Turbo Shoes and Inter- Faith Dialogue.

Some thoughts on the up coming 'Exploring and engaging with new spiritualties day' in Mansfield 10/10/15
I think it would be good if we all learned to wear our labels a bit more inconspicuously – Back in the 1980’s I had some shoes with ‘Turbo’ written on them. They didn’t make me run any faster, and I wouldn’t be seen dead in them now! I come from an Anglican and Pagan background and I recognise that the Anglican tradition has deep Pagan DNA running right through it like a stick of rock from ‘Skegvegas’. It’s all in there, but that's only a small part of who I am and what my life as a whole has been about.
I think we would do well to be more aware of the exclusivist tendencies in all religions and cultures. In my own background I recognise two examples of this: What I call ‘The Christian Taliban’ and the ‘Constantinian Imperial Death Cult’. In both cases unconditional ‘Agape’ love is the antidote to this kind of toxic religion.
According to American Episcopalian Bishop John Shelby Spong, ‘Agape Love calls us out of tribal fear’. He also said: ‘we move beyond ourselves towards the Ground of Being, not a person, but the source of all personhood, in whom we live and move and have our being’ (Acts 17:28). This is the theological position of ‘Panentheism’ or ‘All in God’.
According to another Episcopalian priest Matthew Fox, ‘People of all religions ‘can recognise 4 things’ (I’m not saying that all their adherents do by the way) -
1) The Earth is Sacred.
2) The Earth is in trouble – (signs of ‘Global Weirding’ everywhere.)
3) We humans are greatly responsible for the latter.
4) We can with imagination, work and strength do something positive to try and change that.
As for the so called ‘New Age’ – there is a deep New Age that transcends the ‘market place, but there is also the: ”New Age, New Wage, taking care of your ‘a-Cash-ic’ records, over the counter culture”, that is great for luring consumers in and peaking their interest, but there is a deeper spirituality happening, a genuine new awareness taking place and I see it in my own church too. Maybe it’s something to do with the 2012 shift.. as we say, ‘shift happens’.
I think when we see ourselves moving from Ego-centric to Soul-centric we are on the way, this is for me the ‘one way’ that Jesus talked about, not a slavish adherence to a fearful tribal belief in ‘hell fire and damnation if you don’t believe and do as you’re told’, religion. It’s about what Jung called ‘Individuation’, not ‘following Christ’ but becoming a ‘Christ’, a unique child of the Source and Ground of our being

