Category: Musings

Likelihood and Significance

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

What is significant and important is very subjective. Things important to some are not to others. Many might imagine themselves important to society or the institution in which they work. The whole notion of importance is important in the minds of some. People might make an “important” discovery in science and get a Nobel prize.  People might make an important contribution to literature and get a Booker prize. “Important” things end up as questions on University Challenge. I can normally answer more than half a dozen questions per show. There is loads of stuff in the show which I have never heard of. Being an old git, much of what seems important to the younger generations has next to zero importance to me. My phone has never been used for a call. It is only used to keep in contact with the wife when we are apart. This is almost unbelievable for many though actually factually correct.

I speculate that I am only “important” to one human and three cats, two of which are stray. My current level of significance in the grand planetary scheme of things is very low, the prevailing likelihood is that this will not change.

Were I to leave the physical form it would not impinge on many people, there would be no obituary, no funeral. It would matter not a lot. I am not in the lives of others and they are not in mine.

We will have been here six years in January. It is the longest time in my life since 1969 in which I have not travelled by airplane. My first outing was a 32 hour flight from Heathrow via Acapulco to Syndney Australia. We have left Brittany only once in the six years to go to the Loire with a view to house hunting. One of the questions we occasionally get asked is “have you been back to England?” People are surprised when the answer in no, not at all. I can’t think why I would want to go back. There is nothing there for me. I may never see the UK again.

I was pondering on the nature of fate and mine in particular. The likelihood is that this life will simply fizzle out. I am pretty confident I won’t make it to the life expectancy of ~82.  A part of the fate was to shine early then stop suddenly. I left full time employment at the age of 42 and I haven’t had a job since. I did private tutoring for a number of years. I did pioneer a few things but since end of 2006 I have not contributed in practical terms, I certainly did not add to UK plc. I have not been of much use. Whatever potential I once had has perhaps been spent and there is not much left.

———–

This from Wikipedia

Social isolation is a state of complete or near-complete lack of contact between an individual and society. It differs from loneliness, which reflects temporary and involuntary lack of contact with other humans in the world. Social isolation can be an issue for individuals of any age, though symptoms may differ by age group.

Social isolation has similar characteristics in both temporary instances and for those with a historical lifelong isolation cycle. All types of social isolation can include staying home for lengthy periods of time, having no communication with family, acquaintances or friends, and/or wilfully avoiding any contact with other humans when those opportunities do arise.

———–

Research indicates that perceived social isolation (PSI) is a risk factor for and may contribute to “poorer overall cognitive performance and poorer executive functioning, faster cognitive decline, more negative and depressive cognition, heightened sensitivity to social threats, and a self-protective confirmatory bias in social cognition.” PSI also contributes to accelerating the ageing process: Wilson et al. (2007) reported that, after controlling for social network size and frequency of social activity, perceived social isolation is predictive of cognitive decline and risk for Alzheimer’s disease.

——–

Although I meet the connectivity criteria for social isolation, I do not feel particularly isolated and certainly not lonely. Social conditioning suggests that one ought to be social and one would miss contact when it ceases.

It is perhaps my fate to live this way. I have always been taken by the poems of Ryōkan Taigu a Sōtō Zen Buddhist monk who lived much of his life as a hermit. As a couple our lives are quite hermit-like. {The wife talks to friends using Skype.}

Whatever knowledge I have will go with me to the incinerator.  From time to time I wonder if people missed out learning from me, but that could simply be vanity messing with me.

I bought a new A4 folder today to put my dreams in because the other ones are full. I have made good progress towards carving some dice for the Mo practice. The parameters of life will be clarified by medical professionals next week. It is difficult to engage with the news as it is so repetitive and dire.  War, mass killing, sex scandal, flooding, people getting cancelled for not being PC, orange manbaby says blah blah, blah. The human world has lost its way.

According to numerology I am now well into my final pinnacle which is a one. This is supposed to have the positive aspects of pioneering, go-getting, the instigator, the strategist, the natural leader, the inventor, the cosmologist, mapping out the unknown, fluidity, tenacity, originality, individualism, self-respect, volatility.

Of these only two apply these days.

The negative aspects don’t really fit either apart from perhaps anti-establishment.

