Time and Again, a midwinter ramble.

22dec23.

  “I haven’t had time to .  .  .  ”, generally means whatever hasn’t been gotten around to was a low priority for that someone, and quite possibly may never be ‘got around to’.  I remember a wise woman in childhood telling, “You’ve got to get your priorities straight”, which essentially means one’s Purpose.  My and our Purpose at Gaunts, and in these ‘Reflections’, has been to try to help people ‘Get Straight’, which in this day and age is tricky, as there’s so much accumulated nonsense out there, confusion for all ages, let alone for young bods pulled this way and that by childhood trauma, misleading muck pedalled by ‘interested-parties’, by parents, by hormones, cell ’phone news-crises, and what-have-you.  They have little ‘time’, and usually don’t know how to manage what time they have; true of my grown-up kids, and so many.  Then again, ‘whose Straight’ ?  Only their own, for-real.  Each has to ‘come right’ for themselves, if they can find the courage and will to step-out of the landscape of modern madness, and seek The Real within. 

  We wish for Vision, which tends to come in peaceful times, free of the hydraic distraction of the modern world, its prejudices, chronic myopia, and crises.  ‘Civilization’ – the creation of towns and cities, sinks for greed and over-populations, power-hierarchies, polis, commercialism, and artificial cultures – has been a disaster for humans, and for all life-forms, consequently.  Where are the birds ?  Fundamental to human life is the recognition that we are Human Beings and Spiritual Beings, both, and the need to get our Spiritual Being and Vision right, individually.  And, insofar as it’s possible, we long to feel Free.  The bonds and chains are our own.

  Around two and a half million years ago, a few families of Early Man trundled around doing their thing amongst other animals and creatures, surviving sensibly enough, mainly in Africa, some in what we think of as India and the East.  Around a million years later, possibly in south-east Africa, and likely somewhere in India too, our ‘animal consciousness’ came to realise a revelatory ‘higher consciousness’, higher than any other species : “I am Conscious that I am Conscious”; “I am aware that I am aware” !

  We can ponder whether this transformative step arose from longtime-growing consciousness, or from a gradually awakening realisation of Agape, (Conscious Human Love and Fellowship), or from familiar, possibly shamanic rituals that had taken hold, or from some ‘sudden explosion’ in the mind.  Best guess, a bit of all of them, together. 

  The Genesis story implies a ‘sudden-ish consciousness explosion’, theory.  It tells that ‘Adam and Eve’ are enticed to a sexual ecstasy greater than the animal imperative by a sudden conscious recognition of their genders, (one imagines not thitherto acknowledged), awakening to an Awareness of Consciousness, and in doing so, the story goes, transgressing some imagined theist boundary.  

  ‘And the serpent said unto the woman, “Ye shall not surely die, (if she ate of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil) : for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be of gods, knowing good and evil”’.  Picking the forbidden apple and enticing the other to taste it, is a nice allegory; the role of the serpent, lowly questionable.  

  Confusion between Agape, (Conscious Human Love and Fellowship), Cupid (Romantic Love), and Eros (Mammalian Sex-drive) – and their natural progression – can cause all sorts of upset, sometimes translated as emotional and hormonal imbalance.  The cause is invariably the lack of individual, personal inner-enquiry-searching, and consequent inner instability; the lack too often encouraged by a culture’s religious, or an individual’s acceptance of some prejudicial, or quasi-professional-cum-business-cum-psychological claptrap, which misleading paths have marginalised Parental Love and Care; have characterised so much of the catastrophe that has passed as modern human development.  As our lives have narrowed, and we have become stuck in routine jobs for money, we have blunted our instincts, dimmed our faculty for perception, limited our ‘sixth-sense’, shallowed intuition and our sense of right and wrong, of ‘which way is up’; mislaid our sense of all-embracing intelligent Mind as separate, different, and dominant over robot-Brain. 

  As well as being both Human and Spiritual Beings, our ‘human being’ – corpus and brain – splits physically between the cerebral ‘Limbic’ and ‘Reptilian’ systems; the Reptilian driving our essential life-functions and sex-drive proclivities, which we normally accept as healthy.  

  Males tend to be more rough and ready, hairy or smooth; females, more aware of their appearance and motherhood potential.  Historically, sexual activity is thought to have increased from shamanic rituals, and in towns and cities from concentrated numbers, boredom, and unnatural divorce from real life.  Nowadays we are led by the nose to an over-emphasis on sexy women and shallow sex for commercial purposes, (and violence), particularly in advertising and the movies, especially for perfume.  [And what is perfume, if not to add to a woman’s allure ?]  The genders are equally sexually excitable; women enjoy a mix of male mastery and their sexual power over men.  Adolescent cock and tit-illation exacerbates a different driver, to ‘get one’s rocks off’, a form of liberation from the greyness, stress, and artificiality of our lives.  While young men may feel a need ‘to spread it around’, later more focussed as attachment, women tend to be both more circumspect and more reckless, and not-unnaturally attracted to the beauty, sorority nonsense and wisdom of their own gentler-gender.  They are willing to use, on one hand, powerful gender-emotion, and on another, sexual and perverse fantasies to manipulate men, to achieve their goals.  Women are naturally more hormonal, and can be a little crazy.  Some, of both genders, can adopt a psycho-emotional sexual habit, masquerading as need, but which smacks more of addiction.  The French appear to differentiate Eros as a habitual, natural pastime, seemingly part of their raison d’être; a back-to-front progression – eros, then cupid, then agape – which ignores the fact that sex can get in the way of healthy, loving Agape; to my mind, a different, confused culture, nevertheless, alluring in its open-door, refined gratification.  What is sex other than the fulfilment of a natural urge to blend the this and that seen in another with one’s own, to procreate ?  So much confusion in something so natural.  

  How early in life do we become ‘programmed’ ?  The experiences of one’s early years may be seen to format the child [1]; but that may not always be true, as different traumas, such as dramatic changes around ages 6 and 13, wrong education, sexual molestation, particularly traumas in adolescence and young adulthood, may alter the course of a life.  While leaders in most fields appear to have their heads on ‘back-to-front’, and while the wrong-programming of kids continues, so will the traumas and disasters that characterise our modern world.  Like children, we long to be Free.

  This December morning, I watched three pigeons courting on the bare branches of a plane tree.  ‘Too early’, I beamed to them, but they paid no attention, the urge being too strong.  And, like many over the aeons, I have watched birds at a distance all my life, sought to understand them, and mourn their disappearance.  Perhaps their love of freedom and their playful and communication skills, senses of light and temperature, and freedom of flight, inspired the dreams of Gustav Whitehead [2], who built gliders and an ornithopter, (bird-like flying machine).  With a friend, he made the first ever recorded flight in a steam-driven monoplane, which crashed in a Pittsburgh Park in 1899.   Officially though, the first flight ever, his, was witnessed and recorded by a newspaper proprietor in Connecticut in 1901 [3].   

