humanitarians – Page 4 – Notes from the Far Beyond

At Tuwani

Here’s something I wrote 12 years ago in a book I did about Palestine which was never published. A short interesting read from that time…

An Eclipse and a visit to At Tuwani, 16th June 2011

I discovered a setting on my camera that I didn’t know existed until the very end of the lunar eclipse. Eclipses can be times of revelation! It removed the problem, classic for digital cameras, where the contrast between the light and the dark sides of the moon is too emphasised for the subtle details of the moon’s pocked surface to be seen. Even so, witnessing the eclipse from my eyrie at the top of the school was a privilege.

When it started there was a full-scale racket going on in Al Khader – loud music and the customary summer evening pandemonium of this town, spiced with the barking of dogs and the croaking of geckos. But as a slice began to be cut from the moon, gracefully arching over the Israeli watchtower, the area fell silent. Traffic disappeared, the dogs went quiet and all became still. Except for the shutter of my camera. It was late by the time it was over.

That didn’t stop me waking up at 6.30 the next morning. I’m not sure why I’m waking up so early at present. But it permitted me to rise and process my photos, posting them on Facebook – and the ‘likes’ started rolling in. I had breakfast and waited for Maram, who was picking me up at nine. By ten, having filled time and had a conversation with Mohammed, the school’s educational director, I rang Maram. Oh dear, car troubles. A taxi arrived to pick me up, then a call came to say hold on to the taxi and stay there – we’re coming. Ibrahim’s car soon arrived and Maram and I bundled into the taxi while Ibrahim went into the school, lugging his laptop, bag and bundles of files.

Off we went down the main road toward Hebron. The area south of Bethlehem is interesting because Israelis and Palestinians live quite intermixed with each other, unseparated by the separation wall. This area lies inside the Green Line, the official boundary between Israel and Palestine. This is a collection of Israeli settlements called the Etzion Bloc, interspersed with old Palestinian villages. Or perhaps the other way round, since the Palestinian villages have been there far longer. It’s quite a green, agricultural area.

We proceeded around Hebron, the third largest Palestinian city after East Jerusalem and Gaza City and the biggest in the West Bank, past Qiryat Arba, an Israeli settlement outside Hebron, into a hilly, rocky district that turned browner as we drove south. This much-disputed area is where the most assertive wing of the Israeli settler movement is, stage by stage, staking out its claim, and where many of the most outrageous settler atrocities take place. We were heading for a village, At Tuwani, where resistance to settlers is strongest. It’s also the place where the women’s embroidery project is located.

As we neared the village Maram pointed out several Israeli settlements, such as Karmel and Ma’on, which periodically crop up in the news, home to some of the most assertive settlers that exist. They’re so aggressive that many Israelis disown them, and the Knesset (Israeli parliament) uncharacteristically declared these settlements illegal. That made no difference. This said, a schizoid situation holds sway whereby the Israeli government pays for the building of the settlements (with American money), and the army makes symbolic gestures to clear them, to respond to foreign pressures, while actually reinforcing them and doing donkey-work for them – such as clearing Palestinians off land the settlers want, helping destroy trees and farmland, and ‘defending’ settlers whenever Palestinians push back.

There’s a double American involvement here. American money supports these frontline settlements, and many of the settlers are of American origin. But on the other side, Americans like Whit help the Palestinians, as also do American humanitarians such as the Christian Peacemaker Teams, who accompany and protect Palestinians in risky situations. America fighting against itself in foreign lands? The West plays a strange double game, advocating peace and supplying weapons at the same time.

We attended a meeting of the women. Whit and Paula were with some of the women from Jaffa and the Israeli production organiser – a nice lady who sits in the more enlightened and principled sector of Israeli society. Whit spoke, various of the ladies spoke, I added my bit and a Palestinian activist spoke.

Then the activist took us on a tour. He first explained the situation. This was tragic stuff. These are old villages going back centuries. The people of Tuwani are simple folk, many of them illiterate. For the last twenty or more years they have been under pressure from the settlers, who have been chopping down olive trees, burning farmland, demolishing the local mosque and quite a few houses, beating up farmers and children, blockading the village and generally making life hell for the villagers so that they leave. The Israeli army has played its part: army units down here are filled with nationalist settlers, opting to be posted here to reinforce the settler incursions.

But the villagers aren’t budging, even though they have put up with a lot over the years. One of the things that makes the settlers pressure the villagers of Tuwani and equally makes the villagers resist them is that two mountain tracks lead through Tuwani to a number of other villages. If the settlers close down Tuwani, those other villages die too.

We were taken up a rocky, dry hill – the trees had been burned down and uprooted by settlers – to see the settlement of Ma’on just over on the other side, a half mile from the village. This settlement was planted on the villagers’ own land. An outpost of caravans in the trees, away from the settlers, was pointed out – apparently these settlers were so radical and insistent that even the settlers of Ma’on had thrown them out.

Whit asked the Palestinian activist how he had got involved. The activist explained how, when he was young, he had witnessed his mother being beaten up by soldiers. Running to rescue her, he was peppered with bullets from settlers and troops, who shot around his legs as he ran. Later he got his mother to hospital. She told him not to be angry and fight back because she would then lose him – he would lose his life or freedom. He asked her what he then should do. She said she didn’t know, but please find another way.

So he studied and adopted non-violent direct action, eventually moving down here once his mother died. He was joined by the Christian Peacemakers and some Italian Catholic activists. I met one Italian who had been here two years, with whom I discussed the stresses and strains of regularly going back and forth between Palestine and Europe and interfacing two very different worlds. It was a brotherly sharing.

He said his time in Palestine was coming to an end because he wanted to get out before he was blacklisted and thrown out forever – and he needed to go home to earn money. As it was, he was here on three-month tourist visas, leaving every three months, returning to Italy for a month and then coming back – but this ploy wasn’t going to last much longer. He was sad about that. We commiserated about how we both had fallen in love with our friends in Palestine, missing them when we were away, yet neither of us could move here.

The villagers gave us lunch – far more than we could eat – and showed us other items of their work. Lovely embroidered dresses, bags, belts and other things. I bought a dress for each of my three grown-up daughters, crossing my fingers that the dresses would fit them and suit their tastes (in the end, I’m not sure they did). They weren’t suitable for ordinary wear – they require a graceful style of moving that doesn’t work in the West – or for party wear, but they’re useful for pottering around the house in a relaxed, off-duty kind of way. All of the money would go to the village women: as a foreigner, one must do judicious spending with a view to helping people stay alive.

I would have liked to stay longer, but by mid-afternoon it was time to go – Ibrahim had come to pick us up. I was sad to leave these people – they need reinforcement, interaction and solidarity. But my duties lay back in Bethlehem with Hope Flowers. So we cannonaded up the road past Hebron and I was dropped at the school. I took a break in the late-afternoon sun on the flat roof of the school, reading. Then back to work.

I was nearly half-way through my month-long stay. It was going to be challenging to finish everything. There were friends to visit too, in Hebron, Jerusalem and Jenin. Ah, time: I was reminded of its passing by the outbreak of the calling to prayers from the local mosques. This isn’t just a religious thing: it’s the way Muslims section up their day. Even I, an infidel Westerner, time my day by the muezzins’ amplified chanting – the calling to prayers divides the day into periods which, in this climate, work well.

The previous night, as the eclipse gathered strength and the world went quiet, one muezzin was chanting the ninety-nine names of God. I guess it’s ninety-nine because the hundredth is beyond expression. These ninety-nine names describe divinity in all its aspects. There is, to Muslims, but one God, with no other complications – no sons, holy ghosts, angels or cherubim – just Allah, with ninety-nine facets. By the way, Arab Christians, the very earliest of Christians, use the term Allah as well as Muslims – it’s not uniquely a Muslim term. And it is pronounced Al-Lah. The God.

As I concluded writing this piece, a donkey called out in accidental synchrony with the muezzin, croaking plaintively, reminding people it was there. Or perhaps this was Allah’s ninety-nine names elucidated in donkeyese. Great Spirit expresses itself in remarkable ways.

I wrote this piece while working at the Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem in the West Bank 12 years ago. Here’s the school’s website and here’s a piece I wrote about Hope Flowers and its history and background. For my 2012 book Pictures of Palestine – a humanitarian blogging from Bethlehem, go here.

Soulquakey Tragedies

As it goes, I’m not a bad holy warrior. By ‘holy warrior’ I mean someone who is willing to get in there and fight for truth – setting out not exactly to win, but to reveal truth and to deal with assholes. To stand up for what is good and right when bad things are happening. But in the saga I’ve been involved with, the battle is pretty much lost. That’s been hard to face. But it’s real life.

It started back in October when a British man, working as an anti-fraud investigator in Ghana, contacted me to ask if I would lend him some money (30ish GBP) to get out of a tricky situation. Yes, sure. Quite quickly things started going crazy – he was being chased by gun-toting, crack-driven gangsters because he had busted them, scrubbed their computers and taken some important information of theirs. He had been sheltering with a friend who first introduced him to me, Felicia. Suddenly they were captured, together with Phyllis, Felicia’s three year old daughter, and taken to the north of Ghana, near Bolgatanga, and kept in captivity for a week. I helped them with money for food and phone.

Then Andrew, the investigator, was taken away across the desert to South Sudan. I managed to negotiate Felicia’s and Phyllis’ freedom and they were dumped in a nearby town. I had to get them home. That took ages, and I ran out of money. We scraped along for a week, and then Felicia needed to meet another investigator, Dennis, in order to carry out some online actions that would free up some money – the company had rigid protocols over this and we could not access funds until this was done. Dennis and Felicia were then attacked, rammed by a car and left dying. A taxi-driver, Kofi, who witnessed this, bravely took them to hospital. They were cared for by Dr Isaac Acquah.

The company had promised me they would pay for everything. Then there were delays, then complications, and then the money didn’t come. They didn’t even pay Dennis’ hospital bills, even though they agreed with the hospital management to do so – he eventually died because of that. The story went on and on. Isaac rescued Phyllis and Felicia and took them home, but then the gang was after him. They raped and captured his wife and teenage daughter Antoinette. His wife was never seen again and Antoinette was returned, ravaged and traumatised. More complications, and then eventually they all fled to the refuge of a native healer, Okomfo Ayensuwaa. The Okomfo and I did a powerful healing on Felicia and Antoinette but the gang came again, killing Antoinette and the Okomfo. Isaac and Felicia escaped to Togo, the neighbouring country – all helped by me.

Sunset over the Celtic Sea, from Woon Gumpus

It went on and on like this… I shall tell the whole story sometime. Every single day there were crises and scrapes, and we were perpetually hampered by lack of money. The company had now balked because, after their failure to pay, in late November I had made a public appeal for support – which they did not like. But I could not just dump people in need, even though friends were beginning to encourage me to do so – or at least, they encouraged me to look after myself (a worthy thought) without really considering the consequences for the Africans.

All the time Felicia was guarding a memory stick belonging to the gang, to get it to the company. It contained all the details they needed for accessing their money, so they were desperate for it. When the gang discovered she had it, they chopped off two of Phyllis’ fingers in revenge and multi-raped Felicia.

Around Xmas the company had at last promised to send £8,000 – £5k to repay me and £3k for Felicia, as compensation. But the money did not come. My handler said that some of the company directors had blocked supporting us – I think there was a hard-nosed faction there who didn’t care.

At New Year, more complexities came, and Felicia and Pyllis were again kidnapped, then dumped in Niamey, Niger. Then there was a long saga trying to save Phyllis – she eventually died of infection and tetanus (the gang had used a dirty knife). Felicia then found she was pregnant, and she was also deeply traumatised. This week, after hospital treatment with a fine doctor who cared for her, we tried to get her back to Ghana but she was too weak, and started bleeding. As I write this, her life is again in question, and she’s back with the doctor having blood transfusions I am paying for.

