RANDOM SNIPPETS - NO 7 - Self Deluding Fibs

Everyday I wake up to a new aspect of bodily discomfort. This keeps me on my toes. I do what I can to ease my body from becoming too stiff or set. It is a battle I constantly lose the benefit of every night. I am just becoming better at applying a more effective balm to smooth the soreness. 

Through this is a way of side stepping the truth of bodily decay and decline, that we all do. We make it all appear safely manageable and contained. Then I can pretend it's not really happening. It's not that serious a concern. I'm not in the process of bodily decay, or even approaching dying. Because, I have so many things to do and to make. So long as I can remain productive, how could death even be close? 

And this is how our society thinks and behaves in relation to mortality, when all else fails distract yourself.  By not wanting any discomfort or mild inconvenience, that we don't already have a salve for, that we can purchase over the counter in a pharmacy, to make it disappear or diminish. There is, however, no medicine for our death, this is the blunt fact of our existential situation.

To an extent I am deluded. I am living and perpetrating a fib. Most delusions we tell ourselves, are fibs that we attempt to convince ourselves are true through repetition. That we can meditate ourselves into being Enlightened, or that reality is perfectible, that some things are permanent and will be eternally with us, that we can have whatever we desire, that oodles of money will bring us happiness. That I will not die for a while yet, is just one of those fibs we perpetrate and perpetuate. We like to cultivate a perception that we have all the time in the world, in which to thwart mortality for that little bit longer. These are the deceitful strategies by which we live. 

The extent to which I believe these deceptions varies. I know in theory that I cling to fundamentally incorrect expectations about the extent of my life span. Do I act in a way that demonstrates I've seen through these? Well, no, I do not. Though after the heart attack it has been much harder to maintain the blitheness of my ignorance. It's the sort of fib we unconsciously sustain, even though all the data is now well and truly in. You are gonna die brother.  

This is similar to the die hard MAGA supporter, who still believes Trump is sent from God, though it should be patently clear by now he never was any such thing. We cling to our fibs because admitting they are incorrect, will make our fragile ego look truly foolish indeed. Likewise, we may go to our deaths still trying to convince ourselves that this is just a little chest pain, that will soon go away. We shall all feel foolish when the moment of death arrives.

Taken from my Study Journal for April 18th & 19th, that has been edited and further adapted.

RANDOM SNIPPETS - No 6 - Chasing The Dream Of The Ideal Body

I do my resistance band exercises every other day. I am noticing, though initially done as a fitness thing to restore muscle mass, it can lean into being a project that has underneath it bulging muscles of vanity running through it. The ideal of having the perfect fit body, whatever you imagine that to be, can take over your much milder ambitions. If this obsession with physical appearance was allowed to grow further, it could become ever more unreal in its assessments. In what it makes of how you look, and what your ambitions for that perfect body appear to be. This may start with the laudable aim of being fitter and healthier, but leave you chasing the mythic dream of the ideal bodily form. And you do see these men on You Tube who are seventy, with the well toned body of a man thirty years younger. What you do not see is how much of their life they have devoted to this aim. And as a sixty eight year old man, obtaining, let alone maintaining, the perfect form with my aging physique, can only be called somewhat delusional. And it's a vanity that is unbecoming, if indulged in. Also, I have better things to do.

How you perceive your actual physical body, is always going to be, to a degree, distorted. Zeroing in and amplifying all those visible imperfections. We can so quickly stop seeing the real body before us with true honesty. We succumb to a disease of the imagination that perverts our perceptions. Fed by psychological insecurities and idiosyncrasies born from our vanity, plus the desire to bolster our self respect. So today, even a perfectly handsome young guy, who might see himself in the mirror as being undesirable, works hard in the gym to have the most attractive body. This attempt to compensate for the apparent 'defect' of feeling ordinary looking,  undoubtedly will make him feel better about himself. This is fine, should it stop at that. However, diseases of the imagination can lean into real eating phobias like anorexia and bulemia. I'd say, one could now add the skeletal 'Ozempic' body to that list. Also, at the other end of the spectrum are the sort of muscle bound bodies that have been so excessively pumped up by exercise, their muscle mass resembles clusters of over inflated beach balls, about to explode. These too, seem to me, to be fueled by a similar imaginative defect. Where perceptions of the physical body have become warped.

I'm aware of the need in myself to maintain some clearsightedness about my own physical body image. What I see this body to be, and what I imagine it could be. To apprehend ,appreciate and respect my physical appearance, simply as it is. Imperfect no doubt, when squeezed through the narrow perspective of an ideal. It should remain closely aligned with actuality. Grounded in a frank but humane realism of my advancing age. Do I want to leave behind a beautiful corpse or a beautiful life, when I die? 

An edited and further elaborated version of my Study Journal for the 7th February 2026

RANDOM SNIPPETS - No 5 - Weeping In The Ruins

'Discerning whether a desire is a healthy one to encourage, or not, is a life skill to be learnt. It's one that I find always requires my conscious practice, because I've yet to  master it. I notice in myself when a desire has become particularly sticky. When I ardently want something to happen, to buy something, to find something troubling me that won't go away. There is a subtle shift, when it flips from being a passing maybe pleasant thought, into this betrothed willed for thing. What then follows are the incumbent anxieties, stresses and strains derived from my yearning.  The weightiness of carrying this desire around with me, as though its a gall stone I cannot expell. 

