Lent 2026: day six – the Meaning of the Cross

The world's most recognisable religious symbol, the Cross of Christianity, may represent more than the means of Christ's execution. Here's a metaphorical interpretation, based upon a idea from the Greek-Armenian philosopher and mystic, G.I. Gurdjieff...

The vertical beam represents spiritual ascent, the journey from Zero to One, from small 'c' consciousness to the Big 'C' Consciousness that is unity with God.

The horizontal beam represents the material world, the ego, animal instincts and desires. It stands a barrier to the spiritual ascent, cutting across it at 90 degrees.

Traditionally, the horizontal beam is two-thirds of the way up the vertical beam.

If we take the biblical lifespan of 70 years, the ascent from Zero up to beyond the horizontal beam takes two-thirds of a human life, that is a little over 46 years.

By the age of 46 years, we should have overcome our egos, made and feathered our nests, begotten our offspring, and have moved onto a state where – having overcome the challenges of the material world – we can concentrate on the spiritual, from a position of comfort and wisdom based on lived experience.

When I say '46 years', this is not meant to be taken literally; our lifespans have lengthened since biblical times. So, the age at which we reach and overcome the material/ego barrier is proportionately higher. Sixty six and two-thirds if you're aiming to live to a hundred?

Having said that, the barrier of Ego, which clouds, dilutes and distracts from the spiritual journey does not suddenly pop up in middle age; it begins forming with a child's socialisation. "Child is born /With a heart of gold/Way of the world/Makes his heart so cold [That's the Way of the World, Earth, Wind and Fire, 1975] Within the first few years of primary school, building up to a crescendo of hormone-fuelled stupidity that eases off with entry into adulthood, when a more deliberative ego emerges. From the horizontal beam hangs a drape, which doesn't quite touch the ground...

Emerging above the horizontal beam, seeing with clarity, on the final stages of the human body's journey through life, untroubled by the fripperies of material desires.

Having said that, some humans are destined never to cross that barrier whatever their age; trapped by their egotistical instincts. Never content, always seeking external validation. A certain orange-coloured president springs to mind.

Lent 2025: day six
Defining the nature of reality 

Lent 2024: Day six
Spirituality for our (New) Age Pt I

Lent 2023 Day Six
The role of consciousness in human spirituality

Lent 2022: Day six
Do you believe in life after death?

Lent 2021: Day six
How should we see God?

Lent 2020: Day six
Build your own religion – the tenets

Lent 2026: day five – the place of the Ego

Our bodies are containers for our consciousness. Our bodies are biological, the result of evolution. We are – each one of us – the product of lineages that have reproduced successfully every single time, all the way back in an unbroken chain to the moment that life first emerged on this planet. Survivors, biological survivors. The survival instinct is powerful. 

Being biological creatures, we are guided by instincts and desires, forces that are tempered by intellect and by social norms. And over time, evolution of Homo sapiens has come to select for intellect as much as for more physical attributes. 

Males (and I can see this clearly in cats as well as humans) are driven to mate with as many females as possible - it's what males do. Females are driven to be selective in regard to their male partner, to ensure the best genes and (in humans anyway) a carer/provider. Males need to display their determination, energy and social status to females. Females compete for mates with beauty. Sex for security.

The Ego provides the drive to compete in society, to find an optimal mate(s). However, that ego can become toxic; symptoms include seeking an ever-higher place in the status hierarchy and constantly seeking external validation. As this happens, empathy dims, other people become treated instrumentally.

The Ego can easily be seduced – through flattery, through advertising; buy this car and you will raise your status. Boast about this, boast about that, and – the Ego reasons – people will think more highly of you. Materialism is seductive. Surround yourself with the trappings of material success, and your ego is boosted. People look up to you. Or so you think...

Left: I asked ChatGPT to design a 1950s car ad from the US aimed at the potential (male) buyer's ego, and got this excellent piece of artwork and copywriting. The golden age of psychological manipulation. An entire socio-economic system predicated on flattering the ego. Our advertising industries today are less crass; in any case our regulators would take a dim eye on such blatant ego-manipulation.

But lose your ego – then what? What would it be like wandering around without an ego, especially in one's early twenties. I think of the classic ego-death brought about by abuse of psychedelic drugs. I think of Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett, Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green and the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson as examples of great musical genius that took too many trips and lost it.

There is a time and a place to lose your ego; it is once you have brought up the children. When you can step back from the status-hierarchy race. When you are living comfortably – not precariously, not in luxury, but comfortably – then wind back the ego and refocus on the spiritual, regain the child's awe at the Universe around you. Let the spirit evolve.

We must understand our biology and rise above it.

Lent 2025: day five
Is it possible to be a mystic materialist?

Lent 2024: day five
Believers and the unbelievers

Lent 2023 day five

Reality, the New God

Lent 2022: day five
The Ego and Evil

Lent 2021: day five
Science, materialism and God

Lent 2020: day five
Monism and Dualism

Ego's journey through human life – Lent 2025: Day 15

As I age, the flame of my ego turns down from a 7 to a 3; then on towards a 1 before it is inexorably extinguished. Yet the flame of my consciousness grows in strength from year to year, along with my understanding of reality. And with age I grow in wisdom. Whilst the ego is visible to all (boastfulness, garrulousness, displays of status symbols), consciousness is silent and unseen.

In childhood I was both they highly conscious mądry Michaś and at the same time the rather silly, ego-driven głupi Michaś. Now, while 'głupi Michaś' would occasionally do or say stupid things – głupi Michaś rarely had the upper hand. When left to his own devices, it was 'mądry Michaś' that was in charge, spending time playing, observing, reading, pondering, playing, imagining, experiencing, thinking, playing, watching the clouds – feeling what it is to be alive – again. 

