Jennifer post: What can you take with you when you die? Redux

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I was walking down the corridor at home trying to figure out where I’d left something. A book. I was very frustrated, and I went from room to room, searching everywhere for this book.

But I couldn’t find it. I was getting very grumpy with myself. And then an idea popped into my head: What can I take with me when I die? I can’t take this book I’m looking for, so why am I getting so frustrated and grumpy?

And then I thought to myself: Not only can I not take this book with me, but I can’t take any of the physical things around me, things that often preoccupy my thoughts. Like all the junk in the garage. Or the side curtains that are starting to fade. Or the mattress in the spare bedroom that needs replacing. Or the plants that need repotting.

These things that really don’t matter, yet I think about them. And other things too.

And I thought: I can’t take a clean garage with me when I die. I can’t take new curtains, or a new mattress or plants in bigger pots. Or the sundry other things that I think about from time to time.

So what can I take with me when I die?

When I’m quite happy to take my last breath, when I’m about to move on to my next adventure, I would like to take with me the things that matter to me – like the joy and love that I’ve experienced during my life; the love I’ve shared with my husband and my children. And the beauty of nature, and art.

The beauty of a field of wild flowers.
The beauty of beauty.
And the deliciousness of fresh and exciting ideas.
And of discoveries.
And mysteries.

What I don’t want to take with me is anger and frustration and greed and a desperate need for more and more things. 

So many of us spend our lives working hard at acquiring things that we’re going to leave behind: a big house. A nice car. Beautiful clothes, and expensive nick-hacks.

Things. 

Some of us work hard at leaving behind a legacy, which is generous. But sometimes the cost of that legacy can be ill-health, or acrimonious relationships, or anger. Or disappointment when things don’t work out the way you’d hoped.

I finally found the book, at last. It was where I’d put it. Lost things are always where you put them.

And then I thought: I’m just going to forgive myself now for getting into this state of anger and frustration, and I’m going to look at everything around me quite differently.

I then shifted into a place of peace and equanimity, because I realised that none of it was important. What’s important is relaxation, and happiness, and joy and love.

These are the only really important things you can take with you when you take your last breath.

Jennifer –

Jennifer Cluff pic 2 copy

Be the change you want to be… redux

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What does that actually mean?

Be the change you want to be…

It means that if you want change in your life, adopt that change and change will come. Don’t wait for change to happen, contingent on something else. Be the change.

An example: I’ll like that person when they stop being rude to me. Like them anyway, embrace them literally and figuratively, and you know what? they might just stop being rude to you.

Another one: I’ll be happy once I get a better job, or I have more money. Try being happy right now in your miserable job, start adopting the mantle of being free of money worries, and the money will come, the better job will come, or your current job will become a happier place.

It’s amazing how it works.

This isn’t about the Spiritual Laws of Attraction, because for that to work it requires a belief that there’s separation between you and what you want. This is saying there’s no separation.

You are what you want.
You are the change you want to be.

Here now is a personal example: I’ve been frustrated for a while because I’ve been waiting for two of my movies to kick in – the thriller to be shot in India, a $7m movie called DEFIANT starring Toni Collette, and my film on intuition.

Not many people realise that independent filmmaking requires enormous patience. Movies usually take between 5-7 years to happen, sometimes longer if, like DEFIANT, the subject matter is tough.

DEFIANT is based on a true story of two young lovers hunted down by their families in an honour killing. I read this story in the Times of India while I was in Bombay about 5 years ago, and I’ve been determined to make the film ever since.

The gestation for the intuition film has been much longer – now coming on 15 years since a “voice” saved my life in New Orleans. But it’s needed that time to coalesce – for me to grasp the full implications of the film I need to make. For me to truly understand what I need to make.

DEFIANT is now getting close to being funded – the script is in terrific shape, Toni is an extraordinary actress, and I’m working with a wonderful Indian producer who feels as passionately about the film as I do. He was born in “honour killing” country in India.

But the reason this funding is now starting to materialise is because two months ago I went to the US for 5 weeks where I spoke with financiers, and that energy I put out there fanned embers that are now becoming flames.

As an aside, one of the reasons DEFIANT is taking this length of time to go into production is because it’s battling age-old and entrenched energy that doesn’t want the film to be made – that wants these horrific practices to continue, because it’s not actually about so-called “honour” at all, it’s really about power and wealth.

With my intuition film, Jennifer and I depart in less than a week to begin filming in India. After having a meaningful dream, and waking up at 4:44am one morning, I decided to get on with it.

I decided to be the change I wanted to be.

