By the time I'd been at King's Canterbury a couple of years I had grown so alienated I'd retreated into my own world where I did little else except play the organ and occasionally get beaten for noncooperation. My active antipathy to sport meant that I was singled out for bullying in that hellish academy of barbarians.
Messiaen was my salvation. I had first encountered him throu Allan Wicks, who also taught me organ. All weekend long I'd practise on the crypt organ, and by the age of 15 I could play all Messiaen's then-published oeuvre.
I had evolved a burglary kit that included a cathedral key & a coat hanger to gain access to the main organ loft. Being insomniac, I would wait until everyone in my dorm was asleep and then leave by the fire exit from Meister Omers, adjacent to the Choir School /House, go to the cathedral & let rip for several hours. Amazingly, I was never challenged, and no enquiry was ever raised about the organ being played 'Phantom-like' at midnight.
I ran up awful music bills for my poor father at Forwoods. £60 a term when a term's boarding fees were only about £250. (Hard to believe now!) And he couldn't even pay that half the time. Psychologists will understand something of the (non-)relationship that this way of demanding my father's attention was intended to provoke. Unsuccessfully.
When I'd first begun to compose, around the age of 12, I received no encouragement. My voice /idiom developed spontaneously under the influence of Messiaen as I learnt to play his intensely mystical organ music. Therefore I had the youthful experience of finding that exposing what was intensely meaningful for me produced indifference in everyonelse, including my parents who probably thought that composition was a just phase I'd grow out of when I needed to get a job.
This brought me to a crisis, which was essentially one of my own authenticity /self-worth: the more I followed my calling, my creative daemon, the more isolated it made me. Since those sounds that seemed most real & vivid to me aroused to response, except embarrassment, where did reality lie? The final straw for me was when I could find noone at Kings, boy or master, willing to read throu Messiaen's La quattuour pour le fin du temps with me. I just thought 'well if I'm in a parallel universe' maybe there's another one I do belong in, and if it does Messiaen must be in it. So to Paris I prepared to go.
I knew my grandfather had taken out War Bonds in my name, and discovered they'd matured & could be cashed. So I did so during the holidays & returned to school with my passport in the Easter term 1963. I could speak intelligible french – about the only thing I learnt at Kings.
Having been to the Trinité twice to hear Messiaen improvise after High Mass -wonderfully- and then seen him descend from the organ loft into a small sea of fidgety organophiles I knew I should never be able to approach him. Who was I? A a kid on the edge of a breakdown with no credentials, nothing to offer, barely able to give an account of myself. How could tell him -in french- I needed him to save my life? And if my god were to spurn me I must necessarily embrace the devil of suicide with which I had flirted constantly for at least 3 years.
The end of it was, my money ran out and I returned to England with my tail between my legs - determined on one thing only, never to submit myself to the confederacy of dunces called education. Accordingly I started work at Gala Cosmetics as a sweeper. My salvation was to meet harpsichordist Jane Clark & her composer husband Stephen Dodgson, who took me into their home and made me into a musician and a human being.
But my time in Paris was productive in another way, for I saw Ray Charles on his first European tour. Never before had I seen this level of incandescence, and rarely have I encountered it since. Ray was so attuned to his music that as a performer he seemed to be without physical limits - pure spirit. Nothing I'd absorbed about ice-race spirituality at Canterbury prepared me for a sun-race spirituality that was earthy and vibrantly sexual. Achieving a spiritual fusion between these polar antitheses of musical being, the intensely literate and the intensely intuitive, has been guiding principle of my evolution as a composer, music producer and teacher – not a superficial idiomatic synthesis, but an exploration of the nature of the energy relationship between intentionality and sound.
2008/06/26
2008/06/25
Joyce Grenfell
I saw an excellent doc on tv about Joyce Grenfell last Sat. What I found fascinating about seeing her from 20-80 was that in everything she did there was an inner truthfulness, an inspirational quality that was a testimony to her faith. She was never malicious, tho she could be acid enough to show she was well aware of the dark side, yet always chose the light. She probably felt her talents were trivial, but to my mind her memorial is not her work, it is that she was true to her Self. Apparently many pro actors denigrated her 'amateurism' - but actually that was pure jealousy because she had 'it' - that vestal quality that comes from ‘intunity’.
Where I vibe with Grenfell is that like her I was never ‘professionalised’ by the education industry. Therefore what I write I write because I feel it compellingly important. It is of course a source of intense frustration that it is totally unimportant to the world at large: but I've learnt to understand that spiritually. I am motivated by my faith in Christ, and therefore the soundworld I (wish to) evoke reflects that belief system. The rest of the world (largely) isn't & therefore doesn’t respond to the vibe I'm into. I have come to accept that my task is not to ‘be conformed’ to the world’s values, but to respond principally to the truth I sense within me.
On the whole subject of inspiration, see http://msteer.co.uk/analytical/creativoxtext.html
Interestingly, music seems to be the one area where faith persists in our faithless world. Messiaen remained an undeviatingly devout Christian, and it was the mystical integrity of his soundworld that first gave me hope when I was at my lowest and lostest. Charles Ives put up with ridicule, obscurity & never heard his music performed, yet is now regarded as the father of 20thC US music thanks to the evangelism of Lenny Bernstein. He was an intensely inner-led Christian – who used his prodigious creative energy to found what is now the worldwide pensions industry because of his compassion for the elderly poor. There are numerous others I could tell you of: Stravinsky was a sincere Russian Orthodox: Schoenberg an observant Jew. Contemporary UK composer Jonathan Harvey is a devout Buddhist despite being as experimental as all get-out. Tavener’s Greek Orthodox faith is doubtless known to you. Duke Ellington wrote only religious music at the end of his life. Funkmeister Herbie Hancock is a practising Buddhist. The list is far longer.
Often, it is the intensity of someone’s mystical inner sound world that makes hir unafraid to be experimental – because the integrity of that world is validated by the spirituality of their world-view.
We each of us have a path to tread; and the issue –for the composer as much as for each human– is not to achieve great things in the world’s eye, it is to behave with an integrity and vision that balances one’s inner truth with the greater truth as one sees it. And to leave the results to God. Despite the great joy of the relationships in my life, that inner personal walk has often been wearisome & unrewarding, but what has always guided & inspired me is the confidence of hearing the Saviour’s greeting: “well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into thy rest.”
Everyone has cultural preferences based on their personal world overview. For some of the reasons why western musical history has evolved see http://msteer.co.uk/analytical/jmtimbre4.html. Suffice it to say there is always an intimate, if circuitous, link between a person’s ‘intentional proprioception’ [their (non/) belief system about how the world is] & their aesthetic engagement/s. The difference is our individual human identity: the harmonics of those differences create genres and styles according to the number of people who experience their place in the world similarly.
How much easier my life would be if I didn’t ‘hear’ things & didn’t feel obliged to ‘externalise’ my inner world … but how infinitely poorer. The prophet Jeremiah said much the same thing but, I would say from reading him recently, never reconciled within himself the anger he experienced at having his (divine) vision rejected! What I or any composer write/s is a ‘negotiation’ between a collective perception (genre /idiom /style) and a personal inner voice.
All my life I have experimented with bringing the popular and the esoteric, the sacred and the profane, together. After many failed attempts, I see my latest experiments bearing fruit, and still regard this as my sacred vocation to bridge those worlds – to reconnect people brought up in the trivialising environment of electronic culture to the timeless depths of historical cultural continuity, while at the same time providing a contact point for those who exist in those depths to gain access to the energy latent in the surface tensions of modern media.
Writing about this is my way of clarifying my own intentions, of articulating to myself what I need to do further to manifest this reality. Our power as artists is that we create the future (‘unacknowledged legislators’ & all that) – so anyone who seeks to be artistically-conscious is required to be clarify their intentions that they may be vessels for ‘what is of God’ to enter the human dimension. That’s all I've sought to d0: it doesn’t make sense to ‘the world’ because they're not looking for those values. But it’s been an amazingly improbable journey. I've kept a record of it here because, far as I have been from any kind of acceptance to date, I know how the story ends (as certainly as I know Christ is my saviour) and therefore I wish what occurred in my life to be a matter of record, so that other people 'undergoing' what I have may see how salvation comes from holding to faith not from conforming to prevailing trends: and obversely to make clear to those who judge from the surface of my music (when it is finally heard as I intend) that my life was smooth & light-filled, just how dark the journey really was.
