Ra Tuesday's Child!

Tuesday
Tuesday's child is full of ra bliss!! Trying hard (you might not think so!) with the purification and accumulation. I'm just over eleven and a half stone again, and going down!

Last night I was a very good boy! This morning I became awake with my eyes closed. And in ra bliss! What a great way to waken up!! In ra bliss before you even open your eyes. Let's hope the meditations and ra bliss push out the pollutions for good, and bring in the happiness. The happiness if coming through. How to be happy? Get into ra bliss!!

Eleven minutes past midnight.
I was reading the beginning of my new book today and I liked it so much that I thought I'd foist it on Beef McDuck. Sent him the first three chapters. It's not a final draft as yet, but I was enjoying reading it at the time. I really have been enjoying working on the book recently.

It's a book about ra bliss and the jobbie. Anyone wants to see the first three (maybe not quite right) chapters of Hotboy and the Taleban Tims. Or, Let's Kill Fatboy! Or, The Bog Standard Hotboy Versus The Taleban Tims. Or, ... well, I haven't got a title, but if you want to have a peek at something that could change your life, make you rich, or bore you to death, without actually having to read a book, just email me and I'll send it to you.

I don't read novels. Read one last year. Brian Wilson once told me he didn't read books because people were just trying to tell you things in them. Cut to the chase!

Two beers tonight. Do I really want to be happy? Isn't there quite a bit left that would like to cut their fung heads off and then send the heads home to their families in hat boxes? I'm not sure of doing this juju out here. This isn't a retreat. But it will be after I finish off the jobbie stuff tomorrow for four and a half days. Yahoo!

Ra Weekend End!

Sunday 5:40 p.m.
Been quiet for a bit. Last weekend we saw our friend in the hospital and that was that. This weekend I saw the Poisonous for about half an hour on Saturday afternoon. I managed to tell him I was going to become a great yogi. As usual, he seemed hardly impressed.

I'm always trying to do hard things. Or, maybe I just try hard. The two hard things I'm trying to do just now are write my novel and do the juju.

I've just finished the first three chapters of the re-write and it's going quite well, but it's slow. It's slow because of the juju. Meditating is taking up the time. Probably twenty hours since Thursday morning. I know I want to do it. I know I get ra bliss, but it's still hard.

Read about a boy called Gogol. While writing Dead Souls he thought he needed a spiritual awakening and went into the fasting and praying, and all that. Result: nervous breakdown. No, we don't want that. Neither do we want the drink to rot our brains so that we blow them out like the great Ernest. As usual, looking for the middle way and not knowing where it is.

I'd like a result. I want to stop and say, that's it. I don't have to do this anymore. The juju has been done. I've got a big smile to show for it. I don't think this happens.

No beer last night. Lay on the floor for a bit and had great bliss and the vase breathing was working as well. This is wonderful. Even over a couple of weeks, I can see definite progress. Also, ra bliss itself is changing. What happens with some of these vase breaths I cannot describe, but it is the best of feelings. I mean, shockingly better than anything else. But you don't just get it and you can't just (usually!) turn it on. It's work. Yes, but what a fortunate creature to be able to do it!

I jiggered my knee somehow on Friday. It's much better today. After seeing our friend in hospital last week, I'm not complaining about a sore knee. You just step out the door and there it is: grief, sorrow, lamentations ... suffering in this life! Back to the lobby. Here comes ra bliss! Here comes the heat!!

Ra Wonderful life!

Friday?Saturday. 1:15 a.m.
Home alone again from 7 p.m. Sore knee. Knew she'd be back probably before midnight. Lay down in the lobby. Sore knee. Thank God for ra bliss. Thank evolution for ra bliss. Ra bliss has nothing to do with me. It is not mine. Thank God for ra bliss. So you lie on the floor doing the yoga nidra. In the lobby. Because that's where the telephone rings. Ra bliss arises. Then you do the breath. Amazingly that works the way it did when you were sitting up. You sit up after a while and then you do the breath.

I did ra bliss tonight when I was lying flat. This is Friday night. The Domestic Bliss is out from seven. She got back as I was leaving the flat to go to the off-license for ra beer at half eleven. Until then I just meditated.

You can't sit at my stage of the game for much more than an hour on a good day. Then you get sore. I think with practise this will change. But an hour just now is good.

How do you sell yourself on the internet for nine hours a day. I'd like to do that, at first. Nine hours is one and a half hours six times. You switch legs every forty five minutes. I can do that. Once I've been doing that for a bit, I'll be able to do it for a lot longer.

So I'd like to sell myself to someone for nine hours a day initially.

Some of these hours might be spent drinking beer. It's a fun site. Two hours of drinking beer at the end with chatting on the keyboard thing.

Okay? I'll do that. I don't go to work. I don't do anything. I flick a switch for fifty percent. You get the other fifty percent for being a smart flatheid. It's bound to help you and my narcissistic personality disorder feels better, more ehhanced ...