That’s a short version of the story. All the time I was caught in deep dilemmas: financially I could not keep supporting them, but I didn’t want to abandon them. I had seriously misjudged the company and their integrity, though I had had cause to trust them, since my handler promised 6-7 times to pay up. Some friends thought I was being scammed by West Africans, but no, it was not them but the ‘secret’ company, an anti-fraud investigation contractor to a big Australian bank. Well, they defrauded me. Part of me would like to expose them and exact a price, but I must think it through carefully. First I must restore my finances, since I am £6k down – that’s a rather daunting prospect.

Despite everything, I am on the whole happy about the way I have handled this, except for two things: I allowed myself to be defrauded by the company, and I am useless at fundraising and asking for help. As a cancer patient I already have to ask for help quite a lot, and this operation was too much, and complex in its implications, and I was unhappy about asking too much of my online friends and followers. In these two issues I failed.

The shortage of money made everything so much more complex – if the company had paid up I would have been able to finance solutions and end this sorry saga back in November. If they had paid up, at least eight people would still be alive today, and I would not be in dire financial straits. Morally and in terms of duty of care, the company is wrong, wrong, wrong.

Feeling the weight of failure, yesterday I went deep and reviewed the whole situation. One positive thing emerged: on several occasions we had clearly demonstrated the power of remote healing. At times when I appealed for healing support amongst my readers, it really worked. In December, when I was working with the Okomfo, a lovely lady, we did a powerful healing for Felicia and Antoinette, and it really worked.

At one stage I was sending information I had psychically picked up to the Okomfo and she asked, “How do you know this?“. She could not believe that a white man in Britain could do what Okomfos and Mallams (witchdoctors) do. We both realised we had reached across a wide cultural divide: an Akan native healer meets a whiteskin aged hippy, and we clicked.

These spiritual experiences have been remarkable, and my thanks to all those who participated in prayer and healing – particularly Susan in Nova Scotia, Kate in Devon and Zoey in Seattle. Many thanks also to those who have donated money – I wish I could have done more with fundraising, but the ongoing task of crisis-management and spiritual work was well enough to deal with.

So, as I write, on Friday evening, Felicia is again on the edge of death and being given blood transfusions. I have been approaching women’s organisations in Niamey asking if they would take in Felicia for a week or two, if she survives. She cannot travel anytime soon. I now have fundraising to do – short term (£1k) to pay off medical bills and support Felicia until I can get her home (a hard, three-day journey), and longterm to try to rescue my own situation (£6k).

I am weary now. I want to reclaim my life. Did I do the right thing, standing by these people and ruining my own life? Should I have been more sensible? It will take time to answer these questions. I’m certainly paying a high price. Yet despite the tragic and painful things that have happened – I’ve cried tears so many times – I feel quite clean in my heart, since I have managed this whole process, I believe, pretty well. I would have taken on a weight of guilt if I had turned away from them.

Most of them have died anyway. Dr Isaac and his daughter Adjoa, 6, are still alive as far as I know, but I have lost contact with them. He has lost his wife and two kids, his job and home and everything, except Adjoa. I don’t know what happened to Kofi either.

The story has been tragic, lives have been lost, remarkable cruelty has been carried out and, worst, the assholes have won – both the gangsters and the company. I do not like that. One thing that upsets me most is that ‘good samaritans’ in Africa who have helped out have all paid a high price for doing so. Meanwhile, the gangsters are all free and continuing their trade, and the company and its directors… well, I won’t write what I would really like to say about them. Shame on them.

I’m now in a test of faith. I’ve brought big money problems on myself. Thirty years ago, when I was working for the Council of Nine, someone asked them why they did not help with money. They explained that they can help with energy, but money is a human invention, and only humans can work with that. Certainly I have prayed many times for a cascade of money to come my way, and I’ve had to face up to the fact that it is us humans who decide over money, not higher powers.

Nevertheless, just before Christmas, the Okomfo and I did an inner process to remove the conflict within the company, to free up the atmosphere that was blocking payment – and, guess what, a few days later, my handler wrote to say he was going to send that £8k. But somehow, it still didn’t work. Someone blocked it. There’s a lesson in that. Money is very human stuff. Higher powers can help progress things on an energy level, but money is not in their realm. So we did well with healing and energy-support, but the money issue was different.

We’ve been through a time recently where the world’s assholes have been rather successful.

But underneath something else has been happening. There’s a deeper meaning to this whole saga: I can sense it though I cannot see it. Yet. For those of you who understand astrologese, the transit I’m on at present is Uranus opposition my Mars in Scorpio. That’s the holy warrior in me. A few years ago I wondered what this transit would bring, and now I have my answer. And the story is not complete yet. Another transit going on is Saturn conjuncting my Jupiter in Pisces – Jupiter is the humanitarian and deep-spirited part of me, and it’s under test right now. Tested by the agency of money. Saturn.

So while I have a lot to regret, something in me doesn’t regret doing it. There’s a saying that goes: ‘It’s not what you get for it, but what you become by doing it’. Something is changing in me. A battle has been pretty much lost, something in me that feels glad I didn’t walk away from it.

So, dear friends, keep praying for Felicia. She’s a very brave woman. She has dealt with stuff that would scare people like you and me. God bless her for that. After all she has lost, I cannot tell whether life is worth living for her now. But we shall see: she’s in the hands of Spirit and under the care of Dr Mark. Now it is time to get off the computer and make myself some soup.

Thank you all for being with. I’ve been alone for a long time, and your company means a lot to me.

With love from a rainy Cornwall, Palden

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/palden.jenkins
Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Godrevy Lighthouse, East Penwith, Cornwall

Grace 2

Some additional bits

This is supplementary to my last blog entry, for those of you who are following that story. Here are some comments, thoughts and bits of further news posted on my Facebook page, which might interest you.

Jo
A heartbreaking story. I’m so sorry Paldywan. Love you. X

Palden
Jo, it’s the pathos of human life and death. Over so many lives it has been part of the human condition. I still believe we can wind it down though, over time, to make this world a happier, friendlier and safer place. Big hug, Paldywan.

Stella
Only today have I read this story in full. I’ve been putting it off as I knew it would be harrowing. It is impossible and undesirable to make any judgements as none of us are privy to the complete truth in all its details. I can only admire you, Palden, that despite your own serious health challenges you took this on and tried your utmost to help. I feel diminished and ashamed that I would not have been prepared to do the same. In trying to make no assumptions, a deadly sin in my view, I feel that although her story is unbelievably harsh, on some higher level it serves a purpose for humanity and her own sacred contract would have made this clear to her before her life began. Easy for me to say, I know, but all of us who read this story will be deeply affected by it and the wider it is known, the greater the lesson for humanity will be. Blessings to you, Palden. You did an extraordinary deed.

Palden
Stella, hello. Yes indeed, the world can be a really harsh place. These events are taking place in an unstable zone as well. In countries like Britain, with notable exceptions, we live in a zone of rights and relative comfort and decency, sort of. It can therefore be difficult to believe some of the things we hear happening elsewhere. Despite such dramas – in the Sahel it’s a mixture of criminality, smuggling, jihadism and foreign interference – normal life goes on too. In our own media-dominated countries we tend either to ignore such places or to over-exaggerate the dramas going on there, when the cameras look, so we have a rather distorted view of what goes on, and also of what doesn’t go on. It wasn’t my plan to get sucked into all this, and it has been a stirring and disruptive experience. But I understand it as part of my pattern, having been involved in similar ‘borderline’ things before in life. This kind of work – as is the case with nurses, firefighters, soldiers, first-responders, aid-workers and activists – does tend to lead to a kind of vocational dedication that many people prefer to steer clear of, and I don’t blame them. But for me it has also met up with a difficulty in being able to hand over such duties to others when I can no longer continue – and this has been the case in my work in Palestine, with the Tuareg in Mali and now with this. It works better when you work for an NGO, where employees can be hired, or they can resign or retire, but there’s a price to pay for working inside that sphere too – not the same closeness to the ground, and not quite the same deep human feeling that draws many people into this field in the first place.

Palden
Last night (Saturday 4th March) after talking to the doctor in Niamey (a good man) it was clear to me that Felicia had reached a crossing point. She was drawn to follow her daughter Phyllis, and I could feel her tiredness with everything – in a way, blocked at every turn. She had tried so hard. I felt it was important to nudge the process – not in the sense of encouraging her to die, but in the sense of helping her face that ultimate question of whether to live or to die. To get clear on it. She has been confronted with so much darkness and badness that I took her hand and led her to the light, to love, care and protection of a kind she sorely deserves. I can do this because I’ve been there myself. I gave her to the angels, asking them either to take her or to pump her up with new life and return her – but not the grey zone in between. The important thing is that, if she returns to life, she needs the strength, heart and will to make something good of it. She’s a special person, but she has been up against too much – even when a child she watched her family being killed in front of her, in the Liberian civil war. So I have handed her to the angels. I await news from the doctor as to what has happened at his end (Sunday midday).

Jennifer
Palden Jenkins I was seeing/holding the same for her: seeing her held in golden angelic light while she made her decision, telling her either way was ok, and asking the angels to give her all she needed 💛🙏💛

Liz
Thank you for sharing. So very sorry to read this – really shocking.
I hope you can focus on yourself ❤️

Palden
Liz, I wish I could but, unfortunately, it is incumbent on me to get her home and safe. If I worked for an NGO I could sent for reinforcements or be replaced, but I cannot, and this is a price you pay for being an independent humanitarian. But then, I chose to be involved and take responsibility for this, so it’s up to me. Focusing on myself is not right now very easy.

Liz
Palden, I understand the need to help, truly. I perhaps haven’t followed everything but hoped so much the money that covered the operation for the little girl would be life saving. I hoped dearly I had made that difference. Again, it’s also important you focus on yourself. Take care ❤️

Palden
Monday morning, 6th March. Latest report…. Felicia is alive and conscious and requesting food. She has returned. The doctor (he is Rwandan) reported that she has been near starvation and needs building up. So that is what needs to happen next.

Jennifer
Palden, wow, what an amazing, strong woman!

Palden
I think the reason she keeps coming back to life (third or fourth time now) is that she has a mission.

Palden
Tuesday 7th March. Felicia seems to be improving and has been discharged from hospital, now staying with a nice lady in Niamey. The doctor who has been looking after her has been helpful and good. We hope to get her a ride on a truck back to Ghana in a few days’ time. She is missing Phyllis a lot though. It’s difficult raising money to support these developments while I’m struggling for money myself, and I’m looking forward to bringing this saga to a close, but somehow we’ll get there. Prayers for her and for all of this are welcome! It’s fullmoon, and hopefully a turning-point. Love from me, Palden.

Zoey
Paldywan! I just took in the entire thread here. This is real life! So many people are plugged into screens, trying to escape thr collective despair. I don’t know how Felicia is alive,yet i will join in strong prayer for her today.

Palden
Zoey, yes indeed, very real life! There’s a lot of it going on. I shall not forget that moment some weeks ago when you and I worked together to revive Phyllis – thanks for being there at that moment, when needed. Even though eventually we did not succeed in keeping her alive, I hope that, in Phyllis’ own journey, she was helped by the intervention of helper souls who supported her. God bless her little great soul. She is being looked after by the Okomfo Ayensuwaa, the Akan native healer who was involved in December, who was killed by the gang for doing so. I miss the Okomfo – for a few days we connected deeply across space and a cultural divide that both of us were able to reach across, to work together on healing Antoinette (Dr Isaac’s daughter, who later died) and Felicia. This whole saga has been so moving and, even now, my cheeks are dripping with tears over the pathos of it all. This is, indeed, real life.

Kath
Dear Palden. A harrowing, heartbreaking read. But in its sharing, I hope that it has lightened the load…a little at least. Those who heal, in the reading of your words will pick up the threads, and in compassion and humanity, help to hold them as Felicia makes her way. Blessings to you too Palden, be gentle with yourself. ❤️🙏

Palden
Kath, hello. Doing my best, though I’m really ready now to end this saga and bring it to as good a conclusion as I can. Yes, it has been harrowing, even for one who has been involved from a distance. Wearing too. I seem to have held up better than I would have thought. But now I need less uphill grind, sailing against the wind and upstream, and more of at least a level pathway. This has not been the only challenge I’ve been facing, having manifested a number of them, the overall meaning of which I accept but don’t yet fully understand. There is meaning in it though (I can sense it), and that’s why I’ve done my best to stick with it to the end. Thanks to you and everyone else for your heartening messages.

