Edward’s Diary Entry 103: Talking Trees

You commune with humans, with family. You talk as far as you can get, as a long as time permits… Then you take to your feet and go out for a walk. A dog accompanies you. He’s excited – it seems like the very first time he’s every been out on a walk. He’s so intense, he smells and marks everything, he’s an inspiration on how to extract every single instant of life from every single moment of living. He’s perfect – he doesn’t need a coat and scarf like me – he’s got his coat. He doesn’t need boots – he has his padded paws. He doesn’t think about life – he’s already exuberant and crackling with life. He doesn’t ask where he going – he just knows and accepts it. We wandered up the hill. I had been here in the summer, with leaves of green, sky of blue and misty mornings that became sun-drenched days. I would sit in front of a five-trunked tree and do my exercises and become meditative. Now, I see that that same sitting place is still grassy, completely clean, not a leaf on it, whereas all the surrounding ground has dried brown and grey leaves fluttering around, and clumps of grass. It looks like someone still uses it and sits here every day. I wonder whether it is a deer or a bear. My dog finds interesting smells nearby in the field. I inspect and tell him that must be deer dung. But he already knows it. This five-pronged tree is silent, waiting for my return, perhaps. But the trees close at hand are “talking”. There is strong wind and the boughs and branches are rubbing together, making a funny creaking noise as if they were conversing. I listen. I seem to understand it. I find sense in that talk. I’m afraid to say it, but I find  more sense in it than talking with humans sometimes. I review the terrain, breathe my breaths and walk down the hill again and 28 sheep and a black ram are waiting to run towards me. Then they follow me down the lower field. They finally scatter, saying “he’s going back to the humans, he’s leaving us. He’s one of them. The ones that talk endlessly, solve little, and wreak not a little havoc on this planet.” If only humans were like trees, only talking when the spirit of the wind pushes them, then we would talk more sense, and be more human than we are. So… Happy Christmas, let’s listen to the wind inside our hearts and talk more sense – today and in the coming year.

Edward’s Diary Entry 102: A Birthday, a Deathday, an Everyday

It isn’t every day you get to celebrate a 92nd birthday, but today we did. And especially a mother’s 92nd birthday, and yet it happened. We stayed in and we went out, socialising at home and having a fish fry at a restaurant. And then, finally alone, I sat me down under a cloudy night sky and breathed the air. My crow tree in front of me, empty during the night. Because the seven crows congregate here in the early morning, and only lucky I can view them then. A cat at my feet, a dog sniffing around the frosty ground. The pale night sky speaking of snow tomorrow. A well to drink from, with freezing water to chill my mouth. The clock has ticked on for another day, and we’re all still alive. Almost everyone we know. And my mother is well, and others in the family I suppose. I hear of a 4-year-old who has died of malaria on a faraway continent, but I never knew him. His mother will cry. My mother has her two children still. Why should there be anything fair in life, or unfair? Who knows what life has in store for us. And look, my love sits by a bedside and holds a hand getting colder and colder. He won’t last much longer, they say. He’s reached the end. Lived a good life, he says. Been applauded by four children for being a good father, but he will be sorely missed. It wasn’t really time, or was it? I guess it was – it is his turn to pass on, with body ravaged by disease. And my love will be sad, bereaved, bereft. She won’t have him any more in the flesh. Only in memory. But she will have me, and I her, until that too comes to an end, if ever. It isn’t every day you get to celebrate any birthday, or a deathday, or any day for that matter, so every day is special, every breath is new, every instant is the only time we have. Fuel awareness and live, my love; live for now, live for today, and live perhaps for another day… Whatever happens I will love you.

Edward’s Diary Entry 101: Breathing and Dying

We already said we are only 2 minutes from death. We can probably go without food for weeks. We can survive without water for days. Without air, we die in minutes.

But life is so strong, so intelligent, so bent on living within us, that we can’t stop our own breathing. We can just get a taste of that final moment by trying to hold our breath and seeing how impossible it is. Nature abhors a vacuum and will get that breath out or get it in despite our most strenuous efforts to quell the flow.

I remember seeing someone die in a hospital bed, when the intermittent breathing just seemed to wheeze out and wind down, not without some clicking noises, and then there was silence, and the chest no longer rose. The room was darkish and the scene was illuminated from behind by the lights coming in the window, maybe the moon, I don’t know. It was many years ago.

