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    Image of covers of Richard Dell's Stars in our Souls, Bless are the Thieves, The Other Magus, When the Teaman Talks, and Wild Windows 1.:
    Image of covers of Richard Dell's Stars in our Souls, Bless are the Thieves, The Other Magus, When the Teaman Talks, and Wild Windows 1.:

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        Go Back

        WHEN THE TEAMAN TALKS

        Set in present day Cairo, 'When the Teaman Talks' is a children's novel for ages 9-12.

        For the street boys of Cairo, football is more important than food. When Karim is dropped from his team, it is as if his world has ended. To get back in, and to play in the final, he needs a Manchester United shirt, and he needs revenge. But on the rooftops of Cairo, and from the street tea man, he finds another way. If victory is to be Karim's, even victory against his employer's angry son, it will not come from stealing a shirt.
        When the Teaman Talks at AMAZON
        When the Teaman Talks at AMAZON
        More Details
        SAMPLE CHAPTERS
        Since the time when Karim played football in the streets of Cairo, some of the world's great players have left Manchester United. Some have retired; some have gone on to play for other teams. However, the enthusiasm of Cairo 's boys for street football has never altered. It is an enthusiasm that is as great and passionate as ever.
        CHAPTER ONE
        Yusuf Blocks the Way!
        It happened in Cairo not long ago. It happened in Cairo that is the greatest city of Egypt ; the greatest city of all of Africa! Cairo of the River Nile! Cairo of the Sphinx and the Pyramids! Cairo that once ruled the world!
        There is an end to this story, but the ends of stories belong at their ends. There is no beginning to this story, for where does any story truly begin?
        Did twelve-year-old Karim's story begin the day he was let off early from work? Or did it begin five years before, when his father died and Uncle Mustafa, who was not Karim's real uncle, came to Karim's little flat after the funeral and offered his protection? ‘You will not starve, Karim,' bearded Mustafa said then. ‘Nor will Fatima your mother.'
        Uncle Mustafa beat his chest with his giant fist and roared. ‘Am I not Mustafa who was your father's oldest friend? Do I not keep the oaths I swear to Allah? I will give you work, Karim. I will feed you, and with the money you earn you will feed your dear mother here who I have known since I was a boy like you. No one else will die! This I promise!'
        Or perhaps this story began long before Karim was even born, when his father and Uncle Mustafa were young and they played football together in the streets. For it can be said that Karim, who ran from Uncle Mustafa's workshop earlier than usual one evening, would not have been Karim if his father had not died. Nor would he have been Karim if his father who once ran like the wind had not played football with Mustafa who once ran like a gazelle.
        But perhaps the story began even earlier, when all the best stories should. Perhaps it began a thousand years back, when some forgotten ancestor of Karim's rode out of the desert with an army of Muslims and made a home beside the Nile . That Muslim ancestor loved one of Egypt 's Christians, and so Karim could not have been Karim if the pyramids had not always been dreaming for all of Egypt .
        And Karim himself? Well, you would have missed Karim if you had seen him in the teeming streets of Cairo with its ten million, fifteen million, some say twenty million people. Anyone would have missed him. When the street sellers were shouting, and from all the minarets of Cairo the faithful were being called to prayer; when the street tea men carried their samovars of boiling water on their backs, and blind beggars strained their ears for your generosity, and men with no hands strained their ragged arms for your charity, who would have noticed a boy who was small for his age, who had ears that flapped like an elephant's ears, and who had a smile that spread out like a bright carpet suddenly unrolled on the ground? But he was Karim!
        And on that night, after a long day in Uncle Mustafa's workshop, he had been let out early. He was running through the narrow, canvas-covered street that was a street of souvenir shops for western tourists. He poked his head round the doors of those shops and shouted that he was going home early because tomorrow he had a big football match. And the shopkeepers laughed and told him that one day he would play for Egypt , and would be stolen from them by an English club, but still they would love him. And one shopkeeper asked him where tomorrow's great game was to be played, and when Karim told him which street it was to be, the shopkeeper said he might walk down with Mustafa and watch.
        ‘I remember Mustafa when he was a boy. The best footballer in Cairo .'
        ‘The best?' Karim asked.
        The shopkeeper laughed and hung from a hook on the ceiling a great lantern that sparkled with coloured glass. ‘The best except for your father. Mustafa was the gazelle. Few could stop him. But your father, Karim. Ah, your father ran like the wind!'
        ‘Just like me!' Karim yelled. And he hurried on down the street, happy at the thought of the match he would play tomorrow. Above him, the multi-coloured canvas – in places torn, in other places drooping like the petals of gigantic flowers – was draped between the shops. It was there to keep the sun off during the fierce heat of the day. Now, at night, it hid the stars and the tall minarets of the nearby mosque. Now it made that narrow street with its lanterns and bowls and jugs hanging from a thousand hooks, and its plates and ornamental coffee cups propped on a hundred shelves, and its strings of polished stones, and its strange ancient looking statues, feel like a shadowed hall, a shadowed place of safety. Except that on that particular night when Karim was going home early, it wasn't safe. For at the end of the street, blocking Karim's way, was Yusuf.
        And Yusuf put out his hand to stop Karim. He was with his friend, wide-mouthed Omar, and both had come back from a match. They were dressed in their blue Chelsea football kit which they were so proud of and which Karim was so envious of.
        ‘Are you sneaking away?' Yusuf growled, shoving Karim against a pillar. ‘Sneaking away and still expecting to be paid? That would be just like you. Always smiling and making up to my father. Having him think you're such a nice, trustworthy boy. But all the time you sneak away when he's not looking.'
        ‘No I don't Yusuf! Honest I don't. Your father let me go early. He really did. I've got my big match tomorrow. The semi-final! So he called me over. He told me to pack up and go, and to hurry straight home. He did!'
        Yes, that was the truth of it. Yusuf was Uncle Mustafa's son. And if Uncle Mustafa honoured Karim, and protected him, and kept him and his mother alive through the work he gave Karim, Uncle Mustafa doted on Yusuf. Of course he did! He was an Egyptian father. That's what Egyptian fathers did. Doted on their sons. Thought their son's shone brighter than Egypt 's bright sun. Thought their sons would grow taller than Egypt 's tallest minarets.
        Yusuf raised an eyebrow. ‘My father let you home early? A likely story. He has to make money and these are hard times. Not so many tourists these days, Karim. They're even harder times than they need to be with your mouth to feed as well as his own family's. Let you home early? I don't think so.'
        ‘Honest, Yusuf! He really did! Ask anyone in the workshop. They'll tell you. He'd just brought us mint tea. He always does, every evening. And I had just finished mine when he came back in. I thought there was going to be a special order. There were some rich Americans looking round earlier in the day. I thought perhaps they had ordered something special and we would all have to work late. But they hadn't. They told him they would come back another day. And then he called me from my bench and told me to go. I never sneak away, Yusuf. I wouldn't. I would never do that to Uncle Mustafa. Mama and me owe him everything.'
        ‘Well, that bit's true, charity boy. You and your mother would be in the gutter where you both belong if it wasn't for my family. Oh I suppose I might believe you, Karim. Perhaps you're not such a fool to go behind my father's back when you could so easily be found out.' Yusuf glanced at Omar and smirked. ‘Yes, we believe the charity boy, don't we, Omar? But it doesn't mean we have to let it happen.'
        Karim tried to smile up at Yusuf. But he did not feel like smiling. Yusuf was a year older than him. But he could have been three years older at least. It was because Yusuf ate well. Meat every day. Coca Cola from cans. Karim and his mother ate mostly bread: cheap government bread. And fuul of course! Made of beans, which Karim loved and slurped up as if the world was going to end before he could finish it. Fuul was good. But meat made you grow. And over the years Yusuf had grown fast whilst Karim had grown slowly. So every year Yusuf's punches hurt more, and the pain from his kicks lasted longer. Yes, Karim tried to smile, but on his lips he could already taste the tears that would soon fall from his eyes. It was written in the sands, and the sphinx had always known it. Karim was going to feel pain.
        ‘But your father told me to go home, Yusuf.'
        ‘Oh no,' Yusuf said. ‘When you live on my family's charity you can't expect life to be quite that easy. So let me tell you something, charity boy. A little bit of news for you.' Yusuf thumped his chest as if he had become his father. ‘Our team won tonight. I scored a goal. Omar here scored two.'
        Omar laughed and bounced a ball between his hands. ‘Two perfect goals.'
        ‘Congratulations,' Karim quickly said. But right now he didn't care about football. He was trying to work out the best way to slip past them. At the end of the street he could see the gardens in front of the mosque. He could see families out walking. They were eating. They were laughing. He could see boys and girls who in the daytime went to school. And beyond them he could see the dark alleyways that led to home. He knew every inch of those alleys. Every stone, every dark doorway, especially every ledge. He knew them like he knew how to dribble around the food stalls with a football. If he could just get into that crowd, Yusuf might not then be able to catch him.
        Omar was grinning. His mouth was so wide! Nadia, who lived in the same alley as Karim, always told him to be careful not to fall into Omar's mouth that was as wide and treacherous as the Nile in flood. Nadia would laugh at Omar behind his back. She would stretch out her mouth with her fingers when Omar wasn't looking. It would make Karim laugh as well, and that was not good, because Omar did not like being laughed at.
        Now Omar's grin got even wider. ‘We're in the final, little Karim. So if you win your match tomorrow, you will be playing against us .'
        ‘Well,' Yusuf said. ‘Your team will be. We're not sure we want to be playing against you . You're fast. Too fast.'
        ‘But it's my team, not yours!' Karim cried. He didn't like what they were saying. They were up to something. ‘You can't stop me playing for my own team!'
        Yusuf grabbed Karim's shoulder. Karim squealed, but Yusuf just drew him closer. ‘Do you know what? You're right, Karim. We can't stop you playing. But we can stop you being fit enough to play. Are your team going to pick you if you're not fit ?'
        Suddenly Yusuf's knee smashed into Karim's stomach. Karim gasped and doubled up. It hurt! Omar brought a fist back. Yusuf was ready to kick.
        It wasn't how the day was supposed to end. It had been supposed to end comfortably, with him going home early, surprising mama, getting straight to bed so he would feel good for tomorrow's work – more importantly, for tomorrow evening's game. That was what Uncle Mustafa had said to him. Karim had come from the dusty workbench, and Uncle Mustafa had bent down to him, and had spoken very quietly and kindly. Uncle Mustafa was always kind. ‘Listen, Karim. You will be playing football tomorrow.'
        ‘But Uncle Mustafa…'
        ‘You always play football. I watch you. You might not know that. But I watch. You are good, Karim. You are fast.'
        Karim's eyes had lit up. ‘Fast like my father had been before he died? Like the wind? You always tell me that he played like the wind.'
        Uncle Mustafa had laughed. ‘No!'
        He had laughed even more at Karim's crestfallen face. ‘Not yet, my boy. But soon you will be a gazelle like I was. Soon I will watch you and I will remember myself when I was young, when I played with your father. And one day, Karim, who knows? One day you might be the wind just like your father was. But, Karim, you never will be if you leave here late and dawdle like you usually dawdle. Get to bed on time. Get up in the morning fresh. I know about the game you are playing tomorrow. An important game, eh?'
        ‘Yes, Uncle Mustafa. The most important ever. If we win, and then win the next one, we will be…'
        Uncle Mustafa had laughed. ‘You will be the best boys' street team in all of Cairo ! And there can be no greater prize than that! That's what your father and I were. Ah we played some games, Karim; and got shouted at and chased by half the shopkeepers of Cairo . But in the end they all stopped shouting and chasing because they wanted to watch. We were so good, Karim. We were legends!'
        Karim had thanked him again. Of course he had. Karim and his mother owed everything to Uncle Mustafa. Even if the big man had told him he must work all night and all the next day Karim would have thanked him. He would have gone on his knees and kissed his feet if Uncle Mustafa might have allowed him. But Uncle Mustafa had told him to go. And so Karim had hurried from the workshop, dancing and laughing at having an early night. But he had barely got into his stride. He had barely got to the shop at the end of the street. And now he was bent over, his stomach exploding with pain.
        He felt himself falling. Felt he was going to be sick. But Yusuf picked him up. Thrust him back against the pillar. A fist slammed into his chest. He heard Omar laugh. Heard him say, ‘run and score a goal with this leg, charity boy!' Then felt a shattering pain in his knee.
        Again Karim slumped down. Saw the paving stones start to spin, knew he had to get away. Didn't know how. Omar's foot was back, ready to kick again. Yusuf was ready to haul him to his feet, ready to punch him again, finish him off if he could, so that just getting home would be beyond him.
        Use your wits before they're gone, Karim told himself. His head was spinning. Omar was laughing. The laugh sounded far away; as if it was coming from one of the dark alleys where fear could lurk. Your wits are going, Karim told himself. Use them before you can't hear him laughing. Before his laugh is so far away he might be across the Nile, even across the wide Sahara . So far that…
        The effort was all in his mind. His whole body seemed to hurt. But it was his mind that was the problem. Still bent over, still feeling as if he must be sick any moment, still aware that Omar's foot was already hurtling in at his knee again, he tried to force his mind to work, to tell his body what it must do. To act, though it wanted to sleep. To throw himself down and between them, to scramble away. Do it! Do it! He told himself. Do it!
        The next blow landed. He dropped with the pain. But then, hardly knowing what he was about, he shoved himself between Yusuf's legs. Heard Yusuf's fist miss and slam into Omar's shoulder, heard Omar's foot crumple against the pillar. Heard some of the pots outside the shop crash to the floor. Heard the shopkeeper's yell. Heard Yusuf punch Omar.
        Then Karim stood. He staggered to the steps that led out of the street into the square before the mosque. He felt the bright lights on him. Felt the swirl of families around him. Saw faces. Saw eyes. Saw a tea man with a samovar strapped to his back pouring tea for an old woman in a black chador that covered her from head to foot. Saw the tea man refuse money. Saw the old woman offer him Allah's blessings. Karim stopped just for a moment. Breathed. Steadied himself. Head between his knees. He was a street urchin caught in a swirling sea of families who were out in the cooler air of the evening. He smelt the food they were eating. Felt their safety as they walked hand in hand. Then he heard Yusuf calling to Omar. Heard them racing down the steps.
        Karim shot upright. He was in pain but now he hardly felt it. He weaved his way through the crowd. Got yelled at. Didn't care. Saw the tea man smile at him. Didn't understand. Got himself into a dark alley and sped away towards home, towards a door he could close behind him and lock. He stopped once at a corner. Looked back. Saw Yusuf and Omar: dark angry shapes against the brightness of the square. Saw they were gaining on him. They were older and better fed. They were stronger. But he was a gazelle wasn't he?
        No, he thought to himself. He was a wounded gazelle. And the wounded gazelle was always prey to the lion.
        The alleys should have hidden him, protected him. They were dark. They were narrow. He knew them better than he knew the pots that came out of Uncle Mustafa's furnace. Knew them better than the look on his mother's face when she had no food for him. But if he was not careful, they weren't going to protect him. Not this time. He was going to be trapped in them. Trapped in one of the dark corners where doors did not open to give him somewhere else to run.
        ‘Don't be a gazelle,' he breathed. ‘Now you must be like papa was. Now you must be the wind!'
        Karim came to a corner. He peered round it into a street. There were grey houses piled one upon the other, like giant children's bricks. There were painted doors with peeling paint. On one side, half the street's upper floor was in ruins. There was a mosque at the far end: its minaret, old Turkish and like a sleek rocket, pointed to the starry sky where heaven was supposed to be. A man was sitting in the street on a plastic chair watching television, like Mr Hussein always did in Karim's own alley. Two boys were peering over the man's shoulders. There was the sound of gunshots from an American gangster film. And then there was another man staggering towards Karim, an enormous round sack on his shoulders. It was the sort of sack Nadia hauled around Cairo , collecting and selling rags for her father. The man was bowed down because the sack was several times bigger than he was. His eyes were on the ground. But Karim knew what he had to do. That huge sack was his chance.
        Karim laughed as he skidded into the street. Laughed as he thought of how Nadia always stood on top of her pile of rags in the morning. Still limping, he shifted himself round the man with the sack, got behind him, more important got behind that great bundle of rags.
        His knee was hurting. His chest ached. But there was no sign of Yusuf and Omar. He edged backwards up the street, keeping the bent-over man and his enormous sack between himself and the corner he had come round. Not far he thought to himself. There was every chance he had given them the slip.
        Again Karim laughed, but immediately he doubled up with the pain in his chest. He placed his hands on his thighs, brought his head down. Hoped the pain would go. He had escaped. But he hurt. Quickly round the next corner, he told himself, just in case. He backed into an alley.
        There were splitting pains in his chest and right knee. But to escape from Yusuf and Omar was a victory. And by tomorrow morning the pain would be less. By tomorrow evening he would be ready to score goals. Yusuf and Omar might have played in the blue of Chelsea . But Karim's team were Manchester United. His friends Reda and Hassan even had United's red shirts and white shorts. Karim only had a pair of black socks that Nadia had found for him amongst her rags. But it didn't matter. His team was Manchester United. They called each other by their Manchester United names. Ronaldo! Rooney! Karim was Beckham. And even though Beckham no longer played for United that was who Karim would always be. Beckham in a torn t-shirt and ragged shorts and black socks found on a Cairo rubbish dump. He was Beckham. And tomorrow he would score goals. Because he had escaped. Because tonight he would sleep. And because in the morning he would forget that he hurt. Perhaps Nadia would be standing on her pile of rags. Perhaps she would laugh at him. Perhaps he would threaten to push her off. Perhaps…
        ‘Got you, Karim. And you have nowhere to run.'
        The alley Karim had stumbled into was a dead end. There was just a wall ahead of him. A mound of rubbish at his feet. No windows that he could jump onto. No doors. No steps onto the roofs. No ledges. Just a wall with not a single handhold!
        He turned. And there they were. Blocking his way out. Yusuf was grinning. Omar his wide mouth clamped shut, had a piece of iron pipe in his hand.
        Karim stared at them. He was not the wind. He was a wounded gazelle.
        And the lions were about to eat him.
        CHAPTER TWO
        The Promise of Treasure
        Omar laughed and slapped the iron pipe against the palm of his hand. ‘Oh there's no doubt about it. No doubt at all. He certainly isn't going to be fit to play tomorrow.'
        Yusuf did not laugh. Yusuf just glared at Karim. When he spoke his voice was a low growl. ‘He'll be lucky if he's fit to ever play again.'
        They got closer. Karim could see the smudge of rust the bar had left on Omar's palm. He could see the sweat round Yusuf's eyes.
