Pearls of Clarity
Falling with ease, tumbling, colliding, splashing big soft drops that soak in as they hit and drench in the beat of a wing, cool summer rain. Wonderful wet washing water from the sky. What an amazing thing that is.
Tup, tup, tup on the big broad leaves of the palm trees outside my window. Crashing into green. Leaves bounce as they are hit and rain water rolls down and drips off to explode and soak into the earth below. Life to some thing, many things. Death to others.
Wonder, wonder, wonder. The way things are in existence, how every thing is separate but fits exactly where it is in the web of form and function that is nature. Reflective of the vitality below, above the formlessness that powers it all.
And here I am sitting on top looking ‘down’ with nowhere to go but back, back home.
Or … What is left to do, for a wet bee.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
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Why, oh why?
… do I do what I do, walk in nature, photograph insects, teach relaxation/meditation and macro. For peace of mind is the short answer, I enjoy it.
Relaxation/meditation is the basis for actualising my potential, otherwise I am not doing my best. And if I don’t give of my best, one way or another, I lose it. It’s that simple.
To be in nature, which requires a certain love of nature, where there is nothing man made and where I have something to do that I enjoy, looking – seeing – hearing – smelling – ‘sensing’, is freedom from the world of stress and strain – the mind. Though it’s not ‘for’ anything but being (in) nature, my nature.
Insects are our cousins and are closer in nature to us than the flowers and minerals and so reflect our own nature more closely, and without the complication of emotion. This living reflection is intriguing to observe, since it is my own nature uncomplicated. The flowers are reflective of a deeper nature, a more origional nature.
Many who do it regard macro photography as an expression of the predator civilised, a hunt, and it is, for the hunter. But rather than a hunt I would call it a prayer, not in any ‘religious’ sense but in the sense that to be in nature and capture the image of the more exotic and beautiful creatures requires an increasing knowledge of self, since what they do and how they do it is invariably understandable in terms of self, and a corresponding absence of the ‘human’ in human nature – that incessant naming and emotional consideration that is considered ‘normal’ in our mad world and sets us apart and often against the beings and ways of the earth. The perfect fruit of this way is being, (in) my beautiful nature – because nature is beautiful.
It is a simple way of communing with the god made, and an effective methodical, or instinctive, means of leaving the man made out of it. Methodical means it can be learned. Instinctive means you already know it but may have forgotten it, by covering it over with what complicates.
It, being – nature, is the only real religion, really. :D
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Colour Me Wicked …
… colour me blue. An if dat don’ fit just colour me true. Cause if you don’t colour me I’ll have to colour you. Ooh, the ways of the world, and in colour too. ((:
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Colour, colour everywhere. Just reach out and touch it, smell it, feel it, taste it and see it – of course, awake to it. And have you got that other sense, inside, a certain sense of beauty, of colour.
What a wondrous form of life colour is.
The colours and structures of flowers are wonderful and sweet to the inner sense and though they are ‘known’ in the moment they don’t exist in isolation, they depend on insects for their existence, mostly. And they are best shown in contrast to something … contrasting.
So when this bug showed up on one of my garden plants, in fact on a blade of grass in a hanging basket where I haven’t planted anything, sheltering from the wind and rain, I couldn’t help myself. I got the camera out and paraded her, it’s a her, from flower to flower to see where she was most at home and most beautiful.
Well, she loved the yellow, she couldn’t get enough of it, always reaching out for it when we were close enough but otherwise content to bask in the rays of coloured sense. A truly enlightening activity all round, delving into sense where there’s no place for ‘trouble’.
Then there was the white with a little yellow heart against the green. And she loved it too, obviously in communion with the different colours, just not in words, but sensewise – the wisdom of sense.
And when I brought her to the big yellow she was thoroughly uplifted, I’m sure I heard her laugh a laugh of pure delight. Ha, ha, ha, loud, clear and uninhibited. I’m nearly sure. ((:
When we had enough of this playing she climbed off to tuck up under a leaf for the night, to sleep undisturbed.
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Delightfully colourfully I.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Dreams of Coloured Yew …
… and Me.
This little fella got lost one day, climbed onto my foot and, weary of the trek across the great waste of concrete asked for hospitality from a fellow traveller and for me to point the way, since I am so tall and can see so far, he said.
How could I refuse? I gave him some colour to play in before feeding and watering and sending on his way, out into the wilds of the garden where he promptly dug down below the grass and into the soil – built for digging, he was right at home and soon disappeared from sense. Or in sense. Hmmm!
