No two men can be found who may be said to be outwardly and inwardly united. The evidences of discord and malice are apparent everywhere, though all were made for harmony and union. The Great Being saith: O well-beloved ones! The tabernacle of unity hath been raised; regard ye not one another as strangers. Ye are the fruits of one tree, and the leaves of one branch.
(Bahá’u’lláh Gleanings CXII)
As I was in between switching my focus from one Eliot (Thomas Stearns) to another (George), I needed more time to ponder on why Middlemarch, her masterpiece, resonates so much more strongly with me than The Waste Land. Given that George Eliot is praised for the skill with which she conveys the consciousness within, it seems appropriate to republish this sequence which is a fictional attempt to project my inscape into words. It also gave me the chance to add two more possibly closing posts to the sequence. Here’s the second and possibly last.
It is one of those rare days in recent times when the pressure of other problems has subsided for a while. During the night my mind was playing around with ideas about how I could build earth, heart and art into some kind of mnemonic to help me create and sell a plan to the two remaining fragments of my Parliament of Selves. I toyed with the idea of a balloon, rounded like the earth with wings shaped like the two sides of the heart, rising to higher levels of understanding with the heat generated by burning the gas of reflection. Then came the idea of an arrow head, the heart as its shaft, earth and art as its sides leading to a point and reflection as the material it was made from. A couple of other equally unworkable ideas passed through my mind before I fell asleep.
Fortunately Roberto and Christine did not appear in any dream: I was far too unprepared for such an encounter.
Once I was awake, with time on my hands, I made a start. Right now I’m staring at the fruits of two hours of scribbling and sketching. A way of capturing what I most want to hold on to as my purpose and how I need to turn it into action is really beginning to take shape.
Before I try to finalise it. I decide to do what I often do when I want to free my mind to think creatively – I’ll go for a walk. I grab my keys and the cap I wear to keep the sun out of my eyes and head for the door. It may be no coincidence that I’m dressed in green.
I’m already clear that I want, as part of my plan, to slow down, reflect and take the time to explore the reality around me and connect more with the people who cross my path. As I walk I spot the familiar holly bush with purple flowers from another plant trying to push their way through to daylight. As usual I keep walking until, suddenly, I ask myself, ‘Why not take a closer look this time? That’s what you’ve always really wanted to do.’ So, I do something I very rarely allow myself – I turn round and walk back.
I’m not sure why I find that so hard. It’s partly my hurry up and partly my fear of looking odd or stupid. This time I say to myself, ‘It doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks. I’m not doing any harm. It doesn’t matter if I’m late back home. I’m going back.’
I notice how the plant has somehow pushed itself through the densely packed holly bush. The five purple petals are held in place, it seems, by a sunburst at the centre. I decide to take a photograph. My aphantasia means that no matter how long I stare at something I cannot visualise it at all even moments later, and I want to keep this image to look at later so I can at least identify the flower.
I walk away quite pleased with myself for defying my script. Only a few steps later I have another chance to do the same again. Across the road I see the stonewall draped in flowers that always gives me a boost as I walk by it on that side of the road sometimes. I risk my own displeasure and cross over. My phone comes out again to take a picture before I get too close to get the whole wall in shot.
As I move on after taking the picture I realise I’ve been spotted by the owner of the house who’s sitting on the path below her front window chatting to a friend. This time, instead of speeding up to avoid embarrassment I shout, ‘I couldn’t resist taking a picture of your wall with all its beautiful plants.’
‘The aubretia, you mean. They’re lovely.’ She starts to get up.
‘Don’t let me spoil your day,’ I protest. She keeps walking towards me. ‘Even the daisies on your lawn are lovely.’
‘I only trim a path round the edge to show I’m looking after it,’ she explains. ‘I’ve got ants’ nests as well. They feed the woodpeckers.’
‘We’re trying to do the same,’ I add, ‘though some of the neighbours don’t like it.’
She put her thumbs to her nose and wiggled her fingers in a gesture of contempt.
‘Just how I feel,’ I say laughing as I begin to move away. ‘You’ve done a great job. Well done.’ As I move on she moves back to sit down again grinning back at me.
On a bench in the park about halfway up the hill I break my hurry up script again and sit to jot some notes down to remind me of what just happened.
Once I get home I finalise a diagram on my laptop that seems to capture the essence of what I want to remember. I print a copy off to paste into my Ideas notebook which contains all my earlier scribblings. As I look at the printout I feel the tingling down my spine that signals something important has just happened. Will I be ready for my encounter with Chris and Roberto? I think so.
When my wife has gone to see a friend, I put my ear phones on and play the old familiar meditation track. It doesn’t take long before they let me know I’m on line and they can hear my thoughts.
‘Can you see what I am seeing?’ I ask as I open the Photos app on my laptop and select the latest version of my diagram.
‘We can,’ Chris assures me.
‘Good. So let’s get started. I guess I don’t have to teach my grandmother to suck eggs and explain why I’ve got my heart and the earth overlapping.’
‘’Course not,’ Chris speaks for them both again. I assume Roberto is nodding but we can’t see each other working this way.
‘OK. D’you get what I mean by areas of concern and spheres of influence?’
Here Roberto steps in. ‘Mires and Humfreeze always had an interest in tracking your reading and I’ve inherited what they learned. You’ve borrowed that idea from Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, where he writes about circles of influence and circles of concern, and the need not to strain yourself by extending your circle of concern too far outside your circle of influence, right?’
