Fabrice Muamba, Football and Life

Although the situation still looks very grave, I’m heartened to hear that Bolton Wanderers footballer, Fabrice Muamba, is now in a ‘stable’ condition in hospital and breathing by himself, after collapsing on the pitch during the FA Cup match with Tottenham.

And apart from one particularly disgusting incident – where someone rushed to edit his Wikipedia page and put today’s date as his date of death (which was, to the site’s credit, quickly removed) – the outpouring of concern and radiance of positive energy from people all around the world reinforced the fact that us humans are actually pretty great when unite.

The hair on my arms (unfortunately, not on my head, since they’re mostly absent, there) stood up as I read through the well-wishes and tributes to Fabrice on Twitter.

Football is such a passionate sport, for the players and the followers of their beloved teams, and often it can seem so divisive that it appears there’s real hatred between the opposing clans… but something like this reminds us that there’s no division and that, in the end, it’s just a game; the hate is mock. It’s just part of the dramatics that makes football so enthralling.

Both the Bolton and Tottenham supporters were chanting Muamba’s name as he was stretchered off, after those traumatic scenes of him receiving frantic attention from the medics.

This was an FA Cup match – one of the greatest and most revered competitions in all of global football – so, before and during the game, both tension and passion was peaked, but all that energy of rivalry and wanting to beat the opposition quickly changed focus when they saw the horrific developments on the pitch.

I’m sure every single person that was in the stadium is in shock, now, but unified by the overwhelming will that Fabrice recovers, as do the rest of us, whoever we may be and wherever we may be in the world, whether we love football or not.

It leads to questions of the fragile nature of our mortality…

I mean, if a 23-year-old athlete – who, it goes without saying, has taken care of himself to reach that peak level of fitness and performance - can collapse and lie, literally, on the brink of death, then it should remind us that this mortal life is not forever.

We too often fear what’s to come in the days, weeks, months and years ahead, yet this is always at the expense of the contentment and happiness we could fill our living moment with.

Look around you, right now, and everything you may fear to lose in future is still here… so enjoy it… enjoy them… enjoy life, right now.

Face the changes when they come… don’t fear the changes and lose your ability to enjoy life right now.

And as a closing note, I would like to thank all the medical staff who treated Fabrice – and send the same sentiments to every paramedic, nurse, doctor and first-aider who has helped save the lives of countless other people in such situations.

If Superman came out of the sky and saved one person from dying, it would be global news…

If that live-saving comes from an air-ambulance, an off-duty nurse or some bystander who happens to be trained in first-aid, it’s just a couple of column inches in the newspaper, if that.

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As you may perhaps drop coins into a busker’s guitar box as you pass them on the street, if you’ve enjoyed this, or any of my other blogs, then I would be most appreciative if you’d consider throwing a few electro-shinies into my cyber-hat, by making a donation via PayPal, either by clicking the button below...

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Steve Jacques & Harry Moseley

Steve Jacques may not be the most well-known name on the growing list of people interviewed to collect tributes for the inspirational Harry Moseley, but he’s certainly been one of the most passionate and influential supporters of the project and I have a great deal to thank him for.

Meeting, last month, at the world-famous Belfry golf course in the West Midlands, in England, Steve brought with him four more of his and Harry’s close friends: James & Ollie Phelps (the Weasley twins from the Harry Potter movies) and footballers, Michael Johnson (Notts County, Birmingham City, Derby County) and Ian Taylor (Aston Villa, Sheffield Wednesday, Port Vale, Northampton).

It was good fun and a great day, but most importantly, Jen and I got some superb, poignant and powerful interview footage that’s perfect for the book.

The interview with Steve was brilliant.

I hope you can follow Steve on Twitter at @stevejjacques – and also check out @StadiaSAL – a collaboration with Michael Johnson and Ian Taylor.

