Rose Resolutions!

Thursday 1:12 p.m.
Last night I was bobhopeless and tired and a bit bored, so I went out and bought four bottles of weissbeir, so that's the New Year resolution to give up the devil and all his alcoholic works for a year up the spout. Still, I didn't get where I am today by giving up giving up things, and since giving up things is really my hobby, I count today as day one again. Thank God the tobacco is still off the menu!

Due to the bevvying, I was a little tired and despondent this morning, but ra bliss doesn't care. In the lobby there was tons of heat and bliss. Unfortunately, I'm scheduled to see flatheids today, tomorrow and Saturday, but I'll get as much meditations done as I can in the circumstances.

I checked my emails before I started this. For some reason I went into the junk emails and I'm glad I did. I usually just delete them without looking, which I won't do anymore. There was an email from Will Francis who is a literary agent with Greene and Heaton asking to see three chapters of the sensei and reverend's crime book. I've been sending emails out about this practically every week and not getting replies. I wonder how many of them landed back in my junk mail. Buggeration!

There was also a reply from an agent called Allan Guthrie. Here it is.

Btw, it's been a while since I read them, but I enjoyed
both your novels.
Jackie Whitelight, Centrum. Matt (?), the massive novel
and that wonderful sex scene.


        
           

Ra Book Review!

Monday 3:00 p.m.
I got into work today to find this email waiting for me. The kid had read Bugtown after the kidsbook. She is not a relative of mine. Neither have I paid her any money.

Hey!!!
Just finished reading the other book last night!! can't decide what I like More first one or that one!!

I like how you think And how you put in little details, It's really impressive, I'd LOVE to be able to do that!!
It's sooo Amazing! Like It's such a good book and with a classic twist made original!! LOVE IT!


It's not as good as someone giving you money, but it is good!

3:30 p.m.
Another review just arrived!


Hi sir i have read the book and it is absolutely epic. I found it an extremely exciting and dark tale and it is ju st utterly magical. i would also love to read your other book and i really think you are beeter than any other author out there!


I did not pay this kid any money and he is not related to me!

Ra Penance!

Sunday 4:07 p.m.
What is penance for? You get penances when you're a catholic and go to confession. If you do something bad, you should make it right, and I understand that. You take something from someone, and you should give it back. Religious people seem to be dead into penance and since religion seems to spring from mysticism, you'd think that maybe you should try to understand where this penance thing fits.

At the end of the day, it has to conform or re-inforce non-self and emptiness because that's what mysticism is.

So the hindu joe is holding his arm in the air for so many years and that's tapas, or a penance. What it the point of that? Is that a middle way? Maybe between holding two hands up. There's always a middle way explanation.

Thomas A Beckett get his brains chibbed out and the King does a penance for instigating this. I think it's supposed to balance out in some way. But it doesn't really balance out, does it? You can crawl on your belly to Canterbury, but the Archbishop is still dead.

Is it just a demonstration to other people to show how sorry you are?

I was pleased when I read something that said the buddhists weren't into guilt. Guilt, the boy said, is morbid. We don't do the guilty feelings. We don't wallow in guilt. Your robe is muddy, so you clean off the mud and walk on.

Psychologically, there must be something in this penance thing. Also, I suppose if you're going to stay a catholic, every time you do something not so good, you know you're going to have to take a spanking for it, so you don't do it.

Say you did prostrations from Mongolia to Bodh Gaya and that took you three years. The boy who did this looked most serene. He said he was serene because he'd been measuring the earth with his body for three years, and the earth was big. Prostrating yourself like that is a kind of penance. Hmmmm?

I think I understand vows of poverty. Taking vows of poverty isn't the same as suffering poverty like Charlie Chaplin did as a kid. It's obviously about teaching yourself non-attachment. You don't claim ownership. It's a non-self thing maybe. I can understand humility in this regard as well. The Dalai Lama before he does teachings prostrates to the chair he'll be sitting on.

Sometimes I have thought of Lazarus, the coptic monk, who sits in the cave above the monastery of St Antony in Egypt. He said to the Extreme Pilgrim that there was no point in him being in the cave doing the solitude if he wasn't into penance.

It's just passed four thirty and getting dark. Must go to the hut and watch a fire!

