Smoke Signals

Immaculate Misconception.

2011-03-15T23:51:00.017Z

I can distinctly remember the moment when my ego was born.

Well, perhaps not as dramatically as that, for it doubtless spent the previous time assimilating information & getting its bearings in the novelty of the new environment - ex-utero.

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Born into the world at some time previously, equipped with a mind that incessantly craved understanding - constantly, but subliminally making its own sense of life and living, endeavouring to create a stable and balanced psyche - from all the available evidence.

The physical body had done pretty well up to this point - it had been fed and watered, trained into various habits, it even managed to raise itself to its legs and master at first walking, then running at speed.

Now when I say understanding, I am referring obviously to the simple things - the basics - it was rather too early for quantum physics or landscape painting.

All this understanding gradually consolidated itself - forming a world which revolved around the nuturing of a mother, the strength of a father, the constant company of a twin sister - all unquestioned presences in this new world.

A world which assimilated itself according to how it appeared, to how it felt, to how it smelled and tasted.

Yes - I was entirely sure that the world and myself were solid, convinced by the inevitable falls during the learning process. The food that gradually replaced my diet of liquid also felt solid within my mouth, and required chewing and swallowing. My companions and the world they inhabited also showed all the signs of being as solid as I felt I was.

This was my world, in conjunction with a natural flow of happiness and sadness - instantly expressed with laughter or tears - a world which contained tiredness and sleep - daylight and darkness.

I had also learned by this time to utter noises, to shape noises into those I would hear, I learned that these noises represented things - different things.

My learning of this was encouraged and rewarded by the most positive reception - I learned that this was "good" - in fact I learned that I was "good" when my behaviour coincided with the wishes of those teaching me, of those nurturing me.

Of course, I was most happy to please.

On this momentous day - I remember being sat in a green armchair - daydreaming - when slowly it dawned upon me that I was actually the name that I had been given. It was an amazing revelation at the time, because this really had not occurred to me before. I realised that this name was referring to myself - that I was this person - and it was the same as this name. Quick subliminal calculations later, and I had it all worked out - that the same applied to my sister - and all my freinds.

I didn't speak to anyone about this at the time - but how clearly I remember this happening.

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Of course, what that name was associated with - was the solid, bouncy person - living in his solid world.

Still assimilating & accumulating, still naturally inquisitive, curious & craving understanding - as we all instinctively are - being satisfied and educated constantly, by all the evidence available to our sponge-like minds, and all sharpened to a point - the point indelibly etched at the base of all further learning - that I must be good - I am expected to be good, in all of its shapes and colours - goodness, in the eyes of others, is what life is all about.

I know this, because even my nurturing mother and father withhold their love, they change into angry, nasty people - if I am not good.

Of course, this is all happening in a cloud - a drifting bubble of easy happiness and playfullness. Every horizon presents itself as infinite, the colours of the world are vibrant and undiluted - every experience is a mystery of novelty - and I have not learned to care or worry - I am living at full tilt, with all the energy I could ever need.

Soon I am whisked away from the homely comfort, from the warm nurturing nest - to meet teachers, other children - to learn about reading and writing, numbers, playing in sand, strange tasting and smelling food - and being good.

I am me, my name, a solid body amongst numerous others now - all learning that everything we are taught is part of being good, including lessons about God, our heavenly Father - and how He also wants us to be good.

It's quite fun learning to write, playing with paint and colours and sand - I have lots of friends - and I'll soon be home again.

Very soon I am a product of good, I have a head that is stuffed full of being good.

Very soon, this being good starts to sap my energy - in fact, being good is starting to become tiresome - I'm starting to get my own ideas about what being good really is.

It's friends and fun and laughter - pretty girls, climbing trees, cycling downhill at speed, keeping secrets - occasionally being bad.

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A split has started to appear in who I am - the first of many growing contradictions - cleaving my world apart - contradictions which take sides - either with the rewards of being good, the love that is shown, or the fear of disobeying, the spectre of anger and disapproval - and of course all my badness creates within me a secret shadow of shame.

Such a deep secret that I am able to cover it up, and pretend, all the while, even to myself - that I am good.

All painted upon a human canvas, based on the evidence available.

What else can we do?

However, our jigsaw of understanding is stressed by being forced into producing a complete picture - when there is one crucial piece missing.

When that ego descended, and drifted into activity, what was really going on?

It was an immaculate misconception - at that point in time specifically, but also everything leading up to that moment.

The piece of the jigsaw that was missing was awareness - not awareness in itself, or I would not be able to have the experience or remember the experience - but an awareness of awareness.

All of my life had preceded that moment with awareness at its very heart - and proceeded after that moment also - but what was missing was the acute and conscious recognition of that awareness.

Its essential silence and transparency was lost amidst all the noise - but what was not lost was the constancy, the sameness central to awareness - the sense of "I" associated with all the experiences of that life.

It was always there - it didn't change dramatically from moment to moment - it didn't change at all in its invisibile & silent, subliminal presence.

It was the one constant factor amidst all the change, but it wasn't recognised for what it was - and so this constancy was unconsciously mis-attributed as belonging to the character now blossoming within the mind.

This sense of self, of being "I," was associated instead with the name, with the solid feeling body - and gradually the whole host of experiences encountered in life became attached around this association.

A picture was being painted of a life, a glorious technicolour picture deeply entrenched in the mind - of the life of a person answering to that name.

A real life, crammed with real feelings, imaginings, real experiences - present and past - were all being attributed - according to an incomplete knowledge of what was actually responsible for it - yet all the while, the real master, the silent one, the one who genuinely felt all the suffering and delight of being - was held to ransom, forced into obedience by an imposter ignorant that the master was even there, not acknowledging his presence at all.

Held hostage by a shadow, a reflection - a pitifully small version of what he truly was.

No wonder at all that there was pain and unaccountable frustration in that being - no wonder that there were contradictions accumulating between the master, already liberated, during his imposed imprisonment.

Maybe his crying will be heard - that's all he can hope for.

Fortunately there is a strange synergy, perhaps in ways similar to the well reported Stockholm syndrome, between a hostage and his captor - and the hostage can reclaim a useful influential power.

Secretly, stealthily - according to the pleasure principle - often conducted in the enemy territory of "the bad" - the master makes his crys heard - louder and louder.

A chance meeting here, chemical experimentation there, an interesting and captivating book - slowly & imperceptably - the master casts his spell - his one & only wish for recognition.

The jailer falls for his irresistible and convincingly persuasive charm, and starts to lend a sympathetic ear.

I shall stop extending this metaphor about liberation and bring in some pictures instead.

The circle represents experience - our entire world as perceived through our senses - our thoughts & our emotional existence - everything we have been and ever will be - is entirely enclosed within experience.

That is our reality - there is no outside to that reality - it is all internal, and circumscribed by the length, breadth and depth of our own experience.

Everything we have ever encountered, we have done so by experiencing, all of our learning, our understanding, our perception of ourselves, our perception of others - our entire lives - are contained by the fundamental of experience.

We may wrongly ascribe phenomena as arising outside, but they do not and cannot arise to perception other than within our circle of experience.

This circle is our inner world - of which we are the centre.

Our past, our present, all arises to that central point of "I."

At the root of all experience is awareness - it is awareness which allows experience to happen.

Our lives are one enormous canvas of undifferentiated awareness - onto which we paint the detail.

As explained in the tale above, we generally mis-attribute our sense of "I-ness" because we are consciously unaware of the presence of this awareness being causal to all experience.

This is only natural whilst it is the only perspective that we have.

Consequently, we believe ourselves to be according to the detail that we have painted - attaching our just and rightful values to the detail, rather than the blank canvas of infinite potential.

A confusion of differences - painted upon clarity.

We are aware of a constant and consistent presence in our life, but attribute it to a conceptually fixed and static persona - rather than the fluid potential of absolute liberty, constantly supporting and allowing our being.

Our lives consequently are described in terms of a multitude of experiences, of varying shades and colours - which they are, secondarily - but primarily our lives could be described as a singular experience - the constancy of being aware.

In a profound sense we are living in an Alice In Wonderland world, where we mistake the reflections for reality - and reality as merely a reflection or shadow.

In The Beginning

2011-02-26T00:37:00.030Z

Firefox users, please click within video frame and press Ctrl/+ to enlarge.

Or it is available at YouTube.

When watching this short film - please - receive it into feeling - please, let it bypass, unimpeded - into feeling.

It is a film about you - you and me - our reality.

Please receive it into your reality - into your being.

It attempts to depict creation in a really simple way, using the abstract visualisation of number - thereby avoiding all sectarian or partisan division.

In such a way, it is hoped that ideas themselves can be represented - fundamental & critical ideas, devoid of any particular bias - and as such, the reality behind the ideas can be seen with a profound clarity.

After all - ideas are the inspiration for everything.

Simple, two-dimensional geometric shapes have been used at times to help illustrate the basic simplicity of these ideas - however, it must be respected that even the ideas behind these shapes themselves - do have a reality - and that reality owes its existence to the one, fundamental conception - the mysterious probability of which we are a part.

It must be said, that the story of creation is often framed as an "In The Beginning" story - and perhaps this could be due to our incapacity to frame outside of a reference to time.

We cannot conceive of an "Always."

However, the basic implications of this film do not ultimately depend on either "Always" or "A Beginning" - as the majestic conclusions are the same in either case.

I wish to present some of the content for further evaluation.

The film starts with words, against a white background - to suggest that we are witnessing an un-manifest singularity, which cannot "de-exist" - but which represents all potential.

The film labels this singularity as "One" - but in the sense of "All" - not yet in the sense of number.
Because this potential is so obviously a reality, "One" is more appropriate than "Zero."

Words carry meaning - a meaning which illuminates an underlying reality, a reality which can best be understood by feeling combined with intellect, rather than by intellect alone - so please try to connect the words to the enormous significance of their underlying reality, the meaning that they carry - the meaning which is being expressed by your very being - right now.

Only then will you be able to perceive the significance of "two" - being only an idea in the mind of One . . .

. . . by seeing the significance of the One, and the sublime originality & portent of this idea of two.

Remember - we are discussing reality - ideas on a universal scale - and quite reasonably, we will continue the questioning . . .

. . . questions that mankind has been asking - probably, since mankind.

The true answer to these questions being only discernible from the perspective of the One - from a perspective where they are no longer even questions.

So - from the perspective of the One - two cannot possibly be a reality - it can only be an idea, but this idea is the inception of the idea of number - the inception of an infinitely re-creative process.

This is itself an enormously profound inception - an idea within which, One itself becomes transformed, from a purely qualitative being - into a quantitative idea - an idea which when extended beyond One - conceives identity - the very possibility of other ones - of other realities - but, only as ideas in the mind of the One.

The idea (but what we perceive as our reality) of quantity, allows us to sum one & two - arriving at three - a new & third idea - our perceived reality of relationship - born automatically with the inception of two.

However, the potential for identity, for other ones, cannot be realised - therefore relationship itself cannot be realised - if "two" retains its self-knowledge as One.

So there has to be a process of forgetting - of de-science - a descent from omniscience.

"The nature of the One is hidden in the nature of the One's appearance."

A process which leaves identity up-for-grabs - available to the highest bidder, or shall we say, to the most convincing paradigm.

Nevertheless - the question of identity only occurs in the realm of mind - the realm in which it was conceived - the mind of the One.

It is only a matter of mind, not a matter of substance - it is the matter of ideas, not of being.

Which brings us nicely to some of the other graphics - importantly, this one - where we can visualise our paradigm (the conceptual realm) - and notice that all other realms are conceptualised within this realm.

Strangely, there is an anomaly in how we interact within our own paradigm - which appears to invert our notions of abstract and concrete.

Convinced, as we are, that the nature of reality is "concrete" and that the nature of our thoughts is "abstract" - however, close observation will reveal that realistically, it is the other way around - and that from a fluid and emergent "abstract" reality, from a continuum - we elect immovable and concrete "concepts."

Our thoughts, our opinions, although abstract and insubstantial in themselves - do have an irreducible and concrete effect upon our being - in both our unconscious and conscious interaction with ourselves and our environment.

An effect which is by and large influenced by the imposing nature of our senses (the perceptual realm) . . .

. . . resulting in our conviction of a concrete world - but a conviction which conveniently belies the constant and imperceptible change, happening in and around ourselves.

A conviction that belies the stark realisation that we ourselves are not concrete entities, on either the physical or any other level of existence.

But, a part of our very own paradigm is our concrete conceptualisation of "self" - a collection of references from our fixed perspective.

This is distinctly at odds with the nature of everything - which is change - emergence - process.

Close observation will reveal that this "phantom self" - is the product of everything contained within "The nature of The One's appearance."

In other words - it is the product of our existence within the mind of the One - it is concomitant with the possibility of identity, bequeathed to us by the One.

It is a natural occurrence born of The nature of The One's appearance & The Experiential Realm (ourselves) - only possible through the ideas of number and relationship (relativity.)

Relationship and identity also give us the idea of four - ME & (you) - (you) & ME - for anything existent.

Flippantly summed up in the film as "by adding you - that is how we forget" (and, as it happens, that is how we "four get" by adding "u" to "forget." )

However, also making an appearance within our paradigm - is a conceptualisation of the One - which transforms it also from being fluid & emergent - into being objectified - compartmentalised and concrete, alongside our conceptualisation of self - making both concepts available to our attention, but in parallel with all of our other finite concepts, and with a degree of understanding consequential only to our relative paradigm.

We can see how this objectification succeeds in denying us the awareness of the One omnipresence, omnipotence and omniscience - by objectifying it, we are excluding it - exactly the same process that we apply to ourselves.

What tends to be overlooked in all of this - is the degree of liberty bequeathed by the One - a liberty, not only to usurp identity, but the liberty to recreate - in infinite quantities - but that also appears to be a part of the plan.

It is the complete generosity of this liberty, a creative freedom unsurpassed, a love so total and all-encompassing - which grants us our autonomy of mind - our free-will - only limited by the constraints of relativity, the fourfold sphere in which this is all unfolding for us.

However, it is only an autonomy of mind - not of substance or of being - we cannot really create, only re-create - and only conceptually, with ideas within the paradigm - which is our "overall idea," our understanding thus-far - of ourselves and our environment.

Attention to our being will confirm that our basic nature, the root at the inception of identity - is awareness.

Wherever we place our attention - it is our intention which channels our attention - but that attention, wherever it goes - is a focusing of awareness.

As such, it can safely be said, that our attention can never escape our being - our being is confined within that attention, our being only exists within that area of attention - that area of attention defines our being.

Directing this attention within the paradigm (our conceptual reality) confines our awareness to this paradigm, where we find that this awareness itself is entirely entwined with and identifies with the conceptualised self within that paradigm.

The profound subtlety and silence of awareness itself is obscured by the noise of thought, by the imposing presence of gross and subtle mentation, as if the concreteness of thoughts themselves provides an attractive mass which magnetises and imbues our awareness with its own identity.

Our awareness habitually is attached to the concrete phantom of self - and thus can only interact with the paradigm, from within the paradigm itself.

So - in order to start again, in order to re-align the paradigm with reality - we need to extract ourselves, our awareness, from the existent paradigm.

When we start to do this - we discover that our awareness has no shape, it does not occupy a space, it is fluid but unchanging in its nature - we discover that it seems to be searching for an identity, but it can only find choices within conceptually concrete ideas.

In other words, its search for identity tries to be satisfied by any idea that appears in the realm of mind - this awareness, which is at the root of itself - is searching for its own identity - but from a realm that is within itself.

Rather akin to a tree identifying with a leaf.

It is searching within the content of The Experiential Realm, for the identity of itself, the very thing that gives rise to The Experiential Realm.

Without awareness - The Experiential Realm, or any of the content, could not exist.

However, when we observe closer still - we find that the origin of the search, the quest for identity - stems from the residue of the phantom self within the paradigm - attempting to concrete itself, yet again.

Awareness has been in such a close association with this local perception of self - that it has temporarily forgotten its own nature - which is totally abstract, and can be known only to itself.

A true "identity" basking in absolute liberty, saturated with pure potential - an identity restricted & limited only by the very same search for identity induced by imprisonment of the self within the paradigm.

Self (the true identity) cannot recognise its own true nature by appealing to The Experiential Realm. The Experiential Realm will only contain reflections, conjured up (conjure means "with the law" - in this sense, within the constraints of relativity) by its own existence.

Yet without this Experiential Realm, the quest for identity would not arrive - the question would not and could not exist.

Without the hiding and the forgetting - within itself, the One would have no cause to ask the question of itself.

Which is why it has to be a real hiding - a real forgetting - and it can only be real (from the perspective of the One) if the awareness of this hiding and forgetting is known by the very same conscience (knowing) as the One.

Hence - in its purest state, uncluttered by any other reflections of itself (the hiding) - the Self is aware that its true identity is none other than the One - the un-forgetting.

The Experiential Realm, within The nature of The One's appearance, can start to experience its nature as it really is . . .

. . . the process of liberation can commence, liberation from definition, from identification with the finite, with appearances, with concrete concepts & from the quest for any identity whatsoever.

Liberty to avail of the whole of the mind of the One - not just a small prison of confinement.

Represented graphically by a paradigm of reality, a paradigm of "self understanding itself," the bigger picture emerging - a paradigm that gradually approaches infinity and eternity.

Illuminated by the light (real or metaphorical) of true understanding - appropriate, as it is that light of awareness which allows us to see darkness (real or metaphorical.)

