The thought started with Robin Hood. Wondering if it has any basis in pieces of reality, thinking through the storyline put forward in the film Prince of Thieves. Of the crusades, the absent king, hiding in the woods, and the fight to save England, apparently. But it wasn’t to free England, was it? No, it was to fight to save it for sovereignty and free it from the grip of greedy usurpers they say. Taxing the very soul out of the people and creating unneccessary poverty. That tale was set in the late 12th century, but it could be today, couldn’t it? And because so many things have been twisted to fit the narrative, or simply changed to rewrite reality I can’t help rethinking old stories, sayings and things that once seemed just as they were.

Robin Hood – there have been a few people throughout the centuries that have apparently fought and won certain battles for this country, for justice and for freedom they say. Covered in my article When Someone Else Saves the Day, sharing my speculation about these all being fabricated and used for purpose as a beacon perhaps, to pretend the people won through sheer courage and luck. Or maybe they did, and the myths and legends just sprung up thereafter to make sure people wouldn’t forget it can be done, who can say for sure.

Because it is such a good story, I wondered if maybe it helps to conceal its real meaning, purpose or foundation. Making me think of a forest related saying ‘when you can’t see the wood for the trees’. That we are so used to it, and like to believe it might be real, that we miss the real lesson.

Fairy Tales – many of these are set in forest locations, which make for a good creepy setting once daylight fades away, or such thick coverage provides a gloomy atmosphere. Where I then think of another saying we have about being ‘out of the woods’ when it comes to being in peril or at risk. That in many instances, it is the woods themselves that becomes the oppressive environment, rather than an being an escape from one. A few of the films I mention in my articles Urban Myths and Gateway Trees give examples of how the woods can be used for effect when telling a tale. Again, maybe that’s why stories often have dark and creepy forests; to try and give you a preset psychological idea that being in the woods can be a bad thing. That nursery rhyme of ‘If you go down to the woods today’ providing a bigger and perhaps more terrifying surprise than you would like, if you believe such things.

In real life however, it seems that forested areas are on the list to be restricted and removed for the general masses. They wouldn’t want you to have access to something that provides shelter, is a resource for building and heat, can provide food, creates an ecosystem and can offer you safety off the ground. Trees really are wonderful, and grouped together provide an awesome network which nature manages itself, and continues to provide all of the above as long as it can. We would do well to look after them…

(c) MKW Publishing

It does seem apparent that this country no longer wants independent, self-sustaining people and communities. The moves towards everyone being a dependent is chugging along, and has been in some capacity for decades, and even centuries, slowly chipping away at the sense of self, overall identity, expectations, security and rights.

Marriage – people seem to go down that road for many reasons. Social reasons, economic reasons, religious reasons, and so on. Being in love isn’t enough. You have to show it with a license, contract, a ritual, and then rules thereafter. Binding you and your spouse to the state as much as each other. I personally have been down that road twice now, and divorced twice, and before that, hadn’t given that much real thought towards the whole system. Because you are brought up to think it’s normal and expected, with old words like barren and spinster hanging around from earlier decades to help to influence decisions. Yet there is another side to it that I began considering over the years, of how the ‘rules of marriage’ were set up to be of benefit, not for love or commitment.

And who benefits from that arrangement? Unfortunately, men will be slightly in the firing line here, but they have been used for purpose as much as women have. Because it seems that some of the previous ‘rules’ in society towards women, directly held them back and down from individual opportunity, some things only being possible with a husband. Like having a bank account or dealing with finances. You know, the thing that ‘they’ decided was essential for sustaining yourself, was restricted, unless, you had a man around to do it for you – either husband, father or I guess sibling. So, like mentioned above, many people settled or got married just so they could live, could eat and actually ‘be allowed’ to take part in society in what we consider today as normal. If women wanted to breed, they had to be married or great shame would be heaped upon them, or the children would be taken away, adopted or hidden. Not so much for men. Women have been used as pawns for the longest time, and the result of much of that appears to be that many women picked men, that ordinarily wouldn’t have had a chance if it was just down to love and treating your partner with respect.

We even have arranged marriages as a species, which seems like a handy way to continue a tradition of making sure your offspring marry and breed, however, I see a psychological problem with and one that spreads into online dating in my mind. Because there is a similarity in my mind, where you vet the potential candidate, check out their history, their stats, what they are offering and so on, like the parents would with an arranged marriage. Taking away any spontaneity or a chance meeting face to face, it becomes an ordered and arranged affair.