Please follow Harry Moseley’s Mom, Georgie, on Twitter, at:

@Harry_Moseley

And if you’d like to make a donation to Harry’s ongoing fundraising efforts, his website is here:

Help Harry Help Others

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There’s now a Lesism Facebook Page! I’d be most appreciative if you’d give it a LIKE:

www.facebook.com/Lesism

You’re also very welcome to befriend me on my regular Facebook account, here:

www.facebook.com/lesfloyd

Music, Frequency, Ego and Peace

Music can be one of the most accessible and effective gateways to the tranquil realm of present awareness, but – as a mirror to our minds – how it moves you depends on what you listen to.

If you’re feeling low or depressed and you start listening to depressing music, it’s a good bet you’ll remain in that subdued state.

If you’re happy and listen to upbeat, cheerful music, you’re most likely going to remain in good spirits.

If you’re happy and then listen to depressing music for hours on end, there’s a strong chance your mood may lower.

If you’re feeling low or depressed and you start listening to upbeat, cheerful tunes, it may even give you a smile and remind you that life isn’t so bad after all.

Music, and the Universe in general, is all about frequency. We have frequency in light, sound, matter, potatoes… within us and all around us… in fact, the only thing I can think of that doesn’t abide to frequency is my local bus, the 685.

It stands to reason, then, that as microcosm of a mighty cosmos, humans and their fate have an inseparable union with frequency, because we are it.

Fortunately, we can change our frequency. Unfortunately, most people don’t like to admit they know how to change their frequency.

Regard ‘low frequency’ as abuse, anger, depression, disaster, war, famine and all of the bad things of this world, then ‘high frequency’ as all the great things, such as laughter, love, peace, family, friendship.

Unless you’re in a very, very dark place right now, your impulsive preference is for the high frequency qualities of life – to smile, have fun, enjoy what you do, laugh with your mates down the pub or breathe the joy of the world in on your Sunday walk.

Nearly everyone on this planet (even emos) wants to be happy, whether that’s a deep down wish or a one they’d freely share with all around them. Yet… look at the news and you’d think there little more than hatred and ignorance to our species. We seem so entrenched in the negative, low-frequency spectrum of living.

Shrink the problems of the world into a single human body then listen to its rattling mind, and you’ll hear a similar, subjective dialogue: “I don’t like this! Why are they doing that? Are they going to hurt me? They did me harm! This must change. They can’t live there! I’m never going to forget the pain they caused me. They’re doing everything wrong. I’ll never forgive them. Bieber is a wanker.”

But underneath that cacophony of egoic ranting and chanting, most would say something along the lines of this: “I wish to be free, to love, and live a happy, peaceful life.”

So, how can it be that there is so great a will of the high-frequency, good stuff, when most of us dawdle around in the mid-range and some feel their only place in life is at in lowest vibrations?

Yes, it’s the ego again! The bloody ego!

As with your chosen mood of music, likewise with the company you are and the company you keep:

If you’re sad and you’re with a sad person, you’ll stay sad.

If you’re happy and with a happy person, you’ll stay happy.

If you’re happy, with a sad person, then you may find it difficult to stay happy.

If you’re sad, with a happy person, then you may find it difficult to stay sad, unless you’re so good at making the other person sad that the happy person becomes sad, too.

And on, this applies to the human mind and the dreaded ego:

If you’re low or depressed and continue to listen to the thoughts in your head that locked you in that sadness in the first place, you’re going to stay in a low or depressed state and most likely sink lower.

If you’re feeling great and you allow only positive, creative, constructive thoughts to fill your mind, you’re going to continue to feel great.

If you’re feeling great and then decide to focus on negativity, fear and worry, you’re not going to be feeling great for too much longer.

If you’re feeling low or depressed and you charge yourself with only positive, creative, constructive thoughts, you will begin to lift yourself up.

Sadly, it’s a common truth that the egoic mind will attempt to anchor itself in the negatives of life, so even when relatively happy, it will look for a way back down to misery. Even if there’s perceived perfection all around, it will be waiting for something to go wrong, and if that doesn’t happen on its own, soon enough, it’ll find a way to make sure its self-fulfilled prophecy comes true.

It will also look for misery when miserable. It will want those around it to know that it’s miserable. It will try to make them miserable, too. The ego is an skank like that.

