None of us began our existences here on Earth. This podcast is all about origins. Origins of the soul.
Here I share what happened in a deep regression I had over twenty years ago, which involved going back to the beginning of my soul, far away in another world, and a very different world to our own.
This is a longer podcast than most (it’s 39 mins) – it contains a lot. It’s a bit heavy-duty too, but it will be interesting to friends who are interested in my magic circles, and who have read a certain book…
The podcast also covers my connections with beings I worked with thirty years ago. I compiled a book for them called The Only Planet of Choice – essential briefings from deep space. They were called the Council of Nine – kinda part of the management structure of the universe, if you could say such a thing. Those of you who have read the book might like this podcast.
I hope it rings some bells, giving a sense of your own connections with the source of your soul. Which might perhaps be a matter of interest to you! After all, that’s what’s left when you pop your clogs. Since I’m by necessity rather focused on the small matter of clog-popping, such soul matters as these matter more to me now than they did when my life was busier and I thought I was more in control of it.
My Mum taught me not to be a problem. As a quiet Virgo, I wasn’t much of a problem – it didn’t take a lot of doing. But her and my concepts of ‘problem’ were different – mine didn’t encompass spotlessly white collars on my school shirt or holding my knife and fork properly. This pattern has at times itself been in itself a problem – not putting myself forward when I should, or accepting loss more than was right. But it’s also an asset which has helped me in my peacemaking work and generally makes people believe I’m a good guy, and this has got me through some mighty scrapes.
It’s an important thing for the 21st Century. We all have to scale things down that we reduce the extent to which we are other people’s problem or can become one. This is tricky. For me, I’ve often been a problem for others in terms of the way they see things, but not necessarily a problem in an ultimately real way. This is common in all sorts of social and intercultural interactions – we project stuff on each other. I’ve been in many situations where the worse option, not the one I present, has been chosen, just to cover people’s asses or allow them to avoid facing something that is important. I’ve sat in clink, been an exile and lost my kids over this. There have been times when I’ve been plain wrong too – and it’s important to own up to these.
It’s all about attentiveness to others. I’m very attentive in certain ways, though sometimes I seem deficient too, on the personal front. My attention is taken up quite a lot with the world and at times with things not of this world. Perhaps as a psychic type I tend to forget some of the more outward niceties and considerations others need, and they don’t necessarily register the support I might be giving them inwardly. Generous in certain ways, though spontaneously, I forget birthdays and little behaviours that matter to others but I don’t really register in my lexicon. I guess this is an Aspie issue.
Since my life encompasses a large number of people, those close to me can sometimes wonder how much I care specifically for them. This can be reinforced by my at times dispassionate and inscrutable demeanour, or an absentmindedness when I’m focusing on work or innerwork that looks like I don’t care. Or perhaps I’m lost in space, processing situational intricacies, or keeping a presence in the Donbas, or monitoring someone who is ill or dying. Or just floating off. Mad professor stuff. I do change, but I’m slow, sure and thorough in it, especially when on a major Saturn transit like recently, and sometimes people can’t wait. Sometimes I change further than others were expecting.
I’ve had a time of scrangly challenges for the last year – the duration of a Neptune opposition Saturn transit, starting in May 2021 and completing in February this year. It has taken 3-4 months since then to surface and survey the new landscape. In February I felt I had perhaps one year left, and now I feel I have longer – it’s important not to try to pin down how much. For me there’s an extra calculation of two things: the time I can stay in active service and the time to drop it and focus on staying alive, or departing well. I don’t want to drag things out though, because I’m also rather tired in my soul and I want to go home for a while.
One of the transformative gifts here is that everything is so much more provisional than it was before, or than it is for most people. We usually have a sense of a roadmap, plans, expectations and logical steps to our lives, whether it’s framed in terms of things feared or things loved and hoped for. But now, in every arrangement I make I must calculate whether and how much I’ll be able to actually do it when the time comes. It helps to be an astrologer, though much of the decision-making I do intuitively. For important arrangements I tend to take a rather military, or a performer’s attitude, managing my energy to make sure I’m alright on the night whatever state I’m in. It’s the before and after that matter more – and nowadays it’s during those times I need a minder.
I always used to say to astrological clients that, when they had a major Saturn transit, they would get a download and a re-purposing of their life and mission, a new chapter in their work. Or (I’d tell them this carefully) they would get consequences from not doing so. On the approach to the transit two years ago I was going through my cancer struggle and reckoned, well, there’s not a lot more for me to do, so I can’t see how it could work that I’d get a new mission. But on the other hand, before cancer came along, something in me had been saying ‘There’s one more major mission to do’. But I could not see what that might be. When cancer came along I packed away that idea.
