Monstaville Book III. Chapter 13

13

Dr. Iannis (John Hurt), writing a letter to Antonio: ‘You know I am not a religious man, but I believe this: if there is a wound, we must try to heal it. If there is someone whose pain we can cure, we must search till we find them. If the gods have chosen us to survive, it will be for a reason.’

                - Captain Corelli's Mandolin (directed by John Madden, 2001).

I am not going to describe the more extreme measures I have taken to silence my neighbours primarily because I am unwilling to ‘put ideas into people’s heads.’ Knowledge is power but it is also dangerous in the wrong hands. It is for the ‘oppressed’ to meditate and develop their own wisdom and intuition, to find their own inspiration and solutions be they from God, the Self, or from some other source of knowledge and power deep within oneself that does not eclipse one’s conscience or create karma. In other words, what feels right at the time without identifying with it and turning it into a permanent means of dealing with malicious people. The deepest source of power accomplishes maximum effect using minimum effort. Love may or may not be eclipsed for a few moments, but if all the space around them is filled with love it soon fills the heart and restores equilibrium. To live on a higher level than this is to know unceasing love, but also to know greater power as well. Until we reach such a level of consciousness, and transcend duality, we can but juggle light and dark, and grow so that the light gradually increases in proportion to dark. Haha...a friend on MySpace just sent me a comment that includes the message: Stand up, Speak Out, Strike Back.

This book is about how to express power wisely (and lovingly if possible), without being destructive and creating more bad karma for oneself. I might point out that I am consciously aware of karmic rebounds. That is to say, some of my actions have boomeranged quite quickly. However, I did what I felt I needed to do and felt that the price was worth paying! Nevertheless, it is a healthy reminder to take the utmost care over one’s decisions and actions in future.

Knowledge is power: you only have to show what you can do, and you only need to do it once.

I hope that I have demonstrated to our collective consciousness that their kind of behaviour is not invincible; it can be defeated. They can be worn down, deterred, despite what they believe.

While I was writing up these journal entries, the neighbours were taking turns at torturing me psychologically. Every night without fail for two months they made sure that someone ‘coughed’ or ‘sneezed‘ loudly near my wall. It does not sound like anything harmful and it is not something I would feel I could complain to the council or anyone about and be taken seriously. Mostly, I ignored it but the effect of repetition is a bit like flies laying their eggs in one’s unconscious and it can slowly grate on one’s nerves (and put you off your food). I believe it is the negative thoughts that accompany such activities that really cause harm. It is a form of psychic attack, or black magic, as Don Miguel Ruiz would confirm I expect. Such subtle intimidation can wear you, or a part of you, down whether you are conscious of it or not. I have faithfully recorded each and every incident on paper and found this quite therapeutic. I was considering including it here as an addendum but it is just such a long record! I have discovered that ‘doing’ something immediately when such attacks are launched in my direction helps to relieve the feeling of anguish. I eventually started my own campaign of harassment to see how they liked it being done to them. The same loud but momentary noise delivered here and there each day without fail (I made farting noises next to their bathroom and punched my punch-bag just once). I could not compete with the prospect of preventing someone from getting to sleep but I could affect a few of them at the same time.

This approach to the situation is kind of akin to the principle of picking the members of a gang off one by one when they’re alone after they have been so cowardly as to bully or beat someone up. My best friend when I was 17 used to do this all the time with his tormentors (who were some of the village’s principal thugs). That’s how he survived and maintained his joy and enthusiasm for life, never allowing them to get to him. He never seemed to be scared of them and didn’t care too much if they saw him in the street and picked on him. He’d just say, ‘It’s OK, I’ll get them back later, individually.’ They must surely have learned that there were consequences that needed to be weighed and therefore left him alone more than they would have liked.

They quickly stopped harassing me within ten days and I felt relieved (not from the farting noises themselves mind although it’s fun to be silly too!). I sensed that I ought probably to have continued because, in order to achieve a similar effect as they did the sounds have to be repeated for weeks or even months. I’m just not that aggressive and have only ever wanted a peaceful life so I stopped and, I guess, they were let off the hook. For a few weeks, I enjoyed what I considered to be a harmonious pact like all the others reached in the past. Alas, no, their campaign was renewed because they had not suffered and concluded that my own campaign was ineffective and had no muscle. It had not affected them too much because I had been soft and might just as well have held out a white flag and surrendered myself to another prolonged endurance test.

