"The universe as we know it is a joint product of the observer and the observed." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
THE OBSERVER
My monthly observations on matters of interest.
Any observations in return from out there would be welcome:
[email protected]
May, 2021 - Another Observer
I was recently at a dinner party. Good friends and acquaintances. Friendly banter all around. Then, without manipulation, the conversation moved into the field of spirituality. Basically the difference between the concepts of spirituality and religion. There were six conversationalists. We had an atheist, a traditional keen church goer, a struggling Buddhist, a protégée of Rudolph Steiner, a fence sitter and his companion who was still being swayed by the possibilities presented in any decent spiritually-based debate. In a perfect world we could have combined the evident truths in each person’s viewpoint to reach a consensus. Examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth. This never eventuated. One because we only had inadequate words to explain to each other what each had learnt over decades of research, for want of a better word. Nothing to convey a description of intuition and its crucial input into each personal search for meaning. Second our opinions were still bound to guesswork. The mechanics of the Unknown are extremely elusive at the best of times. Thirdly our concepts were ours alone rendering them impossible to share beyond a vague agreement that the concepts offered were to be respected but not necessarily accepted as fact. Each participant approached the debate from a point within their own experiences of exploration. As we know opinions formed in that process are often hit-and-miss at the best of times with the occasional bullseye success. So it was a meandering discussion which became quite heated at times due to frustration as each participant failed to convince or even sway those around them. The dinner party ended with frustration hanging in the air. So, having accepted the dubious success rates of such debates, I have turned to my guest Observer for his opinion. Being the struggling Buddhist at the gathering, I’m grateful for the insight.
“Why are Buddhists specifically instructed not to thrust their beliefs at other people or to declare, ‘I have discovered the best way of life and if you don’t follow it as well, you are lost.’? According to Buddha’s teachings, this approach is both unskillful and unrealistic. When someone has a profound experience, be it disastrous or fantastically blissful, it is a completely unique and personal event. It is foolish to think that an account of such a private experience will be as meaningful to another as the experience was to oneself. Even if we tell our best friend what we have discovered, it is still impossible to convey the true essence of our experience to him. Since what we are saying is necessarily expressed through words and concepts, even a very sympathetic friend will probably not grasp exactly what we want him to feel. True communication on spiritual matters is very difficult.
What this shows is that we are all living quite different lives from one another. Though we may share similar patterns of perception and behaviour, our internal experiences are unique and highly individual. We each live in the private universe of our own mind. Consequently, any attempt to force our spiritual convictions on others or share with them our devotional experiences—which, if genuine, are always of such an intensely personal nature—is misguided and can easily end in frustration and misunderstanding.
Buddha showed that there are both proper and improper times to give teachings. He always waited until he was sincerely asked before giving instruction. He knew that the very act of making a formal decision to seek help and then requesting it creates an energy within those seeking the truth that prepares them to listen intently, not merely with their ears but with their hearts as well. This is a far more effective approach than giving teachings to students who are not yet ready. In other words, the students need space. If they are not given the chance to create that space within themselves—if they are not prepared to meet the teacher halfway by opening themselves up to receiving spiritual instruction—the essence of the teachings will never penetrate their minds.”
Lama Yeshe
California, 1978
I was recently at a dinner party. Good friends and acquaintances. Friendly banter all around. Then, without manipulation, the conversation moved into the field of spirituality. Basically the difference between the concepts of spirituality and religion. There were six conversationalists. We had an atheist, a traditional keen church goer, a struggling Buddhist, a protégée of Rudolph Steiner, a fence sitter and his companion who was still being swayed by the possibilities presented in any decent spiritually-based debate. In a perfect world we could have combined the evident truths in each person’s viewpoint to reach a consensus. Examining and discussing opposing ideas in order to find the truth. This never eventuated. One because we only had inadequate words to explain to each other what each had learnt over decades of research, for want of a better word. Nothing to convey a description of intuition and its crucial input into each personal search for meaning. Second our opinions were still bound to guesswork. The mechanics of the Unknown are extremely elusive at the best of times. Thirdly our concepts were ours alone rendering them impossible to share beyond a vague agreement that the concepts offered were to be respected but not necessarily accepted as fact. Each participant approached the debate from a point within their own experiences of exploration. As we know opinions formed in that process are often hit-and-miss at the best of times with the occasional bullseye success. So it was a meandering discussion which became quite heated at times due to frustration as each participant failed to convince or even sway those around them. The dinner party ended with frustration hanging in the air. So, having accepted the dubious success rates of such debates, I have turned to my guest Observer for his opinion. Being the struggling Buddhist at the gathering, I’m grateful for the insight.
“Why are Buddhists specifically instructed not to thrust their beliefs at other people or to declare, ‘I have discovered the best way of life and if you don’t follow it as well, you are lost.’? According to Buddha’s teachings, this approach is both unskillful and unrealistic. When someone has a profound experience, be it disastrous or fantastically blissful, it is a completely unique and personal event. It is foolish to think that an account of such a private experience will be as meaningful to another as the experience was to oneself. Even if we tell our best friend what we have discovered, it is still impossible to convey the true essence of our experience to him. Since what we are saying is necessarily expressed through words and concepts, even a very sympathetic friend will probably not grasp exactly what we want him to feel. True communication on spiritual matters is very difficult.
What this shows is that we are all living quite different lives from one another. Though we may share similar patterns of perception and behaviour, our internal experiences are unique and highly individual. We each live in the private universe of our own mind. Consequently, any attempt to force our spiritual convictions on others or share with them our devotional experiences—which, if genuine, are always of such an intensely personal nature—is misguided and can easily end in frustration and misunderstanding.
Buddha showed that there are both proper and improper times to give teachings. He always waited until he was sincerely asked before giving instruction. He knew that the very act of making a formal decision to seek help and then requesting it creates an energy within those seeking the truth that prepares them to listen intently, not merely with their ears but with their hearts as well. This is a far more effective approach than giving teachings to students who are not yet ready. In other words, the students need space. If they are not given the chance to create that space within themselves—if they are not prepared to meet the teacher halfway by opening themselves up to receiving spiritual instruction—the essence of the teachings will never penetrate their minds.”
Lama Yeshe
California, 1978
April, 2022 – Writing a Book – My Conclusions.
(The Final Entry)
When I started out writing my observations some six years ago, I was lead by an insatiable curiosity. This was a curiosity, a yearning, borne out of trauma. The trauma, of course, being a drastic cancer diagnosis. It is well documented in my observations that I elected to take a particular path in order to both understand the genesis of my ailment and, hopefully, find a healing process that would sustain itself in my remaining years. So, I set out to save myself both physically and spiritually. This necessitated a close examination of myself, my context in the world I inhabited, the structure of the material world which surrounded me and, finally, an examination of that world which is so elusive, mysterious and eternal – the spiritual realm. I hoped to combine my knowledge of those components of my existence into a cogent whole.
At first it was truly a journey of wonder. Initially, I collected an assortment of bits and pieces of information. All like the differing shapes that make up a jigsaw puzzle. All adding to what, I hoped, would be a completed big picture. I felt the mystery, I sensed the presence of the unknown, I savoured each and every glimpse of “something” beyond. There is no doubt that I was sustained by the knowledge gained. Then, slowly, I began to be overwhelmed by an ever increasing number of jigsaw pieces. In short, the more I collected the harder it came to finding their correct place in my construction. In other words, the more I learnt, the less I knew. Many of my jigsaw pieces of knowledge were no longer part of the “big picture.” This “big picture” was constantly reinventing itself and, to my dismay, some pieces became redundant negating any insertion into the puzzle. I awoke, it seemed, each day to a fresh pile of pieces that called out for my attention. I was now confused by the validity of my pieces – were they necessary or unnecessary? It became patently obvious that the problem lay in “the more I learnt, the less I knew.” I was trying to construct a concrete concept out of a mystery that has intrigued, tormented and confused mankind for all of its existence. I was trying to understand the complexity of the unknown by trying to “know” it. This could not be sustained.
As an immature pilgrim, a novice, a child, I started to resent the spiritual because I felt I had been led into a spiritual ambush. Led by hope to a position where I was stripped of an honest and worthy intent and abandoned. I now experienced doubt in its purest form. A loss of faith. I started to surrender to inertia. I thought about a hasty retreat. But, something, some energy, wouldn’t let go. It insisted on a reevaluation. My intuition told me that a retreat wasn’t such a bad idea. But not a retreat from progress but, instead, a journey, backwards so to speak, into doubt. To do so I had to explore its origin. The past.
I decided to write a memoir in which I would re-examine the past without prejudice. Back to long before my birth. To my ancestors and then on to my parent’s stories then to my story. To see if my present angst was a necessary component of the present, the Now. That the doubt was vital to progress. I hoped to find in the past a logical progression from there to here. That all that once was necessary, essential, existed so that that which is “now” can itself exist. A connectedness. I laid aside exploring the unknown and pursued myself. For, I believed, to understand yourself through a fearless examination, would hold the answer to the difference between a “spiritual ambush” and a spiritual intervention. I wrote a book. It took four years to do so. I finished it a few weeks ago. It was painful, uplifting and exasperating but what I learnt was invaluable. What did I learn?
I found out that the “something/energy” that drove my questioning existed before I was even aware of its existence. There was always something there when I needed it. It was by my side as I stood in the direct path of a fiery, crashing aircraft. It was there when a crazed individual attacked me with his axe. When my psyche was overwhelmed by a psychedelic drug overdose and madness was a distinct possibility. When the full force of a vehicular head-on crushed and mutilated the fragility that was my body. When the doctors told me that amputation was the only logical course in their considered opinion. When a mysterious ailment attacked me, reducing me to such a weakened state that I could not conceive any recovery. When I was determined to have an aggressive life-ending cancer. That energy was also there when all of these incidents revealed hidden avenues of escape and healing. The direct opposite of angst being solace, comfort and calmness in the face of adversity. This “something unknown” was also present in my ancestral line. In the very DNA that had passed from generation to generation. It was clearly visible in the form of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother, Kezia Brown, as she encountered and overcame the horrors of the 2nd Fleet’s ship, the Neptune. I have always had a guide, sometimes highly visible, sometimes at the periphery of events. This force, for want of a better word, led me through my past into the Now. So, through good times and bad times, I could see the pattern, the blueprint - The Big Picture. All that happened, had to happen in order that I could progress. And that creative force is an on-going and ever present necessity in my scheme of things. I could now see that was no need to ever consider a spiritual deviance when it came to my existence, past or present.
I learnt other lessons. That the past, upon examination, can be an illusion. Even though you have lived it, and no one else, and you consider you remember it well, that assertion will be challenged when the past is fearlessly scrutinised. You then find that it is a collection of memories of memories. Each memory diluted by the memory that replaces it. Some parts have also been subconsciously edited and reinvented to suit one’s perception. The Ego refuses some components a voice as they challenge either a present self-image or hide guilt, shame or worse. In writing my book I had to patiently probe at certain recollections til their true essence was revealed. Sometimes the person that you once were emerges as a totally unsympathetic character. At times I lost respect for that character. But I could always see that that character’s development, good or bad, was crucial. If, for instance, I hadn’t done that bad deed, I would have never learnt its lesson or the benefit and gained wisdom from rectifying its negativity. The positive disintegration.
Another lesson was the inadequacy of words to describe the spiritual path. Here we are faced with a path that has to transcend a minefield of personalised concepts, ideas and poorly formed opinions. All powered by words. Twenty-six letters to explain universal mysteries. To explain the power of a moment of pure insight where the cage of normality is rattled. To describe an adequate image of god in whatever form, the writer is often left speechless when attempting to create a verbal picture. I struggled with the use of words as I tried to create mental images of my life. I learnt that words are sometimes useless in conveying the essence of the spiritual experience and that my words would only have an impact if they directly related to the reader’s own personal experience and interpretation of that world in which he or she lives. So, if my words appealed to the universality of the human condition, fear, doubt, confusion etc, then they could be absorbed and applied to the reader’s own worldview. If not, my words were useless. But, as we know, words are all we have and rather than dismiss their use we have to compromise. My only advice: if words intuitively relate to your path then learn from them but be aware that one can get imprisoned by words when they assume the guise of concepts, ideas and theories that are adopted by the receiver as definite truths and, consequently, one’s developing wisdom can be surrendered to another’s thoughts and opinions. If that wasn’t a truth then there would be no more war and peace on earth would dominate our natural state of being.
Finally I learnt the power, inspiration, sacredness of creativity. It is imperative to be creative in one’s existence. All creation is spiritual. When I was first diagnosed I entered a state of suspended animation. My world contracted. The external disappeared. All that was left was a solitary being poised on the edge of a new existence. It was a lonely place. When your mortality is measured out in a simple equation – 60 months at the best til the inevitable – then everything that once “was” loses its momentum, crawls to a stop and surrenders its relevance. All the tools of communication the “old you” employed to convey or receive one’s perceived notion of reality are distorted by a fact that is brutal in its truth. You have cancer with all of its mental, physical and spiritual twists and turns. No matter your previous belief system, you are now in a no-man’s-land not of your own making. (To be fair, this doesn’t apply to all sentient beings. There are some so strong in faith that any calamity, minor or apocalyptic, is endured, even solved, by the wisdom of a resolute belief system.) But the majority are not so lucky. Myself included. I sat and sat. Immobile. Then, I heard an inner voice. “Stop thinking, listen.” And so I did. “If you want to talk to me. To communicate. You have to open the lines. You have to be creative. Your immediate medium has to be music.” I had at my disposal the only avenue that I could use with any assurance of success. Music. Music opened the door and I walked through. Later came the book. We all have an avenue of creativity to use to speak to that which is eternal, within and without. All the art forms, community interaction through the application of one’s abilities, down to the most basic of activities such as gardening. Anything that involves inspiration from a sensed, rather than visible, source. We live in a universe that is still creating itself. It is still expanding. We are part of that expansion. We can access that energy. But, we have to be creative to do so. Writing my book took me into that realm and it saved me from the illusion that obscures our reasoning.
If you are in the same position that I found myself in then I hope that you do not curl up into a small ball of fear but rather gather together your strengths and explore all the possibilities. Possibilities are endless and that is a great gift from the intelligence that surrounds us.
(The Final Entry)
When I started out writing my observations some six years ago, I was lead by an insatiable curiosity. This was a curiosity, a yearning, borne out of trauma. The trauma, of course, being a drastic cancer diagnosis. It is well documented in my observations that I elected to take a particular path in order to both understand the genesis of my ailment and, hopefully, find a healing process that would sustain itself in my remaining years. So, I set out to save myself both physically and spiritually. This necessitated a close examination of myself, my context in the world I inhabited, the structure of the material world which surrounded me and, finally, an examination of that world which is so elusive, mysterious and eternal – the spiritual realm. I hoped to combine my knowledge of those components of my existence into a cogent whole.
At first it was truly a journey of wonder. Initially, I collected an assortment of bits and pieces of information. All like the differing shapes that make up a jigsaw puzzle. All adding to what, I hoped, would be a completed big picture. I felt the mystery, I sensed the presence of the unknown, I savoured each and every glimpse of “something” beyond. There is no doubt that I was sustained by the knowledge gained. Then, slowly, I began to be overwhelmed by an ever increasing number of jigsaw pieces. In short, the more I collected the harder it came to finding their correct place in my construction. In other words, the more I learnt, the less I knew. Many of my jigsaw pieces of knowledge were no longer part of the “big picture.” This “big picture” was constantly reinventing itself and, to my dismay, some pieces became redundant negating any insertion into the puzzle. I awoke, it seemed, each day to a fresh pile of pieces that called out for my attention. I was now confused by the validity of my pieces – were they necessary or unnecessary? It became patently obvious that the problem lay in “the more I learnt, the less I knew.” I was trying to construct a concrete concept out of a mystery that has intrigued, tormented and confused mankind for all of its existence. I was trying to understand the complexity of the unknown by trying to “know” it. This could not be sustained.
As an immature pilgrim, a novice, a child, I started to resent the spiritual because I felt I had been led into a spiritual ambush. Led by hope to a position where I was stripped of an honest and worthy intent and abandoned. I now experienced doubt in its purest form. A loss of faith. I started to surrender to inertia. I thought about a hasty retreat. But, something, some energy, wouldn’t let go. It insisted on a reevaluation. My intuition told me that a retreat wasn’t such a bad idea. But not a retreat from progress but, instead, a journey, backwards so to speak, into doubt. To do so I had to explore its origin. The past.
I decided to write a memoir in which I would re-examine the past without prejudice. Back to long before my birth. To my ancestors and then on to my parent’s stories then to my story. To see if my present angst was a necessary component of the present, the Now. That the doubt was vital to progress. I hoped to find in the past a logical progression from there to here. That all that once was necessary, essential, existed so that that which is “now” can itself exist. A connectedness. I laid aside exploring the unknown and pursued myself. For, I believed, to understand yourself through a fearless examination, would hold the answer to the difference between a “spiritual ambush” and a spiritual intervention. I wrote a book. It took four years to do so. I finished it a few weeks ago. It was painful, uplifting and exasperating but what I learnt was invaluable. What did I learn?
I found out that the “something/energy” that drove my questioning existed before I was even aware of its existence. There was always something there when I needed it. It was by my side as I stood in the direct path of a fiery, crashing aircraft. It was there when a crazed individual attacked me with his axe. When my psyche was overwhelmed by a psychedelic drug overdose and madness was a distinct possibility. When the full force of a vehicular head-on crushed and mutilated the fragility that was my body. When the doctors told me that amputation was the only logical course in their considered opinion. When a mysterious ailment attacked me, reducing me to such a weakened state that I could not conceive any recovery. When I was determined to have an aggressive life-ending cancer. That energy was also there when all of these incidents revealed hidden avenues of escape and healing. The direct opposite of angst being solace, comfort and calmness in the face of adversity. This “something unknown” was also present in my ancestral line. In the very DNA that had passed from generation to generation. It was clearly visible in the form of my Great-Great-Great Grandmother, Kezia Brown, as she encountered and overcame the horrors of the 2nd Fleet’s ship, the Neptune. I have always had a guide, sometimes highly visible, sometimes at the periphery of events. This force, for want of a better word, led me through my past into the Now. So, through good times and bad times, I could see the pattern, the blueprint - The Big Picture. All that happened, had to happen in order that I could progress. And that creative force is an on-going and ever present necessity in my scheme of things. I could now see that was no need to ever consider a spiritual deviance when it came to my existence, past or present.
I learnt other lessons. That the past, upon examination, can be an illusion. Even though you have lived it, and no one else, and you consider you remember it well, that assertion will be challenged when the past is fearlessly scrutinised. You then find that it is a collection of memories of memories. Each memory diluted by the memory that replaces it. Some parts have also been subconsciously edited and reinvented to suit one’s perception. The Ego refuses some components a voice as they challenge either a present self-image or hide guilt, shame or worse. In writing my book I had to patiently probe at certain recollections til their true essence was revealed. Sometimes the person that you once were emerges as a totally unsympathetic character. At times I lost respect for that character. But I could always see that that character’s development, good or bad, was crucial. If, for instance, I hadn’t done that bad deed, I would have never learnt its lesson or the benefit and gained wisdom from rectifying its negativity. The positive disintegration.
Another lesson was the inadequacy of words to describe the spiritual path. Here we are faced with a path that has to transcend a minefield of personalised concepts, ideas and poorly formed opinions. All powered by words. Twenty-six letters to explain universal mysteries. To explain the power of a moment of pure insight where the cage of normality is rattled. To describe an adequate image of god in whatever form, the writer is often left speechless when attempting to create a verbal picture. I struggled with the use of words as I tried to create mental images of my life. I learnt that words are sometimes useless in conveying the essence of the spiritual experience and that my words would only have an impact if they directly related to the reader’s own personal experience and interpretation of that world in which he or she lives. So, if my words appealed to the universality of the human condition, fear, doubt, confusion etc, then they could be absorbed and applied to the reader’s own worldview. If not, my words were useless. But, as we know, words are all we have and rather than dismiss their use we have to compromise. My only advice: if words intuitively relate to your path then learn from them but be aware that one can get imprisoned by words when they assume the guise of concepts, ideas and theories that are adopted by the receiver as definite truths and, consequently, one’s developing wisdom can be surrendered to another’s thoughts and opinions. If that wasn’t a truth then there would be no more war and peace on earth would dominate our natural state of being.
Finally I learnt the power, inspiration, sacredness of creativity. It is imperative to be creative in one’s existence. All creation is spiritual. When I was first diagnosed I entered a state of suspended animation. My world contracted. The external disappeared. All that was left was a solitary being poised on the edge of a new existence. It was a lonely place. When your mortality is measured out in a simple equation – 60 months at the best til the inevitable – then everything that once “was” loses its momentum, crawls to a stop and surrenders its relevance. All the tools of communication the “old you” employed to convey or receive one’s perceived notion of reality are distorted by a fact that is brutal in its truth. You have cancer with all of its mental, physical and spiritual twists and turns. No matter your previous belief system, you are now in a no-man’s-land not of your own making. (To be fair, this doesn’t apply to all sentient beings. There are some so strong in faith that any calamity, minor or apocalyptic, is endured, even solved, by the wisdom of a resolute belief system.) But the majority are not so lucky. Myself included. I sat and sat. Immobile. Then, I heard an inner voice. “Stop thinking, listen.” And so I did. “If you want to talk to me. To communicate. You have to open the lines. You have to be creative. Your immediate medium has to be music.” I had at my disposal the only avenue that I could use with any assurance of success. Music. Music opened the door and I walked through. Later came the book. We all have an avenue of creativity to use to speak to that which is eternal, within and without. All the art forms, community interaction through the application of one’s abilities, down to the most basic of activities such as gardening. Anything that involves inspiration from a sensed, rather than visible, source. We live in a universe that is still creating itself. It is still expanding. We are part of that expansion. We can access that energy. But, we have to be creative to do so. Writing my book took me into that realm and it saved me from the illusion that obscures our reasoning.
If you are in the same position that I found myself in then I hope that you do not curl up into a small ball of fear but rather gather together your strengths and explore all the possibilities. Possibilities are endless and that is a great gift from the intelligence that surrounds us.
March, 2022 – Getting to Know Your "Ism"
If you are searching for answers within the belief system of your choice then it is imperative that you explore the source that will provide those answers. From there you will examine the validity of the insight gained so as to determine your context within that Ism’s spiritual structure. You are vital to the context, it is vital to your sense of participation in your belief system. Why ask questions of a source that you find, upon investigation, has origins that has manufactured answers built around ulterior motives rather than spiritual considerations? Which brings us to the heart of this exploration. If you are Buddhist, Christian, Jewish or a follower of any one of the seemingly endless “isms” available, then it is your responsibility to explore the origins of your belief system without prejudice. You must be fearless. You can’t just accept on blind faith. Why? Because, in many cases, you are accepting a man-made reinterpretation of an ancient spirituality. One that has carefully crafted to mislead and confuse. One that has created an idea of God to suit the purpose of its creation. An appropriate God for the environment, be it of a cultural, political or religious necessity, established to regulate and control our natural human yearning for the spiritual by reducing it to a set of laws and doctrines determined by institutions that wanted to reinvent the past to suit each institution’s objectives. So, we must look to that time in our civilization’s timeline when the “idea” of God became an earth-bound construct followed by that idea’s personification. Ready-made to be placed within hierarchical institutions. I will concentrate on the Christian church.
There is no doubt early Christianity was a hodgepodge of conflicting interpretations of Jesus and his place in the evolving world of Christianity. And, before written text, the oral practice of passing on the Word of Jesus saw the message distorted and, often misinterpreted, as it suffered the inconsistency and unreliability of being confined to the vehicle of “word of mouth.” Roman persecution didn’t help as it forced secrecy as a necessity for the oral tradition to survive. A consequence is that the word of God manifested through Jesus was atomised, meaning it was hidden in the backrooms of widespread communities. It was widespread but it was, at the same time, isolated within obscure locations. With no shared communal interaction, what one faction thought and believed wasn’t necessarily practised by the city or town further on down the road. The introduction of written text was a unifying factor in Christianity’s evolution as it provided a focal point. There was still a lack of harmony as atomised church leaders, still partially bound to a fading oral tradition, rejected or approved the written text according to personal interpretations arrived at before the written text surfaced. There was clearly a need to trim the branches, so to speak, so a universal structure of belief could be established. But, before such a structure could be constructed, the prevailing belief system would have to accept such a radical move. The persecuted church would have to have to find a sympathetic figure, preferably in a position of power, to enable a compromise that, hopefully, would promise a future for Christianity.
Enter the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Constantine was committed to uniting both the fledgling Christian world and the fading Pagan belief system. He had to move from the barbaric Colosseum to the cross on the hill utilising an astute political nous. A daunting task in which a polytheistic civilization (the Roman empire), in which multiple gods and goddesses were worshipped, was replaced by the one true God. A Christian God. One that had to be reinvented to suit the opposing Isms. What prompted Constantine to initiate this process, be it political, spiritual or personal religious beliefs, is open to conjecture. Nonetheless, he outlawed all persecution and set about to forge a unified empire. A unified empire was a necessity for harmony – political as well as religious. But what to compromise between the two opposing cultures? This necessitated an agreement between both belief systems so that they could exist as a unified entity. Constantine initiated the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, calling together Christian bishops to establish one concrete fact beyond dispute being the Council’s definitive interpretation of Jesus/God. After vigorous debate between the factions that still haunted Christianity, the collective voted into existence their “idea” of God. Their concept. Gone was the reasoning that God created Jesus, who emerged at a particular point in time, to be replaced by the notion that Jesus was God and, as thus, was an eternal entity. One God, one Church. The Roman Empire’s Church. With that status it was free to wield its power in any manner that suited its ideological agenda including persecution of the non-believer, the heretic or any opposition deemed dangerous by the established orthodoxy. From 435 CE onwards the Church had legal permission to kill in the name of their God. One initiative was left: to appease the Pagans so that their beliefs weren’t totally lost within Constantine’s Christianity.
There are clearly visible remnants of the old Pagan ways in today’s Christian structure. We have Easter. Pre-Christian cultures made this date a celebration of the awakening of nature from Winter’s deep sleep – the Spring Equinox. The Council of Nicaea declared it should fall on the first full moon after the Equinox and saw as it as a perfect date to celebrate another rebirth – the resurrection after death of Jesus. The two spiritual belief systems merged. Christmas was a Winter Solstice celebration. It celebrated the end of the year’s harvest and, free of hard labour, Pagan worshippers could devote themselves to praising their various gods and to their families and friends. The Pagans set aside the 25th of December as the birthday of Horus - the Solar God. The Christians set it aside as the birth date of Jesus. It is argued in some circles that Jesus’s birth was in June. They argue that pregnancies were initiated in Autumn (September to November) following the completion of the harvesting season. There was free time to devote to the forthcoming baby and also enough revenue had been generated to pay for weddings and the feasts that accompanied that celebration. Christmas was also a Roman celebration – Saturnalia. Saturn was urged to return the daylight after the Winter Solstice. Any research into Pagan influences within Christianity will reveal a deep well of evidence – be it in Pagan artistic symbolism (cupids, sheep and shepherds, the reading of scrolls), or theology (The idea that people have immortal souls was first taught in ancient Egypt. The Greeks likewise taught that at death the soul would separate from the physical body. That idea was adopted by Christianity from Greek philosophy. It did not come from inspired Scripture. Source UCG.org – Paganism in Christianity.) An intriguing conversion of an ancient “idea” of God to accommodate the reinvented Jesus/God is to be found in the myth of Mithra.
To enter into the debate that the “idea” of Jesus is based on an ancient deity , Mithra, is to step into controversy. Jesus is defended with vigour. Scholars have pulled the following conjecture apart piece by piece til Jesus is assured of his uniqueness. After all Jesus was adopted at Nicaea as an eternal entity which meant he preceded any earthly deity and has continued long after the majority of earthbound deities have disappeared within the passage of time. But our investigation is only interested in the Roman Empire and its conversion to Christianity. Mithra was the God of Light in ancient Iranian mythology – the centrepiece deity of that culture’s belief system – Zorastrianism. Zoroastrianism is recognised as the world’s oldest organised religion predating Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The Roman empire never embraced Zoroastrianism but it did appreciate and adopt aspects of its belief system namely Mithraism. Mithra became known as Mithras to the Romans. The Zoroastrians saw Mithra as the Protector of the Empire and to serve him was to proclaim loyalty to the Emperor. This belief was likely brought back to Rome via the armed forces returning from the Eastern battlefields such as Syria and Parthia (modern-day Iran). They also bought back Mithra’s myth which is disturbingly familiar:
Birthdate: December 25th in the presence of shepherds,
Born of a virgin,
Accompanied by 12 companions,
Performed miracles,
Believed to be a messiah,
Rose from the dead 3 days after his death,
Promised eternal life
The main celebration of Mithra was held during the Spring Equinox.
So, I believe, Mithra was absorbed into the nascent Roman Christian culture as a placation directed at the Pagan elements of the empire. It was a political move. The Christian fathers accepted this merging of two identities as it was a necessary compromise built around survival. Scholars be damned, let’s do what is necessary and leave the debate for another day. Time proved Mithra’s main adversary. As the Pagan ways faded so did the existence of this old God. Jesus was the last deity standing. But, as explorers of our individual belief systems, some aspects of Jesus’s true identity are clouded in the mists of antiquity. What belongs to Mithra and what belongs to Jesus? And, now, the big question – does it matter? You have examined your belief’s origin and have found it was constructed by a politically-motivated forum. It was man-made. You look for divine intervention in the process and all you find is a compromise between cultures. Is this the end of your faith? No, because what you believe is based on faith and faith is acceptance of the unseen, the unproven, the unknown, knowing that which is hidden is true to you. It is what you believe. This yearning for answers that relate to your journey should transcend the Isms that have sought to control and manipulate over the centuries. This is why it is important to know the mechanics of the belief system that you follow. Maybe it is time to move on, beyond, out where the mystery exists unhindered. Basho, the 17th-century Japanese haiku master, says: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought.”
From our investigation it is clear the “idea” of Jesus/God was entrenched long before the Christian or even the Roman worlds evolved. The truth is it was never an “idea,” it was an elemental part of existence. Eternal and persistent. To become aware, enlightened of this truth, necessitates investigation of concepts and ideas and compromises constructed by institutions and hierarchies. To expose their limitations, indeed their complete lack of authority, in such matters. Spirituality is not theirs to exploit for advantage. And, you, the explorer will not know this truth unless you are fearless and look deep into exactly what you believe.
If you are searching for answers within the belief system of your choice then it is imperative that you explore the source that will provide those answers. From there you will examine the validity of the insight gained so as to determine your context within that Ism’s spiritual structure. You are vital to the context, it is vital to your sense of participation in your belief system. Why ask questions of a source that you find, upon investigation, has origins that has manufactured answers built around ulterior motives rather than spiritual considerations? Which brings us to the heart of this exploration. If you are Buddhist, Christian, Jewish or a follower of any one of the seemingly endless “isms” available, then it is your responsibility to explore the origins of your belief system without prejudice. You must be fearless. You can’t just accept on blind faith. Why? Because, in many cases, you are accepting a man-made reinterpretation of an ancient spirituality. One that has carefully crafted to mislead and confuse. One that has created an idea of God to suit the purpose of its creation. An appropriate God for the environment, be it of a cultural, political or religious necessity, established to regulate and control our natural human yearning for the spiritual by reducing it to a set of laws and doctrines determined by institutions that wanted to reinvent the past to suit each institution’s objectives. So, we must look to that time in our civilization’s timeline when the “idea” of God became an earth-bound construct followed by that idea’s personification. Ready-made to be placed within hierarchical institutions. I will concentrate on the Christian church.
There is no doubt early Christianity was a hodgepodge of conflicting interpretations of Jesus and his place in the evolving world of Christianity. And, before written text, the oral practice of passing on the Word of Jesus saw the message distorted and, often misinterpreted, as it suffered the inconsistency and unreliability of being confined to the vehicle of “word of mouth.” Roman persecution didn’t help as it forced secrecy as a necessity for the oral tradition to survive. A consequence is that the word of God manifested through Jesus was atomised, meaning it was hidden in the backrooms of widespread communities. It was widespread but it was, at the same time, isolated within obscure locations. With no shared communal interaction, what one faction thought and believed wasn’t necessarily practised by the city or town further on down the road. The introduction of written text was a unifying factor in Christianity’s evolution as it provided a focal point. There was still a lack of harmony as atomised church leaders, still partially bound to a fading oral tradition, rejected or approved the written text according to personal interpretations arrived at before the written text surfaced. There was clearly a need to trim the branches, so to speak, so a universal structure of belief could be established. But, before such a structure could be constructed, the prevailing belief system would have to accept such a radical move. The persecuted church would have to have to find a sympathetic figure, preferably in a position of power, to enable a compromise that, hopefully, would promise a future for Christianity.
Enter the Roman emperor Constantine the Great. Constantine was committed to uniting both the fledgling Christian world and the fading Pagan belief system. He had to move from the barbaric Colosseum to the cross on the hill utilising an astute political nous. A daunting task in which a polytheistic civilization (the Roman empire), in which multiple gods and goddesses were worshipped, was replaced by the one true God. A Christian God. One that had to be reinvented to suit the opposing Isms. What prompted Constantine to initiate this process, be it political, spiritual or personal religious beliefs, is open to conjecture. Nonetheless, he outlawed all persecution and set about to forge a unified empire. A unified empire was a necessity for harmony – political as well as religious. But what to compromise between the two opposing cultures? This necessitated an agreement between both belief systems so that they could exist as a unified entity. Constantine initiated the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, calling together Christian bishops to establish one concrete fact beyond dispute being the Council’s definitive interpretation of Jesus/God. After vigorous debate between the factions that still haunted Christianity, the collective voted into existence their “idea” of God. Their concept. Gone was the reasoning that God created Jesus, who emerged at a particular point in time, to be replaced by the notion that Jesus was God and, as thus, was an eternal entity. One God, one Church. The Roman Empire’s Church. With that status it was free to wield its power in any manner that suited its ideological agenda including persecution of the non-believer, the heretic or any opposition deemed dangerous by the established orthodoxy. From 435 CE onwards the Church had legal permission to kill in the name of their God. One initiative was left: to appease the Pagans so that their beliefs weren’t totally lost within Constantine’s Christianity.
There are clearly visible remnants of the old Pagan ways in today’s Christian structure. We have Easter. Pre-Christian cultures made this date a celebration of the awakening of nature from Winter’s deep sleep – the Spring Equinox. The Council of Nicaea declared it should fall on the first full moon after the Equinox and saw as it as a perfect date to celebrate another rebirth – the resurrection after death of Jesus. The two spiritual belief systems merged. Christmas was a Winter Solstice celebration. It celebrated the end of the year’s harvest and, free of hard labour, Pagan worshippers could devote themselves to praising their various gods and to their families and friends. The Pagans set aside the 25th of December as the birthday of Horus - the Solar God. The Christians set it aside as the birth date of Jesus. It is argued in some circles that Jesus’s birth was in June. They argue that pregnancies were initiated in Autumn (September to November) following the completion of the harvesting season. There was free time to devote to the forthcoming baby and also enough revenue had been generated to pay for weddings and the feasts that accompanied that celebration. Christmas was also a Roman celebration – Saturnalia. Saturn was urged to return the daylight after the Winter Solstice. Any research into Pagan influences within Christianity will reveal a deep well of evidence – be it in Pagan artistic symbolism (cupids, sheep and shepherds, the reading of scrolls), or theology (The idea that people have immortal souls was first taught in ancient Egypt. The Greeks likewise taught that at death the soul would separate from the physical body. That idea was adopted by Christianity from Greek philosophy. It did not come from inspired Scripture. Source UCG.org – Paganism in Christianity.) An intriguing conversion of an ancient “idea” of God to accommodate the reinvented Jesus/God is to be found in the myth of Mithra.
To enter into the debate that the “idea” of Jesus is based on an ancient deity , Mithra, is to step into controversy. Jesus is defended with vigour. Scholars have pulled the following conjecture apart piece by piece til Jesus is assured of his uniqueness. After all Jesus was adopted at Nicaea as an eternal entity which meant he preceded any earthly deity and has continued long after the majority of earthbound deities have disappeared within the passage of time. But our investigation is only interested in the Roman Empire and its conversion to Christianity. Mithra was the God of Light in ancient Iranian mythology – the centrepiece deity of that culture’s belief system – Zorastrianism. Zoroastrianism is recognised as the world’s oldest organised religion predating Buddhism, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. The Roman empire never embraced Zoroastrianism but it did appreciate and adopt aspects of its belief system namely Mithraism. Mithra became known as Mithras to the Romans. The Zoroastrians saw Mithra as the Protector of the Empire and to serve him was to proclaim loyalty to the Emperor. This belief was likely brought back to Rome via the armed forces returning from the Eastern battlefields such as Syria and Parthia (modern-day Iran). They also bought back Mithra’s myth which is disturbingly familiar:
Birthdate: December 25th in the presence of shepherds,
Born of a virgin,
Accompanied by 12 companions,
Performed miracles,
Believed to be a messiah,
Rose from the dead 3 days after his death,
Promised eternal life
The main celebration of Mithra was held during the Spring Equinox.
So, I believe, Mithra was absorbed into the nascent Roman Christian culture as a placation directed at the Pagan elements of the empire. It was a political move. The Christian fathers accepted this merging of two identities as it was a necessary compromise built around survival. Scholars be damned, let’s do what is necessary and leave the debate for another day. Time proved Mithra’s main adversary. As the Pagan ways faded so did the existence of this old God. Jesus was the last deity standing. But, as explorers of our individual belief systems, some aspects of Jesus’s true identity are clouded in the mists of antiquity. What belongs to Mithra and what belongs to Jesus? And, now, the big question – does it matter? You have examined your belief’s origin and have found it was constructed by a politically-motivated forum. It was man-made. You look for divine intervention in the process and all you find is a compromise between cultures. Is this the end of your faith? No, because what you believe is based on faith and faith is acceptance of the unseen, the unproven, the unknown, knowing that which is hidden is true to you. It is what you believe. This yearning for answers that relate to your journey should transcend the Isms that have sought to control and manipulate over the centuries. This is why it is important to know the mechanics of the belief system that you follow. Maybe it is time to move on, beyond, out where the mystery exists unhindered. Basho, the 17th-century Japanese haiku master, says: “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old, seek what they sought.”
From our investigation it is clear the “idea” of Jesus/God was entrenched long before the Christian or even the Roman worlds evolved. The truth is it was never an “idea,” it was an elemental part of existence. Eternal and persistent. To become aware, enlightened of this truth, necessitates investigation of concepts and ideas and compromises constructed by institutions and hierarchies. To expose their limitations, indeed their complete lack of authority, in such matters. Spirituality is not theirs to exploit for advantage. And, you, the explorer will not know this truth unless you are fearless and look deep into exactly what you believe.
February 2022 – Is There a Genuine Doctor in the House?
(A repeated blog. In light of varying conspiracy theories rampant in these days of Covid where, for one, the vaccine industry is accused of treatment monopolisation to ensure that profit overrides humanitarian considerations, I decided to revisit the implications of the medical profession’s future if it is industrialised, if its practice relies on technology, statistics and the denial of a human touch. I substitute Cancer for Covid.)
There are none more conservative than the medical establishment. I offer no argument when they perform traumatic surgery. We’ve seen the reattached limbs, marvelled at the microscopic surgery (in my own case I benefited as they rerouted blood vessels on my left leg. One severely mangled and torn almost beyond repair), heart replacement – the list goes on and on. I turn and walk away when it comes to the one great disease of the human immune system – Cancer. (The rest of this narrative is aimed at that area – immune system breakdown.) Traumatic surgery is aimed at that that is highly visible. The severed fingers packed in ice, the damaged heart via an angiogram. All localised. Cancer doesn’t fit this picture. It is a symptom. It can emerge decades after an event often long forgotten. One that often only exists in the subconscious. Child abuse, fear of death germinated from a teenage car accident, rape, violence, cultural frustration. Or it can emerge in the Present from the misuse of diet, lifestyle or stress management. All the varied dangers that lurk in the Human condition. What about genetics? The Victorian Department of Health’s website the Better Health Channel (under the guidance of the Victorian State Government) maintains that: “Current research suggests that environmental factors such as tobacco, diet, infection, alcohol, drugs, radiation and chemicals are more important than genetic (hereditary) factors in determining development of most cancers. All cancer is triggered by altered genes. However, only five to 10 per cent of cancers are actually hereditary.” The seeds mentioned above clearly outweigh the genetic factor by 90%. This dominating percentage, when they manifest, are not questioned as to their origins, they are, instead, bombarded with chemo, radiation, hormone treatment, castration, mutilation and every finger-crossed treatment that is the flavour of the day! I read once that if you have cancer try to find a doctor who can mend a broken heart. He’s your man.
Of course, the medical establishment’s biggest thorn in the side is the alternative approach to health. And, unfortunately, most is based on an economic consideration. They choose to deny the validity of, say, Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). A practice based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years. It is there in Tibetan Medicine. Rescued from repression and flourishing in Nepal. It has a foothold in the West. Particularly in the US. All using treatments that struggle to bloom in the face of the West’s narrow medical worldview and its consequent ignorance. Many alternate practices are still deemed as relevant as those prescribed by a remote Amazonian witchdoctor. We can look for a sinister motivation from the West. After all a healthy population is never in need of the doctor, specialist or surgeon. That person doesn’t need drugs. So the logic follows – an unhealthy population is more economically acceptable. There is a sad Truth here but I want to look beyond that Truth to a situation where it would be no longer relevant to even consider this materialistic approach.
There is a book – In Search of the Medicine Buddha by David Crow. Crow spent a considerable amount of time in Nepal where he sought out the secrets of medical teachings from the Tibetan Buddhist and Ayurvedic traditions. The spirit of Shamanism pervades this book and it proposes solutions to our dilemma: how to reconnect with the energy that naturally nurtures. Or, on a simpler level, how to persuade modern medicine to open their eyes and see the light! There is a glimmer of that light. Witness Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in an address at the WHO Congress on Traditional Medicine, Beijing, People’s Republic of China: “Medical care has become depersonalized, some would even say ‘hardhearted’. In most affluent countries, the number of family physicians and primary care doctors continues to decline. The trend towards highly specialized care works against a sympathetic doctor-patient relationship. In too many cases, the patient is no longer treated as a person, but rather as an assembly line of body parts each to be managed, often with great expertise, by an appropriate specialist.” Crow’s book backs Chan’s belief.
The modern physician needs to be reinvented. He needs to be more than a doctor. He needs to be a teacher armed with dietary and lifestyle knowledge. A spiritual adviser that can take into account all the circumstances of life that bought the patient to his office and can, accordingly, offer a road of hope leading to good health. A spiritual companion sharing that road with the patient. To be a medicinal guide aware of the ancient power in the plants and elements provided by mother Earth. Elements that have sustained the human race from sabre-tooth tiger to moon landing. And, most importantly, because of its simplicity and far-reaching implications, he needs the lost art of doctor-patient empathy to be re-established. Crow underlines that in the frenetic tempo of the modern world there is simply no time to nurture a personal relationship between doctor and patient. The old-fashioned country doctor knocking at your door at midnight is almost a myth. There is now a barrier between doctor and patient: technology. “Modern technology eliminates the human element in diagnosis,” Crow offers. As the doctor relies more and more on machines his inner perception and intuition atrophy. These gifts are overruled by the laboratory and computers. The computer is now judge and jury. There is no empathy between machine and patient. When was the last time you gave your computer a hug? Statistics now prevail. Averages. Patients lose hope as their future existence is now statistical: numbers on a page. Expected lifespan, the recommended dosage to maintain a decent level of health. The machine is more than positive that the unnatural is more effective than the natural. It proposes a violent approach. Chemo, radiation. The immune system looks on in horror as the doctor is consigned to the corner practising imaginary golf shots. He has no time to hold your hand. He has forgotten that healing is a spiritual path. A path that leads to balance, harmony, enlightenment and transcendent wisdom.
If the medical system can be reinvented. If technology can be utilised as a instrument that aids rather than hinders. If the shamanic element – a conversation between the natural and supernatural – can be incorporated into the practice of healing. Then it could be a new world. To me, I just want the doctor to remember who he once was. Before.
(A repeated blog. In light of varying conspiracy theories rampant in these days of Covid where, for one, the vaccine industry is accused of treatment monopolisation to ensure that profit overrides humanitarian considerations, I decided to revisit the implications of the medical profession’s future if it is industrialised, if its practice relies on technology, statistics and the denial of a human touch. I substitute Cancer for Covid.)
There are none more conservative than the medical establishment. I offer no argument when they perform traumatic surgery. We’ve seen the reattached limbs, marvelled at the microscopic surgery (in my own case I benefited as they rerouted blood vessels on my left leg. One severely mangled and torn almost beyond repair), heart replacement – the list goes on and on. I turn and walk away when it comes to the one great disease of the human immune system – Cancer. (The rest of this narrative is aimed at that area – immune system breakdown.) Traumatic surgery is aimed at that that is highly visible. The severed fingers packed in ice, the damaged heart via an angiogram. All localised. Cancer doesn’t fit this picture. It is a symptom. It can emerge decades after an event often long forgotten. One that often only exists in the subconscious. Child abuse, fear of death germinated from a teenage car accident, rape, violence, cultural frustration. Or it can emerge in the Present from the misuse of diet, lifestyle or stress management. All the varied dangers that lurk in the Human condition. What about genetics? The Victorian Department of Health’s website the Better Health Channel (under the guidance of the Victorian State Government) maintains that: “Current research suggests that environmental factors such as tobacco, diet, infection, alcohol, drugs, radiation and chemicals are more important than genetic (hereditary) factors in determining development of most cancers. All cancer is triggered by altered genes. However, only five to 10 per cent of cancers are actually hereditary.” The seeds mentioned above clearly outweigh the genetic factor by 90%. This dominating percentage, when they manifest, are not questioned as to their origins, they are, instead, bombarded with chemo, radiation, hormone treatment, castration, mutilation and every finger-crossed treatment that is the flavour of the day! I read once that if you have cancer try to find a doctor who can mend a broken heart. He’s your man.
Of course, the medical establishment’s biggest thorn in the side is the alternative approach to health. And, unfortunately, most is based on an economic consideration. They choose to deny the validity of, say, Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). A practice based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years. It is there in Tibetan Medicine. Rescued from repression and flourishing in Nepal. It has a foothold in the West. Particularly in the US. All using treatments that struggle to bloom in the face of the West’s narrow medical worldview and its consequent ignorance. Many alternate practices are still deemed as relevant as those prescribed by a remote Amazonian witchdoctor. We can look for a sinister motivation from the West. After all a healthy population is never in need of the doctor, specialist or surgeon. That person doesn’t need drugs. So the logic follows – an unhealthy population is more economically acceptable. There is a sad Truth here but I want to look beyond that Truth to a situation where it would be no longer relevant to even consider this materialistic approach.
There is a book – In Search of the Medicine Buddha by David Crow. Crow spent a considerable amount of time in Nepal where he sought out the secrets of medical teachings from the Tibetan Buddhist and Ayurvedic traditions. The spirit of Shamanism pervades this book and it proposes solutions to our dilemma: how to reconnect with the energy that naturally nurtures. Or, on a simpler level, how to persuade modern medicine to open their eyes and see the light! There is a glimmer of that light. Witness Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in an address at the WHO Congress on Traditional Medicine, Beijing, People’s Republic of China: “Medical care has become depersonalized, some would even say ‘hardhearted’. In most affluent countries, the number of family physicians and primary care doctors continues to decline. The trend towards highly specialized care works against a sympathetic doctor-patient relationship. In too many cases, the patient is no longer treated as a person, but rather as an assembly line of body parts each to be managed, often with great expertise, by an appropriate specialist.” Crow’s book backs Chan’s belief.
The modern physician needs to be reinvented. He needs to be more than a doctor. He needs to be a teacher armed with dietary and lifestyle knowledge. A spiritual adviser that can take into account all the circumstances of life that bought the patient to his office and can, accordingly, offer a road of hope leading to good health. A spiritual companion sharing that road with the patient. To be a medicinal guide aware of the ancient power in the plants and elements provided by mother Earth. Elements that have sustained the human race from sabre-tooth tiger to moon landing. And, most importantly, because of its simplicity and far-reaching implications, he needs the lost art of doctor-patient empathy to be re-established. Crow underlines that in the frenetic tempo of the modern world there is simply no time to nurture a personal relationship between doctor and patient. The old-fashioned country doctor knocking at your door at midnight is almost a myth. There is now a barrier between doctor and patient: technology. “Modern technology eliminates the human element in diagnosis,” Crow offers. As the doctor relies more and more on machines his inner perception and intuition atrophy. These gifts are overruled by the laboratory and computers. The computer is now judge and jury. There is no empathy between machine and patient. When was the last time you gave your computer a hug? Statistics now prevail. Averages. Patients lose hope as their future existence is now statistical: numbers on a page. Expected lifespan, the recommended dosage to maintain a decent level of health. The machine is more than positive that the unnatural is more effective than the natural. It proposes a violent approach. Chemo, radiation. The immune system looks on in horror as the doctor is consigned to the corner practising imaginary golf shots. He has no time to hold your hand. He has forgotten that healing is a spiritual path. A path that leads to balance, harmony, enlightenment and transcendent wisdom.
If the medical system can be reinvented. If technology can be utilised as a instrument that aids rather than hinders. If the shamanic element – a conversation between the natural and supernatural – can be incorporated into the practice of healing. Then it could be a new world. To me, I just want the doctor to remember who he once was. Before.
January, 2022 – Compassion Chaos
Every morning I awake to a chorus of fear, doubt and barely restrained hostility. The platforms of media – the printed press, on-line behemoths, television – now appear to act according to their own immediate interests leaving the national interest in their wake. It is hard to deny political coercion as the guiding hand in establishing a scenario whereby the media has no choice but to seek only survival. An ethical and realistic approach to the problems surrounding us at this moment in time have been pushed aside. The bastions of media survive but the consequence of this survival, built around fear mongering, sees a growing division within society that is universal in nature. Slowly, but surely, compassion is being eroded. Sides are being taken which, if encouraged, will see a cultural apartheid. There can be no compassion in an environment where those in conflict do not understand each other’s basic humanity. Do not understand there is more in common in the human condition than that which separates. Maybe, when Covid eventually evolves into a regular yearly flu and nothing worse, the actions of a manipulating minority, being those who see power as akin to an aphrodisiac, may be more clearly evaluated. Until then we are stranded in life as it is now. What to do?
Our individual influence on a global dilemma is definitely limited. Yelling at the 6 o’clock news report, burning the daily newspaper, shunning on-line confusion, moaning in despair with those nearest and dearest or, on the other hand, expending energy hating the next door neighbour because his vaccination status doesn’t match one’s own, remains localised. Confined to the house and street in which you reside. Putin and Biden have never heard of you and never will. There are a few choices to make. One is an acceptance that Covid is yet another viral evolution in this planet’s path through time. Antonine Plague, (165 - 80). Small pox ravishes the Roman Empire. Five million dead. Plague of Justinian, (541). A rat-based disease spread via Egyptian grain ships entering eastern Roman Empire ports. Twenty-five million dead. The Black Death, (1347 – 51). A bubonic plague that eliminated half of Europe’s population, accounting for between 75 - 200 million deaths. The Spanish Flu, (1918 – 19). One third of the planet’s population infected resulting in 50 million dead. Aids – still ongoing – in 2018 38 million were carrying HIV. One million still die per year. There have been many more outbreaks, in various forms, throughout the planet’s lifeline. If you accept this evolution then Covid is just another chapter in life’s timeline. No one’s specific fault. Just circumstances merging and then dispersing. But, as in all trauma-related events, there is always a message. Wisdom to be gained. Covid is no exception.
What do you learn about yourself in this setting? If this is just another mutation then history will prove that it won’t be the last. Best be prepared for that probability. The next one could be twice as bad. It’s time to examine this current viral event and your place in its existence. Your attitude. Your worldview. And, especially, your relationship with all other participants. For instance, will you find hatred for those unseen forces beyond your control? That includes those who, for whatever reason, do not vaccinate and, in doing so, lead you to a conviction that they are a mortal danger to you and the ones you love. You don’t know their motivation but assume, aided by media pressure, that their reluctance is based on selfishness and ignorance. Maybe you are suspicious of Nature itself. After all these minute viral predators, infecting all the innocents they encounter, are products of that great energy that surrounds us – Mother Nature. She can produce great beauty but, equally, afflict us with a plague with regular monotony as witnessed down through the ages! Maybe, if you have lost a loved one to Covid, you can blame whichever God you happen to worship when the going is good. Or, and there is an “or”, you can stop for once and consider the inherent lessons in the trauma and its wisdom.
In such a consideration you consider life itself in all its entirety. All of its shades, opposites and contradictions. Birth, death. Joy, fear. Love, hate. Peace, angst. Plainly put, all of its changes. And when you are caught up in one of life’s inevitable changes it is not the time to point fingers, to accuse, to persecute, it is time to show compassion for your fellow travellers. To see their humanness. Good or bad. You feel fear, they feel fear. You feel insecure, they feel insecure. They lose faith, you lose faith. Now is the time to recognise that all the conflicting emotions that you experience are universal in nature. They are part of life. Everyone is part of life. Trauma will bring the chance to explore life. To show you who you are spiritually. Then, as predictable as sunset-sunrise, life will change and Covid will be but a memory. Because that is what we live within. Life constantly reinventing itself and that includes plagues. Just as it includes the opposite – well being and harmony. So, Covid is an opportunity to examine life in one of its fragile manifestations. A start is to develop compassion for both yourself and for others. This is not an easy process but it does involve a powerful energy being Intent. An intent to learn, to self-educate, to grow. Even if your capacity for compassion is initially feeble, a persistence on Intent will encourage that inner growth. This will offer a refuge in troubled times. Buddha said: “By protecting oneself, one protects others, by protecting others, one protects oneself.” And it is what it is.
Every morning I awake to a chorus of fear, doubt and barely restrained hostility. The platforms of media – the printed press, on-line behemoths, television – now appear to act according to their own immediate interests leaving the national interest in their wake. It is hard to deny political coercion as the guiding hand in establishing a scenario whereby the media has no choice but to seek only survival. An ethical and realistic approach to the problems surrounding us at this moment in time have been pushed aside. The bastions of media survive but the consequence of this survival, built around fear mongering, sees a growing division within society that is universal in nature. Slowly, but surely, compassion is being eroded. Sides are being taken which, if encouraged, will see a cultural apartheid. There can be no compassion in an environment where those in conflict do not understand each other’s basic humanity. Do not understand there is more in common in the human condition than that which separates. Maybe, when Covid eventually evolves into a regular yearly flu and nothing worse, the actions of a manipulating minority, being those who see power as akin to an aphrodisiac, may be more clearly evaluated. Until then we are stranded in life as it is now. What to do?
Our individual influence on a global dilemma is definitely limited. Yelling at the 6 o’clock news report, burning the daily newspaper, shunning on-line confusion, moaning in despair with those nearest and dearest or, on the other hand, expending energy hating the next door neighbour because his vaccination status doesn’t match one’s own, remains localised. Confined to the house and street in which you reside. Putin and Biden have never heard of you and never will. There are a few choices to make. One is an acceptance that Covid is yet another viral evolution in this planet’s path through time. Antonine Plague, (165 - 80). Small pox ravishes the Roman Empire. Five million dead. Plague of Justinian, (541). A rat-based disease spread via Egyptian grain ships entering eastern Roman Empire ports. Twenty-five million dead. The Black Death, (1347 – 51). A bubonic plague that eliminated half of Europe’s population, accounting for between 75 - 200 million deaths. The Spanish Flu, (1918 – 19). One third of the planet’s population infected resulting in 50 million dead. Aids – still ongoing – in 2018 38 million were carrying HIV. One million still die per year. There have been many more outbreaks, in various forms, throughout the planet’s lifeline. If you accept this evolution then Covid is just another chapter in life’s timeline. No one’s specific fault. Just circumstances merging and then dispersing. But, as in all trauma-related events, there is always a message. Wisdom to be gained. Covid is no exception.
What do you learn about yourself in this setting? If this is just another mutation then history will prove that it won’t be the last. Best be prepared for that probability. The next one could be twice as bad. It’s time to examine this current viral event and your place in its existence. Your attitude. Your worldview. And, especially, your relationship with all other participants. For instance, will you find hatred for those unseen forces beyond your control? That includes those who, for whatever reason, do not vaccinate and, in doing so, lead you to a conviction that they are a mortal danger to you and the ones you love. You don’t know their motivation but assume, aided by media pressure, that their reluctance is based on selfishness and ignorance. Maybe you are suspicious of Nature itself. After all these minute viral predators, infecting all the innocents they encounter, are products of that great energy that surrounds us – Mother Nature. She can produce great beauty but, equally, afflict us with a plague with regular monotony as witnessed down through the ages! Maybe, if you have lost a loved one to Covid, you can blame whichever God you happen to worship when the going is good. Or, and there is an “or”, you can stop for once and consider the inherent lessons in the trauma and its wisdom.
In such a consideration you consider life itself in all its entirety. All of its shades, opposites and contradictions. Birth, death. Joy, fear. Love, hate. Peace, angst. Plainly put, all of its changes. And when you are caught up in one of life’s inevitable changes it is not the time to point fingers, to accuse, to persecute, it is time to show compassion for your fellow travellers. To see their humanness. Good or bad. You feel fear, they feel fear. You feel insecure, they feel insecure. They lose faith, you lose faith. Now is the time to recognise that all the conflicting emotions that you experience are universal in nature. They are part of life. Everyone is part of life. Trauma will bring the chance to explore life. To show you who you are spiritually. Then, as predictable as sunset-sunrise, life will change and Covid will be but a memory. Because that is what we live within. Life constantly reinventing itself and that includes plagues. Just as it includes the opposite – well being and harmony. So, Covid is an opportunity to examine life in one of its fragile manifestations. A start is to develop compassion for both yourself and for others. This is not an easy process but it does involve a powerful energy being Intent. An intent to learn, to self-educate, to grow. Even if your capacity for compassion is initially feeble, a persistence on Intent will encourage that inner growth. This will offer a refuge in troubled times. Buddha said: “By protecting oneself, one protects others, by protecting others, one protects oneself.” And it is what it is.
December, 2021 – Hide & Seek
“If God wanted to hide. He would hide in human beings because that’s the last place we would think to look.” – Stan Dale - founder of the Human Awareness Institute.
We have all experienced what has been described as the “awful silence of Heaven.” On those occasions when we find ourselves on life’s fraying tightrope without any visible safety net below, we instinctively reach out for guidance from a point somewhere in the external realm. We find ourselves unleashing a torrent of prayers and petitions calling for divine intervention. But all our pleas seem to evaporate into a silence that appears so definite in its intent to ignore every word. You pray till every plea is exhausted leaving you still perched on that decaying tightrope. The words have been absorbed into that “awful silence of Heaven.” You have been ignored, your prayer at your feet like a deflated balloon. Why is this happening to you? Don’t you deserve better from your pious attempt at communication? What kind of reward is utter silence? What is this? This childish game of Hide and Seek?
The problem, when I consider this dilemma from my own perspective, is that we are praying to the Past. The Past is our blueprint. For clarification we return to it over and over for it is within its confines that we have built ourselves an empire of concepts. Some, like a hot stove can burn bare skin due to carelessness, are essential for the everyday but others are not so user-friendly. The hot stove lesson is built on fact, on empirical evidence. It can be visualised, recorded and proven as a viable logic. But can you say the same about a personal contact with the deity of your choice? Can your God be visualised as a definitive image? A universal image? If you believe that he, she, it or any other mental conception is possible then you have definitely conjured that result out of the Past. Where else would you find it? In most cases this concept has been carefully manufactured by external influences. Built to fit the cultural environment that surrounds you, be it Christian, Jewish, Islamic or even the atheistic totalitarian regimes who have their own concept of God. God as an image has been handed to you and then you have either blindly accepted that image or added your own imagery according to your ideal of what a God should look like and how he or she should intervene when it comes to the complexities you encounter in your life! An ideal is inadequate when it comes to a petition. All ideals have a built-in obsolescence simply because, as seen in one definition, they “exist only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality.”
In our Western society we have assigned human characteristics to the nonhuman. A spiritual anthropomorphism? The intuited intelligence beyond our immediate senses has been given a plethora of names, faces and, even, addresses. Heaven and Hell spring to mind. If you are comfortable with naming the mystery then you would be comfortable naming the sea Fred and the wind Betty. If you have built a concept of God – your very own personal invention – then you have no choice but to pray to that concept. That God that you have created. I believe that there can be no communication with manufactured imagery, ritual or dogma. That which is unknown, ineffable, cannot be personified. If you pray to that illusion then your words will go no further than the feet of that illusion – that statue, religious icon or guru. That which your concept supposedly represents will remain oblivious to your appeals for, unfortunately, when you appeal you are talking to your persona and its ideals. Obviously the only way forward is to seek without concepts blocking your way. Easier said than done but not impossible.
We can, from this point on, only consider any further conjecture from our own personal lifetimes. It is within your own experiences, that life lived, that, on close inspection, will you find that there is no game of Hide and Seek because that which is been sought would never intentionally hide. Hiding is our forte. We think that when we ask for divine intervention and receive only silence and little to no change in our circumstances that we are being either ignored or punished. We never consider that sometimes the answer to prayer is “No.” In other words all prayers are answered but sometimes not to our liking. Here, in many cases, we abandon the search, denounce our spiritual entity as merely a myth or, intuitively, vow to continue despite the roadblocks. In any of these choices we surrender to the fallibility of our concepts or seek to go beyond them. But before we venture forward we must close the distance that we created when we placed our man-made ideals firmly in the external world. Up there beyond the clouds so to speak. Or at a guru’s feet. Or at a sacred site one day a week to appease our guilt, to do the right thing by tradition. The narrower the distance becomes, the closer we come to the Truth. Everything is universal. We are not separate from this, that or anything. The mystery of the divine is clearly evident in any direction we turn. It flows from everywhere through us, around us. The grass grows, the trees blossom, the tides roll in and out, the sun sustains, the air sustains. And we, as well, grow - organically linked to that visible and invisible world around us. Dependent on that which is unseen but never hidden. All is connected. We are all manifestations of energy. Behind, above, under, within, without is an all-encompassing cosmic energy.
So, our prayers leave our lips and venture forth into an unknown that has no centre point simply because it has no boundaries. Consequently, they are often returned marked address unknown. Be careful, isn’t prayer yet another concept seeking the company of another concept that we have manufactured. Two concepts circling each other without ever connecting. Our business here in this existence is to find out for ourselves if that last statement is true or false. Indeed if all concepts have to be re-evaluated. The gift of free will to explore is one not to be ignored. Use it to go inside and find out for oneself unencumbered by external tradition, ritual or second-hand dogma. There is a mystery waiting there to make acquaintance. Before I go I would like to add that there is solace and peace to be found in a church, a holy book, a mystic’s logic because to explore these avenues shows intent. A spiritual intent. Intent, if fostered, is vital. But these avenues, and others, are only stopping points along your solitary path. Signposts so to speak. You must follow the footprints that lead beyond these points of inspiration til the only footprints left belong to you. You will find that that path leads within, deeper and deeper. Far beyond the physical world of concepts and illusion. Far beyond Hide & Seek.
“If God wanted to hide. He would hide in human beings because that’s the last place we would think to look.” – Stan Dale - founder of the Human Awareness Institute.
We have all experienced what has been described as the “awful silence of Heaven.” On those occasions when we find ourselves on life’s fraying tightrope without any visible safety net below, we instinctively reach out for guidance from a point somewhere in the external realm. We find ourselves unleashing a torrent of prayers and petitions calling for divine intervention. But all our pleas seem to evaporate into a silence that appears so definite in its intent to ignore every word. You pray till every plea is exhausted leaving you still perched on that decaying tightrope. The words have been absorbed into that “awful silence of Heaven.” You have been ignored, your prayer at your feet like a deflated balloon. Why is this happening to you? Don’t you deserve better from your pious attempt at communication? What kind of reward is utter silence? What is this? This childish game of Hide and Seek?
The problem, when I consider this dilemma from my own perspective, is that we are praying to the Past. The Past is our blueprint. For clarification we return to it over and over for it is within its confines that we have built ourselves an empire of concepts. Some, like a hot stove can burn bare skin due to carelessness, are essential for the everyday but others are not so user-friendly. The hot stove lesson is built on fact, on empirical evidence. It can be visualised, recorded and proven as a viable logic. But can you say the same about a personal contact with the deity of your choice? Can your God be visualised as a definitive image? A universal image? If you believe that he, she, it or any other mental conception is possible then you have definitely conjured that result out of the Past. Where else would you find it? In most cases this concept has been carefully manufactured by external influences. Built to fit the cultural environment that surrounds you, be it Christian, Jewish, Islamic or even the atheistic totalitarian regimes who have their own concept of God. God as an image has been handed to you and then you have either blindly accepted that image or added your own imagery according to your ideal of what a God should look like and how he or she should intervene when it comes to the complexities you encounter in your life! An ideal is inadequate when it comes to a petition. All ideals have a built-in obsolescence simply because, as seen in one definition, they “exist only in the imagination; desirable or perfect but not likely to become a reality.”
In our Western society we have assigned human characteristics to the nonhuman. A spiritual anthropomorphism? The intuited intelligence beyond our immediate senses has been given a plethora of names, faces and, even, addresses. Heaven and Hell spring to mind. If you are comfortable with naming the mystery then you would be comfortable naming the sea Fred and the wind Betty. If you have built a concept of God – your very own personal invention – then you have no choice but to pray to that concept. That God that you have created. I believe that there can be no communication with manufactured imagery, ritual or dogma. That which is unknown, ineffable, cannot be personified. If you pray to that illusion then your words will go no further than the feet of that illusion – that statue, religious icon or guru. That which your concept supposedly represents will remain oblivious to your appeals for, unfortunately, when you appeal you are talking to your persona and its ideals. Obviously the only way forward is to seek without concepts blocking your way. Easier said than done but not impossible.
We can, from this point on, only consider any further conjecture from our own personal lifetimes. It is within your own experiences, that life lived, that, on close inspection, will you find that there is no game of Hide and Seek because that which is been sought would never intentionally hide. Hiding is our forte. We think that when we ask for divine intervention and receive only silence and little to no change in our circumstances that we are being either ignored or punished. We never consider that sometimes the answer to prayer is “No.” In other words all prayers are answered but sometimes not to our liking. Here, in many cases, we abandon the search, denounce our spiritual entity as merely a myth or, intuitively, vow to continue despite the roadblocks. In any of these choices we surrender to the fallibility of our concepts or seek to go beyond them. But before we venture forward we must close the distance that we created when we placed our man-made ideals firmly in the external world. Up there beyond the clouds so to speak. Or at a guru’s feet. Or at a sacred site one day a week to appease our guilt, to do the right thing by tradition. The narrower the distance becomes, the closer we come to the Truth. Everything is universal. We are not separate from this, that or anything. The mystery of the divine is clearly evident in any direction we turn. It flows from everywhere through us, around us. The grass grows, the trees blossom, the tides roll in and out, the sun sustains, the air sustains. And we, as well, grow - organically linked to that visible and invisible world around us. Dependent on that which is unseen but never hidden. All is connected. We are all manifestations of energy. Behind, above, under, within, without is an all-encompassing cosmic energy.
So, our prayers leave our lips and venture forth into an unknown that has no centre point simply because it has no boundaries. Consequently, they are often returned marked address unknown. Be careful, isn’t prayer yet another concept seeking the company of another concept that we have manufactured. Two concepts circling each other without ever connecting. Our business here in this existence is to find out for ourselves if that last statement is true or false. Indeed if all concepts have to be re-evaluated. The gift of free will to explore is one not to be ignored. Use it to go inside and find out for oneself unencumbered by external tradition, ritual or second-hand dogma. There is a mystery waiting there to make acquaintance. Before I go I would like to add that there is solace and peace to be found in a church, a holy book, a mystic’s logic because to explore these avenues shows intent. A spiritual intent. Intent, if fostered, is vital. But these avenues, and others, are only stopping points along your solitary path. Signposts so to speak. You must follow the footprints that lead beyond these points of inspiration til the only footprints left belong to you. You will find that that path leads within, deeper and deeper. Far beyond the physical world of concepts and illusion. Far beyond Hide & Seek.
November, 2021 – Trauma’s Secret
The seemingly endless days of Covid are taking their toll via many avenues. All, when combined, are overwhelming at times. Fatality statistics sweep over us daily reminding us constantly of a new world. One dominated by a fragility impossible to ignore. This precarious physical world holds possibilities that, on reflection, threaten our sense of security and our sense of purpose when it comes to our inner defence mechanisms. The inner and external are at loggerheads. The mental toll borne out of isolation and fear of an unknown that seems to have no concrete rules, has inflicted a physical, mental and spiritual toll. Within that inevitable conflict there has emerged an offshoot of antagonism which is undermining any sense of unity. This is, in essence, coping mechanism versus coping mechanism. Us versus us. Evident in the vax vs antivax debate.
We have entered a period of change that is testing our adaptability. And it is in change, which is a constant companion to each and all, that we measure our context as individuals. Not only our context but also our sense of internal harmony and balance. It is not the first time, nor the last, that we will find ourselves in times of uncertainty. We have all endured illness, financial burdens, sad relationship breakdowns, mental vulnerability, crises of the spirit and on and on as we experience all the hues that the Samsaric palette presents. Most of our traumas have been confined to definite and set locations - within the family unit, the workplace, the confidentiality of medical or psychiatric institutions. Covid, via its universality, unpredictability and callous nature, has, unfortunately, exposed human nature on a broader, more public scale. People are judging people and their respective responses to Covid by using their individual fears as guidelines of instruction. “This is how I feel about Covid. Follow my logic or go to hell.” We are seeing extremes in attitude. Soon I’ll share a post on my Facebook page from American author Tim Wise describing the culture of the radical antivaxxer. Wise lumps all into his vague societal group including those who aren’t sure, have immune problems, are waiting for less controversial vaccines, are hindered by the likes of heart, kidney or liver problems, ex stroke victims or are confident in their immune systems to cope and then those who are relying on intuition. I prefer to call this latter group, having shared acquaintance with many, procrastivaxxers. But none escape Wise’s scorn as “perish one, perish all” is his unfortunate mantra. This approach can be just as vitriolic from the opposing camp who often wish future sickness or even death from vaccine side effects on the vaxxers. Consider this from a visitor to James Kunstler’s website:
“It is high time for real patriots in this country to Cowboy Up. If you don’t own firearms, buy some…..and learn how to use them to defend yourself, your family, your neighbors, your country.
Here’s the attitude that needs to replace the “There’s nothing we can do” bullshit mantra:
* If I can shoot, I will join the battle line.
* If I can’t shoot, I’ll load.
* If I can’t load, I’ll bring ammo.
* If I can’t bring ammo, I’ll help with the wounded.
* If I can’t help with the wounded, I’ll give blood.
* If I can’t give blood, then I’m probably dead…..so strip my body of what you need and KEEP FIGHTING.”
But we will concentrate, briefly, on Mr Wise's interpretation:
“(They are) different, something more dangerous, sociopathic, and sadistic — not suicidal but homicidal. As I said last year, this is a Mass Murder Movement. If you refuse a vaccine when you have no valid health reason to do so (as almost no one does), thereby keeping the virus alive longer by increasing the risk of mutations, you are saying that other people’s lives don’t matter to you. On a personal level, treating deniers like pariahs means banishing them, metaphorically, to the cornfield. It means cutting them out of our lives entirely: no invitations to the cocktail party or backyard barbecue, no seat for them at the holiday table, and no invitation to the grandkid’s graduation, Little League game, or dance recital. Refuse to speak to them, break bread with them or communicate with them in any way until they get their shit together and learn to play by the rules of public health by which rational, decent people agree to play. Till then, they have made their ICU beds. Now they can lie in them, and sadly, die in them — completely and utterly, alone.”
The two commentaries reek of fear holding hands with ignorance. Not altogether a surprising reaction following any contemplation of this unknown virus and its bag of tricks. Mr Wise, for instance, would be better served to place Covid into context. This is not the first pandemic nor will it be the last. If we can’t accept change, no matter the depth of its mystery, into our existence with all of its permutations, then we will be lost in a perpetual arena of fear, doubt and an anger based on a sense of hopelessness. There is an inherit wisdom in the most dire of circumstances. Just read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning which underlines the insight that arose from his Holocaust experiences. Or Dabrowski’s theory of Positive Disintegration which was born out of his suffering in Nazi-occupied Poland. Covid is a tragedy and it would be extremely difficult for those who have suffered at its hands to consider that there was any benefit or silver lining in such an event. But, in denying such possibilities, we will neuter our lives post-experience. We will adopt a lopsided approach to our existence. No middle way in this logic. As its message is lost, the angst of Covid will determine our worldview.
I can only approach this dialogue with its content aimed at the individual soul. The collective consciousness is a mishmash of cultural, political, psychological, religious, scientific, artistic, educational (on and on) influences. So, the focus is confined to the single soul on a spiritual level. And my interpretation of spiritual, in this case, is a soul who is “aware.” Not a saint, guru or mystic but that person who has devoted a good part of their journey to pursuing wisdom and insight thereby gaining an “awareness” of the external and internal components of existence. And, via this “awareness,” has intuited a possibility of unity between the two. Personal growth achieved through the understanding of context. One’s position in the universal dance. A spiritual dance where all the participants are of a spiritual nature. This dance involves highs and lows. Grief and happiness. Angst and contentment. And, as an contemporary example, a period of non-Covid followed by a period of Covid followed by all manner of possibilities. So for the spiritual adventurer what are the benefits, the valuable lessons of insight, to be gained from this pandemic?
There are several but concentration will focus on one. The most obvious being that hatred and division solves nothing and has to be addressed. Hard to achieve on a collective level but achievable in the everyday. This will involve compassion. Compassion is “awareness” in its purest form. Simply: walk a mile in someone’s shoes and you will understand, even share, their angst. Understand hatred and division on the level of the individual, face to face, and you will be in a position to deal with its energy. By understanding those who carry that bad energy into your life you will find them invaluable in providing living examples of abnormal intent manifested in front of your very eyes. Your reaction should be a vow to not imitate in any manner but also to thank those who have given you a gift. The gift to live, day-to-day, knowing the character and essence of hatred as personally experienced. Vowing to eliminate it as best as possible as it has no role in any spiritual path beyond the knowledge that it exists in the spectrum of human existence. So, your reaction to a crisis as presented by Covid is coloured by one fact: any consequent personal inner growth would only be possible because Covid exists. If it were not Covid then rest assured that it would be another drama. All the traumas of existence teach. All the joys of existence teach. This is their gift. This is the silver lining.
The seemingly endless days of Covid are taking their toll via many avenues. All, when combined, are overwhelming at times. Fatality statistics sweep over us daily reminding us constantly of a new world. One dominated by a fragility impossible to ignore. This precarious physical world holds possibilities that, on reflection, threaten our sense of security and our sense of purpose when it comes to our inner defence mechanisms. The inner and external are at loggerheads. The mental toll borne out of isolation and fear of an unknown that seems to have no concrete rules, has inflicted a physical, mental and spiritual toll. Within that inevitable conflict there has emerged an offshoot of antagonism which is undermining any sense of unity. This is, in essence, coping mechanism versus coping mechanism. Us versus us. Evident in the vax vs antivax debate.
We have entered a period of change that is testing our adaptability. And it is in change, which is a constant companion to each and all, that we measure our context as individuals. Not only our context but also our sense of internal harmony and balance. It is not the first time, nor the last, that we will find ourselves in times of uncertainty. We have all endured illness, financial burdens, sad relationship breakdowns, mental vulnerability, crises of the spirit and on and on as we experience all the hues that the Samsaric palette presents. Most of our traumas have been confined to definite and set locations - within the family unit, the workplace, the confidentiality of medical or psychiatric institutions. Covid, via its universality, unpredictability and callous nature, has, unfortunately, exposed human nature on a broader, more public scale. People are judging people and their respective responses to Covid by using their individual fears as guidelines of instruction. “This is how I feel about Covid. Follow my logic or go to hell.” We are seeing extremes in attitude. Soon I’ll share a post on my Facebook page from American author Tim Wise describing the culture of the radical antivaxxer. Wise lumps all into his vague societal group including those who aren’t sure, have immune problems, are waiting for less controversial vaccines, are hindered by the likes of heart, kidney or liver problems, ex stroke victims or are confident in their immune systems to cope and then those who are relying on intuition. I prefer to call this latter group, having shared acquaintance with many, procrastivaxxers. But none escape Wise’s scorn as “perish one, perish all” is his unfortunate mantra. This approach can be just as vitriolic from the opposing camp who often wish future sickness or even death from vaccine side effects on the vaxxers. Consider this from a visitor to James Kunstler’s website:
“It is high time for real patriots in this country to Cowboy Up. If you don’t own firearms, buy some…..and learn how to use them to defend yourself, your family, your neighbors, your country.
Here’s the attitude that needs to replace the “There’s nothing we can do” bullshit mantra:
* If I can shoot, I will join the battle line.
* If I can’t shoot, I’ll load.
* If I can’t load, I’ll bring ammo.
* If I can’t bring ammo, I’ll help with the wounded.
* If I can’t help with the wounded, I’ll give blood.
* If I can’t give blood, then I’m probably dead…..so strip my body of what you need and KEEP FIGHTING.”
But we will concentrate, briefly, on Mr Wise's interpretation:
“(They are) different, something more dangerous, sociopathic, and sadistic — not suicidal but homicidal. As I said last year, this is a Mass Murder Movement. If you refuse a vaccine when you have no valid health reason to do so (as almost no one does), thereby keeping the virus alive longer by increasing the risk of mutations, you are saying that other people’s lives don’t matter to you. On a personal level, treating deniers like pariahs means banishing them, metaphorically, to the cornfield. It means cutting them out of our lives entirely: no invitations to the cocktail party or backyard barbecue, no seat for them at the holiday table, and no invitation to the grandkid’s graduation, Little League game, or dance recital. Refuse to speak to them, break bread with them or communicate with them in any way until they get their shit together and learn to play by the rules of public health by which rational, decent people agree to play. Till then, they have made their ICU beds. Now they can lie in them, and sadly, die in them — completely and utterly, alone.”
The two commentaries reek of fear holding hands with ignorance. Not altogether a surprising reaction following any contemplation of this unknown virus and its bag of tricks. Mr Wise, for instance, would be better served to place Covid into context. This is not the first pandemic nor will it be the last. If we can’t accept change, no matter the depth of its mystery, into our existence with all of its permutations, then we will be lost in a perpetual arena of fear, doubt and an anger based on a sense of hopelessness. There is an inherit wisdom in the most dire of circumstances. Just read Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning which underlines the insight that arose from his Holocaust experiences. Or Dabrowski’s theory of Positive Disintegration which was born out of his suffering in Nazi-occupied Poland. Covid is a tragedy and it would be extremely difficult for those who have suffered at its hands to consider that there was any benefit or silver lining in such an event. But, in denying such possibilities, we will neuter our lives post-experience. We will adopt a lopsided approach to our existence. No middle way in this logic. As its message is lost, the angst of Covid will determine our worldview.
I can only approach this dialogue with its content aimed at the individual soul. The collective consciousness is a mishmash of cultural, political, psychological, religious, scientific, artistic, educational (on and on) influences. So, the focus is confined to the single soul on a spiritual level. And my interpretation of spiritual, in this case, is a soul who is “aware.” Not a saint, guru or mystic but that person who has devoted a good part of their journey to pursuing wisdom and insight thereby gaining an “awareness” of the external and internal components of existence. And, via this “awareness,” has intuited a possibility of unity between the two. Personal growth achieved through the understanding of context. One’s position in the universal dance. A spiritual dance where all the participants are of a spiritual nature. This dance involves highs and lows. Grief and happiness. Angst and contentment. And, as an contemporary example, a period of non-Covid followed by a period of Covid followed by all manner of possibilities. So for the spiritual adventurer what are the benefits, the valuable lessons of insight, to be gained from this pandemic?
There are several but concentration will focus on one. The most obvious being that hatred and division solves nothing and has to be addressed. Hard to achieve on a collective level but achievable in the everyday. This will involve compassion. Compassion is “awareness” in its purest form. Simply: walk a mile in someone’s shoes and you will understand, even share, their angst. Understand hatred and division on the level of the individual, face to face, and you will be in a position to deal with its energy. By understanding those who carry that bad energy into your life you will find them invaluable in providing living examples of abnormal intent manifested in front of your very eyes. Your reaction should be a vow to not imitate in any manner but also to thank those who have given you a gift. The gift to live, day-to-day, knowing the character and essence of hatred as personally experienced. Vowing to eliminate it as best as possible as it has no role in any spiritual path beyond the knowledge that it exists in the spectrum of human existence. So, your reaction to a crisis as presented by Covid is coloured by one fact: any consequent personal inner growth would only be possible because Covid exists. If it were not Covid then rest assured that it would be another drama. All the traumas of existence teach. All the joys of existence teach. This is their gift. This is the silver lining.
October, 2021 – The Art of Dying
(Still I am compelled to write. Something or one is not done with me)
My brother’s recent death still reverberates within, influencing my everyday approach to my own inevitable departure. As I witnessed John’s death, as I became a component of the process, I became part of a situation that some of us would run a hundred miles to avoid, being our mortality and its inescapable reality. John’s sharing of his death invited me into his final days. He shared what he felt, what he saw, what inspired him, what frightened him to his very essence, and, most of all, his regrets. This was John’s gift to me. Sharing his final days, with their inherent wisdom and insight, with his older brother. Sometimes, I must admit, I felt like a voyeur. I dismissed that notion because what I was witnessing was as natural an event as the rising and setting of the sun.
There is a poem, of unknown origin, that best describes our aversion to the thought of death:
“Life asked death,
“Why do people love me but hate you?
“Death responded.
“Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth.”
After John’s death, I pondered on what I had learnt from such a sad occasion. First, it’s a shame when death arrives unexpectedly as if it was never a serious consideration in one’s expectations - being something that happened to other people, not you. We have to learn to live and die in the same instance, the same minute, second, the Now. We are alive but we are also dying with each and every breath and heartbeat. This is the way it is. It is true and undeniable. This is not a negative situation to find ourselves in. A negative situation involves a declaration that this logic can’t really be applicable to our existence. Such a declaration is a verification, an unfortunate acceptance, that birth and death are separate components of our time on this plane. That they are not part of a continuum. We deny a vital ingredient of our existence. In doing so, we ignore a vital consideration essential to the well-being of our existence. We are then living an incomplete version of life. To deny death is to deny the inevitable.
Second, we have to learn the art of dying. As the American Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast, says: “The Art of living well is also the Art of dying well.” My brother died full of regret. He was a few weeks away from retirement and had the future planned out. The transition from cancer diagnosis to his death was only 10 weeks. Swift and absolute. Every time we spoke he was shocked at that swiftness and absolute certainty. He was not prepared. John has passed but that sense of bewilderment is a universal sense. It is often, along with fear and doubt, the most persistent emotional experience shared among those close to the end. Those who were not prepared. How do you prepare? You must adopt death as a companion. After all, its intrusion into your life can take you by surprise as it isn’t built around a timeline – you can’t underline the date and time of its arrival. Being aware of its proximity lessens the surprise element. It is here, will always be here as a companion, and, as you engender acceptance of its presence, death will reveal its secrets. Some would say: “What a morbid way to live life. Obsessed with death.” I would counter: “What a fulfilling and healthy way to live life. Au fait with death. Au fait with its context within your existence.” If you can accomplish this mindset, and it can be uncomfortable in doing so, you will be ready to die when the time comes. So, there should only be a fear of death if you encounter it completely unprepared for its embrace. As writer Robert Burton wrote in 1621: “The fear of death is worse than death.” Acceptance and understanding will remove the fear and that embrace will follow the shaking of hands as witnessed when any old friends are reunited.
I’ll finish with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. “Those who have not really lived – who have issues unsettled, dreams unfulfilled, hopes shattered, and who have let the real things in life (loving and being loved by others, contributing in a positive way to other people’s happiness and welfare, finding out what things are really you) pass them by – who are most reluctant to die.”
(Still I am compelled to write. Something or one is not done with me)
My brother’s recent death still reverberates within, influencing my everyday approach to my own inevitable departure. As I witnessed John’s death, as I became a component of the process, I became part of a situation that some of us would run a hundred miles to avoid, being our mortality and its inescapable reality. John’s sharing of his death invited me into his final days. He shared what he felt, what he saw, what inspired him, what frightened him to his very essence, and, most of all, his regrets. This was John’s gift to me. Sharing his final days, with their inherent wisdom and insight, with his older brother. Sometimes, I must admit, I felt like a voyeur. I dismissed that notion because what I was witnessing was as natural an event as the rising and setting of the sun.
There is a poem, of unknown origin, that best describes our aversion to the thought of death:
“Life asked death,
“Why do people love me but hate you?
“Death responded.
“Because you are a beautiful lie and I am a painful truth.”
After John’s death, I pondered on what I had learnt from such a sad occasion. First, it’s a shame when death arrives unexpectedly as if it was never a serious consideration in one’s expectations - being something that happened to other people, not you. We have to learn to live and die in the same instance, the same minute, second, the Now. We are alive but we are also dying with each and every breath and heartbeat. This is the way it is. It is true and undeniable. This is not a negative situation to find ourselves in. A negative situation involves a declaration that this logic can’t really be applicable to our existence. Such a declaration is a verification, an unfortunate acceptance, that birth and death are separate components of our time on this plane. That they are not part of a continuum. We deny a vital ingredient of our existence. In doing so, we ignore a vital consideration essential to the well-being of our existence. We are then living an incomplete version of life. To deny death is to deny the inevitable.
Second, we have to learn the art of dying. As the American Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast, says: “The Art of living well is also the Art of dying well.” My brother died full of regret. He was a few weeks away from retirement and had the future planned out. The transition from cancer diagnosis to his death was only 10 weeks. Swift and absolute. Every time we spoke he was shocked at that swiftness and absolute certainty. He was not prepared. John has passed but that sense of bewilderment is a universal sense. It is often, along with fear and doubt, the most persistent emotional experience shared among those close to the end. Those who were not prepared. How do you prepare? You must adopt death as a companion. After all, its intrusion into your life can take you by surprise as it isn’t built around a timeline – you can’t underline the date and time of its arrival. Being aware of its proximity lessens the surprise element. It is here, will always be here as a companion, and, as you engender acceptance of its presence, death will reveal its secrets. Some would say: “What a morbid way to live life. Obsessed with death.” I would counter: “What a fulfilling and healthy way to live life. Au fait with death. Au fait with its context within your existence.” If you can accomplish this mindset, and it can be uncomfortable in doing so, you will be ready to die when the time comes. So, there should only be a fear of death if you encounter it completely unprepared for its embrace. As writer Robert Burton wrote in 1621: “The fear of death is worse than death.” Acceptance and understanding will remove the fear and that embrace will follow the shaking of hands as witnessed when any old friends are reunited.
I’ll finish with Elisabeth Kubler-Ross. “Those who have not really lived – who have issues unsettled, dreams unfulfilled, hopes shattered, and who have let the real things in life (loving and being loved by others, contributing in a positive way to other people’s happiness and welfare, finding out what things are really you) pass them by – who are most reluctant to die.”
September, 2021 – Covid? Positive Disintegration?
(I wasn’t going to write this month but was urged to do so by a voice I couldn’t refuse.)
I have often written about the theory of Positive Disintegration over the years. The theory best exemplified in the life of Viktor Frankl. I’ll reiterate what I wrote about Frankl a few years ago: “ I was drawn to Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search For Meaning – which the Library of Congress called ‘one of the ten most influential books of the Twentieth Century’. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, endured four Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz, in the process losing his parents along with other members of his family. Frankel, who went on to become a renowned psychotherapist, found in the midst of horror the spiritual inspiration to develop a radical approach to the chaos surrounding him. His core belief, Logotherapy, stated that one could find a personal life-meaning amidst chaos, however dire the circumstances can be. Frankel, in his own words, ‘There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life’. This was a man in the dark pit of existence who, as a first-hand witness, witnessed ‘the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable’. Defying and Braving. Frankl saw the life ahead of calamity defined by the ‘attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering’.” Viktor Frankl faced circumstances of horror and degradation that are almost unimaginable yet found strength and resilience within those parameters. And so it can be for those who find themselves cowed and dismayed by life’s vagaries. “Riding high in April. Shot down in May” as the song goes. There are degrees of disintegration ranging from losing a job to Frankl’s experience but be assured in knowing that even a Nazi death camp can have some inspirational seeds to cultivate. When any crisis arrives, no matter its severity, look for the message or wisdom among the wreckage. I did that with my dire cancer prognosis and found a direction hidden to the angst that led me onto a spiritual path that grows stronger each and every day. It wasn’t easy and it took perseverance to utilise the positive in those dark times. I still fall behind sometimes but I now have insight and intuition to help slip through the roadblocks.
Now we have a societal disintegration manifested in Covid? A collective problem. When Covid raised its ugly head last year I noticed that there was an immediate realisation, common among the populace, of issues once hidden by modernity’s clamour and its demand for one’s absolute attention, now revealed. Suddenly, almost overnight, people were isolated from the attachments of our culture. No restaurants, no bars, no sport, travel reduced to a few steps here and there. Families were split. Social interaction was reduced to communication between you and whoever shared your life within the walls of a single residence. Here, of course, came the first issue, boredom. Boredom with one’s self emerged. I had friends ring to tell me how they were going crazy with their own company. Lost hours were spent watching television, Netflix, drinking too much and watching the hands of the clock. They were effectively split in two. The person who once existed in the now-restricted world outside and the one who now existed in the most definitely restricted world inside. People soon found that they had no inner strength, no plan to cope and no idea how to find those essential qualities. Without the attachments, escape strategies or diversions offered by a life that treasures entertainment and unrealistic pipe dreams above all, many souls finally met their real selves, minus the persona, and didn’t like what they saw.
Another issue emerged. All of a sudden, mortality and its ever-present but equally ever-hidden questions of possible death, started to disturb the collective consciousness. Turn on the TV and there was death everywhere. Bodies piled high in India. Overrun American hospitals in New York forced to utilise make-shift morgues parked just down the road from Kentucky Fried Chicken. And the cause, Covid, was not exclusive to one location, it was lurking right outside the door. Now the disillusioned soul who had just discovered aspects of themselves that disturbed their equilibrium, found another viewpoint that rattled their inner furniture – fear of death. Surely, they thought, this wasn’t a possibility. The vaccines arrived and, for some, death was put back in its rightful place – out of sight, out of mind. But, for some, the big questions of life and death took hold and the resultant mental and spiritual confusion added to the dilemma of living in a pandemic.
External issues added to the angst. People lost jobs and businesses folded. Lifestyles vanished. Life, once taken for granted, was now a precarious affair. One of the most fragile pipe dreams offered by both politician and the medical establishment was the promise of a return to “normality.” Once the vaccinated dominated the landscape, “freedoms” would return. As if nothing had changed. The answer to happiness and inner security would, once again, be found in the bars, restaurants, satisfactory material achievements and all the old diversions offered to meet our society’s expectations of what it takes to be a “winner.” People would regain the “freedom” to stand, applaud and admire their highly visible successful progress through life.
But, as we know in Buddhism, everything changes, constantly. Covid has wrought an irreversible change and, most probably, will continue to do so. The probability invites possibilities. Positivities. To live in such an environment, the troubled individual, disillusioned by their response to chaos, by the questions raised about life and death, about health and wellbeing, about sharing life with potential infection being as close as the next door neighbour, has a chance to reinvent their lives. If you were rattled by that person you faced in the mirror who, in isolation, found that they were plagued by doubt, fear and a loss of identity, then you now have a chance to reinvent that soul’s trajectory. Be it physically through a lifestyle change via diet, exercise or any activity that encourages an active and healthy immune system. Be it mentally through a change of material priorities, an honest appraisal of which attachments thwart an inner wellbeing and which attachments foster inner wellbeing. Be it spiritually when you consider that the idea of possible death or severe complications due to disease shook the foundations of the world that you had created to avoid the thought of your demise, had left you vulnerable and there were questions of life and death to ponder. Adopting an intent to answer questions, or to alter destructive habitual behaviour, is one step to turn a disintegration from a negative affair to a positive affair. Then you could look in the mirror and say, without fear of contradiction, that Covid helped to change your life simply because its negative aspects inspired an inner search. Its presence exposed a soul lacking in depth and awareness but, in doing so, it manifested a response from that soul that was positive in intent. An intent to find one’s true self.
This time round it was Covid. Next time it could be cancer or financial ruin, or divorce or death of a loved one. Each crisis carries the potential to create or destroy. Your best armament is to be ready when life decides to intervene and upset pipe dreams and false ideals. This is no Utopia, far from it. It’s a tricky existence at the best of times. Embrace the idea of impermanence. Place yourself in the centre of this impermanence. Your context. You can only do this if you truly know who you are. I accepted cancer as a wake-up call not as an end to it all. I saw its message and believed it. And then I reacted to that message. Without cancer I wouldn’t be writing this blog. Every disintegration contains a chance for rebirth.
“The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.” The Buddha.
(I wasn’t going to write this month but was urged to do so by a voice I couldn’t refuse.)
I have often written about the theory of Positive Disintegration over the years. The theory best exemplified in the life of Viktor Frankl. I’ll reiterate what I wrote about Frankl a few years ago: “ I was drawn to Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search For Meaning – which the Library of Congress called ‘one of the ten most influential books of the Twentieth Century’. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, endured four Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz, in the process losing his parents along with other members of his family. Frankel, who went on to become a renowned psychotherapist, found in the midst of horror the spiritual inspiration to develop a radical approach to the chaos surrounding him. His core belief, Logotherapy, stated that one could find a personal life-meaning amidst chaos, however dire the circumstances can be. Frankel, in his own words, ‘There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life’. This was a man in the dark pit of existence who, as a first-hand witness, witnessed ‘the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable’. Defying and Braving. Frankl saw the life ahead of calamity defined by the ‘attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering’.” Viktor Frankl faced circumstances of horror and degradation that are almost unimaginable yet found strength and resilience within those parameters. And so it can be for those who find themselves cowed and dismayed by life’s vagaries. “Riding high in April. Shot down in May” as the song goes. There are degrees of disintegration ranging from losing a job to Frankl’s experience but be assured in knowing that even a Nazi death camp can have some inspirational seeds to cultivate. When any crisis arrives, no matter its severity, look for the message or wisdom among the wreckage. I did that with my dire cancer prognosis and found a direction hidden to the angst that led me onto a spiritual path that grows stronger each and every day. It wasn’t easy and it took perseverance to utilise the positive in those dark times. I still fall behind sometimes but I now have insight and intuition to help slip through the roadblocks.
Now we have a societal disintegration manifested in Covid? A collective problem. When Covid raised its ugly head last year I noticed that there was an immediate realisation, common among the populace, of issues once hidden by modernity’s clamour and its demand for one’s absolute attention, now revealed. Suddenly, almost overnight, people were isolated from the attachments of our culture. No restaurants, no bars, no sport, travel reduced to a few steps here and there. Families were split. Social interaction was reduced to communication between you and whoever shared your life within the walls of a single residence. Here, of course, came the first issue, boredom. Boredom with one’s self emerged. I had friends ring to tell me how they were going crazy with their own company. Lost hours were spent watching television, Netflix, drinking too much and watching the hands of the clock. They were effectively split in two. The person who once existed in the now-restricted world outside and the one who now existed in the most definitely restricted world inside. People soon found that they had no inner strength, no plan to cope and no idea how to find those essential qualities. Without the attachments, escape strategies or diversions offered by a life that treasures entertainment and unrealistic pipe dreams above all, many souls finally met their real selves, minus the persona, and didn’t like what they saw.
Another issue emerged. All of a sudden, mortality and its ever-present but equally ever-hidden questions of possible death, started to disturb the collective consciousness. Turn on the TV and there was death everywhere. Bodies piled high in India. Overrun American hospitals in New York forced to utilise make-shift morgues parked just down the road from Kentucky Fried Chicken. And the cause, Covid, was not exclusive to one location, it was lurking right outside the door. Now the disillusioned soul who had just discovered aspects of themselves that disturbed their equilibrium, found another viewpoint that rattled their inner furniture – fear of death. Surely, they thought, this wasn’t a possibility. The vaccines arrived and, for some, death was put back in its rightful place – out of sight, out of mind. But, for some, the big questions of life and death took hold and the resultant mental and spiritual confusion added to the dilemma of living in a pandemic.
External issues added to the angst. People lost jobs and businesses folded. Lifestyles vanished. Life, once taken for granted, was now a precarious affair. One of the most fragile pipe dreams offered by both politician and the medical establishment was the promise of a return to “normality.” Once the vaccinated dominated the landscape, “freedoms” would return. As if nothing had changed. The answer to happiness and inner security would, once again, be found in the bars, restaurants, satisfactory material achievements and all the old diversions offered to meet our society’s expectations of what it takes to be a “winner.” People would regain the “freedom” to stand, applaud and admire their highly visible successful progress through life.
But, as we know in Buddhism, everything changes, constantly. Covid has wrought an irreversible change and, most probably, will continue to do so. The probability invites possibilities. Positivities. To live in such an environment, the troubled individual, disillusioned by their response to chaos, by the questions raised about life and death, about health and wellbeing, about sharing life with potential infection being as close as the next door neighbour, has a chance to reinvent their lives. If you were rattled by that person you faced in the mirror who, in isolation, found that they were plagued by doubt, fear and a loss of identity, then you now have a chance to reinvent that soul’s trajectory. Be it physically through a lifestyle change via diet, exercise or any activity that encourages an active and healthy immune system. Be it mentally through a change of material priorities, an honest appraisal of which attachments thwart an inner wellbeing and which attachments foster inner wellbeing. Be it spiritually when you consider that the idea of possible death or severe complications due to disease shook the foundations of the world that you had created to avoid the thought of your demise, had left you vulnerable and there were questions of life and death to ponder. Adopting an intent to answer questions, or to alter destructive habitual behaviour, is one step to turn a disintegration from a negative affair to a positive affair. Then you could look in the mirror and say, without fear of contradiction, that Covid helped to change your life simply because its negative aspects inspired an inner search. Its presence exposed a soul lacking in depth and awareness but, in doing so, it manifested a response from that soul that was positive in intent. An intent to find one’s true self.
