Notes from the Far Beyond

Israel’s Situation

A while ago, a dear peacemaker friend of mine in Israel got triggered about some comments on one of my posts on Facebook, concerning Israel. It’s been bugging me ever since. His reaction was understandable. I’ve been wondering how to heal it. This new post might or might not help, but it’s a statement of where I stand.

One of the advantages of being a long-distance author is that I’ve often written stuff before – and there is little point writing it all out again. Especially when it’s a delicate subject that can evoke lots of reactions, many of them heading in very different directions. And if I am accused of anti-semitism, all I can say is “Yes, if that’s what you want me to be“. Please form your own judgements.

Below is a chapter from my 2011 book Pictures of Palestine – a humanitarian blogging from Bethlehem. What I wrote then still holds for me now.

Ma’ale Adumim, an Israeli settlement on the West Bank, east of Jerusalem. It splits the Palestinian West Bank into two halves, making the West Bank less viable as a nation.

One of my daughters wrote me an e-mail asking whether the blog I was writing, on which this book is based, would be biased. Well, yes, I was portraying a Palestinian perspective, if that’s what ‘biased’ means. Yet I care about the survival and future of Israel too, and Palestine’s success doesn’t have to mean Israel’s failure. Many people don’t get this.

‘If you’re not with us, you’re against us’. Crossing that gulf is a difficult aspect of working with both sides – you can get the splitz. The two sides aren’t just arguing about different aspects of the same debate – they’re not even in the same conflict. There aren’t just two sides, and it’s not a straight black-and-white issue – it involves lots of variegated nuances and complexities. To be for one lot doesn’t have to mean you’re against the other lot. The real battle lies between those who encourage polarisation and violence and those on the receiving end of them. Both sides can live together, and they shall. They do live together, even though they are strangely divided.

Palestinians aren’t angels and they’ve made mistakes but the power and the burden of error weighs heavily on the Israeli side. Israel has long had superiority in weapons, money, connections, PR, foreign backers, chutzpah and forcefulness. Israelis don’t see things this way, seeing themselves as endangered victims, thus explaining the hardship, punishment and violence they assert on others in self-defence. This is not unique amongst nations, but for Israel it’s extreme and the effects impact heavily on their victims and on the wider world.

The Israeli project – to provide a safe haven for Jews where they may live by their own norms – is a noble thing. Historically, Jews have suffered immensely, especially from the actions of Europeans. But this doesn’t justify their oppressing or punishing Arabs today or doing to others many of the things that once were done to them. Israelis don’t see themselves as oppressors – they are the oppressed, busy protecting themselves. They don’t see themselves as colonisers but as a people with an entitlement to what they feel is theirs.

Israelis have a lot to be proud of. They built a nation in six decades. From their perspective, Arabs have attacked and menaced them and Israelis have bravely held off such threats. This was the narrative I learned as a teenager in 1967 at the time of the Six Day War, during which the Israelis occupied the Palestinian territories as if by accident, pre-emptively defending themselves. In later life, I discovered that this invasion, like the previous one of 1948, involved severe ethnic cleansing and uprooting of Palestinians, razing and occupying villages and parts of towns and killing of thousands of largely defenceless people. The awful fate visited on Jews by Europeans was visited by Jews on Palestinians.

Only some Jews were perpetrators. Many were accomplices who shut their eyes, went along with things or obeyed orders, to an extent tricked by their leaders. Some protested but didn’t get far; others felt that the ills taking place were regrettable but unavoidable, believing Israel to be in mortal danger when Arab armies, somewhat incompetently, solely sought to protect Palestinians against overwhelming Israeli force.

The Israeli project was driven by a caucus of Zionists who branded Palestinians as barbarians. Zionists drove the occupation in ways which decisively defined Israel’s character and future as a state locked in a military vortex.

It could have been done differently. As they immigrated to Ottoman and then British Palestine in the first half of the 20th Century, Jews could have integrated much more with Palestinians – there would have been difficulties, certainly, though arguably fewer difficulties than actually arose.

The British administration of the 1920s-1940s could have exercised less of a divide-and-rule approach, driving people against one another.

