There was a quote I heard from a film just recently 'I spent the whole of my Life being afraid of Myself' and I realised that many people in my life and myself had either a background unease or very real tangible tension and anxiety of fear and uncertainty.
Even though I had that breakthrough so very early in the late 50's and that phrase given to me by my own Sensei through the Koan which pierced my brain so to speak and something dropped away, something tore away a mind set and I cannot even to this day say what left and what remained, for days I was in peace, joy, light and the words of Sensei 'you will never be the same, the world will not understand you or you it, it will seem strange and you will not fit in anywhere, now your troubles begin'. It now seems I am that Sensei to myself.
I was an apprentice electrician and I had joined a firm that travelled in the UK fitting shops up and at home doing jobs and also then teaching Judo, Kendo and meditation, the jobbing electricians were
hard and unfaithful to their wives, the boss hard and unscrupulous and I was shocked and lived a lonely life with meditation and gym work away from home while they went womanising. The contrast between meditation and Judo and all sent confusion into me. I began to loose touch with that 'space' I had in the Koan experience.
I then became a full fledged electrician and joined the Metropolitan Police electromechanical maintenance team at the Met Police Collage in Hendon / Colindale where I lived in Hendon as well. The peace of the Collage was welcome and I got together with Gilly who became my partner and then I found forensics after moving to to the West End as a supervisor of Maintenance and eventually returning to Hendon and then to Forensics. I then had a few sabbaticals to Spain, Canada, Scotland and many excursions into religions, guru's, philosophy, TV and radio appearances, love affairs, an affair with an escort girl and academia and science, this is a rough synopsis of a very eventful life.
All through this was health problems with cancers or suspected cancers and scares of the lungs and prostate and miraculously they healed and was said to be spontaneous remissions. I noticed this background anxiety and indeed suffered panic attacks and was very sensitive to health issues bordering on hypochondria at times.
There was these seemingly endless contradictions which caused despair, confusion and a contrary 'adhesion' to what is reality? The world and experience of the joy, light, freedom of and in the space of the Koan and the joys of money, fleshly pursuits, material success which were enjoyable and the peer pressure to be material and all of that. For many years I did not meditate and then with health problems and the burn out from travelling weekends to Europe to present many workshops and the endless patients in healing and therapy, the cancers came and I retired from it all in 2000. I gradually began to meditate and realised how afraid I was, the background tension and my tired body and mind and I realised they were the same began to unwind, I realised I did not trust myself and indeed was afraid of myself, the auto responses, the programming, the conditioning were not me and yet they were and as I realised these programmes and agendas were not me I was appalled to see the grip and the habitual dictatorship they had on my life, I was living someone else's brain washed dictates, the fear was then 'who am I' and what identity did I have, where do I fit in without an identity and so on.
The fear was coming to the surface, my very existence was not real if I were a mere idea, a programme set by human religion, politics, medical procedures, wars, culture and of course wealth and money and position' a person of note, an authority. It was then I realised that the Koan had torn this whole wordily cacophony from my 'head brain space' I had to experience the world and its attributes and its ID cards, its compartmentalised hysteria of now facial recognition, AI, complete utter surveillance of every move and thought, social engineering, big huge brother, so THEY know everything about you and mold you into a robotic person so they feel safe from their paranoia and always know and predict and feel safe from any unpredictable circumstance, the ultimate insurance policy and safety zone.
In my own way I was always making sure I had my supplements, routines, disciplines, I was safe with the known procedures of my own agendas modified from my conditioning and brain washing and then smugly private and secretive thought I had peace in this ivory tower of the safety net of my own manufactured 'no Identity', but was it no identity?
Indeed not; this was the safety net of those above, I was the surveillance and AI, my own facial recognition as I looked in the mirror or my body for any weakness's or ageing, for any disturbing news or event. The ace fake news of manufacturing and an identity on a Zen empty mind, and so the fragile conditioning was RECOGNISED as fragile, thought minded put together programmes which were just the empty agendas and beliefs which were impermanent and this was the anxiety that my intuition felt they were unreal in the sense of their impermanence, their foundations were 'pie in the sky' and such could I trust these fragility's and so my false fake beliefs which over the years I had made solid by habit and therefore the known were and now seen as false, although at the time, unshakeable and on solid ground that made sense and backed up by many wise powerful people and so my reality was set, bound and accepted, until the cracks appeared and the Koan reared its head.
So where am I now, I don't know and that is seeming to be very OK for now.
SHACK
In the image at the top many of us can feel that we are being stalked by 'bad' luck just when all seems well, whack, the saboteur strikes, and maybe the saboteur has the 'job' of breaking down the surmised solid reality of ones beliefs which may have been not appropriate and now leave a space for whatever.(SHACK)
