'Light', Ch 21: Songs and Demons

To read more of the online novel, Light, click here.

Chapter 21: Songs and Demons

When I got back to my room I turned off my mobile, curled up in bed and slept for two days. This is not an exaggeration. I felt so utterly disgusted with myself that I couldn’t face the prospect of getting out of bed and looking at myself in the mirror. It was as if a great hand has inserted itself inside my chest and was pulling at some great musical string that existed there. And the tune that it was playing was self-loathing, on a droning, never-ending loop.

Of course it wasn’t all about the shame of having slept with some stray hussy from the bar just days after having started going out with Amanda. It was also the fact that sheer physical exhaustion had caught up with me. Just two weeks before I lain on Merewether Beach half dead, and I had not even stopped to let the enormity of that event sink in. I was on high-octane fast-forward and now I had completely burnt out.

As I lay there I tried my best to block everything out of my mind, but the messages just kept coming through into my dull head. On the first day, the words to one very annoying Depeche Mode song played over and over and over in my mind.

I just can’t get, I just can’t get enough, I just can’t get enough…

Bright Lights in the Sky

 No, this is not the actual image (I didn't have a camera at the time)

I know some people who have read my books will have heard this story before. But it has never appeared on this blog, so I re-tell it here. Marcus

Some people ask me how I got interested in knowledge that might be considered "alternative" in some circles. Here is a little story about an extraordinary experience that certainly helped me along my way! So here goes my story, and one hundred per cent true.

In 1996 I was living in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, Australia, a small coastal town. One day I was walking along the street downtown, and I saw a sign which read: "Psychic readings, $10". I had never had a psychic reading up till that time, and curiosity got the better of me. So I went inside and met a woman named Lesley who gave me a "reading." The reading itself was nothing particularly special. But what followed certainly was.

To cut a long story short, I ended up going to one of Lesley's talk/meditation evenings a few weeks later. At the end of the talk she told everyone present that she had had lots of dreams about UFOs the previous night.

"Whenever I have these dreams there are lots of UFO sightings around," she said. "So if you go out tonight you may see something. I feel that about two in the morning would be the right time."

Now, being the gullible fool that I am, I decided to take up the offer. I went to bed at about 11 p.m., but set my alarm for 1.45.

When the alarm rang, I managed to drag myself out of bed. I stumbled around my house for 15 minutes, and then headed outside at 2.00 a.m. sharp.

My eyes almost popped out of my head when I swung the door open and looked up at the sky. For flying right in front of me in the clear night sky was something I had never seen before. I can only describe it as a large ball of luminous white light, about a third the size of a full moon. The thing was probably a few hundred metres in the air, and was floating eastwards at about 90 degrees above the horizon. There was absolutely no sound, and it seemed to be gliding on air. I can only describe it as eerily unearthly. I ran out onto the road, and watched it disappear over the neighbours' houses. In total it was in view about 30 seconds.

"Light" Ch 20: The Mistake

This is Chapter 20 of Marcus T Anthony's online novel Light. To read the rest of the novel, to date, go to http://www.lightmysterious.com/

The Mistake

She was thin, almost gaunt. She looked at me with big eyes, They were a little too hollow to be beautiful. But I could feel them inviting me in, along with the pull of her arms.

“Would you like to dance?”

“Um, yeah, why not?”

Why not? One decent reason might have been because I had a beautiful new girlfriend who was just a couple of suburbs away. But like I said, the beer was talking, not me.

We were at the far end of the dance floor away from the lights, where it was dark. I had to  force myself to keep my eyes wide, because I was having trouble focusing. That was on  account of my drunkenness. It was an effort not to slur my words.

“You’re a good dancer.”

“Me?” Giraffes on roller skates dance better than I do.

She twirled around a few times, and started dancing closer. The strange thing is that she  didn’t smile. She didn’t even look that happy. But I could see something, feel something  within her. She wanted me. And there was something good about that.

“Buy me a drink.” She said. She dragged me over to the bar like a dog on a leash.

The Gratitude of Being

Emmanuel Kelly: A powerful teacher indeed

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. 

So began Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, written 150 years ago. But how can a single time be both good and bad? The answer is provided, in part, by another giant of English literature, William Shakespeare. In Hamlet the protagonist declares that, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." It is the judgments that we pass on things that colour our experience. Judgments take us out of presence. Judgment blinds us to the divinity within the people we meet. It strips the day of its God-given glory.