        Karim quickly stared around the alley. But there was just the high wall behind him, and that was impossible to climb. Why had he come into such a place? He was Karim. He knew all the streets and alleys. Knew which ones had stairs leading up to the roofs, or at least ledges and half-open windows that allowed a long-legged boy to climb. Cairo was filled with such streets and alleys. The rooftops had to be reached. Whole families, who could afford nothing else, lived on the rooftops of Cairo . But he had chosen an alley that was blind, an alley with no windows for anyone to watch him being beaten.
        They were close now. He wondered why Yusuf hated him so. Wondered what an iron pipe would feel like. Wondered why he had even thought that. It would hurt! Like no pain he had ever known before. Of course it would! A fist hurt too, but a fist could also know pain. A fist could not punch too hard without hurting the puncher. But an iron pipe? An iron pipe knew no pain at all. Nor did an iron pipe know anything of Allah's mercy or compassion.
        Omar raised the pipe above his head. He grinned. He made clucking noises with his teeth. But Yusuf looked scared.
        ‘You shouldn't have picked that pipe up,' Yusuf snapped at Omar. ‘He just needs to be taught a lesson. Just needs to know that I am my father's son and he is a nobody; that he always will be a nobody. My father feeds him, protects him. My father takes his mother food after prayers on Fridays. But he is nothing! Nothing!' Yusuf swung round and grabbed Omar's hand. ‘Not too hard,' he hissed.
        ‘Don't be soft,' Omar said. ‘I'll do him hard alright.'
        Karim brought his hands up to protect his head. This was going to be worse than any beating they had managed to give him before. There was real fear in Yusuf's eyes. There was anger in the way Omar's wide mouth was clamped shut. Pray to Allah, Karim told himself. You do not go to the mosque enough, Karim. Not since papa died. But now you must pray. Now you must pray that Allah in his compassion and mercy will save you. Pray!
        But he did not have time. Omar's hand was white where it clenched hold of the iron pipe. Omar's eyes were wild.
        And then the iron pipe swung down.
        Suddenly Yusuf tried to stop Omar. Tried to get between him and Karim. But he was too late. He was shoved aside and the iron pipe continued downwards. Karim screamed. Prayed to Allah. Steeled himself for the blow. But the iron pipe was in the air, turning over and over: spinning. Yusuf was at Karim's feet, his chest crumpling into the litter-strewn dirt. And Omar was falling back, still straining for the iron pipe he had lost his grip of. But the iron pipe was twisting away from him, and away from Karim too, as if Allah or some invisible genie was wildly dancing with it. And then Karim could see nothing of his attackers. Just greyness. And just their cries. Just Omar's swearing as he finally landed on his back. And just the clatter of the iron pipe as it bounced in the dirt. Something large and round filled the alley. Bounced in the alley. Bounced on top of Yusuf and Omar.
        Then a voice high above Karim called his name. Was it a miracle? Was he, Karim, being helped by Allah? Had the tea man smiled at him because the tea man had known? Were the pyramids dreaming dreams of kindness just for him?
        ‘Karim! Karim!'
        But if this was Allah or the pyramids, then Allah or the pyramids had a girl's voice. Allah or the pyramids had Nadia's voice!
        Karim laughed. He looked up, and there was Nadia's round, sun-darkened face. She was staring down from the top of the building.
        ‘Hurry, Karim! Out of the alley as fast as you can! I can see everything up here. I will guide you!'
        Yusuf was at Karim's feet, struggling to get up. Omar was lying on his back, shaking his head. And between them was a huge grey bag of rags. Nadia's rags! Nadia the rag collector's daughter! Nadia whom he had known since he had first learned to run and kick a ball. Nadia who stood on her pile of rags in the morning and laughed at him as he went to get cheap government bread. She had pushed the bag over the edge of the roof, and her aim had been perfect. It had fallen on top of them and flattened them. It had been better than any goal he had ever scored in the whole of his life.
        ‘Karim! You must be quick!'
        Karim was no longer the hunted gazelle. Karim was a free gazelle! With a laugh of relief, he leapt over Omar and raced to the end of the alley. Nadia on the rooftop followed him.
        ‘To the left, Karim! I will guide you!'
        He turned left into the street and ran. He still hurt from where they had hit him. But fists and feet could never stop him. An iron pipe could. But not fists and feet.
        ‘Karim! Left again! Now!'
        There was another alley. He dived into it. Did not need Nadia to direct him anymore. There was a stone slab, and above it a window, and above that another window. It was as good as a staircase.
        Karim leapt from the slab onto the window sill. Someone behind its shutter shouted. But he was gone in an instant, up to the next window, up to a ledge.
        Nadia laughed as she ran to him. He was on the roof. He was getting to his feet. He was staring at her.
        ‘We must run, Karim. They are down there following. Soon they will climb.'
        He nodded.
        Then they heard Yusuf's voice in the alley below them.
        So they ran. Nadia tried to take Karim's hand. He shook her hand away. But they ran. Across the other Cairo that was the Cairo of the rooftops. A Cairo of a great sky of stars. A Cairo of minarets. They leapt across a narrow alley. Then they looked back at where they had started from. Yusuf was already there. He was reaching down. He was hauling Omar up.
        ‘Have they seen us?' Karim whispered.
        They were beside someone's tattered, makeshift home. It was just bits of wood with rags stretched across. Piles of rubbish in sacks weighted down the roof. A door with no hinges leaned against the brick wall the shack had been propped against. Through the open doorway Karim could see a kettle and a small cooking ring. A man and woman were squatting outside, watching him. The man was grey-haired and bearded. He had eyes that Karim did not like. They were eyes without hope. The woman wore a black chador, but she had let it slip from her head. She had a baby sleeping in her lap, and she had the hope that mother's have for their children dreaming in her eyes.
        ‘They have seen you,' the man growled. ‘What have you stolen from them?'
        ‘Nothing!' Karim cried. He was indignant at such a question. ‘I do not steal! I work. I earn money. I pay for what I have.'
        The man grunted. ‘You don't look like a boy who has very much.'
        ‘I have a mother, honoured sir. And I want to get back to her safe.'
        The woman had been watching her baby. Now she looked up at him. The man's face was hard, suspicious. But hers was kind. ‘Then run, child.'
        They hurried away, darting between the satellite dishes and boiler vents. Karim was limping, but he was still fast. To his surprise Nadia was not slower than him. Nadia was fast as well.
        Soon they had leapt onto the roof of a mosque. Its great dome, rich with carved patterns and three times their height, could hide them. Here, for a while at least, Yusuf and Omar would be unable to see them. They stopped behind it, drew breath. Karim rubbed his hurt knee. Nadia's plump face, deep brown from the sun that burned on her every day as she hauled her father's sacks, was suddenly worried. ‘We must not go too far,' she said.
        ‘We have to get away, Nadia. At least I do.'
        Leaning back against the dome, Karim was remembering all the times Yusuf had been cruel to him. Few days went by when Yusuf did not find some way to hurt him. In the shop. Out of the shop. But Uncle Mustafa's store cupboard was the favourite place. Karim would be sent there to get rags or a bottle of the etching acid they used for the pots and jugs after they came from the furnace, and Yusuf would slip in after him. It was a quiet place, set away from the workshop. It was dark and stuffy and usually the electric light spluttered on and off like lightning in a storm. And usually, as he pretended to be looking for something, Yusuf would manage to jab Karim in the back, or kick him on his knee or ankle. And sometimes a terrible anger would get hold of Yusuf and blows would rain down on Karim, and Karim would suddenly feel as if he was fighting for his life. Both boys would stumble out of the store room, bruised and bleeding. Karim would say nothing when Uncle Mustafa demanded to know what happened. He couldn't. He received Uncle Mustafa's protection. Uncle Mustafa's protection kept him alive; and it kept him humble. But Yusuf would tell his father how Karim had suddenly lashed out at him, and Karim would hang his head and Uncle Mustafa would become sad and would tell Karim that one day he would have to tell his mother about these sudden fits of anger. Now, with Nadia beside him, Karim rubbed his bruised knee and sighed. Being attacked by Yusuf wasn't something that was going to end. But he didn't want to be hit any more tonight.
        He turned and stared at Nadia. ‘I can't be caught by them again, Nadia. Not tonight. They hurt me. And tomorrow I must play football. Tomorrow is the big game.'
        She shook her head. ‘They will go for me as well, Karim. Boys like that will not care that I am a girl.'
        ‘Then let's go!'
        ‘No!' She grasped his arm. ‘I have to get the rags back.'
        ‘We can't go back, Nadia! Yusuf and Omar are big.'
        ‘But my rags, Karim.'
        He stared at her; did not take his eyes from her, willed her to forgive him for what he was about to say. It was something boys were not supposed to say to girls. ‘Nadia,' he whispered. ‘I am scared of them.'
        She looked at him. And he guessed what she was thinking. Boys were supposed to be scared of nothing. Strong as elephants. Fierce as lions. Fast as leopards.
        She took his hand. This time he did not pull his hand back.
        ‘Sometimes I am scared of my father,' she whispered. ‘When he is angry. But always I am more scared of being hungry. I have to get that bag, Karim. It is big. It is full.' She smiled. ‘I will find a pretty dress in it, Karim. I always do. Would you like me to wear a pretty dress, Karim?'
        He snatched his hand from her. ‘No!' Stupid Nadia, saying things like that. He hated it when she made jokes about her dresses. Almost every morning when he came from the flat to get bread she would be standing on her pile of rags and she would call him and laugh at him and get him to look at the new dress she had found amongst them. Always it was the best dress in Cairo . Always, though her face might be smudged with dust, she would say it definitely made her the prettiest girl in Cairo . The prettiest girl in all of Egypt !
        Nadia laughed and moved round the dome so she could sneak a look. She peeped out, then jerked her head back. She beckoned Karim to her; grabbed his hand again. ‘We have no choice,' she whispered. ‘They are almost here.'
        ‘We could have escaped, Nadia. If you hadn't got us to stop we could have been off this roof and back down in the alleys. We could have been almost home.' But then he shrugged. Without her, he would not have been on the roof in the first place. He would have been down in that blind alley, he would already be half left for dead. She had helped him. Saved him. So he knew that now it was his turn to help her. ‘Alright,' he sighed. ‘We will double back for your rags.'
        ‘Karim?'
        ‘Yes.'
        ‘I can give you a present if you want it?'
        ‘What sort of present?'
        She grinned. ‘Something you want more than anything in the world. Something you have wanted all your life.'
        ‘Girls talk nonsense. Always nonsense. Now be quiet.'
        He eased himself round the dome. He could see them! Yusuf was in front. Omar was a few steps behind, staring ahead, his eyes fierce, his wide mouth set in a grim line. The iron pipe was back in his hand.
        Karim turned to Nadia. He put his finger to his mouth. Surely a girl would at least understand what that meant. She nodded. There was no laughter in her eyes anymore. She was as deadly serious as he was. Nadia was wearing a sleeveless dress over loose trousers. Her arms, as dark from the sun as her face, were bare, and he saw the muscles in them tighten. He saw too the sinews of her neck become hard, saw her mouth compress. Saw the look in her eyes. Like a bird of prey. Like the eyes of a falcon soaring above Cairo 's citadel of Saladin. Yes, she understood.
        He reached out his hand. She took it. He could feel the strength in her and it surprised him. Sometimes there was more to Nadia than her just being a stupid girl. He pointed to her feet. She nodded and he knew she understood. They must tread carefully; make no sound. He inched forward, pulling her with him. Slowly, carefully, they moved as Yusuf and Omar came up to the dome. Every now and then there came the unpleasant pat of the iron pipe slapping into the palm of Omar's hand. Karim and Nadia shifted round a bit more.
        ‘Where've they gone?' they heard Omar say.
        Yusuf snapped back at him. ‘They might have dropped down to the street.'
        ‘We'd have seen them. They're up here somewhere. And I'll get them. No one escapes from Omar. And no girl makes a fool of me with a bag of rags. She'll wish she hadn't come up on the roof to play. Not tonight. Not when Omar has Karim in his sights.'
        ‘Then we'd better speed up, or someone actually will escape from you, and that Nadia will have made a fool of you whether you like it or not. And for the sake of Allah, throw that bit of pipe away.'
        ‘I'll throw it at you if you don't shut up!'
        Karim and Nadia were inching round. Watching their feet. Watching for anything that might make a noise. Every sense on fire. Straining for information. Smelling the breeze and the sky. Tasting the mood of the night. The streets were still alive. Like rivers in deep gorges. Some quiet and slow. Some, the wider ones, like raging torrents of noise and shifting lights. The sound of Yusuf's and Omar's Chelsea-blue trainers was all but lost in Cairo 's sleepless grumble and roar. But in Karim's and Nadia's ears the sound of those trainers was amplified a thousand times. Everything hung on that sound, how it moved across the other side of the dome, how it kicked at loose stones, how it suddenly paused, how it shuffled further away, how it brought Karim and Nadia round to the farthest side of the dome, had the grip of their fingers ease, had them breathe again, had him look at her. Now she wasn't just Nadia who lived in his alley anymore. She was Nadia who had shared a hunt with him. Nadia with her face as dark as a Nubian from Egypt 's south.
        ‘Karim,' she whispered.
        ‘What?'
        ‘In the morning, first thing, get bread for me, Karim.'
        ‘Why?'
        Leaning against the dome, she squatted down. She rested her elbows on her knees and cupped her chin in her hands. And all the time she watched him with her dark eyes, and he wondered how eyes for a boy could be so weak and easy to hurt – the best place to punch a boy you were fighting. But a girl's eyes were worse than weapons. They hit you harder than a boy's fist ever could. Boys couldn't hurt you if you were more than their arm's length away from them. But girls could. Nadia could hurt him from one end of the alley to the other: just with her eyes.
        ‘I'll give you something, Karim, if you bring me bread in the morning. And I did save you.'
        He peered round the dome. Yusuf and Omar had leapt one of the alleys. They were heading away. He was going to get home with no more bruises, no more sudden shocks of pain. ‘Give me what?'
        ‘Something you will like. Something you have always wanted. I know you, Karim. You are my friend and I know what you have wanted since the days you were too small to climb up on my pile of rags and push me off.'
        She smiled. Girls' smiles could be as dangerous as their eyes. You couldn't work out what they meant.
        ‘Something precious, Karim. Something you have been dreaming of every night.'
        ‘Oh?'
        ‘Only you will have to give me bread every day this week. Every single day. Because I get hungry in the morning and you ought to be looking after me like I look after you. Every morning you go and get bread for you and your mother. But you don't get bread for me.'
        ‘You have your own bread.'
        ‘I want a piece of bread every morning, Karim. Starting tomorrow.'
        ‘You're mad!'
        He hurled himself away from her, and started back the way they had come. The sooner they got her bag of rags the sooner they could get home. She jumped up and followed. At the same time she smoothed her clothes.
        ‘Do you like this dress, Karim?'
        He shrugged.
        ‘I am the best dressed girl in the whole of Cairo .'
        Karim knew that Nadia only got to wear her dresses for a few days. Then, because she always chose the best ones from the rags, her father would demand them back, mended if they needed mending, so he could sell them on. Within a few days she would be wearing something quite different, and claiming she looked just as beautiful in it.
        ‘Bread for a whole week, Karim? If you get me bread tomorrow I will show you what the present is. If you bring me bread for a whole week I will get it from where I have hidden it and I will hand it to you, and it will be yours.'
        But Karim had had enough. He hurried his pace. ‘I haven't got time for your games, Nadia.'
        ‘But you always want me to have time for your games, Karim. You and your silly football. Every night for a whole year you got me to play football with you. Every night I had to kick a silly ball and pretend I was a silly footballer playing for some silly English team. And every night you told me off for the way I kicked. There's just kicking, Karim! There isn't different ways to kick a ball. You just kick it!'
        ‘It isn't silly, Nadia. And there's your way to kick a ball and there's the right way. You just kick with your toe. The whole point of kicking a ball is making it go where you want it to go. You can't do that with the end of your toe.'
        ‘But I don't want it to go anywhere. Well, what I really want is for it to go as far away from me as possible.'
        She caught him up. ‘If you come back in the morning with some bread for me, Karim, I will show you the present I have been keeping for you ever since I found it.' She raised a finger. ‘Just one piece of government bread, and I will show you what you have always wanted. I will show you the greatest treasure you could ever imagine. But once I've shown it to you, I will take it back to my hiding place until you have given me bread for a whole week.' She paused. Again her head went to one side. ‘I know you will want it, Karim. And once you have seen it, you really will bring me bread every day for a week. Perhaps even cake. You will! Every single day.'
        ‘You really are mad!' he cried. ‘Mad and dirty.' He paused and looked at her. ‘And your precious dress is torn at the back.'
        She glared at him. But then the smile returned and her eyes took on new depths. ‘You get my bread, Karim. And I will wash my face just for you. And as for my dress…' She stamped her foot. ‘I will mend it! I will have to mend it anyway!'
        They dropped down into the alley. Quickly they recovered her bag of rags. Karim helped her haul it through the narrow, bustling streets to their own alley. Mr Hussein was there watching his television, banging it when the picture went, cursing it when the picture flickered with lines of electric light. When Nadia had got the rags inside her father's yard, she stood at her door. Karim shuffled his threadbare trainers in the dirt. Stared down at them. Felt uncomfortable. There was something he knew he had to do. But it felt difficult.
        She giggled. ‘Do you want to kiss me, Karim?'
        ‘No!' Trust a stupid girl to say something like that.
        ‘What then?'
        He raised his head. He stared at her. Then he said it, though it was difficult. ‘Thank you, Nadia. I want to say, ‘thank you'.'
        She grinned. ‘Because I saved you?'
        ‘Yes. I suppose.'
        ‘Will you give me a piece of bread in the morning, Karim? I do get hungry, and I have no Uncle Mustafa like you have to protect me. I just have my father, and he is not rich with a shop and men working in a workshop like your Uncle Mustafa has. Your Uncle Mustafa can even speak English to the tourists. Your Uncle Mustafa is a great man. Will you bring me bread, Karim?'
        He nodded. He knew he had to do that for her: after the way she had helped him. Besides, he admitted to himself, he was curious. A present that she had put in her hiding place would be precious indeed. And even gazelles, who lived for football and scoring goals and being part of the best street team in all of Cairo , could be interested in a secret present. He nodded again. ‘Yes, I will bring you bread.'
        ‘Then I will show you! I will sneak it out tonight. My father does not know where I hide things. I have money there that I make for myself when I am not doing the rags. And I have your present.'
        She grasped his hand and before he could pull it away from her she had bent down and kissed it. She glanced up at him. She had a look in her eye, but he could not work out its meaning. Karim was never to know it, but it was the same look a Christian girl had once given to his Muslim ancestor who had come out of the desert. It was the same look the Sphinx had been giving for thousands of years as all the history of Egypt unrolled like a magic carpet before it. It was the same look the sun gave the minarets of Cairo at the very break of day, before its heat got too fierce.
        ‘Karim,' Nadia whispered. ‘I am going to show you the greatest treasure that Karim the Gazelle could ever imagine.'
         
