What is a spiritual land?

Our mind is cluttered on this subject by a load of other ideas so lets just clear those.

We are taught that the Earth is just a planet orbiting a star called the Sun in just one of 100s of billions of galaxies. There is nothing special about this planet. Science fiction films which are invariably based around "space travel" give up the significance of lands in order to pack in large universes. Perhaps Arrakis in Dune or Tatooine in Star Wars are planets that have some special meaning. We are also taught that planets are rock, and rock is made of minerals and elements which are inanimate and of no use except for mining and raw materials for industry or building. These are some thoughts we are given by our society and culture.

But these ideas sit rather uneasily with other ideas we have. How about this type of land?

 

Probably in the West we don't make much of a big deal about this. Yet never-the-less we will find ourselves at some stage visiting a place where someone was buried to remember them. How does that work? After a few years there is nothing left of them physically, and the planet has moved millions of miles in space away from the actual point where they were buried (relative to galactic centre) and the grave stone marks essentially nothing. Why not take the stone home so we can remember them all the time? No: somehow this plot of land takes their place somehow. The land itself has become spiritualised. This is probably the only thing left in most people's sterile lives in the West that indicates some semblance of "spiritual land."

Here's another example: the tree at the end of the film Shawshank Redemption.

Now this tree marks a special moment in Andy's life as it is where he proposed to his wife. But this becomes a special place to everyone watching the film. Its a real place, you can visit it and the meaning of this is now a scene in a film. The tree has now been cut down so there is little marking to spot, but we can still visit that point where the fictional Andy proposed to his wife. There is meaning in the spot even if very tenuous.

Another type of sacred land we will be familiar with is the church. This is a formally consecrated land which is set aside for God and the worship of God. We privately set such land aside all the time like Andy, but the religion does this formally for the whole community too. 

Here is another more subtle example. In the UK--at least, don't know the rest of the world--a marriage traditionally is held where the bride comes from. Traditionally--and very unfashionably now--a bride was guarded by her father who ensured that she remain childless until she was handed over to her husband. This way the husband was sure that any future children were definitely his and this encouraged him to take the bride seriously and commit to her. I imagine a bride travelling long distances in the Past would have been a recipe for her to run into trouble--and there again is the issue of travel and land being inversely connected. But whatever the reasons for the way things came about, it was the land from which a bride was born and raised, that provides the literal bedrock to a traditional marriage.

These are just some basic examples of how land is more than rocks on a planet's surface in space. But it becomes very much deeper.

When they find ancient skulls they can analyse the teeth to find ratios of elements that they can use to determine quite accurately the probably land on which the person lived. Our bodies are actually made from the food we eat which is in turn made from the plants that are grown from the nutrients in the soil where we live. The land actually becomes our bodies. Now if land is just inanimate rock, this cannot be said for our bodies and brains. Suddenly the bold distinction been land and person is completely blurred. If we ever doubt this consider how much of us would be left if we stopped being able to grow plants and were unable to source the minerals that we get from soil and rocks. We are fundamentally linked at the most basic level.

Now this fundamental link between humans and the land was identified all the way back at the start of humanity. Humans know they are intricately intertwined with the land. Where people were born, where they died, where they lived their lives and did things all come from and go back into the land. We call it history now but its marked on the land. Our militarised and aggressive culture of conquest means that our maps are covered in the sites of battles. The land bears witness to our troubled and unhappy culture and minds. The bodies get buried where they are fallen and forever stain the land.

 SO to try and get into the mindset of people before the age of materialism, capitalism and mechanised transport where people lived in one place and really called that home we need to understand that history and even souls are connected to the land. It is a living and breathing thing that takes part as intimately in our community, culture and lives as any other human or living thing. The spirits of the dead and ancestors live in this land, the spirits of other non-human creatures also inhabit this land and along side all this are the living who feel they grow from the land and belong to it. This is all summarised by a relationship with the Earth Mother which is a common sense for all people, that we are birthed and owe our lives to a miraculous event which is the creation of mankind both as a species but as each one of us. No one knows how this happened and it will remain a marvel for ever that it did. But somehow the inanimate world of rocks gave birth to humans. It never asks for any payment for this greatest gift of life and humankind exist in a state of grace and bewilderment at their existence. Modern humans would rather bury this miracle in text books and science and pretend it did not happen, but it did and they are here to ignore it and not be grateful and amazed by it. This is the greatest spiritual force in the land one that sadly more and more people are closed to.

