Welcome into the vortex........

anarcho-shamanism, mountain spirits; sacred wilderness, sacred sites, sacred everything; psychonautics, entheogens, pushing the envelope of consciousness; dominator culture and undermining its activities; Jung, Hillman, archetypes; Buddhism, multidimensional realities, and the ever-present satori at the centre of the brain; a few cosmic laughs; and much much more....


all delivered from the beautiful Highlands of Scotland!






Friday 20 December 2013

Keeping Them In The Mist: Gorillas and Humans



                  Humans and gorillas in the DRC

A few weeks ago I received a letter from Henry Chiruza. He is Programme Manager of the Gorilla Organisation in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). It was a circular, not personal correspondence, but I keep in touch for my own reasons. 'Dear Friends' the letter began. 'This year was the worst I have experienced at the Gorilla Organisation. Last November we faced war just 15 km away from Goma. Rebels started to fight with government troops. We didn't know if we would need to cross the border to become refugees. Bombs were falling on our heads. I was about to give up. I saw my kids. They had so many questions. What is there to look forward to? Will we go to school today Daddy?.......We have no idea where or when a bomb is going to go off....' And so it goes on.

An estimated five million people have died as a result of the ongoing conflicts in the DRC (this figure includes casualties from war-related poverty and disease), making it the biggest bloodbath on the planet since WW11 (the figure has recently been challenged, and revised down to a mere three million people - which makes it OK , I suppose).

The African carnage in the Heart of Darkness - you just don't hear about it.

In contrast, there's Syria. Over the past year, the populations of the west have been subjected to a constant barrage of 'news' and images from the country, living rooms saturated with pictures of children and babies with blood dripping down their faces, limbs missing, and the rest. Horrific stuff. Until recently, day after day of bombings, chemical weapons, displaced mums and children. Reporters and journalists flown in from all over the world to bear gruesome witness. Meanwhile, in the African Heart of Darkness, all is quiet. So what is going on?

Should anyone still require persuading that 'news' is not an objective appraisal of the international state of affairs dished out by some all-seeing and benevolent media guru, then this example should make it crystal clear. And if it is not an objective appraisal, then what is it? Well, it is in large part propaganda; we could call it 'mind control', an attempt to shape public opinion. It has already been decided which issues should concern you. What opinions you should hold. What you should fear, and who the goodies and baddies are. A child in pain in Syria (or Egypt, Iraq, wherever things need to happen on the current political chessboard) has more political currency than in the DRC. So roll her out.

A very simple yet effective exercise when presented with any item of 'news' by the mainstream media is to ask yourself the question 'Why am I being told this?' Or, conversely, should you stumble upon something of apparent import that you knew nothing about 'Why am I not being told this?' It's a method that works a treat.

The strategy is especially significant when a story is relayed into your home day after day after tedious day. Syria, Egypt, the Arab Spring is one such example from recent times. Another is the so-called 'phone-hacking scandal'. While I'm sure that the Murdoch Empire is full of not-particularly nice people, it seems obvious that there is a sub-text to the way that the story ended up full-frontal on BBC's 'Newsnight' for weeks on end. This involves state interference (read 'control') in the media. 'You naughty boys and girls in the media can't be trusted to look after yourselves, so we're going to have to bring in Big Daddy State to ensure you behave.' Which the BBC, in its coital relationship with Big Daddy State, will be only too happy to help chivvy along.

In similar vein is one of David Cameron's many caring and compassionate masterstrokes: protecting our dear uncorrupted children through internet filters on pornography. This is fuelled by trying to befuddle the population into mixing adult porn, child porn, and paedophilia into the same poison chalice. Do we really believe that Uncle Dave cares what little Billy in his Huddersfield bedroom is watching on his tablet? Of course not. The subplots involve quietly filtering material other then pornography, trying to remove 'esoteric' websites from the easily-accessed public domain, for example. And, further, acclimatising the public to the idea that complete freedom of the internet no longer exists. Sowing the concept which, in time, becomes the default setting for the unaware human being. 1984 unravels quietly, surreptitiously, in our modern times.

For those who would control us, the internet has become a real headache. It is increasingly difficult to lie or pull the wool over everybody's eyes; the puppets of domination look more and more pathetic and foolish. Making it difficult to access certain sites and info is one ruse to help maintain control over that unruly mob known as humanity. Another is to invoke the thought police on various forums etc. One such example is Reddit where, I learned recently, they have banned comments written by 'global warming deniers'. This is the trendy, lefty, liberal form of free speech. Dangerous people. The Golden Age of the internet is, I fear, at an end. However, it may be that too many people's eyes have been opened for a complete turning of the tide to be possible.

In the face of all these efforts to deceive and pervert the human species, the question remains: what do we do? How to respond? It's a conundrum that I have grappled with for forty years now. In the early 1970s I wrote an article entitled 'The demonstration or Zen?' in which I concluded that neither political action nor purely personal enlightenment do the business. In response to my observation that 'people are getting killed all over the place' I commented 'The thing is: is it worth trying to stop them getting killed? If you don't try, you feel bad and apathetic; if you do try, you're wasting your time and you know it.'

Two small incidents in my own life have served to concentrate my mind on this issue. Both involve windfarms (yes, I know they haven't turned up on this blog for a while.....). Back in early spring I was invited to help set up an anti-windfarm political party in Highland Scotland. The idea was to  provide candidates in selected constituencies, targeted the big windfarm boys like Salmond and Ewing. I dutifully attended the inaugural meeting, and met some good people. Yet I knew before I entered the door what my personal decision would be. You can't stop turbines like that: things don't really work that way. It's not how the Control System does stuff. To repeat what I said way back: you're wasting your time and you know it.

The second incident occurred just last week. Walking along the high street, I noticed a little stall with a couple of guys collecting signatures for a letter. I recognised one of them from five years ago, when the shameful Lochluichart windfarm project was being promoted. Yes indeed, they were back with the same old game: signatures in favour of some Highland windfarm proposal. These people are predators pure and simple, playing upon the fears of young mothers: 'You don't want the lights going out for your kids, do you? You don't want them to inherit a world of climatic disasters, do you? Be a responsible parent: sign on the dotted line, then.' One of the archons - sorry, men - approached me about his bloody letter. 'I completely disagree with you' I blurted. 'You're not saving the planet. it's all nonsense and all total crap.' I believe I then said something that I shall not include here. Invited by the windfarm ideologue to be civil, I retorted 'I don't want to be civil' then walked away.

I have reflected on these incidents, particularly the latter. I am not in the habit of speaking to total strangers in that way. What was going on? There is a profound truth hidden therein. As the Buddhist story says, you find the jewel in the middle of the dungheap. These windfarm guys are ideological zealots, compared to which a meeting of rabid Jehovah's Witnesses is a picnic. Most significantly, their views - their being - is totally embedded in what Neil Kramer refers to as the Construct. Put briefly and simply, life demonstrates two aspects: reality, embodied in personal authenticity; and the artificial, the constructed, designed to confine and control us. The mainstream media, as discussed above, is a major expression of the Construct. The lesson from my windfarm-related encounters is that it is not possible to work within the confines of the Construct, whether it be through the political system or arguing the point with some windfarm people. The Construct provides the framework, the points of reference - that's part of how it works. Anything outside that is either taboo or ridiculed. It is not possible within this context to talk the real issues surrounding windfarms: destroying the power of the land, something our ancestors knew about intimately; power spots and sacred places; the suppression of free energy knowledge; disempowerment of the individual.

So, as a start, I propose that disengaging from the Construct is a great step on the way forward. This is why immersion in the mainstream media is fatal. Someone else is creating the narrative for you, and that person ain't very nice. You can't do it and be authentic, simple as that. I have little patience for anyone thinking otherwise nowadays, the evidence is all around. Whatever we do or don't do, at least do it from our authentic self. Listen to our heart and our instinct above all. Listen carefully, then act. That's all.

'The demonstration or Zen?' 'Dealing with the Construct.' Work in progress...............



                                

Monday 25 November 2013

Neil Kramer on Alchemy Radio

http://alchemyradio.podomatic.com/entry/2013-10-01T04_16_12-07_00

Neil Kramer pops up regularly on Pale Green Vortex. Here is a link to a recent interview of his, which is a good intro to his work, containing as it does a clear exposition of some of his foundational ideas. Plus, of course, one or two interesting notions.

Tuesday 5 November 2013

Detox, Detox


www.thenaturalrecoveryplan.com/articles/Oil-pulling-therapy.html

I have discussed elsewhere migraines (or, rather, my migraines - it's all about me....). The other debilitating health condition to have affected me over recent years is sinus problems. While less severe than migraines, they have nevertheless impacted significantly upon my everyday life. In the mornings, especially, the dull, energy-sapping pressure behind the eyes has been at times commonplace. With the accompanying discomfort of queasy feelings in the intestines, I have often headed into the day feeling like a member of the walking wounded.

