Like many I have often thought about the ‘ego’ and how it fits in with a contemporary search for spiritual enlightenment.
Ego is a term originating from Sigmund Freud and has a technical meaning in psychoanalysis which I shall not include in this essay as there are plenty of psychology books for those interested in a clinical version of the idea.
It’s common usage in English today is to mean that a person is vain and has an unjustified high opinion of themselves, however when we use the word to understand ourselves or ‘what makes us tick’, it has a more constructive purpose.
Ego is Latin for ‘I’ and this sense of ‘I’ works to develope our feelings all through life. I is the observer who perceives through the five physical senses. But this very act of ‘perception’ includes unconscious filtering, predjudices and biases to support what we believe. If this process is unconscious, how sure can we be about the ‘I’ personality we build up through life? How authentic to truth are we?
Whatever ‘I’ is, we can be certain that it rules a great deal of our conscious behaviour; in fact – almost everything.
This is where ‘spirituality’ may start to appeal to a person; to fill this uncertainty and distrust of a fake ‘persona’, accompanied by a suspicion that there must be something beyond personality. The ego is unlikely to admit there is a higher intelligence to it but on surrender of egotistic desires a person can expand their consciousness beyond the everyday.
There are three words which come together to form this expanded version of who we might be; ‘body’ ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’.
It is simple to understand that we are in a body. This was one of the first learning hurdles we had as a baby even though ‘being just a body’ is another of nature’s illusions. You can lose your legs in an accident and still be the same person.
Soul and spirit have various definitions which I shall not explore here. Let us merely propose that beyond our body and senses, there is more that is not within the experience of being me, even if it is mysterious!
In many cultures and traditions the spiritual journey aims to reach an alternative to ego called ‘enlightenment’. Many spiritual leaders claim to have abandoned their egoistic desires and become enlightened. The past remembers such people as prophets and saints but enlightened people are alive today, even if they do not realise it themselves! Perhaps the most beguiling such teacher on the internet is Eckhart Tolle who is candid about his transition into a non-ego driven life and gives gentle and amusing lectures to modern audiences. He does not couch his teaching within terms of any religion unless there is a need to use a specific word or idea. The core of his advice is transferring self guidance away from the ego to the higher self while letting life just happen without needing to control it for desires.
There was a famous Sufi who was stopped by a friend in the street by calling out his name. The Sufi replied, ‘he has gone and I hope he never comes back!’ Dying whilst alive is not part of doctrine in many religions, preferring instead to promise reward after physical death.
In ancient cultures around the world such as Egypt, temples were built mainly for the purpose of placing initiates into a non-egoic state. From here they would leave the body and after three days, just as sun, moon or distant star light fills the chamber, return as a resurrected being. The gnostic Jesus of Nazareth referred to this as being ‘born again’.
One might wonder then what part the ego has in the spiritual quest. Well, clearly the process is not as simple as just abandoning ego.
The truth is that the ego has a particularly strong hold over us, something that it is easy to underestimate. The process of ‘dying’ is anathema to the ego and it will do almost anything to stay alive. Being ‘frightened of dying’ is common for the general population and understandable. We have a choice. Either to be haunted by The Grim Reaper all your life or ‘die before you die’.
The Japanese Samurai in Feudal Japan were spiritually trained as well as being fearless warriors. They entered fights in which they were very likely to be killed for the simple reason that they had overcome the fear of death. What did it matter? The Templar knights in twelth century Europe went through a similar initiation process and were likewise, fearless warriors.
A Templar Knight picture credit Middle Temple
So when a person in modern times takes up the spiritual path and accepts that the final destination is an abandonment of ‘I’ and everything, the ego opens it’s playbook of dirty tricks. It will not give up without a fight to the death.
The most blatant of these is to transfer the feeling of ‘I’-ness into a new, highly spiritual ‘I’ personality.
When the ego is transferred to spirituality in this way, all hell can be let loose!
I once stood at a London rail station with some friends. We looked across the concourse to a large group of African Muslims dressed from head to toe in white robes. They were clearly performing the spiritual journey of the Hajj, bound for Mecca. The pilgrims strict dress code to wear white for humility and yet this group clearly ignored the spirit of the dress code. Their robes were over sized and flowing and their headgear voluminous so as to draw attention solely to project their imaginary high status.
The extremist armed groups of all faiths and political persuasions in modern times are twice as deadly and ruthless precisely because their egoistic sense of being ‘right’ holds power over others. The fact their their evil actions are the opposite of the religion their profess blinds them in a way that only the ego knows how to do.
The Spanish Inquisition operated what we might call today a ‘death squad’ against all the Christian principles of compassion and love, for over three hundred and fifty years.
picture credit: Ancient Origins
Even peaceful looking cross legged gurus and self style ‘god men’ in India and other with strong spiritual traditions, may secretly hide the fact that they have simply adopted the appearance of being spiritual for a variety of non-spiritual reasons. These might range from obtaining money and property, sexual exploitation of naïve followers, illusions of self importance and power over others.
Their conman techniques include dressing up elaborately clothing, hypnotic music, chanting and dance, illusory tricks such as surgery without incision, strict regimes of ritual, unquestioning obedience, removal of individuals from family and friends, shaming and praise and a thousand other deceits and conceits. It is the pyschology of the cult which promises a way to overcome personal egotistic desires but replaces them with the egotistic desires of the guru.
When ‘abandoning ego’ we are as vulnerable as a crab without a shell and great care is needed to value the role of the ego as something that keeps us going in a difficult even dangerous world. Ego is not something to be abandoned without something more real and more reliable to replace it. It is after all, the motor that gets us up in the morning and sustains us however frail and feint we may feel.
Perhaps the middle way is not to abandon egoistic ‘desires’ but to come to terms with them in such a way that our ego does not pull our higher self along like a dog on a lead. The path to perfection is to separate our consciousness from the ego as described in gnostic teachings. In this state, the ego must do as it is told be the highest benefit of oneself and others.
There are a series of paintings in Zen Buddhism which describe this process, one part of which is called ‘taming the bull’ where the bull is our ego.
Taming the Bull picture credit: thedawnwithin.com
The whip and rope are necessary,
Else he might stray off down some dusty road.
Being well trained, he becomes naturally gentle,
Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.
From “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones” by Paul Reps
The rider of the bull is then, that part of ourselves that has become separate and yet still connected to ego or ‘I’ ness. A connection to spirit without destroying the grounding ego gives us, is achieved through strict objectivity in attention and awareness, just as in the expression, ‘in the world but not of it.’
This enables our state of being to move into the ‘higher-self’ or ‘infinite consciousness’; our eternal and infinite connection with ‘all that is and ever shall be’ . It is attained not by the ‘achievements’ that we are encouraged to aim for by society, but by removal of our ‘imitation self’ or ‘personality’. Surrender, non-attachment and the knowledge of forgetting, are just three tools from the wisdom schools of the past which steered seekers of self knowledge long before the modern schools of psychoanalysis and psychiatry.
The following is a description of a process that I believe could bypass the current dead lock in peace negotiations. Today Ukraine is understandably against giving up territory for which it’s soldiers have died and, from their perspective, so is Russia.
picture credit: Geo Political Futures
On 11 May 2014 referendums took place under the Russian controlled Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics . They asked in essence, whether the population preferred to be Russian or Ukrainian. This initially appears fair towards the citizens as many of whom speak Russian. However, the results were clearly unrepresentative as by then large numbers of loyal Ukrainian’s had fled! The world was given a clear demonstration of how dictators use democracy when and how it suits them.
So, my suggestion is to take another look at this idea of asking the people of these regions the same question, but only after allowing displaced Ukrainian citizens to return safely to their homes and after peace has been declared and sustained. Such a process would have to be supervised by a neutral international organisation such as the United Nations.
This resettlement process should be given an extended period for the social, economic and political ‘dust to settle’; say five years. These parts of Ukraine would remain a demilitarised zone between Russia and Ukraine pending an agreed peace plan for the future. It is wise to acknowledge that Ukraine acts as a buffer zone between Russia and NATO. This has so far kept the two sides apart and long may it be so.
But presently neither Ukraine nor Russia can agree on the border and negotiations involving the United States are deadlocked. In such a case, consulting the people of those disputed regions must be the fairest way to decide.
I would hope that Russia and Ukraine could invite soldiers in a peacekeeping role from non-European and non-NATO countries. The fear of NATO boots so close to Russia is in fairness to Russia, understandable. The Cuban missile crisis in 1962 that threatened full scale global war, was produced by just such a move and to repeat it at least in principle, would be to court extending the war for no clear advantage.
Cuban Missile Crisis 1962 picture credit The Independent
When reaching any peace agreement, diplomats work so that all sides are able to ‘save face’ and some sort of compromise is usually involved.
It should be pointed out to Russia that ‘Special Military Operations’ are not able to gain territory because of their self defined limits of operations. In contrast it is ‘total war’ that annexes neighbouring sovereign states as demonstrated by the German Nazis in the second world war. Ironically, we are told that the original aims of Putin were to eliminate Nazi’s from Ukraine and this story has apparently been the reason why Russian citizens are supporting the invasion of Ukraine. The right wing Azov Regiment in Mariupol were rightly or wrongly set up as the objective for Putin’s SMO. But it is clear that the initial invasion of Ukraine by forces on it’s northern border ‘on exercise’, intended to go straight for Kiev, with the intention of taking over the government.
