The Norway Atrocities, Amy Winehouse, Judgement & Compassion

I was going to write a blog about Friday’s horrific bombing and subsequent shooting massacre in  Norway, and the very clear connection with the dysfunctional mind…

… then I heard about Amy Winehouse’s death…

… so I decided I’d write a blog about the Norway atrocities and the passing of Amy Winehouse, and the common link in both tragedies… the dysfunctional mind…

… then I read this, on Twitter:

“91 innocents lost to us - why should I give a damn about a drug addicted singer who couldn't cope with fame and fortune! #perspective”

… a third, though more subtle example of the dysfunctional mind.

I wrote this, last week, in the 2012 & the Awakening Phenomenon blog I posted here:

"You are the key component in the transformation from a violent, greedy, ever-judgemental society, towards a veritable heaven on Earth."

Judgement/prejudgement/prejudice is one of the greatest, most destructive, most abhorrent flaws of our species. It is a virulent psychological disease that has driven the slaughter of millions upon millions of people.

It is an absence of compassion. Compassion is not a discriminatory virtue.

It was judgement and a vacuum of compassion that had Anders Behring Breivik calmly walking around Utoeya island, on Friday, summarily executing scores of children.

Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Stalin, Pol Pot, Ida Amin… they weren’t some supernatural incarnations of evil in human form… they were human beings, with human minds… subject to the same dysfunction we are all prone to, if left unchecked.

None of these people single-handedly killed the tens of millions they are collectively deemed to be responsible for murdering…

… like a psychic virus, their judgement and lack of compassion spread, rank and file… starting with an influence of hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands…

Judgement can begin in one person, or one group of people, and end with millions dead. You only have to look at the history books to see that truth.

Going back to that Twitter comment…

“91 innocents lost to us - why should I give a damn about a drug addicted singer who couldn't cope with fame and fortune! #perspective”

This was similar to many other posts I saw which displayed selective compassion… judgement… hypocrisy…

Amy Winehouse was 27-years-old; a young woman, and from my perspective of being ten years older, just a kid. She was an immensely gifted singer and songwriter – a proper genius with her music – yet haunted by her own mind.

While I don’t know how or why she actually died, it’s clear that she had struggled for many years to find compassion in herself, for herself… and it’s a given that the process of addiction led to and was exacerbated by self-doubt, low self-esteem and real human agony… a shadow-life of self-judgement… critical over-thinking and inner-torture.

She lost the fight.

People that never knew her other than from tabloid news stories - who were probably singing the praises of the fall of the News of the World in the UK, earlier this month, despite getting all their gossip and having their sense of moral superiority inflated by the perpetual judgement spouted by that socially toxic publication and its ilk – are smarming to themselves, saying they saw it coming, and they display absolutely no compassion to a life lost in such tragic circumstances.

When you break down the truly shocking Norway death-toll of 92 (for the confirmed dead… and there are four people missing from Utoeya, and possibly more bodies in unstable, bombed-out buildings in Oslo) you find that they become individual tragedies…

For each life lost, there’s a devastated family with their hearts broken, right now… parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins… girlfriends and boyfriends… friends…

How different is their incomprehensible grief to that of Amy Winehouse’s mother and father, waking up this morning and remembering their little girl is dead?

…

Practice compassion… not judgement…

If you catch yourself judging people, if you say the wrong words, don’t beat yourself up… don’t judge yourself, too… forgive and let go. Learn and return to compassion.

Judgement will always lead us down dark paths, both in the mind and in society, and it spreads like a plague.

Compassion will always lead us to the light, and the more you practice it - the more you display it and make it part of your life - the more people around you will practice it, too.

We have a simple choice that can steer the direction of mankind… to destruction, or to salvation.

Judgement or compassion.

Which do you choose?

2012 & The Awakening Phenomenon

It’s important that you read this post slowly and carefully, as it contains vital information about your life. Imagine your voice is being played back in slow motion;  reduce the speed of the movement of your eyes as you look across the page and read every word, and please ensure you absorb the entire post.