Chill with the Still

I first became interested in meditation way back in the 1970’s. I was a newly qualified Mental Health worker (RMN) and I’d just landed a plumb job in a pioneering mental health unit in Derby. My first task was to develop a meditation/relaxation program with the aim of helping people become less reliant on tranquilisers and anti-depressants and more able to cope using natural cognitive methods. This was pioneering work back in the day and we found much resistance from Psychiatrists who seemed more intent on pushing drugs that tended to mask the problems rather than solve them. Arguably, these days we have a more enlightened approach to mental health care, and although resources are even scarcer than ever in the NHS, cognitive therapy and mindfulness meditation are now commonplace treatments as they are cheap to administer and effective for many people suffering from anxiety and depression. I also began to regularly meditate at this time using Hindu and Buddhist methods and I found them to be very helpful both for my own personal health and wellbeing but also in my work as a therapist. I have continued to meditate on a daily basis since that time. However in the 1990’s I came across a Christian form of meditation that was very much like the Eastern methods I had been using, but that was firmly grounded in the Christian monastic tradition, and coming from a Christian background I naturally warmed to this way of meditating.
After being diagnosed with Fibromyalgia last year, the doctor told me the condition could possibly be helped by a course of cognitive therapy and mindfulness meditation. As I was already well versed in both therapies, it was very much a case of ‘physician heal thyself’ (Luke 4:23) and I began to ‘set to’ by attending a couple of Cognitive Behaviour Therapy courses and deepening further my lifelong interest in meditation.
The nearest meditation group I knew of was down at the Buddhist Centre in Nottingham They hold a twice weekly lunchtime ‘drop in’ session for people of all faiths and none. The groups they run are really good but it was a long way for me to travel and they drive a different type of vehicle from my own. I started looking for a Christian meditation group in the local area and thanks to Susie Booth from St Edmunds I was introduced to a group based at St Marks in Mansfield who were using mainly Ignatian methods of prayer and meditation in the ‘Kataphatic’ tradition rather than the ‘Apophatic’ method I was used to.
Apophatic, Kataphatic? - these are strange and unfamiliar terms to many Christians but to put it simply, Kataphatic meditation uses thoughts, images and guided scenarios, and Apophatic meditation transcends our thoughts and seeks a direct experience of God. Most Christians are comfortable with the former but find the later much more challenging, unfamiliar, and even scary. On finding no group in this area that was practicing Apophatic meditation I decided to start one of my own! After all I was a qualified mental health worker, with a first class honours degree in religion and healing arts, and with 40 years’ experience as a meditator, I reckoned I had enough of a track record, or so I thought. I ought to have realised that when it comes to meditation we are all perpetual beginners and we have to seek afresh the divine presence every day, (using what the Zen Buddhists call, ‘a beginners mind’). Also I learned quite quickly that this type of meditation is much more familiar to the ‘general’ public than it is to the ‘general’ Christian, particularly up in this part of the world!
Apophatic meditation of all styles is particularly effective in calming down the thoughts that arise involuntarily in the mind, what meditators often describe as ‘the monkey mind’. These thoughts are mainly self-referential ego related thoughts such as – ‘I’ve got to remember to do so and so’, ‘I’ve got to make sure I don’t forget that’, ‘they must think I’m mad, or that I was born yesterday’, what a fool I’ve been’, I shouldn’t have said that’ etc.- They can often be much worse, for example when we criticise and judge others in order to make ourselves feel better and more superior, (the ‘he/she/they/them’ variety). Apophatic meditation, cognitive therapy and mindfulness have proved to be very effective in helping those with low self-regard, anxiety and depression, alcoholism and drug addiction, who will often go to almost any length to escape their destructive self- critical and negative thoughts.
However, in the past 50 years or so many hundreds of thousands of Christians throughout the world have discovered the benefits of apophatic meditation that has been a central part of the monastic traditions since at least the 3rd century CE. They value it for both the physical and psychological benefits, but even more importantly, to develop a deeper experience and awareness of the presence of God. Groups like the ‘World Community for Christian Meditation’, and the Trappist led ‘Centering Prayer Movement’ continue to grow at a phenomenal rate, and authors from these groups like Laurence Freeman, and Cynthia Bourgeault, sell books on Christian meditation in their ‘shed loads’- (search online any of these tags to find out more).
Earlier this year I started holding a regular meditation group at the Park Centre here in Mansfield Woodhouse where I live.. I began by offering a course on ‘The Cloud of Unknowing’, a 14th century book on meditation written by an anonymous indigenous monk from the East Midlands of England. This ancient manual on apophatic prayer has been very influential on developing my own style of meditation and so I thought it might be a good place to start. As the group has progressed however, it has evolved into more of a support group for those who have already had a taste of meditation, often via the NHS/College cognitive mindfulness course that they run, and also from encounters with other spiritual traditions.
I am planning to run another lot weekly support style groups again, starting in the autumn. These will focus primarily on encouraging people in their meditation and offering support rather than focusing on specific methods. These open, inclusive, multi-faith sessions are free/gratis and open to all. Meanwhile just remember, ‘If you need to chill, come and be still!’
A quick start guide to meditating
• Sit comfortably and close your eyes
• Mentally scan your body for any tension, (esp. face and shoulders).
• Using the default word ‘one’ begin to say it silently and slowly in your mind. (You can choose your own personal word that is sacred to you, or that evokes a sense of love, peace, or calmness later on*)
• Whenever distractions appear (thoughts, aches and pains, noises etc.) allow them to simply fall away, and gently return to silently saying your word without any strain or tension.
• This is the ‘deal’ - 10 000 times you may be distracted = 10 001 opportunities to return to saying your word. It’s that simple but it’s not easy! But even if you ‘zone out’ for a long time you have not failed because your intention, or will, has been to honour ‘the deal’. You are still meditating – so no guilt or feelings of failure that you are doing it wrong, this only adds to the noise of the distractions.
• After 15 or 20 minutes (or longer) gradually stop saying your word and just sit for a while before you stretch and open your eyes.
*Some suggestions – “Abba” (‘Father’, also mark of respect for an older man or teacher- Aramaic) -“Amma” (‘mother’, also mark of respect for older woman or teacher - Aramaic) - ‘Bless-ed’, (said as two syllables) - “Amen”, (meaning ‘so be it’ or ‘let it be’- pronounced ah-men) – “Shanti” (Hindu word for ‘tranquillity’) –“Santi” (Buddhist word for ‘tranquillity’) – “Shalom” (Hebrew greeting meaning ‘peace’) – “Salaam” (Muslim greeting meaning ‘peace’)- “Seetal” (Sikh word meaning ‘peaceful, calm, contented’