For the past four or five years, my sinuses have become so sensitive that almost anything could set off problems. Cold, heat (especially dry artificial heat), wind; stress, fatigue, too much exercise, not enough exercise; alcohol, insufficient fluid intake; time in front of a computer or television screen; too much reading, writing, or brain work. I found myself trying to walk an almost impossible tightrope of lifestyle balance.

Problems might especially flare up in the late hours of the night/early hours of the morning, and I have gone through periods when I have viewed going to bed with apprehension. I would go to sleep feeling clear, but wake at four in the morning with that familiar sensation of something bashing against my eyeballs, the grunchy feeling in the stomach, and knowing that I would just have to sit it out. Nothing seemed to help: high pillows, low pillows, no pillows; feet up, feet down. In fact, nothing helped my sinuses much in general. 'Natural remedies' such as nasal sea-water spray, steam baths, a variety of plant oils to sniff or vaporise, could calm things down when symptoms were mild, but were completely ineffective in the face of a full-on sinus blast. The conventional G.P.'s armoury of medicines often doesn't agree with my body nowadays. A corticosteroid spray like Beconase is frequently prescribed. For a while this drug would clear up the sinus symptoms, but in a way that just doesn't feel right. If I paid attention to my nasal cavities, they would be crying 'No, no, no: don't do this to us, please.' Then the sinusitis would return anyway. I don't fancy spending the rest of my life sticking corticosteroids up my nostrils, so the Beconase is languishing in the bathroom cupboard, past its use-by date.

I have recently discovered something that really helps. Your local G.P. won't tell you about it, but there's nothing I can do about that. It's called oil-pulling/oil-swishing therapy. It's a method of everyday detox, consisting mainly of swilling edible oil around your mouth for 15 - 20 minutes once or twice a day. It's been part of Ayurvedic practice for ages, and is aimed at improving oral health - and health in general - by the removal of toxic material through the vehicle of the oil.

I am not going to write much about it here - info is readily available on the internet. But the article linked to above on Alison Adams's website is a god starting point. And check out Dr. Bruce Fife - Dr. Coconut, as he is sometimes called. Some people recommend particular oils - not surprisingly, Dr. Fife goes for coconut oil - but any, it seems, will do. Personally, I like cold-pressed olive oil and local cold-pressed rapeseed oil.

If you decide to give oil-pulling a go, you should read up on 'healing crisis' as well ('Am I dying or getting better?'). From my side, I have been swishing oil for three months now, and the effects have been brilliant; perversely, it's become one of my favourite moments in the day. Sinus problems haven't completely gone away, but my sinuses are in better shape than for several years, with a lot of the pressure removed. The oil pulling seems also to have taken some 'heavy psychic energy' out of my system. I intend to continue with the technique, and look forward to seeing if any other changes in health come about. Happy detoxing, everyone....

Photo: themiddlepath.com



         

Tuesday 29 October 2013

Authoritarians and Libertarians

redicecreations.com/radio/2013/10/RIR-131004.php

A very interesting discussion, looking at some Pale Green Vortex-type topics from a fresh viewpoint. Well worth an hour of our precious human life, I'd say (or two hours, if you are a Red Ice member).


Sunday 6 October 2013

Sunny Isle






The Isle Of Skye,with its mountain range of the Cuillins, lies off the coast of western Scotland, and has the reputation for being a rainy, windy, misty place. These photos from a mountain walk last week illustrate that it is not always the case.


Friday 4 October 2013

Migraines, Moons, and Mountains

                On Migraine Mountain

I wrote about my personal experience of migraines in a post on October 26th, 2010, 'The Bad Trip: Migraine'. Since then, I have continued to undergo their intermittent pain, albeit less frequently (I actually went for four months without an attack), and with generally less severity. When they have arrived, the migraines have tended to go on for a long time, however.

Migraines are, I conclude, little understood by the medical orthodoxy. This is evidenced by the large number of bewildered sufferers whose tortures can be readily accessed online, plus the equally bewildering profusion of causal theories and proposed palliatives and remedies that haunt the relevant websites. For me, there is, with little doubt, a supernatural element to the phenomenon. I once tracked the timing of my attacks against the phases of the moon. I discovered that the migraines have a strong tendency to cluster around the time of the full moon, to a degree that is statistically almost impossible to occur randomly. I also read on one website (which I unfortunately did not make a note of) that migraines typically occur thirteen times a year. This information was relayed without comment - but thirteen, annual cycles of the moon: any connection, maybe??? Some people find the apogee and perigee of the moon (respectively its furthest and closest proximity to the Earth) to be significant factors in the timing of their migraines.

The other bane of my physical life is chronic sinus problems. I may write more about this at some future time, but it started about five years ago. Since it is a condition that is focused around the same areas of the body and its energy systems as migraine - the brow/temple region and the intestines - it is reasonable to consider that both migraine and sinusitis manifest a similar problem. At this point, however, you leave the mainstream medical profession well and truly behind......

A few weeks ago I set off from home with the intention of climbing a fairly large mountain in western Scotland. I awoke to that familiar pressure around the brow and behind the eyes which is characteristic of sinus disturbance. Such a common experience was insufficient to cause me any real concern, however. It was only when I was on the coach and well on my way that the pain began to intensify and to migrate to the right side of my head. Accompanying this was a growing nausea, and it began to dawn on me that this was not simply sinusitis, but impending migraine.

It is one of the nightmares of a migraine person: to be stuck on some form of transport far from home with excruciating pains in the head and the uncontrollable urge to vomit viciously all over everybody and everything. Being stranded while in the throes of a migraine is one of the worst things around. What was I going to do? I could ask the driver to let me off at the next stop and somehow make my way home. I could ask him to take me on further than my intended destination, to at least a village where I might be able to find some respite. As it was, I decided to breathe deeply, try to relax, and continue with my original plan.

I stumbled off the bus in the middle of nowhere. To the east runs a long loch, and to the west the road snakes down a glen cut like a gash into the hills. Lines of steep-sided mountains stretch north and southwards as far as the eye can see. I was standing outside the only habitation for miles - literally - a lonely hotel with a solitary petrol pump. In my enfeebled condition, the mountain I originally intended to climb had taken on Himalayan proportions. Out of the question. Yet I felt strangely happy to be among the mountains with a skull about to split and intestines threatening to evacuate across the peat and heather. I would not go to the big mountain, but instead opt for a small mountain close at hand. I could take my time, walk as much or as little as I wished, and generally follow my fancy.

Am Bathach is the name of the little mountain, the one normally reserved for a half day out. I began to climb, very slowly, stopping for long and frequent rests, surveying the gradually unfolding landscape from a large variety of rocky vantage points. Halfway up the southern brow of Am Bathach I succumbed to some deep retching, following which I felt slightly better. Continuing with this stop - start routine, I eventually reached the summit ridge, where I was confronted by its three peaks. Normally, they present themselves as mere protuberances on the ridge, but on this day they manifested as enormous walls of mountain to be climbed. I lay down to rest in the silence of the middle peak. Suddenly I was jarred into wakefulness by a racket above me. A bird of prey - my rudimentary knowledge of wildlife suggests it was a buzzard - was hovering close to the ground,  but was being harassed by three noisy crows, which followed closely in its wake as it swooped then hung in the air, apparently trying to get close to the ground. The persistence of the crows paid off, and the buzzard eventually swung off across the valley and into the distance. The drama over, I closed my eyes again and drifted into sleep.

The descent off the far end of Am Bathach is slightly steep, over heather and slippery peat. As I was coming down, it occurred to me that, despite my physical frailty, I did not feel the slightest bit worried or intimidated. In fact I had felt fully confident during the entire little adventure. I knew myself  - my abilities and limitations - and had made appropriate decisions for the day. I had never been be-migrained in the hills before, but I was very much at home here. I respected the mountains, and they lent their support to me. My  own love of the wild would be reciprocated, provided I acted appropriately and with common sense. Going to the mountains was what I did.

I arrived back outside the hotel with an hour to spare. I could have taken refuge inside. Instead, I lay down on a rock, closed my eyes again, and felt the caress of the wind on my face. It had been a mild migraine by my standards, allowing me the unique opportunity to spend a day of ill-health outdoors among the mountains. I felt curiously satisfied.

                  

Tuesday 17 September 2013

Windfarms: Postscript in Blood


                                     Ed Davey salutes the masses

There may be those who consider me a little harsh on the supporters of windfarms. I could possibly do with a bit more understanding of their position; I could moderate my words and my judgment. Nothing of the sort. I have, in fact, been generous and charitable in the extreme in what I have written. The reality is worse than anything my ability with language can conjure up.

Among the worst offenders are those members of the Liberal Democrat party in Britain. These guys should get themselves a dictionary: it is difficult to find a bunch of people less democratic and liberal than these. Actually, in the last general election hardly anybody voted for them. Nevertheless, in the brave-new-world coalition of today they are in the driving seat for trashing vast areas of countryside with industrial junk, not to mention condemning lots of older folk to an early grave thanks to the consequent high energy prices of their windfarms policy.

