Hacked!

That was not fun. In fact yesterday was one of the most difficult and trying days I’ve had in a long while.

First a text from my email provider saying there had been unauthorised access to my account and they’d blocked it. While I embarked on the long and ridiculously complex process of trying to get myself back into it, there was a phone call from my son, telling me he’d had a suspicious-looking email, claiming to be from me, and asking for ‘a favour’. He said he feared I’d been hacked. That was the opening of the floodgates.

Messages came through on every social media platform from anxious, concerned friends, family members and contacts I hadn’t seen or thought about in years. What was wrong? they asked. Did I need help? What had happened? People I barely remembered were sending sweet messages of care and support and I was having to thank each of them in turn for their warm wishes and concern, then tell them that it was a scam, that if they responded to the bogus email, someone pretending to be me would try to relieve them of large sums of money.

In between all that, I was frantically trying to prioritise who to call next and warn about the scam – friends with autistic perception, elderly friends and relatives, those who didn’t have English as their first language, people in other countries… Anyone, in fact, who might not know me well enough or read the situation clearly enough to realise that I would NEVER email them and ask for money.

It took all morning to regain my email connection. It was only achieved with the caring and patient help of a lovely Scottish BT engineer who guided me gently through the process and interspersed each set of instructions with something like, “I’ve got everything crossed for ye Jan. We’re gonnae do this!”

Me want cookies!

Once I was able to view my contacts list (not easy – the virus scan I’d had to run had wiped every cookie from my laptop) the size of the task really hit me.

By lunchtime, the stream of confused enquiries and people thoughtfully calling to tell me I’d been hacked had become an avalanche. From Seattle to New York, from the cottage behind mine to Switzerland they came, and each, once they understood the situation, offered commiserations, friendship and little messages about how they and their families were getting on. I learned how former pupils were faring at college and university, heard from forgotten friends and those I hadn’t spoken to in far too long.

Sadly, my warning came too late for at least one dear friend. They had already sent the money off. I was heartbroken. And yet even this person, after ruefully commenting that they’d waved goodbye to 200 dollars, still took time to update me on their news and wish me well.

So yes, my stress levels were through the roof, my day had been ruined and I went to bed hurt and sad, yet I was strangely uplifted by the waves of kindness and consideration from friends and virtual strangers alike. There are some unkind people preying off others in cruel ways in this world, but the vast majority of humanity is kind, caring and generous.

Abject apologies if you were stung by this or a similar hoax and huge thanks if you were one of the people who helped me through that day.

Carrots and Cabbages

Musing today on the current state of life in Merrie England, as it was once known.

Covid-19 is no longer headline news, it seems.  Oh there are those who have it still.  I’ve spent much of the past week or so on video calls to snuffly, feverish grandchildren and a pale, coughing daughter with enough energy to slump on the sofa and little else.  The drama has gone, though – no record-breaking hospital admissions, none of those briefings from Downing Street (well they wouldn’t dare, really, would they?).

So the press has moved on to hunt for new dramas and fear-mongering stories.

At the start of the week news reporters stood shivering outside Number 10 (I mean, why?  Expecting to catch an exclusive of a beleaguered Boris and Carrie clutching cardboard boxes and followed by nannies and children heading out of the door on the walk of shame?) and reporting no news.  Slightly luckier media colleagues lurked in those drafty-looking hallways of Westminster, searching for Tory back-benchers seeking their five minutes of fame.  What could they say – ‘Yes, of course he should have resigned.  Anyone with a hint of integrity would have done so, but this is BORIS we’re talking about here and we still have constituents who kind of admire his cheek and think the rest of them are even worse, so if we boot him out we might end up losing our seats…’?

Eventually, while the Met police – finally stung into action by that Line of Duty video – sift slowly through photos and decide whether to issue a few retrospective £200 fines, it became clear that the news hounds needed to search elsewhere for a feel-bad story.  And there it was, right on cue.  The smart coats and suits from Westminster were packed away as reporters were sent off in more suitable garb to blend in with the good people of the most depressed and disadvantaged towns they could find.  Cost Of Living Rises became the next headline.  Once again the statisticians and slick graphics were back, showing us how hopeless it all is.  The dangers of Omicron may have subsided.  We might not yet have to deal with a general election but within a year vast swathes of the population will have to choose between heating and eating.  With silvered tongues, our media news reporters have found a new way of striking fear and desolation into the populace.

