Womb

Just think, you were here for at least the best part of 9 months. Trippy or what? At what point did you become you? The fact is that whether you remember it or not, it was the same brain in your head which you use to think with today that once formed cell by cell in the snugness of mommy’s womb. There must be some kind of repressed memories, surely. Try to imagine. How can you not remember being in such a place?

The more I think of it, our consciousness is like a stamp onto our physical vessels. At what point we become self-aware, I dread to think. Personally, I can barely recall anything before running out of infant school at the threat of Mr Ellard’s cane.

If there is such a thing as the soul, and the jury is still out on that one, then there must be, in my book, different kinds of soul. Whether your soul was planned since the dawn of creation by God, or whether it just occurred randomly, by accident, hardly undermines the sheer miracle of it either way.

The fact that we have arrived at this moment in time together is against the odds. How many permutations of chance had to happen not only for all our ancestors to meet each other, but to screw around, resulting in our parents, thus making us? All that way back through time…and here we are. Me and you.

Will I live again? Have I lived before? How would I know? Would I be someone else, if I wasn’t me? Am I someone else, when I’m not me? When you turn off a light switch, there is still electric current in the wires.

Buddhism’s reincarnation theory reigns supreme for me, if for no other reason that it’s the most imaginative idea. Call me mad, but I genuinely think it’s possible that I’ve been here before. And that, in the famous words of Arnie…

…I’ll be back.

the longer you sleep the more you dream....i return to the womb every night

The Sweet & The Sour

Get ready to laugh, because I’m about to mention the word “career”. I’m not saying I regret not being a working stiff from the age of sixteen (although I think I am), but if I’d turned up for my work experience placement at Asda then imagine where I might be by now? I’d be able to fill the Citroen C5 boot up with Quaker rolled oats, reduced-fat mayonnaise, Onken Raspberry yogurts, and a whole heap of other codswallop every night, and all for free. The thing is though, I’d still be asking myself the same question, more or less, if I was a Regional Manager in an office equipped with window and mahogany desk: What if I HADN’T turned up for my work experience placement. What then?

It’s all about perspective. You wouldn’t know either way and you can’t settle for anything else other than what you have because the option simply isn’t available to you. It does help to be aware of what path you’re on. You can be on the wide path for forty years and not even know it. External events and internal hang ups can ostracise you from your perception of whatever “the loop” might be for life. The important thing is to either change your direction or lie in the bed you make.

One’s own random writing can be cringeworthy at times (although spitting it raw with no care for self-censorship can, frankly, be disturbing). Because it loses its truth over time. It can lose its meaning the next day. The spirit’s utmost belief one month can be a ton of cow dung the next. A matter of the heart one year can be a matter of pub gossip the next. Words can overcomplicate. They’ll never make up for actions (although they go a great way in explaining them).

We are all works in progress, for the most part, every single day. As wavering as the wind; as fickle as fog. Tumbling our way over pitfalls, setbacks, turnpikes, and greasy rungs; many of our own making. But the cream rises.

If you’re fortunate, someone will see yours.

Rob Bell

Went to see Rob Bell at Liverpool Cathedral last night. Rob is a celebrity pastor from the states (easiest way of putting it) but he is quite unlike the usual perception of the preacher evangelist types who love the sound of their own voice on the God Channel.

He is young and full of questions. He is not afraid to answer questions too.

A man recently nabbed me in a cafe and gave me a bashing from his bible for ten minutes. It was in one ear and out the other. When it was over – mercy from above – I had no idea about the personality behind this makeshift sermon. He could have been Dan the Dagger man from Dagenham. The point is that too many people spout the bible like robots without offering any of their own opinions to substantiate it. And then there are those with testimonies that are difficult to grasp because they are 100% certain of some miracle or other which doesn't even qualify as a miracle to you.

Rob Bell knows the bible backward, but he writes his own books too. He’s got his own mind. It’s not a bad one. He was raising similar doubts to the ones I have. He suggested that if a 17 year old does not accept Jesus (or indeed never heard of him, or lived before Jesus’ time) then is he still being eternally punished 17,000 years later? He shed some light on the concept of eternity in as much as it is relative, like a weekend of bowls with nothing to drink compared to a weekend sampling Paris restaurants with Winona Ryder. FOREVER could be a mere 3 days, if you are buried alive.

Which got me thinking about TIME and SPACE, and my recent understanding that they are BEYOND our understanding.

He touched upon his future works involving QUANTUM PHYSICS. I have bookmarked that area myself and wonder if the quantum level is the next logical rung on the ladder for anyone searching for answers in general. There is only so much to measure in the top veneer of the world we have already mapped so well, and things behave so differently beneath the surface that defining the miraculous becomes that much easier.

So he’s a clever dude with faith, although at one point it was uncertain whose side he was on! But what gets me is his following. The turnout was great. They say the church is big business. This guy signed 500 books at the end in a blink. The queue stretched away like only a handful of authors can dream of. Hmm.

The cathedral is astoundingly magnificent inside; a shrine for a giant with no budget spared. Bit chilly though.

And Christians are NICE people. Everyone was smiling. Everyone looked trustworthy. If we all had been naked except for rucksacks full of liquor, soft drugs, and refrigerated Galaxy Caramels, it might have been Heaven right there and then.

THINGS LEARNED ABOUT LIFE LATELY: There is no D in refrigerated. Peas and Beans taste nice together. God hates me. And oh yeah...

You're gunna burn in Hell!

Philosophy

In my notes from a few years ago this has a title (World According to Me!) which suggests that I made it up, but looking back over it I can’t believe that I did. I can’t have. I didn't. Little bits, yeah, but some of it looks as though I may have been making notes from a textbook. The term "non-intentionally" sure sounds textbook to me!

I’d like to take a minute to consider the ‘automatic response’ that occurs when you see a flashlight or hear a siren, about the way the brain has no choice but to experience it, whereas a concrete block doesn’t. What is that automatic response all about? The sheer autonomy of it!

What about the ‘occasion of flight’ too? The point where a moving grounded object takes to the sky. What exactly changes in the physics world to allow that to happen? A blackboard full of mathematical equations, that’s what.

Is the world an idea in the mind of God? Is God an atom in another structure? Believe in what you have good reason to believe in. Reality develops between reconciling of contradictions: Synthesis.

Is the aesthetic skin of what we know a fragile cloak to something else? Does pleasure-seeking influence a loss of morals and failure of duty and obligation ethically? Does despair submit us to God, and in turn true freedom?

We control what we can of the world. Private property through labour makes people means to another person’s ends. Nothing can be proven, but sufficiently vague is certain enough for poetry.

Truth in thought: Morality in action. Value has no value in itself. Nature is valueless. We bestow currencies and determine worth. A tree is non-intentionally conscious.

Does the method of how we perceive our thoughts have any bearing on their content? Ideas are instruments for affecting the physical world. Is there a relationship between the physical world and the kinds of these ideas we have about it then?

The longing for love: The search for knowledge. Pity for mankind: the inhumanity of man. It’s a world of facts and rules, not objects.

Above image: Rene Descartes