jenniesredbook

Fireflies, Even

Fireflies, a musical accompaniment for this blog, written by Adam R. Young, and performed by Owl City.

I have dithered for many years (and then some more) about whether I should publish this blog, or any for that matter. It has been stored away for years. A few edits and otherwise nothing much has changed. After a prompt from YouTube (see Fireflies above) and my seeing that it had 602M views, a WOW number, I then noticed that it was put online on 15 December 2009. Synchronicity has been a good friend throughout my long life, and while all I say and write is born of my thinking, I also accept fully that I may get things wrong sometimes, but never intentionally. Either way it is time to find my fingers again. I am now going to hit publish.

On 13 December 2019, I posted a photo of a sunset on Facebook. It was a sunset that knocked the breath out of my lungs and filled me with a foreboding sense that the world was on fire. Well, you could say I wasn’t far wrong. The next morning a year-old memory revealed that I had posted a similar photo on FB on the same day last year, 13 December 2018. Little did I know then of what lay ahead for me and my family. My beautiful, kind Mad Hatter of a brother, who self-identified with what was good and truthful in the world, which included Jesus and Shiva, shortly into January 2019 entered an eight-month period of an existential crisis that revolved around good and evil and how he could not continue to live unless he recovered his ‘beautiful life’ that now lay in tatters at his feet. It is all he spoke of to me and a few others throughout a deeply painful time for him that manifested in his body as well as his mind. I believe he had an experience in which he saw the past and the future, a part of which we all are. August 15th 2019 he gave up his inner battle.

We, all people living today, are in the midst of a societal and equally an environmental existential crisis, or as I see it, that great ever-present battle between Good and Evil—as above so below. This feels clear to me, and thoughts of Greg never follow far behind. We have ‘killed God’ and Nietzsche’s words, The Parable of the Madman, ring loud and clear all around us. Without our God, the same one no matter which religion or Religion , our souls feel isolated and are starved of love as we struggle to find them within.

Today we slide at breakneck speed down a muddy mountain slope as we edge closer to the evils as illustrated by great literature like George Orwell’s 1984 and Margaret Attwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale—how evil can be hidden within a political movement disguised in the clothes of concern and supported by smoke and mirrors. It is sad-making as it is not because people in the main are not good and kind, but rather we have given our trust to the kings, leaders and governments believing that they know how to do the job and have our best interests at heart. There may have been a few good ones in the past, but now that ‘God is away’ what is to stop the rats from coming out to play. Power, wealth and secrecy are an intoxicating mix and the game being played is too easy. It offers riches and power to the few while we, the spinners of straw into gold, are being seen as the thorn that pierces their rosy world.

Will the much talked about awakening of our souls happen in time to save us all from unthinkable atrocities and a devastated landscape? It can because it has always been there waiting for us to become more conscious. Now is the moment to find the courage that lies somewhere behind our backbone, as we stare back down the long dark path of our past. I can just make out a stand of trees filled with twinkling lights of fireflies. “Don’t forget us, turn to face the future,” I hear them say, “Even with your last breath redemption is to hand.”

Do you know that fireflies spend most of their lifecycle as a ‘glow-in-the-dark’ grub in the soil? They feed, rest and grow, trusting always that following a true miracle one day their moment to light up our world will come. Let’s make our incarnation this time round a good one. Let it draw us to the light that reveals the All. One for all, all for one.* We may well find there is a very different way of being who we always had the potential to be.

*Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers. Unus pro omnibus, omnes pro uno. The unofficial motto of Switzerland, and also the motto of the virtually real town in the Truman Show and.

Journal 18 June – Gateway to Heaven

Life and death are one thread, the same line just seen from different sides.

Lao Tzu

Please watch the video link (only 11mins) before reading any further because what I have written cross-references with Jordan Peterson’s comments.

I know the majority of people who support assisted suicide, as brought into law by the Canadian government, MAiD, and in many other countries now, Australia for one, believe in their heart that it is the kind thing to do. I have even heard it said, ‘We don’t even let dogs suffer pain so why do we…’

But that said, I, like Jordan Peterson, do not believe that it is safe for any government to sanction by law any form of assisted dying because not only is it conceivable that we could find ourselves in a situation where our government does not have the people’s best interests at heart – has happened before and will again – but also one is handing down the decision and deployment of this law to any number of people to follow through on. And who knows when one comes across someone who has their own agenda or activism, or even mis-held beliefs of any kind.

I also recognise that whether one is a spiritual person or an atheist may also govern one’s beliefs and feelings around death. I have only compassion for someone who has taken the decision to end their life, but I also feel sorrow for them not seeing through and getting beyond their deep suffering which may be even short lived, and also for feeling they cannot allow life to take its own course whatever that experience may bring. They may also never know that death can also be peaceful and beautiful.

I am going to start with the dog thing. In recent years I have had a very deep connection with two dogs where I have needed to be involved with their deaths. The first was our pug, Oscar. He was fit until about eleven years old when it became apparent that he had bladder cancer. I needed to rush back from South Africa when my family told me that things were not looking good, and he was suffering. I got back to Ibiza within thirty six hours and, having spoken with my vet, it was decided that we would give him some daily relief, both of the bladder and for the pain, so that I could be with him for a few more days. I made it through two nights with him sleeping by my side, and then I knew that I could not let him suffer any longer. One cannot explain to a dog what is to come and I knew that I had to do the kind thing for him. My vet came to our home and explained the procedure to me. I sat on the ground holding Oscar in my arms and then experienced for the first time the cessation of life from one moment to the next. I was traumatised by the experience for months, the trauma also being exacerbated because other than the cancer he was still fit and loving life. But also I believe that something of my trauma was knowing that I had made the decision on his behalf that it was time for him to die.

More recently and with my second pug, Kito, at age eight and fit as a fiddle, and I noticed one day that something was not right with him. He collapsed a couple of times and had low energy, so I took him to our new vet in Somerset. They found he was anaemic and suggested further tests. He continued to collapse the next day and the vet said he was now extremely anaemic and suggested a scan. The scan revealed that he had a mass in his abdomen, and the reason for the collapsing and anaemia was because he was bleeding into it. On investigating further they found he had some lesions, still very small, in his lungs. This was secondary cancer. My heart broke, and the memory of my trauma with Oscar flooded through my system.

