One of the most profoundly moving and revealing reviews of my book that I have read! Thank you so much, Sarah, you have revealed my hidden facets of my own soul to me! Many, many lives!!
Month: May 2020
Change in the time of Coronavirus
There are a lot of very angry people expressing their rage on Twitter and Facebook right now. Why? Because they are craving the distractions that take up time and constitute or substitute for LIFE. They are stuck at home with not much to do but think and lament and pace and drive themselves mad for lack of activity.
They want someone to direct them, lead them to the promised land of avoidance but who has the map?
There was a function and purpose in the ancient practise of spending time in the wilderness. There is a function and purpose in practises like Vipassana where one is forced into silence for an allotted number of days. These periods of reconnection were choices but Coronavirus has forced everyone into the desert with nothing but our minds and souls for company.
And what do we find there? Who do we meet?
People spend entire lifetimes running away from themselves because who we are is wanting. Who we are is never enough. Who we are will not save us from the wolf that prowls and howls and echoes our self-loathing. But now we are locked in with the wolf we would do well to tame it or at least, feed it. The wolf will navigate the wild parts of your soul, the part of you that looks at stars and wonders, the part of you that looks into a lake and remembers, the part of you that hears the voice of Nature and understands, the part of you that urbanity has suffocated and warped into compromise.
Now in the time of Coronavirus you have the chance to reconnect with your true self and decide who you want to be. If you dare.
But first we must all deal with our addictions.
Addiction is a process of reliance. It creeps up on you and eventually recalibrates your soul. Things that once had no importance have now enslaved you in dependence – dinner on Friday nights with friends, going to the club on Saturday afternoons for gambling with mates, meeting friends at a wine bar every Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday night, breakfast with besties on Tuesday mornings, jogging every morning at 5am, bench-pressing weights at the gym every Monday night, working for a corporation whose CEO you’ve never met and obsessing about how you can make more money for him/her, planning your life all the way to the grave. Never looking up at the stars or into a lake or stepping outside the routines that have caught you in a sticky interlacing web.
All gone now. And what are you left with? Time and yourself. And at first it feels as if you are falling into an abyss. You have no idea what to do with yourself or how to be or what to think. If not about money and having fun then what?
Here’s the map. First, who are you? Or who were you before life reprogramed you? What did you want to be when you were a child? What delighted you? What did you dream of being? What were the pulses and drives that informed your soul?
Sometimes these answers are too painful to contemplate because you realise you have drifted so far from your innocence. If so, let it go. Let it all go and stand in emptiness for a while and wait. You’re not falling. You’re not dying. You’re just beginning to live authentically.
So, returning to this epidemic of rage on Twitter and Facebook and analysing it. People are terrified of change and they know it’s coming, like a tidal wave it is gaining height and momentum and the impact will wash away the existing structures. Is there any point clinging to your raft and defying the descending forces? No. But people are terrified of losing the constructs that define them and keep them unconscious. They will do anything to avoid re-imagining life. They want the life that has been encincturing generations for centuries. They want the routines that preclude involvement and effort. They do not want to create anything new because NEW means they have to trust themselves and most people don’t even know themselves let alone how to trust themselves. Rather than strike out alone most people would rather congregate in institutions like work and religion that impose ideologies and regulate behaviour.
Religion means people don’t have to strive for authentic connection with God or whatever they see as God. They prefer to join crowds in prayers and chants and cants that become addictive and hysterical with repetition. I have seen hysteria in church services and it’s both sad and frightening because it flags addiction and the inevitable clawing hunger that follows when the “high” wears off.
Work is another form of hysteria when it becomes a fierce competition to make as much money as you humanly can in as little time. Watch the feverish endeavour to close a deal and remember the zealotry of religious fervour and now look at a gambler’s desperation or and an addict’s comatose high.
It ALL looks the same.
Life is not addiction. Life is quiet reverence and the steady pursuit of excellence in a field that engages you body, mind and soul.
I have worked with addicts and watched their agony as they try to free themselves cold turkey. Some have succeeded. Some have failed. Now ALL of us are positioned to free ourselves from our addictions cold turkey. We have no choice. We must re-evaluate our lives and find a way of being that does not sever connection with our true selves.
Bannered over the gate at the temple of Delphi were these words: KNOW THYSELF.
Most of us don’t know who we are without our striving and our routines. This is our chance. Coronavirus is a great gift if we use the time wisely. It’s also a very painful process for many. Time alone with ourselves is the one thing every addict will tell you they don’t want. Sobriety reveals all the dreams that were planned and abandoned along the way and it’s too painful for most people. It takes courage.
Why do we work? Why do we want money? Answer those two questions honestly and you will see who you really are and how to find your way home.
It’s OK to be poor. It’s OK to be old. It’s OK to be a failure. It’s all OK.
You are so much more than your job, your body, your friends, your possessions, even your soul. You are so much more. You don’t even need to BE so much more. You already are. You are alive. You breathe. You think. You live. You observe. You create. You love. You feel. You crave meaning. You are a miracle and it is enough that you remember that.
