Proof.

  I don’t know why I was still sat crosslegged on the mud floor of the Nepalese orphanage´s dining room when I had long finished the dahl baht. Maybe I had free time with no duties; maybe I was sat in Mandukasana – the Frog pose – to help digestion; maybe I was just being plain lazy. What I do know is that I was sat quietly, motionless, gazing through the door and marvelling to myself how the corn seed, that had been planted around the time of my arrival, had grown to be a couple of meters tall, how the heads were beginning to look like something I could imagine eating, with butter.  
 

Dhananjay, Sumitra and Namita in the Ashram´s Dining Room.
Curiously they are sitting exactly where I was in this story.
The door is to their 2 o´clock (right)



Rishi had come to the ashram a month before. He had travelled a brave, difficult path, for after marriage, he had felt the need to embark on a spiritual life, which his wife was unprepared to follow. It had lead to their physical separation which, presumably especially in Nepalese culture, was an extremely delicate situation. We spoke about it a little, about his hurt, how it laced into his joy of finding this spiritual path.

 

Rishi, I and a few others, did yoga in the morning together under the we-would-like-to-say “expertise” eye of Doctor Gopal at 6 am: which in Nepal is late. The children, my little children as I mother-duckingly felt towards the end, were up at 5am with their yoga. I was so proud of them! I was only just able to crawl out of bed with Gopal knocking at my door at 5.45 am for communal tea and biscuits in my bedroom. That is when I realised that: 1) privacy is something that is within us, not without; and 2) always wear pyjamas. Anyway, Rishi and I were co-walkers for a while along the same path.

The children in the yoga hall, 5am.

   

So, I´m sat there on the mud floor looking at the green corn, and suddenly -¡click! - it is as if my vision has changed from an old grainy fuzzy film to a modern crystal clear format…the colours jump out, saturated in a greener than green, in a brilliantly dazzling green, and I don´t know if before there had been a slight breeze but I suddenly notice it, and see how the corn, so vibrant, seems to come alive and dance in that breeze, how different greens weave a pattern of sensual art, of pleasure, of being, and I am filled with joy, and want to sing the song the breeze is making. And there, in the dining room, I find that I have suddenly burst into song…I feel so connected with everything, with the corn outside shining into the shadowy room, as if live itself were right there at the doorway…and I look around, most of the children had finished eating their rice with a splattering of vegetables, and have gone to do their chores. There must have been maybe four children still - and Rishi. I look at him. He is sat with his direction towards me. I can´t remember if he has his eyes closed or not, but then we make eye contact, and I beam at him, he beams back, as if we have shared an intimate moment…and hesitatingly I say (and it is the first and last time I have ever said this to anyone):

“Have you been sending me energy?” And he replies in his Nepali accent, a little embarrassed,

“Yes, I have been sending you Reiki.” Suddenly it all makes sense!...the dancing green, the livid breeze, the burst into song. “I must apologise, you really must never send Reiki until you have sought permission. You must always ask before doing so.” He says awkwardly.

“Ohh Rishi, it was wonderful. Thank you.”

How could I have been anything other than thankful to him? And later I realise just how fortunate it was that he hadn´t asked me for the said permission - for otherwise I would have thought it was my head playing tricks again. I would never have had the opportunity to experience, innocently, those moments and the effects of someone sending me “energy”. It is an Aloe-vera soothing relief when, on that high vertigo verge of serious doubting, of wondering if this time if I really am going mad – the image of that doorway, with the corn outside, most needingly flashes back from memory in the knick of time. I can only be eternally grateful to Rishi, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, for giving me this heart-warming, sanity-saving proof. I don´t know what to call it - energy, libido (the energy of life, not just the sexual), Eros, Caritas, Spirit – who knows? But whatever it was, I know it does, it really does, exist.



Prem and Jivan collecting
cow food from the next field to the corn.

The Eternal Return

My little christmas tree to you.        

So I´m a little late…I got caught up in rushing around before Christmas…but I´m in time to wish you a Happy New Year!

I had an unusual Christmas this year.  It was very nice, with excellent foods, and good company but it wasn´t Christmassy... There was no going down the pub to see faces you haven´t seen for a minimum of a year or decade, and in Catalunya cranberry sauce is unheard of. No mistletoe, no sitting around with the ceremony of who opens which present when, and shockingly not even a hint of drunkenness…I did slurr my words, but it was more due to the eternal struggle with foreign languages.