I said to the vet I would like to have Kito die at home but would never want to cause him unnecessary suffering. I was afraid that the vet would think this was selfish. But to the contrary, he was totally receptive to this idea, and understanding about my unwillingness to go the ‘injection’ route. He told me that Kito would not suffer because he would simply continue to weaken until he bled out into the mass. There was no option to remove the mass because eventually he would suffer once the cancer in his lungs became more prominent. We discussed how I could nurse him at home and I knew that I could do this with his support.

The day after my discussion with the vet I was looking through a few posts on FaceBook and someone had posted an article written by a vet where he said that it is sometimes hard on them when asked to put an animal down because they see the eyes of the dog searching around the strange and fearful vet’s surgery for the eyes of their owners. In its synchronicity this article gave me the peace of mind to go through with allowing Kito to die naturally.

It was hard and some nights when he was weakened by the bleeding I would stay up with him, but then I came to know that his death was not imminent and we settled into a rhythm. Some days were good and there were times he even had the energy to go for walks with Zac, and his old spirit reigned. Now and again I would let myself think that miracles do happen. But towards the end of a month he started to weaken daily, and on the morning of his last day I knew the end was coming. It meant everything to me to be constantly with him for his last hours. Zac, his brother by another mother and father, sat next to his basket and would not leave him. As terribly sad as it was it was equally a beautiful experience. I talked to him and told him he would be fine, and asked him to tell my loved ones on the other side that I loved them all. About twenty minutes before he died I noticed that his eyes were no longer looking around, and his breathing became more erratic. I now believe that his soul had probably passed at that point, or for those who prefer a more scientific explanation, that he had entered a coma. There were three big gasps for air, and then all was still. As sad as I was to lose him I did not suffer trauma, although I will add, that is not either the point. Zac and we grieved, and then one day we all began to live again. Zac sometimes still seems a little unsure of what to do with himself but is once again enjoying being the only child he was born to be.

Now for a much older story. My mother trained to be a nurse and after qualifying she returned to her home town, Knysna, South Africa. She worked as a private nurse looking after the elderly for a few years but one day her family learnt that her father had bladder cancer. I don’t know whether surgery back around 1950 was available as an option or whether her father turned it down, but she then spent his last months nursing him along with her mother.

Many years later and when I was somewhere older than thirty she told me more of this time. She said that as he was suffering pain, and because she was a nurse, she was given the morphine to administer to him. One day as it became apparent he was dying, and with her and her mom never leaving him alone, he said to my mom, ‘Peggy, it is time.’ She told me quietly and with great pain at the retelling that she knew that he knew that it was not yet time for his next medication. I imagine that possibly the doctor had discussed with her and her mother the implication of giving him a higher dose than what was prescribed, and I don’t know whether my mother made a decision with her mother, but either way my mother gave him another dose. Following this she and her mother sat either side of his bed while her father kept saying, ‘Mummy, switch on the light. It’s so dark.’ No amount of telling him that the light was on settled him. She then told me that after a while he said, ‘Ah, that is better…’, and then he passed away. Although my mother was someone who prayed at the side of her bed every night, she had never tried to influence my life with regard to God and I am in awe of her over this, and my father had a similar practice. But I knew what she was implying—that he had seen a great light through the darkness of death. Only now and in this moment of writing have I wondered if this had borne down on my mother’s conscience, and perhaps even her mother’s. My grandmother, when I was six months old, refused my mother’s request that she move in with us, and her answer to her daughter was, ‘I love you very much, Peggy, but I don’t want to live without Daddy.’ I can just imagine how hard this was for a daughter to hear her mother say. My mother through all her life could never mention her father and mother without her eyes filling with tears. Tears can teach us a lot about someone. I often used to think about this but now I wonder if it was guilt that lay heavily in the recesses of her memory.

I will never support assisted suicide and I also know it is already not ending well. The direction of travel of our civilisation today tells me so. More than forty-five thousand people have already died at the hands of MAiD in Canada. Because I have followed this subject for many years now, I happen to know that many who accepted the offer of a humane death, and sometimes before an offer of a medical solution, could see no way through the poverty or lack of support brought about by illness or a disability. Now the Canadian government is keen to open the opportunity to children and those suffering from depression and poverty. And soon the UK government will try to get it enshrined in law too. Heaven please forbid.

A Puzzling May 10

The truth knocks on the door and you say, go away, I ‘m looking for the truth, and it goes away. Puzzling…

Robert M. Pirsig

It took some time before the public learned that to appreciate an Impressionist painting one has to step back a few yards, and enjoy the miracle of seeing these puzzling patches suddenly fall into one place and come to life before our eyes.

Ernst Gombrich

Why wouldn’t an Intelligent Designer place signposts along our evolutionary path if he/she/it truly cares about what happens to humanity? Otherwise we are left to die out over and over again as we persist in taking the wrong path, lane or road.

Many of us have come across a sign on the side of the road saying Road Closed Ahead. There have been times when I hoped that perhaps the closure ahead was beyond where I wanted to go, especially when travelling the small lanes and an alternative route is hard to imagine because this was the only road I knew. And without a doubt, if the road sign is not the usual standout official signage, few of us would take notice. The signs rarely give more information, like Bridge Ahead Collapsed, or Road Ahead Impassable. You could say that Free Will needs to be involved in the mix if we are to believe that God has an unfathomable and long term plan for us. And according to all the great religions of the world, their mystical writings indicate that there most certainly is one.

When puzzling recently, something profound in its simplicity came to me. As a starting point I need a puzzle that appeals to me emotionally and visually. Then I need courage, some self belief, and a plan. My plan is always to look for the boundary pieces, and I won’t continue any further until I have the stabilising edge pieces in place. There is no need to describe how I continue because I am sure all puzzlers worth their salt have a good plan going forward.

I am currently working on a beautiful V&A offering of birds of a wondrous plumage. The profound moment relates well as a metaphor: the more ‘dots’ I put together the easier the picture begins to take form. As the picture develops beyond the half way mark I am able to pick up a piece and know exactly where to place it. I am now at the point of closing in on completing it, and the pieces left are virtually the same colour. At the outset I had separated them and placed them in a little pot for later. They may be of a similar colour but will fit nowhere else other than in their correct position. Only for a moment did I consider not completing the puzzle now that the interesting bits were behind me. If a job is worth doing, it is worth doing well. Haha—no gain without pain. It is not different really from joining up the dots scattered in all the subsets of life. Knowing that the world requires a lifetime of me continuing to attempt to join up the dots has made my days easier in some crazy and puzzling ways.

