It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum.
The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation.
They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished. Their hopes for a political solution to their plight have been vanishing.
But the grievances of the Palestinian people cannot justify the appalling attacks by Hamas. Andthose appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.”
picture credit: Israel Hayom
“Excellencies,
The situation in the Middle East is growing more dire by the hour.
The war in Gaza is raging and risks spiralling throughout the region.
Divisions are splintering societies. Tensions threaten to boil over.
At a crucial moment like this, it is vital to be clear on principles — starting with the fundamental principle of respecting and protecting civilians.”
“Protecting civilians does not mean ordering more than one million people to evacuate to thesouth, where there is no shelter, no food, no water, no medicine and no fuel, and then continuing to bomb the south itself.
I am deeply concerned about the clear violations of international humanitarian law that we arewitnessing in Gaza.
Let me be clear: No party to an armed conflict is above international humanitarian law.”
I
picture credit: Reuters Third Reich Concentration Camp
Authors comment; ‘Of all the nations of the world, which would be most expected to understand the horror of ‘collective punishment’ by right wing extremist governments?’
Israel’s response to Antonio Gutteres;
Israel’s response
‘Israel’s Foreign Minister Eli Cohen, in his address to the council, criticised the secretary general’s remarks. After being told by a reporter at a stakeout later that Guterres stood by his statement, the Israeli minister said: “There is no cause for this, and shame on him.”
Cohen then refused to meet with Guterres, writing on X (formerly known as Twitter) that “there is no place for a balanced approach. Hamas must be erased off the face of the planet.”‘ source: Euronews 24/10/23
There is a deadly game of chess being played before the whole world at the moment. Like all chess matches, the out come depends on the ability of both players to see the intentions of the other.
To the casual observer, Hamas control Palestine but it should be remembered that they do not represent the people of Palestine. Their stated aim is to eliminate Israel, but they lack the means to do this. They only have rockets and assault rifles. By any definition, they are a guerrilla army only capable of performing hit and run operations. They have no chance of winning against the larger and better equipped Israeli Defense Force.
But perhaps there is a clue in this ‘David and Goliath’ situation, as to the strategy of Hamas which few commentators have expressed. Most see only a heinous attack on innocent Israelis attending a music festival close to the border with Palestine.
A second clue is that some of those injured, killed and taken hostage by Hamas are from other countries than Israel. Why were multi-national civilians targeted…could it be to call other nations to arms? Will the USA come to collect it’s own, as it always does?
Why have Hamas behaved so provocatively? Taking on Israel’s extreme right wing government is surely madness.
Or is it?
Israel’s principle justification for retaliation is that ‘we have a right to defend ourselves’. Certainly there are those of the Hebrew faith who justify violence, but only in self defense. That part is not in doubt, but then the issue becomes ‘by what means may one defend a country?’ At present it appears that the ‘the end justifies the means’ thinking model (which I covered in a previous blog as a deeply flawed argument), is being used by Israel to react militarily without respect for Palestinian civilians. Why would you take down an entire residential block in order to take out a Hamas cell?
In criminal law, self defense is generally defined as using equal force in response to the attacker but no more; in other words proportionate. It also allows the defender to strike first. Is Hamas defending Palestine or the IDF defending Israel, or both? When did this war begin?
Despite Israel starting from what can only be described as an intelligence failure of Biblical proportions, Israel say they know precisely where Hamas fighters operate from. No doubt Israeli agents, human intelligence sources and proxy parties in Gaza, report daily on which buildings are used for what purpose.
For the last few decades it has been permissible and proportionate for Israeli troops to enter Gaza and the West Bank, and search these places from which Hamas operate. Tactically, they could go in using high quality intelligence, superior numbers and firepower and the element of surprise. They then might work there way floor by floor, room by room engaging in a firefights when taking fire. These are basic anti-terrorist tactics as practiced by Special Forces all over the world. Has this been done by the IDF? Or has Israel developed a conscript army capable only of walking up and down beside fences, sniping at kids throwing stones and controlling road blocks? Partly true perhaps, but it has a professional officer corps who must now lead their troops into the Gaza Strip against a cornered and dug-in militant force on it’s own territory. The IDF need to show the world it can win.
But the use of artillery and missiles to flatten civilian areas of Gaza and medieval siege tactics, indicates that Israel lacks the ability to use proportionate and intelligence led forceto ‘defend itself’.
There is a bigger and more nuanced picture here. Hamas may be extremists using tactics of terror against Israeli civilians, but they know they will never destroy Israel on their own. The ten thousand or so Hamas fighters are not an army capable of open warfare. Instead, in my view, their operations are designed to shock and disgust the whole world. They know precisely how historically Israel will react to hostage taking and murder of their civilian population. In my view, this is what should have made Israel pause and think ‘are we being played here?’
Have Hamas lured Israel into a trap, knowing exactly how to make their enemy go into a rage of self righteousness? Hamas want Israel to respond without regard for civilian life, hospitals and schools in what is often described as an ‘open prison camp’. Hamas are scarily prepared to set up a situation in which innocent Palestinian women and children will be slaughtered without mercy by Israel because, in my view, it intends to shout out a ‘call to arms ‘across the Sunni Muslim and Shia Persian (Iran) countries of the region.
It is obvious that mice do not attack bears unless they have a trick up their sleeve and one trick is that the mice do not care how many non-combatant mice the bear will slaughter. The more the better because the mice know some friendly bears who need to be so outraged that they will join in with the fight.
Presently Hamas sit safe from harm in their tunnels and basements with, I suspect, hidden glee, because the Israeli bear is about to walk into the Bear Pit. Hamas are evil but not stupid. They know that they have friendly armies nearby who are watching closely. Egyptians, for instance, may explode with self righteousness as the pile of Palestinian bodies grows. These are fellow Muslims; brothers and sisters. No more ‘peace be with you’ and ‘Shalom’. This is Old Testament stuff and Joshua will come up to the walls of Jericho once more with his horns and Arc of the Covenant, but this time, to try to destroy Israel.
Hezbollah in Lebanon may join in along with Iran. Egypt might not but who knows? Russia and Syria might. The Muslim countries could make a formidable army of a size not seen since the second world war. This, I believe, is the real aim and strategy of Hamas and to date, everything is going according to plan. Proof of which is gathering of the opposition such as the US Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group (and others) and Amphibious Task Forces positioning currently themselves in the Eastern Mediterranean. Israel can still summon it’s US and Western allies, especially with a U.S. presidential election looming.
