Category: Musings

Third Omen – Not Coincidence…Dreaming Symbol

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Last night just after dusk around 18:30 there was a large thud and a bang.  In the drive there was a small silver Citroen facing horizontally across. The car had hit the crash barrier and spun skidding over the verge and dropping about 1.5 metres THUD into our drive. The car was facing the steep slope and must have gone over the edge backwards. There was an animated young woman with dark hair and glasses talking to her mother on the ‘phone. She had a major fright.

It was getting a bit icy.

This is the third crash directly outside our property in a tad over six weeks!!

The odds on this are not likely.

It gets safer to conclude that this is NO coincidence.

She was unharmed and the air bags had failed to deploy. After a while her mother and another woman turned up. She was able to manoeuvre the car down the drive and onto some hard standing grass. It is there now iced up. Someone will come and pick up the abandoned car which is at least partially functional later today.

The sloping drive will be ice-rink-slippy until midday.

Three times now somebody else’s vehicle, state of awareness, has crashed outside our house, our view of the world.

This as dreaming symbols is suggesting that for person or persons unknown to us, their awareness, the way they perceive and align the word, has come to a sudden halt and crashed. Outside and near our house.

It was a bit of a car crash…

As the saying goes…

Is Knowledge Important ?

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———

“ The knowledge economy, or knowledge-based economy, is an economic system in which the production of goods and services is primarily driven by knowledge-intensive activities that contribute to the advancement of technical and scientific innovation. The key element of value in this paradigm lies in the increased reliance on human capital and intellectual property as primary sources of innovative ideas, information, and practices. Organizations are called upon to leverage this “knowledge” in their production processes to stimulate and consolidate their business development. This approach is characterized by reduced dependence on physical inputs and natural resources. A knowledge-based economy is founded on the crucial role of intangible assets within organisations as an enabler of modern economic growth.”

Excerpted from Wikipedia

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There are various schools of thought which suggest that in modern times knowledge is a key factor in economic success. That knowledge must be commercially exploitable and can include skills and artisanal know-how. As recent world events suggest, access to natural resources remains of high geo-political importance. Venezuelan oil being an obvious marker.

In my view this schematic is a tad idealistic, it does not mention socio-political barriers and vested interests. One might say that recent changes in US policy have moved away from the notion of a knowledge economy back towards gun boat aircraft carrier diplomacy.

Just like AI has been shown to hallucinate it is a moot point as to whether the so-called AI investment boom is also a group or herd like hallucination among humans. FOMO investments can have bubble-bursts.

The knowledge which has pecuniary value relates only to profit. There is little attention paid to altruistic knowledge. To live only for profit and gain is unbalanced. In the eyes of some there may be more to life and living than that. Not everyone agrees.

One could argue that I am an example of how the so-called knowledge economy failed to make use of a resource. It failed. I failed. Either way I am now retired and doing gardening and DIY.

“You lose what you do not use.”

Is an axiom which has perhaps wide applicability. Knowledge which is not applied and practised can no longer be recalled. The edge of its blade becomes blunted by rust. Slowly like an untended path in the woods it becomes overgrown, deserted and before long nobody remembers that it is there or ever was there. As an older person I have seen how scientific knowledge from many decades ago has to be reinvented because people cannot find it so easily in online search engines. Because search engines are now biased to the fee paying advertiser, much knowledge is now lost in far flung unvisited corners of the internet, there to gather spiders and webs.

It is reasonable to assume that whatever knowledge I may have will die with me. That may not be a great loss but it is an example, of how people may talk a good game. But when push comes to shove knowledge is rarely as important as self-promotion. There is nobody queuing up to learn from me. And by now I am too hermit-like to converse.

There is a danger that human evolution, despite all the advances in technology, is taking a backward step towards a new dark age. An age where image and sound-byte becomes a new Goebbels-reality. An age where short snappy mind numbing mantra replace thought and consideration. An age in which metrics and graphs bury substance and worth in cold clammy tombs. Bullet point thinking is not knowledge and not wisdom.

