The Aboriginal Shaman Woman

"Gathering Bush Tucker", a painting by Aboriginal artist

June Sultan Napanga

It may come as a surprise to some readers, but there was a time when I was a skeptic of anything remotely spiritual or "psychic". In fact in my early twenties I was an avowed atheist and empiricist. I was quite hostile to any reference to such things. Yet over time my attitude relaxed slowly. I have previously mentioned one or two formative experiences which led to this shift. Many of them occurred at around the age of 26-27 (I'm now 44 years old). One other such event also occurred at this time, and involved an Aboriginal shaman woman. At the time I was living in Coffs Harbour, in northern New South Wales, Australia, and I had no conscious awareness of any innate intuitive ability I might possess. I was also happily free of any academic responsibilities. I had no intention of pursuing any higher education.

I sat down one day to read the local paper, and noticed a small ad for psychic readings in the classifieds section. I was then becoming interested in the psychic realm.  That evening I dialed the number and found myself speaking to a woman named Maria. The very next day I  walked over to her home for a reading (Coff Harbour is not a big town).

There was nothing special about Maria on the surface. She was quite down to earth, and although I was open to the possibility that she might offer something useful or even profound, I found myself quite skeptical. She didn’t appear to be particularly spiritual in the way I thought “spiritual” was supposed to be. Her house was far from tidy and was run-down. There was renovation being carried out as she spoke to me, with workmen coming and going. She also smoked, a strong dislike of mine.

“Put your paw up here,” she said. She took my hand, and began to “read.”

Go West!

 The peak behind Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, today

I live in a very beautiful part of Hong Kong – Discovery Bay, on Lantau Island. Lantau is the biggest island in the territory, apart from Hong Kong Island itself. It’s great to be able to come back here and relax after a long day of work (or blog writing!)

But I didn’t always live in this part of Hong Kong. I Hope that the story of how I came to live here will be instructive for anyone who wishes to follow their Integrated Intelligence to live their Bliss.

I have only lived in Discovery Bay for less than six months. Before then I was living on the 50^th floor of a high-rise in the eastern side of Hong Kong. I found the experience less than blissful! Being so far from the earth was very ungrounding. At times I felt almost soulless. Still, the place was close to my workplace, so I endured it.

Then one night a song came to me as I was sleeping, as so often happens to me. It was a line from Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.

Digging Deeper For Oil: A Futurist's Perspective

Click on "read more" to see the Midnight Oil Youtube clip - it doesn't come out on the home page for some reason.

Australian band Midnight Oil:  Never more relevant

The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been making headlines for the past few weeks. I have been thinking of writing about this for some time, and it has now dawned on me that this issue is a perfect opportunity to invoke one of the very best analytical methods of Futures Studies. Futurists like me are not merely interested in predicting the future. In fact many of us have little or no interest in prediction. Above all, futurists also like to analyse futures, and because the future does not exist yet, the best way to do this is by taking a deep look at the major issues that are effecting the world now. The oil spill is a perfect opportunity to introduce one powerful method by my favourite futurist, Sohail Inayatullah (www.metafuture.org).

 Sohail Inayatullah

Now, I admit I am slightly biased here. Sohail was the supervisor for my doctoral thesis, which I did through the University of the Sunshine Coast in Australia. Sohail has worked with numerous governments across the world with a process called Causal layered Analysis, or CLA.

CLA is very simple. It involves taking an issue and breaking it down into four levels. These are the litany, the social/system, the worldview/paradigm, and the myth/metaphor levels. When I use the process, I add a fifth level, the Consciousness Level. This is because I feel that the deeper workings of the human mind and the spiritual context of our lives requires a level all on its own. This obviously reflects my own interests as a person and a researcher, and my personal biases come into play at that level.

Taking a look at the Louisiana oil spill using Causal Layered Analysis, some very interesting things emerge.

Entanglement: The Next Big Thing?

Just a few months ago on his blog, parapsychologist Dean Radin boldly claimed that the idea of entanglement will soon become taken for granted in biology. Entanglement is the idea that all things are connected at a deep level, and that this connectivity transcends the currently understood limits of space and time, as held in mainstream science. In the post, titled “Quantum biology now. Quantum psychology next?”, Radin suggests that psychology will quickly follow suit, taking on entanglement as a founding principle of mind.