Ra Charlie!

Sunday 1:19 a.m.
I've been reading a book by Charles Chaplin called My Early Years. All the really good books are non-fiction.

The auld maw says she started married life as a lodger in the house in Mossend, a five appartment. There are five children in the family. Once the father walked to Whitburn, a not inconsiderable distance, to borrow two and six from his daughter to buy bread. The seven shillings the auld maw and the auld da gave them covered the rent on the house. My auld man had to search for his coat on the beds before he could go to work in the morning because they used the coats as blankets, as you would.

They're all going to hell, Jack. The evil bourgeois are all going to hell.

I think Charlie Chaplin was a Scotsman and probably a buddhist. I fancied reading the book because I wanted to know how come he was the commie rat who had to skeedaddle to Switzerland when the UnAmerican Activities blah blah.

It's humbling to read about lives of poverty and hardship, it really is. His descriptions of his mother going insane and staggering down to the hospital due to malnutrition are ...

I've had a wonderful life. We had the dole. And free education in esteemed universities. I did not get separated from my family in a workhouse at six years of age. I think it would be great if I could die in my sleep tonight. Lifetimes don't get much better than this one has been already. If there isn't any point to existence or any afterlife or anything at all, that would be okay. Even Charlie Chaplin didn't get ra bliss. Death tonight! Yahoo!

Ra Yogurt Bliss

Friday 6:31 p.m.
Yesterday I must have meditated for eight or nine hours, so I didn't have any time to write my book. This evening I sat down in the lobby just after it got dark, about five, and the space with my eyes closed was very bright straight away, and blissy, and viscous like yogurt. That was before I started in with any juju, or anything.

The thoughts were flowing very evenly today on the train to Bellshill; nice and steady. This makes it much easier to place you mind.

The kiddo and her boyfriend are due to visit this evening. I hope later on we'll be in the living room watching the director's cut of Blade Runner. I should be having the time of my life with my eyes rolled up and the noise blockers on. I'll watch it at the end when the android tells Harrison Ford was a flatheid he is. I believe the actor wrote the speech himself. Best part of a great movie!

Rose Alien Creatures!

Thursday 12:23 p.m.
About sixteen or seventeen spam robots and Alien Creatures from Outer Space land on this bloggie every day. They come incognito. You can't tell who these basturns are because it says Non Referrer for most of them in the statscounter thingy. I assume that means they've bookmarked this blog, but who knows? Some real people land here from the sensei and reverend's blog, including a regular from Helsinki.

That might be one of my numerous nephews. If it is, hello, John, and I hope you've started meditating regularly.

I hope most of the people who come to this blog and don't leave comments do meditate. When I insult flatheids, which I sometimes do, I do not include folk who meditate because even if they don't get ra bliss yet, they will if they keep meditating.

You may have noticed that I'm somewhat intolerant of flatheids, especially ones I know personnally. When I feel a bit crabbit, which is unfortunately often, I sometimes have difficulty differentiating between flatheids and pondlife.

You get what evolution gives you if you're a flatheid, and that's that. Not much progress really. Just standing around sucking sweeties, a complete waste of time and space. Any horse does better as a horse than these flatheids perform as human beings. They are a waste of human beingness.

You might say you are sceptical of all this juju. You can't get more sceptical than moi! I don't believe in any things, especially thoughts. If I believe in anything, it's the illusory nature of reality. Nobody I know believes in less than moi. I do not believe in this computer, for instance, or try not to. It has a function and a name, but it is impossible to fully describe or define. It does not exist in the manner of its appearance. Neither do I and neither do you. If you're too dumb to meditate, you can't hide behind your scepticism around here.

I've been sitting meditating in the lobby on Thursday mornings for nearly four years now, since I went part time at my jobbie. What a difference that time has made!

Nobody I know in Edinburgh meditates. None except moi have access to ra bliss or any of the other astonishments and amazements encountered whilst engaging in the juju of jujus, the great vajrayana. Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the most fortunate creature of them all? It has to be you, Hotboy! No contest! What a fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!!

Ra Bliss Report!

Monday 9:50 p.m.
It's easier to tell if you're progressing when you keep the pace of your life nice and slow and steady. That's why I hate the Christmas ... no, I'm not going there again! Anyway, nothing much has been happening recently, which is great. Monday comes along and you can check out the Monday bliss.

