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.

[

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

Saved

.com, HDR by Photomatix Pro]

EPISODE FOUR: IN WHICH SOME DIGNITY AND BALANCE ARE RESTORED AND A DEFENCE IS MADE FOR THE PREPONDERANCE OF WORDS.

Welcome to my blog which is the continuing story of a writer coming to grips with his lack of career and attempting to rectify the situation. For further exposition please refer to previous blogs, although I’d prefer it if you skipped over the poem at the end of the last one which is an embarrassing aberration that I suspect was written on ecstasy back in the days of yore. My old friend Phil Malleson, as pedantic a blank-verser as one could ever hope to meet, will be turning in his grave (which is probably quite tricky after cremation) at the idea of my calling those lines poetry. Phil’s photo is on the shelf above me. We argued about poetry throughout our lives which bearing in mind I hardly read any was a bit silly. I did scribble a few lines when I last visited his derelict flat – a dereliction which he, as ever ruled by principle, conserved by never adding a lick of paint or cleaning the toilet in twenty years. He was dying then, although he didn’t seem to know it. He was cheerful too, he who had never been cheerful in his life. His possessions consisted of a thousand tattered volumes of high literature, a change of clothes, two cups and two plates, a few pictures and some black and white photos which were taken by friends of his, framed and hung carelessly on his peeling walls. One of these photos was of my daughter wearing a hat. I never understood why he liked the picture so much but muse are muse and who knows where they will turn up?

Hopefully here, soon.                             

I’ve been reading my Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook, (nb that £14.99 I’ve invested in myself to add to the £500 for the laptop and printer: can it possibly be worth it?) in which I’m told, ‘Most blogs are rubbish. They aren’t read by anyone and are poorly written.’ What’s more, they shouldn’t be visually boring (i.e. like this one.) All this unmediated plain text stuff is tedious for you. (Have you tried reading Spanish novels?) Apparently you all have special machines that enable you to multitask at all times. You can watch videos, listen to podcasts, dance to music, ‘connect’ with millions of people simultaneously while making choices between an universe of products being offered to you. And you work and you have families.

I’m a bit slower than that.

I hold out hope, however, that help is on the way.  One day you’ll be on your machine and it’ll suddenly stop here and you’ll be amazed by the flowering artistic talents of my, presently latent, readership. Photos (of what?), videos, links, music, showgirls and boys, maybe all these things are on the way.

Meanwhile we have words. Let us not underestimate the power of words, of language. ‘In the beginning was the Word’ etc. The Hindu philosopher Bartrhari wrote a work in c600AD called ‘Vakyapadiya’ (Words in a Sentence) and it in said:

‘There is no cognition without the operation of words: all cognition is shot through and through by the word. All knowledge is illumined through the word.’

The RigVeda, one of the oldest texts known to man dating back 3,000 years, writes poetically of the beginnings of language:

‘When they came to establish the first beginning of language, setting up names, what has been hidden in them as their best and purest good became manifest through love.

 Where the sages fashioned language with their thought, filtering it like parched grain through a sieve, friends recognised their friendship. Their beauty is marked on the language.

They traced the course of language through ritual; they found it embodied in the seers. They gained access to it and distributed it widely: the seven chanters cheered them.

Many who look do not see language, many who listen do not hear it. It reveals itself like a loving and well-adorned wife to her husband. (!)

Though all the friends have eyes and ears, their mental intuitions are uneven. Some are like shallow ponds, which reach up to the mouth or armpit, others are like ponds which are fit for bathing.

At its best, therefore, the nature and function of language is ‘to manifest or reveal the meanings of things’. And why does it not always do so? …Well that’s a topic for another day.

Okay, I’m digressing. I told you I would. Am I masking total inaction? No. Even as I write this another idea development has popped up in my head. At this moment I can see the whole thing. Well I could. It is quite likely that that was the clearest the vision will ever be. For between 15 and 60 seconds it is as if a jigsaw puzzle is suddenly coming together before your very eyes. Then just as you step back to admire the picture it all breaks up again and you can’t quite remember what it is you saw and how the pieces fitted.

It is possible, I suppose, that some of the structures Jack has put into place are paying off. I’ve remained comparatively focussed and only had one attack of despair in the month I’ve been on the blog. This came about when, spurred on by writing this, I contacted my agent, from whom I hadn’t heard from since the day two years ago when I signed the agency agreement. Obviously I knew nothing had happened but his brusque confirmation of this was a little disheartening. I emailed him a second time to ask if he’d actually done anything at all with my novel but he doesn’t seem to want to tell me.

So it goes. (Thanks to Kurt Vonnegut.)

In fact I’ve had a flurry of possible projects reveal themselves to me this last week. Probably too many. This does happen to me every decade or so, a downpourring of viable suggestions all demanding months of work, few of which I complete because I’ve had to go to bed to cope with the overwhelm. The recent additions to the list for lifetimes are: a TV documentary to sell in America; an in-depth article connected with my studies in death and dying at University which I think I could also sell abroad: a book connected with some travel I did thirty years ago and…well…too many to mention, especially as I’ve just come across lists written in 1999 and 2005, both of which remain 95% undone. And no, at this stage I don’t want to be more concrete in case you steal my ideas. (And why wouldn’t you want to?) I can tell you that assuming the cataract op has gone well (which I think it has except they’ve removed my near vision), I will endeavour to enter short stories into two competitions, those of the Guardian Magazine and the V.S. Pritchett society.

Endeavour? Why do I need to endeavour?

Time’s up.

PHIL

 

 

 

 

Lines written as Phil slept

When the delight is done

And I find myself an old man

Staring in the mirrors of incomprehension

What will I do then?

When the song is sung

And even the tune but a confused memory

And when I’m tired of hobbling from nowhere to nowhere

What will I do then?

And when my body begins its dying

And when my friends are shadows in the past

And my lovers all forgotten

What will I do then?

When the only fields are painted on a picture half-seen

When the only smell is my own decay

When it hurts my heart to smile

What will I do then?

Oh my love, what will we do then?

Extra bit

You may remember an earlier consideration of an East/west split. Klaus Klostermaier in his piece, ‘The Creative Function of the Word’ compares the Western notion of creativity in which the aim is to produce something ‘original’ and ‘new’  with the Indian approach which is quite different. “The great creative geniuses of India take care to explain their thought not as creation but as a retracing of forgotten eternal truth. They compare their activity to the clearing an overgrown ancient path in the jungle, not the making of a new path. The creative effort of the rsi – the composer or author or artist –is not to manufacture something new out of his own imagination, but rather relate ordinary things  to their fundamental nature.”

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.

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