It feels like I've only just finished writing yesterdays blog and now I'm back again, in reality about ten hours has gone by - I have been sleeping. Its a good thing that I'm thoroughly enjoying writing, I have had the occasional anxiety about what on earth I'm going to find to write about each day, but so far something occurs in my life each day that sparks up some train of thought that needs attention! The kind of attention I'm talking about is where good feeling thoughts must be chosen!
We stayed the night at my dad's house on saturday, and just before we set off he called to tell us to bring extra jumpers, he said that his house was cold but that it wasn't too bad, he said it was mainly that his partner was worried we would be cold. My alarm bells did not ring, I grew up in what I considered to be cold houses, you know the kind? Where you wear several layers and a warm jumper in the day and at night pyjamas and a hot water bottle is not unusual; just comfortable. Indeed I would go so far as to say that I dislike overly warm houses, I like wearing Jumpers in winter, and thick socks; I even relish those times when I snuggle in bed with a hot water bottle, my breath rising in plumes like a little dragon........
I spent ten years on and off living in caravans and vans, winter and summer, through all weathers and have very fond memories of it. Anyway you get the idea; I'm used to the cold.
When I look back on saturday night I almost laugh out loud! My dad's house is out on it's own, on a fairly high up very flat unsheltered bit of land. His central heating was out of oil and therefore inactive, however he did have an open fire in the sitting room, which was blazing merrily away when we arrived. We ate our dinner in the kitchen and dad put the oven on to warm the room. We had a nice evening and went to bed at about ten as our baby was a bit grumbly. Upstairs the house was so cold that we piled masses of blankets onto the bed and even wore hats! We had to put a tiny pair of red and white spotty tights on the baby's head as her hat was wet!
I was so cold that in the end I started to lose my temper!!! Luckily for me and my dad, my partner again pointed out to me that I should be choosing better feeling thoughts! That was the only thing I really needed to do! As soon as we began to choose good feeling thoughts I started to relax and settled down to quite a restful nights sleep.
So what on earth was really going on here???
The only other times I remember being that cold before were when as a child my dad took us camping in winter and it snowed heavily in the night and I came out of the tent in the morning to a thick blanket of snow, or when we slept on my dad's narrow boat. There seems to be a bit of a theme here: my dad!
I noticed that although the fire was on in the sitting room on saturday night, it was just a small blaze which one needed to sit right next to in order to get warm, I would have been inclined to build it up but my dad was content with the way it was. My younger brother is currently living with my dad and I asked him the next morning how he feels about the temperature; he replied that he once built up a really good hot blaze in the fire and dad complained that it was too hot!!!
This experience really took me to thinking about how we think about temperature. How is it that my dad is so resistant to cold? I believe that we learn our attitudes to the temperature around us and that each person feels the cold or heat in a different way. Have you ever noticed that small children are forever running around in the middle of winter in just shorts and t-shirt and have to be told by their parents that they are cold?
"Put your coat on" gets said a lot in my house. My ten year old daughter would very happily go out in winter in just jeans and a t-shirt, oddly though, if its snowy outside, she puts on several pairs of trousers, several jumpers and a thick coat, gloves and mittens and a couple of hats AND scarves and goes out looking (and probably feeling) a bit like the abominable snowman!!!! Why she does this is a mystery to me when she is normally so warm. Can a couple of degrees really make that much difference to her? Or is it that she has been told that snow is cold, and seeing the evidence out there on the ground she takes it on and dresses accordingly?
My dad is nearly seventy and according to statistics and government reports he really ought to be feeling the cold, but clearly he doesn't. My dad spends a lot of time outside, he is a gardener and as such he clearly gets warm outside, as he doesn't wear that many layers (as far as I have observed). Could it be that feeling the cold is all in the mind? Could we just choose warm feeling thoughts, or just calm, comfortable ones and no longer suffer from warmth or heat?
Last year I watched a documentary on a man called "The Ice Man", it brought to mind a lot of eighties super heros for me and really wasn't that far off! Wim Hof aka 'The Iceman' is able to submerge himself in freezing water and lie around in snowdrifts, in short he is able to withstand and even thrive in temperature which would kill your average human rather quickly. and his body doesn't even get cold. Forty-eight year old Hof suffers not from frostbite or hypothermia! His grand finale in the film I watched about him was to run a half marathon barefoot in shorts one hundred miles north of the Arctic Circle!!!! His explanation is that he very much enjoys the feelings his freezing activities produce in his body and that basically he prepares mentally and that he believes its all in the mind.
What is really going on here on earth? We get 'educated' in all these so called 'facts' and 'truths' (generally in school, and later by the media) but whose truths and facts are they really? Again it seems I'm back to science and scientific fact, that old chestnut where some boffin (and I certainly do not mean to discredit or malign all the brilliant work scientists have painstakingly done on our behalf) "PROOVES" a hypothesis, and then we all believe in it and live our lives according to that fact! It seems almost constantly that old scientific facts are being found to be incorrect and are being re-described with a new 'FACT' for us to put our faith in and re- limit our paradigm. For many years, the earth was FLAT and you had to be careful at sea lest you fall off the edge!!!
I'm going to do my best to open up my PARADIGM, I have had enough of the limitations inherent in living according to other peoples truths and beliefs! Living my life in the way I am now, I am constantly choosing better and better feeling thoughts and I am really experiencing happiness, joy and peace, despite difficult and sometimes downright unpleasant circumstances.
If we drop all the beliefs we have about 'life' and 'how things are' WHAT WILL HAPPEN NEXT???????
I THINK IT WILL BE VERY EXCITING!
Today I am thankful for people who step out in the world and work outside the beliefs of the masses
I am thankful for adventurers
I am thankful for the wisdom of children
I am thankful for all my senses
I am thankful for the beautiful birdsong
I am thankful for my baby's chatter
I am thankful for my children singing
I am thankful for my wonderful brain
I am thankful for the fire that warms the body, heart and mind
I am thankful for the bitter cold of a winters day and the promise of the sun on the horizon
love Klara
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