Zen For Cockneys


This post will comprise the first chapter of my upcoming book.  I still haven’t decided on a definite title yet, but it looks very likely to be “The Road To Nowhere“, with the sub-title “Paradise for the ungodly“.  I originally wanted to call the book “Zen For Cockneys“, the reason being that I wanted to aim it at ordinary down-to-earth people (like me), and cockneys* are generally regarded to be real “salt-of-the-earth” people.  I changed my mind in the end because I felt that potential readers might take the title literally and think it wasn’t for them if they were not cockney.  However, I have kept with the idea of a pocket-sized book that can be conveniently carried around; it’s something I’ve been thinking about for several years.

I have taken 20 parables that are mainly Zen in nature, but a few have their origins in Tao and Buddhism, and I have written them in my own words and interpreted them in accordance with my own understanding and influences.  I’m sure there will be many armchair philosophers out there thinking, “who does he think he is?”  “What a massive ego!”  But wait…

In line with my “salt-of-the-earth” theme, ordinary folk like me don’t want to be blinded by philosophical ramblings.  So, I came up with the idea of a small pocket-sized book of Zen-based parables written in a reader-friendly manner.  I may not be a fully realised soul, but I have experienced several tangible awakenings; a sort of step by step awakening over a number of years.  In other words, Zen has “happened” to me (which it does) so I feel able to unleash this book into the world in the knowledge that it comes from the heart.

Zen is not a belief system like other religions; Zen literally finds you, you are not required to believe anything.  Now, I’m not one for stealing other people’s words, but I can’t think of any better description of what it means to be a Zen person than the one used on many, many occasions by Osho.  He used to say you “drop” everything.  But to elaborate on that, it is not dropping as in something that you do as a conscious action.  It is the automatic dropping of things that no longer serve you; it happens, Zen finds you and it happens.  You suddenly find that things, which have always been a big part of your life, no longer have any use or meaning; they no longer serve you so you just automatically drop them without even giving it much thought.  This is the true meaning of renouncing and repenting.  It is not a forced thing, as in Western religion, that you do out of fear.  This is why so many Christians struggle; because they give up (renounce) things that they are not spiritually evolved enough to abstain from.  They indulge; then guilt takes hold and they feel that they have to repent their sins.  Nonsense!

Back in the 1980s I had a brief flirtation with the Financial Services Industry, and my old branch manager used to say that if you wanted financial advice, the last place you should go is to a bank.  Because they don’t want to give you sound financial advice, they only want to sell you their products.  The same can be said if you want spiritual guidance; the last place you should go is to the clergy/church.  They are only going to perpetuate the delusion; they are not going to tell you the truth, that you are powerful beyond your imagination.  They want to spin you a yarn; think about it… First the church tells you that you are a sinner.  Then its preachers tell you that if you blindly believe in their imaginary friend, you will be saved and attain eternal paradise in the future.  Now, read that last sentence again…

It’s going to happen in the future, not now.  “Now” is all we have, whereas “future” is nothing more than a series of thoughts in the mind.  When the future arrives it is not the future, it is NOW; this is why I referred to an imaginary friend, because the Christ that is pedalled by the church is a completely different Christ to the one who walked the earth.  The real Christ would have nothing to do with the church if he was here in flesh today (except maybe to tell it a few home truths). It is also no coincidence that the clergy refer to their churchgoers as a “flock”, because you literally have to be a sheep, follow the crowd, be everything that Christ wasn’t, be an Anti-Christ.  The real Christ was an agitator, an activist; he went against convention.  Hence, feathers were ruffled.  He did not advocate a God or deity that exists as an all-powerful entity, separate from the rest of creation; a God who was judgemental and angry.  His message was very Zen, it was all-embracing.  He spoke of our true nature of infinite consciousness, that “Ye are all Gods”, “the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”, not somewhere where we might be lucky enough to go to in the future if we are good.

