about me

What is life? It is the flash of a firefly in the night. It is the breath of a buffalo in the wintertime. It is the little shadow which runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.
Crowfoot, Blackfoot warrior and orator

first impressions
My first recollections at two or three years old were of the unfathomable complexity of adult activity and wonder at their knowledge and skill. And their size and strength. I eagerly waited to get to that stage of life. By the time I was 5 or 6 doubt had crept in. Many obvious things were invisible to adults and some absurdities were taken for granted as true.

By the time I was 11 I reasoned that every one lives in their own personal reality with their own personal view of themselves and of time and space and things in it which they believe is fact. All this arising from memories of their experiences.

These personal realities with their wilderness of various presumptions, measurements, theories, psychoses, sciences and religions more or less serve everyday purposes like communicating, making a living or driving a car but how true are they?

I further theorised that there might be an underlying absolute reality that triggers all those different beliefs and world views And that there was no way a person or anyone or anything else could know it. Or was there?

If humans like other animals just evolve to survive and reproduce there seems to be no extra need for any of their ideas to be sensible or accurate How can anyone find out what the world (if there is one) is really like and if so what it is really going on in it?

church
Every week on the way to Sunday School I passed another church and its hall where I gradually realised they had Sunday school as well. One Sunday at the age of 5, instead of walking past, I walked in.

It turned out that there was no need to do or say much. They had to deal with me. And being uncertain where I came from and unable to extract a clear answer from me they put me into a Sunday School class. I had learnt the power of doing nothing.

This Sunday School had a quite different feel to it to mine. They seemed more relaxed and friendly and less imposing. These were ordinary folk not the power elite.

There was a sand tray – a table standing on 4 legs with a huge tray of sand covering it about 6 inches deep – about twice the size of the one at my Sunday School. And there were the wise men, the donkeys, camels, various people and Jesus obvious by his garb and halo. But the figures were twice the size of the ones at my Sunday School and astonishingly Jesus had a different face . . . . . . . there were different versions of Jesus!! None of the kids or the teachers seemed to notice the weirdness of their Jesus. Cracks started to open up in my world view.

This Sunday school was preferable in many ways but this visit would be the only visit – I sensed that questions were beginning to form in their minds about what I was doing there. When it was over I walked out as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

That was the beginning of the end of church and Sunday School for me. Kneeling in church hurt my knees and listening to the sermons gave me a headache. I had been to Sunday School far too many times and there was nothing new in it any more.

And I had begun to see through it. I had seen another Jesus. There were probably hundreds of different ones around the country. The Sunday School teachers were emphatic but hesitant. They lacked real confidence in what they were saying. They were saying ”the right thing” or making stuff up but they didn't actually know. Deep down they knew it was flaky and they were not able to admit it out loud.

smallness
A few months later at the age of six I discovered the power of smallness. One Sunday morning. I decided not to go to Sunday School and my parents told me in various ways but without any solid reasons that I had to go. But beneath their insistence a lack of conviction was detectable. What lengths they would go to? Would they drag me there?. They might not be up to the public spectacle but I was. I had had enough church. As the minutes dragged on and time was running out they became more and more agitated. And when it seemed they might possibly drag me to Sunday school I climbed the walnut tree. High in the tree on the slenderest of branches a big person could not get anywhere near a six year short of cutting the tree down. It was game over when my father turned the hose on me. A spectacular display of powerlessness. I was drenched but home clear. Sunday School was starting without me and I would never have to go again. Hours later after the sun had gone down I climbed down after anger had turned to anxiety and family won out over church. We had reached an unspoken agreement.

when you grow up
What are are you going to be when you grow up? I was speechless. No idea at all. The answer. came at six. I was going to be dead. There was certainty here. Everyone does it. And this elicited much more interesting responses than “no idea”.

What to do in the meantime was not so clear. After a very long time at the age when everyone was going to be something there were still no signs anywhere that hinted at any point to the sensations of existing.

What to do out of so many choices? On closer examination people seemed destined to do whatever their experiences and upbringing predisposed them to.

