WHAT WOULD HAPPEN – LY DE ANGELES

If Everyone Started Telling the Truth

(Rewilded title from a truck bumper Sticker)

(First printed in Pagan Vision for a Sustainable Future, Llewellyn USA, 2005)

Introduction

If you don’t watch videos that reveal a future dark and dangerous, controlled and grey, with black-masked cops wielding lasers and stun guns, that doesn’t mean that millions of others avoid that film. Are entertained. Play World of Warcraft like it’s a switch-off after a day’s work in retail. Some worry. A few realise how close we are to that virtual future. One could almost become paralysed. Paranoid. Convinced, because virtual means almost, and I am old enough to remember that eventualities occur because of somebody’s capacity to speculate. You see I was born into a world with hardly any plastic, no TV, no computers, no mobile phones and no satellites. Can you imagine?

So walk a little further into the future and ask yourself if you’ve done enough.

Imagine, if you can, the seventh generation. Does it matter that your name is not remembered? No. But I’m aware that one person (just one person) can affect an incalculable number of people with an appropriate and truthful narrative. The very thing that affects species the most, outside of the basic necessities of food, sex, shelter, sleep and health, is excitation. And what excites? Interaction. Doesn’t matter with what. And what is the key here? Communication. Whether through words, gesture, expression, sensation or manipulation, cellular division, communication is [our] species’ most exciting (and devastating) tool.

Part 1

There’s too much talking. And talking, much of the time, has taken on a seriously flawed agenda. Either personal or social propaganda in an era of sensory assault. I would be naïve to believe that people had not used lying or distortions of the truth for gain or profit (in whatever form) for a very long time. One merely needs to know sufficiently of history to get the big picture. But… At no other known time has there been an atmosphere so degraded, so filled with energetic chatter, so burdened with radio-waves, microwaves, electrical interference as now. Not that I know of, that is.

The Big Picture

Time and space and matter are all made up of energy in some great dance and song. Light joins the festival telling us, as a species of life, just how fine is starlight. Everything that is emits. Everything in the continuum of living and dying (which is all progression from something to something else) is entwined with everything else in an endless season of energetic symbiosis, constantly changing in patterns that the naked eye cannot see but that our bodies know. Our DNA hold the knowledge of forever (Big Bang being merely a theory of possible beginnings because what comes from nothing).

Let’s throw away the idea that anything is inanimate. Physical forms might not all breathe the way that we do but in a universe so complex, who would have the audacity as to assume we were special anyway? Suns and stars and tables and worms, mould and plastic and cold, cold iron – all emit. All express energy in whatever their state of growth or entropy. One photon a trillion light years away from Alpha Centauri dances a pattern. Another photon another trillion light years away knows about this because all expressions of energy nestle in a sea of infinite space that is very good at not losing anything.

Localise

Earth provides her progeny with everything. If it isn’t here we don’t know about it. We are getting to the point that we think we understands an awful lot about energy, from particle physics and quantum mechanics to chaos theory. And more often the new sciences recognise that energy and our understanding of consciousness are not separate. That nothing is separate, but inter-relative, therefore our symbiosis with Earth is, of course, mutual. So what are we doing stuffing it up?

Our relationship with Earth is as seriously damaged as a pair of friends where one person does all the talking and the other ends up very bored because they are being treated like a wall. Lovers playing power-over games. Doing the Drama Triangle (to the eventual demise of the relationship). Politicians pretending to listen to the people they are meant to represent but who go ahead and make war anyway. Scientists devoutly inventing another noxious toxin and telling us how beneficial it will all be. And hardly anyone is listening to other voices because, should they, the ramifications to greed and avarice would be staggering.

Personalise

Check Your Current Reality: Questions to ask yourself

Note: your answers are best kept private unless you have already resolved the experiment.

Who do you live with and what is your relationship to these people?
Is your relationship to those with whom you live different to the relationship you have with your friends? If so, how and why?
Do you hold a job? If so who are you around your workmates and bosses?
If you are studying what is your relationship to a. the tutors and b. the subject matter of your study? Is the subject matter of your study aligned with a vocation[1]?

