Well, That Was a Waste of Time

This morning, we got out of bed early, having set an alarm. We drove for 40 minutes for an appointment with an orthopaedic spine surgeon. We paid €90 before we even went in for a consultation. Pay first…

The hip surgeon had prescribed an MRI to check if there was a spinal problem. The results had been sent to the spine surgeon. The hip guy had intimated that there may be a back problem.

The hip man sent us to the spine man.

I saw the MRI image on screen. I have yet to see the full results or the write -up. The spine surgeon said that there was not a lumbar problem and said to go back to the hip surgeon. My hips are causing my back pain according to him. He was disinterested in the huge bony growth on my thoracic spine. A few minutes later we were back in the car with a chit to send back to the health people to claim for a part of the €90 fee. We drove 40 minutes back.

The spine man said go back and see the hip man for your operations, if you want.

There was absolutely no need for a face to face based on that experience. I knew there was no neuropathy. We may get a referral to a rheumatologist. It seems so inefficient.

Back to square one methinks.

I don’t know if I am being pig headed, if there is some huge cultural mismatch or what. This yo-yo stuff is doing nothing for my confidence. Pass the hot potato…

I really don’t appreciate being dismissed and told there is nothing we can do. I already knew this but it is not exactly good bedside manner. I found out two days ago…about the bony growth.

I can see this all going badly tits up…

In the past I have seen this kind of thing and there is nothing you can do; it just has to play out…

What must be, must be.

Well, that was a waste of time.

And They Said I Was Stiff – 3d Visualisation

I have been playing with the 3D CT data visualisation software…

It looks as though I have a boney growth throughout my thoracic spine.

Strangely it is mosty one sided. It is the white material in the centre.

It is not a pretty thing to observe for one’s own spine.

The length view looks like this.

It seems that my vertebrae are fused together.

It looks like my aim to dance lead for the Bolshoi will have to be put on hold…

Game Changer – Lung CT Scan

It is a nice sunny day and before lunch you download the CT scan results from yesterday. There is no commentary.

You open them up in a data viewer and you see an anomaly.

You do not need to work for SpaceX, NASA or ESA, in the rocket propulsion department, to note that something is wrong here.

You can see that the anomaly presses into the lungs on the left hand centre side of the image.

And that the joins with the ribs are also a bit off having downloaded a free trial of a medical data visualiser.

Quickly you come to the conclusion that whatever it is/was you thought you might have been doing is now wrong.

The game has changed.

In my crystal ball I see more medical appointments, scans and probably a biopsy…

The Beep-Beep Toad – Alytes Obstetricans

Over the last few weeks, we have been playing a nocturnal game called “what is that sound?”. Around 11 pm when all else is quiet and dark we hear a quasi-electronic sounding beep spaced at ~4 second intervals.

It gets so that you wait for the next beep!

It is tad irritating when you are nodding off.

So, I have variously stopped the voltage getting to the external lights, the supply voltage to the LNB detector on the satellite dish, and the electrical volets. None of which made any difference. The beep-beep is not here during the day. Only at night. Electrical causes are ruled out.

Last night it sounded like it was coming from the rose garden. I went out to explore wondering if I would discover some hidden electronic device. No. It went quiet when I approached.

Having spent time in Zambia and Queensland I am more accustomed to weird frog noises.

A Google search this morning revealed The Common Midwife Toad!!

This now adds to our wildlife tally with the two fire salamanders in the basement {vide sanitaire}. The slow worms are due to start leaving hibernation soon. Then we will have the grass snakes, some of which swim on the pond.

I don’t know if knowing it is a toad will make it easier to sleep. There is no electronic catastrophe pending.

We shall see….

Wolfgang – Switzerland – Being Slagged Off – Martial Arts Grading – UKE Dream 07-04-2025

Here is last night’s dream. I was on much reduced medication to see how I coped. Sleep was not deep.

The dream starts in a communal office setting. Wolfgang {flat mate – and subsequent employee} is sat opposite me. He has a thin pencil moustache and something of a mullet, neither of which he was accustomed to have. He is upset with me because he thinks that I have been mean to him and reneged on our friendship. I have done no such thing to my eyes. I know in the dream that because I do not do transactional “friendships” I do not have “friends” in the traditional social sense. I am very poor at “normal” friendships. I do not do mutual praise and ego stroking. People cannot relate to me because they do not get the normal feedback they are expecting. I say to Wolfgang that he may have misjudged.

The scene now coalesces to the shared common room area of our floor in the University of Bern. Sat around the table are many of the people from the research group. Wolfgang says in front of them all, that they have all been slagging me off and bad mouthing me, partially because I did not fit in and suck up. He says that I was always the outsider. I say to him that it is in no way new to me to have people gossip and slag me off behind my back whilst pretending to be nice and friendly to my face. I say that people can be very mercenary when they think that I have something(s) they want. I say to him that he needs to get over it, his misplaced upset. I say that his moustache looks ridiculous.

