“When you want to move or want to talk, first examine your mind. And then, with firmness, act in the proper way. When you feel desire or hatred in your mind do not act or speak but remain like a log.”

It’s ten days since I have posted to freedomforall.net and in some part that is because I have the above quote from Shantideva pinned under the screen of my computer. The quote reminds me to “keep it simple stupid” and this has lead to a questioning of the purpose of this site. freedomforall.net is an enquiry into personal and social freedom from habit and history and ignorance and desire. It is about our times and not about them. It is about truth.

Yesterday I spent part of the day with an old friend whose problems are in many ways worse than mine. He suffers HIV and a terrible addictive streak which has left him almost unable to control his life. We went out to buy some things and found ourselves in a shopping estate off the motorway. My friend spent money on bits of computer equipment he doesn’t need because the money in his pocket is more dangerous to him than anything. “Someone told me the quickest way to healing is to ask myself ‘am I being honest with myself?’”, he said.

That’s a question I have been asking about this project freedomforall.net. Am I being honest with myself? I think this is the greatest question we can ask for only if we are honest with ourselves can we be honest and real with others. Sometimes it seems we live in a society that has as it’s bedrock self-dishonesty. We see politicians brazenly lying, fudging and smudging the truth. We hear our parents lie to us about why we have to go to bed, the existence of Santa Clause and much else given in the name of childrearing.

The honest question I try to ask myself is how can I add to peace in the world. So far the only honest answer I can offer is that I must find peace in myself. Like most people, even most Buddhists, I am highly fragmented and able to lie to myself comprehensively. Shantideva’s attitude of immovability and My friend’s attitude of aiming for self-honesty combine very nicely into a meditative pact with self which I think can be greatly helpful in this endeavour.

In the name of honesty I have to admit the other reason I haven’t posted for a while is that my mind has been elsewhere. Actually it’s been quite a long way away, in New York, to be precise. Indulging itself in daydreams and hopes and desires, all centred around a certain New York Weblogger whose attitude, intelligence and photo conspired to lead me off into Samsara once again. I just wish it wasn’t all such fun, although in any case, relationships do not necessarily have to be ruled out and nor are they essentially samsaric.

It is the sense that one is going to be saved, have one’s life put right or made complete by the establishment of a new relationship that is the big lie in this arena. This leads to cathecting of the “love” object with those highs generated by daydreaming. This is the feeling most people have when they enter a room where the love object is present: contact with the person upon whom such grandiose fantasy has been projected leads to an uprush of endorphins and a resultant feeling good. “Oooh it must be love”. No stupid, it’s just more habits.

Love is the work you do to go beyond yourself in serving others. With this one I am entirely with M. Scott Peck. Love is work. Love is remaining like a log when you feel desire or hatred. The only problem with this as a working definintion of love is that you have to totally let go of self to attain it. I think that’s why Nirvana is better translated as “extinguishing” than “enlightement”: extinguish self and there is only love. Unless and until that is the root of action, you are stuck in the wheel.

The Olympic Committee are visiting London this week. On Thursday they will be in Newham visiting Stratford and the Lower Lea Valley, center of the proposed site. I wonder if they will visit a few of the many Bed and Breakfast Hostels littering the Borough of Newham. If they did they would see the dire need for housing now and the complete disregard most residents have for lots of tourists and egotistic sportsmen in five years time.

Perhaps a little protest at Stratford Station on Thursday afternoon would help them understand the dire needs this borough has and how focusing on the Olympics is distracting the local authorities from what they need to urgently do.

I am completely against smacking in all circumstances. Children will not become good peaceful people if violence is used to control them. There is always an emotional scar involved in that and emotional scarring is what leads people to all kinds of violence.

I once looked after a child for a friend for six months. He, age five, was a nightmare: kicking, punching, screaming. Not just tantrums but absolute rage against everything.

It wasn’t his fault. His father left him with his aunt’s older son whilst conducting an affair with the aunt and the older boy used to inflict pain on him for fun. His mother was alcoholic and completely unnavailable emotionally. His father was an abuser of everyone concerned. His grandparents were oldschool fear merchants.

