Never really talk much about spirituality but have had some experience with practical applications of it. You know when you have to redefine something you are basically kidding yourself and well you can look like you have been shopping around as though its about the best deal. My first experience with anything that could be defined as spiritual was when I went to karate at around ten years of age. To finish a basically gruelling class the teacher would get us to meditate. This was my favourite time compared to the commando rolls and bashing that went on beforehand. I left karate after a few years but I continued to meditate right up till now, it is my go to retreat or better yet treat to end the day. I read some books in my teens about meditation but I never really understood them. In my mid twenties i joined a meditation group with a guru etc and did that for around two and a half years living for a year in an ashram. It wasn’t a hippy ashram it was full of Indians and there was a lot of conservative stuff like you better be an accountant kind of stuff but beautiful mornings at five giving offerings and connecting with the universe.

So whats all that about? Connecting with the universe aren’t you already in it anyway and isn’t that scary? Well when I meditated and when I still do I connect to an energy which is arguably everywhere. Sounds a bit vague right well yes it kind of is until you do a George Harrison manoeuvre and feel it! The issue I had with all this connecting stuff was that I knew that a spiritual life per se wasn’t for me at least not as an end in itself I had other stuff to do like eat tofu : )

It wasn’t until I went back to my childhood karate teacher in my late twenties and after a few years was introduced to a spiritual master that I got practical understanding of this energy and how I could refine it and use it. Of course that spiritual master was basically a crazy Chinese guy who just couldn’t shut up but he had some very interesting viewpoints and practical skills. Of course if I blurted out his weird anomalies that are a bit hard to believe anyway you would know that I am basically crazy. But that in itself isn’t an issue because I know what people are capable of. But it isn’t about doing strange things it is about surviving and thriving in what can be an inhospitable world. But all this mind bending stuff isn’t where the journey ends or begins. As he said it is practical and anyone can refine the energy that is around them it isn’t all about walking on water or breakdancing.

To be honest after dealing with this Taoist master and all this physics bending strangeness I basically had a mental breakdown and even though I kept practicing it I suddenly found myself at the local church. By now you are probably on the floor laughing but it is actually true, this stuff just went on and on. So in my mid to early thirties I became a Christian and weeped with the best of them. I was never Christened as a child and after talking with the local Minister of which being mad I saw strange animals (seriously it gets better) as he spoke to me somewhat like when I first visited a Jungian anylyst while part of that meditation group the analyst seemed to transform. But after all this meandering I had continued to meditate and practice my Tai Chi while occassionally picking up the Bible. There you go as crazy as hell but what I want to get back to is that energy. The energy of the Holy Ghost is energy and you can feel it, maybe you don’t want to. The Tai Chi is about experiencing energy and refining it, maybe that is a bit odd for you. Anyway that is enough vague and odd things for this evening, take away, it isn’t really spiritual but practical.

Basically have painted my first aerosol work for 2015, it could be a couple of weeks until the next work but it feels right. Have come a little further in my current freelance work project so that is good. Probably in the next few weeks it should be finished aiming for mid Feb and that will be a complete website with custom graphics. The first work of the year in aerosol was another unexpected arrival didn’t really know what it would come out like and it was a tad different. There seems to be a lot of younger graffiti writers with an illegal agenda who still seem content to do legal walls which is rather strange if you pride yourself on being a rebellious type. When I was younger it was only after twelve long years of illegal work that I started doing legal walls and only because what I wanted to do ie big elaborate walls in full colour with custom artwork couldn’t be done illegally. These young tykes do a pile of crap on legal walls and I don’t understand why they bother. They will also wax lyrical that you have to do illegals so they are at best hypocrites too. The ones actually doing what they say they do are alright because they are honestly doing what they are good at or should I quote Michael Jackson and say are “bad” at. Go and do what you like but don’t let your agenda turn you into a jerk so you feel you can go scrap up legal walls, leave that to people who can actually paint well rather than like some quick illegal stuff which should be on the train line you are trying to get up on.

There is a time and place for everything and remember that there are people who are artists and that isn’t a threat but a reality. I love quick rollers and all of that stuff but keep it illegal and then you can at least feel like a decent person and learn to enjoy the variety of art out there even if it is patterns or street art. Otherwise you just burn bridges and that is not the way to go about things. I admit though some street artists are just as bad and they probably need to respect graffiti culture but tagging on legals is pointless. And to finish hating street art or patterns or legal painters just means your not busy enough doing what your supposed to be doing which is getting up.

