Esoteric Arts

Fraying at the edges or slipping into catastrophe.

As far as environmental and political disasters go I have spent a lot of time bemoaning all that I think is wrong or misguided. One can spiral down into a depression doing that. I have spent time looking forward to an expected human cull brought on by human foolishness.

However, although I still embrace catastrophe as the human choice as means for change, I have started to believe in a new paradigm. This is that there are 12 time lines of parallel realities i.e 12 futures for those here on earth now. This is more than just a biblical wheat and a chaff division. Compatible energies will have a similar future, incompatible energies will no longer be forced to live together. These 12 time lines seem destined to hive off soon. I take great comfort in the thought that I will no longer be sharing my world with incompatible energies. Therefore I get a warm feeling in my heart for my future and that leaves little room for present bitching. There is SO much that is just not right for me here on earth now I could spend all day complaining. It seems better to think happily of the splitting away of those 12 time lines. Goodbye can be such a cheerful word sometimes dont you think?

Some of these ideas came from www.operationterra.com.

The site has made me realize that someone can be highly intelligent, informed, intuitive and yet quite possibly be a little mad. However I mostly find the eccentric charming and my life has been greatly enriched by the odd.

What I also like about the 12 futures is that it is not simply a heaven/hell judgement and division. You just go where you are most suited and that seems a good solution. Moreover, as energies for change flood our earth as they currently do, they provide stimulus for the hiving off. They boost what one focuses on, or where ones heart is. Ones life is what one attends to, so what one attends to now will become ones future.

Is all this 12 time lines stuff true? I dont know. Life is mysterious. Do I believe it? Perhaps, and it helps me get through my day.

I just dont recognize the world that so many people seem to be living in as my world any more. If that is to be above the fray then I guess that is where I am.There is some advantage not be passionately engaged with most of what happens Any way I have enough of my own fray to deal with.

In his core, Maharishi has wanted to help and I think he has done so.

He taught me

1) I could do nothing more fundamental to change the world than changing my awareness and he taught me how to do that.

2) Knowledge is structured in consciousness i.e. what you know and what you experience depends on your awareness.

If I look at the facts the world provides this is hard to prove. But if I look at my personal world it seems valid for, apart from some slips and blips, I see a world of love.

This morning I put some more of my large garden to bed. A frog hopped towards its winter bed under a big pile of mulch, from where it will emerge in the Spring to eat slugs. I greeted it with affection as a companero. Chickadees start their own sunflowers in the garden and in Fall eat the seeds therefrom. They are unfrightened as I walk by and as they flit amongst the 8 foot tall plants I call to them hello sweetheart.Deer munch on the left over carrots and beets Bright winter rye is sprouting to suppress weeds and to become a green manure in spring when I till it in.My well tended soil gives me wonderful vegetables and fruit. How can I not see love in all that balance and ripeness.

So it depends on what you want to see.

I have been taught that when something of beauty is seen to love it, for the earth as we know, like the elves in Tolkien, is passing away. This beautiful earth is apparently vanishing in turmoil and catastrophe. That is one view; the splitting off of the time lines. The world that some people inhabit is just not mine at all so why worry about them? They have their future and I have mine. As I think of my future in a world of love I get a delicious feeling in my heart.

I am currently making a sort of study of Wagners magnificent Ring Cycle. Wotan, the head god in order to provide security for his fellow immortals has two giants construct a magnificent palatial castle. In this act he gives life a twist that will lead to the gods inevitable destruction. He moves every which way to change things but comes at last to the realisation, which he had always suspected, that the end is destined. All he can do now is to choose to participate in the ending and thus in some way choose his own end.

It seems to me we are faced with important choices about our ending and our earths ending. Trying to pretend it is not going to happen is for me not one.

We have choices. We can yap angrily as life passes by or we can grab it by the handful and love it. I think Maharishi has done the latter. He has taken two huge handfuls of life. And once he took my hands in his warm embrace for a while and that has made all the difference.

The Wombat and other Musings.

I watched this film, which is good for children, and then thought of my friend Marguerite in Australia. She is a ‘sensitive’, wonderful with animals, and lives on a communal ‘farm’ in the mountains of New South Wales.

One night she came back and saw a wombat near her door. The next evening it was curled up on the steps with the cat snoozing next to it.. The wombat showed no sign of fear and Marguerite had to take a big step (they can get up to three feet in size and weigh 80lbs) to get over it and into the house.