The awakening phenomenon is occurring all over the planet.

Irrespective of race, creed, colour and all other demographic labels,  people are letting go of their emotional chains and destructive mental patterns – microcosmic of the symptomatic dysfunction in consciousness of a civilisation that has been corrupted over thousands of years by the will of the few – and are waking up to their true nature, their true potential, their true power and to true life.

This is actually happening.

I know some people reading will be rolling their eyes and thinking I’ve been on the gin, but it’s more than likely you know someone who has gone through the same seemingly impossible shift of consciousness, even if they’re not quite sure what exactly happened, yet.

Ask around…

And then, some of you – quite a lot of you, it seems – will know exactly what I mean, because you’ve either woken up already or have begun that process of awakening.

I’ve received a lot of comments, Tweets and emails on the subject of awakening since applying steam to the work I want to do through my blog, and it seems that at least every other day, I meet someone else who has woken up… and people of all backgrounds; just normal, everyday folk, who have stumbled into what appears to be a miraculous new world.

I’ve also had quite a few emails on the subject of 2012 and the connection to awakenings, and how we should ‘prepare’ ourselves for the events of next year.

For the uninitiated, the advent of 2012 – specifically, Friday 21^st December, 2012  - brings with it the end of the time and space… the Universe will cease to be…

… or it could be less widespread, and involve a global cataclysm, bringing about the end of the world…

… or the collapse of civilisation as we know it…

… or we may be liberated from our folly by aliens who will finally reveal themselves to us, disarm all our weapons, cleanse our environment and help us grow up as a species… 

… or we may shift from the third dimension to the fourth, fifth and sixth dimensions – and some bright spark is going to make a fortune from selling special glasses if this particular prophecy comes true.

There are even some people who believe that 2012 will lead to… 2013…

Heretics!

Basically, you can find thousands of different theories and variations of theories on the subject… and obviously not all of them are going to happen, if any at all… so which of the people behind these bold statements are telling the truth, which are exaggerating the possibilities and which – as we say here in England – are talking out of their arses?

I have no idea, to be quite honest, but here’s my take on how to deal with the oncoming whatever of 2012…

Don’t worry about it.

Just put it out of your mind completely, because it’s 2011 at the time of writing this…

Even if you’re reading this in the future, in the actual space-year 2012, don’t let it stress you. The very fact that you’re cozied up, browsing the internet, shows that nothing particularly bad is happening to you at the very moment of reading these words.

I suppose there is a remote possibility that you’re reading this right on 21^st December, 2012, and you’re looking out of your penthouse window at the approaching Godzilla, knowing you’re about to die, and you have the urge to write one last comment on my blog, stating - probably with lots of exclamation marks at the end - that I was very, very wrong.

If that’s the case, I’m sorry – but if you’d read my blog earlier than now, you’d have had the foresight to buy a microlight for just such a situation, wouldn’t you? It’s not that you couldn’t have afforded it, what with the cost of that fancy apartment. You’d be up on the roof already, laughing as you crank up the engine and put on your flying goggles.

I digress…

I know that the awakening phenomenon is a truth, because I’ve been lucky enough to experience it first-hand.

I also know that those who haven’t yet experienced it first-hand have no idea whether I’m telling the truth, simply because it sounds so implausible that I could shift from being a ‘lifer depressive’ to being completely at peace, with ancient wisdom spontaneously flooding my head, within the space of an hour.

I love the idea of UFOs appearing all over the planet next year - and I have watched quite a lot of footage on YouTube of some very mysterious sightings - but do I really believe that they’re going to reveal themselves, en-mass?

No…

How could I possibly be 100% sure of that and say yes?

And it’s not that I don’t believe in intelligent life from other planets… in fact, the complete opposite is true – of course there must be. You just have to look up on a clear night and realise how many other stars and galaxies there are out there in the Universe, and of course there’s life out there, with species that have survived and developed for millions and millions of years, compared to the human civilisation which is only about 13,000 years old.