Hence the plea to receive this into feeling, your whole being - & not just the intellect.

Jai Sat Chit Anand.

The Spiritual Enigma

2011-02-15T02:10:00.043Z

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townsquare.romasharma.com

For those of us aware of the possibility of realising God-consciousness, there sometimes arises the dichotomy between our own metaphors, as to the nature of this specific journey.

For some of the time, it appears to be a journey of self-discovery and at other times the journey seems to be a reverend devotion to and appreciation of God.

Both of these metaphorical representations of our journey often borrow from each other's vocabulary - the result of our own fascination and our constant drawing of support and inspiration from a wide variety of sources.

Is this a case, as it were, of simply mixing our metaphors - or could there be weightier considerations as a consequence of this possible confusion?
Is it an example of burning the candle from both ends, tackling the quest from opposing directions - hoping that they will both coincide at the point of imagined destination?

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The two questions above already remind us that we should observe great caution - to never lose sight of the reality - the actuality - which is our subject matter.
We are exploring reality itself - ourselves - and must constantly seek to place any use of metaphors in their correct context - purely as metaphors.

Here we have arrived at the very reason behind this discourse - our inability to communicate with each other, and importantly to ourselves - without resorting to subtle or more obvious metaphors.

Metaphors are bridges or containers for meaning - however, they have a more insidious side to them, in that they influence perception - they determine perspective.
Words are metaphors - cultural memes are metaphors - a journey is a metaphor - even the pristine and precise languages of mathematics and physics - perceived objects - everything is a metaphor - a bridge or a container for an underlying meaning.
Nevertheless - that meaning can be derived from a belief, a consensus or an acutely intimate observation - the understanding of which may itself be influenced by the metaphorical context in which it was perceived.

This poses the intrigue - can meaning exist outside of any metaphorical context?

Do our metaphors allow us to filter and detect meaning, or do they actually invent & impose meaning?

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jitterbuggingforjesus.com

Ultimately, metaphors are constructed to bring order and lend a rational framework to two great unknowns, two mysterious enigmas and their relationships with each other, whether we realise it or not - everything alludes to two central themes.
To journeys of discovery & realisation, involving God and ourselves.
Journeys, rendered in metaphor - between metaphorical subjects - the reality of both journey and subjects being unknown.

Can the meaning be independent of the metaphor?

I feel that it is vital that we never lose touch with our original inspiration, a fundamental fascination - generated by the awe and wonder that we naturally feel, and the resultant inquisitiveness that compels our attention - aligning our lives to the quest for truth.
The journey that we are upon.

Along the way we will have encountered numerous disciplines, philosophies, creeds, theories, theologies, religious dogma, rituals, cults, orders, establishments - all setting out their own perspective, their own prospectus on truth - in their own metaphorical language.
Some we will have dismissed - one or two we may have adopted for ourselves, and become bent on adhering to a prescribed methodology to lead us towards our avowed goal - or simply find them useful tools of visualisation.

For truth appears to be approachable via any suitable metaphorical means, including our own, personal perspectives.

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If sincere and containing deep relevance to our desired journey, these metaphorical perspectives are about our individual relationship with the absolute - and contradictions in our relationship with ourselves - with echoes back to our first, emerging inspiration, surrounding the relationship between ourselves and the existence that we find ourselves in - about the inspiration to cultivate an accurate and living perception of truth, hopefully to end all contradiction in our being.
It connects to our first stirrings, our first awakening moments - moments which spoke to us directly or indirectly, hinting at an association with something spiritual and mysterious - bringing a curiosity to our assumptions about God.

At such a time we were possibly very much the natural products of our culture, and reflected a mix of inherited, indoctrinated cultural and societal memes - having already countless deep and unconsciously formed influences on our perception - a naive vision of God fashioned from the raw diet of parental authority and formal or socially subtle indoctrination - a vision that naturally engendered skepticism, seeming incongruous as our lives lead us away from those early influences and into our own search for liberty and independence.

Something was stirring in the friction between fear and love - and out of this - our spiritual journeys were born.

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blog.livingforgod.net

The friction we felt, the questions we felt stirring in our hearts and minds - being generated by the constant movement of two gigantic and permanent states of being - like tectonic plates within reality - our relative and absolute states of existence.
Both in constant co-dependence with the other, both living side by side - as closely related as an object and its own reflection.
Our being in both states simultaneously, causing the fault lines to appear within our paradigms - stirrings - questions.
Questions which arise from our subliminally subjective and our demonstratively objective perspectives - questions arriving from our supplication to emotion and intellect.
Questions for which answers may bring all manner of confusion.

A beautiful and auspicious confusion.

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The mud has been well and truly stirred up, the detritus of our discarded paradigms, of all the metaphors we are outgrowing.
The mud of expectation and presumption - the brown murkiness of anticipation.

An impenetrable gloom, seen often through eyes that are blinded by the black hood of spiritual ego.

Another auspicious observation - for clarity beckons.

In our sincere and devoted attempts to further ourselves along our chosen spiritual path - it is often inescapable and unavoidable, that we actually increase the influence and insinuation of the ego - by the very willfulness of our own intent.
Our own previous revelations and insights can play a large part in blinding us, by causing anticipation and expectation.
Our own earnest application in re-educating ourselves, in updating our living paradigm - often results in an accumulation of objectification, as we shape each new discovery to fit within an existing, established or emerging pattern or metaphoric visualisation.
These metaphorical objectifications often insinuate themselves, re-conditioning our perspective and therefore our perception - drawing a subtle veil of the already known over the very truth we wish to experience - which is always freshly unknown.

Similar to driving a car at night - you cannot follow any course other than which is illuminated by the beam of your own headlamps.

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We may observe all of this process of the mind - and find ourselves discarding one perspective - one metaphor - for another.
We may oscillate between the perspective of God-consciousness (implying God) and self-realisation (implying self) - and whatever the metaphor chosen, that will become the beam - the journey proceeds along that imagined trajectory.

Again, let us refer back to our original inspiration - and see ourselves then - although we may well have been subconsciously cluttered, we had not yet formed our spiritual ego.
We found ourselves arriving into a conscious relationship with our naive concept of God, we found ourselves at the start of a journey in which we would approach and try to understand more about truth - and at this point, our egos refashioned themselves and started to become cluttered with all manner of spiritual detritus.
For we were deluding ourselves if we thought we would ever be able to understand - if we thought we would ever be able to satisfactorily objectify truth and simultaneously live a life that was consciously enlightened.

What has happened to our relationship with God?

Have we abandoned that at times, to be replaced by a metaphor of self-discovery?
Have we substituted a naturally progressing, mostly unconscious life with a subliminal awareness of God - for a self-conscious and pretentious life, filled with self-ordained ritual and stuffed to the brim with accumulated "new wisdom" & pseudo-science - and an ego that is more restrictive and inhibiting than ever our "old selves" were - obscuring any trace of God, rather than illuminating His presence?

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At a certain point along our journey - we may well have had that epiphany, that moment of enlightened vision - that "Yes - in truth we are all indeed God" - and our earnestness to live our life as to bring forth the full awareness of that implication becomes an over-riding obsession, the supreme challenge - for we know that somewhere, somehow - we have as human beings the means to realise that knowledge, to inhabit a living heaven on earth with every waking moment.

We have become trapped by our desiring the lure of some imagined state of bliss and enchantment, the cause of our ego's earnestness - and are side-tracked away from reality.

However, I am more and more convinced - that in order to witness that perpetual majesty, magic and mystery in our lives - of knowing, of seeing for ourselves that living realisation - we must include the ultimate gift of self-hood.
We cannot enjoy the blessings of that self-hood - by attempting to obliterate it, or destroy it with nihilistic philosophies of annihilating the ego - we merely need to understand why it arises - to penetrate and avoid its phantom lure.

Do we imagine that by closing the mesh of our perceptual filters ever tighter, by attempting to intercept reality with understanding, that we remove the residue of ego from our awareness?

No - by imposing strict metaphorical filters in that stream we simply are made more aware of ego - it is the grasping and clutching nature of the ego that has insisted on those restrictive filters being in place - in order for it to observe its very own predictions and expectations.

If we open the filters completely - remove them entirely - all the detritus ceases to exist - the phantom has no cause to appear - and its reality was only ever in its appearance.

Ego is born from no more than an individuated point of awareness within the field - and the mental habits caused by mis-perception.

It is no more than the crest of an ever rolling wave - a vantage point, harmless other than the waste produce of its own intent.

Without that vantage point - there is no point to being human.

As human beings - the most suitable metaphor is surely one that revolves around our relationship with God in some way - calling it whatever we may - the Great Other, the Tao - realising that "human being" and "God" are after all only metaphors themselves, representing this experience which we cannot possibly understand - but nevertheless is a very real experience.

A relationship with an absolute respect of that reality - a relationship that permits us the blessings of human appreciation - of discovery - of peace - of love - of joy - of the awareness of being human - the ultimate gift of self-hood.
Rather a paradox - an enigma - but without it, by denying God in our metaphor we deny ourselves the possibility of any blessing.

So yes - we are God - and we are also God's witnesses - the perspective which permits the relative to gaze upon the absolute.
That self-hood is God's own unique perspective - allowing a restricted and pin-hole view into the totality - only possible through the focused awareness of individuated perspectives, creating the impression of separate observers, separate beings.
Yes - these unique perspectives are designed in such a way as to attract all manner of confusion, all manner of distortion and bias - but ultimately, they are none other than God's own confusion, God's distortion and bias of Himself.

Are they not God's own metaphors as well - tools to assist our journey - some, which we may find more appropriate for ourselves than others?

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Our journey is one that takes us back to its starting point - our relationship with God - still unknown - but unknowable in every moment - our journey has been no more than a focusing, an awakening, a cleansing of perception.

God - now unknowable consciously - a perpetual and awesome mystery still - an enigma living & breathing with us - and whose blessings we can only share in, with humility.

Having thrown aside all metaphor, or at least peeked beneath the surface of them - perhaps, at last - we will be able to see the truth clearly - in and all around us - understanding (standing-under) its nature as blessed human beings, with humility in our common relationship with the living and ever-emergent truth.

For we will never comprehend God and His mysteries intellectually - and attempts to do so merely obscure the reality - so we might as well simply just open ourselves to receive & share His many blessings in the sweetest way we can - as human beings - in His universe.

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www.lifebetweenlives.co.uk

"There was once a Hassidic fund-raiser who set out to raise funds for a worthy cause.

Knowing that in certain towns the Misnagdim (opposers of Hassidism) who lived there did not welcome Hassidim, who were considered a near-heretic cult, the Hassid took pains to disguise his Hassidic behavior, realizing that otherwise he would be thrown out of town without a penny.

On passing through one such town, he posed as usual as a misnaged.

His disguise paid off and he received generous donations, however one of the leaders of the community got inkling that maybe this fundraiser was actually a hassid. In order to try to discover his real identity, he went over to the hassid and asked him very bluntly, "What do you have to say about this Hassidic cult?"

The hassid thought for a moment and replied, "The cult? I know some of those hassidim, all day long they think and talk about themselves, and they don't talk about God at all.

The misnagdim, though, they think and talk about God all day and they never talk about themselves."

This answer pleased the community leader very much and he gave him an additional contribution.

Once the hassid had received all the money and was ready to leave town, he called the man over and said, "I'll explain now what I really meant before when I replied to your question.

You see, for Hassidim, it is obvious that God exists, God is an axiom, the question they ask is 'Do I exist?'

So all day long they are contemplating whether or not they exist, because God certainly exists.

But for a misnaged, the opposite is true, the fact that he exists is obvious to him, but whether or not God exists, that is the question, maybe God never existed?

If God exists is He present in my life?

Is there Divine Providence?

The misnaged questions this all day long, so he is always thinking about God.

That is what I meant." The hassid then took to his heels and ran off as fast as his legs would carry him.... This story clearly illustrates two different perspectives of our Divine service relative to our Creator.

The contemporary debate whether or not there is an Intelligent Designer to the universe, exactly pinpoints the position of the general public in America today. In Hassidic terminology this is called, "elokut behitchadshut" meaning that God is a conscious novelty, for were it not so, then God would be taken for granted and man would be questioning his own existence.

Hassidism offers the reverse perspective, seeing God as being obvious while man's own existence is a constant novelty, my own experience of existence is not the core of reality; it is merely some exterior shell that hides the true essence of reality, which is God."

Courtesy Torah & Science.

Babel

2010-09-15T13:07:00.000+01:00

The Tower of Babel by Pieter Breugel - courtesy de-conversion.com
Please click on pictures to enlarge.

The traditional representation of the Tower of Babel is that it depicts diverse nations, the multitude of races - in an apparently confused and futile attempt at cooperation to complete the tower itself.

The gigantic proportions of this construction always seem to hint at a degree of folly, the arrogance of the human race in trying to reach the heavens through any sort of achievement.
The generally accepted premise for the confusion being that all the nations of the world speak a different language.

Turris Babel by Athanasius Kircher - courtesy rereviewed.com

I propose a subtle alternative - that the confusion is due to the constraints of language itself imposing a powerful influence upon the structuring of our thought patterns.

It will be obvious that language has developed from the ways in which we interact with our world, it is eminently human and is imprinted with our desire to communicate.
The faculty of language reveals the unconscious paradigm of ourselves and our world.
But this paradigm is an exclusively human view and is merely a layer, a purely mental construct, superimposed onto what is already there.

It is intrinsically the language of separation - subject and object.
Although language has room for words like "unity" & "holistic," they are nevertheless compartmentalised into merely being different concepts, alongside all the others.
Language confounds us even more with encyclopaedic lists of nouns - can you think of anything without a name?
Adjectives permit us to describe what we see or hear, allow us to attach shades of emotion to our experiences - and those emotions themselves come in such a wide variety of colours.
Verbs blinker our understanding into believing cause and effect, that actions actually occur involving subject and object.

As wonderful and necessary as the facility of language undoubtedly is, it is nevertheless only a tool.
A tool of creative, educational or habitual communication, but merely a tool.

In many ways it is not ideally equipped to communicate the absolute - having its roots and branches in the world of relativity, but as only a tool, we should not permit language to dictate to us how we think - inhabiting as often as we can, that other world, the world of silence, of the ineffable, the unspeakable - the miraculous world that simply speaks for itself, remembering that being is perhaps more profound than doing - and that the labels of Babel are useful, but not essential.

Tower of Babel by M.C.Escher - courtesy Jill Britton

The Door to the Kingdom

2009-05-22T01:06:00.022+01:00

A Psycho-spiritual assessment of human experience - using subjective science (or put another way - a whole lengthy post to point out the most simple thing - too simple - let me entertain you.)

Everything is a process - one major process - being the evolution of consciousness.
This evolution is unfolding in the eternal now.

Quite literally and emphatically - there is no time - only the process.
When we observe a clock - we are watching a process, nothing else.

Photo courtesy slipperybrick.com

Time is purely and entirely a perception.

The human brain has evolved, as part of the evolution of consciousness - we have evidence of its past stages.
It has evolved to support the being, surviving in its environment, being shaped by the gradual understanding of this environment, in terms of sensory cues, spatial awareness, gradual development of subconscious instincts etc - obviously an enormously complex process, a miracle of nature, but nonetheless - a part of the one process.
Important to this discourse is the fact that the brain (and mind) have evolved entirely in response to environmental cues and as such are finely tuned for this purpose - observation and survival in our perceived surroundings.
The brain has evolved, incorporating this understanding within its very design - as such, if you like it is "forward facing" "outward facing" - a finely tuned partner in conjuction with the physical sense organs.

Quite naturally, born into a human body, we adapt ourselves entirely around the sense of reality inherently projected into the mind - a sense of reality that is 100% the result of interaction with the environment.
The structure of our logic, our rationale, our understanding of space, our conceptualisation - prismatically refracting one whole experience into a myriad of compartmentalised moments, events, objects, ideas, theories etc. - the whole gamut of life, of experience - as interpreted by the mind.

As a rule - we learn to live with this CPU of the brain interpreting everything for us - the experience we are given is entirely, lock stock and barrel - the consequence of the mind.
It is important to fully realise that our entire sense of reality is entirely projected into our awareness by the mind.
Reality, as we know it, as we are so comfortable inhabiting, that we take so much for granted - is only a perception.
Therefore our very own reality is only conditional - it is a condition of the mind - and that is the process of the mind, taking place every second, minute - every hour of our lives.

Photo courtesy blogs.discovermagazine.com

However - that very time itself is a projection of the mind - it is purely a perception.
The mind, as it were - smudges the "now" - it draws the experience of the "now" imperceptably into subtle memory, creating a sense of continuity. We could not possibly survive very efficiently without that process - it is where all the cues for continuity exist - in the process of "now" becoming progressively replaced by more experiences of the now.
The process that is happening is continuity of consciousness - from within that "now" - there is no other time.
Our memory is our previous "nows" - stored as memory, perceived as "nows" gone by - it is the process of memory that is all - and it is that process which creates the perception of time.
Time is only that perception - the future exists as a projection of memory - into a presumption of there being a future - simply because we have presumed a past. The whole concept of time as passing, or being linear - is entirely only a perception - a process of the mind.
However - it is an enormously strong perception - one that is entirely believable - is not our whole life ordered by this "imaginary" time?
Are we not convinced we have a tomorrow - when the process continues evolving - the earth in its orbital process around the sun - time is a product of awareness and the process of the mind.

