Malevolent Thoughts – Magic – White Scallop – Phowa Dream 06 -02-2026

I had hoped that we were past this, past this kind of projection at me. Here is last night’s dream on a night which had an otherwise long sleep.

The dream opens in a seemingly underground labyrinth, a warren of tunnels, which I know to be the mind of another or others plural. The walls are curved and of a grey muddy hue and texture. Hanging pendant from the ceilings of these tunnels are amulets shaped like a pain au raisin, coiled. They are palm-hand sized. They are British English of provenance. I know they are encapsulated thought forms and parcelled emotions. They are negative and malevolent towards me. They have variously resentment, jealousy and ill will. They are anger and even hate filled projections at me. In some cases they have festered long. They are by way of black magic spells directed at me either wittingly or otherwise. The persons generating these malevolence are not fully aware of their voodoo like essence. Nor do they understand that these emanations against a witch with well-practiced charms of reflective protection is for them, the emanator, a very unwise thing. Deep in the resentful caverns of their minds they are harbouring and feeding this negativity which is bad for them. They are nurturing it and it feeds upon them. It is eating them alive. To project against a witch is foolhardy.

In the dream I sigh.

The scene changes to a small cove on the coast with crystal clear waters. It too seems English. I am in the water swimming at the behest of an “archaeologist”. I am free diving to the bottom and searching the sand. I find a large pristine white scallop shell. Larger than normal, shiner than normal and whiter than normal. It is somehow special even magical white. I go to shore and show it to the archaeologist. He is excited. He asks me to find a living bed of scallops as proof. I know that the archaeology refers to the/my past. I dive and swim towards where a fresh water stream inlets into the sea. There on a small rocky outcrop are a bed of scallops. I take a picture with my underwater camera and with the knife from my ankle scabbard ease a living pair of scallops off. I return to the shore. I show the archaeologist who is very happy.  We go into the village and enter a small cottage with a “Tudor” blue wooden frame. We go into the kitchen and start to wash the scallops in the sink. The couple who are the cottage owners return and let themselves in with a key. At first they are surprised to see us in their house, their kitchen. The archaeologist apologises and explains. They are happy and the wife helps him wash the scallops in the sink.

The scene fades and I am left with a very strong visual image of someone known to me whom I have not spoken with for two decades. He is older than me and of a prior “generation”. I know that he nears death and this is by way of a checking in. If and when things progress I will see him during the transition and soon afterwards. The same holds true for a female also of his generation. As a part of the Phowa practice I will encounter them on planes non mundane in the in between. I am ready whereas they are not. I am at home there.

The dreaming sequence ends…

On waking I know that there is nothing you can do if someone harbours envy, bitterness and jealousy towards you. If you mention it, it does not go away. It only entrenches and gets worse.

Spiritual or Soular Challenges and Karmic Merit

I have been mulling over this subject on and off for a number of days now. It is surprisingly difficult to put into words nevertheless I will have a go.

I’ll start this off with a postulate.

In any given lifetime we are presented with challenges which we are required to face in order to evolve. We must endeavour to engage with these with as much willingness as we can muster and try to face them and learn therefrom. They are pivotal to our development as incarnate beings and are a requirement of/for our Souls. They are a part of the lessons we chose to try to learn for ourselves in selecting our birth.

Whether or not you agree with this postulate does not matter especially in the context which it sets up. It frames life no matter if you believe it or like it or think it is poppycock. If the postulate holds it has consequences spanning lifetimes. If you do not accept the postulate and yet it still holds it has consequences. If it is a pile of bull I made up because I was bored and it is raining outside there are fewer consequences. You are “free” to act like an arrogant arsehole should so wish.

Place your bets…

Modern life has boundaries and laws. It has social contracts and is heavily laden with social expectations. There are the itchy back game endless transactions. There are thousands of “shoulds” and “oughts”. These are to an extent culture and peer group specific. Some things are expressed in law and in general it is wise to follow these laws or you could find yourself fined or in gaol. These are “hard” and are relatively non-negotiable. The shoulds are more bendy. The requirement to behave according to a “moral” code is partially enforced by humans and peer groups. These are subject to the vagaries of time. It is no longer socially acceptable to black up for a black and white minstrels show. Morals are flexible and some consider themselves less beholden than others. But you can get cancelled and if you hang out with a famous paedophile in your Y-fronts it can change your future.