Current Windfarm Fuhrer-Messiah is Lib Dem Ed Davey, successor to nice Lib Dem man Chris Huhne. The nonsense that issues from this man's mouth is jaw-dropping. His department is currently engaged in blocking reports on the effects of windfarms on property prices and on rural economies generally. Very liberal and democratic indeed. Of course, it is no coincidence that a guy like him is head of energy ('Coincidence' is a word we like to throw around to cover up a connection which we are either genuinely unconscious of, or which we do not want to face up to). It's all engineered by Cameron, but I'll leave you to work that one out.

A personal observation. I have no proof, but this is what I see...... Scottish Highland people, especially the rural ones, generally like to stay put. Selling a house here is a far slower process than it is likely to be in London. Yet I have passed through a number of small communities where a surprising number of 'For Sale' notices have been on display. These have all been near windfarms, or places with windfarm proposals around. Coincidence? No: 'coincidence' is a word.......etc etc. One village, in particular, not far from Loch Ness, seems awash with such notices. There is a windfarm already up the valley from the settlement, with another proposal adjacent, and several others in fair proximity. The area is also now crossed by the Beauly-Denny transmission line, hundreds of miles of giant pylons under construction which march across the hills. Their erection has meant considerable areas of forest being cleared and turned into unsightly industrial sites without a thought for their appearance. Of course, personal sacrifice has to be made in the name of the greater general good; tough luck on the local residents. 'The greater good' argument is another weapon wielded by the tyrannical. I have been there myself. It is not nice.

The Highland Clearances is one episode in Scottish history that is correctly viewed with shame. Yet the fallout from the saturation bombing by windfarms is similar. In fact, the closer you look, the more remarkable the parallels turn out to be. You see, the Empire maintains its control through a small number of strategies repeated time and time again. Deja vu.

        

Friday 13 September 2013

A Warrior's Greatest Love, And Its Great Betrayal


It's the end of the line. After a decade and three best-selling titles, the time has come for a final dramatic farewell. Along with Pablito, another apprentice, Carlos Castaneda stands on the northern edge of the mesa, a flat-topped mountain, somewhere in Mexico. There, too, are Don Juan and Don Genaro, Castaneda's teacher and benefactor respectively. The light is fading; twilight, the door to the unknown, is fast approaching. The time for the jump. The jump into the abyss.

Pablito and Carlos are told to say goodbye to all those present and everyone else they are leaving behind. They might return to fulfil their earthly task, or they might not, instead merging finally and completely with the nagual, the infinite.

A wave of sadness and loneliness overcomes Castaneda. 'It's almost time for us to disband....' says Genaro.'But before we go our separate ways, I must tell you one last thing. I am going to disclose to you a warrior's secret.' He recalls Castaneda once saying that the life of a warrior was cold and lonely and devoid of feelings.  This cannot be so, iterates Genaro, because his life is based on his affection, his devotion, his dedication to his beloved. At this, Genaro makes a series of 'dazzling magical moves' that Castaneda perceives as a luminous ball 'sliding on something like the floor of an ice skating rink with a thousand lights shining on it.'

The voice of Don Juan illuminates: Don Genaro's love is the world, and this is his way of embracing the Earth. The Earth knows that Don Genaro loves it: hence his life is filled to the brim. 'Genaro roams on the paths of his love and, wherever he is, he is complete.' 'Only if one loves this Earth with unbending passion can one release ones sadness' he continues. 'A warrior is always joyful because his love is unalterable and his beloved, the Earth, embraces him and bestows upon him inconceivable gifts.'

The barking of a dog cuts the silence. This barking, Don Juan goes on to explain, is the saddest thing one can hear. 'That barking, and the loneliness it creates, speaks of the feelings of men. Men for whom an entire life was like one Sunday afternoon, an afternoon which was not altogether miserable, but rather hot and dull and uncomfortable. They sweated and fussed a great deal. They didn't know where to go, or what to do. That afternoon left them only with the memory of petty annoyances and tedium, and then suddenly it was over; it was already night.'

For Castaneda this, a warrior's greatest love, is the final teaching, the one that puts everything else in context. And it is written about in the final pages of 'Tales of Power' with a force, a focus, and a passion, that is, to my mind, unequalled in the work of Castaneda. It is real Earth mysticism, direct contact and communication with Gaia, which arguably represents the highest aspirations a human being can have.

Today, this sacred pathway has been twisted and distorted beyond recognition, hijacked by the oligarchs and other emissaries of control over our species. Love of the Earth has been debased into global warming panic, carbon emission guilt, the desecration of the beautiful face of the Earth with windfarms that benefit only the rich and power-hungry, and a general hatred of humanity for its sins. A message both poisonous and ludicrous, thrust upon a gullible public desperate for something to believe in, something to save their hideous souls.

In Britain we have the Camerons, the Ed Daveys, the Huhnes; the Salmonds and Fergus Ewings in Scotland; the shameless opportunists of Scottish Renewables and Renewables UK; the fanatical ideologues in Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and WWF. Blind ideology and Machiavellian opportunism combine in varying proportions in an appeal to people's better nature. Rationally, it doesn't have a leg to stand on. Just as one example, even were human-made warming a perilous reality, whatever happens on these small islands of Britain would be irrelevant, given its tiny contribution to planetary emissions overall. More and more people are seeing through these vicious lies, but still they hold, through ignorance, fear, and guilt, far too many people in their thrall.

In truth, the Green mind control programme delivers a double whammy; it is probably the most successful in business at the moment. Increasing numbers of people are becoming suspicious of the 'Mohammed Dave has an enormous armoury of massively destructive weapons in a little country far from here and he's got them all pointed at his next-door neighbour/Kensington High Street (delete as appropriate)' routine. Yet those very same people will swallow whole the 'climate change - panic - just do as we say and everything will be alright' fabrication. It's the programme that catches nice people, people who are concerned. Some generally aware 'psychedelic people' are among those who have fallen for the scam. Take Graham Hancock and Ralph Metzner: both people for whom I have a goodly store of respect, and who carry around a bucketload of wisdom with them. Yet look at their blogs and websites, and they are littered with stuff about human-induced climate catastrophe, draconian low carbon strategies, etc. If we are going to talk low carbon technology, let's at least do it properly. Forget wind turbines and everything else that's been thrown at us thus far. Put serious time and energy into looking at the plethora of low- and free- energy devices that are popping up nowadays (with predictably zero coverage in the mainstream).

I haven't written much about windfarms recently. That doesn't mean they have gone away. It's just that I have no intention of turning into a full-time campaigner. At the end of the day, moving the pieces around on the chessboard isn't a solution. The real game is off the chessboard altogether. As it happens, my cursory glances at the 'news' show how the extent of the windfarm lie is being exposed on a daily basis. Yet still this programme bulldozes its way through regardless, attempting to worm its slimy way into every nook and cranny of sacred earth beauty. And, by the way, the Earth appears to be cooling at the moment, and Arctic ice is back with a vengeance.

Image: truth frequency

           

 

Saturday 31 August 2013

Chasing Authenticity


Being authentic - sounds simple, doesn't it? Do your own thing, man. Be true to yourself. Follow your bliss? Er, no. Granted there are different degrees of authenticity, but to honour this pursuit at all deeply is one of the most difficult tasks on offer to a human being on this planet.

Authenticity requires removing, or at least getting beyond, the veil upon veil of fabrication that stands between our everyday experience and direct immediate reality. From the moment of our birth - or even beforehand, if we take seriously the work of Stan Grof and others - we are assailed by all manner of input and information drawing us out of our core. Very soon our direct perception of reality is being substituted by an interpretation of it, or what in the works of Castaneda is termed a description of reality. This normally happens seamlessly, a process of which we remain blissfully ignorant. Undoing the knots and tangles presented by this taken-on interpretation is a large part of the process of self-discovery, spiritual life, call it what you will.

Two main, though not completely discrete, elements of this fabrication of experience can be discerned. Firstly, there is what is commonly known as personal conditioning. A library of therapies has appeared over the last century with the aim of helping to untangle the knots and tangles (complexes), the distortions developed through our lifetime that have stayed buried, unconsciously skewing our experience of the way things more truly are. In Castaneda, this is referred to as 'erasing personal history': not that things didn't happen, but liberating us from the dark magic that their hold maintains over us.

Then there is the distortion created through the ever-present influence of the media, religion, the education system, the belief systems and taboos of the culture that we grow up in. As Neil Kramer vividly explains, it is almost impossible to be authentic, real, while remaining a heavy consumer of mainstream media, such is its power to tell you what is what, and what is not. A little research soon throws up the unsavoury truth that these are not organs passionately dedicated to getting to the bottom of things and aiding in our quest for liberating authenticity. Even if this was their more noble original intention, they function, in their mainstream guises especially, to put onto an unsuspecting public a particular version, or single tiny slice, of reality, making out that this is the whole story.

