Day 69: Paulo Coelho

This is an extract especially for anyone struggling at the moment (I closed my eyes and opened a page in the book while thinking of you) as well as for all my Brazilian friends. It is another quote from The Manual of the Warrior of Light:

'The spiritual energy of the Path uses justice and patience to prepare your spirit.'

The Breviary of Medieval Knights says:

'The spiritual energy of the Path uses justice and patience to prepare your spirit.

This is the Path of the Knight: a path that is at once easy and difficult, because it forces one to set aside trivial things and chance friendships. That is why, at first, many hesitate to follow it.

This is the first teaching of the Knghts: you will erase everything you had written in the book of your life up until now: restlessness, uncertainty, lies. And in the place of all this you will write the word courage. By beginning the journey with that word and continuing with faith in God, you will arrive wherever you need to arrive.'

Day 68: Using Your Brain FOR A CHANGE

This excerpt from the book Using Your Brain FOR A CHANGE is from one of the creators of NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programming) Richard Bandler.

"Running Your Own Brain

I'd like you to try some very simple experiments, to teach you a little bit about how you can learn to run your own brain. You will need this experience to understand the rest of this book, so I recommend that you actually do the following brief experiments.

Think of a past experience that was very pleasant - perhaps one that you haven't thought about in a long time. Pause for a moment to go back to that memory, and be sure that you see what you saw at the time that pleasant memory happened. You can close your eyes if that makes it easier to do....

As you look at that pleasant memory, I want you to change the brightness of the image, and notice how your feelings change in response. First make it brighter and brighter....Now make it dimmer and dimmer, until you can barely see it....Now make it brighter again.

How does that change the way you feel? There are always exceptions, but for most of you, when you make the picture brighter, your feelings will become stronger. Increasing brightness usually increases the intensity of feelings, and decreasing brightness usually decreases the intensity of feelings.

How many of you ever thought about the possibility of intentionally varying the brightness of an internal image in order to feel different? Most of you just let your brain randomly show you any picture it wants, and you feel good or bad in response.

Now think of an unpleasant memory, something you think about that makes you feel bad. Now make the picture dimmer and dimmer....If you turn the brightness down far enough, it won't bother you any more. You can save yourself thousands of dollars in psychotherapy bills.

I learned these things from people who did them already. One woman told me that she was happy all the time; she didn't let things get to her. I asked her how she did it, and she said "Well, those unpleasant thoughts come into my mind, but I just turn the brightness down."

Brightness is one of the "submodalities" of the visual modality. Submodalities are universal elements that can be used to change any visual image, no matter what the content is. The auditory and kinesthetic modalities also have submodalities.

Brightness is one of the many things you can vary...[though there are] exceptions to the impact brightness usually has. If you make a picture so bright that it washes out the details and becomes almost white [etc]

Day 67: How Intuition Can Work in Your Life

This is from intuition and beyond by Sharon A. Klingler:

How Intuition Can Work in Your Life
1. It helps you to recognise the best opportunities available to you and supports you in taking the action to embrace those opportunities, regardless of what your other sources of information and opinion say.

When Oprah Winfrey first had the opportunity to move to Chicago, she says that she did so not because her common sense or her friends told her she should, but because her intuition directed her to go, in spite of the greater risk involved in moving away from her established career and into an untested market. 'When you have finished growing in one place or time, you know. Your soul tells you when it's time to move on.' The rest, of course, is history - still in the making!

2. It helps you make the best choices about relationships and about your actions within those relationships. (I have a client in New York City who was very hesitant to marry because of trust issues about sharing financial responsibility. But her inner voice wouldn't let her remain in fear. It led her to a happy marriage and an opportunity to work through her fears about security.)

3. It helps you make the right choices in financial matters (as in the case of Conrad Hilton, Cornelius Vanderbilt, and many others.)

4. It helps you tap into a greater experience of your creativity. (In a poll of Nobel Prize-winning scientists, the majority said they believed intuition had been an important factor in their discoveries.)

