Jeff Salzmann critiquing Jordan Peterson on the Daily Evolver

Jeff Salzman of The Daily Evolver and Integral theory thinks Jordan Peterson is a "traditionalist" which is two or three stages behind integral as a development. I disagree.

Here's the link to Jeff's piece - https://www.dailyevolver.com/2018/03/what-jordan-peterson-and-his-fans-and-foes-can-learn-from-integral-theory-part1/

Jeff (JS) says Jordan Peterson (JP) is "traditional" and believes in "good and evil". But he's also "modern", and "green". And then he admits that JP may be integral, but isn't using the right words. Kind of patronising. I wonder how much JS has read or listened to. He seems to have read "12 Rules" - with none of which I disagree, especially don't bother children when they're skateboarding, and put your own house in order. Not sure about stroking cats, but I don't know what he's referring to, which is apparently rule 12.

And JS misses what JP is really saying about religion and myth.

JP talks about development theory (e.g. Piaget). Just because he's never heard of or refers to Ken Wilber and Integral Theory doesn't mean he's not integral. (And Integral doesn't necessarily have all the answers - assume everyone you talk to knows something you don't - rule #4 or something).

Is JS just hung up on JP's language? The first thing I picked up on when reading Ken Wilber 15 years ago was his attack on post-modernism, moral relativity, boomeritis, flatland - all the things which JP is attacking. He's not traditional (even if JS cannot get past his language) - he's post-post modern, just like the rest of us. He's saying we cannot live without values and meaning.

Is Integral (a la JS) in danger of being worshipped as an ideology?

Does KW/JS have a problem with JP's idea that hierarchies are a) natural and b) do actually reflect reality? (i.e. that people rise to the top of hierarchies because of virtue (in a genuinely equal opportunity situation, which of course begs a lot of questions).)

He DOESN'T say make a religion of your ideology (if anything, he says that's the problem with SJWs and post-modernism).

JS doesn't think the jihadis (et al) are like the Huns and Vandals. Or he thinks they're unimportant / irrelevant. There are an awful lot of (potential) jihadis out there - the poor and dispossessed of the world, who may not want to be reasoned with, and may be losing patience with things as they are (even if they have no idea where to go other than backwards).

And I would give JP 8/10 on the Integral Level score card (as displayed in the video) - I think he is precisely everybody's friend and no-one's fool. He's attacking post-modernism and Marxism, not people. And is prepared to talk / argue with anyone / everyone.

I doubt that JP has ever hit anyone. That's not his point. He's saying we have a very deep in-built cultural bias against hitting women, but not men. So that men are thereby constrained when arguing with men (don't behave outrageously, because that may end in violence). And yes, we can walk away from crazy people, but in today's interconnected always on world, where people are screaming Nazi and other abuse, how do you deal with that, and the lies they peddle, which are believed. I have lost count of the number of people who tell me JP is a right wing ideologue, who have never listened to or read anything by him, but believe the abuse that is thrown at him on the internet. How do you counter that? KW and JS don't get that reaction (I think / assume, if they do it's very low key) because they don't have a million hits on their youtube videos.

Will there be no police in the integral kingdom? Will everyone be nice? (Part 2, 43 mins)

"Its truer than true, it's true with a capital T" (Christianity) says Jeff, but criticises JP for saying the same thing, but being honest and humble enough not to know exactly how one squares the Truth with scientific truth (and is also maybe being very careful with the sensitivities of his audience). JP's key point is that myth encapsulates the accumulated wisdom of humanity from very early times - it cannot be taken literally, it's possible for example that no such person as Christ ever existed, but the figure of Christ represents an ideal, a way of being, that we can aspire to.

Jeff says he knows how Christianity is true (and all other religions) - has he seen the light? Jeff and I may have an idea how to integrate Christianity into our lives, world view, integral philosophy, but I think this statement ("I know") is on a par with JP's tweet about slapping the book reviewer for calling him a fascist mystic. BTW, why is JP a "fascist" mystic? And I didn't know Jung was a fascist. Ban all uses of the word Nazi or fascist from intelligent discourse, please. Does JP want to gas Jews?

52 minutes - right on. Why does JS think that JP thinks we should take it literally - where does he say this (or even imply it)? JP is arguing for a much richer understanding of the myth than I think JS allows.

The virgin birth is (maybe) equally about the creation itself - the Big bang - something from nothing. And the cosmos is our divine mother inseminated by the creator, whatever he/she/it is.

56 mins. Why does JS think JP doesn't think evolution is continuing? JP talks all the time about our needing to be our own hero, about straddling the boundary between where we have come from, the known, and where we are going, the unknown. Not hiding in the known, cosy, but going on this great adventure - isn't that what Integral is all about?

Pond Life 6 January 2003

It was the first Sunday of the new year. Soon after I woke up I was overwhelmed with anger, with someone I love, but who I feel no longer loves me. I had the day before me but did not really know what I wanted to do with it.

I had a pot of tea in bed, and a bath, and then sat down to meditate for an hour.

After a while, I felt myself to be sitting or lying at the bottom of a pond, looking up at the surface. It was choppy and disturbed, so that the light in the pond was subdued, as on a grey overcast day. I realised, as I looked at the surface, which seemed far above me, that it was my anger, confused and disturbed. Yet I felt completely calm; it was quite separate from me. Although I could feel it, or remember how it had felt a half hour or so before, it didn’t touch or affect me - as if I was watching a surgeon cutting my flesh under a local anaesthetic. Not like that really, because I did not feel numb or drugged, just that it was distant, happening outside of my self. A sort of haiku popped into my head, which I wrote down in my journal after the meditation had finished.

When I got up, I had breakfast and a cup of coffee. I decided I wouldn’t go to mass at 9.30, but that I would try to find the Friends Meeting House in town, which I had been meaning to go to for some weeks. The meeting was due to start at 10.30. I got up to leave at 10, still sort of undecided, not quite sure where the Meeting House was, or where I could park the car. When I had spoken to someone about the times of meetings before Christmas, he was very particular to say I was very welcome but that, if I came, I should arrive before the Meeting started. I decided to leave it in god’s hands - if I found a parking space, and if I found the Meeting House, and I arrived in time, I would go to the Meeting - if not, I’d go to Asda and do some grocery shopping.

As it happened it was easy - a parking space appeared and I followed my nose (I had a vague idea where the Meeting House was as I’d been there for a sort of seminar two years before) and I arrived at the house a few minutes before 10.30.

As I stepped through the door, into a hall crowded with people, and stood looking about, an elderly lady came up to me and asked me who I was, and offered her help. I explained I was a visitor and she gave me a few leaflets about the Quakers. I felt how friendly Friends seemed to be - there was a warmth and liveliness in the hallway that was very warming and reassuring.

We all trooped in to the room where the Meeting was to be held. The Meeting House itself looks Georgian, but the room is a sort of annex, modern, hexagonal, with large windows letting in the brilliant winter sunshine, and comfortable chairs arranged in circles around the room. A large bearded man got up and apologised for the loud drilling noise, and assured us it would soon stop, which it duly did, and everyone sat in silence around the room. I closed my eyes, and assumed most of the others did also. Somewhat to my surprise, and pleasure, the meeting proceeded exactly as I’d always heard they did. There was no leader, there were no readings, or hymns or rituals, just about twenty people sitting quietly. After a while a woman got up and asked us to remember a friend who was appearing in Clacton Magistrates Court for refusing to pay part of his taxes - the part that he estimated was paying for a war in Iraq. After a while a man got up and talked about old age, and a bit later another man picked up the same subject and said a few words more. All the time, the room was filled with sunshine, warmth, and the sound of birdsong from the little garden outside. I sat in my chair and meditated.

