Original Sin

Wandering along the Way to Compostela one day
Pondering the mystery of Creation from a story in the Bible
Old Testament that is: One Creator God, three names, three religions
Jehova for Jews, God for Christians, Allah for Muslims,
All United as One, fighting each other in The Holy Lands ever since!

Meanwhile, in Paradise, Adam lived, playing happily,
Naked as God intended,not separate from the birds, bees,
And trees, shedding golden leaves each Autumn, or Fall
To stand naked in black and white silhouette in the snow

Evolution of the species led poor Adam into a quandary
As the consciousness he shared with other species - thinking
Became metaconsciousness, thinking about thinking for God's sake!
Which, as many Buddhists and others discovered, is a trap for meditators
Since transcending the Ego can never be found by thinking it can ...

Meanwhile, back in The Garden of Eden, Adam yearned for a playmate
And God assented to his request, by taking a spare rib from his chest
And creating a beautiful woman, Eve, naked like Adam was, but subtly different
With small breasts sprouting out, and the penis tiny at the top of her secret place
Hiding under a mound of hair known as Venus ...

It wasn't a serpent who dared her to pluck the apple of desire, to tempt the pair
After all, how else would they be able to produce two sons, Cain and Abel?
So, the human race spread across the face of the Earth, with women and men
Breeding like rabbits, loving the heat of the sexual energy, as if such a thing
Could ever be a Sin, as young people know from experience, whatever the priests preach
Hypocritically ... their holier than thou celibacy twisted, power misused to abuse
Maidens, choirboys, each other, alone with whips to scourge their Sin
To gain the Heaven they espouse, or the Hell they may deserve

Celibacy, you see, as a Rule, may be a blessing or a curse
Depending on how you experience it yourself
Radical celibacy on the other hand, scorns any rules made by humans
And employs Common Sense, Ethics and Compassion to choose how to live
In harmony with the humans of any religion or none, any race or colour of skin
Or false notion of Original Sin ... in Latin that three letter word simply means error
A mistake we may learn from, an arrow missing the Bulls Eye, that's all
Travelling in Spain, for example, Sin carne Senõr? No meat then!
Incarnate? In human form, embodied ... endowed with a Soul flourishing
Along the Pilgrim Ways ... why else walk for weeks and months at Life School
If not to know thyself and see it for what it truly is, an illusion, that's all!

In old age, the passionate heat of youth settles down
To a warm glow of contentment and equanimity,
after a life well led experientally and not only book-read
Seeing is believing, living authentically something else entirely
If All the World's a Stage and we are merely players on it
We'd better play our many parts as if real
And return to our real home at the end of this life
For a well earned resting in Peace!

1 11 21 ...

Here we are again, another new month and last one of Autumn as the leaves fall and the Winter thinks about turning colder and darker for a while. With luck we'll see sharp frosts and snow to clear out the bugs, though obviously flu season tends to encourage some to settle in to warm houses and warm bodies of some humans, which inevitably means some us shuffling off this mortal coil and hope for a peaceful passing, maybe looking forward to seeing old friends again in an afterlife, though that idea comes without a guarantee, so we'll just have to wait and see, won't we!

Yesterday's Hexham event was most uplifting, with plenty of old friends and new sheltering from the rain under the Bandstand, offering hugs and warm conversation to any wishing to join in. Things are speeding up on the Resistance front, with plans afoot to create a parallel world without all the degenerate nonsense evident in the current excuse for a free country and throughout most of the world consumed by the Fear and thrashing around of the demons in their death throes, as the truth becomes clearer and clearer about the plot of the plutocrats to usher in their Brave New World  in The Great Reset. .. meaning it's make your mind up time to accept slavery or rise up and realise The Great Awakening is here at last, as Pisces passes on and Aquarius arrives at last. Which sounds good to me, since the Dawning of it was very exciting for a teenager learning about The Summer of Love and the practical applications of it.

