EPISODE EIGHT; IN WHICH JACK PONDERS THE PURPOSE OF COMMUNICATION AND DECIDES TO AGREE WITH HARRY PALMER.

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Welcome to the blog of John Heston which today is hosted by his ‘inner American’ or alter-ego, Jack.

Hi!

Believe me it is pleasure to be here and I relish the thought of even one person meeting me  on this edge of cyberspace Someone asked me the other day, why write a blog? And why read one? One answer is, so that we can co-incide like this, maybe make a few observations to one another, maybe just smile (or grimace), maybe fall in love, maybe say goodbye in a jiffy or maybe stay together for longer than forever.

Who knows?

The amazing thing about the internet is that (excepting censorship, lack of access and political interference) anyone can say anything to anyone and anyone can tell the story of their lives. Is everybody’s life interesting? Maybe not to you, or even to themselves, but each life is unique and in itself contributes to the experience of the whole. Even if no-one ever reads the lonely blog, it stands as a testament to the existence of its creator and his/her utterly individual view of life. It is an amazing thing now that communication is global and without the need of intermediaries such as publishers, record producers, gallery owners, establishments, etc., to ‘permit’ broadcast. The effects have, of course, already reaped harvest, for good and bad, through the power of social networks.

I appreciate of course that the sharing of information isn’t the complete garden of communication, maybe only a leaf, but at the very least it indicates an awareness of other and that some sort of co-operation is required, if only to receive the communication (or why send it in the first place?).

The (eastern) ancients (here I’m going to sound like John, harping back to some la-la land in Kashmir where sages found divine sayings scratched on rocks - but stay with me) saw the written word as being a very inferior product to the spoken one (which in itself is only the 4^th Level of speech, the vocalized form) uttered face to face. As we know even then successful communication often does not take place. For this reason teaching was an oral engagement between teacher and student and while a body of scripture formed, to which to refer back to, the words were not the thing but pointers. To guide the arrow straight, as it were, to turn the words into gold, (mind you, gold arrows wouldn’t fly far) one needs the physical presence of one who has already completed the journey (mixed metaphor or what) that you are on, and who can reveal the meanings behind the words through interpretation and by relating them knowledge to the student’s cultural understandings and unique perspective. Hence analogies, similes, parables, metaphors etc., never intended to be taken literally.

On the other hand (unless I’ve already used it) the power of an artist to communicate the juice of life to a listener (reader, viewer), the rasa, the taste of existence, is extolled because that rasa is bliss. My greatest desire as a writer is to raise that rasa in the receiver of my communication.

Um. I’ll have to question that statement. I’ll write anyway because when I don’t write my thoughts become stuck and repetitive. They don’t move on. It is like picking up a novel and always reading the same page. My first desire as a writer is actually to express myself to myself. In the process of doing that I create (not deliberately that I am aware of) an audience of at least one, myself. So before you, I aim to please myself. At the moment I can’t quite see why one then needs to extend the audience to include others. Why not just write the work and then set fire to it?

I’ll tell you why. Because I did that once. Some friends of mine were calling me an egotist and saying that if I wanted to let go of personal history I should burn my diaries. Which I did. And then, just to prove how spiritually tough I was, I only burned the one and only copy of my first novel.

What a twat!

My original point was that obviously bloggers have a variety of motives, selling you something, convincing you of something, but the majority just want to share, to communicate. Why have people written diaries that no-one should read, why do they talk to themselves, why sing a song when you’re in a certain mood? What evolutionary survival techniques are these?

John Heston, erstwhile lord of this manor, has used the blog to catalogue his disgruntlements, reveal his ambages  and express his opinions on various things. What good has he done you? You can almost guarantee that he’ll pother about Death, the cynic’s divinity. I’m of the Immortalist School myself and have little time for preoccupation with fantasising about and fearing what happens when an Unknown becomes a Known. If it does. Yes, you have to be honest about current reality and yes, creators are unbound by morality, but for my part in this blog I’d like to communicate joy and where I can’t do that, the possibility of joy. Misery and hopelessness you can surely find for yourselves.

This week I haven’t found any illustrations for you. This is in part because John broke a memory stick on which were all our photos, a number of essays, a third of a novel, and all the stuff he can’t remember that’s stored on there. In fact this is why you haven’t heard from him. He’s in such a sulk that he won’t talk.

How short these programs are when I’m on.

