The Thought Inside: get it out!

Expressing oneself is part of our human condition. We live, we feel, we experience, we put two and two together. We observe, we question, we notice, we think; the details fall into place. It clicks. Reality takes on an ever-sharper focus as we gain deeper and deeper insights. What's the meaning of existence? It's taking shape! I'd want to share an idea with others; that thought inside, getting it out is vital! Get it out! Say it! Write it! Sing it! Play it! Paint it! Sculpt it! Express it! Having your own voice, one of eight billion voices around today, one of the 117 billion Homo sapiens that have ever existed, is what it is to be human.

So what's stopping you? A great many factors... 

Most often – memory; lost in the tumult of day-to-day concerns, that Great Thought often gets crowded out by more mundane ones, trampled on, forgotten. When you get it (or when it gets you!) – don't lose it. Notice it; savour it; roll it around your mind – and then, most importantly, capture it. In writing in your notebook, or digitally with your phone's voice-recorder app. Below: getting it down – so important. Prompted to Imagen 3.0

But another significant 'what's stopping you' is doubt; "what for?" "For whom?" "Why?" "Is this thought at all useful to anyone else?" "Is it practical?" "Is it applicable to one and all, or only to myself?" "Aren't there too many thoughts out there already?" "It's probably already been thought before by someone before me, and written in some book I've not read." And fear – fear of mockery – or even worse, fear that your precious thought will just be ignored, overlooked. You may think the thought, once out, has the power to go viral. No – that's not the point.  And once those doubts and fears dilute the thought, you underestimate its value; you belittle its power. And once it's gone, forgotten, well, you say to yourself, it couldn't have been of any value anyway. "I'd have remembered it had it really been good." 

But would you? 

I'm often surprised when going back over my old blog posts just how good some of those thoughts actually were, and how glad I am that I managed to capture them and publish them here. Looking back, I can mull them over, and from them, life takes on purpose and direction.

If anything, my problem is not having enough of these deep, insight-laden thoughts. Noticing that sometimes they're more frequent, whilst at other times they're hardly there all, crowded out. Or simply they're not present in an empty mind. As Zen Buddhism points out, wu hsin (no-mind) is a state to be aimed for. But I actively want insights. I want revelation. I want understanding. I pray for it. But it comes when it wants to come. And when it does come, I have to be ready to catch it, define it, refine it, and share it. Don't lose it. Don't let that stray thought pass. It may speak of the intuition that comes from non-local Consciousness.

This time two years ago:
Spring magic 

This time six years ago:
Building work almost done on the działka

This time seven year:
Karczunkowska's closed again

This time eight years ago:
Little suitcase in the attic
[End of next week, it's off to Schindler's Factory in Kraków to take part in a year-long exhibition there]

This time nine years ago:
What I read each week.

This time 11 years ago:
Defending Poland, contributing to NATO

This time 13 years ago:
Balloon over Warsaw 

This time 15 years ago:
Happiness, Polish-style

This time 16 years ago:
And watch the river flow...

Full blossom

This is it! The peak of the apple and cherry blossom, coinciding with a day of perfect clarity of sky. Time to snap the fruit trees in flower, the glory of the neighbourhood!

Below: where the orchard ends and the forest begins.

Below: a young male deer between rows of apple trees bedecked in blossom. Note the dandelions in a line along the grass. Today and yesterday I spotted several deer and a similar number of hares. 

Below: a trio of hares between the trees, near Gaj Żelechowski yesterday. And a propos of wildlife, I cannot ignore the birdsong; blackbirds, blue tits and the Eurasian black cap (Sylvia atricapilla, kapturka). Most beautiful and complex at this time of year.

Below: even the commercial orchards, neat rows of apple trees under hailstone-proof netting, are blooming. This one is in Adamów Rososki. Overhead, an Emirates airliner is on its way from Stockholm to Dubai.

Below: not every fruit tree is in blossom this year. These biennial-bearing cherry trees that are not tended the year round bear fruit (and indeed flowers) much less profusely every second year. My apple trees, which produced a bumper crop last autumn, are showing no blossom this year.

Although the sky was perfectly clear from dawn to dusk, it was rather a cool day, with the top temperature not exceeding 18°C, and a night-time low of just 1°C forecast. It's like the Ice Saints have come early! Tomorrow will also be an optimal day for viewing the apple blossom of Chynów and district. Unlikely to last until next weekend. The cold means the scent is not as entrancing as it was on warmer days, when the head swims in the perfumed air.

This time 13 years ago:
Testing the Boris Bike

This time 14 year:
Corruption: reasons to be cheerful

This time 16 years ago:
Bicycle shakedown day

This time 17 years ago:
Jeziorki in full bloom

New asphalt for Gaj Żelechowski

It is a measure of how quickly rural Poland is getting on with it. Farm tracks, dirt roads, dusty in summer, muddy in spring and autumn, are being asphalted over, year by year, making life easier for local folk. Apples no longer get bumped and bruised as tractors haul the wooden crates in long trains on their way from the orchards to collection points. Shoes and clothing, cars and houses are cleaner. 

The village of Gaj Żelechowski (pop. 160) has been provided with full end-to-end asphalt, so residents can now drive into it from the south and the east along a decent road. Below: at the eastern end of the village. Note solar panels on the roof of the house on the left; the government-subsidised boom is over. Those who got the subsidies (I did, both for Jeziorki and Jakubowizna) did well. I am still waiting, however, for my promised government subsidy for installing a solar energy storage system.

Below: photo taken from the western end of the road, 609 metres of freshly laid asphalt. I'm getting that rural U.S.A. of the 1940s vibe strongly, all shotgun shacks and sharecroppers.

Below: on the corner. To the right – Gaj Żelechowski, straight ahead and left, Dąbrowa Duża. Behind me, from where the asphalt runs out, it's 860m of dirt track which joins the Jakubowizna-Machcin road. 

