I’ve been a geopolitics buff all my life. And up came an insight last night, to share with you. It’s this…
My adopted Akan granddaughter, Adjoa Kenobi Otoo.
Forget China. Yes, it is taking over from the industrial countries of the Global North but this is because, after its Century of Humiliation, it needs to return to its proper historic status – as the Middle Kingdom.
There are things that Europe and America have failed to do, as a result of our own limitations, materialism and vested interests. China is taking them over, to take them to their conclusion.
We in the West have lost our vision and seek now only to hang on to what we’ve got – and that’s no vision.
Such a transfer happened before, around 1890-1920 when the impetus transferred from Europe to USA. It is now transferring to China and the Far East, but this is temporary. It will last a few decades only, since they too have their limitations and, like us, they’re getting old.
For genuinely new things to arise, young people are needed. In large enough numbers to turn the tide and overcome the resistances of oldsters.
This is what happened in Euro-America in the 1960s, when an enormous cultural change became possible, because of the sheer numbers of young ‘boomers’ – but it was suppressed, and the West ran back to material and military security.
Where are these young people now? Africa.
By the end of this century, Africa will be the place that defines the world’s direction. This will not be about technology and economics. That’s the old stuff, which China is bringing to its proper conclusion. But China is growing old too.
The African future is cultural, ethical and it concerns people. It will address a problem that the West could not solve:
Do people exist to serve the System, or does the System exist to serve people?
It is likely that Africans might be able to bring planet Earth to the state where it becomes a ‘light-space vehicle’, falling into line with what The Nine were alluding to in my recent posting titled ‘Imitating Mountains‘, a few days ago.
We need to take ourselves and our planet in hand. We need to become truly human.
This might just be so, with Africa: it is a glimmer of possibility. However, the future is not written, since we humans are the authors of it, and we’re a capricious and thoughtless lot, as a whole.
“Take me to your Leader.” “Um, no thanks – that’s no solution.” “It’s okay, we know.”
Don’t get caught up in the urgent stream of daily events. Step back and look at what’s happening behind and underneath. Listen more closely to Things than to people. Think less about yourself and yours, and more about all of us, and ours.
Forget World War Three too: don’t buy into the logic of destruction. It will destroy you. Stay tuned to the logic of reconstruction and rebirth. There lies a future.
Last week I was ready rather early for the meditation, so I took down a tatty old copy of The Only Planet of Choice, opening it at a random page, and this is what emerged. This is Tom, the spokesbeing for The Nine.
And, a note: in this piece from the 1990s, the Nine are not talking about this year or next year – they see human history as a wide sweep of time and experience. And we live in historically critical times of global inflection.
————————————–
TOM: Now we are moving into the period that begins the solidification and cleansing. In times past souls upon your planet Earth refused to leave it, and through your conflicts they continued to recycle, as you recycle your trees. Your recycled trees have usefulness, but the soul-recycling of humankind does not create usefulness – it creates a bottlenecking of forwardness.
You now have come to a time in which those who make transition [die] – those who do not fulfil what they have come to fulfil, such as those who make transition in accident and in war, or those that create their own transition through suicide, or through a form of devastation by accident or tragedy – those live now in a different realm.
Souls who have now transitioned from war and from accidents and tragedies have now been taken into other, higher evolutionary states for releasing of that anger and despair. Therefore there will not come a recycling of souls of this kind, that have kept planet Earth in bondage, through their hurt. This has come about because of the awakening of humankind to the reality of where it has come to. You are at the beginning of finding your divinity within.
Humankind is now moving forward in increased unification, and in bringing about the ending of conflict and aggression – the world conditions that create the situation of bondage. That does not mean that there is instant change, but change has begun its great movement forward. This is shown by the unification of nations that now understand that the destruction of one nation is in reality the destruction of all others, and the beginning of all destruction: the destruction of vital elements upon your planet Earth affects all. It is a time to be in great joy.