The problem we have in even imagining around this state of "no time" - is that "time" - being a perception - contains the implication of observation - even in our imagination - abstract thought.
Observation implies awareness.
We cannot conceive of unconsciousness - we cannot possibly imagine it - because the very act of imagining can only occur through consciousness.
As conscious beings - it is utterly impossible.

Photo courtesy mi2g.com

Why is all this necessary as an explanation before the Door to the Kingdom?

OK - I firmly believe that our lives are influenced by the fundamental substance of our being.
We form values involving love, liberty, the value of human life - because these represent some of the attributes of our fundamental being.
We strive for that liberty, for that love and joy that our fundamental being knows for itself - and these are manifest into our physical existence - intertwined with time and space.

As a result of the process of the mind - our firm and established belief in time - we are often separated from the awareness of being - by absorption in the consequences of the mind. We will often miss the subtle experience for the less subtle.
The subtle experience is that of awareness itself - easily obliterated by the colourful & busy world of the mind.

One result of this is that we have substituted a limited, relative perception of reality for an awareness of the infinite - within our own being.
This awareness is born from the eternal now - and constantly floods into our being - potential experience becoming actual experience.
That potential itself - as explained - is not a consequence of the process of the mind - therefore there is no time for this potential - only process.
Potential without time is infinite, eternal.
Process without time is infinite.
I cannot stress enough - time does not exist other than as a perception - a process of the mind.

Please pause at this point to realise how even our language refers to our total belief in the presumption of time.
The very words I use here - "constantly" "becoming" - even "now" itself. "Now" is perceived to be no more than a window, a moment of passing time - as if it were sandwiched somehow between the "past" and the "future."

A part of the reality that we experience as a result of the process of the mind - is relativity - where objects appear to exist in separation - a consequence also of the process of individuation - being born as individuals.
A part of that reality is that we strongly identify with that individuality.
As far as we can instinctively perceive (through the process of the mind in its normal mode of operation) we are indeed separate - why should we not identify ourselves as this individual?
Why not indeed - perfectly natural - individuality is our vehicle for experience.

Part of the relativity is our system of values, judgements, discriminations, polarities, affiliations, likes, dislikes - the mind has prismatically refracted one whole experience into many - many opportunities for choice.
Another part is our conceptualisation of reality into ideas of things, separate things, applying labels, names - further segregation that has been useful in the evolution of our understanding.
These processes are those of logic, language, rational, intellect etc. all themselves attributes of the one potential - but shaped and primed from our "forward facing" attitude towards life. Forward facing and completely intertwined with the minds own projection of time. These are all essential processes of our evolution, but we have now come to a turning point.

Photo courtesy allposters.co.uk

To see beyond the mind.

We should start to consider, that perhaps this door (a metaphor, obviously - for we have very few words to use as signposts in the realm of the unknown) - perhaps this "door" is one that we already have stepped through, on our journey from childhood.
When we stepped out of the kingdom and learned to live more and more identifying only with the conceptual world of the mind.
As our physical stature grew - our kingdom started to shrink.
When our infinite world started to feel the pinch of definition.
We should think of this as the front door to the mind - the back door is the one facing outwards and forwards - through the senses.

Instinctively, and completely naturally - something that we entirely accept as intrinsic to our reality - is conditionality.
The way we perceive ourselves - our self awareness of ourselves - is conditioned by the process of the mind itself.
There is great wisdom in Judge not, lest ye be judged - it is the same value system that we apply to our environment that we apply to ourselves - our value system that has been moulded entirely by our perception of the physical world.
This gives us a very restricted vision of who we actually are - remember - our perception is our reality all the time we are interfacing with the CPU.
How can we observe ourselves without intercepting these limits, these conditions?

We import into our subtle but influential perception of ourselves, the "memory" of our physicality, endorsed by our sensory perception of our fellow human beings.
Our perception of ourselves is that we are restricted to the confines of a physical body.

Just to show you how crazy this can get - your perception of the top of your head - exists for you inside your head - where your awareness interfaces with the CPU.
Your perception of the soles of your feet exists inside your head.
Critically - your perception of inside your head - exists only as a perception - inside your head.
So - where is it really?

This awareness - this mind?

Observe - it can only be inside your head - if you remember your head - and presume.
It can only be inside your body - if you remember your body - and presume.
In fact - you cannot say "where it is" - you cannot confine yourself to a space at all.
Sense your being - feel it - become familiar with the dimensions.
How big - how small?
Unanswerable.
Where?
It is all over you - you are all over it - the same - we cannot relate our being to anything we have taught ourselves from merely observing the "physical world."
It is in a different realm - the kingdom.

When we close our eyes, all of a sudden - we project the perception that we are now "inside our head" somewhere - but all we have done is close our eyes.
We remember the perception of our head, or body - and presume the rest - based on the process of the mind.

I hope you are following this - it's all very practical - please try it.

In other words - eliminate the subtle but influential presumptions based on our "physical logic" - and we are in a completely unknown dimension.
Where is your mind?
All around you?
Can you hear it telling you who you are, who you think you are?
That is all presumption - perception - it is not as real as you may believe.

Something else that we import into our perception of ourselves is our projection of time, interpreting the process of life, of growing, physical change - as being "time based."
Convinced that we have a limited "time" - happiness becomes our treasure - reinforced by the pleasure principal itself - reinforced by our fundamental substance being attracted to joyful experiences - reinforced by nature's tendency for balance and harmony - happiness, contentment become permanent goals in our lives.
Some may balk at that idea, in denial - believing that some conceptualisation of altruistic value actually transcends this fact. That is probably a concept that is muddled by old fashioned moralistic dogma. It is a myth.
Human beings seek happiness - a basic tendency - which we recognise in others - and gives us our basis of morality.

Because of the process of the mind - our happiness is sought linearly, intertwined with our projection of time.
This allows us to ignore happiness, temporarily - believing as we do that it exists in our "projected future."
From long term projections, to really subtle projections, we defer our happiness from the "now" - into a mythical future - because we are speeding along inside the hamster wheel - our mind - the imaginary scenery being scrolled past - like in the old movies.
What Carlos Castaneda wrote about "stopping the world" - is exactly this - stopping that hamster wheel - even for a moment - to glimpse the reality - the reality of our own being.

Photo courtesy essence-of-reality.blogspot.com

To know that we are indeed, truly infinite beings - in fact - that we are all the one infinite being - the whole, the all - separation is not the reality - nor indeed is our limited perception of ourselves, who we truly are.
This is the eternal truth - hard to believe - but that just goes to show how pervasive our perceived sense of reality is - it's utterly convincing isn't it?
Yes - until you see beyond that projection.

To know that in the "now" - the only place that exists - lies the ability to observe the temptations of the hamster wheel - the lures of future happiness - the discontent that awaits a future resolution that will never come - all the colours of the rainbow, refracted from the one whole experience of that "now" - that allow us the projection of "choice" - but also separation, segregation, likes, dislikes.
All that becomes united in the "now" - as one experience - in which one has real choice - to obey the dictates of the mind or not - to be dragged by the mind back onto its hamster wheel - or not - if you can only stay in the "now" - where your awareness of infinity affords you such an amazing experience of abundance, of true cosmic mystery - to know - beyond any doubt (which only exists in the mind) of your being - your home - the universe in its awesome majesty - is all there - for this short journey on earth.
Such a sense of peace and fulfillment - to feel that abundance - to feel that unity with everything - it is there in that "now."

There are no negatives in that world, there is nothing lacking - nothing that cannot be.
Only fullness, continuance of completion.
There is only the gift of this awesome reality.

Where is the door?

Acceptance - deep, willfull acceptance.
Acceptance beyond effort, beyond the struggle to be - because your being already is.
Accept this gift.
Your being is calling out to become whole with itself - listen to its cries.
Accept - relax - gradually stop the hamster wheel - sink back into the "now" - sink back into awareness - it's always there - that awareness isn't going anywhere - ever - there is no place for it to go - there is no "time" for it to go - it always is - it is you - me - everything - your eternal home - your infinite being.
It can only be forgotten while believing in the fairytale of "time."
Open yourself up with gratitude - to the abundance of life - of existence - the complete and utter unknown - that is the reality of this experience on earth.
Forget the explanations - the excuses - don't put it off - it is "now."
Forget the theories - you are not a theory - you are a human being - this is your birthright - this experience.

Gratitude - humility - awareness - being.

The mystery of stillness - is utterly profound.

Try it.

Peace and love to all.

Exposure

2009-05-06T01:03:00.007+01:00

I want to use the metaphor of a movie camera (the old type) - containing a reel of film to explain, in conceptual terms (because how else can something be explained?) the mechanics of experience.

Photo courtesy filmgeek

The point at which the unexposed film becomes exposed to the data from the lense is our now.
This now is a constant point - the unexposed film is continuously passing that point of exposure - changing from unexposed to exposed - changing from the unknown into the known.
Our awareness of now is created at that moment - at the threshold of change - it exists, if you like, as a realisation of the contrast between the unknown and the known.

By reviewing the exposed footage (our experiences - in memory) we conceptualise time. We presume that this footage represents the past - only because of this conceptualisation - and we deduce a future from this - unaware that our concept of time is purely a deduction, a presumption.
Whereas in reality - there is only the now - the point of exposure - where the unknown changes into the known.
That unknown is pure potential - potential experience - consciousness.
It is possible for the mind (the lense) to look into that unknown - by focusing the point of experience on itself - by observing experience as it changes from potential to actuality.

However - for most of the time, life has a quality of "double-exposure" to it.
Not quite the new experience it should be.
That is because we literally are looking at all of the new experiences through the reference of the old - we experience the present - the unknown, veiled with a filter of conceptual thought - the known.

How can any evaluation deduced from experience (conceptualisation) be in any way valid in trying to put the unknown in any context whatsoever?
We cannot measure the unknown by the known - it cannot have a context that we could possibly understand from the perspective of the known. Therefore it cannot have a context - other than its own, known only to itself.

We can make guesses as to the context - desire for experience, for life, for love - for lessons - but, still - they are all subject to our own perspective.

Now - having explained the mechanics of this process - in a totally conceptual, metaphorical way - let's look a bit closer at the reality - our being.

We constantly refer to the known - it is our library of experience - we identify with that known - but it is quite clear that the root of our identity is in the unknown.
Without the potential experience - there would be no experience.

Photo courtesy abgoodwin

Rather than being "film" - potential experience, consciousness is flooding into us, like light from an inner sun, it again experiences the known, the only just known, the long known, by experiencing our conceptual mind. However the experience itself is happening in the only place it can happen - the now - where potential experience is becoming actual.

Like flowing water and ice - it is all essentially water - but the fresh water, constantly bubbles up from a distant, eternal spring and the mind turns it into a progressively expanding glacier - that we experience slowly sliding away from us - into what we imagine is our past.

Photo courtesy geography-site

However that is the only place a past exists - in that glacier of the known - likewise its presumptive projection - the future.
Our real "future" - exists as pure potential.

Why is it so critical that we establish, for ourselves, individually - the root of our identity?

Let me make a critical distinction here - hopefully readers will see that this is all practical, not theoretical - and can be experienced, observed for themselves with suitable attention.
What we commonly mistake for "the experience" - is really "the experienced."
We confuse the subject (the experiencer - true identity of awareness itself) with the object (the detail of the experience) - although both are simultaneous and co-dependent.

To realise, unequivocally, beyond doubt - that true identity is the experience of awareness itself - fundamentally the potential for experience - will allow us to become progressively detached from identifying - ie. putting extravagent value, on the completely diverse range of "experienced" (objects of experience) - that make our individual journeys so distinctive and uniquely colourful.

When we look at the "experienced" - we find that there lies the cause for all separation - starting with the fact that all of the "experienced" involves an individual and completely autonomous "physical" body - and that is just the start.
All of our values (including the base value of identity) all of our beliefs, concepts, paradigms - everything - in toto - exist in the "experienced" - the known.
Many values we will find in common - we can share - but so many others, divide us - because we have attached our identity to them, and not where it belongs.

This is not belittling the experience of individuality at all - in fact it puts it in higher relief than ever before - as we begin to understand how bizarre, how intricate, how cosmically humorous, the nature of this reality actually is.
It does not belittle the experience at all - it magnifies it to its true proportion - it allows us a true sense of perspective - at last - a common perspective - shared, experienced at the base level of human life.
Simply by observing and understanding the significance of the observation.
Observing the unknown become the known.
By complete acceptance of our own being - we can allow the glacier to softly slide aside for a while.
Obviously the unknown is beyond categories of thought - and applies equally to the believer, the non-believer (I didn't say what the belief or non-belief was - there are potentially an infinite amount) - the milkman, the millionaire, princes, paupers - across the whole spectrum.

Simply by honestly observing the nature of experience - in oneself.

Inside - Outside?

2009-05-06T00:57:00.006+01:00

This is the key question - are we "innies" or "outies" - and the answer will only arrive through contemplation of one's navel.

Seriously though - I have been thinking about this.

Photo courtesy vindon.co.uk

We are born into the constraints of our reality (our human body) - our reality is delineated by those constraints - and we cannot see outside those constraints.

Understanding what those constraints are however - can illuminate the answer to this question.

Because our equipment (senses - brain) is so seamlessly efficient and works so incredibly well - and importantly we have learned to exist and co-operate with them, we have never had cause or reason to question or to actually explore the nature of our inner environment.
We take it completely for granted and just carry on with our lives - believing that we have a direct interface with a solid, physical reality - out there in front of us, below us, around us.

Now all of this can be confirmed subjectively - by anyone.

Our identity is rooted in awareness.
It exists inside a panorama of thought.

Photo courtesy dailygalaxy

Despite learning that in fact we have a brain - we do not subjectively experience our brain - I have never seen my brain.
We experience within a panorama of understanding presented in the mind - we conceptualise from within this panorama.
Usually, when we are conscious of it - thought implies a conceptual "identity" thinking - inside this panorama - a sort of "avatar" - I suppose - but nevertheless, our entire sense of reality is created by the mind - in conjunction with awareness.
This is the holistic experience - relevent to a human being - much more so than any pretence at objectivity.

The panorama of thought is a representation of the consequences of the brain. For our awareness - in terms of the conclusions and assumptions made by the brain - interpreted into an understanding, this is our entire sense of reality. The world we live in. The brain provides the meaning to the data it receives through the sensory organs - which the mind knows as thought.
We are so convinved that we are dealing with "reality" - out there - but we are actually living in a world of thought - because of course - that is our reality.
That is the nature of our reality.
A world which from birth to death, we are so convinced exists "out there" - does not in fact exist out there as far as our actual awareness is concerned.
It exists inside the mind - it is a panorama of thought - incorporating everything that we know or have known.
Our entire existence has been unfolding for us at this point of interface between awareness and thought.
However - because the integration is so seamless - and because it is the only reality we have ever known - it is our normality - we totally accept it - no questions asked.

It is the brain and the ear which transform the consequences of air pressure into sound for our awareness - which in turn gets transformed into the separate conceptualisation of sound - in our conceptual thoughts.
It is as a consequence of light hitting the eye - inverted by the brain - that we see - that we have a picture in our mind - comprised of understanding relative to our environment.

With a different brain, with different eyes or ears - our world would be different - yet to us, it would be our normality - hence our reality.
Similarly - if the same data were input into our brain, representing any given sensory data, an experience could be totally replicated - yet different from the actuality of the physical environment.

Although this is a model of our reality - we can easily see the similarities between this model and what we know as "virtual reality."

Photo courtesy futureupdate

Why is this pertinent?

It is so pertinent because the presences in our reality are manifold - they are not limited to representations of just our physical environment - but of every single aspect of our lives. Wall to wall.
We perceive objects as thoughts.
We perceive other people as thoughts.
Our feelings, our reactions are all conceptualised into this inner environment - so critically interactions in our environment affect our emotions - our environment contains desire and fear, likes and dislikes.
It exists completely as conceptual thought - as a result, everything will have an opposite - presenting us with choice - with preferences. Our inner environment is entirely created from thought and concepts - so our conceptualised emotions impact on our reality as well.

Our judgements, our thoughts, our emotions - all perceived as conceptual thought will impact directly and immediately on our total paradigm of reality - just as our reality is created immediately and directly (as far as we can perceive) in our thoughts - it is a two way street - but a street that doesn't lead anywhere "out there" - it is all at the interface between awareness and thought.

So the answer to the question as to which effects which - inner or outer.
The truth is that as far as our experience goes (which is our reality as human beings) - there is no outer.
It is only a perception - a perception that exists in thought alone - and an emotional perception that is changed by thought alone.

We are aware that data is streaming through our sensory organs - but we construe that data as the concepts and "reality" presented by the mind - and that is the world we live in.
The concepts in turn - lead us to believe in duality, in opposites - there is no duality in the data itself.

That is the nature of our reality - our life is awareness - our identity is awareness - and that is how we interface with our environment, by bringing the environment inside and letting us re-create it according to choice.

Photo courtesy kreations.net

It is only our conceptualisation itself that creates the divisions inner and outer - therefore using them as terms of reference is misleading.

Nobody who doesn't understand this nature of reality can have a conscious choice to change their inner environment, although the same rules operate - when they think they are happy, their world temporarily changes - as their reality is fixed for them by accepting the environment and conditions as real - which, therefore they are. Real is only permanent if no change is possible. This acceptance over-rides any conscious contributions they may from time to time just wish for themselves. So you can see - to a great extent our "reality" is formed and transfixed by our environment - but it exists only as our inner awareness of it inside our world of thought.