But cancer gave it back to me. It changed my life. It aged me, putting me up against the wall. It forced me to look at hard truths. It is now yielding fruits I did not expect – yet, the way it feels now, in a funny sort of way, all my life I’ve been unwittingly preparing for this. It shows how taking a hard path can sometimes shift things much more than following a seemingly easier or safer path. I peeped into hell during the depths of last winter, struggling with demons in the desolate places of my soul. But it shifted a pile of crap too. It’s strange to say, in my condition, that I’ve been given a new life, but there’s some truth to it, even if it lasts only a few years.
On the cliffs with the sheikh and friend Julia Aisha
This week I was visited by the Green Sheikh Saad Iddeen AlMaghrebi AlQudsi. He came with a dear Palestine soul-sister, Julia Aisha, with whom I worked in Bethlehem, and by his minder Said Julia Adams. Both Julias are very English, yet Muslims and well versed in Middle Eastern ways, and the Green Sheikh lives in London and goes regularly to Jerusalem, where he was born. He’s involved with many of the spiritual peacemakers I’ve worked with out there, on both sides of the conflict, nowadays calling themselves the Abrahamic Reunion (though formerly they were Jerusalem Peacemakers – it was founded in Glastonbury).
Julia Aisha played the oudh and sang some lovely Palestinian songs, and we formed a little bubble of Palestine here under the cloudy skies of Cornwall. Transfixed, we were. Then I took them to Carn Gloose, a dramatic clifftop nearby, and they made prayer there, facing Makkah. Cornwall weaved its oceanic magic on them and they were shining. We came back and the sheikh said prayers for me, giving me the healing of Allah. He lit up as he was chanting. I was being blessed and felt it. Allah was giving permission to move forward. Alhamdulillah – thanks be to That Which Cannot be Named.
So I want to create some magic spaces and invite you in. I’ll be doing some talks too, captivating in their own way, but this is different – this is circle-working. I’ve always been a good teacher, threading things together and causing a lot of lightbulb moments, but this isn’t primarily about teaching. It’s more about what Tibetans call transmission. Not from me but through me, and through the rather amazing people working with me and through those who are present. This will take some input and focus by everyone for the duration of each event (lasting perhaps 5-6 hours altogether). Something special becomes possible when it’s all well engineered and everyone’s in there with it. I cannot tell you exactly what this will be, but you’ll know it when it comes. I feel I’m in a position now to bring such a thing through, with your help.
At present, there are three areas where I feel I can contribute something. The first is about life and death and our lives and paths, the second is about ‘inner aid’ work to help the world, and the third concerns connecting with the source of our souls and the places and soul-tribes we come from.
I’m not interested in converting anyone or starting a following – I’m not around for long, and that kind of stuff really doesn’t matter any more. This is a series of one-offs – they are not going to get routine. I’m interested in drawing together people who feel a resonance with me and the signal I put out, because in some way that makes us soul-relatives or soul-friends, and we thus have a resonance between us. The coming together of a group of souls with such a connection means that energy-levels can be upstepped to a higher voltage. It means that everyone present needs to be a bit stretchy, willing to overcome reservations and swim in deeper water, but if we hold the circle well, everyone will be safe and the outcomes can be memorable. I and many of you have experience in this and we can do it.
The overall aim of this is to help everyone get connected up better, within yourself and with some good people and beings. I hope it will encourage you to follow your path and pursue your mission, whatever it is. My personal aim here is to fulfil one of the major threads of my life and hopefully to do something of assistance to The Management and to you. Those that I work for don’t seek believers and followers and they are not important in themselves: they want us as souls to rise to our full stature and to do what we’re here for and what we need to do. They’ll support anyone who does, and I want to strengthen in you ways in which this may be done.
Get this. One of the greatest crimes against humanity of today is withholding. We all do it – me too. It’s embedded in our cultures and it’s quite a heave to pull out of its clutches. With it go self-doubt, not-good-enough little-me syndrome, fear of risk or shame and that creepy feeling that the holy spirit somehow left us behind, or that we’re not up to it. Withholding involves setting aside and even forgetting the reason we came, and the true gifts and purpose we have. We get on with other things that seem important at the time, but when we approach the end of life, the money, property and success we’ve had and the chocolate we’ve eaten matter little, while the enduring truths of what we have been and what we have become stare us in the face.
