Category: life-purpose

Eyes and Ears, Hands and Feet

Treen and Gwella, a gull couple in Falmouth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Swans near Falmouth

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gulls at Gurnard’s Head

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

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

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

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

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

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

A peregrine falcon at Carn les Boel

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

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

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

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

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

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

With love, Palden.

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

Gull on sentry duty at Carn Gloose

Cancer – fighting and making peace with it

Thought is like a ripple in the void.

We manifest cancer in our lives for all sorts of reasons, and they go deep. In our day we have medicalised it, rendering cancer treatment into a physical process that can be fixed with pharmaceuticals, surgery and radiation or, for holistic types, rigorous dietary, miracle cures and other regimes. This focus on the mechanical causes of cancer – diet, lifestyle, life-conditions, stress – is often personalised and privatised to place responsibility on ourselves as individuals, or to put it down to genetics, and this is partially correct. Even so, we still tend to regard cancer as a stroke of bad luck that happens to some people and hopefully not to us.

Meanwhile, the spread of cancer is a symptom of a world that badly needs correction and of a spiritual crisis in the heart of humanity. These causes of cancer are kept quiet – pollution, radiation, poverty and, when it boils down to it, the very nature of our societies. But there’s much more to it than even these, because some people get cancer and others don’t, even when living similar lives under similar conditions. There’s a deeper meaning to it all, for each and every one of us.

Nowadays there’s a growing movement of people ‘fighting cancer’ – making it their mission to overcome this threat to their life. Many more people are succeeding in ‘beating cancer’, thanks particularly to advancement in treatments, whether medical or holistic, and this is good – the knowledge and experience around it is growing.

I myself have followed an integrated medical approach – bridging the medical divide and partaking thoughtfully in the virtues of both conventional and complementary medicine. A few things stopped me from taking an entirely holistic route:

  1. it was already too late, I was an emergency case and I could hardly move an inch;
  2. it would have cost a lot (it’s private treatment);
  3. I needed a comprehensive local service (doctors, paramedics, ambulances, nurses), which is not available in the holistic sector;
  4. and here comes the key issue… I did not have the willpower.

Some things also stopped me from taking an entirely medical route:

  1. I’ve been doing holistics all my adult life;
  2. Conventional medicine can be brutal;
  3. It fails to address psycho-spiritual issues (as does society in general);
  4. Using holistics can reduce side-effects and problems involved with pharmaceuticals.
When water crashes, froths and swirls it’s at its most beautiful. As with life.

The matter of willpower is central and critical. When cancer hits you, your situation and where you stand at the time matter a lot. But the critical question is this: what is the life-lesson that cancer, as a psycho-spiritual catalyst, is bringing you? Since cancer is life-threatening, it certainly does bring up big, fundamental questions about why we’re alive and what we’re doing about it. Some people look deep into this question and some avoid it or hope it will go away. The story varies a lot for different people. I’m one of those who went deep.

By the time I was diagnosed in November 2019, I had already exhausted much of my stock of willpower, after 2-3 months of excruciating pain which had worn me down, scraped my edges and taken me to the far boundaries of toleration. I had had a life where at times I had played for high stakes, using up a lot of my willpower credits. Approaching 70, I didn’t have enough in my batteries to face yet another full-on, miracle-working, crunchy push against the odds, doing battle with the Fates. There’s something of a warrior in me (Mars in Scorpio), but a warrior still has to choose his battles carefully.

So I had a choiceless choice, to take the treatment that was available there and then, offered by the NHS. It had taken me in, half-dead on a stretcher, diagnosed me and given me the options. It took only minutes to realise there was no option. I just had to ‘trust in Allah’ and trust myself, the doctors and the process.

And, believe me, even the most hardened atheist utters a prayer at this point.

I was helpless to do much except to fully and completely accept what was happening and do my best with it. I made a deep prayer to my ‘angels’ to regulate and modulate the process in a spiritual sense – not least because, in my rather helpless state, this was pretty much all I could do. I decided to suspend all previous positions and attitudes and to see what would happen – this was a truth moment. I would live or die, and my choice lay in doing my best with whatever happened.

There are some who are in a good position to ‘fight cancer’ and overcome it, medically and attitudinally, and there are some who must take another route. Those who fight cancer can go through a life-changing initiation in self-care and rearranging their lives to fit their new situation. They go through a change of diet and lifestyle, get into meditation, walking, helping others and all sorts of life-improvements, perhaps changing their lives significantly.

A spirited life-change like this, for someone who has lived a stressed, imbalanced life, given over to careers, family and life’s rigours, is such a boost, energywise, that it can kick the cancer. It’s a positive shock to the system, a shedding of a load, a serious course-correction. And it can work and change a person’s life.

This strategy can work first time round but, in my observation, the second time round can often be different – again, because willpower credits are more used up. Life returns to teaching us about acceptance and death. A recurrence of cancer can corner a person more seriously than before, since willpower and hope can be weaker and tiredness stronger. Heavyweight medical treatments or death often follow.

This was one reason I took an integrated medicine path and a path of acceptance from the beginning. I decided to take the hit, live with cancer and pace myself, energywise – given that I had only a certain amount of charge in my inner batteries.

And something in my heart told me that I had been given a strange kind of gift.

Abiding, watching, holding firm.

Some time ago I wrote that doctors saved my life and healers gave me a new life. In the end, I was impressed with the doctors and medical staff I encountered. There were some problems because I’m a strange guy who doesn’t obey normal medical rules, but I worked at being pleasant and cooperative because I knew they were doing their best and my life rested in their hands. This has always been my technique for getting through scrapes and it usually gets me through somehow – or at least it reduces the crunchiness of it.

