This shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, since New Zealand only exists because two tectonic plates decided to get together and have a rub-yourself-up-against-each-other party. To the West we have the Indo-Australian plate, to the East the Pacific Plate. Which I guess actually made it something of a "bring your own plate" party. Ohhh, I'll be here all week, try the veal.

More specifically though, the actual faultline was about 50 metres (160ft) from my house.

What's it like growing up in this kind of environment? Well, let's just say, anything under a 5.0 on the Richter scale you might lift your coffee off the table while you assess it & check your nearest safe zone (table, doorway, etc), but other than that you more or less ignore it.

You become blasé surprisingly quickly.

A more interesting question is: what the hell does a faultline actually look like?

Well, my folks have moved since I was a kid, so I'm now living much further away. About 50 metres further.

To get there I have to cross this most excellent bridge:

Awesome bridge

I do like well considered architecture (and blues skies).

I also have to pass this rather interesting (non earthquake related) tree:

Because we're on the other side of the world, the sun goes in circles, confusing plant growth patterns

Definitely an odd tree — there's only one of them.. ahh!

Anyway, just past that, you get to this rather innocuous looking bank:

Innocuous Bank

Just like any old golf course really. Except for those weird blue poles. What's up with them?

Well, if you sight along them, they look like this:

Two poles. Perfectly aligned

Notice how they're perpendicular to the bank. That's not an accident.

These poles were put in by the government white coats to track plate movement.

That innocent looking bank above? It keeps going in both directions… and there's an identical looking bank on the other side of the river. That's the faultline. Twenty years ago that ground was bulldozed flat.

So why do the poles line up, if there's been all that movement?

Because we're standing too close. Here are three poles:

Uh oh, someone stuck one of those poles in the wrong place. Yeah, that's it.

Notice how the two on the other side of the fault are angled off to the right of the viewer (ie, the most distant pole is to the left of the central pole).

That is very, very much out of alignment.

When they were put in, they all lined up perfectly. It would have been done with one of these. Theodolites are great, love me a theodolite. If you've never used one, I highly recommend it.

So let's step even further back:

Oh dear.

Remember how the most distant one is slightly to the left?

So you can see that drawing a straight line between the two most distant poles goes off to our right. A straight line between the two poles on this side of the fault goes screaming off to the left of the furthest two.

Not only has there been significant vertical movement, but a ton of lateral motion too.

So here's the odd thing: There's been no major earthquakes here, certainly nothing like Christchurch.

What's happening is something that scientists have only really been able to track since about 2002 — slow earthquakes. These are tricky to spot, since they occur over hours or months, and don't typically register on seismographs (the scientists use GPS to track them instead).

Many of these slow earthquakes are huge though (R7-9) and they're radically altering New Zealand's shape. This isn't a terrible thing though, NZ's a weird shape to start with, a bit of a haircut might do us some good.

Why can't we be an elegant, tastefully shaped country, like Italy's boot?

Gratitude lists are super popular (yes, 60 million pages). It's very simple why — by focusing on what's good in your life, you attract more of it.

Ever start a morning, stub your toe, feel shitty, then suddenly everyone you meet seems to be in a shitty mood too?

Yeah, it's like that but in reverse. So you know, more fun, with less toe-stubbing.

As a bonus, the more sincerely you feel grateful for the positive things in your life, the more you genuinely connect with the present feeling of them — and well, the better you feel.

Giant "duh" there. This isn't rocket science.

Now, here's the caveat.

I've tried gratitude lists several times in the past. I'd wake up every morning, make a list of 5 (or 10) things I was grateful for, then get on with my day. I also tried at night, right before I went to sleep.

But for me? They never seemed to do, well, anything.

I didn't feel much better and my life didn't improve in any noticeable way.

If there's one thing I'm a stickler for, it's reproducibility.

I did try. Note the "several times", above. Bottom line though, if something isn't giving me significant, reproducible results, I throw it out.

Recently though, I've realised something.

There's quite a difference between being grateful for something, and appreciating it.

Here's where we get into the airy fairy bit.