Fundamentally, the two leaders are entrenched, literally and metaphorically over the old or a new Ukraine border. Therefore, I suggest that both sides should forget resolving their border claims at the present time. Instead, the regions under dispute and their populations, should be placed under the protection of a neutral organisation. There will be a promise and expectation to the citizens who live in those areas that in five years time they will be able to vote in a referendum to decide which country has sovereignty in their region. Immigration of citizens from both countries will have to be based on legal ownership of land and property otherwise illegal settlements will spring up as in Palestine!
Since Russia has already shown it’s willingness to abide by referendums over sovereigty, I would hope that Ukraine agrees to the plan. The delay of five years will allow genuine refugees to return to their homes, local and global economies and social services to ‘normalise’ and some stability to return to the regions. It might take ten or twenty years but this can be decided in the intitial negotiations over the agreement. Ultimately people will be able to vote for the system of government they prefer.
A note of caution when advocating referendums. They can be used to advantage as Putin has already shown. He has a precedent as also Adolf Hitler favoured using rigged, manipulated referendums (plebiscites) to provide a facade of democratic legitimacy to his dictatorship.
On the other hand, U.K. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher disliked referendums calling them “a device of dictators and demagogues”. But she did submit to a referendum to decide whether the United Kingdom should join the European Economic Community in 1975.
picture credit El Periodico UK Brexit
With this in mind, one should therefore treat referedums as carefully as unexploded ordance; the outcome can hurt! After a referendum result there might be left a substantial minority of disgruntled citizens for whom the outcome did not go their way. We saw this in the 2026 UK referendum over the question of whether to stay in the European Union. The result was narrowly in favour of leaving, a view that has reversed itself since. To avoid division and future instability, I suggest that a super majority is required of two thirds of the population before any result becomes law. The 50/50 referendum rule over Brexit was not open to public consultation. Brexit has illustrated however, that a large minority of disgruntled voters become considerably more political astute and active than a contended small majority and the same could occurr in the disputed Ukrainian territories.
To overcome perpetual border disputes, after a referendum has taken place, those uncomfortable with the outcome could be given the opportunity to move, together with generous compensation from Russia; what one might call ‘special military compensation’. Ukrainians could move to new Ukraine and Russian speaking Ukrainians who support the Putin regime could move to Russia.
My first visit to the mosque in Cordoba got me into trouble with the security guard. It was winter and I entered wearing my hat. I was approached and told to remove my headgear. I considered this rather odd as covering one’s head is mandatory in a mosque. But then when you look at the guide book it calls the mosque a cathedral for the reason that there is indeed a cathedral that was dropped as if lowered from outer space, through the ancient roof of the mosque.
As soon as the guard was out of sight, I replaced my hat. Hats on or hats off, women hats on, men hats off, in my heretical view, is a product of imagining unreasonable rules by those who do not know. On that note, the following essay may also appear to be conjecture to which I would humbly request that the reader suspends disbelief. There is much being discovered from our ancient past at this time and buildings such as the Mezquita in Cordoba are perfect places to go and experience for oneself.
If one were to construct a holy building, meaning not just for shelter, it would have to embody both matter and energy. But some energies are beyond scope of scientist’s instruments. There is plenty of evidence of manipulation of energy by and through buildings in the past.
We need not look far for examples. The ancient Egyptian sacred buildings, such as the Osirion Temple at Abydos or the Temple of Luxor, copied the sacred proportions of the human body. The energetic and physical functions of the building were designed to be proportionate to and reflected the energetic and physical functions of the body. Much of the work of the French Egyptologist R.A. Schwaller de Lubitcz gives many examples as in this illustration. The legs are the two lines of columns at the temple entrance working through to the head which is the altar and initiation chambers.
With this understood at least as a possibility, I would like to use the Mezquita in Cordoba in Southern Spain as example of a ‘living’ building energised by spirit.
It is to be found in the old town of Cordoba beside the River Guadalquivir; a waterway that was once navigable to the Atlantic Ocean.
This grand building was built in Al-andalus in Southern Spain between 784 – 987 B.C.E. It was expanded at various times, to accommodate growing congregations. It’s functional layout is similar to a modern industrial building allowing it to grow. In 1236 under the King of Castille and Leon Ferdinand III, the city of Cordoba was captured. The mosque was repurposed as a cathedral.
The Mezquita garden is a landscaped courtyard with fountains and a cistern, presumably once for ritual ablution before prayers. The planting is principally standard sized trees in a regular pattern resembling an orchard rather than a forest. This theme mirrors the rectangular grid of the mosque’s structure. A rectangular grid of columns supports double arches and a high roof.
This then is a brief description of the of the mosque as it appears materially. Now let us move on to consider ‘energy’.
picture credit: Lions in the Piazza
The first thing you notice when entering the mosque are the red and white arches supported by marble columns, recycled from Roman and Visigoth buildings. These columns do not reach the desired height of the roof so a higher arch sits on top of the lower arch. This is an unusual engineering solution but there is a possible explanation that these columns were selected for another reason than for practically. They were made by the Romans from various types of stone but principally polished marble, jasper, porphyry and granite.
All of these stones contain quartz to varying degrees and from the energetic viewpoint, this is significant. Quartz is piezoelectric mineral, meaning that when compressed, the geometric structure of the atoms squeezes out positive and negative electrons producing a voltage across the stone. The voltage is proportionate to the amount of weight on the pillar, hence one might conjecture, the unusual second arch above the first. Structurally, the second arch has no other purpose than to add height and weight, evident because these arches are only used in one direction of the grid where the weight of the roof is supported. This device of increasing weight to increase the electric potential of columns is evident in much sacred architecture. At the Gobleki Tepe temple in Turkey, standing stones are T-shaped, at Stonehenge in England they have lintels and the pyramids of Egypt compress pink granite lined chambers. The ancient Egyptian temples such as Luxor contain an excessive number of columns to support the roof. All around the world and throughout time, sacred buildings are structurally over designed which is in my view is to produce electric potential.
Electricity works closely with magnetism, for instance inducing magnetic fields when an element such as iron moves through an electrified copper coil as in a simple electric generator. We are familiar with electromagnetism but not the as yet undiscovered organic force known as Chi or Prana in the east and Ether or Orgone in the West. It is this as yet unscientifically proven energy that is connected with the spiritual effects it has on the human body and soul.
So to the return the Mezquita, do these arches remind you of horse shoe magnets? Indeed, the typical shape of the arches in Islamic architecture is called a ‘horseshoe arch’. If an arch and it’s two columns are electrically charged, then one column will be positive and the other negative.The grid plan supports this hypothesis, as it connects these opposite electric poles in series, in the manner that batteries are connected to produce more amps at the same voltage. One can go even further if we include the fact that human bodies also contain an electric charge which in a mosque are again aligned during communal prayer. Could males be separated from females not for religious and cultural reasons, but to configure human experience?
Do the red and white patterns in the arches physically mirror the anodes and cathodes in the whole design at least symbolically? If human electricity or bioelectricity sounds beyond scienctific acceptance then the work of Sally Adee confirms we are indeed walking light bulbs!
Any person who has attended an event where a large number of people congregate such as a football match, know that the ‘atmosphere’ during that occasion is not experienced by those who are physically removed from the event and watching on television.
When large numbers of people congregate they are capable of producing powerful sounds. At a football match, the compression waves from the chanting and cheering is capable of boiling one pint of water; a small amount in terms of heat but definitely an effect. So one might wonder whether the compression waves in air from sacred chanting and music is sufficient to produce a piezoelectric effect in stone?
Consider a human body which is constantly vibrating at certain frequencies. Through resonance each person is able to resonate with others during in prayer and meditation. When this is performed as a ritual performance in a sacred building, the context amplifies the effect on each individual. In this way worshippers of any religion have their frequency raised which they experience as an uplifting of spirit in a heart centred rather than a head centred way. Although there is hardly room in this essay, I should also suggest there is the whole subject of healing that has taken place at sacred times and places, sometimes at the level of miracles.
Consider the original plan and physical location of the Mezquita. It is aligned so that the congregation face Mecca in a south easterly direction; 100 degrees and 5 million yards away. Consider the thought that the prayers of the faithful, were directed into the flowing waters of the river Quadalquivir. A controversial scientist of today, Masaru Emoto discovered experimentally, that water records words and thought as changes in it’s molecular structure. Such resonances through prayer of love and beauty may well have been intentional?
Picture credit: Venerable Master Chin Kung
As well as sound we should consider every type of wave in the electromagnetic spectrum. At a lower frequency than visible light are radio waves which in themselves are strongly connected to crystals. The early radio receivers needed no battery, just a quartz crystal, an aerial and electrical earth. An operator could listen to the waves of an radio broadcast using headphones. Conversely, a slice of a quartz or galena (lead sulphide) crystal, works as a microphone in response to sound waves and sends a modulated signal through insulated copper wires. This shows that even a tiny pressure from sound in air produces a response in crystals. A forest of columns containing crystal in a mosque is therefore something not to be underestimated in it’s effects on the human energy field and through that, perception.
Let us look far away for an example as this effect is not as far fetched as it may at first appear. There are in existence thirteen quartz crystals carved into the shape of human skulls.
One such skull is on view in the British Museum in London, England. I have been to view it and found it exhibited on a sultry landing in a stair well. It had been removed from the Aztec gallery on the grounds that some marks from modern instruments had been found on it when viewed under a microscope. The conclusion was made that the skull was made in the same moment of history as these instruments. In my view this is false logic as any object can be altered at any time in history. Work at a moment in an objects existence does not suggest when it was made . It’s the same false logic from archaeologists who find a skeleton in a dolmen and assume the dolmen was made for that burial.
If we can accept that we do not know the age of these crystal skulls then they could be any age including from the Younger Dryas event and even pre-deluvian times.