And because of that personal commitment, investment is now flowing in; others see that the film is commencing, and they want to support me and be a part of a very exciting (and hopefully profitable) venture. It’s starting to snowball. The film I’ve been working on and dreaming about for so long is now about to start production.

This wouldn’t have happened if I’d waited for something to trigger my commencement.

I was that trigger.

When I look back on the fifteen movies I’ve produced and directed, and all the documentaries too, they’ve happened because I took the first step. Without realising it, I’d adopted the practice of being the change I wanted to be.

So many people in my industry sit in coffee shops and talk about the movies they’re going to make and how great they’ll be – better than any movie made by such-and-such or so-and-so.

And three years later they’re still sitting in those same coffee shops and they’re still talking about the great movie they’re going to make, perhaps with a little more bitterness because they believe their extraordinary talents aren’t being properly recognised, and they view the world as being grossly unfair, and limiting.

The world isn’t being unfair or limiting – the world is the world. It’s their actions – their karma – that’s limiting them.

They’re waiting for change – they’re waiting for funding from a Government agency, or validation from independent assessors, to tell them their material is terrific, and that they’re hugely talented, and that the movie should be made.

It’s like waiting for that rude person to stop being rude to you. You’re waiting for that rude person to smile at you. But the rude person won’t smile at you, not until you do something to make them smile.

Here’s an exercise – ask yourself this question: what would you be doing right now if money weren’t an issue. If you were so wealthy you didn’t need to work another day in your life.

Then do it.

That’s the really scary thing, right?
Doing it.
Embracing the rude person.

Because if you begin doing what you want to do, rather than what you need to do, then what you want to do becomes your change. It becomes your life, your reality.

You will begin to be the change you want to be.

Start small, and watch it snowball.
Put energy out there.
The universe loves energy.
The universe will smile at you.
if you embrace it…

Sadhu

Word Press – you are bugging me

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Hey guys – sorry for the additional posts but I just am trying to figure out why the comments box doesn’t come up on the website.

I notice that it’s available on the email notification that’s send to you when a new blog is posted.

Huh.

I am by now means a Word Press expert, but I’ve gone through all my settings and nothing appears to be wrong.

Bill

I’ll figure it out…  🙂

Der Spiegel article on the Camino

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I’m not in the habit of re-printing newspaper article on this blog, but this feature piece in Der Spiegel, reprinted in the NY Times, is worth a read.

I’ve cut and pasted the intro – with a link to the rest of the article, which is quite long. Interestingly it raises a number of questions that Julian Lord is currently facing on his Camino, and discussing through his posts on this blog.

Here is the article:

Soul Searching and Commerce on the Way of St. James

Not long ago, only a few people would make the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Now, over 200,000 people a year spend several grueling weeks along the route. Traditionalists turn up their noses at the crowds, but the rewards are still vast.

In the Middle Ages, pilgrimages were neither a quest for meaning, nor an opportunity for contemplation, nor an event. People had real worries and pilgrimages were part of a deal. On the one hand was the willingness of the faithful to suffer, on the other was God’s capacity for deliverance. The one walks, the other heals — a transaction based on reciprocity.

Similar to mendicants, pilgrims had no possessions beyond what they carried with them: a walking stick, a small sack of belongings, a gourd full of drinking water and the clothes on their back. They were filled with reverence and, not uncommonly, a thirst for adventure.

The grave of St. James in Santiago de Compostela has been a pilgrimage site for over 1,000 years. When times were quiet, only a dozen people would make the effort. At other times, it would be a couple of thousand.

But the quiet years are over. More than 200,000 people followed the Way of St. James last year. And this year, those who make money from the steady stream of wayfarers are in a particularly celebratory mood. Four million copies of the book “I’m Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago” by German TV celebrity Hape Kerkeling have been sold in Germany, and its impact has been huge: Since its publication in German nine years ago, Germans have made up the largest share of foreigners making the pilgrimage. Last year, according to church statistics, 16,000 of them turned up in Santiago, a new record. And now, German public television station ARD is making the movie.

But will that mean that even more people will come? If so, it raises questions about the meaning of the trek — and fears that it could become little more than a traveling circus. There is no doubting the potential economic benefits for one of Spain’s poorest regions, but there are also 1,000 years of tradition to consider.

This is an attempt to find answers to such questions. A search among soul-searchers.

DER SPIEGEL ARTICLE IN FULL…

Camino de Santiago, Jakobsweg

 

Julian Lord – Time to be a Pilgrim (post #4)

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Time to be a Pilgrim

It seems that each time I return to the Camino, the extremes of the Pilgrim customs grow further and further away from each other.