There is profound insight into the psychology of 20thC European culture to be gained from Dreaming With Open Eyes by Michael Tucker. He depicts a mainstream European culture that had become sterile & formulaic by the time of WW1 being swept aside by a shamanic irruption of the collective unconscious that had been repressed by Christian & post-Christian orthodoxies – not necessarily rejecting them in essence, but certainly rejecting them in their existing form/s.
There is, and will always be, a tension between the rational world of science & social order and the inner anarchy of the creative subconscious. This was first exposed in the rise of the Gothic movement paralleling that of early-modern science. Today we feel it more acutely because, under the impact of science, as a culture we have lost the ability to see meta-physically or meta-phorically, and can only see literally. [Hence the furious battle between Creationists & Dawkins-ites!]
Where I vibe with Grenfell is that like her I was never ‘professionalised’ by the education industry. Therefore what I write I write because I feel it compellingly important. It is of course a source of intense frustration that it is totally unimportant to the world at large: but I've learnt to understand that spiritually. I am motivated by my faith in Christ, and therefore the soundworld I (wish to) evoke reflects that belief system. The rest of the world (largely) isn't & therefore doesn’t respond to the vibe I'm into. I have come to accept that my task is not to ‘be conformed’ to the world’s values, but to respond principally to the truth I sense within me.
On the whole subject of inspiration, see http://msteer.co.uk/analytical/creativoxtext.html
Interestingly, music seems to be the one area where faith persists in our faithless world. Messiaen remained an undeviatingly devout Christian, and it was the mystical integrity of his soundworld that first gave me hope when I was at my lowest and lostest. Charles Ives put up with ridicule, obscurity & never heard his music performed, yet is now regarded as the father of 20thC US music thanks to the evangelism of Lenny Bernstein. He was an intensely inner-led Christian – who used his prodigious creative energy to found what is now the worldwide pensions industry because of his compassion for the elderly poor. There are numerous others I could tell you of: Stravinsky was a sincere Russian Orthodox: Schoenberg an observant Jew. Contemporary UK composer Jonathan Harvey is a devout Buddhist despite being as experimental as all get-out. Tavener’s Greek Orthodox faith is doubtless known to you. Duke Ellington wrote only religious music at the end of his life. Funkmeister Herbie Hancock is a practising Buddhist. The list is far longer.
Often, it is the intensity of someone’s mystical inner sound world that makes hir unafraid to be experimental – because the integrity of that world is validated by the spirituality of their world-view.
We each of us have a path to tread; and the issue –for the composer as much as for each human– is not to achieve great things in the world’s eye, it is to behave with an integrity and vision that balances one’s inner truth with the greater truth as one sees it. And to leave the results to God. Despite the great joy of the relationships in my life, that inner personal walk has often been wearisome & unrewarding, but what has always guided & inspired me is the confidence of hearing the Saviour’s greeting: “well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into thy rest.”
Everyone has cultural preferences based on their personal world overview. For some of the reasons why western musical history has evolved see http://msteer.co.uk/analytical/jmtimbre4.html. Suffice it to say there is always an intimate, if circuitous, link between a person’s ‘intentional proprioception’ [their (non/) belief system about how the world is] & their aesthetic engagement/s. The difference is our individual human identity: the harmonics of those differences create genres and styles according to the number of people who experience their place in the world similarly.
How much easier my life would be if I didn’t ‘hear’ things & didn’t feel obliged to ‘externalise’ my inner world … but how infinitely poorer. The prophet Jeremiah said much the same thing but, I would say from reading him recently, never reconciled within himself the anger he experienced at having his (divine) vision rejected! What I or any composer write/s is a ‘negotiation’ between a collective perception (genre /idiom /style) and a personal inner voice.
All my life I have experimented with bringing the popular and the esoteric, the sacred and the profane, together. After many failed attempts, I see my latest experiments bearing fruit, and still regard this as my sacred vocation to bridge those worlds – to reconnect people brought up in the trivialising environment of electronic culture to the timeless depths of historical cultural continuity, while at the same time providing a contact point for those who exist in those depths to gain access to the energy latent in the surface tensions of modern media.
Writing about this is my way of clarifying my own intentions, of articulating to myself what I need to do further to manifest this reality. Our power as artists is that we create the future (‘unacknowledged legislators’ & all that) – so anyone who seeks to be artistically-conscious is required to be clarify their intentions that they may be vessels for ‘what is of God’ to enter the human dimension. That’s all I've sought to d0: it doesn’t make sense to ‘the world’ because they're not looking for those values. But it’s been an amazingly improbable journey. I've kept a record of it here because, far as I have been from any kind of acceptance to date, I know how the story ends (as certainly as I know Christ is my saviour) and therefore I wish what occurred in my life to be a matter of record, so that other people 'undergoing' what I have may see how salvation comes from holding to faith not from conforming to prevailing trends: and obversely to make clear to those who judge from the surface of my music (when it is finally heard as I intend) that my life was smooth & light-filled, just how dark the journey really was.
There is profound insight into the psychology of 20thC European culture to be gained from Dreaming With Open Eyes by Michael Tucker. He depicts a mainstream European culture that had become sterile & formulaic by the time of WW1 being swept aside by a shamanic irruption of the collective unconscious that had been repressed by Christian & post-Christian orthodoxies – not necessarily rejecting them in essence, but certainly rejecting them in their existing form/s.
There is, and will always be, a tension between the rational world of science & social order and the inner anarchy of the creative subconscious. This was first exposed in the rise of the Gothic movement paralleling that of early-modern science. Today we feel it more acutely because, under the impact of science, as a culture we have lost the ability to see meta-physically or meta-phorically, and can only see literally. [Hence the furious battle between Creationists & Dawkins-ites!]
2008/05/30
Getting to the point
The main game of life needs to be finding our right relationship with the earth – which means finding both where /how we belong on earth but also where & with whom to make our stand – collectively & personally.
Our inner life dynamic & dreams guide us towards this – if we let them(!)
This process works best if we consciously unpack the content/s of our psyche & resolve its incongruities. Thus by encountering & attuning to our selves as creative artists we discover how to make a harmonic interaction with something within our subjectivity that is, if not objective, then at least carries within it an overtone or archetype of our true selves (regardless of whether this or we are constructive in attitude) that contributes a resonance to our work which then carries it beyond its immediate context.
Our inner life dynamic & dreams guide us towards this – if we let them(!)
This process works best if we consciously unpack the content/s of our psyche & resolve its incongruities. Thus by encountering & attuning to our selves as creative artists we discover how to make a harmonic interaction with something within our subjectivity that is, if not objective, then at least carries within it an overtone or archetype of our true selves (regardless of whether this or we are constructive in attitude) that contributes a resonance to our work which then carries it beyond its immediate context.
2008/05/27
Inspiration
The way it works (best) for me is when ideas come in dreams or the half-awake lucidity that follows. From studying my dreams over the last 20 years, I've learnt never to second-guess this process. I simply write down whatever I'm shown. This gives the ideas both a clear feeling-tone & an integrity, from which I find it reasonably easy to transcribe or scale them up in a way that preserve their essence. It doesn't necessarily mean everything I write is wonderful, but I find the results have an owned quality to them which is different from the brain-spun work I did earlier in my life.
Even where they attract no external interest I feel I have obeyed George Fox's injunction 'to (ac)quit my soul' - which he meant in the sense that if we utter what is shown to us without fear or favour, then the reception of that utterance is not our responsibility. It rests with the Powers That Be as to whether it evokes a direct response, or whether our function is to contribute to some evolutionary process that we may not understand at all.
This concept is part of both Christian and Vedic thought. The former says 'Deo dat augmentum' - God gives the increase: our reward is to play our part, the nature of its fruitfulness is 'in the lap of the gods' (to borrow a pagan phrase). The Vedanta says that it is the prerogative of Vishnu /Krishna to reward or withold.
All that is important for us as humans is to be truthful to the inner dynamic. The more we sync to it, the more harmonic synchronicity it produces.
Even where they attract no external interest I feel I have obeyed George Fox's injunction 'to (ac)quit my soul' - which he meant in the sense that if we utter what is shown to us without fear or favour, then the reception of that utterance is not our responsibility. It rests with the Powers That Be as to whether it evokes a direct response, or whether our function is to contribute to some evolutionary process that we may not understand at all.