If you've read back far enough, you'll know I've spent a lot of time working with energy. Healing, shifting stuff around, all sorts of bibs & bobs. Trouble is, a lot of this is experiential. I know what I've seen and done, but it starts to get a bit tricky since I often can't simply say "just do *this* and *that* will happen." There's a lot of background (& practice) required.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice. Simple, right? Yeah, exactly.

I try to keep stuff on here pretty concrete since me describing my experiences doesn't do much for you if you're in a very different place in your life. If you're in a similar place, well, you'll be seeing results like that anyway, so you won't need me telling you.

So, if I say "Energetically, 'appreciation' is much softer and closer feeling whereas 'gratitude' is more distanced with little energetic connectivity" — well, that's kinda hard to put into language that doesn't depend on my personal experiences. Put frankly, if you're not me (or energy weird like me) it's gonna sound like crap.

However, let's give it a shot. Just for fun.

Interestingly, just focusing on the words (in English) shows a lot.

Gratitude is quite a hard word (all those consonants). You could quite literally spit "I'm grateful for blah" at someone through angry teeth. Ha, I should know, I've done this, on particularly grumpy days.

Appreciation has all those soft rounded sounds.  Saying "I appreciate blah" is a much gentler experience.

Of course, the key question is — is this a factor of the experiential difference between these terms, or is it merely a linguistic difference in this particular language (English)?

Tough to say. What came first, the experience or the description?

A rose by any other name might smell as sweet, but if it didn't, would it have been named Rose in the first place?

Appreciating something feels (I warned you about this, right?) much closer, softer, more vulnerable, more open, more connected.

Gratitude ("I am grateful for..") feels more analytical, more distanced, more of a third party description.

So again, perhaps this is merely a linguistic difference. You don't say "I grateful" you say "I am grateful" — you're describing a personal state of being — passive.

When you say "I appreciate" — you're describing an action — active.

So maybe it's just that difference — the insertion of the verb "to be" in the sentence.

Maybe. What came first, the behaviour or the linguistic variation in methods of describing that behaviour?

What I've been trying to do is tease this all apart. Is there actually a difference between gratitude and appreciation, or does it just feel this way because of how English is structured?

Let's try and get the sentences as close as possible:

•     I am grateful for foo

•     I appreciate foo (no)
•     I am appreciating foo (not quite)
•     I am appreciative of foo

See, even then, the aural shape of the word "appreciative" softens the experience of saying it (particularly out loud). It's also interesting how many ways you can dance around appreciating something (or someone), and yet with gratitude you're forced to take a fixed position in time & space.

Interestingly, while we can say "I appreciate foo" (whomever foo is) there's no equivalent form for gratitude. You can't gratitude foo, you can't grateful foo. You're forced to be grateful, or express gratitude. It's always one word, one state of being more abstracted.

All this word-nerding aside, at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter.

If saying "I appreciate foo" feels better for you, more powerful, more connective, more useful then great, use that.

If you still reckon "I am grateful for foo" rocks your boat, well, do that instead.

As always, the trick is to find what's right and what works best for you.

For me, since I've been thinking about this, I've noticed that every day I'm finding more and more things I appreciate. Plus, better yet, I'm verbally acknowledging them — and feeling better for it. So really I'm doing gratitude lists all day every day — by appreciating instead.

It's working for me.

This is one of the reasons I've come back to live with my folks for a while. I'd got about as far as I easily could peering into my own navel. Much easier to look at them to see what else is there in me. As the old saying goes: "If you think you're enlightened, spend a weekend with your parents." So far, it's been about six months and boy, I've grown lots. Ha ha. Oh boy. Yes.

What I've started to realise over the last couple of days is something of a corollary to the above truism.

What I want most from others is what I'm not giving myself.

For years, the thing that has made me the most angry is if I feel someone isn't listening to me — particularly if they're insistently asking me something, despite my attempts to explain.

The very few times (historically maybe twice a decade) I've got truly "red mist" angry, that's been the situation.

At some level, the reason it has had such a strong effect on me is simply because I feel I haven't been listening to myself.

Isn't it funny how it's ok for us to treat ourselves like shit, but if someone else does it, it's suddenly outrageously unacceptable?