The stark conditions of the ’93 and ’94 Camino, where everyone, rich or poor (except the very richest), would walk and sleep in the same circumstances — either you walked every step, or you could forget about a place in the Refugio, and anyone who broke those rules was a false pilgrim, that the Hostels down the line would be warned of –

And the Hostels themselves were most often converted barns, sties, or one-room houses, often with dirt floors, simply fitted with some bunk beds, a cold shower and WC, and a tiny desk and chair for the Hospitalero.

I can remember in ’93 that my first hot shower on the Camino was about 3 days before Santiago.

Sure, there were a few places to stay along the way that provided better comfort, usually religious establishments, but these were the exception not the rule, and they were still quite Spartan compared to even the bare minimum that people expect nowadays.

What was gained, though, in those conditions was amazing — as even the deepest and most firmly defined social differences between any and every Pilgrim simply could not exist on the Camino as it existed then.

Millionaire or unemployed, University man or manual labourer, devout Catholic or vague agnostic, we were all the same in the harshness of the Path and the starkness of the Pilgrim life.

Yes, some people did sometimes take a bus, and the pack transport services were already in their infancy, but barring illness and such, the only distinctions between the True and the False pilgrims involved either using or shunning those services, or having a motor vehicle backup.

The current creature comforts and their easy availability are of course not bad in themselves, but they have contributed greatly to turning far too much of the Camino into the Tourigrino Way.

The Camino is now inhabited by a certain type of cash-conscious bourgeois bien-pensants that have zero comprehension of even the basics of the spiritual Journey towards the Apostle and towards the Church and towards God, nor otherwise of any other of the various deeper reasons and spirituality of the Way.

But the Camino remains, ever true to itself and to each Pilgrim, denying any claims of ownership upon it, and any attempt to place a cash value on Pilgrimage.

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Julian Lord – The French Camino (post #3)

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The French Way

The title to this piece may be confusing, so let’s clear it up right now — I mean the Camino in France, and not the Camino Francès. And I mainly mean my own Camino from Lourdes to Somport than anything else.

About the Camino itself, the thing that has really struck me is how Catholic the Way from Lourdes to Somport actually is — I have never seen such a strong Catholic presence anywhere else along any Camino routes, and I do not mean just locally, but over this entire section of the Way.

This did not strike me simply as some sort of anthropological curiosity — No.

My passage from Lourdes to Spain has truly been a passage from the familiar to the foreign via the religious and via the spiritual that makes all of these disparate things, from whichever modern point of view of our minds, into the deeply religious Christian Worship of God as He provides us with such a simple Wealth.

I cannot help but be delighted that somewhere, at least, on this Camino, its Catholic Christian nature is openly celebrated, and not hidden away.

——

As for the Somport Way in and for itself, in its non-religious aspects, there are around 1% of the Pilgrims at SJPP and &c. The GR version of this Way is even more annoying than usual, as the French Hiking Federation volunteers seem as keen as always to send their victims into sundry mud slides, up some uselessly difficult 5 km detours up whichever mountain madness, and to generally assume that all Santiago Pilgrims are lunatic masochists. Except no, some of us aren’t !!!

——

My days seem to be gradually lessening in difficulty, though it’s a long slog — I am nevertheless very pleased to report that my knees appear not to be bothering me on this Camino too much …

So Far !!!

—

I have feasted my departure from France as well as my arrival in Spain — these Borderlands may be spiritually nourishing, as suggested hereabove ; but they also mess up your normalcy !!!

KODAK Digital Still Camera

Pulled lamb

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I was on my walk the other morning and I heard someone calling out to me.

I turned to see that it was a lovely lady who lives nearby. My wife and I have known her for years, and the previous weekend she’d invited us to her house, along with some friends, for dinner.

The woman’s name is Lesley, she used to own one of the top wineries in the district, and  she’s a wonderful cook. As we walked into her beautiful house on the river in Mudgee, odours wafted through from the kitchen. She told us proudly that she’d been cooking two shoulders of organic lamb for the past six hours.

Pulled lamb, she called it. Because the flesh would pull away from the bone, due to the slow cooking.

I’ve been vegetarian ever since I got that very strange message while meditating at the Yogananda Self-Realization Temple in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. That was two months ago.

The message was clear and immediate: If you’re about to eat meat, look into the eyes of that animal and ask yourself if you feel comfortable killing it for food. 

I wrote a blog at the time. Here it is –

Epiphany of a meat-eater.

