… the shock of disorientation – the unknown …

Change is the only reliable constant. I sometimes wished I could pledge my life to a convincing reality. For me, what is derived from facts or beliefs in our culture often lacks a vital ingredient – the acceptance of the continuous process of harmony unfolding from cycles of necessary chaos – so I watch the river flowing and imagine stories and create worlds.

four weeks old

Though my childhood had its trials, I was lucky to be held during my early years, both physically and metaphorically, which gifted me with a sense of basic trust, a right to exist, a right to question, and a playful irreverence. Maybe this is why my little wisdoms play with facts and beliefs, dust the inner mirror, value what is emerging, the ever higher level of coordinates of truth and beauty, like a trajectory of the love I received.

For someone not held at birth, change can be dreaded, or seen as a means of escape from an unsafe environment. What we all have in common, is a longing for sufficient containment, and periods of relaxation.

Some years ago, I walked up the stairs of the Social Services centre where I worked. The building had two sections of offices that mirrored each other in design, with exactly the same stairway on each side. A lift in the middle accesses both sections. Being lazy, I usually took the lift up to the third floor, though I liked to take the stairs down on the far side. On this particular day I wanted exercise, and time to ponder a logistic problem. Steeped in thought, I headed for the staircase in sight. Arriving at my floor, I entered the office with its familiar layout and was hit by a sense of total disorientation. Wrong, all wrong, on my desk sat a row of bright, fluffy soft toys, not the company I had round my computer. In a split-second I noticed other irregularities, the quality of light – a smell of heady perfume. The entire atmosphere in this office was alien, the wrong music – alien to my expectations.

 

M. C. Escher

First thought – I must have time-jumped, returned from the past – my mother often marvelled at my vivid imagination. More laser-fast thoughts – perceptions are tenuous and dreamlike – reality is self-made and its boundaries are fragile. Calling in episodes of lucid dreaming, my fear switched to wonder, until I grasped the situation. With my thoughts dwelling in abstract orbs, I had walked up the wrong set of stair, expecting to see my desk, which was however in the other, mirror-part of the building.

Being sandwiched between two realities, the expected and the unexpected, the cognitive familiar and the unknown, tends to cancel time for an instant, long enough to escape the compulsion of identifying with objects or thoughts. Shocked awake, the mind is free and spacious, a delightful state.

 

Disorientation, if tolerated, can bring a sudden glimpse of unidentified consciousness in action.

Not discounting trance and meditation, or the vast variety of personal experience – mind and body work in synergy if we loosen up our ideas and learn to relax. In synergy the combined intuitive intelligence of body/brain and the collective mind brings us into resonance with a reality beyond our comprehension – the reflection of a universal order. Not a miracle.

As a child I once dived into a swimming pool. The brilliant sky was of the same blue as the tiles that lined the floor and walls of the pool, which would have been fine had I not opened my eyes under water – the blue world overwhelmed. I lost all sense of direction and panicked. With no way out, I instinctively shut my eyes, which calmed my racing heart and allowed my muscles to relax. My body naturally floated upwards.

I later learned, during experiential Sufi practices, that apt intentional exposure to situations depriving us of habitual coordinates, can prepare us to face change, the unknown, with less stress and more equanimity.

Have you had moments of disorientation – even if it was putting a cup to your lips expecting coffee and tasting tea?

*    *    *

The theme of ‘disorientation’ came up after recent posts by a blogger friend, Joe Linker (see blog roll), on Buckminster Fuller – his thoughts on synergy are powerfully relevant today – http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller

… We are now synergetically forced to conclude that all phenomena are metaphysical; wherefore, as many have long suspected — like it or not — ‘life is but a dream’ …

Buckminster Fuller

So we might as well dance … http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pXpaI5IMQsg&feature=related

 

… the recycling of unease …

Merciless downpours – I occasionally dash between strings of rain to trim the green jungle in my garden and pick a handful of wild strawberries. Tonight, looking east, the sky is grey. And not a leaf stirs, due to the full moon. In the next room a brilliant sunset reflects in a glass-framed painting. And as I look east again, a high cloud is blushed in rose-colour. More rain announced. It is the wettest summer in my many lifetimes, of late a tumultuous time. I was indirectly affected by a trauma, not mine, not my story to tell, though I’m proud of two dear young people who dealt admirably with the fallout of having their flat in London broken in. Several flats in the same block were crashed into with crowbars within the span of two hours and in bright daylight. Picture the scenario: you leave your home for a short while and return to find your front door broken and all means of communication, including the creative tools needed for your livelihood – gone. The logistics of solving the problem are, to put it mildly, overwhelming.

