North Stoke Life

I attended the Irreverend Live podcast at Trinity Church in Winchester on a sweltering Tuesday evening this week. It's a beautifully decorated anglo catholic church.  As the debate went on I became more and more disassociated with what was being said - everything was about the many crises happening 'out there'. Yes, there were several hymans and a prayer but these seemed like ritual tokens rather than a focus.  I looked up into the eves of the church wondering if God would show himself as the crisis signalling proceeded below. People need a crisis. More than we need more important things. Notice how I'm always pointing at the crimes of the world, 'out there'. And how those 'others' must be stopped. Or how "something must be done about it". And "its obviously two tier why can they not see it?". And the biggest of all "things are so much worse today" when clearly things materially are much better.  Yes, as sinners, things mig...

Mainstream society teaches us that if we feel guilt or shame, we must have done something wrong in our personal lives - such as is currently being exploited by race baiting. I argue that there is a deeper, existential guilt born from being in exile which spans all races equally: The Spiritual View: Said in myth and symbol, the moment the divine spark was separated from the True Source and trapped in the material world, it experienced a cosmic trauma. The soul feels an inherent, floating "shame" simply because it is trapped in a low-vibrational, flawed body and forced to live by the rules of a false creation. The Psychological View: More literally, when you cannot identify the source of your guilt, it is because it doesn't belong to your personal autobiography. It is an archetype from the collective unconscious—the deep, inherited human awareness that we are somehow fractured, incomplete, and separated from wholeness. It is this shame and guilt which is partly responsible ...

A main theme of this blog is cosmic exile. A condition all of us are equally trapped in.  Here I'm going to tell you about why you cannot tell others about it, ironically. Why teachers and gurus or amateurs like me are useless in helping you gain freedom and your way back home.  This cannot be taught; it can only be awakened. Recognising this means taking up direct, experiential knowledge. If you try to explain to someone consumed by historic slavery, climate panic or conspiracy theories that they are actually projecting cosmic exile, their ego will fiercely reject it. To them, the physical threat is completely real. By implication, if my true self is inward, only I can act, Believing what someone else tells me to believe is only telling me about they believe. Only you can trigger yourself to act. If you look outwardly to solve your world’s problems, you have already ended the opportunity for salvation. And may well be adding to the material world chaos and incoherence. You ca...

Because for some reason it is too hard to speak literally and directly about the thing in question. I will use a myth to speak about a truth, which cannot be told in any other way. I call this 'signalling'. I will be talking about a truth using this signal because all other ways of discussing it are either unknown, forbidden already or dangerous for me. Sure, try having a dialogue with someone about say, God using facts, logic and reason. We all know where it goes. It cannot be had literally, being unknowable. It can only be discussed in myth and symbol. Yes, that will not be facts. So what? The stories we tell about it together allow the sharing and the signalling of meaning. And it is meaning that we really want to know.  What reasons might cause me to signal these forbidden truths via a myth? There is no language yet available, maybe never will be available, to describe something deep we all know by intuition is happening. It is self-indicting. That is, by speaking about thi...

If you've always found yourself wrapped up in endless criticism of 'others' out there in the world yet have suddenly realised these 'others' cannot be to blame, and deserve compassion, the following may be one idea you can test on yourself. How Do I Work With My Newly Discovered Projections? There is a therapeutic framework designed to help you take back the energy you have scattered onto the outer world and direct it internally onto the shared exile we all must live with. Here is a specific, multi-step process to help you dissolve projections. It cannot be taught. This is how I will do it. You might find a a better: [1. Notice the Charge] ➔ [2. Trace the Hook] ➔ [3. Withdraw the Object] ➔ [4. Integrate the Energy] ➔ [5. Repeat as you start remembering the exile is root cause] Step 1: Notice the "Emotional Charge" You can always spot a projection because your emotional reaction to an outer event is completely disproportionate. If an issue (like climate cha...