THE COSMIC CONNECTION AND THEORY OF UNIVERSAL FULFILLMENT

As we have seen scientists agree that the nature of matter, reality if you like, depends on one thing and one thing only…the presence of an observer, in other words, a witness. Again my use of words is pre-ordained. Essentially it doesn't matter if an electron manifests as a particle or a wave so long as it manifests. So if the electron doesn't appear to manifest then maybe it doesn't exist. And to know if it exists at all depends on a witness, a witness to reality.

The answer is you, me - everyone. We actually bear witness to our own reality. In fact I will go so far as to say we are our own reality. The world is what we think it is. And that's why it keeps changing, why new things arise including new scientific theories, because like everyone, we keep changing our minds. This is about as holistic as one can get. In other words:

This is to say that if we didn't have senses to bear witness there would be nothing to bear witness to. However, this does not mean the world disappears every time we close our eyes and block our ears. It doesn't and we aren't all ostriches. But if you've been able to follow this ungainly progression of ideas you might now demand to know if there is an ultimate witness, which, if you like, can bear witness to everything altogether to maintain the whole picture for everyone and everything all at once.

Oh boring you say, she's not going to talk about The God Factor. Well too right I am, but not the God you grew up with, but a much grander, exhilarating, potent, personal God that you could ever imagine - the God inside of you.

Don't turn from me now, the world is revealing,
things unknown and those half said.
Linger not in the half light, for on the horizon,
is the path to peace deposing our dread.

I'll go back a bit now, just for the fun of it and get up close and personal. I feel I owe it to you. At the beginning I told you that all this arose after I read TE Lawrence's Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Well that is true in a sense, but it was more than that…very much more. The mystic madness I alluded to earlier, well here is some of it.

During the writing of my own rather amateurish version of the Seven Pillars of Wisdom called Miracle of the Desert: The Untold Story, I lapsed into a trance. Having never heard of, let alone experienced such a phenomenon before I was incredulous, not alarmed, incredulous, and especially since the aftermath was so stimulating. For nearly three weeks after that I was plunged into a profound and unforgettable love for everyone, and the desire to explore the nature of the universe took hold of me in an incredibly forceful way. My research into the nature of reality had begun, culminating many bewildering months later, in an intuition to sing hallelujah, via the Internet, to the world at large. At that time of the intuition I distinctly heard the words, universal classroom.

Not that the going was easy, but when the going gets tough, the tough get going. My first job seemed to be the examination of myself in depth and this was done primarily with the aid of the Myself chapter in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom and the writing of my own book, Miracle of the Desert: The Untold Story.

Ooh you might say; this is sending shivers down my spine. Well how do you think I felt? I had no one to talk to, my only truly understanding friend and invisible mentor being TE Lawrence. Some people might call it a breakdown or a mid- life crisis when Purgatory is what it really is. It's a state of mind where we get to see ourselves exactly as we are.

Now this is where it gets really spooky. I wrote a long and revealing essay analyzing sentence by sentence, word by word, that particular chapter mentioned. Oh you say again, perhaps she is TE Lawrence reincarnated after all. Well that's what I thought too and the idea nearly drove me nuts, not to mention everything else I was going through. Family and friends rightly thought me possessed. But I've since come to the satisfactory conclusion that I'm not him and do not intend being him. As I said before Lawrence's troubles have universal appeal. There's a little bit of Lawrence in us all. And he taught me many things, the most important of which was the relative evil of my competitive nature, my ego, which is the very devil himself. This is how I described Rachel, a fictional character in my book.

The next day was full of fun and surprises. I drifted with the group and from a bird's eye point of view was part of it, which of course I really wasn't. Being part of a group means, least of all understanding it, and mostly wanting to belong. I had never really wanted to be part of the group I had and now I had a new one I wasn't sure if I wanted to be a part of that either, except of course as the novelty act.

