All One Big Happy Family, Innit?

Probably not human: Highland frog

During the twilight period of my 'official affiliation' with Buddhism, around twelve years ago, I wrote an article for the magazine of the Buddhist organisation concerned. It was written in the aftermath of 9/11, at a time when I saw no need to question the official version of events that fateful day; nor, indeed, realised that anything other than the story beamed out of televisions and newspapers of the mainstream was possible. The article was called 'I'd rather be a gorilla than a guerilla', the main theme being how little I felt in common, on a deep, visceral level, with certain members of the human race. And how, in certain respects, I felt greater kinship with some non-human beings, even on the level of consciousness. I singled out as an example the gorilla, as an animal closely related genetically to humans, and as an animal with which I felt a personal affinity as a result of the shamanic practice I was undertaking at the time.

The article was, I thought, bold and, within the world of modern Buddhism, potentially controversial and groundbreaking. Without fully recognising the implications of these trains of thought and feeling, I was questioning the discrete nature of different species' identities, suggesting instead a continuum of consciousness. The feedback I received on my radical article was precisely...... zero.

The Gnostics, those western spiritual ancestors contemporary with early Christianity, were forthcoming about this topic. In 'the Tripartite Tractate' the Gnostic mystic writers proclaim there to be, not one, but three different kinds of human. There are the Pneumatics, spiritual souls. Then there are the Psychics, matter-dwelling spirits. Then there are the Hylic, totally devoid of soul, lacking the 'light of epinoia'. All three appear the same, living inside bodies of flesh, sharing the same language, mode of procreation, all with the same DNA etc. But their origin and psychic make-up are seriously different. Three different types of human, dressed up to look the same, but with unique configurations of consciousness, and at their own distinct stage in the 'sacred journey' (call it what you will).

More than once on Pale Green Vortex the words 'psychopath' and 'politician' have appeared in the same sentence. Some readers have considered this uncharitable of me; I'd say that the truth staring us in the face, should we dare to look, is not always pleasant, or what we'd like to see. A more softly-softly but related diagnosis for some people in 'high places' is afforded by the phrase 'narcissistic personality disorder'. I have my reservations about some of these psychological diagnoses, but for now let's go with this one. Narcissistic personality disorder is especially prevalent, it would seem, where visible signs of success, power, and status are prominent, and where admiration is readily forthcoming. Politics, celebrity, academia, medicine, finance, law enforcement, high profile sports. You've got the picture. A person suffering from NPD is likely to exhibit the emotional maturity of a typical 3-5 year old.

You can draw up your own mental list of likely candidates: I've got mine. But hierarchical systems of status, power, and influence will inevitably attract, and be populated by, folk with psychopathic and NPD tendencies. This is the rub, and plain common sense. Bees to the honeypot, and it cannot be any other way. A number of friends of mine have implied at various times that I'm a bit hard on politicians and banksters: we're all the same, really, all trying to create a better world. These friends of mine are in the main intelligent people, articulate and with a decent portfolio of formal qualifications. When asked why, with their apparently impeccable credentials and a wish to improve the world we live in, they haven't made any attempt to climb the political ladder themselves, they are at a loss. The answer's easy. They are decent folk, with a good heart and, unlike the Hylic, with an active soul. They are simply not the kind of people who are going to get into high-profile politics, finance, law, or whatever.

One serious consequence of these ruminations is that our current systems are tailor-made for (and by?) the soulless, the psychopathic. And, what's more, some form of political anarchism is the only political set-up that can in the long term be good for humanity. Even small government doesn't really fit the bill: the bees-to-the-honeypot syndrome dictates that small government will become bigger and bigger as time goes by.

It is a materialist worldview, focussed on physical appearance rather than on consciousness, that has promoted the great fraud that we're all the same. We look the same, therefore we are all the same. It's almost as if we've been put onto by this one. So don't be suckered. And keep your eyes peeled next time you walk down the high street: you never know who or what might be passing you by.




      

            

Home Sweet Home

I recently engaged in some correspondence with an old friend of mine. He related to me how, for much of his life, he has felt out of place in this world; that he has been born in the wrong place or at the wrong time. This is an experience I am only too familiar with myself. The number of occasions I have been out and about, and felt like an alien, sharing little in common with the other people around me and the goings-on in 'the world at large'. I am a misfit who belongs in the stars, with the cosmos at large, not waiting at a bus stop while a parade of Highland drunks sways past, punctuated by groups of teenage girls laden with cheap clothes from Primark.

I replied to my friend, detailing my familiarity with this most uncomfortable feeling. I continued my letter, however, with two more sobering reflections. One is that this experience of being a misfit is actually based on 'perceptual selectivity'. When I look at the world around me as a whole - the plants, the birds, the sun, the hills, the stars - I feel very much at home and in the right place. It is only when I narrow my focus to the world of less-than-noble activities of average human beings, as Castaneda savagely refers to the mass of humanity, that I take on the guise of an alien visitor.