In adolescence, however, that conscious, wise, self was almost entirely pushed aside by testosterone-fuelled ego. Yet the wise self clung on somehow. In adulthood, it crept back gradually, pushing away the folly of youth. Mądry Michał finally emerged triumphant, around the time I reached the age of maturity, which I now recognise as being 65. But this very statement smacks of boastfulness, which suggests that the ego is still lurking there in the mix. It is hard to shed one's ego totally. Mindfulness helps.

The human condition

Whether you are a physicalist (everything is matter) or an idealist (consciousness is fundamental), the truth is that your biological body is subject to entropy, just like everything else composed of matter. It is the ultimate destiny of all matter is to break back down into random particles. To the physicalist/materialist (I use the terms interchangeably) who considers consciousness to be a mere product of neuronal activity, the process of ageing is tragic. One's youth fades, one's strength ebbs, and all that there's to look forward to is decay, suffering and oblivion.

Yet Consciousness abides. It does! I feel certain of it. Consciousness was there at the beginning, willing there to be Something rather than Nothing. Consciousness will be there after the end of all matter. And it is present everywhere. It survives matter. It survives entropy. Grasp this, and ageing, and what comes after – death – hold no fear. 

I asked Google Gemini's Imagen 3.0 to create an illustration in the Arts & Crafts style entitled The Human Condition. Rather nice, don't you think?

And the same title, this time in Mid-Century Modern style. Isolation and materialism have taken over. "I am no longer part of a community, no longer an integral part of nature, but I have things."

Lent 2024: Day 15
Aligning Prayer with Cosmic Purpose

Lent 2023, Day 15
Intuition and instinct

Lent 2022: Day 15

Religious belief, practice, inquiry and experience

Lent 2021: Day 15
The Afterlife - Faith and Doubt

Lent 2020: Day 15
Rites and Rituals

Ego, consciousness and Time: Lent 2024: Day 14

One analogy: your body is the car, the driver is your ego, your consciousness is the passenger, observing the journey as it unfolds. You consciousness knows where it wants to go; the driver, however, is erratic, speeding, showing off. After many wrong turns and traffic violations, the destination draws nearer, the driver has settled in and no longer feels the need to rush; the passenger is now contented and finds joy in the passing scenery.

How does Google Gemini Imagen 3.0 see ego and consciousness? An definite east-west split here!

Whilst we need to separate out the ego from consciousness, the ego is not ethically bad per se, it just has a tendency to boastfulness, cutting corners with the truth, and focused on acquisition of material goods. Some of which are needed for a comfortable life, but others, more luxurious than necessary, being used as status symbols.

The ego is an important aspect to our personalities. It's a suit-and-mask ensemble worn by the biological self. needed for establishing our place in the pecking order. It is needed for mating; it is needed for getting on financially. Ego is primarily motivated by our need for status. This is natural; we are, after all, mammals, and hierarchy is inherent in mammalian groups. 

Meanwhile, our consciousness is there in background, observing and feeling. Cringing at times at what the ego is up to. Representing nobler sentiments.

Your consciousness is the real you; your ego but an artifact you forge. It is the suit of armour your biological self dons to protect you against the buffeting you'll get from society, at school, at work, socially. Ego can lead you to acts of folly, but also to build a positive public persona. Whoever regularly speaks publicly will know that. (My ego was delighted that six people who left an opinion on our webinar today all gave five stars – and my ego is keen to share that fact with you.)

But in general, the older one gets, the need for the ego recedes. Materially comfortable, folk who are still chasing ever-greater fortunes to live in ever-greater luxury as they approach old age are the spiritually hollow. 

The maturing of the soul over this lifetime is an important aim. Yet I'd argue that one lifetime is nowhere near enough for this process to reach fruition. If you can accept the idea that our biological selves are only containers for our immortal consciousness, then it's possible to envisage the process of spiritual evolution as spanning many lifetimes (in this regard, I am more aligned in my thinking about reincarnation with Hinduism than with Buddhism). This places my view of time as traditionally linear; the arc of progress from imperfect past towards a perfect future, in incremental improvements.

And finally an intuition that came to me on a walk a few days ago:
{{  Never show off what you know. Share what you know.  }}

Lent 2024: Day 14
Emergence and Complexity vs. Entropy and Chaos: Good vs. Evil?

Lent 2023, Day 14
The appeal of mystic traditions

Lent 2022: Day 14
Between Serendipity and Proactiveness

Lent 2021: Day 14
Prayer

Lent 2020: Day 14
Choose the music for your religion

You, your consciousness and Time – Day 13

Time ticks away, marked by an increase in entropy (things breaking down, falling apart, rotting, rusting) but also by an increase in syntropy (new life coming into being, new stars and galaxies forming, awareness growing all the while).

If you accept that Consciousness is the fundamental property of the universe, from which space, time, matter and energy derive, then it becomes far easier to accept that your small-c consciousness is eternal.

The theological question, then, is to define the word 'your'. Pure consciousness, untainted by ego, the driving force behind our quest for status. The pure consciousness of subjective experience, of being in the moment, unmotivated by any material plans, just being aware of existence. Your consciousness is not boastful, it seeks not status; it observes, it feels. 

The discrete units of consciousness are qualia, defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. We live them – but do we notice them? Do those moments imprint themselves upon our memory? 

Memory is our past living on in the present. Indeed, the past that exists in the present does so solely through memory. And our memory is far from perfect. Our memories of events are analogue, rather than digital. They get coloured and mutate in the retelling. The ones that evince positive responses from the listener are kept, the ones that fail to impress are forgotten. As the ego-storyteller retells the story to ever-greater effect with each retelling, the boring bits are skipped, and the focus is on the wow! moments, that tend to aggrandise the storyteller's ego. 

But qualia flashbacks are different; they remain constant. Your ego wasn't involved; you were just the conscious observer. Qualia memories – not of events but of instants of being – do not fade, do not transmute. They feel as real as they did when you originally experienced them. The memories snap you right back into the moment. They may be experienced weakly, like a déjà vu, but they're absolutely genuine. They do not change in the retelling, because they are never retold, they are refelt. 

