Looking within, facing the past, finding you

Many people are in an angry, isolated and misunderstood state. Simple things that could have been resolved in a chat across a garden fence in five minutes have instead festered and grown. Even within family homes self-absorbed modes of being have stifled intergenerational exchanges. Instead of unity each retreats. Misunderstandings abound.  Disappointment is felt by many players and children lose out big time. Instead of daily conversations across a shared meal, something even our ancestors enjoyed over an open fire, we hardly touch base. The love that can be there goes unexpressed, unspoken, taken for granted and exhausts existing bank balances of shared experiences and love. No wonder disappointment reigns.  

If we’re honest our own disappointment lies closer to home. We are not what we thought we could or would be. This present shadowy creature is not a reflection of our inner reality. We sense that at a fundamental level. But veils have come between us and our own hearts. No wonder those around seem inscrutable and bewildering. We are not even sure how we ended up here. There is a vague memory of another desired path. It has been so long since we glimpsed it we’ve accepted the present landscape as our reality.

Never has time been more precious or more abused. Take a moment to look around at the faces. Sit in a cafe, train station or street centre and watch the faces. Be heartbroken at the misery written plain in too many. See others. Look at their expressions and feel your own heart contract in sympathy. Know too, that this face, that you see, is their public one. It is the shell that they adopt when exposed to the general population. Then, just imagine if you could see them at home in their own little box able to relax and really let the defences down.  Some don't even have this luxury. Their private homes are even worse plays that call on acting skills to see them through the long hours. They must perform charades, exhausted by the effort that entails. Souls lacerated, they self harm to excise the pain. Whether that harm is with a razor, drug, drink, overeating, under eating, gambling etc it matters not. These symptoms of dreadful wrongs haunt the spaces of our society.

At a time when happiness is sought by so many why has misery become ever more abundant?  These are questions that need asked. We have to remove the barriers within us. Allow the quiet honest reflection that enables you to question your own spirit and really listen to what it says. It may surprise you. Just allow silence into your life. 

Turn off all the news, entertainment, gossip, never ending tasks and, as you would with a dear dear friend who you've not seen for decades, ask the real questions that matter. Allow time for the answers to bubble up from deep within. A lot of hurt, disappointment will surface too but be patient. Deep within, you have something worth waiting for. Don't be distracted by the flak. Hold fast, it is worth it. When there is love, there is always enough time. Suddenly, there will be a flash of you. Crystal clear glimpses of the old you that is still in there. At first it may appear like shards of a broken mirror, the pieces of an old image. Reclaim yourself, you are worth the effort.

You are worthy of love and respect. You cannot feel it for others if you don't claim it for yourself. Allow the the real you step forward and recognise the voice that has been silent too long. You will get distracted and disappointed by the inactivity and lack of results. Hurt by bad memories you’ve tucked deep away. Swamped by feelings of fragility that emerges. Being sensitised is a hurtful thing! See past that, to the fluid nature within. You are all these feelings and experiences but you are even more.

Trust the voice within you, even if it just says “shut up”! Be patient, this is a dear friend who deserves your love. They have walked with you on epic journeys of heartbreak. Be still and respect the insights they offer. Know too that you will get better at mining these gems that lie inside. You are worth the effort so start digging for those jewels.

It is said our lives flash before us as we die.  Perhaps it is because in order to see, actually see the light you need to clear out the debris of life.  Why wait until the end, when this moment could be the  beginning of everything.

PS  If you don’t whether to trust the response that comes from within.  Know that there is a touchstone to measure the authenticity of real insights from vain imaginings. 

“And the honour and distinction of the individual consist in this, that he …should become a source of social good. Is any larger bounty conceivable than this, that an individual, looking within himself, should find … he has become the cause of peace and well-being, of happiness and advantage to his fellow men?”  

A Plague of Our Times

The plague has struck humanity repeatedly over our long history. An early mention of the plague occurs in 1 Samuel, in the old Testament, where the Philistines are struck down after they steal the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelis. The description of the disease is identical to that exhibited by the plague.  It is believed that the book of Samuel was composed between 630 and 540 BC but used much older source documents. Remarkably, Even older evidence than this has been discovered, dating to 1350 BC, when the fossilised remains of plague fleas were found in Amana Egypt.  Obviously, this disease has been around for thousands of years and been responsible for the loss of an unbelievable number of human lives.

The plague is in an acute infectious disease caused by the bacillus Yersinia pestis and is still endemic in indigenous rodent populations of South and North America, Africa and Central Asia. The disease is transmitted to humans by the bite of a flea. Primary hosts of the flea are thought to be the black urban rat and the brown sewer rat.  

The Justinian plague of 541 started in central Africa and spread to Egypt and the Mediterranean.