But if Israel attracts too much condemnation from U.N. security Council members and other world leaders, it could find it’s status and raison d’etre seriously challenged…as may be prayed for by Hamas. The watching world leaders do not have to side with Hamas when condemning Israel, but they will seek to protect Palestinian civilians, for whom there is has been decades of sympathy worldwide.
The, as yet, unrealised but possible turn of events of this toxic and inflammable political mixture, is the effect of the emergence of a charismatic Islamic leader. These figures pop up at important crossroads in history and this likelihood is no doubt, somewhere in the CIA playlist. Alexander the Great, Napoleon, Hitler…These figure heads gather their military power and come down on their enemies in a whirlwind of destruction. The Muslims are expecting the Iman Mahdi, real or impersonated, and this could be a real factor in forthcoming events.
A Muslim army with a new leader would leave organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah on the sidelines of a global conflagration, such as has not seen for decades. Remember that those who conducted the second World War and knew the importance of avoiding a third at all cost, have now passed on. With that loss, so has much the resolve and memory of politicians to avoid another world war at all costs. That is dangerous.
Another unspoken factor is that the Middle East has a completely different culture to the West and ‘democracy’. Failed foreign interventions, as happened in living memory in Afghanistan and Iraq, show that fighting in a foreign land against religious or political fighters using guerrilla tactics and dictators, distanced from your own country with stretch military supply lines, does not work. Vietnam was the same.
Israel depends largely on the USA for it’s existence and Palestinians on foreign aide.
A ‘two State solution’ depends on peace, fair distribution of land and resources and mutual tolerance. How far we are away from that is subject to debate but it deserves a chance.
Islam is a religion of peace and tolerance. When it is hijacked by extremists who use fake moral virtues to hide their real intentions and justify immoral acts, these actions are neither peaceful nor tolerant. Love and tolerance is at the heart of Christian and Jewish religious ethics making reconcilliation an achievable ideal objective with the right leadership; which is not present at the moment.
In my view the way forward for Israel is to punish Hamas using international law rather than the ‘eye for an eye’ spiral of violence that we are witnessing. There is virtue in seeking peace with honour for all sides, but who will make this happen?
You may wonder why many great mystics have used poetry to express themselves. The masters who have written volumes of scholarly books might look across the writing table at the snoring companion who finished writing after just a few lines.
Brevity in speech and writing is not accomplished easily. Winston Churchill remarked how much easier it is to write a half hour speech than a five minute one. This paradox is perhaps why men of few words are misunderstood, when they should be revered. In a world where technology encourages everyone to ‘have their say’, words are flying around the globe with a speed and volume never known before.
Yet ‘saying more with less’ is surely an art well worth remembering and putting to good use?
If poetry were an equation then let us suppose, it would look like this;
1 + 1 = 3
To explain:
There is a principle of the sum of the parts being greater than the whole.
The first ‘1’ is a simple fact or what we call ‘information’. It is like a railway timetable or menu. It is not generally revealing of anything except as an aid to the general running of things.
The second ‘1’ is knowledge. It is again fairly basic but more subtle to acquire as it comes with experience, understanding and manipulation of all that ‘information’.
Strangely their sum is not ‘2’. When a person acquires a significant amount of information and knowledge during their life, a moment is reached, or at least grasped out for, which conflates facts and knowledge into wisdom which is represented as ‘3’. Wisdom has the quality of the unexpected and often comes as a jolt or joke…as in the Japanese Koan or the royal court Jester’s flippant remark.
In the game of chess this is represented as the ‘knights move’. The knight decides to take what Robert Frost describes in his famouse poem as ‘The Road Not Taken’.
Wisdom has the same quality as; ‘that’s it!’
So why does poetry use brevity to such effect?
We might define a poem as;
…the realisation of ideas using few words…
This runs counter to most modern philosophy and thought where books are written on obscure subjects using specific terms. In other words, if you used these ideas in conversation with those not conversant with them; no one would understand you.
By drawing back from the minutely specific, a poet has the advantage of not only using fewer words, but unexpected ones that suddenly make sense. There becomes an understanding already in place between the writer and the reader through shared experience of life and perhaps, intution. This might be described as a resonance between a subtle sequence of words and the experience to which they refer. If the reader has not had that life experience, as in a child for instance, then the poem cannot be understood.
Tuning forks work as a metaphor for resonance in the physical world. Usually in the physics lab, they are of similar size but if we use ‘philosophical’ tuning forks, then an infinitely large tuning fork will animate a very small one and visa versa.
Resonance picture credit: Quanta Magazine
In this way, as we experience life, we become literally ‘attuned’ to the Universe. There is a Universal tuning fork and a human one. The human feels the energy of the Universe and the information/knowledge/wisdom that travels with the resonant waves. (Remarkable recordings of sounds have now been made from the planets in the solar system which should be heard to believe!) Beyond this level of vibration is the Perfect Word which we might call Mind or God.
The Ancient Egyptians may have understood this or something similar, as they built temples at several times a larger scale than the proportions of the human body. We know that much of the beauty of the body is a product of precise use of sacred proportions.
In his book ‘The Temple in Man’; Schwaller de Lubitz laid images of an upscaled human body over plans of Temples in Luxor. The proportions known as the Golden Mean and Fibonacci series (as evident in the natural processes of growth and fractal patterns in nature) were used to amplify the resonant frequencies focused in and emanating from the Holy of Holies. By this way whatever was contained and protected within the Holy of Holies – such as a statue of a god in Ancient Egypt or the Ark of the Covenant when in possession of the Hebrews – became energised by universal wisdom or one might say; alive.
Scaled down to the human body is our own ‘Holy of Holies’; the human heart. It is placed in the body at a point of focus, so that when metaphorically cleansed and open, the Universal resonances can tune into the own body’s resonance. What you become is whatever energy you focus on in this lifetime whether demonic or angelic, factual or wise, destructive or creative.
The choice as always, is ours. It will there reflect, your truths and generate into the world the messages which you will relay to other people; just as a mobile or cell phone relay station, receives and transmits microwaves.
As an aside, the manifestation of crop circles in certain parts of the world is, in my view, this same effect. Wisdom from inter-dimensional intelligences is being expressed as diagrams and projected onto the surface of the globe. These diagrams are in a way visual poems; very precise and full of meaning. By merely looking at the patterns, it is said, their message can be absorbed and understood; even unconsciously as in the mandala paintings of the East.
