Let the spirit guide you - Lent 2022: Day 30

Automatic writing - opening your stream of consciousness to allow in bidden thoughts from outside... let the spirit guide you, let it move you. Prayer's back-channel - being open to the celestial feedback. 

So let's start. 

"Always begin with gratitude. Give thanks, promise to be better, kinder, gentler; open your mind to new ideas rather than continuing in the same, well-worn groove. Seek constantly, allow not false premises to distract and mislead you. Sift the false from the true, using an open mind to intuit between them. 

"Now - meditate now, hold open windows to new vistas, pause to ask the way. Actively. Asking for what is good - not just for you and for immediate family and friends - that comes quite easily; ask also for what is good for an ever greater group; your country, your continent, the world - the environment, all creatures great and small, plant life too - open them all to the warmth of God's Universal love, heavenly scented, harmonic warmth that's tasteful to the eye; and ask for spiritual focus whenever your mind stumbles or strays.

"Prayer continual rather than constant, there in the undertow of your thoughts, conscious connection with the Continuous Whole in everything you do, rising above the daily material concerns, placing them into a context of the infinite and eternal. Not thinking too hard, but merging with the flow of the Universal unfolding which will happen with or without you, but nevertheless it wants to include you, if you will let it, if you are open to it, to be a part, a conscious part of that process.

"Rest, work, feed, exercise, socialise; distinguish well-earned rest from common laziness; work on yourself, on your weaknesses, work with yourself, identifying your strengths to develop them in a way that makes the most of your human potential. Growth, from day to day, from year to year, a wholeness of life with learning always at the core. Increased wisdom and understanding - your intuition is often right but ignored or overridden - feel its influence strengthening as your grow. 

"Don't get lost - as soon as you feel you are too far into the woods as day turns to night, draw back, seek the light, for the darkness is not your friend. The Sun as your guide - treat each sunny day as a gift, with eyes closed, face the Sun and give thanks, meditate with gratitude."

The easiest post I've written this Lent! No planning, no thinking, no effort - I just let the above words flow spontaneously through my fingertips - and there we are; the 30th day of Lent, 2022.

This time last year:
The Devil is in Doubt - or does Doubt drive Curiosity?

This time two years ago:
Body and soul

This time four years ago:
Religion and Happiness - a Lenten summary

This time five years ago:
Health and fitness in a Quarter of Abstinence

This time nine years ago:
Easter Sunday in the snow

This time 11 years ago:
Cycling to work - the new season begins

This time 12 years ago:  
Five weeks into Lent

Meditations on travel – Lent 2022: Day 29

An early start today to get to Łódź for a press conference (about Brexit). Travelling by train today brought back memories of my earliest solo long rail-journeys across the UK when applying for universities. Five journeys (Canterbury, Lancaster, Norwich, Essex and Warwick) at the age of 18, in the late winter and early spring of 1976. I’d pop into the restaurant car for a beer, to enjoy the sensation of travel in an altered state; I’d drift off into a reverie while watching the countryside pass by.

Every form of land travel yields a different experience. Motorcycling is faster than cycling which in turn is faster than walking, but are essentially similar; immersion with the landscape, unseparated from it by the barrier of glass. Driving a car, or being a front-seat passenger, one has the road unrolling ahead, while in a train, the landscape passes laterally, perpendicular to direction of travel. In both cases, the window detaches you from what’s around you – you are watching a movie, rather than being in the movie.

The rail reverie is quite specific, especially on a sunny day – the fields and forests flash by, the landscape changing continually, vista replacing vista. Sunlight on leafless birches, shadows in the furrows of ploughed fields. After a while the “rhythm of the clicketty-clack” makes you sleepy – especially after an early start.

Normal meditation practice is about unshackling your consciousness from day-to-day concerns, focusing on being aware of being; of breathing, of posture, heartbeat, external stimuli kept to a minimum. Being, just being. No distractions, no extraneous thoughts, no intrusions.

Motorcycling requires focus (“never ride faster than you can focus”); you can’t drift away. Neither should you when driving a car. But on a train, you can afford yourself the luxury of doing so. And as you do, travel becomes metaphysical. The landscape becomes timeless. Branch lines diverging off from the main line – where to? Sleepy halts flash by; what’s it like to live here? a rhythm dictated by the infrequent stops of local trains? A few cars waiting outside for passengers returning from town; how was it before the war?

The iron road has been a feature of the human landscape for over 170 years – several generations have had their perspectives widened by the possibility of journeying far from their place of birth. No longer a world with a radius of a day’s horse-ride.

How will the future of travel unfold for us? Will be remain shackled to our planet, or will space travel become as common for mankind as air travel has been for our generations? 

Movement too makes me realise this - even when we think we are standing still, when we think we are in the same place - we're not. We are being whirled around on the surface of a rotating lump of rock, orbiting a star, moving through a galaxy that itself is part of a rapidly expanding universe. Nothing is stationary in spacetime. When you fall asleep in your bed this evening, you will wake up in your bed in the morning, but many thousands of miles away.

Your bed is actually on a planet that's spinning (at Warsaw's latitude) at 642 mph (1,033 km/h) while hurtling around the sun at a speed of 66,619 mph (107,230 km/h), and rushing through our galaxy at 515,000 mph (828,000 km/h). The planet's spin you can get your head around, when watching a sunrise or sunset with the Copernican insight that it's not the Sun rising or setting, but the Earth spinning towards or away from its local star. The movement of the Earth around the Sun is only evident through observation of the passing of the seasons. The change from winter to summer on a day-to-day basis is almost imperceptible, but clearly visible on a month-to-month basis. The travel of our solar system through our galaxy, as its spiral arms rotate around the centre, is impossible for us to notice. And yet there it is, calculated by astronomers as moving at half a million miles per hour.

So as you sleep, you have moved more than four million miles from where you were. And as you are carried in your bed at these improbable speeds, you are travelling through oceans of invisible dark matter - does your sleeping consciousness react to it? Does it relay it to you in the form of dreams?

This time last year:
Actively seeking understanding

This time two years ago:
Anacyclosis - what goes round, comes round

This time four years ago:
Winter returned for a morning

This time five years ago:
Globalisation and the politics of identity

This time eight years ago:
More photos from Edinburgh

This time nine years ago:
Edinburgh continues to fascinate

This time ten years ago:
Ealing in bloom - early spring

This time 14 years ago:
Swans arrive in Jeziorki

Understanding the Infinite and the Eternal - Lent 2022: Day 28

Forty-six days without alcohol or meat may seem like an eternity when you start out, but the days pass quickly. Four weeks gone today, two and half to go.

Eternity and infinity tend to go hand in hand. One connected with our perception of time, the other, with our perception of space. Looking at our Universe, which we currently know to be 13.8 billion years old (assuming the Big Bang was its beginning). We currently (written before the James Webb Space Telescope starts to bring us images of the farthest reaches of the Cosmos) think the observable Universe is 93 billion light-years in diameter, which immediately raises the question of how it got that big within that time if nothing can travel faster than light.

