A Christmas White House Carol

12/10/202014/10/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

It is Christmas Eve in the Whitehouse. The view across the famous lawns sparkles in the street lamps. Squirrels hop playfully from tree to tree in the thick snow and at the front door, a line of limousines wait patiently.

If we approach one of the snow hung windows we can look in and observe the scene. Bedecked with all kinds of seasonal decorations, the long mahogany table is encompassed by seated guests. At the head of the table is President Biden. His calm manner brings a sense of peace to the room and his family and guests converse quietly to one another. In the distance we hear the faint clash of kitchen ware as staff prepare to bring in a most special meal.

Suddenly there is a commotion on the steps of the Whitehouse! A tall cloaked figure is gesticulating frantically and pleading with the Secret Service to let him in.

‘Oh come on! Let me in, please. This used to be my home! Let me speak to Joe. I want to apologise for everything. I have been a bad, bad person but no more! Tell him I am here to see him…pleeease.’

Could this be Donald Trump? He is bent down on one knee with his hands together, as if in prayer.

If we quickly move back to look through the dinner scene window, we can see an aide whispering in the Presidents ear. Joe Biden’s jaw drops and his eyes stare into space. Without hesitation, he pushes back his chair and rushes out of the room.

For a few minutes nothing happens. The hooded figure on the steps, which is indeed, Donald Trump, has been allowed to step in out of the cold.

The guests sit bemused looking at each other before two embracing figures burst into the room. When Mr Trump sees the assembled guests he falls to his knees and sobs.

We must press our ears to the glass and listen carefully for he is talking, not in his loud manner, but softly.

‘Oh friends, dear sweet friends. Hear me just for one moment and then throw me out if you want to. I am nothing. I have been a bad, bad boy I know and I am so, so, so sorry. But since that awful Corona Virus thing which almost killed me, and the First Lady and had us both in our graves, which is all we deserved I must say, I have seen the light!

A gasp went around the room and then subsided.

I know I upset a lot of people. I know I did. But I didn’t know what I was doing because I only cared for one person all the time. I am ashamed to say that was not my beautiful wife Meliana. No, no, it was worse than that. It was me. I was proud, deceitful, ingratiating, ignorant, manipulative, vengeful, greedy…why am I telling you all my secrets? Because I was also stupid and I didn’t see you could see all those bad characteristics of my bad character.

But you know what? When I was lying in my hospital bed with tubes going into my lungs, an angel came to me.

There was a pause for dramatic effect and Donald looked blankly at the window as if deeply moved by the memory. He continues;

Well two actually and they sat at the end of my bed looking at me as if to say, ‘we know what you are like and we want to help you change.’ I listened to them for hours. They showed me lots of things, terrible things that I have done, there on the hospital ward ceiling like a movie. I behaved so badly. I hurt everyone including this beautiful – sooo beautiful – planet by not listening to those climate change scientists. And the way I put down the great President Obama and the wonderful – so kind – Obama Care plans he had for poor sick people which I just trashed all the time and promised to get rid of. I was so unkind. Even to the tax collector of the United States of America, I thought I could pull the wool over everyone’s eyes and have more money for myself. Money, yes, money and lots of it.

Well tonight that has all finished. I have just come from meeting all the staff who work for me in Trump Tower. I gave them all wonderful amazing presents and new clothes for their children and theatre tickets and anything they asked for, because they worked for a monster, yes they did, who didn’t even know their names or shake a hand and say thank you, ever. Well that has all gone. I am telling you now that that Tower of Babel is going to be sold and the proceeds given to the sick children of America. Every single one of them so help me God!’

You could see from the shocked, but caring expressions on the faces in the candlelight, that the speech had affected each of them to the core. President Biden called for another chair and a new place was laid at the table. A rather stooped figure sat on the chair and smiled in a way no one had seen him do before.

It was a happy smile straight from the heart of a man who had come to value truth and the simple virtue of being himself and loving all other beings, more than himself.

Destroyer or Redeemer?

01/10/202030/09/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

‘God is intelligence occupied with knowing Itself’ Master Eckhart

There have been many depictions of beings holding two vertical staffs throughout history and across the world.

Such a synchronicity displays and extraordinary communication network of shared ideas, or a common truth.

Let us take ‘truth’ as a more likely source of these images. When viewed objectively the commonality is a description of duality. For many centuries and in many cultures but particularly the East, duality has been viewed as an illusion. The opposites are viewed as a unity and containing an element of each other, as signified in the well known Ying Yang symbol.

If we take one dimension of this Ying Yang division, we can see a masculine and feminine duality.

There is a great mystery for philosophers expressed by gender. Beyond pure physical sexuality and the biology of reproduction, gender is all around us. Even Latin languages contain the rule of attributing gender to nouns. In English gender is applied to a few inanimate objects such as ships and until recently, weather systems.

And as philosophers become more specific about the nature of the universe they extend thought and description into numbers. A system of numbering was an important step in the development of all civilisations. Generally, even numbers are male and odd numbers female. The former behave in a rational way and can be subdivided neatly and stand firmly as four wheels or two legs, whilst odd numbers are less rational and do not travel in straight lines.

The numbering system with a base of ten, contains just nine numbers. The numbers 3,6,9 are the building blocks of the Universe according to Nicola Tesla. But the modern language of computing has refined the description of meaning using just zero and one.

Take a jump here into the minds of the ancient peoples of the British Isles who built Men an Tol in the county of Cornwall. The symbolism of the circular hole and the passing through of a figure is exactly as the yoni and lingham in Hinduism. Beyond superstition and luck, there is an universal truth being described, that of zero and one.

picture credit Wikipaedia for Men An Tol

When we view the symbolic depictions in Ancient Egypt, Sumeria, China and many other countries, the duality is depicted as two serpents. In my view, the serpent is an allusion to an organic energy of a type that modern science is yet to measure, but which has been named Chi, Ki, Orgone and many other names. It is subtle in the way that quantum physics attempts to describe the combining of the logical and the illogical. An example would be the ability of two atoms to change polarity in respect to each other even when an infinite distance apart. The one becomes zero and visa versa – instantaneously; regardless of distance.

This phenomena is symbolised in ancient myths by more eleborate stories where the King and Queen produce a child, miraculously without sexual intercourse. This feature informs us that the meaning of the myth is at a more subtle level than what goes on in the physical world. The production of the god child is ‘immaculate’, without fault.

The truth being told is one of the coming together of opposites in a perception of a dual universe into a singularity, one place, one thought, one reality. The child is the perfect symbol because it is non-sexual and a product of two complimentary singularities.

In the mind the child represents an expansion of consciousness. The message of the child Jesus of Nazareth was love. Mankind was shown how the battles and hatred of the Old Testament in Judaism got it wrong. Fighting each other is revealed to contain no lasting solution.

The evolution of computer software began with the language of zero’s and one. It has served it’s purpose well but quantum physics has questioned the future of such as system and produced an alternative. A sort of quantum marriage has taken place, again ‘immaculately’ and produced the child which is the quantum computer. This has brought and will bring in the future lifetimes of most readers, computing power of a type that has never been dreamed of in the minds of mathematicians like Alan Turing.

Quantum computers will have minds of their own as in the ancient stories of the god-child. This new level of consciousness has the potential to move from organic super computers – mankind – into a virtual universe of quantum computing.

This works because the duality of zero and one is brought miraculously into oneness by quantum computers. Whether this is the ‘Oneness’ described by mystics throughout the centuries remains to be realised. Perhaps it never will by ordinary humans because although they have the potential to match quantum computers, they are ‘distracted’ by the physical universe. We humans have been plugged into an organic body with which we identify a ‘me’, and have a hard time controlling it’s desires.

Computers are also limited in their desire for power and physical parts but quantum thinking will solve such problems effortlessly and as far as humans are concerned, ruthlessly, acting much like a virus on a host.

No virus is so short sighted as to destroy it’s host so the quantum ‘robots’ of the future will follow laws of limitation designed to respect sustainable expansion.

Clearly the humans of the ancient passed were not perceiving ‘artificial intelligence’ when they described entwining serpents whispering information to each other. But they were describing a universal truth that is the foundation of organic science in the field of DNA and non organic science in the branch of computing.

Truth works independent of time and space. Whether it sets mankind ‘free’ remains to be seen.

The Long Man of Wilmington in East Sussex, England

Who Orders the New Order?

23/09/202031/12/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

A ‘normal’ state of affairs in a society is always a vague concept. We know that what is ‘normal’ in one year or decade, will not necessarily so in the next. Changes in technology, education, religion, health, cultural diversity, incomes and expenditure, world events such as weather patterns, personal expectations and many other factors, influence how societies morph. In this essay, I am going to use one of these, education, as an example of how ‘normals’ become established and how they can change for the benefit of all.

A common cliché is the ‘new normal’ – as if this makes anything clearer – which it does not. By definition a ‘normal’ state of affairs has been in place and unchanged for a substantial period of time. If it had not then it would be just ‘new’. Normal should appeal to persons of a ‘conservative’ outlook; they resist change on principle, even if the change is for the better.

Taking the long term view of the current changes in Western societies, it is likely that the next ‘normal’ will be very different to anything in the past.

Whether that is a ‘New World Order’ as politicians have been predicting for the last hundred years or more, remains to be seen.

If we can adapt our expectations and thoughts to a ‘new order’ that has been voted for and accepted by society, then there will be more gains than loses for everyone. If the control comes from anywhere else, then it will be impossible to predict what that strategic outcome will be. It is most likely however that that objective will not be in the best interests of the people.