Look at the stars. Do you think they should be more? Or different? They are and it is enough.
Look at yourself and marvel at the fact of your being. That is the map out of addiction. What you do next, where you go, with whom and why is your choice. Just remember life can be reimagined now. It can be different from anything you’ve ever known. You do not need to entangle yourself in the old routines if you don’t want to. Live and engage with life authentically. You will never get a better opportunity than this to remake your life and ensure it has value.
I draw much of my solace from Nature in whom I invest my hope and my wonder. Do Nature spirits exist and if so, what are they and what is their purpose? Many cultures believe absolutely in the existence of Nature spirits and some people claim to have seen them. When I walk in the forest or by the sea or through a garden I feel a sentience. I am not sure if I separate this from the lifeforce of Nature or whether I am feeling the souls of Nature spirits. I don’t care much. The pulse of life in the world around me and its absence of neurosis gives me hope that humanity can also restore its sanity. We have so much to be proud of and admire in our accomplishments over the centuries and it is comforting and inspiring to spend time marvelling at works of human genius if only to remind ourselves of human sentience at its best.
I don’t believe that 
people who only make money are to be admired. Give them a chisel and a block of marble and see what they can do. If anything.
I am weary of the bleating of billionaires who are nothing without their money. I am tired of living in their world and listening to the dull booming of their toneless orchestrations. Life is more than money and mindless occupation. Find it within.
In this silence listen for the song of your soul and the song of the stars.
ALEXANDER – THE MUSICAL
Logo Design by Dean Michael Rochford @DigiLuxEU – Art by Deano
NEWSFLASH: ALEXANDER was featured on New Musicals Monday on 1st February. Ryan Thornhill @thorhilltheatrespace (14) Thornhill Theatre Space | Facebook and Jean-Paul Yovanoff @MTR (14) Musical Theatre Radio | Facebook are working tirelessly to spotlight musical theatre writers who may be unfamiliar to you. Between them they are bringing brilliant new musicals to the world.
The link to Thornhill TheatreSpace New Musicals Monday is https://open.spotify.com/show/0Txud9SgySsD0iP4qWImzJ…
ALEXANDER presentation: https://youtu.be/VeiTPxFT-yI
Thornhill Theatre Space presents selections from the musical “Alexander” Book and Lyrics by Wendy Waters and Music by Ian Camilleri and Wendy Waters
ALEXANDER is a book musical based on the life of Alexander the Great. The map of Alexander’s quest is well-known, less well-known is the map of his inner journey from inspired conqueror determined to unite the world under the banner of Democracy to the disillusioned narcissist who came to believe his own hype that he was a God and therefore invincible.
In this musical Alexander is seen through the eyes of the people closest to him, his mother Olympias whose ambition found traction in her genius son, Hephastion, his first great love and 2IC, Bagoas the gentle and wise houseboy whose loyalty was absolute and finally his wife, Roxanne who longed for his unrequited love.
The show is a fusion of ancient and modern dress and times. The overall statement is my strong belief that all wars are senseless and all empires crumble.
BONUS TRACKS available on our Spotify podcast:https://open.spotify.com/show/0Txud9SgySsD0iP4qWImzJ…
Learn more about “Alexander” at
Twitter: @wa_waters
I spent a little over a decade writing and rewriting the “book” of my musical ALEXANDER, first from the POV of the soldier/conqueror/King of Macedonia and then from the POV of a tortured visionary whose lust for both power and enlightenment finally drove him to the excesses characteristic of dictators of every stripe and creed.
ALEXANDER‘S physical quest is well-known. In 334 BC, following in the footsteps and mindset of his warrior father, King Philip II of Macedonia, Alexander embarked on a series of battles which ultimately broke the power of Persia. A decade later, when Alexander overthrew the sybaritic Persian King Darius III he had conquered the Achaemenid Empire in its entirety. At that point, Alexander’s empire stretched from the Adriatic Sea to the Beas River, one of the largest empires in the ancient world but, this did not satisfy Alexander. Addicted to conquest, he endeavored to reach the “ends of the world and the Great Outer Sea” and in 326 BC he invaded India, winning an important but incomplete victory over the sub-continent.
Alexander and his mother, Queen Olympias circa 326 BC.
Alexander the Great was born in Pella in 356 BC and succeeded his father Philip II to the throne of Macedonia at the age of 20. He spent most of his ruling years on a military campaign through western Asia and northeast Africa, and by the age of thirty, he had created an empire stretching from Greece to north-western India. Undefeated in battle he came to believe in his mother, Olympias’, claim, that he was fathered by the God, Zeus, rather than the merely mortal, Philip. The world came to believe this fantasy, too, as Alexander, the master manipulator, gave credence to it by building over-sized campsites en-route throughout his quest, leaving enormous chairs and tables made from boulders as if an army of giants had camped there. Discovering such things on a morning’s sheep-herding must have been very disconcerting for the locals. Playing mind games with the soon-to-be-conquered became an established part of Alexander’s military repertoire. In a midnight climb he instructed his men to plant dozens of Macedonian flags outside the city gates of the unreachable mountaintop eerie called the Sogdian Rock. When the township woke to the sight of dozens of Macedonian flags outside their city gates the next morning they surrendered to the man who was either winged or had demons in his service.
