David Icke says Enough do you?

Posted on January 20, 2012 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0


So do you ????

Environment & Conspiracies

Censoring the net – Sopa

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

The problem with true freedom is that you will always find people saying and doing things you don’t agree with . For me that is just tough, I’d rather be offended and disgusted than told what i can and can’t think, do and watch. It seems some Bills in far off America could change our wonderful world wide web forever. I will not go into detail about the bill but below are some links to news sites that will tell you more about the subject.

Don’t place your head in the virtual sand, find out more as one day you may log on and find your favourite sites blacklisted.

Sopa and Pipa would create a consumption-only internet 
Explainer: understanding Sopa - www.guardian.co.uk

Wikipedia and Google join anti-piracy bill protest - Telegraph 


 

Below is the most powerful poem in history to why we as humans here and now can never look the other way on any subject we don’t believe effects us :-

First they came for the Jews 
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the communists 
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
and I did not speak out -
because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me -
and by then there was no one left to speak out for me.
By Pastor Martin Niemöller

At the end of the day when your freedom is gone it’s gone.

 

 

Uncategorized

2012 just another year ?

Posted on December 31, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

There are many of my friends in the Mind body and Soul community that believe 2012 is a very special year. They speak of a year that marks the start of an Ascension to a new level of thinking, or indeed a physical ascension that will whisk us away to a new and higher realm. For as many people that talk of such things there are those that focus on a darker 2012, the end of life as we know it, Armageddon, the end of days that so many belief systems talk of.

For me I see and feel nothing special for the coming year, sure the media and governments are transfixed by the global depression or recession. Violence, wars and old style hate may appear to be on the rise. The ‘great’ religions of the world seem once again to be vying for followers, entering more radical phases as if preparing for some metaphysical set too, but that for me is all just life happening and nothing out of the ordinary.

Sure few younger people can remember it so bad, but looking beyond short term history you would still have to say on many levels we as humans have never had it so good.

I unlike some in the spiritual community  claim no soothsaying ability. Sure I get feelings about places and people but I cannot and would not want to see the future. Neither do I have an obvious guide or sprit that keeps me clued up on what is really happening. All I can say is 2012 is just another 365 days, which hold no greater or lesser weight to them than any other number of days since counting days became fashionable.

I know some of you I love and respect may feel very disappointed maybe let down about my view of this ‘special’ Year but you really shouldn’t be. I hope you respect my views on 2012 as I do yours, even if we can’t agree.

So Just another year?
Over the past years I have come to what some may see as a radical view of life and everything which can be called oneness, universal love or even I guess non-duality. I shall not go over old ground to deeply here, except to say how could any day month or year be any more special than another when viewed from a oneness.

Nothing in oneness can be more important than anything else, nothing can be held up as good or evil, right or wrong. Life as I say again and again just is. People who know me, know things in this world effect me greatly and I disagree with much I see. The thing I never forget and know at a very deep level is this cosmic cell (tiny tiny me) which is Tony Pinfold is just playing its part in the great body which is everything.

So much as I enjoy talk of mayan calendars, planet alignments,conspiracies and prophecies I cannot and will not beyond my wafer thin ego driven mind, see anything more in today than yesterday or come to that tomorrow. From a human point of few I could say every second is perfection beautifully interconnected with the next. having said that I know that Universally our precious time is both irrelevant and so fleeting that beyond us few even bother to keep it.

And finally..
Maybe on the 21st of December 2012 this race will be wiped off the planet or come to that maybe the planet maybe wiped off the galaxy who can say. Whatever happens or doesn’t it’s all ultimately fine, it’s just the everything doing what it does and it’s never personal. Much as cells die within our body day in day out without us even grieving their passing, we to will pass unknown. That said like our cells we should never underestimate our importance in the grand scheme of things.

Please Note words fail as always when it comes to these types of descriptions, so don’t get to hung up on them or my poor use of them.

Never forget that in our Universe things seen and unseen come and go, are smashed and reformed again and again. Death is not a universal concept in is simply a man made one … Universally nothing ever dies it is simply reshaped and used again for reasons and purposes we may never know in this life form .