 Dean Radin

Radin has long held the belief that entanglement will eventually be embraced in science, but his confidence received a boost at the beginning of the year because of a paper published in the prestigious science journal, Nature by Elisabetta Collini and colleagues.

The Terror and the People

Beijing journalists bravely soldier up to the task of spreading panic amongst the people during the SARS period

Your mind is connected to an intelligence that transcends your individual mind. I call this Integrated Intelligence. This gives you the capacity to draw upon a kind of universal mind to make wise choices. Integrated Intelligence can help us to sense which way to go when things get tough. The following little tale took place in China, and is taken from a time when a few thousand people died from a nasty little bug they called SARS, demonstrates the point. It was a time of widespread panic.

But not for some…

 

During the SARS crisis of 2003 I was living in Beijing, one of the cities hardest hit by the disease. I was working at an international school while also writing my doctoral thesis. By that time I had spent more than a decade working at a practical level with Integrated Intelligence, both with others and on my own, so my own intuitive capacities were then highly developed. My experience during the SARS “epidemic” also suggests how Integrated Intelligence potentially shifts power relations between the individual and the State and the mass media.

The following is an extract from Light and Shadow at the Edge of Mind, basically an autobiography, which I have never gotten round to publishing.

The IT Trap

Advertising is an ever-present feature of the consumer society, and we are constantly being bombarded with images and messages which shape our lives, often unconsciously. It’s something of a chicken and egg story. What came first: the advertising which promotes mass consumerism, or the consumer society itself? The best answer is that that they feed off each other.

Advertising is linked to culture. In east Asia, IT culture has become pervasive. Take a look at this advertisement, above, currently running on the MTR (subways) of Hong Kong. It’s by HSBC, the biggest bank in Hong Kong. I don’t think I have ever seen a more perfect representation of the forces driving modern Hong Kong and east Asian culture, than this ad. It sums up Money and Machines societies to a “T”. The woman has sold her higher Self out to the immediate needs of the small self – for security, amusement, and to look cool. She has become a robot.

The Other Side of Hong Kong

 A smaller island, off Chen Chau (island), seen through the trees near the Trappist Monastery on Lantau Island, Hong Kong

Note: first video may not show up on home page - if so, click "read more" to see it. You will find several other short videos there, also. Double click on the video if you can't see the whole thing on your screen.

Hong Kong is a very busy place. When most people think of this territory where I live,  images of glittering high-rises and international bankers in flashy business suits come to mind.

There are 7 million people crammed into a relatively small area in Hong Kong. Most of them live on Hong Kong Island, and Kowloon, which is just across the harbor from the island. I have often lamented the extreme urbanisation of Hong Kong, and how much of the population has lost touch with nature, and the inner worlds of the human spirit. Life has become over-commercialised and over-techlologised. It appears that most Hong Kong people are either unable or unwilling to extract themselves from their busy work life, contsant mobile phone chattering and SMS texting, internet surfing, shopping and eating/sleeping to explore life at a deeper level. In part, one can point the finger at the government, and its policy makers, who have fully bought into the idea that human futures are  predominantly about more money and more machines for everyone. Yet there are other choices that are available,to the general public, even in extremely urbanised environments like Hong Kong.

Few people outside Hong Kong know that there are many rural areas around the city. including many fascinating islands.

Fully 40% of the territory is designated as national park. Yet even the locals seem reluctant to explore them. Yesterday, Sunday, my wife Emma and I went on a short hike from our home on Lantau Island, just a 23-minute ferry ride away from Central. It was a wonderfully cool summers day, thanks to some high cloud and low humidity. Yet on the entire hike, we saw no more than a dozen or so other hikers. On the little beach you will see in one of the videos below, my wife and I were literally the only people . We stayed there for half an hour and enjoyed the serenity. In contrast, the shopping malls of Hong Kong are so packed on Sundays, that one can often barely squeeze past other shoppers.

Somehow, something vitally important has been forgotten here.

So here is evidence that this other side of Hong Kong does indeed exist!.Please excuse the sound of my breathing here and there! This is quite hilly terrain, and is slightly aerobically challenging.