I then had a very clear visual experience. Occasionally when I meditate this happens. When I first began, many years ago, it would usually consist of a dark background, with a bright glowing golden disc in front of it, or occasionally a sort of doughnut. The disk or doughnut looked like molten gold, a brilliant rich yellow colour, slightly blurred around the edges, and the darker background generally looked like clouds, grey and dark and brilliant white where the light caught them with here and brilliant edges of gold and silver where the sun caught them. The background might vary but the disc or doughnut was nearly always there. I read some time later in a book called A Meditator's Diary, by an American woman who had stayed in a Buddhist monastery in Thailand to learn to meditate, that this was a nimitta, and that each person had a different one, and that this tended to change over time as they meditated. The visual experience never lasted very long - it’s hard when meditating to know how much time has passed in any case, but it usually seemed to last for only a few minutes, perhaps only seconds, and frustratingly, because it was always very beautiful, if I attempted to look at it, it disappeared even more quickly. As if by grasping at it, I had chased it away.

I stopped regular meditation many years ago - there never seemed to be enough time - and only very occasionally made an attempt to do so, and I usually ended up feeling frustrated. Then my marriage failed and after several months on my own I started to meditate again, every day, for an hour, usually straight after I had got up and bathed. On the odd days when I missed it, I felt uncomfortable and insecure. Ironically, I missed it most often on Sundays, when I got up too late and didn’t want to miss mass at 9.30. During the week, as I work for myself, I would simply go to my office that much later in the morning, if I woke up later than usual.

When I resumed regular meditation, I did so in quite a different spirit than on those few occasions when I had tried over the previous twenty or so years. Then I had often felt desperate, or very depressed, and needy for some dramatic experience, which never came, so I gave up frustrated and discouraged. Now, despite all the anguish over the preceding months, I came to it without any expectations, just a feeling that this was something I should never have given up, and that I should persist, patiently, and trust in God I suppose, to let whatever was to happen, happen. And nothing very much did happen. I found it relaxing, deeply so, and as the months went by, it became more and more important to me that I made the effort every day to put the time aside for it. That was the only effort - meditation is about the contradictory state of trying (to meditate) without trying, which can be confusing, and disheartening. But that was also part of the benefit - not to be disheartened, to accept whatever happened in meditation as intended, part of the process. Sometimes after an hour of trying to still my thoughts, continually focussing on my breath coming in and going out, or simply on being aware of my surroundings - the bird song outside, the warmth of the sun on my face - it would seem as if I had done nothing but daydream, one endless stream of thoughts about anything and everything chasing their tails around my mind, and, only for a few seconds in the hour, actually being aware of the moment. But I began to realise that this was not time wasted. For a start, although trains of thought came and went, I wasn’t interested in them, or what they were about. Although not perhaps aware in that pure sense of the moment, I was very much aware of how these thoughts arose, and each thought led to another, and another, and another, in an endless silly cycle of mental chatter. At times it was like watching a hamster scurrying round its cage, running in its wheel or up and down its little ladder, endless motion, without going anywhere. So even if I wasn’t stilling my mind, I was at least becoming aware of its separate existence, and for such a lot of time, its futility. And oddly, sometimes after the most frustrating sessions, feeling deeply relaxed and secure afterwards, as if the part of me that was observing the mind, was really relaxed, and was quite separate from the thoughts themselves. Sometimes the thoughts were quite disturbing - violent, or fearful, or angry. I didn’t try and suppress them, or change their direction or mood, just constantly tried to pay attention what was actually happening in the moment.

After a while I began to have visual experiences again - I am deliberately not referring to them as visions, because they aren’t - more akin to the effect of pressing your fingers against your eyeballs with your eyes closed, which makes you see bright flashing lights, or what you see if you’ve been looking at a bright light and then close your eyes and you can still see the after-image. This time they were different. The background is light, varying from a silvery grey to bright white light like hazy sunshine, and in the foreground, a tiny dark fragment. If you imagine the background as a sheet of white A4 paper, the object in the foreground measures perhaps only one or two millimetres square. It looks most like a small fragment of paper ash, very sharply in focus, with the colour varying from jet black to a soft grey. It often seems like the focus of the whole field, as if everything is being drawn in to it. I also sometimes think it may be the “blind spot” at the back of the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eyeball and there are no rod or cone cells to detect light - that is as if with my eyes shut what I am aware of is that part of the brain that processes the signals from the retina.

To return to the meeting. As I sat there meditating, I was once again sitting or lying at the bottom of the pond looking up at the surface. Now the light from the surface was much brighter (probably the effect of sitting in the sun filled Meeting room, even with my eyes shut) when it seemed quite suddenly that two things happened. Firstly my nimitta was no longer a piece of ash, but a water boatman swimming on the surface of the pond. I could see with pin sharp clarity each of its legs, moving frantically, and so clearly that I could see the depressions in the meniscus that its body and legs were making. And at the same time I could see that the surface was completely flat like a sheet of glass, mirror smooth, through which I was able to see the sky completely clearly. And then, suddenly, as I was looking at the water boatman, it suddenly shot off out of view over my right shoulder, and I suppose I sort of came to.

What was so wonderful, funny ha ha really, or funny ah ha!, was the way in which this experience complemented and completed the experience I had had whilst meditating at home that morning. What the little boatman signified, if anything, I don’t really know or care about. Perhaps nothing, perhaps the last vestiges of my anger, perhaps me, the little me that wanders about the world supported on this perfectly clear, perfectly still, pond of water. But I felt wonderfully answered, completed, satisfied. I wanted to stand up in the Meeting, but something held me back, and I said nothing.

Once the hour was up (I heard no bells or alarms so I suppose one or more were looking at the wall clock) everyone sort of woke up, and shook hands with each, and after a bit of business (upcoming events and announcements, just like the priest gives out at the end of a service) we all went back into the hallway for coffee, and I chatted with one or two of the Friends, and borrowed a book from their library. After about half an hour I went off to Asda to do my shopping, and then to the village pub for a couple of pints and a bit of social life.

Towards the end of the week, on the Friday, I got into a bit of a panic about the amount of work I had to do, and having slept late, rushed off to the office without meditating. In the event I got there no earlier than I normally do, and although I worked away all day, did no more than I often do in two or three hours. I went home at the end of the day, having worked until nearly 9 pm, feeling nervy and frazzled, and determined that tomorrow I would not miss out.

I thought I had the Saturday to myself, and was relaxing in bed with a pot of tea, smoking a cigarette and reading from the book I’d borrowed from the Friends’ library the previous Sunday. I was looking forward to my bath, and an hour’s meditation, when the ‘phone rang. As this doesn’t happen often, I didn’t want to miss the caller, and hopped out of bed and rushed down to answer it before the answering machine picked up the call - it wasn’t an old friend, or one of the family, as I’d hoped, but someone from the gliding club, asking me why I wasn’t there to do my winch duty. Somewhat confused, I said I wasn’t there because I was on duty the next day (Sunday) but it turned out that the man who’d done the winch driver’s rota had got his dates muddled and that in fact I was due at the club this morning at 9 am for a 3 hour shift. As I had in any case wanted to go to the Friends Meeting again, I was quite pleased, and in any case it was too late to try and get someone else to do the shift in my place, so I said I’d be there as quickly as I could. So I finished my tea and got dressed, and rushed out without either bathing or meditating, deciding that I would do both when I got home again after my shift was over.