5. It creates a better understanding of your sense of purpose and how you can bring that purpose to bear in your life.

6. It will give you insight into the most beneficial changes you can make and the options that lie before you.

7. It could even save your life. (Countless individuals claim to have been saved by their intuition. Winston Churchill, for instance, said that listening to his intuition had kept him alive on a number of occasions, from his days in Africa through to the Second World War. In one of these instances, while visiting an anti-aircraft battery during a bombing raid, he sat in the staff car on the opposite side from where he would usually sit. During that drive, a bomb exploded so near the car that it was actually lifted into the air, but Churchill was saved. When his relieved wife asked him later that day why he had made that choice, he told her, 'Something said "Stop!" before I reached the car door held open for me. It then appeared to me that I was told I was meant to open the door on the other side and get in there - and that's what I did!)

Besides creating clarity out of confusion and being able to make the best choices, there are even greater results to developing a conscious rapport with your intuitive mind. Looking inward for answers instead of outside yourself will always bring a greater discovery of your strength, confidence and freedom in life.

The more you listen to your intuition, the easier all of your decision-making becomes - building trust in yourself and in your own ideas. And this growing trust will allow you to become more self-reliant and confident in your truth. Ultimately, the answer to 'Why use intuition?' is the same as the answer to 'What is intuition?' And that answer is:

Your intuition is your truth;
it is the voice of your spirit

If you listen to the voice of your truth, you will start to be more true to yourself, no matter what obstacles lie before you. And the more you live your truth, the more you will feel the freedom to follow your dreams!

Day 66: More tricks to get a First Class Memory

THE NUMBER-RHYME SYSTEM

It is important, when forming the images, to have a very clear mental picture in front of your inner eye. To achieve this it is often best to close your eyes and to project the image on to the inside of your eyelid, or on to a screen inside your head, and to hear, feel, smell or experience it in the way that works best for you. (For example, think of what you ate for lunch yesterday: how does your brain recreate it for you? Use the same medium.)
To make all this clearer, let us try the ten items given.

1 bun table

Imagine a giant bun on top of a fragile table which is in the process of crumbling from the weight. Smell the fresh cooked aroma, taste your favourite bun.

2 Shoe feather

Imagine your favourite shoe with an enormous feather growing out of the inside, preventing you from putting your shoe on, tickling and tickling your feet.

3 tree cat

Imagine a large tree with either your own cat or a cat you know stuck in the very top branches frantically scrambling about and mewing loudly.

4 door leaf

Imagine your bedroom door as one giant leaf, crunching and rustling as you open it.

5 hive student

Imagine a student at his desk, dressed in black and yellow stripes, buzzing busily, or with honey dripping on his pages.

6 sticks orange

Imagine large sticks puncturing the juicy surface of an orange that is as big as a beach ball. Feel and smell the juice of the orange squirting out.

7 heaven car

Imagine all the angels sitting on cars rather than clouds; experience yourself driving the car you consider heavenly.

8 skate pencil

Imagine yourself skating over the pavement, hearing the sound of the wheels on the ground, as you see the multi-coloured pencils attached to your skates creating fantastic art wherever you go.

9 vine shirt

Imagine a vine as large as Jack and the Bean Stalk's bean stalk, and instead of leaves on the vine, hang it all over with brightly coloured shirts blowing in the wind.

10 hen poker

Have fun!

Day 65: Tricks for a Brilliant Memory

Mindmapping is a fantastic aid to studying and Use Your Head by Tony Buzan is a great introduction to the field. It also covers memory systems. Here is an extract from the book:

Assuming that the items to be remembered are:
1 table
2 feather
3 cat
4 leaf
5 student
6 orange
7 car
8 pencil
9 shirt
10 poker

In order to remember these it is necessary to have some system which enables us to use the associative and linking power of memory to connect them with their proper number.
The best system for this is the Number-Rhyme System, in which each number has a rhyming word connected to it.

The rhyming key words are:
1 bun
2 shoe
3 tree
4 door
5 hive
6 sticks
7 heaven
8 skate
9 vine
10 hen

In order to remember the first list of arbitrary words it is necessary to link them in some strong manner with the rhyming words connected to the numbers. If this is done successfully, the answer to a question such as 'what word was connected to number 3'? will be easy. The rhyming word for 5, 'hive', will be recalled automatically and with it will come the connected image of the word that has to be remembered.

SMASHIN' SCOPE OF MEMORY
The important thing in this and all other memory systems is to make sure that the rhyming word and the word to be remembered are totally and securely linked together. In order to do this, the connecting images must be one or many of the following:

1 Synaesthesia/sensuality
Synaesthesia refers to the blending of the senses. The great 'natural' memorisers, and the great mnemonists, developed exceptional sensitivity in each of their senses, and then blended these senses to produce enhanced recall. In developing the memory it has been found to be essential to sensitise increasingly and train regularly your:

a) vision
b) hearing
c) sense of smell
d) taste
e) touch
f) kinaesthesia - your awareness of bodily position and movement in space.

