Cock o’ the Walk
When you watch nature’s creatures you soon begin to see an extraordinary thing. They don’t get emotional. They don’t have psychological positions to protect from dissolution, because they are not identified with any of it. They simply live their life, doing what they do from moment to moment.
If only people would do the same, but with the knowledge that to cause pain is to receive it, whatever form it takes. And that’s what we do until we wake up to it. I am not special, I know this from my own experience of getting it wrong, of giving pain instead of love.
But waking up is not easy, even, or especially, for the ones who think they are already special. The ‘revolutionary’ fighters of causes, the so-called spiritual ones who love to dress up – inside and out, anyone in fact who is identified with what they demonstrably are not – that is a psychic condition and demonstrably unsustainable.
We, I, am demonstrably the body, inside. Outside is just the appearance of inside. And inside I am the simple sensation, that never lets me down, or I am nothing – an apparent psychological impossibility, but only if you believe that. Anything I think is a Chimera, gone with the next best wind.
I don’t believe, in fact I have spent my life tearing down the belief I was inculcated with by the dysfunctional Catholic church in the form of the Christian Brothers schooling – the most violent people I have ever come across, simply because they used such trickery you didn’t know you were being used and abused – and all in the name of god. God wills it! The cry of hypocrites down through the ages.
God wills nothing of the sort. I say god would have you know love and enjoy the beauty of the earth and rest in knowledge of uncommon truth. People who had taken a vow of celibacy in a vain attempt to emulate a fallacy of the master Jesus being without the love of woman in his life – even though there have since been found scrolls that put Mary Magdalen at his side when the 12 disciples had already abandoned him – bloody cowards, lost in their hopes and fears. And hail Mary, for her undying love. :)
The body won’t be denied, it is a sexual entity, evidence the world population if you need any. And what is suppressed comes up in another place but distorted. Hence the worldwide phenomenon of priests being chased, at last hunted down, for their sexual abuse of children who were in their care. ‘Care’, a euphemism nowadays for neglect, or worse.
The same is true of any organisation that puts ideology over actuality. Ignore the fact for long enough and it will come home to bite you in some other form. The trick to waking up and ending this absurdity called our way of life is to get back home, back to the reality of the body, inside, as the sensation first, and acting from there and not from what the mind conjures out of want and greed, desire and ambition – for position or power, usually over others.
But how to do it, get back home? Well, you can make a start here : Meditate. Or wherever you find what fits you. And just keep at it until you break through the crust of mind that would have you do something else, to fill your inner space.
And the fundamental key to it all? Relax, be easy, let go, inside … And Kick some ass if need be. My 2c. :)
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Falling to Earth
I suppose everybody saw or heard something of the fellow who jumped from a balloon borne capsule at around 25 miles high. Apparently he spent 7 years planning, 2 hours ascending, and 9 minutes descending. He broke 3 records, highest jump, fastest jump and the sound barrier.
People thought he was going to blow up on the last one, passing the sound barrier at over 800 mph. He said he didn’t feel a thing or have any idea how fast he was going with nothing to relate to.
And that’s the point. It’s all relative here and with only up and down to relate to it looks like a fall when in truth it was an ascension. He went as high as he could to do what he did.
He stepped off into space to invoke and face his fear of falling, what else is there to fear, really.
And such a simple experience, falling, falling …
On the way down he was spinning out of control but regained poise somehow. And when the time came he pulled his cord and came in to land perfectly, on his feet, as if it was perfectly planned and executed from the start.
He never really left the earth, and never really lost control. I suspect through it all he maintained a quiet place inside. A place untouched by all that passed by outside.
And when asked what next he said ‘that’s it’, next he wants to be sitting where the guy before him was sitting that day, next to the guy after him.
He doesn’t feel the need to break any more records, he intends to have some fun flying helicopters in rescue missions around the world, or such.
What next? Who really knows when the only indicator is the past and occasionally there is the new.
A perfect landing? Or a perfect escape from the repetition of fear?
