Shamanic Journey

It is eighteen years since I engaged in an intense period of shamanic journeying. It was a phase in my life that radically altered my experience and subsequent view of the world and how it works.

My spiritual life, for want of a better expression, had hit a brick wall: it was the end of the road for orthodox Buddhist practice, as I saw it at any rate. It was taking me nowhere. In an effort to revive flagging spirit and soul, I decided to give the technique of shamanic journeying a go. There was nothing to lose; plus, a friend of mine was embarking on a similar experiment at the same time, so there was ready opportunity for sharing.

One of the first tasks is to find your power animal; or let the power animal find you.  Shamanic literature abounds with tales of helpful power animals. Wolf, eagle, mountain lion; owl, bear, crow: these are typical animals you will read about. In my case, however, the power animal emerged from behind a thicket on the edge of a dry limestone mountain in the shape of....... a Great Ape. I was astonished to see such an animal, since I had never given any thought or consideration to this kind of creature before. It seemed to appear from nowhere. And it is at this point that the theories of behavioural psychology come tumbling down. This was no memory from childhood, no image absorbed then forgotten from my infant picture book. A repressed encounter at a zoo, a story told by an uncle. No. This really seemed like a new kid on the block.

My power animal journey came easily, effortlessly almost, despite my never having done a practice remotely like this before. It was accompanied by a remarkable release of physical and emotional energy, and a state of considerable bliss. It was as if I had opened a doorway - or, in the case of shamanic journeying, descended a tunnel - that had been ready and waiting for me for a while. It was easy, seeming the most natural thing in the world.

From then on, shamanic journeying became a regular item in my diary. To the accompaniment of recorded shamanic drumming, I would meet my animal friend and guide at the entrance to the lowerworld. Together we would descend a long, dark tunnel, to exit into a landscape of some description or another. We would walk or fly, sometimes traversing enormous distances. Typically we might then meet a female figure, who I came to regard as a teacher. Following this encounter we would plunge further and deeper into mysterious lands, engaging in all manner of adventure and bumping into all kind of beings animal, human, supernatural, or just plain weird. When the drum beat changed to the callback, the animal and I would scurry back, returning the way we had come.

I recently reviewed the journal I kept at the time, and was astonished at how much journeying I had done. Over a period of twelve months beginning in Septemer 1998 I travelled on 32 journeys. Some of it I don't recall very well. But, for a while, my life seems to have consisted mainly of teaching work Monday to Friday, with shamanic journeying sessions fitted in most weekends.

At the time, the journeys were nearly always vivid, imbued with an unmistakeable numinous reality. One of the most amazing things was that they were never 'willed' or 'intended' on my part. Sometimes I set off with a distinct purpose, on other occasions simply to explore, but the events taking place during the course of these journeys were always independent of 'me' guiding or directing. I was not so much the creator of the narrative, but a character who turned up in a story that was taking place anyhow.

The journeys seemed to open a doorway into another layer of consciousness. As can happen with psychedelics, it was very different to 'normal' experience, and worked in very different ways. At the same time, it appeared very close, just around the corner, a storehouse just waiting to be tapped into.

I didn't 'understand' it very much at all, but my instinct was that this was very important if you wanted to know how things and the universe work. It was my friend who was experimenting with journeying at the same time who put me onto Jung. I was amazed to read about Jung's nekyia, or 'night-sea journey'. He would deliberately descend, or fall into, a dark tunnel, and meet a whole bundle of characters that he would later refer to as archetypal images. Jung's technique and experiences during his night-sea journey mirrored precisely what my own shamanic journeys had thrown up.

Delving more deeply into Jung, I came across another idea of his which seemed to resonate, and to describe concisely what I had encountered. 'Autonomous contents of the unconscious' is the phrase he created for the figures who walked through the landscapes that I entered during the shamanic journeys. There is no need to get caught up in the minutiae of Jung's terminology, as some folk are inclined to do: endless wrangles about whether the unconscious truly exists as a thing; about whether it can be considered as having 'contents'. I prefer to take Jung's phrase as an image in itself, rather than literally.