The wombat is, except for occasional cloudy days excursions, essentially a nocturnal animal, so she was surprised one morning to see it still on the steps in bright sunshine. It was there all day, and the next morning. It didn’t look well. She took a few photos and went to see her vet who was able to diagnose it with a serious ailment and said that untreated it would die in a few days. It needed a course of injections plus pills for 2 weeks.

Marguerite was very poor at the time but wanted to help the poor animal so she sold her TV set to get the money to buy the medicine without any guarantee she would be able to inject the wombat or get it take the pills for the whole 2 week course

When she came home it was still there and she sat next to it and lovingly explained that it needed a course of treatment which involved a prick and a pill to be swallowed. Plucking up her courage, as she had no idea how it would respond she injected it. It stayed immobile. Then she said,’ now for the pill and you must open your mouth’. She put a hand under its chin,and popped the pill in. By night fall the wombat was walking around and was gone the next morning.

However it came back in the evening, got its injection and voluntarily put its head back for the pill.

Each day it looked better and got its medications..

A few days after they were finished it stopped coming back.

One evening she took a walk to where there was a wombat hole a few hundred yards from her home. She didn’t see it but heard in her head a ‘gravelly’ voice which said,” Little kind missy. I am better now.”

My sister Jenny in South Africa has a way with animals too. She has lived with a donkey called ‘Bojangles’, a gorgeous Rhodesian Ridgeback called ‘Willard’,a blue parrot called “Blue’ who kisses Jenny and puts its whole head into her mouth allowing her to shut her mouth without complaint.

She also had a crow that adopted them called ‘CrowCrow’. It would fly above her daugher’s head when she walked to school and when school ended came back to fly with her as she walked home.

If Jenny slept late CrowCrow would pick up a pebble and let it roll noisely down the tin roof, doing this over and over again till Jenny appeared.

They had an outside shower for washing down after surfing in the sea. Visiting surfers would also brush their teeth there in the morning and CrowCrow began plucking the toothbrushes out of their mouths and flying away with them.

One day Jenny climbed up to its nest and found many toothbrushes, rings and keys that had gone missing. These were CrowCrow’s treasure.

She eventually got very tired of the morning pebbles rattling down the roof so she and her husband put Crow Crow in their van and drove a hundred miles and released him in the wild.

CrowCrow was back a few days later.

These are not singular stories but it is useful to remind ourselves of the rapport humans can have with animals.

A month ago during a stroll in the fields I saw a dead coyote.It was such a beautiful animal but I guess some hunter thought it looked better dead. Where I live in Eastern Ontario coyotes are not often seen or heard and now there is one less one to amaze a walker with its presence.

Humans are good slaughterers. With themselves I suppose one could objectively call it a method of population control. We seem to know few others. Wild animals on the other hand allow the natural cycles of food and its lack to maintain a balance in their numbers.

I think ‘Nature’ is going to teach humans some lessons about this balance and the lack thereof.

For myself I yearn for a world where we are the gentle friends of all the species that inhabit our planet. Maybe after all the coming catastrophic changes we will have such a world.

As we find that deep peace, harmony and joy that inner balance gives we might finally become worthy custodians of this suffering Earth.

This is my hope for 2007.

The last day of the year dawned with a red tinge in the East and a veil of diaphanous clouds that gave the sky that delicate, faint Turneresque colour. 2006 was rung out with rain and rung in with plus 9 and sunshine blessing us all.

As usual I began my forms outside with a centering Chi Kung benediction bringing the energy of the Sky down my body to my feet, and into the Earth, and then up again four times while alternatively facing the four directions, feeling the flow of the Blessing moving gently and ecstatically within.

We live in a simply gorgeous world and many lacking balance, gentleness and the serenity that comes with cultivated internal power do not become it.

T’is a pity!

For long it has amazed me that there aren't more critical comments on the size of the human population. Few people it seems have read Daniel Quinn ("Ishmael" and "The Story of B", amongst others).

So many of our societal troubles come exactly from too many people competing for too few resources. Where I grew up in South Africa (Western Cape ) the population has increased 10 fold since 1947. 400,000 to 4 million. It is now the murder capital of the Western World and is a place I will be happy never to see again as I prefer my happy memories of childhood to remain intact.

How does one deal with the rapidly changing conditions in the world? In 30 years the Arctic will be ice free and the polar bears will be extinct in the wild. This is cause for tears. Nothing can stop this.

Humans next.

Humans will be beset by one crisis after another for we have chosen catastrophe as our way of change.

Read: http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=281

So my question is how do we emotionally survive as this happens?

I'll tell you what seems wise to me and it came to me some months ago when I started my usual rant on there being too many people to a technician during a bone density test.

She said,"Too many people? Surely not in Sydenham."

And there aren't. I look out over a lake and see forest to the horizon.

This then is what I do when I get emotionally charged by all that goes on. When talk of bombing Iran, Bush declaring martial Law, this conspiracy that conspiracy depress me I remind myself of where I live.

Here, right now I can see "paradise". I have harvested 113 garlic bulbs, am digging red, white and blue potoatoes (my French wife enjoys these colours). My garden is bountiful, full of birds and I live in harmony with my environment. I feel blessed by my situation.

I contribute to Greenpeace, Green Party, David Suzuki and PETA. I send out loving thoughts. The expansion of my Light Body causes itching. I scratch. Meditation takes me to no "I". There is a vast Joyous Space beyond me. Nothing to do, nothing to gain.

The future will be chaotic, but here, in Sydenham, right now, today, it is a beautiful world.

I hope I have done with enduring the downward spiral the negative, tragic news gave me. Humans have made their choice. Suffering will come. Getting depressed before the event doesn't help. In my heart I know peace and joy. Now I would like to be a tonic of good cheer for the world. I have ranted about what is wrong long enough.

There are little miracles. Twice this summer I have heard the most musically charming song from a blue jay. Yes, a blue jay renowned for its unpleasant raucousness sat once in my pear tree and once on the bird feeder and sang so sweetly to me. It was lovely. I thanked it.

So I do my Chi Kung. Circle my hands over my head connecting earth, sky and planets and run the energy down to my feet.

Where I am, where I stand, energy and power are in balance, my heart is at peace, birds sing, the world is beautiful. There is nothing more to be done.

We can sing raucously or we can sing sweetly. A choice.

Isn't it all a marvel?

We live during times of an amazing clutter of information, ideas and news. It is a gift of mixed blessing as our consciousness can only process so much, can only focus on what is before it, or what is chattering in the mind, overtly or subliminally.

If you tend to anxieties there are tsunamis of facts, of political conspiracies, future catastrophes and economic uncertainty that will overflow into your life.

We not only know so much of what happens in the world we feel obliged to keep informed. What we are fed probably tends to come from a biased source as the news media is far from free.

If you like channelled material there is a plethora of that, much of extremely dubious merit.

If you are an empath then the chaos and stress of the times seeps constantly into your emotional body even when you stop the clammering news.

It is unsettling.

More than that.

It seems to me we have lost the ability to feel the world, partly as a result of our trying to know it factually, intellectually

As empaths will tell you, they will feel how the person talking to them is, quite apart from the verbal content of the dialogue.

I think humans used to feel the world. We have mostly lost that ability.

I do wonder what the clamour over deteriorating earth changes would be if we actually felt the soil getting dry and hot.

Does the wind still talk to us?

Do you feel kinship with the little species all around you? A rapport with them? Do you feel the tragic burden humans are placing on all life? I don't mean as an idea, an intellectual concept but a physical/emotional embrace of what this feels like.

We are superior in our technological conceits, our muscular resource relationship with life on earth.

Bird song does not flow through us like a poem; if it did we would care more.

Why do I read so often of the need for constant economic progress along with the fear that if humans don't keep breeding ('fucking into extinction' as a friend, Conny Larson, put it) then who will pay the taxes for old age support? It seems so absurd. It FEELS so wrong, so imbalanced, so separate from that wonderful life around us.

If you want to know how bad it is then look at this:

http://www.rainbowbody.net/Finalempire/

If we have lost the ability to feel the world then that has come about because we have closed our heart consciousness. I sometimes cringe when I read all the mushy talk about love and what it can do. It seems to me that love is not an emotional over indulgement but the vibrant fact of that pulsing centre being open. It is a question of the energy flow and how much time gets put into clearing the loops and cultivating the energy. Even love needs the discipline of that.

I daily practise Taoist internal arts. You can read innumerable books, hear countless lectures but it is the daily feeling of how the energy flows that gives growth. It requires discipline and lots of practice. Balance, like energy, is dynamic and is a moment to moment embrace. The ultimate development is not how to hit someone hard but the development of feeling the world. To master fighting is one thing but feeling the world is another and it is superior.

Any top martial artist always cultivates that.

Like bad poetry, talk of love abounds. But read Rumi, stop the talking, start the feeling.

There is often an essential conflict between grasping the world rationally and feeling it like a lover who runs panting after his beloved.

Even while you develop 'your' unlocalised awareness, focus lovingly on the locality of where you are.

That is, Be Apart, but be a part of here too.

Do you realise that the world as you have mostly known it is vanishing? Dying before your eyes. The human empire which has for too long neglected to love and cherish the soil is toppling.

If it is true that your life flashes by as you die then spare a thought for the dying earth. Love what you can while it is here. If you can feel the majesty of a tree, can actually see the glorious gold energy that surrounds it then skyscrapers and highways don't look so grand.

Even if it is too late for the human empire to change it is not too late for you. The future world/s that will come out of catastrophe needs the consciousness of those who can

feel the world.

In my lovely part of this beautiful earth the sun rose this morning on the other side of Eel Bay, still sleeping, wraiths of spiralling mist, trees in splendid warm Fall colours. The green grass soon sparkled with the frost and I had my cup of Sencha enriched with Matcha. A spectacular morning.

Of course I am truly blessed, or lucky, whichever you prefer, for much of the world is darkened by misery and many people awake in fear and foreboding. A tour of the Web will easily light on hosts of fearful stories, many of them economic.

I am amazed that there is so much talk of supporting the system. It seems very obvious that capitalism which has fueled the industrial revolution and all that incredible, exciting growth has run its course and has now alienated humans from humans and humanity from the rest of this planet. Of course it has to fail under the weight of its own voraciousness. Didn't Karl Marx precisely predict that? Good riddance to all that greed and corruption.

When society is on the cusp of a paradigm shift, and it seems to take catastrophe to spur these changes, the natural tendency is to try to hold on, to preserve our way of life. But what a cost our way of life has demanded. Ask the soil, water, air and the vanishing species!

I have been asking myself what sort of person would I like to be. The sort of person who surfs the web and discovers legions of horror and quickly passes them on, spreading the misery like cheap fertiliser; or the person who everyone seeks out because they are made to feel happy. Birds of a feather flock together and how nice to flock with the cheerful.

We are a world in transition and it is a dark, dangerous and mysterious future we enter, something unknown, and hurrah for that! The known has produced considerable suffering for so much of the earth. It is in the Unknown our salvation lies.

At the risk of compounding fears I give two links that pretty much sum up everything else you will have read and need not have.

http://www.realitysandwich.com/money_and_crisis_civilization

http://www.webofdebt.com/articles/modest_proposal.php

We live in an ocean of energy. It surrounds us. We breathe it in. It fuels all life and it is evolving. It evolves by destroying. Nothing lasts forever and change is generally disruptive. The price for this change will be suffering and this hasn't started to be felt yet. But the goal is a new way of living and a balance that seemed to be tragically lost. Embrace that life force and feel its surge moving towards splendour.

You might have lost money but frankly the warnings and predictions have been around for years. Even my website in my essays and my book have, in a modest way, warned of this. Precautions should have been taken. The Taoist internal arts teach flexibility in the finding of balance in a dynamic and unpredictable world, not of standing rigid to maintain the status quo, of embracing the unknown joyfully, of being, like the Dalai Lama, not unconnected with the sadness but still a wonderfully fun person to know.

What sort of future do you want? What sort of people do you wish to know? Be joyous in the change and spread that joy and you will meet happy people

After my tea I lit the cookstove so my wife, when she awoke, would come down to a warm kitchen. Outside I played my forms and then harvested more carrots and beetroot for my root cellar. Little chickadees sang to me from the huge sunflower heads and I greeted them lovingly back as I worked underneath.

It is a wonderful world. I have recently awoken during the night so happy I had trouble going back to sleep, so lay there in a cocoon of warm Light Energy.

It is there if one opens one's heart to It. The happiness of our future, after all the turbulence, depends on your doing precisely that.