I took a good long look at leadership because someone once banged on at me about this {a lot}. I have concluded that I lack the socio-political skills and inclination to lead for anything other than a very short time. I just cannot be arsed with all the horse trading and back scratching. I am not cut out to lead people in normal activities.

I am confident that I have pioneered differing forms of meditation.

I have pretty much stopped reaching out to other people. I have no desire to inflict myself upon them. Everybody has their own agenda and evidence suggests that I am not thereupon.

I wonder if having a quiescent mind ends with a quiescent life fading in which one realises that one is not a big deal and in reality, one never was. I am no big cheese, no grand fromage. I was perhaps only mildly significant to others for a very short period.

I wonder how many people think themselves important, if only in their own lunch hour…

Hmnn….

The Superpower of Patience

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll speculate that immediacy and the immediacy of gratification are part of the modern way of life for many. People do not like to wait and many suffer badly from premature conclusion which can be messy. The concluding kangaroo can be found easily on all sides and people jump great distances to form dodgy yet firm conclusions without real basis. Many rely on what “they” say and are unwilling or too lazy to look into things themselves.

Śāntideva in the Bodhicharyâvatâra has a whole chapter on the virtues of forbearance which is a close ally of patience. The jewel of awareness forbearance is depicted by tarot 12.

–

–

Sometimes you are required by karma to bear whatever life brings and to do so in as cheerful a manner as possible without pissing and moaning or whingeing like a stuck record. Often there is light at the end of the tunnel and it is not a TGV train oncoming.

This urge for immediacy means that long term policy making is neglected and life is governed by knee jerk reactions and sticking plaster temporary “solutions”. If it can’t be “sorted” quickly people lose interest. This condemns life to the shallows and the profound depths are never plumbed. It is a natural law that depth needs time and application. Concentration without distraction for extended periods brings insights more meaningful than a short flashy TikTok video. If you wait long enough an insight might come along and then just like with busses you may get several.

Humanity is in a rush like never before in some senses.

This means that the superpower of patience is fading and heading towards a mass extinction event. Being patient is not fashionable, nor is it good clickbait. Being patient is for losers. Gimme, gimme, gimme.

Aligning a complicated dye laser to give the best balance of laser power output and narrowness of spectral linewidth is nearly an art form. I refer to it as Zen and the Art of Laser Alignment. If you get twitchy and impatient it can go badly wrong and you are returned back to the start. All the good work can be undone by one or two impatient tweaks of a mirror positioning knob. If you note that you are losing patience, best to stop go out of the room and then come back calm to start again. In the past I could work at laser alignment in four hour sessions.

This loss of patience and hasty reaction is fairly prevalent. If gratification is not immediate interest is lost.

In Buddhism theory even after one has entered the stream it takes several lifetimes to complete liberation. Patience then is a scale. If one can work over many lifetimes that is patient. If one gets annoyed by the slow loading of a Netflix film, that is less patient. We boomers had ~50 kilobyte per second modems, we were initiated into patience thereby.

Pavlovian society is now conditioned to immediacy, buying in a click and getting food delivered to the doorstep in many places.

I wonder if I could survive the massed impatience and accompanying ire / agitation of London these days. For a long time, I was immersed therein. I doubt I could hack it now.

I think it fair to speculate that I am more patient than average. I can sit in a hospital waiting room without my comfort beads, by smartphone. I do not have to scroll frantically.

The need, it seems, for constant distraction is having a detrimental effect on mental health. The data dealers keep pushing more deal baggies of gigabytes at us, encouraging us to use high definition cameras like junkies to make huge files and selling ever more data to satisfy this addiction.

If people could go cold turkey on the taking and publication of all that imagery, the climate would not get so hot.

I think that were we all to better develop our superpower of patience, the world would be a better and perhaps more tolerant place. It would stop being so knee jerk reactive and it might even try to understand differing views and perspectives. It might ease the pervasive malady of premature conclusion.

The Tendency to Scoff and Self-diagnosed Omniscience.

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I’ll speculate that many have a tendency to scoff and perhaps belittle as a default knee-jerk reaction. People may be unaware of the limits of their knowledge and self-diagnose more than a little prematurely a know-it-all omniscience. Because I once worked in academia, I have met many pompous people along the way who rated themselves. I observed a willingness to soap box on matters outside their subject area, with an assertiveness inconsistent with their actual depth of know how.