To accept that there are 'autonomous contents' in our psyche; that our everyday conscious ego may not be ruling  the roost all the time, in fact might not know what's really going on in our life: all this dramatically turns round how we regard and live our life. It should be humbling, positively so. That there may be forces running the show that we do not control is, to many people, too scary to consider. It's a reality that will truly bring that Tower in the Tarot crashing down. It is a notion that is anathema to much of the edifice of modern society, built as it is on the values and ambitions of a cut-off ego. It is this sense of being individuals isolated in our ego-structures, ego-wishes, ego-insecurities that is manipulated and exploited in the constant clarion calls to personal ambition, success and fear of failure, material gains, career path etc etc. Listen to, make conscious, the voices issuing from the figures roaming around the lowerworld, and much of this just gets blown away.

In my case, I have at times found the emanations from the unconscious scary - very scary. At the same time, an abiding curiosity that amounts to a personal need, has led me to explore this element in life. To live a complete, whole life means calling up, having a decent chat with, whoever, whatever, might be around in the realm of psyche that is all that I know, all that I am. This is not a 'path' that I have chosen. It feels truer to say that it has been chosen for me; 'I' have had little say in the matter.

After that year, journeying became more intermittent but still powerful. I continued for another eighteen months or so, but by that time the effectiveness of the technique had begun to wane, with the journeys becoming less vivid and themes increasingly repetitive. I eventually stopped, apart from the very occasional venture. Looking back, maybe I didn't need to make so many trips to the lowerworld, and could instead have spent more time reflecting on and absorbing what had been happening. I don't know. For sure, I ended up with a real bucketload of archetypal adventures, many of whose sense and meaning continue to elude me. But I became familar with a different and special landscape, intuitively coming to know how to negotiate its features and how the whole thing worked. Since then, life has not been quite the same.

Image: from our friends at Reality Sandwich



                    

New Order

Card number twenty in the Tarot is often titled 'Judgment'. Or 'Judgement'. Take your pick with the spelling, it would seem. The typical depiction, found in the classic Waite-Smith Tarot for example, shows an angel in the sky blowing a trumpet-like instrument, with people rising as if from the dead in salutation. The problem with the idea of 'judgement' is that it comes burdened with twisted notions from orthodox Christianity, of the good going up to heaven while the bad suffer eternal damnation. Resurrection and redemption are further problematic aspects to the narrow and literalistic view of 'judgement' offered up by Christianity, and ones which spread their pernicious influence over some Tarot decks.

In the Thoth Tarot, that pious Christian saint Aleister Crowley ditches the term 'judgement' in favour of 'Aeon'. Good move, I suggest. It is a new age, a moment of change, of transformation, of ushering in the new. The deeper meaning of the twentieth card in the Tarot is expressed more properly in the image of the phoenix, that miraculous bird arising from the flames. It is depicted rather beautifully in the image here, from the Chrysalis Tarot.

'The phoenix renews her youth
only when she is burnt, burnt alive, burnt down
to hot and flocculent ash.
Then the small stirring of a new small bub in the nest
with strands of down like floating ash
shows that she is renewing her youth like the eagle,
immortal bird.'

From 'Phoenix' by D.H. Lawrence

Card number twenty was face up on the centre of the dining room table forty years ago. The commune project for which I had shed blood, sweat and tears for three years had fallen apart, and with it a good slice of the meaning of life for me. Fear not, however. The phoenix rose from the ashes, splendid in all its glory. I spent a goodly portion of that endlessly hot sunny summer on Buddhist retreat, and in a whole variety of ways felt wonderfully reborn. A year later, I was due for ordination into Buddhism. The intervening period had seen the feathers of the phoenix dampened by the less-than enlightening experience of 'working for the Buddhist movement'. Nevertheless, the magical bird was able to shake off the heaviness of the water like dew on a sun-blessed dawn as I prepared for that momentous event.

New age, new life, new everything: this was what was signified by entering the Western Buddhist Order. It is a matter of identification. Everything that I previously considered myself to be was gone, to be replaced by a new identity, a consciously-expressed new direction, a new me. And that wasn't all. Being reborn into a Buddhist Order meant rising up out of the flames to discover a new family, full of people doing the same thing as yourself. Sounds great...... doesn't it?

I offer a couple of reflections related to that ordination here. Not as personal indulgence, but because issues beyond the details of my own life may be hinted at here. Vamos, vamos....

What's in a name?

One of the primary aspects of my Buddhist ordination was getting a new name. Coming in Sanskrit, it denoted both the path and the goal. It purported to encapsulate the Ideal in personal form, if you like: what I was to become. It also signified a psychological rebirth into a new family, that of aspirant Buddhas. These were my new brothers and sisters, fellow phoenixes arising out of the death of everything that had gone before. It never occurred to me to ask my blood parents what they thought about all this. Were they disturbed, pissed off? Did they feel existentially disowned at this swapping identity, my successful transfer application? Did they feel that the blood, sweat and tears they had put into bringing me up amounted, on my part, to zilch? Bloody hell......

More recently, I have had occasion to mischievously muse over how my former Buddhist teacher came upon all these names. Did he receive a gusty blast of transcendental inspiration to order on the eve of every ordination? Or did he pick names out of a hat? The answer probably lies somewhere between the two.

In translation, my Buddhist family name comes across as 'Jewel hero', 'hero of the Jewel', something like that. And for a decade I lived up to the appelation. I practiced meditation daily, and taught it. I studied Buddhist texts, attended seminars on Buddhist themes, and led study groups. I worked for the Buddhist movement, then became chairman of a Buddhist centre. My jewel shone so brightly that people had to wear sunglasses if they wanted to meet me. 'There are no flies on you' another Buddhist commented to me after I had given an inspirational and doctrinally spotless talk at a Buddhist gathering. Then I went to New Zealand and fell apart.

On my return to Britain, everything was different. People who had once queued up to speak to me now looked askance as my darkened presence approached. It was as if I had fallen into a deep pit full of horse shit and come up smelling not too good. I gave up giving talks and bought an electric guitar with a bunch of effects pedals instead. I took to a basement rehearsal room in a friend of mine's house, where long hours were spent with friends playing dark, spacy riffs through flangers, phasers, and any other weirdness-enhancing effects that might have been around at the time. Rarely has an apparent Buddhist manifested in less jewel-like garb.

As for the 'Hero' side of my nature, I undertook a serious study of Jung, then archetypal psychology under James Hillman. In the worldview of Hillman, the hero in myth is none other than the ego sallying forth in conquest, marching its narrow-minded march forward in an effort to take over the entire psyche. According to Hillman, the true way forward is not heroic at all, but lies in 'relativising the ego': putting it in its rightful place rather than granting it carte blanche to run riot and identify itself with the entire psyche. During my final years as an official Buddhist, I wrote a number of articles for the Buddhist journal about how the heroic ideal was limited in perspective. It had to go; and so did I.

It is ironic how the ideal laid out in my name became turned completely on its head, rather like the Hanged Man of the Tarot. Yet there may be a further layer to this name stuff. There is a story in the White Lotus Sutra of Mahayana Buddhism, where a jewel is found in the most unlikely place, at the bottom of a dung heap. This has proved to be my experience as the years have passed - the jewel at the bottom of the dung heap. And maybe the more heroic act is the one that dares to question the entire notion of the heroic ideal in the first place.

Good Chakras, Naughty Chakras

Another aspect of my Buddhist ordination was the receiving of a visualisation and mantra meditation based upon one of the many Buddhas and Bodhisattvas, the different imaginal embodiments of the enlightened state. This invocation and creation of an image of awakening suited me down to the ground, and I performed the entire practice, involving verses, mantras, building up then dissolving visualised images on a daily basis for ten years. During this period the sadhana, as it is known, was focal to my spiritual life, probably the most important thing that I did, and on many occasions when my spirits were lower than low, it saved my bacon.