So our prescribed natural death can come at any time, effortlessly. We don’t know when. It’s just like our normal breathing. We are not aware of it, it just happens in us. We get up, brush our teeth, have breakfast, work, play, smile, get angry, suffer stress, and we hardly know we’re breathing at any time, unless we are so hard-pressed that we have to run and gasp for air – then we notice it for a minute. Or as the Spanish say, we put on a new shirt and have sex on a Saturday, and suddenly we know at the final moment that we are breathing hard! Ha-ha, it’s also a climax for breathing!

But if not, we spend 24 hours breathing like animals, without awareness, without realizing its magic. Maybe 8 hours in complete unconsciousness when sleeping, but then 16 hours like ghosts. Why talk about dying in this context? We’re already partially dead, because we haven’t even started living like real men and women yet. Unless we place awareness in our breath at some point throughout the day, and perceive that magic – the kind of magic that is omnipresent and unseen, multifaceted but unheard, universal but only dimly experienced. So some lucky few do pranayama in yoga class and are finally aware of their breath for a few minutes. Or get a workout at the gym and struggle for air, if they’re not simply focusing on growing muscle fibres. Or maybe smoke a cigarette and finally breathe more deeply and notice their breath, albeit tainted with nicotine flavours.

What we need to do is to breath like human beings, who are endowed with a consciousness that is higher than that of the animals. That means marvelling at the power of breath, its depth, its connectivity… We have invented “social networks” out there, but we have always had a highly social network right in our throats, because breathing connects all living things on the planet via the atmosphere. It also tells us we’re alive and pulsating, not dead and awaiting decomposition. So let’s get some more Self-Awareness into our respiratory system and stop acting so unconsciously – which is what causes all our human problems. Human “problems” decrease with an increase in Self-Awareness. It’s simple.

Edward’s Diary Entry 100: Sleeping and Dying

It’s not as if we haven’t practised dying… We do it every night. Whether we lay us down “amidst these humble bowers”, or “beneath the fragrant myrtle”, or in a simple white-sheeted bed, our Awareness is snuffed out, we lose consciousness, we drop off, and disappear. And with it the whole world disappears, and if perchance we dream, a new split-second or timeless world opens up before our eyes, and we live another brief life. We toss and turn, come up for air, as it were, and then fall back into nothingness again. And suddenly, whether the cock crows, the birds sing or the smart phone chimes, we come to ourselves again and say “we have awakened” to a new day. Isn’t this kind of death wonderful? It seems we have the assurance of a new awakening every time it happens…

So most of us who don’t have somniphobia, the irrational fear of going to sleep, simply die every night and are reborn in the morning. And we hardly notice it. This is our daily “2-1-0” movement, from Waking Consciousness (called Self-Awareness state 2 on this blog [see article]), to REM phase sleeping (Self-Awareness state 1) down to deep dreamless sleep (Self-Awareness state 0). When we only dip in and out of these 3 phases, our life is pretty shallow. Because state 2, normal waking consciousness in this fantastic being self-proclaimed homo sapiens sapiens, is a conditioned, self-centred, opinionated existence based on preterite experiences – the past inputs from the five senses only. In other words, the scientific classification is the best-case scenario or most optimistic view of the subspecies, but it is a misnomer in that “knowing that we know” is only a potential, but not an actuality, in the majority of the 7.4 billion currently occupying this planet.

What we need to learn from the “little death” of sleeping every night is how to live more fully when we wake. And that involves striving for Self-Awareness state 3, where there is a real experience of a Witness or Observer that is the actual Awareness in me, which does not necessarily identify with all the comings and goings of the mind-body complex, because it sees that my impulses are my body’s and can be ordered properly, my feelings are triggered by experiences and thoughts, and my thoughts do not have to roam aimlessly, they can simply be watched. The Watcher is the Controller observing the play of the mind and its five senses, accepting some inputs, disallowing others, ordering and re-ordering others, and generally standing firm in the face of adversity. If this is happening, we are in a different state altogether compared to state 2, where consciousness is merely stimulated from outside, from the external world, and all manner of excuses are invented by the mind to accept sensory input and our own mind-recycled input as reality.

So dying can happen in various ways:

1) the loss (meaning disconnection of the energy source from its various bodily devices) of the body and its mind-body complex while sleeping deeply: from state 0 (deep sleep) to state X (death state, or unknown state);

2) the loss of the body and its mind-body complex while dreaming: from state 1 (REM sleep) to state X (death state, or unknown state);

3) the loss of the body and its mind-body complex while in so-called “normal waking consciousness”: from state 2 (societal state) to state X (death state, or unknown state). This may be from accident or terminal disease (with various states of pain-suppression if required, thereby influencing awareness), or simply from old-age shutdown.

4) What we don’t currently know is what the loss of the body and its mind-body complex is like from Self-Awareness state 3.