What is transformed is the perception of reality - as an inner environment existing entirely in conceptual thought.
As such, and very really, our perception represents the totality of our reality.
This is not the same as being able to manipulate "matter" - but that our world is only our conceptual interpretation and understanding of it - and it does not exist anywhere else - as far as we are concerned.
We cannot take a short cut to our environment which circumnavigates the mind and the sense organs.

Relaxing In The Paradigm

2009-05-06T00:54:00.004+01:00

Whatever "sense" we make out of our take on reality, I feel that somehow we have to arrive at a balance that allows us to continue with some degree of acceptance.

Photo courtesy fineartamerica

Possibly, by being partial in our observations our paradigm is being constantly created from a selective source of information.
The constraints already imposed on us by the equipment of our "physical" body already act as a filter on our perception, combined with the restraining, limiting perspectives we cause ourselves by viewing reality through a selective range of conceptualisations and frames of reference.

For some of us, our paradigm, the residual effect of our worldview, may be more or less influenced by politics, by religion, by scientific study, by psychology, by philosophy and also profoundly by our interaction with our fellow beings and by our observations of ourselves.

Perhaps the summation of these influences leads us to adopt one of two basic stances - that we see the world as a hostile place, requiring defensiveness, suspicion, security - a conclusion of fear.
Or that we see the world as a friendly place, inviting openness, trust and liberty - a conclusion of love.

Photo courtesy gilbertmaui

I feel that these run so deep within us that although we assimilate and compensate in order to create that balance within our being - they nevertheless influence our entire perspective - even as we relax within the arms of our paradigm.

So strong is the influence of this basic stance that it puts a bias upon all new information absorbed - because we have to assimilate that information somehow into an already established balance.
In other words, we subjectively distort information, shaping it to fit within a context already allowed for, by our own paradigm.

All this takes place in the realms of emotion and thought.
We are obsessed by a compulsion to balance - to create equilibrium.
In most cases I think we acheive this - we are able to continue with our lives - carrying around this sense of emotional and psychological balance.

Photo courtesy creativecow.net

Where does the compulsion for this balance originate?
Not from the paradigm itself, but from the emotional needs of our being.
Those emotional needs, although influenced by the paradigm itself, are shaped by their own requirement of balance and equilibrium.
In fact they are almost exclusively the motivating force for anything we do - and are themselves responsible for how our paradigm has been shaped.

We cannot therefore hope to reshape our world view, our paradigm and the basic emotional attitude we adopt unless we can somehow input into those emotions themselves.
Aptly demonstrated by what happens when we "fall in love" - the world becomes a different place.

At this point we enter a closed circle - our emotions are conditioned by our paradigm - and our paradigm is in turn influenced by our emotions.
Neither are free to change.

We need to find a source of inspiration, that has not yet been consumed, rendered impotent - by being absorbed into our conceptually defined world view.
We need to find a source of inspiration outside of the limited emotions that are conditioned by that world view.

Without this constant source - to take us from wherever we are, emotionally, conceptually - to somewhere else - we will remain forever defined and therefore dead.

Photo courtesy angelinoview

We need to open a window to the unknown.
We need to plug ourselves in to that indefinable mystery, that constant source of awe and mind-numbing majesty - our being.
Realising that each moment is in fact new - that we enter the unknown every second - with each beat of the heart, with each breath - we are on a journey into the unknown. Everything we do is completely at the mercy of a totally uncomprehendable universal law - allowing existence. Everything we think is only possible because of that law - a whole law - of which we have observed the merest, tiniest fraction - and in our conceit - we call it knowledge.
What else is capable of inspiring our hearts and minds?
Filling our hearts?

We are all entering this unknown together - right here - right now.
By reflection on that, within oursleves - we can find a very real unity.

Part of our paradigm is an acute awareness of death.
More than anything else perhaps, death represents the unknown.
Life - we think we can handle - we think we've understood, we have created our securities while we are here, by transforming the unknown into the known, precisely to defend us from realities like death.

Photo courtesy deviantart.com

Our awareness of death creates a division in our being - like a scalpel cutting through reality - on one side, fear and negativity - on the other, love and positivity.
Our attitudes, our stance exist somewhere along the line stretching between those two conceptual poles - as positive acceptance or negative resistance - likes or dislikes - we draw our personalities with a matrix of these lines.

On closer examination however - we will find that although these poles exist (conceptually) they are unified by the actual concept itself.
We tend to ignore that unity.

For example - without death (which is really one end of the line - "physical life") - what we conceptually visualise as its opposite - life - could not exist. It would be absolutely devoid of meaning, of value. There would be no compulsion, no motivation, no recognition. In fact death defines life - birth and death being the two ends of that conceptual line. Without two ends - we could not know it as life - as anything.

The same applies to any other polarities we care to think about - they are born out of the polarity of life and death.

They are the relative attribute of existence that allows it to be known.

However it is crucial to understand that all polarities only exist in conceptual thought - in reality they are united as one attribute.
For example - black and white - the same attribute of reflectivity of light.
Loud and soft - the same attribute of pressure waves causing sound.
Pleasure and pain - the same attribute of physical/emotional sensation.

If we are honest with our awareness - we can experience this.
Total acceptance of our being implies being absolutely honest with ourselves - simply observing and letting be.

The polarised, conceptual nature of reality is essential for accumulating understanding.
By pulling separate conceptual threads from the weave - and viewing them from a limited perspective - it can give rise to an understanding - but only an understanding that is of value to that particular perspective.
It is a piecemeal understanding - arrived from observation - this we call "knowing."

However there is another form of understanding - another form of knowing - beyond the capacity of logic and reason.

Our conceptual "knowledge" although useful, is second-hand knowledge, piecemeal and from observation only - and is exclusively human in relevence and origin.

Photo courtesy uweb.ucsb.edu

There is another form of knowledge - whole - first-hand, and creational in its relevence and origin.

Our second-hand knowledge cannot create - only conceptually can it create - so really it can only re-create, re-fashion what is already there.
First-hand creational knowledge - well - it's obvious isn't it - is behind, within creation - and importantly it is whole - or reality would not exist.

By stepping aside from our conceptual view - we can enter into this wholeness - this newness every moment - as we are constantly being sustained by that whole law.
By simply being aware - here - now - without judgement - without conceptualisation - without trying to understand.

Total acceptance of our being - by accepting ourselves, completely, absolutely, individually - we are automatically accepting the entirety of existence - for it is one and the same.

Taking Liberties

2009-04-27T02:43:00.023+01:00

Image courtesy bbc.

Is not a window
But a see-through wall?
There's more we shall know
By not looking at all.

It's just occurred to me that the unknown is identical to the known.

Let me try and explain.

I would equate "knowing" with understanding - the bedrock of our being.

We may not know the entirety of our being, subjectively, but it is there - and we are still "being" it nevertheless.

A different kind of "knowledge" is the term we use for collecting empirical "facts" or "theories" - which by definition - require us to adopt a certain perspective with which to contain their reference - because a "fact" or "theory" without a frame of reference cannot exist.
This is the term we use for objective knowledge - looking through a narrowly defined window of perspective - of which there are an infinite potential variety - this kind of knowledge exists only in our conceptual mind.

Our conceptual mind overlays reality with a veil - usurping the being of that reality with the conceit of pretended knowledge - it is deceitful - stealthily substituting the truth of that being with a token (not a fair exchange) - a word, a label or a theory - based on only its selective, relative and dualistic perspective - dividing and defining an unknown whole - and replacing it with a sum of parts derived from its own imagination.

That is why I say that the unknown is identical to the known.

It is identical if we refer subjectively - and also if we refer objectively.
Subjectively we can be no more or no less than 100% of our being - so whether known or unknown - it changes nothing.
Objectively - we are merely dealing with tokens - the known or the unknown are simply more tokens - more deceit.

OK - let's ease up a while - objectiveness, our relative perspective is not the villain I make it out to be - or is it?
It is our innate perspective - the one we are educated to see by our senses - by our individualised nature.
Like the crest of a rolling wave - formed and yet formless - at the threshold between subject and object.
A moving point of awareness - but it is not concrete - it is as free and undefined as we care to allow it to be.

In some ways - it is the classroom.
Where and how we learn - in our relationship to our environment and fellow beings.
Where we associate with pain of differing types - emotional and physical.
Where that pain becomes the biggest educator of them all.
Where we start to question.
Where we start to explore.

We start to search.

Secretly - I believe that all of us, deep down, are aware that our sense of "I" ness is mysterious, is magical, is miraculous.
Our being is a most precious gift.
Either from gratitude - or in supplication through suffering - or just from an awesome sense of wonder at it all - we turn our minds to questions of origin.

Now we're in trouble - especially if we are determined for an answer.

You see - our conceptual minds work entirely with a dualistic perspective - a perspective that operates almost identically to our rules of language.
Subject, adjective, noun, verb, object, cause and effect etc.
We are already dealing only with the tokens issued by that mind to substitute reality.
They are not connected to that reality in any relevant way - other than for defining and labelling it within the constricts of a relative state.
With the limited perspective available to it - the conceptual mind (aware that it did not create itself) is at the mercy of the following restricted supposition.

I (subject) exist (verb) and I (subject) did not create (verb) myself (effect/object) - therefore I must have a creator (cause/object.)

Of course this dialectic is supported, at least superficially, by most major religions - and with their added authority - do we really need to look any further?

How much further dare we look?

Let's be extremely courageous - and dedicate our purpose to sincerely discovering the truth - then we can expect to be welcomed back to our creator and to be forgiven if that's where we are led.

A quick recapitulation at this point - we have already discussed that we cannot be more or less than 100% of our true being - whether known or unknown - we are that very being right now.

Our understanding of the conceptual mind has lead us to see that we might have invented the concept of a creator as being separate from the creation.

Yet we still have the sense of mystery, of awe, of the miraculous.
Why?
Because inescapably, existence, our being feels like that - at times.

Our being.

If we could accept our being, totally - right now - stop asking questions - stop cheating ourselves with deceitful answers - allow ourselves to be overwhelmed by that mystery, that awe - the miracle - could that make a difference?

Would it matter then - if we could find that unconditional acceptance - which if we are honest - we spend every waking moment chasing for.

Do you disagree?

Why do we turn to alchohol, or drugs, or relationships, or seeking more?
Or seek oblivion by obsession?
Do we accept ourselves - or are we trying to prove something to win approval to our own set of conditions - inherited or invented?
Why do we invent tomorrow, if not from fear or desire?
Tomorrow we will approve ourselves - but not today - tomorrow - over the fence, where the grass is emerald green - and actually belongs to our neighbour - which is why it matters not that we throw all our rubbish there - from today.

The ability to accept - now - this miracle.
If we do all those things in the cause of finding happiness - we are really denying that it exists.
If we search for it - we are denying that it exists - here.
Denying that happiness and ourselves can co-exist - now.

Accepting our own being unconditionally, automatically takes us beyond conceptual thought, to a state where we accept the whole - beyond division, beyond separation.
That includes everything within our awareness - and beyond.

If we were to find that ability - would it make any difference?
Would it make a difference to what we called - being?
Would it matter what origins that being had?
Scientific - natural - spiritual - only labels.

Being - contentment - acceptance - of ourselves - unconditionally - can lead to joy.
Honest, unattached joy can lead to gratitude.
Gratitude can lead to action.

Anything else is a condition that is being met - and not liberty.

Thanks for sharing this journey with me.

Another extraordinarily delightful website on this topic - Yoism

A Journey, Love & Abuse.

2009-04-26T16:33:00.001+01:00

What started my mind whirring in the direction that resulted in this post being written?

Photograph courtesy JJLeeming abd.org.uk

Quite simply - a journey.

Driving home after a Saturday morning doing some work - it's a lovely sunny day.
Faced with the contrast of the motor cars on the road, the tarmac roads themselves - set against a backdrop of natural surroundings - fields, trees, grazing cows - all very pleasant and acceptable.
But somehow there seems a subconscious division between the natural and the man-made.

Photograph courtesy treehugger.com

Then the mind kicks in - it intercepts this perception, interrogates it as to its validity.

This vision of the world transforms into a historical perspective - what I see now is merely a glimpse, a snapshot of mankind's evolution.
Life and matter.
Mankind enjoying it's recreative ability - the way it can transform and manipulate matter to make human life more amenable.
But somewhere in this equation is a motivating force - an energy.
We could call it the life force.
Such a powerful force that has the will, the irrepressable urge to recreate & procreate, survive & thrive.

Photograph courtesy earthecho.com

I want to examine the word "love."
I feel at times it is grossly overused and abused.
What do we mean when we say "I love" something or somebody?

Let me offer this definition.
We mean that some deep part of us is moved to - identify with, attach itself to, desire the experience of, intimately associate with - the object of this love.
It can be used at a very casual level or a very profound level.
We use the same word for french fries, a TV programme or a significant partner in our lives.
We may even use it when describing a relationship with the Divine.
As such it is used as a verb.

How about as a noun - as in "making love?" Two (or more?) individuals accommodating their expression of a mutually shared - identification with, attachment to, desire for the experience of, intimate association with - each other.
How about as in the phrase "an act of selfless love?"
Implying an inner motivating force, the love, which compells one to perform a selfless act.

The common denominator in all the above is that "love" is always referring to something that seems to be universally understood, recognised and appreciated, valued and treasured - no matter how the word is applied, it is always in the context of the positive, an ideal, a pleasant experience or harmonious co-existence.
You may agree or disagree with my definitions, but I am certain you will not deny that love exists.

Back to the car journey.

I realise that although I am seeing the world in all its colour and glory - maybe I am blind.
Just as this very computer can only deal with binary information - my eyes can only deal with a certain spectrum of visible light.
That's what they were designed to do - and function extraordinarily well - but nevertheless, it is a highly selective form of "vision."
I cannot see television broadcasts without a TV set, I cannot see x-rays, the ultra or infra.
I have a paper bag over my head - I think my vision is all encompassing - but it isn't.
The same can be said for all my other senses.
I am perceiving a highly selective band of "reality" through my variety of receiving apparatus.
I am living in a world of experience, defined and limited by a human body.

Photograph courtesy boingboing.net

I am also living behind the filter of conceptualisation.
For example, as above I outlined various conceptualisations of the word "love" - do I choose to ignore the reality that love is a powerful motivating force in my life - it must have an origin - do I allow myself to get tangled up in the complicated, highly subjective issues of morality, of ethics - concerned more with the interpretation, definition and expression of this "love" in human conceptual terms - rather than explore its actuality?

Photograph courtesy enchantedmind.com

Love - as a force, an energy, a power?
A force that moves us so deeply, that is common to all life, recognised universally?
What if we had eyes of a slightly different design, that allowed us to see love?
What would it look like?

Would everything sparkle - be covered in a fiery incadescence - a fluid shimmering energy - full of eddies and swirls - dancing between, around, all amongst us - would we see it obedient to our will - would it transform as we interacted with each other?

Photograph courtesy dreamingheart.com

Quantum Physics is right now toying with the notions that perhaps gravity and mass, such primordial essences, are the attributes of certain specific sub-atomic particles. These theories have yet to be proven as science is stretching itself to design and build the experimental equipment required, such as the LHC at CERN (see other post 10, 09, 08 . . .)
Whereas science requires demonstrable, quantifiable proof
- most of us are content with personal experience to teach us - and we do not really need further acknowledgement to prove that love exists.
But maybe "love" is another sub atomic particle - existing in the Quantum world - at a level of infinite smallness.

It doesn't really require an emormous stretch of the imagination to formulate an equation, beyond any conceptualisation, dealing with the actuality of love as a power, a force, an energy - suffused with pure potential, pure will, pure consciousness.
Adequate will to manifest itself from a pure state into the creation of a universe.

God=Love or Love=God

Love also supplies the reason for creation - if one were needed.
Creative activities & indulgencies sometimes bring a breath of that force, that power, that love - a stirring in the heart of absolute joy and wonder.
A love so vast, so powerful that we cannot imagine - implying such a recreational liberty that our conceptual world cannot contain its understanding.
Love provides an adventure for itself - a journey - an evolution.
Why?
For no reason other than because it can - and for the joy of the experience.
What other reason can such an infinite power have?

Now remember, we are discussing a real power here - a real force - not the result of a human thought process, but the very cause of it - and the potential for everything else.
It is beyond obligation, beyond honour, beyond guilt, beyond aspirations, beyond hope or dreams - it is our very nature.

We could call such a power God - referring to Him, Her or It - would it matter?
We could even dispense with the upper case letters.
Would it matter?

Such a God, with such an infinite power - would not be at all perturbed by what we thought, by what we did - after all - we all have a contract with the laws of the universe - and there is no escape clause.
Such a God certainly would not be concerned with how we portrayed Him - because such an infinite power can be portrayed in an infinite amount of ways - all equally suited.
Would such a God require us to worship him?
No.

Any such discussion is really nonsense.
Any discussion or perception of god, because of the confines of language and because of the way we think - automatically creates a subject/object division - a separation - which cannot be true.
It is simply a convenient way of approaching the subject for our everyday awareness.
But often it becomes a convenient excuse - if we fail to realise that Divine intervention is in our own hands.

Atheist or believer - they are only labels and do nothing to alter the reality.

Photograph courtesy fp.enter.net

Religions of a devotional nature are admirably suited to acheiving enlightenment in a way that is so comfortably human - dealing as they do with the primal force of love as it manifests in human relationships - or a relationship with a deity.