There was so much of it this morning, today, this evening that I'm starting to think I might be a bit peculiar. We're talking bucketfuls, shovelfuls, tramloads of ra bliss. I really wasn't expecting it to be anything like this, Jack. You sit down and mutter your mumbo jumbo to yourself and who could think it would ever end up like this? And who knows what's to come? This is ra bliss!! Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!!!

Ra Extreme Pilgrim!

Sunday 3:30 p.m.
Anybody else been watching the Extreme Pilgrim teevee show which just finished with the third programme on Friday? Right up my street!

The vicar goes to seek spiritual whatever first of all with these Shaolin monks who lived in a hermitage away from the main centre. So they do a lot of kung fu and they seemed to be practising zen. I couldn't understand why they weren't meditating for at least six hours a day, but the vicar seemed to get an insight at one stage.

I do Tai Chi sets every day. There's been a colossal difference in my tai chi sets over the years and I don't know why. I've to go for a walk now. I don't know why that is either. Might be my tao, eh? Back later!

5:51 p.m.
Then the vicar went to learn how to be a sadhu in India. They sat around all day, smoking dope, standing on their heads, and doing ra bliss as far as I could see, and I fancied a go at that sometime. The vicar got a village to be a sadhu in though he might not have had much of a meditation background. But the village wanted him there and fed him. I assume they'd also give him dope to smoke. The only problem was the vicar got amoebic dysentery as you might well do in India. Shame about that.

Anyway, I'm one of them.

Then the vicar got back to Jesus and went to sit in a cave near the monastery of St Antony in Egypt. He had three weeks in a cave on his own. This was a very hard thing to do, especially for a flatheid. It was pretty horrible for the joe at first, but after three weeks he loved it.

The coptic monks at St Anytony's monastery chanted Kyrie Eleison, Christe Eleison. I wasn't expecting that. I use that as a mantra when I'm doing juju with the face on the Turin Shroud. There were pictures in the cave looking very like this. Hmmm? Nice correlation.

The boy was doing a lot of praying in this cave, a lot of Kyrie Eleisons. But he never once mentioned ra bliss.

I really am a fortunate creature, Jack! So I am. I think I'll go back into the lobby and continue with my investigations into ra bliss. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

Rat Vase Breathing Again

Friday 10:17 p.m.

"for only he who passes this way can understand it, and even he can't describe it." St John of the Cross. The Wall


"Those who know, don't say. Those who say, don't know." Lao Tzu.


"The Tao that can be expressed is not the real Tao." Lao Tzu.

The last one has got to be the best opening line ever, just about. One line and already you've got a movie deal.

Sometimes alien creatures from Outer Space land on thisbloggie after googling kundalini, or tummo, or the 6 Yogas of Naropa. This is a post about vase breathing for the hotboys who really have three heads and twelve arms.

I should always say that I know bugger all about vase breathing other than what I picked up from a couple of books, primarily The Bliss of Inner Fire and GlennMullin's translations of Tsongkhapa's Six Yogas of Naropa and the Readings supplementary one. But I have had some empowerments to do deity yoga from Dr Akong Tulku Rinpoche as well as one from his wee brother, my root guru, which was somewhat less formal.

I wonder what it would be like doing some vase breathing if you were just the usual JoeFlatheid? I suppose it would just look silly. I don't think you'd get the effects. This is because Joe Flatheid hasn't got anything to experience the effects in.

Though I am just getting thisjuju to work, the experiences of heat and ra bliss are wonderfully way beyond any other sensory experience imaginable. This is Ra Bliss!!

Of course, ra bliss and all those fabuloso sensations are just a side effect. Fortunately, with this juju I think the more side effects you get, the better you are progessing. Why can't all religions be like this?! In the ABCBBB you refuse to believe in any things at all and get out of your face on air!

We're the junkies of breath, are we not?

Shooting the breath we were. The space the after effects occur in has developed somehow as a product of you meditations. Otherwise there is nowhere in your body as Joe Flatheid to feel the sensations in. Now, isn't that weird? There are more things, Horatio ...

So I'm at the movies on Wednesday night and the film's boring and I start doing these wee vase breaths. There's a kind of band of heat goes round your abdomen sometimes these days. You let go ... and whoosh, up comes ra bliss with much more depth somehow than usual, and what's starting to come up with it is ra heat. It does feel really, really good. I have no idea why these experiences exist. There is no real way to explain them with what we know. You just do this, and that happens.

It would be interesting to get really hot to see if you sweated. I don't think it's that kind of heat somehow. If someone would like to take away and develope this idea to show the existence of the astral body (which is the one getting hot maybe, for the sake of calling it something ) because if it was your usual components getting hot you'd sweat. The heat might be crossing planes. The brain cells might finally be giving out. Already we're in science fiction territory with the alien creatures and now this total load of old photons.

So I tells someone after the movie that the point was to get dead hot and fry out a bit in the middle of your head and then descend, frying out bits as you went, all this accompanied by increasing levels of extraordinary bliss. They did not seem to fancy it. Scottish people are naturally miserable basturns. Miserable basturns in miserable weather. Basturns!

And vase breathing .... better than drugs.

If you fancy having a go at this, you should read Gopi Krishna's book "Living with Kundalini" because you can seemingly totally fung yourself up way beyond any horrorshow. Gopi also reckoned the looney bins were full of people who'd had bummer arousals.

You make it sound as if you'd have to be a bleeding lunatic to be interested in this juju, Hotboy! I don't care, Jack. I'm old. This is the adventure of my life, so it is.

Ra Clear View!

Wednesday 6: 44 p.m.
I left the jobbie today without any negative feelings about the place at all. How surprising! After the lousy weather we've been getting, the afternoon was quite clear and cold and bright, so I went for my six mile run through the beautiful city. Before my bath, I weighed in at just under twelve stone.

That's more than a year and a half of being a fat basturn, Jack! It's got to stop!

Today I finished reading Shadow of the Wind by ... now, I can't remember the name of the writer. Zopan? Anyway, a very excellent book, but a big mother suitable for beach holidays. Worth a read definitely.

The boy's a spango and the book was translated by a descendant of Robert Graves who wrote the Claudius books. He also wrote Goodbye to All That about the First World War; a brilliant book which I read in my twenties before me and the Domestic Bliss toured about Majorca. After the Goodbye book, Robert Graves buggered off and went to live in Majorca, a wee town called Dea, I think. Up the north west side, if I remember right.

When I was still interested in doing the Mediterranean rat town holidays, I used to gauge how good they were by the swimming. Were there fish? Any rocks about for swimming around and feeding fish? There was a very busy wee road in Dea (?), but we cut down from there by some terraced fields and big sunflowers till we came to this most wonderful wee cove. The water was sparkling clear and it was a very beautiful locale. Only about four other people there. The woman who translated the book must have swam there as well.

I've had one night on the beer since a week passed on Sunday. My meditations before I came in here were a wee bit different again. I don't have anything I have to do, apart from going to see the auld maw, till I go back to the jobbie on Monday.

This is the life, Jack! Freedom! Freedom!

Ra Kidsbook

Mon day 10:00 a.m.
Last week I gave a couple of kids a copy of the kidsbook with the new beginning. This morning I came into work to find this email from a kid whose sister assured me would never read the book!


Hi! Am 2/3's into the book an really enjoying it!!! I was glued to it last night, It really really good!!
It's one of those books you want to put down but think 'Oh I'll read another chapter then stop reading' and once you read that chapter you think 'Well another chapter won't harm me'!!
Are you writing any other stories? Because I'd be interested in reading them!

I'm going to be rich!! Rich, I tell you!

Ra Tempis Fugeting!

Sunday 8:00 p.m.
I've known the wonderful people we went to see last night in Strathaven for almost forty years so I don't suppose they were too surprised when I was incoherent by eleven and tucked up in bed soon after. A good time was had by all!

Yesterday I meditated for as long as I could before departing for Lanarkshire, so I put in about five hours. Today, the first chance I got was when the Domestic Bliss took her old dear to twelve o clock mass. So I'm in this kitchen in Newmains thinking how fantastic it is straight away. I was hard to believe there was so much of ra bliss after bringing drunkenness back into the path the night before. A really fabulous meditation. Thereafter, I could just close my eyes and fall back into it. Oh, ra bliss, ra bliss, ra bliss!