The village in this first video is situated by the ocean, and is just five minutes away from where I live. The first time we went here a couple of weeks ago, my wife refused to pass through, because of the dogs… as you shall see.

About fifteen minutes more of walking, and the track goes up into the hills, where there is a quaint Trappist (Christian) monastery. This is a very pretty little place. I have been told that the monks have taken a vow of silence – expect for the singing. I snuck my video camera in there for a few seconds!

Vanity, Thy Name is Freak

OK, enough of the serious stuff (at least for a few minutes). I confess I’m not above having a giggle at the sheer mindboggling idiocy of human vanity. We humans do like to puff ourselves up, preening ourselves and strutting around like peacocks. Even I’ve been known to do it. It’s called my workout. In my defense, however, I have done away with the short shorts that I wore with pride as a younger man (just quietly).

Plastic surgery is probably the ultimate expression of vanity. I almost put a picture of Michael (you know which one) at the top of this post, but felt so bad about the image I found I couldn't bring myself to do it. So I used a more flattering example - Kylie Minigue. Still, you probably saw the pictures of twins Igor and Grichka Bogdanoff, who attended the Cannes film festival recently. I confess I’d never heard of these guys till yesterday, but apparently they had a hit sci-fi show back in the 80s. Looks like these guys watched a few too many episodes of their own show, as they appear to have morphed into ETs themselves, courtesy of the surgeon’s knife.

This is what they looked like when they were heartthrobs in the 80s.

And this is the magical transformation.

Should we Pursue Psychic Development?

 Recently I have had some extraordinary experiences. I will relate one or two of them here. But the more important question is, should we pursue psychic experiences for their own sake?

If you have read a few of my blog entries here, especially those about Integrated Intelligence, you might be forgiven for thinking that I am an advocate of psychic development. After all, Integrated Intelligence is basically harnessing certain cognitive functions that would normally be classified as psychic or paranormal by mainstream science and media. And I have referred to some rather extraordinary experiences I have had over the years, including sightings of UFOs, out of body experiences, precognitions and so on. These experiences can be useful, and point us toward the destination, but they shouldn’t be confused for the goal.

Many popular spiritual and New Age books also use references to paranormal events as a means to entice their readers/viewers. On the back of one of Stuart Wilde’s recent books, for example, there is a reference to someone dematerialising and walking through a wall.

Are You Enlightened?

I rarely ever use the word “enlightened” because, like many people (including those on a spiritual journey), the concept is heavily culturally laden. It seems arrogant to think of being enlightened, or to say that my representation of enlightenment is truer than yours. It’s also fashionable, and indeed politically correct, to state that enlightenment is relative, and that each representation of spiritual development is perfectly valid according to the culture and time in which it occurs.

Yet those who have reached the higher stages of human spiritual development do not seem terribly interested in such arguments.

You are welcome to join True Purpose!

It's always great to read the comments and emails of people who visit this blog. The good news is that I have started a "meet up" group called True Purpose, so that we can all keep in touch and share ideas. You can find out more about it via the link, below, and the summary which follows.

I hope to 'see' you there!

Marcus

http://www.meetup.com/True-Purpose/

Your True Purpose is a higher calling. Because of the demands of modern socities, most people tend to sleepwalk their way through life, failing to listen to the intuitive voice of their inner Sage.

The True Purpose group is for people who want to keep developing their knowledge of their True Purpose. In this group you will learn more from me (Marcus) and also from other group members, whom I trust will, from time to time, contribute ideas, articles, insight, personal experiences and wisdom.

My intention in starting this group is to help keep people on the right track. After reading that book, article or attending that meeting or workshop, there is a need to follow through with real world actions. Knowing that others are working through similar issues to you can be a great help. The hectic lifestyles of modern societies sometimes cause those of us committed to a more spiritually rewarding life feel very isolated; but it is important to remember that we are not alone!

You will also be updated with news of coming events, meetings and workshops. This will include my own, but you can post yours here as well, as long as we don't get saturated with them!

Can Consciousness Levels be Measured?

