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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....


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Sunday 26 August 2018

The Layers of Conditioned Reality: Bulldog

Part One

It's something particular about being British. English, especially, though it applies to an extent to all varieties of the British species. It is the belief that British people, above all English people, are never really bad. Bad people come from other places: Russia, Germany, Balkan places; China, Japan, South America, Africa. While English people can be a little bit naughty, but never really bad.

This is one of the humbling elements I have discovered while becoming more aware of what it means to be born English. I wrote previously about how I grew up with the sense subtly instilled that Britain was just slightly superior to the rest of the world. There is a corollary in degrees of beastliness. While the rest of humanity may indulge in all manner of horror, genocide, and the rest, the English, in particular, don't go in for that. We are just too decent, too rational, for that kind of thing.  

It's a blind spot inculcated from early on, and very convenient for certain types of folk. It gives a psychological carte blanche to all manner of horribleness to pass unscrutinised. We go around in a collective unconscious fug. Come from Colombia, as does my wife, and it's a different story. Colombians can do unspeakable horrors to other Colombians. It's known; everybody knows it; and at least the place runs its shaky course under the umbrella of a degree of honesty.

The assumptions leak into considerations of 'general health of society'. Whilst other nations suffer tyrants, oppression, and so on, we Brits live in a free, open, transparent world. Not really true. I have thus far been able to write this blog without censure, and I suppose it's preferable to find your website unceremoniously closed down or your facebook account stopped rather than having Joseph Stalin's henchmen come knocking at the door. Nevertheless, the topics and points of view considered unacceptable or unspeakable at the bus stop has increased enormously over recent decades. Much of the comedy created in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s which is actually funny would not be made today. Could not be made today. Forbidden. So when I mutter about 1984 and Animal Farm when it comes to Britain and much western Europe, I mean it seriously. We do not live in free and open times. Not really. The genius lies in creating a censored society without many of its inhabitants even realising it.

Part Two

On the home front at least ('foreign affairs' are another thing) overt viciousness is a little out of fashion. In the long run it doesn't get you many votes. Instead, and what could sadden me the most, we are confronted with a public British display of abject stupidity.

Being abjectly stupid in your own home is, I suppose, your prerogative. However, there are folk a-plenty who actually make a living out of being crass and idiotic in public. They can be found within the 'mainstream media', often beneath the banner of 'Comment' or 'Opinion'.

I go to mainstream media occasionally. I never go for long - never. Should I spend three minutes in its largely toxic company, it will normally be the most negative three minutes of the day. In the event that I should indulge in vestigial masochism and go there, what do I find?

Abject stupidity number one:

In the Telegraph online of 21/8/18, there was the following article, written by one Tom Fordy: 'Tom Daley becoming the new face of Pampers is a baby step in the right direction for equality.'

For anyone who knows even less about babies than me, 'Pampers' are nappies for babies.

Now, if Pampers wish to choose a 'gay dad' as their face of the moment, that is their prerogative. Tom Daley is not a father, though. My dictionary defines 'parent' as 'The material or source from which something is derived.' We could get metaphorical, and refer to Tom as 'father' the same way that I could talk about fathering this article. But, in general terms, while he may turn out to be an excellent looker-after of a baby, he is not its father.

This is the modern way, and it's very 1984. Manipulating language and the meanings of words in order to shape the public perception of  reality. Call Tom Daley a father frequently enough, in the hope that folk eventually see no difference between him and anybody else in the parenthood stakes. We're all the same. Exactly the same. This is the trick which is being attempted. And this is what is meant by 'equality' in the article heading. It is another manipulation of meaning. 'Equality' in this case doesn't really mean equality. It has been subtly morphed into 'sameness'. Or, following Neil Kramer, into anonymous, uniform blob-hood.

There is just one little problem here. My studies of biology have revealed an inconvenient truth. You see, men and women are different, in quite fundamental ways. They are built differently. Relevantly to Tom Daley and Pampers, women are able to become pregnant, carry a tiny human being within their own body for nine months, providing it shelter and nourishment, until finally giving birth. A man, however, does none of these things. He does his initial bit - which might last an embarrassingly short length of time - and then has done. He might support the pregnant woman excellently, but his function is not the same. Not at all.