I think popularity and fame have removed knowledge and wisdom from the mantelpiece above our hearths. Shiny, flashy and chav dominate; viral despite COVID remains a term indicative of success.

It may seem strange but I think that the pool of available knowledge is actually shrinking, it is becoming more standardised and subject to peer approval. Loss of diversity is generally bad for ecosystem; it is an indicator of environmental decline.

I think that genuine knowledge is becoming much less important than claimed or asserted knowledge. The tendency is away from the unfathomable and profound towards the safety of the shallows and the common. I suspect that reputation has become more important than knowledge.

Once diversity has been lost it is very hard to replace. Same is not often best. Clone-think tends to be counter-evolutionary.

Once knowledge has been lost it is not easily restored. Value for money seems to be the main arbiter of which knowledge survives and is nurtured. There is a very short term outlook.

Sometimes we are so stubborn, adamant and omniscient that we can only learn through loss.

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“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”

Native American Proverb

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Spiritual Teachers and Gurus

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I’ll comment that on the internet there appear to be quite a number of these.

I do have a background in orthodox UK university based science education. Nevertheless because I do not have qualified teacher status I am not allowed to teach science unsupervised in UK state run high schools. I have previously set my self up as a private science teacher and there was some circumstantial evidence to suggest that I enhanced the achieved “A” level grades of my 1:1 students. They may have gotten more than that; 10-20 hours of 1:1 teaching in science might have had extra ancillary benefits. Only Ph.D. students have had that from me before. I was for a while paid to teach.

Pissing about on the internet this afternoon there are a number of opinions about what a “spiritual teacher” should and should not do. There are warnings about overly devotional guru-worship and falling into cult like behaviours. The first comment that I have about so called spiritual teaching is that it often appears wishy washy, hand waving and vague. There are many pushing their own agendas. Some sell books to advise on spiritual journeys and teachers; they include red flags. One of which might be having merchandise. There is a lot of self-promotion out there. The internet marketers have had an influence.

The second comment I have is that it is impossible to teach the spirit. It stands above and transcends human endeavour. To think you can teach the spirit is very up-your-own-arse ego. Spiritual teacher is an inaccurate and misleading term. A bad use of nomenclature.

“Hey man I am a very spiritual being…”

“Yeah right…”

There appears to be some backlash against Tibetan Buddhism and Vajrayana in particular.

My own view is that many are experiencing what might be termed sixth ray problems. Full of idealism and devotion they deify a teacher upon a pedestal and if he gets a collection plate out or waves his cock about, they are disappointed and crest fallen. Everyone likes to crucify people they have previously worshipped or deified. They don’t take responsibility for their own lack of discernment. Heaven forbid a teacher should smoke or drink! God does not do that though Jesus was a dab hand at the wedding bar with the wine {allegedly}.

The clergy have always abused power…Those drawn to it may have a predilection so to do. People who want to teach and be special may have very mixed motives. Monasticism encourages sexual repression and leads to deviance in some.

People also have prejudices…

In our time the plagues of immediacy, short attention span and having to be Insta-ready are extant. I don’t know if people can hack hard work and confrontation. There may no longer be any purpose in trying to help people towards liberation. The time may be entirely wrong. Humanity may need to fall deep into a quagmire, a doldrums of empty meaningless vacuous materiality.

The current blueprint for any would be teacher is to write a book, send it to Oprah, sell more books then set up a guru institute offering free ten day trials. {We are only taking credit card details so that your first subscription goes through easily. The subscription can be cancelled at any time during your ten day trial.}

My personal view is that the quality of much New Age guidance / literature out there is not high. If you look on YouTube it is even worse.

At the turn of the century there seemed to be a lot more New Age activity…It seems to be dying out. Physical new age, or as I call them hippie shops, are closing and disappearing from our streets. You can still buy crystals and tarot on line.