So here's the interesting bit: what the hell does that even mean? "Not listening to myself?" I honestly have no idea. All I do know is, when I healed* on not listening to myself, I felt a huge rush of energy leaving and a great peace come over me. Now, if I think back to those times when I've been aggressively not-listened-to (ha ha, yes), I find the situations oddly amusing.

This, by the way, is great news.

Why? Because it shows you don't have to consciously understand what anything is about to heal it. You don't have to figure it out. Just let your subconscious sort it out. It is, after all, the part of you faffing about and being all stroppy in the first place. It's only fair it should pull its weight for once. Take that, inner child! Slobbing around on the sofa all day watching TV and eating cheerios!

Over the last couple of days, as a background task, every so often I've answered two questions:

• "What pisses me off (about others)?"
• "What do I really want (from others)?"

Often these are opposite sides of the same answer. It pisses me off when people don't respect me. I really want people to respect me. The reason for both of these? I'm not respecting myself. If I do that, well who cares what anyone else does? The craving for it disappears.

I want people to love me? (And frankly, who doesn't?) I'm just not loving myself.

I want people to listen to me? I'm not listening to myself.

I want people to value me? I'm not valuing myself.

This is such a stupidly simple thing, it sounds almost ridiculous to write down. All I know is, this has been incredibly helpful.

When I give myself what I want, I no longer crave it from others.

*Oh, and the silliest thing? How did I heal this? That's the easiest bit yet. More on this in a little while, but for now all you need to know is this:

1. I simply said: "I love that I don't listen to myself," while releasing all the energy, physical tension, emotional responses and thoughts that arose in response to saying that.
2. I mixed it up a little with "I love that I still  don't listen to myself."
3. I kept going until I felt peaceful.
   
4. I then plugged in the positive "I love that I listen to myself," "I love that I always listen to myself," "I love that I listen to myself completely." Again, releasing all resistance that came up.
5. I kept going till I felt peaceful and the positive statements felt true.

Really, I simply said whatever popped in my head, felt right and felt like it would push things a little further, a little deeper. I maybe tapped my karate chop point if I felt things needed amping up a notch.

If you really want to test if something's gone, see how you feel about someone else treating you in that way. Can you say out loud (for example) "I love [person close to you] not listening to me"?

That's all I did. It's all I needed to do. How could I not share something so elegantly powerful with you?

Generally for New Year's Eve I prefer to do something contemplative. Meditate on the past year (or years). Feel my way to a better direction for the coming year. Assess and makes choices that will guide me positively forward.

With that in mind, around 10pm I took off up a nearby hill (it's only 345m high at the peak). It was a 45 minute hike in the dark to the lookout point I was aiming for. I chose to use no lights, partly as a more interesting challenge and partly so I could see the glow-worms on the way up.

Oh boy, they didn't disappoint. Unfortunately, photos just don't do those bright little bundles any justice.

I was right about it being an interesting walk. For a start, it's been raining like crazy the last few days, so everything in the bush is soaking wet. Combine heavy cloud cover with only a quarter new moon, and it wasn't exactly clear where I was supposed to be walking either. The path was (theoretically) fairly light, except so were the ferns on either side, oh, and the rocks… and the puddles… and the grass. Also, that light coloured path? It was covered in various dark coloured flora, tree branches, grass, leaves, stiles, animals, dead bodies, burning cars, zombies*.

* some of these items may be a complete lie.

Mostly it wasn't too bad though. My eyes adjusted pretty quick and I only slipped over a couple of times.

I got to the top around 11, but had wildly underestimated how warm it would be trekking up the hill, so promptly stripped down to let my shirt dry out a little. If there were any ghosts up there, I'm sure I scared them off with my stunning whiteness (it's a sight to behold, I assure you).

I then spent the next hour meditating, absorbing the essence of the previous year and sipping the delicious coffee I'd taken up with me.

I also got treated to lightning on the far off ridges and fireworks up and down the valley. Theoretically fireworks are illegal in New Zealand outside of Guy Fawkes' week (the week before Nov 5) but people still store them up for New Year's. I'm happy they do, it makes New Year's a lot more festive than just a bunch of yahoos yahooing.