2 Movement
In any mnemonic image, movement adds another giant range of possibilities for your brain to 'link in' and thus remember. As your images move, make them three-dimensional.

3 Association
Whatever you wish to memorise, make sure you associate or link it to something stable in your mental environment, i.e. Peg system: one = bun.

4 Sexuality
We all have a virtually perfect memory in this area. Use it.

5 Humour
Have fun with your memory. The more funny, ridiculous, absurd and surreal you make your images, the more outstandingly memorable they will be. Salvador Dali, the surrealist painter, said that, 'My paintings are photographs painted by hand of the irrational made concrete' and that in many instances they are the paintings of the perfectly held memories of his day and night dreams.

6 Imagination
Einstein said, 'Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.' The more you apply your imagination to memory, the better your memory will be.

7 Number
Numbering adds specificity and efficiency to the principle of order and sequence

8 Symbolism
Substituting a more meaningful image for a more normal or boring image increases the probability of recall. You may also use traditional symbols, e.g. stop sign or light bulb.

9 Colour
Where appropriate, and whenever possible, use the full range of the rainbow, to make your ideas more 'colourful' and therefore more memorable.

10 Order and/or sequence
In combination with the other principles, order and/or sequence allows for much more immediate reference, and increases the brain's possibilities for 'random access'. Expanded use of order and sequence allows you to develop Memory Matrices, such as the Self-Enhancing Memory Matrix, enabling you to memorise as many as 10,000 items of information and more (see Master Your Memory).

11 Positivity
In most instances positive and pleasant images are better for memory purposes, because they make the brain want to return to the images. Certain negative images, even though applying all the principles above, and though in and of themselves 'memorable', could be blocked by the brain because it finds the prospect of returning to such images unpleasant.

12 Exaggeration
In all your images, exaggerate size, shape, and sound.

These can easily be remembered by the mnemonic anagram smashin' scope.

Day 64: Restoring Peaceful Sleep & Relieving Pain

This is from Crystals and Crystal Healing by Simon Lilly:

Restoring Peaceful Sleep
Sleepless nights can be caused by a variety of situations. They can often be overcome by simple strategies - but when you are half-asleep and exhausted, motivation is a difficult thing to summon up. This is when the right sort of crystals can be very useful. Different types of sleeplessness will need different gemstones to ease them, and you will need to experiment - a stone that works for one person may keep someone else awake.
* Chrysoprase, an apple green variety of chalcedony quartz, has been found in most cases to encourage peaceful sleep. A tumbled stone can be put under your pillow, or a larger piece placed on a bedside table
* Just hold the appropriate stones or have them nearby. They will help to quieten you so that you can relax and fall asleep.
* If tension and worry is the cause of restlessness try amethyst, rose quartz or citrine.
* If your sleep pattern is disturbed by something you have eaten, a digestive calmer like ametrine, moonstone or iron pyrites may help.
* Where there is fear, particularly related to bad dreams or nightmares, use a grounding and protecting stone such as tourmaline, staurolite, smoky quartz or tourmaline quartz and place it at the foot of your bed. Labrodorite will also help to chase away any unwelcome thoughts and feelings.

Relieving Pain
Pain is the body's way of letting you know that something is wrong and needs attention. Very often pain is caused by an excess of energy of some sort. Using crystals can help reduce pain to manageable levels by releasing blocks within the subtle bodies and stimulating the body's own healing mechanisms. In general, all cool-coloured stones - blue, indigo and violet - will help to calm painful areas and restore the natural flow of energy in a damaged area.
* Copper is well-known for its ability to reduce inflammation and swellings of all sorts, and some of the most useful gemstones for controlling pain have high concentrations of copper. Copper itself can be worn as a bracelet or carried in its rough, natural, nugget form to help all energy flow in the body and reduce inflammation.
* Malachite is a soft mineral of copper that forms in concentric bands of light and dark green. It is good at calming painful areas and drawing out imbalances. It is a good absorber of negativity and needs regular cleansing to maintain its effectiveness.
* Turquoise can be used whenever there is a need for calm healing energy. The colour of the stone stimulates the body's immune system and it has a beneficial effect on many areas.
* Carnelian, although it is a warm colour, is a useful stone as it is a powerful healer of the etheric body and encourages healing.
* Pink stones, such as rose quartz, calm aggravated areas and also reduce the fears that often accompany injury and pain. Placing pink stones at the solar plexus and sacral chakras [situated below the naval] will calm the mind and relax the body.