And yet, as soon as I can release my grip, relax the need for something to happen, and breathe more with the ebb and flow of life. Then the mind turns that little bit looser and away from the tight control of destiny. I commit myself to further suffering through desperately clinging.  And yet, losing something I've grown fond of or loved, it can be painful. To grieve for what has now gone from your world, it is a saddening experience. These wounds can go deeper and sometimes can last longer than even my one little lifetime. As every time I visit an old monastic ruin, I'm reminded and once again lament for what has been lost. For in the ruins of our desires, of what remains, can be our grieving for centuries old unhealed wounds, but also for our wish to be at peace with them. I cling onto memories as I stand right in the midst of their ruins. And here as I'm weeping in the ruins of what was, I start the process of washing away the residue of accumulated pain, to set my desire for restoration to rest. To learn how to let this thing be.'

Taken and further adapted from my Morning Study Journal the 13th January 2026.

RANDOM SNIPPETS - No 4 - Battles With Oneself

In films today, when they show us a medieval battle scene, you see vast phalanxes of archers launching arrows into the air. Hundreds and hundreds of them fall upon the enemy lines in a lethal thunderstorm. This bares a similarity with how our mind operates. Hour by hour, minute by minute, second by second, assaulting ourselves with damaging self limiting thoughts, created by our mind. Constantly besieged by self generated attacks upon who or what we think we are. 

This is how the story we tell ourselves about ourselves can become such a debilitating thing. It swamps us, assaults us, unrelentingly all the time. Raining down at times, so intensely, we have to find some way of seeking shelter or relief from it. That's why we crave pleasure and distraction so much, to bring us some temporary relief from all the penetrating arrows of self-criticism, self-justifications, self-lacerating, self-imprisoning thoughts. 

There is an internal war going on, one which we tell ourselves we are constantly losing. We can end up feeling so embattled, so involved with just dealing with it, we never have the time to question what exactly is going on here, why can't we ever find any peace? Why is it we feel so hemmed in all the time? However, it is you who is perpetuating this phoney war, you who ends up fighting with yourself,  all the time. So it is you who can call a ceasefire, and you who can bring about that state of peace. You can bring to an end the whole 'battle scenario' anytime you like. 

It is, however, a characteristic of these internalised 'stories' about our self identity, that written into the story itself is one fundamental lie, a deception that tells you that 'You' cannot do that. That 'You' are uniquely incapable of stopping it.  Defeating the pernicious nature of that one untruth, is the first step anyone can take towards liberating themselves.  *

An edited and further adapted extract from my Morning Journal
Originally written 17th November 2025

* Though I've used this metaphor of arrows and being embattled to make a specific point, the idea of seeing one self through the lens of an armed conflict is ultimately not an ideal one. Something less defensive, more open hearted and kinder in tone is what I'd be looking for. 

RANDOM SNIPPETS - No 3 - Worshipping At The Temple Of Me

'Paradoxically, a running commentary actually distracts me from a deeper engagement with myself and the environment I am in. Whenever I am talking about myself, I am not being myself, I am re-membering then performatively re- presenting myself. I cannot be listening and commenting at the same time. When I am talking about anything, I cannot hear other people, understand other people, relate better with other people. 

When I am worshipping at the temple of me I cannot even sense, let alone respond to the presence of the true nature of reality, that is all around and unacknowledged within me. I drown it in a deluge of chatter, shallow observations, the grubby carapace of useless comment and vacuous analysis. Even though I might aspire to being a Buddhist, I talk far too much about the theory, the practice, the outcome or the lack of it, the goal or the non-goal, the moment or the non moment. Far more than I actually put the theory into action. 

Life is similar to a fleeting and ever moving feast. But if I live as though its a series of endless courses of junk food, that needs consuming quickly before the next one comes along. Then I will find no value in the rich flavour of the wind and the enlivening taste of dawn rising. Ending up so busy compiling a review in my head for my blog, to really notice what is actually there in front of me.' 

An edited and further adapted extract from my Morning Journal
Originally written 23rd September 2025

RANDOM SNIPPETS - No 2 - The Legacy Artwork

'This project I've launched myself upon, as most of my projects appear to do, has become larger and more unwieldy ( in my mind at least ) as the weeks go by. I do wonder why my creative projects always seem to develop in this way. They become a bit more than messages from my ego. This tendency towards the baroque and grandiose, could this be a symptom of frustrated creativity over reaching? Is this legacy making? That I'm not going to be leaving a legacy to the world via having children, so let's leave this absolutely gargantuan piece of artwork, too big to fit in most folks homes. And even though I will have undoubtedly put a lot of myself into it, this will probably be the first thing to be broken up and thrown on the bonfire, after I'm dead.'

An edited and further adapted extract from my Morning Journal
Originally written 19th June 2025

RANDOM SNIPPETS - No 1 - Mental Turbulence

'When spiritual teachings tell you - when all things around you seem insecure and ill at ease, just practice and don't comment. That's a great response, but not one I find easy to do. There is always a tendency to want to engage in the debate and the contention. And, as I have found to my cost, if you do respond from a place of fear and insecurity, that this will destabilise your inner world. All will become turbulent and murky. When anyone stomps around in a pond, all the sediment within it gets stirred up, and you can no longer see what lies at the bottom of it. - The same is true of the mind'.

An edited and further adapted extract from my Morning Journal
Originally written 15th September 2025