Wisdom from the Pornmeister...

 View from my workdesk: Bang Bao (near Lonely Beach, Koh Chang island, TL)

 

Welcome to the new Mind-Futures site! (almost). I am completely re-doing my main site and blog. Why am I doing this?

Well, it all began when I met a porn meister in a little village in a small island in the Bay of Thailand about three weeks ago. I met Yohan when I rocked into a Rasta bar one evening while on my month-long holiday on the Island. The bar was dark and smelly, and there were more dreadlocks to be seen than in a Jamaican cricket ground. Yohan was very tall and very Dutch – and we hit it off right away. I eventually got around to asking him what he did for a living.

“I design web sites.” He said is his Arnie-esque accent. “Some dating sites. And mostly porn sites.”

“Ah huh. That’s nice.”

Turns out Yohan was a really nice guy, not exactly in the porn business himself, but flirting round the edges. He told me how, since breaking up with his girlfriend of ten years, he had gone on the road, and was living as a “digital nomad”, traveling the world and living in inexpensive countries. In Lonely Beach he was staying in a beach hut for 150 baht a night – that’s about eight American dollars. He had a magnificent silver computer in his backpack. Straight away I realised that we had a lot in common, even though I have no connection with the porn industry (honest!). I, my good self, was travelling light around the Sand of Smiles. I had one very simple, small, black backpack which contained a small laptop, two shirts, one pair of jeans and a single pair of shorts (yeah, some socks and underwear, too). My inspiration for this midlife-crisis of an experiment was none other than Julian Assange, whom I have read travelled around in similar fashion before he became internationally (in)famous. Julian, it was said, had only a single, collared white shirt in his backpack, which he washed daily – even when fronting major international organisations and media presentations (Note: you should try travelling this way. It’s great! No need to wait for your bags when your plane touches down as you just take your single little bag on the plane).

Anyway, I am not the judgmental type, so I immediately accepted Yohan for what he is. I realised I could actually learn a lot from him. After all, he epitomises many of the qualities of what Timothy Ferris calls “The New Rich” (I wrote a review of Ferriss’ The Four Hour Work Week here).

While Yohan was slumming it in his beachside bungalow, I was living it up in a luxurious beachside resort some ten kilometres down the coast from Lonely Beach. I had a huge air-conditioned room, a huge soft bed with about ten pillows, and a massive 50-inch TV screen with international cable TV. Outside there were two swimming pools to choose from, jungle walks, and two palm-tree lined beaches – the resort was sandwiched between two seas on an isthmus. I felt very guilty for the US$37 a night I was paying . But hey, you have to splash out sometime in life! 

Video taken while driving (single-handed! - thus the shaky footage) on my motor-scooter, leaving my resort in Bang Bao, Thailand

 

Each evening I drove my motor scooter over the hilly road from the resort, through the jungle and into Lonely Beach. There I would meet up with Yohan and we would talk about some deep and meaningful subjects; and many were not about pornography ;-) . Then, after a timeless time, we would walk few metres into the bar street and chat and dance the night away - often barefoot – in the balmy tropical evenings. And no, I wasn’t dancing with Yohan. The porn thing kind of put me off.

Lonely Beach is mainly a young backpacker’s hangout, so there were lots of people much younger folk there than Yohan and I there, but we didn’t care. We just had fun. On more than one evening I drove my motor scooter back to my hotel (the last part being through rather wild jungle) at very early hours of the morning.

I had given Yohan my business card at one point, and so it was that on one evening when I met up with him at a coffee shop in the town that he looked at me rather seriously.

 Me, at the caffee where I had the conversation about my website. Luckily Yohan didn't start on my dress sense (but hey, this was TL!)

“Hey. I have been looking at your website.” He said in his strong Dutch accent.

“MindFutures dot com?”

“Yeah. It’s not good. It’s like something from ten years ago.”

I felt a bit defensive. “Yeah. It’s just for academics. It’s not for the general public.”

“I looked at some of your other sites. You have sites all over the place. You need to have one centralised site. That would be much better.”

I nodded. In the days that followed, I reflected on Yohan’s advice. Here was a man, seasoned in the subtle arts of the porn industry, and he had found me wanting. My site was useless. Impotent even. He was right. I needed a site that would get people excited. Arouse their interest. Something more…sexy.

In the end I came to see that Yohan was right. It is always good to get the view of an outsider.

After about ten days in Lonely Beach I bid farewell to Yohan, and not without some degree of sadness.

Just yesterday I was in contact with Yohan. He is still in Lonely Beach. But then again, it is still just a couple of weeks since I left that place. He has invited me to join him at his next destinations – Columbia, Brazil, Mexico... You, know… all the great places where you can find adventure, even in dreaded middle age… and where you just might get shot up in a drug bust or a gangland shakedown. But hey, there is no adventure without risk! Maybe I will take up that offer. One day. Before I am too old to explore the new. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the new Mind-futures.com. I think you’ll find it a little bolder than this blog, more dynamic, and maybe even a little more sexy. You can thank a Dutch porn meister for that one.

Many blessings,

Marcus

PS. This will be the last post on www.22cplus.blogspot.com – and the first on www.mind-futures.com (which will go up in the next day or two). Please do join me for adventures into the frontiers of mind and spirit… into the unknown… and the future!