It is my observation that many people into 'spiritual things', while acutely aware of the former, often limit their degree of authenticity through ignoring, or denying, the second form of distortion summarised above. If you are being constantly put on, by the media, for example, and not even conscious that that is happening, what chance have you got of experiencing the deeper levels of your reality? We have a personal responsibility to delve below the surface, to try to see what is really happening to us, what we are really being fed and why. Taking personal responsibility is an integral part of developing authenticity. To get topical: if you believe hook line and sinker what international thugs like Obama and Kerry, Cameron and Hague, tell you about Syria, you are likely suffering from a severe unconscious reality distortion.....

Contact with greater authenticity is one of the main benefits of immersion in 'nature' as we call it. It could be anything: forest, desert, rivers or oceans. In my case, mountainous places are the main thing. Go to the mountains and you are confronted with authenticity. You can't escape it. Stones, rocks; heather, peat, mountain streams; wind, rain, sun; a deer on the horizon, a frog caught unaware in a pool of slime. All have no choice. They know no other way than to be authentic, whatever that might be for each and every one of them. Out of the tangled, distorted world of humans for a week, a day, for a few hours even. Recontacting, reconnecting. Back to source, giving our authentic self a chance......

            

Thursday 15 August 2013

Casey Heads West....


Casey Hardison has appeared before on Pale Green Vortex, most notably in 'The Gagging of Casey Hardison', posted on October 24th 2011. He was, you may recall, well into a twenty-year prison sentence dished out to him for producing LSD and other 'psychedelic-type substances' in his house in Brighton. His persistence and irrefutable logic regarding the ridiculous severity of his sentence finally led to the Home Office issuing a 'shut up until you're out of here, reality pest' order on Casey.

Anyhow, after nine years, three months, two weeks, and two days in prison, Casey was released into the light of day on May 29th 2013. Considering his honesty-and-reality speak a threat to the system, or at least a serious nuisance, St. Teresa May at the Home Office saw fit to deport him immediately whence he came, the U.S. of A.

I am keeping the link to the 'Free Casey' website (as well as still wearing my t-shirt of the same) on Pale Green Vortex, since it is a useful portal into the world of the War Against Some Drugs, and especially the War Against Certain Types of Consciousness. Anybody still labouring under the delusion that drugs laws are anything to do with the health and well-being of the general public is advised to have a good old scratch around here.

And as far as Casey Hardison is concerned: Pale Green Vortex wishes you good luck with the rest of your life!

  

Saturday 20 July 2013

Mountains of Mystery





Photos one and two: on Beinn a'Ghlo. Photos three and four: wild camp on Ben Macdui

Beinn a'Ghlo: hill of the mist, or hill of the veil. The literature surrounding this Scottish mountain abounds in adjectives such as beautiful, mysterious, isolated and remote. Yet veils and mysteries seemed a world away when I began my visit to Beinn a'Ghlo at the end of June. I stepped off the train in the small and quiet township of Blair Atholl, and was soon walking past flower-filled meadows and bright green pastures. Only ninety minutes south of where I live, yet Blair Atholl and its immediate environs exude a softer, lighter ambience than the frequently-stern landscapes nearer to home. I could have been in Sussex.

An hour or so later, I arrived at the base of the mountain proper, and any notions of being in southern England were quickly dispelled. A steady wind was blowing beneath a uniform grey sky; as I climbed I could not help but notice that, despite the wind, a distinctive silence seemed to have enveloped the entire scene. This, the eerie silence, is another feature of Beinn a'Ghlo sometimes noted in the literature. Was this 'just' a fabrication of my own imagination? Was the silence 'really' out there? Was the reality a mixture of the two? Was there any practical way of knowing?

A long serpentine ridge connects the three major summits comprising the massive bulk of Beinn a'Ghlo. I moved along the twisting snake of the back quietly and with the respect appropriate to this great mountain. I sensed the place to be a repository for some ancient wisdom long disappeared from the world of human exoteric knowledge. When the time arose for me to return to Blair Atholl, I eschewed the ridges and trodden ways, instead making a beeline across the stone and heather for a bridge across the river way, way below. As I started to descend, I sensed a movement out of the corner of my left eye. Over a mile away, and far below, a herd of deer had nevertheless caught my scent. As a single body, they moved across the surface of the corrie, bunching close together as they went. I have never seen such an enormous herd of deer in my life, and the sight brought to mind those aerial shots of huge herds of wildebeest or buffalo roaming across the great plains of Africa that are the staple of wildlife documentaries on television.  Mountain of hidden mysteries indeed.

More recently, I had the pleasure to visit another mountain that brims with folklore. As part of a wild camp multi-peak trip across the Cairngorms, I took in the second highest summit in Scotland, Ben Macdui. As Rennie McOwan observes in his fascinating book 'Magic Mountains', the Big Grey Man of Ben Macdui is the best-known spectre of the Scottish mountains (as well as being, according to the author, the one about which most nonsense has been written). As one penetrates the interior of the Cairngorm massif, a very particular quality of savage wildness emerges. Wide highland spaces cut through deeply by crag-lined, loch-cradling, clefts and canyons. Ben Macdui is characterised not so much by its massive domed summit as through the cliffs and gashes that form its perimeters. Personally, I saw no evidence of the Grey Man. However, many claim to have done so. Certainly, the enormous rock-and-gravel strewn summit area seems more suited to the Moon than to be regarded as an Earthly landscape, and it is not difficult to envision all kind of otherwordly happenings taking place on the upper slopes of Ben Macdui.

Rennie McOwan is of the opinion that the Big Grey Man no longer walks the tops of the Cairngorms. 'The Big Grey Man of Ben Macdhui will never return to that mountain. The mountain is too busy. It is often thronged with people. The old mystery has gone. There is no longer an atmosphere when the feel of the hill can frighten people.' He has a point. Certainly, as I stood beside the summit cairn and became aware of a man not fifty yards away conversing on his mobile phone, it seemed as if there was a human conspiracy at large to remove the mystery from these high places. Yet I have been to spots where the mountains have provoked fear in me. I have had strange experiences in these high places, and felt the veil between the worlds become wafer-thin. We can still learn much from these repositories of the most ancient of wisdoms, the mountains. I shall return.....

                  

Tuesday 2 July 2013

In the Footsteps of Castaneda


                              East face of the Witch

In the footsteps of Castaneda: no, not literally. That's Neil Kramer, recently returned from a great road trip taking in the Sonora Desert, northern Mexico, home to the many adventures of Carlos Castaneda, Don Juan Matus, Don Genaro, et al. I speak more of following some of the techniques and practices sprinkled throughout the pages of Castaneda's compelling prose.

It's convenient to dismiss Castaneda as mental titillation for the bohemian wing of the student population. 'Wow! Amazing stuff! Hey, who's got the dope?' In truth, the works of Castaneda are among the few of my inspirations from the 1970s that speak more profoundly and eloquently to me today than forty years ago. The wisdom contained therein seems more pertinent and closer to hand than it ever did during the years of my communal youth.

'The Teachings of Don Carlos' is a compilation by Victor Sanchez of practices gleaned from the volumes of Castaneda, along with other techniques he has learned himself. Significantly, he had lived and trained with the Nahua and Huichol Indians of Mexico long before coming across Castaneda and finding striking similarities (thereby lending authenticity to the sometimes disputed wisdom of Castaneda).

Today I am largely concerned with the teachings on walking. The Mexican Indians are, according to Sanchez, masters of the art of walking, having developed the requisite skills during centuries of roaming across vast areas of mountain and desert. In Castaneda's books, time and again the author is taken on a long walk by the aged seer Don Juan, the wise old man moving effortlessly across the surface of the Earth for hours on end, the hapless Carlos puffing and panting, sweating and struggling along behind. The teachings on walking form part of the process of 'stopping the internal dialogue', a prerequisite for moving into the separate reality, other dimensional/density space, call it what you will. The art is to perceive reality directly, rather than thinking about it; direct experience instead of mere description.

I leave Newtonmore station, on the edge of the Cairngorm National Park, and am soon walking above the cascades and plunge pools of the Calder River. The teachings are simple in essence, yet ridiculously tricky to apply with any consistency. Walk rhythmically and silently, concentrating on the terrain near at hand. If you want to talk or look at the wider landscape, stop walking. Stay 'in the body', wear a rucksack and carry nothing in the hands. Remain conscious of breathing, and try to synchronise it with walking. Stay aware of the Earth. In general terms, don't think about where you are going or where you have come from: just be 'in the walk' right now. Follow these instructions and you will gain access to unknown reserves of energy, not to mention opening the crack between the worlds.

It is as I begin to climb more steeply and the terrain becomes rougher that the challenge really looms. As a better-than-reasonable reader of maps and of the landscape, I can easily fall into gauging my current altitude and how many more metres I have to climb. This is largely a reflection of the unpleasant sensations sometimes experienced when climbing - an ascent becomes a disagreeable slog, something to get over and done with as soon as possible. But now, don't think of the top of the mountain. Put away the map, don't consult your watch. Just be aware of moving through the landscape, whatever its nature.