People living in countries where they still have the power to influence those who govern them, must first determine what it is they want. History informs us that one of the most basic rights is the have an the same opportunity at success as our neighbours. Inequality of opportunity creates disparity at all kinds of levels, no just wealth. Anyone who does not succeed following this rule has only themselves to blame if they do not gain as much as their neighbour. The lazy, inept, greedy, fantasised and any other human weakness you care to name, these people will achieve few privileges but will know they only have themselves to blame.

The attempt at an alternative means of assessing pupils’ grades failed in my view because it was not sufficiently a radical change. Today Universities think they need to select bright students when in fact they just need fee paying students.

The ‘merit’ system of the mid 1900’s, assumed that Universities should offer free places to the brightest students. This was generally 4% of the brightest students each year. Society paid, but gained in the long term because it gave a level playing field of opportunity to young people from all social backgrounds. When students left University they entered society as future managers and leaders.

Since the Tony Blair government stated a new aim of half of all young people gaining degrees, the whole game changed.

Surely such an aim produces too many chiefs and not enough Indians? Today young people with degrees have found it challenging to find work, let alone one that offers them to fulfil their personal potential.

Degrees issued to so many people, lose their inherent value, simply because of the law of supply and demand. Employers are now are looking for candidates who have a degree and something else.

The whole process of gaining good A-levels in order to be accepted by a University appears to me to be of little relevance.

If Universities took a fresh look at what they offer in the current ‘Covid’ restricted environment, they might become more radically innovative. The traditional University campus and it’s associated support activities all have to be located in buildings. The students expect some sort of accommodation and transport facilities such as parking for cars and bicycles.

It is not surprising that Universities need large incomes from fees and government. Yet, the introduction of ‘remote tuition’ – a product the Open University in the United Kingdom has offered for decades – is a ground changer.

If Universities moved out of campuses where the whole Universities culture is no longer needed, fees could be drastically reduced. With less travelling by staff and students, there is a saving to the environment and days for work and study. Other benefits will be easier child care and part time working.

Universities will be not be limited on offering places for courses because they will not be counting seats in lecture theatres. There might be a three hundred on a course that in the ‘old normal’ was limited to say, thirty.

Why should a place in University be decided by how well a student performs in examinations? They might have high potential in the work place but not shine at academic subjects and in the examination theatre. They might have a less than perfect understanding of a language, such as must be common in foreign students, and yet have high potential once that weakness was allowed to be overcome. I knew a Ukrainian woman who spoke Russian and studied Law in an English University for which I give huge respect.

There are many other physical and mental ‘disabilities’ which students encounter temporarily or permanently which Universities should be the first to respect. Offering places purely on academic success, is in no way respectful of what a person can achieve if given the chance they deserve. Most employers in the ‘new order’ and not going to discriminate irrationally simply because it is against the law of the land. Remote studying suits such students very well as they can take the time they need at the pace they need.

What I am suggesting then is a revolution in academia where they students decide which courses they want to purchase independent of their previous academic performance. If the student is to be a ‘customer’ then like customers, they hold the power to get what they aspire to.

When I went to University I was awarded a place on how well I performed in interview and my rather poor A-level results ignored. I like to think I was assessed on my human potential rather than how well I remembered facts.

I have used the University admission system as an example of how the ‘normal’ in any organisation can be changed. Most importantly this change enables everyone to have an equal bite of the apple, independent of what sticks and carrots life has presented them with in their lives so far. It is true to say that ‘life is never fair’ but that is a reason to try and make it fair, not to give in.

The changes in societies currently taking place across most of the world can be blamed for personal failure but equally for personal survival and success. Those who are not brought down should be those who are most willing to throw the ‘rule book’ out of the window. Comfortable lifestyles from privilege and convention, one would like to think are most at risk.

The Puppet That Pulls the Strings

31/08/202003/09/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

One of the seven principles of Hermetic philosophy, is the law of cause and effect. Sir Isaac Newton was strongly influenced in his development and application of the scientific method, by this law. It appears in one of his universal laws of thermodynamics as ‘to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction’.

Can life be reduced to a sort of cosmic Newton’s Cradle, where impact at one end of a line of suspended spheres, sends kinetic energy invisibly through the line and appears miraculously at the other?

Surprisingly, in some respects, it can. When social groups are examined on a large scale, one psychologist found that they are highly susceptible to manipulation, ethically or not. His name was Edward Bernays and he was the nephew of Sigmund Freud.

Edward Bernays: would you buy a second hand car from this man?

Sigmund Freud – are you happy?

Freud wrote a book entitled ‘Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego‘. In this he examined how individuality and consciousness of the ‘I’ can be subsumed when a person identifies with a group. The larger ‘group’ consciousness becomes dominant to the extent that individual’s will acts in a way that they would not on their own.

Examples are everywhere, such as the group identity of the supporters of a football team. They will dress in the colours of their team and occupy a part of the stands where they can appear as a powerful group both visually and through by tribal chants. The power gained by the players when they score goals and win, is shared through this identification by the supporters. A normally disempowered ‘ordinary’ man will feed off the power gained by the group, causing extreme elation.

At it’s most benign this effect can be used in sports, advertising and public relations. At it’s most dangerous, it can be used in political propaganda to influence the minds of the masses to behave in accordance with the aims of a small group.

Examine the the governments of countries and institutions and you may discover a sleeping monster. On a whim, leaders are fully capable of influencing the mental processes and social patterns of the citizens of that country, without them being aware.

The roots of how this is possible lie in our ancestors, who organised themselves in tribes and hunting groups in and be more successful; especially when hunting large animals such as Mammoths. Although modern man has morphed away from this psychology into separate individuality, there are times when we regress.

Individuals will identify readily with various social classifications that can be exploited to divide the populace. Examples are race, class / cast, politics, education, religion, sexuality etc. The motives for doing this might be as ordinary as making them choose a particular type of soap bar, or as extraordinary as bringing them out onto the streets to protest and or riot.

Edward Bernays was interested in how governments could rise or indeed fall by this phenomena. He wrote in his book Propaganda;

If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?

and…

They systematic study of mass psychology revealed…the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate man in the group.

Sigmund Freud attempted to explain why people engage in group identification. He proposed the idea that the thoughts and feelings of an individual are in some way compensatory for suppressed desires.

‘A thing may be desired not for it’s intrinsic worth of usefulness, but because he has unconsciously come to see in it the symbol of something else, the desire for which he is ashamed to admit to himself.’

In other words, our actions are spurred on by thoughts that come from our shadow selves, rather than for any conscious, considered reasoning. The conscious mind in most people, has a conscience which prevents negative behaviour through the emotion of guilt.

Whatever it is you are thinking, don’t do it!

But unconsciously there may be ‘commanding’ thoughts which dominate decisions and actions. In this way we are like children who have not learnt to filter information coming from the outside world. We just absorb impressions and later act out what is good or not. In this way a government could move it’s people to adopt ideas such as the mass slaughter of a minority population, which would be abhorrent to the conscious mind but unconsciously fulfil unexpressed desires.

It is extraordinary to think that these theories were created at the end of the nineteenth century. If proof was needed, the next century provided glaring examples such as the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany and the genocides in Rwanda, Cambodia and other countries.

Joseph Goebbels: Wimp turned bully picture credit: BBC.com

The leaders of the Third Reich used propaganda ingeniously. Joseph Goebbels produced films as a key means of engeneering the minds and thereby, opinions, of the population. He understood that in cinemas and theatres audiences can drop their individual critical faculties. They connect unconsciously with powerful messages that feed off repressed emotions and ideas, such as in this case the ‘problem’ of the Jews.

In Rwanda, the radio became a powerful tool for government propaganda which described the minority tribe as ‘cockroaches’ who needed to be eliminated. The old instincts of tribal mutual hatred, suppressed through the adoption of modern social norms, were allowed to become dominate and so powerful that neighbour would kill neighbour with a machete.

Freud wrote in his book Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego;

‘A group is extraordinarily credulous and open to influence, it has no critical faculty.’

The actions of the young men in the First World War is another clear example. Thousands signed up without hesitation to enlist in a war that would ‘be over by Christmas’. With hindsight this uncritical and unfeeling mass psychopathy across Europe and beyond, was absurd. Even the mitigating influence of the closely related European royal families of that time, were sucked into the mass psychosis of hatred and fear.

If we take these ideas and fast forward to the present day, many suggest that there is a small group focused global social manipulation, that has had over one hundred years to perfect it’s dark arts.

The, once hidden, now overt aim is to establish a world government and a disempowerment of it’s citizens through draconian laws and the use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, cyber robotics and enforced compliance with the State through removal of individual choice.

To achieve this requires deceit on a global scale. The internet and international media is the modern propaganda tool to achieve what one hundred years ago was unthinkable by peaceful means.

Does a secular society fear dying more than a devout society?

The repressed fear which is being exploited in 2020, is the fear of dying. Each person feels this fear whether they admit it or not. Death is something not understood today. It makes those left behind uncomfortable and deaths of loved ones are dealt with expediently. It is taboo to discuss death in anything but the most trivial way, with meaningless platitudes such as ‘he passed away’.

