My Christmas Story

At this time of the year we reflect on life and its purpose, reflect on the most influential individual in human history (who’s life is recorded) try to enjoy a slice of peace within our community and recharge the batteries ready for a new year. Some of us travel to find peace and harmony in far away destinations with relatives and friends. Some do not take a break and work through this season organising events and parties or by maintaining essential services. For me Christmas has always been a holiday and I have only once or twice worked over the Christmas season.

Christmas has always been a difficult time for the environmentalist. The consumerism does not appeal, the relaxation and the food seems to be over indulgent and the company of relatives only serves as a reminder of how far apart we are in our outlook and concern for our natural world.

This year has been a little different because there is a genuine green gloss over all of Christmas with many features mentioning our responsibility and a genuine lack of hedonism. It seems to me that we are entering a hangover period following our binge of excessive consumerism of the last 20 years.

Such is our wealth now that we don’t need to wait for Christmas to buy and certainly we are not prepared to wait or hope for another’s generosity at Christmas, if we want something we have it now. Last year we promoted Christmas gifts for poor countries such as the gifts that you can get from Oxfam and others. I sponsored a community I know in Gambia to help them protect and plant trees but this year I have felt more empty.

Maybe I am more apathetic than ever locked in a form of atrophy unable to decide how to make a positive contribution. Maybe I am deaf to poverty these days too old to become incensed about suffering and too ignorant to understand my role in the planets demise. Maybe its because as an environmentalist the planet means more to me than people, yet I am trapped in this western lifestyle, with house, wife, dog, business, staff and such responsibilities. I chose not to have children through both selfishness and concern for the overpopulation of the planet (and the realisation that children relatives would not necessarily be any more enlightened than my actual relatives). I am 41 years old I look younger (more to my easy life and shame) and I am in the middle of my midlife crisis.

Of course this is an excellent time to be in a midlife crisis, it mirrors the planets crisis and the group psychosis to which all humanity is involved.

In my youth I thought I could change the planet, in ignorance I thought I could do this more or less single handed. I grew up on David Attenborough’s beautiful images of our planet and believed my own illusions that I had an important role to play. I carried on this illusion dealing with the challenges life threw at me living in Shetland, Manchester, Scotland and working in Europe searching for a person of true inspiration and otherwise striving to make positive connections between people and organisations. Always considering my sacrifices as the only valuable ones and often ignoring or not even realising those of others around me. Slowly but surely travelling further from my core beliefs chasing dreams and mirrors I have come to this place.

This last year as part of my own personal mental breakdown I had psychotic experiences. I connected with all living things, and while travelling and working I saw incredible and terrible visions. At no time apart from one or two occasions was I frightened just firm of purpose but also very much alone. I stopped trusting those close to me and wanted to break free of all bondage. I believed things that I felt and not what I saw and I saw things which may not have been real. Certainly I have come to accept that we may not be able to believe all our senses at all times. In this way the world is the sum of our imaginings both real and illusion. This illusiory world is the future world the one which is the choice before us and the past world is the one we are living through now.
We live in such a time ordered society and this is the main architecture of our lives. We don’t tend to consider it but living outside time should be one of our aspirations. Maybe I should try to explain why.

Time creates the paradoxes, which we live under.

Evolutionary time is the only time which matters, this is the ticking clock of life. In the past time went slower and nowadays every day is like an eon. I noticed this mostly when I was working in Ireland. Whilst struggling to undertake my auditing work I had a day off. I got lost on the road and couldn’t get back home, I tried to make it directly to an appointment I had no adequate directions and I didn’t ask anyone for help. At this time I was still worried about seeing people from the inside their faces showing themselves as demonic etc (this was part of the psychosis). I made it back to my accommodation but felt guilty for missing the appointment and I couldn’t rest. This went on all night, By 3am I felt I had been waiting for morning for years and that the world had moved on by years while I was locked in this timewarp.

There had already been two sunsets and I prayed for dawn. I went outside and there were only 5 or so stars in the whole sky only the plough. This was the beginning of the new earth and the new heavens. I was the only person left on earth. I felt someone was laughing at me. Like Cain killed Abel so the first human being came to be earth (evolved?) and was left alone. Possibly the dead brother went to a new earth or possibly the killer was left on earth, trapped on the earth separated from GOD. Cataloguing the beauty of nature realising that all nature was created in the minds eye and that there is such beauty in this creation. But also realising that being GOD on earth was desparately lonely.

I came to realise this was my connection with the earth at this time, as old father time, as GOD, as the evolutionary watch as a divine pet for all mankind, as the devil himself located among humanity and kept trapped on earth for all time so as not to corrupt the divine that always lives beyond us.

I think lots of people go through this kind of transformational psychosis with the loss of self and ego and the merging of an altruistic or empathic connection explodes into a cross vibrational awareness. (we are all energy forms with a set of different resonances based upon evolutionary hierarchies).

I could see that I loved nature more than people and people hated me for that. People were frightened that I might be angry with them and destroy them all some people took advantage of these fears. We were frightened of one another.

Slowly so very slowly the dawn came. But there was not birdsong and I was worried that I was the only person left and that I would have to live a life alone with just the plants and flowers. But then thankfully a robin gave its simple call and I went out to it. Always robins will be my favourite birds, and then a skylark high up in the dawnlight, and then a pheasant in the copse and later a cuckoo across the valley and it was time for me to face a new day.

I drank from the dew on the marsh marigolds which was wonderful and heavy, I walked down the road at 5 or 6 am loved the day jumped over a wall and washed my face in the stream. For me from that moment I thought things can only get better.

Of course that was before I broke down, got picked up by the police, was put in a lunatic asylum and got caught in this terrible apathy which has so blighted me recently. Once again another of lifes tests. Always the challenge is to decide what to do doing it is always relatively easy. Here is one of the dilema’s

Reducing poverty helps raise living standards. Raising living standards creates less sustainable lifestyle demands. This puts more people into the western lifestyle model of consumption. This destroys the planet and also puts more people in other areas into abject poverty. Therefore reducing poverty is basically unsustainable. Poverty is a relative term and you will always have poor people provided you judge them in our economic system. The truth is this economic reality is a great illusion, terribly powerful because we choose to worship it and obey it. Of course there are more converts to it than ever before.

And so here we all are trapped in our own dream trying to gain the courage to face the truth of a new dawn where the eco-altruists must build higher and higher towers to combat the greed and ignorance which is our present economic system. It is on these towers that the new dawn will rise first.

Light and Life and times sweet fragrance abide with me
Let me not be burdened with the guilt of all humanity
Beauty in the moments of a days release
Oh sweet fragrance let me be at peace
Let me not smell the stench of times death
Where light and life are held in such despite
And where I see the emptiness of this modern life
Earth mother please breathe again a sweetly female kiss upon the air
And let us strive from this apocalypse to find the heavens stair
That road we sought for all this time
but accepting colder easy comforts
rather than a human form divine.

Like open wings upon the dawn let life and light be valued once again
No more to seek a fake illumination and of irresponsible pleasures
While plundering all histories and our futures treasures
Stealing from our youngest their hope yet barely born, in a natures bounty presently scorned
In a few short years the time will come when no youth will believe the lie
That they can work for money and in later time stand for truth and natures eyes
The only salve to the blight of our economy
Is to give for love and believe in that gentle harvest - harmony

Built upon goodwill with our natural earth
Where we most honestly value and revere its worth
I will not claim to be so close to perfection as others I have met along my way
All I can commit to is to keep the faith and be prepared to test my firm resolve upon each new day
I feel as a torn soul in blind apathy and grief for all I can see
Is a host of mirrored forms who grin and grimace back at me
Reminding me that I am not so great or honourable a man as I first knew
When I travelled Africa as a fabulous pauper with nothing to my name except my love for you.

December 2006