The Spirit Ascending

By John Stuart

The spirit ascending is the third in the sharing series , reflecting an emergence

from the self to objective perspectives of experience, with a focus on people

and their life journeys. This includes a RAAF veteran from WW2.

Traditional heroes are lauded in the last section, part of what we are and can be.

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• Language: English
• Publisher: jkspublishing
• Release date: Apr 20, 2023
• ISBN: 9780645784206

John Stuart

John Stuart was born and raised in the Rainbow Region near Byron Bay,on the Australian East Coast. He has spent most of his working life there,renovating property, playing sport, exploring paths and byways.In later years there was a collapse and transformation, from which came the sharing series. This book defines a distint emergencefrom within to without.Selections from this material have been presented on ABC and Commercial radio,in restaurants, pubs and on retreats in this region. This was very well received.The Gallipoli sequence featured here formed the basis for a video, Coming Home,used by the Turkish Embassy in Canberra on Commemorative occasions.

Book preview

Searcher searching but not here,

everywhere else, sometimes near,

doing the done, needing and breeding,

finding in places and places in people,

but without the within withal.

Seekers,

to seek self and find

in blood, deed and mind,

placings and bindings

expanding findings

for seekings.

artart

In the truth that never tells

is a debt never paid and life never made,

the loss that’s always grieving,

the gift never receiving.

In the truth that always tells

is the gift that is always giving,

in a life always living,

the beginning never-ending,

and a love, always transcending.

artart

passings to

present

Places and faces, comings and goings,

passings to present are always flowing,

with soft nests of time floating and free,

mellow melancholy sweetness be,

awareness, aware, going ongoing,

transience touching, reaping and sowing.

Being and been, being in been,

feelings arising sadly softly,

all that is passes through

beneath and below flowing through

that that is always there

then and here, in all there is

flowing through.

art

My friend

for Graeme Aked

He lived in the house

on the corner,

his dog took a piece

out of my bum once,

he saw it happen and thought it was funny,

and he was my friend.

Fair go mate, I yelled in pain.

He was the only boy

on the block about my age.

We climbed trees,

played Cowboys and Indians,

shared food and shelter,

went to the pictures

and swapped comics

and old jungle sayings

from The Phantom,

his Mum’s favourite hero,

she was a bit of a character too.

artart

We made shanghais

to decimate the local wildlife,

but were more successful

with slug guns,

especially with starlings.

We were paid bounties for bodies,

to clear infestations,

up to 6p each.

He was there the day

I shot the Peewee in the wing,

screaming screeching, distorted,

blood and gristle everywhere,

one wing only flapping inanely,

it went through three backyards

before I could

put it out of its misery,

but not mine.

Distraught and pained,

I cried and cried.

He was upset too,

and told me I was a good bloke,

and not to worry.

He was always a bit different

with more of the clues.

He bought an old car from somewhere,

a 1929 Willys,

and managed to get it going.

He was the first to show me

a real French letter,

I was most impressed,

but he wouldn’t let me try it on.

We compared stories

about girls we knew,

what they would do,

he seemed to know more,

or pretended to.

He was with me

the night I smashed up my Old Man’s car

and part of the myth-making

that followed.

We talked of the big questions,

of fate and destiny.

He had a sense of the mystery

but there was

a deep unvoiced fear there

that I could not grasp,

yet alone understand.

I left home,

losing contact with him

over the years.

Decades later,

when I found out he had died,

I felt nothing,

I was too wrapped up in my own dramas

and afraid to let go,

but now perhaps,

I can begin to understand,

that fear …

the fear of sexuality, the urge to explore,

fearing the unknown, to face not ignore,

the fear of time and mortality,

the fear of awareness, reality,

the fear of loss gain, failure pain,

the fear of losing youth,

the fear of being truth,

the fear of love to accept and be,

the fear of me, the fear of free.

artart

Willys Knight 1928

The Byron vibe

It is there, in the Rainbow Region, the most easterly point in Australia, on the edge of the open spaces of the Pacific, the bay itself broken by Julian rocks, a central reference point.

Arakwal, the local Aborigines described this place as Cavvanbah, or meeting place. They regarded nearby Mt Warning, the modern name, as a spiritual guardian of this sacred domain.

The current name was applied by James Cook in 1770, who named Cape Byron after Admiral Byron, the poet’s grandfather, but there was a later