PAFF! I felt one just now, preparing lunch – a flashback from childhood; reading Look and Learn magazine on the sitting-room floor; an advertisement for a Scalextric model car racing track. The feel of the dark-green carpet; sunlight streaming in from the window; cooking smells. Cosy, happy, engaged in my imagination. Qualia flashbacks such as this can be conjured up from memory, but more likely they're triggered by sensory inputs such as light, sound (music), smell, taste or feel.

If consciousness is syntropic, defying the Second Law of Thermodynamics, it would suggest that qualia memories could be eternal, borne into Cosmos – by who knows what mechanism – into the Akashic record, to be replayed within a different biological container's mind at a later date. As triggered or unbidden anomalous qualia memory flashbacks or else in dreams. 

And now onto the questions. The anomalous qualia memories that are clearly not those experienced by my current biological self. They come from another place, another time, and experienced by a different biological self – and yet feel as real as qualia memories that I can put a finger on.

The experience is real, it's genuine, I've had this since childhood, it is my quest to learn more about these anomalous qualia memories, exomnesia or xenomnesia (memories from outside, or foreign memories). Can these be scientifically explained? If so, what is the vector? Some as-yet-undiscovered field of consciousness? Or is searching for scientific explanations essentially futile – the answer being metaphysical in nature? 

Tomorrow: more about the Ego

Lent 2024: Day 13 
Aesthetics, metaphysics and ethics

Lent 2023, Day 13
High Church and Low: Religious Styles and Personality

Lent 2022: Day 13
Comfort and Luxury, Consciousness and Ego

Lent 2021: Day 13
Comfort and Luxury – knowing when to stop

Lent 2020: Day 13
Holy buildings and the sense of the mystical

Personality and Belief: Lent 2024, Day 27

Watching an interview with British theoretical physicist Christopher Isham yesterday, I was struck by his observation that how one interprets quantum mechanics boils down to whether one is an extrovert or an introvert. Here's the quote:

"There is some link between people's interpretation of quantum mechanics and their psychological type in a  Jungian sense. This is the distinction between introvert and extrovert; an extrovert being someone whose primary attention is outside and the introvert is someone whose primary attention is inside. I noticed that those physicists who are extrovert tend to favour the empirical pragmatic probability of measurements as being all that we can say about the world, whereas people like me who are strongly introvert favoured anything but that, and that was the reason they argued so much because they never could understand each other's point of view."

Wow. Now extrapolate this from interpretations of quantum mechanics to philosophy. Could there be a link between extroversion and materialism on the one hand, and introversion and a metaphysical perspective on the other? Put it another way; if you're an extrovert, are you less likely to believe in a supernatural divine power than an introvert?

I have written before about personality type in the sense of the panoply of behavioural disorders categorised by modern psychiatry. I believe that we all, to a lesser or greater degree, are on the spectrum of one or more of the main forms of disorder, however very few of us have these on a scale significant enough to merit diagnosis or clinical intervention. 

Examples of these disorders include depression, bipolar disorder, autism spectrum disorder, attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, dyslexia, hoarding disorder, anorexia, bulimia, substance abuse, schizophrenia, narcissism, paranoia, to name the better-known ones. The percentage of the population clinically diagnosed with such conditions is low. However, diagnosed cases are but the tip of the iceberg, with the vast bulk of people demonstrating low-level symptoms in a way that isn't debilitating in their day-to-day functioning or social interactions but which nevertheless still manifest themselves enough to affect personality.

So – is the way we experience reality a product of our biology? If your personality is indeed shaped by manifestations of your behavioural traits, which themselves are thought to be genetic in origin – then do your genes shape the way you look at the world?

This is another aspect of the free-will/determinism debate. Is your worldview determined? 

I'd posit that there does exist a metaphysical will above that ego-driven material will, which seems increasingly to me to be determined by external factors (upbringing, environment and, yes, biology). The metaphysical will is intuitive; it functions by openness to the cosmic stream of consciousness, ethical in purpose, unfolding along with the Universe. Alignment with the Flow.

There is a clear correlation between spirituality and sense of purpose and meaning to life. People with that strong spiritual belief system do tend to be happier. Meaning brings hope; being trapped within materialism brings on hopelessness. The more you push back against the demands of your ego in favour of the calm voice of your consciousness, the happier you get.

More tomorrow.

Lent 2023, Day 27
Being Positive is more than just being Optimistic

Lent 2022: Day 27
God and Nationalism

Lent 2021: Day 27
Consciousness in other creatures

Lent 2020: Day 27
The Physical and the Metaphysical

The Ego Alone – the Individual vs. the Collective (Pt IV): Lent 2024, Day 24

Thought-experiment time: imagine the most egotistic, narcissistic person you know, marooned on a desert island. Life's comfortable (food is plentiful, there's shelter, a warm climate, no predators), but there are no other human beings around, and escape is impossible. 

Imagine, say, a Trump, on his own, minus entourage, with no one to impress, or boss about or shout at. What would be going through his mind? How quickly would he implode psychologically? 

We see here the individual, the individualist – entirely focused on self – and yet emotionally dependent on the collective. Such a narcissistic ego requires the collective to provide non-stop positive feedback, the crowd acting as a mirror in which the ego can view its reflection. Without fawning flunkies, without the adulation of the masses, the ego's sense of being collapses. The individual ego, it turns out, is anything but independent. For such folk, isolation, loneliness, is the greatest fear. 

Although I'm sure I'd be unable to cope with the level of isolation on that island, I do appreciate the joy of solitude; not having any one around to bother me making demands. Over time, with age, my biology-linked ego has faded; I no longer seek the attention of or approval from others. A calm consciousness rises instead to replace it.

And yet despite my individualism, my deepest concerns are not for my own future, but for the Collective. I don't want a return to war, sparked by a tiny handful of egos. I don't want future humans to suffer from the effects of a changed climate, changed by a couple of generations' unthinking dash for material possessions.