Mircea Eliade writes that all cultures have ceremonies that allow the individual to leave his daily life, if only momentarily, to enter into “that world” where all is exactly the same as the last time, where time stops ticking, all becomes eternal. It is an ethereal, sacred place where the spirit is renewed, the old is thrown out, and the experience gives a sort of reset. Like taking the battery out of the back of your Blackberry.

It is the same place maybe that Henri Corbin talks about, where the material is spiritualised and the spirit is materialised.

I am sure that we have all felt this, when a certain date of the year we do exactly the same as the last time, as the time before that, since we can remember. When we forget ourselves and in so doing re-find ourselves. For, why else would Catalans get so excited about eating a soup for their Xmas meal? And how come stuffing takes you back to when you were a child and Uncle Maurice said that if you imagine strong enough, stuffing tastes of whatever you want it to? And it did. And it does. It tastes of Christmas, it tastes of a connection with my ageless self that I renew through stuffing ceremonies every year.

And this year I didn´t get it through food. I didn´t manage to get into that agelessness on Xmas day where all is the same, where the brain gives way to the heart. Xmas day isn´t a day I expect to do a bit of graffiti with Enric´s grandchildren. But I did (and I loved it...).

But do not fret, I did get that feeling, I was transported back to being my ageless musical self, playing carols with Dan the Man. It is something that as a child and teenager I have done every year, and since have listened to nearly every year. And god-damn, though they are not exactly top of the pops, I love ‘em! They give me the same emotions as when I was me before. They take me half way to that place.

On Xmas day I listened to a TV programme talking about the symbology of Father Christmas. I found it super interesting and want to share it.

Papa Noel was originally dressed in green, because he represented being connected with the earth, with nature, with trees. He is helped by little elves, or tree dwellers, who if you are worthy, if you have worked on yourself, give gifts. The programme talked of gifts as in talents, such as the gift of creativity. If you passed through the material darkness with dignity, with connection to the light of being, then you were given more gifts-talents.

Santa Claus, being attached-connected in this way to the heavens by a very fine golden thread (in Norse mythology), descends from the heavens down through the chimney, which the programme mentioned is related with the spinal cord, with the chakras. He tumbles down to the root chakra and if you have been good, he leaves gifts under the tree.

Here the tree is a symbol of life. We humans are suspended between the roots that go into the lower worlds and the branches that reach up to the higher worlds. The lower world is represented by black, the chaos of material, the instinctual world, and we grow organically up towards the white of the heavens, where there is the possibility of reaching an entelechial connection with the stars (with the star or angel, who sits at the top of the tree smiling angelically, even though the tree has been rammed up her flowing robes).

The tree is decorated, and in the past with candles, which I would like to think are the little lights of consciousness that help us along our individual paths to the final goal - but begs the question of how did the tree not burn down…?

If you are unworthy here in Spain, if you are a naughty and have been acting up, you receive a piece of coal, which is black and represents a regression to the world of material chaos. The smiling white angel has to wait.

But if we´ve been worthy, can the experience of connecting with the angel, be the same that Mircea Eliade and Henri Corbin speak of? Where, as Hermes Trismegistus said, chiselling in the Emerald Tablet: "That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing"?

So, you see I was very happy eating my dinner on my lap, in the privacy of our home, listening to the idea that Papa Noel too represents, in this time of the Winter Solstice, the idea of going into the dark depths with the light of our souls, to come out of the dark chaos with grace, having learnt more about ourselves, enabling us to receive gifts that allow us to live a little wiser, somewhat more universal, with more pleasing order. With each cycle let´s hope we are a little more in unison with our true selves.

Have a Great New Year.

Alchemy and Mysticism from The Hermetic Museum
Author: Heinrich Khunrath
Work: Amhitheatrum sapientae aeternae
Date: 1606

Happy doing the things you do.

So recently Enric sent me this video ...

It made me think...and of course being someone to jump into the shoes, or shoe in this case, of another....I imagined myself the man with the one leg...and contemplated how would I feel at the end of the performance, seeing that I had moved an audience to tears. 

I did a theatre course a couple of years ago with our beloved teacher Jose Vásquez, titled, "Contact with the Shadow"....the idea was to go into ourselves...and through a particular difficult exercise, I realised that no matter what happens to us, even if we have all of the physical problems in the world imaginable, we are still, believe it or not, us. 

