Tuesday 4 October 2011

I think the universe might be listening or perhaps we are?

In August I was at our favourite chalet in the Alps near Annecy.  For many years I have harboured a dream of owning a place in France.  My family take it in turns to drag me away from immobiliers and give short shrift to my musings and desire to go and explore and view beautiful old chalets.  Somehow, I never quite seemed to find the right place or the right time to buy.  I was lying in bed reflecting on this at the chalet and I said to Life, "what I would like is something like this, a beautiful old chalet in it's own secluded spot, which is a bit difficult to access but which has been looked after and worked on so beautifully".  As we left we were chatting to the french owner.  I thanked him for letting us stay in his beautiful chalet.
"If you like it so much, you can buy it" he informed me.  Assuming he was joking I laughed, but he assured me he was serious and that the chalet was for sale at a price which was a stretch but we might be able to afford.  This threw me into a black hole as I was faced with the reality of my beautiful mind picture; did I really want the reality of the responsibility and owning two places?  I consulted my heart and realised, reluctantly that I did not!  Good learning if somewhat disappointing.

This was not an unusual experience for me.  I realised in my twenties with a sense of wonder that the universe was listening to us and delivering on our casual mind chatter.  Often, the result was that people did not like the reality or life would deliver it with a twist.  Most people seemed to entirely forget or miss that they had asked for it.  I thought people would be amazed to discover that life was working this way; it felt like finding the keys to the universe.  I quickly realised this was an inaccurate picture! People did not necessarily want to hear that they were complicit in and indeed responsible for their fate.

However, I was struck again today by the precision of the universe.  I was on the train heading into London when I suddenly thought that my mother in law might not have insurance for our holiday on Friday; it was prompted by sorting out car insurance.  Within minutes my daughter was ringing me to say that my mother in law wanted to talk to me urgently about holiday insurance - something I have never spoken to my mother in law about in my life.  This got me thinking, who is playing whom?

On Friday I resigned from my position as Chair of the Steiner school that I have been chair of for ten years.  As I explained my decision at the meeting, I found myself thinking that I did still want to be involved with a charity and education and that I wondered what the next step in terms of the school of the future I wrote about would be.  I had begun to think there might not be one.  Tonight my wife rang and was describing the first running of an idea that she had had about a toddler group being run for children to come and be with the horses at our centre (www.heartshore-horses.com).  It was a great success and it turned out that the parents already had formed a group to self-educate, employing a teacher once a week.  They were intrigued by our idea of the school of the future and wanted to know more about it.  I saw that we needed to invest in our barn to make a venue for teaching.  This in turn had answered another question which I had been pondering.  I earn very well compared to most people but in watching the news the other evening I was concerned at the protests in America and across Europe about corporate wealth and greed.  Since I work in the corporate sector as a coach, I know I am complicit in this and I didn't want to feel "I am alright jack" since I know it is all "us" and if some of us are suffering then it is all of our problem.  I have assuaged this by putting much of my money into the stables we run for adults, children and increasingly autistic children and this runs largely at a loss but provides something wonderful for those who would otherwise not be able to be involved with animals or have the space and help.  I was thinking that it was in my nature and my fate to earn well but I didn't want to pour my money into money making schemes for my retirement.  I am not against making money, it is the flow of the universe, but I am increasingly asking myself, what for? (This is a whole topic I am going to think about and expand on in another blog).  My question this time is are we the creative force thinking these thoughts and programming the game of the universe or is it perhaps programming us?  Are we in fact puppets whose strings are being pulled or are we masters of our own virtual reality game, which we are unwittingly programming and creating.  Perhaps it is even a mixture of the two?  What is clear to me is that universe is alive and we are involved in an interactive dialogue with a phenomenal learning facilitator.


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