I know with a fair confidence that I am out of touch with the younger generations. They are alien to me as I perhaps am to them. I note fear. I note anxiety. I note fear of missing out. I don’t as yet see an upsurge in rebellion as to what my generation has inflicted.

Is there a need for “spiritual” teachers and gurus in our modern times?

Or do we just need more “nice” merchandise and antiseptic courses in Insta-ready locations?

Zambezi – PTSD and the N Floor Crew

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Quite by accident last night I was taken back to events fifty years ago. These events played out at Kwafala Rapids Camp in the Kafue National Park on the Kafue River a tributary of the mighty Zambezi River. An innocent question about fishing led me back to the river. On one day I went out fishing with a guide / ranger near a reed bed half a kilometre away. He was fully grown and I was maybe 10 or 11 years old. We caught five pike and two bream {perch}. We rowed back to camp and had fish fresh from the river cooked in foil and butter on the braai. The next day I watched him pulled under the water a couple of metres from me by a crocodile.

Based on our success three adult rangers and three children went lure fishing the following day. I was the eldest, there was my sister and a fellow child staying in the camp. We rowed out towards the reed bed and a hippopotamus came up under the boat dumping us all in the river and capsizing. One of the guides could not swim and he tried to grab hold of me. I swam away. I had a bronze medal water life-saving award. He drowned and floated off in the current downstream. The remaining two rangers tried to right the boat but the breeze block anchor prevented it. I got struck on the head by the boat refusing to be righted. I swam to a nearby island and the other two children followed me. Soon the two guides also followed. The one who followed my path to the island was taken down by a crocodile. Thrashing, screaming, more thrashing and silence. The remaining guide, Richard, was in shock. I made him get moving and we headed back cross the islands to within hailing distance of the camp, the other side of the rapids. Getting back into the water after what we witnessed was not easy. We waded and swam between islands for several hundred metres to get near camp. I don’t think the other children really understood. I did. When we hailed camp, the dead by crocodile guide’s wife began her mourning ululation as the tropical dusk fell like a portcullis. It is a sound impossible to forget. We were stranded wet in darkness on a small island in the middle of an African game park, where there were hippos and crocs.

My father drove through the night and came back several hours later with a kayak canoe from another camp. He and the other boy’s father navigated by lamp and our shouts to where we were. They had a gun, blankets and food. At dawn we paddled back to camp.

On the way out of the park I had to write my statement to the police because the policeman was illiterate. I feared I would be in trouble for not saving the drowning man. I carried guilt. I could have done better. I could have saved him. I could not rely on adults.  A few weeks later I was back for autumn term in a genteel English preparatory school in Gloucestershire. My behaviour in school was poor and I was in trouble a lot. I had seen things none of my classmates had.

Nobody could see this in me. I looked normal and seemed to fit in, eventually. Retrospect suggests that I met most of the DSM-5 criteria for delayed onset PTSD. I nearly had a heart attack when I was followed by a tiny fish swimming in the Mediterranean in Southern Italy. Years later I went into “tachycardia” during a night dive off Sharm El Sheikh. I self-medicated, I exhibited risky behaviour, I was hypervigilant anxious, I had a suicidal ideation, I was volatile. I was detached and observational and struggled to have friendships.

I think to myself what lies ahead for all those poor souls in Gaza, Ukraine and Sudan. I had a mere “tickle” of trauma. It played a big part in my life. What is stored in that vast endless well of trauma caused by all the vicious brutality? Millions or what is left of millions carry things, things seen and now unforgettable. They will be as deeply scarred as their countries. The burden of human inflicted trauma is severe, deep and unyielding.

Last night I had a dream with some of the N floor crew  from UMIST. A place and a time where the memories are generally fond. Back then life had not gotten overly complex. The ghost of Kafue was perhaps still in its coffin. Buried perhaps by activity and self-medication. I did not tell them of the Kafue.

It is one of those things, by no means unique or special, the effect of which you cannot convey. All of us have marks and scars. A fact we tend to forget in our interactions, which can be insensitive and abrupt.

It never occurred to me to tell my various therapists about the crocodiles and the river. They never asked. It was easier to reach for the Prozac.

This speaks for the quick and the convenient, the preferred modus operandi of our times. Scratch the surface and put on a plaster. Next…

It is my belief that sooner rather than later humanity is going to have to look in a more profound way at the so-called mental health crisis. The malaise is deeper, mind after mind is rejecting the way society goes through the motions of life and living.

The time is not yet, but it is soon.

What is on the cards for 2026 ?

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In a little over ten days we will get to see the orthopaedic surgeon for the post-operative check up. This will provide some ideas as to when / if they might operate on my left hip. There are a number of factors. Operations are not carried out unless there is an obvious need. {I am already more mobile than before.}  It is probably wise to have two new joints at the same time so that the wear and tear is shared offering perhaps overall greater joint longevity and my ability to recover from major surgery. Aside from the sleeping, I have recovered in a satisfactory manner. In France they tend to use the sledgehammer approach. Do it all in one go. We shall see what he thinks and the outcome of that meeting will advise as to how a fair part of the year will be. There will be at least 2 months needed for operation and initial stages of recovery. Spring – early summer?

So far the wife’s Myeloma is on hold. Long may this continue.

The housing market in France is still stagnant. But like everything in France it is seasonal. There is more hibernation here. The French are not overly fond of the cold and the wet. This market could change as the sun comes out. The decision about hip operation feeds into the thinking on selling the house.

If my mobility continues to improve the pressure to downsize and move house eases. It is still on the cards, a when and not and if.

My application to be allowed to stay in France has been submitted. We shall find out if I am allowed to stay in the next few months. There may be some administrative difficulties. If I am not allowed to stay then that means a move back to blighty. We cannot submit the wife’s application for a couple of months. The outcome of these applications might close off one option. A change in government in France could change everything.

The world is volatile right now.

The statistics for the blog views show that in December I had around 250 views with Council Bluffs, Ho Chi Minh City, London, Manilla and Phnom Penh being the most frequent visitors at around ten-twenty views each.

It is safe to conclude from these data that the readership of the blog is very small. On the basis of measurable data the blog has only a minuscule impact. It is a something of a hobby to keep the grey matter ticking over. That is about it, no biggie.

The next big thing here is the early February toad migration. I will need to lift the bottom wires of the electric fence so as to avoid electrocuting toads migrating towards the pond. Last year we had over a hundred randy toads and frogs.

I should be able to do more gardening. I have already laid some more mole traps and can do some work to clean up after the wild boars. I should be able to drive the sit on mower. There are a number of DIY projects in the house.

Hopefully 2026 will have less medical merry-go-round…they have already done all the major tests.

There is no real world physical evidence for anything more complicated than this. It looks like more of the same…

As usual spring brings with it much beauty and much to do in the garden…we will go up to the coast more often until the summer approaches and the tourist number density increases. We will then go country to return to the coast in Autumn.

A couple of simple decisions hold the key to how the year looks to be panning out…

Some General Observations

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I have met a number of people who think they know more about dreaming than me.

A number of people seem to believe that I can benefit from education by them. I am in severe need of their knowledge / wisdom and they feel sufficiently generous to learn me.

Many people are convinced that they know best and are always right. They can be adamant.

It is not unusual for people to gob off on subjects about which they know little. There are a lot of “instant experts” out there.

As a rule people will only do what seems to be convenient to them. It is very unusual for anyone to put themselves out.

People believe that high-kudos institutional affiliation is a marker of depth and extent of knowledge. Who you know can be more important than what you know.

