Oxford Forum – An Invitation to Young People and Pensioners

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For those not familiar with Dr. Celia Green’s work, she has published several books in the area of human psychology and philosophy and is known for her original and radical standpoint. In 1961 she founded the Institute of Psychophysical Research in Oxford, England where she is the Director.

Her book titles are as follows: The Human Evasion, Advice to Clever Children, The Decline and Fall of Science, Lucid Dreams, Out-of-the-body Experiences, Apparitions (with Charles McCreery), The Lost Cause, Letters from Exile.

Celia Green and her associates plan to build a private sector University/College with Research Dept – and need crucial help in financial backing and people to make this a reality.

Celia Green writes:There is much to do for all wishing to be involved, from simple duties to research opportunities – all abilities are needed. A degree of liking for my general outlook, as expressed in Advice to Clever Children, The Human Evasion and The Decline and Fall of Science is probably necessary.If you think you might be interested then please address queries to our new base which is situated about 6 miles out of Oxford: 17 Denton Hill, Cuddesdon, Oxfordshire, OX44 9HZ.Or alternatively, email us at CG@celiagreen.com (please use the following words in the email subject ‘Getting involved in Oxford Forum’)There is currently a house to let nearby. Anyone who wanted to help us, or to know more about our ideas, could apply to rent it, and they or any other potential associate could come to live in it.

Of course, donations are always gratefully received if you would like to only contribute monetarily.

Bad Blogger

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Gosh, it has been a while since I last wrote about what is going on with me on my blog, in early February my hubby fell over on ice outside the house and cracked his ribs (we think) he spent the next six weeks sleeping in a chair, we were told by the local nurse that he was lucky that he didn’t catch a cold during that time – coughing would have been a killer, or not being able to cough was potential pneumonia! About two days later he made it to bed, considering it had been many weeks sleeping in a chair it was like heaven… Then the dry cough started… He got flu first, me a week later.

We can honestly say that we have never felt so ill since we were children, I lost just under a stone in weight due to no appetite, we lived off filled pittas (chicken and salad) no energy to cook and drank gallons of fluids which had the effect of gushing out of me every time I coughed, which was often, so I had to wear sanitary towels most of the time. We didn’t really see anyone, just closed off in our little house. The nurse came occasionally – told us we had the swine flu version as it still hadn’t gone away and it was now the end of April.

It has left us feeling different, like new people, changed from before we had flu. I started writing poetry during this solitary time and my hubby stayed up at nights watching Mahler Concerts on DVD. We both were discovering something and we had no time limits to stop us, time stands still when you’re ill. Often I went to bed during the flu at 11pm, woke at 1am and stayed up to watch concerts, you couldn’t sleep as you felt like you were drowning in your own fluids – lovely! When we emerged the other side we had skipped roles in many ways. I realised my calling was to write poetry and hubby studies Mahler scores and listens to the many different concerts with different conductors. My classical music knowledge and repertoire has increased and I have learnt much about music in these last few months – doing something I had been very resistant to doing – listening.

I now write everyday and have entered some competitions – it just feels so right to write, it’s even better than writing songs, more expressive, not tied down to modern styles and beats, I can say what I feel expressively and imaginatively. It’s strange because it reminded me of when I was a child. I won a poetry competition when I was about nine or ten. All I remember is turning up at the local community centre to receive my prize – gift vouchers – and the look on the faces of the judges was classic – they were expecting someone older. It was a memory only triggered by writing again.

Hubby on the other hand was experiencing music differently and finding something he had never had – hope – through Mahler, Sibelius, Wagner but especially Mahler he found something he had been looking for. The music was telling him something and he was hearing it differently than the way he used to – not death and destruction – now it was as if he was coming out the other side and it was beautiful, hopeful and uplifting.

So, as a consequence, I haven’t written much on this blog even though I have had more people subscribing to this blog than ever before! Strange old world. I really have found my calling in life. Hubby thinks I will return to music at some point but from a different angle, he may be right, but I no longer want to limit myself to playing the guitar, I’m setting myself free and selling them! Never thought I would do it, I’ve been playing since I was seven – I’m now almost 42. It has always held me back, not being lyrical enough and having far too many past hurts attached to it.