The scene changes to a large martial arts dojo. I am dressed in a judogi wearing a dark green belt around my middle. I am with the sensei, and he is showing me a list of people who are up for their blue belt grading. In this schema, blue is below green. There are a lot of people due for grading and we, the higher grades, are to be uke to their tori. We know that gradings are about form and not real combat. We will be willingly thrown about by numerous people doing their gradings in order for them to learn.

I am up first with four people one from each direction. East, North, West and South.  The people are of ill-defined gender and wearing judogi already with a light blue belt, the colour of which they seek to upgrade. One by one they come to me and holding a fighting stance assume their left hand in an upper block, jodan-uke. I place my arm similarly wrist to wrist. We then start to apply force and ki. They are trying to hold their position. I let them match me for a while and continue to ramp up until I start to sense them falter. Knowing that this is not about me winning rather them having an experience, I ease back just before breaking point. I do this with the first three directions. The woman from the South has defined gender and when she comes up for stance there is no need, because we already understand each other.

I know that there are hundreds more to come in the grading session. On the mat practice continues and we know, the sensei and I, that they have never yet experienced full contact combat which is a game changer.

The dream ends.

Dreaming – I Don’t Mind What Happens

One can find Jiddu Krishnamurti quoted as saying that his secret is that he does not mind what happens. This implies a lack of any goal orientation, preferred outcome, expectation or attachment. He may have omitted, “I do not mind what happens to me.” If one lives in the eternal now there is no concern for past or future, simply moment. One is not chained by the manacles of “what if” or of “if only.” There is a confidence that one can handle everything which life and the universe offers, free of prejudice. Even if that seems unpleasant and challenging. One is confident in ability to improvise and cope.

I have talked about my medical conditions here, which would be rather dramatic for many. It is just a fact of life for me. OMG spinal surgery may be involved… He has seen a brain surgeon and is getting a cancer check up in May….

There is not too much drama in my mind. The pain can be a tad boring. I don’t think there is an exact translation into French. Monotonous is probably close but does not have the nuance.

I am not worried about what if anything happens to whatever it is that I may or may not know. The thought forms exist now and could be accessed in the web of life in due course. If and when the time is due. I don’t currently see a use for me. I am surplus.

The dreaming takes time, decades sometimes.

I have had the first hint, in the dream this morning, that the time in France maybe drawing to a close. There has not been much for me here. The French are not very pro-active. I am in no way integrated. There will be no significant material plane impact should I leave. Only the medics and the checkout ladies will notice.

I have a few more medical appointments programmed. Then, soon, it will be the big summer holidays. Unless the colonoscopy shows anything sinister, that will probably be it until the Autumn. I will get my asthma medication renewed in July. I am not anticipating any solution, any diagnosis and treatment that will result in significant alleviation of symptoms. It looks to me that I dotting and T crossing data collection is occurring.

Following on from the dream we have been looking at on-line estate agents again. Affordability coupled with relative southerly locations limits us to probably South and West Wales in the UK. The property situation in France remains constipated. We need proximity and communications to university grade hospitals.

The problem is that the world is swirling. The web of life has been whacked unnecessarily by orange-boi.  The Nikkei and the Hang Seng could tank further in a few short hours. This is a factor which is against any house moving.

A house move is the dreaming symbol for adopting a new view of the world. Here it is expansive, it has gotten too big. Perhaps the need is simply to shrink and consolidate.

We shall see what the dreaming suggests. It will influence our decisions significantly. The dreaming will show us the way.

I don’t mind what happens – the dreams will suffice.

Emily – Potions – Estate Agent Dream 06-04-2025

Here is this morning’s dream.

The dream is set in a slightly hectic environment. I am talking with various people and they keep mentioning someone whose remedies are good for the back and back pain. Her name is Emily Brouard {sounding brew – yard in the dream.} I am unsure if there is a Y in they name Brouyard. A number is associated with her 354321,{18} it is a partial telephone number. I see three recipes for potions / supplement / meals. One of which has small cubes of beetroot. From the internet I can download two full recipes from her and one for a snack. I am a bit sceptical but the people are insistent that she is good.

The scene changes and we are outside an estate agent in an English speaking town. The shop front is painted in a dark green colour and there are properties on display in the window. We look to go inside. It is locked. The wife notices on the door that it does not open until 2:30 in the afternoon. We are early. We think this odd as we are not in France with its lunchtime witching hour. We decide to go for a tour around the block in our car. The office is situated in / near an urban market hall with dark green painted bollards. In the dream one can feel the hubbub of market days and stalls being set up early in the morning. We drive around the one way system and find a small square the other side of the agency, in order to get through I drive the car over some of the small features designed to deter cars. There is a small clunk but no damage. We park up on the edge of the square under the dark green overhanging roof of the market area.

