Tag: chameleon

“Spiritual” Journeys

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

I have used inverted commas quotation mark here because I struggle a little with how words have in a sense become tainted by multiple usage and being bandied about as PR. Spiritual as a word has had its impact and meaning downgraded to the point of near meaninglessness.

I am going to attempt to put into words something which I have hesitated to do. It is close to impossible. This cannot be undertaken without emphasising just how important a few years of my childhood were in my development, in this life. One constellation in particular left its mark deep in my psyche.

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It was by its light during an English language common entrance exam that I foresaw events near two and a half decades later. It was the harbinger and the key of a volte face in life. I left the harbour alone in my coracle adrift upon the Southern ocean lit by its solace. I left Cape Town after being burned on table mountain.

Later I had another foreboding which was also to find consummation over a similar time delay. Each of these were pivotal. That foreboding prevented me making a UCAS university choice against the advice of my school teachers.

When I was young and in an English boarding school as an expat child I got to read the lessons and the prayers in church. While the others sat with parents. It was like a duck to water that I took to the lectern and the prayer “chair” deep in the nave. There I found St Francis of Assisi.

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« Seigneur, faites de moi un instrument de votre paix.
Là où il y a de la haine, que je mette l’amour. »

« C’est en pardonnant qu’on est pardonné,
c’est en mourant qu’on ressuscite à l’éternelle vie. »

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This man was in tune with the Mahayana bodhisattva ideal. His words touched.

Unfortunately those with the skill of a chameleon can adopt any mask, any direction, any character they choose. Believe me I learned how to blend. And in blending one loses authentic essence.

At the end of my schooling I took general studies courses in Buddhism, cooking and Rastafarianism. Ever Jah, ever loving, ever faithful. Rastafari. I read all that I could on witchcraft and alchemy. I made “friends” with the librarian in our town.

The Buddhism was presented in an intellectual descriptive manner in which the various fetters were enumerated for debate. Although I understood, the manner was for me boring and definitional. I sensed beyond that which was being professed. It was during intense meditation sat in seiza at karate that I learned that I had in fact been meditating all of my childhood. I used to sit and observe. I used to wait. I was touched directly by the dreamtime out in the shimmering bush of western Queensland. The aboriginal pointing stick had cleaved something open.

And then when I went to university I mostly forgot. By the time I was doing my Ph.D. research I figured that I had found something I was good at. So maybe this was the future. I enjoyed “pissing about with lasers”. I was to an extent, life and soul of the party. It was only in the early nineties that I started to withdraw, as if driven by a deeper current, out into the hills, the mountains and the countryside. It set up a kind of imbalance. On the one hand was a “normal” life and career. On the other there was silence and quiet. My reading was more intellectual philosophy, science and philosophy of science. I noted that despite mundane academic achievement many of “the greats” struggled with non-salary paying bigger questions.

I was offered a choice. Fort Collins Colorado or Bern Switzerland. One of those would have brought me quicker into contact with things “spiritual” than the other. The Swiss francs were certain, so I saw the Berner Oberland and learned painfully of “qualität”. Something which I tried thenceforth to express.

In the mid nineties at the place of my prior foreboding I was brought to my knees. Despite writing excellent research proposals I was stymied and unfunded. A grudge held by a “competing” senior academic could kill a proposal with a mere word. I had a breakdown. The answer to life the universe and everything could no longer be found in the laws of quantum mechanics and thermodynamics. It seemed there was more. It was around then that my ambition faded and the picture of a life academic dimmed. I began to search in earnest. I opened myself up wide. Again I largely forgot and tried to rebuild a life after breakdown. For some unknown reason money for research and start-up came more easily. I was “successful” for a while.

In the very early part of this century I was tested by power. I had a taste of it and did not abuse. Like Galadriel I refused the ring and was no longer sorely tempted thereby. It was around this time that a series of what might be called micro-renunciations began. In which step-wise I renounced or was forced to renounce the accoutrements of normal life. Each one was more difficult and profound than the last. Slowly life was stripped of all that made it busy and hectic. Until in the middle of 2006 I renounced all and walked off into the metaphorical “wilderness”. Dramatic as that sounds, at face value it looked simple, at core it cleaved and parted, severed and up-ended.