I’m so grateful to the various meditators, prayer circles, healers, practitioners, spirit-gifts, remedies and inner help I have received, on top of medical treatment – and this is what has given me new life. It has also made the pharmaceutical process work better and easier. I give details in my book Blessings that Bones Bring.

‘Fighting cancer’ was not really an initiation I needed to go through, to prove that I could do it, because I’ve already proven I can pull off some miracles. Some cancer patients don’t need to fight cancer, and some would do well to consider a befriending rather than fighting approach. Some need to die as well as they can, and some, like me, need to accept cancer into our lives and live with it. I’m now partially disabled, and I can only tinker around the edges of that to make it a bit easier.

It’s likely that these seemingly peripheral issues will kill me, not the cancer itself. The well-meaning people who weekly send me information about miracle cancer cures miss the point – I’m doing fine with cancer, thank you, and the problems lie with other things.

Part of me is a holy rainbow warrior, yet I’m a peacemaker at heart and cancer is a negotiation – with the Spirit of Cancer, with Soul and with The Management. It’s a truth process, a karmic cards-on-the-table session. In some respects peacemaking takes more bravery than fighting cancer.

Some months after my cancer diagnosis I had got through chemo and a few things about my new life had clarified. I’d had time to get to grips with the situation. I was deeply weary yet I wasn’t dead, and tentative signs of revival were emerging. My life-expectancy grew from months to about three years.

I realised that decades of inner growth and an alternative-leaning life had not failed me – they were giving me strength and rebirth-potential. My chemo process was concluded after five cycles of treatment, when eight cycles had originally been planned. All the tests I went through showed good signs. This was heartening.

Acceptance and surrender are a fundamental secret in healing. In my life I’ve come close to dying several times and, each time, when I have fully yielded to it, something deep down has started reviving. Obviously this rebirth capacity will not go on forever and at some point I shall die but, even then, surrender is still the best way to go.

Dying involves a loss of control, yet another kind of balance or control emerges underneath if control – our grip on life – is released wholeheartedly and we’re willing to hand ourselves over. It’s like surfing – you have to give yourself to the wave. It’s the same in life: at times we just have to accept facts and there is no longer any point struggling against them. At that point our capacity to shift perspective and change our approach determines much of what follows.

That’s one of life’s big lessons: sometimes taking a difficult path is the easier path.

There’s another deep shift involved here. When we die, we have a choice about how to actually go. Will we wait or struggle until death takes us, squeezing us out of our earthly lives? Or will we die by making a deep choice to relax into it, let it be and enjoy the blessing? We can make these deep decisions before we reach that time – not in our heads but in our cells and bones. It’s an emotional decision, fed by tears. We do this during our lives by accepting the crises that come to us and dealing with them well.

A few months after diagnosis with cancer I made a deep decision. I decided that medical issues will not be the ultimate deciding factor for me in my death. Clearly they do play a big part in the calculus of dying, but I am not a machine.

Willpower decides it. Where there’s a will, there really is a way. Thus far, having lived with cancer for five years, I’ve gone through some crises and some miracles and I’m outliving my initial life-expectancy estimates of some years ago. But my life will not go on forever – it hurts, and daily life is twice as difficult. I shall continue for as long as I am willing and able to do so.

Then there comes a point where willpower runs down and acceptance takes over. Around that point I’m likely to pop my clogs, having reached a stage where I’ve had enough of holding myself up and keeping on going. It will be a decision.

We all have to make it. But it is possible to make it earlier, without too much avoidance, balking and fighting, rather than fighting it out to the last moment – and possibly missing some of the more beatific, grace-infused elements of the experience of dying.

There’s a chance I might go out quite quickly. Having worked on myself quite a lot, I have fewer resistances, fears and blocking issues to struggle through. I’m sure I have more to face, but feel okay about getting through them – it’s a matter of giving ourselves permission to make it easier.

It is in this sense that the story of our lives is but a preparation for death and the afterlife. I don’t feel that I shall need to struggle through a long, slow dying process – and resistance is not actually very interesting as an activity. However, this said, what actually happens at death is not something any of us is in control of. That’s the wonder of it.

The Isles of the Dead – the Scillies. In ancient British tradition, souls go to the Western Heaven when they pass on.

There’s more. Frankly, I’m fine about going home – home to where my people are, home to where I came from – for some R&R with my soul-tribe. Life on Earth has worn me out. It’s had big rewards. Since we leave life as naked as we entered it, all we take with us is what we have become as a result of being alive. I’ve made some progress on that path, and I’m happy enough with it. In some respects we learn more from our errors and inadequacies than we learn from our successes and pleasures.

Near-death experiences earlier in life and since getting cancer have had a funny outcome. Each time, I’ve come out of them with a new mission and a new reason to be alive. This is happening even in the fucked-up carcinogenic state I’m nowadays in. I’ve been given a new, shortish life, with new constraints and new advantages. Something deep inside has changed and I find myself with new instructions. Or a new iteration of the instructions I’ve always had.

It’s not as if the Voice of God comes down, booming out what you’re supposed to do. It’s just that circumstances, happenings and inner feelings lead us that way, almost like an unfolding movie-plot. There comes a point where you realise that it all clicks together and that life is prompting your thoughts and sucking you into a new mission. Or at least, that’s how it works for me.