I'm sorry you're a flatheid! What a shame! The breath tonight. One transcended. One did soar. I try to run away. Hello, Jack? It's not going to stop now, is it, Jack? No, I don't think so.

Ra Expansion!

Thursday 10:50 a.m.
This is clearly on present showing going to be a very wonderful day for ra bliss. It may be that there has never been a better day for bliss than this. Disappointed early doors to be posting half pissed last night, but I'm over it.

Say you've got your eyes closed. There is a space. Things happen in this space. It has changing characteristics. Inflate the space. Sometimes it seems to inflate itself. It seems to get a lot bigger. Stick in some light. Stick in ra bliss. Take away all the thoughts. (You might have trouble with that bit if you're a flatheid!). Stick in peace. Contentment. That's just about perfect.

When you're at that bit, you can see why you don't do the breaths. It seems an unnecessary activity and far too much bother.

Let's pretend that's the dharmakaya, the essence of thought, the absolute.

Put a vase breath in there and you have a very dynamic situation. The drums are beating and the gongs are bashing. Your bliss has liquified. It's a moon shot! Whoosh!

Inflation. Expansion. The space in front of your eyes goes way out. It's like a balloon. Circular. And it expands. You might have lost the sense of your body entirely. You've no arms or legs. Just ra bliss.

So I'm sorry if you don't meditate! What a waste! What a shame!

I've decided to become the agent of the boy with the page: John McKenzie's Wonderful Writings! Since I mentioned this page a couple of days ago, it's google reference is back. It's still getting nine or ten hits a week. God knows why or wherefrom. Back to the lobby!

9:50 p.m.
Horizon is on. It's a tv show. The best tv show I ever saw was the Horizon programme about string theory. Branes. Multiple universes. Tonight they were doing Intelligent Design.

Some things you try to ignore. It is better not to watch the tv or read papers. It is better to sit under the tree and say you don't fung know.

There are two gods. One is outside the machine. He is known as ex machina. He is a Greek dude. They just look down. You can see him sometimes. The Book of Revelations is all about having a look at a joe like that. One of the best books I ever read was the Autobiography of Cellini (probably not called that. Might not have been called Cellini). This is the Renaissance Man. Once he's in the dungeon. He has an epiphany. He sees the woiks. God, thrones, angels, the woiks. Do I disbelieve this? No! This is a contemplative mystical experience. It's out there. You view it out there.

The other god is in everything. It's the pantheistic god. I know that. I've seen that one. It's the kundalini god. It's the non-self and emptiness, oneness joe. You are not contemplating any dudes on thrones, or angels. I believe in this god because I have seen it. I also believe in what Cellini saw because he doesn't need to tell me lies about this. There is no point.

There's a lot of stress, humiliation, etc in being stuck in a dungeon. Maybe when your ego is getting a bit of a going over, you are suseptible to this kind of revelation.

I saw one, but I didn't see the other one. There was no stress involved in the one I saw, except being straight for four or so months.

Intelligent Design. It's smart. The trouble with Darwin is that you cannot see the links. This is because you are an idiot. Instead of embracing your ignorance, the intelligent designers think they know something. In fact, they think they are intelligent.

The trouble with really stupid people, like the intelligent designers, is that they are not stupid. Of course, they are flatheids, but Einstein was a flatheid, so being a flatheid isn't anything to do with being stupid. They are malicious because they are not honest. They are dishonest. They are unfortunately Americans. Americans run the world. The President says you should teach both. Really?

The people you hang about with are very important. You should hope if you have kids that they grow up thinking you're an idiot and then they go and do the acid, or whatever it is you don't like.

So I was doing the acid with the Poisonous when I was about nineteen or twenty. It's the worst place. I told myself I'd never drop acid in that place. White walls. Well decorated, but white walls. Also, some really horrible company. That does include me. So I gives Poisonous the Thomas Aquinas argument about God, which is a first cause. Everything causes something. So you get down to God. Poisonous pointed out that the answer to the ultimate question about causality is not God, but that we don't know. I've wrote about this before. The Buddha and the Big Bad Wolf. "If you want to call, don't know, God, that's up to you, but the answer is you don't know." I might have helped a wee bit there, but that was more or less it. Goodbye, god. Hello, worshipping. Goodbye god doesn't mean that worshipping isn't a useful psychological support.

Lyndon Johnson said: "I don't want to hear any more about this coup shit!" This fits with Scottish people. They voted Hamas. Why are they so stupid? Did they not go to school? Are they Americans? We remember the buddhists setting themselves on fire. Because the democrasy joes wouldn't allow them elections because they'd all vote for Uncle Ho. I saw Uncle Ho in a video doing Tai Chi. The villagers (i.e. the stupid people) thought he was a buddha. Well, was he? Can you hear the words in your head. HO! HO! HO CHI MIHN!

So he's a nice man, George Bush. He's representative. I'm not smart, but they're thick. Rich, thick, stupid basturns.

Of course, we shouldn't drink beer or watch the telly. The whole samsaric thing justs drags you out and fungs you up.

Rem Jackbooties!

