Book Reviews ...

Christmas Day, pregnant with symbolic meaning, thought forms everywhere appearing in the minds of excited children unable to sleep and their bleary eyed parents urging them to try, since Santa is still finishing off his rounds down South ... magical!

Disenchantment sets in later, at age 5 or 6 or 7 ... maybe a sense of betrayal, an existential shock that those trusted parents were lying all the time ... possibly a reason for a deep unease about religion, with Santa standing in for God?

At this stage, for any young readers disturbed by the above heresy, please rest assured that this 70 year old fool, writing these magical stories, has never lost his faith in Santa ... whilst still questioning the existence of a Creator God ... question everything they tell you, examine all of it and reject anything that insults your Soul, your deepest instincts that is if the concept of Soul disturbs you ...

Readers may note a reference to a mystic poet, Walt Whitman, who beautifully spoke his Truth ...

Meanwhile, in the Dale, two books have recently arrived in the Library, both by mystic poets albeit writing prose poetically, not fictitiously but autobiographically, beautifully sharing their insights; one into the Dale itself and her life high up on a hill farm, the other his younger life running with the marathon men and women in Ethiopia at even higher altitude ... both touching on deep truths, philosophers essentially, the local writer sitting in circles with the Quaker folks, mostly in the Silence, awaiting information internally, going inside for insights beyond the incessant chatter blocking any chance of deeper truth, the returning Durham City youngster, wise beyond his years after running marathons all round the world, finding flow states in his mind, writing his insights down for you to read and maybe be inspired ... of course, in both cases, the writers can only point towards the truths they find deep inside through the lives they led and lead now ... if you, dear long suffering reader(s), wish to seek your own Truth, the only Way is by living it ... which may seem tough, but it's worth a try, one glimpse of that peace that passes understanding may transform your life, or lives ...

As Dawn approaches and a walk beckons; today promises some serious fun and joy at the Community Lunch with the Elders, fewer than usual for obvious reasons, and featuring, hopefully:
A vicar with his philosopher wife, from the West of Wales, where they ran a Retreat House for many years; a retired professional from the South of London well acquainted with HRH The Queen from his many holidays; a White Witch from the East of Durham; the star of the show our local celebrity, not the author, but from further West, near the top of the road to Cumbria, with so many stories to tell of her hard life ... it was tough, she says, but our values were better then ...
Plus supporting cast, of which more later!

Time for breakfast now ... if you are wondering about the books:
A Shoulder on the Hill by Carol Madeline Graham of Westgate;
Out of Thin Air by Michael Crawley of Durham City and lover of Weardale. ..
You can find copies in the Library in Stanhope, in bookshops everywhere, via that awful online purveyor of everything if you must, other online bookshops too, Hive maybe ..

Have a lovely day wherever you are ... I can't think of anywhere better than the Church Hall in Stanhope personally ... but that's just me, a very lucky man!

Plots unravelling ...

Just after 5 again, time to write a little after a shortish scrolling of the FB feed, to try to decipher the viewpoints of various chosen FB friends, each with their own version, perception or illusion of what's going on politically around the world, mostly illustrated and supported or attacked in comment threads ... fascinating ... please note your correspondent does not exempt himself, not wishing to play holier than thou, a major error ...

After that an hour of reading ... early reading usually reserved for dense and difficult books, when the brain is most alert ... worth the effort to stay informed on topics alien to this unscientifically structured brain or mind ... writing this stuff to entertain any readers bored after all this time with unusual insights, possibly delusional and lacking the daily colour from Caminoing ... none of it anyway an altruistic chore, but purely selfish and mostly fun ... staying fit in body, mind and soul, not with any intention to live forever but to maybe die healthy if possible ... as predicted by the gypsy descendent of Rose Lee a short while ago ...

Weirdness abounds and finds an old mind happy to entertain it ...

An old young friend arrives with books, all written by him just this year ... in case you're wondering, dear reader(s), it's only one book but several copies, dedicated by him, an affectation you may observe, indicating that this would-be writer at least knows one published author ... anyway it looks good in a Library to encourage would-be readers ... the author developed the book from a thesis which won him his PhD, so he's a doctor now ... frankly I trust him more than some medical ones, dispensing drugs to order from drug barons on prescription, approved by NICE, another strange acronym, a linguistic lie ...

