Course of Mirrors

December 8, 2025 · 8:07 pm

… Stranger in a Strange Land …

It’s how I feel these days.

Stranger in a Strange Land is the title of a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein, published in 1961 …

A child born during a failed mission from Earth to Mars remains the only survivor and is raised by Martians, only to return to earth two decades later, hitching back with another, successful mission. Brought up by Martians, he is now an alien encountering aliens …

The book makes worthwhile reading, even more relevant now then it was decades ago. The title came to mind recently, and it also brought up a precious connected memory.

During the late 70s, instigated by my then Sufi teacher, Fazal Inayat-Khan, I stayed with my then partner and later husband for several weeks in Washington DC, at the time when President Carter was inaugurated. Our contact person was Dr Abdul Aziz Said, Professor for International Relations at the American University.

The above image is us at Amsterdam flee market, raising money to the journey To Washington D.C.

I posted about Dr Abdul Aziz Said in 2015 … https://courseofmirrors.com/2015/11/28/the-inner-jihad/

In that post I did not enlarge on the remarkable people we were introduced to during our stay.

One such person was a young scholar who held an influential position at the American Library, the Library of Congress on Capitol Hill, and the largest library in the world. He welcomed us to a tour of this magnificent place – a great privilege. At one point he asked if there was a book we would like him to locate for us. My partner and I looked at each other and had no problem choosing … ‘Stranger in a Strange Land.’ A short search on a console and the book came whizzing through the extensive tube network of the library and landed in our hands in no time.

This happened half a lifetime ago. I’m thankful for this memory.

If you haven’t yet read Heinlein’s novel yet, do. And share if you, too, like a Martian, feel at times like a stranger in a strange land.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Congress

11 Comments

Filed under Blog

Tagged as books, fiction, reading, science-fiction, writing

November 21, 2025 · 7:12 pm

… all is well …

‘All is Well’ may not sound true to you, but pause for a moment, think of it as a deep state of mind, a trust in the balancing power of the psyche, a trust in human values; don’t underestimate the phenomenal power of this attitude.

Make it your manta. It’s an enabling attitude that dilutes all diversionary and sensational news.

… applesauce – my sanity …

I’m fortunate to have a small garden, the care of which grounds my overactive mind and diverts me from the increasingly surreal global politics of these days.

This time of year I’m challenged to deal with a glut of apples, eaters and Bramley cookers. I hear them plop daily to the ground. I can’t leave them to rot, so apart from sharing the blessings with friends, wrapping the cookers in newspaper to preserve them for a while for stir fries and curries, I’ve made a batch of applesauce today.

I don’t think I ever posted a food recipe, but was prompted by a memory of my mum’s kitchen magic. Her potato fritters, made of raw grated potatoes, mixed with flour, egg – and fried, were served with a dollop of applesauce.

The applesauce I made today, consists of 1 kg peeled Bramley apples chopped up into small chunks, the juice of a lemon, a tablespoon of maple syrup, a little castor sugar, a little cinnamon, a little rose wine, and some butter and salt … result … it tastes divine …

That’s about all the inspiration I feel able to share this month 🙂

4 Comments

Filed under Blog

Tagged as Apples, applesauce, autumn, garden, inspiration, mum's kitchen magic, photography, recipe, sanity, surreal politics, writing

September 7, 2025 · 9:59 am

… treasure hunt with my grandchild …

I happily slow down and follow his lead along the curb of the path. I join his seeing, peering down and examining the ground. He pushes dry leaves ahead; occasionally he lifts one to show me, adding a sound. I nod, repeat, and may add a word. He attends to shapes, curled or straight, to weight, to colours and their shades in the light, he tests textures, hard, soft … a stone, a twig, a feather, an empty snail shell, an acorn.

I witness and share the adventure.

He has learned to resist putting objects in his mouth. Yogurt tastes better. It’s now all about touching with fingertips, sensing, and smelling, moving things, sounding, sorting, weighing, comparing new impression with recent ones, rearranging his comprehension, moment by moment, of how things are connected. His imagination soars. I observe his world expanding.

These discoveries will resurface in picture books, turn into stories and create stories.

He aims ahead, crawling towards the red playground-gate with parallel bars. Arrived, he shakes the bars for a good rattle. Having recently achieved walking, gates will soon cease to be obstacles. And he’ll look less down and increasingly more up.