Day 63: Fascinating Insights into How We Think

Today’s extract comes from Words That Change Minds – Mastering the Language of Influence by Shelle Rose Charvet.

Creating Our Model of The World

Every person has a certain number of filters by which they let in certain parts of the real world. In Noam Chomsky’s 1957 Ph.D. thesis, Transformational Grammar, he said there are three processes by which people create the filters of their individual Model of the World.

Deletion

The first process is called deletion. We delete lots of information from the environment around us and internally. In his 1956 paper entitled Seven Plus or Minus Two, George Miller, an American psychologist, said that our conscious minds can only handle seven plus-or-minus two bits of information at any one time, and that we delete the rest. That means on a good day we can deal with nine bits and on a bad day, maybe only five.

This explains why most telephone numbers are a maximum of seven digits. However, while I was living in Paris in the 1980s, they changed the phone numbers to eight digits. Everyone then had to decide whether to remember phone numbers by groups of two, or four, or to simply add the new Paris code, 4, onto the front of their old number. No one had an easy way of keeping eight digits in their head at once. Each person had to find their own way to break it down. People would give out their new phone numbers in their own peculiar manner. It created a great deal of confusion.

So seven plus or minus two bits of information is what we can be comfortably aware of at one time. Using the process of deletion, we filter out lots of things without being aware of it or consciously choosing to do so.

Distortion

The second process is called distortion. We distort things. Have you ever moved to a new place and gone into the living room before you moved your things in and pictured what it was going to look like furnished? Well, you were hallucinating. Your furniture was not actually in the room, was it? So you were distorting Reality.

Two examples of distortion are hallucination and creativity. They are both similar in that the external information is changed to something else. That is what the process of distortion is all about.

Generalization

Chomsky’s third mental filtering process is called generalization. It is the opposite of Cartesian Logic (where you can go from a general rule to specific examples but not the other way around). Generalization is where you take a few examples and then create a general principle. This is how learning occurs. A small child learns to open one or two, or possibly three, doors and then she knows how to open all doors. The child develops a Generalization about how to open doors. That is, until she has to enter a high-tech company and realizes that, to open the door, there is a magnetic card that has to be slid down a slot in a certain way. She has to relearn how to open doors to deal with those exceptions.

Generalization is about how we unconsciously generate rules, beliefs, and principles about what is true, untrue, possible, and impossible. Some women, for example, may have had several bad experiences with men and then come to the conclusion that men (i.e. all men) cannot be trusted. They develop the rule: Never trust a man. People have a certain number of experiences of a similar type and then make a rule or develop a belief.

With the three filters, Deletion, Distortion and Generalization, we each create our own model of the world.

Day 62: What's Your Type?

Day 61: Natural Ways to Combat Depression

from The Naturopathy Workbook by Stephen Langley:

DEPRESSION:

DEFINITION
Mental depression is an affected disorder characterised by altered mood. There is loss of interest in all usually pleasurable outlets such as food, sex, work, friends, hobbies or entertainment. May be bipolar (mood and elation are alternately present), endogenous (without apparent cause) or situational or exogenous (usually self-limiting from disappointment, illness or loss of job or loved one).

SIGNS & SYMPTOMS
Diagnostic criteria include presence of at least four of the following every day for at least two weeks:
• Poor appetite or significant weight loss, or increased weight gain
• Insomnia or hypersomnia (sleeping for long lengths of time)
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation
• Loss of interest or pleasure in usual activities, loss of libido
• Loss of energy or fatigue
• Feelings of worthlessness, self- reproach, or excessive or inappropriate guilt.
• Diminished ability to think or concentrate.
• Recurrent thoughts of death or suicide.

ORTHODOX TREATMENT
Orthodox treatments of depression suppress the symptoms and don't treat the cause. All orthodox treatments have tremendous and often irreversible side effects.