        CHAPTER THREE
        Yusuf's Mystery Package
        The next morning, Karim's mother was at the sink. ‘Hurry, Karim!' she shouted, poking her head round the door into their flat. ‘If you don't get moving there will be no cheap bread left.' Then she quickly returned to what she was doing. The sink was in the corridor, and was shared with five other families. She didn't want anyone to get to it before she was finished. ‘I said hurry!' .....
        • YouTube image of Richard Dell introducing I AM US with a background of an American Black Lives Matter demonstration

          Albion Publishing

          spiritual & religious questions: new answers for new times

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        • STARS IN OUR SOULS: through its Insights we can touch the unknowable spirit of the ALL

          ALBION PUBLISHING: books that seek the spirit; books that reach beyond religion, beyond dogma: towards the unknowable Truths.

          In particular, Richard Dell's 'Stars in our Souls' offer insights into our perennial religious and spiritual questions. Within it is a language that is almost poetical, and that is as it should be. How else can we hope to touch the untouchable, speak the unspeakable, except through words that suggest meanings beyond their meaning? How else can the untouchable hope to touch us, except when we have transcended mundane meaning and have somehow felt the stars that are forever beyond our reach, and yet are forever in our souls?

        • Comments on Stars in our Souls:

          as it opens others to the mystical and the transcendent

           

          'Science determines what happens. The question of 'why something happens', is answered with another 'what happens'. But the true 'why' is where meaning lies, where purpose and significance hides. The true 'why' is where God resides.' From STARS IN OUR SOULS, Insight 23

          'Prophetic, mystical, down to earth, yet profound. Full of insights so necessary for our world today.'

          - Rev. Anne Turner

          'Richard Dell's insight, 'Deep Meaning', is not only good poetry, it also achieves some “digging” use of words. Transcendence lying just beneath the poem's structure. For me it begins to tease out the mystery of transcendence.'

          David Barklem

          'These insights have universal truth, whether one believes in God or not, and that is proper wisdom!'

          A Cole

          Drawing on a lifetime's contemplation of the world physical and the world spiritual, Richard Dell's 'STARS IN OUR SOULS' opens our religious and spiritual questions onto new horizons and new possibilities.

        • Image of cover of Richard Dell's Stars in our Souls:

          Stars in our Souls

          Forty-two insights; forty-two challenges.

          Richard Dell draws on a lifetime's contemplation of the world physical and the world spiritual. Here are insights into our perennial religious and spiritual questions. Here also is a language that is almost poetical, which is as it should be. How else can we hope to touch the untouchable, speak the unspeakable, except through words that suggest meanings beyond their meaning? How else can the untouchable hope to touch us, except when we have transcended mundane meaning and have somehow felt the stars that are forever beyond our reach, and yet are forever in our souls?

           

          Richard's introduction ends in the following way:

          ... as the words in this book formed, the stars became a tangible metaphor for the heavens. In one sense, when we look up into the night sky we are literally looking at the heavens, at the ‘starry firmament’. In another sense, I ‘see’ God / Other - call it what you will - in everything. Every grain of dust, every cell, every plant, every creature; everything, and everyone. Certainly I ‘see’ God / Other - call it what you will - in the beautiful and seemingly endless night sky.

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          Albion Publishing, through Richard Dell's books that embrace new spiritual and religious insights, encourages spiritual awakening and the spiritual quest, by promoting the meaningful universalist and holistic potential in us all, as we reach towards the universal with regards to our religions, spiritual journeys, and our beliefs.

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          VIDEOS AND SLIDE SHOWS.

          STARS IN OUR SOULS YOUTUBE CHANNEL (videos & slide shows)

           

          All the videos and slideshows. Continually updated.

           

           

           

          I AM US (video)

          Boy meets girl is key to our problems.

          Black lives matter, religion versus religion - these are linked. The social, political, religious and spiritual are all linked. The meaning in life that we seek, sense of wellbeing we crave from a healthy environment are linked and entangled. We are the key to everything. Richard Dell's introduction to I AM US, which is number 16 in his STARS IN OUR SOULS, touches on how the way we so often characterize ourselves as one race or another, and as somehow separate and disconnected from all other races, parallels the way we so often characterize ourselves as one religion or another, and again as somehow separate and disconnected from all other religions. This tendency is at once absurd and corrosive. We need to foster a sense of oneness with each other and indeed with everyone. And oneness is actually something we have experienced all our lives. We experience oneness when we fall in love. When we are in love we experience oneness with the other. It is that oneness that we must achieve in every aspect of our lives.

           

           

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 1 - 5 (slide show)

           

           

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          1. The creation of our universe was not one single moment. It is a continuing and ongoing moment, an eternal unfolding that encompasses ourselves.

           

          2. This new age, this threshold age, marks our coming of age. Now, we sons and daughters of God withdraw from being petitioners of God. At last we become partners with God.

           

          3. The true artist and the mystic have much in common. For both delve deep into their inner being, and the deeper they delve – the more focussed they become within their own being – the more they touch and embrace and connect with the deep and never-ending vastness of the ALL.

           

          4. Our past, and our people’s past, must always be with us. But to remember the past with resentment, anger and hatred, is to be forever bound to that past, and is to forever bind the future. That is true for us as individuals, and is true for us as communities and nations.

           

          5. True free will only exists in how we react and feel about those events external to ourselves. Reality lies within, both in mystic terms, and in terms of true and intimate knowing. What goes on external to ourselves, we can to some extent affect, and to a very great extent can question. It is our inner life that is our Truth, and it is our inner life that determines how we try to affect that which is outside of ourselves.

           

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          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 6 - 10 (slide show)

           

           

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          6. Love God if we will. Love all of God's creation because we MUST. For all of God's creation, IS God.

           

          7. One reason the Church grew in its early days, but is not growing now, is not because people then relied on the scriptures, but do not now. It is because the spirit of God and the needs of those earlier times required it to expand. Now, however, we are entering a ‘new time’, and this ‘new time’ is not the Church’s time. But it is always God’s time. As always we are being awakened in order to experience to the full the next phase in humanity’s progression to the stars.

           

          8. Undisciplined thoughts affect everything. Undisciplined bodies affect little. Even beyond the realms of this physical earth, our thoughts are not lost; indeed our thoughts endure. Thus, are we accountable beyond imagining. Thus must we forever be mindful of our minds. It is only our minds that make sense of, and give meaning to, the entire universe of matter. We can taint the world we inhabit with our darker thoughts. Likewise, though we do not realise it, we can taint the higher realms, the very realms of God with our darker selves. We must always take care. We owe nothing less to ourselves, and to all of creation itself.

           

          9. Scriptures must be reinterpreted, because humanities consciousness evolves. As we evolve and learn, so do we enter into new heights of understanding. With new heights of understanding, our scriptures must be known anew. How else, otherwise, can we be true to ourselves, and true to the infinite call of the heavens?

