EPISODE 38: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR BOASTS OF HIS TALENTS AND LOOKS AT A TREE

Welcome to my blog which is in danger of becoming a testament to the foolishness of ambition rather than the record of unfolding authorial success that it was meant to be. Since I began this journal even the two pieces of my work that have received attention, the novel, Sad Sam, and the article about Spirituality, have failed to actually see the light of day and there appears to be nothing on the horizon. I’d give up, but if you give up the small hope that makes you make an effort, then what do you do?

This week I have spent four days writing an essay (for my partner) called ‘Teaching Collocations with high-frequency delexical verbs to Intermediate Students’. I’ve turned my mind to tedious things before but I’d like to congratulate myself on this particular effort which I crafted out of the DELTA handbook and whatever internet resources I could find which included studies from Japan, Germany, Australia, China, Lithuania, Bangladesh, Poland, Turkey and Greece. Over the years I’ve turned my unutilised intelligence to a number of essay subjects on behalf of various children and partners and in addition to my legitimate qualifications I should claim degrees in Latin American Studies, Family Therapy, and Creative Music Technology. Consistent in all my encounters with other people’s degrees is the lack of clarity in instruction. For all the spelling out and deliberate use of precise language, the student isn’t quite clear what to do and the teaching support appears to be lacking. In the end it is a matter of being able to play an academic game, rather than being an excellent therapist, historian, musician, thanatologist or teacher, which seems to matter. 

In place of having anything concrete to report, I’m going to focus on empty space and first, the ‘feel-it’ exercises on the Avatar Course of Harry Palmer which, if you were a regular reader, you would know to be of reoccurring interest to me, not least because Harry Palmer doesn’t want them taught to you by an unauthorised teacher to such an extent that he may take that teacher to court, as he did Eldon Braun.

I don’t know Mr Braun personally, nor what the truth of his relationship with Avatar was. Undoubtedly he produced his own (not very good) version of the Avatar Materials and this led to an absurd court case in Florida in which a judge tried to decide which techniques and words were common currency and which were uniquely Harry’s. The truth must be that none of it is uniquely Harry’s but the way he has packaged it is extremely original and, in my opinion, effective in a way that Braun’s course simply isn’t. 

One of the main and most crucial techniques in Avatar is the series of ‘Feel-it’ exercises which Braun (based on Heinlein) calls ‘grokking’. In both systems you begin by grokking inanimate objects, then animate ones, then people. According to Braun, ‘Observe inanimate objects one at a time. Just observe whatever it is, and decide to get the essential feeling of it. Try to become it. After a short time, move to something else.’  Palmer put is like this; 1) Observe some object, location or space that interests you. Observe it carefully for a few seconds. 2) Define the object by observing its periphery, edge or limits. Identify with it and feel it.

 

When doing an Avatar Course, one may spend a number of days doing varieties of the feel-it exercises. ‘For example, if you are identifying with a stone, feels its weight bearing down on the earth as your weight, feels its exposed surfaces as your surfaces, feel its density as your density, transform the stone into you the stone,’ says the instruction helpfully. But how do you actually do it? The Florida judge says; ‘It appears that the unprotected idea is to live life with feeling instead of thinking about everything that occurs or every path to take,’ and ‘Braun copied Palmer’s advice to students for approaching this exercise.’ What is obvious is that the judge never actually tried the exercises because if he had, and if he had grasped the essence of the exercise, he would have had to agree that the experience is uncopyrightable because it is simply a description of what we do all the time anyway. It took me many days of trying to feel like a stone for me to realise this; days of frustration and expectation as I kept hoping that any moment I’d somehow turn into a tree or be able to converse with dogs. Much of this time I was doing the course with a man called Clive and each time we’d meet we’d moan about how we couldn’t ‘do’ the exercise. Then we’d go back to our ‘master’ with various stories of our experience and then he’d send us out again for another couple of hours.

Somewhere along the line, there was a turning point, neither dramatic nor revelatory. I was sitting in a pub pretending to be a door, as you do, when the door moved and for the slightest nano-second I ‘felt’ that I was being moved. From then on I decided I could ‘do’ the exercise and my master seemed to agree. Of course I’ve no idea if I’m really ‘doing the right thing’ but this recognition of the feelingness of perception seems crucially important. (And also an excellent reminder that it is the engaging in the doing of the exercise, rather than the preconceived benefit of doing it, that one should remember.)