Wednesday. Midnight.
Interesting moments of ra bliss. After work, I ... then I lay down on the floor and pulled my towel...

The Domestic Bliss bought me a towel in Australia. It has dolphins on it. Are they Australian? So I was falling asleep in the meditations in the lobby and lay down with the dolphin towel over me.

Would you like to buy the towel? Washed once since purchased in 1990. Sat on throughout.

Then I took the towel into the living room and lay on the couch, with the towel over me and the other wee cover there. Still, not secure in the heat. But I wondered if I could do ra bliss like that. Yes! It came on. Then the kiddo came in and arrived home. What a sweetie! But to pursue ra bliss ...After twenty odd years of doing this juju in one way or other, what I have to say to you flatheids is that you don't know. I don't know either, but I still know more than a flatheid. Pity I don't know what I know.

In the cave on the Unheard of Island you can hear the wind outside and sometimes it feels awful lonely inside. There's noboby here, Jack. Just me and Jack and ra bliss. Then annoyance. Say you closed you eyes and what have you got there, Jackieboy? A view. Dearie me. The view can become different. You can change the view, for sure. Is your view okay? Could you change it if you wanted to? Do you believe it? This is RaBlissBlog bringing you confusion, chaos and aggravation. Remember you get infected here.

Ra Euphoricals Part 2

Wednesday 1:45 p.m.
What brilliant meditations I'm going to have over the next few days!!

I've done nothing about trying to get any money for ages. The only thing I have out there just now is three chapters of Light in the Dark at Chicken House.

The problem with having the website of the joe meditating (sponsored by Penguin biscuits. Pick up a Penguin!) is that if I was on it, I might get to be famous and we can't have that. I was going to appear with a big beard, but the site might have to last ages. Probably a couple of years before you could levitate anyway. Can't think of anything worse than strangers knowing who you were, so I'll have to think again.

I think I'll start a religion. If you want to join up, here are the rules.
1) You must not believe in anything, especially thoughts.
2) You must meditate at least three hours a day.
3) You must give me ten percent of everything you earn so that I can get a hundred foot statue of myself built at the top of Ben Nevis. This is to help with my narcissistic personality disorder, which has been playing up again.

Put a Christian koan up on Adolf's blog. Another teeshirt. HOW CAN GETTING CRUCIFIED BE A HELP TO ANYONE? I think you're supposed to think on that until some answer emerges. Hmmm? Might take a while. Any Christians out there? Never mind. I'm off to surf the oceans of bliss! HotboyMadyamikaS.O.B.

Ra Euphoricals!

Tuesday 10:10 p.m.
Hello, are you there, Jack? How you doing? There's no one else here except everyone. Potentially. Really? Narcissistic Personality Disorder pills kicking in again!

This is my religion. Well, I've seen the Holy Ghostie Men and God in this pantheistic world, been baptised a catholic, confirmed ... well, we've all got a list. Ultimately, I'd like to bequeath all responsibility for everything that happens to me to Adolf, or anyone else who would like to put in a bid. What you get with me is ... well, I've been educated and can still remember stuff. Other than that, no visible signs of anything expected soon. Just a lot of sitting. And that's hard. But not after a while. After a while, it's easier. How long are you going to live? Say, you were going to live for another twenty years. What are you thinking as you die? You don't meditate? What an awful confident creature you must be!

Ra Happy Feelings!

Saturday 7:25 p.m.
I was feeling really happy this afternoon after meditating. I thought that it didn't really matter about anything else. Getting books published, getting a literary agent, the job ... none of it mattered. And I thought I wouldn't matter either in the long run. Ra bliss was such that it is sure to make me happy regardless. You could practically feel the happiness creeping in and pushing all the crap out.

All I can say about the meditations is that they just keep getting better! Since no one else meditates, the only happy basturn is going to be me! Beaming with happiness. They'll hate that of course. The flatheids, I mean. But it's not my fault they're all funged up! It isn't! It isn't. Anyway, back to the lobby. You don't get ra bliss if you don't sit.

SUNDAY 1:35 p.m.
Blootered and banjaxed by ra bliss this morning! Everything seems to have moved up again. Another red letter day for ra bliss! I was thinking at one point that this was the astonishing stuff I had once down at the Samye Ling. Well, it's not so astonishing now. But there was a lot of it there this morning. The after-effects of vase breathing were .... it's just a lot of superlatives now!

If you asked the Dalai Lama if he was an enlightened being, he'd probably say no. If you asked him if he was happy, he'd probably say yes. Happiness is attainable. It comes when ra bliss starts coming through and really affects your life. It makes you beam. I want the standby, default position of my mind to be bliss. I want bliss when I close my eyes. It's there just now when I close my eyes, but I want it to stay there. Getting access to ra bliss is where the help really is. I mean, any moron could see that it's bound to help in your life if you can access ra bliss! Shame about all the sadness in the world, about all the funged up people going around with their heads stuff up their backsides, but it's not my fault!! It's really not!

Ra Quiet Times!