Dualistic thinking has a lot to answer for in Western societies. It works in part, but like all approximations, it reaches a point where it is no longer true. What I mean by this I shall illustrated with the following Mullah Nasrudin story.
There was once a King who called all his wise men together. He challenged them to come forward with the largest number that they could imagine. They stroked their beards and looked up to the sky but none could come up with an answer. Hearing of this intellectual challenged in the market place the Mullah Nasrudin begged for an audience with the King as he believed he knew the answer. The King granted his wish and the Wise men and courtiers gathered around to hear his answer.
‘The answer is 348’ announced Mullah.
‘Ptah!’ scorned the head of the Wise men, ‘what about 349?’
‘Oh yes,’ replied the Mullah looking rather downcast but then smiling said, ‘at least I was close.’
Counting is useful but when infinity is placed into the calculation, all hell lets loose. To illustrate this point let us consider the ‘Big Bang’ theory of the creation of the universe. Because in dualistic thinking, everything has a beginning and end it is assumed that so must the Universe. Therefore everything we see today was once not existing before the Big Bang, and one day in the future, will no longer exist. But is this idea a product of truthful observation or thoughts restricted by their own boundaries or a ‘thought cage’? Even the concept of ‘time’ is a ‘thought cage’ where an hour has a beginning and an end. This is true for an observer with a clock, but for a person living in a rain forest, is a meaningless idea.
Certainly if we observe how nature works, everything is cyclic including our own bodies. Within the turning of this circle there is a constant rebirth present, which is by any definition ‘infinite’.
Computer science settled on the idea of ‘on’ and ‘off’ ones and zeros. This carried things along for a few decades but then it reached the cage bars. It could no longer expand. So along came quantum computers which used a new premise of ‘on and off’ being present concurrently. To comprehend the extraordinary effect of this, is not within the scope of this essay but be amazed.
Quantum Computer picture credit: Science Magazine
Perhaps the ‘hippie scientists’ in Silicon Valley had meditated on the Ying Yang symbol for so long that they finally realised, that opposites contain each other. Opposites are not opposite. Beginnings contain ends and ends contain beginnings. This is not a western way of thinking so it took a while for the penny to drop. Off contains on and the other way around, and All is contained in a circular (infinite) whole.
The ‘wheel’ symbol came to the West possibly through the Tarot card named ‘The World’ and itself from the Alchemists depiction of the snake eating it’s tail. Like the spherical rolling ball and the Toroid, these representations of the infinite…a number that has no beginning and no end and no instrument to measure it.
No clock = No start = No time = No end
The James Webb Space Telescope has been staring into space for a few years now. Whilst there will always be various interpretations of what is being observed by the telescope, a well known physicist named Roger Penrose has come to some cage breaking ideas around the Big Bang. Apparently the JWST records galaxies as shrinking rather than expanding as predicted by the Big Bang theory. This means that light from these galaxies is not being stretched and, whilst the non-scientiest will not fully understanding this or other evidence of ‘red shifts being overlarge’, Roger Penrose concludes that ‘there was no Big Bang‘ and ‘time does not exist’. There is a video on You Tube featuring an interview with Roger Penrose for those intrigued.
Suffice to say for the purposes of this essay, that this conclusion can potentially change everything we think and feel in Western societies.
Personally, I have always been a ‘Big Bang’ sceptic and at the risk of sounding smug, I wrote to Sir Fred Hoyle in the late 1970’s suggesting just this. I cited the Hindu story of the ‘Churning of the Ocean of Milk’ imagining space as the ocean of milk. The Churning is brought about in an endless Cosmic tug-of-war between Angels and Demons and a rather discontented snake acting as a the rope. He replied that he had heard of the infinite Universe concept but that he was not convinced.
So what can we learn if there was no Big Bang, provided we are able to agree that this is the more likely theory? Personally I find it rather reassuring that science is able to catch up with what the hitch hikers in the galaxy would simply call ‘common sense’. Obviously you cannot have nothing one day and a whole load of super expanding something in the next nano second. But you can have a whole load of super contracting something becoming a whole load a expanding something.
Put simply this is just like breathing. We breath in and this creates our breath out. Each Universe (and Metaverse and beyond) is an exhalation of dust from dust of the previous cosmic intake of breath. For ‘dust’ also read ‘energy’ as both are interchangeable and that fact is how one can pass through the cosmic nostrils at the moment breathing changes direction.
Add some vibration to the dust and you get waves which in the Old Testament, Genesis calls ‘the Word’. Just as waves on the beach create wave patterns on a sandy beach at low tide, so matter begins to take form.
At a personal level, we are born as spirit (or wave energy if you prefer) into a physical body. Marlo Morgan is an American medical doctor who lived amongst the Real People in Australia. She was initiated into their way of life and ideas in stages;
Female Healer: Do you understand how long forever is?
Marlo Morgan: Yes I understand.
Female Healer: Then we can tell you something else. All humans are spirits only visiting this world. All spirits are forever beings.
Extract from Marlo Morgan’s book ‘Mutant Message Down Under, page 93.
At a few dimensional levels above is the same concept that the Divine Consciousness is within us as infinite consciousness outside of time and space.
With no time and space there is no fixed point for the Divine Consciousness. Logically, with no fixed point (what psychicist invent as ‘singularity’ to explain the Big Bang) there is only forever and ubiquity.
And the ‘Divine Consciousness’ that humans contain in microcosm means that like the Universe we also come and go as spirit moving through matter having a ‘human experience’.
Now that is something to think about and if you are totally blown away by the reassurance the idea brings, it is something to be grateful for.
Australian Aboriginal Painting picture credit: Blanton Museum of Art
We live at a time when volcanoes of information are filling the sky with an uncertain grey dust and obscuring our horizons.
The internet may have enabled ‘nation to speak unto nation’ but instead of bringing understanding and concordance, the effect appears to be the opposite. People with little knowledge consider themselves expert.
I am often confused when at the end of a presentation the speaker asks the virtual or real audience, what they think. ‘Put your thoughts in the comments below’. Really? Who is the expert here? The speaker or the listener?
So how do we make decisions? What is real and true? What is fake?
With this ‘information age’ came a whole generation of young people who were given high expectations in life. ‘You too could one day be Prime Minister’. Statistically true but probably as likely as falling off a cliff.