Often that which seems too good to be true, is. People like shiny things and fail to appreciate the price attached. The free lunch is a cornerstone of mythos.

The Soular challenges that I am thinking about are not required by law, nor by peer pressure , nor social compliance. Even if you might “get away with it”, by not doing it, these challenges ask that you rise up above that mentality. In listening to your Soul you have no choice but to be utterly impeccable even if that has to it a seeming cost, pecuniary, social or otherwise. The reward is karmic merit gained and a heart enlivened because you have been at your impeccable best.

Doing things when there is no pressure to do them and when nobody else sees them is not something which transactional beings tend to do. There is no apparent immediate reward. There is no “look at me” kudos to be had.

Simply an impeccable and often compassionate act is sufficient in and of itself. It is satisfactory. There is no drum roll, no heralding trumpets. No great big drama.

The acts which gain karmic merit are often to be found in overcoming selfishness, pettiness and greed. They may be invisible to others. But karma has eyes which see more than the profane. These acts are nearly always about “getting over your-self” and they engender a wider humility and understanding of the universal and not the me-personal. Most of all these acts are about attitude. If the attitude in benevolent and not seeking of personal reward, the acts have a nice hue, a rich colouration. There is a subtle perfume to them. They smell nice.

But in order to engage with these challenges one is required to overcome social fear. Often one has to stand out from the crowd in some way. One has to make some kind of an integrity based stand. Which may have a price. In most cases the barrier to doing the act has been bigged-up to gargantuan proportion. Only hindsight concludes, “what was all that fuss about?”  The mind and little-self does its best to dissuade.

Most of these challenges are to do with mind and perception is some way.

Spiritual and Soular challenges can be very subtle indeed. The opportunity is readily missed in the maelstrom of modern living.

There is no, “what is in it for me?”

This mentality of reward and even bribery of a kind is far too prevalent in our times. It does not generate karmic merit.

To do a genuine, as opposed to for show, 180 degree shift away from personal reward is not to the liking of most.

But if you want to evolve you need to change the way you think, the way you act and the way you orient towards life. Otherwise you will stay the same. It is not rocket science.

If you have been lucky enough to have a relatively easy incarnation then chances are it will have a number of subtle yet very important challenges for you to face. You gave yourself the wherewithal so to do…

You can try to run and hide from these challenges but that is not an evolutionary attitude, is it? If you are too important to face your challenges and learn from them what does that say about your attitude to learning and evolution? Maybe you are already so evolved that you are above all that…

Evolution after all is just for the plebs….

Someone Else’s Mind – Stranger Things

We have recently been watching the fifth series of “Stranger Things”. We have one episode to go. The worlds of Stranger Things and Henry’s mind might seem a bit odd, fanciful and far fetched to many. I joked with the wife this morning that it is pretty tame compared to our dreamworld. The “upside down” outside our fence and garden gate is full of various unpleasantness. Which leaks through via various news broadcasts and on-line newspapers. There is nasty stuff and are nasty people out there. We live in “the right way up”.

If you read and concentrate upon the dreams in the previous post it is likely to do something to your mind. It will perhaps unsettle. To me it is normal, it is slightly more unsettling for the wife. I am more at home with visionary art and spaced out verbal recollections. I can answer University Challenge art questions if the picture is from William Blake or Hieronymus Bosch.

In a sense this blog is a kind of window into what goes on in my mind, my head. It does not however show the “normal” state of my mind. This is largely silent and thought free. It cannot be written down. What occurs here comes only after I have decided to think or verbalize. I live largely in what I term the place before thought.

I am entirely capable of having the kind of dreams, which might knock others off kilter, and without a second thought I can put the coffee on to brew. I know when I am dreaming and when I am so-called awake. I can also differentiate waking dreams or visions. I can function “normally” whilst having a vision. An example being the ability to teach Chemical Reaction Kinetics whilst a vision was resident and “in play”.