Two eclipses are predicted this month, one lunar, one solar, and some say that's significant, even though it's not necessarily magic, unless you think it is, which basically describes the placebo effect after all. And if the mind and its stories create the worlds in which we live, then clearly thinking healthy thoughts and telling uplifting stories, must surely be better for our mental and physical health than nocebo, the opposite effect, which means we may indeed think ourselves ill enough to kill us, and loneliness and despair does that, if you deal in demonic stories and visit the places so dark it feels like hell on Earth, rather than the Heaven available as a nicer option.

So, here we go dear readers! After Halloween yesterday, with beautiful souls discussing wonderful futures, today is here, and a trip to Heaton to see my beautiful younger daughter for a while means November begins as it means to go on, with manifestation of wishes and deepest desires easier than usual, apparently, so what could possibly go wrong? Bonfire Night on Friday looks promising, and this old blogger will be indoors in front of the log burner, thinking good thoughts and musing on the meaning of Life, as usual!

Remember November

As clocks go back at Halloween, and November arrives tomorrow, an extra hour is conjured to allow more light this morning and less this afternoon. A whole hour extra to review the rantings of a madman, passing his time imagining better worlds to come, through stories he makes up to promote his past as good enough despite the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune from Shakespeare in his Hamlet soliloquy asking the question To Be or not To Be ... the rest you can read for yourself and find your own answer, and if you thought Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, had issues, try Macbeth, the Scottish play whose name is unmentionable in case of bad luck ... all of which long-windedness brings us to Mac, a friend from Stanhope, whose name is misspelt mistakenly with a K on the end, as he kindly told me yesterday, along with his critique from his story of September, noting that he never made it to the Falklands with his ship, so skipped the horrors of that particular war, which Thatcher used to boost her popularity with voters so easily misled by notions of patriotism, when the war drums beat, flags flutter to evoke national pride, and young men go visiting other young men with their own flags in order to fight and maybe die .. for what and for whose best interests is not always clear to voters without a sense of history ... like WW1 for example, when The Great British Empire, The fading Austro-Hungarian Empire, Russian and French Empires and allies created mayhem in many theatres of war, not least the appalling slaughter on the Somme, as young men killed each other under orders from psychopaths, who thought the sacrifice was acceptable if rewarded with posthumous medals. The Saxe-Coburg blood line ran through from Queen Victoria to Kaiser Bill, Tsar Nick, and King George V .. not to mention our dear old Queen Elisabeth the second and her dead husband Phil the Greek.

And since November provides poppies everywhere, to remind us of the slaughter of the innocents, sent to die in the carnage of the Somme, this old blogger and dissenter is still waiting for the message "Never Again!" to sink in before commemorating those boys and all the rest in wars unending.

Today, Sunday, when the scary ghosts and sprites come out to trick or treat us, let's see later if they find the Retreat House just outside the village ... the custom here is to smile at them and offer a healthy treat, from the pile of apples picked last week, which usually confuses them ... before that Hexham calls, and a Stand in the Park with a rainy forecast so the Bandstand will provide shelter if needed, and maybe a coffee in the dry later at the Beaumont Hotel with whoever wishes to discuss issues philosophical, political, psychological, metaphysical or cosmic ... followed by Waitrose for supplies, organic where possible and a drive back to Stanhope again ...

Tomorrow, the first of November, a visit to Newcastle is planned, and a walk with younger daughter, re-arranged from last week to celebrate her debut appearance on the stage of life, and a Scorpio like her father, whatever that infers. The Gunpowder Plot follows on Friday, when Guido  Fawkes failed to blow up the Houses of Parliament, being betrayed by a friend, which was not very nice. Still, the children have a second chance to extort cash from adults, as they request a penny for the Guy they created, maybe with the help of adults in the game ... cynical? Not at all, honestly! Maybe it's time for another go at blowing up Parliament, metaphorically obviously, since honest parliamentarians are scarce these days, as always ... perhaps starting with the Cabinet and working down from there? Johnson is long overdue for ... ahem ... retirement ...

Ways to change your mind

This world of human beings has nearly as many opinions as individual people, apparently more than 7 billion, which is a lot to take into account when constructing consensual reality in order to organise communities in the hope of keeping them safe, prosperous and happy. Various systems have been followed over the few millennia homo sapiens and variations has roamed the planet, some benign, some malign and many a mix of both, depending on the status of the individual.

