The 4 keys to life

In the order I discovered them:

Peace, Freedom, Focus and Love

1) Peace
In 2003 sat in the chapel of St Serf in Lichfield cathedral I realised the importants of peace. Peace is calm and harmony. It is opposed in every way to conflict and disharmony. In this sense it is not "opposed" to conflict but rather seeks to avoid conflict, agression or disagreement. It is the state of tolerance and acceptance and if characterised by stillness and ease within oneself. This should be sort in every dealing with the world, others and oneself.

2) Freedom
Last year I realised the importants of freedom. Freedom seeks to escape the control of desires and controlling forces. It seeks for a self which interacts with the world in honesty and truth without the demands of controlling desires which corrupt. It seeks especially to deal with others in a way which promotes ease and the opportunity for others to be themselves.

3) Focus
This is the essence of mind. Mind occurs where there is focus upon an object and strength of focus gives one strength of mind to master its objects and see them for what they are. A focused mind should seek to instill focus, sincerity and truth into everything that it allies itself to, and to master distraction which is the source of non-mind and ultimately all wrongs.

4) Love
Love is the appreciation of others and our acceptance that we need others and cannot exist without them. It is not a weakness but the strength to accept our dependence on others and the world. It seeks to promote the well being of others and to make its relations with others fullfilling and joyful.

With these perfected life is good.

Theory of everything

http://freeinternetpress.com/story.php?sid=14658

The more I think about tis problem the more I realise (like with so many things I have attempted) that I know nothing and can't even get on the ladder of the problem. Its at least supportive to see scientists beings just as naive as I am :-)

So far in the quest for a proof that "a definite fundamental truth is a contradiction" I've got stuck on self-reference which is the most likely place where a fixed truth is likely to defeat itself.

A self-reference does 2 things.
1) its refers to itself
2) and it refers to something which refers to itself.

Now I can't seem to resolve this issue.

"I have 4 words"

meets condition 1 since it refers to the sentence which is doing the referring. But does it meet condition 2? If it doesn't meet condition 2 then condition 1 must also fail, and if it does meet condition 2 then it must meet condition 1 ... but while 2 implies 1, 1 does not imply 2!

and is there the loop problem here... that it needs to refer not to itself, but to the self-reference itself...

4 some reason this is escaping my grey matter... altho it is Xmas and I'm distracted with presents and stuff...

also distracted by a catrastrophy at work... I lost all the company backup data last week. This is the worst thing I've ever done I think, but I've learned a lot. "What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger" has a corollary... if u want to be strong then nothing must kill you ;-) So I had a few sleepless nights and struggled through and hopefully this will be ok in the end.

Strangely I didn't get that awareness of the universe being a vast wheel with our lives and the events of the world just occuring for short periods of its rotation... like I did when my father died. Instead I began to realise the enormilty of the universe "outside" our sphere of influence. That while I am confident in IT events can transpire against me and I took too many risks with the data and the events did transpire in a very unlikely way. Hubris is what it is called and its the lack of humility at the size of the universe and the way that humans are extremely dependent on good conditions for their well being. There is the growing doom I feel for the human race as a whole... I've always known we were heading for destruction, but the frustration I used to feel and the resignation to our fate seems to have got more ingrained. Hubris.

self-reference link

http://www.cut-the-knot.org/selfreference/index.shtml

Colour and self-reference

There are 2 ways to get orange. The colour with frequency between 585 – 620 nm and a mixture of red and yellow pigments which averages to that frequency.

The reason that this works is that the eye has a limited resolution. There are 3 types of retina cell: red, green and blue. A mozaic of tiny red and yellow particles activates the red and green cells exactly the same as particles in the orange frequency range above. (Yellow itself lies between the red and green).

We can study a subjects neuron excitement to watch how this occurs. Clearly the red, green and blue neuron pathways must be distinct for were they to cross before colour processing had ocurred the distinction would be lost.

It remains though that there is nothing different between red, green and blue colour pathways other than the frequency at which the end receptor activates. All the brain - so to speak - knows of the end receptors colour preference is whether it has fired or not.

Structuralists have a good way of explaining how the brain comes to "know" what it is looking at. Knowledge is held in language. We learn our language in association with all the brain activity. Naturally then we use the words for red, orange and whatever in the situations in which they are properly used and so it is a circular argument that we "see" red when our "red" neurons fire because that is the situation in which we use the word red.

Given the huge range of neuron states in our colour system this analysis also suggests we could have many more colours were our language and culture to demand it. Indigo i understand is recent colour. To "see" a new colour just find a situation in which is occurs and give that a name. Soon enough there will be a new colour!