  From this joyful achievement, just 122 years ago, an industry arose, promising ordinary mortals dreams of flight, escape, and nowadays tourist holidays abroad.  And another phantasmagorical dream, space-flight, technologically extraordinary, with little purpose beyond scientific folderol, other than escape from the madness of planet Earth.  “It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species.” [4]

  “To achieve great things, two things are needed : a plan, and not quite enough time” [5].  

  Better to get things right down here on Earth, if it’s not too late.  Whatever happens, humans will continue the madness wherever they take it, unless they first come right in themselves, and come together.  Love isn’t so hard to understand.  We know it in the warmth of children’s hugs, in our loved-ones, and in the warmth of our everyday exchanges.  We know it in the trust we share.  We know it in Agape.

  Agape must triumph in our lives and in our world.

  It seems to me, the Purpose of Humankind is to Learn to Love, to Celebrate Life, to Procreate and Sustain, to Manage & Care, and to Evolve; and that these are our Priorities.

‘ The Way of heaven is to nurture

Endlessly and benevolently.

The Way for Humans is to Love

and love

     And Love. ’  [6]

  As this year’s end approaches, my feeling is that this raft of ‘Reflections’ have run their course.

  If enough people would like to join a series of informal weekends to discuss these ‘Reflections’, and whatever else crops-up, let us know : WWW.gauntshouse.com   We could arrange it, and will let you know.  Country House stays for retreat purposes are available, too.  Please enquire.

  Blessings, Peace, and Agape.


[1]  “Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man.”  Aristotle, later echoed by the Jesuits.

[2]  Gustav Weisskopf – he arrived in USA from Bavaria in 1893, after the death of his parents.

[3]  Predating the Wright Brothers.  [NB.  Early American ‘Fake News’, possibly wishing ‘american-born boys’ to have made the world’s first flight – part of the rise of USA.]

[4]  Stephen Hawkins, warning that Life on Earth could soon be wiped out by global warming or nuclear war, June 2006.

[5]  Leonard Bernstein.

[6]  From stanza 81 ‘Tao Teh Ching’, interpretation Louisa Milne, 1996 & 1999.

An Honest Day’s Night.                                                                  1dec23.

  In Conversation, much will depend on one’s sense of who one is, on how far one has got in one’s inner enquiry, how open and honest, how conditioned and prejudiced, how riddled with belief and opinion one is, how funny and friendly, confident or shy, and so on. 

  Sitting in a Conversation Circle, much depends on ‘Where One Is Coming From’ – a little like tacit appraisal at a cocktail party, of oneself; or a stranger arriving on a desert island, and could-be cannibals enquiring, in the nicest possible way, “Where are you from ?”  Which world, what sort of peoples, what they do and don’t do, what they eat, what sort of beliefs, what morals, friendly or up-tight, creative-cool or dull, and so on.

  Advent, meaning approach to Christmas, more realistically to ‘mid-winter’, a time we may imagine to be snatched from horizonless travail for feasting in the warm embrace of one’s friends and loving family, we are told is upon us; part of some earlier indoctrination.  This year, the reality for many will be a testing shortage of funds for food and fuel, coupled with glitzy enticement to overspend; the young glued to cell-’phones, computer-games and TVs; adults exhausted, sightly tipsy, wondering what on earth it’s all about; the Judaeo-Christian-Muslim mythologies having been blown out of the water, and ‘political leaders’ around the world posturing foolishly, mostly out of touch with the peoples’ lives they seek to control.  

  We seem to have become used to the idea of our lives spanning eras of accelerating change and development.  We might as well add population growth, species and resource depletion, burgeoning pollution, etc.  And escalating worldwide financial mayhem, known to some extent by the world populace via feathered media releases; covertly known and avoided, by the ‘men in suits’ whose lives veer between anxiety sickness and wanton extravagance; between fleeting superficial success and dark despair.  We can call it the ‘money culture’, as money, the modern god, dictates and over-rules all else, as directed by those foolish virgins, our ‘political leaders’.  If money is your ‘god’, expect only confusion, personal compromise verging on catastrophe, and unhappiness; a sense of being lost in space.  Happy Christmas ?

  Despite its negative aspects, ‘Political Economic Growth’ has appeared to raise living standards, to increase life expectancy, improve medical care with fewer mothers dying in childbirth, to provide cleaner drinking water, and to result in better-fed populations.  And yet, In the early years of the Industrial Revolution (c.1750-1850), Adam Smith in his extensive volumes and editions of ‘The Wealth of Nations’ decried avarice and injustice, factions and special interest groups be they bankers, corporate, trade-union lobbying, or any like, taxes and tariffs, and the interference of government in people’s affairs.  Around the turn of the nineteenth century, (c. 1800), the writing was already on the wall.  Thomas Malthus predicted over-population, climate and environmental catastrophes, a limit to financial manipulation, and eventual famine.  And in the mid-nineteenth century John Stuart Mill wrote of logic, jurisprudence, and social liberty as justifying the freedom of the individual in opposition to unlimited state and social control.  

  At the University of Kansas in 1968, Robert Kennedy declared that “Gross National Product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play.  It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.  It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile”.  And, “If our colleges and universities do not breed men who riot, who rebel, who attack life with all the youthful vision and vigour, then there is something wrong with our colleges.  The more riots that come out of our college campuses the better the world for tomorrow.” [1]  

  Is the manipulation of money a right way to manage one’s life and the lives of one’s children and colleagues ?  That it has failed hundreds and thousands of millions of people throughout time, destroying so many and so much, and has brought life on earth to the brink of global collapse, is broadly evident.  For centuries, ‘the love of money’ has been called ‘the root of all evil’ [2], which may be translated as the love of wealth, power, status, thus greed, hatred, division, and so on, is obvious even to children.  That it has determined perverse paths of religion, education, politics, and ‘justice’, and that those wrong ways have led inevitably to the downfall of humankind and widespread compromise-cum-destruction of life, is self-evident.  That it has compromised the good nature, honesty, and well-being of so many for so long, cannot be denied.  We can conclude that figments of ‘financial economy’ are not only delusory, but are seen as ‘wrong love’, a wrong way.  It follows that the challenges facing humankind are mainly egoic [3] (‘the root of all evil’), and that that is where we need to look within to sort ourselves out.  Time to think it all out again.  

  Generally speaking, our natures share much the same essentials of Life, Love, and the Uni, which can be seen as foundational.  Similarly, we share many common experiences of modern living, particularly financial challenges.  Modern generations have endured questionable ‘pay-bargaining’ and eras of politically-based strikes over pay and conditions.  Our differences tend to be found in self-interest, questionable beliefs, adoption of misleading propagandas, competition, profiteering, shortages, mistrust – so many elements that push us apart rather than draw us together.  A reasonable person would see that any family or organisation needs to share its aims, ideals, plans, togetherness, support, and rewards, equitably.  Open and honest discussions, with the shared intention of supporting everyone involved, fairly, and without elements of self-interest, could surely pave the way for common solutions ?  We are not yet an entirely failed species. 

