When Papandreaou was preparing to give the Greek people a referendum on the bail out deal, he was kicked out. Here, the birth place of democracy, the people were going to answer whether they would accept the IMF deal. The European Union leaders were in uproar. How dare the leader of Greece ask the people their opinion on what will happen to them? So, Papandreou has left and in his place we have econocrats in charge. Democracy was denied the Greek people.

Read this excellent article by John Pilger which gives an alternative to what we’ve been fed by corporate media.

The article is below.

Visit his website http://johnpilger.com/

============================================================

http://www.johnpilger.com/articles/the-heresy-of-the-greeks-offers-hope

In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger inverts the perception of Greece as a “junk country” and sees hope in the uprising of ordinary Greeks protesting against the “bailout” of an economy plunged into debt by the tax-evading rich. Greece, he writes, is a microcosm for the developed world, where class war are the words seldom used because they are the truth.
As Britain’s political class pretends that its arranged marriage of Tweedledee to Tweedledum is democracy, the inspiration for the rest of us is Greece. It is hardly surprising that Greece is presented not as a beacon but as a “junk country” getting its comeuppance for its “bloated public sector” and “culture of cutting corners” (the Observer). The heresy of Greece is that the uprising of its ordinary people provides an authentic hope unlike that lavished upon the warlord in the White House.
The crisis that has led to the “rescue” of Greece by the European banks and the International Monetary Fund is the product of a grotesque financial system which itself is in crisis. Greece is a microcosm of a modern class war that is rarely reported as such and is waged with all the urgency of panic among the imperial rich.
What makes Greece different is that within its living memory is invasion, foreign occupation, betrayal by the West, military dictatorship and popular resistance. Ordinary people are not cowed by the corrupt corporatism that dominates the European Union. The right-wing government of Kostas Karamanlis, which preceded the present Pasok (Labour) government of George Papandreou, was described by sociologist Jean Ziegler as “a machine for systematic pillaging the country’s resources”.
The machine had infamous friends. The US Federal reserve Board is investigating the role of Goldman Sachs and other American hedge fund operators which gambled on the bankruptcy of Greece as public assets were sold off and its tax-evading rich deposited 360 billion euros in Swiss banks. The largest Greek ship-owners transferred their companies abroad. This haemorrhage of capital continues with the approval of the European central banks and governments.
At 11 per cent, Greece’s deficit is no higher than America’s. However, when the Papandreou government tried to borrow on the international capital market, it was effectively blocked by the American corporate ratings agencies, which “downgraded” Greece to “junk”. These same agencies gave triple-A ratings to billions of dollars in so-called sub-prime mortgage securities and so precipitated the economic collapse in 2008.
What has happened in Greece is theft on an epic, though not unfamiliar scale. In Britain, the “rescue” of banks like Northern Rock and the Royal Bank of Scotland has cost billions of pounds. Thanks to the former prime minister, Gordon Brown, and his passion for the avaricious instincts of the City of London, these gifts of public money were unconditional, and the bankers have continued to pay each other the booty they call bonuses. Under Britain’s political monoculture, they can do as they wish. In the United States, the situation is even more remarkable, reports investigative journalist David DeGraw, “[as the principal Wall Street banks] that destroyed the economy pay zero in taxes and get $33 billion in refunds”.
In Greece, as in America and Britain, the ordinary people have been told they must repay the debts of the rich and powerful who incurred the debts. Jobs, pensions and public services are to be slashed and burned, with privateers in charge. For the European Union and the IMF, the opportunity presents to “change the culture” and dismantle the social welfare of Greece, just as the IMF and the World Bank have “structurally adjusted” (impoverished and controlled) countries across the developing world.
Greece is hated for the same reason Yugoslavia had to be physically destroyed behind a pretence of protecting the people of Kosovo. Most Greeks are employed by the state, and the young and the unions comprise a popular alliance that has not been pacified; the colonels’ tanks on the campus of Athens University remain a political spectre. Such resistance is anathema to Europe’s central bankers and regarded as an obstruction to German capital’s need to capture markets in the aftermath of Germany’s troubled reunification.
In Britain, such has been the 30-year propaganda of an extreme economic theory known first as monetarism then as neo-liberalism, that the new prime minister can, like his predecessor, describe his demands that ordinary people pay the debts of crooks as “fiscally responsible”. The unmentionables are poverty and class. Almost a third of British children remain below the breadline. In working class Kentish Town in London, male life expectancy is 70. Two miles away, in Hampstead, it is 80. When Russia was subjected to similar “shock therapy” in the 1990s, life expectancy nosedived. A record 40 million impoverished Americans are currently receiving food stamps: that is, they cannot afford to feed themselves.
In the developing world, a system of triage imposed by the World Bank and the IMF has long determined whether people live or die. Whenever tariffs and food and fuel subsidies are eliminated by IMF diktat, small farmers know they have been declared expendable. The World Resources Institute estimates that the toll reaches 13-18 million child deaths every year. “This,” wrote the economist Lester C. Thurow, “is neither metaphor nor simile of war, but war itself.”
The same imperial forces have used horrific military weapons against stricken countries whose majorities are children, and approved torture as an instrument of foreign policy. It is a phenomenon of denial that none of these assaults on humanity, in which Britain is actively engaged, was allowed to intrude on the British election.
The people on the streets of Athens do not suffer this malaise. They are clear who the enemy is and they regard themselves as once again under foreign occupation. And once again, they are rising up, with courage. When David Cameron begins to cleave £6 billion from public services in Britain, he will be bargaining that Greece will not happen in Britain. We should prove him wrong.                    

Today I want to say something about essence and personality. It sounds very simple: personality is everything that is borrowed – taken from the outside, essence is what we are born with – what is really our own. This really is only an outline, just in order to give people the idea of it. I was looking up one of Mr. Gurdjieff‘s old lectures, and particularly one that he gave at the Prieuré in 1923 on this same subject of essence and personality. There he took essence and spoke about it from an aspect that is not usual, and one that we probably have not seen written about in any books. He made the distinction that personality is everything that we think, and that essence can really only be studied in our emotional life. He also said there that personality has really only one instrument – only one centre – and that is what we call the ‘formatory apparatus.’ But although essence is deeper than personality, and nearer to what we ourselves really are, it is for the most part something very rough and uneducated, and its reactions are not disciplined. So that very often when with our personality we know we should behave in a certain way, or that we should like someone, then if our essence does not like that person, it is able to produce actions that our own personality does not approve at all. So that although it can be said that essence is more sincere than personality, it is less fit for ordinary life; it requires to be educated, and really nothing has ever been done to educate it. All education has been lavished on the personality.