It was with their words ringing in my ears that I headed along to my local Co-op for my weekly food shop.  As has been the case for many months now, there were huge gaps on the shelves.  Where once the out-of-season peaches, nectarines, tomatoes, aubergines and mange-tout would have shone enticingly, now there were piles of carrots and cabbages, leeks and parsnips.  The market stalls offered little more.  One had a massive tray of earthy, slug-tunnelled Jerusalem artichokes as its centrepiece, and that triggered a memory.

Way back, around forty years ago, when we struggled to care for our growing family on a single wage and used our allotment to provide most of the sustenance we needed, there were times at the end of winter when we had to resort to the un-killable Jerusalem artichokes to provide a meal.  It was a desperate choice.  Peeling them was well-nigh impossible and when you did, the tiny nuggets of food offered little flavour.  Compared to them, those carrots and cabbages were starting to look quite appealing…

I took my mind back past the fear-mongering press reports to the pledges made at COP 26.  Yes, we said we’d use less fuel, so hot water bottles and fingerless gloves on the coldest days are a good thing.  So is the lack of foods from far-flung places and all the air-miles they involve.  It’s February, for goodness’ sake; time to eat the fruits of the earth in our locality.  It feels right.  It feels sensible.  The cabbages and root veg are plentiful and cheap.  I’m no cook, but I’m going to enjoy the slaw with baked potatoes, the casseroles and the stir fries made with local produce.  I will, though, avoid the Jerusalem artichokes while I can.

Where Was I Last Night?

I’m fairly sure, now, I know where I was.  Things had been building up to it, if you know what I mean.

When I say ‘last night’, I’m talking in temporal terms, obviously.  The experience I had took place sometime between around 2am and 7:30am this morning.  Since my mind was dreaming, though, the timescale for the events didn’t belong in that time at all.  It was, like all dreams, non-local.

What I recall most clearly is the excitement, the enthusiasm, the anticipation my fellow protagonist and I were experiencing.  We were family, although he had no obvious counterpart in my current life.  I’d describe him as a sort of brother, maybe even a twin.  All of our attention was focused on the task before us.  Each of us was choosing a new adventure.

I can only describe what we were examining in terms of geometry.  There were tubes – dark flexible cylinders or wormholes perhaps – overlaid with uneven grids and lines of bright, greenish light which intersected in interesting ways.  Each was a different ‘adventure’.  The tubes were the destinations, while the patterns showed different timeframes.   We poured over every detail with intense concentration and excitement.  The more complex the slashes of lines and the patterns they created, the more enthusiastic we became.

“Oh, this one looks interesting!” he would exclaim, pointing to a place where a diagonal crossed a group of parallel lines then veered away in a dynamic tick shape.

“Yeah,” I would laugh, “You might need a bit of help with that one!  I could probably lend a hand there.”

Ever had your palm read, or an astrology reading?  They are the nearest analogies I can think of.  Every line and every crossing had huge significance.  They represented the challenges, the exciting parts, the fun of this unique adventure.

Each of us was searching for a location and a timeframe within it that would give us a thrilling rollercoaster of an experience.  There was no fear or trepidation, no hunting for the easy bits.  We both wanted a full-on white-knuckle ride with plenty of problems to solve and puzzles to overcome.

Despite our emotional closeness, we were aiming for quite different adventures.  There was no regret that we would be separated, but there seemed to be an underlying acceptance that we could, at any point, call on one another – and on a rather nebulous ‘back-up team’ who seemed to be lurking nearby – if we needed support at any point.

I was beginning to wake up – to return to the physical world.  I didn’t want to!  This was fun.  There was another pattern on another tube I was desperate to explore.  My companion, too, was still busily engaged in the activity.  I managed to climb back into the dream state and spend a little more time there, but the physical body was becoming restless and finally shook itself free of that other existence, bringing my mind back to its daytime residence.

