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The Era of Terror

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In 2001 on September 11th there was an attack on the World Trade Centre in the city of New York and simultaneously other locations critical to national security. Many United States of America citizens felt threatened in their own country for the first time; horror was not happening somewhere else. President George W. Bush famously declared a ‘war on *error’ and many sympathetic and perhaps frightened nations, rallied to the clarion call.

The problem was, what is a *errorist? Is it an individual, a group, an army, a State or just a cause?

A definition of *errorism is;

‘The unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.’

This definition creates an ambiguity as it so broad, it includes conventional warfare between countries. But perhaps all ‘war’ is a form of *errorism? At the other extreme, one person acting alone can be a *errorist. Attacks by one or many are high risk missions usually against a considerably superior force.

*errorism is mostly a means of engendering fear in a population for political aims and in my view is a tactic distinct from total war.

I list below five examples historical examples of *errorist conflicts. The question I am asking myself is ‘how could these have been better dealt with?’. The conclusion I reach is not what you might expect, given the cost that individuals and nations pay in efforts to ‘eliminate’ the *errorist/s.

  1. In Rwanda there was a mass murder carried out by one tribe against another. Even next door neighbours became enemies overnight and were dealt with brutally.
  2. The Irish Republican Army emerged from Southern Ireland against Northern Ireland using terror tactics. After three decades of getting nowhere with violence the IRA joined the government under the name of their political wing; Shin Feinn and a peace treaty ‘The Good Friday Agreement’ signed.
  3. A Coalition of Nations invaded Afghanistan on 7th October 2001. After a couple of decades they departed unceremoniously, leaving the Taliban extremists to form a government.
  4. The Green Peace ship ‘Rainbow Warrior’ was sunk by two agents of the French government in New Zealand’s Auckland Harbour as it threatened French projects in the region. The agents were sent to jail and Rainbow Warrior II was launched.
  5. The Archduke Ferdinand was assassinated by a Serbian in an act of terror that started the First World War, due to a complex system of Treaties within Europe.

In these examples it can be seen that the *errorist is unlikely to achieve their aim by the use of violence, whilst civilian populations suffer most. Governments also fail to ‘come out on top’ during protracted campaigns against politically motivated *errorists. If the head of the mole is hit, another one pops up.

The challenge, in my view, is one of problem solving: a subject assumed to exist where it often does not. Yes, if your country is attacked you use force to repel the attack, but when the enemy disappears as the smoke rises from the scene of carnage, who are your armies expected to fight? The best they can do is ‘patrol’ and in the process be picked off by an unseen enemy. So what would a ‘problem solver’ do?

If I can use the metaphor of the problem of driving a nail into a piece of wood, we may view it from a different perspective; a tried and tested problem solving technique.

(1) There are those who would argue that a hammer is too brutal and something soft, such as a banana should be used. The United Nations Peace Keeping Force during the Rwandan genocide in 1963/4 are an example of this. Because of strategic priorities and orders ‘not to fire unless in self defence’ they were powerless to stop the atrocities Hutu’s atrocities against the Tutsi.

(2) After decades of effort with little success, the person hitting the nail gets tired. The British Army during the decades of the Northern Ireland ‘troubles’ failed to achieve their aim of keeping the United Kingdom safe from *errorism. The two sides finally came together and shook hands as both finally realised the futility of violence.

(3) In Afghanistan the original nail turned into one of a multitude. As fast as nails can be driven in, others appear unexpectedly. Both the Russian invaders and the Coalition Armies failed to fight effectively against the guerrilla tactics of the Mujahidin and Taliban respectively. The Coalition was beaten militarily and politically, as was the USA in Vietnam.

(4) The nail fails to be driven in one stroke. The *errorists are detained, tried, put in prison but released before their sentences expired. The sinking of the Green Peace ship is an example of this. The building of a new ship to replace the old is an example of the futitily of violence.