I pick up my guitar now and realise I want to be free of it, to start again sometime with a different instrument, the piano I think. Some people who know me here and have played music with me over the last two years are horrified that I’m giving up playing but they don’t understand creativity, it comes in many forms and for me right now – its the written form I love to do. I’d had success two years running as a semifinalist in the UK Songwriting Contest but I had to put that aside, besides I am totally spoiled for modern music after hearing Wagners Ring Cycle – it blew me away – it meant it was hard to find pleasure in pop, country, etc – it just wasn’t fulfilling anymore – I really am a changed person!

I also find it hard to be amongst other people, this has been the way ever since I did more psychoanalytical work over the last two years with hubby, you can’t find out who you are when you are with others, so the flu helped there and I only attended the occasional group meeting. I feel better when I’m not around others, I’m finally finding out who I am, through writing and listening.
Hopefully that will change in the future, maybe I won’t lose myself so much when I’m amongst others as I get happier being me. Or not of course! Maybe I’ll be happier not being around folk, we’ll see. It seems ok when being with folk is structured, like a poetry meeting etc, but can be stressful when I just have to be standing around, small talk is not my greatest asset although I do care about people and how they’re lives are going… Sometimes it’s easier to do that by mail… Oh! I don’t know, all changes depending on mood (us creative types can mood shift very quickly)

Well, that’s it for now – so please forgive me if my writing here is only sporadic – I’m sure you’ll survive I’m not arrogant enough to think that people will suffer if I don’t write in this blog! I’m the happiest than I have ever been in my whole life. Long may it continue!

I’m following my heart – sometimes we need destruction of the old for something new to come to life.

It will be capitato for you to read this post…

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Good old EBay, there’s nothing much you can’t find somewhere in its depths. Hubby wanted to buy DVD sticky labels to put through a printer, he backs up music on DVD- these particular DVDs he bought look like old records, black with grooves – now all he needed was the labels to go on them.

So he found the right ones for the job but the translation to English was so bad I had to put it on my blog. It’s the ‘imbattibile’ and ‘stampabile’ I liked!

DVD – 150 Adhesive Labels

CHARACTERISTICS OF THE PRODUCT: This product is studied in order to eliminate the effect transparency. It will be capitato to you to find to you with a cd/dvd with written with pens or it marks it of the same one in strong evidence? Thanks to the back of the black label of color the written ones on the cd/dvd will not be noticed. You will be able also to only print in a single part of the label without having to you to worry of what it is written under. For format “full face” that studied format agrees in order to cover the label entire.

TYPE PAPER : This product is perfect for printing Laserjet, in how much being “super glossy” has a finished product perfectly polishes with quality of imbattibile diagram. Usable E’ however on printing to ink jet “inkjet that they support the press with photographic

SOFTWARE : Standard is be a matter of format and therefore stampabile with it varies programs to you of press labels, which black cover designer or prints copertine2 (www.giocaitalia.it)

Don’t Hog all the Sweets!

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I was just browsing Amazon products as a friend of mine is addicted to Maple Syrup, thinking of silly presents to give and as usual I was not disappointed… This then led onto bacon…

Maple Syrup & Bacon “Man Bait” Lollipop.

Maple Syrup and Bacon lollipops are great as a sneaky snack, but also perfect for parties, office treats and other social occasions.

Bacon lovers unite! Finally, you can have your dessert that also conains your favorite food group: Bacon! This maple and bacon lolli is a fiercely delicious combination of real smoky bacon bits and delicious maple syrup giving all at once savory and sweet sensation. Mmmmmmm, bacon!

Plus, it’s made with all natural ingredients!

Effervescent Bacon Drink Tablets

When you drop one of these magic tablets into a glass of water it will begin to bubble and dissolve, eventually infusing the water with a delicious bacon flavor. But don’t limit yourself to water. These Effervescent Drink Tablets work just as well in milk, juice or soda. Great for making bizarre beverages or slipping into a friend’s drink when they’re not looking. Each 2-1/4″ (5.7 cm) round tin contains about fifteen tablets.