To quote Daryl Anka from You Tube Twin Flame – the Forbidden Connection;
In Atlantean times the council of 13 would sit in a circle around the master skull and they would sing; they would chant to it. The idea of Tibetan chants is a hand me down of a memory of the idea of using vibrational resonance through chanting to release information from the skull.
In other words, the quartz crystal not only act as ‘microphones’ absorbing sound energy containing information and converting it, but also ‘speakers’, emitting information.
Could granite columns act in the same way when stimulated by the collective chanting and energetic vibration of a congregation? Quartz crystal is silicon dioxide or (SiO2) and silicon is used in the memory of modern computers as a chip. It works by using billions of microscopic switches called transistors on a silicon base to control electrical current, processing data as binary 1’s and 0’s, functioning as tiny logic gates that perform calculations and execute commands.
Whilst granite columns are clearly not computers, could they work in a similar way to store information for later release to following generations?
I shall quote Daryl Anka again from the same video;
The arrangement of the atoms within the crystals is a representation of information storage in terms of how light courses through the crystal…sound can release the idea of information by hitting the right note and pattern / chord key…and it can actually release the information by vibrating the molecular matrix so as to allow the information to come out.
So the key energy in this arrangement is sound and if you consider sacred buildings around the world, sound is an important feature of worship whether it be bells, organ pipes, chanting, choirs, congregations singing and intoning.
The Mezquita in Cordoba during a storm
A largely unknown and curious example of this are the gargoyles featured on Gothic churches and fashioned as devilish creatures with open mouths. These functioned not only to scare evil entities but to channel rain water but contained within some are precisely carved resonant chambers. These ‘squeeze’ the sound of bells and project it in an amplified form for long distances. Salisbury cathedral in England is an example and the scientific principle used is a Helmholtz resonator.
A Helmholtz resonator is an acoustic device, like an empty bottle, that resonates at a specific low frequency, acting as a mass-spring system where air in a neck (mass) oscillates against the compressible air in a cavity (spring). It’s used to analyse sound (by isolating specific pitches) or control noise (like in mufflers or rooms) by absorbing certain frequencies. The resonant frequency depends on the cavity’s volume, neck length, and neck area.
Source Google AI
Returning to Cordoba and the Mezquita, we know that custom for Muslim prayer is first to perform an ablution. This is not only to remove physical dirt but spiritual dirt in the form of conscious entities known as Jinn in Islam or Archons by gnostics. These can be detached from one’s energetic body by washing and sacred incantations such as the call-to-prayer, prayer and recitation.
Imagine then the possibility that sacred sounds in whatever form are absorbed and emitted by a place of worship and meditation, in the way of a simple microphone and speaker. If one can suspend judgment a little further, then consider this extract from ‘Crystals and Stones’ on You Tube by Bashar,
…crystals – the chamber (in which they are built) resonate in such a way as to imbue to you whatever information they have stored in their molecular matrix that you are open to receiving.
The reference to ‘open to receiving’ is important, as we know that people are not necessarily aware of the effects of unseen energies upon their mind, spirit and body. For instance, the earth emits a sound at the frequency of 7.83hz known as the Shumanresonance and experiments have shown that this creates an Alpha wave state in the human brain.
AI Google gives this concise description of this state of mind. Compare it as you read, the state of mind of congregations at prayer,
Alpha waves are brainwave patterns (8-12 Hz) common during relaxed wakefulness, like daydreaming or meditating, acting as a bridge between focused (beta) and drowsy (theta/delta) states, promoting calmness, creativity, and efficient information processing by inhibiting distractions and enhancing mental clarity…
If quartz in granite columns is recording sound vibrations from nature and humans in sacred buildings, then this information, this memory, is present from the previous days, weeks, months and even years. Are our ancestors talking to us and if this were true, then would you not also record your culture’s information, knowledge and wisdom in some indestructible for those who come after you?
When science has the instruments to measure and interpret information contained in crystal bearing stone such as the red granite lining the inner chambers in the Pyramid of Ku fu, then we may understand the purpose of using such particular stone, because at present we do not.
My experience when dowsing, is that sacred buildings such as the Mezquita in Cordoba are highly energetic. The intention in it’s choice of building materials and construction was in my view, to imbue a received meditative state of mind and feeling of closeness to Allah in those who enter the mosque. There is no need even for worship to be taking place to have this experience for the stone pillars emanate an form ofq bio-electromagnetic energy which is an as yet, undiscovered energy to which humans naturally resonate in their own bio-electric field or shall we say, chakras.
I should include another important source of energy in sacred buildings which is from the earth on which they sit. It is significant that worshippers in a mosque stand in regular lines. They have removed their footwear, not only for cleanliness but also to make sure they are electrically earthed. Some more sensitive souls carry metal tipped walking sticks for this same reason for a build up of energy requires controlled discharge. Beneath the mosque are tellurgic currents associated with water; remembering the mosque is sited next to a significant overground river.
Whilst dowsing in the courtyard gardens, I found a spiralling spring under the present cistern and fountains. Such currents will certainly extend into the mosque itself and connect with the bases of the granite columns.
This energy can rise in a spiral around the columns as depicted in Freemasonry as symbolic columns named Boaz and Jachin. These formed a ‘portal’ into the Temple of Sol-om-on, a ‘third space’ between sun and moon or masculine and feminine in which was to be found completeness.
The Healing Rod of Asclepius picture credit: Greek City Times
It is a fact known to the Knights Templar and Freemasons who inherited the practice from the Ancient Egyptians, that most sacred buildings around the world are placed over global, regional and local nodes of tellurgic current. It should also be noted when considering the properties of granite that it can be naturally magnetic when containing magnetite or ilmenite. The darker or metallic coloured granites exhibit this property most and there are many such columns in the Mezquita.
Many sacred buildings connect visually with ‘heaven’ or the sky by means of a tower or spire. A minaret was added to the Cordoba mosque in 958 BCE. Such high structures were built not only for the call to prayer by the muezzin, but to connect the entire complex with positive and negative ions in the atmosphere, notably moist thunder clouds or the hot dry air of summer. Most dramatically, lightning seeks high buildings to discharge into the earth. This effect was utilised by the ancient Egyptians when they built pyramid topped granite obelisks some of which have been relocated to European cities such as Paris, Rome, London and Washington DC. The city of Washington has an interesting street plan likely to be designed by the Freemasons within which the ‘Washington Monument‘ plays a key role.
Such macro views resemble in a fractal pattern, the layout of micro circuit boards and transistors. Modern science is catching up with ancient science but at micro scale as in quantum mechanics. The statue of a god in the Greek or Egyptian Temple which gods found irresistable to enter, is today known as Artificial Intelligence and is already equally potent.
The pyramid’s geometry both discharges and collects energy from the atmosphere and the heavenly bodies particularly at certain astronomical alignments with the sun and constellations. The pavement surrounding the Great Pyramid of Kufu in Giza is said to have a surface of fulgurite a stone produced by the action of lightning striking the earth.
To ‘reverse engineer’ the energetic qualities of buildings from our past is an inconclusive enterprise. It is hard to convince others as present day knowledge does not consider the energetic characteristics of buildings in any depth. The task of convincing others is left to people who are sensitive and responsive to changes through feeling qualities in their body, mind, emotions and intuitions when entering sacred buildings and places.
It appears to me that we are metaphorically trying to extract the sword of truth Excalibur from the stone of ignorance. Never the less, I do believe that there are many minds open to the suggestion that buildings have a powerful influence upon us and if one of two of the ideas here presented make your gargoyles resonate; listen.
Gaining knowledge from the past and present buildings are a gift to us that we would be foolish to ignore, for when the sword is finally extracted it might well make kings of us all.
H.G. Wells wrote The War of the Worlds, a story about creatures from another part of the Universe invading the planet Earth and how the humans fought back. Words too can conquer worlds, especially the world in your mind. For this reason, I believe it is vital that we choose words that fit exactly the meaning we intend.
When speaking, we like to believe that we use words to converse clearly with others.
If there are no words in our own language we can create new words in fun and familiar ways. This linguistic phenomena is apparent in the speech of young people. New generations invent their own vocabulary with which to talk behind the backs of adults!
The power of language is it’s ability to open new perspectives on life. A restricted vocabulary will limit thoughts to the point that they no longer serve anyone’s best interest.
Words create our thoughts which can in inturn be inhibited by those words. Imagine a map of a city as a model of your neural pathways. Those journeys we repeat, such as to work, become familiar, almost over used. A map is also constrained by it’s boundaries. It does no show the whole world. The unreachable thoughts are as if in another dimension. Logic cannot venture beyond logic.
I listened to a debate on the radio recently in which scientists were challenging each other over the popular conundrum, ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg?’ They conjectured about birds as dinosaurs and an absurd point in time when the first egg was laid. Only one scientist suggested that change is a gradual process when viewed over long periods of time. No parrot changes colour over night. Evolutionary changes take thousands of years before being noticeable. There is no single moment when chickens and eggs come ‘into being’.
picture credit: The Australian Academy of Science
The same is true in astronomy. Do you believe the universe happened in a nano second as the so called ‘big bang’. Scientists are currently theorising that universes expand and contract over vast periods of time. The explosive power of the ‘big bang’ phrase, froze original thinking about how the universe began for decades. The universe was never a chicken, nor an egg…it is obviously both.
Semiotics is the science of language and meaning. In my view, we all benefit from understanding how we structure our thoughts using language and meaning. Here is an exercise;
Imagine a ‘cake’.