(5) Sometimes the hammer produces an unintended spark which sets fire to the whole workshop. The assassination of the Arch Duke Ferdinand igniting the first World War is an example of this.

How our metaphorical nail got there in the first place and whether a skilled carpenter would have more success, or removing the wood from the nail, or not using a hammer, are just a few of the options unlikely to be considered.

What today is termed ‘soft politics’ must be a viable option to the ‘alpha male locking of horns’ approach of the past. Certainly there are lessons from the past which have repeatedly failed to be learnt.

In present times, matters which you might consider to be of the most extreme importance to individuals and nations are put in the hands of politicians and bureaucrats. If there are wise advisers in government or opposition or in the civilian population, they might be ignored or suppressed (prison) or ‘eliminated’ (deportation or execution). This process compounds the dissent in civilian populations.

In the 21st century one would hope that solving problems by direct confrontation is no longer an option. Wars are expensive and if for no other reason than this, governments need to face up to those who commit *errorist acts against them with the answer to a simple question; where did this come from? In my view, unpicking the answer is the beginning of a solution.

Perhaps all war is *errorism and as Winston Churchill suggested, ‘Jaw Jaw’ is how to solve all the problems. Perhaps warfare in general is the error? How cleverly Mahatma Gandhi reclaimed the jewel of the British Empire with just a loin cloth and spinning wheel.

It’s Not a Phobia

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Regular readers will know that I am interested in words and language and how sometimes a shortage of words limits the boundaries of thought.

My case is that there is no excuse for a shortage of words, in any language, as they are easy to make up.

The study of lexical semantics is concerned with this issue. It includes and in a manner requires the creation of new words in language through ‘common use’ rather than academic or inspired thought by an individual. Languages not only define themselves but give birth!

Perhaps the process of the movement of a word into common usage is a product of both conception by an individual and adoption by society because society has a use for it.

So here is my attempt as an individual, at introducing a new word into the English speaking world. My intent is that common understanding and adoption of it’s the word would correct a ‘vagueness’ and introduce a ‘precision’ in thought.

The word I propose to challenge, correct and replace is ‘Islamaphobia’.

This is why. A ‘phobia’ is generally understood as an extreme and irrational fear of something. In common use phobias relate to fear of spiders, rats and more abstract concepts like enclosed spaces.

I question here whether a phobia regarding a religion, and those who are members of that religion, really induce an ‘extreme and irrational fear’ in others. I mean, really?

Are there those who are extremely and irrationally fearful of Christianity? Are there those who are fearful a religion that has love as its founding ideal? People might have been fearful of it’s armies such as in the Crusades, but those armies were never the product of the ethics of the teachings of the Prophet Jesus of Nazareth.

So should modern societies be ‘extremely and irrationally fearful’ of the ethics of the teachings of the Prophet Muhammed?

I would argue no. Societies in the West are aware of being irrationally fearful when it manifests as a prejudice and this is more closely what is expressed in the word ‘Islamaphobia’. But is this prejudice rightly placed in the list of spiders, rats and enclosed spaces?

Perhaps a new word is needed to describe this prejudice against people of this faith.

There is one in common use for the prejudice against members of the Hebrew Faith and this is of course, anti-Semitism. It is not Semitic-phobia because there is no such word. It’s a bit weak.

So the word I suggest is used to describe prejudice against people of the Islamic faith is;

‘anti-Islamic‘. I have saved it to my ‘Word document’ dictionary, as it is not there.

Perhaps one day, it will be.

Life and Death

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The Garden of Now

There is a tradition at this time of the solar year, of celebrating death. In South America there is the ‘Day of the Death’ and in Europe, ‘Halloween’ and ‘All Saints Day’. We see this archetype most vividly in nature as the cycle of death and rebirth. Many prophets and ancient gods lived out this archetype in their life story; one of the most famous being Jesus of Nazareth who was ‘resurrected from the dead’. The same archetype is celebrated in China at a different season, in the spring equinox as ‘Qingming’ when families celebrate their ancestors. To a dualistic mind; either end of the stick of ‘change’ will do.