I did not become a wandering mendicant with charnel grounds for abode nor skull cup for beverage. Though adrift I most certainly was. I had already learned as a child, the nature of impermanence. Strangely without accoutrement life did not cease, the world did not implode, nor did it stop.

When you are thrust  from an Outlook calendar ruled life, with hours dissected into segments, with meetings set for you, with each action seemingly accountable, into nothing. The meaning of time changes in an unalterable and irrevocable way. It is no longer a spreadsheet thing. The boxes, the rice paper walls of the day, dissolve.

At end of 2008 I left the map so to speak. I began a series of meditations which went beyond. There was nothing, despite my research skill, which I could find written. These “meditations” continued in the UK in houses close to civilisation yet separate in the English countryside. I can say that the rigor of these was high and they continued for many years. In around 2010-11 I began having Buddhist dreams.

In the early part of the century whilst still teaching physical chemistry I had a series of waking visions in which I had “om mane padme hum” tattooed on my forearms in Sanskrit and with me in monastic robes. These visions were sufficiently powerful to be present whilst I was lecturing Chemical Reaction Kinetics to undergraduates in South Kensington. It was around then that I got to express my compassion for others, to care for them.

Overlaid on a “Toltec” background was a distinctly Buddhist vibe.

All the while I had a seemingly normal life as a married man doing for quite a while “A” level science private tutoring. The outer world and the inner world differed and markedly so.

To me as a member of the elephant dreaming class there is no problem with the scholastic wisdom teachings of Siddartha and the more dramatic Toltec corpus. The latter is a guide, when viewed with clarity, to the navigation of glamour and illusion. There is probably only one truth expressed via many different approaches. The Tower of Babel has a lot to answer for…

This is probably enough for today…

Narziß und Goldmund – Quantum Superposition State

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Finding “The Glass Bead Game” and Herman Hesse was a pivotal moment for me. In Knecht, the Magister Ludi, I found someone who innately sensed interconnectivity, the flow of consciousness and how one idea or theme intertwined others. His “lives” spoke direct to me. Finally I did not feel quite so absolutely weird. The scale of concept was vast and hugely refreshing. Someone on the planet was wired a little like me, though far more eloquent and expressive.

Like Magnus Pym and Bern, “The Perfect Spy”, had captured and conveyed a little of what it was like for me to have traversed life. His fiction more complex than mine. Yet I recognised the chameleon into which I once morphed for safety and to blend.

But it was with Narziß und Goldmund that I learned in the courtyard at Mariabronn of my own duality superimposed into a superposition state. There I sensed something of my monastic pasts and my reckless wild child. Initially I felt more Goldmund, later Narziß. The coefficient of the latter in my superposition sate is higher, when time averaged. I saw in this duality the autobiography of Hesse and his delicate and nuanced verbalisation. The sense of friction but not conflict, of phase and of interplay.

In a way each of my blogs are / have been by way of a glass bead game, only making sense to me. They are a way of arranging things like a sand Mandala, waiting for the brush of diaspora onto wind.

And again I am back with Narziß und Goldmund, wondering what fate may have left in store. Are there adventures left or is a retreat deeper into cloister on the cards…

Social Blurring and Status Problems

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

During the night I came up with this term “social blurring” to try to verbalize something which has seemed difficult to / with me in my social interactions. That is behaviour within the common social-conditioned view of the world. It is surprisingly difficult to put into words.

One could say that I do not have the “proper” respect for social position and authority. Nevertheless, I am law abiding, these days. I am pretty sure that I have put noses out of joint among those who consider themselves higher, better, more powerful than me.  I am not prone to arse licking or sycophancy. I do not play the itchy back game in a transactional sense.  I do not curry favour nor do I butter up. It is possible that this has been noted. People have gotten hoity-toity with me when I have not shown enough respect “due” to their position in society. In some cases, this has caused a punitive response, particularly when I was a precocious graduate student. I have reason to believe that this detrimentally affected my career. To me it is no big deal if someone is a famous Prof, a CEO or a King. I see the person and not the status.

