November 2024 – Notes from the Far Beyond

Social Capital

Photos from trips I made to Geneva 12-14 years ago. These are *The Dispossessed*

If you’re in your forties or fifties this is for you. Oh, and by the way, this is what’s nowadays called a ‘long read’, and, guess what, no AI was involved.

It’s about the care crisis and what needs to happen before you yourself grow old. I’m not going to harp on about pensions and savings, or the rights or wrongs of privileged old people currently being relatively prosperous at the expense of younger people. Neither will I repeat the implicit message that says ‘Look after yourself because no one else will’. There’s much more to it than that.

Nowadays I’m a net recipient of care and support, as a creaky old cancer patient. Similar things will probably happen to you. For Millennials and today’s younger people, it looks like you have a problem building up for when you get old, and that’s daunting. But there’s time to prepare, and magic solutions are available.

We’ve got to get real about the future. My own postwar generation has avoided much of this, and our behaviour has not necessarily matched our beliefs and ideologies. There’s a lot of hot air about growing old gracefully, but my generation still hangs on to our independence, sovereignty and property, and we have difficulty letting go (Pluto in Leo, and the Pluto in Virgos of the Sixties can be pretty control-freaky too). When we were young we had big visions of community (we have Neptune in Libra), and it hasn’t happened – not in a way that works in our old age. We have omitted to pool our financial and social capital. Here’s a tip: try not to do the same as you lot grow older!

Many of my generation have landed up on our own, stowed away in our centrally-heated, often over-sized houses or isolated in some godforsaken room somewhere. Society, in a perpetual hurry, quietly elbows us and dependents like us to the side. People largely don’t mean to do this, but they just don’t have time to be human – and this creates a social crisis. It’s the human aspect that, to children, to the chronically ill, the disabled and the old, becomes critically important: we humans have a bizarre need to feel that somebody loves and cares about us, that we matter to someone.

Palestinians used to ask me, ‘How can you talk about human rights when you stuff your grandparents away in front of a TV in a padded prison?‘ – and they have a point.

This is a Pluto in Aquarius question – a key issue for the next twenty years. In the West we’ve gone through a period of (arguably) excessive prosperity, enabling us to venture into possibilities that otherwise wouldn’t have happened. One of these is lengthened lives – it’s now reasonable to expect reaching our eighties while, when I was young, it was the sixties or seventies. If I had contracted cancer 30-40 years ago I’d soon have been decisively dead – but not now.

Along the way we have professionalised and medicalised social care, and this is unsustainable, clunky, expensive and without limits. There’s a shortage of carers, nurses, teachers, cleaners, cooks and midwives, and we neither pay them well nor honour them properly, even though they hold up society. It’s all costing more than we are able or willing to pay, and we’re going deeper into debt, trying to maintain a lifestyle that’s already past its time. We’ve reached the end of a period in which the West got rich off everyone else, and now that we’re in an historic downward-curve, we need to get focused on a soft landing.

We’ve lapsed into a rather decadent kind of denialism: “I’m all in favour of change as long as it doesn’t affect me“. Thus we’re heading toward a likely crash landing… shock, horror… only to realise that we can’t continue living as we have lived, and our precious lifestyle has become unserviceable. Why didn’t someone warn us? Well, they did, decades ago, and no one wanted to listen.

Well, we’ll get what we get, though there are options.

Geneva has never been an imperial capital or the capital of anything, but it has a certain style to it…

In the rich world we’ve become materially wealthy while becoming socially and spiritually poorer. We’ve set aside social and community matters, even our humanness, in favour of wealth-generation and consumption, as if happiness comes from material plenty and security. But it does so only up to a point, and above that we hit diminishing happiness-returns. Just enough is good for us, and too much is definitely not. Treats are not a substitute for happiness.

This dilemma revealed itself to us during the Covid lockdowns. We became a tad more human for a month or two before grudgingly restoring normality. Meanwhile, having lectured the world about democracy in recent decades, we whiteys (or pinkies?) now find we’re an ethnic minority in a big, wide world where we’re far outnumbered and outclassed. We British think we’re different from Hungarians, but to the rest of the world we’re all Europeans and pretty much similar. Over half of the world’s population is Asian. Things are moving on.

I learned a lot when working with Palestinians – they are socially wealthier while being materially and circumstantially poorer. Their families, clans and communities pretty much hold together, even under extreme duress – and that’s what social wealth looks like. From the late 1960s to the 1990s they lived virtually without government, organising themselves so that everybody was provided for and most essential social functions were catered for from the ground up. A simple consensual rule held sway: help, support and do no harm to fellow Palestinians. Or, for that matter, to anyone deemed a ‘good person’. This included ‘good’ Jews. It’s not about ethnicity or religion – it concerns content of character. Guess what? There was little crime, pretty good road safety and a woman could walk down the street alone at night and feel safe.

A ‘generosity economy’ survives through mutual support and collective adaptation. You need no qualifications to participate or to benefit richly – you just need to do your bit, whatever you can do. It’s not perfect, but in another way it is exemplary. Even in Gaza we have not seen the kind of destitution and social disarray that we sometimes see in other places that plunge into crisis. While Palestinians are always the losers, they are not beaten.

The world – the work of some famous artist whose name escapes me.

From this I learned a big lesson. It wasn’t a case of me, a well-meaning Westerner, a ‘humanitarian’, going out to Palestine to help these poor benighted folk in their dire circumstances. No, I had to get over that one. All I needed to do was to be amongst them, to add my bit when appropriate, to listen a lot and learn from these people. Being fully present was sufficient. Their generosity and sincerity was, at first, button-pressing to me as a European – we’re programmed with a neurotic need to pay for everything. But in Palestine you should never offer to pay if something is ofered or given, because you will deprive a good Muslim of giving you a gift of God – even if they’re poor, with nothing for tomorrow.

Instead, you learn to enter the cycle of mutually-circulatory social generosity and you play an active part in it – keep the benefits moving around. As a relatively rich outsider, you spend thoughtfully and you quietly drop people occasional monetary gifts of God, to help them on their way, simply because it’s good to do so.

However, I had further advantages I could offer. As a European, it was easier for me to level with an Israeli soldier than it was for a Palestinian. I could use my privileged position in the apartheid system to eyeball an Israeli, practice street-level diplomacy and improve the overall outcomes – you see, in a roughly nine-level apartheid system, foreign visitors come in third, just below Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews, but above the Druze, four kinds of Palestinians and the Bedouin. It’s complex.

Often, the poor soldier was 30-40 years younger than me anyway, doing his or her conscription-slavery, and I pulled age on them. I used my influence as a Westerner to turn round the interaction and calmly hold the power, even though the soldier had the gun. Exploiting the hidden rules of apartheid, I projected an image of a politely self-confident, imperialistic Brit visiting one of his country’s former colonies.