  Notions of Wealth demand Ownership, and yet, logically, one cannot ‘own’ anything one cannot carry.  Notions of Ownership are better seen within an understanding of an environmentally based Natural Collective, and one’s belonging therein.  One’s few personal possessions, (clothes, toothbrush, tools, jewellery), may be seen as belonging to the individual, openly yet discreetly.  We move through the rest as we move through life.  Of far greater moment are an individual’s integrity, perception, caring and creative and positive interactions within a family and collective.  Notions of Wealth and personal accumulation can be seen as underlying the problems that have long faced humankind on Earth. 

  Every environmentally based Natural Collective will face challenges of survival and maintenance, of endeavour and organisation, of hierarchy, pecking-order, and motivation.  Natural exchanges will revolve around both individual and collective adherence to integrity, perception, caring and creative and positive interactions in their everydays, and in collective meetings, where every voice will be weighed, and in their celebrations. 

  Sitting in Conversation Circles, one observes simple guidelines for everyone’s benefit – speaking one’s truth from that deep inner place within, expressing oneself carefully, creatively, descriptively, and succinctly, listening to others intently – which can be immensely liberating.  One exchanges from an accepted point-of-view that everyone brings special gifts and intelligence to the table, insofar they are free of inner nasties.  In this form of ‘sharing’, we can listen and learn and ‘welcome the differences’ as they so often enlighten us.  

  So many people are not ready for this sort of Open Conversation.  So many put their own self-interest first.  So many are confused by what they were taught and have believed to be the way for them and their community.  So many continue to ape ‘keeping their heads above water’; so many feel a social need to display something they don’t feel; so many experience hunger, cold, homelessness, particularly the young, (so many contemplating suicide).  They are our young.  How could we be so careless ?  

  How can we ‘come in from the cold’ ?  How can we overtake the ‘professional’ conventions we have been trained to observe ?  How can we become the real people we would love to be ?  So many people are not ready for Open Conversations.  So few have embarked on their profound inner learning, for-real.  So many put their own self-interest first, their heads in the sand.  So many are confused by what they were taught and have believed to be the way for them and their communities; ways that have brought us close to imminent chaos.  So, what is this profound inner-learning all about ? [4]

  Many scientists will deny the existence of soul, that super-special something within that we sometimes seek to return to, that is the Real Us, our connection to Love, Life, and the Uni.  We can applaud the ancient teachings of Vedant in India, of Zarathustra in Persia, (Iran), of the ancient Greek philosophers, of the ancient Chinese mystics, all 2,500 to 3,000 or so years ago.  And we might as well as acknowledge the Ibrahamic Religions for their reaching for biased misunderstandings of the divine in the last 2,500 years; the point being that notions of the divine, creator, prime-mover, can as well be seen as ‘Cosmic Consciousness’, ‘Universal Intelligence’.   

  That our souls share that same immensity, that each human-being’s soul is a part of that, that that ‘Cosmic Consciousness’ is the most fundamental part of who we are; that we can know that in ourselves and in each other, beckons us to a new age.  It takes a while and a hard inner-slog to get anywhere with such understandings, let alone to ‘real knowledge’.  

  Profound Learning is no more than a label for introduction to paths that can help to support each and any individual find their own way.

  Meanwhile, in the United Arab Emirates, at the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, (CoP 28), the ‘men in grey suits’ posture and exchange largely meaninglessly.  After 28 years of mostly faf, we have experienced the hottest year ever with environmental and climate emergencies all over.  In Ukraine, Palestine and all over, appalling atrocities, human failures, continue, while the world watches.  What hope ?

  Perhaps, in ‘Profound Conversations’, we can together find simple ways forward for us now and for survivors in the future.  Perhaps, in Conversations, we can together find consensus on some fundamental challenges : how to control human populations in the future, how to exchange and share with each other positively, carefully, and caringly, how to touch on the commonality of our specialness.

  It’s going to take time.  The sooner we lend ourselves to it, the better for our children, for Love, Life, and the Universe, for all. 

  Time to awake to a new dawn.

  Happy Mid-winter !


[1]  See also ‘Kicking our growth addiction is the way out of the climate crisis’. Larry Elliott article for the Guardian, 2022.  

[2]  Saul-Paul to Timothy, (1Timothy 6:10).

[3]  Rivalry, competition, ambition (as opposed to aspiration), avarice, fear, greed, wanting more, and so on.

[4]  See also ‘Gateways’ – Reflection no. 8.

Gateways. 

Gateways.

  The not-such-good-news is that the pariahs, those who early in life consciously sold their souls to the devil – the money-speculators, bankers, brokers, agents, priests, politicians, ‘professionals’, conmen, thieves – who would have us believe they are the backbone of modern society, but really predate on their own kind; their way is a consuming cancer.  They seek to draw us into their web, which appears against the sky like scaffolding, but it’s a trap.  They seek to devour what they can of our beings before discarding the remains.  Worse still, they seek to sell their wickedness as a right way for others to follow.  Theirs is the path of damnation, degradation, destruction, devastation.

  The Good News is that there is another way, the Real Way, but we have to shake off the detritus to find it in ourselves.

 

  “ You have within you a ‘spark’, some call it a ‘divine spark’, some ‘soul’, which are all the same, really.  All very well to suggest such a thing, but how can one know it to be true ?  By finding out !  We will call this finding-out the ‘original search’, for that is what it is; one’s first real search for what one can absolutely know is true, which turns out to be ‘what is true for you’, as the real you is all you have to go on.  The sense of the ‘real you’ is at once both the goal of your original search, your guide, and destiny.

  “ Very many humans avoid this all-the-way-deep soul-searching for shallow excuses, like they’re too busy chasing their fantasy, ‘chasing their tails’, and so forth.  Very many are too attached to what they subscribe to, to what they have been taught, to what they may want to believe in, to the conventions of a world so crazy it is destroying itself.  They know nothing else, no better, nor does anyone else they know, other than some crazies chasing the scent of a dream. 

  “ The door, or ‘Gateway’, to one’s ‘original search’ can be an ‘end-of-tether’ situation of a personal nature.  In other words, humans seem to need a reason – a powerful fed-up-ness, inner desperation, sorrow, ‘nose in the gutter’, end-of-the-line confusion – to bring them to the point of sitting down alone, to work out who in heaven or hell they really are, what life is, whether to live or die.  Sometimes, this moment may come to a young person confused by years of poor parenting, inappropriate ‘education’, social pressures, trauma, and the prospect of an adult lifetime ahead with little object beyond some seemingly prescribed compromise of self.  Sometimes, it can come a little later in life, when the compromises and confusions have become overwhelming and unbearable.  Sometimes, it may come to the aged who have endured a difficult life and would like to live out their days in peace.  Many endure, clinging to what have become the chains that bind them, and never come to it.

