I know that the idiot who controls your mind for your ego is denying this as you read it but one day you’ll remember that paragraph above and admit that it is a precise description of the normal human condition, for virtually of all of us. No amount of vegan diets, telling jokes, social networking, image-building, meditating, giving up desire, visualisation, playing chess or Byron bloody Katy is gonna change us from zombies to fully alive.

But hey, once you admit all this there is something you can do to bring yourself a bit of balance, not eternal happiness, not “success”, not a cure from your habitual patterns of thought and feeling, but a bit of balance that feels quite good and may come back if you want it to…

Because for each and every person, beyond all the pretence, the bullshit, the sighing and hoping and putting on a face… for every person there is something genuinely marvellous in your life and about you. Call it your genius if you want to be grandiose but actually it serves you much better to see it as a normal feature of the heart and soul of who you are and what treasure you have managed not to lose.

When I wrote CVs for a living I had a vested interest in people believing in themselves because I gave the customers a money-back guarantee that they would get an interview. This means that I devoted some of my utterly brilliant insight into trawling past the garbage they usually put out, past the defeat in their voices, past the denial of despair and hope, past the remorseless grind of their lives – all the way through to the central issues, which is…

What is it about you that is a real gift to the world and yourself?

Once you touch that place you can begin to put your burden down from time to time, the burden of being a slave in a world of slaves, the burden of being a cog in a world of cogs, the burden of “working for the man” and never getting anywhere, the terrible burden of falling out of love with the ones you loved. These things are all connected. See the dark side and you will notice how strong the light is. Carry on pretending and you get shades of grey for ever.

Trust me, where I’ve been, at the doors of death several times, there is no other way. What descending into the underworld teaches you is that you need the company of angels to survive and in the company of angels you too can be angelic. This is a metaphor, by the way. not a new religion. Metaphor is far more true and expressive than referential and “logical” language, which is for small-minded people who are trapped in their boxes, their servitude to systems beyond their control that do not want you to know you are an angel and a free being who can love and be loved and rejoice in the gifts of life…

Say no to the grind; say hello to the wonder. Yes, but first you must tell the truth(see paragraph one above). There is no escape. You are not there yet. You are still acting out being mature. That doesn’t make you bad, but it keeps you in shackles dictated by repetition compulsions, competitive social values, bitterness, avarice and the pathetic increments of triumph that ego needs to feed on, like a vampire. It is your joy that it is feeding on, and the joy you could be having with others (instead of social grease and random, meaningless, let-you-down-when-things-get-tough, erm “connection” -which is sheer bullshit).

This is your life. Live it.

The news is not good. I will never walk properly again. We have long suspected that inoperable fibroid growths are slowly chocking my airways and now we know for sure that similar, minute and obviously inoperable growths are eating into the nerves of my legs, feet and hands. The only good news is that there is stuff I can take for the pain and the cramps and an anti epileptic drug to ease the twitches and another more sinister sounding concoction which may slow the inevitable spread of the growths. At least it isn’t another cancer!

The reason this is happening to me is that in 1967 when I should have been enjoying myself I was fighting for my life against a cancer that killed my elder brother and all five of my cousins. The cancer came back, in both lungs in 1971 and I became the first person on earth ever to survive five years of that particular combination of killer diseases, which in turn enabled me to survive long enough to mock  as*holes who believe in facile rubbish…

Alas, the treatment back then was massive doses of radiation, about 200 times today’s “safe” dose, and I had it twice. I am now just about the only 45 years survivor left alive and they have finally realised through the deaths of many others that side-effect wise, radiation is “randomly connected” to nasty fibroid tissue damage, which can begin as much as thirty years after the main event, a bit like asbestosis only less malignant, thank God.

So here I am at 63 in June. At 16 I didn’t get cancer because I ate the wrong diet or lived the wrong emotional life and neither did my brother who died aged 4, so that knocks your stupid ideas of cancer causation on the head. It was hereditary, in the genes, sheer bad luck, could happen to anyone, may yet happen to any of you…

I expect some twats will step forward to tell me that I’ll be fine if I laugh a lot, if I eat beetroot till I turn red, if I read Krishnamurti, if I follow “The Secret”, if I “visualise” feeling well, if I follow Byron Katie – or any one of the other idiotic, terrified, cold-hearted beliefs you all adopt to separate yourselves from cancer.

But actually I shan’t be doing all that. I shall be trying my best to live as long as I can with the least pain and the least burden on Cora. I shall scourge the as*holes I encounter online and I shall tend my garden, sit in the sun and be grateful that I had any life at all. I should have died at 16 but I fought back. I now know that this was a mistake because I have endured 45 years of terrible anguish, pain, deprivation, prejudice, bigotry, put-downs, isolation and ill health. If I’d known what the world was offering me I’d have said no thanks.

But it’s too late now. There are people and things that I love and people who love me. I have to carry on for the beauty.

Can’t cry? Don’t want to know? Rather be “optimistic”. Acting cheerful all the time? Being “on purpose” and focussed and unaware of the “bad” things going on in you….