After all, my grandfather was in General Allenby’s invasion force in WW1 when we took Palestine from the Ottomans, and my father fought in Egypt in WW2, and my aunt was a periodic Jew-rescuer – so it could be construed that Israel owes my family a favour, if truth be known. My ruse was that I was an historian interested in studying early Christian fonts. Yeah, me, a Christian – but it worked. Israeli border guards tend to regard Christians as rather stupid, sometimes awkward, but largely harmless.

Of course, to see many of the UN buildings, you have to go on a tour. But there are security issues they do need to stay on top of.

At times these interactions were rather comical. When searching my bags once, they found some plastic-wrapped tofu I’d bought in a healthfood store in Tel Aviv, suspecting it was Semtex… well, it took a few minutes to sort that out (such as reading the Hebrew labelling) and we all landed up chuckling… and, in a better mood, they let me through, waving a load more people through after me. Bingo.

It’s all about societal energy-exchange. In that instance I used my strengths as a Brit to give both the Israelis and the Palestinians what they needed. It works best when there’s some sort of balance of benefit that can equalise both parties – however that benefit is perceived. A change of mood and spirit can make the whole situation flip quite quickly, and the all-round benefit gained often grows greater than the sum of all the individual benefits.

After all, the soldiers at Checkpoint 500 were bored shitless, and the Palestinians standing in line were equally bored, and it just needed the right thing to happen. The magic catalyst was tofu – Romanian-style and marinated. But if I’d reacted to those soldiers as ‘the enemy’, tightening up my body-language and doing oppo, trouble would have ensued and I’d have given away my power – since they did have the guns – and the Palestinians would have got home from work even later than they did.

So, here am I, older and more decrepit, in need of a few hours of help a week, and also for times of company, love and tenderness. These three matter a lot in late life – you might get hugged but real cuddles can be rare. I’m quite self-sufficient, though there are times when I go downhill and I need more intensive help and attention. In recent months a lot has come together on the support front and I am really happy about it: a group of lovely people has come together, and it’s working. Friends of Palden (FoP) – thank you all and bless you. It was a health crisis I had in September that precipitated the change.

For my part, what needed to happen was an opening of my own heart – and the illness and physical pain cracked me open. I had been in a state of emotional recoil for two years, after the sudden and, for me, reluctant end of a loving relationship early in 2022. After that, I wasn’t interested in opening up to others. I’d lost my trust and felt stuck in my hermit-like Saturnine isolation pattern – the ‘anti-social’ thinker and writer with one foot in society and the other in the mountains.

There was something I needed to face – a big and rather final, late-life change – and it took two years to adjust to it emotionally. I’d realised that this was the last close one-to-one relationship I would have in this lifetime. That sounds a bit sad, or dramatic, but no, it isn’t. It’s quite a settled feeling. I’ve had some good relationships over the last half-century, and there’s more to life too. Things have changed. Actually, don’t tell anyone, but it was Ayahuasca wot did it. The focus of my love extends now to a wider circle of people, and I’m playing a new and different role in their lives, and they in mine, whether they’re near or far.

Here we come to energy-exchange. Caring for an new age codger like me can at times be hard work. So I’m working at making it good for everyone, if and however I can. I can’t run around servicing relationships in the way I used to in pre-cancer days, but I can do certain things. I can give a listening ear and sometimes a few astute observations – as a wizzened old retired astrologer who’s figured a few things out. I can give them an hour’s break in a warm, calm, phone-free cabin on a farm in a magical place, with springwater tea and an oakwood fire, so that they can draw a line between the last thing and the next thing, departing a little clearer and more ‘sorted’ than when they came.

There’s something deep to this. It’s about being there for people – it’s the grandfather or patriarch archetype. I don’t have to do anything, and they don’t even need to be with me to benefit from it. It’s just that I’m here, and that in itself is perceived to add something to others’ lives. Spending a lot of time on my own, I range around in my mind, pastorally thinking of people as they pop into my attention, I monitor their souls and pick up on them when they’re unconsciously signalling. They themselves feel supported, deep down. This motivates them to do things that benefit me.

This sounds terribly transactional but, actually, if you keel over with cancer or something similar, or with misfortune, you do have to think transactionally and make sure you’re getting enough of what you need. Otherwise, you won’t get it. You have to be carefully selfish, yet also understanding of others since you’re relying on their goodwill and generosity.

For what it’s worth, ‘elderhood’ is where I now find myself. I’m something of a natural at it, though I’m also somewhat reluctant (I prefer thinking of myself as a veteran). Perhaps I’ve been here and done this before in other lives. It’s all about quietly standing behind people and being there for them. It gives them a certain security whereby, if they feel they’re out of their depth, or fucked off with life, or at their wits’ end, they can anchor back to someone like me, even just in their thoughts.

To which my response is, Yes, that happens, it’s life, it’s okay, hang in there, and the world isn’t ending… though I’d put it more subtly, and much of it lies in the vibe I give out. The fact that I’m standing there is living proof that you can and do survive life’s hard knocks. Or at least, I have, thus far, and perhaps you can too.

It’s not about having opinions and telling people what’s best. There’s a challenge to overcome the reactive, self-satisfied conservatism of age and, from a rather more transcendent, slightly dementia-liberated viewpoint, to think afresh, seeing things from a new place, contributing not opinions but perspectives. But even then, only when asked. Be pleasantly surprised if younger people actually do take heed. Besides, they’re the ones making the decisions now.

So, although I depend on the help, support and company of friends, there’s something I can offer, and this is important. This is ‘social capital’ and if, like me, you haven’t been focusing on building up financial capital, then you need to work on building up social capital, on cultivating your assets, your character and transferable skills. This means that, when you too become relatively useless, with luck you’ll be liked, valued and a little bit useful, even then.

In my life I’ve had phases of organising volunteers to help me run projects I’ve started. While they liked doing it and it brought them benefit, it was also hard work, with a fair measure of wind and rain thrown in. I tried to help them gain a growth-payoff, a soul-payoff, from it. That is, something in them would progress, and some started a new life from that time on. There’s a certain joy in being part of something that works well and is good to be part of.

My father taught me that. He had been in industrial relations in the 1960s-80s and his philosophy was that, if your workers are happy working with you, they’ll be motivated to work well and and everyone will benefit. He’d encourage the directors to eat lunch in the canteen rather than at the golf club, and to avoid driving their Jaguar to work. Sounds obvious, and it’s true, but it was not what was happening in British workplaces at the time, and it does so only for some workers now. It’s how a generosity economy works, in which everyone is a stakeholder and beneficiary, together.

It’s about ‘we‘, not ‘I‘. However, while the relationship of ‘I’ to ‘we’ is still important, in the end ‘we’ are the overriding priority, and each of us needs to learn to do the best we can with that, as individuals.

Pluto is now in Aquarius. We need now to focus on strengthening society. Not the economy, not technology, not government, not business, but society and the mechanisms by which it works.

Do people exist to serve the system, or does the system exist to serve the people?

Pluto likes to dig out the bottom-line hard truths of things, and this is the big question for at least the next twenty years.