I then spent three hours driving the winch, launching gliders into a clear blue sky on a beautiful clear and very frosty morning. When driving the winch, one is generally alone and, for a lot of the time, just waiting for someone to call you on the radio to ask you to launch the next glider. In the intervals I tried to meditate, but I found it hard to concentrate. I then had a very powerful insight, a sort of visualisation. Although not in that meditative state that I had been on the previous Sunday, I saw myself again, now looking down. I was in air rather than water. And all I was was an observer, just consciousness. And below me, quite separate from me, was the rest of me - David really - the full set of vices and virtues, my past, my personality, everything of me that makes me me as distinct from anyone else, apart from my consciousness. And I had this wonderful perception of how completely innocent that entity was, how what David is, how he behaves, responds, acts and reacts, how he thinks and feels, is all contingent, all arises out of where he was born, his parents, his upbringing, his genes - that he is utterly helpless to change any of this. Even that the boundary between himself and the world, where his autonomy begins and ends is almost a construct, that he is part of a continuous chain of causes and effects which he both suffers and transmits. And that this David has come into being, at his birth, and will disappear utterly with his death. That if anything continues, it is simply this awareness. As I am describing this, it may sound as if I’m describing a chain of thought, but it wasn’t like that - it was all bound up with the visualisation or vision, apprehended immediately, although the implications worked out over the next few hours.

It was wonderfully liberating - no guilt, suddenly seeing what is meant by action without acting - David is part of the flow of events, continuously responding to the things that happen to him, and this disembodied self floating above him, the will, now wills nothing, desires nothing. And David is no more special than all those other personalities he’s interacting with, that they are all equal, and equally unimportant - that what matters is the self behind and above and beyond each of these personalities, and that’s how it’s possible to love your enemy - ironically easier to love your enemy’s true self, because you don’t even like the personality - that all there is to love is the self (whereas to truly love our friends and lovers and children is much harder, because as personalities we love their personalities or perhaps what we see in them that is of us, or complements us). The Dalai Lama talks about this in his little book On Transforming the Mind - that we need to learn to see particularly those we love without attachment, to realise that the thing we are loving is transitory, not really real.

The experience is also horrifying, as The Gospel of Thomas (apparently) says “. . when you find that for which you are seeking, you will first be horrified and amazed . .” because suddenly all these things from which all my happiness has seemed to come, are nothing. It’s not lonely or depressing, it’s just so different.

And then seeing so clearly what I’ve been told and sort of intellectually understood for years, about our desperate searching for happiness and fulfilment in the world, but really seeing it and understanding it - that it is the self trying through the personality to find the satisfaction in the world and its abundance and riches, in relations with others, the satisfaction that only the self can provide. That the world is wonderful, but as soon as we begin to believe in it, we are lost to it, and to our true selves.

And more of the same, to the point where I feel myself on top of a very high mountain, and very much afraid that I shouldn’t really be up here at all, and that I will fall, and it will hurt terribly. I shall probably go home soon, and get drunk.

low growth

Am I experiencing low growth? My income is low, my assets decreasing, my future prospects dim. Does it hurt? Do I mind? In short no. I have never been happier. Or, less uncomfortable, anxious, stressed. I like not growing. Am I vegetating? I don't feel / think so. I feel richer, safer, happier. I am uncertain about our future, my future, but happy with that unknowing. See https://soundcloud.com/weeklyeconomicspodcast/the-end-of-growth?&utm_medium=email&utm_source=nefoundation&utm_content=2&utm_campaign=wep_0803&source=wep_0803

On God

References: Iris Murdoch, Metaphysics as a guide to Morals et al, Paul Davies The Fifth Element (check), . . . .

Definition:
God is the set of all sets, the sum total of everything (and of no-thing, to be defined / discussed below). It has no attributes, as yet, other than its totality - it is just everything that is, every particle, every thought, every feeling, every living (or dead?) inidividual. All energy, all matter, all potential, all action, all cause and effect.

So defined, God has some of the attributes usually associated with it - omni-presence, omni-science (since it includes all thoughts, perceptions, awarenesses everywhere), omni-potence (since it is all actions, all events). Whether it has will or intention to be discussed below.

This definition does not presume identity, coherence or direction.

In what sense can God be regarded as a person?

I think Spinoza said this already.

Eros and agape

Eros as desire, agape as attraction - in mathematics a well of attraction. Eros, not simply a negative rolling down the hill into the well of attraction, but a positive desire to head for the well of attraction. Both eros and agape drive the evolution of the cosmos (all-that-is)

Eros resides in the entity / organism / individual

Agape resides in the cosmos as a whole

Why / in what way is the cosmos (and therefore God) a coherent unity)? Paul Davies - the boostrap theory for the singularity. The appearance of difference. The descent(?) from potential energy to the heat death of the cosmos.

Sometimes dreams are true

Maybe . . .

A few years ago, something  she always worried about (it happened to her mother) started to happen to her. She was frightened and lonely and much too proud to want to share her real deep down fears with anyone. Added to which, the effects were affecting her responses and behaviour, and her ability to think about what was or might be happening and what to do for the best. He became increasingly confused, angry, and upset, at her sudden mood changes, outbursts of unreasonable or incomprehensible anger, and she could see that. He was having problems himself, of self esteem, with his business, with her and their relationship, and although he tried to be philosophical and accepting, lurched towards drink and denial. She began to see the situation was hopeless. She did not want to descend into dribbling incoherence, or worse, with him, and when she remembered that she loved him, did not want to drag him down with her. She concocted a plot - to drive him away, but not to tell him why, because she knew he would not leave her for that reason, that that was what he had signed up for, in sickness and in health. And she felt it would be kinder, to force him out.

So he left, and she began to regret it almost immediately, convinced he would kill himself, and then sent him money so that at least he might survive for a while, long enough perhaps to find his feet. He did not understand, and kept pursuing her, badgering her, trying somehow to persuade her that things (which he did not understand) were not as they were. And she, wretched and confused, wanting him, in some way, but knowing that could not, must not, be, pushed and pulled. And all the while the rot crept on.

Eventually, affect ceased. She did and said things almost by rote, because she felt they were required; a postcard, a letter, birthday and Christmas cards and poems, but felt each day, each week, each month, less able to summon the feelings the letters and cards were meant to convey.  She talked of the old, good times they had shared, all the while knowing there was no future, they could do no more. He grew irritated and sad, that she said so many empty things, while meaning and wanting something more (he felt). And each time they met, the distance grew wider, the gulf deeper, until only anger or rage was powerful enough to jump the gap, which only made it wider still.

Finally, one day, he understood, and wept. Because he loved her, and meant to care for her, and did not know how to reach out his hand, and hold hers, and be good to her.

Thought for the day

My lack is my salvation. I wrote this on my Facebook page and here on May 2nd, 2014. I'd had an insight that my very shortage of practically everything (I was then trying to live on between 5 and 8 euros a day) was in a way both a liberation, and a protection for me, a way of forcing a kind of asceticism on myself that I am otherwise too weak willed, or weak minded, too willing to be distracted by things I can pay for, to seriously undertake. Now I am even poorer (financially). I have £1 in my bank account and nil in my pocket. I have no tobacco, nothing to drink, enough food for a few days. I have a comfortable bed. I am warm and dry. If I want to go anywhere, I can cycle, or walk. And I know, if I did have any money, the first thing I would want to do is buy tobacco, or alcohol, or both. Which is why, if I do get any money, after buying myself some good food, I will use what's left to pay off those people who have been kind enough to lend me money over the past few months.

A stone for Alba

Down and out in Naxos and Corfu

Eleven months to the day, date and hour since I had first passed her in the wolf light of early dawn, I got off the ferry in Corfu. I had descended from a mountain in Naxos a few days before, where I had been pleasantly marooned for five months without access to electricity, running water or people, other than my landlord and host, a man called Hodge.

