Freeedom is a concept worth exploring, as loyal readers of Wear & Dao will know well. The whole crazy adventure of setting off from Stanhope 7 years ago, free from clutter or anything which wouldn't fit in the battered old rucksack and setting off Southwards, since it was already November, staying a couple of days in the Krishnamurti Centre in Brockwood Park, conversing with other K types, and acknowledging the impulse for the journey was K's well known book: Freedom From the Known. Do read it for yourselves folks, though the title says it all. We are never truly Free, until we dare to explore worlds beyond those we already know.
So why on Earth does an old bloke go walkabout in winter with an old rucksack and old trousers, but the best shoes and walking socks he can trust to prevent the blisters which so many pilgrims suffer from. As the Buddhists say by the way: Pain is inevitable, suffering optional ... pointing to those pilgrims who think suffering is essential. Madness! You walk for a month to see other worlds, then wallow in suffering! The worlds such pilgrims see are surely not contentment or happiness, but misery and painful bloody blisters ...
Back to World Freedom Day and reports arrive of demos in Newcastle, Belfast and London. People have had more than enough of pandemic madness and are rising up to demand Freedom's return... not that we really ever had true Freedom of course, endless wars for thousands of years confirmed K's view that our cages, however big and luxurious they may appear, must restrict our Freedoms. Funnily enough tonight's dvd was Victoria and Abdul, with Judi Dench playing a dying Queen Victoria, bemoaning her own gilded cage which trapped her, despite her massive power as Empress of India and other countries.
Well, I do hope you've enjoyed World Freedom Day today, wherever you are, dear readers. Tomorrow Bill comes for lunch around 12.30, and doubtless Krishnamurti will be a topic of discussion. Frankly, K influences your old pilgrim blogger more than Rudolf Steiner or Gurdjieff or Thay of Plum Village fame, recently passed, but many mystical teachers appear in The Retreat House Library ... for example five books of contemporary mystic Charles Eisenstein drop through the door, a bargain at £75 from Hive Books, not Amazon ... whether the old blogger will ever read all these books is inconsequential since it's a Library!
Sunday tomorrow, hooray! The day of rest from the arduous task of creating the Earth in six days, and resting every Sunday .. if you happen to be a proper literal Christian that is ... the philosophical blogger currently doesn't support that view, but thinks all stories are metaphor, and we may create our own reality and here and now it appears the world of Peace is available. Who on Earth would choose violence ?!
Good night and peaceful dreams ...
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