There are many categories we can use to describe cakes. There are cakes we sub-categorise by their ingredients such as a sponge cake, fruit cake, carrot cake and oat cake. Then there terms for cake which describe when we eat it, such as birthday cake, Christmas cake or wedding cake. Alternatively the means of production is a description such as home-made or shop-bought. Another way of thinking about cake is the origin of the recipe such as Black Forest, Dundee or French Fancies.
None of these sub-categories describe cake but the word cake includes all of the sub-categories. When we choose which cake is included in which sub-category we use thought to DISCRIMINATE between different cakes. This tool is an important power of mental faculty but unfortunately it’s meaning has changed in common usage. It has become to mean PREDJUDICE and in my view, there is a loss of meaning and ergo understanding, when these two are confused.
Discrimination is an objective skill whereas prejudice is subjective. When we think subjectively we mix emotions with logic. Feelings introduce prejudice for or against something in a way that cannot be explained logically. Insignificant examples are then used ‘prove’ to oneself and others that a prejudice is based on fact in a process known as ‘bias confirmation’.
Bear with me if you think I am stating the obvious but in my view much cultural, ethnic, racial, gender based, geographic, religious and political misunderstanding has it’s roots in how language governs thinking and in particular, prejudice.
A mind which for whatever reason developes a predjudice against a general category of something is in trouble. To use our previous example, it would be wrong to say ‘I don’t like cake’ when what is meant is that you do not like cake with a lot of cream.
When it comes to making prejudices against categories of fellow human beings we hit trouble. Any prejudice is more a product of intolerance, misunderstanding, eliteism, narrow mindedness and other unelightened views in the mind of the observer. However, we hear predjudice views in the news regularly so it is important to unpick how and why they are held.
Consider the term ‘anti-Semitism’. The German journalist Wilhelm Adolph Marr lived at the end of the nineteenth century. He popularised the term ‘anti-Semitic’ to describe anti-Jewish sentiment within political ideology and the general public.
This prejudice towards Jews we know has been present for thousands of years. What was new then was the term, ‘anti-Semitic’. It could be argued that this contributed to the start of the second world war and it remains in common usage today, so did it ever serve the world well?
Let us examine the term. We might question the meaning of the term Semite. Who can define what this means other than an anthropologist? Cynics might suggest the use of the term was a pseudo scientific device to impress and support a prejudice which in turn came from right wing views on eugenics.
Certainly just as ‘cake’ has many sub-categories, so does the word Semite. Historically a Semite might be from a specific geographical location such as Canaan, Judah, Judea, Israel or Palestine.
The term ‘Jew’ is entomologically derived from the tribe of Judea. Then of course there are sub-categories for a Jewish person by religion such as orthodox, conservative or reform. Then there are those who are Jewish but do not practice a religion such as non-practising Jews and those who do not believe in God such as Zionists; who might be Jewish or Christian.
Sometimes language is used to catergorise a ‘people’ and using this categorisation, Semites would be a group who speak Hebrew and / or Aramaic.
The Nazi’s in the 1930’s arbitrarily define a Jew by racial characteristics, not religion, derived from an elitist philosophy of the Aryan race being superior to others on which an extreme predjudice was based.
We might expect a national category of Jew, but the Supreme Court of Israel has determined there is no Israel nationality.
There are other sub-categories of Jewish identity such as by culture, ethnicity and politics, but I hope that I have made the point that the terms ‘Semite’ and ‘Jew’ mean many things to many people depending on what category you choose to define them.
Who is a Jew? picture: Instagram
There is a criticism of the term Semite as meaning Jewish by non-jewish people, that it ‘disingenuously’ excludes those who also identify themselves as Semite, such as Arabs. Does the term anti-semite poplarly applied to Jewish people, imply a denial that Arabs are also of Semitic origin?
In my view, the nineteenth century pseudo scientific phrase ‘anti-Semitic’ continues to obfuscate clear thought and sustains predjudice rather than exposing it. It has been used by politicians in particular with the intention including victims of the holocaust and stealing their suffering to gain the moral high ground. Such verbal smoke and mirrors has spawned wars and continues to do so to this day, unquestioned.
In my view, it time to clear our thoughts of words that do not describe precisely what they mean. This is not just a matter of taking sides but simply being clinically clear about where are ideas come from? Are they the product of predjudices? What are the intended and unintended consequences?
To be impartial in a debate that is more a minefield than a cornfield, let us reverse the coin and examine the current term for ‘hatred of Muslims’; Islamaphobia. Again, should we not question the use of this term? Should the psychological term ‘phobia’ really be used to describe a fear of spiders, snakes and Muslims? Clearly confusion, not clarity will result from humans being casually categorised using a word from the science of psychology incorrectly, rather than a clear expression most people understand.
Fortunately, words can serve us to correct such unclear thinking. We can invent new words or phrases in any language and in doing so, say exactly what we mean, fairly and without bias.
It should not be, but if a bigot wishes to describe a group of humans using a term of predjudice, then I suggest that those describing distaste of a sub-category of a human being, should use the prefix ‘anti’. This creates the terms anti-jewish or anti-muslim concisely and without ambiguity. Alternatively, the terms ‘jew hate’ and ‘muslim hate’ in countries where ‘hatred’ is an important aspect of a legal definition and unambiguous to all. The prejudice is clear to all and not spun with fake science. It also makes clear that these are irrational generalisations.
There is a war of the worlds, but it is contained in our heads, not the heads of other people who we may not understand.
In my opinion, the dangerous, self-unaware prejudices that thrive in the emotional biases of current politics, poison the thoughts of otherwise rational and compassionate human beings, and in doing so whole communities. Such hatred of difference is so divisive that it incites violence between one group and another. The simplest example is when governments of countries declare war on each other.
Words are powerful as they form a part of the process whereby we create and sustain our beliefs. How much of the horror that we see in the news today, started as copied or learnt bias, built on an emotional response to an unfiltered stimulus, that slipped under the barrier of compassion towards others.
It is clear to many but sadly not all, that those who express ‘anti’ views in the name of a religion, are not following the most basic rules of the religion they profess to follow.
Fortunately, those who are strongly, even violently prejudiced, are in a tiny minority. The general population do respect and are prepared to learn from, those who are different to themselves. The world’s religions all follow the principle of do-as-you-would-be-done-by.
At the zenith of the Julian Calendar we have the festivals of ‘Christmas’ and ‘New Year’.
These celebrations carry warm and fond memories for many westerners. We can trace this back to childhood where children become the centre of attention and adults serve them for a few days; they pretend to be Santa Claus.
If, for whatever reason, you wish to influence the minds of adults for life, then you would start with the child because the child has no filters to prevent unconscious programming. The consumer industry that has grown around Christmas and the New Year suggests, very few adults can see through the smoke and mirrors.
Look objectively at these ‘festive times’. We tell stories to children about Santa Claus and a completely disconnected Nativity which they absorb with relish. And even though these are rather thin and bizarre narratives, children believe them.
Did shepherds really watch their flocks during the coldest nights of the year? Surely this nightly routine is only necessary when the sheep are lambing which is not in the winter months. Angelic hosts? Moving stars? Do kings saddle up camels and set off with other kings and no armed guard and courtiers towards a new light in the sky? And why give a babe in swaddling cloths such inappropriate gifts? Surely, a rattle, a soft toy and a blanket are more likely to raise cheeky smile?
This Bible story has the quality of a dream and in my view, for good reason. For just as dreams are constructed using symbols, so are these stories. Modern Jungian psychology is very comfortable with dream interpretation and symbols, as have peoples from around the world and throughout history.
The Roman church does not advertise that the nativity story is laid over identical ancient Egyptian and other traditions in which a child is born on 25th December of a virgin mother.
Isis Nursing Horus picture credit Isiopolis
It’s interpretation of the gifts are as signs not symbols. They suggest that gold was given to show Jesus was ‘Christ the High Priest‘, in other words giving him power and authority, but a symbolic interpretation carries deeper meaning than signs.
In my view, the symbolic interpretation of the story is related to the winter solstice and a solar god rising and setting (Set being a destroying god from ancient Egypt). At this time the sun effectively dies and is placed in the ‘place of the skull’ or Golgotha. The round stone in front of tomb is closed for three days symbolises the sunrise not moving for three days on the horizon. When the sun moves again on 25th December is resumes it’s daily ascent into heaven.
This is not to say that Jesus the Christ was not a real person, but in my view, Jesus was born in the spring, did not die on the cross and lived his last days as far away from the evil Roman Empire as he could, in the Indian sub-continent, Kashmir.
The Tomb of the Prophet Isa or Jesus the Christ picture credit Indian Heritage Walks
Surprise to see that there is no Santa Claus in the Bible because his is a symbolic story from another time and place which I have discussed in a previous blog; just as there are no cuddly Easter Rabbits or munchy chocolate eggs at Easter in holy scripture.
Here is a more serious alternative interpretation of the nativity story that might well have been within the teachings of the mystery schools and secret societies.
Consider the three kings as representing the pineal, pituitary and the hypothalamus neuroendrocine glands. These are all within the ‘place of the skull’. We should note that the birth most likely took place in a cave, a symbol of inner consciousness used by Plato, not a stable.
Many believe that much of human experience is ruled by our energy bodies as depicted in Hindu tradition by the chakras. Each month a sacred oil rises in the spine from the solar plexus and the part of the spine we call the sacrum. This is represented as the gift of myrrh from the pituitary gland. The hypothalamus is symbolised by gold, which is a pure, non-tarnishing, noble element, that freely conducts electricity. This charges the oil with golden, solar ions. Lastly the pineal gland secretes frankincense, a precious oil burnt in holy places to symbolise prayers rising into another dimension which becomes visible when the smoke disperses to reveal the source of the light. This was a new light and new consciousness on planet Earth.