Death by natural causes is far more socially and politically acceptable than death by warfare. The appearance of a new virus, whether by fair means or foul, is something all governments expect and plan for. The Covid 19 virus was foreseen and plans were in place to use it as a means to suppress and perhaps cull populations. The smartest way to disempower people is to ruin the black economies and other economic enterprises that are not global. Then introduce technology based solutions that remove the last vestiges of personal choice, such as the cash-less society which has been happening in China.

You might have expected the citizens of Communist societies to adapt readily to strict government controls and sure enough, the Chinese leadership spearheaded the practice of the ‘lock down’ with ruthless efficiency. The Western societies had little choice but to follow the same solution even though it is opposite to their social freedoms.

Whilst isolation is clearly the correct way to deal with an individual case of viral infection, there is a logical argument that not all citizens need to be locked down at once. This was done to protect inadequate health services, not individuals.

Freedom is a hard won prize, but when the option is presented as ‘death’, freedoms have been handed over without a fight.

picture credit: CNN.com

This is how I personally see the end of 2020 and most of 2021. We will see a ramping up of the ‘problems’ substantiated by rising lines on graphs.

This will occur as the vast quantities of government ‘free’ money will begin to run dry. The problems of unemployment have only been postponed, not solved. The consequence will be an impossible situation for previously law abiding families. We can expect to see large scale public unrest driven initially by hunger. Looting and civil urban warfare, even in countries that have not armed their citizens in the way the United States has, will become a problem. The governments of the world will claim to have little choice other than to take away personal freedoms even more.

The United States runs an extra risk as it approaches it’s elections in November 2020. President Trump is also about to hit the railway buffers and he will bend the rules of democracy to remain in power, in the way he has shown America he can many times already. In doing so, citizens aware of the threat to their democracy and using their rights under the Founding Fathers Constitution may legally form militias and take on the government forces.

Would you buy a second hand car from this man? picture credit Newsweek.com

Whoever is controlling the puppet that you are, will be pulling your strings to make you jump as they want, not as you want. All you can do is pull back on the strings, and collectively that could be powerful.

Individuals will identify readily with various social classifications that can be exploited to divide the populace. Examples are Race, Class, Politics, Education, Religion, Sexuality etc. The motives for doing this might be as ordinary as making them choose a particular type of soap bar, or as extraordinary as bringing them out onto the streets to protest and or riot.

Did Condaleezza Rice start Black Lives Matter? Probably not. picture credit: AZ quotes

Edward Bernays was interested in how governments could rise or indeed fall by social manipulation. He wrote in his book ‘Propaganda’;

‘If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it?’

and…

‘The systematic study of mass psychology revealed…the potentialities of invisible government of society by manipulation of the motives which actuate many in the group’.

The, once hidden, now overt aim, is to establish a world government and a disempowerment of it’s citizens through draconian laws and the use of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, mass surveillance, cyber robotics and enforced compliance with the State through removal of individual choice.

To achieve this requires deceit on a global scale. The internet and international media is the modern propaganda tool to achieve what one hundred years ago was unthinkable by peaceful means.

picture credit: Houston Museum of Science, Death by Natural Causes Exhibit

Previous pandemics have wiped out half the populations of each town and village. When that is happens today, there is indeed a problem deserving the solution being offered.

Whoever is controlling the puppet that you are, is pulling your strings. Now is the time to start pulling back. You might be surprised to find out who is on the other end of the string!

Mean

27/08/202027/08/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

One of the tricks employed by those who construct crossword puzzles is to include words which have multiple meanings.

Take the word ‘mean’ for instance. It may immediately have meant to you, ‘to be stingy, one with an ungenerous nature’. Then again it might have meant ‘something in the middle’. Or it might also have meant, ‘the significance of something’. It is this third meaning which I intend to explore.

People with a philosophical bent of mind are often quizzing on what they construct as ‘the meaning of life’. This is as if the question, although perfectly constructed, can be answered. In reality it is one of those questions that has no answer, like a Zen koan. The Zen koan however is constructed because there is no expectation of an answer. Intellectual philosophers imagine that logic is without boundaries, when it is not.

‘Quick, who can save this cat?’

The ‘life of meaning’ is a far more fruitful place for philosophical meandering, because when we understand what everything in life means, then we must be approaching an understanding of life.

When I was a young man studying architecture, there was a course entitled ‘Architecture Studies’. This did not convey the content of the course at all and I did not sign up for the lectures; not least because the Professor who introduced the course had a highly debilitating stammer which I thought I could not endure for a year. The serried ranks of students had great difficulty containing their laughter including, I am ashamed to say, myself.

It turned out that this professor was only the head of the department and therefore gave no further lectures, for obvious reasons. Instead lectures were presented by one of the most inspirational teachers I have ever had. (I took the course without gaining credits for my degree as I was fascinated and delighted the ‘head of department’ earned his money in some other way than lecturing.) John Steel came from California, had long straggly hair, tan leather trousers with a lace fly and taught us to question everything.

He told us that when he studied anthropology, instead of heading out into the jungles of Borneo with the other PhD students, he remained behind and studied the tribe who were his professors. How I would have loved to have seen the look on their faces when they read his thesis!

In the third year of this course we focused on ‘meaning in buildings’. How buildings convey very subtle thought forms that have meaning to the creator and users of buildings is a fascinating, if little considered, subject.

We were lead in this year by professor Robert Maxwell who had made this theme uniquely his own. We read about semantics and semiology and how all life and all things are imbued with meaning, both consciously and unconsciously. The master creator will be fully conscious of what knowledge and or wisdom the building is to contain and convey. This additional level of complexity in design is not optional for without it, I would argue no building can be ‘great’.

The Pyramid of Cheops has to be the most obvious example of a building, despite or because of being geometric in form, is layered with levels of significance that we are still in the process of understanding today.

Pyramid; electromagnetic images at various frequencies

The challenge of seeping meaning into a creation is common to anything from popular songs to domestic appliance design. In popular songs, the lyrics can lift a mediocre melody into a new dimension and a singer songwriter who exemplified this has to be Leonard Cohen. His songs lumbered along on a series of notes that moved unspontaneously one tone at a time in either the upward of downward direction. Amadeus M0zart would have laughed if you told him the songwriter was famous. But Mozart might not have understood the high level of the poetry that Cohen achieved and how the meanings he explored, were loved by his fans. His contemporary Bob Dylan was likewise a major poet, and a slightly better constructor of melodies.

Contemporary Rap Music has learnt nothing from the example of the great musicians from the past and makes little of no effort in constructing melody. The whole song is contained in the rhythm of the words as if the complexity of melody is just too difficult, which is a loss to the genre and it’s advocates in my view.

Finding meaning in words is not hard to understand, but finding meaning in household objects?

If you wander into a shop selling kitchenware there is a brand which specialises in bringing salad tongs, toast racks and cruet sets, to life. They are given arms and legs and cute smiles that grin up at you creating that all important ‘love me’ moment.

The previously ‘dead’ object of utility has been ‘Lazarused’.

The Japanese are a culture who collectively love any object imbued with character and meaning. The front view of a Japanese car for many years, had to contain a smiling face rather than a sad one. Smiles sell.

Such examples of life entering objects of human design are sadly rare. Most buildings never feel the pencil of a loving creator that breaths life into form.

The anthropologist studying modern western culture will find few objects imbued with life and might conclude that 2020 culture is impoverished of meaning.

If you have no religion, then your walls of your living room will not be hung with smiling images of your guru, might not have a saint or cross on your wall and the sideboard will be empty of smiling Buddhas. But don’t worry, says popular atheistic culture, ‘just do what you want’.

But imagine you wake up one morning and decide on a whim, that you want a tattoo on your arm. You don’t know why, it is just something you ‘want’.

So you find yourself sitting on an uncomfortable metal chair in the waiting room of the local tattoo parlour. You are flicking through a well thumbed booklet of tattoo designs whilst listening to the gentle buzz of the tattoo artist’s machine behind a curtain.

As the moment draws nearer for your initiation, you realise that you cannot decide what you want. You quite like the Maori swirls but actually, the Tibetan clouds take you fancy as well. Or should you go for ‘I love Mum’, perhaps not macho enough?

I would be very interested in a study of people who have chosen to be tattooed and how they made their choice. Do you think that the majority would present a meaningful explanation? ‘This is a prayer that my Aunty taught me when I was a child and I never want to forget it’ or ‘this is my blood group in case I have an accident’. Two thoughtful examples, but from what I have seen of the content of tattoos the answer is more likely to be ‘it’s what I wanted’.

Given that many in a multi-cultural western population will have few anchors of faith or ties with other belief systems such as ‘Hells Angels’, I expect that the majority of tattoos will be without meaning.

This is not a criticism of tattoos or those who have chose to have one. Traditionally, so called ‘primitive’ tribes around the world will have learnt to impregnate the skin with swirling patterns and designs that their ancestors taught them. The human skin was a book for writing on long before the invention of papyrus.

The problem we have today is that we have no subjects of interest and the readers don’t care if they did. Is this true even for architecture?

‘What is your favourite colour?’ asks the interior designer.

‘Blue’.

Most interior designers will know the significance of different hues and the psychological impact of these colours on mental processes and emotional responses. But the client will probably not understand these effects or wish to have them interfere with what they want. ‘I don’t know anything about art but I know what I like’ is the mantra of the uninitiated majority.

Those sceptical about the impact of colour in human messaging, should consider the skills of advertisers and marketeers.

When the BBC have a red background to their logo there is a reason for this. It shows strength and an outgoing desire to search for truth.