In his determination to succeed, Alexander used every arrow in his quiver. A brilliant military strategist who thought outside the square, he also won the love and trust of his comrades by sleeping in the same rough soldier’s tents as his men and fronting every battle. He also knew the names of all his soldiers and in some cases, their wives and parents, too. It was a masterstroke in winning and maintaining loyalty.
That his success was due to his talent, personability and the discipline of his army is beyond dispute. It was also timely. Slaves the world over were tired of their lot in life and the extravagance of Darius III, the flagrant despot who built Persepolis, the largest and most extravagantly appointed Palace on earth, the antecedent of Versailles which sparked the revolution of 1789, drove many Persian subjects to the point of rebellion. In fact Darius III was murdered by two of his own generals, helping facilitate Alexander’s triumph over Persia.
Ruins of the Palace of Persepolis.
So, by the time Alexander arrived, ready to liberate slaves and implement democracy, the rule of the people, it was a perfect storm of social unrest coupled with a brilliantly prepared and highly disciplined army bannering equality, albeit under Macedonian rule.
During his youth, Alexander the gifted student, was tutored by Aristotle and it was his political manifesto of Democracy that Alexander the genius conqueror, implemented throughout his empire. An open-minded man, he encouraged religious and cultural diversity and syncretism of existing beliefs. Always fascinated by spirituality, Alexander even embraced many of the religious practices he encountered on his quest.
King Darius III with his concubine eunuch, Bagoas.
The quest part of Alexander’s story has been well documented. What is less well-known is the man behind the soldier, a man who did as much harm as good. A man who came to believe himself a god. A man who had no idea what to do with himself in peacetime. A man who came to expect conquest because he had never known defeat. A man who conjured a legend that grew around him like a glamour. But ultimately, a man whose time ran out.
After returning to Babylon, recrossing the Himalayas in winter and leaving India half-conquered, Alexander’s loyal army was homesick and longing to be reunited with their families after a little over a decade of campaigning. Completing Alexander’s waning sand-glass was the loss of his great love, Hephastion, who died in 324 BC. It was all too much for the world-weary conqueror, who died six months after Hephastion, perhaps from grief, perhaps from poison or perhaps because his battered body and soul gave up. This close departure from the world is always a mark of soulmates I believe.
Hephastion 356 BC – 324 BC
After the loss of Hephastion, success must have felt hollow indeed. From boyhood on Alexander and Hephastion had shared everything including Aristotle’s tutelage, the almost dual command of the army and for many years, a bed. Every dream and plan of Alexander’s had been co-conspired with Hephastion whose own talent for soldiering was considerable. Certainly of all the loves of Alexander’s life, Hephastion was the only one who shared the ‘trenches’ with him, often fighting side-by-side like guardian angels for each other.
Had Alexander lived he would have stumbled on alone, establishing Babylon as his capital and executing a series of campaigns that would have begun with an invasion of Arabia. In the years following his death in 323 BC, a series of civil wars tore his empire apart, resulting in the establishment of several states ruled by the Diadochi, Alexander’s surviving generals and heirs.
In my research I read The Persian Boy by Mary Renault, a book about Bagoas, the exquisite eunuch Alexander inherited from the court of King Darius III after the conquest of Persia. Brilliantly written, Renault shows Alexander through the eyes of the people closest to him. Unlike the ugly jostling for power in a harem, Alexander gives each of his loves their own place and the dignity befitting their role, avoiding the deadly competition writhing in the courts and harems of contemporaneous Kings and Sultans.
Mary Renault looks at Alexander through the eyes of Bagoas, a one-time prince of Persia who was ‘cut’ to preserve his beauty and interned in the harem of King Darius III as a sexual slave. Alexander, enthralled by the young man’s beauty and intelligence, makes him his houseboy and sometime lover.
Bagoas Prince of Persia who became a eunuch prized for his beauty.
I became fascinated by the other satellite characters in Alexander’s world – his mother Olympias, beautiful, ambitious and driven, Roxanne, the Sogdian princess he marries after conquering her province, Hephastion, his 2IC and arguably love of his life and, of course, his beautiful black stallion, Bucephalus, who remained with him throughout his decade long campaign and whose death in 326 BC caused Alexander enormous grief.
All of them exhibited an unusual degree of loyalty to Alexander and a passion bordering on worship.
The love and loyalty of those closest to Alexander are great indicators of the character of a man whom many regarded as a monster warped by boundless ambition. But they only knew him from a distance and in the wake of conquests which arguably left them better off. But conquest is conquest no matter how benevolent the dictator.