My practice of walking Toltec-style is deeply flawed, yet makes a difference. I cross peaty, conventionally dull and featureless terrain in a mood of contentment.  Eventually, I find myself beside the cairn on top of the mountain. A'Chailleach, it's called: the Witch. Who is this witch? Did a traveller through the different densities of the cosmos once inhabit the mountain, maybe inhabiting a cave in the crags below the summit? Was a witch from ancient Celtic legend - the Cailleach Bheur, for example, witch of the storms - reputed to live on the mountain top, or to have created it? Was a witch burnt here during the times of persecution? Does it refer to the mountain itself, endowed with magical and healing properties? Does anybody know?

I continue onwards, across a landscape increasingly remote from the cares of normal human civilisation. The sense of shifting into a different world is palpable as I ascend peat and grass slopes to the top of another hill, Carn Sgulain. In truth, it is a small rise in the general swell of the moorland. Carn Sgulain may indeed be the least spiky of all the Munros, but looks out over the vast sprawling spaces of the inner Monadhliath, and I love it. Distant horizons are obscured by a uniform grey murk, but the sense of expanse is marvellous nonetheless. A place that the witch would feel at home indeed.

This Monadhliath, with its Chailleach and Carn Sgulain, is prime territory for trashing by industrial-size windfarms. Within a few years, the number of these monstrosities in the area will have multiplied. The witches, wizards, and local spirits will not be pleased. As documented elsewhere on Pale Green Vortex, a look below the surface hype and hysteria reveals that logical and rational arguments for this desecration amount to literally zero. Even for someone chasing the chimera of decarbonisation, windfarms are the last thing to be promoting.

I freestyle across boggy terrain, pathless and infrequently visited by humankind, finding hidden cascades and an unexpected craggy aspect to the Witch as I do so. Eventually a vague path appears alongside the stream threading down the glen and leading me back to the world of human affairs. A shaft of warm sun breaks through the greyness overhead as I pass once more along the Calder gorge and spy the little township of Newtonmore close at hand.

          

Monday 24 June 2013

Road To Avalon


                                     
'I'm not a bloody terrorist!' All my self control needs to be exercised to hold myself back from shouting at the guy at airport security and slapping him hard across the face for being so stupid. This would not, however, be a clever strategy for the long term. This being the case, I obediently place jacket, belt, watch, toiletries, and other bits and pieces in the little tray and observe them disappear into the innards of the x-ray machine. As usual, I beep, so am subject to shoes-off and the pat-down. A boy, aged seven at a guess, has similarly set off the alarm, and is busy taking off his shoes under close official scrutiny. 'Get them young' is obviously the latest strategy of Al-Qaeda; they have doubtless learned this tactic from the global warming softly softly totalitarian brigade.

I have lived in Inverness for eight years now, long enough to see the local airport transformed from a friendly provincial place into a small copycat of the mainstream monsters. The zealous nature of some of their security officials can outdo anything their counterparts at Heathrow or JFK are likely to serve up.

Having negotiated security without breaking anybody's nose, I stumble into the departure lounge, where I am immediately appalled by the atmosphere. Casting an eye around, I cannot help feeling that, despite the money, the travel, the Rohan and Barbour clothes, the majority of people here lead lives that are poor in quality. I also notice another peculiarity: newspapers. Adults are all sitting around reading newspapers. Not only that, but their facial expressions suggest these newspapers are a very serious matter. They appear to be taking in and actually believing what they are reading. A quick peek at the headlines sets out a nightmarish vision of humanity. This is what reality is, this is what's important today, and you'd better believe that is so.

In some ways, it is the 'educated middle classes' who are most susceptible to this particular form of mainstream control practice. They demonstrate a great passion for, and avidly consume, their newspapers of choice, thereby considering themselves infinitely superior to the illiterate lower classes with their vulgar tabloids.

Security checks; newspaper headlines on terrorism, celebrity perverts and paedophiles; nearly everything else on the front pages: it seems I have stumbled into a world where the generation of fear and insecurity, and the consequent necessity to tighten control over the populace, is the main name of the game. It's transparent - how anyone continues to believe in these constantly re-enacted scenarios beats me - but relentless and apparently successful it remains. Scary......

Once aboard the plane, I am reminded of how our 'reality' is largely determined by what we are prepared (or able) to perceive. 'Are you interested in mountains, then?' the lady sitting next to me inquires, as I put aside the book I have been reading, entitled 'Magic Mountains'. She did not, apparently, clock the word 'magic', actually in larger print on the front cover than 'mountain'. But 'Are you interested in magic?' or 'What kind of magic do you find in the mountains?' are questions outside the domain of the lady's conscious perception of what constitutes reality.

I arrive in Bristol, where it immediately starts to pour a drab, insistent rain. I am unable to find the bus stand I need, and quickly feel as if I have arrived in hell. Resisting the urge to panic and jump on the first train heading back north, I pass repeatedly between train station and main street in my search. Eventually I solve the koan, and head slowly out of town on a bus full of soggy commuters going home. It is tortuous: southern England seems small, crowded, and jam-packed with busy psychic disturbance, guaranteed to prevent clarity of perception.

Things finally start to pick up when I arrive at my destination. The rain is still falling in torrents, but somehow is less bothersome. With its plethora of crystal shops, tarot readers, esoteric booksellers, reiki practitioners and assortment of healers, Glastonbury is unique, in Britain at least. On this soggy evening it is like a ghost town. Almost without realising, I find myself ascending a path leading up a hill to the celebrated tor. The mist-suffused setting seems perfect for this famously mystical spot. There is barely a soul around, and after the day's trials the tranquility is balm. At the top, I bump into Paul, gazing over the mist-shrouded Somerset levels. We have never met before, but within five minutes are swapping tales of energies, mystical happenings, and the like. It's not the typical supermarket-queue conversation, but it's kind-of what I've come for. My only previous visit to Glastonbury was in 1974, the day after my first psychedelic experience (see 'The dangers of psychedelic substances, part two', posted on Feb 13th 2011), and both Glastonbury and I have changed since then. I am curious to experience the closest that Britain has to an 'alternative town'. Eschewing the temptation to organise my time here into a whirlwind programme of events and workshops, I come devoid of a schedule, aside from general wandering around, open to whatever may or may not happen.

As twilight imperceptibly melts into darkness, I wend my way down the path leading from the tor to a quiet road and thence to my resting place for the night. 'Spirals' is the name of the bed and breakfast I have booked into; located on the edge of the town and at the foot of the tor, it is highly recommended by me. Unless, that is, you crave the starchy atmosphere typical of breakfast in many of these institutions, a constipated silence punctuated by the crunch-crunch of sliced white toast. Spirals is, I suppose, the kind of hostelry you are more likely to find in Glastonbury than elsewhere: informally friendly, bookshelves crammed with literature on power animals, the tarot, Castaneda, the kabbala, not to mention the super-duper shower. Above all, the place oozes authenticity, a world away from the synthetic theatre of grand fakery I had endured only hours before. I feel energised, but eventually drift into sleep: a morning of adventure awaits.

                


Monday 17 June 2013

The Summit Cairns





                    On the South Glen Shiel ridge


Monday 6 May 2013

Living In Strangeness


              An alchemist: student of strangeness

Part One: Update on Weirdness 

'Does a God who has conceived and borne intimate witness to all life and manifestation throughout the vast multi-dimensional realms of ineffable splendor - over countless aeons and through infinite iterations of mind-boggling dynamic evolution - really care what individual human beings choose to eat, drink, wear, say, or believe? Let alone choose to do with their genitals? I would suggest that the answer is no. God doesn't mind at all. Not even a tiny little bit.........  Perhaps the only thing that would be of tremendous interest to a supreme creator entity is just how well we are progressing on our own individual spiritual journey......'     (Neil Kramer, 'One Dream, Many Awakenings')

Neil could well have added that this 'supreme creator entity' does not care overmuch about personal trauma, either. Unpleasant, disorienting, and, er, certainly traumatic: but in the cosmic scheme of things, personal trauma barely registers. This is a perspective that I can at least begin to entertain as the traumatic element in recent life events slowly fades into the distance.

It is almost a year now since my life was thrown into unexpected turmoil by the trashing of our house by flood, all within the wider context of an astonishing and nightmarish synchronicity (see 'Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine', July 10th 2012, and 'Life Inside a Random Universe', August 21st 2012). Suggested interpretations of the flooding have poured in from a variety of sources: of a neglected house protesting; of a dwelling place that we originally moved to in immaculate condition now demanding to be our own creation; of the collapse of an ego personality and a corresponding rebirth and renewal; to mention just a few. People have read their Jung, taken note of the reality of correspondences, and these have been the results. To all who have offered suggestions, I say 'thank you'.