So – seeking an afterlife that's essentially the same as this one, but with your ego residing in another plane is, according to me at least – is unlikely to occur. Seeking an afterlife with your ego residing in another body is even less probable (different body = different biology = different ego). But seeking an afterlife in which your consciousness, unshackled from your ego, survives in some form or another, well, that's a notion I'm open to, if only because this squares with my life-long experiences of anomalous qualia memories from another time, another place.

But how about if your afterlife were to take the form of a dilution of your individual, small-c consciousness into one, vast, cosmic, Big-C Consciousness? I have long posited this as the end-point of the unfolding Universe, its Purpose met, its destiny fulfilled. You are no longer either ego nor individual, subjective conscious experience, but the consciousness of everyone, everything that ever existed. You know all, there are no secrets, everything is clear – but you are now everything.

This squares with Buddhist and Hindu teachings; the 'I' subsumed into 'we'. A difficult concept for individualists to swallow – whether materialist individualists or even ones with a more spiritual outlook.

Lent 2023, Day 24
We are all Sentinelese? 

Lent 2022: Day 24
Memory, identity and reincarnation

Lent 2021: Day 24
Reconciling science and spirituality

Lent 2020: Day 24
Refutation (II)

The Purpose - Lent 2023: Day 44

Should you ever catch yourself asking "Why am I here? What's the point?" you may have lost your way; the sense of  wonder of being alive has (temporarily I hope!) gone out. A brief reset is required.

The reset should depend on acknowledgement of Consciousness, of the eternal 'I am.' 

Not 'I am sad' or 'I am in pain' or 'I am tired' - but simply 'I am'. I exist; I can feel that I exist - and that feeling, on its own - unmodulated by material reality - is quite splendid. Who are really - merely the biological, ego-driven product of your parents' mating? What would you have been had your parents never met? I'd posit that you'd be someone else - an entirely different biology and ego - but with the same essential consciousness that you possess right now. And that's the real you-ness of you.

I have written earlier this Lent about the amazing miracle that is you being biologically alive, given your trillions of forebears going back to the Last Universal Common Ancestor. Most of them single-cell organisms. And every link in that chain - unbroken! With so much peril at every step of the way! 

And yet... you are. 

Relish that fact.

We age at an ever-accelerating pace. A ten-year-old subjectively experiences a year passing at the same pace as a 50-year-old experiences the passing of five years - both periods equate to one-tenth of their total life lived so far. Should you make it to 100, you'll feel time passing twice as fast as you did when you were 50. And as you feel that life is accelerating you ever faster towards death, there is that encroaching anxiety as you realise there's not enough time to do what is essential.

So what is essential? It is, to me, to understand the big picture. To have meta-awareness - even if it's only an awareness of all that you remain unaware of. Curiosity is a great driver, a spur, a magnet. Wanting to know - wanting to uncover - that satisfaction of the 'click' moment of insight - so many remain as yet unclicked. Even to the most brilliant scientists and philosophers. 

As I try to put it all together, I realise that I'm nowhere near reaching any answer - it will take a great many lifetimes! All I can hope for now is to read, listen, discuss, learn, and build upon it - taking it one level up at every turn. 

I hope to reach my father's age - he died at 96 and half - indeed, yesterday would have been his 100th birthday had he survived just three and half years longer. What kept him going was a sense of purpose and unquenchable curiosity; I believe that he is back among us, in a new incarnation. That he willed himself back. And this is how it goes; life after life after life after life - from Zero to One [see below].

The path from Zero to One is from being an isolated individual, and Ego out on its own, to becoming part of the Eternal Whole. Small acts of kindness and charity help connect us with others, bonding into a society that's more win-win than adversarial, more trusting than suspicious. If you doubt life's purpose, thinking it merely a random collection of atoms, consider how you could actively help others.

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

Personalities and Disorders – Lent 2023: Day 11

Psychologists have long been devising matrices and grids with which categorise human personalities. (And not only human personalities, as any pet-owner knows!) If we think back to the Ancient Greeks, they had their four fundamental elements, fire, water, earth and air, were matched by the four humours – Phlegmatic, Sanguine, Choleric and Melancholic. Alchemy also attempted to categorise human personality types. Today, psychologists use various methodologies in the arcane practices of corporate HR, some of which have become commonplace though controversial, such as Myers Briggs Type Indicator. There are many other competing methods for assessing and defining personality types; no one consensus model exists.

Yet given the precision that physicists have attained with in classifying basic forms of matter with the Standard Model, the lack of any generally agreed descriptions (even introvert/extrovert are vague and woolly away from the extreme presentations) shows up the gulf between science and social science.

And so – there are traits, habits, behaviours that allow themselves to be classified as personality types; each one drifts off into the arena of personality disorders - from the realm of the psychologist to that of the psychiatrist.

Yes, we are all individuals. We may display certain characteristics in common, but these can overlap, cancel each other out or be subject to wildly varying interpretations. Just looking at the personality traits that I display using different scales and indicators, I can see I fit precisely into none.

Am I introverted or extroverted? If my interlocutor is interesting, I am extroverted. The discussion becomes animated, the more so in the presence of alcohol. If I’m in the presence of bores, I switch off and prefer to stand alone in the corner.

One spectrum that I consider to be greatly important is Ego – Consciousness (my thoughts on this from Lent 2022 in the link below).

The pure experience of being conscious, the awareness of being aware that I AM, is in itself an introverted act, a detachment from the here and now of classical reality. At the other end of the spectrum is pure ego, the narcissistic inability to perceive reality through any other filter than that of the Great Me.

Ego has its purpose; I would argue that it is essential to the biological imperative to survive and reproduce. But having reproduced, and having helped its biological owner attain a comfortable and relatively stress-free existence, it needs to be dialled back, and Consciousness should rise to the fore.

Does being on the Ego end of this spectrum hold back spiritual growth? Not necessarily – many great spiritual leaders were driven by Ego (especially in religions with hierarchies). “You! God wants you to be a mendicant monk, living in Holy Poverty!” “Very well, sire!” Ego-related disorders are often perceptible in leaders across all hierarchies.