Anyway, the Doctor brings with him another Doctor and their delightful daughter, not yet in possession of academic awards, but bright enough not to have forgotten she knows everything and still asks why ... she'll probably comply eventually with cultural norms and adapt and forget the weird stuff not required to progress in this time and place ... though there's still hope, since her parents embrace Anthropology,  a soft science subject which often throws up Shamans ... they go native whilst studying with ignorant backward savages ... in Empire times smart Christians taught them about the Jesus story, often violently. .. a serious error obviously!

Time is speeding up, according to physics and certainly for older folks with most of our future behind us now ... we have the chance to story our life looking backwards, since it happened ... though unless we kept a diary all our life the history of us is not told then but now and how well we remember it depends on many things ... which is where selective amnesia may pay off; a chance to tell a better story, weeding out the weeds we don't wish to find in our garden ... sorry if this sounds flowery and weirdly enough this triggers a memory from a me from teenage years, when a rather bitter teacher judged this aspiring writer's writing "flowery" ... and not in a good way ....

Christmas Eve is upon us already and a clear sky promises a sight of the Sun appearing to rise after yesterday's gloomy rainy day ... all is illusion on this Earthly plane, all the world's a stage and in this individualistic age, on FB and in general, everyone wants to put themselves at the centre of everyone else's story ... imagine that! Chaos reigns, the internet is about to break under the weight of photos of our Christmas Dinners, our families if we are permitted to see them, sunrises, sunsets and so on sitting in huge databanks. .. stored for when the miners can sell them back to us ...

Time for breakfast and a walk before Dawn ... see you on the other side ...

The light returns ...

Just after 5 the day after the longest night
A good time to write while FB is quiet
At least in the North
Our friends from the South are awake
And ready for attention, the existential trap
Of the most powerful addiction known to Man
Not dangerous by design, like fine wine
It's using it in moderation, not letting it use you that's key
Blaming FB, Twitter, Instagram, Wtf's that App
And other attention grabbers
Pinging incessantly to remind us how important we are ...

Language itself, essentially the way we see our world,
Conspires in its very structure to blindside us
So many nouns in sophisticated languages
Whilst Truth will never be found in nouns
Fundamentally, as known from physics and psychics
Truth is a verb, or to be more accurate, it's verbing
Never fixed, always moving, forming and dissolving
In the void, itself not empty, but full of energy
Awaiting your full attention, your Consciousness
To create the World you want at deepest level, maybe

Language explains and constrains simultaneously
And explanations in the mouths of Sophists sound smart
Though thought itself is limited,
Since thought is structured by words
Try Silence sometimes or better still, often
It's golden for a reason after all is said and done ...

Meanwhile, in the void, pregnant with infinite potential
This Universe is expanding and everlasting
Full of Love and your intelligence

From big bang to big crunch again and again

What's beyond the edge of this Universe is left unasked
One Universe at a time is enough for Now!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year, from Wear and Dao
Please try to enjoy the dreadful games if you can
Doing what we can where we are
As if all the world really is a stage
The key to happiness in the mundane world

Love wins, it always does ...

The Bishop and the Elders ...

Well, that was fun! A full day for a retired person with nothing much to do ... an early start approaching the shortest day or longest night, depending how you story it, some hours to pass productively before Dawn, itself some Time before Sunrise, itself a misnomer given that strictly speaking the Sun does not rise or fall in relation to the Earth, though that's all pedantry, some say ... this pedantic old blogger demands accuracy however, since language creates our World and if we wish to understand it we'd better be clear about the language we employ ... Sophists use language to deceive us artfully, others fall into the many traps mindlessly set by it ...

The latest semantic game plays out through a recent form of an ancient art - Power and how to use it ... known as Neuro-Linguistic-Programming, NLP for short ... a neutral device essentially, waiting for humans to apply it for good or ill or neither ... in brief, Common Purpose, a fine sounding title for a malign organisation, set up years ago to persuade the human race to behave sensibly, rationally, in order to halt the trends of climate change, gross inequality, greed, conspicuous consumption and more ...all bringing the planet to crisis point ... plausible? Yes, maybe so ... but a cult was smelt by many with a nose and instinct for such things and publicly exposed ... but the cult continued and recruited adherents in influential positions in national and local authorities, health services and so on ... voluntarily submitting to brainwashing ...