“A man and a woman were sitting beside each other in the first class section of the plane. The woman sneezed, took out a tissue, gently wiped her nose and then shuddered for 10 or 15 seconds. The man went back to his reading. A few minutes later, the woman sneezed again, took a tissue, gently wiped her nose and shuddered again. The man was becoming more and more curious about the shuddering. A few more minutes passed and the woman sneezed one more time. Again she took a tissue, gently wiped her nose and shuddered violently. The man couldn’t restrain his curiosity. He turned to the woman and said, ‘Are you all right?’ ‘I’m sorry if I disturbed you,’ the woman replied, ‘I have a rare condition; when I sneeze, I have an orgasm.’ The man was a little embarrassed but even more curious and said, ‘I’ve never heard of that before. What are you taking for it?’ The woman looked at him and said, ‘Pepper.’” (A joke on the Internet).

Well, it seems that the suppressed emotions surfaced and I simply felt vengeful and ruthless. I did not believe it possible to ‘teach’ them to behave like ‘adults’ and felt that I needed to hit them hard and make them feel some pain. Naturally, it is difficult to achieve that within the law! And it is just as well for who knows what lengths I would have gone to in order to resolve the matter in that mood? Needless to say, I went further than ever before and did something spontaneously every time they ‘coughed’ or ‘sneezed’ (interestingly, I have heard them sneeze for real a few times now and it sounds quiet and delicate, a far cry from the loud and aggressive noises they have been making every day!). I found that just by getting up and taking some action, I diffused all the negative energy that was sent to me and which reached me in some measure, affecting me emotionally regardless of how much I ignored it. This was quite a revelation to me. Deliberately choosing to react, to go wholeheartedly with my instinct to retaliate in an attempt to dissuade them from being so heartless and aggressive, was exactly the therapy I needed! However, I saw no sign of them backing down and I did not really care by that point since I was mainly interested in my own therapeutic release of their poison which, no doubt, is a poison in my own unconscious, and in the unconscious, that their malice triggers. I would hurt them, if not now then by some subtle action that might only affect them after several weeks had passed when it dawned on them that I was responsible for something. And, at that time, I didn’t even care if they knew or not. I was hurting or annoying them in some way and that was sufficient. That ruthless mood subsided after a couple of weeks, partly through other distractions both very pleasant and very difficult. I was back to my gentle, thoughtful self and not feeling compelled to react any more. And, after all, where would it end? I was meeting fire with fire and knew this was not wise, just fuelling more anger and hatred!

At the same time, I reached the section in my journal where I had written down several enlightening extracts from Paco Rabanne’s book The Dawn of the Golden Age. It struck a chord and gave me a valuable insight. If taking some kind of ‘positive’ action could diffuse the evil vibes then expressing power through a blessing and prayer might have an equally, if not greater, effect on my own state of mind. Sonia Choquette explains that an astrologer once told her that “nothing is more powerful for you than the sound of your own voice…” (The Answer Is Simple…love yourself, live your spirit, Hay House, Inc., Carlsbad, CA., U.S., 2008, p.126). And, so, since then, I have been making sure that I speak out loud to them (not raising my voice so they can hear...although, come to think of it, perhaps I could give that a try sometimes!), usually to the tune of ‘God bless you! May you become all that you can be!’ (I have not gone as far as declaring ‘thank you’ as yet!). This takes the sting away, as though, without feeling it, an itchy little bump does not rise on the surface of one’s consciousness begging for one’s attention. One must get rid of the poison quickly, before it reaches you, before it has a chance to penetrate and spread.

Action of any kind can channel the energy at that early stage. It is the best way. When dealing with people face-to-face, too, you can say or do something positive to diffuse the negative energy and prevent it from reaching you and changing you adversely. You can even say ‘bless you.’ I don’t know how one can disguise blessing in words. ‘Peace to you’ or something perhaps. In the West, we are not taught that we are God, that everything and everyone in our lives is a reflection of something inside of ourselves. Once we have grasped this, we might discover that, as we bless our ‘enemies,’ so do we nurture and heal ourselves. We move through unconscious insecurity and resistance to deeper love. When we bless others, we are communicating spirit-to-spirit. It is therefore something we can also convey through walls (although, as with love, it requires openness on the part of the recipient to have much of an effect). It might be difficult to resist adding something like ‘noisy critter,’ but it’s certainly worth a bash!

“It is a fact that cannot be denied: the wickedness of others becomes our own wickedness because it kindles something evil in our own hearts.” - Carl Jung.

“You cannot overcome the enemy until you’ve healed in yourself that which you find despicable in them.” – The I Ching.

Charles Manson

Pain.

And a woman spoke, saying, ‘Tell us of Pain.’

                And he said:

                Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

                And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy;

                And you would accept the seasons of your heart, even as you have always accepted the seasons that pass over your fields.

                And you would watch with serenity through the winters of your grief.

                Much of your pain is self-chosen.

                It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self.