Each spectrum has its pluses and minuses when placed into the context of spirituality. Would, for example, those on the Obsessive-Compulsive Behaviour Disorder spectrum focus too much on ritual, getting agitated by a rite being conducted in, say, the wrong order? The "TV Tie syndrome" – being unable to absorb the message of a talking head on TV because his tie was too garish, too wide, too narrow, or the stripes clashed with the pattern of his shirt, comes into play here. “I must have a Latin Mass, and yet I become distracted if the priest mispronounces his Latin words!”

The attention-deficit and hyperactivity disorder spectrum poses its own problems, as those experiencing symptoms may find it hard to dwell long enough on matters spiritual to find answers in them. (Indeed, my chief problem in regular church-going was the ease with which my mind drifted off topic in a room full of sensory distractions.)

Episodic disorders characterised by mood swings also have their reflections in the way those who experience them seek or connect with the Numinous.

The more I think about overlaying personality traits and behavioural disorders onto the spiritual realm, the more convinced I am about the rightness of the intuition I felt one night in the summer of 2021 – “everyone who seeks God shall find God in their own way.” There is no one-size-fits-all solution – other than for the well-adjusted, emotionally balanced, neurotypical minority.

Lent 2022: Day 11

Aliens, Angels and Daemons

Lent 2021: Day 11
The Ego, Consciousness and Spiritual Evolution

Lent 2020: Day 11
Dreams and the Afterlife

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

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

The Ego - what is it good for? Lent 2022, Day Four

I can't say anything about your subjective experiences - your thoughts and reflections - from when you were growing up; we are all so different despite being so similar. As a child, I was more conscious, more sensitive than I was when I became a teenager. With puberty come not only chemical changes induced by hormones, but the beginnings of a struggle to assert oneself on the Ladder of Authority.

Our society is innately hierarchical, but over history, the hierarchy is starting to flatten and become more like a network. Win-win relationships are clearly more successful than those in which one side wins at the other's cost. Yet much of the hierarchy still remains, and to climb a few rungs higher up the Ladder of Authority, you need sharp elbows - driven by your ego.

Without a strongly defined ego that demands feeding with constant attention and admiration, a person's default position is deference to the better idea, something - someone - to follow, for want of one's own leadership. Yet so often in history, we can see people deferring to egos whose ideas are simply bad.

Consciousness, I noted last year [here and here] should revive as ego withdraws. As you mature, as you establish your place in society, you find less and less need to display boastful behaviour to those around you. There is acceptance of you by your peers - of your peers by you. In old age, a well-developed consciousness (which we can also read as 'a well-developed spiritual side') is the best antidote to an ego worried about physical decline.

But in early adulthood, the ego is - I would argue - needed so as one can mark one's place in society. It is as important biologically - evolutionarily - as is a fine set of tail feathers on a peacock. Wanting the best for oneself is the essence of the selfish gene, but knowing the limits, knowing when your egotistic behaviour becomes parodic, is key. Narcissistic personality disorder is the extreme end of this spectrum. "NPD is a mental disorder characterised by a life-long pattern of exaggerated feelings of self-importance, an excessive craving for admiration, and a diminished ability to empathise with others' feelings." - [Wikipedia]. Note the words 'life-long pattern'. The suggestion here is that feelings of self-importance and cravings for admiration are normal, but should fade over time. 

Psychedelic drugs such as LSD or psilocybin have the effect on those who take them of removing one's sense of individuality, and making one feel a part of a greater whole. Creative artists who have overdosed on psychedelic drugs may experience trips that lead to works of profound beauty or insight - but too much and the ego is lost. Pink Floyd's Syd Barrett and Fleetwood Mac's Peter Green are examples of acid casualties whose quest for ever higher levels of creativity stripped them of the ego's self defence mechanism.

An artist who managed to hang on to his ego (just) was the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson. Hang On To Your Ego is based on his personal experiences with LSD. 

A far darker song about ego loss through abuse of psychedelics is Syd Barrett's last song with Pink Floyd - the final track off the band's second album, the only song he wrote (having written nearly all the songs off the band's triumphant debut album).

This time last year:
Karma - social control or something more?

This time two years ago:
Prayer and luck

This time three years ago:
Honey, it's post!

This time four years ago:
Consciousness, and the war between Science and Religion

This time five years ago:
The atoms within us

This time six years ago:
Our house gets connected to the town drains

This time seven years ago:
No more revelations

This time 11 years ago:
Free will vs. destiny

This time 12 years ago:
Dogs begin to bark, hounds begin to howl

This time 14 years ago:
Winters are getting warmer

Ego, Consciousness and the Ladder of Authority

What do you make of leaders like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump? I see a vacuous rampant ego; a narcissistic bully, without a moral compass. Yet I also see an almost total detachment from the calm, quiet workings of consciousness. Consciousness that should be at the helm. From the spiritual perspective, they are empty vessels.

"Nobody has done more for Christianity or for evangelicals or for religion itself than I have" - Donald Trump, 1 October 2021.

Can a group of people - a company, a nation - accomplish great things in the absence of an ego-driven leader? "When the best leader's work is done, the people say: 'We did it ourselves'." - Lao Tzu. True leadership should be invisible. 

Biology provides the entitlement to give commands to others. We are hierarchic creatures; the Ladder of Authority stretches from the pinnacle of the pyramid to the bottom of its broad base. Over the millennia - and in particular over the past two centuries - the idea that might is right has given way to a more enlightened notion that a leader's key characteristic in a complex world should be intelligence.

 But democracy is a two-edged sword; the poorly educated can look at a Trump or a Johnson and think "he is smart", and on that basis put their X in the box. Because they don't know what 'intelligent' looks like, a blustering ego shouting  "vote for me, I'm clever, I know what I'm doing" louder than more modest candidates, have an edge in the democratic process. The more monstrous the ego, the less intelligent their supporters. 