Ye Olde Forde Anglican *

I’ve been musing a lot about the olde Forde Anglican vehicle that I use to get around and whether or not it ought to be allowed to quietly decay and its framework put to some other use, maybe as a Community Centre, Mosque, Gurdwara, Museum, or Music and Arts venue.

The thing is that my olde Forde Anglican banger seems like a perfectly good - yay magnificent - vehicle to take me forward in my own personal spiritual growth, and although many of my neighbours have swapped their old Jalopy’s in for a New Age, Evangelical, Mega Church, deluxe model, I think there is a lot of life still left in the cranky old motor yet.

These old vehicles were built to last, and although most Anglicans don’t realise the full depth and breadth of these ancient means of transportation, the quality still shines through for those who take time to examine the weathered log book and take a look close look underneath at the robust chassis.

Not only do we have a fine example of an authentic apostolic mainstream Christian vehicle, (complete with its own Constantinian Imperial death cult interior). It also has a secret esoteric Gnostic glove compartment and it sports some of the finest European Pagan folk traditional body work still to be found in the western world.

As far as I’m concerned all it needs is a bit of a tinker and tweak from a qualified Quantum Mechanic and a dab or two of ‘Global Wisdom, and Inter-Faith Praxis, Fibreglass filler’, and it can soon be back on the road, chugging along magnificently, even better than new.

The trouble is do we really know what a rich treasure we have? And will old crates like these be allowed to continue to rot and decay in our towns and villages because we don’t have the vision to see what a beautiful mode of transport they can still turn out to be? If only we could get rid of our jaundiced view of what they once were, and see the vast potential they still have to provide a usefully practical and reliant run-around, well able to transport our spiritually hungry children around. This is of course providing we can first make the effort to treat them to a huge dose of tender loving care; wash them down thoroughly with a few buckets of deep empathy; and then carefully buff them up with a huge amount of heart felt tolerance and ‘deep shine’ understanding. And I'm not just talking about the Children!

So, anyone up for a bit of old vehicle restoration?

* for those born after 1984 the title of this blog is a parody of the name of an old auto called 'the Ford Anglia'.

A Cold Bedroom Estate

The residents of Park Hall, Mansfield Woodhouse (where I live) have lost the appeal by Barratts Builders to build a bedroom estate at the back of us. I was so disappointed I put pen to paper and wrote this song (to the tune of 'when a knight won his spurs in the stories of old').

