I have seen the river I must cross. It is a revelation. Crossing it is another matter - a question of hard work. This is the hard work M. Scott Peck describes in his ground breaking (at the time) though overly theistic work, The Road Less Travelled.

Peck suggests that “love” as we normally describe it is nothing more than a chemical high of endorphins that we attach to our love object. By repeatedly feeling good when we think of or encounter our love object we get a little addicted to the endorphins rushing round our brains and the “up” they give us. We cathect (ar attach) these feelings to the person and, hey presto, we’re “in love”. Of course, like most addictions, this one loses its efficacy in time, hence the very high divorce rate.

Peck’s alternative definition of love is one with which I wholly concur: Love is the hard work we do to overcome our own ego in relating to another. Crossing the river I have seen is much the same only writ large and inspired by the suffering we see all around us. Only the river is in flood and I am the river and it is that which must be overcome.

Jesus sat in the desert for thirty days, Buddha under the bodhi tree. When I try and sit, the river continually overwhelms me: that is my path right now: to be continually overwhelmed and wracked and then from time to time to stop from sheer neccessity and breathe. I think it is a strange overlap of trying to recover from abuse whilst trying to be a meditator. The abuse was only survived through the repression of a never stopping mind. The meditator’s first aim is to let the mind exhaust itself and come to a natural calm abiding or peace. Then meditation in earnest may begin: the meditations of percieving and comprehending and unpacking the self that is meditating. Because, as long as I am in the river, and not crossing it, when I see you it is my perceptions and habits of mind I see more than you. Which is the river I must cross.

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Child abuse has become a hot topic over the last fifteen years. Headline grabbing occassional rapes, snatches and murders by persons unknown to the child have grabbed the headlines and the mindset. As a consequence there have been “Stranger Danger” campaigns waged relentlessly.

They are of no real help in combatting the issue of child molestation: in fact they do great harm. The fact of the matter is that in excess of 99% of children who are molested will be subjected to this abuse by their father, their uncle, another family member, friend, teacher, priest or other adult known to them and entrusted with their care. The stranger danger campaign is a piece of the fabric of denial that still surrounds this issue. It is not strangers who provide the dangers but daddy and uncle bob.

For a child being subjected to this kind of abuse by a trusted carer or parent the stranger danger campaigns themselves are very confusing: “I have to be careful because strangers might do to me what daddy does”. But if it is not OK when a stranger does it, why is it OK for daddy to do so? The childs’ existential bind is hieghtened by this.

A raped child can only escape by repressing the knowledge of what has been done or is being done to them This sets up the psychology of trauma and pain which leads to self and other abuse, drug taking, criminality and prostitution. Oh … and it is responsible for most “cases” of ADHD too. Ritalin helps minds split by unbearable reality get through the day. Stranger Danger campaigns help those abusers get off the hook.

How long will it be before we stop missing the point?

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I have often wondered about this “civilisation” of ours. It seems a lie. To civilise means to raise from a barbaric to a civilised state. Western civilisation now dictates the human worlds’ form and function almost totally. In most “developed” nations around 30% of children will be sexually abused in one form or another with something close to 5% being subject to penetrative oral, anal or vaginal rape in their first two or three years of life. These last poor souls are the one’s who go on to fill our drug dens, brothels, prisons and mad houses. In the less “developed” world this also happens and because of western economic dictatorship some 30,0000 kids a day starve or die of curable disease.

It seems to me a good test of “civilisation” is the question “Do they screw their children?”. In every way we fail. We are not civilised, we are barbarians. Enjoy your burger.

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It has been playing on my mind, a sentence uttered on Wednesday by the Hip Surgeon. He’s a good man - indeed the Hip team and the Neuro-urology team have been faultless in doing their jobs, having treated me with respect and undertaken the necessary investigations in a timely manner.

If you’ve been around these parts a while you may have read of the “Pattern of Stupidity” Theory. In brief this asserts that there is probably not a great conspiracy afoot in our world but a remarkable Pattern of Stupidity, a result of the same mindset ruling all areas of our life. With its consistent ignorance of truth appearing in all the same places, this mindset creates events and attitudes that are convincing of a conspiracy which does not exist. Indeed it asserts that this ignorance makes conspiracy, if not impossible, very unlikely to succeed.