To the church of the time he was a very dangerous man, and the establishment of today continue to use him and his name as the central character in a story that contains little, if any truth.  But organised religion is very clever (and I can only really speak for the UK here).  It is one of the richest, if not the most rich, organisation in the UK, but if there is a hole in the church roof they get YOU to pay for its repair!  You have to admit, it’s absolute bloody genius!

All the great souls who have ever graced the earth all carried the same message; YOU are Divine NOW; not in the future and not by blindly following religious dogma and doctrine.  The Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus etc; they all bucked the trend and all ruffled feathers.  If you take Jesus as a prime example and the church’s line that, “the messiah is coming”, what if he did come?  That would put the church into a bit of a predicament in that they wouldn’t be able to pedal the story of a future messiah.  In all likelihood he would be accused of blasphemy!

It goes without saying that there are many good Christians in the world, but it does not alter the fact that the story is simply not true, and that the church is nothing more than a tool used by the establishment to control people.  The paradox here is that it is only the ungodly that experience paradise (heaven), because until we drop all attachments to Gods, gurus and messiahs we will remain on the treadmill of birth and rebirth.

As you read the parables, you will gain a deeper understanding of Zen.  You will probably find that some of them overlap and that some messages are repeated, but this should not detract from what I hope will be an enjoyable reading experience for you.

Remember, you are unique, you were meant to shine, so don’t be a sheep.  Better to be one of the great unwashed than one of the great brainwashed.  Flourish sweet soul!

*Cockney – A Londoner specifically born within earshot of Bow Bells, the bells of St Mary-le-Bow in the Cheapside district of the City of London.

A Truly Delightful Soul – Part Two


It never fails to amaze me how things happen in this wonderful adventure we call life.  Within a day of me writing my last blog post, A Truly Delightful Soul, I received an insight; one that I already had but was ignoring.  I was reading (for the third time) an Osho book, entitled “Zen – The Path of Paradox”.  I was on the penultimate chapter when I received the aforementioned insight.  I had to laugh, because not only was this insight unashamedly brutal in its delivery, but it was 100% Zen to the core.  It was immediate, it took no prisoners and I was left in no doubt whatsoever that I was skating on thin ice if I was REALLY serious about this spirituality caper, but equally, and true to the paradoxical nature of Zen, it showed me that my experience had indeed served a relevant purpose.  I shall explain… But first, for the sake of continuity, I will post my previous article again below.

A Truly Delightful Soul

The plot continues to thicken with regard to my astral adventures. I have now had the pleasure of the company of a truly delightful female soul, not once, not twice… but three times! As usual, I have no clue what it is all about or what purpose it serves, but I have had much worse experiences in my life, I can tell you! Being an advocate of the teachings of Ramana Maharshi and Rupert Spira, I know that the development of attachments to relationships such as these will do my long-term spiritual growth no good whatsoever. However, it is also true that Zen teaches the importance of embracing the totality. So, if this experience has come my way in the last few months, I’m going to accept it.

At first, she seemed quite excitable and a bit too playful; to the extent that I was questioning it. But the two subsequent times we have astral travelled together she has been much more disciplined. I’m presuming that we know each other from way back, but I don’t honestly know. What I do know is that she is a really lovely and very affectionate soul. I’m looking forward to sharing more adventures with her, if that is how we are going to roll; in fact, I’m hoping that even as I type, she is perusing the astral travel brochures and planning our next trip!

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So… there I was people, knowing that embracing this kind of experience will do more to hinder me spiritually than to help me, but actually quite enjoying it; when the inevitable happened.  I would like to share here the full transcription of what I read, but if I do that I will be infringing copyright laws, so I’m going to use my own words and give you a condensed version.