All of which goes to suggest that a mother's relationship to her baby might typically be a little different to that of the father. Hers might be, most naturally, a bit more physical, bodily, flesh and blood, er, Pamperish.

Anyhow, you'll be relieved to hear that I've taken on this equality (read 'sameness') of the sexes on board. I am setting out to demonstrate solidarity with my sisters across the globe. One inconvenient difference between the sexes is how, once a month roughly, the female of the species, at least if she is of child-bearing age, undergoes the messy and sometimes painful process of menstruating. The fact that men fail to do similarly is surely an affront to our noble quest for equality and blobby-hood. We males should undergo something similar. So, for four days every month, I shall be sporting sanitary towels inside my underpants. Sticky-side up. Not very sexy, but these things must be done. Don't be surprised if I am adopted as the new face of Bodyform.

And as if that's not enough...…

Abject stupidity number two.

Part Three

There's going to be a new Doctor Who. This October. On television. And the new Doctor is going to take on the form of woman.

You can make Doctor Who a woman if you want. You can make the good doctor an armadillo for all I care. But these things always have to be topped by some abject stupidity. Here we go.....

The new Doctor Who is going to be played by Jodie Whittaker. Here she is, speaking about her new role: 'The thing about this role …. is that essentially gender is irrelevant and that's completely liberating.'

I watched Doctor Who avidly in the 1960s. Since then, it's been pretty cursory. That said, it doesn't take a lot to keep track of the different manifestations.

Over the decades, Doctor Who seems to have maintained a certain style beneath the changes. An approach, an attitude, which marks him out as the Doctor. A way of seeing the world which combines reason, intuition, matter-of-factness, sometimes grumpiness, and a splash of genius that comes from somewhere else altogether. It's a package which I can't help but identify as, well, rather masculine. Eccentrically so, but masculine nevertheless.

A good deal of the magic surrounding the Doctor issues from his communication with his various companions. Especially his female companions. In its best moments, it is like the alchemist with his soror mystica, creating magic in the laboratory. There's a kind of sexual chemistry. It's quite subtle: not a 'Shall we do it in the Tardis?' type of sexual rapport. But a spark between male and female - a spark which, I suspect, comes with the interplay between two different ways of experiencing the world. That's really what we mean by 'sexual chemistry'. And, Jodie's pronouncements notwithstanding, that's all gonna change.

I'm not saying that it won't work. There is the female alchemist, after all, who has her frater mystico. Maybe it will be great in a different way.  But it's just that 'gender is irrelevant' is stupid. Abjectly so.

That's more than enough. Clearly, three minutes a day in the company of the mainstream is three minutes too much for me.....      
            




Sunday 19 August 2018

We're Doomed.....

Part One

A little over a year ago, I wrote a piece that touched upon the theme of 'hope' ('Five Hours in Barcelona', July 23rd 2017). Hope - yes, Hope - is one of those big words, which take up a lot of space, and can be looked at from many different angles and perspectives. As the months have passed, so have I become conscious of how I simply skimmed the surface of one single aspect of that big word during that article.

Several friends and acquaintances have recently put forth the idea that 'They have no hope.' Or 'There is little hope for the world.' These are not necessarily pessimistic people. They have simply surveyed the landscape of current humanity - its politics, culture, ethics, general affairs - as they see it, and come to this conclusion. Those who have reached a certain age are able to look back over decades of events and sense that, in terms of creating a decent world for the mass of humanity, no progress has been made. None at all. Instead, they look at May, Johnson, Corbin, Trump, the EU, Merkel, Syria, climate change, fake news, environmental catastrophe, the current inability to trust or believe anybody of influence - and just give up all hope.

I notice how those people of today who harbour little hope express their belief with the minimum of panic, horror, or despair. 'I can't see much hope for the future': it's a phrase that's stated almost cheerfully. Matter-of-fact, a self-evident truth.

