Classical Astrology to Modern is as in "Beatles" is to "Bach"

My classics professor hired me to dig over his garden for a summer every Sunday. After work we would climb onto the patio and talk about Everything Under the Sun. Or, rather, he would talk about everything and I would listen!

One time his communist son turned up and we talked about Leninism and anarchy for three hours in fascinating detail. Another time his gambling buddy and girlfriend turned up and we talked about probability, complexity theory, and horary prediction in astrology.

But on his own he was willing to speak even wider, ranging from Islamic history to Heidegger to Tibetan dream tantrayoga to Sufism to, eventually, classical Egyptian astrology.

I have heard people talk about classical astrology as something in the last century. That's like calling the Beatles classic rather than Bach; its a far narrower time reference, and a corresponding smallness of meaning with it. But because (ancient) classical astrology is really, really different to our present forms it is easy to view it as just old fogey stuff.

My professor also took me to visit some Classicists - as in, students of the Greek and Roman classics. Artists, eccentrics, recluses, invalids - the doors opened to a vital world of thinking and feeling completely alien to our postmodern sensibility. I was awed, then excited, then silenced by their depth of wisdom and understanding. The Classical Roman tradition alone is profound in wisdom comparable to the Native American or Hindu or Buddhist or Confucian traditions, and yet our Western tradition is seen as the dead past. In fact, the classical apsects of consciousness are revealed to be alive and well; among us walk Romans and Greeks of the Classical period, and we cannot see them.

My professor recommended two writers on classical astrology. Because of what was lost in the Great Fire of Alexandria, we will never know how sophisticated classical astrology became, but for these two books. The first is Ptolemy's Astrology. The second is an anonymous Greek almanack of predictive astrology for farmers.

Briefly, then, I will describe the unique nature of classical astrology as he taught me that Sunday afternoon on the patio his his garden.

The system uses only the visible planets. Like modern physics, symetry is everything. So the system of rulership has no start and end point (Aries and Pisces). Instead it has an axis which passes between Leo and Cancer, ruled respectively by the Sun and Moon; and Aquarius and Capricorn, both ruled by Saturn.

This will be familiar to most astrologers:

Saturn rules:

Aquarius and Capricorn

Jupiter rules:

Pisces and Sagittarius.

Mars rules:

Aries and Scorpio.

(Can you see the pattern? The zodiac is split down the middle between ying and yang expressions of each planetary principle!)

Venus rules:

Taurus and Libra.

Mercury rules:

Gemini and Virgo.

Which leads us to the ultimate yin and yang, the sun and the moon, the givers of life.

This system reflects the seasons and agriculture closely, and in fact was used as a planting and tilling guide from time immemorial. The present tradition to use a circle to describe the zodiac chart of an individual is instead replaced, significantly, by squares for each of the houses, forming a matrix of 4 X 4 boxes for the chart. This is highly significant as the Western form of a basic Chinese Feng Shui Bagua form, and the square chart form describes a block of land with planting and fallow cycles as accurately as it describes an individual. More significantly still, this square chart is earth-focused and nature-centered, with local associations to cloud formations, plants, bird life, water flow, disease presence of absence, earthquakes, storms, and all incidents of rural life - it is the remaining living part of the indigenous tribal culture of the ancient Westerners in that area.

Later, Greek, reinterpretations would greatly alter the meaning of this square chart.

Interpretation of a chart traditionally was completely different to how we now do it. The worldview was utterly different here and classical astrology parts ways with modern astrology completely.

It appears there was a birth chart of the universe, a perfect, round, celestial chart. Unlike the earthly individual chart it was circular. This round chart (which the Greeks, frankly, usurped from the "gods" and abrogated to human individuality) is the invisible realm of the soul, the vastness of space, and the eternal life of all phenomena in the universe.

This circular chart was superimposed onto the square chart to produce an interpretation.

