Family Matters

By now my frequent readers, as few as they are, will have come to the conclusion that I am an old reactionary troglodyte who finds it impossible to engage with modern society. This is possibly true – yet there are some things I think we did better in the past, than we do now. One […]

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Another Way of Knowing

The Blessed One thought, “I have taught the Truth, but simple as it is, the people don’t understand it! Therefore I will tell them stories.” Recently I wrote of how we need to meet our spiritual needs in order to attain a sense of wholeness in our lives. I have written that in achieving this […]

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A Dream of Brahman

In my previous essay which I titled “Such is Life” I explained the basic cosmogony of Hindus and others is that the world and all in it were created by a dream of Brhman. The sceptics will probably laugh that I should pay any respect at all to such a fanciful concept. My critics will […]

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Such is Life

I recently published an essay Reconciling with Impermanence. Whilst rummaging through my archives recently I discovered another essay I had written almost twenty years ago that throws some light on this important subject. I have updated it somewhat and now share it with you. Let us begin by asking the question, “What is a man’s […]

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Is Unhappiness a Mental Illness?


Mental illness wreaks havoc with individuals, their families and friends. Most of us, unfortunately, will know someone who has suffered or is suffering from severe depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or the like. And these are serious disorders. In recent decades, society rightly, (at least on my opinion) has sought to destigmatise mental illness. But this […]

September 20, 2010

What About Relationships?


It is a source of some sadness to me, that as I get older I know more and more people who have felt compelled to end their relationships. Don’t get me wrong. There are people who have been trapped in awful incongruence and separation and divorce are gratifying escapes from intolerable situations. But it makes […]

September 15, 2010

Getting Off The Treadmill


In the tumult of modern society I see more and more people struggling psychologically. They struggle with anxiety, despair and depression. Many are on a treadmill that they are finding difficult to keep up with. The treadmill is driven by expectations of employers to keep improving the bottom line. It is driven by expectations of […]

September 8, 2010

Being and Meditation


It is difficult for human beings to just be. We are driven to meet the expectations of others, to pursue the goals of organisations and to meet, what appear to be, essential imperatives. Consequently we are soon lost in our strivings to achieve and our desires to be something we are not, to meet the […]

August 31, 2010

The Struggle With Self


Many years ago my good friend Dr Phil Harker taught me that the route to good psychological adjustment had three steps, viz. Know Yourself>Accept Youself>Forget Yourself. This has over the years, proved to be good advice. This seems such a simple formula – and it is. But it is also very profound and quite difficult […]

August 24, 2010

The Way of Vedanta


Vedanta is the wisdom of the Vedic sages. It is one of the oldest forms of religion and was the precursor to Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism and Buddhism. It is the spiritual path outlined in the Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita. The Ultimate Reality, according to Vedanta, is all-pervading pure consciousness. As one adept wrote, “ […]

August 19, 2010

Power and Fear


‘The Emperor of Tsin Chou province was a proud and haughty man. He was jealous of his power and authority and went to great pains to defend his little empire. He had numerous spies who were always abroad in the neighbouring provinces gathering intelligence because he was anxious that he would be attacked. Anyone who […]

August 11, 2010

The Mind of Ted


What a paradox it is that I have had an ongoing sense of identity all my life. The “I-ness” I now experience seems little different to that which I experienced when I was younger. Yet I am substantially a different person from that Ted Scott that existed thirty or forty years ago I am older […]

July 26, 2010

The Ground of Being


It is all there, all the time, everywhere and everywhence. How overwhelming but how strange seen from the limited perspective of one man or woman’s eyes, or discerned by their senses; beyond our perception and our conception and therefore beyond normal belief. And so we break it down to that little bit we can physically […]

July 21, 2010

Where To After The Monarchy?


One of the more pleasurable things that have happened to me in recent times was to become the Chair of the Fitzroy Basin Association (FBA).FBA is one of Queenslands thirteen community based Natural Resource Management (NRM) Groups. As a result of this position I get to sit on the Board of the Queensland Regional NRM […]

July 15, 2010