Below: from the south, looking north from Dąbrowa Duża. In the foreground, the old asphalt. On the map (below) this is the red line running north-south.

Below: OpenStreetMap showing the new asphalt (red) and how it connects with previously existing asphalt (orange). Note the right-angle dog's leg on the red bit, this corresponds with the photo above. Connecting this corner to the Jakubowizna-Machcin road will be a huge boon to local people.

This time three years ago:
Russia's army – not what we feared it was

This time four years ago:

Long wait for apple blossom

This time six years ago:

Electromobility – the last half-mile

This time seven years ago:
It's binary. There's either a God or there isn't...

This time nine years ago:
Work on the railway line, work on the golf course

This time 12 years ago:
Kestrel on the roof

This time 13 years ago:
Definitely worse in Britain

This time 14 years ago:
Miracle on the Vistula

This time 15 years ago:

Collapsing footbridge on Puławska

This time 16 years ago:|
A new dimension to plane-spotting

This time 17 years ago:
One swallow does not a summer make

Local news update after Easter

For a village the size of Chynów (pop. 1,200), much has happened since the start of Lent! The big news is that we now have a third supermarket. Another local dirt road has been surfaced, and the pavement leading to the railway station has had posts put up to stop cars from parking on it.

Below: Deko Market. The building has been standing completed for some while; work to fit it out and open it has taken a long time. Last month, the name went up on the front of the building; I was unsure whether the name 'Deko' comes from 'deko' as in 'dekagram' (the obsolete term for one-tenth of a kilogram, or 100g), or whether it came from 'decor' as in a home-decoration store. Turns out to be the former. I visited on the day after it opened, and it is run by the same people who ran the Mirabelka Market on ulica Wspólna as well as the small grocery shop opposite the church on ul. Główna. Both of these smaller shops have essentially been rolled into the one new larger-format Deko Market. Inside it is spacious and well stocked for a store of its size.

The small grocery shop has now been merged into the florist next door, while Mirabelka (below) is now permanently shut. I wonder how long it will take Google Maps to notice. It will be interesting to see to what use the building will be put to (residential? retail? A pub would be nice!) Incidentally, the new Deko Market is 500 metres further from home than Mirabelka, making my walk to the nearest shop now over 2.3km.

Running off ul. Wspólna is ul. Ogrodowa (below), which has just has just been paved over. This is good news for local residents whose houses are off this thoroughfare; no longer a muddy/dusty farm track but a proper road. However, once the houses end, so does the paved stretch of ul. Ogrodowa. 

Below: where the paving ends. Beyond this point (ie behind me), it's just orchards all the way to the end of the road. 

Meanwhile, Chynów's first supermarket, the Top Market in the Biały Dom retail complex is having to cope with the competition. Last autumn the car parking space was extended. Outside the Top Market – opened last month – is Chynów's second kebab shop! Unlike the Luxor, the Amigo Kebab is not a sit-down restaurant, but there are tables outside. Behind it, next to the Biały Dom, some new buildings are under construction. Interesting to see what they turn out to be.

And more good news – posts alongside the pavement leading to Chynów station. Until these were erected, drivers would park on the pavement making it impassable to pedestrians. There are literally acres of parking space by Chynów station – the old goods yard. Car drivers are a lazy bunch. I see cars parked outside the station that are literally driven a few hundred metres from their owners' homes.

It's good to see Chynów thriving, developing, becoming more civilised. It's a microcosm of rural Poland. Once dreadfully left behind, EU funds for farmers plus Poles' tendency to work hard and invest is making rural Poland a fine place to live.

This time last year:
Michalczew and its murder-mystery church

This time two years ago:
Spring explodes in Jakubowizna

This time eight years ago:
Litter makes me bitter

This time 11 years ago:
Lent's over – now what?

This time 12 years ago:
Completely in the dark

This time 13 years ago:
Ruch Palikota – a descent into populism

This time 14 years ago:
I cross two unfinished bridges

This time 15 years ago:
What's the Polish for 'grumpy'?

This time 16 years ago:
Do not take this road!

This time 16 years ago:
Seated peacock, Łazienki Park

This time 18 years ago:
Spirit of place: 1930s Kentucky – or Jeziorki?

From Sage to Mage

It's one thing understanding how reality works; it's quite another to be able to influence it. Magic means bringing about a physical effect (or outcome) without a physical cause (or input), by power of will. Intention to change that becomes actual change. Willing the outcome. Can you do that? Can I do that? I would argue that yes, but very weakly, and within clearly defined and narrow limits.

The power of the magic is weak, but it can bend the arc of history – though rarely in a way that can be observed or attributed to a given mage. "If you will it, Dude, it is no dream." Belief in the power of belief, whether we're talking about mind over matter when it comes to health, or just that day-to-day luck that separates the fortunate from the unlucky. Bring it on, bring it upon yourself. Good luck – quantum luck, collapsing wave functions within matter so as to bring about an outcome that's better aligned with the cosmic purpose. A myriad quantum outcomes that could result in you finding good luck, or avoiding misfortune. Or even turning things around.

Be a part of it! But don't expect it to deliver you riches and power and adulation. That won't happen. You cannot will base metal to turn into gold. But you can will a smoother ride through life's vicissitudes, if our will aligns with the purpose. How to do it? A blend of will and acceptance. Nudging the stream. "It may, it will."

If consciousness is the one force that can overcome entropy (syntropy), then consciousness can be harnessed to the cosmic purpose as the Universe unfolds. Nudge it along. The power of prayer, balanced with the art of letting go, of going with the flow, works when you want the same thing that God wants. And humility must inform this. Never boast of it. Quietly, get on with it. Don't boast about your powers or they will disappear. Disappear as the direct result of you boasting about them. 