Thursday 9: 25 a.m.
The weather forecast the other day said it was going to be miserable. Everyone in Scotland knows what that is. Miserable weather. It's not so miserable today, but what perfect weather for sitting quietly doing nothing! Probably meditating, writing and blogging all day. The Domestic Bliss is going out tonight, tomorrow night and the next night. Fabulous! I want quiet with the time stretching so I can put in the meditations, and clear the mind. Just don't want to be trying too hard.

I discovered this fantatic webpage. It doesn't have a google entry for some reason, but mentioning it here maybe helps with that. I don't know. It's called John McKenzie's Wonderful Writings! and contains about six unpublished novels and one unproduced play. What an idiot that boy is though. Fancy spending all that time writing books that were never going to be read! If he's spend half that time meditating instead, well, floating by this time no bother!

Much better to get out the rowing boat and head for the Unheard of Island for the entire weekend. Go nowhere. See no one. Remember you could be dead tomorrow. Remember you were supposed to be dead three years ago. Today is the day to do ra bliss and get ra heat! Did an hour before breakfast. Here we go!

1:15 p.m.
Just finished my lunch of delicious soup and toast. This morning I put in just over four hours meditating. Hardly any vase breathing until the last hour. Lots of bliss, but little heat. There's still a lot more bliss evident with my eyes closed than open. I wonder why that is?

Right now, I'd much rather just keep meditating, but I'll try writing some of my book. I'm re-writing Chapter Three. It's a first person narrative. It's a novel. Chapter Three begins: "When you die, you might see God, but you probably won't."

5:20 p.m.
After writing for about an hour, I wasn't sure what to do. Go for a run? Hut? I sat down in the lobby again and what bliss! I never expect much of the afternoon, but I'm often surprised. Hardly any vase breathing, but lots of bliss. Then I went and meditated in the hut. Set a week's supply of newspapers on fire. Just love fire!

This Thursday has worked better than last Thursday. A lot more bliss. That's good. I'll write the book till the Domestic Bliss comes home from work. I've managed about six hours meditating today so far. A very, very good day!

9:15 p.m.
Good day. Maybe about seven and a half hours of meditation today. Good boy! Now, with one eye on Celebrity Big Brother, I'm off to tour the blogs! Good boy!

The beginning of the a.m.
You would not want to be the Domestic Bliss. Not with me. But how wonderful she is! What a wonderment! Take me away now, please. I don't need any more of this. Where are the angels to take me away? Ra Bliss Chariots! Still, ra bliss is ra bliss is rabliss. Kiss ra bliss../

Rat Free Feeling!

Wednesday 1:40 p.m.
Adolf thinks I should give up blissing and blogging until I get someone to set up a site for me to make oodles of money sitting quietly doing nothing. (Last Post) When I was in my mid twenties and people would ask me what I was going to do (I probably didn't look as if I was doing much!), I used to tell them I was going to become a rich and famous novelist. I think I'll revert to that. You don't actually have to become one, just say you are. In my mid-twenties this really did get people off my back!

All you have to do is write the novel.

Then sell it.

Meantime, I'm going to row off to the Unheard of Island. I have no meetings with flatheids planned before I go back to work on Monday. My meditations are going superbly well at the moment. I've got a virtual money spinning website on the island with satellite links and a big counter board at the back where the total is displayed. I expect to be virtually loaded quite soon.

Google doesn't list my site anymore. I asked Beef McDuck which book he liked better between Ancient Futures and Bomber. He said he liked the former better, but it ended abruptly. He liked the descriptions of craving after drink and drugs in the Bomber. Who could have wrote that? It doesn't sound like me at all! Anyway, I'll go with Ancient Futures for a bit though God knows what I could say to anyone about that!

Ra Get Rich Quick!

Tuesday 6:00 p.m.
Are you there? Jack the Spam Robot? Are you there, Jack?

Nobody visits anymore, Jack. If I wasn't writing this blog, I wouldn't visit it either. But maybe we should just stay like this and be glad that it's quiet. Just keep a straight record with no embellishments. They're all flatheids anyway and almost none of them will get ra bliss because they don't meditate. Can you believe that, Jack? The nicest thing we can say about them is that they are indeed unfortunate creatures.

Someone going to college decided to make some money and set up a million pound advertising webpage. He sold the pixels, whatever they are. And he's not going to college anymore.

My problem, Jack, is that most of the folk I know are too old. I don't need a literary agent. I need a manager. One under twenty years old would be good. A kid who likes technology and things. One who doesn't mind working his butt off for thousands and thousands of pounds a week. You have to go and find this person, Jack.

You've got the set. It's to look like a cave, but not too much. Any old Santa's grotto would do. I just sit surrounded by toy penguins and such like. There is a webcam of some kind. You have to have contact with the punters so you'd need .... whatever they use for porn sites. I'll be the whore, but all I'm going to do is sit there. Bid for meditation time. Have your name stuck up on the site for the duration. Meditate for anything. Dead goldfishes, lame horses, it doesn't really matter. Maybe you could type answers to folks' questions. Whatever.