Humility is the recognition of something so totally beyond our comprehension, our logical capability to understand - beyond the familiar spheres in which we operate as human beings.
Nevertheless - this Divinity is something in which we have an intimate share.

Humility levels the ground - it doesn't detract or weaken.
In fact - with its recognition of the truth - humility restores, amplifies and provides enormous strength - and allows for a space in our hearts and lives to become filled with even more of that infinite love.
A space created automatically when all the junk collected by the ego is thrown out of the attic.
It permits true understanding - which is, after all, standing-under.

Our only obligation, if we choose, is to our true selves, to realise this in our lives, to see it and live it as the true reality - and what a liberating and joyful prospect that is.
How severe a discipline is it anyway - to become what we already are?
Can we conceive of a discpline that is pure joy?
Can we emerge from the shadows of fear?
Can we reach that true liberty?

None of this can possibly do anything to detract from the awesome nature of the universe, of life - the miraculous reality of existence.
It does nothing to lessen the majestic power of creation.
Nor should it prevent us from feeling blessed with such abundance and giving thanks.

What it does is simply include us as a part of the equation.
In ignorance or enlightenment - whatever, whenever, wherever - it is all a part of that equation - that journey.

It is the journey itself that is the reality - and we are all fellow travellers - right now.

Some religions refer to it as a journey through Maya - or illusion - a journey from darkness and ignorance to enlightenment and understanding - and the final recognition, love re-knowing of itself - shining brightly, undeniably, within its own cunning disguise.
The disguise - is you and me - but so is the essence, the motivating force, the love.
Illusion carries no stigma, as it is an essential part of the plan - necessary rather than negative.
We are the seed, the tree and the fruit - the beginning, the middle and the end of this journey - this evolution.
Love is our inner guide, our constant reminder - our map.

A satellite navigation system to blow your mind.

Photograph courtesy wmich.edu

Infinite Science

2009-04-25T10:37:00.000+01:00

Could science itself be an infinite quest?

Constantly, the net of discovery is becoming more and more refined - first of all catching whales, then discovering that whales trap krill to eat - then asking "What does krill eat, and what does that lifeform eat?"
Evolving through chemistry, the tables of the elements, to physics and a point where it considered protons and electrons to be fundamental, universal building blocks, but has now discovered a whole range of smaller particles - Quantum Physics - Quarks, Mesons, Bosons etc.
Sretching to the limit the ability to prove by experimental means what mathematics and theory suggests and predicts.
Although the word atom is derived from the Greek "atamos" - meaning uncuttable, or undivisible - science appears to have found further divisions.

This refinement is taking it into regions of "Atto" measurements - a billionth of a billionth.
Discovering oscillations at speeds that challenge the ability to measure - appearing, perhaps to be superimpositions - or conveying the dual existence of Schrodinger's cat.
Particles with the properties of waves?

It is journeying down the road to the infinitely small - the infinitely fast - which will always remain at least one step ahead - concealing always something around the next bend.
Or perhaps it is coming to the edge of the current paradigm, requiring a radical shift to proceed further.
Beyond the event horizon of this paradigm lies a whole new universe of understanding - which requires that it abandon such notions as time - limitations presumed - such as the speed of light.

Perhaps even the tool of logic may prove too blunt - the light of our intelligence too dim.
Our arms are too short, despite the evolving technology that we equip them with, to reach any final goal - because maybe there isn't one.

Science itself is an infinite journey - a perpetual discovery - with its historic acheivements being simply milestones stretching as far as the eye can see.
At some future date - certainly - the amazing excitement going on at CERN right now - will be just another chapter in the book of human scientific adventure - a few pages further on from electric light and penicillin.

But science is somehow part of our DNA - that curiosity we have - a vacuum that so urgently sucks in knowledge and understanding.

The great caverns hewn out of the ground at CERN, where the vast megalithic experiments are housed, are aptly known as the cathedrals.

For the active worship that takes place there is surely a demonstration of the deepest reverence - an awestruck obsession with the mysteries of creation.

10, 09, 08, . . .

2009-04-24T22:22:00.000+01:00

Perhaps the start of a count down?
Well - who knows - but it certainly is the planned date of the first BEAM ON - at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research - or CERN - in Geneva, Switzerland.

A worker inside the LHC tunnel
(Image courtesy of CERN)

For the first time, the giant 27 km circular particle collider (LHC - Large Hadron Collider) will fire up - smashing sub-atomic particles into each other at speeds approaching the speed of light - in an attempt to re-create a mini version of events that happened in the first few billionths, of the very first second of time - a fraction after the Big Bang.

But did you know that the very first proposal for the World Wide Web (WWW) was made at CERN? Well I certainly didn't until I started browsing their fascinating website.

Enter the extraordinary world of Quarks, Gravitons, Bosons - and the search for the Higgs Particle (or Higgs boson) - already postulated theoretically as a contender for the particle responsible for the attribute of mass - at the moment, being one of the key questions asked by Quantum physicists.

Dark matter, string theory? No problem - just step this way.

There have been scary rumours, completely disproved by recent thorough safety evaluations - that perhaps the first collision might create a real black hole - that possibly the scientists there will unwittingly bring about the destruction of planet earth.
There have been amusing articles written suggesting that perhaps a warp in the fabric of time could permit time travellers from the future to appear.
We'll all find out - on Wednesday (although no actual collisions are scheduled for a while.)

There is a bit of a dilemma at the moment - Albert Einstein's famous theory of General Relativity & the formula E=MC2 seem to be consistent and satisfactory at the Macro level of the universe - but not on the Micro level - the Quantum level.
This is not a pleasing state of affairs - A Theory of Everything - (if there were one - the Holy Grail for science at the moment) would unify the apparant inconsistencies between the Standard Model (being the name given to the current theory on particle interaction) and Einstein's GR theory.

(Click for interview - Robert Aymar - Director General of CERN)

Wednesday 10th September 2008 - sees the start of the most cutting-edge scientific experiments into all these questions - and no doubt, many more.

(Image courtesy CERN)

An auspicious example of international collaboration - Milestones - will give you a detailed impression of the scale of the undertaking & the enormous engineering and scientific challenges presented in the building of the LHC.

I wish them all the very best of inspiration and good fortune over at CERN.
It's massive - it's exciting - it's on the frontier of physics right now.
You can sign up for an account with them - keep in touch.

Entertaining & educational - the "Large Hadron RAP."

A humorous side? Gravitons, Protons, Bosons . . .

It was enlightening for me to learn that forces such as gravity and possibly properties like mass have their origins in sub-atomic particles - various combinations and permutations of Quarks.
It brings many interesting questions to my mind about other fundamental properties, other attributes - such as intelligence, willpower, consciousness - could there actually be sub-atomic particles responsible for these?
Which led me to imagine an alphabet of potential discoveries . . .

A list of new sub-atomic particles discovered at CERN.

The Amazon - the particle responsible for tall people.

The Baron - the particle responsible for blue blood.

The Chameleon - the particle responsible for colour.

The Dependon - the particle responsible for reliability.

The Eggon - the particle responsible for encouragement.

The Futon - the particle responsible for insomnia.

The Geton - the particle responsible for friendship.

The Hangon - the particle responsible for . . . delay.

The Iron - the particle responsible for decrease.

The Jettison - the particle responsible for rubbish.

The Kettleon - the particle responsible for tea.

The Longjon - the particle responsible for heat.

The Marathon - the particle responsible for d i s t a n c e.

The Napoleon - the particle responsible for short people.

The Onandon - the particle responsible for boredom.

The Presson - the particle responsible for determination.

The Question - the particle responsible for curiosity.

The Reason - the particle responsible for everything.

The Strapon - the particle responsible for gratification.

The Tampon - the particle responsible for blockages.

The Upon - the particle responsible for elevation.

The Viagron - the particle responsible for rigidity.

The What'son - the particle responsible for the radio times.

The Xylophon - the particle responsible for fossils.

The You'reon - the particle responsible for stagefright.

The Zion - the particle responsible for the middle east crisis.

(I would love you to comment, with your own suggestions . . .)

A very useful GLOSSARY

Out of the Mouths of Children

2009-04-18T02:48:00.004+01:00

For more information on this - Magick River - who was this girl?
An entry in Wikipedia.

Save Abbey Road Studios

2009-02-20T04:09:00.000Z

Image courtesy nytheatremike

Read the history of Abbey Road Studios - the very first, purpose-built recording studio complex in the world.

History of Abbey Road

Did you know that at this Abbey Road website - you can view "The Crossing" (probably the most famous zebra crossing ever!) 24 hours a day - on their dedicated webcam?

(At the link above - tab - The Crossing.)

Learn about the constellation of artists who have associated with the place - Edward Elgar, Bernard Shaw, Yehudi Menuhin, Noel Coward, Ella Fitzgerald, Peter Sellers, The Beatles - the list is staggering.

Surely, the decision to save this precious piece of British Cultural Heritage from becoming a pile of brickdust - is a no-brainer?

Please join the group at facebook.

Save Abbey Road Studios from property developers

Please visit here -

Save Abbey Road

- and sign the petition.

NEWS & STORIES ON THIS TOPIC

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1252116/Ill-save-Abbey-Road-Andrew-Lloyd-Webber-promises-30m-plus-buy-studios.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8519197.stm

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/feb/16/abbey-road-studios-sale-emi

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/889e63f0-1a70-11df-a2e3-00144feab49a.html

http://www.recordproduction.com/abbey_road.htm

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/the-beatles/7259139/Beatles-Abbey-Road-Studios-could-be-saved-by-National-Trust.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/musicblog/2010/feb/17/abbey-road-studios

The Hunting of The Sarc Mark

2009-01-25T23:58:00.000Z

Image courtesy www.guardian.co.uk

With apologies [but not too many] to Lewis Caroll.

(Courtesy www.everypoet.com)

Illustrations courtesy commons.wikimedia.org

Fit the First.

Illustration of the crew,
as described in Fit the First.

THE LANDING

"Just the place for a Sarc Mark!" the Bellman cried,
As he landed his crew with care;
Supporting each man on the top of the tide
By a finger entwined in his hair.

"Just the place for a Sarc Mark! I have said it twice:
That alone should encourage the crew.
Just the place for a Sarc Mark! I have said it thrice:
What I tell you three times is true."

The crew was complete: it included a Boots--
A maker of Bonnets and Hoods--
A Barrister, brought to arrange their disputes--
And a Broker, to value their goods.

A Billiard-marker, whose skill was immense,
Might perhaps have won more than his share--
But a Banker, engaged at enormous expense,
Had the whole of their cash in his care.

There was also a Beaver, that paced on the deck,
Or would sit making lace in the bow:
And had often (the Bellman said) saved them from wreck,
Though none of the sailors knew how.

There was one who was famed for the number of things
He forgot when he entered the ship:
His umbrella, his watch, all his jewels and rings,
And the clothes he had bought for the trip.

He had forty-two boxes, all carefully packed,
With his name painted clearly on each:
But, since he omitted to mention the fact,
They were all left behind on the beach.

The loss of his clothes hardly mattered, because
He had seven coats on when he came,
With three pair of boots--but the worst of it was,
He had wholly forgotten his name.

He would answer to "Hi!" or to any loud cry,
Such as "Fry me!" or "Fritter my wig!"
To "What-you-may-call-um!" or "What-was-his-name!"
But especially "Thing-um-a-jig!"

While, for those who preferred a more forcible word,
He had different names from these:
His intimate friends called him "Candle-ends,"
And his enemies "Toasted-cheese."

"His form in ungainly--his intellect small--"
(So the Bellman would often remark)
"But his courage is perfect! And that, after all,
Is the thing that one needs with a Sarc Mark."

He would joke with hy{ae}nas, returning their stare
With an impudent wag of the head:
And he once went a walk, paw-in-paw, with a bear,
"Just to keep up its spirits," he said.

He came as a Baker: but owned, when too late--
And it drove the poor Bellman half-mad--
He could only bake Bridecake--for which, I may state,
No materials were to be had.

The last of the crew needs especial remark,
Though he looked an incredible dunce:
He had just one idea--but, that one being "Sarc Mark,"
The good Bellman engaged him at once.

He came as a Butcher: but gravely declared,
When the ship had been sailing a week,
He could only kill Beavers. The Bellman looked scared,
And was almost too frightened to speak:

But at length he explained, in a tremulous tone,
There was only one Beaver on board;
And that was a tame one he had of his own,
Whose death would be deeply deplored.

The Beaver, who happened to hear the remark,
Protested, with tears in its eyes,
That not even the rapture of hunting the Sarc Mark
Could atone for that dismal surprise!

It strongly advised that the Butcher should be
Conveyed in a separate ship:
But the Bellman declared that would never agree
With the plans he had made for the trip:

Navigation was always a difficult art,
Though with only one ship and one bell:
And he feared he must really decline, for his part,
Undertaking another as well.

The Beaver's best course was, no doubt, to procure
A second-hand dagger-proof coat--
So the Baker advised it-- and next, to insure
Its life in some Office of note:

This the Banker suggested, and offered for hire
(On moderate terms), or for sale,
Two excellent Policies, one Against Fire,
And one Against Damage From Hail.

Yet still, ever after that sorrowful day,
Whenever the Butcher was by,
The Beaver kept looking the opposite way,
And appeared unaccountably shy.

Fit the Second.

The Bellman's Map,
described in Fit the Second.

THE BELLMAN'S SPEECH.

The Bellman himself they all praised to the skies--
Such a carriage, such ease and such grace!
Such solemnity, too! One could see he was wise,
The moment one looked in his face!

He had bought a large map representing the sea,
Without the least vestige of land:
And the crew were much pleased when they found it to be
A map they could all understand.

"What's the good of Mercator's North Poles and Equators,
Tropics, Zones, and Meridian Lines?"
So the Bellman would cry: and the crew would reply
"They are merely conventional signs!

"Other maps are such shapes, with their islands and capes!
But we've got our brave Captain to thank
(So the crew would protest) "that he's bought us the best--
A perfect and absolute blank!"

This was charming, no doubt; but they shortly found out
That the Captain they trusted so well
Had only one notion for crossing the ocean,
And that was to tingle his bell.

He was thoughtful and grave--but the orders he gave
Were enough to bewilder a crew.
When he cried "Steer to starboard, but keep her head larboard!"
What on earth was the helmsman to do?

Then the bowsprit got mixed with the rudder sometimes:
A thing, as the Bellman remarked,
That frequently happens in tropical climes,
When a vessel is, so to speak, "Sarc Marked."

But the principal failing occurred in the sailing,
And the Bellman, perplexed and distressed,
Said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due East,
That the ship would not travel due West!

But the danger was past--they had landed at last,
With their boxes, portmanteaus, and bags:
Yet at first sight the crew were not pleased with the view,
Which consisted to chasms and crags.

The Bellman perceived that their spirits were low,
And repeated in musical tone
Some jokes he had kept for a season of woe--
But the crew would do nothing but groan.

He served out some grog with a liberal hand,
And bade them sit down on the beach:
And they could not but own that their Captain looked grand,
As he stood and delivered his speech.

"Friends, Romans, and countrymen, lend me your ears!"
(They were all of them fond of quotations:
So they drank to his health, and they gave him three cheers,
While he served out additional rations).

"We have sailed many months, we have sailed many weeks,
(Four weeks to the month you may mark),
But never as yet ('tis your Captain who speaks)
Have we caught the least glimpse of a Sarc Mark!

"We have sailed many weeks, we have sailed many days,
(Seven days to the week I allow),
But a Sarc Mark, on the which we might lovingly gaze,
We have never beheld till now!

"Come, listen, my men, while I tell you again
The five unmistakable marks
By which you may know, wheresoever you go,
The warranted genuine Sarc Marks.

"Let us take them in order. The first is the taste,
Which is meagre and hollow, but crisp:
Like a coat that is rather too tight in the waist,
With a flavour of Will-o-the-wisp.

"Its habit of getting up late you'll agree
That it carries too far, when I say
That it frequently breakfasts at five-o'clock tea,
And dines on the following day.

"The third is its slowness in taking a jest.
Should you happen to venture on one,
It will sigh like a thing that is deeply distressed:
And it always looks grave at a pun.

"The fourth is its fondness for bathing-machines,
Which is constantly carries about,
And believes that they add to the beauty of scenes--
A sentiment open to doubt.

"The fifth is ambition. It next will be right
To describe each particular batch:
Distinguishing those that have feathers, and bite,
From those that have whiskers, and scratch.

"For, although common Sarc Marks do no manner of harm,
Yet, I feel it my duty to say,
Some are Boojums--" The Bellman broke off in alarm,
For the Baker had fainted away.

Fit the Third.

THE BAKER'S TALE.

When at length he sat up and was able to speak,
His sad story he offered to tell;
And the Bellman cried "Silence! Not even a shriek!"
And excitedly tingled his bell.

There was silence supreme! Not a shriek, not a scream,
Scarcely even a howl or a groan,
As the man they called "Ho!" told his story of woe
In an antediluvian tone.

"My father and mother were honest, though poor--"
"Skip all that!" cried the Bellman in haste.
"If it once becomes dark, there's no chance of a Sarc Mark --
We have hardly a minute to waste!"

"I skip forty years," said the Baker, in tears,
"And proceed without further remark
To the day when you took me aboard of your ship
To help you in hunting the Sarc Mark.

