2017

Another New Year's Eve and the regular early night planned ... the lure of alcohol fuelled revelries resisted and new neighbours hopefully quiet ... the holiday cottage next door but one is occupied, so a wild party is yet possible ...

The year has an interim feel ... mostly spent in Stanhope as the long running inheritance saga finally bears fruit with attendant paperwork ... proposed Camino postponed as cottage purchase dragged on, though a month in the sun with Susie, sandwiched with The Barn retreat and the wonderful work week at Brockwood Park, extended by ten days, provided nourishment for mind, body and soul ... next year's work week already booked and a Camino or two anticipated as the status of the cottage on Railway Terrace resolves into the Retreat House previously planned on Front Street and the first retreatant booked for Tuesday ... meanwhile the library is growing, new shelves a priority ...

Since walking with the pack curtails study, this house based year has enabled plenty of reading and a spacious routine, including occasional minibus driving with the elders ... service in the community being an essential element of life, alongside fresh air, good food, exercise and the always seductive solitude ... if a resolution is needed for next year, maybe more interaction with fellow human beings is it ... and maybe the Retreat House is a step in that direction ...

The occasional reminder from FB of thoughts and events over the past five years suggests that most of the time has been deepening rather than expanding ... maybe old encrusted brain cells are content with the current version of reality ... maybe the formless philosophy, integrated into a life embodying compassion, simplicity and patience is the pathless path to the truth or even the Truth ... and whether that's right or not, what is clear is that FB recalls more about me than the conventional memory bank does ...

Happy New Year, dear reader(s), and thanks for your attention!

Boxing Day ...

Boxing Day dawns brighter after yesterday's rather drizzly weather and a long walk over the fells inspires a festive edition of Wear and Dao for any readers still hoping for inspiration or entertainment after a patchy period ... it is the pilgrimages that provide the juiciest material and it is the next pilgrimage that is a current focus ... the Via de la Plata calling ...

As for the Christmas season, it is passed pleasantly enough with a combination of visits with daughters and friends, and  trips with the elders, including a Nativity performed by the local junior school children, 9 Lessons and Carols at the cathedral in Durham, assisted shopping and several Christmas lunches, including the rather special one on Christmas Day in the church hall yesterday, inspired by a local teenager who wondered what folks wanting company were doing ... Ruth and her family are still organising the event three years on ...

Special thanks to Jennie for a wonderful linguistic addition with "vague 'un" to describe folks aspiring to a plant based diet though without taking it too seriously ... sounds familiar, though mammal flesh has been avoided for nearly thirty years without noticeable negative effects ... dairy products currently reduced due to the interesting discovery that official regulations specify how much blood and pus is permitted ... ethical concerns on animal welfare add weight, though maybe as a secondary layer to be truthful ... the initial impulse to avoid corpse eating was due to the routine use of antibiotics in animal husbandry ...

Reading material, possibly perversely, is the Autobiography of a Yogi by Yogananda and the weightier Introduction to Buddhism by Peter Harvey, sometime Reader in Buddhist Studies at the University of Sunderland ... the more familiar Christian story no longer resonating, though Yogananda, having decamped to California in 1920, includes many biblical references in his work ... neither Hinduism nor Buddhism calling strongly, though both offer interesting insights ... current thinking maintains the formless path or non-path, the very attempt to organise systems around religious insight identified as problematical ... 

The conclusion to recent musings on the purpose of the newly acquired cottage on the edge of Stanhope seems to be to try to transcend the perils of property by offering it as a Retreat through the "A Place to Be" network and see what transpires ... the more sensible AirBnB option remains, and of course family and friends are always welcome ...

Anchor or Base?

The editor writes to enquire about the lack of blogging, musing on whether the settled life has turned into Groundhog Day... prompting a report on progress as the mind wrestles with the consequences of property ownership ... the mundane details of furnishing from scratch, the slightly more interesting designing of the necessary upgrades ... the insight gleaned from managing a never extinguished coal fire to maintain the cosiness, which is an experience to be learned from though not necessarily every winter ... bearing in mind that winter in Stanhope is longer than in the Algarve (the focus of occasional thoughts for the New Year) ...

On a philosophical level it is noted that the concept of property ownership has made little impression, since "mine" infers a "me", an entity fundamentally non-existent, as described in several previous posts and a great liberation as the concept is embodied in daily life ...

The metaphors employed to tell the story to interested friends and neighbours include anchor holding "me" in place, versus base for exploration ... anchor in boat terminology is, of course, a temporary feature anyway ... and having a base to return to, whilst limiting the freedom experienced in the past three years, need not be a constraint to more wandering ... the cottage is being set up anyway with two bedrooms for guests (via AirBnB or whatever) and a micro bedroom for returning explorers ... all managed by a friend in the village, who is also taking care of the renovations ... symptoms of vitamin D3 deficiency have been noted and sunshine is prescribed, along with walking and talking with pilgrims ... Seville to Santiago over six weeks sounds appealing...

Meanwhile, regular readers may have noted the big idea for a Retreat House in Stanhope has fallen away ... though the house is still for sale and the vision lurking in the field of possibility, the collective energy has not yet gathered ... let's see ... anyway, the cottage may be a mini-retreat ... the library is growing ... 