Some days I wish I could just have a rest.  But alas! I must always be with me.  No escape.  So, after the video I imagined myself, in the position of the man with one leg, and imagined how I would react (all half unconsciously - you know that internet half-in-half-out approach...) and came quickly to the conclusion that I would probably react like this:

"What the f am I doing here?....making audiences cry just cos I´m dancing with one leg....What am I here on this planet for?....What is my existence worth?....Why should I not just kill myself?..." and on and on....

The sensitive reader will discern that I had, emotionally wise, a rather difficult November.  Again.

But at that moment of hundimiento....of falling in on myself....into and far away from my imagined one legged body....a little voice came into my head.... not strong but small and gently wise....and said "You are right.  It´s no good dancing just to make an audience look at you admiringly be moved to tears"  It continued "....you would only get the satisfaction, the fulfilment you are looking for, if you danced because it is what most you wanted to do in that moment, because it is what you LOVE to do."

And I would say, humbly, that that little wise voice inside of me is actually quite wise....

I Ching says: 

• When a man is dissatisfied with modest circumstances, he is restless and ambitious and tries to advance, not for the sake of accomplishing anything worth while, but merely in order to escape from lowliness and poverty by dint of his conduct. Once his purpose is achieved, he is certain to become arrogant and luxury-loving. Therefore blame attaches to his progress. On the other hand, a man who is good at his work is content to behave simply. He wishes to make progress in order to accomplish something. When he attains his goal, he does something worth while, and all is well. (Hexagram 10, 9 at the beginning)

Maybe this is all so simple and obvious to others, but to me it was a sort of breakthrough.  So I apologise if this would seem ridiculously simple, but I realised how important it is to listen to your heart, and do what makes you enjoy life, what makes you happy just to be.  If people see you doing it, and themselves are moved to do what their heart whispers to them, (which also makes them happy doing something, with a love of the action-result to want to show others too), well, that is just beautiful...and if no one sees, or they do but don´t applaud, well, just by having done the action itself brings the feeling of it being totally worthwhile.  Personal fulfilment is gained by simply living with a balance between the desire of our heart and the possibilities of our mind.

I would hazard a guess that what we are innately trying to acheive is Beauty.  It is what fills us with fulment.  Beauty, according to François Cheng is what manifests between yin and yang, between the femininine (in all of us) and the masculine (in all of us), between the right and left brains, between performer and audience.  Between the polarities of life manifests Beauty like an end of a rainbow.  We cannot create it....we can only do our bestest in expressing our part, in the way in which we feel most purity, most harmony with who we are, in the hope that Beauty manifests. 

In her wonderful talk Elizabeth Gilbert talks at one point about the Moors who invaded the south of Spain.  Their dancers would dance night after night, dancing, dancing....but once in a while a dancer would "click in", would tranform and in so doing would seem to float in the harmony of their movements, they would appear more than just human as if a light were shining through them...and the audience would shout "¡Olé! ¡Ole!" which was "Allah! Allah!"....the divine shining through.  And that, I guess, is Beauty.

But we cannot dance in life if we are not dancers, just to achieve what someone else really liked and got fulfilment from, and got audiences shouting "¡Olé" at them....for as Oscar Wilde put succintly "Be Yourself, everyone else is taken". 

And so I realise that I have been moved by the ballet of the two people in the video…moved to think about myself, to think about my actions, my motivations, to think about Beauty….I have been moved to write, to play with words….but I´m telling you, even with two legs, if I were to dance for you, you´d all fall about laughing.  

Joan Melé - Money and Consciousness

I have just watched a marvellous video of Joan Melé, the subdirector of Triodos Bank, an Ethical Bank (YES they exist!) talking in Castellaño about Money and Consciousness.

Joan Melé giving his talk "Dinero y Consciencia"

He begins by saying that it is impossible to come out of this present crisis if we are only going to think about coming out of the crisis. We need a change of paradigm, we need to see that the earth is not just in a crisis, such as climate change, but is in a far far worse state, the world is sick. And we, living together on it, are too.

Joan Melé explains the difference between mechanic and organic systems. He says mechanic systems are a sum of its parts. However organic systems, which we undoubtedly are, are a reflection of the whole. Each cell affects the whole and each cell needs the whole for its existence.

Cancer is a rapid growth of cells, explains Joan (on first name terms now), that have no concept of the whole, that grow at the expense of the other cells around them, and eventually kill the system itself. He then, cleverly, explains how money is working in a cancerous way as someone pays millions for a Picasso painting, with the plans to spend billions on the extension of Camp Nou or how millions are spent on a formula one car or thousands on a piece of jewellery...open the newspapers for more examples…my brain has gone dry.

And then listen to this loveliness! The heart governs the blood flow, that flows through every single cell in our bodies. It goes through a small conical pouch that projects from each atruim of the heart called an “auricle”.  The word stems from "auris", as in "ear"…the heart listens to the body, to the information coming back through the blood and redistributes the blood that goes through every single cell, and prioritises. If you are studying it goes to the head, which I hope is where your blood is now reading this, if you are eating it goes to the stomach, if you are running up the road mine attempts to get into my legs and sprints into to my face cheeks…The heart (with help from the brain) has the global vision of the body and distributes the oxygenated blood, which is life, in function of the necessities. It is not mechanical, pumping uniformly, but listens, responds, modifies.  Banks, in Joan´s idea, should have the mission of circulating the money, the economic blood of our communities, like a heart.  They should connect those who have ideas and are without money, to those with money and without ideas, sending life to where it is needed in each of the cells of the whole. It is the original idea of banking in his opinion. But we don’t seem to allow that. We go for making money from money. But I´m not going to get into that. We all have our opinions about speculating.

The world is sick. The world has cancer. We are all cells in the whole. Are we healthy cells? Erm…what an embarrassing question. But we must answer it.

My dense knowledge of Biology may be summed up in one word…none. But I am trying to think how a body naturally deals with cancer, and anyone who knows, please, I would appreciate, stroke need, your opinion. But logically, there must be an area where there are cells having a ball, multiplying like crazy, celebrating the cell stock market highs, frenzies of cocktail party growth, while around them there must be cells who are still healthy, who are so tempted to get into all that action and multiply, but don´t. Why? How? There must be a wall of healthy cells that are strong enough inside “themselves” to maintain their vision of the whole.

I know, I know, it is just not scientific at all, but how else can it be?

Joan says that we cannot let decisions be made any more by others. He cried a little on the inside with the election based on the hope that Obama is going to save us. We have to save ourselves. Kant said a similar thing, we have to take the responsibility off external authorities and internalise it. We have to raise our consciousness so that we can learn to make decisions.

Are we strong enough to stand up in a sick world, and maintain our principles? Can we be strong healthy cells besides those who are having a good time multiplying endlessly in self glory. Can we be healthy enough with the hope that the present craziness will not spread to every single cell? As we see our environment amusing itself to death, are we strong enough to act differently to our surroundings?  Can we maintain internal strength springing from the sense of life, without falling into the temptation of easy wins at the expense of someone else who we don’t even know (another cell)?  It is so easy just to buy the cheapest, to buy fruit out of season without thinking about the implications, to put our money into high interest rate accounts (did you know 95% of money´s movement (the blood) is pure speculation that doesn´t create wealth?). I guess it´s time that we begin to be aware of what we do everyday.

The questions Joan poses are:

How do we consume? What are the effects of our purchases? Who has made them, how have they been treated, how has the production affected the world?  Has transport and its pollution really been necessary?
Why do we consume? The psychological biggie which needs more than just a ten day silent retreat.
How do we save? And where is that saved money going to? Joan explains his experience of the irony of ironies: Often NGOs are fighting on one side for peace while putting their money in banks who invest in arms.  That more than $1.5 trillion spent on the military worldwide (according to SIPRI figures for 2009) is a very tempting market and has great interest.  And if not war, big companies often squash out the smaller in the "survival of the fittest".  Are your principles and your saving in harmony?
Joan remarks quite simply that money doesn’t just make money, as much as we may try to fool ourselves. Anyone who puts their mind to it will see it is impossible…someone, somewhere loses. Cancer´s temptation has spread.

He too is for the idea that we are human and beings. We have a higher and a lower self. Fear, not exactly of the present but of the present´s future, is making us behave like animals. And as much as we may be told we are animals (it is a great excuse for all kinds of behaviour) Joan persuades us we are not. An animal, such as a lion, is uniform. They all act the same way. Humans do not. But we are competing and living like animals in an absurd survival of the fittest, pissing on the less adapted to survive. Even the survivors aren´t happy. The education system is uniform, offices around the world are impossible to place outside ubiquitous land, we are bashing ourselves into uniformism, else people wouldn´t be so grossed out by my hairy legs. We are not promoting difference (please no-one else grow the hairs out for so long - it is a failed experiment).  We don´t allow ourselves liberty or creativity, which is what gives us our sense of being. We are selling cheap our sense of being a higher entity rather than a mere human animal, just for credit card points.