A couple of years back in conversation I asked an ex-student what his maths was like in order to try to explain something. I wanted to know what “language” to use. He was very circumspect because he had attended my matrix heavy chemical group theory course. He sensed that he could be digging himself a hole and stopped.

A lot of people have a braggadocio which when tested is found groundless.

I have an ongoing problem which is not massive.

Here in France a fair proportion of Brits make little or no effort with the French language. This makes them seem a little stupid and illogical. Around here anyway the housing is relatively cheap and thus the British people who live here are not financially loaded.  There is some small correlation between wealth and intelligence. My prejudice is that the French have a low bar when it comes to their assessment of Brits, they do not think us smart, the French can be arrogant.

I’ll speculate with a high confidence that most of the locals round here have no experience of dealing with a former academic from a world top ten science university and a high tech. entrepreneur to boot.

There is a catch twenty-two. If we are interacting, how do I make them aware of what they are dealing with? They have no personal experience. I can offer them a wiki write up of Imperial College in French. This makes them think me weird. They read it cursorily. Then when they try for example, sales pressure manipulation and I assert back they are surprised. I say I did try to warn you. But you did not listen or try to figure out where I was coming from.

In a conversation about a house sale, I said; “I have absolutely no wish to discuss this endlessly over and over.”

The first offer had been at 60% of the sale price for our house and they kept edging up ten grand at a time. The phrase fuck off came to mind.

The negotiator said, “This is France, that is what we do. Il faut discuter.”

The conversation did not go further.

How do you explain to people that they don’t know what they are getting in to and that there is a shed load of things which they know nothing about? If you try you are not believed people can be very adamant and unaware of their ignorance. Is it even worth trying?

A cursory look at social media suggests that adamant self-diagnosed omniscience is a widespread phenomenon. There has never been so many experts pedalling stuff from their soap boxes and otherwise gobbing off.

Are we not blessed to live in an age like this?

Travelling With a 511 keV Gamma Emitter Tomorrow

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

We are a four cancer household of two. I have had stage 3 colon cancer and a couple of basal cell carcinomas. The wife has recently had a lumpectomy for breast cancer, stage 1, followed by 15 sessions of radiotherapy. Tomorrow, she has a Positron Emission Tomography {PET} scan to check on the state of play with her multiple myeloma, it will be an 18F – FDG PET scan. The [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose shows sites of hypermetabolism associated with regular cancer or myeloma. It decays by positron emission, an up quark changes to a down quark.

–

–

The annihilation of the emitted positron causes two ~511 keV gamma “rays” emitted at exactly 180 degrees to each other to conserve momentum. The half-life of 18F is around 110 minutes. The drive back from the centre of nuclear medicine is half an hour, we have a smallish Peugeot 207 and it takes place at less than one half life after injection.

–

–

According to what I have read in the scarce literature, this car journey gives me an exposure of ~0.4% of the annual average exposure to radiation.

Perhaps there is a need for more research on what happens when a patient leaves the nuclear medicine centre? There are health and safety assessments for the healthcare practitioners, what about the carers? This is the third journey like this for me. There will be more.

We have an appointment with the radio-oncology specialist and the haematologist week beginning 2nd December.  We will know a little more about what our immediate future holds by the end of that week….

Shamballa and the Great White Lodge

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Judging from my recent foray on Twitter/X conspiracy theories continue to circulate. The New World Order where an elite exerts financial control and runs the world is one. Another theory in circulation for nearly a century and a half is that there is a grouping of spiritually advanced beings called by some The Great White Lodge / Brotherhood who work behind the scenes to uplift and advise humanity towards the New Age putatively of Aquarius. In some circles they are spoken of with bated breath and there are more than a handful of people who have claimed telepathic rapport with members of this grouping. There is a doctrine of continuous revelation of “teachings” from Blavatsky and Leadbetter, through Alice Bailey and continuing to this present day.

In one of these recent transmissions given around 2020, the upcoming year 2025 is predicted pivotal and that Shamballa force or “energy” will come swiftly into play. This grouping of beings is, according to the teachings, coming into incarnation and starting to sow the seeds of the new age. They are externalising. The grouping entails people learning the teachings, starting to work with them and so-called initiates of various degree. Those beings having taken the fifth initiation are often referred to as masters or masters of ageless wisdom, sometimes even ascended masters. My scientific mind asks if they ascended, whereto?