Now it was time to consider what I’d seen from a human perspective.  Surely that happy, excited, fearless aspect of me had been wherever-it-is we go between lives.  My companion and I had been selecting our next incarnation.  Everything pointed to that conclusion.

As I said, things had been building up to it.  Recent conversations, news items, personal experiences, channeled messages from others I follow on social media… even a friend who just yesterday re-read and commented on a post I had written several years ago.  The message had been the same:  We chose this location and this time in which to live this life.  We chose it – warts and all – in order to give it our best shot and see what we could change, what we could figure out, what we could take on and deal with.  Moaning, protesting, trolling or grumbling just won’t do any more.  We judge and complain about our fellow humans but write them glowing eulogies and obituaries when they pass.  We beg and insist that gods, spirit, world leaders, politicians and anyone other than us must change our lives for the better.  No wonder so many channeled beings are metaphorically throwing their hands in the air and reminding us that we chose it, and we intended it to be fun.

So yes, I woke up to an overcast drizzly day in October and a world beset with challenges and problems galore.  I’m off now to try to reconnect with the cheery, excited and optimistic aspect of myself I experienced last night and to bring as much of her hope and enthusiasm as I can into this amazing timeline and space I opted for this time around.

Dipping my TOE into Science

For around 20 years now I’ve been scuttling about down various rabbit holes.  My rather exciting secret life (the one most of my family and some of my friends roll their eyes at and politely ignore) has incorporated telepathy, channeling, remote viewing, a smidgeon of spiritual mediumship, dowsing… and the list goes on.

With help along the way from some very special guides – human and otherwise – I’ve reached, at the Biblical age of three score years and ten, what feels to be a fairly robust theory of how-it-all-works.

Oh, you want to know what it is?

Right.  Erm, OK, I’ll have a go.

In the beginning was Consciousness (note the big C), loads of it.  It’s still there.  It always will be.  It can’t not be. 

Static Consciousness would be pointless.  There wouldn’t be anything to be conscious of except itself, which it already knows.  It therefore needs to be dynamic.  Holographic bits of it separate out from the whole thing and become individual Selves (another intentional capital).  Each of these Selves plans out a way to gain experience, think up new ideas, try out experimental paths in a place where they have free will.  Every Self has a kind of blueprint – a rough guide to what they’d like to experience.  They make agreements and plans with other Selves, because it’s going to be tough and they’ll need all the help (and hindrance) they can get to complete the task.

When they’re ready, they coordinate their entry point to the 3D world and become little s selves with little c consciousness.  That is, they are born, to parents of their choice (yes always!).  These human selves will have arrived wearing filters.  The filters are very important.  It would be impossible to take this crazy and chaotic human life seriously and actually gain anything from it if they were still fully aware of big C Consciousness.  It would be as pointless as sitting an exam with the answer paper right next to you.  

The filters vary.  We don’t all select the same model.  Some people choose thick filters that block out almost all conscious knowledge of the big C, while others throughout history and particularly within the last 30 or 40 years elect to enter physical life with more and bigger holes in their filters.  They are far more aware of What Lies Beyond.

I’m guessing the unknown creator of the Flammarion Engraving was one of them.

These visionaries/ wise ones/ way-showers/ shining ones/ dangerous lunatics, depending on your viewpoint, have often sought to teach the rest of us about our innate connection to Consciousness.  They help us to poke more holes into our filters, if we let them.  I strongly suspect this is the next evolutionary leap.  

Regardless of our individual levels of awareness of the great field of Consciousness from which we emerged and will – upon ‘death’ – return, we are constantly feeding back information to it and gaining just the slightest of hunches, gut feelings and inklings that show us it never really went away.  In that way, we remain connected and Consciousness – fed the experiences we are passing to it – remains dynamic and ever-expanding.  Win win.

So where does the science come in?