Daily life, not yet Groundhog Day, passes peacefully, with occasional driving with Wheels to Meals, lots of walking the fells, plenty of reading (mostly Daniel Borstin's wonderful "The Discoverers, A History of Man's Search to Know His World and Himself"... man, his and himself, of course, clumsily including the other gender, although women are thin on the ground, whether through bias or a feature of roles throughout these ages territory dodged by this blogger, conditioned by feminist views in relationships professional and domestic ...) ... the mid-winter light festival approaches, celebrated here with a paradoxical partnership of Christian mythology and Mammon indulgence ... all observed wryly ... the solstice and the return to longer days more important for me, whoever that is ...

early Christmas lunch ...

Since the ladies of Edmundbyers W.I. , led by the remarkable Flora Hodgson, take a break in December from their monthly community lunch at Blanchland Social Club, yesterday was Christmas dinner for 60, plus raffle and entertainment from a dubious duo, one from Newcastle the other from North Northumberland, running through well worn jokes and songs, to the general amusement of the audience not conditioned to political correctness ... three busloads were collected door to door in Weardale for the occasion on a damp and blustery day ...heatwarming work and demonstrating the value of spending some time being useful to others ... though there may be room for debate on whether it is being useful or just feeling useful that works ... ah well no need to overthink such things, the overall response was wonderful ...

Current reading material includes Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, with some gruesome detail on the fate of heretics in the days of Henry V111 ... not a time to explore unconventional spiritual views, at least not in public ... more interesting is the convoluted justifications for carnal drives within rigid moral codes ... and a more compassionate drawing of Henry than expected ... next up, a book discovered in the Durham Oxfam Bookshop on the Albigensian Heresy and how that turned out a few centuries before our randy and murderous Henry ... the joys of life without a television ... the joys of life without torture and immolation for heretics!

On the subject of the TV free life, still a minority pursuit in 21st Century UK, the time and space created by eschewing it is only one of the benefits, perhaps the greatest boon is removing the hypnotic method and the brain rotting material ... the constant drip of fear fomenting rolling "news" along screens ... trailers for more in depth treatment of spurious debates on politics, "celebrity" antics, scary weather and so on, stitched together to keep our focus on the banal and inviting us to take up emotionally driven opinions on issues we have no control over .... like the nicotine habit kicked ten years ago, the TV habit has no attraction these days ...

Local drama plays on in the background .... though very much in the foreground for the main characters ... the victim of bullying and injustice and the perpetrator ... both of whom are worthy of compassion, though it is the victim who is a friend .... the philosophical question, a luxury for the non-combatant, is how to maintain non-judgement without abandoning the friend ... perhaps the key, and one with general application, is to differentiate between the actor and the action, to discern the merits of the action without judging the actor, who, after all, is playing a script and maybe an old one. Let's see how that plays out!

Annual attention ...

Our virtual world ramps up the opportunity for special attention once a year, by alerting our FB friends and others when our birthday arrives ... though, like most of our online life, we do have a role to play in supplying the information ... of course there are lots of ways to garner attention, with all the different emoticons with which to respond ... this often entails expressing an opinion on subjects we propose or by commenting on other folks' starters ...

This need for attention has been discussed before on here and indeed my recent birthday supplied some welcome greetings, though the exercise was met with equanimity ... my main concern was to acknowledge each greeting, being brought up to be polite .... interesting also to note comments from virtual and actual friends asking where I was currently wandering, indicating previous engagement with the blog, maybe the chapters boosted with FB posts ... or perhaps picking up telepathically current thoughts of wandering again and feeling rather trapped in the details of houses, like how to unlock the back door, how to pin down tradesmen to do the desired conversion work to make the place attractive for Airbnb guests or tenants ... how to summon up the enthusiasm for this project ...

The promised review of Rupert Sheldrake's new book "Science and Spiritual Practices" is underway ... nothing very deep to share, some reworking of his general themes about the limits of scientism and a moot point (if I may be so bold) on the merits of pilgrimages. Sheldrake is a patron of the British Pilgrimage Trust and proposes the principal point is the destination or destinations en route ... the holy places ... he is signed up to the Anglican version of Christianity, which may inform his view. Regular readers may recall I never saw any destination as key ... just the joy of the journey, whether on recognised pilgrim trails or other routes. Anyway, the book is light reading and with an engaging style ... if any local friends want to borrow it, just ask ...

Arriving at the ripe old age of 67 concentrates the mind somewhat ... elder daughter now at the age her mother bore her and ready for breeding herself ... younger one not interested at all in such a thing ... each to their own ... maybe a Grandfather role will suit sometime ... meanwhile the pilgrim role still calls ... Via de la Plata early Spring perhaps ... but first the mundane issues of the house, somewhat offset by persuading a local friend to play a project and property management role ... let's see!