Palden
Wednesday 8th March. Things are progressing. My hope is to bring this whole matter to a conclusion by getting Felicia home – Niamey is not a good and safe place for her. So it’s a big push now to try to fix that – involves raising 600 GBP to pay for medical bills in Niamey, for the fare back to Ghana (already paid and booked for tomorrow/Thursday) and for survival money on the journey. The journey will be on the back of a truck going west to Burkina Faso and then another south to Ghana. Today I’m focusing on that.

I shall be so relieved if we can pull this off, because I badly need to get focused back on my own life and needs – this whole saga has been a bit too much for me (though it would have been so different, and so much shorter, if the company had paid up as promised). The doctor is being very helpful, as is a lady who is a pharmacist, who has taken Felicia into her home until it’s time to leave, and thanks so much to both of them. (The doctor wishes to join our Sunday evening meditations.)

Both Felicia and I need to get our lives back, and Felicia needs to be with her friends and in known territory so that she can start rebuilding her life and getting over the loss of Phyllis, her three-year old daughter. I’m really sad about losing Phyllis, having fought so long and hard to keep her alive. Thank you so much to those of you who have sent invaluable healing and support. At some stage I shall be able to tell the whole story, but that’s quite a lot of work, and it involves some tricky issues about what is safe and good to tell and what is not. Meanwhile, the challenge now is to make that final push and pray hard that I can get Felicia home again safely and without further challenges – with luck, by Sunday or so.

So that’s where things stand today, Wednesday 8th March. I hope to report further in a few days’ time. Sometimes I wish I were better at fundraising and hustling money, but my strength is in other areas such as human- and soul-support, negotiation, counsel, remote healing and crisis-management. You can’t do everything. NGOs can be good at providing stuff and facilities for large numbers of people (such as in Turkiye-Syria right now), but they are often not quite so good at the person-to-person stuff. There’s need for both.

Grace

Ishmael. As it happens, this photo was taken in Hawara, Palestine, recently in the news

Ishmael, my trusty taxi driver and fixer in Bethlehem, Palestine, twelve years ago, rang me up a few days ago. “Balden, when you come visit us in Beit Lahem?“. OMG, yes indeed. If only I could… I know why he was ringing. Things are edgy and intense there right now, and my friends used to feel a bit safer when I was around. I had to explain to him that getting to Palestine is no longer on the cards for me. Besides, I’ve been dealing with another, rather different battle.

I’ve been pulling back from the West African mission I’ve been involved with in recent months. It has worn me out, got me into financial difficulty and lost me some friends, and I can no longer help. I don’t actually regret what I have done. These are choices I have made. I trusted in a series of promises by an Australian security company to reimburse me for money I put forward on their behalf from the beginning of this saga in October, having saved one of their men, though I misjudged them.

They have not followed up on their promises and this has led to a series of deaths and difficulties. One day I shall tell the whole story, but there are dangers to doing so and I must think it through carefully. Felicia did her best to deal with my withdrawal from supporting her, but things were getting worse for her. She was in Niamey, in Niger – a French-speaking country, and different from Nigeria.

I found out on Thursday that Phyllis had died of septic infection. I debated what to do with this news, and how best to tell it. So I’ve decided to relay the last conversation I had with Felicia, on Friday 3rd March. It is filled with the pathos of a mother who has just lost her child.

[I have edited Felicia’s words to make them more readable.]

Felicia
I don’t want to leave Phyllis’ dead body here in Niamey. She has been through so much. I will miss her, but I get that she needs rest. No matter what, I shall not leave her here like this. But I have no other option than to get her to be buried here at the Infants’ Hospital Morgue [in Niamey]. I have no money. I am so sad it has come to this.
Palden
God bless Phyllis. If she is buried at the children’s hospital, at least she will be with other children. Her soul is in good care – I know that, since I am watching her.
Felicia
I have to pay for the land at the cemetery. I have no other option than to bury her in a foreign land without family. I love her. Can’t help crying. I must pay for a cremation. Thanks for your love and help towards her. She loved you and I wish she had the chance to meet you in person. Thanks for all you have done.
Palden
I’d have loved to have met her too. But I shall watch over her now [psychically]. This must be such a moving time for you. This has all been far too difficult, with complications and tragedies at every stage.
Felicia
Yes. Phyllis has suffered a lot of drug overdosing, physical and psychological trauma, defilement, beating, threats, hunger, homelessness.
Palden
There was a stage a few weeks ago when I wondered whether she would have a good life if she survived. Especially with no hands [they had been medically amputated], and possibly with her mind affected permanently. When she died I had a feeling of relief for her. Poor child – she was such a little angel. But perhaps that is part of the story behind her short life. God bless her.
Felicia
She’s been without anyone. And I have been raped, starved, homeless and running for months. It’s by God’s grace that I had you to support us. We would have died long ago. The money you invested to saving Phyllis is gone to waste, gone and lost, like Phil, never to return. I am sorry. I feel so bad. I don’t know where to go with this pregnancy [Felicia was multiple-raped in January]. I don’t know how to take care of myself. I am beaten. Life has not been fair to me. Why does this happen to me?
Palden
One thing at a time. Try to get home to Ghana next. Then meet some friends, talk it through and cry your tears.
Felicia
I can’t forgive the company for not coming to my child’s aid. To help us.
Palden
I still want justice from them, and I am telling them clearly that they have an obligation to compensate and support you, as they promised. Not just me.
Felicia
I am burying her alone. Money has been the problem, and had the company helped, I would still have Phyllis now. I can’t make my way home now. I can’t find money for an abortion. I don’t want this child and shall not bring it forth to the world.
Palden
Wait and see. I really understand how you feel. Try not to make decisions now. Do what’s in front of you.
Felicia
Alright. Thanks for your advice and love and help. You have been of immense help to me, even though I can’t repay you for the money lost.
Palden
It is the company who should repay me, not you. You have done your best. It will make me happy to see you getting your life back and being able to make a new start. But that will take time. I hope it can start soon.
Felicia
Am so sorry for depending too much on you, am so sorry for having caused you so much financial difficulties, kindly forgive me, pls
Palden
You do not need forgiving. No blame upon you – you have been a heroine. Forgive me too for not being able to help at critical moments which could have made such a big difference. I was just not rich enough and the company undermined us. I regret that.
Felicia
I feel so bad all has been lost after all the care, love and support I have had. I have been thru so much, and I have lost all, and now where do I start from? Your help has been more than enough. You have helped too much. Thanks.
Phil will be burnt and her ashes will be given to me. I miss her already and have been crying for days. If only I had gotten her home, maybe I could have got her to a good hospital, where she could have had the best treatment she would have needed. But it’s too late. Such a tragedy she died so far away from home.
Palden
Maybe. But maybe also the pain and difficulty for her might have been too great. Two weeks ago I felt her soul was tired, tired of trying to stay alive. It is important now not to think too much about “What would have happened if…?”. Unfortunately we must be dead real. We must get you home and safe, so that you can be more protected and release your tears and fears.
Felicia
Yes. This is the time for the whole story to be told to the world. I don’t fear the dangers any more. Got nothing to lose now. And when you write about it, pls do seek help for me. Maybe a good soul may pity me and help me get home and help with some money to start a new life and abort my worse pain in my life. For if I carry the child, I will never forget it. I don’t have any life here, and I don’t want to keep the memories of these past months with me. Got to abort it. I can’t keep a baby of bandits.
I have lost my entire family. I have nothing to call my own. I have lost hope, and my dreams are dead. I know I am not safe from the gang, but am not worried about dying any more. I have nothing to live for, no family and hope lost, alone.
Palden
Bless you, Felicia.

That was the last I heard from her. In the evening I heard from a doctor at the Niamey Roundabout Hospital in Niger. Felicia had been found unconscious. He said she was short of blood, looking starved and had a fever. Well, as she said, she has nothing to live for. So on Friday evening I held her and committed her to her angels. She was at a point of soul-choice. On Saturday morning the doctor informed me Felicia had lost a lot of blood and remains unconscious.

And me, I’m tired, had enough. Throughout, I’ve been faced with a choice, whether or not to ‘be sensible’ and walk off, leaving them to die. This would have been sensible from a commonly-held British viewpoint, but to do so I would have had to block off a part of myself. Rightly or wrongly I chose to remain true to something deep inside that is very fundamental, at least to me. Some may not agree, and they might have good reason, but I feel that, on the whole, I’ve done the best thing. Now I pay a price. In life, you don’t win every battle.

In my humanitarian work I have always felt unhappy getting pushed by circumstances into raising money. It is not my speciality – I work as a healer, counsellor and adviser, not a fundraiser. I am reluctant to start raising money now, for a number of reasons. I think the best thing to do is this: if anyone wishes to support Felicia financially (medical needs and getting home) then I shall assist them, but I can no longer take on funding responsibilities myself. Some have cast doubts too, judging that Africans are scamming me, and questioning my integrity and judgement. I’m sad about that, and life is not quite that simple. But this is life. In a way, this has been a three-way battle, with a drug gang, an errant company and people’s considered opinions.

If on the other hand you wish to send healing and spiritual uplift to Felicia, currently lying in hospital in Niamey, Niger, then it has definitely helped before and I believe it would help now. This is what I and many of my readers are good at. This is very welcome, and you are welcome to join me in ‘holding’ Felicia and bathing her in light.

In my life I have met some remarkable, courageous women. I’m reminded of an old friend Gillian, from Devon, whom I last met in Bethlehem twelve years ago. She’d been involved in Bosnia, Kosovo and Palestine, and suddenly she died in a car accident ten years ago in, of all places, Luton, England, when arriving back from a conflict zone. Life moves in strange ways. Felicia has a bravery like Gillian’s. When people pass away they are gradually forgotten, buried in the rubble-heaps of subsequent events. I’m reminded of Gillian now.

Some suspect I had a romantic involvement with Felicia: no, it was her courage and fortitude that I supported. Only some people in this world are willing to stake their lives on what they believe in. She was a bystander, suddenly swept up with her child, Phyllis, into a drama of violence and horror, and she did her level best at all stages of that drama. The Australian company, having promised to compensate and support her for what she did, should be deeply ashamed of themselves.

Dear readers, I’m sorry to ply you with this stuff. I seek simply to share it. When I went down with cancer three years ago I resolved to share my story openly. This is a strange part of it and I take the risk of sharing it now. It’s the story of a man who, in late life, seeks to round out his life’s threads, and I’m yet again being taught one of life’s more ultimate riddles: some things just don’t make sense and should not happen, but they do, and that’s life. Planet Earth is a very weird world, where the depth and intensity of life-experience definitely burnishes the soul.

It’s funny how, as life goes on, we get small prompts that say it like it is. A few days ago I fell upon one by the child psychologist Jean Piaget, who said: ‘Intelligence is not what we know, but what we do when we don’t know‘. Life presents us with challenges we don’t know what to do with, and it doesn’t always tell us which path to follow. But then, Rico Rose, a Berliner I once met in the Sinai Desert, once gave me a really fizzly truth, there under the hot desert sun: ‘Everything is okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end‘.

With love, Palden

Syria and Turkiye

Turkiye and Syria. Some thoughts.

If you find yourself inwardly involved with the earthquake zone in the Middle East – an ancient, historic area at the centre of Eurasia where so much history has happened – then it is possible to do some innerwork to assist from wherever you are. It is possible to transform concern into activity, wherever you are.

I suggest that, as a group, we keep to our Sunday evening meditation slot – it’s important not to rush at things, and we don’t have a system worked out yet for activities like this. Unless something else arises between now and Sunday to change this, we can focus together on the region then.