On the subject of the massive synchronicity involved, however, words of wisdom have been less forthcoming. This is more seriously weird, cutting across our normal perceptions of time and space, and I have been largely left to my own devices to deal with this one.  There are times when I have tried to dismiss the whole idea of this being synchronous as erroneous, just a chance coincidence; but the odds of this being the case are infinitesimal. The 'meaning', if indeed that is an appropriate notion, remains elusive. Maybe dark archontic forces started to take notice of me, and havoc was the result. Certainly, soon after the event, it was chaos and destruction - in the form of Shiva -that readily came to mind. Or maybe the Universal Consciousness decided the time had come to test my resolve; or that I was off-course and, failing to do anything about it, needed a helping hand in straightening myself out. Or maybe the Universe was simply putting on a fantastic magic show as a means of opening up my experience of the non-ordinary elements to existence.    

As the months have passed, I have become less concerned about 'understanding' the synchronistic aspect to the event, than simply absorbing on deeper levels that it took place at all.  In retrospect, I can begin to envision these various synchronistic events as all parts of a kind of initiation. An invitation into non-linear modes of experiencing....

Without doubt, the period prior to the house flood found me accessing unfamiliar states of consciousness - both during and outside formal meditation/mystical practice - with an ease and regularity that was new to me. An unmistakable change - maybe I was being primed for something bigger. But still nibbling around the edges. Then a higher intelligence entered centre stage: 'OK, dude. So you're interested in weird stuff? Well, here's something to really get you going. You won't like it. But I think you can take it.'

So it was an exit route from purely causal, linear, time-and-space perception into direct experience of something quite different. The old mechanistic way of thinking just wouldn't be able to get a handle on this at all. The water pouring from the attic onto the sodden floors below was not just an agent of destruction: the leaking water tank was also a vase of initiation, bestowing grace upon one terrified student of consciousness.

Today, the weird continues to manifest more regularly in my everyday life. While the domino-style world continues, another functions in parallel, the two entwining from time to time to create a richer tapestry. Rather like a number of computer programmes running simultaneously, one visible and obvious, the others chugging along in the background, but ready to manifest the moment it is appropriate. As it has started to become more commonplace and familiar, the weird is gradually becoming, well, less weird. More like a facet of life that I am constantly challenged to accept with equanimity.

Part Two: Buddhism's Missing Link

As should be clear from some of my recent posts, the questions of 'Why did I become a Buddhist?', 'Why did I stop being a Buddhist?', and 'How did Buddhism work and not work for me?' continue as threads in my life. They are not so much obstructions to personal energy as part of the wider task of understanding myself - plus, understanding what many of my former colleagues (some still good friends) are still up to.

Just recently a theory has presented itself to me. It remains speculative and not fully digested, yet worth outlining here nevertheless. It concerns missing bits in Buddhism as commonly practiced by westerners today.

As one such westerner attempting to follow a Buddhist path at the end of the twentieth/ early twenty-first century, I sensed that something major was missing. The practices just didn't work for me anymore. That was not, I concluded, because I was just lazy or obstinate or avoiding issues. The thing that was missing, I now see more clearly, was the weird stuff. The mystic shit. And the connection goes like this......

The sacred path is enumerated in various ways in Buddhism; but as an umbrella term, you can't do better than the Threefold Way. This consists of Sila (translated most frequently as 'morality' or 'ethics' - it's how you conduct your everyday life), Samadhi (meditation, one-pointed concentration), and Prajna (Wisdom). As I have seen Buddhism commonly practiced by westerners, the importance of Sila is readily understood and its practice taken seriously. The effects of our habits of body, speech, and mind in moulding consciousness are properly recognised. Folk are also generally prepared to take on Prajna, be it reflecting on impermanence, meditating on the dissolution of the elements, attending a course in Vipassana, Mahamudra, or any other of the wealth of approaches the Buddhist tradition offers to 'the way things really are'. But what about Samadhi? Sure, most folk spend a bit of time on a meditation cushion, but it's more than that. On presenting the Threefold Way, the Buddha put forth Samadhi as a whole one-third of the path. It was Sila, Samadhi, Prajna; not Sila, Samadhi, Prajna. My (past) experience leads me to suspect this is often not grasped. One reason? Samadhi is tough, disturbing, and seriously weird. It's where you find the mystical stuff; and where you can go nuts.

As conventionally presented, Samadhi has two main threads. One is that of developing one-pointed concentration. The other is the element of entering dhyanas, 'supernormal states of consciousness' as they are sometimes described, and each associated with a corresponding objective world (different density/dimensional realms as they are described in some western mystical traditions). I have met few Buddhists who appear to have taken this dhyana stuff all that seriously. More typical is an incident I recall from being on Buddhist retreat thirty years ago. One Buddhist colleague of mine, who clearly suffered from an overly discursive mind, emerged from the shrine room after another unsuccessful attempt at one-pointedness with a broad grin on his face. 'It's OK' he beamed reassuringly. 'You only need a bit of the first dhyana (the 'lowest' of these 'supernormal states') to become Enlightened.' A comfort, no doubt, to those reluctant to leave behind the unfamiliar; but a complete misreading, nonetheless.

Despite apparently being an integral part of the Buddha's path, these dhyanas are known to get a bad press, or at the least to be presented in a spirit of ambivalence. Typical, maybe, is the relevant section in 'A Survey of Buddhism', the magnum opus from his earlier years of my former Buddhist teacher. Having described the various states of superconsciousness, as he calls them, he goes on to discuss the supernormal powers associated with them: things like walking on water, passing through walls, telepathy. These powers, he emphasises, are not to be developed for their own sake: should they appear, they are devoid of spiritual significance, and are to be looked on 'with indifference, even with disgust.' The Buddha, apparently, regarded these powers 'with contempt and loathing.'

While there may be some truth in all this, it is hardly psychologically astute. For a modern western practitioner, bred on a diet of the Three D's (Descartes, Darwin, and Dawkins), any suggestion that we don't need to emerge from the safety of normal, consensus reality will come as a great relief. This distortion - that the supernormal powers are loathsome, therefore this dhyana stuff isn't worth the paper it is described on - amounts to a huge cop-out. You can only view these supernormal powers with loathing and contempt because you have actually been there and seen their limitations first-hand. The type of caution declared in 'A Survey...' may have been relevant at the time of the Buddha, when life seems to have overflowed with meetings with devas, yaksas, and all sort of other-dimensional entities. Or in tenth-century Tibet, when unleashing conjurations of thunderstorms on your neighbour's crops was a favourite pastime. Our 'weird stuff', intimately connected with the dhyanas and non-ordinary states in general, was more familiar to these people. To modern western folk, things are very different: entering the world that is embraced by the term 'samadhi' becomes in itself an enormous challenge and achievement. It means taking on the supernormal states and the weird stuff that is their hallmark. Leaving behind the narrowly rational, everything you ever learnt at school, scientific materialism and the rest. Synchronicity, telepathy, crop circles, past life regression, encounters with fourth-density entities, etc etc : anything that challenges the linear time-space programme, introducing in its stead felt paradox, strangeness, creating elasticity with regard to causal relations. This is all part of 'becoming whole'.

In the popular versions of the Buddha's life, as his final act before Enlightenment, he 'travels up' through all the superconscious states, then comes back down again. This is not, we can presume, done purely as a piece of good entertainment for the masses, but as an integral part of the process of the  Buddha's awakening, a profound teaching. In the light of what I have written above, its meaning becomes transparent. Full, red-blooded spiritual awakening has to contain everything, including the weird stuff. A being coursing purely in ordinary, linear consciousness is a mere ghost of a being. For modern western folk, it might be more appropriate to think of the samadhi stage as the stage of high strangeness. It's where the universe, and the individual who comprises part of that universe, ceases to work in the manner we are used to. This is what we are concerned with, rather than a literal journey up an escalator of 'superconscious states'.To chart a course through this unfamiliar territory will require all the strength, the energy, the subtlety, and the courage that we can muster. Do this and the student of consciousness will truly earn the title of spiritual warrior.



                                      

Saturday 27 April 2013

Arab Spring? Highland Spring....

Photos taken in early April; north-west Scottish Highlands.






Friday 22 March 2013

From Buddha to Dakini: Naked Partings and Meetings


       Sherab Chamma.  Pre-Buddhist Bon figure

Part One: Animal Farm or wot?

Buddhism. Buddhist tradition. Buddhist traditions. Buddhist people. I spent over twenty-five years formally ordained into Buddhism, making a final extrication getting on for six years ago.  At least, that's what I thought.

Just recently, various happenings have coalesced to cause a more deeply critical revaluation of certain things Buddhic, at least as I have come to experience them.  I present a summary below.

First up, the Buddha.  Or, should we say, the historical Buddha figure, the one who prowls through the pages of the Pali Canon.  Was he really everything he cracked himself up to be?  Wise and accomplished, little doubt, and with a rare enthusiasm for communication. But the claims of uniqueness and exclusiveness, at least in this era, that he insists on so strongly? The new bright light burst into an otherwise uniformly dark and brutish Kali Yuga? The One and Only? The Really Special One? All seems a bit dodgy to me these days.