When the UN partitioned Palestine, favouring Jews in the process, the Israelis could have made do with the territory they were allocated, without such rabid ethnic cleansing of the land.

They could have traded land for peace in the 1970s or 1990s.

None of these options would have been perfect, but some sort of peaceful and productive coexistence could have arisen, leading to a sounder long term future for Israelis. But the path Israel has chosen is, I believe, deeply flawed, and the results are coming back to haunt them.

Israeli feelings of existential threat arose from deep-seated and justified feelings of vulnerability following the Jews’ terrible history in Europe. But the threat from Palestinians and other Arabs has been less a conquering aggression, more an ineffective response to Israeli force and expansion. A sense of threat does not have to be the case now, even in these days of Arab revolutions [this was written in 2011]. When Israel upsets its neighbours, causing great loss and damage, or when during negotiations it refuses to budge on issues crucial to Palestinians and neighbouring Arabs, it naturally creates an unhappy response.

Thus, Israel becomes its own worst enemy: while intending to reinforce Israeli security, it generates ill-feeling and threats instead, undermining that security. The ethnic cleansing of 1948 would be consigned to history if such cleansing didn’t continue today. Hezbollah in Lebanon would be no threat if Israel hadn’t invaded and bombarded Lebanon so devastatingly on several occasions in the last 40 years. Hamas and other militias in Gaza would not fire rockets if Israel let up on its siege of Gaza. Action creates a reaction.

Zionism sees Israel’s own interests and expansion as paramount. Whatever means are used toward this end, and whatever costs are incurred or imposed, Israel’s growth must go on. Zionists like to reinforce the belief that the world stands against the Jewish people. The notion that Israelis’ needs and security could be helped by acknowledging the needs and security of others doesn’t enter the equation, except amongst a much-dwindled Israeli peace camp.

In the long term, if anything weakens Israel, it is Zionism, since it undermines the sympathy the world might have toward Jews. Only a proportion of Israelis actively subscribe to Zionist sentiments, though acquiescence to such sentiments increases when Israel feels threatened, and this happens regularly, and Zionism is a norm drummed into Israelis from an early age. Tragically, war has been used as a way of keeping Israelis united.

This strong-minded agenda doesn’t even really accord with Judaism’s core tenets: Judaism is one thing and Zionism another. The laws of Moses’ Ten Commandments – not to kill, not to steal – aren’t being followed, and the nobler, more tolerant aspects of the Jewish faith are sidestepped. It’s considered heretical to say this. The Zionist mentality builds concrete walls and fences around Israelis in self-protection, and in so doing they become separated from the world and increasingly fail to see the wider world’s viewpoint. Zionists accuse critics of anti-Semitism (though Arabs are Semites too) and it labels Jewish detractors as ‘self-hating Jews’.

But here comes a key proposition. If Israelis saw things another way, opening up to the notion that their fellow humans sit in the same boat as they, and if Israel ramped down its military expansionism and permitted some restitution of the ills which have occurred since 1948, then, over time, threats to Israel would subside, and the country and its population would become more safe and secure.

One Jewish extremist I know is so way-out that he’s right off the political map. Menachem Froman is an ‘ultra-orthodox’ (strictly observant) rabbi. [He is now dead.] He regards the state of Israel as scripturally premature and illegitimate, since the arising of such a state is prophesied to follow the coming of the Messiah. To him, the founding of Israel is supposed to make manifest a Holy Israel, a state of divine perfection and peace – what Christians call Heaven on Earth. To Jews the Messiah hasn’t yet come, and in Froman’s view Israel is thus manifestly unholy, both theologically and in everyday life. He’s the rabbi of an illegal West Bank settlement south-east of Bethlehem, and he’s also a member of Jerusalem Peacemakers [an organisation I was involved with founding].

But, get this. He hobnobs with sheikhs, imams, bishops, Tibetan lamas, Native Americans and oddbods like me. He also makes friends with ‘the enemy’. When Yasser Arafat was holed up under bombardment by the Israelis in Ramallah in 2002, during the second intifada, Froman walked through the lines, using his rabbinical authority to confound the Israeli troops seeking to stop him, and he visited Arafat repeatedly, becoming a close personal friend. Later, he walked into Gaza to make friends with Ismael Haniyeh, the Hamas prime minister. Israeli troops can’t quite shoot a rabbi if he breaks the rules since rabbis are by definition ordained by Jewish tradition to define the rules.