For the ancients, it didn't matter how positive your personal charts aspects might be. What mattered was how you chart harmonised with the original chart, the map of the universe, the image of your face before you were born. So the sun in the celestial chart stood in Leo, and the aspects of your Sun to it were highly significant. Planets stood in their rulerships in the celestial chart, and wandered in the earthly charts.

It is hard to recapture the uncanny way the Greeks altered this. When you read some of their astrology they sound like they are tripping on drugs sometimes, they are very out there. For the latter day ancient Greeks taught that the individual was one and identical with the universal chart itself:

"Men are born of the earth, once-born then dying, but we Athenian men are born twice, born of the earth, then born of the stars. We are the twice-born and celestial men," they taught.

The doctine of the twice-born man, fueled by the drugs of the Eleusian mysteries and the occult and superstition of the pagans, gave rise to a new sense of self among the Greeks, the sense of oneself as an "individual", separate from the universe. And it is that concept which has led to our present forms of "classical" (Beatles-level) astrology.

It is helpful to know that there is a classical astrology which is deeper and wider that modern classicism. To every Beatles there's a Bach.

Words we don't have in English for emotional states we don't have in the West

Daniel Goleman on dealing with negativity:

"The other research underway now is looking at beginners. And now that we know what to look for, we're starting to see similar shifts in people who are just in the first two months of meditating. In another study of meditation, they taught it to highly stressed workers at a tech firm. The researchers found that they shifted the brain set-point for emotions from the "distressed zone" to the "good zone." That was after two months of an hour [of meditation] a day.

Here's the other most interesting comment on some limits of English:

"...The paradigms can be so different. For example, it turned out that in Buddhism there's an emotional state called sukha, which is an ongoing, imperturbable sense of joy that you feel regardless of what happens to you in life. What was remarkable in this dialogue is that there's no parallel in Western psychology and it made us wonder, 'What are we missing? What else are we missing?'

"He [the Dalai Lama] made another point which was that in Tibetan, and actually in all Asian Buddhist countries, the word for "compassion" means both compassion for yourself as well as other people. Whereas in English it only means for other people, not for yourself. He said, "You're missing a very important word." I thought that was a good insight."

NASA and a space flight experiment

The Wright brothers used a wind tunnel to test out variations on flight fast, covering the territory that took birds millions of years in only a few months.

Why can we not develop a "wind tunnel" for space travel?

It costs millions to laugh a ship out of the atmosphere and to re-enter. Why not replicate these conditions mechanically on earth and try out a whole bunch of nutty "solutions". The reality is that the costs need to be an order of magnitude lower and the opportunities of space flight a magnitude greater for space flight to, literally, take off.

Likewise with orbital re-entry. Why not invest in a program to simulate it with sufficient complexity to discover how to do it with ease?

It is also interesting that NASA tests weak with kinesiology. To do its job it would have to calibrate over 400 on the Hawkins scale, and instead it calibrates below 200.

So NASA joins the other disintegrous organisations, such as the United Nations and the World Bank, that do not have sufficient intrinsic power to do their jobs.

Support the solution, a dream:

I had a dream last night.

In the dream a tyrant ruled an ugly city, at war against a beautiful red-gold dragon. The city could not rebel against him militarily, by force, but a small group of old women and little girls applied the Gandhian economic solution: weaving and shoe-making as a spiritual solution.

Eventually their courage earnt them a say in the tyranny, and everyone realized that living in this war machine was silly and the dragon merely wanted her life back, living inside the cave that was the city. The people went back to the pastures and the dragon laid the egg for a nest of beautiful emerald green dragons.

The skilful means this dream teaches is significant: don't battle wrong, falsehood or "evil"; instead, build the everyday habits you need, the weaving of everyday life and the shoes to walk the path of the future.

Build peace and peace will come.