There’s something substructural going on. In richer countries, our time is done, our economies are subsiding and we’ve got to get real about this. It is a necessary historic adjustment of economic levels. For Britain, Europe and America real wealth-generation is sinking, overall costs, complications and debts are rising, and things are approaching a crunchpoint.

We in rich countries are not enjoying treading the mill of work and consumption as we once did. We’re supposed to be excited about the latest gizmo, scientific discovery or tech advance, but many of them arouse mainly a yawn. We’ve reached a certain level of satiation. There’s now a deep-level exhaustion, a declining motivation to bust a gut for what might anyway prove to be dubious outcomes. There’s an element of laziness and decadence to this, yes, but it’s also genuine, deep down. We’re discovering a need to become more human and for society to become more humane.

This historic shift will affect Millennials and currently younger people as you grow old. Compared with my (Pluto in Leo) postwar generation, you have more inherent social wealth than we, with a greater sense of implicit togetherness, and this is driving a deep reconstitution of society that is only now gaining momentum.

There is a fundamental law of economics that few mention, yet it’s abidingly true: when the economy goes up, society goes down, and when the economy goes down, society goes up. We’re at an inflection point in this oscillatory equation.

When you yourselves are old, there might be care-bots to help you, and there will still be people who hold society together by acting as committed care-givers, but there’s unlikely to be the capacity to finance the full care and medical facilities that we have today. So this needs tackling another way, especially by building up social wealth.

Here we return to people like Palestininans with their family survival mechanisms – and most Mediterranean cultures are (or were) like this. They have families often of fortyish people, young and old, which are part of a larger clan that can number hundreds or thousands. The old people and the kids spend a lot of time together, often at the centre of the compound where everyone lives, freeing up middle-aged people to do their daily duties. The older kids look after the younger kids, both look after the old people, and the old people oversee the kids. People come and sit for a chat and a cup of tea, then to continue on their way. It’s an integrated system with the oldsters and the youngsters at the centre. Everyone does something toward the family, to the extent that they can, and someome is usually available to step in with a solution if there is a need.

Western researchers would come to Palestine, finding unemployment levels standing at 20-30%, yet no one was hanging around looking unemployed. This was simply the generosity economy at work – lots of people had no paid job, but they had a place in the family and community economy – and it doesn’t show up in the statistics. Everyone is catered for and everyone contributes. In Bethlehem, a little boy would help me with runaround tasks and occasionally I’d give him some loose change, and he’d run home to give it to his Mum because it was more important to him to contribute to his family than to sneak off to the sweetshop to feed his face.

This is the way to go. It lies in social values. So teach your children well. To get through the future, countries like Britain need to work on social wealth and resilience. Social love and solidarity. Hanging together. Making life easier for each other. Sharing lifts. Keeping an eye out for each other.

That’s not as easy as it sounds, because it involves dealing with disagreement – what’s politely called ‘diversity’. In the 2020s we’re pretty good at arguing, disagreeing and detracting, pretty unwilling to hear others’ viewpoints, or even to acknowledge that they’re actually real, valid people, just like us. We have issues about who’s in and who’s out. There’s a lot of shadow stuff lurking in the social psyche – trust issues, historic pain and resentment, unresolved questions, pending problems.

Migration is one of those issues we have to face because it is happening anyway, and we have to get sensible about it. It is changing our societies and we need to do this well. We can’t evade the facts, pretending that we can stop it or send people home – it’s happening, and we in rich countries have been a substantial part of the cause. We cannot supply munitions to Israel and expect Palestinians to stay at home without seeking refuge in Manchester – sorry, that’s two-faced, narrow, poor thinking, and if such thinking were applied to you, you’d hate it. Yet, on the other hand, we need to take in numbers that we can realistically absorb, so that there are enough housing, teachers, facilities and space to cater for them, to give them what they need and to get what we need too – and this is a very real issue without easy answers. It brings up quite primal emotions – it’s not solely socio-logical.

My generation failed, when it reached its sixties, to pool its capital and engage in creating mutual support systems for late life. We didn’t think we would actually get old. Those of us who have done well financially do what we can to enjoy our position, and the rest of us get by as best we can. Our sense of generational fairness and equality has been compromised by incentives and bonuses that have successfully splintered us. We might disapprove of businessmen getting stinking rich, though strangely we nevertheless believe it’s kinda okay for a rock musician to own five houses, a stack of glossy, carbon-belching sports cars and an art portfolio for which the insurance can cost a quarter million. [Even so, here’s a perceptive song from one of them, Roger Waters: Is this the Life We Really Want?]

This kind of thing is not really good for the future – unless of course we permit it, allowing an oligarchy to burn up resources while we dutifully catch the battery-bus to save energy. World circumstances are changing, and if the excesses of the past are to continue into the future, then you Millennials have a problem before you. And here’s an awkward question (sorry): do you want to leave this problem to your children, as my generation has done with you? Or will changing circumstances and shifting values perhaps force the issue before you reach that point?

Strengthening society – from the bottom up. To face the future we need to build social resilience. This means looking after each other and sharing what’s available and what we have. It means pitching in together when there are floods, pandemics, economic downturns, supply-line blockages, power-brownouts and gaps on the supermarket shelves. Governments and institutions can certainly facilitate the process, but it needs to come from ordinary people.

In 2025 Neptune enters Aries for 14 years. This is about Big Men and our neurotic need, during insecure times, for leaders who will fix things for us and keep control. This is why we have Putins, Trumps, Modis and Xis dominating the world and holding it to ransom. We need to overcome this illusion. However, the real issue here is not about getting rid of leaders – that’s something we’re generations away from, realistically.

It’s about right leadership and – more important – astute, intelligent, thoughtful citizens who think a bit further than our noses, and who don’t allow populists and pranksters to capture our support and run off with the agenda. Perhaps we also need to support and respect our leaders a bit more, holding them to account but with more empathy and understanding – it’s a lonely and shitty job, with plenty of holes to fall into and minefields to navigate. The worst bit is that, even if you’re a great reformer, someone, somewhere, gets hurt and loses out.

During this Neptune in Aries period we might also see some exemplary, Mandela-esque leaders. To quote Georges Pompidou, a French politician of the 1970s (in old sexist language): “A statesman is a politician who places himself at the service of the nation. A politician is a statesman who places the nation at his service“.

One such leader I’m watching at present is the prime minister of Barbados, Mia Mottley – she’s lucid, justice-seeking, solid, with a good sense of proportion, likeable, and she’s the sort of person who, with luck, will leave a good track record behind her. [Click here to see her recent UN General Assembly speech.]

Leaders can catalyse helpful social processes – at least for their first ten years in office – but it is not for them to determine our future. Society needs to take control of itself. We need to train ourselves to form, develop and hold to social consensus, to make fair deals between competing interests, to stand back from sectoral disagreements and responsibly to keep hold of the power and influence that society itself should hold. Government is important as a coordinating influence, but placing responsibility for fixing society on government and institutions inevitably leads to a disjunction of values and aims between oligarchies and ordinary people.