Palestinians like him: he’s the kind of Jew they can talk with. He considers Jews no more nor less special than anyone else. He doesn’t mind living under an Israeli or a Palestinian administration as long as he can live in Eretz Yisrael, the holy realm of Israel, where he was born. His own proposed peace settlement states simply that if Arabs can live in Israel (which they do) then Jews can live in Palestine, so let’s just divide it up and get on with life, or live equally under one single government and shared land. But Froman, a memorable, charismatic character, does not represent mainstream Israel.

Most Palestinians and Arabs don’t want to fight. The idea that they want to destroy Israel is nowadays a myth, or voiced by Arabs only when tempers are hot. [This was the situation in 2011 and it will eventually return.] Arab extremists say they want to eliminate Israel and, equally, Israeli extremists want all Palestinians to be driven out of the land, but neither kind of extremist represents a majority, and such exclusion would charge a heavy price to the victorious who are left behind. Germany, for example, has paid heavily in compensation and guilt for its exclusion of Jews 60-80 years ago.

Most Palestinians and Arabs accept the existence of an Israel within the pre-1967 borders – an enormous concession that they signed up to in the 1993 Oslo Accords. Even Hamas, which Israelis perceive as the arch-enemy, has stated that it will recognise Israel within such boundaries. Palestinians just want a fair deal and a decent life. Peace will never be a perfect deal for everyone, but it will be better than the current situation.

Israel cannot afford to remain militarised forever: it has poor people and social problems of its own, enormous water-shortages, a risk of coastal flooding, toxicity, pollution and all the kinds of problems that pervade most modern countries. It also shares the West’s dwindling prestige and power. And it is isolated.

Even if Israel won every war it undertakes, this doesn’t make for a happy, healthy nation. Israel needs to make friends with its neighbours because it needs them, and they need Israel. Israelis can’t drive to Damascus, Beirut or Amman for the weekend – they are hemmed into their own country. Arabs can’t visit Tel Aviv for business or shopping or easily visit Jerusalem to pray in its holy places. It’s crazy. They all have a lot to offer each other. They share Middle Eastern space.

Looking down on Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean from up in the Palestinian West Bank, near Bir Zeit. Most West Bank Palestinians are not permitted to go there – they can see the Med but never bathe in it.

Israelis need a safe and peaceful future. Many are not fully aware of what’s going on in their name, or they shruggingly accept the ‘security reasons’ they are given when their army tramples on Palestinians. Many feel powerless, or they maintain an indifference by ‘living inside the bubble’. Others adopt extreme, partisan views, as if everyone is against them and deserves a strident response. Since the late 1990s, the centre of gravity of Israeli politics has headed toward the hard right, and a harsh minority nowadays dominates the public dialogue. Zionist minority interests place their priorities above those of the nation. The rule of dominant interests, while not unique to Israel, maintains a perpetual state of near-conflict.

I support a neighbourly Israel and its gradual integration into the Middle East. But I have difficulty going along with the way this nation behaves today. I know plenty of remarkable Israelis whose humanity and conduct of character are impressive, but these people’s voices do not prevail.

Sadly, Israel acts against its own longterm best interests and could come to regret many aspects of the last sixty years. It soils its nest by pushing its case uncompromisingly, thus creating enemies and the opposite longterm effects to what it genuinely seeks. Its reliance on force, bombing, assassinations, land-grabs, ill-treatment and dehumanisation of Arabs builds up new, avoidable problems, fostering new generations of opponents. We need a new habit of peaceful coexistence. This will take a generation and more, but it is important.

Israel’s great danger is the risk of truth breaking out amongst its own Jewish inhabitants, causing the Zionist world-view to be deconstructed. Disillusionment and uncertainty could one day cause many Israelis to decide that other countries offer greater peace and security. There’s even a risk of fighting breaking out between dissonant Israeli communities, or between ‘Israel proper’ (Israel) and ‘Israel of the settlements’ (Judaea).