Alexander
So, I adjusted my “book” to focus on the ancillary characters in Alexander’s life and through them map the inner terrain that inversely echoed his expanding empire. As Alexander’s empire expanded, his psyche shrunk under the weight of success and delusion and the legend he and his mother created to inspire worship and obedience became his cage. The fantasy of his progenation by Zeus ultimately enslaved his mind and loosened his grip on Terra firma, toppling him, Empire, ego, life and all.
But for a musical theatre writer what an extraordinary narrative of lust, loss and tragedy, perfectly arced and embodied in an exquisite young cast, each one alluring in their own right and powerfully placed to influence the most famous man of his time.
I set about re-configuring the book away from a chronological paralleling of his campaign and into the tragic arc of an idealistic young visionary/conqueror who morphs into a self-destructive, power-crazed addict, messily transformational and ultimately immortalised through the alchemy of success. Musical theatre gold-dust.
Alexander and Bucephalus.
When I completed the revised book I began writing the lyrics and to help me with the music I invited talented composer and pianist, Ian Camilleri on board and together we wrote all the music for Alexander in a succession of Sundays over the course of a year. Ian and I then took the show into a studio and with the help of friends we recorded a demo of five songs. In a series of truly serendipitous interventions we managed to acquire direct contacts with Cameron Macintosh, Andrew Lloyd Webber and closer to home, producers Harry M. Miller and Michael Edgely – all of whom turned the show down flat.
Such is my manic perseverance I then decided to hire an arranger to orchestrate the show and lift it to another level. The result was a fuller sound closer to what may be expected in a West End or Broadway production. Over the course of five years the show was staged in concert version by Southbank Institute and later introduced to London audiences in selected songs in a showcase my own work, Wendy Waters Rites Words at The Pheasantry 3rd September 2019 with talented cast Frank Loman, Lauren Lovejoy, Louise Burke accompanied by pianist Ricardo Nunes Fernandes.
Louise Burke, Lauren Lovejoy and Frank Loman – Cast of Wendy Waters Rites Words.
Ricardo Nunes Fernandes rehearsing with Louise Burke for Wendy Waters Rites Words, The Pheasantry 3rd September 2019.
2020 brings its special challenges with COVID-19 and lockdown and bringing new work to the public is difficult but fortunately there is a visionary in Canada, Jean-Paul Yovanoff, who plays musical theatre songs all year around and especially encourages new works.
Here is a Podcast of my #musical ALEXANDER played on Canadian radio. 1drv.ms/u/s!AtFMpokjm_
Thank you Jean-Paul Yovanoff @MTR_Tweets
FRED – A Musical
Due to renewed interest in my #musicals #FRED and @ALEXANDER I am reposting this.
FRED is my Book Musical. It’s the story of three lonely women living in adjoining apartments in a crowded city. They never open their doors or their hearts to one another until the power in the building fails and an electrician called FRED arrives to fix it.
As Fred fixes the fuses he chats to the women and comes up with a plan that will unite them in friendship and purpose. #heartwarming #redemptive #familyfriendly
https://m.tweeddailynews.com.au/news/fred-is-here-to-lend-an-ear/3434054/
FRED Poster
The musical Premiered on the Gold Coast in July 2018.
Here’s to a long and happy life FRED.
Size Ten is the first song in the show. It is Alison’s I Want song. Alison is a lonely twenty-two year old girl who wishes she could lose weight and get down to a Size 10. If she could only get to that magical size all her problems would be solved, she thinks.
In this…
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Salem rises again in modern America
Over the past few months I have been called some truly vile names on Twitter. The people who debase themselves to such an extent are people who support Donald Trump. I have asked them repeatedly to explain why they are so angry but they have been unable to clarify the cause of their rage. Rather than answer they have sunk even lower into the turgid mire they inhabit and called me even uglier names. My friends who have bravely tackled them with the same question have been similarly targeted with incendiaries of name-calling and bullying. Because my friends and I stand united and at a safe distance from this aberrated witch-hunting we dismiss them as fools.
But we do not laugh.
Why? Because whilst we are safe from their wrath, others are not. People are dying in a fomentation of hatred spurred on by a movement in America that has gained momentum and sanction under the titular head of POTUS 45. Whilst Trump did not perhaps knowingly start an ugly conspiracy movement which is getting more dangerous by the minute, he does nothing to disavow people who are using his leadership as incentive to snowball hatred fuelled by feelings of inadequacy.
Anger is fine if it is founded on fact. It can be a great motivator for change – personally and globally. But indiscriminate anger arrows into rage and becomes a lethal weapon.
Be clear in your anger. Be specific. Attacking strangers on social media in a storm of disproportionate abuse only serves to ostracise and court discrimination.
Americans do have cause for complaint but I’ll get to that.
Ever since Trump took office I have been feeling nervous about his followers. They seem unduly aggressive. I am aware of a massive fiscal imbalance in America. It is beyond disgraceful and every hard-working, underpaid person has the right to feel both duped and angry about a system of government that favours the indecently rich. It is corrupt and it is fraught with potential injustice but above all else it is keeping an unworkable system of government firmly in place.