That is what we have to find out. And to do this, falling asleep every night is the field of practise. Is it possible to be intensely but gently AWARE at the very moment we are falling asleep, and if so, what happens? That is the lesson of sleeping and dying. And practise, they say, makes perfect… so let’s do it and see.

Edward’s Diary Entry 99: Living and Dying

I have been travelling for two weeks and adapting to difficult care and nursing situations… Yes, I've been visiting an American nursing home every day, where few come out warm and alive, as most are kept there to die. They come out stiff and cold, ready for the undertaker’s. Some are far gone and do not respond to stimuli very much, some manage a smile occasionally, whereas others are even joyous at times, maybe just recovering from an accident or fall. I gave as many patients as possible a chance to smile, I think. And now I am back home and have been met by another impending death. But just like the farmer philosopher said about her little lambs – that they were “born to die” – we too, as human beings, are all born to die and will pass sooner or later. It’s just a matter of time.

What disease and impending death should do for us is open the doors to Reality, and then we can apply this Reality to ourselves to become more cognizant of the fact that we are going to die, probably sooner rather than later, or probably sooner than we think we would like. Now what that does, if we are intelligent, is to strengthen our Awareness so we can live better lives now, at this very moment. We take the memory of a death as a message; or we take the news of an impending death as an encouragement to live more fully now. We cannot just break down and cry, or we mustn’t believe in crying if we do cry. If we need to cry, we cry; but this is just a reminder to our Awareness of Self that all of us must pass –  we too – and therefore we bow down to Reality, accept our mortality and make the best of our time here and now. All too often, unconscious immortality blinds us to both ourselves and others, and simply makes our lives more stressful.

So what I have done is to take two weeks as the limit. That's right: in two weeks I’ll be dead, and even that's a lot of time. This is because there is someone near and dear to me who will die in a few weeks, or a few months, or perhaps survive a year or so, but in any case his time is strictly limited, as we have recently been told. So now I walk the streets and look at everyone and imagine their death in only two weeks’ time. If they approach me I will treat them compassionately; I will never be angry with them; I will interact with them kindly; I will help them; I will show them love and compassion. And more. Because they are soon to die. There is no time to waste. What does it matter that I don’t even know them? Others know them; they have parents, children maybe, friends, relatives and workmates who will miss them. That is enough. Place yourself in that position and you will see. It doesn’t make any difference what difference you may happen to have with their opinions, ideas, beliefs or what have you. We are both goners. We’re both dead, in the long run or the short. We’re both only here for a brief time. So have mercy.

This means there is much less room, time or space for wasting time, getting angry, upset or impolite about anything, or picking fights. Because you know the clock is ticking away and you’ll soon see someone dying or experience death yourself – leaving the body behind all cold and stiff, and either Catholically being buried in concrete vaults (sorry no more stone: as if we didn't have enough concrete and asphalt while we're alive, it has to be concrete when we're dead, too!), or being cremated, packed up tight in a decorative urn and perhaps being thrown to the fishes or the worms.

The body will go; it is just physical and returns to its source – the Earth, as modern-day recyclers should know. The emotions were just intense impulses produced by a brain-mechanism made to produce them; from thoughts that were made to be produced by a mind fuelled by the same energy that pervades the whole universe. Both petty and (for humans) lofty thoughts were produced by that brain, that mind. But all is gone now. It’s all to be recycled, because we live in a sustainable world, where we create nothing, we destroy nothing; we only recycle it. Whatever lay behind that body producing emotions and thoughts, making such things possible, that Awareness or Consciousness, is perhaps washed clean and given another chance to seek out its own meaning in another life, who knows? What those who are left to live on this Earth can discover or can know, is that either we rise above body, emotion and mundane human thought, or we simply die and have to start all over again, or are destroyed forever. Either way, life is all we have when we have it, so why not live to discover what it really is? Or are we simply to believe what others and society tell us? Is that all we think there is? Impossible. Life goes on, the universe is functioning perfectly. It’s just we humans who can get into sync with it. Either living or dying. So at least let's give it a try. Today. Before it's too late.

Edward’s Diary Entry 98: Now what? A Working Hypothesis…

And so the exercise has been done and – if you’ve been attentive – we have analysed the Gothic “I” in all its mystical glory and gained some insight into how and why it symbolises something and seems to preserve some special knowledge for us, if we look closely enough... One letter, representing our psyche, our self, with one part facing outwards like the five senses, and an inner construction for which we have to look within to better understand ourselves. But looking within is looking at blackness. Not exactly complete blackness as shown here, as there are always pinpoints of light and clouds and moonshine, much like the night sky...