In my heart I knew what the problem was. There are for some people like me and Ned too I suspected no compromises with relationships. To be wholly satisfying they have to be perfect. Even close friends and family do not fill the void between what is desired and what is received. Individuals have such different backgrounds, which influence their thoughts and behaviour. They can be selfish, conceited, jealous and afraid making the perfect relationship practically impossible. I was so in tune with these qualities in other people that my ability to communicate with them left me feeling as though I had been exposed to a shower of intellectual bullets which proved so debilitating that I sometimes found the effort of companionship unsustainable. I usually gave up the struggle and went somewhere to read or daydream. Only with Chester and Ned had I ever felt completely at ease, and now Albert.

There is an innate ability in all of us to protect ourselves, to hide and confuse our feelings with our needs. Self awareness is a brick wall made up of the well kneaded blocks of our personal heritage, life experience and self worth, hardly ever another person's opinion. However it seems the case and is the devil himself to those like me whose receptors are so acute and self- love so fastidious.

I can be rather dramatic, can't I? Blatantly honest too. But seriously, do you get the point? It wasn't everybody else's personality I was experiencing but my own. Who else's could it be? Those aspects we most admire or like the least in other people are really the aspects we most admire and dislike about ourselves.

We project what we don't want or can't accept onto them and then attack or idolize them for it. How egocentric, schizophrenic we all really are! Now if you don't like this explanation then have a good look at the work done by Carl Jung, he'll soon set you straight. All his team building talk about persona and shadow is a real adventure into the psychic underworld.

Yet strangely, this discovery of myself was incredibly satisfying. Once discovered or perceived, the positives and negatives or the seen and the unseen or the visible and the invisible or the persona and shadow are no longer at odds, but complimentary, acting in unison to produce a completely new person, a whole person.

A certain person close to me suggested that the whole episode was just a case of me growing up and I think he's right. There's nothing really mystical in facing your own demons, but it is magical, because at the end of it you become the person you always thought you were but somehow couldn't be. Suddenly you're a much more well rounded, interesting, confident human being. No longer do you blame others but see in yourself those aspects you despised in others and let them go. Mind you, in a far from complimentary fashion, the same person says, that it's as if I've just learnt to talk!

And so I have, but I don't talk just about anything, I talk about this. I guess that if I don't watch out I could be labeled an eccentric or worse.

But seriously, my sacred journey wasn't exactly unique. The story line itself is, as it is for everyone, but the essentials are the same. It is a call to remember who and what we are, to remember God, and to think and act responsibly.

The other fascinating thing was that at this point pieces of the universal puzzle began to fit together. I could but gape at the scope of it all and gasp at my own former stupidity and blindness.

With a more subtle and comprehensive understanding and acceptance that each of us is responsible for how we view ourselves the journey continued.

Take for instance the realization that my former shyness was just a front for my deeply competitive nature. Formerly I had considered myself non-competitive. How many people say with gay abandon, Oh I'm so shy, when they really mean, I'm not game to talk to that person because I think they're bigger, better, prettier, cleverer, sexier than me. What's that, if not comparing oneself to someone else? Judging. This leads to another interesting question. If the shy, or introverted person is competitive, is he or she any more or less competitive than the out going of extroverted person who in not so many words lets everybody think he or she is better than someone else? Of course not, the evil, if you like, is not relative noise a person makes but the reason why he or she does or does not make it. If you like, being shy is reverse competitiveness, a bit like reverse snobbery. They both do serious damage to the personality and hence the soul. Yet by recognizing an attribute like shyness for what it is, a lame excuse to avoid failure, it can become a thing of the past.

Oh yes, there are all sorts of snobs and not just your more obvious, garden variety ones. Snobbery is just another term for competitiveness. There's the egotistically self-centered I'm better/different to you variety. Or the equally judgmental self-depreciating you're better/ different to me variety: Just like TE Lawrence's and mine. Very few of us are lucky enough to have personalities which are completely integrated or unified or perfect.

The world is facing up to, and hopefully removing, such diabolical plagues as racial, sexual and religious discrimination. But discrimination in total must be exorcised if the world is to make a comprehensive recovery. Fat and thin, tall and short, beautiful and ugly, clever and stupid, weak and strong must be the next class distinctions to go. These, most subtle forms of discrimination, are naturally, ego based, and amongst the most insidious falsehoods told to Adam and Eve by the serpent in the garden.