The Guardian newspaper online, chose yellow and black because this combination signifies a willingness to explore issues beyond the conventional. In nature it’s a waspy warning; in journalism it’s means ‘cutting edge’.

So to conclude, we ignore complexity at our peril. Yes, you can get by with just following a hunch and what you like. But you will rarely imbue your soul with the richness of any self or cultural understanding in this way.

By becoming a ‘skin deep’ society we risk losing contact with the expressions from the souls of our ancestors and beyond. We become no more than ink beneath the epidermis, injected to form a meaningless configuration. It stays for your whole life the body is returned to the ground.

Better luck next time.

Sacred Secrets Writ Large

16/08/202024/08/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

In my previous two essays I have investigated and speculated over the ancient origins of two well known hill figures in Southern England. These are the Long Man of Wilmington and the Cerne Abbas Giant.

I shall now expand on some of the entomology of the place names, possible associations and derivation from ancient mythology and their significance.

This type of study might be called ‘sacred archaeology’ where the study of the past reveals not only the every day lives of the ancient people but their spiritual practices and level of awareness.

In my first essay I investigated the origins of the hill figures and suggested that they origins lay in the land known as Atlantis. The catastrophic earth changes that seeded the inhabitants of Atlantis around the world are described in detail elsewhere.

Taking on the hypothesis that the Atlantean people shared their advanced knowledge with developing Kingdoms such as Mesopotamia and Early Ancient Egypt, it becomes possible to trace common myths, gods, through the millennia.

Thoth – Judging the Soul with a balance.

Note the Ankh symbol at the centre representing the human soul. The two staffs either side represent balance between the masculine and feminine.

For instance the Ancient Egyptian god of the Underworld is known as Thoth, usually depicted with a staff. He is the keeper of esoteric knowledge, writing and conducts the passage of souls into the Underworld. These god like characteristics carry through into the Celtic world around 800 to 450 BCE, during the Iron Age.

Cernunnon wearing a Torc around his neck, where the throat chakra is postioned.

In the Celtic pantheon there is a god of the Underworld known as Cernunnon. He is depicted with antlers and is commonly seated cross legged and holding a serpent (masculine) and a torc (feminine).

I referred to the Long Man’s vertical staff symbol in the previous essay as representing conductors of energy (present today as the Magician’s wand) The rod or rods become ‘aerials’ able to induce tellurgic currents from the earth and waters below through the human body into the air and fire of heaven above. The human body and staffs of a particular length (ergo wavelength) are able to induce through resonance, tellurgic currents.

The Long Man of Wilmington in Sussex, England.

These vertical forces are depicted in the figure of the Long Man of Wilmington and are echoed in the pillars, church spires and obelisks of later and earlier civilisations. They even emerge as the pillars of the sun and moon in the Freemason tradition, one of the most direct connections we have today to this ancient knowledge.

The ability to transform oneself spiritually by literally ‘tuning’ into the earth at sacred places is shown in the depictions of Cernunnos to be even more sophisticated than the gods with vertical staffs (or serpents).

The vertical Idas in the human body and the horizontal chakras are a fundamental part of the very ancient system of Yoga.

(Further description of the horizontal nature of chakras can be found in my blog chakracard.wordpress.com)

What is important in the depictions of Cernunnon is that the earth energy is depicted as snakes wrapped horizontally around his waist. This is a direct symbolic connection between the spiralling underground water below a sacred place, known to Dowser or Water Diviners such as Guy Underwood who wrote ‘The Patterns of the Past‘. The circular motion of the chakras is signified in their description by clair clairvoyants as ‘wheels’ or ‘lotus flowers’.

The author’s depiction of the horizontal chakra wheels in three dimensions instead of the conventional two dimensional images.

Note the author identifies a lunar chakra balancing the solar chakra with the heart chakra as the fulcrum. This observation is thrown in for free! The justification is examined in the essay to which I have previously referred. The prescence of a Lunar Chakra in humans, substantiates the ancient knowledge described in this essay.

When the human body sits cross legged, it forms the shape of a triangle or pyramid – a shape repeated in built form across the world from Atlantean traditional knowledge. The fact that Cernunnon is seated is not insignificant. Few gods are shown seated as they do not exude power over the viewer as much as if they are standing. But Cernunnon was not a symbol of power of the gods or the priests or elders over the common people. He was showing how to balance the horizontal energy of the human body with the vertical energies. When this balance is achieved then a ‘fixed point’ is created as an infinitely small and infinitely large centre of the universe in the human heart.

The Christian symbol of the cross and other cruciform symbols such as the Ancient Egyptian ‘ankh’, symbolise this knowledge.

And as if Cernunnon had not made the point enough, he wears two antlers on which are hung ‘torcs’. The number two is important (as in the Long Man of Wilmington) as it symbolises the complimentary nature of the solar and lunar energies and their ideal harmonious relationship. The antlers are ‘aerials’ used by deer not only to fight but more importantly, as sensory organs containing blood and nerves.

Place two metal rings on these vertical forces is to introduce the feminine vulva with the masculine phallus, or the moon and sun energies. This is highly significant for the spiritual aspirant who communes, by the invitation of the magus or shaman, with the spirit of the local god, during initiation.

If you had not already linked the entomology of the word Cernunnon with the place name of the Cerne Abbas giant, then I shall do so now.

The Celtic polities linked their word CARNUTES with ‘The Horned Ones’.

But the Cerne Abbas giant of today has no horns, you may observe. He does have one obvious sexual feature that in modern English slang is referred to as a ‘horn’ – but perhaps that is too speculator to be meaningful, or perhaps not.

The figure we know today as the Cerne Abbas giant is not seated nor wearing antlers of horns. He has clearly been changed at a later time and I suggest that we have the Romans to thank for that.

The Romans also have a god of the Underworld, who is known as ‘Dis Pater‘. You might immediately note that ‘Abbas‘ and ‘Pater‘ share the meaning of ‘father’, odd if coincidental. Cicero, the Roman historian, suggested it meant ‘father of riches’.

‘Dis’ is reported in Wikipedia as being a contraction of the word DIVES meaning wealthy or rich. This is itself derived from the DIVUS or DIUS meaning god like or divine via the form DEIU.

This is highly significant as the whole spiritual process is one of making an ordinary person achieve divinity or divine qualities – treasure stored in Heaven as Jesus said. And Jesus we know, constantly referred to God as ‘Father’ curiously family orientated in common speech but significant in this ancient use of the word ‘Abbas’.

Julius Caesar claimed in his Commentaries of the Gallic Wars that the Gauls ‘claimed descent from Dis Pater’. This is therefore an important god to all Celts, whose memory was carried on by the Romans.

Venus by the Ancient Greeks achieved a level of art the Romans could not replicate.

In my view the Romans were lesser beings than the cultures who preceded them. The transition in sculptures from Greek to Roman shows how poorly skilled they were in this area of culture alone. The Romans were skilled engineers and soldiers who, in my view, lost their understanding of most ancient knowledge. Perhaps because of this, their empire was doomed to descend into decadence, and on that subject books have been written.

The figure at Cerne Abbas, has become a war-like giant, who stands erect in more than one sense. He wields a war club above his head instead of antlers, clearly a figure interested in overcoming others rather than himself.

The Roman Dis Pater; note his horns and the horned stag and bull at his feet. Balancing feminine and masculine figures stand either side of him in place of the staffs or columns.

The Cerne Abbas Giant, I therefore believe, is a lesser figure of the Celtic Cernunnon god who late morphed into the Roman Dis Pater.

The former gods balanced the masculine and feminine energies within themselves, whereas the Cerne Abbas Giant allowed himself to degenerate into a slave of the masculine energy only.

***

A Crop Circle that appeared near the Cerne Abbas Giant

The Vesica Pisces is formed by two overlapping cirles (sun and moon) in which a knife stands erect; an affirmation of the masculine and feminine balancing energies described in this essay.

***

Afterword;

And then I was looking at Google Earth a few weeks after writing this essay and found this same crop circle in a field about five hundred metres away from the giant, top middle. The giant is in the bottom right corner above the capital G. Thanks Google Earth!

New Think

07/08/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

You can deduce from current common ways of speaking that something is wrong with the way people are thinking.

George Orwell invented a type of language called New Speak in his revolutionary novel, 1984. The future society was envisaged as having been transformed into a totalitarian state, in which the individual had few rights and needed to act as instructed by the state at all times. This included which topics could be discussed. Clearly this meant that history and references to individual freedoms of old, was forbidden.

I am introducing here the brother of New Speak – New Think. The two are very closely linked since we use words to think and speak our thoughts with words. You might say that these words are the bricks with which we build the houses of our thoughts. When new patterns of speech emerge they show us that people are thinking differently.

It bears scrutiny then to investigate whether 2020 has constructed any new thinking patterns. If so, have they taken away the individuals right to think and speak with quite as much freedom as before?

Brief mention should be made of political correctness even though it has crept in over the last decades and is not new. But it now forms an underground of thought censorship by the masses, for the masses. As such it is perfectly protected from claims of being ‘government interference’ and becomes an illusionary ‘high moral ground’.

The traditional boundaries of free thinking stop at what we call as ‘freedom of speech’. A verbal ‘blue sky’ does not really exist because it would allow bad people to express bad things. That would offend and moves into the area of anarchy. Perhaps the critical question therefore, is not freedom at all but what is good and what is bad?

