Signs spotted

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In a toilet of a London office

TOILET OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE USE FLOOR BELOW.

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In a laundromat

AUTOMATIC WASHING MACHINES: PLEASE REMOVE ALL YOUR CLOTHES WHEN THE LIGHT GOES OUT.

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In the basement of a London store

BARGAIN BASEMENT UPSTAIRS

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In an office

WOULD THE PERSON WHO TOOK THE STEP LADDER YESTERDAY, PLEASE BRING IT BACK OR FURTHER STEPS WILL BE TAKEN.

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In an office

AFTER TEA BREAK STAFF SHOULD EMPTY THE TEAPOT AND STAND UPSIDE DOWN ON THE DRAINING BOARD.

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Outside a secondhand shop

WE EXCHANGE ANYTHING: BICYCLES, WASHING MACHINES, ETC. WHY NOT BRING YOUR WIFE ALONG AND GET A WONDERFUL BARGAIN.

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In a health food store front window

CLOSED DUE TO ILLNESS

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In a wildlife safari park

ELEPHANTS PLEASE STAY IN YOUR CAR

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During a conference

FOR ANYONE WHO HAS CHILDREN AND DOESN'T KNOW IT, THERE IS A DAYCARE ON THE FIRST FLOOR.

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In a farmer's field

THE FARMER ALLOWS WALKERS TO CROSS THE FIELD FOR FREE, BUT THE BULL CHARGES.

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On a leaflet

IF YOU CANNOT READ, THIS LEAFLET WILL TELL YOU HOW TO GET LESSONS.

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On a repair shop door

WE CAN REPAIR ANYTHING. (PLEASE KNOCK HARD ON THE DOOR: THE BELL DOESN’T WORK.)

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Small changes add up

People who really want to make a difference in the world usually do it, in one way or another. And I've noticed something about people who make a difference in the world. They hold the unshakeable conviction that individuals are extremely important, that every life matters. They get excited over one smile. They are willing to feed one stomach, educate one mind, and treat one wound. They aren’t determined to revolutionise the world all at once,; they’re satisfied with small changes. Over time, though, the small changes add up. Sometimes they even transform cities and nations and, yes, the world.

BETH CLARK

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Let out all the lengths of all the reins

Every year I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the life we have not given, the powers we have not used, the selfish prudence that will risk nothing and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well. No one every yet was the poorer in the long run for having once in a lifetime ‘let out all the length of all the reins’.

UNKNOWN

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Things to learn in life

1. We get bored being children, are in a rush to grow up and then long to be children again.

2. We lose our health to make money and then lose our money to restore our health.

3. By thinking anxiously about the future, we forget the present, such that we live neither in the present nor in the future.

4. We live as if we will never die, and then die as if we have never lived.

5. We can’t make anyone love us. What we can do is let ourselves be loved.

6. What is most valuable is not what we have in our lives, but who we have in our lives.

7. A rich person is not the one who has the most, but the one who needs the least.

8. It only takes a few seconds to open profound wounds in people we love and takes many years to heal them.

9. There are people in our lives who love us dearly, but simply don’t know how to express or show their feelings.

10. Money can buy everything but happiness.

11. Two people can look at the same thing and see it totally differently.

12. A true friend is someone who knows everything about you, but likes you anyway.

13. It's not always enough to be forgiven by others, we have to forgive ourselves.

14. People will forget what you’ve said and what you've done, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.

​Paraphrased from An Interview with God

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An ocean of truth

I don’t know what I may seem to the world. But as to myself, I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

ISAAC NEWTON

 

We are all one

Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them. For ages this idea has been proclaimed in the consummately wise teachings of religion, probably not alone as a means of ensuring peace and harmony among men, but as a deeply founded truth. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.

NIKOLA TESLA

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Not letting your ideas become your identity

If you define yourself by your opinions, questioning them is a threat to your identity. If you see yourself as a curious person or a lifelong learner, changing your mind is a moment of growth.

ADAM GRANT

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Finding yourself

‘Finding yourself’ is not really how it works. You aren’t a ten-dollar note in last winter’s coat pocket. You are also not lost. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you draw as a child that became your beliefs about who you are. ‘Finding yourself’ is actually returning to yourself. An unlearning, an excavation, a remembering who you were before the world got its hands on you.