That seems to be the brain all wrapped up, and the old issue of "conscious experience" evaporates in a simple explanation of culture and word use. We "see" what is established by our normative environment.

However can we really use this explanation to refer to our "own" experience. It is not a simple matter of taking what is objectivel known and just imagining it applies to us.

At any moment as we try to explain what is happening in our minds we are also changing what is happening in our minds. It is impossible to actually pick out a moment of experience and at the same time, think what that is (objectively) without changing it.

We do an experiment to see what neurons are activated when we look at the colour red. But to see the MRI scan we obviously can't look at the colour red. Maybe we can record the MRI scan and press a button to say when we are looking at the colour. But then we need to record our own experience to compare with the MRI later.

If we focus on red, then we are focused on red and it is no-longer and objective process of knowledge and language, but rather a state of mind called "looking". To be able to look, the actual experience of being a mind, is not like the knowledge we might have of it. The knowledge does not capture the experience of being a mind.

This becomes more obvious if we "think" about the neuron processes behind thinking itself. The familiar hall of mirrors of self-reference open up.

If we are "truely" a collection of activating neurons, then is this the "thought" created by a collection of activating neurons or the "real" collection of activating neurons.

Saying that thoughts are identical with neuron systems, is then both a thought and a neuron system. So that statement is both a thought and a neuron system, and neither!

The other path

At 2pm 10 years ago i said yes to what I discovered less than an hour later was certain disaster. I fell in profoundly in love with a teenager based upon a look, a joke and a discussion about poetry and the moon. Then she said she had homework to complete and my heart sank... I already knew this was impossible.

If I put down my hopes and dreams for one goddamn minute there is no mystery to any of this. The world is fractured and there is no pure path through it. In her new world there were two things sex and friendship. Frustrated by my lack of physical exertion within only a matter of months I was designated best friend forever... and that was it... forever!

In my world there were 3 designations. Sex - that which prostitutes are smart enough to get paid for, friendship that which ignored sex, and love which was supposed to be a physical-spiritual communion joining both body and mind. Love however means commitment, the end of freedom, a bondage and ultimately children, marriage and family. She knew this, she avoided this until the year before she died.

My project is a myth. The great mistake was to join my spiritual path to my sexual path. I believed until yesterday that both could be completed together. Through physical intimacy a communication and sharing between souls might be possible that would evaporate the self - that two might really become one... a death of the individual and a birth of something new. That orgasm was a tool to trigger release from self-attachment etc etc.

You and me
When we touch:
Where?

My hopes seemed almost to materialise except for one thing... she did not understand. There was only sex and friendship.

That said except for whatever happened between us, she remained loyal to her lover for 2 years, saying that when she was with him she didn't want to be anywhere else. Pretty good at her age! I've never experienced that, except with her. So there was more than sex for her, but it was not love... she always said she didn't believe in love. Quite what that chimera was - may be something substatial or maybe just momentary indulgences - remains a mystery to me.

But for me combining a spiritual and sexual path was a disaster. I lost one and so I lost the other. The spiritual path is not contingent. You do not need to complete something, or have some conditions arise before you can embark upon it, it is always possible and available. That is the beauty of spiritual realisation: it is not conditional, and, thus is flawless and indestructable. Sexual experience on the other hand is fraught with conditions: ones own state of mind, that of the other, physical health, opportunity, morality and good luck. She has died now: if that does not demonstrate the imperfection of physical existence then nothing will.

She was psychic. That was another level of confusion. Being able to see and speak to ghosts is not a spiritual capability, it is psychic. It is quite a different sort of energy. It is a often a by product of spiritual practice, but something to ignore on the spiritual path.

Friday last I dreamt of her father. He told me to behave myself and treat his wife and remaining daughter with respect. The following night, the eve of first ever seeing "my muse", she appeared in a dream and basically told me with little sympathy to get my act together. Strange that I needed her to tell me to move on (rather than the usual telling ghosts to move on) but it has been good and has evaporated remaining sentimentality and attachment to my dreams.

Dreams can come true, but they can also not come true and then what of them? The simple reality is that I should have become physically intimate when I had the chance. Ignored the morality of it, ignored her boyfriends feelings (which I found out much later were trivial anyway), trusted her to take her own path on life and make her own choices, risked inviting her into a fools paradise, and not demanded love or deeper spiritual connections before embarking. What is the worst that could have happened? wasted my most profound desires on a trivial sexual fling? maybe that way I would have got to where i am now much quicker! The realisation that there is nothing profound in worldly communion of any type. It all leads to death. Accepting her friendship, while it seemed to noble thing, was a fools move. If I loved, then it should be love, if i desired then it should be sex, and while friendship was there and I miss her very much, the distractions of the other things were greater.

