A trip to the GP today with Navel - 4 x 500mg penicillin type antibiotics and some steroidal anti bacteria and anti fungal cream. No messing about there then! The products of rational thought can be wonderful; science has brought many benefits to us. The prospect of all these bugs evolving faster than our medicine is a salutary thought.
And the treatment of the psyche? Well, I am halfway through reading 'Toward a psychology of awakening' by John Welwood. I find this rewarding; he seems to be voicing my hunches and it is good to get the expansion of thought from reading a much more developed set of thoughts. He draws out a nice progression from unconscious, prereflective immersion in our experience, to thinking and talking about experience, to having our experience directly, to nonidentified witnessing, to being-present-with experience, to pure being/emptiness in a way which builds a bridge (as is his intention) from Western psychology to Eastern spiritual practice. In building this he points out that Western psychology can help keep the problem going as much as sort it out. The problem being the idea of a self with something wrong with it; the idea that one could be having a better experience. I find this mix of psychology and emptiness (or oneness) interesting. I don't think I am navel gazing. I am fine.
DC is in Bristol. He has been giving a talk on consciousness. We should sit down and review various approaches to this together. It will be nice to have him back tomorrow.
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