I remember that I heard that lecture in 1923. We were never able to ask Gurdjieff any questions about his lectures and he never would allow us to speak about them, or try to understand them by discussing them together – we just had to listen as well as we could to a very, very bad translation, either by a Russian who did not know English, or an Englishman who knew very little Russian. Therefore, when he said something quite unexpected or bewildering of that sort, we just had to put up with it. I say it was unexpected and bewildering, because what Ouspensky had been saying in London – from where we had all come to the Prieuré – was quite a different idea; we felt that essence was something good and ‘high class’ – that anything that came from the essence was estimable and suddenly to be confronted with the idea that essence was just an uncouth kind of animal was certainly disconcerting to us. It is not very difficult to understand, in theory, about personality. We can see that it is a fact that the content of our different brains – or different centres – has come, almost entirely from what we have experienced since we were born. And what is more, it has come almost entirely from what we have seen, and heard, and touched, and tasted and so on – in other words through our senses. And in fact, when people begin to observe themselves they can recognise some of the content of their personality grouped round some of their habitual experiences. They can recognise also that the personality is not ‘one’, but that it has many ‘I’s, many habits, many values and interests and so on. They can even see, to some extent, where these originated. But that does not mean that they are able to observe personality. And it does not mean at all that they have really understood what personality is. I can say, speaking from my own experience of nearly forty years, that it is just eleven years ago that I really was able to see what is personality. I had studied and been very interested in this division of personality and essence, and had practised self-observation, had been in groups and so on, for all that time. I say this to you because I very seldom see any people here who have seen their personality. And therefore, when you talk about ‘personality,’ you are really only talking of various features of personality, or some of the content of personality. The reason for that is quite simple. That is that you live in your personality the whole time, and even when by chance, or by some shock or accident, something else is awakened in you, you do not realise that what has happened is that you have been separated from your personality. As soon as you begin to think about what has happened, you are back in your personality again. This I say to you – without any shadow of doubt – that none of you can think with any instrument but personality.

It is just not possible that any of you can think with your essence. You may be able to have other experiences with your essence – but not to think. That is one fact with which we have to reckon – that whenever we think, we think only with our personality and not with anything else, and whatever we think about, and whatever thoughts we have, it is still the same. That is really the meaning of what Gurdjieff said, that to all intents and purposes the personality is the formatory apparatus and the formatory apparatus is the personality. This really makes a very big difficulty and obstacle in work, because what matters to us is that something should awaken and grow in the essence. I must say once again that very often people make the mistake of supposing that something is happening in their essence just because they are thinking about, or feeling about some unusual, strange kind of experience. It is like someone going to a picture-gallery: you may see poor pictures, or you may see very good pictures, or very great paintings, but the eyes that look at the poor pictures and the eyes that look at the very great paintings are the same eyes. Because you are able to recognise a difference and say: ‘This is great, fine work, that is poor, feeble or imitated work’ it does not mean that you really see, but simply that you know what is the difference. And it is much, much more than that for our inner experience, because all our inner experience we still see through our personality. Whether we think about it, or whether we feel about it, whatever we may do – it is still our personality that does it. What Gurdjieff said about the essence being a quite uncouth, uneducated animal, is quite true – and it is true for all, because that is the first, or primary condition of the essence. And this, of course, is something that you see in the exercises that we do when, if the personality can stop, then the essence itself begins to produce our manifestations. Sometimes people are astonished at their own or other people’s manifestations. They wonder: ‘What does this come from?’, but it really comes just from that, that they have begun to uncover their essence, and that is what the essence is like. This is nothing new, or strange; as I said, I have heard Gurdjieff say this same thing thirty-four years ago. Of course it does not mean that all the essence is like that.

The difference between essence and personality above all consists in this, that the essence has different depths in it, and all that is touched in the first instance is really this part of the essence in which we have our quite undisciplined and really unconscious impulses and desires. With some people, of course, the uncovering of the essence is a very slow process because the personality is well entrenched, and therefore it is some time before they observe it. Speaking for myself, it was eleven years before I really saw the difference between the essence and the personality. I saw only this and no more the quite false, artificial mask, and underneath just that: an undisciplined and unconscious animal. The difference, certainly, between the way that we followed then – with all the help that some of us were able to receive – and the way that most of you are now following, is that whereas it took me eleven years, it may happen to you in eleven weeks; there is such a big difference in the speed with which things can happen to people. But there is really no difference in what happens to you when you become aware of the separation of essence and personality – in whatever way you may become aware of it. Somehow or other the personality has to become passive, it has to surrender the initiative that it has really quite wrongly usurped and which it holds on to tenaciously. But even if there is this separation, it does not mean that people can really see what it means, or see the personality; because, for example, they may only experience the new life that has come into their essence. When the personality is made to surrender the initiative, it is possible for some life to enter into the essence. Instead of being – as it is in nearly all people – almost extinct, almost dead – not dead but almost dead. Really what is called ‘suspended animation’ describes this state – it is like a parched, dried seed that may continue to have the possibility of life for a very long time but is not alive. When moisture enters into it, then it begins to have some life and everything is quite different for it. It is the same when it is possible for some life to flow into our essence. Of course, you have, also heard many times that what is wrong with the ordinary state of man in this world is that his essence has lost its birthright and that another has taken it – as in the story of Jacob and Esau. The personality has usurped what is really the birthright of the essence – to be the centre of our consciousness and the source of our initiative, the seat of life in us. All that has been let go. As far as can be, the personality has taken it, because the personality cannot really take what belongs to the essence, but can only rob it. So people everywhere – and we also – live in that situation so that, all the time, the initiative, the centre of experience, the consciousness, are in personality. What is lacking is life, because personality cannot have this. So that personality has only a seeming life – something that looks like life – and real life remains suspended, because there is no one to take it. You have heard all that, of course; but how to verify and experience it? That is the question. Some of you who have had many, many years of experience of Gurdjieff’s work, have tried, and followed, various exercises and tasks that really have as their aim to make it possible for a man to be for a certain time in the world – the outer life – and yet not to be identified with his personality – not lost in his personality. A little can be achieved in that way. How little it is you really only can know when the real separation has come in you. All that can be done by various efforts of attention, by various exercises and practises, is to bring about a little detachment. That, in itself, is a great blessing, because it brings a real sense of freedom and makes one very much less vulnerable and weak in all kinds of outer-life situations. But it has one great disadvantage; that all the time the effort has to be directed to keeping separated from the personality, and no force remains over for the correction of what needs to be corrected in the essence itself, and it is hardly even possible to see the essence, or to be aware of what is required in the essence. So really, at the best, this can only be called a half-measure.

