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Messages - Paul Duffy

#1
Thanks Nicolette.

I don't have plans to take any more organ exams.

Have decided on the following pieces for tomorrow:

Evensong (Martin) and Minuet in Classical Style (Armstrong Gibbs) as preludes

Choral Song (S.S. Wesley) as a postlude.

Best wishes,
Paul
#2
I admire your refreshing optimism and enthusiasm Nicolette. I am also impressed that you managed to reach ARCO level in ten years. Though I gained the ALCM in piano, I only managed Grade 5 ABRSM in organ, so well done!

What pieces are you playing this weekend? It's Saturday afternoon and I still haven't decided what I am doing!

Best wishes,
Paul
#3
Tony, you signed off your post with an ancient Chinese curse.

On the subject of organs, I believe that the church organ is all but dead. The instrument's sheer difficulty to master, coupled with the extremely low return on one's investment of time and money learning it (I had to fund all my lessons, music, organ shoes, and examinations with NO help from the church) and poor/zero pay as an organist is hardly an attractive prospect to a young musician. Pipe organs will gradually migrate from churches into private ownership or into skips because A) there will be no-one to play them, and B) because the culture has changed.

On the subject of internet fora, I believe that people have a much shorter attention span these days, and, dare I say it, the average person's intelligence is quite poor and getting worse. People prefer posting short messages on Twitter and Facebook rather than the more thought-out letter style response of a forum post. Though occasionally, you do find some intelligence out there:

"It is currently 10:29PM and I am watching the decline of Western civilisation on television" (Twitter poster's response to Channel Four's odious Sex Box programme)

Best wishes,
Paul
#4
David, the language you are using is not even Gnostic, it is Atheist.

Tony (and that other Paul!) summed it all up for me:

Quote"12 But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 13 If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." (1 Corinthians 15:12f)

If there is no resurrection, churches, organs and choirs (and our faith) are indeed, useless. As an organist I serve my parish church on a voluntary level. I simply would not do this if there was no resurrection and it was all based on a lie. In seeking to intellectualise it all and treat the resurrection as some sort of superstitious fairy story you would actually take away all meaning from services and rituals.

David, you know full well you are an atheist and you are deliberately setting out to be provocative. I suggest you go onto an Islamic website and be openly hostile to their faith too, because they also believe in life after death. I suggest you post grossly offensive remarks akin to this one:

QuoteLikewise it is not the work of the Creator to put a man on a cross to die to save me from my wrong steps that I take 2000 years later. For the Church to insist on saying so as a basic tenet of Christianity will not bring the population into Church because it's a patent nonsense.

And then there are other comments you make, which frankly I can't make head nor tail of:


Quote;-) We have to be prepared to sacrifice what we hold dearest in order to find it. It's as the testing of ore. We have to put the ore in the furnace in order to find the precious stuff within.

Sorry David, I won't be sacrificing my beliefs for anything or anyone. Either you are at the level of pure materialism, scientific equations and rationalisation, or you believe there is more to our existence than meets the eye. I believe that both Jung and Nietszche had some sort of 'spiritual experience' but in the end they had to rationalise it, reason it away and intellectualise it. You are doing exactly the same. You can't do this with 'The Creator'. For 'The Creator' interacts with humans in the grey area which straddles 'spiritual awakening' and psychosis. 'The Creator' is very clever. I would even be so bold as to say 'devious'.

QuoteWhen we are able to junk the clothes of our religion and find its naked core then we will share the work of the Creator naked with the other religions capable of doing the same.

So why have you started this thread in the first place?. If religion is just clothes, then organs and choirs are certainly even more so. They are mere adornments. In this one small sentence, you have singularly undermined your argument and apparent concern for the continued existence of churches. You have essentially admitted that we don't really need them, we just need thought and reason. But why didn't this work after the French Revolution if it is such a good idea? Why isn't Notre Dame de Paris still a Temple of Reason?

QuoteThe lady loved Jesus as her brother

Please tell me where is the wrong in this? It is far better to love than to ridicule, which is what you are doing.

QuoteCan our faith survive crucifixion of the Virgin Birth? Can our faith survive Cruxifiction of bodily  Resurrection?

Mine certainly can't. And your use of the word 'Cruxifiction' is utterly disgraceful and very much the language of militant atheism. It marks you out as a deliberately provocative closet atheist. And if you insulted the faith of a Muslim person in such a manner you would find the same response coming your way. I actually think it would be a good idea for all the faiths to coming together against the rising tide of pure materialism and its proponents such as yourself, who have basically got our existence down to a cold set of numbers and a soulless body of flesh and bone.