What is the quality of communication like with those in question one? Is the quality based on a pecking order of imposed household authority? What are your responses when faced with dispute? Is it debate, argument, someone walking out and slamming the door, one of you waiting to see who says sorry first, resentment, guilt, anxiety, violence, boredom? Is your household comfortable with silences or do others think there’s a problem if one of you is not speaking for their own reasons? Do any of you seek to interfere with another’s choices without discussion?
What is the colour of your conversations with your friends? Do you ever branch into dangerous topics that could offend another’s’ viewpoint? Do you regularly discover things to talk about? Are you comfortable with these people when there’s nothing to say?
Does your job cause you satisfaction? Why? Do you question the motives of the business with which you are currently employed? How do you relate to authority; your own or that of others?
Do you ever really listen to your seemingly-random thoughts? If so, can you discern the different layers of thought?
Do you think about what you say when you say it or do you find yourself repeating material in a repertoire?
Do you ever communicate, internally, with someone or something that you know is not you?
What, to you, constitutes authority?
Do you have unique thoughts and/or ‘original’ conversations or are they based on pre-learned parameters?
Do you question everything that you are told or taught?
Do you question yourself on issues, ideals, ideologies, beliefs, ethics, moralities and information upon which you base your judgments or opinions? Do you change when the above are undermined (or do you fight like a demon to be seen as consistent)?
When listening to another person speaking, do you actually listen without bias?

Answering these questions can change you. Especially if you allow yourself to answer freely and to enter into debate regarding the questions, your answers and what you really feel in the depths of yourself. Do you even care? Does it matter? Does anyone you know care? Are you living in a vacuum?

What happens next is the experiment.

The experiment has nothing to do with talking and everything to do with listening – listening very deeply.

Listening deeply requires that you use more than your ears. Listening requires that you use your hearing in conjunction with your eyes, your sense of atmosphere, your gut.

The experiment requests that…

Section 1

you initiate no conversations
you only respond to what is said to you
you do not automatically think of what you will say next
you recognise your pre-conditioned biases and emotional responses
you respond to any and all conversations without pre-conceived parameters of relationship

Section 2

you observe the body language of the person with whom you are engaged in conversation
you remain aware of the spaces between your bodies as this is a strong indicator of the emotional state of the person towards you
you remain aware of your bodily responses to the conversation and learn to trust them – they are a truer receptivity barometer than your intellect when any emotional content enters into the conversation
you never pre-judge a person by the glamour they present, rather you remain alert to the equality of all people, no matter how educated in the so-called western modality.

I never found it necessary to keep a record of my participation and observations in these experiments, rather I discovered the ability to be free within all interactions and to respond honestly, whether it gets me into hot water or not. The people closest to me are aware of what I am doing and in most cases they are engaged in the same experiment.

FIRST DO NO HARM—examples (self and others) OF PERSONA GARMENTS

The Arguer: debate, keeping the object of debate at the constant foreground of conversation, does not lead to argument unless the participants become emotionally attached to being seen as right. It is no longer, then, a debate but a debacle that will leave both or all parties debilitated and distressed

The Manipulator: emotional manipulation utilises many criteria: guilt, flattery, conspiracy, destructive criticism, arrogance, vulnerability, constant agreement, denial, comparison – you can tell which is which by the inflation/deflation ratio

The Quoter: this person will use ‘the big guns’ of authority by quoting the works of others as a reference upon which to base their opinions

The White-Lighter: well, mostly they don’t engage, they just tell you what’s good for you and talk at you about stuff that makes them feel good about themselves

The Perennial Parent: is constantly thinking they know what’s best for others, based on their own experience, socially, spiritually, morally and emotionally. This behaviour seeks to impose uniformity onto individuality without recourse to differences. Many politicians and religious leaders do this. So do people with something to gain. So do those who need a mirror to their own psyches

The Victim: there are two kinds of victim in the world. Those with choices and those without. Those people who have choices can choose to change their current realities but the Victim will not, rather using that consciousness to attract sympathy in order to control another

Real victims (of any species or life-form) have no choices. They are legion, and altering the ways we communicate and listen are one of their chances of escape. They do not have a voice. They are not heard.

What you will be doing, as a result of actively engaging in this experiment, is to break down, or through, conditioning. You will be altering your emission – your harmonic – and that will have an effect upon the collective field. Enough alteration: overall change to the human harmonic affecting life.

The Rescuer: a mix of perennial parent, white lighter, the manipulator. This individual could actually be a rescuer. Problems only start when they identify as having done that for you. Do you ow them? Was the resce necessary? Are your boundaries breached because you had that experience of helplessness and they ‘saved’ you? Admiration for First Responders everywhere, and those humans who see what needs doing and does it. But let us take into account Hippocrates: FIRST DO NO HARM. A rescuer can get their dopamine hits from how good they feel helping you up when you’re on your arse, literally or figuratively. Be aware, however, that in social and familiar relationships the ‘rescuer’ can often want payback.

The above can read as cynical. You know as well as I that it isn’t. We have a sort of duty to defend the whole of ourselves, and to listen to the microbiome; be aware when all those trillions of people that make you, you, when they project that sensation in the gut or the heart. They pick their organs as ecological language/weather forms of communication. With an estimated 2.6 billion years of genomic experience they are not controlled by religion, media, populism or ideology. They simply want the ecstasy of living.

