The demise of the ego

During the past week, being back at work full time (which for me means four days a week) I have become at times, almost painfully aware of just how over active my mind is. By this I mean that there seems to be this endless chatter going on in the background, in the periphery of my vision, which manifests itself as a vague feeling of dissatisfaction and unease. This seems to be borne from the fact that I do not like the life I have chosen, or more accurately, that my ego does not like the life that I have chosen.

The ego though is an illusion and not who I am, it is merely the inner manifestation of all my deepest fears and loathings, about not just life, but ultimately who and what I am. It is the part of me that wishes to deny my own divinity, for to accept this will mean that I am powerful beyond measure and have no need for the pettiness that the ego becomes embroiled in. This, like the various products that we sell at work, is merely a distraction designed to detract away from the fact that I am not just unique, but also divine - for God does not rest outside of us as some obscure and judgmental man, or even woman, but lives in the heart of every single one of us. The ego uses every means at its disposal in order to deny this very important fact, and will go to almost any lengths, including killing us slowly inside, through insanity or other means (Eckhart Tolle says that the over active mind is the greatest form of insanity) in order to get us to hide from the truth.

The expensive items we sell at work are not in the scheme of life important, but are things and trappings that we surround ourselves with in order to stay trapped on the perpetual treadmill called work. We are told that we must have these things, so we go out to work in order to buy them, getting into so much debt that we have to continually work harder, and thus have no time to be still and stop thinking. I see through the trap though and choose not to have these things in my possession. I still though have to sell them at work, and this is where the challenge lies.

It occurs to me that the reason I have chosen this particular job is because of the unique challenges that it brings - in other words to be in the illusion but not be part of it. This means that I can observe from a detached perspective all the goings on and all the ego talk of my colleagues and customers - two of my colleagues in particular act like overgrown school boys, practically drooling over video games and the latest technology as if they were some prize to be cherished, and talking about beer and women in much the same vein.

Some women would be mortally offended at this talk, but not me, I just grin silently to myself and observe the silliness and almost obsessiveness of the whole thing. And yet at the same time, I have been amazed this week at just how similar in some ways we are. I was having a conversation the other day with one of my male colleagues, as I helped with the delivery, about women who moan about there not being any good men and how they can't maintain a relationship and how lonely they feel, and in the next breath say how they value their independence and don't want to get tied down. There is a great paradox here that the majority of these women seem unaware of. No wonder men are so confused as to what women want - how can they know after all how to treat us if we do not know ourselves how we wish to be treated.

How though do I wish to be treated - as a human being with feelings and emotions, and with the knowledge that I am not infallible and need love and nurturing as much as the next person. I also perhaps more fundamentally, wish to be treated in the same way that others would wish to be treated - with courtesy, honesty, integrity and respect.

These are all qualities which the modern world seems to be lacking in - but qualities that I saw today in abundance. Today I was blessed to have a stall at the annual Brigitte Trust complimentary therapy day.

The weather blessed both us, and the couple who got married in that same church this afternoon at 2pm. Some 200 people came through the doors between 10.30 and 5pm, as I manned the stall on behalf of Waterstones in Epsom. This was a mutual arrangement between Sally, the organiser, Nick the manager of Waterstones, and myself, which the universe perfectly orchestrated. It meant that the Trust got someone to look after the stall for them, as did Waterstones, and I had some free space in which to sell my own books.

I took a total of around £88 which was not a great deal, and sold one pack of my own cards - quotes from my book for £3, so financially the day was a disaster. This is not though what the day was about, and the fact that I can write this at all, means that I have come a long, long way in the last three weeks.

It would have been nice to have sold at least one book - and the ego does its best to chatter away still about the unfairness of it all, and how others did so much better than I did, and how technically I lost money through spending on cups of tea and lunch etc, but then I remind it that actually it was Coran's turn for lunch, and as for tea, well I would have gone for walk to the nearby National Trust centre if I had not been at the fair, and so still would have bought tea and cake there anywhere!