This concept is part of both Christian and Vedic thought. The former says 'Deo dat augmentum' - God gives the increase: our reward is to play our part, the nature of its fruitfulness is 'in the lap of the gods' (to borrow a pagan phrase). The Vedanta says that it is the prerogative of Vishnu /Krishna to reward or withold.
All that is important for us as humans is to be truthful to the inner dynamic. The more we sync to it, the more harmonic synchronicity it produces.
2008/05/21
Mantra
For years Ive been working with the mantra SamBhaVa. Those syllables came to me so long ago I don't even remember when, but probably more than 20 years ago – some time in the 90s. I certainly associate their reception with the inspiration of Sai Baba in my life at that time. And I continue to find it very heart-opening to chant them. 5 years ago I sensed a new one given to me.
The seed meaning of syllables is balance-devotional love-movement. That can be interpreted in several ways, but the one that spoke to me was the idea that the mantra's function was to 'balance the flow of love' in my life: ie, to help me get over the binge-bust responses of elation at times of inner connection and despair at its absence; and indeed to get over the idea of personal ownership of &/or identification with such emotions. One can argue whether it is the sole agency accomplishing this ;) but the fact that the chanter is constantly made mindful of the thought means that it percolates into hir wider consciousness.
Mantram (pl.) are very sacred, yet as intimate as a vest. (I was going to say 'pants' but you can see why I didnt!) In the Vedic tradition they are given by the guru /teacher to the chela /student as a uniquely personal gift. I was therefore suitably cautious about adopting SamBhaVa, yet it has served me well.
My adoption of another mantra came about in about 03 when I read Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living & Dying. The founder of his Tibetan lineage was none other than Padma Sambhava, who gave his followers the mantra: Aum ah hum - vajra guru padma siddhi hum. Since then I have added that one. The meaning is eternal-I-am, diamond-teacher-consciousness-miraculous-am. IOW, the eternal is within me, educated by /to a shining & incisive consciousness I am /attract the miraculous.
Seemed good to me!
The seed meaning of syllables is balance-devotional love-movement. That can be interpreted in several ways, but the one that spoke to me was the idea that the mantra's function was to 'balance the flow of love' in my life: ie, to help me get over the binge-bust responses of elation at times of inner connection and despair at its absence; and indeed to get over the idea of personal ownership of &/or identification with such emotions. One can argue whether it is the sole agency accomplishing this ;) but the fact that the chanter is constantly made mindful of the thought means that it percolates into hir wider consciousness.
Mantram (pl.) are very sacred, yet as intimate as a vest. (I was going to say 'pants' but you can see why I didnt!) In the Vedic tradition they are given by the guru /teacher to the chela /student as a uniquely personal gift. I was therefore suitably cautious about adopting SamBhaVa, yet it has served me well.
My adoption of another mantra came about in about 03 when I read Sogyal Rinpoche's Tibetan Book of Living & Dying. The founder of his Tibetan lineage was none other than Padma Sambhava, who gave his followers the mantra: Aum ah hum - vajra guru padma siddhi hum. Since then I have added that one. The meaning is eternal-I-am, diamond-teacher-consciousness-miraculous-am. IOW, the eternal is within me, educated by /to a shining & incisive consciousness I am /attract the miraculous.
Seemed good to me!
2008/05/07
Going & Doing
When I wake in the early hours I follow after my mind, as it emerges fresh from sleep. In these moments it is reborn each day, with a love/energy that springs from the stars. I listen to what my dreamworld is telling me; and if /when specific people appear present I engage with them throu prayer – respectfully holding them on the altar of my heart and invoking light in their lives.
So it is that I send you love from the profoundest part of my heart. I make no claim to understand exactly where you are in yourself, but I am familiar with the terrain your creative life is now traversing, and so my purpose in writing is to reassure you that you are held in love, and that the turning you took is correct (provided you persist), and that it will bring rewards.
The advice I offer from experience is that the way /path is itself the purpose of your journey, not the goal you aim for, important as that is to motivate your progression. For it is in following the path that transformation occurs, not in reaching the goal. The goal you do reach, will almost certainly not be the one you were aiming for – but will be a greater fulfilment than you could have dreamt.
So it is that I send you love from the profoundest part of my heart. I make no claim to understand exactly where you are in yourself, but I am familiar with the terrain your creative life is now traversing, and so my purpose in writing is to reassure you that you are held in love, and that the turning you took is correct (provided you persist), and that it will bring rewards.
The advice I offer from experience is that the way /path is itself the purpose of your journey, not the goal you aim for, important as that is to motivate your progression. For it is in following the path that transformation occurs, not in reaching the goal. The goal you do reach, will almost certainly not be the one you were aiming for – but will be a greater fulfilment than you could have dreamt.
2008/04/22
What is it to be?
We do not become truly human until we acknowledge the divine (undying) aspect of our personalities.
2008/04/09
Finding your point of balance
Yesterday I had a solo harpsichord concert in London, and been practising for 3 hours a day during the final month. To do so is so ridiculously uneconomic in relation to the fee that even the phrase ‘pay to play’ pales into irrelevance.
What then is the reward? I think it is the gain/s in focus & self-awareness (during the learning process) & in self-confidence (from successful performance) – which are like the payoff a sports person gets from reaching peak condition & then pushing themselves even further to achieve a personal best.
The important life lesson for kids in music is even more valuable than sport & it’s this: a personal best does not involve you winning or losing in relation to other people (thus it is without an emotional downside, given adequate preparation) – what it does do is to put you in touch with the bedrock of your own psyche & help you to decipher your personal hand-eye-brain coordinates & the illusions /cultural mythology of how we all see, hear & respond which form the delusions or programming which govern most people's perception.
Where music is unique among the arts is that, once you’ve mastered your craft sufficiently to be able to hear yourself objectively, the sound you make offers instant feedback to keep you centred in the experience itself, and because, when you succeed, it is auditorily gratifying. Thereby a virtuous circle is created which validates your ego, and so reinforces your self-worth. One of my arguments against exams is that this ‘affirmation of human uniqueness’ is such an important discovery for each and every person to make by some means in their life, and one whose importance so far transcends ‘piano’, that creating conditions where a particular type of human (to wit those with an aptitude for music) can begin this long slow self-circling is the most valuable thing a music teacher can offer pupils. It’s an infinitely subtle & on-going evolutionary process and to mislead students into believing that the purpose of acquiring musical skill is defined by what can be measured in exams, or even as a shortcut to applause, is completely to misinform them about the re-creational possibilities music offers for refreshing their inner world in adulthood.
If you know yourself only in terms of other people’s valuation, then your well-being remains dependent on the opinion of others: but if by engaging with the confluence between intention & execution (which making music demands) you come to discover where /how your personal physical and psychological truths interact, you are thus led towards your human uniqueness – and from this all that is best human achievement springs, for this gives the individual a fulcrum to move the mass.
What then is the reward? I think it is the gain/s in focus & self-awareness (during the learning process) & in self-confidence (from successful performance) – which are like the payoff a sports person gets from reaching peak condition & then pushing themselves even further to achieve a personal best.
The important life lesson for kids in music is even more valuable than sport & it’s this: a personal best does not involve you winning or losing in relation to other people (thus it is without an emotional downside, given adequate preparation) – what it does do is to put you in touch with the bedrock of your own psyche & help you to decipher your personal hand-eye-brain coordinates & the illusions /cultural mythology of how we all see, hear & respond which form the delusions or programming which govern most people's perception.
Where music is unique among the arts is that, once you’ve mastered your craft sufficiently to be able to hear yourself objectively, the sound you make offers instant feedback to keep you centred in the experience itself, and because, when you succeed, it is auditorily gratifying. Thereby a virtuous circle is created which validates your ego, and so reinforces your self-worth. One of my arguments against exams is that this ‘affirmation of human uniqueness’ is such an important discovery for each and every person to make by some means in their life, and one whose importance so far transcends ‘piano’, that creating conditions where a particular type of human (to wit those with an aptitude for music) can begin this long slow self-circling is the most valuable thing a music teacher can offer pupils. It’s an infinitely subtle & on-going evolutionary process and to mislead students into believing that the purpose of acquiring musical skill is defined by what can be measured in exams, or even as a shortcut to applause, is completely to misinform them about the re-creational possibilities music offers for refreshing their inner world in adulthood.