Fortunately, as much of an arse the ego is, it only exists in your head and you have the ability to turn it off, through the engagement of present awareness…

Reader’s Voice: “But Les, present awareness is so difficult to learn and I just don’t think I’ll ever find it.”

Blah-blah-blah, is my response to that!

As I opened this blog with, music can be one of the most accessible and effective gateways to the tranquil realm of present awareness… but so can painting, writing, fell-walking, bird-watching, love-making, footballery and an almost limitless supply of other activities that focus our attention on the living moment.

Keira... singing?

Music is special, though – like a gift to our species. It’s an appreciation that almost all people share, in its many expressions. I’ve never seen a deaf person dance (which is an apt caricature of how I dance, now I come to think about it), but I’m sure there’s a joy of release from boogying to a thumping bass they can feel through their whole body.

Have you ever listened to something that you just loved, that made the hair on your arms stand on end and your spine and scalp tingle with energy? Have you ever just lost yourself in an album, feet up, headphones on, and let the rest of the world do its own thing for a while? Have you ever danced with someone, with a smile on your face, and interrupted for a few minutes all the miserable and worrisome stories your ego likes to repeat to you?

If yes, then if you think you’ve never experienced that peace of present awareness, or it’s too tough to reach and not worth trying for, know that you’ve already experienced it. Far from being elusive or unachievable, you’ve been there and it’s in you, waiting for you to go back.

Once you recognise this place, within, you can return just about whenever you please, and you don’t have to use music to take you there.

Granted, there are situations and events in life that throw up a fog which makes it very difficult to navigate back to that peace, immediately, but trust your heart and ignore the deception of ego, and you’ll find your way home.

Go put some music on (I’d suggest something upbeat. Radiohead or Evanescence may not help with this experiment)… listen to the instruments in the back of the song; the drums, the bass, the strings… feel the depth. Every time your mind tries to take over, focus your attention back on the sound. When your ego becomes upset about the peace you’re experiencing and tries to throw a spanner in with random thoughts of past and future, relax back into the moment and understand that everything is okay, right now.

Every one of you reading could go do this, right now, and in ten minutes understand that the same place of peace I so annoyingly bang on about is actually right there within you, too. And it’s quite nice, isn’t it?

Once you’ve got that basic sorted, it’s just a case of practice to feel that way pretty much all of the time.

And remember, you’re like a song to the people around you. If you pump a room full of happy frequency, you may even make grumpy people dance. If they don’t, tell them to get the heck out, then keep dancing.

The Angry Sun

Although the solar storm we’re experiencing at the moment is only a ‘worst in five years’ event, it’s chilling to consider the implications of something much stronger hitting our planet.

Solar storms come in the wake of violent activity on the Sun, such as a solar flares, causing mind-boggling amounts of gas to be flung out into space, travelling at around 2,000 kilometres per second (which is too fast even for a speed camera to take a photo of).

When this material pounds against Earth’s magnetic field (the magnetosphere), it causes a geomagnetic storm, and this can really create problems with anything electrical.

In 1859, the most powerful solar storm in recorded history knocked out telegraph systems, with poles sparking and operators being shocked at their desks. The telegraph was just about the height of technology at the time.

In 2012, rather than electrical contraptions being few and far between, or just for the wealthy, they’re everywhere. Modern society is totally reliant on hi-tech electrical and electronic equipment; even the Taliban use mobile phones.

But it’s not just smartphones, tablets, laptops, televisions, satellites and so on that we’d lose, should the planet be hit by a significantly more powerful solar blast wave… it’s not that we’d be sitting twiddling our thumbs at home, with nothing to play and nobody to talk to, online, and that would be the full extent of our problems… it’s that all of our systems would collapse at the same time, because they’re run with electronic equipment.

It could silence our communication system, so the only way you could deliver a message to someone would be to hand-write it and take it there yourself. Almost all vehicles have electronic systems and they’d all be redundant. There’d be no fuel… no heating… no water supply… no restocking of supermarket shelves… no banking… no effective police system… no government… no money any more.

