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thoughts

~ Cast Away ~

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~ Cast Away ~

“I remember the moment clearly my friend. It was on the mountain that day when I saw you were a cast away soul. It was in your eyes – the way you stared into that sunset sky. I’d seen that wistful look before in mirrors of the past. You were homesick for a place you’d never been; homesick a place you’d never known. Like me, you also felt betrayed by the universe that you’d been abandoned on this rock, chained down by gravity, trapped in a cage of slowly decaying flesh and bone. This planet could not offer you the grand adventure you craved. You were a foreign thing: a wayward wanderer of the cosmos, crash-landed and stranded in a world full of things you just didn’t understand. The situation was strange, and what was left to do but stare up into those skies, waiting for something to come and take you home.

Yes my friend, I know. I know that your soul longs to sail up there through the stars and not toil in this mud, but together on this rock we shall live out a blazing adventure that will make the stars above weep with envy. Maybe we will not reach those faraway galaxies, but with a heart full of passion and a mind full of imagination we shall embark on a voyage that will have the gods on the edge of their seats. Our journey through the wilderness will be dangerous and daring. We shall cross rivers of fear and climb mountains of wonder. We will travel into the depths of ourselves and explore the places where few dare to venture. The poachers will come and try to tame our wild hearts, but we shall fight them off at all costs. We will live a life of ferocious intensity, of complete and utter fullness, and when we die we’ll leave this world behind, ready for the next adventure, ready for the next voyage – ready to sail back to that starry ocean of infinity where we truly belong.”

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thoughts

~ A Journey Of Passion ~

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~ A Journey Of Passion ~

“It is true. There is no greater pleasure in life than giving absolutely everything you have toward that which makes you feel alive. To give it all to your passion – to that which makes your heart dance and your toes twitch with excitement. Yes, this can mean solitude; it can mean messy hair and tired legs; it can mean going insane behind a keyboard at 3am. But make no mistake about it: nothing stirs the blood more than when you get lost in the wonderland of your own joy and imagination. In a world so often darkened by mediocrity and banality, the greatest way to respond is to not to attack the darkness, but to set fire to your soul and light up the shadows around you with the flames of your own inner being. Our passions carry the power of the stars. Without them, our eyes start to dim and our minds become stale; without them we fall into the pits of simply existing and no longer living. To give up on your passion is to give up on yourself – it is to give up on whatever the hell it means to be alive. So whatever it is that makes you feel alive, do it. Do it and do it with every last drop of your soul. Don’t let anyone else belittle your aspirations. Don’t let that spark inside be put out by convention or culture. Follow your bliss wide-eyed all the way to the grave. As a wise man once said, ‘it’s the only good fight there is’.”

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~ The Trip Of A Lifetime ~

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~ The Trip of a Lifetime ~

“We are all on a one-way highway towards death. Stop kidding yourself and accept that fact. In every second we are cruising towards a cliff that drops into the abyss of the unknown. There is no way off this road; there is no secret turn-off hidden somewhere to the side. Life is transient and you are going over that edge whether you like it or not. So please stop wasting so much time stressing. Stop spending the entire ride trying to tighten your seat-belt. Some people rush around their whole lives trying to make themselves safe, working and toiling and creating the illusion of permanence, but I promise you that it doesn’t mean a thing in the end. The end of the road is coming whether we like it or not. This is not something to be sad about; this is not something to avoid thinking about – it is something to celebrate. It is the very thing that sets you free. Look outside your window and marvel at your environment. You are a human-being riding a rock around a big ball of fire. You live in a world of mountain peaks and dancing clouds. You are the most intelligent creature in the known universe, living at a time when horizons are easier than ever to conquer. Don’t be afraid to sit back and enjoy the ride. Don’t be afraid to stick your head out the window, screaming like an utter madman with the winds of life soaring against your face. I promise you that when the road finally ends – you will look back and smile. You will look back in complete fulfilment knowing that you were alive, knowing that you were free – knowing that you experienced the trip of a lifetime to the absolute, goddamn full.”

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(taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)

thoughts

~ The School Of Self ~

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~ The School of Self ~

“Do not look always outward toward teachers and institutions for guidance and knowledge. Don’t be scared to venture inward into the galaxies of your own mind, your own experience, and your own intuition. Your very flesh and bones are the outcome of billions of years of cosmic drama, and within yourself lies the fundamental fabric of the entire universe. If you allow yourself to be perpetually marginalised, limited by convention, and to chase after the external, then you will never unearth the hidden treasure that you carry within. Each and every one of us has some untouched gold in the hearts within our chests. The combination to it will not be found while allowing yourself to be melded shut by the formulaic and unimaginative. The world waits desperately to hear the symphony of your soul. So don’t suppress it any longer. Become your own teacher; learn your own dance; sing your own song; walk your own path. The greatest discoveries are made by those brave enough to explore the kingdom of themselves.”

