The Art of Magic (and the magic of art)

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.” Pablo Picasso

That from the artist who also claimed that it took him four years to learn to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to learn to paint like a child.  It’s a perspective that interests me.

About thirty years ago I recall a family picnic on the banks of the River Stour on the Essex-Suffolk border.  My 18 month old son (now a professional graphic artist and illustrator) seized his father’s sketchbook and pencil, stared intently at the reeds and bull rushes growing at the water’s edge, then proceeded to draw a series of vertical and near-vertical lines on the paper.  It took him seconds.  His first representational landscape drawing!  The child moved on to other ways of exploring the environment immediately.  It was as if the drawing was some kind of instinctive yet fleeting need to capture the 3D world in just two dimensions.  He didn’t, as his older siblings might have done, compare it to his father’s sketches or seek anyone’s approval or praise.  In fact he was confused by our excitement and delight.

A tiny child will not seek out the ‘right’ colours or consider shapes and ratios.  What they do, though, when you think about it, is pure magic.  They use their crayons to create the significant people and objects around them at that moment in time.  Their art freezes an aspect of the swirl of life and movement and emotion they find themselves in and places it on a flat sheet of paper.   How very different that is from our own self-conscious attempts to draw a representational image.  We are hung up on how realistic it looks, whether our lines are straight or whether the perspective is right.  Most of all, we are worried about how others will judge it.  That, I suspect, is the ‘problem’ Picasso was referring to.

“That’s a lovely picture.  Would you like to tell me about it?” we were taught to say when I was training to be a teacher.  It avoided the problems of, “What a beautiful picture of Mummy!  Oh, I see – it’s a green tractor with lots of mud, is it?  Right.”

Gradually we ‘help’ the child to fit their depictions to the conventions of art in our world.  In medieval times, drawing the mother or self far larger than other people would have been quite acceptable.  The convention was ‘important people are shown larger than less significant people’.  In our modern world the convention is photographic, so a person shown large is closer in physical space to the artist’s viewpoint than those standing further away.

And what of magic?  I would argue that this, too, is something a small child experiences and responds to in a very natural, comfortable way and trying to regain that instinctive connection to the magic inherent in their lives takes many years, once the child has been trained to put it aside.

We allow – even encourage – small children to fill their lives with magic.  We tell them of Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and read them stories or show them videos of unicorns and dragons, magicians and heroes with fantastic powers.

At some point, though – perhaps around the same time we start insisting that humans should be drawn with bodies, not just a circular head with legs and arms – we begin to teach them what is ‘real’ and what is ‘pretend’.  What many of us don’t recognise is that this is just as arbitrary and incomplete a world view as the one we are asking them to leave behind.

Magic has a strong similarity to art.  When painting and drawing we encapsulate three dimensions in two.  With magic, we bring multiple dimensions into the three that form what current convention sees as our world.  (Again, I suspect our ancestors would have viewed it quite differently.)

In the children’s story book I’ve just published, I made sure enough magic was embedded within it to at least allow my 8-12 year old audience to keep wondering.  My metaphysician (yes, of course there had to be one!) observes three members of a family who find themselves confronted with a magical ‘coincidence’ as follows:

The lady in the blue dress looked from one to the other of them – the mother, who was slowly shaking her head and muttering, “Extraordinary…”, the boy who was now clutching his cheeks and laughing with amazement and pure delight, and the small child beside her who was still young enough to understand how real magic was and therefore not surprised at all.

I’d love to think that a few children reading The Glassmaker’s Children will recognise the magic my young hero Stellan rediscovers and notice how, by using attention and intention, both he and they can find way of surviving and thriving, despite the setbacks and challenges they encounter.

Small note:  I originally set up this blog (back in 2012) as a vehicle for my metaphysical ramblings, and I’d like it to stay that way.  For that reason, I’m placing most of my posts about The Glassmaker’s Children on my Open the Box blog.  This one, for example, explains the particular challenges my two young characters face as they battle to cope with a narcissistic parent.

Dragons and Rats and Realities

Right.  This is complicated.  Before I start, there are a few bits of background you’ll need:

• For those who don’t know, I spend a fair bit of my time making steampunk miniatures.  Recently I have been making ‘time dragons’ – an ecclectic mix of papier maché, modelling clay, old watch parts, intention and creativity.
• Steampunk, for those not familiar with the term, is an imaginary retro-futuristic existence, something like the sci-fi worlds created by HG Wells and Jules Verne.
• As well as this, my metaphysical pondering blog, I also write one called Steampunk-Shrunk, which contains whimsical back stories about the models I make.
• Finally, you need to know that I live in an end terrace cottage and my neighbour has recently had a problem with rats in her loft, so her landlord called in pest control.

