Is it easy or difficult to make a friend? We can certainly make acquaintances. We can certainly talk across the garden fence. We can exchange our opinions of the weather, the political situation, and can give reports about our health,  but what about being accepted at a deep level? In other words ‘knowing’ that you are a friend. What about feeling co-existential with the universe when you are with someone. That as we say is another matter altogether.

A major problem is the fact that people are afraid of being themselves. My mentor of old, Dr Martin Israel, said that “the biggest contribution we could make to the world is to be ourselves”. People can be frightened by religious or Christian edicts to behave in a certain way, to believe in certain things, even though some of those things may be counterintuitive and indeed counterproductive.

People are frightened of authority and will do anything to be ‘good citizens’ even if it means not following their consciousness or just plain refusing to think.  This is the so-called Stockholm Syndrome where the prisoners fell into a relationship with their captors and would not speak against them in court. The same type of thing is happening with the governments of the world today, people say ‘ they wouldn’t do that would they’? Yes they would and yes they are. The thing about being manipulated is that you don’t notice it, so the government are not our friends.

What is a true friend?

Someone who is a true friend can be a catalyst for you. It’s the way they respond to your questions or statements, which may be presented in a very disordered way, but the brain is such that it can make sense of material irrespective of the order in which it is presented. You need the right time, the right place, the right state of mind, a willingness to conjoin with someone in a learning situation, freedom from distraction and you have the recipe for a catalytic conversation or maybe a synergistic conversation that can go on for some time.

Incidentally, the word ‘synergy’ was used first in the 1650s to mean co-operation, working together  which is from the Latin ‘synergos’. The meaning of “combined activities of a group” which is used from 1847: A sense of Advanced effectiveness. “as a result of cooperation”  was used from 1957.

Most relationships do not achieve their potential because of lack of willingness to go down through the rings of an onion and reveal the often unpleasant or unattractive elements below. I have a friend who says at the moment he is going through facing his demons but he will not tell me what the demons are. If he did so I could probably help him more or at least give a clue of some sort. That is what coaching is all about. I love doing it.

People are rejected because they do not fit. This lack of ‘fitting in’ is indefinable but it is basically about wavelength of mind. On another track, if you say something whilst believing something else you will not ring true and will not be trusted. So if you represent a wavelength that other people do not want to go anywhere near, probably for reasons of fear, you will be ‘rejected’ or let us say ‘disapproved of’.  It is difficult not to take this personally when you are rejected not by one but by a number of people. The only comforting thing I can say is to take the rejection as a damage report because it people were not damaged they would recognise you as they would not see you as a threat.

If we do not know ourselves well enough to relate to ourselves, how can we be expected to relate to others save with the herd Instinct that animals possess. As the oracle said ” know thyself, itself, thyself”. So simple and so profound.

Dark Matter

Does the universe matter? (that was meant to be a pun)  I was recently exercised by the statement that 99% of the universe is so-called dark matter which is material that is not part of the electromagnetic spectrum. Could it just be that this is where consciousness exists and that is the default position for our soul which is not intended to be a separate entity but part of what we will call heaven, universal consciousness and unconditional love (acceptance).

We on this planet are at an intermediate point. We have an immortal soul that yearns to be with other people and we are living in a material universe where everything is separate. We are at the Midway point between spirit and matter. We can describe all matter indeed ourselves included as detritus, a statement of the breakdown of Unity. We could stretch ourselves and say that the whole material world is just detritus, a fallout from a universe where matter did not exist, as in The Big Bang.

Could it be that a gateway from matter to spirit be an atom of hydrogen because it is the simplest substance known to man, which most perfectly mimics the forcelessness of an infinite universe. Somewhere, we yearn for simplicity – to breathe, to share, to love and be loved, to understand, to cooperate,  to be able to feel what it is like to be a human being and these feelings  are only experienced on occasions where our conflicts of mind or the daily rind momentarily cease in their operations

Looking at the political world for a moment we see how scientific fact, or the attempt to make order out of chaos, is resisted or ignored by politicians. I am thinking about a constituent, a scientist, who wrote an 81 page thesis to his MP about why a particular medical intervention was more harmful than beneficial and his letter was completely ignored. The deliberacy and consistency of this is not just carelessness, it is evil, and would indicate to me anyway that they are being controlled by a force of entropy that wants to separate us all, almost a machine-like entity.

Is Artificial Intelligence intelligent?

Matter derives from consciousness. It is a one-way Street. Artificial Intelligence will never succeed because matter cannot create consciousness thought they can make ‘decisions’ based on algorithms, but who writes the algorithms?  Imperfect human beings who do not understand consciousness?  That does not auger well for the future.

AI cannot succeed for the same reason that parts of a motor car cannot reassemble themselves into a complete vehicle because the parts would not ‘know’ what to do. We are going to be using artificial means of working things out partly because we choose to ignore the already God-given universal consciousness with all its aspects that is already freely available to us. It’s a bit like a prosthetic leg, if you have your leg removed you need an alternative but such a pale imitation of the original.

The word information is interesting in its use. Planes fly ‘in formation’. We fill out a form. We inform someone when we train them in some specific subject. From this we get its evil twin, exercise to the hilt, of disinformation. Disinformation is a falsehood created with the intention to cause harm as opposed to misinformation which is also false, create a door shared without the intention to deceive others.

From this we get the word formula. We speak of formulating an idea but the above suggests that unless we use the right material the results will be of very little value if any. I have heard this described as ” rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”

So, to summarize for now, If we choose to remove from ourselves certain sensitive abilities or allow society to dictate our behavior indeed our thoughts to us, we instinctively try to find an alternative in order to survive. May I draw your attention to so-called primitive societies. How many psychiatrists do they have? How many daily pills do they take? I read that 80% of Danish people are on antidepressants of some sort.

Is this a good advertisement for humankind? Most of our ills derived from our separation from nature, the lack of realization that our own bodies are the ultimate self healing entity, the fact that we do not understand the nature of consciousness and if we chose to study the subject. Through  consciousness we can relate to each other in the ultimate fashion. ‘oneness’.  We have the keys to each other’s happiness.

Do ‘Black Lives Matter’?   Yes of course, but ALL lives matter as we are ultimately all one consciousness. Most of our psychological problems derive from the lack of awareness in this respect. We are not designed to live in isolation, It is our sense of identity that is key, and as Saint Paul advised ‘be in the world but not of it’. This is so vital for mental and emotional stability.