Solitary 4 Tomorrow - in Dialogue | Responsible Spirituality of Recovery

closed door

•May 7, 2025 • 5 Comments

Have today received a diagnosis a type of cancer, clearly brought-on by 7 years of severe stress and manipulation by a poor soul disguised as a Jesuit, plus one or two miserable hangers-on, and I have – decided that I had half-hearted allowed my master manipulator et al, to read along. No more.

My goal when I started this blog – getting to the point where I write ‘my book’ – is much much closer. So I’ll be busy, carrying on with that and living as healthily as I can – getting to eighty is a goal.

I look forward to seeing subscribers and others again when the time is right. Drop me a line if you will.

Posted in Journalling

human is

•April 2, 2025 • Comments Off

“All the time, I was getting closer to animals and nature, and as a result, closer to myself and more in tune with the spiritual power that I felt all around. For those who have experienced the joy of being alone with nature, there is really little need to say more; for those who have not, no words of mine can ever describe the powerful, almost mystical knowledge of beauty and eternity that come, suddenly, and all unexpected.”

~ Jane Goodall

Posted in Applied Philosophy, consciousness, Guest:, Human, quote, Reflection
Tags: Jane Goodall, mystical

living in the ever deepening mystery of liberation

•January 17, 2025 • Comments Off

We have to break with our mental categories, with the way we relate to others, with our way of identifying with the Lord, with our cultural milieu, with our social class, in other words, with all that can stand in the way of a real, profound solidarity with those who suffer, in the first place, from misery and injustice. Only thus, and not through purely interior and spiritual attitudes, will the “new person” arise from the ashes of the “old.” (Gustavo Gutierrez OP, 1928 – 2024)

see https://theology.nd.edu/people/gustavo-gutierrez

as I believe I have already said here – for me he is not so much the founder of liberation theology, but the one who liberated theology; where a theological or religious affiliation shines through above, I do not share it but his imperative I hope to make mine still.

—

1928 – 2024

Posted in Applied Philosophy, beyond theology, consciousness, Guest:, quote, Reflection
Tags: Gustavo Gutierrez

the other side of paradox

•January 16, 2025 • Comments Off

from my time as a mental health social worker, I fortunately remember occasions where I was able to the best of my abilities to reframe for colleagues and patients alike what was happening to the latter as a social experience, not one that needed medication. I also recall one occasion at least where I was unable to do so.

On one occasion, a young man, took himself out of the situation, missed an appointment while out of the area, came aback 2 weeks later, when he had received his benefits and smiled at me – well now.

On one occasion, I had to report the Psychiatrist after I left the assignment for serious errors. From my perspective on many cases of mental illness I have met, the medical model is only good for an initial emergency response.

Most importantly, I refer to the psych survivor who, as an academic later was passionate: “We are all on the spectrum of human experience”.* That does not mean we can be allowed to tread anywhere.

That again is a reason why I think it is important the RC tradition accepts Human Rights. But I digress…

—

*her name escapes me, I will ad it as soon a s I can

Posted in Journalling, Reflection
Tags: mental health

love that parts in paradox

•January 16, 2025 • Comments Off

Years, no decades ago now, while I was living in North Wales, I was occasionally visiting Carmelite Srs. And on one occasion, I saw one of the younger nuns, greeting young relatives of hers with a deep love tinged with equally deep sadness – that she would not be able to be with them or: even explain her calling to them…

Much more recently, I have heard shamanic teacher Roel Crabbe say. how we individually respond to the deepest love in us, is very personal…

—

Posted in Applied Philosophy, Journalling, Reflection
Tags: Life, love, paradox, Roel Crabbe

all the world on a small island*, April 1999

•January 16, 2025 • Comments Off

south coast England, nr Dover, chalk cliff, photo borrowed from google – thank you

—

She is planning on returning from 3 years teaching Applied Psychology to young nursing students back in Germany to have another go at life in Britain, and, driving her little blue Fiat off the ferry, she decides to have a break up on the cliff top to enjoy the view before heading north on this visit to test the waters.

After a few minutes sitting there, she switches on her car radio and – happens to listen to one of Tony Giddens’ Reith lectures on globalisation**. He appears to be a fairly dry sociologist, and neither a radical when it comes to analysing the economy, and not an expert on human consciousness. She had been reading up on the latter as part of her research over the last 14 years***. Yet something resonates deep within and opens in her, never to quite close after that. As if the dial of her spiritual heart was set to a new and different frequency for good.

Later, when she had returned home to North Wales, walking up to her special place by the Lakes, she heard inside of her mind the words ‘now you have to be careful not to attach yourself to any one heart demanding exclusivity’..’ Strange – but a very clear and kind, an imperative.

a sunny breeze

not yet arrived –

new old world****

5 years later, she will sit in her little flat in the loft of a Victorian house in North Wales, overlooking the estuary and on to the Atlantic, devising her mission statement: The Welsh language dictionary tells her, there is in that language just one word for truth and reality (Gwirionedd, later integrated in her business name).

Most vividly though, she remembers the book she was looking at in primary school, age 7: A story where little Hans went out into the world but – mother wept, so he returned. What a cheat, her 7-year-old self thought: I won’t do that.*****

*24 years after the Reith Lecture, in a cinema in England, pre-show ads: An international bank advertising their philosophy – showing this or a very similar view while a voice from the off says: ‘Where some see boundaries, some see opportunities’. It takes her breath away and – for a moment at least – also her dislike of all things advertising: Not a gentle swipe against the inward-looking Brexit-spirit, she wonders -. That same year, she finds natural scientist Tom Oliver venturing into consciousness studies from an angle that seems somewhat strange to her at first, but eventually she gets a taste of what Oliver is aiming to explore: “As your sense of self-identity widens and your attention lifts from perceiving yourself as a single thread to seeing the majesty of the whole tapestry, you become a critical part of the global effort towards securing a safer and happier future for all humanity. (The Self Delusion, 2020, p.247)

**http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/

***e.g. Hugo Enomya Lassalle SJ: “The present time urges us to a new way of thinking. A gigantic shift in understanding questioning many obvious and common sense findings. And yet, there is at work in this urge a desire for truth and reality.” (Am Morgen einer besseren Welt, Koeln 1981, p.29, translated by the present author)

****In most haibun that contain – i.e. disguise as well as expose – an aha-moment, I circumscribe that which cannot be put into words, or not adequately so. In this one, even more than 20 years after the event, I feel hesitant to do so. So I write about the process of the disguising – dealing with the hidden in me and in the world.

Posted in Applied Philosophy, case study, consciousness, Haibun, humour, Moment
Tags: cosciousness, Dover cliff, future, globalisation, humanity, Tony Giddens

call it love, if you will

•December 26, 2024 • Comments Off

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love

This morning, looking at the wikipedia references briefly, I got struck identifying philia in two male academics I have not long met, from a distance. One referred to their connection through a shared field of work, initially – but did not say much else. Did not have to.

