Manna from heaven is assumed in a materially based world to mean physical food. I have trawled the recipe books, from Ramsey to Ronay, Blumenthal to Craddock and all stops in between and there is none for manna. Different people posit different ideas: herbs, esoteric foodstuffs, specific pastries and sweets but all are barking up the wrong tree.
You see, manna is a description of learning, it is the amalgamation of knowledge and experience and that is the true foodstuff of heaven or the gods or whichever cosmology you subscribe to. To learn is all, to become a greater being as a result of one’s learning and the application of what one has learned is the greatest pleasure accessible to any of us.
Learn something new all of the time. Look at those things you are familiar toward with new eyes. Imagine you were a stranger in a strange land, imagine you were the pilot of a UFO stopped here temporarily to refuel or whatever they make temporary stops for.
See your life through different eyes, grow and change, become something bigger and better than you are already. That is manna, manna from heaven.
Perhaps one of the strangest phenomena of the Internet is the idea of hooking up with people you’d otherwise be unlikely to meet. So to all of those who have added me to their friends list and the blog to their fave list, thanks, I appreciate it in some strange way and hope that somewhere in the blog there’s something for you.
I believe there is an interconnectedness between us all and that we each have some gift for each other. This works at many levels and it may be in a lesson, a look, even something as seemingly obtuse as brushing by one another in a crowd, but there are parts of us that remain open ended that need closure in order to form up into something greater than we currently are.
This is something that I consider to be at a spiritual level, not the faux fashionable find a guru stuff. The real grist to the mill of human existence and human purpose. We each have a destiny and each are the authors of our own portrait. The evidence argues strongly that we cannot do it - as in fulfil the design of that purpose - alone, we are beings that interact with the environment we discover ourselves to be a part of.
We are here to obtain knowledge and understanding of what we have previously never experienced. This is fundamental to the understanding of our situation which may only be developed and emancipated through intense study of self, via observation and self revelation.
The Universe is an arena of change, a place of metamorphosis. We shift between states as we evolve as spiritual entities. Our lives are a never ending sequence of shifts and alterations that reposition us in relation to the core issues of our existence. We do not die, we are not born; we are agents of consciousness within the Macroverse, we begin as lost children and we end up as the product of what we have gathered and woven together.
In 1841 Charles Mackay published Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Though its style may seem archaic to the modern reader, its content is utterly relevant, particularly in light of current events.
You may think what is happening at the moment is a new departure, yet such folly has been the stablemate of human culture and societies since the beginning. In recent times there is the Y2K fiasco, remember planes dropping out of the sky, nuclear power stations going into meltdown, the world’s computer network resetting itself to ‘0000′ and so on? The dot.com bubble, and the Ponzi or pyramid schemes that took Albania and parts of south eastern Europe to financial and political meltdown. Do the research and the list of gullible, duped and confidence tricked individuals is pretty extensive.
Why do I mention these things in this context? It’s very simple really, true development is something that occurs outside the corral of what is happening n the world at any given time. While world events may flavour your experience of the culture you are in, they must never drive your personal assembly or come to dominate what you think about or how you think. That is, of its nature a huge study in itself. Happiness, as I mentioned earlier, is not a matter of finance or acquisition of material possessions, yet somehow it has metamorphosed into contemporary shorthand for just that.
Charles Mackay refers to the following schemes, manias, delusions and scams:
The Mississippi scheme — The south-sea bubble — The tulipomania — The alchymists — Modern prophecies — Fortune-telling — The magnetisers — Influence of politics and religion on the hair and beard — The crusades — The witch mania — The slow poisoners — Haunted houses — Popular follies of great cities — Popular admiration of great thieves — Duels and ordeals — Relics
Each of which demonstrates the susceptibility that we all experience to a greater or lesser degree to a good yarn, a charismatic individual or plain and simple greed - by which I mean the perceiving of an opportunity to gain a greater return than is necessarily reasonable for whatever investment of whatever commodity one is prepared to make.
Some fifteen years ago I heard of an individual whom I knew by acquaintance with a somewhat chequered past making a living by ‘arranging’ mortgages for people who would otherwise have not been considered suitable candidates following the usual routes. These were things done on the QT, a nod’s as good as a wink, and no questions asked.
It transpires that around the developed world there was a growing network of Mr Fix-its undermining the financial stability of blue chip institutions and the, so called, Dogs of the Dow. Many of those institutions whose pedigree was considered beyond question are now wrecked upon the rocky coastline of the new topography that was being created by the Mr Fix-its and bag men.