I personally read everything with a pinch of salt and as little prejudice as I can muster. I will have by training a measure of scepticism. If one tries to translate there can be more truth than the face value occludes. Just as physical science may be sceptical of new agers, so are new agers suspicious of scientists, like me. {This is my generalisation based on limited personal interaction.}

Given the recent world events and the election in USA, the world is on tenterhooks and very edgy just now. One cannot accurately accuse Trump of being an altruistic and inclusive being. There are two cauldrons of human barbarism via high explosive ordnance regularly in the news. There is also Sudan and Myanmar where humanity is not excelling. Humanity is not acting on climate change and there are those who soap box about it not being real. There is head in the sand complacency. Inconvenient truths are ever the unwelcome leper. People are not willing to forego luxury, they want to have their cake and eat it. They are unprepared to change ways of living as A humanity. It will need to get very bad before most are ready to act. My own theory is that insurance will get so prohibitively expensive and that this will be a key motivator for change.

The prediction for 2025 being pivotal looks to be sound.

In the books by Bailey and Khul the great white lodge is due its centennial meeting in 2025.

Much of the spirit of genuine cooperative internationalism is being eroded by the undermining of the United Nations for petty political national purposes. The EU has been damaged by the UK exit. The urge for the United Nations came after the horrors, bloodshed and destruction of the 1914-1945 war. The USA has not had widespread backyard war since 1865. It seems people have forgotten.

I doubt the new age will be all sunshine and smiles like in Hair, certainly not at first.

This is the dawning of the age of Aquarius

Age of Aquarius

[Bridge]

Harmony and understanding

Sympathy and trust abounding

No more falsehoods or derisions

Golden living dreams of visions

Mystic crystal revelation

And the mind’s true liberation

It seems to me that the urge to good arises only when the shit has truly hit the fan and things have gotten very bad indeed. Humanity does not learn adequately from history and repeats the same mistakes over and over. In a sense there needs to be darkness before light. That darkness might need to be very dark indeed.

Unfortunately, the lead provided by the USA is not a good one, it is dominated by power over, threat, bullying and not diplomacy. The troubles and iniquity there, at home, are not addressed, blame is apportioned. The scapegoat of immigration does not hide the division already present. Blame the people who build your skyscrapers and clean your toilets. Smart.

It would be ironic if the age of Aquarius is the age of widespread flooding due to climate change and sea level rises, water everywhere.

In the blue books opus Shamballa acts by way of a distributive node whereby the impulses and ideas flow out into the global centres of humanity. The “masters” decide what they believe humanity needs and project this outward into wider society, via Shamballa. There is no requirement for humanity to enact what is offered but theory goes that those sensitive to impulse will choose to.

If this so-called externalisation is underway how might human beings respond to members of the white lodge?

I suspect humans being how they are, those in power will act to preserve that power and maintain the status quo, which is always a high inertia thing.

It could get very messy indeed next year.

The Shamballa Thought Form and Nomenclature

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

There are certain words bandied about by esotericists and new agers which will grate on the ears of someone trained in the physical sciences. Because therein their use is specific and defined. If you talk about a vibration to a physicist, chemist or engineer it has a very contained meaning. If you say the vibration of a new age it sounds like poppycock, yet people will accept informal “only good vibes, man”.

It is common parlance in esoteric circles to talk about the astral plane, the mental plane and the buddhic plane. Plane to a scientist refers most often to a two dimensional surface or cross section, there are planes of symmetry about which reflections can be made. The misuse of language appropriated by science is a real barrier to any acceptance of esoterica in the mainstream scientific mind, a real turn off, a deal breaker and a red line.

If you speak about someone being polarised emotionally that has no defined meaning. If, however, you describe someone as governed to a large part by their emotions and emotional reactions that is more acceptable. Soap operas are popular because many like the emotional drama as it reflects their lives and how they pan out.  In esoteric parlance the majority of humanity is “polarised” on the emotional/astral plane.

Others are preoccupied with body, form and fornication. They are governed by physical sensation, hormonal response, instinctual behaviours and sexual urge.