This is very different to the moments when hope for the future was in the balance in earlier periods of my life. There was the time of the Cuban missile crisis, when our family went to bed in genuine fear of the possibility of planetary annihilation before sunrise on the morrow. The height of the Cold War similarly induced a sense that the future of humanity was in dire peril. At these times, though, the overall sense was that the destruction of humanity would be a real tragedy, a disaster of unprecedented proportions. Human life, human civilisation, was extremely precious; something worth holding on to, worth surviving and fighting for. Today, however, the absence of hope for the human venture is greeted with a shrug of the shoulders. People are beyond deeply caring. We're doomed, and we'll get what we deserve for our sins.

Part Two

Let's consider this passage about C.G.Jung. It is written by a friend of his, having met Jung in the final few years of his life.

"Jung had observed in the eyes of animals giving birth to their young an enormous suffering which seemed to represent a fear of the dark unknown. And he believed that these animals need us, that they are waiting for us to reveal to them the nature of the world and the mystery of their painful existence. We are needed because we alone can project them into the light. Thus in a word, we will become the mirror of all creation, of animal, tree, river, stone and, perhaps, of God himself, for in the end, we are the consciousness of the world...… Nature has created us  ……. so that we may in turn contemplate it in all its evanescence and reveal it in its totality....."

It is possible to consider Jung's notion of the place of humanity in the overall scheme of things as ridiculous and laughable. That's not the point. The issue at stake is how we view things, and what we focus on. On Pale Green Vortex, a similar story to that of our no-hopers has at times been rolled out: how a glance at the past two thousand years of  the history of 'western civilisation' reveals that, details aside, nothing much has changed. Technology has developed, we may live longer, but the structural pattern through which people live their lives has remained pretty much the same. Political, social, and economic affairs take place beneath the umbrella of 'Empire', as Neil Kramer has been known to describe it. The name of the game is containment rather than true betterment. The prime aim of law is not to promote big concepts such as truth, justice, fairness, moral excellence; it exists above all to manage and support a system.

To the extent that we permit Empire to shape our view of what human life is, to that extent will we most likely experience hopelessness. Hope is not part of the agenda of Empire. It never has been, and never will be. Instead, it fosters a sense of futility, an disposition of passive dependence, an attitude of servile disempowerment, where authenticity and real individuality are frowned upon. And it behoves us to remember that it takes two to tango. The game of containment continues with such effect because it is allowed to, through the silent consent of the mass of folk. It is not enough to simply blame Trump or the EU or the local council for our lack of hope. It is an attitude to develop individually, by moving beyond the limits which these petty views of human potential encourage.

Rather than conclude with a wave of the 'no hope' banner, Pale Green Vortex has a different take on the soul-destroying nature of life under Empire. There is no solution within its strangulating parameters. That is the nature of the beast, arguably consciously developed as such. Solutions - hope - come from somewhere else altogether. As a start, there presents itself the task of elegantly removing ourselves from the entire set-up, as best we can. Take our identity out of its poisoned embrace, in whatever ways we feel suitable and find possible.

Hope comes with a change of perspective on the purpose and destiny of humanity, such as the change outlined by Jung. And that's it.

                   

Wednesday 8 August 2018

Everywhere Awake

Part One

When I was a kid, waking up was what you did in the morning. It was a part of the day anticipated more enthusiastically at weekends than on schooldays. My first inkling that there was more to waking up than this was during my early days of practicing Buddhism. I soon discovered that Buddha was sometimes referred to as the Awakened One. The implication being, I suppose, that the rest of us were, to varying degrees, asleep.

Nowadays, all sorts of people are waking up in all kind of way. I know this, because the internet tells me so.

One common type of waking up concerns folk who are beginning to realise some truths about politics, parapolitics, the news, the media, education, the financial system, and so on. They are beginning to arouse from a slumber induced by being blindfolded, having the wool pulled over their eyes, or some such. This kind of waking up can be truly shocking, making a person question everything they have ever considered to be real, to be true. The entire world begins to crumble before their newly-opened eyes. It can be profoundly disturbing, depressing, or worse.