The Top Eight Things I've Learn this Week

1. Begin great enterprise by building confidence and self-esteem.
2. Feelings are not facts.
3. Dare to be average; dare to have average goals; dare to aim for normality, competence, the everyday achievements, and the good over the great.
4. Greatness is not in doing a perfect job, but in always being the best person you can be.
5. You feel the way you think; automatic thinking arises from signifying, opinionating, judging, categorizing, manipulating logic, emotions and perceptions to suit preconceptions, which in turn arises from inadvertence and ignorance, which in turn is cured by clarifying awareness.

6. From a fascinating article on how learning occurs at http://www.winwenger.com/part81.htm

"What it really boils down to is this:  though the inputting is important, it is only when we output it that we actually learn. Regardless that the method of inputting may be anything (and some methods of input may have more virtue than others), no real learning occurs until we actually voluntarily output whatever it is that we want to learn. On the one hand, the input is significant because without the input there would be no learning, but at the same time the stress should not be placed on the input but on the output, because that is where the real learning occurs.

"Once you understand this, you will understand everything that is wrong about the public and most of the private school systems. The public (and some private) schools try to shove the information down the students’ throats through various inputting methods. But the students will never learn the information until they start outputting it! This is why so many of the public and private school students fail. The ones that succeed have somehow willingly and consciously output the information (through thinking about it, writing about it, speaking about it, drawing it, etc.).

"Certainly accelerated learning has developed many advanced and far faster methods of input than the usual ones. And, though the majority of them are coupled with effective outputting techniques (to facilitate real learning), many times people lose the correct focus on the output. Not to disparage the accelerated learning movement (far from it), we have to remember that real learning comes when we receive conscious internal feedback from our own voluntary output."

So it's really important to DO something about what you learn!

7. I want a therapist not only experienced in mood-altering and consciousness-raising cognitive therapy, but also a psychoanalyst with a Jungian orientation who is also learned in bodywork and healing modalities, with excellent active AND passive counselling skills. I want to work such a therapist with over a period of some years.

8. I need to change my financial circumstances ASAP, much more sooner than later, if I want to enjoy the quality of life I deserve and take responsibility for the likelihood of future expenses greater than my present modest means. (What a garbled sentence!)

Out of a blue clear sky

Theory: "Your emotional responses are preceded by automatic thoughts, it is not difficult to train yourself to focus your attention on them during various events and circumstances."

Practice: "Start practicing the skill of recalling the images and ideas which floated through your stream of consciousness during the last few moments. To do this, sit quietly and allow your mind to wander. After a minute or so, ask yourself what you are currently thinking about. Once you’ve identified that, ask yourself what led you to start thinking about what you were thinking about. Continue tracing your thought stream back as far as you can."

Problem: The automatic thoughts are - and falsely - labelled as "I". So investigating thoughts like this can be like quizzing a nun about scriptures, or like harrassing a marxist on economic. It requires humility and genuine disinterest in oneself, and, by reversal, comittment to truth above falsehood.

Solution: Spiritual. The "I" unaided can't detach from the causes of itself, but can only dissociate from the effects. Logic, perception and feelings, all work at the level of effect. So the techniques described above are useful in the context of a dedication to personal responsibility and truthfulness... in turn, only someone who has a sense of their own existence perceives the value in truthfulness, which to three quarters of humanity is a convenient fiction only.

I'm listening to George Strait:

"Surprise your new love has arrived
Out of a blue clear sky!"

And the joy in the song opens my heart to the painful sorrow there for my poor puss, who has disappeared this last day. The gratitude for her having been with me for the time she was replaces the fear that she may not return; and as tears stream down my cheeks I recall that unconditional love brings us together, no matter how far apart we seem to be. It is only the conditionality in my lovingness that causes me such terrible sorrow.

Man I'm feeling blue!

My cat's disappeared for close on twenty hours. I've missed her sleeping on the bed and waking me in the morning. I've missed her meows and her comings and goings. I've missed her purring and, above all, just her beautiful loving presence.

I feel so sad. I don't want my relationship with this puss to end here. I worry how I'll feel happy without her loving presence.

