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 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 TWO; IN WHICH AN ATTEMPT IS MADE TO BE POSITIVE BECAUSE IT JUST MAY HELP.

 Welcome to Episode Two of the blog about the reality self-help 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!’ which charts the inspiring, entertaining and deeply transformational story of a (late?) middle aged man, faced with economic challenge and intimations of death, surprisingly achieving his lifelong ambition to become a successful writer.

To those of you who visited last week and have now returned, gushing thanks. To newcomers who would like an update on what they’ve missed may I respectfully point them to Episode One 1 in which not a lot happens but you are given a good purview of the enterprise. You also get a small tension – resolution hit from discovering, or confirming, where I discovered the requisite 58 year old on the verge of turning his life around.

Here. Of course.

Now I admit straightaway that I’m not 100% ideal for the post. Hard-work, one pointedness, dedication to the end result – these are not my strongpoints. Yes, I can vow to make a change; yes, I can be very convincing at the beginning. A month or two later, however, and even a purblind observer can see that nothing has actually happened.

This is where the self-help element comes in because while it isn’t necessary for the hero of a story to succeed in his endeavour, the will he won’t he drama building tension of this reality show will be lost if he doesn’t at least make an effort to triumph.

How, therefore, am I to instil excitement, enthusiasm and purpose in place of ennui, inertia and discouragement? Answer, by embracing positivity.

To cut one of my long stories short I must point out that I’m not a neophyte when it comes to the field of positive thinking. I’ve dabbled since the 70s, attending courses, living in Ashrams, learning all the latest new age techniques and old age philosophies. It sometimes seems that my life has been a battle between two main worldviews or paradigms, each with its own Self and attitudes. In caricature one is Eastern, the other American. The Easterner has no time for the play of the world or the reality of the individual and his so called problems. All that matters is realizing oneness with the Source. The American wants to change himself by changing his thoughts and enlighten the world as to what he believes it needs. I swing from one side to the other, spending longer in the East than the West while feeling most of the time that I’m not quite grasping either properly.

What I’ve set myself here however is undoubtedly a task in the material domain. My Eastern Self has no respect for this for his only grail in life is to free his imaginary self from the whirligig of existence. Using one’s limited powers to achieve satisfaction and renown in a world of death is seen as somewhat shortsighted by the traditional mystics.

As ever there are other points of view. Take one of thousands, Harry Palmer, author of the Avatar Courses, for example, who advocates immanent action in a transcendent vehicle and writes: “If you wish to participate in life with any degree of deliberation, the primary action must be to set a goal. Goals are an essential ingredient of happiness. A person without goals is discouraged and unhappy.”

What to do?

Create goals that are right for you because “Believable, achievable, exciting goals are the grand prize of existence.”

On the scale Harry gives for judging the rightness for you of a goal I scored 30, which is plenty, with my choice, i.e.  To achieve economic independence through writing by December 31^st 2012. The next step is ‘to align your actions towards’ the goal. “Alignment of your attention and energies with the goal you want to achieve is called focus. Focus is one of the keys of success.”

Oh dear.  This means I have to remember to want tomorrow what I want today. Clearly if I don’t want to repeat past patterns I should try following the advice of my American Self rather than swim in the Eastern Sea which, evidence suggests, I drown in.

What I’m going to do now, therefore, is to split myself in two. Well, not exactly. To engage in goal-setting and belief rearranging cognitive exercises, I must release my inner American because, quite frankly, the rest of me won’t get it together

My inner American is to be called Jack. I’m going to try to be quiet for a while and let Jack speak for himself. First I think I should advise you that initially Jack may be a little hesitant to express himself. This will be because of past experiences of being allowed out by me. I don’t tend to be supportive when he’s ventured forth. I begin by telling him, ‘Bout time you got out there Jack and got me the things I presently feel are lacking in my life, money for example, or some other prop for the individual. Fill yourself with the required currencies of self-esteem and ambition then strike out.” Sometimes I’ve sent Jack on self-improvement courses. Hardly ecloded from my womb, Jack is despatched off, sometimes for two weeks on end, to sort himself out and learn the mechanics of personal creation.

For example, I made him do something called Rebirthing, a breathing therapy with big ideas. He became a qualified teacher, would you believe and ran courses himself. He also did a few weeks on Robert Fritz’s Creation techniques (to no apparent avail). His last new age adventure into the world of self recreation involved numerous courses, in England, Germany and America – the source! These Avatar courses would have been fewer if he hadn’t kept coming back home saying he didn’t like them and was homesick. Really it was hard for him to adapt from living with me and my negativity to exuding confidence and enthusiasm when totally out of his comfort zone and subject to bouts of deriding and name-calling from me. Nevertheless, he persevered, and would often he would come back from these psychological explorations bright eyed, bushy tailed and full of good intention.

So, I’d get him back into the old ways, my ways, as quickly as possible. I’d take him round to a friend’s house and we’d all get stoned together. On the first night Jack would say, “I’m not sure if I should. I don’t want to lose this space I’m in.” On night two he’d have ‘just one puff’ on a pipe. And then off he’d go, flying into a world of possibility and into an universe where everything is connected and he suddenly understands – ‘really’ understands, whatever it was he went away to learn. I do like this part. He becomes so happy that his happiness leaks into me and we become, briefly, harmonious.

Then I eat him up.

By the fourth night he can smoke as much as he likes but all that is left is a trace of light.