Now then, dear readers, if you care to review previous postings in Wear and Dao, you may see we have no reason to believe the essential existence of this multi-faceted, complicated, complex, funny, smart, tragic, needy, simple, difficult, stupid and even sometimes wise illusion which is the egoic construct called "self " ... easier said than done, you may say, which is true enough. Despite all the writings and songs of mystics since the dawn of time, the only person who can truly destroy that tricky imposter is guess who?

Yes, now do you see the problem? The best we can do, maybe, is to take time to clear the mind, sweep out the clutter at every level, look deeply inside, free of the chatter of other human beings on TV screens, Radio, Tablet, Smartphones, even friends in the places you live ... seek solitude, since the very definition of egoic mind, and the reason for its existence, is to present a face, a voice, a body, a smile to another human being, with its own issues to discuss ... and, by the way, having realised from Wm Shakespeare that "All the world's a stage" really ... well, we might as well choose a role that suits us in this phase of our wonderful or horrible life, because we do have that choice ... some even say we chose our own parents and place to be born as the basic condition to begin with! That's from folks subscribing to many lives and karma theories, of course, which is easy to say, harder to swallow.

Please yourself? You might as well, after all ... youngsters in love despite parental disapproval? No need to play Romeo or Juliet and die tragically, just elope and escape the madness of your parents, the ones you chose, after all, so the ones you are free to reject ... why not? And live happy ever after, if you're lucky ... Shakespeare had the key stories covered, so check him out if you want to change your mind,  and there are plenty of contemporary writers to help you as well. Basically, the brain itself may be re-programmed, brainwashed you might say, as proven by the U.S. government, needing conscripts to visit Vietnam a while back, in order to pacify the locals and save them from communism ... a tricky task for farm boys used to shooting rabbits and pigeons, but not women, children or men anywhere at all, since it was forbidden in all religions and none. Of course the Civil War showed what was possible, along with all wars, but Vietnam was a turning point, when it came to killing indiscriminately in combat on the ground. Obviously, the decimation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki was from high above, though the crew who flew over Japan on those missions often went mad with guilt and despair, medals notwithstanding ...

Neuro-plasticity shows the very cells of the brain may be rewired to process alternative consensual realities, as shown in any cult organisation. Which cult do you choose this time? More wars? Sign up for the Armed Forces! Thou shalt not kill a human for any cause? Try the Jehovah Witnesses, they knock on your doors to save your souls whether you like it or not!

Not being keen on cults, despite trying many nice systems like Buddhism of different kinds, this old blogger still seeks Freedom from the Known. .. and yes, dear sceptical reader, even K has his cult followers, as observed without judgement on many visits to Brockwood Park!

Time to walk, it's Saturday again, who knows who might turn up for a visit? Better clean the place up, just in case, it's necessary occasionally anyway ... tomorrow after the clockbackery, time changes again and Hexham's a possibility for a change!

Families continued ...

Today, Thursday marks the special day of two members of the Day clan, plus a very special angel spending time in Stanhope and emanating love wherever she goes. Younger daughter, now with a double barreled surname due to divorce, which she finds very unusual, though a search will inevitably find a few others, and not only posh folks who often like such pretensions of grandeur, quite likes to be special and different from other surnames, though she's by no means short of social skills, nor needy for attention from any random passer-by offering her attention not necessarily with benign intent. Anyway younger daughter responds to her HB verse and gifts with an invitation to visit next Monday, which fits perfectly into other possible plans. By the way, since we're on the subject, neither daughter shows fear of living Life to the full after the traumas of separation of their parents. It happens often, and more than one father has lost all contact with his daughters, for the sake of keeping the new wife happy. Which is sad.

Over to elder sister's first born son of the four she brought into the world hoping for a daughter, eldest nephew sired three daughters and no son, so his Mum finally got the daughter she wanted times 3 from eldest nephew of the clan, with the name of the father, my first brother in law.
That side of the family seems quite normal, and the other boys knocked out two boys, two girls and a boy, and two girls, no boy so far, in descending order. Clearly fertility was not an issue with them.

