Monstaville Book II. Chapter 39

39

“First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

- Gandhi.

Valley of the Dragons (1961)

My life: The move to London represents the flowers of youth dying. The soil was dug over through harsh experience. Then this job/accommodation/intimidation from the neighbours represents the addition of manure. Now, hopefully, something can grow in it. Some seeds must have been sown amidst the suffering. Being given the opposite of what I want should have brought to the surface, to conscious light, what I want from life. The seeds that are growing now are positive thought forms. They are projected as clear intent onto the canvas of life to become manifest. My body and life are like a mule! (Saturn in the First House). I am constantly having to try and drag it around by exercising my will. Now I am trying to change or train it, to turn it into a race horse!

To me, life is a bit like weightlifting. My life anyway. I always seem to have such heavy burdens to lift and then more weight is added at times and I never know if I have the strength to endure it. It’s all a test of strength and stamina. If ever my inner strength is not equal to the pressure, I simply collapse. I am pulverised, squashed to a pulp, forced to surrender. If I am equal to the weight but only just, then it is touch-and-go. My posture and balance, my energy vibration, faith and centeredness, may make the difference and pull me through. My material 3D life has always been about suffering in this way, and my physical life too: poverty and illness. ‘Heavy!’

No S**t Sherlock!: “Children are bullied because of their appearance.” - University of the West of England (Metro, 14 July 2005, p.13).

No S**t Sherlock!: “Alcohol facilitates aggression among those who express anger outwardly.” - University of Georgia, Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research (Metro, 30 June 2005, p.11).

Banana Pudding

“Monty Python once performed a sketch with John Cleese’s sergeant major drilling his men on how to defend themselves against a man armed with a piece of fresh fruit. Only now it seems somewhat prescient. The capital’s most inept robber, drug addict Robert Downey, 24, was jailed for seven years after being found guilty of holding up a betting shop in Tower Hamlets with a banana. Downey’s imitation firearm was so badly disguised in a plastic bag that clerks could see its yellow colour and distinctive bend. As Downey demanded, ‘Give me the money or I will f***ing shoot you!’ they carried on chatting. One clerk said to another, ‘He says he has a gun, but then it might be a banana.’ Downey then pretended he had another gun, which was obviously a pair of scissors. After his fruitless heist, he fled the crime scene, but was arrested while attempting to remove his balaclava, which was too small for him. Downey had earlier dumped his banana weapon, which was later found by a police sniffer dog, 100 yards from the crime scene, bruised but still in its plastic bag. Could there soon be a banana crimewave in London? As Shaw Taylor might have said on Police 5: Keep ‘em peeled.” (‘London Spy: Pete May on the mean streets of London, U.K.,’ Nine To Five and Mideweek, free magazine, 4 April 2005).

People are afraid of what they don’t know. They try to drag you down to their level so they can relate to you comfortably (or dominate you), so you are familiar, like a clone in their own boggy gene pool. If they do not feel threatened by a higher vibration then they can relax and get on with you OK. Or, they want to show you, and prove to themselves, that you are weak and insecure by making your position weak and making you feel vulnerable. That is, they want an unfair advantage, using weapons if they feel they can get away with it.

The caterpillar doesn’t want to know about the butterfly. It is not ready to express its own potential and grow through the crisis of the chrysalis so it blots the butterfly out and will gun it down or bulldoze it if it gets the chance: it will do anything in its power to destroy that beauty and perfection, that rainbow light that threatens its static, heavy, humourless and loveless existence.

“I believe there are more urgent and honourable occupations than the incomparable waste of time we call suffering.” - Sidonie Gabrielle Colette.

“People have a hard time letting go of their suffering. Out of a fear of the unknown, they prefer suffering that is familiar.” - Thich Nhat Hanh.