If you know yourself only in terms of other people’s valuation, then your well-being remains dependent on the opinion of others: but if by engaging with the confluence between intention & execution (which making music demands) you come to discover where /how your personal physical and psychological truths interact, you are thus led towards your human uniqueness – and from this all that is best human achievement springs, for this gives the individual a fulcrum to move the mass.
2008/03/27
Unpacking the Box
I've come to believe that, aside from giving & receiving love, nothing we do during our time as human beings matters as much as our determination to open our hearts to identify with Life in its deepest sense – to tune our antennae to the vibe of coexistence with all life-forms on the planet.
This is impossible without a parallel journey into our own fear & darkness. The more we encounter & learn to love those aspects of our personality we would prefer to deny, the more this search for integration brings into a natural loving relationship with the world around us.
One of the goals of life must be fully to unpack our contents during our lifetime, so that we can leave the planet with no tasks left unfulfilled, no commissions undischarged, and no omissions un-made-up. Only then can we truly say that we have lived life to the full – for only then we done what we really came here for.
Until you allow yourself to fall (fall in love, fall into the hands of the living god) you cannot possibly know what great things are in store for you. Up until that point you believe that you (could) control your life – once you know you can't then the Great Dance can begin. Because our lives are subject to gravity we think that to lose control is to fall to destruction. It isn't. To fall apart is the beginning of being remade. It's the first step to learning that the conceptual world is not the whole of existence.
Let go & let God.
This is impossible without a parallel journey into our own fear & darkness. The more we encounter & learn to love those aspects of our personality we would prefer to deny, the more this search for integration brings into a natural loving relationship with the world around us.
One of the goals of life must be fully to unpack our contents during our lifetime, so that we can leave the planet with no tasks left unfulfilled, no commissions undischarged, and no omissions un-made-up. Only then can we truly say that we have lived life to the full – for only then we done what we really came here for.
Until you allow yourself to fall (fall in love, fall into the hands of the living god) you cannot possibly know what great things are in store for you. Up until that point you believe that you (could) control your life – once you know you can't then the Great Dance can begin. Because our lives are subject to gravity we think that to lose control is to fall to destruction. It isn't. To fall apart is the beginning of being remade. It's the first step to learning that the conceptual world is not the whole of existence.
Let go & let God.
2008/02/26
Go for Go(l)d
If we worship (acknowledge with awe) what is totally within us, we are also worshipping (acknowledging with awe) what is totally without us. Thus, one side of reaching our fullest development as a creative human must involve developing our wonder /love /self-respect for our gifts, while the other is to develop wonder /love /respect for the unknowable otherness which is integral to such gifts.
This alone sharpens our wits to receive (or recognise) the higher levels of the basic skill-insights given by one's genetic heredity.
Learning to praise this Otherness is indispensible to growth – for it is in giving thanks (even for the little that we have) that we are given thanks. The praise /thanks mechanism is itself an aspect of the organic (yes, orgasmic) pulsing by which all things are conceived and ultimately born. It is our privilege as humans to interact consciously with this process, and we reach our highest evolution when we engage our will in discovering what the truth of this 'otherness' is /means in our lives.
Blessing 2 U O Lord who call me in the early hours.
This alone sharpens our wits to receive (or recognise) the higher levels of the basic skill-insights given by one's genetic heredity.
Learning to praise this Otherness is indispensible to growth – for it is in giving thanks (even for the little that we have) that we are given thanks. The praise /thanks mechanism is itself an aspect of the organic (yes, orgasmic) pulsing by which all things are conceived and ultimately born. It is our privilege as humans to interact consciously with this process, and we reach our highest evolution when we engage our will in discovering what the truth of this 'otherness' is /means in our lives.
Blessing 2 U O Lord who call me in the early hours.
2008/02/14
Running away from school
When I first began to compose, around the age of 12, I received no encouragement. Nevertheless, my voice /idiom developed spontaneously under the influence of Messiaen as I learnt to play his intensely mystical organ music. What I wrote, now lost, aroused no interest either among my peers or teachers, one of whom was Allan Wicks, the organist of Canterbury cathedral and Messiaen's principal British protagonist.But for me it touched the core of my creative being – & therefore I had the youthful experience that exposing what had meaning for me produced indifference in everyone I knew – including my parents who probably thought that composition was another phase that I would grow out of. This was later to give me a serious compositional block, since the pain of the inability to communicate by means of my music created an effective aversion therapy! [In this picture taken during Choir School scout camp, I am parading beside Oz Clarke, now better known for his oenophilia.]
Eventually this brought me to a crisis, which was essentially a crisis of my own authenticity /self-worth: the more I followed my calling, my creative daemon, the more isolated it made me. Since those sounds that seemed most real & vivid to me aroused to response, except embarrassment, where did reality lie? I was already in a parallel universe with, apparently, no tangent to that of others.
I decided that the only person who could understand me was Messiaen himself; so to Paris I went. I think it was just after Easter term 1963. But then, so alienated did I feel, I dared not speak to him – for to meet rejection from my god would have spelt the extinction of my last remaining beacon of hope. And I couldn't risk that, by the same token that the rules of chess forbid exposing one's king to check. To hazard one's dominant principle-principal is to court annihilation.
Having been to the Trinité twice to hear Messiaen improvise after High Mass -wonderfully- and seen him descend from the organ loft into a small sea of fidgety organophiles I knew I should never be able to approach him. Who was I? A 16 yearold with no credentials, nothing to offer, and unable to give an account of myself. How could tell him -in french- I needed him to save my life? And if my god were to spurn me I must necessarily embrace the devil of suicide with which I had flirted constantly for at least 3 years.The Australian concierge in the little hotel in the Rue Vaneau (7ème), where I stayed on the recommendation of someone I'd met on the boat train over, suggested I went to Brive la Gaillarde. So why not? There was nothing for me in Paris. 40 years later I felt a savage recognition reading Rilke's account of his experiences in Paris 60 years before mine. All that was light and warm in humanity was a closed book to me. A neat irony, then, to go to a place whose name spoke of gaiety. I wrote poetry there that still exists in some notebooks somewhere.
Eventually I ran out of road. I had no psychic energy to project my consciousness across the void towards that of other people, nor any experience that would predict success. After three and a half weeks I got in touch with my parents, & my father came out to see me.We had one of the few times of closeness we were ever to enjoy. He was open to me as he was never to be again except when we came to bid farewell to my mother a week before her death. Sadly, it was a measure of his inability to see what I needed that he encouraged me to stay and find work. He meant well, to encourage my independence, but anyone with half an antenna could have seen I was incapable of fending for myself. I accompanied him back to Paris, half thinking to return, half simply wanting his company. The journey, for which we bought first class tickets thinking it would guarantee seats, not understanding the french reservation system, ate up nearly all my remaining funds, as Id bravely insisted on paying my own way. I was left without enough money to return to Brive, let alone to live on. My money would stretch only to a ticket to Orléans, which was not even on the mainline south.
Some memories have stuck with me from my chambre de mansarde (garret room) in the cheapest hotel I could find in Orléans under the distrustful eyes of the flophouse Madame as I awaited a remittance from my parents, which I was sore at having to request. Maybe the mordancy of these memories has stayed with me because of not having eaten for 3 days – seeing prosperous bourgeois avocats spilling out from the courthouse in search of a gallic lunch in the tree-lined cafés around the Palais de Justice, and my having NO idea what life would be like a member of a human race I thought I was never destined to join.
Another was walking aimlessly throu a fair, possibly that evening, under the dusty trees of the market place. I'd found a sou in my pocket & been able to purchase a chew, which served only to madden my hunger. I really didn't know how I could go on living under any circumstances, even with food inside me. The fair was truly charming in those days before amplification with real live accordionists & little bal musette cafés – that I couldn't afford to visit. At one of them a gaggle of jeunes mooched by counter including a really beautiful girl, perhaps no more than 2 years -yet a whole world- older than me, who was evidently bored with being the arm candy of some spotty hoodlum. She turned to follow me as I walked, her eyes a bridge to that other world which I had no idea how to cross.No woman had ever paid that kind of attention to me, certainly not one with her credentials. I was shocked with delight, yet it only made my isolation more intense – what import could any contact between us possibly have?