We rarely get detailed glimpses direct into the mind of others. This is partially because our minds are so god-dammed noisy with internal dialogue, worries and a list of devoirs. We live in our “own little worlds” and often try to fit others into the rules pertaining to how that world is assembled and assimilated in our own “minds”.  Our assimilations may differ. Our versions of observable reality may diverge from one another. More often than not we insist on our own assimilation and sense making. What makes sense in our “the right way up” may be to others the “upside down”. We may be adamant that everybody else has gotten the wrong end of the stick. Only our rules of perception and assimilation apply. Only our interpretation is correct.

The mind of another may unsettle us because of its unfamiliarity.

In a sense the dreamworld presented in this blog is other. If it is only a dreamworld it has no significance at all in the normal “real” world. The dreamworld, however it is produced and wherever it comes from, need not impinge on/in your reality out there in the “upside down”.

There are few portals or gateways between our “the right way up” and your world. They exist tangentially. Only occasionally do we go through to go to the hospital or supermarket. We usually make it back without being attacked by a Demogorgon or two.

The only potential problem arises is when the dreamworld here has a significance which is more significant that just dreams, just a dreamworld…

Permimeter Defences – Coypu – Badger and Wild Boar

The first of the shagging toads have arrived in the pond. The start of the annual toad migration. There is an electric fence between the river and the pond to stop the coypu getting in.

One of the little buggers tried last night and disturbed the fence.

They are after the baby lotuses and irises.

Previously the wife blocked the badger hole in the fence.

They built a small set in our garden..

This is where the wild boars first got in…

This is the repair of the second place they broke the fence. I am due to do more fence repair this afternoon.

This is Gandalf the grey and white stray cat now a.k.a. Kidney because she leaves regular mouse kidneys and entrails for us as presents.

Snowed In – Committee – Nigel Farage – CV – Dream 03-02-2026

Here are last night’s dreaming snippets. It seems that the dreaming is changing and there is a reminder that I cannot be prejudiced about what the dreaming brings me and suggests. There was an earlier snippet about organising an event which I cannot recall well.

The dreaming scene opens in a facility, a large log cabin, the central building to a collection of cabins. It is the centre of the facility / park. We have gathered everybody together because we are snowed in and the weather forecast suggests that there is more snow on the way we are going to have to wait it out. Some of the people are disgruntled and unhappy.  We need to organise central catering so as to make best use of the available resources. I get everybody to bring what food they have to the central cabin and put it on the table. Because it is the end of the week and people were getting ready to leave the collection is meagre.

There are pig’s trotters, potatoes, cabbage, carrots, onions, fennel, a chicken, some stock cubes and bags of flour. I know that I can make a big hearty stew which will feed us all for days and that we can make soda-bread and dumplings. I reach for a huge aluminium saucepan. One of the richer women is horrified that I will use pig’s trotters. I explain that they will make the stew taste wonderful. She says that she would prefer to chance the roads in her 4×4. I say to her if she can even get out of the compound I will be surprised.

Most people are happy to hanker down and help with the food prep. All the spare wood has been brought in to run the fire in the central cabin where we will hanker down together to preserve energy.

Later a ranger and I go out to inspect where the creek flows into the lake. It passes under the exit road out. We can see that there has been an accumulation of mud in the tree roots along the creek which will inhibit the flow of the melt water, inundating the road. So we get busy clearing the mud with our walking canes.

I am now in a council meeting chamber. It is like a county council with a distinct flavour of an island council. It feels Jersey-lite. The council is for an affluent area and is English. There are a several of us sat around a table. I am next to Nigel Farage who smells of beer and fags. He is smoking a foul smelling cigar. The meeting is to discuss matters arising. Nigel is putting forward a request for a prohibition order for a mini-festival one of the local pubs wants to hold. He has a vested interest in getting it banned as one of his pals has land near to the pub. He brings up the request. I mention that the mini-festival is good for the island economy and vital for the pub and his staff. Surprisingly Nigel is keen to discuss the request from all angles and at the mention of money is more in favour of it going ahead. He likes the idea of bringing more money to the island. He too is surprised at himself.

The scene shifts and I am filling places in a committee of some unspecified variety and function. In front of me is the CV of Susan S. She played a significant role in the start of the start-up I was involved in. On the CV are her university affiliations and the number of non-executive director roles she has had. Some of which are big cheese like.