It is said that when an individual is very close to enlightenment, that they may have visions pertaining to the particular pathway they have been following.  For example, a Christian may have visions of Christ or a Buddhist may have visions of Buddha.  The passage went on to say that a Hindu may start having visions of Krishna and the Gopis*, will then “fall in love” with the Gopis and forget Krishna.  There was also reference to the Zen master Hui Neng, who apparently said, “If you meet Buddha on the way, kill him immediately.  If you see the patriarch, Bodhidharma, on the way, kill him immediately

The above statements give us warning as to just how cunning the mind (ego) is.  Having such visions does nothing but perpetuate the illusion of duality.  The ego knows it’s on borrowed time and will do absolutely anything to prolong its illusory life; hence the spectacular visions to tempt us away from the inner reality.  Hui Neng’s instructions to, “kill Buddha immediately“, if we see him along the way, is our reminder that as long as we maintain attachments to Gods and gurus we are affirming the existence of the separate self and will remain on the treadmill of birth and rebirth.

But what a beautiful way for the totality to remind me of the importance of understanding this.  “Hmmmm, what shall I do?  I know, I’ll send Richard a delightful soul to remind him of the importance of not developing attachments to delightful souls”.  This is why I absolutely love the “pathless path” of paradox that is Zen.  The delightful soul may not have been in the form of a Buddha or a Krishna, but she was still representative of a separate self.  Also, just because the experience occurred astrally, it was still nothing more than a projection of consciousness.  What rises up out of consciousness must also dissolve into consciousness and is therefore ultimately an illusion.

The essence of Zen is simply letting go.  Our pathless journey is from No-thing-ness to No-thing-ness.  In the middle we pick up mind-constructed “stuff”.  Zen is simply giving up the mind-constructed stuff in order to realise the inner reality; that is in fact neither inner nor outer, but the ONLY reality.

*Gopis = The female cowherders who danced to Krishna’s flute in the Bhagavad Ghita.

An Hour & A Half; 90 Minutes Or A Lifetime? Part Two


As you would have gathered by the previous article the evening of April 3 wasn’t exactly a bundle of fun.  But to the writer, evenings such as this can be a God-send in the long-term because they inspire creativity.  With this in mind, it seemed like a great opportunity to give you further insight into the process of mediumship.  Also, a friend of mine in Slovenia had a number of queries (valid ones) that I shall endeavour to answer in the following few paragraphs.  I will also take the opportunity here to explode a few myths.

It’s a common misconception that mediums can just pluck information out of thin air, and are in constant communication with the realms of higher vibration.  Nothing, in fact, could be further from the truth.  Firstly, any decent medium will make sure they are closed as they go about their day-to-day business.  Believe me, you really don’t want it “there” all the time.  From time to time you do come across people who will tell you that they are in constant communication with their “guides” and who are always trying to shove some kind of hair-brained message down the throat of anyone who will listen.  If you come across this, in virtually every single case that person is simply communicating with lower energies who have attached themselves to them.  In a nutshell, if you have got a constant jabber, jabbering going on in your head or you are constantly having clairvoyant pictures flashing through your mind, then there is something seriously wrong.  A good medium will be disciplined and will know intuitively the difference between negative vibrations and vibrations of a pure nature.  A good medium will remain intuitively connected to the Divine and will not feel the need to show others how great they are by the constant churning out of messages.

Going back to April 3, there was a number of things going on in that room that made the evening one to forget, as far as the clairvoyance went.  But nonetheless, they give a good insight to the uninitiated as to how a demonstration of mediumship can be sabotaged.  There are certain conditions that you need in order for things to run smoothly.  If you have all of those things in place then you really are laughing, but you can get by normally by just having a few of them in place.  Firstly, in an ideal world your venue would have a really good energy, but as already stated, the energy in that pub was probably the most negative I have ever encountered.  Secondly, you would always hope that your audience are going to be warm and open to working with you.  Sadly, they were also probably the most negative audience I have ever encountered.  Thirdly, you need people to respond to you; you need the vibration of their voice.  When you just get blank stares it makes life nigh-on impossible.  It’s also not good when people sit with their arms folded when you speak to them.  The reason being that “who we really are” nestles within our heart centre.  The medium is in a heightened state of awareness and the info coming from the astral realms also has a higher vibration, so the sitter needs to be open-hearted so that the three-way link can be created; in other words, we actually communicate via the heart, so if you sit with your arms folded you are blocking the energy.  I remember going to one particularly grumpy old man sitting at the back, who sat arms folded and with a face like thunder all the time I was trying to work with him; and he was one of the more receptive ones.