There are times when one would feel despair that there is not forwardness: what is necessary now upon your planet Earth is for each of you to understand that you contain within you that element, that cell, that atom, that molecule, that soul-part of you that is a part of the Creation and the whole. You in your evolution can create the energies necessary, by yourself and with others, to stop further destructiveness.
In times past it was religion which led planet Earth, and religion served its purpose, but now it is you, the peoples of planet Earth, that speak. Be joyful for this and do not feel burdened with it, as some of you seem to do. It is not a perfect time, but it is a time of greatness, and we are in gratefulness to you humans who are positive – for it is necessary for the fulfilment of planet Earth for us to be in partnership with you.
We find great joy for the youth that are coming to Earth in this time, and who have come in the recent past. They are coming with the full understanding that they serve a purpose. Those who came and did not understand their purpose, it is now being revealed to them.
Most people have been upon planet Earth in times past for learning. In this time many people have come to benefit planet Earth in conjunction with us, in service. Many of you come from higher evolutionary levels of other civilisations that work in total peace and harmony with each other. The civilisations have enjoined with all who are bringing planet Earth to its rightful direction.
Each of you humans contains the essence of what you term a star. You have existed in all eternity and will continue to exist in all eternity.
Understand this, and the responsibility that goes with it, but understand it in joy, not with fear or despair. Do not flagellate yourself when you make an error, but move beyond it, and remove and peel off that shell and let another light of yourself come through.
When you are in the presence of others you emanate an energy of light that touches and begins their awakening also. When you create jello [laughter] in the universe, you create great energy and the release of what you term ‘darkness’, and the removal of what sticks in holes in darkness. Each of you humans is like a jellobean. Is there a jellobean?
LARK: Jellybean. TOM: Is it wobbleness? LARK: It’s very sweet too.
TOM: Then people like you are sweet. Yes. Believing that darkness rules you is an escape from responsibility. It is the way it is because humankind created errors.
It is time for humankind to begin to understand who you are. You affect the universe. The days of destruction and of saying ‘that is their problem’ must end, for it is not a responsible way to think.
Bring the beginning of elimination of human accidents that entrap the soul in a non-functional vehicle [disabled or injured]. Do you understand?
JOHN: Could you elaborate on that please? What is it that entraps human beings?
TOM: If there be embattlement [war] and one is entrapped in a body that is injured, then that spirit-soul becomes angry. Then it serves not the purpose it came for. If there be entrapment in the mind through ingestion [of drink or drugs], if it be deliberate or an accident, then that mind cannot fulfil its desired function. Then that energy of despair is like an out-of-beat note. It then needs special love and energy, and to begin the elimination of what causes that. We have confused you now?
JOHN: I think you’re talking about those people who are damaged either at their own hand or for other reasons that are out of their hands. And that those problems must be eliminated so that the soul can live its purpose.
TOM: Yes. And they need help to remove anger. It must be in your meditation that you wish for this. Also include the intention of permitting nations and each group of entity-souls to be allowed to be who they are, without being forced by another nation that would wish to control them. Then will peace really begin to come to your planet Earth, and it will begin to be the paradise for which it was created. Yes.
It is important for humankind to understand its responsibility, and what responsibility is.
Your humankind, in all aspects of its religious life – which has not supplied the understanding – is searching for the elements of its beginning and its purpose, the strength of its connection and who its people truly are, in their being.
We are on a path of upwardness. What now is important is the elimination of involvement with terror and violence, and the non-permitting of them, so that planet Earth may begin to emerge in balance. If you concentrate on the removal of terror [whether by terrorists or by states], then you will also see that the peoples of planet Earth will not tolerate corruption and other means of harming others. In eventuality humanity will become correct. Therefore it is the time of the beginning of this emergence. Yes. Is it not joyful?
Tom is reporting an underlying upward longterm trend. There is something we can do to help, and it relies on us to keep this movement going. We cannot rely on others doing it for us. This is an important time to be alive. Light can be seen at the end of the tunnel. Change is happening in our time. In a few centuries, when looking back at this time, we might well feel honoured to have been a part of it.