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

The evolution of consciousness is central to the overall purpose of humanity here on this planet. Ironically, it is in part, the fixation with measurement in modern science which has seen this understanding vanish from the annals of modern scientific literature. There has not been a verifiable means to measure consciousness levels, so science has tended to ignore the idea. The advancement of consciousness in any given lifetime is also heavily dependent upon exploring inner worlds, and especially the waves of thought that emerge from the substrate of consciousnesses within the mind. Since meditation and reflection have largely been extracted from modern education and science, very few people working there understand consciousness very well at all.

To even begin to measure consciousness evolution, we first have to perceive that such a thing exists, then define it. Consciousness evolution refers to the process of never-ending unfoldingfrom ignorance to cosmic bliss - or enlightenment. This progresses through various stages - which have been mapped by sages throughout history. In a sense it is the journey from darkness to light, illusion to truth, fixation with form to the recognition of the essential role of self in structuring and emotionalising reality.

There are ways, however, to measure the consciousness levels of people, books, movies, newspapers, curricula, institutions, entire populations and so on.

One method which has recently surfaced is outlined by David E. Hawkins in his books such as Power Vs Force, and the Discovery of the Presence of God.

Killing Bliss in China

 Men armed with metal poles patrol outside a kindergarten in China

At 8.20 a.m. yesterday, 48-year old villager Wu Huanming entered the Shengshui Temple Kindergarten in Shaanxi province in north-east China, took out a kitchen cleaver and hacked to death seven children and two teachers. He also injured eleven others.

Shockingly, it was the sixth such attack in a Chinese primary school or kindergarten in less than two months. The first attack occurred in Nanping, Fujian province, on March 23, when former surgeon Zheng Minsheng, 42, killed eight children and injured five. Then followed four school attacks in April in Guangxi, Guangdong, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces.

The school attacks have all happened in towns or small or medium-sized cities and were committed by unemployed or underemployed middle-aged men. Most had personal grievances that they felt powerless to redress. The attacks have been escalating at an alarming rate, several of them being copy-cat massacres.

 The locations of the recent school attacks

What are we to make of this very sudden shift in Chinese society, which has always seen itself as holding a deep love of children? What does it say about futures within and beyond China?

Video: What is Your Bliss?

I recorded this little video a couple of months ago in Thailand. Here I talk about what it means to live your Bliss, and how to follow your excitement.

An Immeasurable Mind

 Anil Seth

On his new blogoflove, Simon Buckland has today written about an article which appeared in The Guardian.  The article refers to a research programme at the University of Sussex, set up by neuroscientist Anil Seth. Simon wrote to me yesterday to tell me about the article, and it stayed on my mind for some time, because it was a very good example of some of the fundamental misconceptions about consciousness which exist in mainstream science and much of the conservative mass media. I then got the idea for writing this blog (and, as it happens, Simon has written about it too).

Interestingly, when I went to bed last night, I had a dream about this article and the researcher.

What is Integrated Intelligence?

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

In quite a few of my blog posts I have referred to Integrated Intelligence. However not everyone who visits this blog has read my books or knows what I mean precisely by this term. So in today’s post I am going to give a succinct little summary of what Integrated Intelligence (or INI) is. I’m also going to outline what you can actually do with it, and give some fascinating examples.

Before we even begin to define Integrated Intelligence, we should stop for a moment to ask what intelligence is. 

True Purpose (workshop)

Please note that this workshop has been canceled, and will be replaced by other workshops in the future. Contact me with any queries: mindfutures at yahoo dot com

Marcus

 

True Purpose 

A workshop in beautiful Discovery Bay 

An Extraordinary Woman, an Extraordinary Time

In recent posts I have written about a most remarkable woman I once knew, whom I refer to as Jessica (not her real name). In fact, of all the many extraordinary people I’ve met in my life, she is one of the two most remarkable, the other being mystic Leonard Jacobson.

I didn’t spend a lot of time with Leonard, but I did have numerous dealings with Jessica over a period of two years, and in that time I got to know a great deal bout her. Jessica is the inspiration for the theory of Integrated Intelligence (which is the subject of much of my research) because she embodied that intelligence more than any other person I have ever encountered. 

So, please allow me to backtrack a little...

It was not until I had turned 30 that I was met a group of extraordinary people who would fully embody the idea of Integrated Intelligence.