More to the point still is the reluctant realisation that, in terms of consciousness, I am in precisely the suitable place with precisely the most appropriate people. It cannot be any other way. Everything is, in a sense, completely perfect and as it should be. This is the inescapable and humbling conclusion to arise from seeing that consciousness is primary, the main determinant, and seeks out (or, less romantically, just turns up in) the circumstances with which it is familiar, and/or which it needs for the next stage of its sacred journey.

That consciousness is primary is, for me, a no-brainer. The contrary notion, that consciousness is a product of the material brain, seems to me stupid, as well as being coincidentally highly unscientific. While modern neuroscience is successfully mapping out a wealth of functions in different nooks and crannies of the brain, it has got nowhere in locating the place of origin of consciousness itself. That's because it's not there. Stack against this the plethora of reports suggesting that consciousness has a life of its own, independent of any current physical manifestation. Near Death experiences, verifiable reports of past lives, experiences in meditation and other technologies of non-ordinary states of consciousness, not to mention the testament from many traditions from around the world.

Consciousness is just that: consciousness. To consider that it is produced by the brain is akin to believing that television programmes are produced by a television set. The brain is more like a receiver or transducer of consciousness. This consciousness takes up temporary residence in a particular physical body, heading for the exit door when the time arrives. Only a science that is highly prejudiced and based upon fixed ideology - in this case of 'scientific' materialism - can fail to take this on board.

Consciousness cannot help but end up exactly where it should be - this is implicit in notions of karma and rebirth, for example, and is sound common sense. But this is, for me, a humbling realisation. All the silly stuff, all the apparently ignorant people, the entire parade of the surreal and bizarre at the bus stop, is precisely what I need for my own walk along the sacred path. It is not an accident or a cosmic mistake that I am who I am, where I am. I hereby confess my hubris, arrogance, and superiority. While  part of me does indeed fly through the sky and swim with the moon, there is another part that truly belongs in the muck, the confused, the vicious - and the plain humdrum.

This life of mine on planet Earth can serve a twofold purpose. One is to, for want of a better way of putting it, seed the akashic field, the universal consciousness, with constructive, positive stuff. You may hardly see another person in your everyday life, but if you are really doing your mystical stuff, your life needs no more justification than that. But this life also serves as a great learning opportunity. Everyday living is like boot camp training - as Neil Kramer says, if you can survive planet Earth, you can survive anything. And this perspective adds a new, rich gloss to everyday life. No moment need be wasted: every experience, no matter how apparently trivial, provides an opportunity for growth. Every day presents a myriad of choices. Act from truth or untruth. With a sense of rightness or wrongness. With a caring loving heart, or a cold, sod-you attitude. In the mundane lie marvellous opportunities. And if, as I have often done, you feel that the world is crap, and you don't know why you've ended up in this cesspit, there's only one thing to do: stop sulking, get over it, and get on with it......

Photo: bhmpics


        

The Prison of Thoughts

It can happen to anyone, at any time. It was on the banks of the local river that it all happened to me.....

I am walking along beside the water. Ducks swim playfully on the surface, and sunlight penetrates deeply the clear waters, creating patterns on the stones below. Trees sway in the wind, seagull chancers hover close by in the hope of scrounging some free goodies. I become aware of the stream of thoughts coursing incessantly through my mind. It consists of words uncalled for, and completely unrelated to the present situation. There is also playing intermittently a song that I haven't heard 'live' for weeks, and which I do not particularly like.

A few days later I am walking alongside the same stretch of river. I am once again conscious of a similar theatre acting itself out inside my mind, except that it's a different song playing repeatedly, and different random groupings of words. And that I'm beginning to find the whole thing quite irritating.

Some time later, I take the same familiar walk. On this occasion, the full force of what's going on hits me. Jung talks about thoughts as a bunch of wild animals running amok through a forest, and he is right. These words and songs that seem to come and go unbidden have nothing to do with 'me' in the sense of my conscious will and purpose in life. It's all just random rubbish clamouring for my attention. I become keenly and painfully aware that these thoughts are not harmless, neutral entities. Instead, they have an energy to themselves. A strong thought can knock you off your feet; and this torrent of stuff surging through my mind can leave me drained and exhausted. Conversely, even a few moments of freedom from the cascade releases a great surge of energy.

Let's leave aside the question of whether these thoughts are energetic food for archon-like entities or not. Whatever its precise status, this torrent of thoughts forms, for the aspiring mystic, a crux. The alchemical process of purifying the vessel, thus making it fit to receive higher dimensional wisdom, consists in good part of removing these obstructions to direct experience from our mental sphere.

In Castaneda, this process is described in terms of 'stopping the internal dialogue'. '.....The internal dialogue is what grounds us' Don Juan said.'The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about it being such and such or so and so.' Don Juan explained that the passageway into the world of sorcery opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off the internal dialogue. 'To change our idea of the world is the crux of sorcery' he said. 'And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it.' (Tales of Power, chapter one).

If we succeed then, in the words of Don Juan, we can 'stop the world'. Stopping the internal dialogue is not, however, so easy. Who we think we are, and the world we identify with, depend on the constant narrative we automatically tell ourselves about how and what things are. In other words, our ego depends on the internal dialogue for its identity and survival; any attempt to quieten the internal dialogue will also threaten ego. It follows that strategies set up by the ego are doomed to failure: its not going to vote for its own abolition. As Victor Sanchez points out in 'The Teachings of Don Carlos', 'It is not possible to stop thinking by thinking about it. Western rationality simply does not work as a method for achieving inner silence.' (chapter six). Even Hindu and Buddhist-based techniques for 'quietening the mind' and developing samadhi can suffer from this problem, and therefore are sometimes of limited value. Stopping the internal dialogue may require more the approach of a trickster, creeping in sideways, obliquely, sneaking in without the ego cottoning on to what's really happening.

To repeat: stopping the internal dialogue is the key. And I'm in no position to prescribe a ready-made and guaranteed formula for success. We're kind-of out there alone. But here is an outline of a few strategies that I find personally helpful:

Listening to sounds. In 'A Separate Reality' Don Juan advises Carlos Castaneda to listen to sounds. Certainly, I feel that meditation techniques which focus too much on the subject will only fail in attempts to stop the dialogue. Sounds are clearly 'outside' us, beyond the clutches of identity and ego, beyond ownership. Our ego identifies far more readily with sights, which are often the predominant conscious sense input for humans. Adopt a meditation posture if you wish, or do it any way you want. Close your eyes and pay attention to all the sounds. Birds, wind, voices, traffic, whatever turns up. That's all you need to do.

Another meditation posture strategy: turn thoughts into concrete visualised words. See the wild animals running through the forest as actual words. They dissolve and disappear.

And the classic techniques of 'being in the here and now'. Be in the physical body, the physical sensations, not in the head. Go out into nature or any other uncluttered situation. Work on experientially distinguishing between thinking and perceiving. 'We modern humans live as prisoners in a reality constructed for us by our thoughts.' (Victor Sanchez again, chapter six). It's time to break out.

And a brilliant quote that is obliquely related to the theme:
                      'There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil
                       to one who is striking at the root' (Henry D. Thoreau)

Go for the root, dear friends, go for the root.......




                    

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.

Coming Home

In terms of practising the art of thinking for myself, I nowadays regard my years in organised Buddhism with ambivalence. On the one hand, there was the notion of 'developing as an individual', plus the sense that things were not to be taken on blind faith, but on the basis of personal experience. This was one of the things that initially attracted me to Buddhist practice: it did not present a bundle of dogmas that had to be swallowed before you could move on. Compared to orthodox Christianity, this was liberation indeed, a deep breath of fresh air. Just get on with your meditation practice, your Buddhist texts, your sense of ethics. At least, that's what I thought.....

As time passed, I became increasingly aware that I had aligned myself with a particular tradition which arrived, as many traditions do, with a whole package of notions and attitudes, sort-of beliefs, really, which one was expected to sagely nod the head to. Some were genuinely spiritual, others more historical and cultural; sorting the wheat from the chaff proved exceedingly problematic. There was also the idea that there were other people around, more experienced and advanced than myself, and that these lofty beings should be listened to very carefully indeed, on a whole range of topics. On several occasions I was exhorted to give these wise folk 'the benefit of the doubt', a crafty approach which had the effect of discouraging serious personal evaluation. Needless to say, the benefit of the doubt was granted by myself more frequently than I sit comfortably with nowadays.

Moving out of this eventually constricting atmosphere into the wider alternative/independent culture of today was another breath of fresh air, to rival the one I had taken thirty years beforehand on first coming across Buddhism. I finally gave myself full and free rein to explore whatever I wanted to, believe whatever I felt to be true, without any reference point other than my own sense of what is 'growthful'. A real sense of personal empowerment and self-confidence has been the result. Over the past five or six years, not to beat about the bush, I have flourished.

Nowhere is this spirit of confidence in the discerning intelligence of the listener/reader exemplified better than on Red Ice Creations. 'We present, you decide' is the key phrase of Henrik Palmgren, Lana Lokteff, and the others at Red Ice. What balm! What liberation! 'We're going to give you all sorts of stuff to consider, and we have confidence in you to make up your own mind.'

So it is in this spirit that I include links to a couple of articles relevant to the topics of weather and climate. One concerns the fraudulent, underhand nature of human-made global warming panic-mongering. Similar articles appear somewhere or other nearly every day, but this one is particularly clear and concise. The second presents a particular take on the flooding of the Somerset Levels in England this winter.

But, but, but..... I can hear the protests already. One article is gleaned from a website that could be characterised as right-wing, heaven forbid. And the other is written by a former mainstream journalist who now does shamanism. So what? I say. In these dodgy times, we are in no position to allow personal preconceptions to obscure the voice of authenticity, whatever its source. Such personal prejudices are a luxury that we can ill afford to hang onto. Our mainstream sources of information are themselves unreliable and untrustworthy, underpinned by programmes and unspoken agendas. I have railed on Pale Green Vortex particularly loudly against the BBC and the Guardian, especially because of the unthinking belief that too many people still cling onto with regard to these sources of 'news'. Treat them as Henrik encourages us to view Red Ice; they present, we decide. That's all. Believe not a word without doing some background research of your own, without listening to the voice of intuition, without picking up a clear signal from your unique antennae of authenticity.

www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=29071

www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=29060