In a work or personal situation, it's easy to walk away from toxic people. They are no good to have around. It is said 'you join a firm, but leave a manager'. But how can you walk away from an elected leader that's clearly no good for your country or for you? The United States got itself together and pushed Trump out of the White House, the only president to lose two successive popular votes. The UK has to wait until December 2024 for a chance to remove from office the worst prime minister it has ever had (unless the Conservative Party remove Johnson before then, seeing him as a liability).

The notion of 'the hierarchy' vs 'the network' is more relevant than ever in a complex world. Our greatest challenge is dealing with climate change - which will require huge sacrifices in life style among the world's well-off. This in turn requires leadership by example - not flying private jets to get up north for a photo opportunity.

The free world will be distracted from this task by simultaneously dealing with two despots - Putin and Xi Jinping, who are using strident nationalism to bolster support. This does not look like it will end well.

Can the world's conscious community work together to steer us to a better direction? Meditations against ego-led despotism? 

This time last year:
Trains and snowy days

This time two years ago:
"I wake up at five and queue for bread and soup"

This time three years ago:
Getting over this year's flu

This time four years ago:
War and the absence of war

This time six years ago:
Sensitivity to spiritual evolution

This time seven years ago:
75th anniversary of Stalin's deportations of Poles

This time eight years ago:
Peak Car (in western Europe at least)

This time eight years ago:
Pavement for Karczunkowska NOW!
[I still have to walk through mud or snow dodge speeding drivers!]

This time ten years ago:
Until the Vistula freezes over 

This time 11 years ago:
Of sunshine, birdsong and wet socks

The Ego and Evil

Theologians wrestling with the existence of evil in God's universe need look no further than the human ego. There's no need to invent a Satan; look no further than our own human imperfections, born of our animal inheritance - this is our original sin. It is the human ego that fosters man-made evil in our world.

Hitler - Stalin - two monstrous, perverse egos, unrestrained, allowed to take control of ultimate power of life and death over many millions of people. Utter evil, monuments to what can happen when single-minded egos rise unchecked. Today's evil men - Putin, Lukashenka, are also full of themselves. Pride, arrogance, limitless power, wealth and luxury.

At the top of the Ladder of Authority sit the boastful egos, full of themselves, commanding those egos lower down the ladder by way of stick (threats) or carrot (those below wishing to ingratiate themselves to those above, for whom a kind word from the Leader will make their day). In Western democracies, the monster ego rises but falls as it is put to the electoral test. I can't see Johnson staying long in Number 10; Trump's fall has only just begun.

The chaos that befalls humanity is either natural or man-made. The former - volcanoes, tsunamis, droughts, the latter - wars, revolutions. In between there are those where natural and human causation - famines and  pandemics - over which mankind does have some control. And once humans enter the equation, so do their egos. Coping with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse calls for teamwork, putting away the ego in favour of workable solutions, ones based on science not personal advance.

In the world of work, the big ego all too often becomes the toxic employer; "you join a firm but leave a manager" is an old truism. At a time when the labour market is full of job offers, ego-maniacs are having a hard time hanging to the the very staff they need to feed their egos. There's simply no point of enduring the discomfort of a bullying or stupid boss today.

Back away from demands of the ego. It is the ego that wants to be pampered with luxury, that is not content with mere comfort. It is the ego that wants to be lavished with praise.

The quiet counsel of consciousness should prevail over the brash, risk-taking shouts of the ego. Overtaking a stream of traffic that's moving at 65km/h (in a 50km/h zone) on the approach to a pedestrian crossing - an ego heedless of consciousness. Or even bereft of a consciousness. A P-Zombie?

This time two years ago:
Warsaw's Christmas lights 2019-20

This time three years ago:
Pawlikowski's Cold War

This time six years ago:
"Extreme weather events are now a feature of the British climate"

This time eight years ago:
Cheaper public transport for Varsovians

This time nine years ago:
Swans on ice

This time ten years ago:
Cars 

This time 11 years ago:
What's the English for kombinować?

This time 12 years ago:
The demographics of jazz

This time 14 years ago:
A day in Poznań

Ego, consciousness and soul

Our ego - our sense of self - is the product of a process of biological evolutionary selection that goes back to the origins of life on earth. In biological terms, the stronger the ego, the more likely its owner's genes will propagate more forcefully. Yet on a planet of almost eight billion people, we are now beyond that point in the evolution of Homo sapiens where any individual's ego is of much benefit to us as a species.

The demands of the ego - to be flattered, feted, followed and feared - lead to many negative consequences for humanity and for our planet. The maladjusted ego, soaked in materialism (rejecting the spiritual) is harmful for the environment. Thoughtless addiction to ever-bigger cars, exotic holidays, luxury goods, and endless consumption to show off one's social standing, means burning through single-use resources as our planet inexorably heats up.

We do owe it to ourselves to live in comfort - we must work and save and spend to avoid living in discomfort - but we should never strive to live in luxury, and we should avoid those people that do; for usually they are toxic, bereft of spiritual traits.

Yet we are  (all of us? some of us?) not just biological entities, we are also conscious beings. [Do philosophical zombies exist? Somehow Trump makes me believe in them.] Our consciousness - our subjective experience of being alive - can be equated with the religious concept of the soul. Can this transcend physical death? I certainly believe so, based on my personal experience of anomalous qualia memories (which I call exomnesia or xenomnesia). This reincarnated consciousness is shorn of its attendant ego at bodily death, although past-life dreams may show episodes experienced by the previous ego, so as to highlight the progress upon this short stage of the spiritual journey from zero to one.

I wrote about my observation in childhood that there was a 'mądry Michaś' and a 'głupi Michaś'; the former an attribute of my consciousness, the latter an attribute of my ego. In adolescence, the conscious, wise, self was almost entirely pushed aside by the testosterone-fuelled ego. In adulthood, the former has returned to push away much of the latter.