It is necessary, if something radical and permanent is to be changed in us, that the change should be in our essence, and that really means the education of the essence. But we cannot reach the essence from the personality. There are various laborious ways by which the correction of the essence can be brought about by very persistent behaviour according to a certain pattern or a certain rule. So that, for example, if – for some reason that it considers powerful for it – the personality imposes on itself a discipline that corresponds to what there ought to be in a person with a normally awakened essence, then it is possible that this will in time begin to bring about an education of the essence. But the really normal, right way for the education of the essence to be achieved, is that it should begin from birth. The education of the essence is really a task of childhood. And if the essence has not been educated by the age of nine or ten years old it is very, very difficult for it to receive education later because it is hardly possible to reach it any longer except by very persistent, continually repeated actions, which finally can pass through the personality and begin to affect the essence. I must say, it has struck me very much in the last few weeks when reading literally hundreds of letters that I have been receiving from people from all over the country, that the majority of them simply ask for peace of mind, or something to hold on to, some consolation or something like that. In all these letters I see the same thing: a sick personality, unable to help a sick essence. And no-one can help, They have tried and it is of course possible – to act on the essence by violent means, such as giving people electric shocks and so on, which act directly on the essence and not through the personality, but it is a barbarous way of trying to bring education into the unfortunate essence. You picture to yourself what kind of education that is! Without any understanding in the essence of why it is receiving this brutal treatment – without any understanding of what is required of it – it is simply given a succession of shocks, and if by chance it happens that something works a little bit better from that, it is considered a very great achievement, But, although these kind of cases are very numerous in the letters that I have been reading, there are also many cases of people with different sicknesses, where it is clear that these sicknesses really have as their cause this wrong condition of the essence – a condition of very great strain between the essence and the personality. But although all those are really very pitiable, they do not differ very much from what is called the normal state of man. The only difference is that there is not such a visible, palpable state of tension between the essence and the personality, and people are able to continue to exist without realising that underneath this personality there is something quite wild and quite uneducated. In order to be normal it is necessary that this part of us which at present is really so ignorant and so unprepared for life should become the master – should become the ruler of our life – and that the personality which is so well-behaved, so educated, so clever and so on, should give up its hold and allow itself to become the instrument, and servant of the other. Naturally, people think that this is just an absurd suggestion, and many people are quite revolted by the very idea of such a thing happening. And so long as they think in terms only of the ordinary social relationships between people, they are really quite right. Because it is a big thing, to have the whole of one’s inner balance reversed, to change from life that comes from outside and is dominated by every external thing to a life that comes from inside and that does not depend upon and is not vulnerable to external things – it is as much as this that is involved in the change from the centre of gravity in the personality to the centre of gravity in the essence. But if this is not achieved, then the whole of this work is really only playing – it is really only painting over the surface.

If our work continues to be – as it is in so many people – only work in the personality, it can at the very most only lead to a somewhat more comfortable existence for a certain time. What I must say to you about this, so that really there can be no misunderstanding, is that if one wishes to come to real being – to real inner freedom – there has to be a very big change in us. It is almost impossible for the personality to relinquish its hold on the initiative voluntarily – to surrender that initiative to a part it does not understand and does not trust; that is the essence. And, of course, the work only begins with this separation, because there is the whole of the primary, basic education of the essence to come. And only when the primary education is completed so that the essence is able to live as a normal being – but really only like a school-child – that the essence itself can begin to move to another stage. The second stage of the awakening-development of the essence is really something completely different from this ordinary education that should take place in children between birth and eight or nine years old. If it is achieved, that someone comes to the point where they really have an essence that is eight or nine years old, they are already quite, quite different from ordinary people, because they are real live beings and that essence will not only not die when the body dies, but it will remain conscious and able to continue consciously on its way; like a child of eight or nine if it has been properly educated. But, of course, at eight or nine years old, a child is still very, very far from being able to manage its own life or understand anything just beyond discreet behaviour.

A whole stage of experience and education has to come when the child prepares to go out of the family into the world, which will last for another ten, twelve, or fourteen years. It is the same with the essence; it also has to become accustomed to living with other beings, and not only to be dependent upon what is equivalent in our inner life to the relationship between a child and its parents. There is, in our own essence all that can develop in that way. But it is only when the essence is grown-up that life really begins in earnest for it. That is the third stage; but by that time it is really necessary that the relationship between essence and personality should have been altogether and permanently reversed, so that the personality can no longer have the initiative, and does not require constant watching in order to keep the initiative away from it. Because it is impossible for the essence to do what is required of it in face of its really great responsibilities if all the time it has to put its attention to watching what should really be no more than an instrument for its automatic reactions. So that really, by that time, it is necessary that personality should be like something dead. And it really has to be like dead, because only something which is dead will be quite passive in relation to the hand that uses it. So that by the time the essence is fully grown and has reached mature age, it starts on the third stage of its development in life and the world. The personality, by then, must have died and no longer must any initiative remain in it. It in only then that it becomes quite clear for the essence that the personality is just a shell that has no more connection with one’s real being than one’s own clothes. If you come back to our own ordinary situation, you must see that it is entirely different from that. It is hardly possible for us even to picture for ourselves a situation in which the personality is dead. Such a state must appear just like complete death because there is nothing else that is able to have any initiative; because we know of nothing except thinking and feeling and all the habitual activities of our body. We know no other existence – or hardly any other – and therefore the cessation of our ordinary existence seems like death. There is the death that is simply the destruction of an instrument; but there is death of another kind that is possible here when life is withdrawn from the instrument, which continues to be usable as an instrument and is not wholly destroyed. That is really what is possible for man in the third stage of the development of his essence. Then although this personality has died, it is possible for that personality to be absorbed into the essence and to have its life in the essence, but it must die before it can come to that. In speaking about essence and personality today, what I particularly wanted was to remind you and if necessary again and again – that the separation of essence and personality by one’s own voluntary effort of attention with the help of specially devised exercises is something very precarious and – as many of you have verified – it enables one only to hold oneself apart from the personality without being able to be conscious of the essence which is in the background. If you have If you have ever seen this for yourselves, then you must remember that and get more and more accustomed to the idea that what is necessary for all of us is that there should be such a separation so that the work in the essence can really go forward. And this essence of ours – in which all our hopes really lie – should begin to come to life. But it will not come to life as a completely grown-up, well-behaved, well-educated person like the personality. It comes to life in a strange kind of way, something like the picture of a little child inside a bear. The bear is big and strong, and very rough and wild, with no manners; the little child is inside, but cannot manage the bear. That is how you may begin to feel when you begin to waken in that way. And you realise that somehow or another that bear has got to be changed; bear, or tiger, or horse, or dog, or weasel, or whatever the wild animal may be. If you begin to feel and see all this in yourself and really have begun to recognise and know something of the uneducatedness and of the unpreparedness for life of your own essence, then you have seen a great deal – much more than most people see even after many years of work. I remember how, eleven year’s ago, during the journey from London to the coast, at four o’clock in the morning – all the way down on that journey – I really saw, and never lost this realisation of who was who and what was what in me. This is exactly the same as many of you have seen in these exercises. They are really a blessing that cannot be measured, just only because they make it possible for people to know what is essence, what is personality, what is the condition of the essence and what is the condition of the personality. And I think that many of you have really begun to see that our thinking – all our thinking – is something that is in personality alone; and that we have never had the experience of essence-thinking, or any idea what essence-thinking could possibly be, because essence-thinking really only belongs to the third stage, the adulthood of the essence.

