other lives ...

Reincarnation is a topic fairly frequently considered, since anecdotes abound and allowing the possibility opens the mind to explanations of otherwise inexplicable phenomena ... as well as offering comfort to those of us entering the third phase, though thought may disturb equanimity if an entity entertains memories of evildoing and fears the coming karma... Roman Catholics officially reject the concept these days, though they do have an arrangement for adherents to confess their sins and wipe the slate clean ... hasty research suggests many folks signed up to the "one true faith" don't bother so much with the confessing but do believe in reincarnation .... kind of pick and mix so common these days ... our sceptical times undermining orthodoxy, along with the behaviour of so many of the clergy, finding the rules of celibacy too challenging and allowing the blocked sexual energy to manifest in ways not only immoral but often cruel and abusive ...

Anyway, this Sunday posting is not meant as yet another attack on organised religion, which, after all, does bring solace and companionship to so many ... and if folks are prepared to sacrifice their freedom for some hope of salvation, then that's their business ... if it turns out their version was correct, good luck ... if it turns out reincarnation is a thing and each entity needs to sort out their own understanding of what's going on, there are plenty of lives available, after all eternity is beyond a very long time ... if it turns out the Atheists are right, nothing is lost in the end and believers can meet their demise happily deluded ... renouncing sin and evildoing is always worthwhile, whether to mitigate karma and dodge rebirth in hell realms, as described in some Buddhist texts, or just because of the intrinsic benefit of living an ethical life this time round ...

Recent reading material enriches the concept of reincarnation ... Claire Sylvia's 1997 description of her experiences after a heart and lung transplant ... the donor being a young man ... her uncanny knowledge of details from the deceased boy's life and her meetings with the family ... suggesting, as well as reincarnation, memories held not only in the brain ... in fiction, David Mitchell's wonderful debut novel, Ghostwritten, tells the stories with reincarnation (and transmigration) implicit throughout ...

Such are the joys of synchronicity and confirmation bias ...

Meanwhile, sunny, Sunday, Stanhope offers Dances of Universal Peace with Nicola in the Church Hall .... always a joy ...

seeking sangha of the formless ...

Well, here's a conundrum: recognising the desire for connection with like minded folks .... in Buddhism the Sangha, Christianity the Congregation ... and declining the labels, naming being the first step on the road to perdition (perhaps) ... how to attract the lovers of the formless?

Wandering the pilgrim trails solves the problem temporarily, since amongst the many different seekers on the caminos rarely a day passes without connecting with a lover of the formless (which has no name and maybe better stay that way!) .... first clues are non-verbal .... the eyes, the smile .... key words and references like Love, non-duality, Krishnamurti ... the K centre at Brockwood, of course, a place to find folks as well as Findhorn, The Barn at Sharpham and others to be discovered ... and at these places, folks speaking of second hand truths sometimes neglecting to live them, whilst out in random mainstream places people living their truth without speaking much about it at all ...

Maybe time to pay attention to the Angel Card reading from Susie several years ago: Your relationships are a reflection of you .... relevant to pretty much everyone ... and since the default mode here is solitude, hardly surprising that maintaining a Sangha of the formless is so elusive ...

Meanwhile, in the community of Stanhope, energy grows for a return to service design and community development, specifically building on the success of Wheels to Meals, and the clear need for new models of housing for seniors .... maybe including juniors in a multi-generational project ... anyway Social Care is struggling, what with budget constraints, raised expectations, increasing numbers of elders ... hospitals desperate for safe places to send recovering patients ...

So, all that excites and balances with ongoing attraction to the moving sanghas on the pilgrim ways ... but first the new base, which is taking longer than expected, on the back road on the edge of the village ... and interesting to observe the mind musing on the objects needed to furnish it ... maintaining freedom amidst home-owning the next challenge ... the hopefully ironic message at the temple of Mammon that is the MetroCentre mildly amuses momentarily, though many mesmerised shoppers suggest the irony missed the mark ...