What's Happening In The World Is Under 100 Words

What's Happening In The World In Less Than One Hundred Words.
*Deep breath*

Currency economics dominates world markets.

Only those with strong savings and high credit ratings survive the purturbances, brought on by the currency shenanigans presently unfolding between China and the US. (Briefly, China is lending cheap money to the US to fund a real estate bubble there.)

So the only two nations on the planet with stable growth AND savings are the Uk with 400 years of yearly growth at a sustainable average of 1 percent, and Japan, whose consumer savings have slowed their economy sustainably.

We have completely misunderstood Japan. They are quietly building the future of capitalism based around voluntary consumer savings and decreased liquidity of assets. Stability is the vogue there. This is the future of capitalism.

Handel: the novelisation.

I cleaned some dishes. I washed some clothes. I tidied. I stacked books and took pleasure in reviewing some of the wonderful publications.

It was the start of the hour before dawn when I fell asleep.

I woke at twelve thirty on a Saturday and blearily wandered about, contemplating that navel of inwardness known as the internet, slowly roused up to do some more cleaning.

About one thirty I went shopping. As a reward I bought 2 Russian pastries which, as the Adelaide Market was about the shut, were a dollar each and just delicious. I sat and watched the crowd wash past eating my spinach and ricotta, and leek and potato, "Piroushkis".

I got home feeling simply joyous, whistling Mozart concertoes and bustling around the house, and on a sudden inspiration I chatted with a friend about Frederick Handel's life, which in itself was a significant conversation:

I have felt for many years that Herr Handel's life would make a great popular novelisation, along the style of "Immortal Beloved" or "Amadeus". But for lack of a sense of narrative coherence, without which a story would falter, makes such a novelisation perilous.

So an online friend, an expert in Handel's life and work and not a storyteller as I am, is suggesting story points from the Man's life. One after the other is discarded as not sufficiently riveting to be the climax scene. But we have discovered a few pivotal scenes.

The best candidate for a climax - but to my mind only a major pivotal scene - was the string of commercial failures that turned him from opera to oratoria, fusing his background in opera seria with the ancient tradition of sacred music to forge new works.

The other challenge is that the undisputed pinnacle of Handel's life is the composition of the Messiah. This is climactic in the cultural sense of western history for a number of reasons. But for Handel himself it seems to have been somewhat of an anticlimax, and Messiah flopped when it was performed in London.

My inspiration was that Handel's climactic event may have been his shift from contractual sponsorship to employment linked to the marketplace of music consumers. For Mozart such a move offered greater freedom to earn and to work independently. But for Handel he had an annuity for having taught a princess throughout his latter life and little problem coming to terms with market demand.

So Handel's is a latter life without epiphany! We have records of his kvetching about the Industry, but bugger all about the inspirational climactic experiences that would make a good novel climax.

www.inchoatus.com

I just read the high flown recommendations of www.inchoatus.com . Their intent is great, noble and true in stating the following works as SF Sublime. But I think they are in falsehood about it!

Cryptonomicon, by Neal Stephenson.
The Book of the New Sun, by Gene Wolfe.
Stories of Your Life and Others, Ted Chiang.
The Scar, by China Mieville.

The Golden Age, by John C Wright.

Now for the clicher. Of these book which www.inchoatus.com, ALL BUT THE LAST ONE tests strong by kinesiological testing. In other words, the four books above are skilful shams of integral Science Fiction.

Disgusting Cat Story

You were warned...

Whenever my cat starts hacking on the mat, I leap up and move her onto the tiles. That way if a little gross cat chuck comes up I can clean it up easily.

Unfortunately this has the side-effect of short-curcuiting my cat's furball reflex, and she promptly (like a good teen queen) swallows.

This was no problem at all until she went to the toilet today, and then proceeded to dash around the house with a lump of crap connected by a big chunky rope of hair to her bum...

*sigh*

The Past Five Days Kacks

In case you don't know, a "kack" or a "cac" is Australian English for a big laugh. Having a good kack is my reminder that I smell just like everyone else.

