My Centring Summer

My Centring Summer

Back in March I said I was withdrawing from Twitter and Facebook. Since then I have been through a shattering centring process and feel very much a changed person. I start my volunteer teaching on the 16th so I have been gradually emerging from this centring. Dare I say it, it has been huge. What has surprised me so much about the changes I have gone through is the fact that I went through a radical upheaval when I was 23 (discussed here) and that since then I have felt that I have followed a spiritual life, especially since retiring, including regular meditation.

With this type of internal spiritual journey I have always found that journaling has helped, using writing to express how I feel inside; my blogs are similar in that I develop insights that have come in meditations. The journal is more than 22,000 words for this Summer’s centring. For a journal to be worthwhile, as with the journey itself, you have to be brutally honest. Essentially I have been integrating the shadow side of who I am. To investigate the shadow requires an attempt to go as far back as possible – what some call “Inner Child”. I have always thought of my life as beginning with the upheaval – I have even called my life since upheaval a second childhood in the Treatise. So integrating that time has been quite powerful and emotional, deeply personal. I publish most things on my website or blog, I will not be publishing the journal.

This shadow work has come at an interesting time with my writing. In the pathtivism manual I had long written “detach and go inwards”, but went back and developed more of the first section – the OUTER ENGAGEMENT. The remainder of the second section will be me piecing together what happened during the centring in a form that I hope will be of some use to others – up to you, but you won’t have to go through the turgid emotions of my life as part of the second section. What is important to note is that none of that second section will be theoretical, it will be based on what I experienced.

Much of my shadow work has been helped by videos from Teal Swan. I came across her early this Summer accidentally in a Google search – shame (not deep shame ?) on me that I have never heard of her before. For me her focus is on authentic integration – the path that integrates conscious and shadow. Whilst I find no inconsistency with her and the Buddhism I have learnt – I summarise my teachers as “Embrace Teal and honour Ven Bdasa”, she is highly critical of spiritual teachers in general. Teal is highly controversial – this puts her in my good books to begin with, but what I know of her so far I respect her integrity. However she talks of being Arcturian, talks of other dimensions, and for most people in the world of work I knew she is “off the charts”. However if you listen to her content she is not. I think what Teal has to say is important, and I will write a long appendix to the pathtivism manual to explain why I think Teal is important. As the Buddha says in the Kalama sutta (my interpretation) it is up to you what you accept – based on your experience of the teachings, Teal says something similar here, as for myself in one way or the other my life has been about the path – of course ultimately that is true for everyone but it is up to you to take what I say or not – try it and see.

I now have got a complete disenchantment with politics. I became re-interested in politics with the Occupy movement, a movement which was grassroots and about people and community. The 1% hated it and smashed it. Since then we have had Trump and Brexit, I don’t think this is a coincidence as I suggest they were both financed by the Dark Money Network. Electoral politics is a complete sham, a drama designed to use up our energies so that real activism has no energy and power. Heroes like Bernie and Corbyn have no impact on society through electoral politics as what they represent is completely swallowed up within the 1%-satrapy. The circuses Brexit and Trump represent are so choreographed, and designed to waste our energies whilst the 1% manipulate behind the scenes to increase their profits by creating war and propagating wage-slavery. The purpose of electoral politics is to create the delusion that together we can do something. Together we did – Occupy, and it was smashed, now our energies in politics are just wasted.

It is important to understand that it is not just the electoral parties which draw our energies in, but also our political aversion to the electoral process. Such aversive commentators seek positions within the electoral umbrella (eg The Real News Network) working hard to sustain their organisation continually searching for funding etc; survival of such organisations often taking a significant proportion of the energy. I agree with what TRNN says, but what is the point?

Look at the media about electoral politics, it is so much a part of the inclusivity – so much a part of the manipulative drama. In the US even light entertainment is directly invested in the electoral process, I only know the Liberal side but watching Trevor Noah or Samantha Bee is like watching a party political broadcast for the Democrats.

