Many
years back I had this lovely friend and she and her husband were one of my early
mentors and her husband became a ‘sort of’ brother monk type being and we
attended many Zendo’s together and met the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and he
became a devotee of the Maharishi and although I knew Mahesh quiet well I
preferred the Japanese / Chinese way of ‘the way’. To me they said the same
things in different ways and appealed to ones ‘something or other’
Lana
(not her real name) was very beautiful and became a devotee of the late Sai Baba and stayed in his Ashram for a while. She has to retire from ballet as she
injured her leg and for a while was a dancer at the London Palladium. Many
years of meditation and asana’s another Guru gave her, I think his name was Satyananda
in Behar in India where she stayed for a long while and attained a great deal
of wisdom and many insights her husband Mac (not real name) preferred Maharishi
teachings and meditation. So Lana, Mac and I met regularly at their little flat
in London and we used to meditate and discuss our experiences
and compare them through the different ‘ways’ we embraced. I am writing about
the late 60’s and early 70’s.
For
many reasons it was time to move on and then we went our own ways. Mac remained
in the local London vicinity, Lana moved to East Anglia with a friend to live
devoting their lives to deep practice and meditation and I ended up going to
work after a failed soccer career through injury that never really took off,
nor the Cricket one either, my destiny lay elsewhere.
I
went to work at the Police Training College in Hendon as an maintenance electrician having served
an apprenticeship as an electrician during my soccer episode, the club insisted
that all the lads learned a trade in case of injury, they paid for the
education until I became a tradesman, also Jewish care sponsored me and bought my tools for the electrical trade, as we were very, very, poor and the football club only really gave me a reference's as I only cleaned boots and got minimal training.
During
this time I took four individual years off only after I switched from
electrician to forensics and studied at University for it to get a BS.c in
Forensics and biology then to MS.c in Electro Mechanical Engineering and also a
Psychotherapy and counselling degree at the same time doing workshops from the
late 70’s onwards all over Europe, Canada, Scandinavia and the UK, you can see
my CV in www.geoffreed.com.
I then
had numerous affairs with ladies and eventually settled and married Gilly at
Findhorn we were to together for twelve years.
I stayed at Findhorn for a year and took other sabbaticals as above.
During
most of my working years I lost my meditation so to speak and yet there was
always that ‘silent current and calling somewhere in the depths of my mind’
even during those years of endless work, travelling to destinations by air,
ship, car or train to do workshops, healing's and clinics, I really did not have
time for meditation and yet there was a something going on automatically,
unconsciously.
Then I guess I went through burnout which many folks warned me about, I was a
workaholic and two severe life threatening illnesses pulled me up sharp. Yes cancer of the lungs and followed by
cancer of the prostate. I refused
chemotherapy and in both cases went to meditation, prayer, Qi Gong, TCM and
Essiac and with grace and yes even with a sort of healthy scepticism Life gave, nay granted me an extension. The lung cancer turned to glandular fever and the prostate was benign after definitely being carcinogenic, a spontaneous remission as was that with the lungs.
At
the end of 1999 I took early retirement from everything, still did a few odd
workshops and healing's at the clinic, and then by 2002 moved to where I am now
to recover from both illness and start up my meditation and concentrate on the
writings and just be, meditate, do juicing, Qi Gong and rest. I did not realise how world weary I had been
and even now in 2018 I have not fully regained strength and deep inner peace
and yet that auto something as above kicks in now and again and that peace,
that grace is all I seem to need, it doesn't come when I plead for it and meditate
and I can get to empty mind but it is an invitation and something in me
recognises it is humming away in the background.
Something
came to mind that prompted me to type this; Lana said to me just before she
went off to the East
Anglia
(I never heard or saw her again and Mac once or twice). Lana said ‘I have to
meditate and do my practice because there is nothing I want or pray for I feel
complete in myself, really I could just lay in bed or just stay in meditation
all day and night’.
When
I used to meet with Mahesh he seemed to be in meditation all the time and his
eyes would kind of switch on as if he was on ‘stand by’ mode. My Sensei and Sifu had that alert relaxed
mode as well and if one tried to jump on them as we rascals did now and again
they would react so fast that the shock threw one over.
Some
years before all this when Gill and I parted around about 1978, I missed her
like mad and there was a mourning healing time and then on a very rare occasion
as if it really mattered that something in the background of my being would
set me down and I would go deep and sometimes a rare vision and insight.
This
particular one was; a moving travelator or moving walkway appeared and I was
standing watching and then appeared all manner of women, tall, dark hair,
blond, black, brown, skins, long hair straight, curly, wavy, slender, full
buxom, all nationalities, all colour eyes and I realised there is an attraction
to each combination and they changed into many and I loved them all, not
sexually just realising their form was not them, this healed me of Gill and
then came a trial with other short term affairs each wonderful and then
realising similar to SHACK 21 Angel Face, I did walk away but it was mutual, we
realised the quest was in ourselves and our inner unshakable peace.
Just
lately as I approach my eightieth year in November 2018 I have had similar
visions on my moving walkway, cars, houses, money, exotic places, fame and I
know what Lana meant. Also I know what Sensei meant when he said when I was in
anxiety at Judo Championship (Another story in SHACK) only necessary to enjoy.
Since
I do not really want anything but the bare necessities, of course I am not a
saint or guru and I do get the odd urge; perhaps a better flat, a small car and
bit more money and then I feel this peace with my lot, you may say this is my
age and years, yet I realised when many said I was weak, too laid back, said I
was a coward and so on, not ambitious, not motivated, much of this is true,
yet there is this NDE experience which I
did not want to come to Earth, I find the Earth beautiful in nature but hard in
humans, I have been told I am to yin, vatta, pitta and that I am vulnerable I
own up to that, sensitive yes, used to be hurt not realising all material goods
perish, bodies and cars do, so like sand or ice grasped they slip through your
fingers or melt and heaven knows in my forensic days to see endless corpses,
terrible torture, misery and sometimes no motive and apparent senseless murder,
it would have been easy like so many of my colleagues to get blind drunk,
bitter or go into some kinky distraction, yet from my Buddhist days and then
into Quantum Metaphysics the endless play of possibilities and probabilities
like the popping in and of matter to source and back again to form, atoms
99.99% empty, enough to drive one crazy as Bohr said ‘if you understand Quantum
and atoms you really haven’t a clue’(that’s my take on his quote). Then the
endless pain in workshops and my participants stories along with the
psychotherapy, counselling, healing sessions more pain and suffering.
Yes
those missing years at work regarding formal meditation, those years of
travelling and meditation, Tai Chi, Qi Gong bad eating habits, anxiety and
illness along with the horror of forensics the clinics, workshops and all that
were actually showing me one lesson; There is no such thing as forever: if one
sets one thing in concrete and relies even on several things i.e., a
relationship, health, business, money, fame and so on this very reliance brings
a false security and when it goes or ends there is loss, grieving and despair,
suicide, bitterness, no hope. So one is on the travelator the moving walkway
but not on it just observing and like clouds, enjoy their shape, texture and
colour and let it pass, do not press the ‘stop halt red button’ and cling to
just this or that, because someone will press the start green button and one
will be on the walkway bound to the journey which will eventually come to an
end and that which one clung too and the object will end as well and maybe one
will search endless other walkways all ending in futility as one realises there
is no such thing as forever in Life’s forms physical or mental, so stop the hankering
for a solid forever and that anything outside one is lasting, it evaporates and
let it evaporate and become a transparent see through and in that know one is
safe as an observer and that is all.
No
cling film and even that is transparent.
So
the end is the beginning and the beginning is the end and one is neither. So do I lay in bed and just be in the peace and joy of no mind or do I get up and do the same?
SHACK
Post Script
In 1973 Dr Edgar Mitchell Astronaut and Electro Engineer Willis W Harman PH.D set up the Institute of Noetic Sciences and I joined and was granted an associate membership and became very friendly with Edgar. It was through Edgar I got to associate with NASA. In 2008 I got my PH.D in Metaphysics with a brief to bridge quantum physics to metaphysics through the two slit / split experiment focussing on the observer effect and talks I had with my late cousin Professor Cyril Wolf and correspondence with various scientists about the observer effect.
It was because of the Institute of Noetic sciences that I had the courage to go out of main stream science and became very unpopular with many academics. That is why I started my writings from 1967 onwards and online in 2005 through the media of the late www.energygrid.com and salvaged most of blogs from this very large and amazing online magazine and journal in www.geoffreedarchive.bloggspot.com
The
Institute conducts research on topics such as spontaneous remission,[8][9] meditation,[8] consciousness, alternative healing practices, consciousness-based
healthcare, spirituality, human potential, psychic abilities, psychokinesis[9] and survival of consciousness after bodily death.[10][11] The Institute maintains a free database,
available on the Internet,[2] with citations to more than 6,500
articles about whether physical and mental health benefits might be connected
to meditation and yoga.[8]
Headquartered outside Petaluma, California,
the IONS is situated on a 200-acre (81 ha) campus that includes offices, a
research laboratory and a retreat center (originally the campus of World College West).[12] Its
current director is Cassandra Vieten. Other researchers associated with it
include Dean Radin and Rupert Sheldrake
This of course was at the time the only institute of its kind and another one I joined is The Doctor Healer Organisation / network and through these two Institutions and my many travels throughout Canada, Spain, Belgium, Germany, UK and Scandinavia I had the privilege of meeting many well known celebrities, doctors, healers, Shaman, lawyers, politicians, astronauts, scientists, mystics, judges, lawyers and great people who did not have degrees or appeared 'ordinary' and had gifts of wisdom and spiritual acumen far beyond mundane belief. Then of course my Sensei and Sifu in Japanese and Chinese Arts. My trials at Soccer and Cricket which never took off, and my transition from electrician to Forensics.
The main key event the NDE(near death experience in 1942) in High Wycombe Buckinghamshire which gave the notion through the years of there was another realm other than this Earthly life experience and started the quest and still burns within me.