People believe that “they” are the arbiters of truth. Peer pressure and acceptance is very important to them. Belonging to the herd, tribe, shoal, cult, party, institution or society is seen as vital. One must belong to some grouping or other.  “We” know better than “they”. God is benevolent to only “us”. We are special.

People are terrified of missing out and being socially ostracised.

People are very fickle.

People put things off and practise escapism  / avoidance until such time as they learn the meaning of complacency via hindsight and retrospect.

People are very self-centred; they only do what suits them and advances their imagined  interests. Genuine selfless compassion centred altruism is rare, altruism for public relations show is common.

Those in power by association or by position will always seek to conserve that power at whatever cost and for as long as is possible. Even when it is foolish so to do.

Letting go is not something which people do easily. The clenched fist clinging on is much more common than the freely open palm of offering.

People worry and stress much more than is warranted. This is because they are obsessed with the socio-political pecking order which them deem reality. They are masochist and insist on suffering lifetime after lifetime.

People imagine that they are hard done by and say stupid things like “it is not fair that Jack got cancer..” They are unwilling to take responsibility for the karmic effects in their lives and play an endless blame game…

In the west people like to complain and moan and find fault and whinge and blame and play stupid dramas and seek revenge and throw sand at each other in the sand pit and then sulk to mummy, a lot. This is not in proportion to the relative ease of their life circumstances. There is an ungrateful sense of entitlement which pervades.

In general it is always someone else’s fault. Quite often I am to blame for all of their woes.

It is all my fault after all…

They Paved Paradise, Put Up A Parking Lot

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—

Don’t it always seem to go

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone

Joni Mitchell             

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The human ability to look at the shiny, the immediate, the trendy, the popular, the short term and the otherwise glamorous is well developed. People can fail to think things through. They can be petty and reactive.

Right now people are being persuaded that climate change is a bit of a con. This by people who want profit and personal gain. There is greenwashing and sportswashing. The popularist may claim net zero as a loony ultra-far-left ideology from their soap box.

“Vote for me, fuck the planet.” Seems to be one of the new mantra.

There are a lot of babies thrown out with the bathwater.

Afraid of facing up to a reality there can be a tendency for head in the sand cross fingers and hope “strategies”. People do not wish to see that which may be inconvenient to them or for them.

This form of put off today and maybe pay later thinking, is debt based. Tomorrow may never come so let’s make hay…anyone who disagrees is a fun sponge. Debt is however karmically bad.

The decision not to act is an action. A decision to prevaricate and procrastinate is a decision, nevertheless. This may be the path of least resistance. It seems less risky. When in fact it is very risky indeed. Procrastination is a risky endeavour. One whose risks are often ignored or downgraded in importance. Procrastination seems convenient.

More often than not the time for anything is now or much closer to now than many are willing to accept. One day tomorrow never comes…

What we value may change with the benefit of retrospect and hindsight. Yet the easy is more often chosen than the “difficult” even after hindsight has offered us lessons.

Learning by and through loss is something that can occur. The lessons of loss may not be accepted readily. Repetition may be needed. People can be slow learners.

It takes a while to understand that the overtly shiny bauble, the overtly enticing power, the seemingly offered advantage may not be all that it is first cracked up to be. Temptation by the shiny can lead to the loss of that which holds much deeper value and perhaps import. Fickle are humans. A quick fix, a sticking plaster is rarely a sound solution.

Humans are perhaps more primitive than they might like to admit. Shiny…

This time of year with the festivities in full swing can bring with it the metaphorical ghosts of Christmas past. They may rattle their chains in the psyche. Stuff can come out of the woodwork…

It is a weird time of year.

—

Don’t it always seem to go

You don’t know what you’ve got ‘til its gone

Joni Mitchell             

—

That Waiting Vibe Again

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A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take.

Carlos Castaneda

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Around this time of year I tend to look at the numerology for the upcoming year. I have been putting this off, not feeling motivated so do. This partially because of a strong feeling of waiting, of being in some kind of holding pattern. There are a number of other things which I might do, but these too are kind of in abeyance because I am waiting.