Withholding lies at the root of our planetary problem today. If everyone increasingly got on with their true calling, things on Earth would start resolving quite rapidly. It’s amazing what comes out when the channels start getting unblocked. And yes, the toilets would get cleaned, because there’s a way of making even cleaning toilets a divine act of soul-enriching service.
Climate change, war, systems disintegration, injustice, poverty, toxicity – all these we can resolve. It’s going to take more effort, time, energy, sacrifice and change than we currently believe, but we’re going to do it and we can’t not. There will be payoffs, good news and miracles amidst the crises and crunches. What’s interesting here is that the drift of events in the world is forcing us to face big questions and do something about them for our own survival. There’s an urgency to it. It’s becoming clear that it is in our self-interest to work together and prioritise collective interest. We have to devise a way of coexisting on Earth in a way that fosters diversity and cultural variegation while becoming one planetary people, consensually cooperating in maintaining our world, rendering it safe and decent, and building a new world out of the structures and rubble of the old.
Here’s a question worth addressing, regarding death and what happens afterwards. Do you choose to return to live out one or more further lives on Earth, to contribute toward that planetary resolution, and perhaps to be here when the breakthrough happens or afterwards? It’s hard and risky work though it has its rewards, as you probably know. Or would you opt for heading off to other realms and leaving the Earth issue to those of us who remain? This has its validity too, and this life might be designed to be your last. Consider this carefully because you will face it sometime. Sorting out this question can help you refocus your current life so that, whatever your choice, you do it well while you’re alive.
Because once death comes, there’s no going back. There’s no delete or undo button. That’s when you set sail for other horizons and, if indeed you are to come back or move on, that will be finalised later on, once you’ve gone through the full post-death process. You’ll have a conference with your angels and members of your soul tribe.
I awoke at six this morning with a cacophony of thoughts that permitted me only to make a round of tea before getting on with them. That’s what I’m like. But also I’ve been on Dexamethasone for the last two days, a once-monthly part of my cancer treatment, and as a steroid it gets my mind buzzing. Something usually comes out of it – I’ve trained myself to make use of it. That’s perhaps why you got another blog thrown at you quite quickly after the last one.
I’m on antibiotics too for an osteo-necrosis infection, which I’m not happy about, but I do not see any alternative to them at present, so I’ll continue till I find one that actually works – since this is potentially a killer issue and I can’t mess around. My back is getting weaker, and exercise doesn’t necessarily help it. Cancer caused four of my lowest vertebrae to soften and collapse and my bones shrank marginally – you ought to hear my back clicking when, several times a day, I click myself back into place…
Myeloma is a blood and bones issue, and that’s pretty fundamental. It’s not tumorous, but it permanently changes your constitution. Blood is about life-force and will-to-live, and my bones hold me up, allowing my body to hang itself onto them for the purpose of functioning on a densely-gravitational planet. Myeloma is not very common but it’s one of the fastest growing cancers today – because of increasing EM radiation and use of certain neurotoxic chemicals. My functionalities are much reduced, but I manage, with a little help from my friends. Sometimes, by late afternoon, I can’t hold myself up any more, it hits my life-force tremendously and my brains conk out. I have to hit the horizontal, allowing myself to relax and float off for a regeneration session – it takes about half an hour. That’s when visitors need to get out their knitting.
A number of Paldywan events are taking shape in Glastonbury, Avebury and Totnes in the coming months and, when things are firmed up, I’ll let you know. This will be networked, not greatly advertised. For those of you who cannot come, it will be possible to devise a way of tuning in – news about that later. Other places are possible in due course, though I must pace myself and my helpers. These events will perforce be ‘limited edition’, even if I manage to continue with them for two or three years. Electrosensitivity means I cannot work in cities. Besides, everyone will be far more in contact with things with their phones switched off.
It’s time for breakfast. The sun is shining and I’m going to potter in the garden. I might or might not be alone this weekend, depending on whether anyone chooses to come visit. One other gift cancer has given me has been loss of agency – control over my circumstances. I’m in Neptune’s capable hands, and have gone through another lesson in acceptance. In life, we get what we get, and that’s the way it is, and we’re here to do the best with that. But the amazing thing is that other things happen instead, even if we don’t get what we want, and the universe does indeed look after us.
Bluebells at Treviscoe, West Penwith, the home of a dear friend, Ba Miller
I felt a bit like a nine-year old boy, swallowing hard, facing the Great Wide and Wonderful and wondering whether he’ll make it.
