X-Factor and personal attainment

There is no doubt that X-Factor is a superb picture because it gives us both a demonstration of one of the most sublime qualities of human beings which is music and inparticular our voice... and some of the voices and the control displayed are meditative in their depth and focus. It also gives us a direct insight into that human condition of desiring existentially... and by that I mean desiring to become something. Watching tonight I saw an aspect of myself in there. In exactly the same way as these people wish to express their music and become what they want to be, so I experienced this with "my muse". Exactly as they say that when singing nothing else mattres, and this is all they want; so I experienced with this girl. Nothing amazing there. But, its the knife on which my current decisions in life are based...

In my understanding of Buddha the source of suffering is this "trying to become" which is a futile process in a world that just as much is unbecoming. Never attaching to a moment in form is the only way to peace and freedom from suffering. So I've been on the road to try and undo this striving for existence, but it takes me in completely the opposite way to X-Factor and it seems wrong at the moment, but I continue to see where this goes. My disease is not singing but a strong desire for indian girls... a potent mental formation derived from my experience of satisfaction from food and philosophy from that region... which translated into what I thought would be satisfaction sexually... but deep down that enternal nagging thought that the philosophy actually teaches the complete opposite has been there and I have never found freedom from conflict between these two aspects.

I see recently more how our desires determine what we think. WE aim to be so impartial and noble in our thoughts, when really all along we are seeking self interest. These delusions driven by the desire of personal existence dominate the world of the ordinary folks. I guess I'm still there 100%.

p.s. I didn't die the other day, but had a sleepless night of heart palpitations! Put it down to too much tea.

Historisity... I was, I am

Just had an odd experience... I'm dying or so it seems... everything is falling apart... but this is where I want to go for whatever this is doesn't everything else depend upon it? Maybe that sounds mad, only one way to find out.

Was just sorting out music. Found Sister Sledge's - 'Lost in Music' where I used to be lost a lot! reminded me of times in the bar with 'My Muse'. Then N-Trance - 'Set You Free' from 1995 and it reminded me of the room I used to play it at college where my first and only child was conceived. And I was transported into the past and I realised that today I am a road only to be walked once and this road takes me here. And, I thought how I've been lost drifting down this road for ever.

It is the road that has taken up my walks. I often think can you really break a long distance walk and come back? How do you join two walks? Do you find the place, the same street, the same tree, the last set of footprints and try and make the join. Like the butterfly effect there will always be different starting conditions. The walk has been broken and that is an inescapable fact. Thus a broken long distance walk is different from doing it in one go.

As a friend once wisely said 'you've never had a break from life' (it wasn't a threat ;-). There is just one long stream with no break. We can make up a stoary to try and edit and join it all together in a nice way, but today we are where that road has taken us. And here I am. It is like having your life flash before your eyes as you see the whole road that brings you here. Standing on the Lizard in Cornwall this summer looking out over the cliffs at the sea, I am there now, in the bar speaking to 'my muse', I am ther now, in that room where I used to listen to N-Trance, I am there now.

Fantasy wealth. The dream ends?

You read the papers and listen to the news and it all sounds so complicated
about why this is happening. A friend alerted me to what was going to happen
many years ago based upon the fiat currency argument (that inflation was
being created by endless unbacked credit). It seems a bit simpler to me, the
cause is simply there is more debt now than actual things to buy.

Our economies are not that productive really, how much work do we really do,
and how many of us would really buy the products we create? I kust got
called today about health insurance. I said I'm not going to fall ill. How
do I know this? Because I live "carefully" and have risk factored into my
life already using "intelligence". I've spent years working in
Biointeractions which makes all its money from a coating for bypass
oxygenators. Thing is the massive rise in heart disease occurs as soon as
people start living in cities. That is as soon as they start sitting at
desks, driving cars and eating "too much" (intended tautology): all the
things they are earning money to afford. In the fields they never needed
oxygenator curcuits... so the value of what I was doing was almost entirely
created out of thin air by all the other industries (like food and
transport) which are manufacturing an imaginary market out of thin air by
getting us to eat more than we need. And the car industry does the same: if
we really need cars, how come I don't have one?