I was met at the bus station in Corfu Town by my new owner, or boss, and hauled off to her hotel, the Villa Magdalena, some twelve kilometres away, in the centre of the island. She kindly allowed me two hours rest before putting me to work with a gang of Greeks, Albanians and Glenn, another English refugee, preparing the hotel for the arrival of a group of forty or so Germans the following day. This explained why she had been so keen for me to come at once, although she did not explain this on the ‘phone. After a blissfully hot shower, my first in several months, I presented myself for work. I cannot remember when we stopped that day, but it was certainly late in the evening. We resumed at seven the following morning. I continued to work eighteen hour days for the next fortnight until the Germans left. A baptism of fire into the life of an unpaid volunteer in the hospitality business. Once the Albanians had left and the Germans arrived four of us remained to cook, feed, clean up and man the bar.

One evening I got rather drunk (I was possibly also exhausted) and compounded my felony by swearing in front of the guests and falling over one of them, who was unfortunately “rolly” (German for wheel chair) bound. For some reason my owner did not sack me.

I had left Naxos in a hurry. I’d spent my last days in Naxos City, a.k.a. Sodom and Gomorrah, and each day I inevitably spent a little more of the pittance left after eleven months. I had just enough cash to buy a ferry ticket and a small bottle of water. I disembarked in Athens with €1.50 in my pocket. I was able to touch an old work mate for a loan - he had a whip round in his office for me.

This is not an unusual situation in Greece. In January I was helping Mikhailis redecorate his house in return for a mattress and a meal, usually lentil soup and bread, and some krasi from his taverna. I asked him to lend me €10 to buy some tobacco. He declined, explaining that he had no cash until the end of the month, when he received his pension. Meanwhile he was surviving on tick from local shops and the remaining stock at his taverna, closed for the winter. I realised I knew no one on Naxos who had any money. I posted a jokey reference to this on FaceBook. A Greek American friend spotted it, and immediately offered to sub me. I subsequently heard he had done the same for Mikhaili and possibly others. He had to return to the US to apply for Greek citizenship, so he could continue to live on Naxos, and promptly had his bank accounts frozen by the IRS over some misunderstanding about his tax. The Naxos cash crisis deepened.

When I arrived on Naxos I had a wodge of money, thanks to a loan from my wife who had precipitated my departure for Greece by throwing me out of her house. For a while I cheerfully extracted cash from ATMs, assuming something Micawber-like would turn up. It didn’t, but I survived anyway. At first I had great difficulty spending the money – every time I offered a bar, taverna or shop a €50, the only notes the ATMs dished out, the retailer would run off frantically looking for change. Things perked up later, when the Germans and Scandinavians arrived and injected their cash into the Naxian economy. Once they leave, Naxians revert to tick from their friends, and the food everyone grows on their plots of land. The rest of the Cyclades disparagingly refers to Naxians as “farmers”, but at least they are not in total hock to the tourist industry for their survival. They grow four crops of potatoes a year.

Shortly after my arrival on Corfu our German guests gave us a €500 note. They wanted to make sure they could keep eating and drinking. My fellow Englander had been doing the washing up all morning and the note had got rather damp in his pocket. He fished it out with a very wet hand and gave it to Magda. Far from being delighted with the rather pretty pale lilac note, she had a total tizzy. Do €500 notes dissolve? Melt? Magda dragged me off to town (one of my jobs is to sit in her illegally parked car while she does errands) and took the note into not one but two banks to have it checked. I began to understand her distress. If the note was fake, or even damaged, she would be unable to spend it. It was the first time in my life I had seen so much money represented by a single note. In England banks refuse to accept euro notes larger than €100 because of fear of fraud. Earlier, I’d had a problem trying to use a €10 note to pay for a sandwich and a beer. It had a tiny tear on one edge, and the shop assistant refused to accept it. Her boss reluctantly agreed she could. I had only just been handed it, as change, like some hot potato.

And the other reason for her unenthusiastic reception of the note was that it was already spent. She got rid of it in the space of a half hour, drip feeding various creditors just enough to keep them happy for a few more days. She is running her business on credit cards and paying 22% interest on what she owes them. She is in a permanent state of near hysteria. I feel for her as, until I left England, I had been playing much the same game.

This is the opposite of a cash economy. I feel very much at home.

“Where are you from?”

It’s almost like talking about the weather.

An obvious opener, in a hotel full of young persons travelling, but I find it difficult to answer. Or rather, I’m reluctant to answer it. Just as I was reluctant on Naxos to agree that I was English, and would usually say I’m half Scots, half Irish (and deny Granny, who was a Lancashire mill girl, but really became Scots by adoption, living out her days in Beauly near Inverness).

The question, or its answer, sort of implies that, wherever it is, that’s where I’ll be going back to. And it pigeon-holes or labels me in a way that I don’t wish to be labelled. If I really was “from Scotland” I’d be delighted to tell them. But I could just as easily say, I’m from Eiserlohn, where I was born, and whose location, oddly, I only have the vaguest idea about. Perhaps I should visit. Or Listowel, in Kerry, which is where my FaceBook page says is my home town, the one constant as I grew up. I’m not “from” Wormingford, or Coggeshall, or Ampleforth – they’re just places where I lived for a while. Where I always felt like an alien, an interloper, a visitor, just passing through. But here I call home, without thinking, in the most innocent of contexts – writing a list of things to do when I go to England (not “back” to England) and ending with “Monday 7^th July, fly home” and don’t even notice until later. Yet I have no actual “home”, no spiti – a bed somewhere, a meal from someone, for a while. But if I was sitting on a mountain in Greece, with a campfire, a bottle of krasi, and my sheet of plastic for a tent, it would feel more like home to me than any of these places. Perhaps because I chose it, or it chose me, or my “higher power” led me to it, seemingly by a series of accidents.

So what is it that makes me feel I belong here, in a way I’ve never felt anywhere else, apart possibly from Loch Spelve on Mull, or Hope in Sutherland, which I would have loved to call home.

The light. The heat. The Greeks. How I wish I could speak to them, as one of them. The fruit. The trees. The rocks. The mountains and the sea. The sea. The flowers. The ramshaklecality of it all, bodged and half finished. The talk. The shouting. The quiet. The cymballing of the goats and sheep. The magic. The madness. The way it won’t let you walk away from this present moment, its intensity and aliveness, that neither past or future has any weight, compared to the electricity of now, the intensity of it all, the assault on the senses. Only it’s not an assault, it’s a seduction, a caress. I’m in love with Ellaada, and most people I meet seem to feel the same way.

So to answer, “I’m from here”, is not a lie, not a presumption, not precious or pretentious – it’s the literal truth.

Funny Money

Funny Money

I have just moved to Corfu (Kerkira to the Greeks) to help Magda with her hotels. A few days ago, Magda was given a €500 note by one of our German guests. This was kind of them, but probably entirely self interested as they wanted us to continue feeding them. Forty Germans get through an astonishing amount of food every day and Magda and I seem to have spent the best part of half a day, every day, exploring the wealth of supermarkets and cash ’n carries in Kerkira for the best priced deals. Magda is a bogof queen. Which means she sort of assumes bogof applies to everything, and if one of something is a bargain, ten of the same must be an even bigger one. This plays hell with her cashflow.

So I was surprised at her reaction to the €500 note. Instead of being wreathed in smiles, and momentarily delighted with life, she seemed to go into a complete decline. She said in fact she was having a panic attack. Glenn, her best man, had been given the note by Katherina, a well built girl who is responsible for the Germans. This means she has the biggest tab at the bar, and unlike everyone else, has not as yet deigned to settle it. Glenn had been doing the breakfast washing up all morning. His dress code is shell / track suit / trainers and he refuses to wear the extremely smart faux leather apron I persuaded Magda to buy at the Chinese shop, so he was very wet. When he handed Magda the note fished from his pocket with a very wet hand she had conniptions. Do €500 notes melt? We immediately departed to town and her bank, which she rushed into to get the note checked. She then went to another bank and repeated the exercise. They both confirmed the note was OK.

