Doubt v the spiritual warrior

Doubt can be the greatest adversary.

Should you choose to go with intuition

Should you go against conventional wisdom.

Doubt is a doubleness of presentation.

It presents alternatives in consciousness.

In these days of ambulance chasing law firms

we've surrendered our dignity

for what at one time might have been called

"Thirty pieces of silver".

Look long and hard enough at any injury

and it's possible to find someone else to blame

for damage suffered.

There is an inclination to choose

one course rather than another.

Be aware that it's not only professionals,

family, friends, teachers etc. which obstruct.

Ancestral voices,

speaking through your protoplasm

will be speaking to you internally.

They question your prudence,

They tell you to be careful

and to avoid innumerable possible mistakes.

"Is it safe?"

This is why, in the book that I've written,

I suggest that anyone who is confident

that surgery, chemo and radiotherapy is best,

should pursue the route they've chosen.

In some cases it can be a successful method.

Belief plays a large part in cure.

Those who choose the alternative route

take their life into their own hands,

and if they don't have a confidence and belief

in what they do, it can be a route

too scary to even contemplate.

Are you prepared to live or die

according to the choices you've made?

Or to live or die according to

the choices made for you?

The body is complaining.

Treat it with respect,

or let someone poison it for you.

Either way, it's a wake up time.

After one chemo session I felt like death.

I feel now as if I'd been asleep for thirty or more years.

Musings on the 'all clear'

On the 23rd of February 2016, I was told that a PET scan showed no significant sign of tumours anywhere. This wonderful news was tempered by the knowledge that it was also the day when we would be saying goodbye at my friend's farewell ceremony. The couple of years of harsh treatment by surgery, chemo and radiation for his cancer was over.

Kill or cure seems to be at the toss of a coin, A road is chosen, and in the case of a serious disease, if it's followed faithfully, the road teaches you something. Some say I must be brave to go it alone. Not so. Although in those first few weeks several people, family, friends, McMillan Nurse and oncologist feared or even predicted a negative outcome, I've never felt alone.

Maybe it's this historically unique period of communication, which means that many people, disillusioned with oncology, are able to share their success stories. For every success story there will be someone to pooh pooh it. Can you tell how sincere a person is when delivering their testimonial? Some of them are so emotionally moving.

Or maybe it's something 'spiritual', by which I mean a connection I feel with a higher order of energy than the gross, toxic chemistry that modern day science offers. The effects of chemo-therapy may kill the cancer. I've seen in friends how it also leaves many organs in the body seriously damaged, many of them continuing throughout the rest of the life of the body. I feel gratitude that I avoided that.
We have our being in an energy universe. Every form that we see, feel, smell, taste or hear is a modality of the energy in this universe ... including you and I. When this truth becomes clear in the mind, it changes one's whole attitude. Waves cannot exist in an ocean without the water which gives them the possibility of form. Hurricanes cannot arise without the atmosphere which supports them. And we exist only as whorls in a continuum of energy.

We enter these bodies as a bawling bunch of appetite. Appetite wants what it wants when it wants it. And when appetite has it, and is completely satisfied, it goes to sleep. Appetite is a fundamental property of the universe. In Troilus and Cressida Act 1, Scene 3, Shakespeare call it the 'universal wolf'. And this wolf will devour everything, unless some kind of hierarchy of order rules it.
This order begins when it is realised that we are not the only appetite. Our action produce reactions that don't fulfill what we want. We learn to become 'considerate', to appreciate how things are on the other 'side'. We become 'e-ducated', drawn out of the appetite into the thinking process.
In ancient Greece, the heart was believed to be the seat of intelligence. In the age which we are now passing through, the matrix of the thinking process has been given more importance. It's importance is stressed so strongly, that we lose awareness of the recognition that we are energy beings. We believe that repeated behaviour patterns rule us, and that they way we are is somehow unalterable.
This is an error that we have been led into by our educators: parents, friends, teachers, governments, scientists, all pull us continuously away from our awareness that we are energy beings.

The way we use our energy produces the form of our body. All form is energy behaviour. And change in energy behaviour therefore brings about change in form. At heart, we are the will which brings about such change, but when we're enamoured with, trapped in, the matrix of thought, we lose awareness of the magic that happens when we fall back onto our own will.

Faith, in order to succeed, has to overcome the thinking process, that process which has been set in motion for survival, but which has outlived its usefulness when the body is facing its own more or less imminent death. Faith is the path that is set out on, not knowing where the road will lead, yet confident that, win or lose, all will be ok. Why? Because when you drop this body you, the energy being that powers it, will move on.

I still think of my friend when I walk around town. We spent many evenings imagining the historical events that occurred here in Chester. In our minds we cherish these moments shared with a friend, and even when they've moved on, their legacy is the fond memory of happinesses once shared.
Isn't this what life is all about? Sharing our qualities and inequalities, in the spirit of friendship? When we move on, isn't the meaning of our lives these memories that we leave behind in the minds of others?

Wherever you now are, Andy, it was a joy sharing our brief time together, and an honour to have met you. Rest in peace my friend.