Many will fine little comfort for their ego in what I write but that is neither here or there ,Universally everything is just fine and it could never be any other way. We are all perfect never forget that, perfection can not create imperfection everything plays an important roll, even if we can’t see it or understand it here and now.

You will have a perfect 2012 because nothing else is possible. As to if your like it or not well that a completely different matter which is totally down to you.

Enjoy the 2012 ride my friends and thank for your support over the past 365 days :-)

Tony

Union .... everything is part of the whole

Thoughts & Opinions , , ,

A day for remembrance. A day for Love?

Posted on November 11, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

So its 11th November again in the UK that means Armistice Day when Millions of people will observe a two-minute silence at 1100GMT, for Men and women who were cut down in there prime fighting in wars and battles they often didn’t even understand. As we know wars rage on daily across our planet, it is hard not to believe that they won’t continue to do so until the last person on the planet draws their last breath on some god forsaken scorched earth.

Most humans I meet hate the idea of war and most will do what they can to avoid violence but FEAR is a great motivator. FEAR will make people do the most insane things and the people in power know this . Give that ‘motivational?’ story that those people (who ever they will be ) will come and destroy our (who ever we are) land. What red blooded male would not run to defend their mother, wife or child. It is in our genetic make up to defend the things that will ensure the continuation of the species. Sadly such a deep routed code can be manipulated until we get the results that all can see. Smashed bodies of muddy battle fields , women and children fenced in concentration camps and now young men left to die often alone under the scorched sun of the middle east.

Ask anyone and they will all say they never wanted this, but someone somewhere did because how did/does it happen and keep happening. Again I say FEAR.

As corny as it may sound there is only one thing that can offset FEAR and that is LOVE. That famous statement ‘LOVE will conquer all” makes the heart flutter, the mind thinks it knows better the, mind remembers times in our lives when we opened up our hearts and gave love and it was rejected or betrayed. The feeling of heart break can scar deeper than any physical pain it can destroy the heartbroken’s life. Heartbreak will ultimately be used as a reason to stay in darkness or to never truly open up to LOVE again. Indeed many people FEAR LOVE more than anything else because of the pain it can so often bring with it.

So what does that have to do with today remembrance day? Everything. Today as we remember our dead our loved ones, we have a chance to open up to LOVE or close down to FEAR both are natural reactions neither are wrong or right but you can be sure one is more likely to perpetrate more wars and suffering than the other.

I believe in a linked Universe where all is ONE where good and bad are meaningless and where things just happen as the ONE grows and expands, Universally nothing is personal Universally nothing matters. As I write today it is almost impossible for me to truly understand what I believe as the mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers and sisters stand a weep in the cold November Air. LOVE is all we need but seldom due to events beyond our control it is seldom what we get.

So are you and me brave enough to open up to Unconditional LOVE this 11 11 11 ?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_HNAqCGcrA

Namaste my friends

Thoughts & Opinions

Money

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

Money may not make the world go around, though it does seem to get most humans in a spin. :-)

Thoughts & Opinions

Thank you Steve Jobs

Posted on October 6, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

Steve Jobs was a computer visionary who has change the way people see the world, via tools that have connected millions in ways few would have ever dreamed of. Via these tools he has help to make the world a smaller place and in doing so shine a light on what makes us human and what connects us . Steve was just a man like any other but unlike most he refused to be crushed under conformity he did what he loved first and foremost and ultimately that is why he was so successful.

Thank you Steve you rocked the world.

Internet/Media

Into the void.

Posted on August 2, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

The creative block is over.
So it has been well over seven months since my last creation, even by my standards that is a rather long dry patch. I believe this creative block was due to three factors.
1) I was no longer in a state of peace and joy when I was creating, it was far more like a desperate need/search to create something that would make me money rather than what would make me happy. Please note I have never been able to bring myself to sell such images.
2) I had moved all my work to my Mac and retired my Pc. While I like Macs for many reasons, personally from a creative point of view, I find that they fail to inspire creativity. (crazy I know).
3) I had moved my position in the house near to a main doorway and as a result I always felt drained.

