The first laundry load it doing its thing and due at 9:20am. Today I may visit Sharen, since it was New year’s day that I last saw her and because she explicitly said ‘See you next week!’ She is intuitive about certain things and because of her age, I listen attentively.

Tomorrow lunch with John, on Friday with Herman and upcoming is our ethnic dinner with my neighbour. Plus, the first of the year breakfast with former colleagues, with just before that my Sunday talk on ‘Spirituality’. So, I’m busy! Just in case you wonder.

Yesterday I was too late to make an entry, but I did want to report that Jack and I had our monthly coffee talk, catching up with each other’s life holiday activities and if not solving the world problems, at least addressing them!
Time for laundry rotation and continuing at 9:32 till 10:10am.

Jack brought me a banana cake, courtesy of his wife Vangie. It will have to compete at coffee and tea time with left over Christmas cake, but I may just have to keep trying both in order to do due diligence! Thanks Vangie, the banana cake tastes like the winner.

My web server still is in hibernation and I’m exploring alternatives; I’ll make a decision before the end of the week. Last night I gave some thoughts to my upcoming talk, while being a bit frustrated that I cannot bring a focus to it while I keep exploring alternatives. However, it appears that I may have found the seedling for such a focus, one which will mean quite a change in the approach I take for my talks; see below under writings, but coffee first at 9:45am.

Last night I was reading in Mircea Eliade’s ‘A History of Religious Ideas’ volume one (1) chapter 13 on Zoroastrianism. I already had been exploring this topic in the two sources mentioned a few days ago. However, the ‘binding idea’ that I hoped to find for my talk, remained elusive. I kept shifting from shamanism as source of spirituality to its trace in Zarathustra’s religious ideas and then via the spiritual disciplines of established religions, on to our current notions of ‘spirituality’. No shortage of ideas, but how to hold it all together?

As this long foregoing sentence shows, I was wandering without an aim and … I’m back again from laundry at 10:41am. So, yesterday evening I returned to an after sleep notion that awoke me, about Zarathustra as a prophet and some associated notions regarding the ‘spiritual’ activities that my friends Thomas and Gabriella are engaged in. In this dream scene I was going through a box of papers trying to find an attractive illustration that I wanted to show my friends and may be even give to them. I did not find it, but woke up instead.

During my commiserations last night, I went over the above mentioned post hypnogogic scenes again and concluded that they had the flavour of teachings, of prophetic activity. Zarathustra is an example par excellence of a prophet and the work of my friends is also a building activity within the frame work of their own interest.

I compared this with my own approach, which is one of exploration and acquiring insights, but very light on making a commitment to a certain path forward. Now, this is not the first time that the theme of teaching surfaces with me and neither is the idea of the need to make a commitment.

So, I slowly to question my lack of showing a direction based on my studies, talks and findings of the last number of years. The need for application started to announce itself in me and with it focus and energy became available. To walk the path of the ‘Prediker’ [Preacher in Dutch] or the Ecclesiastes is new and scary to me, because I now expose myself to criticism since I have taken a position, but humankinds ‘boundary situation’ requires that kind of action.

The last dryer load is due in ten (10) minutes and I have formulated the start of a new initiative for myself. And with that I sign off at 11:16am and later today at 8:53pm.