She told me how on another occasion she had gone into her bank to pay some cash in. She couldn’t understand why they put a single €5 note through the note counting machine. Surely, she thought, they could count a single €5 note. The cashier gently explained that the note counter didn’t just count notes, it also checked them. On my way to Kerkyra from Athens, I had tried to pay for a beer and a sausage roll with a €10 note. It had a small nick on one edge. The girl on the till tried to refuse it. I protested, and her boss said grudgingly that it was OK and she then accepted it.

Within half an hour, Magda had got rid of most of the €500. She used it to make part payments on some of her more pressing accounts, and about a third of the minimum payment due on her credit card. This was probably a case of good money after badmoney down the drain. She has already had several of her cards cancelled due to her being late on her payments, and she’s desperate to keep at least one credit card alive. Once cancelled, she cannot reapply for another, and her business is kept afloat on credit cards.

Three months ago I was working for my friend Mikhailis, helping him to refurbish the shutters for his windows and doors. In return he gave me lentil soup and bread, a mattress, and the last of his restaurant’s stock of krasi, each day. I had no money and one day I tried to borrow €10 from him to buy some tobacco. He regretfully explained that he would have no money until the end of the month, then twenty days away, when his pension was paid. He meant, he literally had no money. I suddenly realised I knew no one on Naxos, where I then was, who had any money. I made a joking reference to this fact on Facebook, and a kind Greek American called Lou or Elias, depending on whether he was being American or Greek, said he’d be happy to lend me some. I subsequently found out he’d done the same for Mikhaili, who still owed Lou/Elias €500 when I left Naxos in April. Meanwhile Lou/Elias had returned to Philadelphia to apply for Greek citizenship, and had had his bank account frozen by the IRS over some misunderstanding about his taxes. So the credit crisis deepens.

Kiki, who runs the hotel really, while Magda flies around in an almost permanent panic attack, showed me the €500 note before she entrusted it to Glenn’s damp track suit trouser pocket. It’s a rather beautiful pale lilac colour and I was struck by the fact that this was the first time I had seen so much money represented by a single note. I can understand why Magda felt so nervous.

When I first arrived in Greece, I was quite flush for a time, and constantly interviewed ATMs who happily excreted bundles of €50 notes for me. But I had the greatest difficulty spending them. Invariably I would offer some hapless Greek retailer a €50 note and he or she would rush off down the street searching for someone who could give them change. This was in May, before the season had really started. It became less of a problem later when the tourists started to inject a bit more cash into the Naxian economy.

In January Mikhaili, waiting for his pension, survived on tick from friends – supermarkets, corner shops, hardware stores, petrol stations. He and his family ate and drank what was left of last year’s stock at their taverna (like much of Naxos they close down from October to April). Mike, in turn, kept a number of friends, mostly frail and elderly, supplied with free meals from the taverna when it was open. One of them was a carpenter, and reciprocated by carefully cutting out all the rot from Mike’s shutters, and refilling them with wood inserts and glue, for nothing. His painter and decorator, Giorgiou, did much the same.

Many Naxians, whom other Cycladic islanders refer to disparagingly as “farmers”, live almost entirely and exclusively off what they themselves can grow and produce – potatoes, peppers, tomatoes, several varieties of beans, tomatoes, zuchini, melanzanes, orta (Greek for weeds, wild greens), lettuce, oranges, lemons, kumquats, olives, chickens, cheese from their goats and sheep, krasi and raki from their vines. And mostly, they are extraordinarily generous with what they have.

This is the opposite of a cash economy.

Nothing on Naxos

I am sitting in my room. Outside it is raining, the sky dark with storm clouds. I am drinking an ouzo and reading a history of the Ottoman Empire. I am very happy. I feel I should be doing something else, but as it is not obvious to me what that might be, I shall, for now, continue not doing it.

So, what is nothing? No money. No plans or prospects. No regrets. Just food (enough). Warmth. A glass of krasi. Tobacco. Coffee. Something to do. Or read. Or watch. No “God”. Just whatever is, today, now, this instant.

“God” went west in May. With Him (it was/is a “He”) out of the way, life became simpler. One foot in front of the other, one minute, hour, day, at a time. And the real god (we need a new pronoun for the real god) started shining through. In the kindness of strangers. In happy accidents. In children. In friends, old and new. In bus timetables, ferries, taxi drivers. And, eventually, in Naxos.

Eliot wrote “April is the cruellest month” but for me, it has always been late August. Everything dead, or dying. Crops in. Trees still green, but dull, no longer exuberant with life. But here October brings a second spring – the ground covered with swathes of wild cyclamen, autumn crocus, cistus, daisies, wild thyme, the trees greening, bees busy buzzing, fungi everywhere, the hillsides as green as Ireland, meadows and terraces covered in sorrel and dandelion – the Greeks call it all “orta” (weeds), and eat it with abandon.

So you walk. And look. And breathe. And live.

Walking is good. It takes time. You meet raki distillers. You get lifts. It gets you from A to B (sometimes) quicker than a car – they weren’t idiots, the old Greeks; nor are the new ones – they give you a lift when you ask. Modern roads cost money, and modern cars don’t like to go uphill too fast. So, not many roads, and they take the long way round to get from here to there. The old footpaths go straight, up and down hill, and get you to where you’re going in short order. And while you’re walking, you have time to notice things. The view. The flowers. The time.

I always thought sculpting would drive me mad. It takes so long. Bashing away at a piece of rock with a hammer and chisel, slowly finding a shape. Actually, it’s a kind of meditation, a complete absorption in the material, the process. And an enforced detachment – Naxos marble is beautiful, but very crystalline, so it glitters like diamonds and lets light shine through, but is also painfully liable to crack, just when you think you have made something worthwhile. It’s done it to me twice now. You just have to start again. Fail. Fail again. Fail better.

From our eyrie, 1200 feet above the Aegean, looking north and east, on a clear day, we can see Ikaria, where the inhabitants are reputed to live to over a hundred. Beyond is Patmos, where Saint John wrote his gospel and strange revelations. South east on the far horizon, between Donoussa and Amorgos, you can see Rhodes, the original home, after Jerusalem and Cyprus, of the knights of Saint John. And, after dark, we see the flashes of thunderstorms over Turkey, and the lights of Smyrna reflected on the clouds, 150 kilometres away.

We live on Lagos Raki – the Hare’s Back – a kilometre or so north of Mesi, on the northern tip of Naxos. We are off the grid – no electricity, other than what we can make for ourselves, no water other than what god chooses to let down on us by way of rain on the roof funnelled into a cistern, no heat other than sunshine and firewood. I had a bath (a wash in a plastic basin with water heated on the stove) the other day, and found out how long it takes to gather and chop enough wood to heat water for a shave and a thorough clean. About 45 minutes. It makes you think twice about turning on a tap and getting instant hot water, or getting water at all.

Ditto food. We gather – fungi from the fields, peppers, tomatoes, beetroot, beans, potatoes, from Stuart’s garden. Bread may come, from the nearest village, 6 kilometres across the valley, an hour’s walk. Fish, if we hear the fishman’s van, crying his catch, and get to him before he’s gone on to the next village. Meat from Chora, 50 kilometres and two hours’ bus ride away to the south. Some days we don’t eat much.