Science and Mysticism

Each human being is born with a talent[2] that can grow, deeper and more expansive—a recognised attending genius—and once realised and expressed, life takes on meaning. No one talent is more important than another, they are simply different and those differences are what makes life exciting. Volcanic, tidal, architectural.

Sometimes a talent can seem like a gift and other times a curse. It’s curse-like when one is unable or incapable of following through on realisations. For example, I can predict the future for others but I cannot prevent what seems like misfortune from happening. I can hear the desolation emitting from the gorillas in a zoo but I cannot release them. I can pick up the despair of the refugees in enforced detention centres but my only recourse is protest.

I hear them in the other voices of nature. I listen to other animals and we talk the same language of feeling and sensation, necessity and humour. It’s human beings who are in a serious state of communication-crisis. So often, what is said is not what is meant, or is said for the sake of talking, or is what I call the broken record conversation, or what is said has a hidden agenda of want. Conversations with people who have been damaged, emotionally, and who have never released their attachment to the experience that caused the dysfunction can be deeply akin to psychic vampires. What all of them have in common – what everyone has in common – is that they emit. These emissions are what are currently distorting life’s patterns and this will affect the future; this is affecting the future.

What sound is

In 1787, the jurist, musician and physicist Ernst Chladni published Entdeckungen über die Theorie des Klangesor (Discoveries Concerning the Theory of Music).In this and other pioneering works, Chladni laid the foundations for that discipline within physics known now as acoustics, the science of sound. Among Chladni’s successes was the discovery of a way to make sound visible. With the help of a violin bow, which he drew perpendicularly across the edge of flat plates covered with sand, he produced those patterns and shapes which today are called Chladni Figures. What was the significance of this discovery? Chladni demonstrated once and for all that sound actually does affect physical matter and that it has the quality of creating geometric patterns.

This is calledcymatics (<Gk Kyma or ta kymatika: matters pertaining to waves). The study of wave phenomena is a science that was pioneered by Hans Jenny (1904-1972), a Swiss medical doctor and natural scientist. He conducted experiments animating inert powders, pastes, and liquids into life-like, flowing forms, which mirrored patterns found throughout nature, art and architecture. What’s more, all of these patterns were created using simple sine wave vibrations within the audible range. So what you see is a physical representation of vibration, or how sound manifests into form through the medium of various materials.

Dr. Jenny’s methodology was meticulous, well documented, and totally repeatable. His fascinating body of work offers profound insights into both the physical sciences and esoteric philosophies. It illustrates the very principles which inspired the ancient Greek philosophers Heraclites, Pythagoras and Plato, on down to Giordano Bruno and Johannes Kepler, the fathers of modern astronomy.

Sound in Relativity to Emission

The easiest and most familiar way to study vibration is through sound. Just as the many and varied alphabets of the world encompass all possible words in verbal language, the octave structure encompasses all possible vibrations of sound, and reveals the simple way that they fit together. Chaos theory might call the octave an attractor, meaning that all vibrations of sound, however chaotic or random they might be from one to the next, must be attracted into the octave structure.

An identical level of this octave of vibration occurs in the visible light spectrum[3], where we recognise seven colours before encountering other, more subtle, levels (or octave of vibrations) such as infrared, ultra-violet, X-rays, gamma waves. Science tells us that packets or units of energy known as photons form the basis for light, and we now know that the frequency of the photons that create visible light are simply a finer octave of vibration than the sound frequencies of the musical octave. In other words, you could take the numerical ratios between each note in the musical Diatonic scale and double them many times over, and eventually you would find the same, identical ratios between the vibrational speeds of the light spectrum. The only difference is the magnitude- sound is vibrating much more slowly, whereas light is vibrating much more quickly.

The Sound of Magic – Time

Clairaudience, clairvoyance, clairsentience: the same but different.

Philosophy is written in this grand book – I mean universe – which stands continuously open to our gaze, but which cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth. Galileo (1623)[4]

If, sitting here, I was to prophesy about the next 50 years only, I could do so with a probability ratio, oh randomly, of about a 99.9% certainty, we’re in for big trouble. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that right now, in the early years of the 21^st Century, we’re at a point of environmental and social critical mass. I could throw up my arms and get really upset about all the issues facing life (all life) but—

a.) that would only add to the problem (based on the aforementioned conversation) and

b.) it wouldn’t make sense. I have read tarot for other people for decades. They come from everywhere, all walks of life, hold a myriad of differing viewpoints on life, the universe and everything, and year after year that which is foretold comes to pass. How? What is it that allows a seemingly random shuffle of seventy-eight cards to predict events that seemingly have not yet happened?

