Tag: liberation

Chaotic Mess – Rare Slow Soul Magic – Dream 12-12-2025

~ quantumdreamer ~ Leave a comment

Sleep last night came in two segments 12 – 2:30 and after an hour of TV, 4 to 7. In “A Discovery of Witches” season two last night Diana masters the ninth knot, the spell of endings and beginnings, the knot of completion(s). Implicit is inherent in this is also the tenth knot. Diana a weaver and time walker prepares to travel back to modern day.

The first part is in the early sleep and shallow. I am with the ex-wife. She wants to show me what is going on in the village. She insists that I go to see what has become of the village pubs. She is curious and very nosey. She wants all the gossip. Reluctantly I go with her and one of the pubs is under new management. He is trying to make a go of it. The pub is in a state of mess and undergoing renovation. A part of it is open for business. We go in and he asks what I want. I ask for a pint of Guiness and it takes long while to pour and settle. The ex-wife has a half of bitter and proceeds to go around chatting at/with everyone else in the pub. I ask the landlord about his plans.

We move off to the next pub. This is more lively and all the village folk some from out of town and some born are ostentatiously getting pissed  up. The air is of forced jollity, almost an anxious jollity. This pub is better lit. The locals all stare at me. Once again the ex-wife works the room talking to everyone and gossiping about life in the village and in general. I do not see the point of it in the dream. The pub is a mess and someone needs to do a glasses round and wipe down tables. There is a hint of Christmas party and the TV in the pub is blaring away in the background. It is harsh to the senses.

I awake for some poor TV, a pill and two lion bars.

Back now in the dream I am upstairs in a retreat centre type house. It is redbrick and old. On the other side of a single track road is a chest height red-brick and flint wall behind which is a substantial weir and mill race. The river is powerful and the water deep and of a green hue due to the weeds. I know the building I am in is aligned to the old water mill. It is a part of the complex. The feel is very similar  to Llangollen. The smell is similar too; we are near mountains. I am lying on the bed with the window open. The net curtains are blowing lightly in the breeze and I can hear the deep bass rumble of the water on the weir.

I hear a key in the door downstairs and in walks Paul and Emma. (Walker). They walk through into the kitchen and I can hear the keys being thrown into a small ceramic pot / ashtray. The pot is glazed agate green. I can hear Paul complaining to Emma about me. He complains how things can be messy after I have been and that although the mess is not mine it is in response to me that the chaos and mess ensues.  He is not happy about me being there and wants me to go. His unwelcome is widely held among many people. I do not do what they deem I ought to.

I come down stairs and Paul intuits that I have heard what he has been saying. He asks if I have heard.  I affirm. He says that there is no point pretending then. I say that I am not in the least bit upset. I have something to show him. In the kitchen are plates and cutlery unwashed. He looks at them with scorn. We all go out into a walled garden and to a stand-up wooden table in a “beer-garden” private to the property and which overlooks the weir.

I say to Paul that I possess a special rare type of magic. This he doubts as otherwise I would have used the magic to clean up. I say that this magic is not of a material kind, the kind for tricks and show. I say that my magic is a special kind of magic known by some as Soul magic. This magic is of a very slow effect. It is a slow Soul magic. He is sceptical.

I hold up my left hand and a brown hen’s egg appears in it. This catches his attention. It cracks and the top comes off. It is now like a soft boiled egg ready for eating in “dippy eggs”. I say to him that my magic, the deeper magic, pertains only to the Soul. It is not mundane. In the dream he understands that the egg is a metaphor for the Souls. I say that yes I can and do work directly with the Soul(s).

The dreaming view looks down at the soft yolky egg from above and then zooms out to a side view. A small amount of yolk has run down from the egg along my fingers and onto my white inner wrist. I say that even Soul magic is of two kinds, the magic of the Souls evolving through lifetimes and that of the spark within. True magic is about the creation and enveloping of the spark within a Soular casing, the egg of lives. The ultimate magic is about liberation in which the ovoid shell, the eggy casing of the Soul is rent and evaporates only to leave the spark within and thence throughout. Soul magic is about encapsulation and liberation. It is beyond the sight of most and not to the everyday taste.