(Imagine that! A bacon milkshake!)


Uncle Oinker’s Savory Bacon Mints

Each one of these mints tastes like a delicious slice of crispy bacon with just a hint of mint flavor to give it that extra punch! It may sound weird but once you taste it, you’ll see that mint and bacon is a match made in heaven. Each 2-1/4″ x 2″ x 1/2″ (5.7 cm x 5.1 cm x 1.3 cm) tin contains about one hundred mints.

Bacon Lollipop

A traditionally styled lollipop with an untraditional twist – this one tastes of sweet and smoky cured bacon! Each lollipop is 10.2 cm in diameter, and can survive hours or merciless licking. You can enjoy this on its own or serve it up with scrambled eggs and hash browns!

And finally… Bacon Frosting!

This dark red bacon-flavored frosting is a dream come true. Keep a tube of Bacon Frosting on hand to finish off a dessert masterpiece, add sweet smoky delight to any dish, or indulge in a delicious squirt right onto your tongue (like we do). Rumor has it the astronauts have been asking for bacon in a tube for decades! Each tube is 5″ tall by 2″ wide and holds 2.1 oz (60g) of frosting.

(Just what I was looking for to finish off my Bacon, Cheese and Onion Cheesecake. Oh, that’s a quiche isn’t it… Well, who else didn’t get carried away!)

 

Propranolol combats racism… apparently…

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This from a news story two days ago in the Telegraph. The headline reads.

 Heart disease drug ‘combats racism’

Now, as another friend of mine commented who is actually taking this drug for a thyroid problem, are they suggesting that people with heart disease are racists? Who decided that the two were linked? I wouldn’t ask a Viagra user how they felt about landscape gardening!

18 volunteers were ‘asked how they felt’ about images appearing on a computer screen featuring negative and positive words and pictures of black and white people after half of them had taken the drug Propranolol and the other half given a placebo.

‘Results of this study conclude that a reduced ‘implicit’ or ‘implied’ racism was evident in those volunteers who took the Propranolol’.

This study and it’s outcome is flawed in so many ways. Firstly, the study makes the statement that racism is fundamentally founded on fear. This may or may not be true. Where is the paper on this?

It also said in the report ‘Differences in the time taken to carry out the tasks provided the basis of the result’ So, not the responses of the study group but the time it took? This is getting woollier by the minute.

‘Propranolol had no effect on a different measure of “explicit” racial prejudice, religious and sexual prejudice, or prejudice against drug addicts’‘ These were tested using a “feeling thermometer” psychological tool used for assessing explicit prejudice. Volunteers were asked to rate how “warm” they felt towards different groups on a 10-point scale analogous to a thermometer’

This is not a scientific test in nature as so many factors could weigh in here, the subject may have unknown side effects from taking the tablets making the subject feel unwell or not himself, peer group pressure, even on a one to one basis could change the results etc.

It wasn’t said in the study if exactly half the tested volunteers had a reduced implicit racial prejudice, what was the actual figure? If it was only one or two, then could the study still make it’s conclusions? Also eighteen people? What demographic or sample rate or spread of people – were there black or other ethnic minorities among them? Professor Judith Grabiner talks exactly about this problem in Mathematics, Philosophy and the real world – The Teaching Company – Great Courses. She talks about how the populace is duped everyday by graphs favouring results and surveys rigged to show ‘wanted’ results.

What was the population being surveyed, how many people were interviewed, how were those people chosen, what kind of sample was it, random, stratified or biased. Was anybody left out? What is the sampling error, what questions were asked and how were they worded.

Random – one where each member of the population has an equal opportunity of being chosen.

Stratified – where the sample is  a small model of the whole population. Significant subgroups of the population are represented in the same proportion that they have in the whole population.

Biased – A certain type of people are chosen for the experiment.

This study using Propranolol is a biased study of those who have taken propranolol without a prior knowledge of their previous convictions on their feelings of racism.

Also worth reading, The Mis-Measure of Man by Stephen Jay Gould- a famous evolutionary biologist.

At the bottom of the report, if you had bothered to read this far: ‘But Dr Chris Chambers, from the University of Cardiff’s School of Psychology, said the results should be viewed with “extreme caution”. He said: “We don’t know whether the drug influenced racial attitudes only or whether it altered implicit brain systems more generally.” And we can’t rule out the possibility that the effects were due to the drug incidentally reducing heart rate. So although interesting, in my view these preliminary results are a long way from suggesting that propranolol specifically influences racial attitudes.”

Boom boom! Too late of course because the headline reads:

Heart disease drug ‘combats racism’

This is the first impact. This is a headline. This is what grabs the attention. I’ll put in my friends comments who is taking the drug and quite frankly deserves some answers.

 …Well this has upset me. Firstly it suggests that racism is a disease that can be cured. Why would I want to take a heart pill that interferes with my thinking.

 Now my son has ADHD and he has a pill to change his brain to make it possible for him to get through a day without killing himself.  Is some one suggesting that racism is like this and just needs a brain tweak?  In which case will the next round of medical journals recognise racism as a treatable complaint .

If some one is a racist can they claim disability benefits because its not their fault.

If they are American will they be able to claim treatment on their health insurance. 

Will those who have been convicted of racism be able to get their sentences commuted due to a treatable illness… I have been on this drug for two years. Have my views changed in that time?  I don’t know…

I wish newspapers would not print such studies, they should remain amongst the peer groups who publish and are able to criticise scientifically amongst its peers before it reaches the general populace who are not trained in this area.

Fortune favours my right foot…

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It’s 4.30am. I should be sound asleep dreaming of alternate worlds but instead I’m writing while my throat calms down from not having moisture on it for four hours. I’ve got this flu/cold that’s going around and it’s no pushover. I’m usually a fairly well and healthy person and have never felt as bad as this since I was a kid. Of course, if you are usually well, you really resent not having your normal standard of living i.e. being able to swallow, not coughing continually, not having a high temperature making you slightly florid, a normal appetite for food and a throat that isn’t one, big open gaping wound.

I’ve got flu. It’s not a cold. What’s the difference? Apparently with flu, you are knocked off your feet and take to your bed, well, I would take to my bed if I didn’t wake up choking every half hour! I don’t care – I’m calling it flu.

Luckily, just recently, I’ve had a habit of getting up at some point in the night and reading for a couple of hours then going back to sleep so interrupted sleep doesn’t bother me too much. But this morning at 4am, I’ve been dreaming about stitching, not just any stitching but one that is a law force agency. So in my dream, the stitching in my clothing talks to me and tells me what to do. It’s on a par with an acid trip really if my throat wasn’t a lump of chewed meat. Then I hear this high pitched noise, like a hearing aid that’s overloaded.

I wait. Maybe it’s my husband. No, can’t be, he’s back to sleeping in the chair as he has this cold too. Then I realise it’s me! I’m emitting this sound! I’ve really left the planet now! My throat is obviously speaking to me while I notice my left foot must have been uncovered in the night and I slipped it against my right thigh in an attempt to wam it up. Now I’m up, I need medication. I’m starting to get a phobia about swallowing anything.

The doctor tells me to gargle with dissolved aspirin and it should ease the pain, well, it does but not immediately, so you end up coughing and spluttering because your normal swallow mechanism is up the creek. I’m just gonna swallow – which is agony anyway. My husband needed antibiotIcs as his tonsils were ulcerated and I almost envied his prescription as he felt better for taking them. Both of us are very careful about taking antibiotics due to overuse of the pink cherry liquid given for every medical problem in the 1970′s. I almost considered mugging him except that he’s not ulcerated but still suffering from the viral part of this cold/flu, it’s hit him hard.

About four weeks ago he slipped on the ice outside our house. He had suspected cracked ribs which meant he couldn’t lie in his bed at night and instead slept in a recliner chair. He didn’t sleep very well due to the pain so was really suffering from sleep deprivation, he eventually heals and is able to get a good nights sleep. Two days later he’s hit with this cold and back to sleeping in the ‘electric chair’ or so he calls it. Poor man!

As I write this post my medication is kicking in but I keep dropping off to sleep and wake up with a start, my stylus jerks forward and hits another app – losing what I’ve already written. Oops – and again, now I’m talking to Gandhi. Isn’t it strange how you can quickly fall into a dream thinking you’re awake.