They’re building a city at the back of our yard,
Well ain’t it a pity, life’s gonna be hard,
For the Hedgehog and Bats and the Buzzard and Fowl,
They’re building a city so, to hell with the Owl.
A Suburban city is this what we dream,
As we all wait in line for the Planner Man’s scheme?
Dying to turn into poor mortgage slaves?
At four percent interest till we rot in our graves.
. There once was a time when the rent it was fair,
And we all had a house from the Council to share,
Till along came the bullies and Barrister men,
The Corporate Cannibals have done it again.
You can call me a ‘Nimby’- ‘Not in My Back Yard,’
But what’s wrong with that when we’re making life hard,
For the Badgers and Field Mice and old ancient trees,
Providing a home for the birds and the Bees.
The Town Centre is empty, the shops boarded up,
The Buskers and Beggars gone off with their cups,
To the Big shopping Malls, built out on the edge,
Where there’s much richer pickings for those on the beg
So here’s to the queues at the junctions and lights,
And frustrated drivers and more road rage fights,
The old and disabled can ne’er cross the road,
And that’s not to mention the Frog and the Toad.
They’re calling it ‘Netherton’ up on the gate,
To my mind it's just a cold Bedroom Estate,’
And here come the diggers, and here come the trucks,
They’re in it for profit so who gives a Fox!
They're in it for profit so who gives a Fox!

Jim

I often think what would happen if Jesus walked into our church on a Sunday evening and sat at the back. This time round he’s a homeless addict and drinker called ‘Jim’ (Jesus in me). He has mild hyperthermia, he’s strung out, and hungry, with no family to speak of, and he doesn’t really know anyone in these parts… and what’s more, he smells horrible!

What would I say to Jim if he came and sat next to me? How do I imagine he would react when he begins to get his bearings and realise that all the pomp and drama, and all the choruses and hymns we were singing, were actually all about him? Would he become even more paranoid, or just bemused by the way he has become such a legend in his own lunchtime, such a huge legend in fact, that the lady at the front, in the robes and dog collar, is shouting out that he is the ‘King of the Universe’ and the ‘Son of God’ and all that malarkey.

Jim remembers that long ago in a previous life he used to yell in the street, ‘I and the Father are one’ and other crazy junk like that. He used to reckon he was made of the same stuff as God, but no-one understood that he was trying to be inclusive when he was ranting about things like that, and deep down he just wanted folk to feel what he was feeling, overflowing with love. That’s the way he had always felt deep in his heart and all he wanted was for everyone around him to be just like one big happy family.

Jim knew what it was like when people heard him chanting his God talk in town, ‘I am the Son of God’, or ‘before the world was created ‘I AM!’ In fact he once jumped off a multi-story car park and broke both his legs because he thought he was divine and could fly… (Something about the angels saving him if he tripped and fell over, or ran in front of a line of fast moving traffic) - So he thought he’d put that theory to the test. Huge mistake! They ‘sectioned’ him after that episode, and injected him with Largactil, a nasty drug that twisted up his body and turned his face into a mask. He thought he’d learned that lesson a couple of light years ago when they whipped him in the street and nailed him to a cross. They said he had learning difficulties – ‘there’s nothing as sure as that’ he would say to himself.

So here he was, in this creepy old church full of dead men’s bones. He remembers meeting an old geezer sitting on a bench outside who told him that there were the remains of 5 000 corpses, buried over 900 years, in the graveyard. Not to mention others concealed beneath the floor and in the crypt of the church. Jim decided it was best not to start thinking about all that medieval spooky ‘woo woo’ stuff and focus instead on what’s going on at the front. But now the woman in the robes was holding up some bread and saying ‘this is my body eat it’ and then she held up a glass of wine and said ‘this is my blood, drink it’. ‘Oh my Gosh,’ he thought, ‘is this some kind of secret man-eating death cult?’ ‘I’m a celebrity get me out of here!’-

But he reckoned it might be worth sticking around for the sandwiches, coffee and cakes. The old bloke had told him there would be free nosh on offer after the show finished: “It might be a good idea to put some grub in me before I get my Methadone from the night chemist and settle down in the subway for the night. You know it’s getting more and more difficult to find places to crash nowadays. They’re laying spikes and metal studs and all sorts of crap in all the best sleeping spots, and they’re even making the bus shelter benches slope downwards so you can’t lay on them. What’s that all about, and who are ‘they’ anyway? I’ve always wondered about that – Some people reckon there are Shape-shifting reptilian aliens controlling the world! “Here I go again with all that ‘spooky woo woo’ stuff - shut your face Jim,” he said to himself..