           

          10. There are many paths to God, so there is just one path to God. Pentecostalism and emotional healing are not dissimilar to shamanism; whilst the various mainstream Christian churches, that can range from puritanical simplicity to high ceremony, reflect and even reproduce the varieties of worship to be found in all the religions of the world. Throughout the world, there are the quiet paths, the reflective paths, the rhythmic paths of ritual, the unadorned paths of the ascetics, the ecstatic paths, and yes, the wild paths of the shamans. When imbued with good heart, and only when imbued with good heart, they are all valid paths leading ultimately to God. There are many paths to God, so there is just one path to God.

           

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          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 11 - 15 (slide show)

           

           

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          11. This is a key question. Supposing it could be shown without a shadow of a doubt that the Bible told us to hate people and commit murder. Would we, as the people we are today, obey? If not, then clearly we must accept that there is an inner sense of what is right that transcends the Bible and indeed, that transcends all scriptures. This is not to suggest that any of the world’s religious scriptures do so require us to hate and murder – though they can come pretty close – instead, it is to show that when all is said and done, our own sense of what is right and proper trumps the world’s scriptures: every time.

           

          12. Eating food is not a moral issue. How our eating affects others, who need to eat, is. That is inescapable, and not only in terms of how our eating might rob others of the chance to eat; but also, as we are so aware these days, in terms of how our food production can damage the environmental integrity of our planet. Likewise, sex is not a moral issue. How we handle our relationships, is. We are linked with everything and everyone. There is no escaping that. And there is no escaping the fact that there will invariably be people to whom we are beholden. So long as we have any sort of moral compass, and so long as we see ourselves as connected to others, then sex is rarely uncomplicated.

           

          13. A key question for every Christian since the beginning of the Christian Era, is whether he or she would recognise Christ at the Second Coming. Well, here is something that we need to accept, uncomfortable though it might be. The Second Coming is upon us NOW. Christ is here, working through all those souls who see religion as an inner path or journey that embraces inclusivity with all such paths, regardless of detail, dogma, and doctrine. The remarkable growth of new spiritual thinking, of religious and spiritual pilgrims at last beginning to recognise the validity of other ways, is the clear manifestation of Christ being once again in our presence. This is a Second Coming Christ who is not One, but who is Everyone.

           

          14. So many of our overly utilitarian buildings are a true reflection of our present view of ourselves. All that matters with so many of these buildings is that our physical needs are met. The spirit is of no consequence. This might appear to be an inconsequential point. But it most certainly is not. Our buildings, our townscapes, our various environments, invariably reflect us, reflect what we are, and perhaps more importantly reflect what we think we are, what we feel about ourselves. We are not worthless and inconsequential, yet too often the environments that we create for ourselves would suggest that we are. We need to understand that we cannot hope to become spiritually fulfilled within ourselves, and just as importantly spiritually at peace with each other, until the buildings we create, and the towns and cities we live in, and the rural locations we breathe in, reflect that harmony and spirit. Only then might they reflect what we ourselves, at our best, can be.

           

          15. The prophets of Israel continually made the point that if the people of Israel lived by the Law, in other words, in their terms lived ethically, then they would prosper under God. If they did not, then there would ultimately be calamity. When it comes to right thinking and right acting, this had to be so, because of the karma that would inevitably be generated if the thinking and acting was not ‘right’. Now we are in the same situation as was ancient Israel on so many occasions. We, here and now, so often do not behave ethically. Oh, we do not always break the law, but we always hear people boasting about how they pulled off this deal or other by in some way ‘shafting’ their opponents. So often now we do not live honourably. Hence the decline of our nations. Until we restore honour and ethics to our everyday dealings, we shall not come out of our present-day misfortunes. In the 19th century there were undoubtedly unscrupulous people, but nonetheless people were expected to be honourable, and indeed there was a code of ethics that most people tried to operate by. Deals were made, but when made, one did not go back on one’s word. That was the code, even if it was not always adhered to. Do we have any sort of underlying code of ethics these days?

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          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 16 - 20 (slide show)

           

           

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          16. It is not just the physical environment that has to be redressed. It is the ethical as well. The physical environment is the world in which we live and upon which we depend. The ethical arena is actually us ourselves. At the same time, everything we do and feel and think, is a reflection of ourselves, and in a poignantly meaningful way, is ourselves. When we look upon the wasted areas of our world, be they our blighted urban landscapes, or our scarred and despoiled wildernesses, we are looking at ourselves. When the abuser stares into the frightened and wrecked eyes of the abused, he or she is looking at him or herself. So is it the case with the world that we live in and have created. When we gaze at polluted streams, at razed forests, at denatured pastures, at … We gaze upon the truth about ourselves.

           

          17. The fundamentalist notion that only Christianity is correct, is a latter-day aspect of the notion that only the white European’s culture etc is any good. It is a lingering manifestation of that corrosive superiority complex that has contaminated the world for so long. And this is not unique to the Western world. It is a notion that at various times has infected nearly all the various peoples of our planet. Perhaps it is responsible for most of our ills. Certainly it is an attitude that our religions, be they of the west or the east, the south or the north, must overcome within themselves. Likewise all our various races and all our various colours of our skins.

           

          18. Whether astrology works or not, and I suspect that it is all far more complicated than astrologers would have it, and is intimately linked with the ONENESS of the ALL, which transcends our human based mathematics, geometry and logic. Our present being and our immediate and ultimate destinies are connected with everything, are in fact in a real, profound and universal sense EVERYTHING. Everything is connected and so everything affects everything else to a greater or lesser degree. At the same time we must also take into account all the rhythms of Gaia, of the planet that is our home. Even if our planet Earth was mere dead geology, we will only thrive on it when we live as if it really is alive and in a real sense conscious. It is only a small step to realising that it is indeed alive and conscious and deeply aware of us and what we do to each other and what we do to our ‘it’ to Gaia, to our Mother Earth.

           

          19. What is the difference between trusting a psychic about the world, and trusting a scientist who tells us what weird flickers on a monitor screen mean? One key difference is that what the scientist does is repeatable and can be corroborated by others. But there is an important point that can be made here, and that is – leaving aside the psychic, but focussing instead on the mystic – we can see that both the mystic and the physicist are delving deep into the realms of mystery and indeed of uncertainty: the mystic delving into the realms of mind, the physicist into the realms of matter. Both touch all but unimaginable dimensions.

           

          20. The new ways of spirituality can in one sense mean an end to those profound feelings of religious guilt that can afflict so many. In other words, the artificial doctrinal guilt that religions so often imposed on their adherents can be dissipated in moments, as those adherents become free of the stranglehold of doctrine and theology. But that does not mean that the new ways of spirituality negate all guilt. The key to the new ways of spirituality is that there is embedded in our consciousness and our souls the profound sense of spiritual and actual responsibility. We are responsible for what we think, and for what we do and thereby for what we are. We may be free of an artificial guilt imposed from outside of us, but because the new way recognises our responsibility, that responsibility we thereby have for ourselves and for each other, and for the whole of the world around us, social and environmental, becomes immense. When we get things wrong, as indeed we shall, then there might be some other word for it, but guilt will still play its part.

           

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 21 - 25 (slide show)

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          21. I heal when I know I’m not a jumble of unconnected parts, but am an interconnected whole. The world heals when we embrace its connectedness. The holistic approach is a healing process in all sorts of ways; ways that can transcend its customary focus on our personal physical and mental wellbeing. The holistic approach which instinctively sees the parts that make up a whole as being intimately connected, will need to be focussed on our social and political arenas if we are to make our societies properly functional, and if we are to bring our societies into a state of ‘good health’ where each and every one of us is seen as a valuable and integral part of the whole. We are all connected. We are all part of the Oneness that characterises a vibrant and healthy society. That does not mean that we will thereby lose our individuality. It means, that we must recognise that we can only achieve true individuality for ourselves and each other when we recognise that we are part of the whole and have responsibilities to everyone else who makes up that whole with us. Only then can we bring about a healing of the social and intellectual fragmentation of Western society, and indeed of all societies, that has been so extraordinary in modern times, yet also so damaging.

           

          22. To heal all nations, we must embrace their ONENESS. To be healed, all nations must rejoice in our uniqueness: our symbiotic entanglement.

           

          23. I am my faith; I am all faiths. I am my country; I am all countries. But in the end, I am me. In the end, I am responsible.

           

          24. To heal ourselves and our nations, we must accept this: that our personal and collective symptoms are symbols. Symbols to be interpreted. Symptoms, be they medical, social or political, are symbols of underlying and fundamental truths about ourselves. Symptoms that are symbols are the keys to ourselves. Our task, as always, is to unravel their meaning, to get into the truth that they are displaying for us. This is why symbols are so important. What we read in a good novel may not be true – Darcy and Lizzie Bennet, for example never existed – but that good novel will be deep-set with truths. As we follow the adventures of the made-up Mr Darcy and Miss Elizabeth Bennet we learn something that is universally true about relationships, betrayals, vanities etc. So is it also is with our dreams, or what we might sense in our meditations. A good novel, and a seemingly significant dream will require investigation, will require unravelling. We will always need to go deep, and that process alone will be part of the voyage of discovery that leads ultimately to ourselves, that leads ultimately to truths about ourselves. Likewise, we are called upon to go deep into the meaning of the symptoms – medical, social or political – that can afflict us. What are they hiding? And more interestingly, what are they saying?

           

          25. Body mind and spirit when ONE, is ourselves made whole, ourselves made complete. The quest for the Grail is within; the Holy Grail is US. Body, Mind and Spirit. We too easily and readily function in just the one plain. We sometimes learn that body and mind are linked. We sometimes manage to recognise that when linked, when seen as two aspects of ourselves, connected and entangled, body and mind as ONE can raise us to new and even unimaginable heights of achievement and awareness. It takes effort. It takes concentration. It pays. Body, mind and spirit as ONE, requires of us even greater effort, even greater depths and heights of concentration. But those depths and those heights can be beyond measure, if we can achieve them. Body and mind as ONE is our first sacred haven on our eternal quest to God, to ourselves, to everything. Body and Mind and Spirit as ONE transcends itself. Body and Mind and Spirit as one, is ONENESS, is us at last ONE with the ALL.

           

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 26 - 30 (slide show)

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          26. The reason why psychics and dowsers, and others in similar fields – leaving aside charlatans – do not always get the sort of consistent results that science invariably requires of them, is because just as with physicists when working deep in the strange realities of quantum mechanics, they are working at the extremes of physical reality. Consequently, three things affect what they are attempting:

          1. the state of the moment. Probing along the very edge of the physical, everything is affected by the quality – not just the quantities involved – of the moment – as Jung has pointed out.

          2. The state of the observer – that is the state of the medium or dowser. These practitioners – leaving aside charlatans – are all at different stages in terms of their abilities and indeed of their moral / ethical compass.

          3. They are also affected by the moment itself. The observer, in relativity and quantum physics always affects the observed. This is true in matters of the mind and the soul. But also, we must understand that when it comes to such as psychics and dowsers, the practitioners themselves are also affected by the moment and by the state of that they are observing. Reality shifts, and sensitivity to those shifting realities will be in continual flux, will be forever in an all but unpredictable flow.

           
          27. What must, and hopefully will, characterize our new times is our awareness of our universal connectedness. The holistic approach to medicine; to our own selves as being body, mind and spirit – three in ONE – ; and to our intrinsic connection with our planet and the entirety of its flora and fauna, will inevitably and seamlessly bring us to a rational and all-encompassing, utterly inclusive, world view, opening up for us multi-faceted levels and degrees of consciousness. Conscious of our connectedness, we will again both inevitably and seamlessly embrace responsibility for ourselves and how we perceive ourselves, and for our world and how we perceive our world, and of course for each other, and how we perceive, appreciate and seek to cherish each other.
           
          28. If If our planet generates ley lines of interconnected energy flows, as some tell us it does; much as our bodies, some say, are connected by acupuncture flows of energy lines, then everything we do to our planet, the roads we carve into the landscape, the buildings we erect, and of course the mines, both deep and open cast, that we gouge out of the rock and earth, will have inevitable deleterious consequences for us all. We are all connected to the ALL. We live and breathe with our planet’s living and rhythmic breathing. We are CONNECTED. We are ourselves, and we are each other, and we are the environment in which we function. Gouge out rock and earth, and we gouge out something within ourselves.
           

          On the other hand, if ley lines do not exist, we cannot, nonetheless, allow ourselves to be cavalier and dismissive with regards to what we do to our planet. We are CONNECTED. We are ourselves, and we are each other, and we are the environment in which we function. Gouge out rock and earth, and we gouge out something within ourselves. We also must then live and breathe, must necessarily resonate with, our planet’s wound. We can never be separate from what we have done, and what we do, and what we will do.

           

          29. One aspect of the British Arthurian legends, that at times lies as dormant and hidden as the Grail itself, is the belief that Arthur and his knights are asleep – the Welsh hills are the favoured locations for their slumber – and that one day they will awake, or be awakened, and shall return to redeem and restore Albion. The ‘Once and Future King’? Such legends and myths exist around the world. They are all but embedded in the human psyche. Even Jesus Christ, we are told, will return in a Second Coming to redeem His people. The truth may well be found in these stories, though with a nuance that makes them profound beyond their mere telling. It is not the Kings and knights of yore, it is not the messiahs and avatars, who will return. These leaders and prophets are in fact the exoteric or outer personification of something deeper and ultimately more powerful. So what is the truth that hides in these legends and stories? It is that in the cosmic rhythm of eternal humanity’s continuing pilgrimage, and in the rhythmic breathing of our planet’s own life and story, and in the eternal and infinite unfolding of the creation itself, there run hidden streams of truth and wisdom, that periodically sink beneath the surface of our awareness, but which periodically, at times that are determined by the undulating rhythm of the ALL and also by our readiness to understand and gain by it, these streams of truth and wisdom emerge into the light of day and into the light of our being; sometimes through the teaching and very existence of some great soul, and sometimes through our own collective readiness to absorb and proclaim and most importantly prosper from the awareness and wisdom that will suddenly touch us all, and just as suddenly change the future direction of our progress for the future, until those streams vanish once again, and then at some future time enter our souls yet again, for the next step in humanity’s all but endless journey to the stars and to God. The keys to the next opening of our souls do indeed lie asleep in the hills.

           

          30. Science is very good at telling us what happens. It is not able to tell us why something happens. It does seem to tell us ‘why’, but it doesn’t. It’s ‘why’ is invariably another, admittedly deeper level of ‘what’. So science will tell us that after a number of observations, it can declare that gasses rise when they heat up. They then investigated why that should be so. Their answer, however, was another ‘what’. They investigated and ultimately they found that the molecules that constituted the gas became excited as they were warmed, and so began to occupy a greater space, thereby lowering their weight to mass, and thereby rising relative to other gases that remained at a constant temperature. This is, of course, another ‘what’.