The other experience which occupied those 5 hungry days was making friends with the organiste du choeur of Orléans cathedral. A lovely /lonely semi-alcoholic who lived in one room in 18thC squalor in an 18thC apartment house near the cathedral. He had once had a piece played on Radio France by Jean Françaix, & this was his sole topic of conversation! His job was to accompany the choir on the humble organ in the chancel. He had no contact with the titulaire, the capital O-Organist, who played the splendid Cavaillé-Colle grand orgues at the west end, whose duties were merely to play solo pieces at grand liturgical moments, and who disdained his earthly colleag (who had once had a piece played on Radio France by Jean Françaix)!
The end of it was, the money came, I went back to Brive, collected by belongings & came back to England with my tail between my legs.
What I believe sustained me throu this dark period, and indeed brought two remarkable people across my path, were the prayers of my paternal grandmother. My Granny 'Ginger' was a genuinely beautiful woman at every period of her life. Her wedding picture shows her with a butterfly on her hand: she told me it was a real butterfly which had flapt into the photographer's studio at the exact moment he was ready to snap, paused on her hand for the photo, & flown away. To a person with her faith, there was nothing remarkable about this - that was how miracles happened, just everyday occurrences, that we were to be truly grateful for, but not to get particularly excited about.
I've always felt that my meetings, not long after my return, with Jane Clark Dodgson and the other really significant person in helping me back to a halfway normal life, Roger Wild, the vicar whose organist I became at the age of 17, were due to my Granny upholding me in prayer.
Before taking the cloth, Roger had been MD of Wild Aero Engines, a small independent manufacturer with a history going back to Spitfire engines, and he had Lived with a capital L, before experiencing a christian conversion under Billy Graham, and gradually realising he had a vocation as a priest. He was a visionary man of god, who filled what had been an empty church by simply making a space where it was safe for people to find personal answers.
He later married Clancy and me; but was gathered to his fathers not long afterward.
2008/02/12
Transcendence
All true art is a gift to the world that is beyond price. Constantly, at least once a year, I play throu Bach's complete 48 preludes & fugues. It brings me infinite & instant 'transport'. Such a thing
is beyond value. It & much other music has, for centuries, been a free gift to tens of millions of musicians.
Nature is full of such gifts. We we are truly awed by the richness that surrounds us then we can begin, but only begin, to understand the true depth of love – & when we have begun to feel the constancy and omnipresence of this love we have begun, but only begun, the process of attuning ourselves to the creator-spirit.
To experience this shower of love, one must cease to conceptualise, to see(k) 'reasons'. Love is - and its heart lies in an invisible cavity between words & wordlessness. To find the way to this is to find not merely 'shower of love' but also the show-er of love. It is both the (self-)discovery and reflexion of a perception of that entity which we can only name 'otherness', the unnameable, the 'not-I /not-us' which nonetheless encompasses the ego/I/us of humanity.
is beyond value. It & much other music has, for centuries, been a free gift to tens of millions of musicians.
Nature is full of such gifts. We we are truly awed by the richness that surrounds us then we can begin, but only begin, to understand the true depth of love – & when we have begun to feel the constancy and omnipresence of this love we have begun, but only begun, the process of attuning ourselves to the creator-spirit.
To experience this shower of love, one must cease to conceptualise, to see(k) 'reasons'. Love is - and its heart lies in an invisible cavity between words & wordlessness. To find the way to this is to find not merely 'shower of love' but also the show-er of love. It is both the (self-)discovery and reflexion of a perception of that entity which we can only name 'otherness', the unnameable, the 'not-I /not-us' which nonetheless encompasses the ego/I/us of humanity.
2008/02/10
A time to embrace
What a privilege to wake and know that there is a power, a presence enveloping me. To say 'I can't believe my luck' would sum up my feelings. And yet what at last has come to me has been sought throu years of tears – pursued throu wilderness, flood and mud, over trackless wastes, across impassable glaciers, and beyond steep stony mountains. So in a way, the only aspect of 'luck' that comes into it, is the luck I invoked by my heartfelt search for meaning.
During years I could not find a friend I had only the love of my family to sustain me – and how rich that was. Only a very few other people even knew, let alone carred, that I was alive. Yet I felt /feel that the principal value in my time on earth was simply to be a witness to my own life – to make no assumptions about what should happen, but to record simply what I am shown, to accept being 'dumbed down' but to continue to testify even to dumbness and desolation. With the same attention I now record the pleroma, the sense of abundant life &/or stream of living water which now visits me.
I know I don't own this. It has been allowed me, as a harmonic is 'allowed' to a note when the correct physical laws are observed. And this is why the Beatitudes tell us we must hunger and thirst after righteousness. The Bible says 'seek and ye shall find'; but it might be better to express it as 'seek and ye shall be found.' What you thought you were looking for is not what will find you. The function of seeking is to open our selves to Life.
The next step is to trust (in) your inner-life dynamic, to believe that you do indeed contain the latent wisdom you now invoke. By trusting, we become trust-worthy; just as by loving we become love-able. By learning to walk straight in the darkness we attract the light we seek, and make ourselves worthy -indeed make ourselves value- that light, so that when it appears, in the fullness of time, we may handle it as we should. Imagine: if such a gift were given to the without suitable preparation would enlightenment result? The teaching of Maharishi (who died this week) detonated a consciousness-bomb in the 1960s: while a great number undoubtedly gained empowerment to pursue their enlightenment, many more entirely missed the point of departure and remained trapped in their earthbound conception/s.
How many wish to rise above the level of their earthbound neibours? How many wish to shed the veiling flesh and come to see with opened eyes the glorious spirit body each of us has, and to begin inhabiting it during their lifetime? It fascinates me how throuout history such wisdom constantly arises and is as constantly forgotten when fashions and meanings change, only to arise again in new forms in response to new situations and vocabularies.
I believe that Christ released into the atmosphere an original dynamic which can never be extinguished, despite the best efforts of his 'followers'(!) – yet I should not understand the half of his message without the illumination of his fellow light-worker Gautama Buddha or the perceptual-philosophical ground of Vedanta.
There are beautiful things happening all over the world right now. We can choose to side with them, or we can surrender ourselves to the embrace of chaos.
During years I could not find a friend I had only the love of my family to sustain me – and how rich that was. Only a very few other people even knew, let alone carred, that I was alive. Yet I felt /feel that the principal value in my time on earth was simply to be a witness to my own life – to make no assumptions about what should happen, but to record simply what I am shown, to accept being 'dumbed down' but to continue to testify even to dumbness and desolation. With the same attention I now record the pleroma, the sense of abundant life &/or stream of living water which now visits me.
I know I don't own this. It has been allowed me, as a harmonic is 'allowed' to a note when the correct physical laws are observed. And this is why the Beatitudes tell us we must hunger and thirst after righteousness. The Bible says 'seek and ye shall find'; but it might be better to express it as 'seek and ye shall be found.' What you thought you were looking for is not what will find you. The function of seeking is to open our selves to Life.
The next step is to trust (in) your inner-life dynamic, to believe that you do indeed contain the latent wisdom you now invoke. By trusting, we become trust-worthy; just as by loving we become love-able. By learning to walk straight in the darkness we attract the light we seek, and make ourselves worthy -indeed make ourselves value- that light, so that when it appears, in the fullness of time, we may handle it as we should. Imagine: if such a gift were given to the without suitable preparation would enlightenment result? The teaching of Maharishi (who died this week) detonated a consciousness-bomb in the 1960s: while a great number undoubtedly gained empowerment to pursue their enlightenment, many more entirely missed the point of departure and remained trapped in their earthbound conception/s.
How many wish to rise above the level of their earthbound neibours? How many wish to shed the veiling flesh and come to see with opened eyes the glorious spirit body each of us has, and to begin inhabiting it during their lifetime? It fascinates me how throuout history such wisdom constantly arises and is as constantly forgotten when fashions and meanings change, only to arise again in new forms in response to new situations and vocabularies.
I believe that Christ released into the atmosphere an original dynamic which can never be extinguished, despite the best efforts of his 'followers'(!) – yet I should not understand the half of his message without the illumination of his fellow light-worker Gautama Buddha or the perceptual-philosophical ground of Vedanta.
There are beautiful things happening all over the world right now. We can choose to side with them, or we can surrender ourselves to the embrace of chaos.
2008/01/29
Love 1 - Love all
The words are simple –
They always are –
Love … Give …
Love yourself: give to others.
The energy within the holy 1 transforms the world, person by person:
embrace that integrative energy.