The events have already happened.

Matter and energy

I remember a couple of scientists talking on ABC Radio National back in the 80’s. They were visiting Australia on a discussion tour. They had done studies of differing forms of divination for a year and had come to the conclusion that “tarot defies the law of probability” more than any other form of foretelling. Up until then I’d always wondered but had never had the keys to look for answers to the mystery of what I do. I undertook some basic study of quantum physics and read Gleick’s book on Chaos Theory, pondered, in awe, such things as the Mandelbrot Set and Fractal Geometry.

If we take into account the theory of the Big Bang then light (remembering that it’s a vast thing and the naked eye sees only a very small section), which is both particle and wave, occurred instantaneously throughout the universe. Matter, on the other hand, seems to be taking its time catching up, which is why our universe is said to be in a continuous state of expansion.

As nothing comes from nothing we were the Big Bang, albeit in a different state of vibration: both light and matter on an arrow-flight through conceptual evolution, however virtual. Now whether we consider our current selves as human or otherwise is really irrelevant; whatever we even contemplate our ancestors as having been is really irrelevant. What is most profound is our having been there, because if we hadn’t been there we wouldn’t be here now. The mere fact that our haemoglobin contains iron; that our insides slosh around in vast quantities of a fusion of hydrogen² and oxygen (and that hydrogen is what fuels stars) is fact. That our bodies follow a seemingly adequate set of parameters and reproduction indicates that they remember having been around forever … and that surely after several billion we’ve experienced most everything in one manner or another.

When a person shuffles my tarot cards they are actually sorting them into order. Because everything has been experienced that person doesn’t need to look at the images, like a very proficient pianist does not have to look at where their fingers are going (and in some cases to look would be to stop the music) because the music is in them. I interpret what the person is telling me because quite often when you’re involved in your life you lack objectivity. This is where the strange part comes in. And I’ve wondered about this all my life: is it a case of the chicken or the egg?

Collapsing the Wave: Thought to Speech

Have you ever heard it said that to name the thing is to empower the thing? That to speak it will either

a.) prevent a thing from happening, or else

b.) if you speak a thing you will cause it to happen (hence touch wood)?

Well I have.

Not only is it the basis for spell casting it is also founded on an interesting theory put forward by Dr Darryl Reanney in his book The Music of the Mind: that thought is like light and travels at the same speed and that speaking collapses the wave giving it a semblance of matter. Once spoken, never unspoken. Once spoken, the thought becomes interwoven with the fabric of our atmosphere as a frequency (please see Part One as a reference to babble) and can interfere with material reality.

Consequently, once I say aloud what I see or experience in tarot it enters into time. Still as an energy (like light) that the individual will walk into sooner or later, it will be recognised as it happens. Therefore, retrospectively, as the present moment is already the past it has already happened once spoken.

It’s the same with causing events to occur by way of the use of verbal magic. One can enter a spell into an average conversation and probably no one else will ever know. It all depends on what is said and how it is said but the reality is that I know I’m creating a loop: NOW®THEN®NOW. It all depends on how we understand progression. When we really throw away the illusion of linear time all things are valid, it’s merely a matter of when.

To achieve a conscious transition from the fate of linear time one simply needs to look at life, the seasons, the natural configuration of existence: it either spirals, cycles or unfolds. When and why did the line become such a god?

Thought into Matter

Propaganda is one of the more potent influencers of contemporary western culture. Media and the advertising industries are the current dispensers of doctrines of acceptability. Throughout the centuries people have been told what they should or should not do and are threatened with the inventions of damnation, starvation or torture for bucking the rules. These inventions are projections of consciousness. I know this could sound trite but it is people who make tables, and tables began in the minds of their inventors. Therefore, to think a thing is to trigger an act of creation when the thought is manifest into a material reality.

The future is the product of all that precedes it – it is a concept. It is therefore really important that we participate in the art of creating events yet to come into existence through our current actions and awareness. This requires conscious choices in every situation, no matter what our lot in life. It requires conscious responses to sensory input, specifically in relation to words, realising that Logos is as easily manipulated as a puppet.