I run out of tobacco. To get more, I must walk for an hour down to Apollon. Hope the little shop is open. Hope Yanni has some tobacco. Walk back up the hill to the Hare’s Back. Do I really want a smoke that badly? I want to see Eleni, my sculpture teacher. Friends have a car and drop me off. I stay the night. Yanni plays his lyre and baglamas, a kind of small bouzouki. On Sunday morning, the sky is clear although it is blowing a howling gale. I look at my map. It will, I think, take 4 or 5 hours to walk home. I could go by road, and take the chance of a lift (everyone will stop, but you can walk for two hours and not see a car) or walk over Mavro Vouni, the third high mountain on the island, and have an adventure. Seven hours later, I get home. I have walked over Scottish moorland, down verdant spring fed valleys, been blown sideways by the wind, seen both sides of this little kingdom in the sea, got lost twice, and been frightened, a bit.

I am richer than Croesus. What he had could be taken from him. Having nothing, there is nothing to lose, and everything is pure gift.

 EleniKapiri is an artist on Naxos

working in sculpture, paint , photography and poetry

 

Eleni Kapiri was born in 1970 in Moni, on Naxos. Her father operated a marble quarry and this brought her into direct contact with the unique qualities of Naxian marble. She began to make her first sculptures at the age of 12. At 18 she studied at the Fine Arts School of Tinos.

She has spent time in Brighton, England, in Germany, and in Athens, but most of her working life has been on Naxos, which she loves with a fierce passion and pride.

• In 2014 she will be exhibiting her sculpture, painting and photography in the Bazeos Tower on Naxos, in Athens and in Thessaloniki.
• In 2000 she took part in an exhibition of traditional artworks in her home village of Moni.
• In 2001 she held an exhibition of her work at the Venetian Museum in the historic old town - the Castro - of Naxos.
• In 2004 she participated at "Dionysia", a series of activities and events organised by the Municipality of Naxos.
• In 2007 she held an exhibition of her paintings (she began painting in 2003) at the "Naxos Cafe".
• In 2008 she held her own exhibition in Athens, at the Art Hall.

Many of her works are in private collections. Tragically in 1996 a great deal of her work to that time was stolen from her studio.

"Elements from the African, Indian, Maori as well as from the Buddhist sculpture of the Far East make her artworks part of the contemporary global aesthetic." Stamatina Palmou

"With her work Eleni Kapiri takes the history of human art from the very beginning. She is like the Statue of Liberty - only that instead of the torch, she is holding a paint brush or a chisel." Jimmy Efthimiou

"Tracey Emin on steroids. A unique perspective. A sense of the energy and tension in things, and a powerful connection with the natural world and her home, Naxos." David Simpson

More pictures of Eleni's sculpture, painting and photography, and translations of her poems, to follow

All images copyright © Eleni Kapiri 2013 - not to be reproduced or used without the permission of the artist.
Please email to eleni@elenikapiri.net for more information. 

www.elenikapiri.net

The Dimitra Project

To build a sustainable, self sufficient, ecologically sound community and cultural centre on the island of Naxos in the Cyclades, Greece. To make a positive contribution to the wider community of Naxos. To grow, to evolve and to give back, to the land and to the community of Naxos.

We are looking for 200 to 300 supporters who are prepared to give some of their time and invest a small amount of capital in the project.

If you cannot get involved yourself, please support us by passing this message on to as many people as you can (even if they are not interested, they may know someone who is).

Please scroll down for more information.

Photograph© Isabel Theron 2013

The Temple of Dimitra or Demeter, Naxos c. 700 BC

Dimitra (or Demeter) is the Greek goddess of fertility.Her temple on the island of Naxos was the first to be built completely of marble including roof beams and tiles. She is very beautiful.

Design Principles for the Dimitra project

1. Off the grid; rainwater capture and conservation (Naxos receives as much rainfall annually as East Anglia in the UK); photo voltaic generators; possibly wind turbines; possibly Peldon wheel water turbines; composting toilets; grey water capture and reed bed filtration; wood fueled stoves and cooker – grow enough biomass on site to provide own fuel.
2. Straw bale, local stone (marble, limestone, emery) minimal use of concrete other than that required by authorities to make building earthquake proof. Straw bales provide good thermal insulation for both hot and cold weather (it snows on Naxos in the winter). Natural ventilation systems (NO air conditioning)
3. No WIFI or mobiles except for emergencies
4. Grow own food.
5. Permanent community of 1 – 5 bodies.
6. Accommodation for up to 20 guests.
7. Courses – sculpting Naxos marble, painting, poetry and writing, guided walks on Naxos, drama, eco-building and sustainable horticulture, photography, sailing, wind and kite surfing, cycling, horse riding – use local talent as much as possible.
8. Retreats – silent, guided, meditative, yoga, Zen.
9. A chapel / meditation space.
   

Click here to email Dimitra

Plan

1. Find and purchase site (4 in prospect) – large enough and appropriately located, with access, existing buildings (ruins for preference) and water supply.
2. Build single room and cistern, composting loo(s), site access, install stoves.
3. Plant / restore orchards and vegetable patch.
4. First water capture channel at top of the site, feeding the main cistern (which will also take water off the roof).
5. Install photovoltaic generators and electric water pumps
6. Extend house – on going.
7. Build second cistern at base of site to receive reed bed filtration system run off for grey water plus rainwater run off from rest of site.
8. Extend water capture system – channels and cisterns. Rebuild / repair terrace walls. Complete buildings (accommodation for 20 guests, loos, chapel, course / classroom building).
   

Proposal
Raise enough capital to buy site and complete phases 1 to 4 above (€60-70,000). We will be putting all our available capital into Dimitra and expect to do all or most of the work in phases 1 to 4 ourselves i.e. at no charge to Dimitra (other than our subsistence costs and the cost of materials etc). Photovoltaics and other work requiring particular expertise will be sub-contracted, if necessary – ideally we will be able to recruit experts as members or temporary volunteers.
Further fund raising and guest / course revenue will be used to fund phases 5 – 8 and whatever follows.
We intend to sell shares in Dimitra at say €200 each, to raise the capital needed. Shares can be purchased by a group (we are well aware that young people would find it hard to raise €200 and we want the demographic of the community to be as varied as possible). Each share would entitle the owner to a certain number of free days in the community per year i.e. for accommodation and food. Everyone, whether staying for free or paying to stay (daily rate to be decided – may be covered in whole or part by additional work on the site), will be expected to make a contribution to the daily life of the community, in any way that they can e.g. helping with building projects, gardening, administration, perhaps running a course). We would also like to able to offer bursaries for young people, especially from Naxos itself.
The Dimitra Trust will be incorporated in Greece as a not for profit charitable trust, with a guiding board selected by the share holders. In addition it will of course have an auditor / accountant and a lawyer, publish quarterly progress reports and audited annual accounts.
Dimitra has a website, its own email address, and a Facebook page, to communicate with supporters and shareholders and to promote Dimitra and its courses and other activities to the wider world.
Permanent occupants should own at least one share and help to pay for their food and accommodation with work, money or goods and services in kind (e.g. photovoltaic, electrical, mechanical, building or horticultural skills).
Guests (excluding their free entitlement) will have to pay a certain amount each per day and help out, and pay course fees where applicable. Course charges will be transparent and kept to the lowest practicable level (i.e. to cover direct costs, plus a small contribution to Dimitra). This is another reason for using local artists and other talent to run the courses whenever possible. Course places will be open to people staying elsewhere on Naxos.
Send no money now! When Dimitra has been incorporated and has its own bank account we will be in touch again. In the meantime, if you would like to support us and participate please let us know how many shares you potentially would be prepared to subscribe for.
All of the above are only suggestions – i.e. all interested potential shareholders will agree how Dimitra is set up, financed, controlled, and its rules and constitution.
Click here to email Dimitra
Something about Naxos

Naxos is the largest island in the Cyclades, in the Aegean. It is approximately 50 kilometres north to south and east to west although actual road distances can be considerably more as it is very mountainous. It has the highest mountains in the Cyclades and gets snow and frost most years. Thanks to natural springs parts of the island are heavily wooded and, by Aegean standards, very lush.

