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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 4th 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?
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