You are not a Gnostic. You are not even an Occultist. You are an Atheist, plain and simple.

Best wishes,
Paul





#5
David, your point of view becomes more offensive to me with each new post. And now, Jesus, the God-man, is relegated to a 'bloke' who perhaps didn't even die on the cross at all. I sympathise with your yearnings to get beyond the often divisive walls of religion, but now you are insulting the gods themselves. You seem to be totally embarrassed by the idea of a Virgin birth, so I suggest you make a thorough study of the religious traditions of ancient Greece, because that it is where the idea seems to originate. It seems that divine beings are coming down to Earth to inhabit human bodies at regular intervals throughout history, and such events are usually accompanied by advances in human thought, skill and behaviour. You deplore the Titans, but you have seemingly and wholeheartedly took on the Titanic mantle of materialism. The Gods created us. Without the energy of the gods we cannot move or do anything. Perhaps we wouldn't have advanced as much as we have without their help. You might think it odd that a Christian should be espousing polytheism, but if you substitute the word 'Angels' for 'Gods', you might better understand my point of view. And now you wish to airbrush them from history and relegate it all to a fairy story.

You seem to want to avoid church closures, but you attack Christianity at every opportunity. And now you regard the crucifixion as mere superstition, despite it being recorded by four different writers, and supported as a concept by the World Tree of Norse mythology. ("I knew I hung on a wind rocked tree, nine whole nights, spear-wounded, to Odin offered, myself to myself"). Can't you see that there is something greater at work here? The Christian faith, although it cares not to admit it, has remained faithful to these old sacred truths and believes them. Islam and Judaism do not believe them. And neither, it seems, do you. If you think you are somehow going to bring people back into churches by ridiculing the faith which they profess then you don't know human beings very well. They will just feel affirmed and vindicated by their non-attendance if it is all just 'mere superstition'.

Best wishes,
Paul
#6
Sorry David, I won't post trash like that again. I don't know why I did it. I am cursed by a restless searching mind. A trepanning procedure would do me good.

I was reading a Dolores Cannon book last night (The Three Waves of Volunteers and the New Earth) before I read your reply this morning. Odd, isn't it?

Best wishes,
Paul
#7
David,

I urge you and people on this forum to read the Book of Truth. After much soul-searching and a great deal of thought and introspection, I believe this book to be, indeed, the truth. It is corroborated by other non-Christian sources. Our planet will shortly separate into New and Old. Your wish to preserve the continued existence of churches is commendable, but it is immaterial. Planet Earth is beyond repair and has to be made into a New Earth. The situation is much worse than man thinks it is. From what I have read, one wouldn't want to remain on Old Earth when this separation occurs. The Book of Truth mentioned a coming global vaccination back in 2010. We now have the Zika virus which has suddenly been declared an international emergency.  We shall see if this indeed results in such a vaccination.

Best wishes,
Paul
#8
I thought you were Gnostic, David. As I am sure you are well aware, Gnostics believe that the Earth was created by a Demiurgus, not the 'Real God'. The Demiurgus created the Universe imperfectly, which explains human suffering, and he is known by certain names which I won''t repeat here because it is controversial to do so. According to Gnostics, the 'Real God' doesn't create. You are probably aware that all the Pagan traditions, including Norse, Greek, Egyptian and Irish mythology and Hinduism and Gnosticism all fit with each other, yet Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions stand apart in their monotheism (though Jesus fits with the Pagan traditions because of his death upon the World Tree.). As we know from Akhenaten in Egypt, monotheism is usually instigated as a means of control and power. This is the root of the problem, in my opinion.

Best wishes,
Paul
#9
Thank you David for your kindly reply.

QuoteIn 13BC Emperor Augustus defined Peace as a Goddess

This brings me back to the Black Madonna I mentioned in an earlier post. People think that it is a statue of the Virgin Mary holding Jesus, and that it is black because of candle smoke. Well, one could take it that way, and certainly it is easier to explain it like that rather than the controversial truth behind it.