           

          This does of course beg the question as to what a true ‘why’ would look like. It is indeed possible that all our knowledge and understanding can be reduced down to a multitude of ‘whats’. It is possible, but I cannot help feeling that if we accept that, then we are missing something vital. Many years ago, during my headmaster / headteacher / school principal days, I was eating lunch in our school dining room, half listening to a conversation between our head of science and an eight-year-old boy. They were discussing gravity. I heard the head of science saying that gravity was a consequence of the space-time continuum. At this point I looked up and said that that was indeed what science told us what happens, but why does it happen. Without missing a beat, the eight-year-old looked at me and said, ‘well Mr Dell, that’s when science ends and your Monday morning assemblies begin.

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 31 - 35 (slide show)

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          31.

          When we pray, we are in a sense talking to God. When we meditate, we might say that we are in essence listening to God. In reality, of course, the situation is far from being such a binary one.

           

          In praying – in talking – we are undoubtedly engaged, undoubtedly aware. Even at its most basic level we can claim that we are deep in a sort of spiritual therapy, talking to a silent listener whom we know / believe understands us and cares for us. In that light, prayer is undoubtedly therapeutic. In that light, within the silence of the ‘unknown’ listener we can find answers. Whether they be answers from deep within ourselves, or answers from deep within the Silence of God, hardly matters.

           

          In meditation – in listening – we are also undoubtedly engaged, undoubtedly aware. Now, though, the silent listener is ourselves, and within our silence we can reach equally deep and equally therapeutic understanding. Do we touch the infinite universe beyond ourselves? Or is the infinite universe forever within us? It hardly matters.

           

          32.  

          Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. There is the given situation – thesis – which, from within its own contradictions can result in a reaction in a vaguely, sometimes violently, opposite direction -antithesis – which can ultimately result in a ‘blending’ of the two resulting in a restored equilibrium – synthesis – which provides a new and for a time sustainable way forward – a new thesis.

           

          It is possible to see this happening with regards to our own soul journeys, if we take into account the ‘mechanism,’ of reincarnation – which may or may not be true, but which makes spiritual and practical sense to me. It might be said that between incarnations we are in a state of a newly forged ‘thesis – forged from the trials, tribulations and experiences of all our previous incarnations. But in order to progress spiritually we must be tested, we must, it is tempting to say be taken into the fire of a new incarnation, in which we shall experience the sometimes gentle, sometimes excessive trials and tribulations of the antithesis. It is only through that testing that we can forge for ourselves newer and higher levels of strength and understanding; it is only through that testing that we can forge for ourselves newer and higher soul synthesise – incarnation after incarnation until the physical plane has nothing more it can teach us, until we are at last One with whom we always should have been, and One with the ALL, One with GOD.

           

          33.
          We know that war must be avoided. We probably recognise that it is not necessarily the case that war should be avoided at all costs. One of the tragedies of human existence is that sometimes the alternative to going to war is more dangerous, or more heinous, than the war itself. Within war, we can be led into perpetrating dreadful acts. Within war, we can be tested in ways we never would have been tested if there had been no war. Within war we can find ourselves being tested to the point of extreme bravery and extraordinary nobility. War is life writ larger and more fearsome than most of us would ever want. We can incur considerable karma when at war. We can also be ‘paying off’ karma when at war. Also, and we forget this at our peril, the events and deeds that lead us to war are rarely the prime movers – the essential causes – of war. War that can lead us into heightened bouts of karmic shifting, is itself the karmic consequence of past, and sometimes even long-forgotten, acts and thoughts.

           

          34.

          Within Christianity, we have, for all but two thousand years, been bound to some extent by the story of St Thomas the doubter. After Thomas put his hands in Christ’s wounds, Christ said ‘have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe.’ With these words, faith was raised onto its pedestal and, as a consequence, faith became the litmus test of the true believer. But we need to note that Christ did not condemn Thomas. We need to note that Thomas was not thrown into the abyss. And we need to note that scepticism is not a ‘sin’. We also need to note that blind faith can never be a spiritual virtue, and that the sceptic who seeks actually does have faith: faith that there is something to seek. Most important of all, we need to be aware that it is not faith or belief that is spiritually important; it is how we conduct ourselves, how we behave and think, how we care for others and for our world (‘we shall know them by their fruits’ Matthew 7:16). Must we condemn the most virtuous possible Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, atheists etc etc, because they do not have the sort of faith that some Christians might claim as being essential for salvation? We might also want to note that the doubting Thomases of our world have probably done more for us than those who act by faith alone.

           

          35.

          There can be no one moment of ‘surrender’ to God. There can be that initiating, exploratory moment of surrender to the path, to the dream, but that can only be the beginning of our journey to God, not the end. In fact, once on the path we do not put our struggles behind us, we in fact face greater struggles, of greater import. We face the tempering and the refining of our inner spirit. The path is a quest, of Grail-like proportions. The path is steep and tortuous. Our adversaries are terrible and are entirely of our own making. We face truths with regards to ourselves, and those are the truths most horrible to contemplate. But the path that is constituted by our surrender to God is the only path that does not lead endlessly to nowhere. It is a path with a destination of wonder that we all shall one day take. Name God how we will. The path is there for us all. The Quest is for us all. God has no name, but God is the ONENESS that we are always part of and shall one day know.

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 36 - 40 (slide show)

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          36.

          The scientific and philosophical revolution that occurred around the 16th and 17th centuries, saw the triumph of the principle of the first cause, or efficient causality. In other words explanations regarding how the world worked and indeed what the world was, were essentially grounded on the principle that ‘D’ was caused by a prior event ‘C’, and that both ‘D’ and ‘C’ could ultimately be explained by prior event ‘B’ and so on. This was, without a doubt, a powerful and profound insight, that has led to a previously unimaginable awareness of how things work, and of course has led to our scientific and technological progress that has transformed the world and indeed for many people has transformed lives for the better. It is possible, however, that we are nearing a tipping point in which we become aware that although efficient causality is a crucial factor in the universe and indeed in our lives, it does not explain everything about us and our world. So long as we see some sort of purpose in what we do, in other words that not all that we do can be explained through efficient causality, or more to the point through machine-like mechanisms, then suddenly we begin to grasp something fundamental about ourselves, and indeed about the very world and universe in which we live. The natural world, which must be seen as including ourselves, may no longer be viewed as belonging to the realms of magic, but it and we have to be viewed as being ‘magical’. It is not difficult for us to accept that the animal kingdom – which includes us – is sentient, is conscious, is aware and often self-aware. As we delve ever deeper into the so-called mechanisms of the vegetable kingdom, it is not even that difficult for us to sense some sort of consciousness in plants and fungi. Sentience and purpose – in philosophical speak that is teleological processes; in other words the concept of the final cause in what happens rather than just the efficient cause in philosophy speak – not only offers insights into ourselves and our world and how we and all of it works, but it also points us to the higher purpose of us and our world. If we and our world are essentially mechanistic, then there is no purpose. But if we and the world in which we live are as much moved by purpose as we are by what happens to us, and if we can accept that and be aware of that, then we stand at last upon the threshold, the tipping point, of a greater awareness of what we and all of creation is. Our very sentience is the key. Our purpose is to become mindful of, and embrace, and become ONE with the sentience of everything, the sentience of the ALL.

           

          37.  

          Having a monarch as head of state might well appear anachronistic in our modern world. But the reason why it does appear anachronistic, even blatantly so, throws a spotlight on something about our modern world that is profoundly out of kilter with what our world should be. Monarchy appears so anachronistic because our modern world, our modern nation-state, the way we do things in our modern world, is essentially materialistic and mechanistic. Clearly monarchy can have no place in our modern world if that monarchy is about power and privilege, as so often in the past it was. The monarchy that actually can have a place in our modern world is that monarchy that manages to represent the spiritual aspect of a people, a spiritual aspect that is too often lacking in our modern times. The overly materialistic and mechanistic societies that we have created are ill fitted to meet the needs of a people that might overtly respond to the materialistic and mechanistic, but which in its hearts senses an unease, a profound loss, even an existential emptiness. We as people need to recognise that loss in ourselves, and our monarchies need to recognise that it is that spiritual need that they must relate to and respond to.

           

          It is possible to see this happening with regards to our own soul journeys, if we take into account the ‘mechanism,’ of reincarnation – which may or may not be true, but which makes spiritual and practical sense to me. It might be said that between incarnations we are in a state of a newly forged ‘thesis – forged from the trials, tribulations and experiences of all our previous incarnations. But in order to progress spiritually we must be tested, we must, it is tempting to say be taken into the fire of a new incarnation, in which we shall experience the sometimes gentle, sometimes excessive trials and tribulations of the antithesis. It is only through that testing that we can forge for ourselves newer and higher levels of strength and understanding; it is only through that testing that we can forge for ourselves newer and higher soul synthesise – incarnation after incarnation until the physical plane has nothing more it can teach us, until we are at last One with whom we always should have been, and One with the ALL, One with GOD.

           

          38.

          The scientific revolution of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, and of course subsequently, led to an undermining of long held religious beliefs, as the scientific methodology and its extraordinary consequences in terms of understanding our world and then manipulating our world through scientifically based technologies, seemed to make a mockery of long-held and long-cherished religious beliefs such as communion wine actually turning into Christ’s blood, or heaven being a real place that existed just above the clouds, and hell being a real place somewhere deep underground. Accidents were invariably seen as divine retribution. Pagan superstitions were still rife. Complementing the scientific revolution was the protestant revolution. With the old certainties gone, faith and trust were invariably placed in the ‘so-called’ Word of God. The great swathe of traditional church teachings, that were not grounded in the Word of the Bible, even though they might actually have touched on deep spiritual truths, were swept away. There was only the Word. The Word was the Truth, regardless of whether it actually was true, and truths that were not contained in the Word were seen as irrelevant at best and at worst as quite simply untrue. Perhaps it was only with the 18th Century Romantic movement, itself a reaction to soulless science and a stifling Word, that spiritually inclined ‘adventurers’ began to look for spiritual inspiration in the experience of nature rather than in the dissection of nature or the dissection of the Word. An overly mechanistic view of the universe, linked with an overly literal view of the divine, gradually began to give way to an appreciation of a universe that was in some way sentient and thereby actually more human.

           

          39.

          The Heart of the Cosmos is Love. For love is the expression of absolute and unconditional ONENESS. The heart of ourselves, is the heart. And the heart is love. We are not always ONE with our own being, but to be ONE with our own being is a vital step in our journey into the heavens. We can walk no profound steps if we cannot love ourselves. Only when we love ourselves, only when we fully experience the heart centre of ourselves, can we at last learn to love the extraordinary and love-generated and love-suffused world and universe in which we dwell. And when, at last, we love ourselves and our love-generated and love-suffused world and universe in which we dwell, can we be ONE with the ALL, ONE with God, complete and the heart centre of ALL.

           

          40.

          It is only through the struggles of being tested that we can make spiritual progress. The quest for the Grail, the Holy Path to God is not an analytic progression, it is not obtained through the learning of our mind. The Grail Quest, the Pathway to God, the entering into communion with the ALL of Creation which is then communion with God, is an existential happening, it is a transcendence of mere mind and thought and logic and understanding. To be ONE with the ALL is to enter the realms of wonder and bliss and compassion and empathy etc. which forever exist beyond any words. This learning is of the soul and of the spirit and is existential to the utmost degree. These learnings must be EXPERIENCED, and only through descent into the realms of matter, into the domains of gravity, into the polarities of thesis, antithesis, synthesis, the polarities of struggle, can we experience in the very guts and bowels of our souls the lessons we must duly learn. They MUST be learnt, for only then can we duly give of ourselves to others. And only then can we know God and be ONE with God.

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 41 - 45 (slide show)

           

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. These first five insights cover:

           

          41.

          A key question is this. Why should we give, whether of ourselves or of things we might possess, when it is apparently more to our advantage to take? After all, we would appear to gain so much by taking, and in a real sense actually lose so much by ‘indulging’ in giving. Certainly there can be advantage in giving when we are linked with others in some sort of mutual arrangement. But what of altruistic giving. Must it always be to some extent sacrificial? There is an answer to this, and it is a profound one. Perhaps the words ‘advantage’ and ‘disadvantage’ do not sit easily with the concept of altruistic giving, but rather we should consider the actual effects – the spiritual effects – of either taking or giving. When we take in any sort of selfish or self-serving way, we actually close ourselves down, close ourselves up, cut ourselves off from others, and from our own spiritual and true selves. When we give altruistically, we instead open ourselves up, open up our souls. In fact, when we selfishly take, we darken ourselves and diminish ourselves. When we give in any sort of altruistic way we open ourselves up to spiritual nourishment and growth. Giving is an explosion of energy. Taking is an implosion of energy. There might even be cases when individuals can be so addicted and dedicated to taking that they become spiritual ‘blackholes’. To give, on the other hand, is to be a radiant sun.

          There is no obvious answer to this. But in actual fact, there is a profound reason. When we give ourselves, we open out our souls and auras, and by giving we actually grow. When we are selfish, we are actually closing in on ourselves. It is a difference between explosions and implosion. I suppose those people who are powerful in terms of evil are like black holes.

           

          42.

          The story of humanity is primarily the story of the evolution of our consciousness, of the evolution of our mind and thereby of our reasoning powers; and also, though we may not always realise it, the evolution of our faculties for empathy and intuition. We have invariably used the development of our powers of reason to further ourselves in terms of our ability to survive and be comfortable. Sadly, we have also employed those reasoning powers to achieve dominance over other reasoning threats to ourselves, as well of course dominance over the Earth and all the creatures of the Earth. Genesis I:26 and beyond is prescient when it says: ‘And God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.” And it was so. And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day.’ But this was written at a time when the seeds of our reasoning powers had not yet born fruit. However, as the centuries have passed, so have our powers so increased, indeed become so powerful, that we can no longer afford to assume that we have unbridled dominion over the very Earth that nurtures us and harbours us. If we are to fulfil the true destiny of our awakening powers, we must emphasis to a much greater degree our power of empathy and intuition. Our destiny is to cherish, nurture and indeed harbour our planet and all its creatures thereof as once our planet cherished and nurtured and harboured us. Unless we can break through into a new evolutionary level of consciousness, we might have little evolution left for us to enjoy and use.

           

          43.

          Between the wars, when hyperinflation wracked Germany, the Berlin government was congratulated on its ability to speedily print higher and higher denominations of banknotes. To some extent they were forced into this. No-one chose for there to be such a catastrophic devaluation of the currency. But there was certainly nothing new in praise being heaped on people or organisations that could fashion such extreme achievements. And there is certainly nothing wrong in having ambitions to achieve new ‘heights’ and in actually achieving those new heights. But that being said, we do need to take stock of some of our ambitions and endeavours. It is laudable to run faster without the aid of performance enhancing drugs; laudable too to create a plane that can fly faster and higher than any other; or for that matter a car or train that can travel faster than any other. But what of our everyday lives? Is it really sensible to create trains that go fast, only to create new trains that go faster and so on? Do we need to motor along a highway at seventy, eighty or a hundred miles an hour, when it is probably safer and more relaxing and more environmentally appropriate to travel at some slower speed? Is an increasingly hectic world a boon for humanity? Is a noisier world to our advantage? Speeds and size and noise seem to dominate our national and world agendas. We have certainly improved when it comes to safety, but there seems to be very little room these days for matters such as beauty or elegance. Where are we in this brave new world we are creating?