Making women dependent on men, and men dependent on the state. I have already written about a certain aspect of this in Digging for Gold, or Freedom? examining the obstacles and conditions that seem to have led to that strategy developing. Then, strangely, a change occurred and suddenly women weren’t just allowed to work, they were allowed their own finances, full on careers and what we would call ‘freedom’ to do what they wanted, on their own if they wanted. But it wasn’t that simple, because in that there were also rules you were supposed to follow about having a career or family, not both, with shame still being wheeled out when needed, from both sides. Because the mindset of generations of conditioning doesn’t just disappear or change overnight, or in one decade or even two. It takes time and a fair amount of work to make people think how you would like them to, as my article Consumerism discusses. But now you had a changing landscape, where the state doesn’t seem to want anyone having any opportunity anymore, no freedom or choice or long-term plans.

And them being involved in people’s relationships, is just one of the many intimate interferences of the ‘rulers’ into people’s personal matters. Along with your birth, your health, education, finance, and death, they are also there to facilitate an upgrade or downgrade to your relationship status, or when you grow your family, after they themselves have put the rules of those relationships and family in place. Forcing you to adhere to the ‘terms of society’, with exclusion and torment if you don’t do as you are told. Quite a busted-up system really, where we are ‘allowed to adult’ with certain rights we are told we have, but are actually treated very much like children. And it does seem as though a rather childish tone has overtaken society currently, with the most childish and immature attitudes coming from the government itself. But if you get to always spend someone else’s money, and have no responsibility for that, then I guess it does lead to an entitled, childish attitude. But if we are the ones funding them, surely that means they are ones who are dependents…

(c) MKW Publishing

A reading of my article – Patterns or Pareidolia?

(c) MKW Publishing

They say that sleeping is something that is indistinguishable from death within our consciousness, where the subconscious can sometimes apparently roam as might happen with an NDE (Near Death Experience) or a mind-altering experience. Yet most people do not have an NDE on a regular basis, or so they think. In Dreamy, or Terrifying? I discuss a certain angle of sleep and its related ‘activities’. But when there is speculation of being able to ‘leave’ this physical plane while unconscious, and that we all need sleep, I thought of sayings we have for things related to sleeping and being dead –

Sleeping like the dead – I always believed this to be about the how deeply you are asleep, and if you are able to be woken easily or not.

Dead to the world – as with this one, so deeply asleep that you are completely cut off from the ‘real world’ while your mind is actually somewhere else.

Dead tired – when you are so tired you feel like you are dragging yourself around, and have become as weighty as a corpse perhaps. On the brink of sleep, where your body and mind start initiate the sleep phase, whether you are ready for it or in the right location or not.

Death warmed up – not usually attritibuted to sleep, but to a waking state and often one of illness. Where you feel so rotten and would benefit from sleep or at a minimum some rest, but have to keep going about your day as you normally would. The wording making me think you have checked out to that ‘sleep/death’ state, but your body has to keep going through the motions of an animated corpse. Hence, death warmed up.

Land of the living – often said as ‘back to the land of the living’, again usually around illness, a phase that sometimes is known to precede actual death, but is also one that more often than not, will require sleep and rest. But saying you have come back to somewhere, means in a way, you think you were somewhere else.

There is talk that death is just an altered state of our consciousness, and what we believe to be ‘life after death’, is in fact, just another dimension of existence we inhabit after our physical body and the material world is no longer of use. And one we have ended up calling The Other Side. But if consciousness does exist outside of the brain and body, it stands to reason that once the physical has expired, whatever existed within that, then just carries on existing somewhere else.

Imagine living two lifetimes every day, one that what we know as the waking day for two thirds of it, and a shorter portion allocated for the sleeping one, yet both existing as separate lifetimes running simultaneously, playing tag with each other. While you are awake here, you are asleep there, kind of thing, neither ceasing to exist just because the other ‘wakes up’. Like day and night, a perpetual hand over each day from dark to light and back again, but just as sometimes the moon isn’t always visible at night, and sometimes can be seen during the day, it’s not always as clear cut as we think. Asleep or awake? Dreaming or reality? Or even alive or dead? How does our consciousness understand the differences in those definitions I wonder, and realised that perhaps it doesn’t…

(c) MKW Publishing