Now, after a whole year of reviewing the Virtues in their positive attributes and their opposites, the Senses and the Gothic “I”, and quite a few articles and extras, I’m ready for more… Are you? Here’s a quick review of Edward’s mindset, written on 6 October 2016.

Working hypothesis 06.10.16:

Mind: There is this sensation of “me” which I call my “Self-Awareness”, and that is what drives this search, part of a “Life Plan” to delve within the mind, considering that we live in our minds, and we don’t even look into them properly, and accept all kinds of theories and words from others. That is a great mistake. This “Self-Awareness” is so “me” that it just happens, or works (or doesn’t work), and there is no getting behind it to observe it. It is just observing and experiencing. So as I sit still with eyes closed, there is darkness, and I reject all swirling lights and clouds and stars and black holes and retinal images and other things, and insist on an answer to “Who am I?”, “What is the origin of this I-thought?”. It takes great but silent effort to do this.

Body: The workings of the body are noted: heartbeat, breathing, perhaps some stomach gas or a sensation of fullness or emptiness, or a slight hunger pang, a discomfort here or there (normally due to yoga, or stretching, etc.).

Feelings:  The “feelings”, if any, do come occasionally, are noted, like excitement, calmness (serenity), delight, joy, satisfaction, interest, pleasure, surprise (amazement), longing (for an answer)… There are residual feelings of a “negative” nature that are detected occasionally, but usually caught and seen immediately, and not reacted to.

Thinking: The “thought process” is noted. It comes unexpectedly, a thought pops up, and the realisation that there are thoughts is noted. During practises, they are forthwith rejected, as it is not time for thinking during such sessions. An “idea” may occur, and it is noted and usually remembered for later writing (as in this very case). But usually thinking is quiet, as there are only two thoughts of importance in these sessions: WAI on the in-breath and WIG on the out-breath. WAI is of course Who Am I?, and WIG is an attempt to connect to a higher source and put things in perspective by referring to Where is God?, or Where is the Creator?, meaning how did all this come about?

Dreaming: The “dream process” is noted. As “Awareness” wavers, or “sleep” oppresses, what I call “dream images” and “thought trains” occur, and one can drift off into these. But usually “Awareness” returns and a renewed effort is made to reject the dream image or thought process, and breathing or breath-retention is used to come back to WAI-WIG only, or greater concentration on the “inner sound” that is always there.

Blackness: All else is black. There is nothing there. It’s a black wall. If drifting occurs, it may look interesting, but one can see an underlying dreaming process that could be called some kind of “subconsciousness”, but little importance is given to this – it may all be dreams, and we must have clear-cut reality. Unless something is very, very clear and explicit, it is rejected.

Visions: Very occasionally, reported in diaries, images seem to come from a “different place” – one is wide awake and attentive inside, with no sensation of sleepiness, and suddenly a clear photographic image occurs. This does not come from the underlying dreaming process in my present opinion. I reserve any opinion about this and must wait and see.

“Intelligence”: Underpinning all functions is an innate “intelligence” in the sense of an ordering, application and use of energy to keep all instinctive processes working. Heart, blood, lymph, cellular functions, digestion, elimination, breathing and the stuff of mind – thinking, feeling, sensing – all intelligently cooperate to keep this LIFE going. This is inferred by the mind as it contemplates life operations.

Other words: The things lots of people “talk about”, and even write about (as I sometimes do!), like the “I”, the “soul”, the “spirit”, the energy body, the mental body, the “higher self”, the pain body, the subconscious, the unconscious, the ego (or id or superego or whatever), the personality, even the “self”, are all just words and do not correspond to anything I can see in my mind. My opinion on these terms is reserved for later. If anybody uses them, they have to define them in their own experience. So far, there seems to be no more in the Mind than what I have described above, and when other words are used, they must always be questioned.

That is the current state of affairs in Edward Wells’ mind. Two years ago, there were many more words, thoughts and feelings, but I had no idea what they really signified. Today, calm perseverance has so far served me well. I hope this Diary has also been good for you to some extent.

Cave Series 11: Persevering in the Darkness

Black, darkness… Hey I can’t even see the phosphorescence anymore… There used to be lights, shimmering clouds, green shapes, purple fields and even little images once in a while. Now there is nothing. It’s all gloom, obscurity and shadow. This is when the going gets tough, and who can say if I’m tough enough to get going. There is no stick to beat me on; no word, no gesture. I’m all there is here, there’s no one else, and nothing to guide me. And it’s too dark, too dark to see. I’m knocking on the door, and it’s not heaven’s door, or hell’s gates. It’s just a big black sheet of rock, maybe the gates of Mordor, and I’m a tiny little barefooted hobbit. The only thing I have going for me is that I’m small and difficult to see, so maybe I can fool that huge expanse of rock and its guardians and slip past somehow. I don’t care what’s behind me or in front of me. I just have to keep beating away at those walls – and blowing my trumpet – and see if I can have them tumble down, like the walls of Jericho did once upon a time. 