Finally, you would also hope that no one brings their own negative entity attachments in with them.  Unfortunately, I had this to contend with as well.  Another man sitting at the back seemed to be constantly in communication with unseen forces himself.  When this happens it interferes with the medium’s link and makes things very difficult.  It got to the point where I couldn’t quite believe what was happening, but I saw it as a challenge and thought the best course of action was to hang in there and keep going.  You just have to work with what you have, it’s as simple as that.  But ideally, you would want a venue with good energy and an audience/congregation who are seeking some kind of spiritual enlightenment, as opposed to just wanting a message; which brings me onto my friend’s queries.

I was asked why I would be doing spiritual work in a pub, why there was teenage girls in the audience and why I felt that clairvoyance had nothing to do with spirituality.  So, for my friend in Slovenia and anyone else outside of the UK I will deal with these issues one at a time.

Firstly, meetings such as clairvoyant evenings have been taking place in the UK for many, many years; probably as far back as the 1800’s.  In the early days they would be raided by the police and mediums would be persecuted.  But for many years now such meetings have become a normal part of life.  Quite often, the people who run them have difficulty finding a suitable hall.  Maybe there aren’t any in the area, or all the decent ones are already taken, so sometimes they have no option but to book a function room in a pub.  However, in this particular instance it was the proprietors of the pub who were running the event.

Secondly, it is quite normal in the UK to have youngsters at these events.  In a lot of the Spiritualist churches people take their kids and even their dogs; it’s actually great to see when families all come together.  The behaviour of those particular teenage girls was actually a rarity.  To be perfectly honest I have had much more problematic evenings because of the childish antics of adults, and what with all the other stuff going on, a few giggling girls was the least of my problems that night.

Finally, my comments about clairvoyance and spirituality were meant in the context of such evenings.  I will endeavour to explain.  As I said in the previous article, clairvoyant evenings tend to attract people who are not looking for spiritual enlightenment.  They go along for a number of reasons.  Maybe just to see what it’s all about, to get a message or maybe with a group of friends to “have a laugh”.  When I said that clairvoyance has nothing to do with spirituality, I meant that simply churning out messages from fairly low levels of the astral plains to people who are not interested in spiritual enlightenment, has indeed got absolutely nothing to do with spirituality.  On the other hand, those who seek enlightenment can of course benefit greatly from their own clairvoyant faculty, either through the bliss of meditation or simply by being in tune with who they really are.  My comment was meant purely in the context of such events that are referred to as “clairvoyant nights” here in the UK.

To end this article I will just elaborate a bit more on why I reacted the way I did.  I was really knocked sideways when I realized I was in for such a rough ride, but as stated, I quickly also realized that I was being tested.  So at the same time as trying to make the best of a bad job, I had a lot of other stuff going through my mind.  I thought about all the quotes I post on social media about tolerance, forgiveness and practising what you preach.  I thought about Baba’s teachings with regard to loving those who want to hurt you and being able to see God in EVERYONE.  I thought about how Baba had literally given his whole life in service of mankind; never complaining and ALWAYS being there for us.  I thought about what Baba had done for me personally and I also thought about the sacrifices made by Christ, Gandhi, and in more recent times, Nelson Mandela.  Taking all that into account was I really going to let my ego win when faced with something so trivial by comparison?  There was only one answer, and I left the venue a happy man and stronger for the experience.

I think I can safely say that I’ve put the night of April 3 behind me now; but watch out for more posts on similar subjects.