And there we are today, cast into despair through fear induced by senseless rules imposed ostensibly because of a pandemic called to deal with a particular flu, no more lethal than the annual one, with mass deception of a frightened people projecting all their fears of death, loss of money, loss of loved ones, a people softened up by excess stuff including money ...

Which brings us to the Elders ... shamefully neglected since Martial Law commenced in March, locked up with no choice about how they spend their golden years or weeks or days, as expressed to me by more than one nonogenarian locally ... actually their wisdom has been undervalued for much longer, given the lives they led, the lessons they learned, the values they shared when times were much much harder ... and not just the snow, barely seen in recent times ... still their grand and great-grand-children learn, by visits if they're lucky, by phone if not, and not at all if the elders have none with whom to share the lessons ... and vice versa, since the young bring wisdom of their own to bear, especially pure compassion which exists in their hearts before cynicism sets in ...

Riding over the fells, reminiscing on places not seen for ages, fond memories about tougher, kinder times, the touchy subject of the Prince Bishops of Durham, based in Bishop Auckland, not especially worshipped by some elders, what with the excess wealth of the established Church extracted from the miners and farmers in the good old days ... never mind, Bishop Paul, the current Bishop, turned out to preach a very positive and mercifully brief message of Peace and Love to all in the name of Jesus Christ, reminding his flock of the similarities between the experience of Mary and Joseph, tormented by Herod, and current times ... well said, and radical in a way, the message received and understood by many gathered round the Tree, the Fear lifting palpably, social distancing, bubbles, clusters, rules of six, tiers of three and all those strange ideas notwithstanding.

One of the unusual features of these crisis times is the demise of the Established Church, replaced anyway round here by more austere Chapels inspired by Wesley who taught that alcohol and gambling were best avoided and the Love of Christ more important than the Love of money ... the surplus value sucked out of the ground and the sweat of the miners, farmers and so on ... though the C of E and Once True Faith, plus other assorted versions of the Truth are to be found around, though many actual religious buildings are finding other uses, since the younger generations seem to have lost faith in the old stories. .. still, as the Bible, New Testament I think, taught : Where two or more gather together in My name, there am I in the midst of you ... a question explored in some depth along the Way in solitude ... basically: Why two humans, not just one?

That's all philosophy, already shared in Wear & Dao for loyal reader(s) with long memories, and best left for now while we enjoy the story and especially the essential message of Christmas time!

Creating the world you want ...

As promised here's a look at the less well known opposite of Paranoia ... Pronoia!

If you, like me, have known paranoia, maybe experience it in daily life, even in dreams ... it is surprisingly common to greater and lesser degree ... worth examining before diving into the magical world of the opposite known to me, the Centre of my own World you may recall, through experience, and perhaps to you, the Centre of your World, times however many readers are reading this story ... if we move from the extremes of both it seems likely most if not all humans have experienced these feelings ... looking rather like yin yang or Dao ... but that's another story!

Yesterday's morning's walk was wet, as forecast ... weather, being complex, is notorious for lack of predictability ... patterns may be observed and best guesses broadcast, confidently since viewers and listeners like certainty, certainly an error in a world fundamentally uncertain, if Heisenberg was right ... and many others, of course! Nevertheless, this mostly waterproof walker didn't drown and met other walkers, though fewer, while in the shops shopping continued with tinsel, sparkly Santas and enough food to last a month or two, much of it destined for the bin ...

Later, a visitor arrived for lunch and philosophy ... a very deep exploration of human existence, existential suffering and all those far too common experiences of human beings ...
The Buddha taught, amongst other things: Pain is inevitable, Suffering is optional! Or maybe that was another neo-buddhist sage? The positive message from that tradition was that there's an escape from suffering on offer ... and there perhaps is Pronoia, the topic for today, how each human being, employing the power of the Mind, has the ability to create a parallel universe, even in the mundane one, where suffering is not experienced, though empathy for fellow humans is an essential part of the deal ... after all's said and done, we're not separate anyway, so any suffering of any sentient being is shared compassionately ... balance being a key point here ... too much empathy, i.e. suffering for the whole world, may mean excess projection and less useful action; too much cool detachment may point to psychopathy, best avoided ...

