The Corrie

Summit of Corrie Etchachan

But in the climbing ecstasy of thought,
Ere consummation, ere the final peak,
Come hours like this. Behind, the long defile,
The steep rock-path, alongside which, from under
Snow-caves, sharp-corniced, tumble the ice-cold waters.
And now, here, at the corrie's summit, no peak,
No vision of the blue world, far, unattainable,
But this grey plateau, rock-strewn, vast, silent,
The dark loch, the toiling crags, the snow;
A mountain shut within itself, yet a world,
Immensity. So may the mind achieve,
Toiling, no vision of the infinite,
But a vast, dark, inscrutable sense
Of its own terror, its own glory and power.

From: In the Cairngorms, by Nan Shepherd

I once wild-camped in Coire Etchachan. It was July 2013. I count it among my most pleasant and 'successful' wild camps. The weather was settled and warm, the location astounding, the ground level, and running water was close to hand. This was in stark contrast to some of my wild camps, which have been battered by wind, tentpegs plunged into a midge-infested peat bog before darkness completely enfolds the world. And what I considered to be level ground proves to actually be a slight incline, resulting in an entire night spent rolling down a hill in a sleeping bag, then hauling it back up again.

There have been no wild camps the past two summers. First came the 'heating' pre-kundalini phase, when my being seemed to be softened, sweetened, and averse to long rough walks in the mountains. Then came full-on kundalini emergence, during which period the tenderising process continued, while accompanied by explosions of hitherto unknown energies, which rendered mountain heroics still less appropriate. And the hernia, which first appeared almost a year ago. The last thing this abdominal bulge wanted, or indeed permitted, was vigorous physical activity.

This coming year may well be different; I currently feel that it might be. But, until the time arrives, who knows?

Images: The wild camp, Coire Etchachan
             Evening stroll from camp onto Beinn Mheadhoin summit

It's Time to Meditate

'Shut up and listen!' This simple directive contains the essence of what 'meditation' means to me these days. Forget everything you think you know. Forget who you think you are, what you think you are. Forget your friends, your family, foes, everybody else. Forget the past, the future, the present. Your hopes, your dreams, your fears. Your identity - yes, above all, your identity. Forget the lot. Just shut up and listen. Then, and only then; then, just maybe, something very interesting, something beautiful yet more than a bit disturbing and scary, something completely unexpected, may begin to emerge.

It wasn't always like this. I have been 'doing meditation' for over forty years. At times it's been very sporadic, at other times it's been hours a day. But it's only in the past six years or so that I've kind-of stumbled into what now seems so blindingly obvious: just shut up and listen.

I used to practice, as one of my little bundle of meditations, something sometimes called 'just sitting'. It's not the same as shutting up and listening, though. The emphasis nowadays is on listening - on developing an attitude of alert yet soft receptivity. The 'outside world' is as important as what is going on in the interior. Listening to the sounds of traffic or vacuum cleaner opens up the world more than 'watching the movements of my mind.'

Closer to the spirit is Castaneda, when Don Juan exhorts him to 'stop the internal dialogue.' This is more like it. The problem is that 'you' will never stop the internal dialogue, since 'you' depends on the internal dialogue for its own phantom existence. It needs, somehow, to be tricked.

'Shut up and listen' is a phrase that I've pinched from Georgia Lambert. She describes four stages or levels of meditation. First up is 'relaxation': calming down, releasing stress, we've all been there. Next is 'visualisation', by which I take her to mean realising that you can create your own reality through working on, in, through, your mind. You begin to take your life into your own hands. Then there is 'concentration', which she warns can be very boring. It might be, but can be the contrary, in my experience. And finally, we get to 'shut up and listen'. This, according to Georgia, is real meditation.

I dedicate this modest wee piece to a recently sadly deceased buddie of mine. He would probably have liked the general drift, though would most likely have come up with a list of doubts, queries, and rejoinders of a philosophical kind. Such was his way. He might have also liked the picture. I shall miss him: I already do. Fly, friend, fly...

Image: One of the Five Faces of Hecate, one of Luis Royo's finest creations, in my view. It doubles as Four of Pentacles in the Royo Dark Tarot. Solid, earthed, watchful, watching, waiting. Secure, steadfast, confident in oneself. Such is the Four of Pentacles as manifesting here.    

Conditionings of Race and of Culture

(Warning: There is nothing, in my view, the least bit offensive about anything in this article. Its overarching theme is how all of us can easily become unconscious slaves to our racial and cultural conditioning - something to be avoided whenever possible. Nevertheless, there are those who might beg to differ. So, should you go ahead and read, you have been warned).

Part One

Englishness. I am English. Can't get away from it. It's had its effect. In some respects I am probably not too typically English. In other ways I am quintessentially so.