But does this work? 

Here I 'd invoke what I call the Minoxidil effect: I used this 'wonder cure' for male pattern baldness when it was still in the final stages of clinical trials back in the late 1980s. Did it work? No. But the pharma company behind it would say "Just think how much balder you would have been had you not used it!" One could use that same argument. "You're not particularly lucky in life. But think how much less lucky you could have been!"

You have willed it so? You get the willed-for outcome? Be grateful. Feel that gratitude – it has to be sincere. Be grateful and be quiet; don't boast.

This time four years ago:
Greylag geese find a home in Jeziorki

This time five years ago:
Aviation over lockdown Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Easter in Ealing

This time nine years ago:
WiFi works on Polish train shock

This time ten years ago:
My dream camera, just around the corner

This time 12 years ago:
Longer, lighter lens

This time 13 years ago:
New engine on the coal train 

This time 14 years ago
High time to leave the car at home

This time 15 years ago:
The answer to urban commuting

This time 18 years ago:
Far away across the fields

Jesus and me – Easter Sunday 2025

When I was preparing for first Holy Communion some time in the mid-1960s, the nun who taught the catechism classes talked about sin. "Your soul," she explained, "is like this beautiful white shining cloth; every time you sin, the cloth is stained. It gets dirtier and darker, with large black patches spreading all over it. You can take it in to be cleaned by going to Confession and expressing contrition for all your sins; the priest will absolve you, and the act of taking the Eucharist during Holy Communion will make your soul spotless and shining white once again."

So here, at the age of six or seven, I was confronted by the Cartesian dualist notion of the soul as being something separate from the physical world, something that belonged with God and Heaven and all things Heavenly such as angels in an immaterial realm. But I did not feel this soul. What the nun was describing was something entirely abstract; something that I couldn't understand, that clicked not with my personal experience of life thus far.

In other words, I was being told to believe something without understanding it. Such is religion. Just accept what you are told. 

But what about gnosis – the idea of a personal revelation? Of a journey, of a process of spiritual understanding?

It was only in adulthood that I began to grasp the notion of consciousness. Now this is something I did feel, since earliest childhood. The awareness of being aware. I remember, one Tuesday sometime in the early or mid-1980s, reading a pop-psychology feature article in the London Evening Standard about consciousness on my way home from work. It had made an impression on me. [I'd love to find it in some archive somewhere!] Discussing it with friends that evening over a few beers, I noted that some of them (Andy Ł, Jack Cz) immediately got the concept, whilst others wanted to breeze on past to other more tangible subjects of conversation. But that article made me equate the notion of 'soul' and 'consciousness' or 'awareness' as synonyms and a concept with which I could personally and deeply relate. 

Over the decades, this has evolved in my thinking, particularly when I first stumbled upon the concept of qualia, as discrete units of conscious experience. Yes, this is crucial. The primacy of first-person, subjective conscious experience as being the foundation, the absolute core of all philosophical and theological inquiry into the nature of reality. Forget for a moment atoms in spacetime. It is your perception, your understanding of atoms in spacetime that's fundamental. Consciousness is fundamental. Consciousness pervades the Universe, gives it existence, structure and purpose. Consciousness is the soul, that same soul that gets soiled by sin. What sin? Anything that's on your conscience. Embarrassing moments in your life that you'd rather had not happened. Events brought up in life reviews often mentioned by people who have had near-death experiences. Events which could be said to be associated with karma. That's how I see sin; things you'd wish in retrospect never to have done or said.

So what about Jesus, whose resurrection from the dead we commemorate today? Below: the Sermon on the Mount, as imagined by Google Imagen 3.0.

Jesus on the one hand is a historical figure whose authenticity cannot be doubted. Upon the foundations of that historical figure, however, has come to be built a narrative that I find questionable. A theology based on acceptance rather than personal gnosis. "Here you go," says the Church. "Here are all the things you must believe." "Yes, but I have issues with some of them. My way is individual." "Heretic! Who are you to question the infallibility of the Church!"

The Gospels, the four key books of the New Testament, were most probably written between AD 66 and 110, putting their composition within the lifetimes of eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus's life. The remaining 22 books (the 27th and last being the Apocalypse or Revelation of St John) are the Acts of the Apostles and the Epistles (13 of which were attributed to St Paul), which make up the bulk of the New Testament (21 books in total). It was only at the Council of Rome in AD 382 that the final canon of the New Testament was agreed upon by the Church. Out with the gnostic gospels and other apocrypha. Three and half centuries after the time of Christ.

Ultimately belief is a highly personal thing. For me, as a child, curious, sensitive and believing in a meaning and purpose to life (my life and the universe in general), the notions taught by the Catholic Church did not square with my personal observations and experience. Yes, I believed in life everlasting (not bodily life, but some form of survival of consciousness. My personal experience of anomalous qualia memories of a time, from a place outside of my biological life, suggest that this is very real, far more real, far more tangible, than that of a historical figure described in the pages of the New Testament. 

Jesus – son of God? Are we all not children of God? [I roundly reject assigning sex to God. The Cosmic Purpose is not of physical matter, hence has no chromosomes determining gender.] Did Jesus rise from the dead on the third day after crucifixion? This is something I can accept metaphysically rather than literally.

Do I believe in God? I most certainly do. I believe in an overarching Divinity that provides purpose and a teleology to life and to the entire Cosmos. Though this Divinity is ineffable, something that we are incapable of understanding (like cats cannot understand electricity, though are aware of its presence when a light is switched on in a dark room). Those who deny the existence of God because of three centuries of rationalism are (in my mind) just as wrong as those who define God too rigidly on the basis of ancient religious texts. But ultimately, I hold to this intuition that all who seek God shall find God in their own way; and if that way is as a part of a religious community, then so be it.