———————–
Then, propped up in bed, I did the meditation, or it did me, and all was well.
If you’re wondering what this Sunday Meditation thing is, the times are below and the details are found by click-clacking here: https://www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html
These maps go through an update about every six months – they were first researched and constructed between 2015 and 2022. They’ve just gone through another update.
You won’t notice much of a visible difference, because they’re also a database of information about each ancient site and alignment – and it is mostly these details that get updated. I have also done some weeding of a few alignments that are less plausible. Just click on any symbol or line, and info about it will pop up – including links to other useful sites, map references and more details.
The positioning of all ancient sites on the map is pretty exact, so you can use it to find them in the field. With a few carefully thought-through exceptions, all alignments are accurate to within just 3 metres or 10ft.
However, when you’re out visiting and ‘bothering’ sites, please consider this. Geomantic energies and mobile-phone signals are not compatible – it’s like playing heavy metal music loudly, next to a tinkling stream. So if you approach ancient sites with your phone switched on, you’re not only desensitising yourself, but also you are tampering with the energy-fields of the site you’re visiting. Just because what we call ‘earth energies’ cannot currently be detected by scientific instruments, it does not mean that this will always be the case. So pls to do not contribute to the contamination of the subtle energy-fields of ancient sites – whether or not you believe what I’m talking about. Thank you!
And do enjoy using the maps. They’re for you – if you’re mad on Cornwall.
Early in 2020 I wrote this prognosis, about the 2020s and subsequent decades…
The 2020s. Here we see a social turning-point brought on by weaknesses in the economic system, and by environmental and social pressures. It will be a decade of people, crowds and society, where human principles rise and profitability considerations decline as primary determinants of events (Pluto moves into Aquarius for 16 years in 2024).
The big issue will be people and social control, migration, social movements, progressives versus resisters, and a battle of ideas. The broad consequences of inequality, globally and domestically, will be critical.
Behind this a new mindset will grow that is both idealistic and pragmatic, local and global, driven particularly by younger people – in much of the world the majority generation. Ideas that once were left-wing become pragmatic.
The 2020s will see waves of crisis emerging, of which Covid and its wider cascading effects was the first. By 2025-29 this is likely to reach what seem at the time like avalanche proportions, forcing increasing unpremeditated systems change.
Astrologically, it’s a triangle, Uranus sextile Neptune sextile Pluto, from Gemini to Aries to Aquarius, all about ideas, communication, innovation, principles, multiplicity, pluralism, throngs of people – and the data and surveillance powers of digital corporations, governments and background operators.
It will be a challenging, struggly and also exciting time, with a full panoply of global issues coming at us – feeling at times like an overload. A time of creativity, change, emergence and acceleration. Busy, noisy, a happening time. Astrologically, the time of Elizabeth I and Akbar the Great provide an historic precedent, another being the decade leading up to the American and French revolutions.
How this plays out depends on the world’s responses – resisting or adapting to change. Both will be the case, but which of these predominates will be a critical issue. Amidst this, a florescence of ideas, solutions, innovations and discoveries is likely. The Millennial generation will be taking power – a big issue in the developing world, which will increasingly determine the world agenda.
China will be counterbalanced by alliances of mid-sized powers and continental blocs (Africa, Latin America, SE Asia, Middle East, India, etc) and a geopolitically confusing period is likely.
There is a risk for conflict and other hazards (‘mad dictators’, tech breakdowns, social chaos, mass migration, economic pressures, climatic events, environmental criticals), but there is an equal risk of positive breakthroughs (enlightened leaders or social movements, social breakthroughs, new ideas, reorientation of resources, etc) – and we could see both.
It’s an eruption of a new landscape, a new realism. The momentum of change will accelerate, though this will likely lead to several decades of insecurity, complexity, shifting socio-economic patterns, disruption and systems problems, with positive changes emerging rapidly too, crisis-pushed.
The world is in such a parlous state, and we’ve seen so much mindless devastation and tragedy recently.
Below is a chapter extracted from my 2012 book Pictures of Palestine. It’s about the amazing creative contributions that some people make, with a view to re-heartening downhearted people.
This might not be a thought for you now, but it might become relevant in perhaps a few years’ time. The agenda here is to help people rebuild, once the horrors have stopped. There are plenty of countries to choose from.
It can be done for (say) two months each year. If you’re in your 20s or 30s, or approaching retirement, it’s a chance to do something really meaningful. This extracted chapter will give a taste of it.
Arriving back in Bethlehem from Ramallah, I went to Adnan’s shop to sit down. But then something else happened: music started playing down in Manger Square. It turned out to be a Palestinian Christian marching band playing, to my surprise, Scots bagpipes and drums. The shutter on my camera was busy for a while.
This was a throwback to the days of the British Mandate. The band, clothed in smart uniforms with red berets, marched around Manger Square, then up Al-Najmah Street into the Old Town. It was rousing music, yet coloured with a wry sense of historic tragedy, a hint of wishful thinking of former days. It faded into the distance, there was a pause and then they came back down again, with gaggles of people in tow and others hanging out of the windows watching. The band marched around the square again and then stopped. People hung around, chatting and the atmosphere on the square was sociable and upbeat.
Then something else started up: the unmistakeable sound of ragtime jazz, coming closer down Al-Najmah Street. As I went down to see, seven Austrian musicians appeared, dressed in comical clothing and followed by a happy crowd of kids and adults, all now entering the square. Everything and everyone perked up and people flooded into the square from all directions. Eventually hundreds were gathered, young and old. The jazz band stood in a semi-circle, striking funny poses, eyeballing people as they played, taking turns to do solos, and people gathered around, taken with the witty ragtime music. It was good music, skilfully played.
Bravo to them. The group had come to Palestine to entertain, and they were succeeding spectacularly. Their crazy humour connected well with Bethlehemites, everyone smiling and chuckling. Christian monks in their habits hung around, chatting with the remnants of the marching band; boys on bikes weaved around them, and families, old ladies, kids and sundry foreigners all were drawn in by the happy din.
My eyes were becoming moist – the scene was so poignant. Here was an imprisoned people chattering, laughing, hanging out. This musical intervention is real aid and development, providing an ignition-spark to raise people’s spirits, give youngsters ideas, remind oldsters of happier times and simply to exorcise all current gloom. Bethlehem broke out into a smile and tapped its feet while the trombone, clarinet, cornet, trumpet and drums blasted out jazztime ditties and the Austrians sweated in their funny costumes.
A number of private initiatives like this do happen in Palestine – people come here bringing spirited cultural and human input. They bravely contribute what they’re good at to a remarkably grateful and responsive audience. Carrying a trombone through security checks can’t be the easiest thing to explain to a sceptical Israeli officer.
I heard of a project by a Dutch rock band, half of them working in Israel, half in Palestine. They held drumming workshops on both sides to train people up for the main event. They got loads of people drumming on anything they could find, all ages joining the training. Then one day everyone trooped upstairs through the buildings on each side of the separation wall on to the flat rooftops, where they played together for hours, across the concrete curtain of the security wall. Apparently it was quite a gig.
Some years ago a German installation artist came to Palestine, mobilising people to assemble junk, wrecks and bits of old metal, of which there is plenty. Then he set to welding them into massive statues outside various Palestinian towns. After completing one junk-sculpture, he would move to another town, leaving a series of sculptures which are mostly still there.
There was also a woman from Switzerland, whom I helped to get fixed up, carrying out her own aid initiative. She taught the European Computer Driving Licence, a certificate course in computer and software use. Her aim was to teach five Palestinians whom she would then set loose to teach others, and she would return later to supervise developments. She had discovered the Hope Flowers Centre in Deheisheh as a place to help facilitate this process – they had a newly kitted-out computer room funded by a European charitable trust.
