Dinner with Dave...living at-one from my cabin

I am using my iPad and it changed wonderful sharings to shavings and, as I wanted to congratulate Dave on his beautiful handiwork, it is totally appropriate. I know I'm hugely late to this Forum posting but WOW, I am blown away by the great demonstrations of sustainable living by Mr Williams, and lovely sharings from others in this thread. I'm starting to wonder how I can turn 2013 into a greater exploration of sustainable living in the city (or perhaps elsewhere) and it's so great to have inspiration. thank you and much love (oh and my ipod just shuffled onto 'heaven help us all' by Stevie Wonder. indeed! and I found a book called 'Dancer' on the delayed train Im on. Always a gift if you keep your awareness tuned in...) xx

Aha. So David has moved away from the victorian values of sending small children up the the chimney to developing a radio controlled vehicle with a toilet brush attached?

I remember those programs! I was going to say I thought David had:
- built a portal between dimensions.
- found a treasure map in lots of pieces.
- completed his latest clothing line for the 'Man about Nature'.
but of course he is building a chimney for his wood burner.

I did dumster diving until I left for Canada in June and could cover about 80 percent of my food need with that! It was unbelievable what shops would throw away. It broke my heart to see that, and so it felt as if the lower energy of the non organic food was balanced out with the act of saving it from being wasted. What I experienced was that there wasnt only the processed stuff but mostly vegetable and fruits in the dumpsters. I also went to dumpsters of organic food stores and didnt think that I would find a lot there, but wrong!!!
You wouldnt believe what they throw away too! Perfectly fresh lettuce, apples etc...
That shows that organic supermarkets are enslaved by their customers like the big stores, or rather that people who buy their food at organic shops have the same expectations of 'perfection' and therefore the shops attune to that expectation. With buying organic food there comes no change in consciousness unfortunately.
What I also found over time as my spiritual consciousness grew was that I became more and more sensitive to food and in the end I couldn't really cope with the non organic 'dumpster food'. So that put me ín a difficult position as I still feel that it is so wrong to throw good food away but on the other hand I feel the need to get purer and purer from both the inside and outside.
I have to contemplate that topic again!
:-)

Sandra
xx

hi amber

did you ever hear of 'freeganism'? Apparently ridiculous amounts of edible food and useable resources are literally thrown away or destroyed every day. There's lots of info online. figures such as "15 million tonnes of food" in the UK every year!
'freegans', as I understand it, feed themselves largely from some of what would otherwise be discarded (or already has been) as well as living in ways that use less or minimal extra resources. It makes some sense. I remember sitting in a cafe with a friend of mine a few years back and he managed to get a decent sized meal just by helping himself to food that other people had left behind, and there was more to spare. It may sound a bit funny but its a powerful mirror I think. That food was otherwise 'destined' for the bin!

Its an interesting way of living in the matrix but not 'buying into it'. I think there's lots of ways to be more in tune with the earth and living in more 'aligned' ways in the city. even living with other people is one step as it saves money towards fuel and so forth.

have fun exploring! and enjoy. :-)
blessings

Ben

The cabin is amazing Dave! And your first sharing too. How deep we can get with "ordinary things"! (as if they would even exist)

That really inspires me to work with my hands and my heart more then with my brain :-)

Thank you for sharing this. I find it very deep. There is a temptation to share only the "etheric stuff" on a "spiritual website" - you have demonstrated how everything can be "spiritual", and like others said before I can literally feel your souls love even through the pictures of the cabin.

Awesome.
The other David

Dave I love the cabin. It looks great. I'm impressed by your creation, but more so by how you so fully engaged with it, your perseverance, your continued 'self-consciousness' (you know what I mean) throughout the process, and by the natural expression of your beautiful gifts of beingness. You are a multi-talented man and I see the cabin as a work of art. honestly.
well done!

B

Dave, an awesome job outside and in.It fits so naturally in the garden and I can see it blending in more with time. It is funny how this year the most satisfying job I did was digging footings for an extension with a friend. They were a metre deep and I really got into the zone through the day. Much more fun than computer networks! Mark

Dave, you're the man! hhhhh Or hmm your cabin IS the man! Ok, I am confused.

