June 11, 2021 - My Octopus Teacher

A surprising story of how an Octopus lifts a man from the depths of a mental struggle.

May 10, 2021 - Reduce The World’s Net Suffering

An answer from, Nick Cave, The Red Hand Files …

My question is about how you perceive the utility of suffering.  What is the value of suffering to us as individuals, and to us as a species …

Nick Cave in Yorkstrabe, West Berlin, 1985.  Photograph by Bleddyn Butcher.

Dear Peter,

What do we do with suffering? As far as I can see, we have two choices—we either transform our suffering into something else, or we hold on to it, and eventually pass it on.

In order to transform our pain, we must acknowledge that all people suffer. By understanding that suffering is the universal unifying force, we can see people more compassionately, and this goes some way toward helping us forgive the world and ourselves. By acting compassionately we reduce the world’s net suffering, and defiantly rehabilitate the world. It is an alchemical act that transforms pain into beauty. This is good. This is beautiful.

To not transform our suffering and instead transmit our pain to others, in the form of abuse, torture, hatred, misanthropy, cynicism, blaming and victimhood, compounds the world’s suffering. Most sin is simply one person’s suffering passed on to another. This is not good. This is not beautiful.

The utility of suffering, then, is the opportunity it affords us to become better human beings. It is the engine of our redemption.

Love, Nick

May 5, 2021 - Feel Things Changing

April 20, 2021 - Buy Into It – Or Not

Repost from 2014.  Before social media added to the erosion of self…

Image by Banksy.  Text below by Kalle Lasn, Founder of Adbusters Media Foundation.  Source:  ‘The Gruen Transfer’ book.

“Rather than child proofing the world, we need to world proof our children” *

“There’s anything between 1000 and 3000 marketing messages entering the average brain every day.  I believe our brains are simply not capable of absorbing that level of advertising.  One of the reasons advertising causes mental illness is because of the weight of that onslaught, the sheer number of hits to the brain.

And then, on a secondary level, many ads are psychologically abusive.  Many ads amount to emotional blackmail.  Ads point out flaws in your personality, in your body, in the way you dress, the way you live, and then once they have made you feel inadequate, they say, ‘Okay, we have the solution to your problem.  Buy this.’  If this happens consistently, it erodes your self-confidence and turns you into an anxious human being.

March 11, 2021 - Army of Ink – Out The Bad Apples

Sometimes you have to find a way of separating the badness from your self .

There are so many of us who have been given a bad apple.  It is the worst thing in the world to receive.   Just like having a bad apple in your bag, it rots – eventually ruining everything.  This little soldier has a story about ‘outing’ bad apples – and rising from the ruin …..

… Someone put a bad apple in her bag once, and although she was sure people could tell something was wrong, she didn’t show anyone the apple because it was so bad – and she worried it would make them feel bad too.

The little girl’s greatest fear became that if she ever took the bad apple out, or someone discovered it, they wouldn’t want her anymore.  They’d think she was bad.  She forever longed for someone to  get rid of the bad apples for her.

On most days, she wished the bad apples had been put in someone else’s bag.

November 25, 2020 - A Hand In Loss

One desperate morning, however, I did the most simple of things and perhaps this can help you with the loss of your wife, and your brother, more than my words. I sat by myself, in a quiet space, and called upon my son by name. I closed my eyes and imagined lifting him from my heart — this tormented place in which I was told he lived — and I positioned him outside of my body, next to me, beside me. I said, “You are my son and now you are beside me.”