Do I believe in life after death? I believe in the survival of consciousness after death. But what happens thereafter is mere surmise. My personal experience speaks to me of fleeting glimpses, consistent, familiar, pleasant, yet ephemeral, that pop into my stream of consciousness now and then, sometimes triggered by a moment, sometimes entirely spontaneously, hinting of past lives lived. Samsara, the cycle of death and rebirth? Evolving spiritually with each successive lifetime? Or ultimate unity with the One Consciousness, dissolving into God, fundamental and universal, as biological life slips away?

This time last year:
April, a treacherous month

This time four years ago:
Pandemic, then drought

This time five years ago:
Lent 2019, a summing up

This time six years ago
Spring polarises into existence

This time ten years ago:
The Road to Biedronka

This time 11 years ago:
Lighter, longer lens

This time 14 years ago:
Making sense of Polish politics

Lent's End – but really? Lent 2025: Day 46

The first time I took Lent seriously was 1992 (no alcohol for 46 days – nothing more), so I'm now coming up to the end of my 34th consecutive Lent. To the alcohol ban were added abstinence from confectionery, biscuits and cake, salt-snacks and fast food, and later, meat. I did, for a couple of years, also give up fish and dairy, going vegan for Lent, and forswear caffeine. These two proved physiologically (dreadful headaches) and practically (tough being vegan when on business travel across Poland) too tough to continue with.

The will not to do something is easier to see through than the will to do something. Gradually, over the years, I added physical exercise to my Lenten regime, which from 2014 on became a year-round activity. And from 2013, I introduced blog content focused on human spirituality (each day throughout Lent from 2020 to 2025, interrupted by my hospital stay this year). Looking back over my old Lenten posts, I can trace my spiritual development over those blogging years. Yes, it has really helped shape who I am in a positive way.

What starts as a Lenten resolution often turns into year-round habit. (Looking back at my past Lenten blog posts, I see that watching TV is also something I kicked during Lent.)

Concentrating on a life of simple joys, eschewing materialist pleasure and thrill-seeking, I get closer to a peace of mind necessary for continual contentment. No rush, no stress, no anxiety, no desire to vault myself up the status hierarchy.

The timing of Lent depends on the date of Easter, a moveable feast. It can shift by four weeks, the earliest Lent starting on 4 February and ending on 21 March; the latest would start on 10 March and end on 24 April. So this year's one is of the later Lents. The day before yesterday, the thermometer exceeded 30°C (87°F) – on 17 April, in Poland, you will understand. Though it may not be astronomical summer, it certainly feels like it. Lent starts in winter and ends in spring; this is a metaphor for rebirth and new beginnings.

In the month before Shrove Tuesday, my blog received over 71,000 page views. Over the past month of exclusively Lenten contemplations, traffic has fallen to under 18,000 page views. Do I care? Does this matter? Will I return to regular content or should I focus the rest of my blogging years on posting existential thoughts of a purely spiritual nature?

A new exercise for myself to adopt: one hour's focus a day. Reading a book for an hour. Writing for an hour. Building up to it will take time, like any exercise. Starting with shorter periods, say 15 minutes... Can I do it? Setting aside focus time and building up over the weeks? Over the years?

The practice of year-long asceticism is good for the soul – and good for the planet.

At midnight – traditionally, I shall break fast and indulge in some alcohol. Bought a couple of weeks ago, a bottle of Po Godzinach barley wine from Browar Amber (8.5% abv). Image created with Imagen 3.0 on account of it being broad daylight and not wishing to pour the beer until midnight.

During six of the seven days I was in hospital, I ate meat (ham and chicken mostly); on the Friday I left, fish was on the menu. So 40 days without meat achieved. 

Lent 2024: Day 46 
Why do we exist? Why does anything exist?

Lent 2023, Day 46
The summary, finale

Lent 2022: Day 46
Easter Everywhere, but not Ukraine

Lent 2021: Day 46
The summing up

Lent 2020: Day 46
Nor followers, nor leaders; one's own way to God

Kicks, thrills, fun, pleasure – and joy – Lent 2025: Day 44

What is it to be alive, to experience life rather than not to? The unalienable right to the pursuit of happiness was written into the American constitution in 1776. This is interpreted as the right to seek a better life, one of contentment and well-being...

It's late-1956. I stroll past the Chevrolet dealership; the Chrysler – De Soto dealership is right across the road. I see the 1957 Bel Air in the metal for the first time, and there's the Chrysler Windsor Hardtop or the De Soto Firesweep Sportsman. Which to buy? Excitement. Power. Acceleration. Glinting chrome. Glamorous style. Man, I gotta have one of these babies!

Dames just love 'em! One of these, a ranch-house home, a good job in the defense industry – everything falls into place. This is the pursuit of happiness... 

It's important to distinguish between feelings of well-being. Separate comfort from luxury. Above all, freedom from discomfort and disease (dis-ease). Not being hungry, ill, cold or stressed out. And then what? Fun – that's what! Taking a powerful motorbike out on a winding road in Vermont at dusk!

After the privations of the Great Depression and the Second World War, America in the late 1940s and 1950s was an earthly paradise (assuming of course you were white and male).

I remember Las Vegas in 1978. I was a 20-year-old, keen to (re-) connect with America. The excess was indeed excessive – does the world need a Las Vegas? Did I need to see it? I'd have rather spent more time in small-town America, seeking out rural corners where it still felt like 1952. All gone now...

These days, I treasure the quiet, the calm, the sunny. Not running around seeking kicks. Instead, I seek joy, rather than pleasure. Contentment rather than thrills. Is this just an age thing?

Below: seeing this billboard in Warsaw in 2016 was highly formative to my spiritual worldview. Translated, it reads: "Distinguish joy from pleasure and rejoice too in suffering". Not sure I'm totally on board with the second part of the slogan, but the first part is crucial. 