Oh such drama. If only the eyes could see what the heart tells us. How much better we feel when we've been good, how bad we feel when we've been bad. And how angry we get. Isn't that what you tell your children? I know I do. What goes on inside our own heads is the Heaven or Hell we live in NOW.

Now it's time to proceed with the surgery. I intend taking a scalpel to my own conscience and dissecting it for all to see. As it was done by me in the recent past, and relived again with you, it will not seem so painful, but your mission, should you decide to accept it, will be to look at your own. This is the only meaning of the Last Judgment. There is no vengeful God only your own vengeful conscience. St Julian stabbed his own parents to death and yet he was forgiven.

Those people who survive drowning or the near death experience simply experience a re-run in reverse of their own lives, rather like peering into a tunnel or vortex as one delves their hidden depths. Many writers, including myself, have described the same thing. During re-emergence from my own trance I distinctly recall being in a spiral where all creation seemed to be present. Others, like Dante, describe their self- analysis as a winding mountain of sorts, and whilst climbing to the top endure all sorts of disturbing and gratuitous revelations.

Just prior to the trance I recall thinking how I loved writing stories because I got to be anything and do everything I wanted rather like God Himself. Like an author He was both the characters and not the characters at the same time. The impression was so overpowering that I suddenly realized that God was a story- teller too and I was a vital part of that Neverending Story. I also understood that I was in Him and of Him and that we'd experienced an unfortunate breakdown in communication. The next thing I knew I wasn't there anymore. When I came around this is what I wrote.

The more I create, the more I can create, spiraling ever higher until I merge with what…the Ultimate Creator?

So, with a little help from a friend, I shall proceed. Please, play Misty for me.

Now, how to proceed? A good surgeon knows what he is about. He removes the outer layers first to gradually reveal the source of all the trouble. This is what I shall attempt to do with that time proven anesthetic called humour.

If you've ever read Saint Teresa of Avila's, The Interior Castle, then this is definitely not it, although I fully admit to dreaming of crocodiles more than once. In the first instance I was with two people I knew. One was what I would call a complete non-believer whilst the other was curious about the meaning of life. As I consider all dream characters to be but representatives of your own psyche at work, the dream represented the part of me who was becoming more certain day by day, another part which still had doubts, and yet another which was completely skeptical. All three of us wanted to throw me into a pool full of viscous, snapping crocodiles. I'm charming to myself aren't I? Much later on it was piranhas!

The next dream, a few weeks later, was completely different. I was hanging out the washing where the washing consisted of a nicely dead and salted crocodile skin. I distinctly recall being full of satisfaction whilst hanging it out to dry. How's that for hanging out one's dirty washing? The dreamscape is not necessarily only informative, but fun.

If crocodiles and other assorted reptiles represent hidden emotions and demons, as Theresa seems to imply, then at least, at that stage, I had begun to deal with mine.

But that wasn't nearly the finish, in fact if I recall correctly, these dreams came later when I had begun to take note of seemingly symbolic nature of dreams. Prior to that I was literally in the dark about everything. The worst time came quite early, in fact not long after the initial trance. Once the ecstatic effects subsided I seriously began to doubt my sanity. Consequently its benefits gradually faded. Yet prior to that I searched, relentlessly, for explanations about what I was experiencing, yet throughout I knew that it had simply to be endured. Strangely, because I was writing at the time, I can honestly say I thoroughly enjoyed it. Although at times terrifically painful and confusing it was an adventure, an adventure into the very nature of my own being. Strengths and weaknesses I had refused to acknowledge came at me like beasts demanding complete attention; beasts just as terrifying as any of those written about by Paul in Revelations. In addition vagueness was a tangible sign of an intense inner life, and for an extended period of time, normality was indeed a mangle.

I have wondered, and still do, if Revelations describes, not what is to come, but what has already been? This is a good question for the Theologians, I think. I've also wondered if 666 should be re-interpreted as 999. After all, the world is upside down!