It feeds itself, producing 4 crops of potatoes a year (it supplies most of Greece). Many family tavernas only sell their own produce, including meat, wine and cheese. Rich culture going back 7,000 years. Dimitra's temple was built in 600BC. There is an ancient aqueduct (actually a ceramic pipe) that was built at the same time that brought fresh spring water to Naxos city from springs at Flerio, 12 kilometers away. Parts of the pipe can still be seen, following the contours down from the hills.
The old city of Naxos is a warren of tiny streets and delightful little shops and tavernas, built from the 12th Century when Naxos was part of the Venetian Empire – the streets were designed to confuse pirates who were a big problem at that period. And as a result many Naxians moved inland to the mountains to avoid the pirate attacks. Thanks to the Venetian influence, Naxos boasts a fine Catholic cathedral as well as hundreds of Orthodox churches and chapels, many of them on top of mountains.
There are fine museums in Naxos City and many ancient monuments and Venetian towers all over the island. Naxos really invented monumental marble sculpture in 7th century BC (basically it's made of the stuff – they are in the process of removing the tops of two mountains which are solid marble). Naxos has a permanent population of about 20,000, which rises to 180,000 at the height of the summer season – this puts a considerable strain on the island’s infrastructure, especially its water supply which can become more or less undrinkable in July – 160,000 people taking a shower twice a day is a lot of water. Pure spring water is available through public taps around the city and the island.

Tourism came relatively late to Naxos and it has perhaps as a result retained a lot of the character and characteristics of pre-mass travel Greece, socially and economically, away from the western coast around the main town where most of the tourist resorts are to be found. However a lot of previously cultivated land has been abandoned as people have moved to the towns and jobs in the tourism industry, and to the mainland.

Apeiranthos – a traditional mountain village in the north east of the island	Kinidaros – a lush, green valley below the modern marble quarries
Naxos (Hora) – the old Venetian citadel, seen by night from the Palatia	The Portara temple, on the Palatia, whose arch looks towards Delos Image © Eleni Kapiri 2013

Dimitra – all content © David Simpson 2013

Mirror

Sunday August 30^th 2009, 9:13 to 9:40 am,
in the garden at 12 Mehetabel Road

I am sitting on a wooden folding chair at the end of the garden looking back at the house. It is a sunny morning with a cool breeze blowing. I am slightly hungover.

In my notebook I write:

“another lovely morning – sunny, cool breeze, oyster shell clouds. A bit stale. Half inclined to go home now.

When the Buddha attained enlightenment, everything (one) became enlightened.

The Buddha is not out there

I am / have the Buddha.

Hence if I see him, he is a delusion.”

I am looking at the blue plastic washing line tied to the white painted brickwork on the back of the house.

Thoughts come and go. I keep returning my attention to the blue plastic line on the wall. At some point, I think towards the end of sitting, I disappear. Image – a perfect mirror and I and everyone are flecks of dust lying on or just above the mirror. It seems as if I have fallen out of my fleck of dust. I see I am just pure awareness, always have been. That out of this awareness the fleck of dust arose, could not help it, when the mirror became me, whenever that was. This all happens at once. A complete understanding – intellectual, emotional, physical. It is so simple. So everyday. The blue plastic line is still there. The sun is still shining. But I, the fleck of dust above me, is transformed, the water of life seems to pour through all of me, every aspect of my self, my past, transformed, aligned in one direction. I am not forgiven, there is nothing to forgive, nothing to judge, awareness trapped in me had no way other than to become me, to struggle in the delusion and agony, unable to see itself, the I AM. I see this is the kingdom, within me and among us, each of us trapped more or less in our little fleck but in reality, all one. Yet there is still I here, just free of all the trappings of I. Seeing the fleck and all other flecks with perfect understanding and compassion, only wanting everyone to come down here. And the whole world is brilliant, sparkling, full of love and energy.

On the bus to St Marks I want to weep, and keep laughing at the wonderful shops – a shop with a stuffed ostrich and what looks like a capuchin monkey, a shop called ‘Lie down I must tell you I love you’, an extraordinary cinema like an Egyptian temple which I have never noticed before but must have passed many times. Wanting to rush out and tell everyone it’s true, the kingdom is at hand, right here and now, and they weren’t making it up (Jesus and Buddha and Eckhart and Teresa and everyone else).

At the same time, mind rushes back. I’m so lucky, special, clever – I wonder how many others have experienced this – it is just like the tempter in the desert, almost beguiling, and I know I can never stop meditating, that it would so easy to try and take possession of this, turn it in to an idol, hug it to myself. And I’m suspicious of the urge to get up and tell everyone about this – and fearful – I want them to understand, to believe me, not to think I’m bonkers or arrogant, and I don’t feel worthy or able to do that. But I’m filled with this overwhelming love and joy and peace, and everyone I look at seems to be alight, and there isn’t somehow any necessity to tell them – they are already filled with love. And it is love, somehow agape and eros combined.

Even as I am writing this, I can barely recall the experience. The mirror or kingdom has an impersonal quality – it is not me but it is not not me. I may never have such an experience again, but I know it is real, and as I meditate, as I remain mindful, walking the dog, whatever, it is there even though I am not aware of it. The parable of the wise virgins is so important – always to have the lamp filled, the wick trimmed, waiting without grasping for the moment when one falls through the crack into all truth.

In my beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and Word was God. And light came into the world, and the darkness comprehendeth it not. In all our beginnings is the Word and it is with us for ever.

In the evening my step daughter, Laura and her husband Toby tell us they are having a baby. This morning I wrote this:

every conception an Annunciation

every mother a Virgin

every child the Word made flesh

every life a crucifixion and a resurrection

in each one of us the Cosmos created anew

At the moment (however long it lasted, I think no time at all) I fell in to the Kingdom, and I was flooded with the water of life (all the images are true, I felt like a dry desert filled with fresh rains) I wanted to rush off and read all the scriptures, the psalms, the gospels, everything to see the truth that was written in them (and perhaps the falseness too).

All through the retreat, just sitting in the Zendo with my eyes open, they felt dry and gritty. Now they are filled with tears and are refreshed. And so appropriate that it is a Sunday morning, in a garden like the one where Mary found the empty tomb.

Still a question remains. Should I not have got up and shouted at everyone in St Marks, that I have been in the Kingdom and it is here with us all and it’s all true, and that Mother Julian had it exactly right only I would change the tense – all things are well and all manner of things are well and there is no sin in the world, only delusion and ignorance. Let those who have ears hear, let those who have eyes see.

New Year's Day 2014

Almost immediately after I woke up this morning the still small voice said "I" (or perhaps it said "You"), "will never hear from her again."

I hear it quite often. It is quiet, authoritative, without an emotional edge. It is not judgemental or despairing. Sometimes it tells me not to have another drink, to stop doing something, and I ignore it. There are no comebacks. Sometimes it makes quite banal, mundane suggestions, such as "Stop this now" or "Go for a walk". It seems completely real and trustworthy to me. If I ignore it, it doesn't mind - I may beat  myself up about ignoring it, but it never does.

When I heard it this morning, I was sad. Not despairing, or grief stricken (I've done enough of that in the last eight months). I just accepted that it was telling me the truth. Not practically or literally. There will inevitably be some sort of contact, about divorce, or property, or the stuff I've left behind, but that could just as easily be through a lawyer or accountant, or one of my step daughters, on her behalf. But there will be no loving, caring, engaged, email, or letter or phone call.