Since the demographic pyramid currently favours the old, weighing quite heavily on the young, we oldies need to pull together to look after each other to lighten the load. We have resources. We don’t need a paid carer to come in to make a cup of tea and hold our hand when a friend, a neighbour or a grandchild is far better. We need professional help only in those things that we cannot do ourselves – I can keep my house in good shape on a daily basis, but I find vacuum-cleaning physically difficult. I can mostly cook for myself, but there are occasions when I’m worn out and really appreciate the application of someone else’s culinary gifts.

Being rendered into a passive recipient of care – especially in old people’s homes – is disempowering, dispiriting and it costs a bomb. It’s healthy to keep going with the daily tasks that we can do – and it’s far more healing to do it with and for others, not just for ourselves. And a single oldie doesn’t need a whole house to live in – I live in a one-room cabin where it’s just five steps from my bed to my kitchen, and it’s great! Let’s liberate our oversized homes for people who truly need them.

Social capital. The strongest social bonding force is crisis. When a society goes through a crisis, triumphing over the odds by sharing and cooperating, the social ring of power gains strength. It’s a transpersonal feeling, a feeling of being in it together and being mutually reliant and reinforcing. It is in the interests of oligarchies meanwhile to keep society splintered, dissonant and competitive. The social ring of power is activated when collective resonance and solidarity rise and hold firm – and this is why organisations like Hamas and Hezbollah are unbeatable, since you can bomb them out as much as you like but the need for such movements doesn’t go away. So they remain and revive, even when shot to pieces.

But solidarity can be dangerous if social blindness or denial is tangled up in it. When at war, Israelis have remarkable national solidarity, but the big question is, toward what ultimate end? Israelis need a safe homeland where they can pursue their lives in peace. Yet, feeling the world to be against them, they do tend to create conflict around themselves – and this is an example of the way a people can be captured by an oligarchy which harnesses and exploits their solidarity for narrow, ultimately unwise ends – in this case, it’s Zionism, but Israel is not the only place where such things happen. But for Israelis, subservience to Zionist aims and values leads to a situation where war is needed as a way of generating solidarity – national unity in an otherwise rather culturally-argumentative country. Here herd mentality fails to serve the true and lasting interests of the whole herd. Israelis will find peace when they become friends with their neighbours. Period. And so it is worldwide.

The initiative lies with people at ground level. It concerns cultivating the wisdom of crowds. Often this happens through encountering nexus-points of occasion and crisis where there are opportunities for social healing, for the airing and resolution of unprocessed social issues. In Britain we’ve just had a rumpus over ‘assisted dying’ – a rumpus because we have a cultural fear of death and an unwillingness to even think about it, so we start panicking when we’re forced to.

There’s also the possibility of a future characterised by the madness of crowds and a lack of societal connectedness, leading amongst other things to the marginalisation of the old and the unwell by the fit and the healthy. The solution to the ‘problem’ of the old and infirm is a fundamental reconstitution of society. And perhaps this escalating social crisis is a gift in disguise. The crunch will come when our economies can no longer support the standards we have become used to.

Good luck, you lot, in addressing a problem I don’t think my own generation has cracked. We need to look after each other a lot more, and to get into proportion what’s really abidingly important in life. Because, believe me, at the end of my life it’s not the pounds, shillings and pence that I earned and spent that I remember – it’s the closenesses I’ve had with fellow humans, the magic moments and the rustling of the leaves in the trees.

With love from me, Palden

http://www.palden.co.uk
https://penwithbeyond.blog
http://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

The pictures are from trips I made to Geneva in Switzerland (an incredibly expensive place) 12-14 years ago – one of the UN capitals. As you might gather, I’m distinctly internationalist in my geopolitics!

AND… the Sunday Meditation continues every week… details are here: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

Eyes and Ears, Hands and Feet

Treen and Gwella, a gull couple in Falmouth

On Facebook, I seem to be settling into a new habit of announcing Sunday Meditations once a fortnight, not weekly. But the meditations continue weekly, whether or not they are announced. So if you’ve been meditating with this group thus far, keep going, and if you’re hovering around wishing or meaning to do it but not quite doing it, well, that’s up to you.

It concerns intention and what we give our time and attention to – and here lies the root of freedom of choice. It’s all about what we do with our psyches – our hearts, minds and behaviour. Nowadays there are tremendous diversionary, distracting pulls and pushes that we encounter every day – pressures, needs, imperatives, concerns – and this is the way of our lives in our time. Here we’re offered a choice to ricochet our way through life – as victims of our distractedness – or to anchor back to the roots of our being, to remember why we came into life and to do something toward giving that some priority.

The meditations are designed to be entirely doable. You can participate every week, or dip in and out when you can. It’s important to keep it simple and just do it. But there’s a funny paradox too: if you do it 100% every week, it gets easier. If we’re clear about it, life rearranges itself around it so that distractions start unmanifesting. Besides, meditation is simply a state of mind, and sometimes doing meditation on a bus can actually work really well because the stimuli and noises around us can help us focus within.

We can get so serious about things like this, and it’s not like that at all. Last night, before the meditation, I lost track of time and I was a few minutes late. Typical me, I had been trying to finish something I was doing, and my friends upstairs were tapping on the top of my head, as they usually do just before the meditation… and there I was, standing there at the toilet having a pee and feeling the meditation starting.

Here’s a footnote. Since becoming a cancer patient, when I get the need to pee, I do have to pee quickly – some of you will know this problem! But also, as a creaky old man, I pee really slowly, and it can take ages.

So there I was, sensing ‘them’ chuckling at me and the comedy of my earthly situation, and my psyche was already sinking into meditation-mode while I was standing there peeing… and this is what happens when you take on a regular date with ‘higher powers’. I’ve meditated in airports, motorway service area car parks, in fields surrounded with heavy-breathing cattle, in side-rooms at parties, on buses I have to disembark from in the middle of the meditation… and that’s the deal. And at times it can be really funny.

In situations like that I’m aware that my ‘friends’, being non-earthly types, quite appreciate getting a look into our world through my senses. I remember, a few years ago, some hooting geese flying over my house during the meditation, and I got a distinct sense of “What’s that?” coming from ‘upstairs’. So I visualised geese, explaining that they are birds in our world and they make that rather haunting sound that geese can do. And they got it. So, in instances such as that, I’m acting a bit like a drone or a remote sensor for them – and that’s fine.

It has led me to quite an inner breakthrough, actually. If these guys can see inside me, they need to see the whole lot. They are interested in us humans and our amazing complexities – our sub-personalities and sectioned-off, often conflicting parts of our psyches – and they do seek to understand us. This has meant letting them into those guilty, fearful parts of myself that I even hide from myself. That has been amazingly cleansing. When I first did it, it was an immense relief. I was letting these beings see the whole of me. In doing so, I started seeing myself more clearly too.

For they do not judge. We judge ourselves a lot, but they don’t judge. That’s something we do here on Earth, and it has its roots in our religious traditions, and also it feeds off our hidden guilt for things we have done, as individuals, as societies and as a planetary race. Bad shit. So we tend to feel judged by others and by ‘God’, and we judge ourselves in ways that really clip our wings.