Imagine a city the size of London or New York suddenly without water, food and heating, with no way of resupplying when stocks ran out, knowing that even if they tried to make a break for it, wherever they go, people are going to be in the same position – slowly starving to death, drinking from polluted rivers and literally fighting for their lives. Billions could die across the planet as the rest of humanity learnt to adapt, again, to a life without electronics.

It sounds like the scenario of a disaster movie, but this is something that could actually happen within our lifetime… even within the next year. The Sun reaches its Solar Maximum in 2013, and many more large solar flares are anticipated as that occurs.

The Electric Infrastructure Security Council – a massive, international panel of politicians and scientists, brought together to look at ways of preventing or coping with such an event - say, on their website: “… the probability that modern society will face such an event is essentially 100%”

Maybe it’s time to stock up on tins of beans and bottled water?

Time

I’m not an astro-physicist, but I’ve come to the conclusion that time doesn’t exist – that, rather than a dimension, it’s a measurement.

There is nothing that has happened, in time, that can’t be explained by the natural change of things.

The illusion of the Sun rising on this Earth comes from movement… the turning of the Earth and its rotation around the Sun. Yet, our Sun is perpetually moving around the gravitational centre of our galaxy, and our galaxy moves, too.

It’s a difficult concept to grasp… because it means that there really is just one moment, and everything changes within it. We are in a constant state of restructuring, and – in the sense of time – this is the same moment the dinosaurs were roaming the Earth; Christ was here; the Sun has exploded; the Universe began… the Universe ends.

If you consider a mountain, and if you believe that it’s been there for tens or hundreds of thousands of years, unmoving, then you’re wrong. It’s just a massive soup of atoms, in constant travel. A mountain is always moving.

Things change. Humans have a problem with this. It doesn’t sit well with our feelings of superiority over the rest of this world we live in, and on. But we die. In 100 years, everyone who reads this will be dead and gone. This is our fate on this small rock in the incomprehensible vastness of space.

The concept of time is just a way of us rationalising the change we can’t understand.

It’s actually quite liberating, when you remove the illusion of time, because you see that life is just this constant process of change and improvement, and we are the architects of the change we want in our own lives.

I’m not an astro-physicist… just a reminder, there.

A Brief History of Depression

“I’ve been to hell and back so many times, I must admit you kind of bore me.” – Ray LaMontagne

Being that I’m generally very happy, positive and enthusiastic about life and living, I sometimes encounter people who seem baffled as to how I could possibly talk with any authority on the subject of depression, let alone suggest it could - in many cases - be cured… which I firmly believe to be true.

Perhaps they hold the opinion that my life must always have been a bed of roses and I blog these bold and arrogant statements without having experienced anything more than feeling a little low?

There have even been suggestions that - because I didn’t kill myself - I can’t have been suicidal, as if the lack of making the final cut, so to speak, was a weakness.

What they don’t realise is, I went through hell…

I know that many, many people who have walked this planet have gone through or are going through worse ordeals of suffering, but in the sense of Western-world depression, I’ve ticked just about all the boxes except for executing a successful suicide… though that’s a very grim oxymoron if ever there was one.

I write about depression from the perspective of someone who’s been there. I spent over twenty years - more than half my life - inside that living nightmare and I speak openly and candidly about my experiences because I’d like to help others find their way through, too.

So… I’m going to use this blog to do two things: firstly, to give greater insight into the scale and depth of the depression I experienced; and then to explain the reasoning for my conviction that we can overcome it and remove it from our lives, as I have done.

If you’re already gritting your teeth and possibly whistling steam out of your ears at the suggestion that depression can be cured; if you think I’m meddling with things I can’t possibly understand… then I recommend you don’t read any further.

And before I carry on, I want to say that I’m not looking for sympathy in explaining some of the more intimate details of my experiences. From my perspective, here and now, I see every dark moment as a slab in the crazy-paved path that led me right to here, and I love my life. I am truly happy and have made peace with myself and all the content of my mind.

