Have you cast a glance within yourself lately? The world outside, with all its splendour and pain, all its surprises and change, can be so compelling that it’s easy to forget that you are a part of that picture, too.

What’s in you can impact how you respond to what’s out there. It can affect how – and even what – you see in the world… how the world is for you.

So what’s in there, inside you, right now?

How easy it can be to let the moments just slip on by. And keep slipping.

Caught in a web of ‘more important’ things to do, of obligations and responsibilities, you might find yourself at times not quite noticing what’s around you. Not quite living out your own life…

Have you ever felt that feeling?

Maybe you’re just too busy to notice the countless little impossibilities unfolding all around you. Or under too much pressure worrying about how to make the future work out, that the present moment is lost; invisible.

Yet, even if they remain unseen, it seems these magical little moments of “now” continue.

Take this particular moment (in the photo above), unfolding in my living room just the other day…

Written in careful chalk along the the bare brick walls of a house a few streets away from where I live, these words (in the photo) seem to form a kind of urban haiku:

“Love

is a

place”

Does that feel true for you?
Is that how you could perceive of love?
If so, where is this place of love in your life?

There’s a saying about bowls. It comes from an ancient text, but maybe it’s just as applicable today (bowls haven’t changed much in that time…).

It’s about the fact that the absence of bowl is just as important as its presence. That the emptiness inside it is crucial to its nature. The emptiness makes it possible – is its essence, in a way:

“Mould clay into a bowl.

The empty space makes it useful…”

- Lao Tzu in the Tao Te Ching

Perhaps there’s something to learn here…

When I first spotted this dog (in the photo) behind the window in a local street, my initial thoughts were of “the one with the waggly tail.” But then other, perhaps deeper, thoughts bubbled up.

Like, what are you keeping behind glass?

What are you storing ‘safely’ away, preventing from roaming free in the world?

Which parts of you might you be keeping to yourself or restricting in some way? (Maybe even hiding, or wishing weren’t there).

They’re big questions. Complicated.

For there might be legitimate reasons to seek safety for now. Or maybe it was important to keep new aspects of yourself sort of removed from other people while you grew them or strengthened them or practiced them quietly. And all of that is fair enough. It can even be crucial.

But one of the seemingly inevitable parts of being human involves forming habits. Habits of thought, habits of feelings, habits of behaviour. We seem to be creatures of it…

Time does so many things in our lives (or at least our conception of it, and relation to it does).

Some think it ‘heals all wounds’.
Or that it’s ‘on their side’.
Or that it moves too quickly.
That it ‘conquers all’ (as the photo suggests).
That it rules our calendars with appointments and obligations.
That it frames our very lives…

Who knows what this time stuff actually is?..

But one thing it seems to do (at least in our experience of it) is,  it moves.

So do you move with it?

Or have you been left languishing somewhere in the past, re-living what you used to be or know or have or aspire to? Are you lost in times gone by?

I stumbled upon some serendipity the other day. It was travelling on a bus. So was I.

Just as I was thinking about my life, and how I might get through some challenges, I happened to look up. Up there, near the ceiling, a small bureaucratic sticker had been partly covered over (the complete version is in the photo above).

Now, though, instead of advising passengers to keep their belongings close, this particular sticker offered something that almost seemed like wisdom:

“DO NOT LEAVE YOU”

and

“BAGGAGE UNATTEND”

How can public transport be so profound?

Just stop for a second. (Or maybe “pause” is a better word…)

Where were you just then?

Where were your thoughts?
Your feelings?
Your gut reactions?

If you’d sent yourself a postcard from then to now, how far would it have to go to really reach you? How many countries of the mind would it have to travel?

Through busy-ness?
Overload?
Distraction?
Pain?

Where are you in the middle of all that?
You, the traveler of all these territories?

Come, let’s take a short trip and find out…

Welcome to Part 3 of this interview with Dr Harville Hendrix, co-founder of Imago Relationship Therapy and internationally renowned bestselling author of “Getting the Love You Want.”

Here, Dr Hendrix starts out by talking about how neuroscience might impact who you are in relationships, too:

For the past two or three years I’ve been reading a lot on brain research, and the brain people seem to agree … that an integrated brain is the function of an integrated context, and that that is the neurophysiological basis for a sense of psychological wellbeing.

And no matter what you do to try to shape-up your psychological life, if you don’t have brain integration [and relationships] in the balance, you’re not going to feel good; you’re going to feel anxious.