The essence-child really cannot think, even as much as the personality-child appears to be able to think. And therefore one must not forget, all the time, in everything, that whenever we think it is our personality that thinks and it cannot be anything else; and however necessary it may be that the personality should think about its own problems, it cannot think about the essence.

Sciatica - diagram from Wikipeadia

This is the key – my not listening to my body.

In fact, if I view this situation from a Work perspective, the sciatica, instead of being a useless pain, could be useful as a powerful sensation reminding factor. I remember when I first came across the idea that sensation was the anchor, the platform, the foundation of awareness of oneself, I thought I found the key to my tan tien, my centre. Up to the discovery of sensation as an anchor for attention I visualised where my centre was. Informed by my Tai Chi teacher the centre, the tan tien was about  3 inches below my belly button and about an inch or two in towards my spine. I tried to direct my attention by visualising the surface of my body. With the discovery of sensation as an anchor things changed. I theorised that if I can place my attention on my body, or a part of it and at the same time carry on doing what I normally do, I have the beginnings of separation between “I” and “me”. The attention is divided between sensation and what I am doing. (Check out a development of this idea in my post Kites and Consciousness.)

I went about trying to find means of remembering my tan tien, my centre while watching and counting my breath using the sensation of cold incoming breath and warm outgoing breath through my nose. This was the simple Buddhist meditation of counting the breath. I scratched the spot where the tan tien should be on the surface of my body gently, I even put tiger balm on the area because the heat generated would draw my attention there. I thought I’d figured out why some monks wore hair shirts. It reminds them that they have a body and not to just squat in their minds.

Tan Tien

Did it work?

I gained a sense of my centre but this was also due to the growing sensation of my whole body. It was easier to remember the tiger balmed spot and it was the heat of the balm that drew my attention.

My sciatica has freed me from the need of a hair shirt or tiger balmed strategic spots. Sciatica has given me the “gift” of pain sensation in my lower back and leg and attending to it with awareness of my breath – I type or eat or drive as needed. The pain is there when inflammation fires up but my awareness of it is not. Reacting and feeling the pain is not being aware of it – the pain leads and my mind follows.

If I can build a floor, a stable point of attention in my body I will have the beginnings of separation.

Why the need for separation between the body and awareness?

Why the need to say I see through my eyes not with them; I hear through my ears not with them; I sense through my pain but not with it?

Without that separation “I” am not here, there’s just a happening, an event but no observer.

I wish to be present to what is happening and if what is happening is witnessed within the mind-body then I witness through this mind-body.

So, who am I? Who is the Observer? The Witness?

I’m looking at the process of writing this down and it has opened up a little river of opportunity. Action … it seems acting (doing something) sets up its own dynamic in a super structure sense. The action into the unknown allows another higher order world that shows signs on the crossroads. The GPS here is set to the inner satellite orbiting one’s heart. Obviously the muscle pumping blood around the body hasn’t got a Latter Day Sputnik bipping around it. The heart I speak of is that part of ourselves which tastes truth and sees through the onion layered worlds we live in. Sees through? Yes, like a prehistoric insect sees through amber before it solidifies.

One of my greatest “heroes” is a guy called Gurdjieff. Someone wrote that the Fourth Way which Gurdjieff brought to the West was a method of making the real – super real. In fact, it is practical surrealism. So now I want to practically surrealise some of my dreams. Using the template of power-in-action through visualisation, various projects were able to be given a material existence (like the Cultural Stomp and the Flotillas of Hope). It is not “me” who did it, or who does it. In fact, my job as a person with heart is to move out of the way so that the forces attempting to make whatever needs to happen, happen.

I remember one time when the Flotillas of Hope project was white hot in its birthing. Two websites had already manifested, as well as a satellite phone and 2 boats. An art auction was about to happen in Sydney, where we raised over $8,000, and I get this call from a guy heavily involved in the Socialist Alliance.

 He says, “Stavros, this is big. How the fuck are you managing this – where’s your committee?”

I laughed and told him that if he knew the truth he wouldn’t want to work with me because he’d think I was absolutely crazy. Really crazy! He pleaded with me to tell him the truth.

So I told him,”My job is to just keep the fire burning while aligning myself to the Kabbalistic Tree of Life using the astrological chart of the project as the foundation.”

Tree of Life - another aspect from Z'ev ben Shimon Halevi's "Adam and the Kabbalistic Tree", Rider, London 1974

 He went quiet. I added, “I am just focussing on the vision – the image of us sailing to Nauru and the focus is the fire.” 

 He replied slowly as if it pained him to hear something like that, “B-u-l-l-s-h-i-t !!”

I laughed and told him that it was true and if it was all bullshit, how did he explain the manifestation of boats, websites, satellite phones, art auctions, crews, inverters etc etc that are here in the real world? He didn’t ask me again how I was managing .

I’m trying to get out of the way so that what is most necessary at this time comes to fruition. Who knows, it may be a book, a million dollars, a shop with hidden treasures or a beautiful garden. It may be the birth of another grand child, or my recently planted grapevine bearing fruit this coming year.

Having a shed allows me to play and tinker to my heart’s delight. At the very least, I want to have made my scaled down Great Pyramid to experiment with to see if Pyramid Power is real, my very own Orgone Accumulator and a simple Dream Machine within a year or so.

I suppose to gain a born again virgin soul is really to regain the innocence of a child. We were all once children, so innocent and then experience came in and made us fall from that state of grace. This is so beautifully expressed in William Blake’s  ”Songs of Innocence and Experience”.

William Blake's Frontispiece for "Songs of Innocence and Experience"

The Divine Image   by William Blake                                      

The Divine Image

Image via Wikipedia

Jack’s eyes reflected the light of the lamp. It seemed like a tiny bowl of light emanating to the edge of darkness that was his head.

“Here have some apple, ” he said reaching out for a piece of the fruit.

“Thanks. I still reckon that you should leave dreams – what you call ideals, for sleeping with and face the real world,” Jack said.

Angelo crossed his legs as he bit into the apple. He was young with an old forehead. His mouth curled at the ends into a smile, even when he wasn’t smiling.

“Look, you can’t tell me that this star shape within the apple doesn’t make you wonder?” said Angelo.

“What star shape – I can’t see stars in apples, or any fruit. Here you go again, projecting dreams onto the surface of things. What star?”

“When I cut the apple in half,” Angelo picks up another apple from the glass bowl, a green granny smith. He pointed to the apple’s equator with the knife tip, then slowly scruntched a cut leaving two halves. Angelo pointed to the centre of one half and said, “Look, see the five pointed star at its core, see the seeds within each of the star’s hands.”

“What of it?” Jack shrugged.

“Well, doesn’t it seem strange to you that there’s a star within the fruit that fell on Newton’s head showing him and all of us that everything – the stars, the planets and all the moons are all falling?”

Jack doesn’t say a word. He stares at the apple.

“Doesn’t it seem strange to you that it is the same fruit that was the cause of the fall of humanity? Our ancestors fell from Heaven to Earth by taking one bite of the fruit that has a star within it – the apple.”

Angelo took another bite of the apple.

Jack’s eyes reflected the light of the lamp. It was a tiny bowl  of light emanating to the edge of his apple and to the darkness that was his head.  His five senses were now five points of a star as his tongue freshened with apple taste.

Please sign the following petition below and we may find that he has all his funds frozen. With any luck he may even be charged with corruption.

==============================================================

Dear friends,

Mubarak may have stolen $70 billion from Egyptians — one third of their national income! The new Egyptian government is calling on the world to get it back. Sign the emergency petition for world leaders to immediately freeze his assets before the funds disappear, and then forward this message!

Egypt’s people have forced Mubarak out, but he may take unimaginable wealth out with him. Estimates of his stolen fortune range as high as $70 billion, more than a third of the annual Egyptian national income!

The new government is calling on the world to immediately freeze his assets in foreign banks, and a new UN Convention requires that stolen funds be returned to the country. Switzerland has already frozen his finances, and some EU leaders have offered to help — but only a massive outcry will get all governments to stop the Mubarak billions from vanishing into a maze of obscure bank accounts.

The G20 finance ministers meet this weekend — that gives us 4 days to call on leaders to freeze the accounts and ensure that Egypt’s money is returned to the people. If we reach 500,000 signatures by Friday, the petition will be delivered in Paris — sign now and spread the word!

http://www.avaaz.org/en/freeze_mubaraks_stolen_fortune/?vl

Millions of Egyptians live on less than $2US per day — yet experts say that corruption costs Egypt more than $6 billion in public money per year. The Mubaraks themselves have benefited massively from a web of business deals, crony-capitalist privatization schemes, and state-guaranteed investments throughout Mubarak’s 30 years as president. Estimates of their wealth run from a “mere” $2-3 billion to the staggering $70 billion figure, which would make Hosni Mubarak the world’s richest man. And 25 senior government officials are already under investigation for amassing fortunes while serving under him.

But the days may finally be over when corrupt rulers can escape with their fortunes intact. The new United Nations Convention Against Corruption explicitly calls for the return of corruptly-gained assets to the countries of origin, and Egypt’s military government has already asked European Union governments to freeze Mubarak’s fortune. The key question now is whether action will come fast enough: all the laws in the world won’t help if the Mubarak billions are shuffled out of sight before authorities can seize them.

Our voices as citizens can help the people of Egypt make good on the promise of their revolution. Join the call for Egyptian wealth to go back to the people of Egypt:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/freeze_mubaraks_stolen_fortune/?vl

As millions of Egyptians risked — and even gave — their lives for democracy, there was little that we around the world could do beyond send our hopes and solidarity. But now, in the aftermath of Mubarak’s ouster, we have a special responsibility: to ensure that our banks do not profit from the corruption of Mubarak’s government, and to do our utmost to restore the national property stolen by a dictatorship that our own governments tolerated for far too long. The people of Egypt are ready now to build a new nation. Let’s play our part to see to it that they regain the resources that were once taken from them, as they create the future that few dared to dream possible.

With hope,

Ben, Alex, Ricken, Mia, Rewan, David, and the whole Avaaz team

SOURCES

Washington Post: “Egyptians focus their attention on recovering the nation’s money”
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/12/AR2011021203767.html

Egypt’s Mubarak Likely to Retain Vast Wealth; Mubarak Family May Have as Much as $70 Billion Stashed Away, Experts Estimate
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/egypt-mubarak-family-accumulated-wealth-days-military/story?id=12821073

Seize Money Stolen by Mubarak and Return it to Egypt
http://www.aljazeerah.info/Opinion%20Editorials/2011/February/15%20o/Seize%20Money%20Stolen%20by%20Mubarak%20and%20Return%20it%20to%20Egypt%20By%20Paul%20Dunk.htm

EU looking to freeze assets of Egyptian regime
http://euobserver.com/?aid=31805

The United Nations Convention Against Corruption
http://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/treaties/CAC/convention-highlights.html#Asset_recovery

Support the Avaaz community! We’re entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way — donate here.

That’s a fair question.

Dodona is one of the oldest oracles in Greece, located near Yannina, Greece. I was born in a small village, Anatoli (which means East) about 10 kms from Dodona.

Dodona - the oldest oracle in Greece.

It is here that Zeus speaks through the rustling of oak leaves and doves (pigeons) fly across the sky leaving message trails that punctuate Zeus’ rustling words. The word dodona in my web address is thus connected with my place of birth and its oracular history, since my interests are mantic in nature and this blog expresses some of them.

The triple 7 is interesting from a number of different angles. Whilst I’m aware of the popular meme “666″ as the number of the Beast and its associations with the Dark Side I don’t believe this. In many ways 666 can be seen as Cosmic Life with 6 the Hebrew letter vav being life force on Earth in Humanity and the Heavens  6, 6, 6. However my name stavros has 7 letters and when I searched the net for the significance of 777 this is what appeared:

By the way – I did not consider all the many meanings and symbolism of 777 when I used the number in my email and blog address….but it does make interesting reading – one wonders whether 111, 222, 333, 444, 555, 888, 999 would also come up with as many meanings .

Symbolic Properties of the number 777

“This number joins together the principles of the man, 700, the cosmic plans, 70, and their image in the Archetype, 7, according to R. Allendy. It is the universal organization, 7 + 7 + 7 = 21, the general evolution. Represent the celestial perfection, 7, on the 3 plans of the manifestation: matter, astral (mental or soul) and spirit. It is the number of the sacred work of the sons of God for the establishment of the Kingdom of God on the Earth, mainly for the period of the seventh millennium after Adam where it is written that Satan will be chained for thousand years.

In esotericism, 777 means that virgin spirits (those to which God gave the life with the mission to rise towards the Creator, until to absorb themselves again in Him) will know 777 incarnations during seven revolutions that the wave of life accomplishes around the seven globes of the seven world periods. The symbolism of this number is therefore the ascension of the soul through the physical body. According to the tradition of Himalayan masters, 777 is the number of the celestial man and symbolizes the transmutation which takes place at the time where the man becomes conscious of the necessity to cover the path of initiation, and that he perceives, even of an elementary manner, that the goal is in God. The purity – does not father and is not fathered.

Bible Age of Lamech, father of Noah, when he died. In the posterity of Seth, Lamech is the last patriarch before the flood. (Gn 5,31) The book of the Genesis contains 777+777-21 or 1553 verses.

General question, in the Secret Doctrine of H.-P. Blavatsky, to solve “the problem of the 777 incarnations”.

If seven is the number of cycles and of the divine numbers, in it resides also the secret of the 777 incarnations of the man that should be taken care to not interpret as being the totality of incarnations of the man on earth, but that it should rather be reported to what the humanity must one day realize.

In a study on this number, H.S. Green sees there the triple evolution of Manas, Buddhi and Atma – “The number 777″, in “The Theosophist”, London, n. 9, 1909, p. 326. Raoul Auclair points out that when the Virgin Mary appears in Cova da Iria in Portugal, on August 13, 1385, this country was then 777 years old. And 532 years later, that is to say on May 13, 1917, took place the first appearance of Fatima. In an Ethiopian apocryphal book, named “The Wisdom of Sibyl”, it is written in conclusion of the book: “End the prophecy of the Sibyl. Praise to the Lord, Master of the world. Amen! That the Lord, eternally, makes you mercy. The Sibyl saw nine suns; each space of time is 778 years; the ninth is 777. The cycles of the Sibyl are 800 or 700; each is 800 years. There are 49 cycles of Ezra; each one counts 143 years. The cycles of Enoch are 10 and each cycle is 700 years. The Days of the Lord are 7; for us there are 2548000 days.” By making the calculation, this cycle of the nine suns lasts 7001 years: 8 cycles of 778 years = 6224 years 1 cycle of 777 years = 777 years Total = 7001 years And the 2548000 days of the Sibyl have a duration of 7000 years minus 7000 days.

The document “the celestial sanctum” in the order the Rosicrucian A.M.O.R.C., titles also the “liber 777″.

In Korea, in one of the speeches of the reverend Moon, this one declared to have already proceeded to the blessing of 777 couples.

Gematria The Christ said: “I am the resurrection”. In Greek, resurrection is written “h anastasiV”, numbering 777 = 8+1+50+1+200+300+1+200+10+6.

In the first verse of the Bible, it is written: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” (Gn 1,1) This verse consists of 7 Hebrew words and 28 letters, and it also counts three names: God, heavens and earth. The sum of the numerical values of each one gives 777: God = 86, paradise = 395 and earth = 296, where 86+395+296 = 777. Written in Hebrew, “Orthodox Messiah”, gives 777: he, mem, shin, yod, heth, daleth, taw and yod, giving 5+40+300+10+8+4+400+10 = 777. Written in Hebrew, “YHWH in the YESHUA Messiah”, gives 777: yod, he, waw, he, beth, yod, shin, waw, ayin, he, mem, shin, yod and heth, giving 10+5+6+5+2+10+300+6+70+5+40+300+10+8 = 777. Written in Hebrew, “YESHUA saves”, gives 777: yod, shin, waw, ayin, he, waw, shin, yod and ayin, giving 10+300+6+70+5+6+300+10+70 = 777. By using the ASCII table, we find that the French word “EXORCISTES” (exorcists) gives 777. The numerical value of the Hebrew word NMLA IVMM, meaning “filled with light”, gives 777.

Occurrence The number 777 is used 1 time in the Bible. The word priest is used 777 times in the Bible.”

Franz Anton Mesmer

So, which was he? A man way ahead of his contemporaries and that was why he was misunderstood? A con man seeking fame and fortune using chicanery and fake rituals to make money out of his hapless victims? Or something completely different, something that our categories cannot box in…. Between God and Devil?

What I found interesting in this book is the idea that there is a psychosomatic continuum – a life force that is both in the body and mind and that this force is magnetic in nature. Magnetic? Visions of iron filings stuck like fine hair on a magnet, two small magnets repelling each other because they turned their faces to each other, moving a needle across the page with a magnet under it, making it seem that the needle moved on its own accord. This is magnetic from my experience. So, what does it mean that humans at core are magnetic beings? Why, when someone as well meaning as Mesmer, tries to tell people about this force and how to use it for good, do they get persecuted, at times burnt, hung and poisoned? The deeds of Mesmer were witnessed by all the power holders of the day – the academies, the politicians and royalty. Everyone who witnessed the actions had their own interpretations. This was more than seeing glass of water as half empty, half full. This was seeing clear water or poison.

Something similar happened to Wilhelm Reich in the 20th Century. He was another life force explorer who was treated as a quack outsider. I know that the life force exists. Reich called it orgone, Reichenbach called it od, ancient Chinese called it chi or qi, Indians – prana, Polynesians – mana. It is real and it can be “used” eg Acupuncture and Kahuna healing / magic.

Wilhelm Reich

What is this magnetic core within humans which extends outwards from the physical frame? What is this magnetism which is connected in some mysterious way to planetary forces? Has it something to do with Sheldrake‘s “morphic resonance”? Is it a more coarse aspect of the astral body?

Why is it when someone wishes to explore this life force and makes some very useful discoveries which can benefit humanity, they get incarcerated and treated as insane? Has it something to do with the medical – industrial – pharmaceutical – academic establishment that does not want to consider another alternative perspective? Is it because this different way of looking at things may make their dollar making / status hierarchy obsolete? I think it is this and far more.

Check out the links above and I will write another post about this later.

stavr0s

 A month after leaving Mount Athos in Greece (May, 2000) I arrived in Damascus, Syria. I left my bag in the hotel and found my way to the Jordan Embassy. I needed a visa to get across the border to Jordan and I arrived five minutes late. The embassy officer was adamant that I had to return the next day before 11.00AM. I was frustrated and irritated but I decided that rather than give vent to my negativity I’d just walk in any direction to see what happened.

I walked streets with only Arabic signs and scripts.

My travel guide book gave the street names in English only. I walked by houses with concrete veneers and gardens on terraces, vines entwining telephone polls and wires across a lane making an arch of leaves, palm trees swaying in the dry breeze rooted in concrete pavements, lurid red and blue posters of the latest film shows on billboards and walls. I kept walking sensing the Syrian sun on my face and discovering I had no marker, no point of direction back to my hotel.

I was lost in the streets of Damascus.

There were flashes of deja vu, definite sensations and feelings that I had been there before – a familiarity on the tip of the tongue. Maybe I was here in a previous life. I was lost in a place that felt like a long forgotten home. My stomach rumbled and I saw a restaurant with vats and tables outside on the street. I went in and found a seat at a table with four other men, one much older sat beside me. He began speaking to me in Arabic. When I replied, “Yunan, English” meaning Greek or English he spoke even louder so that others from tables nearby turned their heads towards us. I repeated, “La (no) Arabic – Yunan (Greek), English” pointing to my mouth. The old man had a short white beard that seemed to brighten when he shook his head. The others around our table stared at me.

I said, “I’m Australian – Australos – English or Greek – Yunan.”

A few tables away a man with a black moustache called out, “You from Australia?”

I said, “Yes”.

“Then why this?” He pointed to his face and drew a circle around it in the air and then pointed at me. Shrugging his shoulders he extended his arms in front of him.

He was saying in hand talk, “How come you look Syrian but claim to be Australian?”

I said, cradling an imaginary baby in my arms, “Baba, Yunanistan,” then I made my fingers walk in the air saying, “Australia.” I went to Australia as a baby from Greece. The others in the restaurant, even the owner were watching this exchange. They smiled and the man who asked the questions said, “Hey, I come and be with you.”

He was in his late thirties, slim with a certain earnestness about him as he walked towards my table. He squeezed between the two men sitting opposite me. By now his presence had made my table invisible again.

He said, “You from Australia? I know a little English.” I told him about my trip from Greece via Turkey, to Egypt and that I’d be leaving very soon for Jordan.

He asked,

“Where are you going now?”

“The old souq (market). I have lost my way and stopped to eat here.”

“Ah, good. I’m going to a library and the souq is on the way. I will show you where to go.”

There was a certain radiance about him, as if there was a tiny grain of the sun burning in his chest. He nodded, “I understand much better in English than I speak.” Something in the way he said “understand” touched me.

For no apparent reason I said, “One of my wishes while travelling through your land is to meet someone who is wise in the way of the Sufi,” I paused and in the silence I added, “I visited Rumi’s tomb in Konya, Turkey, how I dearly wish to visit Ibn Arabi’s tomb in Syria.”

“You know Ibn Arabi?” he asked surprised, “you know of our saints?”

“Yes, only a very little. I have read about Ibn Arabi in English. What little I know of him has touched my heart. I wish to pay him my respects.”

He said, “Come, let’s go. I want to take you to a special place, a surprise place for you.”

There was this instant trust between us. As we walked under a concrete bridge near a busy intersection he said, “You’re not a tourist just going click, click, click with a camera. You know something of my culture. Islam?”

The way he said “Islam” prompted me to reply, “I’m a Christian and I believe that all religions speak of one truth but in different tongues and styles. I’m searching for truth and anywhere I can find it I value it.”

“I will take you to Ibn Arabi’s tomb.”

“What here in Damascus?”

“Yes, just around the corner. You must not speak. Just copy everything I do. You look Syrian, only your tongue gives you away.”

I wondered why I had to pretend to be Syrian and not speak when we arrived at the saint’s tomb. I figured that it was a very small price to pay – to be silent. We passed some men sitting on wooden boxes playing backgammon on a small table. One of the players smiled at me revealing a toothless mouth. The streets of Damascus are mostly narrow and crooked. Saint Paul lived on Straight Street near where we were. We turned a corner going down a narrow lane and finally arrived at a small door in a stone wall of a mosque. As we entered we  climbed down some narrow stairs that lead to a silver cage enclosing a small tomb. It looked like a big beautiful bird cage on the floor.

Others already there were prostrating on their knees and lifting their torsos up while silently moving their lips to prayer. My friend indicated that I stay beside him and as he went down on his knees I copied his movements. I bowed and touched the floor near Ibn Arabi’s body. I was amazed that I was there in front of his tomb, a tomb that has been there for hundreds of years.

Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi (1165 – 1240) was at the centre of an extraordinary flourishing and cross fertilization of Jewish, Christian and Islamic thought in the Moorish culture of Andalusian Spain. He was a Spanish mystic who had a huge and subtle influence on both East and West. In his early childhood he was recognized and taught by two women saints, Yasmin of Marchena and Fatima of Cordoba. Dante’s “Divine Comedy” was influenced by Ibn Arabi’s work.

 As I looked through the cage, the more I saw, the less I knew. Who am I? Why am I here? I smelt a delicate fragrance in the swirls of prayer around me. After about a quarter of an hour we arose and left. While climbing the stairs I took one final look at the small tomb of a great man. I felt my own smallness and my own limitations as a “man”. Somehow, even though his body had lay there for so long I felt something emanating from the space that contained Ibn Arabi’s remains. I wondered whether it was his own emanations that remained there or if the people who came to offer their respects and prayers left “soul stuff” that gradually accreted over the years so that one could feel a palpable presence in this small space. Maybe it was both and was it the same in other sacred places?

Mahmoud told me that it was Ibn Arabi’s special mission to scatter Sufi seeds onto diverse contemporary fields of learning accepted by the people so that they would come to recognise the One Love behind everything.

 “Now, let us go to the special place I promised I will show you,” Mahmoud said with a grin.

“I thought Ibn Arabi’s tomb was the special place.”

“Yes, it is special and this other place is special in a different way. I won’t go to the library today, it can wait. I will spend time with you.”

I was curious as to what special place he had in mind. As we walked we mentioned various authors and books to each other and we were amazed that we recognised each other’s references. The theme was the search for truth and the miraculous. I was excited by the prospect of meeting a Damascus local who may have contact with people who understood the inner essence of Islam and who could sense or know the same essence in Christianity.

After a while he said, “You know that Christians, Moslems and Jews are cousins? Abraham was our common ancestor, our common source.”

We were at the large courtyard of the Omayyad Mosque. Mahmoud said,”It is interesting that this mosque was built on land that was sacred before Mohammed. It was used as a place of worship 3,000 years ago by the ancient Syrians. Then it was a pagan temple for Jupiter during the Roman era. Then it was… no, wait for the surprise.”

Omayyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria

 We walked on beautiful geometric patterned tiles. These patterns were repeated on some of the façade and walls. The doors also had hand carved patterns that looked like they were lifted from crystal reflections. I felt as if I walked into a world of lattices, a net of lines, a web of relationships numerical in kind and geometric in shape. I took my shoes off and entered the main door. Inside was a cavernous space, Mahmoud pointed out a section of the wall with mosaic panels made of coloured and gilded glass. He told me that all the walls were decorated like this centuries ago. The prayer hall had a small domed shrine near where we stood.

Approaching the shrine, Mahmoud said, “This is the surprise. The shrine contains St John the Baptist’s head and maybe his body!” Surrounding the shrine were Moslem people bowing and praying. I asked, ”Why the prayers for St John the Baptist? Why is his tomb here in a mosque?” Mahmoud delighted, said, ”Yes, I knew it would surprise you. This place of worship many centuries ago had divine services for both Christians and Moslems. The Christians worshipped in one half of the space and Moslems worshipped in the other half. Together Christians and Moslems worshipped under this same roof.”

 I paid my respects to St John the Baptist, this time crossing myself the Greek Orthodox way. No one took exception to me for doing so and as we left I felt a real connection between our two faiths. Mahmoud explained to me that Jesus was a prophet and Mary his mother was revered in Islam. He told me that St John the Baptist was revered by Moslems as a saint. Mahmoud was right, this place was a special place and that it would surprise me. He invited me to his home which meant that we had to catch one of the many small service taxis (mini buses) that were everywhere on Damascus roads. Road rules didn’t seem to count here as our bus swerved in and out of lanes with no indication and turned corners without slowing down. While our bodies moved this way and that in concert with the bus I was curious as to how Mahmoud would take my experience at Rumi’s tomb in Konya, Turkey.

I said, “While I was visiting Rumi’s tomb I felt that I could only pay my respects as an Orthodox Christian but could only do this in a hidden way. I couldn’t externally pray like the Moslems around because I’m not Moslem and at the same time I couldn’t pray as a Christian outwardly because I did not want to offend those around me. So I held my hands together in front of me and inwardly I imagined my right hand making the shape of a cross. In my faith, the thumb stands for the Father, the index for the Son and the next finger, the Holy Spirit – the Holy Trinity. My ring finger curled into my palm signifies the divine nature of Christ and the little finger is the human nature.” I showed him the tripod of fingertips and my curling fingers. I continued, “So, in a manner of speaking my hand reflects the whole of my faith. I move my right hand with the thumb and my first two fingers joined together. Firstly to my forehead, then to my belly, then to the right of my heart and then to the left of my heart – three times. I did this inwardly while silently chanting a prayer. Outwardly I was standing with my head bowed and hands together but inwardly I was actively praying in the Christian way. Tell me Mahmoud, did I do the right thing for Rumi?”

We jolted forward as the bus swerved around another corner. Mahmoud said, “My friend it is obvious to me that your intentions were pure. You were in pure heart and so whatever you do in such a state is pure. You can do what you will and it would not be wrong because of your state of mind and heart. So, you did the right thing.” He stopped and looked at me eye ball to eye ball.

“By the way,” he said,”did you know that Sufis, the People of the Path are also called esoteric Christians?”

“No,” I said, “What of our cousins the Jews?”

“Rabbi Jesus is also revered by Jews in touch with the hidden stream.” He smiled and gently touched my hand, “You and I are seekers of truth and as such we are not caught in the literal meanings of scripture and sacred texts. It is these literal, fundamental meanings, dogmas that create misunderstanding between our religions and ways of being in the world.”

I couldn’t agree more but this didn’t mean that individual and unique differences that make up a particular set of beliefs were obliterated. No, it seems to me that seeking the essential truth behind the formal, literal truths was a way of freeing one self from narrow mindedness and the razor wire of fundamentalism. And I don’t just mean religious. To name a few – scientific, economic, political, psychological, philosophical, artistic ….in fact, name an activity and it can be done and thought of in a fundamentalist way.

Mahmoud lived in one of the many concrete and cement apartments in down town Damascus, right under the arc traced by missiles from Israel. He was very lucky he told me because he had a ground floor apartment with some earth for plants. A wooden door from the street set in a large wall was the entrance to his home.

He introduced me to his wife and two daughters, his father and mother and his brother as “Stavros from Australia”. His wife Jamil brought some tea in glass tumblers and sat next to me. She said, “Pleased to meet you and welcome. I want to show you a book. I am learning English.” I was touched by the effort she put in saying this to me in English.

We were sitting around a wooden table in the enclosed area behind the wall facing the street. Mahmoud pointed to a fountain and pool, the size of a bathtub on our right . He said,”I and my brother made this fountain.” It was made of cement with inlaid patterns of shells, coral and pebbles. The shape was more like a cumulus cloud than rigid lines of concrete blocks. The water spouted from a bowl in the centre while the spirals, circles, squares and triangles of the fountain’s container looked on with mosaic eyes. I walked over to it and admired the detail of their work.

Meanwhile Mahmoud’s father, mother and brother brought cucumbers, tomatoes, shallots, radishes, cheese, bread and boiled eggs to the table. Soon after, falafals, humous, fried eggplant, cinnamon beans and dips were added to the table. Everybody sat around the table with the young girls at one corner each. We each had a plate on which we placed what we wanted from the dishes before us. Everybody was interested in this stranger from the other side of the planet – Australia. In my shoulder bag I carried postcards of Australia to give to new friends. I pulled some out and passed them around – pictures of kangaroos, koalas, Sydney Opera House, Uluru and Sydney Harbour Bridge. Everybody recognised the kangaroos.

Jamil brought over a book on the English language. She was studying English on her own using this book and some tapes. Her husband Mahmoud helped when he could but he was not fluent in English either. She said,” Please, may I read and you tell me if sounds true? Please?” She read some dialogue between two people. One was asking for directions and the other answered. The only thing missing in her delivery was confidence.

As I sat there with this Syrian family I thought about philoxenia, “Friend of the Stranger” the Greek word for “hospitality” which in the original denotes something sacred and more open than “hospitality”. It is mentioned in Homer’s “The Odyssey” where Odysseus experienced philoxenia often in his travels. My new friends expressed philoxenia in such a way that it brought tears to my eyes. I was a stranger in their midst and they offered me friendship, food and comfort. A bond grew between us that had its strength our common humanity and the fact that everyone is a stranger away from home. Mahmoud and his brother asked me what hotel I was staying at and then phoned for a taxi to take me there.

While waiting for the taxi Mahmoud said, “I want you to have this.” In his hand were some worry beads. I showed him the worry beads my uncle gave me in Greece. The Greek ones I had were more solid and heavier with round beads. Mahmoud’s were smaller and the beads were like long brown rice grains. We compared them.

He smiled, “Well you now have Syrian worries to keep your Greek ones company!”

Mahmoud and his brother rode with me to my hotel in the taxi. They would not allow me to pay for the fare. They just wanted to make sure that I was taken to the right place.

In Damascus, Syria, I found true philoxenia not xenophobia. Now I had a paper boat from the Holy Mountain and a set of worry beads from the Middle East to take with me back to Australia. I put these in a special bag where I kept other special things like hand made amulets, pellets of rose incense, a smooth stone from Dodona, crystals, a small wooden cross from Jerusalem, a tiny rock from Mt Sinai, a stone from an Aboriginal Elder in Australia and some holy oil from a small monastery of nuns near the birthplace of my father in Greece. The bag, made of an old Turkish rug remnant was wrapped in a scarf from Bethlehem, along with the Chinese “Book of Changes” – the I Ching and tarot cards. These four items were my psychic technology backup, just knowing they were there helped me. The last item to be put into my special bag was the frayed remainder of the Southern Cross flag that flew on Eureka. It was placed on top of the other things soon after we left South Bellona Reef on our way to Nauru.

My Spiritual Kit Bag with psychic technological backups, to be used in case of emergency sailing to Nauru!

A  few days later I visited Palmyra, about 100 miles east of Damascus, near the border of Iraq. Palmyra has the best preserved Roman ruins in the world. The stone buildings all have a rose tint and you feel like you are entering a Roman city with rose tinted sunglasses on. 

Here’s a picture or two of what I saw. Another time, another story.

Palmyra, Syria. That little taxi takes you everywhere.