This time round it was Covid. Next time it could be cancer or financial ruin, or divorce or death of a loved one. Each crisis carries the potential to create or destroy. Your best armament is to be ready when life decides to intervene and upset pipe dreams and false ideals. This is no Utopia, far from it. It’s a tricky existence at the best of times. Embrace the idea of impermanence. Place yourself in the centre of this impermanence. Your context. You can only do this if you truly know who you are. I accepted cancer as a wake-up call not as an end to it all. I saw its message and believed it. And then I reacted to that message. Without cancer I wouldn’t be writing this blog. Every disintegration contains a chance for rebirth.
“The world is afflicted by death and decay. But the wise do not grieve, having realized the nature of the world.” The Buddha.
August, 2021 – Words Fail Me.
This is my last entry in this series of observations. I have come to the point where I can no longer best articulate the spiritual path I am on. Words now fail me. I liken this to the following: I am talking to a blind man trying to explain the colour green. No matter how hard I try, I can’t convey an image that he can mentally fathom in his darkness. I am trying to describe the taste of water to a man who has never had the pleasure. It is useless. I am trying to describe a piece of music to a profoundly deaf man. Can’t be done. And so it is when I try to describe, even to myself, the feelings within stirred by the Buddha’s words or the wisdom of Krishnamurti. The insight or inspiration sweeps over me but, increasingly, the experience is mine alone. I can’t ring up a friend and convey the depth of my reaction to the many voices that reach me now.
The catalyst is my brother’s failing health. Given only a matter of weeks to live with his aggressive cancer, I find my beliefs are mine and mine alone. If I was conversing with a fellow traveller there would be, of course, common ground. We could meditate upon death together. Talk of the Bardo, of Karma, of future lives but, to an unbeliever, interest in such considerations has not only never been encountered but their influence when arriving at the deathbed is virtually lost under the weight of pain manipulation, a deep set fear of the end of life and bewilderment. My gift to my brother is companionship and compassion physically delivered and a host of silent mantras and prayers delivered in silence. In silence because I can’t convey in words what I believe. I can’t say: “oh you know, you don’t really die in a spiritual sense? Rather you will pass from one existence to another. Death is natural.” It would not be fair. He is dying his own death not mine. My one consolation is that I believe I know what will happen to my brother upon death and after. I know he will exist in another incarnation with a chance to progress deeper into spiritual awareness. That reality is his to discover alone. Until then my belief system is of little value.
So, my brother’s final gift to me will be that he has shown me the divine and its persistent intervention in my life, so far, is not easily transferrable to words. It can be manifested in action – kindness, compassion, love – but its essence and power is lost in translation. Words, simply, are not enough. Consequently, I have decided to walk on, alone, without any description of the process. I hope that what I have written over the years might be of use as a stepping stone for whoever has read those words. That whatever you are seeking is seeking you. Beyond words.
This is my last entry in this series of observations. I have come to the point where I can no longer best articulate the spiritual path I am on. Words now fail me. I liken this to the following: I am talking to a blind man trying to explain the colour green. No matter how hard I try, I can’t convey an image that he can mentally fathom in his darkness. I am trying to describe the taste of water to a man who has never had the pleasure. It is useless. I am trying to describe a piece of music to a profoundly deaf man. Can’t be done. And so it is when I try to describe, even to myself, the feelings within stirred by the Buddha’s words or the wisdom of Krishnamurti. The insight or inspiration sweeps over me but, increasingly, the experience is mine alone. I can’t ring up a friend and convey the depth of my reaction to the many voices that reach me now.
The catalyst is my brother’s failing health. Given only a matter of weeks to live with his aggressive cancer, I find my beliefs are mine and mine alone. If I was conversing with a fellow traveller there would be, of course, common ground. We could meditate upon death together. Talk of the Bardo, of Karma, of future lives but, to an unbeliever, interest in such considerations has not only never been encountered but their influence when arriving at the deathbed is virtually lost under the weight of pain manipulation, a deep set fear of the end of life and bewilderment. My gift to my brother is companionship and compassion physically delivered and a host of silent mantras and prayers delivered in silence. In silence because I can’t convey in words what I believe. I can’t say: “oh you know, you don’t really die in a spiritual sense? Rather you will pass from one existence to another. Death is natural.” It would not be fair. He is dying his own death not mine. My one consolation is that I believe I know what will happen to my brother upon death and after. I know he will exist in another incarnation with a chance to progress deeper into spiritual awareness. That reality is his to discover alone. Until then my belief system is of little value.
So, my brother’s final gift to me will be that he has shown me the divine and its persistent intervention in my life, so far, is not easily transferrable to words. It can be manifested in action – kindness, compassion, love – but its essence and power is lost in translation. Words, simply, are not enough. Consequently, I have decided to walk on, alone, without any description of the process. I hope that what I have written over the years might be of use as a stepping stone for whoever has read those words. That whatever you are seeking is seeking you. Beyond words.
July, 2020 – The Fragility of Concepts
A theory or a concept is abstract. A mental construction. They can grow or diminish as the thinker, their creator, absorbs knowledge and changes his or her opinions with each and every experience encountered. The logic here is that concepts and theories are subject to change like all the components, physical, mental or spiritual, that make up this existence. When I write my monthly blogs I have faith in the logic of what I write at the time I write it. But all moments in time are subject to change and faith itself is subject to that change. Life, the great educator, recently stepped in with a lesson of its own. It underlined the fragility of any earthbound concept by accentuating its malleability – a concept is susceptible to change from that moment in which it is created. Life didn’t dismiss concepts, it just added a contribution to any logic presented. I was told that concepts are important as encouragements, as catalysts, for prompting deeper considerations of our time in this dimension. But, when it comes to the big, eternal facts, they can lose their usefulness depending on the surroundings in which they find themselves. It is this inbuilt flaw that should inspire us to look outside of concepts for guidance in difficult times. In this case, when death, itself, knocked at the door.
Two weeks ago, my brother rang me. Two spots had been found on his lungs. The doctor considered them removable. But, first, to get the big picture, a biopsy was conducted. The result was a calamity. The cancer was virtually in every corner of the body. Aggressive and all-pervasive. The life span? A mere 13 weeks. As an apprentice Buddhist, my spiritual beliefs are of no help to my brother. He is your archetypal outback bloke. Rough around the edges. A lovable rogue. A spiritual road has never been considered beyond that unique yearning for answers to pressing questions of existence that nag at all sentient souls. If I were to sit and hold his hand in his final hours, talk of the Bardo or reincarnation or even death as a door not a dead end would fall on ears not attuned to the intricacies of my belief system. All my theories and concepts would be non-persuasive as my brother has never contemplated a spiritual path with all of its avenues. Though I still ask the Universe for a remission, I have to face the facts. So, how to help my brother through this stage?
Two facts spring to mind. First, abandon the theories and concepts – even if your personal belief in what you have learnt is unshakeable. The Buddhist approach to death is a beautiful avenue to ponder and implement but my brother is not a Buddhist. If he asks me, I will inform him. But only if he asks me. Second, my road is not his road – there is no point in relating the miracles I have encountered on my path post-cancer. Telling him about my healer and her contribution to my survival won’t help him in the least. After all I would be just telling him of the good fortune of survivors I have known, including myself, while he sits in pain and angst far removed from any access to such good fortune. It would only produce unnecessary emotions such as bitterness, envy or disbelief. There is only step I can take - sharing his predicament. I vow he will not be alone. There are hundreds of miles between us but I will overcome that inconvenience by placing myself in his shoes as best as I can. My compassion for his suffering will be strengthened as I try to look at his world through his eyes. I will not ask for a miracle as I don’t have either the authority or the ability but I will ask that he finds wisdom and harmony in his final days. And I will ask for that with all my heart.
My lesson? All concepts, all intellectualisations, all belief systems will be, eventually, questioned by life’s realities. Many will not survive scrutiny because many are, though at times inspired, just guesswork or wishful thinking or are, at worst, self denial or visions of ego inventing destructive personas. How to differentiate? You have to have faith in what resonates when any concept is considered. The beauty of Buddhism is in its scientific approach. Test tube logic. Try it in your everyday existence and, if it generates no spiritual insight, no inspiration, move on. But, if the core teachings reach out, then open your arms wide. Here the external, Buddhist teachings, communicates with the internal - Life, as lived, merges with the spirit within. When I write each month I write guided by intent. An intent built on positive energy fuelled by intuition. All is well when I do so. Sometimes doubts are raised when difficult, external circumstances emerge. My brother’s illness being a case in point. The probable death of a loved one is never easy and often the feelings of injustice arise. But this is the world in which issues, especially the meaning of death, inspire and create concepts. Our role is to examine and test all such concepts for their validity. To see whether we can relate to the logic involved and then, once accepted, whether we can use our belief in helping others.
Understand the concept. Understand its relevance to you. Reject if dissatisfied. Use where applicable using intuition. Do not force your belief system on those who have no use for it.
A theory or a concept is abstract. A mental construction. They can grow or diminish as the thinker, their creator, absorbs knowledge and changes his or her opinions with each and every experience encountered. The logic here is that concepts and theories are subject to change like all the components, physical, mental or spiritual, that make up this existence. When I write my monthly blogs I have faith in the logic of what I write at the time I write it. But all moments in time are subject to change and faith itself is subject to that change. Life, the great educator, recently stepped in with a lesson of its own. It underlined the fragility of any earthbound concept by accentuating its malleability – a concept is susceptible to change from that moment in which it is created. Life didn’t dismiss concepts, it just added a contribution to any logic presented. I was told that concepts are important as encouragements, as catalysts, for prompting deeper considerations of our time in this dimension. But, when it comes to the big, eternal facts, they can lose their usefulness depending on the surroundings in which they find themselves. It is this inbuilt flaw that should inspire us to look outside of concepts for guidance in difficult times. In this case, when death, itself, knocked at the door.
Two weeks ago, my brother rang me. Two spots had been found on his lungs. The doctor considered them removable. But, first, to get the big picture, a biopsy was conducted. The result was a calamity. The cancer was virtually in every corner of the body. Aggressive and all-pervasive. The life span? A mere 13 weeks. As an apprentice Buddhist, my spiritual beliefs are of no help to my brother. He is your archetypal outback bloke. Rough around the edges. A lovable rogue. A spiritual road has never been considered beyond that unique yearning for answers to pressing questions of existence that nag at all sentient souls. If I were to sit and hold his hand in his final hours, talk of the Bardo or reincarnation or even death as a door not a dead end would fall on ears not attuned to the intricacies of my belief system. All my theories and concepts would be non-persuasive as my brother has never contemplated a spiritual path with all of its avenues. Though I still ask the Universe for a remission, I have to face the facts. So, how to help my brother through this stage?
Two facts spring to mind. First, abandon the theories and concepts – even if your personal belief in what you have learnt is unshakeable. The Buddhist approach to death is a beautiful avenue to ponder and implement but my brother is not a Buddhist. If he asks me, I will inform him. But only if he asks me. Second, my road is not his road – there is no point in relating the miracles I have encountered on my path post-cancer. Telling him about my healer and her contribution to my survival won’t help him in the least. After all I would be just telling him of the good fortune of survivors I have known, including myself, while he sits in pain and angst far removed from any access to such good fortune. It would only produce unnecessary emotions such as bitterness, envy or disbelief. There is only step I can take - sharing his predicament. I vow he will not be alone. There are hundreds of miles between us but I will overcome that inconvenience by placing myself in his shoes as best as I can. My compassion for his suffering will be strengthened as I try to look at his world through his eyes. I will not ask for a miracle as I don’t have either the authority or the ability but I will ask that he finds wisdom and harmony in his final days. And I will ask for that with all my heart.
My lesson? All concepts, all intellectualisations, all belief systems will be, eventually, questioned by life’s realities. Many will not survive scrutiny because many are, though at times inspired, just guesswork or wishful thinking or are, at worst, self denial or visions of ego inventing destructive personas. How to differentiate? You have to have faith in what resonates when any concept is considered. The beauty of Buddhism is in its scientific approach. Test tube logic. Try it in your everyday existence and, if it generates no spiritual insight, no inspiration, move on. But, if the core teachings reach out, then open your arms wide. Here the external, Buddhist teachings, communicates with the internal - Life, as lived, merges with the spirit within. When I write each month I write guided by intent. An intent built on positive energy fuelled by intuition. All is well when I do so. Sometimes doubts are raised when difficult, external circumstances emerge. My brother’s illness being a case in point. The probable death of a loved one is never easy and often the feelings of injustice arise. But this is the world in which issues, especially the meaning of death, inspire and create concepts. Our role is to examine and test all such concepts for their validity. To see whether we can relate to the logic involved and then, once accepted, whether we can use our belief in helping others.
Understand the concept. Understand its relevance to you. Reject if dissatisfied. Use where applicable using intuition. Do not force your belief system on those who have no use for it.
June, 2021 – Is it true? I could die someday? Why wasn’t I told?
“The fear of death is worse than death.” – Robert Burton (1557–1640)
People have often confided in me that their greatest fear is dying. The problem with that expressed fear was that the majority of these souls were often decades away from the event. Here you are at age 40 for instance. You are deep into your inner thoughts. Sitting, thinking, trying to imagine your final moments. That instance when you close your eyes and a great mystery reveals its essence. When you are no longer you. You struggle to imagine a world where there is no longer a “you”. The ego of course finds this a confronting concept. How can the world possibly exist without your presence in the centre of all things physical? How can your loved ones possibly cope without your guiding, loving hands to cling to? This, of course, is the ridiculous notion that the Universe revolves around you and you alone. Considering such egotistical concepts is a consideration worth pursuing but I’m more interested in the reality of death being approached as an undeniable fact situated somewhere along your spiritual path.
As death is just one point on a path then all the points that precede that inevitable destination are important avenues for contemplation. I will concentrate on that soul who is afraid of a conceived extinction at an age being lived years before the actual reality is revealed. I am not talking about the terminally ill soul with a cancer-ridden body with only a few months of life left. That soul is another consideration. I am talking to that neurotic person who is healthy, outwardly normal but, privately, is haunted by neuroticism. That persistent, ongoing emotional state dominated by negative reactions and feelings. In this case a fear of death. People who are dying in their imagination long before their time is due. The truth is that person, at age 40 for instance, is trying to imagine the death of a stranger. How can you predict how that stranger accepts his death? You are trying to reconcile two different points along the path of life. One is “Now”. The 40-year-old Now. The other is a future “Now”. This Now has no relation to a Now being lived.
The soul, at 40, trapped in the uncertainty that the physical world has imposed on the otherwise natural way of things, is not the same person who dies at 80. That latter soul will certainly be more frail, more knowledgeable, wiser, physically, mentally and spiritually different. Or, the opposite. No matter, different age, different composition. Just as the reckless teenager racing his car 80kph above the speed limit through crowded city streets would bear no resemblance to the same person, years later, safely driving his wife and children home from a night out at the movies. If, in the realms of science fiction, they both occupied the same room they wouldn’t recognise each other and, if they did, they certainly wouldn’t share the same mentalities. Both would be strangers. A neurotic approach to death is then someone trying to pre-empt the future. Trying to imagine the 40-year-old person they see in the mirror closing their eyes for eternity. That mirror image will vanish long before death arrives. That’s like declaring that the teenage speeder would be the teenage speeder right up to the final breath. Life never entertains such a possibility.
Everything changes. So be kind to yourself. If you are struggling with the concept of death long before its due date try to accept that that struggling “you” will change. Don’t try to live life split in half – the present you and the future you. They are strangers to each other. You can’t speak for the future you. You can’t dictate how you will think years down the path. Death and beyond is a mystery that has eluded many questioners from the ancients onwards. It is a question best answered by those who experience it, not those who image it long before its advent.
“I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it.”
- - Mark Twain.
May, 2021 – The Failure of Words?
“Everything changes but change.” – Israel Zangwill.
Everything changes. I have written these observations for six years with that fact always in my mind. Each month I have waited patiently for my habit of intently watching my interaction with the world around me, to isolate one topic that I would find worth extra investigation. A topic that would induce a personal reaction, an inner spark, that I would like to share externally. I have a belief in the validity of the majority of subjects I have explored. Most of my observations have matched my intuitions. Most, but not all, of what I have written sits comfortably within my intuition of all that is possible. I have to accentuate “my intuition” before I continue. All I have written is influenced by my own particular transit through this existence. My journey from first breath has provided all the paving stones that make up that path. My experiences, conclusions (either ethereal or concrete), my memories, all colour each month’s contribution. Now I find that my words have almost reached their use-by date. And, in that one realisation, everything changes. What triggered that realisation?
I realised that words eventually became inadequate when it comes to sharing one’s path with a host of readers or listeners. If your destination is so mysterious or wondrous that it is beyond a reasonable or adequate description then it is ineffable. Ineffable destinations are nigh on impossible to put into words. When you start on your spiritual quest words are often all you have. You are like a child learning to read. Words are essential, otherwise life would be just a series of grunts and vigorous hand gestures. So it is in the beginning. You seek information. You take up meditation often accompanied by a mantra’s words. Words are uttered by varying teachers and spiritual guides. Words are written in a multitude of volumes designed to aid your exploration. So it goes. I believe that you are approaching an essential awareness, an enlightenment, if you are increasingly intuitive that you are closing in on a pivotal point on the path that proclaims that words are becoming redundant.
To progress you must accept one realization. You find that you are running out of words and the concepts and convictions they produce. Soon you will have to abandon words because they are becoming increasingly inadequate. Can you go to a close friend and adequately describe that intense insight you reached on a street corner as the traffic rolled by? When you caught just a glimpse of the truth behind the illusion. When all - traffic, you, the sky, the earth beneath your feet - merged into one entity. And you saw yourself as part of something bigger and there was no distance or barrier between you and the unknown. Just a glimpse, just a millisecond of profound wisdom, can it be described perfectly? Unless your close friend has had the gift of a similar experience to compare by, the answer is no. words will always fall short. You can describe the road that led you there – the hours of searching, researching and searching again. The doubts, joys, highs and lows that you encountered but that one glimpse and its power is beyond all description. Then you realise that all your knowledge and its accompanying concepts, ideas and fancies cannot even convey the divine insight contained in that one fleeting glimpse. We have just twenty-six letters to describe our existence, first breath to last, and they are all used up describing this existence as we have experienced it. What we have never experienced and, indeed, what very few souls have experienced, quickly reveals the shortcomings of language as a tool of explanation, definition and understanding. Words fail us.
A personal example. I’ll move from the spiritual to the paranormal, that which is removed from scientific reasoning. One early evening on the 5th March, 1965, I was walking with two friends to the local cinema when one friend called out in alarm to look skywards. And there above were large, metallic objects sweeping by in a beautiful formation. The larger lead object, triangular, was flanked by smaller companions. A perfect formation in complete symmetry. Very much like ducks flying south or north for the winter depending on your hemisphere. Majestic in flight. They were described in the Sydney Morning Herald, on its front page, as flying at a speed of between 18,000 to 20,000 mph! The only applicable words uttered by the boys below were: “What is that!?” Brief and inadequate for there were no other words we could use. Simply because we were experiencing something outside of the explicable. This was a UFO sighting. Unidentified flying object. Unidentified being the key word and the only one available. Then and forever. Words are only useful for so long and then they fall beside the roadside.
I am now approaching that point where I can no longer articulate where I am going. Therefore my words will soon be wasted as they lose all descriptive powers. I have, over the years, written down my journey to share with others but it has always been my journey alone. I hoped my varying insights might have an influence on other souls in that my words might stir a latent inquisitiveness into action. All I can say now is I pray that someone, somewhere, has read my observations and a door has opened to a path worth exploring. I will continue further alone, deeper within, hoping to find that which is both beyond understanding and, at the same time, completely spiritually knowable. I want to look into life’s eyes and not see a stranger.
Osho:
“We are already enlightened. Learning is dangerous. Your head overdoses with words, concepts, emotions, facts, information. It becomes very noisy and you cannot hear the silence. That silence is lost in the noise of knowledge. Unlearning, becoming innocent, will bring you home.”
“Everything changes but change.” – Israel Zangwill.
Everything changes. I have written these observations for six years with that fact always in my mind. Each month I have waited patiently for my habit of intently watching my interaction with the world around me, to isolate one topic that I would find worth extra investigation. A topic that would induce a personal reaction, an inner spark, that I would like to share externally. I have a belief in the validity of the majority of subjects I have explored. Most of my observations have matched my intuitions. Most, but not all, of what I have written sits comfortably within my intuition of all that is possible. I have to accentuate “my intuition” before I continue. All I have written is influenced by my own particular transit through this existence. My journey from first breath has provided all the paving stones that make up that path. My experiences, conclusions (either ethereal or concrete), my memories, all colour each month’s contribution. Now I find that my words have almost reached their use-by date. And, in that one realisation, everything changes. What triggered that realisation?
I realised that words eventually became inadequate when it comes to sharing one’s path with a host of readers or listeners. If your destination is so mysterious or wondrous that it is beyond a reasonable or adequate description then it is ineffable. Ineffable destinations are nigh on impossible to put into words. When you start on your spiritual quest words are often all you have. You are like a child learning to read. Words are essential, otherwise life would be just a series of grunts and vigorous hand gestures. So it is in the beginning. You seek information. You take up meditation often accompanied by a mantra’s words. Words are uttered by varying teachers and spiritual guides. Words are written in a multitude of volumes designed to aid your exploration. So it goes. I believe that you are approaching an essential awareness, an enlightenment, if you are increasingly intuitive that you are closing in on a pivotal point on the path that proclaims that words are becoming redundant.
To progress you must accept one realization. You find that you are running out of words and the concepts and convictions they produce. Soon you will have to abandon words because they are becoming increasingly inadequate. Can you go to a close friend and adequately describe that intense insight you reached on a street corner as the traffic rolled by? When you caught just a glimpse of the truth behind the illusion. When all - traffic, you, the sky, the earth beneath your feet - merged into one entity. And you saw yourself as part of something bigger and there was no distance or barrier between you and the unknown. Just a glimpse, just a millisecond of profound wisdom, can it be described perfectly? Unless your close friend has had the gift of a similar experience to compare by, the answer is no. words will always fall short. You can describe the road that led you there – the hours of searching, researching and searching again. The doubts, joys, highs and lows that you encountered but that one glimpse and its power is beyond all description. Then you realise that all your knowledge and its accompanying concepts, ideas and fancies cannot even convey the divine insight contained in that one fleeting glimpse. We have just twenty-six letters to describe our existence, first breath to last, and they are all used up describing this existence as we have experienced it. What we have never experienced and, indeed, what very few souls have experienced, quickly reveals the shortcomings of language as a tool of explanation, definition and understanding. Words fail us.
A personal example. I’ll move from the spiritual to the paranormal, that which is removed from scientific reasoning. One early evening on the 5th March, 1965, I was walking with two friends to the local cinema when one friend called out in alarm to look skywards. And there above were large, metallic objects sweeping by in a beautiful formation. The larger lead object, triangular, was flanked by smaller companions. A perfect formation in complete symmetry. Very much like ducks flying south or north for the winter depending on your hemisphere. Majestic in flight. They were described in the Sydney Morning Herald, on its front page, as flying at a speed of between 18,000 to 20,000 mph! The only applicable words uttered by the boys below were: “What is that!?” Brief and inadequate for there were no other words we could use. Simply because we were experiencing something outside of the explicable. This was a UFO sighting. Unidentified flying object. Unidentified being the key word and the only one available. Then and forever. Words are only useful for so long and then they fall beside the roadside.
I am now approaching that point where I can no longer articulate where I am going. Therefore my words will soon be wasted as they lose all descriptive powers. I have, over the years, written down my journey to share with others but it has always been my journey alone. I hoped my varying insights might have an influence on other souls in that my words might stir a latent inquisitiveness into action. All I can say now is I pray that someone, somewhere, has read my observations and a door has opened to a path worth exploring. I will continue further alone, deeper within, hoping to find that which is both beyond understanding and, at the same time, completely spiritually knowable. I want to look into life’s eyes and not see a stranger.
Osho:
“We are already enlightened. Learning is dangerous. Your head overdoses with words, concepts, emotions, facts, information. It becomes very noisy and you cannot hear the silence. That silence is lost in the noise of knowledge. Unlearning, becoming innocent, will bring you home.”
April, 2021 – Faces of Faith
In the 13th Century, Zen master, Gao-feng Yuanmiao, expressed that the move from delusion to awakening was dependent on three essentials: Great Faith, Great Doubt and Great Determination. To start with faith. Though one has faith that there is meaning behind the visible, without distinct proof, questions naturally arise. Spiritually, faith in the Unknown invites questions. The questions inspire doubt. This doubt is not negative. It has a valuable, positive intent. Fuelled by a yearning to “know,” faith and doubt combine to encourage further exploration. Enlightenment is the objective. A pathway, though faint, is discernible. To access this pathway takes courage, a great determination. And so the interrelationship continues. Greater faith, more complex questioning fuelled by a persistent determination to understand. American theologian, Carter Heywood, states: “Doubt is as crucial to faith as darkness is to light. Without one, the other has no context and is meaningless. Faith is, by definition, uncertainty. It is full of doubt, steeped in risk. It is about matters not of the known, but of the unknown.” This is spiritual faith but not religious faith. It is a divine exploration as opposed to an earth-bound, spoon-fed belief system designed for the masses. The former is an inward journey. The latter, relies on the external. Amorphous verses Material. Intuition verses Concept.
Religious Faith
Organised conceptualisation is the cornerstone of many of today’s religions, which, throughout time, have relied on the external for comfort and guidance. That faith incorporates a fair degree of blindness as it utilises an institutionalised approach to its adherents’ belief systems. Many of those who prefer this approach reinforce their “blind” faith by employing a complete handover of the internal to the external. The outcome is that the external, be it manifested in an institution, dubious guru, ancient ritual or radical interpretation, is adopted as that adherent’s seeing-eye dog. In this setting, comfort is found in a collective religious consciousness. An agreement is reached as to what concept or ideal is most appropriate to both institution and resident believer. Within each belief system there are strict guidelines of what is “correct and true” and what is “false.” There is a God. There is a Heaven. There is a Hell. And one’s earthly interaction with these concepts is out of one’s hands. Instead it rests in the hands of tradition, conservative values and doctrine, all carefully reinforced by varying interpretations of that which “can’t be seen.” And faith, in this material world, is often a concession. “I will not question or step outside of the guidelines. I will not doubt. I will ignore any internal misgivings and accept all external information as the only information worth considering.” This is religious faith.
Here I have to avoid elitism by displaying a degree of caution as there are many who find solace and counselling in the traditional Abrahamic religions. Just as they find comfort in many other belief variants. Even the atheist has a belief system through which she or he claims that a non-God world is the rational approach to living correctly. And they find comfort in numbers. There are, in estimation, at least 400-500 million declared atheists worldwide – approximately 7% of the global adult population. I am, though, pointing an accusatory finger at those who accept, wholeheartedly, their manipulation by those who are experts in that manipulation. Those who surrender to those manipulators who, as a consequence of that passive acquiescence, profit materially from a warped religiosity. Those whose target is not the soul of their practitioners but their pockets and wallets. And those who accept a belief system that sees bombs in city centres and public transport as an expression of devotion to a God that is theirs only. A selective, biased deity. Or those who were escorted to a non-existent heaven via Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Jonestown faith in all its glory. This is a warped religious faith lost in the external.
Spiritual Faith
Spiritual faith is a totally different consideration. It is a conviction that that truth which exists outside of mere words, concepts and straight forward illusion, exists and is accessible to those who seek it. The divine, utilising a clumsy and inadequate word association, is eternal and omnipresent. The divine, the unknown, cannot be confined to a precise location that can be found in a building, a shrine, on a map or wavelength, or in words on a visible, physical page. It is both here and there spontaneously. It is internal. It resides in every quantum building block. No matter how infinitesimal. It is an intelligent force within every physical manifestation that the eye can see. And it is external as it pervades that which we cannot see. It exists far beyond the most technically efficient cosmic telescope or fledgling space probe. Beneath our feet there is evidence of cosmic intelligence that we can visually contemplate as displayed in the delicate balance between the cosmos and our planet. Consider Gravity. The Universe is as fined tuned as a concert piano. Its mechanism suggests order in the face of possible chaos. A nameless intelligence at play. A New Scientist article states: “The moment of the Universe’s birth created both matter and an expanding space-time in which this matter could exist. While Gravity pulled the matter together, the expansion of space drew particles of matter apart – and the further apart they drifted, the weaker their mutual attraction became. It turns out that the struggle between these two was balanced on a knife-edge. If the expansion of space had overwhelmed the pull of Gravity in the newborn Universe, stars, galaxies and humans would never have been able to form… Our cosmic history could have been over by now.” Yet you have faith in Gravity because, minute to minute, you experience it. So it is with spiritual faith.
You can find spirituality in a certain holy location or by praying with a book of concepts in hand or kneeling before a self-proclaimed flesh and blood spiritual adviser but it is diluted within boundaries. True spirituality cannot be confined, conceptualised and marketed if it is to flourish. This spirituality cannot be a slave to the “known.” The “known” is a static point. It is finite and leads nowhere meaning that spiritual faith is stymied. Spiritual faith calls to you but the message can be absorbed into the dogma which is the heart and soul of that belief system that relies on obedience and discourages exploration beyond the rules. Such a system denies any chance of clarification when it comes to an individual’s yearning for answers to questions outside of that belief system. How to avoid this conundrum? By cultivating that same faith that you have developed when it comes to Gravity – acceptance of the “unseen” through personal experience. Can’t see it but you know for sure it’s right there all around you. A simplistic example but any experience gained by one's own inner intuition is valuable and rewarding. This is your experience and not a mandated hand-me-down experience. So, to nurture spiritual faith, one has to abandon religious faith. Ignore any domesticated doctrine aimed at the collective. That collective which is clambering for tickets from travel agents specialising in Enlightenment Tours for self-proclaimed holy sightseers! Harsh but there remains a steady proliferation of such agents in the modern world. Prepare yourself to have faith in “everything” not “something.”
If you have started on a spiritual path and have arrived at the state of religious faith and find that there is no comfort in its application or if there is no lessening of your doubts or if your persistent yearning undermines an unrealistic complacency, then you are hearing the voice that invites you to foster spiritual faith as a building block of exploration. Religious faith, then is a rung. Spiritual faith is a ladder. There can be no ladder without rungs and the opposite applies. The difference being that is a rung is measureable, it fits within the structure, but the structure can be infinite without limitations. So if you are insistent the first rung is as high as you want to go, or are coerced into thinking that way by external forces, then the ladder is finite and of no use. You are caught in religious faith. But if you realise that this is your journey and no one else’s, and armed with the wisdom inherent in that belief, the faith generated by that conviction, you can move far beyond the shackles of spiritual conformity. You can climb the ladder.
In the 13th Century, Zen master, Gao-feng Yuanmiao, expressed that the move from delusion to awakening was dependent on three essentials: Great Faith, Great Doubt and Great Determination. To start with faith. Though one has faith that there is meaning behind the visible, without distinct proof, questions naturally arise. Spiritually, faith in the Unknown invites questions. The questions inspire doubt. This doubt is not negative. It has a valuable, positive intent. Fuelled by a yearning to “know,” faith and doubt combine to encourage further exploration. Enlightenment is the objective. A pathway, though faint, is discernible. To access this pathway takes courage, a great determination. And so the interrelationship continues. Greater faith, more complex questioning fuelled by a persistent determination to understand. American theologian, Carter Heywood, states: “Doubt is as crucial to faith as darkness is to light. Without one, the other has no context and is meaningless. Faith is, by definition, uncertainty. It is full of doubt, steeped in risk. It is about matters not of the known, but of the unknown.” This is spiritual faith but not religious faith. It is a divine exploration as opposed to an earth-bound, spoon-fed belief system designed for the masses. The former is an inward journey. The latter, relies on the external. Amorphous verses Material. Intuition verses Concept.
Religious Faith
Organised conceptualisation is the cornerstone of many of today’s religions, which, throughout time, have relied on the external for comfort and guidance. That faith incorporates a fair degree of blindness as it utilises an institutionalised approach to its adherents’ belief systems. Many of those who prefer this approach reinforce their “blind” faith by employing a complete handover of the internal to the external. The outcome is that the external, be it manifested in an institution, dubious guru, ancient ritual or radical interpretation, is adopted as that adherent’s seeing-eye dog. In this setting, comfort is found in a collective religious consciousness. An agreement is reached as to what concept or ideal is most appropriate to both institution and resident believer. Within each belief system there are strict guidelines of what is “correct and true” and what is “false.” There is a God. There is a Heaven. There is a Hell. And one’s earthly interaction with these concepts is out of one’s hands. Instead it rests in the hands of tradition, conservative values and doctrine, all carefully reinforced by varying interpretations of that which “can’t be seen.” And faith, in this material world, is often a concession. “I will not question or step outside of the guidelines. I will not doubt. I will ignore any internal misgivings and accept all external information as the only information worth considering.” This is religious faith.
Here I have to avoid elitism by displaying a degree of caution as there are many who find solace and counselling in the traditional Abrahamic religions. Just as they find comfort in many other belief variants. Even the atheist has a belief system through which she or he claims that a non-God world is the rational approach to living correctly. And they find comfort in numbers. There are, in estimation, at least 400-500 million declared atheists worldwide – approximately 7% of the global adult population. I am, though, pointing an accusatory finger at those who accept, wholeheartedly, their manipulation by those who are experts in that manipulation. Those who surrender to those manipulators who, as a consequence of that passive acquiescence, profit materially from a warped religiosity. Those whose target is not the soul of their practitioners but their pockets and wallets. And those who accept a belief system that sees bombs in city centres and public transport as an expression of devotion to a God that is theirs only. A selective, biased deity. Or those who were escorted to a non-existent heaven via Kool-Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Jonestown faith in all its glory. This is a warped religious faith lost in the external.
Spiritual Faith
Spiritual faith is a totally different consideration. It is a conviction that that truth which exists outside of mere words, concepts and straight forward illusion, exists and is accessible to those who seek it. The divine, utilising a clumsy and inadequate word association, is eternal and omnipresent. The divine, the unknown, cannot be confined to a precise location that can be found in a building, a shrine, on a map or wavelength, or in words on a visible, physical page. It is both here and there spontaneously. It is internal. It resides in every quantum building block. No matter how infinitesimal. It is an intelligent force within every physical manifestation that the eye can see. And it is external as it pervades that which we cannot see. It exists far beyond the most technically efficient cosmic telescope or fledgling space probe. Beneath our feet there is evidence of cosmic intelligence that we can visually contemplate as displayed in the delicate balance between the cosmos and our planet. Consider Gravity. The Universe is as fined tuned as a concert piano. Its mechanism suggests order in the face of possible chaos. A nameless intelligence at play. A New Scientist article states: “The moment of the Universe’s birth created both matter and an expanding space-time in which this matter could exist. While Gravity pulled the matter together, the expansion of space drew particles of matter apart – and the further apart they drifted, the weaker their mutual attraction became. It turns out that the struggle between these two was balanced on a knife-edge. If the expansion of space had overwhelmed the pull of Gravity in the newborn Universe, stars, galaxies and humans would never have been able to form… Our cosmic history could have been over by now.” Yet you have faith in Gravity because, minute to minute, you experience it. So it is with spiritual faith.
You can find spirituality in a certain holy location or by praying with a book of concepts in hand or kneeling before a self-proclaimed flesh and blood spiritual adviser but it is diluted within boundaries. True spirituality cannot be confined, conceptualised and marketed if it is to flourish. This spirituality cannot be a slave to the “known.” The “known” is a static point. It is finite and leads nowhere meaning that spiritual faith is stymied. Spiritual faith calls to you but the message can be absorbed into the dogma which is the heart and soul of that belief system that relies on obedience and discourages exploration beyond the rules. Such a system denies any chance of clarification when it comes to an individual’s yearning for answers to questions outside of that belief system. How to avoid this conundrum? By cultivating that same faith that you have developed when it comes to Gravity – acceptance of the “unseen” through personal experience. Can’t see it but you know for sure it’s right there all around you. A simplistic example but any experience gained by one's own inner intuition is valuable and rewarding. This is your experience and not a mandated hand-me-down experience. So, to nurture spiritual faith, one has to abandon religious faith. Ignore any domesticated doctrine aimed at the collective. That collective which is clambering for tickets from travel agents specialising in Enlightenment Tours for self-proclaimed holy sightseers! Harsh but there remains a steady proliferation of such agents in the modern world. Prepare yourself to have faith in “everything” not “something.”
If you have started on a spiritual path and have arrived at the state of religious faith and find that there is no comfort in its application or if there is no lessening of your doubts or if your persistent yearning undermines an unrealistic complacency, then you are hearing the voice that invites you to foster spiritual faith as a building block of exploration. Religious faith, then is a rung. Spiritual faith is a ladder. There can be no ladder without rungs and the opposite applies. The difference being that is a rung is measureable, it fits within the structure, but the structure can be infinite without limitations. So if you are insistent the first rung is as high as you want to go, or are coerced into thinking that way by external forces, then the ladder is finite and of no use. You are caught in religious faith. But if you realise that this is your journey and no one else’s, and armed with the wisdom inherent in that belief, the faith generated by that conviction, you can move far beyond the shackles of spiritual conformity. You can climb the ladder.
March, 2021 – The Cracks in the path to Creativity
I’ve been writing a book over the past three years. It’s been, at times, exhilarating, liberating and a cathartic experience. At other times I have found it a process riddled with doubt, apprehension and, at worst, an unsteady confrontation with my version of the Past as I believed it to be. To tell such an intimate story involved facing all the obstacles that beset human creativity. One such obstacle is the unreliability of memory. To rely on memory is perilous. Human nature distorts all our yesterdays. The Past is riddled with selective amnesia. The good times tend to predominate in our recollections while the bad are often relegated to a subconscious cupboard. The fact that memory ages along with the physical body doesn’t help. Events blur and co-mingle til the boundaries between become nebulous in nature. Yet it is the Past where most of us retreat in order to find answers to the questions we need today. Answers that are essential in an autobiography. We rely on yesterday. Yesterday in turn appears to resemble an intricately staged play overflowing with a myriad of plots containing a never-ending array of twists and turns performed by a cast of characters perplexed by the complexity of the performance they are expected to deliver. Yet when we create, whether it be words or music or any form of creativity, the Past seems to hold all the ingredients for success.
Faced with the uncertainly of memory, we are further hindered by the presence of the most dubious influence in our play. Ourselves. When we enter our remembrance, our memory of recollection, we confront our Persona, our outer mask that has been carefully manufactured over the decades, which has established a confused Self as its mouthpiece. We then have a facade that, more often than not, claims ownership of any interpretation we offer as to the world we personally inhabit. The inner identity it harbours, the creative spirit, is isolated and ignored. The consequence is we, as individuals, are entities effectively split into two. In line with the majority many accept our dominant Persona’s reasoning as the only focal point of reference. We just don’t hear, or choose to ignore, that distant inner voice looking for communication. The voice that is hoping that our intuition will eventually raise it to the surface of our existence. We live in an arena where the physical seeks to subjugate our inner spirit. Our Persona is constructed to protect our Ego. Its story, often a pipe dream that distorts Past-Now-Future, appeals to our personal ideals. The subjugated spiritual essence struggles to show us the light, the truth. To only heed the Persona as a reliable avenue of knowledge and information is careless if we are going to write a realistic account of what has led from “what was” to “what is”. To choose one voice over another is a shame as one prevaricates and one doesn’t. We need to understand both voices because the Past is stubborn and often it cannot be reconstructed faithfully – it’s like picking up fragments found lying in a vast field and then trying to recreate the structure they once represented. Some pieces will inevitably be missing – trodden underfoot, eroded or taken by others. You have to look elsewhere for an approach to understanding what the fragments represent.
The central characters in my story are not quite fictional but are close enough to raise an alarm. What to do? Rather than pursuing an unreliable reconstruction of the Past, I had to implement a deconstruction of my memories of the Past! This is possible if one is aware, enlightened to a fact, that all that has occurred in one’s life is ambiguous in nature. Some details are solid and recoverable and some are distorted through our Persona’s manipulation over the decades that have passed. Clearly we have to reinvent our entry point into the act of creativity.
If your creative effort is autobiographical and you are recreating the Past as best you can then there is a problem in that you are revisiting many prior versions of yourself. The pre-teen you, the teen you, the young adult you, the middle-age you. All different voices with different interpretations of that world at that time. Ourselves as we once were. We can try to be as honest as we can in relaying that stranger’s contribution but we can’t entirely rely on that person’s testimony simply because we are no longer that person. Personally, if I could jump in a time machine and go meet myself as I existed years ago I probably wouldn’t recognise myself. I would probably cringe at my immature worldview and laugh at my steadfast belief system. We all remember that person that we once were though time has eroded the recollection to a point that we can no longer claim that we know that identity well enough to consider that former identity as the preeminent voice in any reliable reconsideration of the Past. Therefore, we can’t start “there.” Back there. We can only create from the position of “Now”. Who we are at this moment. Between the thought and its manifestation. Between the inspiration and the first chord, word or paint stroke. This is the Now! We can’t rely on that stranger looking over our shoulder. If we are to be honest creative souls where do we turn? Questions nag away. Does a memoir of our youth hold more distortions than real facts? Do we write to suit our interpretation of what happened, whitewashing the main character, ourselves, to justify past actions. Are we just manifesting solid, likeable personalities out of the Past’s fuzziness? So, we have arrived at a complex dilemma when it comes to creativity if we want to protect its integrity. What is illusion and what is truth?
All creativity opens a line to beyond. There is a presence at the end of that line. When I compose a piece of music I feel that I am not the sole composer – that I am co-writing with a contributing creative force. Sometimes I can’t remember composing my music. In my studio I have entered a near-trance state as my imagination opened up to inspiration. Friends have asked: “Where did you get that arrangement from? What is that strange chord you are playing there?” In many cases I have to truthfully say that I don’t know and, as I can’t read or write music, there are pieces that I could never faithfully reproduce. One moment there was silence and the next there was a piece of music. In the act of creation I have encountered an unknown muse. It has no name, no material shape. Yet the feeling of a presence just out of sight, whispering in my ear, is a powerful sensation to encounter. And this presence is a collaborator. I am not composing my music. Rather I am composing "our" music.
Finally, to pave over the cracks on the creative path, one must apply intent to the difficulty. Like cement on a cracked footpath. Intent to create, no matter the difficulties. Intent, as an applied energy, opens the lines of communication. You will find that you are no longer lonely. There is a sense of co-operation between the physical and the ineffable. In my book where I travelled deep into the Past, into the secrets, trauma and angst, I had a companion. My muse. Avenues opened up to me. Novelist Elizabeth Gilbert writes of her muse: “Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can - through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through deja vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms... through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long...” And so it is. My muse showed me that the Past is not clear cut by guiding me to other perspectives. Long lost relatives found their way to my door. Old letters resurfaced. Yellowed photo albums were found in neglected locations. People contacted me almost out of thin air. People that I never knew existed. My Persona was shunted aside by the application of different perspectives. I began to see my role in the drama more clearly. Prejudices vanished. I saw the whole picture from all sides. I was liberated from decades of self-deception. Truths merged with other truths til a clearer Past emerged. And, all the time, external guidance in the form of synchronicity, intuition or inexplicable inspiration hovered waiting for the right moment to intervene. For all of this to happen all I had to do was accept the Past as a strange country, ask for guidance and wait for the right moment. That moment was when I typed my first sentence and invited creativity into the process. I believe this eliminates falling into the cracks on the path to creating “what happened” as opposed to “what I think happened.”
“Our arrogant mind wants to think that we make up the things we create, but this is not the case at all. When we open to our creativity and our imagination, we are opening to the wisdom of Spirit, and what comes is coming THROUGH us, not FROM us.” - Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
I’ve been writing a book over the past three years. It’s been, at times, exhilarating, liberating and a cathartic experience. At other times I have found it a process riddled with doubt, apprehension and, at worst, an unsteady confrontation with my version of the Past as I believed it to be. To tell such an intimate story involved facing all the obstacles that beset human creativity. One such obstacle is the unreliability of memory. To rely on memory is perilous. Human nature distorts all our yesterdays. The Past is riddled with selective amnesia. The good times tend to predominate in our recollections while the bad are often relegated to a subconscious cupboard. The fact that memory ages along with the physical body doesn’t help. Events blur and co-mingle til the boundaries between become nebulous in nature. Yet it is the Past where most of us retreat in order to find answers to the questions we need today. Answers that are essential in an autobiography. We rely on yesterday. Yesterday in turn appears to resemble an intricately staged play overflowing with a myriad of plots containing a never-ending array of twists and turns performed by a cast of characters perplexed by the complexity of the performance they are expected to deliver. Yet when we create, whether it be words or music or any form of creativity, the Past seems to hold all the ingredients for success.
Faced with the uncertainly of memory, we are further hindered by the presence of the most dubious influence in our play. Ourselves. When we enter our remembrance, our memory of recollection, we confront our Persona, our outer mask that has been carefully manufactured over the decades, which has established a confused Self as its mouthpiece. We then have a facade that, more often than not, claims ownership of any interpretation we offer as to the world we personally inhabit. The inner identity it harbours, the creative spirit, is isolated and ignored. The consequence is we, as individuals, are entities effectively split into two. In line with the majority many accept our dominant Persona’s reasoning as the only focal point of reference. We just don’t hear, or choose to ignore, that distant inner voice looking for communication. The voice that is hoping that our intuition will eventually raise it to the surface of our existence. We live in an arena where the physical seeks to subjugate our inner spirit. Our Persona is constructed to protect our Ego. Its story, often a pipe dream that distorts Past-Now-Future, appeals to our personal ideals. The subjugated spiritual essence struggles to show us the light, the truth. To only heed the Persona as a reliable avenue of knowledge and information is careless if we are going to write a realistic account of what has led from “what was” to “what is”. To choose one voice over another is a shame as one prevaricates and one doesn’t. We need to understand both voices because the Past is stubborn and often it cannot be reconstructed faithfully – it’s like picking up fragments found lying in a vast field and then trying to recreate the structure they once represented. Some pieces will inevitably be missing – trodden underfoot, eroded or taken by others. You have to look elsewhere for an approach to understanding what the fragments represent.
The central characters in my story are not quite fictional but are close enough to raise an alarm. What to do? Rather than pursuing an unreliable reconstruction of the Past, I had to implement a deconstruction of my memories of the Past! This is possible if one is aware, enlightened to a fact, that all that has occurred in one’s life is ambiguous in nature. Some details are solid and recoverable and some are distorted through our Persona’s manipulation over the decades that have passed. Clearly we have to reinvent our entry point into the act of creativity.
If your creative effort is autobiographical and you are recreating the Past as best you can then there is a problem in that you are revisiting many prior versions of yourself. The pre-teen you, the teen you, the young adult you, the middle-age you. All different voices with different interpretations of that world at that time. Ourselves as we once were. We can try to be as honest as we can in relaying that stranger’s contribution but we can’t entirely rely on that person’s testimony simply because we are no longer that person. Personally, if I could jump in a time machine and go meet myself as I existed years ago I probably wouldn’t recognise myself. I would probably cringe at my immature worldview and laugh at my steadfast belief system. We all remember that person that we once were though time has eroded the recollection to a point that we can no longer claim that we know that identity well enough to consider that former identity as the preeminent voice in any reliable reconsideration of the Past. Therefore, we can’t start “there.” Back there. We can only create from the position of “Now”. Who we are at this moment. Between the thought and its manifestation. Between the inspiration and the first chord, word or paint stroke. This is the Now! We can’t rely on that stranger looking over our shoulder. If we are to be honest creative souls where do we turn? Questions nag away. Does a memoir of our youth hold more distortions than real facts? Do we write to suit our interpretation of what happened, whitewashing the main character, ourselves, to justify past actions. Are we just manifesting solid, likeable personalities out of the Past’s fuzziness? So, we have arrived at a complex dilemma when it comes to creativity if we want to protect its integrity. What is illusion and what is truth?
All creativity opens a line to beyond. There is a presence at the end of that line. When I compose a piece of music I feel that I am not the sole composer – that I am co-writing with a contributing creative force. Sometimes I can’t remember composing my music. In my studio I have entered a near-trance state as my imagination opened up to inspiration. Friends have asked: “Where did you get that arrangement from? What is that strange chord you are playing there?” In many cases I have to truthfully say that I don’t know and, as I can’t read or write music, there are pieces that I could never faithfully reproduce. One moment there was silence and the next there was a piece of music. In the act of creation I have encountered an unknown muse. It has no name, no material shape. Yet the feeling of a presence just out of sight, whispering in my ear, is a powerful sensation to encounter. And this presence is a collaborator. I am not composing my music. Rather I am composing "our" music.
Finally, to pave over the cracks on the creative path, one must apply intent to the difficulty. Like cement on a cracked footpath. Intent to create, no matter the difficulties. Intent, as an applied energy, opens the lines of communication. You will find that you are no longer lonely. There is a sense of co-operation between the physical and the ineffable. In my book where I travelled deep into the Past, into the secrets, trauma and angst, I had a companion. My muse. Avenues opened up to me. Novelist Elizabeth Gilbert writes of her muse: “Inspiration is trying to send me messages in every form it can - through dreams, through portents, through clues, through coincidences, through deja vu, through kismet, through surprising waves of attraction and reaction, through the chills that run up my arms... through stubborn ideas that keep me awake all night long...” And so it is. My muse showed me that the Past is not clear cut by guiding me to other perspectives. Long lost relatives found their way to my door. Old letters resurfaced. Yellowed photo albums were found in neglected locations. People contacted me almost out of thin air. People that I never knew existed. My Persona was shunted aside by the application of different perspectives. I began to see my role in the drama more clearly. Prejudices vanished. I saw the whole picture from all sides. I was liberated from decades of self-deception. Truths merged with other truths til a clearer Past emerged. And, all the time, external guidance in the form of synchronicity, intuition or inexplicable inspiration hovered waiting for the right moment to intervene. For all of this to happen all I had to do was accept the Past as a strange country, ask for guidance and wait for the right moment. That moment was when I typed my first sentence and invited creativity into the process. I believe this eliminates falling into the cracks on the path to creating “what happened” as opposed to “what I think happened.”
“Our arrogant mind wants to think that we make up the things we create, but this is not the case at all. When we open to our creativity and our imagination, we are opening to the wisdom of Spirit, and what comes is coming THROUGH us, not FROM us.” - Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
February, 2021 – What I Believe
I believe that we are all fallen fragments of a divine whole. Perhaps we fell as a collective – transplanted into existence as a complete human race or perhaps we fell individually. The answer to that configuration is hidden to us. In my reasoning there has to be an entry point for our Earthly existence. A moment in eternity where the first of our many lifetimes originated. It may have occurred on this planet. It may have occurred on another planet. We may have been born inter-dimensionally – moving between dimensional birthplaces. I believe there is no doubt we fell because, in some manner, we rebelled against the natural order. Again I have no doubt that we have all, for whatever misdeed we have committed, been manifested into this dimension for one reason alone. To acquire wisdom in order to ascend back to the divine state from whence we originated. Therefore this Earth-bound dimension is our sanctified school. Here we have two choices provided by the gift of free will. Ignore or learn. If we ignore the mystery that surrounds us and drift aimlessly, never looking beneath the surface, we are then fated to never correct our raison d’etre. The reason or justification for our very existence in this dimension. The consequence of our ignorance is the samsaric cycle. That which is the cycle of repeated births, ordinary existences and deaths.
Such considerations of my belief system or any other individual belief system for that matter, uncovers both the complexity of our past and our inability to unravel that complexity. Therefore, it is advisable, I believe, to avoid devoting this lifetime to a fruitless pursuit of an understanding clearly beyond us. Because we are surrounded by such elusive mysteries within mysteries, we must not attach our search to an ultimate unveiling of one, or any, of those mysteries The question: “where do we come from?” is undoubtedly one of the most perplexing facing us. That question is clearly open to conjecture. That conjecture will always be frustrated by an answer that exists beyond proof, beyond understanding. That line of pursuit only leads to a position where we are overwhelmed by our intellectual shortcomings. We will be perplexed, distracted, discouraged and eventually repelled. Simply because we will be lost in a past that defies our fumbling understanding. Here and now is where we should devote all our endeavours because this is where we live. Wisdom must be based on the experiences offered to us cradle to grave. As Albert Einstein said: “the only source of knowledge is experience.” This is our crucial priority in this incarnation. Once we have accepted the limitations of our access to certain cosmic truths, we can concentrate on discovering what truth is “here.” Where we live and breathe. Here we trust that the universal logic that placed us in this dimension will become apparent due to our spiritual labour and it is laborious. The road from a deep sleep to an awareness of that “beyond” is hard and long. It is then, of great comfort to discover we are not alone.
Now that we have descended we would be sadly mistaken to believe that we are forsaken in the sense that we are left here, alone, forever. I believe in the Law of One. All life in this dimension springs from one source and, though we exist “here”, at the same time, we also exist “there”. There is no separation. Only a “oneness.” What is this source? It is not a personalized deity. A fatherly figure that sits in judgement somewhere beyond the clouds. That is too simple and naive an image. The complexity of understanding a source that is described as that which is “an all pervasive intelligent energy, that is both within everything that exists and without,” is one lesson we must learn and fully understand. It is essential to our spiritual advancement. If we understand we will see a simple truth: if we are forsaken by this creative source then it, in turn, is forsaking its very essence. Knowing that that concept is not possible is a liberating moment when first realised. Unfortunately, it is a long road from first breath to that realization and will, and must, involve a continuum – a series of existences from birth to death that contain a lost soul often learning only by a slim matter of degree each lifetime.
Our journey back to Oneness is a long and complicated one. I believe it takes many lifetimes. Simply because of the fact that we have been placed into an arena of such complexity that a speedy ascension is all but impossible. Complex in its structure but also complex in the building blocks that define that structure’s character. We face an environment that is contradictory to an alarming degree. A glance at the Six-O’clock News shows an exterior world that is not at all subtle in its portrayal of a human drama that has lost its spiritual roadmap. A world apparently bereft of almost all its compasses – be they ethical, moralistic or spiritual. Yet among the chaos and borderline anarchy, you can also find visions of extreme kindness and compassion. We are then bewildered by what is the true depiction of our essential nature – the shells raining down on an Iraqi hospital or the drowning child bravely rescued from the floodwaters by that heroic passer-by? And that is just a glimpse of the outside world. There is another world, just as complex, that exists within the structure that houses our very essence. Inside those walls we also see the human complexity unfold before our eyes. We watch it unfold in our deep, personal relationships with the inner and outer worlds. Living within our confliction we struggle to ascend. Sensing that we inhabit a world of illusion where nothing is as it seems, we look for solid ground. In order to differentiate between that illusion and an elusive cosmic truth is to call on facilities that were severely atrophied in our descent. Like an old radio set they still work but the batteries are crucially low. We are still receiving signals but the static predominates. These voices, be they hidden within Intuition, Genetic Instinct or Synchronicity for starters, are feeble at first but increasingly persistent and spiritually revealing to those who try to listen carefully. Those who tire of listening to a perceived static and who prefer to listen to voices propagated by a materialistic source, often throw their radios away. They surrender to a belief that this dimension’s illusions are the only reality in which they choose to live their allotted lifetime. Those who hear fragments of sense in the airwaves - the incoming ethereal conversation - intuit the existence of an unknown broadcast source and set out on a search to find that source. This is a journey to discover their role in the great scheme of things. I believe this is why we are here. To be taught the Truth. To understand that Truth. To practise that Truth to the best of our ability, second by second. Though stumbling in our initial steps, at first no more effective than an amateuristic and erratic Earth-bound imitation of Buddha, our mission is to attempt to be an example of the power of that Truth so that others can be inspired by its presence manifested through us.
So, our origin, our genesis, is, on the whole, lost to us as long as we inhabit life within set boundaries. Post-death, answers may be given but until then we have only one locality in which to explore – this existence, breath to breath. Any examination of one lifetime, this lifetime, is really an examination of all our lifetimes. Every life that we have lived has been a preparation for the next. This very moment could not exist without each and every one of our past incarnations building a foundation for this moment to exist. We “are” because we have “been” over and over through birth, life and death countless times. And, locked into the Law of One, is the fact that we are all connected. All springing from one source. All the fallen carry a spark of universal energy to sustain them in the struggle to rise from mediocrity to a transcendent state. That energy manifests in our longing to “know.” Because we yearn to know there is a communication, sometimes anaemic or sometimes strong – between the visible and the invisible. We intuitively know that all the spiritual drives that impel us to seek enlightenment are part of who we are and who we have been. The intensity of that yearning is a vital pointer to just where we stand in the cosmic plan. If it is just a vagueness, easily dismissed, then we have a long way to go. If it is a persistent longing that fills more hours of our day that not, then we are blessed. All the intricacies of my many incarnations are not open to viewing in this dimension but one is. The one I’m living now. And, knowing this incarnation is a companion to the past, sharing a host of commonalities with those existences, I gain a glimpse of the elusive character of my past lifetimes. A glimpse is sufficient and all that is needed. As stated, we need to focus our vision squarely on the “Now” in order to resist a myopic viewpoint stranded in the past. The past hides its secrets well. The present is always open for inspection.
This is what I believe.
January, 2021 – Buddha’s Laboratory
Voltaire said that he honoured the man who sought truth but despised the man who said that he had found it! I’m in Voltaire’s team. If I ever claimed that I knew all the answers, I would never speak to me again. Thankfully I have been long enough aware to know that when it comes to the spiritual, I know very little. And I’ve known it for some time. Back in 2019 I wrote that, upon self-examination, that, maybe, I was a Buddhist who didn’t know how to be a Buddhist. That I had introduced an unnecessary complexity into my exploration of Buddhism, overlooking Buddhism’s inner simplicity. Trying too hard which only produced an awareness of what I was not. Instead of a growing sense of wisdom and peace of mind I looked inside myself and all I could see was a divided entity with one foot in the mud and one foot in a perfect stream. Marooned as the armies of disquiet, doubt and confusion jostled for space among the meditations and mantras. The wise and knowledgeable individual that embodied my concept of what Buddhism could manifest was missing in action. I was discouraged by a sense of alienation from Buddhism’s promise. It all seemed too hard. Any comparison between myself and the source of wisdom I pursued was negligible. If I had called myself a Buddhist at that stage, the notion would have been laughed out of court. The anxious and confused being on the witness stand would have been making a call open to ridicule and little else. Consequently, because my life up to that point in 2019 had stalled within the teachings of Buddha and had produced nothing but unrest and puzzlement, I was well short of declaring myself a Buddhist. To do so would have been pure illusion and Voltaire would have had an easy target to despise.
That was in 2019. The intervening years has witnessed a change in perception. Making declarations of certainty when it comes to any belief system is a dead-end – by doing so you are locking yourself into concepts and idealism. You have bypassed progress and have declared perfection as your present state of being. “I am a Buddhist. I am enlightened. I see the Truth.” – these are all statements that declare an end to your spiritual journey. You are saying that you have arrived and there is no path beyond. Yet at the heart of Buddhism is the simple truth: everything in human life (all objects, as well as all beings) is always changing, undergoing birth, death and rebirth. A Buddhist’s reaction to a declared perfection by any soul in this existence must be one of doubt. And that includes one’s own reasoning. Doubt is a gift because it compels us to stop, examine and then act accordingly. In Zen we have the "beginner's mind" and "don't know mind" – describing a mind that that is receptive to awareness as it is presented to us by our inquisitiveness. It can’t be receptive unless it knows it “doesn’t know” (but wants to) or it has doubts about the validity of some declared positive certainties. Buddha said to doubt everything and find your own light. Rene Descartes echoed the Buddha: “If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
The gift of doubt, reinforced by that intuition that I was light years away from perfection, sent me back to my tattered roadmap. I now realise the power of that doubt that surfaced in 2019 and my spiritual status is clearer. Following such wisdom, I delved into the mechanics of my earlier attitude. Upon inspection I doubted my self-examination of 2019 and looked for the message that doubt presented to me. It was that I had no right to hope for an inner wisdom to be delivered so easily. Certainly I wasn’t in a position to declare a certainty. The certainty being that I was a Buddhist and thus would remain so. I was not a Buddhist then and I’m not a Buddhist now. I am not a Buddhist simply because my everyday mental, physical and spiritual behaviour isn’t, as yet, acceptable. I fall short of what Buddhism teaches far more often then I follow its tenets with success. It will remain thus until I can intuitively feel that I would be comfortable in describing myself as a Buddhist. Until then I can only explore more. To do so, I can only approach Buddhism as a science. A spiritual science practised in a spiritual laboratory. This avenue is often described as “intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study, through observation and experiment, of the structure and behaviour of the internal and external worlds.” This spiritual scientific approach is in direct opposition to that of the materialistic approach.
Mathematician David H. Bailey, describing the latter method, explains its premise that: “physical reality, as made available to the natural sciences, is all that truly exists. It is clear that there is little room for religion in this philosophical system, since religion involves faith in unseen and presumably empirically untestable entities.” No room for religion or belief systems such as Buddhism. American author, Barbara Ehrenreich, states: “the business of science is to crush all alien intention and replace them with predictable mechanisms.” So, the Buddhist scientist really has no options. If he or she is to ever call themselves a Buddhist without flinching or experiencing a sense of personal deception, then follow the intuition. Enter that laboratory of Buddhism that encourages the Unknown to become known through your experimentation. As Carl Sagan said: “somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” That something cannot be found in a physical test tube or microscope. It will only reveal itself, prove its existence, in response to your spiritual research. Buddha knew: “Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.” Buddha was a spiritual scientist. The world as he perceived it was his laboratory. Follow in his footsteps, no matter if you’re a Buddhist, Christian, atheist or just curious, read the textbooks, fire up the Bunsen burners of knowledge and wisdom, peer through the cosmic microscope into your inner self. Apply all that is gained by doing so and you will soon begin to appreciate who and what you are. Far removed from concepts, ideals and pure illusion.
December, 2020 – How Did I Get Here? Where Am I? Where Am I Going?
The universal questions. The dilemma, to varying degrees, behind every existence. Some suggest it’s a Western conundrum, claiming the East have mastered the intricacies involved. Certainly Westerners appear to wear their collective hearts on their sleeves when it comes to tormenting themselves via self-examination. Hence the proliferation of self-help media, traditional Isms, spiritual tour guides and cults willing and able to lend a helping hand to the mystified. On the other hand we have drugs, alcohol, assorted vices, death-defying escapism, rampant consumerism, all available to lessen the impact of the yearning. All combine to produce a sense of a culture lost in its own thoughts. Directionless. If you have no compass, then there is no escaping the questions of location and destination. Spiritually speaking, the East, on the other hand, seems to have the upper hand. The myth or ideal of the harmonious, Zen-like approach to inner conflict is an alluring concept. An increasing number of Westerners are becoming attracted to Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sufism or the more esoteric avenues of Eastern exploration available. I must admit, on an intuitive level, I have also gravitated eastwards. Buddhism appeals on many levels.
But is the East so different? Is it free of mental angst? Let’s look at suicide rates: Asian suicide rates sit at 19 souls per 100,000. 30 percent higher than the Global rate of 16 per 100,000. WHO and other researchers state that it is estimated that suicides claim approximately 1 million lives worldwide every year, and as many as 60% occur in Asia! So, on this estimation, we have an annual rate of over 600,000 troubled Asian souls, many devotees of Eastern spiritual guidance, seeking a dismal alternative to the woes and questions posed by this existence. And misinterpreted Buddhism, itself, can fail, reducing Asian countries to a barbaric level often found in less harmonious cultures. Witness Myanmar. Myanmar has a population of 54 million of which 90% follow Theravada Buddhism. Yet, we see a genocide consuming the Rohingya Muslim population led, in part, by the notorious Ashin Wirathu. This man, a Buddhist monk, has led his followers on a path of brutality. If statistically correct, it follows that 90% of the armed forces must follow Buddhism. But, judging on their actions, their commitment to their belief system is questionable. They have trampled on the Dhammapada as they have slaughtered men, women and children. Blood staining the Buddha’s words: “All tremble before violence. All fear death. Having done the same yourself, you should neither harm nor kill.” So, dissatisfaction knows no boundaries. It is universal. East and West face the same questions and, until, they are answered, the disintegration of humanity’s peace of mind will continue. And the universal questions will persist insisting that the longing for answers to life’s fundamental questions is not confined within cultural barriers. Be it the materialistic ideals of the West or the presumed tranquillity of the mythic East, feelings of angst, doubt and fear are uniform. Acknowledging that this component of human angst knows no borders, any approach must be conducted with the human race treated as a universal creation. Not broken down into classified units. All brothers and sisters beneath the skin. Indeed beneath the myths, illusions, personas and barriers that we have created within as survival mechanisms. Back to the beginning then:
Where Did We Come From?
The facts as espoused by Science. Fourteen billion years ago, give a year or two, this Universe came into existence. A Big Bang. That term indicates an explosion but I like to think more in the terms of an energy source that came from somewhere and which reinvented itself elsewhere. A Cosmic pinpoint, an infinitesimal gate, was utilised by that energy source to display its creativity on a massive scale. It entered and then dramatically expanded and, within a minute fraction of a second, it expanded from the size of an electron to almost the same space as that which we experience today. (And its expansion is incomplete.) The material was there. The building blocks. Mother Earth came into existence over 4 billion years ago. Built from the dust and gas discarded by the Sun’s creation. Creativity blossomed and the first cellular organisms emerged about 3.4 billion years ago. Next came sealife and all the creatures that inhabited the land. Then we started to appear. Homo habilis, our earliest ancestor, emerged in Africa 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago. Cosmic creativity had given us a foothold. We accepted the opportunity. The species that is us, Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 years ago. So, this is where we came from according to Science. Creationists would argue. As would any sceptic attracted to the lack of a complete, definable big picture of our origin. But the fact remains, once upon a time we were not here in the form that is the human body, then we were. There was a creation involved. And that is all we need to know. We weren’t and now we are. And we will most probably never really know if the puzzle will ever be solved. The only question that matters is what went wrong. Why did our continued evolution as a species lead to the turmoil, inner and outer, that marks this modern existence? That question introduces the next contemplation. Where are we and why is it such a complex place to live out our days?
Where Are We?
Problems arose when we evolved from a primitive, prehistoric consciousness to self-consciousness. Prehistoric life was a time-consuming battle to survive. Evolution had led our ancestors to an environment where the upper hand was held by the natural world. Mankind had little or no control over that which lurked outside of his or her cave. Flood, famine, drought, the savagery of the surrounding predatory life - all the unpredictable forces of that existence - plagued a species that was often the prey, not the predator. Nature bound the human race, as it was, to its whims and fancies. Nature was the enemy, beyond understanding. What can’t be understood can’t be controlled, predicted or trusted. Early man had no option but to fear the Unknown. Genetically, for thousands of years, this state of mind revolving around defencelessness and the extreme uncertainty inherent in the environment, was etched into the human psyche. But, as any Buddhist will tell you, the world at any stage of its being, is subject to the law of impermanence. The prehistoric world was no exception.
Evolution persisted. Language, fire, weapons, domesticated animals, community, all arose out of necessity. Brain size increased, stimulated by a growing technology. A primitive science but science no less and it offered as a gift, freedom to think, to reconsider Nature and man’s relationship within its structure. From a state of no time to think, due to a daily existence set in survival mode, came time to contemplate. First victims of contemplation were the ancient Gods of Nature. Their worship by ritual and sacrifice - often human – lost its predominance over the emerging cultures. The ancient Gods dropped away like leaves in the autumn. The departure of once-feared Gods left Nature exposed. Nature was no longer to be feared or worshipped with the same intensity for, to do so, wasn’t in the best interests of a species bent upon a march toward a civilised world. The dance of the seasons no longer needed partners. Our ancient harvest celebrations lost their sacrificial elements and, today, are only celebrated as a means to an end. These ends being commercial or entertainment oriented. (Halloween and Easter both have Pagan origins.) We began to create our own Gods. New Gods, fewer in number, but more manipulatable, took their place. We moved heaven to earth.
We successfully alienated ourselves. We were here in our expanding glory and the Unknown was somewhere out there only to be approached when we deemed it useful. For power, prestige or, as demonstrated by the Buddhists in Myanmar, for self-justification. We had reinvented our human logic when it came to survival. A specific intelligence, far removed from the cave, now emerged. The birth of self-consciousness - “I” as opposed to “We.” More time to think about a growing sense of self-identity led to an alienation with nature, the universe itself. Evolution led to an egocentric worldview. In our modern egocentric state of mind, we have finally lost most of the tribal mentality that once existed. There is only self and no other. We have largely lost the ability to understand any perspective other than the one we possess. Community too exists as a means to an end. Success, wealth, satisfaction of desire. But inner conflict still rules. As humans became more human, we realised that it was more a hindrance, than a blessing. Where are we? Here, right now, in the Now. And that is where we will be to our last dying breath. The dilemma is that we have not entirely shaken off one demon that plagued our prehistoric ancestors. Our fear of the Unknown. This demon combined with our unnecessary alienation, yearning, inquisitiveness and nagging intuition has directly led to the big three Universal questions.
Our fear of the Unknown has persevered because we still have not walked toward life to explore its intricacies, rather we have run away from its realities. Its Truth. Especially when it comes to the matter of our inevitable death. So we are locked into a perspective that is blinding not revealing. The caveman within has hardly changed in his fear, and bewilderment. That ancient community still exists. The good news is that we do not have the same extreme limitations placed upon us as that community suffered. We have time to explore and, if we consider the depth of our yearning, good reason to do so. The human race has always been a community of longing. Fuelled by doubt throughout the ages, it has sought to hide from that doubt. But doubt is a gift.
For me, doubt is communication with that which was there pre-Big Bang and that which is here post-Big Bang. It signifies that life is interested in your quest. By life I mean the creative energy, the intelligence that exists out of the corner of one’s eye. Elusive but ever-present. If this spirit wasn’t interested it would leave you to your own devices. It wouldn’t trouble you with questions of any manner at all. You would be the most satisfied soul on your block. The only satisfied soul on your block. But it hasn’t worked out that way for the human race. The questions persist. We, as humans, yearn. All of us. We have no control over this drive because we don’t understand it. Without understanding we are at its mercy. So, it is in our best interests to find the root cause of this doubt, this fear, this yearning. So, when it whispers in your ear, listen and learn. If you have no doubt, fear or yearning, then don’t bother.
Where do I come from? Doesn’t matter. The fact that you are descended from that ancient single cell organism? That your genetic makeup involves stardust, primordial soup, caveman and all the other evolutionary stages of life on Earth is interesting to know but it doesn’t guarantee a good night’s sleep. What you are interested in is the spiritual drive that has grown exponentially with each and every evolution. Shadowing our species through every stage of existence right up to this very moment. Tis moment being the present. The Now. You are here now because that fact can’t be changed. No matter how hard you try, you can’t be anywhere else. Life then is a series of Nows. You can’t in the past and you can’t worry about what hasn’t even occurred. You can only find answers in this moment. The questions - Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? – are blessings. Because they mean there is a communication between you and what really matters. The Truth. Reality. Only in exploration will you find a direction. To understand yourself as you are Now, not in a passage of time past or yet to come, is the key. You won’t find all the answers but you are in good company. Explore with intent. You will never communicate unless you encourage the Unknown to show its presence.
The universal questions. The dilemma, to varying degrees, behind every existence. Some suggest it’s a Western conundrum, claiming the East have mastered the intricacies involved. Certainly Westerners appear to wear their collective hearts on their sleeves when it comes to tormenting themselves via self-examination. Hence the proliferation of self-help media, traditional Isms, spiritual tour guides and cults willing and able to lend a helping hand to the mystified. On the other hand we have drugs, alcohol, assorted vices, death-defying escapism, rampant consumerism, all available to lessen the impact of the yearning. All combine to produce a sense of a culture lost in its own thoughts. Directionless. If you have no compass, then there is no escaping the questions of location and destination. Spiritually speaking, the East, on the other hand, seems to have the upper hand. The myth or ideal of the harmonious, Zen-like approach to inner conflict is an alluring concept. An increasing number of Westerners are becoming attracted to Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Sufism or the more esoteric avenues of Eastern exploration available. I must admit, on an intuitive level, I have also gravitated eastwards. Buddhism appeals on many levels.
But is the East so different? Is it free of mental angst? Let’s look at suicide rates: Asian suicide rates sit at 19 souls per 100,000. 30 percent higher than the Global rate of 16 per 100,000. WHO and other researchers state that it is estimated that suicides claim approximately 1 million lives worldwide every year, and as many as 60% occur in Asia! So, on this estimation, we have an annual rate of over 600,000 troubled Asian souls, many devotees of Eastern spiritual guidance, seeking a dismal alternative to the woes and questions posed by this existence. And misinterpreted Buddhism, itself, can fail, reducing Asian countries to a barbaric level often found in less harmonious cultures. Witness Myanmar. Myanmar has a population of 54 million of which 90% follow Theravada Buddhism. Yet, we see a genocide consuming the Rohingya Muslim population led, in part, by the notorious Ashin Wirathu. This man, a Buddhist monk, has led his followers on a path of brutality. If statistically correct, it follows that 90% of the armed forces must follow Buddhism. But, judging on their actions, their commitment to their belief system is questionable. They have trampled on the Dhammapada as they have slaughtered men, women and children. Blood staining the Buddha’s words: “All tremble before violence. All fear death. Having done the same yourself, you should neither harm nor kill.” So, dissatisfaction knows no boundaries. It is universal. East and West face the same questions and, until, they are answered, the disintegration of humanity’s peace of mind will continue. And the universal questions will persist insisting that the longing for answers to life’s fundamental questions is not confined within cultural barriers. Be it the materialistic ideals of the West or the presumed tranquillity of the mythic East, feelings of angst, doubt and fear are uniform. Acknowledging that this component of human angst knows no borders, any approach must be conducted with the human race treated as a universal creation. Not broken down into classified units. All brothers and sisters beneath the skin. Indeed beneath the myths, illusions, personas and barriers that we have created within as survival mechanisms. Back to the beginning then:
Where Did We Come From?
The facts as espoused by Science. Fourteen billion years ago, give a year or two, this Universe came into existence. A Big Bang. That term indicates an explosion but I like to think more in the terms of an energy source that came from somewhere and which reinvented itself elsewhere. A Cosmic pinpoint, an infinitesimal gate, was utilised by that energy source to display its creativity on a massive scale. It entered and then dramatically expanded and, within a minute fraction of a second, it expanded from the size of an electron to almost the same space as that which we experience today. (And its expansion is incomplete.) The material was there. The building blocks. Mother Earth came into existence over 4 billion years ago. Built from the dust and gas discarded by the Sun’s creation. Creativity blossomed and the first cellular organisms emerged about 3.4 billion years ago. Next came sealife and all the creatures that inhabited the land. Then we started to appear. Homo habilis, our earliest ancestor, emerged in Africa 2.4 million to 1.4 million years ago. Cosmic creativity had given us a foothold. We accepted the opportunity. The species that is us, Homo sapiens, evolved around 300,000 years ago. So, this is where we came from according to Science. Creationists would argue. As would any sceptic attracted to the lack of a complete, definable big picture of our origin. But the fact remains, once upon a time we were not here in the form that is the human body, then we were. There was a creation involved. And that is all we need to know. We weren’t and now we are. And we will most probably never really know if the puzzle will ever be solved. The only question that matters is what went wrong. Why did our continued evolution as a species lead to the turmoil, inner and outer, that marks this modern existence? That question introduces the next contemplation. Where are we and why is it such a complex place to live out our days?
Where Are We?
Problems arose when we evolved from a primitive, prehistoric consciousness to self-consciousness. Prehistoric life was a time-consuming battle to survive. Evolution had led our ancestors to an environment where the upper hand was held by the natural world. Mankind had little or no control over that which lurked outside of his or her cave. Flood, famine, drought, the savagery of the surrounding predatory life - all the unpredictable forces of that existence - plagued a species that was often the prey, not the predator. Nature bound the human race, as it was, to its whims and fancies. Nature was the enemy, beyond understanding. What can’t be understood can’t be controlled, predicted or trusted. Early man had no option but to fear the Unknown. Genetically, for thousands of years, this state of mind revolving around defencelessness and the extreme uncertainty inherent in the environment, was etched into the human psyche. But, as any Buddhist will tell you, the world at any stage of its being, is subject to the law of impermanence. The prehistoric world was no exception.
Evolution persisted. Language, fire, weapons, domesticated animals, community, all arose out of necessity. Brain size increased, stimulated by a growing technology. A primitive science but science no less and it offered as a gift, freedom to think, to reconsider Nature and man’s relationship within its structure. From a state of no time to think, due to a daily existence set in survival mode, came time to contemplate. First victims of contemplation were the ancient Gods of Nature. Their worship by ritual and sacrifice - often human – lost its predominance over the emerging cultures. The ancient Gods dropped away like leaves in the autumn. The departure of once-feared Gods left Nature exposed. Nature was no longer to be feared or worshipped with the same intensity for, to do so, wasn’t in the best interests of a species bent upon a march toward a civilised world. The dance of the seasons no longer needed partners. Our ancient harvest celebrations lost their sacrificial elements and, today, are only celebrated as a means to an end. These ends being commercial or entertainment oriented. (Halloween and Easter both have Pagan origins.) We began to create our own Gods. New Gods, fewer in number, but more manipulatable, took their place. We moved heaven to earth.
We successfully alienated ourselves. We were here in our expanding glory and the Unknown was somewhere out there only to be approached when we deemed it useful. For power, prestige or, as demonstrated by the Buddhists in Myanmar, for self-justification. We had reinvented our human logic when it came to survival. A specific intelligence, far removed from the cave, now emerged. The birth of self-consciousness - “I” as opposed to “We.” More time to think about a growing sense of self-identity led to an alienation with nature, the universe itself. Evolution led to an egocentric worldview. In our modern egocentric state of mind, we have finally lost most of the tribal mentality that once existed. There is only self and no other. We have largely lost the ability to understand any perspective other than the one we possess. Community too exists as a means to an end. Success, wealth, satisfaction of desire. But inner conflict still rules. As humans became more human, we realised that it was more a hindrance, than a blessing. Where are we? Here, right now, in the Now. And that is where we will be to our last dying breath. The dilemma is that we have not entirely shaken off one demon that plagued our prehistoric ancestors. Our fear of the Unknown. This demon combined with our unnecessary alienation, yearning, inquisitiveness and nagging intuition has directly led to the big three Universal questions.
Our fear of the Unknown has persevered because we still have not walked toward life to explore its intricacies, rather we have run away from its realities. Its Truth. Especially when it comes to the matter of our inevitable death. So we are locked into a perspective that is blinding not revealing. The caveman within has hardly changed in his fear, and bewilderment. That ancient community still exists. The good news is that we do not have the same extreme limitations placed upon us as that community suffered. We have time to explore and, if we consider the depth of our yearning, good reason to do so. The human race has always been a community of longing. Fuelled by doubt throughout the ages, it has sought to hide from that doubt. But doubt is a gift.
For me, doubt is communication with that which was there pre-Big Bang and that which is here post-Big Bang. It signifies that life is interested in your quest. By life I mean the creative energy, the intelligence that exists out of the corner of one’s eye. Elusive but ever-present. If this spirit wasn’t interested it would leave you to your own devices. It wouldn’t trouble you with questions of any manner at all. You would be the most satisfied soul on your block. The only satisfied soul on your block. But it hasn’t worked out that way for the human race. The questions persist. We, as humans, yearn. All of us. We have no control over this drive because we don’t understand it. Without understanding we are at its mercy. So, it is in our best interests to find the root cause of this doubt, this fear, this yearning. So, when it whispers in your ear, listen and learn. If you have no doubt, fear or yearning, then don’t bother.
Where do I come from? Doesn’t matter. The fact that you are descended from that ancient single cell organism? That your genetic makeup involves stardust, primordial soup, caveman and all the other evolutionary stages of life on Earth is interesting to know but it doesn’t guarantee a good night’s sleep. What you are interested in is the spiritual drive that has grown exponentially with each and every evolution. Shadowing our species through every stage of existence right up to this very moment. Tis moment being the present. The Now. You are here now because that fact can’t be changed. No matter how hard you try, you can’t be anywhere else. Life then is a series of Nows. You can’t in the past and you can’t worry about what hasn’t even occurred. You can only find answers in this moment. The questions - Where do I come from? Why am I here? Where am I going? – are blessings. Because they mean there is a communication between you and what really matters. The Truth. Reality. Only in exploration will you find a direction. To understand yourself as you are Now, not in a passage of time past or yet to come, is the key. You won’t find all the answers but you are in good company. Explore with intent. You will never communicate unless you encourage the Unknown to show its presence.
November, 2020 – Faith and the Abstract
First I was diagnosed with an aggressive Prostate Cancer and then I was offered a copious amount of treatments to consider. None of which appealed in any way. The medical powers-to-be told me to hasten in my decision as time was not on my side. How much time was available, when requested, was an elusive concept but I was informed of one certainty: without an immediate treatment there was, in reality, only one feasible prediction standing head and shoulders above all other considerations. Simply. Act now because any procrastination would be my downfall. I would descend into a world of misery with my demise guaranteed. I chose to ignore that logic. As documented on Seeing Silence I chose an unexpected avenue to explore. Unexpected for those close to me, the medical profession, and, to be honest, for myself as well. I went to a healer and the healer did what she promised to do. She healed me.
The healing opened up an entirely new perspective. I became aware of how unaware I was when it came to the mystery that surrounds our very existence. The healing was a mystery within a mystery. I accepted that I had been blessed but I wasn’t quite sure who had delivered the blessing. The healer told me that she was just an instrument. A cosmic tool. The visible hand of the Universe. She told me to never lose faith in what had transpired. If I lost faith then the healing would eventually evaporate. Evaporation, in one definition, is: the process of something abstract ceasing to exist. “Something abstract.” In other words she told me to have faith in an experience that I didn’t understand and, probably, never would. This experience involved a period of illness succeeded by a return to well-being. Made possible by an interaction between the physical and the mystery surrounding us which was represented in this case by spiritual energy. For this to eventuate, the physical had to display faith in the unknown. In the abstract. Faith being certainty overruling doubt. A human being, just like the one you see in the mirror each day, then bypassed medical reasoning by accepting a form of healing beyond the recognized laws of medicine. I chose to step outside of that square that confined that which was considered by decades of wisdom to be solely the domain of modern medicine. “We heal,” the doctors demanded. “Not your revered miracle worker.” I chose faith in my intuition to proceed. Intuition versus ignorance. After all, as St. Augustine said: “Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.” My intuition, my faith, told me that my healing could transcend my ignorance, or unawareness, of that which I didn’t understand.
I did have a solid ground, except for the odd eggshell, to walk upon. I had had other experiences that have provided set precedents where the aftermath of each event, unpleasant as they had been, had reinforced faith and trust. The experience’s mystery had stimulated belief not degraded it. Then, it follows, that one has to experience before the question of faith can be raised. Cancer for instance. You can’t look for faith in your cancer’s cure unless you have the cancer in the first place. My cancer diagnosis saw me embrace one insight: the cancer itself was a learning process set inside the stages of my progress through this lifetime. Life is a series of experiences. Some minor, some major, some common, some rare, some trivial, some profound. They are all stages in one’s life cycle. Many of life’s curiosities – synchronicity, déjà vu, uncanny foresight, coincidence, the odd glimpses into the realms of the psychic or clairvoyance – are absorbed as novelties. Interesting at the time but not life-changing. Many are not treasured as insights into the wonder of life’s possibilities. Which is a shame. But when one is life-changing, exceptional, it separates itself by its intensity. Its importance. Its energy. It commands attention. Your life is threatened. You save yourself by your actions. You are healed, be it by chemotherapy, radiation or whatever procedure is deemed appropriate by the establishment or you are healed outside of the “normal”. There are millions of souls that were healed by the traditional, the orthodox, the conventional. That is where they put their faith. In the external machinations. But what if you were healed by the miraculous? Where there is no physical presence to pour your trust into? No doctors, IV pumps, linear accelerators or even hospitals in sight? Just the abstract? There is one physical presence, the only physical presence you can turn to. Yourself.
Here one has to put the experience of healing into context. Any faith generated is not present in each unique experience, but, rather, post-experience. In the experiencer. That’s where you direct your faith. You believe in yourself. This is where the true healing lies. In my case, cancer was a stimulus. A teacher. An incentive for self-awareness. It forced me into the past to reinvent the present. The Now. I saw the steps that led to my disease and I saw the steps that led me away from that path. I sensed the abstract as the healer worked her magic. I accepted its energy even though I couldn’t articulate or conceptualize its true form. I just knew it existed and that was enough. I had faith in myself to believe that notion. Once believed, it was up to the experiencer to maintain that faith. To nurture it. This was not a blind faith. It could see. Simply because once I was ill with a dire diagnosis that my immediate future was locked into the world of harsh and unpredictable treatments. Then I turned to myself for strength. A door was opened and I stepped through. Now, many years later, I am healthy. I never think about prostate cancer. It is not part of my everyday life. It holds no interest for me. I write words that reveal truths that, pre-cancer, would never have entered my sphere of existence. I live with both faith and the abstract, the known and the unknown, as pivotal factors in my journey. It is what it is and I would be foolish to see it any other way.
First I was diagnosed with an aggressive Prostate Cancer and then I was offered a copious amount of treatments to consider. None of which appealed in any way. The medical powers-to-be told me to hasten in my decision as time was not on my side. How much time was available, when requested, was an elusive concept but I was informed of one certainty: without an immediate treatment there was, in reality, only one feasible prediction standing head and shoulders above all other considerations. Simply. Act now because any procrastination would be my downfall. I would descend into a world of misery with my demise guaranteed. I chose to ignore that logic. As documented on Seeing Silence I chose an unexpected avenue to explore. Unexpected for those close to me, the medical profession, and, to be honest, for myself as well. I went to a healer and the healer did what she promised to do. She healed me.
The healing opened up an entirely new perspective. I became aware of how unaware I was when it came to the mystery that surrounds our very existence. The healing was a mystery within a mystery. I accepted that I had been blessed but I wasn’t quite sure who had delivered the blessing. The healer told me that she was just an instrument. A cosmic tool. The visible hand of the Universe. She told me to never lose faith in what had transpired. If I lost faith then the healing would eventually evaporate. Evaporation, in one definition, is: the process of something abstract ceasing to exist. “Something abstract.” In other words she told me to have faith in an experience that I didn’t understand and, probably, never would. This experience involved a period of illness succeeded by a return to well-being. Made possible by an interaction between the physical and the mystery surrounding us which was represented in this case by spiritual energy. For this to eventuate, the physical had to display faith in the unknown. In the abstract. Faith being certainty overruling doubt. A human being, just like the one you see in the mirror each day, then bypassed medical reasoning by accepting a form of healing beyond the recognized laws of medicine. I chose to step outside of that square that confined that which was considered by decades of wisdom to be solely the domain of modern medicine. “We heal,” the doctors demanded. “Not your revered miracle worker.” I chose faith in my intuition to proceed. Intuition versus ignorance. After all, as St. Augustine said: “Miracles are not contrary to nature but only contrary to what we know about nature.” My intuition, my faith, told me that my healing could transcend my ignorance, or unawareness, of that which I didn’t understand.
I did have a solid ground, except for the odd eggshell, to walk upon. I had had other experiences that have provided set precedents where the aftermath of each event, unpleasant as they had been, had reinforced faith and trust. The experience’s mystery had stimulated belief not degraded it. Then, it follows, that one has to experience before the question of faith can be raised. Cancer for instance. You can’t look for faith in your cancer’s cure unless you have the cancer in the first place. My cancer diagnosis saw me embrace one insight: the cancer itself was a learning process set inside the stages of my progress through this lifetime. Life is a series of experiences. Some minor, some major, some common, some rare, some trivial, some profound. They are all stages in one’s life cycle. Many of life’s curiosities – synchronicity, déjà vu, uncanny foresight, coincidence, the odd glimpses into the realms of the psychic or clairvoyance – are absorbed as novelties. Interesting at the time but not life-changing. Many are not treasured as insights into the wonder of life’s possibilities. Which is a shame. But when one is life-changing, exceptional, it separates itself by its intensity. Its importance. Its energy. It commands attention. Your life is threatened. You save yourself by your actions. You are healed, be it by chemotherapy, radiation or whatever procedure is deemed appropriate by the establishment or you are healed outside of the “normal”. There are millions of souls that were healed by the traditional, the orthodox, the conventional. That is where they put their faith. In the external machinations. But what if you were healed by the miraculous? Where there is no physical presence to pour your trust into? No doctors, IV pumps, linear accelerators or even hospitals in sight? Just the abstract? There is one physical presence, the only physical presence you can turn to. Yourself.
Here one has to put the experience of healing into context. Any faith generated is not present in each unique experience, but, rather, post-experience. In the experiencer. That’s where you direct your faith. You believe in yourself. This is where the true healing lies. In my case, cancer was a stimulus. A teacher. An incentive for self-awareness. It forced me into the past to reinvent the present. The Now. I saw the steps that led to my disease and I saw the steps that led me away from that path. I sensed the abstract as the healer worked her magic. I accepted its energy even though I couldn’t articulate or conceptualize its true form. I just knew it existed and that was enough. I had faith in myself to believe that notion. Once believed, it was up to the experiencer to maintain that faith. To nurture it. This was not a blind faith. It could see. Simply because once I was ill with a dire diagnosis that my immediate future was locked into the world of harsh and unpredictable treatments. Then I turned to myself for strength. A door was opened and I stepped through. Now, many years later, I am healthy. I never think about prostate cancer. It is not part of my everyday life. It holds no interest for me. I write words that reveal truths that, pre-cancer, would never have entered my sphere of existence. I live with both faith and the abstract, the known and the unknown, as pivotal factors in my journey. It is what it is and I would be foolish to see it any other way.
October, 2020 – Half-way and Then No More - a Sin?
“Why did you climb half way up the mountain and stop? Didn’t you want to see the view from the top?”
Someone, somewhere, once said: “To remain on a given level, no matter how exalted, is a sin.” This was a spiritual quote referring to the spiritual path. In essence, to reach a certain point on the journey, and to accept that point as the end of your yearning, could be a betrayal of your spiritual intent. There is a danger to accept such a limitation simply because it is considered by many fellow travellers as being as far as you need to go and that, consequently, you can lay down your weary body and rejoice in the security generated by the collective consciousness around you. Spiritual intent is an energy and, as such, could be subject to atrophy and could possibly wither through your simple misjudgment that this is as far as you need to go. A sin, if you consider the original interpretation of the noun. Derived from ancient Aramaic, it was originally an archery term meaning “to miss the mark or bulls-eye.” Sin, therefore, means to not reach a goal, way, mark, or right point. So, using that definition as the heart of the opening quote, we can apply it to a contemporary explorer’s journey where it has apparently reached a conclusion. Is that ending all that is necessary or is it unwarranted?
The logic for such a stance could be as follows: “I was lost. I needed to explore. To find answers. I set out. I studied. I meditated. I became aware of my inner demons, my futile attachments, my acceptance of illusions. My knowledge broadened. I felt an inner wisdom. I climbed. I reached a plateau and it was populated by kindred souls. They had the words, the rituals, the sacred ceremonies. They filled the holes that had, so far, populated my knowledge and wisdom. I felt complete. The plateau was an exalted site. It had grand buildings. Revered statuary. It contained spiritual masters. It was all I needed. I stopped and went no further.” Maybe the impetus was spiritual weariness as ahead, beyond a continuation, was the unknown. And, though it was never in dispute, the mountain’s peak was ever present but frustratingly obscured. The explorer, tired of the unseen and the obscured, surrendered to the known and visible. Any sense of wonder deflated. The mystery that initially drove his or her yearning to “know” what was unknown was relegated in importance. It was now hidden, out of sight, behind the majestic buildings, the babble of well-intentioned but earthbound words and concepts, the guru, the priest, the preacher and the ocean of bowed heads soaking up only what they understood but little else. All reinforced by the presence of sheer numbers of fellow believers. Safety and security based solely on a head count. And left lying in the dust? The corpse of intent. A sin!
As always, when writing an opinion such as mine, it’s wise to be careful. Every soul has its own individual path. There are those who feel they are satisfied, happy and content at certain levels. They are content to stop at that one point on a path that promises the traveller a focal point for inner peace. The seekers then forsake any motivation to traverse beyond that static point. They are content with levels that other searchers would deem inadequate, spiritually unfulfilling. Who is right or wrong in any decision to accept “far enough as good enough” as a philosophy is not for those who observe such behaviour to decide upon. Any judgment resides solely with the individual involved. The validity of any such decision can only be determined by that individual’s inner meditation. So, if you choose to step off the path or continue, the journey, in both cases, is still ongoing. Considering the varying viewpoints, any decision to stay or further progress relies in the end on intuition. Simply, if you feel that, within, your yearning is not satisfied by that specific final destination that appears to appease the majority of souls, then leave the walls behind and embrace the space that surrounds the refuge. The unknown that awaits your eventual arrival. If you have found a refuge that speaks to you, then stay. But be vigilant and only stay when certain intuitions are fulfilled. Do not display a satisfied smile fuelled by ignorance while you are, according to the preceding definition, sinning. Be aware. Do not be seduced by rituals and concepts that are earthbound in nature. Do not let your spirit become so immersed and interwoven with the material world that has apparently manifested in the form of a sanctified sanctuary, only to find that the sanctuary is, in fact a cell! Because, in reality, the only satisfied component of your being will be your Ego.
Within your cell, if one is not careful, the Ego will create yet another persona to protect itself. This persona will present to the world a satisfied spiritual soul. Who basks in the glory of a God clumsily hand-crafted by consensus. Who accepts the wisdom of flesh and blood here as superior to that wisdom that pervades the unseen world that your yearning for the truth drives you toward. The Ego is uneasy when faced with any spiritual urge as it has no strategy for a process that is ever-changing. Which can’t be pinned down and manipulated. Ego will resent its transition from the steering wheel to the back seat. To fight back it will rely on the familiar. The already-proven armoury. Doubt, scepticism, fear, apprehension, character-belittlement. The aim is not to destroy, but to return you to the status quo. In this case, half way up the mountain is an ideal place for the Ego to take a stand. It will seduce you into an acceptance of the traditional, those “isms” that define our appropriate religions. Here you will find Gods tamed by concepts, marketed mysteries, sacred bucket lists, pop culture spirituality, Zen travel agents. The Ego prays that you will find comfort in the known and you will settle back into a level of acceptance that will offer no challenge to the Ego’s interpretation of reality – within that narrow viewpoint the Ego’s manipulation will be unchallenged!
So, is halfway far enough? Your intent’s compass relies now on intuition and faith. If your intuition is telling you that your original yearning is still unresolved then obviously your journey, despite the Ego’s protests, should progress beyond that half-way point. Beyond that level we reach an area where faith is the first item you should pack in your suitcase for the climb ahead. Intuition has told you that there is further ground to cover. And, from now on, all is a mystery. And to embrace faith is to place yourself in the hands of that which you cannot control. Faith is essential as the spiritual path is devoted to a pursuit of something we can’t not only name but can’t even imagine. It is something we can only sense. It requires an inner conviction to believe there is a “known” behind the “unknown.” To sense a connection between you and what calls you and to believe its validity is an act of faith. To ignore all and then to try to confine your yearning within the boundaries of a half-way point is a sin.
September: 2020 – The Spiritual Path – Freeway or Roadblock?
You decide that action must be taken. After all, you feel dispirited. Your angst is defying containment. What was once a nascent awareness of an inner discontent is now starting to bloom in the garden that you have unwittingly created for its continued growth. You begin to make promises to seek answers. Then the promises are manifested into actions. Your turmoil is invisible so you search for the avenues of research that are concerned with exploration of that which is beyond words or a definitive concept. Your first steps lead you to the external world of knowledge provided by the wise, the saintly, the mystical. You delve into the ancient and the contemporary worlds of those who gone before and those who are either beside you or ahead of you on their own journeys. You find comfort in the assurances offered that any question asked has more than one possible answer. There are rituals. There are rules. There are procedures formulated from centuries of spiritual analysis. You meditate. You take retreats. You inquire, absorb and apply. You begin to feel that you are on a path though you are not sure where it leads but your intuition tells you to persevere. So you do. Moving further and further away from your first step.
First thing you notice is an increasing loneliness. A loneliness that has its roots in doubt. Your points of reference have often been inspirational but the inspiration has its limitations. The external approach is informative but still you procrastinate. The wise and saintly have granted you maps. Their maps are based on their interpretations of the results of their individual quests. You have still to find a map specifically designed for your journey. You find some inspiration in a sense of kinship. Your yearning is universal. All sentient souls yearn. The true believer and the atheist, for instance, both yearn for answers. Both are on the same path, though the former and the latter, unconvincingly, deny any common ground. Nonetheless, the spiritual path has had heavy traffic made up of conflicting approaches since time immemorial. You are one of many. But that knowledge is of little comfort. You now stand on your path and your path alone, paused in contemplation. Everyone on this journey, upon observation, appears to be alone. All that is shared between each participant is that yearning that fuels the pilgrimage. Beyond that, all have their own nebulous concepts of their destination’s structure. All have their own modes of transport. The isolated monastery in Nepal, the whipped-up hysteria of the circus religions, the new age temples of possibility in the deserts and forests. All are stations of departure. You may have been there, bought your ticket, taken your seat and, though the wheels were rolling, you still were plagued by a sense of underachievement. If so, the problem must be inherent in the traveller. You are not understanding yourself. You are on a path that is, in essence, a crisis of self-identity. Simply, it is not just you alone on this journey it is an amalgam of identities residing within. As Walt Whitman quoted: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Your spiritual path now must veer from the external to the internal where the true “you” resides or you will become lost in a fruitless external search.
