Post Anaesthesia – Insomnia – UK Shenanigans – US Security Services Dream 02-12-2025

Still struggling to get a decent night’s seep. I am on a protocol of Zopiclone and 500/30 paracetamol codeine before bed. I have long been aware that my per kilogram body mass ability to handle alcohol and cannabis was at the higher end of the spectrum. I can still function when others might not. The attempts to sleep might be hindered by a state of “vigilance” and I am building up a psychological conditioning in which I do not want to try to go to bed. This is not healthy. In the “pharmacy” there are a number of synthetic and non-synthetic “narcotics” which I might use. At the moment the dosage is minimal, a maximum of 60mg codeine a night. This sleeping is clearly the thing I want to ameliorate now.

The morning’s dreams are in two segments. The first I would characterise as very boring and very old hat. Yawn.

The scene opens in UK research council offices. People known to me from the late eighties, the nineties and early two thousands. The people are exclusively London and South East based are conspiring amongst themselves about me. They, whilst pretending to be my friends, are undermining me and otherwise plotting and whispering amongst themselves. They have a fear of being found out and exposed. They are stuck and badly so. At the time they thought that the plotting was clever even cunning. They are now less convinced of this and far less amused by it. They are worried. In the dream they imagine they can interact with me in the same way as they once did. They are arrogant and complacent. They have no idea of the extent to which I have changed. In the dream I am bored that the same old shit is again being presented. I know that what they may deem important is ultra petty and trivial to me.

I awake it is around 6 AM. I have a loo break going back to bed assuming that I will not sleep.

The wife and I are walking through an airport. We have already cleared customs and border check. It is a huge airport in America. {Query Denver} There are shops and food concessions on either side. The wife pops into a shop. I continue along the corridor and a tall woman in dark navy cop like uniform stops me. She has immaculately ironed grey trousers and a paramilitary shirt. She is armed and has her long black hair in a tight pony-tail. She addresses me by name, “Dr Taylor can we have a word with you in private?”

“Yes, what about my wife?”

“My colleague will look after her. You are not being detained, we would just like a word.”

She ushers us off through an identity pass on lanyard secure door and into what looks like a high technology operations room. She ushers me down the corridor into a glass walled cubicle / office. All the while she is chatting with me in an accomplished and highly skilled manner. She is a pleasure to be with. She has a mild west coast accent and is very high functioning. I can tell that they are taking multiple images of me and she asks if I would mind giving a blood sample. I have nothing to hide.

I say that she is not what she at first seems to be and is probably secret service. She agrees that she is. I ask her if I can have a look at my file. She says that she cannot think of a reason why not and pulls up a chair her side of the desk. She shows me image after image of me reaching back decades. There are some from Tokyo some from Santa Clara and even some from Brittany France. I comment that they have been busy. She says with some pride that this is what they do. I ask her if there is anything else she wants to know. No. She looks at my passport and identity card, scans them. She gives me another card which is of US origin. It is for me to use, if needed, during our stay. It is high end official. If in doubt just show this card.

She then ushers me back to the main terminal where the wife is waiting. The wife asks and I say that US secret service have just taken a blood sample and have had me under surveillance for a very long time.

The dream ends and I gingerly role over onto my back. It is a little after 7 AM.

Waking Dream – French GP – UK Charity Dream 18-10-2025 – Bodhicaryāvatāra

Here is the dreaming sequence had yesterday and overnight. The purpose of this current visit is to ascertain if a move back to the UK feels right and/or is otherwise on the cards. The previous few dreams have not been auspicious in this context.

Yesterday we were driving back along a valley and “no through road” “road ahead closed” signs became apparent with no further information. It is the only “A” road route. The signage for diversion was late and the following signage poor, to understate. It was done in a shoddy manner. This contributed to us getting lost in a hive of tiny single track country roads.

During the night around 1 AM the fire alarm in the bedroom started bleeping on a regular basis. I opened a window to allow air circulation. At home this often corrects. The bleeping continued. So stark bollock naked I climbed with my spastic body on a chair to investigate. The detector was stuck to the ceiling with dual sided sticky tape and two screws which had not been rawl plugged into the ceiling. The detector came away in my hands. I went to the bathroom the both of us wide awake and light on. I unplugged the battery and the bleeping stopped. The workmanship was quick-fix shoddy rushed.