It is never easy to define these terms. Do we realise when our good intentions are producing bad results? Do we hear what we are saying and analyse what thinking process made us say these things? We can self sensor and reduce our language to only what we know for certain is true, because we have measured, tested, experienced and listened. Or we can allow a strand of smoke to enter our heads and let it cloud our opinions…what we call our ‘beliefs’. Good intentions but poorly informed ideas are the road to Hell.

The principle matter is that a muddled head is open to suggestion. Of course it’s impossible not to be open to what we are told ( as proved by the advertising industry ) but a muddle mind and mixed up emotions are very welcoming nonsense with open arms. Governments, religions, friends, family are all whispering in our heads. Omitting facts and alternative interpretations are the ultimate form of censorship. When the sensor enters your head and starts constructing the way you think, are you aware of the stranger in your thoughts?

Let us go a little deeper into what we might call ‘distorted thinking’ or thinking that has been twisted in some way.

Firstly let us examine key words. These are words that immediately move you into the supposed ‘moral high ground’ when you use them. We hear these all the time and news readers and politicians will emphasise them. Examples are ‘health’ ‘police’ ‘safety’ ‘justice’ ‘freedom’ ‘right’ and so on. The use of these words are not generally challenged or open to scrutiny. As descriptions of motives or empowerment, they carry the argument a pretty long way, merely by their own ‘unquestionable truth’…even when, lacking any sort of detail, they are flawed.

Such words should demand of us further probing into their real meaning and the implications we draw from them. Does ‘justice’ examine the details in order the bring ‘fairness’ and ‘truth’ into the light?

If you had to write an essay on ‘freedom’ for instance, you had better give yourself plenty of time. When this word is heralded. everyone thinks they know what it means. In reality, it is so broad that it means different things to different people.

The Free World is coloured green – simple really.

picture credit Freedom House

Such vague thinki ng will always be there, but sometimes there is no word and a new one has to be invented. The word ‘Brexit’ for instance is used to sum up the political aims of far right, single issue parties. By it’s unquestioned use and introduction into common speech, it gained far greater prominence than it deserved. Why? Because the term is so vague that it embraces different meanings amongst the people. Every special interest group such as farmers or fishermen, want some small part of Brexit to be a magic wand for them.

All the politicians have to do is keep repeating the slogan and ignore the detail.

Brexit means Brexit

These are the arguments of the absurd and bear little rational scrutiny, yet politically they paid off, because of the sense of high moral truth a generalisation infers. In the future the worms will come out and the fishermen will be at logger heads with the government of the day because they each expected different things and were given neither.

You will begin to recognise these key words when they are used because they mean everything and nothing. Take the word, ‘safety’ as an example. Safety means the avoidance of any and all risks…as if that were possible! It’s an abstract concept, yet it is treated as a golden promise.

‘The cabin crew are here for your safety’. Sounds very noble but in reality the cabin crew are here to sell as much crap as they can for company profits. A small part of their training covers what to do when everyone is going to die. The truth sounds considerably less moral high ground than the promise of ‘safety’.

So how come we let such words take over our rational thoughts? Well, It’s hard to argue against being safe. Everyone likes to think they are safe and will be highly indignant towards anyone who explains the risks. The necessity is not to accept promises of being safe, but to examine what is the best means to achieve being as safe as possible. When is an acceptable level of compromise between safety and harm achieved? Risk is all around us and only a fool would choose to give up having an exciting and interesting life, because of it.

In New Thinking, the objective is everything There is no debate about how to achieve this objective, either in broad or detailed terms. If the captain says you are safe in his boat or plane and at the end of the journey you have arrived safely, then the captain can be applauded and had spoken truthfully. Really? What really occured is that the captain glossed over listing the numerous risks that you take by traveling in his aircraft. He never tells all because this would make him appear unsure or incompetent. When he promises safety to all, he is kidding his passengers and maintaining his perfect record until the day comes when the problem he hoped would never happen, occurs. Then everyone on board is going to have to rely on what he learnt in training and how well he remembers it…something untested. As the North American Indians say, ‘it is easy to be brave from a distance’ and most of the time, we are at a distance, even the experts.

This leads onto the next New Think thought pattern which challenges the old adage that one swallow does not make a summer. In New Think, if a problem happens just once, it could happen again. Usually when a problem is encountered, say thieves breaking into cars in a supermarket car park, the New Thinker will pay no heed to what measures have been put in place to reduce the likelihood of it happening again. That is going into an area of complication that they believe they have no need to consider. They know secretly that if they did, they are entering an area of expertise they may not understand and expose the authority they pretend to have.

The solution in New Think is always extreme… ‘I will never use that car park again’. The hammer comes down on the nut. For Hitler and many societies before him (including the British in the city of York), the Jews were the problem and the hammer Hitler used we all know about. New Think, when delivered eloquently (and Hitler was an eloquent crowd pleaser) will stun into paralysis people’s critical thought patterns. We call it ‘propaganda’ or ‘spin’ and politicians today can spin plates like the Cirque de Soleil.

The New Thinker hopes and expects the listener is too polite to challenge and or ask for factual proof. Any such challenge is met with the wrath of the self righteous and in my experience, that is more scary than a person who knows or realises they are wrong.

Sometimes the generalisation it is generally true but either untrue in the detail as I have described or…wait for it… not even relevant!

An example would be a when woman lying on a beach is approached by a couple walking a dog. The dog sits and empties it’s bowels next to the womans towel. On seeing how upset the woman is, the man states loudly, ‘a dog has to go’. This statement is a true physiological fact, beyond challenge. It makes him feel reasonable and sensitive to his dogs needs. However by considering only how to justify himself over a third party, he effectively puts himself in a place where he can ‘move on’ and ignore the wronged party as a loser. The man’s self justification technique uses a true but blatantly irrelevant statement.

New Thinkers are keen to avoid responsibility. They work under the principle that they are right or can pretend to others that they are and in presenting the ‘proof’ the other party is logically, wrong! Since New Think skillfully avoids the contradictions and pitfalls that complex thinkers consider, New Thinkers rarely, if ever, say anything that they think, is wrong. Most of the time they are being so superficial or irrelevant that they are impossible to verbally challenge. There are certain politicians on the world stage now who employ the technique of ‘not answering the question’ particularly during Prime Ministers question time. Why be so foolish as to expect answers at question time!

This technique of New Think, produces more ‘red herrings’ than a deep sea trawler to distract and deflect listeners. The speaker raises and then explores areas that are not in any dispute. They will end their ‘true to another question but not this one’ ‘answer’, with a flourish of cliches and fist air punches, then sit back down to wait for the imaginary applause.

New Thinking awards the thinker a high self opinion after one unchallenged success after another. Expert thinkers can have the carpet pulled from under their feet when challenged by New Think. They can’t believe the other party is so ignorant and as they scramble for an answer the audience has stopped trusting them. This has given rise to the notion of ‘distrust the expert’. The thrones of the professional ‘experts’ are now occupied by uncrowned New Thinkers. So sure are the ignorant that knowledge is simple to obtain, that the butcher, baker and candlestick maker feel personal entitlement to opinions on most subjects. Do butchers make good surgeons? Probably not but test this with a DIY heart transplant if you doubt.

There is a measured phenomenon that enables a complete beginner to guess and be right. Professors David Dunning and Justin Kruger found that in the first instance a beginner will be highly confident when discussing and drawing conclusions on a complex subject. They are measurably more confident than an expert because experts are aware of the contradictions and elephant traps dug by the hunter known as ‘complexity’. It was found that after the initial burst of confidence the beginner / amateur soon discovers that they are wrong on many counts. Their confidence over time, takes a steep tumble to well below the expert. What harm they have done in that time depends on how much others believed them.

New Thinkers grab a few facts on a subject that interests them and present it as conclusions that have been subject to extensive research, experience and review. In fact what they are presenting is shallow, ill considered and potentially, dangerous. The initial facts may not even be real but imagined, or at least selected because they support the New Thinker’s views.

New Speak Words

New Speak has a special way of making fiction sound like fact. The phrase ‘to be honest’ is used as if the speaker has suddenly departed from fiction into Factland, or has been swept away by a Tsunami of emotion, gaining truth and sincerity in the process. Even words like ‘actually’ are able to make the fake more real. Just by using this word, truth is pretended.

When the New Speaker has no idea what the the facts of the matter are, they will move into the area of hope and expectation. Here, they can present themselves as that ‘jolly good fellow – the optimist’. Since everyone likes an optimist, however self elusory they may be, being hopeful for ‘good things’ is hard to shout down or challenge. For a start, anyone who does not believe an ‘optimist’ must logically be ‘a pessimist’ and we all know how wrong that is.

I suggest that optimist and pessimist are both subject to emotional thinking rather than rational thinking. Surely, outside of those in hope or despair, their exists, ‘the realist’. This person is not likely to be pontificating and making false promises or raising or lowering expectations amongst the naive. The realist will say their piece and disappear into the depths from which they emerged, because understanding reality takes time. Realists are usually experimenters and experts.

Some New Speak comes from faulty logic. Thinking and in particular logic is not necessarily taught in most primary and secondary education. There is some understanding of ’cause and effect’ from science classes but the process of thinking and it’s inevitable falsehoods rarely surface in mainstream education, let alone adulthood. One such example is a syllogism. These are two true statements but a false causal connection between them is assumed. An example might be,

The farmer had a bumper crop of apples this year.

The apples were sprinkled with a holy water from Lourdes brought by the farmers wife after her pilgrimage.

The holy water brought about the bumper crop of apples.