You now look for signs that suggest an avenue into the internal. You can use the wisdom of those who have gone before as a new departure point. For example, Rumi: “The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, and with that treasure builds it better than before.” He was on his path long before your existence and learnt that any such journey was not for the faint-hearted. That message has been conveyed and reinforced by all the saints, Buddhas and divine figures that preceded and followed Rumi down through the ages. It is just one signpost, among many, along the spiritual path that suggests a truth built on experience and application. If this one signpost resonates, if your intuition is intrigued by its logic, then it is calling out for exploration. That truth’s validity will not benefit any traveler unless it is put into action and then judged as a hindrance or impetus for spiritual progress. We will follow Rumi’s reasoning.
The spiritual road is a process of positive disintegration. It is an identity crisis. It is a call to discard the personas you have created over time as survival mechanisms in order to find the true “you.” The destination is “you.” Tear down the house and seek out the true traveller. Then rebuild the positive from the debris. This process is painful. Who you really are, when exposed without a hiding place to crawl back into, can be brutal. But brutality is essential. Your doubt, your aloneness, your fear, your loss of faith, all must be impelled to tell their secrets. You will cry. You will shudder when you see the depth of your angst. You will even become afraid of yourself. Of the way you think and then act out those thoughts. You will see the opposites as they collide within every soul’s existence. One minute a saint, the next a lustful all-hating fanatic. A benevolent soul, then, in a moment’s time, a malevolent opposite. By exploring these apparent contradictions, we unearth the treasure that Rumi alludes to. The clothes for your nakedness. This treasure is the tool that frees you from who you thought you were and delivers you to be the person that you want to be! The treasure is the understanding, the enlightenment, that informs the traveler of the true reason of ever attempting to set out on a spiritual road in the first place. Being a return home to your unification. That soul that you were before life distorted, distracted and perverted your innocence. Before it misted your mirrors of perception. Before it created so many identities within that you lost sight of your original essence. Before Ego replaced universal consciousness with a claim that it was the only source of wisdom. Before the opposites that inhabit our many self-manufactured identities forced us to flee their presence rather than accept them a natural elements in our internal make-up. Rumi’s treasure is the granting of a gift. The ability to peel away the layers of created personas like the layers of an onion til there is only one essence remaining. A state of living in which all is accepted and nothing is denied. You, most probably in one lifetime, will never be a saint, a guiding beacon of pure light. But you will be you with all of your possibilities free to express themselves without the distortion of deception and illusion refusing spiritual growth. Still, easier said than done. Is there a way?
No matter how hard you meditate or attempt to read every inspirational word ever written or sit reverently at the feet of your guru, you will never manufacture this promised gift. It is given, not achieved via a formulated series of steps. A gift such as this is not an award for the accumulation of knowledge or blind faith in rituals or the idolization of concepts. It is, instead, only rewarded via the application of that special energy called intent. We all have the energy of intent. But, like so many other talents, it has been atrophied by life’s unpredictable roller coaster or focused on that which is unattainable – riches, fame, Ego-enhancement – the list is endless. Even spiritual intent can be lost in the gaudy halls of organised religion. In the thrall of the cathedral’s ambience as the orchestrated holy choirs reinforce the words of the charismatic preacher hovering above the congregation. Even in that refuge devoted to the East’s ancient message. The somber monks. The brightly painted statues representing a host of reverential figures. Your intent, rather than sharing the spiritual energy and gaining inspiration as the yearning is acknowledged and appreciated, can, instead, be surrendered to external forces. Lost in the spectacle. Protect your intent. To uncover and understand yourself. You need two requisites to have any chance of success. Patience and faith. If it happens tomorrow, well done. If it takes many more lifetimes, so be it. If you die no closer to the truth, so be it. There will be rebirth opportunities. You will not fall away into non-being. Because you have patience and because you have faith. You have faith in your intuition. In the yearning that compels you like it compels so many others. You would not be in this position if something, unknown, wasn’t calling out to reach you. Compelling you to find out the true answer behind the question. The spiritual path: freeway or roadblock? The answer will be unique to you and no one else. And it will free you.
You decide that action must be taken. After all, you feel dispirited. Your angst is defying containment. What was once a nascent awareness of an inner discontent is now starting to bloom in the garden that you have unwittingly created for its continued growth. You begin to make promises to seek answers. Then the promises are manifested into actions. Your turmoil is invisible so you search for the avenues of research that are concerned with exploration of that which is beyond words or a definitive concept. Your first steps lead you to the external world of knowledge provided by the wise, the saintly, the mystical. You delve into the ancient and the contemporary worlds of those who gone before and those who are either beside you or ahead of you on their own journeys. You find comfort in the assurances offered that any question asked has more than one possible answer. There are rituals. There are rules. There are procedures formulated from centuries of spiritual analysis. You meditate. You take retreats. You inquire, absorb and apply. You begin to feel that you are on a path though you are not sure where it leads but your intuition tells you to persevere. So you do. Moving further and further away from your first step.
First thing you notice is an increasing loneliness. A loneliness that has its roots in doubt. Your points of reference have often been inspirational but the inspiration has its limitations. The external approach is informative but still you procrastinate. The wise and saintly have granted you maps. Their maps are based on their interpretations of the results of their individual quests. You have still to find a map specifically designed for your journey. You find some inspiration in a sense of kinship. Your yearning is universal. All sentient souls yearn. The true believer and the atheist, for instance, both yearn for answers. Both are on the same path, though the former and the latter, unconvincingly, deny any common ground. Nonetheless, the spiritual path has had heavy traffic made up of conflicting approaches since time immemorial. You are one of many. But that knowledge is of little comfort. You now stand on your path and your path alone, paused in contemplation. Everyone on this journey, upon observation, appears to be alone. All that is shared between each participant is that yearning that fuels the pilgrimage. Beyond that, all have their own nebulous concepts of their destination’s structure. All have their own modes of transport. The isolated monastery in Nepal, the whipped-up hysteria of the circus religions, the new age temples of possibility in the deserts and forests. All are stations of departure. You may have been there, bought your ticket, taken your seat and, though the wheels were rolling, you still were plagued by a sense of underachievement. If so, the problem must be inherent in the traveller. You are not understanding yourself. You are on a path that is, in essence, a crisis of self-identity. Simply, it is not just you alone on this journey it is an amalgam of identities residing within. As Walt Whitman quoted: “I am large, I contain multitudes.” Your spiritual path now must veer from the external to the internal where the true “you” resides or you will become lost in a fruitless external search.
You now look for signs that suggest an avenue into the internal. You can use the wisdom of those who have gone before as a new departure point. For example, Rumi: “The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, and with that treasure builds it better than before.” He was on his path long before your existence and learnt that any such journey was not for the faint-hearted. That message has been conveyed and reinforced by all the saints, Buddhas and divine figures that preceded and followed Rumi down through the ages. It is just one signpost, among many, along the spiritual path that suggests a truth built on experience and application. If this one signpost resonates, if your intuition is intrigued by its logic, then it is calling out for exploration. That truth’s validity will not benefit any traveler unless it is put into action and then judged as a hindrance or impetus for spiritual progress. We will follow Rumi’s reasoning.
The spiritual road is a process of positive disintegration. It is an identity crisis. It is a call to discard the personas you have created over time as survival mechanisms in order to find the true “you.” The destination is “you.” Tear down the house and seek out the true traveller. Then rebuild the positive from the debris. This process is painful. Who you really are, when exposed without a hiding place to crawl back into, can be brutal. But brutality is essential. Your doubt, your aloneness, your fear, your loss of faith, all must be impelled to tell their secrets. You will cry. You will shudder when you see the depth of your angst. You will even become afraid of yourself. Of the way you think and then act out those thoughts. You will see the opposites as they collide within every soul’s existence. One minute a saint, the next a lustful all-hating fanatic. A benevolent soul, then, in a moment’s time, a malevolent opposite. By exploring these apparent contradictions, we unearth the treasure that Rumi alludes to. The clothes for your nakedness. This treasure is the tool that frees you from who you thought you were and delivers you to be the person that you want to be! The treasure is the understanding, the enlightenment, that informs the traveler of the true reason of ever attempting to set out on a spiritual road in the first place. Being a return home to your unification. That soul that you were before life distorted, distracted and perverted your innocence. Before it misted your mirrors of perception. Before it created so many identities within that you lost sight of your original essence. Before Ego replaced universal consciousness with a claim that it was the only source of wisdom. Before the opposites that inhabit our many self-manufactured identities forced us to flee their presence rather than accept them a natural elements in our internal make-up. Rumi’s treasure is the granting of a gift. The ability to peel away the layers of created personas like the layers of an onion til there is only one essence remaining. A state of living in which all is accepted and nothing is denied. You, most probably in one lifetime, will never be a saint, a guiding beacon of pure light. But you will be you with all of your possibilities free to express themselves without the distortion of deception and illusion refusing spiritual growth. Still, easier said than done. Is there a way?
No matter how hard you meditate or attempt to read every inspirational word ever written or sit reverently at the feet of your guru, you will never manufacture this promised gift. It is given, not achieved via a formulated series of steps. A gift such as this is not an award for the accumulation of knowledge or blind faith in rituals or the idolization of concepts. It is, instead, only rewarded via the application of that special energy called intent. We all have the energy of intent. But, like so many other talents, it has been atrophied by life’s unpredictable roller coaster or focused on that which is unattainable – riches, fame, Ego-enhancement – the list is endless. Even spiritual intent can be lost in the gaudy halls of organised religion. In the thrall of the cathedral’s ambience as the orchestrated holy choirs reinforce the words of the charismatic preacher hovering above the congregation. Even in that refuge devoted to the East’s ancient message. The somber monks. The brightly painted statues representing a host of reverential figures. Your intent, rather than sharing the spiritual energy and gaining inspiration as the yearning is acknowledged and appreciated, can, instead, be surrendered to external forces. Lost in the spectacle. Protect your intent. To uncover and understand yourself. You need two requisites to have any chance of success. Patience and faith. If it happens tomorrow, well done. If it takes many more lifetimes, so be it. If you die no closer to the truth, so be it. There will be rebirth opportunities. You will not fall away into non-being. Because you have patience and because you have faith. You have faith in your intuition. In the yearning that compels you like it compels so many others. You would not be in this position if something, unknown, wasn’t calling out to reach you. Compelling you to find out the true answer behind the question. The spiritual path: freeway or roadblock? The answer will be unique to you and no one else. And it will free you.
August, 2020 – Too Much Past
“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
- Eckhart Tolle.
Your understanding of the spiritual, physical and mental blueprint that is your essence, is, at most times, a fragile understanding. Sometimes the evidence that led you to your own, individual worldview, good or bad, is clearly visible on the surface. Maybe, in the formative years, you were the battered child, the abandoned child, the spoilt child or the sensitive, misunderstood child. Maybe you were situated in an impoverished environment or an affluent environment. You can point your finger at any of these decisive elements as being critical building blocks for the person that you are now. But sometimes the reasons for unhappiness in that adult world that you have created long past childhood, are baffling. After all, once you were poor, now through blood, sweat and tears, you are now rich. Once you were a neglected orphan, no family to call your own, but now you have three children and a happy marriage. On the surface, you are floating but not sinking. But you are aware of the dark depths below. You can’t shake an omnipresent sense of fragility. You are the victim of too much past and not enough present. You have to live in the Now which Henry David Thoreau described as such: “the meeting of two eternities, the past and future… is precisely the present moment.” Easy to say, harder to practice. Unless, of course, you understand yourself, not in the present, but as that child you once were. Use the past as a means to living in the Now.
I’ll concentrate on that child that you once were, aged two to seven. The programming years. It is here that who you are now was created. Wellbeing coach Amanda Gachot describes those years as: “the years where we take on beliefs, about ourselves and life, and many of these will remain unconscious throughout the rest of our lives, though they will show up in our behaviours, our achievements, our goals, how we choose our friends, our life partners…” As a participant, you were living in a world of suggestion, open to any stimuli coming your way. Hypnotised by life itself. Gachot defines these children as such: “they live in the realm of imagination, daydreaming and still not able to show signs of critical, rational thinking. This is a super learning state… These children are likely to accept what you tell them as true.” There you have it. What life told you then you accepted it as true. There’s your initial building block. And it still exists in that house you built over the following decades. You still have that child’s belief system with you but you are no longer a child. That child lives in the past.
Now, if you find yourself in a position of unease or disease that seems to have had its origins in what went before, be careful not to view the genesis of your discontent from behind a victim’s eyes. Do not make an enemy of the past. An “enemy” suggests a physical entity. Not only an entity but one that has chosen you as a foe. Singled you out. By doing so, you reduce the past to a concept. The past is not a concept. It is what it is. A phase of existence between the first and last breath. Your only mission should be to examine what occurred in that phase, understand it, then learn from it because, as stated, everything that you are now originated there. You no longer physically live there. You can visit, utilising an unreliable memory bank but you can’t live there anymore. Once again, easier said than done and evidence abounds that the human race is inept when it comes to adopting a strategy that places the past in a context that harmonises with the everyday. Which brings us to the neutralisation of the past. You neutralise by applying an opposite force. That force? An understanding of yourself when you existed as a child.
Aristotle once said: “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” No truer words. All men and women are the eventual maturation of that child aged two to seven. The end result of a stranger in a strange land. Mapless. Facing an unfamiliar terrain armed with no precedents to draw on. Completely open to suggestion. Like blotting paper. Soaking up experience without real understanding of the data presented. The result being that the child relies on instinctual imitation. They watch and learn. Mimicry is the first reaction, long before the art of rational thinking is possible. The child will mimic the necessary persona presented to them to survive as a role model. The one that seems to fit in with the expectations of parent, peer or society as a whole. The problem, of course, is in the validity of the many teachers that abound in the child’s environment. Are they stepping stones to the child’s future stability or are they deep potholes on the road that, once fallen into, take a lifetime, if ever, to climb out of? This is the period where Tolle wisely states that guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness and bitterness are forged. It is not the past’s fault. Whatever or whoever you encounter in the past are just figures in a landscape. It is the interplay between the participants that is of the most importance. How do I know this? How do I know the examination and reappraisal of this stage is vital to healing yourself as an adult? Because I went there and I saw the building blocks being created. They were numerous but one stood out. I then tore that building down and started again.
When I was diagnosed with cancer I went looking for any factors that could have contributed to its formation. I went deep into the past. I found a bitter mother, wounded by the denial of her hope that love was that shiny knight on a white horse promising perfection and delivering it without hesitation. Teenage daydreams that all ended in the betrayal of her idea of perfect love as a given to those who crave it. Pregnant at 15. The father, an older man, who was a practising habitual criminal and master manipulator. A man who lied his way into her affections. The wolf and the hare. Struck then left. My older sister was reluctantly accepted into the household. A second child conceived with a trainee fighter pilot who died in a plane crash on the outskirts of town. The child taken from my mother’s arms and given to her brother. The child to be never told of her real identity. The decision of an evangelical family unit who sought God’s approval more than they sought their own flesh and blood’s happiness. Two bastards in one house considered beyond any deity’s approval. My entrance. Born from a love affair between a desperate mother and a father who never returned from the battlefields of World War 2. He didn’t die there. The boy who enlisted and fought died there. The man who returned could not adapt to the normal world. It was mediocre when compared to the glorious uncertainty of warfare. Where the spirit, the life-force, is so close to the surface that you can taste its beauty. His failure to adapt, to compromise, even thought he had a wife and young son, saw a drift toward alcohol and increasing affairs. The vows of their marriage couldn’t withstand the turmoil. The union was split. My mother took up residence as a barmaid and cook in a country hotel out on the red soil plains of western NSW. There she found solace in the arms of a young grazier. Pregnancy once again followed. Twins. My mother, still in her twenties, had produced five children to four fathers but love and security was just as elusive as it had always been. Bitterness and resentment were not so elusive. As a child I was the recipient of the knowledge gained by my mother from those two destructive emotions. I was the blotting paper. The lesson: Don’t trust anyone. Just trust some people more than you trust others. Don’t give too much of yourself away. Be stingy with your affection. People will take more than they deserve. And love? Well, it’s a risky step to take at any time. Finally: Your father didn’t want you. He didn’t love you. Live with it! The tragedy here of course, is that, as a child, I firmly accepted my teacher’s lessons as the truth and nothing but the truth. The result was a child who felt abandoned. Who was not valuable enough to be cherished by his own father. And, unfortunately, suspected that there was something abhorrent in his being. Something that would drive a loving parent away. A child’s logic – difficult to suppress if it intensifies over time.
I believed till I took my journey into the past. I tracked down my father’s brother who was in his mid-nineties. I spoke to his daughter. There are many variations of the truth. Many interpretations. I only possessed one facet. My mother’s story. There was another version of my past that I was unaware of. My father had tried repeatedly to contact and connect with me. My mother’s father and brothers had run him out of town on a number of occasions. My mother was locked away like a princess in a tower if my father approached from any direction. Both she and I were denied any second chance. “Your father loved you and he loved your mother but all were victims of circumstances,” I was told. My father had gladly given the twins his name so as to allay any family recriminations. This was not a man to hate. This was my father. I never had the chance to reconcile as he died while I was still in conflict with his existence in my world. But, armed with the facts, I wrote him a letter. I walked up the hill behind my house, took out the letter and read the words out to the silence. I said I was sorry that our lives had turned out the way that they had. I now saw the young couple, my mother and father, in the light. Young, confused. One tainted by her unfortunate experience with love, the other by the after effects of war. Trying their best but ultimately failing. I asked for forgiveness for basing my past’s bitterness on misinformation. I said that I hoped in his new, incarnated life that he was happy and that my mother was too. My words were now part of a special relationship that belonged to no-one but us. I said goodbye and walked back to my house below, leaving my father and the child I once was behind.
If you are confused about why you are not as content as you think you should be. If there are underlying currents of dis-ease, then maybe it’s time to leave the child that you were behind. Wish him or her the best and give thanks to the soul that has travelled through the stages of its existence to be the adult that you are now. Be brave. Too much past is a hindrance. Just utilise the amount of the past’s information that you need to move forward.
“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
- Eckhart Tolle.
Your understanding of the spiritual, physical and mental blueprint that is your essence, is, at most times, a fragile understanding. Sometimes the evidence that led you to your own, individual worldview, good or bad, is clearly visible on the surface. Maybe, in the formative years, you were the battered child, the abandoned child, the spoilt child or the sensitive, misunderstood child. Maybe you were situated in an impoverished environment or an affluent environment. You can point your finger at any of these decisive elements as being critical building blocks for the person that you are now. But sometimes the reasons for unhappiness in that adult world that you have created long past childhood, are baffling. After all, once you were poor, now through blood, sweat and tears, you are now rich. Once you were a neglected orphan, no family to call your own, but now you have three children and a happy marriage. On the surface, you are floating but not sinking. But you are aware of the dark depths below. You can’t shake an omnipresent sense of fragility. You are the victim of too much past and not enough present. You have to live in the Now which Henry David Thoreau described as such: “the meeting of two eternities, the past and future… is precisely the present moment.” Easy to say, harder to practice. Unless, of course, you understand yourself, not in the present, but as that child you once were. Use the past as a means to living in the Now.
I’ll concentrate on that child that you once were, aged two to seven. The programming years. It is here that who you are now was created. Wellbeing coach Amanda Gachot describes those years as: “the years where we take on beliefs, about ourselves and life, and many of these will remain unconscious throughout the rest of our lives, though they will show up in our behaviours, our achievements, our goals, how we choose our friends, our life partners…” As a participant, you were living in a world of suggestion, open to any stimuli coming your way. Hypnotised by life itself. Gachot defines these children as such: “they live in the realm of imagination, daydreaming and still not able to show signs of critical, rational thinking. This is a super learning state… These children are likely to accept what you tell them as true.” There you have it. What life told you then you accepted it as true. There’s your initial building block. And it still exists in that house you built over the following decades. You still have that child’s belief system with you but you are no longer a child. That child lives in the past.
Now, if you find yourself in a position of unease or disease that seems to have had its origins in what went before, be careful not to view the genesis of your discontent from behind a victim’s eyes. Do not make an enemy of the past. An “enemy” suggests a physical entity. Not only an entity but one that has chosen you as a foe. Singled you out. By doing so, you reduce the past to a concept. The past is not a concept. It is what it is. A phase of existence between the first and last breath. Your only mission should be to examine what occurred in that phase, understand it, then learn from it because, as stated, everything that you are now originated there. You no longer physically live there. You can visit, utilising an unreliable memory bank but you can’t live there anymore. Once again, easier said than done and evidence abounds that the human race is inept when it comes to adopting a strategy that places the past in a context that harmonises with the everyday. Which brings us to the neutralisation of the past. You neutralise by applying an opposite force. That force? An understanding of yourself when you existed as a child.
Aristotle once said: “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.” No truer words. All men and women are the eventual maturation of that child aged two to seven. The end result of a stranger in a strange land. Mapless. Facing an unfamiliar terrain armed with no precedents to draw on. Completely open to suggestion. Like blotting paper. Soaking up experience without real understanding of the data presented. The result being that the child relies on instinctual imitation. They watch and learn. Mimicry is the first reaction, long before the art of rational thinking is possible. The child will mimic the necessary persona presented to them to survive as a role model. The one that seems to fit in with the expectations of parent, peer or society as a whole. The problem, of course, is in the validity of the many teachers that abound in the child’s environment. Are they stepping stones to the child’s future stability or are they deep potholes on the road that, once fallen into, take a lifetime, if ever, to climb out of? This is the period where Tolle wisely states that guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness and bitterness are forged. It is not the past’s fault. Whatever or whoever you encounter in the past are just figures in a landscape. It is the interplay between the participants that is of the most importance. How do I know this? How do I know the examination and reappraisal of this stage is vital to healing yourself as an adult? Because I went there and I saw the building blocks being created. They were numerous but one stood out. I then tore that building down and started again.
When I was diagnosed with cancer I went looking for any factors that could have contributed to its formation. I went deep into the past. I found a bitter mother, wounded by the denial of her hope that love was that shiny knight on a white horse promising perfection and delivering it without hesitation. Teenage daydreams that all ended in the betrayal of her idea of perfect love as a given to those who crave it. Pregnant at 15. The father, an older man, who was a practising habitual criminal and master manipulator. A man who lied his way into her affections. The wolf and the hare. Struck then left. My older sister was reluctantly accepted into the household. A second child conceived with a trainee fighter pilot who died in a plane crash on the outskirts of town. The child taken from my mother’s arms and given to her brother. The child to be never told of her real identity. The decision of an evangelical family unit who sought God’s approval more than they sought their own flesh and blood’s happiness. Two bastards in one house considered beyond any deity’s approval. My entrance. Born from a love affair between a desperate mother and a father who never returned from the battlefields of World War 2. He didn’t die there. The boy who enlisted and fought died there. The man who returned could not adapt to the normal world. It was mediocre when compared to the glorious uncertainty of warfare. Where the spirit, the life-force, is so close to the surface that you can taste its beauty. His failure to adapt, to compromise, even thought he had a wife and young son, saw a drift toward alcohol and increasing affairs. The vows of their marriage couldn’t withstand the turmoil. The union was split. My mother took up residence as a barmaid and cook in a country hotel out on the red soil plains of western NSW. There she found solace in the arms of a young grazier. Pregnancy once again followed. Twins. My mother, still in her twenties, had produced five children to four fathers but love and security was just as elusive as it had always been. Bitterness and resentment were not so elusive. As a child I was the recipient of the knowledge gained by my mother from those two destructive emotions. I was the blotting paper. The lesson: Don’t trust anyone. Just trust some people more than you trust others. Don’t give too much of yourself away. Be stingy with your affection. People will take more than they deserve. And love? Well, it’s a risky step to take at any time. Finally: Your father didn’t want you. He didn’t love you. Live with it! The tragedy here of course, is that, as a child, I firmly accepted my teacher’s lessons as the truth and nothing but the truth. The result was a child who felt abandoned. Who was not valuable enough to be cherished by his own father. And, unfortunately, suspected that there was something abhorrent in his being. Something that would drive a loving parent away. A child’s logic – difficult to suppress if it intensifies over time.
I believed till I took my journey into the past. I tracked down my father’s brother who was in his mid-nineties. I spoke to his daughter. There are many variations of the truth. Many interpretations. I only possessed one facet. My mother’s story. There was another version of my past that I was unaware of. My father had tried repeatedly to contact and connect with me. My mother’s father and brothers had run him out of town on a number of occasions. My mother was locked away like a princess in a tower if my father approached from any direction. Both she and I were denied any second chance. “Your father loved you and he loved your mother but all were victims of circumstances,” I was told. My father had gladly given the twins his name so as to allay any family recriminations. This was not a man to hate. This was my father. I never had the chance to reconcile as he died while I was still in conflict with his existence in my world. But, armed with the facts, I wrote him a letter. I walked up the hill behind my house, took out the letter and read the words out to the silence. I said I was sorry that our lives had turned out the way that they had. I now saw the young couple, my mother and father, in the light. Young, confused. One tainted by her unfortunate experience with love, the other by the after effects of war. Trying their best but ultimately failing. I asked for forgiveness for basing my past’s bitterness on misinformation. I said that I hoped in his new, incarnated life that he was happy and that my mother was too. My words were now part of a special relationship that belonged to no-one but us. I said goodbye and walked back to my house below, leaving my father and the child I once was behind.
If you are confused about why you are not as content as you think you should be. If there are underlying currents of dis-ease, then maybe it’s time to leave the child that you were behind. Wish him or her the best and give thanks to the soul that has travelled through the stages of its existence to be the adult that you are now. Be brave. Too much past is a hindrance. Just utilise the amount of the past’s information that you need to move forward.
July, 2020 – Us Versus Us
There is no hiding from the environmental destruction that surrounds us. It is a list of global indignities far too long for a blog such as mine. From Pole to Pole a marked percentage of the human species appears hell-bent on trashing the very house it lives in. Nothing is sacred. The air we breathe, the water we drink, the soil we till, the fauna and flora, all seem marked as targets for the assassination squads that hunt them down. This is a war but it is not a war between two Isms or two flags or two religions, rather it is a war fought between ego and that which cannot be conquered, namely Nature. There can be only one victor. Mankind’s egotism, if declared the winner, would find that as a consequence of winning, its own fate would be sealed as it would be left incapable of survival in an inhospitable landscape of its own creation. Doomed to struggle until the species finally surrendered to the inevitable. On the other side of the equation, that which was seemingly conquered, via its immeasurable patience, eventually would re-inherit the battlefield. And then, as predictable as night and day, there would be a regeneration, a rebalancing. All that was once mankind would be buried beneath Nature’s ascendency. The sad fact is it is not a battle between man and Nature. It is Us versus Us!
The reality is inescapable. We are locked into a scenario where we are fighting ourselves. A Collective Vandalism versus a Collective Spiritual Yearning. Unfortunately, we find our egotism and sacred yearning in conflict. Unable to reconcile the impulse to destroy with the impulse to unite and grow as one. The logic behind the impulse to destroy is where the answer to this conundrum lies. If the logic is understood then it can be addressed and corrected. Then a truce can be established on both fronts. There is a fascinating theory that this historically deep-seated destruction of our environment, of nature, is an act of revenge. A revenge inspired by racial memory or genetic knowledge as we have not forgotten that once we were the hunted not the hunters. Prehistorically we were preyed upon, stalked, run down and devoured by adversaries far better equipped for that purpose when compared to the defensive abilities of the hunted. Nature had provided the predators with deadlier claws, fangs, speed, smell, flexibility and mobility, all underlining the clumsiness of the presented human prey. There was no mercy in Nature as it was understood. Cornered, outnumbered, there was no negotiation between man and Nature at its most ferocious, just slaughter. This helplessness, so the theory proposes, has not been forgotten. Genetic memory being what it is. Bent on revenge, we go beyond reason now to ensure our superiority, so that such helplessness is vanquished. We slash and burn, pollute and poison because we owe it to the past, to our species. We must be, undeniably, the hunters not the hunters.
Feasible or implausible, as far as theories go, this could be a lively dinner table topic to explore between courses. But as a serious theory that proposes someone would destroy their very existence for revenge, it is hard to swallow. A collective suicidal consciousness built around revenge, as a plausible theory, is hard to fathom. Yet, on the evidence presented, it appears that a death wish is in action and that those who have the impulse to wreak havoc appear to have complete power to do so. They are unanswerable to no one, not bound by territorial boundaries and live far removed from the worlds of ethics and morality. We are facing a Sixth Mass Extinction Event as human activity grinds this blue planet into submission. This Mass Extinction scenario will see us sacrificing our fragile existence to the open arms of oblivion, joining the victims of the previous five events. Every soul is a potential dinosaur. So, welcome to the facts. A study published by Science (Issue 6187) puts it bluntly: “current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than they would be if humans weren’t around.” The UN Convention on Biological Diversity in 2015 sadly observed that: “every day, up to 150 species are lost.” Every species lost is a step closer to our own extinction. Last man standing is no option if we are standing in a landscape that no longer supports any life form.
It is clear that, as a species, a destructive percentage has lost sight of the traditional relationship between man and Nature. Man once co-existed with Nature, living within the seasons, acknowledging the intricate exchange of mutual existence as a given. Life was a co-operation. Nature manifested as the Earth was loved and respected. Its bounty received with gratitude. Nature was worshipped. Nature was an energy force approachable via the adoration of not one but many deities. Ceres the Roman god of crops and agriculture, Poseidon who controlled the seas, Amun the Egyptian god of sun and air stand as examples. This relationship was slowly eroded then lost in the process of natural evolution. Gods were abandoned one by one til only one emerged from the depths of antiquity. This God was established as the “only” God, no matter the Ism that supported it. This deity was the sole creator of all we see and that included Nature. Nature was only answerable to God. But everything changes. Now this God is almost, but not quite, a victim of man’s natural evolution. This evolution forced a constant re-examination of the Past. What once mattered was subjected to redundancy when exposed to our perceived expanding intellectual maturity. Each new expansion of reason called for new Gods to match the wisdom that fuelled the reasoning. Too many inexplicable controversies had clouded the logic of believing in what went before. Nature was now shared between man and any belief system that favoured the earthbound. We created a two-headed God: Science and Technology. Science is the God who examines and analyses that which constitutes our world and Technology is the agency that attempts to transform all scientific possibilities into physical instruments that will elevate our species to greater heights of sophistication and well-being.
Nature exists in opposition to the two-headed God because of its unpredictability. Its energy is anarchistic when placed in a context of the perfect world that Science and Technology pursues. There is a conflict. Barbara Ehrenreich in her book Living With a Wild God states: “the business of science is to crush all alien intention and replace them with predictable mechanisms.” All alien intention! Nature is not normal, it is alien. We do not trust its intentions. We plant, there is a drought. We build and the wildfires come. Storms, earthquakes, tornados. All unpredictable. We can’t predict or control what we don’t understand. And, accordingly, armed with technology, we force Nature to provide economic progress. Better to be the hunter right now than the hunted tomorrow. Everything is urgent. Time is running out. Nature is lurking, filled with ulterior motives. There is no future. Only now. A warped Economic Zen. All we reap though is a growing sense of dread. We live in a fragile dichotomy. Materialism opposed to spirituality. The spiritual component of our consciousness knows it is one with the cosmos. The relationship is indivisible. Quantum physics reveals a sub-atomic level where all energy moves and interacts. Where you and I and this and that are you and I. To quote one definition of Quantum’s String Theory: “at some fundamental level, all the different forces, particles, interactions and manifestations of reality are tied together as part of the same framework.” Our spiritual side intuits this but then it sees our ego act in complete opposition to such a notion. The problem being they share the same house. If we see Nature as an adversary, then we are a house divided!
A re-examination of history would probably offer the following solution: “we need a new God.” Good luck with that. If the world can’t agree on a solution to its own on-going destruction, it certainly wouldn’t agree on a universal deity that could point the way to survival. We have Gods enough. When it comes to our place on this planet we need a mind that is open to the message that each of those personal Gods deliver. There are 2.5 billion Christians inhabiting this planet. The Bible is emphatic in its environmental message. Psalms 24:1: “the earth is the Lord’s, and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it.” Leviticus 25:23 pulls no punches: “the land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants." If, as one, Christians had a collective insight that God was, indeed, the creator of both heaven and Earth, then they would not be as bold as to destroy his house! They would not have the courage. Consider the Islamic worldview as expressed by Fatima Al-Banna, an environmental activist at Sharjah Higher Colleges of Technology: “Environment protection is an important aspect of Islam. Being stewards of the Earth, it is the responsibility of Muslims to care for the environment in a proactive manner. There is a definite purpose behind the creation of different species, be it plants or animals. Muslims are encouraged to reflect on the relationship between living organisms and their environment and to maintain the ecological balance created by Allah. Protection of the environment is essential to Islamic beliefs and mankind has the responsibility to ensure safe custody of the environment.”
There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims on this planet. Combined with Christianity, these two belief systems number 4.3 billion adherents whose deity would rather see Nature respected for what it is. A living, vital creation for the benefit of all. The army for reform is there. All is needed is a spiritual awakening. If you are a spiritual being, and we all are though many have forgotten it, then it follows that one must simply follow the God that they have chosen in all of that deity’s teachings. That applies to all the Isms. Despite their differences, there is common ground. A spiritual yearning for salvation not destruction. For answers not questions. In my case I believe all comes from one source. In the beginning there was one soul seeking the truth from one avenue. More souls, through the ages, meant more interpretations of the source til it became a concept that could be manoeuvred to serve different social, political and spiritual agendas. We all search for that which we can relate to and that is no crime. But, as I have discussed, within each belief there is one truth that is not open to negotiation. This Earth is a sacred creation. We are not meant to destroy it for reasons as fickle as greed and power. We must remember our origin, our essence, in order to understand ourselves. Understand yourself and you will understand those who you share the planet with – including the vandals. When we see their motivation reflected in our own behaviour, we can address it. Then, hopefully, there will be a collective rebirth intent on unity not disintegration. So, the war of Us versus Us is the one that is of uttermost importance. If the harmony is not restored then our children’s children will be residents of a desolate world not of their own making but a creation of our own ignorance perpetrated here and now. If Christianity and Islam simply practised what they preached, then there would be peace in the valley.
June, 2020 – The Unseen Visitors.
Recently I visited my Reiki therapist. Reiki is not affiliated with any particular religion or religious practice. According to the International Association of Reiki Professionals, Reiki is “not massage nor is it based on belief or suggestion. It is a subtle and effective form of energy work using spiritually guided life force energy. Reiki is the life energy that flows through all living things.” I find Reiki helpful and appreciate its healing qualities. But, in my world as it is now, my Reiki sessions have proved to be more concerned with the “spiritual guided life force energy” not restricting itself to mere healing. Rather, on a number of occasions, the life force energy has made its presence visible to both Reiki practitioners who have treated me in the past few years. Visible to the therapists but not to me. Usually I feel a presence and, upon remarking that we have a visitor, I have that intuition confirmed. It rarely fails. During my last treatment, for instance, St Germain introduced himself. Saint Germain is one of a collection of Ascended Masters. Described by medium James Van Praagh as “a group of spiritually enlightened beings who once lived as humans. Through their own hard work, they have cleared all their karma and have left the cycle of rebirth. In essence, they have achieved mastery. They’re now on standby, waiting to share their profound wisdom on all aspects of your spiritual and personal development.” So, after my treatment, my therapist told me St Germain had visited, showing interest in her work by lending his energy to my healing. I had not been acquainted with St Germain till that moment.
My friend Wendy, before her recent death, was a spiritual Reiki master. When I sensed a presence, Wendy also saw it. She often described such visitations. At times her treatment room became quite crowded! There were descriptions forthcoming from the Unseen of past lives, spiritual advice and, sometimes, Wendy was ordered by various observers to cease and desist mid-treatment. Obviously it had been decided that the open door was to be shut at that very moment. Such events weren’t confined to the Reiki rooms. Pema, a Buddhist nun, saw a deep blue aura surrounding me which, as she explained, was the universal healing force manifested. A psychic in a neighbouring town once observed a Native American Indian spirit guide off one shoulder and my long-departed grandmother off the other. My NZ friend who is a distance healer and intuitive energy dispenser, for wont of a better description, has told me of visitations during our sessions. Personally, I have seen not one visitor but, as stated, have sensed a presence on many occasions. My intuitive friends and associates have often confirmed my own intuition. What is my opinion when it comes to such matters? Such visitations have not been uncommon in the past decade. What is my reaction? Indeed what would be any earthbound soul’s reaction?
Everyone in this dimension, I believe, possesses varying degrees of ability when it comes to communication with the Unseen. Some are minimal, almost non-existent, and some are highly advanced. The range of communication can vary. That tiny voice that tells you not to shoplift that 50c lolly. That voice that tells you not to get into your car that day. That voice that says keep to the streetlight and not the dark alley. To buy that lottery ticket. To change your lifestyle, worldview or there will be a physical, spiritual or emotional backlash. Then there is the one that manifests itself in that it not only speaks but also adopts a physical appearance for those who are tuned to a certain level, so to speak, to perceive such visits. The latter chooses those most receptive to that world-not-visible to relay its message. Those with the most finely-tuned antennas are first receivers then channelers. To appear without creating mental pandemonium within the receiver, the manifestation will assume a form that is as innocent and non-threatening as possible. Hence we have the Angel, the gentle North American Indian, the saintly figure, the small child or wise old man. I’ve been informed of the above being present around me when it was the appropriate time for a message to be delivered.
Such benign manifestations are much preferred than that of a deafening clap of thunder, a blinding flash of cosmic lightning and an unworldly voice reducing one to a quivering mess. One thing I am sure of is that all of the above mentioned identities are illusory but not in a deceptive manner. They are adopted personalities. Personalities that are acceptable upon appearance. But, behind those adopted identities, there is but one source. Its name is elusive and rightly so. If we can name it and imagine it then we separate it from the unity that surrounds us. One is all and all is one, not separate components. So, if it appears there are separate manifestations, it is illusory. There is only one manifestation. St Germain and the wise old man, the North American Indian and the little girl, the Angel and the saint, are all the same. The Universal intelligence manifested. If I wear an assortment of masks, I am not that mask. I am what it is behind the mask. My face never changes, only the mask. Crudely put but that is how I see it. My visitors, your visitors, are just one part of the whole adopting a persona that we can comfortably identify with. Now such visitations are just one of an endless range of occasions where we encounter messages of guidance and inspiration.
We have coincidence: where the heavens align and you, without prior planning, find yourself at the exact right place at the exact right moment and the unexpected becomes reality. What mathematicians Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller define as: “a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection.” Then we have synchronicity. Lost for an answer to one of life’s problems when you overhear a random conversation that relates to the solving of that personal dilemma or you take a wrong turn up a street and there is the very book in a second-hand shop window that is just what is needed for a particular purpose. Then we have the natural world around us. Inspiration for art, music, poetry, literature from the power and beauty of nature as it communicates its essence to you. Or that tiny voice that wakes you up at three o’clock in the morning with advice and direction regarding a dilemma that appeared unsolvable only a few hours previously. On and on we go. My visitors at Reiki are but one manifestation in a line of visitations. All such occasions all are what is needed for you as a traveler on a difficult road through life at that particular moment in time. Some, such as what I have encountered, are strange and mysterious but always welcome. They appear when you need their guidance.
So, I believe that St Germain and synchronicity, the power of nature, the small voice that wakes you in the wee wee hours, coincidence or that psychic or clairvoyant that you feel intuitively to be genuine are like waves in an ocean. No waves, no ocean. No ocean, no waves. All come bearing messages, guidance and inspiration from the heart of one source. It is a blessing that we are privileged to encounter such phenomena no matter how subtle or how powerfully obvious. A persistence, armed with patience and right intent, to not forsake your spiritual journey will naturally lead to such occurrences be it the Angel in the corner or the beauty of a single flower igniting an inner essence that takes you deeper into the heart of things, removed from the distractions of an external world where such insights are often negated by the blindfolds we wear as protection. Spiritual awareness will be the key that opens the door to such opportunities, too rare and too precious to let pass without recognition. I write this with prior knowledge as my guide. Every month I write this blog setting out a few days before the month’s end. Usually I have a vague idea on the composition but sometimes an unexpected inspiration comes from out of the blue. This month, for instance I was set to write on the Buddhist theory of Eternalism but I didn’t get past the first sentence when a whole new topic interjected demanding, it seemed, to be written. And so it was. I was directed to write by an energy inside. The voice within the voice. Perhaps it was St Germain. If it was then he too was a voice inside a voice. And we were all indivisible at that moment. Everything there is is here, now.
Recently I visited my Reiki therapist. Reiki is not affiliated with any particular religion or religious practice. According to the International Association of Reiki Professionals, Reiki is “not massage nor is it based on belief or suggestion. It is a subtle and effective form of energy work using spiritually guided life force energy. Reiki is the life energy that flows through all living things.” I find Reiki helpful and appreciate its healing qualities. But, in my world as it is now, my Reiki sessions have proved to be more concerned with the “spiritual guided life force energy” not restricting itself to mere healing. Rather, on a number of occasions, the life force energy has made its presence visible to both Reiki practitioners who have treated me in the past few years. Visible to the therapists but not to me. Usually I feel a presence and, upon remarking that we have a visitor, I have that intuition confirmed. It rarely fails. During my last treatment, for instance, St Germain introduced himself. Saint Germain is one of a collection of Ascended Masters. Described by medium James Van Praagh as “a group of spiritually enlightened beings who once lived as humans. Through their own hard work, they have cleared all their karma and have left the cycle of rebirth. In essence, they have achieved mastery. They’re now on standby, waiting to share their profound wisdom on all aspects of your spiritual and personal development.” So, after my treatment, my therapist told me St Germain had visited, showing interest in her work by lending his energy to my healing. I had not been acquainted with St Germain till that moment.
My friend Wendy, before her recent death, was a spiritual Reiki master. When I sensed a presence, Wendy also saw it. She often described such visitations. At times her treatment room became quite crowded! There were descriptions forthcoming from the Unseen of past lives, spiritual advice and, sometimes, Wendy was ordered by various observers to cease and desist mid-treatment. Obviously it had been decided that the open door was to be shut at that very moment. Such events weren’t confined to the Reiki rooms. Pema, a Buddhist nun, saw a deep blue aura surrounding me which, as she explained, was the universal healing force manifested. A psychic in a neighbouring town once observed a Native American Indian spirit guide off one shoulder and my long-departed grandmother off the other. My NZ friend who is a distance healer and intuitive energy dispenser, for wont of a better description, has told me of visitations during our sessions. Personally, I have seen not one visitor but, as stated, have sensed a presence on many occasions. My intuitive friends and associates have often confirmed my own intuition. What is my opinion when it comes to such matters? Such visitations have not been uncommon in the past decade. What is my reaction? Indeed what would be any earthbound soul’s reaction?
Everyone in this dimension, I believe, possesses varying degrees of ability when it comes to communication with the Unseen. Some are minimal, almost non-existent, and some are highly advanced. The range of communication can vary. That tiny voice that tells you not to shoplift that 50c lolly. That voice that tells you not to get into your car that day. That voice that says keep to the streetlight and not the dark alley. To buy that lottery ticket. To change your lifestyle, worldview or there will be a physical, spiritual or emotional backlash. Then there is the one that manifests itself in that it not only speaks but also adopts a physical appearance for those who are tuned to a certain level, so to speak, to perceive such visits. The latter chooses those most receptive to that world-not-visible to relay its message. Those with the most finely-tuned antennas are first receivers then channelers. To appear without creating mental pandemonium within the receiver, the manifestation will assume a form that is as innocent and non-threatening as possible. Hence we have the Angel, the gentle North American Indian, the saintly figure, the small child or wise old man. I’ve been informed of the above being present around me when it was the appropriate time for a message to be delivered.
Such benign manifestations are much preferred than that of a deafening clap of thunder, a blinding flash of cosmic lightning and an unworldly voice reducing one to a quivering mess. One thing I am sure of is that all of the above mentioned identities are illusory but not in a deceptive manner. They are adopted personalities. Personalities that are acceptable upon appearance. But, behind those adopted identities, there is but one source. Its name is elusive and rightly so. If we can name it and imagine it then we separate it from the unity that surrounds us. One is all and all is one, not separate components. So, if it appears there are separate manifestations, it is illusory. There is only one manifestation. St Germain and the wise old man, the North American Indian and the little girl, the Angel and the saint, are all the same. The Universal intelligence manifested. If I wear an assortment of masks, I am not that mask. I am what it is behind the mask. My face never changes, only the mask. Crudely put but that is how I see it. My visitors, your visitors, are just one part of the whole adopting a persona that we can comfortably identify with. Now such visitations are just one of an endless range of occasions where we encounter messages of guidance and inspiration.
We have coincidence: where the heavens align and you, without prior planning, find yourself at the exact right place at the exact right moment and the unexpected becomes reality. What mathematicians Persi Diaconis and Frederick Mosteller define as: “a surprising concurrence of events, perceived as meaningfully related, with no apparent causal connection.” Then we have synchronicity. Lost for an answer to one of life’s problems when you overhear a random conversation that relates to the solving of that personal dilemma or you take a wrong turn up a street and there is the very book in a second-hand shop window that is just what is needed for a particular purpose. Then we have the natural world around us. Inspiration for art, music, poetry, literature from the power and beauty of nature as it communicates its essence to you. Or that tiny voice that wakes you up at three o’clock in the morning with advice and direction regarding a dilemma that appeared unsolvable only a few hours previously. On and on we go. My visitors at Reiki are but one manifestation in a line of visitations. All such occasions all are what is needed for you as a traveler on a difficult road through life at that particular moment in time. Some, such as what I have encountered, are strange and mysterious but always welcome. They appear when you need their guidance.
So, I believe that St Germain and synchronicity, the power of nature, the small voice that wakes you in the wee wee hours, coincidence or that psychic or clairvoyant that you feel intuitively to be genuine are like waves in an ocean. No waves, no ocean. No ocean, no waves. All come bearing messages, guidance and inspiration from the heart of one source. It is a blessing that we are privileged to encounter such phenomena no matter how subtle or how powerfully obvious. A persistence, armed with patience and right intent, to not forsake your spiritual journey will naturally lead to such occurrences be it the Angel in the corner or the beauty of a single flower igniting an inner essence that takes you deeper into the heart of things, removed from the distractions of an external world where such insights are often negated by the blindfolds we wear as protection. Spiritual awareness will be the key that opens the door to such opportunities, too rare and too precious to let pass without recognition. I write this with prior knowledge as my guide. Every month I write this blog setting out a few days before the month’s end. Usually I have a vague idea on the composition but sometimes an unexpected inspiration comes from out of the blue. This month, for instance I was set to write on the Buddhist theory of Eternalism but I didn’t get past the first sentence when a whole new topic interjected demanding, it seemed, to be written. And so it was. I was directed to write by an energy inside. The voice within the voice. Perhaps it was St Germain. If it was then he too was a voice inside a voice. And we were all indivisible at that moment. Everything there is is here, now.
May, 2020 – Spiritual Bricks & Mortar
(Inspired by Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa)
So, you went to the East and you had a defining mystical encounter with the unknown. A taste of pure enlightenment. It filled your inner being with a joy beyond description. You came back to the West but all you had was a memory. No matter how you tried you couldn’t conjure up the magic again, let alone describe it coherently to those who would listen. Memory became distorted by linear time and then, more often than not, you began to think that you had dreamed it. There was now a strong sense of loss. Of uncertainty. You delved back into the past looking for something that you never understood in the first place. To recapture the beauty and power because you needed it now - in the present. But, because you never understood its origin, it was too elusive. You had a travelling companion this time round but it wasn't a benevolent companion.
So you now faced an unexpected danger in that your experience could be pirated by an energy that was more than ready to take advantage of your perceived loss. Namely your ego. It always craves normality. It always resists the spiritual urge as it sees spirituality as an unwelcome readjustment to the unknown, to forces beyond the ego’s grasp. The recipient of a transcendent experience is lifted out of a mundane world into an unseen, sensed world. This unseen, sensed world is not a fertile ground for the illusory ego to exist in. It has no control there. It cannot call on precedents to use as armaments as the ego has never encountered transcendence in any shape or form before. Such events are unique. Its only weapon is your mistake in solidifying the transcendent moment. When you made your spiritual moment in time a concept. It was in your mind as real as a place built with sacred, spiritual bricks and mortar. The ego then used this spiritual materialism as tool to be used for its own safety and very existence. The ego is out of depth when faced with the inexplicable but it can attack a concept, an ideal. In a flash what you once regarded as self improvement becomes a perversion as the ego now demanded ego-improvement! To ensure its continuity, its dominance by removing the mystique. It whispered that your miracle began and ended in the moments that it occurred. And, maybe, it wasn’t a miracle at all. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Now you fell further behind and could only realise a clumsy revisualization. Indistinct. The intensity faded as the ego built barriers around it until you were just clinging to the vestiges. The doubt was planted. And now that you were disillusioned the ego offered a solution. It will create a new world for you. And, it will turn your special moment into a human construction of the ego’s own making. The ego is happy because it is gaining control. It is outsmarting the mystical. It impels you back within the familiar – the everyday round of samsara with its nagging pinpricks and spiritual roadblocks with only your ego as a guide. Sometimes souls step off the path here, they surrender to the notion that the spirit has moved on and left one stranded. Has your spirituality been damaged beyond repair?
Sometimes you encounter a miracle along life’s trajectory. In my case, as documented in my monthly musings, I encountered a situation that seemingly placed me beyond the normal. Beyond my expectations of what life could offer in a time of crisis. Beyond that what available for healing within the established traditional medical regime. Beyond what was scientifically acceptable. This event appeared to be in conflict with the conformity that dominated the everyday logic surrounding me. Of course, in the revealing light of hindsight, any conflict was illusory. It only appeared to be in conflict with the world as I knew it then. In fact, it was logically part and parcel of my existence at that particular point. As Saint Augustine noted: “Miracles happen, not in opposition to nature, but in opposition to what we know of nature.” That is what a miracle is. It is a point on the spiritual path where you encounter that which is beyond the expected. Deepak Chopra notes that “miracles are a joyous release from everything we expect is possible”. Beyond what we know. I was guided through my recovery in a synchronistic series of steps. I had no control. I didn’t conjure the healing up. It unfolded before me like… well, just like a miracle. And when all was settled I could see that this process had been present on other dire occasions in my lifeline. There had been previous miracles. I never understood just what those forces were beyond the fact that there was a deep spiritual involvement in the process. I followed my intuition, my inner voice that I intuited was a voice within a voice, telling me that I had experienced divine intervention.
Quoting Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Understanding is not necessary. Accepting is sufficient. Miracles occur when they occur. They are stages along the path. They manifest, along with their beauty and intensity, at that point. That point is not static. It is an evolving situation. You receive the manifestation with gratitude, love and respect. Then you let go. The experiences are not to be constructed into a material form like a house built on the site of the miraculous. If they are then they are subject to all the universal laws that govern the material. Decay, neglect, constant change, misinterpretation. They can be manipulated by the fragile inconsistencies that make up our physical and mental composition. So, bask in the experience. Learn from it. Apply it to that point in time and then let it go as you journey further on into the constant flow of "nows" that make up a lifetime. The wonder won't vanish, it will walk beside you unless, of course, you allow your ego to isolate it back there in the form of a useless experience designed to hinder the ego's concept of what is ideal.
If you have had the fortune to come face to face with the brilliance of a sacred insight, the wonder of a healing beyond medical definition or the like, then it is wise to place that event in context. Life is a miracle both seen and unseen. When an unseen element of wonder surfaces, it cannot be separated from its source. It cannot be possessed and isolated. What we call a miracle is a part of the whole. We live in the whole. Everything is here. Everything is wondrous, mystical and miraculous. We are often blind to that fact but sometimes we are not. On those occasions it is good to accept that everything changes including the wondrous moments. To try and capture them like a butterfly in a butterfly net is inadvisable. See their beauty and then let them go. They are gifts not possessions. There can be an impulsive urge to hang on to them with all one’s might. In doing so, that past experience solidifies, able to be visualized as an ideal. It becomes a concept. Unfortunately, it is a concept that can never be explained. So why persist? There is a road and along it you will encounter wonders. Know that they are there because your intent led you to them. Your intent to increase your awareness of the mystery that surrounds. When you move along, the magic and intensity doesn’t fade. It returns to the source and the source is your true companion. Not your ego. When the time is right, there will be another manifestation of that source. That is the real miracle.
(Inspired by Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism by Chogyam Trungpa)
So, you went to the East and you had a defining mystical encounter with the unknown. A taste of pure enlightenment. It filled your inner being with a joy beyond description. You came back to the West but all you had was a memory. No matter how you tried you couldn’t conjure up the magic again, let alone describe it coherently to those who would listen. Memory became distorted by linear time and then, more often than not, you began to think that you had dreamed it. There was now a strong sense of loss. Of uncertainty. You delved back into the past looking for something that you never understood in the first place. To recapture the beauty and power because you needed it now - in the present. But, because you never understood its origin, it was too elusive. You had a travelling companion this time round but it wasn't a benevolent companion.
So you now faced an unexpected danger in that your experience could be pirated by an energy that was more than ready to take advantage of your perceived loss. Namely your ego. It always craves normality. It always resists the spiritual urge as it sees spirituality as an unwelcome readjustment to the unknown, to forces beyond the ego’s grasp. The recipient of a transcendent experience is lifted out of a mundane world into an unseen, sensed world. This unseen, sensed world is not a fertile ground for the illusory ego to exist in. It has no control there. It cannot call on precedents to use as armaments as the ego has never encountered transcendence in any shape or form before. Such events are unique. Its only weapon is your mistake in solidifying the transcendent moment. When you made your spiritual moment in time a concept. It was in your mind as real as a place built with sacred, spiritual bricks and mortar. The ego then used this spiritual materialism as tool to be used for its own safety and very existence. The ego is out of depth when faced with the inexplicable but it can attack a concept, an ideal. In a flash what you once regarded as self improvement becomes a perversion as the ego now demanded ego-improvement! To ensure its continuity, its dominance by removing the mystique. It whispered that your miracle began and ended in the moments that it occurred. And, maybe, it wasn’t a miracle at all. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. Now you fell further behind and could only realise a clumsy revisualization. Indistinct. The intensity faded as the ego built barriers around it until you were just clinging to the vestiges. The doubt was planted. And now that you were disillusioned the ego offered a solution. It will create a new world for you. And, it will turn your special moment into a human construction of the ego’s own making. The ego is happy because it is gaining control. It is outsmarting the mystical. It impels you back within the familiar – the everyday round of samsara with its nagging pinpricks and spiritual roadblocks with only your ego as a guide. Sometimes souls step off the path here, they surrender to the notion that the spirit has moved on and left one stranded. Has your spirituality been damaged beyond repair?
Sometimes you encounter a miracle along life’s trajectory. In my case, as documented in my monthly musings, I encountered a situation that seemingly placed me beyond the normal. Beyond my expectations of what life could offer in a time of crisis. Beyond that what available for healing within the established traditional medical regime. Beyond what was scientifically acceptable. This event appeared to be in conflict with the conformity that dominated the everyday logic surrounding me. Of course, in the revealing light of hindsight, any conflict was illusory. It only appeared to be in conflict with the world as I knew it then. In fact, it was logically part and parcel of my existence at that particular point. As Saint Augustine noted: “Miracles happen, not in opposition to nature, but in opposition to what we know of nature.” That is what a miracle is. It is a point on the spiritual path where you encounter that which is beyond the expected. Deepak Chopra notes that “miracles are a joyous release from everything we expect is possible”. Beyond what we know. I was guided through my recovery in a synchronistic series of steps. I had no control. I didn’t conjure the healing up. It unfolded before me like… well, just like a miracle. And when all was settled I could see that this process had been present on other dire occasions in my lifeline. There had been previous miracles. I never understood just what those forces were beyond the fact that there was a deep spiritual involvement in the process. I followed my intuition, my inner voice that I intuited was a voice within a voice, telling me that I had experienced divine intervention.
Quoting Albert Einstein: “If you can’t explain it to a six-year-old, you don’t understand it yourself.” Understanding is not necessary. Accepting is sufficient. Miracles occur when they occur. They are stages along the path. They manifest, along with their beauty and intensity, at that point. That point is not static. It is an evolving situation. You receive the manifestation with gratitude, love and respect. Then you let go. The experiences are not to be constructed into a material form like a house built on the site of the miraculous. If they are then they are subject to all the universal laws that govern the material. Decay, neglect, constant change, misinterpretation. They can be manipulated by the fragile inconsistencies that make up our physical and mental composition. So, bask in the experience. Learn from it. Apply it to that point in time and then let it go as you journey further on into the constant flow of "nows" that make up a lifetime. The wonder won't vanish, it will walk beside you unless, of course, you allow your ego to isolate it back there in the form of a useless experience designed to hinder the ego's concept of what is ideal.
If you have had the fortune to come face to face with the brilliance of a sacred insight, the wonder of a healing beyond medical definition or the like, then it is wise to place that event in context. Life is a miracle both seen and unseen. When an unseen element of wonder surfaces, it cannot be separated from its source. It cannot be possessed and isolated. What we call a miracle is a part of the whole. We live in the whole. Everything is here. Everything is wondrous, mystical and miraculous. We are often blind to that fact but sometimes we are not. On those occasions it is good to accept that everything changes including the wondrous moments. To try and capture them like a butterfly in a butterfly net is inadvisable. See their beauty and then let them go. They are gifts not possessions. There can be an impulsive urge to hang on to them with all one’s might. In doing so, that past experience solidifies, able to be visualized as an ideal. It becomes a concept. Unfortunately, it is a concept that can never be explained. So why persist? There is a road and along it you will encounter wonders. Know that they are there because your intent led you to them. Your intent to increase your awareness of the mystery that surrounds. When you move along, the magic and intensity doesn’t fade. It returns to the source and the source is your true companion. Not your ego. When the time is right, there will be another manifestation of that source. That is the real miracle.
April, 2020 – The Illusion Meets The Truth.
23rd March - It’s 10am. We’re sitting in a hospital room in Shepparton, Victoria. Kerry sits on one side of a bed. I sit on the other side. Between us lies our friend Wendy. She is in the final hours of her time here in this dimension. Her spirit preparing for its transition from one existence to the next. It has been 10 days since we last saw her. The physical decline is startling. The cancer dominating her body has reduced her from what was once a fountain of vitality and energy to a mere trickle. Her face sunken. Her arms so fragile that they appear as if they could break at the mere suggestion of pressure. One touch of affection elicits a moan of pain. Her morphine dosage has been increased earlier so Wendy is now just a lost figure drifting in and out of consciousness. She no longer has the strength to acknowledge our presence. Her eyes are semi-closed, fixed on a point that has no visible physical properties. We, simultaneously, carefully, take one of her hands each. As light as a small bird. And we sit, the three souls, as hospital life swirls along the corridors and pervades the adjoining rooms. Kerry whispers encouragement to her good friend. Soothing, sweet words. Compassionate. “Don’t fight, accept. It’s time. You are not alone.” Wendy shudders. Her breath ceases. Our hands drop away. There is a deep sense of finality. Then life comes back and Wendy settles. Slowly but surely, with great effort, she raises her right hand as if searching for an object above her head. Grasping at thin air till her hand is reunited with Kerry’s. I know then that we are still connected. The small concessions that imminent death offers, accepted as a gift. We stay that way in silence. Till it is time to leave. I say a barely audible mantra and leave the two old friends for their personal goodbyes.
24th March – Early in the afternoon Wendy passed away.
Wendy was deeply spiritual but not in a mainstream manner. We spoke often about her looming death and she was ready. She saw it as a door opening, not shutting. So, in a sense, she welcomed it as a transition, a step into the mystery around us where questions would be answered and new beginnings offered. Death was as natural as birth. I joked with her just weeks before that I was jealous that she would soon know what we all want to know. Things that we only have glimpses of, that our intuition only hints at. Things beyond faith and clumsy belief patterns. She would know. And, to add to this unusual line of humour, we joked that she had had so much practice in previous incarnations in the art of dying that it should be a cinch this time, if not slightly boring. Such humour was lacking in her final hours, replaced by a sense of spiritual energy present when the soul readies for release. Outside, in the so-called real world, Wendy’s lifetime of collected knowledge, experiences, ambitions, dreams, hopes and disappointments wandered free with nowhere to go. Lost. Inside her small hospital room there was no room at all for illusion, attachment or the remnants of her material desires. Here there was only the Truth. That fact that we mostly turn and run from. Here was death. But not death as we know it. This is death the companion. The comforter. It is not an unfamiliar presence. We have met before. In previous incarnations.
Jiddu Krishnamurti says that in a friend’s death, a part of those left goes with their friend. So, wherever one friend goes, they are accompanied by the love they generated in their former existence. The departed is never alone as they carry a part of those who loved him or her with them. The opposite, too, is true. A part of the departed stays with the farewellers. So, all is one, linked, united. Here and beyond. There is here and here is there. And death is the doorway between the finite and infinity and that is all it is. So, we are happy for Wendy as she opens and passes through death’s door to such a place. It is a place that defies definition, beyond our imagination. But, be it physical, spiritual or energy rejoining energy, it is a destination that is inevitable and, as such, should be welcomed. Both for ourselves and those who precede us. Our sympathies and compassion should be directed at those who live in a no-man’s-land of spiritual apathy and inner atrophy. Who live in an existence where fear, confusion and doubt rule the roost. Wendy never lived there. She sailed on beyond her final breath with expectation. With a certainty that negated both doubt and fear. It was as it should be.
23rd March - It’s 10am. We’re sitting in a hospital room in Shepparton, Victoria. Kerry sits on one side of a bed. I sit on the other side. Between us lies our friend Wendy. She is in the final hours of her time here in this dimension. Her spirit preparing for its transition from one existence to the next. It has been 10 days since we last saw her. The physical decline is startling. The cancer dominating her body has reduced her from what was once a fountain of vitality and energy to a mere trickle. Her face sunken. Her arms so fragile that they appear as if they could break at the mere suggestion of pressure. One touch of affection elicits a moan of pain. Her morphine dosage has been increased earlier so Wendy is now just a lost figure drifting in and out of consciousness. She no longer has the strength to acknowledge our presence. Her eyes are semi-closed, fixed on a point that has no visible physical properties. We, simultaneously, carefully, take one of her hands each. As light as a small bird. And we sit, the three souls, as hospital life swirls along the corridors and pervades the adjoining rooms. Kerry whispers encouragement to her good friend. Soothing, sweet words. Compassionate. “Don’t fight, accept. It’s time. You are not alone.” Wendy shudders. Her breath ceases. Our hands drop away. There is a deep sense of finality. Then life comes back and Wendy settles. Slowly but surely, with great effort, she raises her right hand as if searching for an object above her head. Grasping at thin air till her hand is reunited with Kerry’s. I know then that we are still connected. The small concessions that imminent death offers, accepted as a gift. We stay that way in silence. Till it is time to leave. I say a barely audible mantra and leave the two old friends for their personal goodbyes.
24th March – Early in the afternoon Wendy passed away.
Wendy was deeply spiritual but not in a mainstream manner. We spoke often about her looming death and she was ready. She saw it as a door opening, not shutting. So, in a sense, she welcomed it as a transition, a step into the mystery around us where questions would be answered and new beginnings offered. Death was as natural as birth. I joked with her just weeks before that I was jealous that she would soon know what we all want to know. Things that we only have glimpses of, that our intuition only hints at. Things beyond faith and clumsy belief patterns. She would know. And, to add to this unusual line of humour, we joked that she had had so much practice in previous incarnations in the art of dying that it should be a cinch this time, if not slightly boring. Such humour was lacking in her final hours, replaced by a sense of spiritual energy present when the soul readies for release. Outside, in the so-called real world, Wendy’s lifetime of collected knowledge, experiences, ambitions, dreams, hopes and disappointments wandered free with nowhere to go. Lost. Inside her small hospital room there was no room at all for illusion, attachment or the remnants of her material desires. Here there was only the Truth. That fact that we mostly turn and run from. Here was death. But not death as we know it. This is death the companion. The comforter. It is not an unfamiliar presence. We have met before. In previous incarnations.
Jiddu Krishnamurti says that in a friend’s death, a part of those left goes with their friend. So, wherever one friend goes, they are accompanied by the love they generated in their former existence. The departed is never alone as they carry a part of those who loved him or her with them. The opposite, too, is true. A part of the departed stays with the farewellers. So, all is one, linked, united. Here and beyond. There is here and here is there. And death is the doorway between the finite and infinity and that is all it is. So, we are happy for Wendy as she opens and passes through death’s door to such a place. It is a place that defies definition, beyond our imagination. But, be it physical, spiritual or energy rejoining energy, it is a destination that is inevitable and, as such, should be welcomed. Both for ourselves and those who precede us. Our sympathies and compassion should be directed at those who live in a no-man’s-land of spiritual apathy and inner atrophy. Who live in an existence where fear, confusion and doubt rule the roost. Wendy never lived there. She sailed on beyond her final breath with expectation. With a certainty that negated both doubt and fear. It was as it should be.
March, 2020 – Music’s Whisper
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley
I always wanted to be a musician. An ambition hard to resist in the Sixties. Any teenager with stars in their eyes couldn’t help but to be swept away by the tidal wave of creativity that characterised that era. The new ideal, when it came to prestige, glory and respect among one’s peers, was to be that person on the radio, on the TV, on the stage singing that song that rang out from open windows, passing cars or was whistled or hummed by complete strangers on any street corner. A song that whole cultures would eventually sing. Your creation. It was a basic desire driven by visions of a utopian existence. Rich, envied, beyond simple admiration, exalted beyond reason and, of course, there were the physical rewards. Sexual dreams to entice the hormonally driven. Riches from creativity. Too difficult to resist. So, I tried my best but my best wasn’t good enough. I became a musician but found out quickly that being one wasn’t a guarantee of a place in the pantheon of rock music. Disillusioned, I gave up in my mid-thirties and walked away from the music. It took me twenty years to walk back again. The reason? In a time of crisis, music whispered in my ear. It said that I had missed the whole point of creativity in my immature years. I had misunderstood the purpose of all creativity – being the line of communication between the earthbound soul and its essence, its origin, its lifeblood.
This wasn’t the same voice that had appealed to me in my youth. That voice was insistent but its insistence was based on a flimsy simplicity: I could construct a perfect world which would deliver both physical and material rewards using creativity as the building blocks. It never mentioned that this world would be built using ego and illusion as the principal architects. Both architects too fragile to support such a project. That voice faded within the decades. The new voice talked of invisible riches beyond the material that were more valuable that those locked into my youth’s imagination. I could experience not only healing but a reborn spiritual landscape within. All I had to do was to re-establish lines of communication that were ego and illusion free. That voice saved me and its communicative avenue was the very source that had eluded me years before. Music. What I lost back then is echoed now in the contemporary world of music. We have all lost something vital.
Philosopher A. C. Grayling in his collection of ideas, The Heart of Things, muses on creativity, its exponents and its influence on past civilizations. Antiquity believed that “artistic creativity was not the spontaneous work of an individual, but the result of divine inspiration (‘in-spir-ation’ – literally, ‘breathing in’). The Muses, the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts, had “breathed it into him, he was a conduit for their creations, their messenger.” “Genius” meant ‘a spirit’, a benign demon, who sat on the messenger’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.” This antiquarian belief has been eroded by the ages. Though it has persisted when it comes to prodigies, geniuses or those one–in-a-million creative individuals. Consider Mozart, a true child prodigy. Playing the piano at the age of three, and, by age four, already composing. By the age of 12, Mozart had written 10 symphonies and had performed publicly for an incredulous Europe and an equally impressed emperor and empress of Vienna. Any consideration of such a unique individual could not deny an intervention, either divine or that which is beyond classification or definition, as playing a guiding role in Mozart’s musical brilliance. That belief in divine inspiration has persisted but its powerful imagery now exists in isolation.
Music in its purest form has been hijacked and replaced by an inferior creation. Unfortunately, its spiritual influence has been all but been abandoned. In the mainstream the idea of music as a generational bonding agent, as a communal focus point, as an intellectual and emotional treasure trove, as a voice that speaks across demographics, as poetry, as an avenue of improvisation, as embracing the spectrum from surreal to the organised - being from the avant-garde to pure pop - minus any boundaries interrupting its continuity, has blown away in the cultural wind. There are creative voices out there but their words and notes have been swallowed in the blandness and conformity that characterises the world of music as it stands today. I did not welcome a return visit to such an environment but a crisis in the shape of a dire cancer prognosis compelled me to seek solace in music. But how was I to know what was truth or what was delusion when I invited my muse back into my life?
There is a wonderful novel written by Karen Raney called All The Water In The World. It is the story of Maddy, a sixteen-year-old in the final stages of cancer and her relationship with the unknown as it manifests around her. She finds comfort and inspiration in music. She attends a classical music performance in a church accompanied by her grandmother. There she experiences the spiritual power that all unadulterated music possesses. She observes that “music can break free from the instruments and live a life of its own.” She comes to love the wait in expectation for “the music to part company with the instruments.” To “wing its way out of time, out of reach.” Creativity set free for all to absorb. Like a prayer set free. Escaping the instrument, passing through the expressive ability of the musician and embracing the listener before passing on into the infinite. She, in her finite time left, had grasped the ancient concept of music as a living force – an energy. I never had that notion in mind as a struggling musician in my twenties and thirties. I never realised that playing was praying. That I was a link between the material and the unknown with my instrument as the intermediary. First the player. Wanting to create, to share, to inspire, to conjure up emotion and beauty. The instrument. No longer an inanimate object. Suddenly alive with possibility channelling the player. The audience, the collective soul. Sharing as one the message. The music. Winging in with the muse, inspiring the player, the audience and then returning to its source. Maddy is saddled with cancer. It lifts her into an intuitive state. I was saddled with cancer. It too elevated me into a similar arena of existence as experienced by Maddy. I converted my dark energy into light via my music. Saved.
The lesson is simple: if you misuse the purity of creativity for purposes that are ego-driven then you will achieve the same result as that which follows any negative action. If you look within the creative energy source for its voice and open to the muse, then you will achieve the exact opposite of your initial misinterpretation. Let’s quote antiquity: “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” – Plato. Antiquity was right. Creativity is a healing, restorative conduit. Sometimes, as in the fictional story of Maddy and the real-life narrative which is mine, it takes a disintegration in order to reassemble the pieces into a coherent big picture.
And so it is with life. Look past the illusion and create your own reality. Be it painting, poetry, music, carpentry, sculpture, film and all the many avenues available, when you create with a pure intent then you will find something so precious that will wrap you in its arms and not let go.
“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.” – Aldous Huxley
I always wanted to be a musician. An ambition hard to resist in the Sixties. Any teenager with stars in their eyes couldn’t help but to be swept away by the tidal wave of creativity that characterised that era. The new ideal, when it came to prestige, glory and respect among one’s peers, was to be that person on the radio, on the TV, on the stage singing that song that rang out from open windows, passing cars or was whistled or hummed by complete strangers on any street corner. A song that whole cultures would eventually sing. Your creation. It was a basic desire driven by visions of a utopian existence. Rich, envied, beyond simple admiration, exalted beyond reason and, of course, there were the physical rewards. Sexual dreams to entice the hormonally driven. Riches from creativity. Too difficult to resist. So, I tried my best but my best wasn’t good enough. I became a musician but found out quickly that being one wasn’t a guarantee of a place in the pantheon of rock music. Disillusioned, I gave up in my mid-thirties and walked away from the music. It took me twenty years to walk back again. The reason? In a time of crisis, music whispered in my ear. It said that I had missed the whole point of creativity in my immature years. I had misunderstood the purpose of all creativity – being the line of communication between the earthbound soul and its essence, its origin, its lifeblood.
This wasn’t the same voice that had appealed to me in my youth. That voice was insistent but its insistence was based on a flimsy simplicity: I could construct a perfect world which would deliver both physical and material rewards using creativity as the building blocks. It never mentioned that this world would be built using ego and illusion as the principal architects. Both architects too fragile to support such a project. That voice faded within the decades. The new voice talked of invisible riches beyond the material that were more valuable that those locked into my youth’s imagination. I could experience not only healing but a reborn spiritual landscape within. All I had to do was to re-establish lines of communication that were ego and illusion free. That voice saved me and its communicative avenue was the very source that had eluded me years before. Music. What I lost back then is echoed now in the contemporary world of music. We have all lost something vital.
Philosopher A. C. Grayling in his collection of ideas, The Heart of Things, muses on creativity, its exponents and its influence on past civilizations. Antiquity believed that “artistic creativity was not the spontaneous work of an individual, but the result of divine inspiration (‘in-spir-ation’ – literally, ‘breathing in’). The Muses, the inspirational goddesses of literature, science, and the arts, had “breathed it into him, he was a conduit for their creations, their messenger.” “Genius” meant ‘a spirit’, a benign demon, who sat on the messenger’s shoulder and whispered in his ear.” This antiquarian belief has been eroded by the ages. Though it has persisted when it comes to prodigies, geniuses or those one–in-a-million creative individuals. Consider Mozart, a true child prodigy. Playing the piano at the age of three, and, by age four, already composing. By the age of 12, Mozart had written 10 symphonies and had performed publicly for an incredulous Europe and an equally impressed emperor and empress of Vienna. Any consideration of such a unique individual could not deny an intervention, either divine or that which is beyond classification or definition, as playing a guiding role in Mozart’s musical brilliance. That belief in divine inspiration has persisted but its powerful imagery now exists in isolation.
Music in its purest form has been hijacked and replaced by an inferior creation. Unfortunately, its spiritual influence has been all but been abandoned. In the mainstream the idea of music as a generational bonding agent, as a communal focus point, as an intellectual and emotional treasure trove, as a voice that speaks across demographics, as poetry, as an avenue of improvisation, as embracing the spectrum from surreal to the organised - being from the avant-garde to pure pop - minus any boundaries interrupting its continuity, has blown away in the cultural wind. There are creative voices out there but their words and notes have been swallowed in the blandness and conformity that characterises the world of music as it stands today. I did not welcome a return visit to such an environment but a crisis in the shape of a dire cancer prognosis compelled me to seek solace in music. But how was I to know what was truth or what was delusion when I invited my muse back into my life?
There is a wonderful novel written by Karen Raney called All The Water In The World. It is the story of Maddy, a sixteen-year-old in the final stages of cancer and her relationship with the unknown as it manifests around her. She finds comfort and inspiration in music. She attends a classical music performance in a church accompanied by her grandmother. There she experiences the spiritual power that all unadulterated music possesses. She observes that “music can break free from the instruments and live a life of its own.” She comes to love the wait in expectation for “the music to part company with the instruments.” To “wing its way out of time, out of reach.” Creativity set free for all to absorb. Like a prayer set free. Escaping the instrument, passing through the expressive ability of the musician and embracing the listener before passing on into the infinite. She, in her finite time left, had grasped the ancient concept of music as a living force – an energy. I never had that notion in mind as a struggling musician in my twenties and thirties. I never realised that playing was praying. That I was a link between the material and the unknown with my instrument as the intermediary. First the player. Wanting to create, to share, to inspire, to conjure up emotion and beauty. The instrument. No longer an inanimate object. Suddenly alive with possibility channelling the player. The audience, the collective soul. Sharing as one the message. The music. Winging in with the muse, inspiring the player, the audience and then returning to its source. Maddy is saddled with cancer. It lifts her into an intuitive state. I was saddled with cancer. It too elevated me into a similar arena of existence as experienced by Maddy. I converted my dark energy into light via my music. Saved.
The lesson is simple: if you misuse the purity of creativity for purposes that are ego-driven then you will achieve the same result as that which follows any negative action. If you look within the creative energy source for its voice and open to the muse, then you will achieve the exact opposite of your initial misinterpretation. Let’s quote antiquity: “Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.” – Plato. Antiquity was right. Creativity is a healing, restorative conduit. Sometimes, as in the fictional story of Maddy and the real-life narrative which is mine, it takes a disintegration in order to reassemble the pieces into a coherent big picture.
And so it is with life. Look past the illusion and create your own reality. Be it painting, poetry, music, carpentry, sculpture, film and all the many avenues available, when you create with a pure intent then you will find something so precious that will wrap you in its arms and not let go.
February, 2020 – Voices
I have a friend who is battling a dire onslaught from cancer. The cancer is not confined to one area. It has chosen to manifest itself in several areas of her body. Her life expectancy has passed. Xmas was the deadline. She has a powerful life force. A spiritual life force that refuses to yield. Her physical energy is diminishing but her spirit refuses to surrender. It continues to nourish her. She is now in a twilight zone between life and death. She sees no future benefit from modern medicine’s interventions. With a weakened immune system, chemo and radiation could prove fatal. The oncologists persist with possibilities but they have no choice. The system has a protocol that locks it into a series of possibilities that are linked to the physical not the spiritual. My friend is bypassing those suggestive voices. Suggestive, in medical terms, because the advice offered is based on statistics, precedents and, in some instances, a fingers-crossed approach. Cancer treatment is often loaded into the one-treatment-fits-all category. Suggestions of a possible road back to health based on the past, on individual cases that were as varied and multilayered as is possible, considering the complexities that dwell within the average body’s molecular structure, is just day-dreaming. My friend no longer resides in a world of suggestion.
Life is a process of natural attrition. Desires, dreams, hopes, fall away one by one. This is echoed in the realm of voices, both inner and external. We live our days immersed in a sea of voices. Within, the Ego cries out encouraging our personas with delusions and illusions, particularly when it comes to the concept of our mortality. The external world is composed of a ceaseless chatter. Most of which is irrelevant, useless information designed to distract from the reality that surrounds us. There is an endless conversation. In meditation we encounter the Monkey Tree. We sit encouraging silence but are assailed by fragments of dialogue. Fleeting across the consciousness like startled monkeys in a tree. But, as we approach our physical demise, the voices begin to drop by the way. The growing realization that what we feared, or welcomed, is an inevitability refocuses our attention away from the trivial. We prioritise. Mentally, physically and spiritually. One by one the voices drop away. The voice of youth. The voice of middle-aged maturity. The voice of ambition. Of frustration. The voice of insistence that to grow old and frail is a crime against nature. The voice that denies that this life is but one of many. That denies that this life is a place to acquire wisdom, not to hide from its acquisition as if it were a harmful agent that promises only chaos rather than peace. So they fall, simply because they become redundant with age or are shown in their true light in the face of imminent death, be it illness or the myriad ways the physical can cease, accidentally or intentionally. Soon, there is but one voice left standing. This is the voice my friend hears.
The establishment, in our culture, is wary of the spiritual. After all, the spiritual is unscientific. It certainly cannot be contained and evaluated in a test tube. It certainly can’t speak. If so, says the scientist, show me a recording. A visible object. My friend ignores such shortsightedness and chooses to listen to the spiritual within. It talks to her. It tells her that everything is going to be alright. And so it is. The body carries the spirit, the true essence of every existence. The spirit is deathless and will pass, intact, from the physical limitations that temporarily hold it. It will be embraced, once again, in the cycle that leads to an eventual home for the wandering soul. This is where my friend is. Momentarily. Between two voices. One spiritual, one physical. One states that everything changes. That life is not confined to one existence. It has many faces across many existences. This voice is not concerned with the art of dying as death is viewed as a process of reinvention. Roman philosopher Seneca echoed the spirit’s wisdom: “That day, which you fear as the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity.” The other voice knows its boundaries. It is confined inside an individual physicality. My friend’s illness finds her tired body initiating the art of dying. The body knows what to do because the body is designed for both living and dying. It has a relationship with both. It has only one expectation of the identity that it has carried through this existence. That it accepts the evitable and doesn’t spent the precious time left in fits of despair and fear. Now, as the process intensifies, as the mobility decreases, as the everyday, personal routines of life, be they mundane or enjoyable, fall out of grasp, the body surrenders its voice. That voice grows weaker as its role in my friend’s life comes to an end. Soon, there will be only one voice remaining. That of the spirit. The most loyal, truthful and wise voice we can hear.
In the final analysis, only that one voice matters. That quiet inner voice. Elusive. Not there at one’s beck and call. Only when it matters. My friend hears it and sooner or later we will all hear it. It wants to tell us a truth: We all know how to die. After all we have died many times before just as we have been somebody else, many times over. I admire my friend’s life force. It is fierce but sometimes, as distinct individuals, we fight to stay here when we should be listening to our inner wisdom. We can’t stay here forever. We can’t be who we are in this dimension forever. To fight so hard against the naturalness of death is to fight against the tide, the wind, the seasons, day into night, night into day. We have to learn the art of dying in order to learn the art of living when it comes around again. If not then we will repeat our lives over and over. Different name, different face and body but still the familiar angst will arise and, with it, the voices of distraction and delusion. Our defiance built around our refusal to explore, decipher and then learn the truth - the heart and soul of existence - will be a millstone around our necks. I trust my friend’s approach to her illness. Her persistence is a sign that her learning isn’t complete. There is more wisdom to come. She listens to her true self, her spirit. It tells her that all will be well. This will be the message till the spirit tells her the learning is over and it is time to reinvent. To move along the eternal road. To leave this stage behind. In my friend’s case I am praying for a miracle because that is what we as humans do when friends are in peril but if there isn’t a miracle forthcoming, I know there is another miracle waiting in line that will be realised. Death is never the end of the wonder, the mystery that surrounds us.
“The grave is but a covered bridge leading from light to light, through a brief darkness.”- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
I have a friend who is battling a dire onslaught from cancer. The cancer is not confined to one area. It has chosen to manifest itself in several areas of her body. Her life expectancy has passed. Xmas was the deadline. She has a powerful life force. A spiritual life force that refuses to yield. Her physical energy is diminishing but her spirit refuses to surrender. It continues to nourish her. She is now in a twilight zone between life and death. She sees no future benefit from modern medicine’s interventions. With a weakened immune system, chemo and radiation could prove fatal. The oncologists persist with possibilities but they have no choice. The system has a protocol that locks it into a series of possibilities that are linked to the physical not the spiritual. My friend is bypassing those suggestive voices. Suggestive, in medical terms, because the advice offered is based on statistics, precedents and, in some instances, a fingers-crossed approach. Cancer treatment is often loaded into the one-treatment-fits-all category. Suggestions of a possible road back to health based on the past, on individual cases that were as varied and multilayered as is possible, considering the complexities that dwell within the average body’s molecular structure, is just day-dreaming. My friend no longer resides in a world of suggestion.
Life is a process of natural attrition. Desires, dreams, hopes, fall away one by one. This is echoed in the realm of voices, both inner and external. We live our days immersed in a sea of voices. Within, the Ego cries out encouraging our personas with delusions and illusions, particularly when it comes to the concept of our mortality. The external world is composed of a ceaseless chatter. Most of which is irrelevant, useless information designed to distract from the reality that surrounds us. There is an endless conversation. In meditation we encounter the Monkey Tree. We sit encouraging silence but are assailed by fragments of dialogue. Fleeting across the consciousness like startled monkeys in a tree. But, as we approach our physical demise, the voices begin to drop by the way. The growing realization that what we feared, or welcomed, is an inevitability refocuses our attention away from the trivial. We prioritise. Mentally, physically and spiritually. One by one the voices drop away. The voice of youth. The voice of middle-aged maturity. The voice of ambition. Of frustration. The voice of insistence that to grow old and frail is a crime against nature. The voice that denies that this life is but one of many. That denies that this life is a place to acquire wisdom, not to hide from its acquisition as if it were a harmful agent that promises only chaos rather than peace. So they fall, simply because they become redundant with age or are shown in their true light in the face of imminent death, be it illness or the myriad ways the physical can cease, accidentally or intentionally. Soon, there is but one voice left standing. This is the voice my friend hears.
The establishment, in our culture, is wary of the spiritual. After all, the spiritual is unscientific. It certainly cannot be contained and evaluated in a test tube. It certainly can’t speak. If so, says the scientist, show me a recording. A visible object. My friend ignores such shortsightedness and chooses to listen to the spiritual within. It talks to her. It tells her that everything is going to be alright. And so it is. The body carries the spirit, the true essence of every existence. The spirit is deathless and will pass, intact, from the physical limitations that temporarily hold it. It will be embraced, once again, in the cycle that leads to an eventual home for the wandering soul. This is where my friend is. Momentarily. Between two voices. One spiritual, one physical. One states that everything changes. That life is not confined to one existence. It has many faces across many existences. This voice is not concerned with the art of dying as death is viewed as a process of reinvention. Roman philosopher Seneca echoed the spirit’s wisdom: “That day, which you fear as the end of all things, is the birthday of your eternity.” The other voice knows its boundaries. It is confined inside an individual physicality. My friend’s illness finds her tired body initiating the art of dying. The body knows what to do because the body is designed for both living and dying. It has a relationship with both. It has only one expectation of the identity that it has carried through this existence. That it accepts the evitable and doesn’t spent the precious time left in fits of despair and fear. Now, as the process intensifies, as the mobility decreases, as the everyday, personal routines of life, be they mundane or enjoyable, fall out of grasp, the body surrenders its voice. That voice grows weaker as its role in my friend’s life comes to an end. Soon, there will be only one voice remaining. That of the spirit. The most loyal, truthful and wise voice we can hear.
In the final analysis, only that one voice matters. That quiet inner voice. Elusive. Not there at one’s beck and call. Only when it matters. My friend hears it and sooner or later we will all hear it. It wants to tell us a truth: We all know how to die. After all we have died many times before just as we have been somebody else, many times over. I admire my friend’s life force. It is fierce but sometimes, as distinct individuals, we fight to stay here when we should be listening to our inner wisdom. We can’t stay here forever. We can’t be who we are in this dimension forever. To fight so hard against the naturalness of death is to fight against the tide, the wind, the seasons, day into night, night into day. We have to learn the art of dying in order to learn the art of living when it comes around again. If not then we will repeat our lives over and over. Different name, different face and body but still the familiar angst will arise and, with it, the voices of distraction and delusion. Our defiance built around our refusal to explore, decipher and then learn the truth - the heart and soul of existence - will be a millstone around our necks. I trust my friend’s approach to her illness. Her persistence is a sign that her learning isn’t complete. There is more wisdom to come. She listens to her true self, her spirit. It tells her that all will be well. This will be the message till the spirit tells her the learning is over and it is time to reinvent. To move along the eternal road. To leave this stage behind. In my friend’s case I am praying for a miracle because that is what we as humans do when friends are in peril but if there isn’t a miracle forthcoming, I know there is another miracle waiting in line that will be realised. Death is never the end of the wonder, the mystery that surrounds us.
“The grave is but a covered bridge leading from light to light, through a brief darkness.”- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
January 2020 – Pilgrim or Fraud?
Let’s talk about the spiritual road. That long, long journey that supposedly leads from blindness to awareness. From the darkness into the pure, white light of enlightenment. The avenue of promise. Of possibility. All of these and more. I have met those who swear that they have mastered the process. Outmanoeuvred the roadblocks and pitfalls. Angels have appeared. Spectral voices have been heard. The infinite has personally shook hands with the chosen few. I have read of the lightning flash that is the experience of Satori. D. T. Suzuki, in An Introduction To Zen Buddhism, described the wonder as “the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of”. Of meditations where the One - being the unification of within/without, above/below, universal/physical/spiritual - lifted the sitter into a realm of bliss and understanding beyond definition. Yet, here we are, millions of souls confined to an accumulated knowledge that has had stringent limitations placed on its length, breadth and depth. In other words, we have heard of, read about, thought of, yearned for and desired any experience of the divine, no matter how small or fleeting, with ears and eyes set on maximum response frequencies but still our spiritual road seems to have only one inhabitant from horizon to horizon. One intrepid traveller. Ourselves. The road appears to be spiritless. If so, then we have to question who that traveller is. A seeker or a tourist? Purposeful for as long as it takes or a misguided sightseeker? For if we are only tourists and sightseers then we should expect to encounter loneliness, doubt and frustration. Our intent is flawed. Is the isolation we feel the exact reward a fraud would receive? Are we frauds?
A fraud? Not at all. Simply because you have reached a point where the question has to be asked. If you had no interest at all in any form of spiritual advancement you would never reach that point on the spiritual road where you first encounter doubt. You would still be back at the starting line afraid or, not interested, in that first step to somewhere. Back there you would be asking no questions of yourself because you would have no clue that such questions exist. This is a road. It leads within. Deep into the molecules and atoms of your existence. And then into the essence. You never start half way. There are no short cuts. Stage one is always the same for each and every seeker. According to the culture in which you reside. You absorb that culture’s belief system. You believe but only because it is the accepted norm. Because there is safety in numbers. Because it is expected. Stage two is the birth of intuition. The sense of something beyond the boundaries of specific cultures. Beyond blind belief. You intuit that there must be more than meets the eye. You start to think this when you realise that the questions raised by blind belief in the collective creeds do not provide inner satisfaction because the answers are so elusive. Religion as a ritual is non-sustaining. Here is where you take your first steps. Where you develop faith. Faith that the simple act of beginning with intent, will lead to a point that hasn’t, as yet, been proven as actually existing. This stage is fragile. Satirist H. L. Mencken underlines its fragility: “Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” Hardly reassuring to the novice. Still your intuition leads you on.
Stages follow. Some souls achieve a direct experience of the Unknown as outlined in the opening paragraph. They transcend. These souls, with their collective knowledge, inform the travellers behind of what lies ahead. We read it in the wisdom of the Buddhas, the words of Christ, the logic of Krishnamurti and Yogananda, the works of the modern sages like Watts or Thomas Merton. These vanguards of wisdom and inner knowledge are our signposts on the road. They inform and encourage the solitary traveller as he navigates the barriers of self-doubt, uncertainty and of a world that is lost without a spiritual map or compass. I have no doubt that each and every one would have reached the same exact point of doubt as encountered by those of us who have, as yet, no direct experience of a spiritual transcendence. Reached it and then moved on. They would have faced their spiritual inadequacies entertaining the notion, the possibility, that they were fraudulent. Fraudulent in the sense that maybe they were deceiving themselves or their spiritual intention was self-serving. They reached that point and then realised that there are no boundaries, no limitations, on the spiritual road, self-doubt included. Doubt was an indicator of progress, not a roadblock. As Rumi stated: “The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, and with that treasure builds it better than before.” Doubt is an essential part of the path.
If you are a traveller and you ask the deep, bold and frank questions of yourself, then there is no fraudulence involved. Only courage. For the spiritual road is not for the faint-hearted. The questions will increase in intensity as the road broadens. As you become aware of what you are not, of what you want to be, of how far you have to travel, then all will be tested. The important thing is that those lost in a self-made illusion or dream are never tested because they are not aware that they are being questioned. They are not travelling on any road because they are asleep and no-one, without exception, walks to awareness while they are sleeping. Do not expect anything. As one wise soul said: “Do not force a desired future upon yourself.” Just join in life’s unfolding as it happens. Have patience. Adopt a practice of meditation. Welcome the opposites. Doubts can pave the way to certainty. A spiritual awakening. Yogananda: “Everything in the future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now."
Don’t compare your progress to another’s. Every soul’s journey, though sharing a universal yearning, is different in its application. No two are alike. This is not a race. This is a set of individual steps, often decades, even lifetimes, in length. There are no rules, no time limitations. No collective maps. No one-stop spiritual shops for guidance where one route serves all. Have patience for this is a gradual process. I described stages above and we will find that we are all within one of those stages. Just remember they are stages, not finite positions. They are like steps on a ladder. In my case, I was 64 years old when I faced cancer and my pending demise. It took that long for me to finally set out on a path far different from the tired one I had been traversing. I am only a spiritual child and I expect that I will continue on this path for how many lifetimes it takes to return home. I used a ladder analogy but I would prefer to think of my progress in another way: like a raindrop at first. Then a puddle, then a pool. Then a rivulet. Then a stream. Then a river, Then a ocean. Then beyond. That belief, faith, intuition tells me that I am a pilgrim, not a fraud.
Let’s talk about the spiritual road. That long, long journey that supposedly leads from blindness to awareness. From the darkness into the pure, white light of enlightenment. The avenue of promise. Of possibility. All of these and more. I have met those who swear that they have mastered the process. Outmanoeuvred the roadblocks and pitfalls. Angels have appeared. Spectral voices have been heard. The infinite has personally shook hands with the chosen few. I have read of the lightning flash that is the experience of Satori. D. T. Suzuki, in An Introduction To Zen Buddhism, described the wonder as “the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of”. Of meditations where the One - being the unification of within/without, above/below, universal/physical/spiritual - lifted the sitter into a realm of bliss and understanding beyond definition. Yet, here we are, millions of souls confined to an accumulated knowledge that has had stringent limitations placed on its length, breadth and depth. In other words, we have heard of, read about, thought of, yearned for and desired any experience of the divine, no matter how small or fleeting, with ears and eyes set on maximum response frequencies but still our spiritual road seems to have only one inhabitant from horizon to horizon. One intrepid traveller. Ourselves. The road appears to be spiritless. If so, then we have to question who that traveller is. A seeker or a tourist? Purposeful for as long as it takes or a misguided sightseeker? For if we are only tourists and sightseers then we should expect to encounter loneliness, doubt and frustration. Our intent is flawed. Is the isolation we feel the exact reward a fraud would receive? Are we frauds?
A fraud? Not at all. Simply because you have reached a point where the question has to be asked. If you had no interest at all in any form of spiritual advancement you would never reach that point on the spiritual road where you first encounter doubt. You would still be back at the starting line afraid or, not interested, in that first step to somewhere. Back there you would be asking no questions of yourself because you would have no clue that such questions exist. This is a road. It leads within. Deep into the molecules and atoms of your existence. And then into the essence. You never start half way. There are no short cuts. Stage one is always the same for each and every seeker. According to the culture in which you reside. You absorb that culture’s belief system. You believe but only because it is the accepted norm. Because there is safety in numbers. Because it is expected. Stage two is the birth of intuition. The sense of something beyond the boundaries of specific cultures. Beyond blind belief. You intuit that there must be more than meets the eye. You start to think this when you realise that the questions raised by blind belief in the collective creeds do not provide inner satisfaction because the answers are so elusive. Religion as a ritual is non-sustaining. Here is where you take your first steps. Where you develop faith. Faith that the simple act of beginning with intent, will lead to a point that hasn’t, as yet, been proven as actually existing. This stage is fragile. Satirist H. L. Mencken underlines its fragility: “Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.” Hardly reassuring to the novice. Still your intuition leads you on.
Stages follow. Some souls achieve a direct experience of the Unknown as outlined in the opening paragraph. They transcend. These souls, with their collective knowledge, inform the travellers behind of what lies ahead. We read it in the wisdom of the Buddhas, the words of Christ, the logic of Krishnamurti and Yogananda, the works of the modern sages like Watts or Thomas Merton. These vanguards of wisdom and inner knowledge are our signposts on the road. They inform and encourage the solitary traveller as he navigates the barriers of self-doubt, uncertainty and of a world that is lost without a spiritual map or compass. I have no doubt that each and every one would have reached the same exact point of doubt as encountered by those of us who have, as yet, no direct experience of a spiritual transcendence. Reached it and then moved on. They would have faced their spiritual inadequacies entertaining the notion, the possibility, that they were fraudulent. Fraudulent in the sense that maybe they were deceiving themselves or their spiritual intention was self-serving. They reached that point and then realised that there are no boundaries, no limitations, on the spiritual road, self-doubt included. Doubt was an indicator of progress, not a roadblock. As Rumi stated: “The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health. It destroys the house to unearth the treasure, and with that treasure builds it better than before.” Doubt is an essential part of the path.
If you are a traveller and you ask the deep, bold and frank questions of yourself, then there is no fraudulence involved. Only courage. For the spiritual road is not for the faint-hearted. The questions will increase in intensity as the road broadens. As you become aware of what you are not, of what you want to be, of how far you have to travel, then all will be tested. The important thing is that those lost in a self-made illusion or dream are never tested because they are not aware that they are being questioned. They are not travelling on any road because they are asleep and no-one, without exception, walks to awareness while they are sleeping. Do not expect anything. As one wise soul said: “Do not force a desired future upon yourself.” Just join in life’s unfolding as it happens. Have patience. Adopt a practice of meditation. Welcome the opposites. Doubts can pave the way to certainty. A spiritual awakening. Yogananda: “Everything in the future will improve if you are making a spiritual effort now."
Don’t compare your progress to another’s. Every soul’s journey, though sharing a universal yearning, is different in its application. No two are alike. This is not a race. This is a set of individual steps, often decades, even lifetimes, in length. There are no rules, no time limitations. No collective maps. No one-stop spiritual shops for guidance where one route serves all. Have patience for this is a gradual process. I described stages above and we will find that we are all within one of those stages. Just remember they are stages, not finite positions. They are like steps on a ladder. In my case, I was 64 years old when I faced cancer and my pending demise. It took that long for me to finally set out on a path far different from the tired one I had been traversing. I am only a spiritual child and I expect that I will continue on this path for how many lifetimes it takes to return home. I used a ladder analogy but I would prefer to think of my progress in another way: like a raindrop at first. Then a puddle, then a pool. Then a rivulet. Then a stream. Then a river, Then a ocean. Then beyond. That belief, faith, intuition tells me that I am a pilgrim, not a fraud.
December, 2019 – How Now is Now?
“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.” – Eckhart Tolle.
When I first delved into Buddhism I found The Now, which Henry David Thoreau described as the moments in time accommodating “the meeting of two eternities, the past and future” as a difficult concept to entertain. There is no doubt that Life is a series of inexhaustible, transitory “Nows”. But each Now, as it appears, seems too fast, too fleet of foot, to grasp sufficiently enough to be of any real benefit. Over before they begin, effectively limiting one’s ability to make any decision, either wise or stupid, due to the time limitation imposed. This observation that the Now is inadequate as a meaningful interval because of its brevity, is obviously wrong.