POSSIBLE FACTORS
• Exhaustion-mental or physical
• Hypothyroidism
• Alcohol abuse
• Recreational drug abuse
• Loss of loved one
• Sunlight deprivation
• Poor nutrient status-vitamins B3, B6, lecithin
• Blood sugar imbalances (Hypoglycaemia)
• Hormonal fluctuations (oestrogen/ progesterone)
• Postnatal
• Food allergies
• Deficiency of amino acids - tryptophan and phenylalanine
• Medication, drugs, the Pill
• Dehydration
• Dysbiosis - candida overgrowth

NATUROPATHIC TREATMENT & MANAGEMENT
• Remove stimulants - caffeine, alcohol, smoking
• Increase Essential Fatty Acids (EFAs) e.g. Udo's oil
• Increase tryptophan foods (precursor to serotonin) - chicken, fish, turkey, beans,
avocados, cottage cheese, wheat germ, bananas.
• Emotional healing - counselling (e.g. repressed anger)
• Exercise, yoga, Qi gong
• Eliminate refined carbohydrates and sugar
• Vitamin C (500mg BD with food)
• Vitamin B complex plus extra folic acid (400mcg daily)
• Walnut tea (serotonin) - steep a broken half of a walnut in boiling water, drink several over the day.
• Porridge (oats) for nervous system restoration
• Aromatherapy - clary sage, lavender, rose, jasmine
• Bach Flowers - mustard, sweet chestnut, star of Bethlehem
• Bowel detox - probiotics
• Eliminate food intolerances or allergies e.g. wheat

HERBS
St John's Wort Hypericum perforatum (sedative) 2-4g by infusion TDS (N.B. DO NOT TAKE THIS IF YOU ARE BLOOD TYPE O OR DO NOT KNOW YOUR BLOOD TYPE. IT HAS DANGEROUS SIDE EFFECTS FOR TYPE O. - by Editor (SBW).

HOMOEOPATHY
Refer to Homoeopathic practitioner

Day 60: The Frog Prince

Today, another poem, especially for us single people! My brother and his wife have their work cut out for them - she gets precious little sleep and my brother is not allowed to stay overnight, so she has to deal with them alone until he comes in the morning. The twins are of course adorable and my brother has already changed two nappies and is a dab hand at swaddling them and quieting their crying. I held one of them and she looked at me with her blue eyes (all new-born Caucasian European babies have blue eyes, apparently) for several minutes. They are surprisingly unscrunchy, as often premature babies are still wrinkly when taken out before the full nine months.

The Frog Prince

I am a frog
I live under a spell
I live at the bottom
Of a green well

And here I must wait
Until a maiden places me
On her royal pillow
And kisses me
In her father’s palace.

The story is familiar
Everybody knows it well
But do other enchanted people feel as nervous
As I do? The stories do not tell,

Ask if they will be happier
When the changes come
As already they are fairly happy
In a frog’s doom?

I have been a frog now
For a hundred years
And in all this time
I have not shed many tears,

I am happy, I like the life,
Can swim for many a mile
(When I have hopped to the river)
And am for ever agile.

And the quietness,
Yes, I like to be quiet
I am habituated
To a quiet life,

But always when I think these thoughts
As I sit in my well
Another thought comes to me and says:
It is part of the spell

To be happy
To work up contentment
To make much of being a frog
To fear disenchantment

Says, It will be heavenly
To be set free,
Cries, Heavenly the girl who disenchants
And the royal times, heavenly,
And I think it will be.

Come then, royal girl and royal times,
Come quickly,
I can be happy until you come
But I cannot be heavenly,
Only disenchanted people
Can be heavenly.
by Stevie Smith

Day 59: The Twins (again)

I am off to see the one day old twins soon with my mum. First, another poem. It is either this one or yesterday's that is the twins' mum's favourite poem of mine. I include this alongside the other because I need to get used to giving two presents every time I see them - and probably slightly different presents, as each twin, of course, wants to be unique.

Grimblegromp
He grimaces like a Grombit
when he tries to gremb a smile
and his teeth crockle and brockle
like shinebows on the Nile.

As he tockles throfting brickles
which twackle underfoot
the wimbling Wonchglocks
glatter 'bout a gless-plit brook.

Swanterin swontily
he bruzzes srommy shinshom
brenning brop brish-brosh,
brish-brosh in the crawm.

