Anne Whitaker's Blog, page 21
July 6, 2015
Rupert Sheldrake – a persistently open-minded scientist
As those of you dropping by here will know by now, I am as interested in science as I am in esoteric topics – and what I most admire in scientists apart from breadth and depth of knowledge is: open-mindedness, and generosity towards those with whom they may disagree. Rupert Sheldrake is one of those. To his great credit, he has kept up that spirit despite severe testing by diehard reductionists in recent years.
Rupert Sheldrake
What I most dislike is dogmatic dismissal of others’ theoretical positions, knowledge bases or viewpoints, especially if that dismissal is rooted in ignorance of the body of knowledge or subject area which is being dismissed.
Astrologers know all about this!
I am putting together a small group of books to re-read over this summer/autumn period, one of them being Rupert Sheldrake’s recent book which I first read in 2012 and which I featured here then. Here is my 2012 introduction both to the book and Rupert Sheldrake’s talk:
“…I’ve now read and very much enjoyed “Science Set Free” (USA) / “The Science Delusion” (UK) and would highly recommend it. Whom better than the author himself to let you know what it’s about?…”
Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uD2qScZlvYE
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200 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2012/2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Science for non-scientists! Tagged: Milky Way, Rupert Sheldrake, Science Delusion, Science in Society, United States
July 4, 2015
Latest post on “Astrology: Questions and Answers”: free b...
Latest post on “Astrology: Questions and Answers”: free book!
moons-nodes-in-action
http://astrologyquestionsandanswers.com/2015/07/04/free-book-the-moons-nodes-in-action/
Filed under: Uncategorized
June 27, 2015
‘the still, sad music of humanity’….Some thoughts and feelings during an awful week for our world…
Something I have learned – the hard way – is that some of us are more porous to the experiences of others at an intuitive, non-rational level, than others. This hyper-sensitivity is a gift in some contexts: it can ensure an appropriate, compassionate response to one’s fellow beings, thereby enriching one’s own life, as well as being useful to one’s fellows. Having worked all my life in contexts where sensitivity is essential to being an effective teacher and helper, I can personally affirm the value of such a gift.
Prisoners of Conscience window, Salisbury Cathedral
photo: Anne Whitaker
But the gift has a dark shadow. It means difficulty in creating the boundaries that are at times necessary to protect oneself from being invaded by others’ pain, others’ woundedness, others’ unconsciously destructive energies…and the pain of the world…
I have been feeling really low since yesterday when the dreadful news of the Tunisian beach massacre burst on us all, following on other horrors this last week. In this, of course, I am not alone.
I feel as though the dark pain at the core of my own being, old long-accepted pain which most of the time just lies there, like rotting old leaves at the bottom of a deep pond, has risen to meet and join with the world’s pain. Normally I keep those feelings to myself, sharing them only with one or two trusted loved ones. But today, I thought I would write about it, and share a personal experience from a long time ago which also evoked for me ‘the still, sad music of humanity’, in poet William Wordsworth’s poignant words.
Calais, France, Summer 1990
Twenty five years ago whilst fulfilling our mother’s wish for her seventieth birthday that my brother and I should take her to visit her older brother’s war grave in Calais, I had a shattering experience of being plugged into the world’s pain which I have never forgotten.
Le Touret
Le Touret Memorial (Le Touret Military Cemetery)
A radio officer aboard HMS “Achieve”, her brother’s ship was sunk in May 1945, off the French coast, shortly before the end of the Second World War. His was the only body from the “Achieve” ever found. Having managed to swim ashore, he died of hypothermia on the beach before anyone could rescue him.
My husband Ian’s diary for Friday 5th May 1990 records ‘Annie a bit nervous about trip to France tomorrow’. Had I known just how fraught it would be, I’d have been hysterical…
The overnight return trip from Glasgow to Calais turned out to be pretty harrowing, owing to our time miscalculation based on erroneous information concerning distances provided by the travel agent, whose cheery “it’s just a hop, skip and a jump from Paris to Calais !” turned out to be two and a half hours longer than he had told us. We finally managed to get to the cemetery, stressed and exhausted from our 6 am start, just as a churlish and unfriendly French attendant was slowly pushing the gates shut for the night.