“And now there’s a band warming up on stage, and the dude at the front is shouting, ‘we don’t do boring in this house’ and they crank up a song and everyone’s singing and dancing and holding up their hands in the air for some strange reason, ‘I’m down here mate’ was what Jim was thinking, but anyway. “I didn’t know any of the songs, so I just stood there and took in the vibe. I felt a nice tingle down the back of my neck that turned into something like a waterfall flowing over me. What did they put in that wine?’ Whatever they’d spiked it with it was pretty powerful stuff. Suddenly I saw my life flash before me, all those hard knocks I’d been given as well as all the good times. All of it seemed to be working together to bring me to this point. It felt like I was on a mountain top, in a totally clear space and I was free again. No more fear, no more guilt, no more tense feeling in my shoulders and back, just the impression I was floating two foot off the ground with the sensation of pure love pulsing through my veins. In my mind’s eye I saw all my old mates and ex’s who seemed to be lost in a fog, just like I had been not a second before. They all looked so sad and it seemed as if they were looking around for something magical to happen, for some kind of miracle, something to take away all the fear and pain. And then I realised for the first time in an aeon that I was completely ‘myself’- my eternal self, my genuine soul. I no longer wanted to follow in the footsteps of my hero and trickster friends, imitating what they were doing just to fit in and be liked. Now I was just being me, just Jim. Now I know exactly what I’ve got to do for the rest of my life. I’m going to go out there and try and make the world a better place, it’s that simple. I don’t know all the details yet but I get the feeling that I’ll be able to download all that stuff as and when I need it. But I know this one thing, that whatever happens from now on, through the good times and the bad, with all the love I feel inside me, right here, right now, it’s all going to work out fine, I just know it”.

“Sh*t! Jim said to himself, does this mean that I’m a Christian now? Oh man, how the hell did that happen? Well I guess at the end of the day that’s for the experts to discuss and decide. The only thing my science teacher used to say that made any sense to me is. ‘X is an unknown quantity and spurt is a volume of liquid forced through a small aperture’. It’s not my problem Bud, so I’m not going to worry”.

“Me? - I’m Just Jim mate, fancy a cuppa?”

Ruff intro to my book that is coming along nicely thanks

This collection of blogs and essays includes material that began life back in 2004 as a book called ‘the Aqua Course’ a parody of the Evangelical ‘Alpha Course’ doing the rounds in many churches at the time and that is still very popular as a way of promulgating a literal reading of the Holy Scriptures to people who are interested in becoming a certain type of Christian. I began working on this book around 2 years after I graduated from Derby University with a 2.1 in Religion Culture and Belief and Healing Arts, a combined study program. Although I enjoyed the 3 years I spent at Derby, one of the best times of my life, I no longer could financially afford to stay in academia and I continued to teach in schools and community settings and perform as a kit drummer and vocalist both in the UK and on the continent, something I had been doing fairly successfully previous to my studies.

The Aqua Course quickly became a vehicle to continue my studies in spirituality and healing arts without having to conform to the constraints necessary to achieve an M.A. or Doctorate, and while my abilities as a student would never be honed sufficiently to break new ground in either religious studies or complementary medicine, it felt natural to continue the learning process with the tools I had acquired in academia but with the freedom to roam wherever I wished.

Although I abandoned the Aqua Course title fairly soon, due to its provocative title, and not really wishing to enter into a skirmish with my Evangelical brethren. I tried many other ways to organise the topics I wanted to explore but without much success. I was still writing and researching a great deal however, and as the internet, the virtual ‘Web of Wyrd’, became greater and more accessible I soon started to gobble up all the weird and wonderful material I found there, collecting data and trying to make sense of all the crazy conspiracy theories and speculations and such. After the initial intoxication I felt after drinking in the outpourings of kindred souls like David Icke, Graham Hancock, Tom Campbell, and Michael Tsarion et al, I felt that I needed to focus on one or two areas that I knew something about rather than try to make sense of the whole crazy bag ‘o mashins.. To make it more digestible, I began to explore the relationship between Christianity and the indigenous Shamanism of the British and Irish Isles, with a view to enriching my own faith as a Christo-Pagan Anglican and meanwhile finding out what my place might be in the general scheme of things, especially as it is emerging post 2012, which seems to have indeed been a significant milestone in the raising of ‘low entropy consciousness’, as the great Tom Campbell calls it.