Under the Plum Tree. The Teachings of ‘Old Chinese’ by Chung Fu. Edited by Marjorie B. Giles (Blue Dolphin Publishing, Inc., CA., U.S., 2000. Chung Fu - meaning ‘Inner Truth’ and being derived from hexagram 61 of the I Ching - is the spirit guide who channelled through trance medium Marshall N. Lever. He has stated that his last incarnation was as a student of Zhuangzi in China. These teachings were probably conveyed during the mid-seventies).

p.120-121. Responding to confrontation: Each thought pattern or feeling you have is a part of your programming from early childhood. You can reprogram yourself, so that when someone yells, ‘You have the horns of a water buffalo, and you are just as ugly,’ your anger doesn’t well up inside of you and your heart pound and your stomach enzymes create havoc. When someone confronts you, you say, ‘I am powerful and poised. I see only beauty around me.’ This thought form will replace the angry one that was there before...If you say, ‘I am powerful and poised, and I am in control of the situation, you begin to replace that negative urge of the subconscious mind. It is important never to say to someone, ‘You do not look well today.’ The person will become ill if they are extremely suggestible - and most are. How many physicians look at the patient and say, ‘We have a problem here. You are very ill?’ If he can say, ‘Your body is strong and you are getting well,’ the patient finds relief...Fear creates fear. This is important to know.

p.125. Karma: It is possible for you to walk down a road and meet a person that you killed in another life or you stomped upon, or gouged out their eye. If you are in harmony with self and in tune, you will walk right by them. If you are not, they will gouge you, poke you in the eye or stomp you. Peace.

p.125. Beauty: Each individual has beauty, perhaps only one little thing that is beautiful in them. Being in harmony means seeing all things, not just the surface. If you look for beauty in all things, you will see only beauty. If you look for negativity, for those things that irritate you, you will find only the irritable things. Peace.

p.125. Countering negativity: If they say ‘It is a terrible day,’ you can say, ‘I feel good this day. To me, it is beautiful.’ You are not combating them; you are showing how you can look at things positively. They may act negatively to receive a response. If being negative elicits only a positive projection of yourself, they will begin to see that they must be positive to receive a positive response. Peace.

p.133-134. Negative personality traits: You do not want to get over your personality. You want to project it positively and not negatively. To work with it, you need to understand the things that cause agitation. Begin to look at yourself, at what you feel when something or someone else bothers you. Say, ‘I am in control of the situation. I have positive feelings.’ Name the individual and say, ‘We are in harmony with one another.’

                You can cause a basic change in your pattern through this discipline: sitting in a chair, relaxing, breathing in your concerns, one at a time, and then releasing them. Breathe in again. Let us say you have a concern about a relationship with another individual: breathe in the individual, release them, breathe them in again, and say in affirmation, ‘I have an excellent relationship with this individual. We have patience with one another.’

                This establishes a pattern of positive projection in your concerns in the people you meet. Time should be set aside for you to project the people that you are dealing with, rather than working on immediacy. As you project in this way, you’ll find that when you meet again they will react to the positive projection that you have given them previously. In that way, it will begin to change. Peace.

“If you are insulted, if you are accused, if they gossip about you, don’t say anything bad. Don’t be the one who sees the shame, be the one who corrects it.” - Shams Tabrizi.

I once repeated the ‘I am powerful and in control’ mantra in my head throughout a discussion in which the guy (an older Pakistani man who was one of my bosses), who could be a bully towards others (other Asian men though), was using all his mental and emotional power to find some weakness in me to exploit. A most interesting experience! I had heard about him having ripped people apart verbally for hours on many occasions. He kept looking me up and down, trying to find fault in me, expecting to find some lack of self-esteem in me, some button he could press to overwhelm my will. He was trying to manipulate me the way Pigsy did, trying to evoke a reaction but without being the first one to make any radical suggestions about my character because there were other people present. Had he said anything that was absurd, that was not true and that I would never accept as being possible, he would have looked a fool. So, he was being cunning and tactful in applying pressure to prise my buttons to the surface so he could target those areas of my subconscious. I could feel his energy being thrown at me, trying to demolish me! In between words, he was almost huffing as he allowed his emotions to build up and intuitively, psychically get under my skin, into my mind. But I remained centred in the affirmation. Such a simple feat to perform but it made me effectively impenetrable and he gave up after a while realising that he was getting nowhere, that his assault was beginning to backfire because the longer he stood there doing that, the stronger and more dignified I appeared and the more he looked like a complete dummy! Haha. Too funny!