Now I could understand if this was the spearhead complaint of Trump’s followers but it isn’t. They have bought into a conspiracy theory called QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by an alleged “deep state” against U.S. President Donald Trump and his supporters. Only a dedicated and manipulative victim could sanction such insanity.
Crazy? Obviously to those of us who are not fuelled by lurid and vague accusations of victimization.
Trump’s followers are evangelistic in tone when they decide you are a witch, as many of them did yesterday on Twitter when I dared suggest that Trump is far from the flawless embodiment of righteous ire, far from the avenging angel sent by God to smite the sinners. Far from Trump being the victim here he is a dangerous bully who cries witch when he doesn’t get what he wants.
The only clever thing about Trump is his ability to tune into the neuroses that flows like a sewer through the minds of followers warped by Puritan Christianity.
Which leads me full circle to Salem and the notorious witch trials, which echo the governance of POTUS 45 and his circle of entitled friends like Kavanagh and O’Connell and of course his family who might very well fit this 1692 profile like a glove: “As a group, the judges represented the proverbial 1 percent – the merchant elite who were wealthy, intermarried, and exercised power in social, political, and military circles. In short, they were the superrich of Massachusetts. Simply calling them ‘merchants’ short-changes them…Most had considerable political experience, having served as deputies and assistants in the General Court.”
Quote from https://historyofmassachusetts.org/salem-witch-trials-judges/
“The infamous Salem witch trials began during the spring of 1692, after a group of young girls in Salem Village, Massachusetts, claimed to be possessed by the devil and accused several local women of witchcraft. As a wave of hysteria spread throughout colonial Massachusetts, a special court convened in Salem to hear the cases; the first convicted witch, Bridget Bishop, was hanged that June. Eighteen others followed Bishop to Salem’s Gallows Hill, while some 150 more men, women and children were accused over the next several months. By September 1692, the hysteria had begun to abate and public opinion turned against the trials. Though the Massachusetts General Court later annulled guilty verdicts against accused witches and granted indemnities to their families, bitterness lingered in the community, and the painful legacy of the Salem witch trials would endure for centuries.” https://www.history.com/topics/colonial-america/salem-witch-trials
And here is a list of the men who facilitated the process of murdering nineteen innocent people.
Quote from https://historyofmassachusetts.org/salem-witch-trials-judges/
“The Salem Witch Trials judges were several men who served as judges during the Salem Witch Trials in 1692.
On May 27, 1692, Sir William Phips appointed nine of the colony’s magistrates to serve as judges on the newly created Court of Oyer and Terminer. The court was created specifically to handle the growing number of cases in the Salem Witch Trials.
According to a letter that Sir William Phips sent to the Earl of Nottingham in October of 1692, he chose these specific men for the job because they “were persons of the best prudence and figure that could then be pitched upon.”
These judges had a lot in common. They were wealthy merchants and high ranking militia officers. All nine had been judges for years and were all members of the Governor’s Council. Six of them were also related by marriage and five of them had attended Harvard, a training ground for young ministers, yet none of them became ministers.
According to Emerson W. Baker in his book, A Storm of Witchcraft, these nine judges were considered the elite of the Massachusetts Bay Colony:
“As a group, the judges represented the proverbial 1 percent – the merchant elite who were wealthy, intermarried, and exercised power in social, political, and military circles. In short, they were the superrich of Massachusetts. Simply calling them ‘merchants’ short-changes them…Most had considerable political experience, having served as deputies and assistants in the General Court.”
Baker points out that they were also all middle aged, with Sewall the youngest at 40, while Richards, 67, and Stoughton, 60, were the oldest and the rest were between forty-five and fifty-three.
The following is a list of names of the Salem Witch Trials judges
Judges at the Examinations:
Jonathan Corwin
John Hathorne
Bartholomew Gedney
Thomas Danforth
Court of Oyer and Terminer Judges
William Stoughton, Chief Magistrate
Jonathan Corwin
Bartholomew Gedney
John Hathorne
John Richards
Samuel Sewall
Nathaniel Saltonstall
Peter Sergeant
Waitstill Winthrop
Superior Court of Judicature Judges
William Stoughton, Chief Magistrate
Thomas Danforth
John Richards
Samuel Sewall
Waitstill Winthrop”
Quoted from https://historyofmassachusetts.org/salem-witch-trials-judges/
A person would have to be blind or wilfully ignorant not to recognise the correlation of privilege and the miscarriage of justice occurring right now under the banner of “draining the swamp” in America. It’s easy to see the rise of the #MeToo movement in response to misogyny and historical injustice, more difficult to trace the current fomentation of reckless name-calling and accusation as trembling fingers point at every man who dares question Trump with the fire branding screech of “I saw him at Epstein’s”.