We go back into the agency and it is now crowded with a few staff at a serving counter and each is occupied with customers. There is a lot of noise. Finally, one of the agents gets free. A woman pushes in front of us to return her sterling cash deposit and key. A new agent comes to the desk,

She is middle aged and with dyed bleach-blonde hair. I put our folder of documents on the desk and immediately she is well disposed towards us because we are highly organised. I thumb through a number of property fliers with a dark green border on, the agency branding, and stop at one for a property which is just on the square to the back of the market. It is a town house. The woman says, “Ah, that is a good choice. Not to everyone’s taste but ideal for the right dwellers.” The word dweller stands out in the dream. I ask if we could visit the property. “Yes”. She picks up a massive bunch of keys.

The dream ends

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Notes:

On waking I do a Google search on the name in the dream and it points at a female Breton athlete who looks quite similar to a young woman who shared the waiting room for the MRI on Friday afternoon. They are not the same person. The feel is similar.

Summer Job and Patent Decision

I saw a summer job advertised for someone to help do tours of the local distillery. They wanted a trilingual person for two months over summer. Seems a bit of an ask…They are probably not all that common.

I have said hi and that I am interested. The demographic who might visit a distillery are probably not rabid smart ‘phone users or teeny gamers. There may even be the odd grey hair. Having said that, I am probably compatible. I have offered to help with the “franglais” translation into English for the web site. I could be DR X who gives the tour.

I’ll not hold my breath for a reply.

The quantum optics patent comes up for renewal in May. I have to decide if it is worth another ~£150 to keep it live. I could simply let it expire, fadeaway. I can’t really see a way of taking it forward to any kind of commercialisation.

I have had my MRI yesterday. Hopefully they can get the results to the spine surgeon for the appointment next week. Otherwise, there will be an iteration. Getting an appointment with a rheumatologist here is not facile. I need a referral. I am 90% convinced that there is some immune implication in my joint pains. It is not well received to suggest to an “expert” that they may have overlooked something. We may have to let them do their round(s) or inquiries before we get any meaningful traction. People have processes which you cannot always accelerate.

Failing that I could do a Zoom consultation with some private Harley Street type geezer in London for a few hundred quid. I have imagery which I could send electronically.

I’ll will be surprised if there is no immune component. When you put your arse in an MRI scanner you do not know what if anything they will find. There is an entirely new branch of medicine based upon instrumentation and not symptoms.

You never know what is around the corner.

For some reason over the last day or so people from my undergraduate degree course have been popping into consciousness. I did briefly touch base on LinkedIn and then deleted my account, disappeared back into the aether.

The whole house move situation has been given added uncertainly thanks to Uncle Donny and his game-show tariff board. He missed his vocation as a corny game show host. The scores on the doors…

We will visit Jersey just to see how being surrounded by people speaking English feels. It will add a feeling to the variables. The bank in Paris want to touch base. Last year I asked about a bridging loan. We shall see what he wants / advises.

It is sunny here today…time to feed the stray cats soon…

CT scan of my lungs on Monday…looking for the evolution of COPD and possibly some kind of fungal aspergillus feature? Farmer’s lung would be another factor in the must move house equation.

I wonder how many people are sighing at the folly inflicted upon the world from the USA…It is a bit sad really…so unnecessary.

Is the great USA afraid of fair competition? Perhaps it needs to fill cauldrons with boiling oil and man the ramparts of fortress USA.

Make America Paranoid Again…

A Trumpian Sixth Ray Jihad?

The personality ray of the USA is the outgoing sixth ray of Idealism-Devotion. It is the ray par excellence of separation and of division. It is the cleaver of US and THEM, the axe of wounding. The single pointed dogmatic conviction that its own view “vision” {I use this term ironically} is the only correct one and anyone who critiques is an enemy to be destroyed. It is the view of a horse with blinkers who only sees one thing and chants only one mantram.

And so, it has begun…tariffs – import duty.

A tax payable by any American purchasing any goods from outside. It is not a tax cut!!

The weird thing is that in no way was this action needed or necessary.

If it all stems from “we are big and rich and they make people pay taxes on our products, it is not fair!!” Then that is a bit of a victim mentality. What sort of modern powerful democracy charges punitive tariffs against Lesotho FFS? It is certainly not a magnanimous or humanitarian one.

To use power wisely and for the benefit of all humanity is not a skill which is easily acquired.

Where things go from here, who can say. It looks like we are not now moving house anytime soon!!

“Gee thanks Donald.”