There have been times when I’ve done meditative double-tracking – that is, I’ve been in a situation I can’t get out of, while also being in meditation mode. This can work if the situation is not too demanding – perhaps kids are present but they don’t need much attention, or perhaps other people are doing most of the talking – and at times it’s necessary to focus on the situation at hand and then return back to centre, to the meditation, when it’s possible to do so. Building that habit of returning is important and really valuable, as a general life-practice.

Once upon a time I was quite deep in meditation and gunfire broke out outside – this was in Bethlehem, Palestine. Something in me decided instinctively not to stir, and I stayed where I was, in meditation. I did some energy-working to spread calm to the situation outside and carried on – and, lo, the firing soon stopped. One of my neighbours down the road – a nice chap, and now disabled – had been a fighter in an armed showdown in the Church of the Nativity in 2002, during the second intifada, and the Israelis often used to come for him. I have no idea whether my input had had any effect, but the important thing was to hold steady. And trust. Trust like hellsbells.

Back in the 1990s, in the Hundredth Monkey camping retreats, participants signed an agreement to stay for the whole camp – there were good reasons for this since there can be dangers sallying forth into the world in an altered state. There was also a mobile phone and outside-contact ban – it was like a week out of this world, as if on a spaceship. One year, one participant broke this rule, only to find out that her father was dying. She was immediately upset and wished to leave. We could not and would not stop her leaving, but it didn’t feel right. It took a long process, but eventually she realised that she could better serve her father by staying with us in a more spiritual and empathic state, rather than going home, to be amongst anxious family members who would be acting out all sorts of strange behaviours around her father’s death. So she stayed. After the camp she reported back that she was really glad she did what she did because, with us, she had been able to mind her father’s soul and stand by him inwardly as he died – instead of panicking, obeying her guilt and rushing off in a car to go back home, probably arriving too late for her father’s death anyway.

Anyway, I finished my pee and settled down for the meditation, all the while dialoguing with those ‘friends upstairs’ in quite a jocular fashion. They sympathise with our situation and they feel lucky not to have to face such things. And they do not judge.

As usual I tuned in to others meditating in the group. Now this is fascinating because, while I know some of the people who are there and can feel them – in Wales, Nova Scotia, Iceland and Sweden – there are others flying along with us that I do not know of. I sense them there sometimes, and other times I really don’t know. It depends on the state I’m in, quite a bit – how much I feel others.

Recently, in my last Aha Class, I was recounting the story of the close encounter I had, in 1972. It seemed that the ETs were making use of me to solve a problem they were working with – it was a problem with nuclear technologies in use at the time. It’s not that I had specific knowledge of nuclear issues. So why did they want me? Well, I figured out that they needed access to an Earth-human’s brain and psyche in order to help them figure out the strange logic by which this errant piece of nuclear technology was put together, so that they could fix it. That’s what they needed.

This means a lot to me. Throughout life I’ve often felt myself getting used – as if part of a larger chess game in which I’m a pawn or a rook, getting moved around the board for the execution of agendas beyond my perception – or perhaps I just get faint glimmers of it. There’s something in me that’s willing to do that. I call it ‘actional channelling’. It’s not just about ‘being the eyes and ears of God’, but also the hands and feet too – doing things the universe needs to have done.

Sometimes I’ve even felt requisitioned. I felt that some years ago. I had found myself doing research into the ancient sites of West Penwith, here in Cornwall, and coming up with results that were quite astounding. It felt almost as if I had been moved to Cornwall because I was eligible, with my background and experience, to do a job on behalf of the spirits and ancient places of Penwith. It was as if they wanted to speak, and I’d been shunted in to give them a voice. I felt that earlier in life when I founded the camps – as if I’d been called up and given that job because the job needed doing and I was the only one in a position to do it. It was an idea whose time had come, and it needed someone to make it come into manifestation.

That’s one thing that lies behind this meditation – for me, at least. It’s about ‘meditative availability’ – making myself available to ‘higher powers’ so that they can carry out their actions and manoeuvres through me – if they so wish, or have a need, that is. And it just so happens also that other things happen during the meditation too – it has been important to me in the cancer process I’ve been through in the last five years. And it acts as a half-hour island of sanity each week – a bit like locking the door, shutting out the world for half an hour and taking a warm bath. I’ve been doing it for thirtyish years now.

Having had a rather irregular life for decades as a ‘new age professional’ – with lots of late nights, weekend working and hyper-flexible timetables – the funny thing is that the regularity of this once-a-week meditation allowed me to set my inner clocks. In the very few weeks in recent decades that I’ve missed the meditation, my life lapsed into foggy chaos. It’s funny how an appointment with The Timeless has become the way by which I’ve set my inner clocks – re-setting my psyche’s gyroscope.

By now you might be aware that I work with some beings called the Council of Nine. It was an arrangement with them, thirty years ago, that prompted this weekly meditation – and various streams of people over time have done it, and still do. This is my own personal commitment, and I don’t evangelise about it. But I am aware that there are some souls out there who also, in some part of their being, resonate with me and with The Nine, who are drawn to join this meditation, as a way of making themselves available to that energy-stream.

For we all have quiet agendas we’re acting out – partially consciously. I had an old friend, Gabrielle, who was one of the Oak Dragon family. She was a quiet soul and a committed meditator. She lived at Alton Barnes in Wiltshire, which happened to be ground zero of the crop circle phenomenon. Gabrielle never rated herself very highly. Well, humility is good, but sometimes it can distort our perceptions of ourselves too. What she did during her life (she died a couple of years ago) was much bigger than she was aware of. Through her meditation, she was ‘holding the energy’ in Alton Barnes. In an esoteric sense she was carrying out a really big job. In the world of humans she gained no medals for that (and didn’t seek them either), but in the greater universe she was performing an important act as a kind of energy-moderator in a major transdimensional diplomatic mission that was being conducted between worlds.

She made herself available and, in her quiet way, carried out a duty that no one else was doing, or possibly even capable of doing – as if she was requisitioned or drafted for the job. And she did it, right through to the end of her life.

This stuff might sound weird to some readers, but others will, I think, know what I’m talking about here. There’s something deep to this. Something about quiet service to a greater cause, to a deeper dynamic. Something about making ourselves available to participation in a larger chess-game. It’s a rather big act of trust too.

So, apart from the fact that it’s a good practice to invest half an hour a week to such a thing as this meditation – though it’s an entirely free choice – and I’m happy to encourage friends to do so, there’s something a bit bigger than this going on. In my recent Aha Class, about extraterrestrials, I talked about the need we each have to penetrate back to our roots as souls. We all come from somewhere, as souls, and we all come from soul-tribes, soul-nations and soul-worlds to which we still belong. There’s something in deep memory that remembers this. Following from this, it is possible to anchor back to those roots, to our family and soul-clan. For, here on Earth, whether or not we are aware of it, we are acting on behalf of our people. Our soul-clans have their own agendas.