I have always gotten a lot of spiritual guidance. I suspect that this is because I need more than most people, being a bit daft. Songs often pop into my head just when I am facing a problem, or getting caught up in the illusory world of thought and projection. One of the songs that often comes to me as guidance is The Streets of London, which was originally sung by Ralph McTell in the 1970s. It is a song about homeless people in England's largest city. The last verse and the chorus, go like this.

And have you seen the old man
Outside the seaman's mission
Memory fading with
The medal, ribbons that he wears.
In our winter city,
The rain cries a little pity
For one more forgotten hero
And a world that doesn't care

Chorus:

So how can you tell me you're lonely,
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London
I'll show you something to make you change your mind

I remember singing that song in primary School. Mrs Marks, our music teacher, had the wisdom to teach it to us. Even as a youngster, I remember being moved by the simple and profound message. Above all The Streets of London implores us to give thanks for what we have, and not to focus upon what is missing. Take a look around and you will see many people who have it worse than you. Much worse. 

There is so much to appreciate in every day. This is why it is so important to not to allow your thoughts of unfulfilled hopes and dreams destroy the pure, simple abundance that lies at your feet this very moment.

The reason I write this short post today is that I recently saw a YouTube video which reminded me of this profound truth. It comes from the Australian talent show The X Factor, which is basically the Aussie version of American Idol. There is no need for me to say much about this video, and the wonderful and moving story that lies at the heart of it. It is the story of Emmanuel Kelly, the young man whose image fills the top of this page. He is a very special human being indeed. 

Simply watch and feel.

Blessings,

Marcus

Soul Templates

Here's a few promotional images I put together for my book Discover Your Soul Template, which comes out on November 15th. Regular visitors of this bog will probably know that this is the new edition and retitled version of my self-published book Sage of Synchronicity. The images contain direct quotes from the book. I mostly made these for social media websites like FaceBook. I thought they were a better and more creative way of communicating the ideas than mere direct quotes. You might like to think of them as Soul Templates :-).

Blessings,

Marcus

For this next quote I have to give thanks to Leonard Jacobson, who taught me this concept.

Blood On All of Our Hands

One of 18 passers by who ignored Yue Yue as she lay bleeding and unconscious in the street

 I was so appalled by the following incident i wrote the following oped, which I have submitted to Hong Kong's 'South China Morning Post'... Marcus

This week within and beyond China observers have been shocked at images of passers by strolling past the still body of a two year old girl, lying unconscious in a small street in Foshan, Guangdong.

Neither of the two drivers who ran over the little girl stopped to help. The first driver got out of the car, then convinced that he had not been seen, drove away. Later he called the parents, refusing to hand himself in, but offering cash. After being arrested he defended his actions, saying that he only did what everyone else in China would have done in the same circumstances. The horrifying possibility is that there may be some truth in what he said.

Rightfully, both the media and the blogosphere in China have expressed outrage at the incident. Just how did society reach such a point whereby the only person willing to help a dying child in the street was, perhaps prophetically, a garbage lady?

Surfing the Reality Filter

Personalisation has given us something very different: a public sphere sorted and manipulated by algorithms, fragmented by design, and hostile to dialogue.

Eli Pariser, The Filter Bubble

The internet has been heralded by many as part of the great democratisation of knowledge. Almost anything you want to know can be found on the net, thus ending the great hegemony of governments and the powerful, and their long history of manipulation and control over what information we can and should be exposed to.

However the situation is not quite as neutral as many might think, as is made clear in Eli Pariser's book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You. This is a book that should be read by anyone who is interested in the future of the internet and knowledge. This is one of my ‘standard’ book reviews, as opposed to my intuitive reviews. .

The Filter Bubble begins with the revelation that in December 2009 Google changed its search engine to make it more ‘personalised’, and it is the phenomenon of personalisation that Pariser rail against in this book. The internet is now constructed such that the most dominant sites tend to feed back to us our own worldview, and our own construct of reality.

It is now true that two people doing the same web search will not necessarily get the same results, because the software "knows" your web history, tailors the results, and feeds back to you the information it 'thinks' you want. In recent times Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, YouTube and many other major internet organisations have followed suit.

The top fifty internet sites install an average of 64 cookies and tracking beacons in your computer. This is how these sites keep ‘track of you.