I talked her through a few facts of the game, and she was receptive. This was a good sign: many Westerners have difficulty encompassing the differences between Palestine and the West. I told her that the basic efficiency standards we take for granted in the West were unlikely to work here – people turning up on time and things happening as planned. She wouldn’t achieve her teaching task in just a few days, as she first had anticipated. I advised her to give it a few weeks, and she’d probably need to do more supervision and follow-up than intended, but her students would be intelligent and motivated. She would also make many friends and might even fall in love with the place – these are the truly human spin-offs that can arise. She got the message and I think it rather excited her.
This kind of thing can be problematic though. As Hope Flowers’ webmaster, people e-mail me with offers of help, but they don’t necessarily understand the realities involved. There’s an expectation that Palestinians will jump to attention and accommodate their generosity, and it’s not quite like that.
One lady from New York City wished to teach cartoon-drawing to the children, to help them deal with their trauma by externalising their life-stories in cartoon format. A very good idea! Except that she wanted to have everything lined up so that she could do it in just one day. This was just not doable: it’s not possible to move everything around to accommodate the urgent timetables of a visiting Westerner. People wouldn’t be convinced of the value of cartooning until they tried it. To succeed in her mission, she would have to adapt to the situation, give it time and take things as they come. I had to decline her offer and regretted that.
A charity in California wanted to send vitamin pills for the school kids, another wonderful idea. Usually they sent them to Africa or to disaster areas, so they didn’t quite understand the unique political circumstances here: the Israelis would not allow such a consignment through. The charity could not believe this – after all, Israel is an ally of USA, isn’t it? Well, that makes no difference.
There’s an extra twist to this. It’s not just a question of straight, oppressive restrictions. If the charity gave the school money to buy the vitamins from abroad, then the business would go through an Israeli importer who would profit from the transaction and, eventually, inshallah, the vitamins would probably get through. The fact that this was an aid donation made it different, since Israeli policy firmly has it that there is no humanitarian problem in the West Bank, so no aid is needed. The charity got upset with us because they thought we were being ungrateful and obstructive.
Such ungratefulness also happened with a charity seeking to send Christmas gifts. Theoretically a good idea, except that Muslims don’t do Christmas. A consignment of gifts was sent but Israeli customs got hold of them, so Ibrahim worked hard to release the gifts. Eventually they arrived long after Christmas, with most gifts removed and distributed to poor Orthodox Jewish families, whose parents don’t work for a living.
Disappointingly, only the boxes and a few leftover gifts were allowed through. Ibrahim told the charity not to send more gifts the following year but they couldn’t believe that the Israelis would block such a donation. Surely corrupt Palestinians had embezzled the gifts instead?
There’s another issue here: cultural sensitivity. Palestinian children don’t need Santa socks. As for cake with brandy in, books with Bible stories or plastic toys that break on day two, forget it. So, the thought is nice, but it’s necessary to find out what’s actually needed or to send some money, or to come over to visit and find out what will work and why. We might ask for art materials or photocopier spare parts, or even money to cover the accountants’ and auditors’ services that Western organisations often require, to prove that we’re not embezzling funds. Westerners’ generosity is sincere but it doesn’t always have the intended effect and the hassles incurred can be immense. Or the aid that is sent mainly benefits educated, well-connected Palestinians who need it less than the underprivileged. Complications that are encountered can cause charities and well-wishers to withhold support, which in turn increases Palestinians’ feelings of abandonment.
The street-level aid and support ventures that individual people think up and carry out are heart-warming, imaginative and, at times, genuinely helpful – often in different ways than first conceived. Healers, artists and all sorts of people come here, and the locals appreciate it. Fancy taking an initiative yourself? Someone might fix you a piano, a room or a crowd of people. If not, something else will happen. But it’s probably best to make a reconnaissance trip first, to find out what reality looks like in Palestine.
Acceptance is quite difficult for Westerners. We tend to want life to go the way we want it to go – and it doesn’t. Life has its own agendas and game-plan.
This becomes very apparent in late life, or when we contract debilitating, life-threatening illnesses like cancer, or when we acquire disabilities. Especially when we face death, over which we have little or no control. Death makes its own decisions.
But in the 2020s, a bigger agenda is taking over, and we have many unknowns and normality-disruptions ahead. Our grip on reality is loosening, and even billionaires and other sundry titans cannot buy themselves out of it.
It’s all about acceptance. Reality-street. That’s what this is all about.
and how the Tin Trade ended Cornish Megalithic Civilisation
This is for readers who are interested in ancient sites in Cornwall
I’m an historian who is deeply interested in prehistory, and I have an historian’s viewpoint, looking at longer-term processes at work over time. Over the last fifteen years I have done a lot of research in West Penwith, Cornwall, where I live, and here are a few new thoughts on that matter.
By examining its alignments system (see above) I was able to demonstrate that Penwith constituted a complete, integrated and focused magical landscape, an upgraded local ecosystem, and a cultured people who were at their peak in the Bronze Age.
This is about the transition from a matrifocal to a patriarchal culture, incrementally taking place during the Bronze Age.
Now a peripheral place, in that time Penwith was a central place because long-distance travel took place by sea and river – the land was extensively wooded and tracks were muddy. Penwith lay on an ancient maritime trading and cultural corridor stretching from Iberia to Britain and Ireland, so boats came from Europe every summer, landing at St Michael’s Mount.
St Michael’s Mount
This pod is about the social and psycho-spiritual changes that went on through the 1,200 years of the megalithic part of the Bronze Age. It was a pretty sustainable culture, yet it was eventually overtaken by events.
An enchantment, uplifting the land and people, was shattered. The megalithic period came to an end around 1200 BCE. It was the end of a world – the Bronze Age Collapse, affecting Egypt, Greece, Mesopotamia and the whole of western Eurasia.
Recorded in the bluebell woods on our farm. For more about Penwith’s ancient sites, look here: ancientpenwith.org or here.
Back in 2012 I was doing a tour of duty in Palestine. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was to be my last. After that I was visiting Palestinian refugees in Syria, who were in an awkward situation regarding the Assad family’s ultimately self-destructive habit of shooting at their own people.
Rock Sea Camp, near Nuweiba, Egypt
The Assads had been good to the Palestinians, but the Palestinians could not accept what the Syrian regime was doing. That put them in a politically awkward situation. So, at the request of some Palestinians in Bethlehem, who could not visit their relatives in Syria, I went from Amman in Jordan to Yarmouk refugee camp near Damascus to help with some awkward issues they were facing.
This was early on in the Syrian civil war in 2013-4, when there were about 5-6 parties slugging it out. You couldn’t tell who was shooting, or who the next checkpoint belonged to – it was a nightmare. It was a matter of staying calm, being friendly and hoping for the best – it worked. I’m good at that and, as proof, I’m still alive.
Anyway, while in Palestine I had to leave after three months because I had only a three month tourist visa. I had to leave and then re-enter – a rather dodgy business. So I caught a bus to Eilat in the far south of Israel, over the prickly border into Egypt (the Israelis give you a harder time when you’re leaving than when you’re entering), and then I hitched a ride in a Bedouin taxi down to the Rock Sea Camp.
While there, I wrote this blog entry, called ‘Lost in Arabiyya’:
Rock Sea was a camp by the side of Red Sea, not far from Nuweiba, filled mostly with Europeans. https://www.rocksea.net They mostly flew in from Europe via Sharm el Sheikh – Egypt’s big tourist resort on the Sinai peninsula.
I went there to decompress, to think things over, and then to return to Bethlehem for another two months in the rather hot frying pan that is Palestine.
I needed this thinking time because I had been involved in some rather hair-raising events in Bethlehem, and there was a chance that certain people might have been watching me. Not very nice people. The story (as much as I can safely tell it) is here, as an audiobook called Blogging in Bethlehem:
So this is the short story of what went on for me at Rock Sea, extracted from my third Palestine book, called O Little Town of Bethlehem – Christmas in God’s Holy Land, available online here, for free: https://www.palden.co.uk/pop/order.html
Love, Abu Balden
Arabs can’t say ‘p’ – instead they say ‘b’. Hence that, there, I’m called Balden. ‘Abu’ is an honorific meaning ‘father figure’.
I’m moving towards the end of six decades of public speaking and teaching. I feel it in my aching bones and sluggish brains – what’s left of them. My synapses have run almost enough marathons for this lifetime. But I think I’ll last until the end of this year, inshallah. So I’m going to do a few talks and classes during the rest of 2026. That is, if people invite me, and if it’s doable.
I was thinking recently about my capacity earlier in life to hold and convey vastnesses of information and big, wide perspectives. In my audio archive there are talks from thirtyish years ago, and some of that stuff surprises me now. Gosh, was that me? Was it in this life or another? The audio archive is here: https://www.palden.co.uk/audio-archive.html
I’ve always been rather a polymath, covering a range of subjects. A typical hyper-focused Aspergers type, I became a veritable expert in each subject I took on, and subject to occasional bursts of genius. But that’s what I did in mid-life, and now I’m rather a worn out, ponderous old hippy veteran who’s seeing things in more of a reflective way. More transdimensional. But I still have a few more things to share.
I’m doing a talk in Penzance as part of the Golowan Festival around summer solstice, courtesy of an old friend and neighbour, Na Nook. (Info: The Cornish Sacred Landscape.) I’ll be holding forth on the prehistoric society of West Penwith in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.
This is about the ancients’ worldview, their optic, their magic and their society, as demonstrated in the ancient sites they left behind. That’s fascinating, though what’s most important is that we need to learn from the ancients – it’s growing in relevance today. I’m really happy with the discoveries I’ve made about Penwith’s ancient sites in the last fifteen years. This is a kind of final statement of where I’ve come to on that matter.
As usual for me, it’ll take 20-30 years for people to really get what I’m talking about – being ahead of the times has been both a blessing and a bane in life. Hence, I’m leaving an extensive online archive which, I hope, will stay intact and available for at least thirty years! Perhaps its time will come. In the archive there’s some interesting stuff from the 1990s – some of you might enjoy Paldywan Kenobi’s Millennial Master Class from 1995.
At the JustLiveCamp at Morvah, in Penwith, Cornwall, 23–29 May, a community camp in sacred Cornwall, I’ll be giving a talk about quoits, stone circles and cliff sanctuaries. Chun Quoit is just up the hill from the camp, and I’ll happily transport those who are present on a journey into the Neolithic, 5,000 years ago, to connect with those times – the much-forested times when Chun Quoit and Chun Castle were first built.
If I can, I hope to make a trip around parts of Britain during this year, to see old friends and haunts. As you might gather, my health and mental acuity are approaching a stage where making coherent talks is becoming less possible, but if there are invitations to speak, and if it’s doable (I have to be brought by a driver-minder) then I’ll do my best!
I hope to be able to keep on with podcasts – they’re still doable. Blogs are more difficult because my fingers no longer work well. A lot of people think voice recognition programmes are a solution but, no, they take so much re-editing and correction work that I find they don’t necessarily help. Besides, written English is a little different from spoken English.
Perhaps I need a digital assistant – someone living nearby with networking and literacy skills who would like to manage my online process as I pass away. To the right person this could be really interesting, since I have a large archive of material which can easily be recycled. We shall see. Magic happens – and sometimes it doesn’t, and something else happens instead!
Anyway, here’s a new podcast about ancient sites. I pose the simple question, why do people like visiting ancient sites? We need to look at this question. We need to be honest about a few things. I believe we need to get a bit more serious about ancient sites and what they mean for us now. It’s here:
All things being well, my penultimate book, Shining Land – the ancient sites of West Penwith and what they say about megalithic civilisation, might come out in printed form before long. It already exists in digital and audiobook format, and it’s here: https://www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/
My final book, Blessings that Bones Bring, is going through a review and hopefully will emerge as a second edition by the end of the year. Or sometime – in Cornwall we say ‘dreckly‘. Clare, one of my helper-angels, is assisting with that. It’s made up of re-edited cancer-related extracts from my cancer blog.
