A simple step

Have a go at this .. go on, it's quite interesting and will only take five minutes or so, and follow each step sequentially without jumping to the next or the end before you have completed the step you're on.. Look around you and find something that you can pick up that is a raw / natural material, like wood or stone, a leaf of seed, a nut or maybe a fruit of some kind. Now hold it in your hand and feel its weight and mass. Close your eyes and sense how heavy or light it feels in your hand. Sense how the object in your hand feels against your skin, how it is warm or cold, soft or hard, smooth or rough. Now place your nose over it and breathe in, sense the aroma it gives off for a minute or so - think about how it makes you feel. Look closely at the object, notice how it looks, its' form its' shape, the space it occupies in your hand. See how it fits into your palm. Look at the colour of the object, the surface of it - is it matt, shiny, bright? Focus on the ob

We (or at least a lot of us) have heard of the law of attraction and the book and film called The Secret - it's interesting stuff... it got me thinking about the amount of time I (and my closest friend) spend playing on PC games and Internet games like Farmville (which recently won an award as a social gaming site) and the fact that the games offer us a means of creating a new, virtual reality for ourselves. They allow us to dream and to form a reality around those dreams - pretty cool stuff. The question I have been pondering from a negative angle, was whether or not these 'virtual realities' that we create could act as a means of blocking us from achieving our desires. For example, if we're playing Sims and creating a new home for our Sims family, based around our personal desires for a new home, does this mean that the Universe will see us as having achieved that desire - the new home has after all manifested itself, albeit in a virtual fashion.. Thinking about i

How often have you heard the words 'control freak'? Quite a lot I'm guessing. I had a meeting today at which the person I was with commented on my tendency to want to control and this got me thinking... In nature, is anything controlled? Does the weather change to suit itself - is it controlled by God or the Universe? Do flowers control their growth? Do animals control their behaviour? We are all keen on achieving peace of mind for ourselves, which in essence could be argued to mean relaxed, at peace, out of control. Feelings of control tighten us, they create seen and unseen restrictions, boundaries. A financial controller's job is to control the purse strings, mission control effectively drive the actions of the crew on the space shuttle, but nowhere in nature do I see or feel control - why is that? Someone once wrote that the best way to obtain power is to give it away, and that principle could apply equally to control - if you have ever suddenly felt 'in t

A funny day. I have my three boys here for the holidays at the moment who are all under 11, and today we decided to get the ferry from Devonport to Auckland City to have lunch with my Partner, Ali. We drove to Devonport and I duly parked the car in the car park, tried to buy a ticket (the machine wasn't working), ran to get on the boat and off we went on the 11.15am ferry towards the Sky Tower and Downtown Auckland. A couple of hours later, well fed and watered, we arrived back at the ferry terminal in Auckland and waited for 20 minutes for the ferry back over the water (it's only a 15 minute trip). The ferry arrived, but this time it was a different type of boat and much busier. We hopped on, checking with the ferry man that the ferry was the right one and going to Devonport (as I had reservations), and off we went.. As we neared the Devonport ferry terminal, Sam, my eldest pipes up .. 'hey Dad, this doesn't look familiar at all. This isn't where we left the car&