My choosing to burst into tears to evoke his sympathy rather than punch him, accompanied by my miraculous recall of French, probably saved us from being denied entry on what turned out to be our only opportunity. For the cemetery – bizarrely and unexpectedly – was closed on the following morning, a Sunday, only during the weekend of our visit.
But my mother did find her brother’s grave, and we were all shattered by the experience. I will never forget my brother and I standing at a respectful distance to give her privacy, keeping an eye on the burly, scowling attendant, as she hung the silver celtic cross she had brought with her over the right hand corner of a small, plain gravestone. Head bowed, she wept quietly to herself. She had loved her brother dearly and deeply.
Fortunately, suspecting we would need privacy, my brother and I had booked us a room each. On retiring to bed after dinner, I began to weep, and simply could not stop until exhaustion eventually brought sleep. It was no ordinary grief: I was aware once again of my personal sorrow becoming a channel for ‘the still, sad music of humanity’….in Wordsworth’s poignant phrase: this time, it was for the heartbreak and waste of that terrible war…
It is seventy years since the end of the Second World war, and humanity’s track record on applying restraint to the reptilian part of our brain in order to diminish the impulse to torture, maim and murder those whose values, beliefs, race and gender differ from our own has not appreciably improved as the twenty-first century unfolds. We are unimaginably ingenious, brilliant, when it comes to applying our intelligence for example to the quest to decode the human genome: been there, done that! – or to find the Higgs Boson – ditto.
When, oh when, are we going to find a way to stop slaughtering one another?
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800 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards Tagged: "as above so below", hyper-sensitivity, Le Touret Memorial, Prisoners of Conscience window, William Wordsworth
June 19, 2015
The miracle of the living soul: Inspiration from Jung
All my life’s work has been with people: as an adult education teacher in many settings, as a psychiatric social worker, as a private counsellor, trainer and supervisor of counsellors, and writer.
At the core of this apparent vocational diversity has been, I now understand, the same drive. It is that urge to find meaningful contexts for my own tiny, ephemeral spark of life, whilst offering some affirmation to others that their tiny flame matters too: it is worth struggling to get our light to burn with a purer and brighter radiance.
Something ineffable and charged can on occasions arise in deep communication between one person and another – those in the helping professions and their clients are by no means the sole partakers of this context. There is a moment in which the feeling of safety, intimacy, trust, empathy and openness of exchange becomes so intense that the level on which two people are interacting shifts from ‘ordinary’ to numinous.
The Diamond Soul
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In that moment, (to my subjective recollection) both souls are held, in a state of grace, in the palm of some vast invisible benevolent Hand. Both sparks of life are suspended in a sense of the sacred….Such a state can never be evoked. It can only be bestowed – fleeting, memorable, perhaps life changing.
Coming across the following quotes recently thus struck a profound chord:
first, from Carl Gustav Jung –
“ That is why I say to any beginner: learn your theories as well as you can, but put them aside when you touch the miracle of the living soul. Not theories but your creative individuality alone must decide.”
Carl Jung from “Contributions to Analytical Psychology” (quoted in Self and Society Vol 27 No 1 March 1999, p 22.)
second, from ‘Gilead’ by Marilynne Robinson, p 51 –
“ When people come to speak to me, whatever they say, I am struck by a kind of incandescence in them, the ‘I’ whose predicate can be ‘love’ or ‘fear’ or ‘want’, and whose object can be ‘someone’ or ‘nothing’ and it won’t really matter, because the loveliness is just in that presence, shaped around ‘I’ like a flame on a wick, emanating itself in grief and guilt and joy and whatever else …. To see this aspect of life is a privilege of the ministry which is seldom mentioned.”