Blogging for a Year: 16 November 2015 up to Today.

There’s no special significance in the fact that I’ve been blogging at International Self-Awareness Day for a year now, since 16 November 2015. It's just great to be 1 year old!

In my very first "Diary Entry" on November 18, 2015, I said I was “…planning to continue at least until July 2016”. Well, it's now been a whole year. This exercise has at least served me well, and I am now planning to continue for another six-month period, but I would like to know that someone is finding it interesting and/or useful, so I’m just wondering at this anniversary time: 

1) Has the information been of use to you? 

2) If so, what other things would you like to see on this blog?

3) Do you have any other comments you'd like to make?

I'm here, accessible and I will always reply. Meanwhile, thank you all for reading this blog and the IS-AD Facebook page, and special thanks to friends who follow Edward Wells on Facebook.

Celebrate life every day – every moment of it!

Tweaking the System: Slight change, Big difference. A Sensing Exercise.

My information about the “sensing exercise” comes from sources that are “ancient” for me, i.e., going back decades... 

Robert de Ropp explained this exercise in an appendix to his “Master Game”. Ouspensky and de Salzmann mentioned it. J.G. Bennett described this and others, and so have many other people in the Gurdjieff tradition. The Master himself gave an account of it in Chapter 7 of the First Book of “All and Everything”, when Beelzebub was instructing his grandson Hassein on how to prepare himself for the future: “…at your age, it is indispensably necessary that every day, at sunrise, while watching the reflection of its splendour, you bring about a contact between your consciousness and the various unconscious parts of your general presence… Try to make this state last and to convince the unconscious parts – as if they were conscious– ”...not to “…hinder your general functioning....”, after which he went on to enumerate the consequences of this.

Now unless you have some kind of guru or teacher, the individual seeker has to look after him or herself, and be reasonable. There are so many “opinions” about one thing and another, relating to eating, drinking, breathing, sleeping, waking, believing, thinking and offering yet more opinions, that it behoves the smart student to do all the necessary research, and then forget everything and start afresh. Find out for yourself. We’re supposed to be doing things to make ourselves more conscious, more in the present, more aligned with reality, not more dependent on others. So as long as you don’t jump off a building, or play Russian roulette, or blindly enter a sect, you’ll be fine... Just go your own way and discover. Listen to all, but get real data only from people who are tried and tested Masters, with real knowledge. And even then, test it out for yourself.

My sensing exercise, or “I”-Placement exercise, placing Awareness into 27 parts of the body successively and then bringing awareness of the body in its totality, has served me pretty well until now. It’s 25-28 minutes of pure concentration. It’s a challenge to remain awake. It’s a way to move energies around and experience sometimes powerful results. But it’s just a preparatory job, much like something for a child as “immature” as little Hassein. So, inspired by a new exercise which I have not done yet, but plan to do (the Isha Kriya from Sadhguru, a truly living source of wisdom today, and highly active in social media), I changed one little adjective to an definite article in the mental phrases that I use for my exercise. That means that instead of saying “I am in my right eye”, I made the change to “I am in the right eye”, thereby modifying the whole mindset of “proper English usage” and copying the Spanish, French and Germans and others, who use reflexive pronouns and definite articles with verbs indicating things they do to their bodies. Paraphrasing them, it’s like saying: “washing myself the hands”, “taking off the shoes for myself”, or “combing (for myself) the hair”, which all sound funny in English, but are realities in other languages, in which speakers strangely choose not to identify so much with their body parts and personal items, using “the” most of the time instead of “my”, “your” or “ours”.

This made me laugh a little, and it sounds strange, but it did the necessary trick. Suddenly the exercise became a little more objective. I was not identifying so much with “my” body and “its” parts anymore. It refuelled my attention and awareness. It was like hovering over a meadow like a drone, dropping my awareness into different sections of the field as if I were a farmer sowing seeds, and hoping for a good crop!

So that’s part of the game, master game or otherwise, of making up and modifying your own exercise as you go along, keeping attention riveted and preparing the field of the body for higher experiences, if possible.

Clingers and Hoarders I Have Known

Sadhguru of the Isha Foundation recommends a simple exercise for wellbeing called Isha Kriya. We can all do it, but it’s a great solution for clingers and hoarders as well – people who are blindly identified with their possessions. 