Palestinians don’t have to fight Israelis – they just need to stand firm. Gradually, they will simply out-populate Israelis, and changing wider-world circumstances will redefine the situation in Palestine and Israel. Palestinians want dialogue and a fair deal. They’re remarkably patient but they still need a sense of progress. So do many Israelis, living in a small, walled-in country with an army that’s slowly losing its mojo and a government dominated by minority interests.

The Holy Land is a multi-ethnic, multifaith land and a fascinating place. Sanctity is elusive and faiths define it differently, but it’s safe to say that ongoing conflict is not one of its characteristics. Positive change matters for the whole world – Israel and Palestine form a bottleneck in the world’s process of change.

Security is developed by building up a nation’s internal feelings of alrightness, community and integrity. It is built by cultivating collective happiness and creativity, giving people a sense of a positive, mutually-beneficial future. This is the real national interest, the true guarantee of Israel’s future.

That was an excerpt from Pictures of Palestine. Its website is here. This book can be ordered online in print.
The sequel, Blogging in Bethlehem, is available as an audiobook, here. The other sequel, O Little Town of Bethlehem – Christmas in God’s Holy Land, is available in PDF text format, onscreen, here.

This was the view from my apartment in Al Khader, Bethlehem. Over the valley was an Israeli watchtower. They had their binoculars and listening devices, but I had psychic antennae. I knew what they were up to. Most of them were bored shitless. But I wasn’t.

Agonos

A natural or a placed rock? This one is probably natural. Zennor Hill, West Penwith.

I’m only as good as I am in my worst moments. This is what I have learned, or perhaps re-learned, recently. I’ve been going through a lot of physical pain, and pain has a way of reducing and diminishing me, bringing me down into a state of unclarity bordering on despair, so that my best efforts at staying conscious get to be a struggle.

This is affecting my writing. Already, peripheral neuropathy in my fingers has made typing difficult, and my fingers miss the buttons, and there is so much correction and re-editing to do that I lose track of what I’m trying to write.

Unfortunately, using speech-recognition software isn’t as simple as many people believe when they recommend it, and it doesn’t work well with me. That said, about one third of this blog was first-drafted this way, then re-edited.

It’s the pain that is really doing it. Pain demands complete attention – it is merciless, scooping up consciousness and attention and blurring my inner focus. It’s my left foot only, but the pain level is so high that it can keep me awake all night or, in the day, at times bring up tears of helplessness. I’ve also been weakened by tiredness – finding myself wondering whether it is day or night, what time it is, and what’s happening.

So I will not be writing as much as I have done in the past. Which I regret, because writing has been a major part of my life – I’ve spent mega-thousands of hours doing it. But that’s the way things are now and I must accept it. The pain I am currently dealing with soaks up so much of my attention and energy, and that’s that.

This brings up something of a fear. It is the fear that, if I say nothing and go quiet, I’ll be forgotten. It’s probably an early-life psychological issue or a past-life memory, or both. I can be forgotten for perfectly good reasons – people are busy, and so many things shout for our attention, and people assume that, if I’m quiet, I must be okay, or that perhaps they should not disturb me. Or relationships become digitalised and weakened, with a constant stream of how-are-yous with little or no face-to-face contact. But I do have people close to me who keep their eyes on me and I much appreciate their involvement in my life.

This is about neurological pain. It’s to do with the interaction of our neurological system (the information system), which is plugged into our body, and our conscious mind, which isn’t directly so. It has a lot to do with what we give attention to. However, it is easy to say this, but when in deep pain it’s difficult to summon enough focused attention to change the pain from the inside.

Pain has a way of forcing us to pay attention to it whether or not we wish to. It sucks up all clarity, positivity and perspective. It’s important not to panic and to avoid getting too caught up in it, though this in itself can be difficult when the pain gets mixed up with nightmares and dream-stuff in the quiet loneliness of the deep night.