Moon

This month's full moon, appearing ten days earlier than the November one reported in Finisterre last year, was obscured on its debut, but the two subsequent dawn walks have been wonderful, with Moon hanging in the West as Sun slowly rises in the East ... beautiful features in the spectacular frosty, Weardale landscape ...pre-dawn FB friend reports sinister association of Moon with Saturn, though he is rather predisposed to wild conspiracy theories and rather ranty too ... maybe gathering energy from his gullible audience as well as his more sceptical viewers ... so many theories, so many realities; inevitable in a thought created universe(s) ... after finishing The Illuminatus Trilogy with all its fantastic and lightly held speculation, the mind relaxes a little and normal service resumes, which is an early sit with candle lit, dawn walking before breakfast, some reading or writing ... including a rare Sunday newspaper yesterday, to check what liberal minded folks are currently programmed with ... Social Media, of course, is infiltrated by mainstream mind manipulators with paid content to lure back the refuseniks ... and whilst the more respectable outlets are almost credible, mass circulation comics are beyond parody ... more polarised positions set out for our limiting opinions, laced with lasciviousness to degrade perceptions and divert attention from issues the powers that be (whoever they are) wish left alone ... HM the Queen comes under scrutiny for dodgy investments, though avoids further investigation of the Diana case ... not to mention other skeletons in other cupboards ...

Meanwhile, the annual outing  of the poppy police is upon us, as the symbol from the blood drenched battlefields of Flanders is brandished not so much to say "Never Again" as a badge to glorify and justify war and ongoing violence in the century since the First World War (but not the last) ... white poppies as a pacifist alternative, but this is only playing the game of polarisation and likely identified with the infamous white feathers handed out to non-combatants then, by the very patriotic people pushing the bloody poppy now ...best not engage in pointless arguments ... "Thou Shalt Not Kill" is clear enough and practiced less than preached ... on a personal note, my father, who never spoke about the war of his youth, served in the medical corps, suggesting a pacifist outlook and indeed he was mostly peaceful except when provoked and even then the occasional smack for the children was not considered violence in those times ... the good old days according to some and indeed it was a golden era in many ways, at least as far as economic conditions of the majority of the population went ... history is suspect, since the narrative is dominated by a small section of society ... these days of social media and citizen journalists and historians open things up considerably, whether to truth or crazy conspiracy theories, who knows?

The latest addition to the library arrives, thanks to Hive Books and the Royal Mail ... Rupert Sheldrake's "Science and Spiritual Practices" ... reports to follow ...

the occult ...

Following a rather scary depiction of Kali, destroyer of demons, liberator of souls, at the Dances of Universal Peace, the goddess lingered a day or two longer to burst out spectacularly in a long running workplace drama ... who knows how that will play out ... and whether there was indeed a causal link between the invocation of Kali and the subsequent slaying of perceived demons ...

Halloween is as good a time as any to explore the occult a little, and recent study material coincidentally conspires .... mainly Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson's (oc)cult classic "The Illuminatus Trilogy" ... impossible to summarise or describe here ... this version arrived brand new via Hive Books (your opportunity to shop online ethically and support the local independent bookshop of your choice) .... the first time I saw the book it was some years ago during a stint at a local residential college for folks seeking to bolster their employment prospects, many with assorted diagnosed divergent abilities ... I was there earning a crust as a Residential Officer on night shifts during one of the periodic financial crises ensuing due to a lack of focus on security ... staying awake was one challenge, though there was usually a chance to sleep a few hours once the residents had settled down ... otherwise it was chatting to insomniacs or other students, one of whom thought I would find the book of interest after a long conversation around topics esoteric ... he managed to escape before it could be returned, though it did not really resonate at that time ...

Other occult items include a look at the Rosicrucians, a masonic order faintly on the radar since learning that inspirational folks like Peter Caddy, co-founder of the Findhorn Foundation, and Rudolf Steiner were members ... an aversion to masonry in general kept the interest at bay .... recent investigation of the aversion reveals that my father was strongly against masonry for reasons never fully explained, but possibly connected to suspected corruption, whilst my own experience with local government endorsed such suspicions ... also the requirement to cede personal authority to a hierarchy of humans with no expectation of explanation never sat well with this anarchistic soul ...

So, whilst a mild interest is explored, a full on dabble is not ... in student days a craze for ouija boards was also eschewed ... the paradox accepted here being that one can only know from one's own
experience (and even then there may be delusion) ... so, for now, the occult, like heroin, LSD, Las Vegas, Dubai, murder and other undesirable things, remains at the periphery of consciousness ... perhaps best left there until such time as the psyche is fully prepared for the inherent dangers ... meanwhile, focusing on gentler explorations of the hidden realms, perhaps one may bypass the demons, or bring them into the light and Universal Peace!

As house buying limps along endlessly, observation of the mind reveals occasional thoughts about stuff discarded during the extreme de-cluttering of recent years ... watching those thoughts without judgement dissolves them and gathering stuff to stock the base continues, including, of course a library ... hence, sitting alongside the bulky Illuminatus Trilogy is an elegant version of the Tao Te Ching ... teaching that the Tao which can be described is not the immortal Tao and proposing three Treasures: Simplicity, Patience, Compassion ... later development of Daoism discovered its own occult systems, of course ...