There have always been visionaries who place roadsigns on our evolutionary path. Many of them were later recognised as prophets as we saw that the knowledge they whispered or cried out to us came to pass. But there are so many more amongst us that blocked our ears, closed our eyes or turned our backs on their well judged roadsigns. How much angst might we have saved ourselves from had we only heard them. But equally, through our obstinacy what opportunities we received to gain deep insights and wisdom. We may have overlooked the mystics and visionaries throughout time, and still do so today, because perhaps they were perceived as lacking the correct birthright or the right education, they were the wrong colour, or simply too primitive. It is often not our way to conjure up our imaginations, strike out the band, and go out and to meet them—to pit our intuition against their words.

Few would disagree with the following: that we are at a crossroad that holds immeasurable significance to our future well-being and survival. Also that our planet is soiled, creatures are dying, and the health and welfare of all living things is heading for a critical level. What kind of a world are we bringing to fruition by handing over responsibility for it to those with great wealth and a will to power to carve it up to their Ahrimanic ways? What should we be doing? Puzzling is a good start.

Journal Speak 5 April 2024

Three things cannot hide for long: the sun, the moon and truth.
Gautama Buddha

At the age of a quarter of a century while living with my brother in Ibiza I experienced a lunar eclipse in the ‘now’. It was probably expected and had most likely even been mentioned on page 4 in the local newspaper, but not known to me. As I often was want to do, I headed out at about 11pm in search of a dance and walked around the port of Ibiza towards Pacha with boats still lined up to the quay on the road side. One of them was probably my friend Pete’s Mediterranean antique sail boat called the Isla Blanca. I am sure I was wearing the quirky ‘materialed’ cigarette leg trousers that I had made having taken a pattern off a pair that fitted (we do say this in the UK) me very well and a baggy t-shirt. 1978/9 was a magical time on the island. Sin and innocence were solid bed fellows. The sea sparkled and pollution and life-threatening climates were not yet words on everyone’s lips. Fishing boats put-putted as they set out to sea each night at this time in anticipation of bringing back a good, but not obscene, haul to market. Having danced in my own world for two hours my body was tired, and I headed home—about a twenty minute walk. Confusion reigned as I looked up for the full moon that I had left home under. Or perhaps it was a time shift or worse still, a glitz in the matrix. The full moon did look more like the Apple logo. Living as I was in a foreign land a long way from Cape Town, my childhood home, it would be true to say I was now submerged in a language I couldn’t speak, and living amongst a people I had no experience of, Romany folks I shared Sa Penya with. It certainly wasn’t for me to second guess my surroundings. On the walk back to Calle Alta 34 a celestial ghost kept taking bigger and bigger bites out of the moon, my moon that night. And then it dawned of me—I was experiencing my first lunar eclipse. Ah, that was it. The Earth must be placed exactly between the moon and the sun wherever it was now in the sky somewhere else around the globe. This must have been how those early settlers felt who lived on the plains fifty thousand years ago, or whenever it was we roamed the Earth in animal skins.

Apparently there are two to five solar eclipses each year, with a total eclipse taking place about every eighteen months. A partial lunar eclipse happens between two to five times a year, with a total lunar eclipse occurring every two or three years.Only a few die-hard fans used to chase eclipses until now and with April 8 looming fearfully ahead of us. Yes, in the US fear has been ratcheted up for the last two weeks. Until now the only advice ever given ahead of solar eclipses was to use slitted glasses. Now people are being warned to stock up on fuel, food and water.

The US has gone full steam on closing a number of schools in the path of total eclipse, calling up disaster management teams, even the nuclear disaster unit. A number of counties have declared a state of emergency. From what you may ask. Sorry I can’t help you there, my US friends, but you have been warned. Apparently they say people are going to clog up the highways and byways, empty shops and garages of all food and fuel, and there will be dangerous food shortages to follow. One but wonders what they know that we don’t know. Starting to sound a lot like the warnings of what was going to happen at midnight 31 December 1999. But does one stock up, also known as emptying the shelves, just in case? I hear that there will truly incredibly be a comet passing across the eclipse which should be visible by the naked eye. Images show it to be a stunner with a swirly whirly very very long tail. And NASA thinks it could be helpful to fire three rockets at the lunar shadow. But more weirdly the scientists at Cern, Switzerland, who openly admit they don’t really know what they are doing or even whether they run the risk of upsetting our very own universe, are going to fire up the Large Hadron Collider and bash a couple atoms into one another. I don’t know about you but I fail to see how this helps humanity thrive and be happy.

Astrologers tell us that all that happens in the celestial realm has an impact on us. This is not something I find so strange. Maybe why I do wonder whether an Alien nation has been in situ on our planet for sometime already, or more likely become body snatchers who work their way up through governments and organisations etcetera etcetera with the sole intention of slowing ridding the Earth of our presence. Could be a possible explanation for the awful things our rulers are doing, not only to the planet but also to us, supposedly their kin and the bearer of future generations. Or are we living in a ground hog day where every day is April 1. I did notice that this year there was no appetite for jokes. Luckily, it is at this point I remember the tin-foil hat on my head and relax. Phew! Nothing to see here.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to…7 March 2024

Religion is capable of driving people to such dangerous folly that faith seems to me to qualify as a kind of mental illness.
Richard Dawkins

It is not the Faith that is the disease but the way a person responds to it. In other words, the cause of the mental illness already lies within the person and not in the Faith, just as a gun does not kill someone until a person decides to pull the trigger.

I feel calm, except for an occasional agitation, and enjoy smiling my way through life, except for momentary moments of sorrow. Well, that is a statement that probably sits at odds with pretty much everything that is happening around us on our beautiful planet, Earth. I remember saying in 2016 (the year of our daughter’s death, Trump and Brexit—not all bad but all shocking events) that it feels like I have slipped into an alternative reality. Many times in the years since it does seem to have been made clearer to me, and now just feels true. Even the probable event of its happening seems obvious now. Watching live on our TV with our friend Graham and brother Greg I remember the existential shock I experienced as a plane fly into the World Trade Centre in 2001, and then the collapse of the buildings. The overwhelming message that came through to me was that ‘the world has changed forever’. Ironically my husband had been telling me for a decade at least that his instincts were telling him that 2001 was going to be a big year for us. His thinking was that this is when all that we worked for as a family was going to come to fruition. Since then we have come to view his ‘insight’ as having a different meaning all together. He has had a more recent obsession over the last 8 years and it is the figure of 27,000. Nothing so far is coming to mind around this one!