Ken Robinson on http://www.ted.com/ says Schools Kill Creativity



Ken Robinson, with his fine name, said in his TED talk that someone said: If all insects were to disappear from this planet, within 50 years all life on earth would end.  If human beings were to disappear from the earth, within 50 years all forms of life would flourish. Are we really so cancerous?

With freedom and creativity comes responsibility. We are in a moment of time of the greatest richness in history, it is simply that our heart is not working correctly, we are not distributing the riches to all of the cells. We all know there are people starving while we tuck into our three meals a day.

But, I shout, what can I do? Well, we can stay healthy, and not fall into temptations of the easy something for nothing living. It is not easy to stand erect (so I´m told) when everyone around is laying in hammocks and saying what can I do?

Joan put a good spin on meditation…he says in modern life we are anorexic of internal life. That we need to create space in our lives for silence, to reconnect with ourselves and nature of life. He recaps each night the day he has led, and tries to think of all that he has done, both well and that which was a mistake. He´s not into flagellation, he isn´t out to judge, instead to become aware so that the next day he can try and be better, which he says we will almost certainly fail at! But Rome was not built in one day, a coach potato does not become a marathon runner in one day...

Being on our own in our own silence is not easy. It like being in a big sports hall alone with no where to run. It is a contact with nothingness as the rug is pulled from under our idea of our own existence…but it also starts to bring into focus an idea of the greater picture, of who we are, of where we are, of the importance our relationships with ourselves, with others, and that which what we jointly create (which we each call as we will).
We need to raise our consciousnesses of the whole, and really what a wonderful job. At first so scary, seeing our nothingness, our fragility, our shadows…but if we are strong enough to withstand the real image of ourselves, we can also begin to see beauty too. For there is no light without a shadow and vice versa.

We cannot change the world or politics and really we have absolutely no right to tell people to change, says Joan. We can only change ourselves, and this in itself influences others.  Can we be honest with ourselves and break through the fantasy mirror of our self image, to see how we act? To realise the consequences of our own actions?

Joan, having been a Director of a bank for 30 years, says that most people at the end of the month, now that money is electronic, have no idea how much they have spent nor what they have spent their money on. The credit card monthly slip is always a surprise. I unfortunately belong to this group. I have no idea.

As well as our money, we must be fairly oblivious to our actions and their consequences - they are even more invisible than our shopping…if only we would take some time each day to consider ourselves (latin: con sidus – to be with the constellations) to become aware of what we are doing, how we are acting and the consequences of us simply being. From realising the pollution going into buying a cherry out of season, to sensing the consequences of our words on others, understanding the impact of our work to comprehending our no action...we can become more aware.  We can make ourselves into healthy cells just by sitting down and considering ourselves, by taking responsibility for our actions, and not falling into the tempting trap of thinking that the more we have, and the easier it is, the happier we will be.

And that was based on the first 30 minutes, Joan spoke for an hour an a half. 

Living Deeply

I just watched a lovely silly little film, the Saturday afternoon types, where “Einstein” in a group of four friends, all of whom are super brains, have fun and make light of their genius-ness trying to get his niece to use her heart instead of her head and fall in love with a mechanic. My fish brain has processed the name of the film which is now floating in no-idea land. It wasn´t a deep film, to say the least but I did wonder if maybe geniuses who combine their knowledge with their hearts in unision really do end up laughing at the end of their lives, enjoying the moments of living.

Dan the Man is my terrific trumpet teacher. I´m learning more than just how to play the trumpet with him. I´m learning to learn again.  Dan told me something about the natural course of a trumpeter that got my mental valve oil squirting: A trumpet player has to, of course, first learn to play the god-damn thing. He (or she of course) has to learn to read music, to learn scales, to learn to make a noise through the instrument, to memorize the fingerings of the notes…then once a trumpet player has learnt the basics, he begins to learn to play less crudely with more technique, and to begin to be able to play for longer with stronger lip muscles without talking after half an hour of practise like a survivor of a head on truck crash. Then of course comes the increasingly complicated music, which gets more technical as time goes on, faster fingerings, difficult scales, sharps, flats, flying out of the horn as if it were a note tamer in the circus. People come and listen and comment on how talented the trumpet player is, how well he plays, how fast his fingers move as his notes go up through the skies. What a solo! He is at the apex of technical ability.