So if the energy-stream that I am on resonates with yours – that on a soul level you and I might be relatives, friends or associates in some way – then you might find that, by doing the Sunday meditation, it helps you anchor back to your own roots. Or perhaps you have an inherent connection with The Nine. Or perhaps it’s simply a case of resonance. It doesn’t matter. The main thing is that there’s a channel open once a week at the specified time and, if you sit within it in meditation, then you’ll be bathed by it, and you might well find that interesting inner experiences follow!

If you don’t resonate with it, that’s fine too. The main thing is, whatever your path, follow it and pursue it. That’s what will, in the end, change the world. Some years ago a nuclear scientist asked The Nine whether there was one single thing which might change the world, and the Nine simply said, “Yes, the world will change if the people of planet Earth all pursue their life purposes”.

What am I here for? A lot of us are on that quest. Well, you find out by doing it, by doing what you’re drawn to doing. And by flapping your wings and getting on with it. Here’s a good guideline for finding out what it is: if it lifts you up, do it, and if it weighs you down, don’t.

It’s entirely our own choice. This is the bottom-line issue with free will: we are free to do whatever we feel is best. Making choices and dealing with the consequences is our learning path here on Earth. And we’re here not just to learn and to grow as souls, but also to make a contribution.

With love, Palden.

Website: www.palden.co.uk
Blog: https://penwithbeyond.blog
Extraterrestrials: www.palden.co.uk/ahanotes-ets.html

Dying Ahead

Chambered cairns in West Penwith. This is Bosiliack Barrow. It has been taken apart and reconstructed by archaeologists, but they did it well, and the cairn seems happy as it is. Many cairns are far more wrecked.

Just over a week ago, as reported in my last blog, I went to hospital, caught a virulent cold infection there, and I’ve spent the last week coughing, spluttering, wheezing and snotting as a result. I’m on immuno-suppressing cancer drugs, so my defences are down. I live rather a sheltered life on a farm, so my immune system doesn’t get much exercise, fighting off the kinds of infections most people encounter on a daily basis. An extra irony is that I couldn’t attend a further hospital visit yesterday (Friday, fullmoon day), because I was too unwell from the last visit to hospital! But we did a telephone consultation instead.

Being more vulnerable than otherwise I would be if I didn’t have cancer, small illnesses can get big. My snotty cold pushed me into quite an altered state. Fullmoon approached, I got fed up with it and I wanted to turn things around. I had been invited to attend a special healing ceremony, which would probably have helped, but the prospect of being with a large group of people overnight, most of them 20-30 years younger than I, was a bit too much – especially since I was due to take my weekly main dose of cancer drugs the next day. The illness I had had just over a month ago (muscle spasms) had warned me not to push it. So, reluctantly, I decided not to push it and I stayed at home. In parallel with the group, some miles away, I did my own inner journey instead.

One of the blessings of cancer is that, if you’re seeking truth and breakthrough in your heart and soul, you don’t need to look very far – truth comes to you, free of charge. Your life changes, and death stares you straight in the face. When I was healthy, I would do innerwork, or tramp the hills and clifftops, or join a group process, or somehow do a spiritual workout, but actually, with cancer, all I need to do is catch a cold and I’m pitched into a truth process at the deep end! When my energy is down or my health is poor, I find my perceived age, the psychological feeling of age, climbs upwards from my seventies into my eighties and sometimes into my nineties.

Brane chambered cairn near Carn Euny, with a neat hair-do

Besides, I’m not really seeking truth at this stage of my life – cancer gives me enough of that, and at times, I even get rather tired of it. No, it’s not truth I seek. It’s forgiveness and release. Which itself involves a truth process, but it’s different. It’s all to do with letting myself go through elements of the psycho-spiritual process of dying before I get there and actually pop my clogs – dying in advance. Doing the business before the business does me. The main part of this concerns processing issues accumulated during the life I’ve had – clearing the decks so that, when I get to death, I don’t have too large a deluge of issues to face. This enables me, theoretically, at least, to move more easily toward the next stage, rather than having to be preoccupied with untangling the past.

Except, the more I dig up, the more I find there’s stuff underneath I hadn’t really been aware of, or I’d forgotten it or buried it. This is helped by a strange rearrangement of memory. Toward the end of life I’ve found that the time-bound sequentiality of life’s events decreases in life’s inner chronicle of memory. I’ve started remembering things from earlier life that had been crowded out and overwritten by subsequent events. It’s not time-sequentiality but process-sequentiality that comes forward.

Our inner process rises and falls at different stages of life, accelerating and decelerating, and it doesn’t travel in a straight line – sometimes we even seem to go backwards, screwing up over issues we’d thought we’d resolved and repeating old errors and patterns. At other times we move forward more easily, the cork pops and the fizz and froth spill out all over the place. Such is the nature of inner time and of the threads of evolution within our psyches.

So here am I, staggering through late life and discovering how little I have learned. Last night, while inner-jouneying, I was particularly, and tearfully, aware of the way I’ve screwed up with the close women in my life – particularly my three daughters and my last partner. This is rather paradoxical because, ever since I was about 20, I’ve stood alongside feminists and been supportive to so many women carving out their lives and destinies, and I’ve done a lot of emotional processing, yet I still seem to be fucking up, even in late life. When I was younger I thought I’d be wiser in late life. Perhaps I’m not much wiser, but in less of a hurry instead.

Inside Brane cairn. Many archaeologists would disagree with me, believing they were for burial. No, I don’t think so. They were built for retreat, for actually dying in, for energy-bathing crops, seeds, medicines, mind-medicines and tools, and as an energy-bath for healing and initiation.

I asked within for forgiveness. For anything I have done or omitted to do, or failed in doing, which might have hurt or harmed them or set them back, I acknowledged it, asking their souls for forgiveness and release from past shadows. It hurts and harms me too. It always takes two to tango, and the bit that I can influence and change, even if only in retrospect, is my own part in that tango.

The funny thing is that, especially in late life, I’ve been popular with womankind. Many women seem to think I’m the kind of man they’d like to be with, or to have as a brother, father or son – since I have quite an open heart, as it goes, at least when I’m hyperfocused on matters of the heart, and I have sensitivities that are unusual for a man.

Perhaps this is one of those dilemmas that arise from being an Aspie (with high-function autism or Aspergers Syndrome). Haha, it’s not a syndrome at all. It’s a different operating system and a minority one which, in ‘normal’ people’s acquired beliefs, is called a syndrome – for which one is supposed to get fixed so that one can have a ‘normal’ life.

One facet of this ‘syndrome’ that applies to me is that I’m pretty adept at standing up in public and putting myself on the line, and pretty adept at being alone too, but in the space between – personal, close relationships – I’m not very good. I forget people’s birthdays, I don’t do Christmas, I get the wrong roses, or I cannonade off on my crazy, driven missions, forgetting those that I’m close to. This hurts them. Understandably. Problem is that, right or wrong, it’s me.