The Moon of Changes

How have you been going lately? It's a common enough question, but how you have been going is not entirely of your own choice, is it? There are a whole host of factors which influence your mind, right from its immediate conscious expression, through to your neuro-physiology and the effect of the world you interact with. This is not disputed in most modern science. However, as a regular meditator and mystic, what I have seen is that there are other forces which impact the way we experience life. I have often written and talked about consciousness fields, and how these impact us. Each of us has a mind embedded in entangled multiple layers of projections and psychic forces beyond our immediate control.

One factor which I have now come to accept influences consciousness is that of cosmology - the way that the relative 'movements' of the moon, sun, stars and so on impact our lives. Although once I laughed at this idea, I now firmly believe that it is true.

A week or so ago we had a super moon. Apparently it was about sixteen per cent bigger than average. Because the moon's orbit is elliptical - not circular - it is bigger at some times than others. A "super moon" is the point at which the moon is closest to the earth, and thus at its visible biggest 'size'.

To generalise, this recent super moon heralds a time of letting go. It may mean the end of relationships, or jobs or things we identify with. It is all about change. There may be a period of sadness and mourning as the old passes, and the new replaces it. For spiritually inclined, you may need to be aware of the forces which hold you back from making those shifts. While they will all reflect internal issues within yourself, they may also express themselves in those around you unconsciously trying to stop you from moving on - or to put it more accurately, from deepening into truth (you are not really going anywhere).

I live right beside some tall hills, on Lantau Island, Hong Kong. During the night of the super moon, the moon rose over those hills, and flooded my bedroom with bright moonlight as I slept. My curtain does not fully cover the window area, so for a period in the early morning there was a huge Mr Moon staring at me through the gap! The images and dreams that I had strongly suggested to me the insights about change I suggested in the previous paragraph. 

All the images you see on this post were taken through that gap in the curtain using my iPhone. They are a bit blurry, distorted, but in some ways that blurriness mirrors the fuzzying effect the moon has on the human psyche. You can see the dark shadow of the hills just below the moon as it is setting.

One dream was quite disturbing (and disturbing dreams are 'good', for if you integrate the consciousness of them, you will learn something at a deep level). I found myself in a kind of computer hardware store. the ceilings were quite high, and the most remarkable thing was that the walls and ceiling were all made of glass. It was night time, but I sensed that there were some scattered trees outside, like as if it were on an open plain area. Suddenly there was a huge wind, and lightning, and the place began to shudder and shake. There was a huge storm or typhoon coming. Since the building was made of glass, it seemed terribly fragile to me, and I was scared it would all be blown away.

 

The guy behind the counter told me I'd better put off entering the competition as it wasn't a good time. Next, I was trying to hide, but it was no use. The whole place disintegrated and I was being blown away into the sky (at this point it became third-person, me watching another person). "I" became David Warner, who is a very talented young cricket player who plays for Australia. As Warner was blown away I was thinking "What a waste: all that talent gone because he's dead."

The dream is reasonably clear. The computer store is actually my mind, which is becoming more transparent (to me) as time goes by. This represents a deepening into presence, which leaves a person more 'honest', and the working of the mind/ego are more readily acknowledged. Wind, especially strong winds, often represent the forces of change which are out of control, and the fear of being swept away into the chaos - the fear of loss of control.

The 'competition' mentioned by the salesman in the dream is, of course, the ego's way of dealing with life - setting itself up in a marketplace to 'sell' - i.e. to manipulate and control circumstances to get what it wants. I suspect in this case it has to do with my book Discover Your Soul Template, which I am 'selling' via promotion. And I hope you noted some irony in that last sentence, as I got a plug in for the book! (the point remains valid, though)

In this case, the cricketer David Warner represents my own 'abilities and talents', which my ego fears will be wasted if I let go and shift into a different way of being. It suggests I am attached to my work as a writer and speaker, and as a "seer". My identity is caught up in those roles. This is something that people who set themselves up as spiritual teachers will encounter to some degree. We see ourselves as the teachers, the wise ones, the purveyors of knowledge. But at a deeper level we are all just here in a state of being. We are all teachers and students.

Change is inevitable. If you set out on a spiritual journey, you are inviting change. That is the 'price' you pay. The key then, regardless of what actions you may decide to take in light of changes occuring around you, is to relax and experince the shift without judgment. Integration then occurs without resistance.

Blessings,

Marcus

Julian Assange: Saviour or Demon?

Julian Assange: looking to come in from the cold (others hope he stays there)

The question in the title is, of course, rhetorical. The tendency in many commentaries has been immediate deification or condemnation of Assange. Yet as I have argued, if we move beyond the immediate judgment of the man and his actions, there are much more fruitful questions to explore.

So Julian Assange is no saint. But who is? In my last post I used the WickiLeaks saga involving Julian Assange as a means to explore the way the male ego tends to project, namely through the Rebel and God-man archetypes. The idea of the Rebel requires little explanation, while the God-man is basically the part of us that likes to believe we can achieve masterful power and control over the world. The Superman character is the ultimate God-man. My intuitive reading of the situation leads me to sense that these archetypes are strongly represented in Julian Assange’s psyche – his subconscious, if you like.

Still, having soul issues which perpetuate drama does not make one’s cause or life a mere waste, or some kind of evil (although it may). It does, though, logically lead to a query. Is there a healthy expression of the Rebel archetype, or even the God-man archetype?