I made my first trip away from home for a long time, travelling to East Cornwall to stay with an old friend – we’ve known each other for four decades. I caught the train back – it’s necessary to take a punt on its not getting too crowded. The last two miles as the train comes into Penzance must be one of the better stretches of train journey in this country, as the mythic St Michael’s Mount appears and the train cruises above the Long Rock shoreline. A very fresh air and seagull welcome greets you when you get out at the last town in Britain.
Penny, my trusty helper, picked me up, taking me home to the farm. She had spring-cleaned my cabin while I was away, bless her. I spent the evening detoxing from the mobile-phone radiation I had picked up in transit, letting the brain-screeching, embattled agitation and sharply-piercing headaches of electrosensitivity die down slowly – it takes about 36 hours. Still alive, still here.
Going away changes my perspective, and I had a lot to mull over. In a way I’m starting again. The traveller in me, locked down for the last few years, managed to get an airing – and in making the trip I was testing out my capacity to handle it. Because, all things being well, and when I can afford the ruinous post-Brexit health insurance for a cancer patient and the expense of taking a minder with me, I might one day even find myself once again sitting in an aircraft seat and heading off somewhere.
Guess who’s the chief
The four likely destinations, in order of doability, are Sweden (where I once lived and have family and friends), the ancient Minoan island of Kalymnos in Greece and the even more ancient town of Bethlehem in Palestine, where bits of my heart still reside, and, least likely, Tinzibitane in Mali, the village of the Tuareg tribe I’ve been helping for some years. It would be great to meet the village chief, who is my age and a brother of the soul, before either of us passes on. Though perhaps we might meet over on the other side instead – you never know. I wonder if the Tuareg version of heaven is similar to that of a European like me? I might find out before long.
Making plans – a very Western preoccupation. I’m making some provisional plans. They must be provisional because I could have a choking fit or a sudden downturn and keel over tomorrow – I had a downturn and lucky scrape only in February. But I could also live for five years more. For a person like me, held up by strength of spirit more than by medical probability, there’s a mysterious factor too, because I have an uncanny tendency to bounce back from the deepest of crises, and this makes things a bit less predictable.
This stone circle was built in the 1990s by the late dowser Hamish Miller, and it does indeed thrum.
So I’ve decided to do something I’m good at: put myself on the parapet, push the river in a direction cancer patients like me usually shouldn’t take, and create a few miracles before I go. My two strong points lie in pulling together groups to do some magic pressure-cooking and close encounters, and humanitarian work in embattled places. These are more connected than it appears, actually.
I’m going to try to pull off a few things, using my weakness and despair as strengths and the insight that wizzened mortality and beat-up experience have brought. I’d like to create some magic moments for people I’ll soon be leaving behind. Or perhaps I want to reaffirm a heartlink with sisters and brothers far and wide, to strengthen our network of light so that it comes back to life in other realms and other times. Because the work is not yet done.
When I was twenty, standing atop a mountain in Snowdonia, north Wales, I had a life-changing vision of the coming battle for the hearts and minds of humanity. I saw the beauty of nature and the dark clouds on the horizon. I discovered what Weltschmerz felt like – German for the pain of the world. Fresh from a failed student revolution at the LSE in London, burned out and trying to process it, I had a soul-shaking revelation of the kind you sometimes get at the tops of mountains. I made a deep commitment to doing what I could to transform the world into a safe and friendly place.
Well, in the ensuing decades I did what I could, and now, as curtains time approaches, I feel the job is distinctly incomplete. This is deep because I feel I came into this life not to help bring about that change, but to attend to what needs to happen after it when, having crossed the hump, humanity is faced with the big question of what to do next. This mission is as yet unfulfilled – it must be commuted to my next life. Inshallah, if that is what it is to be. So if sometime in the future you see some kid in a baby buggy staring right at you and twiggling your sonars, it might be me.
Many ancient stone circles are sanitised and also robbed of their setting by farms and more recent developments, but this stone circle sits in a fine and beautiful setting. It draws the spirits to it.
But there’s still stuff to do. In my latest book about prehistoric sites in West Penwith, Shining Land, I suggest that the esoteric technology of the people of the neolithic and bronze ages in Britain is pertinent to us now because, once we’ve sorted out basic sustainability, social and ecological issues, by the end of the century we will come to the matter of working with the subtler energy-fields of nature and the planet, to bring about the next level of planetary restoration and repair. This is what I mean by ‘after the change’. It concerns not only ecological-climatic repair but social, psycho-spiritual and civilisational repair, deep and on a global scale. The book will come out sometime but, currently, there’s a technical problem: its typesetter, Jonathan, who has done two of my previous books, happens also to be the Green mayor of Penzance, and he’s a tad busy!