Part 2

DESPAIR

Practical ideas towards healing

When, either personally or collectively, the illusion of either abandonment or disconnection (sometimes both) mental illness manifests and expresses itself in a tapestry of dysfunction. This disease is despair and a necessary step in the eradication of despair, is to first recognise that it is present, either in yourself, your family, your peers, your community, the current zeitgeist or the demands of a society. To do this you monitor your attitude and outlook on everything for a set number of weeks/months. You will, of course, be affected by news and advertising which, more often than not depict the world (in the former) in a disadvantaged state and (in the latter) what you will need to own or to look like to be on the winning side. There is no point blinkering oneself throughout this training. It is also important to keep eyes wide, wide open; to learn as much as one can about the soul-illness afflicting our mutual species. It seems to present itself in several ways:

Apathy. Constant assault from myriad media sources can trigger a form of apathy whereby people can watch absolutely horrific scenes of barbarity and brutality that eventually, seemingly bounce off the psyche … but do they? How can they? What actually happens is more insidious: acceptance that these behaviours are validated by their continuum. The training you undertake in ridding yourself of despair is all about seeing clearly what is happening but realising that you are not a participant in the process.

Accumulation (or, when is enough, enough?) The propaganda of advertising is not about you benefiting from a product, remember that, rather it is about a chain of profit that has its own best interest at heart. That chain of profit includes people who produce nothing but who benefit enormously from those who do. And by creating fear. Finding a level of contentment with your possessions and consciously realising that you need no more is a powerful thing. It allows you the security of simplicity and it means you no longer feed the beast. To purchase your goods directly from the grower or the manufacturer means that you are honouring their work, feeding their families and denying improper investment used for such things as war, environmental rape, the lining of the pockets of the greedy and any of an incalculably vast arsenal of destructive research and development (including the still-prevalent use of vivisection).

Debt. Have you heard of the term usury? I realise that it is considered as the ‘illegal’ charging of excessive interest on loans but who is it that decides what is excessive? Is ‘a profit of $2.192 billion…’ in one year excessive? Is: “The Reserve Bank found the big four banks enjoy an implicit government subsidy worth up to $4 billion dollars a year,” said Mr Oquist.[5] This amount of money is SPARE MONEY. It will be used for investment. Do you know where this money will be invested? Do you know how this profit was accrued?

Every time you take out a loan, or purchase using credit, you are indebting, even enslaving, yourself to others. In the current climate of company CEO’s claiming bonuses in the millions of dollars you might want to ask yourself: How do I fare? When will be your next holiday? What is your quality of life like? I realise that I’m not necessarily talking about issues of which you are unaware but, so far, have I managed to get you thinking?

(Please note that some of the following topics will overlap each other.)

Relationships. Communicate without fear. Communicate without the need to manipulate. Respect silence when there is nothing to say. Whether we are talking about an intimate relationship, the relationship between family, between friends, between associates – the way to understand relationships, and not ‘lose’ yourself somewhere in these relationships, is to realise three things:

There is always going to be a pecking order within any relationship. This is not a power, or a power-over, phenomenon but a biological one. It cannot be controlled, and neither can the conflict that can, and invariably will, arise because of it. Therefore, understanding it is your first line of least resistance. No relationship is permanent and no relationship will remain fixed to any idea any of us may consider. False relationships are those based on power over others.

The Pecking Order

Every species of animal has one. The problem for us, as an animal species, generally, is that we don’t remember that we are one and we have been brainwashed through both the entertainment industry and religions of the idealisation of love. Many in intimate relationships find themselves in the dominant/submissive role. This always leads to conflict. When sexually active people mark each other with their scents (in effect: marking their territory) and someone else enters into the picture there willbe conflict unless the couple band together, like a wolf-pair, to attain a specific outcome (scenario irrelevant). In the case of a couple without children there is likely to be little conflict unless outsiders attempt to lay a scent. In the case of a couple with children? Well, here’s the reason for a couple of millennia of discord or oppression. In most other animal species the breeding female is always the dominant member of the pack, herd, barnyard and the males will always fight for her favours, therefore establishing their own pecking order. This is not our history. The male of our species has been placed in an unnatural state of dominance (and look at the mess we’re in). Currently the western world is undergoing a crisis of sexuality (specifically in heterosexual society) because, again taking animal behaviour into account, the majority of species do not take their sex lying on their backs. The flipping of an animal onto its back is a threat. In another powerful turn, same sex relationships and gender variations alter the perspective of what, even fifty years ago, would have been predictable in sexual relationships.

Suggested solutions to dysfunctional relationships

Share your living-space with several people, setting clear boundaries of mutual responsibility and gain. If assisting good friends or family to move into a new dwelling be certain to lay your scent on the dwelling by either cleaning, helping to place objects and furniture, cooking a meal for them using their appliances. This will ascertain you both feel, and are, welcome whenever you return. Respect each others’ needs for independence and spontaneity, do not lean or rely on each other, rather be together for the sake of simply that.