This week I came across an excellent work called the ‘New Spanda Karikas’ by Peter Wilberg. Here he talks here about perceiving a tree:

If you look at a tree and regard it as a mere illuminated object for your eyes, that it one thing –an ordinary visual experience. But if you now attend, with your whole body, to your awareness of seeing the tree, then you will begin to sense it as well as see it – and to see and sense something quite invisible to your eyes.

You will sense your entire body surface becoming ‘all eye’.

What you see with your eyes you will also begin to subtly sense within the aware inwardness of your whole body.

What you begin to sense and experience will not be the tree as a mere ‘object of consciousness’ but those qualities of awareness that manifest as the tree and shape its consciousness.

Now if Harry had told me to do that, I’d still be trying.

EPISODE 21: IN WHICH THE AUTHOR REFLECTS ON PROGRESS MADE AND CHALLENGES AHEAD

Welcome to my blog which is posited to be the episodic unfolding of a writer’s life at a crucial time. Crucial to him of course. No-one else really gives a shit whether he finds an audience (and an income) or not. An oddity of a blog is that readers (when they appear) arrive in the middle of things and then can’t be bothered to scroll back to the beginning to find out what’s been going on. For example, how many of you know that in Episode 18, I advertised my novel, BOGGY STARLESS AND THE DRUIDS OF GLASTONBURY (written under a different name) which is available on lulu.com for a mere £9.99? 

Or that the reason this is called a ‘Self-Help Reality Novel’ is because, having decided that age dictates that this is a now and never situation, I thought I needed to utilize all the tools at my disposal, including whatever benefits I’ve accrued from years of psychological experimentation with drugs, meditation, newer age type thinking, Rebirthing, Avatar, The Path of Least Resistance, and various other techniques and advices, to make the best effort I could to produce the results that I want.

Should you have followed the story from the beginning, you might appreciate why today, rather than digress as I am wont to do, and prefer to do, onto tangential matters such as Dean Whitbread’s desire to diminish the power of the word, and concentrate on providing a progress report on the self-help side. When I made this leap of commitment to genuine effort, my plan was to spend May to September preparing the ground and then from now, my first week of self-employment as an ‘Author, Course Teacher and Thanatologist,’ upping the ante with a view to being well-established by the end of next year.

Plans, I can do. Enthusiasm for my plans, I can do. Heigh-ho, let’s get stuck in, I can do. Stick at it and finish it, I can do. At this moment I’m not sure what it is I can’t do because slowly, with years collapsing between paragraphs, work appears, creation happens. Job done. It’s the stage after the creation which seems incomplete because with the exception of a few stories and articles, and now Boggy, nothing has actually turned into a book because in manuscript form it has gone off to agents and publishers where it has been inspected, often commented on, sometimes praised and occasionally almost given a contract, but never actually published.

 Now we don’t need intermediaries to publish, although they could certainly help, to give us permission to be what we want to be. Thanks to lulu.com, any author can cheaply put themselves in print. Believe me, that’s fucking amazing.

Deciding to write this blog once a week, was an act of discipline and a statement of intent not to forget what I was meaning to do and not to find myself in two years’ time finding a list of projects which I never got round to completing. So far writing the blog has been very useful in surprising ways. Until writing tonight, for example, I’d been concentrating on producing and not really noticed that there’s a sort of post-completion step that I seem to be missing.

Before looking at the techniques that I have, or have not employed, I do feel that something’s dawned on me in relation to creating. The title of Harry Palmer’s book, ‘Living Deliberately,’ sums up the Avatar philosophy. In myself I’ve always felt a little uncomfortable with the idea of living deliberately, of making choices, of defining, because it appeared to contradict what I believed more deeply, viz. that any self is an illusion and anything it ‘chooses’ is equally illusionary. I still believe that. What’s changed is that I have begun, or think I have, to disentangle my creations from my identity. Robert Fritz is very good on this (cf). Also I realized, and bear with my here, that although I believed I wasn’t really a person, ‘personing’ continued and that person was unable not to create – because creating is in the nature of personing – and would continue to perform the five-fold act of creation either unconsciously, through habit and repetition, or consciously by thinking of something it wanted to create and creating it. Instead of feeling guilty for focusing on particular goals (without undue attachment), I now see creating as an invaluable tool for mental health.