If you’re adversely affected by all this, then commiserations. Remember you can’t take any of it with you and true happiness is not within the gift of the world’s economy. Houses built on shifting sands will always collapse, Ponzi and those of his parasitic inclination will always prevail for a short time while there is a gullible and uneducated constituency upon which they can prey and then others will have to rebuild the havoc they have wrought.
Surveying the happiness landscape, there is an obsession that grips a significant number of commentators on the subject and it is the money issue. Distilled into the question, can money buy happiness?
To anyone with more than just a passing interest in the state of human affairs it is abundantly clear that this is the most wide of the mark question it’s possible to pose in the endeavour to understand happiness. Happiness is a subjective quality, a diluted form of being that transcends misery but as an end in itself utterly futile. The desire to acquire or DTA is a primeval instinct that in our emancipated condition has no real place, it is something of an orphan in a developed society but more significantly for you and I in a developed individual.
Happiness is a perceived external condition that comes from the sense of fulfilment, satisfaction and integrity to purpose demonstrated by an individual. To do something because it makes you happy is not a worthy objective, being happy because you are doing something that is interconnected with a worthy objective is far more potent in terms of living a life of account.
This is where the Greek concept of eudaimonia is misinterpreted by seeing happiness through the veil of the twenty first century and a completely different set of sensibilities to those that persuaded and motivated the Greeks. When Aristotle says that the attainment of happiness is the ultimate expression of human life he does not mean dancing around in fields and singing like an extra in an MGM musical.
His happiness is to do with assimilating a higher purpose in one’s life, pursuing that and being filled by the well-being that gives rise to. A driven man is not always a happy man in the ‘happy clappy’ sense, but take away the drive and the struggle then is to find something purposeful to do. To experience this, try visiting a community where the industrial engine that was based there has moved on or simply ceased to exist.
An individual is a community in their own right, with many different components adding up to the whole that they are. Bereft of purpose the individual or community begins to lose its way.
The question about money and happiness in this context really is a nonsense and can only serve as a distraction to those whose enquiry is more than just a passing fancy.
My inbox is constantly inundated with spam originating from Uraguay. If you’re anything to do with this, do me a favour, switch off your machines, it’s just a little tedious and serves no purpose whatsoever.
It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. David Hume expressed it, beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them. (Moral and Political Essays, 1742).
As with happiness.
Happiness is ultimately a subjective state, a lattice held together and underpinned by those facets of the individual’s cognizance that assimilate with their beliefs about what they should derive happiness from.
Rubens painted voluptuous women that were perceived as the epitome of beauty in his age, while in the 1960s the elfin like figure of women/girls like Twiggy was eulogised as the acme of beauty.
None of it is true. None of it is untrue either. It is a matter of perception.
Subjective - that’s what we are. A man wins the lottery, he is happy, a woman loses her purse she is unhappy. We are influenced by things around us. We are like sheep herded by the dogs of cultural nuances. Whatever is happening in the world drives us, whatever the zeitgeist is colours what we think, feel and do.
Is this the totality of the human condition. Is this what we, as individuals, are obliged to engage with? Is this what you would choose to engage with?
The factors of this are simple enough. Yet they consume us as surely as though they were a monster. Let’s take a reality check here.
We are born. There is no choice in that, we are actuated by the actions of two people over whom we had no direct influence. We are born into a world that we had no part in creating, we enter it as an already up and running system. We did not create the Universe which upholds the planet we appear upon and we did not create the planet that sustains and supports our life. So we are born innocent, we are not culpable in any sense for where and how the world is or isn’t, what it may or may not be.
We grow and are educated by the world we find ourselves a part of against its criteria. We are given an education based upon cultural requirement. That education either ignores or does not deal with the most fundamental issues raised by our existence and, again like the sheep earlier, we are driven by the dogs of cultural imperative to the pens and enclosures that it wants us to occupy.
There is an old folk tale concerning the people of Hamelin in Germany who were plagued by a rat infestation. The legend tells that a man, a musician, turned up in the town claiming to have the ability to charm the rats and lead them away from the beleaguered town. He made a deal with the burghers of the town and cleared Hamelin of the rats. When the man claimed his payment the town’s leaders reneged upon the deal they had struck.
The man left the town and returned later whereupon he played his pipes and enchanted the children of the town, compelling them to follow him. He lead them into the mountains where the legend has it they entered a cave and were never seen again. Two children survived, one who was deaf and the other who was lame and unable to match the pace set by the piper.
The meaning and interpretation of this tale is fascinating in itself but the significant feature here is that the children became fascinated and enchanted by the tune that the piper played, they danced to his tune and followed him to a place of his choosing where he had them at his mercy.
Let’s shift the story and cast ourselves as the children and the world as the piper. Do you see how you dance to a tune that you never created? How you are fascinated and entranced by a world you never made? Is there anything wrong with this? No, of course not, but, the point here is that you are not in control of your own destiny.
You become the marionette of something else that pulls your strings and makes you dance to its tune. The question here for you concerns the nature and intention of that which holds your strings in its thrall.
I say this simply because we are in the midst of, according to whose media stream you drink from, the most severe economic crisis ever, cataclysm, doom and gloom and all the rest of it. If you are in the west or a wealthy nation, let’s talk turkey for a moment, you own too much, eat too much and are absorbed by a false sense of entitlement. It’s OK, that’s what the world wanted you to become and it’s what you became. How do you solve the problems of the world? It’s simple, you go shopping! (Excuse me, did I hear that right? That is actually the advice being given by certain world leaders at the moment)
We could all do with slowing down, gross consumption has made us fat fools and lazy incompetents, do I exclude myself from this? Of course not, I’m in the same culture as everyone else and therefore not immune to what ails it.
The lifebelt is this: whatever the economic system does, however the markets react, whatever the situation regarding your personal equity, the Universe goes on. It really doesn’t matter - yes, it has immediate worldly ramifications, absolutely, and if it’s your livelihood that’s threatened then you have already decided I’m an idiot - but in the bigger picture it is of little consequence other than to the life you give it by thinking about it. This is a man made problem that doesn’t exist except in a conceptual universe of notional profits and losses.
The Universe has invested in you and implores you to be true to your birthright as a human being rather than a wage slave. What is the one poignant thing about the rat race? It has to end, there is no such thing as a race that never ends - remember our ancestor in Hamelin who lead the rats away, he actually charmed them into the river where they all drowned. The only thing about the rat race is - it is run on a carousel so you never see the finish line and usually it’s too late, by the time you realise it the moment has passed, you have given your life to a fickle master that probably never even knew you existed.
Make your truths permanent, base yourself upon foundations that do not shift like the sands in a desert, whatever anyone tells you about finances, derivatives and so on, it is all nonsense, if everyone cashed in their chips the system would be exposed for the house of cards that it is. Confidence is the key, your confidence is better invested in the Universe whose ways are timeless and true, unchanging and constant.
Found this article from AP interesting, it’s all grist to the mill of happiness, background information, food for thought:
By Eric Gorski and Trevor Tompson, The Associated Press
An extensive survey by The Associated Press and MTV found that people aged 13 to 24 who describe themselves as very spiritual or religious tend to be happier than those who don’t.
When it comes to spirituality, American young people also are remarkably tolerant - nearly 7 in 10 say that while they follow their own religious or spiritual beliefs, others might be true as well.
On the whole, the poll found religion is a vital part of the lives of many American young people, although with significant pockets that attach little or no importance to faith.
Forty-four percent say religion and spirituality is at least very important to them, 21 percent responded it is somewhat important, 20 percent say it plays a small part in their lives and 14 percent say it doesn’t play any role.
Among races, African-Americans are most likely to describe religion as being the single most important thing in their lives. Females are slightly more religious than males, and the South is the most religious region, the survey said.
The poll’s mission was to figure out what makes young people happy. And it appears religion helps.
Eighty percent of those who call religion or spirituality the most important thing in their lives say they’re happy, while 60 percent of those who say faith isn’t important to them consider themselves happy.
“If you believe God is helping you, then everything else isn’t as important and you can trust that there’s somebody there for you no matter what,” said Molly Luksik, a 21-year-old ballet dancer in Chicago and a Roman Catholic who attends Mass weekly. “Just going to church and everything … it’s very calming, and everyone is nice.”
Sociologists have long drawn a connection between happiness and the sense of community inherent to most religious practice. Lisa Pearce, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina, said religion can indeed contribute to happiness, but she cautioned that the converse also can hold true.
“It’s easier for kids who are happy and have things going well in their life to find the time and energy to participate in religion,” said Pearce, co-principal investigator for the National Study of Youth and Religion. “It could be kids who have bad experiences in church end up leaving and being unhappy with religion.”
The poll also asked young people to choose between two statements about their views of other faiths.
Sixty-eight percent agree with the statement, “I follow my own religious and spiritual beliefs, but I think that other religious beliefs could be true as well.” Thirty-one percent choose, “I strongly believe that my religious beliefs are true and universal, and that other religious beliefs are not right.”
The latter statement is more likely to be the position of young teens 13 to 17 and those who attend religious services weekly.
However, tolerance is the rule overall. That doesn’t surprise the Rev. Paul Raushenbush, associate dean for religious life at Princeton University and author of “Teen Spirit: One World, Many Faiths.”
Young people eat lunch and play soccer with peers from other belief backgrounds, while adults tend to self-segregate with others of like mind, he said. Sweeping immigration reform in 1965 transformed America into the world’s most religiously diverse nation, and young people grew up with the second generation of the immigrant wave, he noted.
“This shows that it doesn’t require a lack of conviction in your own faith tradition to think someone else might have a similar type of conviction in their own,” Raushenbush said. “There is no sense of, ‘This diminishes my faith.’”
Traci Laichter, 14, went to Jewish preschool. Her grandparents are Holocaust survivors. Her family keeps kosher and displays a mezuzah - a little box holding verses from the Torah - on the door of their suburban Las Vegas home.
Her faith is strong and she believes it will last, but that doesn’t mean she thinks other faiths are devoid of truth.
“I believe whatever you believe is true to you and it really shouldn’t matter what other people think,” she said.
About 75 percent of those surveyed say God or a higher power has some impact on their happiness. At the same time, 90 percent believe happiness is at least partly under their own control.
“I think you do have control over how you are going to feel on a particular day,” said David Mueller of Lockport, N.Y., a 20-year-old college student who attends an evangelical Christian megachurch called The Chapel.
“When it comes to events in your whole life, it’s already somewhat laid out for you,” he said. “You can stray off to another path. But where God wants you to go, you are going to get there.”
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The AP-MTV poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks Inc. from April 16 to 23, and involved online interviews with 1,280 people aged 13 to 24. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
AP News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius contributed to this report.
What is the synthesis and distillation of all knowledge? What is the most profound thing you have ever heard?
Think about it for a moment…
Well, what did you come up with? Anything?
This, my friend, is the ultimate description of the human situation at this time, on this planet; it is contained in the words thou mayest. Two small, slightly archaic sounding words that sum up our lot in totality.
What, you might wonder, do I mean? Contained within thou mayest is the crook and the flail, the agony and the ecstasy because it brings into play those most potent concepts choice and responsibility.
Thou mayest fundamentally says, you can choose, you may select that with which you shall engage and, furthermore, have executive prerogative over how you react to those things.
In a word it is permission. Permission from the Universe, from Creation to go out there and explore, to be according to your own choices and inclinations. What follows is a matter of semantics but you are here and you are allowed to be and determine your own outcomes and your own path.
I could expand upon this at length but it is not necessary here. Simply have the thought, think about it, consider it, ponder the infinite and your place within it, give the permission your consideration and see whether you agree with it. After all, you have the choice…
How does it go? We stand in our own patch of diamonds but see it not…
Ever watch a dog chase its own tail? It’s great and the dog is usually oblivious to what it is doing, it gets so lost in the thrill or the passion of the chase.
Today I went for a walk with the head honcho, she who must be obeyed, the little woman, ‘er indoors. You know the person I mean, right? Well, we have a route that we take, down along the waterfront, along the jetty and out into the sea, it’s just under five miles there and back and we can crack along at some pace when we need to, it’s a real cobweb blaster, the negative ions of breaking waves, particularly when there’s a swell as there was today, and the salty breeze have a healing effect.
A huge ship was leaving the mouth of the river and heading out to sea, it looked modern as it had a very ‘of the moment’ feel to it, almost a stealth cargo ship, obviously designed to cut gracefully through the waves and weather whatever seas it might encounter. We sat on a bench on the breakwater and looked at the ship beginning its voyage. I don’t know if it was a coaster or about to cross an ocean but I fancied the thoughts of the seamen as they left the haven of the river and moved away from the land. I have ridden out storms at sea and know the joy of placing your feet back on firm ground, so I wondered about their collective experience, the combined encounters of the crew with the elements.
We were discussing the financial repercussions of the current economic situation, and how it might start to affect people’s habits and their spending patterns. We were considering how much sympathy members of the public might have for city high fliers who had for years traded the markets with other people’s money and paid themselves huge bonuses - we thought: not much. I explained that for every winner in the markets there has to be a loser, profit taking and successful trades by their nature mean someone else has taken a hit.
The markets are at once a complicated but also very simple place. The difficulty arises, as we are experiencing now, when all that hypothetical intrinsic value is suddenly exposed as worthless. Paper money, figures on computers but not ‘real’ in the tangible sense that a gold ingot is real or a treasure chest is real. This is when confidence wavers and the single most important element of the fiscal and commercial system that we currently enjoy/endure is confidence. Without confidence people will not invest, there is no speculation and the capital markets run dry. People become uneasy, they worry and they hold on to what they think they’ve got. The irrigation that cash flow provides to the economy is directly analogous to the need for water in agriculture.
So we looked at the ship and my best beloved said, “The ship of the financial markets, sailing on an ocean of misery.”
image: faith goble