It’s just that when I read messages posted on the Internet (often with shocking grammar) from these so-called ancient masters of the cosmos, announcing that they are about to carry out complete disclosure and uncloaking of the motherships that are already stationed in Earth’s orbit, it all sounds a bit like someone has been on the gin and, with whatever good intent, they’re basically typing out something that other people would love to actually happen and may retweet or like on Facebook.

For me to believe this, it’s really going to be a case of them beaming into my room, looking me in the eye, and saying, either vocally or telepathically: “It’s cool, Les, we’re real and we’re here to save the world!”

Then I’d say: “Ace! But don’t ask me to spread your message to the wider world, because I have a big file at my doctor’s surgery that states I’ve been a bit of a mentalist in the past – so would you go and tell everyone else now, please?”

And I’m totally open to the fact that there may be people who have had direct contact with these beings… whether classed as aliens or angels or whatever else… but the truth is that I haven’t, so it would be wrong of me to make statements to the contrary by passing on information that I can’t verify as fact.

The difference between the awakenings and all these other speculations and predictions is that you already have this same peace and knowledge inside you, and all it will take for you to shift your consciousness is the awareness of that consciousness.

Unless you have some genuine physiological condition that affects your brain functions, it is possible for you to wake up right now.

It’s not possible for you to see a flotilla of alien craft in space right now. It’s not possible for you to witness what may happen on 21^st December 2012 right now. It’s not possible for you to be in some alternate dimension right now… I know that because I don’t publish my blog there, yet, though I do have a Google+ account.

You are here, right now…

... now… if you took notice of the first paragraph of this post, you’ll have been reading slow and carefully to this point.

The physical reading of the words and the attention you gave them anchored you into the present moment.

Assuming you did place your full attention on the words… where did those scathing thoughts about that part of your body you’re unhappy with go while you were reading? Or about the bill you were worried about paying? Or the pain of that relationship that never worked out? Or that person who bullied you 20 years ago, at school?

Your mind was silenced by the attention to the moment.

And through that silence, you awakened… however briefly…

This same silence is there when people read books, listen to music, dance, laugh, paint, sculpt, write, surf, skydive, stare out across the beauty of mountain landscapes and make love (not all at the same time, unless you’re some ace multi-tasker).

It’s through freedom from the destructive, repetitive, critical dialogue of the mind that we experience the greatest joys of real life.

And when you disarm the dysfunctional, egoic mind, you simultaneously remove yourself from the dysfunctional collective consciousness that causes the wider horrors in humanity.

At any point during the careful reading of this post did you feel a strong urge to have your country go to war with another nation? Did you have a particular revulsion to homosexuality, people you may have earlier considered were the wrong colour, or a staunch belief that women shouldn’t drive cars or be able to vote?

Present awareness gives you the peace within to force the silence of the mind that allows you to wake up, to experience true consciousness… and that’s why I would say that nobody should be worried about 2012, or any of the possibilities to come, because you have life available to you right now.

To change the world, we must first change within – and this internal change is absolutely possible, as you know, because you’ve just proven to yourself that you can silence your mind and rid yourself of all the destructive mental debris that you may have felt would never allow you to change.

This is more important to you than possible UFO saviours, developing an understanding of crystals and energy balancing, or trying to prepare, emotionally, for a cataclysm.

You are the change.

You are the key component in the transformation from a violent, greedy, ever-judgemental society, towards a veritable heaven on Earth.

And when you’re there, in the moment, at peace, loving your life, you’ll know that all that’s needed to make that change happen across the whole planet is more people just like you.

Titan Talks!

Whoooooop! I just found this short video inside a musty folder in a dark corner of my computer, close to the chain-sealed files that the photographs of me with a pony-tail live.

Although the image quality isn't very quality, this is my favourite clip of my little guy, Titan - simply because of his excellent meowing performance.

You can also hear me speaking fluent Cat back to him.