I bemoan the motherly welfare state and the infantile moral consciousness it feeds. I observe signs in my relatively crime-free little town. As an illustration, the other day in a car park I observed a woman tossing an empty plastic bottle from her car- window before she drove off. Her children in the backseat looked on. What motivates careless behaviour? What jumped to my mind – probably a negative mother (state) dependency, a resentment of mother’s permissiveness, having being patronised and cheated out of meaningful relationships and been entranced by the material world. 

Next day I visited a car boot sale in search of world-objects for my sand tray therapy work. A young girl spilled coins from her purse over the stall while paying for a trinket. A few coins fell to the grass. A boy behind her casually covered one of the coins with his foot. He didn’t even smile at his clever trick. His face was blank. This chilled me. Without parents to model self-respect, how will children become psychologically independent individuals?

 

We all experience the acceleration of change. The changes in my lifetime eroded structures of meaning that carried values I held dear. Change is however the only constant. Navigating change without straining our nervous system and by implication the nervous system of our planet is a challenge that requires an attitude of self-respect and tolerance: the ability to bear contradiction and confusion.

While collisions of mythologies storm all around us, we have the elation about the Higgs particle, indicator of a Higgs field. The single-minded work of a scientific community including 20 member states is remarkable, I’d be proud to be part of it. But wait, many more billions will now be spent on search for super symmetry (SUSY).  Imagine what could be achieved if even a tiny portion of this budget would go towards exploring the autonomous postulates spouting from our collective unconscious, in other words, exploring the underlying structure of the human psyche, of which the visible particles populate our dysfunctional societies.

Light is both particle and wave, and though we can only observe one at a time it is one light.

*      *      *

What In The World IS A Higgs Boson?

http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/04/what-in-the-world-is-a-higgs-boson/?src=un&feedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fjson8.nytimes.com%2Fpages%2Fscience%2Findex.jsonp

An interview with Dr Lisa Randall, from last year but more informative

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/12/science/physicists-anxiously-await-news-of-the-god-particle.html

Sandplay therapy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GD6PPwUlgGM&feature=related    Not me

http://sandplayvideos.com/sandplay-therapy-training

… the wonderful visit …

I loathe most talk of angels since they became best-selling brands, but the synchronicity of Annie Lennox wearing wings and singing to an angel at the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and the discovery of a rare book among my shelves, brought angels up close.

H G Wells (1866-1946) has been referred to as the Father of Science Fiction. A neglected story, The Wonderful Visit, published shortly after The Time Machine, was regarded as a mocking reflection on attitudes, beliefs and the social structure of a typical English village in Victorian times. I read the social commentary as ornamentation, the comical human attempt to stay the same, round a more essential theme, the conflict that can accompany awakening.

The edition below is from 1922 and has an illustration by Conrad Heighton Leigh. The line under it is from chapter 5 – ‘He fired out of pure surprise and habit.’

A strange bird was sighted.

Ornithology being a passion of the Vicar of Siddermorton, Rev. K. Hilyer, he was going to outdo his rivals and hunt the strange bird. So it came to be that on the 4th of August 1895 he shot down an angel.

… He saw what it was, his heart was in his mouth, and he fired out of pure surprise and habit. There was a scream of superhuman agony, the wings beat the air twice, and the victim came slanting swiftly downward and struck the ground – a struggling heap of writhing body, broken wing and flying blood-stained plumes … the Vicar stood aghast, with his smoking gun in his hand. It was no bird at all, but a youth with an extremely beautiful face, clad in a robe of saffron and with iridescent wings … never had the Vicar seen such gorgeous floods of colour …

‘A man, said the Angel, clasping his forehead … then I was not deceived, I am indeed in the Land of Dreams.’ The vicar tells him that men are real and angels are myth … ‘It almost makes one think that in some odd way there must be two worlds as it were …’

‘At least two,’ said the Vicar, and goes on pondering … he loved geometrical speculations, ‘there may be any number of three dimensional universes packed side by side, and all dimly aware of each other.’

They met half way, where reality is loosely defined, and truth has no hold. And they shared the nature of their worlds. Eat, pain, and die were among the new terms the strange visitor had to come to grips with.

‘Pain is the warp and the waft of this life,’ said the Vicar. Riddled with remorse over having maimed the Angel’s wing, he decides to looks after him. But to adjust to the Vicar’s world, the Angel must eat and accept pain, and learn all manner of things very fast indeed … Starting to read, during a phase of now legendary sunshine, I settled in my garden with a glass of red, and consequently spilled the wine on my wild strawberry blossoms due to sudden bursts of laughter.

‘What a strange life!’ said the Angel.

‘Yes,’ said the Vicar. ‘What a strange life! But the thing that makes it strange to me is new. I had taken it as a matter of course until you came into my life.’

Mr Angel is nothing like the pure and white angel of popular belief, more like the angel of Italian art, polychromatic, and a musical genius with the violin. Listening … the Vicar lost all sense of duration, all sense of necessity … The reactions of the villagers oscillate across a hair-thin-divide between comedy and tragedy. The bone of the story is however psychological, and spiritual. Indirectly, the Vicar encounters his anima through the Angel’s love for Delia, the maid servant of the house. There is no escape. Things get intense. The Angel, over the span of a short week, is tainted by the wickedness of the world, and it crushes him. And the Vicar’s awakening from his narrow prison brings him into tragic conflict with his community.

*    *    *

Not much has changed. The world is crowded with wounded angels seeking compassion, and since our daily vocabulary has only cliché words for other realities, talk of awakening rarely convinces unless it is embodied and conveyed through atmosphere. Look out for the artist so … the musicians, painters, writers, animators, filmmakers … and the children.

‘If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.’
― William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

The painting heading this post is by the Finnish symbolist painter Hugo Simberg.

… Is a parent ever unemployed ? …

Something new – AVAAZ encourages individual campaigns now . I started one. Click the link and read the proposal, and if you like the idea vote for it.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/petition/Put_parents_on_the_payroll/?fHNQuab&pv=0

Yes, it makes sense - put parents on the payroll – tied to the attendance of courses.  Here some more thoughts as to why …

Family structures are changing for a variety of reasons. No use blaming parents and home-makers that are unable to cope. No good romanticising the past. Parents and carers need  support in this time of flux.  New structures are emerging, single parents or carers, for example, seek families of heart and mind. Our policy-makers don’t seem to take note of this phenomenon. Think of independent units around a communal space that would allow socialising and the sharing of skills.

And why not use the psychological knowledge that has been available for decades? Why is this knowledge not disseminated to parents? Corporations require further training from their employees, offer courses that teach people skills, because they realise these skills improve business.

Parenting is important business, without question the most important one.  Years ago, when I was involved with Parent-Link, sharing skills, I had an idea how to create more opportunities for parents and raise their status. You can read about it by clicking on the AVAAZ link above.  And please vote, or come up with your own ideas.

Present social policies often force a mother or father to beg alms from the state, become unemployed. Is a parent ever unemployed?  Children are the future and must concern us all. I meet many parents, who, even with heightened awareness, tenacity, creativity and sacrifice, struggle to stay sane.

Thanks

… solitude …

Weather-defying, I had my first Pimms with ice cubes this year, imagining warmth, sun, swinging in my hammock under apple blossoms, listening to birds, walking barefoot and having friends round to watch the sun go down and the moon come up. The Brits are fed up with the rain. More than darkening the sun, clouds also obstruct the brighter aspects of the mind. Signals from the noosphere get muffled, or so it seems. There remains solitude, a tranquil space where questions arise, and thoughts have space to dream and play without being overstimulated. Allow your children periods of solitude and they will come to value it later in life.

I mulled over a question these last days, not for the first time. And an answer came, an angel whispered it into my ear while I slept – if all incarnated beings living on this planet were enlightened at the same time, the whole developmental cycle of the psyche would collapse, and consciousness would expand into a new matrix all over again. I’m making no claim to truth, angels can’t always be trusted. But the message seems to be - all is well-tuned as it is.

This is what solitude does to me – I get answers that beg more questions, like, what about multiverses? My body lives in this house in England that is at times difficult to maintain, but my mind also has another house, an interior house, free from mundane pressures, a house that exists in a dimension invisible to the physical eye … built from bricks of meaning rather than clay.

Here to the Noosphere, an interesting concept:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere