how to get pumped

When you’re pumped you have enough momentum energy to carry you over the threshold dip into a new activity- because make no mistake, starting something new, meeting someone new needs a reserve of energy to carry you over the threshold. So you get pumped first.

Get pumped physically. If you are an athlete you may already know enough about yourself to be able to get pumped even when you feel down or tired. My way is to keep dropping down an energy level until I find something so easy there is no inner resistance. I find peddling on a stationary bike on resistance one is good. Do it six or seven minutes, building slowly until you’re racing. When you come off you’ll be pumped to do a real stretching or training set.

Get pumped creatively. The opposite of creation is control. Creation is the big splurge, no limits. It is akin to sexual energy in that sense- the less inhibition there is the more of it you can tap into. So you need to get yourself into a creative field or zone where you can be really uninhibited. Now this could mean producing stuff no one likes- fine- warm up writing or painting or whatever with this crazy stuff and when you are pumped switch to doing the more mundane tasks. You’ll have enough momentum to carry through and succeed and get the success pay off energy you so rightly deserve!

where's home?

"Home is where your house is."

Lisa Alther, Bedrock

what do you take from a burning house?

I heard this story recently: a guy in the middle east was ordered to leave his house by the occupying army who intended to blow it up. He had twenty minutes to rescue what ever he could. He was lost. His whole life was there: but what to take? In the end he went to the washing machine and emptied it and left forever carrying only the clean washing.

no worries

Worry is the preferred form egotism takes with those with a 'small ego'. Whereas the bigger ego is more likely to be afflicted by common or garden self-regard. Is it possible to observe both of these in oneself?

interstitial living

People with regular hi-pressure full time jobs are missing out on the interstitial spaces in life. The gaps in the interstices of life are, I increasingly think, where life itself tends to squat, hidden, a bit, from view. I was talking the other day with friends about parties and how the preparing for the party, the late night of the party, the morning after are all better than the party itself. It’s as if you need these EXCUSES- job, parties, holidays, expeditions- to be able to occupy the interstitial gaps they create. One pal of mine is on five day break looking after a friend’s shop part time- how cool is that? Whereas looking after a shop fulltime is my idea of purgatory. On holiday it’s the stop at the café for a cold beer or a hot chocolate mid afternoon I like rather than the museum I just saw. But I need the museum to enjoy the break. Problem is- we forget that and make the raison d’etre the be all and end all. Full on jobs and hobbies that suck up all the interstitial holes for miles around. The secret is to multiply those interstices, be an interstitial hole generator or know how to spot them coming.

cults end badly

Mike Ivey has pointed out something very pertinent about cults and cult leaders: they always end badly. One to bear in mind for future leaders and members. My tentative suggestion is that leadership might be passed around rather like the Conch in Lord of the Flies (another bad end, ot-oh). Maybe everyone should get a go at being leader of a cult, a bit like those charity auctions where you buy a slave for a day or be one. Maybe you have to pay to be the cult leader for a day...sort of a reversal of the usual cult where the followers get to pay the leader. One to ponder.

more on the cult

The great thing about being in a cult is a)having everything taken care of so you can experience ‘the back seat home’ and b) being the cult leader with all the perks of power and status that implies.

Unfortunately in a non-transparent, ie. real, cult those things are mutually exclusive. Though the cult leader may get all the kudos, the women acolytes, the Rolls Royces he is also burdened by his followers. He has to give them stuff to do. He has to feed them and house them. It’s a big worry. One thing the cult leader NEVER experiences is the ‘back seat home’. This is taken from the superb book by Arthur Deikman “the wrong way home”- essential reading for anyone interested in The Cult- in essence the ‘back seat home’ describes that wonderful feeling you had as a child, when, after a long day out with your mum and dad you’re driving home and it’s dark and you’re falling half in and out of sleep on the back seat but its all warm and cosy and you don’t need to worry because the adults are TAKING YOU HOME. You even look out of the window and muse at what mysterious things could be out there but it all doesn’t matter because everything inside is warm and cosy. That’s the feeling cults offer their members. You’re wanted. You’re understood. You’re one of the family. Your life has meaning. And this continues- unless you start to question things or show some independence of thought, ie. grow up. Then the ‘back seat home’ is withdrawn. Cults use exclusion to bring their members into line- and it works. And the greater the sense of ‘us and them’ that has been created, the greater the sense of the leader being inviolable and the one source of ‘secrets’ the more that exclusion, or threat of it, works.