Clearly there are social “problems” inherent in this attitude. A mere pleb did not ought to think like this and perhaps needs reminded of their position on the ladder of life. I do not appreciate my position in “the” pecking order as a serf.

Various people have said things to me which made little or no sense to me but seemed to make sense to them.

My mother, from the Rhondda valley, said that I behaved “to the manor born”. Which meant that I was a bit posh and at ease in posh places like expensive hotels and restaurants. Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines paid for four years at an English private preparatory school. I had an itinerant childhood and thus became an adept chameleon. I never had a sense of not belonging in a posh place. I can walk into the Ritz and feel at ease. I have been on stage at The Royal Albert Hall. I can walk into expensive private homes and not feel at awe.

Twenty odd years ago Théun Mares said that I was an alpha male. I thought to myself what the fuck is he on about. He kept banging on about this and some wolf pack interpretation of status. It had never occurred to me that I am in any way alpha nor dominant. I have no desire to assert position nor have underlings. I do not need nor want to snarl to keep a pack in line. In this weird world view I am a lone wolf not a pack animal. I clearly do not exert or exude the boundaries others anticipate. I am not interested in being top dog nor will I be overly submissive either. I don’t get excited by the intrigue of power struggles, nor can I be arsed with them. As a consequence of not snarling people can take the piss. The boundaries are blurred. Some, so I am told, like clear boundaries and definition of position in pecking order.

When I was a lecturer, it never occurred to me that I had status and position, in that context. I saw myself as no better than the students and definitely not a font of all wisdom. I interacted in a manner similar to a third year graduate student with a first year graduate student. It was more working together than professing. When I left my job, it became abundantly obvious that there were elements of social positional power associated with that role and the institution in which I had been institutionalised. It was a big deal for some, whereas for me it was bog standard. The lines between staff and student were accidentally blurred. I saw them more as equals than underlings.

In a weird sense I am used to being listened to irrespective of social position, there may even be some residual expectation of that. This expectation is rarely met. I have mostly gotten used to it, though on occasion it can flare up particularly if the other person concerned is ignorant and yet adamant in their ignorance. Sometimes I fail to hold my tongue and I do not care what their social standing may be.

In general, I am not awed by social positions but may be socially awkward when in numbers. I just find the ritual sniffing or normal social interaction boring and pointless. This means that I do not satisfy apparent needs / requirements of others. I can seem like an odd fish. I have no need to brag and claim social ladder rung in consversation..

When I have had “power” I have not wielded it. Nor have I taken advantage of that power when I might have. Being a young man with a paper share value of £ 2 million has an impact on knicker elastic. I feel pretty sure in my self that I have been tempted by power and come out the other side relatively unscathed. I did not turn into a power crazed arsehole.

I keep coming back to a perception that somehow, I do not fit what others expect.

I do not see others as better than, higher than me. Nor do I see others as beneath me. I am no better. I may be more experienced and intelligent, but I am not above. It is a kind of egalitarianism which can make people uncomfortable. There are some who have deferred to me and others who are perennially spoiling for a fight as if to assert position in pecking order. A fight I have no interest in partaking in. It has been my perception that people who have thus engaged have failed to learn whatever it is that I might have taught them. The immediacy of perceived status and competition for it has blinded them. Some people want to bring me down, teach me a lesson.

Perhaps the overarching weirdness in this life has been the number of people who want to tell me something, argue the toss, try to convince me they are right and otherwise teach me.

“That’ll learn ‘im!”

It remains an unsolved mystery as to how and why others feel the burning pressing need to educate me.

Because I do not have strong demands or wants, I have been pliable and subject to manipulation. I rarely have an agenda in contrast to many.

On occasion people have looked to me to provide a lead, only later to undermine me when that lead has not been to their liking. I have come around to the idea that I like planning and envisioning way more than execution. I am certain that I am not cut out to provide any ongoing leadership role in a socio-political sense because I cannot be bothered with the social “niceties” and tedious transactional negotiations. I am not a sycophant nor am I prone to sycophancy. In terms of leadership, I can sustain that for very short terms only. Sooner or later its will go pear shaped because I am unwilling to play the “normal” games.

