Waste Not Want Not

There is too much stuff in this house – 16 years of four children, various guests, pets, businesses and endless activity.

It just had to go – I needed to truly release SO much of this “stuff” - this was a clearing of Hollywood proportions. The skip was filled to the brim and so we hired a Ute loaded it up and drove to the DUMP.

The Dump – as a kid, going to the dump was THE exciting adventure of the weekend. There was no such thing as a skip – to us that was the nickname that the Greeks and Italians had for us Aussies who watched Skippy the Bush Kangaroo after school each day. This was the time in my childhood when firecracker nights were still legal and Dad could burn anything in the incinerator in the back yard without applying to the council in triplicate.

Whatever was too big and hard to burn, Dad would load up into the Volkswagen. My brother and I would pile in stuffing our bodies in amongst old bikes with knees up to our chins surrounded by various broken bits and pieces of our household’s life that my father could pry from my mother’s stubborn fingers. The closest dump was located in the next suburb with tiny dirt roads carved through mountains of settling landfill winding around various stages of rubbish processing.

Today it is a very trendy upmarket suburb sporting parks and house proud residences. But back then, going to the dump, for me, a budding Archaeologist, this was akin to a religious experience. After all, these were piles of prehistoric treasures just waiting to be discovered and my imagination would run wild digging up jars containing sacred scrolls and all the answers to the universe.

We would drive into craters of dirt, park beside other dumpers and watch as some people sifted through the already dumped “stuff” seeking that “one person’s trash is another’s treasure” find. We would all pile out of the car and grab the various refuse items and literally just throw willy nilly out onto the ground. The smell was something that has etched itself onto my memory forever – a combination of old, dirt, sickness and death – simply ferrel. There were crows, magpies and seagulls everywhere – all capitalising on whatever opportunity they spotted and wasting nothing.

Looking back now, it was dangerous and quite a health and safety hazard. That is something we never thought of back then. However as a six year old, dodging the seagulls swooping while chucking crap from the VW - it was great fun!

Today, the Dump is called a Transfer Station. Transferring your trash OUT of your household and into a station where it can be recycled restored and resold as someone else’s treasure is a federal enterprise and managed by a strict accountability system. So today, driving into neat lawned grounds we were met by a weighing station and given a ticket with specific path and bay instructions. Impeccable landscaped gardens greet us around each corner and after seven curbs we turn into a large shed with an enormous deep hole in the middle where bulldozers and large shiny yellow squishing machines transform ordinary rubbish into flat neat little packages. The dump smell is diluted to 100th of my memory and the whole place was – well – clean and tidy. I felt significantly underdressed and respectively hopped out of the car, mindful of all the safety instructions as per the hundreds of signs around me and carefully placed the rubbish into the designated area.

It felt like we were at Ikea – the Ikea where items are returned and transferred after a decade or two. I watched the abundance of our city being transferred to this neat clean little facility and wondered about our relationship with “stuff” and where appreciation would factor into our waste management practices. What a great example of the universal balance – here at the Dump?

Sunday mornings may find many people at Harvey Norman or Far Pavilions buying new furniture. Sunday afternoons may find many people at the Transfer Station relieving themselves of the old furniture they no longer want. In one end and out the other – just like living organisms expelling toxins and waste.

Waste management is big business and is the human control of the collection, treatment and disposal of different wastes. Approximately 3000 tonnes of solid waste are generated each day in the south-east corner of Queensland alone. Most of this waste is sent to landfill. But what if we applied the law of the 5 ‘R’s before we made our next purchase?Recycle, Reduce, Reuse, Repair, Restore – this is what REAL appreciation is all about!

How could we upgrade our relationship with “stuff” with appreciation and reduce our waste? Decluttering is a wonderful thing. Clearing out creates space on an energetic level. However what if we regularly conducted an inventory of every single thing that we owned and held in our house, office or life?
What if we valued our “stuff”?
What if we converted decluttering to our very own internal transfer station?

My grandmother’s favourite saying was “Waste Not Want Not” and she lived her life by that premise. I would definitely be in lots of trouble if she were still alive today.

Let’s look at the big picture here – look at the WHOLE picture. I created the Push the Earth policy for our business and industry and have been patting myself on the back about how much I value the environment yet look at my first paragraph – “There is too much stuff in this house – 16 years of four children, various guests, pets, businesses and endless activity. It just had to go – I needed to truly release SO much of this “stuff” - this was a clearing of Hollywood proportions.”