The Battlefields of the Mind

In yesterday’s post about giving power away to group consensus, I mentioned the concept of “spiritual maturity”. Von made a comment about it, which suggests that he was unclear about what I meant by that term. So today I am going to clarify this issue, which is absolutely vital for the futures of the human species, as I see things. Spiritual maturity does not mean “spiritual evolution”, but is more akin to psychological maturity. Such maturity is not dependent upon one’s worldview. An atheist could have a high level of spiritual maturity, whole a spiritually-inclined or religious person might have a low level of spiritual maturity. Many of the spiritual” folks I have met over the years have had a low level of spiritual maturity. 

The essence of spiritual maturity is the capacity to assume responsibility for one’s thoughts and mental projections. This in turn is dependent upon the capacity of the individual to know at a deep level that the world of thought is ultimately an illusion. And to grasp this fully, the person has to develop the right relationship with ego. The current typical level of spiritual maturity on this planet is around four percent of capacity.

He Stoops to Belong

If someone told you that the sun is red would you agree with them, just so they would like you? Probably not. What if seven people said it was red, and you were the only one who thought it was yellow? What then? The truth is that you would be more likely to say it is red than you realise. 

How low would you go?

It is amazing how easily people will give their power away to others, just to be accepted. In 1958, a well-known psychologist tested this idea in what has become known as the Solomon Asch experiment. Here’s how it went. One unsuspecting person was led into a room with seven others. However, the others had been “planted” there by the experimenter, and told what to do beforehand. Two cards were shown to the participants, with the card on the left containing one vertical line, the card card on the right featuring three lines of different length.

The subject was then asked to choose which of the three lines on the right matched the length of the line on the left card. Sometimes the others in the room had been told to deliberately choose the wrong line, even when it was clearly the wrong answer.

The results were somewhat disturbing.

Think, Blink and the Big Stink

Today I review Michael R. LeGault's book Think. LeGault rails against what he sees as lazy and sloppy intuitive thinking, the kind popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in the book Blink. Think is worth reading, but mostly because it exemplifies a way of thinking which is dying - and rightly so.

More about Integrated Inquiry

My previous post is pretty long, so Blogger has decided to refuse me permission to edit it. So just click here to go to the original article, for those who are interested.

I also got this great photo in here, which would not post on the previous entry! And no, I didn't take it!

Marcus

Passion and the Spirit of Research

Research can be so much more than a dry left-brained process. Those of us who attended university were not taught this crucial little bit of information. In fact, nobody at university ever really tells you how to research. They just give you an assignment, essay, paper or maybe even a thesis, then they tell you to go away and come up with something interesting for the professor. Postgraduate and professional academic scholars, of course, have to follow very specific protocols for their disciplines. This generally involves a specific method, and way of reporting results. Still, when it comes down to it, it’s all about finding sources and data, and then making sense of them.

When I was an undergraduate in the 1980’s, I was very much the typical unimaginative researcher. I did an Arts degree majoring in History and English, and quite frankly, I found it a struggle to stay interested. Sitting in the university library was torture, but I just bit my lip and did it like everyone else.

Some 13 years after I received my B/A, I went back to study for my doctorate. But by this time I had spent a decade developing my Integrated Intelligence (Integrated Intelligence is basically spiritual intuition). I had developed some rather advantageous cognitive skills by that time, and I set about formally incorporating them into my study sessions. The result was spectacular. My research came alive, and I was able to complete a 110 000 word thesis and publish half a dozen academic papers in less than four years of part-time enrollment (while working full-time as a school teacher). I got rave reviews from my examiners, and the thesis got published as a book, Integrated Intelligence.

I continue to use these methods today.

So, what exactly did I do that made all the difference?

The end of China

 Scene from the Tibetan riots in 2008

Is China destined to implode once again? George Friedman, in his book The Next 100 Years, dismisses China's rise. The chapter is entitled "Paper Tiger". He suggests that the historical issues which have plagued China in previous times will resurface yet again, once the economic growth begins to retract. The recent strong performance of China's economy in the Global  Financial Crisis suggests China will continue to rise economically. But could Friedman possibly be correct?

Recently China's blogging community has been enraged by widely circulated figures which indicate that 0.4 per cent of the population possess 70 per cent of the PRC's wealth, while 91 per cent of those with assets of 100 million RMB or more are children of senior Communist Party cadres.