Anyone who thinks this wouldn't make a fortune is a total flatheid. How much would the initial investment take? I could pilot it over my summer holidays.

Of course, I'm too blissed to be bothered! What I should do is write my book more and stop wasting time blogging! My book, which I'm supposed to be writing just now, is going very well, by the way. What I should do is publish it myself and sell it from the cave page! Essentially, the story of how I got to the cave. And didn't have to go to work tomorrow!!

11:50 p.m.
I have a wonderful job. It would be better if I was a wonderful person.

My maw and I talk a lot about poverty, the like of which we do not see anymore. 1930s Scottish poverty. She asks why people complain. There must be a dissatisfaction default. I complain. Dearie me. If I can complain, anyone can complain. I'll have to think of something to complain about.

Ra Sunday!

5:41 p.m.
Due to downing six cans of the Wifebeater last night, I was obliged to cancel the run I was going to have with Brian Wilson this morning. Slept in. This is shocking. A disgrace! Bad boy! Instead, I had to go into the lobby and meditate. What an amazing amount of ra bliss! I thought, has there ever been bliss as blissy as this? Ra bliss is like climbing a hill. You think you're getting to the top and then see that there's another bit to go. If ra bliss is the serotonin superhighway, is there a limit? Shiva reckoned it was limitless though it might have a physical base. I can't remember the reason for that, but he might be right, being a hindu God and all.

It was astounding. Sometimes it is.

Rem Meditations

Saturday 10:45 a.m.
Nice, mild Saturday morning here in Edinburgh. I've done about an hour or so of meditations today. The flat is empty just now. I'll go into the lobby and meditate for a bit, then come back and try to describe what's been going on. This is RaBlissBlog. Let's talk about ra bliss!!

12:45 p.m.
Just finished and got a cup of coffee.

The first thing about these meditations ... is I don't know how to do them. All my information is from books. Once you start getting into doing Guru and Deity Yoga, you can see that there's a lot not in the books. I'm doing these meditations as a preparation (hopefully!) for doing a proper retreat in the Unheard of Island, or at Rumtek, or even in my hut.

In the first hour I didn't get much bliss. I did the usual opening with taking refuge, generating compassion, etc. Then, after a wee while, I went through the after death sequence. This is mirage, smoke, fireflies, butterlamp, white, red, black, and I assume is taking you from the complexities of mind (afflictive emotions, etc.) to the simple.

I am the dharmakaya. I assume that's something simple. Described elsewhere as the essence of thought. I tried to stay there for a while. This stage is a kind of mahamudra meditation, I think. You've negated the false sense of self by the dying stuff and then you let thoughts go.

" When we can see straightforwardly and non-conceptually, the nature of our clear light mind and remain totally absorbed in this nature without ever regressing from it, we have become a buddha." Dalai Lama. The wall. I don't know what that means. But "clear light mind" might be equivalent to dharmakaya.

The first hour was almost all done with eyes open. Strange things are going on in the visual field. I'm sitting in the lobby gazing down at the sticker of a kalachakra mandala on the front of an old diary. The colours loosen and it seems like you're looking at a negative for a bit. Highlights on the edges. Shimmering a little. Then objects might seem to move about a little, slip from their positions. The space between your eyes and the object seems to grow a little "thick."

I spent the first decade of so of meditations with my eyes closed, or rolled up to the top of my head. So I don't know if beginners get these visual quirks. At this stage I can't see much difference between this and zazen. Does anyone doing zazen get distortions of the visual field like this?

I don't have to sit upright very long before things start happening inside my body. It's as if something starts to hold you up. It stretches you. It puts a rictus smile on your face. I assume this is kundalini, chi or whatever, but I don't know.

At some point you move into sambhokakaya, which is the points in the body, symbols, coloured tubes, etc. I think you are supposed to concentrate on the red symbol in your navel here.

You're feeling pleasant here, but it's not really bliss.

I closed my eyes and went for some vase breathing. Then you're doing the big arising globules of bliss, etc. I went into nirmanakaya, which is the deity in the mandala, but I'm really useless at this. I think you should be doing 3D visualisations of the deity here, but my legs have gone and I have to get up.

Go into the kitchen and do the 108 moves of the tai chi set. Sit down again

Want to do bliss? No problem here. If you do a tai chi set and then sit down, close your eyes and you're whitied out! The chi or whatever you call it is up now.

Up till then I hadn't really been looking for bliss. Trying to get the mind settled and the thoughts moving easily from one to the other. Maybe more of an attention thing.

In the last session I did about four vase breaths. That's all. Not much breathing going on otherwise. As you become absorbed, you don't really want to do vase breathing. It's an effort. But when you notice you're becoming restless or agitated at all, you can put one in. You're previous thoughts just fly out the window. You're into heat now. Not much, but it's there.

This might be regarded as a preparation for the evening meditations. This evening there will be tons of bliss and heat if the flatheids will just go away and leave me alone. They're due back soon. I'll do a headstand just and sit again until they return. No, I won't. They're here!