Fair play. A level playing field. These have, as far back as I can remember, been of importance to me. There is an element of natural 'rightness' about this feeling, but also an unmistakeable Englishness. If I sense that someone is getting special treatment, has an unfair advantage, then I don't like it.

As a child, I took to playing the game of cricket. In my mind, at least, cricket was just that. A sport in which the ideals of fair play, a level playing field, were held in highest esteem. A little corner of a nasty corrupt world where honesty, fair play ruled; where excellence was king, and nobody threw tantrums in order to try and gain an advantage.

I was reasonably proficient, and played and practiced a lot, mostly in the back garden in evenings, and in the local park with a few friends, when I should have been doing homework. At secondary school, I was picked for the house under-thirteens cricket team (it was a state school, but had pretensions, so all pupils were allotted to one of four 'houses' for sports and other activities). I was only eleven at the time, and excited to be chosen.

I was to be opening bat. This is a particularly challenging role: you bat first, normally to face the most ferocious bowlers that the opposition can throw at you. You need to be a bit of a hero, or a mug. I went in, apprehensive but prepared, for the first ball of the innings. As opening bat, you are prepared for a small but extremely hard ball to come hurtling very quickly in your direction. The object is to avoid all temptation to run away, to erase fantasies of ending up in hospital, and take on the challenge; give as good as you receive.

The bowler was Trev Chandler; the umpire was history teacher 'Ted' Taylor. First ball: straight, accurate. I defend stoutly. Not very fast at all, really. Maybe things aren't going to be too bad. Second ball: short, down the leg side. I hook it hard and high, two runs. No problems. At this moment, I begin to fantasise about a real run-feast. The bowling's a piece of cake.

Third ball: slightly short, straight. I hit hard, snicking it loud onto my pads and out onto the off-side. To my surprise, Trev Chandler is appealing. To my even greater surprise, that is to say my disbelief, Taylor is raising his finger. Out! Out? No way! You cannot be out leg before wicket if you hit the ball with the bat first. That's the rules, Basic. Out?

Had I developed the inner Serena Williams, I would have approached that pathetic umpire, screamed at him, called him a thief, and threatened to smash up his history room with my cricket bat. As it is, I was far too timid, and far too English. I walked slowly and dejectedly off the pitch, with pure contempt in my heart for that umpire, who didn't even know the basic rules of the game.

A great innings might have altered the trajectory of my life. Afterwards, I played school cricket with a degree of success for a number of years. Then, aged sixteen, I decided that the game was a bourgeois aberration, and went off to research trepanning and the burgeoning counter-culture instead.

Part Two

Fair play. Level playing field. No unfair advantages. It's been axiomatic to my philosophy of life. In this respect, I am a true egalitarian.

Related to this is my attitude to what I shall term double standards. One law for me, another law for others. I don't like it. All other things being equal, I'm all for everybody having the same chances, being treated the same way (according to their own aptitude, skill, intelligence, etc).

So when a group of people appear on the world stage putting themselves forward as 'God's Chosen People', with the conferred status implied, I am not going to be very impressed. I am aware that there will be an underlying conditioning that goes with that belief, and it is one that will remain within the individual, regardless of conscious beliefs, unless they have undertaken rigorous personal deconstruction and purification through self awareness and deconditioning. Otherwise they stay rather like my father, who was a professed atheist, yet continued to display many characteristics typical of the Protestant environment in which he grew up.

I received a bit of 'feedback' after my piece on the taboo against discussing the Jewish situation (27/07/2018), including some extensive criticism. Nevertheless, I stand by what I wrote. Of course I am not condoning any crude facebook-like insulting or name-calling. I simply call for the freedom to discuss freely and to air ones point of view.

God's Chosen People: by implication, they will wish for special treatment. And judging by the kid gloves applied by our 'western democracies', our leaders all implicitly agree with the special status of the self-appointed special ones.

I was, rightly or wrongly, strongly affected by events during the 'migrant crisis' of 2015. Masses of people streaming into eastern and central European countries from the Near East, along with a few African nations. Nobody in authority seemed to be very concerned at all: just let them all in, whoever they are.

Those photos, of crowds snaking across east European countrysides. Surreal. It was obvious to me from the outset that these were not all bona fide refugees. A cursory glance at these photos showed a preponderance of working age males, not families with women and children (of which there were some, but that's all). We didn't need the United Nations to come along and tell us that, well after the horse had bolted.

It was the open acceptance of this bizarre situation, an invasion, really, by most authorities, the lack of serious questioning of what was really happening, that finally brought me round to a degree of sympathy with the 'forced multiculturalism as aimed at the death of Europe' point of view. It was a notion that I had found so abhorrent, I had resisted it for a long time as far-right paranoia, Surely nobody could have such a vicious aim. But now the evidence was there, staring me in the face.