OK.  Now for what happened.  I’ll try to put it in chronological order, but I suspect time is somehow absent from parts of it.

As I said, I’d made these strange model dragons.  It was fun.  I then wrote a rather dark little story about them to publish on my other blog.  It said that they formed out of the rubbish that collects in corners and crannies of steampunk inventors’ workshops, coalesced into living creatures and flew away to inhabit caves in an undiscovered canyon, where they had started to breed.  (If anyone wants to check the story, it’s here, but there’s no need to unless you’re so inclined.)

The following day, the pest control man came.  I heard him chatting to my neighbour in our shared entrance hall, heard him head upstairs and wished he could have been some magical pied piper … but rats are rats.  I’d had them in my roof a few years back, heard them gnawing purposefully at who-knows-what and although there is a fire wall up there between the two lofts, I’d recently heard the occasional brief scuttle above my bedroom, so I wasn’t sorry to hear that they were being dealt with.

That night I went to bed.  I’d been going through one of my frequent spells of insomnia, so was not really surprised to find I was still awake at 3.10 in the morning.  Having looked at the clock, I sighed, turned over yet again, and tried to lie still.

Then quite suddenly I found myself sitting on my sofa downstairs.  I was surprised, mainly, and disorientated.  What was I doing here?  How had I got here?  Was it real?  I checked the sofa.  Yes, definitely mine.  The colours of the fabric were the same, I could feel the cushions against my body.  This still surprised me.  I couldn’t work out what had happened to propel me here.  My coffee table was just in front of me, in its accustomed position, yet something was wrong.  I felt – I honestly did – as if I’d entered some place that was and yet wasn’t in my home.

The room was fairly dark; not (now I think about it) as dark as it should have been in the middle of the night, but there was a dimness about the whole place, as if space acted slightly differently here.  The rest of the room should have been visible, but I was only aware of this one area.  And yes, there was a difference – my model time dragons were under the corner of the coffee table, which is definitely not where I had put them.

As soon as I became aware of the dragons, I noticed that they were moving.  That was WRONG.  Now I was genuinely scared.  They were making a scuffling sound and suddenly, as if at some unseen signal, they erupted into the room, scuttling and flying outwards and upwards in all directions.

Immediately I was back in my bed, eyes wide, heart pumping and body shaking.  A split second later, in the loft space above my head, there was a stampede of rats.  There must have been at least five or six of them.  I heard them race across from one side to the other.  Then silence again.

 

So what was that all about?

Yes, the most ‘rational’ explanation is that I’d finally fallen asleep for a few moments and the scuffling of the rats had woken me.  In my dream state their noise had become the noise of my dragons taking flight.  I’d then heard the rats running.

A few things didn’t fit, though.  Why was I so disorientated if I was dreaming?  We normally accept whatever reality we encounter in dreams quite comfortably.  Even before I noticed those dragons (and yes, as it happens they are roughly rat-sized) I felt uncomfortable, as if I’d strayed into one of those many-worlds/ alternate realities.

So now I’m left wondering.  Was it ‘just a dream’ or had I strayed – or been taken – into some alternate world where my ‘words became flesh’, so to speak?  Is there a reality out there now, in amongst all that strange dark matter, where my little dragons have indeed taken on an existence of their own?  Did I pay that world a fleeting visit, just to discover how ‘creative’ I really am?  Did (as my guides are suggesting) the same psychological trigger event occur in both worlds, causing the time dragons and poisoned rats to erupt into a frenzied movement at the same moment?

The time dragons here are quite inanimate now and so too, it seems, are the rats in the loft.  Strange, though, and interesting to ponder…

 

When My Two Worlds Collide

Summer is the time I connect with family.  Some come to stay with me, while I head off to stay with others.  It’s been a crazy few weeks of checking dates and train times, bustling about, packing and unpacking, making up beds and sorting menus.

That’s not the hard bit, though.  The hard bit is trying to live between my two worlds.  It’s been harder than ever this year.

My accustomed world is here – full of long, rambling, enlightening conversations with like-minded souls, either in person or on my computer.  We ponder the metaphysical and wonderful, the numinous and semi-visible, the psychic and arcane.  There are conversations over coffee about sacred geometry.  There are conversations over Whatsapp about probability.  There are articles about consciousness to read and references to check and ideas to share.  Even as the mundane carries on around me, my mind rarely strays far from this world.