Holding my focus has become more of an issue. I wrote a blog last week and ground to a halt with it. This is what I wrote…

I don’t know whether Agonos is a proper Greek word but, in the middle of the night a few nights ago, it gyrated around in my mind, aptly describing the state I was in. Things have been tough, and daily life is hard work. I’m doing quite well regarding the blood cancer, Multiple Myeloma, that I’ve had for seven years now – it is held at bay with cancer drugs. It’s the side-issues that cause the agony – especially peripheral neuropathy – and I have also acquired a secondary skin cancer, a carcinoma. Doctors’ visits, tests, pills and interventions are increasing.

I feel like I’m in my Nineties, shuffling around like an old crock. Things have been changing in recent months, and life and my medical condition have been getting more complex, as have relationships with the various different doctors I’m under. It’s a long uphill grind. The pain in my feet dredges and wrings me out. I have some fundamental life-questions to sort out too, the main one being this: is all this toil and trouble actually worth it?

Peripheral neuropathy is a side-effect of cancer drugs I’ve taken since 2019, which have killed off the nerve endings in my feet and fingertips. Initially it leads to an ungrounded loss of feeling – I learned to live with that though, since the cancer drugs have kept me alive and I’m glad about that. But recently it has developed into two kinds of acute pain: one is a feeling of burning in the feet and the other is a bony pain, like the excruciating pain you get when you stub your toe. Except it doesn’t go away.

These happen when I am sleeping, relaxing and not moving. With a vengeance. When I move around the pain usually subsides. But I cannot move around at all times of the day and night – I need to rest and sleep too! The sensors and signals in my neurological system have gone haywire, sending the wrong signals to the brain, which registers pain and exaggerates it, sending the wrong signals back. This is rather ironic, for one who has spent so long on computers! It becomes a psychological loop that is difficult to break out of, even with painkillers.

I was given a drug (Amitriptylene) to deal with the peripheral neuropathy, and it helped partially, but it had a big psychological effect. It drained my willpower, making small tasks seem big, and making me ask depressive questions like ‘What’s the point?’ and give up. In the blurb for the drug they do say ‘risk of sui*cidal thoughts’. I’m not desperate, lost or unstable enough to be thinking of that, but I can see how such thoughts can develop with that drug. So I’ve been switched to another drug (Nortriptylene) and I cannot yet tell whether it is helping or when it will start working (it takes 4-6 weeks, apparently). The question drags on.

I’m unhappy about the number of drugs I’m prescribed and the number of doctors who are tinkering with me – none of them know me and they tend to look at the computer more than at me. Tests and scans are amazing, but sometimes a look in my eyes or a feel of my feet would do better – cheaper and faster too. The doctors and nurses are all good people, doing their best, but they work in a medical system that is not really designed for humans – for the whole human.

There’s a good chance this is a human-placed or adjusted rock. Simply to enhance nature.

So that was what I wrote and didn’t finish. It’s the same with this one, where I need to report to friends and relations what is happening, so that you know, and I’m not sure how to finish it.

I’m making some sort of progress though, giving the pain less attention, taking more of an uncomplaining and accepting attitude – when I can – and receiving some insights into my father, mother and ancestors, and into the way of things.

My left foot hurts a lot right now. I wish this would end. I guess there must be a good reason why it doesn’t. I haven’t found it though.

Eitherwhichway, I wanted to give you a read-out on where things stand for me. I’ll probably be saying less and recycling more in the way of old material from now on (but it’s good stuff). But I have a new digital helper here in Cornwall, Lucy, who, all things being well, will handle my online affairs when I lose the ability to do so – we’re running in and working through details and questions, as time goes on.

Thanks to all of you who have been following my blogs, pods and other outpourings. After getting cancer it gave my life new meaning, and the creativity of it has itself had deep healing effects. Were that not so, I think I might well have died in winter 2022. I am so glad that good souls out there like you have been enjoying and benefiting from them, and so grateful to have touched the lives of so many people – as you have touched mine.

These are at Sperris Quoit, forming part of a kind of rock temple close to the quoit. I think these are placed rocks.

In life’s final chapter, as daily life gets more difficult, the multi-level, even multidimensional costs and benefits of staying alive can shift, and the costs can get to outweigh the benefits. Just getting up out of a chair or clipping toenails can be quite an operation! Sometimes cooking food wears me out so much that I can’t eat it (but often I cook for 2-3 days each time, so it’s not disastrous).