  “ There are other ‘gateways’ to profound inner seeking and learning, too.  Imagine a circle over here of the gifted, thems blessed with extraordinary talents, good intentions, well-meaning innocence, bright-eyed trust; and, in that direction over there, another ‘group’ of wind-in-their-hair folk in woods and gardens, on the land with the animals and growing crops, hunting and caring for wildlife and the environment, out sailing, surfing, mountaineering, adventuring, exploring, and the like; and then, over there, the thoughtful and creative, dreamers, poets, artists, sculptors, musicians, singers, writers, wood-carvers, story-tellers, designers, the transformers, creative artisans, and the rest; and again, somewhere else over there, the natural healers, those whose nature or experience leads them to helping and healing others in need, some near-saintly in their provision.  And there are some with a cornucopia of all these elements of human-being, too.

  “ And one must suppose the majority of nowhere people sitting in their nowhere land, not knowing where they’re going, the confused, the cold, homeless and hungry, the weak, the alcoholics and addicts, the down-trodden, and the ‘idiots’ – those addicted to modern materialism and claptraps – might find reason to begin to find their way, somewhat shakily, (perhaps from the rejection of their children); but very few will get far without help.

  “ Any and all of these people can be moved to enquire deeper into the self, towards soul.  Many will have had this or that sort of experience – some of them ‘spiritual’, without really paying much attention – too busy with ego, the false self; others paying too much attention, imagining they are special, much too busy with their wannabe selves.  But then again, some, here and there, may begin to be touched profoundly, imagining they experience a non-event as guidance, as a nudge, a mystery, a puzzle, a challenge.  Then again, one may suffer a series of wonderful, or dreadful, man-made experiences that may or may not have profound meaning.  Are such experiences a test, a consequence, an inspiration, or what?          

  “ So, one might find oneself sitting down alone to embark on one’s ‘original search’.  What then ?  One comes to realise the only way to get anywhere, to get to the bottom of it, is by being honest with oneself; completely, utterly and ruthlessly honest.  Only that way can one progress on the journey.  Anything else misleads.  So, one’s original searching begins in earnest. 

  “ To be ruthlessly honest with oneself demands letting go everything one has ever been taught in order to be able to discover what one really thinks and feels; because that alone is our guide; that alone we can know; and that alone is how we learn who we really are.  Each one of us is potentially important, whatever that might mean.  It’s a battle of right and wrong, of real and unreal, that must be won.  One must let go the ego-nonsense, the wanting, and make-believe; perhaps what one’s parents or school have leaned on; what they may have inflicted on the child; prejudice and conditioning ?  At every turn, there’s challenge, confusion, conflict to be shrugged-off in order to progress to the depths of one’s being, because that is where one is going; to find out who one really is.  

  “ If one is brave enough, sometimes desperate enough, possibly both, one may come to perceive one’s essence, which may appear as the yolk of an egg surrounded by albumen, or a sun surrounded by clouds.  And the realisation may come that this concept of original essence represents one’s Life Spark, one’s ‘Soul’, within and without.  The thing is, this concept of essence within – this soul – is the realised Real You, a silent recognition, but only the very beginning.  We can call this essence your ‘spark’, the source of your spirit-energy; and the realisation of it for-real becomes the one and only first-day of the rest of your Life. [1]

 

  This will be the way of survivors.

 

[1]  from ‘Come Sunrise’, chapter two, 2019-20.  Gaunts Publishing.

Dimensions of Consciousness.                                                                                    18nov23.

  I suppose I and my contemporaries have been fortunate that our lifetimes have spanned the most extraordinary human era.  The years from c.1940 to c.2030 have witnessed more highs and more lows, more change and more colour, more light and more dark than any other era, so far.  As of this early morning, I thank my lucky stars for having survived, and ponder, would I have had it any other way ?  Of course, the answer is affirmative : so much of the change has been seriously detrimental to so many and so much; a nightmarish drift into crazy commercialism, loss and empty gain, political mayhem, and common destruction.  In these ‘Reflections’, I have often projected into another time – after the ‘Correction’ – because I see the modern world paradigm can only destroy itself, which people of my age have witnessed as progressive defilement throughout our lifetimes, clearly-sighted or not.  I was a born ‘watcher’, observer, witness, (think of it how you will), albeit influenced by dint of circumstance, naturally one of those countryside or maritime folk with what can appear to be second-sight, but more likely is a translation of intelligence and clear-sight; a double-faceted gift.  On the up-side, one can sometimes see a bigger picture, and ‘make provision’; on the flip-side, one’s good nature can be vulnerable to charlatans and lost souls. 

‘ Commerce is supported by keeping the individual at odds with himself and others, 

by making us want more than we need, 

and offering credit to buy what refined senses do not want.

The masses become shackled; 

I see how their eyes weep and are desperate – of course they feel desperate – 

for something, for some remedy that a poor soul feels needs to  be bought.

I find nothing more offensive than a god who could condemn human instincts in us 

that time in all its wonder have made perfect.

I find nothing more destructive to the well-being of life 

than to support a god that makes you feel unworthy and in debt to it.  

I imagine erecting churches to such a strange god 

will assure endless wars 

that commerce loves.

A god that could frighten is not a god – 

but an insidious idol and weapon in the hands of the insane.

A god who talks of sin is worshipped by the infirm.

I was once spiritually ill – we all pass through that – 

But one day the intelligence 

In my soul

Cured

       Me. ’  [1]

  It is, and has been, the apparently ambitious, but mistaken activities of ‘lost souls’ that undermined the wellbeing of the human species for all the reasons paraded previously; too often seduced by apparent easy comfort and convenience; too often using resources and fossil fuels mindlessly translated as ‘practical necessities’; too often the very opposite of essential awareness, of the vital, foundational breath that is connection to ‘Love, Life, and the Universe’; too often precluding any real choice.  While the extreme over-population of humans on earth can appear to offer obvious commercial opportunities, cheap-fixes for consumers actually degrade and pollute our environment, not unlike rodents in the house.  That mindless, posturing politicians too often dance the dance is everyone’s misfortune. 

  Any awareness – apparent cognition and recognition – however woolly or bizarre, may be described as some level of Consciousness.  We feed into our consciousness what we will.  On awakening of a morning, we might direct ourselves into the bathroom and kitchen to perform ritual tasks, sleepily.  On going to bed of an evening, we might follow a familiar nighttime routine – reading, for example – to relax the mind before switching-off the light and snuggling down for sleep.  Just for now, we might imagine our regular actions and motions involve an ‘Objective Consciousness’ – beaming our consciousness into and onto whatever we are doing.