Today, the forecast is brighter, weather-wise, and the Elders of the Dale, are meeting up for lunch and conviviality ... well a few of those brave souls stepping out of the awful Fear created by Fascist Authorities by design ... but that's all politics, best left alone for now ... perhaps. ..

This evening a Carol Service outdoors by the tree, the Bishop of Durham no less leading the faithful and the faithless too in joyful singing or miming, anyway gathering in a large group from the community for once ... subsequent reports will let you know how that goes for those not attending.

Pronoia? Put simply it's the simple joy of imagining the whole universe conspires to meet your needs and heartfelt desires ... which sounds rather pleasant and much more fun than the miserable fear invoking paranoia driving this mundane mass hallucination created from the minds of ...

... Who? Or should that be whom? Even WHO. .. though that's another conspiracy theory!

Looking like quite a busy day, time for breakfast and a pre-dawn walk to fire the engine, meet the trees, talk to the sheep munching grass in the fields, climb above the slumbering village for a while before descending for some interaction with the locals ... and incomers like me!

The Centre of the Universe ...

Just in case you, dear reader(s), ever wondered where the Centre of the universe(s) is, was and maybe will be, here's a Revelation for you!

You may indeed have had the same or similar Revelation yourself ... since in a sense each and every human being, endowed with Soul (whatever and wherever that may be found), is the Centre.

For clarity, albeit in a vague way, space ships from this planet in this era of recorded history have not found the actual edge of this Universe and therefore an actual single centre common to all of us cannot be found. Any cosmologists reading please share the latest on this question, though more information may be found from philosophers of a mystical kind. Jude Currivan maybe? Her book 'The Cosmic Hologram' offers hypotheses to consider ... Jeff Foster wandered in the same territory, having studied cosmology scientifically for a while before diving inside his own mind in search of some answers, or better questions perhaps ...

So, for this particular individual, real or not, the Centre was revealed as himself ... imagine that! Luckily for his humility, at the same time (since time is relative and revelation is always beyond it); nothing, nada, forget such self importance ... apart from anything else one conclusion to muse upon was permission to hold two contradictory views as true simultaneously, which was liberating ...

Where does this point then? Well, for a start, in case you wondered, you, dear reader(s), are also at the Centre of the Universe, or your own one anyway ... just don't forget the other part or you fall (or Fall like Adam in the Eden story) into the sin, or error (which is really just a mistake laden with judgement from some religions) of imagining humans to be separate from Nature, less than an imaginary all powerful creator God, but given dominion over all the rest, animal, vegetable and mineral (plus fungii) to do as we will ... the results of which mistake are now perceived as problematical, not least since the imaginary Creator was thrown out along with all the blood stained dirty water some time ago as the latest illusion landed, Scientism, with a new caste of priests, with new certainties ... certainly lethal now armed with the means to wreak destruction on the Earth on industrial scale ... as described elsewhere on this rambling blog ...

Bringing us to Consciousness ...
                           ...and the question of whether that is separate, group or Universal ...

Meanwhile a pre-dawn start meant dawn arrived in the woods, and sunrise up on the fell ... which was wonderful ... though impossible to describe and even the greatest photo couldn't capture it ...
As usual key meetings on the Fell add context to the stories, and in the village, on the street and in the shops, more teaching and learning goes on ... listening intently always pays off, and any words of wisdom very carefully chosen, not to evade the issues, but neither to trigger a friend not wanting to hear ... anyway, the other is always the Centre of their own story, so what's the point?

The point at this critical time, when baby boomer hopes and fears intensify as they (we) approach the end of this Scene, or Act of the never-ending story as Shakespeare is said to have written in one of his mystical phrases, sentences, observation, insights maybe: All the World's a Stage. .. perhaps the apostrophe is misplaced ... hmmm

That's nearly enough for now, time is short and attention spans shorter, please feel free to disagree and share your version, if nothing else it will draw you into my story, leaving the small, needy ego at the Centre, where it likes to be ...

Next up: pronoia, which AI needs to learn ... it offers paranoia, which is its shadow side!

The end is nigh!

Less than two weeks to Christmas Day, when the world pauses for one day, with almost all shops closed, almost all humans thinking about big questions:

Is there enough food for at least that day, plus maybe the next?
Who is sending cards this year and should I?
How much is postage costing now?
Have all those adults sending gifts had one from me?
Which crabby relatives must we tolerate this year?