Lawrence describes this period well in the Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Obviously something similar was happening to him at the time. He claims that the Seven Pillars of Wisdom is his beast's mangy skin, dried and stuffed and set up squarely for men to stare at. Something like my crocodile skin hey? The turning point came for me when I recognized my gravest fault, that is, my fear of failure or pride. How's that for an original sin?

Those who know me would not suspect I have one, but a secret shadow exists in all of us. However the shadow is not completely bad. Although it might hide a multitude of sins, it can also conceal many positive, if latent, talents and tendencies. The book, The Soul's Code by the archetypal psychologist James Hillman is excellent for this. For me it was instrumental in addressing and coming to terms with my own shadow which culminated painfully with imagining my own son would some day kill me.

Oh heck, I hear you say, but don't despair, by hanging onto my rational mind whilst dealing with the clearly insane part of it I managed to comprehend that it was not my son who wanted to kill me but my own ego. It' s out to get everyone. So clearly I now know what insanity looks and feels like. But I also know insanity is a choice we make. It saves us having to face our worst fears, which is hardly salvation at all.

A Course in Miracles says that at its best the ego is suspicious, but at its worst, it's vicious.

This made me think that schizophrenics, even more so than many others, might identify rather too closely with their sub-conscious minds, their unintegrated egos, their shadows and therefore really do live in a hellish world of their own.

Now to explain this better I must mention the novel I was writing at the same time all this was happening. You know the one about Lawrence and his personal and public ordeals. Actually, the main character in the story was not Lawrence himself but a fictional character; a gypsy called Rachel Balfour. In truth she was more like me than anybody else, and really, how could it be otherwise? Having come from the same source, the characters in a book can only represent sides of their creator's nature.

I've occasionally wondered if we represent God's shadow. Now that's a blasphemous idea, don't you think?

Some characters, usually the good guys, are made up of aspects of the creator's squeaky -clean aspirations, while the negative or habitual or unseen or evil aspects belong to the shadow. Perhaps this is a bit too literal because surely the market to which the work is aimed makes a difference, but when someone is attempting to write a serious book, then I do wonder how much of it is heavily reinforced by the writer's own psyche. Just re-read some Charles Dickens, DH Lawrence, Jane Austen and Emily Bronte. What absurdly self-critical and soul searching minds they must have had! Anyway, the upshot of this was that both the fictional character Rachel and Ned, (Ned, was of course, Thomas Edward Lawrence's pet name) shared a shadow character called Jeremy. Although Jeremy didn't start off all that bad, he certainly had problems and became worse and worse as time went on. Filled with jealousy, resentment and fear he eventually turned against his old friends during the post World War 1 strife in Arabia. I gradually advanced from fearing my own son was out to get me, to believing it was in fact Jeremy who represented the evil forces of my own nature. Only some time later did I realize that it was my satanic shadow that was causing all the strife, and at this point things seemed to improve. It was as though the shadow had been perceived and was no longer loose on its own. Also about this time my son broke his femur and I had to nurse him for several months. By the end of that time I had come to terms with my greatest fear; the fear of not being able to care for him adequately, ie fear of failure again. He'd been a difficult baby and I had been a panic stricken mother. Many of my own fears and weaknesses I had projected onto him until I could no longer discern the real from the imaginary. Several months before I had written this telling poem which seemed to make much more sense now .

It's not the mess in the kitchen, the bathroom or the lounge,
or smelly nappies draping all around.
It's not selfish resentment about giving up work,
or crying like a sook if the dinner gets burnt.
It's the pain in that face, screwed up in a knot.
That screech in the night, when something's not right,
reflecting every fear you've ever had, and that which you don't want to know,
that someone so helpless,
is really your shadow.

From this point on I became increasingly curious about the origin of fear, my own, Lawrence's and everybody else's. In one of his letters Lawrence makes his fear poetically explicit.