Asceticism – joy from the simple things, by choice. This I have on a beautiful cloudless day, this I have on days such as today; two walks – one through the wood and back, one to the station and back – and I have it all. No need for a sports car, exotic foreign holidays, fancy clothes or expensive watches.

One you learn to stop boasting (which I must admit I haven't, fully), it all falls into place.

Lent 2024: Day 44
Spirituality and the Dream World*

Lent 2023, Day 44
The Purpose

Lent 2022: Day 44
Habit, discipline or obsession

Lent 2021: Day 44
Life after life after life after life

Lent 2020: Day 44
A myriad paths to God

Accident of birth – Lent 2025: Day 42

 "O, to be in that space whence flow the great revelations!" What's missing? Inspiration. Knocked out by my medication? (eight pills a day) Or is it just a need to sit down and Get On With It?

For me, a powerful argument for the existence of the conscious soul is the conundrum as to whether I'd be here had my parents never met. Well, the biological 'I' would not be here. But that itinerant soul most certainly would be. In a different body, with a different ego, but still with the same awareness. Where do you locate a soul – by what logic? Hindu and Buddhist theology would both ascribe karma to the process. Lessons needing to be learnt from past lives.

What brought the conscious 'I' to West London in 1957, as the son of Polish refugees displaced by war? What biological container housed the conscious 'I' prior to that? 

I have strong feelings that the previous life was lived in America from the 1920s into the 1950s, This is based on lifelong familiarity and preference, along with anomalous qualia-memory flashbacks (xenomnesia, or exomnesia) and dreams. Walking home up the hill from Chynów station, the sight of the two houses on the left on a cloudless day is guarantee of those flashbacks; but they flash back neither here, nor now.

Left: this was me, aged four, Christmas 1961, at the Polish Saturday school Święty Mikołaj party. In the box – a toy train, an American diesel locomotive that would spark an instant and strong flashback, so familiar and so pleasant.

What's the reason for where a consciousness reappears on its eternal journey from Zero to One? 

Here I need to dive into reincarnation as defined by the two main religions that hold it to be true. The concepts of reincarnation in Hinduism and Buddhism share some similarities, but they also have key theological differences. 

Hinduism believes in the existence of an eternal, unchanging soul, the atman, which transmigrates from one body to another. The goal is to achieve liberation from the cycle of samsara (birth, death, and rebirth), and ultimate union with Brahman, the Oneness. Karma plays a crucial role in this cycle, with actions in one life determining the conditions of the next. Good actions lead to favourable rebirths, while bad actions lead to unfavourable ones; the karmic cycle driving the process of reincarnation.

The Buddhist doctrine of anatta denies the existence of a permanent, unchanging soul; instead, Buddhism teaches that what transmigrates is a continuity of consciousness and a stream of mental impressions. Having said that, Buddhism also emphasises the importance of karma. Actions have consequences that influence future rebirths, though how karma affects future rebirth differs, due to the concept of anatta. Buddhism also views samsara as a cycle of suffering. The goal is also to achieve liberation from this cycle.   

So both Hinduism and Buddhism see rebirth as a process of dependent origination, but Buddhism sees this as a flame being passed from candle to candle, while Hinduism is more literal, seeing a soul moving from body to body. Another way of seeing the difference is to use Bernard Carr's 'Big-C', 'small-c' consciousness metaphor. Hindus would see our small-c consciousness growing over a succession of incarnations until finally it merges into Big-C Consciousness. Buddhists would see the small-c consciousness returning to the Big-C Consciousness at the end of each biological life, with new biological life being filled with a fragment of small-c consciousness from the Big-C whole.

I must say I'm on the fence on this one. On the one hand, my lifelong subjective experience does indeed suggest a soul moving from body to body, and while that sensation isn't particularly strong; it's strong enough to for me to recognise it tas such. However, it is perhaps more separate from the ego; a pure expression of consciousness.

Maybe had I been born into a Hindu or Buddhist family, I might have been more curious about those past-life flashbacks I'd noticed in childhood. I might have been less dismissive of this phenomenon that has fascinated me since the age of three or four. Christianity and scientific materialism both roundly reject the notion of an eternal consciousness passing through myriad life forms on the way to an ultimate unification with the Everything.

But I was born into a Polish, Roman Catholic family, in West London, at a time and a place when religion was becoming marginalised, and where its practice in our edition was more to do with nationhood (Matko Boska królowa korony polskiej) than with theology. The concept that my conscious soul may have lived before was not something to discuss in such a milieu. 

More to the point: some time in the second half of this century, a small boy – who knows where? (but a boy, I'm certain) will have incongruous memories of qualia pertaining to London in the second half of the 20th century and Warsaw in the first half of the 21st century. 

Lent 2024, Day 41
More Questions than Answers (Pt II)

Lent 2023, Day 41
The End of Times

Lent 2022: Day 41
A Better Future

Lent 2021: Day 41
The Holiest of Holies

Lent 2020: Day 40
God and Nation don't go together

The nature of the past – Lent 2025: Day 40

“My past is nothing more than a box of tools that can serve me in the future.”

“I was never young; I have always been my age. The past is an illusion; it survives only in your memories, which, being analogue rather than digital, degrade over time. Only the strongest memories survive, distorted in the retelling."

The present is illusory; it passes you by in a fraction of a second (neuroscientists and philosophers reckon it’s somewhere between a fifth and a two-hundredth of a second. Bernard Carr calls this the 'specious present'). 

"There is only the future. Of which we know not. The past, though it shaped you, is no longer relevant.”

Events that have happened to you – and the way you dealt with them – are of practical use when confronting new challenges in life. You learn skills. You acquire experience. But dwelling on how things could have turned out differently is a train of thought to avoid completely. It happened; learn your lesson, acquire the new skill, and move on.