The Black Madonna is deliberately coloured black, and because of this it is actually a statue of The Goddess (Kali, Isis, Athena etc.) giving spiritual re-birth to an initiate. (Gnostics go even further, and suggest it is a statue of Mary Magdalene carrying Jesus's child.) My weird experiences over the past two years linked the book 'The Secret Life of Bees' with the Black Madonna and a chap called St Bernard of Clairvaulx. It was almost like wheels within wheels. Bernard instituted worship of the Black Madonna and he is a patron saint of beekeepers; and the Secret Life of Bees centres around a Black Madonna statue. Bernard haunts all my steps! You mentioned the Dionysian Architects. Many months ago I discovered that Bernard had worked with them to build the Templar-Cistercian abbeys. I had buried all this stuff and forgotten about it. But it seems that Bernard wants to be noticed! Over the Christmas period, he appeared in a picture in the background during a scene in the BBC's 'Dickensian' programme. And now you have drawn my attention to him once again.

QuoteEven the Rosicrucians

I have learned much from the beliefs of these people. Before I ever knew anything about them I had a dream in which three rose crosses were borne horizontally in procession in some cathedral or religious building. I later learned that this concerns spiritual healing. I now know that the cross is pre-Christian. Indeed, the early Christians used a five pointed star as an emblem, not a cross. The rose cross symbolises the soul 'crucified' on the body. This is a pre-Christian concept.

There are many more things I could share with you. To be honest David, you are the only person I can talk to about these secret and sacred things. Other people are likely to demonise me or label me insane. What I have come to understand, is that God/the Great Architect/ the Universe, does not give out orders. He/It does not interfere with free will. Instead, He/It encourages us to write our own stories, to create our own Heaven. He does alter the minds of certain people, but that is so they can step out of the collective unconscious and see how everything is connected within the Universe. He makes some people into Prophets, and there are some really good ones. But the things they wrote are their own conclusions. God didn't dictate anything to them. Isaiah is a particularly intelligent and clever prophet, but my personal favourite is our very own William Blake. People labelled him insane in his day, as they are wont to do, but in my opinion Blake was indeed touched by God and he understood that God is above morality. Blake is my hero really. It's sad that people only seem to remember him for one thing, because he was multi-talented and could do illuminations, etchings, engravings and poetry as well. He had a great sense of humour which comes through in his poems, though the elite at the time often baulked at this because they expected all poems to fit a certain mould.

"Men are admitted into Heaven not because they have curbed and governd their Passions or have No Passions but because they have Cultivated their Understandings. The Treasures of Heaven are not Negations of Passion but Realities of Intellect from which All the Passions Emanate Uncurbed in their Eternal Glory."

"I must Create a System, or be enslav'd by another Man's. I will not Reason & Compare; my business is to Create."

How can such a man be labelled insane by his contemporaries? Surely they are the ones who are mad, including Chesterton, whose biography of Blake is a travesty.

Best wishes,
Paul.
#10
David, I wish to apologise for my fundamentalist rant. You had touched a nerve. It was indeed a Titanic response, but there is a reason for such a harsh reply. Since I posted it I fully intended to lurk occasionally on this forum. However, what you have said in subsequent days has struck a chord. Allow me to explain.

QuoteBeing berated above for being Gnostic

The sort of Freemasonry espoused by Pike referred to above is a very different animal to that of the 18th century, and might even have been a result of radicalisation and fundamentalism in the Christian domain in the 19th century itself.

It was thanks to 18th century belief in the Great Architect, that dissolved the silly differences between the brands of Christianity.

As I have stated in previous posts, I have been experiencing some sort of 'spiritual awakening' these past few years. I am in little doubt that it is 'divinely motivated', but the experience has pointed very firmly towards Gnosticism and Freemasonry. I have been pushing against this for a long time because I simply did not wish to accept it. For a start, believing or dabbling in Freemasonry will get me excommunicated from my Church and Faith. However, I cannot ignore Gnosticism and Freemasonry any longer. They contain sacred truths, and the awakening is returning me to them time and again, together with the Rose Cross, The Holy Grail and The Black Madonna amongst other things. I don't know what it all means, but I will have to re-think EVERYTHING I believe in. This is why your comments on Gnosticism touched a nerve.

But it was this comment which compelled me to reply, even though I did say I would never post here again:

QuoteIncreasingly I find reference to the worship of Bacchus or Dionysus nowadays in derogatory terms but as a proto-Christ he was central to the 18th century views, the Dionysiac Artificers having been sent by the King of Tyre (King Hiram) to assist in the building of Solomon's temple.