That’s one key reason that recently I did an Ayahuasca ceremony, to make a pilgrimage to a deeper place. It’s what earlier esotericists used to call the Causal Plane, the place where the magic of life and the deeper laws of karma are rooted. I needed to clarify things and clear some impediments standing in the way. I managed to exorcise one of the ghosts that has been haunting me for the last two or more years, and that has been a relief and release. I progressed with another one but there’s more to go on that.

That’s what life is about: there’s always more to go.

Our life purpose and the way we are to carry it out do not announce themselves in advance, neither in words nor logical propositions. Yet a sense of rightness appears at each stage, if we stay on track, guiding decisions in the context of a vision or an instinctual feeling. The mission is to follow that feeling and to do whatever is needed to stay on track.

Strangely, right now I have a public role that is rooted in isolation: I spend most of my life alone, down here in a cabin on a farm in Cornwall. Yet almost every day I’m playing a part in people’s lives in multiple countries. Rather psychic, I’m at times really close to people far away – we are together in quantum space even if sundered by long distances. My psyche is a bit like a telephone exchange, even when I’m not fully conscious of it.

Though I’ve been quite isolated, and partially because of it, my work has been appreciated more than ever before. That’s funny, especially since I haven’t really been trying. Furthering my career, making money or collecting ‘likes’ don’t motivate me, though sharing some insights and experience before I go is amazingly medicinal.

I learned something from an old friend, Hamish Miller the dowser: he didn’t write down his knowledge of the geomancy of West Penwith, and it died with him. A few years after his death I’d have loved to interview those details out of him. But he’s been hovering around me while I’ve been doing my researches, so perhaps that exchange has happened anyway.

So I’m communicating as much as I can of what I’ve learned, in those subjects I’ve given focus to over the decades, since it’s useful to those following in the tracks of folks like me. I won’t be leaving money or property when I die, but I’ll leave a voluminous archive (it’s on my site).

I’ve been privileged to be involved in the origination stages of many things, having been active in an historic germination phase between the 1960s and 1980s. For me and people like me it’s our duty to hand down what we’ve learned and created, because there’s still a long way to go.

It’s your turn, and you have your own slice of human history to work within. We’re in a prolonged historic process of redeeming the complex issues of a profoundly screwed-up world, and we aren’t here solely for the chocolate, sex and tax-paying. This process takes time, and there are chapters, layers and levels to it. Our planet hosts eight billion souls, originating from across the universe, and a big global fermentation is going on, and we’re all part of it.

[For an audio talk about this fermentation, from 2013, click here.]

Back to willpower. With cancer, or with any other earth-shaking adversity or crisis, we are offered a choice. Modern medicine and current social values encourage us to ‘get better’ and fight cancer, but this is only for some people. It can serve as a powerful initiation and empowerment, though in some cases it can also be an escape, an avoidance of the bigger life-and-death questions that cancer can bring up. These questions inevitably return, sooner or later. There is also the option to learn acceptance in life, and bravely to look into the eyes of death when the opportunity arises, even if it’s not our time to go.

The paradox here is that getting friendly with death can often give us new life – it opens up channels, it makes uncanny healings or revivals possible, and life no longer needs to teach us that lesson. If it doesn’t give us new life, it leads to a more peaceable and benign death, giving us a good start in the afterworld. Death comes inescapably to all of us and it is not the end of our journey. And cancer, if it doesn’t kill us, gives us a practice run for dying – a preparation for later.

It changes the very focus of our remaining lives. I had a near-death experience at age 24 and it was a life-changer – I was unconscious for eight days, awakening with much of my memory scrubbed. I can safely say that many of the things I have done since then were sparked by that near-death experience. It made me fully aware of what I was here for. Now in my seventies, near-death has happened again, through the agency of cancer. My shelf life and possibilities are limited but cancer has sharpened my focus.

People tell me I shall live a long time yet. Living in the bodily condition I’m in, I’m not so sure. I’m not sure that I want to – I’m finding it hard work. But I’ll be alive until I’m done, and I’m not done yet. And acceptance means accepting life as much as it means accepting death.

Since a very Saturnine life-crisis of 2-3 years ago my life prospects seem to have extended, to my surprise, and I’m now on my 124th blog and 49th podcast! Gosh. But then, when in my early forties, three people separately told me I would reach my peak in late life, and now I understand what they were saying. It’s funny how life goes. In a way, I needed cancer in order to rebirth myself.

With love, Palden

Site: www.palden.co.uk
Cancer Audiobook: www.palden.co.uk/boneblessings.html
Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Going deep has its virtues.

Altruismics

Space. Near Falmouth, Cornwall

I woke up this morning with ‘philanthropist‘ going round my head. So I decided to look up how it was defined.

“A person who seeks to promote the welfare of others, especially by the generous donation of money to good causes.” Oxford University Press. Interestingly, they found that the greatest use of the word in Britain was in the 1850s, the peak of the Victorian era and the industrial revolution, declining gradually until it sank a lot during WW1 and afterwards, and it started slightly picking up only since 2005ish.

“A philanthropist is someone who donates substantial resources, often including time and expertise but always including substantial financial resource, to a particular cause, area or social issue.” That’s the Charities Aid Foundation in UK.

“Anyone can be a philanthropist and be more effective at making a difference. Here’s how. A philanthropist is a person who donates time, money, experience, skills or talent to help create a better world. Anyone can be a philanthropist, regardless of status or net worth.” That’s a bit closer to where I stand. It comes from an American organisation called Fidelity Charitable.