It gives the inside story about being a spiritually-oriented cancer patient, and about cancer as a spiritual path and process – a path of awakening, acceptance and completion. As I say somewhere in the book, doctors saved my life and healers gave me a new life – and this is how it has been.
Everything that begins and is born eventually comes to an end. This is the nature of life. This is our learning. We come here to master this. It’s all in the grand scheme of things and, guess what, it’s a training for a greater life. Yes, folks, there’s further to go.
Just remember: you are on a journey, and this life in a physical body, on a dense, spinning and rather troubled planet, is but a stage along that path.
Oh, and while we’re here, I invite you to join me and a widely-spread group of shining souls in the Sunday Meditation, any and every Sunday. Come and waste half an hour with us, for a homoeopathic dose of infinity.
Whether or not you do so, please put in a prayer for all those people round the world whose lives are being devastated by the military actions of fucking assholes who believe they can bend people to their will and their geopolitical delusions by bombing hell out of them. Both the bombers and the bombed are to be pitied, each for their own reasons, and may the 21st Century be the final century in which this kind of insanity is permitted to happen.
Yes, permitted. You can go on as much as you like about Illuminati, Reptilians, Bilderbergers, Oligarchs or any Them you can name, but, in the end, it is we, humanity, who permit all this madness to happen. It is in our hands. We can do it. It has to be done.
With love, Palden
BTW: I was given the nickname Paldywan Kenobi in 1986 by a boy, then aged about eight, in a rather deep, hot and heavy talking-stick sharing circle at the time of Chernobyl, and the name kinda stuck. He stood there with the stick before him like knight holding a medieval standard, uttering words of power that I can’t remember but I’ll never forget. He’s William Cartwright, nowadays a rock musician in Glastonbury. This is where children become our teachers. And our parents.
A podcast about inner meditative work to help the world.
A marketplace in Hebron, Palestine, in 2012
This is a recording of a talk I gave in 2022 in Avebury, about the ins and outs of inner-working with crises, wars and acute situations around the world. Places such as Iran may seem a long way away, but it is on the same planet as we, and crises happening elsewhere are very much a part of our own lives.
On the inner planes there is no distance at all – only the psycho-social distance, the uncloseness that we create ourselves. Those people over there are just like us.
So this is about world work. There is lightworking – working with light beings to bathe our planet in healing vibes – and there is world work, which is about getting inside critical situations to work more surgically, bringing whatever is needed to a situation to help it resolve itself constructively.
I’ve done quite a lot of this over the years, in groups large and small, and on my own. In this talk I share experiences of what can happen when we apply ourselves to this kind of thing.
If you are vexed by events unfolding around the world, this is one way to be involved. Ever thought of flying alongside a missile and tipping it so that it lands in a harmless place? Ever thought of ministering empathically to the needs of souls devastated by floods or bombing? Or standing alongside a mother who has just watched her family die?
Ever thought of sitting alongside a fighter to try to understand what drives him and how he feels about life? And then to witness a woman fighter (Kurdish or Burmese, perhaps) and what drives her?
In retrospect this is one of the most meaningful activities of all that I’ve done in my life. You can do it wherever you are. This is one of the key things I do during the Sunday meditations – working consistently and regularly with the issues of the time. I’ve learned so much from beavering away at this. Paradoxically, since becoming semi-disabled as a result of cancer, I’ve got better at it – as physical capacities have declined, inner capacities seem to have grown.
I’m reminded of George Harrison’s song, The Inner Light, adapted from the teachings of Lao Tzu. “Without going out of your door, you can know all things on Earth. Without looking out of your window, you can know the Ways of Heaven. The farther one travels, the less one knows, the less one really knows…“.
Notes from the Far Beyond 
You must be logged in to post a comment.