For the first month, every time it started, I swept him up in my arms, held him tight enough that he could not hurt either of us and told him that was what I was doing. His rage got worse and worse for a while, then stopped.

One time only he actually managed to give me a full on kick in the balls when I wasn’t paying enough attention. I struck out in shock at the pain and smacked him on the leg. I learned in that moment that I still had a lot to learn about self control.

After three months, as we sat eating dinner one day, he looked up from his meal. “Matthew, he said, “you’re actually here to help me aren’t you?”. “Yes”, I replied, “that’s exactly why I’m here”.

Nothing more was ever said but in that moment he expressed his realisation that not all adults were going to hurt him, lay trips on him or try constantly to control him. In that moment he admitted that he and I were both OK.

I fear that whenever a big person uses violence or the fear of violence to control a little person they are only adding to the violence in the world and the unpredictability. Children need to grow up centred in themselves as feeling persons, not supressing their true selves to avoid violence.

On this one I’m with Alice Miller. I think we would not accept a world where one in four kids are sexually molested and 30,000 die needlessly every day unless we ourselves had our feelings beaten out of us by our repressive families, upbringing and society.

The start of true peace on the planet has to be in the heart of each person, finding that it is possible and desirable. Violence against children makes this unrealisable for the vast majority of people. We have to stop the violence somewhere and the right place is at home in childhood.

Originally posted as a comment to a piece at the excellent cybersatan

Capitalism as it has been configured until now is in it’s death thoroes. If the damage it is doing to human lives and the planet around us do not convince you, this story from Samizdata.net will.

It is about a berlin woman being threatened with benefit cuts if she does not accept a job as a prostitute. That a modern economy should treat it’s “free democratic citizens” in this manner is bizarre and the sort of sign that shows a system at the limits of its constraints.

When systems hit constraints, pressure builds somewhere, until the system blows a gasket or reconfigures. This is called discontinuous change. Discontinuous change is the stuff of revolutions and volcanoes. It is not all bad however. It’s merely a part of the information revolution in this case. The apocalypse, or revelation of truth, is dawning as freedomforall.net has reasoned before. Things will get better after that.

Can’t keep up with all the blogs you read? Tired red eyes starting to itch? You need Natural Voice Reader. natural Voice Reader automatically reads anything you copy to the clipboard or paste into the programs window. Alternatively use it as a web browser, highlight what you want to hear and click read. Away it goes. Let it read your emails, reports, blogs - anything.

The free version comes with the voice that Stephen Hawking used for many years. It takes a little getting used to but it is worth it. If you use the net a lot and read a lot this software effectively turns any text to a personalised radio station. Alternatively a paid version comes with a higher quality and much more acceptable voices. I’m going to buy myself the full version - the first software I will have paid for in years - as soon as I get the money saved up.

Thanks to Sujartin for her report Apocalypse Now which offers a chilling wake up call. The fact is that our planet cannot support what we are doing. It is essential that simpler living become the norm. In this regard Mr Blair is barking at the wrong end of the social spectrum with his recent attacks on invalidity benefits.

Quite simply, it is better for the world that these people live simply and cheaply than go to work. The economic problem is not too little work but too much wealth in the hands of a few. It is time for the ecological solution to be named and outed for once and for all. We will have to enact wealth limits and remove the wealth from those that have it. By redistributing wealth in this manner the wealthy will use less and the recipients of redistribution will gain enough to live simply without undertaking further damaging “economic” activity.

The biggest lie in our world is the sham economics of “me first”. Economia, the art of keeping house, is a greek word. If our economics destroys planet earth’s ability to support us as it looks increasingly likely to do, what value or truth can there be in it. In a simple society with great equality and time to be human we would all have much less and be much happier than in our overblown materialistic time-bomb society.

Infant Scoliosis is known to affect around 3-4% of children. Often the problem is self correcting over time but sometimes not and it can lead to increasing problems. The cause of Scoliosis in infants is currently unknown. Boys are affected more than girls. Most current research is into genetics which I think is entirely wasted.