Being an ‘expert’ has become raised in esteem at the same time as reducing it’s social value. Numerous professions are being disgraced by the media, such as the police, social workers, school teachers, health workers on the evidence of shocking but isolated incidents. It’s a compelling use of emotional persuasion rather that logical reasoning. Those who struggled to reach beyond a life of manual work, are being rewarded with low wages and flagging public confidence.
How has this happened? How do we decide things, really? Are our opinions being made for us?
There is a book that appeared in a permissive 1971 called ‘The Dice Man’ by George Cockcroft which I thoroughly recommend to adventurous readers. The theme of the book is a psychiatrist who starts to make every personal decision with a die. It’s as simple as that. The ‘moral’ values of this character’s life are eliminated and his behaviour become socially ‘exploratory’.
What the theme of the book shows us is that we make decisions and yet those decisions might as well be random for all the understanding we have about how they came about. One might also question where one is going in life.
To get to the rub here; humans decide using their heads, their hearts, their intuition or just randomly; including omission. Most of the time it’s a combination of all of these in unequal proportion of strength of influence.
If that sounds complicated, it is. And when two humans decide something together it gets a whole load more complicated. When a man meets a woman in a bar and they are both looking for a life long partner and wondering if ‘this is it?’, there is a lot of thinking, feeling, intuition and ‘do I feel lucky?’.
When a married couple are shown a house by an estate agent (or realtor), usually the husband is measuring the garage while the wife is in tears over the beautiful kitchen and views of the garden. Or they may both see nothing about the house that they like. Perhaps the agents description pressed the wrong buttons and they thought they were going to look at something else.
What about political decisions? If you live in a democracy you get a vote, now and again. How do you decide? Those whose tendency is to use their mind to make decisions, may read a party manifesto or listen to the speeches of candidates to form a decision based on information.
The problem with this is that the information is almost always biased. Candidates may have only selected facts that support their policies. This may unknowingly contain information that was generated by a hostile state and fed into the minds of politicians and voters alike. Then the bias is from randomly elsewhere and yet intelligent people base their decisions on it.
People are constantly mislead even by their own governments in the same way. For instance, a government might present as fact something that is not true. This has become prevalent in much of modern politics whether in the USA or the UK. The disgraced ex-prime minister Boris Johnson was known as a compulsive fibber even in his school reports and is still present in his ‘I don’t care’ decision making.
To give another example of biased decision making, only those scientists were quoted during the Sars 2 – Covid 19 pandemic whose ideas supported the policies of governments. For instance, if they were specialists in virology and immunology who thought untested RNA vaccines were the best solution to the problem of hospitals becoming overwhelmed, then they were selected to advise ministers and front with the public in interviews.
The decision making process before during and after the pandemic highlights the many strands to justifying decisions that affected people’s lives and livelihoods. The poor decisions displayed little understanding of how decisions should be made. Perhaps the problem was never hospital capacity but keeping people fit to continue to go to work and for children to study; all by using socially reassuring and cost benefited methods.
Much of the justification of actions by governments during the pandemic was accepted by the general public because persuasion was targetted at the emotions rather than the mind and good old ‘common sense’. Instead the emotion targetted at populations was fear. If governments can persuade their populations that they have to do x,y and z otherwise they will die or cause the deaths of others, then they gain a dominating position.
Proffesor Mark Woolhouse wrote in The Guardian newspaper
And nothing could be further from the truth, argues Professor Woolhouse, an expert on infectious diseases at Edinburgh University. “I am afraid Gove’s statement was simply not true,” he says. “In fact, this is a very discriminatory virus. Some people are much more at risk from it than others. People over 75 are an astonishing 10,000 times more at risk than those who are under 15.”
The argument ‘get vaccinated or you will be passing a fatal illness on to others’ has also since been proved to be factually incorrect! The drug companies had thought about this but only conducted research using eight (or was it ten) rabbits. As to harms associated with the vaccine, these were strongly denied and anyone suggesting they may cause myocardial disease was discounted as a ‘conspiracy theorist’. This expression has evolved into an emotional criticism rather than showing a basic understanding of the difference between a ‘theory’ and a fact.
Again there has since been found a high percentage of excess deaths in those vaccinated, either causal or temporally correlated; a situation that has not been publicised, explained or apologised for by either drug companies or governments.
The whole ‘pandemic’ situation can be seen with hindsight by the rational mind as a ‘storm in a tea cup’ stirred up initially by a despotic government to whom few other nations openly respect in most other matters, namely the China’s Communist Party.
Pandemic Politics picture credit: The Economist
Was ‘lock down’ ever a better alternative to ‘go to bed’? How did ‘lock down’ ever become acceptable to freedom loving democracies?
Emotionally, many were traumatised by events when they really didn’t need to be, especially by constant fear inducing reporting by the media. The only solution offered to the fear of death, was to be vaccinated.
There were some who didn’t understand the science and didn’t feel the fear but made a decision about whether to be vaccinated based on intuition. These are the people with who are hardest for governments to deal with. Novak Djokovich knew his own mind on the subject of vaccinations and spent time in detention in Australia for his principles.
In summary, most life decisions are far more complex than we have to tools to make. Victorian education was based on fear induced fact learning. Today unrealistically optimistic self belief is taught in schools. Perhaps in the future children and young people will be taught how to gain a rigorous understanding of their psychological, emotional, intuitive and ‘I just feel lucky’ characteristics. Ultimately, understanding oneself with any clarity takes a lifetime to achieve, if at all. Trial and error decision making is really not a good tool for life in my opinion but it happens to an alarmingly high degree not least in those who lead us.
Governments and citizens have become like rabbits caught in the headlights of change. They look left and right for a safe direction to run but like unfortunate lapins, our future depends on making swift, informed, ethical, unbiased, emotionally intelligent, compassionate and inspired decisions for ourselves, our loved ones and those who come after us.
You have one sixteenth of a second to decide. Your time starts now.
A Bomber crew are flying across a desert. Suddenly, all four engines cut out. They have miscalculated their fuel. The pilot sees a small dot of green below and glides the plane down to crash close by. The navigator lays the pilot down in the shade of a palm tree for the pilot has broken his leg. They discuss what to do and the navigator says he will explore at dusk on a bearing of 90 degrees. He does so and comes back in the morning reporting not having found anything. The next night he does the same with the same result. The pilot asks him why he set off in the same direction as the night before. The navigator replies that he wanted to be sure where he was going, by following his footprints.