Recognise the pecking order that is natural between you, and your near associates, but do not allow it to manipulate or over-ride the uniqueness of each individual involved. Communicate freely (and that does not imply talking a lot) but do not invade another’s need for solitude or silence when that need is obvious

Impermanence

This is a very important ideal to keep in mind. I am not implying that all relationships will cease to be, rather they will definitely change over time as either/any of you explore and learn new things. You will find yourself at a disadvantage in any relationship should you place too much emphasis on that relationship to the detriment of your own journey. Many relationships do have a life-span and attempting to hold onto them when they cease to be relevant to either/any party involved is kind of like not burying or performing an appropriate death-rite with a corpse: sooner or later the thing will become repugnant. Quite often the severance process at the completion of a relationship is painful. So be it. Mourning is a natural way of dealing with letting go. Respect of both the self, and the process of change, is how one transforms through change.

False Relationships

Our culture is full of these. To avoid them, simply don’t do them. We encounter these at all levels of society – governments, business, family, institutional religion, within many education systems, socially. These superficial hierarchies are established for the purposes of control or greed (perhaps both). In an ideal world there is a need for leadership but that leadership ought to be based on the transparency, wisdom and proven adroitness of an individual. On their consistency. In an ideal society those leaders are not better than anyone else but are clear on the responsibilities based on honour and integrity. Leaders are good leaders when they don’t need to lead, and they recognise that they are merely good at what they do and are reliable within the expertise of that leadership.

Parents quite often demand that their children conform to authority that is not gained through example but through force (sometimes physical, usually psychological), as do many institutionalised educators, as do politicians and bosses.

Observation, on your part, of the behaviour and body-language of others will allow you to understand any situation and to either extricate yourself from it or mould your behaviour (not necessarily your true self) to fit the circumstances.

Death

Despair often walks with the person who has been taught to fear death. Through consciously realising the organic nature of death (and that everything does it, therefore it is natural), and deciding to live your life gloriously, death can be recognised for what it is – a breaking down of organic matter into that which it is forever becoming: something else.

Religions and New Age movements place an inordinate focus on retaining one’s individuality (as it is understood) after body-death and there are, therefore, a plethora of ideologies and theories concerning an after-life. I ask you to contemplate: when is there no life? What constitutes no life? When is there not life? Is it necessary to believe in an after-life as distinct from life? Do we know all there is to know? There is nothing ‘after’ life because life is perpetual; eternal. And, besides, it’s not like body-death is something anyone really ought to worry about because it’s going to happen sooner or later. In the meantime, what about the quality of living?

A Lack of Knowledge Concerning Our Own Bodies

When our health or well-being is taken out of our hands; when we do not know sufficiently about our own bodies to ascertain their functions; when we accept, blindly, the authority of others over our own, we allow the demon of despair to have itself a party.

Change the situation.

I was once told by a doctor whom I was teaching about fitness, that throughout the entirety of his medicinal training he only spent somewhere around forty hours learning about nutrition. Due to my own studies and research I was able to advise my own son, who had been diagnosed with “killer cholesterol” and given a prescription for medication, on a fitness programme and a nutritional regime that both he and his girlfriend could enjoy. It took him three weeks to reduce his cholesterol to healthy levels. He has since continued his exploration of such things as triglycerides, good/bad fats, protein/carbohydrate affects upon the body and has also rid himself of a ten year high blood-pressure problem (bearing in mind he was a young man).

Death is an integral facet of good health. Without sufficient decaying matter—compost—the earth’s ability to sustain and grow food is diminished, as are the food’s nutritional elements when they are consumed. Growing one’s own food is an unsurpassed act of creativity and as Frank Herbert said in his unpublished notes “A requirement of creativity is that it contributes to change. Creativity keeps the creator alive.’”

Mulengro

The spelling mulengro is a shortening of the form mulengero. This shortened form is used quite commonly in some varieties of Romani < mulhengero mulo (fog ghost) < Mulengero Di (All Souls Day) < mulo (dead) [these terminology are from the Burganland Romani dialect]

Mulengro is like a disease passed from one person to another through the use of seven dysfunctional manipulations: envy, greed, guilt, deceit, denial, expectation and assumption. Each time an individual seeks to entice, control, coerce or otherwise warp seeming facts to suit an agenda they will perpetuate one or more of these. The only way to prevent despair from overwhelming our well-being is to cease allowing Mulengro into our lives. I’ve done it; several of my students have done it; most of my friends have stopped it.

The outcome of being infected by Mulengro is always resentment, rejection and blame and, needless to say, despair. The carrier of this disease will always attempt to pass it on. I could write an entire book on the games that people play on both themselves and others in this fashion but I’m sure with contemplation and practice you can recognise Mulengro when it is present in your dealings with others.