In the other world there are grandchildren and aunts, cousins, sons and daughters.  We go out for meals, wander the grounds of stately homes, discuss jobs and houses, share memories and plans, sightsee and chatter.

I can manage both.  I enjoy both.  I need both.  But they are mutually exclusive.  I’ve learned – the hard way – to keep them well apart; yet this year they moved too close for comfort.

I was trying to work on both levels at once with an elderly relative.

This amazing lady has enjoyed excellent health and vitality for almost 90 years.  She still lives independently and works – a complex, computer-based job that requires a flexible mind and sharp intellect.  Just recently, though, she’s been in tremendous pain.  Her physiotherapist seemed unable to help.  The GP arranged blood tests and X-rays, shrugged and put her on 30 tablets a day (a terrifying mix of painkillers, along with all the pills to cancel out the side-effects of the others) and told her not to sit for more than 20 minutes at a time.  She’s 89!  She still had the pain.  She had to give up driving because of all the tablets and she was – understandably – at the end of her tether.

From my accustomed world, my response was to send her distant healing and to ask my friend Will (a splendid medical intuitive) what was causing the pain.  Armed with only her name and a rough geographical location, he correctly identified the affected area and told me the pain was caused by bones in her back ‘breaking down or weakening’ and that there was something wrong in the stomach or lower torso area which might or might not be linked to this.

In the other world, I arranged to go and spend some time staying with this relative, told her a friend’s mum had symptoms similar to hers and used that to share the diagnosis Will had given, and discussed not-too-wacky alternative treatments, such as acupuncture.

It all went well to start with.  Like me, she has a deep distrust of Western medicine’s way of papering over the cracks, so decided to cut down on the painkillers except for the ones that seemed to be helping slightly.  She made an appointment with an acupuncturist and demanded an appointment at a pain clinic.  Her results came back from the doctor.  Osteoarthritis.  All other results normal.  “Oh good,” she said, “I had been worried that it could be cancer, because I do have some digestive problems.”

Full marks to Will!

Then she looked very hard at me, with those piercing, alert eyes and said, “But what is it YOU are doing?  Ever since you arrived, I’ve felt so much better.  The pain is far less.  It’s getting better by the day.  I think you must have some sort of – magic.”

She wasn’t joking.  It wasn’t a trite remark.  She was puzzled and confused and she wanted to understand.

What was I supposed to say?  My family don’t do weird.  They don’t believe in energies, psychic phenomena, anything that can’t be seen, poked and physically examined.  I tried a bit of logical common sense:  ‘You probably feel more relaxed having someone else around the place.  Chatting with me takes your mind off the symptoms and so you’re not dwelling on them like you do when you’re alone.’
All true.  All acceptable.  But she didn’t accept it.

“Yes, maybe so,” she said impatiently, “But that’s not what I mean.  When you’re around me, I can feel something happening in my body and it’s really making a difference.  Explain that!”

 

So, feeling deeply uncomfortable, I explained aspects of my world to her.  I told her that, to my way of thinking, we are far more than our bodies and brains.  I told her I believed that when we get out of balance in some way – too tense or anxious or angry or lonely, for example – it can spill over into the body and cause physical symptoms.  I told her I believed that we can send healing energy to one another by using loving thoughts and clear intention, and that that was what I’d been doing in the days before I’d arrived and – in a more focused way – now that I was there.

She was very quiet for a very long time.

“And there’s more that you’re not telling me,” she finally said.  “There are other things you can do, aren’t there?”

I told her I’d probably said far more than I should.

“You know you’d have been burnt as a witch if you’d lived a couple of hundred years ago?”

I nodded and suddenly the tension was broken we both laughed.

“Well I don’t pretend to understand,” she sighed, “But please keep doing it.  It helps.”

So I do.

 

 

 

Having Fun

Right now, at this point in my life, I’m having fun.

Should I feel guilty about that?  Would I be more worthy if I focused (as many wonderful people I know do) on wars and famine and the-state-of-politics and all the other worrying aspects of our world?

I dare to say it: no.

My life – all six-and-a-fair-bit decades of it – has had it’s share of disasters, problems, heartbreaks and despair.  I’m now – in hindsight (which is a much cosier place to view from) – thankful for all those difficult and testing times.  They’ve etched lines on my face, turned my hair white and allowed me to understand myself and others far better than if I’d had a safe, comfortable time reading the papers and keeping the house tidy.  (I do neither of those things.)

