Episode 3 in the Five Gates of grief series.
St Paul wrote,”We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now..” Romans 8:22
What he didn’t know was how much additional pain we humans would cause to this planet since he penned that line!
In this video we explore our grieving, “The Sorrow of the World” and how this grief can become a resurrection for us and the planet.
Following the outline of Francis Weller’s “Five Gates of Grief” this video invites us to locate and mourn the parts of our lives that never knew love.
This is sacred and soulful work. As we examine the deficits and voids in our selves, as we see where our lives were Bonzai-ed by circumstances or the unskilful acts of others.
Now we can begin to allow the light to enter us through those very cracks and fissures.
The video also introduces the Japanese art of Kintsugi as a metaphor for the integration of our loss.
Using the headings of Francis Weller as an outline, Peter explores the first of what Weller describes as the “Gates of Grief“.
Gate 1:Everything you love you will lose.
Gate 2:The places that have not known love
Gate 3:The Sorrows of the World
Gate 4:What we expected but didn’t receive
Gate 5:Integrating our Ancestral Grief
Knowing the impermanence of everything is not as depressing as it sounds.
If skillfully integrated into our understanding, knowing that
“Everything we love, we will lose“, is a liberation to love and live in the moment that is with us now.
You can schedule one on one Skype or Zoom sessions with Peter by emailing peterwoods.pe@gmail.com
Being a South African on the weekend that the Springboks win the Rugby World Cup makes the other challenges of living on the southern tip of Africa a lot more bearable!
You don’t have to be South African or even to follow Rugby to know that winning is a great human experience.
We love to win, to be the best, to come first.
It seems that winners win and enjoy the euphoric experience.
Isn’t that what evolution calls the survival of the fittest?
Or is there another perspective?
In this video I explore how competitiveness may not be helpful in certain scenarios and offer a simple conflict transformation tool to alter your adversarial relationships.
I sometimes fear we have lost our souls. I look around and see the departure of soul from so many sectors of life.
The same soul flight seems to have affected our religious traditions.
Is it possible to still encounter soul in the superficiality of modern life?
If soul is that which animates us, it seems to currently live in interesting places. Many pilgrims witness that they are enlivened by travel and wilderness experiences. There is a new spirituality that doesn’t need to conform to dogma. In caring for plants, animals and people who are suffering. In stewarding ecology and once again finding divinity in nature, soil and sea.
On closer investigation it seems we haven’t lost our souls, they are very much with us, but need a different diet to cope with the challenges of our hyper-driven world.
Food for the soul is still abundant and this video explores how to find and nurture soul.
In this episode I explore the role of the inner “persona” or mask in our relationship to the world.
The word persona comes from Latin and is the term Romans used for the Greek theatrical mask (prosopon) which allowed actors to play more than one role. Because there were no big screens or optics to improve the audience’s view, the masks were larger than the actors’ heads and set in expressions that portrayed the nature of each character.
We all have a public Facebook self-mask that we have curated for the world.
Sometimes our professions seduce us into stereotypical ways of being in those roles.
The mental-healthy trick is not to become over identified with the masks of our professional or social roles, but to be as authentic when facing the public as when facing ourselves.
You can schedule one on one Skype or Zoom sessions with Peter by emailing peterwoods.pe@gmail.com
To be human is to experience loss. In the Buddhist, Five Subjects for Recollection is the phrase, “all that is mine, beloved and pleasing, will become otherwise. Will be taken from me.
Peter reflects on how we process loss. The destructive as well as more constructive responses.
In the talk Peter references the work of Dr Gabor Mate a helpful resource on addiction.
Please search for him on YouTube.
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You can schedule one on one Skype or Zoom sessions with Peter by emailing peterwoods.pe@gmail.com
We are all busy following something or someone. Diets, exercise programs, studies, teachings, religions.
But what if we lose the will to follow? What if we just cannot go on?
Peter suggests a good test of what we are following, is to ask if they will follow us when we get lost.
You can schedule one on one Skype or Zoom sessions with Peter by emailing peterwoods.pe@gmail.com
A silly mistake while building a fire in a vintage wood burning stove, offered me a metaphor for how we sometimes focus our passions in the wrong areas.
I hope you enjoy this weeks video, and that it stimulates your life reflections.
On a barren desert highway in the Karoo, South Africa, a reinvented roadside store invites us to consider what sexuality means.