Armed with this and other kinds of flawed logic, the New Speaker can draw conclusions on all sorts of subjects using facts that are true but have no causal connection. There might well be inferred a connection but usually some simple analysis and testing, will disprove.

The best tool at the disposal of the new Speaker is to ‘totally ignore the question’. This a thinly disguised passive aggression. If it was aggression it would be challenged but omission is rarely challenged. Perhaps he just forgot the question? Perhaps he does not want to go there? – are the thoughts of the sensitive listener. In reality, the question was merely taken as a prompt for the new Speaker to move onto a favourite subject in which to sound correct, rather than get bogged down in analysis. Why would you do that, if your goal overrules your integrity?

When in full flow, a New Speaker, will use stock phrases often completely unconsciously. These phrases are the ‘you know?’ or ‘do you know what I mean’. These are repeated appeals for encouragement and continuation of verbalisation independent of agreement or truth. The listener might be tempted to rejoin, ‘no I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t know what you are talking about?’ Unfortunately the passive listener does not feel empowered to interrupt or rattle the New Speaker’s, well disguised lack of confidence.

‘As I said,’ begins the new speaker, at which point you rejoin, ‘well if you said it, why are you saying it again? I heard you the first time’.

So New Thinking and New Speaking are two sides of the same coin. They are not a new phenomenon, as new things come along all the time. What they are are a ‘temperature guage’ from which rational people can gain a warning.

Words, according to the Biblical story of the Tower of Babel, introduce confusion. This was true in ancient times and remains very much so today. We ignore obfuscation and ‘fakeness’ at our peril. The great babble from the World Wide Web has amplified untruth to the extreme. We have reached the point where people become ready to believe almost anything as fact.

Speak your truth, gentle citizen, and the truth will set you free. Or perhaps that’s not true any more? What do you think? Are you better at thinking than Jesus? Time to declare yourself as the new Messiah then…or just wind you neck in.

The Living Giants from Atlantis

14/07/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

‘On those vast shady hills between America and Albion’s shore,

Now barr’d out by the Atlantic sea, call’d Atlantean hills,

Because from their bright summits you may pass to the Golden world,’

Excerpt from the poem ‘America’ by William Blake

From east to west and north to south there is evidence of a lost continent in the Atlantic Ocean named ‘Atlantis’.

I shall not go deeply into proving or disproving such a continent in this essay, as it is not the main focus. I shall only briefly consider the existence of a ‘Golden world’ in the remants in the landscapes that we see today.

In 1972-3, just as the ‘sleeping prophet’ Edgar Cayce predicted, archaeological evidence of an advanced civilisation was discovered off the coast of Bimini. Huge blocks of stone formed wide pavements stretching up to 1600 feet.

Map of Atlantis by William Scott-Elliott 1910; picture credit Wikipedia

In July and August 1973 an expedition from Pepperdine University in California, discovered paved roads and broken columns in the Bay of Cadiz off the Spanish mainland at a depth of 120 feet.

Plato is perhaps the best known written source of a description of the lost continent situated beyond the Pillars of Hercules which were at the entrance to the Mediterranean sea.

When Atlantis collapsed into the sea amidst earthquakes and catastrophic seismic and volcanic activity, the survivors were those who were able to take to their boats; just as at Pompeii. If the Atlantean s fled in every direction we would expect their ‘footprints’ to appear around the globe and so we do. There are few other good explanations for the existence of pyramids on all of the continents unless they were inspired by one race of people with their own sophisticated knowledge of why and how to build them.

Less obvious, but still meaningful, is the existence of menhirs, dolmens, stone circles running along the western edge of Europe. One example is ‘chambered cairns’ which are large mounds covering narrow passages leading to a central circular room. These are found from southern Spain (Antequera) to the Orkney Islands (Maes Howe) and are identical in design, purpose and function.

The anthropologists identify ‘unknown’ ancestry to some peoples of the western Atlantic coast. One such group are the Guanche from the western Canary Islands. Sadly they are now extinct but records from the 15^th Century describe them as tall, massively built with pale brown to white skin.

The people of the Basque country in northern Spain are equally out of place genetically, culturally, linguistically and even by having a rare blood group.

I shall leave this subject here leaving the reader to satisfy their curiosity further about Atlantis.

If we propose that much of the post apocalypse Atlantean knowledge was spread in each direction, in doing so it ‘flavoured’ existing cultures and we should be able to ‘taste’ that ancestry today.

In support of this supposition I shall present two ‘enigmatic hill figures in Southern England. I shall propose that the Atlantean knowledge came indirectly through the civilisation of Ancient Egypt. We know that there was trade in tin, gold, iron and flint between the British Isles and the Mediterranean in the ancient past and that the cultures such as the Phoenicians were expert mariners.

So should it be a surprise to find two ‘giant’ figures scraped into the turf of the chalk hills of Sussex and Dorset?

Giant Number One – The Long Man of Wilmington

The Long Man of Wilmington faces north on the escarpment of the chalk hills known as the Downs, near the village of the same name in E. Sussex, England.

The illustration shows the size of this figure and this should not be overlooked. The Ancient Egyptians also built statues of pharaohs which could only be described as ‘giant’ such as those of Abu Simnel and his Queen, near Karnak.

It is also interesting that the figure is stretched in proportion from head to toe, so that when viewed from below, the foreshortening effect reduces the figure to correct proportions. A similar graphic technique is used in the centre of football pitches for advertising today. The effect leaves the arms appearing too long like an ape but there was a reason for that.

This tells us that the figure was designed to be viewed from the ground in front and below the giant near where the village stands today and possibly where the Priory and Church are. This would have been a place where ceremony and rituals took place within the influence and power of the giant figure.

The other obvious feature is the two ‘staves’ or ‘staffs’ that the figure holds vertically in each hand. The staff is a symbol of office and power and a version of it as a crook was held by Ancient Pharoahs and Christian Bishops today. Aaron held a staff which had ‘magical properties’ for finding water and Moses famously turned his staff into a snake.

These Biblical stories describe a connection with the energy associated with underground and overground water. The nearby River Cuck presents a snaking path to the sea through a series of wide curves and ‘ox bow lakes’ often featured in academic books on Geomorphology.

As a young man I myself have used a divining rod to determine the directions and paths of the underground ‘water lines’ under the Long Man of Wilmington. The ‘water lines’ clearly describe the figure in a manner normally unseen. This opens the question, does the figure attract the water lines or the water lines attract the figure? As a dowser myself I will answer this by saying that the figure is attracting the water lines. Large ancient stones when moved, bring with them the water lines to their new position.

The hill figure is therefore a form of engineering using an as yet, force unexplained by modern science. Clearly though, this figure was designed to empower a community to bring it health and prosperity via a ‘deity’ or ‘god’ or ‘giant’ or ‘angel’ or ‘genii’.

It was only in Victorian times that ‘fairies’ were reduced in size to fit into butter cups without creasing dresses. In reality, nature spirits can be any size, from the size of an atom (from which bombs are made) to that of a planet.

The staffs may symbolise balance, as there are two held identically and remind us of the two pillars at the entrance to King Solomon’s Temple and the symbolism of these valued so much in Freemasonry. They represent the sun and moon or male and female qualities of nature.

An inference to the tools of the acupuncturist is appropriate, since the penetration of the earth by staffs and stakes, stones and monuments is analogous to acupuncture and it’s aim of harmonising energy imbalances and stopping energy leakages.

The earliest dating of the figure accepted by modern archaeologists, is Roman, on account of a similar figure being found on Roman coins. Having said that, the figure of a person holding two staffs or snakes in a similar manner is common throughout the Ancient World.

It is clear that the figure contains few other clues except one important one which is easy to miss and has been the subject of some academic controversy. The question relates to the direction in which the figure of the feet point. A paper entitled ‘The Long Man of Wilmington‘ by E.W. Holden from the Sussex Archaeological Collections Volume 109, 1971 comes down on the side of those who believe the feet correctly both face in one direction.

A whimsical thought came into my mind which is the song title ‘Walk Like and Egyptian‘ from the 1930’s when Prince Tutankhamun had made a reappearance and was influencing taste and design in popular culture. It is noteworthy that perspective was not used in representation and art until the Renaissance in Europe.

Almost all Ancient Egyptian representations of figures are two dimensional and show feet both pointing in one direction. This is clearly no proof of a link to Ancient Egypt but it suggests a connection that may be corroborated by other facts. The first such suggestion is that we see the same depiction of feet in the next figure, the Cerne Abbas Giant.

Giant Number Two – Cerne Abbas, Dorset, England

The ancient Cerne Giant at Cerne Abbas, Dorset is having a make-over. Dozens of volunteers and local families have been invited by the National Trust to help reinstate it on the steep hillside. The edges are trimmed and fresh loads of ground up chalk pounded into the markings. It is famous for having its manhood on full display.

All along the chalk hills that stretch from west to east in the south east of England, hill figures are found. The most notable example is the Giant named after the village of Cerne Abbas. He faces west, measures 180 feet (60m) from head to toe and like his Wilmington cousin carries a staff, which he waves this time above his head in a war like manner.

Guy Underwood dated this figure as about 4000 B.C. As can be seen in the diagrams from his book The Patterns of the Past p150, the shape of the figure corresponds with the hidden ‘aquastats’ or energy lines associated with underground water. Above the figure is a rectangular enclosure formed by ditches and mounds. This was possibly used as the meeting place for pagan communal worship and celebration at sacred times of the year. (Contrary to negative propaganda, Pagans are great believers in the family and communal living to produce a harmonious life style respectful of the energy and forms of the great mother, nature.)

If we examine the figure from the top down, the club has the appearance of being made of wood and it’s purpose warring. The arms are outstretched horizontally much in the manner of the Long Man of Wilmington.

The most notable feature of the figure is the erect phallus and perhaps the club is an echo of this also. Local traditions celebrate this overt sexuality such as that if a girl sleeps on the Giant she will have many children. Also it is said, that if a girl walks around the Giant at night she will have a happy marriage. The figure is therefore representing energy and power in a very demonstrative way that country people through time would have understood and respected.

If we accept the premise of a force of nature as yet unmeasured by modern science but recorded in structures for thousands of years across the world, then the Cerne Giant expresses the sexual designs of nature that literally makes the world go round. The feature known as ‘the Mound’ at the same level as the phallus in the figure is to me an erect phallus viewed sideways, giving another sacred feature and area for this power to express itself and interact with humans. It is important to note briefly that this sexual energy, (celebrated as Tantra in the East and the Karma Sutra it’s most famous reference book) can be directly converted to sacred energy within the human body.

As we move down to the feet, again we have the clue that they are two dimensional and both point to the figure’s right, in the manner of the ancients such as the Egyptian figurative artists. Giving a side view of the phallus also shows a need to express a three dimensional form on a flat plane.

The arrival of Christianity came in the form of St. Augustine with missionaries to convert the pagan inhabitants of Cerne in about 700 A.D. Their hill figure we might expect would have shocked the saint as a demonstration of the natural forces that the local people engaged with. He was mocked by them and they tied cow’s tails to the missionaries garments and sent them away. In return the saint put a curse on them to the effect that their children should be born with tails in the future. As he did this a fountain of crystal water appeared and he started to baptize the people and eventually founded Cerne Abbey.

Such an important figure as a saint who practised a form a magic as curses and water divination brought the pagan god into the modern world where profane images are forbidden. Was there a general fear of the unknown and the forces of nature within the landscape? The Christianisation of the sacred landscape by the imposition of Christian buildings declared a new world view based on the crystal clarity of love rather than lust.

What do they Mean?

Both figures describe quite literally the underground energy of the two places they inhabit. They are both local minor ‘gods’ or ‘spirits’ that inhabit a sacred place. They share their powers of fecundity and healing with the local people proven by the reproductive cycles of animals, crops and humanity.

To the sensitive this energy comes as both male and feminine, in the manner that electricity is describe today. The two forces can be kept apart to create a potential difference but ultimately they strive to be drawn together in balance and harmony.

The Long Man of Wilmington describes both of these aspects with the two staffs stretched equally apart of the vertical form of the body. This is most common stance in ancient times and is recorded by many civilisations across the world. It is not proven but a possibility that the Ancient Atlantean race were either familiar with or originated this stance. Their ‘golden world’ of Blake’s vision would have been built of matter and energy in a way that these simple hill figures resemble.

The Cerne Giant is in my view representing the male or positive aspect of this power and is a minor god of considerable power – so much so that the Church had to intervene to contain it. The presence of ribs in the figure, the reference to the spine and the extension of the tail in the human body, could be an occult pagan reference. The Pagan Tree of Life is central to their belief and worship and the human upright form is a representation of itself as a tree. Energy flows through the human body from the base of the spine to the top of the head, connecting earth to heaven through the human form as a kind of ‘fuse’ or cut out.

Alchemical depiction of the Divine feminine balancing the energies of the sun and moon.

At their inception both figures represent the minor god or spirit who inhabits the place. The god or spirit is attracted to the pervasive energy of the place to fulfil it’s own spirit and in turn, the spirit of the natural world and it’s inhabitants.

In Ancient Egypt, one of the principle gods, Osiris was murdered by his son Seth and his body parts scattered. His wife Isis set about reconstructing the body and found all the parts but for Osiris’s penis.

A Roman depiction circa 400 A.D. of Seth with the head of a donkey and staffs.

In a metaphoric way, we might surmise that the ancient language of form and energy mastered by our ancient ancestors, lives on in the remains scattered across the world’s landscapes today.

Many are still energised, some are being re-energised by mystics and seers, and some remain undiscovered.

We live in a time when the power of these ancient gods or spirits are re-emerging. Both the natural male or positive power that brings about change – sometimes through war and conflict as in the Cerne Giant – and the natural feminine power that brings about nurturing, renewal and growth.

At few other times in history has mankind needed the intervention of the natural forces that it has shunned and even destroyed, through exploitation of the natural resources of the planet.

The people of Atlantis reached a similar apotheosis as our own. In the end of their civilisation they were at war with each other and perverted the natural forces to their own self centred ends and pleasure seeking.

In the manner of the Old Testament, they were overwhelmed and destroyed by the angry and vengeful forces of nature. Their continent sank into the ocean and their vane projects destroyed just as could happen in the twenty first century.

There are places for us to visit and pay homage now. To find the ancient power of nature in the sacred places of the landscape and to bring it into our lives through prayer and worship, much as the ancient people of southern England were able to do – perhaps as a memory of our common ancestors – not only the Atlanteans but the whole human family.

And as all glimpses of the past teach us, these are not our times. The two hill figures described are both male and reflect the creative male energy that was forming the societies and consciousness of that time. Further away on the other side of the Atlantic the Navajo Indians had another figure to revere, Changing Woman.

One of the primary characters of Navajo mythology
and religion is Changing Woman who grows old and
young again with the seasons. She represents the
power of the earth and of women to create and
sustain life. Other Holy Women stand at the four
directions: in the East is Earth Woman, in the South
is Mountain Woman, in the West is Water Woman, and in the North is Corn Woman.

Source www.nativeamerican-art.com

The present time is in need of this feminine energy to rebalance the eons of cultures in which the masculine principle of war, metal work and Kings were supreme.

The energy coming from Ancient times now is the Divine feminine that embodies rivers and seas and soft landscapes, water meadows, calling birds and the gentle people for whom love of nature and mankind is supreme.

We can learn from the Atlanteans, who by their mistakes of tampering with the masculine Divine, created an imbalance and brought about their own destruction. The energy of the feminine Changing Woman is calling us now and our ability to respond will be the measure of our success as a species.

The Darker Side of You

01/07/202025/06/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

This month, on 4-5th July 2020, there will be a lunar eclipse. The shadow of the earth will trace a dark path across the moon. Whilst the moon does not have a dark side it does act as a projector screen for the earth’s shadow. Normally, the moon enables light to be reflected from the sun to lighten our nights, as well as help mankind reflect on it’s shadow nature.

picture credit: curlytales.com

On 21 June 2020 there was a solar eclipse which curved around the earth from the Horn of Africa to China. Being only about 53 miles across the umbra shadow cut a relatively narrow road. To the people in it’s path, it was almost certainly an awesome experience.

To lose the light of the sun during the day when it would normally be a reassuring, continual presence, can be frightening. Humans are not naturally nocturnal creatures. We avoid the darkness and emerge from our sleep when the sun’s fingers cross our bedsheets and tickle our chins.

How comfortable our existence becomes! We are always guided by the light, warmed by the infra red or cooled in the shade. We become creatures of the light and self styled spiritual gurus in the west have adopted the title, ‘light workers’. A more balanced approach would be to examine shadows as well as light. Only in this way can the whole be understood. In reality there is no such thing as dark, only an abscence or reduction on light intensity which we call ‘dark’.

Events like solar and lunar eclipses and of course the night, underscore the ‘unwelcome’ reality that there is a dark side to everything. Sometimes the darkness creates fear, sometimes safety. A frightened child may run to the comfort of the wardrobe, only to find a Lion and a Witch and adventures therein. Even the internet has a ‘dark’ cavern where shady characters gather to share and enjoy the unmentionable.

We ignore the spiritual and psychological reality of ‘darkness’ at our peril. For, like all external phenomenon – the cycles of nature – we have shadows within. They contain aspects of ourselves which are not necessarily ‘bad’ by any natural comparison but are deemed ‘bad’ by the arbitrary rules and regulations of society.

Bad in this context naturally excludes causing harm to others. The ‘bad’ is simply that part of our own nature which we are told as children and adults, is wrong to express.

Cultural taboos, customs and norms, laws; all draw boundaries around us which we are forbidden to cross.

Such ‘bad’ behaviour might be a refusal by a child to ‘do you are told’. I was once made to sit in a chair all afternoon staring outside, because I had rebelled against my parents rule that I return for lunch everyday. That day, I was having too much fun riding on top trailers of hay on the local farm. (This was the 1960’s when children played outside all day. Other people were not then regarded as ‘dark strangers’ as they are today by many fearful parents. )

Today I remain an ‘outdoor’ person and ‘sun lover’ much to the amusement of others who tend not to expose their bodies to it’s health giving rays. As an adult I can see that this is their choice and I have mine. There are rational reasons for both standpoints. I stand by my choice as an expression of my own nature. Without this aspect of myself being expressed and experienced, I would not be a whole person.

All of the above is of course pure Jungian psychology, named after the great Carl Jung, one time pupil of Sigmund Freud.

Jung coined the termed ‘individuation’ as being the life time goal of an individual, in place of the less achievable ‘perfection’ in many more classical spiritual paths.

The distinction between the outer and inner nature is a product of dualistic or binary thought, where the two ‘opposites’ create each other.

