www.clarity-of-being.org
Feeling lost here?
In fact you have the following navigation facilities at your disposal:
Periodically people write in to me because they feel daunted by the amount of information available on this site, claiming that the site needs more navigation aids. I am pretty sure that most or all of those people happened to have weakly grounded attention / awareness and thus they didn't have the practical focus actually to find and use the various means of navigation that already exist for them here. It is for such people that I spell out above just what facilities they can use for finding what they are after on this site.
I appreciate that some people will regard my doing this as rather
patronizing or
otherwise 'a bit off', but there is no way that I could possibly please every
visitor all the time, and I have opted for forestalling some rather
time-wasting
communications that come my way from time to time from people who have
navigation difficulties on this site and want me to 'help' them in some way.
This site has grown in piecemeal fashion since late 1997 from a very small and crude beginning as a very basic 'shop window' for my literary works (only). Eventually the steadily accumulating 'spirituality' and self realization material, including my Alexander Technique page, split off from my personal site and then progressively that new site took on its own identity. All along, because I was presenting significant content, I wanted to sidestep all temptation to copy others who create 'professional'-looking websites full of frames (slow loading, often a cluttered screen, and impossible for most search engines to index), distracting logos, images and animations, and taking an age to load into one's browser. As explained in Exit 'Spirituality' - Enter Clear-Mindedness, it wasn't till well into 2007 that I finally dispensed with 'spirituality' and this site's title changed from Self-Realization and Spirituality to the current one.
I seek in this site to put priority on clarity, directness and fast loading. Any graphic or picture here has to have strong justification for its inclusion; it must point to or enhance the content and 'message' without adding distraction or unduly lengthening page loading time. I totally exclude animations, for they are a great distraction from the contents of a serious site such as this. For this reason too I use plain colours and for the most part not images as backgrounds for text, and keep them to light colours for maximum readability.
Light pastel colours in any case resonate with and encourage a clear-minded and expansive outlook and, when used in a focused, functional way, have minimal resonance with the extremely problematical astral sub-reality of illusion and delusion (whereas the colours used for the vast majority of 'spirituality' sites resonate strongly with it - not only because of the colours chosen but also because of the ways they are used), and thus the sort of colours that I have chosen are particularly appropriate generally for sites that truly aim to benefit people. Those running or thinking of setting up spirituality-oriented sites would do well to heed this latter point, and to read this site's introduction and start understanding what extremely serious trouble their 'spirituality' is leading them into.
All images used on this site, whether they are photos or other graphics, have been produced by myself - with the exceptions listed below. I claim copyright on all the photos of mine, but not on the non-photo graphics. However, as noted further below, I do NOT allow deep linking to any images at all on this site, because doing that is bandwidth theft.
The photos of me used on this or any other site of mine have been taken by other people on my behalf, but the photos are still my copyright.
The images to which I have no rights are as follows:
and 
- from a forum boardThe original design of the site was carried out with no regard to accessibility for the special browsers and screen readers used by visually impaired people. In particular I used tables extensively for various layout purposes, and I didn't give any of the tables 'summary' attributes. Tables are notorious for their incomprehensibility to such screen readers.
I now use a minimum of tables for layout purposes, wherever possible using CSS for layout.
My aim is eventually to make this whole site fully accessible to all comers, but that is a big task that I cannot realistically be expected to accomplish quickly. I am, however, regularly making further accessibility-oriented changes, and this is an ongoing process.
If you have any particular accessibility recommendations concerning this site, I would be interested to hear from you about it - though I am really interested only in genuine assistance with accessibility, for I am well aware that many people simply feel that they have to nitpick and make issues in order to impose their will upon others, and I am not interested in that sort of agenda.
My five websites all respect your privacy, and do not track you. Indeed, no cookies are used at all, and no 'spying' techniques such as web bugs are used. I do carry out a check of my daily website statistics, but these do not show visitors' personal information apart from certain technical details - their host or IP address, their browser, their operating system, and usually any search text that they have used in order to find the particular page they have requested. That is standard data supplied by any hosting company.
The forms that I use for contact, visitors' book entry, or making a photo purchase enquiry (the latter on Broad Horizon Photos) do ask for your e-mail address, but I guarantee that those addresses and any other personal information that you may supply (such as postal address, required for some purposes) will not be passed on to any third parties, nor placed in public view - except in the very unlikely event of it being required in the course of a criminal investigation or legal proceedings or serious misconduct of a particular site visitor.
I also give assurance that I am very proactive with regard to security on
my computer, and I have still not had one instance of my computer being
infected or compromised by any 'virus' or hacking attempt, since starting with
my first computer (1986 or 87); I first went online in late 1997. Thus so far I
have a spotless track record with regard to keeping my data secure.
Occasionally new images may not be correctly referenced, so that I then need to correct the image link on the appropriate page (usually a matter of capitalization in the filename, or the inadvertent use of a path on my local system for the file). Generally I would notice and correct any such problem within a few days of its appearing, because it would show up on my daily web statistics.
Most
or all of
your visitors may soon see this
image
if you try deep linking to an image on this site
To use an image or a sound file on a website of yours or in, say, a forum, which is sourced from a file on somebody else's website, without the site-owner's or webmaster's permission, is antisocial as well as extremely discourteous and usually a copyright infringement. Most websites, including this one, have a limit upon the amount of bandwidth they can use (i.e. their volume of traffic), and it is a type of THEFT to use somebody else's bandwidth for your own site or in a forum - quite apart from the copyright infringement that is involved.
