In a time of Pandemic
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Reading into the early hours of the morning and eventually feeling tired enough to sleep, a thought about so called sacred places flicked across the screen of my mind.
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Why now in a time of viral pandemic? And why sacred places?
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Now I am used to thinking of a sacred place as a church or temple or mosque or some other holy place especially put aside and reserved for religious purposes, and I have been in many hundreds of them over these last forty years or so.
But that is not what this particular thought was saying. It asked the question; are there places other than those put aside for a deity, that take on special significance for me; those that take me out of the everyday humdrum of life and catapult me into a place of inner calm?
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The calm that then makes way for and leads to a sense of the awe-filled recognition of the stupendous beauty of the cosmos we are but a speck of consciousness in.
A night spent camped out in the desert with no pollution or cloud cover to observe the view of the night sky is one example of that sort of place for me.
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A place that also still has special power for me is where, like a thirteenth century French troubadour I first caught ‘sight’ of the beautiful maiden I was destined to marry.
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Or the place where I first caught sight of my first born child.
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Not just place but time and person can seem to be special as well.
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Sacred in terms of set apart; apart where celebration of life seems to be an essential component.
One could go on and on but then along comes the BUG that grabs one’s attention.
We are told that we have to go to a special place to in effect wait to see if the grim reaper eventually calls. And that special place is our own home of what ever form it takes.
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Well, what a surprise. An extra special place!
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Now only a person who doesn’t value life fools around with death.
I mean real death, not the pseudo death that a ‘thrill seeker’ is looking for.
The death that is imminent.
The death that panics to the core.
The death that one loses total control to and terror accompanies.
And this special place we are sent to and possibly experience this, is our home; our own set apart place where we can retreat from the everyday world after a day’s toil.
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Now that’s an idea. One’s home as sacred place.

There are people I know who have a ‘special area set aside’ in their home where they can retreat to when ‘time out’ is needed, but extremely rare the person I have come across in my three score and ten so for, who has designed and built their home with this “sacred” idea as the core principle.
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Do you remember the time back in the 1960’s when the era of architectural fashion was called brutalism; the fashion that when followed by government employed architects to design for mass public housing produced such monstrosities that communal breakdown, mental illness and premature death was a constant danger? A worse example of a de-sacralised home I cannot think of at the moment but I am sure there are many more.
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After being in lock-down for a few weeks with this unexpected forced ‘time out’, how does one’s own home stack up in the sacred stakes? A beautiful retreat, where the soul is fed with beautiful food; or more prison like, where society sends its outcasts?
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This BUG is certainly turning out to be a prolific little teacher. I wonder if they will be teachings that stick? If not, I guess further future schooling will be necessary, with stricter measures being used.
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I do hope not as I am a bit averse to too much pain.

Shock Shock Shock
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Feeling confused?
Feeling insecure?
Feeling fear?
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Then: Don’t worry be happy, it is only the fog of war.
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What war are you talking about?
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Well, the war within one of course.
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The war between:
• The objective life and the subjective life.
• The war between the free man and the slave.
• The war between the inner and outer you.
Perhaps not too easy to engage with if one has not been educated for life, as well as the ubiquitous training for work.
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It seems a bit like being conscripted and thrown into the front lines as cannon fodder unprepared.
Not usually the way it is done in a well organised society which has been prepared in the skills necessary to operate and survive, well before the first shot is fired.
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What a paradox though.
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Prepare for war during the peace. – Almost guarantees there will be a war doesn’t it!
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Well unfortunately there is one going on continually.
The war between good and evil and what makes it so devastating is that it is going on to some degree inside every human being without exception. And the only way to try and inoculate yourself from the worst of it – is to get to know yourself as deeply and thoroughly as you possibly can. Not a recipe for salvation that appeals to many these days it seems.
But there you go, a recipe that has been inscribed in stone at Delphi for thousands of years;
“Know thyself,” “Nothing too much” and “Make a pledge and destruction is near.”
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Know thyself: what is that supposed to mean? – I know who I am.
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The outer man will usually have a bunch of criteria that is used to ‘describe’ who he is; in the West it often starts with – What work you do.
The inner man is another matter, even though we know we have an inner aspect, as one cannot deny their own self awareness. – Consciousness, thought, emotions, instincts, etc.
But what else is there hidden in the depths?
Well psychology is a branch of the humanities (liberal arts) that is supposed to help us. That is if it is not used simply as a tool for fixing problems. Not that fixing problems is not a good thing – very helpful for the outer man.
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Religion is the other traditional carrier and transmission (transmitter) of insights of the inner terrain. For Western Christianity the transmitter started to lose its power source after the Reformation as it couldn’t or wouldn’t update its foundation story in words and images that could be understood for growing numbers of peoples, until today it is virtually almost extinct. And as a result has left the field open for – nothing.
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What does one do when one wants to explore the inner life, but guides are few and far between?
Well the first thing is to understand that ‘time out’ from the work a day world cacophony will be required.
And by that “time out”, one means from the state of mind that is now dominated by total work; to be able to pursue with vigour a way of seeing life differently through engagement with areas like:
• Art
• Philosophy/poetry
• Beauty – particularly in the other and the environment
• Love in all its forms
• Death and dying.
Once this has been ‘tasted’ then the search can begin in earnest to find people who are holders of wisdom (‘Keepers of the Knowledge of Life’) to help you plumb the Mystery. Your search criteria will now have been usefully expanded.
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The sharks and criminals will do everything in their power to keep you solely in the outer man, even unto death and so be careful.
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Life, the search for real life is not an easy path without danger and pain, but remember, the goal is to become a whole human being, not a dead robot, a pawn in the greed infused thirst for THINGS.

