My daughter is Jo. My new daughter is Melina. My new family, (adding to the Empire) is Fatima, Carlos and Vasco.
Here is what I wrote:
I am Jo's dad and a time traveller from the first half of last century. I’ve already passed my three score and ten. When I was young I played marbles and climbed lamp posts and I rather imagine that many might think everything was in black and white. In a way it was. We were strongly socially and culturally embedded in the prevailing forces, attitudes, beliefs and prejudices of the time, just after the Second War, though as this was unconscious we were in general, naturally unaware of it. Everything was as it was. I'm speaking of the time when I was in Primary school, which actually was an all boys Junior school, until I was in the first year or two of secondary school.
As there were no girls in the school and I had no sisters and there were no girls on our street in a Council estate in Nottingham, I therefore knew next to nothing about girls. I had no concept of being gay and knew nothing about gender and sexual matters. I had never seen a foreigner until I was about 8. I remember seeing a black man on a smoke filled bus going to town one day and we naturally stared...
Fortunately, my dad had travelled with the army in Turkey and India and had learned to appreciate some aspects of their culture. For instance we always had curry powder out on the table. Though that might seem pretty minimal you must remember that T bags and instant coffee were not yet available. He told me stories of black panthers raiding the bins and of various Indians he came into contact with, always in a positive light. He bought me an atlas with pictures of the world and he had a great old book by a photographer called Stoddard which contained many images of the world, and we talked about them together. My mother got pregnant when she was 19, just before my dad was sent to Turkey. He came back from there to marry her and then was away for 5 years. Hard times but my mum, or mam as we said in Nottingham was a great, resourceful strong woman who managed against all the odds. She was able to get gas installed for the street. Every morning previously she had to make a fire in the hearth before she could even have a cup of tea. They were wonderful. In that regard I was so lucky. We only went to church for weddings and funerals so I did not have to cope with religious dogma. My mum did 'believe in Jesus' and we did say the Lord's Prayer at night sometimes but my dad said that when you're dead you're dead just like an ant is dead if you squash it. He rode 12 miles to work to Spondon near Derby as a warp knitter, making nylon, then back again every day. Jobs were scarce.
My dad had a copy of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam and sometimes he'd read me some of the quatrains or short verses. This was of Sufi origin and he was in tune with it. Away into the future I would remember this.
Anyway, that's enough of my origins, but I hope you see that the cultural embedding was strong but yet with hints of possibility.
I 'woke up' from marbles when I was in the second year of Secondary school. I began to like science and maths more than other subjects because they seemed to offer definite knowledge that couldn't be questioned. Literature seemed relatively dull (maybe because a of the books we were forced to read from) and I was still unaware that the best books offer another way of learning about reality. I ended up reading physics, maths and cybernetics at university. I was still too shy and too reserved in the presence of girls, no doubt due to my background, but I looked out into the world rather than in and I joined an exploration company, looking for oil under the bedrock of the seas.
Hence I travelled a lot and saw many things unusual for the times. I talked to many people about life, reality, love, death, religion, philosophy and so on. I read a lot, so I would say the old conditionings were getting looser.
I was going on shift one night about midnight when we were working off the coast of the Cameroun when I asked a friend what he was reading. This turned into a very special discovery for me and it altered the course of my life. The book was 'All and Everything' by George Ivanovitch Gurdjieff.
The alternative title was 'Beelzebub's Tales to his Grandson'. The first page described its purpose which is:
"To destroy, mercilessly, without any compromises whatsoever, in the mentation and feelings of the reader, the beliefs and views, by centuries rooted in him, about everything existing in the world."
I.e it was a book about de-conditioning, de-programming, about questioning everything, about de-embedding. It was about the possibility of becoming free of psychic bondage and seeing Reality.
I bought all that was available about Gurdjieff and the people around him. P. D Ouspensky and J G Bennett for example. These writings were profoundly freeing for me. They provided a new pathway towards reality that previously I thought could only be fulfilled by science. They were beyond religion. They were the essence of all religions. They indicated that 'Mankind' is an unfinished project, but that everyone needed to work on themselves in order to climb out of their gravity well of crystallised response, beliefs and prejudices and since then, I have worked alone, with Gurdjieff groups, with Subud and now I have friends in Chan Buddhism, though there is still no finality there. If I was forced to say what I 'believed' in, the Chan Buddhism of the great Masters would be the closest I could come. Chan is the ancient Chinese precursor to Zen.