On the health front my recovery is possibly slightly ahead of “normal” schedule. The physio last night has already introduced the notion of end of sessions. I am walking, by and large, like a biped without crutches.

The weird thing is that Tibetan vibe. It is hanging around at the periphery of consciousness. It was particularly strong around 3 AM last night, like something was going down. In the previous post I speculated. Should anything materialise along those lines it would be a game changer and make for an unusual 2026.

Being earthed and grounded I can see a number of small jobs I can do in the garden. There are some moles which need to be trapped here in the far West of France. I told the gardener yesterday that I might trap them soon. There are some plants which need to be cut back and a plumbing job upstairs. The shops will be shut for Christmas tomorrow.

One trajectory is simple and uncomplicated.

There could be other low probability trajectories which may come in by way of a quirk of fate, a curveball.

The feeling is that something is up. I am waiting for something, I do not know what. Whatever it is, it is not my move.

I have had feelings like this before, a hint of incoming, and nothing has materialised. On occasion stuff has happened.

If you are powerless like me, there is very little in my power. I can do very little. My influence and impact on the world is tiny and local.

A bit weird though this feeling of waiting…

Cagliostro – Erasing Personal History

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In a world obsessed with the curriculum vitae it makes “sense” to be able to account for our life, our training and our affiliations. We might even get a job on the basis of our CV. Historians may want to pin down where we were born, to whom and with whom we associated. That makes a story, a narrative of our lives, a his-story or a her-story. Human folly suggests that these stories are important when they are in fact impermanent and mutable. If someone knows our story we can be held to it.

“You said you are vegan and that meat is murder. How come you are eating a steak you lying bastard?”

Our stories make an expectation which people expect us to life up or down to. If we don’t behave as a good priest we could be chucked out of church for shagging a prostitute.

There is a Toltec technique called “Erasing Personal History”. In which one is encouraged to unpick, change and ultimately remove any legend or story we might have about ourselves. We become free of the bullshit we tell ourselves about who and what we are. We are liberated by rubbing out the story, erasing it. As an interim measure we might make a working story to use until such time as we have no story at all.

The CIA and MI6 allegedly prepare extensive cover stories for agents complete with passports and driver licences. The back story might be fleshed out in, inter alia, social media.

So why not invent a cover as Comte de Cagliostro?

It might infuriate those who want to try to pin you down to some identity or other. You are not playing fair if you do not stick to “normal” societal rules. Who is this charlatan?

Well maybe he was someone who was erasing his personal history forever reinventing how he behaved and how he presented himself. As he evolved as a spiritual being his story, his legend evolved with him. He was not a fixed and rigid being. He was not constrained by the stories others sought to tell and be adamant about.

Right now there is nobody who can give a good account of me. I have claimed that I used to teach chemistry to the nurses. Nobody has tested my knowledge. I could be a lying charlatan. Weirdly I might be able to talk about high resolution laser spectroscopy and how to use a two-stroke strimmer.

If your bloodline was dangerous to you. It might be wise to hide your pedigree. Having noble parents could mean your end. There are many motivations why someone might be vague about their birth.

They did not have DNA screening and biometrics back then!!

It is funny to watch people getting into a tizzy about who Comte de Cagliostro might have been. Then watch them present their theories, which have made it onto Wikipedia.

So obvs they must be gospel true.

The whole notion of wanting and trying to erase any and all personal history goes against what makes “sense” in the normal socio-political view of the world. A personal history can shackle.

Peoples lives are ruined now because once they made an ill conceived remark. Their careers can be trashed, cancelled, because of the recorded history of what they are alleged to have said.

Now like so many others I am writing off any trip to the USA because what I have written on blogs may be held against me and prohibit my entrance. There is no point doing the paperwork.

Having your history held against you is not very liberating…

I have not been to Malta for quite a number of years 😉