Next, Tibetan Buddhist Tantra. From the days of my early acquaintance with Buddhism, this is the stuff that really turned me on, communicated to the 1970s neophyte with zeal by Govinda, David-Neel and the rest.  Blueberry-coloured beings with huge bellies, half-human half-animal, three eyes, lots of flailing arms, out to scare you shitless. Great stuff. But in more recent times, it has come as a surprise to learn that some of this carnival of the bizarre is not Buddhist (or Hindu, whatever that catch-all phrase means) in origin at all.  Some, at least, of the figures have come up through pre-Buddhist Bon, which in turn most likely inherited them from more ancient shamanic peoples.

The Bonpo themselves get a bit of a bad press from the orthodoxy.  Weird magical anarchists with a penchant for hurling rocks and thunderbolts at their neighbours.  Then along came the Buddhists with their proper, organised spirituality, bringing light and peace in place of the dodgy rituals of those unpredictable practitioners of the Dark Arts.

So the story goes.  But maybe the truth is rather different.  Maybe we are looking at a tale of invasion and repression of indigenous shamanic peoples and practices, a tale rendered respectable by modern pro-Buddhist spin.  Could it be that the newly-arrived Buddhists in Tibet cleverly hijacked and absorbed the Bon and pre-Bon elements for their own ends, just as the Control System twists and assimilates to its heart's content nowadays?

History is written by the victorious.

It has been disquieting to consider that Buddhism, which I once embraced so enthusiastically as a radical alternative to the ignorance and blindness of the Judeo-Christian religions, may share, in degree and at times, in the same patriarchal idiocy and hierarchical power sickness.

Simultaneously, realising that the figures of Enlightenment are not the exclusive preserve of any one particular tradition has been personally liberating.  They roam the world wild, pure, unfettered, larger than any system that humans can hope to come up with.

Then there's the teacher.  The bottom line is that I left the Buddhist Order he founded because the practices and techniques weren't working for me any more.  In  retrospect, there's the temptation to  feel hoodwinked.  I signed up for the Great Enlightenment, and I got generalised exoterica - which worked for a while.  Then he showed me nothing else.  The disquieting niggle is that he had nothing else to show. I may be wrong.

Actually, what I have written above is not quite correct.  As well as the exoterica, my former teacher passed on a sadhana of a particular Buddha/Bodhisattva.  This sustained me for years, and for that introduction I am truly grateful. But when it comes to navigating consciousness as it begins to extend beyond the world of everyday third density perception, there was no guidance, no advice; not even any proper recognition of its existence. Maybe that is the mainstream Buddhist way. Look elsewhere, however, and helping hands abound. There are the shamanic traditions scattered across the globe; there are western mystical traditions, if you can get your head around them. There is Jung, fragmentarily; in fictional guise there is Castaneda, even. And there are quite a number of modern folk whose words can be accessed through books and the internet: Neil Kramer and John Lash have proved most helpful to me personally.    

And let's not forget the disciples.  Some remain among my best friends.  But when I formally embraced Buddhism I assumed I was joining a bunch of folk who, to a person, were uniformly busting their gut for realisation of the Unborn, the Uncreate, the Immaculate.  With respect, I would now say that this was a miscalculation on my part.

Part Two: Skinny-Dipping

23rd July 2007: a letter arrives.  It is acceptance of my resignation from the Buddhist Order by my former teacher. He is not surprised, he says, at my leaving.  The letter is courteous, though failing to express any appreciation of the years of blood, sweat, and tears I put into teaching meditation, organising classes, and running centres devoted to spreading his own brand of Buddha Dharma. I suppose this is OK.

Once I had decided to resign, writing the letter and the rest had come easily.  At least I thought it had.  One day, however, just recently, an alarm bell went off very loudly.  There was something I still hadn't dealt with. The kesa....  

A kesa is an item worn around the neck by those formally devoted to following the Buddhist path, in some schools at least.  It's soft-core uniform (I use this word, not as a put-down; I came across it as description on a Zen Buddhist website).  Getting rid of the kesa encountered more resistance than writing the letter. I mean, what do you do with a kesa? I put it off. And put it off.  Then forgot. Or, should I say, 'forgot'.

With time, deeper layers of purpose began to reveal themselves to the act of leaving behind formalised Buddhism. 'The drugs don't work any more' morphed into a spiritual imperative: to go freestyle.  The very act of identification - as a Buddhist in this case - manifested as an obstacle.  So I turned spiritual vagrant. With nothing to tie me down, I became like a beach-comber, wandering through the flotsam and driftwood of the seashore looking for bits and pieces of value.  It was not long before I realised that the great ocean, in its abundant generosity, would throw up all manner of treasure once I learnt to open my eyes.  I became a student of the intuitive art of beach-combing.

Things have changed in the Order to which I once belonged.  Its members can roam wide, free to gain succour from many areas of spiritual nourishment.  I look upon this as a good thing.  Nevertheless, at the end of the day, they will return from their wanderings to a comfy bed with the recurring motif hung above the pillow: Home, Sweet Buddhist Home. A sound night's sleep beckons.

To walk unfettered, free of any fixed identity, revealed itself as necessary for me to develop further.  Much can be learnt from a spiritual tradition, but the time arrives when, with gratitude and respect, the aspirant needs to jettison it, leave it all behind.  The leap into the void, into pure empty space, is just that.  No ties, beliefs, identities. No umbilical cord, however fine and gossamer thin. Not exactly comfortable, I know.  But to dance in the company of the wild, naked dakinis is a two-way affair: you need to go naked yourself.

Part Three: Grey Sky, Blue Sky 

Monday 18th March, 2013.  I open the back door to an east wind that cuts my breath. The perpetual winter sun of late February has long since given way to the unrelenting viciousness of March.  The thermometer reads three degrees, but in the wind it feels far colder.

The sky is painted a uniform grey as I head down the hill, alongside the river, then across mud-tangled grass. Monday: the world seems in quiet mourning.  A thick murk hangs over the landscape; as I climb, I can see thick smudges of snow on the lower hills to the east, then barely perceptible sheets of dirty white covering the higher ground beyond. Mercifully, the murk renders the wind turbines which rake the far skyline invisible. Darkness has its uses.

I am finally beginning to warm up, and stop to remove hat, gloves, and scarf.  At last I leave behind human habitation, and begin to ascend the wide and muddy track up the hillside.  I am nearing my destination. I had reckoned on two hours to get this far, but a glance at my watch shows me that, with the cold, I have accomplished the walk in only ninety minutes.

As I turn up the final narrow path leading to the little stone circle on top of the hill, a few grains of snow fall from the canopy of grey above.  The white Buddha, the Buddha of purity, of the mantra, is conferring his blessing.

The remains of the circle sit at two hundred metres above sea level, perched on the brow of the hill.  To the west lies forest, but eastwards the view is panoramic - on a clear day, that is.  Today, the gorse and thick grass hang damp in the silence.  I open my rucksack and take out a small wooden box, delicately carved for me by an old friend many years ago.  Opening the lid, I take out its contents.  There is a ring of flames and a number of tiny vajras, all made out of card, relics from a ritual in the Spanish mountains over twenty years ago.  Out comes a pouch holding a kesa; then a second older and grubbier specimen of the same.

The ritual is simple and effective, involving a few brief invocations and the burning of the wall of flames, vajras, kesas, and finally the pouch.  At first, it is difficult to get a fire in the wind and damp, but eventually the objects are returned readily to their constituent elements.  All this takes place to the quiet background hum of the mantra of the pure white Buddha.  I have not recited it for years, but it comes effortlessly to mind.  Ironic, indeed, that these Buddhist regalia, and with them any remnants of Buddhist identity, should disappear to the sound of the pure white Buddha.  A Buddha stretching back, beyond Buddhism into a distant authentic shamanic past, before Buddhism as history.  And, more profoundly, back to Universal Mind, beyond time altogether.

Midway through the ritual burning, a flock of wild geese fly directly over the circle. They are disconcertingly low, and in perfect V-formation. The group geometry, the distinctive honk-cry, the great migration to a distant who-knows-where, is something I have found, in these Scottish parts, singularly moving.  Now I begin to understand why.

The little fire begins to exhaust itself; with nearly all reduced to ashes, I pour some water over the remains just in case, before taking silent leave of the scene.  My hands are numb with cold, and I move quickly, eventually catching a bus for the final stretch of my journey. I search out warmth in a corner cafe and, over coffee, begin to write. It wonder if a tear will come: it doesn't.


References: for more on the relationship between Buddhism, Bon, and shamanism, go for the magnificent 'Shamanism and Tantra in the Himalayas' by Claudia Muller-Ebeling, Christian Ratsch, and Surendra Bahadur Shahi.  The equally magnificent John Lash writes in various places on metahistory.org: try 'Open Source Earth Wisdom for Kali Yuga' for starters.




                       

Monday 18 March 2013

The Day of the Anarchist

                   
        Prince Peter Kropotkin

Part One: Sticks and Stones          

One of the vulgar tactics deployed by the wanton and the ignorant is the calling of names.  Find the right name and the unwary will immediately be deflated, a somnolent public deceived.