Authority?

What a strange word. What connotations. The word has come to represent a pinnacle – the epitome of a powerful person. I rather detest the word and I would, perhaps, ask you to develop a healthy objectivity regarding this concept. The word authority is very different, in truth, to a master (such as a master carpenter, a master of the sword, a master chef) because a person who has mastered a skill is a practitioner whereas, in many instances, an authority is someone with an opinion who confers with other people with opinions and who, therefore, could be considered to be educated in opinions. Of course I’m generalising, but it’s worth your consideration as quite often those who consider themselves authorities do not condone having that authority questioned and that is, and has been, despotism or tyranny. Whether the presumed authority is a parent, the president of a company or country, an educator, a five-star general, or a pope, it is the responsibility of a truthful person or society to consider the individual, or the institution, open to fallibility.

I once sat on the loo of a friend’s house in Victoria pondering the poster he had on the back of the door. The image on the poster was of a skeleton in a bathtub in the bathroom of a hotel that is discovered in the far distant future by a team of archaeologists. They document the sarcophagus (the bathtub), the roll of paper used to send messages to the gods via an aqueduct (toilet paper and flush-toilet), mirror used for divination, various holy objects (like razor, toothbrush etc) kept on the altar, the obvious sacredness of water (realised, of course, from the profusion of taps), the quirky plastic crown worn by the king or priest of this temple (the shower-cap). On and on went the description. I realised that no one could truly understand the past from the stand-point of the present and that all such sciences employ educated guesswork.

When I see a documentary on ancient people depicting them bent-over, ugly, hairy primates I tend to cringe as nothing in life is ungainly in its natural habitat so why depict humanity, alone, as having been so? And primitive is merely deemed as derogatory in comparison to us now. To take upon oneself the responsibility of informed questioning ensures that authority does not take upon itself the liberty of ‘better-than’ – it allows for possibilities, it allows for alternatives, it allows for error and it ensures that the authority remains accountable.

Religion

The Jesus Myth

Pope Leo X, who reigned 1513-21, once said: “It has served us well, this myth of Christ.” By this he meant that over the centuries, the Vatican had managed to acquire enormous wealth and power in the name of a figure called Jesus Christ. In the twentieth century, the man most responsible for making the Vatican a financial powerhouse was its investment manager, Bernardino Nogara. Speaking of him, Cardinal Spellman of New York once said “Next to Jesus Christ, the best thing that ever happened to the Catholic Church is Bernardino Nogara.” Anticipating that Europe was heading for war, Nogara invested heavily in armaments factories, buying several of them outright. This allowed the Vatican to reap huge profits when Mussolini invaded Abyssinia in 1935 and in World War II later.

Religious Fundamentalism, Dogma and Bigotry

It is drummed into children in war-torn countries, brainwashing them into hating one another without knowing why. It is the arrogant racist who believes in an imperialist, white supremacy that presumes anything can be bought. It is in the neo-Nazi and the Ku Klux Klan. Fundamentalism is in the office worker next to you who feels her faith is superior to yours and that you will be damned for your viewpoint and your sexual activity and she, to a place thought of as paradise. Fundamentalism is the reason people mail anthrax to abortion clinics because they don’t believe a woman should have a right to choose. Fundamentalism is the man who bullies, beats or represses his wife because he believes women are inferior – the source of all wickedness because of some Middle Eastern myth from life only knows how long ago – and passes on seeds of tyranny to his children. Fundamentalism is the people who mock same-sex love; people who shun unwed mothers, the poor, and those infected with HIV-AIDS calling such a terrible illness “the wrath of God”. It is people who smile politely to those of another race in public, but condemn them in private purely because of the colour of their skin or their religion. Religious fundamentalism; religious laws, rules, arrogance, moral condemnations.

A very good way of controlling people, don’t you think? Divide and rule? A future where wonder is revered and the wildness and the beauty of life is honoured, where such terms as man conquers…, in the battle to control… and in the war against… are no longer used to discuss natural phenomenon like mountains, space, death – actually, to not use these terminologies for anything.

Religions? What is valid about them? Whom do they serve? Why do a vast percentage of humans insist on bowing to seemingly omnipotent and, to be honest, terrifying deities that have no connection with the rest of nature unless he uses it to wreak havoc on his enemies, or prayed to, to stop hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, oil spills, the leaking of Fukushima nuclear plant, the uselessness of future antibiotics. So much for omnipotence.

Religions demand worship. They demand divisions and employ dualisms like good and evil, us and them, sacred or profane. Us and them. Why? Religion and the words worship, faith, belief all to go together. Inherent within these words is possibility of doubt.