I am then beginning to realise that complaining is a fast track to continued deep unhappiness and despair. It is borne from the need to be right and make someone else wrong - and therefore make us feel superior at the expense of others, for complaining about what we perceive as injustice, in any form - within the publishing industry, at work, or the fact that our neighbour can afford that new car that we can't, implies that this thing whatever it is, should not be happening, that it is not morally right. This implies judgment, of both others and ourselves and places us at the moral high ground as the wounded or injured party, but also on a self imposed pedestal. It it this sense of superiority that the ego feeds off and craves, as it is this that maintains it within the illusion, keeping us in the illusion.

So next time someone asks me who I am, I will remember a phrase uttered by Dr Stephen Franklin, the Doctor in Babylon 5, when he awoke from life saving surgery after being stabbed - "I am alive, everything else is negotiable."

Fair Trade for Authors !

I think when something like a large amount of book returns happens to an author, it is like any other type of grieving process - you go through many different stages before reaching acceptance - the angry stage - how could this have happened, what could I have done to prevent this, the let down stage - I have let myself and everyone else down etc, before one finally gets to the stage where one just surrenders to what has happened and tries to see it in a positive light instead.

Over lunch today, Coran and I watched an episode of Babylon Five, an extraordinary science fiction television series written and created by J Michael Straczynski - the episode we watched was entitled 'Whatever Happened to Mr Garibaldi'. There is a scene in that episode where one character Delenn, is watching a film of her lost lover whom she is pining for. It is a long story that will be familiar to fans of this series. I won't go into full details here, as it would take too long.

She blames herself for his disappearance, as it is her actions that led him to take risks. In the footage of him speaking that she is shown, he states "this is the hardest thing we've ever done, and frankly, it scares the hell out of me. But it has to be done. The job is to turn this around and make it into something positive. My dad always told me, that's the only way to deal with pain. You don't surrender, and you don't fight it. You turn it into something positive". This is what I now intend to do.

Yesterday then, I sent an email out to all those on my mailing list, and have had some wonderful responses and messages of support. One lady has offered to put the book on her new online shop and try and sell some copies at her local flea market; another chap in Australia has put me in touch with one of his writing pals whom this also happened to, and whom I am waiting to hear from. It was so lovely to hear from Malcolm, whom I hadn't heard from in over a year. His wife died just over a year ago, and we shared some quite personal correspondence and got to know each other very well for 2 people who live on opposite sides of the world. It was lovely then to hear from him after all this time. Good things then can come from adversity.

Yesterday though was a busy day. I spent an hour or so on the phone in the morning ringing various branches of Borders, and managed to get at least some interest. Bournemouth are definitely ordering one copy, which is a start, and the rest asked me to email them with further information. Will keep an eye on the number that Gardners have in stock over the next day or so and see what happens. I am sure I will the first to know when they need more copies, and have got some quotes from DHL in case!

If the number in stock does not drop, I will ring those stores again next week, when I get my day off and catch up with them again to see what the interest is.

Later on in the afternoon I went through the list of contact details for Blackwells stores - an academic book chain based on university campuses, sending them a copy of that review from The Self Publishing Magazine that I had last year which said that the book was ideal as a companion for students of social sciences. Will keep an eye on what happens there as well, as this might be something that could open quite a few doors and lead to interesting opportunities all round.

It even looks like the local paper might write a piece and help me to shift some copies - they will ring me at work tomorrow, all being well, to discuss things further. I am then beginning to think that those books being sent back might turn out to be one of the best things that could have happened.

In the shower this morning like one does, I had the inspiration to write an article entitled Fair Trade for Authors. This seems topical at the moment, as we are in the midst of fair trade fortnight. I did some research of my own on the web and came across an article entitled Fair Trade Books which was posted on a site entitled Times Emit last October. Interesting reading it makes too.

The author, Peter Collingridge, makes the point that being green seems high on the agenda at the moment within the book industry, with moves towards firm sale and the use of recycled, or as least sustainable paper. There is though, to the best of his knowledge, only one carbon neutral publisher, Alasdair Sawday.

Each year, thousands upon thousands of unsold and returned books go to landfill sites and end up being pulped. Most of these are mint copies, which have never been opened, much less read, and this to my mind is little short of criminal. His colleague, James cited a Times Higher Education Supplement piece which calculated that what with production and transport, the average paperback eats its way through 4.5kWh of energy on its journey to the reader. This is equivalent to an extra 100,000 cars on our roads.