EMILY McDOWELL

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Defining your circle

Your friends brag about you, say your name in rooms of opportunity, hold you accountable with softness and love, celebrate your wins as their wins, have more compliments for you than shade, encourage new experiences and growth. This is the basic criteria. Assess your circle.

DANA WHITE

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All is part of you

When you adopt the viewpoint that there is nothing that exists that is not part of you, that there is no one who exists who isn’t part of you, that any judgement you make is self-judgement, that any criticism is self-criticism, you will wisely extend to yourself an unconditional love that will be the light of your world. 

HARRY PALMER

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A Medicine Woman’s Prayer

I will not rescue you. For you are not powerless.

I will not fix you. For you are not broken.

I will not heal you. For I see you in your wholeness.

I will walk with you through the darkness. As you remember your light.

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Partnership

An individual remains an individual, not only from birth to death. We never lose our individuality, we never lose our uniqueness. Each of us is individual and each of us has individual qualities, with individual talents and gifts, and these are not to be surrendered in partnership. Therefore in a spiritual partnership, there is not bondage but freedom. This is not true in a human partnership. In spiritual partnership, where both recognise that in partnering they are setting each other free. This is the only thing I have discovered in thirty years of this work that will make possible such things as happy partnerships, peaceful partnerships, successful partnerships: the ability to set the other free and each live with his/her own individual life and yet share with each other without demanding. Neither partner has any rights over the other, they only have the privilege of giving, but they have no rights to demand anything of the other.

Adapted from JOEL GOLDSMITH Nov. 18, 1959

 

The Laws of . . .

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1. Law of Mechanical Repair

After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you’ll have to go to the toilet.

 

2. Law of Small Objects

Any tool, nut, bolt or screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner of the room.

 

3. Law of Probability

The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of the act.

 

4. Law of Random Numbers

If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers.

 

5. Law of the Alibi

If you tell your employer you were late for work because you had a flat tyre or the train was cancelled and neither were true, the very next morning you will have a flat tyre or your usual train will be cancelled.

 

6. Variation Law

If you change lines in a queue (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.

 

7. Bath’s Law

When the body is fully immersed in water, the doorbell rings.

 

8. Law of Close Encounters

The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don’t want to be seen with.

 

9. Law of the Result

When you try to prove to someone that a machine won’t work, it will.

 

10. Law of Biomechanics

The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

 

11. Law of the Performance

At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last and will leave their seats several times to go for food, drinks, or the toilet. They will also leave early before the end of the performance or sporting event. The people in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies, and stay to the bitter end of the performance. They are also very surly.

 

12. The Coffee/Tea Law

As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee or tea, your employer will ask you to do something that will last until the coffee or tea is cold.

 

13. Murphy’s Law of Lockers and Lanes

If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers. If you are lane 1 in a ten-lane swimming pool and there is only one other person swimming in the pool and they are in lane 10, the next person to enter the pool will start swimming in lane 2.

 

14. The Law of Physical Surfaces

The chances of an open-faced jam or peanut butter sandwich landing face down on a floor is directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

 

15. Law of Logical Argument

Anything is possible if you don’t know what you are talking about.

 

16. Brown’s Law of Physical Appearance

If the clothes fit, they’ll be ugly. If they are gorgeous, they won’t fit.

 

17. Law of Public Speaking

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

 

18. Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy

As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.

 

19. Doctors’ Law

If you don’t feel well and make an appointment to see the doctor, by the time you get there you’ll feel better. But if you don’t make an appointment, you’ll stay sick for days.

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No ordinary gratitude

To all green, growing, flowering ones of this beautiful planet, who embody the universal creative healing energy and with each moment, humbly assume the grand task of transforming light into life, and who patiently bear the crude assaults and insults of our misguided ignorance, all in the dream of awakening, we are immeasurably indebted. Without your conscious living presence, nothing, no breath, not food, no life, no delight, none of our earthly endeavours would be possible.

UNKNOWN

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A place for unlearning

A German scholar met with Sri Ramana Maharshi and announced: “I have come to learn from you.” To which the Indian Hindu sage replied, “Then go elsewhere, because here we teach unlearning. Learning is not our way. If you are ready to unlearn, be here. If you have come to learn more, then this is not the right place. When you come to me, come to unlearn. This is a university for unlearning, a university to create no-mind, a university where whatsoever you know will be taken away. All your knowledge has to be dropped so you become knowing; so your eyes are not filled with theses, or theories, with prejudices, concepts; so your eyes have a clarity, an absolute clarity and transparency; so that you can see. The truth is already there. It has always been there.”