Those more detached and less dominated by emotion could be said to be governed by mental or thinking process, these can be straightforward or highly abstract.

We might then loosely talk of three moods or modes of consciousness, carnal meaty, emotional and mental. In esoteric speak the physical plane, the astral/emotional plane and the mental plane. There is no plane simply a state, a mood, a flavour of consciousness where the being’s consciousness mostly is. It is possible to move between flavours. A simple act experienced by a detached mental type could cause an upswelling of emotion.

If you are often angry then you are governed by emotions. There is a lot of anger in the middle East just now, a lot of hot angry heads.

In esoteric circles there are the so called buddhic and atmic “planes” which are more “rarefied” and “above” the three “lower” planes. The buddhic state of consciousness is governed by intuitional mind {and heart}.

The aim of rāja yoga is, in one sense, to try to rise above the mundane, emotional and the pettier aspects of mind. The being then “spends” more time free of wild emotional swings and the desire for physical and sexual gluttony. We might speak of individuals who are largely physically governed, largely emotionally governed, largely mentally governed and largely intuitionally governed. {The intuition here differs from mental guesswork.}

This last paragraph does not use nomenclature which belongs to science. Instead of “plane” we are framing a loose description of a state or type of consciousness. No dimensionality is implied. An ordering, perhaps evolutionary is. The consciousness is increasingly expansive and inclusive as effort is applied and mind opened and broadened. One is not dogged by the incessant unwelcome boners of the physically governed and can allow consciousness and awareness to elevate above the belt and emotional storms.

In the blue books opus By Alice Bailey and Djwhal Khul Shamballa is mentioned as a “place” where the so-called spiritual hierarchy hang-out and meet. Human beings who have watched too many Raiders of the Lost Ark and Tomb Raider will be prone to imagine that Shamballa is a place with perhaps secret entrances. They will look for the kingdom of Shambhala referenced in a special scroll of Kālacakra tantra. The insistence on verbatim and dead letter reading causes people to seek out the resting place of Noah’s Ark. Maybe people are unwilling to accept the prevalence of metaphor and allegory in parable. It seems to me Moses parting the sea is more metaphor than physical “plane” reality.

In the works of Kuhl he mentions that the so-called maters can be “found” high up on the mental plane, near the buddhic.

In other words, people who are large mentally and intuitionally governed might be able to “contact” the masters.

Perhaps Shamballa too is a state of awareness, a level of consciousness and a thought form in which these evolved beings congregate from time to time. When one has risen above and expanded consciousness one might be able to build the Shamballa thought form and “go” “there”.

Being Watched and Residual Fate

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

We have two feral cats who live on the compound, Felix who is black and white as you might expect and Gandalf who is grey and now white after the battle with the Balrog. Gandalf is a young, neutered female who is full of beans and Felix is an old warhorse who got her up the duff not long after she arrived here. I captured her and took her to the vets and the local charity paid for her operation for her to be released back here.  

When the wife was recovering from surgery for her breast cancer recently, I fed them both. Gandalf in particular equates me with food. So, I am under constant surveillance wherever I go in the garden. Having a patch of white fur is poor camouflage. Cats think they are clever. I can often feel it when Gandalf is observing me from some random place of hiding / vantage point in our 2 acres. I know. When I turn and look directly at her from say 50 metres, she has on occasion looked surprised and even startled. I have seen her flinch.

I have a kind of sixth sense, which may or may not be reliable.

Of late I have felt some kind of human observation, especially when I am down near the river. It is the wrong time for day for the Korrigans {fairy like beings often associated with water}. The feeling is always of a male, masculine. It has happened a few times in the last few days. But when I have turned to look there has been nobody there that I can see. The line of sight through the gap in the hedge points at a treeline on the hill. It is possible, though unlikely, that someone is watching. What are the crazy Brits up to now? The other day a helicopter flew over our property, stopped directly above, then turned around and headed south. This happened twice in a few minutes. If anybody is watching it must be bloody boring for them. I might set up some trail-cams.

Weird…

Today I have been mulling over if there is any residual fate left for me. The current hypothesis is that I will quietly eke out my days and experience my possibly karmic bad health slowly worsening. I don’t see much left for me to do. I am largely apart from the world. There are cancer and myeloma follow ups for the wife in the next few weeks which include another PET scan. That will advise.