You are mistaken to go that way. If you do feel the grief, if you do cry a lot, at first it seems infinite and overwhelming, but gradually it comes about that you wonder why you are crying. That is when the buried grief in your body tissue is releasing. There are no thoughts or images or protests or humiliations attached. It’s just pure grief. Everyone is holding it. Few ever clear it. To clear it you need courage and (probably) the support of a loving other who can be there simply to witness you.

Once you begin to clear it you will be simply astonished by how clearly life appears to you and how wonderful your joy can be, even in the tiniest moments. A lifetime may not be enough to empty the entire ocean of grief but in time you will become skilled at being with your own previously neglected and forbidden truth. And you will finally feel real, feel genuine, feel truly confident in your gifts… no need to pretend or bluff or connive your way through life ever again.

This is a lot better than learning some quick tips at an NLP course.

Either which way, though, everyone has already voted, already endorsed, already accepted, already cemented in place the reality they are currently living in. That is exactly why change is so challenging because they have already voted to wallow in meaningless optimism where they waste their lives planning the future, as opposed to making conscious choices to accept what is and then having the courage to risk seeking real alternatives, whatever the cost in disturbing their status quo.

For “they” read “we” for we read “I”. There are no exceptions. Every mind on earth is happy to take responsibility for the good things and full of projected blame for the “bad”. Good and bad, of course, are subjective value judgements, two sides of the same coin. The only point that comes out of this is that change demands total honesty which begins with the recognition that you have so already voted on everything that exists that you have integrated it into your own mind.

That is why being a rebel is not just fun; it is essential; it is life itself. To reclaim your reality, starting with your own mind. By admitting that you voted, even for everything you hate. Then you can vote for something else…

When this happens something is kindled in the soul which might give them the torque to lift themselves up. Nothing else can work properly. What passes for coaching, advice, consultancy and therapy is merely vampirism that exploits the disenfranchised victim. The vampires who do this kind of work get a ghastly thrill out of being clever and feeling how well-adjusted they are compared with their victims, as doctors often do also.

You all need to flatten your egos to the point of equality with whoever you are with. They are not in trouble and you cannot “support” them. If you think you can then you are in big trouble. You are a) grandiose, b) stupid as hell.

I don’t care who agrees with this or who it offends. This is fact. We must not parasite on the backs of other people, especially in the hypocritical guise of helping them. And people who monopolise your time and ask you to hear their story, agree with it and devote your attention to them? Tell them to grow up and get lost.

Only they can help themselves. Only you can help you. All anyone needs is a couple of people who appreciate who they are. And such people are unlikely to be expecting payment.

The lie takes many forms: secrecy is lying; breaking your word is a form of lie; cheating and stealing and profiteering are all offences against truth. Keeping quiet when you know something is wrong is also in the spectrum of lie, so is claiming wisdom and knowledge that you do not in fact have. Saying anything for personal gain is to lie. White lies to “protect other people” and “avoid embarrassment” are nevertheless part of the fabric of lie in which we drown.

Gossip is a currency of lie and so, very often is the cruel humour of the Jonathan Ross generation who cannot say anything straight and sincere.

When you pretend you are lying. When you act. When you mislead. When you manipulate using NLP or otherwise. When you withhold vital information is also to lie. When you write that ridiculous puffed-up profile you are exaggerating, which is to lie, as all personal branding is, and all marketing come to that. Marketing conceals some information and promotes sly charm, leaving the consumer confused, deliberately. That’s a cardinal form of lying.

I don’t get me started on religion and political lies…

In a climate of lie such as this, which has always existed in some form in every human culture – in such a climate it is almost impossible to sustain sincerity, honesty and the hugely powerful skill of allowing the truth to flower in any situation.

We are hoist by our own petard, full of sound and fury that signifies nothing (that’s a quote or two for the non-educated, “creative writing” generation).

Once you perceive, admit, experience and begin to recognise the universality of lie all around you there comes the occasional chance to jump out of it for a bit of liberating truthfulness. It’s not going to survive for very long when nobody you are talking to gets it and everyone is so steeped in lie they cannot understand you, but you have to try, or go to your grave with your eyes never opened.

I believe things because it pleases me to do so. I don’t require for my belief to be anchored in verifiable truth, but it pleases me when I find an ally in my belief.

Already in two sentences I have placed “what pleases” me above the concept of Truth, seen as some unseen dictator criticizing my feeble failure to accord to its strictures.

When I stop believing my beliefs, shaken by some emotion, I feel disconsolate, drifting like a boat that has broken its moorings. Perhaps this is why my favourite beliefs are those which cannot easily be proved wrong. Those such as militant atheists, the BBC and the scientists and doctors it clasps to its bosom, who worship the “evidence-based”, rather miss the entire point of beliefs.

I ought to give some examples of the kinds of things I believe, or would like to believe—I’m not sure there’s a difference between the two. I believe that all creatures are intelligent; that evolution itself is intelligent, not blind and mechanical. I believe a giraffe’s neck is long because its ancestors desired to reach the high branches. I believe that the conscious mind, the I that is in the given moment dedicated to interaction in the world, is less important than commonly acknowledged. True self-awareness has its centre of gravity more in the unconscious, the autonomous processes of the body which keep us safe and strive to prevent us from continuing in self-destructive actions and attitudes; even if they have to make us ill in order to send us messages. I think poor Nietzsche believed that too, and he had more than his share of illness. Perhaps in him it was merely syphilis, which from a scientific point of view disproves the belief. But never mind. He said what he said, and it has value that cannot be refuted by medical science.

It is perfectly rational to do what pleases us. And our beliefs prop us up. We need that!

You can have mild smugs. My best friend is one. Or you can have gentle angries, like me. The variants are infinite. But nobody escapes.

Typically a person will have elements of both.  Me, for example: on the state of the world I am a powerful angry. On the hand of cards that life has dealt me I am almost tortured by grief daily, which is a helpless state between smug and angry. When it comes to the power of words, as you know, I am ineffably smug and superior.

Each of us has a profile in this range of vibrations but this is a totally new concept that will not be commonplace for another twenty years or so. It all depends on how sensitive you are to the manipulative charm of smugness or the unsettled power of anger. Speaking as someone who is more angry than smug I see it everywhere. I am so intensely sensitive to it that I suffer just reading people’s written words and I so love anger that I can tolerate almost total insanity such as Nietzsche without a qualm.

Most intelligent people are the other way round, because they have snatched more than their fair share of life.

Is there any way around this awful paradox? Well, yes, there might be, if we were evolved enough to hold more than one reality in our hearts at the same time, for example: to hate and yet to also forgive, both in relation to the same object, person, group, system, whatever.

You can’t change anything at all by using control, by planning, scheming, manipulation, NLP or any other bullshit visualisation or management technique. They don’t work, like diets don’;t work, except when they do, which is very rarely.

First step is to acknowledge our fury and when I saw hundreds of people at EST do this the next emotion underneath was generally fear, but very close behind that was profound loss, grief and sadness that was as big as an ocean.

That’s the place everyone needs to get to before they can even speak of maturity, before they can channel anything about themselves usefully. Anger is not to be manipulated intellectually. It’s actually the way that the powerful control the rest of us: by tapping their potentially explosive just-below-the surface threat of anger into our own fears.

We are so crushed by our fears that we start pretending. We deploy self-aggrandising strategies. We turn to smugness (if we feel like winners or want top project that impression). We turn to anger and the threat of anger, like our bosses, governments, parents, bullies – if we think we may lose the game and wish to intimidate opponents first. Just like animals, especially apes, especially our closest relative, the chimpanzee.

If that all fails we sulk, become helpless, force other people to waste their own lives in taking care of us.

Once you know about your fear and anger, which are two sides of the same coin, then and only then can you feel your way into the loss, shock and grief that lies below them. And only by reaching that, deep in your heart, your memories, your tissues, your thoughts, your over-compensating ideas and behaviours… only when you clearly know and feel all that can you access sublime joy, true creativity, real love.

But don’t expect them to last. This is an ongoing process, for ever, that nobody ever wins at. The best you can achieve is to be real and to feel real empathy with others.

That is the goal you were born for. Anything else is a betrayal of your gift of life. Anything glib that offers a solution is a lie. You need to live all this. No one is immune. No one has beaten it. No one will for centuries hence.

If this is true it flatly contradicts one widespread notion that people hold about their lives, viz that each of us has “my own reality“, “my truth“, “a right to my opinion”. You think you believe this when your own views are challenged but clearly you do not when you compare yourself with someone who is mentally impaired, with a small child, with a horse – all of which are implicitly assumed to be less in contact with the real reality than I am.

Do you see how important this contradiction is? Are you able to entertain the possibility that you could be more real, in better correspondence with the actuality of what is happening in the world?

The commonest way for anyone to avoid the implications of this inflexible truth is to split the real world up into zones. Hence we have financial reality (economics), psychological reality (a vast and treacherous zone with innumerable sub zones), spiritual reality (a lovely catch-all to avoid making accurate judgments about almost anything in life), political and social realities (in defence of who we are and what we do and what is done) and, most damaging of all, the divisions of a zone called ethics into so many subsystems of tolerance, judgement, prejudice and self-aggrandisement that we can almost no longer use the word “good” without a cynically half-held breath of contempt.

Once you start using these sorts of categories (and believe me you do) you have strayed from the reality into my reality and everything you say is totally invalid. It is nothing more than a complex defence of your own position, your behaviours, your omissions, your mistakes, misjudgements and cruelties.

If you do not know this you know absolutely nothing at all.

If you do not attempt on an on-going basis, all day and every day, to wrestle yourself free from the insane insularity of my reality towards an imperfect understanding and harmony with the reality then you are certainly a primitive life form. We will never get there, any of us, but we owe it to each other to try.

And the most important aspect of the one reality in which we all live? Oddly enough, though we strive for objectivity as a general goal we conversely must deploy subjectivity to find the truest and most important aspect of all reality: our empathy, our understanding, our imaginative reaching towards, our love of… other beings.

Sorry, but you cannot have your own reality. You share it with everyone else.