Day 58: The Twins

Today, my younger brother's wife gave birth to twin girls. Thankfully, the whole family are okay and all is well. I plan to visit them with my mum tomorrow - we are both excited. My mother always wanted a girl after having three boys and now, as a grandmother, she has two! To celebrate, I am reproducing another poem from my book as I think it is my brother's wife's favourite poem of mine and one that I made up for her.

Nonsense
I made this oop fer you’s,
‘cos I know you’s like me nonsense stews
an’ the clock was a-slowin’
while the wind-blown door was slammin’
an I’m sure I heard a howl like a Wholin.
No one believes in Wholins but me,
but no one stays up all night lissenin’ like me,
an I swear I heard a Wholin
howlin’ out your name
saying “Nonsense!”

Day 57: Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Firstly, my brother's wife is due to have the twin girls early: tomorrow in fact, so I will be an uncle soon! It's all very exciting and I hope all goes well and will be sending my good thoughts to them all tomorrow.

I finally got a photo from the photo shoot so will upload that soon.

Today's quote is from Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert T. Kiyosaki with Sharon L. Lechter:

"The main management skills needed for success are:
1. The management of cash flow.
2. The management of systems (including yourself and time with family)
3. The management of people

The most important specialized skills are sales and understanding marketing. It is the ability to sell - therefore, to communicate to another human being, be it a customer, employee, boss, spouse or child - that is the base skill of personal success. It is communication skills such as writing, speaking and negotiating that are crucial to a life of success. It is a skill that I work on constantly, attending courses or buying educational tapes to expand my knowledge."

Day 56: SynchroDestiny

In SynchroDestiny, Deepak Chopra states that Intent Weaves The Tapestry of the Universe

"My intentions have infinite organizing power

Our intentions are a manifestation of the total universe because we are a part of the universe. And our intentions hold within them the mechanics of their fulfillment. All we really need is clarity of intent. Then if we can get the ego out of the way, the intentions fulfill themselves. Our intentions attract the elements and forces, the events, the situations, the circumstances, and the relationships necessary to fulfill the intended outcome. We don't need to become involved in the details - in fact, trying too hard may backfire. Let the nonlocal intelligence synchronize the actions of the universe to fulfill your intentions for you. Intention is a force in nature, like gravity, but more powerful. No one has to concentrate on gravity to make it work. No one can say, "I don't believe in gravity," because it is a force at work in the world whether we understand it or not. Intention works the same way.
...
FOCUSING INTENTION
The best way to focus on intentions is to write them down. Although this may sound like an obvious first step, it is a step that many people ignore. As a result, their intentions remain unfocused, and therefore unrealized.

Go to a quiet place where you are not likely to be disturbed. Write down what you want on all different levels of desire. Include material, ego gratification, relationship, self-esteem, and spiritual desires. Be as specific as possible.

Ask yourself what you want on the material level, in terms of abundance and affluence. Do you want your own house with four bedrooms? Write that down. Do you want to be able to send your children to college? Write that down. Think also of your desires for sensory gratification - sound, touch, sight, taste, smell, and sensuality - anything that gratifies the senses. Write these down.

Ask yourself what you want in terms of relationships. Write down your desires for all your relationships - romantic partners, children, peers, parents, friends, and professional relationships.

Write down what you want in terms of personal accomplishments or recognition. Note what you want on a more universal level - how can you help? What do you want to do with your life in terms of your society, your country, your civilization? What do you want to contribute? Write down what you want when you think of discovering your highest sense of self. Whom do you want to be? What spiritually do you want to add to your life? Write down everything you desire on a single sheet of paper. Add or subtract from the list as your desires change or become fulfilled.

Meditate on what life would be like if all these desires were to manifest...Be patient, but watch for the miracles to begin."

Day 55: The Success Secrets of The Ancients

Today's excerpt is taken from George S. Clason's The Richest Man in Babylon

The Five Laws of Gold

The First Law of Gold
Gold cometh gladly and in increasing quantity to any man who will put by not less than one-tenth of his earnings to create an estate for his future and that of his family.

The Second Law of Gold
Gold laboueth diligently and contentedly for the wise owner who finds for it profitable employment, multiplying even as the flocks of the field.

The Third Law of Gold
Gold clingeth to the protection of the cautious owner who invests it under the advice of men wise in its handling.

The Fourth Law of Gold
Gold slippeth away from the man who invests it in businesses or purposes with which he is not familiar or which are not approved by those skilled in its keep.