The view of one person is limited so experiencing as much as possible and particularly through the eyes of others was attractive. Helping others was pleasant and seemed least likely to turn out to be the wrong course just in case there turned out to be a wrong course so that seemed the way to go. Maybe something clearer would turn up as things progressed.

knowing
When I was little I was keenly aware of not knowing how everything worked. Fixing things was wonderful. It felt so good when something worked smoothly again. And it was astounding.

Adults more or less managed their day to day affairs but were tied down by conventional ideas that they doubted. This did not inspire confidence. I didn't want to wind up in the same boat.

My second year secondary physics teacher (a refugee with a Ph.D. in Physics) explained Newton's third law of motion (Colliding objects rebound with forces that are equal in force and opposite in direction). I checked with him if the earth would move ever so slightly and unnoticeably when I jumped up and down on it. He took the common-sense view that it would not. The earth was too heavy to move at all. Here was an exception to Newton's law. To demonstrate that a small force would not shift something that big he thumped the wall of our prefabricated wooden classroom very hard with the palm of his hand. The building shook. Newton's law stood the test yet again and the world view of teachers took a hit.

intuitive thinking
School was limiting. Science preached hypothesis but practised dogma. Why should I ignore the evidence of my own senses for fashionable theories?

When I left at 17 after years of narrow, deductive and linear thinking I took up chess to learn to think intuitively. Chess is a logical and analytic game but the intuitive chess player just moves the pieces instead of consciously planning the moves. This used to have a small dedicated following.

I played through hundreds of master games from chess books to absorb the logic of the game and then played with accomplished players. The games were enjoyable, I didn't lose them all and learned that you didn't have to prove everything and think through every decision in logical sentences. This was a relief. There were calculators inside that would work things out if they were given the chance.

And anyone could sleep on a problem and wake up in the morning with a more detailed and accurate answer than by sweating over it logically and methodically in valuable waking hours.

work
After a year or so fettling, horse-breaking, mustering, fencing and office work I did a Social Work course. I have worked as a Social Worker in Adelaide, London and Sydney apart from helping out in an antique and second hand business and a few months of mining and factory work.

A year or two after graduating I taught English, Social Studies and remedial English and Maths in a secondary school. A colleague observed that after 5 years of teaching you became a teacher. A quick look around confirmed this and looking further it seemed to hold true for most jobs. Was this reversible? Who wanted to become a teacher or anything else for that matter?

I spent no more than 5 years in a full time job but over the years probably became a therapist among other things. Limiting - but what's the alternative? – we all wind up being something or other eventually.

words
In one of the network of squats in London back in the 1970s we had our own childcare, vegetable gardens and food co-ops. Our food buyers travelled the world buying bulk grains and pulses from producers by the container. We had the best Pakistani Basmati rice in London at 10 pence a Kilo.

Our home-grown electrical manual was 4 double sided A4 pages stapled at the top left corner showing everything necessary to manage house wiring, on the go, without attracting the attention of the angel of death. It looked to be written by someone clear-headed but without the advantage of drafting, legal, publishing or electrical training. Clear and simple line diagrams of hands doing things showed each step.

The diagrams in the official government manual were beautifully and meticulously drafted and almost incomprehensible. There were hundreds of pages mostly repeating the same thing over and over in different ways and from different angles. You could spend a lifetime mastering it.

Most books can be refined to a couple of A4 pages without much loss of meaning by finding the right words and arranging them to minimise the ways they might be misinterpreted.

I am still looking for that one word that says everything. Until then johnbrasted.com aims for simple and effective paths to well-being.

know yourself
We experience nothing immediately. Information from events takes a short or longer time to reach us and then it take a second or minutes or longer to register a response. All of our experience is a memory of something not the thing itself that triggered the memory.

Everyone experiences events differently depending on their nature and their history.

To understand what is being read or experienced someone must know who they are because everything is being seen through the lens of their memories.

This website suggests strategies to unlock this understanding and to describe some of the things that get in the way.

These considerations are my main interest.