school holidays kept me away from his home area, I returned to find him almost at deaths door from starvation. You can read more about him HERE, along with some beautiful pictures of him enjoying the sprinkler last summer. Well, (giggle) he is far from starving these days. Everyone who sees him says the same thing, "Oh my goodness, you own Garfield"!! I think he is a very handsome and portly buddha cat, who also happens to be very, very fluffy!! :) So here he is, fully grown and extremely healthy, happy and spoilt, he is sleeping here with my daughter who Stellan calls Pretty Princess, (which she just adores!). Isn't Elsu just so very handsome...

Well, as usual the universe saw fit to place yet another beautiful little soul onto my path...her name is Safa. Like Elsu, I came across her unexpectedly, starving to a point of emaciation that I had not come across before. Her head looked far too big for her delicate little body. She could hardly walk, she was incredibly unsteady on her feet and she had the most heart wrenching meow I have ever heard. So off came my sweatshirt and into it she was bundled. I brought her home and began the journey of worming her, and feeding her and keeping her warm. The last was the most important as we were entering winter and the poor little girl was so thin that she was no longer capable of maintaining her own body temperature. I had to make sure she had warm things to sleep on and soft warm blankets to cover her.

These photos were taken a few days after I rescued her

Safa and I bonded very quickly, she began following me around the house, sitting on my knee whenever I worked on the computer but no matter what she never seemed to respond to my calling out to her like the other cats did. Finally, I realised that she was completely deaf in both ears. Now that I knew what was going on, I brought her a collar with two bells on it, then attached another two bells, this way I was able to hear her through the house and could look for her when she was looking for me, she had become distressed a few times when she could not find me. I started teaching her sign language for her name, for food, for her to come to me....she picked up the nuances of sign language very quickly, clever little girl!!

She had been with us for a couple of months now and was settling into the family very well. I was working away on the computer and talking with Stellan one morning and Safa walked in and jumped up onto my lap as usual, she settled in and all of a sudden I felt this warmth seep through my pants and onto my leg. I lifted her up to discover that she had passed a little urine with mucous and blood in it. I was devastated. I quickly got organised to take her to the vet and in the 15mins it took me to get ready she passed urine, blood and mucous several more times.

After a visit to the local vet hospital I discovered that what I thought was a young cat was in fact an older cat, who was suffering the effects of old age. I also discovered that she has a heart murmur and her heart beats very loudly, which indicates that it struggles to pass the blood around her body. I also discovered that she is partially blind and that she most probably has a thyroid problem and that the urine problem appeared to be a bladder infection. So off home we went with antibiotics to treat the infection, and lots of cuddles and kisses to treat the ailments of age and genetics topped off with the bestest softest food I could find for cats who were entering the "years of wisdom" (some refer to it as 'old age'). I am completely besotted with her, I feel like she has been a part of my life forever.

So that is Safa, the newest addition to my family, the numbers of which seems to grow very rapidly...what can I say, I have an open door policy, if you need love or help then you have come to the right place, no matter who you are :) Who knows how long Safa will have with us, I do not care, I am just so happy that she is loved, fed and warm, that she has a home and a place where she is loved unconditionally and where in return she loves us with all her heart including the extra beat that it throws out into the world.

The name Safa? It is of North African/Arabic origin and means Pure or Innocent.

Stellan helped me to pick it out. I think it suits her very well and is a very pretty name for a very pretty little girl.

What do you think?

Much love to you all.

love me

sm

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Where oh where have i been of late....???

winter sunset through the old gum tree

taken a couple of nights ago in front of my house

by sweetmango

Hmmm, yes i know I have been oh so very slack in my blogging....lets see, we can blame some of it on LoVe hee hee naughty Stellan, distracting me with his words, his eyes, his beautiful smile and his endless supply of LoVe....but I have also had a big year, a year of massive changes and new directions. I'm thankful to say that I am starting to feel a rhythm creeping into my life again and although I am not really one for planning and timetables and repetitiveness to my days I am in need of a routine to allow my days to flow more easily. You see routine is needed when you are a bringing up three kids on your own with only the odd weekend made free when the kids stay with their Dad, but even those times seem to have no rhyme or rhythm to them.

But I digress, I have had to spend the last six months really focusing on the here and now, the present. I have had to make concerted efforts to create an ebb and flow to my existence, to our existence in order for happiness to settle into every corner of my life, my house, my being. I am by no means there yet, there are days when young babies crawling into my bed before my body has even completed the last dreaming of the night brings me to points of exasperation. Tiredness is how i begin each and every day but I am thankful that i am still young and healthy and am able to shake off the cobwebs and within an hour i am fully awake and doing what needs to be done.

Most days I could have someone turn up at my front door unexpectedly and am more than happy to let them in knowing that my house is once again, flowing, the housework is up to date and the energy inside it feels ... well.... complete, restful, nurturing not just to the kids and I but to all who need to be nurtured, who require a little retreat from the world, from their world.