(‘Gilead’, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is a wonderful novel in which, towards the end of Rev John Ames’ life in 1956, he begins a letter to his young son, setting down all that he wishes to communicate which impending death will otherwise render impossible.)
I urge you to read it for its humanity and its wisdom.
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500 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Experiences of Oneness / the Source (article archive) Tagged: Carl Jung, diamond soul, Marilynne Robinson, Religion and Spirituality
June 11, 2015
Mercury makes more mayhem!
This is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answers. To read about a true Mercurial drama, click HERE
“…At this moment, with Mercury preparing to resume direct motion at 11.35pm BST on Thursday 11th June, I am sitting writing in my Glasgow office – wondering whether we will be spending the night here…. No matter how long one has been studying and practising astrology, there are times when its accuracy in describing the prevailing energy field of a given time period is simply breathtaking. So – sit back, fasten your seatbelts, and let me present you a case in point!…”
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Astrology Article Archive 1 – "Not the Astrology Column" Tagged: "as above so below", astrology, Mercury Retrograde 2015, mundane astrology
June 9, 2015
For love of wild landscapes – returning to the North…
Rolling stones do eventually run out of restlessness, if they are lucky. I came to rest in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, by an accident of fate – by putting a wrong number on a university application form. ( long story – some other time…) it was a fortuitous twist of fate, since I have been happy here, and have no desire to move again, ever.
Standing Stones in Winter
But every so often, I need a ‘fix’ of the land where I was born and raised. The land, sea and skyscapes of the North-West of Scotland inspired me from my earliest days. I can still recall lying tucked up in bed listening to wild January gales tearing the world apart outside, wondering what Power drove all that mighty energy. The Northern Lights transfixed me with their beauty. The unpolluted night skies revealed magical star patterns to my youthful imagination, inspiring my writing from a very young age. I still need scenic wildness, scenic beauty regardless of weather or season.
So – here we are, for a few days’ vacation. I thought I’d share a few of my photos. The bottom one is me, spaced out on horizons and fresh air…What is the landscape which calls you Readers to return? I’d love to hear!
200 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Away to the Wild North West!, Experiences of Oneness / the Source (article archive), Healing - the power of Nature (article archive) Tagged: Glasgow Uk, Northern Lights, Scotland, Star patterns, Wild landscape 
May 28, 2015
Here is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answe...
Here is the latest post on Astrology: Questions and Answers. Wondering why matters to do with travel, communication and organisation seem to be more skew-whiff than normal? Read this post to find out why – and add your experiences!
Capricious Mercury
Filed under: Uncategorized Tagged: Mercury Retrograde
May 26, 2015
On returning to the world…with a little help from some friends…
Today I am feeling celebratory. It is now three years this month since I returned to work part-time – albeit at an age where most sensible people are contemplating doing the opposite!
An important bridging step was going back to university to do some postgraduate study. I coped well with the rigours of getting up very early to travel to my place of study, managed to do the brain-frying amount of reading each week, completed and passed my assignments. Then, in March 2012, whilst wrestling with a social science research essay for which I felt no enthusiasm at all, I had the startling thought:
” I am now perfectly well and recovered. Why don’t I just go back to work?”
So, dear Reader, I did, and have not looked back. However, the process of arriving at that decision was not straightforward. Whilst looking through some of the writing I did during the build-up to that March 2012 decision, I found this piece – written to “generate raw data” for a social science tutorial – quite amusing. Maybe my blog followers would like it, I thought…
Anne and her animal Muse generate raw data….
cartoon by Paul F. Newman
“…Friday 27th January 2012 11.38 am Hillhead Library Glasgow…
“I am in despair”, I said to the young man behind the counter of a posh local deli which was about to charge me £1.50 for a very small bottle of Chegworth Valley pear juice: my bribe to go straight to the library. I live in Glasgow where you can say more or less what you like to anyone without being regarded as all that odd.