I think I might go to an old haunt of mine, down Wooyung way, see what’s fallen to Earth. Mid week should be quiet, early November for the Christmas Beetles or whatever else falls to earth then – maybe stay a day or two if the van is ready – doesn’t seem likely though, it takes much longer to get things done these days than it used to.
It might be a good time for an uncomplicated natter with nature, accessed from the old caravan park, though I don’t expect much since there has been so little rain for so long, you never know.
Nature is always in some form, no worries.
I clearly haven’t done the work for such a journey. Sometimes giving up is the only way to move on. Giving up the expectations, of self and others.
And some things we are just hard-wired for, the unchangeable. You never know until the day. So, no time to judge.
Unless the observer sees more clearly. It’s why it’s called part-icipent. One is not the other.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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Thank You for the Arm!
This Doli fly was out on a leaf one recent cold morning. Usually they sense the pre-flash of TTL exposure and are gone before the shutter speed of 1/160 sec (fastest with flash) can capture it, that’s fast reflexes.
But this little lady was too focused on simply being, in the cold of a spring dawn one thousand kilometres below the tropic of Capricorn after a night long clear sky.
It is my privilege to bring you the Lady Doli, from all available angles at the time.
If ever you have dreams that elucidate something you have known about yourself that was or is the basis for an attitude towards someone – or in general, from your past experience – but hadn’t yet been fully acknowledged and resolved, that – ‘Thank You for the Arm’ – is a recipe for the resolution of any residual potential for recurrence – as the past we hold on to is the present that disturbs or enriches ‘us’.
Thank You for the Arm. An acknowledgement of the good that everyone does for you, me, in spite of appearances, with a little absurdity tacked on for that extra push across the momentum of negative time to repeat, a sense of humour.
Never forget your sense of humour, or of the absurd. And for all the little things, and the not so little?
Thank You for the Arm.
Be Grateful and … Thank You for the Arm! Cuts through the negativity of mind like a hot knife through butter, when you have fully seen the fact.
Thank You for the Arm.
The garden is filling up with nature’s forms of plant and creatures. It just needs daily attention to watch for where it needs a hand, or an arm. And a watering, a foot on a spade, a moving here or there …
Thank You for the Arm. And don’t hold on to the dream, it will die a natural death if you leave it be.
That’s what seeing the fact of the past does; it allows the new to be.
Whatever the situation – Thank You for the Arm.
Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture to enlarge in a new tab – best in FireFox
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The Perfect Picture …
… of sense, what else … is the one the mind doesn’t move on, obviously – no thought, no fault.
Thinking is the only imperfection on sense.
Here’s one to practise on.
No thinking now. :)
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Hide and Seek
Anthropologists say that in every culture in history children have played the game hide and seek. And we’re still at it one way or another. ((:
I would say you can often see the simple way of things in the uncomplicated nature around us. The instinctive intelligence of it without the interference of thought or emotion arising from past experience.
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Here’s a Jumper that’s at it too, the seeking part anyway. I knew he was up to something, posing as he is in the first two shots, and deliberately looking at the ground where there is nothing in particular to see.
Tall – ish, dark and handsome.
In the next two he has begun signaling with his two front legs, holding them out and up and waving them about.
Then I saw her, the object of his attention. A little tan beauty.
Introductions made and he’s away and wooing, and she’s talking back – a good sign.
Chasing her this way and that.
But she’s giving him plenty of opportunity to demonstrate he’s serious, that he really loves her and he’s not just a fly-by-nighter.
And he persists against all rebuttal and abandonment.
Juliet, Juliet, wherefore art thou running my love?
“It’s only me!” He called. As he pursued her off into the leaf litter.
The end, as far as we know. ((:
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Visitor to the Mantis Nest
The Mantis nest had a couple Earwig visitors ‘listening’ at the surface the other day. Or so it looked to me. The same nest the Ichneumon Wasp was parasitising. No rest for the prey here it seems.