Surprisingly, the march back down the hill was significantly more dangerous than up. My eyes had adjusted so I could see better, but even with that I hit a lot of unexpected drops in terrain. I ended up walking most of the way down in a half crouch. Imagine you're sitting in an upright chair. Now take the chair away. Yeah, like that. An odd posture, but effective and a lot safer than walking normally (which had left me unharmed but on my arse a couple of times). When I got back closer to civilization, I also had to shield my eyes from the street lights just to see where I was going. It's hard to comprehend just how much light pollution there is until you're walking back into it from the pitch black.

I did end up soaked to the skin up to my knees — it's hard to see invisible wet grass — but it was totally worth it. Walking down in the dark, brooks burbling by the track, the glow of the worms, giant trees majestic against the skyline, it was an utterly beautiful experience.

And proof you can take the boy out of Scouts, but never take the Scout out of the boy; other than what I wore, I also took with me and used:

• hat
• gloves
• scarf
• camera
• blanket (my Grandma gave it to me over 20 years ago; it's the only thing I have left connected to her)
• thermos of coffee

but took and didn't use:

• three torches
• phone
• bottle of water
• fabric tape
• plastic bag
• leatherman

I figured if I accidentally walked off a bank & broke a leg (a reasonable risk) I might as well take enough to be comfortable & safe until morning.

Turns out I didn't need most of it, but it was worth it without the added excitement. Partly for the peace & calmness that comes from occasionally detaching completely from the world. Partly for this:

Here's to a gorgeous 2012.

For a start, he managed to wangle a free trip, which is always a bonus. A friend of his was coming up and said she had a spare ticket for whomever asked first. Nice one.

They get on the plane, and the guy next to them is doing scratchy tickets. I don't know if you have them where you are, but they're a form of lowkey gambling. It's a piece of card you buy from a gas station or corner shop that costs a couple of bucks. You randomly scratch off some elements, and there's a chance to win a money prize.

Anyway, this guy is doing these and suddenly he says "Oh wow, $20! That'll cover what I paid for them." Pretty obviously this happened because my brother was sitting right next to him — he's got to be a good luck charm, right?

The guy continues scratching away, then leans over and asks "This can't be right, can it?" Guess what? He won $100,000. Right there and then.

That's not the eventful bit of the trip. I'm just telling you that coz it's kinda cool. The eventful bit was about half way through the flight, when the head steward comes storming up the aisle and demands to see both of their boarding passes.

Here's my brother's:

I've, uhh, blacked out some of the more incriminating details

This may not come as much of a surprise at this point in the story, but the steward wasn't coming to offer them a complimentary hot towel for their wit and verve.

The staff on the plane gave them something of a bollocking (local slang: telling off, in this case while the staff standing behind you try not to giggle too loudly).

They were then met at the door by a police officer with rather a lot of pointed questions, although apparently he had the decency to be at least a little amused by it all.

I think my brother might have got away with it though. I reckon it was his friend that really pushed it over the edge.

Her boarding pass? Ms Pimpin' Bitch.

Since any mind map should ideally be about a single subject, if you want to clear a bunch of different subjects, each subject will require a different map.

So, unless we want to the spend the entire rest of our lives tapping frantically, instead of, well, living (*yawn* been there, done that. BORING), you need a fast way to hammer through these. Then you can head off happily to the pub (or wherever) with the freedom of knowing that whatever-it-was that had been bothering you is now a thing of the past.

OK. SO.

My general approach (as I outlined here) is to scribble out a map, then next to each item jot if it's about wanting or lacking Approval, Control or Security (or all three). Finally, I flick on the video & tap along, saying "I love that I lack control (etc) about.." (whatever the item is).

So, here's the trick to clearing a lot of these things quickly. First of all scribble out all your maps, one after the other. When you've finished that, then go through each item on each map & put it into a/c/s (or combos). Only when you've completely finished, go through & tap each map.

I find when I'm in that kind of flow, it's super easy to just flick from one map to the next, with barely a pause in between. Doing them one at a time took forever!

There's something about not needing to context switch (writing, assessing, tapping) back & forth that makes this way much, much faster than just doing each complete map one at a time.

Anyway, have fun clearing stuff out. I've been doing a ton of these over the last month or so & the difference it's made in terms of inner peace is almost ridiculous.

What I've learned recently is just how subtle this body/mind interaction is.