Its all imaginary wealth stoked up on imaginary needs and imaginary
products. Insurance! what a scam. Like all the gambling in the stock
markets. Clearly if it benefitted you then the insurance companies and
traders would all lose money. It is because they make money that we know
they are scamming us. They make money from nothing more than a "sense" of
risk, its not even a real product! So there is a probability that I will be
crippled today and be unable to work. You can be sure the actuaries have
done the maths and it works out that the cost of your insurance is greater
than the likelihood of that happening. So it is better to save that money
yourself! So the entire finance sector is just fake wealth, and fake
employment. And as if to prove it is unreal, the government just changes the
rule when it pleases.

The economy never really grew because humans haven't really changed. That is
a simple fact. The bubble and stuff are all imaginary, admittedly stoked by
easy credit, but that credit was only buying stuff that didn't really
exist... like "easy" transport. Its not the cars which are "easy" because in
a century with better technology car's will be a sad hassle for poor people,
its just that we think they are "easy". I still walk because I've got legs,
cars are an illusion of easiness and wealth. As copiously argued it is
actually status which gets people driving, and buying 4x4 as the latest
trend. So it is imaginary wealth. The "wealth" in a car's doesn't exist, you
are wasting your money to buy it.

This is why the system may collapse because people are now asking, what is
really "worth" anything? Well I've argued at length in the blog: love,
water, food, warmth, health in that order! these are what are "worth"
anything.

We can die happy if we have love (love meaning 'giving' freely to all, not
selfish what we 'take' from our partner). We can be strong for a long time
with water. We can keep moving and search for shelter with food. We can rest
and recover when we find warmth. There is nothing else in this whole
universe that has Real value. In the "depression" that comes we will relearn
this lesson. Cars, houses, electronic goods, this blog probably; all will be
lost. But that is good, because the "depression" is badly named, it is
actually the Homecoming out from the glittering world of illusions of the
economic fantasy in which we're been nurtured for the last few centuries.
And this will bring a smile once again to the face of our Mother, Nature,
for her children may finally be coming home again.

Roosevelt, 1930's

Pritchard-Evans quotes Roosevelt on the 30's crash,

"The rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers.

"The money changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilisation. We may now restore that temple to the ancient truths," he told the nation.

Rulers who apply the Law can't fail, because laws (by definition) cannot fail. The rulers are not therefore Rulers, and their seats are not High.

We are judged not by Man but by God the maker of all things. Its such a simple equation and it amazes me it has taken so many pages of blog to become clear to me.

It ran out of room.

Reading about the property bubble in Moneyweek, "This bubble stopped growing simply because it ran out of room. It just couldn't get any bigger. " I suddenly realised that apply this to Capitalism and this is the argument against economic growth. There is no reason for economic growth except for fluctuations in population. I've argued this at length before. The only possible reason for 'interest' in it is exactly that, so the Capitalists can get a second income from the money they already have. A ludicrous system but one that seems to get parsed without complaint by most people - I suppose because they get there pittance in bank interest. So the rich have every reason to expand the economy in any direction it can go: from deforestation, to obesity in children, to IT and housing booms.

The degregation of the planet has everything in common with the housing boom and the root lies in the ability to get returns on capital. Abrahamic religions outlaw this practice within their communities, yet we seem have to forgotten this.

We can blame Greenspan for keeping interest rates low and putting off the IT crash, we can blame food companies for unscrupulous exploitation of children, we can blame cigarette companies when at root it is just people trying to get rich, and worst the investors looking for any rising price to invest in.

The problems go to the heart of the modern world, and to the heart indeed of humanity and its history. Question are we closer to resolving, or closer to forgetting there is a problem... i think the latter. And when the boom that is human race runs out of room then what?