There are days however when, no matter how hard I try i cannot stay on top of everything and the laundry looks as though someone collected dirty washing from every house in the street and then stood at the door and threw it all into the room, backwards, over their shoulder without a care in the world where it lands...and of course that is the same day that Misty my 'scaredy cat' decides to hide in the laundry, hiding from Elsu my big playful 'Garfield look-a-like' cat. Of course she chooses to hide up high, on the tallest pile of folded, clean laundry, the one at the back that cannot possibly hold her weight and so it must be, as Einstein told us, that gravity must do its thing and knock her and the pile of clean clothes off onto the floor, on top of the dirty clothes already lying there stretched out on the floor looking like they are on vacation and draped upon deck chairs around a pool, they look so damn relaxed that I really want to scurry away and whip them up a margarita to complete the picture.

Of course, as luck would have it, I am completely unaware of the drama unfolding in the laundry and before I am able to reach the scene of the disaster to administer relief, to separate the injured (dirty clothes) from the survivors (the clean clothes) the twins manage to decide to use the laundry as their entrance and exit point of the 'fairy pirate ship' which is their imaginary play game today and of course, this story would not be complete without last nights rain, which equals today's two sets of muddy little footprints left all over the crime scene.

So I begin to sort the whole lot out, into various piles of colours as any good artist and mother does and by the time I am finished there are 8 piles of clothes for the wash, 8 full loads and i know that really there should only be 3 piles to wash today. I look outside, it is freezing cold, but the sun is out and thank goodness there is a little breeze so i know that I can get them at least half if not three quarters dry before finishing them off in the dryer and that is when i spot the horizon, all dark plum and purple.... sigh.

But the really funny part of all this and really the moral of the story is..... i should have just folded that washing and put it away, in the bedrooms ... right away. Why did I pile it up, saving it up for what exactly? I did it because i was tired, too tired I decided to be bothered putting it away, it can wait i said to myself, what do i know anyway?? So now, it seems that I shall be a little more tired today, as I re-wash everything and get it dried in between my normal jobs and today's lawn mowing extravaganza which is a whole other story in and of itself.

So the lesson is not lost on me, not one little bit. Although to be honest I have heard the lesson repeatedly from both my mother and grandmother..... put everything away once you have finished using it, it saves a lot of time in the long run. Seriously people, what was I thinking questioning the tried and true wisdom of my female elders? Especially considering their houses were always neat as a pin and so very very welcoming... and they always had time to cook and sew and do art .... even with kids.

I am off now, to wash, dry, fold and PUT AWAY my fresh clean clothes, I shall do this with a smile, I shall breath deeply of their cleanliness and natural breezy smell. Their vacation is over, it is time for them to get up off the floor and back to work in the drawers and on the bodies of us, my family.

beautiful days to you all

love me

P.S I am hoping to find time to blog more often now that I am learning how to ebb and flow.

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A little more Mango over at Stellans place...

photo by stellan

Want to read another sweetmango piece of prose?

Then click on the link below to go to Stellans blog where i have written a post...and stay tuned, because he is going to write a post on my blog.

Stellans Blog ".. ...With regards to Love" by sweetmango

While you are there check out some of his other writing and artwork, I know I am somewhat biased since I intend on spending the rest of my life with him LOL, but I guarantee that if you like my writing then you will also enjoy his.

Namaste to you all

xxsm

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I Dream Of Clouds...

Just to let everyone know... Stellans Dad has been back home for a couple of weeks now! He is recuperating slowly and healing after his emergency surgery and extended hospital stay after his appendix ruptured several weeks ago. Thank you to all of you who put him in their thoughts and prayers ....

Below is a gift I am sending Stellans Dad as a get well present. I have a thing for clouds, I have a huge file of cloud photographs and these are just two of them. Written around the outside of them are two quotes/poems.

Clouds come floating into my life no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add colour to my sunset sky.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Wake up from your dreaming of soft sunlight flooding your world,

of the gentle music that plays in your head,

of gardens filled with flowers of white and shapes of clouds that tell you a story.

- Stellan

i dream of clouds

of cumulus towers in the warm tropical air

i fall in love with the streaks

across the blue of a late summer sunset

i live for the puff balls scattered across

the ocean of the sky on a hot summer afternoon

i wish to recreate the memories of colour

splashed across a mid winter sky at sunset

i drown in the operatic display of first light

as it plays across the oceans surface

i lose my self in the scattered remains of wind swept

clouds as they streak the mountain air

i daydream about our future

as i watch the sun dance upon your face

and all the clouds of my past are lifted

i see only love splashed across my horizon

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I Wear the Robes....a re-post from Dec 08

One day I was in LAX (Los Angeles International Airport) and a Tibetan monk walked in and sat down beside me.