Well I’d just like all the dots to be joined up.  I’d like to see an end to the absurdity of the materialist paradigm that has held sway in science for far too long.  I’ve known for a quite a while that some scientists are continuing to find funding somehow, publish papers somehow and survive the scientific establishment’s jibes and slurs whilst managing to experiment and theorise in ways that acknowledge the prime role of Consciousness.  The now extensive collection of meticulously collated reports on NDEs (near death experiences) and out of body experiences as well as convincing research into psi phenomena helps their cause.

To quote Dr Dirk K F Meijer (2019), “The hard problem in consciousness theories … turns out to be tightly linked to the western way of thinking that adheres to the idea of a matter-dominated universe.”

He goes on to comment that this mindset is “extremely obstructive” to both consciousness research and “a deeper understanding of the physical world.”

So spurred on by such encouraging words, I’m attempting to paddle in the shallow waters of science and read what these people are saying.  An O-level pass (just) in human biology being my sole scientific credential, I find myself ill-equipped to venture very far, but each paragraph I manage to comprehend fills me with delight.  There is a new vocabulary to master, but I attempted to learn Welsh during last year’s lockdown.  Surely this can’t be any harder?

I’ve been delighted to discover that Meijer’s 4D zero-point energy field,  David Bohm’s implicate order, Ervin Lásló’s Akashic field and Jung’s collective consciousness all seem to equate to my big C Consciousness.  Through ‘holographic resonance’ of this field with ‘specific coherent oscillation domains in the body’, there is a way to filter information moving between Consciousness and the brains of our small selves.  I even found mention of a ‘mental field-receptive resonance workspace’ which equates to the big S Self (soul??).

I’m not finding it easy, but am nonetheless prone to little gasps of delight as I discover some phrase or diagram that fits what I have ‘known’ at a deeper level for so long.  So huge and grateful thanks to Dr Meijer and the other Consciousness pioneers.

One day, perhaps, we will all be popping our heads through the Flammarion Engraving’s ‘event horizon’ to gain a glimpse or two of the big C.

As Nikola Tesla (another of my heroes) said:

“The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”

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) to publicise my first book.  Since then it’s be come more of 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Curing

I feel safest with stories.  They soothe me.  And the old stories are the best of all.

Today I want to share an old story with you – one that came to me and was most anxious to be shared.  Even the synchronicities that drew this story to me tell a tale in themselves.

I live in England, where currently entire households in which anyone has a fever or a cough must self-isolate for 14 days.  When my grandchild developed both these symptoms, her mother was faced with trying to work from home and care for both children.  I live far away, but decided to have a daily one hour video talk session with the children, giving my daughter a chance to get some uninterrupted work time.  I’m an ex-teacher, so we play maths games, draw, read, write and learn together.  It’s a delightful time for all of us.

I went to my still fairly extensive children’s book collection (who can throw books away?) looking for stories that would interest a 5 year old and her 8 year old brother.  Almost at once my eyes fell upon Hugh Lipton and Niamh Sharkey’s beautiful ‘Tales of Wisdom & Wonder’.  It’s a glorious collection of folk tales from around the world.

On day 1, we read the first story, a delightfully silly tale of a monkey who demonstrates that we should be very careful what we ask for.

Last night I sat down to read the second story – a Cree tale called The Curing Fox – in order to re-familiarise myself with it.

The first sentence told of a little girl who became desperately ill with a high fever, dreadful cough and breathing difficulties.

Ah.  My initial instinct was to put this one aside.  Who knows what fears and nightmares the children are having as Covid-19 spreads through the world?  Then I thought deeper.  Why, of all the stories in my bookcase, had I been led to this one, at this time?  That almost imperceptible tingling that tells me synchronicity is drawing me in had appeared.  I read the story.