Perhaps it's time to restore Bacchus in our understanding.

The awakening has pointed VERY STRONGLY to Bacchus, via an astonishing experience which I cannot go into in an open forum. I didn't want Bacchus to disturb my beliefs. I didn't want the upheaval. I wanted the Bacchus episode to go away because it did not fit with my beliefs. But this is what Bacchus does. He turns everything upside down. Here am I, a mainstream Catholic, having to accept the very real possibility that I was 'spiritually initiated' into the Bacchic/Dionysian mysteries. That is why I reacted in the manner I did. I didn't want to accept it because it sounds insane and it doesn't reflect my beliefs.

I apologise once again. Keep going David, you are on to something.

Best wishes,
Paul


#11
David, I take back what I said the other day about you achieving a higher level of consciousness. Your recent posts have shown you to be an atheist. Of course, you are entitled to this viewpoint as we live in a free society. But I do find it odd that in your atheism you are on the one hand displaying some sort of mock-concern for the churches yet wholeheartedly joining in with the general open season on faith and religion on the other.

As a church organist and believer, I am disheartened every time I read your comments on these matters, not inspired. You are a complete atheist, and I wish you would have the honesty to admit that and write as an atheist instead. If you want to show the 'farcical nature' of religion, then be honest and do it properly. Don't hide behind this pretence of concern, because you know full well that any modernisation of church life to make it relevant would have to step beyond the walls of a stone building. The model you appear to be hankering for does not require organs and choirs.

QuoteThe tragedy of wasting the usefulness of lives in this life in expectation of heaven in the next...

QuoteAnd our churches are in decay, dying, and are under attack as, in the circumstances, they should be.

I can't figure you out. You appear to lament the decline of the churches but then state that they should be attacked. Again, this shows you to be an atheist, albeit a very confused one. You still haven't grasped it though, have you David? The real reason that people are leaving church is everything to do with image, apathy, embarrassment and celebrity culture and nothing to do with what the churches teach. People just use 'because of what the churches teach' as an excuse not to attend. The word 'Jesus cult' is classic atheistic language.

I thought you were somehow reaching a higher level of consciousness, but your latest post reveals you to be an atheist who enjoys posting links to the writings of other atheists. I find it personally distasteful that you are now resorting to attacking the persona of Jesus Christ and posting links to these Gnostic writers. Gnostics do not believe that Jesus died on the cross, or that he was the Son of God. It is atheism by another name. You post this Essene garbage in which 'Jesus' encourages His followers to shove the stalk of a gourd up their back passage and give themselves an enema. You bring Bacchus into it. Bacchus, whose initiates rended animals (and sometimes humans) alive as a sacrifice to their god and ran around with thyrsus wands cavorting and having sex. Are you really suggesting we return to those days?

David, I thought you were a spiritual person who was perhaps searching for something. But you are not. You are an atheist and I find your comments increasingly confusing, de-moralising and antagonistic.

I feel that you are correct in your assertion that you should not be bringing matters of faith to an organ forum, particularly as some of us are church organists, and one of us is an organist AND a reverend. We have enough ignorance to put up with in the outside world.

I shan't be posting on this forum again.

Best wishes,
Paul.

I
#12
Quote
I hope it's not too late. There is much in the world that understanding of the process of creation in echo of that which created us can accomplish, and much to be lost if it isn't

It is too late. I am a church organist. I have seen the decline with my own eyes, both in an Anglican church where I used to play, and in my own church. Both churches knocked Sunday afternoon services on the head because of low attendance, and weddings are very few and far between. In my own church, we used to have 25+ weddings annually. Now it has been whittled down to two or three. You think people are going to suddenly have a change of heart? Forget it, they aren't. Go back to the French Revolution. People only took note of religion and what it meant to them when it had gone. The Christian faith in godless, materialistic Britain has gone into a modus operandi of managed decline.

QuotePeople have turned away from the churches because what they have heard inside doesn't match up with the outside: it's ceased to be relevant to them. That's a reflection not upon the people . . .

Funny that you should twist things around and blame the churches, including myself, for I am 'part of the establishment' so to speak. Ask any person on the street about their perception of churches and the first thing he or she is likely to say is that they are 'boring'. Therefore, your 'organ and choir renaissance' is holed below the waterline already. Your average person is more likely to want churches to resemble the materialistic world they inhabit outside. In my opinion, this does not include your traditional organ and choir, though it might possibly include the Gareth Malone 'pop choir' model instead, though they would have to sing secular songs with no mention of God or Jesus in them, because your average Brit is embarrassed by these things. It certainly doesn't include the organ, that is for sure. Some 'progressive' churches are actually embarrassed by their organs and want rid of them.