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Now there is a darker side to this. Connection to land work both ways. If I am connected then you are not. What the inhabitants of a land gain, the foreigner loses. Normally because we all realise that life was given to us by the land for free, we do not covet the land. But as the modern world has progressed and especially trade and transport people have been uprooted from the lands. It means that linos to the land have become fractured and damaged. On one hand this had led to the destruction of the planet, and on the other it has led to Nationalism as people fight to preserve their connections to land. It is important for immigrants to realise that they have made a grave choice to leave their land. In some cases immigrants try to bring the land with them in some identity but this is a mistake. When you move to new land you belong to new lands. To suggest any thing else is to break the very idea of a connection to the land. Once the connections are broken then you start to end up with people who belong no where. They are lost people. Thus unfortunately more and more is what Capitalism is creating. Lost people without connection land are cutting the very life blood and source of their existence. Physically they may be sustained by a supply of food but it is just a life support system: there is no spirituality or meaning.

This is only true to a level. There is a more advanced level of spirituality that places all phenomena together. At this level then everything above becomes just sensations and thoughts. So the above is not absolute. It is however an important part of human life.

Mad Max vs Native Existence: a lesson for the New World and Capitalism

Well Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga is visually stunning and good fun, but couldn't help see the darker size. 

This land that they are tearing up is a sacred land full of spirits, ancestors, song-lines and meaning. 

Contrast that with the morally corrupt nihilism of the white man.

You see the same thing in America and across the New World. well we know the New World began with a genocide of the Old World people and their culture and the theft of their land. I wonder whether this crime is what drives the schism between the Europeans of the New World and the Land. They know they do not belong. Is this not what comes out in the hopelessness, meaninglessness and nihilism of Mad Max? And more broadly New World Capitalism in general. People of the New World no not belong and must keep searching forever for the next bit of gold. Dementus admits to the hedonistic treadmill at the end (I'll need get that quote). So perhaps the cure for the New World (and Capitalism) is the admit they stole the land and do not belong, admit they committed a vast genocide and then perhaps they can start to slow down and stop running, grow roots and stop tearing the world up.

This actually feeds into all the modern American nonsense like anti-racism, feminism and gender fluidity. Alienation from your land is like alienation from your body. People who do not belong to their land, do not belong to their bodies. And now you get the nonsense. Women ignoring their role in childbirth and wanting jobs instead. Men wanting to be women. And people from one country wanting to live in another. I mean all this is fine, but when you give up one you need make a home in the other. And if the problem is an ability to make a home then no amount of changing and migrating can solve that. Migrating from one part of the world to another is no different from migrating from one gender to another or one sex to another or one social role to another. It is all the same New World sickness.

The snake teaches us how to cope with death

It's a shame that the Jews cursed the serpent to walk on its belly, because elsewhere it is venerated for its ability to change its skin.

When someone close dies we never recover, but we don't need to because the process of moving forward (on our belly or otherwise) involves growing into our new skin and letting go of the one we had with them.

How can there be Non-Self?

It is more a matter of letting go of self, rather than some statement about the self.

We can hold tightly to lots of things. During a sports match involving the team we support we can get seriously tense and drawn in. We are gripping the fortunes of our team and holding tight. It is an exciting and tense time, but we are able to let go at some stage to get on and enjoy other things.

But with self it is not like a football match that gets scheduled and we see the draw and we plan and we go and see: Self is nearly always there. It seems impossible to get away from. In fact the idea of getting away from it seems scary. Isn't that death? What am I without a self? Is not self central to me? Letting go of self looks like letting go of life. But this is the whole misunderstanding.

We are not our self.

At least not the self we think we are. The self we think we are is like character in a film. When we talk of letting go we mean no longer adopting this view of our self, or at least being open to others, or perhaps none. The hero in a film is not in every scene, and neither are we in every scene of our life!

So how do you get beyond this limited, relative view?

Breathing meditation is actually multifaceted and extraordinary. The root of it is the (any) sensation arising from the act of breathing. If we examine this sensation we will find no self!

What a crazy claim. Am I not breathing?

Well crudely no you are not.

When asleep you breath quite happily. Who is doing that? In fact we may never have even thought about that, and now fishing for an answer we decide it is me. But that captures very much the fakeness of this self. There was no self present while we were asleep breathing. We literally just made that up to fill the gap. While we are asleep dreaming or whatever, breathing goes on all by itself.

