Monday 28 December 2015

An interview with Jim Morrison by Lizzie James

The end of 2015 is fast approaching and it brings with it an opportunity to reflect upon the year that was and set new direction and purpose for the year ahead.

As I was trolling through files today I came across this interview with Jim Morrison which is a perfect reflection of how I am now choosing to live my life by feeling my way through each day.  Some days I am successful, some days I allow the pressures of the fears of others and my own fears to overcome me and I dismiss opportunities to feel my true self.  this is something that I am working on every day. Every day I pray for the humility to be my real self - the me that God created.  In order to find this pristine self I must first wade through all the crap that has been dumped upon me as a child and added to by myself as an adult.  It is a slow and painful process but one which I believe is absolutely necessary if I am ever to reveal the real me that God created.

My prayer for 2016 is that I will have the courage to open more fully to humility and allow myself to feel more fully the broken and hidden parts of myself.

I hope you too can resonate with these very wise words from Jim Morrison.

Interview with Jim Morrison - http://www.cinetropic.com/morrison/james.html 

Lizzie James: I think fans of The Doors see you as a saviour, the leader who'll set them all free. How do you feel about that? It's kind of a heavy burden, isn't it?

Jim Morrison: It's absurd. How can I set free anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom? I think it's a lie--people claim they want to be free--everybody insists that freedom is what they want the most, the most sacred and precious thing a man can possess. But that's bullshit! People are terrified to be set free-they hold on to their chains. They fight anyone who tries to break those chains. It's their security....How can they expect me or anyone to set them free if they don't really want to be free?

Lizzie: Why do you think people fear freedom?

Jim: I think people resist freedom because they're afraid of the unknown. But it's ironic ... That unknown was once very well known. It's where our souls belong ... The only solution is to confront them -- confront yourself -- with the greatest fear imaginable. Expose yourself to yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power, and fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

Lizzie: What do mean when you say "freedom"?

Jim: There are different kinds of freedom -- there's a lot of misunderstanding ... The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your senses for an act. You give up your ability to feel and in exchange, put on a mask. There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.
You can take away a man's political freedom and you won't hurt him -- unless you take away his freedom to feel. That can destroy him.

Lizzie: But how can anyone else have the power to take away from your freedom to feel?

Jim: Some people surrender their freedom willingly--but others are forced to surrender it. Imprisonment begins with birth. Society, parents; they refuse to allow you to keep the freedom you are born with. There are subtle ways to punish a person for daring to feel. You see that everyone around you has destroyed his true feeling nature. You imitate what you see.

Lizzie: Are you saying that we are, in effect, brought up to defend and perpetuate a society that deprives people of the freedom to feel?

Jim: Sure ... teachers, religious leaders-even friends, or so-called friends -- take over where the parents leave off. They demand that we feel the only feelings they want and expect from us. They demand all the time that we preform feelings for them. We're like actors-turned loose in this world to wander in search of a phantom ... endlessly searching for a half-forgotten shadow of our lost reality. When others demand that we become the people they want us to be, they force us to destroy the person we really are. It's a subtle kind of murder ... the most loving parents and relatives commit this murder with smiles on their faces.

Lizzie: Do you think it's possible for an individual to free himself from these repressive forces on his own -- all alone?
Jim: That kind of freedom can't be granted. Nobody can win it for you. You have to do it on your own. If you look to somebody else to do it for you -- somebody outside yourself -- you're still depending on others. You're still vulnerable to those repressive, evil outside forces, too.

Lizzie: But isn't it possible for people who want that freedom to unite -- to combine their strength, maybe just to strengthen each other? It must be possible.

Jim: Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself-and especially to feel. Or not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to -- letting a person be what he really is ... Most people love you for who you pretend to be ... To keep their love, you keep pretending -- preforming. You get to love your pretence ... It's true, we're locked in an image, an act -- and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image -- they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forgot all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it -- they feel like you're trying to steal their most precious possession.

Lizzie: It's ironic -- it's sad. Can't they see that what you're trying to show them is the way to freedom?

Jim: Most people have no idea what they're missing. Or society places a supreme value on control -- hiding what you feel. Our culture mocks "primitive cultures" and prides itself on suppression of natural instincts and impulses.

Lizze: In some of your poetry, you openly admire and praise primitive people -- Indians, for instance. Do you mean that it's not human beings in general but our particular society that's flawed and destructive?

Jim: Look at how other cultures live --peacefully, in harmony with the earth, the forest -- animals. They don't build war machines and invest millions of dollars in attacking other countries whose political ideals don't happen to agree with their own.

Lizze: We live in a sick society.

Jim: It's true ... and part of the disease is not being aware that we're diseased ... Our society has too much to hold on to, and value -- freedom ends up at the bottom of the list.

Lizze: But isn't there something an artist con do? If you didn't feel you, as an artist, could accomplish something, how could you go on?

Jim: I offer images -- I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached -- like The Doors, right? But we can only open the doors -- we can't drag people through. I can't free them unless they want to be free -- more than anything else ... Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up. A person has to be willing to give up everything -- not just wealth. All the bullshit he's been taught -- all society brainwashing. You have to let go of all that to get to the other side. Most people aren't willing to do that.