The Fifth Law of Gold
Gold flees the man who would force it to impossible earnings or who followeth the alluring advice of tricksters and schemers or who trusts it to his own inexperience and romantic desires in investment.

Day 53 & 54: Frogs, roses, chocolates and poems!

On Saturday, I arrived in Sussex whilst my mother was still working, so got the bus to where she lives. The moment I got on the bus, I found a box of chocolates and a chocolate medallion saying You are the Best on it on the seat. I doubted anyone would claim it if I handed it in, so I took it with me to give to David (I shall give him the same pseudonym I have given him in my book Off The Rails) for his birthday.

Mum tells me, whilst we sit in front of the TV and I read her some of my blog, that David does not eat sugar. I suggest perhaps it would be better if I ate the lot myself, but we decide, on balance, perhaps not.

On Sunday, I help mum clear some debris which has become something of a compost heap out the front, on the drive, as builders are due to come Monday and re-pave it. I clear it whilst mum rushes off to work again and I unearth about ten frogs hiding in a fern that mum bought for next to nothing but which took over the place. I re-locate the frogs to the pond, though they wriggle and try to leap out of my gloved hands.

The back garden and front are both exquisite – the back garden is something Monet would have struggled to do justice too, such is its array of colours, especially of the roses: bold pink ones, standing high; red ones, deep and strong; orange roses, of a rare and delightful hue; yellow ones, red-pink ones, white ones…The front garden too – though I do not even know all the names of the flowers – is a splendour, with the eternal, deep-red roses, orange nasturtiums and a carpet of blue star-like flowers growing on the rockery.

I get a lift with David to his party, as mum has to work again and says she will come later. When there, we sit in the garden of the house he has rooms in and share food (I give David his medallion and box of chocolates, although I tell him the fortune that led to them becoming mine) with other guests. Next to the garden is a church and we periodically hear the bells chime the hour. In the corner of the garden is a wild white rose that is perhaps twenty foot tall and a resplendent beauty, climbing a tree that is its neighbour.

We discover that there are many creative types amongst us: two storytellers and two poets, even before the ladies re-join us from admiring more roses in a rose garden. Therefore, David requests a poem and we all oblige, one highly talented man with a voluminous memory reciting a poem by Dylan Thomas (one of the ones to a friend on their thirty-fifth birthday, although David is a few years older). It is an emotional poem; rich and deeply affecting and we all like it so much we request him to read it again, which he does, again from memory.

Later, David sings one of his poems whilst the memory man recites it simultaneously, to great success. We all share a poem (I share Nostalgie, added to this blog on Day 2 or thereabouts) and mum comes with a beautiful lily for David an hour before the end.

Nine days to go before the Twins are born to my brother’s wife! Mum may stay the night with me that night and I may go to the hospital along with her to offer my support to my brother and his wife. Right, crossing the Thames now, so I will sign off and close the laptop.

Day 52: A Parting Present

Marcus Aurelius provides so much good advice, in this humble writer’s opinion, that I will provide a second helping, in the event that I am unable to blog over the weekend. This, also from Meditations:

“When you would have a cordial for your spirits, think of the good qualities of your friends: this one’s capability, that one’s self-effacement, another’s generosity, and so forth. There is no surer remedy for dejection than to see examples of the different virtues displayed in the characters of those around us, exhibiting themselves as plenteously as can be. Wherefore keep them ever before you.”

Day 51: Pause for Thought

I may go down to Sussex for the weekend now, as my friend the writer has his birthday party on Sunday and, much as I love the city, a break to the country is always rejuvenating. I may not blog for the next few days, consequently.

I leave you with a lucky dip quote by Marcus Aurelius from the book Meditations. Aurelius was a Roman Emperor (AD 121-180) yet also a profound philosopher. This is a book I enjoy dipping into regularly.