Another source defines three types of philanthropy: relief, improvement and social reform. In my work in places like Palestine, I’ve focused mainly on social reform – a longer term perspective that builds conditions leading to improvement. This is trans-generational when it comes to questions of mass trauma-healing – which is the approach taken by the Hope Flowers School that I worked with in Bethlehem. Their motto is, ‘every act of violence begins with an unhealed wound‘ – so the task is to make progress on healing those wounds. The school originally had Muslim, Christian and Jewish children but, in 2001, during the intifada, the Jews withdrew, largely for safety reasons – understandable, though regrettable.

According to the Borgen Project, “Philanthropic people show selfless concern for the welfare of others and venture to alleviate the struggles of others without seeking anything for their own personal benefit. Truly philanthropic acts are done without expectation of compensation or recognition of one’s efforts.” This might be so, but this ‘without expectation’ bit doesn’t cover the expenses incurred, and covering my expenses has always been problematic. When in the Middle East, I still had to pay my rent and bills back home, as well as covering travel, living costs and helping needy people. I still do this with the remote work I do now from my desk at home.

I met this guy in Bethlehem. He’s now 20ish. I wonder what he thinks right now?

In this life I have not been a financial philanthropist. Many people believe that donating money is the only form of philanthropy, but also, out in places where there is need, everyone tends to drive, elbow and oblige me to raise, funnel or fix money. They perceive this as their primary need, and that’s true in the short term and not necessarily true for the longterm background conditions I’m best at working with.

This has tended to smother and detract from what I’m best at doing – human and spiritual input and multilevel intelligence. The thinking needed for fundraising and admin is very different from that of healing and magical-spiritual work, and I cannot do everything. This has been an ongoing dilemma.

It hasn’t helped me support myself either. People tend to think that, since such work is a chosen vocation, I needed no support or already had the funds. The prevailing thinking is that, if you’re doing well financially, this enables you then to act philanthropically – and only then. For many people this point never arrives, so they don’t do it. But it needs to come from a deeper place, from a sense of calling. That’s what was the case for me and, in late life, I’m really glad I did it, even though I’m quite poor now as a result.

Carn Barra, West Penwith, Cornwall.

When in Palestine and Israel, there were two main age-groups of volunteers and activists from abroad, most of them self-financing. One group was around age 25-35 (and 60% female) and one was around sixty (and 60% male). The thirtysomethings were doing it out of principle, setting aside career progress for what they believed in – though for some it was a voluntary internship to help a career in the NGO sector. Some had law, business and accountancy degrees, working in ‘lawfare’ – legal improvement of the rights of Palestinians and helping Palestinian NGOs function.

The sixtysomethings were good-hearted types, often retired from careers in education, social work or healthcare, who had raised and despatched their kids, perhaps they were newly divorced, and they had the resources and long-accumulated wish to at last pursue their calling in a place like Palestine. Both of these age-groups were committed, brave and valuable people, nevertheless driven by slightly different motivations. Many of the older ones contributed to the relief and improvement areas, while many of the younger ones contributed to reform.

There’s an innate philanthropy built into Palestinian society. It’s an attitude. It’s shared by some but not all Israelis – particularly those brought up in kibbutzim or living in settlements. It’s a kind of generosity economy, where everyone is brought up with an ethic of mutual help and contribution. This is social resilience, and when society is under duress it really works. This is something we in Europe need to learn – it’s in our group memory but it has lapsed.

When a young person thinks about their future career, they don’t think of personal ambition as much as the contribution they can make, and the likely slots that will appear in their clan or neighbourhood in future – whether as a dentist, embroiderer, car mechanic or even a professor. If the local midwife is growing older, a younger one will be thinking of replacing her in ten years’ time.

The holy well on Trencrom Hill, guardian hill of West Penwith

Over the decades I’ve banged on a lot about life-purpose, helping and empowering people to identify and pursue it. Here comes a repeat quote, but it’s important. The Council of Nine (who thirty years ago jogged me into working with Israel-Palestine) were asked whether there was one thing that could change and transform the world. They simply said, “If everyone pursues their life purpose“.

This gets bigger. They didn’t say this but, by extension, omitting to pursue our life-purpose, or withholding it, for whatever reason, is a soft version of a current major concern: crimes against humanity. It is the indifferent, inherently self-serving ethic of Western and, increasingly, global culture, that permits situations such as Gaza to happen. Because we don’t stop it.

People expressed surprise and horror at the precipitate actions of the Gazans when they broke out and violated so many Israelis, starting off the current round of trouble. Anyone who actually watches anything more than the urgent splutterings of the headlines knew something like this would come. It continues a long, long story and it didn’t happen out of the blue.

The surprise arises from global indifference, which prefers stuff like this would just go away. To be fair though, there’s also a surfeit of other events, tragedies and concerns competing for attention. Israeli hubris was caught napping. The main surprise here was the strategy and audacity of it. I do not encourage violence and have been a lifelong peace-freak, but are we really to believe that the Palestinians, generally unheard, blocked and disregarded, are supposed to act like polite gentlefolk, shrugging shoulders and nobly accepting their lot without a whimper? How would you like to be a 20 year old in Gaza, with no future? Or his or her parents?

Palestinians. They’re terrorists, as you can see

Today, the Gazans are so hungry, thirsty, desperate and traumatised that it would not surprise me if there were another mass breakout, into Israel or Egypt – of mothers, families, grandparents and youngsters seeking food, water and safety. Later, Europeans will duly complain when another wave of refugees comes to our shores, but our endemic indifference has caused much of this. Refugees arrive in Europe and America to give us a gift, a gift of humanness, empathy and philanthropy. Amazingly, it has even been found scientifically that it makes us happier. Indeed, there’s more to life than comfort and security.