To top it all off then… I FEEL BLOODY LOUSY! And I found a small flea on my leg yesterday which worried me as I don’t have pets – trouble is, nearly every person on this island who comes into our house does! Does that mean I’ve now got to spray Pestroy in every room?

Bloody hell!

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Stone Tumbling – the quiet way!

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I’ve got a new hobby – how can you live 2 mins from a beautiful natural stone beach and not tumble and polish your own stones? So last month I invested in a stone tumbler, just a small one, it is easy to use and my first batch of stones were not too shabby! Since my first batch I have picked up some tips, so the next batch was even better – BUT… There is one drawback. It is quite noisy inside the house.

First I tried putting it in a cardboard box with towels piled on top to dampen the sound – not bad… But you had to leave a gap as the motor gets hot. Still a bit noisy. So the solution was to run it in the day and turn it off at night as it rumbles a bit and you know how sound has a way of being louder at night when everything’s quiet, mind you, my neighbour next door is quite deaf so no complaints as yet!

So, what could we do about the noise? I have no means of putting it outside, no shed, so it has to be inside. The machine takes two – one and half pound barrels – so you could just run one which is not so noisy but then thats a waste of energy when you could be running two simultaneously until one day my hubby had a brainwave…

We’ve got a fan assisted cooler box, the ones you put cold or frozen food in when you’re travelling in your car, plugs into the 12volt cigarette thingy, he had the idea of putting the tumbler inside and closing the lid to soundproof it and at the same time the fan runs in the top of the cool box keeping the Motor cool. Spiffing idea! Just need a 12v adapter power supply so we can plug the cool box into the wall. Taking a risk we ordered a power supply on eBay £7 in all, with a soldering iron he melted a place to put the lead of the plug, not too big or noise could escape through the hole and hubby wired up the power supply (great handyman)

So today was the big day. I had one barrel ready to go, lowered it in and we switched on. Well, what an amazing improvement! you hardly heard anything apart from the gentle fan sound. Time to add an extra barrel. That was an improvement too – considering I couldn’t run two barrels before because of the noise. So there we have it… A great solution to a noisy problem and it kept the motor cool.

Here’s my tips on stone tumbling, mainly serpentine stone, which is a softer stone compared to some others – the hardness of the stone you’re tumbling is worth checking online. (photo below: Should read fan INTAKE not output)

1. Be quite selective about your stones. Any with cracks, or a crazed top will not come out so well, if you’re tumbling stones from the beach then the sea has done a lot of tumbling for you. Unless the stone is amazing, try to get ones that are well shaped or the shape you require for your project. Try to search for stones when the stones are wet, this gives you an idea of what colours will come out once the stone is polished (serpentine shows up better when wet)

2. Don’t tumble different hardness of stone together, some stones are softer and can get damaged with harder stone placed with them. I tend to tumble serpentine on it’s own.

3. If the stones are well tumbled already by the sea, you might only need to do two stages of tumbling. I use a pre-polish grit and then the next stage is the polishing. Use plastic pellets too as they cushions the softer stones and helps polish them up in both stages. Don’t be tempted to skip the pre-polish stage as this gets rid of any minor scratches and really does a good job of pre- polishing. See instructions for using plastic pellets, I basically fill half the barrel with stones and make it up to three quarters with pellets, I then add enough water to just cover the stones, then add grit or polish powder. Basically, it’s your discretion, but just leave enough room in the barrel for the stones to ‘tumble’ i.e. to move around! The pellets can be used up to twelve times before you change them for a new batch. Don’t flush any pellets down the sink as they cause environmental damage.

4. DO NOT put the used gritty slurry water at any of the stages down your normal sink, it will set like concrete and you might end up having to have new waste pipes put in. Find somewhere in the garden you can tip it where it doesn’t matter but not next to your drains.

5. If you have rougher stones or want to wear down some stones more than the pre-polish stage, than use a coarser grit which will grind down more of the stone. Again trial and error is the only way to learn with this.