My own grasp of what infinity means as a mathematical concept was little more than a billion billion zillions until the early 1980s, when I was watching the comedy show Not The Nine O'Clock News. There was a sketch which mentioned a parallel universe identical to this one, but in which the gear-stick of the Mini Metro was a millimetre shorter. Now extend this comic conceit to include a multiplicity of parallel universes differing only to this one in that the Mini Metro's gear-stick was longer or shorter by one Planck length (1.616×10⁻³⁵ m, or about 10⁻²⁰ times the diameter of a proton). This is the shortest discrete unit of distance possible (there can't be half a Planck length). But even so. Once you start contemplating universal possibilities at the sub-atomic scale, infinity becomes mind-boggling.

It becomes something that we can't get our heads around. It literally does not compute. But how about eternity? A mere 13.8 billion years is something we can grasp. But can we grasp the time-scale of the heat-death of the universe, when the final proton decays, estimated to be some 10^3,200 years from now?

“Eternity is awful long time, especially towards the end,” said Woody Allen. 

I beg to differ - it will speed up, with our eternal souls perceiving it to rush as it moves towards a finite end.

As we age, our perception of time changes too. To ten-year olds, one year represents one tenth of the total time they will have experienced, a week being around 0.05% of the sum of their life's span so far. But as a 50-year old, a year is but one fiftieth of the time you've experienced, a week flashes by you with the same relative speed as a day would to a seven-year old. And as such, our perception is that time accelerates as we grow older. As we approach 80 years of age, we feel time passing at twice the speed we did when we were 40.

I would posit that the journey of our consciousness, growing in understanding through a series of lifetimes - who knows, maybe in one epoch beyond biological life? accelerates as we near God - God the purpose - All in God, God in All. 

This time last year:
The Holiest of Holies

This time two years ago:
"On my planet, there is no disease"

This time four years ago:
A Brief History of Time review (Part II)

This time seven years ago:
"We don't need no [tertiary] education"

This time eight years ago:
Arthur's Seat - Edinburgh's urban mountain

This time nine years ago:
Heaven

This time ten years ago:
A wee taste of Edinburgh

This time 13 years ago:
Forward go the clocks

This time 14 years ago:
Early spring, dusk

God and Nation, nationalism and patriotism - Lent 2022: Day 27

If there's one thing that upsets me more than anything else about organised religions it is how easily they can become co-opted by the nation state to foment hatred of other nations. Appreciating a universal God - as in God of the Universe - "all things visible and invisible" - a Universe of billions of galaxies each of billions of stars - it is utterly ridiculous to appropriate that one God to one's nation. Patriotism means taking pride in your nation; nationalism means degrading all other nations to inferior status.

Behold the belt-buckle of German soldiers in WW2. "God With Us", it proclaims. "God is with us - and therefore not with other nations, enemy nations." Given the powerful social control mechanisms inherent in organised religion, it is relatively easy to align them with nationalistic strivings to crush other nations. Which is both sad and scary - taking the Gospel of Christ and turning it into a pretext for barbarity.

Patriach Kirill of Moscow, Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church, holds similar views. He approves of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and has blessed the Russian soldiers fighting there. The Moscow patriarchate views Ukraine as a part of its territory. Kirill has said that "the Russian army has chosen a very correct way".

The notion of 'God' choosing sides in a fight between two nations is bizarre. A choice between good and evil I can get my head around, but an all-round slaughter such as the First World War, a war between empires not hell-bent on exterminating peoples based on race, nation or class cannot be classed as a war between good and evil. 

Personally, I believe that God exists subjectively - not objectively. As a non-falsifiable proposition, science is unable to prove or disprove God's existence. As such, I can claim, on the basis of my subjective experience, that 'God is with me' (the corollary to my father's question "why have I been so lucky?"). But I would never claim that God is with my nation to the exclusion of other nations. Or to the exclusion of other species. Or of other planets hosting conscious life.

The Polish Catholic Church is in a big muddle over this. Part of it is knowing where patriotic hymns end ("O Lord, protect our nation") and nationalistic ones ("O Lord, smite our foes") begin. The choice of the Blessed Virgin Mary as Queen of Poland is theologically bizarre. I feel that since the death of Pope John Paul II in 2005, the Catholic Church in Poland has been drifting away from anything that I could associate with my own belief system, however metaphorically.

This may be a character fault; I have difficulties with seeing worship as anything other than an individual practice based on prayer and meditation. Coming together with others to worship God is not something I do. Can you pray for you nation? I believe you can - in the same way that you can pray for health, contentment, peace of mind, security, freedom from discomfort, acceptance, a satisfying job - and you can pray for these for your loved ones. But you cannot pray for lottery wins or power. Praying for your nation to find its way, peacefully, to internal and external harmony yes - defeating weaker neighbours - definitely no. And your football team beating a rival club in the local derby - also a no.

This time last year:
Medicine, mindfulness and miracles

This time two years ago:
Divine intervention

This time three years ago:
Oblique views of Warsaw from the air

This time eight years ago
On Calton Hill, Edinburgh

This time nine years ago:
Doomsday - the Last Judgment

This time ten years ago:
Sunny Scotland at 23.9C 

This time 12 years ago:

My road bike, ready for action

The End of Times - Lent 2022: Day 26

On my walk yesterday I see a car with a sticker saying 'Wakacje spełnionych marzeń' - something like 'dreams-come-true holidays' or 'wishes-fulfilled holidays' [I wrote here about the differences between the English and Polish words for 'dream']. Can we imagine a wish-fulfilment holiday in which your dreams (marzenia rather than sny) actually come true? A final realisation of everything you ever wanted, all on one holiday? A far-fetched marketing fancy. 

Fulfilled wishes run on into the End of Times; the final closure. Question: does it all come right in the end? Resolution of all untied threads, the completion of everyone's last project, with nothing more to worry about, ever?

My father died in the autumn of 2019. His final project was fixing a broken windowpane. Brexit (which he was vehemently against) had yet to happen; Covid hadn't escaped from the Wuhan wet-market, and Putin's imperial malevolence in Ukraine was confined to Donbas and Crimea. It was as good a time to die as any - had he survived the winter into the spring of 2020, the pandemic would have become a major cause of anxiety for him in his final days.

Things always change, but never resolve. Like gardening. New chores, new challenges every season. The garden is never 'done'. Like squishing a ball of Plasticine - you can make it smaller, but it will always try to ooze out between your fingers. There's always a new worry emerging, a new issue to solve.

The study of end of times is called eschatology, "which in the context of mysticism, the term refers metaphorically to the end of ordinary reality and to reunion with the divine". And in the context of cosmology, it would refer to the end-point of the Universe, which - barring an eternal cycle of expansion and contraction - would be its heat death, when all energy has been used up, entropy can no longer increase, the last photon fizzles out, ceases to move.