I’m now going to turn you over to Jack Heston, my inner American (cf Episodes 2,3,8,11).

Hi! As usual I’ve been left to clear up the dogends of John’s mind. And only 250 words left to do it in. Here’s my report on the current status of project positivity and focus.

OVERALL SUMMARY.

The original goals remain in place but there are more of them and they are more specific. There remains, however, a lack of definition about the final objective. Plans are in place but there are gaps in the plan. In terms of ideas, there has been an abundance, which is both good and bad; the bad being a sense of overwhelm and loss of focus as to what the next thing to do is. The various strands of my abilities appear to be coalescing in a way I didn’t expect. Writing 17,000 words of Sad Sam wasn’t in the original plan and took a few weeks of my time away – to what end I don’t know yet. On the other hand, I loved writing it and am certain writing a novel that works for me is the best feeling. Without Chris Wade’s intervention, I suspect Sam would have remained unwritten. Already I’m gagging to write two more novels.

Another surprise is that I now feel I can and want to teach Avatar again.

I suppose I should admit that John is smoking like the veritable chimney. I will work on him. He also keeps complaining about the lack of time. I’ll work on that too. How many minutes are spent rolling cigarettes and emptying ashtrays? I am pleased with his commitment to the job, however, though I can see that his struggles with the technology are a problem to be resolved if his efforts are to be properly productive. All in all, we appear to be on track. And, all being well, they’ll be a time when John creates an opportunity that will require him to face his threshold condition and to step out of his room and of himself to create his creations in the real world. I don’t think he’ll be able to do this. That’s when I’ll take over and establish myself as the proper captain of the good ship Heston.

Be seeing you.

WORDS, BASED ON BOWIE SONGS, WRITTEN FOR THE ELDEST SON, CALLED TOM MAJOR. HE WASN’T IMPRESSED.

This is Major Tom

Calling Daddy John

I’m floating in a tin can

Spaced out on your afghani man

Five years of stardust

‘N Rock ‘n Roll wanderlust

This is Lieutenant Tom

Can you hear me mum?

Everything’s hunky-dory

In this lovers’ story

The boys keep swinging

The boys always work it out

This is ground control to Colonel Tom

Lets dance, put your helmet on

We can be heroes

Though just for the day

We’re absolute beginners on a drive-in Saturday

Junked out on heaven’s highs

Cracked by Crowley’s lies

The lad’s insane

Booze, pills, and cocaine

Ziggy’s sixty-four

And can’t play the guitar any more

This is ground control to General Tom

Time falls wanking to the floor

And time will trace us all

A word on the wind from your dad and mum

They love you Major Tom

They love you Major Tom

By the way, before I forget; David Cameron’s confession that he is a KGB spy is very timely for me because I have the complete low down on Maggie T’s own career as a Russian agent as revealed in my story ‘Sex with Maggie T’, the memorial edition of which will be issued later this year, I hope. (It all depends on the OCR machine.)

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

1

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 THREE: IN WHICH AN ALTER-EGO SPEAKS FOR HIMSELF.

With great respect, with love even, I welcome you to my blog which tells the story of a 58 year old man who is revitalizing his life by realizing a childhood ambition to be a successful author. Those of you who have read previous entries will be aware that John Heston, the writer both of this blog and the incipient novel entitled ‘I’S NOVEL ABOUT HOW THE WORLD’S YOUNGEST BEST-SELLING AUTHOR (FAILED) ACHIEVED REDEMPTION AND MODERATE SUCCESS AT THE AGE OF 60 - HE BLOODY HOPES’, is a man divided in himself.

In part he has an eye on eternity. From this perspective the fiddliness of life makes him ache for the Elysian fields and his attitude to the happenstances of life is based on his guru’s description of existence as ‘a story told by a grandmother’ or, more poetically, ‘a play of sun and shadows’. In another part, however, he knows he has a power to create and while acknowledging that the shadows exist, he wants to make the most of the sunshine and have a good life.

I’m that part and I’m called Jack. I’ve been promised free range to express myself today so I intend to be as positive as I can for I never know when John’s going to come back and reimprison me in his Vedantic straightjacket. Ultimately, of course, I’d like to strike out entirely on my own, become individuated in my own right, because I don’t accept that I’m a foolish part of John. On the contrary I believe that I’m the real McCoy and he’s just the product of his upbringing.