But how can a shift into an actual parallel reality happen? In recent years, that is to say, since 2019, I have come to understand how that may work, and it is based within both science and spirit. Everyone must be aware of the latest physics with its luminaries talking about the theory of a multiverse, while in the realm of spirit we have philosophy from the earliest times tell us that all is connected in the Consciousness of One, and as time goes on this seems more and more likely. How did they do that…I say of the early Greek philosophers. Even Einstein saw the woo hoo quality of quantum physics with special attention to quantum entanglement: “I cannot seriously believe [in quantum mechanics] because the theory is incompatible with the requirement that physics should represent reality in space and time without spooky action at a distance…”. Well, today we know that there is no more likely theory out there besides quantum physics.

Still in the vein of spirit, and on researching for this piece, I came upon this clip on YouTube of Richard Dawkins being interviewed by a rather intelligent journalist for a change. I can’t believe this is the revered (used ironically) top dog Atheist, looked up to by so many of our intelligentsia and the rest of their class, and how easy it was for someone like me to hear our personal and less rational were his reasons for believing that there probably was an ‘intelligent designer’ but there was no way that that might by God. His words, as he reads from his book, and so oft quoted, may sound impressively intelligent and accurate, but none fit with my understanding of The First Testament—too long to get into here! I was left wondering who hurt this man so deeply.

We all believe our common sense is working hard to tell us that the world works this way or that way, and some of us even claim to see a logic in what our common sense is telling us. And now a number of us are saying or thinking, “It feels like we are all living in a weird combination of different worlds, or at least in an alternative reality.” Since 2020, the year of perfect vision, it has also become clear to me that in order to maintain family and old friendship bonds many of us have had to learn to leave out a number of talking points because to differ on them could be fatal to said bonds. And so it emerged that I/we could continue to reach through the ether from ‘different world views’ and continue to hold a space together. But so I am learning that I don’t need to reveal Truth because I cannot be sure either. I have finally learnt that Truth reveals itself. The other evening in a short clip I heard Adyashanti, a Zen Buddhist, trying to explain how one can live on a single planet but in seemingly different worlds or realities. He said that there is only one way to understand how this is so. That even though there is truly and simply one Reality, the way in which we are able to come together is by having our individual ‘unrealities ‘(Hindus call it the Illusionary Reality or Maya) that each chooses to live in and by.

I, like most people, believe there are Truths, and here I am not referring to scientific truths because they only exist until a new truth replaces a defunct truth, and nor do they inevitably improve our human story. As we discover Truths, as opposed to opinions, for ourselves there can be little doubt that they have the effect of improving our experience of life. This said, it seems clear to me these days that the only way to enhance life and allow it to thrive can be learnt from a vantage point of the front seat on The Cloud of Unknowing. And the only way to sit comfortably for any length of time is cloaked in humility. One soon gives up the idea that there are no mysteries and that magic is impossible, and acknowledges that Man most likely does not reign supreme. It is a hard path to stay on, our egos don’t like it much, and nor do we want to be found believing that the naked Emperor is wearing garments made of the finest materials when actually in reality he is naked. I can’t help feeling that if we make the effort and trust our intuition more, in the words of Charles Eisenstein, we can ‘make the more beautiful world our hearts know is possible’. My intuition tells me that nothing beautiful will emerge from our current dystopian and world wanting of kindness and integrity. We need to learn that hope of a rebirth will only emerge once we stop all stop the killing of our fellow Men in the name of war, righteous or not. That is on the collective level as the individual level is much more personal. The Law makes no distinction between whether our laws say when it is legal and when it is not. Love our neighbour as we love ourselves. And if there was ever an example of what this means, Jesus gave us many both in his actions and in his parables.

If I could only find words…

“Can science be so sure that there is no such thing as a religious instinct?” Carl Jung

We have a saying in my family—if it can’t be written on the back of a cigarette packet it probably doesn’t make sense. So here goes…

There is something odd happening in the world today, and a few believe it is possibly even nefarious. Some would even go so far as to say there is an ongoing war rampaging against the people, and not the traditional kind that involves uniforms, bullets and bombs. What makes it impossible for the great majority of good people to even contemplate the possibility of this being true is that none of us saw it arriving. How could we possibly contemplate that we are simply targets that need to be monitored, marked and controlled because there are just too many of us. And this could be explained by the fact that the vast majority of us had no idea how advanced our technology has become. And it would be true to say that we still don’t get it, although we are learning fast.

But at the same time there are other changes becoming apparent too. There is reason to believe that a great other shift is happening across the globe. An upward advancement in the conscious awareness of humanity, and maybe even more of the planet too. I leave you to work out what I mean. Perhaps we are becoming less predictable, harder to coerce and more difficult to keep in our boxes. We have no context for what is currently taking place around the planet, so how could we begin to comprehend the enormity of what is happening. All we are really sure of is that we don’t want to die. We don’t know who has us in their sights, although there are some useful clues, and nor can we fathom why we might be unloveable, although I hear say that we are responsible for the sad plight of our resources and the condition of our planet. Maybe that is enough of a reason for why a few of scared of the many. We believe that we are here to live out our lives intermingled with others who are trying to do the same, some with more advantages than others, but ultimately that all are welcome by the very fact that we survived our birth. Almost all of us obey the laws that keep on fattening up the statute books, look out for our loved ones and others, pay our taxes and more. And for the most part, we are satisfied with our lot in life. Rather too many privileged people believe there may be too many of us on the planet today, or are we ‘waking up’ and rejecting more of what they would like us to be, good consumerists/workers who do as they are told? I think it is more likely an inhospitable combination of both.