Lindsey Wixson for Mulberry Fall-Winter 2012-13 by Tim Walker

Retrospective insert.

Damage control.

“It's hard to admit that you're not as strong as everyone believes you are.” – Anon.

“If I accept you as you are, I will make you worse; however, if I treat you as though you are what you are capable of becoming, I help you to become that.” – Goethe.

I have found that one requirement of living here in Monstaville is to expect the best from my neighbours willy nilly every day! I can’t afford not to. This practice is necessary in order to at least try and minimise the negative reactions, intentions and behaviour that result from their selfishness, hatred and weakness. So, I guess, even though it has not accomplished the degree of peace I desire, it has been both a good exercise for me and training for my mind as well, potentially achieving a level of damage control.

An image of wading through a muddy swamp springs to mind. One has to walk very gently and carefully in order to continue on one’s path through it with minimal resistance. Using too much force or trying to move too quickly alters the consistency of the thick, gooey mud or it gathers in places that slow one down. Stops and starts likewise hinder one’s progress. A steady, continuous momentum creates a subtle ‘groove’ by adapting to maintain harmony with the substance, the environment, in which one finds oneself.

“Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment. If you have behaved badly, repent, make what amends you can and address yourself to the task of behaving better next time. On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean.” - Aldous Huxley (Brave New World).

In a sense, perhaps, I am starting to learn to see that people are only playing roles on Earth and that this is not the real ‘them’ because all are expressions of divinity in reality.

At a Heart Blessing, one Sunday afternoon, I overheard St. Germain telling a young mother to expect the best behaviour from her child even though he will misbehave anyway. He did not explain any further, just gave her this advice. He wanted me to hear it, I’m sure, because it is an art with which I am now well-acquainted since it helps to avoid making situations worse than they already are. Hopefully, it does some good and might well be responsible for periods of calm, at least in part.

Abraham-Hicks stresses that we live in a vibrational universe and that we are composed of more energy and electricity than we realise. We are like magnets, according to Abraham, and, as such, we attract everything that come into our experience, including all the people and events in our lives. We also attract thoughts to ourselves. In turn, what we think about and our life experience are always a vibrational match. Unless we see things as we would like them to be nothing will change or manifest as we would like it to be. Once we begin to understand the correlation between what we are thinking, feeling and receiving, says Abraham, we have all that we require to be to be wherever we want to be. By seeing ourselves as the vibrational beings that we are we will develop the gift of deliberate creation. (Ask and it is Given. Learning to Manifest Your Desires by Esther and Jerry Hicks, Hay House, Inc., CA, US, 2004, p.57-58). And that requires that we choose thoughts that feel good in order to change the condition and not the other way round; that is, it is not about the condition changing and then responding positively. (Manifest Your Desires by Esther and Jerry Hicks, Hay House, Inc., Carlsbad, CA., U.S., p.200). Can you accept yourself as a vibrational being?

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” - Dr. Wayne W. Dyer.

“Mind reaches out forever, but it reaches only to itself. Therefore, every word that I share with you is already present within you. Here alone, does Love abide. There is no space for anything unlike Love. This is why every loving thought is true. For it arises not from the superficial or the surface level of the mind that generates thoughts merely in reaction to other thoughts. But Love emerges from the depth of the heart that transcends what you know to be your body and your mind, your feedback mechanism.” – Jeshua (channelled through Jayem, The Way Of Mastery, Heartfelt Publishing, 1997, p.136, www.wayofmastery.com).

“You've got the brain of a four‑year‑old boy, and I'll bet he was glad to get rid of it.” – Groucho Marx.

Charlotte Kingsnorth - Hybreed Chairs