To tell the truth, at times the advice offered by the sages of history that to live well was to live exclusively in the Now, seemed to me to be a hard command. The logic was solid. One had to break the shackles imposed by Thoreau’s “two eternities”. By doing so, we could break the habit, in some cases addiction, of living anywhere but where we exist moment to moment. To stop hiding out in either the Past or Future, so to speak. Logically, Now was the only place in time to function effectively. “Can’t do it yesterday, can’t do it tomorrow.” The logic’s fine but the practice is another matter altogether. It is hard to not take the two eternities into consideration when making those decisions that determine our future’s stability. The Past’s experiences and lessons, which are relied on, appear vital in any serious decision-making process and the Future, being something to aim at when an ideal is the objective, could be a daunting place if those ideals are threatened. The two eternities, it could be argued, were every bit as important as the space between. Yet we never live there Now. It is impossible. We have no choice but to live where Life is lived, in the Now. But does the Now give us enough time to live there successfully? I pondered on the dilemma and then I found a satisfactory middle ground. As is the usual case if you throw your questions “out there”. Synchronicity, intuition and faith will always prevail. If you persist on any spiritual quest and keep your eyes on the signposts along the way, eventually you will find what you are looking for.
Ethan Nichtern’s book, The Road Home, was one such signpost. Nichtern gave me food for thought when he wrote of letting go of “what was” and “what should be” and embracing, wholeheartedly, “what is”. Drawing from his logic, I formed an inner interpretation that differentiated between The Present and The Now. This interpretation might be not what he had in mind when he wrote his book and he might be confused as to how I arrived at my point of view but there is no doubt that I would not gained an insight if I had not read the book. The Present is what surrounds you as you live it. This is the arena of the Everyday. Where “things” happen. In our dimension we divide it into a linear sequence – seconds, minutes and hours. Nichtern writes about Gaps that crisscross that linear sequence. They cannot be predicted or measured but they are plentiful and they are valuable. He calls them the space “between a habitual impulse and a chosen reaction”. I call them the Now. And we should familiarise ourselves with their unlimited potential. This is where we should endeavour to focus our attention when we face challenges. A well from which to draw experience and wisdom. This is the space between Past and Future. For instance, our natural impulse when confronted with a rude and belligerent personality is usually based on past experience. Yell at me and I will yell back. Throw a punch and I will throw a punch. Or, I will use this method of coercion or intimidation because it has worked perfectly on other occasions. This is our impulse. Our reaction is aimed at defining the situation’s future. Hopefully, the threat will be eliminated and there will be peace in the valley. But how many times has the impulse and the consequent reaction, only produced regret or sorrow? “In hindsight, I wish I could have said the words that suddenly appeared long after the incident. Much better words, more appropriate and wiser. If only I had been more aware of the possibility of cultivating such an ability.” Obviously, if we had enough time, that ability would be achievable. Only obtainable by living in that space between the two eternities. Still, not an easy assignment in a world where our senses are open to unwelcome stimuli 24-7. Yet, we need to start now and nowhere else.
The Past is an interesting story, told only once. The characters within have all delivered their lines to an audience that only existed for that performance. The interaction between players and interested onlookers is an interaction that only applied to that moment in time. The Future is just a billboard promising a performance down the line unless, of course, inclement weather intervenes. Fingers crossed. The real performance is the one that is on stage in the present. And, in that performance, there come points that exist between impulse and reaction. The hero considers a choice. “Do I kiss the heroine or not?” Or, more extremely. “Do I pull the trigger or not?” That choice, that intent, determines what will follow that decision. It can only be made in the Now. We must learn to make the right choice when it presents itself. To work, the Now must have no time limit. The Present has a time limit – today will always end up as yesterday. But not the Now. The Now is truly that gap between impulse and reaction, between question and answer, between intuition and faith, on and on. It could be hours, or seconds, between a deadline delivered last night and our compliance. The Now is the due consideration of the benefits or disadvantages of our decision arrived at by an understanding of just why we decide what we decide. Using the art of meditation and inner inspection we can develop an understanding of our psychological processes as they occur – second to second, moment to moment, Now to Now. We can use the Past by understanding who we once were and can use that knowledge in context with who we are now. By cleaning the windows of perception, the other you, the person that you once were, can reach out and teach you. Then, when we encounter impulse, we will know exactly, based on prior defensive stances or decisions made based on impulse alone, how to react wisely and to trust each reaction as it arises.
“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow, so today is the right day to love, believe, do and mostly live.” - The Dalai Lama
“Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of non-forgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.” – Eckhart Tolle.
When I first delved into Buddhism I found The Now, which Henry David Thoreau described as the moments in time accommodating “the meeting of two eternities, the past and future” as a difficult concept to entertain. There is no doubt that Life is a series of inexhaustible, transitory “Nows”. But each Now, as it appears, seems too fast, too fleet of foot, to grasp sufficiently enough to be of any real benefit. Over before they begin, effectively limiting one’s ability to make any decision, either wise or stupid, due to the time limitation imposed. This observation that the Now is inadequate as a meaningful interval because of its brevity, is obviously wrong.
To tell the truth, at times the advice offered by the sages of history that to live well was to live exclusively in the Now, seemed to me to be a hard command. The logic was solid. One had to break the shackles imposed by Thoreau’s “two eternities”. By doing so, we could break the habit, in some cases addiction, of living anywhere but where we exist moment to moment. To stop hiding out in either the Past or Future, so to speak. Logically, Now was the only place in time to function effectively. “Can’t do it yesterday, can’t do it tomorrow.” The logic’s fine but the practice is another matter altogether. It is hard to not take the two eternities into consideration when making those decisions that determine our future’s stability. The Past’s experiences and lessons, which are relied on, appear vital in any serious decision-making process and the Future, being something to aim at when an ideal is the objective, could be a daunting place if those ideals are threatened. The two eternities, it could be argued, were every bit as important as the space between. Yet we never live there Now. It is impossible. We have no choice but to live where Life is lived, in the Now. But does the Now give us enough time to live there successfully? I pondered on the dilemma and then I found a satisfactory middle ground. As is the usual case if you throw your questions “out there”. Synchronicity, intuition and faith will always prevail. If you persist on any spiritual quest and keep your eyes on the signposts along the way, eventually you will find what you are looking for.
Ethan Nichtern’s book, The Road Home, was one such signpost. Nichtern gave me food for thought when he wrote of letting go of “what was” and “what should be” and embracing, wholeheartedly, “what is”. Drawing from his logic, I formed an inner interpretation that differentiated between The Present and The Now. This interpretation might be not what he had in mind when he wrote his book and he might be confused as to how I arrived at my point of view but there is no doubt that I would not gained an insight if I had not read the book. The Present is what surrounds you as you live it. This is the arena of the Everyday. Where “things” happen. In our dimension we divide it into a linear sequence – seconds, minutes and hours. Nichtern writes about Gaps that crisscross that linear sequence. They cannot be predicted or measured but they are plentiful and they are valuable. He calls them the space “between a habitual impulse and a chosen reaction”. I call them the Now. And we should familiarise ourselves with their unlimited potential. This is where we should endeavour to focus our attention when we face challenges. A well from which to draw experience and wisdom. This is the space between Past and Future. For instance, our natural impulse when confronted with a rude and belligerent personality is usually based on past experience. Yell at me and I will yell back. Throw a punch and I will throw a punch. Or, I will use this method of coercion or intimidation because it has worked perfectly on other occasions. This is our impulse. Our reaction is aimed at defining the situation’s future. Hopefully, the threat will be eliminated and there will be peace in the valley. But how many times has the impulse and the consequent reaction, only produced regret or sorrow? “In hindsight, I wish I could have said the words that suddenly appeared long after the incident. Much better words, more appropriate and wiser. If only I had been more aware of the possibility of cultivating such an ability.” Obviously, if we had enough time, that ability would be achievable. Only obtainable by living in that space between the two eternities. Still, not an easy assignment in a world where our senses are open to unwelcome stimuli 24-7. Yet, we need to start now and nowhere else.
The Past is an interesting story, told only once. The characters within have all delivered their lines to an audience that only existed for that performance. The interaction between players and interested onlookers is an interaction that only applied to that moment in time. The Future is just a billboard promising a performance down the line unless, of course, inclement weather intervenes. Fingers crossed. The real performance is the one that is on stage in the present. And, in that performance, there come points that exist between impulse and reaction. The hero considers a choice. “Do I kiss the heroine or not?” Or, more extremely. “Do I pull the trigger or not?” That choice, that intent, determines what will follow that decision. It can only be made in the Now. We must learn to make the right choice when it presents itself. To work, the Now must have no time limit. The Present has a time limit – today will always end up as yesterday. But not the Now. The Now is truly that gap between impulse and reaction, between question and answer, between intuition and faith, on and on. It could be hours, or seconds, between a deadline delivered last night and our compliance. The Now is the due consideration of the benefits or disadvantages of our decision arrived at by an understanding of just why we decide what we decide. Using the art of meditation and inner inspection we can develop an understanding of our psychological processes as they occur – second to second, moment to moment, Now to Now. We can use the Past by understanding who we once were and can use that knowledge in context with who we are now. By cleaning the windows of perception, the other you, the person that you once were, can reach out and teach you. Then, when we encounter impulse, we will know exactly, based on prior defensive stances or decisions made based on impulse alone, how to react wisely and to trust each reaction as it arises.
“There are only two days in the year that nothing can be done. One is called yesterday and the other is called tomorrow, so today is the right day to love, believe, do and mostly live.” - The Dalai Lama
November, 2019 – Am I a Buddhist?
On my recent trip to NZ, I had morning tea with the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling Buddhist Centre’s resident nun, Ani-La - that being the affectionate name those closest to her address her by. Officially she is the Ven. Jampa Tsekyi. We chatted over many cups of green tea about this or that til I remarked that, despite all my years of studying the intricacies of Buddhism and my fumbling attempts at absorbing and applying its messages of spiritual reinvention to my everyday life, I remained convinced that I could never, by any measure, call myself a Buddhist. Ani-La replied: “Of course you’re not a Buddhist!” She never added to that emphatic statement simply because in her 75 years or so on this Earth, I was not the first soul to voice that opinion, and she, in her accumulated wisdom and knowledge, readily agreeing, without hesitation, knew one when she saw one, so to speak. I didn’t take umbrage at her observation. In fact I felt quite the opposite. Her words provided me with a sense of spiritual progress. The fact that I could, finally, assert “I am not a Buddhist” without any fear of contradiction, was liberating. In that room with Ani-La, I felt that this simple truth was a vital step forward. Within that step there was a glimpse of awareness. A faint glimmer far removed from the full-blown light of awareness of the true Buddhist, but I had an inkling of what I now was and what I now wasn’t. The knowledge that I wasn’t a Buddhist was, as I said, a vital step because it raised one question. Why wasn’t I a Buddhist?
To be Buddha-like is a difficult destination point to find on any map. Almost impossible for the average spiritual aspirant. Why? Because the struggle, and it is an almighty struggle, is centred around the pursuit of an ideal. A concept. Being the achievement of enlightenment in our short lifetimes. From “endarkenment” as one soul described it, to “enlightenment”. Enlightenment being the pure light of Truth that is encapsulated in the true Buddha-nature, that light illuminating a state of awakening filled with compassion and wisdom. Good luck, safe journey, call me when you get there. The problem, of course, exists in the pursuit of the ideal, the concept. This is Utopian spirituality. Let’s be blunt. This path, and by path I mean not the garden path or highway that runs through town but rather the path that leads inwards, is always open to obstruction. These obstructions or roadblocks – call them what you will – are, unfortunately, almost exclusively, human constructs. The concept of an ideal Nirvana within our grasp if only we become a much different person to the one we are compelled to live with all our lives, is one such human construct. The notion of Nirvana is confined within the boundaries of whatever culture believes it to be a distinct reality. Ask a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim and the definition will relate only to their traditional thinking, or interpretation, of the concept. We’ll stay with Buddhism. Nirvana, in Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hinduism, defines Nirvana as “the annihilation of the personality where one becomes One with the universal I Am”. Buddhism added to the concept of Nirvana declaring it a state where a person’s desires are extinguished and that transformation enables an escape from the Samsaric cycle. With that escape comes a realization that he or she and the Universe are One. I believe this to be true. Achievable. Otherwise I would reject Siddhartha Gautama as a fairy tale, myth or a symbolic legend. But as it relates to mere mortals, me and you, is it achievable? If we can’t elevate ourselves to the highest state of Buddhist being then are we best advised to turn around and retrace our steps to more secure surroundings. To accept a spiritual capitulation? “No” is the answer.
So, to become Buddha-like, in this case, involves the realization of an ideal bought into existence by the earthly efforts of the spiritual seeker. An ideal constructed over the centuries by a diversity of “isms” and an assorted collection of Towers of Babel. The predominant building blocks being designed by architects whose direction was based on Guesswork alone. Maybe a harsh estimation, maybe not. It is a fact that we rely on “knowledge” to make our crucial spiritual decisions. We have no choice. We live, we learn. When faced with a dilemma, we generally all look into the Past to determine the Future. There is personal knowledge – you only put your hand into the fire once - and there is communal knowledge. Spiritually, utilising the latter, we eagerly follow ancient rituals, interpretations and precedents set long before we drew our first breath. Or we seek contemporary spiritual knowledge. Here we can encounter more than enough obstacles to true insight. House-broken Gods. Marketed Mysteries. Pop Spirituality. Bucket-list Zen. Enlightenment Travel Agencies. We delve here and there looking for that “Knowledge”. “We appropriate and manipulate” is one wise observation. This is why I am not a Buddhist. If I had achieved enough insight, intuition and wisdom on my journey so far I would clearly see what was the untainted Truth and what was the distorted Truth. Which “ism” was relevant and which “ism” was to be avoided at all cost. Which spiritual guide was genuine and which guide was the ringmaster for a spiritual circus and nothing more. A true Buddhist would just “know” without distraction or attachment. Sadly, that ability, that art to see clearly, is still an ongoing process for me. I know more than I once did but that is not enough. And, worst of all, the Past is still as important as the Future while the Now is still seen as a stage between those two abstracts. Not as an absolute which is its essential character. Is all lost and should I surrender to my inadequacies? Is there still a path to explore?
Don’t be silly. Of course there is. Look in the mirror. You are not a concept, an ideal. You are not your occupation, your nationality, an atheist, a saint, a Christian and certainly, in my case, a Buddhist. All these identities are what we have become. Most, if not all, of these identities are self-manufactured. Personas, or masks, developed by an actor, yourself, for the role that you are playing in this drama called life. A mask that obscures til it is finally removed at death after a lifetime of misuse. If you accept this physical limitation as an obstacle, then your next step should be to transcend the limitations of your self-description, your self-deception. In doing so, you stop defending, sometimes to the death, this persona. This persona keeps us in a cell far removed from any spiritual path. Isolated. Separated. Stepping away from and abandoning the idea of yourself as a concrete identity, clears the way opening up all of this existence’s possibilities. To remove yourself from the rules and regulations that define and regulate a constructed identity will set you a path to find out who you really are.
"I am a Buddhist." To say that, and believe that, is a denial that everything changes. It is a spiritual full stop leaving me sitting in a cloud of dust after slamming on my brakes. I can no longer see the road ahead. To be caught in an “ism” is not the way to go. Buddha, as a teacher - but not the only teacher available, taught me that. He said everything changes. It is one thing we can rely on. We, as humans, are an evolving manifestation within a landscape that is expanding, reinventing and redefining itself. As spiritual evolutionists we have to overcome our personal, self-centred, definition of what is and what isn’t temporary. Everything is temporary. And that includes becoming a Buddhist. Buddha has shown me a path that I can emphasize with. A road to follow. I will follow that road til it no longer exists. Maybe many lifetimes will pass before that realization. At that moment Buddhism will be long in the past and I will be something altogether different from the soul writing this. But I would have never taken that direction if I hadn’t stumbled upon Buddhism decades ago. Buddhism encourages us all to let go of all concepts. Of the soul, of God, of yourself. If you do you will find that you too are not a Buddhist.
On my recent trip to NZ, I had morning tea with the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling Buddhist Centre’s resident nun, Ani-La - that being the affectionate name those closest to her address her by. Officially she is the Ven. Jampa Tsekyi. We chatted over many cups of green tea about this or that til I remarked that, despite all my years of studying the intricacies of Buddhism and my fumbling attempts at absorbing and applying its messages of spiritual reinvention to my everyday life, I remained convinced that I could never, by any measure, call myself a Buddhist. Ani-La replied: “Of course you’re not a Buddhist!” She never added to that emphatic statement simply because in her 75 years or so on this Earth, I was not the first soul to voice that opinion, and she, in her accumulated wisdom and knowledge, readily agreeing, without hesitation, knew one when she saw one, so to speak. I didn’t take umbrage at her observation. In fact I felt quite the opposite. Her words provided me with a sense of spiritual progress. The fact that I could, finally, assert “I am not a Buddhist” without any fear of contradiction, was liberating. In that room with Ani-La, I felt that this simple truth was a vital step forward. Within that step there was a glimpse of awareness. A faint glimmer far removed from the full-blown light of awareness of the true Buddhist, but I had an inkling of what I now was and what I now wasn’t. The knowledge that I wasn’t a Buddhist was, as I said, a vital step because it raised one question. Why wasn’t I a Buddhist?
To be Buddha-like is a difficult destination point to find on any map. Almost impossible for the average spiritual aspirant. Why? Because the struggle, and it is an almighty struggle, is centred around the pursuit of an ideal. A concept. Being the achievement of enlightenment in our short lifetimes. From “endarkenment” as one soul described it, to “enlightenment”. Enlightenment being the pure light of Truth that is encapsulated in the true Buddha-nature, that light illuminating a state of awakening filled with compassion and wisdom. Good luck, safe journey, call me when you get there. The problem, of course, exists in the pursuit of the ideal, the concept. This is Utopian spirituality. Let’s be blunt. This path, and by path I mean not the garden path or highway that runs through town but rather the path that leads inwards, is always open to obstruction. These obstructions or roadblocks – call them what you will – are, unfortunately, almost exclusively, human constructs. The concept of an ideal Nirvana within our grasp if only we become a much different person to the one we are compelled to live with all our lives, is one such human construct. The notion of Nirvana is confined within the boundaries of whatever culture believes it to be a distinct reality. Ask a Jew, a Christian or a Muslim and the definition will relate only to their traditional thinking, or interpretation, of the concept. We’ll stay with Buddhism. Nirvana, in Sanskrit, the ancient language of Hinduism, defines Nirvana as “the annihilation of the personality where one becomes One with the universal I Am”. Buddhism added to the concept of Nirvana declaring it a state where a person’s desires are extinguished and that transformation enables an escape from the Samsaric cycle. With that escape comes a realization that he or she and the Universe are One. I believe this to be true. Achievable. Otherwise I would reject Siddhartha Gautama as a fairy tale, myth or a symbolic legend. But as it relates to mere mortals, me and you, is it achievable? If we can’t elevate ourselves to the highest state of Buddhist being then are we best advised to turn around and retrace our steps to more secure surroundings. To accept a spiritual capitulation? “No” is the answer.
So, to become Buddha-like, in this case, involves the realization of an ideal bought into existence by the earthly efforts of the spiritual seeker. An ideal constructed over the centuries by a diversity of “isms” and an assorted collection of Towers of Babel. The predominant building blocks being designed by architects whose direction was based on Guesswork alone. Maybe a harsh estimation, maybe not. It is a fact that we rely on “knowledge” to make our crucial spiritual decisions. We have no choice. We live, we learn. When faced with a dilemma, we generally all look into the Past to determine the Future. There is personal knowledge – you only put your hand into the fire once - and there is communal knowledge. Spiritually, utilising the latter, we eagerly follow ancient rituals, interpretations and precedents set long before we drew our first breath. Or we seek contemporary spiritual knowledge. Here we can encounter more than enough obstacles to true insight. House-broken Gods. Marketed Mysteries. Pop Spirituality. Bucket-list Zen. Enlightenment Travel Agencies. We delve here and there looking for that “Knowledge”. “We appropriate and manipulate” is one wise observation. This is why I am not a Buddhist. If I had achieved enough insight, intuition and wisdom on my journey so far I would clearly see what was the untainted Truth and what was the distorted Truth. Which “ism” was relevant and which “ism” was to be avoided at all cost. Which spiritual guide was genuine and which guide was the ringmaster for a spiritual circus and nothing more. A true Buddhist would just “know” without distraction or attachment. Sadly, that ability, that art to see clearly, is still an ongoing process for me. I know more than I once did but that is not enough. And, worst of all, the Past is still as important as the Future while the Now is still seen as a stage between those two abstracts. Not as an absolute which is its essential character. Is all lost and should I surrender to my inadequacies? Is there still a path to explore?
Don’t be silly. Of course there is. Look in the mirror. You are not a concept, an ideal. You are not your occupation, your nationality, an atheist, a saint, a Christian and certainly, in my case, a Buddhist. All these identities are what we have become. Most, if not all, of these identities are self-manufactured. Personas, or masks, developed by an actor, yourself, for the role that you are playing in this drama called life. A mask that obscures til it is finally removed at death after a lifetime of misuse. If you accept this physical limitation as an obstacle, then your next step should be to transcend the limitations of your self-description, your self-deception. In doing so, you stop defending, sometimes to the death, this persona. This persona keeps us in a cell far removed from any spiritual path. Isolated. Separated. Stepping away from and abandoning the idea of yourself as a concrete identity, clears the way opening up all of this existence’s possibilities. To remove yourself from the rules and regulations that define and regulate a constructed identity will set you a path to find out who you really are.
"I am a Buddhist." To say that, and believe that, is a denial that everything changes. It is a spiritual full stop leaving me sitting in a cloud of dust after slamming on my brakes. I can no longer see the road ahead. To be caught in an “ism” is not the way to go. Buddha, as a teacher - but not the only teacher available, taught me that. He said everything changes. It is one thing we can rely on. We, as humans, are an evolving manifestation within a landscape that is expanding, reinventing and redefining itself. As spiritual evolutionists we have to overcome our personal, self-centred, definition of what is and what isn’t temporary. Everything is temporary. And that includes becoming a Buddhist. Buddha has shown me a path that I can emphasize with. A road to follow. I will follow that road til it no longer exists. Maybe many lifetimes will pass before that realization. At that moment Buddhism will be long in the past and I will be something altogether different from the soul writing this. But I would have never taken that direction if I hadn’t stumbled upon Buddhism decades ago. Buddhism encourages us all to let go of all concepts. Of the soul, of God, of yourself. If you do you will find that you too are not a Buddhist.
October, 2019 – Exploring with Miss B.
We have just returned from a fortnight spent in New Zealand. Not much time for tourism as, in Kerry’s case, the days were occupied with family matters. Reunions followed by goodbyes. Any oversea trip, in the future, will strain the purse strings. So, many of the goodbyes were permanent. As dual retirement looms, financial scarcity will invite the necessity of a simplistic lifestyle, one minus the bonuses that a regular, decent cash flow provides. Living on a Pension will see to that. All that aside, the trip, in my case, was more of a spiritual affair. One focused on a vague sense of deprivation. Spiritual deprivation. Living on the South Coast of NSW, I was feeling the sensation that I was becoming increasingly isolated because my location offers no communal spiritual life. No Buddhist focal centre or Sangha means no physical contact with other birds of a feather. Consequently, my teachers and guides all come in the form of books, You-Tube lectures or similar mediums. This has to be closely monitored because in many case you are simply borrowing another soul's lifetime experiences to try and make sense of your own. Unfortunately, beyond those physical mediums, any deep, meaningful, conversation with the like-minded is subject to rationing, often with weeks separating the opportunities. It can be argued that such isolation is good in that you are on your own and your intent is under a microscope. Is its structure hardy and strong enough to hold together? In my circumstances I thought I was still maintaining a steady advancement, albeit a slow one. But I could see the dangers of isolation sapping the strength of someone less determined. A spiritual malnutrition in that individual's case could see a journey over before it started. I was far from such a roadblock but I still had a desire for a return to what NZ could offer to replenish and revitalise. Two questions remained: was that journey built on insecurity, overriding a genuine urge to explore without any prejudice? And, what role did the Ego play in the exercise? To return to the Past for an ideal that once existed is always a risk. I took that chance simply because my intuition told me it was the right step to take. Take it, it said, and learn the lesson inherent in the action of doing so.
I made appointments. I started at the beginning. Back to Adrian, the man who saved my life when cancer first invaded. It was due to his introduction of Robyn Welch into the scheme of things, that saw her healing pulling me back from the brink. Robyn is somewhere else now but Adrian remains with his own healing gifts and insight into the energy fields that determine inner harmony and health. He probed and saw only good news. Then on to the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling Tibetan Buddhist Centre perched high above the town of Kamo. Its stupa visible for miles around. Here resides my only claim to a personal teacher, Buddhist Master Ven. Geshe Sangey Thinley. This was the only place I was instinctively drawn to when I felt the urgent inner need to reinvent my life in those early fragile days that marked my initial cancer diagnosis. Where I first explored the art of being creative when an inner creativity become an essential. Seated in the Centre, Geshe-la’s words rang true and pure. Sunday morning was spent with the Sangha revelling in the deep ambience that only a Centre such as this can provide. There was one disappointment. Throughout the 2-hour session, I noticed a few around me focusing more on their phones than on the message being delivered. (Welcome to one aspect of practised spirituality Western-style.) Despite the distraction, I bypassed their approach to meditation and concentrated on my own. The following morning was spent with Jam Tse’s ordained nun, Jampa Tsekyi, or Ani-La as she is called by those who know her well. Here was the conversation I craved. The interchange of ideas and Buddhist logic was like a cool drink on a hot, spiteful day. Refreshing and sustaining. I could feel in my atoms that a connection between realms was being re-established. The atrophy diminishing. My visiting so far had all been conducted on a familiar terrain. Now it was time to step outside the familiar. The next visit was an introduction to Miss B for it was in that visit that I intuited a lesson was to be absorbed and learnt.
Miss B. was recommended to me by Adrian who felt, in his unique intuition, that there was a message there for me to learn. She is a spiritual motivator, clairvoyant, natural medicine expert and a host of other things. I am wary of psychics and such, having met only a handful in my lifetime that were genuine. There are many tricks and ruses available to those born more cunning and manipulative than the majority of souls who inhabit this dimension. Some prey on your Ego. “You are a special person with gifts just short of astounding.” Or, they prey on the many fears that stalk most individuals. Fear of failure, death, instability. They, in short, tell you what you want to hear and then you pay them well. There is also the consideration that the psychic is delivering his or her message to you based on their intuition and their interpretation of that intuition. This interpretation is based on a number of factors. Hopefully, one is that the information provided is genuine - a message from a source unknown. A source that is benevolent and pleased to be of assistance. Or, unfortunately, the message delivered is filtered through the psychic's accumulation of knowledge gained via the building of a personal persona throughout a lifetime. In other words, the interpretation of the message and information is tainted by the psychic's worldview. There are other motivations. I once went to a psychic who told me he could see dollar bills falling from heaven around me. That he could see me moving house. He then produced a card. He was a real estate agent when he wasn’t elsewhere. When I sold my house he was the man to call. My reading, he hoped, would ensure another healthy commission if I followed his prediction. I drove up to Miss B’s house determined to use my own intuition. If I felt deep within that this was of no use that I would be just an interested observer viewing just another slice of life with an interesting individual. I was hoping that possibility wouldn't eventuate. Miss B was waiting on the front veranda. A sprightly old lady in her very late 70s. We went inside and our time together started.
Miss B. employed numerology and the Tarot for the purpose of our visit. In the reading she didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already suspect or intuitively feel. There was an inner reassurance in the fact that she saw what I felt. She offered spiritual encouragement. The right path was still under my feet. I had one question. I had felt that the book I was writing was, in fact, writing me. I had lost myself inside its words but she said that the writing itself was the real journey of discovery, the finished product a bonus. The wisdom gained through the self-examination that the book forced on me was invaluable. The cards told her this and I felt they didn't lie. To be creative was where I should live. It was my source of communication with the spirit that inhabits us all. That spirit that delights in any such conversation. Together we covered a range of topics. Health being of great interest to me. She said that I had had a nasty bout with a major illness but had been healed. No signs of cancer persisted. She said I had to let that experience die a natural death as it was long in the past. We talked back and forth and I listened intently for that one sentence that would provide the clue to exactly why she and I were sitting in that room having this conversation. A clue arose when she said: “You are remarrying yourself.” Reuniting a whole out of opposites. That I was using a simplistic spirituality, almost childlike, to achieve the reunion. That I was not caught within any “ism” that I might encounter. That is was important for me not to stall at a single point along my timeline, not to be satisfied that that was as far as I needed to go. Being childlike was the perfect approach. The wonder of being is often destroyed by maturity. A child accepts each and every new experience on its merits. There is no judgement because a child lacks the memory references to base a judgement on. A child lacks the ability to intellectualise the experience. Therefore there is no blockage such as the ones thrown in the way by the adult mind. No rationalisation, scientific logic, hard-earned scepticism. A child is always ready to explore, to play without restraint and with imagination. As adults we lose our ability to be simple again. In Turgenev’s novel Virgin Soil, the character, Nezhdanov, commits suicide leaving as an explanation that he killed himself because “I could not simplify myself.” Extreme but the message is there. We need wonder. I follow Buddhism because it stresses the need for exploration. Self-examination and external investigation should go hand in hand. The reconciliation that will be achieved when the inner and outer are harmonised is what Miss B was talking about when she said I was remarrying myself. Buddhism is my bedrock. It is the solidity that I base my explorations upon. It fuels them. Buddhism encourages the investigation of all the wonders that co-exist with Buddhism. Take what you need from what you find. Finally, Buddhism teaches impermanence. Everything changes. Definitely. If you believe this, you can't come to a grinding halt within any belief system. If you believe in impermanence, you will be naturally carried by life's stream from this point to that point, endlessly. A sceptic would say I was unrealistic. I was childish. Thank you.
I left Miss B’s house content in her reassurances but not entirely satisfied. Even if she was a fake and I certainly didn’t believe that, she proved to be yet another important point of call situated beyond the limitations that exist in any “ism” that demands that you stop and obey confined within their varying worldviews. But the fact remained I had travelled a considerable distance to forage for any experience that I hoped would be transcendental in essence. At the heart of things this was not a spiritual quest. I felt deep down this I was pursuing an ideal, a concept, a wish. All man-made constructions. These destinations all have an ending as an objective. You reach them and you can then retire, spiritually satisfied. That's in a perfect world but not in ours. This is an intellectual search. Its driving force is in the mind. In its thought processes. In the Ego. It smells suspiciously like insecurity, like fear. It feels like the actions of an observer who hasn't cleaned the windows of the house he has spent his life building. The panes are dusty and distorted by the Past's misconceptions and the Future's unfilled promises. Back in Australia, I slowly gained a valuable perspective. This was the lesson. I had read perhaps one spiritual book too many and had drifted away from the answers found in my solitude. There was never really any deprivation. I did not really have to go so far for the lesson. Despite my supposed isolation, I had everything I ever needed exactly where I stood in my day-to-day existence. “Everything was here.” Right here. It took Miss B to underline the simplicity of things as they applied to me. I had misinterpreted my intuition. And, when I returned, all my intuition had to say was: “I told you so.” There is no isolation from the Truth, from the spirit, the unknown. I pictured a scenario: You visit the Church, temple or Buddhist Centre religiously each week. You find comfort and a meaningful direction in doing so. Because that is a physical location in which you can communicate with the unnameable. Suddenly you are kidnapped. You awake to find yourself on a island. In a small house. With a garden, water supply. But you are there alone. There is no church, temple or Buddhist Centre. The physical that once held the spiritual essence you devotedly sought is lost to you. Do you sink into an apathy too heavy to shake off? If you are spiritual you won't. Simply because spirituality is awareness. Awareness of the context of your life in the scheme of things. An awareness of the dangers inherent in the Ego-driven illusions that test us moment-to-moment. Being spiritual is an acceptance of what life delivers to us, good or bad. Every instance is valuable. So, your kidnapping would be evaluated and accepted because of your spirituality. What you sought on the mainland is there in abundance on your island. It hasn't, and never will, disappear. You do not need an "ism" in your new situation, nothing has changed. “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; follow what they sought,” said Basho. And that's exactly what you will do. You would continue to explore despite the physical limitations. If you weren't a spiritual soul and all your mainland visits to holy refuges were just hedging one's bets in case of any future calamity where you might have to beseech your God for aid. Racking up heavenly brownie points, then you would set fire to the island's house and pray for a physical rescue. A divine intervention wouldn't be a consideration. We have to explore because that is why we are here. Miss B gave me the benefits of her intuition. She reconfirmed what my inner guidance had been telling me from cancer diagnosis to this moment in time. To find such moments, important moments, one must place themselves in any situation, without fear, to reap the benefits of the wonder around us. Physical isolation has no influence at all.
We have just returned from a fortnight spent in New Zealand. Not much time for tourism as, in Kerry’s case, the days were occupied with family matters. Reunions followed by goodbyes. Any oversea trip, in the future, will strain the purse strings. So, many of the goodbyes were permanent. As dual retirement looms, financial scarcity will invite the necessity of a simplistic lifestyle, one minus the bonuses that a regular, decent cash flow provides. Living on a Pension will see to that. All that aside, the trip, in my case, was more of a spiritual affair. One focused on a vague sense of deprivation. Spiritual deprivation. Living on the South Coast of NSW, I was feeling the sensation that I was becoming increasingly isolated because my location offers no communal spiritual life. No Buddhist focal centre or Sangha means no physical contact with other birds of a feather. Consequently, my teachers and guides all come in the form of books, You-Tube lectures or similar mediums. This has to be closely monitored because in many case you are simply borrowing another soul's lifetime experiences to try and make sense of your own. Unfortunately, beyond those physical mediums, any deep, meaningful, conversation with the like-minded is subject to rationing, often with weeks separating the opportunities. It can be argued that such isolation is good in that you are on your own and your intent is under a microscope. Is its structure hardy and strong enough to hold together? In my circumstances I thought I was still maintaining a steady advancement, albeit a slow one. But I could see the dangers of isolation sapping the strength of someone less determined. A spiritual malnutrition in that individual's case could see a journey over before it started. I was far from such a roadblock but I still had a desire for a return to what NZ could offer to replenish and revitalise. Two questions remained: was that journey built on insecurity, overriding a genuine urge to explore without any prejudice? And, what role did the Ego play in the exercise? To return to the Past for an ideal that once existed is always a risk. I took that chance simply because my intuition told me it was the right step to take. Take it, it said, and learn the lesson inherent in the action of doing so.
I made appointments. I started at the beginning. Back to Adrian, the man who saved my life when cancer first invaded. It was due to his introduction of Robyn Welch into the scheme of things, that saw her healing pulling me back from the brink. Robyn is somewhere else now but Adrian remains with his own healing gifts and insight into the energy fields that determine inner harmony and health. He probed and saw only good news. Then on to the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling Tibetan Buddhist Centre perched high above the town of Kamo. Its stupa visible for miles around. Here resides my only claim to a personal teacher, Buddhist Master Ven. Geshe Sangey Thinley. This was the only place I was instinctively drawn to when I felt the urgent inner need to reinvent my life in those early fragile days that marked my initial cancer diagnosis. Where I first explored the art of being creative when an inner creativity become an essential. Seated in the Centre, Geshe-la’s words rang true and pure. Sunday morning was spent with the Sangha revelling in the deep ambience that only a Centre such as this can provide. There was one disappointment. Throughout the 2-hour session, I noticed a few around me focusing more on their phones than on the message being delivered. (Welcome to one aspect of practised spirituality Western-style.) Despite the distraction, I bypassed their approach to meditation and concentrated on my own. The following morning was spent with Jam Tse’s ordained nun, Jampa Tsekyi, or Ani-La as she is called by those who know her well. Here was the conversation I craved. The interchange of ideas and Buddhist logic was like a cool drink on a hot, spiteful day. Refreshing and sustaining. I could feel in my atoms that a connection between realms was being re-established. The atrophy diminishing. My visiting so far had all been conducted on a familiar terrain. Now it was time to step outside the familiar. The next visit was an introduction to Miss B for it was in that visit that I intuited a lesson was to be absorbed and learnt.
Miss B. was recommended to me by Adrian who felt, in his unique intuition, that there was a message there for me to learn. She is a spiritual motivator, clairvoyant, natural medicine expert and a host of other things. I am wary of psychics and such, having met only a handful in my lifetime that were genuine. There are many tricks and ruses available to those born more cunning and manipulative than the majority of souls who inhabit this dimension. Some prey on your Ego. “You are a special person with gifts just short of astounding.” Or, they prey on the many fears that stalk most individuals. Fear of failure, death, instability. They, in short, tell you what you want to hear and then you pay them well. There is also the consideration that the psychic is delivering his or her message to you based on their intuition and their interpretation of that intuition. This interpretation is based on a number of factors. Hopefully, one is that the information provided is genuine - a message from a source unknown. A source that is benevolent and pleased to be of assistance. Or, unfortunately, the message delivered is filtered through the psychic's accumulation of knowledge gained via the building of a personal persona throughout a lifetime. In other words, the interpretation of the message and information is tainted by the psychic's worldview. There are other motivations. I once went to a psychic who told me he could see dollar bills falling from heaven around me. That he could see me moving house. He then produced a card. He was a real estate agent when he wasn’t elsewhere. When I sold my house he was the man to call. My reading, he hoped, would ensure another healthy commission if I followed his prediction. I drove up to Miss B’s house determined to use my own intuition. If I felt deep within that this was of no use that I would be just an interested observer viewing just another slice of life with an interesting individual. I was hoping that possibility wouldn't eventuate. Miss B was waiting on the front veranda. A sprightly old lady in her very late 70s. We went inside and our time together started.
Miss B. employed numerology and the Tarot for the purpose of our visit. In the reading she didn’t tell me anything I didn’t already suspect or intuitively feel. There was an inner reassurance in the fact that she saw what I felt. She offered spiritual encouragement. The right path was still under my feet. I had one question. I had felt that the book I was writing was, in fact, writing me. I had lost myself inside its words but she said that the writing itself was the real journey of discovery, the finished product a bonus. The wisdom gained through the self-examination that the book forced on me was invaluable. The cards told her this and I felt they didn't lie. To be creative was where I should live. It was my source of communication with the spirit that inhabits us all. That spirit that delights in any such conversation. Together we covered a range of topics. Health being of great interest to me. She said that I had had a nasty bout with a major illness but had been healed. No signs of cancer persisted. She said I had to let that experience die a natural death as it was long in the past. We talked back and forth and I listened intently for that one sentence that would provide the clue to exactly why she and I were sitting in that room having this conversation. A clue arose when she said: “You are remarrying yourself.” Reuniting a whole out of opposites. That I was using a simplistic spirituality, almost childlike, to achieve the reunion. That I was not caught within any “ism” that I might encounter. That is was important for me not to stall at a single point along my timeline, not to be satisfied that that was as far as I needed to go. Being childlike was the perfect approach. The wonder of being is often destroyed by maturity. A child accepts each and every new experience on its merits. There is no judgement because a child lacks the memory references to base a judgement on. A child lacks the ability to intellectualise the experience. Therefore there is no blockage such as the ones thrown in the way by the adult mind. No rationalisation, scientific logic, hard-earned scepticism. A child is always ready to explore, to play without restraint and with imagination. As adults we lose our ability to be simple again. In Turgenev’s novel Virgin Soil, the character, Nezhdanov, commits suicide leaving as an explanation that he killed himself because “I could not simplify myself.” Extreme but the message is there. We need wonder. I follow Buddhism because it stresses the need for exploration. Self-examination and external investigation should go hand in hand. The reconciliation that will be achieved when the inner and outer are harmonised is what Miss B was talking about when she said I was remarrying myself. Buddhism is my bedrock. It is the solidity that I base my explorations upon. It fuels them. Buddhism encourages the investigation of all the wonders that co-exist with Buddhism. Take what you need from what you find. Finally, Buddhism teaches impermanence. Everything changes. Definitely. If you believe this, you can't come to a grinding halt within any belief system. If you believe in impermanence, you will be naturally carried by life's stream from this point to that point, endlessly. A sceptic would say I was unrealistic. I was childish. Thank you.
I left Miss B’s house content in her reassurances but not entirely satisfied. Even if she was a fake and I certainly didn’t believe that, she proved to be yet another important point of call situated beyond the limitations that exist in any “ism” that demands that you stop and obey confined within their varying worldviews. But the fact remained I had travelled a considerable distance to forage for any experience that I hoped would be transcendental in essence. At the heart of things this was not a spiritual quest. I felt deep down this I was pursuing an ideal, a concept, a wish. All man-made constructions. These destinations all have an ending as an objective. You reach them and you can then retire, spiritually satisfied. That's in a perfect world but not in ours. This is an intellectual search. Its driving force is in the mind. In its thought processes. In the Ego. It smells suspiciously like insecurity, like fear. It feels like the actions of an observer who hasn't cleaned the windows of the house he has spent his life building. The panes are dusty and distorted by the Past's misconceptions and the Future's unfilled promises. Back in Australia, I slowly gained a valuable perspective. This was the lesson. I had read perhaps one spiritual book too many and had drifted away from the answers found in my solitude. There was never really any deprivation. I did not really have to go so far for the lesson. Despite my supposed isolation, I had everything I ever needed exactly where I stood in my day-to-day existence. “Everything was here.” Right here. It took Miss B to underline the simplicity of things as they applied to me. I had misinterpreted my intuition. And, when I returned, all my intuition had to say was: “I told you so.” There is no isolation from the Truth, from the spirit, the unknown. I pictured a scenario: You visit the Church, temple or Buddhist Centre religiously each week. You find comfort and a meaningful direction in doing so. Because that is a physical location in which you can communicate with the unnameable. Suddenly you are kidnapped. You awake to find yourself on a island. In a small house. With a garden, water supply. But you are there alone. There is no church, temple or Buddhist Centre. The physical that once held the spiritual essence you devotedly sought is lost to you. Do you sink into an apathy too heavy to shake off? If you are spiritual you won't. Simply because spirituality is awareness. Awareness of the context of your life in the scheme of things. An awareness of the dangers inherent in the Ego-driven illusions that test us moment-to-moment. Being spiritual is an acceptance of what life delivers to us, good or bad. Every instance is valuable. So, your kidnapping would be evaluated and accepted because of your spirituality. What you sought on the mainland is there in abundance on your island. It hasn't, and never will, disappear. You do not need an "ism" in your new situation, nothing has changed. “Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; follow what they sought,” said Basho. And that's exactly what you will do. You would continue to explore despite the physical limitations. If you weren't a spiritual soul and all your mainland visits to holy refuges were just hedging one's bets in case of any future calamity where you might have to beseech your God for aid. Racking up heavenly brownie points, then you would set fire to the island's house and pray for a physical rescue. A divine intervention wouldn't be a consideration. We have to explore because that is why we are here. Miss B gave me the benefits of her intuition. She reconfirmed what my inner guidance had been telling me from cancer diagnosis to this moment in time. To find such moments, important moments, one must place themselves in any situation, without fear, to reap the benefits of the wonder around us. Physical isolation has no influence at all.
September, 2019 – The Haunting
We are all haunted. We live in a haunted house of our own construction where the residing ghosts are all manifestations with one obvious root energy source – ourselves. We are their life-support system. You don’t need a Ouija Board to communicate with the ghosts within. Access is much simpler. Living a normal, everyday life will do the trick. For it is within our individual existences that we will constantly face the ghosts that materialise in any fear, phobia or shattered expectation that blocks our growth potential. These spiritual, psychological, physical or emotional setbacks are unavoidable. Unavoidable but not invincible. Fortunately, they are all restricted to one location – the Past. This is where the ghosts live. In those rooms within our house that were established and designated as belonging to our resident ghosts and no-one else. The private lodgings that we granted them.
Our fabricated ghosts thrive in the Past where they camouflage, or discourage, the truth with layers of misconception, and then present these distortions as the only bricks and mortar that we can use in constructing any present extensions to our house. They neglect to tell us that all such materials are, more often than not, faulty. There is no display of a guilty conscience forthcoming, no concern at all, if the roof leaks or our walls crumble. Their job is to haunt, not heal. If we are living in such a house, one that is haunted by fear, self-doubt or any of the endless variations of dis-ease that can haunt us, then two consolations remain. The first is that our ghosts are locked into the Past. This is a tactical advantage. So, if we can understand the Past and we can place our ghosts in a contextual position within that framework, we can walk down the hallways to their doors and introduce ourselves. Familiarity, in this case, will breed wisdom, not contempt. We will see the influence exerted within our psyche by these misunderstood and unwelcome components. How our spiritual light and energy is dimmed by intrusion without invitation. How our ability to cope with life’s vagaries can be compromised by information offered from an unstable source. But, most importantly, we will see that the ghosts are us and we are the ghosts. We will see, first hand, just one example of the opposites that dwell in every soul’s structure – this one being shadow and light. Ghosts that haunt are shadows. All shadows dematerialise when exposed to the light. The light is our second consolation. We can materialise this inner light through the act of Creativity and, with the use of this natural Universal gift, we can refurbish, or reinvent, our individual dwellings. What is this Creativity and how do we activate it?
I believe that we are many individuals within one entity. We are, where we stand in this present moment, an entity that carries within us the essence of the persona that once defined the child, the teenager, the emerging adult, the middle-aged, the old man – the people that we were. Each of these stages contained its own worldview and coping mechanism. And, the time frame that each stage inhabited, was rich in events, emotions and all of life’s lessons that guided or misled, encouraged or defeated, inspired or discouraged. Our adopted reasoning when we faced life’s lessons was stored as information for the future. This information, as we moved through our developmental stages, became the building blocks of our psychological/spiritual DNA, incorporated into our very lifeblood. Consequently, each persona from our past still has a voice that whispers in our ear. Sometimes indistinct, sometimes plain as day. Some information is obvious. Don’t put your hand into the fire. Conscious information that is easy to implement for everyday living. It is the unconscious voice that is our concern. For it can emanate from two sources, one that is beneficial and wise or one that is negative and harmful. From a harmonious persona or one that has been damaged. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, some of these past personas are unbalanced. Consequently, in a stage lacking true harmony which is a balancing or acceptance of the opposites that we carry within, there are ghosts created. If we are fearful, full of anxiety, frustrated or struggling to overcome the addictive elements of life and don’t know why. If we can’t help ourselves because we don’t understand ourselves, then we are haunted. We have ghosts in our lives.
Sometimes we are just nagged and we can reasonably cope but sometimes the haunting is relentless and destructive and we fall. Some souls stay where they have fallen, defeated. But those who have a creative nature don’t. They seek an explanation. An understanding. They seek a rebirth. Creativity is the ability to reinvent. To create something new. But it is only possible through a self-examination. As Krishnamurti said: “Understand the seeker before you understand what he is seeking.” Once you understand yourself, you automatically understand that which haunts you. The truth is revealed, not a lie passed on from one stage of life to another. Theologian Donald Nicholl stated: “Delight in the truth. Truth tastes better with each illusion that evaporates.” Exposure to the light of wisdom will guarantee the ghost’s exile. It will be isolated, refused access to the rooms that we have refurbished. We will then inhabit a house that doesn’t keep us awake at night. It will be a house devoid of the shadows that once resided in rooms we dared not enter. As humans, there are always ghosts to replace those ghosts we have discovered and banished. This is the nature of our samsaric existence. But each of us is creative. We all have abilities we can draw upon to meet and understand each haunting as it arrives. Some are latent while others are clearly functional. Some souls are fortunate to be writers, artists or musicians. These talents are natural conduits into the heart of creativity. Other souls have different creative potential. Self-awareness will encourage intuition and intuition will lead us to our creative potential. Self-awareness how? Meditation is one avenue. Sit and regress to those personalities that you once were. Look into the damaged periods in your past and who inhabited them. See if that soul’s ability to cope and grow was an end result or if it was the opposite. A response that led to an atrophied spiritual entity. An entity that followed your development into its next stage. And, reinforced by negativity, into the next. Ghosts joined by ghosts. Painful as it will be, be courageous and show intent. Intent, I believe, is an energy source as strong as any other we can utilise to help ourselves help ourselves. There is one more consideration: our doubts and fears, weaknesses, mental and spiritual frailties are there for a reason. To learn from. Not to be ignored to the stage where they overpower and defeat. There is no greater stimulus than a good haunting to stir each and every soul’s imagination into action. Hard to appreciate in the middle of conflict but, nevertheless, true. Remember: “smooth seas don’t make good sailors.” Be creative.
We are all haunted. We live in a haunted house of our own construction where the residing ghosts are all manifestations with one obvious root energy source – ourselves. We are their life-support system. You don’t need a Ouija Board to communicate with the ghosts within. Access is much simpler. Living a normal, everyday life will do the trick. For it is within our individual existences that we will constantly face the ghosts that materialise in any fear, phobia or shattered expectation that blocks our growth potential. These spiritual, psychological, physical or emotional setbacks are unavoidable. Unavoidable but not invincible. Fortunately, they are all restricted to one location – the Past. This is where the ghosts live. In those rooms within our house that were established and designated as belonging to our resident ghosts and no-one else. The private lodgings that we granted them.
Our fabricated ghosts thrive in the Past where they camouflage, or discourage, the truth with layers of misconception, and then present these distortions as the only bricks and mortar that we can use in constructing any present extensions to our house. They neglect to tell us that all such materials are, more often than not, faulty. There is no display of a guilty conscience forthcoming, no concern at all, if the roof leaks or our walls crumble. Their job is to haunt, not heal. If we are living in such a house, one that is haunted by fear, self-doubt or any of the endless variations of dis-ease that can haunt us, then two consolations remain. The first is that our ghosts are locked into the Past. This is a tactical advantage. So, if we can understand the Past and we can place our ghosts in a contextual position within that framework, we can walk down the hallways to their doors and introduce ourselves. Familiarity, in this case, will breed wisdom, not contempt. We will see the influence exerted within our psyche by these misunderstood and unwelcome components. How our spiritual light and energy is dimmed by intrusion without invitation. How our ability to cope with life’s vagaries can be compromised by information offered from an unstable source. But, most importantly, we will see that the ghosts are us and we are the ghosts. We will see, first hand, just one example of the opposites that dwell in every soul’s structure – this one being shadow and light. Ghosts that haunt are shadows. All shadows dematerialise when exposed to the light. The light is our second consolation. We can materialise this inner light through the act of Creativity and, with the use of this natural Universal gift, we can refurbish, or reinvent, our individual dwellings. What is this Creativity and how do we activate it?
I believe that we are many individuals within one entity. We are, where we stand in this present moment, an entity that carries within us the essence of the persona that once defined the child, the teenager, the emerging adult, the middle-aged, the old man – the people that we were. Each of these stages contained its own worldview and coping mechanism. And, the time frame that each stage inhabited, was rich in events, emotions and all of life’s lessons that guided or misled, encouraged or defeated, inspired or discouraged. Our adopted reasoning when we faced life’s lessons was stored as information for the future. This information, as we moved through our developmental stages, became the building blocks of our psychological/spiritual DNA, incorporated into our very lifeblood. Consequently, each persona from our past still has a voice that whispers in our ear. Sometimes indistinct, sometimes plain as day. Some information is obvious. Don’t put your hand into the fire. Conscious information that is easy to implement for everyday living. It is the unconscious voice that is our concern. For it can emanate from two sources, one that is beneficial and wise or one that is negative and harmful. From a harmonious persona or one that has been damaged. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, some of these past personas are unbalanced. Consequently, in a stage lacking true harmony which is a balancing or acceptance of the opposites that we carry within, there are ghosts created. If we are fearful, full of anxiety, frustrated or struggling to overcome the addictive elements of life and don’t know why. If we can’t help ourselves because we don’t understand ourselves, then we are haunted. We have ghosts in our lives.
Sometimes we are just nagged and we can reasonably cope but sometimes the haunting is relentless and destructive and we fall. Some souls stay where they have fallen, defeated. But those who have a creative nature don’t. They seek an explanation. An understanding. They seek a rebirth. Creativity is the ability to reinvent. To create something new. But it is only possible through a self-examination. As Krishnamurti said: “Understand the seeker before you understand what he is seeking.” Once you understand yourself, you automatically understand that which haunts you. The truth is revealed, not a lie passed on from one stage of life to another. Theologian Donald Nicholl stated: “Delight in the truth. Truth tastes better with each illusion that evaporates.” Exposure to the light of wisdom will guarantee the ghost’s exile. It will be isolated, refused access to the rooms that we have refurbished. We will then inhabit a house that doesn’t keep us awake at night. It will be a house devoid of the shadows that once resided in rooms we dared not enter. As humans, there are always ghosts to replace those ghosts we have discovered and banished. This is the nature of our samsaric existence. But each of us is creative. We all have abilities we can draw upon to meet and understand each haunting as it arrives. Some are latent while others are clearly functional. Some souls are fortunate to be writers, artists or musicians. These talents are natural conduits into the heart of creativity. Other souls have different creative potential. Self-awareness will encourage intuition and intuition will lead us to our creative potential. Self-awareness how? Meditation is one avenue. Sit and regress to those personalities that you once were. Look into the damaged periods in your past and who inhabited them. See if that soul’s ability to cope and grow was an end result or if it was the opposite. A response that led to an atrophied spiritual entity. An entity that followed your development into its next stage. And, reinforced by negativity, into the next. Ghosts joined by ghosts. Painful as it will be, be courageous and show intent. Intent, I believe, is an energy source as strong as any other we can utilise to help ourselves help ourselves. There is one more consideration: our doubts and fears, weaknesses, mental and spiritual frailties are there for a reason. To learn from. Not to be ignored to the stage where they overpower and defeat. There is no greater stimulus than a good haunting to stir each and every soul’s imagination into action. Hard to appreciate in the middle of conflict but, nevertheless, true. Remember: “smooth seas don’t make good sailors.” Be creative.
August, 2019 – The University
I have a simple philosophy when it comes to this existence. Life is like a University. It is an existence that contains many classrooms within which exams are carried out on a regular basis. We encounter these examination points and are compelled by circumstances to enter the classroom and do the best we can. Once entered we find that our teacher is that Lifeforce that pervades all Life here in our current existence. Usually, I have found, we sit unprepared. Life often offers no exam timetable. One that would grant us time enough to prepare. Exams are often a spur-of–the-moment event. We lack the tools of study or research and, more often than not, any precedent, when we enter the classroom. Our results, Pass or Fail, are not based on percentages, they are based on our reaction to that Pass or Fail mark. Based on our intent, post-examination, to re-educate ourselves or to drop out. If we are broken by our failure in Life’s University and fall away into the mediocrity of the existence off-Campus, unwilling to understand our failure, then our mentor, the inner Lifeforce (spirit) will take notice.
The Lifeforce will not destroy you if you fail but, if you are persistent in dismissing any future lessons as useless, it will react. It won’t ignore you, but in your intent to ignore it, you will be isolated and inspiration will be lost to you. The border between negativity and positivity will be fragile, easily broken. The shadow between light and dark will grow in intensity. Wisdom will be the baby thrown out with the bathwater. Creativity will be denied because it would be wasted on a soul that refuses to accept the exam results in Life’s University. Creativity is essential to any spiritual reinvention. A Life minus inspiration will foster a sense of disproportion in the everyday. Then Life will appear unfair, the odds stacked against you. Life’s teachers and inspirational manifestations will be thwarted by the roadblocks your apathy has thrown in their paths. Then you will be a victim. Lost in a “why me?” mindset. But the victim’s perception is never the reality. Personalised concepts are useless when it comes to awareness. They are a description of a reality that is self-centred within a Utopian ideal.
Life is never unfair in my philosophy. To say it’s fair or unfair, is an accusation that it has preferences. Individual favourites. Life is life, nothing more or less. The lessons it offers are never based on a popularity poll. Life is a series of examinations across a finite time-span that includes every student on an equal basis. To say it has the human characteristic of bias is an argument not worth pursuing. It is that essence that nurtures Life that should most interest us. The infinite as opposed to the finite measurement that is Life here on Earth. The infinite spirit that flows through this existence. This Lifeforce, to me, is an energy that reacts to a kindred spirit. The kindred spirit that we all carry within. This Lifeforce is naturally attracted toward what it sees as common ground. That place inside where our true self lives. Where the outer and inner can merge in a perfect union, without boundaries. But that attraction can be stymied when our examination results are made visible. When we walk out of the classroom with a Pass or a Fail in our possession. Then the teacher, guide, creative inspiration or intuitive energy (call it what you will), will consider our reaction to that mark as a measure of our intent. A guide to the level of spiritual awareness that we possess. If we see no worth, lessons learnt or value in failure and our intent is to install bitterness, fear, anger, guilt or sorrow as the basic elements of our lives left here on Earth, then we will suffer the consequences of that decision. If we walk out with a Pass, having seen Life as a series of opposites that make up a whole and that each event has to be placed in context and dealt with accordingly, then we will be blessed with a divine creativity. This creativity will be vital when the next examination surfaces and it will surface.
This is my philosophy. Every event that Life offers is there for a purpose. That event, be it traumatic or blissful, contains the seeds of self reinvention. I am writing this after cancer entered my life. I didn’t flee, I took myself into the heart of what caused the cancer. I found the answer and addressed it. And, because that healing opened up a whole new world to explore, that dreaded diagnosis wasn’t the end, it was the beginning. My intent, as I stepped out of the doctor’s surgery into the sunlight, was clear. I would embrace my years left in an enthusiastic hug and, with the Lifeforce reenergised and appreciated, I would seek the spiritual and place the material within a context where it existed without the power it once held. And all of this would not have been possible without the University course that dealt with cancer. That classroom and its teacher saved my existence from that dead-end street that haunts and frustrates too many souls to count.
I have a simple philosophy when it comes to this existence. Life is like a University. It is an existence that contains many classrooms within which exams are carried out on a regular basis. We encounter these examination points and are compelled by circumstances to enter the classroom and do the best we can. Once entered we find that our teacher is that Lifeforce that pervades all Life here in our current existence. Usually, I have found, we sit unprepared. Life often offers no exam timetable. One that would grant us time enough to prepare. Exams are often a spur-of–the-moment event. We lack the tools of study or research and, more often than not, any precedent, when we enter the classroom. Our results, Pass or Fail, are not based on percentages, they are based on our reaction to that Pass or Fail mark. Based on our intent, post-examination, to re-educate ourselves or to drop out. If we are broken by our failure in Life’s University and fall away into the mediocrity of the existence off-Campus, unwilling to understand our failure, then our mentor, the inner Lifeforce (spirit) will take notice.
The Lifeforce will not destroy you if you fail but, if you are persistent in dismissing any future lessons as useless, it will react. It won’t ignore you, but in your intent to ignore it, you will be isolated and inspiration will be lost to you. The border between negativity and positivity will be fragile, easily broken. The shadow between light and dark will grow in intensity. Wisdom will be the baby thrown out with the bathwater. Creativity will be denied because it would be wasted on a soul that refuses to accept the exam results in Life’s University. Creativity is essential to any spiritual reinvention. A Life minus inspiration will foster a sense of disproportion in the everyday. Then Life will appear unfair, the odds stacked against you. Life’s teachers and inspirational manifestations will be thwarted by the roadblocks your apathy has thrown in their paths. Then you will be a victim. Lost in a “why me?” mindset. But the victim’s perception is never the reality. Personalised concepts are useless when it comes to awareness. They are a description of a reality that is self-centred within a Utopian ideal.
Life is never unfair in my philosophy. To say it’s fair or unfair, is an accusation that it has preferences. Individual favourites. Life is life, nothing more or less. The lessons it offers are never based on a popularity poll. Life is a series of examinations across a finite time-span that includes every student on an equal basis. To say it has the human characteristic of bias is an argument not worth pursuing. It is that essence that nurtures Life that should most interest us. The infinite as opposed to the finite measurement that is Life here on Earth. The infinite spirit that flows through this existence. This Lifeforce, to me, is an energy that reacts to a kindred spirit. The kindred spirit that we all carry within. This Lifeforce is naturally attracted toward what it sees as common ground. That place inside where our true self lives. Where the outer and inner can merge in a perfect union, without boundaries. But that attraction can be stymied when our examination results are made visible. When we walk out of the classroom with a Pass or a Fail in our possession. Then the teacher, guide, creative inspiration or intuitive energy (call it what you will), will consider our reaction to that mark as a measure of our intent. A guide to the level of spiritual awareness that we possess. If we see no worth, lessons learnt or value in failure and our intent is to install bitterness, fear, anger, guilt or sorrow as the basic elements of our lives left here on Earth, then we will suffer the consequences of that decision. If we walk out with a Pass, having seen Life as a series of opposites that make up a whole and that each event has to be placed in context and dealt with accordingly, then we will be blessed with a divine creativity. This creativity will be vital when the next examination surfaces and it will surface.
This is my philosophy. Every event that Life offers is there for a purpose. That event, be it traumatic or blissful, contains the seeds of self reinvention. I am writing this after cancer entered my life. I didn’t flee, I took myself into the heart of what caused the cancer. I found the answer and addressed it. And, because that healing opened up a whole new world to explore, that dreaded diagnosis wasn’t the end, it was the beginning. My intent, as I stepped out of the doctor’s surgery into the sunlight, was clear. I would embrace my years left in an enthusiastic hug and, with the Lifeforce reenergised and appreciated, I would seek the spiritual and place the material within a context where it existed without the power it once held. And all of this would not have been possible without the University course that dealt with cancer. That classroom and its teacher saved my existence from that dead-end street that haunts and frustrates too many souls to count.
July, 2019 – The Washing Machine Blues
Here is a scenario:
The hopeful meditator assumes the position. Calls on the power of concentration to fulfil his (apologies to the fairer sex) intent. Only to find an obstacle that is unrelenting. The dreaded Monkey Tree inside the mental Zoo. Thoughts like skittish monkeys flitting across the branches of the mind in a blur of obscure imagery, chatter and directionless abandon. All colliding, receding, dominating with no regard at all for the mind that created them. They say we average 60,000 thoughts a day. This meditator feels that’s an underestimation. Suddenly, peace of mind or even a heightened awareness, seems a million light years away. The possibility inside the concept is swamped and overrun by anarchic thoughts and feelings. He surrenders and goes off to do his laundry. Disappointed, he stands and wonders aloud:
“Here I am, watching my socks rolling around inside the washing machine. Rolling and tumbling as Muddy Waters sang. So like the act of meditation. The mind imitating the washing machine. Thoughts like socks rolling, falling, tumbling. Is it supposed to be like this? Where is the peace of mind, the revealing insight, the promised enlightenment? Of course all I have to do is flick the switch and then all will be still within the machine? But how do you turn off the images or emotions that haunt more than a few meditation attempts? Where is the switch?
“Outside my window is the western world. I can hear it. Smell it. If it slips, momentarily, out of sight, I can still sense it. Its presence. It’s all pervasive. There is no monastery on a hill here on my street to find refuge in. There is no deep retreat in this house, forest-like in its silence, to offset the relentless drama that the modern world generates. A drama filled with every conceivable twist and turn. But there is no respite when the footlights are turned off. Off-stage there is no ignoring life’s distractions, dubious attachments or the fragile facade of reality. The drama wraps its arms around the cast and audience with equal ferocity. This theatre never closes down. And this on-going drama infiltrates all attempts at a meaningful meditation. Do we have to head east for solace? Into the foothills beneath the sacred mountains? Searching for our own personal Bodhi Tree, far from the west’s corrupting influence? Is that the answer? Swap cultures and we swap modernisation for tranquillity? Why can’t we find what we seek in the contemporary hustle and bustle of the west? It seems that no matter the locality, our lack of understanding, the lack of any precedent to utilise as a stepping stone, will still block any access to fulfilment.”
It seems, to this meditator and he is not alone, that maybe the answer is that no meditation is preferable. No meditation equals no frustration, no self-doubt, no futile time-wasting. That the concept of enlightenment might be better abandoned. He does just that and another soul disappears back into the melee that is modern society. That confused mass of humanity that always welcomes reinforcements. But, for one moment, if he had broken down the components of the term “concept of enlightenment” it might have welcomed further exploration. For it is within the meaning of that noun “concept” that answers can be found. It could be argued that his concept of peace of mind is blocking his realisation of peace of mind. Or at least a genuine step towards its possibility. A concept has a boundary. It has to have a boundary because if it didn’t it would blur and merge with any adjacent concept. This boundary is necessary to separate one concept from another concept. Some concepts, when it comes to a mental visualisation, are easily satisfied. You can see the healthy, slim individual after the fitness regime. The lowered blood pressure or cholesterol from the right diet but spiritual concepts are not so easily visualised. Because they have no boundaries. What is enlightenment? What does it look like or feel like? Could one describe it with any accuracy to the uninitiated? When we sit to meditate is our desired objective too shadowy to offer any chance of realisation?
Let’s examine a desired concept that any meditator could see as worth striving to attain. Let’s say one of an individual that is fully satisfied with his life in all its variations - spiritually, mentally, physically and emotionally – and is compassionate, loving and free of delusion when it comes to an understanding of the world as it really is. This concept is a destination. If you could buy a ticket to get there, you wouldn’t hesitate. But, upon examination, there is no doubt that you are here and it is there. Now, there is no option but to try and navigate the distance between the two existences. But what if the distance increases with each and every effort to close the gap? The realisation that you are wasting your time is cruel and dispiriting when it finally makes it presence known. Why is this such a futile exercise? When your sole objective is to chase a concept, you remove yourself from the present, from the Now, and set your sights on what could be. Further more, you rely solely on a concept that you don’t really understand and never will because such a spiritual concept is indefinable! It is a noble ideal no doubt, but in this society, in this day and age, where the abstract is pushed aside, it is nothing more than Utopian in nature. The individual described above is a being that is not of this dimension. He is perfect! Such perfection is not spiritually possible to the novice. So, to progress spiritually, you have to abandon the idea of an attained perfection.
The first step is the abandonment of the concept because it localises something that is universal. Osho states that: “Meditation is pure space, undisturbed by knowledge.” When you sit to meditate in order to satisfy a concept then you are inviting the past and the future into that meditation. A concept is initially a product of one’s past. Something you’ve experienced. Something you’ve read. Something someone told you. Somewhere in your timeline you have formulated a wish for a desired state of being, a concept, using acquired knowledge. Then, when that concept is pursued, the meditator looks to the future where the realisation of that concept will, with devoted concentration and fierce willpower, suddenly burst into existence. Though there is still no clear picture of what that will encompass as there is no universally accepted definition of such an event. The concept is nebulous. What isn’t nebulous is what you experience Now. Between the past and the future.
What you are experiencing Now is a desire to be a better person. That is crystal-clear, easily understood and, therefore, is enough. Now perfection is just an ideal, a concept, that can be placed in context. It can wait in line. The meditator introduces a new element into the meditation process – patience. Patience is essential. Within patience is the gift to focus on self-realisation. That desire to understand the meditator. To observe. The spiritual path can only be navigated or manifested in the individual when he or she understands their imperfections and those imperfections are only visible in the context of our moment-to-moment interactions with our immediate environment. In the Now. Our initial failure at meditation is not a failure at all. It is to be expected that the atrophied component of your existence, being to ability to close down the external in order to access the internal, will be more than a little rusty. That the act of meditation will be a gradual realisation rather than an abrupt ascent into bliss. Failure is when you surrender and give up. When you don’t surrender, the Monkey Tree reveals its true meaning. The monkeys are not to be avoided. They are to be meditated upon. Understood. They all in range in intensity. One monkey might represent a fear of failure. He’ll chatter in your ear. “Give up. You’re no good at this. There must be a dark and sinister reason why you can’t meditate. Poor you.” Another might be a brief, fanciful daydream. Sailing the oceans in a luxury yacht you could never afford. Decide which monkey is more important for spiritual development and give the little bugger a banana! Only by keeping that one close enough for examination will your ability increase and you will find the switch that turns the machine off and the switch that turns the light of insight on.
June, 2019 – Naming the Abstract. The Unknown’s Resistance
“Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology.” - Matthew Hutson, The 7 Laws of Magical Thinking: How Irrational Beliefs Keep Us Happy, Healthy, and Sane.
The major Abrahamic belief systems - Christianity, Judaism and Islam – plead a case against anthromorphism but, on close inspection, their imagery of God is essentially anthromorphistic. Organised religion relies on its ability to give the abstract, the unknown, humanistic qualities. All the religions would fade into obscurity if they didn’t provide imagery and concepts that the normal, everyday churchgoer could relate to. God’s existence wouldn’t be a reasonable supposition if it didn’t fit a conceptualisation of what was “normal”. Normal, in this case, being the preference of a bearded wise father figure over an invisible, gender-neutral, nonspecific universal essence. I’ll stay with the Christians. Its adherents pray to the skies searching for a personified God. Historically, this has either been a vengeful tyrant of the Old Testament as witnessed in the trials and tribulations of Job. God and Satan used this mortal man to settle a bet. Satan was adamant that he could seduce any man to renounce God and, with God’s permission, chose Job as a likely candidate. God was just as adamant that Job, whom he considered as an good, decent righteous man, couldn’t be corrupted. The result, after a series of disasters that saw Job’s personal life decimated as he lost his entire family, his wealth, his health and whatever else Satan could use to manipulate Job, was that Job remained a member of God’s flock. On the other hand we have the New Testament version of God as a loving and compassionate being. A deity who “so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” It is the conflicting personalities of the Gods of the two testaments we are interested in. The imagery implies a celestial being perched on a throne somewhere out there. This being is firmly established in the Christian imagination as a physical being. Our father who art in heaven. The Supreme Being. King of Kings. The belief that this God is vengeful or compassionate implies that it is a concept with human traits. It is this concept of God that is a roadblock to any meaningful understanding of the divine as an abstract noun. For any attempt to personify, to make human, the abstract divides rather than unites the spiritual and those who seek it.
There is a saying in Zen Buddhism that states that “if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him.” It doesn’t mean that you slaughter anyone in particular, rather it means that the “unknown” essence, or spirit, that a spiritual seeker looks for has no human identity. Nor can it be conceptualised, put into words and is usually beyond one’s imagination. So, if the seeker runs across, or inwardly establishes, a conception of Buddha that they feel they can share with the world then it is their duty to kill that imagery. Such an image of the abstract is impossible. Try describing the colour yellow to a blind person and you will get a glimpse of the inadequacies of our imaginations. Try describing a symphony to a profoundly deaf soul. Same result. Now try to describe God to the person sitting next to you on the bus. They will soon move seats. Why is it a necessity to dehumanize our perception of the divine?
As long as God is a “person”, he will increasingly fade. He will lose all importance in our lives simply because we have chosen to separate him, to isolate him. He is not “within” but “without.” Out there somewhere. And, by popular consent, he appears to be localised in Heaven. (Heaven being another human construct that demands the acceptance of a beautiful utopian city filled with earthly delights. A materialistic reward for the saved.) Making God human invites his isolation. That enforced isolation, due to our demands on his presence to intervene in our trials and tribulations, has intensified when there is no discernible reply from the “man upstairs!” In our modern world, more and more people are questioning God’s validity. They reach out but appear to be ignored. Their prayers are no longer answered. A prayer directed to any identity out there will die as the distance between God and prayer becomes too far to negotiate. There are too many failed prayers. The distance invokes frustration in the petitioner - a lost prayer implies a lack of interest from the other end. That celestial “individual” is not responding. Faith is lost. The prospect of any personal experience of God when the concept is contained within an actual perceived physical image, is doomed. Unless, of course, the very word God is dismissed and you reinvent your search. “Out there” as a direction for a fruitful search is no longer an option.
To experience the unknown, you have to make room for it within your consciousness, for it is here that any possible communication with Spirit is centred. To experience the unknown you must try to remove all interference that is the known – that clutter of misconception, immature reasoning, useless knowledge – as best you can. Then the unknown – your higher consciousness - will respond. There will be a path to follow. There will be a reconciliation. Your reward will be due to a persistence realised. Listen for the inner voice, the intuition, that’s where the spirit lives and it doesn’t have a name, shape or form. Leave the physical imagery to those who can’t maintain their faith without resorting to anthropomorphism, or its close relative which is personification. It is not an easy task to move beyond the centuries of religious iconography that has dominated and influenced the church’s preferred imagery of the sacred. The visions of heaven conjured from a million pulpits have all been accepted by generations as not fanciful but as solid and firm as the floor their knees touch in prayer. This acceptance will bring the same comfort as experienced by any soul who seeks comfort in numbers, those who prefer to follow rather than to lead. Those who fear of death forces them to seek any source that guarantees that that fate will never happen. The green fields of Heaven, populated by angelic forms, where you are just an extension of your earthly personality - Fred on Earth equals Fred in heaven – seem to be almost a spiritual narcotic. The painted pictures mesmerise. So, to bypass that, to leave it behind, to enter a personal contemplation, meditation, inner voyage unshackled by preordained imagery is not a road for cowards. But the risk is worth it because you will be noticed and rewarded.
“Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the men of old; seek what they sought.” – Matsuo Basho (1644 – 1694)
May, 2019 – Lost Within The Energies - The Danger of a Misguided Love
A few years ago, a friend was diagnosed with cancer. She was given a calculated life expectancy based on averages. The prediction wasn’t encouraging. Her oncologist delivered what he considered as an educated guess based on statistical evidence that calculated the survival rates of similar patients originating from the initial diagnosis to the final outcome. This calculation was divided into two categories: treated or untreated. Untreated, her life expectancy was limited but, despite her oncologist’s sombre advice, my friend chose the latter option. She felt that such calculations were contradictory in nature. An uneducated guess rather than an educated guess. She intuited that every soul is unique, in health and in sickness. Some have a strong will to live, some fall over. Some have strong immune systems while others haven’t. Some have faith in survival, some don’t. Some believe in what they are told by the medical profession, others believe in alternatives. No-one had mentioned a dietary change. A lifestyle change or even a proper and deep exploration of her cancer searching for a hidden cause. Understanding cancer wasn’t part of any chemo or radiation treatment. (My oncologist, years before when I took the same option as my friend, felt that mine was an interesting approach: suicide by prostate cancer!) My friend never encountered such an extreme opinion but she did encounter an unfortunate dilemma that plagues many people that are freshly diagnosed: what is often an unintentional negative energy that often emanates from the ones who care about you the most. I believe my doctor cared about my well-being but his lack of control over negativity got the better of him. He clearly didn’t understand the negative energy generated by such a statement.
My friend’s alternate route worked wonders and her cancer went into remission. Now it has returned. Why it has returned is a question for my friend to explore. Sometimes we slip back into the past and repeat actions that made us unbalanced in the first place. Sometimes we have to reinterpret our approach to understanding our cancer. My friend has taken the same approach as taken upon her initial diagnosis. A reevaluation of intent. A strengthening of intuition. All is well except for the dubious energy directed at her. “Please do the chemo, the radiation. For our sakes. We love you and we want the best for you.” All are expressions of love and concern but they are also roadblocks to recovery. If adopted, this is a treatment based on external expectations. I still have friends on the phone asking why I’m not at the doctors every six months searching for cancer. I’m not there because I don’t have to be there. I was healed. My doctor told me six years ago to come back if I had symptoms and not before. I don’t have symptoms. Yet, if I was weak in my conviction that I could be healed through an alternative approach, I could easily fall by the wayside in an effort to please those who I love or whose advice I have always treasured. Then I would be fulfilling the wishes of those who do not have cancer and probably never will. They are all, unfortunately, guessing at what they would do if they were in my shoes. Based on their knowledge of cancer and, particularly, on a fantasized perception of how they would react to such a diagnosis. Not good enough. What is the compromise? What to do when you are buffeted between opposing energies – the energy of external concern and the energy that is driven by your own, precious intuition? In such a trauma you need support. You need your friends and family. But what do you do if their attitude to your recovery is more dangerous that is helpful?
If you are reading this and you have a loved one recently diagnosed, I have advice gained from experience. The souls who helped me, did three things: They listened to my fears expressed without judgment, choosing to share my fears without hysterics; they gave advice only when asked for by the frightened soul that I was; they supported my elected treatment, even though the idea of a distance healer was beyond their understanding. But what if it is your wife, mother, father or child who is looking to you to not only save your own life but also to restore a balance in their own lives and the only avenue they can see for success is locked into their idea of “the right thing to do”? I have had good friends tell me of many people who didn’t take traditional medicine’s advice and who died horrible deaths as if this was a wake-up call I had not noticed. But the worst thing to tell your loved one is: “don’t be selfish. Think about us.” Don’t be selfish! Where is the selfishness? You say: “I want to live. I want to be here with you for many more years. I have looked at all the treatments and I feel this is the best one for me. The one that will see me through.” Of course I’m writing about certain individuals who have opted for treatment that exists outside of accepted traditional procedures. Whose intuition leads them away from chemo, radiation and other forms of invasive treatment. How do these individuals deal with the split created from what will be done by you and what is expected by others?
First have compassion for those who don’t understand your illness, its consequences and their sad place within the trauma as they share it with you. They are your loved ones but they can only share it, not live it with you, they are not in your shoes and even if they have been in your shoes and have been cured by conventional means, they can’t presume that what worked for them, works for all. Cancer is unpredictable, even after a cure is announced. Recent research has found: If you remain in complete remission for 5 years or more, some doctors may say that you are cured. Still, some cancer cells can remain in your body for many years after treatment. These cells may cause the cancer to come back one day. For cancers that return, most do so within the first 5 years after treatment. – National Cancer Institute (the US federal government's primary agency to address research and training needs for the cause, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer). The search for the right path to take is a lonely affair when considering such statements as above. To be called selfish in the process of consideration is heartbreaking. You are looking to make the right decision. When you are faced with the fear and sadness that your cancer has aroused in your loved ones, you must adopt a Disinterested Compassion. You feel their anguish but you must dismiss any involvement in its energy once you have made up your mind. “Thank you for your advice. I’ve included it in my final decision. I’ve looked at the case histories, the latest innovations. The success rates. The failure rates. The debates over quality of life versus years of side effects. I’ve explored the spiritual angle. Diet. Lifestyle. Meditation. Stress management. I’ve taken nothing lightly. This is my path, I’m going down it. Thank you for your love but please respect my decision and, hopefully, accept it alongside me.” Tell them that the misdirected energy is harmful and of no help whatsoever. Then follow your intuition. It’s your greatest gift.
To step into the unknown without a safety net is a courageous but lonely step. There is ample company if you follow the well-worn route. The clinics are full of patients who have relied on radiation or chemo for salvation. You will never be lonely if all your faith is placed in the hands of modern medicine. And, without question, many souls have emerged healed or, at least, in remission. This is the path they chose. Other people, however, don’t choose that path. They might know friends who have had such treatments, have been pronounced cured, only to see the cancer return with a vengeance a matter of a few years later. They might have listened to friends who have suffered impotence and incontinence on a permanent basis post-treatment. They may have joined in the debate raging over the fallibility of a PSA test. Just witness this article in the New York Times who reported the frustration of Richard J. Ablin, the man who invented the prostate-specific-antigen (PSA) test which is widely used to detect signs of early-stage prostate cancer. Ablin has been frustrated by the widespread use of the test. Each year, he notes, some 30 million men undergo PSA testing, at a cost of $30 Billion. Yet “the test is hardly more effective than a coin toss. As I’ve been trying to make clear for many years now, P.S.A. testing can’t detect prostate cancer and, more important, it can’t distinguish between the two types of prostate cancer — the one that will kill you and the one that won’t.” It’s no wonder that some bypass conventional wisdom and wisely choose a more detailed investigation. I did and my friend did. The end result being a holistic approach to the problem coupled with an analytical approach to what could contributed to the formation of our cancers – the factors in our lives that have disturbed our body’s balance and harmony. In doing so, we listened to the cancer itself. Its message. Both of us adopted meditation as a tool, as an inner antenna. Then, when all was considered, we took action. The problem then being that our peers continued the debate without our permission! Not satisfied with our satisfaction of a course of action that answered our questions, they continued to add their own questions to the equation. Our selected vehicle of healing was threatened by the extra weight . Its wheels started to spin for traction. This is the danger that such opinions produce. I talked of a Disinterested Compassion from the viewpoint of the afflicted soul and suggest an adoption of the same approach from the people who love you. By all means your loved ones can cross their collective fingers behind their backs but don’t clench your fists in a barely-concealed frustration that is clearly visible. The clash of energies will do no good. Wish the explorer well and welcome him or her back in when they return home!
A few years ago, a friend was diagnosed with cancer. She was given a calculated life expectancy based on averages. The prediction wasn’t encouraging. Her oncologist delivered what he considered as an educated guess based on statistical evidence that calculated the survival rates of similar patients originating from the initial diagnosis to the final outcome. This calculation was divided into two categories: treated or untreated. Untreated, her life expectancy was limited but, despite her oncologist’s sombre advice, my friend chose the latter option. She felt that such calculations were contradictory in nature. An uneducated guess rather than an educated guess. She intuited that every soul is unique, in health and in sickness. Some have a strong will to live, some fall over. Some have strong immune systems while others haven’t. Some have faith in survival, some don’t. Some believe in what they are told by the medical profession, others believe in alternatives. No-one had mentioned a dietary change. A lifestyle change or even a proper and deep exploration of her cancer searching for a hidden cause. Understanding cancer wasn’t part of any chemo or radiation treatment. (My oncologist, years before when I took the same option as my friend, felt that mine was an interesting approach: suicide by prostate cancer!) My friend never encountered such an extreme opinion but she did encounter an unfortunate dilemma that plagues many people that are freshly diagnosed: what is often an unintentional negative energy that often emanates from the ones who care about you the most. I believe my doctor cared about my well-being but his lack of control over negativity got the better of him. He clearly didn’t understand the negative energy generated by such a statement.
My friend’s alternate route worked wonders and her cancer went into remission. Now it has returned. Why it has returned is a question for my friend to explore. Sometimes we slip back into the past and repeat actions that made us unbalanced in the first place. Sometimes we have to reinterpret our approach to understanding our cancer. My friend has taken the same approach as taken upon her initial diagnosis. A reevaluation of intent. A strengthening of intuition. All is well except for the dubious energy directed at her. “Please do the chemo, the radiation. For our sakes. We love you and we want the best for you.” All are expressions of love and concern but they are also roadblocks to recovery. If adopted, this is a treatment based on external expectations. I still have friends on the phone asking why I’m not at the doctors every six months searching for cancer. I’m not there because I don’t have to be there. I was healed. My doctor told me six years ago to come back if I had symptoms and not before. I don’t have symptoms. Yet, if I was weak in my conviction that I could be healed through an alternative approach, I could easily fall by the wayside in an effort to please those who I love or whose advice I have always treasured. Then I would be fulfilling the wishes of those who do not have cancer and probably never will. They are all, unfortunately, guessing at what they would do if they were in my shoes. Based on their knowledge of cancer and, particularly, on a fantasized perception of how they would react to such a diagnosis. Not good enough. What is the compromise? What to do when you are buffeted between opposing energies – the energy of external concern and the energy that is driven by your own, precious intuition? In such a trauma you need support. You need your friends and family. But what do you do if their attitude to your recovery is more dangerous that is helpful?
If you are reading this and you have a loved one recently diagnosed, I have advice gained from experience. The souls who helped me, did three things: They listened to my fears expressed without judgment, choosing to share my fears without hysterics; they gave advice only when asked for by the frightened soul that I was; they supported my elected treatment, even though the idea of a distance healer was beyond their understanding. But what if it is your wife, mother, father or child who is looking to you to not only save your own life but also to restore a balance in their own lives and the only avenue they can see for success is locked into their idea of “the right thing to do”? I have had good friends tell me of many people who didn’t take traditional medicine’s advice and who died horrible deaths as if this was a wake-up call I had not noticed. But the worst thing to tell your loved one is: “don’t be selfish. Think about us.” Don’t be selfish! Where is the selfishness? You say: “I want to live. I want to be here with you for many more years. I have looked at all the treatments and I feel this is the best one for me. The one that will see me through.” Of course I’m writing about certain individuals who have opted for treatment that exists outside of accepted traditional procedures. Whose intuition leads them away from chemo, radiation and other forms of invasive treatment. How do these individuals deal with the split created from what will be done by you and what is expected by others?
First have compassion for those who don’t understand your illness, its consequences and their sad place within the trauma as they share it with you. They are your loved ones but they can only share it, not live it with you, they are not in your shoes and even if they have been in your shoes and have been cured by conventional means, they can’t presume that what worked for them, works for all. Cancer is unpredictable, even after a cure is announced. Recent research has found: If you remain in complete remission for 5 years or more, some doctors may say that you are cured. Still, some cancer cells can remain in your body for many years after treatment. These cells may cause the cancer to come back one day. For cancers that return, most do so within the first 5 years after treatment. – National Cancer Institute (the US federal government's primary agency to address research and training needs for the cause, diagnosis, and treatment of cancer). The search for the right path to take is a lonely affair when considering such statements as above. To be called selfish in the process of consideration is heartbreaking. You are looking to make the right decision. When you are faced with the fear and sadness that your cancer has aroused in your loved ones, you must adopt a Disinterested Compassion. You feel their anguish but you must dismiss any involvement in its energy once you have made up your mind. “Thank you for your advice. I’ve included it in my final decision. I’ve looked at the case histories, the latest innovations. The success rates. The failure rates. The debates over quality of life versus years of side effects. I’ve explored the spiritual angle. Diet. Lifestyle. Meditation. Stress management. I’ve taken nothing lightly. This is my path, I’m going down it. Thank you for your love but please respect my decision and, hopefully, accept it alongside me.” Tell them that the misdirected energy is harmful and of no help whatsoever. Then follow your intuition. It’s your greatest gift.
To step into the unknown without a safety net is a courageous but lonely step. There is ample company if you follow the well-worn route. The clinics are full of patients who have relied on radiation or chemo for salvation. You will never be lonely if all your faith is placed in the hands of modern medicine. And, without question, many souls have emerged healed or, at least, in remission. This is the path they chose. Other people, however, don’t choose that path. They might know friends who have had such treatments, have been pronounced cured, only to see the cancer return with a vengeance a matter of a few years later. They might have listened to friends who have suffered impotence and incontinence on a permanent basis post-treatment. They may have joined in the debate raging over the fallibility of a PSA test. Just witness this article in the New York Times who reported the frustration of Richard J. Ablin, the man who invented the prostate-specific-antigen (PSA) test which is widely used to detect signs of early-stage prostate cancer. Ablin has been frustrated by the widespread use of the test. Each year, he notes, some 30 million men undergo PSA testing, at a cost of $30 Billion. Yet “the test is hardly more effective than a coin toss. As I’ve been trying to make clear for many years now, P.S.A. testing can’t detect prostate cancer and, more important, it can’t distinguish between the two types of prostate cancer — the one that will kill you and the one that won’t.” It’s no wonder that some bypass conventional wisdom and wisely choose a more detailed investigation. I did and my friend did. The end result being a holistic approach to the problem coupled with an analytical approach to what could contributed to the formation of our cancers – the factors in our lives that have disturbed our body’s balance and harmony. In doing so, we listened to the cancer itself. Its message. Both of us adopted meditation as a tool, as an inner antenna. Then, when all was considered, we took action. The problem then being that our peers continued the debate without our permission! Not satisfied with our satisfaction of a course of action that answered our questions, they continued to add their own questions to the equation. Our selected vehicle of healing was threatened by the extra weight . Its wheels started to spin for traction. This is the danger that such opinions produce. I talked of a Disinterested Compassion from the viewpoint of the afflicted soul and suggest an adoption of the same approach from the people who love you. By all means your loved ones can cross their collective fingers behind their backs but don’t clench your fists in a barely-concealed frustration that is clearly visible. The clash of energies will do no good. Wish the explorer well and welcome him or her back in when they return home!
April, 2019 – The Tattooed Silence
I have been writing a book for two years and a daunting project it has turned out to be. Basically being the story of my progression from early childhood to the drastic cancer diagnosis that caused a radical change in horses mid-stream, it marks some of the events, traumatic or otherwise, that led me into the study of the theory of Positive Disintegration. This simply being that what appears to be, on the surface, the end of the road can, in fact, be a blessing. A sanctified intervention for want of a better description. Writing a book is hard enough, finding a title very elusive. The title has to reflect the content. The title is the essence in one sentence. I considered many titles until one afternoon, reclining on a lounge, the title The Tattooed Silence, made its way through the scattered thoughts and diversions. I liked it but I didn’t know what it exactly meant and how it related to the book. My life had been anything but quiet. Silence was a luxury. And when that luxury was fleetingly granted, why was it tattooed?
But what did I mean by silence? I realized that I was confusing my silences. This wasn’t the silence between traffic, between the TV ads, between the aural chatter, both electronic and human, that is characteristic of the age we live in. This was another silence. Carried from rebirth to rebirth. A refuge in each lifetime to turn to when your questions and doubts threaten to leave you curled up in a spiritual fetal position, unable to kick-start your journey home. Author Gunilla Norris described it thus: “Within each of us, there is silence. A silence as vast as the universe. And when we experience that silence, we remember who we are.” Osho narrows down this silence’s preferences, its partiality, to each individual soul: “Only the inner silence is yours. No-one gave it to you. You were born with it and you will die with it. (On the other hand) thoughts have been given to you. You have been conditioned to them.” So, why do some souls tune into (for want of a better term) an intuition of a deep essence within and others have no clue at all? Why do some kill, rob and maim without any conscious guilt or remorse while others grieve when they kill an insect as common as the household fly? If we were all born with this universal gift, why then isn’t it universally accepted and why isn’t the human race, as it stands today, a glorious place to spend your days?
The answer is simple I suppose. Some souls hear the voice of guidance and some don’t. Some invite and some reject. Whatever the reason we can only observe and note that are literally billions of incarnated souls devoted to roads that only they can traverse. Billions of individual roads negotiated by billions of travellers carrying suitcases that only they know the contents of and, even then, often don’t understand those contents when revealed. We try to look on with compassion as we recognise ourselves in the faces passing our windows. Searchers with a collective consciousness and a collective unconsciousness – the silence. One that is clearly visible in the angst, greed, frustration, confusion, dread, anger, blind ambition and ego-driven ideals of a vast majority of planet Earth’s inhabitants. The other? A refuge on the way home that we have disfigured, misinterpreted, falsely symbolised, vandalised, graffitied til it has virtually disappeared under the weight of our misguided intentions. What have we misappropriated, ignored or abused? Nothing less than the source of all human creativity!
The source that we can all draw from to ensure the creative ability to construct a life worth living. A life with purpose lived by a soul that understands what lies behind the illusion that thousands of years of spiritual ignorance, societal manipulation and a misconstrued sense of dominance over the unknown that is represented by the carnival that is organised religion. One that both understands and acknowledges that soul’s place in the revealed truth. This creative source is beyond words. There are no words, symbols, philosophical theories or dogma that go anywhere close to offering an explanation or description that we can incorporate into our schools of thought cultivated across the millennia of life here on earth. Because there are no words, silence is as appropriate a description as any. Words are ignored when this creativity communicates, it utilises intuition, radical insight, synchronicity, miracles and even phenomena such as experienced by the psychic or healer to offer a reconciliation between the earthbound and the unknown. Even so, every atrocity committed in the name of a vandalised ideal is testament to the fact that the predominant human trait is to turn away. If not, every soldier, terrorist or murderer would lay down their weapon of destruction simply because the silence, the creativity, would say that to kill was wrong. Because the killing persists, it is apparent that the gift offered is still being refused.
Now, all above belongs to the world at large but it is still an important consideration and influence here in the miniscule which is my life as an atom of the whole. An influence that took almost seventy years to lead to my book’s title – A Tattooed Silence. Looking back, I saw how I ignored the gift of creativity throughout the years. I was a musician but not for the right reasons. Seeking praise, fame, respect – all seemed to be the motivation for the music. I never realised that music, for me, was a communication channel between spirit and flesh and blood. I was grateful for the miracles in my life but the sense of wonder didn’t persist and I fell back into the everyday. Surprising, seeing that miracles abounded. In my book I detail more brushes with trauma that, considering an average lifetime, seem more than reasonable. Slightly beyond an expected equality of chaos. There is a plane crash that changed everything a five-year-old boy regarded as normality; a drug-induced breakdown that led to a drug referral centre where I was held as I struggled to make sense of a world turned upside down and where a spiritual intervention allowed creativity to enable me to reinvent myself; a road accident that led to a final diagnosis of amputation that never eventuated due to an alternate approach from an unexpected source; a severe illness in my early 30s that modern medicine struggled to understand and only TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) had the answer to. And finally, my cancer diagnosis that saw me ignore the traditional, seeking healing through the gift of Robyn Welch, a quantum distance healer. All of these were achieved by looking within for answers. I stepped away from the accepted and sought refuge in the inner realm of a creative silence. As Deepak Chopra wrote: “Inner silence promotes clarity of mind; It makes us value the inner world; It trains us to go inside to the source of peace and inspiration when we are faced with problems and challenges.” It took the cancer diagnosis with its dire death sentence to finally see the spiritual penny drop. I went deep within and I met the silence. And there and then, I realised that I had irresponsibly either ignored or tried to readapt creativity to suit my ambitions and earthly expectations. I had tattooed it with symbols and graffiti that covered it like gaudy posters cover a wall. I inked in images of my poorly conceived ideals of what a life lived in this incarnation should look like. So many tattoos that I couldn’t see what was behind them. And that is what my book is about, the progression through existence that led to me removing all obstacles to insight. From a desperate disintegration to a positive disintegration and then the creative reinvention that the silence within promises.
There is an eternal silence. There is and will always be, a silence deep within our lives. We can’t divorce ourselves from it just as the silence cannot be separated from our being. We are life therefore the silence is life. This silence cannot be broken down into particular components. It is not a pile of bricks that we can manipulate in order to build an approximation of what we sense, yet cannot physically see nor hear, except in the most transient of moments. Yet, even though we are manifestations of the silence and the spiritual centre of that manifestation is where the silence and our true selves embrace, we shy away from its essence. If we listen carefully and, in doing so, we exercise that facility, we will stop the atrophy and we will build up that gift’s strength just like a muscle that has deteriorated and then we will be creative, in tune with our true selves.
“The quieter you become the more you are able to hear.” Rumi.
I have been writing a book for two years and a daunting project it has turned out to be. Basically being the story of my progression from early childhood to the drastic cancer diagnosis that caused a radical change in horses mid-stream, it marks some of the events, traumatic or otherwise, that led me into the study of the theory of Positive Disintegration. This simply being that what appears to be, on the surface, the end of the road can, in fact, be a blessing. A sanctified intervention for want of a better description. Writing a book is hard enough, finding a title very elusive. The title has to reflect the content. The title is the essence in one sentence. I considered many titles until one afternoon, reclining on a lounge, the title The Tattooed Silence, made its way through the scattered thoughts and diversions. I liked it but I didn’t know what it exactly meant and how it related to the book. My life had been anything but quiet. Silence was a luxury. And when that luxury was fleetingly granted, why was it tattooed?
But what did I mean by silence? I realized that I was confusing my silences. This wasn’t the silence between traffic, between the TV ads, between the aural chatter, both electronic and human, that is characteristic of the age we live in. This was another silence. Carried from rebirth to rebirth. A refuge in each lifetime to turn to when your questions and doubts threaten to leave you curled up in a spiritual fetal position, unable to kick-start your journey home. Author Gunilla Norris described it thus: “Within each of us, there is silence. A silence as vast as the universe. And when we experience that silence, we remember who we are.” Osho narrows down this silence’s preferences, its partiality, to each individual soul: “Only the inner silence is yours. No-one gave it to you. You were born with it and you will die with it. (On the other hand) thoughts have been given to you. You have been conditioned to them.” So, why do some souls tune into (for want of a better term) an intuition of a deep essence within and others have no clue at all? Why do some kill, rob and maim without any conscious guilt or remorse while others grieve when they kill an insect as common as the household fly? If we were all born with this universal gift, why then isn’t it universally accepted and why isn’t the human race, as it stands today, a glorious place to spend your days?
The answer is simple I suppose. Some souls hear the voice of guidance and some don’t. Some invite and some reject. Whatever the reason we can only observe and note that are literally billions of incarnated souls devoted to roads that only they can traverse. Billions of individual roads negotiated by billions of travellers carrying suitcases that only they know the contents of and, even then, often don’t understand those contents when revealed. We try to look on with compassion as we recognise ourselves in the faces passing our windows. Searchers with a collective consciousness and a collective unconsciousness – the silence. One that is clearly visible in the angst, greed, frustration, confusion, dread, anger, blind ambition and ego-driven ideals of a vast majority of planet Earth’s inhabitants. The other? A refuge on the way home that we have disfigured, misinterpreted, falsely symbolised, vandalised, graffitied til it has virtually disappeared under the weight of our misguided intentions. What have we misappropriated, ignored or abused? Nothing less than the source of all human creativity!
The source that we can all draw from to ensure the creative ability to construct a life worth living. A life with purpose lived by a soul that understands what lies behind the illusion that thousands of years of spiritual ignorance, societal manipulation and a misconstrued sense of dominance over the unknown that is represented by the carnival that is organised religion. One that both understands and acknowledges that soul’s place in the revealed truth. This creative source is beyond words. There are no words, symbols, philosophical theories or dogma that go anywhere close to offering an explanation or description that we can incorporate into our schools of thought cultivated across the millennia of life here on earth. Because there are no words, silence is as appropriate a description as any. Words are ignored when this creativity communicates, it utilises intuition, radical insight, synchronicity, miracles and even phenomena such as experienced by the psychic or healer to offer a reconciliation between the earthbound and the unknown. Even so, every atrocity committed in the name of a vandalised ideal is testament to the fact that the predominant human trait is to turn away. If not, every soldier, terrorist or murderer would lay down their weapon of destruction simply because the silence, the creativity, would say that to kill was wrong. Because the killing persists, it is apparent that the gift offered is still being refused.