At this point, I have no major problems in my life and I have the most inordinate amount of fun.  If you’re about to say, “Oh don’t say that, you’re tempting fate”, you are missing the point.  In those terms, I don’t believe there is any such thing as ‘fate’ – or, for that matter – a vengeful deity of any kind, which must be appeased and bowed down to.  I don’t believe that I have a preordained ‘lot’ that will come to me, whatever, or can only be avoided if I follow the rules, or store up good karma.

I believe that I create my life.

Now the devil’s advocate will be saying, “So if that’s the case, how come you created all those heartbreaks and disasters, huh?”

I don’t mean that I create the whole shebang consciously and meticulously (although I have come across a few people who are just about able to do that).  However I am coming closer to a conscious awareness of the process.

Since I started to see myself as moving through a thixotropic aether (see my last post for details if you have no idea what I just said there) rather than a vacuum which happens to have a bit of air in this particular portion of it,  I’ve altered my way of viewing life.  It’s great!  I’m loving it.

The way I considered it was this:  Quicksand is thixotropic.  The more you bash and flail and struggle, the more unyielding it becomes.  If, though, you very softly and gently relax, flow with it and – causing as little resistance as possible – swim slowly and carefully towards the edge, you can gradually escape.

The thing is, if my whole life is a journey through this substance, just crawling out once won’t help that much.  There isn’t, in this existence, a place of safety, where no perils or challenges can possibly occur; physical life just isn’t like that.  I could argue that it’s one big sea of quicksand.  Once I know how to deal with that, though, it stops being a problem.  I can drift gently through it.  I can get used to the way it pulls and sucks at me.  I can stop seeing it as the enemy and just resolve to move lightly through it, not taking it too seriously, not resisting it.  I can start to enjoy it’s texture and the whole adventure.  It was my choice to be here, after all.

So I’m not living in some kind of fool’s paradise.  I know just how it all works.  I know the hazards and dangers, but that is not going to stop me enjoying myself.

Like I said, I’m having fun.

Acashic Technology?

Well I decided a couple of months back that I needed to keep myself informed about current and future technology, as it all seems to be moving so fast and I don’t want to fetch up as one of those little old ladies with a mind stuck in the last century.  It isn’t a subject that enthuses me particularly, but – like occasionally scanning the news headlines to see what the politicians are up to – I vaguely think I should keep at least a toe-hold in 2017.

So I subscribed to Peter Diamantis’ handy weekly summary of what’s new in the world of tech – flying self-driving cars, solar powered wonders and the like.  (Here’s the link if you’d like to subscribe.  It’s free.)  This week, I read the following there:

In recent months, researchers at Google Brain, OpenAI, MIT, Berkeley, and Google’s DeepMind have all reported progress on creating a machine learning system that creates machine learning systems. At Google Brain, the team designed a piece of software to design a system to take a test used to benchmark how software is able to process language, surpassing all previous results from human-designed software.

Hmm.  So should I be panicking here?  Racing around saving the world from artificial intelligence the way Will Smith did in I Robot?  That boss robot kind of had a point, didn’t she?  Looked at in terms of pure, cold logic, isn’t the human race, er, somewhat flawed?  How long before the machines notice that?

Actually, though, I’m not bothered by AI, nanotechnology or any of the other weird and amazing things I’ve been reading about.  I’m not bothered because I believe – totally and absolutely – in the Akashic Field.

Is this a diagram of a solar system or an atom?

My theory goes a bit like this:  No matter where we look in the cosmos, we find that things – stars, planets, plants, people, creatures and any stuff you can think of – are all made of the same basic components and behave in the same basic ways.  That isn’t coincidence!  It works that way because there is a basic, all-embracing blueprint that governs the way the cosmos works.

And I don’t even need to comment on this one.  

Despite our brilliance and technological wizardry and general amazingness as a species, we are hard-wired into the over-arching Akasha – the ‘Way It Works’ that governs all physical matter.

Certainly we invent new stuff that works better or more efficiently than old stuff.  We’ve been doing that for quite a while now.  (Yes, of course I think the old ‘primitive cave man’ idea is total rubbish, but that’s quite another subject.)

My point is that no matter what we develop, it’s made of the same basic matter – the self-aware consciousness of All That Is – and it is completely and irrevocably linked in to everything else that IS.

Obviously there will be choices made which do not benefit the world.  Just think how the wheel – that most brilliant of inventions – was used as an instrument of torture in the middle ages, for example.  All creations can be used for what we term ‘good’ or evil’.  The tension between the two is exactly what we are here to explore:  Can we make better choices?  Can we use this or that invention to the benefit of the rest of the cosmos?