Scotland’s Action on Depression website lists the following as symptoms of depression:

http://www.actionondepression.org/depression/symptoms-of-depression?gclid=CJTc4uebwq0CFYuIfAod625rBg

• Feelings of hopelessness

• Inadequacy

• Anxiety

• Self-hatred

• Negativity

• An inability to enjoy things which were once pleasurable in life

• Guilt

• Agitation

• Weight loss or weight gain

• Loss of energy or motivation

• Loss of sex-drive

• Disturbed sleep

• Poor concentration, indecisiveness

• Irritability, anger

• Social withdrawal

• Unexplained aches and pains

• Self-harm

• Recurring thoughts of death or suicide

That list pretty much encompasses how my life used to be. I can relate to and have experienced every symptom, and they never came one at a time – they gang up.

I first started self-harming aged around 13. There was probably an element of bravado to begin with, because I used to do it with my mates, at school. We’d drag craft-knife blades across our forearms and see who could bleed the most, but when that fad wore out amonst my peers, I kept doing it. I’d cut myself, alone in my bedroom, choked up with deep, shoulder-rocking sobs and blinded by tears.

I was bullied at school, but also a bully. I’d get the occasional beatings, jibes, slaps across the head or punches in the back when I was walking along the corridors… and then I’d take it out on some other poor bugger (David – he forgave me, latterly), because it felt like my only means of control, when everything else in my life was so chaotic.

My parents had split up when I was nine or ten and my mother had to work crazy hours just to keep the proverbial wolf from the door. She’d leave for her factory job at six in the morning and return at nine at night. I had two older brothers still at home, but they both had jobs at a local hotel and usually worked in the evenings. I was almost completely unsupervised during those formative years, and without guidance, so began the descent.

I had a morbid fear of nuclear war and of people close to me dying. During my early teens, I lived in a constant state of terror, with the absolute certainty, however deluded, that I and all the people I loved were going to die in a fiery, atomic apocalypse. (This is why I advocate that people don’t live every day as if it’s their last… the last day is the shitty one.)

I was 22 ½ stone (315lbs/143kg) when I was aged 14. I was probably around six foot in height by then (being I’m 6’4” now), but I was disproportionately fat. It wasn’t condusive to the attraction of girlfriends.

I used to truant from school and buy – on credit, on my Mum’s account, from my local shop – loads of food. I remember Mr Kipling’s caramel slices, particularly. Afraid of every knock on the door, I used to hide away from the world and just eat. Sometimes, I made myself throw up, but most often I just hated myself and kept eating.

I stood on the outside of the parapet of Victoria Viaduct in Carlisle, on a ledge of about a foot, talking to policemen and explaining why it was my time to die. There was something like a hundred foot fall one step back from me, and I wanted to take that step. (The policeman lured me into talking to him, grabbed my arm and with the help of other rushing officers, pulled me over that wall.)

I’ve slit my wrist and seen the glutinous pool of blood spread across the desk, watching it and being afraid that this was it… that I’d be no more. Blood pumps out of you faster than you’d expect, if you have no expectations.

I remember being stomach pumped after a particularly nasty overdose, when I combined everything I had: sleepers, painkillers, anti-depressants… I wanted to die. I remember the tube down my throat, sucking out all the toxins, and not being able to swallow without pain the next day; and the next day, I still wanted to die – lying in my hospital bed, totally void of emotion, wishing I wasn’t there.

There were times I could watch women’s tennis and only be interested in the score.

I spent two occasions in mental hospitals. You don’t go there for fun.

I had agoraphobia and social phobia for years… I can’t remember most of my 20s. I didn’t step out of the house for months at end, at one point.

I almost pulled the life from myself, with that ligature in the woods.

I worried about everything… my past, my future… how I’d fucked up and how I hoped for better, but knew I’d fuck up again.

Now, I know I’m happy.

What I want to teach is that this really is possible – happiness is yours to take - and those who may pour disbelief and criticism upon my words are really not helping you or I.

I don’t pretend to know every form or manifestation of depression, but I’m guessing that a lot of you out there have experienced something of the above – and if you have, then the good news is that there is a cure… there is the truth that you don’t have to suffer until the end of your days believing that you have an eternal disease.

Depression is a lie we tell ourselves. It is nothing more than that.

It’s self-deceit.