A time came, however, when a creeping sense of discomfort began to descend upon my often complex, troubled being. The Buddha spirit wasn't reaching into my depths. The transformational element was not complete, failing to touch some aspects of my psychology.

There came a seminar, to which I was not invited, on which one upstart asked a telling question. During this meditation practice, variously coloured lights were seen emanating from the Bodhisattva form and entering the body of the meditator. These lights streamed out from between the eyebrows, the throat, and the heart, corresponding roughly to three of the upper chakras as enumerated in the conventionally-used seven chakra system. What, asked our bright spark, about the 'lower chakras', solar plexus and below in the human body? Didn't transformational light need to beam into these as well? No, the reply came loud and clear, there was no need. Transform the 'higher' energy centres of mind, speech, and heart, and the 'lower' chakras would be transformed automatically, of their own accord.

Seen from the space that I nowadays occupy in this marvellous universe, I suggest that this is a big mistake! It is a suggestion that comes oozing value-laden notions of higher and lower, better and worse, sacred and profane, the stuff of false dualisms that have distorted two thousand years of thought and life in the western world.

Why this bias? Why transform 'higher' energy centres and not 'lower' ones? Is there something we're afraid of? Our strength, maybe, our physical vitality. The viscera. Sex. Shadow. Our drive, our will. Yes, that's the rub. It's a bit of a psy-op, I feel. All of our energy has to come for the ride if personal transformation is to be effective. No need to discriminate, that's just a mind distortion. All energy centres from top to bottom can express our innate divinity, provide contact with that sacred level to existence, act as portals to the infinite. No high and low; no black and white; no good and bad. These are all veils that get placed upon our own direct experience, veils designed to deceive, to delude, to blind us to a remarkable truth that is staring us in the face all the time, should we be so courageous as to look. Energy centres are energy centres, that's it. End of story. The reality is so beautiful, so simple that it's...... unreal.





                
        

Europe: A Voice from the Vortex

The silence from Pale Green Vortex on the topic of the EU as the referendum in the UK approached was both deafening and deliberate. I had written plenty a while ago on various aspects of the EU, to the point where I was finding the entire theme dispiriting, my own enthusiasm for this blog plummetting to a level where I was wondering whether to tie a little bow around Pale Green Vortex before consigning it to the dustbin of history. Such is the effect of directing ones focus too much onto matters of politics, parapolitics, and geopolitics. In addition, the world was awash with comments and opinons on the matter anyway, and the last thing we needed was yet another bunch of comments and opinions. It is actually the easiest thing in the world to spout opinion, even if it is of the reasoned and intelligent kind. Nothing special about that at all.

It was with considerable shock that, on that fateful Friday morning last week, I finally tuned in to the outside world to discover the result of the referendum. It was, I had decided, just a formality: the result was a foregone conclusion. At the end of the day, folk in Britain would lose courage, and by a considerable margin decide to  play safe, follow the track taken by so many of us in our personal lives, the track with the signpost saying 'I know this is all horrible, frustrating, and rubbish; but rather follow the comfortable, the known, the familiar. It is, in the end, easier than striking out into pastures new.' When I first saw the result, I wondered whether I was reading things right, or whether it was a preposterous joke. When it finally sunk in that this was real I picked myself off the floor, dusted myself down, and got on with the rest of my life.

Aside from any good things and bad things about leaving or staying in the EU, I took one big message from result. The vote suggested that the spirit of plenty of folk has not been completely quashed by decades of control, control, more control, mind control in the guise of producing nice, decent people (political correctness) and the rest. I had all but given up on the British, especially those in England, so I take the referendum result as a cause for slight optimism. I don't vote in general elections, local elections etc, for reasons that have been explained on Pale Green Vortex before; but this referendum was a bit different, since it was about control by institutions that are vicious and undemocratic even by the vicious, undemocratic standards of the conventional political world. It was about how many layers of control we want (and the answer is 'as few as possible'.) The result demonstrated that it is possible to bring about a few changes after all.

