The Turn

... there is a lot of thought about change as the years turn ... how this next year is going to be the one ... how all wrongs will be righted, and all dreams fulfilled, hopes manifest ... and this spirit of hope is the triumph of the wonderful human spirit ... a spirit that believes against the evidence of the past that the future will somehow be different ...

I wish you well with your dreams, I have some myself though they are abstract in nature, as abstract as dreams that make no sense but have meaning buried within ... but I still ask that you consider the following ...

You have little control over your life ... your skill is not in mastering the game, but in playing the hand that will be dealt to you in the coming year ... whether that will be a good or bad hand is not your concern ... how you deal with it is your concern ...

The less you try, the less you try and control events, the more energy you have to be receptive ... and if you make space for receiving signals that are not rational but universal and natural, and you trust in these signals that come in the shape of feelings and thoughts and even epiphanies, then change will come at a 'divine' pace ... and if it feels too slow adjust your clock from human time to cosmic time ...

Not everything is temporary, some things exist for eternity, like love for a child or a man or a woman, or Batman sequels ... and this always love ignites the dead material of this place we inhabit and charges it to a better future ... but beware ...

We can love ... but if we allow this love to define us, to bring us happiness, to guide us entirely ... if we hold onto this love as though it is all we are, and that without it we cease to exist, then we sacrifice ourselves ... and if we sacrifice ourselves then we don't really exist at all ... there is fortitude in love as there is fortitude in life ... it is work, it is commitment, it is passion ... but it is not obsession at the expense of ourselves ...

all is temporary, our loved ones will change and move on, the day will come ... so love yourself this year as you have never loved before ... the world needs you

F.A.I.T.H.

If there is one leap of faith to consider, it is the belief that ...

We are not seperate from the elemental forces that gave birth to us, and that no person or conscious entity who has ever lived, or will ever live, is priviledge to any knowledge, secrets or power greater than that which we ourselves already have, or are capable of acquiring through faith in ourselves.

We are at the forefront of time. We are at the threshold of experience. We are the keepers of consciousness. There is nobody ahead of us and there is nobody behind us. We are quite literally where it's at folks, and where it will always be.

Once we can grasp this one fact and understand that faith in ourselves in the light of this fact is our only concrete resource, we can apply loving kindness because we know that all living beings are in the same state. We can see through the petty troubled beaurocrats and angry husbands, resentful wives, spiteful children, egotistic colleagues, jealous siblings and into the light that these people have never witnessed even though this state is their rightful inheritance too.

The emotional vampires and troubled souls that previously infected our lives are impotent to curse us with their own pain as soon as we feel compassion for their unhappiness, and feel pity that they are in pain.

We do this through our faith in ourselves - a faith I propose may be capable of aligning us with the vibrations of the stars themselves until words are no match for magic ...

FIRE

The retreat is closed until April and we have only resourcefulness as our tool of survival in the winter months. November has been a positive portent - the mildest ever, with temperatures around 15 degrees. So the woodstock is untouched. It's possible the 6 cubic metres of wood will see us through at this rate, though the logs are fast burners, poplar I think, rather than the slow burn of oak. The woodstock was bartered in exchange for some roof work. Some of the logs need splitting to fit the stove.

The artichokes are ready. We made a honey sauce and peeled down to the heart. I am sure that artichokes like these, that taste of the earth itself, are as good as truffles. The last pumpkin was as sweet as melon, and diced into a curry. The walnuts are like sweets too. The apple juice is a sugar syrup this year.

But apart from a few herbs the garden is dead.

We can lose sight of the simple pleasures in each day, if we project our worries into an unknowable future ... and though I cannot say now whether we will have food at the end of the month, or be warm at xmas, I can say with certainty that it has been like this for a decade, and that each month provides all we need and more ...

... but to be part of nature is to experience the wonders of foraging from month to month like any other creature, be it in the forest, the garden or the market place, where the Turks sell explosive chilli peppers and cheap potatoes ...

Know that this is life, and never let an uncertain future spoil a good meal !