All that said there is nothing to worry about in Earth bound relationships and life. It is fantastic and often highly beautiful and there to be enjoyed. But that road if you follow it to its end leads no where. The ride stops and we need to get off - always in the hall of earthly things.

Instead i now return (hopefully reinvigorated) 10 years late to the spiritual path. Recent investigations have pushed closer to realising that "self-reference is impossible". For the self this means that the path of trying to discover what it itself is is fundamentally flawed. We can never know ourselves in essence. Instead we can only "be" ourselves.

and that links to dhyana - the essence of mind which is "focus" or more often translated as meditation... but really it is focus. Focus on something and other things go. Focus very deeply on something and that process continues until everything else goes but what you focus on. That way the mind is "concentrated" (pardon the pun) and comes to know itself truely. Mind - the nature of all things - is present in all things - and knowing mind liberates us from all things. That is the spiritual path. I must have been on the path in passed lives, indeed I must have met "my muse" in passed live, but hopefully the latter is now ended and my last words to her "see you in another life" fall upon deaf ears, and instead i continue the fruitful spiritual path into future lives.

At 2pm today I will say "no" and take the most important other path that was available on 5th December 2007.

Home

I have returned finally to an enquiry that "my muse" in many ways upset, the search for Home. Love is extremely tempting for it offers us the sense of being profoundly found. I have felt profoundly lost since losing her: unsettled, unstable, chaotic, insecure, panic attacks etc - I imagine this is the most unpleasant experience. Finding ones destiny in employment, or in life's application, can also be profound I am sure. The sense of peace that comes when the soul knows its place in the world and can rest upon the life it has found is the goal. This has always eluded me. If there was one destiny I knew I had it was to meet this girl. But that is done and the story told. There is no peace, or so it would seem.

But I persist in this knowledge of maybe something deeper. The problem with "getting what you want" is that you will fear forever losing it, unless that is you can satisfy that desire and be free from it... and there's the rub... its the being free from it that counts... that is why we want it. Not having what we want is suffering. The soul hurts. The more we need it the more our soul hurts. "My muse" was to play the deepest role in my souls life... through her I would unravel the mysteries of my relations with the outer world, the mysteries of sexual desire, the mysteries of birth and life - through her I would be able to live. Without her I would die, which is how it feels. Ironically her death in many ways seems the easier path; for i am the walking dead, the souless.

But not to despair for this is the other side of the same coin. If I cannot walk this path, I am not worthy to walk the other path of having what I most desire. Do I suffer because lacked the courage to take what i wanted most dearly, or do I suffer because I had the courage to face what I feared most. I have been unable to decide on that. Certainly what i have done has been madness and reckless by any imagination, but i knew i would only know if this was true love through the loss... too quickly familarity would have bred contempt had I walked the other road and that I had to protect love from.

If we are truely to belong then surely we must be able to belong anywhere and not be condemned to run the gauntlet of loss. In many ways I am too proud to live in fear of loss. If I fear loss then i will take loss head on and defeat it in the open, rather than have waged a guerilla war in the shadows. Loss it what I have fashioned my life upon now, that is the battle. But the paradox is that how can we not fear losing what we hold so deeply? If we do not fear losing it, one has to question how important it is to us. In this paradox there can never be happiness. We either have loss, or joy tainted with fear of loss. Naive lovers who believe that it will last forever will undoubtably have a shock.

I am running between work and this... risking being caught by the boss... this very text is written in the shadows... where is truth and honesty in this fractured world.

I wish to add a slightly adjacent point before continuing. 10 years ago I made my choice. She had a boyfriend I over heard. How was I to know that he was cheating on her, maybe that is what she wanted. That maybe she measured me up, and stayed with him in the background, that is the weakness that my love would never have shown. If you see before you what you truely desire do you not drop everything and risk everything for that? Surely the outcome can only be glory or destruction? She did not play such a bold game, she did not love like i did. How was I to know that she was not happy with him and I would be just a fools paradise; he was rich, she chose that; I was poor she did not know that. She was young, i felt I had to protect her and make the choices that I knew would be best for her, is that not what you do to those you love? So i chose what proved to be the path of destruction for I was not strong enough to love without gain, and jealousy consumed and hate for the world replaced what had been satisfaction with existence. In that maybe lies the errors, but documentation will never change what was done.