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What if?

What if you slept? And what if in your sleep you dreamed? And what if in your dream you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if when you awoke you had the flower in your hand? 

SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE 

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Tune in, attract . . . whatever

The universe responds to your frequency. It doesn’t recognise your personal desires, wants or needs. It only understands the frequency in which you are vibrating at. For example; if you are vibrating in the frequency of fear, guilt or shame you are going to attract things of a similar vibration. If you are vibrating in the frequency of love, joy and abundance, you are going to attract things that support that frequency. It’s kinda like tuning into a radio station. You have to be tuning into the music you want to listen to just like you have to be tuned into the energy you want to manifest into your life. Change your mindset, it will change your life.

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The gift of the Self

There are no more maps, no more creeds, no more philosophies. From here on in, the directions come straight from the Universe. The Curriculum is being revealed millisecond by millisecond — invisibly, intuitively, spontaneously, lovingly. As one of Thomas Merton's monks has it, “Go into your cell and your cell will teach you everything there is to know.” Your cell. Yourself.

AKSHARA NOOR

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Three things to give up to be truly free

There are three sets of mental fetters to give up if you want to be truly free: judging, comparing and needing to know why.

JOY BRUGH from Joy’s Way: A Map for the Transitional Journey 

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​Stop investing in the idea of 100% healed

We cannot and should not invest in the idea that 100% healed while alive is realistic. This is a marketing fantasy that sells. Life is challenging and we are in a constant process of self-discovery. We will trip and fall, get back up again, and then one day fall again. Loosen the rigid grasp around the fantasy of a pain-free life. Life is meant to be lived, not controlled. 

TODD BARATZ

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Forgiving not forgetting

Forgive anyone who has caused you pain or harm.

Keep in mind that forgiving is not for others.

It is for you.

Forgiving is not forgetting.

It is remembering without anger.

It frees up your power, heals your body, mind and spirit.

Forgiveness opens up a pathway to a new place of peace where you can persist despite what has happened to you.

LES BROWN

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Benchmarks

When you’re not used to being confident, Confidence feels like arrogance.

When you’re used to being passive, Assertiveness feels like aggression.

When you’re not used to getting your needs met,

Prioritising yourself feels selfish.

Your comfort zone is not a good benchmark.

DR VASSILIA BINENSZTOK

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This is what’s important

And every day, the world will drag you by the hand, yelling, “This is important! And this is important! And this is important! You need to worry about this! And this! And this!”

 

And each day, it’s up to you to yank your hand back, put it on your heart and say, “No. This is what’s important.”

lAIN THOMAS

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The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Double Blind Country

(Warning: this story contains cruelty)

 

There’s an old joke among biologists that goes something like this:

 

A researcher is experimenting on frogs to learn more about their athletic abilities. He gives a frog on his lab bench the verbal command “Jump!” and the frog leaps 25cm across the table. The scientist whips out his tape measure and jots down the measurement in his notebook.

 

He then takes a scalpel and cuts off one of the frog’s legs and repeats the command “Jump!”

 

The frog, a little worse for wear but still game, leaps almost 19cm.

 

The scientist repeats his grim surgery three more times, lopping off a leg every round. Each time he gives the command to “Jump”, the frog’s distance scores understandably dwindle.

 

Finally, the poor legless frog is just sitting there on the workbench. The researcher gives the command “Jump!” for the fifth and final time.

 

The frog doesn’t move.