Ever since that message, I haven’t eaten meat. I’ve eaten seafood now and again, but I’ve had no meat, no chicken or poultry, and certainly no lamb.

I love lamb. There’s nothing more delicious than roast lamb, lamb cutlets, lamb korma curry, rack of lamb and slow-cooked pulled lamb.

But I also love baby lambs.

As I walk around Mudgee, I often see baby lambs frolicking in the paddocks. I couldn’t bring myself to kill one – whether it be for food or for any other reason. I just couldn’t kill a baby lamb.

We sat down for dinner, and I had the lamb. Didn’t say a word. And it was delicious. Lesley suggested I have seconds, and I didn’t say no.

So the other morning when she yelled out to me, I walked over and thanked her once again for the beautiful meal – and mentioned to her that it was the first time I’d eaten meat in two months.

She asked why, and I told her the story of the Yogananda Temple and the message I’d received. She was mortified. She began to apologise profusely.

“You should have told me,” she said. “I would have cooked you something vegetarian.”

I laughed and said it wasn’t a problem. “You’d spent a long time preparing that meal, you’d put a lot of thought and love into it, and I was a guest in your house. The least I could do was appreciate the meal you’d cooked for us all, without any fuss, and thank you gratefully.”

Still she was mortified.

I explained to her that refraining from eating meat was a decision I’d made after receiving that message, but I wasn’t going to be obsessive about it. The message wasn’t Don’t eat meat,” it simply told me to give consideration to the life of the creature that would be killed for my food.

I could argue that the lamb had already been killed for that dinner.

I could also argue that I love eating lamb.

I could also argue that I’m weak and a hypocrite.

But I could argue as well that I’d prefer to live in the real world, a world of moderation, and walk what the Buddhists call the Middle Path.

I haven’t eaten meat since that night. And I have no plans to do so. But if I was presented with a similar scenario, I’d eat what’s put in front of me – without complaint.

And I’d be grateful.

lamb

 

 

 

Upcoming Tours

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Word seems to have spread about the fun we had on the Portuguese Camino tour – because we are now fully booked for the Assisi Tour in April of next year.

If you’re interested, you can put your name down on a wait list in case anyone drops out.

We’re putting together another Portuguese Camino Tour in October, if anyone is interested. We’re already starting to fill that up.

Our beautiful and hilarious local liaison van driver / translator / parking in tow-away-zones lass, Catarina, will be on board again – subject though to us getting sufficient numbers.

After the Assisi Tour, we’re planning a Celtic Camino Tour possibly in the 2nd half of next year. That will involve a series of ancient pilgrimage walks around the West Coast of Ireland, which is a spectacularly beautiful part of the world.

But right at the moment we’re filling up the next Portuguese Camino, which will kick off out of Porto towards the end of October. So email me if you’re interested at –

billpgsblog@gmail.com

Bill Bennett.

Jen on cliffs.2

Julian Lord – Lourdes (post #2)

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LOURDES

The Camino this time is still continuing to be very nice with me, which is most encouraging !!

The hitch-hike from Saint-Gilles to Lourdes was lightning quick (well, apart from the bit where I managed to head the wrong way on foot LOL), and Oscar, who took me most of the way, to within 10 miles of Lourdes, is an Italian bike pilgrim who will have done his first Camino stage today.

I arrived in Lourdes at about 6 PM last night, then immediately found a place selling Chimay gold top, a beer I had been wishing to taste for roughly 20 years, but even that pleasure was unable to lessen the beautiful joy of the Lourdes Pilgrim Hostel, as it is simply, and hands down, the BEST I have ever stayed in.

The internal wooden architecture instantly tells you that this isn’t just any old Refugio — while you’re here, it’s Home. The wonderful Jean-Louis is keeping it mostly single-handed, on a Donativo basis, and he provides not just a wonderful breakfast and a superb home-cooking supper — but also his fatherly kindness and warmth, so that his stuff is your stuff, his kitchen your kitchen, and your Camino is his joy.

Last night I was the only Pilgrim in the main dormitory, and there was only one other pilgrim in the Hostel — tonight though there is a mix, seven of us, four starting still Lourdes, two having walked in from beyond, and the last being a foot pilgrim to Lourdes who has therefore just finished his hike.

Five of us are walking on out tomorrow, so I’ll see which I’ll be bumping into along the Way …

I attended a Traditional Latin Mass this evening, just down the road, which naturally turned out to be the Mass of the Transfiguration, which is one of the most important Saint James Masses of the year (among many other aspects of course hehehe).

Looking terribly forward to start the Camino in the morning.

Lourdes_Julian