“Mr Jee you have a problem”, said the hip surgeon, “we are trained as doctors to look for things that are in the textbooks, then do something about them”. He continued “you are not in the textbooks so we have no idea what to do”. I guess that is why the nasty and manipulative “Rehabilitation Consultant” - against whom I have issued a complaint with the General Medical Council - decided it must be principally in my behaviour that the problem lay. I was under the impression that doctors used their skills to investigate problems, establish what was wrong, and then see if something could be done. In this it seems I was fundamentally mistaken.

But hold on a minute - there were no textbooks one thousand years ago (excluding ancient texts not used by western medicine) and many of the techniques in use today were undreamt of only one hundred years ago. The “if it doesn’t appear in the books it must be in your mind” attitude I have been bullied an manipulated with would, if universally applied, have precluded medicine making any progress whatsoever.

Clearly there must be some doctors out there who are actually intelligent, open, interested and honest. Those must be the people moving medicine forward.

I think I am starting to understand the problem with rest of these people. You have to be in the top 1% of measured “intelligence” to enter med school: how incredibly dull it must be to be one of these people and to be stuck doing the medical equivalent of making Victoria sponge cakes only from Delia’s recipe. No room for manoeuvre, no chance to add a cherry here or a slug of brandy there, no room to experiment, progress, move forward. No wonder their minds become so ossified and stuck, no wonder some become nasty and manipulative.

Cooking in Britain has undergone a revolution of new ideas and talent over the past twenty five years. If only our great medical men and women could learn these lessons. An old boss of mine once said ‘you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs’. It seems you can in medicine, all you have to do is plead ignorance and let time take it’s toll: the eggs will break themselves eventually.

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In an excellent medical Blog, NHSBLOGDOCTOR I recently became embroiled in a little controversy.

Someone claiming to be an NHS Psychiatrist made some very disparaging remarks and expressed some very innaccurate opinions about my state of mind. When I complained to the Fitness to Practice Directorate of the General Medical Council he rather quickly withdrew and appologised. The GMC were frankly appaling. Because I could not name the individual they say there is nothing he can do. The person concerned has a flatmate styled the venialsinner who publishes a blog at http://venialsinner.blogspot.com/ so it wouldn’t be hard to trace him.

I wonder why the GMC will not undertake a minor piece of detective work? Could it be because they are doctors?

From the GMC website
====================
Council

The Council is the governing body of the General Medical Council (GMC). It comprises 35 members:

* 19 doctors elected by the doctors on the register
* 14 members of the public appointed by the NHS Appointments Commission
* 2 academics appointed by educational bodies - the universities and medical royal colleges.

Highlights from the controversy
===============================

Dear Dr Crippen,

I like your site. Violence is always wrong. It happens the other way round too though.

In July I was admitted as a patient at the Royal London Hospital. I have “unique” musculoskeletal problems. After two weeks laying in a bed with inaction I took the liberty of reading my hospital notes: something the hospital does not allow.

I was assaulted by two nursing staff who physically manhandled me to remove the notes from my possession. All I wanted to know was what was happening but the hospital rules do not allow this.

Not wanting to escalate things but knowing my position was now risky I made an off the record note of the matter with the PALS service.

Two days later I was unceremoniously kicked out of the hospital as “there is nothing we can do for you”, having seen a junior orthopod who said nothing was wrong with my lumbar spine.

In december I had scans done privately. The upper part of my sacrum has collapsed up and back into my lumnbar spine. Two intervertebral discs have burst.

How about zero tolerance of violence from staff to patients? Until the table is levelled you will suffer the violence o people angered by a miserable system.

Best wishes

Matthew Jee

===============================================================

Oh dear.

I don’t know how all that happened but leaving that aside you have AN ABSOLUTE LEGAL RIGHT TO SEE YOUR NOTES. They cannot refuse. A lot of hospital adminstrators tend to resist requests like this, and they are wrong.

The days of doctors writing notes like “This patient is stupid….etc” should have long gone.
Dr Crippen

===============================================================

Dr Crippen

I know that I have a legal right to see my notes and I have a human right to health (though NOT established in British Law).