It was named after the Roman emperor of that time.  How unfortunate to go down in posterity named after one of the most frightening and virulent diseases!  The early historians describe the effect of the disease. They said people had a sudden fever and then they developed swellings on their body, in the groin, inside the armpit and also beside the ears and even on different points on the thighs.  Constantinople lost 10,000 of its population per day and by the end of the outbreak a third of the total population of the city had died from the plague. The disease spread as far north as Denmark, west to Ireland and then even to Africa the Middle East and Asia Minor. In total, it is thought that between the years 542 AD and 546 AD the plague killed nearly 100 million people.

An eyewitness, John of Ephesus describes the process.

“[Theodore] made very large pits, inside each of which 70,000 corpses were laid down. He thus appointed men there, who brought down corpses, sorted them and piled them up. They pressed them in rows on top of each other, in the same way as someone presses hay in a loft ... Men and women were trodden down, and in the little space between them the young and infants were pressed down, trodden with the feet and trampled down like spoilt grapes.”

It is difficult to describe the fear, the devastation and the scale of the loss of life at this time. By the end of the plague a quarter of the population of the Roman Empire was dead.

The plague returned as the black death of 1347 AD. This pandemic was brought to the Crimea from Asia Minor.  The Tartar armies of Khan Janibeg had laid siege to the town of Kaffa (now Feodosya in Ukraine) but were unsuccessful. Before they left, they catapulted the corpses of plague victims over the walls into the city.  The citizens of Kaffa fled in ships, carrying the disease with them all through Europe.  Meanwhile, the Tartars also carried the plague with them further to Russia and India.  War like fleas, it seems are perfect vectors for the spread of disease.  A lesson that humanity, even after thousands of years, it seems has not yet been learned.

In medieval accounts there are descriptions of the symptoms of the disease. It begins with tumours in the groin or armpit some of which grow as large as an apple, others the size of an egg. Then black spots appear on the arms and thighs. 

History calls it the Black Death.  The overall mortality rate varied from city to city. In Florence, half the population died. People died with such rapidity proper burial or cremation could not occur. Corpses were once again thrown into large pits and putrefying bodies lay in their homes and in the streets. Transmission of the illness was thought to be by disease carrying vapours emanating from the corpses and the from the breath of an infected or sick person. Others thought the Black Death was a punishment from God for their sins. People joined in huge processions of flagellants whipping themselves with nail embedded scourges and incanting hymns and prayers as they passed from town to town.  As much as 88% of those afflicted with the disease died. The plague lead to a preoccupation with death and some macabre artwork such as The Triumph of Death by Pieter Breughel the Elder in 1562 AD.  

By the end of the outbreak a quarter of the population of Europe, over 25 million people, were dead.  The scale of the loss of life was such that by 1430 AD Europe's population was lower than it had been in 1290 AD and indeed would not recover its pre-pandemic level until the 16th century!

In the 15th and 16th centuries doctors wore a peculiar costume to protect themselves from the plague when they attended infected patients. They were clothed from head to foot in leather or oil cloth robes, with leggings, gloves and a hood. This was topped with a wide brimmed hat and a beak like a mask with glass eyes and two breathing nostrils filled with aromatic herbs and flowers to fend off the fumes. They avoided touching their patients and would lance tumours with knives several feet long.  Even now the picture is horrific but imagine how it felt for their patients!

Another small epidemic occurred in London in September 1665 AD when 7000 people per week were dying. By the end of that year a fifth of London’s population had died.  An old familiar English nursery rhyme published in 1881, reminds us, all too clearly  of the symptoms of the plague. 

Ring a-ring a roses (a red blistering rash)

a pocketful of posies (fragrant herbs and flowers to ward off the disease)

atishoo, atishoo (the sneeze and the cough heralding pneumonia)

we all fall down.(all dead)

Just in case we think the plague is a thing of the past it's important to realise that outbreaks still occur. Here are the figures over the last few decades. 

Given our present antibiotics the death toll from the plague has been reduced to a kill rate of only 16% nowadays. However, It is particularly worrisome that some multi drug- resistant strains of the bacillus are appearing.  This is not a good  omen for the future.  The ways in which we can become infected are also multiplying. 

To make matters worse, we are sometimes playing risky games with this age old killer.  In 2015 the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US reported (after inspections of an army base in Maryland) one of the Pentagon’s most secure labs, had mislabelled and improperly stored and even shipped samples of potentially infectious plague bacteria!

If history has taught us anything about this dreadful disease over the past three millennium it is surely this.

1. we should be on guard against complacency
2. avoid unnecessary wars and 
3. forced movement of millions 
4. protect the health and well being of all human beings to boost their natural immunity 
5. and never for a moment assume we have this endemic killer under our total control.

scary facts  once you open the webpage  click on it to enlarge!

PS Used a lot of info from The History of the Plague - The Three Great Pandemics by John Firth

Fasting - progressing or regressing?

There are many reasons to fast. Several organisations have claimed extraordinary health benefits for fasting. I enjoyed this talk on the surprising changes it can bring.

In fact if you tell people you're fasting for health benefits most people will be impressed with your determination and strength of mind. Slightly in awe of someone choosing not to eat or drink when they have the freedom to do both. In an age where obesity is endemic in the developed world, with all its associated diseases, those who choose the opposite direction stand out.  They are akin to the super fit among us whose regular frenetic workouts keep them energised and in shape. They are to be to be admired for not going with the flow. Actually finding the wherewithal to go in the opposite direction to the norm. After all, for a huge swathe of humans, being without food or clean water is not a choice. They wrestle daily to obtain these basic necessities and die periodically in substantial numbers when they lose this battle. 

We live in a world that has those who literally eat themselves to an early death and others starving from malnutrition who die because of a lack of food. In case we think these two extremes are linked to each other it is important to point out the obvious difference. Those who eat their way into obesity and diabetes do have a choice. Those who are dying of hunger rarely do. You might argue that the food industry has cleverly generated over zealous consumers of their manufactured products to earn them millions. That by the use of sugar, flavour enhancers, excess salt and other means the food industry has caused the obesity we see around us. There may be some truth to this and those who target children with their unhealthy fare are becoming rightly the target of the public's ire. However, in general the public is distracted and in the void where information should be, entertainment and advertisements have elbowed their way in. It is becoming harder to discern the truth. Instead of right and wrong we seem to have only shades.

In a world of excess those who choose to do with less are admired. In a world of scarcity to choose to do with less is suicidal. We admire those who control their appetite by fasting because it is uncommon. Of course those who fast because they have a psychological disorder receive no such admiration. The inner prompting that keeps an anorexic from eating is recognised as a sickness not admired  as self control. The Romans overindulged and then routinely vomited so they could repeat the delight of eating again similarly do not deserve applause. Food is so fundamental to well-being we all inherently fear its wastage to greater or smaller degrees. My mother-in-law who lived through war and the shortage of food that entailed wept in her son’s restaurant kitchen, in Texas, to see huge uneaten steaks being scooped into the bins. To those with experience of hunger, food is infinitely precious.

Fasting for religious purposes is viewed differently by most. When I, as a Baha’i, fast people are sometimes uncomfortable. They can see it as fanatical, incomprehensible and almost akin to scourging. It is undoubtably antisocial.  How many times do I find myself not joining friends at such times. They become self-conscious eating and drinking in my presence despite protestations to the contrary. Not been able to give you a cup of tea or coffee as you enter their home makes them feel like a helpless host. So what is it that fasting does for me.

1. It helps me discover all my addictions. For example, coffee drinking has to stop at least a month before the fast. Otherwise the fast becomes  a time of endurance and not enjoyment.
2. It's frees up time to commune with God. Without tea, coffee, biscuits and meals there is suddenly so much time available. The mind is clearer and sharper. There are less distractions.
3. The physical doing without food or water from sunrise to sunset is not the hardest part. For me dealing with the cold is a major issue. I am sitting at present  wearing jumpers, coat, gloves and a scarf in the shopping mall. Two tourists have wondered by in tank tops and shorts. I'm not sure what goes wrong with my body when deprived of food and drink but for whatever reason hypothermia is the result.
4. Dealing with the physical effects of fasting is not the hardest part at all. The challenge is actually growing spiritually as a result of fasting. It is possible to do without food or water day after day with rigid discipline but advance not one jot spiritually. In fact that's not true. Because I'm convinced our spiritual state is dynamic not static it's quite possible to fast and move further away from God.  You can become grumpy and bad tempered. You can suddenly be judgemental of others! Any self satisfaction during this period can be dangerous. It can generate pride that causes your spirit to actually shrivel.
5. We are told that some who fast will not be accepted by God and many that don't fast, will. In other words, it seems it's not the decision to put something in your mouth or not that determines the spirituality of this period. It is the degree to which we succeed during these days of rejuvenating our spirit. It can allow us insights on what we can achieve and what we need to change within. It triggers the possibility of transformation and provides a quiet space for that possibility.

Every year it feels like the sands of this special time are running through my fingers before I can truly grasp them. Creating the space once a year reminds me that we are all crops in progress. There are things needed weeded out, seeds requiring planting, plants to be pruned and all need the water of life to strengthen them. Everything you do this season will influence the year ahead. May yours, like the coming spring, be fruitful and abundant with promise.