As they watch the egg starts to dissolve shimmering into space with a shimmering of tiny golden insubstantial flecks. Leaving a tiny bright yellow-orange radiant spark or flame. Which is suspended above my fingers. Paul and Emma are temporarily transfixed. They come to with a jolt and all they can see is my upstretched left hand with fingers touching from where the egg once was. They can see a small trickle of bright yellow yolk against the white inner skin of my wrist.

The dream zooms out and looks directly into the depths of the water going over the mill race weir. I know that those prone to the chaos of the West struggle to see the beautiful order and patterns of time.

I come to and feel the stiffness in my hips and lower back…

No! I do not want to download your effing app!

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I have been pondering a notion, a question. It is this, “is it enlightenment or old age?”

Many of the things that people seem bothered about such as ‘phones, clothing, hairstyle, general appearance, apps, shagging, ‘phones, career advancement, kudos and internet fwiends don’t hold any fascination for me.

Now is this because of all my meditation that I have seen them to be impermanent and thereby illusory?

Or is it that just like any old git, I have experimental life evidence that these things ain’t all that?

Buggered if I know…

Recently I have been on the receiving end of my first bit of internet banking fraud. I do not use open networks in public spaces, nor do I visit and pay at dodgy web sites. Nevertheless some bastard has been able to pay for Uber in Amsterdam and Food Panda in Karachi of all places.

Given the location here in the wilds of Brittany I doubt anyone has had a bank card reader on an auto bank. There is just not enough footfall.

The signal from our Wi-Fi router does not reach off the property and unless someone has spliced into the fibre optic cable our internet has the low-level security of distance and isolation. We do not “surf” in public nor at Byron Bay. Of course some “actor” with skill could access our traffic. Because it is boring and not commercial I doubt anyone can be properly arsed. I haven’t yet fitted quantum key encryption.

There has been a data breach somewhere else…

We tend not to answer the ‘phone. Any attempt at ‘phone coercions would be met with English and not French. Random callers are ignored. If a French  ‘phone scammer was able to persuade me in English, they would have probably earned a few quid. I used to keep the Jehovah’s Witnesses busy for hours discussing comparative theology and world philosophy. With a smile. They even used to “blood” new recruits because they knew I had no ill will.

The bank have replaced my card but set its ability to purchase on line to zero euros as a safety measure. For some reason they want me to use the mobile app to put this right. I only turn on my mobile when I am going out to the physio or the shops alone. A battery charge usually last several months! So why would I want to use a mobile app?

This seems to be the answer for everything  down load our mobile app tear you hair out and have a myocardial infarction…

OK as a ’64 child I am still technically a boomer. But hey I used the internet back in the mid-late eighties.

In the hitchhiker’s guide the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is obviously download our mobile app…

Obvs…

Simple…

No! I do not want to download your effing app!!

Clearly, I have just answered my own question. I must be an enlightened being because I no longer salaciously obsess about juicy smartphone apps.

There is no need to reincarnate to feed off/at the Google and Apple stores.

Final liberation is mine. I am a free being…

1984 Quotes – George Orwell

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“Orthodoxy means not thinking–not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”

“If you want to keep a secret, you must also hide it from yourself.”

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.”

“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them.”

“Sanity is not statistical.”

“The object of terrorism is terrorism. The object of oppression is oppression. The object of torture is torture. The object of murder is murder. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?”

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it.”

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

“Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

“The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.”

“Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.”

“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else. Not in the individual mind, which can make mistakes, and in any case soon perishes: only in the mind of the Party, which is collective and immortal.”

“All rulers in all ages have tried to impose a false view of the world upon their followers.”

Arhats Pratyekabuddhas and Bodhisattvas – Hagiography

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I have a pet theory that the hagiography of all religions exaggerates and glosses. From knowledge of human behaviour and Chinese whispers, things passed down get embellished so as to confer kudos on the teller, the raconteur. Rarely are things made greyer and more boring. This means that taking things with a pinch of salt might offer some balance.

