Rough Guides Basics

My aim in this writing is to distinguish between what is real and reliable, and what is unreal and untrustworthy - between what is necessary and helpful (Heartland) and what unnecessary, and mischievous (Egoland).

(See what happens when we reverse the word 'live'.)

see Song words in Miscellaneous

This kind of discernment between real and unreal, true and false, is a practical skill essential for everyday life, yet it touches on things we don’t discuss much, or even find it easy to think about.

The capacity for discernment we need, to maintain our open access to the Heartland - our centre of wellbeing, energy and authentic identity - is a matter of skill and will rather than of intellectual understanding.

‘Knowing’, with my mind, how things stand is all very well when I'm feeling OK and events seem to be moving along smoothly – but I need more than ‘knowledge’ and understanding to see me through the times when events or people seem hostile: I need courage and character, the firmness to keep putting one foot in front of the other, even in the dark, and to keep trusting what has shown itself to be trustworthy.

Having admitted that what is offered here can only be a form of fair-weather assistance – corroboration, perhaps, of your own experience, and hopefully clarification of some of life’s murkier goings-on (not the kind that make the headlines!) – I would now like to present quite a bold assertion, or pair of assertions.

What is true is real, and works.

What is true feels harmonious and is effective - it feels right, allows the cycle of life to roll on, with a sense of mutual support and enjoyment.  This is the cycle of attraction – compatibility – conception – birth – and new life, growth, expansion.

This cycle is ruled by love – not love as an abstraction or principle, but as feeling, spontaneous and natural – physiological, even. It is not just about sexual attraction: it is the whole ongoing, all-embracing, win-win feeling that suffuses us when we are in our Heartland, when we are being true to ourselves.

What is untrue is unreal, and doesn't work.

The corollary of the above is that what is untrue (i.e. false, faked, made up, mere fears and fantasies) doesn’t work. What is untrue and unreal hampers, twists and blocks life’s flow, and turns things (and people) against themselves.

Our human capacity for self-deception, and our utter need of acceptance, in infancy and childhood, make us very susceptible to infiltration by defensive lies and half-truths, which can cause all kinds of problems – psychological and physical – throughout our lives.

The vicious cycle of lies is ruled by fear.

We feel fear in our bodies, of course, but it also lives in the imagination, and particularly in the unexamined statements, many of them pernicious, destructive (and self-destructive) falsehoods which we have taken in throughout our lives, and accepted as ‘true’.

What is real allows the enjoyment of life – enjoyment which diminishes no-one. The real is inclusive, and enhances everyone’s experience.

What is unreal offers perks to some people at the expense of others, or to some part of my body/mind, at the expense of others who/which lose out, and feel marginalised and put down, their needs denied or dismissed. Thus the false initiates - and goes on to justify - injustice, inequality, the privileging of a ‘superior’ minority over the majority.

one side of Table Mountain, Cape Town

and another side

The process of falsification and the rationalisation of falsehoods goes on within and between communities, and societies, nations and power blocs, as well as within and between individuals.

This whole power-based way of operating – while it clearly holds sway in significant areas of our present human culture, worldwide – is based in unreality. It doesn’t work, and it doesn’t reflect or express what does work.

Though these Rough Guides are not primarily about the international financial and economic system, and its unjust and destructive effects, I hope that the relevance of these reflections to the shared public, political world we create, uphold and inhabit, will be apparent throughout.

(And I will allow myself a few sideswipes and little rants along the way!  Watch out for the rant warnings.)

The truth is, the way things are in the world, for good and for ill, is the effect of human attitudes and behaviour through history. The unrealities (falsehoods, untruths, half-truths and distortions) we embrace, or allow to persist unchecked, have consequences for ourselves and others, just as the realities we come to acknowledge and accept – and the unmasking of falsehoods - enable liberating transformations to proceed.

But it is also essential to remember that there is a lot more to reality than human experience. We human beings are part of nature, we are creatures of the natural world.

This is why, through our bodies, we have direct access to how things work – and don’t work. Our feelings are our true and reliable guides. We need to free ourselves from the operations of fear and ego within the psyche, so that we can open up to our feelings, practise discernment and reconnect with reality.