This is what being on Planet Earth is all about: there’s an excruciating gap between vision and actuality, and it often takes longer than we’d like. This is a key part of the learning and soul-honing that coming to this planet involves – it’s what we chose when we volunteered for the mission. It’s so easy to forget that. I do. Some things take a lifetime, and changing the course of history takes longer. For those of us in the business of planetary repair, we need to remember this. True and full change takes seven generations. So look after your grandchildren.
I can’t visit my grandchildren, but each of them I regularly hold in light, giving each of them deep attention and being there as a kind of guardian angel. I have an ancestor, a well-known healer in Pontypridd, South Wales, in the mid-1800s, who seems to have been watching over me. Apparently he was a stroppy, difficult man, but a brilliant herbalist and healer to whom doctors would send patients when they had given up on them. Sometimes he’d disappear off into the mountains, forsaking people and collecting herbs, and people responded with a mixture of relief and hope that, being a community protector, he’d return. Perhaps we’re a bit similar.
I’ve been learning a big lesson for a man, yet again: the taproot of our strength as men lies in our weakness, vulnerability and apparent lack of agency. In weakness we can either become its victim or we can use it to pull out all the stops, to break rules and probabilities. Where there’s a will, there’s a way. During this winter I’ve been alone, going into deep, desolate places in my heart, and realising that, though I’m immuno-compromised on cancer drugs, I don’t want to sit around at home waiting for the chop. I’m a Mars in Scorpio sort of guy who dies in action and rarely surrenders. Well, metaphorically speaking.
This said, I’ve had quite a few chances to die and I’m still here, so God only knows how this saga will actually end. I guess my friends upstairs will hold me up and keep me here until they transfer me to another department. Fuckit, these are the facts of life for a pathological rainbow warrior leaning heavily on his sticks, trying desperately to pull off a few earthly thrills before he deposits his clogs into the recycling bin of forgotten time. Us Virgos, we do tend to want to make ourselves useful.
So, I propose doing a few events, with a little (actually quite a lot of) help from my friends. To some groups it will be armchair talks or afternoon workshops, and in some it will be special group phenomena and close encounters of a ninth kind – inspiring, empowering and memorable, I hope. With the latter, perhaps they’re not for people who prefer to paddle rather than swim. They’ll be one-offs only, because there will come a time when I can’t do it any more.
So if you’re good at organising and you feel drawn to the prospect of doing an event in your area with old Paldywan, please contact me and we can work something out. I can’t do many of these, a minder will be bringing me, it must be phones off and not in a city, and please treat me as if I were ninety. Energy-management: if it all works, it could be a memorable event and a blessing. Cornwall and Glastonbury area are likely locations, but if there’s a caucus of interested people in your area or your network, let’s discuss it.
If you can’t make it, then I’ll be blogging and podding till I no longer can, possibly longer, so all is not lost. Then there are the psychic airwaves: it’s not specifically me that you’re tuning into, but the network I’m a part of, and those of you who get a buzz of recognition with me are getting a buzz from the network, and you’re getting it because you’re already part of it and perhaps need reminding or help with reconnecting. You see, I’m a strange one from a faraway place, and some of you pick up the frequency because you know it. I’m interested in reconnecting with those souls while I still can, and sharing a shot in the arm with you from the folks back home, if you’d like that. It’s pretty much all I can do with my life now. So do come and have a cup of tea with friends old and new, wherever I turn up.
Two dear friends, Ba Miller, 90, left, and Miriam Naccache, 61, right, at Ba’s home.
Concerning psychic airwaves… there’s plenty of spam, phishing and malware out there in the ethers, and keep your commonsense filters up. If in doubt, give it time and form judgements slowly. It all depends on the frequencies you tune into and anchor to. If you are as clear as you can be in motivation and perspective, that is your protection – a whole person has fewer weak-points and we’re challenging as entities to level with. Be cautious with anyone who in some way, often well concealed, advocates division or prejudice, since it is the unified resonance of humanity that will ultimately carry us through – just as the solidarity of Ukrainians is carrying them through today. Remember to know and judge people by their works more than their words – and that includes enchanters like me. In the psychic world the actual content and value of information is far more important than the claimed status of the source. The most valuable sources are not so loud and they don’t make big claims – they tend not to come from our local area in our galaxy or from neighbouring dimensions either. With exceptions. As you do with humans, treat each one individually and follow your intuitions as to how to interact with them.