The rules of the game...

Got my mums TV on next door and catching stuff from the news on Wall Street about gambling strategies factoring in the uncertainties of government decisions.

What I have been focusing on in the last few months about the nature of Laws and Rules is so obvious. Peoples lives are made and broken on the financial rules. People say that life is tough, it is a dog eat dog world, the fittest survive etc etc yet all these things are not Laws but the rules of the game. When the establishment comes under threat suddenly the rules all change. It is what we always knew, it is a gigantic game.

This places economics in the same camp then as the IRB (International Rugby Board) discussing the benfits on the game of raising the try value to 5 points (from the original 4) or switching possession after a stalled ruck or maul. These were calculated rule changes that were seen to improve the game. Just as the laws of economics are. But unlike real Laws they are not Real, and they can be changed.

So all those people who make and break lives within the rules of the economy and employment are actually not Really making or breaking their lives! Their measure is artificial and can be changed over night. Imagine if gold was confiscated again by the government, or money was abolished! In a second the lives of many who were "made" would suddenly be broken. How fragile this world of illusions!

Yet the true realities of food and health, these Laws remain regardless what the "law" makers say. It is amazing how our eyes are so completely obliterated from Reality by this pantomine of status and social order.

Whatever happens in the economy, in politics, in national defence, in the law courts or in any such arenas none of this is real. The spring comes, and the grass grows all by itself.

Sadly however the not seeing of Reality has profound impact from Real poverty, sadness, selfishness, greed, and destruction. What solution can there be to this oldest of human illnesses?

Happiness IS within

Been home a couple of weeks now, and its the longest I think since I left college in 1996. Yesterday while walking and feeling less than perfect about things, I opened my eyes to the beauty which we have in the fields opposite our house in 7oaks and I though wow compared with London and where I am in Reading we are very lucky here. Then I realised better than ever before that of course our circumstance is NOT what defines our experience, but our mind, or more accurately our brain. It is the brain which experiences after all. It is a perfect world already, it is just that we can't see it because of the clouds of negativity.

Last night in that asleep but cogent state I am getting of late, I was able to see that thought right through. Reality has NO form. We don't say of something that it is "hot" until we experience a sudden "increase" in temperature. But increase from what? Normality doesn't look or feel like anything! we just don't think about it but it doesn't mean it isn't there. When we are absorbed into a world of thoughts we don't notice the formless world all around. When absorbed into our thoughts we even try to do mad things like "be normal" as though normal was something discrete and identifiable. Bad scientists are always trying to quantify the "normal".

Good scientists however simply quantify the abnormal, and the abnormal is quantified. The abnormal like negativity can be quantified and thought about. The abnormal like unenlightenment and suffereing can be thought about and analysed. The normal, the positive and the enlightened cannot be thought about, they are what remains when we have let go of the abnormal, the negative and the suffering. At least last night I understood the nature of enlightenment and why it cannot be found directly. It is found simply by ridding oneself of the "not-enlightened" aspects of ourself.

"Being Good" which is an important part of ridding oneself of negativity is not strictly meaningful. We can never be good, because what does good look like? Goodness is normal. It is rather as Buddha described it "doing no evil, ever!".

Likewise the bliss of enlightenment is not a state of mind to chase away the blues. Rather it is what remains when we have let go of the things which give us blues. It occurs behind us and it's light shines forth into the world we see ahead of us.

This is what I "understood" but its damn hard getting all this into reality! What I'm looking for I guess is that I do no evil, and that I seek the welfare of others. Jonny Wilkinson says it perfectly...this is the goal, what the light of enlightenment looks like when it falls on the thinking mind...

“My motivation today has nothing to do with status, money or ego. Before, I wanted to be the best in the world and I would watch other players to see how I measured up. Now, when I do something great on the rugby pitch, it is not about being better than others but about exploring my talent.
“My fulfilment is no longer about self-gratification. It is about seeing the happiness of others.”