On waking I am surprised at why I would be “seeing” her CV and not entirely pleased that Nigel Farage has cropped up. I know that we probably won’t see eye to eye. I think that was a bit odd…

Cunning Ploy Dreaming Snippett – 02-02-2026

One of the recurring themes in my dreams along with “somebody else’s mess” is the “cunning ploy / plan” theme.

This theme arose in the dream last night concerning two people I once knew.

There is a certain kind of person which cannot resist trying to be cunning and using “clever” tricks to manipulate and seek some kind of advantage or gather some information. They have a play book of tricks and methods and a modus operandi which changes little. There is an expectation that these plays or ploys can be relied upon to secure similar results. They often have some kind of negotiation in mind usually of a transactional nature.

In never occurs to them to be open straightforward and honest. Their ploys can be “relied” upon to secure similar results.

I am pretty bored with the whole cunning ploy theme…Yawn…

If you play a cunning ploy delivery with a straight bat it can cause the ploy to go badly awry. No cunning required on my part just play straight.

My mother tried to elicit me to cajole her to come to my second wedding. She said that it was difficult and far for her. I replied that if that was the case then I would understand if she did not come.

Many people try to get some emotional manipulation leverage based upon “rules” to which they imagine others will comply. When it goes pear shaped it can be difficult. I can think of a quite a number of cases when other people’s cunning ploys have gone very badly wrong because  I have played straight and not played their game. These ploy attempts have had major consequences.

Some people simply cannot conceive of being simple and straightforward. It is just beyond their ability.  They do not approach with open hands or open hearts; they are after something.

It is just yawn-some.

For a while I was in “pastoral care” and many students tried to take advantage of the system / me. Unfortunately for them I was in the habit of taking notes and had a good memory. I was prone to repeat their prior narratives to them. Quite a number of schemes failed and the only people who knew were me and them. Confidentiality was important.

Quite why the “cunning ploy” theme is resurfacing again I do not know, but it has been noted by me…

 Yawn…

Do I Have an Attitude Problem, Am I Too Irreverent?

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41. Bodhidharma Pacifies the Mind

Bodhidharma sits facing the wall. His future successor stands in the snow and presents his severed arm to Bodhidharma.

He cries: “My mind is not pacified. Master, pacify my mind.”

Bodhidharma says: “If you bring me that mind, I will pacify it for you.”

The successor says: “When I search my mind I cannot hold it.”

Bodhidharma says: “Then your mind is pacified already.”

Mumon’s comment: That broken-toothed old Hindu, Bodhidharma, came thousands of miles over the sea from India to China as if he had something wonderful. He is like raising waves without wind. After he remained years in China he had only one disciple and that one lost his arm and was deformed. Alas, ever since he has had brainless disciples.

Why did Bodhidharma come to China?
For years monks have discussed this.
All the troubles that have followed since
Came from that teacher and disciple.

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Excerpted from“The Gateless Gate”,

by Ekai, called Mu-mon, tr. Nyogen Senzaki and Paul Reps [1934], at sacred-texts.com

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I suspect that many people are uncomfortable with clarity.  My own experimental evidence suggests that providing clarity can be unpopular and politically unwise. People are fond of brown nosing and otherwise sucking up to those with kudos related positional power. If one is not sufficiently reverent one can become a “problem”. Upsetting the applecart etc. can go down like a lead balloon on a planet with very high mass and low diameter.

If for example you think I have an attitude problem, where does that stem from? Is that from my behaviour or some preconceived idea you may have about how people are and should behave according to the gospel of you? If you say that I have an attitude problem are you in effect simply criticising your own reflection in a mirror?

Who defines which attitude is correct and/or appropriate?

Who is the expert and/or authority on this subject?

It is a part of my nature to take the piss. This can seem irreverent particularly to those who are pompous and very self-important.

I am reasonably confident that some people think that I am not sufficiently reverential and therefore I have an attitude problem. I don’t have a problem with my attitude but others might…

I had this sudden intuition this afternoon that people think I have a bad attitude…there is nothing I can do about what others think….