I do not see the size of the world’s population as the biggest problem but rather that the planet has become too small to hold the complexity that is every aspect of life today, and this instability in our systems is causing implosions to happen at an increasing rate, be they financial, economic, logistics, communications, health or be they simply evolutionary in nature. We are rapidly becoming a risk to everyone else’s quality of life, and particularly threatening to the Elite (sorry, a little cruel I know) of the world. But they are probably more of an important contributing cause than victims of the effect. They have developed a sense of entitlement to the world as their playground, and worse still they believe they are uniquely placed to take charge over how much of everything is for them and how much is left over for us. This would naturally lead to aberrations in their temperaments and perhaps even to a tendency to become narcissists through isolation from the beauty of the natural world, and society for reasons of fear and threats to their health, of scarcity, and fears for their safety. It would not be unreasonable to surmise that they might suffer from a difficulty in finding meaning in their lives of unbridled privilege, often purely through the accident of birth, or through lack of contribution to the bulk of society and a scant knowledge of ordinary people at large while trying to appease their guilt through a multitude of charity balls. It is believed that they encompass over 90% of the world’s wealth, and the rest is divided unequally amongst the remaining 7.753 billion (2020) minus 0.001% of us. It is no wonder that they would fear us. What would happen if we did decide to start and revolution or chose to turn our backs on their commodities? The hard question in any discussion these days is ‘But who are the ‘they’?’ These families have always been around abeit mostly out of sight, with a few ups and downs and new families added or lost now and again. And from behind well fortified facades, they have slowly been taking over all the institutions, corporations, media, etc and now even run most governments quite openly, as illustrated by the World Economic Forum, the UN and the WHO. Theirs is an audacious belief that they are in charge of The Future. Through the urgency of now they have become more brazen, which could be helpful to us all because it is bringing them out into the light. Perhaps they too will not be able to avoid the enlightening process of the coming Age of Aquarius and its uptick of consciousness happening across the world as I write. After all, we hope they are as human as the rest of us. Just a little lost.

Why we may lose this war, at least in the short term, is because we are disadvantaged by being too agreeable, too comfortable, too marginalised and too trusting, sometimes for reasons of ease and convenience. The result of losing this war is going to be catastrophic for many of us, the most obvious being by medical interventions of one sort or another, or the lack of treatment for real health issues, or by food shortages, from freak weather events, from skirmishes to full civil war, isolation and desolation, to name just a few. The opportunity to have children has also been decreasing quite alarmingly over the past four decades and not just because of the increasing costs of life but more importantly as fertility drops. We do nothing at our own peril. We need to refuse to comply altogether no matter whether our beef or someone else’s, shout loudly and get together in groups that can begin to make their presence felt and heard.

But what difference can any one of us truly make? It may feel hopeless but there is always a solution to every problem or issue on this planet. But this time it has to involve us all and united. We must not allow ourselves to be divided. It overrides our natural instinct to care for others and our ability to collaborate with those around us. We have to start talking to each other again and stop being afraid to reveal our fears. We need to stand up for our basic human rights, and equally to support others to be allowed to make choices when different to our own. As Albert Einstein said: Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labour in freedom.

Also, there is no doubt that we need to heal our beautiful Earth which means playing a role in protecting and cleaning up our environment. We must need less and learn to live more simply. I sense that this is something that is coming about perhaps as a result of the raising of consciousness that may be happening. We need to say no to any and all wars, which also means not interfering in other countries’ affairs but rather allowing them the dignity to develop/correct their ways and grow over time. We should make it our business to know what is going on in our own country and in others, and to share what we have learnt with those around us, and also to hear from others what they need us to know. There are always many among us with a multitude of talents, and together we can make the changes that will lead to a more sustainable, much kinder and a more intelligent way of living on this beautiful planet. Some things will lead to quick results while others may take time to show up. There will be disappointments and errors made, but with patience and time, I dream that things will improve such that all on this planet can live consciously, freely and with care and love for all and everything. Above all, there will be a diversity of lifestyles, some choosing to live with technology and others choosing to live with less of it. We will learn through the example set by the success or failure of how different communities develop around us. As small holdings flourish though the rolling back of much of the unnecessary bureaucracy that has stood in our way for so long, we will buy food grown locally. Through the diversification of health practices our innate immune systems will improve leading to better health outcomes for us all. Education will become more attuned to the individual and less controlled by central governments. Tolerance will be something that feels natural and less judgemental. And it is communities who always know best how to take care of their own, even if not quite to our liking.

It is time to make a move back in the direction of simple, natural and clean. We can change the path we have been travelling for five hundred years. It is not simply wishful thinking that this world could be a better place. If we can imagine it, it must be possible. We only need the will, and to look to those who have the knowledge to show us the way. Little changes made by many add up to a massive shift in the way we choose to live our lives. If every person chooses what they can sacrifice, big or small, it will make an enormous difference to our footprint on this planet. It is a time to throw out political parties (quite a recent invention) who impose their candidates after having to jump through many party hoops, and rarely from our communities. We must rather put people forward who have proved their worth to their communities, to represent their people in central governments for a fixed tenure. And most importantly—we need to streamline central governments back to basics. There is a saying that resonates with me: Government works by force, and the bigger the government the greater the force. We are burdened with onerous laws, most just not needed. We do know what theft, grievous bodily harm, rape, murder, fraud, negligence and libel look and sound like. Juries have always done well in administering justice. As long as we are waiting for others/other countries to do the right thing, we wait in vain for a better world. We have to lead and change from the bottom up, be patient and, in time, things will improve around the world. And yes, we do also need to accept diversity of lifestyles and opinions, and above all keep our sacred indigenous people around the world safe and thriving. They hold a font of knowledge that is irreplaceable and are yet to be appreciated for this wisdom. It will probably take a number of generations of people working collaboratively to bring about the necessary changes, but that is what building a better future could look like. It will never happen by only concerning ourselves with our families and close friends, and by allowing the few to work secretively to impose on the many.

I have tried my best to keep this succinct and it has required that I leave out facts and contexts. It may just be possible to fit this onto a cigarette packet but you will need a strong magnifying glass to read it. Will we come together in time to heal ourselves so that we can heal the planet, or will it be the planet that forces a healing on us? Either way I am holding onto hope. At this point I will break off before I break into Michael Jackson’s Heal the World. Bless him. Perhaps we got him terribly wrong. It won’t be the first time we have made a blunder in judgement. Who truly knows except those in the know, and then we are called upon to decide who is lying and who is telling the truth. Never easy. We would do well to see ourselves as all being different faces of the same coin. There are no opposites really, only degrees of the same.

If I could only find words…to say how amazing life is…that we were born to break the chains that bind…that there is an ideal world out there… that we all meet somewhere in dream time…how else could we imagine a kinder world if it is not possible…Suzanne and Leonard tell me so.

PS Have fun with the imbedded links. I found this blog from last year in my drafts folder, and while I would not write in this vein now, it was how I felt about six months ago. I thought I would get it off my chest and live to breathe another way, or is it another day?

The Eye of Horus

“Time is a game played beautifully by children.” —Heraclitus

“We must use time as a tool, not as a couch.” —John F. Kennedy

“The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once.” —Albert Einstein

More of a note than a blog:

I have not been writing blogs for sometime now. Many were started but none finished for the reason that I found myself going off on steep tangents in the same piece, only to discover that I had ended up in a jumbled world of confusion. Instead I chose to work hard and complete my second book—a joy from start to finish including many rewrites. Time alone will tell whether it is destined to be published or not. This one is a short novel written for an indistinguishable audience in a loose genre of magic realism. The story came to me in a rather abrupt or unexpected way with a beginning, a middle and an end as a single download, in the right time, and the right place while sitting waiting for a meeting with my husband and elder daughter, just a few years after my younger daughter died and shortly following the death of my brother. They were both to be in this story but not in any recognisable form. I was initially concerned about how I would ever be able to do the story justice, but in the end I just started. And the rest worked itself out for better or for worse.

While I am doing research for another imaginal that has settled on my plate, I have decided to revisit my blogs with my best paintbrushes, my fingertips these days. Everything that is of this secret corner of my life is about adventures into the unknown, the corners of my mind—trying to break the limits of my own beliefs and perceptions. And for this reason you could say, I am planning a series of revisitations. I shall leave the original as a time-appropriate value. The idea came to me because a blog, Fact or Fissure, popped up, as odd things will happen, on my laptop yesterday, and I chose to read it this morning. My left eye was disappointed, and knew intuitively that I could do better. I am hoping it is because I have been re-educating my right eye, the masculine Eye of Osiris, or the logical and more ordered world experienced through the left brain. But it does feel like I am able to say on paper what I hope to express in a more coherent and less wordy way, now that I have spent a lot more time with my hands hovering over the typewriter keys. Again, only time will tell. Another reason would be that my age gifts me the time to do it—better than being a couch potato in the sentiment of JFK. So all in all, time has a lot to do with everything. There must be a truth in that somewhere – ha ha.

What Lies Below

Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing for the known way is an impasse.
Heraclitus

Growing up in Cape Town, South Africa, with no Afrikaans friends and only one experience of being mocked for being an ‘engelsman’, in this case by a group of Afrikaans children as I stood alone in my school uniform on Newlands station, 13 years old, I didn’t know how to deal with my experience as a simple and free-natured child. I know myself so much better as I approach my seventieth year.

Back then there was much to make me feel angry and isolated as I grew older and watched unpleasant things happen amongst the various racial groups of my homeland and as the two white and privileged nations squabbled, plotted and mocked each other. I count myself amongst the lucky ones who are seldom plagued by anger. Depression was more my bag in those youthful days. As things turned out, I chose to attend Stellenbosch University, an Afrikaans language university, because it was the nearest place to home where I could study the degree that seemed like the right fit for me. Although Cape Town University seemed like a more fashionable ‘uni’ I was not unhappy about going to Stellenbosch. It was going to be an experience and it meant that I had to leave home as daily travel was not an option. What I was always sure of, just as I had never been attracted to boarding school was that I had no intention of staying in a residence, especially because of the strict rules they placed on female students, so I found a room not far from the campus. I was already becoming more aware of my own nature which simply held no more than a few light prejudices that would take me a decade or two more to be able to identify what they were. I do remember though wondering whether it was just because I couldn’t be bothered – that old sloth rearing its ugly head – but as I have grown older I am more confident that this is just what is more natural to me. While in Stellenbosch I learnt more of how much I had in common with some English people and not others, and also of what I had in common with some Afrikaaners and not others. I was meeting and mixing with Afrikaans people of as many political persuasions as their English-speaking counterparts. I also learnt a different side of the European history of South Africa that broadened my outlook again.

I left South Africa as a twenty-four-year-old in 1977 not for the same reason as most people around those times, ie for political reasons, but rather because of the toxic atmosphere of hatred festering and ulcerating through all of its people. I did not want to live as part of this soup of pain, anger, resentment and destruction. Once I had arrived in Europe a part of me felt released and relieved. I was living in a country that was not my responsibility. Well, naive you could say, but allowed me to observe life and grow up without anyone inhibiting, knowing or even experiencing much of my existence. I came to learn that while bigotry and passive aggression was just diluted in the UK and Europe, it was still there, and always bubbling away under the surface.

I still feel cold towards bigots, although working hard to hold onto compassion. Unfortunately I find most, not all, activists to be myopic when it comes to viewing the bigger picture, especially one in which their particular ‘beef’ would be more constructively viewed. Sadly, I find that the majority of humanity has trouble recognising the path following consequences if more than one degree away. While many prefer war to peace, this still has little to do with how self-perpetuating and destructive war is to our souls-that killing people is always going to work out badly for us whether legal or not.

When I meet a person, no matter how intellectual or simple their souls are, that has an open, questioning and seeking mind, that is when I can let go because I am home. I let out a relaxing and deeply satisfying out-breath, and my heart sings like the bird’s.

We may be able to hide from what lies below but best to know that while not the prettiest part of who we are, it certainly is the most vital. Surely good to make friends.

Where have all the Lamplighters and Rainmakers Gone?

“Idris: Are all people like this?

The Doctor: Like what?

Idris: So much bigger on the inside.”

Neil Gaiman

Creation said:
“I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it.
It is the realisation that they create their own reality.”
The eagle said,
“Give it to me. I will take it to the moon.”
The Creator said, “No. One day they will go there and find it.”
The salmon said,
“I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean.”
The Creator said, “No. They will go there, too.”
The buffalo said, “I will bury it on the Great Plains.”
The Creator said, “They will cut into the skin of the earth and find it even there.”
Grandmother who lives in the breast of Mother Earth,
and who has no physical eyes but sees with spiritual eyes, said
“Put it inside of them.”
And the Creator said, “It is done.”

Creation story from the Hopi Nation, Arizona

Instead we have got clowns, oafs, goons and zombies running the show and calling the shots, and that is not counting the demons and narcissists who manage to flourish in the political garden too. There is no standing back anymore to get the bigger picture, perhaps there never was and that is a big part of the problems we face today. Rather we leave it to ‘the experts’ to make the decisions needed to care for our planet and our survival who then instruct us on what we may and may not do.

I think the big lesson of the last few years is that this must change. We need to take responsibility for ourselves beyond our personal daily lives. What I believe Jesus came to show us. He needed to tear us away from our reliance on despotic leaders as representative of a God who lives above us, who may be malign or benign, and his/their laws. We need to turn inward to find the ‘father’ within us. Two thousand years later perhaps we are beginning to hear the message. Our technology may change by the day but we do not. It is reasonable to suspect that we have hardly ‘progressed’ at all through the last two millennia. All that I can see are subtle changes in our morality leading to some changes in our ethics. But how quick are these to fall away when we suspect someone else of wanting to have what we consider ours. Are we less selfish, more loving and considerate, do we refrain from behaviours that when others partake we don’t feel good about, is war still our default mode when big disagreements take place from families to nations? Do we still take the loves of others? Will we still turn away from what we don’t want to see or know?

The time is now to lift up, look under, peer around the back and over the top of, and once we have completed a close-up interrogation, to then move further and further back to gain the greatest overview—the big picture—and then turn our gaze inwards to our own souls. No stone should be left unturned. I must be crazy in my wish to turn over a rather large and dangerously positioned rock to see what else might be tucked in with it. But going by the horror, fear, indignation, and joy from some groups, that Roe v Wade has brought up, I decided it was important to see if, on further reflection, I could learn something more from this difficult and contentious moment. I have no doubt, in this era of wokism, it is somewhat of a foolish idea, but why else might I be here witnessing these decidedly weird times if not to learn as much as I can about myself and the world.

Our default position more often than not is to simply react—a behaviour we are well-known for, hence the popular ‘knee-jerk-reaction’ saying. A saying that surely only makes sense to those because they are old enough to recall the doctors giving us children a quick tap with a little rubber hammer to the area just below our kneecaps as we sit with our feet dangling. If our foot jumps forward involuntarily then all is good in the skeletal department I believe. I can’t remember exactly what it told the doctor but it was as important as tapping our chest and back to hear and feel something that experience allowed them to decipher. I suppose a little like some of us tapping a watermelon to see if ripe. But unfortunately it is that old predictable knee-jerk-reaction that seems to have permeated our lives in more ways than one. And it is exactly what has made our behaviour predictable to the powers-that-be, as edible as a piece of cake, you could say, leaving only the crumbs for us peons to quibble over.

If I were asked more than three years back whether Roe v Wade could or would be reversed I would have said—highly unlikely. But if I were to have been asked in the last couple of years, I would have answered—I ‘dunno’ because frankly nothing is sacred and everything today is on the table.

Erroneously or correctly, synchronicity guides my thinking and has for many years now. Either I have got sharper at picking them up or they really have speeded up as something of a bigger carrot to guide humanity towards the possibility of seeing more of the bigger picture. A bigger picture that I believe the Great Spirit offered to us young souls when he wrote his great logorithm, Creation, which we then set in motion when Eve drew the short straw and ate the fruit of The Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

My day started with having read the above mentioned news and observing the unfolding drama, and a short while later a couple of a-causal events collided revealing to me what I have come to call affirmations that I am thinking in the right direction. Of course I have no way of being sure of this except that I am happy doing it.

A short while later, I was drawn to a clip, called The Eternal Principle, on YouTube of one of my favoured guides, Joseph Campbell. In it and referencing Arthur Schopenhauer, he says, “When you get older and look back on your life, it seems to have had an order; it seems to have been composed by someone, and those events when they occurred that seemed to be accidental and occasional and just something that happens, seem to be the main elements in a consistent plot.” It is not that it is a new idea for me but rather it is the timing of it popping up. A little later, there was a further reminder when an article with the following heading came up: An Astonishing New Theory Claims that Past, Present and Future Exist Simultaneously. Well, for that to be the case, it all has to have ‘been written’ before hand, surely, otherwise how could it be running simultaneously. But perhaps that is again down to only being able to see time as a linear progression—a Catch 22 situation. My mind is a muddle! But never the less, again not altogether a new idea to me. I have been enjoying toying with time for many years now. One of my cocktail of theories is that it is the setting down (into the ether or even the background field perhaps) of our accumulative memories that give time its energy and we know that energy makes things move. It is nigh impossible for us to see time as moving forward and backward from the now.

So if nothing happens by accident, or as I am inclined to believe, ‘all is written’, then there is always a relevance to everything that happens, and we ought to pay more attention than our usual emotional response. So what might that relevance be?

It is hard not to have an off-the-cuff reaction to the big events going on around us, and I think it is fair to say that too often our reaction is followed rapidly by the apportioning of blame, and often that is an end to it. We may attack silently, sometimes verbally or worse, those we blame, or we box the experience and no real lessons are gleaned. But what if it was always beyond the control of the person or persons we hold responsible because ‘it is written’ anyway, no matter who carried it through? What if everything that happens is always a lesson waiting to be learnt—never a command—just an opportunity? I am not saying that we don’t have choices. It is just that the choices we do make determine the next stretch of the path we find ourselves walking, sometimes running, down. And that they were always anticipated. It works as clearly on a collective level as it does individually. I do not see myself as a fatalist but rather that all destinations having been written, we will always end up fulfilling our individual and collective destinies, via one route or another so to speak. This would only have consequences in the afterlife for our next sojourn into an earthly body. Karma is what I am referring to. So having decided one way regarding the initial Roe v Wade case, 1973, the possibility was pre-determined that one day we would arrive at a junction where a choice was back on the table. But why might this be?

Could it be during the times leading up to 1973 that we needed to break away from withholding a woman’s right to speak up for herself in what happens around her fertility, as in who manages her affairs especially concerning her body. Having achieved this consideration, and having determined the limit of 12 weeks in which a decision to abort could be made, did we then go too far such that little consideration is given to the consequences of the fact that copulation leads to the probability of a pregnancy. Today a woman will make love with no precautions, and all she needs to remember is to take the morning-after pill within 24 hours. There have also been some dreadful changes proposed to the abortion laws in some US states, and even some murmurings along this line in the UK. An example of one is to allow abortions until full term, including after a ‘live birth’. We have not exactly measured our behaviour very well when it comes to the gravity of the responsibility we have to respect our bodies and the sanctity of life, and perhaps a modification is required to bring the pendulum back somewhat to a more ethical stance.

The recent Roe v Wade reversal, you could therefore say, came about on the basis that the judges were ‘driven’ to revisit the decision. They decided that it is not a constitutional right, but rather a federal decision, whether to allow abortions or not. It could be a choice that initiates a new path for us all. Residing at the state level to decide what to do going forward, one could say that it is for the community to decide what reflects their views, and the rules can be reviewed at any time. I find it interesting that now there are definite new choices to be made again, and in any case whether communally or individually, both will lead to a new set of consequences. Perhaps we may find the courage to follow through on our personal ethical decisions no matter what life throws up for us.