But now, it’s back to mundanities. It’s another hospital outpatient visit concerning the osteo-necrosis in my chin, followed by a visit from the nurse to shoot me up with my monthly hit of cancer drugs. And team-building after the destruction I went through a few months ago, completing building the Meyn Mamvro Archive (it has taken two years), getting my book out, staggering over clifftops and through woods, and carrying out that strange activity called staying alive. For someone in my situation, that takes more effort than for most.
Walking angels, these two (though they’d no doubt shrug shoulders and deny it)
The 18th Century philosopher Edmund Burke once said something that has always guided me: For the triumph of evil it is necessary only that good people do nothing. This is the story of our time: in this world we don’t have a problem of evil, but we do have a problem with playing safe and keeping our heads down so that evil can prevail. This is why psycho-spiritual transformation is a necessary and central part of repairing all else.
I met a young Berliner in the Sinai Desert one hot, shimmering day. We were specks on each other’s horizon until eventually we met, there in the resounding desert silence, hiding in the shade under a rock, and he taught me something I seem to have repeated quite a few times on this blog: It’s always okay in the end, and if it’s not okay, it’s not the end. The implications of this expand in every direction, the more you consider it.
Hm, while finishing this blog, I kept saying to myself ‘Eat your breakfast, Palden’ – it was ready. Or so I thought. I looked at it and discovered I’d already eaten it. Ah, that’s presumably why I forgot. I might sound lucid in a blog or do a video interview, but actually I’m pretty useless in many functional things nowadays. Chemo-brain. I don’t have brain-fog, I have brain-lag. Which is why I sometimes need a minder, and I can’t organise events any more (that was 30-40 years ago). Nowadays I must studiously avoid getting sucked into complexity because I get lost and screw up. And sometimes, once we get to the car, it’s great to be driven home again, to my little cabin in the far beyond.
Here’s a big hug to all of you who’ve read thus far! Bless you – and thanks for being with.
Some music I’m enjoying right now, Eric Mouquet (Deep Forest) and friends in Brazil: https://youtu.be/-nAwQoM3eS8
Here’s my granddaughter Idun in Lappland, singing in two languages, demonstrating the magic of the coming generation and busy discovering her starborn side (get a tissue): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Dv_6IiHWLw
The Jokkmokk Market in February, in northern Sweden, goes back generations – formerly the Sami and the Swedes met up to trade, though now it is mainly a kind of ethnic festival lasting a few days.
It’s amazing what we humans do to justify our existences. This is my fiftieth blog entry, would you believe.
It takes a few hours to do a blog but it takes days beforehand, churning through ideas and possibilities… and then, one day, I wake up, forget all that, and just start writing. That’s what happened here. I was refilling my tea mug, having just got up – vanilla tea with a dash of coconut. It came. I had to get it down before it was lost in the side-alleys of lapsed memory. It’s all to do with opening up a space inside where creativity erupts, as if out of nowhere. Though actually it comes from the compost fermented in the preceding few days.
Sometimes, as a writer, you can plan things out, but sometimes you just have to start – start with anything. Well, something interesting. It’s all about having something to say, and creating it using words that draw in readers regardless of what you’re actually saying, and the combination makes for good writing. Plus a shot of inspiration – something sparky that comes out of nowhere, oozing out between the lines. We humans communicate in far more frequencies than words, and gifted writers can say more than words.
This might surprise you, but in my own life it took a long time to find my words. It came in stages – ages 14-16, 20ish, 30ish and 36 – having written five unpublished manuscripts. Before that, as an Aspie with a rather complex brain, I was in a kind of deep, silent confusion. The world was telling me things that didn’t accord with my experience. It told me things about myself I couldn’t identify with. It made me into a ‘strange boy’ who would sit in the corner, while everyone else did normal things. At school, I just didn’t understand what we were there for. I was an autodidact, just waiting to go home to get on with my studies and projects.
The Council Chamber at Bosigran Castle, West Penwith
Why should A + B = C? Will someone explain? Why should children suffer to go unto Jesus? If God is Love, why should we fear Him? (And why use capital letters)? Why do cars pump exhaust at you? Why should God specifically save the Queen? With Jupiter in Pisces and Moon in Gemini, these kinds of questions irked the young me.