Part 3

The Power of One

Please don’t think that because you are one person you cannot have a potent and intense affect on the future. My grandmother started me thinking about things mystical and magical when I was just 11 years old. She’d never taught her stuff to anyone before me and she never taught anyone else after me. I’ve ended up teaching thousands of people throughout my lifetime and even more thousands whom I’ve never met have read the books I’ve written. I didn’t start out thinking that was what was going to happen and ultimately it doesn’t matter to me because I’m merely doing what I’m doing.

There is nothing without consequences and everything that you do will have them. If none of us change how we communicate between ourselves and our world, then we’re in an avalanche of trouble. I remember thinking, one time, on the eve of a rally on human rights, So what? It doesn’t matter if I don’t attend, what’s one person less? Of course it was just a fleeting thought. I knew I’d go because if I didn’t and nobody else did there would be no hope.

One becomes two, two become ten, ten become ten thousand … and apartheid falls. Ten thousand become one million, and one million becomes humanity’s next step to change.

Conclusion

Silence.

Silence is, without doubt, the most important form of communication. In silence we can think. With silence we can dare to explore the thoughts deeply buried within the caves beneath the tundra that may hold answers like the truth in a situation of falsehood. Through silence we can also hear other things so vitally important like wind and rain and birdsong. Within silence is heard the voices of the spirits of place, the warnings of our ancestors and the stories as yet unsung.

I am forgotten until you remember me.
I am the living root; the forever Tree –
I await beneath the senses for the soul who truly listens with an ear to hear my mystery … and in the song of such a one I am remembered; and remembering will set the sacred free
to walk through dreams that can rebuild the ancient trackways,
to awaken memories of fires on the hills,
to call the faidh and the ceoltoiri to attend me
As I plant the living legends in the places of the deep,
where the forgotten ones still sleep
of the forest of profusion of the ever-living Tree.
I am the guardian of the Gate – I am not found in any book already written, already printed, already bound
but in the spaces yet to be heard;
in the mystery of the yet-to-be-written word.
Ancient Now. Alive. Wilderness. Free.

Prepare a place for me – a face for me.
Deny me not – I am the legend of the vine
And I am yours, beloved, you who hear me,
And in an act that holds to nothing – we entwine.

The Feast of Flesh and Spirit (excerpt)
Ly de Angeles, 2003

Endnotes

[1] Vocation: a calling [<L vocatio, -onis <vocatus, pp. of vocare to call]. I mention this so that it is understood that we are talking about sound again/harmonics again and not simply employment or career.

[2] Talent is one’s natural ability to shine in an area of expertise particularly rather than generally. It is something one is born with that can be enhanced with experience.

[3] Though electromagnetic waves exist in a vast range of wavelengths, our eyes are sensitive to only a very narrow band. Since this narrow band of wavelengths is the means by which humans see, we refer to it as the visible light spectrum. Normally when we use the term light, we are referring to a type of electromagnetic wave which stimulates the retina of our eyes. In this sense, we are referring to visible light, a small spectrum of the enormous range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.

[4] P. Machamer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge Uni Press, UK, 1998, pp. 64-65

5http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/australian-economy/australian-banks-top-global-list-as-labor-persists-in-demands-for-a-royal-commission/news-story/aefa72c371555ced47804f9604c25c7c

Bibliography

Beaulieu, John, Music and Sound in the Healing Arts, Station Hill Press, 1995

Braden, G., Awakening To Zero Point (revised edition), Radio Bookstore Press, 1997

Gleick, J., Chaos: Making a New Science, Heinemann, London, 1988

Jenny, Hans, Cymatics, (Macromedia, Newmarket, NH, USA, re-printed 2001)

Quinn, Daniel. Ishmael, Bantam Books, 1995

Reanney, Darrel., Music of the Mind, Hill of Content, Australia, 1994

Saul, John Ralston, Unconscious Civilization, Barnes & Noble, Free Press, 1999

[1] Talent is one’s natural ability to shine in an area of expertise particularly rather than generally. It is something one is born with that can be enhanced with experience.

[1] Though electromagnetic waves exist in a vast range of wavelengths, our eyes are sensitive to only a very narrow band. Since this narrow band of wavelengths is the means by which humans see, we refer to it as the visible light spectrum. Normally when we use the term light, we are referring to a type of electromagnetic wave which stimulates the retina of our eyes. In this sense, we are referring to visible light, a small spectrum of the enormous range of frequencies of electromagnetic radiation.

[1] P. Machamer (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, Cambridge Uni Press, UK, 1998, pp. 64-65