Untitled

Do you believe in magic? Perhaps your answer depends on what I mean by magic. Do I mean conjuring a rabbit our of a hat by slight of hand? Or do I mean the magic of miracles, like walking on water, or curing the sick with prayer? Well, it's none of the above. I don't believe in that kind of magic at all. The kind of magic I am talking about happens all the time - and you are the magician.

The rabbit in the hat is a metaphor for something appearing out of nothing, rather like the way our universe appeared out of nothing. All human thought, ideas and beliefs appear out of nowhere. We conjure them into existence. We create thoughts from nothing. Creating something out of nothing is not just the work of artists, who take an idea or a feeling and make it into something tangible and real, like a painting or a sculpture or a song, but it is the profession of us all. Whether you like it or not, you are fundamentally an artist and the fact that you call yourself an accountant or shopkeeper is an insult to your talents. All acts of creation are magical, in so far as they make something out of nothing and we are creating constantly - in the thoughts we have, the interactions we partake in, and in the very act of living itself.

You are an artist, get used to the idea. Don't shrink from being as great as the stars.

The real question is whether or not you wish to share this amazing ability to quite literally create something out of nothing with those around you in a positive and conscious way. The world is not as physical as it seems. Rather it is a sea of thoughts, feelings and ideas that all of us interpret in individual ways. Once we understand this, we can become master of our destiny.

Cake and other drugs

Modern addictions offer us occasional bubbles of bliss, like the first series of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or a new coat, but more often these addicitons are a comfort blanket that keeps us safe from the cosmic reality of our existence. Which according to scientists is absolutely terrifying and beautiful in equal measure, but mostly terrifying, so not that equal ...

For many of us, these distracting activities occupy, in some form or another, almost the whole of our waking lives especially when the sales are on, and only in sleep does our subconscious express itself through dreams and nightmares usually involving a cocktail waitress.

Devoid of one or all of these addictions we can feel lost, lonely and afraid - and sick to our stomach with the sensation that our soul, our true self - which is that part of us that knows the truth but is afraid of it - is giving birth to itself, to lie naked and exposed in a world that we are fearful of. That feeling is often described as melancholia, or a kind of undefined sadness, and it is a sensation that we will do almost anything to negate. Sometimes there is an accompanying sense of fear or dispondency that only a large cake can ease.

These feelings seem unjustified to us in a world of positive affirmations, instant noodles and cultural apsiration, yet these are the genuine feelings of our selves facing the super-human truth of cosmic reality. We avoid these feelings because we have built a world that allows us to do just that.

Having been born and conditioned into the world designed by our fearbears, we have the choice as to whether to give birth to ourselves during our lifetimes. However, it is a choice.

Ultimately, each of us is committed to no more than getting through our life.

There is nothing dishonest, immoral or tragic about distracting ourselves through life with modern addictions if that is what we choose to do, even though they may make us both sick and tired. But if one can face the pain of the true self bursting forth into a natural cosmic reality then there are some surprising rewards, though I can't think of any at the moment ...

the mothership

There is a meaning to life, well it's not so much a meaning, but an imperative ... an inevitable imperative that aligns the onset of birth-life and negates all the crap you have ever heard about your mission or purpose ... yet it's not something I have ever divulged to anyone at the retreat ... I have intimated at times, talked around the subject, though at a great distance from the centre of any soul or ego in residence... on occasion I have been caught out hiding this truth and people have demanded that I let loose this silly-sounding soundbite that is more than the sum total of all that man has ever learnt ... and I explain my resilience as best I can ...

... I might say for example, if you saw a ghost, no, if you really saw a ghost, let's say it was the ghost of Marilyn Monroe, and it wasn't a dream, but, due to some blip in the 11th dimension of the space-time continuum, or some such cosmic accident, that you, yes you, the one and only you, to whom nothing magical or strange or supremely weird had ever happened, were lying there, or sitting or standing, and the crack in the reality of human perception opened up quite unexpectedly and by accident, and the ghost of Miss Monroe appeared before you, spoke with you, sat quietly with you in that place while she waited patiently for the bus back to the afterlife, sang to you sweetly ... until the crack in all that is reopened and she went away again ...

well let's say that really happened, not in your mind, but it really did happen ...

... what could you do with this experience, this knowledge that all is not as it seems ?

... the answer is nothing ... the experience would define you, but could have no impact in any other sphere ...

So when I am pressed to tell, I refrain and laugh at the absurdity of it all ... as much as I wish to instantly lift all your burdens, I cannot do it with the truth, I have to find another way ... that's the way it is ... and the other way is cumbersome and clanky and verbose, but what else can I do?

I have to admit, now I have the publication date of the new book, April 2012, and as I intend it to be my last book, though I have said this before haha, I did think about sliding the truth into the last chapter, where it would go unnoticed, or, perhaps as my final joke, the last amusing aside to a life well lived, I may put it in huge capitals and destroy my reputation in a moment by telling the simple truth in unapologetic terms ... to thousands of indifferent ears ! I'll think about it ... but whatever I decide, rather like the man who really did get a visit from the ghost of Marilyn, the truth is always buried in our own experiences ... truth of this magnaminity cannot be shared ...

However, let me leave you today with something as weird and as strange as all of this ... something that you will not believe unless you too have experienced it ... something that will not define you as it has me ...

... when I was 16 I walked across a great park, home from school in the winter hours when darkness was full in the early evening ... I was not alone but with a friend ... and apart from these two boys in school uniforms there was nobody else in the park that evening ... and that an extraordinary event took place that left us with a shared legacy that meant nothing could ever be the same again ...

and now of course I am in Marilyn Monroe's ghost territory ... so I will stop ...

.... but take heed if you wish to believe me - all is not what it seems, have faith in that if nothing else ...

T.A.T.

If you too are jaded by all those positive affirmations that are as light as a feather, then be assured ...

...there is no meaning or purpose to our existence except the meaning and purpose that we impose. Each of us is nothing but a false God, and our fantastical beliefs about this or that amount to nothing but a personal coping strategy. We are gene replicators created by a chemical and elemental accident in a universe created by fluctuations in nothing.

If you are tired of politics and utopian visions then remember ...

... there is no problem in the world today that could not be easily solved, if the human will was in league together. But each man and woman exists in a quite seperate universe, unfathomable, deceptive and delusional ... the saving grace of an undiscovered universal consciousness is nothing but a pseudo-religious myth

If you are tired of the highs and the lows then remind yourself ...

...that feelings are not your friends, feelings do not justify your existence, they hijack it, to live at the whim of your feelings is to walk the way of the wind until it takes you over a precipice ...

If you are tired of words ...

...then say nothing, beyond the social lubricant of politeness, and leave a trail of silence until your language ability is lost

If you are tired of trying ...

... then try instead to be selfish

If you are tired ... I said

... and she answered ... i need hope, even if it comes from 'delusion'...my coping strategy is to believe that there is meaning in this universe, in this little life. There just has to be! I need guidance to help me find worth in my existence and a way back to 'love' which has to be the only true reason to be alive. Love of self, our children, family ( whoever we choose them to be), friends, our planet, nature and life itself. I do not love myself, do not feel i deserve to be loved - I find it very difficult to love life (even cope with it at the moment- temporary state, I know, I think I am at in essence a positive and cheerful person, it's just life gets to you, you know?!!)) and I want someone to help me help myself, or at least find a way back independent of any outer guidance. No wonder I feel tired all of the time and as you put it have had my life spirit drained out of me...I need to learn to love life again (sorry to sound like a commercial on the telly), or at least feel more at ease...as do most other people, I think.

Eccentrics live longer !

25 years ago the top three career choices for schoolchildren were

... teacher, doctor and banker. (Don't be too hard on the little ones for wanting to be bankers, this was a time when it was still an honourable profession).

In 2012 the top three career ambitions for children are

... famous, pop star, actor. (Notice that being 'famous' is now a profession in itself)

While there is an inate anthropologically proven tendency in the human spieces to idolise, fame is an invention of the media. Celebrities are mythological creatures, as real as unicorns, against which we judge ourselves. When we see celebrities fall apart, we feel glad to be who we are; when celebrities triumph, we feel that it is possible to 'have it all' and are inspired. We are simply engaged in mental theatre with mythological beasts.

Personally, I lament the fact that our children want to be celebrities and that many don't read books anymore, but

... part of the discipline that we are sharing here together is to exist in the world as it is, so that our finite energies are not diluted with dreams of a utopian world of our own making, but focused like a laser on how we can interact in this actual and real and true social world from our new base in the natural cosmos. So ... lamenting the state of things is no longer an option.

The state of things is the state of things. Accept it. But why accept Acceptance as a philosophy? when it is really a therapy to call upon ... because ... there will be times when we are asked to take a stand ...

Once we have made our homes in another place, our personal obsessions with other people and our tendency to exist through contrast to how others live, will fall away into the black hole of the past.

A word of warning ... when your celebral and emotional coalition is no longer dictated by others you may be considered disturbed, or at best eccentric ...

Quantum Feary

If we all saw the world the same way, the way as it really is, we would experience nothing but energy, wavelengths and quantum particles in all places at once … and the sky would not be blue but a seething mass of supercharged ultraviolets and infrareds like some CGI creation by James Cameron … and objects would cease to be solid, all matter would be seamless and in chaotic juxtaposition.

Luckily, (because the truth is bigger than us) the enormity of the true universe is shrouded, blinkered, diffused, mellowed and filtered by eyes and ears and mouth and fingers and noses that block the enormity, the horror! of it all and leave little but sugared tea, and TV.

We seek truth, but when it stares us in the face, when it appears to us in night sweats, we pray for morning and the illusion of light. We weren't born to know all there is, it's not our genetic disposition ... we have not inherited this burden from our forebears but brought it upon ourselves ...

Since the age of enlightenment, when thinking disguised as science and philosophy became the filter of experience, the concept of thought as a progressive weapon of survival has dominated.

Yet rational thought is the enemy of zen, which favours the science of no mind, the urgent intuition. And new age gurus like Erkhart Tolle propose the Power of Now and the negation of thinking. After all, he says, thinking provokes anxiety about the future and regret about the past. We think in words, prose and verse. Aren't there too many words in this place?

I tried thinking in visions and the visions became dreams. The dreams were as real as the landscape from the kitchen window, once the soaps and bleach and the apidistra had been cleared from the sill. The hills ahead, the craggy chalk face of the mountain, the tall pines like soldiers, taller though still in awe, if we are honest, of the forest oaks in the valleys, the blue skies above laughing at its own deception, deceiving us with pure vibration in to believing that blue exists in the world … when there is nothing but waves of energy … the energy fields developing in our head are no more real than my dreams of an imaginary union that solves the puzzle, shatters stone, that is somehow eternal, in some way.

Purfexshun

I once spent an afternoon in a caravan with a half dozen of the world's top models. Don't ask me what I was doing there but it's almost certainly not what you think. Ok, I can see you are curious - they were doing a photoshoot for an advertisement and I was a young hanger-on who had weasled himself into a minor supporting technical role. The only touching up to be done was with Photoshop and in make-up.

Far from being surrounded by Aphrodite and Venus and beauty too painful to behold, there was no face in the trailer that day that could launch a thousand ships. Models are no more beautiful than anyone else. What they are is photogenic, which means that light reflects from them in satisfying ways when reproduced in print or on camera.

The advert later appeared in magazines, and subway stations and giant posters above city squares. These girls next door had not been reproduced in print, they had been perfected in print - with specialist make up, professional lighting and photography, and Adobe Photoshop image manipulation software. They bore no resemblance to the girls I had poured coffee for in that trailer.