Friday 18 December 2015

Reflections on Death



Recently I was fortunate enough to spend a few weeks in Tasmania with my beautiful husband and a few old friends. Like most visitors to Tasmania we favoured the natural environment and spent several days exploring some of Tassie’s pristine forests. It was after one such visit that these thought came to me …….

What is this thing we call death? Is there even such a thing? Or have we been duped into believing in ‘death’ because of the fear and lack of faith in others? Every day we confront ‘death’ in some way.  Most days we are so detuned from ‘death’ that we don’t even notice it until it touches us personally in a deep and unavoidable way.

Our cat catches a mouse and tortures it before killing it to eat. Dead animals litter the shoulders of our highways, victims of this fast-paced life we live.  A bug lands on our skin and we swipe at it intent on killing it. The wood we use in our fireplaces was once a vibrant living tree providing shelter and possibly food for many creatures. 

But is there really such a thing as death? Or is death simply a means of transformation, an opportunity for growth in a different direction?

Whilst we were exploring the many beautiful natural wonders of Tasmania I noticed that everywhere we went life was abundant and beautiful.  In the Franklin-Gordon Wilderness Area we came across the remains of an ancient Huon pine. Some would say that this tree was ‘dead’. It certainly wasn’t living in the form that most would identify as a Huon pine. And yet the remains of this magnificent old tree – hundreds of years old – was bursting with life.  Over 160 species of trees and plants have now been identified as emerging and thriving in the remnants of what once was an ancient giant of the forest.

So is this tree dead? Or has it simply been transformed into something new?  It is certainly providing a fertile bed for a vibrant and diverse colony of life.  The evidence is there for all to see.  So is this tree ‘dead’?

And what about those unfortunate animals which have fallen prey to our fast paced lifestyle and become road kill? Their remains are now transformed into food for the many scavengers which are drawn to the freshly killed carcasses. Without these scavengers we would by now be buried beneath the burden of our own waste, our own carelessness.

But the forest provides the clearest example of the cycles of life, of ‘death’ and rebirth. A tree fallen in a wild storm crashes to the forest floor where it begins the process of rebirth. It is no longer the magnificent tree that it once was as it reached for the warmth of the sunlight.  It has now reached its lowest point and it slowly begins its transformation into something else, something potentially more beautiful, lighter, and more vibrant. 

As time passes this ‘dead’ tree becomes host to a multitude of living organisms – fungi, lichen, moss, insects, grubs, each one working in tandem with the others to transform the tree into something more beautiful than it was before. Eventually this fallen tree will support the continuation of growth and life of all around it.  So has the tree really died or is it simply being transformed?

We are generally afraid of death because change makes us feel uncomfortable.  Think of a time in your life when you were forced to change? A job redundancy, marriage, the arrival of children, moving out of home, illness, travel to a foreign country and so on. How did that feel? And did you emerge from this changed circumstance (whatever it might have been) exactly the same as before or had you changed in some way?  Change makes us feel uncomfortable but it almost always leads to growth if we let it. For most this growth will be in a positive direction but some get stuck in old patterns and growth either stops or reverses in a negative direction. The choice is up to the individual.

Change is all around us.  It is the one constant thing in this world.  Every day every one of us witnesses dozens of small changes – from the way we have brushed our hair, the clothes we wear, the direction of the breeze, the ever changing skyscape.  Change is all around us. Everyday. And yet when it comes to the biggest change of all, ‘death’, we become frozen. Often paralysed by fear of the unknown.  But isn’t God trying to show us through our natural environment that there is no such thing as ‘death’?

In order for us to understand this concept we must be able to acknowledge that we are not who we think we are.  We are not our physical body.  We are a soul having a physical experience. Many religious philosophies teach this. And yet if we truly believed this we would also have to acknowledge that the ‘death’ of the physical body simply marks a transition to a lighter and more ethereal existence.  Of course, the big problem with acknowledging this is that the ‘death’ of the physical body necessitates change. The person whose physical body has decayed and ‘died’ must get used to residing in a lighter form. And unless they were particularly tuned to this more ethereal existence prior to their ‘death’ they will have difficulty communicating with those left behind, especially if their loved ones have not yet developed the ability to communicate across the great divide. The person who has ‘died’ now has an opportunity to learn and grow in a different direction and perhaps be transformed into something with far greater potential that previously imagined.

Perhaps for us ‘death’ is like the tree which has fallen in the forest.  We have now reached our lowest point and must learn to surrender to the process, to the truth of the universe around us, in order to learn and grow and eventually transform into something potentially much grander and greater than we ever would have imagined possible. Like that grand old Huon pine in the forests of Tasmania, we all have the opportunity to allow ‘death’ to transform us into something greater that we ever thought we could be. But to do this we must be willing to surrender everything we thought we knew about ourselves. And we must be willing to learn to see ourselves through God’s eyes, will all of our potential and promise. Then we must be willing to let go and let God show us the way forward.  And who knows where he will lead us? And we can begin this process long before the ‘death’ of the physical body.


Death is not the end.  It is simply a new beginning.  Nature shows us this every day.  All around us.  We just need to wake up and pay attention.

With the end of the year fast approaching perhaps now is an appropriate time to reflect upon our own feelings about 'death' and ask ourselves "What 'death' am I wanting to face before the new year begins? What 'death' must I face in order for new opportunities to bloom and thrive in the coming year?"