There’s a dilemma that the families of public people often face: their public and private personas can be quite different. Perhaps you’re a brilliant musician, author or leader but, as a person in private, you can appear quite dysfunctional, detached, seemingly hypocritical, or even regarded as a thorough asshole. It can be quite difficult in particular pandering to people’s wee foibles – those behaviours that demand conformity with seemingly strange requirements, such as coming home before 10pm or reminding them that you love them, or following proper recipes when cooking, saying “Sorry for your loss” at funerals, or ‘acting responsibly’ by feeding your kids at set times of day.

Here’s the chambered cairn on the summit of Chapel Carn Brea, the last hill in Britain. It’s around 4,000 years old.

So, last night, on the fullmoon, I was processing this stuff, and I sincerely hope it has brought some release and forgiveness to my daughters and ex-partner too – and anyone else who needs it. For forgiveness involves moving to a level where wrongs dissolve and the deeper patterns, causes and effects of life’s sorry events suddenly start fitting together into a more meaningful whole.

Here’s another paradox: those to whom we are closest are often those who uncover and expose in us the deepest of shadows and pain. And vice versa – we do it for them too. This is one of the strange tragedies of love and closeness. I’m sure every one of my readers knows that one from cruel experience!

It’s also a manifestation of the advanced soul-honing opportunities that are available here on Earth. That is to say, it fucking hurts. It gets you deep down, dredging the depths of heart, mind and soul, digging out the hidden ghosts and ghouls lurking in the darkness of buried ‘stuff’. You don’t get this in many worlds. Life might seem easier in the worlds of our dreams and aspirations, or on Arcturus, or the Pure Land, but actually, the grinding action of life on Earth is not only a gift, but also we chose it by coming here. We wanted to do some fast-track soul-evolution. We wanted to get arm-twisted and flogged into transformation. We sought to go for the heavier stakes and to find out what it’s like wading through the slough of despond.

This is not just a personal process but also an evolutionary process for every group and nation and for the whole population of Earth as a planetary race – especially when Pluto is entering Aquarius.

Not because all that shite is important, really, in itself. But it obstructs our process of lighting up as souls, of finding true freedom – the kind of freedom that can sit in a jail cell, accepting one’s lot and making good use of it. Like Nelson Mandela and his ANC friends on Robben Island, who decided to co-educate each other with everything they knew, since there was nothing else they could do. Or like King Wen in ancient China who wrote down the texts of the I Ching while sitting in jail. Like Malcolm X, who waded through the full Oxford Dictionary while banged up in a cell. Like so many less-known women who have carried a heavy weight of families and social mores through many years, even many lives, yet turning out to save the day when the chips were down, feeding the troops or ministering to the needs of people who hardly deserved it.

Here’s one at Pordenack Point. In some cases I think these served as geomantic spots where they’d bury someone they considered a great soul, for the blessing and protection of the land, and I think that was the case here. It was a bit like the preservation of the relics of medieval saints, as a blessing.

So, to the women in my life, bless you all. Thank you for being teachers to me. I sincerely hope there has been some sort of pay-off for you. It’s all in how we see things, really – whether and how much we can allow ourselves to forgive and be forgiven. I’m finding, in myself, that this goes deeper than I was aware it could.

Thank you Maria and the meadows of Penwith for your alchemical gift, helping me walk alongside your group in spirit as you did your fullmoon ceremony. It’s amazing how gifts of grace arrive at our door. Frankly, with my snot-filled porage-head, yesterday I was feeling like a pile of rotting compost as the fullmoon was rising, yet at night I emerged under sparkling starlight with a glint in my eye, a knowing that all is well and a deep appreciation for the wonderful souls, past and present, who play a part in my life. Forgiveness comes in its own time, sometimes when we aren’t looking.

Over and out. With love, Palden

Website: http://www.palden.co.uk
Blog: https://penwithbeyond.blog
Podcasts: http://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Cancer audiobook: http://www.palden.co.uk/boneblessings.html

Here’s a cairn on Mayon Cliff near Sennen – another geomantic cairn, placed in a carefully-chosen spot. Yes, probably someone was buried there, but the bodies would be changed around and the cairn would have other uses too. It wasn’t a memorial to a person, like our graves today. It was a geomantically hallowed spot where they put the bodies of special people, to bless the land. Or where it was a good place to die consciously.

Time is Endless and the World is Wide

“This is one of the virtues of meditating…“, said I to the three student doctors. We had just started reviewing my cancer readings. I was at the Royal Cornwall Hospital. The specialist had just told me that my ECG readings (heartbeat) were good and steady. “That’s rather a surprise“, I said, looking at the students, “Because I’m electrosensitive and I’ve just been sitting in the company of thirty mobile phones, with humans attached, for forty-five minutes. But once you get used to meditating and you build it into your life, it works wonders“. The specialist continued studying her papers.

“You’ve responded well to the new treatment. Your paraproteins have gone right down quite quickly, from 21 to 5. I’m beginning to expect that of you now…“

Again, as an aside to the students. “I’ve been a wholefood vegetarian since 1971 and done supplements and complementary therapies since the early eighties. For your consideration… there might be a connection.“

Then I turned to the specialist. “With your help, I’m alive now and I wasn’t expecting that. So bless you for that. Five years ago I thought I had up to three years. Yet here I am. I’m on extra time. I’ve been given a bonus. It has changed my perspective and since I’ve been given extra time, I won’t be complaining when I get to dying.” Aside to the students: “Attitude makes a big difference“.

And, to be honest, there’s a positive kind of disorientation that has come with that bonus, since I seem to have found a new mission in life, as a decrepit, vibrant old codger of a rainbow warrior and a slightly reluctant elder – with a little literary and audio output on the side.

I’ve been with this specialist for four years now, and she’s got used to me. She’s one of several remarkable goddesses looking after me nowadays. Though I’m an oddbod in their eyes, I’m congenial, good at elucidating symptoms and feelings, discerning but I don’t moan or make things difficult, and I’m not rigidly ideological, and my medical results are good – and the results are the clincher for the doctors. They think it’s good luck, of course – a very scientific conclusion, to be sure. I still regret that, five years ago, when I suggested that they set a student on me to monitor me, they didn’t do that. After all, in these straitened times of cost-cutting, ageing populations and expensive medical advances, they badly need to study people like me to find out how we do it.

To which, the main thing I’d say is this: if you’ve been looking after yourself for a few decades, both in a bodily and a psycho-spiritual sense, then that will build a basic resilience which, if or when you get plunged into the rigours of old age, will help you a lot. The moral of this wee story is this: if you haven’t started, start now.

Cloudscape from Carn Gloose, near St Just

Today’s the day when I pop my cancer pills – mainly Len, Ix and Dex.[1] I’m on a four-week cycle, with three weeks on drugs and one week off – during which time my bodily balances can restore themselves. Pharmaceutical drugs do charge their price, though I’m okay with that – I use holistics and innerwork to ease that out and improve the results.

However, when dying is on the agenda anyway, it’s good not to be precious about life. I feel I’m not quite finished here on Earth, though if the gods want to take me out beforehand, it’s okay. I’ve been and done enough. It doesn’t worry me. Paradoxically, such an attitude can be life-prolonging.