You know those moments when everything slows down, as though you just slipped out of the reality that exists at that moment. You are able to just sit there while the world carries on at a very slow pace....well that is what happened, this monk sat down beside me and the world around me...crawled at a slow almost imperceptible pace, it was quiet, it was calm and I knew there and then that two paths lay in front of me. I was 24. At that moment my heart was offered two choices and told that it had to choose. I could step away from the existence of everything I knew and retreat, to wear robes, shave my head and devote this journey to spirituality.....or.....I could stay immersed in the reality around me and teach as many as possible how to BE, including teaching my own children.

Then the monk stood up, turned and smiled at me, the most beautiful smile that slid inside my heart and touched my soul, he bowed slightly over his clasped hands, smiled once more and walked away into the crowd of the reality that teemed all around me.

and I stood there....

and I cried very silently, very quietly, very politely.

I wanted to put on the robes, never again have to think about what I was wearing, I wanted to shave my head and never have a bad hair day again, I wanted to remove myself from the noise and the pointless conversations and gossip and extremes that surrounded me, I wanted the simple monastic life so that I could focus on my inside instead of the outside.

I spent a year travelling and always it was on my mind, these two choices.

I never made up my mind really. You see I began to hear my children, yes that's right, before they were born, I mean 2 or 3 years before they were born I began to hear them, I could describe exactly what they looked like, mannerisms etc. I have friends who, to this day, can't believe how I used to describe them and how all of them are what I saw.

That is why I am here where I am right now, because I heard voices calling me up one of the paths and I knew I had to go to them, teach them so that they can teach others.

They chose me.

There are still times when I wish I could put on the robes, shave my hair, and walk out the door and join my brothers. This reality just seems so noisy in so many ways. I find it hard to think, but maybe that is the beauty of this challenge, rising above all of the noise means I have to lift myself to great heights and from there I can see so differently and it gives me such clear answers sometimes. There are many times when I think my "monastic" training as a mother really is a much harder task than my brothers are facing. I have to find little pockets of time to meditate...sitting cross legged on the floor in silent contemplation is a luxury I can ill afford. I meditate, while driving, while hanging out the washing, doing dishes, vacuuming. Through sheer will power and practice I have learnt to enter a deeply meditative state in seconds because I usually only have minutes of un-interrupted time. We find pockets of time to do what we need to stay sane and to follow the truths within our heart.

I have friends who know about the monk who say to me, "Oh but it would have been such a hard life to live, you have to give up so much". I giggle, (sleep deprived people giggle, they don't laugh :) I think to myself, this is the hardest thing I have ever done and I have done a lot. I take my role as a mother very seriously, which isn't to be confused with being a serious mother, which I most certainly am not. But I do however take the role very seriously, I have been given into my care 3 sentient beings who against all the bombardment of society I must protect, nurture and teach so that they may sow the seeds of love all around them. I have to make sure they respect and love themselves and those around them, I have to teach them that what other people think, say or do is not important, even when it hurts them emotionally or physically. I have to teach them that it is all about who they are and what they do that really matters.

I have these 3 distinctly different little people who require 3 different types of love and teaching. It is the most full on, engaging, un-relenting task I have ever undertaken. There are days it overwhelms me and I want to put on the robes, shave the head and walk out the door....but I can't do that now can I? LOL, I made my choice, or even as I said earlier, it was made for me....there is a reason why this is what it is...and that is because I need the lessons my children are giving me. The biggest thing my children are teaching me is patience. What a gift. The twins especially taught me patience, you can't have twins and survive without patience. Patience is your life raft, the rope thrown to a drowning woman. My eldest son teaches me humbleness, he humbles me on a regular basis. My eldest son, sometimes I feel like I know what it must be like to be the mother of the Dalai Lama or some other equivalent. When he was about to turn 3, we were standing beside the letterbox about to get into the car. He stood there staring at the ground for ages, I called his name but I knew he couldn't hear me, he was not in this reality at that moment. Finally, slowly he turned his head and looked at me and said,

"Mummy do you think God gave us our shadows as a reflection of our soul so that we will always know that we are never alone."

I kid you not.

What do you say? I don't know. But I do know that this child makes me humble, that he says these things and my heart is squeezed with the knowledge that somehow this world will be ok, because him and others like him are amongst us and will make great changes.

This is a great responsibility, parenting a child. It is underestimated, it is put to one side too often so that parents 'can have a life too'. But it is a short time we have to teach them all they need so that they can go and stare life in the eye and say "I will not be swayed by negative or evil influence".

Teaching them how to Laugh, Love and Live, and find their own paths in this life.

So maybe, just maybe I am wearing my robes after all, and although my hair appears long when you look at me, maybe just maybe when you look into my soul you will see that my hair is shaved and that I am getting up now and smiling at you, bowing to you over my joined hands; acknowledging the god that is within you as I walk away to hang out another load of washing.

Namaste.

sm

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