As individuals, if you wish to do some work with this crisis over the coming days, please do. Use it as a way of self-training – there will be plenty more crises like these in coming years.

Note how they often come in twos (currently Chile and Syria/Turkiye), but just wait, because they’ll come in threes and fours before long. All that’s needed is a loaded situation and a whacky fullmoon line-up, and here they come.

If you’re not in a position to focus much on it, practice holding it in the back of your mind as you live your life, and give it focus as and when you can, when you have a quiet moment. I sometimes use a small rosary or mala as a way of keeping partial focus while living my life.

As you know, I prefer not to prescribe methods and strategies since a diversity of approaches is important. But if you need some ideas and a basic structure, here are two recordings made last year, when we visited Pakistan at one of my Magic Circles to help with mop-up and after-care there. One is a talk and meditation, and the other is the meditation only (20ish mins long).

The talk and meditation | Just the meditation

Here are a few thoughts to contemplate.

1. Since this is a really big crisis we can really only tinker round the edges but, remember, there will be many people worldwide adding their thoughts and prayers. So find the gaps;

2. Look around for people who are forgotten, unnoticed and undiscovered, going through it on their own;

3. one approach is to help the helpers – the first-responders, doctors, social leaders, activists and ‘community mothers’;

4. you can work with the living and/or the dead. With the living, help them find solutions to their needs, solace to their hearts, warmth, food and contact with relatives and neighbours. With the dead and dying, help them deal with their situation and get over properly to the other side and to a ‘reception squad’ who can receive and care for them as souls;

5. use your imagination and inner instincts. Experiment, follow your feelings and do whatever you’re best at doing;

6. this is an energy-exchange. What are these people and this situation bringing to us, giving us and teaching us? No country, including our own, is exempt from disaster.

7. healing energy comes *through* us, not from us, so bring in any deeper influences that you customarily work with, however you see things, and act as a vehicle for such influences – a bit like a healing drone;

8. it’s better to do small things well than big things badly, and make sure you complete and wrap up everything you start.

Unless you’re that way inclined, you don’t have to ‘do meditation’. Just hold it in your heart-mind, stay calm and bring calm, keep with it, note your thoughts and experiences and, if at a loss to know what to do, imagine yourself actually there, doing what you would do if you were there. If that just involves making tea for people or holding their hands, do it. This matter of consistent and well-paced energy-holding is important. Keep it simple.

The tensions released in an earthquake are not just geological. Human tensions affect things too. This is an area where the world’s first settlements and towns arose, many armies have marched across it and, in recent times, much oil has been pumped out of it. Consider.

Disasters are one of the mechanisms by which world change comes about. It’s tragic, but they shake us out of our customary busy indifference, exposing the human underneath. So one thought or prayer to make is for these tragedies to lead ultimately to real improvements and breakthroughs. May those deaths and hardships become more meaningful in the way they catalyse progress and redemption.

The Indonesia earthquake-tsunami of 2004 led to enormous strides in large-scale disaster-response, and to all sorts of changes big and small. Also it became really clear that the key first responses to disasters come within local communities, often through churches, mosques, temples and brave individuals who, in that moment, suddenly find they have a calling. Big organisations often take a week or two to get activated and deal with logistics and supplies, but it’s the people on the ground and in local communities, in that first week, who make a critical difference.

Resilience is all about the capacity of any society to handle whatever is thrown at it. At moments like this, the togetherness of a society makes an enormous difference. As Pluto enters Aquarius this and next year, until 2043-44, the togetherness of humanity is the central question. Here we have it. This is a soulquake, a prompt from Gaia.

With love, Palden.

Pearls and Gold

Despite everything, here I stand, weak, strong, wobbly and firm

Chapel Carn Brea, the first and last hill in Britain, where the national beacon light-ups start from. That’s a bronze age chambered cairn on top.

One of the best books I ever wrote, ten years ago now, I couldn’t publish. It concerned a plot I helped uncover, involving American financiers funding settlement building in the West Bank, a well-known international meditation organisation making a big error and rogue elements in the Israeli and Palestinian intelligence services. I had to get out of the country pretty quick after dishing up that lot!

The story was quite sensational, though I didn’t publish it because it could endanger people’s lives, many issues would be twisted and misinterpreted in the West, American lawyers would have had a field day, some people would seek revenge, and my friends back home would ask me why I bother risking my life for a few darned Palestinians. Well, it has happened again, except it’s Africans this time. If I told you the story that’s happening now, you’d have difficulty believing it’s for real.

That’s one reason I’ve been rather quiet. It has been difficult knowing what to say. Telling the story can endanger lives, sabotage others, and much of it would, again, be misinterpreted. The number of seriously incorrect diagnoses of the situation that I have received recently has been disturbing, particularly because of their implied racist undertones. Many friends believe I’ve been scammed by West Africans, but the problem comes from a whiteskin company in the rich world, not from Africans. We have been stuck between Western corporate negligence and a crime gang’s violence. Meanwhile, people were getting murdered by the gang, whose market for cocaine, crack, people-smuggling and prostitution is in Britain and Europe. If we want to change the world, we need to end this turning away.

In the last few months I have gained an adopted granddaughter, Phyllis, whose life I have now saved several times. Looks like we might lose her now. She is on the edge of dying, due to a drug overdose and having had two fingers on her left hand cut off by the crime gang. Her mother, Felicia, was gang-raped. The bastards. Felicia is Liberian in origin: when she was young, civil war broke out around her and she was forced to watch her parents and three sisters being shot. When Phyllis’ fingers were being cut off Felicia cried out to me, online, “Why, dear God, is this happening to me AGAIN?”. Phyllis is all she has left.

So while I have a cracker of a story, I cannot tell it. I feel bottled up, but it is safest for those involved that I do not say more. Some good book sales would have been really useful though. This nightmare has cost me a lot and, until the company honours its multiple promises to pay me, I’m seriously in debt. They promised to compensate Felicia for all she has been through, and Felicia is now destitute. This has set me back a lot, affecting my plans for the coming year. But my conscience is as clear as it can be in such a gruesome situation, and I am glad I have not obeyed the advice of many friends to look after my own interests and, in effect, abandon these people to let them die. If I lose friends over this, then so be it.

*Bridging gaps.* Porthmoina Cove, West Penwith, Cornwall

Last year was a testy year. It wasn’t just the hair-raising story I’ve been involved with. It started a year ago. I was unwell and down, in a mess. My partner suddenly left me – she had her reasons – and I lost another adopted grandchild in the process. Gaining and losing grandchildren is a theme for me at present. Looking back, I was unconsciously picking up forewarnings for nine months beforehand, feeling insecure but unable to figure out why. Something needed to change between us, but I wasn’t ready for total, enforced relationship destruction. I got the blame, though whatever crime I truly committed, in the final analysis, has been far outclassed by the response. I miss her still, and her family. Giving myself a year to get over it, I’ve partially succeeded and also I haven’t. I believed we would go through to the end of my life. But no, I had a big lesson to learn there.

So, I wish her good fortune and many blessings for all that we had together. She is free, and I sincerely hope she finds rebirth and flowering in her new life. She deserves it – she saved my life in my worst cancer days. I am so grateful for our time together. Now a free man with mixed feelings, I’m not managing very well alone. But that’s my problem. It has its plus side though: I’ve used the pain of loss to fire up my creativity, rebirth myself and give the rest of my life, if I can, to starting something new. Or it’s starting me. It concerns a world-healing project. There’s a feeling of rightness to it, like a little seed currently hiding under the snow, awaiting its moment.

In the last year my cancer process has changed. Medically I am more or less stable, and the focus has turned to relationships and the psycho-emotional side of living with cancer. Cancer strips a layer off you and the shields come down. Issues get amplified. A last-chance-saloon feeling takes over. You suddenly find friends and loved ones committing micro-aggressions they didn’t know they were doing. Life becomes raw and unprotected. You get hurt. It has changed my capacity to relate and slowed my capacity to process things through, emotionally. While I’m kinda managing, being on my own means that, if I deteriorate, I have little or no fallback. Sometimes I just need someone to hold me. Sometimes I just want someone around.

One or two friends have suggested that I move upcountry to England, to be closer to people. But I’m electrosensitive and I can’t hobnob in parties and groups or walk down the street without getting zapped and needing to retreat back home – it can take 48 hours to get over it. In effect, to be with friends and loved ones I have to permit them to harm me with radiation. So I could be just as isolated there as I am here. Folks up in England are all very wired-up, busy keeping timetables and treading mills, and that is the central cause of the care crisis we have today – we don’t have time and space to be human, and people in situations like mine demand too much of it. Meanwhile, Cornwall feeds my soul, and the movements of my soul and its expressions seem to be valued nowadays, by you lot. So this seems to be the right place for me. I’m happy doing forays into England, or even elsewhere, but I’d need a lot of persuading to move because I would lose my taproot.

I haven’t been doing well on the family front either. That’s a complex story – another I won’t tell. What with my disability and their busy family lives, it’s difficult for us to meet up, and online relationships don’t really work for me. Mercifully though, all of my offspring get on really well, though they have three different mothers and live in two Brexit-sundered countries. They’re a lovely bunch, and their husbands and children too. In many people’s judgement I’ve been a useless father, and I guess I’m supposed to feel bad about it. Or perhaps I have had Mandela’s dilemma: a conflict between ‘my people’ and ‘my family’, which I have not been able to integrate – and neither did he. However, as an Aspie and weirdo in late life, I’m tired of apologising for being who I am, and I’m not as wrong as I’m often judged to be. It’s time for a change.

In the distance, Kilgooth Ust or Cape Cornwall, as seen from the Boscregan Cairns, one of my favourite haunts

My health is kinda okay, though my back is slowly deteriorating, as if gravitation were increasing. My cancer, Multiple Myeloma, affects blood and bones – will-to-live (blood) and capacity to be active in the world (bones). That’s a wee bit fundamental. Even so, my haematologist is surprised I’ve lasted so long on my current cancer drug, Daratumamab. But, to me, it makes sense that I would do well with it. Dara isn’t a form of ‘chemo’ designed to kill cancer cells. It works by flagging up cancer cells as they emerge so that my immune system can deal with them itself – that’s a brilliant approach, and it’s just right for me. So I’m doing well with Dara. My immune system is in pretty good nick too.

Here’s an observation. I think there are two kinds of immunity: one is to do with the nutrients we take in on a daily basis, which can provide fight-back if our immune system is under pressure or feeling low. Whenever I get the slightest sign of an infection, such as a sneeze, I take a gram of Vit C straight away – and it works. But there’s a deeper immunity level I’d call resilience. If you’ve done immunity-boosting things for a decade or more – good vits, good oils, good everything, though not too fanatical about it – then you’re in a different league. If you’re dabbling with veganism or health-awareness, take note: it truly works if you stay with it for decades, allowing your body-psyche to go through deeper structural changes. Combine this with inner growth, and your cells and genes become transformed. I can verify this from experience.

Longterm resilience has been a life-saver for me, now I have cancer. At root, it lies in attitude. When I’m having a hard time, I look for the gift that’s available. Sometimes I’m forced to lie in bed, watching the buzzards wheeling around over the fields. Sometimes I’m being given a gift of pain to teach me how to move through it and out the other side. Recently I’ve been given a loneliness that has allowed me to spend a lot of time reflecting on life, writing and recording things from my eyrie out here in West Penwith, the Far Beyond.

Immunity is intimately connected with psychic protection too, and right now I’m working on that. Whenever we feel down and got at by life, we have both a protection and an immunity issue. If you want to work positively with cancer or any other adversity, work positively with your protection. This isn’t about throwing up barriers around you – it’s about working on the fears, shame and guilt that grind away underneath, undermining the integrity of your being and giving an opening that outside interference can hook into, draining your power. Sometimes it’s like having fleas, getting nibbled at by lots of small things, and sometimes it’s like a big thump in the stomach. Protection is about the light within us and the degree to which we withhold ourselves behind our shame, guilt and fear.