The world is perhaps braced for whatever lunacy might ride forth from Tango man in DC. Maybe he will decree that all Americans must wear tin foil hats on their heads. You might be able to get a special MAGA cap lined with tin foil.

My dreams have pointed at using Tibetan dice for divination. I have made two prototypes from Walnut root. The root is too wet. The ones I made were not fair. It was easy to see that some numbers came up more frequently than others. They were “bent” dice. I have a method of production and nice piece of apple wood for the next iteration.

On the warrior’s path anything is possible. The universe has a bag full of spanners and a playbook full of curve balls. So, you never know for sure. Likelihood is a quiet fade-out to clog popping time.

Fizzling out like a dying sparkler seems quite natural and non-dramatic.

–

Sent la pluie comme un été Anglais

Entends les notes d’une chanson lointaine

Sortant de derrière d’un poster

Espérant que la vie ne fut aussi longue

–

Having One of My Clumsy Days

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have started with the manufacture of my dice. I have cut a cross section of walnut root with the chainsaw so that it is about 15mm thick. Today I made it into rough cuboids using my hatchet. I quickly realised when chopping kindling that I am having one of my clumsy days. It is probably not wise to play with a sharp knife. It will wait for another day.

Last autumn I was getting nerve tingling in my left hand, two fingers and the thumb. In 2007 I lost nearly all the strength in my left arm due to a herniated cervical spine disc in the c7-c6-c5 region. I got this as a result of an ippon seio nage judo throw at a sports dojo. On and off some symptoms return nearly twenty years later.

I had an MRI scan September 2023.

–

–

There is clear narrowing around my spinal cord. There is osteo-arthritis. The MRI showed I also have a right sided cervical herniated disc c6-c5. When I drive for more than half an hour I get tingling in my right fingers. It is present now.

Most of the time it is non symptomatic.

Last autumn I visited a brain surgeon / neurosurgeon. It was bizarre. He prescribed be a tapered dose of prednisolone starting at 100mg per day for a week!! That tapered off over a month and I would have had no sleep and been a right royal pain in the arse for a month. He also prescribed an injection of steroid into my cervical spine. From what I have read this is no longer best practice. I did not have any of these interventions.

On my clumsy days the gravitational pull of the earth is somehow enhanced. Everything which can drop to the floor does. There was a bit of left sided tremor too, today. These are probably symptoms on the cervical pathology.

If these symptoms don’t go in the next few days, I may go and see the GP. The one thing I have been doing more of, of late, is screen time on this computer. I can easily stop that….

Haircut – Social Self-image Puzzle

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The dreaming symbol of hair is social-self-image. The dream previous is the second one pointing at getting a haircut, popping out to get some money and the number 10. The earlier one in mid-September was set in a swish posh boutique in London, the one today more local. Before Covid I did get my haircut at a male barber in Guingamp. I have not been back since.

Having a haircut implies some kind of change in my social self-image. Tidying it up?

I am not at all concerned about my appearance and would perhaps look downmarket, even quasi-redneck to those who once knew me. About every 5-6 weeks or so the wife gives me a buzzcut at home. I have not combed my hair in over decade. When it is short there is no need. I live in army combat trousers, t-shirts and in winter a jumper.

In Buddhism hair can be called “ignorance grass” which you shave when you enter as a novice.

Outside of this marriage the only people I talk in any way socially to are the man who comes to cut the grass on the sit-on mower and the physiotherapist.  These are at most often bi-weekly and short.

I think of myself as physically strong for my age but struggle with flexibility and arthritis. I am not yet taking regular pain medication. I have seen a surgeon for him to assess if/when I need replacement hips. He was the man who put the Titanium pin in the head of my femur so that I could walk again after it bust. The wear and tear will only increase. I am pretty physically crocked. The ONS seems to think that on average there is ~50% chance that I will make 85. I disagree. That seems an awfully long time, luckily, I smoked and drank.

Primarily I see myself as a retired man, who has difficulty walking for a long time/distance who lives in a big house, with a big garden on a pension below that of the French minimum wage. I am married and by all “normal” metrics socially isolated. That does not bug me one inch.