This must have been taken six or seven years ago... and he doesn't look a day older. Meanwhile, I've lost all of the hair on my head and occasionally find new ones in my ears.

Lovely Titan.

Introducing... Titan the Ticklepuss!

This is short video featuring my excellent little friend, Titan (aka ‘The Ticklepuss’), who really is the happiest and friendliest cat I’ve ever had the pleasure to encounter, in my life.

There’s a true-life incident, featuring him, elsewhere on my blog, in the ‘The Curious Incident of the Cat in the Daytime’ post, which recounts the time he very nearly had me sectioned under the Mental Health Act. Go have a look, if you haven’t already…

I can’t recall a single time that Titan wasn’t purring: he purrs when you look at him or call his name, as soon as he wakes up, when din-dins is being served, when din-dins is being eaten… in fact, even whenever the phrase din-dins is used; when he’s sitting hopefully at the back door, meowing loudly to go outside, and particularly when the door is open and he can run about the garden, chasing things that only exist in his crazy brain.

He also has the nickname of ‘Pavarotti’, because he enjoys singing so much – and he’s actually very good at it, but his catty renditions of Nessun Dorma aren’t greatly appreciated at 3am, when he’s standing hopefully at the back door, purring, foolishly thinking he’ll actually be let out at that time.

Unfortunately, as lovable as he is, it seems his nemesis is his own brother, Orion – a very lovable, but occasionally very grumpy big ball of black fluff. Although they never hurt each other, they do quite a lot of slow-motion fighting, like some cat version of The Matrix.

Their mother, Scratchy, also doesn’t seem too fond of Titan, as he sniffs her bum a lot… she quickly sees him off with some fast-motion ninja strikes to the face, though.

Despite all this discord, and the fact that they pretend not to get along under the watchful eyes of humans, they are quite often  found all snuggled together in a big lump of fluff, fast asleep.

When Scratchy had her second litter of kittens, I once walked in and found Titan – who was about a year old at the time - lying on the bed with her. He had nudged the mewing kittens out of the way and was securely fastened to one of Scratchy’s titties, purring very loudly indeed. I can clearly recall that the look on Scratchy’s face suggested she was thinking, “Wtf?” and Titan had an expression of rumblement as he looked up at me.

Another thing about Titan is that, when the other two cats call me off the computer and I get on my bed to stroke them, you can guarantee that Titan will be there within 30 seconds, sitting at the foot of the bed. He has incredible intuition when it comes to cats that aren’t him being stroked. I can literally start counting down when I get on the bed, and there will be a dull thump from elsewhere in the house, then his little black ears will appear nearby.

I was there at the moment he was born, and we were friends before then, too, when he was just a bump in Scratchy’s belly.

Shiny Mind. Shiny Head. (Video)

I love my life. I go to bed happy, dream happy things, wake up happy and then have a happy time happily carrying out happy tasks, before I repeat that whole happy process the next happy day.

If I could bottle this, I’d happily give it away to everyone in the world – even Rupert Murdoch.

The great thing is, you don’t need that… you already carry the magic formula within you, and you just have to recognise it’s there for it to begin working.

My life has changed so much for the better, but that hasn’t come about from reading a library of books on enlightenment, sitting in a dark room, chin-on-fist, pondering the workings of the Universe, or even through extensive treatment with electro-shock therapy…

… it’s our natural state of being, when we recognise that the things we allow our minds to obsess on and worry about aren’t actually important at all.

Bobby McFerrin was right…

My Second Mountain (Video)

I mentioned Grange Fell in The Illusion of Loneliness blog back in May – and this video was taken from one of its three summits… the highest, called Brund Fell, which rises over the Borrowdale Valley, with views north towards Derwentwater, Keswick and Bassenthwaite in the English Lake District.

I climbed this mountain by accident…

Last Autumn, I was living and working at a hotel in Rossthwaite, a small village in Borrowdale, and since there was no Vodafone signal in the valley, my fancy iPhone had become little more than an alarm clock and MP3 player.

