The lost children - 4th Sept 07

It's a basic principle of spirituality that you get, in life, exactly what you want. If you wanted something other than what you receive now, you would do whatever it takes to obtain it. You may say that you want peace, love, a quiet life, a healthy environment or what you will, but if your actions aren't uncompromisingly directed towards it, then nothing will happen. It's like the old joke about the man who prayed to God that he'd win the lottery but never bought a ticket.

Linked to that is the principle that life is not about big bad corporations, governments, or armies versus innocent little people. Because of the religious ideas that underpin our culture, we are accustomed to see the world as a battleground between God and Satan. Those of us who don't believe in God or Satan usually devise some kind of dualistic theology, so to speak, around such issues as the Middle East, animal rights, nuclear power, or the environment.

In either case, we are prepared to give our favourite knights in shining armour, or avenging angels, any amount of power to do whatever they like to bring about what we see as justice. We don't ask ourselves the obvious question: given there is something going on that I don't like, what am I doing to perpetuate it?

This blog is called Spirituality and the Standard because it seeks to pick up on something the London Evening Standard wrote about in the week just gone, and examine it. I'm a Londoner first and foremost, and most people who live here read the Standard, if only to have something to do when public transport breaks down. So I'm starting with what Camila Batmanghelidjh wrote on 4th September 2007 about her work with vulnerable kids, and what it says about us. More can be found about her on http://www.kidsco.org.uk/.

The first thing to say is that the problems she describes are completely within our power to deal with. Her organisation is in danger of being unable to continue because she cannot get funding of £3 million from the Government. It costs up to £190,000 per annum for one child in youth custody. In the context of what we are spending on prisons, courts, lawyers, probation officers, and police, £3 million is a few crumbs from the Home Office budget. In the meantime, we are happy to support, and vote for, politicians who promise ever more punitive measures. To what end? No punishment is as severe as an abusive upbringing or indeed as what gang members will do to each other for not showing enough "respect".

She tells a disturbing tale of drug-addled parents, and the effect that their way of life has on their children. Most people think when reading this kind of thing, oh well, that's somebody else's problem, not mine, but that is a fallacy. It is everybody's problem. Every joint you smoke is putting money into the hands of criminals.

It isn't only illegal drugs that are the problem. I have worked with people who, quite literally, cannot sleep without sleeping pills. We used to have a secretary who looked fine on the surface, but she was held together with anti-depressants, and collapsed into a tearful heap when they were withdrawn. Add to that the statistics for alcohol consumption these days, and I think you'd be hard put it to find anyone who isn't chemically dependent.

This, again, is a completely avoidable situation. If you enquire into the reason why you took whatever substance it was, the answer is going to be a combination of two things. One, life didn't seem to be enough fun, or enough exitement, or enough peace, or enough anything else. Two, everybody else was doing the same. This is because we are conditioned to think that we need something from without to be happy. We don't, in fact. We have everything within us, including the power to choose to be happy. We just haven't, for the most part, been shown how to tap into our inner resources.

That is why I would not take any education system seriously unless it taught children how to meditate. There is no limit to what the human mind can visualise, and therefore to how exciting the world can be, if you take time to go within. It is easier to do this when you have been practising it since you were a small child, than it is to turn your thinking round, like a rather unwieldy tanker, and start a meditative discipline in your late forties.

Once you've made the choice to do so, it will make a difference. You will know it has made a difference when those closest to you remark how much more at peace you are than you were before.

The principle is the same in other life relationships. If men and women really loved their partners, demand for sex workers and pornography would dry up in no time. It is within the power of anyone to drop the expectations and the demands, and to choose to love.

If we carry into our politics a dualistic view of the world, we will divide it arbitrarily into goodies and baddies, and we will punish the bad guys and put them into prison. And if there isn't enough prison space, why, we will just build some more. We are at present taking our liberty away from ourselves at a bewildering rate, and it isn't working.

If our politics were based on a view of the world as an integrated whole, in which we seriously consider how the behaviour of all of us affects life around us, it is much more likely to work.

My opinions on anything are subject to change. My love for you will not change.