That’s how many people get around, even those who can loose of their habits but do not. We learn a route and just keep going the same way. Probably the majority of the human population know how to get to only a limited number places, lierally and metaphorically, limiting their life experience.
In defence of this ‘keeping to a well known track’, humans live complex lives and repetition is a coping mechanism. We know that animals act in exactly the same way, scurrying through undergrowth on well worn paths and so doing become meat for hunters.
As humans should we not be more adventurous than animals? Even in our ‘modern’ city lives our culture encourages ‘everyday’ repitition. Many people listen to their favourite music tracks using the ‘repeat’ button the listen over and over again. Some book their holidays the day they return to go back to the same hotel a year later.
Like everything, exploring the unusual starts in our imagination. As creators we can imagine a thing and make it happen. That is very powerful but when a person lacks the ability to ‘think big’ or ‘out of the box’, then how can they progress through life? When you listen to conversation it is common to hear figures of speech such as ‘so’ (to start a sentence with a conjunction!), ‘to be honest’ or ‘in terms of’ repeated endlessly. They lack the ability to string together a line of words imaginatively without using meaningless words and phrases endlessly. Perhaps they are thinking faster than they speak and have never applied themselves to slow down. Perhaps their habitual words have become unconscious and if you challenged them you would only convince them they say ‘you know’ constantly by recording and playing back their conversations.
There is a verbal game show on BBC Radio 4 in which contestants have to speak for a minute without repetition, deviation or hesitation. It is not as easy as it sounds.
Sadly, much conversation involves listening to others giving accounts of situations in which they found themselves in the past. A simple trigger word such as ‘electricity’ will start them off on a story of how their house had no electricity for three days and they ran out of candles and matches they read books by more candles they found under the kitchen sink. If they have a partner, that person will be rolling their eyes because they have heard this story ad infinitum.
Repetition is boring. I said, repetition is boring.
Subtlety though, even something new, can quickly become a mere copy / repeat. The world of fashion for instance, challenges designers to think of some new design that has never been done before even if it is something as mundane as a new fabric design or hue.
‘Everybody, this year, is wearing blue!’
The designs hit the factories which start to make thousands of identical garments. At the office party the bosses wife discovers she is wearing exactly the same dress as his secretary. The secretary should have gone for the pink dress but had been made to feel it was ‘unfashionable’ by those who are paid to ‘set the trends’.
Japanese Soccer Fans pitcture credit: BBC
Happy souls who support a football team will do so with a level of loyalty that has them acting in greater unison than a school of fish; wearing the same football shirt, sitting in the same seat, eating the same hamburgers, singing the same songs.
Originality knows how to run for the hills, if we let it.
Religions are perhaps the strictest social organiser. They demand complete obedience to certain set norms in dress, behaviour and ritual; down to the greatest detail. Repetition of phrases, verses and even complete Holy books illustrates how humans can reduce their super computer brains to being mere SD cards, when prompted.
So what can be done to release humanity from reptition? How do we make the navigator in our heads walk on a bearing of 91 degrees and then 92 degrees each night; until a village is found at 112 degrees?
Sometimes it takes no more than just a mere tweek, to add variety to life. Those who commute to work probably follow the same route each day for years. Yet, there will always be other routes available even if they may take a minute or so longer. There may be alternative means of travel such as walking or riding a bicycle, performing cart wheels or sliding on ice. ‘Walking buses’ for groups of children is an excellent example of how simple changes can invigorate human activity.
Artists have always been beacons of innovative method and expression. Every author sits down and writes a book that no one has read before. It may follow perennial themes of love and war, but the story and characters will be entirely original. The more boundaries of literary norms that are broken the greater the appreciation of the book. James Joyce’s Ulysses is an example of stunningly novel literary…novel.
In every human activity success comes when imagination and the ability to explore the imagination, fuse into the entirely original. This is true for science as well as art, politics, engineering, design, exploration and all things humans reach out to in order to excel.
Learning how to think is a subject which is not taught in schools. This must surely be a folly partly produced by those who think repetitively. It is assumed that children already know how to think in the same way they acquire language; by repetition. This is true, of but of course the thinking skills involved in early learning are at risk of being mere copies of adults mechanical patterns of thinking. Psychologists like Edward de Bono created thinking tools that enabled the ability to think into infinity, or at least where no metaphorical human had thought before. Managers in commerce and industry sent their staff to learn his techniques and used them to gain commercial advantage.
If you asked the man or woman in the street to make up a new word in ten seconds, they would probably stumble. If you taught them the technique of substituting one vowel for another the task is simple. For example, ‘cat’ become cet, or cit or cot or cut. There we have two new words with no meaning yet ascribed.
Ask a friend to do something in the next minute that they have never done before and they might well just stare at the ceiling for a minute because that is what they always do when they cannot think. A person for whom imagination has no boundaries will roll up their shirt sleeve, dip their elbow in a tin of custard and write their name on the ceiling.
There we have two ends of the same problem. Thinking and acting via mere repetition and doing the same but in innovative ways. Somewhere in between these two extremes is a happy medium.
The human brain that can engage in acting whilst ‘not thinking’ such as a Zen Buddhist monk, can change their world. The pattern of logical thought becomes short circuited and the meditators brain changes frequency quite literally, to a completely new level.
Even though a Zen Buddhist monastery teaches using repetition, there is a level of awareness that eventually arises of it’s own accord; above the casual and ordinary whilst in the casual and ordinary.
In this way the world which humans perceive becomes unlimited and infinite in it’s possibilities. It is neither repetition nor innovation, but it is something. This insight is captured in the line which the singer Donovan wrote based on Buddhist philosophy;
‘First there is a mountain then there is no mountain then there is.’
How we live ultimately comes down to the energy patterns in our neural pathways; in the brain and spine and various nerve plexuses. How we think is directly related to how our synapses are used to work and from children and according even to gender, we run our own brains in increasingly mechanical ways.
At a more subtle level, our energy centres, or chakras, are also subject to becoming inbalanced due to overuse in one area or another. This is a whole new subject which I explore in another website chakracard.wordpress.com. But suffice to say that we live enclosed in what Don Juan in Carlos Castaneda’s book ‘The Fire From Within’ describes as a ‘luminous egg’. This is our energetic connection with the subtle worlds beyond physicality. This ‘egg’ can also be another boundary which Don Juan calls a ‘cocoon’. He explains , and I will give him the last word;
‘A mere glimpse of the eternity outside of the cocoon is enough to disrupt the coziness of our inventory.’ page 115
Humans are social animals and their historic ascent to the top of the food chain, came largely from this instinct to act as a group.