Could be she.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Magical Mystical Beeuties
A recent native bee in the afternoon, a Leaf Cutter. They are dying off rapidly, numbers are way down from a month ago. Not inclined to intrude on them so much now, don’t want to affect their behaviour at the critical time of roosting at their favoured places with the predators about, Wasps and Dragonflies. Wonder if they will rebound, as nature does.
Of course, as sun shines, rain falls, grass grows. Of course.
That’s the fact, everything returns.
Behind is the wonder, the beauty, the inscrutable impulse of primordial intelligence to form as a bee. To amaze, entertain and remind of a wordless place that may be called home, or peace, inside.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Blades of Colour
… flitting about so fast and sudden they are barely visible. During the day, at this time of year, they are the fairies of the garden, only catching them at the corner of my eye. Before I can focus on one it is away in pursuit of whatever it chases around the green carpet of grass, lush after the summer rains.
Orange and steel blue darting about, I could almost wonder where and what and how. But the mystery remains, so obvious, ‘tis my own immemorial self. Have you ever looked inside and seen the primordial you? And know instinctively what it is and does.
The intelligent form in the darkness through which you rose from the knowledge of stone and wind and fire, made supple by the waters of the earth, the movement of the tides. As the forms and functions of nature. To see my self in a wasp, or colour, or …
Up through the jagged landscape of a time where nature crosses to human, inside. The endless cacophony of perpetual change. The maelstrom of being and becoming. See the red and grey grit of the ancient twilit self.
Have you seen the waterless deep of being beyond that? The dark light of a quiet star? Beyond heat and cold, up and down, inside and out.
Where there is nothing, left, to speak of.
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A flash of colour in the darkness is all it is sometimes, that moment of elevation, an opening of the veil. A little more clarity.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Dark Visitor …
… came to the computer one night, must have got in during the day. So I gave it a finger to climb on and took it outside and put it where it could fly away easily. It took its time exploring the piece of wood so I left it to it, not wanting to overplay my opportunities.
Always give a little back, eases the weight of acquisitive human nature.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Macro Day Seven
Good to have James and Nigel along, and a pleasant and instructive day was had by all I believe.
A breath of fresh air, literally. A relaxed day, as much as can be. And a focus on what matters, the simple sensation – for peace of mind – and a picture of our small nature in its element. The only rule is to get the best picture I can, to present our overlooked nature in the best possible light, leave everything as it was found and do it relaxed.
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Weather was good, not too hot and the sun was shining with a lovely breeze refreshing continuously. It was lovely to be in the dark green of the forest. Generally there are not many creatures around after the rain so we went where I know some are developing and managed accordingly, you have to know where to look. And once you start looking there is no end to them, they’re everywhere.
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It takes time to gather the stress in the body, it takes time to dissolve it. Everything takes time, it can’t be denied. So you might as well relax while it’s happening …
Again I was more occupied presenting something for the others to shoot but I got some anyway.
And don’t forget to sat thank you, to the bee or the earth or the space it all occurs in, why not? A little gratitude beamed into the evolving creation is reflected back to you, in time. By a mechanism the easterners call karma.
Whatever you call it, it works that way.
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If you or anyone you know is genuinely interested in coming along for hands on experience of what and how I do what I do check these links : Macro Meditation Day, Macro Illustrated and Meditate, and email me at contact (at) beingmark (dot) com so you are on the list for mailouts. Put Macro Meditation Day in the subject line of any email.
Everything of relevance to my Macro Meditation work goes into my blog so if you are interested in what I do and want to keep up I recommend you subscribe via email. Go to top right of this page, there’s a button that reads – Click Here – for subscription. Type in your email and click. You’ll be sent an email with a link to verify the subscription, just click it.
All the best.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
The Idea Behind …
… what I do, on this site and at the Macro Days, is as old as the hills. I came to it through a fundamental need, born of my experience, to know peace of mind. And to know peace of mind requires a willingness to change, first.
The only impediment is my own psychological self, the conditioning of the mind repeating itself, the grip of the past. It is necessary to know and understand how it repeats before the solution can be realised, and it is simple.
But you can’t do anything if you don’t see or have the need for it. Perception is reality in this case, because it’s very easy to think or believe “I can’t do this” with its attendant negative emotions, and so determine your reality, or your unreality.
This idea is mine in as much as I articulate it and live it, the best I can. If you get it, the idea, it is also yours, as much as you live it – this is important, nobody owns an idea, or everybody does.
The idea is not exclusive, any man or woman can do it any time anywhere. It’s just a matter of taking the action.
When the time is right. But don’t wait for another time if you need it now.
The question then is, do you need it now?
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What is the ‘Problem?
What, in your own experience – not what you’ve read or been told, is the common factor in any problem you have ever had. What is the common factor in worry, heartache, paranoia, jealousy, misery, depression, or any other form of unhappiness?