Now we are aware of this because when we go to hold our breath we find we take over our breathing. Now there is self. But if there is self and deliberate action in holding breath, there was not before. Almost all the time in our life breathing happens by itself. Just as digestion in our gut, or heart beats or in fact almost everything. It all just happens by itself. Even the sensation in the skin caused by breathing happens by itself. There is really very little room for self in the breath in fact.

So sitting there quietly watching our breath we find that little by little the breath is just a sensation. I say little by little, I mean month after month or even year after year. Becoming subtle minded takes a lot of practice.

We may come to think about what this letting go of self is like and its really no big deal. But in another way it is extraordinary. If we think about all the philosophy and metaphysics and religion and spirituality trying to link the body to the self it is bewildering. We have souls for example which are selves that live inside bodies. We have mind/body dualisms in Descartes. We have solipsism where only 1 self, me, exists. We have God and gods. It is bewildering. Then we look back at the breath and nothing is simpler.

So why does it get complex? The misunderstanding is through the self grasping, or trying to own things.

Once we see the breath as just a sensation we have let go of self. It is now simple.

If we examine this situation however quickly the self jumps in. Depending on our education we may leap in and grasp at and try to own the consciousness of the breath. We argue that the breath is physical and real, but the sensation is mental and occurs in my brain, or in my consciousness or is somehow mine and linked to me. This is exactly what grasping at self looks like.

We follow this up with the now completely nonsense argument: if the sensation was not mine how could I feel it. For me to feel it, I must be bound to it. We forget that the sensation was there first, and we already sensed it in order to then try and grasp it.

And that is just an example of how self marches in after the event and starts laying claim to thing, grasping them, holding them and pretending it is inseparable and intrinsic.

Now this is all fun and games. We live our whole life in an arm lock with our self. But then the issue of death turns up. Suddenly self goes into crisis. It realises the ship it has been aboard is going to sink and it wants to get off. It tries to let go, push it all away and disown the mortal body. This panic is what we call dying. Dying is not the death of the body. Dying is the weird thing we can't really get our head around, that thing which we cat even work out what or who dies, that thing that we have no idea about at all in fact, which is very weird in a world where we think we know everything. But this is not real dying, this is just our self panicking about holding and grasping at the body. We then think we can just let go of the mortal body and somehow drift off as an immortal being. If we look again this is not what happens.

However small caveat firstly, letting go of self is very unlikely to happen in a flash of inspiration like it did for some Huineng  (638-713AD) or Eckhart Tolle (1948-) and us much more likely to be a slow dawning as we drop and step beyond previous habits and certainties. During this time there are constant changing grips on the situation as we pull up on one thing to get off another. It is certainly beneficial and of no problem for those struggling with death and grief to hold ideas of souls and eternal lives. These are not wrong. What is seen as problematic eventually is holding on to anything solid and permanently. That said where is the problem with holding on to self in death? 

Going back to the breath we saw that the breath happened pretty much by itself, and only once breath and sensation had happened did self turn up and try and own it. I say own it, that is the same as creating a story and description where we can place our self in the central character like when we say "I am breathing." This makes no sense. Breathing was going on fine before I turned up!

The same is true for the whole of the body and our life. We could go through our whole life without the self turning up once. I think most animals do. The decision to involve the self is not a necessity and it comes about just to create a "photo" of what is going on. That photo we take is not really us, and chances are we take a few and only keep the good one. This is how real this self is.

Actual true self is beyond our grasp because it is the one doing the grasping! It is the one who brings little self in, takes snapshots and goes grasping. But while it is ignorant of its true boundlessness it grasps for itself and takes the form of this small, plastic fake self that tries to get involved in everything and tries to own and grasp hold of everything. Little self is characterised by grasping and trying to own and get close to things. True self by contrast is characterised by letting go, easing back and taking in the wider view. 

So the issue of death is no issue for the body or the true self because they are not grasping anything that is dying. There is no sudden realisation that the ship we are aboard is sinking cos we are the ship. We can't get off, because we were never aboard. There is no panic and nothing to let go of or do. Dying is just like the breath, it just happens all by itself plain and simple. No one dies, there is only dying just as no one lives there is only living.

CIA at it in Georgia. Worth watching just to see how they operate.

Apparently Georgia popular protests against overseas investment... hmmm we know whose behind those and it isn't the Georgians! What do they care?

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/5/14/georgias-lawmakers-brawl-as-controversial-foreign-agent-bill-set-to-pass

CIA is definitely losing its touch. I guess when you try the same thing too many times it becomes a bit obvious.