Have a look below and see if the narration of the sixth ray matches the behaviour of the USA…have look at the vices and work to be done.

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The Sixth Purpose of Deity
Ray VI. Devotion or Idealism

This ray, which is just going out of manifestation, is of vital interest to us, for it has set its mark upon our western civilization in a more definite way than any of the others. It is for us the most familiar and the best known of the rays. The mantram which defines its purpose is unlike the others and might be expressed somewhat as follows:

The Crusade is on. The warriors march upon their way. They crush and kill all that impedes their way, and aught that rises on their onward path is trampled under foot. March towards the light.

The work goes forward. The workers veil their eyes from pity as from fear. The work is all that counts. The form must disappear so that the loving spirit may enter into rest. Naught must arrest the progress of the workers with the plan. They enter upon the work assigned with paean and with song.

The cross is reared on high; the form is laid thereon, and on that cross must render up its life. Each builds a cross which forms the cross. They mount upon the cross.

Through war, through work, through pain and toil, the purpose is achieved. Thus saith the symbol.

It will be noted how this purpose, when applied by man to himself, works his release. When applied by man to man, it has produced the corrupt and awful story of man’s cruelty to man.

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The Sixth Ray of Devotion

  • Special Virtues:
    Devotion, single-mindedness, love, tenderness, intuition, loyalty, reverence.
  • Vices of Ray:
    Selfish and jealous love, over-leaning on others, partiality, self-deception, sectarianism, superstition, prejudice, over-rapid conclusions, fiery anger.
  • Virtues to be acquired:
    Strength, self-sacrifice, purity, truth, tolerance, serenity, balance and common sense.

This is called the ray of devotion. The man who is on this ray is full of religious instincts and impulses, and of intense personal feeling; nothing is taken equably. Everything, in his eyes, is either perfect or intolerable; his friends are angels, his enemies are very much the reverse; his view, in both cases, is formed not on the intrinsic merits of either class, but on the way the persons appeal to him, or on the sympathy or lack of sympathy which they shew to his favorite idols, whether these be concrete or abstract, for he is full of devotion, it may be to a person, or it may be to a cause.

He must always have a “personal God,” an incarnation of Deity to adore. The best type of this ray makes the saint, the worst type, the bigot or fanatic, the typical martyr or the typical inquisitor. All religious wars or crusades have originated from sixth ray fanaticism. The man on this ray is often of gentle nature, but he can always flame into fury and fiery wrath. He will lay down his life for the objects of his devotion or reverence, but he will not lift a finger to help those outside of his immediate sympathies. As a soldier, he hates fighting but often when roused in battle fights like one possessed. He is never a great statesman nor a good business man, but he may be a great preacher or orator.

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Excerpted from “Esoteric Psychology I” by Alice Bailey and Djwhal Kuhl

Das Glasperlenspiel – Reincarnation – Missing Pieces

It was not until I read Das Glasperlenspiel – The Glass Bead Game – that I gave much thought to past lives. Somehow the scope of the book and the Three Lives of Knecht appended caught my attention. Hesse was the first person whose mind was so comprehensive. At last. Somebody who thought a bit like me….

Based on the circumstantial evidence inter alia of dreams I can draw up a rough chronology of putative previous lives.

The more recent graph starts ~2500 years ago as a disciple of Siddartha, possibly with a named individual. In principle I may have heard the esoteric Kālacakra first hand. It then proceeds with two further Buddhist lives, one Theravada Thai/Burmese and one Vajrayana Japanese. This is followed by a Christian priest-soldier in France and a seeker / occultist in Sicily Italy. Finally, I incarnated as a proto-scientist in Wales.

Inspection of the chart shows two “gaps”. One of a thousand years and one of ~ six hundred. It does not mean that I did not incarnate then. One can conclude that no memory / data has yet come through for these periods. A thousand years is a big gap. Looks a bit iffy.

Being cynical there is little history written for the -500 to + 600 time period. Therefore, it is more difficult for me to fabricate an internally consistent story / legend / delusion for that period.

I can cobble together a satisfactory rough explanation for this graph. What I cannot explain, what perhaps is the missing piece, is the occurrence of all the Tibetan “stuff” in my dreams.

Speculating the most likely time for any “Tibetan” incarnation would be in the ~1200-1750 window.

No western “scientist” could publish a definitive claim for proof of reincarnation and expect a career of longevity, peer kudos and substantial research funding. A country {Tibet} can choose its leaders entirely on the basis of the Tulku phenomenon and “circumstantial” evidence.

The practice in London/Oxford/Cambridge differs from that in Lhasa and Shigatze.

Only very recently have I had imagery consistent with a Tibetan “maroon” life. I could have snuck one in before Wales.

We shall see what the dreaming brings….