It is thinking and/or emotion. Usually a mix of the two since they are inextricably linked. You can’t get emotional without thinking and you can’t have thinking without emotion to generate it, as a problem. Emotion generates thought about what it is you are emotional about, and thinking (about a problem) stirs emotion about the thing thought. One is dependent on the other, as a problem. If it’s not a problem it doesn’t matter.
Now, in your own experience is there any other common factor in any form of unhappiness you know of, besides thought and emotion? There is, your attention or intelligence. The fact you give your attention to your unhappiness is what fuels it, fundamentally. Which is how you can be distracted from your unhappiness, by distracting your attention.
You might say otherwise but the next time you are unhappy you will notice it is the thinking and emotion that sustains it, by you giving your attention to it as if it is the greater reality.
It is, but only because you have believed it, and as long as you still believe it. And that is a mechanical process.
That’s my own experience. What is yours?
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Well, clearly, if thinking and emotion are the basis for unhappiness the solution to unhappiness has got to be in the cessation of that emotion and thinking. Or do you think your unhappiness comes from ‘outside’ and you can find the solution ‘there’, somebody or something does it to you, so somebody or some thing can fix it, really?
After all these years people, you and me, have sought the solution to unhappiness ‘out there’ and we haven’t found it yet, out there. Maybe because it isn’t out there at all and it’s time to look elsewhere, and the only where else to look is inside. Or do you know of somewhere else?
So, how to free myself of the mechanics of unhappiness? That’s the only real question I can see since the solution would be the basis for the only real change from the unhappy human condition that prevails. Or is there something more important than to be free of unhappiness?
If there is, I’d like to know what.
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And the Solution?
Thinking and emotion persist as unhappiness because we give it our attention at the outset. What if we don’t give it our attention, what then? What if I am fast enough to catch the thought or emotion before it takes me over? How do I speed up my intelligence enough to keep the unhappiness out?
Surely, if I don’t attend to the feeling or thinking that constitutes unhappiness, as if it is the truth, I can’t be unhappy. Surely? I know this looks too absurdly simple to be true but test it in your own experience. If you don’t give your attention to your unhappiness and deal only in the facts of your life as they arise your unhappiness disappears, more or less.
For instance, if you are unhappy (or stressed, or whatever word you use for it) about something in particular you need to do something about it. If you are worried about having no money you need to do something about getting some, or give up worrying, that’s practical, factual. If you are fearful of the boss because he has a terrible temper you need to draw the line and stand your ground, for your own peace of mind, or accept the situation, or leave. Action clears the problem.
Any other practical ‘problem’ also requires practical action to eliminate the emotion. That leaves the habit of unhappiness, the fact it keeps on recurring uncontrollably, to be dealt with by not focusing on the emotion and so feed it with thinking.
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So, there is the unhappy emotion or thinking – as a problem, and there is the attention I give to it. For there to be a solution there has to be something else to give my attention to, and there is.
There is another element in this (mechanical) system of being human that is rarely observed and that is the sensation inside. This is the means of speeding up the intelligence, by slowing down the mind.
What this means is you have something other than thought or emotion to focus on, something that is more real and won’t go away. And by doing so the ‘problem’ is reduced or eliminated.
So the solution, to the ‘problem’, is to take control of what you give your attention to, obviously.
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To put it another way.
There is the problem (of emotion and thinking), there is the pure simple sensation – that is the only reliable anchor against the movement of mind, and there is the attention or intelligence that sustains either. Which am I going to give my attention to, the problem or the sensation?
The sensation ‘inside’ the body is the basis for the senses that appear to be of the ‘outside’ but are in fact cognised inside, sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste along with more subtle senses. And the senses are most easily realised in nature.
I start with focus on the pure inner sensation as it is the more substantive, and add the others as progress is made in slowing the mind, as the practise is established. Nature is the ‘outer’ reciprocal of the inner sensation.
This, the inner and outer of sensation and nature is the basis for the changeover from mind to sense, and it occurs gradually.
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The way it works is this. What I give my attention to grows. If I give my attention to the ‘problem’ it grows, check next time you are worried what happens if you think about it, you get more worried. And if you can give your attention to the pure sensation what happens? It grows, or the problem (of emotion) recedes.
The ‘good’ Wolf and the ‘bad’ Wolf, of that old Indian proverb. The one that wins is the one you feed the most, or give your attention to.
But to be able to do it in the ‘hard’ times, when the pressure is really on, you have to have practised it in the ‘easy’ times.
Does this make sense? Questions or comments are welcome.
(See Meditate for an introduction to the practise.)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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