Here I am complaining about having abundance in – well abundance – and instead of appreciating it – I am DUMPING it. The word Waste comes from the Anglo Frankish “waster” meaning to spoil and ruin - squander, spend or consume uselessly.
How about we SAVE, VALUE and APPRECIATE what we have instead of WASTE?
How about we live a simpler life?
Live as part of the earth, part of the tides, the natural rhythms, the planets and the elements.

Align the values of the earth with family, community, work and our own.
Live with less.
Make better use of our resources.
Make better use of our time.

What would appreciate then?

Winter in Brisbane

Late afternoons watching wet weather adds texture to any day. Standing in the rain, you can see the dark clouds over you, hear the patter on the earth, feel the drops sliding over your body and soaking your skin. There is a definite smell to athunder storm, an orange dusty tinge that floats into your nostrils, teasing them and sending it into your mouth and onto the back of your tongue.

It’s delicious!

Curling up in bed, these days of dark weather are a reminder of just how sunny Brisbane usually is – even in the dead of winter. Compare our weather to Europe and the UK or even New York and we realise our winter is almost the same as their spring. How good is this that we don’t have enough dark weather to ever feel oppressed by a gloomy day every so often? Today, a grey dull dreary winters day, the rain fell in large heavy drops that held the promise of spring inside revealing a pale light green glow upon the grass, and a shimmering glistening on the leaves of the soggy trees, as if they were bouncing back some of the summer sunshine they had absorbed in the months previous.

"The best thing one can do when it is raining is to let it rain" — Longfellow

Today, I walked outside for the first time in weeks to check the garden and the wind whipped around me teasing my hair and clothes. Like an electric charge, it was somehow reminding me of impending adventure, the life I had put on hold and how it was all still waiting for me.

I actually stood in the rain and squealed loudly and for the first time in ages, breathed easy.

Soul Mates

Google the words SOUL MATE and watch how thousands of sites line up in readiness to teach you how to meet and find your Soul Mate.
If there is one void that humanity seems to share it is the seemingly eternal search for one’s SOUL MATE. I must admit to searching for the relevance of meaning of this term in my own life.

The word 'soul' stems from the Old English word ' sawol' meaning the spiritual and emotional part of a person. It first emerged in literary public around the year 725 in the tale of Beowulf. Obviously your MATE has been regarded as being of spiritual and emotional importance to you as opposed to simply being functional for the pro creation of offspring, maintenance of an economic base and to hold lands and chattels in a genealogical hierarchy forged in a familial foundation.

Soul Mate is a term we all popularly use to describe someone with whom one has a feeling of deep and natural affinity, friendship, love, intimacy, sexuality and compatibility. Some people believe these are souls we have met and lived with in many life times. They have been our lovers, spouses, mothers, fathers, siblings, teachers, students, family and friends. Somehow we have a contract with these souls to return to earth together for learning and evolution.

One theory of Soul Mates, presented by Aristophanes in Plato's Symposium, is that that humans originally were combined of four arms, four legs, and a single head made of two faces, but Zeus feared their power and split them all in half, condemning them to spending their lives searching for the other half to complete them.

It seems that we feel closer to certain souls, because we have attracted them into our lives as they are on the same frequency or because we want to work out issues with them.

The Law of Conservation says that Nothing is Missing – your Soul Mate is therefore either in the form of the one or the many. I can see that in my life my Soul Mate lives in the many – about 20 beautiful men in my life – all together – are my Soul Mate. Now before you cast aspersions on my admission – (No I’m not a Skank) my Soul Mate is according to the hierarchy of my values – therefore these men provide great feedback for my particular value system and clearly demonstrate who I am and what is important in my life right now.

I get to spend time discussing and philosophizing with some of them – Scientists, Healers, Conspiracy Theorists – Intelligent brains with words instead of juices flowing between us – just as exhilarating but less messy. J The Mediterranean and Middle Eastern men in my life bring out the Goddess in me as they flaunt their masculine energy with me feigning and feinting - opening doors and killing spiders – the ancient game of the warrior rescuing the maiden (swoon) - and the sacred dance (if I so choose J ) My fitness freak posse accompany me on adventure hikes, mountain climbs and marathon runs. As a fag hag, my gay friends (yes they form part of my Soul Mate) share retail therapy and home decorating sprees. My business buddies wheel and deal over endless cocktail lunches with me, exchanging project concepts and beta testing plans together. I have men to go to social dinners with, boys to take to chick flicks, fellows to suffer endless family events with and buddies to party, dance and rock with.