So rather than tell how the goal setting techniques are coming on, which would take more than words than I have left, let me give a defence of Harry Palmer. Defence from what? My mistrust.It has bothered me for years that he has a reputation for suing people who reveal the contents of the Avatar Courses. The argument that this would dilute the teaching seemed a mite self-serving. It is particularly annoying when you want to share what you think are amazing/helpful concepts and exercises/techniques with others. Or when, like John, you want to write essays admiring how beautiful are some of the correspondences between Harry’s ultra-modern presentation and the well-honed metaphysics of monotheistic India. Over the years people have said to me, (in fact John because I hardly ever get out), ‘if you’re not ‘attracting’ Avatar students why don’t you takes some of its ideas, mix them with your own, and do it on the cheap.’   

When I say no, there is the suspicion that I’m being modest, or beholden to the organization. Reflecting on it now, and on my experience of teaching Avatar, I feel that Harry’s stance is a valid one. It isn’t just a matter of cribbing the techniques and smart sayings but presenting a series of sequenced steps of an invisible dance and then taking responsibility for guiding a student through their resistances and incomprehensions to the end of the course (however long it takes) while showing them the difference between ‘word lessons’ and ‘world lessons.’ If I ‘do my thing’ then what happens to the Avatar guarantees, such as being able to do the course again with me, or another teacher, for free? How would they know where I was trained and how well I’m representing what I claim to represent?  The more I think about it, the more I agree with Harry.

I’ve so much more…oh no you’re off…just take this thought- love and peace, what did they ever do wrong?

EPISODE SEVEN; IN WHICH THE PLOT MAKES AN APPEARANCE AND COMPASSION IS CONTEMPLATED

Welcome to my blog which purports to be the weeklyish update on the (extremely belated) ecloding of the literary career of a writer otherwise bereft both of income stream and job satisfaction. Think of it as a particularly extreme form of Springwatch.

Today I have news of the plot. Something happened to the writer!

He, I, noticed an ad on Gumtree for submissions to a publisher. Fiction or non-fiction. Whole works, bits of work. Presumably anyone with knowledge of the industry would know that someone is about to be flooded with uncountable wordage, shed loads of shit, and a permanent migraine. Or maybe they would smell a rat. 

Or maybe they would be so desperate they would join the queue anyway, just in case.

So I sent off my favourite novel and my period piece Pilgrimage to India 1976. To my amazement I received an email back two days later from the publisher saying how much he enjoyed the work and that it was the most compelling read he had received. And that as soon as I’d finished it he would like to publish it as an ebook.

Finished it? I only then did I notice the title he was referring to, a piece of writing I hadn’t meant to send him. It was the first, only, 15,000 words of a novel that I began last year and then put aside because I had a lot of doing nothing that I wanted to catch up on. Of course I was so excited by this response that I had to spend a couple of days lying down on my bed and staring at the ceiling until I calmed down.

Then I was contacted by a Right-to-die group who wanted to say they’d read an article of mine on the subject which they found ‘balanced, interesting, and helpful’. It all goes to show there’s a discerning public out there.

Doesn’t it?

On Compassion

In my self- appointed role as a very occasional Social Activist, I have spoken up for the health care model developed by Professor Allan Kellehear which he calls ‘Compassionate Cities.’  My support has been reasoned, meaning that I follow his argument and agree with the need, rather than zealous, which I think would have to involve some degree of belief that his vision is achievable. My assumption that this is not the case has been based on two counts:

1.     1.  That people aren’t compassionate

2.   2.    Communities no longer exist.

It’s been a lifelong tendency of mine to observe my own smallnesses and selfishness and then to presume others are the same and that if you scratch hard enough you’ll always find the inner bastard. My compassion tends to be self-indulgent and emotional, arising most often in the privacy of my own room while I’m listening to melancholic music and whimsying on the struggles of mankind in the face of terrible mystery and on how sweet every act of goodness and hope is. Then I cry. Then someone knocks on the door and I hide in case they want to do something I don’t feel like doing.

Like giving them time and attention.

Luckily, we’re not all the same. These last few days I saw my partner helping an old friend of mine who is ill. She didn’t have to do it and didn’t do it out of duty. I watched her do it and marvelled at this altruistic quality that can exists in us that we call compassion.

Rather than do anything helpful I then decided to contemplate compassion.

I looked it up in my Shorter Oxford Dictionary: ‘Suffering together with another; fellow-feeling. Pity that inclines one to spare or succour.’ 

