I'm Just Sayin...

Procrastination is my sin. It brings me naught but sorrow. I know that I should stop it. In fact, I will - tomorrow ~Gloria Pitzer My last post was by way of an open letter to Life: It said “are we not finished yet? Why is it that I cannot get this book to the agent? I could hear Life laughing. “So miss clever clogs, you pretend you are waiting on me, while all the time you know I’m waiting on you. And no, you’re not finished with this healing process and you cannot publish until you have finished, so stop procrastinating” All week I have been listening to Life’s messages. Everything that has happened during these last seven days is full of clues, indicators and information. The message that came in  two days ago was filled with irony and Life’s incessant humour: someone asked me to read and comment on a manuscript which must be at least 200,000 words in length, has been at least 25 years in the writing and is probably a series of three books. Well what could I say?...

I’ve had some interesting responses following my tiny little rant on ‘w here did all the money go’?   One person said that all those billionaires who paid millions for Cypriot citizenship to get access to loose financial controls and high interest rates should now help the banks. In the main, most ‘Northern’ Europeans are incensed about having their taxes used to bail out ‘southern’ European states, seen as being reluctant to make a contribution towards getting themselves out of a mess of their own making, while expecting the north to pay for everything.  The Cyprus government say the country's fate will be decided today. We wait to see how. I’m all for billionaires who are hell bent on hoarding money and maintaining lavish lifestyles, established through ill gotten gains and supported by certain banks, to pay. But here’s the thing: the ordinary citizen who has worked hard all their life and paid taxes and in every sense “done the right thing” must pay ...

I am having a rant today. Today is the 10 th Anniversary of the invasion of Iraq which turned out not to have weapons of mass destruction after all, but a band of political tricksters generating false evidence in support of their aims. Ten years later Iraq is still occupied and there apparently is good reason for this. We dare not leave, not yet, not for a long time. Even after we’ve gone at the end of this year...next year…(?)…we will still be there, providing ‘technical assistance’. In the ten years of his premiership Tony Blair involved Britain in at least five wars – the second gulf war, Somali , Bosnia , Afghanistan and Iraq , the latter of which cost Britain billions – no wonder the coffers are empty. If it was up to him the UK would now be engaged in armed combat in Syria , and probably Libya and Mali . Today the former premier insists that he has ‘no regrets about deposing Saddam Hussein’. He neatly sidesteps the ensuing carnage and senseless destructi...

The other day a friend quoted Neale Donald Walsch (of Conversations with God fame) on her facebook page: "Why?" is the most useless question in the universe. The only question with any meaning is "What?" Asking "Why is this happening?" can only disempower you. Asking "What do I want to make of this?" does exactly the opposite. Here is a great secret: the ‘Why’ of anything is to produce the ‘What’ of everything. It’s not the first time I’ve heard that. One of my spiritual mentors used to say give up wanting to know why; you don’t need to know why. Yes I do. As far as I am concerned there is no such thing as accident, random, chance, coincidence.  So I am always interrogating Life. My friend Glynis tells me that I over think and over analyse everything. I would say that I just see  differently and want to know why things are like they are, especially if what I see does not make sense and/or seem absurd. It was the pursuit of ‘why’ ...

This week the UK ’s Chief Medical Officer (CMO) published her annual report. It presented a view on a looming threat to our health: the body’s inability to fight off new infectious diseases and its resistance to existing drugs. The CMO said this threat was as serious as global terrorism and climate change. Oh really, why is that then? In an interview the British CMO said unless we take urgent action, and within the next 25 years or so, our societies were likely to revert to a pre-antibiotic era because over the last 30 years very few new antibiotics had been developed. Her report highlighted the fact that while diseases evolved and become resistant to existing drugs, there have been very few new antibiotics developed leaving us vulnerable to new infectious diseases.    It is important therefore to preserve our current stock of antibiotics. This means taking steps to prevent infections including being more scrupulous around hygiene but in particular, prescribing fewer anti...