Mr Lipton tells it wonderfully, but here is the briefest summary:

The child’s anxious parents summon an ancient wise woman, who listens very carefully to the rattling in the girl’s chest.  She tells the couple that she hears from it that a small, sickly female fox is undertaking an arduous journey through the snow outside.  When the child coughs, the wise woman hears the sound of the fox’s paws breaking through the crust of the frozen snow.  The father offers to track and bring back the fox.  As he journeys, the wise woman is able to track his progress, and that of the starving fox, by observing the little girl’s illness; when she senses that the hunter has stopped for the night and lit a fire, the girl has a high fever.  Finally he catches the fox, cradles her in his arms and takes her back to the village.  The mother is told to feed the fox.  It then curls up and sleeps.  The child, too, falls into a deep sleep.  Eventually, both fox and girl awake at the same moment.  The parents are asked to feed the fox again and then release it.  The little girl watches from the doorway as the fox runs off.  As it disappears, so does her illness.  The wise woman asks them whether the fox cured the girl or she cured the fox.  The mother replies that the woman cured them both.  The old lady just smiles.

I sat and pondered the wisdom of that story.  Half awake and half asleep, I thought my way back into that First Nation culture and bank of knowledge that showed such subtle yet deep and abiding connectedness.  I wondered at the idea that the symptoms of an illness could, with the right level of focus, lead the wise to find and alleviate suffering elsewhere.  I marvelled that, in taking steps to alleviate that suffering, the illness itself would vanish.  Further and further I meditated my way into the meaning this story held for me.  I thought of the symptoms – the fever, the choking cough, the inability to breathe.  Clearly the girl stands for us in our present crisis.

And the fox?  What does she represent?

The words that floated into my heart were, “Think of the World’s cough.”

 

It was from the Cree that this prophecy came:

 

 

The Wisdom of Corona Virus

Before I begin…

Today is my 69th birthday.  I am embarking on my 70th year in this now rather wrinkly and saggy skin suit and still enjoying every day and relishing the pleasures of life on the Blue Planet.  However my working life as a teacher – which I loved – is now over.  I spend my time enjoying the company of nature, family and friends, reading and writing and making tiny, intricate models out of upcycled junk and discarded items.  No one needs such trifles, but the creation of them nourishes my soul and others get pleasure from them.

Because I can now lay claim to being ‘old’ in Earthly terms, I feel able to write what follows with a clear conscience.  These things would be far harder for a younger person to say.  It may shock and upset many, for which I am sorry.  That is not my intention.  I’m not being mischievously provocative.  I’d just like to encourage others to stop for a moment and consider what this virus is showing us and doing for us.

 

Are you able to pause, put aside the prejudices fed to you by media and gaze on the beauty and perfection of these organisms?  They have intelligence.  It enabled them to evolve this new, unique form.

Humans are quite ready to see this Covid-19 as a wicked, scheming adversary – one that will take all of our collective powers to defeat.  Could we instead see it as a benign, caring entity that looked with concern and compassion at our predicament and evolved to ease some of our most intractable problems?  A step too far for many, perhaps, but worth considering.

Pollution

Imagine, for a moment that we are discussing a wise and benign entity.  It sees the massive pollution rife in China.  It sees the pollution attacking the lungs of China’s people – weakening them, lowering the quality of their lives, lowering their resistance.  Breath, after all, is life force, prana.  China knows this, regrets what is happening, but can’t solve the problem.  Industry has taken control.  Profit matters more than quality of life.  Does it?  Corona Virus strikes and vast numbers of those people, their lungs already compromised by breathing in those poisonous fumes, are struck down.  China simply has to react.  It closes schools, colleges, factories…

And this happens:

Photo taken by NASA of pollution levels over China this year.

Yes, many lives have been lost.  Death – like birth – is almost always a traumatic and messy affair.  It makes huge changes to the lives of those around the person concerned.  I know I am fortunate to believe firmly that my Self is eternal and this physical incarnation just a small – though important and fascinating – episode in its development.  I also believe that Self is able to choose the time of the personality’s arrival and departure in terms of a human life.  I’m not saying (this is a tricky one to explain) that any victims of the virus decided at a conscious level to die.  I’m suggesting that at a higher, spiritual level, the entire entity decides on the correct time – for that being’s evolution – to move on to another state.  At times of mass death, whether from a natural disaster, war, an act of terrorism or a disease, every soul concerned has – at that higher level – elected to move on.  Perhaps part of that decision is based on a desire to force those of us remaining to rethink certain aspects of life.

Will China return to its former levels of pollution?  It will be interesting to see.  Will there be a knock-on effect from this to other industrial nations?

Covid-19 is also affecting travel throughout the world.  I heard yesterday of a school in England requiring all staff to sign an agreement not to engage in any non-essential travel abroad.  Again, air travel is recognised as a major pollutant, yet foreign holidays have become an accepted part of life.  Is the virus holding this up to us for consideration?  Will we find alternatives and make changes to our lives?

Population and Age

This is the single most important factor that leads me to believe that the virus could be intelligent and benign.  We have an intractable problem in our world with the ageing population.  Doctors are able to keep people alive for longer.  This is generally considered to be a good thing.  However longevity takes precidence over quality of life.  It has to.  The alternative is unthinkable.  Thus – in my country, at least – many elderly people become increasingly weak and frail, needing to be cared for by exhausted relatives or in nursing homes.  They spend their final years relying on others to provide all their daily needs – even the most intimate ones – while they sit or lie helplessly waiting for the end.   I have watched, at very close quarters, both my parents and both my grandmothers finish their lives that way.  It is that – not death – that I dread.

Covid-19 is highly selective.  It infects all ages, but children recover easily.  Not until after the age of 50 is there even a 1% chance that it will be fatal.  Even then, only those with weakened immune systems or underlying heart/lung problems fall prey to it.  From age 70 onwards, the incidence of death becomes higher.  At 80 it climbs still more sharply.

Speaking as an old person, I welcome this.  I have no death wish, but there are things far worse than death.  Those lingering years, stripped of all purpose and dignity seem to me infinitely worse than a few days of fever, aches and pains and a bad cough.  Our scientists, doctors and politicians are powerless to change the problems caused by and for this ever-growing elderly population.  Perhaps the virus has arrived to rescue the situation – to humanely deal with those who would choose a quick and timely death.

The Sick and Vulnerable

Ah, but what of those who have weakened immune systems for other reasons – people who are ill but would soon recover or those with conditions requiring care in institutions?  They are vulnerable.  They should be protected.  Yet in my country we place them in hospitals where the essential work of cleaning and sanitising is given to people on zero hours contracts, people living in poverty, people who – if they become unwell – can’t afford to take sick leave, or their families would have no food.  Thus the outrageous treatment of these vital workers may well cause the virus to spread around hospitals and other institutions.

Like China’s pollution, these injustices have been brushed aside for economic reasons.  The Health Service is overstretched, we are told.  We simply can’t afford to pay these people more.  Now, though, can we afford not to?

 

Certainly this strain of Corona Virus is harsh and uncompromising.  It is no respecter of sensibilities and traditions.  It is forcing every one of us to rethink multiple aspects of our lives.  And in many respects, perhaps that is no bad thing.

 

 

 

 

The Randomness of Bees

I was 17, and happened to be sitting next to that girl – Gail or something – who was generally considered by the rest of the class to be a bit weird.

“I mean just look at bees,” she said to me.
This was a conversation opener, apropos to nothing.  We weren’t even doing a biology lesson.
“What about them?” I said warily.
“Well just THINK about it!” she exclaimed. “I mean how can anyone – ANYONE – argue that life is random, that everything just happened to evolve the way it did by a series of chances. So stupid!  Think about bees, Janet. (I hate it when people use my full name, but Gail wasn’t the sort to shorten it, the way everyone else did.) Think about the way they live… the patterns… it’s all just SO perfect.”

She drifted off into a blissful reverie, religious ecstasy temporarily quenching her evangelical zeal. Gail was a fundamentalist Christian.
I grunted and began focusing hard on my work.

The fact that I can recall that rather odd snippet of conversation fifty years later, though, goes to show the effect her comments made on me.  I’ve never forgotten that incident and as I continued through my life, my mind often travelled back to Gail and her bees.  Were we, and all that we share our planet with, really the result of some fluke of natural selection?  It merited consideration, certainly.