What then of Consciousness? Where would it reside? Matter, energy, vibration, would cease - would the Universe be pure Consciousness at this stage? Ready for the next Big Bang? Ready to go through it all again - or would this be both the end of time? Nobel laureate, Sir Roger Penrose, posits that if there is no vibration, there can be no frequency; without any frequency, there is no clock to measure time - so it is literally the end of time - but would this be the moment of a final, divine Unity? How would that square with notions of non-duality - that the Material and Spiritual Worlds finally becoming One?

Or can we even begin to get our heads around this notion of End of Times - that we, descendants of apes (somewhat more advanced but even so) are a species so far from total understanding? 

If in some mystical way, the End of Times is the One, Big Bang being Zero - then is the journey a finite one (that can be measured in trillions of years) - or is it Eternal, a journey that never reaches an end point?

Trying to create a belief system based on subjective intuition rather than empirically provable scientific fact is not easy - but is it better to try than to simply abandon the whole enterprise as being objectively unrealistic?

This time last year:
Praise the Sun God

This time two years ago
Divine Inspiration: God and Artists

This time three years ago:
SO?

This time four years ago:
A Brief History of Time reviewed

This time five years ago:
Eyes without a face

This time six years ago:
London blooms in yellow

This time seven years ago:
London's Docklands: a case-study in urban regeneration

This time eight years ago:
Scotland and its language 

This time nine years ago:
Death, our sister

This time 11 years ago:
The iconic taste of Marmite

This time 12 years ago:

My road bike, back in action

This time 13 years ago:

Spiritual highlight of Lent

Writing It All Down - Lent 2022: Day 25

I often struggle to move forward. Procrastination and laziness hold me back. 'Moving forward' for me means extending the depth and breadth of my understanding of life. This is a mental process, a never-ending learning process. I am continually learning - by analysis of what I hear from others, what I read and what I experience for myself. And then I have to make sense of it all. But all the time there are distractions, and that dreaded 'can't be arsed' mindset that needs to be overcome.

So many thoughts pass through my mind - how many of them actually moving me forward? Great ideas, great insights, are rare - but do I capture them? 

Every day, as I set off for my walk, I take with me my keys, wallet, glasses, notebook... the other day, half way round my circuit I had a thought that merited instant noting down. Not just the idea, but the exact form of words in which I'm framed it. I immediately whip out my notebook from my pocket - but it turns out I've left my ballpoint pen at home. And by the time I'm back, I've forgotten that thought. Totally.

My Lenten discipline to write a blog post every day is useful to me. Year by year, I can - you can - look back over what I've written to trace the development of my thinking, since 2007. Leaving traces, on paper, online, builds up over time. This has been going well for me this year, I'm finding no shortage of themes to explore. If in doubt, I just look back over the years, pick up on an idea I've not yet covered this year, and expand upon it from the perspective of how my thinking on the subject has become clearer or more nuanced since first writing it here.

Capturing insights as they come to your mind is crucial. Brainwaves can come from deep thought, but they can also come spontaneously, which Christians tend to call the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Ideas, answers, insights, can also come as answers to prayer - a proactive form of meditation in which you are seeking divine guidance or inspiration. Right now, sitting at the keyboard, it feels easy to catch the flow, the vibe, as it passes through. But the notebook is crucial for when I'm out of home, walking or travelling.

And so it happened today, passing through Zgorzała, I saw a sticker on a car that triggered a train of thought that formed the inspiration for what I will write tomorrow. This time, I was ready for it - out came the notebook, pen and reading glasses, and with a handful of words I've captured what it is I want to set out. But that will be for tomorrow.

This time last year:
Will we ever discover what's inside an atom?

This time two years ago:
Time - religion and metaphysics

This time six years ago:
Easter Everywhere, Lent reaches an end

This time ten years ago:
Sunset shots, first bike ride to work

This time 12 years ago:
Poland's trains ran faster before the war

This time 13 years ago:
Winter in spring: surely this must be the last snow?

This time 14 years ago:
Surely THIS must be the last snow?

Memory, identity and reincarnation - Lent 2022: Day 24

I'm in the kitchen, having lunch. The smell of buckwheat (kasza gryczana) and pureed beetroot - PAFF! for a second I'm back in my childhood, Croft Gardens, Hanwell. My mother would make this often, together with kotlety mielony (meatballs). Nothing unusual about a smell triggering a memory, albeit a memory from almost 60 years ago. Another aroma-driven flashback, triggered (unusually, given the frequency of this ritual) by a freshly brewed cup of morning coffee. Suddenly I'm back on Greys Inn Road, London, opposite the Eastman Dental Clinic, just before a tooth extraction. I'm aged 13 or 14, with my father. Because I won't be able to eat for a few hours, we go into a sandwich bar across the road for a pizza. A proper Italian pizza - for the first time in my life. And - a cappuccino coffee, also for the first time in my life. That moment of getting the coffee and the pizza (with mushrooms, tomatoes, cheese and herbs) suddenly flashed by. Why this flashback came that particular morning, when I have been drinking daily espressos for years, I don't know.

These are qualia memories, triggered by a sensory stimulus. The memories prove that I am the same person that experienced those same smells in childhood and adolescence. The interaction between complex molecules in the air and the neural pathways between my nose and brain must have been identical, causing the response.

How can you prove that you were you as a child? How do you know that the story's not made up, that it really did happen? Thinking about your childhood is not a daily occurrence - normal dipping in to the memory doesn't go back that far (today I tried to remember when it was that Trump flew into Warsaw - 6 July 2017 - that needed a prompt - and when Moni bought me that espresso machine for Christmas (was it 2012 or '13?). Reaching back into childhood memories is helped by artefacts; photos, children's drawings and physical objects from long ago. It's why we tend to hang on to such mementos.

My mother's childhood ended abruptly at the age of 12 when her family was deported to a lumber camp in the north of Russia; after seven years of wandering, she ended up exiled in London with no artefacts from her pre-war life. And yet into old age she'd report strong memories of that childhood - the Kresy village of Horodziec. She had clearly maintained her identity across those traumatic years without any extraneous memory aids. 

So here we are then - our childhood memories tenuous and yet strong. Not a molecule of your body from your childhood exists in you today; total churn happens every seven to nine years. Yet long-term qualia memory lingers. Long-term qualia memory as opposed to short-term operational memory (like where you left your car in the supermarket car park for example). Long-term qualia memories faithfully recall the precise subjective experience you felt in a historical instant of time.

 

The memories can be conjured up, summoned. They can be triggered by a sensory stimulus. Smell is powerful - the smell of damp towels and sun cream from a beach holiday long ago. A somatosensory sensation - the sense of touch - the sudden hit of frosty air as you walk out of the front door on a cold winter's day. Sight - gathering clouds above reminding you of a sky you've seen before. A song you've not heard for a while. 

But the qualia memory flashbacks that interest me most are the ones that are neither triggered nor bidden. They just suddenly PAFF! manifest themselves into your stream of consciousness.

