Recently stayed at a farm-stay accommodation complex in the NSW country. Ostensibly I was there to help around the farm, serve customers and related tasks. I was of mind not to offer any advice, just observe.

I've just listened to an audio (podcast) of some spiritual, self-development school, who talk about all the wonderful things and experiences to be had when we get to 'transcend'.

Transcending is the way forward, it seems.

Uhm, what exactly is it that we are supposed to transcend?

Presumably it is our wrong-headed egos or some such.

Only question is, does it make sense to 'transcend' anything?

Put it this way, when a young child is growing, and learning, at some point we allow them out of their baby cot (playpen). Does it make sense to say that the baby has 'transcended' the cot?{C}

I recently had a number of highly interesting discussions with various people.

Briefly (more later) they were

• with a good friend on the subject of self-development courses, and where most go wrong.
• with a man who's a 'hard-nosed' engineer, and who spoke standard ideas of a mechanical, objective reality, not realising the 'hard-facts of science' are but a house-of-cards, reliant on some very very poor (and incorrect) assumptions about the detail and minutia of life.
• with another good friend on the the Enneagram and on the subject of tribalism.

All were quite set and confident in their beliefs, until I asked some awkward questions.

Overview:

All matter, energy, people and populations are both feminine-wave and masculine-particle natured. Women, by being orientated towards the community-wave nature, are more naturally group-orientated (tribal). Hence their generally more refined interpersonal skills, communications abilities and relationship-orientations.1

This also leads to the higher prevalence of women using or believing in 'astrology' and other means (e.g. numerology) for assigning people to various groups (tribes, star-signs).

I have a confession to make. I've been unsettled ever since writing my book Be and Become ... as I've explained to close friends, when I finished Be and Become I felt that I had done what I came (into this life) to do. Such was the depth of that feeling that I've since largely drifted. Despite the courses, the presentations, seminars ... and subsequent books, largely I've lacked a sense of deep purpose. However, what has unsettled me most are the expectations that I've burdened myself with -- that the author of such profound, timeless material (The Theory of One and All) should be living some sort of expansive, amazing life. Those expectations have delivered quite the opposite ... struggle, and a perpetual anxiety to live up to those expectations.

So, analysing my situation I've come to realise that for the last few years I've been tentatively playing with the idea that there is a fuller dimension to my life. That, in having written the book, now it is time that I live more deeply, more fully than simply giving seminars, or writing more books, or achieving 'success', or acquiring wealth and so on. I've come to sense, rightly or wrongly that I am in the process of letting go, and learning, really learning that living is inherently supportive, and that I don't need to struggle, or that I need to live up to anyone's expectations.

Yesterday while chatting over coffee at Avalon, the conservation turned to world-views, politics, anthropology, evolution, masculine-feminine natures, immunization, and the different cultures of chimpanzees versus Bonobo monkeys (patriarchal and matriarchal, resp.)

Throughout it all I was amazed at how little supporting evidence there was for each particular view that was discussed. In particular was the subject of immunization and the need for it.