I gave myself a life expectancy of 52, so come my birthday at the start of February I will have been in the gravy for 5 years. One of the foundation exercises for the juju I do is to appreciate the value of your human life and realise it could end any time. I think if I get to 60 years old, I will have lived for an awful long time, a lot longer than the vast majority of the human beings who have ever lived. So I'll have had the time to do what I have to do. Living till I'm sixty years old seems like a good deal to me. Thinking I should be dead by the time I'm 61 is a good aid to getting on with the business. Tempis fugit right enough!

I got warm today just sitting. It wasn't a function of vase breathing. You sit and you get ra bliss. Ra bliss is a compounded thing. It can be weak or strong. When it is very strong ... well, that seems to be when the heat checks in, or that's the way it happened today.

If I stay alive this year, I will make progress. Concentration is much helped by mental calming and mental calming is much helped by living the quiet life. I have no appointments looming. The Xmas santy basturn madness is nearly a year away. I've got money for bus fares and newspapers until I get paid on the 29th of January. What a fortunate, fortunate creature I am, I am! What a fortunate creature I am!

Rose Spam Robots!

Saturday 12:25 p.m.
This is for the spam robots (Hello, Jack!) who are following the Amazing Bloggy Church of the BadBoyBLissheid's 5 step programme for getting out of your face on air!

To re-iterate: The first step is to find some Mumbo Jumbo to repeat to yourself and, when not doing that, occasionally look around and think: It's just a load of old photons!

I was trying to remember what it was like this morning to have the mind of a non-meditator, a complete beginner, a total flatheid. What a horrible moment that was! You might spend a long time not getting much. But if you are repeating some mumbo jumbo to yourself or meditating in any other way, just don't stop doing it. Especially if you are quite young. And don't worry if you smoke and drink and behave like all the other assholes. Just keep meditating anyway. You don't want to be fifty and unable to do ra bliss. You really don't.

At the end of the day what it comes down to is this: Can you, or can you not, do ra bliss???

This morning I had the most wonderful time meditating in the lobby. Why try to describe or explain it? You do some stuff and some other stuff happens. How fabulous is this juju!

It took me days to get here. I am no longer crabbit. Tonight I have to go to the wild west and bring drunkenness back into the path.

You don't have to drink!! No, I could sit for six hours with these flatheids and chant mantras. Oh aye. Basturns! At least, I've managed to refuse to have any arrangements made for me after this. After this, it's the rest of the year .... trying to keep away from flatheids!

Ra Crabbitness!

Friday 5:50 p.m.
I felt quite crabbit today and yesterday. When you are crabbit, it might help to try to disengage the crabbitness from what you are thinking about. You probably think it's the thing you are thinking about that's making you crabbit, but there are a million other inputs into the crabbitness, just as there are a million inputs into the subject of your thoughts. You can meditate this crap away if you have long enough.

I had a wonderful time meditating in Bellshill today. The auld maw and me went upstairs to listen to the CD from the Dorje Shugden worshippers, and it was very good. Sometimes I was listening, but sometimes I wasn't. Mainly I was sitting in a lotus at the foot of the bed getting more and more into ra bliss. What a brilliant meditation that was! The auld maw says she'd be dead already if it wasn't for these tapes and CDs.

I can meditate for over an hour on the train either way, and meditate with the auld maw for another hour and a half.

This is the best socialising I ever do! There is not one friend or acquaintance of mine I can sit and meditate with. Being surrounded by flatheids isn't really a help.

Ra Stocktaking!

Thursday 9:23 p.m.
Like a scalded cat, one leaps into the quiet of January. They're all skint and partied out those flatheids.

I don't seem to have much of a craving at all for alcohol or nicotine. The process of whatever it is going on inside moi has taken a jump once again. Just by sitting still here, the body seems to fill up, be uplifted a little, stretched, and ...close your eyes and you're into the circumnavigations of ra bliss globulation beaming in and beaming out. I hope this is the year of the heat.

Aren't you scared, Hotboy? Well, Jack, I've been told that this juju can lead to amazingly horrible pain and agonies. And obviously I'm not doing this stuff right, or the way you would in an ideal world. Also, you might think that some of these amazingly horrible agonies could be caused by insufficient purification of the mind and body.

The effects of the vase breathing? Yes, Jack, these always were a wee bit bizarre, but they've gone right out the ball park now. And I feel that this is only just the beginning of the beginning. Let's face it, Jack. I've not been normal for the last three years and nobody's noticed. As long as you don't tell anyone.

The visualisations are becoming much better though they are still completely hopeless.

Ra bliss seems to be comparatively non-addictive. The attachment and clingingness of addictive behaviours disturbs my equanimity and helps to give me unpleasant thoughts. And it must be said that after a lifetime of giving things up, I've not really managed to give anything up at all. There are gaps. Feeling good between meditation sessions is the tricky bit.

All I need to do is meditate more.

Watched another fabulous teevee show about the atom on BBC Four. It was subtitled : The illusion of reality. Anti-matter, parallel universes, multiverses .. it was all there. So the boy says you can't get a true image of an atom because it exhibits the particle/wave duality. The only way you can describe it is by mathematics. Loved that! Long ago I read that Pythagoras thought numbers could be used to describe creation. And he was right! Anyway, I love teevee about this stuff because after hearing about all this quantum stuff, the world does seem a lot less concrete. Like images seen in a dream; thus must we regard all things.

Ra Ascent of Mount Carmel!

Wednesday 8 p.m.
I've just read the first book of The Ascent of Mount Carmel by St John of the Cross, the sixteenth century Carmelite and pal of St Teresa of Avila.

This bloggie is supposed to be concerned with experiential mysticism. I think the Kagyuptas might be right about claiming to have the skillful means, but I'm not dismissing any other mystical traditions. Joes like St John of the Cross demand some respect.

He's into union with the divine and in this regard seems very like yogis everywhere... although they might not call it God, or divine. The language across the different cultures shouldn't really be very important. Does it work? is the question we should be interested in i.e. does it dispel alienation?

The Second Noble Truth is that suffering is caused by desire based on ignorance of your own true self.

The first book of the Ascent of Mount Carmel is all about desire.

In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,
Desire to have pleasure in nothing.

In order to arrive at possessing everything,
Desire to possess nothing.

In order to arrive at being everything,
Desire to be nothing.

In order to arrive at knowing everything,
Desire to know nothing.”

He's saying what the buddhists seem to say: You've got to desire the right things.

He seems to say that the "soul" has senses, will and memory. When I was a kid at a catholic school, we were told that the soul was like a white sheet which got marks on it from sin, which were washed off in purgatory before you went to heaven. St John isn't talking about anything like that. It's as if the soul was everything that you are if you take away the flesh. The five skandas are: Body and form, sense bases, perceptions, consciousness and mental formations, which include volitional impulses. The "soul" to St John seems to be almost everything except the body.

St Teresa said she couldn't tell the difference between mind, soul and spirit.

What St John is talking about is more like what we'd call mind. Or a strata of mind. We don't in English have words for stratas of mind. They must have words for this in Tibetan.

Much pleased to have gotten through Book 1. For anyone interested in catholic mysticism, I'll put in the quotations I took out.

Prologue “…for only he that passes this way can understand it, and even he cannot describe it.”

On flatheids: “like children who, when their mothers desire to carry them in their arms, start stamping and crying, and insist upon being allowed to walk, with the result that they can make no progress; and, if they advance at all, it is only at the pace of a child.”

“For there is no going forth from the pains and afflictions of the secret places of the desires until these be mortified and put to sleep.”

“for it has gradually to deprive itself of desire for all the worldly things which it possessed, by denying them to itself;[17] the which denial and deprivation are, as it were, night to all the senses of man.”

“And in this purgation the devil flees away, for he has power over the soul only when it is attached to things corporeal and temporal.”

“ ..and liberty cannot dwell in a heart that is subject to desires, for this is the heart of a slave; but it dwells in the free man …”

“And all the delights and pleasures of the will in all the things of the world, in comparison with all those delights which are God, are supreme affliction, torment and bitterness.”

Gospel St Luke: “He that renounces not all things that he possesses with his will cannot be My disciple.”

“So he that journeys on the road and makes the ascent to God must needs be habitually careful to quell and mortify the desires; and the greater the speed wherewith a soul does this, the sooner will it reach the end of its journey. Until these be quelled, it cannot reach the end, however much it practise the virtues, since it is unable to attain to perfection in them; for this perfection consists in voiding and stripping and purifying the soul of every desire.”

Talking of different kinds of desires. Natural ones don’t bother the soul much. Ones with “will” do. “. But some habits of voluntary imperfections, which are never completely conquered, prevent not only the attainment of Divine union, but also progress in perfection.”

“And thus the soul that has attachment to anything, however much virtue it possess, will not attain to the liberty of Divine union. For the desire and the attachment of the soul have that power which the sucking-fish[117] is said to have when it clings to a ship; for, though but a very small fish, if it succeed in clinging to the ship, it makes it incapable of reaching the port, or of sailing on at all.”

On consorting with flatheids: “And thus one imperfection is sufficient to lead to another; and these lead to yet more; wherefore you will hardly ever see a soul that is negligent in conquering one desire, and that has not many more arising from the same weakness and imperfection that this desire causes. In this way they are continually filling; we have seen many persons to whom God has been granting the favour of leading them a long way, into a state of great detachment and liberty, yet who, merely through beginning to indulge some slight attachment, under the pretext of doing good, or in the guise of conversation and friendship, (my italics!) often lose their spirituality and desire for God and holy solitude, fall from the joy and wholehearted devotion which they had in their spiritual exercises, and cease not until they have lost everything; and this because they broke not with that beginning of sensual desire and pleasure and kept not themselves in solitude for God.”

“every pleasure that presents itself to the senses, if it be not purely for the honour and glory of God, must be renounced and completely rejected for the love of Jesus Christ, Who in this life had no other pleasure, neither desired any, than to do the will of His Father, which He called His meat and food.”

“Strive thus to desire to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and poverty, with respect to everything that is in the world, for Christ's sake.”

“Strive always to prefer, not that which is easiest, but that which is most difficult;

Not that which is most delectable, but that which is most unpleasing;

Not that which gives most pleasure, but rather that which gives least;

Not that which is restful, but that which is wearisome;

Not that which is consolation, but rather that which is disconsolateness;

Not that which is greatest, but that which is least;

Not that which is loftiest and most precious, but that which is lowest and most despised;

Not that which is[133] a desire for anything, but that which is a desire for nothing;

Strive to go about seeking not the best of temporal things, but the worst.

Strive thus to desire to enter into complete detachment and emptiness and poverty, with respect to everything that is in the world, for Christ's sake.

“In order to arrive at having pleasure in everything,
Desire to have pleasure in nothing.

In order to arrive at possessing everything,
Desire to possess nothing.

In order to arrive at being everything,
Desire to be nothing.

In order to arrive at knowing everything,
Desire to know nothing.”

“When thy mind dwells upon anything,

Thou art ceasing to cast thyself upon the All.

For, in order to pass from the all to the All,
Thou hast to deny thyself wholly[137] in all.

And, when thou comest to possess it wholly,
Thou must possess it without desiring anything.”

It's not easy, is it, Jack? If non- attachment was easy, we'd all be blinking floating about in ra bliss, Hotboy. So we would!

Ra Holidays' End!

Sunday 6:10 p.m.
The meditations over the last couple of days have been excellent. I've got a head cold, but the bug had a look at my lungs and went in and out in a day, which is most unusual.

I'm going to have a wonderful time of it next year because I meditate. Existence will continue to be miraculous and the effects of the vase breathing will, I'm sure, continue to cause amazement on occasions.

It was interesting to see what a wee basturn a nicotine addiction is, but it wasn't here long and it's gone now. Thoughts with addiction attachments are such liars! Oh aye, it'll be fine if you just have a couple of joints! So it will!

Everybody says the same thing. Get the foundations right. Stop doing bad things. I'll give it a go again and see what happens. Right now, I'm going to sit down and meditate. Boy, will I have me a time!!!

Ra Refuge Anniversary!

1:26 a.m.
On the 3rd of January, 2003 I took refuge with Lama Yeshe Losal, the abbot of the Samye Ling, and became a buddhist. What a wonderful Christmas and New Year I had then!