As I have described on these pages before, I grew up with only one working Psoas muscle and something of a scoliosis problem as a result. The events that caused this problem took place when I was a one year old and was repeatedly anally raped. In every picture of me as a child the twisting of my body (scoliosis) such a dysfunction caused is evident, mainly in an obviously misused right shoulder.

Infant scoliosis affects three to four per cent of children. According to most researchers in the field, some thirty per cent of adults, give or take ten per cent, were sexually molested in some way as children. Although our whole society wishes to deny the facts and the idea is surely repulsive, is it so impossible to believe that one in thirty or so children is used anally for sex when very small causing a Psoas imbalance and potentially lifelong scoliosis problem?

Whatever revulsion you experience at this theory does not make it wrong or impossible or even unlikely. The Psoas contains a Ganglia of nerves, the Lumbar Ganglia, which performs feedback and balancing between the nerves around the pelvis, lumbar spine and legs. It could be disturbed in its growing function by anal penetration at such a young age. That or mere bruising/tearing of the Psoas could easily result in imbalance and scoliosis.

In my case, we have one living example that proves this cause for my own childhood and adult scoliosis. The best in the field currently blame it on “unknown causes”. This is probably another example of the denial of truth which surrounds the subject of children being sexually misused for adults pleasure and which is as big a problem as the abusive behaviour itself.

What a week. Finally, the doctors are catching up. I’m now under the overall care of complex rehabilitation at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, gastro at Barts, waiting to see a Neurologist, Neuro-Orthopaedic Surgeon, and Neuro-Urologist at RNOH, tests then admission for inpatient physio, expecting to be there two months+. After all that I should be about 6′1 or 2 and not in pain physically any more. And still they aren’t jumping to it for DLA Mobility. they say I have a bit of back pain. I’ve got little function in the right Psoas (some is returning - it’s most weird when I feel the organs it would usually support, pushed into place by it engaging) and no Glut. Max. … yeah, DWP, sure thing … I’m in a little pain. I’d like to disable these muscles in you and watch you struggle to get to a telphone frankly. Where, if I answered the call, I’d laugh at you for the pain you’ve put me through making me get buses to hospital. … At least, there’s a part of me that tinks like that. Better go sit.

Thanks to Sujartin for this piece about Fleet Maul “I will be in the Bay Area Feb 5 & 6 for a screening of the film Prison Sutras (a documentary about my work in prison) at the International Buddhist Film Festival (www.ibff.org).”

The Guardian Newspaper this morning, over it’s story Rice lavishes praise on Britain - but attacks ‘loathed’ Iran carries an image of Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw at their press conference yesterday where Rice asserted that military action was not on the agenda “at this point”. Mr Straw’s face, in the banner photo over the printed edition of the story, says more than either of their words.

Rice was far from honest. Military action is very much on the agenda - it is just not yet at the top of the agenda, and principally because the US is not ready to release troops from Iraq where things are going much worse than expected. Straw has been told all this and asked to carry on jollying along with the rest of Europe in the mean-time.

Rice has the air of an angry bulldog, Straw that of a weak and miscomprehending appeaser. This is an accurate image and Jack Straw is too simple a man to take on the liars and cheats of the Bush administration. He is unable to see through their facade and his own admiration for Ms Rice. He smiles weakly with eyes slightly downcast and the air of man who knows he is in the presence of someone stronger and better.

The US will launch military action against Iran before the end of 2005. Initially this will be bombing raids that require no troop involvement. It will be done in the hope that Iranian groups will rebel and overthrow their Government. In the Spring of 2006 America will withdraw troops from Iraq into Iran to achieve regime change and “democracy” there, spurred on by their “success” in Iraq and the failure of internal groups to act successfully.

We have seen all this before from America. Their freedom must be everyone else’s freedom. They are unable to see the cultural relativity of their own society and the long game which is international geopolitics. This is fundamentally due to the narcissistic disturbances of Mr Bush’s mind and the minds of his cohorts. When I posted two Wars for the Price of One back in November it was somewhat tongue in cheek. It seems I may have to swallow my tongue after all.