           
          44.

          A key question is this. Why should we give, whether of ourselves or of things we might possess, when it is apparently more to our advantage to take? After all, we would appear to gain so much by taking, and in a real sense actually lose so much by ‘indulging’ in giving. Certainly there can be advantage in giving when we are linked with others in some sort of mutual arrangement. But what of altruistic giving. Must it always be to some extent sacrificial? There is an answer to this, and it is a profound one. Perhaps the words ‘advantage’ and ‘disadvantage’ do not sit easily with the concept of altruistic giving, but rather we should consider the actual effects – the spiritual effects – of either taking or giving. When we take in any sort of selfish or self-serving way, we actually close ourselves down, close ourselves up, cut ourselves off from others, and from our own spiritual and true selves. When we give altruistically, we instead open ourselves up, open up our souls. In fact, when we selfishly take, we darken ourselves and diminish ourselves. When we give in any sort of altruistic way we open ourselves up to spiritual nourishment and growth. Giving is an explosion of energy. Taking is an implosion of energy. There might even be cases when individuals can be so addicted and dedicated to taking that they become spiritual ‘blackholes’. To give, on the other hand, is to be a radiant sun.

          There is no obvious answer to this. But in actual fact, there is a profound reason. When we give ourselves, we open out our souls and auras, and by giving we actually grow. When we are selfish, we are actually closing in on ourselves. It is a difference between explosions and implosion. I suppose those people who are powerful in terms of evil are like black holes.

           

          45.

          Schisms are the great crises of the church. Schisms lead to schisms that become the great crises of the churches. In Christianity alone we have seen numerous breakups, as the once all but monolithic Church split between east and west – between Constantinople and Rome – and leaving aside other minor breaks, we eventually saw the split in the west between Rome and Lutheranism, then Luther’s Protestantism splitting into many different factions, and the Roman Church then splitting off the Anglican persuasion. These are the great schisms. There have been many minor ones. Many evangelical churches have broken into house churches, which themselves have invariably broken into ‘rival’ factions or groups. Each split is invariably seen as a crisis for the ‘mother’ group. But as the churches fracture, two possibilities arise. The first is that co-religionists, even though adhering to rival factions, might begin to release that the details of their beliefs are unimportant compared to how they actually live their lives in terms of the spiritual and moral teachings of Jesus the ultimate founder of their religion. Too often it is doctrine – the understanding of what various overly charged terms mean that lead to splits. It is rare for split to occur over issues of morality and ethics and life-styles. The second possibility that might at last arise is that the breaking of the churches, at one level, though not at the most important level of moral and ethical behaviour, diminishes the churches in term of their power. The greatest threat to all religions organisations is not the threat of rival teachings, or rival interpretations of teachings, it is the threat of the what the possession of power can do to the holders of power. Power does invariably corrupt, does invariably lead the adherents of a church away from the true core of Christ’s teach which had absolutely nothing to do with pomp and circumstance and everything to do with humility and love and compassion. Even a church of great pomp and circumstance and wealth can find its true or original hearty when shaken by schisms of its own making.

           

          FASTER BIGGER BETTER (video)

           

          A film-illustrated reading by Richard Dell of his poem FASTER, BIGGER, BETTER: nothing necessarily better. This is No. 33 in his book STARS IN OUR SOULS: a new look at our perennial religious and spiritual questions.

           

          Everything faster, everything bigger, nothing necessarily better.

          That has become the 'poisoned-chalice' mantra of our modern world. This poem, which is number 33 in Richard Dell's STARS IN OUR SOULS, is not just a description of where we are now. It is also a warning. The corona virus pandemic is our chance to emerge from the other side of the pandemic and readjust our lives and thereby our world. But will we?

          Between the wars, when hyperinflation wracked Germany, the Berlin government was congratulated on its ability to speedily print higher and higher denominations of banknotes. To some extent they were forced into this. No-one chose for there to be such a catastrophic devaluation of the currency. But there was certainly nothing new in praise being heaped on people or organisations that could fashion such extreme achievements. And there is certainly nothing wrong in having ambitions to achieve new ‘heights’ and in actually achieving those new heights. But that being said, we do need to take stock of some of our ambitions and endeavours. It is laudable to run faster without the aid of performance enhancing drugs; laudable too to create a plane that can fly faster and higher than any other; or for that matter a car or train that can travel faster than any other. But what of our everyday lives? Is it really sensible to create trains that go fast, only to create new trains that go faster and so on? Do we need to motor along a highway at seventy, eighty or a hundred miles an hour, when it is probably safer and more relaxing and more environmentally appropriate to travel at some slower speed? Is an increasingly hectic world a boon for humanity? Is a noisier world to our advantage? Speeds and size and noise seem to dominate our national and world agendas. We have certainly improved when it comes to safety, but there seems to be very little room these days for matters such as beauty or elegance. Where are we in this brave new world we are creating?

          In Richard Dell’s ‘STARS IN OUR SOULS’, poem 33 addresses this very point:


          33
          FASTER, BIGGER, BETTER

          Everything faster, everything bigger; nothing necessarily better.

          Everything to be loud.
          Everything to be allowed.
          Everything to be fast.
          Everything to avoid being last.
          Everything beyond compare.
          Everything beyond repair.
          Noise upon noise.
          Hype upon hype.
          This better than that.
          That better than this.
          Me better than you.
          Us better than them.

          You race me.
          I’ll race you.
          We’ll race each other,
          We’ll race the other.
          The race to be bigger.
          The race to be faster.
          The race to be louder.
          The race to be zanier.
          The race to be cleverer,
          The race to be racier.

          The race against time:

          ***
          Before time runs out.

           

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 46-50 (slide show)

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. The next five insights cover:

           

          46. The spiritual quest is driven by self. At the door that guards the quest’s end, self must be transcended. The door’s key is always selfless love for ALL.

          The old myths give clear signals about the path of test and ordeal towards initiation and ultimate spiritual fulfilment. The importance of Christ is that he showed that at the heart of this process, alongside bravery and virtue etc. is selfless love. Christ demonstrated through His crucifixion, the key, the final key, to the mysteries. We need the ancient virtues as we set out on our quest, but the final door, the final test can only be opened or won when the whole purpose of the quest is turned in on itself, when the pursuit almost becomes meaningless as the seeker stands at the door and no longer desires to pass, other than through his or her selfless love for all creation, as something done for them alone. The original purposes and desires of the seeker are necessarily lost at the very moment of triumph. But it is in that moment of loss, invariably felt as a soul-shattering and cataclysmic tragedy, that everything is gained.

           

          47. Adherents to so many of our world’s faiths see part of their duty being the proselytising of their faith. Such was the underlying motivation underpinning all the great missionary drives. To teach the faith, to proclaim the faith, to bring new adherents into the faith, was seen as a fundamental duty by so many. Certainly, it was believed by such missionaries that those they hoped to convert would languish spiritually, and indeed would be deprived of eternal salvation unless they were brought into the faith. Certainly, also, it was the case that huge numbers of ‘non-believers’ were drawn into faiths such as Christianity and Islam by both prodigious efforts on the part of missionaries, and also of course by the prodigious wielding of a prodigious number of swords. In our present times, many adherents of the world’s faith believe that their particular religions need to rediscover their missionary, even messianic, zeal. However, a point that needs to be understood, is that the earlier waves of missionary activity, although visibly wielded by the missionaries or the bearers of swords, were merely reflecting the hidden, even occult, divine energies of the time. Our present time may well be responding to such divine but hidden energies in new ways. The ways of God are not for us to entirely understand. We are all caught in a blessed unfolding of the Divine itself. ‘We cannot enter the same river twice’. We can re-enter the flow of Diving unfoldment, but what it should be called, and where it might take us, is beyond our knowing. ‘Trust in the Lord’.

           

          48. The new faiths of around one and two millennia ago, along with the extraordinary spiritual and religious impetus of the Axial Age between the eighth and the third centuries BCE saw profound impulses of thinking that eased humanity away from an apparent need to propitiate seemingly indifferent deities into a sense of personal involvement and responsibility for the individual’s relationship with any deities, along with the individual’s relationship with his or her society, culture and world. With Christianity we see another profound insight with regards to our relationship with the Divine. For the original Christian message proclaimed the love that the Deity had for all ‘His’ creation. This was a profound moment in human history. And yet it did not take long for the new freedom from fear of the Deity to be subsumed by an ever more intense fear of the Deity through the ever more present and ever more vivid teachings of Divine retribution and subsequent eternal suffering. The great moment in human history, where we humans could sense the presence of the Divine as being as complete and perfect and loving as the love our mothers have for us, was overturned. The Divine became masculine, patriarchal, and vengeful: unremittingly and dreadfully so. The Divine’s love was all but lost to us, and it is only now that we seek and fashion new ways to reconnect what should always have been our loving, eternal birthright. Our old religions are not so much under threat of redundancy or irrelevance, as we are on the brink of realising a future with all that is good and wholesome in them, and without all that is dark and limiting about them. A new world!

           

          49. Our new times, which mark our coming of age, which mark our ceasing to be petitioners of God, but instead becoming more and more partners with God, will make little sense, and will have only a meagre and even an ineffectual affect upon the world, unless we can create meaning in ourselves. This will have to be the nurturing of an inner reality, rather than something ‘outside’ that we can all wait around for it to happen. Also, it will consist at first of a small step forward in our inner lives, in our spiritual lives. Evolution is not a theory that is a mere human construct to explain seeming riddles in nature. Evolution is an integral Truth, embedded into the Cosmic Construct. Evolution is the process set within the unfoldment of the Cosmos and thereby the unfoldment of us all. Thus, when we create meaning in ourselves, what we create will only be the first stage of a new mind and soul-driven unfoldment of ourselves. The meaning we must create in these new times will be part of that universal unfolding of everything towards ONENESS, towards wholeness. All will ultimately become ONE in the ALL.

           

          50. One of the great problems in world history is the clash of religious beliefs. We know that religions generate fervent, even fevered, passions, and these passions can so often spill over into hatred, persecution and all-out war. Religious wars have darkened our world history and indeed have darkened the lives and souls of so many who have been caught up in religious wars. And this is not just history. The clash of religions, and more to the point the clash of the various adherents of the various religions of the world are ongoing problems. Does a day ever go by when someone somewhere in the world is not suffering as a consequence of their being perceived to be in the wrong religion? One world religion, when religious persecutions and religious wars can cease to make sense, will too often seem to be an impossible dream. But in fact that is not the case. Indeed, we could have one world religion in seconds, if we truly wanted it. And in the process, no religion would have to be given up by any of the worlds religious adherents. It takes just a simple trick to achieve this. But although at one level it is a mere trick of the mind, in another and much more profound sense it would be the most important, beautiful and spiritual moment in our world’s history. All we have to do to achieve one world religion is remain an adherent of our own particular religion – should we so choose – but at the same time not only accept everyone else’s religion, but in fact rejoice in every one else’s religion. Yes, rejoice. For we are all on the same path. We are all reaching towards the divine. Just rejoice – which goes far beyond mere acceptance. Do that, and we shall all bring ourselves so much closer to the Divine we all aspire to. Do not do that, and the Divine shall continue to be beyond our reach. Rejoice!!!


           

           

          SPIRITUAL INSIGHTS IN A THOUSAND TWEETS 51-55 (slide show)

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters. The next five insights cover:

           

          56. Our achievements in science and engineering and technology, and indeed in our ability to improve the lives of an increasing percentage of our world’s population, has been extraordinary. At the same time, however, we have seen our awareness and appreciation of religion, of the sacred and mystical, of the spiritual path, slip away from us. We must celebrate the physical achievements of our world, but we must not lose sight of our ultimate purpose and destiny. We are, at the very least, thinking creatures, creatures of mind; and at the best we are spiritual entities seeking our way back to the divine, to being ONE with the ALL of the cosmos. We are ALL connected. That has been the message and the sacred secret buried deep within all spiritual and religious texts. The meaning of our lives – our destinies – is our awakening to the ONENESS of all our souls. Our coming awakening is NOT mechanical. It is mystical. Materialist souls must understand that, and so must all religious souls.

           

          57. Personal development might be seen as self-indulgent if we assume that we are separate from everyone and everything. Of course it isn’t self-indulgent. We all, at different times, seek to enhance our awareness, and we are all correct in thinking that as we become more aware, we become more able to help others. But as we realise that we are all inter-linked and connected, then we see that it is our duty to enhance our own consciousness, as it enhances every aspect of the entire universe, including everyone around us. To seek the spirit of the ONE, to embark upon the mystical quest, to seek spiritual meaning, to yearn for spiritual awakening, is to seek and yearn for those things for everyone. To seek the holistic is to understand that all the cosmos is already holistic because ALL is ONE. We must reach out to our Mother Earth, our Gaia, by working to enhance the environment. We do that also through our spiritual awakening, because everything awakes a little more as we awake.

           

          58. The Holistic approach is part of the consciousness of the whole. It is a symbiotic relationship. By becoming aware of consciousness in everything, we are ‘compelled’ to be Holistic. The one determines the other. This is the profound spiritual transformation that our planet is at present deep-set in. As we become aware of the rationale of holism, so we begin to yearn for the holistic way. For the holistic way is the Way of ONENESS. This transcends mere religion, and embraces and lives pure and ultimately mystical spirituality. ONENESS with our planet, our awareness of our place within the nurturing orbit of Gaia. ONENESS with our environment, loving it and caring for it as we should. ONENESS with the divine, with all the cosmos, with God. None of these can be separated from the others. ALL must be ONE. Such is the wonder of our spiritual path, of our ultimate spiritual awakening. Such is the meaning of our spiritual lives, of our very existence and purpose. Such is our destiny.

           

          59. When we attempt to be at one with ourselves, with God, and with the world or nature, we are entering all levels of consciousness. We are being Holistic. This is our spiritual destiny: to be ONE with the ALL, to be ONE with ALL that is sacred, which is indeed ALL. Too often the religions of are fractured world have preached exclusivity and have thereby opened up the fissures in our hearts and our lives. There is no love in exclusivity. There is no spiritual path, no mystical quest, no spiritual awakening in exclusivity. We cannot heal ourselves or heal our world when we seek to fracture ourselves and our world with exclusivity. To be a pilgrim upon the sacred way is to lose self and embrace Oneness. We are not separate from the flora and fauna of our beautiful Mother Earth, our sacred Gaia. We are ONE with these things. To think otherwise and to act otherwise is to damage all that in the end we have held most dear. We must seek true spiritual meaning not in ourselves alone, but in our oneness with everything.