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(taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)

thoughts

~ An Inner Wealth ~

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~ An Inner Wealth ~

“They want you to feel insecure. They want you to feel disempowered. They want that flame in your heart to fizzle out. Why? Because when those things happen then you can be marginalised. And when you can be marginalised they can make you look to external things for happiness. And when you look to external things for happiness suddenly they piss down on you from their billboards, from their newspapers – from their radios and television stations. They want you to feel ugly, to feel poor, to feel inferior to everyone else around you. They want that because when you feel those things suddenly they can try and sell you a load of crap you don’t need to try and make yourself feel better. Save yourself the hassle and remember that you have an entire universe pulsating inside of you. Save yourself the hassle and remember that you are a goddamn human-being surfing a rock through an infinite universe. You live in a world of beautiful nature. You don’t need expensive designer clothes and that HD television – your life is already a cinematic experience beyond compare. Unplug yourself from the insanity of a consumerist society that will never have enough ‘things’ for those thing addicts. Practice mindfulness; explore your creativity – learn the joy of exercising your body. Enjoy the simple pleasures of silence and the touch of rain. Tune into nature and not prime time television. When you do all of those things for a while suddenly you understand that true wealth comes from within – suddenly you understand that there is a wealth inside you greater than all the gold and diamonds in this world.”

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thoughts

~ The Road Less Travelled ~

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~ The Road Less Travelled ~

“Always say no to the things that insult your soul. If the safe highway requires you to feel pain, then walk alone through a forest of bliss. There is a priceless pleasure in living a life true to yourself. It is not something that can be purchased in a store, or downloaded onto a computer, or stored in a house. It is the magic of the wild – the magic of trusting yourself to the water and learning how to swim. Yes, the path can get scary, and you often walk alone, but better to breathe in the air of solitude than to slowly suffocate to death in a crowd.”

pricless pleasure

thoughts

~ A Thought For Her ~

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“Yes, I know you are hurting. This world has broken you. It breaks many of us at some point. But you are not going to give in because I can still see the flames that will start a great fire still flickering within those eyes. You are going to overcome this, but know that it’s not going to be easy. The warrior inside you doesn’t even want it to be. It’s going to be a great battle in which you shall dive down and rescue yourself from the depths of hell. Soon that darkness will pass, the dungeons will be unlocked, the dragons and demons will leave your skies. A new dawn shall arrive as the flags of joy in your heart flutter once more in that morning wind. This is it: the greatest battle you will ever face and you will face it as who you really are: a child of infinity; a warrior of the sun. And it is a battle you are going to win. But first remember to be gentle to yourself. You are not responsible for saving the world, but first yourself, and please know that you are worth saving. Those eyes were meant to blaze with brightness, not wither with gloom; those feet were meant to dance in ecstasy, not trudge in the swamp.

In all your despair, you have forgotten that you are the entire universe dancing in a singular being for a singular lifetime. Stars have died; light has travelled billions of years; cosmic magic has been weaved. Your very flesh contains the fundamental fabric of the entire universe and no matter what anyone says: you matter and you count. So go on: do whatever it takes. Go crazy if you have to. Reinvent yourself. Set fire to your soul and let the battle begin; let your spirit be unleashed. Because there is no way a divine being such as yourself was meant to dwell in darkness and despair. Those days are over and now is the time to emerge from that swamp; now is the time is now to claim back what is yours. With the power of a million suns burning deep inside your heart, now is the time is to rise up and become who you were born to be.”

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articles

~ Expanding Horizons ~

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~ Expanding Horizons ~

“Your life is a miracle. An unprecedented phenomenon that can never, or will never, be matched on any imaginable level. The very fact that you are currently conscious reading and understanding these letters, words and sentences is a moment in which its recipe consists of infinite combinations of abstract events happening in the right space at the right time. The optimum position of our planet in the universe; the perfect conditions on earth for life to flourish and evolve; the very fact that your parents went out to the same place on the same day and met each other. Just think: above anyone else that day, in any place, at any moment, they met each other – and you and your ridiculously complex DNA were the result. Just like they were when their parents before them met each other. And their parents. And their parents. The very fact that all these endless combinations of events led to your being on this earth means that your very existence is miraculous – a stoic defiance of the odds and the culmination of a billion unlikely things all gelling together in perfect discourse. YOU are a miracle. So revel in it. Celebrate it. Your life should be a symphony.

But it throws me – life, sometimes. It saddens me even. Amongst this grand symphony of existence on the magnificent stage of planet earth, I look around and I see so many of us consumed by monotony, recklessly killing the precious time that has been gifted to us. I see so many of us plodding along aimlessly, burying our desires, toiling endlessly in a job that we have no interest in – contentedly dwelling in dead-end towns where nothing ever happens until our minds and bodies become old and weathered. With our precious time on this earth dissipating as we sit comfortably on a sedentary cushion, we so easily fall into the trap of drawing the curtains on our world and perpetually living a systematic and samey routine in which we let days become weeks, let weeks become months, and let months inevitably become years. So many amazing opportunities and experiences drifting on by in the great ocean of time out in this vast world – yet we don’t reach out to explore and experience. And why? Why in a universe of violent bursts and endless movement do so many of us let our lives and horizons become so static and still? Why in a world where we could explore and experience a million different things do we persist in doing the same ones week in, week out?