This afternoon, on the 2-hour mark, smoke billowed from the chimneys on the Sistine Chapel and it was black, jet black.   At least that’s what the BBC commentator said. Great drama. Is it me, or does it seem that the whole world along with those in St Peter’s square is waiting with bated breath for the new pontiff to emerge? I don’t remember having even the vaguest interest in the popedom in the past. It must be the level of political in-fighting in a dyfunctional Curia, Vatileaks, the Vatican bank under investigation - when was it not? Remember god's banker found hanging under a London bridge? And then there's the interminable sex scandals. A church in crisis. Poor Benedict, the first pontiff in nearly 600 years to abdicate, he was apparently done in by it all. Right now 115 ‘princes’ of the Church (60 Europeans, 19 Latin American, 14 North American, 11 African, 10 Asian and one Australian) representing 1.2bn Catholics are choosing the 266 th pope. The Guardian...

My beloved Divine Mother Dance with me under the soft moon shining in the wide open fields far beyond the toil and trouble of my busy mind My beautiful Divine Mother This universe is your body Alive and blushing with cosmic streams And rivers of love                                                                            {Ethan Walker: Soft Moon Shining} Today in the UK we are celebrating 'Mother's Day', and Ethan Walker’s Soft Moon Shining is a fabulous anthology of devotional poetry honouring the Divine Mother. Among the most universally recognised archetype, the mother is nurturer...

Understanding the Soul's Purpose International Women’s Day is an appropriate time to explore the meaning and purpose of soul. According to the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, ‘the soul is the principle of life…the spiritual part of humankind, in contrast to the purely physical…the seat of emotions, feelings or sentiment…the essential part or quality of a material thing’.      The Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary has eight different descriptions of ‘soul’ – the immaterial essence, animating principle, or actuating cause of an individual life; the spiritual principle embodied in all rational and spiritual beings; a person's total self; an active or essential part; the moral and emotional nature of human beings. Transpersonal psychologists use the word ‘soul’ interchangeably with the word ‘psyche’. The word ‘psychology’ itself is an amalgam of spirit and soul.   James Hillman, a High Master of the art of psychology, said that in using the wo...

Friday 8th March is International Women’s Day.   I believe in some countries it is a national holiday; good for them. The push for women to gain more and better political and economic access is a critical and essential spearhead in the battle for universal human rights.                              It is also fabulously fitting that this year IWD is happening during a period when that conclave of Anti-Feminine, the Vatican , is in the process of choosing a new head of that regressive movement.  For me International Women's Day is not simply about the 'feminist cause', more critically it is also about embracing and honouring the  Feminine aspect of humankind. I am going back to First Principles.   One condition of being human is to live in illusion. Unfortunately it means we have to split the reality of Oneness a...

 Creating a world of heart-centred relationships Continuing the theme of disparity and inequality between and within nations, it is striking that a s the ‘age of austerity’ - the 6th year of it - hits all of us, it reveals the huge paradox that sits at the heart of the wealthiest nations on earth. On the one hand Europe is discarding hundreds of tons of food every day, including dead fish thrown back into the sea because of a ridiculous and unworkable quota system, while many people are scrabbling in waste bins for food to feed their families. How does that make any sense? We won't mention parts of the world where children go to bed hungry and die of malnutrion. Since austerity hit the UK, hundreds of  food banks feed the  thousands who nowadays queue for free food; and the numbers are said to have doubled in the last nine months.  What is there to say about that? How does that happen in a society that...

In an age of universal deceit , telling the truth is a revolutionary act (attributed to George Orwell) There’s some dispute about whether the above quote can be attributed to George Orwell, but who cares. Whoever said it, it is true today. All sorts of people, in all spheres of life, including and especially scientists and professionals in the medical and other fields (even journalists) are being imprisoned, humiliated, shunned, vilified and otherwise gagged, in some way, and prevented from telling the truth. Webs of Deceit It has been suggested that the government knew from 2011 that contaminated horsemeat might be getting into the food chain.   The scandal over the dodgy dossier that took us into the Iraq war caused a scientist to take his own life; and even that is disputed by his friends. All politicians prevaricate and obsfuscate; nowadays it is called 'spin', lie by another name. They do this for all sorts of reasons but especially because p ower...