So the other article describes sleep paralysis which is actually quite common. Had it for last couple of years occasionally with heightened hallucinations which is normal. Never realised it was pretty common so there you go.

If you can imagine a place somewhere in your self where you can’t think outside of a boundary. The boundary could be seen as a state of being somewhat displaced from reality, a kind of place to exist within that disregards information from outside of itself. A closed system that cannot think beyond itself, that truly cannot think. Every now and then I am reminded of this place through dream states. They are not dreams but a psychosis a place where reality can’t penetrate. I simply lie there and endure this state as another world seems to fill my mind. But really it isn’t my mind, it has nothing to do with my mind as my mind simply stands aside watching the strangeness unfold, a kind of paranoid reality where I have to watch the goings on without participating. My mind stupefied can’t see any way out it simply is a spectator and the state of mind the spectre.

When these states are endured I simply wait patiently for it to end, I can only hope it will unravel and disappear it only appears every now and then unexpected. A reminder that makes me glad to see the world through my own eyes to know there is actually more than this disconnected place. In this state I call out to my partner but I know I am trapped she wouldn’t know that I am calling from this place, “help me x, help me”. If this was consciousness and I was simply wandering, not in this world mind you but that world you cannot see, that only I can see and others like me can see but really we are calling out, “help me x, help me!”.

I can see you now you are there, I woke up, the bad dream ended and now I hold my hand out, I can see you and I know of the world you see. It isn’t real and it has become all you know, when I am there I also call out but nobody can hear. For some this is all they know.

Lately with all of the goings on in the world I have been thinking of cruelty. There are many examples either current or from the past. The use of torture as a symptom of dealing with enemies of the state, I use the word symptom because it seems so odd to think that the new millennia could bring a reprise of torture. The torturer has a false sense of control, they can administer and command the scene whereas out in the world they can only guess what terror awaits. Torture brings a false comfort, a false victory. The victim who was once the terrorist has information literally prised from their bodies. The deaths they planned to carry out is now the pain they can’t escape, the truth can only be beaten out of them. This though is the understanding and how long is the information relevant? Have the plans of attack changed? Are there new strategies?

This though is assuming that you can find truth through a long and painful process that torture is. So the terrorists show cruelty as they have an agenda to disrupt and unseat the democratic world. They can’t negotiate there own state and how could a state be run by terrorists? Afghanistan was run by terrorist supporters, the Taliban was happy to allow training camps for their own ends. That really is the problem, a huge divide and hatred of the West. The west of course was not particularly worried about a state incapable of a military attack but that underlying hatred was leading to cruel acts. No surprises that there are many injustices in the world, it seems that our disinterest has fed an agenda of hatred and cruelty. Disinterest though these days seems a luxury we can’t really afford and people are always rallying for the common good.

Some states seem like wild and crazy places where to stone a woman to death or threaten nuclear oblivion is their strategy and law, the problem we face is our multicultural society seems a utopian dream where our enemies can simply lie in wait to strike. This other agenda is a common ground of thinking say with the idea that you can ban wearing a burqa. The world is basically going back to a less tolerant and more divided agenda as seen over the past decade or so. Personally I don’t like it as it limits our freedoms and possibly that is the point of the terrorist agenda to limit the Wests bigger world presence. It is actually working too, when laws were passed that limited freedoms years ago some terrorists commented that this showed the Wests true side, what a bunch of bastards! Creating a situation so they could say I told you so. I can’t remember if it was Bin Ladin or some such scum bags but it was a while ago now.

The problem though is the war on terror may just go on for another twenty years, it will basically be a constant operation to limit the terrorist groups and other affiliates. There is actually no other way if the West wants to keep its position relevant. When Iraq was invaded for the second time people were optomistic that Iraq would warm to Western values and there would be a construction industry and other efforts. It didn’t take off of course as it is a sovereign country with its own internal agenda and there are new opportunities to have influence on the country. Our own disinterest seems to be our own undoing but we are not really responsible for the worlds problems, they stem from double standards. We can at once create industry and hope for a better life but what can a family in Afghanistan or Palestine hope for? Education? Farming? Happiness? Charity? The real question is what do they really want and what do we want? Cruelty though won’t help solve problems that is for sure.