If you’ve just done the maths, you’ll have deduced that I was educated in the shiny black and white op-art sixties.  Science was at its zenith.  It was the new religion.  Scientists knew everything.  They could send rockets to the moon.  They could explain anything that needed an explanation.  Other points of view were rudely brushed aside as superstition or ignorance.  To disagree with the concept of life emerging from a rather fortuitous combination of chemicals, temperature, light and moisture in primeval swamps was almost heresy.  It meant you had to be a Creationist – someone who, like Gail, believed the beginning of the Bible contained a factual account of the beginning of the World.

Decades rolled by and I kept thinking.  I became increasingly disillusioned with the pomposity of the scientists who were more than happy to sweep inconvenient truths under their lab benches and persuade museums to hide away artefacts that didn’t fit their version of events.  On the other hand, I remained unconvinced by Gail’s merciful-but-actually-pretty-vengeful God and his six day fix on the bottomless void.

Fortunately for me, life is more nuanced these days.  The growth of digital information, multi-culturalism and alternative ways of thinking and being, mean that despite the continued persistence of some purists and fundamentalists on all sides, terms like Consciousness and Awareness and Intention have gained sway.

It’s no longer either/or.  Even scientists are discovering that we influence our lives, our bodies, our wellness and our experience through our thoughts and expectations.  For me, God has drifted away from being a strict headmaster with a hippy son to become a benign Intelligence, of which all Life is some kind of infinitessimal part.

Understanding the implications of quantum science removes the barrier between living and non-living.  We know, now, how much energy, how much LIFE there is in even the most apparently inert object.  Everything is, well, ert.

So OK Gail, I’ll give you that one.  There is no randomness in bees.  They are a pretty wonderful example of that Divine Intelligence playing out.

And now, I’ve got one for you:  eclipses.  Is it random chance that when we stand on this one little planet, amongst a mass of celestial bodies, our Moon (which is, in astronomical terms, tiny but very close) can exactly block out our view of our Sun, which is far bigger but far further away?

If Life didn’t randomly evolve on this planet, then do the positions of the heavenly bodies need to be viewed as random, or is there a Divine Intelligence at work there too?

Can we listen again to the music of the spheres?  Can we begin to understand why the ancients built megalithic structures with such care and precision, aligning them to star patterns, compass directions and equinoxes?

We are all hard-wired to love pattern, to reach into it and to understand and reproduce it, whether we are humans or bees.

And there’s this….

 

The Day the Muses Died

They’re not truly dead, of course, those Muses.  They are immortal – even the ones who consider themselves to be human.  They’ve gone though, for now at least.  Another one left this morning.

Have you noticed?  Are you missing them too?

There was a time when they reached so close, touched our thoughts, answered our tremulous questions and inspired our imaginings with a generosity of spirit and a wisdom so deep and wide that we felt nothing was secret, nothing was hidden from us.  All we had to do was to wonder and they would be there with a sign, a comment, a synchronicity that proved to us that we were heard and supported and – yes – expanded by their inspiration.

We were such a sensitive, anxious bunch, back then in the years surrounding Y2k and 2012.  Was the world going to end?  How would that look?  Were we ‘birthing a new Earth’, some kind of parallel planet where we would be gods?  Would there be the fires, the floods, the earthquakes and famines that had ended previous ages?  Did we really have to go through all that again? Reawakening, rebirthing, rediscovering our true selves… re- just about anything you could hold a candle up to.  What did it all mean?

We needed answers.  We needed to know the things religions had never seen fit to share with us, the things science hadn’t addressed, the things Hay House and Gaia and the Shift Network tantalisingly offered to sell us, if we had enough $$$$.

That was when the muses arrived.  They were quiet, gently spoken.  They answered our questions with courtesy but rarely initiated the conversations.  Each utterance was filled with a Knowing of divine proportions.  I would listen with reverence, take their words and wrestle with them until I could make some sense of what I was learning.  Then I’d pour those words into my books or my blog or my coffee shop conversations with trusted friends.

Now, save for a very few, they have gone.  Did they answer all the questions we needed to ask?  Perhaps.

