Tuesday 9^th February

A little bit about fear

Yesterday I wrote about the pilot who had no fear of death. It could be argued that having no fear of death is a good thing. Indeed, it could be argued that having no fear at all is a good thing. But I am not so sure that there is anyone, unless they are mad or completely devoid of emotion, who does not have some measure of fear of death. I am also not sure that there is anyone who is never in some measure afraid. And I would be worried if there were some remedy, spiritual or not, that removes fear.

Fear helps define us, helps us know who we are in relation to something else, something not known. However, I think that an acceptance that we die and an understanding that our destinies are set offset fear. They does not eradicate the fear; they simply help you prevent fear from overtaking you. So, we have the fear, but our insight balances it out, allowing us to have some measure of calm when faced with adversity.

Also, such an awareness that the paths of our lives are written allows us to understand that, since we are at a fundamental level out of control of our lives, we will always be potentially subject to experiences that are out of our control. We will always be candidates for fearful experiences, when we lose some measure of control. To accept this helps us remove the fear of being afraid, or fear of admitting our fear.

So, whilst we may have 'overcome' our fear of death when in battle, we might not have overcome our terror of some other otherwise not planned for experience; for example a particularly strong and unforeseen attack of night terrors, or a small bomb going off under our chair when we are relaxed, or lightning striking a few feet in front of us.

Yes, we can improve how alarmed we would be in such circumstances by being strongly aware of our centre, something that is helped with meditation, and the conscious connection with Nature and all that is around us. It could also be helped by the true understanding that everything is done, and that all is in God’s hands; having a proper understanding of astrology helps this.

However, experiencing terror, or being out of control through fear or anxiety, or being taken over by fear are not wrong, and do not reflect that you are any less enlightened or spiritual. But knowing and accepting without doubt that life could do anything it wants to you at any time certainly reflects not only humility, but also a true acceptance of God.

Monday 8^th February 2008

A great Sikh Spitfire pilot

I watched an interview with 93 year old Sikh Mohinder Singh Pujji, a gentleman who fought in the Second World War as an RAF fighter pilot. He has a glittering past, replete with bravery and daring. Such things are always eye-catching to me; but the most striking thing I noticed in the interview with this gentleman was that he shone with life and was in possession of calm dignity. This was most apparent when he was asked whether or not he had been afraid of being killed in his battles, especially after so many of his friends had been killed.

He answered simply that he had always enjoyed his flying. Then, after a pause, he acknowledged the sadness of loss of his friends, but said that he had never been afraid at all of being killed himself.

When the surprised journalist asked why, the old pilot said simply that death is 'out of our hands'. It is, he said, ‘destiny’.

Mohinder Singh Pujji is a fine example of a man who knows that our deaths, and presumably our whole lives, are, at the most fundamental level, completely out of our hands. It is this acceptance that helps to remove our ego, our sense of separateness, and so helps us to merge with God, thus allowing us to flow more easily with God’s Will, rather than our own isolating will.  

As we can see in the demeanour of Mohinder Singh Pujji, such a belief, or I should say knowledge, does not reduce a person to a weak and ineffective blob. Instead, more courage, life and love flows through. That is, not the clingy love, which so many people think is associated with spiritual love, but an all-encompassing detached quiet love of humanity and Life, both here and beyond; a love of forgiveness and strength all in one.

Such an accepting approach to life coincides with very little need for greed, anxiety, hatred, dangerous ambition, cowardice, disrespect, debilitating sorrow and other things that reflect disconnection and therefore isolation and misery.

Of course, in our often idiotic world, where so many of us are driven by base desire, or youth, or power, such an approach to life is an anathema. For when our purpose is defined by only what we can ‘achieve’, by who we are in our ‘career’, by what we look like, by who likes us or by what we own, we are lost when we see that everything we have is ‘given’ to us; and so, really, it has very little to do with us as separate individuals isolated from The Whole.