           

          60. Alternative approaches in medicine aim to help the body to heal itself. Orthodox medicine introduces external agencies to do the job for the body; often with side-effects. This links in with the distinction between the Mystical approach against ‘orthodox’ religion. Orthodox religion looks for a God transcendent (external) who like a Dues ex Machina, can ease our sins. The Mystical approach is to seek salvation within, to seek the God imminent, to heal ourselves and our own souls. No wonder those on the spiritual and mystical path gravitate to health stores and vegetarianism, and evangelical orthodoxy will gravitate towards orthodox medicine, and even orthodox, non-healing remedies for our ecological problems. The spiritual and mystical path reaches for the stars by finding the stars within us. We are awakening to this, recognising Gaia and Her environment as a part of ourselves. The meaning of our spiritual destiny is the inclusivity of our whole being.

          I AM US (video)

          A film-illustrated reading by Richard Dell of his poem I AM US:

          the fundamentalist notion that only one religion is true, reflects the notion that only one culture or nation or people have worth. It is a lingering manifestation of a complex that within its overt superiority, conceals a corrosive insecurity. This is No. 16 in Richard's book STARS IN OUR SOULS: a new look at our perennial religious and spiritual questions.

           

          The fundamentalist notion that only one religion is true, reflects the notion that only one culture or nation or people have worth. It is a lingering manifestation of a complex that within its overt superiority, conceals a corrosive insecurity.

          Here is a great truth that we forget at our peril. Many are the paths to God; many are the spiritual and mystical ways; many are the sacred and holy ways: but ALL when undertaken in the spirit of inclusivity and love, in the spirit of ONENESS with ALL, in the humility of the true spiritual pilgrim, are true and holy and sacred ways. This is the great lesson of our times. ALL is ONE, and ALL travel together when we ALL rejoice in each other’s ways. There is no true spirituality, no mystical touching of the most sacred, no spiritual awakening into the true meaning of our awareness of God, where there is no inclusivity. As the spiritual history of our planet Earth unfolds, as the sacred story of all our lives unfolds, there will be a folding-in of our spiritual and sacred and mystical selves as we truly become ONE. Oneness is the key to our inner spiritual healing, to the spiritual healing of our communities and nations, and indeed to the spiritual healing of all the flora and fauna, of our Planet Earth, of our Gaia.

          We have to understand this if there is to be any hope for us as individual humans, and us as human society on Earth. We have to understand that no religion holds an exclusive monopoly on the Truth of God and the heavens. The spiritual, mystical and sacred ways have always understood this. They have always known that the path to God is not paved with the bones of martyrs to any particular religion, nor carpeted with the ancient texts of any particular religion. The sacred and spiritual path has no signposts and is different for every pilgrim. Deep in our hearts we know this, yet our times and our past times are riven with claims for one religion or another against all other religions. Thus is one of the terrible fault lines in our lives.

          We also have to understand that there is no hope for us if we cannot see that we are all humans, that we all walk this planet and we can only walk this planet in peace and with heads held high if we accept that we all walk our planet together as brothers and sisters.

          Racialism and religious bigotry are manifestations of a corrosive insecurity that can eat like a cancer into our souls. We can only be proud and cherished members of our races if we embrace and hold dear all members of all other races. Likewise, we cannot take the sacred path to God unless we embrace and hold dear everyone else’s pathways to God. It has been said that ‘by their fruits ye shall know them’. That is all that needs to be said. We ‘judge others by what they do, not by what racial or religious label they might bear.

          These are profound times for us. The mood-song of humanity is shifting slowly and at times painfully towards inclusivity, thereby towards a living recognition of the ONENESS of ALL. The fault line across the social, political and religious arena of our present time, is the fault line between inclusivity and exclusivity. At times violent and vicious battles are being fought over these fault lines. But the terrible wounds of division between societies, countries, races and religions are in the process of being healed. Our social, political, racial and spiritual destiny awaits us within our liberation from the divisions that so fracture us. The important thing is that these divisions are healed, that the ONENESS of ALL can be made manifest in our lives. What many will not realise is that this will be a key moment in our spiritual journey, our spiritual pilgrimage. We can call these things with many different words: but as we enter at last into a living inclusivity, so shall we surge forward in our sacred and mystical and spiritual journey to ONENESS with the entire Creation. That is our destiny. This is where we are: on the threshold of ’God with Us’, on the threshold of the ultimate spiritual healing of ourselves, our societies, our nations, our races, and our religions.

          Our destiny was always meant to be a holistic destiny. Our destiny was always to be a spiritual awakening. It has been our divisions that have held us back from that destiny. We can see this with how we at last reach out to the flora and fauna of our planet, of our Holy Gaia. We recognise our interdependence with nature and the environment. In other words, we recognise and seek to live and make manifest our ONENESS with nature and the environment.

          Our troubled time presages an age of true spiritual enlightenment. We join together in healing; we recognise in our religions and races our true ONENESS. The old world of exclusivity is in its long-drawn-out death throes. Our being ONE with each other in every sense, is all but upon us.

           

        • Richard Dell reads Stars in our Souls Insights 16 & 19

          on YouTube, bringing to them a new and deeper spiritual dimension

          Two of the 42 Insights given in 'STARS IN OUR SOULS'; 42 Insights that encourage spiritual awakening and the spiritual quest: for private reading, and for reciting in groups and gatherings.

          I AM US

          The fundamentalist notion that only one religion is true, reflects the notion that only one culture or nation or people have worth. It is a lingering manifestation of a complex that within its overt superiority, conceals a corrosive insecurity. Music by Nick Penny

          DEEP

          The physicist and the mystic delve deep. Each in their respective realms, each observing what is being observed, each affecting what is being observed. The physicist touches the very edge between matter and meaning. The mystic, already deep in meaning, drifts in and out of those edges, forever affecting what is felt. There can never be certainty.

        • RICHARD DELL

          Drawing on a lifetime's contemplation of the world physical and the world spiritual:

          an overview of Richard Dell's life journey as teacher, school principal, parent, grandparent, and spiritual thinker.

           

          Image of Richard Dell. Richard describes himself as being, in this incarnation, an Anglican. But it is the mystical path, rather than organised religion that is the centre of his life.

          RICHARD DELL

          Richard Dell MA (Oxon.) is a retired headmaster in his sixties. He was born in Dorset and brought up in Southampton. Leaving school at sixteen, he did a variety of jobs, including cleaning lavatories, drawing maps and working underground. Discovering books and his spiritual journey when he was twenty-one, he eventually attended Coleg Harlech in North Wales, before going on to St. John’s College, Oxford to read philosophy, politics and economics. Richard then taught history, philosophy and sport, and was subsequently a headmaster for over twenty years. He has appeared on television and radio and has published a number of articles. Richard describes himself as being, in this incarnation, an Anglican. But it is the mystical path, rather than organised religion that is the centre of his life.

          In his school’s last inspection (2002) the inspectors reported on the ‘visionary leadership of the headmaster’. When he retired (2006) the chairman of his school wrote: ‘Richard’s warm personality and subtle sense of humour, his ethical principles and trust in people … are just a few of the qualities that describe the philosopher, thinker and communicator whose soul, heart and humour have shaped our school with its unique atmosphere where children are happy and learning is a joy.’
          These are also the qualities that Richard hopes he brings to his books. They are very much the qualities he brings to his talks.

          Richard and his wife have four grown up children, and five grandchildren.

           

          If you would like Richard to give a talk please submit your name and email address along with venue etc to the link below.

          Submit
        • Image of the covers of Richard Dell's books: Stars in our Souls; Blessed are the Thieves; The Other Magus; When the Teaman Talks; Wild Windows. Spiritual, religious, sacred, spiritual awakening, spiritual development, meaning, Earth, environment, healing, spiritual quest, spiritual love, spiritual life, spiritual unfoldment, universalist, meditation

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        • The Blog

          New writings, new thoughts, new updates; always aiming for the stars within our minds, souls and spirits.

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        •  

          Spiritual Insights in a Thousand Tweets

          Spiritual Insights condensed into aphorisms maintaining the original twitter format of 140 characters.

          Spiritual Insights in a Thousand tweets 26 - 30
          The edge of the physical, where mystics peer, is the edge of meaning: all touched by the state of the moment, & the state of the observer.
          The new meaning. Ourselves, our planet, the cosmos: seen as one inter-relating, inter-playing, interconnected whole; all ONE with the ALL.
          We delve deep into our Earth. We scar and blight. Wonder not at our own pain. We’re ONE with our delving: scarred and blighted in our souls.
          The myth of returning Kings & Saviours are true: it will be the return of the hidden streams of deepest knowing: the new reawakenings of US.
          The ‘what’ of science is true. The ‘why’ of the spiritual and mystical quest is truth.
          Spiritual Insights in a Thousand tweets 21 - 25
          I heal when I know I’m not a jumble of unconnected parts, but am an interconnected whole. The world heals when we embrace its connectedness.
          To heal all nations, we must embrace their ONENESS. To be healed, all nations must rejoice in our uniqueness: our symbiotic entanglement.
          I am my faith; I am all faiths. I am my country; I am all countries. But in the end, I am me. In the end, I am responsible.
          To heal ourselves and our nations, we must accept this: that our personal and collective symptoms are symbols. Symbols to be interpreted.
          Body mind and spirit when ONE, is ourselves made whole, ourselves made complete. The quest for the Grail is within; the Holy Grail is US.
          Spiritual Insights in a Thousand tweets 16 - 20
          It is not only the physical environment that must be cleansed. It is also the environment of mind, which is linked, and which is US.
          Fundamentalists who think only their own religions are true, are as insecure as racists who think only their own ethnic groups have worth.
          If we really are influenced by the rhythms of the stars, we must accept that also we are influenced by the rhythms of our Mother Earth.
          The physicist and the mystic delve deep; observing and affecting what is observed. Both are deep into the uncertainty of the deepest truths.
          As we embrace with inclusivity all the faiths, we at last shed guilt, and at last embrace accountability: for ourselves, and for our planet.
          Spiritual Insights in a Thousand tweets 11 - 15
          If scripture told us to hate and kill, would we obey? If not; then we own an inner guidance that forever transcends scripture.
          Sex is not a moral issue. How we handle our relationships is.
          The First Coming was revealed in ONE man. The Second Coming is US: ALL of US who accept ALL ways beyond separation and beyond exclusivity.
          We build for practical use, so we are limited and constrained. We must build for the soul, to allow our practical lives to take wing.
          To survive we must obey the law. To flourish we must obey the HIGHER LAW, the ethical law: the law of spirit.
          Spiritual Insights in a Thousand tweets 6 - 10
          Love God if we will. Love all of God’s creation because we must. For ALL of God’s creation IS God.
          It isn’t God’s Word that stirs souls. It is God. It isn’t God’s Word that’s true. It is God. It’s not us who bring others to God. It is God.
          What we think is what we are. What we think now, is the world beyond this world we shall one day inherit. We must beware. We must be aware.
          The unchanging Word of God only lives through us: our ever-changing selves.
          Shamans became ritualists. Ritualists became Word believers. Word believers became Pentecostalists. Pentecostalists are Shamans made new.
          Spiritual Insights in a Thousand tweets 1 - 5
          The first moment of creation is a never-ending moment. The creation is forever unfolding, and we are deep in that unfoldment.
          This coming time marks our coming of age. Once we were petitioners of God. Now, at last, we enter into partnership with God.
          Artist and mystic journey together: both delving deep within themselves: both transcending themselves; both thereby touching the infinite.
          To seek the future, we must understand the past. But when our understanding is blighted with hatred and anger, our past becomes our future.
          The world outside us is debatable, is often beyond our reach. But our world within in ours, is US, is what we take when we depart the world.
        • IMAGES OF INSPIRATION 1

          The interconnection of text and image: the ONENESS of visual and textual transcendence.

          CREATION

          We see a distant galaxy in the depths of starlit space. Here is the mystery of creation and existence. Here are the heavens, and in the galaxy itself, no doubt here is life. Here, so far from us, are all the spiritual aspirations of evolving and unfolding consciousnesses. Here are planets, earths, other people’s Gaia. Here in a billion places, are billions of spiritual awakenings, here are sacred religious sites, and beautiful sacred places. Here are a billion spiritual quests, here are a billion environments being threatened and being healed. Here are billions of link and paths of love. Here are ourselves, in all our various phases of spiritual unfoldment.

          COMING OF AGE WITH GOD

          A landscape is bathed in golden sunlight. We see a hillside and trees. All are suffused with the golden sunlight of our that is the spiritual and holy gift of our star. We feel the warmth of love and we experience the truth that all of our Mother Earth, our precious Gaia, is sacred to us and indeed is sacred to the heavens. We feel also just how vital is our Earth’s environment to us as humanity and indeed to all of God’s creation. We abuse it at our physical, emotional, mental and spiritual peril. This is our sacred home, and it is here, blessed by Gaia and the sun that our spiritual awakening unfolds.

          ARTIST AND MYSTIC

          We see an artist deep in his work that is his part in all our planet’s creation. He is deep in a form of meditation that transcends the mere physical, that allows him to touch the infinite. We also see a bearded mystic. He too is deep in his spiritual quest, seeking his spiritual awakening that will see him transcend into the heavens, into ONENESS with the universe and the cosmos, and with God. Both artist and mystic bring deep meaning to us and to our understanding of our place on our Mother Earth, our precious Gaia. Both artist and mystic seek oneness, achieve a sort of holistic awareness. They touch the infinite and thereby become ONE with each other.

          THE PAST BECOMES OUR FUTURE

          Against violent red flames we see people silhouetted in anger and lust. All our histories are lessons in our spiritual unfolding; if we would only take note. Karma is deep-set in our human stories. We are sacred, and yet we forget that we are ONE with each other. We are holy, and yet we do unholy things to each other and to ourselves. The spiritual quest, that is humanity’s journey is fraught with perils. But if we learn from those perils, so shall we make our way closer to ONENESS with each other, and closer to God.

        • IMAGES OF INSPIRATION 2

          The interconnection of text and image: the ONENESS of visual and textual transcendence.

          TRANSCENDENCE

          We see a figure with arms outstretched to the sea and the sky and the very heavens. The figure stands upon a seashore. Darkness is coming, but everything is alight with the radiance of the setting sun. This is our Mother Earth, our precious Gaia at her most sublime and sacred. Infinity is embraced in the figure’s outstretched arms. This is a figure who is transcendent in the spiritual quest. This is spirituality that transcends religion. Here, in the radiant light of the setting sun, the figure is deep in a profound spiritual awakening. How can one not love our Mother earth, and our Mother earth’s life giving environment at such times of transcendent meaning?