I am not saying ‘admit anyone who claims asylum’, but I am saying we need to be more philanthropic, to understand that changes are happening even to us, and to act longterm to deal with the sources of the problem. In the case of Gaza it concerns the historic and current issues arising for the locals from the arrival and behaviour of the state of Israel, and the wider global issues that allowed this to happen the way it did. In Britain, two key fomenters of this problem are the Foreign Office and the media.

So, life-purpose. Are we here simply to pay our bills, tread our mills, keep investors happy and, at the end, collect our pensions? This is a personal question for every single soul. We need to ask ourselves, ‘Am I rising to my full potential as a human philanthropist? Or a human anything, for that matter?’. The answer is both yes and no, and the yes bit needs acknowledging and the no bit needs some attention. [For an audio talk by me, try this.]

Here’s something interesting that I discovered. I have long known I have healing abilities but in Britain I have chosen not to work as a healer, except as an astrologer (a perceptual healer) and a community activist (a social healer). But when I went to Palestine, witnessing the needs of people there, I suddenly started doing healing work – spiritual healing, mainly, and remote healing. On people’s backs, stomachs, wounds, hearts and spirits. What surprised me was that my abilities were dramatically amplified – people were genuinely and visibly healed, and deeply so. They’d approach me later to say so, and I was much moved, rather shocked by that. It was as if the scale of need pulled out almost miraculous superpowers.

But there’s a difference. In Britain, when I’ve done such work, while people do benefit, they tend to continue with the life-patterns that caused the problem. From a healer’s viewpoint, that’s not very satisfying. But in a crisis zone, where despair, danger and dire need are big drivers, I found people really did take on board whatever I said or did, and they were so grateful, and they helped me back. Also, it was liberating to work without charging.

Sitting on the wind. Godrevy, Cornwall

I’ve never liked charging for healing or transformative work – how do you value the fixing of a major issue or the saving of a life? Twenty years ago, as an astrologer I charged £60-70 for a two-hour session but I needed £250. I did a lot for free or underpriced, because there was a need. I’d have felt happier with a salary, like a doctor, so that charging didn’t enter the equation. The ethics and politics of our time did not allow it – after all, astrologers are charlatans, aren’t we?

If you were a Palestinian in Gaza right now, you’d be enacting your life-purpose – whatever you’re best at. The same is happening for some Israelis. That’s how people survive. When the chips are down, you do what’s needed, regardless. If you can clear rubble, cook, minister to people or mind the kids, that’s what you do. No qualifications or vetting needed – just do it, if necessary till you drop.

Saturn is in Pisces: this concerns philanthropy. Without it, the world would be a much sorrier place. Philanthropy is not an option: it is a necessity, like sewage disposal. Crises such as Gaza – and they’re coming at us quite a lot nowadays, and it won’t slow down – shine a light on our life-purposes, for each and every one of us.

What am I here for, really? What am I doing about it? Our calling is programmed in us from the beginning. We know it. It is inherent, not learned in courses or demanding a qualification – it’s a natural, inbuilt gift and skill. It comes easily. Yes, we are all innately talented. If we let it out.

With love, Palden

A young Bethlehemite friend, now in his twenties

PS. I’m blogging a lot at present and it’s not really planned. It’ll die down again! If something comes up, I start blogging and, typical Aspie, I don’t stop until I’m done. There’s stuff going on in places where parts of my heart lie and, since I can’t get to Is-Pal (or West Africa), this is how I let it out. Together with psychic-spiritual work and handholding certain individuals in the thick of it.

At present, I am ‘holding’ Maa Ayensuwaa (on the right), a native healer in Ghana, who is lying in hospital, lacking painkillers and hoping money will come along to pay for an operation for fibroids – it’s wear and tear from helping people and going without. I can help her only in spirit, though our connection is such that (I hope) it works.

Site: www.palden.co.uk
Blog: https://penwithbeyond.blog
Podcasts: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/palden-jenkins

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

Far Beyond

Paldywan Kenobi goes on tour

Paldywan’s ‘magic tour’ is starting in Glastonbury on Tuesday 2nd August – details below.

It will continue to Avebury (right next to the stone circle) in August (date not finalised yet), and then it goes to Totnes area on Saturday 24th September (by Buckfast Abbey). Full details about these two are to follow soon.

The Glastonbury details given here will be common to all of them, but these circles will be different in each place and at each time. You see, these aren’t rehearsed. I have some basic themes to work around, but it arrives on the spot and it’s a process.

Some people might say it’s channelled, but I don’t really use that notion much – it has been corrupted and romanticised. Let’s just say it arrives on the spot. If you’ve seen me on stage, you’ll notice I stand in front of you silently, fumbling with my ear and I look at everyone in the audience. It gets a bit weird, just for a second or two. Then I just come up with the first thing that arrives, and we’re off.

If you’ve heard my podcasts, they’re unrehearsed too, and that’s how I work. When you’ve done this kind of thing countless times for many years, it kinda sinks into your bones. Since I have a bone cancer (myeloma), it looks like it’s coming out!

That was one of my wry jokes – please excuse me. After all, life is rather a joke – when we’re in a position to see it that way. Which does happen sometimes, amidst the treacle-journey of earthly existence, during partings of the fog. It’s all about getting lost in our stuff and then getting found again. The regularity of this as life goes on obliges us to ride it a wee bit better as we go along.