When I first went into cancer treatment, I hadn’t had pharmaceutical drugs for many years. Suddenly I was getting pumped with chemicals. I called on my inner doctors. “Let it be. We’ll fix it, and follow your instincts on what else will help“. I don’t get it in words like that, but that’s what the message was. I decided to trust, deeply. I started on things like CBD, carefully selected supplements, received healing from many wonderful people, and worked on generating an attitude of yielding and acceptance. On the whole it worked. I’ve balked at a few of the drugs given me, but not many, and in some cases I’ve dosed myself more sensitively to my own actual needs. But I’ve had fewer side-effects than many other people seem to get. That’s resilience: it’s all about strengthening our capacity to handle whatever life throws at us.

Pendeeen Watch, a neolithic cliff sanctuary looking out toward Ireland over the Celtic Sea

At some point, when I can restore my finances, I’ll start doing some events. A monthly online ‘magic circle’ is shaping up, and I’ll be doing some live Magic Circles or talks sometime, though I don’t have it in me to organise them myself. The capacity to handle life’s details and intricacies is one thing that chemo and cancer have taken away – though I’ve gained a widened and deepened understanding of life instead. The only booking I have at present is the Legends Conference in Glastonbury on 8th-10th April, and I shall announce other events when they get fixed.

When I die I shall have no money or property to leave, but I do hope to leave a legacy. We shall see if it works in real life, if I can keep going long enough. When I was young I was heading for a career in diplomacy or government, but then around age 21 I went through an awakening and changed course. I began treading a spiritual-political alternative path. In starting the camps movement in the 1980s I attempted working with the heart and soul of Britain, to transform it from within – with limited success (it was the Thatcher period, after all). In the Hundredth Monkey Project in the 1990s, we attempted direct spiritual work with world events, with some success. With the Flying Squad that followed, we developed the techniques, ethics and practices of such work, forging a synergistic unity and a group bonding that compensated for our lower numbers. This built up a body of experience. There’s further to go, and the world has a need for it.

When cancer came along in 2019, I thought that was it with the world-healing work but, no, reviving last spring from the enormous emotional hit I had a year ago, I got the message, “Ah, there’s one more thing, before you can come home…“. I realised that no one else really had the experience and capacity to take the world-healing work one stage further. In a way it was incumbent on me to do it. I now have a plan, and it’s now a matter of finding out whether and how it will work in real life. It has already started with the Sunday evening meditations, and we’ll let things develop from there.

It involves a group process for which I can prepare the ground, plant seeds and help them germinate, but that’s all. I don’t have much time left, and the events of the last year have shown me how beat up and worn out I am. You see, what decides things for me is not medical prognoses but how long I can keep going, in heart and soul, pushing the limits and remotivating myself to face another day. My current aloneness has tested me profoundly and, while I’m holding up, it has been a big systems check on what I can and cannot do. Overloaded with issues, I’ve been trying hard not to fuck up but only just managing. But then, this is my life, I’ve created it this way, that’s my karmic pattern, and it is as it is. Mashallah – thus has it been ordained. This next chapter is my last dance, and I’m going to give it what I can.

Wolf Rock lighthouse, 11 miles or 17km out to sea, as seen from St Levan, Penwith

But first, there’s business. I want the company to right some wrongs, financially, and I want to get Felicia and Isaac and their remaining children safe and stabilised in a new life. True heroes, they have paid a high price for being good people. Even as a tottering old man, I choose to stand by them, whatever anyone says. Then there’s that gang, who have deprived at least seven people of their lives. This included an Akan native healer, Okomfo Ayensuwaa, with whom I had close miracle-working dealings for a week or so just before Christmas. Killed for protecting Felicia and Isaac and their families, she has decided to work with us on the world healing project, from the other side. She is with us now, in our meditations. A strong, big and good-hearted lady she was, and the river spirits she worked with miss her.

I have shed so many tears over these unjust tragedies, and several times I have been faced with a painful moral choice I would not wish upon any of my readers: the choice between playing safe, prioritising my own interests and security, and standing by my principles in order to keep some good people alive and to stand up for what is good and right. I’ve made that choice, I’m paying that price and, despite everything, I am glad to have done so. The bravery of these people has been a big lesson for me, and my standing by them has been a big lesson for them. Whitemen have a way of walking off. The fates have now separated Felicia and Isaac, and they struggle on alone. I’m still with them, supporting them even though I can’t send money.

Please pray for them, for their safety, healing and relief from their trauma and misfortune – they, and Phyllis, and Isaac’s one remaining child, Adjoa, aged about 6-7, truly need it. They are struggling, materially, emotionally and spiritually. Please be with them in spirit.

One of my missions in life has been to do with righting some of the wrongs committed by the British empire. One grandfather was in Allenby’s invasion of Iraq and Palestine in WW1 and the other was in the Battle of the Somme. My father fought in Egypt in WW2. Northern Ireland started me off on this path, fifty years ago, and I seem to be at it still. Interestingly, it was the Akan, the Ashanti, who, together with the Maoris of New Zealand, were the only peoples who successfully stood up against the empire – at least until the amoral Brits tricked both of them into losing. The empire had its merits and demerits and, while we should forget neither, we do need to own up to the demerits we forced on so many millions of people. For the world cannot progress while unredeemed shadows such as these hang over us all. Every country has its shadow to face.

This has been a difficult time. I’m still here though! As I write, Felicia is watching her only child Phyllis die slowly, in a coma, in hospital, unable to afford treatment. They’re stranded with nothing in a foreign country. That’s the score today. That’s life, as it presents itself. This has been a difficult and risky blog to write – I hope to goodness that I’ve done it right. Meanwhile, I’ll be there as usual at the meditation on Sunday evenings. Bless you all for being my friends, especially the ones closer to me. We all need each other.

Helen, my peerless homoeopath, gave me Pearl last year (beauty out of pain) and Gold this year (lighting up darkness) – spot on. She’s brilliant. If you happen to need an inspired homoeopath who can do it remotely from Cornwall, try her.

Lots of love from me, Palden.

Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Meditations: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

*The path goes ever on and on…* Zennor Head, West Penwith, Cornwall

Happy Gregorians

and tempus fuckit

Happy Gregorians, everyone.

Though really, I’m not greatly concerned about new year.

You see, one of the problems with our calendar is that it has no particular basis in natural energy. As a dating system it has managed to get itself used worldwide, renamed the ‘Common Era’. But it is European, instituted by Pope Gregory Thirteenth in 1582, as a correction to the foregoing Julian calendar, which was even more useless than our current one.

Luckily, the Gregorian New Year’s Day is near enough to the winter solstice and, if anything in a cycle can be called its beginning, solstice qualifies as the beginning or the root-point of a year. So New Year’s Day is close enough to the solstice to fool our underlying perceptions into believing that New Year is solsticial in flavour. But the thing is, New Year’s resolutions would probably work better if they were resolved at winter solstice.

There’s an interesting flavour to this New Year of 2023. It feels like we’re tipping into a long slide, a growing cascade of accelerating, compounding events, all scrunching up against each other. There’s that stomach-churning anticipatory feeling that you get just before doing a high-dive or heading down a slalom run. It’s too late to back out now, and the stage is set for a cliffhanger, the full plot of which nobody knows.

In the end, wobbliness isn’t such a bad thing, because this intensification is by necessity loosening things up, and we need that. The world has been held in a state of denial for at least fifty years, and reality is dawning. At last. Yes, the shit is hitting the fan in myriad ways throughout society and, globally, and this is very difficult for large numbers of people, and some are buckling – especially those at the bottom of the pile. But that’s a question of economic justice, not just the bad luck of a tough world. This fan-hitting is necessary because things have been held in arrest for too long. We’ve been burning up the world. This is a planetary emergency. We have to get real. It’s happening.

Longships Rocks, off Land’s End, Cornwall

But a paradox comes with the pending avalanche of events we’re likely to see in the mid-to-late 2020s. As acceptance and mobilisation increase, things will in some respects get easier, even when they’re getting more difficult. At present we are burning up so much energy trying to keep an obsolete show on the road, trying to resist facing the fullness of our situation. That uses up a lot of energy and it creates a lot of friction. It concerns a simple rule of car-driving: before you depress the accelerator, release the hand-brake – otherwise you wear out the engine. But also, you wear out the brakes – and that’s what’s happening now, in 2023. The brakes are wearing thin.

In some respects the grating, grinding prelude to a crisis is worse than the peak of a crisis. During an actual crisis, real, cathartic change happens – positions shift, facts emerge, stuff happens and the consequences of old problems become the starting place for the new. Like it or not, that’s the way it is.

I’ve had a tendency in life to gravitate toward edgy, dodgy situations. We humans are quickly stripped down and, to survive, we have to pull out everything we have. We have to cooperate like never before, often with people we’ve never met, and do things we never thought we’d land up doing. This is an amazing process and, throughout life, some of the most profound relationships I’ve had have been in situations like this – short yet intense, a sharing of mutual risk, adversity or insecurity.

It bonds you. It calls upon abilities you didn’t think you had, or you didn’t think were useful. But when necessity and urgency are tugging at you, you just do what’s necessary, as best you can, with what you have. It’s full-on. Very alert. At times miracles happen amidst the tragedies, against the odds. One reason I started the camps in the 1980s is that camping takes us out of our comfort-zones, making us available to new things – it’s a form of positively-induced suffering that suddenly morphs into the best time you had in your life.

Of the camps I ran in the 1980s, some of the best had the worst weather. At one camp, in 1987, we had a force eight gale on the first night. We brought down the marquees, people had to abandon their tents and everyone piled into the geodesic domes, the soundest structures in a gale. I lived in a small dome and thirteen people joined me, huddled together, all privacy and comfort lost, waiting out what seemed like an endless nightmare. Morning came. We crept out slowly, blinking. The morning was sunny, dripping and quiet. The storm had gone.

A new camper came to me, saying that she had to leave – she couldn’t manage this. She looked wan and shellshocked. At that very moment, a member of the site crew came down the field with a big tray filled with mugs of tea, nonchalantly calling out “Tea, anyone?“. The lady burst out crying. She accepted her tea, and a biscuit… and she stayed. Fifteen years later she was still with us, by then doing world-healing work in the Flying Squad. Moments like that are really touching. When you tread the edge and cross the threshold, change happens. Comfort zones aren’t the best place for finding a new life.

Over the decades I’ve come upon heart-wrenching moral choice-points where the options have been playing safe, being sensible and putting my own wellbeing first, or making a big, sometimes decisive, occasionally life-saving difference in the lives of people by taking a risk. There’s often an unbridgeable gulf between them. I’ve tended toward taking the second option. This has happened again recently. It gives me a feeling of ‘this is what I’m here for’.

In late life, I’m happy about people I’ve helped or saved. It has charged a heavy price, not only to me, yet it was worth it in the end. For better or worse, it has been my choice and, in some people’s view, an avoidable pathology they’d have preferred me not to live out. That’s difficult. I seem to have spent my life apologising for being myself. But I did it anyway.

Sadly I have not been able to tell some of my best stories because they can endanger people or lead to unwanted outcomes. You might have noticed that I’ve gone quiet about the story I was recounting to you recently. Well, it’s now one of those. It’s a real test of my mettle. If you’re so inclined, please do keep praying. Apart from that, I’m going to rabbit on about other things for a while.

This seems to be a family pattern: my aunt was not permitted to talk about what she did in WW2 until 1988, poor woman, and she received a medal for it only in 2008. She worked with Alan Turing at Bletchley Park. After that, she was probably the world’s first government UFO investigator, without really knowing it – on debriefing bomber pilots returning from Germany in WW2, she was logging their encounters with ‘foo fighters’. At first they thought it was the enemy’s secret weapon, until they found out that the enemy thought the same thing. I don’t work at that level, though I do have a few eyebrow-raisers to tell. But it isn’t wise or right to do so.

There are some good stories too. I happened to follow the Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem through a checkpoint, entering Israel from the West Bank. Guns go up. Oh shite. They’re all aimed at the Patriarch, but I’m standing a few yards behind him. “Do you have any weapons?“. Now that’s a silly thing to ask a Patriarch, but lots of silly things do happen in that benighted land… Silence. “Yes“, says the Patriarch. Uh-oh. More guns go up. “Reach down slowly and get it out.” Right now I’m wondering whether I ought to move. Nope, better stay there, Palden. Don’t lift a finger.

The Patriarch, not exactly young and sprightly, reaches down slowly, pulls out and holds up… his Bible. Quite a few of us were trying hard not to crack up laughing, including a few of the soldiers. He had fifteen soldiers by the short and curlies. They’ll remember that for the rest of their days. That’s an example of psycho-spiritual peacebuilding through the teaching of pertinent lessons.

Ships passing in the day, and Wolf Rock lighthouse

It was a hot day in Al Khader, near Bethlehem, and a new squad of Israeli soldiers was taking over in our area (they changed every couple of months). Eight or so were standing around down the hill, where the boundary lies, sweating in their uniforms. I moseyed down slowly, deliberately relaxed, to see if I could do some bridgebuilding. I had a bottle of water. One, with a French accent, asked where they could get some. I said there was a shop 200 metres back. Pushing my luck, I said I could take one or two of them there – they’d be alright. They weighed it up. They seemed to like me. I told them to keep their guns down and just relax – Israelis get really nervous and edgy in Palestinian areas, because of course all Palestinians are terrorists – and we walked slowly up and along to the shop. You could feel eyes watching.

We went into the shop, they got some things, the shopkeeper was quite friendly and chatty, and we walked back. There was a moment of connection where we all saw the ridiculousness of the situation we were in. When we got back to their mates, I said, “These people in Al Khader are alright if you’re alright with them. They won’t give you trouble if you let them be. You’ve just had a demonstration“. I think they got it. In the coming days it seemed to work. Besides, the soldiers weren’t really bothered. They were probably rather relieved to have an easy posting.

People sometimes ask me who or what I work for. I work for good-hearted humanness, however best I can judge it at the time. If I am financially supported, which is unusual, I accept contributions only if the sole requirement is that I use the money well – if there are any other strings, I say No.

I had to learn this the hard way. Shortly after the intifada, I went to Bethlehem with some financial backing and a list of nine tasks, then to spend the next month learning that it would be possible to achieve only one of those tasks – the circumstances just weren’t right. I got nervous: how would I explain that? One day, not long before leaving for home, I gave up, accepting my fate. An hour later, in rolls a van and, lo behold, every person I had needed and failed to see during the last month was inside. It was all sorted within hours. Phew. Magic.

But that made me decide to free myself from such concerns in future, because in high-chaos situations, improvisational freedom of action is absolutely necessary. Going into a chaos zone with plans, as too many Westerners do, is like trying to swim with a weighed-down straitjacket on, and it causes everyone else too much run-around. Yet strangely, high-chaos zones do allow magic to happen.

Magic happened there. But there’s one problem with trusting that magic will happen, because it doesn’t happen just because you want it to, or because you believe your agenda should be everyone else’s agenda. It happens when it is in line with the Universe’s bigger chess game. We get occasional glimpses of this but, quite often, we don’t – not at the time. Quite often we just have to make a choice and do our best. And remember: not doing something also has consequences. In our time we are getting lots of consequences from things not done, in recent decades and throughout history. We live in a time of consequences.

We are more free now to get things right than ever we have been in human history. Life is asking us not to give up on the brink of a miracle. Well, that’s one of the big lessons I seem to be learning at present. Don’t give up just because everything seems to be against you. Though sometimes we must change tactics in order to progress with our overall strategy. In the end, if you’re trying to move a mountain, it’s all about ‘Thy Will be Done’ and ‘the highest good’.

In the Middle East, whenever they make a statement about something yet to happen, they tack the word ‘inshallah’ into the sentence – ‘If it is the will of God’. In English we say ‘All things being well’, or ‘With luck’. We need a neat new word like ‘inshallah’. It would help us get over the arrogant belief that we are masters of destiny. Which we aren’t. At times The Great Cosmic Steamroller hoves into view, and woe betide us if we’re moving slower than it does.

Now that’s a pleasant thought for the new Gregorian year! But there’s truth in it. The more we’re willing to shake things up, the easier it gets in the long run. In the next year or two we’re moving from a time of rules to a time of crowds.

I saw a joke yesterday. It went…
Breaking News: aliens now implementing a points system for people who want to be abducted. Too many requests.

If you’re on your own this New Year’s Eve, so am I, so we can be together in the ethers.

Here’s a hug to everyone, with love from me, Palden.

An interesting radio programme on BBC World Service about the current state of people on humanity’s frontlines: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w3ct380b

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

Carn Barra, Carn Les Boel and Carn Boel, as seen from Carn Guthensbras, Land’s End, Cornwall

It’s Coming

Though it is a question of ‘What?’

This is not a christmas card. This is Kvikkjokk in the north of Sweden, north of the polar circle, last year. It’s where my daughter Maya lives. It was -30C there last night.

There’s one robin that comes from the thicket above my cabin, and another who lives in the brambles down below the barn.

Problem is, being male robins, and with breeding season coming, they’re doing their territoriality trip – much to the consternation of the tits and the blackie, who also want to get to the feeder just outside my door.

When you spend much of your time alone, issues like this do matter! But it’s a welcome diversion too because, as you might imagine, my thumbs haven’t exactly been twiddling very much recently, and I’ll welcome an off-duty break one day.

It hasn’t snowed here in Penwith, though it went sub-zero and icy in the last few nights. Stuck out in the Atlantic and bathed in water that not too long ago passed Miami Beach, we’ve been about 5 degrees warmer than most of Britain. But then, though Brits love to complain, whatever the weather, up where my daughter Maya lives, north of the polar circle in northern Sweden, it was -30C last night – and the sun won’t rise until mid-January. Welcome to Planet Earth, dear friends – this is what you get on this world, and this is what you chose when you decided to come here.

I get cold feet. I’ve got this weird thing called Peripheral Neuropathy – a side-effect of chemo drugs where your nerve-endings die off. So I can feel the inner feelings in my feet but not the outer ones – and I never knew there was a difference until the Good Lord (or whoever) gave me cancer. This also means I don’t feel the cold in my feet very much – which goes to show how, in life, you win some and you lose some, and that’s the deal. I still have warm double socks on though.

An Indonesian Christian rock band in Bethlehem

One of the narratives of my life has been about dealing with paradox. My mother did love and care for me but she didn’t have the time and presence to mother me in the way I needed – that kind of thing. But that’s alright: it gave me some mother patterns to work with. Or this: my Tibetan name means ‘radiant merit’, my Arabic name ‘servant of the light’ and my Brahmin name is god of the sun, but there’s a shady side to me too, who gets involved in gritty, underworldy, heavy stuff. I’ve been exposing this side of me in the last month, with the strange thriller I’ve found myself in.

It goes to show, I’m not a holyholy meditation teacher at all, but a lawbreaking aged hippy charlatan who does nasty things, corrupts dishy young ladies, leads people astray and ought to be locked up forthwith – a danger to civilised society. Be warned.

I’ve been breaking the law recently, paying bribes. In West Africa, if you don’t pay enablement payments, nothing gets done. However, as my late senior barrister friend Keith used to say, in his endearingly bombastic Leo kind of way, “I, dear boy, am a purveyor of the Law of Man, but you, sir, are a purveyor of the Law of God”. Well, that’s a bit over the top, but there’s truth in it too, and sometimes divine will does need to prevail, whatever anyone thinks. So I’ve paid some bribes because, actually, it’s usually just to pay the guy’s phone bill or taxi fare so that he can do what you’re asking for and perhaps take a few bob home to his missus.

Well, if they want to arrest me for that, I’m over here. It’s a professional expense, and not the least of the sins I’ve committed. I’ve been a traitor, consorted with terrorists, smuggled tofu though Israeli checkpoints (they think it’s Semtex), taken on false guises and a few other things I’d better not mention.

But on the other hand, bad as I am, my life-saving stats measure well against any doctor or paramedic, and I’ve had the pleasure of uplifting thousands of people, and many of the bad things I once did, or decidedly didn’t do, are now, a few decades later, strangely approved of. It took a while. Some people think I’m brave, though my rather naive Aspie response is simply, ‘But why is that unusual?’.

Manger Square, Bethlehem, full of people

I have another weird Aspie thing too. I have an aversion to Christmas. I don’t do it. I’ve always felt unhappy feeling obligated to be happy and congenial when, at the time, I’m feeling contemplative and quiet. So I have a no-compromise approach that, before Xmas, is frowned on and, after Xmas, is envied.

On Xmas Day, if the weather allows, I’ll be out on the moors or the cliffs with a flask and a pie, attending to the top of my head and a few related matters, and if the weather is bad I’ll be huddled round the woodstove, propped in my chair or inner journeying in bed, busy not drinking sherry. Unless I find another person who would delight in an utter non-Xmas with me, I’ll be on my own, and that’ll be alright. You might wonder why.

Well, it’s a time for wrapping up the past and looking toward the future, and I have rather a lot of both at present. That’s solstice, the turning of a tide.

But it’s also a time when, rarely, the Christian and Westernised elements in the world suddenly get excited about peace and goodwill for a day or two. This is really good. My only reservation is that it suddenly ends around lunchtime on Xmas Day, when everyone starts blotting themselves out with food and booze, only to regret it afterwards.

Manger Square, Bethlehem, Palestine, at Christmas

Nevertheless, as a guerrilla planet-fixer with an esoteric style, I find it’s worth scooping up some of this goodwill for good use. After all, there are at least a billion people on Earth who really need some peace and goodwill to be shoved their way right now. If not, truth be told, the whole eight billion of us.

So I spend my solstice-to-Xmas doing consciousness work. It’s secret – don’t tell anyone. It’s a good time for doing some gentle infiltration of the collective psyche, to strengthen that thought: goodwill. If you’re on your own this Christmas, then, wherever you are, stick up your antennae and see whether you can find me in that ‘reality-field’ and come join me. Try 11am and 2pm GMT, Xmas Day.

I’m always there on Sunday evenings at 7pm GMT too, for half an hour.

Ten years ago I was in Bethlehem at Christmas. The slightly sad thing is that Christian numbers for the Christmas Pilgrimage are much diminished nowadays, so Muslims make up the numbers – Palestinians do appreciate Bethlehem’s global name-recognition in such a forgotten land, and Jesus is also one of the prophets of Islam.

The Catholic Xmas is a bit like ours in NW Europe, with a lot of the jingle-jangle, and big concerts in Manger Square with Christian singers and bands from Germany, Indonesia and Nigeria, and a few Papal delegates thrown in. And why on earth do they import Father Christmas to Bethlehem, already replete with Christ Mass primacy, when most Palestinians have no idea where Estonia is or what slieghbells are?

Then comes the Orthodox Xmas, which is a bit more sedate, very ornate and quite delightful to a jaded old heathen like me. The chanting is done with deep faith and mystique, and the archangels and cherubim really do seem to hover around.

Then in mid-January comes the Armenian Xmas, which actually, if I were Christian, is the kind of Christmas I’d prefer – ruminative and richly calm. Either way, they’re all resplendent with candles, incense, chant and reverence – that’s very different to the mosques, where there’s nearly no ceremony or pizazz, just quiet prayer. They both have their virtues, but give me an ocean clifftop or a desert outcrop anyday, and I’ll be happy.

It looks like I’ll still be on duty over Christmas, monitoring the West Africa situation daily. Here’s the latest news from there.

Phyllis, the child, is happy and in good shape. She underwent an amazing turnaround last week, going from fever and coughing blood to wanting an ice cream in two days flat. I think you lot, with your prayers, played a key part in that. She is now staying with Dr Isaac and his family. Phyllis seems to be a great kid, easy to have around, and everyone loves her. I’m so happy about that. She’s special, that one.

Felicia… well, she’s improving, but we hit a setback two days ago. She has been reviving, and three days ago we moved her out of hospital into accommodation near the doctor and his wife. She was awake and becoming able to function, but she fell over, and it was bad. She needed two blood transfusions, a drip and medication. I’ve managed to finance that. So, it’s tenuous with her at present.

Those of you who have been giving your prayers, healing and positive thoughts to Felicia… may I ask for another round? Please hold her and raise her up. She has brain injuries from the ‘accident’ two weeks ago (they were rammed, actually). We think she’ll be alright, and she’s in good care, though she isn’t out of danger yet.

I want to put in a word for Dr Isaac and his partner Millicent and their children. They have taken in Felicia and Phyllis. They live simply and have their own family concerns, but they care a lot, and they’re definitely not in it for the money.

One of the greatest benefits I’ve had from my humanitarian work has been meeting simple, good-hearted folk like these who are the real saviours of our planet. They just get on with it and hold the world up. They do so much of the mopping up of the world’s mess.

The people I’m involved with in West Africa, and also my handler with the fraud investigation company, are all good and remarkable people. In this business, you develop ways of finding out who you can and cannot trust, and everyone depends on each other, and there’s a certain implicit code of behaviour, and you bond closely with people you encounter when sharing intense situations with them.

The Syrian Orthodox church, Bethlehem, Palestine

In something like this, to use an old sexist term, it sorts out the men from the boys. The people who hang with you through thick and thin are often amazing people. Dr Isaac is like that. He lost his job for us (though I think he’ll get it back). He risked his and his family’s lives. He’s gone several extra miles. He’s a man of faith and a good doctor who deserves more than a one-room home for his family.

I’ve met many remarkable people, and he ranks high, a true server, a doctor of whom Hippocrates would be proud. We’ve known each other for three rather long weeks. God bless you, Isaac. People like you convince me that this world will survive. My daughters, son and grandchildren do that too.

I guess I’m a sucker for crisis situations because it brings out the best in many people, and I like working with them, and it brings out the best in me. I’m not good at normality, you see. I’ve always felt I’m there to help the helpers, the social healers and the frontline people, and it’s an area of deep late-life satisfaction now.

Here’s the Mosque of Omar on the other side of the square. Sensibly, when they invaded, the Muslims under Caliph Omar didn’t take over and convert the church. Bethlehem has had very good Christian-Muslim relations throughout history. I wonder why?

As an independent ‘freelance humanitarian’, for want of a better term, I’ve held to certain principles I feel are important such as: ‘don’t give a person a fish, but teach them how to fish’, and ‘teach a man and you teach a man, but teach a woman and you teach a generation’. There’s even William Blake’s statement: ‘the path of excess leads to the palace of wisdom’ – and war is excess to human need, in my judgement.

I feel also that, as an educated, white, male, privileged Brit whose ancestors built the empire and kept it going, and living through its downfall and seeing its very mixed outcomes, I have a bit of an urge to complete the job. I’m not a great believer in reparations, guilt or sorrow – I just like to get in there and do something to help people have a better life and rise to their full potential. To the extent I can.

People have asked who or what I work with. To my surprise, at present it’s for a big bank – though that’s not my style. One of my PodTalks, The Only Planet of Choosing, gives clues. I’ve worked with all sorts of people, but the bottom line for me is their humanity, and progressing humanity’s evolution. My focus has been community-building, conflicts and crises, and helping social leaders stay on the rails.

You have to have your wits about you. This is strange because, as an Aspie, I can be at times apparently naively open but it’s not exactly that – it’s because I sense people’s hidden motives and agendas, and I often get delayed-action clarity on what’s really happening. So I look blank for a while. Then it all comes. So I’m best working with others, inputting what I’m good at. Such as total attention, hyper-focus. When I’m on form, I’m brilliant, and when I’m not, I’m best back here in Cornwall, out of everyone’s way.

Which is where I am now, on the farm, and it’s a dark and rainy pre-solstice night, and the owls and crows are all tucked under their wings down in the woods and hiding from the feather-ruffly wind. Wherever you are, may all be well with you.

Don’t worry too much about your circumstances, even if they’re tough at present – look at your attitude, and be innovative. Find simple ways to be happy. We all get inner friction and pain, but these are things we can reduce, even if we can’t reduce the adversity. That’s what’ll get us all through.

Well, that’s what I try to learn, anyway.

With love from me, Palden.

Blog: https://penwithbeyond.blog
Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
PodTalk | The Only Planet of Choosing (1h 13m):

The Church of the Nativity began as a goddess temple (hence the Virgin Mary came here), then a Greek Apollo temple, and only then did it become a Christian Church. The front entrance is really low and you have to duck to go through – this is to force Crusaders to dismount and it stopped their hunky stallions from entering the church. But the Israelis just roll bombs in. Interestingly, in Bethlehem, I don’t get a feeling of Jesus – it’s Mother Mary’s or Mariam’s town, and the matriarchs there definitely let you know it

Events

And the way they change things

Hello everyone. Where have I been? Well, Paldywan’s back on the holy warpath.

Sounds a bit strange, that, but it has indeed been strange. Mars, customarily the god of war, is to me a god of encounter resolution. Sometimes, life leads us into a fight – but the destruction involved depends a lot on how well we deal with the conflicts within ourselves. A great general in history once said, “Every drop of blood spilt charges its price” – it’s true. So the aim is to achieve the best all-round outcomes with the minimum of damage, but it’s a rollercoaster, the stakes are high and often the full results are slow in coming.

It wasn’t my choosing – I fell into it. I have this strange karmic pattern where I’m standing there, suddenly finding myself in the thick of it and sometimes able to pull off a remarkable solution – or at least, avoid the worst. In this instance I served as a honeypot, unwittingly attracting and exposing a crime ring involved in fraud, kidnapping, drugs and probably anything. By dint of doing the right things in the opening moments, I landed up being the only one who could follow it through – online from my desk, here on the farm.

But then, I wasn’t exactly unwilling. I’ve been feeling frustrated recently, physically unable to complete my humanitarian work, and this kind of stuff is the kind of thing I’m good at. Being rather hyper-focused, I’m calm in crises. “Ah, we have a situation” – some Palestinians used to quote me, trying to imitate my English accent, with a cheeky smile. As an Aspie, while I’m seemingly not very good at close relationships, in other contexts I can get inside the head of a person with a gun and talk them down, if necessary. Well, thus far it has succeeded, though there have indeed been ‘situations’.

I thought I’d left all that behind when cancer came my way three years ago, but the universe had other ideas – a few weeks ago I was requisitioned to play the role of a knight or a bishop in someone else’s chessgame. Again.

It’s an anti-fraud operation, now in a few countries. It’s delicate, changing hourly and daily, and I’m handling part of it. The short story is that, when I was blackmailed a few weeks ago, the first three blackmailers were small-time amateurs trying their luck to make a few bucks (two apologised afterwards), but the fourth was different – it emerged later that he was part of a crime gang, though we didn’t know it at the time. An anti-fraud agent – a really good chap, from Britain – handled the case and eventually had it wrapped up, deleting the fraudsters’ computers. Peace descended. Or so we thought.

Then suddenly, I received cries for help – the gang were coming after him, armed, and he needed to get away, pronto. They captured him, together with a woman, Felicia, who had bravely sheltered him, and her three-year old child, Phyllis. Suddenly, I was their only lifeline… and it went on from there. I managed to connect with his anti-fraud company (they work for banks), and since then I’ve been helping them.

The story went on through all sorts of complexities for twelve rather long days – it was demanding and I had to pace myself. That’s why I haven’t been blogging. After a week I managed to free Felicia and Phyllis, then further complications happened, and following that Felicia and another anti-fraud agent working for the company were attacked while driving in a car. Both have been in hospital at death’s door for some days, though on Wednesday (newmoon) I heard from the doctor that she had regained consciousness – what a relief. Meanwhile, he’s still on life-support. The unfolding situation is still rather hair-raising.

Poor little Phyllis is for now in the caring hands of strangers (I’m fixing arrangements for her), and the original British agent is still in captivity somewhere. Here am I, hidden in the far beyond, coordinating online with doctors, agents, taxi-drivers, handlers and sundry oddbods, fixing money, fixing heads, and with three or four lives at stake. Just a normal day on Earth, haha.

You meet some amazing people. A taxi-driver witnessed the attack, took the two people to hospital, then took them to another hospital and stayed with them for two nights and a day. I have just heard that he has lost his job as a result. What a good man – we’ll help him restore things. The doctor I’ve been dealing with has also been remarkable, though his wife probably doesn’t see him much.

Many people urge me to stay out of this kind of thing. Well, yes, but you’re also asking me to let these people die. That’s an option I don’t spend much time thinking about. In the middle of a crisis like this, you bond quite quickly and deeply with people. The first agent, in our last exchange on Skype before they got him, said he’d like to visit me on the farm one day, and I said, “You’re on, that’s a deal”. We haven’t spoken since, but I’m holding that thought, and I think he, wherever he is, is holding it too.

This hyperfocus business is strange. Another task I needed to do at the time was to reduce the length of my book Shining Land and remove some of the pictures – the removed stuff will go on the website. Bruce in Glastonbury, who is typesetting the book, recommended cuts because book production costs are rising and I want to keep it manageably priced. I’d been putting off this job but, when the above operation started up, happening in bursts throughout each day, I used the betweentimes for re-editing the book. It was a way of staying focused during a testy, turbulent, unsettling fortnight. So the book is now done and sent back to Bruce.

When I was diagnosed with cancer in November 2019 my life changed. Then last winter a crisis took me down deep and, by summer, it bounced me back up again, raked out but sensing there was something in life left to do. I seem now to be in a new chapter. My relative disability, aloneness and isolation, more a problem six months ago than now, mean I have time and space to do things – at least, those things I can nowadays do. Near-death and ‘chemo-brain’ have taken me through a level shift in the way I see and understand things, and while in some respects I’m saying similar stuff to 30-40 years ago, something is coming out between the lines that’s deeper, wider and stronger. Which goes to show, even fearsome things like cancer can have their blessings, if we let things be that way.

Having emerged from my shell during 2022, I’ve been cogitating what to do in 2023. What’s taking shape is this…

First, a number of Magic Circles – covering 21st Century esoterics and living as a stellar soul with an earthly contribution to make. Some will be like the Magic Circles of 2022 and at least one will involve a talking stick circle and energy-work.

Second, an online series of monthly Magic Moments (in the far beyond). These are for friends in other countries, those unable to attend Magic Circles and any Magic Circle attendees who wish to join in. Each month I’ll highlight a bundle of useful knowledge and insights, about the universe, time, the nature of our times, ancient wisdom, parapolitics, psychic geoengineering, inner aid work, healing, rescuing souls and whatever else comes up at the time – that kind of thing.

Each of these events will stand for itself, so you can join whatever you like, whenever you can. They will roll along, each rather different, unfolding as they will. They’ll all be reasonably priced and as accessible as possible. I might do one or two events for fellow cancer and terminal patients, if that is sought. Details will follow in the New Year. If you’re good at organising and have outreach in your area or network, please contact me if you’d like to host an event.

Then, third, while doing the above, I’ll be watching to see if some participants are up for starting a world-healing project with longterm aims, to continue and grow after I’ve gone. This is Version Three of earlier world-healing projects of the 1990s and since (the Hundredth Monkey Project and the Flying Squad born out of it). If and when a workable quorum of people forms, such a project can start.

There are people and bits to fit into place, and it’s an organic group process resting on who turns up and how it develops. I have a packet of seeds to hand over, with a little experience in growing them, but the garden will be evolved by the group itself – my shelf life is limited. In the 2023 Magic Circles, amongst other things we’ll have some tasters of this kind of inner work that will be useful to you whether or not you’re interested in the project. Without wanting to sound grandiose about it, there’s something ‘heaven blest’ about this, and some people might like to work within a reality-field of this kind.

Ultimately it’s all about gradually cranking up group synergy to a level where a group’s healing power is greatly increased – and the world needs it. This takes time, since a group is as strong as its weakest links, and it needs approaching in a somewhat matter-of-fact, steady and diligent way, starting at the beginning and giving it time. The Flying Squad managed 20 years, doing amazing work, though where we didn’t succeed was crossing generations and replacing ourselves with new members – so we ran out of numbers and steam. Third time lucky?

I might have only three or four years left for midwifing this idea: its success rests on the circle of people who step in and work together. The project will be pitched so that it is not too demanding in terms of commitment, because beavering away at this work longterm is more important than creating dramatic firework displays that then fizzle out. The basic commitment involves a meditation, wherever you are, once a week on Sundays, plus two or three weekend meetings per year, and there will be scope for greater and lesser involvement, to reflect everyone’s circumstances and availability, which can also change over time.

If there are people who feel right doing this, and if the right critical bits fall into place, then we can start, perhaps in late 2023 or in 2024. It will start in Britain, but folks in other countries will be able to participate remotely and, you never know, it might spread. If this sets a bell dinging, think about it over wintertime, and I’ll come out with more in a while. This is just a tender germinating seed at present, but it might one day become a tree. We shall see. Also, if option three doesn’t lift off, then options one and two will still be good.

If there’s one message I’m moved to convey, it’s this: whatever your path, and whatever your calling, do pursue it.

Now is not the time for holding back and awaiting another day. In whatever way works for you and lifts you up, whatever is your ability and contribution, it is time to come out with it and do it. If I can be of assistance in that, by doing what I do, then welcome. As I keep quoting, ‘For the triumph of evil it is necessary only that good people do nothing’.

I have some personal bits to put in place. Any offers? I need a part-time, nimble-fingered, literate PA with digital and communication skills and the sort of character and availability that would work well with a person like me. You don’t have to be in Cornwall, though that might be helpful, but the main thing is that we need to be able to sync well with each other. I also need an experienced techy Zoom moderator for the online classes, located anywhere, for a few hours each month. I’m looking for a further minder and companion too, living in Cornwall or Devon, to work alongside Penny – it’s occasional, not hard, you need to be a driver, there might be trips away, and I’m looking for someone for whom it would be uplifting and right. I can pay only expenses but, when it works well, there will be ample magic payoffs.

I’ve been quiet yet it hasn’t been quiet. Been going through some big emotional let-gos too, which have been both a wrench and the lightening of a weight. When I’ve wrapped up this operation sufficiently I’ll enjoy a getaway trip away sometime, somewhere. West Penwith, stuck out in the Atlantic, is a windy place in winter, and it sure has been whistling and whooshing around, with sunshine and monsoons in quick succession.

The cattle are down in the lower fields and the birds hide in the bushes and trees when they find the Atlantic coming at them with full-on gusto. The crows and jackdaws down in the woods, hundreds of them, work up a racket when dawn is coming – they’re my alarm clock – and in the evening they do flighty, crarking displays before settling in the evening, reminding me that it’s time to start thinking about dinner. I forget these things, you see – it’s an unhelpful aspect of hyper-focus.

Please put in a prayer for Felicia, child Phyllis and the two agents, both of them good men. I want them all alive and okay. It means a lot to me. Thank you for that. This is not the greatest of the world’s troubles, but if we all deal with our own little chunk of reality, together we’ll make inroads into turning this world of ours into the kind of place it really needs to be. Gaia needs a laying on of hands.

Thank you for reading. You mean a lot to me too.

With love, Palden

Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html (or on Spotify, Apple and Google)
Shining Land: www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/
All the photos here are from West Penwith in Cornwall, where I live – and a reminder of summertime.

World Work

Inner work to aid humanity’s evolution

The Isles of Scilly from the West Penwith mainland, Cornwall

I’m not a lightworker or a conventional prayer-circle type. But I believe we need to take a multi-pronged approach to ‘world work’ – meditative, religious, psychic and process work to assist the world. I’m esoterically more activist and gutsy – it’s born out of a political background, humanitarian experience and an aged-hippy approach to life.

If you do psychic work over a period of time, in conjunction with inner friends or ‘guides’, then you’ll tend to develop an operating style between you – and that’s what happened to me. It’s not that I’m an advanced psychic. It’s more that I’ve been at it for a long time, with formative and defining inner experiences along the way.

An example: when I was 41, in an inner process I found myself walking backwards toward the abyss – a vulnerability we humans just aren’t happy with. I had tremors of fear but just had to go over the edge anyway. Tipping backwards, I fell into the void, falling, falling… until an instinct made me turn, spread my arms like wings and fly… Since that moment, I’ve been able to set my mind more free, and my busy brains don’t interfere so much.

One bizarre benefit of cancer has been the inner experiences that have come with it. Forced to spend time in bed, I went on adventures. It gave me a sense of usefulness at a time when I was wondering whether it was all worth it. But no, the management clearly said “Don’t ring us – we’ll ring you“. Well, you do get some comedy sometimes!

I’m of the opinion that, if you give a flower to an asshole or shower them with light, it will likely be a turn-off and inappropriate, with the opposite effect to what was intended. Billionaires and terrorists don’t change just because you want them to, and you wouldn’t either. You have to get in there, make friends, gain trust and work it out, as if there, relating to a real person – albeit perhaps to their wiser, more feelingful self.

Sometimes I’ll give a backrub to a mountain jihadi, or sympathise with the rigours of a politician’s life, or make an etheric cup of tea for an old lady – ‘confidence building measures’. It goes on from there. Dialogue with them as a guest in their space. When someone can see it’s in their own best interests to change, they’ll change (though not always). Typically for stroppy humans, if you push them around, they’ll resist.

If you want to penetrate a computer, work with climate issues, deal with a natural disaster, do longterm work with ‘megatrends’ (like population growth or deforestation), it’s a question of getting right inside the matter, stepping into people’s shoes, seeing what life looks like to them, getting into the back office, ferreting through the datachips or feeding helpful ideas to people in need.

One key thing is social attitudes and particularly the freeing up of groupthink, cover-ups and polarised positions. These can involve societal resistance or oligarchies who like to believe they’re in control. Changes in attitudes form the basis of world change. A valid notion here is unconcealment, the exposure of things people should know of and think about – whether withheld, or people don’t want to know, or it is simply thitherto not known.

This is not about steering things in ways we want to see things go: it’s about helping humanity accelerate its evolution. Humanity’s group soul knows what it’s doing even if we humans don’t. Sometimes the ‘wrong’ thing seems to have to happen in order to catalyse a wholesome and fundamental change. This concerns defining moments – events embodying big issues and forcing critical shifts or decisions. By this means the collective unconscious and force majeure leak into real life.

In 1995 a circle of eighty or so of us worked with Bosnia – a powerful and moving session lasting some six hours. We heard later that, while in session, some drunken Serbs had bombed a marketplace in Sarajevo, killing 60. This was sobering, shocking – definitely not our intention. What had gone wrong? Yet, a week or so later, this defining event made NATO go in, ending the war within a short time. Something ‘bad’ led to something ‘good’ – though we couldn’t and wouldn’t have designed it that way. We can’t say we made NATO go in, and that wasn’t our thought, but the synchronicities, considering the war had gone on for three years, were too close. We must assume some involvement, even if but to oil the works or connect some dots.

One of the big lessons here is: carefully consider what you pray for. Also, only take on doable challenges, and be willing to follow them through later on.

The main idea is to help foster forwardness and a sense of progress – it’s like midwifery. We cannot force progress but we can do our best to facilitate it. Deep change doesn’t happen overnight, and sometimes we must work at it over time. Humanity’s problem is that it feels blocked, jaded and discouraged, as if nothing will make any difference. So the key issue is to help people gain a sense of relief and momentum – get a taste of the benefits of accelerating evolution.

It’s a matter of getting our politics, cultural judgements, ideologies, values and comfort-zones out of the way. This isn’t easy. It helps to have travelled outside the rich world to see things from another angle. Be aware of the way the media and your education shape your thinking, and listen more closely to events than to what people say. Study a little history, background and smallprint. Step over your beliefs and conditioning, using sensitivity, imagination and intuition to experience things from the inside, to see the dynamics going on underneath. It’s a challenge to set ourselves aside – though just for half an hour or so.

There are many ways to do world work, and if you resonate with what’s written here, then give attention to feeling your way forward, developing your own path. Use the inner tricks, tools and background you already have.

Here’s a crucial, human bit: we need to connect our own issues, pain and challenges into this, to power it up emotionally. We know what our own pain is like, and plenty of people round the world are in similar or worse situations. So they can act as a psychic entry-point. You can see life through their eyes. In recent months I’ve experienced heartbreak, and plenty of people in Ukraine, or Palestine and Yemen (the two main places I regularly focus on), have heartbreak too, and we all need a bit of there-there, and thus we can serve each other well.

With cancer, I tune into cancer patients, because it means something personal to me and I know what it’s like. The feeling-tones around this gives the work more grace, astuteness and firepower. If you’re a nurse, a truck-driver, a gardener or a pensioner, tune in through your own situation and its problems and joys and use this empathically to connect with others.

There are holistic and surgical/pharma treatments for disease. In this context, disease can encompass riots, volcanoes, storms, wars, famines, insecurity, collapses and ‘black swans’ – events no one expected. Holistic treatment works best for building conditions for good health and immunity, while surgery and pharma are best when it’s too late or too serious. This kind of meditation is more surgical, applicable when deep matters of principle are at stake.

But it depends really on whether this is your thing. Or perhaps you might be best continuing with what you already do, with a new slant to it.

There are all sorts of methods and procedures, such as mopping up dead souls after disasters, working to raise the level of the collective mood, inwardly supporting threatened species, love-bombing and truth-mining a conflict zone, or working with whatever comes up in the news that really gets to you. If it’s Ukraine, work with Ukraine because you will also assist other places and situations where similar issues apply. One longterm aim is to remove enough problems from the overall system so that its inherent, homoeostatic self-healing capacity can revive.

Sometimes it’s an A&E and intensive care job, and cutting out a tumour or infected organ can save the whole body, if that is the only option left. That’s how focusing on specific acute issues and crises can help the world as a whole. Don’t forget to support the helpers too: the on-the-ground activists, good-hearted people, dedicated public servants, people who hold society up and do the donkey-work, and people who take brave initiatives. I’ve even found myself sitting with an abandoned dying person in an apartment block in Sian, China, and it was good for both of us. He found a comforting welcome on the other side.

If you do this once a week for a year, out of fifty meditations, ten will be really worth it. When done in a group (three upwards), even if remotely at a chosen time, it powers it up. Stick with it. Don’t seek results – just do it. Give it time. This is a life-long work. It can empower other stuff you’re doing or give meaning to what you might believe to be a meaningless, insignificant life.

Based on earlier experiences in the 1970s-80s, in the 1990s I started a large-group project doing ‘inner aid’, the Hundredth Monkey Project, which pioneered much of this approach, and later a smaller group, the Flying Squad, continued in this work for twenty years. They’re both closed now, but the meditation time-slot, agreed with the Council of Nine thirty years ago, is still open every week on Sundays at 7-7.30 GMT (8-8.30 BST). I’m there, every week, wherever I am, dead or alive, and with a number of others (I know not how many). Tune in on that channel if you wish. If you continue over time the management will give you a direct line.

In my experience there is more personal growth in ‘world work’ than in personal growthwork. You find that out by doing it. The more you do it, the better you get. So just work at it, don’t make a big deal, keep motivation simple and intelligent and, remember, it is for the highest good, for the wide, longterm benefit of humanity, our planet home and all who live in her.

Thanks for reading. We’ll be covering this in my forthcoming ‘magic circles‘.

Love from me, Palden

If this subject interests you, here is an article and a report I wrote in the 1990s. My thoughts have developed and changed in some respects but it all still holds. I’ll revise them sometime. Or not, as the case may be.
www.palden.co.uk/consciousness-work.html
www.palden.co.uk/psychic-work.html

The Flying Squad site is worth a look:
www.flyingsquad.org.uk

My podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html