To the faithful there is nothing quite like a miracle to prove truth and religious figures are given, in narrative, super-human abilities and qualities. These days they would be told with enhanced computer CGI and special effects on a big budget. Bigging up martyrs and buddhas is good PR for the various churches. Who in the past had control of the proles as a raison d’être. The Sacerdotes have always had ritual magic and theatre in their playbook. Simplifying the message to an all fire-consuming hell and blissful pearly-gated paradise could be writ large on the side of big red double decker “Brexit” bus. Nobody could come back to provide a TripAdvisor rating for either holiday destination.

What if all that exaggeration has gotten completely out of hand?

Christianity, depending on flavour has a host of saints. Jesus’ crew, his disciples, are sanctified and portrayed. That depiction has taken place over two millennia. They are represented as holy. When if you think about it, they were learners, disciples, in the act of being taught and trained. Similarly, Buddha’s sixteen {18} arhats are seen as holy, saintly. When they were hanging out listening to Buddha and learning his ideas. It is said they achieved enlightenment. Lessening of burden is enlightenment, full liberation may not be the same as the partial enlightenment.

People pray to the saints and the arhats.

The canon’s of both Buddhism and Christianity were/are written by human beings and therefore by logic are coloured with bias and wishful thinking. There may well be some idealising.

Mahayana promotes the bodhisattva ideal where enlightened or near enlightened beings come back to teach out of the kindness of their hearts for the benefit of all sentient beings. This is seen by some as more worthy. Whereas the haughty arhats are too arrogant to teach, the pratyekabuddhas who do it all by themselves are not sufficiently omniscient to teach. They leave no legacy. They shun the sangha; they are not one of the gang. They are too arrogant, snobby, aloof, to be with normal people. The arhats, perhaps at one with the awesome and austere nature of reality and universe, lack the cosy human compassion are biased against and not as “nice” and the smiling friendly bodhisattva. They cannot be arsed to come back time and time again, the bastards.

People who do not know what these states of consciousness are like, make judgments thereupon. This {scholarly?} interpretation gets incorporated into the ongoing cannon, the creed, the gospel. People like definitions and will roll out comparison between, all knowing, earning bragging rights about something which they do not know. One could look it up in “Buddhism for Dummies”.

Religious thinking likes its “signs”. A rainbow appearing when someone achieves Parinirvana.

What if all these processes are entirely natural, relatively low key and nothing to shout about?

The hagiography diverges from reality…what is natural becomes miraculous. Which may inhibit application. The idea of a miracle is out of reach; the idea of continuous improvement and stepwise attainment is less daunting. Toning it down might increase genuine uptake of practice.,

Status pissing contests are a common human practice and are to be found in religion and science. People like to bullshit each other and pretend to know shed loads.

I have a pet theory that the hagiography of all religions exaggerates and glosses.

Memories – Alzheimer’s – Still Alice

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The other night we watched a film “Still Alice” the purpose of which was to get the viewers to empathise with the Columbia University professor Alice who develops early onset Alzheimer’s disease. It portrayed the impact on her and her family as she lost cognitive function and recall. There was no CGI, sex or violence in the film and it was engaging, well written and well-acted. A nice change from the glitzy, violent and insubstantial. It was a bit sentimental drawing on the American idealism of family and career. It showed how when someone devotes all life to career it can be taken away. Where value is placed can be fragile.

It is pretty easy to prematurely self-diagnose Alzheimer’s as one moves towards dotage. In our case the need for linguistic engagement outside of our proximal relationship is minimal. One could say that I am out of practice talking shite.

Modern psychology is very normative in its approach and there are a series of behavioural norms which, if there is divergence from, evokes a label of illness or syndrome. I don’t know where the set of societal norms are garnered from, what the statistical evidence is or whether the ultimate arbiter of “they” decrees what is normal. I don’t know who drew up and populated the Venn diagrams.

In the film there was mention of “memory makes us who we are”, there was thumbing of family photo albums and old holiday film footage was played in the narrative.

Human perception is never 100% objective and any recall of past events is subject to selective perception and selective memory. Humans are biased. We have selective recall. The memories, the bedrock upon which we build our re-collection of life are not entirely sound. In the film the protagonist identified as a clever university professor. That identity was removed when she started to lecture poorly. Her entire personal legend fell into question. The film suggested she suffered during this process, trying to cling on to her faculties and her legend.