Myself, I feel much clearer in myself since I have heard Dr. Christina Allen, physicist and neuroscientist talk about transformation – beginning with trauma. The nervous system gets out of sync – and then what?

In the mind of the 9-yr old I once was, an image remains firmly present – the gaze held by a stem of grass, seeing the knot that held it upright. If one road comes to an end, is not live-able any more – the knot connects upward, opens new pathways.

I may have quoted before the dialogue in a 1950s novel by Luise Rinser, Mitte des Lebens. One friend says to the other: I love g-o-d in you while you love me in g-o-d. He says that as indicating they will have to separate as she has to follow her path, her calling. She wants to hold on to the potential of their connection but he, in that scenario, does not appear to see that as viable.

It was a Buddhist teacher who identified my way, my path as praying, clarified it for me. The omega-of-praying. Opening to its very own intentions. My own language clarified that for me in time.

Roel Crabbe shares his own process of reflection and maturing when he says: How you will share love is very personal.

—

Posted in Applied Philosophy, Essay

prompt: influences

•December 24, 2024 • Comments Off

Daily writing prompt

Who are the biggest influences in your life?

View all responses

Depends when you ask or asked me – right now, I believe reading Maxim Gorki* recounting his melancholy and resilience as a travelling worker in Russia got me safely through my twenties;

a feminist psychodrama teacher with her own deep experience, I guess, was there, when I needed finally for the world to open;

Gustavo Gutierrez OP, Hugo Enomya Lassalle SJ and JK Kadowaki SJ in their own respective ways helped me to keep my field of vison clear.

*much later I learned that Gorki was part of a movement called god-seekers –

Posted in Journalling
Tags: dailyprompt, dailyprompt-2162

Cobbles – Oct 1995*

•November 15, 2024 • 10 Comments

it appears moments of precious insight – granted freely without merit – can be transpersonal as well as transcultural, philosophical as transcending mythology and yet sustaining as embodied

October 1995

I am looking after an elderly man for a few hours, giving him his evening
meal, getting him ready for the night – all while his mind is seemingly
absent.

His wife shared some of his and their life stories with me, the other week.

Sitting with him for a while, before I go, in the drawer of his bed side
table, I find one single book, a worn copy of extracts from the
Upanishads.

……………There is a Light that shines beyond all things on earth,
……………Beyond us all,
……………Beyond the heavens,
……………Beyond the highest, the very highest heavens. *

Walking back to my rented bed-sit, over the cobbles of the old town, through
a dark but mild October night, a quiet, deep joy about the find is still
with me.

……………………………Shimmering cobbles,
……………………………Curtains drawn against
……………………………Orange lights.

Certain moments in a life, and they need not be particularly significant,
can compensate for so much in this life, give meaning to it. **

……………This is the Light that shines in our heart. ***

*Chandogya Upanishad, 3.13.7-8
**James Baldwin, Afro-American writer, 1924 -1987
***Upanishad, ibid.

first published by World Haiku Review online, ca. 2002

*first here published 2013; not a contribution to the Diwali prompt, but reminded by it of this

—

stockphoto; Copyright: Lisa Combs; thank you

Posted in Haibun, Moment
Tags: aha

From Nowhere – Mar 1963

•November 15, 2024 • Comments Off

From the age of 8 until I was 10, I attended a Sunday Service for children at the local Lutheran Church, in our small town, in mid West Germany.
I remember telling my father I did not believe in all the stories any more, but that may have been later than the event I am referring to here. At the time, I was certainly aware that I did not believe. Yet, the Sunday Service provided calm, quiet, comfort, a space of my own to feel and be.
I loved the organ music (still do) and I liked the modern pine pews and stain glass windows.
The one time I am thinking about, on my way back to my parents’ house, through a lower middles class estate of blocks of flats, I found myself crying out inside: How am I to survive this?
Thinking before even thinking, of the numb, miserable, silent atmosphere with my parents. The adult now relates this to family secrets. The child of 9 had no words.
And, the irony is, the 9-year-old would certainly not have any words for what happened next: She saw in her mind’s eye and felt it in her bones

“There is a Light Beyond All”.

Instantly, at that moment, I also saw my father, in my mind: he did not have the confidence to tune into it, and my mother: She could not be bothered.

“This is the same Light within us all.”

For a moment there, I treasured this with a feeling I now describe as awe and acknowledged I must never forget this. Yet, I did, of course, for many years.
And now, there still is no God to shake my fist at: “What were You THINKING, giving THAT as a comfort to a 9-year-old?”
Years after the memory had come back to me, I found myself in Scotland, in my early forties, being re-connected with the world tradition the insight originated from. (See post/haibun Cobbles, Oct 1995)

born into panoramic view

my calm returns –

still my legs hurt from running

===

image: pixabey free

Posted in case study, Essay, Haibun, Moment
Tags: insight

for my doc

•November 13, 2024 • Comments Off

soul resonance

depth mine

nothing remains

but clarity

for me to share

digest first

solitude inevitable

muddy pond deep

work to be done

Posted in notes
Tags: first draft

another outline: the autoethnographer

•October 27, 2024 • Comments Off

from the wonky tree the other month, this time I chose an image that shows air and light to a solid trunk

My excuse is that I am a narrative autoethnographer, so I am allowed to frame and reframe.

So, again, what I am writing here are the bare bones of the material that appears elsewhere in this blog, the structure.

Meaning is undoubted, making sense of real-life experience is quite another story. I am not a very good student of Diana Winston’s mindfulness, defined by her as the willingness to attend to the present moment with openness and curiosity.

Being sent on a wild goose chase on health matters since May this year while inside knowing every time an exit showed – no, this is not it…

Well, trying to be patient with myself, it’s a start – starting to return to my inner knowing, if not wisdom.

(As for that matter in particular, I am not at the end of the odyssee to find treatment, but I am getting close, one way or the other.)

This autoethnographer is a HSP – highly sensitive personality. That means, among other things, she contributes high sensitivity to the pool of human experience going through history.

She had early transpersonal experiences as a young child, or, as some might say, direct revelations.

These are inextricably linked to her trauma in childhood, being shaken by emotional abuse and feeling alien therefore in her surroundings, while still aware she had a hidden treasure to uncover where she had buried it for later use. (Only very recently she read trauma is the first part of the transformative initiation! See Christina Allen PhD, https://www.austinshamaniccenter.com/resources

That second initiation happened with a Big Bang when she was 31 yrs young (4 yrs after her MA in Social Work, with major in adult education), at a residential feminist Psychodrama workshop, now 39 yrs ago. Life now made almost too much sense. This sent her on a journey of epistemological study, leading to a second MA (non-religious philosophy) when she had just turned 50 while working mostly as a graduate care assistant for the elderly.

Only then she began to work as a social worker, in England, to where she had relocated at the age of 40 – mostly for love of the language initially but gradually warming to the quirky among the Brits.

That very rich career as a senior professional which allowed her to combine empathy, critical thinking with matters of social justice for clients in very – found its pinnacle when she had to make what in law-speak in the UK is called a Public Interest Disclosure (2011) about a serious and prolonged suspicion among professionals that a female psych patient was being abused by her father. The 10 years that followed were marked by clarity on her part – she did what she had to do – and injustice with not a few lies thrown in from NHS staff and lawyers acting for the state.

Now the autoethnographer comes to the fore, wanting to round off her writing and – another of life’s challenges hits. She is not to be side-tracked. One key sentence found very recently helped her to locate herself in the context of services she might or might not be required to make use of:

‘Wholistic health care does not fight nature but makes use of her healing potential… (not least for) highly sensitive patients who choose from experience or other considerations not to go down the mainstream route (of medical treatment).’ (See https://hufeland.com/ – translated into English from German by the present author).

Choosing from experience brings the scenario into the realm of the researcher.

—

Posted in Applied Philosophy, consciousness, Essay, Inner World, insight, Journalling, Moment, Reflection
Tags: autoethnography, notes

my place

•October 10, 2024 • Comments Off

returning to my retreat in North Wales later in 1999, I learned how much the core of my calling was and would remain private to remain healthy.

Posted in consciousness, insight

haibun – faith freely 0924

•September 13, 2024 • Comments Off

(image: pixabay free)

The day I finally and strongly felt called to leave the Church after a long 17 years, during a retreat at the then Jesuit Retreat Centre in Liverpool, UK, a Japanese or Korean nun, as fellow participant, shared, not completely unrelated to something I had said earlier: .”.. It may all disappear… and what remains is the present moment…”

I did not comment, did not feel it was my place. But even then, 20 years ago now, I felt – there is more to it: After loss of all ideological faith – what may return, and it has for me, is what I call existential faith.

truth under open sky

aware of all other

truths as present

—

Please note: This is not saying all faiths are the same, not even: lead to the same goal. Recently, I have heard shamanic teacher/practitioner Roel Crabbe (from Belgium) say, he does not call himself a Shaman out of respect for the tradition – but a shamanic practitioner. That, I feel, touches upon my discernment respectively.

Posted in consciousness, Haibun, Moment, Reflection
Tags: living faith

wonky tree: an autoethnographer (notes)

•September 4, 2024 • Comments Off

“The twisted tree lives its life, while the straight tree ends up in planks.” ~Chinese proverb

(from Tao and Zen’s fb page)

key markers:

transgenerational trauma, WWII, mother abused by her mother, early death paternal grandfather, father German soldier in Russia from age 18. POW in Siberia from age 24 for several years, returned with TB
own condition HSP, transpersonal transcultural experience age 9 (1963); deep shock/NDE, kidney disease 1963; autistic traits?, dissociation? = strength survival meaning (known yet hidden prior to 1985)
spiritual awakening with a big bang in feminist psychodrama residential 1985,conscience; slow progress since …
we all have mystical consciousness whether we know it or not (Ruth Burrows)
forensic religious philosophy (Bringing Up the Jesuits or: how to counter spiritual abuse, 2018 – 2024)
teleological interpretation of challenges – without ignoring the need for justice to be done
NHS whistleblower 2012 -; financial losses upwards of 650000£ through unfair trial (Legal Aid denied through admin ‘error’ – discrimination after speaking up was not in the telephone assessor’s script)
haibun – writing as expression of deep travel
successful approach in clinical adult social work (Mental Health) – deep resources for self-help in ‘hopeless cases’: premise: questioning clinical definitions through deep existential/teleological approach with empathy
initial (self-) published papers are on https://independent.academia.edu/BarbaraSchaefer and https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Barbara-Schaefer-4

watch this space grow 😊😎🤩

Posted in Applied Philosophy, consciousness, Guest:, Inner World, quote, Reflection
Tags: autoethnography, chinese proverb, live life

pushups

•August 26, 2024 • Comments Off

I recall my first transatlantic flight, age 32 or 33: While suffering some anxiety and close to nausea, I kept watching the on-board films. One included a spidery thin older man in a vest saying to camera, he did weight training: “It keeps my spirits up!” I could not stop chuckling: How funny! That took me out of myself. It was difficult not to imagine him lifting his weighty ‘spirits’!

I am with him, in another sense. Even my basic stretches, to avoid or minimise pain seem to activate what someone once called my sense of g-o-d’s presence*.

Well, to add to my mild yoga-type stretches and some such, I have added squatting and now also -pushups. Am doing them against the wall, standing up. It is a thing, so I am told – not cheating. The muscle-building effect may be negligible at this stage, but perhaps I can at least avoid more age-related loss of muscle. And I find owl is listening, too.

—

*Remember Thomas Keating OCSO, who taught and spread contemplative prayer and in later years could be heard in an interview with ‘Buddha At the Gas Pump’ saying he wished we could rename g-o-d! See https://batgap.com/

Posted in Guest:, Journalling

inner child? – Nov 1998

•August 7, 2024 • Comments Off

-foto: pixabay, free image –

during three years teaching Psychology to mostly stroppy nursing students, I attend weekly sessions of Emotions Anonymous to get a base line sorted between – grace and failure, falling from the precipice either with despondency or failing with high spirited approach.

On the train back from one meeting, I ponder on the phrase one group member used: The inner child – is a state of warmth and openness. I like that – the concept of the inner child has always baffled me up that point. –

Sifting through my field notes, 25 years later, sitting at base camp, I immediately feel I know one who can present that warm openness, a theoretical philosopher of all people – when talking of his near-death experience over 20 years ago. In one video he says ‘sometimes before going to sleep at night I marvel: one day I will die..’. Says it without pretense and with, yes, warmth.

through a video

radiates – warmth

is catching

Posted in Haibun, Moment
Tags: warmth

tom cat or: who’s the therapist

•May 1, 2023 • Comments Off

– stock photo –

—

old black

hops on my bench

detached purrs no fuss

the owner gone: eye to eye paws

my shoulder

in the therapist’s garden, she makes a fuss of me not getting disturbed by the cat; keeps telling me he’ll climb all over me if i don’t push him off now …

I tell her to let him be, I will act if and when needed. For a while he hops over to her and sits on the table in front of her, she hugs him close and tells him he’s being a nuisance.

When she goes to make coffee, he sits with me as I sit – quietly. I look in his eyes as he looks at me with one eye more greenish than the other amber. Only then he raises his paw and puts it gently on my shoulder for a brief moment.