Last week I rectified all these problems I brought my old Acer Pc back out of retirement, placed it at the other end of my desk away from the door and finally just went back to my old creative process of playing with photos. This all seemed to do the trick that very day I Created ‘Into the Void’ below:-

Into the void

About the Image
This as always is my interpretation of the work, I ask you as I always do to see it your way, but always question your conclusions. For me going into the void is a very important part of self enquiry which as you know is my favourite ‘spiritual’ practice. It matters not if this void is in nature or simply a mental construct, what is important is that it contains no hiding places for the mind. True self enquiry is not possible if you are able to keep hiding from both the questions and answers that will open you up to Oneness.

Self enquiry strips away illusion it opens us up to the realisation that the human mind and eye has failed to give us the full picture. Even the concept of a void is false for there is no place in the universe where nothingness resides. Stuff is happening everywhere all the time even when our senses draw a blank. That said It is often these places of deep peace and apparent lack that scare us for we are then like actors without scripts unable to maintain our precious persona’s. These spaces may destroy our egos while rebuilding our joy at simply being.

So ‘Into the void’ is clearly a invitation to look deep within and explore what and why we hide from ourselves and also to look at our old perceptions and shine a new light on them. This image like all my work is attempting to shatter our understanding and awaken us to the fact all we know is wrong .

On a personal note this work is telling me to once again stop thinking I have any real control and just sit back and go with the flow. My desperation to make money over the passed year so I can ‘fix’ everything is the very thing that is blocking abundance in all aspects of my life, because as we know ‘Lack’ is just a man made concept based on a few distorted human notions

Have a great time in your void.

Please Note this image will be available to purchase towards the end of 2011

Art & Photography , , , ,

I did that !

Posted on July 17, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

I’ve been asked a few times if I’m the same Tony PInfold that did some cd covers about ten years ago for a company called New Beginnings and the answer is Yes.  I think I did about 20 covers at the time some where simply laying out images i had been given, others were worked from scratch using 3d programs and photoshop. It has amazed me over the years where i run into these covers and it always makes me smile. I asked that my name only be credited to the CD’S I actually created the images for and not ones I simply did the layout and logo work for. It was cool to see these CD’s at the very MBS fairs i was selling my visionary work at. While the Guys at New Beginnings were great it was this project that opened my eyes to the fact that i could never be a freelance artist working for other people. I found it almost impossible to be creative while working to someone’s else’s quite ridged brief. That said i really enjoyed experience and think it’s cool these images like my art will still be knocking around long  after I’ve shuffled of this mortal coil. The only sad thing was soon after the CD’s were released I had to change my web address that was on the back of the cd covers, so from a self promotion point of view it was a non starter.That web address was www.digital-artist.ndirect.co.uk  (which as you can see goes no where).

I still enjoy listening to these CD’s as i was given a whole set once they were completed which was very nice.  I highly recommend the work of  Medwyn Goodall and Llewellyn to those looking for music to sit back and chill out with. Sadly I no longer have a up-to-date we address for New Beginnings but you can still buy the CD’s from a number of people online here’s one person i know who sells them. www.dovemusic.co.uk

 

Art & Photography , , ,

Debt – Never Consolidate

Posted on July 6, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0


This blog is the most important I have ever written. It is a cautionary tale for all those who have multiple debts that seem to be pushing down on you. I know what that is like, believe me, but I beg you to think twice, no three times before you take out a secured consolidation loan.

I guess I should say before we start I have no professionally financial experience and that for some a consolidation loan could be the dream come true like the adverts make them out to be. But in my experience a ‘con’ loan is more like a never ending nightmare that will suck you dry of all your hopes and dreams…

How we get into Debt – The basics

We live in a money matrix, that’s to say that nothing happens or can happen in the man made world without money. That being the case any young person setting off alone into the wide world needs money and lots of it. It’s a sad fact that few of us have enough money to meet out lowest expectations let alone our dreams. If I put on my spiritual hat for a minute I could say that money won’t make you happy and that wandering through life with just a song in your heart and a skip in your step is all you really need . I could say that, but I won’t, I know better. We all need food and somewhere to live, most of us need a car to get to work so we can pay for those things, people need tools or clothes for their trades etc. etc. And so it goes without saying, it won’t take long before you are without funds or as they say from my part of the world skint. It is at this point unless you have a wealthy family or a winning lottery ticket that you must approach a banker (I said banker) for a loan or a credit card. Yes yes we could save for whatever we want but get real we all know that’s never going to happen plus people are falling over themselves to lend us money. I mean every where you look money is just a signature away.