I was the boy with glasses who got picked on and beaten up. But around age fourteen something clicked. I remember two things (my memory is shot, so this is remarkable in itself). Feeling inadequate and holding back, I was nevertheless pushed into speaking at the school debating society. Some kids were getting ready to laugh at me. I won hands down, completely forgetting my notes and holding forth fluently. I found my voice and, well, from then on I was good on-stage. But I still had a struggly quandary going on in myself, especially with understanding my personal position in life and how to work relationships.
The other thing was cross-country running. In Liverpool, football was everything, and speccy-foureyes was no good at it. But when we started long-distance running, Mars in Scorpio found his power. I delighted in hanging round mid-field for the first half of the run, and then accelerating just as the big football heroes were flagging – and I’d love passing them, heading for the front, hehe. That was great! It taught me that anything is possible if I have the will. This lesson applies just as much now, going through a cancer-induced endurance test. Out of this come a second strength and miracle possibilities.
Stone of the Hole, Men an Tol, West Penwith
It was LSD that changed everything. Age 16 (it was legal in 1966), I was given some California acid by a Scouse poet and we tripped out on the dockside in Liverpool. Suddenly I slotted into myself. I had a clue – saw the light, the beginnings of a calling. Uranus and Pluto were conjuncting over the Sun in my astrological chart (historic in itself), and my life changed, on that day. It was a ‘turning in the deepest seat of consciousness’. The strange boy went stranger, and something snapped together. It was okay to be me, as I was. From then on I was on a search for truth.
Well, I found some, only some, though it was worth the journey and it continues today, even in late life. Truth is big and deep and wide. So big that you can’t actually fully get it, and there’s no final answer – though we humans have indeed tried. Anyone claiming The Truth is missing something. When I was involved with the Council of Nine, they’d always refer to ‘What you call God’. Yet it’s here within us, a kind of deep knowing, a feeling of alignment, integration, anchoredness and vastness that reveals itself to each and every one of us at certain moments in life. What we do with that – many people reach for the next can of beer or stand in queues at airports – is entirely up to us, and some of us do say Yes. Hello, you.
But even then, over the decades, for me it has been an ongoing battle between saying Yes and saying No – and also I’ve studiously avoided the question, as we all do. It’s criminal, really – the crime of avoiding doing what we’re really here to do. The crime of retraction. It’s kinda easier to ‘settle down’, get a job and get drunk at Christmas – there’s so much pressure to join the Great Turning-Away. We must conform to some extent, even if you’re a weirdo like me, because we’re all here amongst humanity and, unless you close yourself away somewhere, way away in the Siberian taiga, or even attempt a compromise version like me at the far end of Cornwall, our fellow humans are all around us and we live in the civilisation and time of history that we live in. And we chose to come here.
Aspies call our so-called syndrome ‘Wrong Planet Syndrome’. Problem is, it’s tricky looking at the world from the viewpoint of a stranger. Sometimes you even look at your own mother or your lover and think Who is this?. It’s double-tricky, because most people around you think you have a programming error – a mental health issue – when actually it’s simply that an Aspie is programmed up with a different operating system (like Apple and Android). But Aspies are in a minority, and now we’ve been lumped into an autistic spectrum that some wisecracker with a doctorate thought was a nifty way of reclassifying everyone. And other neurotypical thinkers thought, yay, that’s useful, that explains things… and now we’re stuck in a new, more padded, box. Well, fuckit, I’m not having any of it.
I’ve been a victim many times over, yet something in me deeply believes that victimhood doesn’t really exist. Even if I’m ‘mentally ill’ – and that depends on your viewpoint – it’s still my prerogative to rise up. With some success and quite a lot of failures, I’ve made some progress. It’s about fully occupying one’s space and knowing, deep down, that you’re up to it – you embody it, it’s yours and you can do it. Even when you get beaten down, you can rise up, resist, turn the tables, make things good, move forward. Some of the most exemplary people I’ve known have been through the jaws of total disaster. From this viewpoint, Ukraine is now a crucible of accelerated soul evolution.
Though it can be hard, I prefer being unusual than normal, even when I’m misunderstood today and pay a high price, even charged by close loved ones. For loved ones it’s difficult too, and I really recognise that. I’m a strange mixture of a hermit and a public figure – and it’s the bit in between where I screw up, in personal and closer relationships. I fail to meet up with expectations and behavioural norms, or to deal well with some aspects of human guile and complexity.