Among all this I was conscious of a number of prominent Jewish and/or Israeli diplomats, politicians, commentators. They seemed to be all for this absorption of non-Europeans into countries like Hungary and Germany: 'open borders'. But all the while Israel was to be exempt from taking in any of these 'refugees'. It's a nation to remain 'pure'. Sorry, guys and gals, but such things make me suspicious. Double standards.

Part Three

Then there is a little matter concerning war. The Second World War. Let's visit Wikipedia for some numbers. According to this source, 60 million people died as a result of that event. I find all this difficult to read, let alone write. It makes me feel sick to the pit of the stomach just to consider it, whether it's folk killed by Germans, Americans, Japanese, British, or anyone else. That's my problem, I suppose. That such loss of life could take place is beyond personal belief. It is also beyond personal belief that such devastation was in any way 'necessary' or 'unavoidable'. I don't buy that.

We'll take a look at the breakdown of the deaths of civilians. Jews in the Holocaust: six million. The number is well-known, and the effects reverberate to this day. The Holocaust has been a factor in shaping many events and attitudes since 1945, probably more so now than when I was a child in the 1960s. We all know of it, and television continues to remind us on a regular basis.

Looking  further at the statistics, however, I was surprised at what else I found. Russian civilian deaths: 4.5-10 million (a figure fraught with great complications, it seems). Chinese civilian deaths: 7-8 million. That's a whole load of people. Comparable to the Holocaust; yet their effects on world events thereafter seem to have been, well, roughly zero. It's as if they never happened: those people never lived and perished. Their importance is nothing compared to those victims of the Holocaust. Dead Russians and Chinese: nobody gives a monkeys, really.

Differing western attitudes are also reflected in the different ways that the leaders of aggressor nations are generally viewed. Hitler is the devil incarnate. While Stalin? Well, he had his faults, but not such a bad guy really. Uncle Joe. You can wear a Stalin t-shirt and it's cool (in fairness, Hitler t-shirts are also available to buy, not all of them obviously ironic). There is a restaurant in Inverness named 'Revolution'. On the wall there hangs a cartoon entitled 'Bolshevik Tea Party'. There we see Leon Trotsky and Uncle Joe Stalin sitting together laughing over a nice cup of tea.
       
Double standards on the global front. Suspicions aroused.

Part Four

There is, I suggest, another element at work in how events are viewed, attitudes towards them, in the mainstream west. It emanates from the depths of what I shall term, in a generalisation more sweeping than any I have ever made, the western consciousness.

Western thought, western culture and civilisation: all have been increasingly characterised by the development and glorification of 'the individual'. This is what it's all been based upon: differentiation and identification of the individual as a unique and precious living entity. It is from this that we gain our sense of worth. We can see it already in Augustine, talking about the personal, private, interior heart as the real thing. We had 'ego theory', history as the lives of great men, and the rest, until we reach the modern day. Personal growth, self development, personal coaches. Who am I? Find your self, your own deep, true self. What do I really want? You are special, you are unique. Self confidence, self esteem. Because you're worth it. This is what so much of modern culture is built on. And I put my hands up and submit that it's the way that I have largely looked at the world, and my own life, until now.

This culture of the west has seen many invaluable contributions from Jewish people to its development. Practically, psychologically, financially, in terms of personally driven human beings, Hollywood today, and many other walks of life. In truth, western culture and outstanding Jewish individuals are inextricably interwoven. So if we imagine Holocaust victims, we imagine the unimaginable: six million fully differentiated individuals, with individual aspirations, personal hopes, fears, wishes, and the rest. Six million special, valuable people fated to an early death.

Think of those Russians from the 1930s and 1940s, and the imagination may come up with something a bit different. Lots of men with weather-beaten faces and cloth caps, out in the cold and the potato fields. Women with headscarves and stern expressions. Undernourished skinny children, running around in clothes that didn't make it into the fashion magazines. People less defined, less distinct, less emergent from the group, from the collective.

As for those Chinese, well the imagination probably comes up with nothing much at all. An enormous undifferentiated mass. A sea of anonymity, of non-differences. An ocean of homogeneity.

The unconscious kneejerk response of conditioning deems our Jewish victims to be more unique, more special, more significant, than their Russian and Chinese counterparts. As people, they are simply more important.

I am passing no judgment here; no rights and wrongs, no good guys and bad guys. My primary aim  is simply to try and root out some conditioning which goes towards attitude, perception, bias, all perfectly unconsciously. The effects of conditioning will always be there: I shall always be English, Freud will always be a Jew, Gorbachev a Russian. But the light of awareness may make us less a helpless slave of those conditioning forces; and, by the way, thereby less likely to fall prey to the manipulations of those whose motives are far from universally benevolent.

'I do not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.' Voltaire.

Images:

Top: David Gower, English cricketing elegance
Middle: Bodyline bowling. Fair play or not?
Bottom: Stalin t-shirt