I shall move onto the myth of the ‘new year’ in countries around the world which follow the Julian calendar. This was introduced by the dictator perpetuo, Julius Caesar in 45BCE, to replace the ten month Roman calendar. This was a solar calendar for a new sun god, with 365 days and a leap day every four years. It surfaces in the modern names of September, October, November and December (7,8,9,10) and starts on the first day of January.
But this random 1/1 date is not sympathetic with the cycles of nature. At this time, winter is dormant in the natural world. Animals and humans struggle to keep alive. Understanding natural cycles would suggest that the new year should start at the spring equinox when the days lengthen and there is more sun than darkness; a time of renewal and rebirth.
The Roman January god, Janus, had his two views of the world fixed on a melancholy past and an uncertain future. He was not a god of the moment and reality. He was not awake. Yet we celebrate January as the start of the new year, even to this day.
In the Rome influenced west, adults and children stay up until midnight. This hour is known in Wiccan circles as the ‘witching hour’ because at this time, the veils into the human world are opened and spirits may enter unneeded. Spirits are often consumed within an alcoholic drink to start the new year as one means to continue.
The Druid’s magical mistletoe, is used to give protection from such unwanted guests. It’s berries represent sperm and fertility. A future hope or ‘resolution’ is made real by a kiss beneath the mistletoe. It is an evergreen plant, and therefore provides protection throughout the year, even if unkept resolutions do not.
New Year Family Celebration 1950’s Britain
If these interpretations of Christmas and the New Year were explained to the general populace, their ‘programming’ from childhood is likely to resist any questioning; such is the unconscious power of childhood experience. The modern nativity and new year stories occur arbitrarily within the natural cycles. These children stories are unreal but are repeated without question. At the same time, fairy tales and myths (which are real) are described as unreal. This is the looking glass world which Alice ventured into.
In my view, this uncritical retelling of false narratives spills out into popular understanding and even ethics. For instance, exploiting rather than nurturing the natural environment, is a global policy that does not lead to fertile and happy communities. The erosion of natural habitats leading to reduction in the numbers and extinction of many species, I attribute to this dissonance with the natural world. We imagine it will last forever as that suits our modern self pleasing and comfortable way of live, but it will not.
Waking up from a dream is a slow and dizzying process. There are many who are casting aside these children stories that we were coaxed in our innocence with gifts and jollity to believe in. If our outer and inner ‘nature’ is ever truly understood, humans have a chance of being brought back from the abyss of shallow and false beliefs.
When there are ‘forces’ that do not serve your best interests and highest desires you are being suppressed.
“Whoever battles monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look long into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you”.
Friedrich Nietzsche
What Nietzsche does not say in this famous quotation from his book ‘Beyond Good and Evil’, is that the monster you perceive making faces at you, is you.
This slightly heretical philosophical view of mine, suggests that our internal world (mind) creates the people, places and things we experience. By extension, for those who believe, humans create God in their own image, because creativity is an attribute of Divinity which they share and reflect.
You are not a person living a life, you are life living a person.
When we look back at our forefathers and ask how they dealt with this conundrum, there are two paths. One is to be blind to the illusion that we must surrender to a higher will or ‘fate’. Alternatively, not surrendering to fate empowers each individual to become the power that is within us and resist all attempts to submit to ‘the Abyss’.
This second option is taken by very few souls, for the hero (which is you) has to venture far from the comforts of home to an unknown place. Consider the humble Bilbo Baggins in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings as he pulled the heavy Saturnine ring from his finger and threw it into the flaming Abyss. The Whispering One was destroyed and homely order restored.
The metaphor of looking into an abyss was used in a more gentle way for children by Lewis Carroll in his book, ‘Alice Through the Looking Glass’. Alice’s hallucinogenic encounters in a reversed universe reads as a series of random thoughts and dreams, each jostling for centre stage in Alice’s mind; a type of madness but with it’s own rationale.
Most of the time Alice is vaguely in control of people, places and things. The reader expects a happy conclusion to the story, but as in life, there is always doubt and the fear of horror.
Jalal Udin Rumi refers to this shattered fractal world as what we might see in a “broken glass mirror”. The metaphor refers to the profound idea that ultimate Truth is one, but when it “fell and broke from the hands of God,” people grasped fragments, each glimpsing a fragment of the whole. There is a paradox here because whilst the part is not the whole, it can be mistaken as such. In reality it is the reflection, the message which is the whole, not the physical fragment.
Religious followers are an example of this literal ‘my partial truth’ mentality. They think they know it all but are deceived. Yet there is a commonality to all human experience. Every person sees through the thin skin of their eyes, the cornea. It is transparent and admits all it sees; good and bad. It is our mind that filters and checks what we see in the trillions of connections it makes continuously; a process that dictates and reinforces our personal and randomly biased out-look on life. This is the human frailty of perception which keeps out some or most of the Divine light.
Bashar is an entity channelled consistently for decades by Daryl Anka and for those who are curious his public Q and A sessions are available on You Tube.
To conceive, receive, and perceive in Bashar’s teachings refers to how we can actively create a personal ‘reality’. We conceive a whispered idea or feeling as like a soft touch from outside of our body. This may simply be what time to eat or an inspirational idea that is life changing. Whatever we conceive in our higher Self, from the alpha to the omega, we have the option to be as God the Creator. Making lunch or making the Universe comes from the same Source and is the same.
The second stage of this process is when we receive the idea into our brain and integrate it into our lives. Bashar advises that this is something that must give us our greatest excitement. No working in a factory, unless you love repetition!
Thirdly, our mind must be aware of perception which is like a faithful horse that we groom daily from childhood. Whilst it provides the feeling of freedom and long journeys into the wilderness, it also limits how we experience life. The world we encounter is a reflection of our consciousness. What we think, we see.
There is an saying by Thoth, Hermes or Hermes Trismegistus which has long been treasured by secret societies is;
‘As within, so without, as above, so below, as the Universe, so the Soul.’
Let me show you three qualities of a symbol.
The horizontal line is the line between Heaven and Earth. Just like the mirror between water and air.
The vertical line is the boundary between what we experience as ‘Self’ and what we perceive as ‘not-Self’. This is the illusion we experience as I-dentity.
Where these two lines intersect is the location of the ‘I‘ or ‘eye‘.
In astrology the 90 degree angle is called a ‘square’ or ‘quartile’. When planets share the same quadrant of the zodiac they conflict. One might say they do not see eye to eye. A right angle is discomfort and sure enough we find the cross historically as an instrument of crucifixion. This was not just a Roman engineering solution for crucifying thieves but also those who threatened their evil Empire with the power of the individual.
The Christ was preaching to people that they contained a ‘light within’, when Rome wanted only Rome to be the light, just as the Empire endeavours to keep things today.
The Roman Empire Continues to Strike Back picture credit; Architectural Digest
The light – a solar light as within the god Apollo – long before Jesus the Christ – is symbolised by a circle encompassing the four equal lines of the cross within. In my view this symbol is one way of ‘squaring the circle’. This ancient logic puzzle that transfixed the Ancient Greeks has not been solved using geometry, but by moving towards a less logical conclusion. Poetically, the four straight lines can become the parts of a square within the circle. The four / four beat is a masculine marching rhythm that needs to be smoothed and soothed by the feminine, represented by the all embracing circle.
Even the Ancient Egyptian Ankh is a version of this archetypal geometric paradox. It represents the unification of the masculine and feminine coming together as one, in order to align with and receive the Solar spirit of the Divine.
An Ankh in the Petrie Museum University College London
As within, so without, is less quoted than as above, so below. But it expresses the ability of humans to manifest, make real, a reflection of our highest aspirations. This might manifest through a series of unexplainable co-incidental events and chance encounters. If we powerful humans did not believe we can direct chance, we would not play the national lotteries.
The words, ‘serendipity’ and ‘coincidentally’ and ‘synchronistically’ describe this human experience of good or bad fortune. But who is making these choices, Divine Will or us, or both?
We have all been in a situation where we cannot decide what to do. We want a good outcome but do not know how or the best way to achieve it. If you believe in your own creative power as ‘a reflection of God’ then making the best decision is alignment with one’s higher Self.
Tossing a coin may appear random but if you toss three coins several times, you are allowing serendipity to speak to4 you. Oracle cards work in this way and are increasingly popular in Western society today. Personally, I believe they are an aid to personal choice, not makers of choice.
In some cultures the power of the unknown to influence events is described as ‘fate’ but again, I disagree with this concept. To accept fate is to give away one’s own power. Usually, this personal abandonment of responsibility attributes failure or success, solely to the Divine; Mashallah (ما شاء الله).
This ‘victim’ mindset is not endorsed by professional gamblers in Los Vegas. They will have amassed a strong self belief to the extent that they feel they can do nothing wrong. When a such ‘card shark’ or player ‘on a roll’ appears at the tables and starts winning, the management do not stand a chance.
Gambling on a Dream picture credit Nevada Public Radio
We give away our power constantly. Even prayer can be, in my view, an act of giving away personal power to a ‘higher power’. When things don’t go as requested people lose ‘trust’ or ‘faith’ in Divinity, as if prayer is like a menu for you to order food.
If we accept that we are a tiny fragment of the mirror which is God, then man is indeed made in the image of God. We are His reflection and have god-like attributes and abilities that are obscured until we become a polished mirror.
The Taoist and Zen Buddhist concept of polishing a mirror symbolizes the spiritual practice of purifying the mind and heart to achieve clear, undistorted awareness of reality and connection with God or Mind.
I have recently written two essays on ‘Physcial Enlightenment’ and ‘Spiritual Enlightenment’. The former is a rarely discussed subject, certainly amongst spiritual seekers. My point was that both are not only valid but complementary.
But in a western culture that thinks in dualistic terms, there will always be the question, ‘which is the most important?’ Even in spiritual countries such as modern and ancient India, ‘godmen’ have perched themselves on top of poles or stood on one leg for literally years, thinking this was a suitable way to deny their physicality and ergo, increase their spirituality.
This is in my view, nonsense but stay there if you want to.
My sideways sliding mind brought up the famous formula of Albert Einstein and a philosophers permutation of it;
SPIRIT = PHYSICALITY (c2) or E = M (c2)
I will also give credit to Alan Watts for a lecture ( now on You Tube) he gave on why saints struggle with lust. I don’t usually pick over the bones of someone else’s feast but Alan structures his talks so superbly that I shall credit to him because his ideas remain very relevant today.
The subject of lust has of course remained taboo in polite western society for many hundreds of years, repressed largely to it’s own detriment (almost suicide), by the Church.
The irony is that those who seek to become spiritualy awakened and do so, also awaken their sensitivity to everything in the physical world. We are all, after all, spirits in an animal body.
The Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymous Bosch c.1501
Alan points out that with spiritual awakening induces a desire to withdraw from the world. The shallowness of values and the platitudes of conversation do not contribute to the compelling desire to know oneself. Silence and contemplation are the tools of those with this particular desire and naturally find a place and a way that enables them to do this.
It is my belief that humans are strongly controlled by their ‘chakras’. I assume I need not explain what chakras are so that when I use traffic lights as a metaphor for chakras, readers will understand.
I assume red appears at the top of automatic traffic signals as it can be seen from the furthest distance, and is the only one of the red, amber, green, that causes harm to motorists if not seen.
Let us reverse their order however and place the red light at the bottom, keep amber in the middle and place green at the top.
These three chakras, base, sacral and heart are of great interest for the purpose of this essay. The red base chakra covers our strong connection to ‘tribe’ and family and the amber sacral chakra to basically, lust and animal desire. These two chakras show our bodily physicality and how it connects us with ourselves and those around us, family, friends, lovers, colleagues, leaders, employers, politicians…you get the picture.
Yet our green heart chakra transcends all of this. It is concerned with non-instinctual desire namely, love. This is expressed as love between humans, love of nature, beauty, and our strongest excitement, Divine love.
To sustain the metaphor, these signals are changing within us all the time, red, amber, green and in doing so affecting our behaviour. As much as the traffic controller may want to, there is no point in being on green all the time and creating traffic chaos. We go up and down switching on and off our desires in response to our affairs. Importantly, as one becomes spiritually awakened, the lights get brighter and demand constant attention.
picture credit: Live Science
The consequence is that spiritually guided people become unconscious beacons to other people and entities. The latter includes thought forms who exist in other energetic dimensions where there is a vacuum of love. Prayer, choirs, bells, holy relics, smoke, smells, statues, architecture, geomancy, flags, gongs and other devices are employed by religions to dispel these demons from sacred places. The grinning gargoyles on mediaeval cathedrals are the embodiment of these forces that circle us day and night. Gremlins, Demons, Archons or Jinn, wish to shame and ultimately destroy spirituality awakened humans. The power and prescence of saints in any ‘tribal’ congregation is a threat to demons because ‘love conquers all’. They want to pull you down into the red and amber light and keep you there; the red devil. Their desire is to drain your battery to the last few volts.
It gets worse. A spiritually awakening person has to fight their inner demons as well. Since birth our inner lights have been frustrated and dimmed by various spiritual and emotional wounds. I remember crying on my last day of primary school when I realised I would never see my dear friends again. These were children with whom I had grown up, including one, Fiona, who I had literally been born with in the same hospital and ward. I have a photograph.
Alan Watts explains that spiritual awakening brings ‘old pains’ to the surface, such as loss, fear of abandonment, shame, fear of no love. Lustful pleasures sooth these wounds even if only temporarily. For a ‘holy’ or ‘noble’ person seeking the highest enlightenment and benefit for others, these lustful fantasies can be an embarassment if ever aired publically, depending on how unconventional, immoral or illegal they are.
Priests in the Catholic church are an example of how the desire for sexual pleasure, can become perverted and hurtful towards young impressionable children. Royal families live with the same threat of such practices becoming public. Watch out for public figures who fear media ‘intrusion’ and make ‘no comment’ responses or invent and supress ‘facts’ or create a ‘distraction’ or ‘protest too much’, when challenged by journalists and prosecutors.
The present theatre of tricks being played out in the politics of the USA around the love-less characters of the late Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell will, allegedly, reveal a full picture of perverted lust running amoke amongst an international elite, cheered on by All American demons shaking pom poms and pocket cameras.
Sprituality is not an easy path. When the highest faculties of all the chakras are awakened the challenge is to face inner and outer battles of the highest intensity. As my old teacher used to say, ‘immortality has to be earned’.
Arch Angels such as Michael carry shields and swords because this is war. Spiritual awakening unleashes human weakness of the same order of magnitude; in the words of Alan Watts, ‘as if the soul seeks balance’.
Here is what Alan suggested to overcome this dilema;
Stop pretending this battle does not exist. Flesh is real and desire is real.
Stop fighting alone. Isolation is the trap that feeds the beast. Find another who is non-judgmental with whom you can be honest. This is not confession, it’s illumination.
Attend to your old wounds – acknowledge the pain and the painful work.
Be present when you feel desire but do not act on it (this is very hard).
Do not suppress shame as this only delays advancement.
Take the middle way which allows you to be present with the feeling but not to give away your energy pursuing and enacting it.
Alan’s view and remedies are principally the way of Mahayana Buddhism. It teaches that a seeker of inner transformation must merely watch dispassionately as life rolls by to overcome desire. The adoption of extreme views (as presently seen in the USA and other countries) is not being dispassionate but passionate.
In my view there is more one can do to have the strength to carry the whispering ring to Mount Doom.
We are guided if we will, by the ‘green for go’ light as a symbol of the human heart and the love it attracts and sends out. For the Sufi’s, this is the dwelling place of Divine Love in the human body. As Divine love is by definition everywhere it is therefore within all of our chakras or centres of consciousness. Divinity is present in our most lustful desires and moments as humans share animal desires and pleasures. Sufi saints were allowed to have one or even more wives, although they did not always. The ‘sin’ of pleasure as seen by some religions, creates guilt and shame which then, only priests can forgive. Life in these religions puts ‘sinners’ on a see-saw of ‘moral and immoral’ judgement favouring only those who use this to weild power over the faithful.
But when we resonate with Divinity we allow our attention to focus on the Divine Prescence within, or in modern terms, ‘our higher self’. This focus is one of being ‘in the world but not of the world’. It is neither moral nor immoral, just being Self.
Noah and his wives collected the animals when the world was in flood. Instead of being overwhelmed and drowned by the great flood of all consuming energy which was water, he and his sons constructed a boat that floated above death and destruction.
Being an Arc is in my view the best strategy for survival in a time when there are great metaphorical floods of anarchic and parasitical energy, pervading and interfering with the normal balance of nature, the affairs of man and ultimately our spiritual well being.
So, build a boat and after great storms a small bird will land in front of you and place down a spray of green leaves from an olive tree, and the waters will slowly receed to reveal a new Earth, to observe from high.
The Eye of God Nebula picture credit: BBC Sky at Night Magazine
“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck! Rumi
It is generally accepted that Homo sapiens sapiens have been around for about three hundred thousand years. But our conventional view of history only goes back twelve thousand years or when there was a global deglaciation event that caused a global flood, known as the Yunger Dryas Event.
The continents of Lemuria and Atlantis are generally only accepted by academics as ‘myth’. Yet there is tell today of an extra-terrestrial race known as the ‘Mu’ who created much of the Atlantean civilisation.
More widely accepted in the study of Mesopotamian, Ancient Egyptian, Indus Valley, Mayan, Aztec, Olmec and many other civilisation’s records is that ‘gods came down from the sky’. These various and remarkably similar gods introduced new ideas and technology to humans. For example Thoth in Ancient Egypt, taught writing, sciences, agriculture, engineering and other valuable skills. The Romans knew him as Hermes from which came the Hermetic gnostic tradition.
When the visits of the gods became less frequent and finally stopped, someone had to maintain control of the population on behalf of the absent gods. Pharaohs took on this roll and declared themselves a ‘living god’. Later, priests ran the everyday duties of promoting and conducting religious duties.
Not only the ancient Egyptians, but even early religions focused worship on the sun, as a ‘living and dying’ god. Horus rose on the hor-izon each day and was killed by the evil god Set at sun-set. The solar religions featured similar narratives, such as their gods being born on 25th December, rays coming from their crowns, born of a virgin, being light and life, dying and resurrecting. Apollo fulfilled this role in Ancient Greece and Jesus the Christ later in the Levant, a self-declared ‘sun / son of God’. The early Christian Bishops at the Council of Nicaea, performed a skilful ‘hatchet job’ on the ancient Biblical texts to produce the New Testament; skilful because it told people what they wanted to hear and believe rather than the obscure truths contained in the holy texts that were removed, such as the Book of Thomas.
The Old Testament had introduced several ‘gods’ such as Lucifer, Jehovah and Yahweh. These gods were all male, creating the gender bias towards masculinity. The Divine Feminine was cancelled from the New Testament and perverted into the ‘Holy Trinity’. Mary Magdalene, wife / lover of Jesus and his highest gnostic initiate, was degraded to be a ‘common prostitute’, whilst the gnostic Father, Mother, Son trinity became the single gendered Father, Holy Spirit, Son.
Islam emerged from the debris of these many false narratives in the seventh century as a lunar religion. Worshippers had no priests and prayed before sunrise and after sunset, possibly to avoid praying to the ancient solar gods, such as Horus and Set. Mosques were not East – West orientated as are most Christian churches and cathedrals for the same reason. A non-anthropomorphised religion was a vital move away from the myths that ‘gods’ lived on mountain tops and the sky.
The Lunar Calendar picture credit: Yantar.ae
A discovery in Nag Hammadi in 1945 posed a problem for the modern Catholic Church. Early Christian and gnostic texts compiled by the ‘heretic sect’ known as the Essenes known as the Dead Sea Scrolls revealed what the church fathers had tried to bury.
They contain the revelation or heretical view that there was no God in Heaven or anywhere else, except within us. Such a concept, if widely realised, would have brought down the Catholic cathedral of cards. The Vatican Library remains a locked to this day which only adds to the speculation, why? Perhaps, the Romans destroying global ancient libraries such as the ancient library in Alexandria, had not managed to permanently hide the secrets that were intended to Unite ordinary people with their Creator, without intermediaries.
Sufi gnostics in Islam such as Masur al-Hallaj who dared to pronounce this truth with the words ‘Ana-l Haqq’, was executed for ‘blasphemy’ in 922. Even in this radical religion Allah had to be ‘out there’ as is the perception generated by the ego, not ‘in here’.
If we go back to Ancient Greece for a moment, most large Greek conurbations had an amphitheatre where plays were enacted. They had a psychological message that the masked players represented the illusions of the ego, in a world of its own ‘make believe’. There was introduced a realisation that everything we experience is in some way a ‘shadow’ of the real world, as encapsulated in the Plato’s story of the men in the cave watching shadows of forms that they cannot see.
The ‘skull shaped’ amphitheatre at Ephesus looks out and listens. Picture credit: Wikipedia
The tradition of the ‘shadow play’ is just as popular today. The most famous of all theatres of the imagination is of course Hollywood…the Druids magical staff made from the wood of the Holly Tree or Holy Tree. Here, various fantastical ‘Dream Works’ are conceived and enacted, but the story telling has a darker side. Human beings ‘make believe’ these projected dreams and are highly suggestible to believing their content.
Propaganda films in the second world war, promoted accounts of real events which were at best biased and at worst misleading. Governments and interested parties remain keen to promote or un-promote social ideals in strategies; in plain sight, ‘social engineering’. A present-day example in my view, is the statistical over representation of certain ethnic groups on U.K. television, in advertisements depicting ‘typical’ families. In 1960’s U.S.A. this was what I call the perfect ‘Cornflake Family’ with a white husband, white wife, white son and white daughter downing their early morning dose of starch and glucose.
Random players in mainstream cinematic heavenly realms are adored and even worshipped by the masses. They are called ‘stars’ as if they had fallen from the sky as gods and goddess and awarded golden figures known as Oscars that stand somewhat stiffly in the manner of Osiris.
‘The love that moves the sun and the other stars‘.
Marilyn Monroe was all too eager to exploit the ‘Folly Wood’ games that were expected of her without abandoning her ‘
homespun alter ego of Norma Jean. To her credit she did this with ‘eyes wide open’, but like Icarus she flew too close the sun. Some say her lover, John F. Kennedy shared ‘pillow talk’ secrets about the presence of extra-terrestrials on earth, something allegedly explained to all American Presidents on their appointment.
The Nordic or Pleiadian male and female extra-terrestrials, are known for their highly attractive humanoid appearance. Perhaps Holy-Wood has a hidden agenda that is preparing humanity for a peaceful and gracious introduction to our extra-terrestrial cousins?
Picture Credit: Gaia.com
Even the most agnostic amongst us, still like to deceive children into believing a story about a benevolent, Jovial ‘god’ with a long white beard, who comes down the chimney at midnight on the winter solstice (solar dying), with a sack full of material goodies. These play things keep children amused until they break or the childs interest is diverted. This Capricorn character is the planet Saturn (or Satan) dressed as Old Father Time who sweeps away materiality and our bodies with his scythe, a truth we hide from the innocents.
Krampus picture credit: ACIS
Life seen in this way is mysterious, and many materialists and agnostics alike, are frustrated by not knowing the ‘meaning of life’. Things that we are encouraged to work for in life are sooner or later realised to be ephemeral delights, leaving just a few bones on our plates.
This life less reality that is sustained by scientific materialism is proving so lite, that many today are returning to the concept of a non-material spirituality; to the light.
‘We live in two universes – one held together by gravity and the other, the one Dante described, (in the Inferno) by ‘the Love that moves the Sun and the other stars’.
Extract from ‘The Sacred History’ by Jonathan Black page 272.
In summary let us return to the ‘solar God’ whom we may experience as the rising and falling tides of feelings and life in general. At the highest we experience ‘love’ and the lowest ‘the absence of love’. The Sufi’s such as Rumi quoted above, taught that ultimately all is Divine love. That love is the core of every human being because it is our own Divinity that resonates with and is ‘entangled’ with the Universal love existing in all time and space.
We are no more or less, creatures containing that Divinity that is described by so many cultures.
If we can choose to slow down and literally and ‘shut up’, we need not care about all these delusions, other than to know one simple ‘meaning of life’ which is;
‘Know Thyself’ : words over the Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi
I suppose the best place to start is to suggest that becoming aware that one is a spiritual being, is not the same as becoming enlightened. The latter is something few people ever achieve in a lifetime. The former is the first step of a long walk.
The question we might ask is ‘who is enlightened?’ There are many historical figures such as Guatama Buddha and Jesus the Christ who would qualify as ‘enlightened’, but surely enlightenment is not so rare that we have to look back two thousand years or more?
In modern times, spiritually aware people do not stand out. They are generally modest and seek actively not be achieve ‘celebrity’ status. They will not perform miracles, but if they did they would allow or manipulate things such that another takes the credit. An enlightened person does not dress up in old fashioned clothes or clothes from another culture. They are not in the game of impressing others.
There is an useful expression today known as ‘virtue signalling’. It explains that the signal is not proof of the integrity of the thing that is signalled. The performance of ‘good deeds’ is something many regard as having a spiritual benefit, but as certain stories in the Holy Quran demonstrate, harmful actions can appear to be good and good deeds can appear to be harmful. Explore this excerpt from Wikipedia;
66-69 Khidr, knowing Moses’s inability to receive his wisdom, yields to his importunity
71-77 He scuttles a boat, kills a boy, and rebuilds a collapsing wall
78-82 Khidr refuses to communicate further with Moses on account of his protests against his conduct, but condescends to explain his conduct.
You may look up these stories that (and it is worth repeating), when examined in detail, in context, over a period of time and without bias…apparently harmful deeds can be good and good deeds can have unintended harmful consequences. It’s a possibility that needs to be explored vigorously because ignoring invites ignorance. Today, ignoring complexity is a primary tool of those who wish to deceive. The present president of the United States, who enjoys global power, promised Americans he would stop the war between Russia and Ukraine within twenty-four hours. He failed but was elected on this false promise. Since then, he has brokered several ‘peace deals’ around the world, several which, when examined in detail, are no more than temporary ‘cease fires’. He was surprised when he didn’t get a Nobel Peace Prize, which one might allege is because he is not aware of himself. We have to leave him to shine that inward looking light.
Ultimately, the only person whom you have a duty to judge is yourself. Hence, the gnostic practice echoed by Jesus the Christ in his words;
“Know what is before thy face and what is hidden from thee shall be revealed unto thee; for there is nothing hidden which shall not be made manifest.”
The Gospel of Thomas Verse 5
But can a mirror reflect it’s own image? Can an eye examine an eye? Have you ever seen the back of your head?
Becoming self-aware requires considerable skill and perseverance in observation. The ‘inner eye’ has to be turned upon one’s own thoughts. This is the first step in meditation where thoughts are likened to passing clouds. Eventually it is hoped the sky clears. It rarely does because there is work to be done, not just sitting.
We have a skill where we can control and create our thoughts. When we are not doing that, control and creation of thoughts does not cease, it becomes automatic. It is like breathing, which is either intended or automatic.
Awareness is similar. Thoughts that ‘come to us’ without our deliberate intent to create them originate in the unconscious part of the individual mind or the collective unconscious. These are largely unresolved and repressed, events and emotional disturbances in our or society’s past.
Pieces of music can replay themselves in our heads for which an apt metaphor is a ‘mind worm’. Unresolved encounters with others or other sections of society in the collective mind can become loops that replay themselves. Politicians use these triggers ruthlessly to distract and ultimately control others. In the UK, the cry is ‘stop the boats’ without really understanding the causes and solutions, just reacting emotionally to whatever people imagine ‘immigration’ is and does. The dumb are leading the blind.
Becoming ‘self-aware’ is, therefore, in my view, far more complicated than sitting in meditation. Become awake in a physical world surrounded by other cognisant beings with whom we have relationships, is a vital focus for our mind’s eye. It has to be done with the concentration of a meditator, or as is said, like a cat watching a mouse hole.
We have one brief but exciting lifetime to encounter all kinds of situations and deal with them skillfully, instantly and with joy, just as a tennis player learns how to deal with the ball when it comes from any probable or possible direction; plus any other ‘wild card’ life may deal!
picture credit: wimbledon.com
I was once asked if I meditated and I replied that I meditate all the time. Whilst I may not achieve this of course, it’s an intention I try to fulfil. I was taught to become an observer of myself by being one step removed. An example of this was given as being able to hold honey in one hand and dog faeces in the other, and lick the honey.
All phobias are clear examples of how our unconscious holds us back from participating in life fully. But we can overcome the dark spaces in our minds and emotions by shining a penetrating light of consciousness into those spaces. This is the process of making the unconscious, conscious…like a baby, breaking the waters and breathing it’s first breath.
“I tell you the truth, unless you are born of water and the Spirit, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”
John 3:5
The metaphor used by Jesus the Christ was being ‘reborn’ which he meant as complete self realisation and, at another rarely realised level, as re-incarnation.
Enlightenment can only be achieved by opening one’s eyes and taking deep breaths and observing the world as if for the first time.
In Zen Buddhism this practice is known as ‘astonishment’. It is a principle trigger to ‘realisation’ in the same way that a joke operates mentally as ‘getting it’.
“The bamboo shadows sweep the stairs, but raise not dust”
This essay is intended to be complimentary to the previous one entitled ‘physical enlightenment’. To be a fully realised human being, I believe there must be a playful balance in oneself between the physical world and the spiritual. People, we, usually list towards one or the other.
Becoming an observer of the physical world and one’s inner world and the interplay between them, as if you were in no way involved in either, is in my view, the most important technique for self realisation.
An enlightened person never sleeps. There are many statues of Guatama Buddha where he is sitting upright with one hand resting on a knee and apparently sleeping. But there is only partial rest required for the mind; most is for the body. Being fully conscious in daytime will empower being similarly awake whilst sleeping. We all experience this to some degree as dreams when we sleep, because our unconscious is unrealised and, in effect, has a mind of its own. We generally find dreams confusing. A good dream interpreter can assist in the process of ‘observing’ and understanding what the unconscious is processing because it speaks using symbols, as described in the works of the psychologist C.G. Jung.
An advanced stage of dreaming is becoming conscious whilst asleep, known as lucid dreaming. Some hallucinogenic drugs achieve this same effect although if the conscious mind is not trained in detached observation, the effect can be a ‘bad trip’; a roller coaster ride through the ghost train of the unconscious.
There is also another level of dreaming, in which one’s spirit leaves the body at night and travels through physical reality. This once happened to me whilst sleeping in my car and I moved out through some woods to a statue in the middle of the woods. In the morning, I took a walk into the woods and found the same statue.
People who have had ‘near death experiences’ report similarly leaving the body and observing the room in which there body is, such as a hospital operating theatre.
None of these experiences are ‘enlightenment’. Rather I have tried to describe a few of the curious and infinite depths of the mind. As an analogy, not many of us of us explore the internet in a way that is possible. Instead, we revert to our favourite places again and again. The internet and our mental world become like a cage made from iron bars constructed and installed by ourselves.
Leaving the cage, whether it is the physical cage we leave to go ‘on holiday’ or whether it is a mental cage, is enlightenment. I call holidays, ‘environmental enlightenment’. They are a short lived state of mind and heart, but there is a sense of ‘new world’ in a vacation which excites us before, like Cinderella at the ball, a pumpkin pulled by rats returns us to captivity.
We live in ‘rat runs’ imagining ourselves having god-like freewill, but in fact, we are just repeating repeat. The same applies to every place and connection in the universe of our mind; a state the most imprisoned declare as ‘boring’.
The only constant is observing perpetual change. By being fully aware, we are able to deal with all encounters in any situation, physical and mental. The constantly changing point of Universal consciousness which we contain and describe as ‘the-all-knowing-Creator’ or a thousand other names survives and surpasses this temporary sorjourn in the physical world.
The Enlightened One’s will pass you in the street and you will never notice them, not unless you are also, one of Them.
“You wander from room to room hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!
Look past your thoughts, so you may drink the pure nectar of this moment.”
‘To be conscious in this world is a prerequisite to be conscious in others.’
In recent years many people have ‘awoken’ to spirituality. Perhaps this from a rejection of religious dogma and the availability of spiritual ideas via the internet.
But what it appears to me is often missing in this spiritual revival is an emphasis on materiality. This may sound contradictory but read on.
In many spiritual traditions, one of the first realisations for the aspirant is how important the physical world is. The physical does not cancel out the spiritual and visa versa. From a non-dualistic perspective, the two are complementary, not mutually exclusive.
So before heading down the yellow brick road on one spiritual path or another my personal advice would be to take time to embrace everything practical and become healthy, wealthy and wise in the process. Controversially, I will say that to aspire to physical poverty as do many monastic traditions, is to aspire to spiritual poverty, as in the Hermetic law of ‘as above, so below.’
For me, aestheticism is a poor role model for those seeking enlightenment. Nevertheless, monasteries and nunneries in many countries are occupied by people who avoid being ‘in the world’ presumably in the belief that this puts them ‘on a path to enlightenment’. In practical terms, it is substituting difficulty with institutional routines. The intention to ‘be spiritual’ is sometime the root cause of never finding spiritual meaning in life.
In the Zen Buddhist stories from the East, a young person enters a monastery with an expectation to become spiritually enlightened, perhaps in the first few months or a year or two! Spotting this, the Zen teacher sets them to work in the monastery kitchen. When the meals are over and before the preparation of the next, the novice is given a broom and told to start sweeping. This carries on for years. If the aspirant’s ego gives in after years of being excluded from the spiritual rituals and routines of the monastery, they are appointed Abbot. The teaching was and is, learnt in the kitchen and dusty hallways, not the temple.
The Zen Master Dogen, wrote a practical manual entitled ‘How to Cook Your Life’. It drew parallel lessons between cooking in the monastery and spiritual training. It is available from Shambhala Publications.
It is easy to take physicality for granted, but this three dimensional ‘reality’ is a place where spiritual beings are sent to learn faster and more profoundly than it is possible in other dimensions. This process is known by Christian gnostics as ‘the Creator self knowing’. Certainly, physicality is not a life of ease. Whilst there is beauty and happiness, there is also ugliness and despair.
We would do well not envy the lifestyles of the wealthy and powerful in society who appear to have an easier life than those who have little money or power.
The love of money, as is said, does not bring happiness. Often we see that the poor have a much better chance of growing spiritually than the rich. Possessions are supposed to be bad for spirituality but the benefit is more in your attitude towards possessions and how this is reflected in yourself. Dressing up as a spiritual person, does not make you one. The best philosophy is to be in, but not of, this hologram of physical illusions.
For a person living in our time in a ‘developed’ country, what could be a rewarding spiritual path? As a perhaps unexpected metaphor, consider the ‘boot camp’ style of military training. This starts with the aim of breaking down the ego of the recruits with repeated humiliation. Only after weeks of physical and mental ‘beasting’ is the pressure reduced and replaced with constructive learning. This focuses on polishing boots, pressing uniforms, and keeping personal space clean and orderly, to a level of almost impossible perfection. The point is clearly not the physical tasks but mental resilience in order to excel in an endless cycle physical challenges. What is life if it is not a similar tumble drier of trials?
Members of Royal families face similar challenges, but in contrast to most of us, in an environment of opulence and wealth. Royal children are brought up to serve their nation within the parameters of strict protocols, not personal desire. In return, their every physical need is gratified by servants. Running the bath and cleaning up after the Corgis, royals do not learn. Here, ironically, having few or no physical challenges can be as spiritually disruptive as having too many.
A similar regime of service combined with wealth, governs the lives of high ranking officials in industry, government, and even religious orders. Wealth and power, can become an enormous distraction and many fall from office and spiritual grace through selfish greed.
So what of the ordinary human being who is not wealthy or powerful?
We might start with two aspects of our lives. Consider the physical body and the environment in which the body lives.
The human body is a miraculous and superb creation. You are only given one per lifetime so in my view it is important to treat it with the deepest respect. Jumping from aeroplanes and bridges for excitement is in my view disrespectful to your most sacred gift. Surely, we should be treating our body as if it were a prize race horse?
‘Horse Race’ picture credit: Museo Nacional
For the same reason, every aspect of the physical world is important to the spiritual aspirant. Simply put, every life lesson learnt in a human body, is a lesson that can be applied to the astral or spiritual body.
At the present time there are many ‘spiritual advisors’ advocating moving from this present three dimensional ‘reality’ into a fourth dimension or ‘new Earth’. Dolores Cannon had many insights on this process when she was alive. It is held that those not ready for this transition will not notice any change, and those who are prepared will move quietly ‘on’.
If this is possible and if this is what they want I wish them well. However, personally I regard the greatest challenges and rewards to be firmly here on Earth. Changing the scenery in a theatre does not change the characters or the plot.
In my view, having a deep respect for nature is probably the most important spiritual quality for individuals and human collectives at this time. To watch forests and animals and precious ecosystems be destroyed to support human ignorance and greed is heartbreaking. Similarly, war against one’s brothers and sisters on earth is anathema to spirituality.
We occupy the human learning fields in the present time. To leave this full-on learning environment at the time of it’s greatest need, is to leave an unpaid debt to future generations. I suggest that if we cannot master the fine balancing act between physicality and spirituality, we should at least give our children a chance to do so. Nature rebuilds eco-systems without help from humans, it is all a matter of how much damage has been caused and will an ethical case be made for protecting nature whilst it recovers?
To stroke an elephant or watch a lion sleeping in a tree are both physical and spiritual blessings; one gives life to the other.
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