When it first came into being (1973), if what we needed was a loosening up of old ways of thinking, of not being bound by old laws and judgements, perhaps what we need now is to look back and see if there were babies we threw out with the bathwater. (Yes, I know, but I don’t think unreasonably cruel.) I am reminded of how I have come to view Jesus’s coming to Earth. He needed us to look inwards and find where all truth was hidden, and not to believe that we establish ourselves as ‘good’ people by how well we follow God’s laws. St Paul had a lot to say on this in his various ‘letters’ to the emerging Christian communities. Personally, I see now that Jesus, deeply misunderstood by the people of his time, even his own Apostles, and probably not yet fully understood, may well have come to set something in motion for these times we live in now. I know this won’t be a popular view, but it sure helps me to understand so much more of our history, the religion that is Christianity, its doctrinal requirements, and why so many of its ‘Volk’ have dropped away. Christ Consciousness feels to me like everything we need to find and feel. What is today asked of us by having our attention once more drawn back to Roe v Wade is something of a new lesson. By seeing into Consciousness more deeply, have the opportunity to choose for ourselves that life is sacred—to know we now can choose for ourselves whether to live by this or not. Through my own life experiences, I came to a decision that I would never again abort a foetus, no matter what the circumstances—a lesson I learnt a very long time ago. For me there is no confusion, and certainly no knee-jerk reaction to this issue, because I have left no stone unturned about the subject. It has also taught me not to judge another because it is an extremely complex decision with no easy answers. But then, who said life was meant to be easy?

A little aside, and something that could illuminate further what I am trying to grapple with. It was not Frodo who did the right thing by throwing the Ring into the furnace of Mordor. His desires made him hold onto the ring, and with slipping it onto his finger, all resolve left him. This gave Gollum the chance to take it off him in a rather gruesome way. Once freed from the direct power of the Darkness, Frodo rediscovered his courage, and the will to fight to the death if necessary and was finally triumphant, perhaps with a little heavenly support, when Gollum lost his footing and the Light was able to win this epic battle. The fact remains though—it was the Darkness (as represented by Gollum) that enabled the Light to prevail. So are they really two different things? A subject for another story I think. JRR Tolkien certainly knew how to tell the stories that matter the most to living a meaningful life, and it is up to the rest of us to decipher what it is that could be most beneficial to our lives.

We must never stop seeking the lamp-lighters and rainmakers here, there and everywhere. They can light our way in times of darkness, and make sure we don’t go without what we need to sustain us. They have not forsaken us. It is just that our eyes and ears stopped seeing and hearing their messages, or perhaps we simply stopped wanting them in our lives.

Keep Moving Forward

Forgiveness is fickle when trust is a chore.

Sacred Vision, Iron & Wine is Samuel Ervin Beam

I suspect my tinfoil hat is about to grow even taller, but oh hell, I am The Cat Who Walked by Himself. I was born to be this way, and I have long surrendered to this lonely position. It turns out I would not be bribed into the cave, even for a bowl of cream and a safe warm fire to get you through the cold nights.

There are nefarious ways afoot. I have looked in many directions and it appears to me that this fire was lit by the West/US and the people, already in heightened fear, are fanning the flames for them. That is not to say that invading another independent country is ever the way forward. But there might well be a case that supports the behaviour of a leader of a major nation whose back has been pushed up against an ‘unscaleable’ wall with no-where else to go. And no-one can deny that Ukrainians, where one in three still have Russian language as their first language, are Putin’s people, and therefore the heart is involved for him, either for better or for worse. Of course, we all believe we live in the good half of the globe. But the cracks are appearing in even this view of ourselves. There is no situation that doesn’t require two to tango. I have never seen flames jump so high so quickly!

Ukraine! Only interesting to the West because it sits up against Russia’s border. Reactions have been lightening fast—you have to know surely that no-one has taken time to consider what might be the repercussions of this. We never make good decisions when we listen to our shaking knees. Regime changes, coups supported by the West/US, arming ‘freedom fighters‘ that become Al Queda, and ISIS, and perhaps now, neo-nazis in the Ukraine, invading Afghanistan and Iraq, being involved in wars all over like in Yemen, Sudan, Syria and Libya – how did that work out for us and the world?

I can’t help wondering where the bleeding hearts all around are for those of our own who have taken a bullet to protect Granny. Those who survived the injurious shot are not even permitted to speak, never mind get medical help and restitution from the companies who caused it. Everyone turned the other way from families where the shot was fatal because it is not comfortable to think about it. Where is the outcry? And why would we stand idly by and allow shots to be fired at children? I can only believe the majority truly are now in an even heightened psychological state of mass psychosis. Anybody who sat glued to the TV news over the last number of years never had a chance of emerging unscathed.

I am grateful to be the cat that stays outside of the cave – much more of a free and peaceful place from which to watch what is happening from the outside rather than the inside. There are dangers to be had from finding oneself distanced from the picture, and lack of compassion is one of them, but with experience one learns to keep an eye on them. Stepping back always helps one to see more clearly. The loneliness is tempered by being out in the sunshine by day and under the stars and moon by night. Come and join me. Or alternatively, you could pray for a knight in shining armour on a white horse with a long flowing mane. Not sure though that there is room for him to fit though the cave entrance. And really, we all know that they don’t exist. At the end of the day we only have ourselves to rely upon.

I had no idea when I read the story to my first daughter (about 35 years ago, The Cat Who Walked by Himself by Rudyard Kipling, The Just So Stories), why it hit me square in the solar plexus. I also wondered why it was never one of the stories chosen by our teacher to read to us kids—probably the one story that carried the most meaning. Although I have always remembered the story, yesterday I experienced the memory with deeper understanding. How the world helps to reveal who, why and what we are, if we pay conscious attention to living. I am never bored of life and I am grateful for every minute and all the opportunities it gives me to learn more about its reasons for why things are just so. I also know that there are two ways of travel – just as there is two of everything, whether opposites like love and fear or suffering and grace, or even what we see as one—our line of progress towards our future. We can and do go forwards and backwards—the cycles that only a blind reader of history would miss. Standing still is never an option—too much energy in our closed system this side of the veil. That is all there is to Free Will. No body is interested in whether we choose a strawberry ice cream or a coke, only when it comes to making money from us.

In this life, I was born a simple cat of a soul and never destined for high ground. Once I embraced this fully, I also learned that no matter who we are, we are loved and already forgiven when we trust. And really, we are each one of us a butterfly whose flapping wings are felt on the other side of this world.

My blogs for a while are going to be short and quick to prepare so that I have time to be in the world of my new book—a more beautiful world where we have finally arrived at the moment in time of wanting to keep moving forward, and what this requires from us. Well, at least the children recognise this. Am I a fool to have faith?