Meanwhile, in France, younger sister married a Breton peasant, who she met in Toulouse when they were students there. First was a daughter, then the son required to take over the organic farm, when his Dad moved on. My French niece shows no signs of reproducing and now lives in Liverpool, whilst French nephew married a French woman who popped out two boys.

The tragic death of my elder brother, from a brain tumour, left his widow in Australia with three young daughters, one of whom recently produced a daughter to add to the brood.

Back to the events of today, Thursday, and half-term week in these parts, a trip to Durham with Daisy proves just as weird and wonderful as always. The first job was to pop in to fix the micro-switch or cut it off to stop the pinging. An easy task, you might think but ...the next port of call, was the overflow car park near County Hall, a perfect place to park awhile, and free ... this becomes interesting, since the free parking has been commandeered by a mobile covid testing unit. Of course, Daisy and I waited out turn to discuss things with the young man checking us in. He apologised for the inconvenience and saw the reasons I had for taking no part in their game of fascism. He was Rumanian, and knew enough about Ceaucescu to see through the Scamdemic, and was grateful for his job, helping him learn English better, which is fair enough.

Walking past the Railway Station, a worker was drilling holes, and stopped to discuss things and gratefully accepted his free copy of The Light, since he believed none of the papers could be trusted, like most if not all politicians. On through to the City and over the River Wear to the market place, a dear friend was found preparing to paint the faces of excited children queuing up for her artistic services with her daughter helping her as the queue became longer ... before which a hug from her Mum, the artist, and a first meeting with her elder daughter, a Muslim, was very heartwarming because the mother professes admiration for Rumi and Sufism equally with Buddha, so an interesting mix indeed ... the story continues tomorrow, Friday, with a trip with a close friend and her young grandsons for Halloween stories at Seven Stories near Byker, then Saturday maybe a visit from a Buddhist Sufi mystic, and Sunday perhaps another Stand in the Park in Hexham, but who knows, let's see ... one day at a time!

Now it's raining, and time to tog up and get damp, stretch the legs and breathe the fresh air, before settling down in front of the fire, and supper!

Family Constellations

As more apples are collected and mushrooms too, Wednesday turns out rather dreary, and perfect for wrapping the apples in paper and storing them in the cold, plus mushroom soup to freeze for later. Maybe more sloes, who knows?

Family constellations is the topic today, since psychology helps us understand ourselves better. Not necessarily by asking a shrink to section you, or stabilise your mood with dangerous drugs designed to tranquillise you to accept all sorts of shite a sick society considers normal, like poverty, violence, wars unending ... you see the point?

Now, where we sit in the family constellation, clearly has a bearing on how view ourselves, not to mention the way were treated by the others, and how we treated them. For clarity, I am aware Jill Purse has written books on the subject, none of which I've read, so I'm making it up using examples from my constellation and generalising since my family was not particulary unusual, even if the blogger turned out rather weird. And the extreme examples impact on us extremely, while normal examples may impact insidiously, causing silent suffering, because the family members have not acknowledged their normal behaviour as rather weird. Which is tricky!

You may observe, dear long suffering reader, that the definition of constellation is broad, and basically means in this version, families and the problems they cause, or, families and the blessings they bring, to bring a balanced view to the story. As we know, the good news is hardly news, and tragedies and fights are far more newsworthy. For example, poet and miserabilist, Philip Larkin wrote:

They fuck you up your Mum and Dad
They may not mean to, but they do
They give you all the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you ...

Apologies to readers appalled by the sentiments and swear word, but you have to admit it hits the mark. And rhymes, which is always a bonus in a poem.

Back to the centre of his own universe, yes, that's me ... born in a cottage hospital in Fordingbridge in The New Forest of Hampshire in November 1950, i.e. nearly 71 years ago and a Scorpio, whatever that means. Mum pushed me out into this world confidently, since I was the third and she knew these things tend to get easier with practice. A year or two later, my baby sister slipped out, which made two of each, twice what she had planned for, but that's contraception for you. Number two boy and third child, is a perfect position in a normal family, since all the expectations of Dad were laid at elder brother's door, and Mum had her two girls to put into dresses, which seems rather unfair, when Scottish men get to wear skirts and no underwear, which is freedom of a kind, if a little chilly in winter. So, third child set out to get on with his life as he pleased and to cause as much trouble as possible to attract the attention of Mum and Dad, brother and sisters, uncles and aunties, cousins and random friends, not to mention teachers in schools.