Revisiting the recent RAW reading and a reference to Wilhelm Reich, the psychotherapist whose groundbreaking work on orgone energy attracting the attention of the Powers That Be (or were) in the Land of the Free back in the 1950s, found himself out of the frying pan of Nazi Germany and into the prison of the US of A ... the FBI smashing his equipment and burning his books ... as RAW remarked, this guy must have been onto something to elicit such an extreme reaction ... Reich died in prison and his work was suppressed ... though still available in the UK ... remarkably, two friends with degrees in psychology from UK institutions have never heard of him ... brief research (as always) shows those practicing his methods in the USA to this day are flying under the radar of the AMA ...

Reality tunnels

Remaining with Robert Anton Wilson, another legacy was his borrowing of his friend Timothy Leary's expression - reality tunnel ... suggesting that each of us experiences reality uniquely through our filtering of incoming data through previous memories .... the creation of new memories being built on existing foundations, or fitted into existing patterns and itself a participatory exercise .... maybe ... maybe being another favourite of RAW, who wisely eschewed certainty after accepting the evidence of experiments in quantum mechanics ... he also proposed a new word "sombanall" made up from four words in current usage "some but not all" as a device to avoid over-generalisation ...

Consensus reality, sometimes called common sense, is just an agreement in any given culture and era of the key components of acceptable versions of what's going on ... which is why an open mind and a variety of life situations tends to lead to wider tunnels ... perhaps the ability to hold more than one tunnel as true at a time .... another name for this game is frame ... where our frame of reference may widen as we learn more, but at some stage the frame itself cannot contain the data ... hence the expression "reframing" reality ... psychologically necessary when old frames frustrate and cause brain pain ... leading to a question of what reality might look like without any tunnel or frame .... possibly impossible to cope with except for the most highly advanced practitioners ....

Alongside RAW, HHDL's book Advice on Dying provides a very broad perspective .... Tibetan Buddhism being a very big frame indeed ... HHDL himself, of course, is currently famous for his simple message of kindness across all faiths and none, making the depth of this book all the more compelling with its implicit acceptance of many lives .... making the cause and effect or karmic chains quite challenging, especially for those of us unable to remember all the events of this life, let alone all the others ...

...bringing us to the pressing question of how to lead a good life, given the cool, clear insight that this mainstream world is becoming crazier by the day allied with the heat of compassion for all those suffering and stuck in this round of existence ... Buddhism offers its eightfold path: Right Insight (understanding or view), Right Intent, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration ... leading the end of suffering and the need for rebirth .... for those spotting a cop-out there is the option to return enlightened and work in the suffering world until all beings are enlightened ...

Dear reader(s), please note that there is a lot more in Buddhism worth studying, but at this stage the topic goes off piste and enters the exciting realm of parallel universes and reality tunnels ... which may just possibly be the same thing ... in this hypothesis/delusion each of us has the potential to polish up our realities and align them into a lovely wide tunnel, which attracts folks away from the world they don't want (but energise nevertheless through their attention) and the new tunnel/frame or maybe holon subsumes the old and decrepit one ...

Moving along and still off piste, the question of an integrous and integral life seeks examination ... this time in the context of illness, sometimes contrasted with wellness and the strange interchangeability of the "I" and the "We" ... stranger still is the use of the word "complaint" to stand for ailment as well as criticism ... the switching of the i and the a to produce compliant may need further investigation .... but on with the story .... which is going downhill fast ... a proposition that failing to act upon a thought which felt right and when spoken aloud also felt right, may lead to mental and physical dis-ease ... that a consistent complaining attitude may lead to complaints ... and that human entities, seeking attention energy, may develop victim roles if nicer roles are denied, any kind of attention being better than none at at all ...

Fitting all this speculation into karma is dangerous ground ... karma so often being conflated with revenge ... ironically an action akin to shooting oneself in the foot ...

Meanwhile, the weather in Stanhope's early morning walks has ranged from clear and sunny, misty and mystical to today's  sunshine and blustery showers, producing a wonderful rainbow ... though no photo to share ... sorry!