This exercise is a big revolution – or a terrifying revelation if you haven’t pondered on this before. Within the complete exercise there are various stages, but stage 1 is that on the in-breath you repeat to yourself “I am not the body” and on the out-breath – it gets even worse –: “I am not even the mind”. Poor materialists! They are left in the lurch here. Will their personalities or even their humanity be taken away from them if they do this? If they’re not the body or the mind, what’s left?

There’s a lot left, the whole universe in fact, and it’s infinite, so don’t worry. Animals are stuck in their patterns, humans are supposed to be able to grow and move upwards…

Let me just mention two cases of clinging and hoarding. One is a little old lady who, it is said, grew up in the war years (WW2) and is thereby supposedly justified for keeping all her things, however big, small, useful or potentially useful or useless, or because they came from this person or that, and although she normally knows where these things are, she really does have quite a quaint little house all full of objects, tools, heirlooms, papers, clutter, even stacks of scratch paper and Shredded Wheat cards, and of course lots of dirt, grime and filth.

The second example is an elderly gentleman who as a boy collected vinyl records, left them at his mother’s home 45 years ago, went back to visit only once for a few days in all those years, and has never bothered about the records since, but when they were recently cleaned out of the attic and sold to a collector, and he was told about it, he protested effusively from another continent that no one should have interfered with his affairs!

Now compulsive hoarders always have a justification for keeping all those things others “mistakenly” call unneeded. They are very adroit at explaining why such-and-such an object is of great value to them. See the "Batman" parody, below. And egoistic, uncaring persons who cling to things only when they’re gone are also very good at berating others for their insensitivity. But they are not so strange. The fact is that attachment and identification affect all of us – it’s just the degree and the object of attachment that are different.

What we are most attached to is of course our body. Body-love is drummed into us from all sides from the moment our little baby tummies are tickled by kind-hearted relatives. Some people possibly develop body-loathing by themselves later on. Yes, we have to learn how to use the body. Sure, we need to learn motor skills. But when there is no antidote to constant body-identification, we grow up firmly ensconced in our little shells and think that the body is all there is, and, for some reason, it has to be kept young as well when age creeps in. Some people actually progress a little further to think it’s their minds that make them who they are. And reeling its head over both these domains is the grandiose Ego who also thinks he’s the biggest of bosses, and woe unto him who offends that entity, because it will rear its ugly head and smite all and sundry and pummel them down into the dust.

So it’s quite easy to progress from the love of or identification with the physical body, and our attachment to our minds, and extend our boundaries to include our things, our possessions, our little souvenirs of life that no one knows what to do with when we die – unless the chain of identification continues in offspring or relatives. Of course no one would spurn a nice inheritance – especially cash, land and buildings – but what about those old letters, postcards, photos, mementoes and papers that meant so much to one person but fail to attract any interest from descendents?

So, yes, those familiar with Thoreau will side with his “Simplify, simplify”, but it really means that we have to look at things from a new viewpoint.

Growing means accepting life as it is. As life goes on, we should become wiser and wealthier in understanding, not necessarily in possessions. When we die, we leave everything behind – body, mind and possessions. So why live life clinging onto these and hoarding them? What possible good does it do to “us”? Because behind the body, and behind the mind is the “I” that is the Observer, the Consciousness, the small-scale representative of the Creator. That is what we need to promote and nourish and care for, not dust and ashes, not sense perceptions falling onto the field of awareness and being reacted to, not things made of clay, stone, wood, paper and man-made composites, however needed or useful they may be during our lifetime.

Celebrate your Self-Awareness and thank heavens you are not just your body, or your mind. But much more than that if you really want to be. 

A Democracy Lesson for Today...

With so much hot air, on mainstream airtime, about the results of the US elections, few realise that it is traditionally only half the population who actually cast a vote, so any candidate without a landslide victory always gains office with the consent of about a quarter of the population, like Mr Trump has now done. 

Some 25% of voters really vote for one candidate, 25% for the other candidate, and around 50% vote for “Nobody”. They are supposedly just sitting at home, reading or playing baseball, and only occasionally are they called the “silent majority”. Well, yes, they're probably silently thinking that no one is good enough for them, so that’s why they won’t come out and cast a ballot. Politicians don't like that, but they might start listening when turnout slips below the dreaded 50% line. Then what excuse will we have?

