Property Is Theft

                 It's all mine! Mine! Mine! Ha! Ha! Ha!

'Property is theft': first given voice by Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in 1840, the slogan became one of the clarion calls of the nineteenth-century anarchists. This rallying cry has come to mind recently while I've been (once more) considering the fate of the wild places of Highland Scotland. It's property rights that call the tune. Windfarms (or Wind Cities, as the John Muir Trust has begun to call the bigger ones) are built largely on the estates of mega-rich landowners, who stand to make a mega-buck that they don't need in the first place by leasing out their land to multinational energy companies. They can make a few more scraps by permitting small hydro schemes to be constructed on their estates, another costly and inefficient scheme involving lots of pipes and benefitting nobody other than - oh, the estate owners, along with the poisoned portfolios of a bunch of bandit politicians.

There's also the issue of new tracks on these enormous estates, bulldozed across the hillsides in increasing numbers. These are horrible scars on the landscape, disfiguring the hills for miles around without a thought for ecology or beauty. What a contrast they make to the stalkers' paths of yore, many of which still thread their way neatly through the heather, blending unobtrusively with the landscape; indeed, becoming part of the landscape.

Google 'Ledgowan Estate' to discover what a particularly bad example of an estate thinks of people who dare to walk on 'its' estate (and this despite the excellent Right to Roam legislation existing in Scotland). And over recent times the estate has torn an ugly line across kilometres of hillside near Achnasheen, slap bang in the north-west Highlands - all in the name of agriculture, of course. Very recently I have seen (I couldn't have avoided it if I'd tried) the scar of another track freshly gouged into the heather and peat climbing up beside the stream that leads up local Munro Fionn Bheinn (whether this is part of Ledgowan or a neighbouring estate I have been unable to ascertain). It all looks almost like a deliberate trashing of the landscape.

All of this, of course, is given tacit approval by the Scottish misgovernment. It's all a cartel, really - landowners, politicians, multinationals, in a symbiotic yet poisonous world of their own, and a law unto themselves. To me, this is the grave error of those who enthuse about the possibility of Scottish independence. Despite all the evidence to the contrary, our independence flag-wavers persist in the blind belief that it's actually got something to do with anybody or anything outside the confines of the local cabal. Naive, naive, and just what the Empire wants us to believe. A  nice piece of diversionary theatre.

Property is theft. Actually, I disagree. 'Theft' implies that there is somebody to steal from, and something to steal. In the case of land - most clearly with wild land, nature - this is a ludicrous notion. How can anyone 'own' a hill, a mountain, a forest, a desert? Of course they can't; it's impossible. Property, in this case, is not so much theft as a deluded and hubristic fantasy. If we look deeper, we find that it's a concept of mind control, designed to foster the falsehood of a separate self which erroneously believes it can appropriate bits of the outside world to increase its sense of personal importance. On a personal level, I am fortunate enough to live in a house that I no longer need to pay for; but I don't consider that it is literally 'mine'. It is a shelter and a launchpad for my current various projects. It is a place that I endeavour to treat with care and respect, and I live mindful of the fact that one day my material being will return to the wider elemental world, as will the house where I live. That 'landowners' behave as if they really do own hills, fields etc, viewing them purely as a means for personal gain and sod the rest of us, is an expression of a fundamental lie that has been driven into us from an early age. Property is not theft: it is a notion based on a fundamentally and deliberately flawed view of the universe.



        

In Therapy

It was a few weeks ago now; but it can happen to any of us, at any time. The doings of life had become too much to handle. Anguish and turmoil had become my daily companions. No question: disentanglement was the order of the day. It was time for therapy.

I awoke early and, having pulled on clothes and eaten a quick but hearty breakfast, was on the train soon after the sun had come up. The massive winter snows were in evidence as we coasted past the hills of the east, peaks coming and going beneath a blanket of grey above.

The train was quiet and nearly empty; I was the only person alighting at the countryside station. The sun of the mid-morning put in a wan appearance as I set off up the track. Past the holiday cottages and fields the home of healthy-looking bovine beasts, I crossed the bridge and began to follow the long serpentine curve of the track as it ascended below the line of trees glowering darkly to my right. With height, I found the knots of tension, the inner turmoil spun tightly into a ball, begin to unfold. Leaving behind the world of forest, I entered open land. Even here on the west coast, the snows had hung around for long, with large deep patches down to low levels. At once, the path climbed more steeply in long curves, and then I was at the top of the track. I know these hills, and they know me. My consciousness unfurled, and they took me in their embrace. Once more I was connected and alive, a lone and mysterious inhabitant of a living and infinitely mysterious universe. A minute later the magnificent vista of the ancient yet familiar mountains revealed itself. The outer world and its inner reflection  took on a vibrancy that had disappeared beneath the weight of daily things, stuff, doings. Two hours of walking and I sat to eat lunch, to breathe in the space, the purifying quality of the mountain air, the blessings of the place. Not so much a speaking therapy as one involving direct transmission from the human consciousness to the natural wild world, and back again. I was, for now, transformed.

In the chapter entitled 'A Warrior's Last Stand' from 'Journey to Ixtlan', Carlos Castaneda relates a story from the desert. In his early books, he spends a lot of time walking in the desert, principally with Don Juan. On this occasion, they have been walking for a particularly long time; through a succession of shamanic moves, Carlos has ended up on top of a hill. 'A very quiet ebullience filled me...... It was a strange state of being that had no parallel in my busy and dislocated life....... I wanted to stay in that spot forever and I may have, had Don Juan not come and yanked me out of the place.'