I'm too shy to go looking for dirt. I'd be afraid of seeming a novice in it when I found it. That's why I can't go off stewing into the Lincoln or Navenby brothels with the fellows. They think its because I'm superior: proud, or peculiar or ' posh ', as they say: and its because I wouldn't know what to do, how to carry myself, where to stop. Fear again: fear everywhere.

Many people won't admit to fear because it seems weak and immature but they will admit to anger, anxiety, moodiness, stress and depression, which are but fancy, important sounding terms for a familiar and distressing malady. Other conscientious people nearly work themselves to death as an insurance policy against it. These people are the classic workaholics. If we were honest with ourselves, then most, if not all, non-joyous emotions originate from fear. Fear of matters related to work, marriage, children, abandonment, betrayal, illness, old age, senility, poverty, a down turn in the Stock Market, sharks, spiders, snakes, ceiling wax and other fancy stuff. And when we're fearful we're prone to make idols (false Gods) of things and other people and then defend them through thick and thin. We also blame others for our unhappiness. We might blame our parents, our partner, our children, the tax system, the government, another country or ourselves resulting in the generation gap, divorce, child abuse, crime, rebellion, war and suicide respectively.

Error	Issue	Alternative/inconsistent thought patterns/habits/ obscurities/temptations
Pride	Ambition	Success/failure
Anger	Control	Strong/weak
Envy	Competition	Win/lose
Disease/Abuse	Body	Love/hate
Death	Life	Beginning/end

Each of us needs to recognize our fears and put them in perspective. Each of needs to know that what we all experience daily is nothing more than our own hazardous thought patterns. Life is indeed a sub-conscious obstacle course. And each of us needs to know when and how to pass, to detach, to let go and let life be what it really is, nothing more than a mental projection of a continually changing, chaotic, mis-interpreted internal state of mind. If we were all more patient and kinder to each other then life would change for the better right before our eyes. We'd all become magicians.

My new feeling (a dreaded conviction is looming up in the near distance) is that the basis of life, the raison d'etre of us, the springs of our actions, our ideals, ambitions, hopes are carnal as our lusts: & that the apposition of mind & body, of flesh & Spirit, are delusions of our timid selves.

Now its time to give your confession. I've been pretty blunt about mine, and probably will be again: you see its beginning to be a habit, although it's not as easy as it looks. After all we all know we have faults but how deep do they really go? How cunning is the devil? To benefit from this exercise the job must be done properly and so the trick is to know how to go about it. Well let me give you a few hints.

Start with friends, family and work associates. Choose from that familiar group those people whom you most admire, those who irritate you the most, and those which make you seriously uncomfortable. Chances are their character traits form the bulk of your own shadow. True, it's awfully confronting. However -

Another informative method you can use to identify your greatest fears is to take note of what you talk think about the most. You'd be surprised how many people make a career of talking about the things that greatly disturb them without ever realizing they're making their confession every time they raise the subject. I know I did. I talked about my eldest son all the time. And I talked about how I couldn't do things as well as I'd like to. To a trained ear, especially your own, the concern becomes obvious, even humorous. It wouldn't take a gypsy seer like Rachel long to figure them out.

Topics such as health, diets, hair, make-up, fashion, personal appearance, financial security, divorce, sex, other people's inefficiencies, family issues and numerous other topics, including politics and religion, can reveal specific ego identifications which relate directly to specific attitudinal habits and fears. Some ego identifications might reveal a fear of death, while others might reveal fear of old age, disease, pain, failure, betrayal, poverty and so on. Only you will know for sure and the list is as varied as the imagination itself.

Psychiatry and psychology categorize these fears and give them fancy names. But the trick to good mental health is not necessarily addressing the past, or being labeled a neurotic or psychotic or having a personality disorder, but to recognize your fears for what they are, in other words, acknowledge them, not necessarily get rid of them, but acknowledge them. Trying to get rid of them can actually be detrimental to the overall process. It is an example of the ego trying to take control again. This is what TE Lawrence was attempting to do when he had himself beaten. It didn't work, and resulted in him despising himself even more. So be careful. The keys to success are love, acceptance and non-resistance.