It never ends, and this is paradoxical. The more accumstomed you get to riding life’s waves, and the more tools you gather, the deeper the challenges that Life presents us with. You clear the last lot and become eligible for the next lot. You become ready to handle stuff a level deeper. So, really, it never ends. It’s relentless.

When I was a young Buddhist I used to think that, once you attained enlightnment, you’d be at peace and everything would be alright. But, watching my Lama teachers, HH Gyalwa Karmapa XVI and various other remarkable rinpoches, it became clear that, the more they resolved things inside themselves, becoming more enlightened, the more deeply they were involved with the woes of the world.

This process of inner growth really doesn’t end. Dead or alive, it goes on, and at any age of life. Cancer and other recent experiences have rather put me through the mill, and the grinding action really has helped me become a better version of myself.

Well, I hope. It’s not really for me to judge. Cancer is an amazing crash course in navigating a much altered reality, and it goes on for the length of time you survive in this life. And then you’re free.

So, people who wish me a long life, and I appreciate the thought, but it’s not necessarily as easy and welcome as it sounds! My approach instead is to be straight-up with myself and others about my real prospects and to do the max with the time I have left – hence this tour. Because cancer is wearing, and it depends how much I really want to struggle, hurt, worry and endure. And for what? How much more willpower do I have left in my account?

Well, I’m doing alright at present, and excited about the tour, and enjoying the summertime, but I cannot rely on holding up longterm. In a way the tour is an experiment to see how much I can take. But it feels really good to be doing it. If I get through these three, then I might be able to do another three – it depends on organisers, on being pulled there and on whether it feels right.

If your antennae twitch over this, please consider coming. With the Glastonbury event, don’t leave enquiring about it until late, if you want a place. Otherwise you might have to head over to Avebury – which has its virtues too. The organiser in Glastonbury is my old friend Bruce Garrard, a well-known character around town.

Three themes: 1. transitioning (about incarnation and excarnation); 2. world work (inner aid and disaster response) and, 3. our personal origins, roots and purpose as souls. And the way these knit together. They have knitted together for me, and some of you might get some vital clues for yourselves.

Here’s the leaflet for the Glastonbury event. Download it as a PDF here or as a JPG here.

If you cannot come (perhaps you live too far away or just can’t break out) but you’d like to play a small part, then this is what to do. Put your name on some paper, or send a small photo, or a very small item like a bead or a very small stone or piece of wood – anything, but pls keep it small and keep it simple! These will be put at the centre of the circle in each of the circles we do, and they will be dealt with mindfully afterwards (they can’t be returned).

Send it by post before 25th July to: Palden Jenkins, Botrea Farm, Penzance, Cornwall TR20 8PP, UK.

I shall be at the OakDragon camp in early August (the founder returns on his sticks!) and I’ll do an evening talk in Glastonbury (the Inner Light Group) – to be announced. Then in September I’m really looking forward to the Devon circle. News about Avebury and Devon soon.

With love, Palden.

Podcasts: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Website: www.palden.co.uk

Continuation of the Soul

Yes, you and yours too

For those of you who are interested in the kinds of things I gibber on about, you might find this video really interesting. It’s down below.

Jeffrey Mishlove comes at matters of the soul and psyche from a completely different angle from me, yet I completely agree with what he says. He’s a psychologist with a really open mind, while my qualifications in this subject are zilch, haha, yet I draw on my own experiences. Which, over the years, have become a bit of a list…

These have included a near-death experience, talking to a soul (my son) before he was born, talking to souls after they’re gone and even handholding them over the threshold, re-experiencing a good number of ‘past’ lives and a couple of ‘future’ ones, and all sorts of other out-of-time experiences of many kinds. These qualify me as a madman or rather sane, depending on your viewpoint. (Actually, for all of us it’s somewhere in between – Gurdjieff used to call people of the muggle variety ‘mad machines’.)

I don’t actually consider myself very good at this stuff. Believe me, when meditating, I get booming brains and endless diversions at least as much as anyone reading this. But the issue here is giving it attention and going into it, giving it time and space and doing it over a period of time – such as the rest of your life. Simply do this, and you do pick up experience. Keep doing it. Occasionally, you’re lit up with grace, wonder, healing, resolution and light.

So, I am not a good meditator. I’ve been with people who go far deeper than I do. But the issue here is to sit with it and do it – at your own pace, with no shoulds or oughts, as a part of your life like breakfast and lunch. Give space for the world within to speak.

I’ve been doing a weekly meditation without fail on Sundays at 7pm GMT (8pm BST) for half an hour, since 1994. This is the Nine slot when the channels are open, run by Altea. If you wish to join, just do it – though pls take your boots off before entering and spend the first few sessions just listening and, if necessary, waiting. It works like that.

Otherwise I meditate randomly when it’s right to do so. Sometimes I’m just sitting there churning over my stuff and nothing much seems to be happening – as far as what a meditative state ought to be (ahem). But then I draw out, up and back from myself and see it differently. ‘Removing self from self’. I see myself churning around and it looks very different. It changes instantaneously.

One day I had a breakthrough. It was when I was with the Nine in the early 1990s. I found myself letting my watchers upstairs enter right into my psyche, allowing them to see parts of me I didn’t want them to see. I didn’t want to see them either, and I’m still discovering new hidden shadows down there in the depths. It goes on and on – there’s no retirement in this game.