And asked the Professor who gives a range of definitions but emphasises the mutuality, the co-ness, the ‘sharing with another’s suffering: to be patient in another’s suffering, to bear and support suffering.’

While I was scroogling for definitions I was initially surprised to come across a ‘you can have too much compassion’ brigade of articles written mainly by psychotherapists suffering from burn-out but also by women’s groups saying that their surfeit of compassion made them weak, and contemptible, in the eyes of men.

So can compassion be bad for you? Or is it something alongside the compassion? I’m not sure I’m keen on all that suffering and can’t really see the point of us suffering together. On the whole I’d opt for at least one of us not suffering and that one doing what they could to help the other out.

How then to stop compassion harming you? Inevitably I turn to the Buddha Wikipedia:

 Compassion is that which makes the heart of the good move at the pain of others. It crushes and destroys the pain of others; thus, it is called compassion. It is called compassion because it shelters and embraces the distressed.

 

At the same time, it is emphasised that in order to manifest effective compassion for others it is first of all necessary to be able to experience and fully appreciate one's own suffering and to have, as a consequence, compassion for oneself. The Buddha is reported to have said, "It is possible to travel the whole world in search of one who is more worthy of compassion than oneself. No such person can be found.

Although religions often like to claim their gods as compassionate, I cannot for a moment agree, whereas humans for no good reason, against all the odds, occasionally are amazing. We are, obviously, greater than the gods we create. 

Should you wish to experience Compassion, which is an antidote to anger, try the following exercise from the Resurfacing Section of Harry Palmer’s Avatar Course. Apply it to Petty Tyrants (cf last week) and to aspects of yourself.  

Or don’t.

The Compassion Exercise

Honesty with one's self leads to compassion for others.

OBJECTIVE: To increase the amount of compassion in the world.

EXPECTED RESULTS: A personal sense of peace.

INSTRUCTIONS: This exercise can be done anywhere that people congregate (airports, malls, parks, beaches, etc.). It should be done on strangers, unobtrusively, from some distance. Try to do all five steps on the same person.

Step 1: With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is seeking some happiness for his/her life."

Step 2 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is trying to avoid suffering in his/her life."

Step 3 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person has known sadness, loneliness and despair."

Step 4 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is seeking to fulfil his/her needs."

Step 5 With attention on the person, repeat to yourself:
         "Just like me, this person is learning about life." 

EPISODE SIX: IN WHICH THE WRITER PRESENTS US WITH A STORY, OMITS TO UPDATE US ON THE PLOT, (HOPEFULLY) FORGETS TO CONFUSE HIMSELF WITH INDIAN METAPHYSICS, AND DESCENDS INTO PETTINESS WITH AN (UN)JUSTIFIED WHINGE ABOUT A MAN WHO ONLY TWO WEEKS AGO WAS HIS HERO.

Welcome to my blog. I doubt it’ll do you much harm.

A MAN GOES TO THE DOCTOR

For three weeks he’d dallied over making the appointment. Twice he actually rung up the surgery, only to be told it was too late in the day and he should ring back the following morning at precisely 8.45 - by when of course he’d be at the office or in a meeting. Half the time he thought there was nothing wrong at all. Was his heart really beating a little bit more than it should and could that be linked to the clammy hands or the momentary moments of dizziness that had him steadying himself at the top of stairs?. At first he’d thought he may be on the verge of a stroke so he’d downed a couple of aspirin but after a few days he decided that a stroke would be an instantaneous thing and that he was either having heart trouble or a brain tumour.

So why was he dithering?

He didn’t know.

Naturally he’d said nothing to his wife about his concerns, nor had she notice his preoccupation. Her worrying wouldn’t have helped him deal with his own. In fact he somehow felt that telling her would make the whole thing more real and therefore more likely to have the consequences he feared; hospitalization, pain, operations, loss of freedom, being deprived of tobacco, enfeeblement, humiliation and death.

Daily the dizziness had diminished, though not quite disappeared, and he’d begun to believe he was better and that the extra heartbeat was imagined or caused by anxiety. However, whenever he checked inside to see what his body was up to, there it was, that additional pulse that would not let his mind rest.

 So last Thursday he cancelled a meeting, made the phone call from his car and went to visit the doctor at 3.30 in the afternoon.

Arriving ten minutes early, he stood outside the surgery in the sunshine, feeling it full and warm on his face. He’d always told himself that if he were ever getting terminal news he’d do himself in rather than fight the hopeless fight. At that moment, however, he couldn’t imagine how he would do such a thing.

