Saint Nicholas was a Christian bishop He was born in about 280 in Patara, Lycia Which is in modern-day Turkey His parents both died when he was young And he used his inheritance to help The poor and the sick.
There are many legends surrounding Saint Nicholas He is supposed to have saved three men Who had been falsely accused and sentenced to death. He is said to have died on 6th December 343. His reputation went before him as a gift-giver As well as the protector of children and sailors.
So how does that explain where Santa Claus cames from? Well, his story as a Saint became popular in Europe Until the Reformation when Saints became unpopular. However, the Dutch kept celebrating his feast day On 6th December – children put out their shoes at night and In the morning would discover the gifts he had left for them.
In the 1700s, Dutch immigrants took the legend To the Americas where he was known as “Sint Nikolaas” Or more commonly by his nickname “Sinterklaas” There, he went through many transformations to become Known by his present-day name of Santa Claus, although The present-giving was moved to the Christmas festival.
Clement Clarke Moore wrote a poem in 1820 called “An Account of a Visit from Saint Nicholas”. He described Santa Claus as a jolly, heavy man Who comes down the chimney to leave presents For deserving children. He also drove a sleigh pulled by Magical Reindeer flying through the sky.
Cartoonist Thomas Nast added to the legend in 1881 Drawing Santa with a red suit trimmed with white fur. In the early 1930s, Haddon Sundblom illustrated A marketing campaign for the Coca-Cola Company. And so the kind, charitable bishop from Turkey morphed To became the jolly Christmas icon we know so well today.
When you look back in life Have you ever noticed that Many things have happened to you Because of a set of chance coincidences? They appeared in mysterious and magical ways Which were not obvious to you at the time.
Steve Jobs said: “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; You can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots Will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something: Your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
Do you trust your dots connecting in your future? I was in the garden one lazy afternoon when A strange cloud appeared in the sky Weaving like a numeration of starlings. A moment later a swarm of tiny dots landed Just twelve feet in front of me!
That chance landing of a swarm of bees Has taken me on a life-long journey of wonder and Study into the magical world of the honeybee. I’ve never met anyone else who experienced A swarm landing directly in front of them – But I am sure there are others, somewhere!
Steve Jobs further postulated: “Believing that the dots Will connect down the road Will give you the confidence to follow your heart Even when it leads you off the well-worn path; And that will make all the difference.”
Do you have the confidence to follow your heart Even when it leads you off the well-worn path? What surprising coincidences or dots have lined-up for you? What special places, people or natural happenings Have lined up for you in magical ways? Tell your story and please share it below!
It is over six months since my last post. Much has happened in my life – as I presume it has to those who are reading this. I had not intended to have such a long break. I had not intended to have a break at all. The end of the last break was, in fact, the start of the longest break in my writing this blog. However, this is the end of that particular break. I am renewed with energy after the long break.
During the break, I have been doing a lot of research on various projects. I have also gone back to studying. Studying some of the great thinkers that have created ideas and concepts that have helped shift consciousness. And so it was, I came across the concept of “The Three Principles” by Syd Banks.
Here are some thoughts from Syd Banks on Wisdom:
No one can give away wisdom.
A teacher can only lead you to it
via words, hoping you will have
the courage to look within yourself
and find it inside your own consciousness…
Beyond the word.
The wisdom humanity seeks lies within the consciousness of all
human beings, trapped and held
prisoner by their own person
Wisdom is not found in the world
of form, nor in remote corners of
the globe. Wisdom lies within our own consciousness.
Only you have the golden key to
your soul and the wisdom that
Syd was born in Edinburgh in 1931 where he grew up in a working class family in Edinburgh’s Old Town. He left school at 15 without formal qualification and in due course trained as a welder. In 1957, aged 26 he emigrated to the West coast of Canada and his association with Salt Spring Island, later to become his permanent home, began. He worked as a welder, married and had 2 children and experienced many of life’s normal challenges.
In 1973 he attended an encounter weekend with his wife. Unimpressed by the encouragement to experience and express anger he went for a walk with another delegate. Syd described to his companion the insecurity he often felt. The companion retorted, ‘You’re not insecure Syd, you just think you are.’
This throwaway remark sparked a remarkable insight in Syd, enabling him to grasp at a profound level that his emotional experience was always created by his own thinking, rather than by external circumstances. Over the next few days he experienced what has been described as an enlightenment experience which completely changed his personality.
Of course some people around him thought he had had a sort of breakdown. But his clarity and inner certainty prevailed, along with his awareness that he could help others. Some of the people he shared his insights with experienced very profound improvements in mental or physical health. Even those whose initial problems were less serious, experienced an exponential improvement in wellbeing. Just by listening to Syd talk in an apparently unstructured way they got in touch with their own innate health and wisdom.
In his thinly disguised novels that he wrote as a series called “The Enlightened Gardener”., an unlettered British groundskeeper named Andy serves as Banks’s fictional stand-in — teaching a group of amazed American psychologists about the true nature of the universe. For Banks, space, matter and time were an illusion, a dream. The only three things that are real are what he calls Mind (“the source of all intelligence”), Consciousness(“which allows us to be aware”) and Thought (“which guide us through the world as free-thinking agents”).
As word of Syd’s work spread people came to the island to experience for themselves the wellbeing he was able to point them to. In time these included psychologists and social workers who began working with their clients and achieving similar extraordinary results. Work began in communities such as Modello and Coliseum Gardens, both in the USA, where incomparable turnarounds were achieved. In the decades that followed what became know as the 3Principles, was utilised in schools, prisons, therapy, relationship counselling and business. In each arena the outcomes far exceeded any other approach.