I’m active and functional for about six hours each day, usually doing catch-up things – phone calls, messaging, clearing up and self-care – and then I wear myself out even more! “Palden, why won’t you reply to me? Have I done something wrong?”. No. I can’t keep up, that’s all, and I lose track, and I can’t spend all day at my computer.

That’s the way things are. I’ve written here about problems and hard stuff, yet I’m still grateful for the experience. That might sound a bit schizoid but, for better or worse, throughout my life I’ve always tried to make the best out of apparently bad situations, and it doesn’t stop now – and they aren’t necessarily bad either, if handled well and turned around. I’m minded to dredge up a quote I quoted several times a few years ago in my blogs:

It’s okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

I was given that jewel of wisdom by a Berliner, while standing amidst the geological drama of the Sinai Desert in Egypt in 2012. We were like ships passing in the night, briefly meeting as soul-friends in the middle of the void. I wish I could remember his name.

Love, Palden

https://www.palden.co.uk

——————-

The pics are from Zennor Hill and Sperris Croft in West Penwith, Cornwall. Some of these rocks are natural (it’s weird granitic geology round there) and some are placed or moved – back in the Neolithic, around 5,700 years ago. The question is, which are which? With some it is clear and with others it is a matter of debate.

Most people think this is natural, but I think there’s a good chance this was placed, or adjusted.

Ancestors

and taxiing toward the runway

Pics in this blog are of my father, Julian Jenkins – no longer on this Earth. Here he is, noble at his wife’s, my mother Ruth’s, funeral

I’m getting a feeling that, unless something changes or I’m getting things wrong, it might not be too long before I join the ancestors. That’s not a heavy feeling – there’s a dawning sense of relief to it. Of course, you never get to know when and how death will come, until it actually happens. So I’m faced with rather a strange choice: is it best to talk about this while I can, in case I keel over quite soon, or am I overdramatising something that is not actually imminent?

There is indeed a feeling of migration going on, a gradual shifting from here to there which, at some point, will mean that my heart stops pumping. The time will have come to go over to the otherworld – whatever that lands up truly meaning.

But the otherworld doesn’t start there. I want to return to a thought I shared a couple of years ago, about dying. Dying is a gradual psycho-spiritual process, and every one of us is dead to some extent, at this very moment. You might be only 10% dead, but part of you is over there. I’d estimate myself to be 80ish percent dead at present, up from the 70ish percent of a few months ago – though it’s a non-measurable perception.

Whether or not you’re aware of it, your psyche is much more bendy, pulsating, edgeless, multilevel, imaginal, transdimensional and empathic than you think. We’re addicted to the idea and the feeling of individuality, as if there is a clear boundary between what is me and what is not me, when actually there isn’t.

Julian at Castle Rigg stone circle, Cumbria, in his final years

Part of our deeper psyche oozes over to the other side, and on a more regular basis than we might think. This happens especially when a loved one, or a person who is important to us, dies. Part of us goes over with them, and it’s important to give time and space to experience that. It’s a blessed, spacious feeling, and a great gift. That feeling of inner connection with a deceased soul can be quite strong in the first few weeks. Over the course of a year, that emigrant soul will come back clearly at times. You get a flash of them – if only a glimpse – and you feel them and their vibe quite distinctly. So listen and talk back – this is important.

That’s how it works with ancestors. Early in human history, when we lived in genetically-defined tribes, souls would tend to recycle within the tribe’s psycho-spiritual field. We modern people have now burst out of our tribes, seeking experiential variety and following a multiplicity of possibilities. Both genetically and as souls we have become remarkably mixed and mongrelised. We’ve been at it for millennia.

But there are also specific threads that pertain to our own personal life-stories and interpersonal histories. People in our past have acted as beacons of light, rescuers, enemies, teachers, harmers, questioners and friends to us, and they live within us now, and it’s a personal thing. Or it might be a tribal or group-soul thing – a concatenation of souls with a shared identity and purpose.

