It's becoming a challenging year. It reminds me of the epilogue to the play The Wake of Prisoners that I often quote:" Thank God our time is now when wrong comes up to meet us everywhere". It certainly seems to be doing that. In such a short period of time we have lost one of our finest stateswomen, the cost of living based on the war in Ukraine and the global weather, seems to be streaking along beyond our purse strings, every time we go to do the groceries. Donald Trump seems to be immortal as well as covered in Teflon, and people are being exceedingly nasty to each other on social media. That's without the climate crisis hitting us at home and wiping out the North Islands ability to keep us in many items of food stuff. I find myself pivoting backwards and forwards between wanting to be here to witness what happens next, and wondering if I can actually cope with it. But I trust Life's ability to self-regulate so on we go into the next chapter of what the  Christians call the End Times. But I know that Life transforms itself constantly. We humans tend to have tunnel vision, brought about by too much watching of the bottom line.

The use of algorithms for choosing what the public will consume on social network and streaming companies is well known now. But it wasn't always so. It seemed a mystery to begin with, how the the sites we might like, or the shows we might enjoy, turned up on our feed so effortlessly. Liking someone or something seemed no more than polite behaviour. Little did we know that the beginnings of algorithms were tracking us, making data bases of our every move, informing our choices with the offerings they fed up to us. But we got the hang of it as it all slid into our unconscious mind so that we automatically complied. If I was to say that this is exactly the way our brain works to inform our minds choices, you would probably laugh, thinking it was all too simplistic to be real. But the similarity is all too real.

Twixmas, I am told, is the period between Xmas and New Year. New Year's Day, I believe, was placed on the day of celebration of the God Janus of Rome. He was a pre-Greek pantheon God with faces pointing in opposite directions. "Strange and ancient, Janus was depicted with two, sometimes four faces. One face is always looking back, reflecting, analyzing, learning from the past. The other looks forward, eyes filled with hope, to the future. More metaphor than god, Janus presided over doors and gates, and more importantly, what they represented: transitions", according to Sarah Long https://commonera.com/blogs/the-common-cause/janus-and-the-ritual-of-the-new-yearI once heard that originally the period between Xmas and the New Year was considered to be a period between one year ending and another beginning in which time itself ceased to exist. There was a huge festival, and people were free to do what they liked. It feels a little like that now. Its as if we are all holding our collective breath, waiting to see what happens next.

I am new at this statistics thing, only having found out that I can check who, what, and where visitors came from to visit my website. So it was amazing to me, that in the midst of their darkest hour, the Ukrainian people come top of the list at reading my writings. It conjures up images of people huddled in homes and shelters, trying to stay alive from the hideousness of Russia's assault, reading the philosophy that I have the privilege of coming up with in my safe, secure New Zealand home, tucked at the bottom of the world..

                                                                                                      By Jay Ray

                           By Jay Ray

As 'The Infinite Compass' enters the design stage, even though there is plenty for me still to organise around it, my thoughts turn to the next stage of 'The Enculturalised Mind'. Its then that the portal opens up and I find the information flow begins to show me what needs to be looked at next.

As The Infinite Compass slips closer to each day to being let lose from its nest in my files, into the world at large, I think of bits I couldn't fit in. One of those recently centered around the discussion that since the Agricultural Paradigm shift occurred, by nature of its intent to own everything, people have been shoveled into two categories: those that own, and those that aspire to own. Those that were able to amass land and cattle, by fair means or foul, placed themselves in a powerful position. They owned all the food! That left those that owned no food in a position of starving or having to negotiate with those that had some. This worked well for the landowners, because as their addiction to ownership grew, it was impossible to service all the land, or beings on it. Perfect. Those that owned nothing worked for those that did, aspiring to one day own also. Now we have the economic system. Gradually, that system embedded itself into our psyche so that it was taken for granted that that is what we must do; work, save, buy, and own.

Well, things are getting there. It does look like The Infinite Compass, which now has a subtitle 'A Journey into Wisdom', is likely to be on the market by Christmas. Currently its being made print-ready. That's the last stage before printing and the book launch. Its been a ride. Its never easy to self-publish a book, but for me the integrity of the content is the important issue. We need more independent thinker in this world and the education systems world wide are not design to teach us that skill. Instead they are about providing fodder for the marketplace. I remember when leaving high school in the 60's. We were sent off to a careers advisor but the only things she could offer me was a teacher, a nurse, or an office worker. Of course those were the things that the economy needed at that time, but they were so far from my view of life at that time (an indeed still are) I could not see my path in any of them. Truth be told I have become a teacher, but not as they envisaged. I don't believe they could have foreseen any of the paths I have since journeyed down to become a therapist/shaman and author.