                Therefore trust the physician, and drink his remedy in silence and tranquillity:

                For his hand, though heavy and hard, is guided by the tender hand of the Unseen,

                And the cup he brings, though it burn your lips, has been fashioned of the clay which the Potter has moistened with His own sacred tears.”

                - Kahlil Gibran (The Prophet 52).

“Courage, it would seem, is nothing less than the

power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear,

injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life

with all its sorrows is good; that everything

is meaningful even if in a sense beyond

our understanding;

and that there is

always

tomorrow.”

- Dorothy Thompson.

“Hark! Awaken! Your time has come! I have whispered to you in quiet times. I have shouted loud from the rooftops so that you might hear me. The message is clear. It is time to awaken! It is time to feel the embrace of the Lord in every moment of your experience! It is time to set aside differences, to set aside fears and doubts, and follow the inner calling that you have long since tried to deny. Yet that call will not be denied, and it will not be silenced, and your bodies and minds and the body of Beloved Gaia have paid the price for this. Yet each pain, each disease, each dysfunction is a gift, a lesson, a call to wake up. Life is wanting your full attention, and it is going to great lengths to get it. Yet once you make your choice, and play your part, the journey will be gentler.” - Archangel Gabriel ('Breathe and Receive,' No.9, channelled through Lewis Skinner aka Alexander Clearheart, 2009, www.thelovethatiam.com).

"We must learn to suffer whatever we cannot avoid.  Our life is composed, like the harmony of the world, of discords as well as of different tones, sweet and harsh, sharp and flat, soft and loud.  If a musician liked only some of them, what could he sing?  He has got to know how to use all of them and blend them together.  So too must we with good and ill, which are of one substance with our life." - Michel De Montaigne (On Experience).

"Courage is wise endurance.” – Socrates (an ‘endurance of the soul’ when we know when and why it is necessary regardless of our fears or our confidence).

“Endurance is the spirit which can bear things, not simply with resignation, but with blazing hope. It is a quality which keeps a man on his feet with his face to the wind. It is the virtue which can transmute the hardest trial into glory because beyond the pain, it sees the goal.” - Author unknown.

“Endurance is one of the most difficult disciplines, but it is to the one who endures that the final victory comes.” – Buddha.

“We draw our strength from the very despair in which we have been forced to live. We shall endure.” - Cesar Chavez (A leading voice for migrant workers in the last century).

“If we have the capacity to endure, if we have the patience, things will change.” - Cesar Chavez.

"And the harder it gets the happier you should be that you can stand it." - Ayn Rand.

"Winter brings on cold weather; and we must shiver. Summer returns with its heat; and we must sweat. Unseasonable weather upsets the health; and we must fall ill. In certain places we may meet with wild beasts, or with men who are more destructive than any beasts…And we cannot change this order of things; but what we can do is to acquire stout hearts…It is to this law [of Nature] that our souls must adjust themselves, this they should follow, this they should obey...That which you cannot reform, it is best to endure." - Seneca (Epistulae Morales, CVIII 1-9).

“I woke up this morning…no, this isn’t a blues song…contemplating deeply the meaning of endurance…if you reduce your worldview to its constituent parts, the common denominator is uncertainty and unpredictability…So I asked myself what are the qualities that are keeping me on an even keel in the face of all this, and I came up naturally with courage. But then I dug deeper and realised that the essential quality of which courage is merely an effect, when you strip away all the sentiment, is endurance. That no matter what, no matter how altered reality becomes, how painful or, of course, how blissful, you will endure. Like an oak tree in the storm, you will endure.” - Barefoot Doctor (Dear Barefoot. Taoist Wisdom For Everyday Living, Atlantic Books on behalf of Guardian Newspapers Ltd, London, U.K., 2004, p.277).

“The art of life is to know how to enjoy a little and endure much.” - William Hazlitt.

“The manner in which one endures what must be endured is more important than the thing that must be endured.” – Dean Acheson.

William Barclay describes endurance as that “lithe spirit which can bear all things, not simply with resignation, but with blazing hope; it is not the spirit which sits statically enduring in the one place, but the spirit which bears things because it knows that these things are leading to a goal of glory; it is not the patience which grimly waits for the end, but the patience which radiantly hopes for the dawn. It is the quality which keeps a man on his feet with his face to the wind. It is the virtue which can transmute the hardest trial into glory because beyond the pain it sees the goal...it is the triumphant adequacy which can cope with life; it is the strength which does not only accept things, but which, in accepting them, transmutes them into glory.”

"The greater the difficulty, the greater the glory." - Cicero.

“Enjoy when you can, and endure what you must.” – Goethe (I have written this quote on a bright pink post-it note and it has been stuck on the front of my printer for several months now).

"Being good does not necessarily draw more good your way. That's the part of ‘Attraction’ most do not understand. When you are good it's because you're sensitive to the need to be good, and because you throw it out there (the goodness) you also attract tests to measure that spirit. THAT is the only main challenge in life. Your job is to make it from start to finish - being good. However, just because you started with the GOOD state of mind, does not mean you will make it through a game of Chutes n' Ladders EASY- you will struggle being good. That is the ultimate struggle of every man. WE HAVE TO WORK AT BEING GOOD." - Suzy Kassem.

Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone): You ain't gonna believe this, but you used to fit right here. [Taps on the inside of his hand] I'd hold you up to say to your mother, ‘this kid's gonna be the best kid in the world. This kid's gonna be somebody better than anybody I ever knew.’ And you grew up good and wonderful. It was great just watching you. Every day was like a privilege. Then the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world, and you did. But somewhere along the line, you changed. You stopped being you. You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame, like a big shadow. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very mean and nasty place, and I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard ya hit. It's about how hard you can get it and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done! Now if you know what you're worth then go out and get what you're worth. But ya gotta be willing to take the hits, and not pointing fingers saying you ain't where you wanna be because of him, or her, or anybody! Cowards do that and that ain't you! You're better than that! I'm always gonna love you no matter what. No matter what happens. You're my son and you're my blood. You're the best thing in my life. But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain't gonna have a life. Don't forget to visit your mother.

- Rocky Balboa (written and directed by Sylvester Stallone, 2006).

"The true test of a light warrior is how your 'stance' holds up after any 'circumstance.’ Meaning, how you stand up after the rain, tornado, sunshine, and blizzard (the unpredictable weather of life) is the ultimate test of the whiteness of your spirit. Even through the stormiest weather, a light warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through both his or her eyes. You may get hit by sudden lighting or take severe beatings from the cruel wind, but you will always get back up and stand strong on your feet again, soak in the sunlight, and be prepared to get hit by even the most merciless hail - time and time again." - Suzy Kassem.

“Once we dreamt a dream and for just one moment we chose to believe we were separate, but the time of dreaming is ending now, and because I choose to awaken, my brothers and sisters can awaken within me. For this am I created; for this alone am I sent forth; for this have I entered the world, for this have I suffered the world, and for this I enlighten this world. And now in this moment that is both without beginning and end, understand well that you hold the power to forgive the world, and if there is anyone or any event you have ever known that somehow rests as a chain upon the heart go to that event, go to that experience, go to the presence of that one in your mind and embrace them with that light, and know that you are safe right now to allow miracles to heal whatever has been in the past. Choose it then, choose it well. For the reluctance to forgive has been the only thing that has ever blocked your awareness to the truth and kept it from your mind and from your heart.” - Jayem (excerpt from ‘A Meditation: Open the Shutters of the Heart Cosmic,’ Chocolate Orgasm, 2007, www.wayofmastery.com). 

“Sandalwood gives more and more fragrance when it is subjected to more and more grinding. The sugarcane yields juice as it is chewed more and more. Gold gets refined when it is melted in the fire. So also, a true devotee will not falter in his love for God even when he faces troubles and obstacles in his life. God tests His devotees only to take them to a higher level on the spiritual ladder.” – Sathya Sai Baba.

“When a person, on their journey through life understands that they and others need all kinds of experience, then a broad-based compassion and tolerance develops more easily.” – Gildas (A Message of Love. A Channelled Guide to Our Future, Piatkus, London, U.K., 1994, p.56).

“All events are neutral. You are the one who places the value on it.” – Jeshua (channelled through Jayem).

A MySpace friend added the following comment (which includes a quote from St. Germain’s I AM Discourses to a bulletin that I had posted to share one of the AFW videos:

"’Conditions can never improve for anyone until he desires Perfection and stops acknowledging a power opposed to God, or that there is something either in or outside of him that can prevent God's Perfection from expressing.’________Ta da. Duality is an illusion. There are no bad guys. Nothing to win or lose except within yourself.......Love your enemies. As Abe Lincoln said, if you want to be really spiritual, put your enemies' photos on your altar and pray for them!”

My reply:

'Ta da'? LOL. Desiring perfection = 'ta da' I guess. Regardless of duality being an illusion, even in the planes of Oneness entities have to deal with those of the dark who choose chaos and separation in a free will universe. War is not limited to our plane only. Yes...pray, intend, heal, forgive...but you still have to deal with those people and not be crushed by them. We're at the end of a period of time in which dark forces have controlled humanity by withholding information, by deceiving, by keeping our vibration low...because they won the war at the end of Atlantis. Clearly, sending Light does not always work.

“Some guy hit my fender [wing] the other day, and I said unto him ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ But not in those words.” - Woody Allen.