Our homes are, as L'Oreal keep on, 'worth it' too. John and Rachel bought a large Victorian house on the river, and gathered a pile of sumptious glossy magazines with titles such as 'luxury interiors' or 'extravagant homes'. Rachel scanned the internet for blogs on minimalism, feng shui, amazing interiors, quaker furniture, iron aga ovens, italian ceramic tiles, welsh slate, chromium heated towel rails that twisted in artful shapes and could be exhibited in the New York Gallery of Modern Art. John, meanwhile was working hard to pay for the marble flooring and the granite worktops and the hand made tiles and the Architecture and Interiors magazine subscriptions even though this meant he was getting back after dark and only saw son Charlie and daughter Lily in the soft luminescence of their respective night lights.

Artisans and builders and architects and jobbing labourers flooded the building until the dream had been realised and the house was ready. Amazing Interiors Magazine came and did a shoot for a colour spread and Rachel really did have a house like the ones in the magazines. She had created a perfect home.

Unfortunately, the house was soon soiled by the animals that lived within its walls. Newspapers and magazines were not placed perpendicular to the sharp corners of the steel and smoked glass coffee table. Tea bags dripped on granite surfaces as they were passed by spoon from the cup to the waste disposal unit in the sink. Charlie's toys left their sliding oak cupboards and danced around the rooms with wanton abandon. The weave in the rugs were compressed by the weight of person or persons unknown until they fell in all directions. Rachel had built a house so perfect that any minor blemish disturbed her greatly and she ran from room to room all day in an endless quest to right the wrongs. She rarely saw John who was working hard to pay for the leather tiles in the bathroom. She became depressed in her white space with natural stone accents. She was prescribed a course of anti-depressants. Sometimes only her love for her children prevented her from taking her own life.

I visited John and Rachel last summer. They had sold up and were living in a chaotic townhouse where toys lay on the stairs, coats had fallen from their hooks onto the floor below, bikes hugged the walls of the hallways, the walls were plastered by odd pictures and bills and post it notes with various long forgotton reminders about this or that, music and talk radio clashed on the upper landing. The house was chaotic yet Rachel was still, and her smile never faltered. 'Those houses are for magazines, she said, they are not to live in.'

We invent heaven in our minds as a mechanism of surviving and transcending the state we're in. But the state we're in is already perfect because in nature, there is no other form. Rocks are eroded, leaves decay ... purfexshin in their every state, like you.

The Pudding

Autumn would not dare lay a frost this early but leaves calling cards in heavy dew and chill mornings, ripe blackberries and falling apples. I'm thinking is there a greater material pleasure than free food, that my garden can deliver a gourmet meal like this fruit crumble. Though I had to negotiate the mall for the oats and creme fraiche, because I don't have a cow, churning machine or the time to sow and reap wild oats. And this is the compromise, but let's not feel too bad about it.

Dedication to reality is the psychologists definition of sanity ... but it is our dreams that really feed us and they are too often disturbed by the nagging obligations of material existence, and the irritating administrative duties of everyday.

We can never exempt ourselves from the world as it is. So rather than resent the fact I have to shop in soulless malls for oats and cream I try and embrace it as a healthy excursion into the cool reality of how things are.

So the result is a pudding of compromise ... it is not quite free, not entirely flush with personal joy, what with the sharp flourescence of the supermarket and the price of creme fraiche these days, but it tastes good all the same ...

Happy harvesting friends ...

Who wants the world?

The internet is probably the most significant invention of the 20th century after penicillin, the abdominizer, the sodastream and the filofax diary system. Some psychiatrists estimate that up to 10 percent of the population have an unhealthy relationship with their computer or ipad and now use the internet to satisfy all of their emotional and sexual needs. When the wifi connection is down, these people suffer withdrawal symptoms similar to heroin users. The rest of us just burst into tears and reaquaint ourselves with a book while cursing our provider. Check out Dr. Jerald Block on google, the leading expert on internet addiction. You'll find references to patients dragged kicking and screaming away from online games so they can be force-fed in hospital.

Away from the home or office and into the streets these same people, that's you and I by the way, only look up from our mobile phones to avoid cars, or steer them occasionally between those vital texts, calls and Angry Birds.