So far, I have been pondering on the past as it affects your ego, your body, your physical self.

But there is another type of past, another sort of memory; not memory of an event that happened – but a memory of being in the moment. Qualia – the basic units of consciousness – the observed, felt, experience of being there – return from the past, and unlike event memories, which distort, the sensations of qualia memory are identical to the qualia as they were originally experienced within your consciousness at the time. Like dreams, which don't lie, but about which you can lie, qualia memories are true.

As a result, the past as presented in my qualia memories is more important to me than events-based ‘practical past’.

And lying in hospital (much like my experience with Covid in December 2023), gives me an opportunity to examine these. Two come back to me; both concern being driven at night in our family car to the houses of my parents’ friends, typically on a Sunday, back in the 1960s. London’s traffic was lighter then. The street-lights differed from borough to borough; Acton’s were mushroom-shaped and of a bluer colour than those of Ealing. Balham – again, different. I could feel the precise sensation of looking at the quiet streets at night, passing familiar landmarks along the way, the railway bridge with the coal-merchant, and a model locomotive hauling a rake of coal trucks in the window. An evening train, all lit up, crossing Wandsworth Common. Road signs, pubs, hedges– and the cars; Standards, Humbers, Singers, Rileys, Wolseleys; passing parks, and shops – all closed. Below: Google's Imagen 3.0 has a pretty good go of bringing back those qualia memories.

Elthorne Park, Hanwell, not far from home; the bandstand; the swings, the backs of houses on Townholm Crescent. Most fascinating for me was the far end of the park, where the lawns and paths gave way to bushes and rough land before dipping down to the Grand Union Canal. Beyond that, Warren Farm, and then Osterley. But as a child with a pronounced squint, my eyes could not focus on infinity, and my recollection of the distant fields beyond the park's boundaries were of a magical land that touched the ocean. I could see aircraft on the flightpath coming in to land at London Airport (renamed London Heathrow in 1966), but my eyes' resolution could not distinguish very well at that range. In the early sixties, airlines, charters and air cargo flew a mix of jets, turboprops and piston planes; was that an Avro York or Airspeed Ambassador? Was that a Tupolev Tu-114 or a Boeing 707?

There can be no time without memory. And there can be no memory without consciousness. And so it is that the past only exists in the present through memory, which itself is entirely contingent on consciousness. And so without conscious observers around to subjectively experience time, everything is happening simultaneously, from Big Bang to the heat death of the Universe and all points in between. This is how Big-C Consciousness, which I would take as the Divine, perceives the Cosmic Entirety.

Lent 2024: Day 40
More Questions than Answers (Pt I)

Lent 2024, Day 40
How we lead our lives

Lent 2022: Day 40
Fasting and Temptation

Lent 2021: Day 40
Medicine, Mindfulness and Miracles

Lent 2020: Day 40
Coercion, Persuasion, Conversion and Faith

A Lenten interruption – Lent 2025: Day 38

For a couple of weeks I thought it was long Covid – a shortness of breath and tightness of chest during physical exertion (such as walking uphill) or exercise, which would abate as soon as I'd stop and rest. According to current medical knowledge, long Covid symptoms tend to disappear after between four and 12 weeks. So no great cause for concern, I thought. On Friday 4 April, during my daily walk, I’d feel that shortness of breath and tightness of chest come on strong. So I stopped, and I returned to feeling normal after about 15 seconds. This sensation returned several times, but completely stopped during the second hour of my walk. The evening was spent exercising (usual sets) while listening to Yours Sinsouly with MJDJ on West Wilts Radio, and I went to bed normally.

At around 3am, I woke up feeling the shortness of breath and tightness of chest – not good, as I was at rest. This continued after I got out of bed at 7am, prompting me to call Lux Med and arrange to see a doctor. After a diagnosis over the phone, I was told to rush myself into the clinic just off ulica Żwirki i Wigury, not far from Okęcie airport. Fortunately, I have the use of Moni’s car and could get myself there in 45 minutes from the działka. I was given an immediate electrocardiogram test, which revealed a likely heart attack. 

An ambulance was called, and within minutes I was in cardiology department at Warsaw Medical University on ulica Banacha, having a coronogram of my heart. This was done by inserting a probe into the artery of my right arm, and shoving it up into my heart. This indeed revealed to be a heart attack (ostry zawał serca it says in the paperwork), caused by the muscles of the aorta blocking blood flow. So stents were fitted along the same arteries – three of them – balloons to hold open the chambers of the heart, and by 12:45, I was being wheeled out of the operating room and into the cardiac intensive care ward, a mere two hours after arriving at Lux Med. And there I’ve been from Saturday afternoon through to Thursday morning, plugged into the cardiac telemetry machine, which monitored my vital functions. I had blood tests, an x-ray of my lungs, an echogram, and an ultrasound of my heart, and was hooked up to a Holter monitor for 24 hours. My final day was in the recuperation ward; I was released this afternoon.

So – a bit of a milestone!

And an answer to a question I'd been asking myself for decades: Have I got my father’s heart – or my mother’s heart? My mother had her first (of three) heart attacks at 58; my father only began developing heart issues (angina pectoris) in his 80s. My mother survived until the age of 88, my father until 96; his death certificate listed heart and kidney failure as the causes. My father at least ate a sensible diet and was mindful of the need of physical exercise; my mother ate too much cake, too many biscuits and sugar in general.  And was a worrier, anxious about everything. Her only exercise was the two miles she'd walk to work and back each day, so about 3,500 paces. And by coincidence, my heart attack happened on what would have been my father's 102nd birthday!

First days of the rest of my life

Physical decline doesn’t happen gradually – it happens in steps, with intervals of many years between each one. My last such step was eight years ago (summer 2017); since then it’s been an even keel – until now. After seven days in hospital, five of which were spent in intensive care, I've gotten used to the idea. 