When would the general Georgian population care about, or even know about, something like this? And why would it top Western News?

This is just--yawn--standard US pressure to keep doors open to US Capitalists so that they can steal from countries. Doesn't take much money to pay off a few people and then set cameras to make it look like a mob.. Hollywood does it every day!

Question though is why does the UK press not point out the obvious? Sad truth is UK has had an open door to the US ever since Thatcher completed Churchill's treachery and we are long ago terminally infected. Georgia has a lesson for Brits here: we need this policy ourselves, and when the media magically materialises apparently popular protests in support of US interests then understand exactly how the CIA operates (Brits know this for sure cos we actually taught the CIA this technique in 1953). Cui bono always.

Isn't formally celebrating Nature a contradiction?

On the back of a flyer for a nature festival are the "stalls and sponsors."

It's can't really be a festival of "Nature" as everything is already Nature like the sunrise and our beating heart.

Surely this is rather a festival of whatever crumbs are metered out by Capitalism and the Owners of industry. In fact it's the antithesis of Nature as Nature is what is left after you remove Capitalism. I may purchase a hip replacement from a Capitalist but the original hip comes from, belongs to and returns to Nature. Sad days when "festivals" like this exist.

Are literacy rates the key to understanding how advanced a country is?

 Here's a map you won't see very often: global literacy levels. That has to be the key map to understanding how developed and civilised a country is. The colour coding hides quite a lot: for example hard to see but North Korea is 100% while South Korea under US occupation is only 98% (which is what we would expect). Under US occupation UK literacy rates are falling too at only 99% now.

source: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-highest-literacy-rates-in-the-world.html

Now why has US such low literacy rates? Well one obvious reason is that it is a capitalist country. The government does not see it as its responsibility to educate people, who must seek and pay for education themselves as part of an investment in themselves and their employability and careers. Essentially the slaves in US must work hard to increase their saleability and price at slave auction.

Meanwhile the rest of the world sees education as a collective cultural and social thing. Parents teach children to speak, read and write and follow the culture and customs of their community. My child does not speak "my" language, they speak the language my "community". There is no universal culture, when we teach children we teach them our culture. In the UK that may be how to succeed at a job interview, but in the Australian outback that might be how to find water. There is a huge difference between parents introducing kids to their community and just teaching them my culture. This expands into modern national organisation as a responsibility of one generation to equip the next with all the things they will need for happy and successful lives, and that becomes brokered through the government selected by parents to take charge of the affairs of the country. In recent centuries that sentiment has become collected together into a National Socialism* where parents seek not just to enrich their own children but ensure a welfare and success of the entire nation. It makes sense: there is little to gain from enriching your own child and then setting them out into a country that is inhabited by unskilled and unsuccessful people. Little point in being rich in a country where you can't even find a good plumber, or where you need massive security gates because the country is ruled by a mob of unsuccessful poor who have no means to enrich their lives but crime like you see in America.

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Section on the problem of National Socialism

* Now famously National Socialism runs into a problem captured perfectly by the German NAZIs. To protect your own culture and society at the national level it is necessary to prejudice against other cultures and societies. This perhaps sounds shocking, but its actually quite logical. Jews were hugely effected by this German National Socialism yet today they argue for exactly the same principle to protect Jewish ethnicity. Israel is a National Socialism and in fact supports all NAZI principles it just works to protect Jewish ethnicity rather than German ethnicity. Realising this is very important because it means that the problems of National Socialism have not gone away and we have not solved them.

Israel demonstrates that in fact we need National Socialism to protect ethnic groups, and in fact the Germans do need National Socialism. The defeat of the NAZIs was more political it seems to me. The British Empire simply took an opportunity to do what it did best destroy and take over another Empire.

Peak of German Empire: 2,440,222 sq miles

Peak of British Empire: 13,700,000 sq miles. It should have been easy for the British to defeat the German Empire but in fact it was a complete failure and Britain had to ask the US to win the war which sealed the fate for the British Empire. It was the biggest defeat in British history and lost us everything. To save face a story was concocted that we have a "special relationship" with our colonial rulers but it is paper thin. This I suspect is the real politics, and NAZIs were a distraction. But this does not progress the problem of National Socialism as epitomised by Israel.