US turnout in the 2012 presidential election was 53.6%, based on 129.1 million votes cast and an estimated voting-age population of just under 241 million people. In the aftermath of the recent elections, smart people will do their homework and check out the current 2016 voting-age population and the number of votes actually cast to November 8. And you’ll find that it’s “business as usual” and the trend continues: US presidents never win by any kind of true majority. They are mostly elected with the ballots of a quarter or less of the population (obviating the mechanism of the electoral college). 

Nevertheless, this situation is dangerous for true democracy, and it was addressed before the elections by (one of) the world’s greatest “thinkers” – an Indian mystic whom I am following. In a real lesson on democracy, here’s what he told an audience in San Jose, CA. No one should miss this.

Are You in Control?

Dear Mr Concierge, what do you really control in your life?

My concierge said he had a problem... He shares a flat and has been told he has to move out in 2 month’s time because the property is being sold after 17 years of rental. This was a terrible blow to him, and he complained about the injustice of this… He says he needs more time.

Well, whenever something unexpected hits you in life, it’s because you haven’t analysed exactly what you control in your life. But wait, is total control possible? There’s a simple answer: N-O, no. Externals will always get out of hand at some point. But it is a good exercise to put things into focus once in a while. A rough guideline would look like this:

Money:	Job, income, outlays	Is my job secure? I could lose it any time, then I wouldn’t have an income. Am I prepared for this?
Roof:	Housing, property, rent	Do I own my property? Taxes may increase. If I’m renting, contracts can be terminated, so I need to realise that.
Possessions:	Transport, collections, furniture, decoration, personal items	Do I have a vehicle? It may be break down or be damaged at any time, even stolen. Disasters can strike and destroy my possessions. Robbers could break in and steal something, etc.
Food:	Eating and drinking	Do I control the source of my food? Do I know where it comes from, how it’s grown or produced? Is it natural or full of man-made chemicals and preservatives, factory food and fast food? Is this healthy? Am I in control of the water or liquids I drink?
Relationships:	Spouse, family, children, friends	Can I be sure a marriage or relationship will last forever? Do family members create problems for me, or I for them? Are my children growing up properly, and what does that mean? Can I always trust my friends? Will they make me happy at all times? Are they supposed to?
Health:	Sickness, disease and death	Will I succumb to illness at some time? Am I healthy? Will disease strike unexpectedly? Will I even die two minutes from now, I do not know, do I?
Mind:	Thoughts, feelings, impulses...	Can I trust my own mind to work properly and not misguide me? Am I in control of my own mind? Do I control thoughts, feelings, impulses? What about the unconscious and/or subconscious? What about my dreams, hopes and fears? Is my mind even mine? What is my mind composed of? Do I know?

You see, there’s no guarantee from outside sources, from the “externals” in our lives. Anything can change at any time, and the epigrammatic Murphy even made a Law of it. If anything can go wrong, it will (and some add, “and at the worst possible time!”).

So an intelligent human being will never trust only to “externals”, nor will he or she have any expectations that override actual occurrences. A smart person will get to the bottom of the whole equation and realise that it is the MIND that is the problem. We (mis-)“train” our minds (or they have been mis-trained for us due to wrong education) in such a way that all externals, all our sense perceptions of whatever happens out there, simply automatically (and without much intelligence) spark off a reaction in the mindstuff that opposes the reality of any situation that doesn’t coincide with our little wishes, our likes and dislikes or expectations. Our minds are out of control, and therefore any situation can go wrong at any time and make us anxious, stressed-out and miserable.

The solution to this is to “re-train” the mind to see reality as it is. It may be useful to make a chart of your “externals” and see how they might change at any time and so be better prepared for when they do, because they will. But that’s a makeshift plan. The real plan is to work on the mind so that it will not simply react to a changing circumstance and produce anxiety, fear, worry, misery or what have you, but on the contrary simply see the occurrence and find a solution, if there is one, or adapt. Now what do we need for that?

We need a total “mind overhaul”, and for that we have to sit still and look inside where all the action is happening all the time. We may think something is happening “out there in the world” that affects us, but it is not really happening there. It is taking place inside our heads and hearts, because that is where the seat of our experience can be found. We receive impressions and that is what makes up our world, and our world is inside us. So why are we looking around outside for a solution? It’s a neverending mistake to do that.

This has been stated ever since the first smart guy or guru began talking to someone else – many millennia ago. There’s a Mullah Nasrudin story about it, with the Mullah looking for the key to his house out in the garden, having lost it inside, where it was too dark to search, and I’ve also found a French cartoon strip about this adapted for America in 1942. Take a look... and search for some light in the inner darkness.

Edward’s Diary Entry 97: Whence the “spirit”? And then what?