The point is WOW! Love it :)

I love it!

If feels so mmmmm you know, like something that is connected to the inner destruction and rebuilding... I don't know how to put it... very exciting! :)

About love... I feel more like letting it find me than looking for it, but it is how it works with me.

Big hug
<3

Is there any left for me?

I'm loving the new website btw - great work!

Love and light, Fi

I dont hear myself say no to that :-)
looks awesome as always!
♥

Hi Dave,
it is hard to keep up, as you are so popular hahaha :P

Anyway, I felt to say that lately, during recent months,it feels like I am finding this balance between aspiring for perfection, which is natural and inherent, but on the other hand, losing all the ego connected to it, losing the tightness and rigidity about it.

And, interestingly, what I found this week is the paradoxical perfection of imperfections.

Before I would look at things, and myself, and was focused on what is wrong, what is not perfect. Then I started focusing on what is right. Then I could hold both together. And now... surprisingly, they fuse together! Nothing I would expect!

There is some kind of mysterious beauty in what is not 'right', what feels like not perfect, but this one allows this whole reality and process to exist.

--------------------------

It reminds me of this great movie I enjoyed so much, Cosmopolis.

WARNING! SPOILER!

In this movie, the protagonist, who is genius in predicting how the foreign currency will behave in stock market, suddenly fails and loses everything, all his millions and going through the internal process throughout the movie, until eventually he is shown that he made the mistake because his model was too perfect, too symmetric, and that he forgot to take into consideration the asymmetric factor, this spontaneous, unexpected, imperfect twist that is pervading all reality. And that he actually was given a hint by his doctor, who found that his prostate is asymmetric hhhhh

-------------------------

Well, anyway, enjoy your cabin, I see in it an expression of you expressing yourself externally rather than hiding behind the smooth walls :D And I really loved what I saw last time!

Hugs <3

Hi Sandra mou,

Thanks for sharing, Yes i relate to some of what you are saying too.
The concept of failure and what it means to me etc is something that i am now discovering. i hadnt contemplated it in depth before.. and its interesting!

lots of love

Oh I love that poem! It touches something very deep inside of me!

Vaso, I can so relate to what you were saying about failure. I experience similar. I have the feeling that I have never really failed in life and am therefore scared when it will finally happen. I feel it would be good to experience because in the end what can happen? I would still be there. And also as you described I have that issue with a 100 % committment (on an intelectual level) because I don't want to experience that I might fail I always told myself that I cant do things (like in university). I always told myself that I am not smart enough to fully grasp a topic or to get a straight A. And therefore I wasnt disappointed when it didnt happen, because I told myself that I couldnt do it. But what I experienced during the last term of my studies (that was after the level 2 and 3 course when I was full of confidence in myself) was, that without much effort I achieved everything I needed to achive and the results came from my soul and not from my brain! That was such an amazing experience because the feeling of rightness in whatever result I would get was there. I knew from my heart that I did the best I could and in doing so the need for an outcome fell away because I achieved it already: doing the best I could :-)

So what I try to embrace is the fact that doing the best I can and doing it from the heart is much more fullfilling than the need for a certain outcome. Because in the end what does it matter what grade you have or whether you can play a song perfectly? The experience and the knowledge about yourself you can gain during the journey, seems much more important to me now :-)

So that is what I try to remember when my perfections buttons are getting pushed;-)
what happens quite a lot recently because I am living at a place where I do some decoration work and when I work I try to be a 100 % focused and in the moment of what I am doing. And I like doing things properly. So very often when I am in the middle of a job the guy I am living with comes and tells me that I dont have to worry to much about doing it perfectly, or he takes the brush and paints over the parts I just spent 10 min. on to make them look very even because he didn't want me to do a second coat, but the underlying paint was still shining through. So my first reaction is that I get very tight and angry because I feel kind of undermined and I just want to stop in proceeding the work because it feels as if with that interfering the piece of soul I put into the work has been riped out.
But then I think, ok it's not my problem if I then need longer to finish a job because I will just paint over it again and realign my piece of soul.

much love

Hi David

Yummy! I would have some please.. :)

Thanks for reminding me of that poem Reka! I completely forgot about it. I remember we kept analyzing the meaning of it back in high school.. Now it has very different meaning for me!