  While it can be argued that our various senses feed into our consciousness how they may, it is recognised that sometimes some will not, for example when they are ‘switched-off’ by the host, (when sleeping), or by some external agency, (accident, anaesthetic), or deliberately blinkered by a Wrong Culture’s conventions; the contemporary nightmare.

  Much has been discussed about dreams and dreaming by others all over.  During our deep-sleep, something may stir our unconsciousness just a little, such that we may become subconsciously aware of one or several dream ‘movies’, not unlike a procession of situations, which in our dream state seem real, and we seem to be a part of in some way.  Whereas in the dream ‘movies’, we may seem to playing an active part, actually we are dream-observing active parts of our brains linking aspects of our life, sometimes seemingly rationalising, and ‘filing’ (as in office cabinets), particular passing thoughts, observations, uncertainties and fantasies from recent days, sometimes linked to past stuff.  And then we pass back into the oblivion of deep sleep.  For what it’s worth, we may imagine dream-awareness as ‘Subjective Sub-Consciousness’.   

  We may imagine Consciousness to have Subjective and Objective aspects.  Both Objective and Subjective Consciousness are determined by Mind, our ‘Real Consciousness’, the Us that is in control, (or not), who hopefully tells Brain what to do.  However, when Mind is absent, (asleep, distracted, wandering, unrealised), different parts of Brain can lure Us into foolish ways.  ‘Mr. X’, a cerebral automaton, may take over, temporarily driving the car, doing mundane chores, even making love to  one’s wife [2].  Thus, we can project that Mind and ‘Real-Consciousness’ are one and the same; and that an ‘Unreal Consciousness’ can be fabricated by Brain, when we’re not looking, not ‘watching’, when Mind wanders, is distracted, or perverted.  

  The Consciousness that scribes this piece is ‘Real-Consciousness’, a mix of Subjective Consciousness (receptive), and Objective Consciousness, (translating subjective reception into language, and transferring it into action – ‘watching’, speaking, typing, etc), both present and correct, always maintaining Open Reception [3] ; ‘listening’ and at once ‘translating’ and ‘acting’.  And I suggest that this awareness is the natural and normal way for Humans to be and to act.  And, by association, any human thoughts and deeds, beings and doings, are likely to be misguided without it; to easily go awry. 

  It follows that dimensions of Awareness and Consciousness need to be realised in stillness, and practised, which could be the foundation of all New Education.  How to balance this ‘stillness’ with the natural exuberance of children is quite simple as children, from around 50 months, naturally welcome it, (after a bout of fun and exercise), when practised in communicating, circular sitting groups, regularly, thereafter. 

  Adults need to unlearn so much indoctrinated claptrap, to re-educate themselves along ethical lines founded in common-sense and conscience, and in Real Consciousness, in profound spirituality, in the Intelligence In Our Soul.  

  Many of us have become dimly aware of approaching Artificial Intelligence, of automatic mechanisms and robots that can replace human activities more efficiently and in half the time.  For some, such will appear as commercial investment opportunities; for most, we will have little choice but to conform, to do what we are told in de-humanised environments.  Music for some ‘men in grey suits’, but slow torture for most sentient beings.

  And there can only be a deeper tragedy in all this.  Robots, like computers, are only as good as what is fed into them.  Real Consciousness, imagination, core creativity, the muse, originality, feeling, real care, love, real sexuality, real spirituality, profound stillness, cannot be fed into machines.  It appears intimated that the human race will become bound by inanimate robots; possibly, we will become redundant, Ho !  The ‘men in grey suits’ may imagine the most devious among them will control the robots, and the rest of us; but, as always, they continue to delude themselves, and mislead the world all the way to terminal catastrophe. 

  Time for everyone to Get Real.

  First, look within.  Find the courage to be completely honest with yourself, and with everyone else.  

  What have you got to fear ?


[1]  ‘An Insidious Idol’, Meister Eckhart, c.1300AD.  trans. Daniel Ladinsky.

[2]  See Colin Wilson’s ‘The Occult’, 1970.

[3]  To Love, Life, and the Vastness; to the breeze in the trees; to beauty, colour, light, and truth.

Let’s hear it for the Good News !                                                                                 

                                                           12nov23.

  It’s time to ‘shift onto another foot’, to report Good News instead of the endless critical observations of a temporarily failed species; the doom and gloom that’s surrounds so many modern lives, the fantasy play-lives of some.  The apocalyptic vortex has only steepened, the madness only accelerated during my lifetime, along with the exponential rise in the human population.    

  Historically, early European adventurers settled in Britain hundreds of thousands of years ago.  Around 8,300 years ago, Britain – Plato’s Albion – became a recognised island [1] with regional nomadic peoples [2], evolving a natural island culture.  Following the Roman departure around 430AD, increasing numbers of north-western Europeans came to settle and spread.

  The millions of modern day Brits live amidst a confusing clash of cultures, great and small, with astonishing levels of ignorance about the turn of historical events.  In an age of increasing technology and access to information, so many young and middle-aged appear mentally locked-in to a level of shallowness, and subliminal depression, masquerading as contemporary ‘hip’, which difficulties appear to develop as time goes by; possibly, harbingers of the all-round disintegration of this modern era of Life.  

  And I find, too, that I know so little about what happened politically in the years when the last world-war ended.  Britain again faced bankruptcy to American war-aid, and the people elected the third Labour government in the face of Churchill’s wartime triumph.  What may have started as objection to inequalities of wealth and power, began to be fermented by trouble-makers ‘on the make’ with the advance of industrialisation and its offshoots around a hundred years ago, some justified, some not.  Whereas a mix of cultures has been generally a blessing and a boon, over-population has fermented a growing unrest inherent amongst our peoples.   

  In northern Europe, Anglo-Saxon and Norman descendants share a Viking heredity, a culture of greed, pillage, and violence.  For a thousand years and more, this abusive culture, which spread around the globe, adapting to different religions and ‘trade’, led to the present day come-to-pass, to imminent catastrophes, to the unstoppable trajectories of Climate Change [3], such that many people and life-forms will not survive.

  That a corrupt culture – expanding delusions of power, wealth and status taking wanton advantage of others – has marched in tandem with escalating technologies and horrific warfare, mass destruction of infants, siblings, parents, and property; so much horror and harm, so much hunger and hurt; and worldwide degradations of species and environments, multiplying migrations, and expanding financial and economic failures, ballooning addictions, sickness and mental-health stresses, relationship failures, and societal breakdowns, is consequential, not coincidental. 