Ancestors continue to live through us. They watch and witness from another place, sometimes lending a hand or dropping thoughts into our heads, or acting as an element of memory, as a model of how to do things, or how not to do things, that helps us shape the lives we live now.

One of my key guiding ancestors was a man who was alive in the mid-19th Century in South Wales, where he was well-known as a healer of last resort. Doctors would refer patients to him if they felt they could do no more. Apparently he was a curmudgeonly, difficult old git, with a big, white, Karl Marx beard, though he had a glint in his eye too. At times he would disappear up into the mountains on his horse, leaving the world behind, to collect herbs and spend time on his own. Yet he was gifted with a wondrous ability. He would reappear, back from the mountains, and people would come to him.

I first met him, inside myself, when I was young, during an inner journey on my third acid trip, in 1967. Over time he has returned, as if watching me, especially at critical points in life. It took some years of questioning relatives to find out who he was. He had been an embarrassment to the family, so he was not well remembered. But he was well-known and he did apparently save a lot of lives. He still turns up on the movie-screen of my psyche every now and then, and he’s both a genetic and a spirit-ancestor to me. And I am a bit like him too.

In this life I’ve been involved with large numbers of people, organising events, running groups, standing on stages, muttering down microphones, writing books and building websites, connecting deeply with many amazing souls. I’m aware that, having played a catalytic, key-turning role in many people’s lives, that makes me a kind of spirit-ancestor to at least some of them – once I’ve popped my clogs, that is.

So, after I’ve gone from this life, please do remember to check me out every now and then. Or if you find me checking you out, please do say hello. See whether there’s a message in it for you. I’ll pop up in your thoughts for a micro-second, and you’ll get a distinct feeling of me that comes with it.

But it’s not just that. This is a two-way thing. Being up in ‘heaven’, lacking an earthly body, it means that, if we ancestors want to get stuff done on Earth, we need to get people to do it on our behalf. This gets tricky. Modern humans suffer doubt, thinking that such thoughts are ‘just imagination’, and setting them aside. This can be frustrating for a soul on the other side: try talking to someone on Earth and they just ignore you and walk away! However, we can meet you in your dreams, and sometimes such interactions percolate through into waking-life – into what we call consciousness.

One of the things I am glad about is that, throughout life, I have often followed these promptings. I wake up with a feeling, an inspiration or a compulsion to do something, big or small (this blog about ancestors being one example), and I feel driven to do it. There’s a certain magic that comes with such downloads, a feeling that the prompting points towards something that is genuinely supposed to be. The outcomes from prompts like this can be much bigger than anticipated too.

Acting as an ancestor is rather a choice and a commitment. It’s a resolution to be available and of service to souls who remain in the land of the living, and service to the universe’s wider agendas. You don’t automatically become an ancestor just by dying: it’s a choice to be present, accessible and involved.

It also depends on how others see you, as a sort of role model or example. On some level, and whether or not people are conscious of it, you become a star in their inner firmament. You become a watcher. You cannot interfere, though you can lay seeds of possibility and simply be there for people.

Here’s the main reason I’m dwelling on this. From an earthly viewpoint, my health and condition have been deteriorating in recent months. I find I’m becoming less focused on, and interested in, the world around me. More often, I find myself floating off and disengaging, interiorised and seeing the world more like an outsider, once-removed.

I remember this when my Sagittarian father was in his nineties. I’d take him on adventures – he liked that. He would fall asleep during the journey but, when the engine stopped and he awoke, there before us would be a panorama over the mountains or the sea. We’d sit there sharing a flask of tea, sometimes going for a slow walk. Or I would go for a walk and he’d fall asleep. I was giving him a last look at the world, and we’d visit some of his favourite places. He died over a decade ago, but we still nod and wink to each other across the dimensions. Those were valuable moments.

We certainly are multidimensional intelligences, and this becomes more and more apparent as we approach death. Except, as intelligences, we don’t always use our full intelligence. Jean Piaget, a sociologist, once said, ‘Intelligence is not about what you know, it’s about what you do when you don’t know’.

Indeed. This is the story of life on Earth. It’s a life filled with paradox and improvisation, and we each have a different instruction manual and a unique experiential path to follow, just to complicate things.