The Royal London Hospital were not only medically negligent but allowed two staff to physically assault me without any disciplinary action being taken, when I out of frustration at their ineptitude was a naughty chap.

Meanwhile all the muscles from my hips to shoulders have stopped working in the back of my body and I am being left to rot. I have been under a consultant at the RNOH stanmore for over a year who decided it’s all in my mind so there is no need to do scans. “your attitude must improve” before you get better, said he.

The scans also show that all the vertebrae of my cervical spine have grown the wrong shape where my neck has been twisted back on itself since I was orally and anally raped as an infant. This is why my body has deteriorated so badly: only half of it ever worked in the first place.

I showed the scans to my GP and said “look it is not all in my mind. We need some action to stop my body decaying”. “I don’t really understand those pictures”, she said, “but I can see you are getting very distressed about it would it help to see a psychiatrist?” I nearly hit her, frankly, because this negligence and wilful lack of care has lead to me having a decrepit body of an eighty year old at age 39 and I am now highly traumatised and emotional about it.

I now recieve full disability benefits and can hardly walk. I think I may actually die of the complications soon because there has been and is to date no understanding. The consultant actually said to me “no-one will ever understand what is wrong with you Mr Jee but we won’t waste money on unneccessary scans”. The system now wastes over £30,000 a year subsidising my life but nothing truying to help me regain health. I have spent another £2000 on osteopathy in the last three months. My osteopath describes what he is doing as first-aid, trying to hold my body together and is unsure I will recover with or without surgery.

You can see some of the scans for yourself on my website freedomforall.net

Matthew

===============================================================

I have read with interest website of mathew jee. In my opinion mathew has a mental illness.
He has multiple ailments with no apparent anatomical basis( I have looked at the MR scans, he also displays almost delusional thoughts regarding his ‘being orally and anally raped’. He appears to think that these have caused his present circumstances.His GP offered a psychiatric consult and I think he was very wrong to refuse this. It is quite often the case in those people with mental illness that they lack ‘insight’ in other words, the ability to recognise they have mental health issues. The situation would be funny if it were not so sad, and his refusal to accept psychiatric help will, in the long term, cause him significant problems.
If you read this note mathew, I would urge you to consult with a psychiatrist before your life becomes even worse.
The Pink Psychiatrist

===============================================================

I might just add that the Pink Psychiatrist is my flatmate using my computer, hence why it links to my site. He has no blog of his own…yet
The Venial Sinner

===============================================================

Hi Matthew, Pink Psychiatrist, Venial Sinners and all.

Matthew, I cannot give medical or legal advice on NHS BLOG DOCTOR. You have obviously had a rough time.

The points that you raise are of real concern, they highlight a lot of issues which are profoundly worrying and which need sorting out.

I welcome contributions to NHS BLOG DOCTOR but we can only discuss general principals and we often do that in a rather lighthearted, indeed irreverent manner.

Your issues and problems deserve better than that. I think it would be good to discuss them personally and in confidence with someone you trust.

John Crippen

===============================================================

Dear Pink Psychiatrist.

I have had Psychiatric Consults. My Psychiatrist has diagnosed me suffering Chronic PTSD as a result of infant and early childhood sexual abuse.

He has written to my GP and consultants asking them to stop blaming my physical problems on my mind. He has stated there is nothing psychiatry can offer to help them with my physical problems.

I am in regular counselling, thankyou, and am coping well with that part of my recovery process. I have, however, been severely re-traumatised by what has happened to my body as a result of bad treatment based on bad diagnosis.

The physical problems I have do stem directly from the physiological damage caused when I was raped as an infant.

My neck was bent back and stuck in a twisted manner by oral rape. This has caused a neurological deficiency which means my pelvic floor and many other muscles in the lower pelvic region do not function (confirmed by neuro-urologists at the RNOH).

My right diaphragm stopped functioning and became in effect a structural muscle holding my back up and drawing up the contents of my abdomen to compensate. It may be something you haven’t heard of but it is real and of physical causes.

Your quick diagnosis is an interesting though frankly irrelevant thought in your mind. What is more interesting than the contects is the fact that you feel you can diagnose without having met me. Superpowers have you got? Or a narcisistic disturbance? Given that a Psych freind of mine believes over 50% of NHS Psychiatrists suffer Narcisistic Personality Disorder and that I don’t believe inm Superpowers (mine or yours) I tend to believe the latter may be true. Touche.

Matthew

===============================================================

Dr Crippen,

Thanks. I understand the limits and purpose of your site.

I need a doctor who starts looking at my body and not running from the disgust they suffer at the genesis of these problems into a quick, lazy and incorrect diagnosis such as conversion disorder, psychosomatic troubles, etc.

If anyone wishes to post further to me or on the subject they are welcome to do so on my site under the story linked above.

Thanks.

Matthew Jee

===============================================================

Gravatar Dr Crippen. This website my be lighthearted and irreverent in approach but I have this morning reported the “pink psychiatrist” to the practise committee of the GMC. The text of the complaint is below and is self-explanatory.

———————————

Dear Madam/Sir

I have recently been involved in an internet discussion where issues regarding some physical health problems I suffer as a result of being raped and abused when I was an infant through to my early years were discussed.

An NHS Psychiatrist involved him or herself in the conversation anonymously contributing the following:

” I have read with interest website of mathew jee. In my opinion mathew has a mental illness.
He has multiple ailments with no apparent anatomical basis( I have looked at the MR scans, he also displays almost delusional thoughts regarding his ‘being orally and anally raped’. He appears to think that these have caused his present circumstances.His GP offered a psychiatric consult and I think he was very wrong to refuse this. It is quite often the case in those people with mental illness that they lack ‘insight’ in other words, the ability to recognise they have mental health issues. The situation would be funny if it were not so sad, and his refusal to accept psychiatric help will, in the long term, cause him significant problems. If you read this note mathew, I would urge you to consult with a psychiatrist before your life becomes even worse.”

I have benefited from regular counselling for the psychological impacts of the abuse I suffered and have taken psychiatric consultations. I have been diagnosed as suffering Chronic PTSD as a result of infant and early childhood sexual abuse. My Psychiatrist has written to My GP and to the consultant in charge of my physical rehabilitation asking them to please stop blaming my physical problems on my mental health as they are physical in basis and there is nothing mental health services can contribute to their resolution. I have been discharged fully from mental health services. My musculoskeletal problems have been described by relevant specialist consultants as “unique” and “complex and challenging”.

I believe this person has taken a risky extrapolation from a small and selective part of the evidence in my case and behaved in a most unprofessional manner in making the above comments:

i/ This person has denigrated the truth about the terrifically damaging (physically and psychologically) sexual abuse I suffered: “no apparent anatomical basis”, “almost delusional thoughts”, “appears to think”.

ii/ This person has made a partial and non-specific diagnosis - publicly in an internet forum - without the proper evidence: “In my opinion matthew has a mental illness”.

iii/ This person makes assumptions about me which are false and damaging for which they have no evidence: that I “lack insight …”, that I have refused psychological support, that my life will “become(s) even worse” if I do not consult with a Psychiatrist.

iv/ This person goes on to describe my situation as “funny were it not so sad” which is unacceptably insensitive.

v/ This person refused to capitalise my name anywhere in the above statements and mis-spelled it repeatedly. They also wrote this not directly to me, but in the third person apart from the last line. I believe these could be signs that the person themselves suffers mental health issues and may objectify and mistreat their patients when in practice.

In short I believe this person may not be fit to practice psychiatry. I will not state these conclusions to be fact because I do not have all the evidence - something which I do have insight into - unlike this person. At the very least this person would seem to need a some guidance about the appropriate and inappropriate manner in which to communicate their ideas.

I can not identify this person because they posted their above comments anonymously, however they did so through a friends computer who is easily traceable and whom I am sure can be relied upon to provide their contact information.

I wish to raise this issue before the GMC as a disciplinary matter and wish it to be investigated. I can provide full texts of the relevant discussions and the information I have which would allow this person to be traced. Please can you advise me as to which steps I should now take to proceed with this matter and forward any necessary documentation to my home address as below.

Thank you for your time in dealing with this matter. I look forward to hearing from you soonest.

