tasking my mind yet again. It’s partly because I have been working so hard on Wise El’s Big Thoughts, and the usual Gethsemane theme has been popping into my head: “I’m not as sure/ As when we started/ Then, I was inspired/ Now I’m sad and tired/… / Would the things I’ve said and done matter any more?”

Meaning, of course, my art and books and all the sacrifices I’ve made to get to this point – rather more than three years!

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I doubt anyone is going to do more than crucify me verbally should I enjoy a high public profile. But I – all mystics – have this ongoing argument with our God. It’s the nature of the spiritual struggle. We want to know if this ‘blood, sweat and tears’ is going to bear the right fruit. However, we are told to ‘let go and let God’; to surrender; to allow. But, most of all, to accept whatever happens as the will of God.

Yet, we are of God; we each are aspects of God – the Wakan Tanka, the Great Everything, the Source. What vibrates within us is of God, it is our divine message. If that message becomes confused or misunderstood, it is because we have ceased to hear correctly. We have spent too much time with the mass mind and not enough with the still small voice within.

Sadly, for some of us, this often creates a spiritual aloneness. As I have mentioned before, many mystics write of their divine love deserting them, not speaking to them. Mystical parlance for God not responding for days, months and even years.

It is absolutely nothing to do with manifesting more art or book sales or perfect health or someone to love or whatever other earthly things we would like to make the human experience more palatable.

I do not know why God, the God within each and every one of us, sometimes responds promptly and frequently, and at other times seems completely deaf for the longest time. Yet we are not separate from our God. It is the spark which gives us life thus we cannot be apart.

(Yes, I know atheists disagree. Tough. This is my blog and it’s what I believe!)

All this is something which only a more mystically-inclined soul could understand. It makes it difficult to talk of fear (ie the fear of not hearing one’s God; of not fulfilling one’s spiritual purpose; of wondering – paraphrasing the words of Gethsemane – would what I have written and painted matter any more) without being misunderstood on a different level. It’s like going round and round in circles and arriving exactly where one started out.

No wonder I feel ‘Gethsemane fear’ that all my work will not matter. If so, then why bother? And once you go down that road, it becomes why bother with the process of living as well.

One of the qualities I like about myself just so happens to be one that manages to irritate or upset those of a more sensitive nature: that of being to the point – or, as Dad used to say, being ‘blunt’.

Talking round the houses only causes more confusion or people choose to interpret inaccurately. Or just see and hear what they want to see and hear – even if it is patently not correct. I had that with the NandDs and it used to drive me to distraction. That is why I am quite forceful when I correct a wrong. Cause and effect means I then have yet more fallout to deal with – which is preferable to being misinterpreted, I suppose.

Tomorrow is my Diamond and a Half anniversary. And how has the year gone so far?

Well the last week of July is about par for the course – so far: “What a week it’s been! Car being pranged (neck sore for two days, having to get estimate from garage in Goring), kitchen taps being replaced, bathroom sink plug conking out (a kind of plunger-thing which stopped staying plunged – now fixed), then the pipe under the bathroom sink leaking (washer now replaced), getting a humongous tax bill but speaking to the lovely Linda at HMRC and having it equally massively reduced (phew), learning how to backup and upgrade my WordPress site then getting a new NextGen upgrade which sent everything art-related totally haywire, while all the time it rained or was a grey as an MP’s soul.

In the entire week, I inked about five Wise El cartoons and am again horribly behind schedule. My soul yearns to paint something but hours can go by on just one tiny piece so I’m not picking up a paint brush until I have Wise El’s Big Thoughts done and dusted.

Any plans I had for marketing them individually (as opposed to all within a book) have veered off-course again. Not because of the website hiccups, but because of what would be effective in the longer term….”

Perhaps the next six months will show a bit more promise?

[Just seen in my Twitter feed: “Solitary mystics are the most connected individuals.”- Jon Mundy]

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