Tonights was "Everybody Loves Raymond" a quality kack.

Yesterdays was a game of Tetris with Kitten heads as pieces instead cubes and a frumpy cat-lady sidebar making weird comments.

Day before it was an ad (I don't discriminate on a good kacl!) which had me laughing most the night on and off. And of course Big Brother, my most frequent source of a convulsive and long-lasting kack, as the Housemates bitched and kvetched.

Day before that it was a tribe.net group of jokes: http://brainwhoppers.tribe.net/ The thread has a heap of really funny jokes:

Q:How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A:Oh, its ok, don't worry.... I'll just sit here in the dark...

Day before that, Sunday, I had a good kack watching Big Brother as usual before watching the unfunny Attack of the Clones.

Life's good.

A Panic Attack and A Spiritual Awakening

I woke from a dream where I had been taken in by a rich family, extended every gracious courtesy, and, filled with shame at my lowly status, I stole off, a thief in the night, wearing clothes borrowed from my patronesses (absent) husband. What turned me to shame in the dream, though, was an ice coffee with caramel liquer in a can, imported from America: the Lady of the House has noticed my liking for coffee and doubtless got it specially for me. But as I woke, the sense of sadness deepened and the heavy feeling of obligations I am unable to fill pervaded awareness. Unwilling to move for fear, my heart began to race, and the amount of oxygen my lungs used increased.

All this before I was even awake!!

So I folded my hands and said the Lord's Prayer. This short piece of loveliness has unfailing power to shift the blackest despair, I have discovered through experience. Then, having slept on the (newly cleaned!) couch last night, I reached over to the computer and put on a Buddhist chant.

"Nam Myoho Renge Kyo". The sacrifice of the Monk Nichiren came to mind. When a sage struggles in service of the truth it seems a terrible thing, but Nichiren's defense of this chant against barbaric Japanese authorities is still inspiring me here and now 13 centuries or so later. Real authority in action.

I put on an ancient Western piece, an Alleluia, extracted from the monasteries of ancient and lost Aquitane. Then I put on a methodist piece, O Magisterium Mysterium, which never fails to touch my heart. Something leapt up in me with happiness, and the sense of anxiety and fear and unfulfilled obligation vanished into joy as I got up and wrote out an inventory of my state, thoughts, and feelings.

I am listening to Mozart as I write this, a divertimento.

A panic attack and a spiritual awakening. What a way to start the day.

Real hero worship for personal change

The worst way to worship a hero is to imitate her. Imitators are sucked in by appearence.

To worship is in a sense relying on the inspirational power of the hero herself. Very few people are interested in the principles that support life in everybody, and many heroic people have their own agenda in being worshipped. So many times it's a hard trial and error matter of painful learning as heroes are given up. It's not so much the gaining of wisdom, but slowly having learnt to avoid uninspiring heroes.

People who can distill the essence of a hero, however, who become what they are worshipping by aligning with what their hero aligns with - these people engage in a very precise and impersonal process.

Genuine hero worship triggers an inner survey or inventory not unlike the Step Four in the Twelve Steps of Recovery. The worship of a hero can bring to light self-imposed obstacles and hidden barriers to growth which the inspiration of the hero as it were casts a light on them.

So for this a few things are useful:

1. If a hero has written words about themselves, write it out! IN your own hand writing. And put it on the world. And as your perception and everyday musings include these thoughts, an automatic progression of awareness occurs.

2. The reverse is true also. Acting with courage in lots of little ways and learning is best. If one can act-as-if without themselves being fooled that they ARE their heroes, many of the inspirational qualities can be discovered in awareness and development proceeds with recognition and deliberate inclusion of inspirational qualities more and more in everyday awareness.

3. The real value of hero pictures on the wall or shrines and and meetings, discussions of one's heroes and so on is that they can provide triggers to remembering these qualities in the worshipper as they emerge in consciousness.