After 20 odd years of Aikido, this shouldn't have surprised me as much as it did.

In Aikido, we often sit in seiza. Basically, you kneel with your knees apart, your bum on your heels, back arched and head up.

This posture is well known across the universe.

Here's Spock doing it

(From this excellent site on Vulcan meditation. Ha ha, you think I'm kidding. Oh Internet, you have everything!)

The most important part of all this? The arched back. (Spock does it well)

If you prefer more beard, here's how it looks from the front:

Long white beard is optional. Grass, preferred. Katana, mandatory.

The basic Aikido pin looks like this:

Shake my hand would you, fool?

No, wait, like this:

No! You sit over *there*!

Ok ok, I'm joking around. It's actually like this:

See? There's that seiza again. And you thought we'd just been sitting like that coz we hated legs.

(a few minor corrections — most importantly knees apart will drop her centre more, but that's actually pretty good)

Now here's where the arched back comes in.

When you're on the receiving end (i.e. face down, eating grass) if the person doing the pins arches their back or not makes the difference between:

"Someone's leaning on my arm"

and

"My entire being is pinned to the centre of the earth by a large truck"

What's even more interesting is that when it's done correctly, zero effort is expended, and the person is not just squashing you as hard as they can — that's actually a weaker pin.

Now, out of the dojo, and back to real life.

Here's what I've noticed: When I'm healing, or hell, doing anything sitting down, if I sit just that little bit straighter, and yes, arch my back, everything goes much better and becomes extraordinarily easier.

Stuff that might have been tricky to drop or heal fall saway instantly.

I feel more in control of my code, my writing, my life. Things become… possible.

Everything.

The only thing I'm changing is maybe pushing my butt further back on the chair, and arching my back, very, very slightly. Of course, this pushes one's shoulders back and also tends to raise the head slightly — but really, it's just a little back arch.

Such a subtle shift, such huge effect.

After a while though you may start to notice, there's always more crap.

What's going on?

It's easy to get discouraged, feel that whatever you're using "doesn't work like it used to", or even convince yourself that it never worked in the first place (I've seen this a lot).

What's really happening though?

Well, there's a couple of things.

First of all, our problems expand to fill our horizon.

We have this thing called our Ego (aka the nasty little voice inside), that thrives on misery. So, however big our problems are in reality, if we're not fully present they can seem to fill our universe.

I used to live with a girl. Not very smart, but lovely. I would come home from work and she'd be worked up into a tizzy, almost in tears. It took a while before I eventually figured out what she was so upset about.

Shortland Street. The New Zealand soap opera. "Something terrible" had happened on the show.

The first couple of times this happened I couldn't believe it. Eventually I realised, this girl was serious. To her, this was a very real crisis. To her, this was reality and yes, it filled her horizon.

Important lesson there too: Always respect someone else's pain. (One I've mostly learned, although I do still slip up from time to time in my enthusiasm to help people).

The second thing to realise is that as we heal more and more of our lives, we go through stages:

1. You work backwards through time, dealing with earlier & earlier events in your life (and past lives, if you're into that)
2. You heal more and more subtle issues. You may have started with major life traumas, but the next thing you know you're letting go of anger when you knock your coffee over (it's still non-loving, so you might as well chuck it out, right?)
3. You deal with higher and higher emotions (aka moving up the vibrational scale). Abraham Hicks have their emotional guidance scale. The releasing guys talk about AGFLAP-CAP — Apathy, Grief, Fear, Lust, Anger, Pride, Courageousness, Acceptance, Peace. It's all the same. You start by healing the lower, duller emotions, then work you way through the higher ones.

These three sequences are all happening more or less at the same time. So, there's always new ways to look at things, always room to improve.

Compounding this, our roguish ego often makes every step seem enormous.

A good example is relationships:

• First you realise that it's not ok for them to beat you
• Then that it's not ok for them to cheat on you
• Then that it's not ok for them to shout at you
• Then that it's not ok for them to emotionally abuse you
• Then that it's not ok for them to disrespect, dismiss, be condescending to you
• Then that it's ok to have someone who supports you
• Then that it's ok to have someone who loves you as much as you love them
• Then that it's ok to have someone who works at the relationship as much as you do
• Then that it's ok to have a loving, peaceful relationship
• Then that it's ok to be perfectly happy & growing together

(there may be more, but this is about as far as I can see right now)

At each stage, the thought of accepting something earlier would seem utterly ridiculous. If you're at the point where you will only accept a relationship where you're supported, the thought of being with someone who is physically abusive is ludicrous.