I have a daily inspection of the previous day's statistics and, when necessary, the raw logfile for this site, and I can tell generally when a deep link is being used, what file the link is to and where the link itself is situated.
Where necessary I can set up a redirect so that all visitors to the rogue deep linking site will see the above image in place of the intended one.
I therefore ask that people who want to use files from this site write to me to seek my permission to use them, and then, if that is granted (which it usually would be), to host copies of the particular images on another site so that they are not stealing any of this site's bandwidth. Where permission has been granted and files from this site are used, they should in all cases be credited to me, with a link to this site. Fair's fair.
Although currently I have a page for reciprocal links, I am considering abandoning this because virtually no sites on the current list are compatible with the new, clearer and more balanced outlook of this site - so no new entries will be accepted, at least for the moment.
Please feel free to link to any page here (but not directly to images or files offered for download), but do not place a copy on any other site, at least without my express written permission. To do so would not only be against my wishes but would also be breach of copyright. As it is, one inconsiderate webmaster placed a copy of my substantial text On Finding a Path Towards Wholeness on their site without any reference to me. Although it is fully credited, no link is given to this site, and the text is out of date as I have made various major revisions and additions since that copy was stolen. That is in particularly bad taste as it is supposedly a spirituality site, which itself is asking for financial donations, and when I e-mailed the webmaster about that I got no response whatsoever. Please don't be another hypocrite like that.
I really do understand that my zipping those particular files would be inconvenient for those who want to download them. It is actually considerably more inconvenient for me, and not at all something I wanted to have to do!
The reason for my having done this (in October 2010) was that I found that certain rogue websites had discovered the Microsoft Word documents on this site and, pretending to be some kind of search engine and e-books resource, were displaying the files themselves - something that is in breach of my copyright and my clearly stated intent that such files should not be displayed on other sites - only linked to. In any case, it is not appropriate really for the Word documents on this site to be linked to directly, for they need to be encountered and read in their context on this site.
Spambots are programs that automatically surf the Web collecting e-mail addresses for the purpose of sending them spam. Many of these deliberately access pages that are forbidden for all robots. For example, one from Poland that showed up in the relevant logfile for my site read the robots exclusion list, evidently saw that the Visitors' Book pages were forbidden, and went straight for those particular pages and no others at all.
I have installed traps for spambots at the very bottom of the five main home pages as part of my ongoing programme of progressively excluding from this site all unwelcome robots that I can detect. The prime purpose is to reduce the risk of any e-mail addresses used on this site getting onto spammers' lists. Nobody who heeds the clear warnings that I give there would click on one of my spambot traps.
If you do click on one of these spambot trap links and get my 'Got you!' page, it is important that you e-mail me quickly to tell me what is happened. I could then check through the appropriate logfile to verify that your surfing behaviour was not that of a robot (robots usually give themselves away by doing certain things), and then I would remove the block that I'd put on your host address. This is also stated on the 'Got you!' page, for anyone who actually reads it is unlikely to be one of the robots that I want to ban. If you don't make such a representation to me, you would almost certainly be unable to access this site again, except from another computer with a different IP address.
I have periodically been asked to produce a book (or e-book) of most or all
of my writings on this site. Sounds a great idea, doesn't it! Indeed, if I were
simply
writing down definite facts or reasonably unchangeable beliefs, that would
undoubtedly be a sensible thing for me to do. However, the situation is not
like that, and I see no book on the horizon, at least in the short term. This
site, therefore, is in effect my 'book'.
The point is, by the very nature of my writings, which I am constantly updating and adding to, a book containing them would be already significantly out of date even by the time of publication. That completely rules out commercially printed books, and, although theoretically I could keep updating an e-book, (a) that would be another load of work for me, as though I haven't already more than enough work in just keeping my website writings up to date, and (b) the moment somebody downloads something called an e-book of my writings it is more likely than not that the person would consider that (s)he now has a copy of my writings that are set in stone, and would no longer look here for updated versions of anything.
Those people who have visited this site over a number of years would have seen the great changes that have occurred in my writings as I gained new insights and clarifications, and I think they would usually understand that any type of book of these writings would actually not be a workable proposition. On the other hand, certain individuals who have come to this site more recently feel daunted by the large amount of information that I present, and fondly imagine that it would somehow be more accessible and navigable if it were all put into a book.
In fact I am sure that the writings are easier to navigate and explore
anyway
on this site rather than in a book, and my impression is that various people's
main problem is simply in their not having sufficiently focused attention /
awareness to cotton-on to the navigation aids that are right here on my web
pages. Hence the Navigation Reminder that I have now put further above on this
page and linked to on most of the Original Writings pages.
I know I am by no means the only person to be running a site with significant content that benefits many people and yet who gets extremely few entries in the site's visitors' book. It can be quite disheartening to be putting so much into a site for the benefit of others and to have a whole month pass sometimes with hundreds of visitors but without a single entry in the visitors' book or even one direct e-mail from someone for whom the site has meant something. Please do stop to leave your mark.
Donations are appreciated!
If you value this page / this site and its contents, a donation would be greatly appreciated and would help me maintain it and continue my beneficial projects.