A saccharin rose-tinted view of the past is perhaps the tearful key to enjoy the twilight years according to many. Looking back wistfully sustains as incapacity and incontinence sets in. Our past “glories” provide a nice warm feeling which is not a leaking catheter. The ability to live partially in the past is seen good as the quantity of future available fades.

I am certain that how I hold memories of the past differs from many because I have recapitulated my life numerous times and worked hard at erasing my personal history {not in a browser}. I’ll speculate that were a psychologist to investigate my recall of life memory they might note a difference to norm.

I am not beholden to past nor do I cling on to it. Nevertheless, it has a causal relationship in how I interact in the now. I have a decent scientific training and could, if pushed, sustain a scientific conversation or persona.

One could argue that I have forgotten who or what I once was and have morphed into an anti-social bumpkin. Look how far he has sunken! What a fall from intellectual grace! How sad, what a shame!

But that would be facile.

This addiction to creating “memories” or “Insta-stories” is counterproductive to the pursuit of liberation. The concretising enhances the urge for rebirth. The constant re-telling of “family means everything” is often a lie and something we are encouraged to provide in our PR stories for public consumption. There is a big illusion concerning “family”. To err from ideal is seen as bad even when the ideal itself is an illusory construct. We are complicit in the propagation and recounting of this illusion.

This means that although I can appear approximately normal, the underlying psyche in my case differs markedly in that a shared basis is not there. I do not think the way I am “supposed” to.

About a decade ago I had cause to re-learn university level physical chemistry. It took a while. I had big difficulty because some of the so-called proofs which I once accepted without question no longer seemed adequate to me. They seemed short-cut. Yet thousands of undergraduates receive degrees every year by correctly reproducing them and applying them mathematically to exercises generated by faculty. I have no doubt in the physical applicability of much science, because we can build rockets that work. I am not entirely convinced that the methodology is as perfect as we imagine and profess. There may be some element of kidding of self along the way.

Maybe I have lost my science ability, my science faculties.

The film touched briefly on the notion of identity, or self, and hence self-perception. Something which Alzheimer’s gradually erases, if I understand correctly. In some ways my notions of self are gone already even though I maintain some cognitive function and have near zero resident social-event memory. There is nothing which I cling to and not very much which keeps me here, incarnate, on earth.

This notion of self, seen as good, is also behind war and conflict. The gist of the film was that maintaining the sense of self and still being the same person underneath despite all the loss of function and memory was a good thing. I am still…despite…

I am not sure that it is, from the point of view of liberation. Karmically if you place a lot of stock in intellect and its application, then to have it withdrawn is a major challenge. One which could set you up well for the next life. Sometimes our worst fears manifest and that is not necessarily a bad thing. Our challenges at end of life can be the most profound and the most enabling for our onward evolution.

In the end, for all of us, our current notion of self must dissolve and pass whether quickly or otherwise.

Self is impermanent.

The Philosophy of Personal Identity

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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.

Believing Without Concluding

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Luckily, I can believe something without coming to a conclusion about its veracity or accuracy or degree of right. I don’t have to win an argument or be right. I can even hold multiple views about the same situation without needing to pick a favourite and I don’t need to soap box, to be dogmatic or adamant. The dream this morning highlighted a fundamental difference in mentality between me and where I once worked. I was not ambitious nor obsessed with winning and league table position. My life did not hang on success or kudos. In many ways I did not belong there amongst. So, it worked out as it did. Dandy.

I think a safe “conclusion” is that the dreams in this blog are not normal or average. This makes me something of an outlier, an anomaly even.  This “conclusion” is uncoloured and non-emotive. It is not significant.

I can see how some of the “data” in these dreams can be interpreted using various narratives, for example Toltec. In which case I belong to a certain predilection as a dreamer and not a stalker.  I am a slightly different class of being. I think it fair to see a mild philosophical bent in my approach to life.

I can try on a working hypothesis, see if there is a partial fit. If there is I note it but have no need to conclude. Such and such is consistent with so and so. No Biggy. Next.