Will I be judged, essentially...?
And who's that Jesus bloke anyway?
Bringing Peace and Goodwill to all Mankind, including women ...
With one or two exceptions, obviously!

All this pointless pontification arises from an early foray to the Co-op Store for essential supplies for a day or three ... negotiating the aisles half blocked by a major delivery from a large lorry, whose friendly driver is taking pause to allow the staff to fill the shelves ... he lives in Newcastle, works out of Birtley, the distribution centre for Co-op shops for miles around, and finds the employer fair, unlike some other delivery companies notorious for taking workers' rights back in time at least a century, before trade unions ... though even unions have lost their way recently, abandoning their members protection from Health and Safety legislation  (1974 or 6) ... working all day in unnecessary masks a clear breach of human rights, let alone health dangers from reduced respiration ... the shop staff mostly comply cheerfully enough, the senior managers, maybe complicit and therefore culpable, encourage them to have fun ... happy staff mean happy customers after all ...

More conversation on the street elicits information that next Thursday evening live Carol singing led by the Bishop of Durham around the tree is planned ... a chance for more community engagement chorally and though it's late at 6pm,  it's in the diary ... why not!

The villages are vying with each other for bragging rights to Light up the Dale, like every year ... going into the shortest day and longest night it helps to cheer us up ... indeed psychologically many humans suffer with seasonal affective disorder, physically deficiency of vitC and D especially ... medics prescribe pills, householders have extra lights inside as well as out, while those who can afford it fly South for a week or so in the Sun, pensioners stay there longer, the costs balanced by reduced heating bills and naturally occurring vitC and D ... plus conviviality, let's not forget that!

This winter retreat is turning more convivial than usual here at Railway Terrace, neighbours doing what good neighbours always do - checking out how we're doing in these strange times, not to pry but because we care ... it's one of the endearing features of humanity ...

The apocalyptic tongue in cheek headline of this post, hopefully not the last, though you never know, points not to the end of the world as we know it beyond the peculiar and serious games we are drawn into ...all the world essentially being a stage as the Bard is said to have said, though even that is questioned by the po-faced miserable measurers whose role this time round seems to be to remind us that there's infinitely more to Life than the mundane ... this particular game is reaching crisis point at many levels ... some even point to cosmic changes ... though we may not need to know that to spot the Sophists if we stay alert, question everything forensically, see the behavioural insights crew, ironically described as Sage, conditioned to believe their work is benign in the longer term ... benighted some might say ...

Anyway, there's more to this longish Christmas Season than politics ... or worries about whether we have enough food and tinsel to take us through to January! By then we will be over the hill and into 2021, a brand new year to look forward to ... a Local Agenda 21 they say, to replace the global agenda 19 which lingered overlong through 20, even though the coronavirus selected to serve the fear we needed to shock us from complacency peaked around April, declined steeply through the Summer and was given a second life in Autumn with specious testing throughout Winter aided and abetted by the servants of whoever is running the show (if not us), let's say the scapegoats plus the escaping goats like plutocrats so in love with money they have temporarily lost their soul ...

The illusory nature of money has been mentioned many times before, but as with the deceptive nature of language bears repeating ...

Meanwhile, back in the village, the best of humanity emerges thanks to the message of the Christ Consciousness, not necessarily to be confused with the cultural religious form expressed and used for a couple of millennia in the West ... these curious forms serve our need for company, solace, some certainties ... certainly a major error in any religion taking fixed form ... but that's all theology and philosophy and unlikely to arise at the Carol Service with the Bishop!

Walking to walk continues, cooking to cook a particular pleasure here ... and what with walking, cooking, engaging with the humans on existential questions in the street and on the fell, reading for pleasure and to learn more from history, herstory, psychology, quantum and cosmic science and so on ... oh yes, and writing to write ... finding some time for that, whether readers are reading it or not is not my business ... it all goes into the void, picks up some energy and joins all the 2D data from all the world in this Universe to expand it ... and so on ... speculation about cosmic big bangs and big crunches, infinity, eternity and universes after universes is really best left to Dao, which is to say, yet again, don't bother trying to describe the indescribable ... have some fun, life's far too serious as it is!

Love always wins ...