I like Europe. But I do not like the EU. This is, by the way, another mind game, a psy-op, played by many in the media, referring to the EU as 'Europe'. Not true, but designed to confuse the unwary. I realised many years ago while spending a year in New Zealand that I am an Old World person. Despite the language being more-or-less the same as I had spoken all my life, and in spite of the culture seeming superficially similar to that of Britain, New Zealand felt to me very far from 'home'. I really felt like a stranger in a strange land. Conversely, I experienced a distinct affinity of spirit whenever I visited Italy, Holland, Spain.

Europe: pizzas, piazzas, plazas, playas. Canals, the Rhine winding its majestic way. Passegiata, the many moods of the Mediterranean. This is an idealised view, I know, and there is another side. The ghastly urban high-rise wastelands of some of the Spanish coastline - how could they do this? Disenfranchised, disempowered beings on the Paris metro or hanging around on street corners, people whose soul appears to have fled by night. There are many dark images of Europe, but still.....

During one period of my life in particular, Europe - mainland, continental Europe - saved me. It was around thirty years ago that I would embark upon my annual pilgrimage to Italy. I use the word 'pilgrimage' deliberately, since I went in search of emotional, psychological, and spiritual sustenance. I travelled alone, or with my girlfriend of the time. Seeking to break out of the greyness which seemed to embrace the skies, the buildings, the culture and most of the people of London, I went in search of colour, vibrancy, spontaneity. In Italy I found all this in abundance, at times in superfluity. I especially loved some of the art of the Italian Renaissance, and the late-medieval dudes from the generations beforehand: Giotto, Duccio, Cimabue. Without them, I do not know what might have come of my life.

The EU is not Europe. Like most politics, it is a synthetic structure superimposed on the organic, natural flow of real life, as directly experienced. Opaque Lens refers to it, in his recent bit on Shamanic Freedom Radio, as the EUSSR, and I think that sums it up magnificently. Predictably, and sadly, the aftermath of the EU referendum is bringing out the vultures, the creatures of darkness ready to pick through the carcasses in search for anything that furthers their own power, their own agenda, their own rubbishy career. Out they come, sad beings with nothing better to do with their lives than accrue fake power to themselves within a system that is sick and distorted; to sow fear, division, dissent. The Tory power-grabbers, the Labour opportunists, the inevitable Sturgeon with her 'what about Scotland?' whingeing and whining. What a pathetic parade they make. These are people who I currently refer to simply as low-graders: poor specimens of humanity, really, involved in a low-grade game that has no end, and which unfortunately affects all of us. That, I suppose, is all part of the game.        

Image: The Tower, Ancient Italian Tarot



      

Hierophantic Revisitings

                     

I like the Tarot. It bears ample witness to the joined-up nature of reality. In particular, it revels in the styles adopted by conditionality (the Buddhist term) that exist outside the linear cause-and-effect type insisted upon as the only one by crusty, boring modern rationalists, academics, and one-eyed scientists (come on out, Mr Dawkins - we know you're in there). In particular, Tarot brings forth correspondence and synchronicity, everpresent yet often missed elements in the fabric of experience that is being constantly woven.

Tarot can be related to on as superficial or profound a level as the subject wishes. And, with the plethora of different Tarot decks available nowadays, the interface between subjective experience (the creator of the particular Tarot) and the universal themes (as represented in the Major and Minor Arcana) can be studied, experienced, and played with.

It's a funny thing, really. I came across the Tarot in the early 1970s, when living in commune. While I had always managed to negotiate a trip on high-dose, high-quality Operation Julie LSD, it took the Tarot to freak me out. I would throw the Tarot for myself or for friends, or sometimes just pick out a card or two and see what happened. The images spoke strongly and directly to me. Too many hanged men, figures of death riding horses, and towers collapsing all around me, and it was too much. I really didn't like what was going on; the Tarot just had to go.