As he waited to be called in, he flicked through a magazine and read an article claiming that five most common regrets of dying people were:

1)      I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2)      I wish I didn’t work so hard.

3)      I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

4)      I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5)      I wish that I had let myself be happier.

Reading these brought a tear to the man’s eyes and he promised himself that should he live he would amend his ways and lead a better life.

Less than half-an-hour later, at 3.53 p.m. he was back in the sunshine. The news had been entirely good and all his fears swept away by the jovial reassurances he had received. Breathing deeply in an effort to control his relief and joy, he again imbibed the sun and the glory of life. For a few moments he tried to recall the changes he had promised and although he couldn’t remember the details, tears again welled up. As he stepped into the road his eyes, still blinded by the light and by the tears, failed to see the oncoming car that killed him instantly.

 Across the street, his wife and kids on the way back from school, watched in horror.

AN END.

PETTY TYRANTS:
 "A petty tyrant is a tormentor.......Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction."--Don Juan.

Why is it, I have asked myself, that given the state of the world and the appalling nature of the ‘banker occupation’ (thank you Max Keiser) of the UK greased by David Cameron and his cohort of arms dealers and financial rapists, why is it that I’ve managed to lose track of my thread of creation by becoming annoyed with Robert Fritz (whose books I’ve been lauding) for criticizing views held by others? Instead of just moving on to the next good idea on the following page I’ve drifted off into complaining.

The answer is, there’s a very petty tyrant living in my head. Don Juan (Castenada) tells us how to deal with the Petty Tyrants of the world and that we’ll need the four qualities of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance and timing.

While I wait for those to appear in me, I’ll have a quick bitch.

In the midst of an invaluable section on moving from ‘first-person to third person orientation’, Fritz attacks the ‘New Age Motto’ of ‘Everything is One’. “This homogenized view of the universe”, he writes, “puts the focus back where most New Age adherents think it belongs, on me, me, me.” He then claims that New Agers find differences intolerable and their inclinations are surprisingly alike (to the Nazis!) in wanting “to create a world in which the only inhabitants are people who fit into standards of common identity”.

Excuse me, Robert. This is nonsense.

In another chapter, wisely explaining the nature of worldviews, he says: “A change in the Communist World as it becomes more democratic is that it no longer presumes human nature is exploitive,” i.e. equating liberal democracy with ‘enlightened self-interest’. I know it’s nothing to do with Fritz’s teachings on creating but these unwise asides break the spell of perfection that I want my teachers to cast over me.

I’ve run out of my allotted words without the emergence of my Shamanic powers. I will therefore take refuge in the words of Werner Erhard who, in a lecture on pettiness that I attended in 1980, said, ‘We are petty because God is petty.’ He emphasised those last three words, God is petty.

I don’t know why but it’s always made me laugh – still does.

EPISODE FIVE; IN WHICH A WONDERING AND WANDERING MIND FINDS ITSELF, FOR NO GOOD REASON, CONTEMPLATING THE CREATION OF THE COSMOS.

Welcome to my blog which has the ambition of entertaining you while reflecting the ‘life’ of a writer-in-waiting. And what’s he waiting for? Money? Recognition? Success?  Or the ability to answer the question, ‘What do you do for a living?’ Maybe by time we get to the end of this study (only 65 weeks to go!) we might know better whether any of these results prove to be relevant.

At the moment we can see the writer in his big brother house, sitting at his wobbly MFI desk, one hand keyboarding, the other clutching a cup of tea. It is six in the morning and the room is bright with sunlight.  He is thinking. A writer, this writer, spends a lot of time thinking. He only does this because he can’t help it. Even after thirty years of meditation, the thinking remains untrammelled. Rather than being penetrating and progressive, this sort of thinking is like a rapidly moving downward spiral which ultimately leaves the thinker somewhere up his own arsehole with his fists in his ears to drown out the repetitiveness of the words in his head. The only cure, it turns out, is to write something down. Then there is a shift and everything moves on and new thoughts appear.

I’ve been thinking about creation, and of painters.

You may have noticed that this is called a ‘self-help reality novel’ because part of the story is about a writer who uses deliberative techniques to support his endeavour like, for example, those described in Robert Fritz’s books, ‘Creating’ and ‘Your Life as Art’.  Robert is very keen on using the painter analogy:

“One of the best ways to quickly explore the major principles of the creative process is by thinking about how painters work. Painters use every principle that you need to understand to create your life as art.”