We should not be too conceited about this however as many creatures live as a ‘colony’. When a wolf pack moves across ground in line, the strongest animals lead and follow and the weakest take a place in the middle for safety. Penguins form a dynamic huddle to survive the sub-zero winds. Those on the perimeter continually shuffle towards the centre before going back the edge.
Even insects such as drone bees, protect future of the colony in the shape of the Queen, above their own lives.
Humans, however, have a freedom to ignore the ‘greater good’ and act purely in their individual interests. The result is clearly apparent in ‘western’ societies, where the wealthy thrive and the poor strive to survive. Heroic characters such as Robin Hood of Nottingham, epitomised this ‘greater good’ principle and heroically stole from the rich to give to the poor.
As the R.M.S. Titanic cut through the icy waves, part of the wealthy owner’s focus was to beat the record time for a crossing of the Atlantic by an ocean liner. The White Star Line needed to beat the competition. This desire and it’s consequences, as we know, seeded catastrophe.
Ironically, when it came to individuals on the sinking ship, there was an honourable decorum, and the men generally helped the women and children onto the lifeboats. ‘Me first’ as an instinct for survival was selflessly over ridden by the ‘common good of the species’ and the orchestra played on.
These philosophical reflections on social morality shine a revealing light on what is happening today in western societies.
A certain candidate for the forthcoming elections for the president of the USA, has the campaign slogan, ‘America First’. This highlights the paradox between the rights of the State and the individual. There is an implied promise that by making America ‘great again’, each and every citizen will get a fair share of the apple pie.
But there is no promise and if the homeless of ‘down town America’ stopped to think about this vague contract, they might not vote for the orange Orang U’tang again.
Governance along lines of the good of all and sharing, or socialism if you want, was part of the American Declaration of Independence. The King of Great Britain was characterised as the Sheriff of Nottingham in the Robin Hood story. He was a tyrant, as had most British Kings been since Alfred the Great.
The governance of a nation by one person ironically contained a great advantage for the common people. If you remove the tyrant Monarch, you end his reign in one swing of the sword. But today, ‘treason for the common good’ is not so simple. With the many levels of power in modern democracies, the monster has many self regenerating heads.
You might find yourself slashing and lunging at the Military Industrial Complex, the Deep State, the Secret Societies, the Elected Government, the Illuminati, the Billionaire families and the Tech Billionaires, the Banks including the Central Reserve, the numerous Institutions of State (some declared and some not), the Dark Web, major organised crime…the list goes on. If it is hard to fight a royal monster with one head, it’s near impossible to fight one with many.
But revolution rarely results in lasting peace. It generally creates a lull whilst the monster just grows another head.
In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in 2016 there was a referendum for change. The question was whether the State should remain part of the European Union. As the fifth richest nation in the world at that time, the citizens of that country saw the EU as a kind of Robin Hood, that took from the rich countries and gave to the poor ones. When they asked the question, ‘what is in it for me?’ their was silence. So just over half of those who were motivated by this ‘injustice’ to vote, voted for ‘independence’ or ‘us first’. They were persuaded that a country that turns it’s back on it’s 27 neighbours is going to be much better off and if not better off, British. Again, there was an expectation that what benefits the Nation will ‘trickle down’ to the individual.
picture credit: Sunday Mirror
Seven years on, poverty is such a problem in the UK that the poor, go to food banks in order to survive. If they become ill, their beloved NHS will send to the end of a very long line of the sick and dying. If they can no longer afford to pay the monthly mortgage payments or rent, they will have to sofa surf whilst waiting in an even longer line for ‘social housing’. Either that or a cardboard box under a bridge. These and many other social failures herald an era where the State is run by the prosperous with little deference to the deprived.
Russia and China look on with interest. A divided community of European Nations and a division between the USA and Europe pulls, the trigger of the starting pistol for their plans. The communist system embraces the principle of reducing individual wealth so that everyone is equally poor, or at best, equally good party members.
If they ever existed in Communist regimes, the rights of the individual were banished during the SARS -2 , Covid 19 pandemic. Those who view social ‘lock downs’ as a rehearsal, will be wondering what is coming next. If the richest want to abandon ship, at this moment in time they cannot move their money out of China. Control of money by the State, is a very modern way to control the individual.
The citizens of Western democracies are discovering that cash machines are disappearing from the high streets…as are the high streets. States are setting up digital currencies giving them complete control over the individual. Freedom to travel is being restricted to 15 minute zones and autonomous cars will not be driven by citizens but the Ministry for Citizen Movement. Even the right to decide what goes into their own bodies, once held as sacrosanct, was rescinded during the Covid pandemic.
At a time when individuals find themselves in a world that presently stumbles from one crisis to another, they must ask themselves if these world problems are real and if so, do they want the solution being offered by the State?
There is no system of governance that is perfect be it right or left wing. This is because organisation has to incorporate change of social and individual values, swinging sometimes to the left and at other times to the right. Like the shuffling penguins in an Arctic huddle, an penguin may experience extreme cold for a period of time before it’s turn to shuffle to the warm centre again.
picture credit: Birdwatching Magazine
Democracies are the nearest system of governance to this ideal, as they generally swing from left to right every set number of years. But it’s not a smooth series of transitions and often change is poorly managed. Social housing was sold off in the 1980’s in the UK and no government of any description has sought to bring it back. The result is a housing shortage crisis.
At a global level, there is a ‘climate crisis’. Nations of the world are being asked to join together in overcoming an imminent threat to each and every citizen of the world. Right wing politicians in individual rich countries like the UK, argue that they only caused 1% of the emergency so they do not have to help the rest of the world. Again we hear the ‘me first’ argument but upscaled to global proportions.
The West does not have control of the Equatorial Rain Forests and the benefits they bring to climate change. Neither does it have control of the American Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) and rising sea temperatures and melting polar ice, nor the new hole in the Ozone Layer over northern Arctic regions.
This blue and green spinning space ship is racing towards a metaphorical iceberg. In the rush for the life boat known as Space X and other wildly hopeful Mars missions, you might discover that there is a new component in human evolution. It is called ‘the survival of the richest’, otherwise known as ‘me first’.