Some say that the internet and mobiles are tools like a cavemans axe and not dangerous in proper use. Others, like Dr Susan Blackmore, believe that because of the digital revolution, we may be evolving into a new species.

The internet offers a total universe in which we can live, love and inhabit if we choose. But it is not the only universe. There is the other universe that bore us and we can never really forget our parents, even if there is a period of adolescence where we try hard to do just that.

The myth of change

I've been doing a lot of work on change. Not changing myself as I am stuck here. But with people who want to change and think they can achieve it in a weekend retreat or by way of a book of positive affirmations or some such. If I am put on the spot I tell them this:

You won't effect the change you seek by:

1 Reading self help books

2 Changing your diet

3 Changing your name

4 Giving up anything

5 Changing your partner, job or location

6 Exercising

7 Travelling

8 Participating in alternative therapies

9 Having a child

10 Thinking

You still won't effect the change you seek by doing the following, but do it anyway ...

1 Use the time you are saving by doing none of the above to sit quietly with yourself for 20 minutes before the day really begins, and again for 20 minutes as the day closes. Focus on a candle if it helps. Set an alarm if it helps.

You may not change, but the world will.

in the end

We don’t really think about what in the end means. It doesn’t refer to our deathbeds as perhaps it might if taken literally, but some moment in the future when all the current conflicts and irritations and disatisfactions have resolved themselves. For many working people that means retirement in the rose garden of the autumn years. For others it could be that they are holding onto the myth of romantic love, or believe the grass is greener in another town or country, or that a just a little more of something, money perhaps, is the answer to everything.

In the meantime, with the pot of gold at the end of some other rainbow on the far horizon, we don’t always feel well - emotionally, spiritually or physically. We don’t feel well about ourselves. We don’t feel well about the state of our world or community. This background radiation of dis-ease and un-ease is so universal that it has become part of our human evolution and no matter how hard we try, by changing our lives or attitudes, burying our heads in self help books, taking medications or recreational drugs, seeking medical or psychological help, employing life coaches, prioritising money over morals or vice versa, seeking solace in methods, gurus, teachers and old religious forms, we can feel increasingly helpless.

A cure for this is to seek to resonate at the same frequency as the cosmos, as we are born of the elements of the stars, and to accept that we are the sum total of our experiences and must embrace those experiences rather than deny them or try to mythologise our past.

This is the hardest work we can ever do ...

something bad is going to happen

One of the common questions I get asked is, to paraphrase 'what the hell is the point in anything'. Usually I am tempting to make up some esoteric psychobabble about how we return to the stars, come back as a cat, or become one again with universal consciousness ... for the simple fact that this is the sort of thing my guests want to hear.

But I cannot lie.

Magic of any kind lies in our experiences now and that is all I am concerned about. I haven't a fucking clue about any after-life, neither has any other guru or teacher. I recall Erkhart Tolle, Oprah's boyfriend, a guru who has one decent message strung out endlessly, ie during times of crisis it's good therapy to focus on the present. Well I recall he was asked a question ... what happens when we die? I was praying he'd just say 'I dunno', and indeed he did exactly that, in his rather quaint way, replying, I don't know, I'm not dead yet ... BUT, then, not able to resist, he went on to explain at length with peculiar logic how there is no such thing as death etc ...

Something bad is going to happen ... we can either get used to it, meditate on it a while, or not think about it until the Doctor brings the x-ray results in ...

the knowledge paradox

I have been writing about the knowledge paradox today ... and how, as Woody Allen said in Hannah and her Sisters, one could read every book in the Central Library only to come out knowing less than when one began.

According to this logic, a baby contains within it all the secrets of the cosmos, and slowly sheds this information as consciousness and all its baggage arise until finally, the neurotic and blinkered adult is fully formed !

Both statements are true in my experience, certainly most adults I know are the sum total of their personality disorders, rather than their experiences ... and most kids I know, mine included, are pure joy, and largely unfettered by terminal misery.

Stopping this rot is our primary aim ...