They fascinate. I hold them in my mind for as long as possible, examining them - like looking at the structure of snowflake that's settled on the palm of your bare hand before it melts. The sudden moment of realisation, the recall, the perfect congruence of what your consciousness experiences now matching what your consciousness experienced then. The moment fades. But I smile - they are warmly familiar; pleasant moments that draw past and present together. My identity. Since last year's Lent, I've been identifying them and writing about them (Qualia compilations, here, here, here and here. And indeed here.)

Qualia memory flashbacks from childhood or adolescence are one thing, but the ones that fascinate me most is when I have qualitatively the same sensation - but it is not from my life. These experiences suggest experiencing subjective consciousness in the life before. These 'past-life' qualia memory flashbacks happen less frequently, but they happen often enough, recognisably, across my entire life, for me to be able to clearly identify and appreciate them.

They can happen indoors (the worktop in the kitchen a common place for them), or outdoors - often when seasons change, when the sky is blue, when the landscape around me is somehow reminiscent of America from the 1930s to the 1950s. They happen to me far more frequently in Poland than they did in Britain. And they happen to me far more frequently still in Jakubowizna than they do in Jeziorki. Again, the same sense of pleasant familiarity - spirit of place recalled - place, rather than events. [Events tend to manifest themselves through my dreams - last month I wrote about them here.] 

What do I deduce from these anomalous-memory events, which I call exomnesia ('memory from outside') or xenomnesia ('foreign memory')? They are suggesting to me that the experience of consciousness transcends biological life. But it's not a strong link to a past life; just flashes. Stripped of the ego - just like in qualia memories of childhood or adolescence - these are memories of purest subjective conscious experiences, rather than events. They are brief, they are generally weak and you have to be sensitive to them. But they are real - I've had these experiences all my life, certainly since the age of around four or five. They give me a sense of what a next life could feel like - a different biology, a different environment, a different ego - but a life sprinkled with these odd, anomalous, pleasant, familiar flashbacks to London in the second half of the 20th century and Warsaw in the first half of the 21st century. And the purpose of these flashbacks is to show that consciousness carries on, enriched by having lived previous lives; hopefully growing ever-wiser in understanding, slowly unfolding towards Unity in God.

Onwards into the second half of Lent!

[UPDATE 02.04.2022: An unsolicited taste flashback to the Eastman Dental Clinic - a very specific mouthwash, strong cinnamon taste, unlike the minty one at my local dentist - very precise expression of the qualia involved. I'm sitting in my room writing, and suddenly, with no triggers - PAFF! There it is.]

This time last year:
Glimpses into past lives?

This time two years ago:
Prophetic

This time four years ago:
New bus stop for Karczunkowska

This time five years ago:
"Jeziorki bogged down in railway mud"

This time six years ago:
Ideas, and how they take hold

This time seven years ago:
Russian eyes peering down on Jeziorki

This time 14 years ago:
The fate of urban wetlands?

Matter and materialism - Lent 2022: Day 23

There are people who have a strong belief in God, whether they belong to a religious group or not. And then there are people who are certain that there is no God, and that the Universe is but a random event, intrinsically without deeper meaning or purpose.

Then there are good people and bad people, and a great many indifferent people - neither wrongdoers nor do-gooders - just somewhere in between, getting on with their lives. In my experience, belief in God makes little difference to people's moral actions (the amount of evil carried out in God's name is proof of this conjecture). I know good atheists and churchgoers whom I would trust. And good churchgoers and atheists whom I wouldn't trust.

But if you don't believe in a metaphysical imperative, a prime cause, a reason or destination - then what's left? For the morally inclined atheist, there's humanism. Selflessly helping others, donating time or money to good causes - not for the sake of the ego, but doing good for its own sake - in the full knowledge that life's boundaries are finite, death is final and the Universe is material.

Ideologies have crept in to take the place of theologies. Our increasingly fragmented societies are being splintered along culture-war lines; left-wing and right-wing slog it out on the social media, hidebound by their doctrines but generally blind to the metaphysical.

Without a deeper purpose, without a quest, there's just a journey without a destination. And on such a journey - what is there to talk about, other than changing the car for a posher one, what to we'd like to buy on our next visit to the shopping mall. Or - if deeper debate is required - some mud-slinging of the culture-wars variety. [It's interesting to note that the Thirty Years War occurred after the printing revolution had made accessible books to the literate population of Europe; it was a war of religious ideas and it reduced Europe's population by 20%.]

Reductionist materialism posits that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that everything can be reduced to matter. Consciousness is merely the by-product of material processes - the biochemistry of the brain and nervous system, without which they cannot exist. This belief system stands in opposition to my personally held view that consciousness is fundamental, and without it, matter could not be experienced.

My belief in the primacy of subjective conscious experience over the biological ego makes me less of a materialist in the common usage of the word - I am not chasing physical goods, not engaged in a dash for acquisition of wealth. Asceticism is a therefore an attribute of consciousness. Once a basic level of comfort has been reached - freedom from cold, hunger, illness, war and discomfort - one's efforts should be turned inward - but this can only happen if one believes that there's something more to the Cosmos than mere matter.

This time last year:
One life is not enough

This time two years ago:
The Secret and the Hidden

This time four years ago:
Afterlife - a myriad possibilities, after the Magic has returned

This time five years ago:
Warsaw photo catch-up (Rotunda going down)

This time six years ago:
Conscious of being conscious

This time seven years ago:
New road and retail

This time nine years ago:
Warsaw's Northern Bridge - its name and local democracy

This time 11 years ago:
What's Polish for 'commuter'?

This time 12 years ago:
Four weeks into Lent

The Good Lord and the Environment - Lent 2022: Day 22

"The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away."  Book of Job, 1:21. The reference here is to human life, but I'd want to expand this to include not just life, but the means of life - our planet, the energy we need to live from. News that temperatures in Antarctica reached 40C over the average for this time of year while at the same time temperatures in the Arctic reached 30C over the average is as alarming to me as Russian threats to nuke Warsaw.

When at the petrol station, filling your car with single-use fossil fuel that converts into energy and climate-changing emissions - pray to the planet for forgiveness for what you are about to do. Ask the Lord, with humility, for permission to drive. And soon you shall do so more sparingly, with thought as to the consequences.

Using fossil fuels is an example of the Tragedy of the Commons; whose environment are you spoiling when you burn coal, gas or oil? Everyone's. If it's everyone's, then it's no one's. 

There is an environmental and social cost to this, but there's also the metaphysical or spiritual side to it. Christianity has not adapted to a world shaped by environmental concern, but it should do so quickly. The Biblical idea that Man was placed on Earth above all the other creates, to tend the Garden, and wrestle with nature to shape it to his desires, is no longer sustainable. 

My personal quest to understand the bodily transmigration of (admittedly slim) shards of consciousness, in the form of anomalous qualia memory flashbacks, makes care for our environment a spiritual duty - a mitzvah. If I believe that my consciousness will in some weak form reincarnate on this planet, it is my duty to do what I can to keep this planet habitable for the future. For myself, if not for all humanity. Too many older people tend to think "sod it, I'm not long for this world, so I'm going to carry on as I always have done, I won't inconvenience myself for the sake of the younger generations."