Matthew Jee

===============================================================

Matthew,

Thank you for letting me know about the action you feel you have to take. I am sorry that you are so aggreived.

NHS BLOG DOCTOR does not give medical advice to patients, and I have made that clear on the front page. This is a light-hearted blog looking at health-care problems in an often rrreverent fashion.

To repeat what I said above:

Matthew, I cannot give medical or legal advice on NHS BLOG DOCTOR. You have obviously had a rough time.

The points that you raise are of real concern, they highlight a lot of issues which are profoundly worrying and which need sorting out.

I welcome contributions to NHS BLOG DOCTOR but we can only discuss general principals and we often do that in a rather lighthearted, indeed irreverent manner.

Your issues and problems deserve better than that. I think it would be good to discuss them personally and in confidence with someone you trust.”

I am sorry you were upset by the remarks from the commentator who styles himself as “the pink psychiatrist.” I do not know who he is. I do not even know that he is in fact a real psychiatrist.

I don’t beleive in censorship in any fashion but at the same time I have no wish for any reader of NHS BLOG DOCTOR to be offended personally.

Therefore, would you be happier if I removed all the correspondence from the comments problem? I do not wish to cause offence to anyone. If you have genuine grounds for a complaint, then this would perhaps be better made privately and, as I say, do remember that the so-called “pink psychiatrist” may not be a psychiatrist at all.

John

===============================================================

Dr Crippen,

Thanks. As I expressed earlier I am aware of and fully accept the limitations of your site. I did not nor do seek your advice in particular from you or any of your readers. My original post was related to the issue of violence within the NHS and I am sorry if it got a bit off topic.

I am not worried about these things beyond the concerns I have expressed above. I do not personally feel any need for anonymity - in fact the opposite - there is so much denial of these issues in society in general and within medicine that I actively publicise what was done to me to raise awareness.

Last year the Department of Health requested I draft a proposal for National Guideline considerations for NICE in relation to the treatment of adult survivors of sexual abuse. If the “Pink Psychiatrist” really is a psychiatrist, which I assume s/he is, s/he would appear to have broken many fundamental rules of engagement in this field. If this person is a Psychiatrist and qualified with his/her friend the Venial Sinner, then they are about age 26. This would lead me to believe they have not yet or have only recently completed their specialist training which makes all of the above even more worrying.

I have raised the complaint with the GMC because I feel quite strongly that no Psychiatrist should make off-hand diagnosis in this manner and that it could be dangerous to persons who are less progressed in their recovery than me for a Psychiatrist to behave in this manner. Should the GMC agree I am sure they will take the appropriate action.

I too am against censorship and for that reason, and those stated above, have no desire for any of the material on your site to be removed. I do recognise that it is your site and should you wish to will also have no complaint about that. I have, of course, made copies for the record in the circumstance but my personal preference would be for the original to remain.

Thanks for publishing a truly interesting weblog. And thanks, especially, for being so considered in your attitude to these matters.

Best wishes

Matthew Jee

===============================================================

Dear Mathew

I am sorry that my comments have caused you so much distress

I am a complete novice where blogging is concerned. What I wrote was intended solely as a personal point of view, which was what I believed you had been seeking by commenting in this blogg arena and publishing your entire case history on the web.

In no way were the comments intended to form the basis of a formal medical opinion. Anyone who has access to your site will form a personal opinion and these will vary. It is very unfortunate that I chose the name ‘the pink psychiatrist’ as this had no bearing on what I wrote.

I would like to repeat my apologies for any distress I may have caused to you personally. I have learned my lesson from this experience, and will not be returning to these sites in the future.
The Pink Psychiatrist

===============================================================

Thank goodness for that!

Matthew, I thing that helps a lot; I suspect this guy just shot from the hip and reached all the wrong conclusions. It takes a lot to offer an apology like that.

I hope you may feel able to accept the apology.

I don’t want NHS BLOG DOC to be a fighting ground, and I certainly don’t want it to be somewhere for people to make ill-informed judgements about others.

I hope he has learnt his lesson, but this is a matter for you.

As I said before, I will remove all the comments if you would prefer then we can all have a fresh start.

I will leave it with you.