Letting them in was like an enormous burst of self-forgiveness. They didn’t do anything except take a look inside an interestingly fucked-up humanoid on Earth, but for me it was a release and relief, an opening up and a step forward. I saw myself as I was, not as I told myself I wanted to be, or feared I was, or believed others saw me to be.

My birth chart. Jupiter, down the bottom (like a 4), holds the key to my chart – it’s called a bucket-handle. My chart is a bit like a foolproof instruction manual on how not to be a billionaire.

For a Jupiter in Pisces type like me, this kind of thing is an undoubted peak experience.

Whenever I am troubled, I open myself up for them to take a look. After a while it becomes more of a habit. That opens out a load of things. It shifts the context, I see things more as they are, and this helps me do an update on myself. It’s not as easy as it sounds, because guilt, shame and fear are so deeply embedded and sometimes demand some wrestling, but it helps me move forward.

It’s like mindfulness practice: whether it’s you or your ‘inner guides’ being aware of what’s happening in your psyche, it’s essentially the same awareness being aware of it.

We are not the separate individuals we believe ourselves to be. Here on Earth we’re swimming in an enormous and rather busy psychic collectivity, and it’s like a swirling, whirling, jangly cacophony. We’re all members of tribes and groups that go way beyond this life.

At this time of history we’re being asked to recognise something further: that we’re all of the same tribe, the same people. We’re all so different yet we’re part of one planetary tapestry, one species. We all breathe the same air and see the same Moon in the sky.

Without recognising this in our hearts and in our bones, we will give ourselves a very hard time in coming times, and we’re already well advanced in this. It’s that simple.

Tibetans have a philosophy of doing good and of practicing loving kindness not only because they’re good things to do, but also because they set up conditions for our forthcoming incarnations. It means that, in future, there will be less of a pile of difficult issues to deal with if we make progress on them now. It helps us stop causing problems we don’t really need. Perfection isn’t required: all we need is forward motion. Whether or not you subscribe to such a perspective, it’s worth contemplating. It’s ecological, sustainable and just. It involves what Buddhists call non-duality…

…recognising that the inner and the outer worlds are two sides of the same coin, of equal reality, and they’re thoroughly interactive and mutually-responsive in detail and down to the subtlest of nuances. The toxicity, injustice and tragedy out there in our world are totally connected with those that lurk within our own psyches. Oh shit.

If humanity gets this equation, sometime, somehow, we will make it through the crisis we have here in our world – and we’ll make good use of it. Miracles will happen because we will be creating reality differently. For some (not all) of us here, this concerns our future lives as well as those of our grandchildren, who could become our parents. What we’re doing now creates conditions in which, in coming times, we and everyone may thrive and fulfil our purpose.

Everyone has specific instructions programmed into our psyches and genes, but the two main purposes we all share are… to learn and to make a contribution. No one is here by accident.

This video is by an old friend, Tim Walter, a film-maker and dowser who’s interesting in his own right – check out his videos on YouTube, such as this…

With love, Paldywan

Emergence

and scraping myself off the floor of life

Bluebells in the woods down below the farm

My Mum taught me not to be a problem. As a quiet Virgo, I wasn’t much of a problem – it didn’t take a lot of doing. But her and my concepts of ‘problem’ were different – mine didn’t encompass spotlessly white collars on my school shirt or holding my knife and fork properly. This pattern has at times itself been in itself a problem – not putting myself forward when I should, or accepting loss more than was right. But it’s also an asset which has helped me in my peacemaking work and generally makes people believe I’m a good guy, and this has got me through some mighty scrapes.

It’s an important thing for the 21st Century. We all have to scale things down that we reduce the extent to which we are other people’s problem or can become one. This is tricky. For me, I’ve often been a problem for others in terms of the way they see things, but not necessarily a problem in an ultimately real way. This is common in all sorts of social and intercultural interactions – we project stuff on each other. I’ve been in many situations where the worse option, not the one I present, has been chosen, just to cover people’s asses or allow them to avoid facing something that is important. I’ve sat in clink, been an exile and lost my kids over this. There have been times when I’ve been plain wrong too – and it’s important to own up to these.

It’s all about attentiveness to others. I’m very attentive in certain ways, though sometimes I seem deficient too, on the personal front. My attention is taken up quite a lot with the world and at times with things not of this world. Perhaps as a psychic type I tend to forget some of the more outward niceties and considerations others need, and they don’t necessarily register the support I might be giving them inwardly. Generous in certain ways, though spontaneously, I forget birthdays and little behaviours that matter to others but I don’t really register in my lexicon. I guess this is an Aspie issue.

Since my life encompasses a large number of people, those close to me can sometimes wonder how much I care specifically for them. This can be reinforced by my at times dispassionate and inscrutable demeanour, or an absentmindedness when I’m focusing on work or innerwork that looks like I don’t care. Or perhaps I’m lost in space, processing situational intricacies, or keeping a presence in the Donbas, or monitoring someone who is ill or dying. Or just floating off. Mad professor stuff. I do change, but I’m slow, sure and thorough in it, especially when on a major Saturn transit like recently, and sometimes people can’t wait. Sometimes I change further than others were expecting.

I’ve had a time of scrangly challenges for the last year – the duration of a Neptune opposition Saturn transit, starting in May 2021 and completing in February this year. It has taken 3-4 months since then to surface and survey the new landscape. In February I felt I had perhaps one year left, and now I feel I have longer – it’s important not to try to pin down how much. For me there’s an extra calculation of two things: the time I can stay in active service and the time to drop it and focus on staying alive, or departing well. I don’t want to drag things out though, because I’m also rather tired in my soul and I want to go home for a while.