Basically, the re-evaluation I came across in a boat off the African coast is still an essential part of my existence and to be honest I wish it was part of proper education in general, though I'm afraid it is not. We are surrounded by a sea of inadequate ideas, values and institutions that appear to govern people's lives. Not all ideas and people are the same though and there are a lot of like minded people in the world but they are often scattered and in general without the power of the massive majorities whose influence through advertising and manipulation maintain the status quo.
We have been totally impressed by our four children and continuously learn from them. We knew very little of the LGBTIQ+ community before Jo introduced us. The re-evaluation of our ideas and values continues and to be honest it's not always an instant acceptance with some practices especially in the sex workers field especially when it impacts Jo. As she is fine with it we have to keep re-evaluating. As the song said, 'Love is the sweetest thing." However it has always seemed to us to also be the most private and intimate thing and anything else would inevitably complicate matters. We love Jo and Melina. We were so pleased that Melina's mum and dad, Fatima and Carlos were so lovely. We were friends practically immediately. So now we have four daughters and new family members. Wonderful.
However I would like to add that re-evaluation does not end there, not at all.
I mentioned very briefly that I think we should all be authentic and totally BE WHO WE ARE. But this is not so easy as it sounds. We do not know who we are in general. Members of the LGBTIQ+ have probably had to struggle with ideas such as this more than most and I hope they in general are able to surmount societal and cultural issues and come out strongly by loving life. But just as when two people are in 'real' LOVE, the separate egos cease to exist and in Shakespeare's phrase "each becomes the others' mine", the great Chan masters, not me, say the ego is an illusion anyway and the only way to progress is to stop believing in it and to live and act spontaneously. When two beings are in love there is no relationship because they become the same. In a similar manner when there is no ego getting in the way causing people to believe they are separate from the 'greater reality', this separation fades and we become one with the greater reality. All we see is shadows. Projections of greater things from higher dimensions if you like that analogy.
This reminds me of a quatrain my dad used to read to me from Omar Khayam:
"For, in and out, above, about, below
'Tis nothing but a magic shadow show
Played in a box whose candle is the sun
Round which we phantom figures come and go.”
The masters say also that in reality, we create the world in our minds. What we see is a representation. It seems real and it ‘works’. All sentient beings perceive what they are able to perceive of the Absolute whatever it is. An ant sees something, a frog another, a dog another, an homo sapien perceives something else of the greater reality. Kant said that the categories that we call space and time come into existence when we begin perceiving as new born babies. He was 'only' a philosopher! The Chan masters say the same but they said it 1500 years before Kant.
There are no colours, 'out there', they are created by our minds in order to make sense of things so that we may exist and function. Our minds are masters at creating objects. Our minds operate conceptually, creating objects that are useful for phenomenal living but yet do not really exist. This is so even in physics and maths. There are no dimensions, there is, for us, just what we perceive. Things are as they are, now, for us. Unfortunately we are all to ready to perceive, then conceive, to create objects, then judge. Objects, in this sense, refer to beliefs and prejudices. So much to talk about…so much to re-consider…it brings wonder into life…
For example, there is no space and time as such, we only perceive 'shadows' of the 'real' thing. What we perceive as time is the top slice of the greater ‘solid’ time. Everything that has ever existed, still exists but we are unable to see it, except in the 'mind's eye'. The mind is not completely in time in the same way our bodies inevitably are. I think some of us have a slight extension into the fourth dimension enabling perception beyond the normal. I only say this because my mum, who I referred to earlier, was once sitting in a cinema with her sister and she suddenly knew that Harry, her husband, had returned home from 5 years in India. Her sister told her not to be silly and carry on watching the film. Instead, she ran home and he was there.
Sorry to have gone on about all this but I just wanted to demonstrate that re-evaluation of what we call reality is an endless, wonderful game. It really should be one of the main games in town, but most appear to be crystallised too early, and don’t seem to show much interest. Even the simplest re-evaluations are too much for some people. National rubbish. Brexit rubbish. Far right rubbish. Political rubbish. They will not accept human beings for what they are. Basically, we are all in the same perceptual boat, in whatever mind/body/condition we find ourselves in. We are all human beings. Diversity is to be welcomed.
Long live diversity. Welcome it, worship it, be strong in it, examine it…
It was wonderful to see all you young people at the wedding and spend a little time with you. All beautiful. All trying to be authentic and as real as we can be. You are the beginnings of a new world. All persuasions, from a variety of locations... It’s a small planet.
We are just human beings trying to live a good life.
Love and good wishes to you all.
LOVE LIFE, BE STRONG
Peter, Jo's dad
xxx
"Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough
A flask of wine, a book of verse, and thou
Beside me in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise enough”
Omar Khayam