I’ve just begun revising my cancer book, Blessings that Bones Bring – it needs to be shortened and sharpened. The book is a distillation of relevant material from my cancer-and-life blog, Notes from the Far Beyond. It’s in both digital and audiobook formats.

Next there is a question of how to end the book, since a cancer story, in my case at least, ends when I die. However, I’m not dead yet and, after death, I won’t be able to write the final chapter. That’s one of those paradoxes. I haven’t figured out what to do about ending the book, but something will work out.

So that’s my project for the next few weeks – apart from getting through each day. At this late-life stage, it’s a matter of completing what I can of the flapping threads of my life, while I still can, even though existence is twice as difficult as it used to be before cancer along.

I hope this rather rambling blog makes some sense. Perhaps I’ll return to this ancestor theme another time. I might be losing the plot, going off at tangents, but something else is dawning inside. In the land of the living it looks as if things are going wrong and I am deteriorating, but in the land of the soul something new is starting up. Or perhaps I’m getting a re-training in how to function in the rather rarefied consciousness-realm where ancestors spend much of their timeless time. I wonder if they serve good tea there?

This doesn’t really feel like a journey into the Great Unknown: instead, it feels like going home. It was this life that was all about the Great Unknown – a life in a world where we drive bulldozers through the laws of the universe. We flail around in the choppy seas of earthly experience, bumping up against things and people, struggling to make sense of a pervasive fiction that we call ‘reality’. However, at the end of it we are permitted to go home, and our bruises and wounds are attended to – if, that is, we allow it. If we don’t allow it, we start our next life carrying the baggage, hurt and aberrations of the life or the lives we had before.

Meanwhile, if you’re in the mood for some seriously moving rock’n’roll, here’s a remarkable musical rendering of the dying process, in a Christian cultural context: Gabriel Fauré’s Requiem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPI3E0Sxs0E

Love from me, Palden

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Interesting click-clacks:
+ Cancer book, Blessings that Bones Bring (original 2024 version): https://www.palden.co.uk/boneblessings.html
+ Blog, Notes from the Far Beyond: https://penwithbeyond.blog
+ From the AHA Class, a talk: Getting Dead, and What Happens Afterwards: https://www.palden.co.uk/ahanotes-dying.html

An Insight

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.

Think about it.

With love, Palden

Imitating Mountains

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.

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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

Love, Palden

For more about The Nine, try here: https://www.palden.co.uk/nine.html

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Iceland, Ireland & Portugal: 8-8.30pm Sunday
W Europe: 9-9.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye, the Levant, Egypt: 10-10.30pm
Iran: 10.30-11pm
UAE: 11-11.30pm
Pakistan: midnight-00.30 Monday
India: 00.30-01.00 Monday
Oz: AEST 5-5.30am Monday
NZ: 8-8.30am Monday
Greenland: 5-5.30pm Sunday
Brazil, Argentina, Chile: 4-4.30pm
EST, Venezuela, Bolivia: 3-3.30pm
CST, Colombia, Cuba, Jamaica: 2-2.30pm
MST, Mexico: 1-1.30pm
PST, West Coast North America 12noon-12.30pm Sunday

Maps

of the Ancient Sites and Alignments of Cornwall

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.

https://www.ancientpenwith.org/maps.html

Love, Palden

Funny How Things Go…

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 whole article is here: https://penwithbeyond.blog/2020s/

and if this subject interests you, you’ll find details and charts here, in the Historical Ephemeris: https://www.palden.co.uk/ephem/6-global.html

Love, Palden

Just a Thought…

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.

Or, regardless, it’s a good read!

Love, Palden

https://www.palden.co.uk/pop

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Fun in Beit Lahem

bagpipes and saxes in the Old Town

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

A new podcast

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.

It’s here, on my site:
https://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Or here on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/0JI66zYybtb6ImqF1dcUbQ?si=lbDiQHWGRWmvo3QjAmpviw

Love, Palden

The End of a World

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.

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.

With love, Palden

Listen to the podcast here: https://palden.co.uk/podcasts.html or here on Spotify: