Rose does more healing work

Rose had another appointment with Ethel, the dentist, this evening. As before, she was away two and a half hours. It turned out that she had spent a long time “tapping” one of the members of Ethel’s family.

Rose is getting known around here for working with this relatively unknown method of healing, and I am very glad to see it. Last evening she was at the house of Ethel’s grandfather, who had found himself unable to stand, and unable to use his right arm. He’s over eighty years old now. Anyway, after two or three rounds of tapping, he stood up, declared himself recovered and walked about. This morning his daughter Siling (Ethel’s mother) was very pleasantly surprised when she visited.

So this evening Rose was asked to tap for Seth, Ethel’s brother, the black sheep of the family I suppose you could call him. Seth has been addicted for a while to shabu (speed, meth, ice). Because of this, his wife has left him and he has had to return to live with his father. Rose was tapping Seth for the grief at the loss of his wife, and the shame he felt at have become addicted, being unable to forgive himself. These feelings were somewhat relieved. Rose has only had the one little session with him, and addictions of any kind normally take quite a lot of work even with EFT. It may be that Rose will be have some more sessions with Seth in the near future.

EFT uses the energy meridian points as used in acupuncture, but no needles are used. Instead, a selection of points are tapped with the finger ends, while repeating phrases connected with the problem being treated. The art in EFT lies mainly with finding out the phrases which work best, and these are usually phrases connected with emotional trauma of one kind and another; though sometimes a condition will rapidly resolve itself, even if long-standing, in just a few minutes of routine tapping. More often it takes several rounds of tapping and some inspired guesswork by the tapper. The principal website, www.emofree.com, is a treasure trove of inspiring success stories. In our experience, the great thing about EFT is that anyone with a modicum of common sense can learn to use it, either on themselves or on others.

For an account of some of my own experience using EFT on myself (heart problems), go to my April archives and scroll down almost to the bottom - "EFT, the Magic Technique".

Mishandling the Koran

There are so many reports in the media that "abuse" of the Koran by American guards at Guantanamo have generated "protests worldwide".

This is something I don't understand. How can people get worked up over the fate of a book? It's not as though there weren't plenty of copies left in good shape. If someone told me that my favourite book was a load of shit, I don't think I would be very much bothered, just disappointed that whoever it was was unable to appreciate it. If he appeared sincere, I would try to find out what bothered him about it; if not, it wouldn't be worth discussing.

Do any readers of this blog have any explanations they can offer me? Would they get agitated if for example the Bible was "abused", and if so, why?

If someone becomes uncomfortable when their holy book is disparaged, I interpret that as showing their lack of confidence in the religion that book is supposed to support. If one has to have the support of a book in order to maintain faith, that faith must be very weak - second-hand faith, in fact: not the kind that is going to move mountains, obviously.

Enrollment

It's the summer vacation time here now. School starts again in ten days. I have been trying to find the way forward with Claude's education. He wasn't getting on well the last year at school: frequent complaints from the teacher and from Claude himself. I have been thinking of homeschooling, but Rose couldn't help much, and I don't feel I have the stamina to keep it up. The main problem is, Claude is really too young for his grade, his birthday is right on the cusp of the school year.

Today chance took me to the nearest school and I checked it out, I quite liked it. Better than the one Claude attended last year, though that one has the best reputation. I decided to hell with reputations, the majority is often wrong.

At home, I floated the idea to Claude and Rose. There is yet another school (farther away but there's a school bus). It's a private school. After some discussion and me trying to feel what the gods were thinking, Rose and Claude piled into the tricycle and I pedalled us off to that school. We looked around it and spoke to the janitor who was there - all teaching staff were elsewhere. I liked it, so did Claude and Rose, and enrollment was proceeding at another site in town, so off we set again. Claude was enrolled at the school and I felt relieved and that I had made the right decision. We paid tuition fees and bought books.

A llittle later I took Rose to the dentist for a five o'clock appointment but it was after seven when she returned. The dentist is a young woman who used to be our next door neighbour, she's a careful and gentle girl and she has attended my teeth a couple of times, too. We were invited to the celebrations when she passed her Board Exam, her father was so delighted with his daughter.

Book Tag

Mostly fiction here
Thanks to Gabby for sending me this book tag.

1. Total number of books I’ve owned

Can’t be accurate about this, but there are about 800 books in our living room where I am writing, another 100 upstairs and about 100 in Claude’s and our bedrooms. When I came to this country I sold or gave away about 400, and have halved my book collection at least twice in the years before that, so probably at least 2000.

