Dreamtime

The Meeting began with a minute's silence, and those who wanted then gave an account of relevant thoughts and events since the previous month.

Z said that she had been absent for a couple of months, feeling a multitude of different challenges, which had been taking her away from being present and she hadn't even been aware of it. So she was glad to be back.

T said it had become more and more obvious to her through the month that everything was repetition. Not having the idea of repetition in the past had meant she had tended to start on new 'spontaneous' work frequently which always felt 'short lived'. More recently she has been returning to the same few paintings and deliberately setting up the same scenarios to bring a painting to completion by staying with it. Resistance is huge, but only thus does she get rid of distraction and let something grow. Also she has been using just one colour and the different shades of it to reduce distraction from the task of investigating subtle tone changes to create the picture.

RM had been away the previous time, on a cruise where he had been teaching a one minute meditation method from a system he has been developing for years. Each daily class was for one and a half hours. His experience of it had been very powerful. The one minute of fully focused meditation seems to be as crucial to the day as the keystone is to an arch. It has changed his life. He has been using triggers to do it at other times, and the intensity was growing each day.

L had observed repetition over the month in many areas and at many levels. For some reason events kept taking him to Wood Green. There were also repeated trips to the care home his father had recently moved to. String quartet music had entered his mind and kept repeating, gradually firming like a crystal. Could it be true that everything was repetition, and movement an illusion? He said he would stop before he repeated himself!

The message from BS was read out. He clarified that his request for his entries to be removed also applies to current and future web reports, but he said he would like time to be given in the Meetings to discussing them.

Following the contributions, time was given to responses from the attendees.

L thought that RM’s one minute meditation system was very congruent with the one minute silence which begins each Meeting. RM said it was a Taoist idea. The meditations are analogous to the roots of a tree, without which the tree would wither. D thought that five minutes would be better, saying that one minute is too short, and that the meditation would be over before it has started. RM repeated it would work and that it was important to do it at least once a day. Every morning when he gets up he sits in a chair with his eyes open and focuses on one thing in his surroundings while at the same time he is aware of his feet on the ground. He said that this is a meditation from the Tao Te Ching. L referred to David Blaine, and asked if he was meditating in some state during his performances, or was he retreating into himself, which was the impression he gave. RM said Blaine demonstrated one dimension of meditation, but in his own system the idea is to increase the intensity of it. D referred to the magician Dynamo whom he said was better than David Blaine. He described a scene in which drinks were swapped between a bottle and a tin can. He didn't know how it could be done. L asked if there were any theories about this from the attendees. He suggested the possibility that actors might have been used. D wanted to know why he couldn’t do it. T asked him to think about the phenomenon of his own writing, which itself, as a phenomenon arising in the world, was extra-ordinary and as inexplicable. RM said it was important to be open minded. GC asked if it was possible to be open minded, as personal experience colours how a person sees the world. He said that scientists were not allowed to be open minded. Z said that she didn't care if a thing was true our false.

In response to L, "R" asked if his composing was in the service of anything. L said that he follows the Muse.

GC suggested to D that he gets caught up in thinking. D said one can change one's thoughts. GC replied that it is the thoughts that are the problem; we are all victims of thinking." D said that he thinks and writes because he wants to attain “knowledge”. That's why he does his writing. He feels something has shifted inside himself through thinking, conversation and doing writing. It is a form of creativity, creating something which wasn't there before. "R" said that there is a level where things can be refined. Her mother used to talk about “the culture”, which didn't sit comfortably with her. She was a textile designer doing things with colour, she was not just doing the basic things of staying alive. D said that creativity is the most important thing we do in our lives. GC said that our opinions might change." "R" replied that the value is that we have different opinions.

There was a discussion of the message from BS. It was agreed that because of the open nature of the Meeting and the notes from it on the Internet, it was inappropriate to withhold significant sections of the Meeting from the monthly report, and that alternatively, if BS wished, he could publish his thoughts anonymously,or otherwise, as comments by clicking the link after each blog entry.

The Meeting then resumed the reading of Beelzebub’s Tales.

You must first be told that there exist in the Universe generally two 'kinds' or two 'principles' of the duration of being-existence.

The first kind or first 'principle' of being-existence which is called 'Foolasnitamnian' is proper to the existence of all three-brained beings arising on any planet of our Great Universe …

As regards the meaning of the principle 'Itoklanos' I shall also specially explain it to you sometime.

Clarification was asked for about the two principles. L said that his understanding was that the first was connected to the development of self-aware life, while the second applied to other life forms.

The reading finished at the close of Chapter 16, and there was a discussion about which exercise to adopt for the ensuing month. GC suggested the Solfeggio meditation based on the frequency mi = 528 Hz.



RM suggested the one-minute daily meditation as described earlier, and it was decided, on a vote, to go with the latter.