"A dear uncle of mine (after whom I was named)
Remarked, when I bade him farewell--"
"Oh, skip your dear uncle!" the Bellman exclaimed,
As he angrily tingled his bell.

"He remarked to me then," said that mildest of men,
" 'If your Sarc Mark be a Sarc Mark, that is right:
Fetch it home by all means--you may serve it with greens,
And it's handy for striking a light.

" 'You may seek it with thimbles--and seek it with care;
You may hunt it with forks and hope;
You may threaten its life with a railway-share;
You may charm it with smiles and soap--' "

("That's exactly the method," the Bellman bold
In a hasty parenthesis cried,
"That's exactly the way I have always been told
That the capture of Sarc Marks should be tried!")

" 'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Sarc Mark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!'

"It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul,
When I think of my uncle's last words:
And my heart is like nothing so much as a bowl
Brimming over with quivering curds!

"It is this, it is this--" "We have had that before!"
The Bellman indignantly said.
And the Baker replied "Let me say it once more.
It is this, it is this that I dread!

"I engage with the Sarc Mark--every night after dark--
In a dreamy delirious fight:
I serve it with greens in those shadowy scenes,
And I use it for striking a light:

"But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day,
In a moment (of this I am sure),
I shall softly and suddenly vanish away--
And the notion I cannot endure!"

Fit the fourth.

THE HUNTING.

The Bellman looked uffish, and wrinkled his brow.
"If only you'd spoken before!
It's excessively awkward to mention it now,
With the Sarc Mark, so to speak, at the door!

"We should all of us grieve, as you well may believe,
If you never were met with again--
But surely, my man, when the voyage began,
You might have suggested it then?

"It's excessively awkward to mention it now--
As I think I've already remarked."
And the man they called "Hi!" replied, with a sigh,
"I informed you the day we embarked.

"You may charge me with murder--or want of sense--
(We are all of us weak at times):
But the slightest approach to a false pretence
Was never among my crimes!

"I said it in Hebrew--I said it in Dutch--
I said it in German and Greek:
But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much)
That English is what you speak!"

"'Tis a pitiful tale," said the Bellman, whose face
Had grown longer at every word:
"But, now that you've stated the whole of your case,
More debate would be simply absurd.

"The rest of my speech" (he explained to his men)
"You shall hear when I've leisure to speak it.
But the Sarc Mark is at hand, let me tell you again!
'Tis your glorious duty to seek it!

"To seek it with thimbles, to seek it with care;
To pursue it with forks and hope;
To threaten its life with a railway-share;
To charm it with smiles and soap!

"For the Sarc Mark's a peculiar creature, that won't
Be caught in a commonplace way.
Do all that you know, and try all that you don't:
Not a chance must be wasted to-day!

"For England expects--I forbear to proceed:
'Tis a maxim tremendous, but trite:
And you'd best be unpacking the things that you need
To rig yourselves out for the fight."

Then the Banker endorsed a blank check (which he crossed),
And changed his loose silver for notes.
The Baker with care combed his whiskers and hair,
And shook the dust out of his coats.

The Boots and the Broker were sharpening a spade--
Each working the grindstone in turn:
But the Beaver went on making lace, and displayed
No interest in the concern:

Though the Barrister tried to appeal to its pride,
And vainly proceeded to cite
A number of cases, in which making laces
Had been proved an infringement of right.

The maker of Bonnets ferociously planned
A novel arrangement of bows:
While the Billiard-marker with quivering hand
Was chalking the tip of his nose.

But the Butcher turned nervous, and dressed himself fine,
With yellow kid gloves and a ruff--
Said he felt it exactly like going to dine,
Which the Bellman declared was all "stuff."

"Introduce me, now there's a good fellow," he said,
"If we happen to meet it together!"
And the Bellman, sagaciously nodding his head,
Said "That must depend on the weather."

The Beaver went simply galumphing about,
At seeing the Butcher so shy:
And even the Baker, though stupid and stout,
Made an effort to wink with one eye.

"Be a man!" said the Bellman in wrath, as he heard
The Butcher beginning to sob.
"Should we meet with a Jubjub, that desperate bird,
We shall need all our strength for the job!"

Fit the Fifth.

THE BEAVER'S LESSON.

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

Then the Butcher contrived an ingenious plan
For making a separate sally;
And had fixed on a spot unfrequented by man,
A dismal and desolate valley.

But the very same plan to the Beaver occurred:
It had chosen the very same place:
Yet neither betrayed, by a sign or a word,
The disgust that appeared in his face.

Each thought he was thinking of nothing but "Sarc Mark"
And the glorious work of the day;
And each tried to pretend that he did not remark
That the other was going that way.

But the valley grew narrow and narrower still,
And the evening got darker and colder,
Till (merely from nervousness, not from goodwill)
They marched along shoulder to shoulder.

Then a scream, shrill and high, rent the shuddering sky,
And they knew that some danger was near:
The Beaver turned pale to the tip of its tail,
And even the Butcher felt queer.

He thought of his childhood, left far far behind--
That blissful and innocent state--
The sound so exactly recalled to his mind
A pencil that squeaks on a slate!

"'Tis the voice of the Jubjub!" he suddenly cried.
(This man, that they used to call "Dunce.")
"As the Bellman would tell you," he added with pride,
"I have uttered that sentiment once.

"'Tis the note of the Jubjub! Keep count, I entreat;
You will find I have told it you twice.
Tis the song of the Jubjub! The proof is complete,
If only I've stated it thrice."

The Beaver had counted with scrupulous care,
Attending to every word:
But it fairly lost heart, and outgrabe in despair,
When the third repetition occurred.

It felt that, in spite of all possible pains,
It had somehow contrived to lose count,
And the only thing now was to rack its poor brains
By reckoning up the amount.

"Two added to one--if that could but be done,"
It said, "with one's fingers and thumbs!"
Recollecting with tears how, in earlier years,
It had taken no pains with its sums.

"The thing can be done," said the Butcher, "I think.
The thing must be done, I am sure.
The thing shall be done! Bring me paper and ink,
The best there is time to procure."

The Beaver brought paper, portfolio, pens,
And ink in unfailing supplies:
While strange creepy creatures came out of their dens,
And watched them with wondering eyes.

So engrossed was the Butcher, he heeded them not,
As he wrote with a pen in each hand,
And explained all the while in a popular style
Which the Beaver could well understand.

"Taking Three as the subject to reason about--
A convenient number to state--
We add Seven, and Ten, and then multiply out
By One Thousand diminished by Eight.

"The result we proceed to divide, as you see,
By Nine Hundred and Ninety and Two:
Then subtract Seventeen, and the answer must be
Exactly and perfectly true.

"The method employed I would gladly explain,
While I have it so clear in my head,
If I had but the time and you had but the brain--
But much yet remains to be said.

"In one moment I've seen what has hitherto been
Enveloped in absolute mystery,
And without extra charge I will give you at large
A Lesson in Natural History."

In his genial way he proceeded to say
(Forgetting all laws of propriety,
And that giving instruction, without introduction,
Would have caused quite a thrill in Society),

"As to temper the Jubjub's a desperate bird,
Since it lives in perpetual passion:
Its taste in costume is entirely absurd--
It is ages ahead of the fashion:

"But it knows any friend it has met once before:
It never will look at a bride:
And in charity-meetings it stands at the door,
And collects--though it does not subscribe.

"Its flavour when cooked is more exquisite far
Than mutton, or oysters, or eggs:
(Some think it keeps best in an ivory jar,
And some, in mahogany kegs:)

"You boil it in sawdust: you salt it in glue:
You condense it with locusts and tape:
Still keeping one principal object in view--
To preserve its symmetrical shape."

The Butcher would gladly have talked till next day,
But he felt that the Lesson must end,
And he wept with delight in attempting to say
He considered the Beaver his friend.

While the Beaver confessed, with affectionate looks
More eloquent even than tears,
It had learned in ten minutes far more than all books
Would have taught it in seventy years.

They returned hand-in-hand, and the Bellman, unmanned
(For a moment) with noble emotion,
Said "This amply repays all the wearisome days
We have spent on the billowy ocean!"

Such friends, as the Beaver and Butcher became,
Have seldom if ever been known;
In winter or summer, 'twas always the same--
You could never meet either alone.

And when quarrels arose--as one frequently finds
Quarrels will, spite of every endeavour--
The song of the Jubjub recurred to their minds,
And cemented their friendship for ever!

Fit the Sixth.

The Barrister's Dream.

THE BARRISTER'S DREAM.

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

But the Barrister, weary of proving in vain
That the Beaver's lace-making was wrong,
Fell asleep, and in dreams saw the creature quite plain
That his fancy had dwelt on so long.

He dreamed that he stood in a shadowy Court,
Where the Sarc Mark, with a glass in its eye,
Dressed in gown, bands, and wig, was defending a pig
On the charge of deserting its sty.

The Witnesses proved, without error or flaw,
That the sty was deserted when found:
And the Judge kept explaining the state of the law
In a soft under-current of sound.

The indictment had never been clearly expressed,
And it seemed that the Sarc Mark had begun,
And had spoken three hours, before any one guessed
What the pig was supposed to have done.

The Jury had each formed a different view
(Long before the indictment was read),
And they all spoke at once, so that none of them knew
One word that the others had said.

"You must know ---" said the Judge: but the Sarc Mark exclaimed "Fudge!"
That statute is obsolete quite!
Let me tell you, my friends, the whole question depends
On an ancient manorial right.

"In the matter of Treason the pig would appear
To have aided, but scarcely abetted:
While the charge of Insolvency fails, it is clear,
If you grant the plea 'never indebted.'

"The fact of Desertion I will not dispute;
But its guilt, as I trust, is removed
(So far as relates to the costs of this suit)
By the Alibi which has been proved.

"My poor client's fate now depends on your votes."
Here the speaker sat down in his place,
And directed the Judge to refer to his notes
And briefly to sum up the case.

But the Judge said he never had summed up before;
So the Sarc Mark undertook it instead,
And summed it so well that it came to far more
Than the Witnesses ever had said!

When the verdict was called for, the Jury declined,
As the word was so puzzling to spell;
But they ventured to hope that the Sarc Mark wouldn't mind
Undertaking that duty as well.

So the Sarc Mark found the verdict, although, as it owned,
It was spent with the toils of the day:
When it said the word "GUILTY!" the Jury all groaned,
And some of them fainted away.

Then the Sarc Mark pronounced sentence, the Judge being quite
Too nervous to utter a word:
When it rose to its feet, there was silence like night,
And the fall of a pin might be heard.

"Transportation for life" was the sentence it gave,
"And then to be fined forty pound."
The Jury all cheered, though the Judge said he feared
That the phrase was not legally sound.

But their wild exultation was suddenly checked
When the jailer informed them, with tears,
Such a sentence would have not the slightest effect,
As the pig had been dead for some years.

The Judge left the Court, looking deeply disgusted:
But the Sarc Mark, though a little aghast,
As the lawyer to whom the defence was intrusted,
Went bellowing on to the last.

Thus the Barrister dreamed, while the bellowing seemed
To grow every moment more clear:
Till he woke to the knell of a furious bell,
Which the Bellman rang close at his ear.

Fit the Seventh.

THE BANKER'S FATE.

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

And the Banker, inspired with a courage so new
It was matter for general remark,
Rushed madly ahead and was lost to their view
In his zeal to discover the Sarc Mark

But while he was seeking with thimbles and care,
A Bandersnatch swiftly drew nigh
And grabbed at the Banker, who shrieked in despair,
For he knew it was useless to fly.

He offered large discount--he offered a cheque
(Drawn "to bearer") for seven-pounds-ten:
But the Bandersnatch merely extended its neck
And grabbed at the Banker again.

Without rest or pause--while those frumious jaws
Went savagely snapping around--
He skipped and he hopped, and he floundered and flopped,
Till fainting he fell to the ground.

The Bandersnatch fled as the others appeared
Led on by that fear-stricken yell:
And the Bellman remarked "It is just as I feared!"
And solemnly tolled on his bell.

He was black in the face, and they scarcely could trace
The least likeness to what he had been:
While so great was his fright that his waistcoat turned white--
A wonderful thing to be seen!

To the horror of all who were present that day,
He uprose in full evening dress,
And with senseless grimaces endeavoured to say
What his tongue could no longer express.

Down he sank in a chair--ran his hands through his hair--
And chanted in mimsiest tones
Words whose utter inanity proved his insanity,
While he rattled a couple of bones.

"Leave him here to his fate--it is getting so late!"
The Bellman exclaimed in a fright.
"We have lost half the day. Any further delay,
And we sha'nt catch a Sarc Mark before night!"

Fit the Eighth.

THE VANISHING.

They sought it with thimbles, they sought it with care;
They pursued it with forks and hope;
They threatened its life with a railway-share;
They charmed it with smiles and soap.

They shuddered to think that the chase might fail,
And the Beaver, excited at last,
Went bounding along on the tip of its tail,
For the daylight was nearly past.

"There is Thingumbob shouting!" the Bellman said,
"He is shouting like mad, only hark!
He is waving his hands, he is wagging his head,
He has certainly found a Sarc Mark!"

They gazed in delight, while the Butcher exclaimed
"He was always a desperate wag!"
They beheld him--their Baker--their hero unnamed--
On the top of a neighbouring crag,

Erect and sublime, for one moment of time
In the next, that wild figure they saw
(As if stung by a spasm) plunge into a chasm,
While they waited and listened in awe.

"It's a Sarc Mark!" was the sound that first came to their ears,
And seemed almost too good to be true.
Then followed a torrent of laughter and cheers:
Then the ominous words "It's a Boo-"

Then, silence. Some fancied they heard in the air
A weary and wandering sigh
Then sounded like "-jum!" but the others declare
It was only a breeze that went by.

They hunted till darkness came on, but they found
Not a button, or feather, or mark,
By which they could tell that they stood on the ground
Where the Baker had met with the Sarc Mark .

In the midst of the word he was trying to say,
In the midst of his laughter and glee,
He had softly and suddenly vanished away---
For the Sarc Mark was a Boojum, you see.

THE END.

(An absolute bargain at just £1.20 [$1.99])

(Did I tell you, about 25 generations ago, one of my direct ancestors (a scribe in ancient Egypt - complete serendipity - a slip of the chisel) invented the Full Stop?
Now - let me see . . . £$£$£$£$ . . .)

Some previous attempts at expanding our arsenal of punctuation.

The Zeitgeist Movement

2008-10-09T22:38:00.035+01:00

Who are Zeitgeist Movement?
If it did not exist, would we need to invent such a movement?
Do the times we live in require an organised solution?

Picture courtesy The Venus Project

I have just spent a couple of hours watching a film that was linked to me by a friend.

It's called Zeitgeist:Addendum and is available to watch here.
It is a sequel to the film Zeitgeist, released in June 2007 - available to watch here.

Certainly many, if not all, of the issues raised in the film are of monumentous implication - and appear to be the unspoken voice of many of our concerns today.
Becoming more relevant as each day passes.
As such, the title of the film - Zeitgeist - the spirit of the times - is most appropriate.

I urge you to watch both films for yourself.

It is easy to create a convincing media presentation when allowed, uninterrupted by alternative views, to present a stream of thought and ideas which appear to point to an obvious solution.
However, we live in a world of constant bombardment from advertising hype and spin, representing commercial or political interests - perhaps we are wise to this effect.
How much is the Internet similar to the Emperor's New Clothes - in terms of how easy it is to peddle ideals?

In the context of the Internet, where freedom of opinion is rightly guarded as paramount, this enables people to present their own answers or responses.
As such, I have noticed a growing amount of material - in some way denouncing or demeaning the value of the proposals and ideas contained within the Zeitgeist movie.
I cannot really understand any diametrically opposed views to those presented by the film, or see any merit in labelling the Zeitgeist Movement (whatever that is) as just another separatist movement, amongst all the alternatives. That is surely a perception that is at odds with the very ideas the film is putting before us?

However, I consider this liberty an extremely healthy state of affairs - and I am certain that the substance of the film is adequately robust and profound to stand on its own - and provide a stirring stimulus to any debate or further discussion.

Without appearing to be in any way negative to the overall thrust of the ideas - realising that ultimately, it is completely a matter for individual awareness, individual action or inaction - considering that we are all held in the vice of monetarism - and that social evolution, in the past, has seemed to be laboriously slow - the question which I would most urgently raise is - although it is obviously the first vital stage in the process of transformation, the achieving, through individuals, a critical mass of consciousness - doesn't the scale required to achieve such transformation and the historical uniqueness, the radical nature of the fundamental principle changes involved - find humanity reaching out with their hopes into completely uncharted territory?
There is probably no such precedent - this is pure creativity - the power of imagination.
But then - what isn't?

Picture courtesy archiedu.com

To most minds, I am sure, the appeal of this transformation and the urgent need for the gradual replacement of the old model is instinctive - they appear to be evolutional necessities.

Is it possible to convince an already distrustful society to grant responsibility and authority, in sufficient quantity, to any movement - to any "corporation" - for the coordination of acheiving such a radical change?
Does such radical change itself need coordination?
Surely it will be another process of transformation - slow rather than sudden - dependent on the gradual increased consciousness of the planet?
Is it possible to hasten this process, to cultivate it inside a greenhouse?
What is the mechanism, the practical reality of such a process?

As such, can there be any possible tangible reality to such a movement as Zietgeist Movement?
Can it really have any teeth?
Is all of humanity the men and women behind this curtain?
Can a "corporate identity" achieve a lasting social transformation over and above the usual natural evolution?
Are we living in such times that require this?
Is this a very part of that natural evolution, now we have the tools to raise awareness, globally, via the Internet?