Quite how and why I was born with this set of self-perceptions may be due to prior incarnations, prior learned inclinations. The more I have meditated the less impressed with socio-political status and imagined kudos I become. The whole notion of “advancement” “position” and social rank escapes me. Even though for others I once had a little.

As far as I can tell my beingness and how I am interpreted by others do not match. There is nothing I can do about that. I have to reel myself in because if I let it go, fully, people might struggle.

I am socially a bit of an oddball. At first pass I seem OK, normal-ish. There is some blurring where social perception and shoe-horn expectation does not fit. My behaviour has been “status” inappropriate not in a criminal way, rather something which is mildly unsettling for others.

I don’t fit the social conditioned mould as well as a I might.

Is It Me? – Introversion

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Over the last few weeks, I have been interacting with the medical profession. It has raised a not uncommon question for me. One which had me investigating an Autism diagnosis a decade ago. The question is:

Is it me? Am I too unfiltered, direct and accurate or are people insecure, precious, pompous and defensive? Am I not full enough with bullshit and braggadocio? Do I fail to play the itchy back dog sniffing arses game well enough? Must I always wear a mask in order not to freak people out?

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It seems to me that I unnerve people. I dial back several orders of magnitude already when I interact. It seems the only answer to not causing angst and a feeling of being unsettled is not to interact at all.  To keep my gob shut and wherever possible keep out of public circulation. In general, I have a worse reaction from “men” than from women.

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Am I simply not socially viable in the common socio-political illusion / context. Am I just too weird and feral.

Is it me? Am I the problem?

Questioning Deity – Are You Autistic?

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Not long after I had my colon cancer operated on; I contacted a specialist in adult autism. I wanted to find out if I was autistic or had Asperger’s, albeit high functioning. The other day we watched Claire Taylor in a documentary called “Are You Autistic?” In that documentary a few people diagnosed with autism spoke of the phenomenon of “masking” in which they behaved in a manner so as to conceal their underlying autism. Said masking is tyring and can lead to burn out.  

I have a similar notion which is called chameleon. I can blend in, mimic and fit in for a while. I can be at home in a posh place like the Ritz or the Hotel New Otani in Tokyo. I can also go into a very rough dive / criminal pub and have a beer without fear.

One of the motivators behind my inquiry is/was the over-reaction to question and critique which I have experienced from the self diagnosed omniscient, pompous and self-important people over the years. Those equipped at birth with a penis are the worst at this over-reaction.

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Maybe they are just deeply insecure?

Maybe I have autism?

Maybe I simply fail to kowtow to socio-political order and the pecking-order held in mind?

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The specialist concerned, being a psychologist, wanted to know if my inquiry was about the cancer and dying. {See people make assumptions all the time!!} Because, I did not have enough witnesses about my pan-continental childhood and any extant parents, she was unable to complete the full diagnosis. She offered her opinion based on our conversation that I was not autistic. You could say it is/was moot. Either I am not autistic or I am damn good at masking. Place your bets.

It seems to me I keep coming across, mostly men, who react badly to me even if I am not challenging them. I could be delusional. There are a large number of observations where I don’t talk enough bullshit, pat backs and otherwise ritually sniff arseholes. Some how I am not laddie enough. It is so false and such a waste of time.

I have a hunch that I/we are in the fallout stage of one of these interactions. Face is very important so not a lot can be done.

One is not allowed to question deity and masculine medical deity in particular. It gets their hackles up.

Hey-ho…

I have started looking into alternative arrangements now…

The Philosophy of Personal Identity

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall

“The End” by The Doors

I found by experimentation that if a pub was a little crowded of a Friday night, putting the song “The End” on the Juke box several times was causal of a marked thinning out of people density.

If one were to take too many masks from the ancient gallery one might end up with a split personality or a dissociative identity / multiple personality disorder.

“Dissociative identity disorder (DID), previously known as multiple personality disorder (MPD), is one of multiple dissociative disorders in the DSM-5, ICD-11, and Merck Manual. It has a history of extreme controversy.