2nd stage, or Dhyana: This is the creation of a mental image, the image of Christ for Christians; Mohammed for the Mohammedans; for the Sufis the tasawwur, or tasawwur-e-Shaikh, where a Sufi’s entire concentration is focused upon his Shaikh, to the extent that he experiences the presence of his Shaikh at all times. This presupposes the existence of a Teacher, but some say a teacher is not required; at least not a physical teacher, as the mental image is all that is needed. We are assured by the Christian mystics that concentration on the form of Christ will give us this experience – sooner or later. 

Meanwhile, with the mind strengthened by 1st stage Dhāranā, along with the indispensible practice of the 26 virtues of the Gita, or similar virtues – the names are not important, but the thoughts, words and deeds are – the mind is made stronger, it is purified, if one applies “true psychology” to reject non-virtues and accept Virtues, on the premise that mind is tainted and wild, and needs taming and civilising. Western psychological and linguistic concepts of using ‘qualifiers’ or adjectives, as in “I am afraid”, “I am charitable”, “I am fearless”, “I am hungry”, “I am …” with any qualifier; are considered incorrect. It is more practical and true to say, “I give way to fear”, “I accept and practice charitableness”, “I accept fearlessness”, “I give way to hunger”, etc. Because what we see as “traits of character” are not really that; they are urges or forces within the mind that the mind has the possibility of accepting or rejecting. Just like actions, which can be karmic, akarmic or vikarmic, that is: (karma) reasonable and right action; (akarma) useless activity to be curbed; and (vikarma) harmful actions incurring retributive consequences for the mind, by producing more vikarma or akarma. So 2c is the ideal that we have established in our minds, Christ, perfection, Truth, the name does not matter, and we direct all our efforts towards THAT. Along the way, just as at any stage, one may have experiences of the 3rd stage, called Samādhi.

3rd stage, or Samādhi: This is the unity of subject and object. This is when it is revealed to one that subject and object really do not exist. It is the Reality behind the image of Dhyana. The Purusha and the Supreme Reality, seeking the unknown source, concentration on truth, but… only achieved by the Grace of God. Here no effort except relentless perseverance will help. The walls cannot be forced down by any army of trumpets. When it is time it is time. The Zen Buddhists also say, “Our enlightenment is timeless, yet our realization of it occurs in time.” And the trouble here is point 2c again, where we may stop thinking that all has been achieved. This is Nirvikalpa Samādhi, bliss and happiness in visions supreme.  Here the soul is in bliss, in ecstasy. All is one; all is beautiful. But here, the mind is still playing its tricks. Or perhaps the bliss and happiness lasts as long as the world. But at the end of the world, it will be seen to be nothing, and it will be lost once again. The objective of the soul is to lose itself in THAT, to return to the Source. The Medieval “I” inventors have foreseen this as well, because at 2c the line doubles back on itself to 2d. It rejects the final vision of Nirvikalpa Samādhi and resolutely continues to watch and wait and question and “pierce the veil of consciousness”, and ultimately disappear in the attempt. All may be bliss, all may be beautiful, but all must be given up, the ego shall disappear, the mind shall also disappear, the soul shall be washed clean, the individual consciousness will be seen to be an illusion. Because we were already THAT which we were seeking from the beginning, from the beginning of time perhaps. Words are said to be unable to describe it. But beyond all form, beyond consciousness, breaking away with all constraints and all systems, suddenly it may come in a flash. And then everything is different. The world, as we think it into existence, has ceased to exist, and WE simply ARE. And yet the Perfected Ones, having realised this, re-enter the world to perform their worldly duties. And a new dawn has come. And life is only real, then, when “I AM”. Amen. Aum.

What wonderful symbolism contained in a single word, nay, a single letter drawn by Medieval Masters. Can Truth be any simpler? May you take this as inspiration for its attainment.

(The End – but only provisionally…)

Cave Series 10: Face East, Young Man

By the glowing phosphorescence of a rock in my cave, I noticed something on the floor and groped for it. It was an old compass, but it still worked, and I could make out the directions too. I now saw I was sitting with my back to the East, so I turned round and immediately felt better. Renewed hope overcame me. The mouth of the cave is East, I thought, so that is the way to face. It was the mistaken theory of "Manifest Destiny", an excuse for imperialism, that encouraged people to Go West, as Horace Greeley urged, to practically destroy Native American culture and "conquer the wild west", so I was determined to do the opposite and turn my face towards the wisdom of the East. And so I sat with palms turned upwards, and they tingled and practically caught on fire as I imagined the exit opening up and me walking out into the sunshine. But alas, that was not to be, and I decided to settle down and sleep for a while to see the sky outside, albeit in my dreams, or was it a faint premonition of things to come?