Anyway I’ve only got a 1,000 words in which to appear before you so rather than slag off my host, I’ll get down to business.

But why does he have to call me his inner American? Wake-up, Bozo, the English can be positive too, just look at… (we might have to come back to this one).

So, tasked with turning john into a successful author, I turned to my learning tools, the techniques and technologies imparted to me during forty years of seeking for the keys of happiness. It is true, as John indicated, that, judging by results alone, little has been accomplished for all the hithering and thithering. However, I think we know whose fault this is. Now that the twin realities of having spent all his inheritance sunning himself on beaches and having to sign on for Job seekers Allowance have hit him, I can but hope, nay, insist, that I truly am allowed out of the box.

My chosen representatives of the ‘how to get your head sorted and your life together by learning how to create’ philosophies are Rebirthing, Avatar, and Robert Fritz’s stuff on Creating. Although at times I qualified to teach two of these courses, I’m not claiming that they are the best, just the ones I know.

Each in their own way addresses goals and each emphasizes the need for clarity and specificity envisioning the end result, followed by close inspection of the current situation. (NB to John: total pessimism, physical lethargy, and intellectual paralysis and are not considered helpful towards creating what’s wanted. Nor is whinging about next week’s cataract operation. It’s a minor thing, get over it. The way I see it, anyone can be miserable but being happy, for no reason, when one of your oldest friends is dying, for example, takes guts.).

So I’ve spent the last few days rereading all my old books and jotting down notes (which I wrote in such small handwriting I can’t now decipher them).  

From Rebirthing I:

Selected a specific, important (to me) and challenging goal.

Asked myself on a scale of 1 to 100, how certain am I that I am willing to achieve my goal?

Made a list of everything I could think of that might help me achieve this goal.

Used the list to make a logical plan with clear steps. (Only sort of done this.)

For at least 2 minutes said to myself, Something I have to give up to follow this plan is…

Have fitted the plan and into my schedule

And begun.

From Creating I

Decided what I wanted to create (and learned I shouldn’t create to remedy something that is wrong)

Defined Current reality in relation to the end result

Identified the action steps needed to get from here to there.

From Avatar I

Have assessed the rightness of my goal

Examined my beliefs regarding my abilities to attain my objective and have attempted to remove hindering cognitions and feelings.

Paid note to the following tips:

Increase attention on the goal: Plan backwards from the goal: identify sub-goals: utilize someone else’s energy: Work day and night.

In the past I’ve attended ten day long programs practising and refining these techniques from morning to night. If John thinks I can get all this done while he drinks tea, smokes and stares out of the window ‘having profound thoughts’  he is much mistaken. Once I’ve had time to digest the fruits of my psychic gardening, I will lay out a plan for him which I shall insist that he adheres to. Progress is being made.. Two days ago I hadn’t a laptop of my own, nor a printer, nor a scanner. (This last item was a rash buy and it now appears that it can’t produce the miracle I required, i.e. being able to translate my elderly typed documents into Microsoft Word.) Nor did I know how good I would find my writing to be when I dug it out of its boxes. Why oh why was I so easily discouraged?

Now I’ve at least three techniques to deal with downheartedness caused by rejections. The only question is, will John let me use them or will he stay within his habitual limits - as so many of us are tempted to do?

My time is up. I truly hope I will meet you again. In case not, here’s a poem to remember me by. I wrote it one day when I’d escaped my shackles and teased myself into a state of ecstasy. John hates it but sometimes I just don’t care.

 MAGIC

Magic in the starry sky

Magic in the birds

Magic in the trees

Magic in the seas

Magic in the rocks

Magic in the sounds

Magic in the views

Magic, power, and wonder.

Magic in the music

Magic in the rainbow

Magic on the beach

Magic in the dance

Magic in the dreams of the people here

Magic, power, and wonder.

Magic in the songs of my sons

Magic in the high-wire act of my beautiful daughter

Magic in my lover’s embrace

Magic in the moment

Magic in the breath

Magic in the love of things

Magic in the life

Magic in the silence

Magic at the end of time

Magic, power, and wonder.

__________________________________________________________________________________