I see the answer as being behavioural change across populations. Do we need to wash our clothes so often? Should we shower every other day rather than every day? How much of the things we buy do we really need? Don't own a car if you don't need one. (I've not owned a car since 2013.) If you do need one, buy the smallest and most economical car for your needs (not wants). Insulate your house properly and install solar panels if possible. Above all, think through your energy-use footprint. Save as much energy as possible - don't fill the kettle with more water than you need to boil. Turn down the thermostat and wear and extra layer of clothing. It all adds up, multiplied by two billion people in the rich world.

The Good Lord giveth us a beautiful planet - let's keep it that way. Consciously.

This time last year:
The metaphysics of coincidence

This time two years ago:
The physical and metaphysical, science and religion

This time three years ago:
The People vs. Brexit

This time five years ago:
A leader for our times

This time six years ago:
Social justice - the Church and inequality

This time seven years ago:
Google Street View comes to Poland

This time 12 years ago:
Stalinist downtown, dusk

How much spirituality do we need? Lent 2022: Day 21

A perennial question I ask myself each year. Looking back, I can say for myself the answer is "I seem to need more and more spirituality with each passing year". My mother used to say to me this when I was an atheistic youth - that as when I'm old, I shall be reconciled with the Church. She hoped that one day, I'd return to regular attendance at Mass, as I'd done as a child. 

I regret to inform her memory that this is not to be - the Polish national Catholic Church is not a attractive institution. Masses are boring, the hymns are dirge-like, the sermons uninspired at best and noxious at worst*. Church-going does not elevate my spiritual side, it does not connect me with the metaphysical and numinous. I view it as a mainly social practice - social bonding and social control.

I believe that the need for God (the need for Meaning, Understanding, Purpose etc) rises with age - this is a natural response to one's awareness of mortality. To have made a difference. To have fulfilled your human potential. Even among avowed atheists, the need for something more, something deeper than the mere accumulation of material trinkets and ego-satisfaction grows with age. 

"I am not a Random Event!" my soul is shouting. "There is More!"

If you feel there's More, you should seek it. But how? Through meditation or prayer? Most likely. Somehow, gathering with large numbers of other people to do spirituality communally is not something that works for me. Too many distractions. The moment is never quite right. Answers have to sought and found, not just given from the pulpit.

Seeking means refining; fine-tuning; building better ideas, discarding bad ones. Seeking is a journey; but most importantly, it is simply experiencing. 

I know I can do it - working up feelings of gratitude, prayers for health and peace, trains of thoughts that add to wisdom - but am I doing enough? Again, I'm often falling into the guilt trap - I am guilty that I'm coasting, freewheeling, taking it easy, not pushing myself. I could be achieving so much more; again that balance must be sought. But then, unlike my daily physical spreadsheet logging paces, diet and exercise, there's no sense of logging spiritual activity. The need comes when it comes, and should not be pushed away. Connecting with God/the metaphysical should snap into place, not be forced. Mediaeval monks, with their canonical hours of prayer, might have felt it all too much.

I am aware, however, looking back over this blog, that there is progress. Spirituality is not a steady state; it does grow - but only if you want it, only if you let it.

* Doesn't have to be this way. There are parishes that do it well, but they are few and distant.

This time last year:
The Ecstasy of Wilko Johnson

This time two years ago:

Intimations of Immortality

This time three years ago:
Peace of Mind

This time seven years ago:
The Name of God and the Consciousness of Everything

This time nine years ago:
The Church and Democracy

This time ten years ago:
Prime lens or zoom?

This time 11 years ago:
Warsaw's failed bid as City of Culture, 2016

This time 12 years ago:
Stalinist downtown at dusk

This time 13 years ago:
The End of an Age of Excess?

This time 14 years ago:
Snowy Easter in England

Free Will, Determinism and Consciousness - Lent 2022: Day 20

Are we not automata, bumbling and stumbling through this random, accidental, thing called life? Were not our cards laid out for us at birth, our genes and environment shaping our destiny, which has been predetermined for us to the last detail until we die? The interconnected latticework of events that surrounds us bumps and grinds continuously, like smoke particles demonstrating Brownian motion. Cause and effect, causing effects that can be traced back - and tracked forward. In other words, is the future open? Have we any say in it? 

I tend, however, to believe that we have more free will than causal determinists would have us enjoy. The tricks lies not in what our ego - nested in our biology - tends to make us do, but firstly in the random world of quantum mechanics, and secondly in the power within our conscious mind.

Einstein did not like the non-deterministic nature of quantum mechanics - probabilities rather than certainties. Would the atom decay or not? If so, when? This is not Newton's world of celestial spheres orbiting the Sun with perfectly calculable precision. Within each atom, electrons orbit the nucleus in different states; the 'quantum jump' from one particle state to another appears not to be caused by anything - it just happens - or doesn't happen. "God does not play dice", said Einstein famously. It seems that God does just that. The collapse of the wave function in quantum mechanics has been linked to the presence of a conscious observer. What if the presence of the conscious observer collapses the wave function? Can you will Schrodinger's cat to live?

In practical terms, however, in our observable world, the inner workings of atoms seem to make no difference to our daily lives. Cheese or hummus with my breakfast toast? Set off on my walk towards the forest or towards the railway line? Write this blog post now or put it off till later? 

The notion of having a free will only works if there is a notion of a 'will' - an agency, personally determining the course of one's path. Having structure to one's life, having a purpose. If you live solely for materialist pleasures, you are more likely to be driven down paths that have been predetermined for you in advance. By whom? Or is it just random causality? 

Automatic vs. conscious movement - we all know that phenomenon when you're driving along a well-known stretch of road and you realise you've no memory of what has passed you by over the past ten miles or so.

"We know where we're going/We know where we're from", sang Bob Marley. A useful tenet to go by. Over the past ten years or so, less and less has been passing me by unnoticed. A life goal has been coming into ever-sharper focus - a desire for understanding the spiritual self within the metaphysical universe, and at the heart of that is my consciousness. This is where will resides. And if you link consciousness and quantum mechanics - which one day science might do - then it all clicks into place.

The more you observe consciously, the more you take in, the more you come to understand, the more open your future - in metaphysical terms, at least.

And so, the more you exercise your will, the freer it becomes.

This time last year:
Connecting with the Metaphysical

This time two years ago:
Chance, complacency, gratitude

This time eight years ago:
The clash of narratives

This time nine years ago:
The Church and democracy

This time ten years ago:
Prime lens or zoom?

This time 11 years ago:
Warsaw's failed bid as City of Culture, 2016

This time 12 years ago:
Stalinist downtown at dusk

This time 13 years ago:
The End of an Age of Excess?

This time 14 years ago:
Snowy Easter in England

Between Randomness and Cause - Lent 2022: Day 19

For John Presland

Why is there a Universe? - could it have just emerged, could it have just happened, without reason or prime cause? Randomly?

Science doesn't currently have one generally accepted theory as to what happened before the Big Bang, let alone how the Big Bang came about. This remains in the territory of belief, albeit beliefs based on a deep understanding of mathematics and physics. The first milliseconds of the Big Bang, held to have happened 13.8 billion years ago, remain the subject of conjecture. The notion of 'inflation', for example, remains controversial. 

Between 10⁻³⁶ and 10⁻³² seconds after the singularity, the inflation theory posits that the Universe expanded from the width of a molecule to 10.6 light years across. (Can one even get one's head around a trillion-trillion-trillionth of a second?) What happened afterwards is generally accepted - the Universe, space and time and matter - emerged from a point of infinite gravity, 13.8 billion years ago. Following the inflationary epoch, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate, only to speed up again some 4 billion years ago. 

Competing theories posit that the Big Bang was one of many; whether it was preceded by a Big Crunch (now seen as less likely) or whether it was preceded by the heat-death of a previous Universe, or whether it just came out of nowhere, or that one way or another, universes keep popping into existence all the while. Science might ask the question 'how', but it is philosophy to ask the question 'why'.

Does there need to be a reason why something suddenly appeared out of nothing? Without cause? Has the Universe come into being so that consciousness can be aware of it? Could the Universe even exist were it not for consciousness to be aware of it? This, for me at least, is the most convincing intellectual argument for the non-random nature of the Universe - consciousness is embedded in its fabric for a reason. 

With science in its current state, all we can say is that we don't know for sure - we don't know, but we can intuit. Reach deep down into your consciousness, and ask yourself the question - why does the Cosmos exist? Why do you exist? Do you feel it's all random? I don't.

If you do - then maybe we are co-existing in this particular space and time, but in overlapping universes, one which has cause, and one which did indeed occur randomly.

Proponents of the existence of the universe as a random phenomenon often consider it to be deterministic in nature; more on the determinism vs free-will debate tomorrow.

"Please - accept the mystery."

This time last year:
Meditations upon Meditation

This time two years ago:
Refutation II

This time three years ago:
Young Betjeman by Bevis Hillier

This time five years ago:
The mature mind's power over the instincts

This time ten years ago:
Welcome to spring

This time 11 years ago:
Giving way or standing firm?

This time 12 years ago:
Summerhouses near Okęcie

This time 13 years ago:
A truly British icon

This time 14 years ago:
The meaning of Equinox

Focus - Zen in the Art of Meditation - Lent 2022: Day 18

I have written on numerous occasions about the importance of focus, and how important focus is in life - both the everyday and the spiritual. Outside of monasteries, meditative practice in a state of focus is all but unknown in Western tradition.

Zen Buddhism places great importance upon focus, exclusion of external sources of mental stimuli - extraneous thoughts that tend to distract. From Wikipedia: "The term Zen is derived from the Japanese pronunciation of the Middle Chinese word 禪 (chán), an abbreviation of 禪那 (chánnà), which is a Chinese transliteration of the Sanskrit word ध्यान dhyāna ("meditation"). Zen emphasises rigorous self-restraint, meditation-practice, insight into the nature of mind, ("perceiving the true nature") and nature of things (without arrogance or egotism), and the personal expression of this insight in daily life".

Spiritual practice can take many forms, to a great extent we are shaped by our cultural history. Globalisation has opened us to religious traditions from all over the world - from animistic shamanism to the great religious of the East. Until the early 20th century, few Westerners other than academics or travellers had any contact with religions other than Christianity and Judaism. 

As my brother pointed out to me many years ago, the American experience of the Far East in the aftermath of the Pacific War fed into the 'flower-power' revolution of the late 1960s, as notions borrowed from Zen Buddhism made their way into campuses. The cult philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance was written by Robert Pirsig, who served with the US Army in Korea in 1946-48 before returning to the University of Minnesota is a good example. The English-born writer Alan Watts was another significant populariser of Zen at that time.

Zen monasteries would inculcate focus on student monks with physical brutality - any monk whom the teacher suspected of having a wandering mind could count on being struck across the back with a bamboo rod. Sitting in meditation for hours at a time required high degrees of self-discipline. Such an education - the mental equivalent of intense physical training required to become a professional athlete - would bear fruit in maturity.

Focus on the little things. Can I make my morning coffee without spilling any ground coffee between the tin and the espresso machine? As I fill and level the container? Quidquid agis, prudenter agas, et respice finem, as me ol' mum used to say. Whatever you do, big or small -  do it prudently and focus on the outcome.

That's the physical aspect of focus. Zen in the Art of Archery - bow, string, arrow, target and archer must become as one. But how about mental, internal focus, not concentrated on muscle movement and hand-eye coordination?

In a meditative state, one can be truly aware of the subjective conscious experience, detached from the vacuous noise made by the Ego. 

Too many of use suffer from 'butterfly mind' - the tendency to quickly lose interest in one activity or thought process before moving onto another, quite unrelated one. This is a trait associated with being a generalist, rather than specialist - Newton, Darwin or Einstein could not have achieved what they did with minds that would frequently wander off at a tangent.

Training the mind to focus is important. Setting yourself goals and deadlines is helpful. My Lenten goal to post new content to this blog each day has worked well. But Lent encompasses one-eighth of the year - keeping it going all year round isn't easy.

This time last year:
I'm better than you. No, I am!

This time two years ago:
Refutation (I)

This time six years ago:
Before Spin by Keith McDowall

This time seven years ago:
Mill town Łódź 

This time eight years ago:
Today, a tipping point in European history

This time nine years ago:
Church and state

This time ten years ago:
Scrub fire in Jeziorki

This time 11 years ago:
Airbus A380 visits Warsaw

This time 12 years ago:
Lenten recipe no. 7

This time 13 years ago:
Poland's economy - upturn in sight?

This time 14 years ago:
Six weeks into Lent

Defining God - Lent 2022: Day 17

I define God as Purpose, God as Prime Reason; God as Complete Awareness; God the Destination of an Unfolding Universe. 

God as an omnipotent male anthropomorphic deity with long white beard - no. Any God that is Universal cannot take on the attributes of a species of modestly intelligent beings on a planet that is one of billions that can host sentient life in our galaxy - which is one of 200 billion in the observable universe. And how many galaxies exist beyond that - and indeed, how many universes exist - we just don't know and can merely guess.

Is a God necessary for anything to exist rather than nothing? I'd argue that yes. We are here, after all - and conscious of it - there must be a reason, it cannot just be random.

The word 'God' as I use it is merely a shorthand term standing for 'the prime metaphysical driving force' - I could go on an on. 'God' (pronoun: 'God'/'God's', capitalised as a proper noun) does the job for me.

Some nuance then. God didn't create the Universe - God is the creation of the Universe; God is its unfolding, and God is its ultimate destination.

Now - a few short words about my personal belief in God.

I exist, not because I want to exist - I exist because I do. 

In the same way I believe in God not because I want to believe in God - I believe in God because I do.