“Billionaire Jeffrey Epstein was arrested on July 6, 2019 on charges of sex trafficking, the media have been scrambling to make sense of what happened on Little St. James, his 70-acre private island in the Caribbean. But on nearby St. Thomas, locals say Epstein continued to bring underage girls to the island as recently as this year—a decade after he was forced to register as a convicted sex offender—and that authorities did nothing to stop him. Two employees who worked at the local airstrip on St. Thomas tell Vanity Fair that they witnessed Epstein boarding his private plane on multiple occasions in the company of girls who appeared to be under the age of consent. According to the employees, the girls arrived with Epstein aboard one of his two Gulfstream jets. Between January 2018 and June 2019, previously published flight records show, the jets were airborne at least one out of every three days. They stopped all over the world, sometimes for only a few hours at a time: Paris, London, Slovakia, Mexico, Morocco. When they left St. Thomas, the employees say, they returned to airports near Epstein’s homes in Palm Beach and New York City.” https://www.9news.com.au/world/epstein-sex-abuse-trafficking-usa-virgin-islands/6000e442-25ba-447d-8470-c15
Child abuse, sexual assault and terrorism are hot-button topics worldwide today. Any man can be brought down with an accusation of paedophilia or sexual abuse, many deservedly so, some malevolently so. But even as a woman who believed and supported Christine Blasey Ford and Pell’s accusers, I would caution temperance before levelling an historical accusation of sexual abuse or child pornography at a man you don’t like. Or a woman for that matter. It can so easily become a malevolent cry of “witch” that ends at the gallows or in regret.
And as for terrorism, Julian Assange is the latest “witch” to face the figurative gallows in the American system of mob justice.
“Julian Paul Assange (/əˈsɑːnʒ/;[4] né Hawkins; born 3 July 1971) is an Australian editor, publisher, and activist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. WikiLeaks came to international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. These leaks included the Baghdad airstrike Collateral Murder video (April 2010),[5][6] the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), and Cablegate (November 2010). After the 2010 leaks, the United States government launched a criminal investigation into WikiLeaks.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange
It’s easy to whip a mob into frenzy with a whisper of terrorist or paedophile. It’s easy to hang the wrong people. The burning question is, ‘Who has the right to mete out punishment?’ The mob led by an insufferable Puritan with an axe to grind? Or God? I say no-one on earth has the right to take a life under any circumstances. Life and its demise is the provenance of minds far more elevated than any human I know. If you are concerning yourself with punishment then leave a person characterised by indifference, cruelty and lust alone long enough with a rope and they will hang themselves.
A man’s punishment is between him and his conscience.
A woman’s sins are a matter of speculative subjective assessment clarified by self-awareness.
Humans are not fit to judge humans.
All we are entitled to, as a matter of course and jurisprudentially serving the evolution of our own souls, is an opinion. And God knows aren’t we all over-brimming with them! Myself included.
America, the land that banners “freedom of speech” has a dreadful problem with people who don’t echo its prejudices. Terrorism and Satan are invisible forces malleable enough to be massaged into weapons of mass destruction in the turgid minds of angry mobs who lack the clarity to responsibly amplify their complaints.
Does America have cause for complaint? Yes. Is the system broken? Yes. Is a Salem-esque judge and jury going to fix it? No.
There have been voices raised in calm dissent offering viable solutions to America’s most urgent issues but they do not chime with the hysteria of the mob hungering for bodies swinging from gallows. Salem has lived with the shame of its witch-hunts for two centuries. Reason found no traction in minds inflamed with hatred. And there were people who tried to instil reason in 1692 but they were shouted down as being in league with the devil. American shame will cast a very long shadow if Trump followers have their way and it’s hardly fair to liberal-minded Americans.
Anyone who dares raise a voice against Trump is accused of being in league with the devil, sanctioning men like Epstein and being unpatriotic, that worst of all offences. Heads up, I’m Australian but it doesn’t stop me asking hard questions of those who share my home planet with me. I will ask you for clarity around your prejudiced accusations no matter how uncomfortable you may feel.
Be angry by all means but be clear about your complaints and make sure you are seeking resolution rather than torture framed as righteous vengeance.
How convenient the devil has been for those who lust for temporal power. How marvellously useful he has been for scapegoating those who stand between desire and satisfaction.
I was told repeatedly yesterday by irate, wasp-maddened Trump followers to “look in the mirror” where I would doubtless see a deluded woman condoning the evil of faceless nameless others whose appetite for juvenile flesh and the extrapolation of state secrets was writ large on my brow. Disappointing as it may be for my accusers I saw a woman I have become inordinately proud of over the past few decades. A woman who speaks up despite the rips and fickle tides of public opinion. A woman who has persevered with her Art against the odds. A woman who will try to look at every side of a question before arriving at a conclusion beyond all doubt, and lastly, a woman who knows herself to be disarmed in the presence of bullies. I am proudest of that. I do not carry a weapon any more permanently lethal than my opinion which you are free to take or leave.
But do consider it.
Some people think I hate men and I hate the rich. This is untrue. I hate people whose wealth exceeds their capacity to spend in a lifetime. That they happen mostly to be men is coincidence. This is my opinion and my prejudice and I own it.
If I had a mountain of food and everyone around me was starving and I preferred to let that food rot rather than share it what would you think of me? Well that’s what I think of the people on this list of shame.
Modern shame list:
| Rank | Name | Net Worth | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 |
|
$112 Billion | 56 | United states |
| #2 |
|
$109 Billion | 64 | United states |
| #3 |
|
$98.1 Billion | 70 | France |
| #4 |
|
$85.1 Billion | 89 | United states |
| #5 |
|
$80 Billion | N/A | United states |
| #6 |
|
$74.2 Billion | 35 | United states |
| #7 |
|
$70 Billion | 67 | Russia |
| #8 |
|
$68.9 Billion | 83 | Spain |
| #9 |
|
$61.7 Billion | 46 | United states |
| #10 |
|
$61.1 Billion | 75 | United states |
| #11 |
|
$60.7 Billion | 84 | United states |
| #12 |
|
$59.9 Billion | 46 | United states |
I make no apology for publicly shaming these hoarders of gold. They are the personification of greedy selfishness in my opinion. Yes America and humanity you DO have cause for complaint but these are the people who should be brought to justice. And by justice I do not mean, hung, drawn and quartered for the putrid amusement of the mob. I do NOT condone Kristallnacht or the Guillotine nor do I suggest leaving them destitute. They may keep their mansions and their private jets. But they are not entitled to the mountain of gold they can never spend in a dozen lifetimes.
So what do I suggest for them?
I suggest TAX and a redistribution of their wealth to progenate a sustainable and fulfilling quality of life for all the tenants of earth. The responsible and compassionate dissemination of the excess wealth of the people on this list and many I left off would build housing and food gardens and theatres and schools and provide medical care and opportunities for multitudes. And isn’t that fair? Isn’t that equitable?
And is that what Trump is proposing? No.
Apologies to my few wonderful and loyal readers – this is the angriest post I have ever written. There are points I have wanted to make for some time and feelings I wished to express but I would never leave you without the hope of light.
So, here is the crack that lets the light in: even if these hoarders never find their way back to their souls don’t let it stop us all from building a sustainable, earth-honouring way of life. We can join together and buy houses and land upon which we can build communities where we look after each other. We can plant vegetable gardens and share the produce. We can be kind to the homeless and spread love wherever we go. We can listen to each other’s dreams and be the wind beneath each other’s wings. Those who hoard and seek power through greed may never wake up but we who are already looking up at the stars do not need to wake them or bother with them.
We can do this alone.
Loneliness
There is a contagion on this earth called loneliness, a fatal disease that reduces every part of existence. But loneliness is an illusion, a device to induce and support the intense focus required for self-development. But it is neither natural nor beneficial to a healthy soul or mind when it is sustained beyond the time it’s needed. The loneliness necessary for learning becomes habitual in some, infantilising the adult who should know better.
I have touched on this before but in this time of isolation it’s time to elaborate.
There are two distinct forces that orchestrate our lives at this level of our development – LIFE and DIVINITY. These two forces create the boundaries needed for spiritual development in containment. Angels have told me they experience no boundaries whatsoever and that includes a 360 degree view, but not on a flat plane, in every direction. It’s a remarkable amount of visual information to process at once and it needs an open energised mind to accept and organise so much fresh observation without prejudice or referencing past vistas. Add to that sensory inundation an awareness of sound and scent and you will have an idea of their world.
It is constant thrilling bombardment of new life which qualifies their BEING.
LIFE.
This is the force of growth that has no agenda other than expansion, rampant vigorous expansion until maximum saturation of the physical vehicle has been achieved. The LIFE-force is vital to sentient experience. But it is the force most often confused with evil aka Satan or Lucifer or whatever you want to call it. LIFE is indiscriminate and will overwhelm and absorb other weaker expressions of life in the service of LIFE. In short life will kill to survive and has no conscience about it.
Sentience is an altogether different force. It has consciousness and seeks expression. This force serves DIVINITY.
DIVINITY.
This is the whole, the interconnected, interdependent, interactive collective that works in total harmony to enrich the overall experience of BEING.
We came from DIVINITY. How much we contribute is relative to our awareness. To raise our awareness we consciously elect to separate from DIVINITY and enter a single focus life with a narrow laser view. We become I AM and it is a consciously lonely experience, undertaken to bring a new view and a fresh way of BEING to DIVINITY whom we serve and who in turn, serves us.
Right now I am waiting to greet a friend who has travelled with me for centuries. My friend is being born soon and is already winding down memories of collective consciousness in order to enter the world of flesh as a dependent and helpless baby. My friend will only just remember me and the parents he has chosen. Up until recently I had been talking to my friend in spirit but now he has entered an amnesia and is forgetting who he was, the perimeters of his view shrinking to the tunnel-visioned mono-directional focus he will soon be limited to in order to facilitate growth. LIFE will pour through his fragile little body and it will be all he will think about for many uncomfortable months as he learns to manoeuvre his containment in tiny steps and multiple falls. To communicate with people who cannot read his thoughts he will learn strange new words that don’t quite express the enormity of his feelings and almost-remembered knowledge of a view that was fearless and complete. He will experience loneliness and it will tear at the fabric of his ancient soul and turn his sights inward which is where DIVINITY wants them. He will learn to trust himself and develop talents for creation that will help him express himself better. He will learn to describe the universe in ways that enrich the denizens of the energetic world whose hunger for newness is an addiction. So rich are they in experience they crave newness. He will grow and become a man and he will revel in his physicality and talents and intellect and then some man or woman will tell him he’s God and he will believe it until he relearns the truth – that God or DIVINITY is everything and everyone and whilst he can express God he is not the sole expression of God. He is a droplet of water in an ocean made up of droplets of water and all of them are God. Collectively they express the greater view. Individually they are all equal. But until or unless they learn to dissolve their boundaries no droplet of water will ever see the distant shores or the curious depths or feel the Arctic freeze or the tropical reefs. Once the boundaries are released the interconnectedness enriches the WHOLE with unique experiences and views that inform each droplet of the ocean if they can accept another view. When we truly express DIVINITY, the collective interdependence adjuncts each view into a jigsaw of the whole.
DIVINITY asks us to show them LIFE through our eyes. Give them the laser focused view and sate their curiosity and hunger for newness of BEING. Everyone and everything is needed and everyone and everything benefits.
And so we are born and so we grow in loneliness, our sights tuned to a narrow field, our cravings turned inward for comfort and a measure of comprehension.
Who knows us best? We do.
This separation serves our souls until it no longer does.
When we were in the Kingdom of Nature we were herd creatures, tuned to the collective, instinctive, intuitive and commonly-bound to survival. When we outgrew that experience we looked to DIVINITY for meaning and further expression and in their mercy they found a way to facilitate our growth into greater awareness. But it was by way of the wilderness, separation, individuation. Loneliness. This process continues to this day. We are seemingly born alone, suffer alone and die alone, having lived with interludes of joy and connection.
So, at what point do we attempt reconnection whilst in physical form and under what stimulus?
Anyone who has evolved beyond self-serving and self-aggrandising will have developed empathy. This is the first step to reconnection here on earth and I believe that this pandemic is serving the wider community by offering us the opportunity to empathise with those who are struggling financially and emotionally. Whilst governments largely fail us we now feel the pain of others around us who are battling alone. Without being asked, we can reach out and help, without passing the burden over to the body politic. We are being given the opportunity to behave like angels whose interdependence guarantees both survival and support. If the angels did not help each other creation would stagnate and crumble. Creation, physical and energetic, requires belief to contain LIFE. Physical and energetic form are imagined and supported by collective belief. The angels know that everything depends on harmonic agreement and cooperation. Humanity has yet to learn this and perhaps we have reached a level where this most important lesson must be learned. All growth is painful as old containment and beliefs are shed to make way for the new and frighteningly unfamiliar.
But it is time for this momentous change. Many of us are ready. For some it is long overdue and whilst we are all sad it took a pandemic to wake us up at least LIFE working in harmony with NATURE has found a way to stop humanity destroying the planet and each other and for those who accept the ARK and trust NATURE a new world will emerge.
I am watching certain souls make quantum leaps in awareness through this crisis and for many of them they will never go back to who they were pre-pandemic. The new empathy and awareness is too enriching and too rewarding to let go of. Why? Because when we behave like angels we draw angels to us. They gather to support a new way of BEING just as they do in their own world, which is of course our world but largely invisible to us. But when we behave like angels, i.e. support each other, we feel good and whilst we may not be consciously aware of company, we do not feel quite so alone.
In fact, when we help and support others the feeling of loneliness goes away. Test it.
I see people on Twitter and Facebook saying they want the world to go back to normal. In short they lack the decency to question the morality of billionaires in a world where the vast majority of people are struggling to feed themselves and find shelter. Jesus said, “The poor will always be with us.” And he’s right, the poor in spirit, the empathically-challenged, the morally bankrupt, the spiritually-impoverished. They will always be with us, bullying us into compromise and denying both LIFE and DIVINITY.
But for those of us who long for an end to loneliness our time has come to reach out and connect.
I know it’s difficult and at times demeaning but where possible show mercy. Obviously, bashing your head against an immovable wall is pointless, but be the first to express empathy even in the face of stubborn intractability because the slow learners among us can only learn by example. But do walk away before you exhaust yourself if people refuse to accept your love and support. There are others who will and they are worth sharing the Ark with as we seek new landfall with a fresh platform for BEING.
BEING.
This is what we are all growing towards. The angels describe it as: We are. We be. Meaning they have total individualised autonomy within the over-arching whole. They function individually and consensually as ONE.
But remember, it doesn’t STOP there. It doesn’t STOP ever.
You lead the way.
I lead the way.
We ALL lead the way.
Catch The Moon, Mary 