It is easy to understand atheists. For a start, God presents invisibly. That’s not a good way of convincing people that you exist. Rather like the whole idea of Father Christmas, you can only get away with lying to the naïve for so long. Wise, older children don’t believe.
Similarly, in the two holy books the Christians have, the God of the first book operates as a sort of terror organisation ranting against those in need of a good smote, and the God of the second book introduces a family member who operates as a punch bag rather than a puncher.
If you were born in the East instead of the West, you might have aligned your thoughts and feelings with Buddhists. They skip over the whole idea of a Creator with more practical definitions of good behaviour (noble paths) and just getting along with each other. This philosophy works, as the world turns whether humans believe in God or not…making Him or Her, philosophically surplus to requirements.
Reading his books or listening to the late, great Alan Watts on You Tube, you might become convinced that this is the case. He describes the famous stone being thrown into the middle of the equally universal pond and the circle of ripples spreading outward. These ripples are like the illusion of life we are invited to understand. In reality, the water is not moving at all! The water remains motionless on the x axis, and bobs up and down on the y.
The waves of the sea are similarly completely static and what you are watching is merely kinetic energy disappearing on a beach, making sand.
It’s a clever argument. Because of this illusory nature of life, a good Zen Buddhist should discount illusion and just sit.
But what if illusion is real? Who says that? Well the Idealists say that. Just because you cannot see energy does not mean it does not exist. Radio, gamma rays, X-rays and a whole rainbow of information rich, electro magnetic energy is passing by and through you as you read this. Not seeing does not prove non-existence.
If you wish to live in a material universe then you will always disagree with believing in the invisible. There must be proof, you say. But of course, Sir Isaac Newton produced the Newton’s cradle to show energy moving invisibly through matter centuries ago. Albert Einstein famously equated matter and energy as being the same over a hundred years ago. Energy is a fine form of matter and matter is a dense form of energy. And now, Quantum Physicists working at the sub-atomic scale, prove matter is far more strange than it appears to be to the human eye. The greatest trick of all is that two molecules, a billion light years apart, will act in unison.
This is describing a universe that is beyond miraculous. In my view, materialism should have died long ago, when the saints and prophets consistently demonstrate that the Universe is both matter and information rich energy. If matter was dead, prophets like Jesus the Christ, could breath energy into it and bring it back to life. ‘Take thy bed and walk.’
The energy part is what we call God, since it not only activates matter but also imbues matter with information. So to believe in the real Santa Claus, what you need is a belief in the chimney, a crashing descent of a body down the chimney and an unexpected present in the fireplace.
This is a far more inclusive philosophy than the atheists describe in my view. You can try to insist that everything except matter is an illusion but really, the world has spun too many times, to believe it is a simple as that. Small minds like to reduce things to the minimum because it creates a mental clarity, but really, there is no clarity. For the believer, there is only mystery. There is only the infinite (all our prayers, incantations, thoughts, wishes, beliefs, fantasies, commands, intentions, regrets, affirmations and the rest) extending outwards from a spinning ball of hot matter.
And if we doubt, then imagine the human body as the microcosm of the universe and we can experience ourselves as an organic blob of stuff, powered by information rich energy.
Every DNA coded cell in the human body is powered by 70, information rich, millivolts. If you ever need proof that an invisible God exists, there it is.
Many present day thinkers, expound the present times as being highly consequential to the evolution of the earth and it’s inhabitants.
Whilst there are various extraordinary events playing out on the material plain, we should also consider what is going on in the plains parallel to us; as described in the Hermetic principle; ‘as above so below, as below, so above’.
A recent event caught the attention of the whole world as an intensely tragic and complex human story. I am referring to the Titan submarine disaster in which five brave explorers lost their lives.
Let us take a sideways view of the roots of that story as it is symptomatic, in my view, of far more consequential radical changes in human experience.
The Tower of Babel is featured in the old Testament as a pinnacle of human achievement, both literally and metaphorically. The building was intended to reach into the domain of the gods, in an act of vanity and false bravery that was punished by God using elemental destruction.
This tower, as were the pyramids of ancient Egypt, was intended to ‘fix’ a moment in time when the great cosmic cloud which was the original Universe, changed state and became matter. Imagine water vapour turning into liquid, then ice and that is the process which the Universe went through until the present day.
There are many indications that the great wheel which started this process is beginning to change direction. Matter is returning to energy and synchronically, humans in their physical and energetic bodies, will follow the same pattern; matter will return to Mind for they are both just energy (E=Mc2).
In gathering together the strongest possible materials to build a ship capable of withstanding enormous pressure, were it’s creators not guilty of a vain project against nature? And the greatest error of all, to take this ship to a place where thousands of people had died in horrific circumstances; the waters memory of a titanic tragedy?
On a parallel plane, there exist in this same place ‘thought beings’ of enormous energetic strength who were known in ancient times as Titans.
The Titan ‘Oceanus’ who rules the North Atlantic Ocean
Just because we no longer encounter spirit beings and choose to regard memory of them as ‘fantasy’, does not mean they no longer exist.
The popular trilogy of Matrix films describe the dual realities, where the hero Neo has to move into another dimension and fight the ‘programme’ or ‘thought being’ known as Smith, an almost impossible opponent, stronger even than the once dependable ‘Oracle’; a possible reference to the Oracle of Delphi in ancient Greece.
Let us take a downward journey into the metaphysical plane where Titans not only lurk today, but have been awakened by the cataclysmic events – many still to come – of the present era.
We should understand that the Titans fundamentally resist any change of consciousness in human beings and many people are experiencing such a change in the present time. They were known as Saturn’s ‘enforcers’ as they resist change by force.
‘Dionysus, like Zeus, represents the evolution of a new form of consciousness, and again the Titans were determined to nip it in the bud. Again we see that Titans are the consciousness eaters.’
The Secret History of the World’ by Jonathan Black; page 93.
Their mother is Gaia, the Earth goddess who has been subject to enormous stress and degradation by the vain and self centred activities of humans. She has started and will continue to engage the elementals (earth, air, fire, water, spirit) in destabilising human activities using earth movements, storms, forest fires, Tsunami’s and rising sea levels. These cataclysms, while daunting, are in fact the birth pains of the creation of a New Earth, as described in the accounts of Dolores Cannon (a modern day Oracle ), for those who wish to know more and have access to You Tube.
There is already a gate between the melting material plane and the next evolutionary experience of human beings; an ‘Oceangate’ into the so called ‘Fifth Dimension’.
The effect of this opportunity is a mental transition from regarding the Universe through an illusory dualistic pair of spectacles, into a single monocular Unity. Human history and art describes this struggle between opposites a rather ‘inevitable’ human condition. In reality, love and hate are purely concepts that bear no relation to the single emotion they represent, just as laughter and tears are dual aspects of just one feeling. Think of all ‘opposites’ and join them together on a flat continuum and you will understand.
In the same way that the animal kingdom evolved from one to two eyes, so humans will take one further evolutionary leap into intuitive perception and communication using the single pineal gland. This organ is a remnant of the vegetable ‘Lantern of Osiris’ depicted in ancient Egyptian paintings as sprouting from the centre of the forehead, also known as the ‘third eye’ in Eastern Yogic practice and is painted on the forehead as a Bindi, in Hinduism. New perception needs new organs and the opening of the ‘fire cone’ is just this.
Fontana de la Pigan, The Vatican, Rome
In Islamic tradition, we shall know of the metaphorical ‘end times’ (meaning transition not ending) when ‘end time’ events happen; such as the worship of the Antichrist or ‘One eyed one’.
Abu Hurairah (May Allah be pleased with him) said:
The Messenger of Allah (ﷺ) said, “Let me tell you something about Dajjal (the Antichrist) which no Prophet had told his people. He is blind (in one eye) and will bring with him something like Jannah and Hell; but what he calls Jannah will be in fact Hell.”
Could it be that the screens of our computers and cell phones represent just such a transition of consciousness from our physical reality into a virtual reality. This change is a technological mirror of change in parallel planes; from the 3/4D plane into the 5D. How many mobile phones are circulating the Kaaba in the pockets of the faithful at this very time?
AI is an abbreviation that hints at ‘An I’. In human consciousness we are moving towards ‘An I’; meaning union with the One, rather than the chaotic multiplicity of life today. This is the deeper level of understanding of the Universe; from the multiplicity of religions and all the converging areas of human experience into the One Mind, or as simply stated in the Old Testament of the Holy Bible;
And He said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you’” (Exodus 3:14).
In conclusion, just as the process of ‘solidification’ into matter is the end result of the liquid and gaseous origins of the Universe, so our present ‘solid’ physicality is starting to melt. Between water and air are the waves that carry the energy which is the One Mind and the invitation is for us to ride with the waves.
Think of that, next time you sit on the beach watching the waves, and if you see the sea receed followed by a huge wave coming towards you, know that the only escape is to jump.
It’s a good question. Animals are simple enough, as their days consist of the need to satiate their needs for survival and emotions. Beyond this, whatever happens doesn’t bother them too much, so long as it isn’t a threat. Watching a cat snoozing or a hog gently feeding it’s young in mud, grants us this insight.
But as humans, surely our need for happiness goes deeper than the animals?
At the beginning of a life, we know a new born child has an instinct to seek it’s mother’s breast. After this physical and emotional nourishment, the infant can sleep, if only for a few hours before demanding the same again. At this level of development, humans are not obviously more sophisticated than animals, although admittedly, the process of complex learning, such as language, has undoubtedly begun.
Children can also become unhappy, as we know too well. The smallest discomfort or denial of pleasure creates a disturbance in the emotional well being of a child that we have all experienced. Unhappiness is the inevitable accompaniment to happiness and both become much of an adult’s life.
We are encouraged to immerse in this compulsive process of ‘pleasure seeking’ in a bid to overcome the roller coaster, which is the happy / unhappy continuum. Buddhist identify this pattern as ‘desire’ and recognise it as being a hopeless continuum; like the donkey following the carrot on a stick.
picture credit:Bloomberg
‘Recreational’ drugs try to break this cycle with the falacy of pursuing ‘happiness in a bottle’; where happiness is mistaken for chemically induced pleasure. Most people who have taken recreational drugs such as alcohol, will know that the ‘high’ comes at the cost of a ‘low’.
Despite this fickleness, the pursuit of pleasure is in some way less complicated than what one might call happiness. It can be induced by purely physical stimulation of the body. Happiness cannot.
To examine how pleasure and happiness are different, it might be that ‘happy’, has an emotional level as well an instinctual ups and downs. The heart gives us richer less tangible feelings of happiness that are less fleeting and can reward us even as a memory, for a lifetime. One’s marriage day is contained in the folded memories of the heart, like the birth of a child or one’s first love.
Happiness is in this way more constant than pleasure and is a function of both physical and emotional experience.
But we can climb this ladder one more rung if we consider the spiritual level of human experience. However much one may try to deny one’s spirituality, much of the progress of human civilisation documents this step upwards and is expressed in great works or sculpture, art and literature. The human experience is shown to be capped by spiritual experience and this results in what we call ‘contentment’. Religions and spiritual traditions around the world venerate people who reached ‘contentment’ by breaking attachment to this world and becoming an embodiment of the contentment found in love.
Souls who have attained a high level of spiritual contentment, will no longer be reliant on pleasure, and be ‘in but not of, the world’.
Neither will they be tugged hither and thither by emotional demands. Emotional feelings are not ignored, but observed dispassionately and recognised for what they are; passing, fleeting, capricious, irrational, beautiful, absorbing…a string of contradictory adjectives, which describe life.
Spiritual realms, we might observe, are not reached by being a slave to the world. Rather, they are reached by a process of no longer believing in unwanted connections to a ‘reality’ that is ultimately, not real.
A ‘holy man or woman’ historically has been recognised by this detachment from all pleasures and displeasure and all happiness and unhappiness. Torturers in the middle ages for instance, might inflict the most disturbing acts on their bodies. They might throw them into the deepest dungeon in the castle but evolved beings will emerge having removed the metaphorical thorn from the lion’s foot (the pain of life), as did Daniel in the Old Testament. No cruelty or threat of harm disturbs them, because they do not include this pattern of behaviour in their thoughts and emotions. Historically such stories of saints and prophets abound.
The great wheel of Fortune on which most people find themselves today, is in contrast, relentless.
Modern living in Western societies is hard for the majority. Depression and even suicide, has risen seemingly in proportion to one’s level of comfort. However rich a person is or famous, they find that they are not exempt from the torturer’s wheel because they are bound to it, as are most of us.
So long as people seek everything, except spiritual contentment, they will only ever achieve fleeting pleasure and happiness. The rest of the time they will be in the grip of desire for pleasure and happiness.
Only when the wheel stops, are you permitted, to step off.
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