I believe in God, but I have a long way before I understand even a fraction of what God is. I merely intuit that God is.

It is difficult to express the beliefs that at the core of my being, beliefs that are intrinsic to my essence. I would not foist my belief onto anyone else who does not feel the same way; everyone who seeks God will feel God within, somehow, and will journey along their own path of discovery.

This time last year:
On being perceptive

This time two years ago:
Repeatable mystical experiences

This time five years ago:
Jeziorki's temporary level crossing almost complete

This time seven years ago:
Swans, dusk, Jeziorki

This time eight years ago:
Joe Biden in Warsaw for talks after Crimea invasion

This time ten years ago:
Motive power for the coal and oil trains that pass Jeziorki

This time 14  years ago:
Sleet, snow, no sign of spring

Focusing on the spiritual is not easy! Lent 2022: Day 16

The human mind has a tendency to stray, to wander off track, to meander. Trains of thought rumble on through your mind, often reaching seemingly random sets of points and diverting onto different lines, calling at different stations. There are trains of thought and then there is the stream of consciousness - the default when the mind is not processing thought, when the mind is freewheeling, like during the moments during which you are falling asleep - or meditating.

Meditation - indeed prayer - requires a degree of focus that is difficult to attain. Whatever you try to exclude from thought has a habit of sneaking back in. Distractions bombard you. Our online life in particular is now plagued by continual attempts to derail our train of thought - to divert onto some other website, to look at this, to buy something, to consider this idea or that.

Clearing the mind requires a great - and conscious - effort. 

During this Lent, as for the past few, I have set myself a goal of writing a new post each day. Discipline is called for! If only I could be consistently productive throughout the whole year... And focus - will I be able to get to the end of this post without leaving my laptop to do something else - make myself a tea, answer an email? 

I stumble for a minute, I'm lost for a word - my initial reaction is to stand up and go and do something else. But no - I must focus!

Just as the human battle with procrastination is constant and life-long (especially when there's no external deadline), the battle with distraction is hard to win. Your mind will give in to the temptations of instant gratification; loss of focus as another idea pops into your head [what's that plane flying over now? Might be something military, rare - switch on ADS-B Exchange] ...

Meditation requires time consciously set aside. Walking is a good time to meditate, but again there are too many distractions. From overhead planes to barking dogs, speeding cars, progress on the S7, litter - what I'd like to do to the dirty bastard who dumped an old fridge on ulica Nawłocka... emptying my mind is easier in the countryside than in Jeziorki.

At night of late my mind is distracted by the war. I find myself praying for the safety of innocent people, at risk of death, under bombardment because of one lunatic whom God seems unwilling to incapacitate. But then, where was God in Auschwitz - and off goes my mind again, wandering, rather than focusing.

I know I'm getting it right when I feel God's love within - that inner hug, and eyes welling up with tears. This requires a specific state of mind; calm, relaxed, accepting. Even at night, lying in bed, it's difficult. In normal times, I have a tendency to just drop off to sleep. Now, with the anxiety and stress, my mind is racing. I think how awful it must be sleeping in a shelter every night in Kharkiv or Mariupol, how stressful... I can't get back to sleep. So I do the breathing exercise - breathing in... count to seven heartbeats as I fill my lungs - then hold it for seven - then release slowly for seven, and - the hardest bit - keeping lungs empty for the count of seven before slowly refilling them. Repeat seven times, thinking about nothing but the breathing and the count - works every time - but not now.

Daytime meditation works best for me on the działka, in summer, when there's little or no office work; wide awake, consciously aware - but not letting any train of thought depart from the station. Now, I must admit it's not easy. It's particularly difficult at a time of anxiety. Hence the need for comfort in life, to remove sources of discomfort. Would that it were so simple in this case...

This time last year:
The ups and downs of life

This time two years ago:
Seeking a religious symbol with meaning

This time three years ago:
New views

This time four years ago:
Humanity in a Creative Universe: a summary

This time nine years ago:
Always let your conscience be your guide

This time ten years ago:
Lenten recipe with prawns 

This time 13 years ago:
Polish economy - recession thwarted

Religion, practice, belief, inquiry and experience - Lent 2022: Day 15

For the last four years of my father's life, I would visit him regularly, typically staying with him for a week each month. Each Sunday, he'd walk to church - the Polish Catholic chapel on Courtfield Gardens in West Ealing. We'd walk there and back - only in the final nine months of life did he need a wheelchair. As we walked, he'd he be talking to me about what he is observing - he had an eye for detail, for change. We'd go to church, he'd occasionally nod off during the sermon, but he would always take Holy Communion. And after Mass we'd stop for a while to talk to his friends outside the chapel, before setting off home for lunch. But never, not once, walking home or eating Sunday lunch, did we discuss Mass - the readings, the sermon, or any spiritual experiences.

It was only in the past year, listening to a podcast by British biochemist Rupert Sheldrake did I come to  understand posthumously my father's personal way to God. Sheldrake says of himself that he grew up in a conventionally Anglican family, became an atheist as a teenager, travelled to India as a postgraduate where he discovered Hinduism, and returned to England where, later in life, he rediscovered his Anglicanism. He makes the point to distinguish practice from belief.

Rather than question arcane points of theology, he would simply ignore them, focusing instead on the ritual. And I rather guess that this was my father's perspective as well. My father went along with the Catholic church, for his entire life, never debating or questioning or discussing its tenets. His weekly devotion was a duty, a practice - not a rigorous belief system.

This was unchanged from childhood; my parents would go to Mass every single Sunday, illness excepted. A quiet weekly spiritual reset rather than a 'glory Alleluia' outpouring of devotion.

For me, I find it difficult to practice and not to question. A scheduled weekly meeting with my God in church where spiritual focus is difficult (crying infants, small children running around) does not meet my needs. During my daily walks, I will often find my stream of consciousness latching onto the higher plane; personal prayers (right now - for peace!) offered up - but not in a structured way. Awareness of and gratitude for being alive are crucial.

The (Polish) Catholic church delights me not - neither the architectural surroundings (unless it's a centuries-old building), nor the hymns, nor the sermons; the lack of mystery or magic in the post-Vatican Council rite - I am not a fan. Before moving to Poland, I would take Moni (then around four years old) to St Benedict's Abbey in Ealing for the Latin Mass, with decent singing from the monks and the nostalgia of 'Credo in unum Deum', 'Fiat volutas Tua' and a bit of 'Et cum spiritu tuo' every now and then. Yet somehow the brutalist architecture of the Dominican abbey in Służew in Warsaw fails to move me, though the music there is also good.

Perhaps I'm too much of an individualist, preferring to take my own personal path towards God, a path that does not repeat in ritual, but is more exploratory in nature, based on subjective conscious experience. But, in an epiphany last summer, I came to understand that everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way - some will indeed find God through religious practice, some through solitary meditation, others still through philosophical musings.