When our purpose is thus removed we are faced with the abyss: the terrifying meaninglessness that so blighted the secular twentieth century, reflected in everything from ‘modernist’ architecture to the breakdown of the family to the humourlessness of political correctness to the disrespect of Nature to the lunatic laws of ‘equality’ and ‘human rights’.

Happily, when this abyss is faced, and we see Life, we let go of the abyss. Then we do not just see our true purpose, we become it. And that ‘purpose’ is simply to live, knowing that we are part not just of this world, or the next one, or the Solar System, or the Galaxy, or the different dimensions, or the Universe or different times; we are instead part of all of them, for we are part of the whole Creation; indeed, at an important level, we are The Creation.

With this insight or even part of it (for it is almost impossible to experience and maintain in its entirety all the time in our physical realm), we will be able more easily to flow happily from one moment to the next, even if the next moment we experience is the one that takes us beyond this life into the next.

* * *

Should religious symbols and clothes be banned?

In the light of Judge Sir Mota Singh’s protest against the banning of the Kirpan, a ceremonial dagger and religious symbol, from schools and public places, we are in the position to ask: Should we have a right to wear our religious symbols wherever we are?

The Judge seems a nice enough fellow, but the answer, of course, is simple, because it is no. If you want to join something, be it a club or a school or a nation, you join subject to the rules or the culture. If knives are banned, then you do not wear your Kirpan, because it is a knife. If you do not like it, then do not join.

Religious symbols and religious clothing for some reason have an unreasonable amount of exaltation; because if we understand God we will see symbols of God wherever we look, from the distant horizons to our heart beat. We therefore have no need to add to our burdens by carrying symbols or wearing particular clothes. Our belief and insight in God can never be taken, and yet it need not be shown to all and sundry via the cut of our jib or badges or symbols.

If we try to force our religious symbols or indeed anything on others by using ‘equality’ or ‘discrimination’ laws, we create more problems, because ultimately we are trying to undermine someone else’s identity, which is also to undermine our own. And all identities must be known.

So, if you have an association with God, then you have no need to show it off, for it is a quiet power and lives beyond and including all things. If however, you want to show off your Insight, then you should be able to do so by living according to it, which is to live a good life, with a happy heart.

Thursday February 4th

There is no need for Facebook – not if you are an individual

I am guilty of having had an account on Facebook. I no longer have one, of course, but I did have. It was one of those things with which you find yourself involved because everyone else does it. You do it without thinking. In this way it works well, because Facebook is for the non-thinkers of this world.

It is for those who have very little range of individual expression, which was probably why that whenever I used it I always felt a nagging sense of being tramlined or imprisoned in some way. I always felt uncomfortable if someone ‘poked’ me, or if I read some of the dull commentaries of other people’s lives – ‘today I am tired, got to get out more lol’; ‘... got so drunk... lol’; that sort of drivel. I felt particularly false on the very rare occasion that I poked someone else. I just felt that I was amongst the Great Unoriginal of this world.

Someone mentioned the other day that Facebook subliminally inhibits people, by directing and thereby limiting their expression with silly enticing (to some) things such as ‘poke’ or ‘relationship status’. It lures unaware people into a strict framework with the promise of ‘friends’. Thus it removes individuality, and it is said that those who start on it at a young age could be especially dull in the future. It is therefore for boring people, especially those people who think they are 'up with the times' but are really, deep down, subscribers to a drab corporate world.

Of course, there are benefits. If used very sparingly it can be a point of contact, or used as an on-line people information ‘book’. I am told that it is also useful for starting a craze, or for launching a marketing campaign. You do not need to go on it very often to check up on the progress of your venture, and you do not have to give away too much information about yourself.

You can also can adjust the setting so that it does not send you an e-mail whenever someone writes something inane about their day or hour or minute, or when someone ‘pokes’ you or sends you one of those ‘applications’. But then it is very rare that you have to start a craze, and it is probably, if you are an individual, unlikely that you will subscribe to crazes or be lured by an advertisement.

Rather than sell your soul (or part of it) to some ‘social networking’ website, you might as well have your own address book and, if you have anything to say, your own website. This will help give you individuality and expression with limits set by you, not some corporation.