Dissociative identity disorder is characterized by the presence of at least two distinct and relatively enduring personality states. The disorder is accompanied by memory gaps more severe than could be explained by ordinary forgetfulness.”

From Wikipedia

I think it is generally held that having a fairly stable sense of personal identity is a sign of mental health, though many can have an identity crisis in which said set of views and processes, the identity, are called into question. After crisis one might arrive at a changed personal identity, that change could be small or large it is unlikely however to be an utterly complete change. The notion of self-plays a big role in modern psychiatry, dissolution of self leads to liberation is Buddhism etc. Self-esteem which we hear these days is under threat partially because of all the imaginary imagery. Petabytes of doctored pictures provide an illusory ideal yardstick by which to measure inadequacy.

The sense of self might have a strong component of profession. There may be qualities and descriptors to which one subscribes. These may change during life. The thing is I don’t think that many people actually know themselves very well, which suggests that their self-image, self-description and personal legend are at best inaccurate. This does not prevent life from going on as an ersatz. Not everyone needs to fathom the depths.

Whilst one is fully engaged in the common currents of life and the angular momentum of the daily hamster wheel there is little time for reflection and discovery. The pace of life is too fast to bother. Crisis can change this.

I have heard it said that many who go on a 30 day silent solo retreat, struggle. This is because without the accoutrements of self and a lifestyle, the notion of self starts to fall away. This can be very scary. Some may get scarred. Others come out the other side less obsessed by notion of self, less attached to this and have little or no urge to defend anything even minorly contradictory to the illusory narrative of self. Other people are not holding you to this self-image which you have spent much time projecting into the world and your relationships. You are not bound by a self-narrative to the same extent.

For a number of years, I was an evangelical vegan. Then my notion of self had veganism as a core part. Others saw me as a vegan, perhaps annoyingly evangelical, to sit down at table with them and eat beef steak was a game changer for them and for me. I was bricking it that they would call me a hypocrite. They had a sudden change of view.

Self and identity refer to similar things. I could say that I identify as a heterosexual male. But I don’t really, it is a side effect of my dangly bits, chromosomes and residual sexual orientation.

The ninth aspect of the stalker’s rule is:

“A stalker never reveals his identity, not even to himself.”

The notion of stalking is to stalk perceptions, primarily one’s own perceptions. If you have strong descriptor of self and a fixed identity then you will perceive everything through the possible colouration of that lens. It will provide a perceptual and conceptual bias. If you have no identity or no fixed identity the range and scope of possible perceptions increases.

When I first started stalking my perception, I started with the ninth aspect instead of the first. The implications of this aspect of rule are very wide ranging on the one hand and utter simplicity on the other.

If you don’t say things like, “I am / was a senior lecturer in physical chemistry of Welsh extraction, with left wing leaning politics and profound concern about anthropogenic climate change with a wife and a nice house in the country.” Then people will not know where to place you. But this kind of little sentence forms the basis of many person-person interactions. There is a desire for such a one liner for people to start to feel comfortable about who and what they are dealing with. On one level that one liner is true. But it says nothing about what I am like nor how my world view is configured. I do not identify with that sentence even though it is correct. This kind of statement is a part of ritual sniffing where humans metaphorically sniff each other’s arses, like dogs.

If people ask, I can now say that I am retired. If you say it in a particular way few inquire as to retired from what. Although I am retired from in-world quotidian interactions I am not retired in an absolute sense. I have not carked it yet.

At first glance and upon fleeting interaction I seem pretty much like everyone else. I’ll speculate that once my very different world view was rubbed up against, I would see less normal. If I did not wear my normal society mask and let my true colours emanate, I would differ markedly. Just how markedly is impossible to explain, it would have to be experienced. This is because I have used over two decades erasing self and weakening any identification, especially with the form side of life. At first pass a psychiatrist might be concerned, especially if they were taking notes upon how I see myself, what I like, what I don’t like. They may reach for their bible, the diagnostic manuals, excited.