2. Last book I bought Is that the question? Must be “Lucid Living”, by Timothy Freke. I haven’t read it yet because it is still somewhere between UK and here, I bought it online. I was first turned on to Tim Freke’s writing by “The Jesus Mysteries” and “Jesus and the Lost Goddess”, which he wrote in collaboration with Peter Gandy, in which they set out a very convincing case for Jesus having been a mythical god-man having so many things in common with other mythical god-men such as Dionysus (Greece), Osiris (Egypt), Adonis (Syria), Attis (Asia Minor), Marduk (Mesopotamia), Mithras (Persia), Baal (Judea). They show Paul as a Gnostic master and the early Christians as Jewish Gnostics, and show Jesus as a man after my own heart – “… a free-thinker who breaks the rules, embraces society’s outsiders and ridicules the ecclesiastical authorities for their ignorance.” Hear that, Benedict XVI?
3. I am presently reading “The Future of the Body” an amazing, gigantic book by Michael Murphy. This is a book everyone interested in the possibilities of being human should read. It’s not one of those books one reads from cover to cover then puts back on the shelf for someone else. I keep dipping into it from time to time. Last book I finished was “The Field”, by Lynne McTaggart, detailing scientific research into the Life Force that animates us.
4. Five books that mean something to me:

a) Dr. Zhivago (Boris Pasternak). My paperback copy is falling to pieces from much use (in the photo, bottom, fourth from left). It’s the ending that gets me by the gut – when Tanya the laundry girl tells her story and the whole huge sweep of the Russian country is brought to mind again, the atmosphere of the country after the revolution intensely evoked. And then, the way Lara is cast aside and forgotten as a mere incidental shows us how transient our little lives are, however turbulent and dramatic they may have seemed at the time. I believe Dr. Zhivago is one of literature’s great masterpieces.

b) Another Russian book, “War and Peace” by Lev Tolstoy. My copy of this book, too, in two volumes, is worn from many re-readings (also in the photo, bottom right). What can one say about such a great work? I have tried to follow the progress of the war in my atlas, and there are some sites on the web that give pictures of the battle sites (or one of them at least).

c) Zechariah Sitchin’s series “The Earth Chronicles”. Want a well-researched account of how we got here on this planet? Try this, if you find current “scientific” or creationist accounts unconvincing.

d) Nancy Friday’s “My Secret Garden”. This book showed me there really were women interested in sex – I mean, actively interested,. with their minds as well as their bodies. So heartening to me at the time I read it, and I still look in it sometimes.

e) Joseph Conrad’s “Lord Jim” (in the photo, top shelf, seventh from right). Set in the tropics, not so very far from where I live now, and written with a love for and intimate knowledge of the sea and ships.

f) I’m flouting the rules here, but I must mention “Zen in the Art of Archery” (Eugen Herrigel). I bought this book in London on the way home from work one day, I was so enthralled I took my bike into Hyde Park, sat down on a bench and read the whole book before continuing my journey home. I have read it many times since, even had two copies once, one to lend to others..

For personal reasons, I am not tagging others just now. Hope you’ll excuse me, Gabby! And by the way, I liked “A Hundred Years of Solitude” that you just bought, somewhat surreal and reminded me of Kafka in that way. I like surreal stuff – something that “War and Peace” is not.

Beautiful females at the Bread Mix Cafe

Crossroads at the Bread Mix cafe


The Bread Mix Cafe

Yesterday Rose, Claude and I went into town to the Bread Mix café to have breakfast with Pete and Jessa, long time friends of ours. It had been a long time since we saw them; Pete has been in USA for several months doing real-estate business.

Pete invariably looks happy and lively, even as he’s telling you of the latest skin cancer removal he’s had. I was so glad to see him. He had brought with him his beautiful wife, beautiful daughter (aged seven or so) and her little friend and an even more beautiful niece of his wife’s. This girl, whose name I didn’t catch, is I think the most beautiful teenager I have EVER seen. I felt awkward as I didn’t seem able to stop looking at her, and she was quite willing to maintain steady eye contact with me and even smile. Her image is there in my mind and won’t go away (not that I want it to). I have met her elder sister, who is also beautiful but not quite so strikingly so.

We sat in the café for a long time, ordering more bits of this and that, chatting and sipping coffee or coke. The walls are glass, and I enjoy watching the traffic go by, the café is on the corner of the busiest intersection in town; most of the traffic is “pedicabs”, pedal-driven tricycles that will carry two people comfortably if they aren’t too fat, but are often made to carry a great deal more. The drivers of these tricycles are mostly poor but vigorous men with interesting faces. The road running past the café is the only north-south land route in the country and carries many long distance buses and trucks, besides the local traffic. I have posted a couple of photos of the location, but I missed the opportunity for a shot of the beautiful girl as I didn’t have my camera with me.

Bold, vigorous music

Try this link for bold, vigorous music! Click on "lo-fi".

under-age sex - is it wrong?

I read an article about a former Gym teacher jailed for sex with a fifteen-year-old. Sure, she broke the law; but my sympathies were with her, and her young lover. I wish that I as a fifteen-year-old had had an opportunity for sex with a good-looking gym teacher. It would have done a lot for my self-confidence later in life. Laws like this don't feel right to me.
I would love to know what readers think of this issue. Am I alone in this?