 

He repeats the command to “Jump!” twice more, to be sure. Finally, he opens his notebook and writes carefully, “The four-legged frog displayed substantial jumping abilities, which was observed to decrease by approximately twenty-five percent with the loss of each limb. However, the most exciting finding to report is something totally unexpected. I have discovered that a frog with no legs . . . is deaf.”

as told by JAMES WHEAL in Recapture the Rapture

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Extracts from actual courtroom questioning

 

Q. Now, Mrs Johnson, how was your first marriage terminated?

A. By death.

Q. And by whose death was it terminated?

 

Q. How many times have you committed suicide?

 

Q. Doctor, how many autopsies have you performed on dead people?

A. All my autopsies have been performed on dead people.

 

Q. Officer, what led you to believe the defendant was under the influence?

A. Because he was argumentary and he couldn’t pronunciate his words.

 

Q. What happened then?

A. He told me, he says, “I have to kill you because you can identify me.” 

Q. Did he kill you?

A. No.

 

Q. Mrs Jones, is your appearance this morning pursuant to a deposition notice that I sent to your attorney?

A. No, this is how I dress when I go to work.

 

Q. Doctor, did you say he was shot in the woods?

A. No. I said he was shot in the lumbar region.

 

O. What is your name? 

A. Ernestine McDowell

Q. And what is your marital status?

A. Fair.

 

O. Are you married? 

A. No. I’m divorced.

Q. And what did your husband do before you divorced him?

A. A lot of things I didn’t know about.

 

Q. When he went, had you gone and had she, if she wanted to and were able, for the time being excluding all the restraints on her not to go, gone also, would he have brought you, meaning you and she, with him to the station?

MR BROOKS: Objection. That question should be taken out and shot.

 

Q. And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral. Okay? What school do you go to?

A. Oral.

Q. How old are you?

A. Oral.

 

Q. Now, you have investigated other murders, have you not, where there was a victim?

 

Q. The youngest son, the 20-year-old, how old is he?

 

Q. Were you alone or by yourself?

 

O. Could you see him from where you were standing?

A. I could see his head.

Q. And where was his head?

A. Just above his shoulders.

 

Q. Any suggestions as to what prevented this from being a murder trial instead of an attempted murder trial?

A. The victim lived.

 

O. Are you sexually active? 

A. No, I just lie there.

 

O. Are you qualified to give a urine sample?

A. Yes, I have been since early childhood.

 

Q. The truth of the matter is that you were not an unbiased, objective witness, isn't it? You too were shot in

the fracas? 

A. No, sir. I was shot midway between the fracas and the naval.

 

O. What is the meaning of sperm being present?

A. It indicates intercourse.

Q. Male sperm?

A. That is the only kind I know.

 

Q. Do you have any children or anything of that kind?

 

Q. Do you know how far pregnant you are now?

A. I’ll be three months on November 8.

Q. Apparently, then, the date of conception was August 8. What were you doing at that time?

 

Q. So you were gone until you returned?

 

Q. You say the stairs went down to the basement?

A. Yes.

Q. And these stairs, did they go up also?

 

Q. Have you lived in this town all your life?

A. Not yet.

 

A Texas attorney, realising he was on the verge of unleashing a stupid question, interrupted himself and said, “Your Honor, I’d like to strike the next question.”

 

Q. Was that the same nose you broke as a child?

 

Q. Do you recall approximately the time that you examined the body of Mr Edington at the Rose Chapel?

A. It was in the evening. The autopsy started about 8.30pm.

Q. And Mr Edington was dead at the time. Is that correct?

A. No, you fool, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy.

 

Q. Now, doctor, isn’t it true that when a person dies in his sleep, in most cases he just

passes quietly away and doesn’t know anything about it until the next morning?

 

Q. Was it you or your brother who was killed in the war?

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The answer is never the answer

The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll aways be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

KEN KESEY

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How to count

Count your garden by the flowers, never by the leaves that fall

Count your joys by golden hours, never when life's worries call

Count nights by stars, not shadows

Count your days by smiles not tears

And on any birthday morning

Count your friends, not years.

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Warriors not parasites

My grandfather drove a camel, my father drove a camel, I drove a Mercedes, my son drove a Land Rover and my grandson will drive a Land Rover, but my great-grandson will drive a camel . . . Why is that? Because hard times create strong people, strong people create easy times. Easy times create weak people. Weak people create hard times. Many won’t understand, but you have to raise warriors, not parasites.

SHEIKH RASHID, founder of Dubai, when asked about the future of his country

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18 things to add to your life

1. Compliment three people every day.

2. Watch the sunrise at least once a year.

3. Be the first to say, “hello”.

4. Live beneath your means.

5. Treat everyone like you want to be treated.

6. Never give up on anybody. Miracles happen.

7. Forget the Joneses.

8. Never deprive anyone of hope. It may be all they have.

9. Be tough-minded but tenderhearted.

10. Be kinder than necessary.

11. Don’t forget, a person’s greatest emotional need is to feel appreciated.

12. Keep your promises.

13. Remember overnight success usually takes about 15 years.

14. Leave everything better than you found it.

15. Remember winners do what losers don’t want to do.

16. When you arrive at your job in the morning, let the first thing you say brighten everyone’s day.

17. Don’t rain on other people’s parades.

18. Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them.

​

Avoid saying:

“My cancer”

“My diabetes”

“My depression”

“My anxiety”

“My bipolar disorder”

“My asthma” etc.

These things don’t belong to you. They’re not your property. They’re just something you experience — and from which you can heal.

​

Not us, not them. Just all of us.

I think it’s a deep consolation to know that spiders dream, that monkeys tease predators, that dolphins have accents, that lions can be scared silly by a lone mongoose, that otters hold hands and ants bury their dead. That there isn’t their life and our life. Nor your life and my life. That it’s just one teetering and endless thread and all of us are entangled with it as deep as entanglement goes.

KATE FORSTER

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We are art

People shame artists for seeing colours where others see nothing, feeling emotions where others have an echoing void. They tell us we’re weak and some hardening would do us good, make us better contributors to society. But what they don’t know is our heart and soul have become one and what we contribute to society is so incomprehensibly massive, the reason they can’t see it is because it’s everywhere, all at once, forward and backward, and up and down, within around, between. And to imagine a world without art is to imagine life without living or being, or a lens without an eye or a cloud without a sky or grief without a love or a universe without space for the questions and pain and beauty and ache to dance and play and loom and ignite. Artists are the conduit from which the web that weaves humans into humanity is birthed. We are art.

UNKNOWN

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Escaping the flicker of the cave

Plato’s allegory of the cave is one of philosophy’s oldest stories, and one of its best. 

 

In the story, there are people who have lived their whole lives chained in a cave. And they’re forced to look at the wall.

 

Now behind them is a fire. And in front of the fire are various shapes. People, animals, trees. And they see against the flickering firelight of the cave wall these shapes, and they think they’re looking at reality.

 

But one day, one of the men breaks his chains, and he turns his head for the first time in his life, and he looks, and he sees the shapes, and he sees the fire itself. And it’s startling, and he thinks that is real. “Now I have seen what is real. Before, I only saw the flickering shadows. Now I see what is real,” he thinks.

 

But then, he sees on the far side of the fire, a passageway leading out. Curious, he decides to go up the stairs. And he climbs the stairs one by one, and he begins to see the light. Not of the flickering shadows, not of the fire, not of the shapes, but of the world itself.

 

And he sees the world for what it is. He sees the actual trees. Not the shadows of trees, not the models of trees, the actual trees. He sees the sky, he sees the sun.

 

It all becomes blindingly clear to him, and he realises he has spent his life imprisoned in a false reality.

 

And then as he regards this beauty, he thinks, “I must share this with the people below, with my friends, my companions, my compatriots chained in the cave.”

 

So he takes a last look to drink in the glory of everything he sees. And then with excitement, with joy, with anticipation, he turns back down into the cave, and he begins to tell everyone chained to the wall, “This is not real, this is not real, these are illusions.”

 

And he reaches down and he tries to break their chains. And they do not thank him. They do not praise him, they do not admire his wisdom and his courage. They fight him. And they call him mad, they call him deranged, delusional, disruptive, seditious, dangerous.

 

And he faces the choice, the choice we all face when we learn the truth. Do we stay where we are hated, down in the dungeons, among the enslaved, mentally? Do we stay among those fixated on their screens, who will not tear their eyes away from a manufactured reality to look at the world itself? Or do we go and climb those stairs again to imbibe all the glory and beauty of the natural world, leaving behind those who fight us for bringing them the truth?

 

I say stand and fight.

 

What is the glory of the world if we must drink it in solitude? What is the beauty of the planet if we must view it alone?

 

We have an obligation, if we have seen the truth, to wrestle the lies from the minds of those stuck in the cave.

 

The cave is the manufactured reality of those who would control us by controlling what we think. But fundamentally, you can’t control what someone thinks. Because once they think, they are beyond your control.

Adapted from a monologue by STEFAN MOLYNEUX for the doco Hoax (2019)

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