How Debt becomes the norm-

So we now have a credit card and we are getting a few things we need and a lot we don’t and everywhere you look the stuff of life is looking so good. We are told and we believe life would be so much better if we just had that and that or wow even that. Before long one credit card has become two and we have store cards and a small loan for that really important thingy which you’ve now completely forgotten about. All the time the media is enticing you on this path of destruction and the banks, oh the wonderful banks, keep lifting your credit limit up without you even asking. What nice people, it’s like they knew we wanted all these wonderful things. You look around you and everyone’s doing the same, everyone’s in debt how else could you live? and then suddenly one terrible day you hit the Debt wall. POW!

When Credit Runs Out

One day you will wake up, walk down stairs, open the mail and the shit will hit the fan. You’ve over spent or you’ve lost your job, you fill in the scenario… the up shot is that you have no money to pay for all the stuff the world brainwashed you to have, you are up the creek without a paddle. After hours, weeks, even months of sleepless night you swallow your pride and get in contact with some money person …. Who reinforces your fears but just as you think all hope is gone, a life line falls from the sky and the words Consolidation loan are uttered…this nice person can help you take all your debt and put it into an affordable monthly payment that will take the heat off and let you get back to doing what you do best spend. Sounds grand to desperate unknowing ears. As you sign your name on the agreement your future begins to dim and life will never ever be the same.

Now it gets personal...

The story above is a brief and tongue in cheek outline to how and why millions of people end up taking out a Consolidation loan. Now we are going to get personal… the story that follows is my own and I can assure you as I write it I’m certainly not smiling.

So my wife and I had for good reasons got ourselves in a financial fix playing the game of life. It is a long tale of woe and for most that read this it will be a simple ‘whatever.’ Society has very little sympathy for those of us that get into financial crisis and in fact as I look around there are more people ready to help alcoholics and drug addicts than there are debtors…

Be sure that debt is as damaging to your health as any drug. Thousands of people a year take their own life because they can no longer face their money problems. (We have been unfortunate enough to know someone who took this decision) This may seem like a overreaction but debt removes hope and nothing removes hope like a Consolidation loan.

Let me put this in perspective my consolidation loan takes up 42.5% of what we bring home each month. Couple that with the 25.3% our mortgage takes up that leaves us 18.9% for utilities (electric, petrol for work, insurance etc.) and a whooping 13.3% for food, clothes and general life…

Our health has suffered dramatically as we eat what we can afford and cheap food ain’t healthy. It is like a crushing blow every month when the pay check comes in then goes back out. If anything ever happens which is an emergency we have no funds to fall back on. Yes it was of our own doing for various reasons and we could take the option of going bankrupt but that’s not right either. I do fundamentally feel the financial institution have some responsibility as they just kept giving money even when I was injured and out of work earning no income.

I guess the most soul destroying aspect of the consolidation loan is it’s length if all goes to plan. I won’t be free of this mental incarceration till I’m 60 that’s 15 more years, as the saying goes ‘people get less for murder’. I have nothing left but hope that something I can’t for-see will happen. What many people would call foolish wishful thinking is all that keeps me from mental oblivion. I imagine winning the lotto or selling millions of prints of my work or waking to a pay pal donation that will set me free.

Life goes on …..

Ultimately life goes on you scrap by month to month, you no longer eat out, go to the cinema, take holidays, you avoid shopping malls. On the flip side you go for walks, stare off into the middle distance and contemplate or day dream a lot about the life you could of had if you hadn’t of tried to live above your station and fallen victim to corporate brainwashing. For now in this paradigm money is important and to be without it well I will leave you to ponder all the things you can do without funds.
It is very hard in a short blog to sum up a life under debit. Sadly I can offer no hope to people in my situation, financial manoeuvres with suspect secured liens on ones home make all options other than bankruptcies just pipe dreams and as I have never missed a payment in my life and I love my funny little house why would I want that? Many people like me will also have had their loan company default (mine did ‘picture loan’) and now on top of the debt you have the worry of who owns your debt and what is their master plan? the people that now have my loan have been described on the web as too quick to foreclose, very reluctant to help and unregulated by the FSA not really music to ones ears.

I simply say this – do not consolidate credit card debt into a secured loan. Searching the web you will discover that credit card debt is not as bad as you may think and you have lots of options and flexibility. Once you have a secured loan as far as I can see you have none. I learnt this all too late, as I have been struggling to pay the loan now for 5 years. I hope after reading this you won’t make the same mistake I did.

Can you help Me?

Artist through out history have always need the support of the rich and I’m no different. So this is not directed at normal folk like me, this is for those who would spend my debt in one night and not blink or would earn my debt in few days, hours or even minutes, and obviously a fan of my art. To such fortunate people I hold my virtual hat out in the form of the paypal donate button (below) and ask ‘buddy can you spare a dime’. The world is full of people asking for money many are in more need than me but that said I would be a fool not to swallow my pride and do the same. All support is needed and gratefully received.

Of course I would much rather you support me by buying my prints and postcards, but the sad reality is I would have to sell many thousands of prints a month to pay off all my debts.

Thanks for reading,and if you are in debt I can only say ‘Good-luck my friend’

 

Environment & Conspiracies, Uncategorized , , , , , , ,

Life Just Is

Posted on June 23, 2011 by Tony Pinfold | Permalink 0

Oppressed by tony pinfold

One day in late 2006, I unintentionally created an image which I would later call ‘Oppressed’. This dark and sinister work seemed to sum up my depressing and unfulfilled life. The image which was created from some photos I had taken while on holiday in Scotland seemed to be depicting a desperate and disfigured creature being pushed down into a pit by two cage doors. This picture which echoed the work of artists like Giger did very little to cheer my mood. In fact some days later I was just about to delete it, when I was inspired for some reason to look at the work from a positive perspective, such a mind set was alien to me but I thought I may as well give it a go.

This time, as I looked upon the work I chose to see a creature breaking free from a pit of despair. Was this lizard skinned being at a transitional stage of it’s life? Soon to break free from this cocoon and then turn into something beautiful like a butterfly. It all sounded highly unlikely to me and very airy fairy and then I had one of those ‘aha’ moments that would shatter the way I viewed life forever. My first negative reaction to the work was no more right or wrong than this new positive theory. It dawned on me that I had no clue what the image was really saying because I couldn’t view it without all the filters and programming my life’s experiences had piled on me.

For me this was big, I mean really big, it meant that for the past 40 years I had been simply seeing the world from my perception through a set of distorted lenses and not as it really was, I wondered did anyone really know what life was like? I couldn’t see how they could, I realized that we are all unknowingly programmed from birth not in some dark and sinister way but mostly by well meaning family members and friends who are simply passing on to us their own distorted view of the world.

Slowly as we grow up our fanciful ideas and highest aspirations are hammered out until we become beings that are far less than we should be. Ultimately we metaphorically plugged ourselves into one of the many different but ultimately limiting thought process and usually stay with them until we die. I realised simply by my perceptions I had shut my self off from thousands of opportunities in life and disconnected myself from reality (whatever that was).

I decided that maybe while viewing the world from a positive out look was simply replacing one perception with another I should give it a go as playing role of the dark sarcastic and negative artist had not really achieved anything, other than bringing me more things to be sarcastic and negative about.

A positive out look could indeed improve my life experience but I still had to keep my mind open to all probabilities. Some days later I tried to create another thought provoking image but the more I tried the less I achieved …It wasn’t until about a month later that I created my next image. What I didn’t know then that I do now is that these images can’t be created on demand, I have to be disconnected from a intention to create anything in particular. I have been asked in the past do I take any kind of mind altering drugs the answer to that is no, I think my mind is altered enough as it is. My next two images where both still rather dark but none the less helpful.Torment forced me to challenge my closed views on religion and god and find out why people believed what they did and why it was so important for them.

The third work I embraced the fact I had bipolar I saw that while others may see it as a disadvantage it enable me to see the world through a whole gamut of emotions sometime all in the same day or even the same hour. I decided that weather or not bipolar was a gift or a curse it was just another of lifes filters I would have clear away as best as I could in order to really see.

In the following months and years I learnt to peer above the wall of conventional thinking more and more. I lay my belief that science had everything figured out to one side and dived into as may different views and theories of life and beyond, as possible. I decided to take the stance that all was possible until proven otherwise, and once I truly embraced that view my love for life increased as did my sense of wonder. I engaged people and read books which had views of the world that I never even heard of, some appeared to help and enhance my mental and spiritual growth others didn’t and some I have to admit I couldn’t even comprehend.

Two years down the road I have discovered this… only you can find your truth and it only seems to happen when you are prepared to question everything in your life and I mean everything. I believe you limit your growth as long as you say transfixed by any single storyline. You can only grow and start writing your own a script, so to speak once you break free from conventional lines of thought.

At this point I feel compelled to point out my views of my art and life are only that, mine. They are based on what I feel and think and what makes sense to me after much personal contemplation. I do not declare them right for everyone or anyone other than me …. This is not me trying sound like some egoless teacher, it’s simply that as I look around me it is the need to be right that seems to have brought so much dis-ease to the planet.

I’m very happy to be wrong but in saying that I reject the concept that anyone on earth is perfect that anyone has all the answers. I feel the world can only really be improved or even saved once we all discuss what we believe, but united in our ultimate unknowingness, Just think of the wonderful dialogues we could have if we didn’t need to be right all the time.

Many thousands of people have viewed my work over the past two years and nearly all of them have had come to different conclusions about it, some have hated it and even been scared by what they have seen, while others have been moved to tears of joy and placed my works at the very centre of their lives

My art like life is what you make it, It welds the power all modern art does, the power to force you to make up your own mind and use your own judgment, something many people go months and years without doing, Society its seems does not really embrace the concept of people who think for themselves.

I have found that contemplation of anything be it art, a rose or even the night sky is a very powerful process, for it pulls you back into this moment in time and away from the problems of the past and the fears of the future. It is an ancient concept but one that should be repeated again and again that when you are focused on the now you are in alignment with the universe which only ever knows the Now.

Once you begin to reduce mind chatter you are able to discover what truly matters to you. Also you may find that any negativity you have fades as it can’t live without the reference points of past and future. During these times of focused thought I have seen wonder in the most over looked things and seen that all the past wisdoms are right to point to the fact that the answers for life are within as all, happiness, peace and a love for life can never truly be found in the exterior world. You can travel across the globe in search of truth or enlightenment but unless you open your mind and limit your judgements you will know and feel no more than if you had just stayed in bed.

I have reach a wonderful point in my life, where I realize life is not some problem that must be solved or a test that must be passed, life ‘just is’ and all the judgements and knee-jerk reactions are purely the work of mans over active mind. The power that drives and connects everyone and everything call it what you wish does not find imperfection in anything. I believe this powers is non dualistic and free from the limits of the human mind. Unlike others in the spiritual community I do not have any interest in ghosts or contacting the dead. I have never had any experience of anything paranormal and have no interest in knowing the future or reliving past lives. Yet I do believe the universe is driven by this unseen energy and that this energy connects us all as one. I do consider we are all on a spiritual path whether we like that description or not. I believe we are born into a dualistic world and our challenge is to overcome that limited view of life and see that despite our best efforts we will never see the full picture from this tiny spot in space.

It seems to me the world is on information overload, I sense that more and more people are being crushed by a continual fear based media. Hence the real reason the use of drink and drugs is so high in the western world. We need to understand that all this bad news is simply one perception of the world. I think it is vital we look within for peace and reconnect with our true spirit. We truly gain nothing if we allow ourselves to become slaves to this destructive monolog of despair, watching the news constantly to see how bad it all is, much like moths to the flame.

Reconnecting with the stillness of the natural world is one answer, but it is not easy for many city dwellers nature may as well be an alien world. I believe unless people can rediscover the simplistic wonders of life they will continually overlook the miracles of the world on a never ending and totally fruitless search for a point to life. The question is can Mankind ever let go of it’s need solve its own existence and in so doing extended its existence indefinitely.

Can mankind just be happy to say ‘Life just is’?

The above is a repost from my original wordpress blog

Thoughts & Opinions , , ,