But then comes, says Dan the Man, the vintage years. As the wine grows into the oak, so does the music into the soul. The beauty, the pristine joy of music comes from a trumpet player, such as Doc Cheatham, who created his best work after the age of 70 - music that is technically more simple, but with a depth of feeling, with a profundity of velvetness, that only a true hearted virtuoso can do. Pure expression. He didn´t need to show off his evident expertise, which is what we all aspire to as we begin to learn, but he put the music before the musician. His technique allowed his music to be pure: he enfolded his soul into the music with simplicity and ease. It is when audiences are moved. When e-motions flower. It is when heart touches heart. The music is freed and flows, heals, comes to life.

Doc Cheatham

They say the same about Miró. I mean how many people have looked at his paintings and said “It looks like a child´s done that?” and indeed when you see your little nephew painting you are tempted to put it in an art shop for a couple of thousand. But there is a difference. Do not be tempted! The child does not have the necessary consciousness to be able to transmit the profundity of their soul. Miró learnt to paint, learnt technique, developed his vision and in the end expressed from a similar place to where a child expresses from, but with consciousness, with knowledgeable experience. It is a different drawing board…


Joan Miró. Mujer ante el sol.

So, I guess we cannot all be geniuses, but I think we can all begin to be wise. In the masters course, a profesora explained that life is a curve, not a lineal process.  She used the word curve to make simpler for description but later talked about a spiral from center out followed by a spiral back in to center. Spirals within spirals.  We are born into the world; we are unconscious of ourselves as identities. When a child around the age of 2-ish draws a circle for the first time, when they connect the beginning with the end, it is when the child begins to be conscious of their separate existence to their mother and to others. It´s curious isn´t it? At this stage we are children, coming out of the unconsciousness and the world of fantasy mixed with reality. Then we reach adolescence. We begin to define ourselves as a separate identity to our parents, we finish school, become adults and begin to work and build up our lives. We learn “technique”, we learn to get on in life, to decide what we want in the exterior world, and go get it - until we get to our mid life crisis.  Ahhhhh....slow down!!!!!  Scrreeeeacchhhh!!!!

This is a time of change, like in adolescence when we go from childhood to adulthood, but this time it is a step change of direction. We have reached our apex, our domination of the exterior world, and we begin to cave in, in a positive way - we go into ourselves. We turn under and begin to head back towards the mysteries of life. We skip, or drag ourselves, to the secrets. They are esoteric (belong to an inner circle) because they are unexplainable in logical language, and therefore impossible to make exoteric (outside). That´s why it is secret. We explore the unconscious, the mythical part of ourselves. It is somewhat magic - from which the word “wise” stems according to my New Penguin English dictionary. We go towards the place where we begin to end and a universal spreads before. It’s the place maybe where we were as baby children, but totally innocent, without any knowledge, without any individuality to experience it consciously. As adults we go into ourselves with knowledge of who we are. And the Mirós of this world paint meditatively, as if they were children, trumpet players play simply with all of the heart in the world, and geniuses (if they have comprehended their knowledge having the wisdom to combine their minds with their hearts) begin to live in peace with the world, laughing over silly things like a laughing Buddha, and or eating ice cream with gusto.

Or so the Hollywood comedy love film would have me believe.

And somehow I do. I do believe that there is a way to see if someone gets to the end of their life “successfully” (succedere "come after". Meaning "accomplishment of desired end") you see it in their faces, in their air, they are chuckling and at peace, compared to those tight wrinkled complainers who cry over the price of cabbages and disrespectful children. The wise ones allow themselves to enjoy life like the children.

Krishna was childlike. Matthew says in the Bible “I assure you that unless you change and become like little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Mt 18:1-5.10.12-14). But let us not confuse childish with childlike! We all were childlike once. We all possessed wondrous qualities like unconditional love, trust, playfulness and simplicity. And decide for yourselves what the “kingdom of heaven” is…I think it is us in our truest expression, which being so personal transcends into the Universal.

I know a man who is a silent sabio (wise man). His name is Señor Huguet. He is 84. He does yoga that he recently discovered, he reads books on religion and science and anything that takes his interest. He is constantly learning. He enjoys tasting new knowledge (the root of sabiduria (wisdom) is “savouring” says my Rodriguez-Navas Diccionario Completo de la Lengua Española). He savours his experiences. He would not say a bad thing about low down criminals. He sees well in all. But the thing that makes me realise that he has had a successful life, is that he has developed himself and can truly express himself silently, without a hint of ego. The “proof” that he has delved into his heart and mind, in my opinion, is the feeling he leaves me with. It is impossible to describe. It is esoteric. It is a deep down feeling of still joyous waters, that all is right with the world, that love exists because I am feeling it. I leave him smiling, feeling high on life and I can never work out why. I hardly know him, we don´t ever talk about anything personal. And in the end I conclude, it is simply being beside Señor Huguet and his still deep clear waters of peace and joy. He holds internal harmony. He embraces the good with the bad, the light with the dark. Somehow somewhere his mystical, mythical, unconscious world envelops you in amorous beauty.

I wonder what the secret is? Could it be as simple and clear as a beautiful trumpet solo played from the heart, so that as life unfolds, as we question life, the answer seems to come back humbly, wherever you are, whoever you are becoming, simply to learn to love to live?

In any combination.



Raimon Panikkar who died recently, aged 91, in August 2010.
A great Catalan wise man.



Mary Oliver

While I was writing the last blog, I wanted to add this poem.  My brain worked as usual and forgot.   So here it is.  It is called The Journey, and it is by my favourite poetress Mary Oliver who hardly ever writes about people and is possibly the poet who writes the most about being human.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Walking Naked

Not really what my friend meant by walk naked, but you know... it´s like truths on different levels.

“Learn to walk naked in life” said a little old man who I suddenly found myself talking to after somehow finding myself in a choir concert in the University Cloister. I had followed my nose with the lingering notes. He was not a dirty old man…it was all in context. To be honest I had egged him on by letting loose and telling him about my views for 2012 and the cosmic morning. He was really interested, I could tell cos he kept twitching his left eye.

I declared as if I were some insider, the imminent collapse of the church, and all external authority structures and then he said his line. Afterwards as we were walking like old friends down the impressive sweeping stone steps of the University posh bit, he said quietly, looking around to make sure that nobody could hear such indecency, that he had been a priest. He had been used to being on the opposite side of the confessional box…he left because it had become too difficult, he said, to hear confessions of “sins” that he did not consider sins, such as being gay, of enjoying sex, of non catholic ideas, developing unique ideas, etc.

We had made friends because in the middle of one of the choir pieces my telephone decided to join in. God damn! They are hard buggers to shut up surrounded by so much public, big clumsy hands groping around in a cosmic black hole that is normally my bag. He smiled encouragement and at the end of the piece, my face fading from burning scarlet, he explained the poem that had been sung, had been written by Antonio Machado. The verses are from "Proverbios y Cantares" in Campos de Castilla.

Caminante, son tus huellas     Wanderer, your footsteps are
el camino y nada más;           the road and nothing more;
Caminante, no hay camino,   Wanderer, there is no path,
se hace camino al andar.       The path is made by walking.
Al andar se hace el camino,  By walking one makes the path
y al volver la vista atrás        and turning to look back
se ve la senda que nunca      a path is seen that never
se ha de volver a pisar.        one should re-tread.
Caminante no hay camino    Wanderer, there is no path,
sino estelas en la mar.          Only wakes upon the sea.

I am sure that most of you will have heard me rumbling on about the theory where I suddenly become an expert on astrology because I know two things…and they are:  Every 2150 years the earth comes under the influence of a new sign…and that soonish a new one is coming.

Around 4000 years ago as Aries (the Ram) came in, coincidentally (some would say coincidences don´t exist) Moses came into our history. He was said to have horns coming out of his head, and now to honour Moses, Jews blow a ram´s horn. The shofar was used to bring down the walls of Jericho and may symbolise the waking of the soul (once we have broken down our inner walls) and to repent (I guess from our instinctual behaviour). Don´t take my word for it, I am being imaginative. This is my made up theory, keep your right to make up your own!

Then 2000 years ago, when our time system began, Taurus moved into Pisces, and Jesus also coincidentally appeared in the lime light, represented also by two fish flowing in different directions. Which to resume super fast (from my vast no-ledge) represents the first fish swimming in a smooth path and the second in a problematic path, of which we are coming to the end…(and helps explain things like our consummate interest in absolute trash, the present state of the world etc).

With my breadth of knowledge of astrology I can say with the minimum of authority that Pisces, the fish, the Age of Jesus, is an age of external Authority…when we need-needed external direction to understand who we are, where we are going, what we are. We needed and had priests to tell us what to believe, doctors to tell us how to communicate with our bodies, schools to tell us what to learn, legal systems to tell us what is fair, politicians to tell us…whatever it was they used to do…we were not ready to think, feel, act for ourselves. Just as a child needs her father.
The disciples preparing the last supper (Jesus dies 3 days after) are directed by Jesus, “Behold, when ye are entered into the city, there shall a man meet you, bearing a pitcher of water; follow him into the house where he entereth in.” Luke 22:10.

It´s all very tenuous. Around now Aquarius may be in the side lines muttering his lines, ready to come on to stage, but no body knows really for sure. The Mayan Long Count Calendar has an end-date of December 21, 2012 and is associated, my friend wikipedia tells me, with the precession of the equinoxes and therefore can provide an important demarcation for the Age of Aquarius. Though astrologers can´t agree and vary wildly in their time estimates, now-ish could be the time that Pisces goes into Aquarius. So why don´t we have a look around for some of that water? It will do us no harm.

Aquarius

As we go into the cosmic morning (I pause here as if I know a lot more…) we are ready to take responsibility that in Pisces was too much for us. Aquarius is an age when we come into our own. Wikipedia has a whole section describing the qualities of the age of Aquarius, which I have super ultra reduced and chosen the ones I most like (meaning it is totally warped to my ideas - there were a couple of totally negative war mongering, capital controlling, nightmare visions that I would prefer, thank you very muchy, to simply ignore):

Qualities of Aquarius:

Revelation of truth and increased consciousness (Vera Reid)
Fellowship of Humankind (David Williams)
People becoming more impersonal (detached), yet more altruistic and humane (Marcia Moore and Mark Douglas)
Inventions, machines, worldwide organizations, international collaboration, and the fellowship of humankind. Culture, civilization, and intelligence. (Louis MacNeice)

(Cut and pasted) Ray Grasse believes the transition is like travelling into a foreign land, and suggests that if you want help navigating through the Aquarian Age, you should leave room for silence in your life; create a centre in your life (preferably involving a connection to the Absolute); resist the deadening of your world, so instead of filling up your life with manufactured goods or artificiality, bring living organic things into your life. He also says we need to maintain a compassionate heart; be involved in a network or group; become more self-reliant; avoid being hypnotized by the "group trance"; and take control of our everyday attitudes so not to be dependant upon external events for inner fulfilment.

Kant, the Philosopher (1724 – 1804), argued that evolution will occur when we take the responsibility for ourselves from the outside, from authority, as we internalise it. We make our own decisions. This is really not easy, especially in an age where morality is confused with almost non existent ethics. It is almost like learning our own language and having no one to talk to in it. But with time we will learn others lexicons, we will learn to listen.

I have been a walking bundle of questions this summer. Trying to work out who I am, what I am, what I want. It is not easy. And I have come to no conclusions. Like that lovely quote (again) of Rainer Maria Rilke “Try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms or like books written in a remote foreign language. Do not search now for answers that cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. And every thing has to be lived. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually live your way, without noticing, into the answer some day.”

Living the questions is changing my perspectives, of myself. I have done it on my own, without an authoritative help. Like a child learning to play their own game. My internal image of myself is changing, secretly on my inside, I am discovering a new me. And it is somewhat different to who I thought I was, what I thought I wanted. It is actually quite difficult to accept, but also quite liberating. I have no idea where I am going, who I am, what I am, want I want…but….like the quote from Sacha Guitry (a French film director, writer, actor):

“Wisdom comes from experience, and experience comes from foolishness”

I am becoming more confident in my foolishness, rather than being foolishly confident. I am learning that we do not need to know everything, we do not need the security of an authority structure stuck in a single truth based on a time that has now changed…It is like saying someone on the Camino de Santiago is closer to “enlightenment” at Pamplona that someone starting at Roncesvalles. There is no path, we make it by walking.

All wisemen say something like, whoever thinks they know all, knows nothing. We are specks in the universe. We as a summation of millions of human minds know only 5% of the universe…all we can do is walk our walk into the unknown, into ourselves.

Only we can discover who we are, by our ourselves, on our own. And as we do, ironically we become more universal.

We are moving away from the old energy, of everyone being the same and following authority (even if it is the inner authority figure sat on a throne of judgement) and moving towards something more sensitive, more flexible to the constantly changing, dancing life…as everything arises and passes away…

Instead of putting ourselves or others on a pedestal, I would like to think that we as a whole, are beginning to learn to accept ourselves as unique in all our differences, in our merits and difficulties, our light side and dark, knowing that they change, evolve, as we are moving towards our inner core…and learning that what someone called Ralph Waldo Emerson (Philosopher, Poet, Lecturer who also led the Transcendental movement of mid 19th century) said much better than I could express "What lies behind us, and what lies before us are small matters compared to what lies within us."

Guitry being foolish with his wife