Our main task as humans is to unpack the baggage we brought with us,
so that at the end we can fly away, free spirits, released from the weight of unresolved elements within ourselves, no longer attached to material reality.
Until then, dance.
Dance with all your heart.
Dance with every thing.
Make your world dance.
They always are –
Love … Give …
Love yourself: give to others.
The energy within the holy 1 transforms the world, person by person:
embrace that integrative energy.
Our main task as humans is to unpack the baggage we brought with us,
so that at the end we can fly away, free spirits, released from the weight of unresolved elements within ourselves, no longer attached to material reality.
Until then, dance.
Dance with all your heart.
Dance with every thing.
Make your world dance.
2008/01/20
Peace at last
This morning I felt absolutely resolved, as if the Promethean eagle had been given a day off from pecking out my liver. Two things have happened this week which have contributed to this.One is that ColourMuse has finally gone live after a (re-)development phase that has lasted the best part of 5 months, during which I constantly believed it would be ready by the end of each of the intervening months(!) – which was an exquisite refinement of torture.
The other is that I visited the remarkable osteopath Clive Lindley-Jones for a second treatment, ostensibly for the RSI I have suffered from in my right arm for the best part of two decades. However CLJ's skills extend far beyond mere osteopathy. He also uses kinesiology and a range of other diagnostic tools to assist him in identifying weakness of muscle tone and points of inflammation or dis-ease. Even more remarkably, for a conventionally qualified practitioner, he sees the body in terms of its auric or electrical fields and fully recognises the validity of the ayurvedic system of chakras.
With extraordinary speed & professionalism CLJ was able to isolate certain 'culprit' muscles in the first session. In the second he gave me various conventional physical treatments, but it was the accompanying energy treatments involving the alignment of chakric extensions of my spine both above my head & below my sacrum which I could feel effecting a major change in my sense of physical integrity – ie, of being fully present in my body.
CLJ was frank from the beginning that he might not be able to restore full mobility to my right arm repetition since the problem was of such long standing – but I do feel I have at last met someone who is equipt with the extended range of skills & metaphysical perception necessary to treat the underlying causation.
I salute a maestro!
2008/01/08
Time Changes
So. I lie here at 0445, thinking about what may come.
After so many years during which I lay awake in the darkness, uncertain or dreadful of the future, it comes as a pleasant surprise to find myself looking forward with clarity and anticipation. In a few days ColourMuse will go live. and then I shall be starting to develop it internationally as a mainstream piano teaching method. Win /lose /draw, it can only add value to my life.
When I compare my emotions on the launch of this with how I was around the time I launched my last major enterprise (CataList magazine) 15 years ago I see the measure of how I've developed within myself in what I'm 'given' to write in these sattvic hours. 15 years ago I was, mercifully, able to access an inner wisdom which guided me [preserved here in the earlier postings of this blog] & kept me more or less sane in a crazy time.
I feel that I no longer see this natural wisdom, which we all have, as coming from outside me, but I feel as if I've managed to integrate it within my consciousness. Which isn't the same thing as claimed to be an enlightened or omniscient being! Yes, in a way there's a loss. The bell-like clarity I had has gone, replaced by a more pervasive sense of clarity. So that's a plus. What existed as 'skyborne' inspiration has entered the loam of my soul.
Now, when I pray to that luminously unknowable certainty whom I sense within/without me, I do so in the sense of having a conversation – not with the desperation of someone battering on Heaven's firmly barred gates!
After so many years during which I lay awake in the darkness, uncertain or dreadful of the future, it comes as a pleasant surprise to find myself looking forward with clarity and anticipation. In a few days ColourMuse will go live. and then I shall be starting to develop it internationally as a mainstream piano teaching method. Win /lose /draw, it can only add value to my life.
When I compare my emotions on the launch of this with how I was around the time I launched my last major enterprise (CataList magazine) 15 years ago I see the measure of how I've developed within myself in what I'm 'given' to write in these sattvic hours. 15 years ago I was, mercifully, able to access an inner wisdom which guided me [preserved here in the earlier postings of this blog] & kept me more or less sane in a crazy time.
I feel that I no longer see this natural wisdom, which we all have, as coming from outside me, but I feel as if I've managed to integrate it within my consciousness. Which isn't the same thing as claimed to be an enlightened or omniscient being! Yes, in a way there's a loss. The bell-like clarity I had has gone, replaced by a more pervasive sense of clarity. So that's a plus. What existed as 'skyborne' inspiration has entered the loam of my soul.
Now, when I pray to that luminously unknowable certainty whom I sense within/without me, I do so in the sense of having a conversation – not with the desperation of someone battering on Heaven's firmly barred gates!
2007/12/17
BGG Ethics/Spirituality/Philosophy Field Resignation
I've come to the conclusion it's time to turn my badge in for reasons
unconnected with the recent turmoil. For the past month I've been trying to
find someone who would be willing to take over the
Ethics/Spirituality/Philosophy Field - so far without success.
My reasons are 1) that this summer I intend to rebuild my studio (with
turf roof & local stone) & only have a two month window in the summer to get
this done, so would not be available if the BGG runs: 2)
http://www.colourmuse.com/index.php is nearly ready to go live - in which
I've invested a lorra money & a lorra lorra time, & I really have to focus
on making this a success because my teaching method is a mission to liberate
children from the horrors of exam-mania (as well as a pension, I wish): 3)
I've embarked on a large-scale composition project which will take me half a
year & mentally is simply not compatible with the amount of fiddly
administrative detail that Area Coordination demands.
Beyond this, I do also have to say that as the serious points I've made
do not appear to have been engaged with, let alone responded to, I have
little confidence that the BGG directors understand the issues of resource
& human management any better than the record shows they did formerly. I
would therefore find it hard to engage in planning a future event with any
faith that further misjudgments would not occur.
I am very torn in making this decision, because the BGG has been a large
part of my life during this decade. I want to pay tribute to EVERYone who
has been involved in making it happen, and happen so beautifully. I cannot
begin to express all that I've learnt from being permitted to be part of it.
Due to my anomalous background, I've never felt I belonged in any other
social grouping. Yet the BGG has felt more like home /family to me, & I've
taken fire from the sparks which I feel other kindling all around me.
Perhaps in the human condition we are all wayfarers huddling together
around a midwinter fire telling each other songs and jokes to keep the
darkness at bay, and therefore in the physical circumstances of each
Gathering we meet together in a uniquely honest way on the ground as human
beings, as well as on the ground of our common humanity?
Yet at the same time we are spirit, and we have the power to be other
than our physical surroundings - we HAVE the power to create the dawn, and
ultimately to BE our own high summer. And the Gathering is a forum where
others can experience that power.
We all know this is what the BGG is about, and it's why I'm sad that -as
so often in the history of the world- a bunch of visionaries have been
caught out by their failure to keep track of the mundane nittygritty. We're
not the first bunch of stargazers to land up to their necks in mud.
The art of successful tightrope walking demands constant readjustment to
keep one's balance. In cosmic terms, the greater the light, the greater the
shadow. This is where we fell down: we luxuriated in the light, and did not
wish to see /engage with the shadow. Having a rather devious scorpionic
mind, to which I owe my survival in a fairly harem-scarem life, I have on
several occasions seen the drop coming, where others have partied on into
oblivion. (Call it e.s.p. if you want!) But my warnings about what was
'unsustainable' here fell on deaf ears.
It's an un/fortunate feature of terrestrial life that that which aspires
to raise the condition of humankind is subjected to higher moral standards &
more arduous testing that that which has no aspiration. All wisdom
traditions agree that anyone who takes this path has to expect it - 'As gold
is tested in the fire, so those who are chosen are tested in the furnace of
humiliation' says the Book of Wisdom in the Bible. Or to put in the
vernacular 'if you aim to raise the common consciousness you can expect to
have the shit kicked out of you.'
Why? Because we cannot change anything effectively in our external
circumstances without first being willing to be changed ourselves, and then
that dynamic imparts itself to those around us - and so the psychic ripple
passes throu the 99 monkeys till it reaches the one who tips the balance.
Much that is ineffective in revolutionary politics stems from people using
campaigning for external change when they have not engaged with their own
inner process & motivation.
My great concern is that we who constitute the core of the BGG had
become lazy about maintaining that central dynamic. Our steering group
meetings tended to be mostly inward about ways & means, with very little
about external vision & strategy.