“When you are outraged by somebody’s impudence, ask yourself at once, ‘Can the world exist without impudent people?’ It cannot; so do not ask for impossibilities. That man is simply one of the impudent whose existence is necessary to the world. Keep the same thought present, whenever you come across roguery, double-dealing or any other form of obliquity. You have only to remind yourself that this type is indispensable, and at once you will feel kindlier towards the individual. It is also helpful if you promptly recall what special quality Nature has given us to counter such particular faults. For there are antidotes with which she has provided us: gentleness to meet brutality, for example, and other correctives for other ills. Generally speaking, too, you have the opportunity of showing the culprit his blunder – for everyone who does wrong is failing of his proper objective, and is thereby a blunderer. Besides, what harm have you suffered? Nothing has been done by any of these victims of your irritation that could hurtfully affect your own mind; and it is in the mind alone that anything evil or damaging to the self can have reality. What is there wrong or surprising, after all, in a boor behaving boorishly? See then if it is not rather yourself you ought to blame, for not foreseeing that he would offend in this way. You, in virtue of your reason, had every means for thinking it probable that he would do so; you forgot this, and now his offence takes you by surprise. When you are indignant with anyone for his perfidy or ingratitude, turn your thoughts first and foremost upon yourself. For the error is clearly your own, if you have put any faith in the good faith of a man of that stamp, or, when you have done him a kindness, if it was not done unreservedly and in the belief that the action would be its own full reward. Once you have done a man a service, what more would you have? Is it not enough to have obeyed the laws of your own nature, without expecting to be paid for it? That is like the eye demanding a reward for seeing, or the feet for walking. It is for that very purpose that they exist; and they have their due in doing what they were created to do. Similarly, man is born for deeds of kindness; and when he has done a kindly action, or otherwise served the common welfare, he has done what he was made for, and has received his quittance.”

Day 50: Poetry

I had intended to blog this yesterday, however, after working intensively on the computer, my eyes became very painful, so I stopped work for the day. The day before yesterday, I went to a poetry workshop locally and there made a female friend with whom I went to a film. Following on from the poetry workshop, I share with you a poem by Pablo Neruda, extracted from the third poetry book he published, Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair.

Every Day You Play

Every day you play with the light of the universe.
Subtle visitor, you arrive in the flower and the water.
You are more than this white head that I hold tightly
as a cluster of fruit, every day, between my hands.

You are like nobody since I love you.
Let me spread you out among yellow garlands.
Who writes your name in letters of smoke among the stars of the south?
Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed.

Suddenly the wind howls and bangs at my shut window.
The sky is a net crammed with shadowy fish.
Here all the winds let go sooner or later, all of them.
The rain takes off her clothes.

The birds go by, fleeing,
The wind. The wind.
I can contend only against the power of men.
The storm whirls dark leaves
and turns loose all the boats that were moored last night to the sky.

You are here. Oh, you do not run away.
You will answer me to the last cry.
Cling to me as though you were frightened.
Even so, at one time a strange shadow ran through your eyes.

Now, now too, little one, you bring me honeysuckle,
and even your breasts smell of it.
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.

How you must have suffered getting accustomed to me,
my savage, solitary soul, my name that sends them all running.
So many times we have seen the morning star burn, kissing our eyes,
and over our heads the grey light unwind in turning fans.
My words rained over you, stroking you.
A long time I have loved the sunned mother-of-pearl of your body.
I go so far as to think that you own the universe.
I will bring you happy flowers from the mountains, bluebells,
dark hazels, and rustic baskets of kisses.

I want to do with you
what spring does with the cherry trees.

Day 49: Writing Success & General Success

I managed to re-write and submit the article I wrote about recently. Now I wait up to a week to see if it is approved and published.

As a writer, I know few of my colleagues would dream of selling 16 million copies of their book. Even if the title is not one that attracts you, How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie did sell over 16 million copies and is a useful book. Here is another quote, summarizing how to…

“Win People To Your Way Of Thinking

PRINCIPLE 1:
The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it.

PRINCIPLE 2:
Show respect for the other person’s opinions. Never say, “You’re wrong.”

PRINCIPLE 3:
If you are wrong, admit it quickly and emphatically.

PRINCIPLE 4:
Begin in a friendly way

PRINCIPLE 5:
Get the other person saying “yes, yes” immediately.

PRINCIPLE 6:
Let the other person do a great deal of the talking.

PRINCIPLE 7:
Let the other person feel that the idea is his or hers.

PRINCIPLE 8:
Try honestly to see things from the other person’s point of view.

PRINCIPLE 9:
Be sympathetic with the other person’s ideas and desires.

PRINCIPLE 10:
Appeal to the nobler motives.

PRINCIPLE 11:
Dramatize your ideas.

PRINCIPLE 12:
Throw down a challenge.”