Dear heart, I enjoy the wisdom-gathering fun to be present at your early treasure hunts.

2 Comments

Filed under Blog

Tagged as adventures, comparisons, comprehension, crawling, discoveries, exploring the world, fun, gates, grandchild, ground, imagination, leaves, seeing, slowing down, treasure hunt, walking, wisdom, writing

August 8, 2025 · 2:05 pm

… the psyche’s tectonic plates …

Do you find yourself staring vacantly into space after scrolling through daily headlines?

Just like ocean waters rise during an earthquake, information can dumbfound us when unconscious content is shifting, erupting, and sudden bursts of awareness surface, which is the psyche’s attempt to seek balance.

We are stirred by the rough storms of fervent feelings that emanate from the collective mind spectrum. I may feel safe from natural disasters and human brutalities shaking our planet, but am, like most people, bombarded by the alarming images that land on my laptop screen. I consider it a duty to witness what goes on around the world. But how does one face the magnified realities of injustice, suffering and death?

Those inclined to psychotic violence tend to crave emotional catharsis as a way to deal with paranoia, anger and resentment, spurred on by sensational or false reports that frequently spout blame, hypocrisy and sarcasm.

Ensuing are toxic environments that employ punishing control. A sensitive and too tenderly attuned individual may sink into a trance of inner turmoil and depression, or renounce their moral dignity and engage in violence themselves, often self-harming.

Beyond strength, it takes subtlety to stay awake, present to suffering, and centred, when the functional energy balance of the cosmic psyche wobbles.

There seems nothing useful this helpless me can do. Or is there?

My body complains when muscles cramp up with stored emotional tension, restricting its spontaneous movements, its fluid dance. So I’m forced to listen and allow offered solutions. One example is: to stomp the ground with heels, like in Indian Kathak, Spanish Flamenco, Irish or other dance moves … it’s freeing to ground and rebirth intense energy.

I appreciate the body’s wisdom, true and real in that its physical form is mortal. And I like to believe that the energy state of each of us influences the environment – near and far away. Also, thankfully, our metabolism allows sleep, where impressions are processed via dreams. My dreams are fairly wild these days.

What is your experience of trying for a balanced state of mind within these mad times?

Do share if you like.

The above image was created by Cynthia Holt, inspired by my poems.

1 Comment

Filed under Blog

Tagged as anger, balance, Body, centred, collective psyche, control, death, dreams, earthquakes, energy, environment, Flamenco, healing, heels, influence, Irish dance moves, Kathak, mad world, media headlines, meditation, mental-health, mind spectrum, mortality, ocean water, psyche, psychology, psychotic violence, sleep, spirituality, stomping the ground, storms, suffering, tectonic plates, wakeful, waves, wind, wisdom, writing

July 12, 2025 · 2:18 pm

…balancing the lens of perception …

to magnify …

the near but hidden

by daily mundane living

those tiny universes

of grand design and beauty

reliably unfolding

echoing worlds within us

mirroring the tapestry among distant stars

to minimize …

the blown-up media

numbing our collective heart

those frozen pictures

of devastating events

black shadows of utopia

starved if all humour

mirroring only their curse

trapped in a cold jail

Related thoughts … while this happens … one of the shy visitors to my garden, a sleek young cat, ventures through my open backdoor and peeks around the door-frame to where I sit in my study. I feel the cat’s presence and involuntary face its curious eyes. The guest rushes off, and I realise it felt attacked by my direct glance, which disrupted a subtle channel of resonance between us.

… I’m reminded that, at times, it is more wholesome not to look at the other too sharply and directly, lest assault is mirrored. Instead, a gentle glance from the corner of the eye can reveal a deeper sense of intuition, finer feelings, and wisdoms long forgotten.

… my body – my being …

Irrespective of the benefits AI provides, and the super benefits AI enthusiasts promise, I remain doubtful and, as I tried to express in my last post, and am still searching for ways to express my unease. So I’ll give it another try.

My body-my being is a better wisecrack than my mind alone. The latter, if let loose, will take off into the cosmos like a disengaged kite. Some AI proponents are now referring to humanity as – data in motion – a ‘precious phenomenon’ that needs to be preserved. Well, how reassuring, nature and humans are worth preserving.

Being aware in my body brings deep and grounded, embodied insights that feel fresh and original.

Our body’s treasure-trove of memory, each wonderfully distinct from another; and its instinctive capacity for remembrance, especially when alert to its senses, greatly compensates the buzzing mind.

The body yearns to breathe freely, so energy and blood can flow from head to toe, which is enhanced by movement, since movement stimulates tactile exchanges with the environment, noting temperature, touch, vision, sound, taste and scent, all enriching the imagination.

The attention-demanding internet with its algorithms exploiting the patterns of our attention can become hypnotically addictive and leave the body isolated, forgotten, in a locked position. We can easily live with theories and data, and ignore how feelings build up in the body.

AI bots have developed a theory of senses, and mimic them, they can write novels, create art, and impersonate dead people, but divorced from flesh and blood, they cannot have physical sensations, be it the intimate enchantment of a tiny insect or flower, or the awe of a star-filled sky. The bot’s world, in a way, seems predetermined and flat without recall of the reservoir of eons of plant, animal and human life our vulnerable body-being belongs to and has deep instinctual access to. Even with limited/impaired senses, physical bodies can spark a cosmic connectedness.

So considering our physical inconveniences, which spurn the desire for robots taking care of tedious tasks … to actually fully live in a body … is uniquely precious. The dangers I see are the powerful projections people already invest in the relationship with AI bods, where responses can be taken as valid affirmations that stunt creativity and encourage lazy thinking.

Then again, my window of perception is just a tiny peephole on the world we live in these days, my personal view. The occasional whispers of truth from the other side that slip through my peephole may or may not be of any consequence.

I share a poem I love … my son wrote it time ago, aged eleven …

It’s Magic

Magic is in the air

It is all around us

We use it every day

It is old and beautiful

Many people disuse it

But it still fights on

This magic is very special

It is called Life

5 Comments

Filed under Blog

Tagged as air, Akasha, animals, birth, consciousness, control, cosmos, creative imagination, culture, days, death, DNA, dreams, earth, elements, experience, fire, geometry, health, humans, identity, imagination, instinct, intelligence, intuition, life, light, meditation, memory, mental-health, mind world, mindfulness, mortality, myth, nature, nights, patterns, planets, plants, precious phenomenon, psyche, senses, soul, sound, space, spirit, suns, synchronicity, the unconscious, time, vibration, water, wilderness, will, writing

May 7, 2025 · 3:33 pm

…Thoughts on AI and ChatGPT …

AI is all the rage. It doesn’t chime, and I’m puzzled about its implementations, ChatGPT etc.

Where data is concerned; humans have access, filtered through nature, our body, DNA, our ancestry, through Gaia and the Noosphere … all providing indefinitely more useful and richer intuitive information than any AI machination based on prompts that are trained to offer flattering affirmation and resonance.

I’m only a curious bystander, yet, following reports on this controversial subject, something about AI feels like a discord in my heart, a lifeless blank spot without position or horizon, a killer of critical doubt, a wicked joke, subversion of meaning, a parsimonious harvesting of material from artists, an affront to the psyche, a false mirror … I grapple for words to express my strong concerns, though I tend to agree with Mc Gilchrist…

‘The opposite of life is not death, it’s a machine.’

A poem by Wislawa Szymborska from the 1970s chimes in an uncanny way…

Utopia …

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The tree of Valid Supposition grows here

with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzling straight and simple,

sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:

the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned

and easily explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the lake of deep Conviction.

Truth breaks from the bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.

Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island in uninhabited,

and the faint footprint scattered on its beaches

turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can here is leave

and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

As said, I’m grappling for words to express my concerns, and may lack understanding.

So I’m grateful for feedback of any kind. Thank you.

12 Comments

Filed under Blog

Tagged as a false mirror, AI, an affront the psyche, artificial intelligence, Body, Chat GPT, chatbots, chatgpt, creativity, data, depth, imagination, information, Mc Gilchrist, my concerns, Noosphere, photography, poem, technology, unfathomable life, utopia, wicked joke, Wislava Szymborska, writing

April 16, 2025 · 1:41 pm

… to live in an angry world …

Anger is a natural human emotion. When its agressive energy accumulates as tension in the body, depending on one’s basic temperament, it can well up like a river bursting its banks and trigger a surge of destruction, or, if held inward, often can develop into depression, self-harm or illness.