The other type of awakening is of a more directly spiritual nature. There is plenty of it about, especially online and in magazines concerned with 'mind and spirit'. Most frequently, those people involved talk about non-duality, oneness, cosmic consciousness, divine presence, or some such. While less dark than the first type of waking up, it can nevertheless deeply shake up the individual's sense of who they are and what the world is. By learning discernment, the reader can begin to sort out the chaff from the wheat. There are plenty of folk who are a bit fake, or have had a single blast of more enlightened experience, but who remain, one suspects, a bit lop-sided or incomplete in their awakening. And then there are the few who appear to be the real deal. They tend to be rather quiet, modest individuals, while the tub-thumping, chest- beating, 'follow me and my method, and you will be saved' type immediately arouse suspicion.

Some people are awake to the machinations of the control system, but asleep to other dimensions to life. While others have done a bit of non-dual stuff, but remain oblivious to the deviousness of dualism dished out every day all around them. Both of these are, in my view, insufficient. Direly so, I might say on a harsh day. There are folk 'out there' trying to do a decent job of incorporating the two into a complete vision. I haven't delved into his work much in recent times, but I know that Neil Kramer is one such person. Search them out and cherish them, even with all their imperfections.

Part Two

It's a few months ago when I bought a copy of 'The Spiritual Awakening Guide: Kundalini, Psychic Abilities, and the Conditioned Layers of Reality'. I did so in the hope of landing a fish that might provide some useful advice in my navigating the sometimes tricky and unpredictable waters of the kundalini crossing. I opened the package immediately on its arrival and skimmed a few pages of the book. After about three minutes I plonked it down forcefully on the table. This was one occasion on which I'd really wasted my money. I'd bought a book that really was unnecessary: a guide to kundalini was a contradiction in terms. The process was unique, highly individual - personal, even. The only guide could be my inner muse, and my wish for an external guide was simply a reflection of my inability to muster the courage to deal with my own life.

That was several months ago. Since then, I've found Mary Shutan's  book invaluable on all sorts of occasions. It has been a trusty companion in my moving through the unfathomable.

Like almost everything else conceivable, kundalini has plenty of entries on the internet. YouTube, in particular, overflows with techniques guaranteed to awaken your kundalini. And like everything else on the internet, and on YouTube in particular in this case, most of it is half-sense or nonsense. Anybody with an active kundalini will soon get to discern. There is plenty of stuff simply copied from what the Hindu texts and gurus over the ages have said; or very same gurus spouting the same platitudes themselves. There is plenty of New-Agey type stuff which might conceivably have some effect upon ones energy, but nothing like a full kundalini awakening. And, buried amongst the dross, is a small number of sources which are direct and authentic. From people who have actually been through a process (one which never really ends, it seems), and have something of value to impart. Amongst this merry little band we find Mary Shutan.

I first came across Mary via her website. She is the genuine article. No-nonsense: simultaneously out beyond the heaven chakra while completely practical and down-to-earth. She writes about how, for example, some mornings she gets up and wishes she didn't have kundalini to deal with as well as the other business of the day. Such realism marks her out as authentic. She casts an unimpressed eye over the plethora of 'wake your kundalini' stuff out there, remarking that, if these people really knew what kundalini awakening involved, they would run a mile.

The book is clearly written, and easy to follow. Mary sometimes adopts the style of 'when we reach this point, we will feel this.....' I don't like people telling me what I'm going to experience, but the material dealt with in the book is maybe most easily presented in this manner. It's a small gripe of mine.

Her book is not, for me, something to read methodically from cover to cover. It is a resource to dip into when the need arises, or when you simply fancy reading a few words of her wisdom. Bits and pieces have helped me no end, even if primarily as reassurance. Sometimes I just open a page at random, and see what's there. Nearly always it's of interest and/or use.

Thanks, Mary, for the book. I see she is bringing out another, solely on kundalini, next year. As she remarks, there is plenty of material, and enthusiasm, about waking kundalini, or what kundalini is. But, tellingly, relatively little on how to negotiate kundalini, should it actually wake up in the first place. For this we need people like Mary Shutan.

A typical short quote to end with:

'It is important to understand that many who are teaching or claiming to be "awake" or "enlightened" are doing so on a somewhat awake or between awake and asleep level. This false, or ego awakening is an illusion that can cause a great deal of harm. Careful differentiation of gurus, teachers, and ourselves is needed so that we do not fall into this category, which is increasingly and unfortunately common.' (Part One: Ego Awakening')

Images: Creative Commons
              Mary Shutan's book