Before this brief post turns into an autobiography, let's bring in other characters ... Brenda, for example, born 10 years after Vera, the only child of two doting parents, who introduced her to Vera with the words: Look what the stork's brought you! Vera replied: Well, you can tell that stork to take it back, because I don't want it. Believe it or not, Vera never forgave Brenda for being born, and Brenda, now 70, never understood why she was to blame for being born in the first place, since it was not her idea anyway. Sibling rivalry, it's called, and fortunately this was never a big problem in my family, though you'll have to ask the sisters for their opinion and elder brother died rather early some years ago, a tragedy for Mum and Dad and his wife and three girls in Australia.

What games we humans play, in families and society. .. what a life! Never mind, since we're here we might as well crack on and live it as fully as possible, be kind whenever possible and die peacefully in our sleep if we're lucky! Good night ...

Life unfolding ...

Today, Tuesday, and bin day here in Stanhope as usual, sees this life unfolding in fascinating ways, from the implicate order to the explicate, and back, as explained by David Bohm in his book called Wholeness and the Implicate Order, which took scientific understanding from Newton and materialism, to quantum scale, pointing towards energy being primary, and closer to the view of the mystics over millennia who saw sub-atomic reality without the microscopes, somehow or other. Bohm himself was clearly a mystic, which elevated his view from the mundane and limited explanations of Nils Bohr and the Copenhagen orthodoxy, which sacrificed sanity, philosophy and indeterminacy for lunacy and huge technological progress, with atomic bombs dropped on two Japanese cities to bring Hirohito to the negiating table ... unlike Hitler and Mussolini, the Emperor survived and accepted his new position as a human being without power, a constitutional leader, with political power in the hands of elected parliaments, in the mode of modern democracies like the United Kingdom, Holland and others. Naturally enough, the late entry of the United States of America into the fray, left them in control of the Western World and their main rival for hegemony was the Soviet Empire, as the dreadful slaughter of WW2 morphed seamlessly into the Cold War, as Capitalism and Socialism vied for supremacy.

Of course, the Yanks won that one as socialism morphed into State Capitalism and the Soviet Empire was dismantled, and the Land of the Free ignored the warnings of Marx and Engels, moved on to Globalism and Cartels, setting the scene for fascism across most of the Earth, the United Nations subverted by Plutocrats and WW3 undeclared but clearly embarking on depopulation not with bloody battles, but psychological and biological warfare. Some say Orwell saw it coming in 1984, others Huxley in Brave New World. Either way it's crystal clear the Plutocrats mean business as usual, and are happy to make huge profits from bio-weapons to reduce the 7 billion human beings to maybe a billion by 2030.

Of course, as is known to those like Bohm, no Luciferian types can possibly win at cosmic level, since the poor old Light Bearer only chose to come to Earth from the Angelic Realm, to remind the human beings to address their dark aspects as well as the Light. Which is good news all round, as long as we behave as the best version of humanity we can, rather than indulging in Wars unending at world scale, or in our own psyches, which is fundamentally the same ...

So, dear readers, the latest news from the Retreat House is that Vivek checks out later today to have peace and quiet in a holiday cottage in the village, and other options arising at this off-peak season, and the blogger returns to tranquillity having enjoyed the experience of hosting a teacher of non-duality for a few days and learning so much about Ramana Maharshi and his lineage, which always fascinated me.

Plans for the rest of the week are probabilities and possibilities obviously, as shown by Heisenberg in his Uncertainty Principle, but include walking, talking, silence, thinking, not thinking, younger daughter's 32nd birthday on Thursday, a trip to Seven Stories in Newcastle with close friend and her young grandchildren to be scared by spooky Halloween stories which sound promising, plus surprise visits from other close friends, maybe Wednesday or Saturday. ..

It's late, time to walk, Vivek sleeps late and wakes up late, which is his rhythm.

Light rain and high clouds forecast, let's go outside and see, shall we?!