At that point however (looking further down the list) the thought of being with someone you can be happy with all the time may seem like a pipe dream. Mr (or Ms) Perfect.

Transitioning from each stage to the next can be a major life revelation — a huge jump forward in your personal growth.

As you grow, heal and mature, you do move further down the list though, until eventually (hopefully) those later things will all seem reasonable, normal and expected.

Sadly it often takes several major relationships, maybe a marriage or two, before we see these things clearly. C'est la vie. This is how we learn. Bad choices lead to experience leads to good choices.

Still, we're all on our own paths and everyone learns at their own pace. If I was a faster learner, I wouldn't be over here talking to you. Why, I'd be over *there* talking to you (and it's so much greener too).

To see clarity along the way, keeping a journal is helpful. As is talking to old friends, or family — to remind ourselves how far we've come.

The important thing is to remember it's a journey. Everything you learn, heal and let go of is improving your life. No matter how troubling things seem today, it's so much better than it used to be, and best of all, it's going to be even better tomorrow.

Even though it's winter, around these parts there hasn't been snow since 1995.

So, what better way to spend a Monday morning than to go for a walk up a local hill? (rhetorical question)

Yes. A hill. With actual snow.

This hill, unsurprisingly.

Muppet gloves

Mum brought her gloves, made from 100% genuine Muppet, and we were away!

We passed a couple of ducks. One looked like this:

Duck. One. Not to scale.

The other looked different. Grumpier (I think).

There were also some wild quail. They hopped away in that bizarre quailly manner, which can't really be explained. They weren't particularly scared of us, so I'm guessing there aren't a whole lot of quail hunters in this suburb. As a side note, guns are rather damn difficult to get your hands on in New Zealand, so that probably helps. I'm not sure, exactly, how quail keep up with current gun legislation, but they did seem to have a   handle on it.

New Zealand is also very green (you may have heard).

Here's one of the green bits

There's plenty of green to go round. Lots of other bits look like this too.

Mum got very excited by the first bit of snow we found (I did mention it's rare here, right?)

There was (spoiler alert!) more snow to come, but compared to zero snow, this was LOTS

It was also crunchy under foot (always a nice sound).

The first of many snowball fights

I told Mum I was going to take a photo of myself throwing a snowball at her. Thus, this is blurry — as I'm frantically clicking with one hand & biffing with the other. However, note, just left of her left shoulder — voila! Snowball! In the air! I claim victory! (even if this one did miss her, dammit)

We also saw lots of crazy gorse. Flowering (in winter), in the snow:

Pesky Gorse

Gorse is something of a huge pest here in NZ. This is similar to many innovative & brilliant ideas we gained from the British, who brought gorse over to use as hedges. They didn't allow for the fact that NZ is on the other side of the planet (surprise!), thus has a completely different climate.. and voila! Gorse The (now) Noxious Pest took  over the country. See also: rabbits, and possums. Thanks England! (I'm signalling my disapproval with two thumbs up!)

Gorse is, however, rather pretty (aww).

We're also pretty good at growing ferns over here:

Mum loves ferns. Doubly so when covered in snow.

Mum insisted I get this pic. The framing is crazy coz the ferns were so giant, and the track so small, the only way I could get the pic was by holding my camera over my head (ie, I really had no idea where it was pointing).

When we got to the top, there were a ton of gums & pines (it's forestry area, sorta), all looking as pretty as a picture:

Ooh look, trees!

So, you know, here's a picture.

I also made a snow man (I said I would!). Well, a snow alien:

Snow Alien (I like his antenna the best)

He was tiny but cute (kinda like me — at least some of the time).

Mum reckoned he was starting to look like a rabbit, but No! He's An Alien!

Mum did her best to look like an alien too

Mum did try to twizzle her hair up into antenna, but since everything was pretty wet by now (snow! it's wet! who knew?) it didn't work so well. I reckon she's got the arms pretty much perfect though.