Returning... there is life in loss. It is extradordinary how resilient this life is. Infact life in loss is the same as life in gain simply without the emotional landscape and the feelings of being found and blessed and peace. An analysis of that might begin with the awareness that to be in loss or in gain is just a point of view. It is not a reality. But we need to go really deep to play these games because the suggestion for me is that my life could only be complete with her, that "this point of view" is actually my own life. That is how deep i need to search now to unravel this, much deeper than I ever thought possible. Is that the quest that I have been curious about?

I had a very deep mediatation experience as a kid.. even a jhana I believe. The feeling that followed that was I remember beyond description... maybe even greater than love. That was "being found". I could not communicate it, find any sympathy amongst my friends, thought it odd and it was forgotten.

But that is being found. That is our true home. It is when the mind is focused. If "my muse" gave me love it was not sexual it was because my whole soul was focused upon her, I become a disparate disorganised rabble become one under one leader. They say that the greatest man commands not an army but himself. "my muse" requires a replacement... myself.

A friend said that while playing darts recently he forgot all about his opponent and the people in the room as he focused on his shots. That is self mastery. Focus. That is what brings the rabble of the mind together under one leader. My object had been "my muse" but with her came a million other thoughts and desires, and pains and distractions. Under the master of oneself we are secure and found.

So I have become meditation again with a single goal to come home. Come home to my true home that no-one can take away, that I can only lose by leaving home, that depends upon nothing but an ability to remain undistracted and command the ship through the oceans to the port that it left before memory began. That is the true "being found" and now finally the journey Home has become. May "my muse" always be remembered exactly how she was, and the love remain exactly as it was, and my desire remain exactly as it was, and the fear of loss remain exactly as it was, but may i and she, daughter of the moon to me, and everyone in all directions now complete the true journey home.

10 years on ....

Tomorrow at 2pm, the 5th, it is 10 years since I first spoke to my muse. The 1st was 10 years since the evening I stood in Clapham common gazing at the alignment of 9 planets across the sky to the cresent moon (which I read recently was followed by another on 3-5th May 2000 and the last 9 planet aligment for 600+ years) and the 2nd was 10 years since I first saw the golden light of her form float past me in the shop. This week I have had ample time to relive and remember what has become a defining moment in my life. There is no doubt we were in profound love, and no doubt that I simply let it slip. I knew in January that she was confused and frustrated with me, she never let it show but I knew, and could feel it slipping. We had different ways of dealing with it, she simply continued in her relationship and the many that followed I came to study this event in minute detail to understand.

What is true love? I believed at the time that if we were destined to be together then no word need ever be uttered between us on the subject. It would just happen. The same way the the greater world had brought us together, and set our stories so perfectly that we were in love. That is something we can never manufacture. So why do we need to manufacture the rest? Not if it true love I argued, and argue still.

So no it cannot have been true love because we never were together. On her side I did not provide the physical romance that she longed for, and on my side I knew I had nothing material to offer her. I can write a million letters, and give her a cosmos of gifts, but as she said to me many times, an imagination is no substitue for reality... and she I was always reminded was a realist.

So I blew it, but in that it was never meant to be. I still love her that is the problem, and I knew she appreciated the friendship I cannot believe she kept that painted egg so dear to her. Why would anyone do that? It was just a painted egg from a frustrating friend. Maybe I don't appreciate the love of friendship?

Anyway! Love is flawed. Indeed the world is flawed I can safely say. Love is something that must be built and nurtured like a plant. The seeds may fall but without care and attention it will die. And, in that I am dissappointed in love. What good is that which we have made with our own hands? If i can make something, then at journeys end I have what i started with... except the potential has become the real. Maybe it can be argued that without making something we'll never know what potenial we had, but is knowledge all this is about?

This morning I think otherwise. What is this path of destruction and pain that i am on? I was inspired by Kierkegaard at college and how inexplicably he turned scorned his fiancee and lived the rest of his life anguishing about that choice. The was something perculiar and heroic about chosing against ones wishes. For, those who chose according to their wishes i have always suspected become slaves to those wishes.

The very fact that we can enter futures where what we want either does or does not happen shows us that the world is greater than our desires. It is true that the potential is always there to not have even the greatest desire of one life. I have been fascinated I suppose by the prospect of losing what I hold most dear. Indeed I have done just that. It has happened. It is real and I despite enormous suffering am still here. The world keeps turning. Existence is greater than desire. Not that desire is not important... what world is there without desire. But that "my" desire is but one of countless desires in this world and while everything to me, it just a small part of an unlimited universe.

I always knew that she would enlighten me. Maybe I got it wrong that the enlightenment would come through bearing the loss, than the luxury of gain. Time will tell.