About Palden

I was born in Hartfield in the Ashdown Forest in Sussex in 1950, in a nursing home which not long before had been the American Generals’ HQ in Britain in WW2. A fine start.

I grew up in 1950s Cardiff, Wales, and in 1960s Liverpool, and here my spiritual path began at age 16, tripping out on acid and beginning to see things in an entirely dfferent way. Went to university at the London School of Economics in 1969 during its time of revolution. I never looked back.

This was the big change-point in my life, which set the course for all the rest of it. In today’s terminology I was radicalised, thereafter dedicating my life to world change, and personal change with it, though very much tied up with it.

Later I lived in the mountains of Snowdonia, Wales, then I had to leave the country in 1974, regarded by the authorities and media as a traitor and even a murderer, to live in Sweden until 1980. I’m really grateful for the safety and healing Sweden gave me. I married a Swedish lady, Berit, and we had two kids and many adventures, partly in Stockholm and partly in the forest in northern Uppland.

There, as an English teacher of political refugees, inadvertently I started my later humanitarian work, in which I came to specialise in trauma recovery, social reconstruction and freelance intelligence work in conflict zones.

During that time, after seven years’ study, I became an astrologer. Since then I have counselled a few thousand people, writing three astrology books and founding the astrology camps in the 1980s.

But I didn’t easily fit into Sweden and, when I found out I was exonerated of my former alleged crimes, I returned to Britain. This involved a painful end to my marriage and the loss of two children. I landed in Glastonbury and I cried my eyes out with grief for two years in men’s groups and therapy groups. This was a big change too, opening me up for something.

Then came my instructions and I came alive again. In 1983-84 I started the UK camps movement – first with indoor gatherings in Glastonbury, then with summer camps, at first near Glastonbury, and later round the country.

The Glastonbury Camps, spontaneously started and lasting three years, were followed from 1987 by the OakDragon Camps, from both of which many other camps organisations sprouted, in several countries.  (More here.)

By 1990 I was burned out, and there were quite a few people in the OakDragon who wanted to take things a different way. So, sad about that, I left and started again. I  went into book editing with an enlightened publisher called Gateway Books. In 1992 when I was asked to write The Only Planet of Choice – a book of communications from some cosmic beings called the Council of Nine. It was a privilege to write. I was also involved with editing a series of books by and about the Austrian genius Viktor Schauberger, and five books of alternative ideas about Jesus, and lots of other books too, through the 1990s.

In 1995 I was back to doing camps – this time the Hundredth Monkey Camps. Here we did inner process work on the world issues of the time – Bosnia, French nuclear testing, forest fires, the Davos conferences and much more, often in circles of 70-100 people. It was remarkable and intense, though well worth doing.

This led on to a smaller twenty-year project called The Flying Squad, continuing this innerwork amongst a group of highly committed spiritual humanitarians who had bonded during the camps. Dedicatedly we stuck at it, working together for years.

By 2000 I had another burn-out session involving illness, at age 50. By now I had been pushing the river for thirty years, and I was wondering how much it had actually achieved. Had the world gone beyond the point of no return? Had I been getting things fundamentally wrong in my life? Was there any hope? From this, I started working in Palestine. This continued until 2015.

I ran the Isle of Avalon town website for Glastonbury which, at its peak around 2003-5, attracted over a million visitors annually, raising the town’s profile and economy. I was involved in events such as the Glastonbury Symposium, and doing lots of public speaking, writing, teaching and community web-work.

In 2008-9 I made big life-changes. Leaving Glastonbury after 28 years of quite central involvement in things happening there, I landed up in Cornwall in 2010. Here I have been living in a lovely cabin on an organic farm in the middle of West Penwith, the furthest part of the Cornish peninsula, surrounded by the ocean on three sides. It has more ancient sites per square mile than anywhere in Europe – and I’ve been interested in geomancy and archaeology since 1972. In 2014 I started doing ‘alternative archaeology’ research in Penwith, also making a series of online maps of all ancient sites in Cornwall and Scilly, fully presented on the Ancient Penwith website, which I created.

I rewrote a rather seminal 1987 book of mine, Living in Time, updating and improving it, published as Power Points in Time in 2015.

I also wrote a report about the world’s future by 2050, called Possibilities 2050 – available free online. It took two years. It gives the big picture about the future in a readable format, and it’s not a long book. More recently I’ve written Shining Land, about megalithic civilisation and the ancient sites of West Penwith.

In 2019, despite a life of looking after myself quite well (vegetarian-vegan and health conscious since 1970), I contracted bone marrow cancer. This was a shock. The specialist who gave me the diagnosis simply said ‘radiation exposure’ when I asked its likely cause. I am electrosensitive and have had a few exposures to nuclear radiation – something the medical profession in UK does not recognise (that’s a political issue). I has meant my social life has changed – if I sit with friends with radiation-guns (mobiles) in their pockets, I’m ill and my heart is thumping quite quickly.

I don’t know how long I shall survive – perhaps one to seven years (from 2022) but I have had a full life, with plenty of achievements, magic, love, human relating, deep experiences, pain and also bringing benefit to many thousands of people. I have a feeling there is one more mission to do.

When cancer entered my life, it all changed again. It’s as if I suddenly became much older, as if in my eighties or nineties. I’m now partially disabled, unable to drive or to travel easily, and my life-possibilities, hopes and expectations have changed. Though I’m still good at communicating.

But there is a gift in this too. It has made each day a struggle, yet it also makes each day special and worth living, simply because I’m alive. It has changed my orientation and attitude. I started this cancer-and-life blog, Notes from the Far Beyond, around the time of my cancer diagnosis in Nov 2019, to tell my story and to explore the psycho-spiritual side of cancer and life, as I experience it. I’ve also been doing podcasts and podtalks to share some of my knowledge and insights for those who are interested.

My Tibetan name means ‘radiant merit’, my Bedouin name means ‘always giving’ and my Hindu Brahmin name is ‘sun god’. For better or worse, that’s what I seem to have done quite a lot of, even while wading deep into darkness, and I’m happy about that. I didn’t get rich or famous, but a subtle profusion of inner wealth arose instead.

The results you can see on my website, Paldywan Kenobi’s place.