Which was good timing, coz about a minute later one of the arms fell off the alien (who obviously didn't have quite such a strong grasp on the whole arm/body concept).

The view from the top was pretty spectacular:

Look! Snow! Also, Wellington off in the distance

You can just (if you tilt your head and squint) see the blue of the sea, right off in the distance between those two hills. Trick is, the river runs down into it. They do that sometimes, I'm told.

I also took enough shots to get a panorama of sorts, but I need to figure out how to do that (without wasting hours of my life painstakingly aligning everything & adjusting brightnesses etc).

Aww, pretty!

Everything in general was pretty damn pretty.

Also, we had coffee from a thermos, which made everything more awesome.

This gum was quite beautiful too:

Don't leave it stuck to your bedstead overnight

I've always had a soft spot for gum trees, but I think five years in Australia has made me love them more than ever.

Oh, and proof that the five or six snowball fights weren't all one sided?

Covered in snow. Thanks Mum!

All that snow on me? That was after I'd brushed myself off. I was covered in it! All thanks to my Mum. Sheesh! I used to think she loved me! What a meanie.

One reason I'm laughing so much was that she'd never used my camera before, so picked it up the wrong way. She was about to take a giant photo of her face — which of course I could see perfectly, since the screen was facing me. Oh Mum!

On the way back down, we found a giant branch that had fallen onto the road, so we dragged it off to the side so no-one would come round the corner & drive their truck into it.

We also found the perfect picnic spot:

The perfect picnic spot!

And that was in the middle of a snow storm! Now imagine how beautiful that'll be in the summer!

Wow.

But first let me wind back a bit.

A few days ago I hung out with a friend of mine. This is someone I've known for a decade or longer, so there's a lot of history there. Mostly pretty good, but some very dark times too. This guy has very strong energy. Historically, he's affected me enormously.

Now, he's going through some shit at the moment (aren't we all?) The catch is, within about 15 minutes of hanging out with him, I could feel his energy making me feel, quite literally, physically ill.

Ok, so that's not good. What to do, what to do?

I tried putting up separation roses, to energetically divide us. They didn't stick. Maybe we just have too much history, we're too strongly connected. Maybe he's just too energetically grasping. I don't know.

I could feel giant clumps of dark energy coming off him and coming towards me, as he was describing the various troubles in his life. Nothing I tried was helping, and things were quickly spiralling downwards.

Interesting situation.

Then I settled on the simplest possible solution.

I focused on the clump of darkness, and simply said "I love you."

Yep, just that.

The super cool thing was, the darkness immediately dissipated. My feeling of sickness left, and (very interesting) he perked up and started talking about something else altogether.

For the rest of our time together, everytime I felt negatively affected, or could sense dark globs of whatever appearing, I'd just address them, say "I love you" and watch them disappear again.

Very. Interesting.

Now, in Ho'oponopono (A Hawaiian healing technique), you cycle through four phrases:

1. I love you
2. I'm sorry
3. Please forgive me
4. Thank you

But I'm starting to suspect, if there was one single prayer to say for the rest of your life, it should be "I love you." The single most powerful thing you can say in any situation.

Since then I have (of course, you know me!) been doing the exact same thing to anything that's appeared — in myself, or those around me. Said "I love you" to it (in my mind) and let it go.

So, to last night.

pic by Cesar T Sanchez

Ever since I started tapping out nightmares, the frequency with which I've experienced bad dreams has dropped precipitously. They've just stopped happening.

So last night was pretty interesting. I had 10, maybe 15 distinct bad dreams in a row.

Why? Who knows (and really, who cares?) Maybe I just unblocked something big enough that it was time to wash a bunch of related remnants out of me. It really doesn't matter too much.

Anyway, in each of these dreams, I settled back, said "I love you" to whatever was happening, and the dream disappeared. Sometimes I needed to repeat it a few times, but every single time the dream would dissolve, along with whatever it was that had been bothering me.

Best of all? I woke up feeling like a million bucks. Now that is a first after a night of bad dreams.

"I love you" — said calmly and with intention — it's continuing to amaze me just how powerful that phrase really is.