Nothing is missing – all forms are there – in many faces and places. What I love about my Soul Mate in the MANY is the freedom to have NO expectations other than of myself.

As a child, I had this bizarre belief that one day I would meet my Soul Mate walking down the street one day, he would seem familiar and a white light appears between us then boom ….we live happily ever after. My own parents did not provide me with a balanced view of Soul Mates or even a loving Relationship, so my benchmark was drawn from fairy tales, TV and movies.

And so fuelled by a Boy Meets Girl Fantasy, at the tender age of 20, I married my first husband and had children very quickly. I still regard him as family – wonderful person - however he was not what could be termed The One. However, he remains part of my collective Soul Mate and for that I am truly grateful. At the age of 30, I married my second husband. He is one of my business partners even now and I still regard him as family – He Taught me SO much - however he was not what could be termed The One. Yes, he forms part of my collective Soul Mate and I continue to learn appreciation of him.

My children are part of my collective Soul Mate for they are truly great loves of my life. They express what I suppress and give me the opportunity to love all the things I disown about myself and my parents and our families. I find it hardest to love them without expectation as theirs is the love that stings and rewards the most in my life – my greatest obligation and my dearest joys.

I look back over the relationships of my life and see that there has only been one person that I truly opened my heart to. I was SURE he was the one – all the signs pointed to him being my twin flame. It was a lesson steeped in synchronicity and destined to change me forever. But I was wrong - he wasn’t the one – I was – and through my love for him, I learned to love the one person I never really knew and never took the time to love – ME.

It has been two and a half years since we parted and I have met the most beautiful men since that time. I could say that no one has captured my heart like he did, or perhaps I have just been unwilling to open my heart again. All I know is that the great mysteries of life must be experienced; they must be lived. Duff writes: “The Nahuatl peoples believed that we are born with a physical heart, but have to create a deified heart by finding a firm and enduring centre within ourselves from which to lead our lives, so that our hearts will shine through our faces, and our features will become reliable reflections of ourselves. Otherwise, they explained, we wander aimlessly through life, giving our hearts to everything and nothing, and so destroy them.”

Now looking back, seeing that for me there has been the ONE (past) and the MANY (present), I appreciate the power of the Soul Mate in whatever form I create and see that my heart shines through my own face now.

It feels like there are so many levels of Soul Mate – well I guess I am collecting data about this right now J.
At the base of the Soul Mate pyramid is the Got To– The Physical Attraction – derived from the Cell and the Amoeba.
The next level is the Should/Ought To – This is our search for the Right Person (i.e. fitting into our Fantasy and Value System)– derived from our Pre Amphibian selves.
Then we find the Need to level– This is our Emotional Need – the search for Romance - derived from our Amphibian centre.
Next level is Want To – This is all about the I – the EGO – everything is the way I Want it - derived from our Reptilian selves. Many people never move past this phase.
Then we move into the Desire To level – This is beyond the EGO – Beyond the Physical, Emotional, Romantic, Material – we enter the realm of REAL LOVE only when the first phases are complete – this is derived from the Mammal part of us.
Once we truly love ourselves as we are with no changes and no expectations that another will complete us, we enter the Choose To level – This is a Conscious Commitment – a Value of Self Beyond the Ego without dependence on the other – this is where we become more Human and less Animal.
And finally we enter the Love To level – Unconditional Love – No Rejection – No Expectation – Nothing to Lose or Gain – Nothing is Missing – we are inspired by pure Spirit.

According to theories popularized by Theosophy and in a modified form by Edgar Cayce, God created androgynous souls, equally male and female. The souls split into separate genders later, perhaps because they incurred Karma while playing around on the earth". Over countless reincarnations, each half seeks the other. When all karmic debt is purged, the two will fuse back together and return to the ultimate.

There is obviously a karma aspect – what I don’t love about myself I will attract a Soul Mate who owns that very thing in him. I hope that for me, a Soul Mate – the ONE – is someone I can share my life with, in freedom, integrity, grace, without judgement or expectation, with two open hearts, walking beside each other on similar paths – where living in my highest values serves his and vice versa.

Lao Tsu called it the trackless path. Jehovah translated means “I am.” In Genesis, God says to Moses, “I am that I am.” Perhaps our Soul Mate is the ME in us and will only appear in another form of ONE when we appreciate our Soul Mate in ourselves? For now, I appreciate that my Soul Mate is all around me and there is nothing missing in my life while I still hold the Fantasy of the One Soul Mate who I will meet walking down the street one day, he seems familiar and a white light appears between us then boom……... :-)