Speak!
Open Discussion Thread
Hello everyone. The basic reason that I don’t normally have comments under my articles is that I don’t love to have them there. And so, as I’m in the business of, unless I can’t help it, never doing anything I don’t love to do, from walking over to the other side of the room, to finishing this
It’s nice though, from time to time, to throw the doors open for a few days, so here we all are. Feel free to share any suggestions, comments, questions, anecdotes, savage criticisms, tender musings, agonising doubts or ecstatic raptures, and my wife will read them for me.
With love,
Darren Allen
A while back, we talked about Scots dialect after you'd written a piece, and you showed a bit of interest in it. I was reading Lewis Grassic Gibbon a couple of months back and meant to email you to recommend. He writes beautifully. Not Dickens, but nice. Perhaps you or your subscribers might enjoy.
Hi Darren,
In the past few months I've begun working my way through Barry Long's tapes and books, and thank you for introducing me to his teachings. They are changing my life and bringing more consciousness into it. I'm surprised to find how little discussion or interest there seems to be at least online about him given his (in my experience) unparalleled presence. But maybe that's also not surprising... I'm also in the middle of re-reading Self and Unself and I'm on the section where you describe the ways self defends itself from perceived criticism, and I'm seeing some of those come up around Barry's teachings, which has been fascinating to watch.
Anyway, I recently listened to his "How to Stop Thinking" tape, and I wanted to briefly share, first off, that I'm having a hard time describing the impact this has had on me. It's so simple and yet every time I try to put words to it here, it comes out trite. The gist is, that I saw with great clarity the link between thoughts an emotion, and I also watched with great clarity, in a specific instance, how consciousness dissolved both by cutting off one's source of nourishment to the other.
I've also recently had the recurring thought, "Why did we start thinking in the first place?" And then I laugh at the irony of it...
And finally, I'll reiterate, because it keeps being true, that your work and your writing has made me a more conscious, loving man, and I'll be forever grateful for it. Thank you. I'm sure my partner, her horse, and my cat would also thank you if they wrote here.
-Greg