‘Absolutely right. And the situation is really acute in terms of inscape and landscape. These are not just neighbourhood social situations like your place of work, which are bad enough. Here the discrepancy between what we can influence and how far our anxieties could extend is massive. In his mystical work, The Seven Valleys, Bahá-u-lláh quotes these lines from a poem: ‘Dost thou reckon thyself only a puny form/When within thee the universe is folded?’ I believe both inside and outside space extends across immeasurable distances. So, we’ve really got to make sure our circle of concern isn’t fuelled by any delusional belief that we can alone impact significantly upon those interconnected realities.’
‘How did you sort that one out then?’ Chris wonders sardonically, clearly believing I’m in cloud cuckoo land. ‘And what do you mean by alone? I hope you’re not relying on some kind of god to be on your side.’
‘Well, I haven’t really sorted it out completely. I’ve just got an action plan based on what I can do and how I can do it with the best hope of lifting my understanding a few millimetres nearer the truth in what remains to me of mortal time. Hopefully that will also enhance my ability to influence the climate of my mind and of the world to the maximum extent possible. I know my impact will be tiny, but as George Eliot makes clear at the end of Middlemarch ‘the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs”. If enough people do the little that they can, huge changes can come about.’
Christine says nothing.
‘That makes some kind of sense, I suppose,’ Roberto quietly observes after a pause. ‘What exactly is your plan, then?’
‘That’s what I spell out in the orange box with the mnemonic CARE. This is taking hearticulture to a different level. That idea sank without trace for a while, which was probably no bad thing as it probably didn’t go far enough even though the basic idea was right. I didn’t have this core idea of CARE in my head at the time. It’s taken months of work since the middle of 2022 to get this far. I may not still have got it quite right but I think it’s good enough to make a start with. And if you believe in a god it will probably help but even if you don’t it will get you a long way, I believe.’
‘Listen,’ Christine blurts out. ‘I get most of the stuff you’ve tagged onto the care idea – consultation, altruism, connectedness, art etc – but you’re still making this reflection thing central, and the trouble with that is that it’s got that ‘Higher Self’ crap in the middle of it. I’m not sold on any kind of soul idea. I want something that works without that. I know you’re saying it should work without a god behind it, but how can you prove that?’
‘You said a while back that the proof of a pudding is in the eating,’ Emergioli interjected. ‘And that’s exactly the issue here. I buy the Higher Self idea: you don’t. But we can agree at least to support Pete in trying this out to see how far it gets us. Only if we act in unity will we find out either way. And I feel that even if you don’t believe in a spiritual dimension, a lot about reflection makes sense. It’s not just a Bahá’í thing – you may not realise that Pete first came across it in an Existential Philosopher’s book. Consciousness is not its contents – it’s like a mirror. If we begin to realise we’re not just what we think, feel, remember and believe but a capacity in pure form to do all that, it changes us. We can step back from the identities that create divisions within and between us. We can even lift our consciousness way beyond blending the two hemispheres. We can get closer to the ideal of an understanding heart, even if we do not believe that achieving that proves we have a soul. Can you get on board with that, Christine?’
‘That just might be possible,’ Christine grudgingly admits. ‘It’s going to be hard going though. Is all that stressful gruntwork really necessary?’
‘I think so,’ I reply. ‘Can I take a bit more time to explain?’
‘Please do,’ she says. ‘It might help.’
‘OK. As I see it, where heart and earth overlap, captured in the word hearth in my dream all those years ago, is where we need to focus if we are to make the planet which is our home, sustainable and flourishing. We need to take care, to nurture, if we are to flourish. To do that will not be an easy task. We’re caretakers of the planet and its climate, not its masters. Caretaking in this context is a demanding art of the highest order. The right thing to do, to our modern mechanical mind, often feels counter-instinctual. We have to force ourselves against our indoctrinated grain and immerse ourselves in our connectedness with nature and every form of life on earth including our fellow human beings, just as some wiser previous cultures did. Art and science can both help us realise the need for this and suggest the tools we need to tackle the problems we find. Then it would feel deeply intuitive to do the right thing.
‘To reprogramme ourselves, to work on our inscape, to heal the climate of our minds, and to bring some kind of peace into this warring world, we need to master the powerful skill of reflection to help us replace our machine mind with the understanding heart, to use Bahá-u-lláh’s terms, which lies hidden at the core of our being. A belief in God admittedly would help us feel we can succeed in doing this: without such a belief it will probably harder to maintain the necessary effort. But, believe me, if we don’t strain very ounce of our being to re-landscape our hearts we’ll never be able to sustain the necessary effort to heal the earth of all the harm we’ve inflicted upon it. Maybe realising that if we don’t lift our game in both respects most of our children will die might help.’
‘I’ll buy that last point,’ Christine concedes reluctantly, ‘and will give this my best shot.’
‘Thank heavens for that,’ sings Emergioli, probably causing Christine’s eyebrows to raise in exasperation at the celestial reference.
‘So, are we there, d’you think? Can we all climb on board the ark of care and see how far it takes us across the stormy waters in store for us right now?’ I ask, holding my breath.
‘Yes,’ they both say in harmony. The music stops. The conversation ends. I am left hoping that I have the conviction, time and energy to make some real progress with this plan. Wish me luck and if you are a believer, please spare me some prayers!
Everybody Means Something 
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