So as I imply the purification process is not easy but neither is carrying the ego burden. Weariness, depression, and all sorts of physical/mental illnesses do result from continued resistance to the process. At some point in time, often during a crisis, a decision must be made and the journey begins.

Instead of facts and figures, my note- books were full of states of mind, the reveries and self-questioning induced or educed by our situations, expressed in abstract words to the dotted rhythm of the camels' marching.

Try recording your most well remembered dreams also. Usually dreams are ego-dominated mad houses but those you recall may contain some symbolism worth reflection. They may only tell you what you already know, or what the ego will have you think you are, but with the use of some dream interpretation books, you may find the universality of dream symbolism both stimulating and reassuring. Just as myths and legends have their origins in the human psyche, dreams contain a universal storehouse of images and projections, totems and taboos.

The new generation confessional box is the psychologist's consulting room or the psychiatrist's couch. While this may appear to be a socially acceptable form of self-help, it essentially means you're still looking for someone else to help you out, to forgive you. Until you find the hero within, your own Lawrence of Arabia, you cannot hope to become the hero without. Only by identifying and accepting, but not necessarily eliminating, your own demons, can you achieve peace of mind or personal fulfillment. Therefore, the mirror that you require is not necessarily to be found in the well meaning, but often unenlightened words of an unhealed healer, or the super serious studies found in textbooks, but in the unforgiving crevices of your own compassionate heart.

There is a sound basis for this advice and again it comes from my research about Lawrence. Fortunately or unfortunately I was able to access and read only thirty or so biographies about him. There must be dozens more. As I indicated before, some of these authors spoke of him in glowing terms while others treated him dismally. Yet to be honest with you even the worst still rang true, whilst revealing as much about the authors themselves as their fascinating subject. I soon realized that it is impossible to summarize the totality of a man. Not even Lawrence, himself could do it. If he could have, I'm sure he would have. Both his analytical and language skills were supremely refined, and his need to understand and heal himself paramount. Yet he failed miserably. For the most part, I feel he remained a prisoner of his ego with only glimmers of hope appearing in his second book The Mint.

James Hillman in his book called The Soul's Code deals with the issue of personal biography, great and small, with profound understanding and warmth. And I deliberately chose the words, great and small, in order to publicly chastise myself. There is no such thing as a great or small biography. One way or another we are all heroes taking Joseph Campbell's hero's journey, some are just more aware of it than others, or perhaps they just talk and write about it more. Take Lawrence and myself as case in point.

How can any one person comprehend the complexity of his or her nature and make a judgment about it? We can only catch glimpses of ourselves in the still water of another man's yet incurious mind. You guessed it, there's narcissistic Lawrence projecting again. And doesn't he have a way with words? And this being the case of one person, how difficult it must be to understand the biography or history of the whole universe. Those who believe it a purely physical event are gravely mistaken. They have only read and absorbed one account, and have not recognized the symbolism and imagery that masks its infinite grandeur.

It was about this time my mind began to spin with the miraculous possibility that I had stumbled across something magnificent, something far beyond myself, yet within reach of each and every one of us, something true and beautiful, and hitherto unimaginable. And that something was the origin and nature of the universe itself.

Symbols appeared in my mind's eye like an archetypal fireworks display. The symbolism and imagery intrinsic in natural and mental phenomena was rampant. I compared water ripples to galaxies, internal vortices with black holes, mysterious event horizons to changes of consciousness. Drowning and dying were glimpses of abundant inner worlds. Sleeping and dreaming became channels and waterfalls. Mountain top gardens with statuesque trees bore fearful thoughts of failure and rejection, like autumn leaves, to be worn by Adam and Eve to conceal their naked awareness. Archetypal faces, places, vocations and motivations revealed layer upon layer of hidden human potential.