Blog becoming long. The truth like with most things is probably in the middle. It is quite national for Old world countries to have a dominant common ethnicity, culture and history. For example in the UK we celebrate Christmas which is an amalgam of very ancient customs surrounding Mid-Winter (which includes Stone Henge) and customs brought in with missionaries and Romans around 2000 years ago. Our days of the week are named by Saxon colonisers. Being an island everything here has comes from overseas. But the pace of change and identities have evolved gradually and communities have had a chance to develop and evolve. It makes sense then for government even in the modern era to behave similarly with respect and sensitivity for the communities that exist in the country. The problem with Modern living, especially under US and Capitalist influence is that there is no respect for anything historical: it is all about profit. In the US where a genocide removed the Past people have this idea of "clean slates" and "radical change." But the rest of the world does not think like this. If you are a minority in a country then you obviously are a minority in a country this can never become your interests being a majority concern. The irony I always think with "Black" people or "Jewish" is that while complaining that their rights are not be protected, they are simply building up the wall of the need to protect rights. and if we have equality then the rights of the majority obviously outweigh the rights of a minority: that is simply called Democracy. All legislation is just to ensure that no minority is persecuted but there is a big difference between keeping Black slaves like in the US and telling a employee that no they can't have a day off to mark some religious observance. In the UK Christian missionaries moved their observance days to match the local customs: it seems so obvious for other religious groups in the UK to do the same. So National Socialism is quite logical and when you move to a country you should expect freedom from persecution, but you cannot expect to erased the customs of the majority to make an isolated niche for yourself. Its an idea that has been pushed into the "racist" bag, but there is some sense in saying to immigrants if you do not like the customs here then perhaps its the wrong country for you. I mean people may leave the UK because they don't like the weather, why not leave because you do not like the culture of animal welfare?

So there is no real problem with National Socialism. Jews make very clear that all ethnicities and communities have culture that need preserving. It makes sense therefore for communities to organise their governments around this culture. This can happen without harmful prejudice to other communities. And it does not stop majority communities absorbing ideas from minorities and overseas. But it does stop minorities expecting to ignore cultural majorities, and it does stop the government having to attend to every wish of minorities.

One of the great achievements of the UK is our successful integration of minorities and majorities. Returning to the top the US is a perfect example of a complete failure to do this. Despite supposed "liberalism" the US is peppered with isolated communities and ghettoes that do not integrate or take part either culturally or economically with the main government and culture. The US is very careful to portray the wealthy parts of LA or New York in their media and hide the outside world from the truth of widespread poverty and illiteracy in the US. Meanwhile in the UK we have a country designed around integration and inclusion where almost everyone really does have opportunity, and where all voices are heard. However modern attitudes are afraid of National Socialism and there is a risk of binning the established culture of the UK which is precious and has developed over 1000s of years and which is also irreplaceable. There is no where else in the world where you can get the English culture but England with all the wisdom and attitudes embedded in it. If British governments do not respond to the dominant cultures of Britain then they will actually commit a far greater crime than ignoring the interests of minorities.

But this also becomes an issue of Empires. Even if a National Socialist government emerges that democratically protects the interests and culture of the majority in Britain there is also the threat from the Imperial centre of America. Education has always been central to British culture. 2500 years ago in Britain the Druid class of our society would teach its children until the age of 33 before they were ready to take over the cultural, informational and literary responsibilities of the culture. But the US does not have this culture preferring the sales of "junk" for short term goals like profit. A National Socialist Britain would need to protect the people of this island from enforced cultural injection from powerful outside influence like America. I know for example that to protect regional music in France in the 1960s the Beetles were banned in France. Authoritarian that may sound but it meant that French people in the 1990s would still know the songs and identities of their regions that would be completely lost otherwise. If we turn nihilist and say the past is the past we should just let it all go and move on. Celebrate the Beetles and ignore old fashioned local songs. Then we need take that argument to the Jews and Israel and say why not just let go for being Jewish and join the future? We need be careful our ignoring the Past and role it plays in our understanding of the world and ourselves.

Thanks to the work of a few composers most notably Vaughan Williams some of the rich musical history of England was preserved in the early 20th Century. For example this piece contains local melodies he had collected:

While we may say well there you go we don't need a government to preserve this it has been done. But the problem is the culture that existed around this music has now been lost forever. Anyone can listen to this suite, but few can now call it their own. There is a loss here for the meaning of this music analogous to the loss that accompanies illiteracy. If we are not careful we are drifting into a future where nothing means anything anymore. America is already lost as the genocide of Indian removed the past, but the rest of the world can still salvage this situation by collectively teaching our children our history and culture.