Now, all above belongs to the world at large but it is still an important consideration and influence here in the miniscule which is my life as an atom of the whole. An influence that took almost seventy years to lead to my book’s title – A Tattooed Silence. Looking back, I saw how I ignored the gift of creativity throughout the years. I was a musician but not for the right reasons. Seeking praise, fame, respect – all seemed to be the motivation for the music. I never realised that music, for me, was a communication channel between spirit and flesh and blood. I was grateful for the miracles in my life but the sense of wonder didn’t persist and I fell back into the everyday. Surprising, seeing that miracles abounded. In my book I detail more brushes with trauma that, considering an average lifetime, seem more than reasonable. Slightly beyond an expected equality of chaos. There is a plane crash that changed everything a five-year-old boy regarded as normality; a drug-induced breakdown that led to a drug referral centre where I was held as I struggled to make sense of a world turned upside down and where a spiritual intervention allowed creativity to enable me to reinvent myself; a road accident that led to a final diagnosis of amputation that never eventuated due to an alternate approach from an unexpected source; a severe illness in my early 30s that modern medicine struggled to understand and only TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) had the answer to. And finally, my cancer diagnosis that saw me ignore the traditional, seeking healing through the gift of Robyn Welch, a quantum distance healer. All of these were achieved by looking within for answers. I stepped away from the accepted and sought refuge in the inner realm of a creative silence. As Deepak Chopra wrote: “Inner silence promotes clarity of mind; It makes us value the inner world; It trains us to go inside to the source of peace and inspiration when we are faced with problems and challenges.” It took the cancer diagnosis with its dire death sentence to finally see the spiritual penny drop. I went deep within and I met the silence. And there and then, I realised that I had irresponsibly either ignored or tried to readapt creativity to suit my ambitions and earthly expectations. I had tattooed it with symbols and graffiti that covered it like gaudy posters cover a wall. I inked in images of my poorly conceived ideals of what a life lived in this incarnation should look like. So many tattoos that I couldn’t see what was behind them. And that is what my book is about, the progression through existence that led to me removing all obstacles to insight. From a desperate disintegration to a positive disintegration and then the creative reinvention that the silence within promises.
There is an eternal silence. There is and will always be, a silence deep within our lives. We can’t divorce ourselves from it just as the silence cannot be separated from our being. We are life therefore the silence is life. This silence cannot be broken down into particular components. It is not a pile of bricks that we can manipulate in order to build an approximation of what we sense, yet cannot physically see nor hear, except in the most transient of moments. Yet, even though we are manifestations of the silence and the spiritual centre of that manifestation is where the silence and our true selves embrace, we shy away from its essence. If we listen carefully and, in doing so, we exercise that facility, we will stop the atrophy and we will build up that gift’s strength just like a muscle that has deteriorated and then we will be creative, in tune with our true selves.
“The quieter you become the more you are able to hear.” Rumi.
March, 2019 – The Fallen Fragments
Some say that we are all fallen angels, stranded on this Earth, trying to remember who we originally were. Haunted by whispers and a fogged intuition of another existence we once called home. I believe that we are all fallen fragments of a divine whole. Perhaps we fell as a collective – transplanted into existence as a complete human race or perhaps we fell individually. The answer to that configuration is hidden to us. In my reasoning there has to be an entry point for our Earthly existence. A moment in eternity where the first of our many lifetimes originated. It may have occurred on this planet. It may have occurred on another planet. We may have been born inter-dimensionally – moving between dimensional birthplaces. I believe there is no doubt we fell because, in some manner, we rebelled against the natural order. Again I have no doubt that we have all, for whatever misdeed we have committed, been manifested into this dimension for one reason alone. To acquire wisdom in order to ascend back to the divine state from whence we originated. Therefore this Earth-bound dimension is our sanctified school. Here we have two choices provided by the gift of free will. Ignore or learn. If we ignore the mystery that surrounds us and drift aimlessly, never looking beneath the surface, we are then fated to never correct our raison d’etre. The reason or justification for our very existence in this dimension. The consequence of our ignorance is the samsaric cycle. That which is the cycle of repeated births, ordinary existences and unrewarded deaths.
Such considerations of my belief system or any other individual belief system for that matter, uncovers both the complexity of our past and our inability to unravel that complexity. Therefore, it is advisable, I believe, to avoid devoting this lifetime to a fruitless pursuit of an understanding clearly beyond us. Because we are surrounded by such elusive mysteries within mysteries, we must not attach our search to an ultimate unveiling of one, or any, of those mysteries The question: “where do we come from?” is undoubtedly one of the most perplexing facing us. That question is clearly open to conjecture. That conjecture will always be frustrated by an answer that exists beyond proof, beyond understanding. That line of pursuit only leads to a position where we are overwhelmed by our intellectual shortcomings. We will be perplexed, distracted, discouraged and eventually repelled. Simply because we will be lost in a past that defies our fumbling understanding. The past is where we look and we are frustrated by a complete lack of precedents. Here and now is where we should devote all our endeavours because this is where we live. Albert Einstein said: “the only source of knowledge is experience,” and any accumulated wisdom must be based on the experiences offered to us cradle to grave. This is our crucial priority in this incarnation. Once we have accepted the limitations of our access to certain cosmic truths, we can concentrate on discovering what truth is “here.” Where we live and breathe. Here we trust that the universal logic that placed us in this dimension will become apparent due to our spiritual labour and there is no doubt that quest is laborious and, at times, formidable. The road from a deep sleep to an awareness of that “beyond” is hard and long. It is then, of great comfort to discover we are not alone.
Now that we have descended we would be sadly mistaken to believe that we are forsaken in the sense that we are left here, alone, forever. I believe in the Law of One. All life in this dimension springs from one source and, though we exist “here”, at the same time, we also exist “there”. There is no separation. Only a “oneness.” What is this source? It is not a personalized deity. A fatherly figure that sits in judgement somewhere beyond the clouds. That is too simple and naive an image. The complexity of understanding a source that is described as that which is “an all pervasive intelligent energy, that is both within everything that exists and without,” is one lesson we must learn and fully understand. It is essential to our spiritual advancement. If we understand we will see a simple truth: if we are forsaken by this creative source then it, in turn, is forsaking its very essence. Knowing that that concept is not possible is a liberating moment when first realised. Unfortunately, it is a long road from first breath to that realization and will, and must, involve a continuum – a series of existences from birth to death that contain a lost soul often learning only by a slim matter of degree each lifetime.
Our journey back to Oneness is a long and complicated one. I believe it takes many lifetimes. Simply because of the fact that we have been placed into an arena of such complexity that a speedy ascension is all but impossible. Complex in its structure but also complex in the building blocks that define that structure’s character. We face an environment that is contradictory to an alarming degree. A glance at the Six-O’clock News shows an exterior world that is not at all subtle in its portrayal of a human drama that has lost its spiritual roadmap. A world apparently bereft of almost all its compasses – be they ethical, moralistic or spiritual. Yet among the chaos and borderline anarchy, you can also find visions of extreme kindness and compassion. We are then bewildered by what is the true depiction of our essential nature – the shells raining down on the Iraqi hospital or the drowning child bravely rescued from the floodwaters by a heroic passer-by? And that is just a glimpse of the outside world. There is another world, just as complex, that exists within the structure that houses our very essence. Inside those walls we also see the human complexity unfold before our eyes. We watch it unfold in our deep, personal relationships with the inner and outer worlds. Living within our confliction we struggle to ascend. Sensing that we inhabit a world of illusion where nothing is as it seems, we look for solid ground. In order to differentiate between that illusion and an elusive cosmic truth is to call on facilities that were severely atrophied in our descent. Like an old radio set they still work but the batteries are crucially low. We are still receiving signals but the static predominates. These voices, be they hidden within Intuition, Genetic Instinct or Synchronicity for starters, are feeble at first but increasingly persistent and spiritually revealing to those who try to listen carefully. Those who tire of listening to a perceived static and who prefer to listen to voices propagated by a materialistic source, often throw their radios away. They surrender to a belief that this dimension’s illusions are the only reality in which they choose to live their allotted lifetime. Those who hear fragments of sense in the airwaves - the incoming ethereal conversation - intuit the existence of an unknown broadcast source and set out on a search to find that source. This is a journey to discover their role in the great scheme of things. I believe this is why we are here. To tune in in order to be taught the Truth. To understand that Truth. To practise that Truth to the best of our ability, second by second. Though stumbling in our initial steps, at first no more effective than an amateuristic and erratic Earth-bound imitation of Buddha-nature or a Christ-consciousness or whatever spiritual ideal is sought, our mission is to attempt to be an example of the power of that Truth so that others can be inspired by its presence manifested through us. Not necessarily to be like us but to seek out the inspiration that inspired us. Not as easy as it sounds. But it is in our “intent” to take the first faltering steps that we cultivate both patience and faith. Each of our lifetimes, if we can see through their inherent illusions, should be a concentration in improving the quality of our “intent.”
Lao Tzu said that: “A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” The good traveller lives “now” and his “intent” is evident one step at a time, not in the distant future because it is here that the final destination is determined, no matter its shape or form. This is the objective of Heaven’s fallen fragments. This is why we are here.
Some say that we are all fallen angels, stranded on this Earth, trying to remember who we originally were. Haunted by whispers and a fogged intuition of another existence we once called home. I believe that we are all fallen fragments of a divine whole. Perhaps we fell as a collective – transplanted into existence as a complete human race or perhaps we fell individually. The answer to that configuration is hidden to us. In my reasoning there has to be an entry point for our Earthly existence. A moment in eternity where the first of our many lifetimes originated. It may have occurred on this planet. It may have occurred on another planet. We may have been born inter-dimensionally – moving between dimensional birthplaces. I believe there is no doubt we fell because, in some manner, we rebelled against the natural order. Again I have no doubt that we have all, for whatever misdeed we have committed, been manifested into this dimension for one reason alone. To acquire wisdom in order to ascend back to the divine state from whence we originated. Therefore this Earth-bound dimension is our sanctified school. Here we have two choices provided by the gift of free will. Ignore or learn. If we ignore the mystery that surrounds us and drift aimlessly, never looking beneath the surface, we are then fated to never correct our raison d’etre. The reason or justification for our very existence in this dimension. The consequence of our ignorance is the samsaric cycle. That which is the cycle of repeated births, ordinary existences and unrewarded deaths.
Such considerations of my belief system or any other individual belief system for that matter, uncovers both the complexity of our past and our inability to unravel that complexity. Therefore, it is advisable, I believe, to avoid devoting this lifetime to a fruitless pursuit of an understanding clearly beyond us. Because we are surrounded by such elusive mysteries within mysteries, we must not attach our search to an ultimate unveiling of one, or any, of those mysteries The question: “where do we come from?” is undoubtedly one of the most perplexing facing us. That question is clearly open to conjecture. That conjecture will always be frustrated by an answer that exists beyond proof, beyond understanding. That line of pursuit only leads to a position where we are overwhelmed by our intellectual shortcomings. We will be perplexed, distracted, discouraged and eventually repelled. Simply because we will be lost in a past that defies our fumbling understanding. The past is where we look and we are frustrated by a complete lack of precedents. Here and now is where we should devote all our endeavours because this is where we live. Albert Einstein said: “the only source of knowledge is experience,” and any accumulated wisdom must be based on the experiences offered to us cradle to grave. This is our crucial priority in this incarnation. Once we have accepted the limitations of our access to certain cosmic truths, we can concentrate on discovering what truth is “here.” Where we live and breathe. Here we trust that the universal logic that placed us in this dimension will become apparent due to our spiritual labour and there is no doubt that quest is laborious and, at times, formidable. The road from a deep sleep to an awareness of that “beyond” is hard and long. It is then, of great comfort to discover we are not alone.
Now that we have descended we would be sadly mistaken to believe that we are forsaken in the sense that we are left here, alone, forever. I believe in the Law of One. All life in this dimension springs from one source and, though we exist “here”, at the same time, we also exist “there”. There is no separation. Only a “oneness.” What is this source? It is not a personalized deity. A fatherly figure that sits in judgement somewhere beyond the clouds. That is too simple and naive an image. The complexity of understanding a source that is described as that which is “an all pervasive intelligent energy, that is both within everything that exists and without,” is one lesson we must learn and fully understand. It is essential to our spiritual advancement. If we understand we will see a simple truth: if we are forsaken by this creative source then it, in turn, is forsaking its very essence. Knowing that that concept is not possible is a liberating moment when first realised. Unfortunately, it is a long road from first breath to that realization and will, and must, involve a continuum – a series of existences from birth to death that contain a lost soul often learning only by a slim matter of degree each lifetime.
Our journey back to Oneness is a long and complicated one. I believe it takes many lifetimes. Simply because of the fact that we have been placed into an arena of such complexity that a speedy ascension is all but impossible. Complex in its structure but also complex in the building blocks that define that structure’s character. We face an environment that is contradictory to an alarming degree. A glance at the Six-O’clock News shows an exterior world that is not at all subtle in its portrayal of a human drama that has lost its spiritual roadmap. A world apparently bereft of almost all its compasses – be they ethical, moralistic or spiritual. Yet among the chaos and borderline anarchy, you can also find visions of extreme kindness and compassion. We are then bewildered by what is the true depiction of our essential nature – the shells raining down on the Iraqi hospital or the drowning child bravely rescued from the floodwaters by a heroic passer-by? And that is just a glimpse of the outside world. There is another world, just as complex, that exists within the structure that houses our very essence. Inside those walls we also see the human complexity unfold before our eyes. We watch it unfold in our deep, personal relationships with the inner and outer worlds. Living within our confliction we struggle to ascend. Sensing that we inhabit a world of illusion where nothing is as it seems, we look for solid ground. In order to differentiate between that illusion and an elusive cosmic truth is to call on facilities that were severely atrophied in our descent. Like an old radio set they still work but the batteries are crucially low. We are still receiving signals but the static predominates. These voices, be they hidden within Intuition, Genetic Instinct or Synchronicity for starters, are feeble at first but increasingly persistent and spiritually revealing to those who try to listen carefully. Those who tire of listening to a perceived static and who prefer to listen to voices propagated by a materialistic source, often throw their radios away. They surrender to a belief that this dimension’s illusions are the only reality in which they choose to live their allotted lifetime. Those who hear fragments of sense in the airwaves - the incoming ethereal conversation - intuit the existence of an unknown broadcast source and set out on a search to find that source. This is a journey to discover their role in the great scheme of things. I believe this is why we are here. To tune in in order to be taught the Truth. To understand that Truth. To practise that Truth to the best of our ability, second by second. Though stumbling in our initial steps, at first no more effective than an amateuristic and erratic Earth-bound imitation of Buddha-nature or a Christ-consciousness or whatever spiritual ideal is sought, our mission is to attempt to be an example of the power of that Truth so that others can be inspired by its presence manifested through us. Not necessarily to be like us but to seek out the inspiration that inspired us. Not as easy as it sounds. But it is in our “intent” to take the first faltering steps that we cultivate both patience and faith. Each of our lifetimes, if we can see through their inherent illusions, should be a concentration in improving the quality of our “intent.”
Lao Tzu said that: “A good traveller has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving.” The good traveller lives “now” and his “intent” is evident one step at a time, not in the distant future because it is here that the final destination is determined, no matter its shape or form. This is the objective of Heaven’s fallen fragments. This is why we are here.
February, 2019 - The Notebook
When I first started my series of blogs in 2015, “carry a notebook” was the advice right from day one. When something catches your eye, no matter how relevant it is to what you’re writing, take a copy. It might be pertinent and, if not, maybe applicable further down the line. So I have my trusty Spirax Notebook on hand and whenever I have a thought or access to some other soul’s thoughts, it is entered for further inspiration and, if not used, it is something to ponder whenever I reread it. There are scribbles in the margins; long dialogues that were written in the dead of night or after meditation and quotes and passages from many masters of wisdom. I’d like to share a few that caught my attention and the consequent areas of consideration they led me to:
“If you rely on the testimony of others as your means of establishing faith, you will doubt. They are usually presented as the truth for all, including you. Doubt arises as you then accept a truth without any conscious contact or direct experience of that truth.’ – Wayne W. Dyer.
A quote I considered when I contemplated a piece on the supermarket religions or circus churches as I call them. Mass-produced pseudo spiritual entertainment that stretches from the pulpit to the nose-bleed seats up on the top tiers.
***
“Miracles happen, not in opposition to nature, but in opposition of what we know of nature.” St Augustine.
Noted on my first steps into the world of alternative healing. This made me consider the validity of Distance Healing or Energy Healing for that matter. Both are scorned and regularly denounced as not only unscientific but almost akin to witchcraft. The reason? They don’t correlate with the known laws of nature. The unknown laws of nature are never considered. There are precedents. Syphilis for instance was prevalent in the 18th Century and the establishment deemed it treatable with mercury. Mercury in any form is poisonous. Just ask the neurologic or renal organ systems. They won’t lie. Yet it was a preferable treatment simply because it was within the known laws and we would have to wait til 1928 before penicillin was discovered. Penicillin was always there waiting to be uncovered. It was hidden in the unknown. I am sure we will view the use of chemo and radiation with the same amazement as we now view the past use of mercury as a cure. When it came to faith in a scorned healing method, I abandoned all previous conceptions of possible or impossible and went with the Buddha. Life as trial and error. Open the door, investigate through experience, apply, scan the results and, based on the results, adopt or reject. Distance Healing worked. To me it is a known law of the Universe.
***
“The path of religion is full of trouble and disaster, because it is not a path suited to anyone with a cowardly nature.” – Rumi
“This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor… Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” – Rumi
Rumi underlines the power of Opposites. If we choose to live at one end of the spectrum of life’s possibilities and bury our heads in the sand when the opposite appears on the horizon, then we will not cope with the Everyday. If we expect to be happy materially, spiritually, physically or mentally and never accept the prospect of that dream’s opposite entering our lives then our existences will be troublesome and disastrous due to our lack of perspective. The spiritual path, says Rumi, is not suitable for a coward to contemplate. In the 2nd quote he furthers his argument that we must live in each and every variation that we encounter, no matter how difficult. We must be courageous. “Life is not for the faint of heart” as actress Natasha Lyonne has plainly stated.
***
These are a few selected quotes I have stored for both inspiration and guidance. Many a time in my blog writing I have been left stranded for subject matter. I always turn to my notebook for it is there that another soul’s inspiration has proven invaluable. From just a short sentence of someone’s else’s words a continuity is often established. Their thought leading to another soul’s reaction and that reaction leading to yet another’s consideration. Different lines of thought, different interpretations, different theories, philosophies, all born out of a single sentence written at any time within the past centuries. These words of wisdom reveal the inspiration behind the spiritual path. Its voice. It whispers in one man’s ear and the words live forever. That is why my notebook is a goldmine. It’s full of sanctified whispers. Each quote is alive. I’ll conclude with a quote by Jules Renard: “On Earth there is no heaven, but there are pieces of it.” Millions of pieces and many are quotes.
January, 2019 – Living Inside Extinction
Tis late December and here are those lazy days between Xmas Eve and the beginning of the new year. Lounging around between visits to friends and family. A good time to read a book. This time it’s Roy Scranton’s We’re Doomed. Now What? A series of essays on war and climate change. Scranton is an ex-vet, having served in Iraq, journalist, author and teacher at the University of Notre Dame in the USA. This collection is both disturbing and enlightening. The back cover notes are blunt and to the point: “Our moment is one of alarming and bewildering change – the break-up of the post-1945 global order, a multispecies mass extinction and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. Not one of us is innocent, not one of us is safe. Now what?” Scranton paints a pathetic picture of a planet populated by a species that is plagued by apathy and self-denial. Governed by a political elite that is barely competent and, unfortunately, because they are living examples of the hard-to-refute Peter Principle, are doubly dangerous to both planet and bewildered population. Scranton presents a scenario that stops perilously short of a promised extinction of our species. Too close for comfort.
We, the inhabitants of planet Earth, are living proof that the Peter Principle, first aired in 1969, is alive and kicking in the modern age. The Principle asserts that people in a hierarchy tend to be promoted til they reach their "level of incompetence". The sad truth is that we, collectively, are the people in the hierarchy! From the 99% at the bottom of the ladder to the elite “one percenters” perched at the top who control the wealth and power, we are all locked into the Peter Principle. We have promoted ourselves, age by age, starting in the caves, then through the developmental stages of our civilization. Now we have reached our global level of incompetence. Where our direction forward has been lost in an avalanche of humanity as it succumbs to an increasing social atomization. Atomization is a society in retreat. One in which each soul’s main agenda of survival is based on personal interests and not the collective interest. The majority of the population appear to have opted for self-organization, leaving the business of governance and social organization in the hands of the most incompetent – the ruling elite. The present-day scenario is one of the Peter Principle being an ever-increasing factor in one question: can this planet survive incompetents making incompetent decisions? Especially when those decisions are beyond the capabilities of a fragmented, self-interested global population to interfere with in any constructive manner. The modern politician is building his career on the distinct advantage of having a communal apathy built on denial and a lingering sense of dread about the future that can’t be quite articulated. Climate change? Nuclear holocaust? No real evidence in my street says the daily commuter on his way to work and back. In fact, to a public hell-bent on any signs of security, this day looks very similar to yesterday and it looks very promising that tomorrow will be much the same. Politicians feed on such societies. When the hard questions are asked, they hide within the elite’s political language. Within the borders of Double-talk, whereby, quoting Merriam-Webster, “language that appears to be earnest and meaningful in fact is a mixture of sense and nonsense.” The mixture is disproportionate here on our troubled planet. Nonsense is now the dominant ingredient of all political discourse. Sense is frowned on as it leads to debates that expose political deficiencies. Common sense is to be avoided. The result is the spectacle of the governing elite fiddling while Rome burns. Hopelessly out of tune, out of time and completely clueless as to which chord or scale will reintroduce any semblance of a melody worth singing. The contemporary politician has reached a level of incompetence that threatens to stifle any possible chance of innovation, of creativity, that could benefit Planet Earth.
At the top we have no leadership and, consequently, underneath we have no unity. There is not that one sane voice we can turn to for comfort. Not one voice that carries a universal message of hope. All we hear are a myriad of conflicting voices condemning us to our own modern Tower of Babel. It is no wonder that we, as a species, are fractured and splintered. And, to be fair, it is not our fault. The evolution of man from cave to moon landing, from savage to technological master, was carried out without the presence of the majority of earth’s inhabitants. We had no control over the past but now we are involuntarily forced to live within a momentum beyond our control. As civilization evolved according to the tenets of its own Peter Principle, most of us were not even born. We had no say in the unravelling process that has led us to the gates of extinction. But now we are here, what can we do?
Scranton underlines the difficulty facing us if we are to save the planet from extinction. “There’s no mechanism for uniting the entire human species to move together in one direction. There are more than seven billion of us, and we divide into almost two hundred nations, thousands of smaller sub-national states, territories, counties and municipalities, and an unimaginable multitude of corporations, community organisations, neighbourhoods, religious sects, ethnic identities, clans, tribes, gangs, clubs, and families, each of which faces its own internal conflicts, disunion and strife, all the way down to the individual human soul in conflict with itself, torn between fear and desire, hard sacrifice and easy cruelty, all of us, improvising day to day, moment by moment, making decisions based on best guesses, gut hunches, comforting illusions, and too little data.” There is an awful reality in these words. It is most likely that our inability to coalesce, to produce a single cohesive voice of protest, will see the end of our species. Empty of human interference, the Earth will survive as it has survived all assaults on its existence. It will rotate in space, biding its time. Healing. And time will see the purification of its eco-systems. But we won’t be there in our present form to witness its reincarnation. We will be bones in the debris left by our stupidity. If I am to be believed, then where do we fit into this scenario as Buddhists? Where the odds stacked up against the human race seem so tremendous, we feel there’s nothing really left to do but adopt the fetal position and pray for mercy. What is our day-to-day reasoning to resist such a nihilistic reaction to a hostile future?
Scranton is a Buddhist though he admits he has let the side down more times than is comfortable. He probably matches my description of myself as “Buddhish.” Nevertheless, Scranton (like my good self) is sufficiently Buddhist enough to acknowledge that Buddhism offers more than one substantial adaptation technique when the chips are down. First cab off the rank is the rationale behind Impermanence. Impermanence, called anicca, declares that all of existence, without exception, is transient. Consequently, what is “now” is different by the time it enters the next “now.” It is this truth that confirms the idea that the evolution of our species is inevitable. Everything changes. Whether this change leads to extinction or not cannot be answered with any confidence. Because each “Now” contains an unlimited array of possibilities. A diversity of possible and impossibles. Can we state with certainty that we will perish in a cloud of toxicity? Fried, bleached white skeletons laying where we fell under a hostile sun? Or are there possibilities? Technological marvels that turn the destruction off like a light-switch; a messianic figure arising out of the Tower of Babel with a universal message of deliverance; an alien landing with the answer to survival free to all; a great disaster like a terrorist-inspired nuclear explosion in a major Western city that forces the leaders of belligerent nations to see the reality of such power unleashed, forcing all to reassess any continued aggression against both human life and environment; Christ, himself, as promised, descending through the clouds to deliver us from ourselves. A small cross-section of possibilities. Another one of which is a complete and utter extinction of all life on this planet.
To consider all is to live in the future. A locality that doesn’t exist yet we are dominated by a constant fear of what its potential horrors look like. We are living there and are neglecting where we really exist. We live in the Now. Nowhere else. Nowhere = now here. We don’t live in the future where the anticipated apocalypse waits. Or where it doesn’t. And Scranton advocates that we establish a spiritual worldview that acknowledges that each “now” is eternally temporary. Within our wisdom we “need to learn to let our current civilization die, to accept our mortality”. To “let go”. He wants us to let go of the notion of a civilization that is static. Let that notion die. To accept our mortality as a fact beyond dispute and to rearrange our thinking to incorporate that fact into our daily lives. We, on this planet, are evolving continually and all of us are participants. We will individually die in our present form but that is not the end of the story. We have died many times over and this existence is but one station along the rail. This planet Earth is a living thing, subject to the same universal laws as we are. Perhaps it has to die and be reborn. Perhaps it has its own Karma. We don’t know. What we do know is that each and every moment we should live our existences as best as we can. We could be all extinct very shortly or we could be still around well into the series of “nows” yet to come.
We have a responsibility to ourselves to not fall into a chasm of dread. Into apathy and denial. Faced with an apparent collapse of the fundamentals that bind the everyday into a cohesive whole, that task is daunting. It is up to us, individually, to learn from the lessons taught in this vast university of life. Our successful adaptation to constant change, to impermanence, is vital to our growth as spiritual beings. We need to accept that nothing remains the same. But we must never get lost in the future – influenced by predictions of what will be. Never base our life on your imagination’s insistence that it can time travel. Because if what we predict will be comes around then, as sure as night and day, it will change before your very eyes and your prediction will be either irrelevant or a waste of time. This is the beauty of our existence. What we fear most might never happen. And what we yearn for, just might. Or vice versa. Nothing, even the extinction of Earth, is written in concrete. Armed with this we can live life as it is intended – a gift voucher for a great adventure where within each moment there is all you need for the possibilities inherent in that great adventure. A good life lived is one where you accept all possibilities – good or bad. Learn from all situations – good or bad. Learn and live.
Tis late December and here are those lazy days between Xmas Eve and the beginning of the new year. Lounging around between visits to friends and family. A good time to read a book. This time it’s Roy Scranton’s We’re Doomed. Now What? A series of essays on war and climate change. Scranton is an ex-vet, having served in Iraq, journalist, author and teacher at the University of Notre Dame in the USA. This collection is both disturbing and enlightening. The back cover notes are blunt and to the point: “Our moment is one of alarming and bewildering change – the break-up of the post-1945 global order, a multispecies mass extinction and the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it. Not one of us is innocent, not one of us is safe. Now what?” Scranton paints a pathetic picture of a planet populated by a species that is plagued by apathy and self-denial. Governed by a political elite that is barely competent and, unfortunately, because they are living examples of the hard-to-refute Peter Principle, are doubly dangerous to both planet and bewildered population. Scranton presents a scenario that stops perilously short of a promised extinction of our species. Too close for comfort.
We, the inhabitants of planet Earth, are living proof that the Peter Principle, first aired in 1969, is alive and kicking in the modern age. The Principle asserts that people in a hierarchy tend to be promoted til they reach their "level of incompetence". The sad truth is that we, collectively, are the people in the hierarchy! From the 99% at the bottom of the ladder to the elite “one percenters” perched at the top who control the wealth and power, we are all locked into the Peter Principle. We have promoted ourselves, age by age, starting in the caves, then through the developmental stages of our civilization. Now we have reached our global level of incompetence. Where our direction forward has been lost in an avalanche of humanity as it succumbs to an increasing social atomization. Atomization is a society in retreat. One in which each soul’s main agenda of survival is based on personal interests and not the collective interest. The majority of the population appear to have opted for self-organization, leaving the business of governance and social organization in the hands of the most incompetent – the ruling elite. The present-day scenario is one of the Peter Principle being an ever-increasing factor in one question: can this planet survive incompetents making incompetent decisions? Especially when those decisions are beyond the capabilities of a fragmented, self-interested global population to interfere with in any constructive manner. The modern politician is building his career on the distinct advantage of having a communal apathy built on denial and a lingering sense of dread about the future that can’t be quite articulated. Climate change? Nuclear holocaust? No real evidence in my street says the daily commuter on his way to work and back. In fact, to a public hell-bent on any signs of security, this day looks very similar to yesterday and it looks very promising that tomorrow will be much the same. Politicians feed on such societies. When the hard questions are asked, they hide within the elite’s political language. Within the borders of Double-talk, whereby, quoting Merriam-Webster, “language that appears to be earnest and meaningful in fact is a mixture of sense and nonsense.” The mixture is disproportionate here on our troubled planet. Nonsense is now the dominant ingredient of all political discourse. Sense is frowned on as it leads to debates that expose political deficiencies. Common sense is to be avoided. The result is the spectacle of the governing elite fiddling while Rome burns. Hopelessly out of tune, out of time and completely clueless as to which chord or scale will reintroduce any semblance of a melody worth singing. The contemporary politician has reached a level of incompetence that threatens to stifle any possible chance of innovation, of creativity, that could benefit Planet Earth.
At the top we have no leadership and, consequently, underneath we have no unity. There is not that one sane voice we can turn to for comfort. Not one voice that carries a universal message of hope. All we hear are a myriad of conflicting voices condemning us to our own modern Tower of Babel. It is no wonder that we, as a species, are fractured and splintered. And, to be fair, it is not our fault. The evolution of man from cave to moon landing, from savage to technological master, was carried out without the presence of the majority of earth’s inhabitants. We had no control over the past but now we are involuntarily forced to live within a momentum beyond our control. As civilization evolved according to the tenets of its own Peter Principle, most of us were not even born. We had no say in the unravelling process that has led us to the gates of extinction. But now we are here, what can we do?
Scranton underlines the difficulty facing us if we are to save the planet from extinction. “There’s no mechanism for uniting the entire human species to move together in one direction. There are more than seven billion of us, and we divide into almost two hundred nations, thousands of smaller sub-national states, territories, counties and municipalities, and an unimaginable multitude of corporations, community organisations, neighbourhoods, religious sects, ethnic identities, clans, tribes, gangs, clubs, and families, each of which faces its own internal conflicts, disunion and strife, all the way down to the individual human soul in conflict with itself, torn between fear and desire, hard sacrifice and easy cruelty, all of us, improvising day to day, moment by moment, making decisions based on best guesses, gut hunches, comforting illusions, and too little data.” There is an awful reality in these words. It is most likely that our inability to coalesce, to produce a single cohesive voice of protest, will see the end of our species. Empty of human interference, the Earth will survive as it has survived all assaults on its existence. It will rotate in space, biding its time. Healing. And time will see the purification of its eco-systems. But we won’t be there in our present form to witness its reincarnation. We will be bones in the debris left by our stupidity. If I am to be believed, then where do we fit into this scenario as Buddhists? Where the odds stacked up against the human race seem so tremendous, we feel there’s nothing really left to do but adopt the fetal position and pray for mercy. What is our day-to-day reasoning to resist such a nihilistic reaction to a hostile future?
Scranton is a Buddhist though he admits he has let the side down more times than is comfortable. He probably matches my description of myself as “Buddhish.” Nevertheless, Scranton (like my good self) is sufficiently Buddhist enough to acknowledge that Buddhism offers more than one substantial adaptation technique when the chips are down. First cab off the rank is the rationale behind Impermanence. Impermanence, called anicca, declares that all of existence, without exception, is transient. Consequently, what is “now” is different by the time it enters the next “now.” It is this truth that confirms the idea that the evolution of our species is inevitable. Everything changes. Whether this change leads to extinction or not cannot be answered with any confidence. Because each “Now” contains an unlimited array of possibilities. A diversity of possible and impossibles. Can we state with certainty that we will perish in a cloud of toxicity? Fried, bleached white skeletons laying where we fell under a hostile sun? Or are there possibilities? Technological marvels that turn the destruction off like a light-switch; a messianic figure arising out of the Tower of Babel with a universal message of deliverance; an alien landing with the answer to survival free to all; a great disaster like a terrorist-inspired nuclear explosion in a major Western city that forces the leaders of belligerent nations to see the reality of such power unleashed, forcing all to reassess any continued aggression against both human life and environment; Christ, himself, as promised, descending through the clouds to deliver us from ourselves. A small cross-section of possibilities. Another one of which is a complete and utter extinction of all life on this planet.
To consider all is to live in the future. A locality that doesn’t exist yet we are dominated by a constant fear of what its potential horrors look like. We are living there and are neglecting where we really exist. We live in the Now. Nowhere else. Nowhere = now here. We don’t live in the future where the anticipated apocalypse waits. Or where it doesn’t. And Scranton advocates that we establish a spiritual worldview that acknowledges that each “now” is eternally temporary. Within our wisdom we “need to learn to let our current civilization die, to accept our mortality”. To “let go”. He wants us to let go of the notion of a civilization that is static. Let that notion die. To accept our mortality as a fact beyond dispute and to rearrange our thinking to incorporate that fact into our daily lives. We, on this planet, are evolving continually and all of us are participants. We will individually die in our present form but that is not the end of the story. We have died many times over and this existence is but one station along the rail. This planet Earth is a living thing, subject to the same universal laws as we are. Perhaps it has to die and be reborn. Perhaps it has its own Karma. We don’t know. What we do know is that each and every moment we should live our existences as best as we can. We could be all extinct very shortly or we could be still around well into the series of “nows” yet to come.
We have a responsibility to ourselves to not fall into a chasm of dread. Into apathy and denial. Faced with an apparent collapse of the fundamentals that bind the everyday into a cohesive whole, that task is daunting. It is up to us, individually, to learn from the lessons taught in this vast university of life. Our successful adaptation to constant change, to impermanence, is vital to our growth as spiritual beings. We need to accept that nothing remains the same. But we must never get lost in the future – influenced by predictions of what will be. Never base our life on your imagination’s insistence that it can time travel. Because if what we predict will be comes around then, as sure as night and day, it will change before your very eyes and your prediction will be either irrelevant or a waste of time. This is the beauty of our existence. What we fear most might never happen. And what we yearn for, just might. Or vice versa. Nothing, even the extinction of Earth, is written in concrete. Armed with this we can live life as it is intended – a gift voucher for a great adventure where within each moment there is all you need for the possibilities inherent in that great adventure. A good life lived is one where you accept all possibilities – good or bad. Learn from all situations – good or bad. Learn and live.
December, 2018 – The Quote.
On the 7th February, 2013, just days before my cancer was confirmed as a reality, I decided to instigate a diary. Though the diagnosis wasn’t in, I knew, by intuition, that there was only bad news on the horizon and my intuition wouldn’t disappoint me. I wrote: “from birth to death, life is a panorama of change and now I’m entering yet another change.” I knew that a new reality was nigh. The Universal spirit that permeates within/without – that unnameable force that guides the spiritual cosmos – would soon knock on my door and introduce itself. Hence my diary. I would keep a record of this embryonic relationship. As a last hope I wrote that when I answered the knock on the door maybe a sanctified logic would “walk in and slap me across the face, shouting Wake Up! I scared you with much deliberation so that you would pursue the inner secrets (the keys to a wisdom that would sustain and nurture) and not ignore them. You don’t have cancer.” In other words, pay attention to what is really around you, step out of your illusion or face the consequences of your spiritual lethargy. That was my last hope but it wasn’t to be realised. I was diagnosed with a serious Prostate Cancer. The strange thing was that my last hope, expressed above, would come to be. That that wish would be granted but not at the moment it was desired. I had to wait. But the possibility had been set in motion and the diagnosis itself would be the key of activation.
I knew that I had built myself a house to live in that contained many locked doors, dead-end hallways, fogged-up windows and rooms filled with fear, dread and misunderstanding. Now, as the architect and builder, I had to reconstruct from the basement up. To build rooms that balanced the structure. Though some would contain our human frailty expressed in the angst that haunts most souls, the majority would be devoted to harmony and wisdom, no matter how difficult it would be to find the building materials to construct those rooms. The last words written on that day state that “to find the purity, the inner peace, is a hard journey. But yes, I will try.” So, the diary marked my days from illness to a wondrous healing. My diary is filled with days devoted to an earnest search for inspiration. A blueprint of reinvention. Within and without. And inspiration wasn’t shy in coming forward.
Synchronicity in all its beauty played an important role. If I was troubled by aspects of my cancerous condition or needed spiritual support, I would invariably find an approach from unlikely sources. A newspaper article, an overheard conversation on the bus, a book laying on a table in a library waiting to be reshelved and often from random quotes found online, offline or, on one occasion, on a toilet wall. Anything that resonated entered my diary. It was often a quote that set up the next stage of my journey through cancer. This quote would often lead me to a new way of thinking. It would provide the key for me to further progress, step by step. Quotes often underlined the fact that we, as humans, share a collective consciousness. One entity with different personalities and different paths but, beneath those differences, there is a borderless, earthbound family sharing common ground. So many quotes from so many diverse cultural sources reinforce that belief. There is a common spiritual thread that binds us together into a universal tapestry. This shared spirituality is often expressed in many ways, the written word being one. When a soul is granted a profound thought, it is moved to share it – and there we have the quote. For this blog I will concentrate on one quote that was pivotal in my quest for guidance, harmony and wisdom. When I read it, digested it, meditated on it, I emerged a different soul than that who first stumbled upon the words. I found the following in a book written by Chris Prentiss, the author of several books concerned with personal growth:
“All the laws of the Universe are in favour of the continuation of the Universe!
If there was one imperfection, one false law, it would eventually see its own self-destruction.
The Universe continues to be perfect at every moment and never permits even the first imperfect event to occur. It goes from perfect to perfect to perfect.
All laws are in favour of continuation.
We are the Universe and the Universe is us.
We live within the perfect laws of the Universe.
What happens to you is the best possible thing that can happen to you.
The Universe doesn’t make mistakes.”
(Now, from this moment on, I want to be very clear in stating that the thinking, my thinking, that followed is mine alone. My own, personal inspiration. To a soul in the last stages of pancreatic cancer, my words could be easily dismissed. Or the parents, who just lost a child to leukemia, might be moved to say “it’s alright for him to talk like that but the reality is ...” This reality is, of course, their reality, not mine. I am not dismissing their suffering as irrelevant and pray that I never lose the gift of compassion but I am a soul on my own path. What is important is there is always hope. I know personally people who have walked away from serious cancer simply because they changed their diet. An ex-girlfriend walked away because she decided she didn’t want to die. She signed herself out of the Hospice and went home. They all had their own, personal inspiration. I read the above quote and the inspiration gained was responsible for a spiritual regeneration. Personal and mine to explore for the possibilities that it opened up. My advice: keep your hearts and minds open, there’s always magic in the air.)
Chris Prentiss’s words placed my cancer in a new light. It was no longer my nemesis. It was a part of a Universe that didn’t make mistakes. If the Universe didn’t make mistakes then cancer as a natural component of that Universe was a condition to be understood not fought. It was there for a reason. If cancer was a natural part of the Universe then it had a voice just like the wind or the stars if you cared to listen. The stars? I will digress for a moment. Dr Bill Chaplin, an asteroseismologist at Birmingham University, writes that: “Essentially stars resonate like a huge musical instrument. Stars make sounds naturally but we can't hear this as it is has to travel through space. Like a musical instrument, stars are not uniformly solid all the way to their core, so the sound gets trapped inside the outer layers and oscillates around inside. This makes the star vibrate causing it to expand and contract. We can detect this visually because the star gets brighter and dimmer and so we can reconstruct the sounds produced from these vibrations.” The stars sing. The Universe talks. Cancer talks.
Andreas Moritz, the author of books on diet, nutrition and natural healing, states that “cancer is not disease – it’s a defence mechanism.” It is the body’s line in the sand. The last resort. In spite of any indications to the contrary, the body fights, tooth and nail, to sustain life, not to destroy it. My body was following the natural laws of the Universe. It provided a visible and candid means of communication. Cancer. Cancer now had a message for me: “listen carefully. I am here in this abnormal cell behaviour. Look at the scan. Can you see me? Looks bad doesn’t it? We, the body and me, couldn’t see any other way to communicate with you. You’ve ignored us for decades. All your unfinished business. All your lack of self-respect. Your diet. Your lifestyle. Your anger. Your sadness. Your angst. Worthlessness. This list – how long can it be? What are you thinking? It’s not me in that scan, it’s your neglect, your ignorance. It’s what your abused self has come to. An ominous situation deep inside, clearly visible. They call it cancer for wont of a better name but it bears your name because you were responsible for its birth.”
I took in the words and I readjusted my attitude to cancer. I took responsibility for my existence in this lifetime. I backed up Chris Prentiss with a Bernie Siegel quote. Siegel is an author who writes on the relationship between the patient and healing. He states that: “there is no such thing as an incurable disease, only incurable people.” I took steps to readjust even further. I found a healer who worked on me. I dropped red meat, sugar, processed foods and sugar. I initiated a meditation regime that was far removed from dabbling. I opened my inner being to the mysteries of the Universe. I placed my priorities in their correct sequence, dropping those that no longer made any sense. I did a number of positive and rewarding things. And then, last of all, I made clear my future intent to the Spirit and asked its guidance. It’s not an easy road but it’s the only road. And all because I found one quote, in one minute inside one day, that, to me, was a sanctified direction to take. We live in a dimension that contains a voice that is constantly there, reaching out. Our imaginations have lost the ability to entertain that basic fact. When we are shoved, forcefully into trauma, then, perhaps we are forced to react. To reactivate and intensify our innate abilities to perceive that which is beyond the normal. To be kind to ourselves we should strive to generate those abilities when trauma is nowhere in sight. If I managed to completely change course because I read one quote in one book, in sixty seconds, imagine what you could achieve in 24 hours of each day!
November, 2018 – Navigating the Great Divide
We are a supposedly Christian society here in the West. But it is inescapable that if we really are sincere Christians then the world we inhabit doesn’t reflect Christian values. Spiritually speaking, any possibility of a reinvention of the original, pure principles that were once the bedrock of our evolving species appears doomed to failure. There are now more doubts than certainties when we consider the guidance offered by most contemporary belief systems. We are no longer guided but are, instead, misguided. Consistently. We are now, in fact, many faiths under one heaven. Locked into conflict as each creed states that their way is the only way. That conflict has produced nothing but a spiritual confusion. Too many Gods. The societies we inhabit in our lifetimes suffer as they clash with conflicting belief systems. Opposing interpretations of religion have produced no peace here on Earth. We are confronted with a growing collection of Gods, all at loggerheads with each other. Differing interpretations of the same God, delivered by earthbound institutions, have created a Great Divide. Any chance of a united populace building a bridge strong enough to span the gap decreases with each new sunrise.
Lloyd Geering, the NZ ordained Presbyterian minister who was charged with heresy (accused of doctrinal error and disturbing the peace of the Church), talks of the disintegration of Christianity in the West in his book, The World To Come: “Much of what the West has long taken for granted is now disappearing: the security provided by Christendom; the Christian way of interpreting reality... the belief that Christian doctrine embodies the essential and unchangeable truths by which to live. All these are passing away.” The key words to me being: the Christian way of interpreting reality! We have seen institutionalised religion become not a guide but a hindrance to those travelling the rocky road that hopefully leads to a spiritual reality. Unfortunately many modern creeds are avenues leading to a man-made reality.
We have been indoctrinated into accepting a truth designed for the masses. Manufactured and house-broken. Going to Church is a habit for the majority. As Wayne W. Dyer writes: we have accepted that truth “without any conscious contact or direct experience of that truth.” We don’t talk to the spirit that the Church we visit each weekend is host to. We listen to words delivered by rote instead. Words that have been delivered over the centuries. Only words. Still the wars persist, the violence, the social breakdown. The words are no longer relevant to our lives here in this technological wonderland. We have to admit that our inferior language has failed and we need to look to what inspired the words in the first place. A wise man once observed that for him in any Church, the most solemn moment, the most sacred, was probably the silence before the sermon. There, in that silence, we are gathered basking in the spiritual energy generated by the intent of the souls around us. A whole. There is an inner peace held within our intent and then that intent is disturbed, fractured, by a torrent of biblical information designed to alarm and, in many so-called places of God, instil fear. That which you sought there abruptly loses its all encompassing presence and is redirected to a new focal point – the pulpit. And, that which only a moment ago was all around you and within you is hijacked. Now your reverence is explained to you! Your intuition is now a possession of whichever Church you sit in. Theirs to interpret and pass back to you as an approved and often modified faculty.
We have to navigate the Great Divide that the modern world in its yearning for answers to the big questions has manufactured. Not to rely on words and concepts from the past that have warped with age. What has this fervent manufacturing produced? David R. Barrett is a man who tracks religions. He records each and every religion he finds scattered across this planet. By 2011 he had recorded almost 10,000 and growing! All believe they are the only one. Perhaps it is time to forsake “worldly” belief systems. To teach ourselves not to cling to “what once was.” To move beyond doctrine. To try and not be blinded by religious confusion which only leaves us lost most of the days of our existence. To develop a mind that is open to all possibilities, not attached to one concept that you consider is the only way to a desired future. If that sole concept fails you then you are in trouble. Your “desired future” will wither before your eyes. Build a Church that has no walls. That stretches as far as the eye can see. A universal Church that contains countless concepts to explore. Seek those truths that are spiritual not religious. Those concepts that you intuitively feel are relevant to your search. The modern religion is built on tradition and accumulated knowledge but as William James, the American philosopher, quotes: “knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself.” Learn to decipher by your own means. Follow Lama Yeshe’s advice: “the experience of an atom of honey on your tongue is much more powerful than years of listening to explanations of how sweet it is.”
We all live in a spiritual Great Divide that is largely man-made. Ideology versus ideology. This divide has largely been created by organised religion and its expectations. Expectations that injure rather than heal and unite. The end result of centuries spent creating this modern world has succeeded in only perfecting the art of “Ism” versus “Ism” in an ongoing clash of cultures. Cultures that practise blind faith within blind beliefs. The light can no longer penetrate. We all have to do ourselves a favour: we all have to cultivate the art of experimentation. Experimentation that hopefully leads to direct experience. Personal experience, not one ordained by others. Alter one’s life by exploration. Search for genuine insights, not manufactured ones. Get out of the religious supermarkets and set up your own corner shop!
We are a supposedly Christian society here in the West. But it is inescapable that if we really are sincere Christians then the world we inhabit doesn’t reflect Christian values. Spiritually speaking, any possibility of a reinvention of the original, pure principles that were once the bedrock of our evolving species appears doomed to failure. There are now more doubts than certainties when we consider the guidance offered by most contemporary belief systems. We are no longer guided but are, instead, misguided. Consistently. We are now, in fact, many faiths under one heaven. Locked into conflict as each creed states that their way is the only way. That conflict has produced nothing but a spiritual confusion. Too many Gods. The societies we inhabit in our lifetimes suffer as they clash with conflicting belief systems. Opposing interpretations of religion have produced no peace here on Earth. We are confronted with a growing collection of Gods, all at loggerheads with each other. Differing interpretations of the same God, delivered by earthbound institutions, have created a Great Divide. Any chance of a united populace building a bridge strong enough to span the gap decreases with each new sunrise.
Lloyd Geering, the NZ ordained Presbyterian minister who was charged with heresy (accused of doctrinal error and disturbing the peace of the Church), talks of the disintegration of Christianity in the West in his book, The World To Come: “Much of what the West has long taken for granted is now disappearing: the security provided by Christendom; the Christian way of interpreting reality... the belief that Christian doctrine embodies the essential and unchangeable truths by which to live. All these are passing away.” The key words to me being: the Christian way of interpreting reality! We have seen institutionalised religion become not a guide but a hindrance to those travelling the rocky road that hopefully leads to a spiritual reality. Unfortunately many modern creeds are avenues leading to a man-made reality.
We have been indoctrinated into accepting a truth designed for the masses. Manufactured and house-broken. Going to Church is a habit for the majority. As Wayne W. Dyer writes: we have accepted that truth “without any conscious contact or direct experience of that truth.” We don’t talk to the spirit that the Church we visit each weekend is host to. We listen to words delivered by rote instead. Words that have been delivered over the centuries. Only words. Still the wars persist, the violence, the social breakdown. The words are no longer relevant to our lives here in this technological wonderland. We have to admit that our inferior language has failed and we need to look to what inspired the words in the first place. A wise man once observed that for him in any Church, the most solemn moment, the most sacred, was probably the silence before the sermon. There, in that silence, we are gathered basking in the spiritual energy generated by the intent of the souls around us. A whole. There is an inner peace held within our intent and then that intent is disturbed, fractured, by a torrent of biblical information designed to alarm and, in many so-called places of God, instil fear. That which you sought there abruptly loses its all encompassing presence and is redirected to a new focal point – the pulpit. And, that which only a moment ago was all around you and within you is hijacked. Now your reverence is explained to you! Your intuition is now a possession of whichever Church you sit in. Theirs to interpret and pass back to you as an approved and often modified faculty.
We have to navigate the Great Divide that the modern world in its yearning for answers to the big questions has manufactured. Not to rely on words and concepts from the past that have warped with age. What has this fervent manufacturing produced? David R. Barrett is a man who tracks religions. He records each and every religion he finds scattered across this planet. By 2011 he had recorded almost 10,000 and growing! All believe they are the only one. Perhaps it is time to forsake “worldly” belief systems. To teach ourselves not to cling to “what once was.” To move beyond doctrine. To try and not be blinded by religious confusion which only leaves us lost most of the days of our existence. To develop a mind that is open to all possibilities, not attached to one concept that you consider is the only way to a desired future. If that sole concept fails you then you are in trouble. Your “desired future” will wither before your eyes. Build a Church that has no walls. That stretches as far as the eye can see. A universal Church that contains countless concepts to explore. Seek those truths that are spiritual not religious. Those concepts that you intuitively feel are relevant to your search. The modern religion is built on tradition and accumulated knowledge but as William James, the American philosopher, quotes: “knowledge about a thing is not the thing itself.” Learn to decipher by your own means. Follow Lama Yeshe’s advice: “the experience of an atom of honey on your tongue is much more powerful than years of listening to explanations of how sweet it is.”
We all live in a spiritual Great Divide that is largely man-made. Ideology versus ideology. This divide has largely been created by organised religion and its expectations. Expectations that injure rather than heal and unite. The end result of centuries spent creating this modern world has succeeded in only perfecting the art of “Ism” versus “Ism” in an ongoing clash of cultures. Cultures that practise blind faith within blind beliefs. The light can no longer penetrate. We all have to do ourselves a favour: we all have to cultivate the art of experimentation. Experimentation that hopefully leads to direct experience. Personal experience, not one ordained by others. Alter one’s life by exploration. Search for genuine insights, not manufactured ones. Get out of the religious supermarkets and set up your own corner shop!
October, 2018 - The Loneliness of the Long Distance Seeker
When I was diagnosed with an aggressive Prostate Cancer, I experienced a sudden change of trajectory. My wings were clipped and I came crashing back to earth. My perception of life as a place of wide open spaces where, within, I could make my own way unhindered was dissolved in that single diagnosis. Instead, seemingly at the speed of light, my world dramatically narrowed to a single point. Like all the wide open spaces being reduced to a solitary atom. We all know we are going to die but most of us ignore it and, in some cases, don’t believe it. Dying is a component of the future not the immediate present - this is an attitude readily adopted by that head buried in the sand. But here it was – the GP, facing me across his desk, telling me the bad news, counting out my life expectancy on one hand – five fingers, five years. But my chances would be improved, but not guaranteed, if I accepted what I came to discover, through desperate research, were dubious treatments. Chemotherapy, external beam radiotherapy with hormone therapy (and sometimes with high dose-rate brachytherapy) surgery (radical prostatectomy), often followed by hormone therapy and radiotherapy. Hormone therapy alone. The menu was long and intimidating. My final decision is well documented on this site. A series of events, guided by intuition, synchronicity and divine intervention, led me to a reawakening. A rebirth.
Ignoring medical advice, I ventured down a far different road than that suggested by my advisors. I found that road by a simple process. I decided to re-examine those instances in my past where I had been shown a way that was mine to follow if I chose to. A meaningful road. A road that I had let fall into disrepair. So I set out to repave it. The first step led to a new health consciousness linked with a change of lifestyle, the second to the doors of the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Centre. High on a mountain overlooking Whangarei and the distant coastline. Peaceful. Where I met the resident spiritual teacher the Ven. Geshe Sangey Thinley and the Ven. Ani Jampa Tsekyi, the centre’s resident nun. Under these wonderful guides my physical recuperation was matched by a spiritual equivalent.
After two years I returned to the South Coast of Australia. Into a spiritual isolation. Not meaning that I had been abandoned by my inner drive but that I had lost contact with my fellow travellers. The group energy. The rooms filled with inquiring intent. The ambience that permeates spiritual outposts like Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling. And I left behind the sustaining, uplifting words of Geshe Sangey Thinley. I was alone, forced to pursue wisdom using only my own resources. And here the danger became apparent. One false interpretation. One insight not recognised as Ego-driven. All could undo my noble intentions and my road would fall back into disrepair. What does a soul do in such circumstances? The art of meditation, properly applied, is always there to sustain. There is guidance in the written words of the wise. Carried across the centuries and relevant in any age because of the truth contained within. Will isolation wear these resources down? You think that you are just one soul in the midst of an enigmatic Universe. The pressure of trying to maintain a sure footing, relying solely on your own resources, is daunting. Can you do it alone? But you are not alone. You are an enigmatic Universe within one soul and one soul within an enigmatic Universe. All is one. Thus, you are never alone. “If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.” - Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre knew that the state of isolation contained a sustaining essence. This essence can instruct you. You can find your true self in solitude. Uninfluenced by externals. There is no loneliness when you are comfortable with yourself as company. I examined my time in the Meditation Centre. Vital first steps were taken there as I left my old life behind. But I wasn’t walking in circles. As the Buddha said: “If you’re facing in the right direction, all you have to do is to keep walking.” So, eventually, I walked out the front doors of Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling, packed my flimsy, immature knowledge of an enigmatic Universe, took a plane, landed and kept on walking.
Spiritually, this life is a procession of events. It starts with your birth. Re-examining the sequence you can see where everything fell into place, piece by piece. All logically arranged to enable you to arrive at where you are right now. I am here simply because this is where I have been led. And, it is here that I continue to keep learning. The environment around is different. There is no monastery on the hill anymore. But inside, the momentum, the intent, the intuition, the yearning, hasn’t changed. There is a lesson here for me that is related to my reaction to this supposed spiritual isolation. My spiritual growth relies on this isolation. It has to be this way because whatever happens in our life has to happen. People become spiritually institutionalised. They find an “ism” that presents no challenges. A house-trained God that suits their purposes. I caught a glimpse of that mentality when I left the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling behind. I was uncomfortable. It was a security blanket. My advice is to recognise the symptoms of insecurity. The Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling was an important station on this long trip. It was necessary for my development but it was not a place to step into and never leave. My advice: keep walking and be thankful that you have found a reason to walk. Amen.
When I was diagnosed with an aggressive Prostate Cancer, I experienced a sudden change of trajectory. My wings were clipped and I came crashing back to earth. My perception of life as a place of wide open spaces where, within, I could make my own way unhindered was dissolved in that single diagnosis. Instead, seemingly at the speed of light, my world dramatically narrowed to a single point. Like all the wide open spaces being reduced to a solitary atom. We all know we are going to die but most of us ignore it and, in some cases, don’t believe it. Dying is a component of the future not the immediate present - this is an attitude readily adopted by that head buried in the sand. But here it was – the GP, facing me across his desk, telling me the bad news, counting out my life expectancy on one hand – five fingers, five years. But my chances would be improved, but not guaranteed, if I accepted what I came to discover, through desperate research, were dubious treatments. Chemotherapy, external beam radiotherapy with hormone therapy (and sometimes with high dose-rate brachytherapy) surgery (radical prostatectomy), often followed by hormone therapy and radiotherapy. Hormone therapy alone. The menu was long and intimidating. My final decision is well documented on this site. A series of events, guided by intuition, synchronicity and divine intervention, led me to a reawakening. A rebirth.
Ignoring medical advice, I ventured down a far different road than that suggested by my advisors. I found that road by a simple process. I decided to re-examine those instances in my past where I had been shown a way that was mine to follow if I chose to. A meaningful road. A road that I had let fall into disrepair. So I set out to repave it. The first step led to a new health consciousness linked with a change of lifestyle, the second to the doors of the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling Tibetan Buddhist Meditation Centre. High on a mountain overlooking Whangarei and the distant coastline. Peaceful. Where I met the resident spiritual teacher the Ven. Geshe Sangey Thinley and the Ven. Ani Jampa Tsekyi, the centre’s resident nun. Under these wonderful guides my physical recuperation was matched by a spiritual equivalent.
After two years I returned to the South Coast of Australia. Into a spiritual isolation. Not meaning that I had been abandoned by my inner drive but that I had lost contact with my fellow travellers. The group energy. The rooms filled with inquiring intent. The ambience that permeates spiritual outposts like Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling. And I left behind the sustaining, uplifting words of Geshe Sangey Thinley. I was alone, forced to pursue wisdom using only my own resources. And here the danger became apparent. One false interpretation. One insight not recognised as Ego-driven. All could undo my noble intentions and my road would fall back into disrepair. What does a soul do in such circumstances? The art of meditation, properly applied, is always there to sustain. There is guidance in the written words of the wise. Carried across the centuries and relevant in any age because of the truth contained within. Will isolation wear these resources down? You think that you are just one soul in the midst of an enigmatic Universe. The pressure of trying to maintain a sure footing, relying solely on your own resources, is daunting. Can you do it alone? But you are not alone. You are an enigmatic Universe within one soul and one soul within an enigmatic Universe. All is one. Thus, you are never alone. “If you are lonely when you're alone, you are in bad company.” - Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre knew that the state of isolation contained a sustaining essence. This essence can instruct you. You can find your true self in solitude. Uninfluenced by externals. There is no loneliness when you are comfortable with yourself as company. I examined my time in the Meditation Centre. Vital first steps were taken there as I left my old life behind. But I wasn’t walking in circles. As the Buddha said: “If you’re facing in the right direction, all you have to do is to keep walking.” So, eventually, I walked out the front doors of Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling, packed my flimsy, immature knowledge of an enigmatic Universe, took a plane, landed and kept on walking.
Spiritually, this life is a procession of events. It starts with your birth. Re-examining the sequence you can see where everything fell into place, piece by piece. All logically arranged to enable you to arrive at where you are right now. I am here simply because this is where I have been led. And, it is here that I continue to keep learning. The environment around is different. There is no monastery on the hill anymore. But inside, the momentum, the intent, the intuition, the yearning, hasn’t changed. There is a lesson here for me that is related to my reaction to this supposed spiritual isolation. My spiritual growth relies on this isolation. It has to be this way because whatever happens in our life has to happen. People become spiritually institutionalised. They find an “ism” that presents no challenges. A house-trained God that suits their purposes. I caught a glimpse of that mentality when I left the Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling behind. I was uncomfortable. It was a security blanket. My advice is to recognise the symptoms of insecurity. The Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling was an important station on this long trip. It was necessary for my development but it was not a place to step into and never leave. My advice: keep walking and be thankful that you have found a reason to walk. Amen.
September, 2018 - The Conflict in Opposites
We live in a world of opposites. Life and death. Heartbreak and joy. Guilt and innocence. Wrong and right. We struggle to understand the swing between the two extremes and all the degrees between. One day we feel punished by life only to find that the next we feel blessed. We see evil unpunished and good unrecognised and ignored. We search for meaning. Our position on the spiritual path, our progress so far, depends on how we place the world around us into a relevant context. How do we interpret our role in the on-going drama that is living? In Harold S. Kushner’s foreword to Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning (an essential reading for spiritual survivalists) the rabbi emeritus states: “Frankl’s most enduring insight (is that) forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.” So, your reaction to the opposites in our lives is a barometer, a litmus test, a guide to where you are “Now”! How you react tells the whole story. If you fall over or rise above is an indication of how much distance you have “really” travelled on your journey. I have written a true story. When you come to the last words, look inside and ask yourself truthfully what you really think of John Milton Ausby. How would you have reacted to this incident if it the souls involved were close friends or loved ones? Foregiveness or revenge? Compassion or pure hatred? If forces beyond your control took away all that you loved, how would you respond? These are questions that the opposites in life force us to ask. And maybe you’re not as far down that road as you thought or maybe you are.
*****
When I was young, maybe eight or nine, my mother, setting a precedent, swapped the horses of religion mid-stream. A dissatisfaction with her Presbyterian upbringing led her to the Catholic church. The reason now long lost in time. I found myself uprooted from the public school system and delivered to the nuns at the Narromine Primary Catholic School. I settled in reasonably well though the adjusting to a different religious priority offering its own path to heaven than that previously experienced in the public school scripture classes, took a readjustment. One I never really managed well. (My mother’s conversation to the Seven Day Adventists a few years later led to even greater confusion and I still don’t know if it’s a sin in the eyes of God to dance or not to dance on a Friday night!)
The seating arrangement in the schoolroom was a mixed-gender one. Each desk shared between a boy and a girl. My companion was Sharan Tapp. Her father and mother, George and Patty, were the managers of the local swimming pool so I knew her but not personally. She wasn’t in my social circle. In my eighteen months or so at that school before I was expelled for anti-social behaviour, Sharan and I developed an easy-going relationship. We joined forces against the tyrannical Nun, the over-pious priest and the inconvenience of a good Sunday morning lost in ancient rites when she could have been honing her burgeoning competitive swimming skills and me doing anything but listening to sermons that seemed to be built on fear, guilt and an over-expectation of the abilities of the average practitioner to practice what was being preached. I sensed a degree of rebelliousness in Sharon not shared by the peer group around her. My expulsion saw me back in the familiar grounds of Narromine’s public school. As Sharan and I no longer shared common interests and primary school problems, we drifted out of each other’s orbits. When we did meet, on the street or doing laps at the pool, we shared a good conversation, a laugh or two and then moved on.
I left Narromine at the tender age of fifteen, moving to Kings Cross where I instantly fell into a lifestyle that veered between precarious and down-right dangerous. I, eventually, ended up at Langton Clinic Drug and Alcohol Referral Centre in Surry Hills after suffering a mental breakdown due to a zealous misuse of any narcotic I could find. I had not seen Sharan for almost a decade. And, to tell the truth I probably would not have recognised her anytime during that decade due to my mental befuddlement. But the early Seventies found me relatively lucid and so when we met again my memory ability was functional. I found myself on a railway platform. Whether it was rural or urban I can’t recall. Walking toward me was Sharan Tapp, now in her early twenties. It was good to see her and we sat down for a catch-up. My earlier suspicion that there was a good degree of the rebel in Sharan was confirmed. She wasn’t following the post-Catholic schoolgirl’s expected route to a clean and healthy lifestyle. I told her about my dubious years since we had last met and she told me of her Sydney life. One with more than a fair share of drugs, rock bands and the other joys of the counter culture. What excited her the most was her forthcoming trip to the USA. She had met a young black GI on R&R from Vietnam. Sharan was besotted. He had returned to the States and had stayed in touch by writing a letter or two. I don’t know what his words were. If there was a promise. A sworn love. Whatever the correspondence held it was enough to see Sharan buy a ticket, and, accompanied by her friend Sheral, fly out to her destiny a few days later. We ended our conversation and she walked away along the platform. Sharan, I called out. She turned at my voice. You be very careful there. It can be dangerous. Don’t get yourself killed.
Sharan and Sheral arrived in America on June 8, 1971. They took their time crossing the country before arriving in Washington, DC, in September. This leisurely trip, coast to coast, didn’t match Sharan’s enthusiasm when I last spoke to her. She had been so anxious to find the man of her life, her Soul Man, I imagined a trip of days, not months. Maybe she realised that she had been blinded by the romantic possibilities that are inherent in the throes of that initial passionate consummation. Believing the promises that lovers whisper. Caught in the romanticism of the black GI and the white country girl. Despite the international correspondence, I believe that she didn’t really have the directions to that man’s door. She only had a few letters and a vague mental map. Therefore she was hopeful and nothing else. Arriving in Washington was a harsh reality. The dreaming was over. The city was big and her man’s location was one of a million locations. The only clue was his description of a suburb in one of the poorer parts of town. The girls rented a small, run-down apartment adjacent to the Embassy area in North-west Washington. Undeterred, Sharan persisted. Venturing into areas that should have been avoided. They ventured one step too many far into the backstreets of Washington in an increasingly futile search. Into another world altogether. Into a culture that resented and was angered by the presence of the two young white Australian girls. Being only country girls they were out of their depth in the drug-addled, crime-ridden hostility of the poverty-stricken urban landscape that was black America in the early Seventies. The threat of violence on Sydney’s streets was mediocre in intensity when compared to the big American cities. There were threats and warnings directed at the two tourists. All was ignored as the fruition of this romantic quest was all that mattered. The high visibility of the lovestruck companion and her partner bought increased scrutiny. They were noticed and then they were followed.
John Milton Ausby, a twenty-year-old black Muslim, was a big man standing two inches over six foot. Friends had nicknamed him Goliath. He wore an Afro as a political statement. It signified a hyper-masculinity. Black pride. A spit in the face of society’s oppression and brutality. Ausby’s Afro was a badge of honour. He threw away all traces of a Christian upbringing. He had rejected his given name by adopting the alternative of Abdul Jahan Mohammed. He adopted Islam as his guiding light. His clothes now reflected his faith. He wore a toga and a turban. He was a reborn man and he was angry. His worldview was a combination of spiritual fanaticism and frustration at the social injustice that surrounded him. Ausby had listened closely to the Californian Black Panther speakers as they attempted an East Coast chapter. At first stirring but then the propositions seemed too conciliatory. They didn’t go far enough in addressing the one-sided racial divide. On his own streets, Ausby took more notice of Robert Rippy’s Black Defenders. An organisation created in defiance of the Panther’s watered-down revolution. Rippy understood the pulse beneath the black skin. There had to be a societal segregation. Straight down the middle. One Black nation on one side, one white nation on the other. One united under the Prophet and the other under the white Jesus. To the Panthers, the Defenders were too racist and contained only a skerrick of political nous. To Ausby, political nous, the art of knowing when to intensify a stance or when to modify it to one’s advantage, was a hindrance. It was too time-consuming. The only way forward was direct action. To show an intent, the application of which was only effective when applied in this moment. Now. Tomorrow was the realm of wishful thinking.
Ausby saw his neighbourhood as an urban enclave. The black community within its walls had been forced to retreat to a few square miles by the forces of the white culture that surrounded the inhabitants. And, once contained, boundaries were established where the prospect of any meaningful living standard and the opportunities granted by its achievement, was denied entry. If this was to be the end result of this cultural war then Ausby was determined to protect and serve what was left of his people’s pride. Ausby could venture into the white heart of Washington but he knew the visit was begrudgingly accepted and that he had no choice but to return back to where he came from. He had no power outside of the neighbourhood but it was a different story within the neighbourhood. The sight of two young girls infiltrating his neighbourhood was a pollution. When they walked the sidewalks, the corruption that was endemic to the white belief system, walked beside them. They were the outside white world manifested within this black refuge. And they bought the temptress with them. The impure sexuality that covered the white woman head to toe. They were ignorant of the true role that a female should play in any purified community. Especially in the new Islamic world he envisaged. They were a blatant affront. Their sexuality was a blasphemy. Ausby heard the Prophet’s voice, loud and clear. Ausby was to take his crusade beyond the walls of the enclave. He would make the Prophet smile. On October 30, John Milton Ausby followed the two Australians home. He stood for a moment outside their apartment block and prayed. A righteous calm descended. Then he knocked on Sharan and Sheral’s door.
What followed is beyond my imagination to describe. I read the newspaper reports that followed the crime and I pieced together a scenario as best I could. Whoever opened the door was confronted by Ausby, who was waving a .357 Magnum handgun. The weapon had been stolen from a home in Annandale, Virginia, earlier in the month and had found its way into Ausby’s hands. Ausby pushed his way into the apartment. Herding one victim to join the other. The two terrified girls clung to each other like a single entity. A combination of deep dread and bewilderment. Confusion rendered them speechless. Ausby pushed between them and, with the division, any hope of mercy perished. Sheral was gagged and bound then thrown to one side. Ausby concentrated on Sharan. Ausby quickly tied her hands behind her back and gagged her, throwing her to the floor. Her gag fell away with the impact. She found the strength to scream but was cut short as Ausby throttled her into silence. Ausby regagged her. Her clothes were torn from her limp body. He raped her. Ausby was not violating a human. He was punishing an enemy of the faith. A heathen. An infidel. A female bitch. A dog. Didn’t the teaching say that the blood of a non-Muslim is no better than the blood of a dog? Weren’t women the source of all evil? They seduced and bought men to their knees. It is not the fault of men that they fell. That they couldn’t control the lust that a woman could arouse in any susceptible man. The blame rested solely with women. Women were to be covered, kept out of sight and separated from general society. Didn’t the Prophet himself say: “I have left behind no greater temptation for the men than women.” And didn’t these two unbelievers bring their filth into my world? Yes they did. Ausby humiliated Sharan in the name of his God. Her earthbound sensuality was dehumanised. She was punished like a wayward animal. The assault finished and Ausby put the Magnum to Sharan’s temple and pulled the trigger. Sheral suffered the same fate. Ausby, aware of the interest two gunshots could produce, didn’t stay to gloat. He exited the building as a warrior for the faith. The identity of John Milton Ausby was abandoned. Left behind with the carnage. His shadow lay in the blood next to the two bodies. Ausby was now free of the past. He had died and had been resurrected. Sharan and Sheral lay together on the apartment floor for four days. Washington hummed around them. Lives went on unaware.
Ausby was now a holy man. He truly was Abdul Jahan Mohammed. Guaranteed a place in Heaven for his act of devotion. Ausby’s deed wasn’t to be kept secret. He couldn’t resist boasting. He told Erskine Pittman, a fashion model, that: “I killed two white devils.” Ausby bragged to a close friend, Leroy Dickens: “I feel liberated. I have snuffed out two Australian girls.” In order to consolidate his feeling of complete liberation Ausby raped then murdered Deborah Noel in her bed on December 14. He used the same gun to end her life. Only eight blocks from where the two Australian girls lived. Ausby was a warrior in his eyes but a careless fool in the eyes of the law. He left a trail of evidence and was arrested in a Greenwich Village drug raid. Ausby sat quietly through his three-day trial. He read from two Muslim holy books, occasionally uttering prayers. To all present he was observed as a satisfied man. His demeanour was that of a soul who had found peace. Divine intervention had assured him all the glories of Heaven. He would receive all the blessings that were a martyr’s reward. Ausby never testified and his lawyer presented no counter-evidence in Ausby’s defence. Ausby was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment. A trifle compared to the blessed eternity promised beyond his imprisonment.
****
The last day of October, thousands of miles away in rural NSW, Narromine was waking up to a new morning. George and Patty Tapp were finishing their early-morning breakfast. George had just finished yesterday’s Narromine News. In the background 2DU, the local radio station, was playing Rod Stewart’s Maggie May. It sure isn’t Frank Sinatra, Patty commented. It was mid-Spring and they could hear the first of the grain trucks driving to the wheat silos across the road from their house situated in the grounds of the community pool. The phone rang and Patty picked up the receiver. Morning Carol. Carol, Sharan’s sister, on the line from Trangie, 20 miles to the west. There was a silence. George turned to see Patty standing trance like. Her face was indistinct. For an instance George didn’t recognise her face. She held an expression beyond definition. Something had entered their house, uninvited. Not welcome. There was now a question to be asked. A question that would provide an answer that would be unbearable. George couldn’t summon the strength to utter just two words. What’s wrong? Turn on the news George. They both turned to the radio and waited til the clock struck the hour. He turned the radio up. The announcer commenced with the lead story of the day. Two girls murdered in the USA. Both have been identified as...
We live in a world of opposites. Life and death. Heartbreak and joy. Guilt and innocence. Wrong and right. We struggle to understand the swing between the two extremes and all the degrees between. One day we feel punished by life only to find that the next we feel blessed. We see evil unpunished and good unrecognised and ignored. We search for meaning. Our position on the spiritual path, our progress so far, depends on how we place the world around us into a relevant context. How do we interpret our role in the on-going drama that is living? In Harold S. Kushner’s foreword to Viktor E. Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning (an essential reading for spiritual survivalists) the rabbi emeritus states: “Frankl’s most enduring insight (is that) forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation. You cannot control what happens to in life, but you can always control what you will feel and do about what happens to you.” So, your reaction to the opposites in our lives is a barometer, a litmus test, a guide to where you are “Now”! How you react tells the whole story. If you fall over or rise above is an indication of how much distance you have “really” travelled on your journey. I have written a true story. When you come to the last words, look inside and ask yourself truthfully what you really think of John Milton Ausby. How would you have reacted to this incident if it the souls involved were close friends or loved ones? Foregiveness or revenge? Compassion or pure hatred? If forces beyond your control took away all that you loved, how would you respond? These are questions that the opposites in life force us to ask. And maybe you’re not as far down that road as you thought or maybe you are.
*****
When I was young, maybe eight or nine, my mother, setting a precedent, swapped the horses of religion mid-stream. A dissatisfaction with her Presbyterian upbringing led her to the Catholic church. The reason now long lost in time. I found myself uprooted from the public school system and delivered to the nuns at the Narromine Primary Catholic School. I settled in reasonably well though the adjusting to a different religious priority offering its own path to heaven than that previously experienced in the public school scripture classes, took a readjustment. One I never really managed well. (My mother’s conversation to the Seven Day Adventists a few years later led to even greater confusion and I still don’t know if it’s a sin in the eyes of God to dance or not to dance on a Friday night!)
The seating arrangement in the schoolroom was a mixed-gender one. Each desk shared between a boy and a girl. My companion was Sharan Tapp. Her father and mother, George and Patty, were the managers of the local swimming pool so I knew her but not personally. She wasn’t in my social circle. In my eighteen months or so at that school before I was expelled for anti-social behaviour, Sharan and I developed an easy-going relationship. We joined forces against the tyrannical Nun, the over-pious priest and the inconvenience of a good Sunday morning lost in ancient rites when she could have been honing her burgeoning competitive swimming skills and me doing anything but listening to sermons that seemed to be built on fear, guilt and an over-expectation of the abilities of the average practitioner to practice what was being preached. I sensed a degree of rebelliousness in Sharon not shared by the peer group around her. My expulsion saw me back in the familiar grounds of Narromine’s public school. As Sharan and I no longer shared common interests and primary school problems, we drifted out of each other’s orbits. When we did meet, on the street or doing laps at the pool, we shared a good conversation, a laugh or two and then moved on.
I left Narromine at the tender age of fifteen, moving to Kings Cross where I instantly fell into a lifestyle that veered between precarious and down-right dangerous. I, eventually, ended up at Langton Clinic Drug and Alcohol Referral Centre in Surry Hills after suffering a mental breakdown due to a zealous misuse of any narcotic I could find. I had not seen Sharan for almost a decade. And, to tell the truth I probably would not have recognised her anytime during that decade due to my mental befuddlement. But the early Seventies found me relatively lucid and so when we met again my memory ability was functional. I found myself on a railway platform. Whether it was rural or urban I can’t recall. Walking toward me was Sharan Tapp, now in her early twenties. It was good to see her and we sat down for a catch-up. My earlier suspicion that there was a good degree of the rebel in Sharan was confirmed. She wasn’t following the post-Catholic schoolgirl’s expected route to a clean and healthy lifestyle. I told her about my dubious years since we had last met and she told me of her Sydney life. One with more than a fair share of drugs, rock bands and the other joys of the counter culture. What excited her the most was her forthcoming trip to the USA. She had met a young black GI on R&R from Vietnam. Sharan was besotted. He had returned to the States and had stayed in touch by writing a letter or two. I don’t know what his words were. If there was a promise. A sworn love. Whatever the correspondence held it was enough to see Sharan buy a ticket, and, accompanied by her friend Sheral, fly out to her destiny a few days later. We ended our conversation and she walked away along the platform. Sharan, I called out. She turned at my voice. You be very careful there. It can be dangerous. Don’t get yourself killed.
Sharan and Sheral arrived in America on June 8, 1971. They took their time crossing the country before arriving in Washington, DC, in September. This leisurely trip, coast to coast, didn’t match Sharan’s enthusiasm when I last spoke to her. She had been so anxious to find the man of her life, her Soul Man, I imagined a trip of days, not months. Maybe she realised that she had been blinded by the romantic possibilities that are inherent in the throes of that initial passionate consummation. Believing the promises that lovers whisper. Caught in the romanticism of the black GI and the white country girl. Despite the international correspondence, I believe that she didn’t really have the directions to that man’s door. She only had a few letters and a vague mental map. Therefore she was hopeful and nothing else. Arriving in Washington was a harsh reality. The dreaming was over. The city was big and her man’s location was one of a million locations. The only clue was his description of a suburb in one of the poorer parts of town. The girls rented a small, run-down apartment adjacent to the Embassy area in North-west Washington. Undeterred, Sharan persisted. Venturing into areas that should have been avoided. They ventured one step too many far into the backstreets of Washington in an increasingly futile search. Into another world altogether. Into a culture that resented and was angered by the presence of the two young white Australian girls. Being only country girls they were out of their depth in the drug-addled, crime-ridden hostility of the poverty-stricken urban landscape that was black America in the early Seventies. The threat of violence on Sydney’s streets was mediocre in intensity when compared to the big American cities. There were threats and warnings directed at the two tourists. All was ignored as the fruition of this romantic quest was all that mattered. The high visibility of the lovestruck companion and her partner bought increased scrutiny. They were noticed and then they were followed.
John Milton Ausby, a twenty-year-old black Muslim, was a big man standing two inches over six foot. Friends had nicknamed him Goliath. He wore an Afro as a political statement. It signified a hyper-masculinity. Black pride. A spit in the face of society’s oppression and brutality. Ausby’s Afro was a badge of honour. He threw away all traces of a Christian upbringing. He had rejected his given name by adopting the alternative of Abdul Jahan Mohammed. He adopted Islam as his guiding light. His clothes now reflected his faith. He wore a toga and a turban. He was a reborn man and he was angry. His worldview was a combination of spiritual fanaticism and frustration at the social injustice that surrounded him. Ausby had listened closely to the Californian Black Panther speakers as they attempted an East Coast chapter. At first stirring but then the propositions seemed too conciliatory. They didn’t go far enough in addressing the one-sided racial divide. On his own streets, Ausby took more notice of Robert Rippy’s Black Defenders. An organisation created in defiance of the Panther’s watered-down revolution. Rippy understood the pulse beneath the black skin. There had to be a societal segregation. Straight down the middle. One Black nation on one side, one white nation on the other. One united under the Prophet and the other under the white Jesus. To the Panthers, the Defenders were too racist and contained only a skerrick of political nous. To Ausby, political nous, the art of knowing when to intensify a stance or when to modify it to one’s advantage, was a hindrance. It was too time-consuming. The only way forward was direct action. To show an intent, the application of which was only effective when applied in this moment. Now. Tomorrow was the realm of wishful thinking.
Ausby saw his neighbourhood as an urban enclave. The black community within its walls had been forced to retreat to a few square miles by the forces of the white culture that surrounded the inhabitants. And, once contained, boundaries were established where the prospect of any meaningful living standard and the opportunities granted by its achievement, was denied entry. If this was to be the end result of this cultural war then Ausby was determined to protect and serve what was left of his people’s pride. Ausby could venture into the white heart of Washington but he knew the visit was begrudgingly accepted and that he had no choice but to return back to where he came from. He had no power outside of the neighbourhood but it was a different story within the neighbourhood. The sight of two young girls infiltrating his neighbourhood was a pollution. When they walked the sidewalks, the corruption that was endemic to the white belief system, walked beside them. They were the outside white world manifested within this black refuge. And they bought the temptress with them. The impure sexuality that covered the white woman head to toe. They were ignorant of the true role that a female should play in any purified community. Especially in the new Islamic world he envisaged. They were a blatant affront. Their sexuality was a blasphemy. Ausby heard the Prophet’s voice, loud and clear. Ausby was to take his crusade beyond the walls of the enclave. He would make the Prophet smile. On October 30, John Milton Ausby followed the two Australians home. He stood for a moment outside their apartment block and prayed. A righteous calm descended. Then he knocked on Sharan and Sheral’s door.
What followed is beyond my imagination to describe. I read the newspaper reports that followed the crime and I pieced together a scenario as best I could. Whoever opened the door was confronted by Ausby, who was waving a .357 Magnum handgun. The weapon had been stolen from a home in Annandale, Virginia, earlier in the month and had found its way into Ausby’s hands. Ausby pushed his way into the apartment. Herding one victim to join the other. The two terrified girls clung to each other like a single entity. A combination of deep dread and bewilderment. Confusion rendered them speechless. Ausby pushed between them and, with the division, any hope of mercy perished. Sheral was gagged and bound then thrown to one side. Ausby concentrated on Sharan. Ausby quickly tied her hands behind her back and gagged her, throwing her to the floor. Her gag fell away with the impact. She found the strength to scream but was cut short as Ausby throttled her into silence. Ausby regagged her. Her clothes were torn from her limp body. He raped her. Ausby was not violating a human. He was punishing an enemy of the faith. A heathen. An infidel. A female bitch. A dog. Didn’t the teaching say that the blood of a non-Muslim is no better than the blood of a dog? Weren’t women the source of all evil? They seduced and bought men to their knees. It is not the fault of men that they fell. That they couldn’t control the lust that a woman could arouse in any susceptible man. The blame rested solely with women. Women were to be covered, kept out of sight and separated from general society. Didn’t the Prophet himself say: “I have left behind no greater temptation for the men than women.” And didn’t these two unbelievers bring their filth into my world? Yes they did. Ausby humiliated Sharan in the name of his God. Her earthbound sensuality was dehumanised. She was punished like a wayward animal. The assault finished and Ausby put the Magnum to Sharan’s temple and pulled the trigger. Sheral suffered the same fate. Ausby, aware of the interest two gunshots could produce, didn’t stay to gloat. He exited the building as a warrior for the faith. The identity of John Milton Ausby was abandoned. Left behind with the carnage. His shadow lay in the blood next to the two bodies. Ausby was now free of the past. He had died and had been resurrected. Sharan and Sheral lay together on the apartment floor for four days. Washington hummed around them. Lives went on unaware.
Ausby was now a holy man. He truly was Abdul Jahan Mohammed. Guaranteed a place in Heaven for his act of devotion. Ausby’s deed wasn’t to be kept secret. He couldn’t resist boasting. He told Erskine Pittman, a fashion model, that: “I killed two white devils.” Ausby bragged to a close friend, Leroy Dickens: “I feel liberated. I have snuffed out two Australian girls.” In order to consolidate his feeling of complete liberation Ausby raped then murdered Deborah Noel in her bed on December 14. He used the same gun to end her life. Only eight blocks from where the two Australian girls lived. Ausby was a warrior in his eyes but a careless fool in the eyes of the law. He left a trail of evidence and was arrested in a Greenwich Village drug raid. Ausby sat quietly through his three-day trial. He read from two Muslim holy books, occasionally uttering prayers. To all present he was observed as a satisfied man. His demeanour was that of a soul who had found peace. Divine intervention had assured him all the glories of Heaven. He would receive all the blessings that were a martyr’s reward. Ausby never testified and his lawyer presented no counter-evidence in Ausby’s defence. Ausby was sentenced to 20 years to life imprisonment. A trifle compared to the blessed eternity promised beyond his imprisonment.
****
The last day of October, thousands of miles away in rural NSW, Narromine was waking up to a new morning. George and Patty Tapp were finishing their early-morning breakfast. George had just finished yesterday’s Narromine News. In the background 2DU, the local radio station, was playing Rod Stewart’s Maggie May. It sure isn’t Frank Sinatra, Patty commented. It was mid-Spring and they could hear the first of the grain trucks driving to the wheat silos across the road from their house situated in the grounds of the community pool. The phone rang and Patty picked up the receiver. Morning Carol. Carol, Sharan’s sister, on the line from Trangie, 20 miles to the west. There was a silence. George turned to see Patty standing trance like. Her face was indistinct. For an instance George didn’t recognise her face. She held an expression beyond definition. Something had entered their house, uninvited. Not welcome. There was now a question to be asked. A question that would provide an answer that would be unbearable. George couldn’t summon the strength to utter just two words. What’s wrong? Turn on the news George. They both turned to the radio and waited til the clock struck the hour. He turned the radio up. The announcer commenced with the lead story of the day. Two girls murdered in the USA. Both have been identified as...
August, 2018: So Many Roads, So Many Trains To Ride
“Human life is limited, but knowledge is limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless is fatal; and to presume that one really knows is fatal indeed!” – Taoist Philosopher Chuang Tze (369-286 BCE)
The spiritual quest, for wont of a better word, has been described as many things. One has been a comparison to building a bridge that crosses from chaos to an idealised serenity borne out of an accumulated wisdom. Between turmoil and peace. Once the bridge is built we can cross it and then its usefulness is superfluous. For it is our bridge and ours alone. No-one else can cross our bridge. We all have to build our own bridge. Our collective dilemma, in this shared existence, is in understanding the bridge’s building blocks. What is the best, the right, material to use? And where do we find it? And how do we know that our selection is the best selection for our purpose? For our bridge? The building blocks can double as stumbling blocks if the construction process is too confusing. If you change the wording of Chuang Tze’s observation to read “human life is limited but the building blocks of serenity are limitless,” we can clearly see our problem. If the material to build is limitless, how do we narrow the choice down to suit our purpose? What do we accept and what do we reject? The choices available can drive us into an inner agitation. A feeling of a well-meaning intent on our behalf now unfortunately ambushed by distraction. By a growing confusion as we are faced with a world of spiritual interpretations that offer more variations than we wish to encounter. We can be waylaid by convincing but conflicting methodologies. The result can be fatal to spiritual growth. As Blues singer/guitarist Otis Rush sang when he articulated the way home to the one woman in his life: “So many roads, so many trains to ride.” All to be considered and evaluated before he could entertain satisfaction. Too many roads and too many trains mean we could easily lose our inner quest, left behind on a deserted station or on a back-road not found on a map. Our journey becomes more of an effort to find the map and the destination itself is endangered as our distraction intensifies.
We start collecting the ingredients for our building blocks when our intuition tells us it is time to do so. When we stand on one shore and hunger to cross over to that shore where you sense your true being can be realised. That shore that knows who you are and is always ready to welcome you home. But first the bridge. You get down to business. You collect steps. A step-by-step approach. This step leads you into a church or a synagogue or a mosque or an ashram. That step leads to the feet of a guru or to the arms of a priest or to a messianic cult or to an order of monks cloistered in isolation. Many steps are utilised as spiritual guide books are read, holy words absorbed. Meditation, the silent retreat, the communal prayer, the Wiccan ceremony, the cathedral within the pantheist’s forest – all are destinations reached step-by-step. Your cup is starting to overflow with knowledge but it is also beginning to overflow with doubt. You see the schisms within traditional western religions, the brutality perpetrated in the name of Allah, even within the Buddhist world as we witness Burma’s Buddhist ultranationalists – the Ma Ba Tha monks – attacking that country’s Muslim minority. You read of so many Gods that your head spins. This God is vengeful, this one benign. In this belief system God exists. In this one he is dead. Then it becomes explicit. To save yourself you have to do this, you can’t do that. The answer is within. The answer is without. Fear God. Don’t fear God. Your building blocks slowly fragment simply because you feel that you can’t find one single piece of logic strong enough to sustain you. To over-rule your doubts. For every conviction arrived at is in danger the next time you open a book, attend a sermon or seek the advice of any venerable soul in your spiritual community. You have pursued the limitless with only a very limited compass to guide you.
I have been in that position where an information overload had produced only confusion, robbing me of the ability to meditate with any confidence. Simply because I had accumulated so many possible descriptions - (or maybe roads “that lead to”) – when it came to that spiritual “Unknown” I was exploring, I had become lost on a sea of translations, interpretation and plain old-fashioned guesswork! In my early attempts at forging a link between the Seeker and the Sought I opted to open my meditation by addressing the Unnameable Father. This established an identity that I could relate to. Someone to talk to. Someone to visualise. The problem soon arose when I realised that by doing so I had isolated both parties. By giving Spirit a name, an identity, I was creating a division between myself and the source. This Unnameable Father was “there” and I was “here”. Unnameable Father wasn’t adequate. There had to be a broader description more suitable. I didn’t find one. I couldn’t meditate because I had no idea who I was addressing. I started to ask other people by what name they called their God when they needed an urgent talk or just companionship. Most people couldn’t tell me, electing to use the generic term God. That vagueness within their responses was unsettling. It was as though people were content with a guess. “We don’t know who we’re talking to and the best guess is that it’s something that can be filed under G in the spiritual filing cabinet.” Was I guessing too? Indian philosopher U. G. Krishnamurti made it clear that I was creating my own conflict. He stated that: “all that you do makes it impossible for what already is there to express itself”.
Here was the problem: I was building a bridge but my building blocks were of an inferior quality. My initial building blocks were built from tried and tested sources. I had gathered its components from many avenues. From as many great writers, poets, philosophers, saints and mystics that I could find. I had dived into the core beliefs of Buddhism, Zen, Christianity and all the multitude of “isms” available to any investigator. I didn’t neglect the worlds of magic, of the occult, of scientific wonder, of supernatural and paranormal mystery. All manifestations of the Unknown were welcomed houseguests. But I neglected something vital. I had welcomed all of what I perceived as a positive inspiration suitable as a catalyst to spiritual growth. I was only interested in that which I perceived as “right” and avoided what I considered as “wrong.” I shunned doubt. It was an emotion that only invited perplexity. I sought simplicity. I hadn’t accepted doubt. To my detriment. Consequently, my building block was missing a vital ingredient. To be reliable enough to hold up a bridge it had to contain all variables, all opposites, all the roads and all the trains. French philosopher and scientist Rene Descartes said: “if you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that, at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” You can’t doubt all things “at least once in your life” unless you understand what you are doubting. Unless you ask questions. And you can’t ask questions until you have absorbed the conflict within any belief system. Until you have taken what is relevant to your search from each and every argument or opinion or any radical dogma (be they prejudiced, fanatical, farcical or the opposite – enlightening and inspirational) and forge all into a building block. And then you can build your bridge. Following U. G. Krishnamurti’s logic, all that I had done so far, which was to become lost in the construction of my bridge by overlooking vital ingredients, had succeeded only in creating roadblocks and dead-ends. Continuity was becoming a distant memory. And, with that, “what already is there”, that unseen but sensed presence, was increasingly locked out of my search.
I now know that everything must be explored. Not only that which is convenient or that which makes you comfortable but also that which makes you uncomfortable. That which challenges. And from those challenges, where you confront opposites, you find a third component for your building block. The conclusion that is created from the truth hidden within opposites. For all opposites contain truth. “Today is bad” versus “Today is good”. Two opposites. The former is uttered by a man whose car was stolen. The latter by a man who just found a hundred dollars in the gutter. Both opposites hold a truth believed by each participant. But it is only a truth when placed into context. “Today” wasn’t bad or good. Today was just an experience that held a spectrum containing varying degrees of good or bad, depending on the experience. That is the third component of your building block. We incorporate all opposites. Plus the middle observation which establishes the context and our position within those opposites. So, now when I run across a spiritual observation that threatens to either cancel out or hinder a held belief, I look for the truth within that proposition, adopt it, reject what I can’t intuitively relate to and go forward with the new insight. So every new God within any new spiritual “ism” that I am introduced to is a blessing. And the doubt that the introduction raises is a blessing too. And the true beauty is that doubt, which is seen as a negative, was the driving force. But it’s not a negative or a positive til it’s placed in the context of your own lifetime here on this plane.
“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
― Voltaire
Doubt will keep you on your spiritual toes, certainty will cripple you. For if you know everything, what is there left to know? You will become lost within your house of certainty. The doors will close. The windows will shut. You will remain seated in your chair because there will be no reason to get up and explore because there’s nothing left to explore. You know everything. You are in a spiritual limbo. Your only way out will be if Doubt knocks and invites you out for the day!
“Human life is limited, but knowledge is limitless. To drive the limited in pursuit of the limitless is fatal; and to presume that one really knows is fatal indeed!” – Taoist Philosopher Chuang Tze (369-286 BCE)
The spiritual quest, for wont of a better word, has been described as many things. One has been a comparison to building a bridge that crosses from chaos to an idealised serenity borne out of an accumulated wisdom. Between turmoil and peace. Once the bridge is built we can cross it and then its usefulness is superfluous. For it is our bridge and ours alone. No-one else can cross our bridge. We all have to build our own bridge. Our collective dilemma, in this shared existence, is in understanding the bridge’s building blocks. What is the best, the right, material to use? And where do we find it? And how do we know that our selection is the best selection for our purpose? For our bridge? The building blocks can double as stumbling blocks if the construction process is too confusing. If you change the wording of Chuang Tze’s observation to read “human life is limited but the building blocks of serenity are limitless,” we can clearly see our problem. If the material to build is limitless, how do we narrow the choice down to suit our purpose? What do we accept and what do we reject? The choices available can drive us into an inner agitation. A feeling of a well-meaning intent on our behalf now unfortunately ambushed by distraction. By a growing confusion as we are faced with a world of spiritual interpretations that offer more variations than we wish to encounter. We can be waylaid by convincing but conflicting methodologies. The result can be fatal to spiritual growth. As Blues singer/guitarist Otis Rush sang when he articulated the way home to the one woman in his life: “So many roads, so many trains to ride.” All to be considered and evaluated before he could entertain satisfaction. Too many roads and too many trains mean we could easily lose our inner quest, left behind on a deserted station or on a back-road not found on a map. Our journey becomes more of an effort to find the map and the destination itself is endangered as our distraction intensifies.
We start collecting the ingredients for our building blocks when our intuition tells us it is time to do so. When we stand on one shore and hunger to cross over to that shore where you sense your true being can be realised. That shore that knows who you are and is always ready to welcome you home. But first the bridge. You get down to business. You collect steps. A step-by-step approach. This step leads you into a church or a synagogue or a mosque or an ashram. That step leads to the feet of a guru or to the arms of a priest or to a messianic cult or to an order of monks cloistered in isolation. Many steps are utilised as spiritual guide books are read, holy words absorbed. Meditation, the silent retreat, the communal prayer, the Wiccan ceremony, the cathedral within the pantheist’s forest – all are destinations reached step-by-step. Your cup is starting to overflow with knowledge but it is also beginning to overflow with doubt. You see the schisms within traditional western religions, the brutality perpetrated in the name of Allah, even within the Buddhist world as we witness Burma’s Buddhist ultranationalists – the Ma Ba Tha monks – attacking that country’s Muslim minority. You read of so many Gods that your head spins. This God is vengeful, this one benign. In this belief system God exists. In this one he is dead. Then it becomes explicit. To save yourself you have to do this, you can’t do that. The answer is within. The answer is without. Fear God. Don’t fear God. Your building blocks slowly fragment simply because you feel that you can’t find one single piece of logic strong enough to sustain you. To over-rule your doubts. For every conviction arrived at is in danger the next time you open a book, attend a sermon or seek the advice of any venerable soul in your spiritual community. You have pursued the limitless with only a very limited compass to guide you.
I have been in that position where an information overload had produced only confusion, robbing me of the ability to meditate with any confidence. Simply because I had accumulated so many possible descriptions - (or maybe roads “that lead to”) – when it came to that spiritual “Unknown” I was exploring, I had become lost on a sea of translations, interpretation and plain old-fashioned guesswork! In my early attempts at forging a link between the Seeker and the Sought I opted to open my meditation by addressing the Unnameable Father. This established an identity that I could relate to. Someone to talk to. Someone to visualise. The problem soon arose when I realised that by doing so I had isolated both parties. By giving Spirit a name, an identity, I was creating a division between myself and the source. This Unnameable Father was “there” and I was “here”. Unnameable Father wasn’t adequate. There had to be a broader description more suitable. I didn’t find one. I couldn’t meditate because I had no idea who I was addressing. I started to ask other people by what name they called their God when they needed an urgent talk or just companionship. Most people couldn’t tell me, electing to use the generic term God. That vagueness within their responses was unsettling. It was as though people were content with a guess. “We don’t know who we’re talking to and the best guess is that it’s something that can be filed under G in the spiritual filing cabinet.” Was I guessing too? Indian philosopher U. G. Krishnamurti made it clear that I was creating my own conflict. He stated that: “all that you do makes it impossible for what already is there to express itself”.
Here was the problem: I was building a bridge but my building blocks were of an inferior quality. My initial building blocks were built from tried and tested sources. I had gathered its components from many avenues. From as many great writers, poets, philosophers, saints and mystics that I could find. I had dived into the core beliefs of Buddhism, Zen, Christianity and all the multitude of “isms” available to any investigator. I didn’t neglect the worlds of magic, of the occult, of scientific wonder, of supernatural and paranormal mystery. All manifestations of the Unknown were welcomed houseguests. But I neglected something vital. I had welcomed all of what I perceived as a positive inspiration suitable as a catalyst to spiritual growth. I was only interested in that which I perceived as “right” and avoided what I considered as “wrong.” I shunned doubt. It was an emotion that only invited perplexity. I sought simplicity. I hadn’t accepted doubt. To my detriment. Consequently, my building block was missing a vital ingredient. To be reliable enough to hold up a bridge it had to contain all variables, all opposites, all the roads and all the trains. French philosopher and scientist Rene Descartes said: “if you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that, at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.” You can’t doubt all things “at least once in your life” unless you understand what you are doubting. Unless you ask questions. And you can’t ask questions until you have absorbed the conflict within any belief system. Until you have taken what is relevant to your search from each and every argument or opinion or any radical dogma (be they prejudiced, fanatical, farcical or the opposite – enlightening and inspirational) and forge all into a building block. And then you can build your bridge. Following U. G. Krishnamurti’s logic, all that I had done so far, which was to become lost in the construction of my bridge by overlooking vital ingredients, had succeeded only in creating roadblocks and dead-ends. Continuity was becoming a distant memory. And, with that, “what already is there”, that unseen but sensed presence, was increasingly locked out of my search.
I now know that everything must be explored. Not only that which is convenient or that which makes you comfortable but also that which makes you uncomfortable. That which challenges. And from those challenges, where you confront opposites, you find a third component for your building block. The conclusion that is created from the truth hidden within opposites. For all opposites contain truth. “Today is bad” versus “Today is good”. Two opposites. The former is uttered by a man whose car was stolen. The latter by a man who just found a hundred dollars in the gutter. Both opposites hold a truth believed by each participant. But it is only a truth when placed into context. “Today” wasn’t bad or good. Today was just an experience that held a spectrum containing varying degrees of good or bad, depending on the experience. That is the third component of your building block. We incorporate all opposites. Plus the middle observation which establishes the context and our position within those opposites. So, now when I run across a spiritual observation that threatens to either cancel out or hinder a held belief, I look for the truth within that proposition, adopt it, reject what I can’t intuitively relate to and go forward with the new insight. So every new God within any new spiritual “ism” that I am introduced to is a blessing. And the doubt that the introduction raises is a blessing too. And the true beauty is that doubt, which is seen as a negative, was the driving force. But it’s not a negative or a positive til it’s placed in the context of your own lifetime here on this plane.
“Doubt is an uncomfortable condition, but certainty is a ridiculous one.”
― Voltaire
Doubt will keep you on your spiritual toes, certainty will cripple you. For if you know everything, what is there left to know? You will become lost within your house of certainty. The doors will close. The windows will shut. You will remain seated in your chair because there will be no reason to get up and explore because there’s nothing left to explore. You know everything. You are in a spiritual limbo. Your only way out will be if Doubt knocks and invites you out for the day!
July, 2018: Seeing Silence
I have been asked just what I mean by the term Seeing Silence. It’s a contradiction. Put in technical terms it’s a term in which inconsistent elements are present. You can’t see silence, let alone taste, smell or hold it in your hands. “Are you going all Californian wacky New Age on us Michael?” as one friend said. That question, to me, was an example of how limited a large percentage of reasoning has become when faced with an abstract concept. Be it a simple few words on a page or the mysteries of the unknown. When I say it’s a metaphor for what they would conveniently call “God”, they nod their head and say “why didn’t you just call it God in the first place like the rest of us?” I prefer Silence as it’s a word that conjures up no positive mental image. It is impossible to give Silence a material form. Silence is not a person. If we go down that road we might as well call the ocean Jack and the wind Bill. Any description of the unseen, the intuitively felt presence, energy or spirit that compels us to search for answers to all the big questions, faces an obstacle too big to overcome at this stage of humanity’s spiritual development. That is that we simply do not have the vocabulary to describe in definite terms the identity, shape or form of the entity that we are praying to. That which we beseech for mercy or that wise inner voice that whispers to us directly when we least expect it. So we cling to a word like God and when we call on that name the imagery that ensues is, in most cases, man-made. As once described, that God is a house-broken God, domesticated to suit the culture to which it belongs. Kidnapped and carried from the pure world of a soul-driven contemplation to the many avenues of exploitation that humanity has managed to construct over the centuries. Considering all that, Silence is just as valid a name as God. Leaving that particular argument behind, the question now arises. Can one see Silence?
We live on a planet of wonder in a cosmos of wonder. The human body, this envelope that carries the spirit, is a wonder. We are faced with a storehouse of endless possibilities, within and without yet eternally interconnected. And behind the possibilities we sense an unseen presence that is unnameable. This presence is a source of creativity in that it invites us all to seek, find and create. To create something out of the possibilities. To take them from the possible to the probable to a manifested reality. We see those possibilities manifested into being over and over again throughout the ages. This manifestation is drawn from a source that is more felt than heard. It is silent in nature. We pray, meditate, contemplate but, more often than not, we are not engaged in an actual conversation. It’s not a spiritual talk-back radio program we tune into. Yet, from this silent exchange great inspiration can arise. We can form a partnership with the creativity that is always available when we seek it out with good intent. Rumi, the mystic Sufi poet, said: “the breath of the flute player, does it belong to the flute?” No, the flute is the instrument of expression, the flute-player is the channeller and the breath is the Silence, the source of invention. A partnership between the mortal and the infinite. In this illustration we can see the Silence bought to life. Just as we see it expressed in art, music or literature. To take it one step further, we can not only see Silence, we can hold it in our hands. A book, a painting, a recorded disc. The Silence is not only expressed in material forms as shown above but is also found in Nature. To observe Nature as it responds to the unseen forces which sustain it, is to see Silence in all its grandeur.
So, this Silence is a source I turn to when I need guidance, inspiration or, in many cases, companionship. And, once known, to be visible. Dee Hock, the founder of the Visa Card system said: “Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.” It is an “unknown” willing to be known. The French theologian Blaise Pascal said: “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” Pascal was talking about a shared silence, a co-existent quiet. Silence and Pascal’s Quiet as one within and without. A wordless communication. And when the intuition is stirred, the imagination grasps the elusive, the hidden answers are revealed and the meditator transforms the nascent information into a visible state, be it a new happy state of mind or the vital missing words to complete the poem or the vivid brushstroke that brings the painting to life, then Silence is observable. Then we all see Silence.
I have been asked just what I mean by the term Seeing Silence. It’s a contradiction. Put in technical terms it’s a term in which inconsistent elements are present. You can’t see silence, let alone taste, smell or hold it in your hands. “Are you going all Californian wacky New Age on us Michael?” as one friend said. That question, to me, was an example of how limited a large percentage of reasoning has become when faced with an abstract concept. Be it a simple few words on a page or the mysteries of the unknown. When I say it’s a metaphor for what they would conveniently call “God”, they nod their head and say “why didn’t you just call it God in the first place like the rest of us?” I prefer Silence as it’s a word that conjures up no positive mental image. It is impossible to give Silence a material form. Silence is not a person. If we go down that road we might as well call the ocean Jack and the wind Bill. Any description of the unseen, the intuitively felt presence, energy or spirit that compels us to search for answers to all the big questions, faces an obstacle too big to overcome at this stage of humanity’s spiritual development. That is that we simply do not have the vocabulary to describe in definite terms the identity, shape or form of the entity that we are praying to. That which we beseech for mercy or that wise inner voice that whispers to us directly when we least expect it. So we cling to a word like God and when we call on that name the imagery that ensues is, in most cases, man-made. As once described, that God is a house-broken God, domesticated to suit the culture to which it belongs. Kidnapped and carried from the pure world of a soul-driven contemplation to the many avenues of exploitation that humanity has managed to construct over the centuries. Considering all that, Silence is just as valid a name as God. Leaving that particular argument behind, the question now arises. Can one see Silence?
We live on a planet of wonder in a cosmos of wonder. The human body, this envelope that carries the spirit, is a wonder. We are faced with a storehouse of endless possibilities, within and without yet eternally interconnected. And behind the possibilities we sense an unseen presence that is unnameable. This presence is a source of creativity in that it invites us all to seek, find and create. To create something out of the possibilities. To take them from the possible to the probable to a manifested reality. We see those possibilities manifested into being over and over again throughout the ages. This manifestation is drawn from a source that is more felt than heard. It is silent in nature. We pray, meditate, contemplate but, more often than not, we are not engaged in an actual conversation. It’s not a spiritual talk-back radio program we tune into. Yet, from this silent exchange great inspiration can arise. We can form a partnership with the creativity that is always available when we seek it out with good intent. Rumi, the mystic Sufi poet, said: “the breath of the flute player, does it belong to the flute?” No, the flute is the instrument of expression, the flute-player is the channeller and the breath is the Silence, the source of invention. A partnership between the mortal and the infinite. In this illustration we can see the Silence bought to life. Just as we see it expressed in art, music or literature. To take it one step further, we can not only see Silence, we can hold it in our hands. A book, a painting, a recorded disc. The Silence is not only expressed in material forms as shown above but is also found in Nature. To observe Nature as it responds to the unseen forces which sustain it, is to see Silence in all its grandeur.
So, this Silence is a source I turn to when I need guidance, inspiration or, in many cases, companionship. And, once known, to be visible. Dee Hock, the founder of the Visa Card system said: “Make an empty space in any corner of your mind, and creativity will instantly fill it.” It is an “unknown” willing to be known. The French theologian Blaise Pascal said: “I have often said that the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.” Pascal was talking about a shared silence, a co-existent quiet. Silence and Pascal’s Quiet as one within and without. A wordless communication. And when the intuition is stirred, the imagination grasps the elusive, the hidden answers are revealed and the meditator transforms the nascent information into a visible state, be it a new happy state of mind or the vital missing words to complete the poem or the vivid brushstroke that brings the painting to life, then Silence is observable. Then we all see Silence.
June, 2018: Living in The Big Bang. A Contemplation.
How does it feel? You’re residing somewhere on Planet Earth deep inside your daily activities totally unaware that you’re spinning with the Earth’s axis. Depending on your location, the speed is variable. If you’re holidaying in Brazil you’re whizzing along at around 1600kph. In the time you ordered a coffee and drank it, say 30 minutes, you will have travelled 800 kilometres without leaving the cafe and with no sense of motion. I’m writing this in Australia and am galloping along between 900 and 1000kph. To add to the awe, this galaxy that we inhabit, the island of stars called the Milky Way, is merrily hurtling across the Universe at approx 2,100,00kph so if you have taken one minute to read this so far you have covered 35,000kms. Well done. And we are accelerating. Expanding further out beyond all the unknown limits travelling within the cosmic envelope that is the Big Bang.
The Theory goes like this: some 13.82 billion years ago a “singularity” existed. This singularity was a very hot, small, and dense zone of infinite density with no stars, atoms, form, or structure. A small speck, maybe the size of the single full-stop at the end of this sentence. That description will have to do as an understanding of this zone is still beyond our clumsy interpretation of the laws of physics when they apply to our universe. For reasons unknown this singularity decided to expand. Some argue a tremendous explosion while others are convinced that it wasn’t a big bang as such but more of a very, very small balloon suddenly inflating. Explosion or inflation aside, the concentrated contents within the singularity were released. Space.com, in one of its online articles, underlines the dramatics of the moment: “When the universe was a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second in age — it experienced an incredible burst of expansion known as inflation, in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. During this period, the universe doubled in size at least 90 times, going from subatomic-sized to golf-ball-sized almost instantaneously.” What was released is still controversial. Was it a Universal energy, a compressed form of matter or was it the hand of God full bent on creation? Thirteen billion years on and we are still only observers as the on-going drama unfolds around us. Science has proven that we are participants in an incredible event that we, on Earth, have reduced to a theory. The Big Bang. All theories are transitory – they can swing from certainty to uncertainty with one refocus of a nuclear microscope or one revolution of a Hubble Space Telescope. The final word on anything can suddenly be nothing more than just another guess in the blink of a scientist’s eye. The only thing of importance is that you and I are residents within this expanding phenomena. This Universe. A Universe that has been often defined by Physicist Duco A. Schreuder as "the totality of existence, or everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist.” If this is true and I, for one, stand with Schreuder, then we are obligated, if we are set upon a spiritual search, to explore all possibilities that an observance of our place in this Universe can offer. We have to move from snapshots to the Big Picture.
If our rate of expansion maintains its velocity, interesting possibilities are raised. To name one, we could have a “cold death” of the Universe. If the Universe continues to expand forever it cools down. Eventually it becomes too cold to support any life and we cease to exist. That is just one. There is the Big Rip, the Big Crunch, the Heat Death, the inevitable death of our Sun and on we go. The common factor is that all such theories of extinction are related to our universal expansion. The scientific consensus is that our Universe, one way or the other, will cease to exist somewhere in the future. And we will be no more. That is one consensus but, as always, there is another point of view. There are scientists that believe that this Universe that we inhabit is subject to a law familiar to us all. The cycle of life. The Universe follows a natural course being a cycle that encompasses birth, life and then death, and, if you are a believer in reincarnation, all is followed by rebirth. This is called the Cyclic Universe Theory. They believe this is not the first time that our Universe has followed this sequence. It has previously sprung into existence from a solitary point, inflated til all limits were reached whereupon deflation had set in and, after having run its natural course, the Universe experienced a cosmic death. Then a rebirth - a reincarnation. We, here on Earth at the present time, according to the Cyclic Universe adherents, are experiencing one of these phases. This has interesting connotations. The Big Bang, either as a scientific event that excludes a divine influence or as a direct act of divine creation, created a Universe in which we occupy a definite position. In other words we are as much a vital component of the Universe’s structure as any moon, sun or falling star. We are the Universe and the Universe is us. We are indivisible. Take out any building brick from a wall and it is not the same wall. We are all matter within the Big Bang. So, if we consider that we are the Universe and the Universe is us and that we are share a universal consciousness, then it is worth considering that, if the Cyclic Universe Theory is feasible, then we all experience the same Karmic laws as the Universe. The Earth is in one of its lifetimes, deep in the body of an expanding Universe like the atoms within our own bodies and, where I go, my atoms go. And where the Universe goes, the Earth goes. If the Universe reincarnates, so do we. So, here we have a fresh new Universe that will, once again, produce a life-form that is a manifestation of universal consciousness.
Who is right and who is wrong? It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that all theories are made by souls that are reaching out for answers to questions that have tormented us through the ages. What is important is that there is an unknown source that drives that questioning. We sense it and more often than not we ignore it. Like the hard fact that we will all die, yet a majority of us seem to have an inbuilt urge to deny it. As I have stumbled along my path chasing that ever-pervasive voice, I have found that it becomes more audible the more I persist in observing and if I pursue the resultant questioning. Theories like the Big Bang are important because they invoke a sense of the unknown, of wonder. They compel us, those who exist in the heart of our Universe, to examine more deeply the implications, the available conclusions, that can deepen our understanding of ourselves and the powers that influence it. Our origin, our past, is not important. Our future too is not important. They are both bound by theories. Our universe can only be explored now. We can only live in the present. “Now” is where we all live. And “Now” is a locality where we can best operate. Our origin that was perhaps born in an expanding cosmic speck is cloaked in mystery. Where this ongoing expansion is headed for, its destination, is a mystery. Both of those mysteries are beyond our understanding. The only mystery that we can delve into is the one that surrounds us now.
This writing developed when I came across this picture.
How does it feel? You’re residing somewhere on Planet Earth deep inside your daily activities totally unaware that you’re spinning with the Earth’s axis. Depending on your location, the speed is variable. If you’re holidaying in Brazil you’re whizzing along at around 1600kph. In the time you ordered a coffee and drank it, say 30 minutes, you will have travelled 800 kilometres without leaving the cafe and with no sense of motion. I’m writing this in Australia and am galloping along between 900 and 1000kph. To add to the awe, this galaxy that we inhabit, the island of stars called the Milky Way, is merrily hurtling across the Universe at approx 2,100,00kph so if you have taken one minute to read this so far you have covered 35,000kms. Well done. And we are accelerating. Expanding further out beyond all the unknown limits travelling within the cosmic envelope that is the Big Bang.
The Theory goes like this: some 13.82 billion years ago a “singularity” existed. This singularity was a very hot, small, and dense zone of infinite density with no stars, atoms, form, or structure. A small speck, maybe the size of the single full-stop at the end of this sentence. That description will have to do as an understanding of this zone is still beyond our clumsy interpretation of the laws of physics when they apply to our universe. For reasons unknown this singularity decided to expand. Some argue a tremendous explosion while others are convinced that it wasn’t a big bang as such but more of a very, very small balloon suddenly inflating. Explosion or inflation aside, the concentrated contents within the singularity were released. Space.com, in one of its online articles, underlines the dramatics of the moment: “When the universe was a hundredth of a billionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second in age — it experienced an incredible burst of expansion known as inflation, in which space itself expanded faster than the speed of light. During this period, the universe doubled in size at least 90 times, going from subatomic-sized to golf-ball-sized almost instantaneously.” What was released is still controversial. Was it a Universal energy, a compressed form of matter or was it the hand of God full bent on creation? Thirteen billion years on and we are still only observers as the on-going drama unfolds around us. Science has proven that we are participants in an incredible event that we, on Earth, have reduced to a theory. The Big Bang. All theories are transitory – they can swing from certainty to uncertainty with one refocus of a nuclear microscope or one revolution of a Hubble Space Telescope. The final word on anything can suddenly be nothing more than just another guess in the blink of a scientist’s eye. The only thing of importance is that you and I are residents within this expanding phenomena. This Universe. A Universe that has been often defined by Physicist Duco A. Schreuder as "the totality of existence, or everything that exists, everything that has existed, and everything that will exist.” If this is true and I, for one, stand with Schreuder, then we are obligated, if we are set upon a spiritual search, to explore all possibilities that an observance of our place in this Universe can offer. We have to move from snapshots to the Big Picture.
If our rate of expansion maintains its velocity, interesting possibilities are raised. To name one, we could have a “cold death” of the Universe. If the Universe continues to expand forever it cools down. Eventually it becomes too cold to support any life and we cease to exist. That is just one. There is the Big Rip, the Big Crunch, the Heat Death, the inevitable death of our Sun and on we go. The common factor is that all such theories of extinction are related to our universal expansion. The scientific consensus is that our Universe, one way or the other, will cease to exist somewhere in the future. And we will be no more. That is one consensus but, as always, there is another point of view. There are scientists that believe that this Universe that we inhabit is subject to a law familiar to us all. The cycle of life. The Universe follows a natural course being a cycle that encompasses birth, life and then death, and, if you are a believer in reincarnation, all is followed by rebirth. This is called the Cyclic Universe Theory. They believe this is not the first time that our Universe has followed this sequence. It has previously sprung into existence from a solitary point, inflated til all limits were reached whereupon deflation had set in and, after having run its natural course, the Universe experienced a cosmic death. Then a rebirth - a reincarnation. We, here on Earth at the present time, according to the Cyclic Universe adherents, are experiencing one of these phases. This has interesting connotations. The Big Bang, either as a scientific event that excludes a divine influence or as a direct act of divine creation, created a Universe in which we occupy a definite position. In other words we are as much a vital component of the Universe’s structure as any moon, sun or falling star. We are the Universe and the Universe is us. We are indivisible. Take out any building brick from a wall and it is not the same wall. We are all matter within the Big Bang. So, if we consider that we are the Universe and the Universe is us and that we are share a universal consciousness, then it is worth considering that, if the Cyclic Universe Theory is feasible, then we all experience the same Karmic laws as the Universe. The Earth is in one of its lifetimes, deep in the body of an expanding Universe like the atoms within our own bodies and, where I go, my atoms go. And where the Universe goes, the Earth goes. If the Universe reincarnates, so do we. So, here we have a fresh new Universe that will, once again, produce a life-form that is a manifestation of universal consciousness.
Who is right and who is wrong? It doesn’t matter. What does matter is that all theories are made by souls that are reaching out for answers to questions that have tormented us through the ages. What is important is that there is an unknown source that drives that questioning. We sense it and more often than not we ignore it. Like the hard fact that we will all die, yet a majority of us seem to have an inbuilt urge to deny it. As I have stumbled along my path chasing that ever-pervasive voice, I have found that it becomes more audible the more I persist in observing and if I pursue the resultant questioning. Theories like the Big Bang are important because they invoke a sense of the unknown, of wonder. They compel us, those who exist in the heart of our Universe, to examine more deeply the implications, the available conclusions, that can deepen our understanding of ourselves and the powers that influence it. Our origin, our past, is not important. Our future too is not important. They are both bound by theories. Our universe can only be explored now. We can only live in the present. “Now” is where we all live. And “Now” is a locality where we can best operate. Our origin that was perhaps born in an expanding cosmic speck is cloaked in mystery. Where this ongoing expansion is headed for, its destination, is a mystery. Both of those mysteries are beyond our understanding. The only mystery that we can delve into is the one that surrounds us now.
This writing developed when I came across this picture.
That was all it took. It led me to the Big Bang, the Cyclic Universe Theory, Galaxy Reincarnation, the dynamics of an expanding Galaxy and that was all in two days! Some 48,000kms ago if you think about it, considering the Earth’s axis speed.
May, 2018: The Voodoo Lady
A friend of mine recently asked after my health. “Are you still seeing that voodoo lady?” She was referring to Robyn Welch. The controversial healer that came into my life, did her voodoo and left me a much different soul. As the years roll by and I sit out my supposed death sentence, Robyn’s power and the logic behind it becomes more and more obvious. Entering the sixth year since her treatment, I still await the oncologist’s prediction for my future to eventuate. “I have never encountered a person who has agreed to suicide by prostate cancer,” he told me whilst shaking his head sadly. “A Gleason Eight is what you have Michael. That’s a very bad reading. This is what I can guarantee – within five years you will suffer major symptoms related to your foolishness. Urinary problems, quite severe back, hip and pelvic pain, a metastatic spread throughout your body, these, and more, lie in wait. If you don’t follow our advice, I can only give you maybe eight years of life.” Eight years, I intuited, was no more than a guess on the oncologist’s part. Life expectancy predictions are as fragile as most of the preferred traditional treatments. Chemo, even though the initial response sees tumours shrink and more than a few remissions are experienced, in the long run only boasts a 3% success rate. Most oncologists will not promise any permanency beyond five years - after that expiration date all is just a guess. Radiation, hormone treatment and chemo are just guesses with medical fingers crossed. Guesses aren’t good enough when your health is on the line. I preferred to place my trust in intuition. When I was first introduced to Robyn Welch, my immediate reaction (independent of past experience and accumulated knowledge) was simple. Deep within, a voice spoke. Simply. “This is the way.” Time has proven that that intuition was to my benefit. Guessing was removed from the equation.
I followed the healer’s advice and here I sit, writing this, and there is nothing of concern. No symptoms. Just day after day living the same normal existence as most healthy souls experience. Robyn told me to listen to my body as it would keep me informed. It was intelligent head to toe. I took her advice literally. I spoke to my body then and I still talk to my body. I have names for its components. My heart, for instance, is called Heather. My prostate is Peter. Sometimes my body speaks directly back: I can be in a restaurant ready to eat a meal when the lifting fork is stopped midair and a small voice, manifested as an intuition, will say “No” and I will place the food back on the plate. My body has told me the food presented wasn’t what the body perceived as suitable. When I suffer from the arthritis that has arisen from a broken neck suffered in a road accident, the resultant headache is not treated with a painkiller. I sit and wait as my body takes me deep into a meditative state. I see the pain and I wait til it deflates like a punctured balloon. It may take an hour before the healing that I ask my body for finally arrives but 4 times out of five it does. And the ability is growing steadily. I see my body as a vast communication system in which my brain is a willing component. Robyn believed devoutly in this inner communication. And now the world of science agrees.
On Thursday, April 12, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article under the banner “Message in a body could hold clue to human health.”:
In his book The Philosopher’s Stone, written almost 30 years ago, F. David Peat explores our internal communication systems. He follows an idea that “living systems are sustained by highly complex fields of cooperative information.” A theory that is a precursor to the Australian research into extracellular vesicles. Peat argues that this inner communication is another sense that must be added to the other five that humans possess – sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. This extra sense is already evident in nature as witnessed in the behaviour of bats or whales for instance. The bat communicating and guiding itself via an intricate radar system. Our cells receive information from our DNA – the molecule that “contains the whole history of the cell’s ancestors and evolution.” This is an internal conversation and the information received is seen now, in the University of Sydney research, to be sent, or mailed as they describe it, to other cells. They talk to each other and they talk to the person in which they reside. Me and you. Robyn knew that and her healing involved deep conversations with the body. She had a spiritual talent, a gift from the Universe. She was an adept and she passed on her insight to me as best she could. I have grasped what I could but still remain a novice. But I’m learning. She taught me to listen to my body, to show intent through right actions. Our bodies will respond to respect and understanding. So, in answer to the question: “Are you still seeing that voodoo lady?” “Yes I am.” As Robyn has passed, I can no longer physically communicate on a certain level but, as I progress through my existence, healthy and secure in my belief in the extraordinary as manifested in Robyn’s gift, I can still sense that voodoo lady’s energy. Robyn is a part of my DNA and every time my body interconnects with itself, I am part of that network of which Robyn Welch is still a welcome component.
An afterthought:
Peat produces another interesting theory when it comes to the consideration of communication. He ponders on a link not only between the elements that make up our body but also between the inner and outer. “One idea that at first sight appears absurd, yet has been seriously proposed, is that food may contain not only nutrients but also information! When a predator hunts its prey, so this theory goes, it is seeking not just a source of protein but a source of information. In consuming its prey, it is ingesting a complex structure of information. In this way, information is passed between species.” I see all food as energy and full of information. EnergyFanatics.com states: “ ‘energy’ can be used to describe everything in the Universe? The reason is because when you break matter down to its fundamentals, it is made of only energy. Because everything in the Universe is made of energy, the answers to all your questions lie within the ‘substance’ of energy. This also means that understanding how energy works is essential for your health and well-being... Energy is a ‘substance’ that cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another. Energy is consciousness and consciousness is energy; therefore, energy is conscious of itself. Besides being conscious, the pure form of energy is infinitely intelligent in nature.”
I am you and you are me and we are all “that.”
A friend of mine recently asked after my health. “Are you still seeing that voodoo lady?” She was referring to Robyn Welch. The controversial healer that came into my life, did her voodoo and left me a much different soul. As the years roll by and I sit out my supposed death sentence, Robyn’s power and the logic behind it becomes more and more obvious. Entering the sixth year since her treatment, I still await the oncologist’s prediction for my future to eventuate. “I have never encountered a person who has agreed to suicide by prostate cancer,” he told me whilst shaking his head sadly. “A Gleason Eight is what you have Michael. That’s a very bad reading. This is what I can guarantee – within five years you will suffer major symptoms related to your foolishness. Urinary problems, quite severe back, hip and pelvic pain, a metastatic spread throughout your body, these, and more, lie in wait. If you don’t follow our advice, I can only give you maybe eight years of life.” Eight years, I intuited, was no more than a guess on the oncologist’s part. Life expectancy predictions are as fragile as most of the preferred traditional treatments. Chemo, even though the initial response sees tumours shrink and more than a few remissions are experienced, in the long run only boasts a 3% success rate. Most oncologists will not promise any permanency beyond five years - after that expiration date all is just a guess. Radiation, hormone treatment and chemo are just guesses with medical fingers crossed. Guesses aren’t good enough when your health is on the line. I preferred to place my trust in intuition. When I was first introduced to Robyn Welch, my immediate reaction (independent of past experience and accumulated knowledge) was simple. Deep within, a voice spoke. Simply. “This is the way.” Time has proven that that intuition was to my benefit. Guessing was removed from the equation.
I followed the healer’s advice and here I sit, writing this, and there is nothing of concern. No symptoms. Just day after day living the same normal existence as most healthy souls experience. Robyn told me to listen to my body as it would keep me informed. It was intelligent head to toe. I took her advice literally. I spoke to my body then and I still talk to my body. I have names for its components. My heart, for instance, is called Heather. My prostate is Peter. Sometimes my body speaks directly back: I can be in a restaurant ready to eat a meal when the lifting fork is stopped midair and a small voice, manifested as an intuition, will say “No” and I will place the food back on the plate. My body has told me the food presented wasn’t what the body perceived as suitable. When I suffer from the arthritis that has arisen from a broken neck suffered in a road accident, the resultant headache is not treated with a painkiller. I sit and wait as my body takes me deep into a meditative state. I see the pain and I wait til it deflates like a punctured balloon. It may take an hour before the healing that I ask my body for finally arrives but 4 times out of five it does. And the ability is growing steadily. I see my body as a vast communication system in which my brain is a willing component. Robyn believed devoutly in this inner communication. And now the world of science agrees.
On Thursday, April 12, the Sydney Morning Herald published an article under the banner “Message in a body could hold clue to human health.”:
In his book The Philosopher’s Stone, written almost 30 years ago, F. David Peat explores our internal communication systems. He follows an idea that “living systems are sustained by highly complex fields of cooperative information.” A theory that is a precursor to the Australian research into extracellular vesicles. Peat argues that this inner communication is another sense that must be added to the other five that humans possess – sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. This extra sense is already evident in nature as witnessed in the behaviour of bats or whales for instance. The bat communicating and guiding itself via an intricate radar system. Our cells receive information from our DNA – the molecule that “contains the whole history of the cell’s ancestors and evolution.” This is an internal conversation and the information received is seen now, in the University of Sydney research, to be sent, or mailed as they describe it, to other cells. They talk to each other and they talk to the person in which they reside. Me and you. Robyn knew that and her healing involved deep conversations with the body. She had a spiritual talent, a gift from the Universe. She was an adept and she passed on her insight to me as best she could. I have grasped what I could but still remain a novice. But I’m learning. She taught me to listen to my body, to show intent through right actions. Our bodies will respond to respect and understanding. So, in answer to the question: “Are you still seeing that voodoo lady?” “Yes I am.” As Robyn has passed, I can no longer physically communicate on a certain level but, as I progress through my existence, healthy and secure in my belief in the extraordinary as manifested in Robyn’s gift, I can still sense that voodoo lady’s energy. Robyn is a part of my DNA and every time my body interconnects with itself, I am part of that network of which Robyn Welch is still a welcome component.
An afterthought:
Peat produces another interesting theory when it comes to the consideration of communication. He ponders on a link not only between the elements that make up our body but also between the inner and outer. “One idea that at first sight appears absurd, yet has been seriously proposed, is that food may contain not only nutrients but also information! When a predator hunts its prey, so this theory goes, it is seeking not just a source of protein but a source of information. In consuming its prey, it is ingesting a complex structure of information. In this way, information is passed between species.” I see all food as energy and full of information. EnergyFanatics.com states: “ ‘energy’ can be used to describe everything in the Universe? The reason is because when you break matter down to its fundamentals, it is made of only energy. Because everything in the Universe is made of energy, the answers to all your questions lie within the ‘substance’ of energy. This also means that understanding how energy works is essential for your health and well-being... Energy is a ‘substance’ that cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another. Energy is consciousness and consciousness is energy; therefore, energy is conscious of itself. Besides being conscious, the pure form of energy is infinitely intelligent in nature.”
I am you and you are me and we are all “that.”
April, 2018: Sliding into Truth
God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin' away.
- Paul Simon – Slip Slidin’ Away
I am reading Thomas Merton’s autobiography Elected Silence (The Seven Storey Mountain). Thomas Merton being the American Catholic Trappist monk, writer, theologian, poet, social activist and mystic. This is one man’s personal record of his journey through the stages that lead to the higher grounds of understanding the spirit inside. It is an account of his battle to defy the self in order to find his true essence. Merton states: “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.” Merton’s account of his “voyage of discovery” underlines the fact that such a journey can be taken and the desired destination reached, here on Earth.
An opposite viewpoint is expressed by Paul Simon. His lyrics in Slip Slidin’ Away assert that all spiritual information is unavailable to the mortal man because it is God’s secret. And because we are either too afraid to truly search or maybe we are unaware of a message so expertly hidden, we concentrate on interpreting that which we can see, taste, sense or touch around us. The visible. All our best intentions are channeled into living the everyday so that we can glide down the highway of life as best we can. Though, in the clear light of day, we are fishtailing, barely in control, down a slippery road. Blindly following a path that leads to a destination that exists only in our imagination. Simon punctures our tyres when he declares: “You know the nearer your destination, the more you're slip slidin' away.”
Simon and Merton appear to be at loggerheads here. Merton writes of a possibility that is achievable . A way to enlightenment that can be navigated through meditation, prayer and a deep inspection of the self and its peccadilloes. Avenues of self-reflection. Roads that lead inwards. These are the roads that Merton pursued which led to his personal enlightenment, so brilliantly described in Elected Silence. Simon, on the other hand, appears to lean toward “man plans, God laughs.” He puts a case forward for predestination. His is a fatalist point of view – no matter how we strive, we are doomed to suffer a fate beyond our control. Someone once described Slip Slidin’ Away as “a very sad and resigned shrug about mortality and the futility of human action.” It appears, on the surface, that Simon’s highway follows a different direction to Merton’s. So radical a difference that the two writers could wave to each other as they pass going in opposite directions.
The question has to be asked: who is right and who is wrong? Who is on the right road? And, which one would you feel more comfortable in believing? When I listen to Simon’s song, I find it comforting because it paints a graphic picture of everyday people living everyday lives. The disillusioned housewife, the single father who has lost his child in a divorce or separation, the man obsessed with a love. And in the final verse, Simon underlines a primal suspicion that haunts many souls on this plane of existence: that we are in the dark, possessing no answers to the big questions. Are we just lost in a universe that is non-committal? Comforting is perhaps not the correct description, maybe appreciative would suit better. I appreciate that we share a common angst, a communal yearning, for if that angst pervades our collective consciousness, ignoring race, culture, nationality, gender and the borders that confine us, then that power, that energy, that spirit – call it what you want – is at the core of each and every one of us. ? It’s good to know that you and I are part of such a collective inner consciousness. Not alone. Paul Simon has succeeded, despite his motives which are only known to him, to arouse this appreciative emotion. This song invites questions as all good art does. It speaks to us individually. Simon himself said: “I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent.” He’s more interested in what he discovered about life, about himself, when he wrote the song. Maybe that is what prompted him to declare later in life: “Most of the time it takes you quite a while before you realise you don’t know anything.” In other words, Slip Slidin’ is more of a guess than a definitive statement. But the creative element and the questions born from within that guess is what makes his invention so important.
Elected Silence and Slip Slidin’ Away appear to have differing viewpoints, polar opposites. In fact Thomas Merton travelled the same road that Paul Simon still walks down. This is the only road leading to the only destination. Merton, through decades of persistence, succeeded in removing the barriers that prevented the voice of his inner spirit from manifesting itself where it could speak louder, become more audible. Where it availed itself to offer direction and wisdom. Paul Simon heard the same voice in the midst of his creativity. In a universe of mysterious ways, the same mysterious inner voice spoke to both author and songwriter. I doubt that Paul Simon, the creator of so much beautiful music, could ever doubt the pivotal role of an inner communicator, one sensed rather than one visible to the eye. The same communicator that guided Merton. So the beauty of Merton’s work and the pessimism of Simon’s song are opposites that form a whole. Merton - the soul long past guessing, firm in his faith – and Simon - the explorer, the doubter – inviting the reader/listener to explore alongside them. Here we find the two sides of the whole – we can find positivity in an assumed negativity. First of all in Simon’s lyrics which impel us to question and look at the human condition and then in Merton’s story which shows us how, through our questioning and dedicated searching, we can find the answers to Simon’s propositions. We then find the middle truth that exists within the two conflicting points of view. The balance. There are layers of truth. The surface layer is where we start. Then, like the layers of an onion, we peel away til the final truth is exposed.
God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin' away.
- Paul Simon – Slip Slidin’ Away
I am reading Thomas Merton’s autobiography Elected Silence (The Seven Storey Mountain). Thomas Merton being the American Catholic Trappist monk, writer, theologian, poet, social activist and mystic. This is one man’s personal record of his journey through the stages that lead to the higher grounds of understanding the spirit inside. It is an account of his battle to defy the self in order to find his true essence. Merton states: “What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.” Merton’s account of his “voyage of discovery” underlines the fact that such a journey can be taken and the desired destination reached, here on Earth.
An opposite viewpoint is expressed by Paul Simon. His lyrics in Slip Slidin’ Away assert that all spiritual information is unavailable to the mortal man because it is God’s secret. And because we are either too afraid to truly search or maybe we are unaware of a message so expertly hidden, we concentrate on interpreting that which we can see, taste, sense or touch around us. The visible. All our best intentions are channeled into living the everyday so that we can glide down the highway of life as best we can. Though, in the clear light of day, we are fishtailing, barely in control, down a slippery road. Blindly following a path that leads to a destination that exists only in our imagination. Simon punctures our tyres when he declares: “You know the nearer your destination, the more you're slip slidin' away.”
Simon and Merton appear to be at loggerheads here. Merton writes of a possibility that is achievable . A way to enlightenment that can be navigated through meditation, prayer and a deep inspection of the self and its peccadilloes. Avenues of self-reflection. Roads that lead inwards. These are the roads that Merton pursued which led to his personal enlightenment, so brilliantly described in Elected Silence. Simon, on the other hand, appears to lean toward “man plans, God laughs.” He puts a case forward for predestination. His is a fatalist point of view – no matter how we strive, we are doomed to suffer a fate beyond our control. Someone once described Slip Slidin’ Away as “a very sad and resigned shrug about mortality and the futility of human action.” It appears, on the surface, that Simon’s highway follows a different direction to Merton’s. So radical a difference that the two writers could wave to each other as they pass going in opposite directions.
The question has to be asked: who is right and who is wrong? Who is on the right road? And, which one would you feel more comfortable in believing? When I listen to Simon’s song, I find it comforting because it paints a graphic picture of everyday people living everyday lives. The disillusioned housewife, the single father who has lost his child in a divorce or separation, the man obsessed with a love. And in the final verse, Simon underlines a primal suspicion that haunts many souls on this plane of existence: that we are in the dark, possessing no answers to the big questions. Are we just lost in a universe that is non-committal? Comforting is perhaps not the correct description, maybe appreciative would suit better. I appreciate that we share a common angst, a communal yearning, for if that angst pervades our collective consciousness, ignoring race, culture, nationality, gender and the borders that confine us, then that power, that energy, that spirit – call it what you want – is at the core of each and every one of us. ? It’s good to know that you and I are part of such a collective inner consciousness. Not alone. Paul Simon has succeeded, despite his motives which are only known to him, to arouse this appreciative emotion. This song invites questions as all good art does. It speaks to us individually. Simon himself said: “I'm more interested in what I discover than what I invent.” He’s more interested in what he discovered about life, about himself, when he wrote the song. Maybe that is what prompted him to declare later in life: “Most of the time it takes you quite a while before you realise you don’t know anything.” In other words, Slip Slidin’ is more of a guess than a definitive statement. But the creative element and the questions born from within that guess is what makes his invention so important.
Elected Silence and Slip Slidin’ Away appear to have differing viewpoints, polar opposites. In fact Thomas Merton travelled the same road that Paul Simon still walks down. This is the only road leading to the only destination. Merton, through decades of persistence, succeeded in removing the barriers that prevented the voice of his inner spirit from manifesting itself where it could speak louder, become more audible. Where it availed itself to offer direction and wisdom. Paul Simon heard the same voice in the midst of his creativity. In a universe of mysterious ways, the same mysterious inner voice spoke to both author and songwriter. I doubt that Paul Simon, the creator of so much beautiful music, could ever doubt the pivotal role of an inner communicator, one sensed rather than one visible to the eye. The same communicator that guided Merton. So the beauty of Merton’s work and the pessimism of Simon’s song are opposites that form a whole. Merton - the soul long past guessing, firm in his faith – and Simon - the explorer, the doubter – inviting the reader/listener to explore alongside them. Here we find the two sides of the whole – we can find positivity in an assumed negativity. First of all in Simon’s lyrics which impel us to question and look at the human condition and then in Merton’s story which shows us how, through our questioning and dedicated searching, we can find the answers to Simon’s propositions. We then find the middle truth that exists within the two conflicting points of view. The balance. There are layers of truth. The surface layer is where we start. Then, like the layers of an onion, we peel away til the final truth is exposed.
March, 2018 – Death’s Adventure
“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens. I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” – Woody Allen
It is a brave declaration for the average soul to say that they have no fear of death. Some are fortunate enough to say it with a spiritual conviction but, for the majority of souls, it is an elusive affirmation. Old age or the final stages of a terminal illness, can bring an acceptance when one’s life here on Earth draws to its conclusion. It is easier not to fear death when your body has broken down and the message it sends is for you to accept the inevitable. When the body’s intelligence takes over from your deep-seated fear of the unknown. One can find comfort within in such a situation. But it is different in the prime of life. As your aircraft plunges to the ground and you sit and pray to the unknown, and you find yourself completely dismissing science and modern technology as your saviours. Here you find a compulsion to pray to a God previously relegated to the bleachers for most of your life. Your staunch belief system is now challenged and found to be lacking in substance. And the fear of death drives your hands together in supplication.
Woody Allen speaks for the majority of us. He acknowledges, with humour, our inner conflict when we muse on death. The conflict between the hidden, neglected spirit within that sees the grave as, quoting Henry Longfellow, “but a covered bridge leading from light to light, through a brief darkness,” and the Ego which is petrified when it has to admit to its extinction as the last breath is drawn. The spirit is not afraid of death but the Ego doesn’t want to be there when it happens. But the Ego is always outvoted and it will witness your death, which will come as surely as night turns to day. There will be a final breath and all that once was - your family, your achievements, your joys and sorrows, your very identity – will be no more. The question is will you let your Ego decide your approach to death or will you seek a saner, more rational, voice when the time draws near? In David Darling’s book, Zen Physics, a no-punches description of the aftermath of our inevitable demise is presented. Let’s consider the dramatics of your death then and, as you read these words, be true to yourself. Evaluate your reaction to the stark reality of what happens to the physical envelope, that which carried the person that you once were, when its role is over and you will find out a truth that will reveal yourself to yourself.
“As soon as a person’s heart stops beating, gravity takes hold. Within minutes, a purple-red stain starts to appear on the lowermost parts of the body, where blood quickly settles. The skin and muscles sag, as the body cools, and within two to six hours rigor mortis sets in. Beginning with a stiffening of the eyelids, the rigidity extends inexorably to all parts of the body and may last for between one and four days before the muscles finally relax.
Two or three days after death, a greenish discoloration of the skin on the right side of the lower abdomen above the cecum (the part of the large intestine nearest the surface) provides the first visible sign of decay. This gradually spreads over the whole abdomen and then onto the chest and upper thighs, the colour being simply a result of sulphur-containing gases from the intestines reacting with hemoglobin liberated from the blood in the vessels of the abdominal wall. By the end of the first week, most of the body is tinged green, a green that steadily darkens and changes to purple and finally to black. Blood-covered blisters, two to three inches across, develop on the skin, the merest touch being sufficient to cause their top layer to slide off.
By the end of the second week the abdomen is bloated. The lungs rupture because of bacterial attack in the air passages, and the resulting release of gas pressure from within the body forces a blood-stained fluid from the nose and mouth...The eyes bulge and the tongue swells to fill the mouth and protrude beyond the teeth. After three to four weeks, the hair, nails, and teeth loosen, and the internal organs disintegrate before turning to liquid. On average, it takes ten to twelve years for an unembalmed adult buried six feet in ordinary soil without a coffin to be completely reduced to a skeleton.”
In this life the Ego senses and then tries to ignore such an ending to its dominance. We often cling to each other for company so we don’t have to face the prospect alone. Some turn to externals for distraction. Any distraction – alcohol, drugs, vice, climbing Mt Everest with one hand tied behind your back. Some lives are lived as a series of distractions. Attachments to the physical – the material. Some seek advice from a guru or a spiritual teacher or seek those souls devoted to the paranormal when science has failed to satisfy. But often we only find a kindred soul beneath the cover of the pseudo-mystic who, most probably, has spent just as many restless nights as the seeker, lost in questions unanswered. Some set their standards according to the human interpretation of countless holy books. Here they rely on the inadequacies of mere words to reveal the wonder of the unknown. They often devote themselves to a guess. Only a selected few know, the rest guess. Some go mad as the truth of life is revealed. There are so many variations, reactions, when death is faced. The prospect of being non-existent, non-being, causes us to shudder but that is not a spirit-shudder, it is, instead, the foundations of the house that you have built that houses the persona, the mask, that you have created, shifting on its foundations.
The simple answer to those who are frightened of an end to their existence is to find that part of you that is not afraid. That which offers you dignity in the act of death. Where death can be accepted and respected. You need to not fear death and to be there when it happens because to hide in a corner as it reaches out is a denial of life itself. Marcus Aurelius said: “the act of dying is also one of the acts of life.” The inner search will reveal, in time, that it is the idea of death that frightens us not the act itself. We can’t be afraid of something that we have, in general, no conscious memory of. So, in reality, it is our imagination that is our enemy. Our thoughts. Fueled by an Ego that is confounded by the mystery that surrounds it and will seek any avenue that appeals to the escapee. The truth is your spirit will not share the grave with your decaying body. You will pass from this existence to the next. You will not be there when your body disintegrates. You will have left long before all that you were becomes dust.
Am I just guessing? It doesn’t matter. It’s my belief based on my search. I have arrived at a conclusion. I can’t help you arrive at your conclusion. Whatever your conclusion is will be of your own making. If the description above of the natural characteristics of death was horrific and has shaken you and you have reached for the bottle, the sky dive or a dubious spiritual practice to negate its impact, then it is perhaps your responsibility to find the answer why. Then you will explore and then you will reach your own conclusion and, hopefully, you will find that all our fears can be gifts. They can compel us to seek and, in that search, they can provide access to a serenity that wasn’t apparent at first glance. If I am right, then an acceptance of death as a logical stage in our progression through eternity, would make it more of an adventure than a terrible calamity.
“One who knows the Self puts death to death.” – The Dhammapada (3rd Century BCE)
“I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens. I don't want to achieve immortality through my work; I want to achieve immortality through not dying. I don't want to live on in the hearts of my countrymen; I want to live on in my apartment.” – Woody Allen
It is a brave declaration for the average soul to say that they have no fear of death. Some are fortunate enough to say it with a spiritual conviction but, for the majority of souls, it is an elusive affirmation. Old age or the final stages of a terminal illness, can bring an acceptance when one’s life here on Earth draws to its conclusion. It is easier not to fear death when your body has broken down and the message it sends is for you to accept the inevitable. When the body’s intelligence takes over from your deep-seated fear of the unknown. One can find comfort within in such a situation. But it is different in the prime of life. As your aircraft plunges to the ground and you sit and pray to the unknown, and you find yourself completely dismissing science and modern technology as your saviours. Here you find a compulsion to pray to a God previously relegated to the bleachers for most of your life. Your staunch belief system is now challenged and found to be lacking in substance. And the fear of death drives your hands together in supplication.
Woody Allen speaks for the majority of us. He acknowledges, with humour, our inner conflict when we muse on death. The conflict between the hidden, neglected spirit within that sees the grave as, quoting Henry Longfellow, “but a covered bridge leading from light to light, through a brief darkness,” and the Ego which is petrified when it has to admit to its extinction as the last breath is drawn. The spirit is not afraid of death but the Ego doesn’t want to be there when it happens. But the Ego is always outvoted and it will witness your death, which will come as surely as night turns to day. There will be a final breath and all that once was - your family, your achievements, your joys and sorrows, your very identity – will be no more. The question is will you let your Ego decide your approach to death or will you seek a saner, more rational, voice when the time draws near? In David Darling’s book, Zen Physics, a no-punches description of the aftermath of our inevitable demise is presented. Let’s consider the dramatics of your death then and, as you read these words, be true to yourself. Evaluate your reaction to the stark reality of what happens to the physical envelope, that which carried the person that you once were, when its role is over and you will find out a truth that will reveal yourself to yourself.
“As soon as a person’s heart stops beating, gravity takes hold. Within minutes, a purple-red stain starts to appear on the lowermost parts of the body, where blood quickly settles. The skin and muscles sag, as the body cools, and within two to six hours rigor mortis sets in. Beginning with a stiffening of the eyelids, the rigidity extends inexorably to all parts of the body and may last for between one and four days before the muscles finally relax.
Two or three days after death, a greenish discoloration of the skin on the right side of the lower abdomen above the cecum (the part of the large intestine nearest the surface) provides the first visible sign of decay. This gradually spreads over the whole abdomen and then onto the chest and upper thighs, the colour being simply a result of sulphur-containing gases from the intestines reacting with hemoglobin liberated from the blood in the vessels of the abdominal wall. By the end of the first week, most of the body is tinged green, a green that steadily darkens and changes to purple and finally to black. Blood-covered blisters, two to three inches across, develop on the skin, the merest touch being sufficient to cause their top layer to slide off.
By the end of the second week the abdomen is bloated. The lungs rupture because of bacterial attack in the air passages, and the resulting release of gas pressure from within the body forces a blood-stained fluid from the nose and mouth...The eyes bulge and the tongue swells to fill the mouth and protrude beyond the teeth. After three to four weeks, the hair, nails, and teeth loosen, and the internal organs disintegrate before turning to liquid. On average, it takes ten to twelve years for an unembalmed adult buried six feet in ordinary soil without a coffin to be completely reduced to a skeleton.”
In this life the Ego senses and then tries to ignore such an ending to its dominance. We often cling to each other for company so we don’t have to face the prospect alone. Some turn to externals for distraction. Any distraction – alcohol, drugs, vice, climbing Mt Everest with one hand tied behind your back. Some lives are lived as a series of distractions. Attachments to the physical – the material. Some seek advice from a guru or a spiritual teacher or seek those souls devoted to the paranormal when science has failed to satisfy. But often we only find a kindred soul beneath the cover of the pseudo-mystic who, most probably, has spent just as many restless nights as the seeker, lost in questions unanswered. Some set their standards according to the human interpretation of countless holy books. Here they rely on the inadequacies of mere words to reveal the wonder of the unknown. They often devote themselves to a guess. Only a selected few know, the rest guess. Some go mad as the truth of life is revealed. There are so many variations, reactions, when death is faced. The prospect of being non-existent, non-being, causes us to shudder but that is not a spirit-shudder, it is, instead, the foundations of the house that you have built that houses the persona, the mask, that you have created, shifting on its foundations.
The simple answer to those who are frightened of an end to their existence is to find that part of you that is not afraid. That which offers you dignity in the act of death. Where death can be accepted and respected. You need to not fear death and to be there when it happens because to hide in a corner as it reaches out is a denial of life itself. Marcus Aurelius said: “the act of dying is also one of the acts of life.” The inner search will reveal, in time, that it is the idea of death that frightens us not the act itself. We can’t be afraid of something that we have, in general, no conscious memory of. So, in reality, it is our imagination that is our enemy. Our thoughts. Fueled by an Ego that is confounded by the mystery that surrounds it and will seek any avenue that appeals to the escapee. The truth is your spirit will not share the grave with your decaying body. You will pass from this existence to the next. You will not be there when your body disintegrates. You will have left long before all that you were becomes dust.
Am I just guessing? It doesn’t matter. It’s my belief based on my search. I have arrived at a conclusion. I can’t help you arrive at your conclusion. Whatever your conclusion is will be of your own making. If the description above of the natural characteristics of death was horrific and has shaken you and you have reached for the bottle, the sky dive or a dubious spiritual practice to negate its impact, then it is perhaps your responsibility to find the answer why. Then you will explore and then you will reach your own conclusion and, hopefully, you will find that all our fears can be gifts. They can compel us to seek and, in that search, they can provide access to a serenity that wasn’t apparent at first glance. If I am right, then an acceptance of death as a logical stage in our progression through eternity, would make it more of an adventure than a terrible calamity.
“One who knows the Self puts death to death.” – The Dhammapada (3rd Century BCE)
February, 2018 - The Wisdom within Adversity
I’d like to write about adversity. The bad days in one’s life where the walls fall down, the roof is gone with the wind and you’re 100% exposed to the elements. The elements of sorrow, fear, anger, regret and the all the other components that accompany trauma. Then I’ll try and show another side of adversity – where it’s a learning process, or a transition from despair to hope or even a blessing. I’ll start with a life-event that I experienced. Where I stood on the edge of madness. In a no-man’s-land where reason had retreated. And how I walked out of that place and survived. Everybody’s story is different and what I experienced isn’t the answer for everyone. It is just a consideration for the reader – for me it was an avenue that delivered me through one of life’s apparent roadblocks.
Like a fool, one evening back in late 1967, I swallowed a dose of LSD offered to me by an acquaintance by the name of Paul. Paul was a scholar of psychedelia. He knew the best source for good acid. Once obtained, all one had to do was to welcome Paul into your residence or enter Paul’s residence, settle down, rummage through the waiting record collection, put on the background soundtrack to accompany the opening of the doors of perception, wait in eager anticipation for 20 or so minutes for the initial rush and then you were off on your trip. Previous psychedelic excursions alongside Paul had been wondrous. At times, deeply spiritual and enlightening. At times, the hallucinatory hours spent on the inner voyages, shared with a small coterie of like-minded souls, took on a religious overtone. There was talk of a Church in which we could all worship the visions experienced. All such musings were conducted in the state of an altered consciousness. In other words, in a state of “up.” Once “down”, after the reluctant descent, we all went back into the ordinary where such contemplations were absorbed and faded under the scrutiny of Everyday conformity.
Paul was a ringmaster, a maestro conducting his own cosmic orchestra. Being a large, imposing man and ex-bouncer, he was an intimidating character hidden behind a flimsy pseudo-Hippy facade. A would-be guru. He would enthusiastically lead our trips, be they inside or outside. To the strains of Donovan’s Sunshine Superman or the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper, Paul would dominate proceedings. Along with the music, all imagery, mental stimulation or conversation would lay in his hands. There wasn’t much in way of protest from the participants as our immediate world, which incorporated Paul’s presence, was such a swirling, fascinating kaleidoscope of sensory overload that his persona just faded in and out of focus – just another hallucination to ponder. Still, his guidance, though confusing at times, came in handy when any confusion threatened our mystical joie de vivre. All through the Summer of Love (in reality the Winter of Love in our hemisphere) we ventured ever onwards. Then, in September, Paul’s guidance took a sinister turn. He had decided, without consultation, that my next trip would be done in his own personal laboratory. I was to be Paul’s experiment.
In Paul’s small suburban house, situated appropriately on Mort Street, I dropped a tab of acid. Settling back to wait for the excursion, I was informed, as were the other occupants of the room - being future wife, Lynda, and Paul’s wife - that I was a lucky soul. “Michael,” said Paul. “Welcome to Blue Lightning. I got the tab yesterday. You’re the first to try it out. It’s got a few extra ingredients to give it more punch. Let’s see how it goes.” One extra ingredient, I later learnt, was strychnine. Often referred to as the World’s Least Subtle Poison! When the tab hit, it hit with a power I had never experienced before. Previously, all psychedelics had been just Mini Minors, this was a fully-laden, monster Mack truck keen to devour any highway it found itself on. It announced itself with a roar. Like a wounded jet aircraft. It grabbed my mind in its claws and tried to drag me somewhere I didn’t ever want to go. I was being pulled out “there” where nothing exists but terror. The following three or so hours were characterised by wave after wave of psychic attacks. The drug was malicious and its intent was relentless. It was bent on transformation. A mental metamorphosis. The drug refused any consideration that I would ever return to the personality that was once me. Its vision of my future was terrifying and held not one trace of beauty. Each and every hallucination was straight out of the imagination of Hieronymus Bosch! Amidst the onslaught I knew this was a fight for survival. Not a physical battle but deeper inside. This was sanity versus insanity. It was relentless and I began to tire. I was exhausted and still the waves rolled in. I found my way into a bedroom, closed the door and took a foetal position. Possibly in anticipation of a rebirth as someone, or thing, unimaginable. Then, there was a strange occurrence. An intervention.
The bedroom door opened and a young child, a girl aged maybe five or six, entered. I had never seen her before. She walked up to the bed, stood and watched me intently for a few moments, then took my hand. There was a fragment of stillness and quiet within the storm. Something that I could reach out for. A fragment that I intuitively knew I had to hang onto like a drowning man to a solitary piece of driftwood. Her presence grew stronger and I felt myself descending. A sense of a rapid fall. Earthbound. The drug surrendered to an influence it couldn’t command. Then I was back. Unsteady, unsure, battered but back. The young girl was gone. Was this girl one more hallucination among many? I will never know. I would prefer to think that she was a divine manifestation. Angelic in nature. Certainly she possessed an aura that was distinctly otherworldly. Grateful in the knowledge that the Blue Lightning had unwillingly conceded to an indefinable presence, I fell into a troubled sleep.
When I awoke to the sounds of a normal suburban Sunday morning, I was told that no, we had had no visitors during the night and no, no-one knew anything about a child in the house. And the mystery intensified. All Paul could say was: “Told you. Good trip eh?” I think that he even said “groovy” and, as always, that word never suited him. I would like to inform all that when I left that house I was the same person that entered it the day before. But I would be telling a lie. The Doors of Perception were now slightly warped. They no longer closed properly. From that day on, they would swing open without warning and I would see, and experience, two conflicting levels of consciousness. The problem was that I could no longer trust either perception. Which one was real – the one where I could see the music notes as they floated out of the radio or when I could not enter certain rooms in my house because if I did I would sink through the floor and plunge into the darkness. Then there was the consciousness where I was perfectly logical, tying my shoelaces, paying the bills, writing a letter to my mother. So I suffered and then, when the psychic weight became too heavy to carry, I disintegrated. To the extent that, a few months later, I ended up in Langton Clinic - a drug referral centre in Surry Hills. This was inevitable. Really just a matter of time. My delusional state, coupled with paranoia and the ever-present voice in my head pleading for normality to return, intensified til I attacked a line of customers in a post office in Potts Point, convinced that they were attacking me. I had felt a sharp blow to the back of my head, all imaginary, and I retaliated. I was hauled to, and locked in a room, in the Wayside Chapel til the police came and took my hallucinations to a safe place. I was now on my own. I was officially an Acid Casualty.
I have written this long introduction to get to the point of this observation. The question of survival. How did I endure and survive years of torment? Those desperate times where I had to co-exist with two personalities. One riddled with panic attacks, hallucinations and inner confusion and the one that struggled through the business of existing in what we call “normality”. It is a long story, set over many years, and is one I will cover fully in my book when completed. Basically, I survived because life itself saved me. I believe that certain stages in my development which, at the time of occurrence, seemed dire, were in the cold light of hindsight, neither good nor bad. They were essential to any chance of survival. I will recount three that come to mind. Two were physical and life threatening and the other, the exact opposite:
Back to my LSD trip. A terrifying experience that left me with a psyche that had to be rebuilt from the ground up. And the building blocks I used were found in the debris of my previous “ bad” experiences. I believe that my mind’s strength would not have coped with the psychedelic onslaught if it had no prior knowledge of life’s hallucinatory episodes. There is no doubt that my subconscious learnt vital survival skills for future use when it rationalised that plane crash, that axe attack. Both were dream-like experiences. “This is not real, this can’t be happening” events. The subconscious would have had reference points to refer to when the drug kicked in. Perhaps the mysterious young girl was the subconscious manifesting another reality to combat the anarchy. The power of innocence and tranquillity in the shape of that young girl. A focal point to draw mental strength from. I prefer the angelic approach but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
There is a book. The Laughing Jesus by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. It questions the legitimacy of the major organised religions. Not spirituality itself but rather the damage wrought by misinterpretation. Freke and Gandy are Gnostics and the book is based on Gnostic wisdom. Well worth reading. They explore the misinterpretation of the notion of good and bad experience. I will quote directly. They say that we, as humans, think that our experiences are either good OR bad. The truth being every experience is BOTH good and bad. There is nothing so good that it does not have a bad side and nothing so bad that it does not have a good side. But it is often the most powerful “bad” experiences that wake us up. In my life there have been a series of supposedly “bad” events that have “woken” me up. I was on a collision course with a serious late-life spiritual crisis when I was diagnosed with cancer and given a short life expectancy. My reaction to that diagnosis changed my life forever. It was a rebirth and that rebirth would not have been possible without the help of that “bad” experience - my cancer diagnosis. We have to change our misconceptions when it comes to good and bad. These two words are inadequate descriptions.
I come from a broken home, poverty, a mother who buckled under the pressure of dreams shattered. Her bitter philosophy, forged from a broken heart, was the first lesson I absorbed as a young boy, virtually sitting on her knee. Then the trauma of the plane crash. Events like the axe attack. The clash of culture in the Sixties when I adopted long hair – this saw good and trusty friends turn against me and several bashings, one which left me hospitalised. A drug problem that left me scarred inside and out. The birth of an autistic son. A marriage breakdown. A road accident that saw me spend, on and off, a year in hospital facing amputation as my smashed leg refused to heal combined with the loss of sight in one eye. A mysterious illness that left me in a state akin to chronic fatigue – unable to work, sleeping 15 hours a day, passing blood. Which medical specialists tried to diagnose and treat but all ended up with arms raised in despair. Prostate cancer. All dire but all bad? No. They all had to happen. Like developments in a play til the happy ending is achieved. The villain uncovered. The lovers reunited. I wouldn’t be writing these words of encouragement if just one of these events had never happened. They are a visible pattern of development.
Somewhere in this world, right at this very instance, there is abundant food, somewhere there is famine. Somewhere the rain falls sweetly, somewhere the desert devours all. Somewhere a baby is born. Somewhere a baby dies. Somewhere there is peace and tranquillity. Somewhere the falling shells torture the air. Every moment, across both hemispheres, there is this dance of opposites. We have to share our lifetimes with both. We have to acknowledge or deny. The latter choice is the one that will alienate us from life itself and we will succumb to a haunted life - obsessed with the perceived injustice inherent in the “bad” side of existence. Acceptance is freedom. And acceptance comes with contemplation and with an ability to judge life without prejudice. And that means all of life – good and bad.
I can easily apply my logic to my own life and it has made life a wondrous place as I said but I was struggling with the concept when it came to others, especially when it came to the loss of a loved one. My words would appear to be callous. How dare I tell them to look for the good in their personal tragedy. It was true to a certain extent. I had no right beyond pointing to the tragedy in my own life and how I coped and hoping it helped. Then I picked up a magazine and read an article called My Year of Destruction by Jacinta Tynan. She writes of her friend, Neem, whose husband of 25 years died unexpectedly. She was left with three young children to raise on her own. Neem told of her reaction at the time: “it was like a nuclear bomb was dropped on my life, and I thought, ‘I can’t survive this’.” Jacinta writes of her friend: “ three years on, she can see that the trauma she endured has been her making.” Neem: “I decided I had to keep moving forward and transform myself and my life. Now I feel invincible, like I can handle anything.” Neem was reborn. She clearly had learnt to accept life – good and bad. She transformed herself and started anew armed with valuable wisdom. I’m not alone. There’s Neem and me talking to you. We can’t personally help with our own experiences but we can be examples of what is possible if life is loved, good or bad, and not feared.
I’d like to write about adversity. The bad days in one’s life where the walls fall down, the roof is gone with the wind and you’re 100% exposed to the elements. The elements of sorrow, fear, anger, regret and the all the other components that accompany trauma. Then I’ll try and show another side of adversity – where it’s a learning process, or a transition from despair to hope or even a blessing. I’ll start with a life-event that I experienced. Where I stood on the edge of madness. In a no-man’s-land where reason had retreated. And how I walked out of that place and survived. Everybody’s story is different and what I experienced isn’t the answer for everyone. It is just a consideration for the reader – for me it was an avenue that delivered me through one of life’s apparent roadblocks.
Like a fool, one evening back in late 1967, I swallowed a dose of LSD offered to me by an acquaintance by the name of Paul. Paul was a scholar of psychedelia. He knew the best source for good acid. Once obtained, all one had to do was to welcome Paul into your residence or enter Paul’s residence, settle down, rummage through the waiting record collection, put on the background soundtrack to accompany the opening of the doors of perception, wait in eager anticipation for 20 or so minutes for the initial rush and then you were off on your trip. Previous psychedelic excursions alongside Paul had been wondrous. At times, deeply spiritual and enlightening. At times, the hallucinatory hours spent on the inner voyages, shared with a small coterie of like-minded souls, took on a religious overtone. There was talk of a Church in which we could all worship the visions experienced. All such musings were conducted in the state of an altered consciousness. In other words, in a state of “up.” Once “down”, after the reluctant descent, we all went back into the ordinary where such contemplations were absorbed and faded under the scrutiny of Everyday conformity.
Paul was a ringmaster, a maestro conducting his own cosmic orchestra. Being a large, imposing man and ex-bouncer, he was an intimidating character hidden behind a flimsy pseudo-Hippy facade. A would-be guru. He would enthusiastically lead our trips, be they inside or outside. To the strains of Donovan’s Sunshine Superman or the Beatles’ Sgt Pepper, Paul would dominate proceedings. Along with the music, all imagery, mental stimulation or conversation would lay in his hands. There wasn’t much in way of protest from the participants as our immediate world, which incorporated Paul’s presence, was such a swirling, fascinating kaleidoscope of sensory overload that his persona just faded in and out of focus – just another hallucination to ponder. Still, his guidance, though confusing at times, came in handy when any confusion threatened our mystical joie de vivre. All through the Summer of Love (in reality the Winter of Love in our hemisphere) we ventured ever onwards. Then, in September, Paul’s guidance took a sinister turn. He had decided, without consultation, that my next trip would be done in his own personal laboratory. I was to be Paul’s experiment.
In Paul’s small suburban house, situated appropriately on Mort Street, I dropped a tab of acid. Settling back to wait for the excursion, I was informed, as were the other occupants of the room - being future wife, Lynda, and Paul’s wife - that I was a lucky soul. “Michael,” said Paul. “Welcome to Blue Lightning. I got the tab yesterday. You’re the first to try it out. It’s got a few extra ingredients to give it more punch. Let’s see how it goes.” One extra ingredient, I later learnt, was strychnine. Often referred to as the World’s Least Subtle Poison! When the tab hit, it hit with a power I had never experienced before. Previously, all psychedelics had been just Mini Minors, this was a fully-laden, monster Mack truck keen to devour any highway it found itself on. It announced itself with a roar. Like a wounded jet aircraft. It grabbed my mind in its claws and tried to drag me somewhere I didn’t ever want to go. I was being pulled out “there” where nothing exists but terror. The following three or so hours were characterised by wave after wave of psychic attacks. The drug was malicious and its intent was relentless. It was bent on transformation. A mental metamorphosis. The drug refused any consideration that I would ever return to the personality that was once me. Its vision of my future was terrifying and held not one trace of beauty. Each and every hallucination was straight out of the imagination of Hieronymus Bosch! Amidst the onslaught I knew this was a fight for survival. Not a physical battle but deeper inside. This was sanity versus insanity. It was relentless and I began to tire. I was exhausted and still the waves rolled in. I found my way into a bedroom, closed the door and took a foetal position. Possibly in anticipation of a rebirth as someone, or thing, unimaginable. Then, there was a strange occurrence. An intervention.
The bedroom door opened and a young child, a girl aged maybe five or six, entered. I had never seen her before. She walked up to the bed, stood and watched me intently for a few moments, then took my hand. There was a fragment of stillness and quiet within the storm. Something that I could reach out for. A fragment that I intuitively knew I had to hang onto like a drowning man to a solitary piece of driftwood. Her presence grew stronger and I felt myself descending. A sense of a rapid fall. Earthbound. The drug surrendered to an influence it couldn’t command. Then I was back. Unsteady, unsure, battered but back. The young girl was gone. Was this girl one more hallucination among many? I will never know. I would prefer to think that she was a divine manifestation. Angelic in nature. Certainly she possessed an aura that was distinctly otherworldly. Grateful in the knowledge that the Blue Lightning had unwillingly conceded to an indefinable presence, I fell into a troubled sleep.
When I awoke to the sounds of a normal suburban Sunday morning, I was told that no, we had had no visitors during the night and no, no-one knew anything about a child in the house. And the mystery intensified. All Paul could say was: “Told you. Good trip eh?” I think that he even said “groovy” and, as always, that word never suited him. I would like to inform all that when I left that house I was the same person that entered it the day before. But I would be telling a lie. The Doors of Perception were now slightly warped. They no longer closed properly. From that day on, they would swing open without warning and I would see, and experience, two conflicting levels of consciousness. The problem was that I could no longer trust either perception. Which one was real – the one where I could see the music notes as they floated out of the radio or when I could not enter certain rooms in my house because if I did I would sink through the floor and plunge into the darkness. Then there was the consciousness where I was perfectly logical, tying my shoelaces, paying the bills, writing a letter to my mother. So I suffered and then, when the psychic weight became too heavy to carry, I disintegrated. To the extent that, a few months later, I ended up in Langton Clinic - a drug referral centre in Surry Hills. This was inevitable. Really just a matter of time. My delusional state, coupled with paranoia and the ever-present voice in my head pleading for normality to return, intensified til I attacked a line of customers in a post office in Potts Point, convinced that they were attacking me. I had felt a sharp blow to the back of my head, all imaginary, and I retaliated. I was hauled to, and locked in a room, in the Wayside Chapel til the police came and took my hallucinations to a safe place. I was now on my own. I was officially an Acid Casualty.
I have written this long introduction to get to the point of this observation. The question of survival. How did I endure and survive years of torment? Those desperate times where I had to co-exist with two personalities. One riddled with panic attacks, hallucinations and inner confusion and the one that struggled through the business of existing in what we call “normality”. It is a long story, set over many years, and is one I will cover fully in my book when completed. Basically, I survived because life itself saved me. I believe that certain stages in my development which, at the time of occurrence, seemed dire, were in the cold light of hindsight, neither good nor bad. They were essential to any chance of survival. I will recount three that come to mind. Two were physical and life threatening and the other, the exact opposite:
- When I was six-years-old, two aircraft collided overhead. One narrowly missed me as it passed a few feet above my head and exploded in a ball of flame. One minute, life was a game of Cowboys and Indians and in the next instance, it was a scene of death and destruction. This painful observation jolted me out of childhood. I lost faith in the notion of the World as a benevolent guardian of its inhabitants. There were now two sides to any perception;
- When I was in my thirteenth year. I was staying with my mother in the small bush town of Coonamble. We were renting our house. Sharing it with the landlord, Archie, who lived in the front part of the house. My job, one late evening, was to chop the firewood. I carried it to the fireplace and turned to find Archie, axe raised above his head, advancing across the room. He told me he was going to kill me but never said why. He swung the axe and missed. I was backed into the wall. I screamed. My stepfather, a burly grader driver for the local council, burst into the room and took Archie to the ground. Then they took Archie away. Archie had a history of mental problems and had tried to kill his wife in this very house. We were shown axe marks on their bedroom door. He had been previously institutionalised but released. Fingers crossed. My lesson learnt here was simple and direct. My perception that life, that which we interact with each and every day, was a fragile affair was violently reinforced. Anything was possible at any time;
- In my fourteenth year, in Dubbo, I witnessed, along with two friends, one of the most widely reported UFO sightings in the State’s history. (That encounter is detailed in an earlier entry in the Observer series.) Life, as a never-ending source of surprise, was relentless and ever-changing. You could be playing innocently in a friend’s backyard or bringing in the firewood or strolling through the twilight on your way to the movies. No matter the location, every moment we live is open to change. Often profound and, just as equally, open to misinterpretation as to its nature.
- The question raised is: when we face a calamity or an encounter that is life-changing, is that event bad or good? We often condemn the bad things that happen to us in our respective lifetimes. We tend to try and forget them as we see no merit in reliving them in our memories. Best forgotten. But, like all of our formative episodes in life, the logic that any event can be labelled good or bad is often better observed from a distance, put into perspective and then evaluated. You have a car crash and are bed-ridden til the injuries are healed. Bad? Not so when considering that the car was bound for an overseas flight which crashed later that evening. Win the lottery. Good? The money won buys you financial freedom and a new standard of life. Unfortunately, it also affords you a first class ticket on the same flight that the car crash victim missed. A little pessimistic an example maybe but life can be just like that.
Back to my LSD trip. A terrifying experience that left me with a psyche that had to be rebuilt from the ground up. And the building blocks I used were found in the debris of my previous “ bad” experiences. I believe that my mind’s strength would not have coped with the psychedelic onslaught if it had no prior knowledge of life’s hallucinatory episodes. There is no doubt that my subconscious learnt vital survival skills for future use when it rationalised that plane crash, that axe attack. Both were dream-like experiences. “This is not real, this can’t be happening” events. The subconscious would have had reference points to refer to when the drug kicked in. Perhaps the mysterious young girl was the subconscious manifesting another reality to combat the anarchy. The power of innocence and tranquillity in the shape of that young girl. A focal point to draw mental strength from. I prefer the angelic approach but maybe that’s just wishful thinking.
There is a book. The Laughing Jesus by Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy. It questions the legitimacy of the major organised religions. Not spirituality itself but rather the damage wrought by misinterpretation. Freke and Gandy are Gnostics and the book is based on Gnostic wisdom. Well worth reading. They explore the misinterpretation of the notion of good and bad experience. I will quote directly. They say that we, as humans, think that our experiences are either good OR bad. The truth being every experience is BOTH good and bad. There is nothing so good that it does not have a bad side and nothing so bad that it does not have a good side. But it is often the most powerful “bad” experiences that wake us up. In my life there have been a series of supposedly “bad” events that have “woken” me up. I was on a collision course with a serious late-life spiritual crisis when I was diagnosed with cancer and given a short life expectancy. My reaction to that diagnosis changed my life forever. It was a rebirth and that rebirth would not have been possible without the help of that “bad” experience - my cancer diagnosis. We have to change our misconceptions when it comes to good and bad. These two words are inadequate descriptions.
I come from a broken home, poverty, a mother who buckled under the pressure of dreams shattered. Her bitter philosophy, forged from a broken heart, was the first lesson I absorbed as a young boy, virtually sitting on her knee. Then the trauma of the plane crash. Events like the axe attack. The clash of culture in the Sixties when I adopted long hair – this saw good and trusty friends turn against me and several bashings, one which left me hospitalised. A drug problem that left me scarred inside and out. The birth of an autistic son. A marriage breakdown. A road accident that saw me spend, on and off, a year in hospital facing amputation as my smashed leg refused to heal combined with the loss of sight in one eye. A mysterious illness that left me in a state akin to chronic fatigue – unable to work, sleeping 15 hours a day, passing blood. Which medical specialists tried to diagnose and treat but all ended up with arms raised in despair. Prostate cancer. All dire but all bad? No. They all had to happen. Like developments in a play til the happy ending is achieved. The villain uncovered. The lovers reunited. I wouldn’t be writing these words of encouragement if just one of these events had never happened. They are a visible pattern of development.
Somewhere in this world, right at this very instance, there is abundant food, somewhere there is famine. Somewhere the rain falls sweetly, somewhere the desert devours all. Somewhere a baby is born. Somewhere a baby dies. Somewhere there is peace and tranquillity. Somewhere the falling shells torture the air. Every moment, across both hemispheres, there is this dance of opposites. We have to share our lifetimes with both. We have to acknowledge or deny. The latter choice is the one that will alienate us from life itself and we will succumb to a haunted life - obsessed with the perceived injustice inherent in the “bad” side of existence. Acceptance is freedom. And acceptance comes with contemplation and with an ability to judge life without prejudice. And that means all of life – good and bad.
I can easily apply my logic to my own life and it has made life a wondrous place as I said but I was struggling with the concept when it came to others, especially when it came to the loss of a loved one. My words would appear to be callous. How dare I tell them to look for the good in their personal tragedy. It was true to a certain extent. I had no right beyond pointing to the tragedy in my own life and how I coped and hoping it helped. Then I picked up a magazine and read an article called My Year of Destruction by Jacinta Tynan. She writes of her friend, Neem, whose husband of 25 years died unexpectedly. She was left with three young children to raise on her own. Neem told of her reaction at the time: “it was like a nuclear bomb was dropped on my life, and I thought, ‘I can’t survive this’.” Jacinta writes of her friend: “ three years on, she can see that the trauma she endured has been her making.” Neem: “I decided I had to keep moving forward and transform myself and my life. Now I feel invincible, like I can handle anything.” Neem was reborn. She clearly had learnt to accept life – good and bad. She transformed herself and started anew armed with valuable wisdom. I’m not alone. There’s Neem and me talking to you. We can’t personally help with our own experiences but we can be examples of what is possible if life is loved, good or bad, and not feared.
January (2018) - Elusive Enlightenment
I am writing a book. It is based around my monthly observations published on this site. Mixed in with those observances is a series of recollections of certain events that shaped the contours of the path that led me to this very book. Though these events, as they unfolded at the time, appeared traumatic, in hindsight all were essential in my spiritual development on this plane. In my humble opinion, all were sanctified. All were meant to be lived in this life. This is not a theory of predetermination. Such a view would negate any chance a soul would have of starting a new day anew free from the shackles of the past. It is instead, a belief that what happens to you, today, is a consequence of a life once lived. Of decisions made or directions taken at a certain point in your existence. And that existence is not limited to your current lifespan. It is eternal. So, what I did in a past life had karmic consequences and, if I didn’t learn from those consequences and died a certain death, then I was given another life to correct my inner ignorance.
Here I am writing about my past’s ignorance being corrected. As I looked at the traumas of my earlier years and there were more than enough, I feel that they were all interventions. Or reminders, sometimes brutal, that I had an obligation related to a life once lived. They were, wether I liked it or not, a realigning of the path I had been following up to that day where I reached a specific spiritual crossroad. The nature of these perceived calamities were all conceived in the essence of the past wrongdoing. A privileged few can recall a past life but the majority can’t. So, if you take a closer look at your trauma you can image to a certain extent, its relationship to the past. In my case my teenage drug problems probably meant I was your local neighbour pusher, inflicting misery. My incident with the horror of a plane crash that almost took my life – I was on the ground as the burning craft missed me by a matter of feet, sending me into years of post-traumatic shock – could be related to any military campaign. A German Stuka pilot dive-bombing innocent civilians for instance.
Call those events Destiny or call them Karma, all, from where I sit writing this, were a blessing, though often in disguise. They were reminders, delivered with some force, that I wasn’t paying attention. That I wasn’t learning. As hard as the intervention is, in a sense, one could believed themselves blessed though it’s hard to imagine such a response upon receiving a dire cancer diagnosis. And, when I received such a diagnosis, the feeling that I was being blessed, never entered the scenario. Here I have to be careful. A mother who has just lost a child might find no comfort in what I’m trying to say – but when you live a sequence of traumatic events and you closely examine the outcome of each. What was your reaction and what was the intent that followed? If that reaction was life changing for the better. If you emerged from the wreckage a better person. If you found solace. Peace. A reason to live. (The list goes on.) Then you could be consider yourself blessed by the realisation that something somewhere is paying particular attention to you. It is so interested in your spiritual path then it constantly manifests itself in a series of what appears at the time as disastrous. But what seems disastrous sometimes isn’t in the long run. Years later many people say that “if that terrible time in my life hadn’t happened then I wouldn’t have found the happiness I have today. Thank God.” This attitude would spell out that you listened and were rewarded.
We all have our stories. I have mine and I can plainly see that earlier in my existence I ignored all the signs and interventions that came my way. Satisfied with just being alive at the end of each event, seemed to be the only emotion realised. The fact that I was still alive should have invited me to ask a simple question: Why? Instead all that was achieved was a vague satisfaction covering any questioning of the ‘why’ and ‘what’ that had just occurred. As I survived each and every trauma I conveniently forgot its implications and lessons and merrily proceeded down a road, potholed as it had proven to be, carrying a suitcase that contained ego and little else. It took a death sentence to finally halt my progress. When my remaining years were measured by the fingers on one hand then a truth finally became apparent. Someone was trying to tell me something. And if I didn’t listen this time then that action itself would sentence me to a future life just as potholed as this one, maybe even worse. I had to choose my actions carefully. Here is where the theory of predestination falls away – when it comes up against free-will. To be able to choose a course of action from all the alternatives available. Free-will opens the way for unpredictability and creativity. There is nothing unpredictable or creative when it comes to predestination. In other words, you are freed by your predicament. You are freed to explore. Your trauma takes you into an arena of possibilities. All traumas do that. I chose a way well documented on this website. But I would not have had that opportunity if my cancer diagnosis had not forced me back into my history. To see the hidden hand behind my recoveries. A hidden hand that persisted despite my indifference. This inner guidance is invisible. As the Polish-Mexican author, Elena Poniatowska, said: “everything essential is invisible.” The air we breathe, our thoughts, the energy that is both around and within us, our dreams and the Hand that waits. You won’t find it out there. You will find it within. Where it has always been, each and every life you have lived. You have lived in different bodies, in different environments, possibly from the prehistoric, the mediaeval through to modernity. Those have all changed but not your essence, your origin, your spiritual lifeblood. It is the true “you.” And, within the true you, is an eternal guide.
Think hard about every decision you make. About each and every motivation, no matter how trivial. Look for signs and signals. For messages. Acquaint yourself with the power of synchronicity. Return to enlightenment because that was the way you were born. Enlightenment is your natural state. Living a life bound to the material world has atrophied your insight. Exercise it like a weak muscle. With exercise you reap the benefits. This is how I understood why I ended up with the oncologist listening to his sad predictions and how I placed all in a context that saw a new door open for me to walk through.
Happy New Year.
December, 2017 - The Complexity of Interpretation
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Every month I wait for a new topic. Sometimes it comes early, sometimes at the last minute. My modus operandi involves sitting patiently til an inner direction, or instruction, arrives. At times this can be only a hint, barely audible. A fleeting thought. Other times it can be quite pronounced. This month I was directed to seek out M. C. Escher. Escher, the Dutch graphic artist, was initially encountered by my good self within my drug-fuelled Hippy days in the infamous 60s. Here I remember the 18-year-old Michael mesmerised by lithographs such as his Drawing Hands. Filled with a chemically-induced elevated consciousness, I sat enthralled at the sight of two hands, facing each other, drawing one another into being. There was more wonder in Escher works such as Reptiles and his collection of challenging Stairs where known laws, such as gravity, have ceased to exist. Escher’s art, seemed to me, to be based on the idea of competing realities. The mathematical, physically precise, and the Spiritual, ethereal. Exemplified in Metamorphosis (1937), where the Italian town of Atrani is transformed from bricks and mortar into a collection of quaint oriental gentlemen. There is a conflict involved as the concrete of a physical town loses its identity while metamorphosing into a different reality. I could see that Escher was ‘Psychedelic’ long before the term was coined and that his Psychedelia was produced entirely without the aid of narcotics. And it was maybe here that the first seed was sown that there were other avenues to the extraordinary that eschewed chemical assistance. Art was one such avenue.
Now, 50 years on, I was again encouraged to seek out M. C. Escher. To the library I went and walked out with a copy of M. C. Escher – His Life and Complete Graphic Work. I delved into his life’s story. The first sign of Escher’s introduction to the Infinite and its influence on his art to come, arrived on page 18. Here he describes, in third person, an organ recital in a church: “suddenly a storm wind chased through the pipes of the organ and a thundering sound announced the glory of God! Thereupon the young man lay down on his back on the cold flagstones, in the middle of the church, at that. He felt his heart swelling amidst the hurricane, amidst the resounding thundering voice. The pillars of the church could no more bear this sound than he. They stretched out, like a man stretches out in the morning, so forcefully that it seemed there might be an accident. The young man lay on his back on the cold flagstones of the church and stretched out his arms as if he were going to be crucified. He grabbed hold of the huge stones with his fingers and was aware of lying on his great mother, Earth. He felt that Mother Earth was a sphere and his outstretched hands almost touched the other side of the earth. Above him he could see the undulating, swaying pillars. Wind blew through the organ pipes even more forcefully and thunderously. The organ grew much larger; the pipes reached from Heaven down to the earth and the young man felt such a strong wind that he rose from the stones and flew into the air, right through the swaying pillars.”
In Escher’s art you can see that experience in his storm-filled church later relived and reinvented in any number of his works. For example in his depiction of the Natural History Museum London. There you see the distorted stone pillars that materialised in his epiphany, reproduced. The museum’s walls are swollen and bent to accommodate an inner force. And that force implies an “otherworldliness”. It is that force, not visible to the eye, its power beyond description, that all artists struggle to first understand, then uncover and then transfer to their respective mediums. Music, the written word, art, film and on we go. Most fail as they try to transcend the mundane level of creativity that seems to chain them to this earthly dimension. Here we often witness the breakdown of many a creative soul. Drug addiction, alcoholism, self-mutilation or psychosis are a few of the devils that have tormented those who have struggled with a corridor of expression too tight to navigate. They can open the door and peek in but that’s as far as they can progress.
So, it is in our frustrated attempts to forge a definitive interpretation of the “unknown” that we find a dilemma that appears unsolvable. We face severe limitations being armed only with mere words; simple brush and paint; limited scales, chords and notes. Utilising the limitations inherent in our instruments of expression, we struggle to describe spirit and spirituality. This has eluded the creative abilities of mortals for too long to remember. But it is in our failure that great art is generated. If the definitive could be reached, expertly transcribed and laid out for all to see by merely picking up pen, paper, brush or guitar then we would soon lose interest in spiritual creativity. We would understand the Divine so well that there would be nothing left to express! We would be in an artistic heaven. The other reasons that some artists create for, namely money, fame or ego, would no longer be valid as our understanding of that which is “beyond” would automatically negate them. Fortunately, we simply do not have the creative depth to convey a true sense of the Divine. Fortunate because art doesn’t atrophy as a result. Because of our incompetence, it can only grow stronger as we yearn with great intensity to interpret the great mystery that is our lives. So, in my belief system the essence of all art is spiritual. It is a spiritual road full of yearning. Every artist seeks inspiration to express the inexpressible. The indefinable. But there is no level of inspiration available to satisfactorily achieve that goal. Some have come close and their works have inspired and endured over the centuries. But inspiration and the primitive wonder generated by the great masters is as close as they get. They do not answer the “big” questions. Even one as elementary as what are we doing here. The good news is though all earthly creativity is only a hint, a glimpse, of the “unknown”, it doesn’t deter us. We persist and it is our failure to convey the true essence of the ethereal that drives that persistence.
And so I return to Escher. Wether Escher was deeply spiritual I don’t know. His experience as he lay on the “cold flagstones” certainly points to a spiritual intuition which I’m sure would have influenced his art. His history wasn’t what I was looking for as I followed my inner directive. I found what I was looking for when I examined his art. In Escher’s works one can sense the frustration, or is it yearning, representing all artistry. I was sent to investigate because something was telling me there was valuable insight in doing so. If Escher didn’t exist I could have easily found the same lesson in the world of the avant garde, the surrealist, the free jazz musician, radical film maker or any kindred soul. These are the souls who distort in order to represent their vision. A painting of a bucolic country scene with its grazing cow and green trees and fresh mown hay can convey a sense of place but to invoke the invisible mystery of nature that resides in every blade of grass is an entirely different matter. Look at van Gogh’s Starry Night. At the distorted night sky implying hidden forces at play. Listen to Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. To the great musician’s “sheets of sound” as his sax acknowledges that it is not Coltrane’s instrument but is, in fact, God’s. The music is far above the inadequacies of commercial pop. Look at Escher. There is the same drive and purpose displayed. Escher knew that his personal failure to express was the driving force that led to a direction that was only found outside the boundaries. He said it himself: “only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible. I think it’s in my basement... let me go upstairs and check.”
There is a beauty here. We are all artists. We all create a world that we live in. But when we have to describe that world and our role in it, our true inner self, our spirit, we are all inadequate in our creative efforts to articulate. We acknowledge that as simple souls we will only fail in any attempt to portray the complexity of our existence. We can’t find the exact words. The right brushstroke. The perfect chord. All our creations are just replicas of the surface world around us with maybe a hint of its hidden elements. We paint the surface because we are familiar with its structure but our brushes fail when we try to paint what is below that surface. But we all intuitively know that our world is just a part of that bigger picture that evades us. Why? Because we can’t help ourselves. We write, sing, paint or sculpt on despite the odds against success. It’s an inner compulsion that has driven all humans since the first cave art. To seek out the truth and reveal it. To succeed even though our clumsy attempts are daunting. And, by showing intent, we enter a two-way conversation. All inspiration is divine encouragement and the resultant artistry is our answer, clumsy as it sometimes is. Adventurous artists such as Escher shows us that we have to distort our perception of reality. To become aware and enlightened by looking beyond life’s rigid architecture and create a new architecture better suited to house our inner quest. The power of all creativity is in its persistence. Its insistence. It persists, teasingly, despite its knowledge that our inadequacies will often fail to convey the abstraction surrounding us in its purest form. We are teased by glimpses of the “otherness”. Art is patient. It is often selective granting some such as Picasso, Shakespeare or even the Beatles, a creative perception that can transcend the mundane. They inspire us in two ways: we can take up our instruments of choice and try to emulate them or we can access their conversation with the Universe by simply, in our appreciative observance, merging emotionally, intellectually or spiritually with their works. All is one and one is all.
November, 2017 – Desert Logic
I am engrossed in a book entitled the Solace of Fierce Landscapes by Belden C. Lane. Lane is a Christian Professor of Theological Studies and American Studies at St Louis University in the US. The book is a study of human relationships between outer and inner landscapes, emphasising desert and mountainous environments as examples. Basically the desert is a metaphor for our inner desert - for the indifference and harshness of the everyday, though there is an inborn gift within that hostility, that vastness, the endless horizon. If we can understand that desert and our place in it, our ego can lose not only its acquisitional lifestyle – its materialism – but also its perception of a mastery over nature and universal influences. That loss of ego is liberating. Freeing the inner soul to seek a spiritual road from the desert to higher ground. Western rebirth symbolism is built around that process - the Phoenix rising from the ashes; the flight of Moses’ white dove. The human rationality instinctively feels that higher ground is intrinsically holy ground. We climb the ladder to success; we break through the glass ceiling. That desire to ascend to higher ground originates within our inner desert. The mountain is our avenue of ascent. We see it as being closer to our interpretation of heaven. Mountains contain the peaks of potential silence and peace.
Lane caught my interest when he wrote about our whole Western spiritual system springing from such a harsh environment. Desert logic. Born from a world of tribal conflict, a struggle to master the elements in order to survive. The words of the Bible spring from a culture surrounded by a vista of sand, rock and a parched earth. An infinite, indifferent environment. Author Morris S. Seale in The Desert Bible writes that the Old Testament reflects that nomadic past. The Israelites, even when they eventually adopted a agricultural life with its relative non-nomadic stability, still carried the Desert’s essence within them. The Old Testament, according to Seale, sees a strong connection between some of the words and ideas of the ancient Holy Book and the poetry of nomadic Arabs. This raises an interesting question. What if the Bible was a product of fertile Europe or of Icelandic origin? What would we believe today if we read words that were not only environmentally-influenced but also drew their morality and civil laws from the culture they were written in? That is a question but a question only. Here is the fact. We based our society and our behaviour within it, on the logic of the desert. By a natural evolution or cosmic decree – the latter satisfies my suspicions - this is where we, in the West, found our initial divine inspiration. Unfortunately, trust in our belief system has been eroded by institutional religion, by corporate spiritualism. The modern world is beset by the evils of “interpretation for profit.” Profit measured in terms of ego-enrichment, personal power, political influence and financial gain. There is, in reaction, a growing abandonment of Western values. We find this as people, more and more, seek solace in Eastern belief systems. But, as we lean in that direction, we find it’s a circle of belief. We set out from Here and always find ourselves back Here. What is “there” has always existed “here.” The basic truth of existence knows no boundaries. There is no “direction” to navigate to find it. For instance, there is as much truth in our inherited desert logic as in the halls of Zen.
Further into Lane’s book I came across a particular passage that illustrated one thing: the ancient stories that sprung out of the desert are as relevant today. Sitting in a penthouse in New York or under the stars of an isolated landscape, the reader, be they Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or any of the other mirrors of reflection, would understand the universal logic of Awad Afifi.
“Awad Afifi the Tunisian was a nineteenth-century dervish teacher who drew his wisdom from the wide expanse of desert North Africa. He once shared with his pupils a story that began with a gentle rain falling on a high mountain in a distant land. The rain was first hushed and quiet, trickling down granite slopes. Gradually it increased in strength, as rivulets of water rolled over the rocks and down the gnarled, twisted trees that grew there. The rain fell, as water must, without calculation. The Sufi master understood that water never has time to practice falling.
Soon it was pouring, as swift currents of dark water flowed together into the beginnings of a stream. The brook made its way down the mountainside, through small stands of cypress trees and fields of lavender-tipped purslane, down cascading falls. It moved without effort, splashing over stones – learning that the stream interrupted by rocks is the one that sings most nobly. Finally, having left its heights in the distant mountain, the stream made its way to the edge of a great desert. Sand and rock stretched beyond seeing.
Having crossed every other barrier in its way, the stream fully expected to cross this as well. But as fast as its waves splashed into the desert, that fast did they disappear into the sand. Before long, the stream heard a voice whispering, as if coming from the desert itself, saying, “The wind crosses the desert, so can the stream.” “Yes but the wind can fly!” cried out the stream, still dashing itself into the desert sand.
“You’ll never get across that way,” the desert whispered. “You have to let the wind carry you.” “But how?” shouted the stream. “You have to let the wind absorb you.” The stream could not accept this, however, not wanting to lose its identity or abandon its own individuality. After all, if it gave itself to the winds, could it ever be sure of becoming a stream again?
The desert replied that the stream could continue its flowing, perhaps one day producing a swamp there at the desert’s edge. But it would never cross the desert so long as it remained a stream. “Why can’t I remain the same stream that I am?” the water cried. And the desert answered, ever so wisely, “You never can remain what you are. Either you become a swamp or you give yourself to the winds.”
The stream was silent for a long time, listening to distant echoes of memory, knowing parts of itself having been held before in the arms of the wind. From that long-forgotten place, it gradually recalled how water conquers only by yielding, by flowing around obstacles, by turning to steam when threatened by fire. From the depths of that silence, slowly the stream raised its vapors to the welcoming arms of the wind and was borne upward, carried easily on great white clouds over the wide desert waste.
Approaching distant mountains on the desert’s far side, the stream then began once again to fall as a light rain. At first it was hushed and quiet, trickling down granite slopes. Gradually it increased in strength, as rivulets rolled over the rocks and down the gnarled, twisted trees that grew there. The rain fell, as water must, without calculation. And soon it was pouring, as swift currents of dark water flowed together - yet again - into the headwaters of a new stream.”
Quite rightly Afifi never offered an interpretation of this story. Instead he left it to reader or listener to find their own identity within the words. To become the stream. The lesson is for all to learn by. Belden C. Lane encourages us to explore our inner wilderness and, by doing so, we might find that road that leads to higher ground.
I am engrossed in a book entitled the Solace of Fierce Landscapes by Belden C. Lane. Lane is a Christian Professor of Theological Studies and American Studies at St Louis University in the US. The book is a study of human relationships between outer and inner landscapes, emphasising desert and mountainous environments as examples. Basically the desert is a metaphor for our inner desert - for the indifference and harshness of the everyday, though there is an inborn gift within that hostility, that vastness, the endless horizon. If we can understand that desert and our place in it, our ego can lose not only its acquisitional lifestyle – its materialism – but also its perception of a mastery over nature and universal influences. That loss of ego is liberating. Freeing the inner soul to seek a spiritual road from the desert to higher ground. Western rebirth symbolism is built around that process - the Phoenix rising from the ashes; the flight of Moses’ white dove. The human rationality instinctively feels that higher ground is intrinsically holy ground. We climb the ladder to success; we break through the glass ceiling. That desire to ascend to higher ground originates within our inner desert. The mountain is our avenue of ascent. We see it as being closer to our interpretation of heaven. Mountains contain the peaks of potential silence and peace.
Lane caught my interest when he wrote about our whole Western spiritual system springing from such a harsh environment. Desert logic. Born from a world of tribal conflict, a struggle to master the elements in order to survive. The words of the Bible spring from a culture surrounded by a vista of sand, rock and a parched earth. An infinite, indifferent environment. Author Morris S. Seale in The Desert Bible writes that the Old Testament reflects that nomadic past. The Israelites, even when they eventually adopted a agricultural life with its relative non-nomadic stability, still carried the Desert’s essence within them. The Old Testament, according to Seale, sees a strong connection between some of the words and ideas of the ancient Holy Book and the poetry of nomadic Arabs. This raises an interesting question. What if the Bible was a product of fertile Europe or of Icelandic origin? What would we believe today if we read words that were not only environmentally-influenced but also drew their morality and civil laws from the culture they were written in? That is a question but a question only. Here is the fact. We based our society and our behaviour within it, on the logic of the desert. By a natural evolution or cosmic decree – the latter satisfies my suspicions - this is where we, in the West, found our initial divine inspiration. Unfortunately, trust in our belief system has been eroded by institutional religion, by corporate spiritualism. The modern world is beset by the evils of “interpretation for profit.” Profit measured in terms of ego-enrichment, personal power, political influence and financial gain. There is, in reaction, a growing abandonment of Western values. We find this as people, more and more, seek solace in Eastern belief systems. But, as we lean in that direction, we find it’s a circle of belief. We set out from Here and always find ourselves back Here. What is “there” has always existed “here.” The basic truth of existence knows no boundaries. There is no “direction” to navigate to find it. For instance, there is as much truth in our inherited desert logic as in the halls of Zen.
Further into Lane’s book I came across a particular passage that illustrated one thing: the ancient stories that sprung out of the desert are as relevant today. Sitting in a penthouse in New York or under the stars of an isolated landscape, the reader, be they Christian, Buddhist, Muslim or any of the other mirrors of reflection, would understand the universal logic of Awad Afifi.
“Awad Afifi the Tunisian was a nineteenth-century dervish teacher who drew his wisdom from the wide expanse of desert North Africa. He once shared with his pupils a story that began with a gentle rain falling on a high mountain in a distant land. The rain was first hushed and quiet, trickling down granite slopes. Gradually it increased in strength, as rivulets of water rolled over the rocks and down the gnarled, twisted trees that grew there. The rain fell, as water must, without calculation. The Sufi master understood that water never has time to practice falling.