If the material body can evolve, why not can the soul? Can one compare spiritual evolution with the bodily kind? A slow refinement, a coagulation of consciousness into ever greater units of understanding which grow along with our expanding universe.

I feel that humanity is at a tipping point, this crisis, along with similarly existential crises of the past century (1914-1920, 1939-1945) when little by little, lessons learnt pushed us back from a path to mutual destruction, and the awakening of a more spiritual approach to life in the developed world.

Five billion good people living in comfort (but not in luxury) in the mid-22nd century on a restored planet is not unimaginable, we may draw it forward with our actions today. For those that believe, as I do, that our consciousness, shorn of its ties to the body, will return, an increasingly uncomfortable climate is something that should be avoided if only for selfish reasons!

This time last year:
Samopoczucie, Joy and the Sublime Aesthetic

This time three years ago:
Autumn, with a railway theme

This time four years ago:
A few words about coincidence

This time seven years ago:
Hello, pork pie [my week-long pork-pie diet]

This time nine years ago:
The meaning of class - in England, in Poland

This time ten years ago: 
First frost 

This time 14 years ago:
First frost 

Age and Ego: Part II

My childhood was filled with constant wonders - pure consciousness had the upper hand. 

There were two of me really. One was 'głupi Michaś' who'd occasionally do or say stupid things - but głupi Michaś rarely had the upper hand. When left to his own devices, 'mądry Michaś' was in charge, spending time playing, observing, reading, pondering, playing, imagining, experiencing, thinking, playing, watching the clouds, feeling what it is to be alive - again. 

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." [I Corinthians 13:11] 

But the road to from childhood to manhood goes through adolescence.

As teenagers, the ego, the biology, takes control. Any vestigial childhood sensitivity is roughly stamped upon by a stupid, brutish urge to position oneself as high up the mammalian pecking order as possible. The worst time for this is between the ages of 13 and 16 - an absolutely insufferable period, particularly for boys. For me anyway, the Sixth Form years, preparation for university, was a tipping point away from this mindless hormone-driven behaviour, and the battle between the biological ('bad') me and the conscious ('good') me ceased being a one-way walkover. Stupidity and embarrassing behaviour would make less and less frequent appearances.

Grow into manhood, into the late spring and early summer of life, nothing affected me as much as the new responsibilities of fatherhood. Now I am in the early autumn, the sun still shines, the trees are full of fruit. There is time, but it must not be wasted.

I am happiest when I am The Eyes Without A Face - A Consciousness Moving Across the Surface of the Planet - observing, but not observed, out on countryside walks. Myself and my little patch of the planet. Not my ego - not an ageing biological entity - but a spirit that's lived before and will live again. 

All of us who seek God shall find God but in their own way; I feel I have indeed found my way - so now, onward.

William Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality suggests that a child is born aware of a past life, but as he gets older, he loses sight of the wonders; the "vision splendid" goes on to "fade into the common light of day." I beg to differ; I am regaining sight of those wonders. But then Wordsworth wrote Intimations of Immortality when he was 34; at that age I was also closer to the common light of day than to the vision splendid. To get there, the ego must fade away.

This time last year:
First inklings of the end of summer

This time three years ago:

Nikon's new mirrorless cameras - too big and heavy for me

This time seven years ago:
Short, sharp diet proves I'm allergy-free

This time eight years ago:
More photos from Radom Air Show

This time nine years ago:
Twilight on ul. Karczunkowska 

This time 12 years ago:
First hints of autumn in the air

This time 13 years ago:
Slovakia - we were not impressed

This time 14 years ago:
Jeziorki - late August cultivation

Age and Ego: Part I

In my father's final years, I'd observe him catching sight of himself in the mirror and seeing an old man, bent and frail. He'd try to straighten his back. He'd look at himself again, as if realising the inevitability of human physical decline. Yet he'd never fall into despondency, maintaining a cheerful disposition. 

Some people slide into old age with resignation; others try to fight it, or complain, or rage ineffectually against the physical hardships it brings. And as you age, your appearance diverges further and further from the human ideal. Some people will go to great lengths to maintain a youthful appearance, raising sly chuckles. Others will let themselves go, causing visual and olfactory discomfort to others. A balance far from each extreme needs to be struck. 

My father had the right answer - decouple the ego and its home, the human body, from the consciousness, the human spirit. 

He was rarely down. His mind was always curious and observant; he'd read, do small home-maintenance tasks, work in the garden and stay up to date with current affairs. He was secure of his place in the heavens, a Universe of stars. Church-going helped; although he took Holy Communion each week, he never talked about his faith, which I guess was his and his alone.

My father gave me a clear (though unspoken) lesson as to living out one's later years. Focus on the inner being, the awareness within, and distance yourself from the shallow ego. Our 'shell of foam' is short-lived; consciousness - like atoms - eternal.

I am also minded of the opening of the Coen brothers' film A Serious Man: "Receive with simplicity everything that happens to you." Ageing is something that happens to all of us. Accept it with equanimity.

How we age is down to factors of our own choosing - diet, exercise, lifestyle - and external factors - genes, environment, circumstances over which we have no control. Recent studies on telomeres (the caps at the ends of each stand of DNA in our bodies) conducted on twins, suggest that avoiding stress is the biggest single factor that determines quality of life. [This is worth watching.] 

"Not to autumn will I yield/Not to winter even!*" The body will yield; the spirit not.

My father with my daughter, Ealing, September 1994 - more than a quarter-century of life ahead of him.

Age and Ego: Part II here

*The Vagabond, from Robert Louis Stevenson's Songs of Travel.

This time last year:
Getting there

This time last year:

Best and worst rail journeys in one day

This time three years ago:
What's new around Jeziorki

This time six years ago:
Hydrology - droughts, floods and sandbanks

This time eight years ago:
Radom air show - Part 1

This time nine years ago:
Restricting passenger movement and safety

This time ten years ago:
Seasonal fruit - eat it in bulk, while you can!