“Have you ever been a student?” I asked him.
“I AM one” he said, smiling happily. “I, too, have known despair….” He paused. “And will know it again, no doubt.”
“Yes” I replied with a sigh. “All part of the joy, isn’t it?”
“Absolutely” he responded.
Thus comforted, I proceeded to Hillhead library, where I now sit, wondering why the f—- I am doing a Masters Degree at my age.
Half an hour ago, I was leaning against my husband, who was sitting in his study playing cards on his computer, listening to Bruckner. I hate Bruckner. He loves it. “Oh woe,” I moaned. “Woe and thrice woe! Why am I doing this. Why, why, why?”
“You seemed to be enjoying it until yesterday”, he replied. Used to my melodramatics, he favours a low-key response in his mature years. Uses up less energy.
“I know, I know” I wailed. “But that was yesterday.”
Today the full horror of realising I have to change my research topic and produce some research material from something else altogether for next week has dawned on me. At 3.37 am, to be precise. Which is why I need a night’s sleep, now, urgently. But I am in the library instead, beating myself up.
However, I am also having a quiet laugh at my own expense. After all, I can simply walk away, and start to pick up the threads of my former career. I am now fit enough to do so. I don’t need this Degree. I have enough pieces of paper.
It’s a trying business, finding one’s way in the world again: but my overriding general feeling is one of gratitude that I have sufficient energy to be able even to attempt re-entry….”
Aaaargh!!!
Despite my default rationalist stance, Life has demonstrated to me that if your Daimon or guiding spirit has decided a certain path is for you, then events and encounters tend to occur which reinforce the direction you are meant to be taking. Here are two cases in point…
On Sat 28 January 2012 at 1130am, the day after my data-generating exercise, I had an arrangement to meet a young woman in her thirties for a cup of coffee and a chat. Having found me on Google, she wondered whether I ran any astrology classes or did any one to one teaching? For years, I had said a polite “No” to all requests for my services as a counsellor, astrologer or astrology teacher.
But for some reason, I thought it might be an idea to meet Emilia (not her real name) and find out what she wanted. She was, and still is, is in a high-powered, demanding and stressful job which she largely enjoys – but very much wished to pursue her more esoteric interests at this stage in her life.
After an hour of talking, she looked at me piercingly and stated baldly “You have to go back to work. You cannot keep all this knowledge to yourself.” This, in sum, was a clear case of “When the pupil is ready, the teacher appears” meeting “When the teacher is ready, the pupil appears.” Emilia and I are still in touch, and still talk about this pivotal moment for me. I shall always be grateful for her directness and honesty.
As though that wasn’t enough of a nudge, a mere two days later on Monday 30th of January 2012, my husband Ian’s birthday, I then had a striking and totally unexpected encounter. I was sitting having a cup of coffee with Ian in a local cafe when a white-haired lady came over and very tentatively asked if I was the Anne Halliburton who had taught Assertiveness classes at Strathclyde University in the late 1980s.( I have always run my more conventional careers under Ian’s surname…” ) “I’ve seen you around a few times,” she said, “and wanted to speak to you before. But today is the day….”
I affirmed that I was indeed that person, she told me her name, and said she had been one of my students during that time. She then went on to be wonderfully affirming of me in terms of my professionalism and way of being with people all those years ago. “What I learned from you then has continued to be useful in all the years since,” she said. “And it is of help now, in a difficult situation I am currently facing.” She then paused. “It wasn’t just your professionalism, it was you, your personality” she said slowly. “You are a special person, a very gifted person. I hope you are still using those talents…”
Whilst she was saying all this, I could feel myself becoming tearful. I didn’t attempt to conceal this, and remarked to her that her kind words were moving me to tears.
She then excused herself to another part of the cafe to have her soup and sandwich. I sat there, stunned. Ian smiled at me. “What more affirmation do you need of the rightness of your desire to return and be of help again?” he said.