My own experience is, that at least in my case, the law of cause & effect or karma is applicable. I have a mind set of trying to address karma rather than going “phew got away with it, at least for now”. I’ll speculate that this again is not normal or average. To take responsibility for the actions AND consequences in life is not something most share. They fail to see the link of causality because that can be mightily inconvenient. People suffer from entitlement issues and believe, for example, that they are entitled to bomb the living daylights out of a people. They deserve to enact bloody revenge. It is justice no matter how disproportionate. They may be unable to calmly and cooly think it through. They make concentrated poverty adjacent to their opulent wealth and do not foresee consequences. Blinded by rage they do not solve, lashing out is not the most evolved thing to do.

In terms of liberation. One cannot achieve liberation whilst one has unresolved karma, it remains like a weight holding you back. The karma of stubbornness is rich and like most karma can have an ironic flavour. If you don’t believe in karma, it is currently your karma so to be. Karma is patient and one day it will make you understand. You may get knelt.

I know, I believe, that I understand the implications of much of the material in the blog. But I will never conclude that I am right about this and exclusively so. There could be many other explanations or none at all. I am just constructing a temporary view for my own amusement. Like a sand castle I can knock it down. I won’t be explicit and detailed. People like to argue the toss especially with others on the internet.

Not concluding is the antithesis of modern education methods. We are trained to give the {only} “right” answer, to justify it and make a conclusion or two. That way we can gain marks and pass exams; we can earn qualifications.

Students want to know, “tell me what the answer is”. Sometimes there are no answers within the common mundane context. We can ask Siri or Alexa. I suspect that humanity is getting ever lazier and may one day lose the ability to think for itself.

People might only believe if the norm decrees something right and correct. If consensus deems. But there can be different groups of consensuses who will fight for the dominance of being right.

I don’t think that conclusions and answers are evolutionary. They fixate, anchor and coral.

Guardian – Elephant – Dream 14-9-13

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In the dream and the dreaming….

I am shown a map. It is a map of Japan. On the East side of Japan there is a place. It is The Gateway to freedom and enlightenment. I am the Guardian of this place.

No-one passes through – except by me.

People are annoyed that there is only one such place. It is not “where” people think it is. Nor can it be found as a physical locality, for it does not have one.

Many seek it, but it cannot be found, except through me.

People think that this Gateway is guarded by dogs or savage beasts.  It is not. It is guarded by an Elephant and that Elephant is me.

Many seek this Gateway but they are all using the wrong methods. I am the Guardian of the Gateway. It is a place and yet not a place.

Dream ends.

Karmic Snakes and Ladders

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In Buddhism we have the notion of stream enterer which if entered leads to, in the fullness of time, liberation or nirvana. This does not mean that the subsequent lives of a sotāpanna are easy rather ultimate “success” is assured. The challenges scale with the capability of the being.

One can think of the lives leading up to a possibility of stream entrance as a game of snakes and ladders. In some lives great karmic progress is made, a ladder. In other lives normal steady progress is made, the roll of the dice. Then there are lives in which arrogance and poor choices loads on extra karma. These lives are the snakes where one starts off again in a worse position. There is a snake on square 99 {97 here}. Just when success looks possible the chance is squandered. The problem is that progress and illumination can often stimulate arrogance and poor attitude. By accumulating personal power, one might get wealth, greed and clinging. What looks shiny could be retrograde.

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As one gets close to the fleeting moment of chance for stream entry the challenges get ever larger and sometimes way more subtle.

Imagine if you encountered Siddartha and failed to learn from him. Your “omniscience” somehow got in the way. That fleeting moment of chance which led you to the presence of a Buddha was missed. That is one massive Burmese python or anaconda of a snake! A Buddha could be the key to stream entry.

You missed a huge possibility for progress and were sent way back to learn all over again. A potential fate was forfeited.

Because of dependent origination or dependent arising, no fate is 100% fixed. But the general trends of karma and fate hold true. You have to cooperate with your fate in order to progress smoothly. If you are sulky and “do I have to” you won’t get ladders you will get snakes. If you are stubborn and pig-headed you will get many snakes. If you are light and easy, you will get ladders and people who help you on your way.

Some people really make bad choices, and in my experience, this is to do with them being glamoured in one way or another, by things or people. Those fond of short cuts, can find that they are anything but.