I don’t hasten to say it, but I believe it to be so –  just because it’s easy.  It’s easy for us to get accustomed and stay in one place; it’s convenient for us to only ever interact to the same people; it’s comfortable for us to perpetually relive the same week and repeat the same habits for a lifetime. Due to the impulses of comfort, routine and security, a world can become a bubble – and eventually that bubble can become a world. A world where precious time flies by as we tumble endlessly through the vices of systematic living; a world where comfort and frivolous possessions rank higher than personal growth and experiences; a world where magazines and newspapers open and our minds close.

I know this because I’ve seen it, and I see it more vividly now than ever. After seventeen months of travelling around the world, seeing other-worldly sights, meeting hundreds of new people, sharing ideas, thoughts, language and adventures, I return home from this small lifetime to find that very little has changed. People have new shoes, but the same routine; people have new televisions, but the same knowledge; people have new cars, but the same scripted conversations. And with the pain and bitterness that comes with being back to square one, I have to look in the mirror and ask myself: is this lifestyle really our final destination? Is this static, comfortable bubble really where you and I want to dwell till the end of our days?

Even after only just a few of years of living a culture of experience rather than one of security and possession, I personally already know my answer to this is forever a resounding no. Life is not some story we tell ourselves; it is neither a tale of the past or a preconception of the future – it is the very thing that is happening to us right here – right now. Even as you’re reading this sentence. Now is forever; and if we are to sink into a bubble, stay still and never plot to move forward in any way – nor experience other things, peoples, places and ideas – then we are being short-sighted and condemning ourselves to not taking full advantage of the miracle of life and consciousness that we have all been gifted. And we’re bigger than that; in a time and age where we are more connected and capable than ever before – you and I are bigger than that bubble. Bigger than our sofa realities; bigger than those tabloid newspapers; bigger than closing our curtains and selves off from the outside world.

Our time is now and our time is precious. It truly is – like a drop in an ocean or a grain of sand in the desert, our brief time period of existence is ultimately nothing against the vast canvass of time in the universe. And this universe will not wait. Life is not a rehearsal; it is not some show on television – it will come to an end and there will be no replay button. Time shall pass; youth shall escape us; our bodies shall age; our lives will come to an end – and we will all die – that is undeniable and for sure. But when the time comes, our sun sets and our miraculous time on this earth comes to an end, the only thing of any importance to me and you will be just how much we ever really lived in the first place.”

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(taken from my book ‘The Thoughts From The Wild’ available here)

thoughts

~ Incomplete ~

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~ Incomplete ~

“She walked barefoot through the fields of my heart, untouchable like a ghost, her skin shining in the sun like the blazing light of the cosmos in all its glory. And now the thoughts of what could have been haunt those same fields as I sit alone in the night, hearing those voices of happiness echo in the wind before I return to that silence I know all too well. Some of us are just never meant to feel that union of love; to feel confirmed or completed by another soul. We have that empty space in the heart where we sit still in solitude and stare into skies above, waiting to be liberated from our pain, waiting to be saved from our own madness – waiting for someone or something to come deliver us to a home we know deep inside we will never touch nor feel.”

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thoughts

~ The Wanderers ~

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~ The Wanderers ~

“Everything in this culture is designed around ushering us all toward the life of schedule and routine. First comes school, then comes career, then marriage, then kids, home-ownership, and – eventually – retirement. Make no mistake about it, the system is set up meticulously to usher everyone into this one formulaic mould. But what if your fingers fidget for something else? What if your heart longs for freedom? What if – for some reason you struggle to articulate to friends and family – you find that every ounce of your body rejects this conventional way of life? If this is the case and you find yourself out of odds with absolutely everything, then don’t worry – you are not alone and you are not crazy. Maybe the coworkers and relatives will never understand, but we sure as hell do. So keep a look out for us, and we’ll look out for you too.

Wherever you go, whatever you do: look out for the ones looking wistfully into the skies, for the ones embracing the touch of the rain, for the ones delighting in the sound of silence and dancing out of place. We are out there and we are the wanderers; we are the misfits and outcasts – the adventurers and dreamers. You will not find us in immaculately groomed houses, or in trendy shopping malls, or expensive bars and restaurants. In fact, you will not find us in one place for too long at all actually. No, we are the ones you find beyond the borders, the ones you find away from the crowds – the ones you find on the sunset beaches and mountain paths and peaceful forests. Our nature is awkward and unpredictable; our spirit is rough and uncombed. We are slightly deranged and a mystery to ourselves, but we are sure of some things. We are sure that we do not seek status and security, but freedom and adventure. We are sure that we don’t live life to others’ expectations, but to the flow of our hearts and passions. We are sure that we do not wish to possess, but to cultivate and appreciate. Such a state of being means we usually walk alone, but if you keep an eye out you will be sure to see us occasionally. From the mountain peaks, to the concrete jungles: we are out there roaming; we are out there exploring. And we’re destined never to belong to one place. Because we are haunted by the horizons; we are bewitched by the stars. We are rugged and restless – wild and reckless – lost and found.

We are the wanderers.”

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