I miss them, that’s for sure.  But maybe they shared all the Knowing they needed to before moving on to other missions.  For those we know as fellow humans, those ‘other missions’ may be happening in some part of their greater selves which is not currently visible to us at all.  For those who came to us through channelled voices or spiritual guidance – well – we can’t even guess.  All I know is that during those magical years, the Muses gave us precious gifts, and I will always be so very grateful.

The Quietness is sad and deafening, at times, but I take comfort in the thought that, like the legendary Arthur, who sleeps beneath Albion, ready to awaken when he is needed, they will return when the time is right.  “Assume it’s temporary,” one of the Muses told me once, and another – the one who left today – instructed me to “Trust the Silence.”

I will.

Taxonomical with the Truth

Taxonomy is something I’ve been thinking about recently, because it very much underlies our current world view.  Everything is classified and sub-classified so that it can be put into a tidy little box, marked neatly with a (preferably Latin) name and declared separate from everything else.  We do it with flora and fauna, obviously, but that mania for neat, clear, unambiguous boundaries and definitions has become a mainstay of life in general.  It’s how we understand and make sense of things – their features, their purposes, their very existence.

At times, the classifications have to be tweaked.  Poor old Pluto is downgraded from Planet to Big Rock; some garden plant suddenly gets a new name and all the garden centres have to readjust their labelling.  And don’t even get me started on the labels they use and change around in medical and psychological diagnoses…  Basically, though, humanity clings to the concept that everything that is, can be labelled, and that this is a Good Thing.

Was it always so?  We know our Greek and Roman forebears were keen on this organised labelling idea, but if we go way back to the people who made those strange and wonderful structures that seem to evade neat classification and confound the theorists, I suspect a very different world view was in place.

We are told by the experts that these creations were burial chambers or astronomical observatories or temples or meeting places or whatever the latest fragments of archaeology suggest.  They dig in the dark and assume that a few pieces of charred sheep bone or potsherds will allow them to make a classification.  The truth is, though, we don’t get it.  We, as 21st century humans, simply can’t see why so many people would work together and go to such enormous lengths to create massive, perfectly aligned and painstakingly constructed edifices such as the Giza pyramid complex, Gobekli Tepe, the Stonehenge landscape or Teotihuacan for ANY of those purposes.  The nearest (relatively) modern equivalents we can find are the great Gothic cathedrals of mediaeval Europe or intricate mausoleums, so, for want of better data, we decide that’s what they must have been ‘for’.

Deep inside, though, we know there has to be more to it than that.

What if our distant ancestors lived in a world where classification was considered counterproductive or, at the very least, irrelevant?

Think of all those folk tales and ancient religious texts where a name was considered to be a dangerous thing – so powerful that it was only to be used by initiates, and then only in the direst of circumstances.  That suggests that categorisation per se was not the way their minds worked.  Did these people see the world, and indeed the cosmos, as something so integrated, that to divide it into its constituent parts would be to destroy, weaken or pollute it?  Was it, indeed, a form of heresy?

What if, instead of saying, “Hey, guys, let’s build a gigantic temple to the gods here,”  or “Oh, this would be a great place to build an observatory,” those wise and distant people would perhaps work together to build something that was not this or that or the other, but something that was this AND that AND the other AND all that they could possibly create as a microcosm of the universe itself?

The current mainstream science-based world view is that everything is a fortuitous accident – evolution and climate, gravity and the tilt of an axis here or there somehow randomly resulted in all this.  As such, it’s very fragile, very likely to dissolve back into chaos and we need to impose order on it, if we are going to make any sense of it at all.

If we can imagine a society where such a view does not hold sway – a society where the skies above us, the planet we inhabit, the plants, creatures and all of us exist as a conscious, intelligent, unified whole, with each aspect relying on the rest for its existence, there would be no need to separate and divide it.  On the contrary, all that could be done to celebrate its perfect symmetries and unity would be a job worth doing well.  I suspect that such a society would have a language based in something that expands naturally, like mathematics or perhaps musical notation, rather than words that label, define and confine.  Perhaps such a language, were it ever rediscovered, would help us towards an understanding of our mysterious ancestors, and our cosmos.