Fritz then develops the theme by inviting us to imagine being the painter with a blank canvas and asking him/herself, ‘What do I want to create?’

On reading that, I recalled having seen a similar analogy in one of my books on Kashmir Shaivism. After three hours searching, I found it amid a host of analogies and descriptions used by Shaivite philosophers in the 10^th century to describe the creation of the universe. (Apologies in advance for obscurantism, any apparent religious wording, untranslatable Sanskrit terms written without the right accents and any ennui engendered. Let’s face it, I haven’t many readers yet so I may as well get it out of my system. You can always come back next week, please.)

‘If the Highest Reality did not manifest in infinite variety, but remained cooped up within its solid singleness, it would be neither the Highest Power nor Consciousness but something like a jar.’

‘As the great banyan tree lies only in the form of potency in the seed, even so the entire universe with all the mobile and immobile beings lies as a potency in the heart of the Supreme.’

‘Just as a peacock with all its variegated plumage lies as a mere potency in the plasma of its egg, even so the entire universe lies in the Shakti of the Supreme. The Shakti of the Supreme is called Citi (Consciousness), or para-Shakti (the great vibration) or paravak (the first word.)

‘He (i.e. shiva, universal consciousness) Himself full of joy enhanced by the honey of the three corners of his heart, viz., Will, knowledge, Action, raising up his face to gaze at (his own splendour) is called Shakti.’

‘When He becomes intent to roll out the entire splendour of the Universe that is contained in his heart (in a germinal form), he is designated as Shakti. Shakti is his intentness to create and is the active or kinetic aspect of Consciousness.’

‘At first (logically, not chronologically) there was only ‘Sat’ (existence which is consciousness) – all alone without a second. He gazed and bethought to himself, May I be many, may I procreate!’

‘Just as an artist cannot contain his delight within himself, but pours it out into a song, a picture or a poem, even so the Supreme Artist pours out the delightful wonder of his splendour into manifestation or creation.’

‘Shakti thrown up by delight lets Herself go forth into manifestation. All manifestation is, therefore, only a process of experiencing out, creative ideation of Shiva.’

‘Just as an artist has at first a hazy idea of the picture he has to produce, but later a clearer image of the picture begins to emerge into his view, even so at the Sadashiva stage, the Universe is just a hazy idea, but at the Ishvara stage it becomes clearer.’

And thus we are returned to the painter analogy. However, before addressing what the painter chooses to create, maybe we could first notice that at some point previously the desire to create must have arisen in him. Where did that come from? And why? At what point in the evolutionary cycle did music and art become survival tools? What needs to they fulfil?

According to the selected quotes above taken from indian thought, the desire to create is natural and is inherent in the nature of being and consciousness. Imagine, if you would, an amorphous blob of nothingness stretching infinitely in every direction. In that blob there is ‘a somewhat of a movement’, a throb, a heartbeat, a feeling of explosive energy and that movement, in a flash, ripples out giving the appearance of a cosmic process of creation consisting of emanation, existence, dissolution, concealment and revelation.

Well maybe that’s a bit much to imagine all in one go.

My word count tells me that my 1,000 words is almost up. The bad news is I may have to continue in the same vein next week or until I’ve got this stuff out of my head. Meanwhile I’ll briefly sum up my thinking so I can move on. (Remember I’m writer so it’s all about me even when I pretend it isn’t.)

The essential message of Shaivite monistic philosopher is that ‘the jiva is shiva’, that the individual is no different from the cosmic processor and thus we have the same compulsive desire to create, originating as a throb within our blob and unfolding continually in a recognizable process that produces our experience. Can I illustrate this?

Come back next week.

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The Significance of Shiva's Dance

This cosmic dance of Shiva is called 'Anandatandava,' meaning the Dance of Bliss, and symbolizes the cosmic cycles of creation and destruction, as well as the daily rhythm of birth and death. The dance is a pictorial allegory of the five principle manifestations of eternal energy — creation, destruction, preservation, salvation, and illusion. According to Coomerswamy, the dance of Shiva also represents his five activities: 'Shrishti' (creation, evolution); 'Sthiti' (preservation, support); 'Samhara' (destruction, evolution); 'Tirobhava' (illusion); and 'Anugraha' (release, emancipation, grace). The overall temper of the image is paradoxical, uniting the inner tranquillity, and outside activity of Shiva.
Text taken from hinduism

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