Psycho-normals see Aspies as complex beings, but to ourselves we’re simple and straight-up and the rest of the world is complex. It becomes more complicated because most neurotypicals regard themselves as normal when they’re far more way-out and human than they allow themselves to be.
Boscawen-un stone circle, from Creeg Tol
It’s like French and English: both peoples think they stand at the centre of reality in comparison to the others over there – and all sorts of trouble arises as a result, even though we’re related. My reality is better than yours. We’re doing this to Russians and Chinese at present, reducing and dehumanising them in order to justify things we do to them – and they do the same back, and look at the mess we’re in.
Yes, I’m a victim, so that entitles me either to droop in self-pity or to strike back hard, and to feel fully justified in either. That’s a really complex syndrome, and it affects individuals, social groups and nations. I’m one of the downtrodden, so let’s fuck the banksters, the toxic males or the rich whiteys because there’s not a single human amongst them, and they deserve it.
But there’s something very, very real to victimhood too, and you definitely feel it when you’re locked up in jail, refused your fortieth job application or looking down the barrel of a gun. We should indeed support victims, and injustice is a key issue in today’s world. But just because we were victims earlier in life, or even in another life, it doesn’t make us victims now.
The ancient power of Boswens menhir and the modern power of a major air traffic control beacon. Where truly lies the power?
Just because I have elements of PTSD from seeing a few too many really bad and wrong things, it doesn’t justify my being hard-hearted toward my friends and loved ones – and I’m so sorry to those who have had this from me. I really mean it. (I’ve been on a Neptune opposition Saturn over the last year, and that’s why this confessional stuff is important just now.)
It’s complex though, and nothing exists in a vacuum. Palestinians often say, ‘Why do Jews give us such a hard time, when it was Europeans who gave them a hard time?’. (Also, a wide-eyed, naive Aspie might ask, why do some Palestinians give Israelis a hard time back?) This is the kind of thing we must resolve, and Ukraine is its current nexus of attention, but there will be more horrors until we stop. Please don’t act shocked and surprised when the next round breaks out. This goes deeper than diplomacy: this concerns mass psycho-spiritual, social and cultural change. We just gotta do it, if we are to survive. As much in our own lives as in war zones.
I have been party to this crap too – I have dirty hands, and I’m not unique. It’s important to feel the responsibility and consequence but not to shut ourselves down with guilt and shame. I did it, yes. It’s time for me to forgive everyone who has done similar to me. The past cannot be undone, and it all hangs around what we learn and what we do from now on. Stepping over the craters to hug our adversaries is a really crucial thing to do. Because we’re all in this mess together.
You might wonder why I’m writing this stuff on a cancer blog. Well, these kinds of thoughts are part of my healing, the resolution of my own story. I’m trying to work on this stuff so that I can be a bit more at peace when I pop my clogs. Hopefully. That’s the idea. Not that this kind of cancer (myeloma) or my disabilities can be undone, but it’s all to do with happiness. Basic happiness is the greatest healer around. If you’re underlyingly happy you can make something good of anything. The happiness of opening up, unburdening, forgiveness, understanding, acceptance. And of having some food in your belly and a roof over your head. And the happiness of togetherness.
Here’s something. I’m cooking up tentative plans – yes, plans, for the first time in nearly three years, since going down with cancer. If I can muster the energy and some people to help set it up, I’m thinking of doing a ‘magic tour’ of a few places in Britain, to create an opportunity to meet up. One might be round Glastonbury. I don’t know if it’ll work yet, but this idea has quickened my heart. I want to bring something to you. It’s early stages, and much hangs around finding a good local organiser in each place. I’m in process of writing a proposal and blurb. So watch this space. One of my podcasts sums it all up: the one called Soul Evolution.
Here in my faraway eyrie, I think of you all – I really do. I’ve been alone, feeling rather desolate, for what feels like a long time, and something has come from it. Since I can welcome guests at my home only in ones or twos, I want to create some temporary magic spaces, perhaps round campfires, for friends and soul-relations elsewhere in larger numbers, for a few hours of time-travel, close encounters and lightbulb moments. Would that interest you? I have a strange gift of frail strength, love and tears to share, and I have a few friends upstairs. But I’ll need a good armchair. And you’ll need to switch off your phones if you want me at my best.
Bless you all, and bless everyone. Bless even the world’s worst assholes. The swallows outside my window have just burst into tuneful twittering, as if to agree. And it’s now lunchtime and I forgot my breakfast and pills, so I’d better stop…
Notes from the Far Beyond 
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