Your own mind is attacking you; making you believe that you are it, when you are much more powerful than your thoughts.

This is the ego.

So, anyway, this is why I feel I’m qualified to talk about depression.

R.I.P. PC David Rathband

PC David Rathband

When I woke up, this morning, to learn that PC David Rathband was dead, apparently after taking his own life, I felt such deep sadness.

To those unaware of his plight, PC Rathband was shot in the face and blinded in the Summer of 2010 by a guy called Raoul Moat, who – after being released from a relatively short prison sentence, during which his girlfriend left him – decided to take revenge on the world.

He lay in ambush, then shot his girlfriend (who was lucky to survive), executed her new boyfriend (who he mistakenly believed was a police officer) and then went on a self-styled ‘rampage’ against the police, cowardly shooting PC Rathband while he was sitting in a patrol car.

Raoul Moat

Bizarrely and perversely, when Raoul Moat was on the run, he was celebrated, in some quarters, as a kind of Robin Hood character.

He was nothing of the sort.

Raoul Moat is a wretched example of the devastation that can arise from an unchecked ego. He took no responsibility for his own actions and, instead, tried to justify his murderous, jealous rage by blaming others for his situation.

While on the run, he wrote long, rambling letters about how he loved his girlfriend, yet before all this, he’d threatened her with a firearm because she said on Facebook that she was meeting a friend. If he really loved her, he would have let her get on with her life, rather than regarding her as a possession that some other man had stolen away from him.

He blamed the police for messing up his life, when he’d been sent to prison for violent assault against a younger member of his own family. His jail sentence was of his own making.

He died from self-inflicted shotgun wounds after a long stand-off, when he was cornered by armed police. Before his end, he held the gun to his head for hours, crying that nobody loved him.

David Rathband was just doing his job when he got caught up the wake of Raoul Moat’s messed up mind, and I find it difficult to regard David’s death as suicide, because his life was taken some 20 months earlier by Moat. As well as losing both of his eyes in the attack, he lost the ability to do the job he loved and, in the later part of last year, he moved away from his wife and family.

He was in constant pain, due to the nerve damage from his injuries, and, sadly, never made peace with the changes in his life.

A statement on the charity David founded after the attack – The Blue Lamp Foundation – which supports criminally injured members of the emergency services in the UK, as well as their families, reads:

It is with great sadness that we learn of the death of David Rathband.

Since being shot in July 2010, David struggled to come to terms with his horrific injuries and the traumatic effect they had on him and his family and friends.

David’s legacy will live on in the form of The Blue Lamp Foundation, which bears his name.   The Foundation was started by David to help emergency services personnel injured in the line of duty as the result of a criminal act.

It was David’s wish that those who found themselves in a similar position to him could receive the support that wasn’t available to him at the time.

David’s family have asked that their privacy be respected at this time and they are allowed the time and space to reflect and grieve.

I’m sure that there is life after this life, and I hope, wherever David Rathband went to, Raoul Moat was there to meet him and, through the forgiveness that comes from a mind stripped of ego, both are at peace.

Some people may struggle with the idea that Raoul Moat deserves forgiveness, or that he would even to go to the same place as David Rathband, but Moat’s actions were just an extreme of what so many of us do in our lives… unless we were born as a Zen master.

How many of us can say that, when we’re having a bad day, we don’t let others know about it? How many of us can honestly say that we’ve never tried to shift the blame of responsibility for failure arising from our own actions on to those close to us, or to the wider populace, or institutions, or the government?

Too often, we look for someone else to blame, rather than accepting that we just didn’t get it right this time. We give up rather than try harder.

The lesson is to learn that when we mess up, we present ourselves with the opportunity to change, improve and build a better life for ourselves.

If Raoul Moat had have realised this, all the devastation that he caused wouldn’t have happened, and maybe he’d have found love with some other woman; his ex-girlfriend could have been happy with her new man; David Rathband would still be with us, though anonymously, just getting on with his job and his life.

Instead, along with many others across the UK and the wider world, my heart goes out to PC Rathband’s family and friends as they come to terms with their heart-breaking loss.

R.I.P.