The result is that you are now being fed a less diversified diet of information when you surf the net. The ‘real’ (at least on the net) is beginning to look like a circle of ever-diminishing size. This is not what the internet was supposed to be! Pariser argues that this runs against the spirit of democracy, which requires that we are exposed to ideas and opinions that run counter to our own. Instead, we are becoming enclosed in “the filter bubble”.

There are 'choices' being made which effect what we "perceive" in the world, and they are not being made by human beings. They are increasingly being made by machines, and those machines are owned and operated by gargantuan internet corporations – such as FaceBook, run by 26 year old Mark Zuckerberg.

How the Internet is Taking Away Your Power to Choose

Eli Pariser

Shortly on 22C+ I will be writing a review of Eli Pariser's book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You. It's a book that should be read by anyone who is interested in the future of the internet and information in general. The book begins with the revelation that in 2008 Google changed its search engine to make it more personalised. It is now true that two people doing the same web search will not necessarily get the same results, because the software "knows" your web history, tailors the results, and feeds back to you the information it 'thinks' you want. In recent times Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo and many other major internet organsiations have followed suit. The result is that you are now being fed a less diversified diet of information when you surf the net. The real (at least on the net) is beginning to look like a circle of ever-diminishing size. This is not what the internet was supposed to be! We should all be concerned because there are 'choices' being made which effect what we "perceive" in the world, and they are not being made by us. They are increasingly made by machines, and those machines are owned and operated by gargantuan internet corporations - run by a 26 year old in the case of FaceBook.

My review will appear here in a day or two. In the meantime, here is an excellent TED talk by Pariser which outlines his essential arguments.

Marcus

The infancy of knowledge

Times are very busy at present, with books, papers, and promotional work to do. I don’t always have time to write an entirely new blog post. So today I thought I’d share with you one of my favourite passages from my book Integrated Intelligence.  This is an academic book about a spiritual intelligence which transcends the brain and extends into non-local space, which is based on my doctoral thesis. However I did write it in such a way that the knowledge contained in it would be readily accessible to most people. I even got in a quote from new age author Stuart Wilde! (my examiners probably didn’t know who he is). The following passage is found in the conclusion of the book, and gives perspective on the way we think of mind and intelligence at this time in human history. Sometimes it is easy to forget that the present in just one unique moment in history, and that the nature of our scientific knowledge defines not so much the boundaries of the cosmos, but the boundaries of our dominant worldview.

***

In this book I have compared and contrasted two different constructs of intelligence (Integrated Intelligence, and mainstream models of intelligence), which emerge from different ways of knowing, and different worldviews. It is appropriate to end with a reference from representatives of both schools. Contemporary mystic Stuart Wilde writes:

An energy shift that’s prevalent in the world today sees one group of people moving gradually from ego towards spirit, through the realignment of their consciousness, while anther group is threatened by changing circumstances and moves increasingly in the opposite direction, toward the ego, seeking greater manipulation, guarantee, and control over human affairs (Wilde, Whispering Winds of Change).

The Spirit of Steve Jobs

The artist as a young man

 Marcus T Anthony's new web site and blog can be found at: www.mind-futures.com.

Like many people I was shocked at the timing of Steve Jobs’ passing. In this post I am going to make a few somewhat dispersed points about this recent event.

When very famous and influential people die there is always an effect on the collective consciousness of humanity, albeit often a small one. In particular, individual egos will feel a slight increase in fear as the realisation of mortality deepens. The function of the ego is basically to keep you alive, so it’s no surprise that this is the case.

My sense is that the reason Job’s death has had such a strong impact is because of what he represents. He is the quintessential baby-boomer, born in 1955. Yet his influence transcends that generation to deeply effect generations X and Y. The mediator is of course, technology, and the Apple products that have become such a striking component of many people’s lives. Such has been his influence on the company, that Apple and Steve Jobs’ the man are sometimes difficult to separate.

Steve Jobs was a creative genius, and that genius has now gone from this world. This for me, and I suspect for many others, is one of the salient features of this entire event. For our power to take ideas and turn them into things lies at the very heart of the human experience. But now the mind that made Apple has passed. This is something of a shock to the ego, which likes to think of itself as immortal. The reality is that time waits for no man or woman, and that even the greatest expressions of human intelligence will soon be gone. It’s a humbling thought.

Listening to the Spirit

Are you listening?