Love you guys
Vaso

Hey David,
I'm so glad you make your lovely voice be heard in this way!
BTW: What's for dinner?!!?!? Knowing your cooking skills, please sign me up among your guests! :-)

Perrrrrrrrfection, oh yes, a nice one... For me one pitfall can be when I (or others) think of it as some sort of a train station, s.thing to arrive at? A state to achieve? (And by the way, even if it was like that, would I really want to stay there I wonder... actually i know: for sure not.)

I found this poem some days ago for a dear friend, who's recently set out on a kinda personal Odyssey... I have not shown it to him yet, instead I feel this is now the place to share it (also as a gesture of love for Vaso, since it is by early 20th-c. Greek poet Kavafis).

The (our /each of our's) Odyssey is clearly about a man who is roaming about, looking for something and wants to feel perfectly home somewhere. For instance in Ithaca. Or in himself. Thus I felt it belongs here.

"As you set out for Ithaca
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon – don’t be afraid of them:
you’ ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon – you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then this is the meaning of Ithaca."

K. Kavafis, (Greek Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης) (April 29, 1863 – April 29, 1933)

Hi Guys,

Thank you for sharing David. I would like to see the pictures of the cabin too.
This is an interesting topic... For me, not because i strive for success but because i am afraid that if i try i can be very good or if i try i may as well fail. i see it in many aspects of my life.
i am afraid of disappointment and failure. So i dont put much effort or i am not trying 100% so that if i fail i am not disappointed because i didnt really try... I also think i am afraid of my own potential. another reason is that i havent struggled much in my life. So when something needs more effort i dont put much energy into it.
To give you some examples. I play guitar. I usually practice a piece a couple of times and then i can play it. And there was one piece, it wasnt so difficult but for some reason i couldnt play it.. so i would just skip it without practicing harder. Ironically it was my favorite piece.. and i still wouldnt get into it and try to practice and at the same time i was pissed at my self that i couldnt play it. And one day it hitted me.. that i have to put more effort and it doesnt matter if i still dont manage to play it. it sounds funny to say that i wouldnt realise this simple thing. And it took me a long time until i managed to play that piece.
Another thing i see is the way i approached studying while i was in Uni. I was staying all night awake to start and finish the assignment. I didnt have time to reread it and correct my mistakes. And i was happy with the grade i would get because i didnt try hard and i didnt have time.. so it was okk if it wasnt the highest mark i could get. And i now know that if i tried more i could get a first class degree. But i didnt. And i was telling to my self that i didnt care about law or the grades. But didnt i? or that i was bored with the subjects but was i? well i was definitely bored with some but not all. I knew that i could get a high mark but still i wasnt trying to get one.
There are two reasons i think. One i know i can be very good as a lawyer but i am afraid of diving into it and that i may be good and two, if i try i dont accept that i may fail.. Its like failure is not an option for me but because it may happen i dont commit to something.. Wow i didnt know i was that proud :p I remember one time i went to a math competition. i did horribly in that competition. After that and up until i graduated high school i was happy if i could get 10 out of 20 in the tests. :p It was like everything was blocked.
And its strange because i am very proud and i know that in some things i can be good but at the same time i dont believe in my self. Hows that possible?
I see that in walking the spiritual path. I am never sure of what i feel or i dont believe i can listen to my soul. i dont believe in my instinct etc.. And i think because i am afraid of failing because i am not 'good'and at the same time i know i can do it, i dont commit 100% to it. does it make any sense?? :p

hugs
Vaso

When I saw your cabin on friday I immediately felt the 'you' behind the cabin. Your energy is shining through from every part of it.
Well done :-)

Sandra

I certainly recognise the striving for perfection one :wink:

As you know, there's always a truth in it - the soul yearning for evolution.

The cabin looks awesome - can't wait for the pictures.

Open