Tuesday February 2^nd

Harman is not God

Thank goodness for the likes of Pope Benedict XVI. He has spoken out against the ‘equality’ laws, which are Harriet Harman’s ‘life’s work’, as someone put it; or the bane of the world, as someone else might put it. As we know ‘equality’ is a laughable concept, simply because people are not the same.

Also, in democracy, when many opinions and preferences must be heard and exercised, equality must stand by the wayside. It simply cannot stand in a democracy. It is unworkable. Hence, the pursuers of ‘equality’ are associated with Stalinist Russia, where, as George Orwell put it, ‘some people are more equal than others’.

The Pope says that Harman’s suggested legislation is against natural law. He is opposed to the fact that the state is attempting to step in with some newly cooked up, man-made (or Harman-made) laws that forbid the 2000 year old Church to go against its teaching by making it illegal to discriminate against homosexuals being employed as priests and bishops.

All true religions would be against such a move, not just because homosexuality is against the true overall nature of things and therefore against the teachings of the main religions, but because the proposed legislation gives a loud message encouraging homosexuality; so much so, some might argue, that you would be excused to think that it is the overall natural way of things.

In fact, I am sure that there have been many homosexual bishops, perhaps even popes, which is all well and good, as long as they behave themselves and respect their Church and its teaching. It is just that it does not need to be encouraged with daft laws.

I would like to see what happens when Harman’s over-reaching extends to Islam, forcing those who practice that vigorous religion to have homosexuals and women as Imams.

Harman is stepping horribly out of time with the natural flow of things. Indeed, whilst she might actually think she is God, she must begin to learn the limits that are set not by her or her grotesque ideology but by the true God, or how things are naturally, otherwise she will be increasing the chances of catastrophe. She should take time out today and listen to what Pope Benedict XVI has to say, for the words of a wise old man, who may not completely know The Answer, nor claim to know it, could benefit her tremendously.

 

Monday 1^st February

It is a bad sign when policewomen wear policemen's hats

Not long ago there had been an accident near where I live. The accident had blocked a certain road, which prompted a guiding police presence, so that when I attempted to access a certain road I was stopped. I wound down my window and noticed the policewoman before me was wearing a policeman’s hat.

 I asked her why she was wearing a man’s hat. She was slightly stumped by this question, as no doubt she had been programmed that afternoon only to answer questions about traffic flow. But she was a pleasant girl, and managed to say, ‘Well, we have equal rights in the police.’

Equal rights. Hmm.

It led me to think of our problem of definition.

Paul Johnson in The Spectator a couple of weeks ago brilliantly defined Political Correctness as, ‘the system of censorship which has settled over the English-speaking world like a dense cloud of phosgene gas’. Phosgene gas is a poisonous gas, one used against troops in the First World War, so, Political Correctness is certainly not safe.

But we are not talking about the definition of Political Correctness here, we are talking about defining things or people or jobs or sexes. Political Correctness and it demonic ‘partner’, ‘Equality’, are doing their level best to remove all definition.

No longer do we have actors and actresses, we have actors; no longer do we have policemen and policewomen, we have police officers in men’s hats; no longer do we have managers and manageresses, we have managers; no monger do we have Mrs. And Miss, we have Ms. and so on. The idea is to reduce everything to some sort of slightly masculine dull homogeneity, so that we may be ‘equal’.

In French, in Italian, in German and other languages we know the sex of everything from a woman to a pair of gloves. Things are therefore defined.

It is true that Political Correctness has the effect of a dangerous gas over the English speaking people, because to remove gender and to remove definition is to create disorder, to remove structure, to create chaos. That is because everything must be known, from the smallest thing to the nations of the world, and their borders. Lack of definition and structure is very much against the overall nature of things, and is therefore one of the many roots of the horrors that afflict this world today.

You may wonder how on earth mere words can have such an effect. The answer is that when coupled with the odious Political Correctness and ‘Equality’ ideology, words are lethal weapons. They are very close to our thinking, and our thinking is very much aligned to how we live our lives. And since the ideology of Political Correctness is based in human over-reaching rather than God or the nature of things, it will lead to the effects of over-reaching, which are never pleasant.