  So, let’s put all that on one side for now, and move on.  Surely, to find a better way for the future can only be seen as a Good Thing ?  Tough to find good news within the existing paradigm.  That some will survive the inevitable ‘Correction’ [4]  has to be Good News, surely, looking at things from specie and environmental points-of-view.  That the ‘Correction’ will reduce world human population to manageable proportions, (likely, to be between sub-one and two billion, between now and say a hundred years’ time), and that survivors will need to ‘think it all out again’, have surely got to be Good Things, if bitter pills.  Other species surviving on planet Earth will surely rejoice. 

  Good News that the hitherto unchallenged Gods of Religion and Money will of necessity shortly be ‘put to bed’.  People everywhere are ‘reviewing the situation’, looking deeper into their hearts and minds.  And there’s little chance that any modern political paradigm, so-called political party, or party politician, can survive much longer.  ‘All Change’ time.  “Three, Four Cheers – Hurrah !”  

  Warfare will come to be seen as having been a conjoined breakdown in communication and relationship, promoted by fear and greed, ambition, lust, and human failure.  About bloody time humans come to reject all that and anything like it.  A safer and positive life awaits us all, if only we will contribute our better selves to it.  Has to be Good !

  Can we hope for awakened populations to ‘get down and dirty’, meaning to ‘Get Real’, honest and open ?  Can we hope that populations worldwide will move from the ‘blink-in-time’ [5] hidebound nonsense toward a resurgence of Truth and Justice ?  Sounds potentially like a Global Ethical Revolution – Gotta be Good !  

  Like me, you might rejoice if and when the media shed their sensationalist shenanigans, and their influence over prominent people and the public at large.  So much nonsense tailored to this prejudiced opinion or that; so many wannabes pandering to journalists and cameras to further their dodgy aims to the extent where few intelligent people any longer pay attention to media, other than a passing glance at absurdly pedalled prejudices; a little like reviewing a bookie’s starting prices.  The ‘power of the press’, and of media advertising and undesirable promotions will properly decease in the time ahead.  Can only be Good.

  The Healing of Humans will follow along lines of ‘tough love’ – not unlike the inevitable pain of an operation to put right an ailment – which can only be a Good Thing.  Small, communicating-for-real communities will reintroduce safe and friendly support and stability for their families, children, and oldies.  Land and nature-based education and play will nurture children and adults.  Competition will largely disappear, outside passing friendly sporting rivalries.  Agape – friendly love – may again come to predominate in all our everyday affairs.  Honourable romance will again come to be enjoyed within and between communities.  Relationships will find surer footings in understanding that it is natural, and all but inevitable, that in time individual parties may grow apart, which can be celebrated.  The children and young people will find love and inspiration within their communities.  Such dreams are the real stuff of us human beings, not idle fantasies.  They are Surely Good.

  If the people, priests, media, and ‘men in grey suits’, will lend themselves to it, there is still time to explore and put in place a fresh, pure, positive and compassionate Culture on Earth.  Cultures have tended to be founded on, and adapted to prevailing and promoted spiritual grounds.  It is there we could first look.  It can only be Good to turn from perdition to salvation, from petty politics to profound spirituality, if only for what will turn out to be a few, mainly young survivors. 

  Spirituality, eh ?  a minefield only if people plant landmines of opinion, pain and prejudice in the way.  If we can find our way to the ‘paradox of pure’ in human terms – the highest and lowest common denominators, supreme and simple both – we could find a real foundation for a real future for our children and grandchildren.  Gotta Be Good ! 

  Shall we ?

  And it can be said that the Anglo-Saxons and Normans of these islands and northern Europe have proved to be innovative peoples.  One imagines this intelligence has had to do with the seasonally changing climates of the latitudes, and with the necessary address to coastal winds and currents, and essential relationships with wildlife; possibly a mix of the lot.  Possibly some traditional instinct honed by aloneness, awareness, natural cunning, and survival. 

  Here’s a clue : each one of us has to do all our inner work ourselves; has to undertake that long and troubling inner journey that relies on complete honesty to discover who we really are, on our connection to the Vastness, the Great Spirit.  The care and nurture of our children and communities, and right education can and in time will lead to an Ethical Revolution, and the only possible route to salvation.  Gotta Be Good !

  It becomes the remarkable people of Albion and these fine islands to pioneer such a major historical re-think, to nurture Life, Love, and the Universe.

  So, what do you think ?

  Shall we ?


[1] Around 8,300 years ago, rising sea levels, from receding glaciation, finally cut Britain off from the Euro-Asian landmass; the final part, from between the Rivers Ouse and Thames, connected to modern Netherlands, we refer to as ‘Doggerland’. 

[2]  Some shall we say 6,250 years ago, when there were very few people on the land, nomad adventurers travelled freely where they would.  Nomadic hunter-gatherers, and herdsmen, tend to return to different home bases regularly.  

[3]  ‘Even more relevant to present-day Global Warming than the current rate of emissions, is the far greater accumulation of CO2 at the Tropospheric Ceiling of our atmosphere, from previous decade’s emissions, that mainly causes the warming.  The time it takes ‘Greenhouse Gases’ to reach the Tropospheric Ceiling can be anywhere between 35 to 65 years.  Gases swirl, comingling with other gases around the planet’s surface for a while before beginning to rise, gradually.  The higher they go the colder and denser the air becomes and the slower they rise, Earth’s gravity increasing its resistance.  Once arrived at the Tropospheric Ceiling, they dissipate slowly over a period from a minimum 55 years to centuries.    See also next page. 

  ‘For simple calculation purposes, we may imagine CO2 takes roughly 35 years to reach the ceiling and remains there for say 65 years, a cumulative total of say 100 years.  Thus, the Global Warming we experience today may be seen as largely the result of CO2 accumulations from around 1920, about 100 years ago, or more likely from between the mid-1800s and early 1900s.  

  ‘The unavoidable conclusion is that future decades will experience ever more troubling Global Warming from exponentially increasing CO2 emissions since c.1920.  For example, 2050 will experience warming from the accelerating CO2 emissions in the 1950s and earlier; 2100 from emissions in the 2000s and earlier, and so on : a deadly prognosis.’                                                                                                                                      from ‘Charting Climate Change’, Gaunts Publishing, 2021.

[4]  Nature always has, and always will find ways to correct or adapt to imbalances.

[5]  In the great scheme of things, a handful of thousand years here and there are no more than a ‘blink-in-time’.

The Conference [1]  –  The Gods review the Human Dilemma.

  The Almighties considered that the central problem on Earth was Human Inadequacy.  At root was the devil of human self-interest; envy, fear and greed promoting corruption and wrong relationships, and the misuse of money and material goods.  The source of that confusion was wrong spiritual foundation, wrong culture, wrong education, and stunted parenting through generations.  Religions were seen to have been a mixed blessing, all too often being linked to politics and ‘wealth’, too often to have been the cause of bitter conflict – human inadequacy.