John

===============================================================

Dr Crippen,

I am glad he is wise enough to know he screwed up. He still hasn’t accepted my invitation for a damn fine coffee and a flick through the scans but there you go. I do accept his appology and I do not want anything removed. It does after all relate principally to me and I believe there are important lessons herein for victims and those who wish or must in their professional capacity assist them. I hope you can respect that wish. To reiterate, it’s your site though so I accept whatever you chose to do as your inalienable right.

Matthew

To Te Pink Psychiatrist:

“In my opinion mathew has a mental illness. ” ….. “In no way were the comments intended to form the basis of a formal medical opinion. ” The Pink Psychiatrist.

I thank you for your appology.

Your comments have not caused me a great deal of distress. This is because - as I stated earlier - my recovery is going very well. I am, as this whole thread shows, quite resiliant enough to see off somebody who acts stupidly and without thinking and without insight - such as yourself. I do have insight. Your opinion was wrong in every way.

I am strong many others are not. Many people earlier in their recovery might have thrown themselves off a bridge because of what you wrote or what you say to them in practice.

For that reason, if you are a psychiatrist or psychiatric trainee, I would like you to take this one on the nose, mate, to put it in the vernacular.

I want this to be a lesson to others and to lead to protocols around this issue for practicing psychiatrists if none exist. Be clear, I am in no way on a vendetta against you and I do genuinely accept your appology.

BUT, the GMC will do nothing about the issue without knowing your name (see below). Please, be as brave as I have had to be, to face my past, to recover, to deal repeatedly with foolish opiions like yours both in and out of the consulting room.

Since the time Freud’s contemporaries talked him into Hysteria as a dignosis Psychiatry has done nothing but harm to sexually abused people (Freud originally said, to paraphrase heavily, ‘my patients were sexually abused as children and when they talk about it they get better’. The victorian age he worked in could not bear it - he caved in to peer pressure and the rest is a long sad history we are only just beginning to break. It is clear from some of your thoughts there is a long, long way to go:

“he also displays almost delusional thoughts regarding his ‘being orally and anally raped’”

When I was 51 weeks old my Mother was convinced by a clever paedophile that he loved kids but couldn’t have any. She let him and his mentally disturbed wife look after me for a week on holiday. My first birthday present was that I became the personal masturbatory toy of someone with a very, very sick mind. He spent a week orally and anally raping me. No one knew at the time and the physical damage caused was untreated. It is directly responsible for the state I am in now, with a little help from the NHS who repeatedly misdiagnosed and mistreated me both physically and psychologically. The flashback memories I suffer are horific: like haing a telgraph pole shoved down your throat and up your a***. Unpleasant. Hard to deal with. Not made easier by the misguided “truths” of psychiatry.

To conclude I genuinely thank you for your appology and would politely ask you go one step further and contact the GMC as below.

Best wishes

Matthew Jee

ps The Hip surgeon I saw at the RNOH said yesterday there is clearly a phsical basis to my injury but that I have a problem: the NHS will look at the complex set of physical compensations I suffer one by one: they are not capable of taking a wholistic approach. He cannot order an MRI of my pelvic floor to see if this is the principal causal feature, he cannot order an ultrasound of my diaphragm to establish it’s level of function. In fact he made the position official: I am up that famous creek with no paddle. He suggested I continue seeing the osteopath. As a victim of such horific abuse I am being continually retraumatised by a system that at first denied the problems and now admits it can’t deal with them. Contributions to my fund to fly to America and get my body patched up as best they can are of course welcome.
————————————–

Reply from the GMC

In reply please quote: RC/FPD/2006/0067

Matthew Jee

Dear Mr Jee

Thank you for your email of the 10th of January.

The GMC licenses doctors to practise in the UK and maintains the register of
qualified doctors. We can restrict or remove a doctor’s registration if
their fitness to practise is found to be impaired. We can also issue a
warning if there is evidence to suggest the doctor’s behaviour or
performance has fallen seriously below the standard expected. We can
normally only consider complaints where the events giving rise to the
complaint happened within the last five years.

We can only deal with complaints about registered doctors. We have
considered your complaint but as you have not provided us with any details
concerning the identity of the doctor concerned, we have been unable to take
any action on the matter.