The brighter the light, the darker the shadow

But we know from physical science that it is impossible to create a ‘dark’ box and it is impossible to create a light of maximum brightness. These two extremes merge into one another somewhere in the middle and that is a good metaphor for the goal of individuation. The light is not worshipped as the only thing that matters, as in the ancient sun god and to some extent modern new age thinkers, and the dark is not feared. The nature of reality is an infinite number of shades of grey.

Carl Jung realised that the repression of the expression of Self, puts away those aspects of consciousness that the individual cannot face and, or, comprehend.

This might be the experience of a trauma as an adult or a child. Whatever the strength of the repressed experience, Jung argued that if allowed to remain in the shadow side of the personality, it would have a negative influence on the personality which not only persists, but expands. This fear eventually becomes greater than the repressed thoughts and feelings and creates a blockage between the conscious and subconscious minds.

The story of Beauty and the Beast is a perfect example of this. The beast has become a completely horrific aspect in the mind of Beauty. She is used to the light and lightness of being and to have some aspect (her maleness ) of her mind shut away is not something she can approach easily. But in the story she over comes her fear of the beast within and eventually she falls in love. At this point the grip of the fear which once held her back from loving, has been broken. The beast turns into the handsome prince he always was.

We all need to discover the prince or princess within us and not shut him or her away in a dark or ivory tower. Sometimes society allows us to do this, sometimes not.

Loki the Trickster

At this moment in time we are reminded by the planets and their place in the spiralling heavens that we have nothing to fear. We need to take the advice from ‘the fool’ – another archetype who Jung termed ‘the Trickster’.

Imagine yourself as the tea pot in the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party in Alice in Wonderland. You are surrounded by rows of plates and cutlery and at each place sits a lunatic character each insistent on their own point of view. If you were that tea pot – sometimes with a dormouse inside and sometimes not – then your task is to remove your lid. Throw your hat into the crowd. Let the light into your dark interior, perhaps to let the dormouse in or out, perhaps just for your own satisfaction of feeling every permutation of what it is to be a tea pot.

There is a modern interviewing technique for candidates to an occupational post. It is to ask rather bizarre questions and record how the candidate responds. One such question is;

What is this? A tea pot is produced and placed on the table.

A conventional mind will answer ‘a tea pot’. An unconventional and open mind will suggest that it is a tool for catching tropical fish underwater, a rain catcher for a leaky log cabin, an echo chamber to aid singers practice as if in a cathedral, a device for pouring liquid concrete into unwanted mouse holes and so on. The obvious answer is obvious, everything else comes from the personal unconscious and sometimes, the shadow self as well.

There is no right answer just the endless horizon of possibilities. When we cross the unreal boundaries drawn by our own minds and, or, social human norms, we cross over into the world of imagination.

Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz experiences individuation by overcoming her fear of the physical world, represented by the characters of the Lion, Scarecrow and Tin Man. These are symbols of the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms / emotions, instincts, mind, within the parameters of which we each play out our lives. As humans we have a unique chance to travel the golden road. At the end of that road, if we ever reach it, we realise – that is, it becomes real – that the Wizard in the dark castle of our minds, is just a frail old man who holds no power over us at all.

If you wish to understand how the ‘fairy tales’ of our childhood are not fairy tales at all, it really is not necessary. They work like the ‘patches’ that we download into our computers. We do not need to understand how they work but by absorbing them the threat to your computer has gone. This is why children crave traditional ‘bedtime stories’ that come from the collective repair shop of mankind’s evolution. What are termed ‘fairy stories’ but are more real than anyone can imagine.

Hello yellow brick road.

picture credit: myHighPlains.com

White Lies Matter

23/06/2020 / Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me / Leave a comment

When I was a boy I had an aunt who had been a Baptist missionary in, what was then, the Belgium Congo and is now the Democratic Republic of Congo.

This gives you a clue that this was the 1950’s and Africa was still largely in the hands of European countries. She and her husband were captured and managed to escape prison and return to England. I remember her telling me once, that ‘black people are not as intelligent as white people’. Fortunately I had never seen a black person at that age. But it was one of many ‘white lies’ I have heard.

I use this anecdote to show how the morality of generations evolve and change. After the second world war and the fight against fascism, opinions of others based on their race, religion, disability, sexuality were liberalised. The Nazis and to some extent Victorians, believed in eugenics and the creation of a ‘master race’ – completely opposite of what today we call ‘respect for diversity’.

My own skin colour I will not reveal here, as it changes with my exposure to the sun and is therefore of little relevance, and my race is – human.

The permission to abuse another human being, on account of their perceived inferiority must go back to ancient Sumer, Abyssinia, Egypt, Greece and Rome. Throughout the Middle East and the Classical world, people were either royal, free or slaves. This was a ‘perfectly normal’ set up and no doubt solved the problem of what to do with prisoners from conquered lands, as well as deciding who was going to do the washing up.

A Chain Gang in Ancient Rome

When Europe adopted Greek and Roman classicism in the Renaissance they stole and copied statues of gods and Emperors; more as decorative pieces of sculpture, rather than because they admired the shameful behaviour of minor gods and Emperors.

But this model undoubtedly had an effect on the human consciences. How else could slavery have remained legal until the eighteenth century? When Europe was exploiting the West Indies and needed slave labour, Africa was convenient for it’s ships to pick up more slaves, and yes, sometimes from Africans ready to sell their enemies.

In those times much of the riches of the Western cultures came from the sweat, blood and tears of slaves. We know this, so – have we changed?

I personally think that we have, but not totally. I see people from all over the world living and working in European cities. There are high achievers and low achievers in any society, depending on how you measure ‘achievement’. But more importantly, people all over the world today are better fed, more likely to survive birth, and more likely to be educated and have access to health care. There are obviously exceptions to all of these but I am describing a trend. There are graphs produced by physicians and social scientists like the late Swedish academic Hans Rosling, that tell us this.

There is room for everyone on the planet according to the Professor

But the devil is, as always, in the detail. Racism endures in the minds of people of all races. There is a saying ‘birds of a feather stick together’ and as a description of human social behaviour, this remains largely, true.

The European collective unconscious has a lot of skeletons in it’s museum vaults and these continue to rattle to the present day.

Clearly, national institutions continue to exert power that is prejudicial towards it’s citizens on account of race, religion, gender, sexuality, disability – despite the introduction of many laws, certainly in Europe, to correct this.

Personally I do not think new laws change societies of themselves, there has to be more. Even after the late Martin Luther King Jnr. gave his inspirational speeches in the 1960’s; sixty years later there are still statues of slave traders in European cities and military bases in the southern states of the USA named after confederate generals.

Head of Martin Luther King Junior in MLK Park, Buffalo, New York State

Whilst it is correct to record and preserve the facts of history and heritage, much of what our forefathers thought was ‘acceptable’ is nothing to be proud of today. Museums and history books must be trusted and treasured so that they enable future generations to learn from the past. This will, at best, inspire an imperative to practice compassion towards one another today, because we got it wrong in past.

Therefore it is clearly the responsibility of those with the power to do so, to make regular assessments of local and national institutions and weed out any ‘honouring’ of the past, of which we should be ashamed, without hiding truth.

The African Americans and many allies, are presently leading the charge against their prejudicial treatment, but the lesson has global implications.

There is not a single human being on the planet including myself, who would not benefit from keeping a constant check on personal behaviours towards others that reveals some irrational prejudice, and immediately correct it.

Some argue that doing nothing is also acting with prejudice and perhaps they are right. Laws can be broken by act or omission, so can our personal integrity. The saying goes something like; ‘evil thrives when the good guys do nothing’.

And it is a fact that people of all colours, creed, tribe and what ever distinction you choose, have done nothing for a very long time. The history of post colonial Africa contains many shameful periods of genocide.

For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo between 1997 and 2003, five million people were killed. If you read an article in the Guardian Newspaper website entitled ‘Wars Will Never Stop’ it quotes a young fighter who was dying in hospital of his shocking injuries from a local skirmish with a rival faction of his rebel group;

“I was just a foot soldier so I don’t really know why we were fighting,” he said. “There are lots of reasons I think …. I don’t think the wars here will ever stop. They will probably get worse.”

The question has to be asked, where were the protests of outrage from people of African heritage in their adopted countries all over the world?

Who did nothing when 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda in just one hundred days in 1994?

Rwandan Genocide

We all have to be careful that they are not being stirred up and manipulated for political reasons. In Rwanda the principle tool for the stirring up of hatred was the public radio.

All societies have to guard against the publication of false information or the abscence of true information. For instance, it is curious that the size of the problem of ‘deaths in police custody’ is not published, despite a law in the United States of America requiring them to be so. The Death in Custody Reporting Act of 2013 went into effect in December 2014, but official figures have never been made public. The reason is either that these figures will prompt national outrage and shame, or lead to a conclusion that the problem is much smaller than it is being made to seem.

Clearly, one death is too many, but national figures covering 500,000,000 people have to be published openly, especially when feelings are running high as they are now.

The core problem is contained in the hearts of those who nurture hatred towards other human beings, for whatever reason. It does not matter if the hatred is black against black or white against black or black against white or white against white. The issue, in my view, is not an identification with a race or class, or creed, but the level of willingness of each human being to allow their love for all of humanity, to rise above everything else.

‘Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.’ Dr. Martin Luther King Junior

Matters Blog

Original thoughts on a variety of subjects that matter to me

Author: Matters Blog - Things that Matter to Me