Maybe that will change, now that minds are focussed on the bullet loaded
in the rifle? I hope so. It's the mother of all wakeup calls.
The hardest thing for me to let go are the relationships, especially that of
the wonderful ESPf crew - a number of whom have been coming from Ireland at
their own expense each year. Not of course that I AM letting go of them
altogether, but my decision means that as the bonds loosen some
relationships will disintegrate.
I think the thing that has been the supreme achevement of the BGG thus
far has been to demonstrate to the world that human beings can and do
collaborate naturally without the need for rules and rigid structures to
force them to do it. From the afar you might think that when you're
collaborating in building a visionary community all would happen according
to some ideal: for me the grounding discovery has been that the personality
traits & communication glitches are as much part of 'paradise' as they are
of the quotidian world. What differs is the motiviation to expand our
psychic awareness of interdependence.
Nowherelse have I experienced a social event where the fertile or green
values of Eros (the intuitive /subjective) so successfully outweigh Logos
(the rational /objective) - which is what makes the BGG such a great
counter-balance to the toxically yang energy in society as a whole. Yet I do
believe that its very success is what has led to a corresponding IMbalance
in the BGG itself. And that is what I have endeavoured to draw attention to.
Here we manifest most clearly the interesting phenomenon that whatever
we do not resolve in our own lives we visit as a shadow on others. [Yes, I
own myself in this.] If we are private individuals this doesn't matter so
much, but when we have positions of governance it matters a hellova lot.
Whatever is unresolved in ourselves becomes the blind spot we manifest in
the judgments we make on behalf of our 'constituency'. [Think Bush /Blair:
war on Muslims]
IMO, what MUST happen now for the sake of the BGG's regeneration is to
find a working balance between a competent professional manager, paid a
respectful wage, and a board led by a chair who has the self-confidence not
try to act the MD as well. It's a tough call, but it's one that's got to be
made. If the flow of meddling and bad /muddled decisions that I've seen
during my involvement with the BGG is not eliminated, I don't see a future.
Knowing that I would resign, trying to find someone to take over, and
working out what to say to enthuse that person at such an uncertain time,
has been a weight on my mind. I do believe that the BGG has a great future
if it can struggle to resolve its collective shadow by engaging with, and
embracing, what it fears.
Accountancy & professional management are NOT the enemy of spontaneity,
if the right accountant and manager are chosen. Everything in the world
changes, and if we want to keep the freedom of the cultural renaissance of
the 1960s alive (& my life & art are dedicated to this) then we have to
accept that different times sometimes demand different means to generate the
former answers. Nothing stays the same. As the zeros get longer the system
of financial management has to come of age.
The quality and longevity of an organisation are best demonstrated in
its capacity to train the next generation to assume leadership, which
requires an exceptional degree of forebearance and generosity. My heartfelt
wish is that we, the BGG, should earn the trust and engagement of our kids.
For the future of our planet depends on passing on to them what we have
learnt in a form that is meaningful to them. Finding the forms which the
rising generation finds meaningful is not a straightforward matter, but we
collectively know more about it than most organisations.
We, the BGG, have a head & shoulders advantage over other 'institutions'
- don't blow it up in smoke. Be real, be grounded - we ARE stardust.
I shall of course collaborate with whatever decisions are made about the
ESP Field to ensure the best outcome for everyone.
Best wishes
Maxwell
unconnected with the recent turmoil. For the past month I've been trying to
find someone who would be willing to take over the
Ethics/Spirituality/Philosophy Field - so far without success.
My reasons are 1) that this summer I intend to rebuild my studio (with
turf roof & local stone) & only have a two month window in the summer to get
this done, so would not be available if the BGG runs: 2)
http://www.colourmuse.com/index.php is nearly ready to go live - in which
I've invested a lorra money & a lorra lorra time, & I really have to focus
on making this a success because my teaching method is a mission to liberate
children from the horrors of exam-mania (as well as a pension, I wish): 3)
I've embarked on a large-scale composition project which will take me half a
year & mentally is simply not compatible with the amount of fiddly
administrative detail that Area Coordination demands.
Beyond this, I do also have to say that as the serious points I've made
do not appear to have been engaged with, let alone responded to, I have
little confidence that the BGG directors understand the issues of resource
& human management any better than the record shows they did formerly. I
would therefore find it hard to engage in planning a future event with any
faith that further misjudgments would not occur.
I am very torn in making this decision, because the BGG has been a large
part of my life during this decade. I want to pay tribute to EVERYone who
has been involved in making it happen, and happen so beautifully. I cannot
begin to express all that I've learnt from being permitted to be part of it.
Due to my anomalous background, I've never felt I belonged in any other
social grouping. Yet the BGG has felt more like home /family to me, & I've
taken fire from the sparks which I feel other kindling all around me.
Perhaps in the human condition we are all wayfarers huddling together
around a midwinter fire telling each other songs and jokes to keep the
darkness at bay, and therefore in the physical circumstances of each
Gathering we meet together in a uniquely honest way on the ground as human
beings, as well as on the ground of our common humanity?
Yet at the same time we are spirit, and we have the power to be other
than our physical surroundings - we HAVE the power to create the dawn, and
ultimately to BE our own high summer. And the Gathering is a forum where
others can experience that power.
We all know this is what the BGG is about, and it's why I'm sad that -as
so often in the history of the world- a bunch of visionaries have been
caught out by their failure to keep track of the mundane nittygritty. We're
not the first bunch of stargazers to land up to their necks in mud.
The art of successful tightrope walking demands constant readjustment to
keep one's balance. In cosmic terms, the greater the light, the greater the
shadow. This is where we fell down: we luxuriated in the light, and did not
wish to see /engage with the shadow. Having a rather devious scorpionic
mind, to which I owe my survival in a fairly harem-scarem life, I have on
several occasions seen the drop coming, where others have partied on into
oblivion. (Call it e.s.p. if you want!) But my warnings about what was
'unsustainable' here fell on deaf ears.
It's an un/fortunate feature of terrestrial life that that which aspires
to raise the condition of humankind is subjected to higher moral standards &
more arduous testing that that which has no aspiration. All wisdom
traditions agree that anyone who takes this path has to expect it - 'As gold
is tested in the fire, so those who are chosen are tested in the furnace of
humiliation' says the Book of Wisdom in the Bible. Or to put in the
vernacular 'if you aim to raise the common consciousness you can expect to
have the shit kicked out of you.'
Why? Because we cannot change anything effectively in our external
circumstances without first being willing to be changed ourselves, and then
that dynamic imparts itself to those around us - and so the psychic ripple
passes throu the 99 monkeys till it reaches the one who tips the balance.
Much that is ineffective in revolutionary politics stems from people using
campaigning for external change when they have not engaged with their own
inner process & motivation.
My great concern is that we who constitute the core of the BGG had
become lazy about maintaining that central dynamic. Our steering group
meetings tended to be mostly inward about ways & means, with very little
about external vision & strategy.
Maybe that will change, now that minds are focussed on the bullet loaded
in the rifle? I hope so. It's the mother of all wakeup calls.
The hardest thing for me to let go are the relationships, especially that of
the wonderful ESPf crew - a number of whom have been coming from Ireland at
their own expense each year. Not of course that I AM letting go of them
altogether, but my decision means that as the bonds loosen some
relationships will disintegrate.
I think the thing that has been the supreme achevement of the BGG thus
far has been to demonstrate to the world that human beings can and do
collaborate naturally without the need for rules and rigid structures to
force them to do it. From the afar you might think that when you're
collaborating in building a visionary community all would happen according
to some ideal: for me the grounding discovery has been that the personality
traits & communication glitches are as much part of 'paradise' as they are
of the quotidian world. What differs is the motiviation to expand our
psychic awareness of interdependence.
Nowherelse have I experienced a social event where the fertile or green
values of Eros (the intuitive /subjective) so successfully outweigh Logos
(the rational /objective) - which is what makes the BGG such a great
counter-balance to the toxically yang energy in society as a whole. Yet I do
believe that its very success is what has led to a corresponding IMbalance
in the BGG itself. And that is what I have endeavoured to draw attention to.
Here we manifest most clearly the interesting phenomenon that whatever
we do not resolve in our own lives we visit as a shadow on others. [Yes, I
own myself in this.] If we are private individuals this doesn't matter so
much, but when we have positions of governance it matters a hellova lot.