On the way out, I stopped and thanked her for what she had said. “You will never know how timely this is, or how much it means to me” I said, looking straight into her eyes. Three months later, I was back at work.
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The Big ‘Why’ ?
1150 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
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Filed under: "Our deeply strange existence", 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Health and Wellbeing (article archive) Tagged: Bruckner, daimon, generating raw data, Hillhead Library Glasgow, Masters Degree, Paul F Newman, postgraduate study, social science research
May 19, 2015
May 16, 2015
Preserving wild land and Nature: community versus politicians – Glasgow, UK
Our local community in North Kelvin, Glasgow,UK, has been campaigning for years to preserve a precious piece of wild land in the middle of the area. The most recent initiative, The Children’s Wood, has won numerous awards in its three years of activism. It operates on the cutting edge of world-wide research which shows that children – and their families – enjoying the Great Outdoors together is wonderfully effective in promoting physical, mental, and community wellbeing. Our local wild space is regularly used all year round by numerous community groups, eg a number of local schools are now on side with an impressive range of educational programmes centred on outdoor learning.
This year, the Charity Commission recognised The Children’s Wood by awarding it charitable status, to the delight of all local residents.
Children’s Wood Protest
photo: Anne Whitaker
You would think, wouldn’t you, that our local City Council – which likes to promote Glasgow’s “Dear Green Place” image – would be proud of having such an impressive community initiative right here. You might even think, mightn’t you, if they were savvy politicians, that they could be claiming some of the credit for this world-class initiative, using its success to attract positive interest – maybe even money – in promoting their Glasgow’s Green Year 2015 campaign?
Not a bit of it!!!
No interest whatsoever has been shown. The council persist in describing our vibrant piece of community land as “disused football pitches”. Here, in the words ofThe Children’s Wood website, is a summary of the current state of play regarding the sale of the land – the City Council’s preferred option, opposed by 90% of local residents:
“Glasgow City Council is run by a Labour administration. It is the decision of the Labour party to sell the land. They could at any point throw out the application on various grounds, including the length of time it is taking New City Vision to move forward. It has now been 7 years since New City Vision became the preferred developers, and 3 years since the initial planning application was submitted. In the mean time the community of Maryhill and North Kelvin have been kept hanging around while NCV stop and start.
We are not supported by the Glasgow Labour party and believe that they have not engaged with us on this issue. It is vitally important that you get in touch with your local councillor and other politicians on this issue and ask for their support on this important matter and to put pressure on the council to throw out this application and support our plans to keep it wild. 3,000 local people were surveyed by Glasgow University over a year ago and the results revealed that over 90% do not want building on the land.”
The Children’s Wood
The Children’s Wood have just made a short film which weaves research, activism, and images of children and adults using the land, into a vivid and clear statement of commitment to an ongoing project which can be used as a template ANYWHERE in the world where there are wild spaces within cities.
Do watch it!
Such spaces are in danger of being swallowed up by the power of commercial interests, who cannot see benefit except in terms of money. We are challenging this attitude in our community. We need help and support in fighting against our own City Council, sad though it is to have to see this statement in cold print.
If you would like to help us by sending in, from anywhere in the world, letters of objection to selling the land – find out how to do that HERE
If you would like to give us a donation to help fund our campaign, as well as our ongoing community projects, click HERE.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. Do leave a comment with your thoughts.
Children’s Wood Protest
650 words copyright Anne Whitaker 2015
Licensed under Creative Commons – for conditions see Home Page
Filed under: 01 - new Posts: January 2015 onwards, Healing - the power of Nature (article archive), Health and Wellbeing (article archive) Tagged: "Dear Green Place" Glasgow UK, Charity Commission, community activism, Glasgow's Green Year 2015, North Kelvin Glasgow UK, OBSERVER ETHICAL AWARDS, outdoor learning, The Children's Wood Glasgow