In literature, both ancient and modern, including the sumptuous poetry and prose by Shakespeare, Blake, Yeats and in one of Lawrence's favourite reads, Moby Dick, in which Captain Ahab falls victim to his own whale of an ego, and Michaelangelo's gallant search for his immortal soul in sculpture. The seemingly innocent words of popular songs by John Denver, Don McLean, John Lennon, Neil Diamond, Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel and many others induced me to dance like I haven't danced since I was much younger. Alternative teachings such as those of astrology, tarot and spirituality that I'd been studying seemed not so alien and threatening after all. The deeper meaning of names and numbers became amusing dinner party conversation. Mythology and psychology became close cousins. Ancient and modern philosophy, especially Plato's Myth of Er, had new and wondrous significance, and so too the world's great religions: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism and the irrepressible law of Karma. The glorious Bhagavad Gita became favourite bedtime reading. And last but not least, the latest telling discoveries of modern science.

If you can imagine receiving the greatest gift imaginable, well that is how I felt. It was as though the whole universe was mine. That I belonged to it; indeed, I was it. I had felt the same way about the desert when I had imagined traveling through it on a camel in my story.

We were a curious group, bright and gay upon our camels. I was reminded of my varied past when I had traveled as a gypsy, then as a carnival dancer and now as a reluctant spy. How strange, I thought, that my past would assist me so in the present. It seemed I was to be a traveler all my life whether I liked it or not.

Neither did there seem an end to the wanderings of my mind as we traversed the first stages of our journey. We paced ourselves eagerly towards the rising ball of the sun, which upon its starling appearance had transformed the grey dawn into a hinterland of iridescent colour. .

He smiled but the corners of his eyes were moist. I frowned, thinking him weary already, as he tried to explain in a faltering voice how the desert changes its moods as often and quickly as does a woman.

" She can be vibrant and vivacious, openly revealing herself in startling oranges of smooth towering dunes and rich red peaks. Or she can by mysterious and tempting, tossing alluring blooms and luscious green grasses about as though they were stepping- stones to pleasure and passion. Or she can be cruel and mocking when the black lava flows appear to shred our feet and make rags of our souls."

I did not find it difficult to understand why. For although I had lived most of my life in a temperate climate and had been spoilt by its abundant water and gentle greens, the desert was a challenge to my whole being, as though to meet it on its own terms was something to be prized. To withstand the hardships of such a place, indeed to enjoy them, was in itself ample justification for being there in the first place.

At first I did not understand this about myself. It was only later when I was sick with exhaustion did I realize that I could still go on, and having gone on, could go still further until in the end Ahmed had to force me from my camel in order to eat and drink.

Even before we reached the first Bedouin camp the desert had become to me a person, a pure extension of myself where I was able to appreciate and excuse all its physical imperfections and admire its individuality without fear of reproach. Its beauty belonged to me. Its accomplishments belonged to me. Its thirst was my thirst. Its dangers my dangers, and all its creatures were my brothers. I was as possessive of it as a lover, and more protective of it than a mother.

Surely our native Australians must feel something like this for our magnificent land.

When I lived in the city there was many a time I heard people claim there was no life in the desert. That the open, unprotected land was barren, deprived of life by the relentless sun and lack of water, and that even the most robust of animals shrink from it, venturing from their secluded hollows and hiding places at night. And the courageous plants that emerged faded and withered in the very dawn of their beginning.

They were right and they were wrong. What there was in the desert was a certain encapsulating stillness, which has the power to intimidate and enthral, quite like the moment before a storm or one's first kiss. There is an expectation of hope that in sight there might be a well, an oasis, a glimpse of something inconsistent with death. To ride upon the wavering mass of a camel is to hang suspended in time, hypnotized by movement and endlessness, a form of meditation, whereupon the mind fills itself with dreams and fancies and new and revolutionary philosophies. Much can be found in the desert if one opens one's eyes and looks, and when one sees, the beauty is in the seeing, and a strange new awareness and appreciation brings forth a joy without compare.

From that time forth I couldn't rest until I had discovered what I believe to be the truth about life, the universe and everything.

THE COSMIC CONNECTION AND THEORY OF UNIVERSAL FULFILLMENT

Written by a philosophic friend.

Discussion 2: Coming Clean about Complicated Matters

Major references used: