Writing
I love to write. I always have. For many years I wrote songs and poetry. Playing the guitar, many of these were also set to music… I have a couple of songs that I think are quite good the rest, well, I had fun. Some of those songs and poems are in Weird Tales others are in a huge file of yellowing papers many dating back to 1973. In my professional career, I have also written many many articles and three books. I also have chapters in three other books. All on energy and commodities. One of the articles was even quoted by the US Congress report into the impact of speculators in commodity markets…. However, it was Inner Journeys that I think marked my first real effort at writing
Read More »This Time of Year
I love this time of year. The cold crispness on starry nights and the halo of ice crystals around the Moon or the cold dampness after a cleansing rainfall. The idea and joy of life as everything is dying as winter approaches. There is a magical feeling to it. The cycle of life as the leaves fall to eventually create the rich humous from which new life will blossom. As a teenager, we used to go camping for Bonfire Night down by the Humber near Goole. It was damp, misty and cold but magical. I have an abiding memory of how that felt that can be triggered into full sense at anytime. The colours of autumn are unique and to be treasured. As I said above, the feeling of being
Read More »Soul for Sale?
What do Jimmy Saville and Lance Armstrong have in common? They both fooled everyone for quite a considerable time and both were considered heros. I feel a deep sense of disappointment and outrage regarding the pair of them and others like them. They are not alone. Without perhaps subscribing to what I consider to be rather silly conspiracy theories, I have long suspected that many successful people have ‘sold their souls’. No, I am not saying that they wrote some contract with Satan or Elizabeth Hurley! I am simply saying that at some point either their quest for fame led them to do things that otherwise they may not have done in order to succeed or perhaps, having succeeded their egos got so engorged with fame, they decided they could
Read More »Sucked in and Spat out
There are times when life simply sucks you in. The moment at which that sucking in begins is tough to actually identify but there comes a moment when you understand that you are once again totally wrapped up in life. I mean of course the outer life that can become all consuming. For me, the recognition arrives numbingly in the form of a general but nondescript feeling of tiredness and lack of energy. Next is often some form of low grade illness that no matter what will not go away. At this point, one simply feels encased in imagined responsibilities, stresses and pressures and there can truly seem to be no escape. Until you realize and understand that the operative word is “IMAGINED.” At these moments, it pays to examine
Read More »New Books and New Schools by SC Vincent
There are times in one’s life when events seem to take on a momentum that renders them unstoppable. Sometimes we can see what the catalyst may be, others we simply have to take the time on trust and see where it leads. There are times when life seems to go completely pear shaped and we appear to be losing all we have held dear… only to find that as we relinquish our grasp, reluctantly or willingly, on the life we thought we knew, the changes are wrought and new beginnings, new adventures come in. For me, personally, this year has been one of great and fast movement. We submitted the Mystical Hexagram to Datura some months ago, as one does. At that point my life was vaguely familiar. In the
Read More »The Politics of Hate and the Free Thinker
The recent events in the Muslim world have disturbed me more than almost any other news story of late. I confess, I have less familiarity with the Koran than I do with the Bible but from what I have managed to glean, Islam is a religion that teaches love and tolerance and also has a strong mystical vein rich in meaning. These events got me thinking. I guess my first reaction was to simply decide and confirm my view that religions – any religion – are a bad idea. I mean, its easy to condemn these hate-filled, venomous Islamists based on their actions. But look at the history of christianity! In the persecution of the Cathars, as one city was sacked in south-west France, the noble Catholic leader of the
Read More »We Create Our Own Horror
Found a very interesting website tonight and thought I would reproduce this article as it is exactly what I believe to be truth too….. Consider the following: Our thoughts have potent creative power. We create our reality by thought. This is fact, even if but few people know about it. Because of the time factor we experience in the 3rd dimension we live in, we rarely see the connection between thoughts and their realization. You can find out by being watchful and attentive, even over longer periods of time. Now think about the movies, TV programs, books, journals and other publications of past and present years. Think of the public taste, the tickle of people’s nerves, that has to increase more and more, so that they would be able to
Read More »The Story of Inner Journeys: Exploration of the Soul
Inner Journeys: Explorations of the Soul started as as an idea that I shared one day at a workshop with Dolores ashcroft-Nowicki. To my utter amazement, she thought it was a fabulous idea and she encouraged me from start to finish.. The concept was to write about what brought me to a 5-year course with the SOL that involved meditation every day more or less for those 5-years. So, despite the fact I am really a nobody, the book is strongly autobiographical but I hope that in it people see shared experiences. The second half of the book are the real experiences I had with the course including how I learned to relax, meditate effectively and what I learned about myself in those moments of deep meditation. I used extracts
Read More »The Trained Mind
I just wasted an hour of my life on Youtube. I put in the term “UFO” and then clicked one video after another usually quitting the video just a few minutes – or less – into it. The internet is an amazing thing. It truly does allow anyone to propose theories, viewpoints and even their own particular mania. It is also endlessly confusing. The problem with the internet is simply this… usually there is little or no way to determine the expertise (and mental sanity) of the poster and so you have no idea whatsoever about the reliability of the post unless you happen to be reading material upon which you are an expert. Let me give a few examples. It wasn’t long in my video hopping before I stumbled
Read More »Life and Stuff
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. Macbeth, Act 5, Scene 5, lines 22-31 I had to study Macbeth at school. I hated it. But those lines stuck in my head. How apt, how poetically majestically spoken? Since my father passed away I have found myself questioning the value of my life. Annoyed that, in some ways, my hopes and dreams have
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