The other side of the deal is that, if I use this extra time to serve a purpose that the gods like, then the chances are they’ll help me stay alive to do it until it’s done. Though it’s also true that this might be a glib belief that doesn’t really hold up – it depends so much on one’s life-story – and that’s something that reveals itself as life goes on. Or perhaps having a mission becomes a healing device in its own right – which I’ve found to be true.

When I first contracted cancer five years ago, the immensity of it all, and what it meant, caused me to do a big let-go. I was lying in bed in hospital, helpless and in pain anyway, and that was the best response to an overwhelming situation. I let go of expectations and of those beliefs I’d adopted because I wanted them to be true. I decided to be patient and open, to allow myself to live or to die – whichever was most on the cards – and to see what happened.

Within two months this ‘good results’ thing started showing itself. It’s not that I’m in remission – this is not an option with Myeloma – but I’m doing alright, as it goes. It’s the consequent peripheral issues arising from cancer that bug me more than the cancer itself. I have stomach issues, back issues, peripheral neuropathy, osteonecrosis and a few other weird things. This means that I hover on the edge quite a bit – six weeks ago I was paralysed with pain, and movement was excruciating. I’ve had a few bouts of illness beforehand. It’s a matter of making use of these strange borderline states for the evolution of heart and the soul. For gifts come with them. Pain, for example, has a way of wringing out of us truths we don’t want to face but we need to.

The Longships Rocks and the Isles of Scilly, from Chapel Carn Brea, the last hill in Britain

Many people have to go on courses or retreats to learn things I’ve been given for free. Illness is a fascinating gift, if we choose to take it that way: it’s an opportunity for inner journeying, cogitation, letting be, and the resolution of deep life-issues. One of the key life-issues is the big Saturnine question that hits us particularly around ages 14, 29ish, 45ish, 58ish, 72ish and 86ish: what am I here for? Am I doing it? Where have I got to? What comes next? – all rolled up into one. And the answer lies deep, beyond a threshold of fear and self-doubt.

There’s one thing, our dream, and there’s another thing, our life as it presents itself. It is the grating of these two that characterise our lives and learning processes while in incarnation on Earth. It involves squeezing through the cog-wheels and roller-mills of Time, which stretches things out into threads, sequences, causes and effects. What you seek is also seeking you, but the process stretches out over time.

I had a big lesson in this: in 2000, during a life-crisis (Pluto square Sun and Chiron Return), I dreamed of the perfect place to live – and, as my life then was, it was distinctly out of reach, a fantasy. I forgot about it, got on with life, went through big changes, and then one day in 2012, I was lying flopped on my mattress, having just then got it into place, while in process of moving into the cabin where I now still live, and… gosh… I suddenly realised that this was exactly what I had prayed for, twelve years earlier.

Not only this, but it was the perfect place in which to go through a cancer process and a complete life-change, seven years later. Something in me knew this and fixed it. Yes, our souls know things that we do not. And sometimes there’s a guiding hand that pushes us that way.

Regarding missions, I’m really happy doing the monthly Aha Classes in Penzance – and for those of you who can’t attend, there are recordings on my site and on Spotify.[2] I’m seeking to share some esoteric general knowledge – stuff it’s good for people to think about and know a bit about, even if they’re not specifically interested. Things they already half-know, but hadn’t quite figured them out.

I’m rather an autodidact and, though educated in university (LSE), the knowledge I’m known for was not gained there. My self-education began as I was leaving university, and much of it didn’t exactly involve learning – it involved remembering. And observing. And watching. And gaining insights from within. This means that I don’t quote the usual old stuff, the derivative, fashionable or easy stuff you get in many of the books, videos and courses – you get original thinking.

The gift in this for me is that, no longer very interested in self-promotion (which self-employed people usually have to do), I can just express myself creatively – whether or not anyone publishes it or even reads it. It’s all going into my online archive on my site, and hopefully my rather techy son can keep it there in future times. In the front of my book Shining Land, about ancient sites in Cornwall,[3] is a quotation from Bhavabhuti, a mathematician in India in the middle ages, who said:

‘If learned critics publicly deride my work, then let them. Not for them I wrought. One day a soul shall live to share my thought, for time is endless and the world is wide.‘

Gods bless you, everyone. Look after yourselves. Eat your greens and do your inner growth, okay?!

With love, Paldywan.

www.palden.co.uk

NOTES:

Lenalidomide, Ixazomib and Dexamethasone, with Co-Trimoxazole (against pheumonia), Apixaban (stops blood clots) and Aciclovir (antiviral).
The Aha Class: www.palden.co.uk/aha.html and on Spotify search for ‘Pods from the Far Beyond’.
Shining Land: the ancient sites of West Penwith and what they say about megalithic civilisation. 2023, available online. www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/

Mighty hulkers over the Carn Galva mine, and abandoned tin mine

Us Together

Here’s a little medicine to help deal with all the hot air on the airwaves today – about, amongst other things, where the power really lies.

It’s a podcast I did in 2021, about the collective psyche. Yes, us lot.

https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/palden-jenkins/episodes/Us-Together—the-collective-psyche-e19hajc

or you can also get it on the top right of this page:
https://palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

With love, Palden

Pictures were taken at the Oakdragon Camps | http://www.oakdragon.org

Contemplation

Sunday meditation… yes, it continues… it doesn’t pause or stop!

In North America it is as from now an hour earlier than during summertime.

We’re at a parting of the ways. My feeling is that those around the world who have been pushing and asserting their agenda will not necessarily achieve their goals but slide into a soupy funk. We shall see.

There are hopes, plans and intentions, and then there is evolving reality. Sometimes they converge and sometimes not. Things are not as they seem.

There’s a gentle tipping going on. It’s all about an outer-planet astrological triangle that has been forming this year, and it will be with us for a few years. A few years back I wrote about it here: https://penwithbeyond.blog/2020s/ and it’s shown in the ‘Florescence under Duress’ image here.

Something is opening up. And remember (this is particularly important at this time): listen more closely to things than to people.

Speaking as a regular prognosticator in past times, I currently feel it’s best not to prognosticate – or at least not rigidly so. Possible realities, speculations and prognoses are worth bearing in mind but they should not obscure our seeing of what actually is emerging. Not just the surface stuff squirted at us through the news channels but the stuff underneath. And underneath that too.

We’re in a strangely tender time when possibilities are being incubated. There are known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns, and lots of them.

So in your meditation, get a feeling (repeat, feeling) of the energy-dynamics of what’s under the surface. The future is pulling us toward it. Though stay in the now, and let’s lift it up a notch.

I’ve written this rather late… been inner-journeying and detached from the world for two days over newmoon. Meta-processing. All is well.

Love from me. Palden.

Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 7-7.30pm GMT
W Europe 8-8.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 9-9.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
EST, Cuba, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
PST North America 11-11.30am

The pictures are all from Gurnard’s Head, West Penwith, Cornwall