Soon it was pouring, as swift currents of dark water flowed together into the beginnings of a stream. The brook made its way down the mountainside, through small stands of cypress trees and fields of lavender-tipped purslane, down cascading falls. It moved without effort, splashing over stones – learning that the stream interrupted by rocks is the one that sings most nobly. Finally, having left its heights in the distant mountain, the stream made its way to the edge of a great desert. Sand and rock stretched beyond seeing.
Having crossed every other barrier in its way, the stream fully expected to cross this as well. But as fast as its waves splashed into the desert, that fast did they disappear into the sand. Before long, the stream heard a voice whispering, as if coming from the desert itself, saying, “The wind crosses the desert, so can the stream.” “Yes but the wind can fly!” cried out the stream, still dashing itself into the desert sand.
“You’ll never get across that way,” the desert whispered. “You have to let the wind carry you.” “But how?” shouted the stream. “You have to let the wind absorb you.” The stream could not accept this, however, not wanting to lose its identity or abandon its own individuality. After all, if it gave itself to the winds, could it ever be sure of becoming a stream again?
The desert replied that the stream could continue its flowing, perhaps one day producing a swamp there at the desert’s edge. But it would never cross the desert so long as it remained a stream. “Why can’t I remain the same stream that I am?” the water cried. And the desert answered, ever so wisely, “You never can remain what you are. Either you become a swamp or you give yourself to the winds.”
The stream was silent for a long time, listening to distant echoes of memory, knowing parts of itself having been held before in the arms of the wind. From that long-forgotten place, it gradually recalled how water conquers only by yielding, by flowing around obstacles, by turning to steam when threatened by fire. From the depths of that silence, slowly the stream raised its vapors to the welcoming arms of the wind and was borne upward, carried easily on great white clouds over the wide desert waste.
Approaching distant mountains on the desert’s far side, the stream then began once again to fall as a light rain. At first it was hushed and quiet, trickling down granite slopes. Gradually it increased in strength, as rivulets rolled over the rocks and down the gnarled, twisted trees that grew there. The rain fell, as water must, without calculation. And soon it was pouring, as swift currents of dark water flowed together - yet again - into the headwaters of a new stream.”
Quite rightly Afifi never offered an interpretation of this story. Instead he left it to reader or listener to find their own identity within the words. To become the stream. The lesson is for all to learn by. Belden C. Lane encourages us to explore our inner wilderness and, by doing so, we might find that road that leads to higher ground.
October, 2017: The Extremes Of Doubt
The tests were all in. I had Prostate Cancer with a Gleason score of Eight. Eight is bad. They say most men make up their minds on which treatment they would prefer within 48 hours of diagnosis. They often make that decision under incredible pressure. The oncologist is knocking on the door clutching a handful of dire predictions all based on accumulated medical “facts” and all designed to shake the soul into submission. He conjures up his inner alchemist conjuring magic via the avenues of chemo, radiation, hormone therapy, radical surgery and a host of other alternatives that sound as if they originated in some mad scientist’s laboratory. The wife is wailing in the corner clutching frightened children to her breast. The family dog howls at the moon. And you? Within? Answer the phone, Bob Dylan’s on the line: “something is happening here and you don't know what it is. Do you, Mister Jones?” And you don’t know. You are washed up on a deserted island. Seemingly the only inhabitant. You think you hear voices or is it a trick of the wind? Alone as alone can be. I was there.
Within a few days I had phone in hand to organise my preferred treatment. I had surveyed the menu and thought maybe Brachytherapy. Any relative website gleefully describing the process: tiny radioactive particles, the size of a grain of rice, are implanted directly into the site of the tumour. The radioactive seeds are injected through fine needles directly into the prostate. Brachytherapy, though sounding like a prehistoric treatment for a dinosaur, was the way. This website tells you that I held the phone, pondered, conferred with my intuition and then put the phone down, tore up the menu and took a different approach altogether. I became in that instance, a sceptic and acted accordingly. In my case scepticism opened the door so intuition could enter. From doubt came positivity.
Scepticism can be a gift but there are varying degrees of scepticism. Some are benign and some are downright dangerous. There are people who still insist that my approach was wrong. Simply because it was irrational in the sense that it was outside of what I call Test-Tube Logic. The logic that simply states that if it can’t be scientifically proved then it is impossible if not downright laughable. In my case, to be fair, some of the scepticism aimed at my decision was based on real concern and fear for the consequences that some of my friends and family were sure would be dire. It is not that compassionate scepticism that I wish to examine. It is, instead, the use of scepticism as a destructive tool. Scepticism here is radicalised leading to a full-on attack on any philosophy, theology, “ism” or likewise, that threatens the only worldview in which the sceptic would seek refuge. Areas of beliefs, as mentioned above, are simply considered as theatres of the absurd and all need to be exposed by the defenders of Truth. Welcome to the world of Radical Scepticism exemplified by that peculiar creature, the Denialist.
We can see three main levels of scepticism: a) Healthy Scepticism – the mum-and-dad approach. Healthy Scepticism is the “normal” approach to our everyday interactions with our environment. We are sceptical when the Nigerian scammer offers us a million dollars in return for our bank account details. We are sceptical when our politicians promise us a rosy future when all empirical evidence points to a history that belies all preceding promises. We are constantly sceptical. It is healthy to our well-being to be so. But our minds aren’t closed. We are open to suggestions that fed our commonsense. We are not wearing blinkers. We can see properly. Sometimes we make wrong decisions but they are our decisions. We can always change our minds.
b) Test-Tube Scepticism - being a stance taken where the “unknown” can only be accepted and verified when it satisfies empirical evidence and matches all scientific criteria. The Crown Prince of the Test-Tubers is JREF founder James Randi. He, as the self-proclaimed voice of sceptical Truth, offered $1 million dollars to any individual who could “demonstrate a supernatural or paranormal ability under agreed-upon scientific testing criteria.” Nothing was sacred. All contenders were welcome including those from the religious/spiritual community. All were judged as equal in their foolishness. Randi explains: “Since religion shows up as a part of so many arguments in support of other fantastic claims, I want to show you that its embrace is of the same nature as acceptance of astrology, ESP, prophecy, dowsing, and the other myriad of strange beliefs we handle here every day. Previously, I've excused myself from involved discussions of this pervasive notion, on grounds that it offers no examinable evidence, as the other supernatural beliefs actually do - though those examinations have always shown negative results. Religious people can't be argued with logically, because they claim that their beliefs are of such a nature that they cannot be examined, but just ‘are’." If we could have transported Randi’s challenge back into the past it would have been interesting to see the final verdict on claims such as the Sun revolves around the Earth or even Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity for that matter. Both these theories were heavily criticised by the sceptics of the time. So there it is: centuries of the inexplicable dismissed by one man and his followers. Christ healing and performing miracles. No. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi Tree til he was granted spiritual enlightenment. Not feasible. The prophet Muhammad visited by the archangel Gabriel, revealing to him the secrets that became the Holy Quran. Give me a break. Any spiritual insight, premonition, bump in the night, clairvoyant act, psychic phenomena and all of their close relations and fellow travellers, that cannot be supported by the known facts or reproduced in a laboratory well... Randi’s scepticism is extreme but we can take a further step beyond his myopic belief system.
(Before I return to my own story I would like to issue a challenge of my own: prove to me Mr Randi that all the above didn’t happen. Prove it scientifically or with facts. Maybe, out here in cuckoo-land, we could scrape up a million dollars in appreciation of your enlightening analysis. Meanwhile excuse us if we don’t hold our collective breath.)
c) Radical Scepticism – the world of the Denialist. Look in any dictionary: a person who refuses to admit the truth of a concept or proposition that is supported by the majority of scientific or historical evidence. Denialism takes on board Randi’s suspicion of the “unknown’s” validity but dismisses the insistence on science and empirical evidence as testing tools. Such logic is evidenced in climate-change debunking; the attacks on all that is perceived as superstitious - especially concentrating on the spiritual realm; alternate healing and a host of other theories. To the true Deniers anything and everything that threatens their viewpoint’s stability is open to ridicule. Denialism reaches its extreme when it embraces the Holocaust Denial. Denialism as a belief system does possess a perverted doctrine. Faith in the belief that: 1) all Denialists are absolutely right; 2) everyone else is absolutely wrong; 3) there is no room for doubt in the Denialist’s worldview. Even if the Denialist hasn’t had a personal experience, or concrete proof, of the evidence presented then there is still no doubt that not only are the miraculously healed or those who have unexplained psychic, clairvoyant or paranormal experiences delusional, but that they are dangerous to the population at large. The concept of a universal inner truth being available to mankind in general is a false reality simply because the true reality, the real Truth, only exists within the walls of Denialism. Not outside. Therefore, the outsider’s claim of access to the “real” Truth is deemed impossible because that access is only achievable within Denialism. There is no key available in any sphere that conflicts with Denialism. In the radical sceptic’s world, Faith and Intuition which are two vital keys to the Truth presented from beyond the walls, belong solely to the superstitious and dreamers. This is underlined simply in the final tenet of belief; (4 all reasoning is based on the “known laws” as interpreted by Denialism.
So, we are obviously not talking about healthy scepticism here, we are talking about a vast spiritual conflict that exists under our noses that is far removed from a scepticism aimed at whether Susie really loves me or is she just after my money! This is a conflict between those who see and feel their inner Faith and Intuition as real, accessible, and act accordingly when those qualities are needed and those who claim that any such reliance on intangibles is only found in a fool’s paradise. So, the Denialist denies all spiritual gifts claimed by those outside his walls. He is therefore a materialist. He believes that matter is the fundamental substance in nature and because of that belief only material things exist. Spirituality, or any form of higher consciousness, exists “within” which negates it as it is isolated from the real source of happiness which is “outside” in the material world. This is the only world in which the seeker can find true happiness. The forces of organised materialism have established a clear route that leads away from the sacred to a desired objective where the only desire is to satisfy, in all its forms, desire itself. Thus we have the conflict. We have two energy lines that converge. It takes a good deal of negative energy that travel down the road of materialism. Just as it takes great perseverance and inner spiritual energy to traverse the spiritual road. Every radical sceptic is materialistic in nature. I’ll let a famed sceptic reinforce my statement: thank you H. P. Lovecraft.
Lovecraft has obviously satisfied one of his cherished desires: the desire to deny Spirit itself. That takes a lot of energy. When a soul who has experienced the mysteries of divine intervention and protection and gained strength and comfort from that encounter, meets a soul who is intent on completely denying that such an encounter is possible cross paths, who will walk away intact? Was Lovecraft in a position where he knew something that the rest of humanity didn’t know? Was he a master of knowledge denied to the “superstitious and the dreamer?” In reality the Denialist is master in one area only – the area that demands extreme and radical scepticism. This is a very confined space in which to conduct business. The space is dominated by alienation. Alienated from the outside world because its mysteries are threatening to a Denialist viewpoint. It’s a more comfortable approach to meet all outside challenges with a war cry of “codswallop” then to consider a response of “maybe” or “let me think about it.” For it’s in the thinking process that the real danger lies for the radical sceptic. It takes imagination and vision to step out of a cage and place oneself in another soul’s shoes. Too hard. In fact, they have no desire to do so as they only want to see the world that they want to see without interference from conceived dreamers.
Following my decision to take an alternate route to health and after a few weeks of healing, I visited my doctor for blood tests. I was told in a very sceptical manner that I was, in the doctor’s words, “committing suicide via prostate cancer!” The consequent blood test, though it didn’t completely clear me, showed quite a marked improvement. Enough improvement to raise eyebrows. This left the doctor to offer only one piece of advice. “Whatever you’re doing, though I don’t approve, appears to be having an effect. Come back when the symptoms start to bother you and they will. When you tire of the back pain, the frequent visits to the toilet each and every night, then we’ll get serious.” (I will be fair again – my doctor wasn’t in the same league as the Denialist but he was living in the same neighbourhood). Thankfully I walked away from that meeting with my Faith and Intuition intact. Now, years later, I have no symptoms. I rarely even think about cancer. I plan for years ahead. And for that I thank my scepticism not the doctor’s.
The day I sat holding that phone in my hand and I changed horses mid-stream was the day that I relied on intuition. That ability to acquire knowledge without proof or, for that matter, any conscious reasoning. As Mr Randi wasn’t sitting next to me there was no presentable evidence or facts coming from him to support my decision. There was no understanding of how the knowledge to make my decision was acquired. Ignoring the medical establishment’s long list of facts, I took a entirely different road, far removed from any laboratory, led by a force that was every Denialist’s nightmare into an area that is surely way beyond their understanding - Quantum healing. A process that operates through laws previously unknown. Laws that have always existed but which are only now being utilised. Years after, the end result of my decision was visible to all. Now if I had applied for the Randi million dollar challenge today, armed only with a conviction that what happened to me and its outcome was as real as the air we breathe, I would, like the many applicants who preceded me, have failed. My Faith would have deemed inadequate because of its inability to be measured, recorded and packaged and paraded for all the world to see. Failed according to the JREF but not for one second would their verdict undermine my Faith or convince me that that Faith was misguided. That’s the power that Faith and Intuition bring when you seek them out. I walked away with my Faith and Intuition intact but there are others of good intent who have stuttered, doubted and fallen when the two energies – spiritual and sceptical - have collided. Collided on the road that leads to the spiritual and on the same road that denies it and leads in the opposite direction. If I had initially contemplated utilising the Denialist’s Test-Tube logic as a guide I believe I would have joined a long list of fellow travellers who faltered in the face of a perverse scepticism.
Here we have it – there is a spiritual road that leads through this world. When you travel it as a survivor of trauma armed with a gifted knowledge and wisdom, you will encounter those who question your legitimate right to even be sharing the same avenue. The answer of course is to recognise all you meet for who they are. To examine their intent. Is it compassionate intent or is it an ego-driven, self-centred intent built on fear? Most scepticism that is extreme in comparison with Healthy Scepticism, is just a manifestation of inner fears and doubt. Those energies that some souls forcefully contain within themselves. Once contained, life is spent by the Denialist trying desperately to ignore their very existence or that they ever existed in the first place. Fear of life, of death, of isolation, of illness, of mysteries unexplained, of magic, of technology, of constant change. The list goes on and on. If these souls come across anyone who is aware of these energies and who appears to have reconciled themselves to their existence then the result is open hostility. They direct their hostility toward that belief, that philosophy, that theology not realising their hatred is directed at only one target. Themselves. At their inability to basically interrelate with their environment. At the persona they have created to cope which has failed them. At their lack of wisdom, intuition, faith, and insight and the lingering fear, buried deep in the unconscious, that they have lost access to special universal gifts – once visible but now lost. So, on that road, tip your hat, wish him peace and harmony and press on til the Denialist fades to a dot in the rear-vision mirror.
SEPTEMBER, 2017 - What I Believe
(As old age's embrace is becoming stronger and stronger I decided now was the time to finally write down my journey. Consequently, I have began to write a book. This book describes my spiritual path birth to present - an interlinked narrative of this web-page and my biography. This an excerpt from the book's Preface.)
I believe that we are all fallen fragments of a divine whole. Perhaps we fell as a collective – transplanted into existence as a complete human race or perhaps we fell individually. The answer to that configuration is hidden to us. In my reasoning there has to be an entry point for our Earthly existence. A moment in eternity where the first of our many lifetimes originated. It may have occurred on this planet. It may have occurred on another planet. We may have been born inter-dimensionally – moving between dimensional birthplaces. I believe there is no doubt we fell because, in some manner, we rebelled against the natural order. Again I have no doubt that we have all, for whatever misdeed we have committed, been manifested into this dimension for one reason alone. To acquire wisdom in order to ascend back to the divine state from whence we originated. Therefore this Earth-bound dimension is our sanctified school. Here we have two choices provided by the gift of free will. Ignore or learn. If we ignore the mystery that surrounds us and drift aimlessly, never looking beneath the surface, we are then fated to never correct our raison d’etre. The reason or justification for our very existence in this dimension. The consequence of our ignorance is the samsaric cycle. That which is the cycle of repeated births, ordinary existences and deaths.
Such considerations of my belief system or any other individual belief system for that matter, uncovers both the complexity of our past and our inability to unravel that complexity. Therefore, it is advisable, I believe, to avoid devoting this lifetime to a fruitless pursuit of an understanding clearly beyond us. Because we are surrounded by such elusive mysteries within mysteries, we must not attach our search to an ultimate unveiling of one, or any, of those mysteries The question: “where do we come from?” is undoubtedly one of the most perplexing facing us. That question is clearly open to conjecture. That conjecture will always be frustrated by an answer that exists beyond proof, beyond understanding. That line of pursuit only leads to a position where we are overwhelmed by our intellectual shortcomings. We will be perplexed, distracted, discouraged and eventually repelled. Simply because we will be lost in a past that defies our fumbling understanding. Here and now is where we should devote all our endeavours because this is where we live. Wisdom must be based on the experiences offered to us cradle to grave. As Albert Einstein said: “the only source of knowledge is experience.” This is our crucial priority in this incarnation. Once we have accepted the limitations of our access to certain cosmic truths, we can concentrate on discovering what truth is “here.” Where we live and breathe. Here we trust that the universal logic that placed us in this dimension will become apparent due to our spiritual labour and it is laborious. The road from a deep sleep to an awareness of that “beyond” is hard and long. It is then, of great comfort to discover we are not alone.
Now that we have descended we would be sadly mistaken to believe that we are forsaken in the sense that we are left here, alone, forever. I believe in the Law of One. All life in this dimension springs from one source and, though we exist “here”, at the same time, we also exist “there”. There is no separation. Only a “oneness.” What is this source? It is not a personalized deity. A fatherly figure that sits in judgement somewhere beyond the clouds. That is too simple and naive an image. The complexity of understanding a source that is described as that which is “an all pervasive intelligent energy, that is both within everything that exists and without,” is one lesson we must learn and fully understand. It is essential to our spiritual advancement. If we understand we will see a simple truth: if we are forsaken by this creative source then it, in turn, is forsaking its very essence. Knowing that that concept is not possible is a liberating moment when first realised. Unfortunately, it is a long road from first breath to that realization and will, and must, involve a continuum – a series of existences from birth to death that contain a lost soul often learning only by a slim matter of degree each lifetime.
Our journey back to Oneness is a long and complicated one. I believe it takes many lifetimes. Simply because of the fact that we have been placed into an arena of such complexity that a speedy ascension is all but impossible. Complex in its structure but also complex in the building blocks that define that structure’s character. We face an environment that is contradictory to an alarming degree. A glance at the Six-O’clock News shows an exterior world that is not at all subtle in its portrayal of a human drama that has lost its spiritual roadmap. A world apparently bereft of almost all its compasses – be they ethical, moralistic or spiritual. Yet among the chaos and borderline anarchy, you can also find visions of extreme kindness and compassion. We are then bewildered by what is the true depiction of our essential nature – the shells raining down on the Iraqi hospital or the drowning child bravely rescued from the floodwaters by heroic passer-by? And that is just a glimpse of the outside world. There is another world, just as complex, that exists within the structure that houses our very essence. Inside those walls we also see the human complexity unfold before our eyes. We watch it unfold in our deep, personal relationships with the inner and outer worlds. Living within our confliction we struggle to ascend. Sensing that we inhabit a world of illusion where nothing is as it seems, we look for solid ground. In order to differentiate between that illusion and an elusive cosmic truth is to call on facilities that were severely atrophied in our descent. Like an old radio set they still work but the batteries are crucially low. We are still receiving signals but the static predominates. These voices, be they hidden within Intuition, Genetic Instinct or Synchronicity for starters, are feeble at first but increasingly persistent and spiritually revealing to those who try to listen carefully. Those who tire of listening to a perceived static and who prefer to listen to voices propagated by a materialistic source, often throw their radios away. They surrender to a belief that this dimension’s illusions are the only reality in which they choose to live their allotted lifetime. Those who hear fragments of sense in the airwaves - the incoming ethereal conversation - intuit the existence of an unknown broadcast source and set out on a search to find that source. This is a journey to discover their role in the great scheme of things. I believe this is why we are here. To be taught the Truth. To understand that Truth. To practise that Truth to the best of our ability, second by second. Though stumbling in our initial steps, at first no more effective than an amateuristic and erratic Earth-bound imitation of Buddha, our mission is to attempt to be an example of the power of that Truth so that others can be inspired by its presence manifested through us.
August, 2017 - The Shamanic Vision (Part 1)
The Shaman: a person who acts as intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, using magic to cure illness, foretell the future or control spiritual forces, etc. This is the accepted definition. A Shaman then is a close relative to, and not out of place with, the realms of the witch, alchemist or any conjuror of the paranormal. The Shaman is, like his fellow outsiders, one that can draw from, and operate within, universal laws as yet unknown. Many traditionalists in the West tend to shy away from any association with any concept even remotely linked to the above-named realms. All resisting vigourously each and every notion that cannot be rationally or scientifically proved.
There are none more conservative than the medical establishment. I offer no argument when they perform traumatic surgery. We’ve seen the reattached limbs, marveled at the microscopic surgery (in my own case I benefited as they rerouted blood vessels on my left leg. One severely mangled and torn almost beyond repair), heart replacement – the list goes on and on. I turn and walk away when it comes to the one great disease of the human immune system – Cancer. (The rest of this narrative is aimed at that area – immune system breakdown.) Traumatic surgery is aimed at that that is highly visible. The severed fingers packed in ice, the damaged heart via an angiogram. All localised. Cancer doesn’t fit in this picture. It is a symptom. It can emerge decades after an event often long forgotten. One that often only exists in the subconscious. Child abuse, fear of death germinated from a teenage car accident, rape, violence, cultural frustration. All the varied dangers that lurk in the Human condition. (Even the more visible cancers like lung cancer are symptomatic of habitual behaviour - a reaction to stress or something deeper.) All carry seeds. And when they manifest they are not questioned as to their origins, they are, instead, bombarded with chemo, radiation, hormone treatment, castration, mutilation and every finger-crossed treatment that is the flavour of the day! I read once that if you have cancer try to find a doctor who can mend a broken heart. He’s your man.
Robyn Welch, my healer, to me was a Shaman. (Though to unconfuse the gender definition I will call her a Shamana). She drew on a source between here and there. I went to her as a traditionalist. I had little faith in faith healing, miracle herbs or five loaves of bread and two fishes feeding 5,000 at Bethsaida. My only alternative approach was taking a new route to the Oncologist. I had “little faith” which implies that there was a trace although a microscopic amount. But that was enough. Microscopic sufficed. Cursed with “little faith” but gifted with intuition. Intuition that I now count as Divine Intervention. Someone, invisible, was encouraging me to step beyond my comfort zone.
I was in New Zealand when I first called Robyn in Canada. Eleven thousand kilometres of Planet Earth between us. Robyn relaxed me and began an internal body examination via a telephone! What she said next took me from the unbeliever’s world to a whole new place. “Tell me Michael what are these metal objects in your left leg behind the bone?” Here is my left leg’s story: a nasty road accident leaving multiple bone fractures including a nasty compound fracture; mutilation of major blood arteries on the left side of the leg. Parts of bone shattered and missing, possibly still back at the crash site, massive blood loss. That was day one. Months later the leg was still broken and now the doctors had arrived to inform me that it was not mending and they were crucially short of ideas. The next logical step they said was amputation. To cut a long story short I once again had Divine intervention. Two doctors were found with a radical new process – only ever tried on sheep. Batteries would be inserted along the fracture to stimulate the bone marrow. This worked. The batteries were removed but the metal supports were left in my leg. Robyn Welch saw these and I saw the light. Robyn then went on to heal my cancer. Robyn, to me, was a Shamana. An intermediary between the normal and paranormal worlds. What she used was magic. A magic that conformed with laws unknown.
Robyn is no longer with us but the Shamanic world persists. Its influence can be seen in Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). A practice based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years. It is there in Tibetan Medicine. Rescued from repression and flourishing in Nepal. It has a foothold in the West. Particularly in the US. All using treatments that struggle to bloom in the face of the West’s narrow medical worldview and its consequent ignorance. Many alternate practices are still deemed as relevant as those prescribed by a remote Amazonian witchdoctor. We can look for a sinister motivation from the West. After all a healthy population is never in need of the doctor, specialist or surgeon. That person doesn’t need drugs. So the logic follows – an unhealthy population is more economically acceptable. There is a sad Truth here but I want to look beyond that Truth to a situation where it would be no longer relevant to even consider this materialistic approach.
There is a book – In Search of the Medicine Buddha by David Crow. Crow spent a considerable amount of time in Nepal where he sought out the secrets of medical teachings from the Tibetan Buddhist and Ayurvedic traditions. The spirit of Shamanism pervades this book and it proposes solutions to our dilemma: how to reconnect with the energy that naturally nurtures. Or, on a simpler level, how to persuade modern medicine to open their eyes and see the light! There is a glimmer of that light. Witness Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in an address at the WHO Congress on Traditional Medicine, Beijing, People’s Republic of China: “Medical care has become depersonalized, some would even say ‘hardhearted’. In most affluent countries, the number of family physicians and primary care doctors continues to decline. The trend towards highly specialized care works against a sympathetic doctor-patient relationship. In too many cases, the patient is no longer treated as a person, but rather as an assembly line of body parts each to be managed, often with great expertise, by an appropriate specialist.” Crow’s book backs Chan’s belief.
The modern physician needs to be reinvented. He needs to be more than a doctor. He needs to be a teacher armed with dietary and lifestyle knowledge. A spiritual adviser that can take into account all the circumstances of life that bought the patient to his office and can, accordingly, offer a road of hope leading to good health. A spiritual companion sharing that road with the patient. To be a medicinal guide aware of the ancient power in the plants and elements provided by Mother Earth. Elements that have sustained the human race from sabre-tooth tiger to moon landing. And, most importantly, because of its simplicity and far-reaching implications, he needs the lost art of doctor-patient empathy to be re-established. Crow underlines that in the frenetic tempo of the modern world there is simply no time to nurture a personal relationship between doctor and patient. The old-fashioned country doctor knocking at your door at midnight is almost a myth. There is now a barrier between doctor and patient: technology. “Modern technology eliminates the human element in diagnosis,” Crow offers. As the doctor relies more and more on machines his inner perception and intuition atrophy. These gifts are overruled by the laboratory and computers. The computer is now judge and jury. There is no empathy between machine and patient. When was the last time you gave your computer a hug? Statistics now prevail. Averages. Patients lose hope as their future existence is now statistical: numbers on a page. Expected lifespan, the recommended dosage to maintain a decent level of health. The machine is more than positive that the unnatural is more effective than the natural. It often proposes an irrational violent approach. Chemo, radiation. The immune system looks on in horror as the doctor is consigned to the corner practising imaginary golf shots. He has no time to hold your hand. He has forgotten that healing is a spiritual path. A path that leads to balance, harmony, enlightenment and transcendent wisdom.
If the medical system can be reinvented. If technology can be utilised as a instrument that aids rather than hinders. If the shamanic element – a conversation between the natural and supernatural – can be incorporated into the practice of modern healing. Then it could be a new world. To me, I just want the doctor to remember who he once was. Before.
The Shaman: a person who acts as intermediary between the natural and supernatural worlds, using magic to cure illness, foretell the future or control spiritual forces, etc. This is the accepted definition. A Shaman then is a close relative to, and not out of place with, the realms of the witch, alchemist or any conjuror of the paranormal. The Shaman is, like his fellow outsiders, one that can draw from, and operate within, universal laws as yet unknown. Many traditionalists in the West tend to shy away from any association with any concept even remotely linked to the above-named realms. All resisting vigourously each and every notion that cannot be rationally or scientifically proved.
There are none more conservative than the medical establishment. I offer no argument when they perform traumatic surgery. We’ve seen the reattached limbs, marveled at the microscopic surgery (in my own case I benefited as they rerouted blood vessels on my left leg. One severely mangled and torn almost beyond repair), heart replacement – the list goes on and on. I turn and walk away when it comes to the one great disease of the human immune system – Cancer. (The rest of this narrative is aimed at that area – immune system breakdown.) Traumatic surgery is aimed at that that is highly visible. The severed fingers packed in ice, the damaged heart via an angiogram. All localised. Cancer doesn’t fit in this picture. It is a symptom. It can emerge decades after an event often long forgotten. One that often only exists in the subconscious. Child abuse, fear of death germinated from a teenage car accident, rape, violence, cultural frustration. All the varied dangers that lurk in the Human condition. (Even the more visible cancers like lung cancer are symptomatic of habitual behaviour - a reaction to stress or something deeper.) All carry seeds. And when they manifest they are not questioned as to their origins, they are, instead, bombarded with chemo, radiation, hormone treatment, castration, mutilation and every finger-crossed treatment that is the flavour of the day! I read once that if you have cancer try to find a doctor who can mend a broken heart. He’s your man.
Robyn Welch, my healer, to me was a Shaman. (Though to unconfuse the gender definition I will call her a Shamana). She drew on a source between here and there. I went to her as a traditionalist. I had little faith in faith healing, miracle herbs or five loaves of bread and two fishes feeding 5,000 at Bethsaida. My only alternative approach was taking a new route to the Oncologist. I had “little faith” which implies that there was a trace although a microscopic amount. But that was enough. Microscopic sufficed. Cursed with “little faith” but gifted with intuition. Intuition that I now count as Divine Intervention. Someone, invisible, was encouraging me to step beyond my comfort zone.
I was in New Zealand when I first called Robyn in Canada. Eleven thousand kilometres of Planet Earth between us. Robyn relaxed me and began an internal body examination via a telephone! What she said next took me from the unbeliever’s world to a whole new place. “Tell me Michael what are these metal objects in your left leg behind the bone?” Here is my left leg’s story: a nasty road accident leaving multiple bone fractures including a nasty compound fracture; mutilation of major blood arteries on the left side of the leg. Parts of bone shattered and missing, possibly still back at the crash site, massive blood loss. That was day one. Months later the leg was still broken and now the doctors had arrived to inform me that it was not mending and they were crucially short of ideas. The next logical step they said was amputation. To cut a long story short I once again had Divine intervention. Two doctors were found with a radical new process – only ever tried on sheep. Batteries would be inserted along the fracture to stimulate the bone marrow. This worked. The batteries were removed but the metal supports were left in my leg. Robyn Welch saw these and I saw the light. Robyn then went on to heal my cancer. Robyn, to me, was a Shamana. An intermediary between the normal and paranormal worlds. What she used was magic. A magic that conformed with laws unknown.
Robyn is no longer with us but the Shamanic world persists. Its influence can be seen in Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). A practice based on a tradition of more than 2,000 years. It is there in Tibetan Medicine. Rescued from repression and flourishing in Nepal. It has a foothold in the West. Particularly in the US. All using treatments that struggle to bloom in the face of the West’s narrow medical worldview and its consequent ignorance. Many alternate practices are still deemed as relevant as those prescribed by a remote Amazonian witchdoctor. We can look for a sinister motivation from the West. After all a healthy population is never in need of the doctor, specialist or surgeon. That person doesn’t need drugs. So the logic follows – an unhealthy population is more economically acceptable. There is a sad Truth here but I want to look beyond that Truth to a situation where it would be no longer relevant to even consider this materialistic approach.
There is a book – In Search of the Medicine Buddha by David Crow. Crow spent a considerable amount of time in Nepal where he sought out the secrets of medical teachings from the Tibetan Buddhist and Ayurvedic traditions. The spirit of Shamanism pervades this book and it proposes solutions to our dilemma: how to reconnect with the energy that naturally nurtures. Or, on a simpler level, how to persuade modern medicine to open their eyes and see the light! There is a glimmer of that light. Witness Dr Margaret Chan, Director-General of the World Health Organization, in an address at the WHO Congress on Traditional Medicine, Beijing, People’s Republic of China: “Medical care has become depersonalized, some would even say ‘hardhearted’. In most affluent countries, the number of family physicians and primary care doctors continues to decline. The trend towards highly specialized care works against a sympathetic doctor-patient relationship. In too many cases, the patient is no longer treated as a person, but rather as an assembly line of body parts each to be managed, often with great expertise, by an appropriate specialist.” Crow’s book backs Chan’s belief.
The modern physician needs to be reinvented. He needs to be more than a doctor. He needs to be a teacher armed with dietary and lifestyle knowledge. A spiritual adviser that can take into account all the circumstances of life that bought the patient to his office and can, accordingly, offer a road of hope leading to good health. A spiritual companion sharing that road with the patient. To be a medicinal guide aware of the ancient power in the plants and elements provided by Mother Earth. Elements that have sustained the human race from sabre-tooth tiger to moon landing. And, most importantly, because of its simplicity and far-reaching implications, he needs the lost art of doctor-patient empathy to be re-established. Crow underlines that in the frenetic tempo of the modern world there is simply no time to nurture a personal relationship between doctor and patient. The old-fashioned country doctor knocking at your door at midnight is almost a myth. There is now a barrier between doctor and patient: technology. “Modern technology eliminates the human element in diagnosis,” Crow offers. As the doctor relies more and more on machines his inner perception and intuition atrophy. These gifts are overruled by the laboratory and computers. The computer is now judge and jury. There is no empathy between machine and patient. When was the last time you gave your computer a hug? Statistics now prevail. Averages. Patients lose hope as their future existence is now statistical: numbers on a page. Expected lifespan, the recommended dosage to maintain a decent level of health. The machine is more than positive that the unnatural is more effective than the natural. It often proposes an irrational violent approach. Chemo, radiation. The immune system looks on in horror as the doctor is consigned to the corner practising imaginary golf shots. He has no time to hold your hand. He has forgotten that healing is a spiritual path. A path that leads to balance, harmony, enlightenment and transcendent wisdom.
If the medical system can be reinvented. If technology can be utilised as a instrument that aids rather than hinders. If the shamanic element – a conversation between the natural and supernatural – can be incorporated into the practice of modern healing. Then it could be a new world. To me, I just want the doctor to remember who he once was. Before.
July, 2017- The Shamanic Vision (Part 2)
I have a close friend. He is not well. He currently suffers a battle waged against him by a persistent E.coli bacterial infection. E.coli is a bacterium commonly found in the gut of warm-blooded organisms. Most strains of E.coli are not harmful but are part of the healthful bacterial flora in the human gut. However, some types can cause illness in humans. These types of E. coli can produce a number of infections. My friend has had to endure a urinary tract infection that has plagued him for what seems like eternity. Over the years I have seen him laid low with increasing frequency. Indeed on a number of occasions I have wondered if one of his many relapses was the definitive relapse. The possibility arose that I was witnessing the end for my friend and began entertaining the prospect of me being both a eulogist and pallbearer. My friend always seems to struggle free of discomfort but then, just as quickly, succumbs. His fluctuating quality of life sometimes leads me to utter “there but for the grace for God” to myself as I count my blessings. He looks for answers from the medical profession. And the answer is always stacked to the brim with wishful thinking. “If I prescribe more and more antibiotics for this patient then surely the sheer weight of dosage will eventually overwhelm every last bacterial villain. Surely.” Sadly....
American social critic and author, James Kunstler, theorised in a TV interview last year that History, as it relates to the human race, is full of short-sighted wishful thinking. An arena where events happened because they seemed like a good idea at the time. America’s fruitless Vietnam adventure would back up Kunstler’s theory. Here in Australia we still see the emotional and spiritual aftermath of big government’s Aboriginal Protection Act. A policy adopted at the time because it was believed that the Aboriginal people would die out, given their catastrophic population decline after white contact. According to official government estimates between one in ten and one in three indigenous Australian children were forcibly taken from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970, affecting all regions of the country. All because it seemed like a good idea at the time. As it was in the political world so it was in the medical world. The medical world has always been riddled with wishful thinking. It was wishful thinking that led to earlier practices such as the widespread use of Mercury for treatment for ailments ranging from cuts and bruises to STDs. Mozart died from what was to believed was a mercury-based treatment for syphilis. The popular Soothing Syrup of the 19th Century is another case in point. Designed with good intentions for the “problem child”, it ended in tears. Seeing that the potion contained 65mg of pure morphine, not to mention heroin, powdered opium and cannabis indica, it’s no wonder many a problem child was overdosed and died. I won’t explore Lobotomies, Electric Shock Treatment, Bloodletting and my favourite, Trepanation, to name just a few. (Trepanation being the drilling of holes into the skull to cure seizures and migraines.) But I will mention antibiotics and their use against our perceived mortal enemy – the common bacteria.
I’ve called this article The Shamanic Vision (Part 2) because it continues my examination of David Crow’s In Search of the Medicine Buddha. Crow explores the world of our feared enemy – the bacterial world. Crow states: “we live on a planet that belongs to bacteria. They are the most abundant organisms on earth, whose collective weight is greater than all other forms of life combined. The human body is inhabited by highly intelligent microbial communities composed of hundreds of types of bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and other organisms, in unimaginable numbers. On one square inch of intestine there are more microbes than humans on the planet. A trillion bacteria live on our skin, 10 billion reside in our mouth, and 100 billion are flushed down the toilet after each bowel movement. Over 300 different types of bacteria swim in the digestive tract. Overall, about 100 trillion individual organisms consider each of our bodies as their own. Almost all of them live a harmonious synergistic existence with the others, and with us... Survival of the fittest has always been nature’s law. Fossil records show that bacteria have been on this Earth at least 3.5 billion years. Bacteria are found in all types of environments, and can survive where no other life can: they are at home in the boiling waters of hot springs and in the ocean’s depths. Live bacteria, estimated to be dormant for a million years, have been found in Antarctic ice. Bacteria have been adapting to environmental challenges and noxious substances from competitors since the first appearance of life on this planet, and are highly skilled at resisting man’s chemical onslaughts.”
If you want to make some of the deadly bacteria laugh give them antibiotics. The laughter of Gonorrhoea, Tuberculosis and, ominously, Golden Staph, for instance, is becoming louder. Staph is ominous because it resides in the very place where you don’t ever want it to proliferate – our hospital system. It thrives in an environment of contamination – contaminated staff members, contaminated surfaces like the ordinary doorknob or food tray, contaminated equipment such as the stethoscope. The modern hospital is sowing the seeds of a crisis beyond imagining. Where the antibiotic is impotent, it leads to what the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention describes as the emergence of “nightmare bacteria.” Imagine such a scenario: you don’t die from the complications of heart surgery, hip replacement, child birth, organ transplant or even a simple treatment of a bad cut or common flu, you die because there is no protection from our creation of killer bacteria that kills both weak and strong indiscriminately! And we have been warned right from the top. Consider a statement made by the godfather of antibiotics, Sir Alexander Fleming – the discoverer of penicillin. In 1946, worried that antibiotic usage would be uncontrolled eventuating in its ineffectiveness allowing bacteria to learn and implement a formidable defence system, Fleming told the New York Times: “the thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope the evil can be averted.” That thoughtless person persists: he has seen the collapse of antibiotics Isoniazid and Rifampicin when confronting Tuberculosis; the dominance of E.coli (anemia, kidney complaints) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections (urinary tract, pneumonia) over Carbapenems which are one of our last defensive positions in hospitals. All just tips of an unwelcome iceberg. What to do?
Invent new antibiotics? The Infectious Diseases Society of America says every antibiotic currently utilised is a derivative of an antibiotic discovery made before 1984. Can’t go to the well for fresh water anymore. It’s drying up. There is hope in the development of Bacteriophages. These are viruses that can eat bacteria and were used in World War Two to treat gangrene. As seen, bacteria have survived and flourished for over 3 billion years. They are more than formidable. Bacteriophages will, no doubt, fall short. How about intensive 24-hours-a-day scientific research? It’s all about economics. Funding will also wither as the pharmaceutical companies realise that as antibiotics fail more and more, the economic benefits of manufacturing that product will plummet along with its demise. They will look for greener fields in which to invest. Cancer for one, has unlimited potential. A leading US market research company, BCC Research, has released a report stating that the treatment of prostate cancer was valued at $26.1 billion in 2011 and should reach nearly $29.3 billion in 2012. Total market value is expected to reach $50.3 billion in 2017 after increasing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.4%. This shifting paradigm will be of small comfort to the 20,000 Americans dying each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. It’s clearly time to look outside the box we’re imprisoned in.
Like the natural world we too are full of pathogens, be they bacterial or viral. Not all are predators seeking our demise. A fact is that viral infections suffered at an early developmental stage in children can help our immune system to develop naturally. Viruses can offer protection against future infections. Bacteria too are helpful in improving our immune systems. They are an essential component of our digestive system. David Crow quotes senior medical oncologist Dr Shrestha: “Diseases are not there because the bacteria are there. Meningococcus and pneumococcus are all over our body, but we don’t all suffer from meningitis or pneumonia. It is our body’s reaction which constitutes a disease.” Louis Pasteur, long a champion of the theory that germs were the sole causative agents of disease, clearly had a change of heart when he declared in his later years that: “the microbe is nothing, the terrain everything.” The terrain, unfortunately, is a battlefield. Bacteria verses modern science. It was a stalemate for a number of decades but now the pendulum has swung in favour of the bacteria. The scientific war cry has been “attack, attack, attack” and the responding call from the bacterial cell is “survive, survive, survive.” And that survival is now plain to see as the bacteria mutates, passing on valuable genetic information to its offspring. The next generation producing smarter, more efficient superinfections. So we have a perfect storm through which we have to navigate our fragile ships. Antibiotics were designed to kill and weaken all bacteria – healthy and non-healthy. They don’t discriminate between the black hats and the white hats. The immune system suffers as a result. Antibiotics have no interest in the causative factors of any disease – they are ignorant of diet, environmental stress, lifestyle and all the ills of modern society. Antibiotics create more diseases than they cure and, in doing so, they deactivate our body’s inherent capacity to self-heal.
I have spoken about the Positive Disintegration theory where what you perceive as a disaster is really a blessing. I have called it a sanctified trauma in some cases. In my life it was the oncologist telling me I had a limited number of years left due to the severity of my Prostate cancer. At the time a disaster. But that disaster led me down a new path to a life that was frankly unimaginable before my diagnosis. I feel we are heading for a global disintegration. This planet Earth has sustained us from the cave to the skyscraper. It has provided plants for food, for healing, for shelter, for whatever we needed to survive. There was once a balance between man and Nature. Modernity has chosen to dismiss Nature. It has chosen instead an ambitious policy of trying to dominate the natural order. This is no more evident than in the world of modern medicine. It has ignored, and even forgotten, that all healing was originally sourced from Nature. That Nature was our God-given natural provider and protector. Now there is a disassociation from that source. Almost as if to even consider Nature’s answers is an embarrassment – as if nature’s logic is that of the witchdoctor’s and has no place in a world of technology. The egocentric logic that drives medical modernity refuses to acknowledge Nature as a partner, as a potent source of healing. It has instead surrendered to the profit motive holding hands with its fellow travelers – the pharmaceutical industry, the military, the captains of industry. It has placed our healing in the hands of greed and dispassionate technology. They are trying to replace Nature’s intelligence with an artificial intelligence that is controlled by human hands. All wishful thinking and a fine example of doing “what seemed right at the time.”
The natural world will maintain its existence. It will “survive, survive, survive”. It will be the last man standing. The bacteria cell has displayed an intelligence that has outlived all earthly violations – both environmental and man-made. Modern medicine, at its own risk, has ignored that intelligence. And that intelligence is just a fraction of the Universal intelligence. There will be a disintegration – let’s pray it’s positive and not fatal. Maybe the horror of an untreatable epidemic will see a new order emerge. Or an old order restored. The natural balance between man and Nature.
(I feel, that one more time, I stress that my criticism of modern medicine is directed at that sector that deals in the area related to healing diseases associated with the immune system. I bow to the wonders of the transplant, trauma surgery, tissue replacement and all associated technical wonders. i just don't bow to ignorance and greed. The scenario that haunts me is simple: you are in hospital for a badly broken leg - hours of surgery saves your leg. As you recover a bacteria that has mutated due to scientific experimentation, invades your body. Your immune system, now antibiotic resistant, has no chance. You are now a victim of a medical system that has perverted the natural order. You die.)
I have a close friend. He is not well. He currently suffers a battle waged against him by a persistent E.coli bacterial infection. E.coli is a bacterium commonly found in the gut of warm-blooded organisms. Most strains of E.coli are not harmful but are part of the healthful bacterial flora in the human gut. However, some types can cause illness in humans. These types of E. coli can produce a number of infections. My friend has had to endure a urinary tract infection that has plagued him for what seems like eternity. Over the years I have seen him laid low with increasing frequency. Indeed on a number of occasions I have wondered if one of his many relapses was the definitive relapse. The possibility arose that I was witnessing the end for my friend and began entertaining the prospect of me being both a eulogist and pallbearer. My friend always seems to struggle free of discomfort but then, just as quickly, succumbs. His fluctuating quality of life sometimes leads me to utter “there but for the grace for God” to myself as I count my blessings. He looks for answers from the medical profession. And the answer is always stacked to the brim with wishful thinking. “If I prescribe more and more antibiotics for this patient then surely the sheer weight of dosage will eventually overwhelm every last bacterial villain. Surely.” Sadly....
American social critic and author, James Kunstler, theorised in a TV interview last year that History, as it relates to the human race, is full of short-sighted wishful thinking. An arena where events happened because they seemed like a good idea at the time. America’s fruitless Vietnam adventure would back up Kunstler’s theory. Here in Australia we still see the emotional and spiritual aftermath of big government’s Aboriginal Protection Act. A policy adopted at the time because it was believed that the Aboriginal people would die out, given their catastrophic population decline after white contact. According to official government estimates between one in ten and one in three indigenous Australian children were forcibly taken from their families and communities between 1910 and 1970, affecting all regions of the country. All because it seemed like a good idea at the time. As it was in the political world so it was in the medical world. The medical world has always been riddled with wishful thinking. It was wishful thinking that led to earlier practices such as the widespread use of Mercury for treatment for ailments ranging from cuts and bruises to STDs. Mozart died from what was to believed was a mercury-based treatment for syphilis. The popular Soothing Syrup of the 19th Century is another case in point. Designed with good intentions for the “problem child”, it ended in tears. Seeing that the potion contained 65mg of pure morphine, not to mention heroin, powdered opium and cannabis indica, it’s no wonder many a problem child was overdosed and died. I won’t explore Lobotomies, Electric Shock Treatment, Bloodletting and my favourite, Trepanation, to name just a few. (Trepanation being the drilling of holes into the skull to cure seizures and migraines.) But I will mention antibiotics and their use against our perceived mortal enemy – the common bacteria.
I’ve called this article The Shamanic Vision (Part 2) because it continues my examination of David Crow’s In Search of the Medicine Buddha. Crow explores the world of our feared enemy – the bacterial world. Crow states: “we live on a planet that belongs to bacteria. They are the most abundant organisms on earth, whose collective weight is greater than all other forms of life combined. The human body is inhabited by highly intelligent microbial communities composed of hundreds of types of bacteria, viruses, yeasts, and other organisms, in unimaginable numbers. On one square inch of intestine there are more microbes than humans on the planet. A trillion bacteria live on our skin, 10 billion reside in our mouth, and 100 billion are flushed down the toilet after each bowel movement. Over 300 different types of bacteria swim in the digestive tract. Overall, about 100 trillion individual organisms consider each of our bodies as their own. Almost all of them live a harmonious synergistic existence with the others, and with us... Survival of the fittest has always been nature’s law. Fossil records show that bacteria have been on this Earth at least 3.5 billion years. Bacteria are found in all types of environments, and can survive where no other life can: they are at home in the boiling waters of hot springs and in the ocean’s depths. Live bacteria, estimated to be dormant for a million years, have been found in Antarctic ice. Bacteria have been adapting to environmental challenges and noxious substances from competitors since the first appearance of life on this planet, and are highly skilled at resisting man’s chemical onslaughts.”
If you want to make some of the deadly bacteria laugh give them antibiotics. The laughter of Gonorrhoea, Tuberculosis and, ominously, Golden Staph, for instance, is becoming louder. Staph is ominous because it resides in the very place where you don’t ever want it to proliferate – our hospital system. It thrives in an environment of contamination – contaminated staff members, contaminated surfaces like the ordinary doorknob or food tray, contaminated equipment such as the stethoscope. The modern hospital is sowing the seeds of a crisis beyond imagining. Where the antibiotic is impotent, it leads to what the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention describes as the emergence of “nightmare bacteria.” Imagine such a scenario: you don’t die from the complications of heart surgery, hip replacement, child birth, organ transplant or even a simple treatment of a bad cut or common flu, you die because there is no protection from our creation of killer bacteria that kills both weak and strong indiscriminately! And we have been warned right from the top. Consider a statement made by the godfather of antibiotics, Sir Alexander Fleming – the discoverer of penicillin. In 1946, worried that antibiotic usage would be uncontrolled eventuating in its ineffectiveness allowing bacteria to learn and implement a formidable defence system, Fleming told the New York Times: “the thoughtless person playing with penicillin treatment is morally responsible for the death of the man who finally succumbs to infection with the penicillin-resistant organism. I hope the evil can be averted.” That thoughtless person persists: he has seen the collapse of antibiotics Isoniazid and Rifampicin when confronting Tuberculosis; the dominance of E.coli (anemia, kidney complaints) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa infections (urinary tract, pneumonia) over Carbapenems which are one of our last defensive positions in hospitals. All just tips of an unwelcome iceberg. What to do?
Invent new antibiotics? The Infectious Diseases Society of America says every antibiotic currently utilised is a derivative of an antibiotic discovery made before 1984. Can’t go to the well for fresh water anymore. It’s drying up. There is hope in the development of Bacteriophages. These are viruses that can eat bacteria and were used in World War Two to treat gangrene. As seen, bacteria have survived and flourished for over 3 billion years. They are more than formidable. Bacteriophages will, no doubt, fall short. How about intensive 24-hours-a-day scientific research? It’s all about economics. Funding will also wither as the pharmaceutical companies realise that as antibiotics fail more and more, the economic benefits of manufacturing that product will plummet along with its demise. They will look for greener fields in which to invest. Cancer for one, has unlimited potential. A leading US market research company, BCC Research, has released a report stating that the treatment of prostate cancer was valued at $26.1 billion in 2011 and should reach nearly $29.3 billion in 2012. Total market value is expected to reach $50.3 billion in 2017 after increasing at a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.4%. This shifting paradigm will be of small comfort to the 20,000 Americans dying each year from antibiotic-resistant infections. It’s clearly time to look outside the box we’re imprisoned in.
Like the natural world we too are full of pathogens, be they bacterial or viral. Not all are predators seeking our demise. A fact is that viral infections suffered at an early developmental stage in children can help our immune system to develop naturally. Viruses can offer protection against future infections. Bacteria too are helpful in improving our immune systems. They are an essential component of our digestive system. David Crow quotes senior medical oncologist Dr Shrestha: “Diseases are not there because the bacteria are there. Meningococcus and pneumococcus are all over our body, but we don’t all suffer from meningitis or pneumonia. It is our body’s reaction which constitutes a disease.” Louis Pasteur, long a champion of the theory that germs were the sole causative agents of disease, clearly had a change of heart when he declared in his later years that: “the microbe is nothing, the terrain everything.” The terrain, unfortunately, is a battlefield. Bacteria verses modern science. It was a stalemate for a number of decades but now the pendulum has swung in favour of the bacteria. The scientific war cry has been “attack, attack, attack” and the responding call from the bacterial cell is “survive, survive, survive.” And that survival is now plain to see as the bacteria mutates, passing on valuable genetic information to its offspring. The next generation producing smarter, more efficient superinfections. So we have a perfect storm through which we have to navigate our fragile ships. Antibiotics were designed to kill and weaken all bacteria – healthy and non-healthy. They don’t discriminate between the black hats and the white hats. The immune system suffers as a result. Antibiotics have no interest in the causative factors of any disease – they are ignorant of diet, environmental stress, lifestyle and all the ills of modern society. Antibiotics create more diseases than they cure and, in doing so, they deactivate our body’s inherent capacity to self-heal.
I have spoken about the Positive Disintegration theory where what you perceive as a disaster is really a blessing. I have called it a sanctified trauma in some cases. In my life it was the oncologist telling me I had a limited number of years left due to the severity of my Prostate cancer. At the time a disaster. But that disaster led me down a new path to a life that was frankly unimaginable before my diagnosis. I feel we are heading for a global disintegration. This planet Earth has sustained us from the cave to the skyscraper. It has provided plants for food, for healing, for shelter, for whatever we needed to survive. There was once a balance between man and Nature. Modernity has chosen to dismiss Nature. It has chosen instead an ambitious policy of trying to dominate the natural order. This is no more evident than in the world of modern medicine. It has ignored, and even forgotten, that all healing was originally sourced from Nature. That Nature was our God-given natural provider and protector. Now there is a disassociation from that source. Almost as if to even consider Nature’s answers is an embarrassment – as if nature’s logic is that of the witchdoctor’s and has no place in a world of technology. The egocentric logic that drives medical modernity refuses to acknowledge Nature as a partner, as a potent source of healing. It has instead surrendered to the profit motive holding hands with its fellow travelers – the pharmaceutical industry, the military, the captains of industry. It has placed our healing in the hands of greed and dispassionate technology. They are trying to replace Nature’s intelligence with an artificial intelligence that is controlled by human hands. All wishful thinking and a fine example of doing “what seemed right at the time.”
The natural world will maintain its existence. It will “survive, survive, survive”. It will be the last man standing. The bacteria cell has displayed an intelligence that has outlived all earthly violations – both environmental and man-made. Modern medicine, at its own risk, has ignored that intelligence. And that intelligence is just a fraction of the Universal intelligence. There will be a disintegration – let’s pray it’s positive and not fatal. Maybe the horror of an untreatable epidemic will see a new order emerge. Or an old order restored. The natural balance between man and Nature.
(I feel, that one more time, I stress that my criticism of modern medicine is directed at that sector that deals in the area related to healing diseases associated with the immune system. I bow to the wonders of the transplant, trauma surgery, tissue replacement and all associated technical wonders. i just don't bow to ignorance and greed. The scenario that haunts me is simple: you are in hospital for a badly broken leg - hours of surgery saves your leg. As you recover a bacteria that has mutated due to scientific experimentation, invades your body. Your immune system, now antibiotic resistant, has no chance. You are now a victim of a medical system that has perverted the natural order. You die.)
June, 2017: The Four Interpreters Have Lunch
There we were. Four old friends with decades of shared memories behind us. Sitting in the late Sunday morning sun at a South Coast market. Drinking coffees, a green fresh juice, lentil burgers. Sharing life just as we have done many times before. As was often the case when we gathered together, the conversation drifted til it finally settled on spiritual matters. One friend was deep into the Rudolf Steiner worldview; one was an explorer of all – Buddhism, Paganism, modern and ancient mystics; one was a devoted church-going Christian – though not at fundamentalist; the other, interested in everyone’s point of view – ready to learn from osmosis. So, beneath all, there was a supposed common core, being a shared awareness of each other’s search for answers. Pilgrims at the same table. The topics ranged from reincarnation to divine intervention in human affairs to the possibility of genetic transference of inspiration. Though we acknowledged our common ground and fundamentally agreed with each other’s arguments the conversation became more and more heated til we all arrived at that critical point just prior to abuse. There was one command of “Shut up!” directed from one to another and with that command two participants retreated. The remaining two continued until all words were then exhausted and then followed those who had retreated. What went wrong?
At our table we were armed with our accumulated knowledge gained through study. Backed by our years seeking out the great teachers. Fortified by insight achieved via meditation and prayer. We had the concepts down pat. We all thought we had the words to convince each other. Unfortunately, our words were useless. Everybody misinterpreted each other. Anger arose because the conversation wasn’t meeting our expectations. “Surely everyone could see that what I was saying was just about the definitive statement on each subject.” This was the hidden voice behind this collective consciousness. We became frustrated because each voice’s interpretation of the subject matter didn’t quite gel with those seated next to us. We did have a common ground but it became more and more as shaky as we advanced our arguments. The reason being that we were relying on acquired knowledge. Words, mostly secondhand, passed down generation to generation. Words that echoed human guesswork. Our constructed empires of assumption. After all the saying goes: “if everyone talked about what they really knew about, a great silence would descend on the Earth!” A problem not restricted to that Sunday morning gathering.
What we had here for a while was a microcosm. The disintegrating point of views representing a microcosm of the global conversation. We represented the communities of religion, of politics, of international cultural systems – you name them, they were represented. We, thankfully, commenced our dialogue as friends and returned to our homes still friends. But, in the wider world, this is, more often than not, not the case. Yes, the world’s woes implementing co-operation were exemplified by our behaviour, though miniature in scale, it was still true that from small seeds grow whole forests. Good men with good intentions have historically fallen into an immoral abyss when their belief systems have come face to face with another’s. One that is as equally persistent in the view that it is the only legitimate way forward. We live in a world of such spiritual, cultural and political arm wrestles. Ideals are constantly being trampled in the dust by misinterpretation. Misinterpretation breeds fragmentation which, in turn, breeds extremism. We witness it almost daily as another bomb is detonated in the name of a deity that would surely bend its head in shame at the carnage inflicted in that name. Sectarian violence has no prejudices when it comes to its perpetrators. All sides practise it. Coptic Christians are brutalised in Egypt by the Muslim population. Anti-Muslim violence is perpetrated in Myanmar by so-called Buddhists. Mosques burning. Churches burning. The carnage is ancient. Through the centuries we have never learnt the limits. There are no foreseeable limits. This is our omnipresent mantra: “If we don’t understand you. We will hate you. So help me God.” There is no reason really not to suggest that any one of a million historical atrocities could have germinated from a similar innocent Sunday meal shared between acquaintances. The seeds of conflict are always present.
Back to the Sunday morning Brunch. The reason why there was no creativity, only antagonism, born out of our conversation was because we relied on inadequate delivery systems (pardon the militaristic overtones). By creativity I mean no new, fresh, logical point of view was created from the varying arguments put forward - where you take those points of view agreed upon by the participants and combine those points to create a new theory. This didn’t happen and there was a consequent group disintegration. Now back to the delivery system employed by each. Here we relied on acquired intellectual knowledge, the inadequacy of words to describe topics that were primarily built on faith (reincarnation, celestial beings and genetic transmigration of creativity). The most common ground now revealed was the Past which we all had passed through in order to get to this particular heated discussion. Unfortunately, as we are all aware, the Past is a notoriously bad source of relevant information. Another country. And none of us live there anymore though millions practise life as if they still do. The Past, to be fair, did offer up two undeniable facts that no-one present could ignore – we all had no proof or personal experience concerning the contentious topics. In other words, faith aside, we were guessing. Not many debaters are swayed by a guess. Well proved that morning.
Is this the way to World peace? Do we all, and I include the entire wide world outside my window, cease all our searching with its overload of unanswerable questions? Or so it seems. Do we surrender to ignorance? Abandon every impulse, intuition, act of synchronicity that comes our way? Feelings that nag and pester with vague notions that there is “something” else besides what we have created as our earthly reasons for being? Do we strive to create a culture devoid of opinion especially if they are thought-provoking, controversial or inflammatory? Do we reduce all logic to one ideal practiced by all? The answer is No. Because our deep-seated impulse as human beings is to instinctively reach out for the Invisible. That is sensed but not seen. (Especially in extreme aircraft turbulence at 30,000 feet when the loudest prayer often comes from the atheist in Row 2D! ) When we search all we have to explain either failure or success are words. Words that if, for whatever reason, are universally acceptable, can easily be collected as belief systems. When we reach out we all have to be aware that our belief systems are flawed. Some built upon centuries of misinterpretation. Even we ourselves are capable of providing misinformation even when we are the only person in the room to hear it. Therefore, we have to examine our words carefully. What is their origin? What is their intention? What are the consequences of them being uttered? Are they the words of the present or the words from a distant past that belong to a version of ourselves long forgotten? Are they your words and not words copied from a book, sermon or a dubious guru? Are they fresh or habitual? Are we guessing just to win the debate? Will these words be of benefit or will they, as historically proven, be so powerfully whole societies will fall? Words can do that. So many approaches to consider before opening one’s mouth. And, if we collectively, and truthfully, examine all this and more, then all debate will be for the benefit of all, not the opposite.
May 2017 - To Live or Die
Decades ago, when I was young and unknowingly foolish, I had a good friend. His name was John. We shared common interests like film, music and sport. Not to mention women, solid drinking, travel and wasting hard-earned money on gambling. But, best of all, we shared restlessness. To escape John had a number of pursuits in which he liked to lose himself. Some were successful, golf springs to mind, others not so much. He never had many lasting relationships, seeming to pick women who were better suited to other men. A stable relationship and John was a real contradiction in terms. When he gambled, as the gag goes, he always picked horses that followed other horses. They never led from the front.
John was more adept in the appreciation of the arts. He knew what constituted a great film, novel or piece of music. Of course we’re not talking Mozart or Dostoevsky here. We’re talking inner-city Sydney 1970s. John would turn up on my doorstep with a gem now and then because it seemed we were umbilically connected when it came to alternative possibilities in music, words or film. Ian Hunter’s All-American Alien Boy – the title track. So he could see the delight when I heard Jaco Pastorius’ bass solo. Jazz and rock perfectly married. Mink Deville’s Spanish Soul, Richard Thompson’s early Folk-Rock fusion. All were introduced to me by John. He met resistance when it came to crime literature. My blockage revolved around the concept of this genre as linked to Dick Tracy or cheap pulp – childish. I arrived home one afternoon to find a small package on my doorstep. “Please read us.” Reluctantly I picked up the top book, Robert B. Parker’s initial Spenser novel. I read it, enjoyed it and acknowledged that, in this matter, John knew me better than I knew myself. Good friends can possess that talent. Spenser could have been followed by a John D. Macdonald - the creator of Travis McGee. I can’t remember. The years dim the facts. John’s act of friendship led me on into the works of James Lee Burke, George Pelecanos, John Harvey and Ian Rankin, to name just a few authors. This is the joy of a true friendship – the merging of two separate lines of interest. Two is infinitely more interesting than one.
John would annoy more than a few people. His conversation, in a single hour, would contain more “I’s” than most people would utter in a week. He was clearly exuberant at his position in the social fabric surrounding him. I saw this perceived fault as trivial. After all, it was two imperfect individuals in the same room. John and I. (Though he taught me to watch my “I’s.”) I don’t know what I contributed to John’s life but the longevity of the relationship pointed to something of value. Though that “something” has always been elusive. So, John was an immediate presence during those years. Of course everything changes. Restless youth loses its drive. I started the first of my handful of meaningful relationships. As John did. I bought a house, had children. John moved to America. We settled down as best we could. Which really meant we had a house that we both could be comfortably restless in. Or a partner we could be comfortably restless with. Both restless in our own ways. Though hemispheres apart our paths often crossed. I can see us now in Death Valley in eastern California or maybe Fenway Park in Boston watching the Red Sox or in New Orleans eating a 5-course meal in Tujague’s – blackened catfish if I remember right. Differing paths but still on common ground.
John was always a heavy drinker, as was I, but I was not in the same class. I drank for pleasure. John’s drinking always had an edge of desperation. Observing John I saw there was a sense of a hidden personal fear that alcohol could push deeper out of sight. Consequently, our common ground lost acreage and I lost interest in alcohol and found my pleasure source elsewhere. John didn’t. Long distance phone calls to American friends revealed that his capacity for alcohol was becoming impressive. That capacity increased and the consequent stories more worrying. Drinking a bottle of wine on his early morning commute to work; stealing from his family’s accounts to maintain the lifestyle or appearing on a friend’s doorstep minus essential clothing (in one case trousers) - too drunk to relate the reason behind their disappearance. On visits to Australia he would sit on the sofa drinking harmless orange juice. If he left the room, one sniff of his plastic bottle would reveal the truth. Vodka or Scotch fumes, the juice dumped in a suburban gutter. John tried rehab. In and out and then back in again. John’s marriage deteriorated. His family was alienated. He returned to Australia. Meanwhile, unable to resist restlessness, I had moved to New Zealand.
We met up now and then but the common ground was now just a patch of earth. To now observe his transformation was both frustrating and heartbreaking. John was now a pathetic friend. His social circle shrank to a point where it was more a noose than a circle. Returning to Sydney I had one last night together with my old friend. I virtually kidnapped John whisking him out of his comfort zone and into my car. His protests in my ears. After all, there was no bar in my car. We drove aimlessly around Sydney’s Eastern suburbs. I prayed that my newfound journey into Buddhist Zen would give me the words. Words to force an epithany. A moment of great realization where John would be reborn as the old John right before my eyes. There were no words logical enough to convince John to try a different approach to life. We parked by the sea at Coogee Beach. John left the car and disappeared. I found him in a bar. There are truths that are solid. This truth was I had lost my friend to the demons. I abused him. I told him, without any semblance of compassion, that maybe he should just die and soon. He was drinking himself to death. Couldn’t he just get it over with and all those who were in his sorry orbit could return to what we call reality. Buddha was a million miles away. I drove him home, keen to get him and his dark energy out of my car. I never saw John again.
John moved to Tasmania. The merry-go-round that is rehab continued. I got the odd calls. Some were just like old times. Some were not. John still had a spark, though easily distinguished. It was his belief that the pieces could be still picked up. The pieces proved too small to see, let alone pick up. And, like I said, there are indisputable truths. I received a call. My friend John had walked into his garden, placed a rope or belt around his throat and had hung himself.
All our actions are like throwing a stone into a pond. There is a resultant small wave generated that influences the rest of the pool. John, for instance, threw a rock, not a stone, leaving those left to cope with the dark energy manifested in the wake of his act. Such an act often exposes the onlooker to unfamiliar terrain. In my case my compassion was challenged; my spiritual immaturity was there for all to see and, worst of all, I doubted my beliefs. Buddhism was suddenly inadequate when confronted with the reality of this senseless act.
Some say that killing yourself takes courage. A man by the name of Evert Cilliers wrote that suicide was: “the most courage any human can ever muster. Suicides are the bravest people who ever lived, because they commit the greatest act possible -- a deed against actual existence, against their very being. They say no to life itself, and then have the courage of that unbelievable conviction to end everything.” Maybe but surely if you have no place left to go, if all hope has evaporated and, if death is the only answer, then this is desperation not courage. Courage is where you live your existence til its logical end despite the traumas it can easily deliver.
What brand of courage leaves no admiration but, instead, a legacy of sorrow, bewilderment, guilt and anger faced by the survivors of the relationship with the deceased? Emotions that can haunt and destroy the recipients for decades. Ask the wives, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers left behind in the debris of a single decision if they were proud of that courageous decision. Courage is where you say: “here are the dark woods and now that I’ve found them I won’t walk around them.” Straight into the darkness and out the other side back into the light. That’s courage. To kill yourself is a denial of the possibilities of life. It denies that everything, by its very nature, changes. There are no opposites in the worldview of someone who surrenders their life to an uncontrollable desperation. No day and night. No fear and hope. No war and peace. No sorrow and joy. There is no possible balance. No possible harmony. There is no opposition to Death. In other words, Life, as a divine force, a pure energy, doesn’t exist. Or it’s seen as an enemy. A foe to be fought and conquered. To be in such a position is usually the result of a true horror story. The loss of a child, sexual abuse, addiction, abusive parents or the death of a loved partner. There is an infinite list of human tragedies. Every individual has their own reason as to how they found themselves with razor or sleeping pills in hand. Any advice offered has to match that individual’s story. This is a thankless task. I feel that a common ground is needed – to focus on one of the many simple truths that can universally related to. I picked one: “When you feel like giving up, just remember the reason why you held on for so long.”
This is true courage. A strength found when you were attacked on all fronts by depression, sorrow, fear or the myriad of negative emotions that the human race can conjure up. You were strong for years. You resisted the logic of any suicidal thoughts. You applied your own inner logic to defeat the darkness. You saw the act of suicide and all its consequences. You had a great courage. Now you stand on the precipice and you call for help. Try to “just remember the reason why you held on for so long.” The reason is just there, inside. You hung on because you had the courage to do so. Life wasn’t an enemy then. It was worth fighting for. Draw on that memory, on that early conviction.
One more truth. Everything, and I mean everything, changes. Even the appeal of suicide. It will change if first resisted, then fully understood and, finally, if placed in the context of what it means to be human. “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” (Phil Donohue). Simplistic maybe but that statement contains enough truth to be viable. Suicide is always permanent. Our problems are not always permanent.
John has left me a gift. Because of my questioning of my dubious reaction to his suffering, coupled with the frustration of not being able to dissuade him from a tragic end to his life via Buddhist wisdom, I have delved deeply into such matters. In doing so, my understanding of my anger and frustration on that last car ride has led to an emotional and spiritual conceptualisation of senseless loss and its potentially destructive aftermath. It’s a pity we have to pay such a high price sometimes in gaining such knowledge.
***
(I wrote this because two weeks ago, someone close to me rang and said they were contemplating ending a life that was devoid of reason. Of sanity. History repeating itself in this ongoing story, this existence. This plot of twists and turns in which we all have our roles. But sometimes the plot leads us to a dark place where we can’t see the possibility of a happy ending. We have to let the story unfold with its ups and downs. Evert Chilier’s script has no happy ending. His plot is a tragedy. His play is over before it starts. As soon as the main character begins to suffer you know the plot from beginning to end. It will end with that character’s unfortunate suicide. There are no surprises. Chilier’s play is uninspiring. It has no lifeforce or energy to lift us up. There is no message, no lesson to learn beyond the claim that saying “no” to life is glorious. Ignoring Chilier, I will, once again, try and convince a dear friend to buy a ticket to a different performance at a different theatre. Godspeed.)
***
Decades ago, when I was young and unknowingly foolish, I had a good friend. His name was John. We shared common interests like film, music and sport. Not to mention women, solid drinking, travel and wasting hard-earned money on gambling. But, best of all, we shared restlessness. To escape John had a number of pursuits in which he liked to lose himself. Some were successful, golf springs to mind, others not so much. He never had many lasting relationships, seeming to pick women who were better suited to other men. A stable relationship and John was a real contradiction in terms. When he gambled, as the gag goes, he always picked horses that followed other horses. They never led from the front.
John was more adept in the appreciation of the arts. He knew what constituted a great film, novel or piece of music. Of course we’re not talking Mozart or Dostoevsky here. We’re talking inner-city Sydney 1970s. John would turn up on my doorstep with a gem now and then because it seemed we were umbilically connected when it came to alternative possibilities in music, words or film. Ian Hunter’s All-American Alien Boy – the title track. So he could see the delight when I heard Jaco Pastorius’ bass solo. Jazz and rock perfectly married. Mink Deville’s Spanish Soul, Richard Thompson’s early Folk-Rock fusion. All were introduced to me by John. He met resistance when it came to crime literature. My blockage revolved around the concept of this genre as linked to Dick Tracy or cheap pulp – childish. I arrived home one afternoon to find a small package on my doorstep. “Please read us.” Reluctantly I picked up the top book, Robert B. Parker’s initial Spenser novel. I read it, enjoyed it and acknowledged that, in this matter, John knew me better than I knew myself. Good friends can possess that talent. Spenser could have been followed by a John D. Macdonald - the creator of Travis McGee. I can’t remember. The years dim the facts. John’s act of friendship led me on into the works of James Lee Burke, George Pelecanos, John Harvey and Ian Rankin, to name just a few authors. This is the joy of a true friendship – the merging of two separate lines of interest. Two is infinitely more interesting than one.
John would annoy more than a few people. His conversation, in a single hour, would contain more “I’s” than most people would utter in a week. He was clearly exuberant at his position in the social fabric surrounding him. I saw this perceived fault as trivial. After all, it was two imperfect individuals in the same room. John and I. (Though he taught me to watch my “I’s.”) I don’t know what I contributed to John’s life but the longevity of the relationship pointed to something of value. Though that “something” has always been elusive. So, John was an immediate presence during those years. Of course everything changes. Restless youth loses its drive. I started the first of my handful of meaningful relationships. As John did. I bought a house, had children. John moved to America. We settled down as best we could. Which really meant we had a house that we both could be comfortably restless in. Or a partner we could be comfortably restless with. Both restless in our own ways. Though hemispheres apart our paths often crossed. I can see us now in Death Valley in eastern California or maybe Fenway Park in Boston watching the Red Sox or in New Orleans eating a 5-course meal in Tujague’s – blackened catfish if I remember right. Differing paths but still on common ground.
John was always a heavy drinker, as was I, but I was not in the same class. I drank for pleasure. John’s drinking always had an edge of desperation. Observing John I saw there was a sense of a hidden personal fear that alcohol could push deeper out of sight. Consequently, our common ground lost acreage and I lost interest in alcohol and found my pleasure source elsewhere. John didn’t. Long distance phone calls to American friends revealed that his capacity for alcohol was becoming impressive. That capacity increased and the consequent stories more worrying. Drinking a bottle of wine on his early morning commute to work; stealing from his family’s accounts to maintain the lifestyle or appearing on a friend’s doorstep minus essential clothing (in one case trousers) - too drunk to relate the reason behind their disappearance. On visits to Australia he would sit on the sofa drinking harmless orange juice. If he left the room, one sniff of his plastic bottle would reveal the truth. Vodka or Scotch fumes, the juice dumped in a suburban gutter. John tried rehab. In and out and then back in again. John’s marriage deteriorated. His family was alienated. He returned to Australia. Meanwhile, unable to resist restlessness, I had moved to New Zealand.
We met up now and then but the common ground was now just a patch of earth. To now observe his transformation was both frustrating and heartbreaking. John was now a pathetic friend. His social circle shrank to a point where it was more a noose than a circle. Returning to Sydney I had one last night together with my old friend. I virtually kidnapped John whisking him out of his comfort zone and into my car. His protests in my ears. After all, there was no bar in my car. We drove aimlessly around Sydney’s Eastern suburbs. I prayed that my newfound journey into Buddhist Zen would give me the words. Words to force an epithany. A moment of great realization where John would be reborn as the old John right before my eyes. There were no words logical enough to convince John to try a different approach to life. We parked by the sea at Coogee Beach. John left the car and disappeared. I found him in a bar. There are truths that are solid. This truth was I had lost my friend to the demons. I abused him. I told him, without any semblance of compassion, that maybe he should just die and soon. He was drinking himself to death. Couldn’t he just get it over with and all those who were in his sorry orbit could return to what we call reality. Buddha was a million miles away. I drove him home, keen to get him and his dark energy out of my car. I never saw John again.
John moved to Tasmania. The merry-go-round that is rehab continued. I got the odd calls. Some were just like old times. Some were not. John still had a spark, though easily distinguished. It was his belief that the pieces could be still picked up. The pieces proved too small to see, let alone pick up. And, like I said, there are indisputable truths. I received a call. My friend John had walked into his garden, placed a rope or belt around his throat and had hung himself.
All our actions are like throwing a stone into a pond. There is a resultant small wave generated that influences the rest of the pool. John, for instance, threw a rock, not a stone, leaving those left to cope with the dark energy manifested in the wake of his act. Such an act often exposes the onlooker to unfamiliar terrain. In my case my compassion was challenged; my spiritual immaturity was there for all to see and, worst of all, I doubted my beliefs. Buddhism was suddenly inadequate when confronted with the reality of this senseless act.
Some say that killing yourself takes courage. A man by the name of Evert Cilliers wrote that suicide was: “the most courage any human can ever muster. Suicides are the bravest people who ever lived, because they commit the greatest act possible -- a deed against actual existence, against their very being. They say no to life itself, and then have the courage of that unbelievable conviction to end everything.” Maybe but surely if you have no place left to go, if all hope has evaporated and, if death is the only answer, then this is desperation not courage. Courage is where you live your existence til its logical end despite the traumas it can easily deliver.
What brand of courage leaves no admiration but, instead, a legacy of sorrow, bewilderment, guilt and anger faced by the survivors of the relationship with the deceased? Emotions that can haunt and destroy the recipients for decades. Ask the wives, sons, daughters, mothers and fathers left behind in the debris of a single decision if they were proud of that courageous decision. Courage is where you say: “here are the dark woods and now that I’ve found them I won’t walk around them.” Straight into the darkness and out the other side back into the light. That’s courage. To kill yourself is a denial of the possibilities of life. It denies that everything, by its very nature, changes. There are no opposites in the worldview of someone who surrenders their life to an uncontrollable desperation. No day and night. No fear and hope. No war and peace. No sorrow and joy. There is no possible balance. No possible harmony. There is no opposition to Death. In other words, Life, as a divine force, a pure energy, doesn’t exist. Or it’s seen as an enemy. A foe to be fought and conquered. To be in such a position is usually the result of a true horror story. The loss of a child, sexual abuse, addiction, abusive parents or the death of a loved partner. There is an infinite list of human tragedies. Every individual has their own reason as to how they found themselves with razor or sleeping pills in hand. Any advice offered has to match that individual’s story. This is a thankless task. I feel that a common ground is needed – to focus on one of the many simple truths that can universally related to. I picked one: “When you feel like giving up, just remember the reason why you held on for so long.”
This is true courage. A strength found when you were attacked on all fronts by depression, sorrow, fear or the myriad of negative emotions that the human race can conjure up. You were strong for years. You resisted the logic of any suicidal thoughts. You applied your own inner logic to defeat the darkness. You saw the act of suicide and all its consequences. You had a great courage. Now you stand on the precipice and you call for help. Try to “just remember the reason why you held on for so long.” The reason is just there, inside. You hung on because you had the courage to do so. Life wasn’t an enemy then. It was worth fighting for. Draw on that memory, on that early conviction.
One more truth. Everything, and I mean everything, changes. Even the appeal of suicide. It will change if first resisted, then fully understood and, finally, if placed in the context of what it means to be human. “Suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.” (Phil Donohue). Simplistic maybe but that statement contains enough truth to be viable. Suicide is always permanent. Our problems are not always permanent.
John has left me a gift. Because of my questioning of my dubious reaction to his suffering, coupled with the frustration of not being able to dissuade him from a tragic end to his life via Buddhist wisdom, I have delved deeply into such matters. In doing so, my understanding of my anger and frustration on that last car ride has led to an emotional and spiritual conceptualisation of senseless loss and its potentially destructive aftermath. It’s a pity we have to pay such a high price sometimes in gaining such knowledge.
***
(I wrote this because two weeks ago, someone close to me rang and said they were contemplating ending a life that was devoid of reason. Of sanity. History repeating itself in this ongoing story, this existence. This plot of twists and turns in which we all have our roles. But sometimes the plot leads us to a dark place where we can’t see the possibility of a happy ending. We have to let the story unfold with its ups and downs. Evert Chilier’s script has no happy ending. His plot is a tragedy. His play is over before it starts. As soon as the main character begins to suffer you know the plot from beginning to end. It will end with that character’s unfortunate suicide. There are no surprises. Chilier’s play is uninspiring. It has no lifeforce or energy to lift us up. There is no message, no lesson to learn beyond the claim that saying “no” to life is glorious. Ignoring Chilier, I will, once again, try and convince a dear friend to buy a ticket to a different performance at a different theatre. Godspeed.)
***
April 2017 - The Complexity of Simplicity
I decided to write a book. An autobiography of sorts linking my memory with the Observances that I have made on this Seeing Silence site. A journal of a journey. The Pilgrim’s unsteady progress. This was a new experience and one that conjured up obstacles previously unthought of. I was unprepared. I thought you just wrote it all down as it flowed from the same Source as music, art or poetry. Not so. The Source was reliable but my ingrown resistance came to the fore. I came up against a set of characters, vital to the telling, that I had lost contact with decades ago. Me as a child. Me as a teenager. Me as a young adult, a man, middle-aged and then, finally, old. So many personas. So many differing worldviews. A cornucopia of prejudices, fears and disappointments mixed up with a liberal blend of joy, love and hard-fought insight. It was, via this confrontation, that I suddenly realised that, if we dig deep enough, we are not who we were. Even if we only go back to Yesterday! We are an endlessly revolving kaleidoscope. An ever-changing pattern. What, initially, I thought to be a reasonably simple undertaking, was lost in an unforeseen complexity. No longer straight-forward. The question now: who writes the book? Them or me?
In my introduction to my book I wrote that one obstacle encountered was understanding the characters in my life-story. All the variations of “who you were” undermining “who you think you are now”. I wrote that: “Our Personas, our outer masks that have been carefully manufactured over the decades, have placed a confused set of Selves as their centre-point. We have built a Facade harbouring entities that are perplexed by their own existence. This is not a reliable avenue of knowledge and information if we are going to write a true account of what has led from “what was” to “what is”. These characters are not quite fictional but are close enough to raise an alarm. What to do? Rather than pursuing a reliable reconstruction of the past, we have to implement a deconstruction of our ties to the past! The past cannot be reconstructed faithfully – it’s like picking up fragments found lying in a vast field and then trying to recreate the structure they once represented. Some pieces will inevitably be missing – trodden underfoot, eroded or taken by others. You have to look elsewhere for an approach to understanding what the fragments represent.” The problem was that, in writing my story, I had multiple variations of myself whispering in my ear. And don’t mention the Memory Dilemma.
Ah, sweet memory. Let me introduce the “unreliability of memory. To rely on memory is perilous. Human nature distorts all our yesterdays. The past is riddled with selective amnesia. The good times tend to predominate in our recollections while the bad are often relegated to a subconscious cupboard. The fact that memory ages along with the physical body doesn’t help. Events blur and co-mingle til the boundaries between become nebulous in nature. Yet it is the past where most of us retreat in order to find answers to the questions we confront today. We rely on yesterday. Yesterday in turn appears to resemble an intricately staged play overflowing with a myriad of plots containing a never-ending array of twists and turns performed by a cast of characters perplexed by the complexity of the performance they are expected to deliver.”
My book stalled. It stalled because it became, not a book, but an arena of hand-to-hand combat between the author and the Past. My existence, up until now, was then going to be decoded by conflicting voices. Could I write what I believed to be the truth about my life if distant voices disagreed? I found myself on a self-imposed visit to a psychoanalyst’s couch. The psychoanalyst being me! I had to explore all my inner conflicts with myself as the only witness. All necessary because to open up to the external world I would have to write non-fiction, not fiction. Philip Guedalla, travel writer and biographer, wrote: “autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people”. I needed to tell the truth about myself as well as the others in my story. Here is our problem, as sentient beings, when we embark on a path - be it artistic, spiritual or a new career or a new relationship or... or... the building bricks are manufactured in the past. Are they as reliable as the ones you could manufacture today? “Now?” No. So, to continue with my endeavour, I had to, in my own words: “ rewrite my history from the position of ‘now’. Who I am at this moment. I have to rewrite it with a stranger looking over my shoulder. Myself as I was. He’ll remain there til we catch up with ‘now’. I’ll try to be as honest as I can in relaying his contribution but I can’t rely on that person’s testimony simply because I am no longer that person. (If I could jump in a time machine and go meet myself as I existed years ago I probably wouldn’t recognise myself. I would probably cringe at my immature worldview and laugh at my steadfast belief system.)”
********
It was quite a while before I made a decision and addressed my problem. I had introduced complexity into simplicity. The simple act of writing a book suddenly became complex before my very eyes only because I made it so! There is no complexity. The answer seemed too simple but it worked. I began writing, just to write a book. My very first book. My characters would just have to get along with each other. My memory was the only one I had – fragile as it is – it would have to suffice. I adopted the view that there would be no intended audience when I put down the first words. Intent was all that mattered. The book would be written as an excursion into creativity. To make contact with the same invisible creative essence that I talked with when composing music. When finished, I will draw on my intuition and intuition alone. Here is your book, do you want to share it? Will it be of benefit to others? If the answer is no then I will place my book in the bookcase and lovingly remember the hours of creativity involved. If yes then I will endeavour to distribute it further than my studio.
The Lesson taught? Creativity is its own reward. Creativity, in whatever form, is a contact with your higher self. It’s a journey just like the spiritual quest. Salvador Dali said: “Have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it.” Taking the first steps is more important than the perfection envisaged. If you are locked into an ideal, be it Nirvana or the great Novel, you are placing yourself in a position where you will only find complexity within simplicity. The possibility of Perfection-reached is for dreamers. Simplicity, minus complexity, is crucial for any inner journey. Get to know yourself as you are, not as you were, and use that knowledge to create.
I decided to write a book. An autobiography of sorts linking my memory with the Observances that I have made on this Seeing Silence site. A journal of a journey. The Pilgrim’s unsteady progress. This was a new experience and one that conjured up obstacles previously unthought of. I was unprepared. I thought you just wrote it all down as it flowed from the same Source as music, art or poetry. Not so. The Source was reliable but my ingrown resistance came to the fore. I came up against a set of characters, vital to the telling, that I had lost contact with decades ago. Me as a child. Me as a teenager. Me as a young adult, a man, middle-aged and then, finally, old. So many personas. So many differing worldviews. A cornucopia of prejudices, fears and disappointments mixed up with a liberal blend of joy, love and hard-fought insight. It was, via this confrontation, that I suddenly realised that, if we dig deep enough, we are not who we were. Even if we only go back to Yesterday! We are an endlessly revolving kaleidoscope. An ever-changing pattern. What, initially, I thought to be a reasonably simple undertaking, was lost in an unforeseen complexity. No longer straight-forward. The question now: who writes the book? Them or me?
In my introduction to my book I wrote that one obstacle encountered was understanding the characters in my life-story. All the variations of “who you were” undermining “who you think you are now”. I wrote that: “Our Personas, our outer masks that have been carefully manufactured over the decades, have placed a confused set of Selves as their centre-point. We have built a Facade harbouring entities that are perplexed by their own existence. This is not a reliable avenue of knowledge and information if we are going to write a true account of what has led from “what was” to “what is”. These characters are not quite fictional but are close enough to raise an alarm. What to do? Rather than pursuing a reliable reconstruction of the past, we have to implement a deconstruction of our ties to the past! The past cannot be reconstructed faithfully – it’s like picking up fragments found lying in a vast field and then trying to recreate the structure they once represented. Some pieces will inevitably be missing – trodden underfoot, eroded or taken by others. You have to look elsewhere for an approach to understanding what the fragments represent.” The problem was that, in writing my story, I had multiple variations of myself whispering in my ear. And don’t mention the Memory Dilemma.
Ah, sweet memory. Let me introduce the “unreliability of memory. To rely on memory is perilous. Human nature distorts all our yesterdays. The past is riddled with selective amnesia. The good times tend to predominate in our recollections while the bad are often relegated to a subconscious cupboard. The fact that memory ages along with the physical body doesn’t help. Events blur and co-mingle til the boundaries between become nebulous in nature. Yet it is the past where most of us retreat in order to find answers to the questions we confront today. We rely on yesterday. Yesterday in turn appears to resemble an intricately staged play overflowing with a myriad of plots containing a never-ending array of twists and turns performed by a cast of characters perplexed by the complexity of the performance they are expected to deliver.”
My book stalled. It stalled because it became, not a book, but an arena of hand-to-hand combat between the author and the Past. My existence, up until now, was then going to be decoded by conflicting voices. Could I write what I believed to be the truth about my life if distant voices disagreed? I found myself on a self-imposed visit to a psychoanalyst’s couch. The psychoanalyst being me! I had to explore all my inner conflicts with myself as the only witness. All necessary because to open up to the external world I would have to write non-fiction, not fiction. Philip Guedalla, travel writer and biographer, wrote: “autobiography is an unrivaled vehicle for telling the truth about other people”. I needed to tell the truth about myself as well as the others in my story. Here is our problem, as sentient beings, when we embark on a path - be it artistic, spiritual or a new career or a new relationship or... or... the building bricks are manufactured in the past. Are they as reliable as the ones you could manufacture today? “Now?” No. So, to continue with my endeavour, I had to, in my own words: “ rewrite my history from the position of ‘now’. Who I am at this moment. I have to rewrite it with a stranger looking over my shoulder. Myself as I was. He’ll remain there til we catch up with ‘now’. I’ll try to be as honest as I can in relaying his contribution but I can’t rely on that person’s testimony simply because I am no longer that person. (If I could jump in a time machine and go meet myself as I existed years ago I probably wouldn’t recognise myself. I would probably cringe at my immature worldview and laugh at my steadfast belief system.)”
********
It was quite a while before I made a decision and addressed my problem. I had introduced complexity into simplicity. The simple act of writing a book suddenly became complex before my very eyes only because I made it so! There is no complexity. The answer seemed too simple but it worked. I began writing, just to write a book. My very first book. My characters would just have to get along with each other. My memory was the only one I had – fragile as it is – it would have to suffice. I adopted the view that there would be no intended audience when I put down the first words. Intent was all that mattered. The book would be written as an excursion into creativity. To make contact with the same invisible creative essence that I talked with when composing music. When finished, I will draw on my intuition and intuition alone. Here is your book, do you want to share it? Will it be of benefit to others? If the answer is no then I will place my book in the bookcase and lovingly remember the hours of creativity involved. If yes then I will endeavour to distribute it further than my studio.
The Lesson taught? Creativity is its own reward. Creativity, in whatever form, is a contact with your higher self. It’s a journey just like the spiritual quest. Salvador Dali said: “Have no fear of perfection, you will never reach it.” Taking the first steps is more important than the perfection envisaged. If you are locked into an ideal, be it Nirvana or the great Novel, you are placing yourself in a position where you will only find complexity within simplicity. The possibility of Perfection-reached is for dreamers. Simplicity, minus complexity, is crucial for any inner journey. Get to know yourself as you are, not as you were, and use that knowledge to create.
March 2017 - Pathless
In late 2015 I decided to record my spiritual journey in a series of monthly “observances”. Each month I would examine questions encountered along an ever-widening road. Influences were seemingly inexhaustible. The sages, be they Krishnamurti, Rumi, Christ, Buddha or contemporaries like Caroline Myss, Ken Wilbur or those departed like Alan Watts or Rudolf Steiner, all knocked on the carriage door. Sometimes it seemed, all at once. All revealed a journey that appeared to stretch far beyond my limited horizon. Exciting on one hand, daunting on the other. In good hands but inevitably the question arose – for how long? How long could I rest on the shoulders of others? All that I had gained was, in reality, only an inadequate knowledge. All delivered through words. Important, inspirational words forged down through the ages but, nonetheless, only words. It is a Truth that words eventually lead you to a place where words are insufficient. Here all the World’s words of wisdom converge and reach a final point beyond which they cannot progress – like the full-stop at the end of this sentence. Where do you go from there?
You are now confronting a terrain lacking the comfort of your selected sage’s wisdom. There is no longer anyone to hold your hand. Krishnamurti spoke of a Pathless Land beyond any Earthly authority. He spoke of a situation where man has ceased to be a “mere repetitive machine with certain conditioned responses whether those of the Hindu, the Christian (or) the Buddhist”. Buddha too stated that he was not the ultimate answer but rather a “finger pointing at the moon.” He was not a God but merely a man, a fellow explorer, pointing out the direction home. So, if you trust his words, then you leave the man behind. Every step closer to Buddha’s “moon” is one more step further away from Buddha himself. I am not dismissing Buddhism. No Buddhism, no dilemma. And it is a dilemma. To live and grow beyond the luxury of an “ism”. You are in this place because of Buddhism. This is where exactly where Buddha wants you to be positioned. But there is no denying the difficulty of “acceptance” – the highwire is a lonely place minus the safety net.
Some may struggle to maintain a spiritual vision because, up to this point, “to be spiritual” was the pursuit of an Ideal. The Christian’s Heaven, the Muslim’s Jannah or the Hindu’s Moksha, for example, all promise an Ideal. This Ideal is primarily a human construct – constructed over the centuries by an assortment of conflicting belief systems. All promise that life on Earth will be reconstructed elsewhere. The elite righteous will be rewarded and those left, well they will simply suffer for their lack of insight. All guesswork. There is an inherited “vagueness” in today’s organised religion that can’t be ignored if you are at all serious about your spiritual intention. You have to doubt to be free. Wayne W. Dyer writes: “if you rely on the testimony of others as your means of establishing faith (or salvation), then you will doubt. They are usually presented as the Truth for all, including you. Doubt arises as you then accept a Truth without any conscious contact or experience of that Truth”. In other words, if you have no inner knowledge of what a spiritual essence entails, no deep perception of what a Saint would experience, and have to be told how
“to be spiritual” by strangers then you will flounder. Welcome to the highwire! A highwire that leads from Words to no Words. What is left is simple: You.
Don’t turn around and go back.
Now you are free to embrace yourself – a self free of dubious knowledge. Knowledge has only led you to a roomful of questions that can’t be answered by guesswork. “Why am I here?” “Where am I going?” The answers aren’t in the past behind you. They are where you stand. We came into this lifetime pure. Spiritual. But as we progress deeper into normality, the everyday, we drift further and further away from what we were – spirit - to what we become – virtually non-spiritual. Recognizable now only as a yearning not a conviction. The “isms” can help as they encourage and guide, as best they can, til we either recognise that we have taken sustenance enough to survive alone or we fall back into a robotic mindset.
Buddhism to me was a map, a set of instructions, on how to journey within to where one’s spirit holds the answers. Once again: “understand the Seeker before you understand what he is seeking” – Krishnamurti.
Beloved, I sought You here and there,
Asked for news of You from all I met,
Then I saw You through myself,
And found we were identical,
Now I blush to think I ever searched
For signs of you.
By day I praised You, but never knew it;
By night I slept with You without realizing it,
Fancying myself to be myself;
But no, I was You and never knew it.
Fakhruddin Iraqi (1213 - 1289)
February 2017: Sanctified Afflictions
It is almost the anniversary of my initial Prostate Cancer diagnosis. Almost 4 years have passed and this morning I’m looking back at a much more coherent journey that has led from diagnosis to this particular article. I can now see my cancer in a new light. It’s a strange situation where a person can actually thank the Universe for such an affliction. Where a cancer is not a cancer but a blessing. A sanctified affliction. Where the affliction moves from medical to spiritual.
Back to early 2013. The cancer was one week away from being made official but it didn’t matter. My PSA was double the accepted level and the DRE had detected a raised ridge on my Prostate. More importantly, my intuition level – my internal antenna - had reached heights previously unfelt. The ensuing Biopsy revealed a “suspicious lump”. Then the confirmation – a Type 2A Cancer accompanied by a Gleason 8 – the Agressionometer was in the Red Zone. Operation time with no promises and an ocean of side effects to contend with. I felt that the Grim Reaper - who I suspect isn’t all that grim, but is only doing a job where it’s hard to smile sometimes – was also very near to knocking on my front door! I had my appointments now. To get the ball rolling. This specialist, that specialist. This treatment, that treatment. I decided on the least worst of the worst. I picked up the phone to take the first step. I couldn’t make that call. It wasn’t the right call to make.
An inner voice was insistent. The voice insisted that I take a different road to health. I put down the phone and took a step in the opposite direction. The steps I took and how they led to Robyn Welch, Adrian Turner and a host of other helpful Souls that seemed to materialise like an unknown magic to guide and encourage me, are documented in the introduction to this Website so I’ll bypass the details. My inner voice, a tenuous, shaky one at the time, racked by fear and indecision, had intervened dramatically. But why? Looking back at my Diary I see an entry, written February 8th, 2013, declaring that “the force that guides the cosmos had decided to knock on my front door to initiate an introduction”. This introduction was internal. The message delivered was Eternal.
I had a divine invitation to a paranormal arena – the world of the Intuitive Healer. The world of Quantum energy, physics and mechanics. Beyond all known natural laws. A world of Faith in the “invisible”. I was healed in that new World. That the healing took place outside of the limited boundaries of traditional medicine meant to me that I was privileged to be invited to experience a “divine glimpse”. And, to me, this signified that my cancer was not an illness but an opening door. The truth in this matter is simple: I was diagnosed with cancer; I encountered what is commonly referred to as “the dark night of the Soul” – a collapse where you are confronted by an abrupt end to all that was once the rock you built your life on. As Eckhart Tolle states: “what has collapsed then is the whole conceptual framework for your life, the meaning that your mind had given it. So that results in a dark place”. I faced my mortality and, like so many before me, I turned to divine guidance and hoped for an answer. Hoped that two and two equalled seven! Following the many who had asked the cosmos to intervene where modern science and medicine had failed! Beyond the Known.
Stepping into the Unknown is a daunting experience. But there is an advantage for the uninitiated for it is here that the intensity of prayer is beyond any normal conversation with the Infinite. Life is now a traumatic arena, suddenly denied of meaning. Here is the terminal cancer diagnosis, the possible death of a loved one or any one of the myriad of physical, mental or spiritual disintegrations possible in any one person’s lifetime. Here you will earnestly pray. You will pray at a much deeper level. You will reach out to connect to an infinite source of understanding. You are dead serious and the “other” knows and appreciates your intent. They say that all prayers are answered but sometimes the answer is No! You have to be prepared for both Yes and No. In my case the answer was Yes and I sit here today writing this in good health, thankful for my affliction, as it has led me away from my previous life to a new life. It looked like a cancer, it acted like a cancer, but it wasn’t a cancer. If you are like me, if you have travelled down the same road and now you are “different” and you are now on a journey far removed from the path one you entertained pre-trauma, then it is my belief that your trauma was sanctified. A blessing in that it granted you an opportunity to reach a point where you are now beginning and not ending. But what of those where the answer was No?
( I agonised about writing this section. After all I am trying to communicate with Souls whose lives had been traumatised in one manner or another. Does a heartbroken parent really need a stranger telling them their grief is sanctified? An opportunity? Their concept of sancity, in many cases, could have received a wound almost beyond healing. I had to rely on intuition – it was my only avenue.)
Your cancer is still there. Your child is still dying. Your marriage and business are now ashes. It’s hard to comprehend sometimes that a Spirit-force can appear so cruel, non-compassionate, in its display of interest in any particular individual. The initial response to divine intervention is often one of shock. Where is the holy light, the inner rhapsody, the explosion of peace – all followed by the doctor’s startled report on the miracle observed ? The desperate pleas, instead, appear ignored. Why is there this unrelenting pain and grief? How can I move on from this emotional, spiritual and physical quicksand that has replaced all solid ground?
You are not the first, or last, to lose the Old Normal and find in its place the New Normal. Often an intimidating landscape. I am drawn to Viktor Frankl, author of Man’s Search For Meaning – which the Library of Congress called “one of the ten most influential books of the Twentieth Century”. Frankl, a Holocaust survivor, endured four Nazi death camps, including Auschwitz, in the process losing his parents along with other members of his family. Frankel, who went on to become a renowned psychotherapist, found in the midst of horror the spiritual inspiration to develop a radical approach to the chaos surrounding him. His core belief, Logotherapy, stated that one could find a personal life-meaning , however dire the circumstances can be. Frankel, in his own words: “there is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life”. This was a man in the dark pit of existence who, as a first-hand witness, witnessed “the unexpected extent to which man is capable of defying and braving even the worst conditions conceivable”. Defying and Braving. Frankl saw the life ahead of calamity defined by the “attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering”.
