The China Syndrome: Good and bad
Once upon a time, around 35 years ago, when I was wrestling the serpent that is alcohol in a life or death struggle, life put in my path an ageing Zen Buddhist. Pamela was 67, an aristocrat, had herself spent many years sliding down that particular snake.
An existence as the wife of a wealthy tea planter in India had been supplanted and stripped by a self-replenishing bottle that finally landed her in a one-bed council flat in Worcestershire.
She lived almost entirely in kimonos, shone with the light of Truth and was perhaps the happiest person I have ever met; and in the flame of her love I began to heal. We were an odd pair, both exiles of a sort, forty years apart and soul mates in the purest sense. I would say she saved my life.
In a three-month period, I spent most of the time I wasn’t at work in that small flat, having my feet and shoulders rubbed, being drip-fed the wisdom of the sages both in person and in a series of letters. She finally summed things up with a quotation from Kierkegaard: I was suffering from alienation from Self.
As I read it, its neon sign flashed in my head and I knew beyond doubt she was right. I was drinking because I was traumatised and lost and was looking in alcohol for the Self that would become my life’s purpose — although there were quite a few more cul-de-sacs to travel before I would begin to have any clue about this Self. It can still confuse me.
The autumn of 1988 was the most wondrous honeymoon coloured by the teachings of Alan Watts, Zen’s ox-herding pictures and, most of all, the wisdom of the Tao, which I was never quite sure how to pronounce. I loved the Tao Te Ching, particularly Stephen Mitchell’s translation and Benjamin Hoff’s the Tao of Pooh. Verse 20 from Mitchell’s work was one of Pamela’s many offerings and again it held great import:
‘The people in general are as happy as if enjoying a great feast. Or, as going up a tower in spring. I alone am tranquil, and have made no signs. Like a baby who is yet unable to smile; Forlorn as if I had no home to go to. Others all have more than enough, And I alone seem to be in want. Possibly mine is the mind of a fool, which is so ignorant!
‘The vulgar are bright, And I alone seem to be dull. The vulgar are discriminative, and I alone seem blunt. I am negligent as if being obscure; Drifting, as if being attached to nothing.
‘The people in general all have something to do, And I alone seem to be impractical and awkward. I alone am different from others. But I value seeking sustenance from the Mother.’
It absolutely summed up how I felt. I had felt different in my family from the get-go, did not seem to have the same ambition and drives as others and was needing a far deeper nourishment than anything the manifest world could offer.
I had been propelled into outer space when, nearly dead from pneumonia on my third birthday, some older boy on the hospital ward put his hand up my pyjama leg. I left my body and was for seconds that seemed an eternity floating in a black void attached to nothing.
As a teenager at a swanky restaurant I regaled my subsequent theories about life garnered by that experience, specifically a moon-high detachment and was met with ridicule, which jet-propelled my drinking career until I landed in that council flat, aged 25.
Now, I could go off at various tangents from this juncture but want to get back on course. This was really a long pre-amble about disparate but interweaving strands: all things Chinese and the crisis and opportunity presented by the current madness. The Chinese character for crisis also stands for opportunity after all.
My love of The Tao, its smooth, flowing lines, the wisdom of letting go and of Chinese medicine spoke to me, but so did the cruelties of communism, the atrocities in Tibet and an awareness that those who ran this vast empire were probably not endowed with the wisdom of their own ancients.
Same with most governments of course, for ambition is most often ignited by the small personal self that is both empty and full of itself and wants to swallow the world whole, not understanding, as I didn’t, you will then have to sick it up, but not before infecting everyone else.
For years, we have heard talk of the collapse of the western empire and the rise of the Chinese. I believe we have now jumped upon that bandwagon with an ‘if you can’t beat ‘em…..’’ philosophy. Indeed, Bloomberg only last week declared the uncoupling of America from China must not happen. Too many billionaires have investments there of course.
Instead, we seem to be succumbing to the same communism bent on destroying the freedom of the individual. Unless you happen to be what Klaus Schwab, founder of the WEF in his Great Reset, calls a ‘stakeholder’. I can assure you most of us aren’t. The big media players and tech giants are, which is why they are censoring any information that doesn’t toe the party line. Love of money did indeed turn out to be the root of all evil.
We may be at the end of the Piscean age, but Christ’s words that he came to bring not peace but a sword, that your enemies will come from within your own family, your close associates, has now come to pass.
Why are people disagreeing so divisively? I believe there are a number of reasons: we are all at different places on a long evolutionary journey and our consciousness only sees what is presently available to it (evidenced by presenting people with information from even government websites which counters their belief system — they still won’t see what you are saying). That does not make anyone better than anyone else.
It is simply the mind’s job to sit on the throne of consciousness — whatever yours is — and will fight to the death not to be deposed. So, the battle we are in is both intensely personal and global. The individual mind is battling to stay alive as is the collective mind.
What we need instead is more soul. That’s the opportunity here. A complete reassessment of what we are is now possible. Most will cling desperately to an old identity while others will try and transcend. We know that we are but we have never really known what we are!
We have been brainwashed by the media for decades, trammeled into certain narratives, been persuaded that those telling unpalatable truths are conspiracy theorists, crack pots, and now ‘anti-vaxers’. And we utterly underestimate the extent of this brainwashing.
That is not our fault and disagreements can become so violent because people genuinely believe what they are saying. It is a divide and conquer strategy par excellence. It is also an opportunity to see the limits of the mind, understand the disparity between intelligence and consciousness (many intelligent people are not conscious of what is happening).
There is another problem: the conflating of two different questions which further confuses. Is there a virus? My simple answer is I am not a scientist and am therefore not qualified to speak. I don’t even know what a virus is. Many unqualified people are weighing in on this question of course.
It is worth noting that Melinda Gates said the biggest threat to humanity is from an ‘engineered virus’. I for one don’t like the way that woman smirks!
The second question is more important and that is what is this virus being used for? What is the hidden agenda? I have looked at enough evidence now to feel more confident in having a say.
And as I wrote to a friend this morning, what benefit is there in thousands of good people risking their careers, reputations and perhaps even their lives in speaking out about a global fraud designed to rescind power from individuals and usher in a world government to the benefit of the few not the many? It is surely a corollary the billionaire class has grown richer this past year while the poor have lost even the little they did have.
Think about it. Who would you believe? Those who gain profit and power from upholding the narrative when we know the UK government downgraded this thing in March, or those who risk all in pursuit of Truth? There is no need for a vaccine for healthy people for a disease with a survival rate of 99.7 per cent. It is worse than folly, it is criminal and may lead to a dystopia we can barely imagine.
I would rather the legacy of the East is its undoubted wisdom not its calamitous governance now spreading like a Californian fire over a once apparently saner world.
COPYRIGHT Simon Heathcote