In terms of likelihood, I will probably not do anything vaguely related to science again. Although I have read widely and perhaps have some knowledge, that is not much use to me and virtually nobody else is interested. My opinion is that what I know has no monetary value.

I have no idea how people see me. I am certainly not well known. Aside from the physiotherapist the people who have interacted with me the most in the last five or so years are the district nurses who care for the wife. They know a little about where and what I got up to two decades ago.

Socially I see myself as someone who does not like to interact and the usual social chit chat about the weather and how terrible the world is, is not my cup of tea. I used to hate finger-buffet death by canapé events.  I am pretty sure that my dislike of “normal” social interaction was a negative factor back when I was still in the world. It detrimentally affected my progression. But that is all by the by and nothing can be done to change the past.

I don’t see myself as someone that people might seek out or want to speak with. I don’t perceive myself as being welcome in certain circles. If I have anything left to offer it is not generally sought. I certainly am not going to big myself up or inflict myself on anyone. My life is sparse and most likely to remain that way or get even more sparse.

I guess that I don’t match expectations. There may be people who have an image of how I should be, how I should look. Who knows.

I am a little puzzled as to why my dreamer has highlighted social self-image because I don’t really have a use for one. I can easily be just another anonymous customer in the supermarket. The village pharmacy has closed down, they knew me a little in there. We now go to pharmacies in bigger towns.

We have has a loose Christmas drinks invite from the garden guy. He is all over the place and I am not convinced of materialisation. I am not sure I would want to go in any case.

Hmnn….

That is a rough go at describing my social self-image. Let’s see if there are more dreams on the subject…

Weird…

The Tendency to Literal Dead Letter Interpretations – Nāga

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

In our times there is, allegedly, a lot of fake news. People try to find titbits of “facts” to try and catch people out as proof of lying. It is almost like three year olds trying to get mummy or daddy to tell someone off or punish them. It is what I call sandpit politics. Some believe the bible verbatim and others use this verbatim interpretation to prove that it is not true, that there are errors. The hunt for the resting place of Noah’s Ark continues….

Two thousand years ago they did not have CGI nor for that matter AI. People were largely illiterate and stories had to be crafted in a way that people would remember. There was animistic religion. They had to speak in the parable of the times.

Take a look at the Mucalinda Sutta, – Mucalindavaggo.

Here soon after enlightenment Siddartha is sat deep in thought.

He might have been trying to figure out what to do next. “Ok so what next?”

Mucalindo Nāgarājā notes the incoming poor weather and wraps him in seven coils and protects his head with the hood of a king Cobra risen in threatening manner. They sit for seven days until the weather changes and Mucalinda morphs into a brahmin to praise Buddha the new Bhagavhad.

Naga can also mean Elephant, a semi divine Nāga part snake human who comes from another world Nāga-loka and Buddha is sometimes called Nāga-muni.

Iconography can be easily found with the nascent Buddha protected by a king cobra like Nāga with 1,5 or 7 heads. It is a core piece of iconography. It is core Buddhism.

In occult literature snakes and dragons are words use to hint at wise and sagacious beings, initiates and the like. In the Toltec tradition there are nagal/nagual beings who live in a nagual’s world an alternate assimilation of the one that is commonly held.

Snake is the dreaming symbol for wisdom or need for wisdom.

Rain is the process of life.

Seven is guidance or need for guidance.

Head is intuitive mentality.

Coil or circle is sobriety/ inclusiveness/ unity.

If we interpret this sutta like a dream. Siddartha having awoken as a Buddha had just radically changed his whole view on life the universe and everything. This was mind-blowing. Even for a Buddha. He would need time to assimilate and process things after his ordeal with Mara and the whole shebang. So, he sat in contemplation seeking guidance from his now Buddhic intuition looking at how to apply his Nāga – rājā {very big, king-snake, top notch wisdom} feeling protected by his new found knowledge and had insight, inner guidance, on how to use it to embrace and enlighten all the world.

And he said to himself, perhaps with a chuckle. His intuition had summed it all up for him

Blissful is solitude for one who is content, who has heard the Dhamma, who sees. Blissful is non-affliction with regard for the world, restraint for living beings. Blissful is dispassion with regard for the world, the overcoming of sensuality. But the subduing of the conceit “I am”— That is truly the ultimate bliss.