7:20 p.m.
One of my favourite things is lying in the bath. I went to the hut to meditate as if grew dark and then came back and did twenty minutes skipping and ten minutes shadow boxing. Then the bath! When you're knackered, there's nothing like relaxing in the bath. Imagine being exhausted and lying in the bath in a big globule of ra bliss! It just came up and kind of sat there. Letting thoughts go ... into ra bliss!

I'm going to try and relax with some beer! I should just sit it out .... the flat is empty again till about ten ... but I've been feeling a bit tired a fed up when I'm not meditating recently and I'll do some beers and some surfing. Maybe blog a wee bit later.

Ra Thursday again!

Thursday 5:15 p.m.
I started meditating in the lobby at half nine this morning. Had lunch and a coffee break, and stopped at 4:45 p.m. I suppose you could say I didn't do much today.

I checked the blog at lunchtime and was amazed to see that Eric, samsaramom's man, says he's downloaded all the books on the webpage. That kind of thing makes you wish you'd spent a bit longer writing them. He's going to be in a tent up at the Arctic Circle reading them, accompanied by the Canadian army. Massacres and mayhem! It's not my fault, honest!

Yesterday, I tried to change the copy of Ancient Futures on the webpage since Beef McDuck said I'd uplifted a copy with some pages missing. Tentatively, I checked the site today (maybe third time since it's been up!) and something seems to be downloading alright. I hate having anything to do with stuff like that and exited the page immediately. However, I tried to find it on google by typing in John McKenzie's Wonderful Writings!, which is what it's called. Zip! It's not coming up anymore. I wonder why that is. Adolf, apart from taking naked photies of himself showering in the toilets on the Unheard of Island, is a computer expert. How come Google can't find it anymore then, Adolf? And if Google isn't listing it, how come folk are still finding it?

What have I done today? That's right, I've read most of the Times. The most stressed out group of workers in the world? Librarians! I could have told you that. The boy thought it was something to do with the libraries. No, no, no, no! People prone to stress become librarians because they think it's a nice quiet job. Then they sit there and go mad. My excuse is that at least I'm trying to go mad. They're c0ming to take me away, ha, ha! Adults sometimes pretend you're sane when you're not. Kids are harder to fool. When I started in my current jobbie, one kid called me The Mad Librarian Who Can Stand On His Head. Dances with Books! Falls Down When Drunk! I wonder what eskimos call each other. Mr and Mrs Frozen Noses? Enough of this nonsense! I have to go and write my book.

10:06 p.m.
The flat has been empty this evening again, so I didn't really finish meditating till about quarter to ten. Wrote for a whole hour! Did the shadow boxing routine. Spoke to the Domestic Bliss for half an hour. Showered. That was about it apart from meditating. It's not all bliss when you put in a day like this. Not for me, not yet anyway. You're making an effort most of the time. For some reason, there seems to be more of ra bliss after eleven in the morning and after nine at night. That's ten hours apart. It would make sense if it was seven in the morning and five in the evening. But why? Why at these times?

Had a thought today. It'll be a shame to die before I know who I am. Just drifted in that one. Still, suppose it's an improvement on Oh No!

Ra New Year View!

Wednesday 3:21 p.m.
When I used to see in the New Year at my maw's, I would stand outside and listen to the bells and think what the next year might hold, particularly as regards writing. So how does that and other stuff look now that I've finished my first full week (two and a half days!) back at work?

I'll probably finish the book I'm writing at the moment this year. When that's done, I'll have to have a long think about what to do with the rest of my life. Maybe I'll start another book (which is what I usually do!) , but who knows?

The chances of me getting anything accepted for publication is very slight. I don't expect to get an agent. Today I got a letter from Random House Children's Books. They've got a list of imprints. Jonathan Cape, Hutchinson, Bodley Head, Doubleday, David Fickling Books, Corgi and Red Fox. The letter said that they're "only accepting submissions from recognised literary agents." At last! A bit of honesty! Co-incidentally, I got an email from Isobel Dixon of Blake Friedmann who didn't want to see any more than the three chapters of Light in the Dark. But that's okay. Nice quick response. She says they're snowed under with work. I'll try her again when the current novel is finished.

At the moment, the only thing I can remember being out there is three chapters to Chicken House. (Doesn't that sound like a place of ill-repute?)

The webpage with the six novels, etc., gets a wee bit over a hit a day, but I've no idea whether anyone has downloaded anything. Today I tried to change the copy of Ancient Futures since Beef McDuck said there was a bit missing, but I haven't got the nerve to look and see if the page is still there!!!

I have to keep trying to hustle agents, etc., because I should try to get money for my daughter's education. Getting an agent, and/or getting books published will not make me happy. Meditation will make me happy.

Despite everything, I still do over thirty hours a week. I'm getting a lot of bliss and some heat. The heat seems to be developing a little differently from what I expected. You get light. Then you get ra bliss. The bliss might seem to be in large globule, in which you may kind of feel yourself sitting. Heat, or warmth, seems to be adding an element here sometimes. So you might find yourself in a globule with bliss and heat. It's a powderpuff.

I'll need to live within my income this year or get another full time job. Dearie me. What a prospect! I've got at best another year working part time the way things are going. What a fortunate creature! Any time you spend not at your job is good time. If I can get away with maybe two and a half years of part time work, I'll not complain. Who knows what ra bliss will be doing by the end of this year?

Rat Zen

I was checking about ra bliss and zen on the internet. Here's some quotes. This first one is from some famous paintings of a boy chasing a buffalo. Beside the last illustration, it says:
Barefoot and naked of breast,
I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden,
And I am ever blissful.

Blissful is ra bliss surely!

Here's another one. "The final stage of zen practice is walking through the troubled world with "bliss bestowing hands."

Finally, there as a guy writing about the seven stages of zen meditation. "Many students confuse the blissfulness of the third and fourth stages they experience during meditation sessions with satori, which is a much more rare phenomenon."

One guy also said you might start a zen meditation session with concentration on the breath before you go into the mindfulness stuff.

Anyway, everyone will get bliss, it seems. Sometimes I get ra bliss and sometimes I don't. But I think telling folk they'll hit bliss at some point is better than telling them meditation is a good way to deal with stress (which it is!) or whatever.

I'm not looking for differences. I'm looking for fellow feeling and similarities. It looks as if you Zen people are going to get ra bliss as well! Which is wonderful because ra bliss is ra bliss is ra bliss!! It's very blissful.

The mahamudra meditation I was reading about seems very like this Zen stuff. You sit and negate your false sense of self, but then you're just supposed to sit and do the letting go bit.

Sitting and just letting stuff go might be a bit hard until you get the hang of it. But if you sit in ra bliss, well, obviously, that's got to be easier!

Ra Monday Back!

I went to see Shiva yesterday. Since he is a Hindu God and an embodiment of bliss, we had a wee chat about ra bliss. Shiva looked up some old Hindu books. Ra bliss all over the place! I was rather pleased to see this.

Sometimes when no one else seems to be getting any of ra bliss, you think it might be only you. A little doubt creeps in. Why are they all flatheids? As far as I know, the end result of calming meditation is physical bliss and mental ecstasy. It shouldn't matter where you're from or how you do concentration and calming stuff, the end result is ra bliss. It's just that I read in someone's blog that in zazen you're supposed to be ... bored? Does no one in the zen tradition talk about bliss? I know you can have a very clear mind without too many thoughts arising. But what about ra bliss. Surely, at some point ra bliss has to check in.

This year will be a fabulous one for ra bliss!!

I forgot! I'm supposed to be trying to get a literary agent. Well, I sent four packages with cuttings, reviews, c.v., etc., to four kidbook publishers about six weeks ago, maybe. I knew at the time that this might puzzle whoever was doing the slush piles because I didn't send three chapters, but I did send a S.A.E. So instead of sending the three chapters right back, they had to think. Six weeks of finking! Anyway, Chicken House did get back to me. Chicken House is a wee publisher, set up by a Barry Cunningham, who seems to have been intrumental in getting Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone into print. Anyway, someone there asked to see three chapters and I sent them about a week ago. So I should get back to them about mid-February. But if you don't go through the motions ....

I checked out a wee bit about zazen on the net. One boy said it was about sitting and just letting thoughts go. One of the three things I'd read about thoughts before (while meditating ) was to let them go. You can also try to transform them or cut them off.

Meditating without support is tough. A part of the lineage prayer used at the Samye Ling asks to be in a state where you're meditating without support. A mantra is support. A point in your body is support. A visualisation is a support. Merely attending to the breath is using a support.

But meditating without support must still be a calming meditation. I don't see how it won't lead to bliss if it's a calming meditation. Bliss, like everything else, is illusory. I think everything not simple must be illusory. It has to be misapprehended. If it's got parts, it must change. But what's simple?

I'll have to find out a bit more about zen. According to stuff I read before taking up this vajrayana juju, bliss is the first two stages of samadhi and has to be endured. I think what I'm essentially supposed to be doing is combining bliss and emptiness. I assume that means that y9u sit in ra bliss and if any thoughts arise (I assume bliss is also some kind of thought/sensation), you let them go, or do an analytical job on them if you think that would help.


Shiva hasn't got any money. Or, he's trying to budget since, being a Hindu god, he hasn't got a proper job. He's not spending any money. I take my hat off to that boy! I'm already five hundred quid in debt. The devil's in the plastic!

Ra Saturday!

Saturday 1:30 p.m.
What a great day for ra bliss this is going to be! The kid goes back to her college digs today and the Domestic Bliss is going out for a meal tonight. Yippee!! Home alone this evening! Just me and ra bliss! Just waiting so I can get my bread out the oven and get up to the allotment.

You can't change the world. You might be able to change yourself a wee bit though. Subtle oppressions in operation over the last wee while from other people's grief and sorrow. I can wave it all bye bye for this Saturday. I will try to emanate as a deity today. What more fun could you have? On Monday I have to emanate as a school librarian. Being a deity will be much more interesting! This is RaBlissBlog! Let's do some bliss!!