It’s great that the ethical questions are asked.  That’s exactly as it should be.  And of course there will be new inventions and new discoveries about the past and about places far away.  And the more that is invented and discovered, the more it will be understood that – right at the nub of it all – it all springs from the same blueprint – the amazing, beautiful Akasha that forms everything.

 

A Journey into Consciousness

Scientists now say that energy and matter are one.  They must take the next full step to realize that consciousness and energy and matter are one.
Seth – Dreams, ‘Evolution’ and Value Fulfillment Sept 25th, 1979

Are we there yet?

Quite a huge leap for us isn’t it?  Especially, I’d guess, for scientists.  By and large, they don’t seem to like Consciousness very much.  I suspect that’s because Intelligence gets in the way.

But I digress.  Already.  Before I’ve even started.

Re-finding that Seth quote yesterday, I discovered that – while it had gone right over my head the first time I read it – I was now ready to look it squarely in the eye and at least attempt to see what it was showing me.

I’ll start by travelling, figuratively, inside my body.  Here I can locate a cell.  It’s very small.  I’d need a microscope to see it.  However I know it’s there.  At this very moment it’s busily doing whatever it is that cell is supposed to do, in order to keep my body working.  The cell is matter – definitely; it’s part of me.  It is also energy; if I could look deeper, I’d see all the electrons and photons and so forth whizzing around it – pure energy.  And is it conscious?  Yes.  I’m happy to accept that ‘my’ consciousness is spread around my body, not lodged in my head or heart, for example.  I’m also aware of the concept of Cellular Consciousness, as proposed by Bruce Lipton, which is gradually taking hold in some areas of science.

Right, so my cells are conscious units of matter/energy – every single one of them.  Are they conscious of the entity I call me?  Maybe, dimly.  They certainly work very hard to keep me in shape, to repair me when bits get injured or protect me when I’m ‘under attack’ from other conscious bits of energy/matter.  Perhaps somewhere in their consciousness they have a blueprint of the organ they are part of – the lung or kidney or nerve.  Possibly their consciousness extends to the physical body that contains all those organs and substances – the one encased in skin – the one I’m accustomed to define as ‘me’.  Or not.

Where shall I go next?  I’m tempted to start scrabbling around hunting for the consciousness in my pen, my mug, my keyboard.  They all have matter, after all, and thus energy.  And I think I’m just catching a glimpse of the consciousness inherent in them, but to find it, I need to head off somewhere else first.

Let’s go here:

Oh I love fractals!  They make it all so easy.  So that – if we think in terms of pure consciousness – could have been me heading into my body and finding an organ, and then a cell, then delving into that cell and finding other stuff that is also a perfect replica of all the rest.  Similarly, the ‘me-body-thing’ could have been somewhere in the middle of the zoom and ‘my’ consciousness would be out there in something far vaster and wider.  Am I aware that I am a part of that something?  Maybe dimly…  Maybe a bit more so than I was a year ago.

Like the scientists (and others) I get ensnared in Intelligence.  I start out wondering how conscious something is, although I never ask ‘how matter’ or ‘how energy’ it is.  That’s because I’m linking consciousness to thinking and knowing.  I may know things a cat doesn’t and think things it can’t, and vice versa, but I’m no more or less conscious than it.  When I can shake off the intelligence thing and accept that consciousness simply IS, it becomes far easier.

I’m all caught up in ‘I think, therefore I am’.  But where am I when I stop thinking?  When am I, where I stop thinking, for that matter?  It doesn’t happen that often, but when it does, I’m no place and no time.  I’ve moved beyond them and beyond my physical body, yet ‘I’ am still conscious.

Regular readers won’t be surprised to find remote viewing popping in here.  I’m quoting it because it’s a state in which logical/intelligent thinking seriously gets in the way.  My viewing partner and I find that frequently.  Sensations arrive from the location or object to be viewed, whether that is in the past, present or future, but then the mind starts to suggest something like, “Ah, well if I’m viewing a railway station that must be the platform, or the buffet…” and then you lose it.  When the intelligent mind has nothing much to latch on to (the location of a specific person a week into the future, for example) the viewings tend to work best.

In a recent post from Ask The Council, I was given answers to a question about how RV works.  Here’s a small portion of the reply:

The Council says when you are able to do remote viewing, you are very connected to your higher spiritual self. They say because we are all one, in a spiritual sense, someone who is able to view remotely is theoretically able to know anything about anyone, anywhere.