Nowadays, I am back with the Tarot. Not in any big way: some people are real experts, it's their full-time thing. But I'm back with Tarot sufficiently for it to make a difference.

Of the many Tarot decks around these days, the classic one, comprising the cards most people will be familiar with, remains the Rider-Waite Tarot (more correctly, it should be called the Waite-Smith deck, since Rider were simply the publishers, while Arthur Waite was creator-in-chief and Pamela Colman Smith the illustrator). The Waite-Smith deck comes oozing esoteric and mystical symbolism, originating with the Order of the Golden Dawn, mystical Kabbala, and Waite's own Secret Order, along with various other places. This in itself makes the deck a true university of learning about life and the workings of the universe. The style of the pictures is that medieval-cum-theatrical one, which is simple, clear, and as a result extremely effective.

There are, however, other tarot decks. In this modern day and age, loads of them. I shall unpack a little of this theme in a further post. But for now I'm back with my personal bane, the Hierophant. The riddle of the Hierophant, explored initially in 'the Buddhist Inventory Trilogy' a month or two back. The Waite-Smith card seemed to point up all the mess that comes with the authority of religiosity, even the soft-core religiosity of organised Buddhism. With the Thoth Tarot Hierophant, a bit of non-Christian light came to bear upon the figure; the perspective was expanded. It was while I was taking an internet stroll through the different Tarots in search of further illumination on the riddle of the Hierophant that I came upon this.  It is the Hierophant from the Royo Dark Tarot.

The moment I set eyes upon the Hierophant of the Dark Tarot, I almost wept on the spot. To this day, I remain in awe. Rarely have I came upon a re-working of an image, an archetype, so bold, so innovative, so magnificent. Everything that I had associated, brought to bear, brought into being, with regard to the Hierophant seemed to be turned on its head. Instead of the crusty dignitary of the Waite-Smith, trussed up in the heavy regalia of orthodox religiosity, there appears a radiant female figure. What genius, to present the hierophantic energy as female. Instead of dispensing patriarchal authority (the 'normal' Tarot hierophant is pictured with a couple of 'papal dignitaries', as one book calls them, sitting in a position of deferment and submission beneath the Big Boss in the hierarchy), the focus of our Hierophantess lies in receptivity: she is sitting at the foot  of the dragon, dispenser of Wisdom. The orthodox Hierophant is impermeable to the influence of true Wisdom coming from outside him - his heavy clothes act as protection, armour; while the Royo Hierophant is clothed lightly, almost naked, open to the influence of the Higher, the Greater, the more Beautiful. What's more, she sits with the books of knowledge, scripture, and undoubtedly rules and regulations. But they lie unkempt around; her focus is on the Dragon's Wondrous Wisdom.

This, at least, is what I saw. A gander at a number of Tarot-type internet postings revealed to me, however, that other people saw something completely different. The female was not the Hierophant at all; it was the dragon. The female was the disciple (me - us) in rapt yet completely balanced and centred attention. The manner in which the image can be read so variously only adds to its wonder for me. This interpretation also came redolent with meaning. The Hierophant manifests breathing Knowledge directly, dragon's breath, serpent wisdom, inviting a total reworking of the twisted Garden of Eden myth which has caused so much pain and suffering over the centuries. Most importantly, the disciple, the receiver of Wisdom, is centrepiece, not peripheral like the papal lackeys in the orthodox Tarot depictions. The Hierophant is not just about some bloody religious authority, or 'organised Buddhism' in my case. It asks questions about the querent's own relationship with Knowledge-Bearers, and his/her own responsibilty in spiritual growth.    

The image from the Royo Dark Tarot manifested so much of what the Hierophant could be about on a deeper, purer level, than that of the distorted images of popes, priests, and other figures of disempowerment. On the basis of this one card, I gladly parted with money in order to have a Dark Tarot deck in my living space. There's plenty to muse over with the Dark Tarot, but this will wait for another time.