One such name is 'hippie'.  Nobody has a good word to say for the hippie, from the mainstream conservative to an alternative researcher such as Jan Irvin, who informs us that the 'hippie movement' of the 1960s was largely masterminded by the CIA and related agencies.  Never mind that no serious and self-respecting counterculturalist of the time actually referred to themselves as a hippie, or that the word was a creation of the mainstream media.  No. 'Filthy', 'bloody', and several others I do not wish to include here, are the adjectives invariably linked with that most vile of specimens, the hippie.

'Conspiracy theorist' is another catchphrase used to dismiss somebody you may happen to disagree with.  The term first came into common parlance. I believe, following the assassination of JFK, and was employed to shoot down anybody who suggested that the truth might be anything other than what the official channels told us it was.  It has become a phrase used in the mainstream pejoratively, connoting wackiness, cookiness, and paranoia.  I heard the term 'conspiracy theorist' employed most recently in this manner by Brian Cox. Excuse me, Professor Brian Cox, if you please.  The Great Professor is the current darling of BBC scientific rationalism, most likely a replacement for Richard Dawkins, who is getting on in years and not sexy enough.  Now, I confess to having only watched about twenty minutes of Prof. Cox in total: his cutting-edge scientific presentations seem to have a disturbing effect on my intestinal tract.  Anyhow, I caught him at the end of a programme about the Moon. 'We'll be online to answer your questions about the Moon after the programme' he hissed through the permanent smirk on his face. 'But no conspiracy theorists, who think we didn't land on the Moon' he continued smugly.

Bloody wacko conspiracy theorists.  Not worth bothering with.  Now, personally, I consider it unlikely that the Moon landings were faked.  There are, however, serious rational questions to be answered about some of the evidence presented.  Has Professor Cox, supreme exemplar of scientific objectivity that he is, actually cared to take a look at a few of the inconsistencies surrounding the official story? I doubt it.

The other time I caught the Great Professor on television (this is an unashamed digression, I know), he was in the middle of explaining science and equations and stuff to a hand-picked audience of 'celebrities' and the like (what a message that piece of theatre is sending out.....). 'The new physics is not mystical or woo-woo New Agey' he assured us smugly. 'It's very precise.' Now, look here, mate. These mystics through the ages you're so fond of poo-pooing have had far more knowledge and direct experience of the workings of the universe than will ever get processed through your own equation-and-diagram-addled brain. 'Mystic' turns out to be another knee-jerk term of derision, in the hands of Father Superior Cox at least.

Finally, we arrive at my other insult, the total dismissal: 'anarchist'.  What is an anarchist?  Well, it's a person who doesn't believe in rules, and has a penchant for chaos. Anarchists go round disrupting nice demonstrations organised by nice left-wing type people for nice worthy left-wing type causes.  Don't be surprised, should you have the misfortune to ever encounter an anarchist, if they are wielding a baseball bat or other hard and dangerous weapon.  A sort of western terrorist, really.  In common with the hippie, an anarchist probably hasn't washed for weeks, and frequently earns intelligent descriptive adjectives like 'bloody' and worse.  And it cannot be a coincidence that 'anarchist' sounds a bit like 'antichrist'.  Can it?

Part Two: Liberty Calls

The reality, surprise, surprise, is far from the mudslinging and spin.  One of the main figures in the history of anarchism is Peter Kropotkin. Or, to be precise, Prince Peter Kropotkin.  He is listed in Wikipedia as, among other things, zoologist, philosopher, evolutionary theorist, geographer, economist, and anarcho-communist. In other words, a Renaissance Man of staggering proportions. 'Mutual Aid', published in 1902, is among his more important contributions to human thought.  Following the hijacking and twisting of Darwin's ideas by the social Darwinists, who pushed interpersonal competition and 'nature red in tooth and claw' as justification for the existence of political and social power elites, Kropotkin decided to check things out for himself.  Taking off into the wide open spaces of Russia (there are plenty of them), he observed closely the behaviour of the animals he came across there.  His conclusion: co-operation was every much a requisite for survival and evolution of a species as was competition.  Needless to say, and for reasons that should be obvious, it was the ideas of the social Darwinists that prevailed as the currency of the mainstream.

Kropotkin himself did not deny our competitive urges, but insisted that they were not the inevitable driving force of history as claimed by the social Darwinists. This reflection was a vital ingredient in forming his ideas of political anarchism. Personally, I rather doubt the value of studying animal behaviour to give us clues about human nature.  In the natural world anything and everything happens.  The good, the bad, the ugly. If there is a message, it is this: human behaviour is varied and elastic. Don't try to pin it down too much; many things are possible.

However, in the spirit of political anarchism, we call at the very least work for a huge diminution of central government control, along with radical decentralisation.  There are many who will view such a prospect with trepidation; but is this fear really justified? Is it simply a conditioned reaction?  Just think.  Consider for a moment the people to whom we readily confer control on a daily basis.  The Camerons, Merkels, Milibands; the Salmonds, Obamas and the rest.  Are these beings who demonstrate an unusual and exceptional capacity for love, compassion, and sympathy for other human beings? No. Are they people more honest, honourable, trustworthy and innately responsible than your next-door neighbour? No. Do they embody remarkable qualities of problem-solving and creative thinking? Not at all.   They are where they are purely by dint of working a system, a system of power that they feel at home in.  That is pretty much it.  There is nothing to lose, but much to gain, through their demise.

Part Three: Quitting the Interface 

The notion of modern western democracy has become a grotesque parody of itself.  In Britain, we increasingly hear of LibLabCon, where the three 'major' political parties have been reduced to a children's 'spot the difference' game.  Debate takes place within carefully circumscribed areas, while issues that could make a real difference to people's lives are conveniently left outside the box, not for discussion at all.  In Scotland, whence I write, Big Chief Alex Salmond has an increasingly transparent habit of 'misleading' the Scottish Parliament.  It would be uncharitable of me to suggest that 'misleading' is a euphemism for lying through the teeth, thereby demonstrating an utter absence of respect for ones fellow parliamentarians.

The carnival of dishonour knows no bounds. On the occasions that I dare to dip into the 'news', it invariably shouts out loud in my face.  A couple of weeks ago, local newspaper headlines told of how Fergus Ewing, Scottish Minister for Energy (another euphemism - read 'Minister for destroying beautiful landscapes and plunging people into unnecessary fuel poverty') was accused of 'misleading Scottish Parliament' on how much extra the gas and electricity consumer had to pay as a result of government renewable energy policies. He protested that he was unaware of any problems with his figures: he had got them from the renewables industry, after all. Comrades, this is the same as going to tobacco companies in the 1950s for information on the links between smoking and lung cancer. Exactly the same. Underhand and criminal.  And, what's more, it appears that Ministers in Scotland are under no obligation to apologise for spreading falsehoods anyway. It's up to them to decide.

One simple step we all could take would be not to vote.  This is not just passive abstention, but a positive act.  As Emma Goldman, another prominent figure in the history of anarchism vividly put it, voting provides an illusion of participation while masking the true structures of decision-making.  If nobody voted, the criminals and psychopaths could no longer continue with their dirty tricks.  A system cannot keep going if nobody supports it - its only hope would be to usher in a reign of terror that would make even Josef Stalin wince.

'But we should vote' I hear the bleating protests. 'We live in a democracy. We should be thankful, and exercise our democratic rights.' Well, sorry. We bloody well don't live in a democracy. It's a rigged game, to borrow a term from John Lash.  Every several years we are presented with a number of identikit cut-outs, none of whom has anything to say that represents proper human aspiration. Besides, the catalogue of dark comics we see paraded as our 'democratically-elected representatives' has little say in what really goes on anyway.  This is increasingly determined by groups, organisations, committees way out of reach of democratic accountability.  Climate change summits, United Nations committees; agenda 21, common purpose; shady groupings of European bureaucrats.  This is where the action is. Behind the scenes, out of the public eye. And the action seems to be almost entirely aimed at creating a uniform, homogeneous, docile, planetary population blithely led by a creeping totalitarianism. This is blindingly obvious; anybody who doubts it frankly hasn't done their ten minutes of homework. And there is a two-minute test you can do to check it out. Firstly, ask yourself whether, as a species, we have become much more evil over the past ten years, say, or not. Then, consider the things that governments have done to increase freedoms during that time; and consider the things that have increased control and interference in people's lives over that time.

So don't worry if you don't vote.  Nobody has ever taken notice of your cross in the ballot box anyway.

This is where well-intentioned people who call for greater state control/scrutiny - of the press, for example - have got it so horribly and dangerously wrong.  Faith in the state as an agent for improvement would be touching, were it not so terrifying.  The notion that the state will be any more transparent, any more considerate of the freedom of individuals, has no foundation.  I challenge anyone to show me otherwise; I am open to communication.  In the meantime, our first obligation is to disentangle as far as possible from the state and its machinations.  Reclaim our sovereignty.  Otherwise, there can be no complaints.

To conclude with the eminently quotable Emma Goldman: 'The most violent element in society is ignorance.' And 'Every society has the criminals it deserves.'  Thanks, Emma.