The answer lies partly in digitisation in the form of e-books, but this is not the only option, as print on demand also has a role to play. E-books are all well and good for educational text books and the like, but will never totally replace traditional paper copies. Nothing is like the look and feel of a real paper book, and e-books cannot come close to the experience of browsing in a library or book store. Enter then print on demand, as the obvious solution to this problem.

Both Peter and James make the point that book sellers use the returns system to facilitate their pile ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap attitude to literature. Returns are bad for the environment, and poisonous to literature, as they eat into publishers profits, meaning there is less money going into the system with which to not only pay their own staff, but also the authors. Let's not forget that without us to actually write the books, there would be no publishing industry in the first place.

Writing has never been one of the more lucrative professions, but authors have never been so badly paid, or so exploited, with most of the money going to the select few, who are either very well known or married to someone else who is! It is time then to consider the practise of Fair Trade Books (as opposed to Fat Cat Books), where authors are paid a fair price, publishers print using organic, sustainable, and ethically produced paper and ink, using local printers rather than overseas conglomerates, and where book sellers stop demanding huge discounts and sale or return, helping to promote local authors. Peter is not joking when he writes this, and neither am I, it is not a joking matter.

There has been a revolution going on in the publishing industry which began 10 years ago when Anthony Rowe first brought print on demand to the British Isles in partnership with Gardners. It started as a very gentle whisper, but has become a shout which refuses to go away and can only get louder. If publishers wonder why so many are choosing to self publish, they should take a look at the shameful way in which authors are treated - not as human beings, with feelings and lives and families to support, but as disposable commodities and cash cows to be taken advantage of and milked.

I plan then to expand on this article over the next couple of days, and see what transpires. I have already started the ball rolling by opening up a discussion on self publishing on a book lovers site (for those who read rather than write books) and it is making a few waves, and hopefully will begin to change attitudes towards those who write the books - this is the way to go, for if you can reach the readers and change their attitudes then it seems to me that anything is possible.

As they also say in Babylon Five "if you're falling off a cliff, you may as well try and fly. You've got nothing to lose." This girl has found her wings, and is getting ready to take that jump - to step into the abyss with eyes firmly open, and see what happens.

God Delusion to be banned in Turkey?

I see from the Independent that Richard Dawkins' Turkish publisher Kuzey Publications is being hauled over the coals by religious fundamentalists. It seems that they are being threatened with legal action by prosecutors who claim that their publication of Dawkins' best selling work The God Delusion insults believers. I don't know they are so upset about myself, as the Turkish translation has apparently only sold 6000 copies since publication.

Erol Karaaslan, the founder Kuzey Publications could though face between six months and twelve months in jail if found guilty. Prosecutors are still debating over to press charges.

It is not the first time that Dawkins' has come against such problems in Turkey, since it seems that Islamic fundamentalists also tried to ban his earlier work The Selfish Gene.

I don't understand the furore personally or even why it was deemed necessary to publish in this territory in the first place - the book discusses Christianity more than other religions, and Turkey is a predominantly Muslim country. It also then puzzles me as to exactly who has been offended. Having read the book myself, I don't recall it even mentioning Islam.

Neither is Dawkins the first author to face controversy. The article states that Nobel prize winning novelist Orhan Pamuk and Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink were just two several dozens writers to be charged last year under a controversial law that makes it a crime to insult Turkishness, whatever that means. Pamuk was acquitted, but Dink – who was murdered earlier this year by a teenage ultra-nationalist - was found guilty.

What though does it mean to be Turkish, or for that matter, any other nationality? Does one have to be born in that country or have parents who were, or is it sufficient to have lived there for a certain number of years. If so, then how many? Is a child of Jamaican parents who emigrated to Britain in the 1950's any less British that I am - of course not, for in their hearts they still think of themselves as British, and that is what counts.

This also brings to mind an episode from my favourite science fiction series Babylon Five entitled Infection. It is I believe an episode from series two. It basically revolves around a machine on an uninhabited planet that seems hell bent on destroying everything in its path. When they ask what the machine actually wants it transpires that it was put in place to protect its former inhabitants, the Icarans from raiders by destroying anything that was not pure Icaran. The predictable result was of course the destruction of the entire race. Muslims and for that matter any other fundamentalist regime, should take note for if they do not pull up their own socks and start to behave in a more sensible manner by not being threatened by anything that does not agree with their own faith, they will ultimately share the same fate.