  Humans tend to put their heads in the sand imagining that nothing too awful is going to happen for the foreseeable future, and they tend to see themselves as individually powerless to do much to make a difference without prejudicing their lifestyles, ambitions, hopes and dreams.  For many Earth creatures, living and surviving is more or less it.  They follow a conscious procession of life from birth through death, ‘flowering’ – putting on their ‘glad rags’ – to attract and mate; sourcing food and water, rearing their offspring from season to season, preparing them to survive by nurturing their beings, adapting, and conforming to wrong cultures.

  Humans have been brainwashed into believing that academia, as opposed to ‘real education’, can lead to power and riches.  Appalling soulless education has devalued real intelligence, produced witless state-fodder, disempowering adult life and the greater spectrum of children, and tended to diminish the human spirit through depression, disease, stress, diabetes, and cancer, in supporting absurdly corrupt governments and societies.   

  Science and industry increasingly pollute the planet’s air and water.  While humans may marvel or shudder at new achievements and may sometimes imagine it their purpose to push the boundaries of science and technology, these latter have too often proved detrimental to health and well-being.  So many of the problems facing humankind and planet Earth are the result of neglect in reviewing so-called science, industry, and technology, historical layer upon layer, quite the opposite of what ‘the system’ would have people believe.  Real human achievements are found in creativity : in art, design, language, music, speech, and writing, and in engineering too, but not in real communication as that has been compromised by wrong motivation.  Until mutual co-operation defeats the ego-trip of ‘competition’, and until the worth in a human being is found to be the stability and joy she or he shares, humans and the planet will suffer.  The essential object for change at this time, has to be the ‘Rejection of, coming to terms with the false Ego-Brain’ in the collective evolution of humankind.

  The Conference concluded that it was unlikely that many on Earth had any real sense of where they were in the slide towards apocalypse, except possibly some older people who may have observed and noted the accelerating decline of so much during their lifetimes.  The situation is confused by ignorant and self-interested politicians and businessmen, and by different scientific and university researchers arriving at different conclusions, some of which can be misleading, most amended later-on.  Added to the mix, ambitious journalists fabricate sensational nonsense; and a determination by certain powers-that-be to withhold information for fear of unrest.  

  Christianity, the religion, had much to answer for, some of it obvious, and some subtle.  For example, ‘forgiveness of sins’ on-a-sixpence has permitted people to behave abominably and get away with it.  Western so-called civilization has depended on that.  With removal of colour-tinted gels from their eyes, humans might see that the Abrahamic religions had encouraged them to ‘sell their souls to the devil’ !  So much of this sits upon shifting sands.  Humans have yet to find a common ground they can subscribe to whole-heartedly.  Consequently, they tend to adapt to whatever passing caravan seems to suit them best, often at an unholy cost to others.   

  Across the globe, humans have much in common, much goodness as well as much un-good.  The greatest warmth and generosity are found amongst the indigenous poor; the least, amongst the super-wealthy, often addicted to drugs, alcohol and vacuous nonsense.  Unless and until humans find a comprehensive and comfortable view of life and ideology that all can welcome and contribute to, divisions are bound to continue to plague all societies, countries, continents, and individual lives.   

  Over-population is a dilemma because one of the principal purposes of all life-forms is sexual reproduction to continue a species, to which was added joy, pleasure and ecstasy to make copulation of both the greatest moment and regular comfort.  The greatest, most important, most meaningful event in any human’s life is the birth of a new-born.  Humans must find a way to manage their populations, to link them to the availability of essential local resources, water and food.  It is over-population that caused high levels of urbanisation, over-use of resources, pollution, and sequential catastrophes. 

  The madness of ‘business’, stealing someone’s treasure only to realise that same treasure is coveted by others, and in time will be taken from them in turn, is the way of materialism.  This craziness embraces concepts of slavery and worklessness.  Mass-production, to provide for increasing numbers of consumers, relies on the mining of rare resources to fabricate huge machines to churn-out thousands of identical cheap products for the masses in set time-frames, needing to be adjusted and checked at high speed by robotic slaves incarcerated in massively polluting ‘factories’; providing super-wealth for a few.  Many of these products are ‘not good’ for humans; many parts are discarded, thrown away, adding to mountain ranges of waste.  The failed system fuels madnesses described as consumerism, dysfunction, obesity, and a spectrum of illnesses.  

  The phantasm that is their fiat-money cannot be ignored, meaning the dreadful plastic notes and fairground coins they have in their pockets.  ‘Fiat’ because it is fraudulent and valueless, based on nothing other than trend, whisper, speculative ‘confidence’, and convenience.  The concept allows for ‘taxation’ and mega-corruption, which ordinary god-fearing folk are required to fund from meagre resources, and for which aspirant grey clerks, so-called ‘professionals’, dictate the rules, charging unholy fees to administer them. 

  The approaching apocalypse will occur from a conjunction of several cataclysms: over-population, over-use of natural resources, wanton fossil fuel use and consequent pollutions; accumulation of poisonous gases in the atmosphere; climate change & altered environmental cycles causing drought, water-shortages, famine, wildfires, and migrations.  Pandemic, economic and financial collapse, bio-chemical and nuclear warfare are serious threats.  All of these threaten cataclysm.  Together, they will cause Apocalypse.  If human inadequacy is the first and major problem, the next most urgent are over-population, and fossil-fuel emissions, and the CO2 in the atmosphere.  

  In the near future we can perceive a number of dangerous whirlpools on collision courses, not unlike spatial gaseous attraction.  Imagine these different whirlpools dancing in space, and imagine a Big Negative Vortex drawing them toward it magnetically, only to consume them as its victims.  This is the image of the Apocalypse threatening demented humans, and all life-forms on planet Earth.  On a scale of things, humans are moving from an Era of Betrayal to an Era of Cataclysm.  A series of concurrent cataclysms will conclude in Apocalypse, which will all-but terminate human and most species’ life, but for possibly a few straggling, struggling survivors. 

The Conference then discussed Solutions.

  Humans need Global and Regional Policies to manage population growth, to care for the environment and for all species, and to cease all warfare forever.  And they need compassionate cultures to completely re-imagine education.  First, they need to undergo an accelerated un-learning and healing process; and primarily they need to re-learn honesty and honour.  Within five years, they must have un-learned the ways of the past five millennia.  They must re-learn love, light, and laughter, for-real.  They all need to practice contemplation and meditation, right education, right communication, and right ‘democracy’. 