This time 12 years ago:
Russia-Polish 'unification', 1939-style

The Curve

Controversial this. On the horizontal axis - the entire population. On the vertical axes (plural, for there can be many) - understanding, spiritual awakening, wisdom, curiosity, intelligence, powers of observation - powers of concentration. To the right of me, a relatively small number of humans, vastly brighter, smarter, more spiritually sensitive than me. An exponential curve. 

"If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself" - Desiderata, Max Ehrmann, 1927. Wealth, physical and intellectual prowess - yes, attributes connected with the biological being, the ego, rather than its conciousness.

The point in the curve is is where I feel I am in terms of my spiritual evolution - a long way up, many behind me, a smaller number way, way ahead of me; a long, long way to climb; slightly more than halfway between Zero and One? 

To climb that curve requires an eternity. Life after life after life, each one growing in understanding and wisdom. At the top of the curve - oneness, unity, All in God, God in All. Total understanding, absolute consciousness from the Universal and atomic scales.

Am I being a bit elitist in claiming that we are not all equal? That there is spiritual evolution, that some are more advanced than others?

Are we all Capax Dei - literally, 'capable of God' - or are some of the humans that walk among us merely P-zombies - meat-covered robots who have fewer conscious experiences than my cat. [I strongly suspect that Trump is a P-zombie, a human entity devoid of conscious awareness, incapable of self-reflection.]

One night last week, I had the desire to step outside the house into a starlit night and as I did so, I had the unbidden and sudden insight that everyone has their own pathway to God. Mine is through exploration of a mental phenomenon I have experienced since childhood - familiar qualia memories of past lives. Few people report this. Yet some recorded cases of supposed reincarnation (see this one) are greatly stronger than my flashbacks and dreams, higher up the curve. Maybe each pathway to God involves a different curve, one that I'm not necessarily on (one for example involving Jesus or Mohamed), but nevertheless ultimately with the same end goal - divine unity. 

Letting go of the ego is essential. Finding one's pure awareness, untainted by your biological self. You may say 'there is nothing beyond the biological self!' - a proposition that many hold to be true in our materialist society's Newtonian worldview.

Time to ponder on, to meditate, channel, and seek understanding.

This time two years ago:
Fifty years on, my last kolonia

This time eight years ago:
Grodzisk Mazowiecki's pretty station

This time nine years ago:
Exorcism outside the President's Palace

This time ten years ago:
The raging footsoldier - a story about anger

This time 11 years ago:
Graffiti and street art 

First steps in meditation

In seeking a way into meditation, I'm looking for commonality between meditative methods from around the world. It's increasingly clear - even to rational scientists - that meditation works, and had plentiful benefits for body and mind. But neither Buddhism, nor Hinduism, nor the Western esoteric tradition, nor New Age of their own hold all the answers. 

Four commonalities are 1) emptying the mind, 2) focus on breathing, 3) distancing ego from consciousness and 4) repetition of a mantra.

So - choose your mantra. I'm using the following: Wu hsin ('no mind' in Chinese) and Ein sof (Hebrew - 'unending', 'the infinite', 'limitless') to empty the mind of quotidian clutter. One from the East, one from the West. And so - breathe in - Wu - breathe out - hsin. Breathe in - Ain - breathe out - sof. 

Feel free to devise your own mantras. Down the years, the coupling of Wu hsin and Ein sof have worked for me, though mainly as a sleep aid and more recently as something to repeat before taking a blood pressure reading.  [I believe I came across these two terms in Fritjof Capra's The Tao of Physics in 1984. I have the book here, but can't find the reference...]

Emptying the mind - abandoning the ego - should be seen in the context of your life a part of an infinite eternity; the aims of meditation should more than just calming the body down. A state of being at one with the cosmos, a unification with the continuous and the whole, an opening to fresh creative thoughts - and new energy. That, at least, is what I'm hoping for.

Your mantra needn't be an esoteric term in a foreign language. It can literally be mumbo and jumbo, as long as the words resonate with a metaphysical meaning to you. My mother used to repeat the word 'relaks' to the tune of 'Twinkle, twinkle, little star', much to the amusement of my children. The US armed forces instruct service personnel to repeat 'don't think, don't think, don't think' over and over again as they try to sleep, focusing on those words, shutting out extraneous thoughts. I like this approach too, as it suggests that clearing the mind does not necessarily have to be linked to the spiritual.

A meditative approach can certainly help with falling asleep, but my aim is broader, to awaken new thoughts, to channel the Universe - channel God, if you will. Certainly, it's part of my bedtime ritual, along with feelings of gratitude and wishes of good for those around me (also known as 'prayer'.) Gratitude should be part of our day-to-day mindset. Bringing about that 'inner hug', feelings of deep love where tears begin to well up in your eyes, is the goal.

But meditation for its own sake, to create a wakeful state of mind that is alert rather than dozing, means making it a part of the day's routine. It must be done away from the computer! There's always the temptation, when the mind's freewheeling, to latch on to a thought and think - ah yes, that's interesting - let's Google it.

A daily walk or walks get the mind into the right frame of mind, especially if you do so on your own - conversations can distract. 

One word of advice I'd have for myself today is - go to bed before 22:30. It's too easy to sit up by the computer till midnight, till 01:00 even - it's no good for body or mind.

UPDATE 10 August 2021: This is the best of what I've seen so far...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJCUckX9s8M

This time two years ago:
Poetry in the search for eternal truths

This time three years ago:
Koszyki

This time four years ago year:
It's just an Ilyushin (central Warsaw's plane-restaurant)

This time five years ago:
Marathon stroll (31.5km) along the Vistula 

This time seven years ago:
Complaining about the lack of a river crossing between Siekierki and Góra Kalwaria! 

This time eight years ago:
S2 update (nearly ready)

This time nine years ago:
Progress on S2 bypass - photos from the air

This time 11 years ago:
Up Śnieżnica

This time 14 years ago:
July continues glum (2007 - a rainy summer)