This time last year:
Imagining higher forms of life

This time two years ago:
Applying Occam's Razor to religion

This time three years ago:
In search of spiritual immortality

This time four years ago:
Knowing and being and intuition

This time five years ago:
Rzeszów - capital of Poland's south-east corner

This time eight years ago:
A tipping point in European history
[sadly - how right I was.]

This time nine years ago:
Random sentiments from London suburbs

This time ten years ago:
Stalinist neo-classicism in Warsaw

This time 11 years ago:
A week into Lent

This time 12 years ago:
Afternoon-dusk-night in the city centre

This time 13 years ago:
How I saw these things back then - ALIENS!

This time 14 years ago:
Wetlands waiting for the spring

Between Serendipity and Proactiveness - Lent 2022: Day 14

A life-in-balance piece. How often, when faced with a situation, do you assess all the possible outcomes, look at your input required to achieve each of those outcomes, decide, plan your actions accordingly and then carry them out? Or do you prefer to leave things to chance, to see how it will all play out?

I'm generally of the second school; I've seen time after time that chasing after an outcome, taking all the necessary steps to get what I want, proves futile because events have a habit of taking their own course. Work-wise, for example, planned events get cancelled through no fault of mine (Covid, war); had I pushed far harder to have make things happen, they wouldn't have happened anyway; I'd have wasted time (that becomes an increasingly valuable commodity with each passing year). Listening to intuition is helpful - you're not just floating with the stream but making small course corrections requiring a minimum of effort but which have a big effect on the end result.

Proactiveness is defined as "tending to initiate change rather than reacting to events". Serendipity is defined as "fortunate chance", in this case, it means not initiating change, but hoping - willing - events to go your way. 

I know people - I've worked with several like this - who have a tendency to over-plan, and then get themselves into a state of stress because they focus too much on trivial details and timetables, tripping over themselves when things go awry. Taking it easy is something that comes with time; you've coped with panics, you've smoothed over cock-ups, you've managed expectations, you've trodden carefully around difficult egos. If you can take it easy when you're still in your 40s, you're doing well. Took me longer, but I'm no longer panicked by deadlines or freaked out by things not being within my control.

A big spur to proactiveness is uncertainty avoidance. Ambiguity requires resolution - and so proactive measures are taken. Not always the wisest path to take - often, the ambiguous situation will solve itself without the need for a difficult phone-call or conversation that carries with it the risk of falling out with someone.

Chance plays a huge role in our life. My father, towards the end of his life, would ask me rhetorically, "why was I always so lucky?" I think he knew the answer. Intuitively, he felt that he had guided it thus.

"Let it be" - Paul McCartney (Let it Be, the Beatles, 1970)

"The world won't get no better if we just let it be" - McFadden & Whitehead (Wake Up Everybody, Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes, 1975).

Who's right? The Beatles or the Blue Notes? Maybe the balance is somewhere in between letting it be and taking proactive measures to improve things. 

This time last year:
Consciousness in other creatures

This time two years ago:
The balance between the spiritual and the material

This time three years ago:
Rzeszów and Poznań

This time seven years ago:
Spiritual mentors and spiritual leaders

This time eight years ago:

Architectural contrasts around Wilanowska

This time nine years ago:
In memory of me

This time ten years ago:
Cleaning sensors on my Nikons

This time 11 years ago:
Changing seasons and one's samopoczucie

This time 12 years ago:
Stunning late-winter beauty
[these are among my most gorgeous winter photos ever]

This time 13 years ago:
Lenten fare - Jeziorki gumbo

This time 14 years ago:
Digging up Dawidowska

Comfort and luxury, consciousness and ego - Lent 2022: Day 13

Last year during Lent, I wrote extensively about the need to distinguish between comfort and luxury in life. Over the past year, I have come to better understand the link between luxury and the ego - and why luxury is not a good thing in our lives.

I wrote last year: "The old saying 'There's no such thing as an atheist in a lifeboat/foxhole' suggests that cosy, comfortable, safe, well-lit rooms are the place for atheists to hang out, untroubled by thoughts of an imminent demise." 

I went on to argue that comfort is actually important for spiritual growth, and today, with war going on across the border, I can see that this is right. Fear, anxiety and stress are not conducive to the meditative state; when one's entire being is focused on survival, spiritual evolution is not a priority. Peace is a basic human need, along with food, shelter, warmth, clothing and health. Only then, only when one is comfortable, can one's consciousness seek higher levels of understanding. So here I am at odds with fakirs on their beds of nails - but then everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way.

Comfort, then, is a basic human need - eliminating discomfort - conflict, hunger, disease, poverty, poor housing - should be a policy priority for governments.

But what role does luxury play in our lives? 

Luxury is about showing off, it is ostentatious display for the purpose of proving one's place in a social hierarchy. It is our ego that demands to be pampered with luxury - luxury goods - expensive wristwatches, jewellery, accessories with logos, luxury cars, luxury holidays - projecting one's ego at others, saying "look at me, I'm above you in the pecking order of hierarchical mammals". 

Above all, the quest for luxury is a distraction from the desired goal of reaching up to a higher plane.

Where does comfort end and luxury begin? I have written about the fall from grace of photography brand, Leica. It was once synonymous with precision optics and mechanical reliability, necessary to take technically excellent photographs. In the mid-20th century, many of the greatest photographers would use a Leica III or Leica M3. But then brand found competitors offering similar, if not better quality - and innovation. Today, few professional photographers choose Leica, most opting for Canon or Nikon. For half the price of a Leica M11, there's the top-of-the-range Canon EOS R5; for two-thirds of the price of the M11 there's the Nikon Z9, said to be the unquestioned champ of mirrorless professional cameras. The M11 (body only) costs 41,000 złotys or £7,500. Dangle one around your neck and it says: "I do not make my living taking photos. I am an extremely wealthy individual and I'm flaunting it".

The law of diminishing returns shows that point where luxury kicks in. The moment where ownership of the brand is more important that the technical parameters of the product itself. This effect can be seen across the entire spectrum of luxury goods. Chasing the luxury life is wasteful of one's life, and wasteful of natural resources. Choosing a two-tonne SUV, whether powered by fossil fuels or electricity, is twice as wasteful as choosing a one-tonne family hatchback, for instance.

Comfort should be a priority. A warm home (well insulated with solar panels) is far more important to one's comfort than a depreciating asset like a car, especially if that car is used to project ego - in traffic jams, in the office car park, outside your local supermarket.

Discomfort is not conducive to spiritual growth, neither is a life spent chasing luxury. The materialist mind is never satisfied; there is always another status symbol just out of reach. Requiring that extra effort, maybe some ethical corner-cutting, it's just not worth it. As a species, we need to understand the corrosive effect that our egos have upon our behaviour, our spiritual health and indeed our planet. 

This time last year:
Physical immortality

This time two years ago:
Teetering on the Edge of Chaos

This time four years ago:
Jeziorki viaduct takes shape

This time nine years ago:
Goodness gracious!

This time ten years ago:
Muddy feet

This time 12 years ago:
Secrets of success

This time 13 years ago:
S2 works move ahead