News from the Unscripted Self
Dismiss whatever insults your soul,
Walt Whitman.
Welcome to 2014. A new year and new beginnings. I know it’s well aired by now but since it’s our first meeting of 2014 I want to extend warmest wishes to you. I truly believe this year will bring us many blessings and great prosperity.
Greetings too to our Chinese friends who celebrate it next week. I always think that’s the proper time as it is the beginning of spring, you can see the days slowly begin to stretch, and the first buds tentatively put their necks above ground. So it does feel like a fresh start. Also we raise a glass on this particular day to all those in Scotland (you know why!) and to our Aussie pals tomorrow.
What inspires you?
Inspiration is a very deep and complex subject. I will only brush on it here. Unless we are truly inspired by someone or something we rarely create anything lasting. It may be nature, or a particular piece of music, a beautiful painting, or a poem. But the greatest inspiration comes from people. Of course prominent are Jesus, Buddha, Lao Tzu, Ghandi, and the recently departed Mandela. Certainly these are among my heroes, their words and great deeds continue to inspire despite the ravages of centuries.
But when I talk of inspiration I’m actually thinking of something closer and more personal. I mean someone you know in your life. It could be a teacher, someone who touched you deeply. But it’s more likely to be your spouse, or mate. Deep ties of the soul usually entail intimacy, but it doesn’t have to be sexual. How about someone you loved from a distance, a relationship that didn’t work out, but which still left its deep impress. Or someone who has passed
over, too quickly.
The love and inspiration of someone who touched our lives is a hugely motivational factor, enthusing us, leading us, pushing us to achieve greatness. It teaches us tolerance, compassion, and the will to carry on when things seem at their darkest.
Napoleon Hill, author of Think and Grow Rich, a seminal work on personal development which has influenced every writer and thinker in this field since in first appeared in the 1930s, argues that the sexual attraction (he meant innate personality, not the mere physical) can bring about the transmutation of mediocrity into genius. He goes on to say that every truly successful man is guided, informed, by the nurturing influence of, either, an actual or inspirational woman.
I think he’s talking about what Jung would call the anima.
This idea influenced the Irish poet, Patrick Kavanagh, whose work is deeply
spiritual without ever losing touch with the human and sexual component.
Now I must search till I have found my God –
Not in an orphanage. He hides
In no humanitarian disguise,
A derelict upon a barren bog;
But in some fantastically ordinary incog:
Behind a well-bred convent girl’s eyes,
Or wrapped in middle class felicities
Among the women in a coffee shop.
Surely my God is feminine, for Heaven
Is the generous impulse, is contented
With feeding praise to the good. And all
Of these that I have known have come from women.
While men the poet’s tragic light resented,
The spirit that is Woman caressed his soul.
Kavanagh, God in Woman.
This Month’s Reading
Started off the year with my
New Year
intentions, not resolutions or goals. I encourage you to do the same if you haven’t already.
10 Reasons to Forgive
is self explanatory.
Distant Healing
Sending love to the entire planet at this new beginning. Why not join me?
I'll leave you with these words of inspiration
“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves”.
Rilke
So what, or who inspires you? Write and tell me.
Take care,
Talk to you soon.