6. Reuse the pellets each time and save the ‘slurry’ that comes with it, you can use it next time (just add more grit or polish each time) Make sure you don’t mix the pellets for each stage – keep the pre-polish pellets separate from the final stage polishing pellets. Getting coarse grit in your beautiful final polishing stage can undo all the hard work already done.

7. Use separate barrels for each stage if you can afford it. I have three barrels. One for coarse grit (I rarely use) one for pre-polish and one for polishing. It just makes life easier than really having to wash and inspect each barrel if you only have one barrel for all stages. The plastic barrels are not too expensive – I got my spare plastic barrel for about £7. The rubber barrels are between £20 – £40 each.

8. Check the stones after 24 hours of continuous tumbling, after that every 12 hours, softer stone tumbles quicker so it doesn’t take very long to finish each stage. Sometimes the final polish can take a little longer and you want a good shine, so be patient and don’t worry if they take a little longer, an extra 12 hours can make all the difference between a fairly shiny stone and a perfectly shined stone.

9. Using soap powder and sugar. I haven’t tried it. I’ve only used proper grit and polishing powder. I’ve heard good and bad info about using them. Someone said the sugar can make it a bit of a sticky mess and it builds up a gas which you have to release every now and again or it blows the end cap off! That would be a mess which you don’t want over the tumbling motor and drive belt (if you have one) again trial and error is the way forward here.

10. Having trouble putting on the end caps? Run them under hot water or soak in hot water, this makes them more pliable to put on and they shrink as they get cooler making a good seal. You don’t want leaking barrels. Check your barrels for leaking about ten minutes after you start tumbling.

11. Rubber barrels versus plastic barrels. Rubber barrels are more expensive but are quieter and last much longer than the plastic ones. The plastic ones however are cheaper which might be a bonus when you’ve just paid out for a whole kit. The plastic ones I’m told last about a year but I think that depends on what stone you are tumbling. Coarse stone will be more rugged and do more damage than beach tumbled stone. I will let you know after a year!

12. Every now and then oil the bearings even if they are plastic but don’t get oil on the drive belt or it’ll slip and not run properly.

13. Looking after the environment. Make sure you don’t let any of the plastic pellets go down the drain or they can end up in the sea, some birds mistake then for fish eggs and this can kill their young, who starve from filling up their stomaches with plastic – heart rending stuff.

Dry Serpentine

 

 

 

 

 

Wet serpentine

 

 

 

 

 

See the difference between the two stones? Serpentine comes in many colours but you really can tell it’s serpentine by it’s smooth, silky, almost greasy feel – it’s very tactil especially once polished. Some serpentine is obviously green, brown or the one above which is a more subtle colour. Depends what you want.

If I think of any more tips I’ll add them but I hope this helps. I certainly needed some help when I first started especially as I bought my tumbler on eBay and it had no instructions.

Centralisation 1

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I’m quite a fan of Celia Green. I’ll be posting extracts from her books periodically in ‘comic strip style’. Please click on image to view a larger image in a seperate window.

Celia Green is a philosopher and psychologist, best known for her pioneering research on perceptual phenomena such as lucid dreams, and for philosophical and social commentaries such as The Human Evasion.


 

I think – therefore I Create…

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I was in the car with a friend when we were discussing writing books and dramas, both of us have  finished outlines, an idea which could become, by our thought process, a realised entity. If this entity happened to be shown to the right people, then this entity becomes a reality, this reality is as real as you and me.

Take any character but let’s look at Harry Potter. For a while he was a thought in a mothers mind, not only that, but was born in a certain amount of adversity, J K Rowling had to write whilst she was a single parent on a low income. The entity ‘Harry Potter’ was then taken up and published in a book format which reached many children and adults alike, but at this stage it was still only an ‘imaginative’ Harry, in that we only had words to describe the characters and that our imagination had to be aroused to fill in the details.

Then the magic of film transformed this ‘imagined Harry’ to a REAL Harry Potter played by Daniel Radcliffe. Now Harry and all the other characters are truly alive, and a new ‘entity’ was created and will never be forgotten except by the eventual sands of time.

