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.