Imagine Our Own Future Before Power Imagines One For Us

I feel like precisely because imagining the future which comes after this seems impossible, is the reason why we have to start imagining it. 

Otherwise the future we end up getting to live in we will have had no part in creating, and there are enough politicians and leaders of all kinds out there only too happy to design a future for everyone else to live in if it means they get to write the rules.

As difficult as it may seem, I feel like now is the perfect time for people to try and imagine what they want to happen after this, and seek out others who also share the same hopeful sentiment. Living in a future in which everyone has had a hand in making, no matter how small it may seem, is a really important thing in terms of having a sense of joint ownership about something everyone helped to build.

And that desire to seek out others who think and feel similarly to the way you are right now will be essential in order to galvanise people together into a cohesive whole, able to work as one. Because the only other option or road that springs easily to mind right now is one which leads to despair and total submission to the external forces that usher, steer and coerce us into doing what it thinks is best, if we choose not to do anything at all and remain stagnant.

That does sound proper dystopian, and even a bit hysterical when read in one go, but if you would have told me 2 months ago that very soon I would find myself staying in my house for 5 weeks straight in a bid to help save people's lives, then I would have mentioned that you didn't have to watch the entirety of Black Mirror in one sitting. 

But here we are! 

The truth of what's happening sounds just as wild as fiction right now, which is exactly why the way the story continues is so up for grabs. Everyone has writers block because the true extent of the reality we're in still remains unknown. Which is precisely why imagining a future that personally gives you hope is so necessary.

I Have No Respect For Wasps Who Do This

I have no respect for wasps that get into your bedroom through the tiniest of openings, then when you fully open the window so they can let themselves out, suddenly forget the way they came in and start buzzing about in the curtains and netting like they've been taken hostage and now is the time to enact the escape plan. So they scale the window pane multiple times but jump off each time they reach the top. Pacing around on the window sill shouting "I'm trapped! Somebody let me out!!!", even though the window can't be opened any further and they are 2 inches away from freedom. Absolutely zero respect for wasps who behave like this.

Lovemaking in the Time of Covid-19

What we need more than anything right now is to be able to touch each other. A handshake, a pat on the back, a hug, a kiss, a fondle...

Contact with those we love and cherish in all its myriad forms. But for the foreseeable future such essential life-affirming intimacy is forbidden to us.

How then can we physically touch without making contact?

With BODYDOM

Imagine standing in a box room which is partitioned straight down the middle, ceiling to floor by a see-through synthetic membrane as delicate as spiders silk, as flexible as a Queen's Variety Performance contortionist, and as strong as an iron bar. You stand on one side of the room, gazing longingly through the transparent veil at your partner who stands on the other.

How good would it feel to be able to just walk up to your partner or the loved one Lockdown has kept you apart from for weeks, and simply embrace them knowing it was totally safe to do so?

The transparent sheath that at all times maintains a safe distance between you is so thin and so light that its presence is quickly forgotten, allowing those feelings of love, longing and gratitude that have been on hold for so long to flood forth without restraint.

I'm asking for £100,000 for a 1% equity stake in the company. 

Ewan Davis: Well, what a remarkable pitch! I'd never heard of the Wirral before, but I have now! Such chutzpah! 

The dragons, hands firmly gripping their 50k wads, prepare themselves for the inevitable bidding war...

What I realised about the way I respond during a extended period of depression

Nearly all of the negative things that you say are assumptions. They are NOT facts, because they have not happened yet. 

People should never make assumptions about their future simply because it feels like things will never change. The simple fact is that it is literally impossible for anything to stay the same. Things can only get worse or get better. It's your choice. Things remaining as they are forever isn't actually something that can happen, so forget about it.

Listen to your thoughts or go through your writings or trains of thought and highlight the facts and separate them from the assumptions. The things that can be said because they are true, and the things which will become true if you keep telling yourself they are already true when they aren't.

Dont ruin your life investing the power of your belief in assumptions which the end up becoming self-fulfilling prophecies. Never EVER declare that whatever negative experience is happening for you, will carry on like that forever, because you have no right to claim such a thing before it's actually takes place, and whether it places or not is entirely your choice.

The Truth

The Truth can never be masked or covered or hidden so there is no reason to fear religion.

But there is a reason to fear people who become convinced that they know The Truth. And so as individuals, or as part of a group claiming to know The Truth amidst a vast sea of the less enlightened without it, as perhaps others are simply ignorant or knowingly refuse to accept the ways The Truth dictates which is proof enough of their possession by an entity elsewhere....

These are the people one should be wary of and cautious about. People who claim to know The Truth and cannot stop themselves from making you also know it with them.

So there is paradox at work here. A paradox between our search for The Truth and the problems that begin once we become convinced that we've found it.

The Truth is that which emerges by itself without trying, because it is that which gradually becomes self-evident the more it is engaged with. The Truth is that which no language is needed in order for all to reach agreement upon. The Truth is that which any person of any creed, faith, religion, belief system or persuasion, can find cause to deny.

The Truth becomes stronger and more convincing, more penetrating, the more it is attacked. Because attacking The Truth simply sharpens its edges. Defines its lines, making it even more incisive and piercing a tool when used.

The Truth never ever needs to be defended. That is just another human delusion that illustrates their enduring arrogance and constant ignorance very well. The Truth welcomes attacks from all sides, from all angles, in order to know for itself if it really is The Truth, and not just a figment of its own wishful thinking.

So beware of anyone claiming to know The Truth, claims to hold The Truth, to be keyholder that can unlock the truth for you, for a fee, because The Truth isn't an object that is purchased nor a commodity which can be traded or bartered with. It is free.

Who knows what it is? But we can be sure of what it is not. It cannot be owned or kept or acquired. It is free, and it is everywhere. It is the air we breath therefore it can never be hidden from us because you cannot hide the air that we it breath without killing us all.

Don't conserve what little you have during lockdown. Generate more.

When you're low on energy, low on morale, low on self-belief, just low in general....it might seem like the best strategy is to conserve what few resources you have left for those parts of yourself you think are the most important or valuable. 

But you only have to look at how the The Conservatives operate to realise why replicating their mistakes and applying austerity to our own bodies will never leave us feeling better.

You have to invest your resources into things which are real and here, now. Not promises of what you'll get in the future. You have to invest your resources in things which are natural but also feed everything else, making the pursuit of dreams and ambitions possible to begin with. Investing in the living environment around us in order to help it make more of itself to nourish others.

Neville and the Dao

And so it's either all or nothing. But is it? Is it possible for it to be all AND nothing? Neville AND the Dao.

It all seems to hinge upon the question of expectations and whether we have them or not. Neville teaches us to have nothing but expectation. To project and live in the vision of the future as if it were the present. 100% expectation of what is about to occur next. And in this way it shall occur.

But the Dao is the polar opposite of this, for any hint of expectation about what is to come next is an act of trying, an act of doing, an act of intention. This is not the Dao, because the Dao is the perfect way ahead which we are able to find and walk only when the ego has surrendered all responsibility for steering the destiny of the self. Destiny ought to be in the Dao's hands, not ours.

So there seems to be a paradox here between the two ways of being, and if both are true at different times, then how does one unify them together? 

How is it possible to walk the path we want to see unfold before, without wanting it?

Neville = See and feel what you wish to take place and thus it becomes so.

The Dao = Abandon all intention and surrender yourself completely to each present moment.

Both = The future you seek is already written.