Then you can look at the support for Liberalism in wider media, it all fits together. In the US be liberal – be caring, vote Democrat; end of story. It reminds me of Hollywood romances which end with boy and girl getting together – married, and don’t discuss the hard work of longevity. In the UK it is similar, be caring turn to Labour and become frustrated – or just become frustrated. And if the media is not electoralist, it is either misleading, deflecting (eg sport), sycophantic (to false media idols) or totally mind-numbing, when should one not be totally disenchanted with media?

When have any effective policies against war and wage-slavery been enacted?

Fundamentally anything you do concerning politics is a complete waste of time – and is intended to be so. Become effective, they will swamp you – Corbyn, buy you off – hippies, or bump you off – Che Guevara or Walter Rodney. And what lasting changes have these people produced? None, the British hippies even voted for Brexit.

I remember arguments with the complacent I have had. I have always argued for activism with them so maybe they think I have now changed. No. I am arguing for community activism only – forget party politics, forget the unions, forget the institutions that the Dark Money Network has already infiltrated. Work for people, do what you can without getting sucked into the intended melodrama. Look at these strategies I developed in the Pathtivism Manual (before the centring):-

Work within the community, focus on the community. Shame the 1% for their inhuman excesses, and if there is investment (so-called philanthropy) ask that it be directed to decumulation – indigenous and frontline communities.

But most importantly a pathtivist needs to promote the path. The hope in this world does not lie with the party politics or the isms, it lies with the human spirit. Currently, including within the world of politics, this human spirit is submerged within conditioning, conservative or liberal, party activism or party aversion, and more and more Gaia is being destroyed. Find the spirit, find your spirit, find spirit in others, celebrate spirit.

I began my journey with the path when I was 23 but how many people who know me know that? I got sucked into politics and other diversions within society. Now my only focus is spirit. Follow the path, and hope to encourage others to do the same – pathtivism.

One important aspect of this centring is that I now realise how to finish the Matriellez book on education. What I have learnt this Summer has primarily been concerned withe integrating my life. With my fortunate upheaval the fragmentation that was in the shadow in my youth and my youth sort of swapped place - I retired my youth to the shadow. Through the centring this Summer I have been able to integrate my youth with post-upheaval me. This integration made a complete self that I hope I have been able to let go - anatta. Education should be about a complete process, for me the process was not complete - not it is much more so. I am now in a position to write wbout it educationally - cos I've done it a bit.

What this completion process taught me is that we have childhood baggage. Previously I had rejected that baggage as not being part of me. This is selective, it is not complete. Educationally I have realised that this process of fragmentation happens to all of us, and therefore education should be addressing it. In fact current education practice helps the fragmentation. the root meaning of education is to lead out, when I was at Teacher Training I used the word self-realisation to describe this. Self-realisation could be seen as a complete self without baggage ready to begin life, begin the process of maturing as a complete adult. Instead education is dominated by the corporate paradigm and turns mother and father into wage-slaves to make ends meet, so that instead of bringing up children who are complete young selves we bring up traumatised children who fragment their trauma by dedicating themselves to fragments of their selves which enable a good living for themselves - and profits for the 1%. Details on this can complete the Matriellez book once the manual has been finished.

What happens for me now I don’t really now? With my upheaval at 23 I was starting out in life, and it had a radical effect. It feels as if this centring has been as much of a realignment without the bells and banjoes. I have the 22,000 word journal that needs to be sorted and the approaches slotted into the manual. I have put up some but the second half – Inner Search and Path – will need rewrites. And possibly some of the first half with my complete disenchantment. After that – who knows? But I will definitely be more discerning about writing blogs – Only Path.

I now have a dilemma and will have to give it time to play out. On my fnal holday when I was working I realised that there was a schism in my life between teaching and how I felt on holidays. There was a big distance between me and the path. How I got into myself this Summer demonstrated a similar distance between my centring Summer and my normal year. My teaching commitment is spanned over three days but is not huge. I fit the teaching in with going to the beach but it seems to take over my mind. I am too much a teacher and not enough a spiritual writer. Teaching is not my path, it is what I give back to the community. I don't want to lose that but I have to write. What is the point of going through what I did if I cannot put it down in the manual and then in the Matriellez book. It will take time to assimilate and consolidate what I have learnt but this distance worries me. I must follow the path.

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