As I have mentioned a few times in the past, I have a very musical brain, and one of the ways that my psyche and spiritual guidance comes through is via song lyrics and music which enter my head at random times, especially when I am very relaxed, or when almost asleep. Quite often I awaken from sleep with a song playing in my head. In fact it is very rare for me NOT to awaken from sleep with some music playing in my mind. As I explain in Discover Yopur Soul Template - which is all about developing intuiition and what I call Integrated Intelligence - I once had no idea that this information within me had any importance at all. I simply ignored it, because there was no cultural model from which to work to integrate the knowledge or to think of it in any way as being meaningful. I could have gone my entire life ignoring such information, except that nearly twenty years ago I had a psychic reading from an Aboriginal kadaisha woman (shamen) who told me to start paying attention to my guidance, especially the music that came to me. In fact, she relayed a stern message to me from her spirit guides which was a direct admonition for my failure to listen! 

So in the weeks and months that followed I did just what I was asked, and soon discovered that I was being guided through my life every day by spiritiual forces that I had never previously even considered possible, let alone acknowledged.

The reason I tell you this is because a few months ago a rather peculiar song kept coming to me.

More stuff is not enough

It’s now only six weeks away from the launch of my book Discover Your SoulTemplate, which comes out on November 15 via Inner Traditions. This is the first of several short extracts from the book which I will post here from time to time. I think the following is very relevant, given the rocky economic times we live in. It refers of the tendency to disguise unbalanced materialism as spirituality in some current philosophies.

Marcus

More Stuff Is Not Enough

We need to acknowledge the essence of truth that the New Age movement and a “can-do” attitude contain. However, we also have to examine the dangers inherent within these approaches.

The current world crisis is a wakeup call. More money and machines are not enough. Spirit needs the integration of self and soul, in the simplicity of your presence, here and now, fully extant within your body. It is this which will allow your love to shine through into this world.

The materialism of the modern world has created the delusion—the distraction—that what we need is more stuff. This is not just an American problem. It is a global issue, and developing countries like China and India are buying into the mindset. We have slowly fallen into a collective drowsy numbness where consuming products and amusing ourselves with gadgets is the central meaning of life. The current world crisis is a wakeup call, telling us that money and machines do not free the soul.

The truth is that we don’t need all that much stuff. What Spirit genuinely calls for and needs is love: the integration of self and soul, and to express that love in creative ways that allow Spirit to shine through into the world. When this happens, your life will automatically be in alignment with the evolution of the human oversoul template.

           

What I see in some self-help and New Age philosophies is a worldview that provides tools and techniques for manifestation, but often with no concurrent tools for introspection, for integration of self and soul. The truth is that all the cars, houses, and stuff in the world will leave you empty if you do not make the spiritual journey within.

           

Make no mistake. When you stand in your power as a man or woman, you will have a far greater degree of love and power than you can possibly imagine. That love and power, though, is born of Spirit, not the desire of the ego for more stuff, more attention, and more status.

           

An empowered human being is a wise human being, one with depth. Despite superficial appearances, a human being expressing an unbalanced control and power consciousness is not empowered at all. Fundamentally, he is weak, and remains trapped in fear and separation. This is true, regardless of how much he gets what he wants. The total misuse of power by Hitler stemmed from his weakness, the complete absence of wisdom within his personality.

           

Recently I read an article about a certain pop culture figure who has the kind of fame, attention, power, and money most people can only dream of. She has a certain spiritual philosophy herself, although it is heavily centered within the ego. Yet, if you allow yourself to look at her through the eyes of Spirit, a great deal of her energy takes the form of fear. She lives on a refined diet from which she has eliminated all food products that are known to have connections with aging, such as sugar. Her poor partner was forbidden from bringing such things into the house! The writer of the article referred to the woman with the typical judgmental scorn of the popular media. The truth is that this star’s behavior is not particularly surprising. The fears of the decay of physical form, and of death itself, are universal.

           

In part such fears are biologically wired into us, but the fear is also an expression of the ego. If you are honest, you will also recognize this fear within yourself. The ego inevitably identifies with the body and the personality state. The star’s behavior was a typical attempt to establish control and power—over the body, and also over mortality itself.

           

Looking after the body is part of being a responsible human being. It is the intention underlying the behavior that establishes whether the behavior is empowering or not. In this case, the star’s behavior was underpinned by an attempt to preserve the body because of the ego’s identification with it. No attempt to perpetuate an ego state is empowering, as all ego states are born of fear and are impermanent. Empowering behavior is underpinned by the wisdom of Spirit, and part of that wisdom is being aware that fear of death and impermanence can strangle the soul.