—

Posted in Journalling, poem
Tags: travel, visit

Broken Vows

•April 9, 2023 • Comments Off

”Come, come whoever you are… Ours is no caravan of despair. Though you’ve broken your vows a thousand times, come, yet again, come.” (Rumi)

Posted in Guest:, quote

strange life – edited 2

•November 16, 2022 • 17 Comments

from corners long not swept

re-emerges a love never

went away nor I

yet we’d both

need

complete

costume

change

after a moment

tender your new

disguise

slips:

you turn me upside down

to keep the upper hand

forgetting

my wise:

I draw up

barbed wire

and breathe on

the other side

Did they tell me you had died

young for a priest in your order

or just

that you had died to your

compulsion?

I may never know

but do that your love

came back into

my heart

for no other

reason as I

lay down for

a late nap

3 days later –

before letting me go – ?

Posted in poem

friend? edited

•November 9, 2022 • Comments Off

hardly – to be*

a friend – he might even learn **

I know little more -as I ask

about him – leave me now

than his public – so if he’d

profile and – you could

the way he walked – didn’t know

as we measured – so close

the park behind – never felt

their house – yet I have

—

*even with all that is corrupted in the RC tradition, they have been able to preserve some deep existential truths – e.g. that vows change the inner dynamic of drives of a person. Of course, that was only thought to be fathomable by men if at all.

**something he can’t as long he, intentionally or unintentionally, manipulates me, one way or the other.

Posted in poem
Tags: committment, friendship, long-distance, obstacles, only stronger, platonic

Nov 1 – edited

•November 1, 2022 • Comments Off

overnight November windy dark

lunchtime trip to get trim

cropped head cold ears –

Barber smiles at the mirror

—

stock photo; not the author –

Posted in haiku
Tags: cold, cropped hair, dark, November, windy

my teacher today (edited)

•October 12, 2022 • Comments Off

fully robed*

behind a white beard

bowing:

homeless –

in the RC chapel**

*a rainproof poncho covering whatever other layers of clothing he may have been able to gather this season – all I could see were woollen socks (hand-knitted by the looks of them, sandals and the trouser legs tied neatly at the ankle); he may have been asleep but he was present with me, in a modern chapel, built from WWII ruins, named madonna of the ruins.

—

**PS I’d like readers to be able to cross-reference another post about this encounter, titled ‘down and out’ and there especially a further comment, developed in dialogue with a reader:

dialogue always
unknowing
even

—

Posted in beyond theology, consciousness, poem
Tags: presence, RC, ruins, teacher

hermit on outing postponed: Aug 25, Coalville Newmarket – with Imtiaz Dharker

•August 11, 2022 • Comments Off

https://www.facebook.com/photo?fbid=431449079001393&set=a.308061384673497

I am planning to read some of Imtiaz Dharker, not yet sure what – she has some very cheeky early poems about not fitting in… (see below; it works well if I get the audience to repeat the refrain back at me -)

Imtiaz Dharker

THEY’LL SAY: ‘SHE MUST BE FROM ANOTHER COUNTRY’

When I can’t comprehend
why they’re burning books
or slashing paintings,
when they can’t bear to look
at god’s own nakedness,
when they ban the film
and gut the seats to stop the play
and I ask why
they just smile and say,
‘She must be
from another country.’

When I speak on the phone
and the vowel sounds are off
when the consonants are hard
and they should be soft,
they’ll catch on at once
they’ll pin it down
they’ll explain it right away
to their own satisfaction,
they’ll cluck their tongues
and say,
‘She must be
from another country.’

When my mouth goes up
instead of down,
when I wear a tablecloth
to go to town,
when they suspect I’m black
or hear I’m gay
they won’t be surprised,
they’ll purse their lips
and say,
‘She must be
from another country.’

When I eat up the olives
and spit out the pits
when I yawn at the opera
in the tragic bits
when I pee in the vineyard
as if it were Bombay,
flaunting my bare ass
covering my face
laughing through my hands
they’ll turn away,
shake their heads quite sadly,
‘She doesn’t know any better,’
they’ll say,
‘She must be
from another country.’

Maybe there is a country
where all of us live,
all of us freaks
who aren’t able to give
our loyalty to fat old fools,
the crooks and thugs
who wear the uniform
that gives them the right
to wave a flag,
puff out their chests,
put their feet on our necks,
and break their own rules.

But from where we are
it doesn’t look like a country,
it’s more like the cracks
that grow between borders
behind their backs.
That’s where I live.
And I’ll be happy to say,
‘I never learned your customs.
I don’t remember your language
or know your ways.
I must be
from another country.’

© Imtiaz Dharker, From: I Speak for the Devil, Penguin Books India, 2003

ISBN: 014-303089-2

Posted in Guest:, Journalling, news, poem

Life Support (2) – Aug 6: What is most important for Archie’s care – no hospice – RIP

•August 1, 2022 • Comments Off

See update at the bottom of the post:

While the decision of the Court dealing with the UN-application is imminent, the NHS Trust and Govt lawyers have argued it would be immoral to delay palliative care – in other words they declare the intention to stop life support for the boy before the UN application has been decided upon.

My premise is not that of a lawyer, I am a social care professional who has been treated with contempt and has been dealt lies by NHS professionals and their lawyers. I say this not as much because it may colour my reflection but as I generally think guiding interests should be declared.

In this case I note the Government lawyers’ interest being: Another application is another fee.

The NHS Trust’s interest: Frankly – To keep the right to play g-o-d in other cases going forward as well. (And who would that be in a Monarchy anyway, someone disguised in a red fur coat, siting on a throne?)

In any case this is a society in which I cannot in good conscience argue pro support to end a person’s life.

I shall add the Court decision on the substance of the UN-application here as soon as I get my hands on it.

PS Just received headline email from Washington Post from today. Their article on the case seems, if I read it correctly, to be ahead on some assumptions facts and behind on some facts or vice versa, most likely mostly due to happenings over the week end and the time difference UK vs US.

19:50 https://uk.news.yahoo.com/archie-battersbee-hollie-dance-hospital-life-supprt-093132351.html

18:10 BST – if I understand the BBC correctly, the Court of Appeal has an hour ago rejected the UN-argument to allow further appeal and/or to extend Archie’s care until a decision to be made. The next step seems to be for Archie’s family/lawyers to apply to the Supreme Ct for the permission they seek. In the midst of all the legalise it is easy to forget the substance of the case: Archie’s mom says his best interest should e for her to decide and that she has observed attempts for him to breathe independently. The NHS Trust says he is brain-stem dead and will not recover. And it is therefor not ‘in his best interest’ to continue treatment.

As a social worker I became somewhat familiar with decisions around best interest. However, to use this argument as a justification to end a person’s life seems bizarre. One can argue that is extremely unlikely that he will recover. But I don’t think they can logically argue that it is in his best interest not to even have that remote chance. I was personally involved in a decision not to release a care home resident from the home as he applied. It was decided it was in his best interest to have his liberty restricted as due to chronic alcoholism and resulting dementia he was clearly unable and unwilling to give up alcohol. The decision for the least invasive restriction of his rights was for him to remain in a (quite liberal) Home, including some free time and excursions. Even if the person, under the supervision at the Home, remains abstinent of alcohol, his dementia his not going to get better. So the decision for A’s relative quality of life and against B’s right to live hangs – to be generous towards the NHS-argument (which I have not read in full btw) – on the quality of life in one case over the other. As I said before, without legal training I find it difficult to see how the best interest argument can be stretched in the direction of ending someone’s life.-

Aug 2, 13:30 BST if I understand the legal process correctly, the family have a new window to approach the Supreme Ct to t stop Archie’s life support being withdrawn – either because previously the Court of Appeal did not grant them permission to appeal further or because of the UN involvement. They argue Archie has not ben given sufficient time to recover. The NHS argue he is ‘brain-stem dead’ and won’t recover. I wonder how can it ever be not in someone’s ‘best interest’ to continue life support – unless this in itself causes severe suffering (which does not appear to be the case). So it does not need a lot of ‘hermeneutic of suspicion’ to see the NHS spending a lot of money on this case may be because of a precedent: Other patients may in future use a positive decision in Archie’s favour to demand similar quality of care.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62389726

Again, I am not legally trained and I rely on the information from the BBC and my own professional experience in a related field.

Aug 2, 1735 BST – the family have lost their latest/last appeal to the Supreme Ct; Archie shall now be moved to a Hospice. I hope that works out for them and the Trust don’t object once more. I heard a brief extract of his mother speaking how she felt let down by the Justice system. In any case, they should have probably been given more clinical psychological support rather than be ‘dragged through the Courts’ as I heard her say yesterday. –

Sleep well, Archie.

Aug 3, 12:17 BST Have just read as reported by Sky News an hr ago that Archie’s family have applied to the European Court of Human Rights (Strasbourg) to to prevent stop of care for Archie. I have yet to listen to the mother’s arguments there and will further update.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62403993

Strasbourg has ruled: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62403993

in the meantime the Hospital had refused to refer Archie to a hospice. Apparently they say it might hasten his demise – which sounds a bit strange from the Trust which could not end his treatment soon enough.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62403993

apparently the NHS have relented about the Hospice: https://news.sky.com/?fbclid=IwAR3c3MU378NhdvBCl3Q4ttBSABSF3VAcae-VBvGvOvFU8RA5jJrGgLGdMps

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/aug/04/mother-archie-battersbee-asks-court-let-die-dignity-hospice

the NHS had already once denied move to a hospice, as it would make Archie ‘unstable’;

a new application is now before the Court and the Justice will hear evidence until late into the night:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62418257

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62424659

Aug 5, 15:00 BST It is an hour since I read the BBC post and I still don’t trust myself to comment. Please come back later.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62424659

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-62346354

===

Posted in news, Social Justice

Every Moment Carries the Taste of Eternity guest post

•March 31, 2022 • Comments Off

Creative by Nature

“Just as every drop of the ocean carries the taste of the ocean, so does every moment carry the taste of eternity.” ~Nisargadatta

“There’s nothing mysterious about it. Everybody sees the world through the ideas they have of themselves. As you think yourself to be, so you think the world to be. If you imagine yourself as separate from the world, the world will appear as separate from you. And you will experience desire and fear…

What is beautiful? Whatever is percieved joyfully is beautiful. Bliss is the essence of beauty.

We are slaves of what we don’t know. Of what we know we are masters. Whatever vice or weakness in ourselves we discover (and understand its cause and workings) we can overcome it by the very knowing.

The primary purpose of meditation is to become more conscious and familiar with our inner life. The ultimate purpose is…

View original post 163 more words

Posted in Essay, Guest:
Tags: depth, perception, sensitivity

Love Loving Love – Nov 1985

•January 6, 2022 • 1 Comment

Ruth Pfau, nun and Doctor, for many decades in Pakistan, in one of her books describes a dialogue with a Muslim or non-religious friend who asks her about the Trinity in Christianity.

She replies, if I remember, that if God is Love then the Love must not only be directed towards something or someone but also the overflowing must be part of it… He is stunned.

Corrie ten Boom, in her autobiography, describes how her father suggested to her, when she was abandoned by her fiancée, she may want to offer the love she felt for him – to God. And she did.

It seems to me that the inner movement both these episodes describe, taking into account that ‘the only g-o-d worth talking about can’t be talked about’ as I once read, – describe a realisation of a certain human potential, perhaps a specific response to abundance.

In my narrative memory, Jesus advises his followers to go out to see people and advises not when rejected to wipe the dust of their feet but advises them that the love they had to give would stay with them.

Beyond the words I don’t have and beyond the religion I don’t follow, I can only point in the direction of the experience I had in one psychodrama session – playing a friend’s sister. In the scene, my friend was sitting opposite her sister and repeating over and over, ‘I can’t help you, I can’t help you…’ Yet, I, acting as antagonist, did not feel rejected – but an abundance of love. Love stayed with me.

sitting in the round

on a cushion, shining invisibly –

a new loneliness?

Prof. Godehard Bruntrup SJ in a youtube video describes his near-death experience as being embraced by love and reflects it might leave one with the desire to become a monk, dedicated to sing of that love (my wording) – yet, perhaps, he adds, one had to return to the world and add structure to the experience (or words to that effect).

===

first published on this blog in 2014, revised in January 2022

Posted in case study, Essay, Haibun, Moment, Reflection
Tags: acting, light, love, near-death

dear reader – I painted…

•September 18, 2021 • 4 Comments

created with windows paint, 2014

Posted in painting

April – My Love – 2002

•June 9, 2021 • 4 Comments

This haibun goes back to an encounter in 2002

April – I have not seen her for a few months. When I hear her calling from the gate – I know it is her, before I recognise her. I leave the car, engine running, and rush over.

She tells me she left Uni after the first semester and is now jobbing until she finds out what to do. Her face yet rounder, she looks younger again – and well. I tell her so. She smiles. Even our self-consciousness is tender — as we recognise each other.

Not the sun…in April –
…your face…shines*

I pass her in the car again as she closes the gate after her bike, and we both wave.

Not mother, not daughter –
my love, so much younger
in you

——————————————————————————–

* Inspired as this was, of course, by April (name changed) — my thanks and appreciation also go to the unknown 20th century German poet, who wrote the poem below. It came back into my mind through the encounter reported here:

“When I see you,
The sun rises –
Can’t be, you say?
You only think so, because
You don’t see yourself when another
Recognises you.”

(translated into English by BS)

the image shows a stretch of Mawddach Estuary in North Wales where I was living at the time – the character of the image underlines the paradox expressed in the haibun – in what way can Love be present in absentia…

Posted in Haibun, Moment
Tags: aha

Sitting, rejected – Nov 1985

•January 6, 2021 • 1 Comment

That is not quite my scenario.
I was sitting on a cushion, brimming full of love, rooted in me and around me; yet all I got to hear was the protagonist who sat opposite from me: I can’t help you – for whatever therapeutic purpose that may or may not have had for her, she had to repeat that over and over.

Because, and you may have guessed that by now, we were acting in a Psychodrama workshop. The protagonist had selected me to play her needy sister. Little did she know that she gave me the chance to come home to myself, in a manner of speaking, that would be with me for the rest of my life, and the door really opened only after the scene had finished, we had a break and I took the chance to go for a walk during the foggy November village, passing the cemetery. It was there, that the clarity I had enacted truly hit me. And 35 years later, I am still adding facets of an understanding and perhaps, hopefully, a tiny bit embodied reality.

Solitary

from top to toe –

straightening out so slow

As a young teenager, being bullied at school my walks in the fields down the road from my parents home, in the afternoons, had saved me. The solitude had saved me, even then.

However, other Moments have clarified and reaffirmed the direction over the years and decades.

===

originally published in 2021, updated on Jan 2022

photo: painting by Cornelis Monsma, borrowed from Fine Art America; thank you

Posted in Haibun, Moment
Tags: aha

Insight Prepared, summer 1985

•October 23, 2015 • 1 Comment

Being returned with a sound-less blast:

my tutor on stage –

she shone, a lioness,

even without the summer sun.

I am not going to argue if someone wants to call this a religious experience – one that leads back to being part of being, with the joy and sense of wonder children have. But it was not a religious experience – if someone wants to tell me that surely now I needed to believe in God – if anything, g-o-d showed Itself as being the process of Being. That’s as much as I can say. And I am sure to get into trouble with a religious philosopher who will tell me my notions are fudged. That may be so. My clarity is being clear though.

===

to be precise, the experience began when I entered the venue – the walls seemed transparent – Life was drawing near.

Posted in Haibun, Moment

Rooted to the Spot – Nov 1985

•June 11, 2015 • 2 Comments

Here I was, at 31, attending my second week-long residential feminist Psychodrama course.

The first one, a few months earlier, had opened my eyes to that which I had always sensed but not known, known but not acknowledged, felt deeply but not been able to put into words.

Now it was about trying out different roles and practising that new-found inspiration…

I found myself sitting cross-legged opposite another group member, protagonist of that scene – she had chosen me as her needy sister. In the role of her sister I had to repeat, again, again, ‘but I need you’… whereas she kept shaking her head: “I can’t help you…”

At the same time, I felt Warmth, Love, Presence flooding through me, being held by it – beyond belief.

For the protagonist, the scene was somewhat unresolved. She simply left.

Our trainer, fortunately, left me alone during break time where others might have commented on ‘hard work’. So I went for a walk through the village, on a foggy November afternoon – walking with that unnamed Fullness and Presence, beyond words.

I passed the village church.

rooted to the spot,

at the cemetery gate:

tomb stone inscription

sinks in

Posted in Haibun, Moment

linguist, breakthrough

•May 5, 2025 • Comments Off

The villa I am renting a room in this month, also houses a lady from Ukraine. I was told by the landlady and the lady herself that she does not speak German.

So tonight, I suddenly thought of google: Opened my laptop to translate

me: hallo, hello – google:, Russian: – privet (a little light bulb came on!)

me: good night – (google translates to Russian … ); lady says: ‘Gute Nacht’

—so who does not speak German? will try another one tomorrow! ☺

Posted in Journalling
Tags: translate, travel

rise from the mud

•May 4, 2025 • Comments Off

from Tao and Zen fb page

Posted in consciousness
Tags: radiate into the world

query 1

•May 3, 2025 • Comments Off

who stuck

their club foot

in my throat?

Posted in haiku, Reflection
Tags: investigation

defiance

•May 2, 2025 • Comments Off

disposition to resist : willingness to contend or fight (Merriam-Webster dictionary)

Yes, I am talking about me. From teenage years, I was known to be stubborn or going against what everyone else thought proper.

Gradually, it became clear that part of that is my passion for deep thinking and to never stop. Certainly not when it comes to meaning, and no small talk if you please! Increasingly, another aspect emerged: I am driven by intuition and that is an all-body-sense of knowing.

Like yesterday, I knew, talking with the good doctor: No op for me, if anything, radiation therapy.

Ha. this morning he told me off over the phone as allegedly I had gone against his advice by not checking into hospital. Partly, that simply had not registered as advice, partly I don’t know about the procedure and partly he was right, I was not going to go.

So I replied by mailing him the three or 4 clinics I had begun to research for radiotherapy, adding the comment I had made when teaching Psychology to Nursing Students in 1999 and which triggered, I think. the young man at the top of the class giving me a heart-felt thanks when we parted after he had sat his exam:

Difficult patients are the ones who stand the best chance…

– I could hear the Doc smile across town when he read that.

Posted in consciousness, insight, Reflection
Tags: deep thinking, felt sense, resistance

living the life

•May 1, 2025 • Comments Off

arrived last night as planned in Geislingen, at this 8-room villa – used for individual lets while being refurbished; the views from the terrace are spectacular; room and shared bathroom good. I happened to get 25 nights in May for a very low half-price and offered to provide detailed feedback to help with building a their profile. One long-term tenant seems to have gone away for the long weekend. Otherwise I am on my own.

The old town of Geislingen itself lies rather at the bottom of a valley and does not make itself very attractive, so far…

In other news – suddenly, at short notice and still as if planned – yesterday I finally had a biopsy done on the growth in my mouth, also a tooth taken out by the excellent ENT specialist-in-practice (it had only been hanging on by a thread) and and an overall excellent consultation. I had no greater compliment at the end for him than: The first grown-up doctor I have seen in 3 years of this process. Results expected by Wed.

It is true, I have delayed the biopsy considerably, following my first premise for dealing with mainstream meds – I will only be treated by a doctor I trust – and this one was certainly worth waiting for.

Today it’s a lie-in, supported by owl and church bells.

high hills behind my window

luscious garden

early May sun

I did not need Paracetamol during the night, but now I do – only I can’t face the deep-dive into my bags, not yet, – otherwise I am back into my best pre-diagnosis outlook on a challenge to be transformed at 70 plus…

Posted in Haibun, Journalling
Tags: biopsy, travel

see you later…

•May 1, 2025 • 2 Comments

Posted in consciousness, Guest:, humour
Tags: alligator

hidden meaning…

•April 28, 2025 • 7 Comments

Posted in consciousness, Guest:, insight
Tags: emotions

recap

•April 26, 2025 • Comments Off

during the night when I could not sleep with the darn ache in my jaw, I have done a little work on a presentation for a day conference in Bielefeld next month about ‘Epistemic Injustice’ – not being recognised as knower or not having the tools required… I’ll be there with my autoethnographic writing, some of it and – no idea how it will translate into German culture.

Also: have been a bit lazy about creating Moments during my Journalling posts these last few weeks, so I am going over those and add the category Haibun (and a little haiku).

Having written out a list with names of those Jesuits who made the last 7 years a veritable night mare with their various kinds of intrusion, has opened some flood gates, as I am preparing to take up that outpatient appointment in ENT/Tumour Centre in Stuttgart after all.

glistening clarity

tears and

heart ache

—

Posted in Haibun, Journalling
Tags: ENT, travel

Shame – on the wrong foot

•April 25, 2025 • Comments Off

Posted in Applied Philosophy, Bearing Witness, consciousness
Tags: grooming

it’s the soil

•April 25, 2025 • Comments Off

Posted in Applied Philosophy, Bearing Witness, consciousness, Essay, Guest:, painting
Tags: Erik Moeller, exloquence

late late

•April 24, 2025 • Comments Off

being a bit on the slow side, I realised late I needed more ice for the night to pacify my screaming jaw. Tried to make it to Goeppingen by train – but that would have meant I would not be able to get back before 4a.m. No can do.

In the end I tottered to the local pub cum lounge where I have been before and got there – just before the last beat of clock midnight. Anyway, they had already finished their accounts, but were happy to give me some ice cubes. Not half an hour later, I was back home with enough ice to keep me going for hrs if indeed I did not fall asleep (which I hope I will, at some point).

sun loungers

waiting

on the terrace

Posted in Haibun, Journalling
Tags: late, travelling

open mind

•April 24, 2025 • Comments Off

shared from fb page Other Perspectives

Posted in Guest:, humour

care management 1 and 2

•April 24, 2025 • Comments Off

I swear

medical doctors are full of it

ignorance that is instead of reasoning

and reflecting they repeat their peers

thereby

ignoring

the evidence

they claim to value

—

so what

do I do in response

ignore my own

best advice

and shut myself down in

ignorance

This piece came out of my self reflection following the decision for the moment NOT to follow doc’s advice to head for surgery to take my lymph node and saliva gland out but rather treat my condition (inflammation)…

and in the process of doing my own one-person case conference, I had to admit, that I myself did still not as a regular occurrence subscribe to 120% careful dental hygiene. So without further ado, I shall not assign blame to myself now but rather progress…

Writing this up partly came from the case reflection indicated and was motivated by bouts of darn good old ache in my jaw, but it also came in the context of planning a contribution to a day conference on Miranda Fricker’s Epistemic Injustice – meaning people systemically being denied their knowing or the tools to exercise influence with it. That contribution of mine will be anchored in my narrative research round Bernard Lonergan’s transcendental precepts – be attentive – be intelligent – be reasonable – be responsible.*

—

* Lonergan was a complex philosophical mind with a large work on Insight. I can’t even begin to understand the depth of it all. Gossip has it, that once a nun (as a Jesuit that was the circle he moved in) invited him to attend their nativity play – he replied, he was sorry but that would interrupt his train of thought. 🤣

Posted in beyond theology, consciousness, Essay, poem
Tags: get over it, Lonergan, transcendental precepts

If you could be a character from a book or film, who would you be? Why?

•April 24, 2025 • Comments Off

Dailyprompt 1901

It depends – would I be able to sense-know that I am part of a narrative? There is tremendous sense of freedom in that, not being bound and dragged down by all consideration of so-called purpose.

That said, I would most like to be that sense of liberation in Maxim Gorki’s Meine Universitaeten – the learning as a migrant baker in Russia then,,,

Posted in Essay
Tags: dailyprompt

morning after

•April 23, 2025 • Comments Off

Kurhaus Bad Boll, foto from communal web site

residential rehab clinic, adjacent to large park

chorus of owls

spring air away from

tourists’ eyes

Whether or not I made a mistake yesterday attending the thermal bath there, I am not sure. Even as I got in the water, I noticed the water was too warm for me, so I only spent a few minutes each time in it, 4 times, with cold water application in between. When I got on the bus back, I noticed pain in my neck getting much worse and that carried on until about 4 a.m. when I took my last 2 Paracetamol.

Around that time, I also had a real-life dream that I am now set up to getting old in peace – no more chaos and – I am going to get a miniature Dachshund for company, once I have sold ‘my book’ – which should enable me to book single rooms (in the chain I have been using in Aachen, dogs stay for free in private rooms)!

No prizes for guessing when the master manipulator kicked in here -!

The severe pain has subsided and while I have registered with a local GP for potential referral for in-patient treatment (op, their judgment) in Stuttgart, I have in a very grown-up discussion with the senior assistant in the practice asked them to put that referral on hold as I am today after all expecting a telephone consult with the Cologne doc and naturopath I had practically given up on due to computer issues on his part (don’t ask 🙄) – he may have some low key out-patient options up his sleeve.

As a critically thinking social care practitioner I still find it difficult to take the radiologist seriously who pointed in the direction of urgent op – while not being bothered to at least see me in person. I shared that impression in the practice and they could see where I was coming from, I think – even if they can’t agree as clinicians.

Now I better start finishing that book proposal. But first I have that telephone discussion with the Doc, sitting in the sun, in one of the Italian-style pedestrian zones they have here.

Posted in Haibun, Journalling

getting lost

•April 21, 2025 • Comments Off

yesterday afternoon I got lost in the small-town pavement valley on the way to a pharmacy with Sunday opening – reduced bus service due to building works did not help. Clearly with reduced fitness as my body is dealing with a major infection of sorts, I still walked 2k in total. Briefly, a chorus of owl for company even…

Felt incredibly saddened when the woman staffing the pharmacy was not able to respond in good humour to reference – her shop being named after an artist who hailed from the Eastern part of Germany. The owners had a connection, was the best she could muster when I pointed out that I had a connection to both the local area and that artist, Ernst Barlach.

foto Ernst Barlach, Mutter Erde, sculpture in Gustrow memorial park, see wikipedia

Well, I may never know why she would not even advise me on herbal antibiotics she had for sale. Perhaps some argument with the pharmacy owners turned sour…?

Having purchased some Paracetamol, I kept on walking back towards the bus stop – not close. Got a lift from a naturist (given the state of his van) which turned out to be a round trip through the village as the driver seemed reluctant to consult his GPS… instead I learned that he, while not familiar with Britain, had once lived in Sweden for 4 years. So I was glad to thank him at the end: “Tack so mycke”, my only Swedish phrase, picked up on holiday in 1969.

That left me at a bus stop waiting for 50 mins for a bus to take me back to the train station I needed locally as well…

In the end I did not have to wait quite that long: A woman in her fifties stopped as I was signaling my crutch and I were looking for a lift. She offered to give me a lift of some 10 miles (our of her way).

Turned out she is the local wife of a vicar, who also came from a region closer to Barlach’s origin. This is new – mingling of East and West, post-1989 and the Berlin Wall.

She reminded me of some local Pietist connections I had known about when young but never shared. In the end she dropped me off remembering to give me a flyer – why it was necessary to believe in the resurrection.

Well, I had already driven an RE teacher to distraction at age 14 with my critical thinking on that one and this was not the time or the place to repeat the exercise or for that matter, tell her, that I had come full circle since. So I left it at what I had shared during the ride – namely that I felt closest to the Quakers these days – sitting in silent Presence. S-o perhaps I was not lost after all..

a gem of a dialogue

not to be expected

brought about by kindness

She told me she had seen me standing at the bus stop with my crutch when passing earlier with her husband, returning from some parish visit. She came back out to help, curious?

Posted in Haibun, Journalling
Tags: Barlach, travel

Schwobelaendle*

•April 19, 2025 • Comments Off

So, I must be settling in – not quite at the foot of Hohenstaufen, but only a local train stop away, in Ebersbach, enjoyed a sunny stroll this morning, bought some essentials, such as meds and hot meatloaf.

Took some advice from the pharmacist and under consideration for my budget will continue with some tissue salts for acute infection. – Be it placebo or they are taking effect, my pain level is certainly much lower today than it has been the last few days. The busy landlady has moved a small fridge into my room – absolutely brilliant; got food and drink stored now for 3 days, plus a tiny freezer compartment for my medical ice pack.

Between the pharmacy and the butcher’s on the high street, I plonked myself down on a bench under a rustique sign ‘pickup for Bourg-les-Valence’, the French twin town of Ebersbach. Came a local lady up to me, chuckling, in the local lingo: That’s not going to work – referring to the pickup sign. I reassured her, I’d be quite happy staying for my 2 weeks here. People here seem as friendly to me as the Bavarians – but less hard work with it. Immigrants, a lot of them: mostly Italian, Albanian and Turkish, reasonably well integrated. My landlady, in her late fifties, married to the Italian pizza restaurant owner stems from some folk – to the east. Not Czech, but near there and fully trilingual for it.

*local lingo for Schwabenland, core part of Baden-Wurttemberg – I spent some formative years here, first in Stuttgart with my parents, then briefly as a young wife and mother and student – undergrad at Teacher Training College Esslingen and postgrad in Social Work with major in Adult Education in Tubingen.

Have to include the local cult figures here- Aeffle und Pferdle:

They used to have their own early eve TV slots when I was growing up; humourous, teasing eachother …

Posted in humour, Journalling
Tags: cartoon, cult heros, Journalling, reminiscing

be intelligent* – work-in-progress

•April 19, 2025 • Comments Off

This post is being developed as I find time to add parts. When I make substantial changes, the piece will be re-published (with a new date).

The title stems from Bernard Lonergan’s 4 transcendental precepts – be attentive – be intelligent – be reasonable – be responsible; to be added: Be transformed.

Initially I conceptualised my spiritual initiation as variants of light bulb moments that only with theistic framing would be considered Gotteserfahrungen.

The key point in my experience (11/85) demanded an understanding as akin to a Buddhist kensho – only I was not a Buddhist either.

An aspect of that particular experience made it clear that it was important to see and understand the theistic framing as merely symbolic – here and provisionally understood as a sign that itself points beyond conceptualisation.

At the same time, an early exchange about this (1986) indicated that this was not achieved, perhaps not achievable through religion – a framing concept that unavoidably and by definition restricted the potential of insight. Even Bernard Lonergan, very clearly restricts the experience of God to one of substance rather than seeing it a one of a transformative oepn-ended process.

The clarification remains important.

An early experience at age 9, at a moment of existential despair I can only understand as a transpersonal one. Apparently it is rare but not unheard of that children in that way pick up concepts they had no way of knowing of. (See Oct 1997)

Other Moments, over the years, ranging from similarly deep to rather vaguely intuitive, seem to fit into understanding beyond religion.

Having joined the RC Church, reluctantly, feeling called as ‘temporarily’ – enabled me to structure and orient my development akin to liberating negative theology or the 12-step principles as viewed in an existential sense.

When I finally, 17 years later, undeniably felt called to leave the connection to RC behind, I felt relieved as the container restricting the human mind in addition to the mostly flat misinterpretation of anything I had come to read from the gospel with my heart of hearts – but also felt a bit lost. The encounter that placed me within a philosophical understanding of global development (4/99) as well as the embodied certainty that had for many years already demanded from me to see the human ability for embodiment of spiritual insight as an anthropological given – unfolding in various stages, began to form a new horizon.

Various encounters over the last 10 years have shown that I am not alone here, that other researchers practitioners have laid out relevant corner stones in this field, too:

Roel Crabbe

Rev angel Kyodo williams

(aspects of several modern shamanic practitioners, tbc)

inter-religiously trained rev angel williams embodies not only the conceptualisation of the zen-like experience as beyond religion but also the existentially liberating and socially responsible and transformative character of same. Philip Aitken seems to show similar clarity as does possibly Mark Epstein – the latter two at least in the epistemological aspect if not so much the social one.

Of particular practical importance seems to me williams’ emphasis on hara** (she calls it ‘point’ as a focus for a healthy transformative practice (while the heart can still be manipulated, she says at some point). For me personally this mirrors and represents (7/85), presumably the reason Buddhist master teacher F.N. Nakagawa at some point in personal communication admitted he had not seen anybody similarly deeply transformed (a cause for much gratitude).

What is being described here, are Moments of Grace or breakthrough, which following my research are part of the human potential – given not achieved. Inferring a calling means an obligation to do whatever one can to meet the inner imperative for the good of others and to develop one’s own potential. It is in my view, likely, that deep crisis facilitates one such breakthrough.

—

*one of Lonergan’s transcendental precepts; Lonergan scholars point to this being prone to misunderstanding – intended is not a a definition or grading of intelligence but the human capacity to understand as compared to and seen alongside other aspects of the human heart-mind.

** Karlfried Graf von Duerckheim, Hara, Die Erdmitte des Menschen, O.W. Barth 2005 (in German)

Posted in Academic, beyond theology, case study, consciousness

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