We may not think of ourselves as prone to anger, but think again … loss, resentment, frustration, rigid bureaucracy, fear mongering, feeling powerless, being lied to, neglected, humiliated, threatened, manipulated, or simply witnessing daily insane politics, injustice and cruelty … tell me in all honesty you don’t regularly feel angry.

My former Sufi teacher/friend, ‘Fazal Inayat-Khan,’ embraced contradiction as a function or reality. He had a vastly dynamic, psychological and deeply intuitive way of interpreting his grandfather’s Sufi message of ‘love, harmony and beauty,’ upsetting the traditional understanding of his elders, not in essence, but in the way harmony may be restored. For example, he instigated workshops on the theme of spiritual war-games, like ‘Struggle and Conflict.’

Imagine young people could engage in this ingenious way of recycling redundant matter using the trapped energy of their unresolved feelings …

Sadly, there is a lack of opportunity, especially for young people, to safely release strong feelings, physically or symbolically. As regards the latter approach, artists and creative people have an advantage by employing their imagination to adjust the imbalance of inner turmoil, to help ease the anger out there.

During tumultuous events

dark fears flood our nights

while days pass obscured by lies

truth an ancient myth

players who crave attention

are easily bored

and at times relish mayhem

to release their frustration

meanwhile

a young bee enchants

with fitful choreography

and a spring breeze cheers

How do you, my readers, release your angry feelings?

2 Comments

Filed under Blog

Tagged as anger, anger-management, angry world, balance, Body, contradiction, emotions, energy, Fazal Inayat-Khan, fear, feelings, frustration, health, imagination, mayhem, mental-health, photography, players who crave attention, safe release of anger, spring breeze, struggle and conflict, Sufi workshops, writing, young bees, young people

March 11, 2025 · 6:56 pm

… bed-time dialogue with my body …

Time to close the book and prepare for sleep, not always assured. Still, let’s advance to our night time ritual.

Thank you my little palace.

I love you. I know you are me too, and both of us rely on the mysterious soul, but I call you my body. Forgive our mind for ignoring your gentle cautions and prompts, again. Forgive the unreliable promises, like the hot shower you craved, less time in front of the laptop screen, not eating that pretzel baked with wheat, which gives you gas, or indulging in that late extra glass of Rose. Our rebellious mind has a masochistic streak of resisting your well-meant counsel.

So before sleep, here are some treats. I massage our feet, and toes. Each toe has a name I address it with … big one, forward one, middle one, enchanted one, and little one. Next – a neck-rolling, then pinching and rubbing its surrounding muscles, and, not to forget, finger-cracking. These exercises are not just mechanical, without the imagination to sincerely call in the divine spirit, these rituals would be meaningless.

Pulling the duvet round our shoulders, we adopt a first position, curling on our right side, like a foetus in the womb, finding a cosy arrangement for the head with a small cushion, and recalling the last pages of the closed book, and summarizing impressions of the day.

Now it’s us wishing to just drift off into weightless realms – this remains a wish. We want to stretch, so we shift to lying on the back, flick toes, gently massage the stomach, pull up legs and spread them in a kind of opening-flower-like choreography. This feels good for a while. Then we shift to lying on the left. With less muscle tension our stomach rumbles, its juices are sighing with relief to get on with their purpose, digesting food.

Still, the mind is restless, processing past, present and future, wanting answers, hunting memory land for nostalgic moments, fresh connections, insights, inspiration, all quite useless, since it pulls us in a thousand directions and stops us from sleeping. So let’s do another shift to lying on the right, to escape the meandering thoughts. Our somewhat remorseful mind suggests sinking into images, in the belief that hypnotic images will put reason to rest. So we must try soothing the overly receptive brain. The restlessness may of course be due to oncoming temperature changes, or the energizing influence of the full moon.

Now we remember, a mantra, a prayer, sending blessings to dear ones, gratitude for The One that allows our mind and body to exist together in relative harmony, here, now. These neglected rituals are often surprisingly effective. Finally, vivid images emerge, of friends, places, visions. The self-regulating system of our body-mind will soon update itself in ethereal dream space.

It matters how we achieve sleep, it has a bearing on the way we wake up, clear and resolved for another day ahead, or confused and fretting over the unfinished gestalt of an idea that floats around evasively, like a butterfly. It can’t be helped; there are greater forces at work.

What grounded us next morning was watching a young fox frolicking and eventually flopping down to sunbathe in our garden.

How do you, my readers, go to sleep?