The Council says remote viewing works as we become more than our human selves. With the belief in remote viewing and by trying to accomplish this, you open up part of yourself that’s ready to see what you choose to view remotely. Because we are all connected and all one, when you view remotely you are really looking at an expanded version of yourself that includes others you are connected to.

Is ‘c’ the speed of enlightenment/consciousness?

So Consciousness:  We have it at cellular level and beyond, and those of us ‘evolved’ enough to be able to, can expand it outwards to where time/space/physicality is no longer a barrier and connect with those with whom we have a conscious connection.  Beyond that, of course, we’re connected to everyone and everything – even my mug and my pen…

 

What Price?

This has been puzzling me.  Maybe you can help me work it out….

I’m not even going to touch on the conspiracy theories or give any opinion on the character or behaviour of either of the protagonists here, because that’s not what interests me.  What I want to figure out is the part money plays in the story.  (Also I know it is far more complicated than I’m making it.  I just want to solve my puzzle.)

Once upon a time there were two men (as I understand the story) who were developing electricity in amazing new ways, so that it would be available to all.

One was called Thomas Edison.  He was a smart, hard-headed businessman as well as a brilliant innovator.  He needed investors in order to develop his amazing stuff.

The other was called Nikola Tesla.  He was clueless with money and no good at working with people but also a brilliant innovator.  He too needed investors, for exactly the same reason.

Edison wanted to develop a business empire, selling electricity and electrical products to people.

Tesla wanted to develop free electricity, so that no one would have to buy it ever again.  He’d worked out a way of doing that.

So let’s imagine you were an astute investor, back then, with lots of money in your pocket.  Which of these men would you invest in?

It’s not a hard choice to make, is it?  Edison wins hands down, because his investors will get great returns as everyone clamours to buy his products.  Tesla doesn’t stand a chance.  You invest in his company and you get free electricity forever – but so do all the other people: the ones who didn’t invest anything.  There’s no profit to be had in something that is free.

That means the world is stuck with power stations that run on fossil fuels or nuclear power, and we are all still having to pay for our power – as is the planet.

Now let’s imagine an alternative universe in which the investors all went for Tesla’s ideas.

No one owns electricity.  It’s as free as the air we breathe, even in places where people struggle to survive.  There are no bunkers full of nuclear waste that can’t be safely disposed of, no pollution in the seas around Japan, no coal or oil-fired power stations belching out fumes.  Suddenly electricity is not a commodity. It isn’t bought and sold.  You can’t own shares in it.   You can’t wage wars over the fossil fuels to power it or build pipelines where you shouldn’t.  It’s simply energy, like a thunderstorm or a forest fire.

We live in different times now.  What if crowdfunding had existed back then?  Ordinary people hand over their money to pay for some kid’s operation or to refurbish a hostel they will never see.  In my tiny country £46.6 million was raised in one night last week for Children In Need.  Billionaire stars turn philanthropist and give away their fortunes.

If Tesla were here now, asking for investors, would he find them?

So this is my puzzle:

Have we changed, in those few short years since Edison won his battle?

Is the pursuit of money, ever so slightly, losing it’s grip?

Are we treating it more, now, like energy, allowing it to flow freely rather than stockpiling it and having to make a profit from it?   And if we use it that way, how might our world change?

 

 

Commercial Break

My blog empire is growing…

I have, for several years now, used this site – Looking at Life – to do exactly that.  I’ve told anecdotes from my own life, and those of others close to me; I’ve explored metaphysical themes in all manner of directions; I’ve ranted about education and its shortcomings in our society; I’ve shared the ups and downs of my creative endeavours, whether renovating the cottage or making models.

During those years, I’ve been fortunate enough to attract an ever-growing range of followers.  Thank you.  It’s great to have you along and I’ve enjoyed exploring your sites as much as reading your comments on mine.  Several of you I now count among my friends, despite not having met you in person.  I’m aware, though, that the range of subjects covered here won’t be to everyone’s taste.  For that reason, my blogging has split off in three directions.

Looking at Life: I will attempt (no promises, mind!) to keep this blog site for my explorations of all that LIFE involves – and by ‘life’ I mean every aspect of existence as a conscious being, whether physically present on Planet Earth, travelling through dreams or ‘alive’ in other realities.  I will also continue, from time to time, to muse upon the wonders of A-Thought (autistic thinking), remote viewing and other psychic abilities on this blog.  This will remain my ‘main’ site because this is where my heart and soul are based.

 

 

Steampunk – Shrunk!:   https://steampunk-shrunk.com/ This is my latest venture.  Please head over there if you’d like to follow the back-stories of the tiny, dolls’ house sized characters I’m fabricating for the shop my son is running online.  Each figure will have his or her own post and a link to their pages at the shop.  There will also be articles about the process of making the models and anything else related to that aspect of my life.

 

 

 

 

 

Open the box:   http://opentheboxweb.wordpress.com   This is my education blog.  I’ve given it very little attention recently, having put all my educational energy into planning lessons for my own pupils, but once full health is restored and energy levels repleted, I’ll carry on adding free resources to that site.

 

I look forward to virtually meeting you at one or more of my blog sites in the future.

O Brave New World

I love the Flammarion engraving.  Its an image that feels hard-wired into my mind.  It is, quite simply, my mission statement.

Yesterday I sat for many hours with a dear friend, engaged on one of those rambling metaphysical discussions that sometimes go round in circles and sometimes find a new, untrodden path.  I’d like to share what happened with you – my wider community of dear friends – and would welcome your comments and ideas on the implications of what was suggested…

So, specifically, we had agreed on several points:

• That there are certain places on our planet – sacred sites, as they’re commonly known, and certain artefacts – usually behind glass in museums – which in some mysterious way hold a key to piercing that veil (see picture above) and accessing the akashic realms.
• That it’s possible to enter an altered state and reach this akasha in the presence of these places or objects, but equally possible to be totally unmoved by them.  It appears to depend on your state of mind.
• That the ideal way to approach these sacred places and objects, should you wish for the enlightenment they may facilitate, is what’s known as ‘A-thought’ (see here for a fuller explanation of this concept) – the state of mind we enter when following synchronicity or remote viewing, for example.
• That it’s difficult, sometimes, to enter that state at will, as we so easily get sucked back into the ‘common sense’ world of cause-and-effect and logic.  That’s why so many seekers have used ritual, psychotropic substances, drumming, dance or sensory deprivation to jump-start such an experience.
• That we could do with a bit of guidance before we next set off to hunt down the hidden realms and the treasures lurking there.

“We could try asking my Guides,” I said.

Koimul, the guide I can sometimes channel, has, as regular readers will know, taken a recent interest in my explorations of metaphysical realms.  It felt like the right sort of question to ask.

As we’d hoped, Koimul was right on the case and happy to discuss our questions.  It soon became clear, in fact, that Koimul had been tuning in to our conversation and made several references to it in what followed.

We were told that certain sites we’d considered visiting  ‘WOULD ATTUNE YOU TO THEIR ENERGY’ and provide ‘ESOTERIC KNOWLEDGE FOR REACHING WHAT [YOU] SEEK.

We asked for a definition of what – exactly – we were seeking. (It’s so easy to get mired in obscurity when discussing these numinous ideas.)  Koimul called it ‘MAWDEN’ and defined it as ‘REALITY BEYOND FOUR DIMENSIONS’.

Next we asked about the ‘sacred’ sites and artefacts.  I’d read in Seth’s books that no place is, of itself, more sacred than any other, but is made so by the energy placed there by those who use it.  I’d always wanted some clarity on that, as certain places certainly ‘feel’ more special than others.  So were these places and objects some kind of ‘tool’?

‘NOT OF THEMSELVES,’ Koimul explained, ‘BUT THEY LEAD YOU TO THAT WHICH YOU SEEK’.

Okay, so how, exactly did that work?

We were told, ‘VISIT THE SITES.  LEARN WHAT THEY HAVE TO TEACH YOU AND FOLLOW THE PATH THEY LEAD YOU ON VIA SYNCHRONICITY’.  Koimul explained that the sites were not sacred or special in themselves, but that the knowledge that humans can’t always access is encoded or – literally – crystallised within the stones or artefacts in these places.  It becomes possible for us to access them if we are in the right frame of mind – that A-Thought state we had already identified as important. 

With amazing clarity, Koimul went on to tell us how each member of the group who will be going on this trip has particular abilities to contribute and added ‘COMBINE YOUR SKILLS WITH WILLIAM’S SIGHT TO MOVE TO YOUR GOAL’.

That was unexpected.  William, my remote viewing partner, will not be joining us in person, but he usually gets involved remotely and views places we visit, sometimes seeing things we don’t.  This time, though, Koimul had a new role in mind for Will:  ‘WILLIAM WILL VIEW THE SITES IN ADVANCE AND HE WILL LEAD [YOU] TO THEM’.