The word atheist is generally recognised in most societies as meaning one who does not believe in God. There is nothing wrong in this, as it is like anything else just one of many widely held beliefs. Being an atheist does not make one less moral or less of anything in fact, in fact when you look at the statistics the opposite is true. The more secular societies are nine times out of ten more tolerant and understanding of each other.

The word atheist has it seems only recently crept into the Turkish language, where it is regarded as a kind of insult. The Independent cites a survey of religious attitudes conducted in Turkey in 2006, which found that less than 2 percent of corespondents claimed not to believe in God. More recently polls showed that just 25 percent of Turks accept evolutionary theory.

On the one hand, while I am the first to espouse religious freedom, and in no way agree with the ridiculousness of this case, one has to ask why the book was published in this territory in the first place, when there seems to be such limited demand. Surely they must have known the controversy it would cause. The cynic or perhaps spiritual aspect of myself, wonders if this was the whole idea, since the only way to really shed light on these situations for them to be open to the light of public scrutiny so that they can be discussed by the world media and these regimes will realise and understand that their views are simply not those of a civilised society.

The treatment of women in Islamic countries has also been in the news in recent days. Firstly of course the ridiculous case in Sudan where a female teacher has been jailed for allowing the children in her case to name an innocent teddy bear as Mohamed. The British Government are I understand intervening to get her released, but in the meantime, some have called for a suspension of aid to that country. They are cutting off their noses then to spite their face.

The other case is that of a young recently married woman in Saudi Arabia, whose husband thankfully is standing by her. It seems that in Saudi Arabia with its extreme laws of sexual segregation, the only way that men and women can form any kind of relationship is for men to stand in the streets with their mobile phone numbers either on display as women walk past with their male chaperone's, or to literally throw them car windows. Somehow then prior to her marriage, this woman then formed a phone relationship with such a man.

After she was married he threatened to tell her husband unless she agreed to meet him, and so foolishly it seems she did. They were driving together when another car swung in front of them, hijacked their own car and drove them to an isolated place, where both her and her male companion were gang raped repeatedly by up to seven attackers. She tried to keep it from her husband and family, but the rapists (who had filmed the attack on their mobile phones) started to boast about what had happened and so the truth came out. Astonishingly the woman was sentenced to 90 lashes and then when she and fer family complained this was increased to 200 lashes and 6 months in jail. The rapists in the meantime were sentenced to between 2 and 11 years apiece.

The world can no longer sit back and allow this kind of thing to happen, we have to send a strong signal to these countries that this behaviour is not acceptable.

Warner Brothers - grrrr !!!

March 10

Unfortunately it looks as if I may have to ditch the idea of using quotes from Babylon 5 beneath all my chapter headings. Initially I contacted Warner Bros who produced the programme, believing that they owned the copyright. However, they referred me on to Michael J Straczynski’s agent. I emailed, but they advised me that he was no longer with them, and now had a new agent. What they failed to provide was this new agents contact details..... Luckily I managed to find him via the Internet. Imagine me writing to a Hollywood agent.....

A week later there was still no reply. What is it with these people? Coran suggested that I try and contact JMS via the site that is selling the scripts from B5, as I may be able to get permission that way. I received a very nice email back from a lady named Jaclyn informing me that his company, Synthetic Worlds will only grant permission to use 2 quotes from the series. The only problem is, as my book has 33 chapters, I use a minimum of 33 of these quotes. So, it looks now as if I will not be able to use any at all. I could still use just 2 of them, one at the beginning of the book and one at the end, but will have to go through them all again and think very carefully on which ones would be the best, and at this stage whether it is really worth all the hassle.

I had hoped at some point in the future, to begin work on what may become another book - the title I thought of was "Babylon Five - Science Fact or Science Fiction?" If this is true and I cannot use more than 2 quotes it will be damn near impossible to write a book such as this. I asked Jaclyn to let me have the contact details for Synthetic Worlds so I can check this for myself, as it could mean that you can only use 2 quotes free of charge, but she has not replied. Maybe I will try contacting some of the B5 websites who seem to use copious quotes, as they must have got permission for more than 2 of them from somewhere, so I find it hard to believe that I could not.