5:00 p.m.
There's some great stuff over at Michi Regier's blog about matter. What's matter made of? What is it? I had to ask about ra bliss of course. If ra bliss has a chemical, hormonal or electrical base, or has parts in all of this, is it finite? Is there a "physical" limit on how much bliss you can get? If it's got a limit, is that limit an absolute? That means, I take it, that it doesn't change. Absolute bliss? If your head could get stuck in ra bliss, that's where you'd like it to get stuck. Is Absolute Bliss the god thing? Mnnnn.

Ra Recovery!

Thursday 3:50 p.m.
The horrible holidays (from meditation, sobriety, physical fitness and piece of mind) were made even more horrible this year when we heard of a terrible accident that happened to a friend of ours before Christmas. On Hogmanay a few hours before the bells, I was told she was touch and go. Now she's getting a bit better. Not out of the woods, but not dying. This is very good news all round.

The world does not seem to be fair. This is why we need the consolation of religion or philosophy. The person who is not dying just yet has been battling a degenerative disease for thirty years with great heroism. Before Christmas, she gets nearly scalded to death in a bath. She is a total flatheid. She does not and never will get ra bliss. I was thinking of her in regard to getting ra bliss lying flat on your back. I mean, you can't stay stuck in ra bliss forever (not yet anyway!), but you could get bits of it here and there, even maybe lying flat on your back. So sometimes it seems a little sad when folk don't meditate and sometimes one is bothered by things not being fair.

How do you get out of this?

You could embrace ignorance. We are ignorant. We do not know. We do not have the senses or the perceptive and discriminative abilities to understand the truth of things. We are always dealing with appearances and the way things appear to be, not how they are. That's usually just how we think they are. In effect, we cannot know who or what we are. Intellectually, you might realise that you are certaintly not what you think you are and it definitely isn't happening to you the way you think it is. This make a lot of sense to me. The problem then is other people's suffering and the fact that there's really bugger all you can do about it. Suffering, unfortunately, seems to have a rock solid reality to it.

Grief, sorrow, lamentations .... suffering in this life!

Some people try very hard, and they never seem to get it right But, Oh, oh, baby, I'm beginning to see the light! ... The Inimitable Lou Reed

I have a wonderful feeling of confidence and optimism about the coming year. What a year this might be for ra bliss! I feel as if the world is full of fantastic opportunity. I don't really expect anybody to give me any money for writing this year, but I started (really this time I have started!) to do the re-write of my bliss book yesterday and that made me happy. I have the computer in my room again, which makes a big difference. Trying hard is important to me. It's more important than getting it right. But I've seen the light. And I've been in ra bliss. Bring on the heat! Bring on the heat!
8:25 p.m.
It was just after doing the five hills that the guy hailed me from his big truck in George Street. Wanted to know the way to Dundee. I got into the cab to show him how to get to the Forth Road Bridge. The way goes by my flat. He says his best friend in Rhodesia was a Scottish guy. I asked what he was called. I wondered if it might be Menzies Milngavie. He said it was Hotboy. I think this must rate as a coincidence. Hotboys all over. Hardly bears thinking about!

Ra Holidays End!

Tuesday 12:30 p.m.
Almost free of all this holiday stuff! Thank God for that! I think I've almost made a complete recovery. These winter holidays are like going through some kind of car wreck. You stagger away, checking for broken bones, and glad to be still alive.

Adolf has done some numerology stuff on me. He says I should stick with ra bliss. Must be good advice. I met somebody with a blog and an allotment from Edinburgh at the New Year. Since everyone is an IT expert apart from me, she can stick in photies and there is one of a typical allotment on her blog. There was something funny about her url, but it's Sandy who left a comment two posts down.

I was lying in bed this morning investigating ra bliss while lying flat on my back. This is a big development since it doesn't involve sitting up straight. Of course, sometimes you can't sit up straight. You might be sick. If you could still concentrate, you might be able to do ra bliss even if you were quadraplegic. This can't be true.

For years and years I meditated with my eyes closed. One day I realised I could bring on the meditations by concentrating on something with them open. This was a good day! Let's hope ra bliss coming on through the yoga nidra is something like that. It will be.

To be happier in 2006, here's what I need to do:
1) Not try too hard.
2) Don't spend any money (I'm heading into debt now and if I keep spending money, I'll need to get a full time job again.)
That would do it. Most bad stuff costs money. Head stands, running and jumping cost bugger all!

Ra 2006!

12:30 p.m.
My new year's resolution is to be happier more often. Stop creating the causes of suffering. I just want to dedicate myself to the juju. Some people do not appear to be very happy at all. I think I've embraced Christianity, at least my version of it. Christianity is for buddhists who are a bit thick. So you get the cross. No words are necessary. If the first noble truth is the truth of suffering, let's all get into ra bliss in two oh six. Happy New Year everyone!