Yesterday I was able, with some help of my provider, to get FileZilla to do its upload duties again. Two entries had been left behind and those turned out to be the last ones for April. We - me with my computer and the soft ware - are still operating in the temporary mode, but at least I can do my web postings. Later on to day lunch with Herman and produce shopping at DJ’s.

The past week has been busy since my last entry on Monday. On Tuesday I walked down to the library to copy some pages on the religions of Africa. I intent to make this my topic for the summer presentation. On my way back I stopped for a much needed hair cut making use of the nice weather for that day.

On Wednesday evening I attended a presentation “A Showy Front and a Shabby Back” at Castell Library. It had as topic content the history of Canada’s Native People Residential Schools, the callous policies of its implementation and detrimental effects on its pupils. The presenter, Dr J. Pettit of MRU was very well informed, direct and comprehensive in her presentation.

The children were punished for being Indian and in the way of White people’s settlement.

The first residential school dates back to 1620, while the last one closed its doors in 1996! Considering Canada’s early precarious state as a colony and as a nation later, combined with the social values of the times, I think that alternatives would have been few.

However, what hurts and is central to this story is the viciousness and deprivation of its implementation by Government as initiator and the Churches as executors. The children were punished for being Indian and in the way of White people’s settlement.

Yesterday afternoon I shopped some groceries for Juliet, who I visited in the aft and for dinner. We chatted mostly and did some internet cruising for news and info.
9:48am, coffee time and back at 10:02am.

Last week I occupied myself at various times with our existence as humans within the totality of existence as we know it. Our experience as humans has a large variety of aspects and qualities, such as our enjoyment of physical experiences, the intense sufferings at other time and those of ethereal beauty visual, mental - poetry - or musical.

All our human traditions attempt to give now, or have so in the past, a place to this large variety and at times difficult to reconcile reality. This, then often results in a repression of the irreconcilable aspect for processing and assimilation at a later date, if ever in this life.

Yet, looking back over the 60k years that we as homo sapience have been making our home on this planet, we cannot deny that much improvement has come about. All our human traditions over that time tell us about the reality of the experience of a material, as well as one of non-material in character.

It is my conviction that observed experiences must not be dismissed at any time, regardless as to whether they fit the mould and model that we have formulated ordering human overall experience.

At this point I want to introduce advice we received as students of Physics, regarding the nature of light. The advice went like this: It is helpful to think of light as consisting of waves and particles. This, because light can be shown to behave as particle or waves, depending on the experimental arrangement. The debate was started by Huygens and Newton at the time and was never resolved.

What I want to emphasize here is the nature of the advice. Our physics professor did not say this is the way it is. No, no! It was about the best way to think about things, the way that was most helpful in understanding the nature of light.

No, no! It was about the best way to think about things, the way that was most helpful in understanding the nature of light.

Here, I want to make an analogous case here to understand better our human existence. We are in the material body for some of the time and then exist in a non-material state at an other time, alternating between these two. Each of these states having conscious, unconscious, actions and abilities inherent to it. The totality of our experience is made up of these two states, which we are trying to comprehend as best as we can.

The fact that we do not understand all of this is no objection to entertaining it as a best explanation at this time. Many scientific theories are incomplete and even wrong at times, while still providing useful explanations. For those in the know, positional astronomy that was used until GPS came around, is a case in point. It posits the Earth at the centre of the universe and basis its useful calculation on this erroneous assumption.

The advantage of my suggestion that our experience as conscious beings alternates between the state of being in our known human body and the lesser known non-material - but physical state, is that we can do not have to throw away, ignore or repress evidence about human experience that does not fit the material only model.

I suggest that we keep all the pieces of the puzzle in order to get the complete picture of what our existence is about.
<10:45am~.