Whatever is unresolved in ourselves becomes the blind spot we manifest in
the judgments we make on behalf of our 'constituency'. [Think Bush /Blair:
war on Muslims]
IMO, what MUST happen now for the sake of the BGG's regeneration is to
find a working balance between a competent professional manager, paid a
respectful wage, and a board led by a chair who has the self-confidence not
try to act the MD as well. It's a tough call, but it's one that's got to be
made. If the flow of meddling and bad /muddled decisions that I've seen
during my involvement with the BGG is not eliminated, I don't see a future.
Knowing that I would resign, trying to find someone to take over, and
working out what to say to enthuse that person at such an uncertain time,
has been a weight on my mind. I do believe that the BGG has a great future
if it can struggle to resolve its collective shadow by engaging with, and
embracing, what it fears.
Accountancy & professional management are NOT the enemy of spontaneity,
if the right accountant and manager are chosen. Everything in the world
changes, and if we want to keep the freedom of the cultural renaissance of
the 1960s alive (& my life & art are dedicated to this) then we have to
accept that different times sometimes demand different means to generate the
former answers. Nothing stays the same. As the zeros get longer the system
of financial management has to come of age.
The quality and longevity of an organisation are best demonstrated in
its capacity to train the next generation to assume leadership, which
requires an exceptional degree of forebearance and generosity. My heartfelt
wish is that we, the BGG, should earn the trust and engagement of our kids.
For the future of our planet depends on passing on to them what we have
learnt in a form that is meaningful to them. Finding the forms which the
rising generation finds meaningful is not a straightforward matter, but we
collectively know more about it than most organisations.
We, the BGG, have a head & shoulders advantage over other 'institutions'
- don't blow it up in smoke. Be real, be grounded - we ARE stardust.
I shall of course collaborate with whatever decisions are made about the
ESP Field to ensure the best outcome for everyone.
Best wishes
Maxwell
2007/12/02
The link between the Moslem & Christian worlds
Sometimes you wait for years for an elucidation of certain mysteries. Corpus Alchemicum Arabicum: Book of the Explanation of the Symbols 'Kitab Hall Ar-Rumuz' by Muhammad Ibn Umail with Psychological Commentary by Marie-Louise Von Franz, translated & published by Theodor Abt, is that book.
I had always been convinced that there must be a link between the Sufism, the sacred geometry of the early gothic cathedrals, mediaeval alchemy the troubador movement and the enduring legend of the Holy Grail. The encyclopaedic mind of Marie-Louise von Franz alone had the wisdom & authority to demonstrate where the common factors lie.
I shall write more about this anon, but for now let this extract stand as an example of the link she traces between the pursuit of the alchemical transformation of matter /the self, and the Jungian ideas of the anima/animus as each person's transexual inner otherness.
From 9thC ascetic Ahmad ibn Abu al-Hawari: "In a dream I saw a maiden of the most perfect beauty, whose countenance shone with celestial splendour. To my asking 'whence comes that brilliance on thy face?' she replied 'dost thou remember that night spent in weeping (& devotion)?', I answered, and she said 'I took those tears of thine and with them anointed my face, since then it has shone in brilliance.'
I had always been convinced that there must be a link between the Sufism, the sacred geometry of the early gothic cathedrals, mediaeval alchemy the troubador movement and the enduring legend of the Holy Grail. The encyclopaedic mind of Marie-Louise von Franz alone had the wisdom & authority to demonstrate where the common factors lie.
I shall write more about this anon, but for now let this extract stand as an example of the link she traces between the pursuit of the alchemical transformation of matter /the self, and the Jungian ideas of the anima/animus as each person's transexual inner otherness.
From 9thC ascetic Ahmad ibn Abu al-Hawari: "In a dream I saw a maiden of the most perfect beauty, whose countenance shone with celestial splendour. To my asking 'whence comes that brilliance on thy face?' she replied 'dost thou remember that night spent in weeping (& devotion)?', I answered, and she said 'I took those tears of thine and with them anointed my face, since then it has shone in brilliance.'
2007/10/29
What was I given to do - & did I do it?
This title came to me as I walking my dogs recently. Am I in tune with the profound purposes for which I was given life? Am I clear what they are? To what extent am I accomplishing what it's my role to achieve?In the daily plod it's hard to be sure whether the steps we take are carrying us towards our goal or away? For the path often twists and when we find ourselves not obviously proceeding in the direction we think we should be, it takes a lot of faith to maintain belief that it is our correct route – but OTOH if we're already lost, maybe better to backtrack immediately ...?
Here's what I think. The key lies in keeping your inner motivation to serve the light within you high and strong. If your heart burns with that love, then the light shines, and provided you ensure the link of faith keeps your inner & outer world real and grounded, you are on the right road, because that is itself the right road, and because it is what all the goals & vicissitudes are designed to teach.
That's where trust comes in. To know intellectually where you should be heading, or to have a plan, is the surest possible way to lose the way &/or the plot. It's that trust between your self and your 'inner otherness' that is itself the 'intunity' which we all seek throu external means. And yet the way to find it was always within, smaller than the eye of the needle, a whole world made small. The very greatest gift of all.
Sometimes we have to accept that we're simply called to walk in the dark, at such times the bible verse 'whatever thy hand findeth to do: do it with all thy might,' is appropriate. This concept is well rendered by John Updike in his poem Midpoint
"Cherish your work, take pleasure in your task,
For doing's the one reward a man dare ask."
2007/10/26
Centring
Each morning I have to recalibrate my senses and reset my emotional baseline to neutral, that is to some sense of contact with an ultimate reality which allows me to connect with /surrender to it – or else my monkey mind goes busily about its whirling way, progressively confabulating probabilities into a spiral of planning & projections. (This is of course useful in its place.)
It isn't always possible to centre, for a variety of reasons: I may be excited about busyness that lies ahead, I may have had dreams that I have been unable to process – or indeed may not be consciously aware of, yet which are strongly colouring my subconscious mindset – I may have heavy food or alcohol in my digestive system that is governing my mental process and preventing me achieving clarity.
I refer to these circ~s as spiritual weather: sometimes it's sunny: sometimes it's overcast: sometimes it's stormy. During the latter I repeat my mantra: 'Sai Ram', invoking Sai Baba, the figure from whom I have drawn most spiritual empowerment. (I do not see him as an individual, who is separate from or in opposition to other spiritual teachers – but rather as someone whose energies are most present for me, and who thus becomes a lens throu whom I see to the depths of truth at which all traditions converge.) I also find invoking him really works when I am sleepless – it's a great use of what o/wise is 'dead' time.
The joke about meditation that 'the first 20 years are the worst' is absolutely correct – but the real benefit of persisting is that you come to experience your inner world in all sorts of different circ~s, and thus are able to form an overview of the dimensions of that world. Over such a length of time you are pretty certain to have visited some of the more extreme corners of your psyche and meditation gives you a tool with which to observe yourself as you go throu different kinds of 'weather'.
The day on which I wrote this was one on which I found myself led to put forward a contentious proposal within a group – and that too provided fascinating opportunities for self-observation.
It isn't always possible to centre, for a variety of reasons: I may be excited about busyness that lies ahead, I may have had dreams that I have been unable to process – or indeed may not be consciously aware of, yet which are strongly colouring my subconscious mindset – I may have heavy food or alcohol in my digestive system that is governing my mental process and preventing me achieving clarity.
I refer to these circ~s as spiritual weather: sometimes it's sunny: sometimes it's overcast: sometimes it's stormy. During the latter I repeat my mantra: 'Sai Ram', invoking Sai Baba, the figure from whom I have drawn most spiritual empowerment. (I do not see him as an individual, who is separate from or in opposition to other spiritual teachers – but rather as someone whose energies are most present for me, and who thus becomes a lens throu whom I see to the depths of truth at which all traditions converge.) I also find invoking him really works when I am sleepless – it's a great use of what o/wise is 'dead' time.
The joke about meditation that 'the first 20 years are the worst' is absolutely correct – but the real benefit of persisting is that you come to experience your inner world in all sorts of different circ~s, and thus are able to form an overview of the dimensions of that world. Over such a length of time you are pretty certain to have visited some of the more extreme corners of your psyche and meditation gives you a tool with which to observe yourself as you go throu different kinds of 'weather'.
The day on which I wrote this was one on which I found myself led to put forward a contentious proposal within a group – and that too provided fascinating opportunities for self-observation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)