If I say that I learned at an early age to blend and be a chameleon they might raise an eyebrow. But this is a true if metaphorical statement. I went from an “experimental” late sixties Bristol primary school where I was allowed to play chess instead of do art, to a traditional Mines School deep in the Australian outback. For safety I learned to blend. A sore thumb pom quickly spoke Strine.

If you have a sense of identity, whether strong or otherwise, it is difficult to imagine what it is like to have none. Group and group mind comprise a subset of identity. There are millions of red cap wearing MAGA devotees who might identify as non-woke anti-liberal nonce. Group identity remains identity and it is this which is aback and casual of wars.

Many people identify as Christian but in no way do they practise the teachings of Christ, they might better call themselves old-school Jehovian. Brutal destructive vengeance is not a Christian trait to my understanding.

A big contribution to sense of identity is peer group. In the peer group people share stories about their lives and others keep them beholden, to an extent, to these stories. There may be underlying assumptions and expectations on identity.

If you identify to / as anything it can be used to leverage and manipulate you. You can manipulate others with/by their identity.

Look you are eating steak! I always knew you were a hypocritical self-righteous bastard, shame on you. If you do this for me, I won’t tell the others.

Chameleon – Fire – Keys -Butterfly – Cousins Dream 11-12-2024

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

This dream was between 4:55 AM and 6:30 AM it is followed by a less dreamy attempt to rejoin the dream.

The dream is set outdoors on some kind of patio. In front of me is a raised fire pit. It is made out of fired clay and is light terracotta in colour. The pit is a kind of hand-made grate with a quasi-oval ring of clay supported on pillars of clay about a foot tall. The idea is that there is great air circulation into the fire pit.

On the floor next to the pit is a large chameleon lizard. It is sandy-brown and about the size of my foot. I pick the lizard up lovingly with my hand and it comes willingly. I place the lizard in one side of the fire pit and it lies snug against the wall altering its colour slightly to blend in.

On the other side of the pit, I make a fire with pieces of wood. The fire blazes too quickly. I add more larger pieces of wood. The fire stabilizes and burns more quietly. The chameleon is unharmed.

In the fire pit I notice an old style wrap around key fob in brown leather. I cannot see if there are any keys in the fob or not. I pick the fob out of the pit and put it in my pocket. It feels heavy.

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I continue to look at the fire and tend it.

My eyes are drawn to my right hand. I can see a black suit jacket sleeve with several buttons. Inside the sleeve is a buttoned white dress shirt. Both are incredibly crisp and well ironed. Out of the gap between shirt and jacket I extract, by encouragement with my left hand, a large hand sized pale yellow butterfly. The wings are in two segments so that you can see four segments. Its appearance is like a magic trick and there are flecks of gold in the yellow. It flies out of the sleeve and circles me several times

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The butterfly flies off.

In one corner of the patio, I see two young women. One of them is light brown with a black Muslim head scarf. She is dressed in black. The other one is wearing white and is of European extraction.

The brown one asks me if I recognise them. She is flirty and cheeky.

No.

She says that they are my cousins and that she knows me. She says that I should have recognised them from Wales. We are related through Cristiaan’s wife from South Africa. She has a mild Afrikaans accent.

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I wake and the wife tells me it is 6:30 AM when she gets back into bed.

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I intend to rejoin the dream. I enter a sports hall wearing my bright red WRU t-shirt. As I do so the man running the gym says that Wales are not doing so well at rugby. I agree. I go into the bathroom to piss. I am in a cubicle and note that it opens out from the male changing room into the female one. I change cubicles. When I am finished, I wash my hands ritually.

Outside in the corridor I am seized by several men who have their hands on my arms. They are trying to pull me away and drag me with them. I use Ki to prevent them from shifting me. D is watching and he can see from my mudra-like hand positions that they have no chance of getting me to budge no matter how much effort they expend.

The scene changes and I am outside around a campfire with some middle aged women. They have asked me to cook my famous chicken and fish casserole for them. Despite this request they keep interfering with the way in which I am preparing the casserole. They keep trying to tell me what to do. I pick up a large slice of bacon which I tear with my bare hands to add flavour to the oil. They look shocked that I have used my bare hands. I explain that I washed them thoroughly earlier.

Dream ends.