This leads me on to thinking about the power of our thoughts and the term ‘Be careful what you wish for’ should be extended to ‘Be careful what you think about!’ My hubby has given me permission to tell you what happened to him one day when he put a thought ‘out there’.

It was a beautiful sunny day, we took the car to a beach 4 miles away and sat on the sand admiring the view, the bird cries and general pleasantness of temperature. My hubby thought to himself ‘If I had only one day left, then this would make a great, last day’ unfortunately, as soon as he said it, he realised someone had been listening. That this thought went out and reached the ears of somebody or something.

The next day he woke in a panic because he couldn’t see. His vision was blurred and when I looked into his eyes, one eye had turned inwards. To cut a long story short, he had to spend two days in hospital and wore a patch over one eye for two months. In all this time, he thought that his ‘thought’ caused the problem with his eye… Maybe it did? Maybe it didn’t? But we can’t deny that the thought preceeded the outcome.

Going back to characters like Harry Potter, when they become immortalised in the ‘flesh’ so to speak, then they become a reality which makes it very difficult for the actors who play these entities to shrug off that persona and become another persona, or even their own self! We only have to look at long running series like Star Trek or Dallas (where J.R. actually gets shot in real life because of his evil character) to see that it’s extremely hard for some people to see the difference between TV/film and so called reality. Even years after filming Star Trek, I bet William  Shatner, in real life, still gets comments from ordinary folk about his former character of the Captain of the Star Ship Enterprise.

Jean Baudrillard, (a French sociologist, philosopher, cultural theorist, political commentator, and photographer. His work is frequently associated with postmodernism and specifically post-structuralism) invented the term ‘Simulacre’. He claims that our current society has replaced all reality and meaning with symbols and signs, and that human experience is of a simulation of reality. Without going into too much depth, this does appear to be true.

Hubby and I don’t watch TV anymore but we do watch DVD’s, we love to be wafted away for a couple of hours into a fantasy world, we even sometimes find we are profoundly affected by this experience. We are aware of this and discuss how it affects us after the movie, our lives have been so strange that we often have to do so called ‘reality checks’ from time to time although as we are learning more about the possibility that we don’t live in ‘reality’ the edges get more blurred with every passing day!

So, our thoughts affect us and those around us, for those who are sensitive, we can feel those thoughts – we had a so called ‘scandal’ on our island a few months back, it caused a wave of panic, uncertainty, anger, maliciousness to ripple through the normally sleepy island that me and hubby experienced as most unpleasant to say the least. It was so bad ‘this feeling’ that we considered getting off the island for a while. It was an external feeling, we knew it wasn’t ‘our’ problem but that didn’t make it any less an unpleasant experience. It took a while to fade but was replaced with overwhelming sadness, as a beloved member of the island died of cancer only three years after her sister died of the same disease.

We affect each other more than we know and our thoughts create eddies and rivulets in the ether. Me and hubby, for years had been looking at the Peak Oil problem but it caused so much negative thinking that we had to really stop thinking about it this year, it seemed there was no answer to this problem yet so what was the reason to dwell on this negative thought? It did us no good, and spreading this thought to others also didn’t change anything. We tried to tell others so that things might change – but it didn’t. So, it was time to let go of the thought or let go of it affecting us.

That doesn’t mean that I’ll stick my head in the sand and ignore it but I won’t let it affect my ‘centre core’ – if something comes along to allow me to change things in the Peak Oil Area then I will!

Even the little thoughts that happen spontaneously in the mind, those, what I call ‘useless thoughts’ have to be slammed, you know, the ones that start small and before you know it become huge and you wonder how on earth it blossomed so out of control! All these little negative thoughts imped our advancement, they bring us low, they make us worry, be unhappy and sometimes we make them a reality when we shouldn’t – like when we try to imagine what someone else is thinking – it can get out of control – it ruins us.

I remember a long time ago, our old priest had said something, it was taken the wrong way, pondered upon, it grew into a great monster until the bubble was burst, the Priest was confronted by this monster of a thought and dispelled it with a few words ‘I didn’t realise there was a war on!’ in moments, that monstrous thought died like a balloon deflating – along with the ‘raspberry’ noise!

Careful what you think!!