It's desire stupid

OK i'm convinced... was watching a doco on Merlin last night and was relishing the dreamy moonlit world of the pagan and mystic which I love ... but since a child have been disappointed to know is not real. "My muse" was my closest approach to that "reality" - and after she passed on to greater things I discover amazingly a lot closer than even I was prepared to dream! I find out today yet another coincidence that her birthday fell on the date of the Liberalia the festival of Liber ("the free one" a connection "my muse" would have relished) and an avatar of Dionysus. But for all this dreaming something becomes very obvious, something akin to Sartre's analysis of emotions in general...

It has been said that, we are not material bodies having a spiritual experience, but spirits having a material experience.

Knowing within my own soul the struggles to existence and the romantic dreams which never match their pale realities, I know full well the frustration that the alleged spirit feels within the apparent prison of its weak and mortal form. But isn't this just the dreams that arise in a mind whose desires is greater than their means? As Freud would have argued, it is repression of the sexual instinct which births our whole civilisation - seeded and nurtured within the furnace of frustrations and restraint which typify the civilised individual. Deep down I know that to be a great poet one needs to suffer, one needs the frustrations of unattainable desires to fuel the searching and ecstatic frenzy of creation ... an experience the doco called arwen in Gaelic (or something sounding like that). To be wise also one must suffer, and the two are always intertwined since even before the days when Plato wrote his Symposium. Evan our own Saviour follows this ancient pattern of suffering before he attains the Divine ascendancy. Woden, our Wednesday, who brought us poetry and the runes of writing suffered long hanging on the branches of the World Oak Tree. I'm sure the motif is familar throughout Asia.

But Buddha, teacher to the Asian peoples including the Europeans, teaches a very simple teach. If one has no legs, then only the fool seeks to run. It is in this that our frustrations and sufferings are born. It is in this that our dreams are born.

So it seems plainly simple to me once again until the fogs of desire cloud my eyes again, that really it is having passions beyond our means that is the source of all our unhappiness and suffering. I've known unfailingly since a child that given the choice between getting what you want, and not wanting it in the first place: there is no contest. How can anything go wrong, how can anything be less than perfect if we can forget the desire entirely. In contrast its a journey fraught with danger whenever we seek to satisfy a desire.

And look outward in the search for things, we unwittingly leave ourselves unguarded and inward become slaves to desire. The war, the Desire, is for a ridding of desire. The sweet ability to forget without residue any desire that should arise lest we find it demanding more than can be attained.

It is interesting as someone bound and ensnared hopelessly within the world or desires to watch why it is that attaining mastery over desire is so illusive. One profound complication is social expectation. I always feel the I need to be somebody, that unless I have attained something then I am not what I should be. I feel the need to seek external proof of my attainments like clothes, a house, a car. I am slightly different in that I haven't done any of these things, but the desires are still there like everyone else. I experience huge stress from this disparity between what I seek and the world of expectations outside - but wisdom is born of suffering is it not?

I wish sometimes I were born in India where it (at least once) was socially acceptable to seek spiritual liberation. But am I not just wishing freedom from the social isolation that is inevitable on this road? Another expression of desire and the suffering that comes from its non attainment. The wise begin as social outcastes - always.

I write this blog to furnish my mind with an outer proof that what I do makes sense, a mirror for a self that while educated in them, has ceased to take its cues from the rack of social expectations. There is still this desire for social conformity, if only that people are not frightened or overly challenged by me, and as an a-void-ance of that greatest exile that lies in the void of madness. Is there really such a thing as madness? "My muse" studied all this at university, would she have once answered that question? Is it just a convenient term for those who do not wish to accept that there are worlds beyond the safety of this fragile island state of historically established culture. I watch Bruce Parry engaging with various tribes and one constant between them all is the expression of some unity of custom and culture - people are drawn into syncrony and allignment even in practices that have no material function. We adopt as an automatic harmony rituals like bowing, or hand shaking which have absolutely no function at all except to say "we belong". I heard it said that we shake hands to prove we don't conceal a weapon, so why do the Japanese bow then? Well "belonging" is not a luxury it seems the road to wisdom offers, despite some interpretations of Mahayana teachings. Do the walls really belong to the house? Or does the house belong to the walls?

So I'm im-pressed once again toward this realisation that everything does derive from desires. Those desires we can satisfy bring relief from desire (what is erroneously called happiness) and those we can't bring suffering and from suffering comes dreaming and from dreaming comes false belief in cathartic super-characters who can solve our suffering for us. Really if we can believe it the solution lies in mastery of our desires, something I still find very little "motivation" to do. I mean what motivation can there be to master ones motivation. Maybe what I need is a period of plain hard self-discipline. Ascetic living to challenge and master the desires. Looks like I've no choice anyway. Mum kicks me out tomorrow and I'm back to the simple life I've been nurturing, but winter's coming now and even warmth and light will be rare pleasures! Shall see how I bear up. Certainly the ancestors survived the ice ages so this should be a breeze... but our desires are so much stronger these days and the challenge so much greater than 10,000 years ago.

We can't dodge the blame! And we shouldn't!

Its beginning to annoy me. Every single news carries stories of the economic collapse and pointing the finger of blame. In reality no single person can do anything. The cause of the problem was the buying of millions of things without any means of paying it back... and this was done by the majority of people not by a select few. But, of course the select few who try to fool us into believeing that they have this sort of power will now throw the ball of blame amongst themselves and in playing this childs game they will appear to actual have that sort of power.

I know that if I cannot afford something then I don't buy it. I've argued before in this blog the real laws of economics. I could not afford a mortgage so I've lived in a garage for the last few years. In doing this I've done my little bit to keep the price of houses down. This is the right thing to do I think. Other people have been less imaginative and have bought regardless of the reality of the situation. And as they take more risk they have forced others to do do the same.

There does seem to be a weakness in humans that we don't "think globally and act locally", but rather we often "think locally and act globally". This is what is to blame and be it economics, high food privces, or global warming it all stems from the same oxymoronic selfish-herding behaviour (with emphasis on moronic!).

What annoys me more however is that living in a garage is probably not allowed because of health and safety law - so this law which was created in one situation to protect tenants, now used in another case contributes to an economic crisis which risks the health of billions!

So we are to blame, each and every one of us. And we should be to blame, because otherwise we let the screen icons steal the originality and responsibility from our own existences.

I hear that the bail out has been rejected. I wonder. It is childsplay to explain how we got into this situation and everyone knew it was coming (I did several years ago). The only rational conclusion is that this has been planned. Knowing how stupid the average sheep-human is, you keep interest rates down and suprise suprise people start to borrow vast amounts without any thought for how they will pay it back. Then like a fish swallowing a hook, you got them and you haul the sheep-humans in and make trillions of pounds. That's what I thought was going to happen, it seems that in reality it wasbn't so cleanly executed and the top bankers needed direct bailing out by the tax payer... messy but what is anyone going to do about it?

Really we must claim our lives back from the gallery of illusions and not play into their hands with insurance, interest, debt, democracy and all these vehicles of exploitation.

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?