[To read more of Syd’s life and work the books of his colleague, Elsie Spittle are recommended. Perfect Misfortune by Allan Flood is an account of how one man tapped into the power behind the principles in living with MS. Jack Pransky has written a number of books on the success of this approach with both communities and individuals. All authors can be found on Amazon.]
(Until 2 or 3 years ago there was almost nothing known of this approach in Syd’s native Scotland. Three Principles Scotland is committed to changing that and bringing the benefits of Syd’s work home to his home country.)
Initial quote from Syd reproduced in: Neill, Michael (2013-05-06). The Inside-Out Revolution: The Only Thing You Need to Know to Change Your Life Forever (p. 23). Hay House UK Ltd. Kindle Edition.
Last Sunday, I took my friend Sam to visit my bees. He has been trying to keep bees for three years – but to no avail. The last swarm that I gave him on his birthday two years died off the first winter he had them.
And so it was, I was completely charmed that, on Tuesday morning, he rang me to say that a swarm had gathered on the window of his office – exactly above the desk he works at! We set about to catch them later that day – and yesterday we installed the swarm in one of his new hives not so many miles from here. I’m sure the bees will stay with him now.
This evening, I came across a beautiful piece by Tolstoy about the ultimate purpose of the honeybee – which I thought I would share with you.
It has been a magical and charmed week and the honeybees have truly touched my friend, Sam and me with this amazing encounter. Long may the honeybees swarm into people’s lives as they did for me so many years ago.
“As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself, and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.
A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people.
A poet admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it exists to suck the fragrance of flowers.
A beekeeper, seeing the bee collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it exists to gather honey.
Another beekeeper who has studied the life of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate its race.
A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this the purpose of the bee’s existence.
Another, observing the migration of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that in this lies the purpose of the bee.
But the ultimate purpose of the bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes the human mind can discern.
The higher the human intellect rises in the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.
All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of historic characters and nations.”
Extracted rom Leo Tolstoy’s War & Peace: Chapter IV
I would be surprised if you had not heard about it. Yet we live in such a busy world, maybe you haven’t.
It was discovered in Manchester – and here is a short video describing some of its potential:
Graphne was discovered by Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov at the University of Manchester – who subsequently went on to win the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010″for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”. The magic material could well create the next break-through in battery technology for mobile phones and electric cars – at a fraction of the cost of current technologies. That alone would be mind-blowing!
Yet it has so many other uses. It is cheap to manufacture . And as it is purely carbon – it is very environmentally friendly!
If you want to get into the science of graphene, then watch this video:
There are many more videos on YouTube and many more articles about graphene on the Internet.
Makes you think.
Makes you think about the other uses it could be put to in the future.
Makes you think about how you might get more involved in developing its potential.
Makes you think how it will change people’s lives in the next century.
The ability to seek and identify structures, patterns and designs below the apparent surface of experience is the secret to success in communication, relationships, accelerated learning, languages, and many other things besides.
Someone asked me the other day why I chose to call myself a designer, rather than a consultant and I told them the story of the Tinsmith. The story originally came from an order of the Sufi’s called the Naqshbandi Order. Naqushbandi quite literally means “designer”.
“Once upon a time in a city far far away in a time long gone, a tinsmith was falsely accused of a crime he had not committed. Being poor and without any powerful friends to influence the judge, he was imprisoned.
He was given a wish before being sent to the cells and he asked that he be allowed to receive a rug which should be woven by his wife. In due course, the rug was made and delivered to the prison. Upon receiving the rug, the tinsmith prostrated himself upon the rug, day after day, to say his prayers.
After some time, he said to his jailers: “I am poor and without hope and you are wretchedly paid. But I am a tinsmith. Bring me some tin and tools to work with and I shall make small artifacts which you can sell in the market – and we will both benefit.”
The guards agreed to this and presently they and the tinsmith were both making a profit from which they bought food and comforts for themselves.
Then, one day, when the guards awoke to find that the cell door was open and the tinsmith was gone. Some spoke of magic or perhaps a miracle because no prison in this kingdom had ever been escaped from.
Many years later, a convicted thief confessed to the crime that the tinsmith had been accused of. As a result, the tinsmith was pardoned and two weeks later the tinsmith and his family reappeared in the city. The governor of the province heard of the tinsmith’s return and summoned him to his palace.
The governor asked the tinsmith what magic he had used to make such an impossible escape.
The tinsmith replied “My wife is a weaver. She designs rugs, mats and carpets. She weaves patterns into the wefts and warps of her fabric.”
“By design, she found the man who had made the locks of the cell door and got it from him, by design.”
“She wove the design into the rug at the spot where my head touched in prayer five times a day. I am a metal-worker and this design looked to me like the inside of a lock. But I lacked the materials to make a key, so I made a business proposition to the guards, by design. I then used the materials that the guards provided me to make many small artifacts, including a key that would unlock the cell door.”
So, by design, I escaped.”
“We are all born with a brain”, said the tinsmith. “When we begin to understand the patterns and structures of our thinking, we can start to liberate ourselves from the enslavement of our limitations.”
Story adapted from the book: Sufis: The People of the Path: The Royal Way by Osho – Chapter 5 – Design within Design
As the world becomes more and more global and the European national political and economic frameworks remain stressed, each city is left to its own devices to attract inward investment and keep and grow talent.
In researching this area for a number of UK cities, a friend in the US sent me the link to this video. It is so clever on so many levels you have to watch it more than once:
Oh, and anyone thinking of moving into a new career of iPad magic shows, please let me know! I would love to learn how to do this kind of magic! Brilliant!