The Taliban have taken over. It was quick! I’ll raise the subject so it gets its own department. Not for the spiritual, but for psychology. What to think? They’ve held press conferences, promised a lot, seem more conciliatory this time around. Have they matured?

I’m an incurable developmental romantic, that you normally become a better, more sober human being over the years… Of course it can be a compromise, a little game, to try to get the world’s acceptance. But it may be partly honestly known. You are fundamentalist, but not as blindly and hot as when you were a young Koranic student, like (“Taliban” means student I have learned), you “can’ not care like that anymore, think anymore, not the same in the present… Less idealist, more pragmatist… But I guess it’s going to have to turn out…

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And, if you’re going to engage in some newage-newness-bashing… “Development” is central to such philosophy, the great incremental evolution of the soul, and this single life is just a station on the way… Not very much happens, you incarnat like “adult”, you wear a baby body and consciousness is dazzled in some way… (You might even think of my mom being my partner before or dad my little brother.) …

Whatever the case, what’s true or possible, or not, I’m not saying anything about that. But it seems that it may have the effect of finding it difficult to see what actually happens during this single human life… I always think of it as a “maturation error”. You may feel evolved in some more universal, evolutionary sense, spiritual, found peace. In fact, when you are mostly old.