I received an empowerment the first time I was in the temple listening to a talk from the lama. The temple looks at its best on wintery nights. It's glowing in golden and red and yellow and brown. I'd written to them saying I wanted to take refuge so I could get an empowerment to do deity yoga. So I'm sitting in the temple with a couple of hundred other people and the lama is at the front on his high seat and he's talking about anything that comes into his head, as he seems to do sometimes. Most of the audience were there for a Christmas break doing a course for beginners.

Then the hair on the back of your neck kind of stands up when he starts to say: This is an empowerment to do deity yoga. He says pretend he's holding up this white globe and certain colours come out of it and into different bits of your body, etc. I couldn't believe I'd heard him say that. I looked around at the other punters and really wondered if they were hearing the same talk as I was. But that was great.

I think it was on the 4th of April when I had my first inner heat experience. That was a shocker at the time. Could hardly believe what had happened. Nowadays I think that experience might have been called a kriya or something; a cleansing: a quick roasting along the tubes.

My progress has been bloody slow, Jack. So it has! That's nearly five years ago. Dearie, dearie me! You'd have to live as long as Methuselah at this rate!

I'm not addicted to nicotine or alcohol anymore, but I'm becoming addicted to digging. How else to explain today's behaviour? It was dead cold so I spent the most of the morning meditating in the lobby. Then it started to snow quite heavily. After lunch, I sat at the kitchen window. You can see down onto some rooftops and there's a cricket ground over to your right. A great view for a blizzard. You fix your eyes on something on the roofs below and stay there until the snow goes off about an hour later.

The snow isn't melting. It's lying all around as I start digging. As long as the ground isn't frozen. You've to take your tammy off even if you've had a baldy because of the sweat lashing out your head. You're down to your shirt sleeves and it's kind of envigoratingly cold, but you're kind of hot at the same time from all the panting and sweating. Then it started snowing again and I went into the hut to stare at the candle. The breath was steaming in the cold air. Sitting in the hut might have been a mistake.

I seem to have an infection in my lungs. I can't go to see the auld maw tomorrow if I've got an infection in my lungs. I might have read that raising inner heat, ra tummo, might be good for your defences against bugs since going into a bit of a fever might be what your body does to fight bugs anyway.

Anyway, instead of going to sleep, I sat up in bed and did some vase breathing. In fact, I think I'll stop and do a couple just now. ... the heat thing worked much better than it's ever done!

Just when you get used to something, it turns weird on you again, Jack. You are asking for it, Hotboy. Now, you take a breath and hold it in, squeeze down while lifting and dipping your chin . . still holding . . so maybe half a minute or so .... close your eyes ... exhale ........ HAS THERE EVER BEEN ANYTHING ON THIS SWEET EARTH THAT HAS EVER FELT AS FABULOSO AS THAT?

St John of the Cross said you had to empty the soul of self and fill it with God. So I'm thinking he's a yogi anyway. Then he says that the soul has senses and faculties. (Well, it has to know it's dead, I suppose!) This is very close to the descriptions of whatever leaves your body with the Tibetans. Hmmm? It seems it can be extremely terrifying when your dead so you're probably just better being dead when your dead.

The vase breathing has done bugger all for my disease of course.

Ra Allotment!

2nd January, 2008: 6:40 p.m.
I was looking at a candle in the hut this evening till nearly half five, so it had been dark for about an hour and a half. Cold, but not too cold. As it was getting dark earlier, I thought I sensed a wee bird flitting in through the chicken wire windows, so when I was about to leave, I lifted the candle a wee bit and the wee bird fled. Didn't get much of a look.

I assume it was a wren. I didn't realise birds sat in nests over the winter. (There is a wren's nest over the door lintel inside the hut for those of you who are new to this bloggie.)

Anyway, the allotment has been transformed by four big diggings over these holidays, so they haven't been a complete waste of time.

Tomorrow I'll start work again on the Real McCoy, which I left off to do some re-writing of the kidsbook. And I'm looking forward to everything just now. The flatheids have pretty much worn themselves out and I will be able to continue with my wonderful life and my fabulous meditations without such overwhelming intrusions from the too dumb to meditate. Once I get through these holidays I tend to feel as if I've just survived a car wreck. Allah Akbar!