It is time to return to how things really should be, and to remember that to know the Whole, the parts must be acknowledged. And when I am approached by a policewoman I do not want to think that I am about to be asked to a fancy dress party.

Friday 29th January

The Big Brother Microcosm

When I was having my haircut yesterday my hairdresser and I were talking about the latest series of Big Brother. She said she loved it. She added that it was very good because it was nice to see the show with normal people on it. She did not want to be 'negative about homosexuals or transsexuals or young pop stars', for she knows they have their place, but she said that it was good to have a different emphasis in this series. She was also happy to see heterosexual men having the strong roles. 

The net result, she said, is a happy, ordered, clean house, with plenty of humour. Vinnie Jones is in charge, a responsibility correctly in a male's hands. At his side is the very feminine Stephanie Beacham, who holds an equal albeit different authority, different, of course, because she is a woman and not a man.

As my hairdresser cut away at my hair we agreed that this was a fine example of a microcosm of society: tolerant, humorous, caring and with high standards, a proper structure, and with everything in the best place possible. 

But then we know such a form is correct, because we only need to look at all of the clues around us, found in everything natural, from the Solar System to the human psyche to heaven and earth. 

* * *

The Truth Will Out, even with Mr. Blair - and a Combust Sun -

Meanwhile, I did a horary astrology question on Antony Blair's position today. He is going to be interrogated by a panel about his reasons for going to war with Iraq. There is, of course, much suspicion that he lied his way into the war; and the hope in many quarters is that his deceit, if there is any, is revealed. 

The horary chart revealed that the significator for Antony Blair was 'combust'. That means his significator, the planet representing him, was very close to the sun in the chart. This in turn means, in my opinion, is that Antony Blair will not be 'seen', just as a plane that is coming out of the sun is not seen. That means the truth about Antony Blair will not be seen, whatever that truth is. 

It could of course also mean that his significator is severly 'accidentally debilitated', or in a very bad way; for when a planet is combust it is in very bad shape. But, we must consider the circumstances, the context of the question. One of these is that there does not seem to be a climate of truth in the halls of power at the moment. 

For example, very recently The Hutton Inquiry closed the file for seventy years on the mysterious 'suicide' of top WMD scientist David Kelly. This in itself is tantalisingly suspicious, for why hide it away for so long? Is it because the contents are too damning? Most of us will not know in our lifetimes.

Another point to consider is that if Antony Blair had acted falsely, it would probably be far too dangerous to be known publicly. The outcry would be huge, perghaps big enough to destablize the country, and perhaps also the United States, and the western world.

It is therefore most unlikely, in my view, that the panel today will get to the bottom of the matter. Antony Blair's true position will not be seen, whatever that truth is.

So, if Antony Blair did act in a deceptive and malicious way, will there ever be any justice? Indeed, will there ever be justice against all people, including ourselves, who have done wrongs that have not come to light? The answer is that everything always becomes revealed, or truly accepted by ourselves, no matter how hard we try to hide it. In other words, we will always experience what we are, and if we are bad we will experience that bad until we know what it is and so put it behind us.

No one can enter into Completion, or Heaven, unless all of our 'bad' has been faced and dealt with in this way. That does not, of course, mean that we will know the truth about Antony Blair's role in the war in Iraq, or at least not in the way we might expect it: with a remarkable confession and apology on television. 

What it means is that if he is guilty of leading a nation to war under false pretences, then he will have to accept that and its conqsequences at all levels. And such a thing may not be as bad as you might think, what with being pitch-forked onto the flames. For instance, when David Frost helped the ex-president Nixon face his demons, his conscience, the ex-president would most likely have been relieved. Yes, his world would have fallen apart, but he would have been happy within himself; he would have free and clear.

This is why it always helps to be as honest with ourselves and with others as possible. Of course all of us will sometimes err on lesser matters, but it is most important to be most vigilant over serious matters, like leading a nation to war.




Monday 25th January