It is an unavoidable fact that the death of a child, for instance, is the closing of a door. Behind it, sadly, is the Past. What was once flesh and blood is there. But only flesh and blood. The spirit is now waiting to be integrated into your future. This spirit would never want you to die with them. This spirit would not like to see two graves eventuate because of a death. This spirit would never want to be haunted by your grief and despair. This spirit would want you to hold them in your heart as you move on. A part of your dreams in life’s circle. Frankl defied chaos to reach out through his writings to a waiting world. So too can all of us. Be transformed. And this is a sanctified journey born out of affliction. A journey that starts with personal intent – within. What is your intent? Where is your Faith? What are you seeking? Turn to yourself. Krishnamurti says that you must “understand the seeker before you understand what he is seeking”. “No” is not the negative we know. What is it? It is an invitation. Just as Yes is an invitation. An invitation to look beyond the Normal. You are now on the outskirts of Normal and you have come to a fork in the road. This is a very sacred place containing you and the next step. If your intent is strong, grounded in the wisdom granted by the vagaries of life, it doesn’t matter which road you take.
All life and its elements is sanctified.
January, 2017: Cleaning the Windows to the World
The Ego. Here is the problem. It is unanimous in most schools of spiritual guidance that the Ego must be dispensed with. It must be dealt with. It is the greatest roadblock to enlightenment. Let’s not delay one more minute as time is short. Bring in the heavy weapons. To the novice this is a harsh command. Attack yourself. Your essence. Your origin. Your refuge and, up til the stern invitation to destroy, your best friend. Someone that has been there from Day One to help, guide and rationalise an irrational existence. Now you say, Guru, Priest or acclaimed New Age Prophet, that everything we are is built on quicksand! You are your own worst enemy. If you trust your spiritual influences you are now effectively split clean down the middle. The playing field has been divided into two sides. One side, the physical and intellectual, all powerful and dominant. The other, Spiritual, immature, struggling to find solid ground. Which side do you choose?
The truth that strikes hard is: you have to choose a way forward or retreat. Buddha said: “there are only two mistakes one can make along the way to truth: not going all the way and not starting”. If your guide is Buddhism, as mine is, this leaves no choice at all. Go all the way. My faith and intuition is nourished by Buddha’s Worldview so the Ego’s illusory stance must be addressed. Our window to the World is seen through the Ego’s eyes and, as the Ego has been described as “a movement of energy created out of delusion”, to gain insight we must remove the delusory element and heal the Ego’s confusion. A conciliatory approach rather than Slash & Burn. The Ego is not at ease. It is in a state of Dis-ease.
We need to achieve Harmony. Harmony it must be. Harmony between the Physical and the Spiritual. The Ego’s natural abode is in the Physical. A reality that can be either touched, seen, heard, smelt or felt. A world not lacking in man-made identifiers: Conformity, Normality, the Reasonable existence, the best that Science can deliver, an arena of Rationality. This external, outer world can be shared – it is built on common ground. This is the side that the Ego chooses to play the game with. Unfortunately, as Caroline Myss writes in Defy Gravity: “Somehow, through the centuries of our adoration of the mind, we’ve evolved in a way that has made our capacity to perceive through the eyes of the Soul, not only difficult to access, but also is also threatening to the stability of our physical and spiritual life”. We have to redirect our evolution. The Ego will naturally resist – it remains determined to keep everything as constructed throughout its lifetime. A new spiritual determination will fragment the Ego’s agenda.
The Ego’s problem is that it is now confused by the seeker’s driving impulse to seriously explore the true Spiritual Path. The Ego has no established precedent. No history to call on. No habit to exploit or unwisely protect. The Ego cannot find the words when all is now written in a foreign language. In a landscape where the traditional thought process is irrelevant. Sure there have been previous, preliminary excursions. Scripture classes as a child; Church on Sunday; alternate lifestyles via the Commune or a self-proclaimed New Age scoutmaster. But the Ego remained basically free from any real threat – there was really nothing it couldn’t assimilate and deal with. After all, the seeker’s initial dedication, historically, always lacked commitment. Now there is a spiritual movement that calls for an ever-changing re-adjustment to forces beyond the Ego’s control. The Everyday is now the Everything! The Ego is being removed from the steering wheel to the passenger seat, if not the back seat. Resisting the spiritual urge the Ego calls on familiar armoury – doubt, scepticism, fear, apprehension, terminal procrastination or character-belittlement. Its objective though is not to destroy but to return the pre-existing persona. Back to the past. Away from the Now. The Spiritual Path is seen as a vote of no-confidence in the Ego as a guiding light.
The Ego is strongest when it functions without interference, when it is not under observation and all subsequent judgment. Ego is a creature of habit and indoctrination. It is an internal judge that abuses its jurisdiction. Your habits and self-made persona are the Ego’s guidelines – its Worldview. Awareness and understanding the Ego’s modus operandi lessens the Ego’s ability to do more harm than good – these spiritual gifts restore harmony. You need to gain the gift of insight into the Ego’s motivation and the forces it can muster to deliver your illusory reasoning. You need to address the Ego’s addiction to normality.
The Ego’s main weapon is via the thought process. Any motivation outside of the Ego’s worldview is open to harassment. Every reason “not to” attempts to over-ride every impulse to go beyond decades of habitual groundwork. Powerful as the Ego is, its strength has been conceived on shaky ground. The Ego is a child, born out of innocence. The innocence of the child trying to make sense of its environment. Trying to find logic where all precedential knowledge is limited. The Ego’s facade is built in the formative years. Any Ego attack is then an expression of perverted innocence. The latent energy in any negative thought is simply good energy degraded. When we regain our enlightenment, after years of neglect, we can find the innocence, the purity, hidden behind the Ego’s agenda . Our rediscovery lessens the Ego’s destructive tendencies and the Ego, a natural phenomenon, returns to its original role.
Now we have a sense of Harmony. Co-existence. Your Ego communicates with your environment and the World – your Everyday - as you communicate with the unseen, sensed world – the Everything. There is a new construction. The old building has been renovated. The rooms have been refurnished, repainted. The windows have been cleaned and the view revealed is one that is Soul and Spirit oriented. So then, the Ego is a component of “I” that needs to be reborn as a harmonious component not a hindrance. This is not an easy path but the first step is the truce. A world of self-examination to find the true motivations. Real motivations not illusory motivations. The Ego is here to stay. It has a room in your new building but you are the landlord!
December, 2016: Balance and Harmony - the Seesaw
A fortnight ago I attended Darshan with Mother Meera. Mother Meera is an Avatar - an incarnate divine teacher who calls down a dynamic life-force from the Supreme. The ritual of Darshan involves kneeling before the Mother, eyes closed. She then places her hands on your head. Upon contact, you open your eyes and look into hers. In this brief moment there is a spiritual interchange – you can ask for a specific request and she, in turn, unties systemic knots in your Earthly make-up. She utilises the divine Light to restore perspective and energy flow. I approached Mother Meera, I must confess, more out of spiritual curiosity than unbiased conviction and as the Buddha said about his teachings – hear them, try them and, if nothing resonates, move right along. So it is with physical manifestations of the Divine. Approach with an open mind, sprinkled with dashes of hope and faith and the belief that all roads have led you to this distinct point in time. Enter with good intent and see what happens.
Knowing I only had five seconds or so to offer my request, I practised in the car, the parking lot and in the queue to her feet. “Could I please have spiritual, mental and physical Balance?” The first eight words came easy but the final one, Balance, was hijacked and replaced – but not by me! In a race between uttering that word and the full stop, there was an intervention. Balance was emphatically replaced by the word Harmony – without my consent. Walking back to my seat I mused over the new request granted to me. It was only one word and, surely, they were really one and the same. Balance and Harmony. I was to find out that there was a major difference and this realization changed my spiritual perception. So, if you ask me, did I benefit from Darshan, there is no doubt that I did. There were no visions, celestial lights or angelic visitations – just a noun substitution. That was all I needed. One word.
Balance: Think of life as a see-saw. You select a point, mid-way, to ensure the correct balance. Then you do your utmost to maintain the equilibrium. One foot planted here, one foot planted there. It is now a constant challenge to preserve your position. Unfortunately, what you have done is place yourself in a spiritual “no-man’s-land”. Here there is a forced neutrality. Nothing is moving, all is static. No progress. All animation has ceased. You are holding your breath as you strive for a perfect state wherein all is consistent – yesterday, Now and tomorrow. You are trying to cultivate a spiritual Nirvana here on Earth – where your life is eternally “spiritual”. This is unrealistic. You have created a “habit”, an attachment. The pursuit of perfection. You have also created a duality - a separation of yourself from life as it really is. All is not lost – the inherent desire for Balance is a natural step toward Harmony.
Harmony: Balance is a narrow “Middle Path”. It falls short in its understanding of the natural variations of existence – love and hate, faith and doubt, war and peace, order and chaos. Harmony’ seesaw provides you with a point that recognises, encompasses and embraces all the variations that inhabit the seesaw and adjusts to those variations. Harmony expands the Middle Path so it covers and includes all of life – the fact that it is not consistent and everchanging. Harmony provides an avenue to dismiss your habit, your routine, wherein you flounder to control forces beyond your ability. Harmony’s seesaw sways everyday to a natural rhythm. On this seesaw forces co-exist and are not in opposition – if things don’t go your way you can understand, accept and adapt to life as it is. Harmony allows you to breathe. The impulse now is not to fight but to observe and react accordingly.
So, Mother Meera was an avenue to this new understanding. It doesn’t matter if she is really who she says she is or if she isn’t – though I suspect that she is – what matters is all is Synchronicity and the Mother was an integral part of that process. Our spiritual paths lead us to unfamiliar stops along the way. Stops that were initiated by our desire for answers. We create a web of possibilities by our intent. All roads led to Mother Meera and now they lead somewhere else. But now I’m a different soul armed with a desire for Harmony and the knowledge of how it can be attained. All is treasure.
A fortnight ago I attended Darshan with Mother Meera. Mother Meera is an Avatar - an incarnate divine teacher who calls down a dynamic life-force from the Supreme. The ritual of Darshan involves kneeling before the Mother, eyes closed. She then places her hands on your head. Upon contact, you open your eyes and look into hers. In this brief moment there is a spiritual interchange – you can ask for a specific request and she, in turn, unties systemic knots in your Earthly make-up. She utilises the divine Light to restore perspective and energy flow. I approached Mother Meera, I must confess, more out of spiritual curiosity than unbiased conviction and as the Buddha said about his teachings – hear them, try them and, if nothing resonates, move right along. So it is with physical manifestations of the Divine. Approach with an open mind, sprinkled with dashes of hope and faith and the belief that all roads have led you to this distinct point in time. Enter with good intent and see what happens.
Knowing I only had five seconds or so to offer my request, I practised in the car, the parking lot and in the queue to her feet. “Could I please have spiritual, mental and physical Balance?” The first eight words came easy but the final one, Balance, was hijacked and replaced – but not by me! In a race between uttering that word and the full stop, there was an intervention. Balance was emphatically replaced by the word Harmony – without my consent. Walking back to my seat I mused over the new request granted to me. It was only one word and, surely, they were really one and the same. Balance and Harmony. I was to find out that there was a major difference and this realization changed my spiritual perception. So, if you ask me, did I benefit from Darshan, there is no doubt that I did. There were no visions, celestial lights or angelic visitations – just a noun substitution. That was all I needed. One word.
Balance: Think of life as a see-saw. You select a point, mid-way, to ensure the correct balance. Then you do your utmost to maintain the equilibrium. One foot planted here, one foot planted there. It is now a constant challenge to preserve your position. Unfortunately, what you have done is place yourself in a spiritual “no-man’s-land”. Here there is a forced neutrality. Nothing is moving, all is static. No progress. All animation has ceased. You are holding your breath as you strive for a perfect state wherein all is consistent – yesterday, Now and tomorrow. You are trying to cultivate a spiritual Nirvana here on Earth – where your life is eternally “spiritual”. This is unrealistic. You have created a “habit”, an attachment. The pursuit of perfection. You have also created a duality - a separation of yourself from life as it really is. All is not lost – the inherent desire for Balance is a natural step toward Harmony.
Harmony: Balance is a narrow “Middle Path”. It falls short in its understanding of the natural variations of existence – love and hate, faith and doubt, war and peace, order and chaos. Harmony’ seesaw provides you with a point that recognises, encompasses and embraces all the variations that inhabit the seesaw and adjusts to those variations. Harmony expands the Middle Path so it covers and includes all of life – the fact that it is not consistent and everchanging. Harmony provides an avenue to dismiss your habit, your routine, wherein you flounder to control forces beyond your ability. Harmony’s seesaw sways everyday to a natural rhythm. On this seesaw forces co-exist and are not in opposition – if things don’t go your way you can understand, accept and adapt to life as it is. Harmony allows you to breathe. The impulse now is not to fight but to observe and react accordingly.
So, Mother Meera was an avenue to this new understanding. It doesn’t matter if she is really who she says she is or if she isn’t – though I suspect that she is – what matters is all is Synchronicity and the Mother was an integral part of that process. Our spiritual paths lead us to unfamiliar stops along the way. Stops that were initiated by our desire for answers. We create a web of possibilities by our intent. All roads led to Mother Meera and now they lead somewhere else. But now I’m a different soul armed with a desire for Harmony and the knowledge of how it can be attained. All is treasure.
November, 2016: Lost Magic – The Fading Numen
It was evidenced when the NSW State Government slaughtered the grand old trees along the route of the South-East Light Rail. Some had stood for 150 years. One, the Tree of Knowledge, was of particular importance to the local community. Kingsford-Smith federal Labor MP Matt Thistlethwaite, a former UNSW student, said he was appalled by the decision to chainsaw the Tree of Knowledge which was “like a trusted old friend”. “It is part of UNSW history and folklore,” he said. “Its grand presence welcomed students to the campus and its massive canopy provided shade and cooled the area. This is environmental vandalism at its worst.” The Tree of Knowledge, on the Light-Rail Plan, was simply called Tree Number 178. A number. It was never regarded, by the progressive forces, as a living source of wonder. As nature revealing itself. As spirit materialised. It was simply a number on a piece of paper! There was no sense of communal compromise considered. No sense of the spirit that inhabits both human and tree. So it was evidenced once again that, courtesy of our callous approach to the natural world and our relationship within it, that the power of the mysterious is fading away into the chaotic fabric of modernism. The Numen, the power of the mysterious, still beckons but too many are looking in the opposite direction.
Look in the Dictionary and you will find the Numen: the Latin noun that represents that which arouses spiritual or religious emotion; mysterious and awe-inspiring. The presiding power or spirit found in nature, art, music, great literature or, if blessed, within ourselves. Thomas Moore, in The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life, says that “life is full of cracks, windows, and doorways that allow us to glimpse that which lies hidden behind the surfaces of the temporal”. This is the Numen. When the Invisible casts a spell. Influential Christian thinker, Rudolf Otto, felt that the Numen to be the basis of his spiritual path. Composed of three components: the Mysterium, the Tremendum and the Fascinans. The Mysterium: that which is outside our everyday experience – which, when encountered, produces a state of blank wonder. We’re speechless and humbled. A near-death experience, a spiritual epiphany, a miracle healing, a supernatural intervention. The Tremendum: that which provokes terror leaving one with a sense of one’s own nothingness in contrast to the experience’s power. A tornado, tsunami, lightning strike, earthquake or the unprepared-for power of the Kundalini awakening. The Fascinans: a mystery revealed that is both awe-inspiring and fascinating and, in spite of the terror aroused, the recipient is attracted rather than repulsed. Otto, as a Christian philosopher, would count this as a heavenly encounter. If you awoke late at night, for instance, to find an Angel beside your bed. Terror mixed with pure beauty. To me it might be found in a search of the internal stars where you are confronted by a door to self-realization that you are afraid to open because the mystery to be revealed beyond might contain too much truth too soon – but you open it anyway because your intuition outweighs repulsion. There you meet the Numen.
Carlos Castanada describes our modern dilemma, exemplified in the death of the old trees, as our loss of interconnectedness. “Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He has turned his back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.” We have lost contact with the Invisible – the Awe. If it is at all experienced, it becomes no more than a fleeting experience. We can only comprehend that which appears in plain sight and if then it can’t be logically explained, we relegate it as a fading memory and resume our robotic, mechanical persona. The Numen is there and then it isn’t. We have exhausted our capability to sustain awe and reverence. We reinhabit our dark forest where the light is insufficient to sustain the mysterious and the holy. What to do?
We need to adopt a spiritual Voluntary Simplicity. We need to be simple again. A “childish” spirituality so to speak. We often try to use force, a rigid determination, to being a spiritual being, on a holy quest. We pray hard, we meditate hard. We take vows of silence that extend for days. We avidly scour all the right scriptures. We sit sternly at the feet of Gurus. We try to force the Numen to materialise through sheer willpower. Like demanding a gift for all our “efforts”. The Numen then becomes a physical thing that can be cornered in our temple, cathedral, monastery or lounge-room. Sadly, such things can’t be commanded. Thomas Moore again : “The first step... then is to recover a beginner’s mind and a child’s wonder, to forget some of the things we have learned and to which we are attached. As we empty ourselves of disenchanted values, a fresh, paradisical spirit may pour in, and then we may discover the nature of the soul and the pleasure of being a participant, and not a master, in the extravagance of life.” A mixture of within and without. There is an awesomeness in Nature that is replicated within our own spirit. When the bushfire has left only ash you can be assured the forest will restore itself. Constant birth, death and rebirth are taken for granted in the natural world. Yet we fight the concept of reincarnation. Summer dies and is reborn. Winter follows. The pervading power that sustains the world around sustains us. We are all. When we recognise that then the Numen will reveal itself. Perhaps our untapped sense of wonder should start with our own bodies.
The Wonder of Us:
- The atoms that make up your body are mostly empty space, so despite there being so many of them, without that space you would compress into a tiny volume. The nucleus that makes up the vast bulk of the matter in an atom is so much smaller than the whole structure that it is comparable to the size of a fly in a cathedral. If you lost all your empty atomic space, your body would fit into a cube less than 1/500th of a centimetre on each side.
- The atoms that make up matter never touch each other. The closer they get, the more repulsion there is between the electrical charges on their component parts. It's like trying to bring two intensely powerful magnets together, north pole to north pole. This even applies when objects appear to be in contact. When you sit on a chair, you don't touch it. You float a tiny distance above, suspended by the repulsion between atoms. This electromagnetic force is vastly stronger than the force of gravity – around a billion billion billion billion times stronger.
- Every atom in your body is billions of years old. Hydrogen, the most common element in the universe and a major feature of your body, was produced in the big bang 13.7bn years ago. Heavier atoms such as carbon and oxygen were forged in stars between 7bn and 12bn years ago, and blasted across space when the stars exploded. Some of these explosions were so powerful that they also produced the elements heavier than iron, which stars can't construct. This means that the components of your body are truly ancient: you are stardust.
- Just like a chicken, your life started off with an egg. Not a chunky thing in a shell, but an egg nonetheless. However, there is a significant difference between a human egg and a chicken egg that has a surprising effect on your age. Human eggs are tiny. They are, after all, just a single cell and are typically around 0.2mm across – about the size of a printed full stop. Your egg was formed in your mother – but the surprising thing is that it was formed when she was an embryo. The formation of your egg, and the half of your DNA that came from your mother, could be considered as the very first moment of your existence. And it happened before your mother was born. Say your mother was 30 when she had you, then on your 18th birthday you were arguably over 48 years old.
- It’s possible for your body to survive without a surprisingly large fraction of its internal organs. Even if you lose your stomach, your spleen, 75% of your liver, 80% of your intestines, one kidney, one lung, and virtually every organ from your pelvic and groin area, you wouldn’t be very healthy, but you would live.
- The acid in your stomach is strong enough to dissolve razor blades. The reason it doesn’t eat away at your stomach is that the cells of your stomach wall renew themselves so frequently that you get a new stomach lining every three to four days.
- The human lungs contain approximately 2,400 kilometers (1,500 mi) of airways and 300 to 500 million hollow cavities, having a total surface area of about 70 square meters, roughly the same area as one side of a tennis court. Furthermore, if all of the capillaries that surround the lung cavities were unwound and laid end to end, they would extend for about 992 kilometers. Also, your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
- Your body gives off enough heat in 30 minutes to bring half a gallon of water to a boil.
- The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
- The human brain cell can hold 5 times as much information as an encyclopedia.
- The brain operates on the same amount of power as 10-watt light bulb, even while you are sleeping. In fact, the brain is much more active at night than during the day.
- About 32 million bacteria call every inch of your skin home.
- Three hundred million cells die in the human body every minute.
- The human heart creates enough pressure to squirt blood 30 feet in the air.
- Consider that the human body consists of approximately one hundred trillion cells, about one thousand cells for every bright star in the Milky Way. It takes only fifty replications, starting with the one-celled fertilized ovum, to produce those one hundred thousand billion cells. The first replication gives you two cells. The second replication gives you four. The third replication gives you sixteen cells, and so on. By the fiftieth replication, you have one hundred thousand billion cells in your body, and that’s where the replication stops. So all of the cells of your body start from just one cell. Scientists still have no idea how that one cell ends up dividing into so many different kinds of cells, which then are able to organize themselves into a stomach, a brain, skin, teeth, and all the other highly specialized parts of the body. In addition to doing its specific job in the body, each cell does a few million things per second just to keep functioning: creating proteins, adjusting the permeability of its membrane, and processing nutrients, to name just a few. Each cell also has to know what every other cell is doing otherwise your body would fall apart. The human body can function only if it is operating synchronistically, and all this can happen only through non-local correlation. How else could one hundred trillion cells each doing one millions things per second coordinate their activities so as to support a living, breathing human being? How else could a human body generate thoughts, remove toxins, and smile at a baby, or even make a baby, all at the same time. (The last fact: Source: Deepak Chopra)
- All this is us as we go about our daily business. Most of us blissfully unaware. This is not yet a tragedy. But it could be.
October, 2016: Healing Made Human
In recent times I have been rethinking my life-changing encounter with Robyn Welch and also with other Healers that have entered my lifetime. One question kept rearing its ugly head: “Why can’t Healers heal themselves?” Saint Francis of Assisi, for instance, who could heal the horror of leprosy, died of tuberculosis. On a personal level, Robyn, who healed for decades, died in hospital from serious health complications. As in most instances when I put a question “out there” it didn’t take much time for synchronicity to kick in. It only took a stroll into my local library running my fingers along the rows of literature til I stopped, looked and found what I was looking for. I picked up Wayne W. Dyer’s A Spiritual Solution To Every Problem and found myself at Chapter Nine and its examination of Healing & Healers. Here was the catalyst. All flowed on from that point.
We sometimes think of Healers as “not-quite-human”. They are special souls no doubt but so too is the 5-year-old prodigy who can play any Mozart sonata blindfolded! These people are all too human but on a higher plane. They can access what has atrophied in most people. In our western societies we are predominantly left-brained. The right side, our creative and spiritual armoury, is often ignored in the rush hour of modern life. So, like a forgotten muscle, it loses strength and tone. But the prodigy and Healer, as examples, are humans who have backstage passes. We will concentrate on the Healer. What is a Healer?
A genuine Healer is a channeler. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a channeler as “one who speaks for nonphysical beings or spirits”. They are not that nonphysical being or spirit. They are, instead, me and you on a different frequency. Like we tune in a car radio, they tune in to a blessed energy to help us help ourselves. In the end it is ourselves who do the real healing. The Chemo and Radiation has failed. The tumour has returned twice as vicious. We say “enough.” We look for another way. The Healer is the other way. As Wayne Dyer says in his book, those being healed have to take responsibility for their affliction. “I own this cancer- it’s mine – here is the solution (the Healer) – I believe in that solution.” It is most important that you believe in the channeler. If not, all that the Healer will pick up when tuning-in is static! Attitude can stop Healers in their tracks. Tilopa, the Buddhist philosopher, stated when considering those who seek a different road, that they have to have “a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.” So, a Healer is a soul who is an intermediary between two potentialities – the Healer’s access to a force capable of being but not yet in force and the belief in the Healer provided by those being healed. A two-way street. Unfortunately, sometimes that belief is challenged when the Healer is shown to be all too human. If the Healer has access to a healing force not available to the majority then how is it that they sometimes get sick and die. “Am I really healed or have I been conned?”
Healers are human. They have the same obstacles to face and overcome as any person you pass in the street. What could a Healer encounter in his vocation that could lead to illness? Healing, as Robyn often told me, is energy-sapping. I would often find her breathless, losing strength, during our sessions. The Healer is then faced with mental, physical and emotional exhaustion which, not addressed, could lead to personal health issues. The Healer is often faced with negative energy emanating from those being healed – if not properly insulated against the patient’s fear, lingering doubt or the very real dark energy inherent in diseases like cancer, then the Healer’s energy field could be compromised. On a spiritual level the Healer can become lost inside their Gift. They can become egotistical, self-important. Their ego takes control of the Gift. It gets personally involved severing the connection to the healing spirit itself. The ego states: “Wow, I’m impressed by your talent. See how you impress others. See how they approve of you - they want to meet you, read your book, attend your world tour and all admire your reputation with the rich and famous.” There are now planetary limitations on the Gift. It is now “Earthly” not a spiritual gift. I have seen this happen and its aftermath, which was a rapid decline in the Healer’s health and spiritual well-being.
As we can see we have underlined a few, among many, reasons where a Healer can fall to illness. I haven’t explored the Karmic possibilities, where the Healer’s natural path leads to a debilitating condition or premature death, though that is a valid consideration. The bottom line is if you are karmically fortunate enough to find a genuine Healer and the Healer cancels a session due to health issues, this can only provide evidence that they are only human, not superhuman. There is no doubt that they possess an extraordinary ability but, in reality, this ability lies dormant in each and every soul. In my own experience what Robyn Welch provided beyond my return to balance, was a glimpse of natural laws as yet unknown. Saint Augustine said that “miracles happen, not in opposition to nature, but in opposition to what we know of nature.” Healers provide a glimpse, an evidence, of worlds unseen while, at the same time, their feet tread the same soil as you and me.
September, 2016: The Blessing of Doubt
There you are, walking down your chosen road. Seeking a rebirth. You’re finding an unfamiliar terrain populated with instructions pointing to a desired destination. “This way to awareness - This way to a deep, internal peace - This way to the real, inner you - This way to a profound understanding of one’s place in a mysterious cosmos.” And all achievable via various handy guidelines, all thoughtfully provided by preceding travelers.
These guidelines lay out the requirements necessary to overcome any doubt on your journey. You study Buddhism’s Noble Eightfold Path, designed to cure the disease of suffering via the Eight Rights. Doubt surfaces when the instructions appear more suited to monastic life - perfect for a Monk but not to the Western mind surrounded by an ocean of diversions - not imaginable to a 15th Century Buddhist. Here is the Christian Bible. A doubter sometimes worries the doctrine is dangerously conflicted being constantly hijacked over the ages and used as a weapon in dubious, Earth-centred theologies - as witnessed from the Inquisition to today’s extreme fundamentalism. There is the Islamic world with the Koran as the guiding light. Once again interpretation has led to misguided sectarian fanaticism feeding the atrocities, vandalism and bigotry that many Westerners view as the true face of Islam. A true Muslim would be not true if he or she didn’t have the odd sleepless night.
We have a huge literary well to drink from and it would appear, despite the misgivings, that we are in good hands. It is definite what we have to do. It’s written. It’s preached. Yet we struggle. Sooner or later we meet a wall on our road. It’s inevitable. Friends ask the question: “How is it going for you at the Meditation Centre, at the Mosque, at the Sunday Service?” “It’s just not quite working for me,” you answer. “ I just can’t put my finger on it. My Lama says I have to give up all attachments but I love my family – my Mullah can’t explain why Muslims are killing Muslims – my Priest says all faiths that are not our faith are demonic and doomed for hell. I’m conflicted.” Does your doubt stop you in your tracks and you have no choice but to turn around and go back to what you call home? That would be a shame as doubt is a blessing. Doubt leads over the wall and beyond. Doubt is an energy that creates. It doesn’t destroy – it is your sanctified friend.
I’ll talk about one of the many doubts I’ve encountered. A roadblock. This being the application of Compassion. Love for our fellow man. The friend who stole your wife. The woman who broke your heart. The man who murdered your only child. The financial expert who lost your life savings. The government who took away all your rights. Indignities perpetrated by some that you intimately know and by some who you have never met. Everybody can’t help but encounter these indignities and we can be either destroyed or strengthened by our reaction. We can learn about ourselves, our capacity to overcome or our lack of inner resilience as we fall under the wheels. When I look back I can’t help but see many incidents where any thought of a compassionate reaction was impossible. Some trivial, some life-changing. I’ll pick one – the one that drove me to an early atheism. A world without any Gods at all.
My single mother fell in love with our single, next door neighbour. Somehow, within our small-town, Catholic world, the powers-to-be found out and approached my mother instructing her to immediately drop her sinful ways or face the wrath of God above. She refused. She was now no longer welcome within the embrace of the church. My sister was in a Catholic boarding school at a neighbouring town. She, too, was longer welcome being a tainted relative. One hot, Summer’s day we drove to pick her up and bring her back to our house of sin. On arrival we were informed that we had to wait til mid-afternoon to collect her. We drove off and my sister was forced to stand for hours on the hot concrete of the schoolgrounds unprotected from the blazing sun to atone for her mother’s sin. When we came back she was severely dehydrated, sunburnt and, consequently, in need of medical attention. My distraught mother lost her faith courtesy of that vile act and I, as a young boy, gained a hatred for the institutions of religion that lasted til my bout with cancer where my perception of almost everything changed. If you had asked me about compassion for the Church anytime from late childhood til well beyond middle-age I would have shown you the door. Having compassion for the instigators of this incident seemed way beyond me but I felt it was necessary to overcome this cemented belief as it was a roadblock that needed removal.
The French philosopher Peter Abelard, (1079-1142), states: “the first key to wisdom is assiduous and frequent questioning. For by doubting we come to inquiry, and by inquiry we arrive at truth.” With inquiry we once again venture inside, back onto the path of any spiritual journey. This time we’re looking for different instructions, different signposts. As my lack of compassion was directly related to human intervention, I had to reconsider my relationship with my fellow inhabitants.
Step one: Confucius says “when you see a bad man, search yourself for his faults.” My family encountered mental and physical cruelty, spiritual ignorance and the bad side of religious indoctrination. Facets that I could find in my own persona at various stages of my life. So, under the skin, we are all capable of the same behaviour. You have forgiven yourself so it’s time to widen your compassionate field. Be loving to yourself and then extend it those who, after all, due to unknown factors, can be forgiven for having the same faults as you carry.
Step two: The incident had to happen for you to be where you are right now. In a sense it was a gift. In my case my antipathy toward any organised religion held any chance of spiritual growth at bay. When I ventured into Buddhism I saw that all is interconnected. If we are antagonistic to one piece in the jigsaw puzzle, if you throw that piece out of the window, the big picture is forever incomplete. I accepted other belief systems in their purest forms as being the same belief system – a way to rediscover enlightenment, what we have lost, to return home. If my sister hadn’t suffered I would have never reached that conclusion. (Incidentally my sister remained committed to the Catholic faith so her compassion facility was obviously in good working order.)
Step three: When you live your life holding on tightly to inner rage and bitterness, the circle of victims grows exponentially. You are the original victim but your influence spreads into your family, friendships, personal relationships and, unfortunately, can disrupt society itself. The perpetrator now has many more victims than he originally started out with! It’s so hard to lose anger and hatred. Maybe you don’t just know how to forgive; maybe you think it’s your moral duty to stop any further offences; maybe you enjoy the power inherent in not forgiving especially when the offender is truly contrite and you refuse to forgive and you feel, at last, you now hold all the cards; maybe you feel you are a deserved victim like so many battered wives, and you cling on to your loss of self-esteem and self-hatred believing it’s the way it should be.
There are many steps to take. Just take any one – they all lead to other roads. Jean Paul Sartre says: “freedom is what you do with what’s been done to you.” As all spiritual roads, whichever one you’re on, are “inner,” doubt generated by obstacles encountered, no matter their severity, are an invitation to undertake an earthly-withdrawal. From extra-spection (worldview) to intro-spection. When you are faced with doubt you should know that it is an invitation to investigate. An opportunity that would have never eventuated if you had stayed home and never left the supposed security of inertia. Quoting Rene Descartes: “if you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things.”
August, 2016: If One Person Sees a Unicorn.....
There are two reasons that I don’t talk much about Quantum Healing, even though my experience of it when I was introduced to Robyn Welch, was life-changing. The first is the sad fact that even to this day, almost 4 years after Robyn’s healing, many of my friends and family remain sceptical. Their scepticism is the main reason that I keep what happened to myself to myself though, if I intuit that whoever shows interest does so due to a genuine open-mindedness, then I will happily comply but in my mind to reinforce blind scepticism is to reinforce negative energy.
The second is that the means to prove my healing is hindered by the nature of prostate cancer. It often involves a risky second biopsy. A biopsy sends a ultrasound-guided needle a dozen times via the rectum into your prostate. The needles, on their journey, can pick up serious bowel-dwelling bacteria, found to be highly resistant to modern antibiotics, and kindly deposit them in your prostate. Matthew Gettman, professor of urology at the Mayo Graduate School of Medicine, states that “given the recent spike in infection complications after prostate biopsy, the ideal method to diagnose prostate cancer must be pondered. Despite local anesthetics, the whole procedure is barbaric, and it is surprising that the issue of infection has not come to light years ago.” My first biopsy had serious side-effects that almost saw me hospitalised. Another is not worth consideration. I won’t go that way again.
Now to another means by which to gather proof of healing – the PSA test. Here we go no further than the father of the PSA test, Richard J. Albin PhD, DSc, who discovered the PSA antigen. Albin’s fingerprints are all over each and every PSA test today. PSA is seen in small quantities in a healthy prostate but a higher quantity is seen by the medical establishment as proof of prostate cancer. Not so simple in the real world. Albin asserts that his own discovery is wrong 80% of the time! In other words, a high PSA can indicate an aggressive prostate cancer when, in reality, that diagnosis is wrong. The US Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) does not recommend PSA tests stating that they result in “overdiagnosis” and “most prostate cancer is asymptomatic for life.” Asymptomatic! Wikipedia explains: “In medicine, a disease is considered asymptomatic if a patient is a carrier for a disease or infection but experiences no symptoms. A condition might be asymptomatic if it fails to show the noticeable symptoms with which it is usually associated.” You can see the whole field is tossed and torn with controversy. You have a low PSA so you have no cancer – maybe! You have a high PSA so you have cancer – maybe! Physical black-and-white proof is hard to provide but not so Empirical Evidence – that which is learnt by observation and experience. That which is gathered along the road you take.
My journey is well documented elsewhere on this website but is it the road for everyone? What do I say, for instance, when a close friend is faced with surgery, chemotherapy and radiation and asks me what would I suggest as an alternative? Do I suggest my journey knowing full-well that every cancer is highly individualistic in nature (some kill, some don’t); that the sufferer’s life-force is an unknown (will they fight or will they succumb); can they change their lifestyle – spiritually, mentally and physically – in order to realign essential energies? And, in my case, I couldn’t hold up a doctor’s report showing the healing done and dusted in black and white for definitive encouragement. Would it help if I bought up Intuitive Quantum Healing? Told them about the healers like Robyn Welch who described herself as “a diagnostic medical intuitive with the rare ability to see inside the human body, able to diagnose from its energy field, thus restoring the client’s health and wellbeing - this extraordinary insight and access to the quantum field enables the ability to actually communicate with individual body parts, understand their response and to direct the body to participate in its own healing process.” There is no concept held in the average person’s memory bank to help interact with such an abstract claim. I wouldn’t be surprised at a reply of “say what!” But it is in the “abstract” where the answer lies.
So, if you’re reading this and you are fearfully stranded in the cancer battlefield, I’ll delve into the “abstract” to examine one miracle. One close to home which may, or maybe not, encourage an approach you can ponder that is beyond traditional medicine. Here on the South Coast, in Nowra, we have a friend who early this year started to experience a sore hip that was restricting her movement and causing pain. It became enough of a problem to send her to the doctor for an X-ray. (Our friend had battled an earlier breast cancer and had undergone surgery – being declared cancer free in 2013.) Unfortunately, the X-ray revealed the breast cancer had returned with a vengeance. There was a cancer eating away the hip bone that measured 8 cm x5 x4; two cancers on the lung; one on the spine; one on the liver – all diagnosed as Level 4 Advanced and metastatic! Her initial CA 15-3 test, which measures the amount of Cancer Antigen 15-3 in the blood, registered 72. Not good. The next registered 110. Worse. Her regular doctor was taken by surprise but the best reaction came from a grim-faced Oncologist. His death sentence was sharp and to the point: “we will aim to keep you alive for the next five years and then, fingers crossed, we might find a cure or maybe not. Right now we can offer Tamoxifen as you are long past chemo and radiation treatment. If you don’t take our advice you only have two years left on Planet Earth.”
Do you recognise yourself? Are you in that position reading this? Five years with fingers crossed. (I was lucky I was given 8 years.) Where do you go? Who can you talk to? Our friend took basically the same path as myself, Healer included. A sharp change of direction with the diagnosis in the rear vision mirror. She declined the Tamoxifen as its side effects, after a brief trial, were not a viable option. Depression, anxiety, loss of memory, mood swings, light-headedness and loss of coordination versus quality of life? Life won that round. Time to go inside, find the root cause, to awaken the spiritual, to address death. Next stop was the Gawler Foundation in Victoria where she rekindled the power of Meditation, reinvented her diet and re-examined stress elimination. (Ian Gawler’s story is another insight to Wonder and is returned to later on in this article).
Our role in her story was to introduce the Healer.
My friend Adrian introduced me to Robyn Welch. Robyn had healed his wife of a Basal-cell Carcinoma (days out from a operation). (Another miracle to enter in my book of Emperical Evidence.) Adrian is a Healer with distance no barrier. This, still unexplained, is a component of Quantum Healing that just is. Adrian started sessions on our friend armed only with a photograph. What Adrian does is not open to a logical analysis like so much phenomena that resides behind our limited perceptions. Our friend felt an immediate connection with Adrian just as I had experienced with Robyn. And now was the time to wait.
A few weeks ago our friend had yet another CA 15-3 test. It registered 63! Dramatically down. Then the miracle. New scans revealed that the lungs and spine were completely clear. The hipbone tumour had completely disappeared and the hip was filled with new bone. The liver tumour had diminished by 80% and was disappearing. There you have it. The answer is always within. Our friend realised that and followed her intuition and it led her to a rebirth. I had realised it myself at the time and was led to the same place. My doctor had told me then that by this time further down the road that I would be suffering all the horror symptoms of my aggressive prostate cancer – that it would be now too late and he would have to suggest that I too would have to cross my fingers and pray for a miracle. When I told him I was going down my own road he accused me of “suicide by prostate cancer.” I’m sitting here writing this completely symptom-free. Not a twinge. And marveling at all the possibilities that wait for us if only we search them out. I have personally seen enough miracles to declare they can’t be ignored much longer. If one person sees a Unicorn then you can doubt and be sceptical but if 100 people see the same Unicorn then you just have to pay attention.
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Ian Gawler’s leg was amputated following the onset of osteogenic sarcoma (bone cancer) and he was informed if it returned that it would be fatal. It did return and Gawler’s specialist told him that he had only 2 weeks left on Planet Earth! Gawler rejected that prediction and set out to prove it wrong. He saw cancer as a disease of the immune system and as such it was possible to re-stimulate this natural defence. With the gifts of diet, spiritual motivation, self-exploration and meditation all was possible. Diagnosed for the second time in 1975, Ian Gawler was declared cancer-free by 1978. The Gawler Foundation is now set up as a life-style based, cancer self-help and support Institution. Now you can see it all. It should be clear. The terror you felt in that doctor’s rooms when he told you the awful news, isn’t an end but a beginning. There many people before you that have been in that same room and who have who walked out into a world of miracles. I now believe that if I could transport myself back to my awful diagnosis I would have looked the doctor in the eye and said: “Is that all. Why, I’ll fix that up this afternoon before I go to the movies!” Maybe a frivolous statement but one not that far from the truth. Maybe “fix it up by the end of the month.” Now for the black-and-white evidence. Look at Gawler’s photographic proof: his before-and-after shots. (B) shows bony tumours on Gawler’s chest; (D) shows what is possible – a recovery through faith, belief and practice. The only advice I would now offer is when you take that first healing step it’s important to not take a step backwards - there is no step backwards – there is only Now and where that leads. If you tire and turn around then you will see commitment wither and fall and all that once was will be again.
July, 2016: Farewell To the Healer
"Because I could not stop for Death
He kindly stopped for me
The Carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality."
~ Emily Dickinson ~
On Sunday, June 19, Robyn Welch, the healer that took me from a dark place to a field of Grace, died in hospital in Surfers Paradise. Robyn hadn't been well in the past couple of years but she wouldn't accept any limitations to her healing, any obstacle that would lessen her desire to help and comfort the ailing. She persisted and those who knew her knew the price of that persistence would eventually have to be paid. And so it came to pass and Death kindly stopped for Robyn and her journey ended. Longfellow said that "the grave is but a covered bridge leading from light to light, through a brief darkness". And so it is.
On June 19 one journey ended and on June 19 another journey started and, to me, as surely as day follows night, Robyn as Spirit is eternal - as we all are. "Death cannot kill what never dies" said Thomas Traherne. It amazes, saddens me, that we shudder at the prospect of dying. After all we are all experts at dying. We have done it over and over, across many lifetimes. How many last breaths do we have to take before the truth sinks in? And how would I know you ask. No one knows you say. You say this and you say that. Yet everyday, just name the Ism of your choice, billions fall to their knees and accept their ism's promise of immortality. If your brand of religion suddenly announced from the pulpit that all ends at the grave and that oblivion was your destiny, then you would scurry for a religion that would reverse that statement. Oblivion is not what the Religions promise. Life would be wonderful if it wasn't so easy to be hypocritical - is your belief system hypocritical! Would it tell me there is no eternal life while holding your hand and promising everything? And why is there this incessant search for the elusive answer to that eternal question - is there life after death? Do we deny our intuition? That nagging, ever-present, inner feeling that there is more to this existence than meets the eye. Why are we never 100% certain that all ends when the last clod of dirt hits our coffin's lid? Because dying is not a new experience. It's a familiar experience but as John Lennon said: "living is easy with eyes closed". And so it is.
We have separated ourselves from our own story. We have closed our eyes to so many truths that we have lost ourselves. This life is just one stop along a path that has seen myriads of me and myriads of you. Different bodies, different names, different environments but the essence, the soul, has always been and will always be. So I'm happy for Robyn because she told me, and showed me through her incredible gift, that there is another level to this dimension and to accept it with open arms when it presented itself. As a practising Intuitive she had no fear of death and living was easy on that level because her eyes were wide open. So when I say she "died" on June 19 I find that statement totally inadequate. "Die" seems too much a human word. And we struggle everyday to explain most mystical events armed only with words. There are too many words that fall well short of any explanatory satisfaction. Death is one such word. Robyn and I both know full well what happened on June 19 and it won't be found in the obituary columns.
Bon voyage.
June, 2016: A Fork in the Road
As an Observer, when the opportunity presents itself, I seek out those around us who describe themselves as channelers. Those who utilise “energy from a source believed to be outside the person's body or conscious mind; specifically: those who speak for nonphysical beings or spirits”. In my encounters with psychics, clairvoyants, mediums, healers, I have been sometimes amazed, sometimes amused and, more often than not, disappointed. I have seen enough though to believe that we live in a vast field of the “possible”. Sadly, when we are in this field we are like radios. Some souls are clearly tuned in. Some hear the message but it fades in and out – tantalising but elusive. Some hear only static. Some don’t know how to turn the radio on. Some don’t have a radio and some don’t want a radio at all.
On the weekend I took my radio to the Mind, Body, Spirit Festival in Sydney. I went, not looking for specific answers to specific questions, but to work on what I call my Intuition Muscle. I hoped as I wandered the avenues of stalls I would tune in to an indefinable “something” that is inherent in Synchronicity. I rely on Synchronicity for guidance – which, again, has been described as “the uncanny and fortuitous timing of events that seems to go beyond chance”. Chris Mackey, in his book simply entitled Synchronicity, says: ”in my view, synchronicity is a gift from the Universe... a helpful pointer, affirming that you’re going in the right direction in your life. It’s a bit like coming across a bush marker on a lengthy bush track indicating that you’re on the right path.” You know. You’re sitting at the bus stop, deep in thought, wondering just where you can go for the problem that’s unbalancing you –depression, a spiritual dilemma, gambling, sexual or any one of the many we have created in our modern existence, when a sheet of newspaper blows up against your leg and as you look down an advertisement with an address and a phone number offering help that relates directly to your problem is staring back up at you and the sun suddenly shines and the rain is just a memory. I didn’t have a particular problem on my mind at the Festival but I soon found one.
There was a Psychic Medium there who I know on a casual basis. I wandered into her session and afterwards stayed to say hello. I was instantly informed that I was ill and that a message from the Other Side said I should head for the nearest doctor. As documented on this website I have been fortunate to have come across one of the most-blessed intuitive healers in the shape of Robyn Welch who arrested my cancer and sent me on a path of reborn health. Intuition and Synchronicity has led me to other like-souls such as Adrian Turner and Graeme Cogdell as well as Buddhist Lama Pema, Reiki Master Linda Fenech and psychic Pam Pickles. All have helped and guided me and who still keep a close eye on my well-being when asked to. And have done so in the past weeks. So, being humorous, it was an intuitive showdown with my Festival friend heavily outnumbered. The serious problem here is which intuitive is right and, as Synchronicity has led you to this moment in time shouldn’t you take serious notice of the message in the moment? A fork in your spiritual road has appeared – do you mistrust your inner voice? The answer, of course, is found within.
You are the Intuitive that holds the answer. My inner voice that directs me is always there in my first impression of a person, an event, a written word, a lecture. I find that it is a quiet voice. It never yells or tells me to run. It simply and immediately says: “This is not your path. This path belongs to someone else. You have come across it only to learn from it, not to adapt it as a map or worldview.” Or it says, often in joy: “Yes, this is important – this is the way.” Simplistic but undeniable. Only once has my intuition raised its voice. Ten minutes before my motorcycle crash as I was sitting waiting for a friend to be ready to go out, I was suddenly filled with such dread and fear I almost fainted. The feeling said that I was in immediate danger. That, in fact, my life itself was on the line. My friend was so frightened that he told me to go home as I was scaring him. He stood outside as I drove off and then he heard the crash. The ambulance that raced me to the hospital had only a limited amount of time to get there as they tried to keep me alive. This is intuition and this is what we all possess if we only listen and trust the response. Back to my encounter with the Medium. When I first met her last year, my very first impression – the most valuable of all - said quietly: “Interesting, but not for you. Valuable for many. But not for you.” That is why I will not go to the doctor. My intuition has embraced my other intuitive friends but not this one. As a developing Buddhist my intuition tends to accept those avenues of the “miraculous” that draw on powers that come from within the laws of nature. As one Buddhist teacher quoted: “The discussion of what might be called miracles (or magic) in Buddhist scriptures are not miracles (or magic) as one would typically view them in the Western sense. There is “NO” interference by an outside power with the laws of nature. That is, the "power" or "powers" are drawn from already naturally-existing natural powers.”
Having stated my case I am grateful for that Festival diagnosis. It has strengthened my Intuition Muscle. A path that holds such encounters is a blessed one – it means, to me, that there is a force that is interested in one’s journey, and that it is a constant teacher. This was yet another lesson on my road and my consequent reaction relating to the lesson has once more led me to offer gratitude and love in exchange for the spiritual strength and insight granted.
May, 2016: The Promise of No-Man's-Land
"The musician is very close to mysticism, far closer than the philosopher...because music is meaningful without any words; it is meaningful simply because it rings some bells in your heart... creates a synchronicity between you and itself, when your heart starts resonating in the same way, when you start pulsating in the same way."
Osho, Philosophia Ultima
In the weeks following my cancer diagnosis I drifted into a Spirit-less No-man’s-land. Like any decent No-man’s-land it was a landscape littered with failure – no “isms” to turn to for spiritual inspiration; no inner strength to help face the threat to my mortality; obviously no man, icon or spiritual map to consult; no precedent to draw wisdom from and, no words to express my dismay. It was as though I had died and been reborn into a hostile environment that was relentless in its desire to ignore the newly born. But, to my surprise, I soon realised this was a sanctified affliction, this No-man’s-land. And, being sanctified, being a blessing, there were more answers than questions. If I couldn’t find the words then I would proceed without words. I still had music. And, as Hans Christian Andersen said: “where words fail, music speaks.” The problem was that my music had been corrupted by years of neglect.
I believe I created the garden bed for my cancer. I built it slowly, decade by decade. I lived in a world populated by frustration, restlessness, fear, anger. I lived a long way away from myself as I neglected the inner and saw the outer as the truth. I resisted the spiritual, postponing any chance of contact. In fact I resented the spiritual because it seemed it promised far more than it delivered. My inner core, my energy, was disfunctioning and confused. My body took on the inner attitude and responded. “This man appears to want out. I’ll kill him.” Maybe extreme but my intuition tells me that is the way it was. All spiritual components atrophied including music – especially music. I felt bitterness that I had lost my creativity, my music, through neglect. I had failed me. And music had fallen in tandem. I slowly reawakened when I found words previously written a decade ago describing the persistence of creativity. It's ferocity.
“The music breathes its will thru the rooms of time, down the corridors of perception and invades the comfort of all your futile sanctuaries. It knows every alias that you adopt. It stalks you through the days of your life. Claims dominance over your precious years. The music is a wolf at your heels, relentless in its pursuit of your complete obedience. It assumes every role, from master or mistress to friend or foe, with equal ferocity. The music relishes its ambush mentality. It lurks in every shadow on the dark side of the street knowing your crossing is inevitable. It allies its seductive persona with the elements, the sighs and howls of nature. Silence is its only predator but silence is not your saviour. Music knows your name and demands that you answer when it whispers in your ear.”
I had lost sight of the beauty, the healing power, the avenues to inner peace, that music once provided. Fortunately I had underestimated divine intervention. Perversely, the cancer diagnosis rather than a deadly sentence instead opened up a realm of possibilities. There were voices to heed. One of which was music. And now I see that music did pursue me relentlessly. But not as a foe. It recognised that I was lost in a No-man’s-land of my own creation. Music followed me there and led me out. Later in a Meditation a voice deep within told me that if I wanted a conversation the avenue was through my music. This was a gift. The most powerful thing is it’s everyone’s gift.
This phase of human existence – being a technological wonderland - has seen too many people construct psychological houses to live in that are essentially Spirit-proof. Blind faith has succumbed to blind logic. The telephone lines connecting intuition to the unknown have mostly been disconnected. If you can’t see it, feel it, taste it, experience it every available minute, then it’s a superstition, a fossilised relic. Irrelevant. But cause and effect haunts us. Rejection invokes dissatisfaction, fear and a deep inner nagging. This very same impulse that has persisted through every stage of human development – from caveman to quantum physicist. The voice that persists within is universal – residing in the core of every soul on this planet. In my case it moved from a vague questioning to a guiding light. It spoke through music. We need to look inside and listen because in that modern, appliance-rich house we have constructed there is a forgotten room that holds a presence that wants to communicate. Maybe not through music – maybe through art, writing, poetry – maybe in the natural world outside your windows, the stars above your roof, the rain on the garden. So many roads.
"Music is a higher revelation
than all wisdom and philosophy.
Music is the electrical soil
in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."
~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~
"The musician is very close to mysticism, far closer than the philosopher...because music is meaningful without any words; it is meaningful simply because it rings some bells in your heart... creates a synchronicity between you and itself, when your heart starts resonating in the same way, when you start pulsating in the same way."
Osho, Philosophia Ultima
In the weeks following my cancer diagnosis I drifted into a Spirit-less No-man’s-land. Like any decent No-man’s-land it was a landscape littered with failure – no “isms” to turn to for spiritual inspiration; no inner strength to help face the threat to my mortality; obviously no man, icon or spiritual map to consult; no precedent to draw wisdom from and, no words to express my dismay. It was as though I had died and been reborn into a hostile environment that was relentless in its desire to ignore the newly born. But, to my surprise, I soon realised this was a sanctified affliction, this No-man’s-land. And, being sanctified, being a blessing, there were more answers than questions. If I couldn’t find the words then I would proceed without words. I still had music. And, as Hans Christian Andersen said: “where words fail, music speaks.” The problem was that my music had been corrupted by years of neglect.
I believe I created the garden bed for my cancer. I built it slowly, decade by decade. I lived in a world populated by frustration, restlessness, fear, anger. I lived a long way away from myself as I neglected the inner and saw the outer as the truth. I resisted the spiritual, postponing any chance of contact. In fact I resented the spiritual because it seemed it promised far more than it delivered. My inner core, my energy, was disfunctioning and confused. My body took on the inner attitude and responded. “This man appears to want out. I’ll kill him.” Maybe extreme but my intuition tells me that is the way it was. All spiritual components atrophied including music – especially music. I felt bitterness that I had lost my creativity, my music, through neglect. I had failed me. And music had fallen in tandem. I slowly reawakened when I found words previously written a decade ago describing the persistence of creativity. It's ferocity.
“The music breathes its will thru the rooms of time, down the corridors of perception and invades the comfort of all your futile sanctuaries. It knows every alias that you adopt. It stalks you through the days of your life. Claims dominance over your precious years. The music is a wolf at your heels, relentless in its pursuit of your complete obedience. It assumes every role, from master or mistress to friend or foe, with equal ferocity. The music relishes its ambush mentality. It lurks in every shadow on the dark side of the street knowing your crossing is inevitable. It allies its seductive persona with the elements, the sighs and howls of nature. Silence is its only predator but silence is not your saviour. Music knows your name and demands that you answer when it whispers in your ear.”
I had lost sight of the beauty, the healing power, the avenues to inner peace, that music once provided. Fortunately I had underestimated divine intervention. Perversely, the cancer diagnosis rather than a deadly sentence instead opened up a realm of possibilities. There were voices to heed. One of which was music. And now I see that music did pursue me relentlessly. But not as a foe. It recognised that I was lost in a No-man’s-land of my own creation. Music followed me there and led me out. Later in a Meditation a voice deep within told me that if I wanted a conversation the avenue was through my music. This was a gift. The most powerful thing is it’s everyone’s gift.
This phase of human existence – being a technological wonderland - has seen too many people construct psychological houses to live in that are essentially Spirit-proof. Blind faith has succumbed to blind logic. The telephone lines connecting intuition to the unknown have mostly been disconnected. If you can’t see it, feel it, taste it, experience it every available minute, then it’s a superstition, a fossilised relic. Irrelevant. But cause and effect haunts us. Rejection invokes dissatisfaction, fear and a deep inner nagging. This very same impulse that has persisted through every stage of human development – from caveman to quantum physicist. The voice that persists within is universal – residing in the core of every soul on this planet. In my case it moved from a vague questioning to a guiding light. It spoke through music. We need to look inside and listen because in that modern, appliance-rich house we have constructed there is a forgotten room that holds a presence that wants to communicate. Maybe not through music – maybe through art, writing, poetry – maybe in the natural world outside your windows, the stars above your roof, the rain on the garden. So many roads.
"Music is a higher revelation
than all wisdom and philosophy.
Music is the electrical soil
in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents."
~ Ludwig van Beethoven ~
April, 2016: Invisible Statues
My mother collected belief systems. When I was young our dysfunctional family followed her as she drifted from Presbyterian to the other side, Catholicism. From the arms of traditional religion to the apocalyptic clutches of the Seven Day Adventists. One day you could dance on a Friday night, the next it was a sin! Non-Catholics were misinformed according to the Vatican while the opposition saw no redeeming features in Catholicism beyond a tenuous brotherhood. Having set up tents in both camps at various times I gained no benefit from either. And the Seven Day Adventists left me with nothing more than a fondness for Sanitarium Nutmeat as a food source! Consequently, I rejected most of the messages of redemption embodied in whatever religion that came knocking at my mother's door. Instead I embraced Spiritual Confusion as my guiding light.
When I say I rejected ‘most’ I mean I inherited some disturbing facets. Facets that proved in my later years to be a hindrance to my spiritual quest. I will now concentrate on just one Facet that led to one inner conflict best described as the Invisible Statue Complex! The major Western religions, particularly Judaism, Christianity and Islam, condemn the practice of Idolatry – being ‘the worship of an idol or a physical object as a representation of a god’. I had found credence in the theory that those worshiping a statue were separating themselves from the real object of worship – a presence that existed beyond the stone image. They were seeking contact outside rather than within and within, to me, was the only place to explore any celestial relationship. Why I carried this feeling or intuition with me I could never explain. Maybe a past life lesson, old Testament-style indoctrination or maybe plain ignorance.
Following my cancer diagnosis, when I set out on a new and difficult road, I carried Spiritual Confusion as my Bible. Not recommended. The road led to Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling in the hills behind Kamo, NZ. This beautiful Buddhist centre was both a refuge and a healing force. But it was also a place where the past and present clashed. Deep meditation was bliss but watching the deference displayed toward the exquisite statues of Chenrezig, the embodiment of the compassion of all the Buddhas - the Bodhisattva of Compassion, and Tara, goddess of peace and protection, brought not wonder but disquiet. Was this Idolatry? Or was it my doctrine of Spiritual Confusion in its purest form?
Outside influences did not help one iota. For instance in Deepak Chopra’s book God, he tells a story of Socrates as a young man encountering Diotima – a wandering female mystic, ragged and witch-like in appearance. Socrates was working in the family trade. Carving religious icons and statues to be sold to local merchants. Diotima approached Socrates requesting a statue. “What kind?” “The invisible kind,”replied Diotima. “You could carve that yourself,” was the reply. “No,” said Diotima, adding that invisible statues were the hardest to make. “Why?” “Your statues represent Divinity. But how can Divinity be carved. Divinity is invisible so the representation must also be invisible. An image created in wood is useless.” An interesting argument no doubt. Mentally I placed stone and wood figurines alongside the inadequacy of words – having been armed with only 26 letters to explain and describe the inexplicable – and the failure of intellectual concepts – giving mental images to forces unseen and unknown. My Spiritual Confusion belief system was being constantly being reinforced. But then I found I was wrong and valuable lessons were learnt.
One important lesson was to never carry set-in-concrete, preformed conceptions into any spiritual realignment. In my case my perceptions founded in organised religion were created by the mind of a child – decades ago. The religions I encountered warned of false idols, and so I kept an immature eye out. Knowledge is nice but experience is beautiful. Experience has carried me far beyond childish notions. Ven. Jampa Tsekyi, resident Nun and meditation teacher at Jam Tse Dhargyey Ling, taught me that statues such as Chenrezig and Tara were created to represent Buddhas, not Gods. They were signposts, avenues of inspiration, lighthouses. To me, reminders of all possibilities when I have wavered. If I am to be offended then I should, if true to myself, be critical of the little stone chapel on the hill, the priest or monk strolling down the street, the crucifix, the cross and, in extreme, the sunset, the shimmering blue ocean or the wind in the trees – all visible reminders of an essence beyond the physical. Now the Steeple Cross set against the urban landscape is a blessing not a hindrance. As it should be.
We all live in the house that we have built for ourselves from birth. The concepts formed by fear, insecurity, the seemingly hostile world outside our walls, are our furniture. We cling to the security systems we have installed to protect our house. We try to make ourselves comfortable with the view from our windows. If it changes dramatically and the familiar distorts and we are compelled to investigate outside of our protective walls, we often can't help but take our concepts with us as maps, reference sources or even as weapons. Before we venture into the unfamiliar we need to examine our concepts - which ones are useful and which ones are useless. We need to go inside in order to go outside. I have written about one concept, carried like a backpack, over the decades which hindered, not helped. As humans raised in an universe that baffles more than it explains, we must carry literally thousands of psychological and spiritual building bricks that need replacing. We must try to build a house that we instinctively know that we will never finish - only renovate from cradle to grave.
March, 2016: Beyond the Mask
Recently we took a drive along the Great Ocean Road in Victoria to the Twelve Apostles, offshore of the Port Campbell National Park. The area was laden with tourists slightly overshadowing the grandeur and we retreated from the babble and traffic to our motel. Arising at 6am we set out again to find the area beautifully deserted and, with no logjam on the stairs leading down to the beach, we descended to find a rewarding solitude and set out on a walk.
Sometimes Nature can speak to you on a level rarely encountered in the cacophony that is the modern world. That morning I glimpsed, and only glimpsed, the power of the natural laws and my relationship to those laws that exist beyond the manufactured. The waves like the breath, in then out; the eroded monuments revealing constant change and reinvention; the balance of sky and ocean, hand in hand. The portrait painted for your eyes. And our bodies, two figures in a landscape, an essential component of that portrait. For a moment all was one and then it wasn't. This is our constant dilemma for the majority of humans: we can momentarily glimpse the hidden reality and then we lose the ability to see in a heartbeat. At the same time, this is the frustration of the everyman spiritual journey - the search that is sometimes rewarded and sometimes not. A glimpse, for me on that beach, was worth a thousand days of frustration. For a moment I could truly "see". Beyond the Mask.
There is a small book called Buddhism: Plain & Simple written by a Zen priest - Steve Hagen. Hagen writes about Reality revealing its essence to us through "actual perception and direct experience." By what you see not by what you think - beyond Belief. Hagen believes that "once you see Reality, belief becomes unnecessary. Indeed, at this point, it stands in the way of clear, direct perception. We therefore cannot rely on what we merely believe if we wish to see Truth and Reality". On the beach I lost my reliance on the structured and embraced 'nothing' for a fleeting moment - I had no expectations, no material distraction, no surrounding energy vibrations from the tourist hordes - I looked at the surrounding World and saw an unclouded "moment". And it's magic was revealed.
Steve Hagen illustrates our inability at really see what is sometimes patently obvious. He produces a picture of an object (below) that we are totally familiar with. I didn't see anything I could recognize at first glance and found myself faced with a growing frustration. I thought of possibilities but wasn't ever convinced I was right. Hagen himself said that he first experienced that there "was no sense of seeing", no conviction that he really knew what he was looking at. He continues: " keep looking at the picture. I assure you that when you actually see what it is, all your uncertainty will immediately vanish. You will see what the picture is. All beliefs and uneasiness about it will instantly cease".
There is a small book called Buddhism: Plain & Simple written by a Zen priest - Steve Hagen. Hagen writes about Reality revealing its essence to us through "actual perception and direct experience." By what you see not by what you think - beyond Belief. Hagen believes that "once you see Reality, belief becomes unnecessary. Indeed, at this point, it stands in the way of clear, direct perception. We therefore cannot rely on what we merely believe if we wish to see Truth and Reality". On the beach I lost my reliance on the structured and embraced 'nothing' for a fleeting moment - I had no expectations, no material distraction, no surrounding energy vibrations from the tourist hordes - I looked at the surrounding World and saw an unclouded "moment". And it's magic was revealed.
Steve Hagen illustrates our inability at really see what is sometimes patently obvious. He produces a picture of an object (below) that we are totally familiar with. I didn't see anything I could recognize at first glance and found myself faced with a growing frustration. I thought of possibilities but wasn't ever convinced I was right. Hagen himself said that he first experienced that there "was no sense of seeing", no conviction that he really knew what he was looking at. He continues: " keep looking at the picture. I assure you that when you actually see what it is, all your uncertainty will immediately vanish. You will see what the picture is. All beliefs and uneasiness about it will instantly cease".
I'll quote Steve Hagen further:
"If you haven't yet seen what this picture is, keep looking at it for a while. Eventually you'll get it. And when you do get it, notice the sudden shift that takes place in your mind. Your mind relaxed when, suddenly, you saw, and knew you saw. Your state of mind,which before was vague, mysterious, fuzzy, confused, and uncomfortable, was suddenly transformed the moment you saw. You had clarity and total conviction. And that clarity and conviction will remain with you each time you view the picture again. If somebody says to you:' it's a picture of a man lying down,' you'll know they're off the mark - and no amount of argument is going to influence you. This is analogous to the difference between seeing and simply having a belief, an idea, a concept. The Buddha-dharma points the way to a similar, but more universal and profound, sense of 'Aha!'. About waking up to the moment, seeing this for what it is. And, just as your state of mind changed once you saw what the picture was, you suddenly see the situation you're in, you experience certainty. Things clear up. This is called enlightenment, or awakening. This awakening is available to all of us, at every moment, without exception."
We are all Observers. Sometimes it takes an observer like Steve Hagen to reinforce our own observations. At other times, like on my deserted beach, when the Inner and Outer recognize that all is one. Insight, though at times fleeting, becomes a gift.
Buddhism:Plain and Simple - Steve Hagen. Penguin Books - 1999.
The answer to the Illustration is in Steve's book or email me: [email protected]
February, 2016: ... the forest but for the trees
Mysteriologists have collated thousands of case histories over the centuries. Some have been proven as pranks and some have slipped through the sceptic's net simply because a part of the mystery remains elusive, dodging detailed analysis. One such case is the story of the ghost ship, SS Watertown. In 1924 the oil tanker Watertown was enroute from New York City to the Panama Canal. Two seamen - James Courtney and Michael Meehan - were accidentally asphyxiated due to leaking gasoline fumes as they worked in the hold. They were both buried at sea and the voyage proceeded.
The next morning the Watertown's first mate observed two objects off the starboard bow keeping pace with the ship. Using binoculars the objects were identified as being two swimmers. Steering closer to the apparitions both crew and officers were shocked as they recognised both James Courtney and Michael Meehan - buried just 24 hours earlier. The unsettled ship's company was followed for several days. Ship's captain, Keith Tracy, informed his employers and was instructed to purchase a camera at the next port of call, New Orleans. When the ship proceeded the two figures rejoined their pursuit and Tracy managed six shots. Five were empty of any evidence. One wasn't. This notorious photo was later viewed by grieving family and company officials who confirmed the identities of the two dead sailors.
The consequent investigation has been documented on You Tube.
Mysteriologists have collated thousands of case histories over the centuries. Some have been proven as pranks and some have slipped through the sceptic's net simply because a part of the mystery remains elusive, dodging detailed analysis. One such case is the story of the ghost ship, SS Watertown. In 1924 the oil tanker Watertown was enroute from New York City to the Panama Canal. Two seamen - James Courtney and Michael Meehan - were accidentally asphyxiated due to leaking gasoline fumes as they worked in the hold. They were both buried at sea and the voyage proceeded.
The next morning the Watertown's first mate observed two objects off the starboard bow keeping pace with the ship. Using binoculars the objects were identified as being two swimmers. Steering closer to the apparitions both crew and officers were shocked as they recognised both James Courtney and Michael Meehan - buried just 24 hours earlier. The unsettled ship's company was followed for several days. Ship's captain, Keith Tracy, informed his employers and was instructed to purchase a camera at the next port of call, New Orleans. When the ship proceeded the two figures rejoined their pursuit and Tracy managed six shots. Five were empty of any evidence. One wasn't. This notorious photo was later viewed by grieving family and company officials who confirmed the identities of the two dead sailors.
The consequent investigation has been documented on You Tube.
So, here we have it - another Mystery. This ghost story, as investigated, has flaws. The scale of the faces when compared to the ship's height; no record of either sailors as ever being on the Watertown, the impossibility of the two swimmers matching the speed of the vessel. The event was almost debunked but not entirely. The sceptic's net has a hole in it. These ghosts were viewed by dozens of crew on the Watertown. By discounting mass hysteria, multiple sightings of the same phenomena add to authenticity, not distract. One fool is open to doubt, many a little harder to disprove. The original photo has been clumsily edited by an unknown party - the two inserted arrows hide the original evidence. More questions than available answers.
There is a saying that states that if everyone spoke about what they really knew about, a great silence would descend on the Earth! We don't really know everything - there are untold areas denied to our limited knowledge. This small blue ball floating in an unimaginable vastness is the home to a population that never gets very far past guessing their way through their lives. But this concept is liberating - because if we don't really know then it follows there are more possibilities than ever imagined! We can accept the unacceptable simply because it is possible. Incidents like the SS Watertown, real or imagined, open up great avenues of exploration. Here, in one photo, we can consider life after death, the power of mass psychosis, maybe dimensional inter-reaction, a corruption of the laws of physics or maybe evidence of a higher force that is reminding us that we have lost the ability to accept the Unknown. Would a photo, published in today's paper, depicting a healing Christ walking on the water, raising the dead and turning water into wine eventually end up in one of a pile of second-hand books in the Fantasy or New Age sections. Maybe entitled The Impossible Explored.
I have always had a fascination with the mysteries of the paranormal. Ghost stories, UFOs, past-life regression, psychic phenomena, reincarnation or faith healing - all have attracted and held my attention. Astronaut Neil Armstrong once remarked that: "mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand". The Mystery, with its possibilities or impossibilities, challenges our everyday perception of reality thus offering insight into the big questions that haunt us. "Where do I come from?""Where am I?" Where am I going?" The great mysteries can offer a glimpse of an alternate reality. This reality is beyond the physical - it is rooted in the spiritual. Maybe two ghosts pursued the SS Watertown, maybe they didn't. What is important is the realization that it could have happened. It is possible. And if it is possible then other avenues of possibility are opened up. We can reclaim our lost sense of wonder - long hidden beneath a blanket of misconceived reality.
January - New Year's Day 2016: Light's Hard Road
"The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health.
It destroys the house to unearth the treasure and, with this treasure, builds it better than before."
Jalal al Din Rumi
"The spiritual path wrecks the body and afterwards restores it to health.
It destroys the house to unearth the treasure and, with this treasure, builds it better than before."
Jalal al Din Rumi
I dabbled for decades in a half-hearted spiritualism driven by a poorly defined intuition. An intuition that hinted, and only hinted, that all was not what it appeared to be. Eugene O'Neill once stated: "life is perhaps best regarded as a bad dream between two awakenings." Life, to me, didn't hold any attraction as an illusion. I wanted it to be more than an anaemic "feeling" - an awkward sense of "obscure otherness." I didn't want life to be anything else less than mysterious. A wonder rather than a dream. I began to search for a third awakening within O'Neill's two extremes.
Thomas Edison once remarked that "restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure". I was well-versed in dissatisfaction - a vital component of any soul's search. So, I clumsily pursued insight. And insight proved to be an avenue potholed with sharp twists and turns, attractive distractions, roadblocks and, regretfully, dead-ends. A hard road.
One would think that a spiritual path, once taken, would be a blessed path. That such a path would unfold like wrapping paper removed from a precious gift. Instead as I progressed I found a disturbing landscape through which one carefully marks his step so as to avoid falling too hard. Better to be only bruised, not broken. Your companions are nagging questions nipping at your heels. If this is the way home why is it so difficult to navigate?
This difficulty is underlined as the road expands and broadens. As awareness increases you are confronted by the depth and power of your negative side. It appears more powerful than its opposing side. Why? The "light", the spiritual zone, is largely unexplored and rarely utilised and, thus, has atrophied through misuse. On the other hand, the "negative" or, less harshly, our shadow, is well-tuned, up-to-date and is an old friend. A friend that we call upon for advice consistently in our every-day lives. Envy, jealousy, perverted ambition, greed, lust, hate, self-denial are all easily recognizable whilst love, compassion, charity, self-awareness are all admirable and familiar but lack easy access. It seems easier to succumb to your "old friends" rather than embrace the unfamiliar. In other words, the negative appears to be more persuasive, pervasive and, frankly, more powerful than the utopian promise of enlightenment. This becomes the dilemma faced. All appears disproportionate. The more you become aware of the beauty inherent in enlightenment, the more your shadow expands proportionately to match and overcome your expectations.
You have no choice but personal dissatisfaction. The good news I found was that this dissatisfaction was a gift not a curse. Dissatisfaction leads you to the road you're on. It leads you along the difficult terrain through which you pass. It leads you right to the door of Awareness. Here, as you continue, you start to see your darker side laid bare. It becomes transparent. You start to see its origin, its essence. Where once you hid in ignorance, a victim of a dubious self-centred motivation, you now have the power of insight. The shadow loses its hold. It is inherent in every individual but it is not the defining guide. But it is still a teacher as it shows you what you created. Your invention of yourself. Sometimes the building blocks used in your persona can be more than intimidating. But the beauty is now in the new building blocks now available from within your increasing awareness.
The hard road is reduced to single steps. From "what was" and "what could be" to "now." Easier to manage. The past and the future and, consequentially, your destination, become irrelevant. The past is a place where you no longer live and only useful for what it taught you and the future is largely unpredictable. Abraham Lincoln said "the best way to predict the future is to live it". That means from one breath to the next and nowhere else. Your awareness increases and all, dissatisfaction and negativity, is in context. You are informed from both sides of your psyche. You take note and you apply all lessons to your intent. Your road is reinvented becoming more defined with each step a reward in itself. Balance is achieved when your invented concept of a journey as a trudge along a designated road blossoms into a concept of a journey within. A journey that takes only a quiet room, a period of meditation and a willingness to accept and explore whatever pays you a visit.
Happy New Moment
December, 2015: The Miniature Heaven
"To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour."
- William Blake
No-one is surprised to be told that in our Western Culture we live in a materialistic, ego-driven world. Though unsurprised, we are surprised by our reaction to that fact, that we have willingly surrendered to its cultural demands and inevitable consequences. That, internally, from first breath to last, we have become fragmented as we have carefully built a myriad of conflicting personae in order to present a portrait acceptable to our self-image and society's observance of our everyday interactions with the world at large. That our values, morals and ethics have been polluted by a degenerative osmosis. That, in this unfortunate setting, we have lost sight of our natural relationship with the mystical. We intuit that there is more than meets the eye - worlds inside worlds - but access is denied to most as we struggle toward a self-serving Big Picture down a hard road littered with distraction. It is as if the mad pursuit is the only raison d'etre - our reason for being. We sense our bewilderment, our lack of control but we are compelled by a unrealistic expectation of happiness achievable only by a earthbound blueprint. Indian Mystic Osho underlines our foolishness: "Life is not short; life is eternal, so there is no question of any hurry. By hurrying you can only miss. In existence do you see any hurry? Seasons come in their time, flowers come in their time, trees are not running to grow fast because life is short. it seems as if the whole existence is aware of the eternity of life." We have swapped any awareness of the infinite, the field of possibilities, for the certainty of desperation.
This trap is not limited to the material world, it lurks in the spiritual realm as well. When I first started my journey I fell victim to placing the utmost importance on achieving a designated goal. An anticipated destination. Call it Enlightenment, Nirvana or Reborn Pillar of Wisdom. I didn't really have a name for where I planned to get off the train. Just a burning ambition that demanded satisfaction! And only a lifetime to do it in. I was, of course, trapped in delusion. Caught in the stampede. It was like standing in a river for hours waiting for a promised glass of water. The river was behind, in front, beneath but I couldn't feel that because my longing for a glass of water had blinded me to its presence. This is what we miss. In our rush toward that legendary heaven that resides either here or beyond the clouds, we miss the "small miracles", the "miniature heavens" that Blake calls: "a world in a grain of sand." These insights line our long road, arms outstretched, waiting for acknowledgement. All carrying simple but vital messages to no avail as most, if not all, are ignored. It was Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh who opened my eyes to the need to look for direction in the minute details of the Everyday and not in Utopian concepts when, holding up a piece of paper, he said:
"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close. Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we as humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore, you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper. And if you look more deeply, with the eyes of a bodhisattva, with the eyes of those who are awake, you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here, the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger's father - everything is in this sheet of paper... This paper is empty of an independent self. Empty, in the this sense, means that the paper is full of everything, the entire cosmos. The presence of this tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos."
If a single sheet of paper holds the cosmos then so do you and me. Still we persist in our gallop towards concepts of happiness - wealth, status, fame, power, heaven or a manufactured enlightenment. We run so hard that we leave ourselves behind. If we hold within us the essence of heaven, an inherited enlightenment, we don't have to run - we only have to look closely at what is immediately "within and without". Not what is over that hill and far away. There is no peace there.
"No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars."
- Quintus Ennis (239-169 BCE)
This trap is not limited to the material world, it lurks in the spiritual realm as well. When I first started my journey I fell victim to placing the utmost importance on achieving a designated goal. An anticipated destination. Call it Enlightenment, Nirvana or Reborn Pillar of Wisdom. I didn't really have a name for where I planned to get off the train. Just a burning ambition that demanded satisfaction! And only a lifetime to do it in. I was, of course, trapped in delusion. Caught in the stampede. It was like standing in a river for hours waiting for a promised glass of water. The river was behind, in front, beneath but I couldn't feel that because my longing for a glass of water had blinded me to its presence. This is what we miss. In our rush toward that legendary heaven that resides either here or beyond the clouds, we miss the "small miracles", the "miniature heavens" that Blake calls: "a world in a grain of sand." These insights line our long road, arms outstretched, waiting for acknowledgement. All carrying simple but vital messages to no avail as most, if not all, are ignored. It was Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh who opened my eyes to the need to look for direction in the minute details of the Everyday and not in Utopian concepts when, holding up a piece of paper, he said:
"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no water, the trees cannot grow; and without trees, you cannot make paper. So the cloud is in here. The existence of this page is dependent on the existence of a cloud. Paper and cloud are so close. Let us think of other things, like sunshine. Sunshine is very important because the forest cannot grow without sunshine, and we as humans cannot grow without sunshine. So the logger needs sunshine in order to cut the tree, and the tree needs sunshine in order to be a tree. Therefore, you can see sunshine in this sheet of paper. And if you look more deeply, with the eyes of a bodhisattva, with the eyes of those who are awake, you see not only the cloud and the sunshine in it, but that everything is here, the wheat that became the bread for the logger to eat, the logger's father - everything is in this sheet of paper... This paper is empty of an independent self. Empty, in the this sense, means that the paper is full of everything, the entire cosmos. The presence of this tiny sheet of paper proves the presence of the whole cosmos."
If a single sheet of paper holds the cosmos then so do you and me. Still we persist in our gallop towards concepts of happiness - wealth, status, fame, power, heaven or a manufactured enlightenment. We run so hard that we leave ourselves behind. If we hold within us the essence of heaven, an inherited enlightenment, we don't have to run - we only have to look closely at what is immediately "within and without". Not what is over that hill and far away. There is no peace there.
"No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars."
- Quintus Ennis (239-169 BCE)
November, 2015: Behind the Clouds
"All we know is still infinitely less than all that remains unknown."
- William Harvey
You can be minding your own business. It's a pleasant Summer's morning or a late-Spring evening when you just happen to glance upwards to where there is normally the usual sky's vista but to your surprise all notions of normality are swept aside by what you see...
Recently the residents of the Jiangxi and Foshan areas of China glanced heavenly and saw what appeared to be a city floating above their heads. (Video below) Skyscrapers in the clouds. The ever-ready instruments of our technological evolution were on hand and all was videoed in order to mystify and confuse the rest of the planet. The immediate reaction was as cliched and predictable as expected. A parallel universe. Aliens. A Fata Morgana - a mirage where light is distorted into imagery. NASA's Project Blue Beam wherein a New World Order will be initiated using a simulation of Christ's return using holograms. It is a testament to mankind's ever-expanding imagination that so many explanations are as close to hand. The reaction two or three hundred years ago probably would have been confined to fainting or ecclesiastical logic or, more extremely, witch-burning!
There are really only two avenues of explanation: "normal" - being within the accepted normal knowledge and perception or "paranormal" which resides beyond traditional questioning. If a floating city is considered within the boundaries of "normal," its interpretation is usually confined to scientific reasoning leading, inevitably, to derision and, ultimately, fish and chip wrapping. If it falls within the parameters of "paranormal", it becomes an arena of conflict when opened up to Everyman's reasoning prowess. For it is here in the inexplicable that the majority of the human race feels the most uncomfortable, the most unstable, the most fearful. The Unseen, the Unknown, when it defies interpretation, becomes a threat to "the natural order of things". It is here that a floating city without explanation moves beyond a government plot, a manufactured media event or nature's sense of humour. This is unfortunate for it is here in the abstract that the wisdom and beauty behind the apparition exists. The domains of creativity, spirituality, pure love and healing, where mankind is at its purest, are abstract. They can't be measured, photographed, kept in a bottle, sold by the pound. Yet, they exist in the same sphere as the inexplicable. The very place that we traditionally fear, mistrust and dismiss the most. It doesn't matter if there a UFO in the sky or a monster sailing across Loch Ness. What matters is our initial reaction, our intuition. Our response reveals if we are blindfolded or if we can see clearly without external peer pressure.
As an observer, I have fortunately stood on the edge of "things not known."
One day, like the residents of Jiangxi and Foshan, I looked up into the sky. On the 5th March, 1965, around 7.30 pm while walking with two friends from West Dubbo to the local cinema, one called out to look skywards. And there above were large, metallic objects sweeping by in a beautiful formation. The larger lead object, triangular, was flanked by smaller companions. Very much like ducks flying south or north for the winter depending on your hemisphere. (SMH Report below). Imagine a 14-year-old boy on a balmy Friday night whose biggest concern was probably the inability to afford the latest Rolling Stones record or if he could grow his hair an inch longer without offending half the population. This boy doesn't see a floating city but he does see unidentifiable objects later described as "travelling at between 18,000 and 20,000 miles an hour." Something beyond the "natural order of things". Objects that induced nothing but awe and the deep stirring of a long-buried intuition. He can't call on hard-earned logic or a deep scientific background in physics or an inherited knowledge of the supernatural. He sees what he sees - a moment in time dominated by the inexplicable - and that hidden intuition that says: "everything changes tonight - what you are seeing, its importance, whether it is real or not, these are secondary considerations - look behind the experience for its essence".
As Albert Einstein said: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." A beautiful thing because it is a gift from the Unknown - the Mysterious. All such encounters are signposts. They point without revealing. They are invitations to those who intuitively turn toward the unique encounter and not away from it. An invitation to move beyond Philosophy and Concept to Faith - faith in Things Unseen - things that can materialise above your head, mystify and stir a hidden longing and then leave you a changed person for the experience. The Unexpected is an opening to the vastness that is the realm of endless possibility. There is more to this existence than meets the eye.
"Every thing possible to be believed is an image of truth.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will never believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out."
- William Blake
"All we know is still infinitely less than all that remains unknown."
- William Harvey
You can be minding your own business. It's a pleasant Summer's morning or a late-Spring evening when you just happen to glance upwards to where there is normally the usual sky's vista but to your surprise all notions of normality are swept aside by what you see...
Recently the residents of the Jiangxi and Foshan areas of China glanced heavenly and saw what appeared to be a city floating above their heads. (Video below) Skyscrapers in the clouds. The ever-ready instruments of our technological evolution were on hand and all was videoed in order to mystify and confuse the rest of the planet. The immediate reaction was as cliched and predictable as expected. A parallel universe. Aliens. A Fata Morgana - a mirage where light is distorted into imagery. NASA's Project Blue Beam wherein a New World Order will be initiated using a simulation of Christ's return using holograms. It is a testament to mankind's ever-expanding imagination that so many explanations are as close to hand. The reaction two or three hundred years ago probably would have been confined to fainting or ecclesiastical logic or, more extremely, witch-burning!
There are really only two avenues of explanation: "normal" - being within the accepted normal knowledge and perception or "paranormal" which resides beyond traditional questioning. If a floating city is considered within the boundaries of "normal," its interpretation is usually confined to scientific reasoning leading, inevitably, to derision and, ultimately, fish and chip wrapping. If it falls within the parameters of "paranormal", it becomes an arena of conflict when opened up to Everyman's reasoning prowess. For it is here in the inexplicable that the majority of the human race feels the most uncomfortable, the most unstable, the most fearful. The Unseen, the Unknown, when it defies interpretation, becomes a threat to "the natural order of things". It is here that a floating city without explanation moves beyond a government plot, a manufactured media event or nature's sense of humour. This is unfortunate for it is here in the abstract that the wisdom and beauty behind the apparition exists. The domains of creativity, spirituality, pure love and healing, where mankind is at its purest, are abstract. They can't be measured, photographed, kept in a bottle, sold by the pound. Yet, they exist in the same sphere as the inexplicable. The very place that we traditionally fear, mistrust and dismiss the most. It doesn't matter if there a UFO in the sky or a monster sailing across Loch Ness. What matters is our initial reaction, our intuition. Our response reveals if we are blindfolded or if we can see clearly without external peer pressure.
As an observer, I have fortunately stood on the edge of "things not known."
One day, like the residents of Jiangxi and Foshan, I looked up into the sky. On the 5th March, 1965, around 7.30 pm while walking with two friends from West Dubbo to the local cinema, one called out to look skywards. And there above were large, metallic objects sweeping by in a beautiful formation. The larger lead object, triangular, was flanked by smaller companions. Very much like ducks flying south or north for the winter depending on your hemisphere. (SMH Report below). Imagine a 14-year-old boy on a balmy Friday night whose biggest concern was probably the inability to afford the latest Rolling Stones record or if he could grow his hair an inch longer without offending half the population. This boy doesn't see a floating city but he does see unidentifiable objects later described as "travelling at between 18,000 and 20,000 miles an hour." Something beyond the "natural order of things". Objects that induced nothing but awe and the deep stirring of a long-buried intuition. He can't call on hard-earned logic or a deep scientific background in physics or an inherited knowledge of the supernatural. He sees what he sees - a moment in time dominated by the inexplicable - and that hidden intuition that says: "everything changes tonight - what you are seeing, its importance, whether it is real or not, these are secondary considerations - look behind the experience for its essence".
As Albert Einstein said: "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science." A beautiful thing because it is a gift from the Unknown - the Mysterious. All such encounters are signposts. They point without revealing. They are invitations to those who intuitively turn toward the unique encounter and not away from it. An invitation to move beyond Philosophy and Concept to Faith - faith in Things Unseen - things that can materialise above your head, mystify and stir a hidden longing and then leave you a changed person for the experience. The Unexpected is an opening to the vastness that is the realm of endless possibility. There is more to this existence than meets the eye.
"Every thing possible to be believed is an image of truth.
He who doubts from what he sees
Will never believe, do what you please.
If the sun and moon should doubt,
They'd immediately go out."
- William Blake
SMH SATURDAY 6th March, 1965
October 2015: Positive Disintegration
"Sometimes in order to say hello you have to say goodbye"
In my life there have been four instances where I was placed, either voluntarily or involuntarily, in circumstances best described as traumatic. Circumstances that induced a forced life change. The first occurred in May, 1955, when, at the age of six, I was made acutely aware that one's inner stability and security could be undermined in the blink of an eye. On that day two pilot-trainer aircraft collided in the sky above my head. As they fell one tried to veer away from the town's streets while the other plummeted toward the street in which I lived. An everyday moment being enjoyed by a small boy & his friends suddenly embraced a bewildering transformation. I stood, transfixed, as a burning aircraft filled my vision. It passed over me seeming almost close enough to touch and exploded across the road. In that instance a six-year-old lost both his innocence and sense of perpetual normality. Now there was a new world where everything does and must change; where death is a stark reality that can visit without invitation. Concepts that were all previously unrealised. With no solid psychological reasoning for support, I had to face the psychic aftermath alone.
The second came in my late teenage years when I encountered the Hippy culture seeking vision through chemical means. Experimentation culminated in a bad LSD trip where my dose was laced with another substance beyond my means of control. The resultant psychedelic meltdown led me to a place dominated by hallucination and a soul struggling to comprehend what is acceptably "normal". It was a short further step to the brink of a perceived eternal madness. I was arrested in Kings Cross after succumbing to unreality in a public place and was taken to a drug rehabilitation centre. Langton Clinic, in Surry Hills, was my new home. Here my fall from reality was reinforced by the "otherworldliness" of my fellow patients and the absence of any inner support system to call on. Traditional therapy failed me as I was treated with theories, statistical precedents and fingers crossed. Upon release I was reinserted back into a "fragile" world where one sensed that all was not what it appeared to be. Here I had to rely on mediocre sources to build a protective persona in order to stay, or appear to be, "sane". This struggle continued for years.
The third came in 1975. Sane enough to hold down a job, to maintain reasonable relationships but not quite balanced enough to break free of my mental anxiety that persisted as a carefully constructed inner habit. I was on my motorbike when it collided one night head-on with a car in Bondi Junction. As I lay badly injured I watched my blood that, with every beat of my heart, spurted skyward in a miniature red fountain. I felt my essence evaporating. Here I had a new initiation when I met Death again but not the visitor from my childhood. If this was Death then it wasn't a monster that came calling with promises of oblivion. This visitor held your hand and smiled. I didn't have the classic NDE (near Death experience) with its long tunnel, blinding light and celestial conference. Rather I had a glimpse, an insight, of a deep, peculiar peace, just out of sight. A welcoming peace. Sustaining. I spent months in hospital in recovery. My shattered left leg refused to heal and remained broken three months after admittance. One Saturday morning the ward doctors informed me that I was scheduled for amputation. This was life in its rawest state. Stripped back to reveal the awful possibilities. Or, on the other hand, the beautiful possibilities. Refusing to bow to the traditional medical diagnosis, I sought an alternative way. I found two doctors, Dr Cass and Dr Robertson, offering an unapproved procedure successfully trialed on animals but not on humans. They inserted batteries deep into my mutilated leg along the fractures to stimulate my bone marrow. After many more weeks in hospital I was released early 1976, leg intact, though it took another two years til I was able to walk without a pronounced limp or discomfort. But walk I did. Two valuable lessons emerged: Death is not an enemy and there is always another road - the traditional, the expected, the robotic and the uninformed are not always the only way.
The fourth change was my cancer diagnosis, well documented on this website. That diagnosis I see as a logical evolution. First, the traumatised child who progressed from a person unable to stay indoors while a plane was in the vicinity to a man who made many long international flights. Second, the immature teenager who by foolish life decisions placed himself in a world of shadows and bad dreams but who found a tentative inner voice wise enough to guide him. Thirdly, the ever-anxious individual afraid of Death who faces it on a suburban street and finds no malice and who then finds that intuition can triumph over rigid medical practice. Fourth but maybe not finally, the diagnosis where chaos came calling again and where all lessons learnt blossomed and the inner voice seemed angelic. All achieved by drawing on inner resources awakened by the initial traumas. My life illustrates that calamity and trauma need not be a command to roll over and face the wall but more a blessing or a wake-up call or a spiritual evolutionary advance or a inner reinvention. This is the process of "Positive Disintegration".
The Theory:
Polish Psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski introduced this theory explaining that there were two levels of psychological development.
The first (Primary Integration) sees people locked into a ritualistic worldview. Robotic. Here people accept society's values and customs without question and never consider alternative value systems thereby locking themselves into a rigid behavioural pattern. One's true personality is submerged as one goes along with the group mentality. There is a false sense of security and most issues are external relating to career, relationships, social standing, wealth accumulation or appearance. The surrounding culture is rarely, if ever, questioned or examined. The spiritual aspect is little more than a rumour.
The second (Positive Disintegration) finds that some people rebel against this programming. Dabrowski thought that these people suffered from issues often seen as unhealthy or anti-social: depression, self-disapproval, inferiority complexes or anxiety. Or were people from the fringes: artists, poets, musicians or those who fall under the category of "sensitive". Dubrowski saw these states as tools not drawbacks - all valuable for psychological development. To break down the robotic, crises and disintegrations are needed. All usually provided by life experience. These disintegrations are positive if the person involved can achieve developmental solutions to the situation.
Positive Disintegration is a vital developmental process. In other words you are prompted by your personal disintegration to question traditional customs. This process is often painful as one dismantles the program that has led and instructed since childhood. Often a daunting spiritual and mental reinvention is involved. To emerge from this disintegration a new value system must be constructed - one that is yours and not society's. The cure is in reaching a higher state of consciousness than that one lived before disintegration. The reinvention must be based on values consciously chosen by an individual to reflect their image of how they ought to be - an ideal self. Spiritual and psychic autonomy is the "positive" side of personal trauma. The restrictive programming is transcended.
This is my road but you will find fellow travelers if you look for them. Author Ezra Bayda is one. He writes:
"the learning began when i was able to reframe my resistance to (my) illness so that I could see it as my path. Being able to see our most difficult experiences as our path means that we understand, very specifically, how our difficulty pushes us to work with the exact places where we are most caught in our attachments (our habits). Our difficulties are always our best teacher, taking us to the places we rarely willingly go on our own."
******
The second came in my late teenage years when I encountered the Hippy culture seeking vision through chemical means. Experimentation culminated in a bad LSD trip where my dose was laced with another substance beyond my means of control. The resultant psychedelic meltdown led me to a place dominated by hallucination and a soul struggling to comprehend what is acceptably "normal". It was a short further step to the brink of a perceived eternal madness. I was arrested in Kings Cross after succumbing to unreality in a public place and was taken to a drug rehabilitation centre. Langton Clinic, in Surry Hills, was my new home. Here my fall from reality was reinforced by the "otherworldliness" of my fellow patients and the absence of any inner support system to call on. Traditional therapy failed me as I was treated with theories, statistical precedents and fingers crossed. Upon release I was reinserted back into a "fragile" world where one sensed that all was not what it appeared to be. Here I had to rely on mediocre sources to build a protective persona in order to stay, or appear to be, "sane". This struggle continued for years.
The third came in 1975. Sane enough to hold down a job, to maintain reasonable relationships but not quite balanced enough to break free of my mental anxiety that persisted as a carefully constructed inner habit. I was on my motorbike when it collided one night head-on with a car in Bondi Junction. As I lay badly injured I watched my blood that, with every beat of my heart, spurted skyward in a miniature red fountain. I felt my essence evaporating. Here I had a new initiation when I met Death again but not the visitor from my childhood. If this was Death then it wasn't a monster that came calling with promises of oblivion. This visitor held your hand and smiled. I didn't have the classic NDE (near Death experience) with its long tunnel, blinding light and celestial conference. Rather I had a glimpse, an insight, of a deep, peculiar peace, just out of sight. A welcoming peace. Sustaining. I spent months in hospital in recovery. My shattered left leg refused to heal and remained broken three months after admittance. One Saturday morning the ward doctors informed me that I was scheduled for amputation. This was life in its rawest state. Stripped back to reveal the awful possibilities. Or, on the other hand, the beautiful possibilities. Refusing to bow to the traditional medical diagnosis, I sought an alternative way. I found two doctors, Dr Cass and Dr Robertson, offering an unapproved procedure successfully trialed on animals but not on humans. They inserted batteries deep into my mutilated leg along the fractures to stimulate my bone marrow. After many more weeks in hospital I was released early 1976, leg intact, though it took another two years til I was able to walk without a pronounced limp or discomfort. But walk I did. Two valuable lessons emerged: Death is not an enemy and there is always another road - the traditional, the expected, the robotic and the uninformed are not always the only way.
The fourth change was my cancer diagnosis, well documented on this website. That diagnosis I see as a logical evolution. First, the traumatised child who progressed from a person unable to stay indoors while a plane was in the vicinity to a man who made many long international flights. Second, the immature teenager who by foolish life decisions placed himself in a world of shadows and bad dreams but who found a tentative inner voice wise enough to guide him. Thirdly, the ever-anxious individual afraid of Death who faces it on a suburban street and finds no malice and who then finds that intuition can triumph over rigid medical practice. Fourth but maybe not finally, the diagnosis where chaos came calling again and where all lessons learnt blossomed and the inner voice seemed angelic. All achieved by drawing on inner resources awakened by the initial traumas. My life illustrates that calamity and trauma need not be a command to roll over and face the wall but more a blessing or a wake-up call or a spiritual evolutionary advance or a inner reinvention. This is the process of "Positive Disintegration".
The Theory:
Polish Psychiatrist Kazimierz Dabrowski introduced this theory explaining that there were two levels of psychological development.
The first (Primary Integration) sees people locked into a ritualistic worldview. Robotic. Here people accept society's values and customs without question and never consider alternative value systems thereby locking themselves into a rigid behavioural pattern. One's true personality is submerged as one goes along with the group mentality. There is a false sense of security and most issues are external relating to career, relationships, social standing, wealth accumulation or appearance. The surrounding culture is rarely, if ever, questioned or examined. The spiritual aspect is little more than a rumour.
The second (Positive Disintegration) finds that some people rebel against this programming. Dabrowski thought that these people suffered from issues often seen as unhealthy or anti-social: depression, self-disapproval, inferiority complexes or anxiety. Or were people from the fringes: artists, poets, musicians or those who fall under the category of "sensitive". Dubrowski saw these states as tools not drawbacks - all valuable for psychological development. To break down the robotic, crises and disintegrations are needed. All usually provided by life experience. These disintegrations are positive if the person involved can achieve developmental solutions to the situation.
Positive Disintegration is a vital developmental process. In other words you are prompted by your personal disintegration to question traditional customs. This process is often painful as one dismantles the program that has led and instructed since childhood. Often a daunting spiritual and mental reinvention is involved. To emerge from this disintegration a new value system must be constructed - one that is yours and not society's. The cure is in reaching a higher state of consciousness than that one lived before disintegration. The reinvention must be based on values consciously chosen by an individual to reflect their image of how they ought to be - an ideal self. Spiritual and psychic autonomy is the "positive" side of personal trauma. The restrictive programming is transcended.
This is my road but you will find fellow travelers if you look for them. Author Ezra Bayda is one. He writes:
"the learning began when i was able to reframe my resistance to (my) illness so that I could see it as my path. Being able to see our most difficult experiences as our path means that we understand, very specifically, how our difficulty pushes us to work with the exact places where we are most caught in our attachments (our habits). Our difficulties are always our best teacher, taking us to the places we rarely willingly go on our own."
******