Meanwhile, the question remains. I come across somebody like I was forty years ago. Idealistic, inspired, motivated, yet confused and in need of spiritual guidance, direction. What do I recommend them to do? I'm still not sure. The day of the guru is passed, thankfully, to quote or paraphrase Neil Kramer from a number of years ago. But there is a time and a place for the Hierophant card, when guidance and support is needed. Maybe I would say something like this. Do your retreats, make your contacts and friends; live and work even, in spiritual community, should you feel so inclined. But remember: the paramount concern is your own soul, your higher self, call it as you will. Remain in strong intuitive connection with the inner voice, and listen to it more seriously than any other sound. Do not give away yourself to any 'greater good'. Do not turn into a distorted version of the Tarot Hanged Man. The faintest sniff of anyone asking you to give away your own dream in exchange for somebody else's version and run a mile. Quickly. All groups, teachers, guides, all hierophantic representations, are means not ends. And as such, entirely dispensable when the time arises. The journey is unique, long, and in a sense uncharted. In its mystery lies its magnificence.  


    Images: Cheery Hierophant from a Marseilles deck (top)
                  Hierophant from Royo Dark Tarot (centre)
                  The final solution: Hierophant from Gummy Bear Tarot                                       (bottom)
     

The Divinity of Polarity

Here's a thing. During my years as a practicing Buddhist I was never told about the sacred nature of duality, the divinity of polarity, how opposites are the portal to the infinite. The image above is of Hayagriva yab-yum, but it is not the male/female, yin/yang coupling that I am mainly concerned with here. It is the splitting of wholeness into light and dark; black and white; in everyday experience, nice and nasty.

The teaching of this sacred duality fell to Neil Kramer, as did many things that have impacted positively on my life over recent years. In his typically clear and coherent manner, he describes how polarity is a teaching mechanism. It is possible, I suppose, that other planets, other universes, may boast different styles; but we live on a planet which is pretty gritty, pretty basic, so duality is the name of the game, In particular, this means paying attention to, embracing, the negative pole, the one we easily wish to reject, to pretend doesn't exist.

A while ago I identified two things that really are my bag. The first one is consciousness: see plenty of posts on Pale Green Vortex. My life has been more-or-less devoted to consciousness exploration; it is the main man, the creator, reality. The second thing that is my bag is anxiety. Friends, welcome to the dark side. Anxiety is dark, believe me. The other side of the polarity. I am a specialist. I know.

Anxiety really came to the fore during my years working  as English language teacher. I am the kind of guy who wants to do a good job, not waste other people's time etc. Which is all very well, except that day after day after month after year I would experience a nearly constant undercurrent of anxiety: is this material interesting enough; have I got enough variety in the class; and, worst of all - have I got enough material to last the three hours? This was the real nightmare scenario: running out of things to do with an hour to go, and without energy or spontaneous creativity to sort it out on the spot, just left in this panic-filled void.

I gave up teaching, and planned wholesale life changes, involving, among other things, moving from London to Highland Scotland, aka the Great Unknown. This was the final straw, the anxiety-provoking Great Unknown (that is what anxiety is, a reaction to the unknown. And, guess what - the future is by its very nature unknown). Sensations disappeared from my feet and legs, and I was unable to walk properly. Instinct told me not to bother with a doctor. It wasn't multiple sclerosis, and eventually I moved to Scotland to climb mountains.

But the anxiety was still there. This April I wrote about my visit to the homeopath two years ago. During this fateful ninety minutes, the anxiety came up, through, and out. It must be something to be a practitioner like that, with a bloke you've never met before living out this total panic scenario, everything completely out of control, recounting how this image a bit like Munsch's Scream comes at him, complete helpless panic, about nothing in particular yet anything and everything.