Carlos marvels in the magnificence of the wild expanses and the mountains. Don Juan goes on to explain. 'Fix all this in your memory,' Don Juan whispers in Carlos's ear...... 'You're going to hunt power whether you like it or not. It is not a human decision, not yours or mine.' 'Now, properly speaking, this hilltop is your place, your beloved place; all that is around you is under your care. You must look after everything here and everything will in turn look after you.'

This place, continues Don Juan a little later, is the most important spot in Carlos's life. 'This is the place where you will die,' he says in a soft voice. It is a place to which Carlos will always return, either by walking or through dreaming. Here he will store his resources of power. And when it is his time to die, he will return to the place of his predilection and dance to his death.

It is one of these passages in Castaneda that stops me in my tracks. I have places of predilection, and I also know places I can visit should I want to bring difficulty and turmoil descending upon me. They are all places in the wild, mainly in the mountains, where the signal is clear. Look out for your places of power, of predilection, if you are so inclined. Who knows how significant this may turn out one day to be.







              

Cycles, Circles, Endless Renewals

The wheel turns full circle. When I was a very young, small person I exhibited, in my own infant way, untrammelled authenticity. Running around the garden, splashing in puddles and falling in mud, I was lord of my own domain. By the midpoint between my infancy and today, in the early/mid 1980s, I had firmly and substantially (though, with the benefit of hindsight, I can state never totally) fallen in with organised religion in my quest for self knowledge and realisation. Presented as an alternative to the tired and crusty authoritarian Christianities of western orthodoxy, my chosen Buddhist vehicle was, nevertheless, pretty organised and religious.

Today, the people who catch my attention are those who walk their own path. They wander - to transform Wordsworth's cliched poetic fragment into inner metaphor - lonely as clouds across the vast sky of phenomena. The muse comes personally - the still, small, inner voice, the calling - and nobody can give them instructions or guidebooks on how to conduct their own life. The people who emphasise personal authenticity, individual uniqueness; prepared to look in all directions for advice when needed, inspiration when called for, rather then identify with any one singular path. The people who call up the courage to confront their life in all its marvellous complexities, its heights and depths, its light and its shadow, its own extraordinary richness and variety.

Neil Kramer is one such person. Another is Niall/Opaque Lens from Shamanic Freedom Radio, a man whose sacred path climbs many a dizzying hill and drops down many a dark dale; but a man with the courage to face whatever demons may leap out on the way. In a recent episode, Opaque Lens interviewed Shonagh Home. I had never come across this lady before, but she immediately reveals herself as another of these souls courageous enough to embrace the individual, sovereign path. Do not be afraid to be different. 'Be a rebel, be a misfit' she encourages at one point. 'I'm a misfit - say this with love.' Be happy to be an anomaly, she suggests to Mr Lens.

Of late, I have been listening more carefully to the voices of women. My discovery that the timing of my migraines bears relation to the phases of the moon was the first step in this direction. I figured that I should get to know a bit more about the moon: while the presence and influence of the sun is more obvious, the moon works her magic primarily at night, her influence unnoticed and unheeded while we are all indoors behind windows, walls, and thick curtains. Sister moon relates to that elusive notion, the sacred feminine. And through this to the voices of women.

For a woman, it's impossible not to read and listen to men big time: the majority of stuff out there has been produced by males. But for a man it can easily come to pass that the voices of women can be overlooked, if for no other reason than force of numbers. The subtly different viewpoints and experiences related by the women I've had the pleasure to listen to and read of late have enabled me to expand my own perceptions. Maybe this is part of what Jung and his followers refer to as 'anima integration'. Jung on the Shadow is brilliant, but when it comes to anima, I've always found him confusing - possibly because he was a bit confused himself, I suspect. Be that as it may, my female sources are often more at ease with expressing and exploring their emotional responses to events without prematurely short-circuiting the process by being judgemental or theorising too much. And when they do theorise, they remain in their body and in touch with the earth, instead of disappearing into a totally abstract world where cold logic and tyranny can take over.

The women I have listened to of late do not come into things through the doorway of academia, bristling with a portfolio of PhDs and smart-ass ivory tower superiority complexes. They are more likely to come through poetry, art, story, and song; through love and broken marriages; through tending to the sick and the dying; through listening to the oceans and the trees.

Another remarkable woman of this ilk is Penny Sartori. She came into her own unique calling through her time as a nurse in Intensive Therapy Units. The many years spent in this environment led her to have contact with large numbers of people undergoing the process of dying. The fruits of her experience and subsequent research are distilled into 'The Wisdom of Near-Death Experiences', a book which immediately goes onto the Pale Green Vortex highly recommended list.

Once more, a woman of great courage and humanity, prepared to face the relentless scepticism and worse of much of the mainstream. To go where many fear to tread, exploring patiently yet relentlessly the experiences of dying people in the hope of helping them come to terms with this most critical moment. But the book is more than that. Subtitled 'How understanding NDEs can help us live more fully', it is as much for those with many years ahead of them as for anybody else. Books of the dead and the dying are invariably books for the living too, and Penny Sartori's lovingly-written publication is just that: a book about how all of our lives might be lived better. It doesn't come much better than that.