"You can get used to everything"

My father – who survived the Nazi invasion of September 1939, the occupation, the Warsaw Uprising and prisoner-of-war camps before ending up as a refugee in a distant country – often said this to me: "do wszystkiego można się przyzwyczaić". Whatever change of circumstance destiny delivers, you will adapt. It’s just a question of time. From Covid and Brexit to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine and now Trumpian chaos, this decade has been dealing us blow after blow, and yet we soon get used to the new situation. And so it will be with my new cardiac situation. I am eager to see how it will impact on my exercise and diet regime.

Disassociation

“Through my head/Through my head/Rock'n'roll nurse goin' through my head/As I was lying on a hospital bed” – the lyrics of Bo Diddley’s Pills were going through my head as I was lying on the operating table. My body was shivering (I was wearing socks, underpants and a surgical gown), but my consciousness was calm. Should shit go wrong, I’m ready to drift away. This was nowhere near to a near-death experience or an out-of-body experience, just a sense of my consciousness disassociating itself from its physical container. Pleasant and familiar. Death, I fear you not. I had that same sense of a dissociated awareness moving along the silent hospital corridor at quarter to four this morning, the ultimate liminal space...

Hospital hypnagogia

I have swallowed more pills over the past seven days than in the last eight years. What are they? The pills don’t say. Something for blood pressure, certainly; the other ones? Maybe sedatives? I’ve been dozing off a lot, so quite probably. And in doing so, those hallucinations one gets in the moments before dropping off (hypnagogia) were more vivid. Here are four. A bearded giant, in a dark log hut, eating pine-cone soup from a large, stone bowl. [Image created by Google Gemini Imagen 3.0.]

An ancient wooden Światowid carving, each of its four faces being a distorted face of Trump. Then there was a vision of Alvin Lee, Ten Years After’s lead guitarist, wearing a maroon woollen jumper and denim flares, faded pale, rocking backwards and forwards, playing an air guitar – but old now; in his late 60s, with long, thinning grey hair. [This prompted me to check his Wikipedia page; “he died on 8 March 2013 from unforeseen complications following a routine surgical procedure to correct an atrial arrhythmia. He was 68.”] The military takeover: I hear a group of soldiers singing a marching song, marching in time, marching through a distant corridor of the hospital, their boots stepping in time with the tune.

And finally...

I cannot fault the Polish healthcare system as I have experienced it. Excellent care, excellent people, and I cannot even complain about the hospital food! Though it must be pointed out, that – Fridays excepted – avoiding meat in a Polish hospital is impossible, as chicken and ham are on the menu daily.  So – six days of this year's Lent with meat.

Well, home now, and ready to live the rest of my life. 

Lent 2024: Day 38
Neither a Follower nor a Leader be

Lent 2023, Day 38
Go with the flow, or swim against the tide

Lent 2022: Day 38
When I was a child, I understood as a child

Lent 2021: Day 38
Will we ever understand what's inside the atom?

Lent 2020: Day 38
Religion, Society and the Individual

Hope and hopelessness – Lent 2025: Day 31

Physical and cognitive decline, infirmity and death – that's on the menu for everyone. And despite this, we can be happy. Why? What is it that ultimately gives us hope? What is it that stops us from sliding into existential despair? 

Unlike every other life form on our planet, we have the ability to imagine the future. On the basis of observation, we can extrapolate how the cycle of life looks and how it will look. We can picture, even on a glorious spring day such as today – bright sunshine, brilliant blue sky, 22°C outside as I write, trees starting to unfurl new leaves – that by late November, it will be grim; sleet, leaden skies, temperature just above freezing, long dark nights. But then come next April, we'll once again see days such as today.

It's always worth noting the Rabbinical saying: if you're having a bad day today, remember there will be better ones; and if you're enjoying a good day, remember there will be bad ones. Yet seasons, and days good and bad, are cyclical; something to be toggled through. Biological life, however, is binary – it's either on or off. Alive or dead.

Positive expectations have a positive role in medicine. Belief in the power of hope helps healing outcomes; clinical studies have shown that all other factors being equal, patients who hope to recover are more likely to do so than patients mired in hopelessness. Mind over matter, belief in the power of belief – the placebo effect is powerful; while science has yet to explain how it works, it is real, and it can produce measurable physiological changes.

Hope generates fortitude, the power to carry on in the face of adversity. I could see that in my father in his last years. Accepting his situation, yet striving to get on with it, until the very end.

But what about consciousness? Is its existence also binary? Will it be snuffed out with death? And here we have experience hope in its most profound form. Dismiss the notion of survival of consciousness as a false hope, and it no longer works its spell. It's hope that keeps us keeping on, in the expectation that the soul – in one way or another – survives body death. But is it just hope – or will hope morph into knowing? Into gnosis? Personally, I feel it. In small but regular experiences (I had one today on my walk) which suggest to me that this is true.

Materialism, ultimately, denies us the greatest hope – that of being part of an eternal whole, being upon a journey of spiritual evolution, along with the Universe as it unfolds. 

Lent 2024: Day 31
Time and Spirituality

Lent 2023, Day 31
Science vs. the Paranormal

Lent 2022: Day 31
Consciousness – fundamental and universal?

Lent 2021: Day 31
I'm better than you – no, really, I am!

Lent 2020: Day 31
Divine Inspiration

Getting On With It (Pt II) – Lent 2025: Day 30

We all know (or should know!) that work expands to fill the time available for it. This is Parkinson's Law, dating back to 1955). However, as we will also know from experience, that if you wait until the last minute to do the work, it only takes a minute. This is the Stock-Sanford corollary to Parkinson's law. But what if there's no deadline? What if you don't do it – what if you just push it (whatever it is) further on into the future? You can't Get On With It if you've not defined what it is.