With the help of the homeopathic sessions and some guiding words from Neil Kramer, I began to get a hold on what this anxiety stuff is: where it comes from, what it denotes. To the point where I can now more steadily begin to experience the reality that the character experiencing all these anxious feelings is a made-up fiction anyway.

The point is this, though. Anxiety has been a major way into 'developing', moving on, over recent years. It has required real, visceral situations to present it as a teaching node, be it the house flooding, my wife having early-stage tongue cancer, or other less dramatic events. The dark side can force a hard, clinical we could say, examination of the deepest, most fundamental and obstinate aspects to our being. A necessary examination, which will never be effected if we adopt as our motto 'All you need is love' (unless you clearly recognise that love from the universe may appear in vicious, cruel guises).

As I mentioned above, my years in organised Buddhism failed to bring this out. When the dark side presented itself starkly for recognition, inclusion, or whatever, I was either left to my own devices or needing to look to Lou Reed, Jim Morrison, or Carl Jung for a finger pointing the way. Key notions in Buddhist practice were 'developing', 'transforming', 'transcending'. When flailing about in the stormy waters of the night sea, these ideas don't seem to make much sense. We had a meditation, one of the primary ones in the system, which translates roughly as 'developing loving kindness'. Despite practicing this regularly for many years, I confess that this makes no sense to me at this moment in time. How do you 'develop' love, exactly? It's never happened in my life to date. Isn't love an immediate response to, for example, experiencing the interconnectedness of us all, or our essential non-difference? Or a response to the deep empathy that can arise with another being? Correct me if I'm wrong, anybody. I'm up for learning.

So, a lot of modern New-Age stuff, a lot of 'light workers', disavow this aspect to our sacred being, deny these teachings which seem to me necessary if we are to truly move on in our 'spiritual lives'. A number of friends and acquaintances have recently engaged in various 'no self', 'non-duality' techniques, normally with the aid of a guide, and readily accessed online. I have dipped into some of this material myself, and have found it useful in some ways. A question remains, though, about how deep it goes (this notion of depth may be rejected as valid by some no-self exponents. So be it.). Buddhism, I contend, needs its wrathful deities, and modern systems of no-self require similar, otherwise the 'awakenings' they assist will tend to be vapid. So I was pleased to read one of the main guides on this particular site informing one no-self hopeful that his fear was his best friend; it was through his fear, properly experienced, that he came to see, and eventually see through, the fantasies which acted as mind-made manacles around his consciousness.
          
No darkness, no light.

Costa Del Scotland

The west coast of Scotland, in particular, has recently been a sunnier place than the Spanish Costas, and without the crowds and high-rise hotel monstrosities of Benidorm. I have not made it very much over to the west, but there was one day recently.....

Psycho-Inactives Rule

On May 26th, with the minimum of fuss or noise, the much-vaunted and much-discussed-on-PGV Psychoactive Substances Bill came into force in the UK. There is little to say, really, that has not already been stated ad nauseam. That potentially dangerous substances are in existence out there is not the issue. They can be dealt with intelligently, should one wish to do so. A 'blanket ban' (Jesus, there are going to be some people getting cold this winter) completely fails to address the problem, and my suggestion has always been that it is not really intended to do so. As for a blanket ban on psychedelic substances, as Graham Hancock has been at pains to point out, it is a little strange. Laws on psychedelic substances are enacted by people who have not experienced psychedelics themselves, so have little idea what they are criminalising; and by people who, should they try psychedelics, would most likely have a very unpleasant time.

In a political world that is inhabited overwhelmingly by beings of poor quality, our UK examples are leaders in that very poverty. The balance of 'law' has been turned on its head - this is the bigger picture often unrecognised. Instead of things being legal unless expressly criminalised, new goalposts have been stuck in the mud. When you drink a cup of psychoactive tea or sip a glass of mind-altering wine, you do not do so as an unquestionable 'right'. You do so purely because the misgovernment has been kind enough to make special exemptions from the blanket ban for those few psychoactives it approves of. Nasty little totalitarians, really.