On Responsibility

Forming a few thoughts out of disparate inspiration:

- Intention is what defines an act, not the act itself.

- Intent is impersonal, a field effect which is triggered by constancy of action, association, and familiarity.

- People are only responsible for acting, not for intention nor result.

- The results of an action are up to life in the full itself.

- The world is pretty much autonomous; it doesn't need you or yours to get along just fine.

- We don't own anything, not even our experience of life

- We steward our lives for the good that emanates out of it, and because the value of life is revealed by an intention of stewardship.

- If the overall aim is simply to be the best one can be, then failure is not possible.

Some good, some empowering thoughts here!

Star War, 'Clones', on TV last night

Last night I watched Attack of the Clones again on TV.

During the film, my book project, Gaia, was not far from my mind. I kept flying to the my pen and paper, before I realized that I had already mapped out a similar action-drama trajectory for my book without having done the work to visually locate it into an adequate scene breakdown. So I committed to doing that rather than making sweeping general notes about "how I would like things to be". Haha. We make plans and God laughs.

God bless the Net.

A disturbing email 'returns' to me. I realize that I never sent that email from my yahoo mailbox. I remember the past...

I once had another yahoo email. One day, when I tried to log in, it told me the password was incorrect.

My email had been hacked. At the time it was just another brick in the wall: I wrote to yahoo help and they could do nothing but send me automated instructions for things I didn't need. I wrote again asking for help desperately but my letter was ignored.

I lost about ten friends in that incident.

Not a week goes past when I won't think of one of those friends. Sadness, guilt, shame, longing, blessing, hope for them, good wishes, alternate when I think of them, far away and lost to me now. Increasingly, recognising the negative quality of these thoughts, I have focussed on blessing my lost friends with love and understanding. Now that I live a much more peaceful life I imagine a time when I will see some or all of them again, explain what happened, and express the sense of love and caring for them which I was not able to at the time.

...So when the email arrives I automatically flip through and change my password. Stuff em! I'm going to check out security options a bit more in the email box itself too.

Now, some might say it's my fault for having a fairly anonymous email box. But I would be happy to upgrade it to a professional yahoo account, if it seemed affordable. For now, however, the most logical thing I can do is backup my email list elsewhere on the net, through my sole other email account with hotmail which I don't use because hotmail just overall sucks.

I have asked a contact for a gmail account too, which would be a lovely freebie from the wonderful internet world! Even in spite of the hassles one encounters online, I still bless the net gratefully for the wonderful blessings it brings to my door everyday.

breakfast and being in the middle classes

Today I wake up to music videos on the TV. For breakfast I have spaghetti on toast and black coffee. It's almost like being in the middle class again! I mean, TOAST. With actual butter. And, like, BREAKFAST. hehehe

Then I remember that being in the middle class featured the exact same problems. Great place to visit.

Having suffered difficulties which were severe and protracted, the question is what to do about it? Saving, frugality, investment all the like suddenly seem much more attractive.

I'm willing to dedicate myself to things however they go. The best always turns out for me anyhow.

Just started rereading Tom Peter's 'In Search of Excellence'. Indeed.

The web is changing...

...It's becoming more about video, audio. The emphasis on sales is driving these mediums closer, inching slowly towards fusion technologies in broadband. It was satisfying to see the online release of the trailer of the sixth Star Wars movie, Revenge of the Sith, three months before it came onto tv; then on telly it's fantastic to sense that it already happened (the release, not the movie) somewhere else, in another place and time: the internet.

It's exciting to predict, isn't it? I remember playing online early in 1995 and thinking, "Gee whiz, I can look stuff up!"

Now it's like, "Goodness, I can make friend with folk across the planet!" (although mainly in the States right now!)

And in the future it'll be, "How COME I can't do everything over the internet?!"

But right now the big news for me is that I have thrown out my nintendo. And all the games.

Aside from the bald fact of the matter, if it's okay with you, I'm gonna avoid thinking any more about it. And all the games. And the ninetendo...