I heard tell that there was a great signal up in the hills – though I used to walk up about 800-900ft each day or two, to my meditation point (from where I took the background photograph that’s on both this blog and my Twitter page), and I didn’t get any bars on the phone there…

… so, one day, I decided to head up to the highest part of the hill I could find, and ended up at this spectacular position.

I didn’t realise it had a name, at the time, or that it was so high. At 1363ft, I was almost 90ft closer to space than when I climbed The Steeple, in Lochgoilhead.

And when I got up to the top, my phone started chiming like a bell falling down an escalator, with all the messages and alerts finally able to get through. I even made a few phone calls from up there, not that the people I phoned likely heard more than the sound of the gusting wind.

Here are a few photos, too, which you can click on to see them full size:

Sheep. Boy. Love.

During one of the long, lazy summers of my youth, while the schools were on their extended break, I worked for a fortnight – along with my older brother - on my godmother’s farm. I think I would have been ten-years-old at the time, and, thinking about it now, I’m not sure that was entirely legal…  or at all safe… but I was young and I needed the money… for sweets.

On hindsight, it was a mostly ghastly job. If I wasn’t scooping up cow poo from the cattle sheds, or choking on the dust from lugging around hay bales, I was putting rubber rings around baby baa-lamb’s scrotums or chopping off their tails with a very sharp knife… at the time reassured that it didn’t hurt them at all, though that seems like complete twaddle as I write this.

There was a lot of death on that farm, but not a lot of care. I remember finding drowned kittens in a water trough, watching crows vaporise from the blast of a shotgun… It didn’t do much for my appreciation of farmers. Ronnie, who ran the place, was the sort of guy who would shoot your dog and not bat an eyelid. Farming was in his blood, though… that’s the life he’d lived, all his life, and as the farm had been passed down through the generations, he knew no different.

One day, Ronnie had us all – my brother and I, and two of my godmother’s boys who we were the best of mates with – jump in the tractor trailer, and he drove us up to one of the fields, telling us there was a lame sheep that he had to take to the vet… which was quite a surprise, because I would have assumed that he’d have preferred to have shot it, while laughing.

When we found her, we could see she was in a state. She must have caught her leg in a barbed wire fence, as the flesh had been ripped quite badly… and while struggling, she’d used her forehead to try to break free, leaving a nasty wound.

Ronnie tied her legs – so she couldn’t leap away, not that she looked as though she was in the condition to do so – and we loaded her into the trailer. Obviously, she was in a lot of pain and agitated, but my brother and I sat beside her and stroked her, giving her as much reassurance as we could offer. Before long, as we drove the few miles to the vet, she had calmed down… her breathing had slowed and she seemed very relaxed when we reached our destination.

We took her down from the trailer and into the vet’s, and – since Ronnie was obviously a very busy man and had things to shoot – headed back to the farm.

A year later…

… I was fishing in a stream in one of the farm’s fields, in a beautiful, mossy glade, far away from roads. It was just the countryside, a few grazing sheep, the sound of birds and me… never any fish. I was a completely rubbish fisherman.

I was just sitting on the bank, whiling the day away, when I was nudged in the back, nearly knocking me into the water.

I turned around and saw a sheep standing there, just looking at me…

… and she had a bald patch on her forehead, where there was a large, healed scar.

She’d remembered me. Those brief moments of care and attention the year previous must never have left her, and when she recognised me, she came over to say hello.

Maybe my brother and I were the first (and perhaps only) human beings who had ever treated her with love, rather than as a cash-crop?

She sat down beside me for a while as I continued not catching fish, then went back to the flock when Ronnie appeared in his tractor on the far side of the field at feeding time.

I never saw her again… but I smile when she crosses  my mind, though that’s tempered with a tinge of sadness, as I’ve never been vegetarian for more than a few months. She was no dumb animal. I saw her in pain, she responded to love, and she remembered me. It seems so callous that I’d still eat her kind, when I know how intelligent they are. It’s time to make another life-change.