But I concede to one of the most alarming points in the film, that perhaps an invisible "corporate identity" already has achieved a transformation - to our detriment - but that is sinister and rather conspiratorial - and carries more than a hint of electing a scapegoat for something in which we all share the responsibility. I find it hard to believe - but certainly not impossible - that we have been hijacked into an ignorant and deliberate "slavery" by the monitarists of this world.
Yet the film was definitely extremely convincing.

Picture courtesy ifassted.org

The future awaits - with answers to these questions.
I would welcome any serious analysis of this.

I do not wish to undermine the efforts of anyone contributing to the growth of human awareness - and thus encouraging the way to reductions of poverty, inequality and famine - eventually to their elimination.

Please do not view my commentary here as negative in any way, it is purely to stimulate discussion, to open the subject up to continued debate and understanding.

See Collectivism & Individualism @ Wikepedia.

See also all these forms of government listed.

Direct democracy

Representative democracy

Military dictatorship

Absolute monarchy

Constitutional monarchy

Mixed government

Constitutional republic

Parliamentary republic

Socialist republic

Capitalist republic

Chiefdom

Zeitgeist.com

Can we come up with something new? Something that works?

Where do politics (government) and spiritual truths meet?

Please leave your comments - they are most welcome.

Namaste.

TALL STORIES

2008-08-22T19:13:00.000+01:00

TRELLICK TOWER

(Photograph courtesy of London Open House)

Whenever I come across photographs of this groundbreaking building - a host of memories come flooding back.
I lived there for about a year in the 1970's - in fact the family I lived with must have been some of the very first occupants - as the building was completed in 1972.

See the balcony right at the top, in the left hand corner - that was their apartment - quite a spacious two bedroomed flat.
I shared one bedroom with the girl I was dating at the time.

Birds of prey, falcons or hawks, would build their nests up on the roof, immediately above us. Often we would see the beautiful creatures either balancing themselves in the strong turbulant air up there, as they prepared to land with food for their young - or on hotter days floating effortlessly on a warm thermal current, right outside the living room window.

I used to take advantage of the currents of air myself, flying home made kites from the balcony. I devised a system to bring snow to London, whatever the weather.
Well - not real snow of course.
My kites were simply plastic carrier bags with their handles tied in a "Y" to a long reel of strong black thread.
I would fill the bags with tiny pieces of torn up paper and set the whole thing firmly adrift in the strong gusts of wind - up, up ever higher and further away it would be carried - until it was no more than a distant speck in the sky.
At any random moment, completely at the mercy of the fickle movement of the air, it would spill its cargo of snow - in a rapidly expanding, flickering cloud that slowly dispersed on its way to the ground.

(Photograph courtesy of keller.co.uk)

The view from up there was simply astonishing.
From London town the southern horizon on a clear day was the North Downs - over sixty miles away.
We could see the snaking M4 motorway stretching all the way back to Heathrow airport, to where the sky was full of arriving planes, entering their stacking and holding patterns before landing.
From the bedroom I shared, the view was to the north. Immediately below us was the Grand Union Canal, with its occasional traffic of narrow boats and barges. A long silvery scar weaving its course eventually all the way to Birmingham, although we could not see quite that far.
In the August of that year we had a wonderful birdseye view of the Notting Hill carnival, which would boom out its powerful reggae bass from almost every street corner, well into the night. The colourful and highly animated spectacle of the carnival procession was an absolute delight to watch from the lofty comfort of the balcony, sipping a cold drink, basking in the hot sun.
This was the long, hot summer of 1976.

(Photograph courtesy of londontown.com)

It was a fascinating area to live in, even on ground level - Ladbroke Grove, Portobello Road, with all the mystique of the mid seventies - the wholefood shops, shops filled with the heady aroma of incense sticks, arousing the curiosity with books and pictures, brass trinkets and statues - all the paraphernalia of eastern religions, antique shops, market stalls - an inviting, irresistible cornucopia that could absorb many hours, before retreating back to our own little nest in the sky.

Ears would occasionally pop slightly when ascending in the lift - we were thirty one floors up - exiting the lift tower itself we would cross the gantries that took us across to the accomodation.
Most days there was enough wind for us to notice the building swaying perceptibly - especially standing in those gantries.
They were joined to the main building with some kind of sliding plates which allowed for the movement caused by the wind.
The buildings were designed to have this considerable flexibility - which was slightly unnerving at first experience - and about which I still have the occasional strange dream.
A sort of Towering Inferno, without the flames.
I recall that thankfully, the lifts were seldom out of order - forcing us to use the stairs.

(Photograph courtesy of open2.net)

The lift hall itself, up there on the thirty first floor brings back the memory of my very first day. Some youths were larking about up there and had managed to smash one of the narrow windows in the lift tower.
Concerned that falling glass might present an unwelcomed rain on those below, I set about removing the loose pieces from the window frame.
It was the sort of mottled, reinforced glass that has embedded in it a mesh of fine wire.
It had to happen - a stubborn piece - narrow window frame - hand slips off and my knuckle gets gashed by the jagged edges on the opposite side of the frame.
It looked rather serious - copious bleeding.
As a pianist, I regarded this with great concern.
I still had my bags, there was no one at home to welcome me yet - I'd arrived around noon - earlier than expected.

A short walk to the local hospital and I am informed that I have cut through the tendon of the middle finger in my left hand - it's going to need surgery.
The staff are very appreciative of my concerns and arrange for physiotherapy after the wound had suitably healed.

So a few weeks later I attended my first session - during which it was decided that the best therapy for me would be to play the piano - and they offered me the use of one, right there in the hospital.
Fantastic, what could be better than that, I thought.

I shall never forget the looks on the faces that would often appear round the door, attracted there by the sound of music, from the neighbouring psychiatric ward.
A wonderful assortment of smiles.

That year I found some temporary work in a take away food restaurant.
Very soon I was slaving and sweltering away, late into the summer evenings, cooking a variety of simple meals in the incredibly hot kitchen, or serving the customers by the relative coolness of the restaurant's open doorway.
I remember the radio playing and filling the warm air with the lusciously thick harmony of 10cc's "I'm Not In Love."
The local area was quite a melting pot - all colours and creeds, some of whom still had the manners and habits of their homelands.
I can remember, foolishly, but politely informing a young West Indian lad that he would not be served before all the other waiting customers, merely because he had swaggered to the head of the queue demanding something from the large refrigerated glass sandwich display counter, from behind which I was serving.
His response to this was to walk outside the shop, arm himself with an empty milk bottle from the crate on the pavement, and hurl it with great force into the glass counter.
Needless to say, this caused the place to empty rather quickly - and I was soon alone clearing up the mess.

I think I left soon after this incident and found work in a famous music store in the Charing Cross Road.
Unfortunately - after returning to the shop the morning after a bank holiday weekend - I had only been there a week - I arrived to find the gutters in the road streaming with water and one or two fire appliances parked outside the building.
The famous music store had caught fire during the previous night.
The next few months were spent shifting the salvaged stock to a new premises.

Indeed, what a host of memories that picture brings to my mind.

(Photograph courtesy of galinsky.com)

But something happened to me, one summer evening, sat up there on the balcony, gazing down. Mesmerised by a flock of pigeons - in a synchronised display of ariel mastery - all turning as one - perfectly co-ordinated - banking up and swooping down - beating their wings together - then gliding - for no reason, it seemed, other than for the sheer delight and exhilaration - the glorious freedom of flying.
It was so wonderfully playful and joyful - and captivated my attention - watching these birds, with a birdseye view.

Then my focus shifted - looking through the flight of pigeons - down to the rusty brown railway lines above which they circled - and down to the streets below. I saw what appeared to me now as a contrasting disarray - a milling throng of pedestrians - skuttling, bustling - every which way - self absorbed in their own urgency - a sight that revealed to me symbolically, yet very profoundly - a lack of direction.
A race apart, with no commonly acknowledged purpose or destination - did we really have any idea where we were going?
I was suddenly moved to tears - an explosion of sorrow and sadness overwhelmed me - and yet at the same time here was a vision of hope for the future.
Those moments up there held a secret indocrination for me - I received a gently whispered instruction - to guide me for the remainder of my life.

(Photograph courtesy of hawar-islands.com)

Bloggus Septimius. 1 - Introduction

2008-08-09T08:34:00.000+01:00

We find our unlikely hero languidly supine upon damp, hard cobblestones that form the cold floor of a cell, set within walls of impenetrable thickness, isolating the prisoners captive in this Roman jail from their liberty.
Instead of the blossom-fragrant air blown in from the surrounding countryside, laced on many days with just a hint of the not too distant ocean - they breath the putrid, re-cycled odour of the unwashed, the stench of a dozen men and their calls of nature.

A little sunlight casts a long beam from a small iron barred opening, roughly square in proportion, let into one of the stone walls. Too high in position to afford a tempting view of the free citizenry that might hasten remorse, for only slightly more than their unshackled, sandal strapped ankles could be seen shuffling by. But the light streams in like a followspot and paints a tapering, golden streak through the thick atmosphere, heavy with bodily generated steam and lends a glistening to the perspiration soaked faces. All darkened with stubble or obscured by beards - living calendars of their owners' incarceration.

The year, although unbeknown to those that lived at this time, is 30 AD.
Very soon a force of light would spread around the world changing it forever and people will come to associate the Roman Empire in this context.
But as it was then, the Empire was aspiring to heights of glory and a power unsurpassed in history.

The Emperor at this particular time is Tiberius, or Tiberius Caesar Augustus, to give him the honour due.

Our hero - Bloggus Menenia Aggrippa Septimius - the seventh son of Servius Menenia Aggrippa Balba.

Servius owned a bakery, of sufficient quality to earn the patronage of the Emperor himself - such an assured and prosperous business that he was able to build a home for his family on Palatine Hill. With its views, on the one side across to the Forum and on the other - over the vacant valley in which the great Colosseum was to be built in approximately forty or so years, this was good living indeed.

It was amongst these pine clad suburbs where Bloggus enjoyed his youth, his early romances - and where he learned of the curse which would haunt his life. This was where he spent his years of teenage curiosity, before his father had compelled him to accept a short term of enlistment as a Legionari.

Partly as a small favour bestowed upon Servius for his delicious bread and pastries, there came a tacet promise from those close to the Emperor, that Bloggus could soon receive promotion to become a Centurion.
In his father's eyes, Bloggus was a dreamer, a waster - above all then, this was a way to get his lovelorn son and the smell of adolescent testosterone - out from under his feet - and from under his proud, Roman nose.

For the unfortunate curse that afflicted and embarrassed poor Bloggus, from the night of his first adult dreams, was that of premature and often uninvited ejaculation - sometimes, purely at the sight of a pretty young thing.
Poor Bloggus, derision and mockery were his lot in life, alongside the unmistakable odour that would betray his secret and all too often, bring to an abrupt and untimely end, his efforts to find the maiden of his dreams. (Continued in Chapter II)

Bloggus Septimius. 2 - His Downfall.

2008-08-08T12:08:00.000+01:00

Poor, daydreaming Bloggus was awoken from his distant reveries by the sharp slap of sandal leather descending the staircase that approached his dismal, subterranean prison - and the steely, metalic ringing of weaponry and iron clad tunics that heralded the arrival of the daily food.

Always precisely timed to a clatter of hooves and flickers of light caused by the slowly accelerating wheels passing by the window up above as the bakery cart resumed its long morning round of deliveries - the lock in the heavy, oak door would be turned and the whole of its ill-fitting, studded mass would be shouldered into scraping and grating across the cobbled floor - to contemptuous shouts of "By the Emperor's pleasure, he's decided to feed you today - move away from the door!"

At which the imprisoned would drag their shackles across the floor and form a ragged, restless and hungry line against the wall opposite to the door.
The wall alongside which Bloggus currently reclines - soon to be pressed upon, brushed against by foul smelling backsides and a few feculent thighs.

A wickerwork basket would then be slid clumsily across the uneven floor, with just enough force to clear the doorway itself and spill its contents about.
The door would finally be slammed shut and locked again, but generally this went unnoticed as starvation had transformed an already sorry crowd into a pack of animals, fighting and clawing at the ground and at each other, to secure as much for themselves as was possible. Stuffing great chunks of the bread, together with stems from the straw that was scattered over the floor, in between their yellowed and decaying teeth - with snorts, coughs and choking on greed.
Bread - ironically - that had been baked by Servius, Bloggus's father, that very morning - having risen long before dawn.

The memories of which flooded in to poor Bloggus's mind every day at this hour, cruelly increasing the torment of his captivity.
The other prisoners knew of this, so Bloggus himself rarely had to join the unseemly scrum for food. One of his cell mates would begrudgingly hurl one of the loaves, or at least a large portion of a loaf, directly at Bloggus - there is some honour among thieves.

Why was he here, our hero? What was his crime?

This being a time of what was loosely termed peace (ignoring the murderous treatment received by insurgent tribes bordering the vast swathes of the Empire) the Roman Army was put to service on all manner of infrastructural work. Perhaps supervising the construction of state buildings, or the compilation of maps (a thankless task in itself, as the extent of the Empire was forever expanding, requiring that these painstaking and detailed documents had to be redrawn far too often.)

And of course, another of the regular peacetime duties was the building of roads, extending the growing network that was usually augmented by the Legions while at war, as a means to get themselves and their equipment to a new battle site. It is a skill that the Romans are justly celebrated for, but it was in connection with the building of roads that led to Bloggus's first assignment as Centurion - and which led to his downfall.

The current phase of building, now concluded by the completion of a coastal road all the way South to Napoli, was the latest proud offering of its architect Marcus Claudius Caecus. Before the grand tour which would officially bring this latest phase into recognition, by deserving the blessings of the Emperor himself, Caecus had a brainwave.

Now it is easy today to scorn the simplicity of what for us is rather obvious and everyday, but in common with all manner of things, they had to be invented at some time or other.
Marcus Claudius Caecus had invented the signpost.

Despite your undoubted disappointment in this mundane fact, it nevertheless did involve much logistics and organisation to put his idea into practice. Not only upon the roads and junctions that
formed this new phase of building, but upon roads and junctions previously created, that lay within a limited radius of the capital itself - which hitherto, had been unsigned and required a great deal of guesswork or previous knowledge from the traveller.

Bloggus Septimius was elated with pride as he heard news of his election to be in charge of this task. He personally designed the look of the new signpost and studied the suitability of many
combinations of materials to be used in its construction.

Accompanied by twenty or so men from his Century, equipped with carts, materials, tools, food and wine for man, food and water for horses, he set off on his maiden commission, certain that upon completion, success would redeem not only his self esteem but his sagging reputation, both amongst his peers and within his family. He was in sole charge - and his word now carried the authority of the Emperor - with a determination to set an example of strength, wisdom and intelligence - to make his mark as a leader at the head of these men, a portion of his new command for which he had now been promoted to the rank of Primus Pilus.

Poor Bloggus, always ahead of his time - always out of synchronisation with the ides. He had consulted no one, he had thought that it would please the Emperor, by appealing to his sense of pride.
After all, it was a commonly used phrase - All Roads Lead to Rome. But the chaos that ensued on the grand tour, the utter embarrassment brought upon Marcus Claudius Caecus by finding themselves hopelessly lost and bewildered by the plethora of roadsigns - each one of them proclaiming "To Rome" but pointing in every conceivable direction - the confusion wraught upon that multitude of Senators, Statesmen, the Emperor's household, the cavalry, the carriages and Tiberius Caesar Augustus himself - ensured that they found a scapegoat in our poor hero.
When Rome was eventually rediscovered, Bloggus was immediately escorted to the jail.

COUNTER-CULTURE

2008-08-04T06:29:00.006+01:00

Please do not propagate my mediocrity,
Resist the artificial hastening
Of my fifteen minutes of fame,
Do not digg my daily dalliances,
Stumble not upon my Stygian stupidities,
And I shall avoid the agar of optimisation
Lest my uncultured concerns become a plague.

Already severely pruned
To bonsai proportions
By living's stealthy ransoms,
I am quite familiar and content
That only ants and beetles
May benefit from
My reduced capacity
For shelter and shade.

Besides, is there really
Infinite room for expansion?
A never ending dilution
Of my essence.

Photo courtesy Bonsai-trees-biz

I have finally understood - the penny has at last dropped - gee, I'm so slow.
Nobody told me - the secret was well concealed, but through exploration, discovery and deep thought, I now see the light.

Blogging actually has a purpose, a mission to fulfil, it is the critical part of the social jigsaw, that up until recently has been missing. A large, vacuous gape - waiting to be filled.

I kick myself for not realising all this before, but here I share with you my valuable insight.

* Like a road that doesn't actually lead anywhere, the important thing is to have traffic. Traffic that constantly circulates, traffic that is searching, enquiring, never settling for long, but just enough to leave a trace of a visit, a calling card.

* The first thing to start writing about is how to increase this traffic. There are so many secrets, well - I should say they were secrets - what readers want is not substance, but simply knowledge of ways to increase traffic. So it stands to reason that to reveal these secrets will attract traffic. Write posts all about keywords, anchor text, contests, SEO, page-ranking, linking, back-linking, 3 way linking, bloggers' social communities, the annual Bloggers' Ball - learn all about leaving comments, leaving shouts, widgets, blogrolls - that's the stuff we want to know about.