Lockdown – Self Isolation – Psychological Separation
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It is instructive to watch how there is a small but growing frequency of the use of the term Mind Pandemic when referring to the Viral Pandemic of the moment.
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It is instructive in as much as an indicator of a growing consciousness that this is a real eutectic point between the past and the future. An indicator that there are some who are now realising that living in the recent pseudo ‘traditional’ ways of the neo-liberal world view will not be what evolves in the future. These insightful ones are truly modern, transitioning people, but who also seem to have a firm grip on conserving the wisdom of past ages.
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And knowing what is valuable and what is flummery.
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Of course society is beset with pseudo-moderns, as it has been in every age, but who in reality are nothing but followers in the unconscious herd, sprouting jargon as if wisdom.
Perhaps a clearer indication that has seemed to rise over the last few years is the difference between the coffee drinking chattering classes and the substance producers of value.
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What we are seeing is the undressing of current emperors of many stripes, including those resident in each one of us.
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One needs to keep attuned – these are interesting times.
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The linked article is interesting in as much as it looks at other wisdom traditions and the way they influence the response of their adherents approach to the virus pandemic. Have a look and see how they compare to your own.

Good Friday 2020
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Sitting in bed this morning drinking a cup of tea, I found my thoughts drifting back to parents, grandparents and great grandparents. What tumultuous times they lived through. The culmination of two millennia of Christian ideals, smashed asunder on a world scale. The hopes of countless generations of people, so fundamentally disappointed during the 20th century and continuing on into this one. What has happened to come to this?
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What a fatal shock it has been.
• Barbaric world wars with the deaths of how many tens of millions not known.
• World wide pandemics killing countless millions more.
• Wealth distortions grown to such a level that a handful of people have more than billions of other peoples.
• The technological research causing significant evil as well as marvellous good.
• The battle for supremacy between different wealth ideologies of the few.
• Etc
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And what will that fatal shock in our present now produce?
A more coercive fall in the same direction?
• More fragmentation within societies
• More paralysis in not knowing what to do.
• More fundamentalist thinking with growing battle between opposites.
• Growing loss of the ability to think deeply.
• Survival of the fittest.
• Culling of the herd.
• Expanding levels of mental illness.
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And no idea of what is wrong inside.
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Will the present way get fundamentally changed?
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One must hope. Humankind is going back toward greater herd like characteristics and the herd does not want things to change, but go on in the same way forever. (And forever is a myth.)
Well, as long as your herd is living the ‘good life’ there is not a great enough shattering of the glass bubble.
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Let us hope that more time, more pain will not need to come yet.
More crosses, and waves of psychological/spiritual dislocation and distortion.
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During the ‘Battle of Briton’ they had communal solidarity, physical camaraderie, all hands to the pump and by the skin of their teeth they managed to get through it.
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The current strategy of ‘flattening the BUG’s curve’ resulting in an extended period of ‘solitary confinement’ until a sufficient number of the herd have been exposed and developed antibodies (to what in the end) is likely to be ‘a bridge too far’ if creative political strategies are not developed to relieve the pressure points that will develop.
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The road ahead may turn out to be a year of Good Fridays.
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Have a read of the linked article and see if your current experience, courtesy of the BUG, gives you any empathy for what the author’s experience has been.