Do You Have What It Takes to Succeed?

This is the results of my "Do You Have What It Takes to Succeed?" tests on www.danpema.com

=======================================

Success Test Score: 3

3 is a perfect score.
If you scored anything under 5 points you're basically OK.
Between 5 and 10 points you're moderately at risk for self-sabotaging behavior.
Between 10 and 16 points you have a problem - Get some help.
=======================================

Depression Score: 48

If your total score is greater than 30 you need to seek (psychological) help!
=======================================

Optimism Score: 16

The range is from 0 to 24, from extreme pessimism to extreme optimism, with virtual neutrality being the midpoint, 12. Most people who have taken the test are slightly optimistic, Carver said. For instance, among 2,000 college students, the average score was 14, with two-thirds scoring between 10 and 18.

A group of 159 patients awaiting coronary artery bypass surgery had an average score of 15, possibly suggesting that a serious challenge may boost one's optimism a bit.

"People tend to run a little toward the optimistic end of the dimension, but not by a whole lot," Carver said. "Also, people tend to the moderate in their self-descriptions. Not many are saying they are enormously optimistic or pessimistic."

Hmmm... I wonder what someone with a depression score of zero, and an optimism score of 24, would look like?

The optimist would agree with the following statements:

In uncertain times, I usually expect the best.
It's easy for me to relax.
If something can go right for me, it will.
I'm always optimistic about my future.
I enjoy my friends a lot.
It's important for me to keep busy.
I always expect things to go my way.
It's extremely difficult to get me upset.
I always count on good things happening to me.
Overall, I expect more good things to happen to me than bad.

Aligning to the spirit of the web.

When one interacts with the net, one may align "horizontally" in terms of "what's in it for me?"; or one may align "vertically' alongside the net itself as a whole. Some examples of this:

- "What's in this for us?"
- Seeing the net as a place to give, care, support and help
- Seeing the web not as text, pics and links, but as interactions, intentions, and iterations of shared values.
- Acting on the web as a shared value. For instance, in my blog and collected online works I would hope it is a gift.

Probably the best use of the web is not for shopping but for engaging the mind. The value of this is to align with others in recognising the commonality of human problems and seeing others' problems as part of the same set of solutions as the solution to your problem, and giving what you can.

The decision of the day: to buy ginseng or not?!!!

It's Thursday today, and I'm up early after a night of startling lucid, realistic dreams. Progressing from sex to Dr Leary to outright outrageous entertainment, the dreams certainly dazzled me. It attribute them to A< the contemplative work, B< the Ginseng I took yesterday and C< the 13 hours of sleeping.

Shakti my cat woke me at one-thirty, wounded and shy from some incident outside. I have wrapped her up in a wooly jumper today but she is quiet and serious, speaking only to complain for brief periods while her tail flicks wildly.

Wednesday was great, however. Having lost my card and spent my money it dawned on me mid-morning that I would have to walk into town, which I did in short, contemplative stints, and it was most enjoyable. Everyone in town was polite, thankfully, because I was stuffed once I got there!

I had created four possible ways to spend money this fortnight, four scenarios, as it were. I could spend it on bills, rent, eating out, and scarce home eating. I could spend it all on bills and rent and some ginseng to boost my energy levels. I could eat in more and spend on rent and moderately on bills, and no ginseng. OR I could only spend the normal low amount on bills, pay rent, and splurge the rest of great quality food eating in AND ginseng as well.

It was the final option, D, which appealed to me the most.

I remembered last night in the bath how it felt when one of my relatives gave me a wad of hundred dollar notes once. Being so accustomed to the ups and downs of having little money, then having no money, and having developed no emotional clarity around the fact of relative scarcity, I simply burst into tears at the sudden thought of how to manage an influx of cash.

Now I have the sense that, having developed some degree of intellectual plan around finance, it would be a bit easier on the emotions. But the boom-time rush, and the bust-time slump, is still with me as an animal instinct.