  The ‘Men in Grey Suits’, who have marginalised fundamental good, can only be halted by humans the world over renouncing their foolish ways with non-violent protests in every town and city continuously until common-sense, peace and love prevail.  There needs to be a swift revolution of all the structures of society, legislative, judicial, and financial matters, ‘business’ and media.  For humans to survive, the changes needed immediately include sensible provision for all – water, food, housing, care, freedom from debt, sensible population management and care, sensible environmental care, and an immediate and total end to all industrial and poisonous gas emissions.  There is enough ‘wealth’ on Earth to provide a comfortable existence for all peoples while these provisions are being realised, but only if there is an immediate and total end to the notion of economic growth, globalisation, weapons manufacture, defence spending, and frivolous expenditure on space exploration.  Weapons everywhere need to be collected and destroyed.  Global Laws for people will need to be introduced to share water and food, and to prohibit violence and theft, introduced by some sort of Global Government; a compassionate assembly of sensitive, sensible and wise people who act consensually and only in the people’s best interests.

  New arrangements for meeting, listening, and learning can be introduced that involve everyone as much as they wish and are able.  Everyone will be able to be heard.  Small collectives of men, women, and children – their choice of numbers – will select and send one or two representatives to a next level caucus.  In turn, this group will select and send representatives to the next collective level.  In these ways, every person’s voice can be heard, and common sense and conscience can have their say.  Caucuses will maintain their numbers to manageable collectives of intelligent, compassionate, and wise people; whatever they agree.  At every level, every decision will be made by consensus only, however long that may take. 

  The concept of consensual groups will need to take root in every province and region on the planet.  ‘Politics’ need not be a dirty word.  It can come to mean positive and profound thought leading to consensus.  Old political and factional movements, political parties and polemic cannot exist, as they are limiting and destructive.  No political parties and no political elections.  Politicians and diplomats, as they have been known, need to disappear overnight.  Their bureaucratic hydras will vanish with them.  So-called police everywhere will need to adapt their roles to be carers and helpers, experienced in mediation and counselling.       

  To take part in a consensual group, a person will need to be honest and open, and to have addressed their ‘Personal Development’.  They will need to have come to terms with their daemons and Ego, and to have advanced to be clear and ‘clean’ within, to be free and mindful.  They will need to have learned to listen profoundly, and to express only their inner truths, rather than any claptrap, make-believe, dogma or generalisation.  To arrive at consensus, people will need to have shed their self-interest, or if and where it exists, to declare it openly in advance.  Differing points of view will be welcomed as introducing further vision.  An intention to find and reach right outcomes for the well-being of children and communities, and local fauna and flora, that chime with the group collectively, will lead to consensus.        

  Nation states, as they have been known, will re-arrange themselves according to local identities, language and custom, into regions of either a large enough number of people, or of a land area with its own environmental flavour.  Regions will become self-governing, each having an assembly to agree such regional mores it selects in collective consensual discussion, founded in both global laws and local custom.  Monarchies and republics will continue for as long as the people in those regions and nation states concur via collective consensus.  A good ‘royal family’ is of itself beyond value, positively preventing any other parties self-interested ambition.  How a monarch, and their family, is chosen – be that hereditary or selected for life – and what their role is to be, will be decided by regional elders.

  Could there be a danger of some quasi-authoritarian rule usurping a region?  The collective consensual system will determine what happens, not any other authority.  If one or several loud-mouths, or strong-in-the-arm folk, were to attempt to usurp control, the collective consensuses, above and below, could take care of the situation.

  Towns people will return to the land to assist with local food production, directed by existing countryfolk, farmers and gardeners.  Food supplies will become limited to nutritious foods, rather than flashily packaged junk.  People will become healthier and happier, re-finding their natural weight.  Health problems are likely to diminish as greater freedoms and camaraderie are re-established, and natural metabolisms reassert themselves. 

  All  earthly religions are misleading.  It is the factional competition in humans, theoretically wishing their tribe to be bound to a chosen ‘god’, which fights to the death in foolish attempts to achieve an unreal superiority.  Humankind must learn to replace its primitive ways of violent plotting for advantage, vengeance, and supremacy, with love and peace, compassion, and right ways within the Laws of Life and Essence, so as not to muddy their souls.  

  The laws of humans cannot be relied on as they will never suffice until they are fashioned by and founded on the Laws of Life.  Like a lost soul, humankind needs to return to the beginning, to unlearn much of what they have been taught to believe, and to refine themselves to the essence of Life.  Humans need to re-format themselves in truth, love and happiness-fulfilment, learn to communicate with all life-forms, learn to listen and receive, living by giving.  

  It would be helpful if, overnight, monies were to have no value or currency, and formal financial debts of all kinds be nullified.  All forms of interest-bearing lending can be prohibited.  Hoarded precious metals and wealth can be sequestered to provide for a transition period.  Commercial advertising will cease in favour of sober, creative public announcements and advice.  

  The Almighties cannot intervene overtly to save a child’s life, or a river or tree dying from pollution and disease.  Nor can they intervene overtly to save humankind or any life-form.  Humans need to learn to accept their ups and downs with grace, so that their inner-selves can approach more closely the Essence of Life. 

  Humans need to learn that they can do that, not from material thought or science, but from the power of Love and Life in harmony with eternal existence.  What they will gain is a sense of realness, an absence of envy, fear, greed and stress, and an increase in peace, happiness, security, and love.  Their first need is to become honest.  Thereafter, to become immersed in better parenting and profound education. 

  It will take time to resolve the human dilemmas of ‘wanting’, competition, rivalry, and revenge, to rediscover motivations for life in the vacuum left by their defunct financial system.  It will take time for people to stop seeking to take advantage of one another, to return to innocence, and for new systems of understanding human misdemeanours to be evolved and managed.

  There will need to be a transition period while humans become adjusted to real ways of thinking and being, while right spiritual, educational, and health systems are evolved as foundations for The Way Forward.  Humans will need time to recognise the real values of newly evolved cultural and educational foundations, and for them to take hold; for humans to begin to trust again.   

  A host of practical emergencies need to be addressed immediately, which many will find shocking.  All fossil fuel emissions must cease in quick time, essentially ‘over-night’, which stringency must negate procrastination.  Alternative, sustainable means of distribution will result in a reduction of goods available, and a reduction of waste.  Using ships and aircraft for carrying oil, gas, and globalised food distribution must cease immediately, also aircraft used for holiday travel.  Trucks and all oil-fuelled land vehicles will need to be banned.  Instead, only sustainable electric and hydrogen-powered vehicles can be permitted.  Excursions and farther travel by barge and sailboat, bicycle, horse, train, and collectively shared vehicles will become the way.  Plastics will be eliminated.  The imperative of ending all fossil-fuel emissions will be a most immediate challenge.  Failing that can result only in a desperate apocalypse for humans and all life-forms on the planet. 

  Only if humans cut fossil-fuel emissions overnight, and if they can avoid all forms of terrorism and war, and if no pandemic takes hold, they have at most ten years to have turned their primitive ways around and to have renewed their cultures positively to temper the worst of the devastation that approaches Life on Earth.  

  No ‘Earth’ time. 


[1]  From ‘Come Sunrise’, Gaunts Publishing, 2019-20.