With regard to your request for a complaint form we have posted one to your
address.

I am sorry that on this occasion we cannot help you. Please contact me on
the email address below if you have any questions.

Yours sincerely

Rory Connolly

Investigation Assistant

Fitness to Practise Directorate
Direct Line: 0161 923 6492
Direct fax: 0161 923 6578

===============================================================

Matthew

Thank you for that. That is extremely gracious off you.

I will as you request leave all the letters on.

What I would say to everyone else who may have been following this, it PLEASE go to Mattew Jee’s homepage where the issues involved are covered in detail and from which you will all be able to get a much fairer idea of the problems with which Matthew has had to grapple.

John

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Possibly the funniest and scariest thing I ever read:

From “The United States and Britain in Prophecy” By Herbert W. Armstrong (circa 1947), reproduced by the Chrurch of God, Modesto, California.

“Where is the UNITED STATES mentioned in Bible prophecies? Or is it mentioned at all? We are the wealthiest of nations. And, potentially at least, the most powerful. We are the same people as the British, and, with them we possess more than two-thirds of all the wealth and resources of the world. All other nations, combined, have little more than a fourth divided between them all. And we have acquired nearly all of it since 1800. Never has there been anything like it in history. Never did a nation or people spread out and grow so rapidly to wealth and power. Never was a nation or people so rich. WHY?”

The answer is God: nothing to do with weapons, slavery, colonialism, war and all the other stuff. Oh, no. God wants us to starve the children of the third world with our distorted thinking and economics. Of course, a lot of right wing fundamentalist (Christian, Buddhist, Islamic …. name your choice of religion) writing is both scary and funny at once, but this one takes the award for the time being.

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Zenchick - Musings From the Lotus Position - Writes on Being Seen

This is a great piece. We need to be seen: we need witnesses to our lives, our pains, our pleasures. Human life makes no sense without seeing and being seen just as things are.

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I can’t tell you that. No book can tell you that. No priest can tell you that. You must discover itself for yourself if you are to find out. Or stay locked in the habitual mind that keeps you from your true self.

Many have been there, many have crossed the river, passed through the gates. Some have left signposts and pointers but the rafts they used to cross the river are gone. The Buddha’s way, as he taught it, is lost. Christs way, as he taught it, is lost. Mohammed’s way, as he taught it, is lost.

Christ told us: ‘Know yourself - the kingdom of heaven is within’. Buddha told us: ‘If you don’t get it from yourself, where will you get it from?’. The truth that can set us free is within each of us, clouded by habits of mind and body which we wear like a glove, pretending that it is who we are. “Oh I am a banker” …. “Oh, I am an angry person” …. “Oh, I am so beautiful” ….

So Who are you really? Go figure - like I said, I don’t know and neither does anyone else. You have to find out for yourself. I haven’t even figured out who I am yet. I just know that the above, every single word of it, is true. I have seen the river I need to cross.

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Children learn the unreal mindset that is called western civilisation and learn to fit in with it from an early age. They learn many things, they learn that people lie to them and hurt them and call it love. They learn they must eat their meat, then one day learn it is the “moo-cow” in the field they are eating. They learn they must do what bigger stronger people tell them or they will suffer.

They start picking up on the whole charade and facade by the age of two or three and they fit in and behave in these unsatisfactory ways. They learn to supress the truth which they know: that all people are equal and no-one deserves to be hurt and that such power when used is wrong. And they learn to do all these things, anyway, because you have to fit in.

These things become habits, much as the way in which we conceive of time and space are habits, or the way we rise from a chair is a habit or the ways I think when I write these pieces are habits. Habits pile upon habits and eventually you end up with an adult human being: a collection of habits. Habits of body, habits of feeling, habits of percieving, habits of thinking and … there’s another one … I’m in the habit of forgetting.

The Buddha spoke of this. He described how these heaps (”skhanda’s” in sanskrit) of habits are what we are indulging when we act from ego, from the habitual sense of “me” from which the inner monologue or dialogue stems. These meta-stories we tell ourselves are just more habits. They are not who we really are, or so the Buddha said. So who are we, really?

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