          LOVE GOD, BY LOVING GOD'S CREATION

          A beautiful meadow of grasses and wild flowers stretches into the distance where the ground rises into misty hills. There is a rock bluff almost blue in colour. The sun is setting behind the bluff. The day is ending, but the sun’s light is still radiant in the sky, and still brightens the meadow of grasses and wild flowers. This is God’s creation we see before us: tranquil, beautiful and at peace. The light of God holds us, and we are held by God. The day ends, and the light is the promise of another day.

          DEAD WORDS, LIVING CREATION

          A page of the Bible is open. The words are not clear, but a spray of flowers lies upon the Bible. The flowers have no words, but their language is the language of Creation and of God. In the darkness a priest holds high the Word of God. But both Bible and priest are shadowed. Only the spray of flowers seem eternal and true.

          WHAT WE THINK, IS WHAT WE ARE

          A young person stares into a mirror and sees his own face staring back at him. We wonder what he is thinking as he contemplates himself. We wonder if his thoughts will enlighten his reflection or cast it into shadows. There is never a moment in our own lives when we are not living in some way our eternal lives.

        • IMAGES OF INSPIRATION 3

          The interconnection of text and image: the ONENESS of visual and textual transcendence.

          THE UNCHANGING WORD OF GOD LIVES THROUGH OUR EVER-CHANGING SELVES

          A man is studying with an extraordinary intensity the text of his Bible. He even has a powerful magnifying glass to help him read, and with hope perhaps even understand the text. Behind him is the figure of woman. She comes from another, much earlier time. She looks at us and she smiles. For she knows the truth. She knows that although the text of the Bible can never change, we are always changing. We will always, and we must always, understand the Bible and all sacred text in the light of what we are, what we have become and what we one day will be.

           

          PENTACOSTALISTS: OUR NEW SHAMANS

          We see Pentecostalists with arms raised in ecstasy. They are singing and dancing as they praise God and as they seek to be infused with the very spirit of God. They make happy noise. They cry out in tongues. Near them is a shaman woman. She stares at us as she holds here sacred drum. She beats her drum to the rhythm of God and earth, to the rhythm of the trees and all the beasts of the woods and fields. She too makes a happy sound. She too cries out in her own ancient tongues.

          OUR TRUE GUIDE IS OUR INNER HOLY SPIRIT

          A silhouetted figure stares into the night sky. The Milky Way is radiant with spiritual beauty. Beyond the figure we see a vast military graveyard. The white crosses stretch to the horizon, indeed they stretch to the stars. It is in the star-studded heavens that the souls and spirits, the hopes and dreams of these fallen soldiers belong, and where we can sense that they reside. An image of war can bring spiritual angst and despair. But this scene reminds us that the heavens await us, that peace and sanctuary await us.

          WE FALL IN LOVE, AND

          KNOW GOD'S ONENESS

          A man and a woman stand silhouetted on a hilltop. They embrace in a kiss. We are reminded that physical, emotional and spiritual love being us together into ONENESS with each other: indeed, into the ecstasy of ONENESS. We are reminded too, that when two people love – physically, emotionally and spiritually – they also achieve a ONENESS with the very heavens, with God, with all of creation, will the universe entire. As the couple embrace, darkness is falling, but the radiance of the sun, as it slips beyond the horizon, silhouetted them, and encapsulates them in the radiant divine.

        • IMAGES OF INSPIRATION 4

          The interconnection of text and image: the ONENESS of visual and textual transcendence.

          WE ARE THE SECOND COMING

          We see a path that leads through beautiful fields and woodlands. There are people on this path. All are pilgrims; all are seeking their way. Rising above the fields is an outline of the risen Christ. Christ, and all such spiritual Masters, are the inspiration for all who travel the path. We see that the path continues beyond the risen Christ. Our pilgrims are Christ touched already. They are the heralds of the new times: every single one of them.

           

           

          BUILD FOR THE SPIRIT NOT THE PHYSICAL

          A beautiful flower-filled meadow stretches before us. Beyond are hills, and beyond the hills is the infinity of the heavens. In the foreground we see a number of high-rise tower blocks. They do not belong. We build them, but they do not belong; and indeed, they despoil our beautiful planet Earth, our Gaia. But a little further away is a small house: a homely home. It is part of the landscape, it is part of the spiritual integrity of our Earth, of our Gaia. Which will we choose?

          WE MUST LIVE BY THE HIGHER LAW

          The United States Supreme Court stands before us. It could be any country’s highest court. Here is where the law is decided. But there is also the face of a bearded old man, the face of a prophet. This wise old man, with his white hair and beard, as if his is God Himself, reminds us of the HIGHER LAW. The laws of countries might change. But the HIGHER LAW is changeless. All must accept the laws of their respective country’s highest courts. But we ignore that wise old man’s HIGHER LAW, at our peril.

          WE FALL IN LOVE, AND

          KNOW GOD'S ONENESS

          A man and a woman stand silhouetted on a hilltop. They embrace in a kiss. We are reminded that physical, emotional and spiritual love being us together into ONENESS with each other: indeed, into the ecstasy of ONENESS. We are reminded too, that when two people love – physically, emotionally and spiritually – they also achieve a ONENESS with the very heavens, with God, with all of creation, will the universe entire. As the couple embrace, darkness is falling, but the radiance of the sun, as it slips beyond the horizon, silhouetted them, and encapsulates them in the radiant divine.

        • CONTACT US

          'There are many paths to God. So there is just one path to God. All the ways in communion, one with all others - and only when in communion, one with all others: sound humanity's great hymn to God.' From STARS IN OUR SOULS, Insight 11

           

           

          SUBMIT
        • LINKS

          We value links with like-minded souls who seek spiritual wisdom free of the chains of dogma and doctrine. We value links with all who seek the stars, and will seek the stars with anyone.

          Image of Stars in our Souls website:

          Stars in our Souls

          Spiritual and religious insights

          The website devoted to Richard Dell's book 'Stars in our Souls', and associated spiritual and religious issues.

          Image taken from the cover of Richard Dell’s STARS IN OUR SOULS. It shows a girl with a radiant star at her forehead and at her heart. The text reads: ‘STARS IN OUR SOULS:  a new look at our perennial religious and spiritual questions. There is then a quote from Rev. Anne Turner: ‘Prophetic, mystical, down to earth, yet profound. Full of insights so necessary for our world today.’

           

          Stars in our Souls on Facebook!

        • When we fall in love, we become excruciatingly and painfully vulnerable. But when that love is reciprocated, we achieve completion, and enter unto heaven. Our experience of love at the individual level, necessarily parallels the mystic path towards ONENESS with God and the ALL

           

           

          INSIGHT 33

          What is happening in our world has to become a force for good. If we do not reset, then this difficult time will have been without meaningful purpose. Insight 33 give some perspective to what is happening to our world, and why it has had to happen. Our planet has forced upon us a breathing space. What will we do with this moment?

          33

          FASTER, BIGGER, BETTER

          Everything faster, everything bigger; nothing necessarily better.

           

          Everything to be loud.

          Everything to be allowed.

          Everything to be fast.

          Everything to avoid being last.

          Everything beyond compare.

          Everything beyond repair.

          Noise upon noise.

          Hype upon hype.

          This better than that.

          That better than this.

          Me better than you.

          Us better than them.

           

          You race me.

          I’ll race you.

          We’ll race each other,

          We’ll race the other.

          The race to be bigger.

          The race to be faster.

          The race to be louder.

          The race to be zanier.

          The race to be cleverer,

          The race to be racier.

           

          The race against time:

           

          ***

          Before time runs out.

           

        • THE ORIGINAL INSIGHTS  

          Richard Dell's original spiritual and religious insights from 1991 through to the present day. New universal thoughts for all who seek that which lies beyond us.

          Image of a city skyline at dawn or dusk:
          Image of Richard Dell, author of Star in our Souls and other books: Spiritual, religious, sacred, spiritual awakening, spiritual development, meaning, Earth, environment, healing, spiritual quest, spiritual love, spiritual life, spiritual unfoldment, universalist, meditation

          Get in Touch with Richard!

          Questions or comments about any of the Insights?

          Submit

          INSIGHTS (a sample)

          4

          The creation of our universe was not one single moment. It is a continuing and ongoing moment, an eternal unfolding that encompasses ourselves. 25.02.91

           

          5

          This new age, this threshold age, marks our coming of age. Now, we sons and daughters of God withdraw from being petitioners of God. At last we become partners with God.

          01.03.91

           

          6

          The true artist and the mystic have much in common. For both delve deep into their inner being, and the deeper they delve – the more focussed they become within their own being – the more they touch and embrace and connect with the deep and never-ending vastness of the ALL.

          15.03.91

           

          8

          Is it possible to achieve salvation with a deathbed conversion after a life given to what might be called sin? If the conversion is genuine, then yes, it is – in a sense. The state of our soul at death will determine the state of our existence beyond our withdrawal from our body. So, if we have finally broken through passion and anger and greed and other such ‘sins’, then we shall indeed achieve a serene level beyond the grave. However, we must still ultimately face the consequences of our formerly ‘sinful’ deeds, through karma in later incarnations.

          23.03.91

           

          10

          Our past, and our people’s past, must always be with us. But to remember the past with resentment, anger and hatred, is to be forever bound to that past, and is to forever bind the future. That is true for us as individuals, and is true for us as communities and nations.

          04.04.91

           

          11

          True free will only exists in how we react and feel about those events external to ourselves. Reality lies within, both in mystic terms, and in terms of true and intimate knowing. What goes on external to ourselves, we can to some extent affect, and to a very great extent can question. It is our inner life that is our Truth, and it is our inner life that determines how we try to affect that outside of ourselves.

          10.04.91

           

          12

          One reason the Church grew in its early days, but is not growing now, is not because people then relied on the scriptures, but do not now. It is actually because the spirit of God and the needs of those earlier times required it to expand. Now, however, we are entering a ‘new time’, and this ‘new time’ is not the Church’s time. But it is always God’s time. And always the Breath of God, folded within the undulating patterns of the time, is forever awakening, proclaiming, manifesting the boundless, immeasurable seasons of the heavens.

          14.04.91

           

          13

          Undisciplined thoughts affect everything. Undisciplined bodies affect little. Even beyond the realms of this physical earth, our thoughts are not lost; our thoughts endure. Thus, are we accountable beyond imagining. Thus must we forever be mindful of our minds. It is only our minds that make sense of, and give meaning to, the entire universe of matter. We can taint the world we live in with our darker thoughts. Likewise, though we do not realise it, we can taint the higher realms, the very realms of God with our darker selves. We must always take care. We owe nothing less to all of creation itself.

          21.04.91

           

          14

          Scriptures must be reinterpreted, because humanities consciousness evolves. As we evolve and learn, so do we enter new depths of understanding. With new depths of understanding, our scriptures must be known anew.

          30.04.91

           

          16

          There are many paths to God, so there is just one path to God. Pentecostalism and emotional healing are close to shamanism, whilst the more established church is cerebral. There are the quiet paths, the reflective paths, the rhythmic paths of ritual, the unadorned paths of the ascetics, the ecstatic paths, and yes, the wild paths of the shamans. All are paths leading ultimately to God.

          05.05.91

           

          18

          This is a key question. Supposing it could be shown without a shadow of a doubt that the Bible told us to hate people and commit murder. Would we obey? If not, then clearly there is an inner sense of what is right that transcends the Bible and indeed, that transcends all scriptures.

          08.05.91

           

          26

          Eating food is not a moral issue. How our eating affects others, who need to eat, is. Sex is not a moral issue. How we handle our relationships, is.

          19.06.91

           

          27

          A key question for every Christian since the beginning of the Christian Era, is whether he or she would recognise Christ at the Second Coming. Well, the Second Coming is upon us. Christ is here, working through all those souls who see religion as an inner path or journey. The amazing growth of new spirituality, of religions beginning to recognise the validity of other religions, is the manifestation of Christ coming once again upon our shores. This is a Second Coming Christ who is not One, but who is Everyone.

          27.07.91

          28

          Our utilitarian buildings are a true reflection of our present view of ourselves. All that matters is that our physical needs are met. The spirit is of no consequence at all. There is, though, a trend now back to harmony and spirit. Prince Charles has been involved in this. We cannot hope to become spiritually fulfilled and spiritually at peace with each other until the buildings we create and the towns and cities we live in reflect that harmony and spirit, until they reflect ourselves.

          30.07.91

          29

          The prophets of Israel continually made the point that if the people of Israel lived by the Law, in other words, lived ethically, then they would prosper under God. If they did not, then there would ultimately be calamity. This had to be so, because of the bad karma that would inevitably be generated. Now we are in the same situation as was ancient Israel on so many occasions. People now so often do not behave ethically. Oh, they do not always break the law, but you always hear people boasting about how they pulled off this deal or other. People no longer live honourably. Hence the decline of our nation. Until we restore honour and ethics to our everyday dealings, we shall not come out of our present-day morass. In the 19th century there were undoubtedly unscrupulous people who made fortunes, but nonetheless people were expected to be honourable, and indeed there was a real code of ethics that the aristocracy and the middle classes so often tried to operate by. Deals were made, but when made, a gentleman did not go back on his word. That was the code, even if it was not always adhered to. Do we have any sort of underlying code of ethics these days?

          02.08.91

          30

          It is not just the physical environment that has to be redressed. It is the ethical as well. The physical environment is the world in which we live and upon which we depend. The ethical arena is actually us ourselves.

          02.08.91

          31

          The fundamentalist notion that only Christianity is correct, is a latter-day aspect of the notion that only the white European’s culture etc is any good. It is a lingering manifestation of that awful superiority complex that has so bedevilled the world for so long. And not just unique to the Western world. It is a notion that is all but universal in our world.

          13.08.92

          32

          The higher planes, to which we are all connected, wax and wane with rhythmic seasons of feeling, import and purpose. We will always be remotely affected by these seasons. This is really the heart to which astrology should reach; if it possibly could.

          20.08.91

          33

          Whether astrology works or not, and I suspect that it is all far more complicated and is intimately linked with the Oneness of the All, in other words everything is connected and so everything affects everything else to a greater or lesser degree. But we must also take into account the rhythms of Gaia, of the planet that is our home.

          23.08.91

          37

          What is the difference between trusting a psychic about the world, and trusting a scientist who tells us what weird flickers on a monitor screen mean?

          16.6.91

          39

          The New Age approach to religion does mean an end to feelings of guilt. But it does not mean an end to responsibility. Indeed, because the approach comes from within each individual, the responsibility of the individual for himself and for the environment around him or her is immense.

          01.10.91

          41

          The holistic approach is a healing process in all sorts of ways. It is a healing of the intellectual fragmentation of Western society that has been so extraordinary, yet also so damaging.

          10.10.91

          45

          A mark of this new threshold age is people taking responsibility for their own lives and for each other.

          18.10.91

          46

          Symptoms, be they medical, social or political, are symbols of underlying and fundamental truths about ourselves. Our task, as always, is to unravel their meaning, to get into the truth that they are displaying for us.

          20.10.91

           

           

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