I was told recently about distinguishing between "coping" and "transforming". Coping is just accepting, putting up with, suffering patiently and willingly, or otherwise. To transform requires us to truly relax and then to enter in to our painful response and engage with it. I realise I have spent a lot of my life, and of the last ten years, coping, imagining that I was surrendering to the flow, being detached. In reality I was just putting my pain or frustration or anger or despair to one side, but not moving through it, engaging with it, and then leaving it behind. Hence perhaps my drinking - numbing myself to the great crowd of supplicants in the waiting room next door.

So I spent the day feeling needy and lonely, unloved. Little new year messages on Skype or Facebook or email seemingly ignored. I worked hard at researching for stories for the next issue of the Transition Free Press, all too aware of how ignorant I am of what has been happening in "the world of media" for the last eight months.

So, at some point, I did sit down to relax and enter this feeling, turn it round, see what else was there, what other perspectives I can take. I understand that in a way I've been living in a sort of daydream for years. Clinging to times of happiness and content, of joy, of deep love, of real companionship, but ignoring or glossing over times of misery and despair and deep loneliness. And then I look ahead. Freedom. A new start. A sort of rebirth. I found my self commenting on someone's blog on Inner Transition (what does resilience, sustainability, permaculture, living lightly, mean for the inner life we lead?). She talked of a cone - the individual at the top, then immediate family, then extended family, then community, then nature, land, the earth at the bottom. How each of these sustains us and when one layer fails, the other steps up. And that sometimes we only have the bottom - nature itself - to hold us. And I realised how much of the last eight months has been about rebuilding and repairing each of those parts of my cone. Finding a new community after 25 years in Wormingford and Coggeshall. Going back to my extended family. Staying close to my children. And experiencing nature, this island, deeply, slowly, and being fed and sustained by it. Just the sheer physical pleasure of bright sunlight and sea, plants and animals, this extraordinary landscape. And until I wrote that comment, and read the blog, I had not even realised this was happening.

I jumped into the abyss (a la Castaneda) on April 29, and entered another world. I’m still falling, or floating, or flying . . .

Meditation (and life) – work or play?

My life fell off a cliff about a month ago. I suppose this is the mysterious working of the Spirit, but it certainly didn’t feel like it at the time – in fact I was suddenly off that side of things in a big way, and today is the first time as I write this, that it has occurred to me that it might be (the working of the Spirit, that is). I have certainly been ‘held’, as they say, these last few weeks, not just by loved ones, mainly my children, who have been wonderful, but especially by the kindness of strangers. As I have been traveling by almost every means of transport I have met quite a number each day, and I can only think of two who were negative (as in deeply unpleasant). As it happens they were both English.
I left my Kindle on a ferry and was feeling rather bereft. A kind young Englishman, on his way to a conference on pests of potatoes and tomatoes (which are apparently related in some way) gave me his book, which he had just finished, called ‘Running with the Pack’ by a philosopher at Miami University called Mark Rowlands. He likes philosophising while doing long runs (10 to 30 miles) because he gets into a zone, or several zones, of consciousness, where thoughts just float up and by, a lot like meditation. Although the book is structured around his various runs, mostly with his dogs, one of which was a wolf called Brenin, hence the title, it is really a meditation on the nature of work and play and on the intrinsic value of things. For me it led neatly on from the last book I’d finished on my Kindle – ‘How much is enough?’ by Lord Skidelsky and his son – which discusses many of the same issues.
What is work? Work is instrumental – that is, you do it for something else. So you do a job for the money, you may go running for your health, or to prolong your life, or to win prizes. By that definition, anything in life that you do not do for its own sake, is work. A man and a woman making love are not working. A prostitute of whatever gender almost certainly is – it’s not the act itself, but the money earned that is their motive. When you start to think about this, you realise how much of life is in fact a kind of work. That it consists in doing something for the sake of something else.
Despite my recent woes, I am quite lucky, because actually an enormous amount of my life has tended to be play. My work in computers I would often (and did) happily do for nothing. I have been for the most part physically fit and have hugely enjoyed swimming, gliding, skiing, cycling.
So I have mostly been a player, rather than a worker. But this is not to say these things have been easy or fun. Often they all involve extremely hard work, stress, disappointment, even pain (like long distance running, for example) – but I haven’t done them for any other reason than the sheer joy of doing them. I did try and get a few gliding certificates, but that was only because you’re sort of expected to and it’s more fun to have a challenge, but really all I was interested in was floating around in the sky over East Anglia for hours and doing aerobatics.
What about love, family, friends? At their best, these are all “play”. We love people for their own sake – our children, our partners, our friends. To that extent all these relationships are the purest play (which is a good definition of selfless love or agape, and perhaps why the Hindus talk of God’s play or lila).
So why did my life fall off a cliff, if I am such an accomplished player? Because pretty much everything over the course of the last few years became progressively less and less play, and more and more work, as in a means to an end – my job, my marriage and, and this is the point of this article, meditation.
Meditation became for me not an end in itself, a thing to do entirely for its own sake, but a way of coping with all the other things that were going wrong in my life, of escaping from them, of making myself calm down, and also of providing the escape route – that I will become a better, kinder, more capable, more loving person, because I am meditating regularly. Even perhaps become enlightened, one with God, go to heaven (which would obviously solve all my problems!). So meditation itself became work, and possibly, as a result, actually harmful. Because it allowed me to avoid the present and the reality of me, now. I don’t have infinite patience or love, or the ability to take on other people’s burdens, without breaking down. As Laurence Freeman has said a lot recently – the virus of perfectionism had got me, but I couldn’t see it. I should have talked to someone a long time ago and they might have been able to show it to me (what I was doing to myself and those around me, especially my wife).
This has ended up being rather more about me than I intended, but please take it as a loving warning - don’t let your life become work and, especially, don’t let your meditation become work.
David Simpson

Taxing business

Tax UK sales, not "profits". That way you catch Barclays, Amazon, Starbucks and anyone doing business in the UK. If a UK based business makes all its sales overseas (i.e. it's an exporter) it pays no UK tax at all (although it will be paying sales tax on all the things it buys in the UK).

Loss making (so called zombie businesses) will go to the wall. No more allowances / tax breaks of any kind. If you sell things to UK based customers, you pay tax on those sales - a tax on UK sales of 5% would be the equivalent of paying corporation tax of 20% on profits which are 25% of turnover.

No evasion possible. Similarly tax all land / property in UK

How could we fix our broken democracy?

I was listening to Start the Week this morning (BBC Radio 4 9am Start the Week) and someone said that our democracy worked in the 19th century because the electorate was relatively small and everyone spoke / understood the same political / cultural language, but that now the electorate is so heterogeneous it is no longer possible for politicians to say anything very sophisticated because most of the different demographics will simply not understand or relate to what the politician is saying. So we are reduced to soundbites and tweets, and constant repetition of simple messages (e.g. that the deficit is all Labour's fault, or that the Conservatives are cruel and heartless and want to privatise the NHS).

And the biggest problem is that the professionalised political class are only interested in the very small minority of the electorate that occupies the mysterious and mythical centre ground and will decide the result of a general election in a small number of marginal seats. So, unsurprisingly, the great majority of the electorate are simply bored and uninterested in what the politicians (and the political media) are saying.

So what's the answer?

Metanoia (a short history of the 21st Century)

Now completed and available as an e-book - go to https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By_Lu5q4I0qHT3ZGZlFHbThHcjA/edit?usp=sharing to see sample and order a copy.

Poems written and recited

Poems at the Crabbe Prize 2012

Epilogue

Casa Cuseni

At Sudbury Poets' Cafe

anne boileau and me reading The Bible in german and english