QuoteIt's what Jesus taught, if only the Churches will teach it.

It IS what the churches have been teaching, but people don't want to hear it. Fact it, your average materialistic Brit thinks Jesus is a joke or just a nice story for the kids at Christmas. Oh yes, we get plenty of people through the doors at Christmas, but they all vanish like smoke in the wind come January.

If you think this state of affairs is going to suddenly and magically turn around, then, with respect, you are deluded. If you want to know what the real problem is behind all this, it is that we are the first generation in human history which no longer feels the need to worship something. You aren't going to change that state of affairs with a few ideas about making church relevant. It is like re-arranging the deckchairs on the Titanic. We have gone through a severe cultural shift.

Best wishes,
Paul.
#13
David, I don't know why you keep banging on about churches. You are about twenty years too late. These issues were being discussed back in 1995 when I became a church organist. They haven't been addressed because the culture has changed. Society is moving away from regular church attendance, and it is something we have got to accept.  Even if the C of E went ultra liberal, it would still not arrest the slide.  People are either turning atheist or are finding spirituality within themselves. The future for the parish church is grim, but the cathedrals will survive, mainly thanks to tourism.

Best wishes,
Paul
#14
David,

Your viewpoint on these matters suggests you a reaching a higher level of consciousness. According to people who are often cynically termed 'New Age' by the mainstream, all of us on this planet, animal and human alike, are going through a transitional period in which we will gradually come to understand our connection with God and each other. We are all a PART of God, not apart from God. According to the 'New Agers', we are each a divine spark encased in a body. If we can look at it that way, issues of gender, sexual orientation and religious observance become irrelevant. I think that is perhaps the point which yourself and Mr Chiles are putting forward.

Best wishes,
Paul
#15
I want to try to answer David's question as best I can. I do not know if there is a solution to church closures, but I at least understand why we stand on the brink of a third world war:


•"The Third World War must be fomented by taking advantage of the differences caused by the "agentur" of the "Illuminati" between the political Zionists and the leaders of Islamic World. The war must be conducted in such a way that Islam (the Moslem Arabic World) and political Zionism (the State of Israel) mutually destroy each other. Meanwhile the other nations, once more divided on this issue will be constrained to fight to the point of complete physical, moral, spiritual and economical exhaustion...We shall unleash the Nihilists and the atheists, and we shall provoke a formidable social cataclysm which in all its horror will show clearly to the nations the effect of absolute atheism, origin of savagery and of the most bloody turmoil. Then everywhere, the citizens, obliged to defend themselves against the world minority of revolutionaries, will exterminate those destroyers of civilization, and the multitude, disillusioned with Christianity, whose deistic spirits will from that moment be without compass or direction, anxious for an ideal, but without knowing where to render its adoration, will receive the true light through the universal manifestation of the pure doctrine of Lucifer, brought finally out in the public view. This manifestation will result from the general reactionary movement which will follow the destruction of Christianity and atheism, both conquered and exterminated at the same time."


That was written in a letter dated 15th August 1871 by a man called Albert Pike. I think you'll agree that Mr Pike is getting his wishes fulfilled. And that is because the organisation to whom he belonged have actually brought about two world wars through staged events and hoaxes, and are now in the process of doing so again.

I stated yesterday that I was appalled by the events in Cologne. However, I now understand that these sex attacks were co-ordinated. Some eyewitness reports say there were 'men in suits' giving out orders to the attackers. In my opinion, the people behind this are the same gang that Pike belonged to. They call themselves 'The Family', but most people know them as the Illuminati. Forget the Dan Brown hokum, these people are far more clever, secretive and intelligent to go running around Rome branding cardinals. Their task is to create and foment as much negativity and division as possible through stagecraft or co-ordination. There are suggestions that they were also behind the recent attacks in Paris: the 'goings-on' in the Casa Nostra café are strange to say the least.

'The Family' are trying to drag us all into a third world war. And unfortunately, because of human nature and the 'collective unconscious', they are going to succeed. And they know it. They have been dropping subtle hints amid film and media, and because of Jung's collective unconscious they have gone largely unnoticed amongst the public. The 23rd Sept 2015 was a special day to them. It marked the start of their 'operations'.

But don't just take my word on all this. Have a look at this link from 2010:

http://www.illuminati-news.com/00363.html

For those with an open mind, I also ask them to look at this:

http://thebookoftruthonline.blogspot.co.uk/

I know the latter may be difficult for many to swallow, but I believe it is genuine because it deals with the same themes I have just outlined. Sadly, it has been largely discredited by the Catholic Church, which is a shame. Nevertheless, I still believe it to be true.

Best wishes,
Paul.

#16
It's not going to happen David. I think we need to be realistic. As a church organist I have witnessed a sharp decline in weddings taking place in church in the past few years. People generally find church dull or embarrassing, and would more than likely view organs as being dull as well. You are living in a dreamworld if you think this state of affairs could somehow be reversed and bring people flocking back. Your intellectual argument about the Creator is very interesting and stimulating but it would completely go above the head of your average celebrity/football obsessed cage-dwelling Brit.

Social media is where the future lies for humanity, sad to say. The old world of community values is on its way out. We are entering the age of the dystopian nightmare as presaged by Fritz Lang and George Orwell.

Best wishes,
Paul
#17
I am appalled by what happened in Cologne, and I am disgusted by the recent news that school exams in England are being moved to accommodate Ramadan. I think the question you should be asking is not why are churches closing but why is our culture being flushed down the toilet by the politically correct brigade?

You have to accept David, as I do as an active church organist, that the church age is coming to an end and the decline won't be reversed. The cathedrals will always exist but parish churches will gradually disappear from the cultural landscape.

Best wishes,
Paul
#18
The Devil is a servant of God. To create, one must first destroy that which previously existed, as the Hindu Goddess Kali does.  The Devil is also a part of our nature which we have to integrate.

Best wishes,
Paul
#19
People seem to be turning their backs on churches mostly because of the divisiveness you speak of. I can't see how you are going to turn that state of affairs around. Either people attend church to worship something that is perceived to be apart from them, or they realise that they are A PART of God and do not feel it is necessary to attend public worship to be pigeon holed by a particular creed or religion. Or of course, they become atheist. Though you seem to be searching for it, there is no middle ground here. The church age seems to be slowly coming to an end.

I have had what some people might term a 'spiritual experience' over the past two years and I fully concur with Gandhi when he said that God is not bound by religion. Though I am Catholic, only Hinduism could really explain what was happening to me. So for me, there is nothing wrong with a Christian doing yoga. After all, it did prolong the footballing career of Ryan Giggs.

Best wishes,
Paul.
#20
Cold logic states that it is not possible to bring the dead back to life. On the eve of the great festival of Samhain it seems strangely appropriate to consider such matters.

We know that in the natural world, energy can do great things. It can power cities, locomotives, and computers such as the one I am typing on. It gives us light in the dark. It cooks our food. Without it, our lives would be terrible. I know from experience that the lack of physical energy makes life very difficult. One's life is blighted by it and one cannot really take a full, active part in life. One is relegated to observing from the sidelines. In that respect, Energy is God. Without energy, nothing moves: 'In Him (Energy) we live and move and have our being'.

In my opinion, energy is surely the stepping stone, or bridge, between faith and science. It could explain many things.

Energy could explain the idea of 'morphic resonance': Energy is powering this computer, but information is also being stored on it. Energy could explain the creation of worlds: Energy is powering this computer but I am creating 'virtual lands' and railways on it via an installed simulator. ( Sceptics please note, you still require physical energy to write information down on a piece of paper, or to create a 'miniature world' such as a model railway or a garden.)

But energy is so much more than just raw power and heat and light. I posit that energy has an intellect and a knowing. This comes from morphic resonance and something known as The Akashic Records. I also would suggest that energy is also compassion and love beyond human measure.

Do I believe Jesus was raised from the dead? Yes, I do. How? He was returned to life via the harnessing of energy.  Did He perform miracles? Yes, He did? How? He harnessed energy.

If there are dualities such as heat and cold, darkness and light, then as well as a natural world there must logically exist a supernatural one, which is energy.

So, on the eve of the great festival of Samhain, the festival of the dead, perhaps we should not be thinking about 'ghosts' and instead be thinking about energy. We are all bits of energy wearing an overcoat. It is just that ghosts don't require their overcoats anymore...

Best wishes,
Paul.