Tasks that repeat, projects that don't.

What can you put off until tomorrow, or the next day, or the week or month after that? In other words, when is it OK to procrastinate, and when are you absolutely obliged to get on with it? What's the driver? What motivates you? What will happen if you don't do it at all? Or if you fail in your attempt? The one filter through which to pass these questions is: will it help me fulfil my human potential?

I am minded of the kitchen in Withnail and I. The moment when you finally realise that something must be done. A situation that can no longer go on. It's never this bad in my kitchen, by the way. Every evening, I switch on the immersion heater, wait for the water to heat up, and wash the dishes in between doing weights exercises. However, whilst I don't mind washing dishes and pans, I can't say I'm a fan of washing cutlery. And so, if nothing else, the cutlery tends pile up from one day to the next, in the sink, in an empty (large) yogurt container. Or two yogurt containers. [One solution to this is to reduce the number of knives, forks and spoons I deploy. Just the one set, used in rotation, rather than dirtying new ones and letting them accumulate before washing 25 to 30 in one go.]

Mentally juggling the tasks ahead of me, I ponder which ones are most important and in what order I should tackle them, and what the consequences of not doing them are. The worst that could happen is that I simply end up shifting the tasks on into the future. There's cleaning the house (usually, this can wait). There's blogging. The daily stroll (two hours typically). And books I want to read. And my exercises. 

Time should be measured by entropy, not seconds, minutes and years. The process of order turning into chaos. Wasting time means letting chaotic processes unfold.

{{ czas chce nas skrzywdzić }} – 'time wants to harm us'.

I'm not one for being pro-active. Sure, I react; when prodded, I respond. What drives me still, though, is not material. It is mystical; metaphysical. I do believe in an overarching Cosmic Purpose. So much of what happens to us in our lives, the major junctions at which we take this turn or that, are determined by chance. We think we have control over our destinies, and yet looking back we can see how much was preordained. 

How much we do, how much we achieve – this is determined by our strength of will. How much we push over into the future, rather than doing today. But then on the other hand, avoiding stress is important to living longer. Don't get too worked up over work. If your procrastination leads to levels of stress that you can't cope with, then either learn to let go, or work on reducing the amount of time you waste on the inconsequential. 

Lent 2025: Day 30
The Divine in your life

Lent 2023, Day 30
God/No God

Lent 2022: Day 30
Let the Spirit guide you!

Lent 2021: Day 30
On being perceptive

Lent 2020: Day 30
Time - religion and metaphysics

Getting On With It (Pt I) – Lent 2025: Day 29

The biological containers that carry our consciousness have a finite timespan allocated to them. Predetermined by genetics and by environment to some degree, and to some degree by will, our lives are like flying in a glider. Carried aloft by thermal currents, each flight is bound to end sometime. The question is – how long we can stay airborne? And what we can do while up there? The answers are related to many factors, some of which are under our control, others not at all.

Why do we live? Is life just a meaningless random thing that happened? 

Or – as my own intuition instructs me to ask – is there a purpose? Just pondering that question, "why am I here," it immediately feels to me that yes, there is a reason, no, this is not an accident.

So if there is a purpose – what should we be doing with our lives? 

I'd answer that question in three words – fulfil your potential. Others might say, "Have fun. Buy toys. Seek pleasure." Others might say: "Push yourself ever higher up the status hierarchy." Seek wealth to convert into power, power to convert into wealth. Others yet might have never even asked themselves the question.

Fulfilling your potential means finding the balance. Know your strengths and weaknesses, and make the most of those strengths. Be aware of your weaknesses – but don't beat yourself up trying to fix them. Perfection is an unattainable goal. Improvement in small, measurable steps is a more realistic doctrine by which to live one's life.

My weakness? I am inconsistent. I can be lazy; goofing off when I should be getting on with it. I am all too easily distracted (always have been). The challenge for me, therefore, is getting on with it consistently – staying focused.

Getting on with it? So important. But getting on with what?

It was easier when I was young. I was guided – by parents, by teachers, by media role models. Study, get a job, find a partner, procreate, reach a position of financial comfort. But then what? Take it easy? Retire as early as possible to play golf? 

More and more people across the Western world are inheriting wealth*, which secures their financial future at an early age. Rather than struggle to get onto the property ladder, they find themselves decently housed at an early age, without a mortgage, and their choice now is either to drive hard to "realise my potential", or "take it easy, man". Freed from the pressure of finding a career that pays well, the New Inheritocracy can pursue their passions in jobs that pay less but which can let them realise their potential. But the downside is a society of slackers, who, without passions, just drift and vegetate, or chase empty pleasures, their potential unfulfilled. 

Getting On With It is about drive. We all have different levels of drive, and what we attach it too is all important. Philanthropy, charity, scientific research, ecological activism – or simply the acquisition of wealth, power, prestige. Or across the board – acclaim. The Ego's need for adulation. Finding one's true cause can boost drive, a moment of realisation of one's purpose in life. With me, again, I see that inconsistency. A framework is required, an external target. Setting myself the goal, for the sixth Lent in a row, to come up with daily Lent-focused blog posts helps to jog me along. I must stop wasting time and Get On With It. But beyond Lent, my daily ritual of completing my health-and-exercise spreadsheet (into the 12th year now!) keeps me on the straight and narrow.

* There are two excellent articles about the New Inheritocracy in the 1 March 2025 edition of The Economist, behind a paywall, but well worth accessing.

Lent 2024: Day 29
Altruism and consciousness

Lent 2023, Day 29
Artificial Intelligence creates a religion

Lent 2022: Day 29
Meditations on travel

Lent 2021: Day 29
The ups and downs of life

Lent 2020: Day 29
Prophetic