2012 was definitely a significant milestone in my own life’s journey. As it happened I suffered a near terminal heart attack and stroke in May of that year, and after spending 3 weeks in a coma and many more weeks in intensive care travelling in and out of states of lucid dreaming, I emerged with a new status, that I couldn’t name at first, but that I ended up recognising as that of a ‘full-time Anarcho-Anglican Shaman’!

Physically I was left with the after effects of a stroke and a strange condition known as Fibromyalgia, caused by the trauma, as well as severe breathlessness brought on by a lung condition called Empyema. And to top it all my severally depleted heart muscle was eventually kept going by a computerised pacemaker that has now turned me into a trans-human digital cyborg.

Spiritually however, I seemed to grow in leaps and bounds, having the time now to devote to meditating, creating, writing, and studying in a way that I was never able to do in my previous life as a jobbing musician and teacher. Tragically much of my ability as a musician has left me and I can no longer cope with the rigours of classroom or peripatetic teaching but at least my consciousness keeps kicking in and I continue to be able to express myself moderately well. I have not been given a clear prognosis and I have no idea how long I will continue in this life with my condition, but my brush with death and my current physical limitations seems to have sharpened my spiritual eye and I am able to focus with a penetrating intensity on the things that really matter to me both spiritually and in my day to day relationships with friends and relations and my various acquaintances.

The question now was what to do with the book? What I had written before my heart breakdown seemed to me to be too didactic and focused on dogma rather than on praxis and the development of low entropy loving action. Also I wanted to have fun with what I write, and allow my creative juices to flow more sweetly. What little music I now make is taking on a similar quality and both disciplines are now merging with my personal shamanesque praxis that is in turn enriching my ‘ordinary’ life as a progressive Anglican Christian participating in the life of my local parish church, attending the communion service, playing Bass guitar in the worship band, and coaching a small weekly meditation group among other things.

What is now emerging is what I hope is a fresh and weightless way of writing, at least to my mind, partly helped along by the discovery of the ‘Blog’, (or web log as it is officially called for the non-web literate). Although it is often narcissistic in nature, the blog and the tweet have become powerful ways to share our thoughts and feelings and to get ‘it’ all out there. The fact that everyone is blogging and not so many are reading or listening is beside the point…a powerful communication is potentially taking place that can be used for either good or ill and there is a freedom about it that borders on the anarchic. My fear however is that the Archons, the controllers of the Military/Industrial banking Empires that try to keep us all enslaved to their debt based economy (or conversely the terror based organisation seemingly opposed to the Empire), will soon censure, infect with viruses, or even pull the plug on the free sharing of data, so that we will be left with an even more profound spiritual wasteland than that which existed before the arrival of the digital age. All the more reason, I say, to write it all out on parchment, paper, wood and stone, and through works of art and architecture, in order to leave a legacy for future generations to discover. The digital data we produce is still too vulnerable, in my opinion, to withstand the solar storms, comets, ice ages, and human interference for it to be a lasting record of the spiritual consciousness and cultural developments that have been produced by un-common people in the 21st century. So let us make hay while the sun still shines and meanwhile leave a codex or two in a jar in some cave for a future generation to discover before the robots turn us into Duracell energy sources.

What remains here is a collection of randomly connected blogs and short essays born out of my own experience and research, focusing on ideas and praxis that have made sense to me over the past 50 years or so. If they make any sense to you, then that’s great, if not leave it be and move on…maybe it will make some sense further on down the line, maybe not.