* Earning money from traffic is the goal - so to increase the variety of posts on your site even more why not allow yourself to become an extension of the already ubiquitous blight of consumerism, by writing advertising copy.
If you can't write it yourself you can even purchase generic appraisals which simply need some minor modification (copy/paste) to suit the particular product or service that you have chosen to support. You don't even have to think, or in fact have any genuine interest at all - make it up. Why not, in fact, become a catalogue, a cyber-mall, a hoarding - if it earns you some cash.

* Learn the art of concealing tripe behind hype. It's those keywords - the sound bites - that will hint of the gold at the end of the rainbow. As long as you get a visit - job done.

* You are now an integral part of the cogs and wheels of consumerism. But as they whir and spin, they spit out dollars at you - why should you worry.
There's infinite room in cyberworld - what difference does it make.
Your avatar, your username, may achieve a fame that you personally could only dream of.

If blogging held any merit, any promise - I fear it is gradually being dissolved away by the acidic drips of need & greed - so blatant that it reveals itself around every corner.

It lends it a bitter taste - that hints at nobody having anything to say - and that they are only writing at all to gain traffic.
Isn't this some sort of infernal, self serving, pointless cycle going on here?

It reminds me of the story of the life cycle of a particular variety of grass.
The seedlings had to be protected from direct sunlight and needed covering with a matting, suspended over them as they sprouted and grew.
On reaching maturity, the grass was harvested, threshed - and woven into matting - to cover the young seedlings as they grew.

If you have enjoyed this article - and even if you haven't - Frigg it, Sprigg it, TripOver it, SlinkBack it, Blogroll it, TechnoSmarty it - and visit our sponsor and read more of the same.

WHO KNOWS?

2008-08-03T06:12:00.005+01:00

Have you ever lain on the ground, it's a beautiful, cloudless summer day - and instead of looking up at the sky - just for a moment, imagine that you are looking down at it . . .

We spend the majority of our time with our individual awareness focused on the world that appears outside of us.
We receive information through our sense organs, eyes, ears, our sense of touch, sense of smell etc.
The picture we have built of the world in our minds even makes its presence known during dreaming, so steeped are we in that particular sphere of existence.

This world reaches out from the surface of our bodies into the infinity of outer space.
However, infinity, if you think about it, as well as stretching out to the infinitely large, must also stretch the other way, to the infinitely small, the microcosmic, the subatomic.
Into the world of energy.

We can explore that world and the only instrument that we need for our journey into inner space is a Human Body.
In order for us to discover about our inner world we need to experience it for ourselves.
In this context, experience is the only means of gaining real knowledge about ourselves.
To experience is to know.

I could describe to you the taste of ice cream, but unless you had tasted it for yourself, the words I used would be meaningless - and a very poor substitute for the delicious taste.

So this inner world is explored, using our awareness, by turning it within.
Instead of being saturated with the exterior world, we start to tune our senses in to what's going on inside ourselves.

Documented evidence exists on this subject reaching back to really early civilisations.
Some, no doubt, disputed by science.
Science generally requires quantifiable proof before anything is regarded as being true, but as we've discussed, the only quantifiable proof with regard to experience, is experience itself.
It's impossible to allow someone or something else to share an actual experience, so a lot of this subjective reality stuff is unfortunately dismissed as mumbo-jumbo by the scientific community.

I have noticed that there seems to be a major division of thought in one area particularly.
The area of consciousness, or awareness.
Not in the general sense but in the precise nature of its existence.

Some tend to lean in the direction of consciousness evolving over time, parallel to the evolution,
the development of the human mechanism, the brain, central nervous system etc. and that it only exists as a direct result of these mechanisms.
Others share a belief that consciousness is a subtle form of energy and that it has always existed.

Strange that we are divided about something so close to us all.
Something that is the key to everything we think or do.
Something, without which, we wouldn't even be aware that we were here at all.

So what do you think?
Do you think that awareness, that ineffable quality of knowingness, that which is so personal to us in everything we do, that sense of self, of "I-am-ness", do you think that it is just an accidental occurrence resulting from having sense organs and a brain?
Something which is evident in every life form, from the simple cell, through the insect world,
plants even, right up the ladder of evolution.
Can something as profound as consciousness just evolve?

Just think of the idea of consciousness.
Consciousness as a concept.
How incredibly bizarre it is.
The ability to know, to feel a whole spectrum of different things, from colours, tastes, sounds, emotions, thoughts.
All the time, these phenomena only exist because we know that we are experiencing them.
Irrespective of the meaning we attribute to these phenomena, they surely do exist.
Or are we dreaming it all?
But we are aware of the dream as well.

I propose a different hypothesis.
That consciousness has been imbued into the very essence of the universe since whenever it was that it started.
That consciousness is the most subtle form of energy.
It cannot be created, cannot be destroyed and that it dwells at the heart of every nucleus of every atom.
It is every where at once, is all knowing.
It lives in the quantum world, if you like.

Now, I know nothing of quantum maths or physics, but the little I have gleaned on these subjects certainly doesn't contradict the hypothesis.
But I suggest that science will never be able to discover consciousness because it is only accessible to consciousness itself, being infinitely subtle.
The only way to "discover" consciousness is to be it and for it to experience itself.

Consider this.
The only value judgements that we make are relative.
That is, we can only value something, or give it a measurement in relation to something else.
We have no idea whatsoever how large or small the universe is because the only values used, be they light years, miles or inches, are only a set of relative values that we have invented purely for convenience.
Likewise, neither have we any real notion of how old the universe is.

Is up really up, or could it be down?
There is no such thing as an absolute value.
Consciousness is the only thing that is absolute.

To be being is to know being.
To know being is to be being.
It is at one with itself.
It is beyond duality.
Beyond question, beyond words.
It is never absent.

THE GOLDEN RULE

2008-08-02T07:04:00.000+01:00

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE

SHADES OF EUPHEMY

2008-07-19T02:07:00.002+01:00

Words are a type of currency - tokens.
With the spoken or written word we engage in an exchange - communication - whereby the currency we use transfers its real value.
The real worth of words is in the ideas that they carry - single words or many words in combination - and they can only be "cashed in" so to speak, when received into understanding.

A question I often ask of multi-linguistic friends is "What language do you dream in?"
As a musician I often have dreams which have a musical soundtrack. I wonder whether visual artists have dreams that are breathtakingly colourful, full of sculptured shapes and wonderful symmetry.

Picture courtesy luminous-landscape.com

We obviously have many occasions which require us to communicate our ideas and I don't think it too simplistic to say that these occasions arise from some sort of need.
We are motivated by the need - which results in our communication.

But what are these ideas themselves?
What is the language of ideas?
Surely much more than strings of words?
I agree that words are what we use to help formulate our ideas, but are they involved, directly in the ideas arising, are words used at their very birth?

Would language have developed if we had the ability to communicate directly, efficiently with thought alone?
Would we still find it necessary to employ words?
Could we bypass the exchanging of tokens representing our concepts, our ideas - by exchanging the ideas themselves?
Would we miss the delights of sarcasm or the disguise of euphemy?

We feel that we are engaged directly with the world, through our senses, because that is the only world we have ever known.
But in reality, the world communicates itself to us via the tokens that are accepted by our senses - eyes respond to light - ears to variations of air pressure - our sense of smell to chemistry - but it is all fundamentally a sea of differing energies.

We accept those tokens, but we never cash them in - we use those colours, sounds, smells - all sensations, to formulate the world in our understanding.
We cannot cash them in - for we have no further understanding to receive them with.
The world, reality, in our mental reconstruction of it is stagnated - is permanently frozen in the state that it encroaches into our minds through the gateways of our senses.

We need one further step in our understanding.
The final step - how do these sensations register themselves upon our awareness, our consciousness?
Would it surprise you to know that darkness is not dark at all - where do the colours of your dreams come from?
What we consider to be silence is full of subtle sounds - where does the music in my dream originate?

I shall not venture too far into the contentious ground of discussing consciousness itself.
Surfice it to say that I believe that the very idea of consciousness, the amusingly original, totally unique concept of self awareness, is so mind-stretchingly profound - I do not entertain for one moment that it is no more than an accessory, a side effect of the universe.
That in itself is to me ludicrous.

To me - it was the essential idea behind creation.
It is of such profundity, that nothing could ever make any sense at all without it.
Does there have to be a point to everything?
Is that not simply a human reaction?
Yes - it is.
But without consciousness there would be no reaction at all - from anywhere.
The universe would be dead - lifeless - merely full of automata.

All life displays consciousness - but the awareness of its surroundings depends on the sophistication of the specific equipment with which it can interface with these surroundings - and obviously can only demonstrate or display its consciousness with the limited means at its disposal - a cell, for instance, with only limited mobility, still exhibits that it is conscious.
All evolution has secretly been guided by it.

But who is to say that water is not conscious?
Certainly, some ancient cultures believed that rivers and streams had a spirit.

Picture courtesy BBC

I believe most strongly, that consciousness is the most subtle form of energy.
That it permeates everything.
How else could it be conscious, aware of its own awareness, if it were not the most subtle energy?
Whether we like it or not, or even respect this fact, it is the most central issue of our lives - for without it - there would be nothing.
Our lives would be disappointingly blank.

So - how do sensations register themselves upon this consciousness?

Well, the colours in the mind, the music in my dreams are other forms of energy - yes - subtle forms - but energy nonetheless.
We've all heard of synapses and nerves transmitting messages to the brain.
It's all energy.

I'm not going to suggest that the brain is the seat of the mind - but certainly the mind is what we are aware of from the inside.
The mind is where our consciousness interfaces with ideas, thoughts and sensations - it is where we try to understand our world.
Our consciousness is where we have that feeling of knowing, ourselves and our ideas.

In a way, we allow a kind of euphemy to beguile us, perhaps we are hardwired to be gentle on our egos.
What if we realised that we, and all things around and about us, are created within an ocean of differentiated energies - that the boundaries between this and that, him and her are not as real as they appear?
The stark reality of not having a separate self that was absolute, would mean completely re-evaluating the way we lived and thought.
But let's imagine for a moment . . .

The reason for the title of this piece?
Well - euphemism - "substitution of a roundabout expression for a direct one."

It's going on all the time.

THE NORM

2008-07-18T03:58:00.002+01:00

"Why can't you be normal?"

How many times have I heard that said, to me. The trouble is, nobody has ever explained quite what it is to be normal.

I would have to take an average, of all the various versions of "me" that exist, in the infinity of parallel universes - that would be normal for me (just as an aside here - would there be a universe somewhere in that lot - where parallel universes don't exist?) - but what is quantifiable anyway? How do we measure human-ness? What meaningful set of statistics can we come up with?

What lies to either side of normal? Is it left and right, short and tall, good and bad?

Have you ever looked at your pet cat or dog and wondered to yourself, even just briefly, what it would be like to be it, transferring the whole of your existence to another being?

Have you ever looked into a large mirror, switched off your self awareness and seen yourself in that mirror as a separate person, as others presumably see you?

Just games I play in my imagination.

Is that normal behaviour?

You know what I think?
Despite our attempts to conceal ourselves from each other - only going out in our "Sunday best" personalities - I think we have much more in common with each other than we dare, or care to imagine. I think our distinctions are paper thin - superficial. We've all got different heirlooms and junk up in the attic - but that is all quantifiable, can be weighed, valued and measured.

But does that get us any closer to answering the question - am I normal?

Looked at from a logical point of view, surely normal can only imply that cause and effect have not contradicted any universal law.
Nothing exists that can contradict or confound universal law.
Human-ness, whether we view it from a phsychological, emotional or a physical perspective - is bound also by universal law - cause and effect.

Perhaps it is only our imagination that has any freedom to manoeuvre.
Is that the space where these parallel universes are to be found, in the space surrounding our decisions - the separation between the choices we make?

So in human terms - I feel that normal means the same as uniqueness - and that's what I've always felt my answer should be - "Well, I am being normal - for me."

TAGGED!

2008-03-29T01:27:00.000Z

Help! Oh my goodness - I've been tagged!

This has never happened before - it's a meme - "10 things that make me happy."

Thank you Lucy Lopez for passing it on to me.

Well - it's quite strange when it comes to actually focussing on happiness, what exactly is it?
Does it imply that we are unhappy, until these moments of happiness arrive?
I don't feel that is so - they are peaks in an already positive landscape.
They seem to categorise themselves - for me.

* The relieving of a natural urge or desire - restoring comfort.
* Surprise events, serendipity - that snap us out of our expectations.
* Artistic satisfaction.
* Appreciation of constant treasures.
* Sublime moments of connection with or acute awareness of the miraculous.

1) The glow of satisfaction that follows a creative journey - be it a musical composition - or a piece of writing. When all the editing is done - and everything has fallen into place - you can allow yourself to say "It is finished."

2) Conducting an orchestra - when all the elements of a performance align themselves - a responsive audience, the weather (it affects the sound,) energy levels of the performers, singers, the orchestra playing sweetly in tune - there appears to be a golden thread running from start to finish - carrying the emotions - in an unbroken arc - and you are reminded again of the power and purpose of theatre.

3) Being "in the zone" - moments of improvisation on the piano - where I find the key, the harmony, the melodic phrase of that moment - a unique expression of inner feeling - translated into a mood, an atmosphere - it comes and is gone - but for that short duration - ecstacy.

4) Singing in a harmony group - where the result is so much more than the sum of the parts - to feel an entire group breathing, phrasing - singing as one - the sizzle of the harmony making the hairs on the neck stand up and take notice.

5) Receiving an unexpected compliment or appreciative remark - how considerate, to go beyond
themselves in that way - I must remember how pleasant that is - such a simple way to pass on a parcel of joy.

6) Driving on a beautiful day - when I have actually allowed ample time for the journey - a chance to practice good road manners.

7) Dreams - especially flying dreams - that is absolute ecstacy - to be able to levitate at will - and
fly. It's impressive as well.

8) Moments when the sublime humour of creation hits the nerve - caught unexpectedly with our sense of logic rendered helpless - and one is engulfed with laughter.

9) Feeling a heart full of love - knowing that it is there all the time - and that it depends on nothing externally.

10) The appreciation of friendship - it is a mystery how and who we meet in this life - and there are those precious friends, there in all weathers, for many, many years - in an unconditional way. That is a great blessing. I hope that I occupy that place for some people.

All done - wasn't as hard as I thought - in fact, I could probably go on. It is very therapeutic actually - to count one's blessings. Thank you Lucy.

So I pass this on to:-

Jane at Drippingmind
Lea at OceanOfPerspectives
Prakash at Wizards & Villains

& here's the other two "tag-mates" from Lucy

Rainer at Esoterical Journey
Allan at Baldeagle Blogs

**************************************************************************************
TAGGED AGAIN
This was passed to me by Lea at Ocean Of Perspectives

My goodness - this is getting very revealing.

List these rules on your blog.
Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog.
Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.

7 FACTS about Ellumbra

1 - WORK: Left school aged 15 and joined the Grenadier Guards Band as a musician. Purchased a discharge after 6 years - on the road with a jazz/rock band - now self-employed - mainly working as Musical Director in theatre.

2 - EDUCATION: Professional qualifications - and experience - bucketloads.

3 - FRIENDSHIP: Quantity diminishes but quality shines through as time goes by. Mainly fellow musicians - an earthy, friendly race.

4 - RELATIONSHIPS: Married twice - divorced once - currently not in an intimate or happy personal relationship (work it out.)

5 - WWW: I can remember back to the 90's when it was the buzz-word - and I didn't have a clue what it was about. Buying a computer soon fixed that - it seems to become more and more useful and engaging every day. Many positives - and potential negatives.

6 - FITNESS: Fit - like to eat healthily - was vegetarian for 10 years, until I was seduced by a suasage roll - still prefer non-meat dishes out of choice. Enjoy yoga, from time to time - tea-total - but I do partake of tobacco (in the Native American way) - no, that's a cop out - I'm addicted.

7 - DREAMS: Still working at them - they are elusive and ill-defined, but include artistic satisfaction, spiritual happiness & and a fulfilling relationship.

So - I pass this on to:

Silent Storm at Psyche Analyzed

Camaroman at Let's All Be Friends

Maya at Mayamurofushi

Deborah Katy at Deborah Katy Thumb Blogger

Justin at Free For All

Jennifer at Writing To Survive

Sumayyah at Sumayyah Said So

Fellow tag-mates from Lea:

Rajesh at Yoga, Pranayam, Meditation, Life, Webmaster, SEO

Mike at Live Life 365

Jeffrey at Jeffrey Kishner

Traffic Guru at Free Real Traffic

Bradley at How Is Bradley

Brian at Internet Marketing

I Love Your Blog Award

2008-02-16T20:50:00.000Z

I am completely bowled over - to have received this . . .

. . . from CarolinaZ - whose deliciously haunting style I have enjoyed for some while now.

Thank you CarolinaZ - I am honoured and thrilled, simultaneously.

And so, not wishing to thwart the centuries old traditions of the Internet - it now falls to me to distribute this award and spread a little blog-love further afield on its heart warming journey
around the blogosphere.

The jury are now back from their long debate & have decided to pass the award on to two blogs, already visited on a regular, if not daily, basis - for the pleasure of spending time there . . .

(Drum roll - Fanfare . . .)

To Dave of Pics and Poems.

& to Lucy of Longings, Enchantments and Sacred Spaces.

So - once again - an enormous thank you CarolinaZ - you've made a happy blogger - even happier.