They both took different positions and stopped as I watched, I got the impression they were ‘sensing’ for signs of life that might mean food. It’s odd to see two earwigs together at the top of a five foot stalk of grass. I suspect the wasp did the same in its way, sensing for signs of life – food for the young – with the ovipositor before planting her eggs.
Now what does that remind me of? Dinner time anyone?
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Creatures of Divinity
While the appearance of insects is reduced in the fields and forests because of the cold, the cold sends a few to the light I leave on outside at night. So I get to see some creatures I wouldn’t otherwise.
It really is amazing the design of this beautiful existence, seen in the small natural things. Not by any ‘BIG’ Christian sort of God person but by the impersonal that is beyond the reach of thinking, reasoning, emotional Man. The impersonal that can be ‘seen’ when there is no one to go; ‘there’ it is. It just is, in all things, and out. That’s being, or being divine.
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As for being human, a pained, thinking, emotionally interpretive creature that concerns itself with trivia and dies slowly and uncomfortably over a long period of time?
Who, in their right mind, would want that? And when seen to be utterly futile how to turn it to purpose.
We’ll see, is all I can say.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Ichneumon Wasp – Laying on Mantis
First picture is just for size perspective. The Wasp is 3-4mm long and the ovipositor is thrice as long, standing on a one inch diameter Mantis nest, a globular foamy thing you have probably seen before.
The Wasp is parasitizing the Mantis nest, or Ootheca, by first sensing with her ovipositor, smell or taste – just like us, there is something there to feed her young – every mother is concerned for the welfare of her young. The Ootheca is where the Mantis lays her eggs and they incubate. The wasp has another idea, instead of hunting something for her young to eat and building a nest she does it easy and lays in a ready made nest, the Mantis’s.
She was so occupied I was able to manipulate the grass she was on to get the shot; otherwise she would probably not have let me close. Most of these small creatures are single minded when it comes to fundaments such as eating, shelter and reproduction. And unlike people they don’t make a problem of it, don’t get emotional or worrisome. Just doing what it is moved to do or must, no spanner of thought in the works.
The Mantis nest is one inch in diameter and five feet up on a stem of grass in a field of grass and there is nothing to brace myself or the camera for a shot. This is what I use the stick for, amongst other things. But the first thing is to go still inside. Inside comes first, if I am still inside I am still outside – as much as possible. The value being I am not distracted by thoughts of anything but what matters to getting the shot. And what matters first is stability, of posture or platform, or focus – the inner then the outer. When I quiet my mind this way it also means I am less likely to get anxious or stressed in the often difficult process of capturing the image.
When I have stability of focus – as much as possible – I accommodate the fact there is no perfection standing in a field trying to hold a camera at the top of a five foot long stick absolutely geo-stationary – it’s not possible. This is where the minute but inevitable movement has to be controlled since it can’t be eliminated, even with short working distance and lens and bug relatively stabilized in the same hand, so I move the plane of focus – less than 1mm deep – through the plane of the subject at the angle I want to capture it and shoot just as I judge it is where I want it. And it is a judgment for me. With my gear it is sometimes like shooting in the dark but you can see from my pix it works, and the keeper rate is not bad.
And if this old body can do it with my cam any body can.
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Domino Cuckoo Bee
This little beauty was trapped in my bathroom recently for long enough to exhaust itself trying to get out the window. It was literally out of energy, couldn’t rise an inch for a second when I gave it some honey on a leaf and it fell into it and over on its side a few times. So I helped it out, keeping its tongue in the honey. After a short while supping the nectar it was renewed enough to clamber about until it flew off through the opened window into the garden.
A little nourishment is life to small things. Don’t give grudgingly. Or be true and don’t give at all, even if it means poverty, death or insanity. Relative terms, I know.
To be true to what you are is more important than anything else. For if you are not true to what you are now you can’t move on to what is truer, can’t change.
And change must be.
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Oops! Did I forget to smile just then. ((:
© Mark Berkery ……. Click any picture and click again to enlarge
Nature's Place 
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