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A little later around 4:30 AM. Dreaming I find myself in the upstairs room of a village / town centre region in France. On the square outside I can see a church spire. The village square is cobbled. I do not know this village. In the waiting room next to the secretary a patient is waiting.  He is a man a little younger than me dressed in maroon cords and with a sleeveless puffer jacket. He has unruly curly hair around the circumference of male patterned baldness. He greets me in French with a great deal of warmth. He is a local big cheese. I have taken over as the village doctor, the village general practitioner. {GP}

I usher him into the office, and we discuss what ails him. He is after some more codeine for the pain in his knees. I know that the previous GP had been in the habit of dishing out drugs like sweeties. I ask him to get on the table for an examination. I flex and check his knees. Whilst I can hear some arthritic crunching the mobility is good. I say that we need to wean him of the opiates. He disagrees. I ask him if he remembers having a proper easy bowel movement. No. I say that this time I will prescribe him some codeine but the next time I will reduce the dosage. I open his cardboard covered dossier and look through we discuss in a mixture of French and English his posting to French Indochina and his time in the foreign legion.

Back in the waiting room / secretarial area the room is filling up with people to see the new GP. They are not all ill. It has a social function. The secretary gives me a glass of red wine, and the next patient comes with me for consultation. She too is a local big wig. She sits in my office and asks how much wine I drink. One glass a day I reply. I know in the dream that I do not drink at all. I am saying this because the wine was by way of a welcome. She then thanks me for taking up the position as GP for the village.

The scene changes and I am in a modern squashed in English new build two-bedroom house on the upstairs carpeted landing. A letter comes through the letterbox and lands on the doormat. It is a letter from a solicitor. I open the letter, and it is stating that I have inherited the chairman ship of an unspecified charity in Lerwick. I should travel there to take up post.

I make my way to a ferry port and get on a boat to cross to the islands. First, I have to descend in a lift to the disembarkation point. I get on the boat, and it is very low tide. Out of the window and in the caldera of a fountain which is where the boat is waiting, I can see large eels, ling and conger eels. They are congregating around the central fountain. There is no water. In my mind I note that I could come back here and throw a line should I wish to catch these eels / fish. Though I am unsure that I would wish so to do or why.

On board the boat is a member of the charity committee. He is advising me that there is a power struggle at the charity and as a non-islander there is both a chance that I could sort it out or a chance that I could further precipitate conflict. I am not overly keen on finding out which.

As I start to come to, I am reminded of two phrases, “perfidious Albion” and “may I be the doctor and the nurse”. The latter of which stems from Śāntideva’s so-called bodhisattva vows.

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With my palms clasped at my heart,
I urge all buddhas longing for nirvāṇa:
Do not leave us blind and all alone,
But remain with us for countless ages!

Through whatever virtue I have gained
By all these actions now performed,
May the pain of every living being
Be cleared away entirely, never to return.

For all the beings ailing in the world,
Until their sickness has been healed,
May I become the doctor and the cure,
And may I nurse them back to health.

Bodhicaryāvatāra: An Introduction to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life

by Śāntideva

Being Off the Map

In general people have a fairly fixed idea about how the world is, how people behave and what is expected. Which is a nice way of saying that people are prejudiced. The fact that I resigned my job at a decent university without any other, better job to go to, was for many a non sequitur. They could not get their head around it. It did not compute. Some invented some imaginary scandal to explain it, scandal ever being bread and butter in perfidious Albion.

People do not associate words on perception and meditation with a smoking skinhead bovver-boy. Nor do they image that a piss artist front row rugby player can chant in deep voice. People are set in their ways and their minds are a tad concrete.

I quite like having more than one working explanation for any given situation. I do not have to settle in any absolute way for which one is “right”. Modern education insists on getting the socially accepted “right” answer to exam questions. Students want to learn how to produce and parrot the “right” answer so as to get “A” levels and degrees. People are trained to think in an absolute binary right-wrong way.

The most logical explanation from a socio-political point of view is that I am simply a burn-out who could not hack it with the big boys, the big cheeses.

Another explanation is that I am off the map. I differ significantly in orientation from most. I just don’t fit. I am a square peg which cannot be hammered into a round hole. No drama. People have long been wary of things which have not been mapped out.

This means that only the foolhardy might seek to touch me with a barge pole. I could be infectious. Association with me could be career threatening.

I have been told by others that people do not want to be seen associating with me in public.

There is no incentive in a “what-is-in-it-for-me” sense to interact with me in any way, whether meaningful or otherwise.

I will likely remain off the map, uncharted.

People can choose to choose whatever it is they want to choose. Their choice is their choice. I have no wish to influence. If they make poor choices that is not my problem. I never advised them and they never sought my advice. People need to learn in whichever way helps them to learn.

This notion of standing back, non-interference, is neutral. It is nether life enhancing nor life destructive. It is an approach which does not make sense to others who wish to interact, to impinge, to affect and to influence. Some cannot resist trying to guide the lives of others and bend them to their will.

Non-interference is a direct consequence of emptiness, lack of will or ambition, is not on the map of modern ways of living. It is not there in “opportunity” land. After all “opportunities” should and must be seized!!

Why?