The Day of the Dead in Mexico picture credit: NBC News

Archetypes such as ‘life and death’ exist in all space and all time. They do not go away. Proof of this is that they exist in every moment of our daily lives.

I signed up for an on-line course last week which was a series of lectures given by Dr. Caroline Myss in Vancouver, Canada. Now since I am in Spain the ‘live’ presentation saved me and the environment, cost.

I have always been rather blasé about the benefit of ‘live’ broadcasts on the internet. I could not feel or understand the difference between a live broadcast and a recording. But as soon as I sat in the virtual ‘lobby’ waiting for the first lecture to start, listening to the virtual ‘hubbub’ of the live audience from around the world, I felt and realised the difference. It was exciting to be part of something happening in the present moment, in a way that recorded media is not.

Curious is it not? Recorded media is dead; out of time, out of the present.

Thoughts about the nature of time arose in my mind when the audience I have joined are sat down for a morning lecture and I am in the last rays of the setting sun. The ‘present’ is not a function of time or space. What we experience is our perception changing; what we observe in the present moment, does not.

Only now, as Earthling astronauts, can we acknowledge that there is only one globe. The idea that there are hundreds of sovereign states and ‘I am a citizen’ is outdated. Ancient Greeks had ‘city states’, Empires had ‘countries’ and now, in modern times, we just have ‘planet Earth’.

Thinking of the reason for this evolutionary process, it has always been science and technology that has brought societal change throughout history. For centuries people crossed rivers in boots and then boats. The ‘boatman’, whom you paid to take you across a river or estuary, appears in many ancient myths and legends. The most famous of which is probably ‘Charon’, the ferryman of Hades in Greek myth. He took souls who had left their bodies, across the rivers Acheron and Styx between the lands of the living and the dead.

Sometime in history, physical river crossings by boat were made obsolete by bridges which are probably one of the most revolutionising engineering achievements ever. The bridge builders of the 19th Century like Isambard Kingdom Brunel became the ‘celebrities’ of their time.

The concept of the suspension bridge, was to erect two towers (11) on each side of the river and string sagging wires between them in an inverted catenary arch. From these wires was hung the flat road and / or rail line.

I am writing this on the 11th November 2023, shortly after the celebration of the passage of the ‘Day of the Dead’ and the ‘dying sun’. The numbers 11 and 11 are not lost on those who understand numerology and there are many commentators who will explain better than I. The armistice after the 1st World War was declared on this day on the eleventh hour on the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

The future of the United States of America pivoted on an axis when the sky line of the city of New York changed forever, as souls were lost in the Twin Towers.

The least I need to suggest here however is that these numbers represent the archetype of change and form a sort of ‘portal’ or ‘gateway’ for human souls. A modern suspension bridge is a representation of this metaphor of transition; from here to there. A bridge enables a two-way flow of people’s souls; from life to death and death to life.

Another phenomena of the suspension bridge which was not anticipated by the engineers was that in an unusually strong wind the roadway will begin to resonate and flex, which in the extreme has torn a bridge down. Winds are associated with ‘change’ and decades as well as seasons are subject to archetypal change. The aircraft encountering ‘turbulence’ is a cause to tighten you seat belt.

The conflict in the Holy Land at present, is a manifestation, in my view, of decades of turbulence that are finally manifesting as an uncontrollable and destructive resonance. Decisions made historically by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, are finally showing their tragic poor design and fragility.

The Middle East conflicts highlight the question of where mankind is going in the future; when the pendulum of ‘war and peace’ finally stops.

British Army
‘Figure 11 Target’

A catalyst for such a transition awaits us in the coming years or decades. This may be controversial but, whether you believe it will happen or not, the appearance of a non-human race on planet earth would be just such a catalyst. Whilst Hollywood and other government controlled media outlets with a covert ‘social engineering’ agenda, have done their best to portray ‘aliens’ as ‘alien’ (the clue is in the word) we should expect life, not death, from their integration with humanity.

Scientists who have devoted themselves to investigating governments and the ‘deep state’, such as Dr. Stephen Greer in the USA, describe a race of benign spiritual beings waiting in the wings. Their presence has long been known but the time for humanity to ‘upgrade’ by accepting that ‘we are not alone’, is for the Watchers to decide.

This would be the introduction of a third leg to the two legged stool (‘us and them’ dualistic mentality) on which humanity now sits and would be a great stabiliser for the Earth and its living things; from microbes to whales.

Suddenly the priorities that governments might face would not be how to overcome ‘enemies’ but how to balance the eco systems of the earth and regulate the use of earth’s bounty.

The ravaging forest fires as well as natural destruction by rising seas, volcanoes and earthquakes are portents of the world to come. Efforts to re-balance the living planet are vital now, in my view, in the way any ‘life and death’ situation is given priority.

The garden is a metaphor for benign harmonious change through design. Adam, in a state of unique bliss, was it’s first inhabitant but everything changed when ‘dualistic’ thinking, represented by Eve, changed everything. But it doesn’t have to be that way and all that is needed is or humans to non-dualise their thoughts and feelings, live in the present, to be in harmony with what is out there.

The James Webb telescope recently spotted a ‘new star’; just fifty thousand earth years old! This protostar is one thousand three hundred light years from Earth, but it’s images are real enough to make us pause and think. How small we are in the design on the Garden but strangely we have within ourselves a part of it’s salvation by becoming masters of our own lives and deaths.

A New Flower in the Garden

Finding Oneself

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Spiritual Love

How ironic that this present and looming war, is centred on the so called ‘Holy Land’. This small corner of the world has been the centre of spiritual love for millenniums.

What we should remember however is that those who wear religion as a mask, commit crimes against both humanity and themselves.

‘To thine own self be true.’

When the media use the names of the Abrahamic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, we should be fully aware that anyone can pick up this badge and wear it. It does not mean that a person represents that religion. Only by their actions will their true character and beliefs be revealed. Then we can make up your minds whether we are watching the work the Divine or the Devil.

I have written before about how weak the English language defines and describes ‘love’ (see my blog above called ‘Fifty Shades of Love’). A primary colour in the many shades of ‘love’, is ‘spiritual love’.

It is easier to define spiritual love by what it is not rather than what it is. Certainly it is not romantic love between humans. This is held in high regard by many societies and often rightly so, but when it fails it does so cataclysmically. The union of two ‘selves’ is tainted by projection of one’s anima or animus onto another, hidden bias, false expectation, unfounded optimism, lust and many other aspects of ‘being human’. These have played out in our theatres and cinema screens since the beginning of time.

To understand spiritual love it is essential to be able to see oneself as four components. The acronym BAHAMAS formed in my mind in a dream the other night and this is what it means;

Body:- most people confuse themselves with their body. The Buddhists cleverly ask that if you lose a leg are you not still yourself? Clearly, we are contained in a body, but are not one.

Heart:- this implies the emotional centre of ourselves which scientists observe is far more important in decision making than we give credit for. It achieves a high level of understanding through empathy and non verbal intelligence.

Mind:- again another place that people believe is where their ‘self’ resides. Certainly the brain is a sophisticated organic centre of consciousness but ‘Self’ can exist outside of the body as proved by many who are conscious post mortem, and return to tell the tale.

Soul or Spirit:- however you define these terms ( and many philosophers and religions differ) there is an overwhelming conscious feeling in most people of a power and intelligence within that is not us, but at the same time is us.

With these four categories it becomes slightly easier to understand what ‘be true to oneself’ means. For the ‘Self’ with a capital S (and the ego ‘self’ with a lower case s), is where spiritual love enters and emerges from within the experience we call ‘ourself’.

It is that part which the ‘crown chakra’ (in the Hindu description of the energetic human ‘body’) plays an important part. Along with the Pituitary and Pineal brain centred glands, it is the anatomical equivalent of the modem and microwave dish!

Energy (of the non-electromagnetic debased kind) containing information is universally present for all humans. The benign aspect of this is known as ‘Divine Love’ and my previous blog ‘The Poetic Universe’ attempts to describe this process. The destructive aspect of this is simply an ineffectively weak aspect of Divine Love which is known as ‘The Devil’. Remember that Hell is full of angels. This characteristic of ‘ineffective weakness’ is being played out in the Middle East at the present time and historically is how all quarrels begin; by weak or absent energetic characteristics such as compassion and respect for self and others. Such weakness can also be viewed as the absence of Divine Love or more precisely, a disasterous weakening of that Love which in good times brings happiness and fulfilment to all creatures on Earth and the planet itself.

Seen through the reverse end of this telescope, humans appear very small. But in reality we contain the Universe and this contradiction is evident in the truth already mentioned; ‘that we are not our bodies’. The only part of ourselves for which there is evidence (near death experiences and past life regression) of being eternal, is our Soul or Spirit. This is despite not being able to see it, in the same way we cannot see our head. Logically one should deny the invisible, or change perspective, or imagine what it is and this is what people do – but it does not help.

The human experience, physically and metaphorically, grinds down most of us and some end up as dust sooner than they may have liked. It is all part of being this illusionary entity which changes depending on from which angle it is viewed or imagined. Like Alice in Wonderland, we also can become hopelessly inflated (consider ‘celebrity culture’ and how these souls deal with fame or not) or hopelessly deflated; known presently as mental illness and depression.

Only by overcoming this Tsunamic wave of illusionary experience can humans identify with the ‘still small point’ of spiritual love which they contain. This is the Divinity within them and ironically, is not the ‘small self’ they once believed themselves to be.

What is left after the destruction of the ego by this wave is nothing and something. That something is a small light that somehow avoided being smothered. It has the quality of eternity because it reveals itself as indestructible. It is the ‘love of God’. English expresses this very well because ‘love of God’ implies a two way love between the lover and the beloved. In human love (which is a faint copy of spiritual love) this is known as ‘requited love’.

When human love goes wrong is when the love is not reciprocated. Many stories and enactments on stage and screen, feature this most heart breaking of human conditions.

The golden lining to this cloud however, is that it casts light on how spiritual love is free of the entitlement, judgment and placing of conditions (the marriage contract for instance) that stifles many romances.

Again, the only hope that can arise from this very low point in human history and consciousness, is that from this pit may crawl some who will see the folly of it all. In those few may rise a new society founded on the oldest principles in the Holy Books of ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. This instruction was given to humanity knowing full well, how weak and pathetic we can become when we are blinded by ego and fail to realise who We truly are.

Collective Punishment

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Extracts from a speech to the United Nations by the Secretary General Antonio Guterres. (source https://www.un.org/sg/en/content/sg/speeches/2023-10-24/secretary-generals-remarks-the-security-council-the-middle-east%C2%A0 )

“Excellencies,

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.  And those 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 the south, 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 are witnessing 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

Never Again’: From a Holocaust phrase to a universal phrase – The Jerusalem Post

Shalom, Salaam, Peace

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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 force to ‘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?

The Poetic Universe

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“No matter what plans you make,

No matter what you acquire,

The thief will enter from the unguarded side.

Be occupied then with what you really value,

and let the thief take something else.“

Jalaluddin Rumi (1207-1273)

“The thief left it behind,

The moon at the window.”

Matsuo Basho (1644-1694)

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.

We Are Forever

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From Nowhere to Infinity

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

Rabbits in Headlights

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Understanding decision making

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

“At a No 10 briefing in March 2020, cabinet minister Michael Gove warned the virus did not discriminate. “Everyone is at risk,” he announced.

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.

Repeat Repeat

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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

Picture credit: Tolteclightwarrior