The more I think about it, the cleverer Koimul’s idea sounds.  It seems to me as if what we’ll be doing is reversing cause-and-effect.  Normally I go and hang out somewhere and give Will the time or location (the cause).  He then views where I am (the effect).  Reversing it, though, means the effect – what Will ‘sees’ – is established before the event that ’causes’ it – us going there – has occurred.  We only arrive there because he says we have done so, even though it won’t have happened at that point.

Have I got that right?

Koimul appears to be preparing us to enter whichever locations emerge, having by-passed time and cause-and-effect and having neatly defied logic.  That should certainly put us in the correct frame of mind to be open to whatever synchronicity unfolds…

 

Subtle energies

Every so often, my psychically gifted young friend William sends me another article he has written.  Recently, there has been one about the possible effects of electromagnetic radiation from phones, wi-fi etc. on subtle energies, such as telepathy and psychic skills.  In a second, he was trying to unravel the optimum conditions for successful remote viewing.  At some point, when I have enough, I’ll put his new articles together in Volume 2 of The Words of William.  (Volume 1 is still available in Kindle or paperback here.)

I can only think that the Universe had conspired to give us the answer to both of these lines of enquiry, using something along the lines of the law of attraction.

Last Sunday I was sitting, in the early spring sunshine, in a little courtyard within the Chalice Well Gardens, just along the road from my house.  We’d viewed in the grounds before, but never in this part of the gardens.  Will has never been there.  He was aware of the name of the place I’d be in, but nothing more.  He was, as always, in his home in London.  We’d arranged that at 2pm I would be in position and he would ‘tune in’ and try to pick up details of the place.  Fifteen minutes later, I would take a few photos and head home.  Meanwhile, he would be texting me whatever he had been able to view.

When I returned to the cottage, his words and a drawing were waiting for me.  Once they were received, I sent him the photos and some feedback.  Even by the standards of our most successful viewings, this one was remarkable.

He described features in great detail: A round central concrete structure with patterns carved around the sides, containing plants and probably water.  A green gateway or arch.  A large slab of concrete where he felt I was sitting. Two raised containers or flower pots full of plants.  Many overhanging branches.  The ground was tiled.  His sketch of the site showed all these items in relation to each other.  It was drawn from exactly the spot I’d been sitting in.

My photos showed the round well, surrounded by carved spirals and containing ferns and tiny damp-loving plants.  Water from the red spring trickled gently into it from an underground source.

The green metal archway and gate leading into this part of the garden was clearly visible from where I was sitting.  In this photo, too, the raised beds (his ‘concrete containers of plants’) and stone tiled ground can also be seen, along with the overhanging trees.

Set into the wall right beside my bench there was a large stone slab, drilled with holes for tea lights.  It’s an unusual feature, sticking out into the courtyard like a table.  Will’s ‘concrete slab’ was in exactly the correct position.

So why, I asked, had this worked so well?  He thought it could be because he’s known the name of the location and – even though he hadn’t ever seen the place – that helped him to home in.

Later in the week, though, I had another thought.  Usually we text when we’re ready, keep our phones handy and he texts as soon as he has all the information he can get.  The Chalice Well Garden is a phone-free zone, so we’d pre-arranged the time and there had been no messaging while I was at the site.  I wondered if that might have allowed us to focus better.

William had a further thought.  Perhaps, he said, the signals from our phones interfered with the subtle information passing between us.  Maybe the range of electrical devices in my home, for example, had been responsible for some of the fuzzy, less convincing viewings of objects done indoors over the winter months.

It was an intriguing thought.  I asked Koimul, my spirit guide, for some clarification.

I was told that everything – ourselves included –  has its own electromagnetic energy field.  These are very subtle.  Man-made devices, though, give off a far stronger – coarser – energy.  Koimul asked me to think of the difficulty we have trying to view the night skies with light pollution from street lamps.  The delicate twinkling of far off stars is concealed from us.  Once we are free of artificial light sources, though, the true radiance of the night sky can be seen.  The same is true, apparently, in our viewings.  We are attempting to focus on the subtlest of energies, and a blast of EM radiation from a mobile phone can easily mask almost all the signals.

It’s an intriguing thought.  Perhaps it goes some way to explaining how our ancestors were able to tune in so much better to the subtle energies of Nature.  I wonder if everything we make – not just the electronic devices, but man-made fabrics, buildings or vehicles – is to some extent masking our true ability to link to our planet, and even to one another.