One of the transformative gifts here is that everything is so much more provisional than it was before, or than it is for most people. We usually have a sense of a roadmap, plans, expectations and logical steps to our lives, whether it’s framed in terms of things feared or things loved and hoped for. But now, in every arrangement I make I must calculate whether and how much I’ll be able to actually do it when the time comes. It helps to be an astrologer, though much of the decision-making I do intuitively. For important arrangements I tend to take a rather military, or a performer’s attitude, managing my energy to make sure I’m alright on the night whatever state I’m in. It’s the before and after that matter more – and nowadays it’s during those times I need a minder.

I always used to say to astrological clients that, when they had a major Saturn transit, they would get a download and a re-purposing of their life and mission, a new chapter in their work. Or (I’d tell them this carefully) they would get consequences from not doing so. On the approach to the transit two years ago I was going through my cancer struggle and reckoned, well, there’s not a lot more for me to do, so I can’t see how it could work that I’d get a new mission. But on the other hand, before cancer came along, something in me had been saying ‘There’s one more major mission to do’. But I could not see what that might be. When cancer came along I packed away that idea.

But cancer gave it back to me. It changed my life. It aged me, putting me up against the wall. It forced me to look at hard truths. It is now yielding fruits I did not expect – yet, the way it feels now, in a funny sort of way, all my life I’ve been unwittingly preparing for this. It shows how taking a hard path can sometimes shift things much more than following a seemingly easier or safer path. I peeped into hell during the depths of last winter, struggling with demons in the desolate places of my soul. But it shifted a pile of crap too. It’s strange to say, in my condition, that I’ve been given a new life, but there’s some truth to it, even if it lasts only a few years.

On the cliffs with the sheikh and friend Julia Aisha

This week I was visited by the Green Sheikh Saad Iddeen AlMaghrebi AlQudsi. He came with a dear Palestine soul-sister, Julia Aisha, with whom I worked in Bethlehem, and by his minder Said Julia Adams. Both Julias are very English, yet Muslims and well versed in Middle Eastern ways, and the Green Sheikh lives in London and goes regularly to Jerusalem, where he was born. He’s involved with many of the spiritual peacemakers I’ve worked with out there, on both sides of the conflict, nowadays calling themselves the Abrahamic Reunion (though formerly they were Jerusalem Peacemakers – it was founded in Glastonbury).

Julia Aisha played the oudh and sang some lovely Palestinian songs, and we formed a little bubble of Palestine here under the cloudy skies of Cornwall. Transfixed, we were. Then I took them to Carn Gloose, a dramatic clifftop nearby, and they made prayer there, facing Makkah. Cornwall weaved its oceanic magic on them and they were shining. We came back and the sheikh said prayers for me, giving me the healing of Allah. He lit up as he was chanting. I was being blessed and felt it. Allah was giving permission to move forward. Alhamdulillah – thanks be to That Which Cannot be Named.

So I want to create some magic spaces and invite you in. I’ll be doing some talks too, captivating in their own way, but this is different – this is circle-working. I’ve always been a good teacher, threading things together and causing a lot of lightbulb moments, but this isn’t primarily about teaching. It’s more about what Tibetans call transmission. Not from me but through me, and through the rather amazing people working with me and through those who are present. This will take some input and focus by everyone for the duration of each event (lasting perhaps 5-6 hours altogether). Something special becomes possible when it’s all well engineered and everyone’s in there with it. I cannot tell you exactly what this will be, but you’ll know it when it comes. I feel I’m in a position now to bring such a thing through, with your help.

At present, there are three areas where I feel I can contribute something. The first is about life and death and our lives and paths, the second is about ‘inner aid’ work to help the world, and the third concerns connecting with the source of our souls and the places and soul-tribes we come from.

I’m not interested in converting anyone or starting a following – I’m not around for long, and that kind of stuff really doesn’t matter any more. This is a series of one-offs – they are not going to get routine. I’m interested in drawing together people who feel a resonance with me and the signal I put out, because in some way that makes us soul-relatives or soul-friends, and we thus have a resonance between us. The coming together of a group of souls with such a connection means that energy-levels can be upstepped to a higher voltage. It means that everyone present needs to be a bit stretchy, willing to overcome reservations and swim in deeper water, but if we hold the circle well, everyone will be safe and the outcomes can be memorable. I and many of you have experience in this and we can do it.

The overall aim of this is to help everyone get connected up better, within yourself and with some good people and beings. I hope it will encourage you to follow your path and pursue your mission, whatever it is. My personal aim here is to fulfil one of the major threads of my life and hopefully to do something of assistance to The Management and to you. Those that I work for don’t seek believers and followers and they are not important in themselves: they want us as souls to rise to our full stature and to do what we’re here for and what we need to do. They’ll support anyone who does, and I want to strengthen in you ways in which this may be done.

Get this. One of the greatest crimes against humanity of today is withholding. We all do it – me too. It’s embedded in our cultures and it’s quite a heave to pull out of its clutches. With it go self-doubt, not-good-enough little-me syndrome, fear of risk or shame and that creepy feeling that the holy spirit somehow left us behind, or that we’re not up to it. Withholding involves setting aside and even forgetting the reason we came, and the true gifts and purpose we have. We get on with other things that seem important at the time, but when we approach the end of life, the money, property and success we’ve had and the chocolate we’ve eaten matter little, while the enduring truths of what we have been and what we have become stare us in the face.

Withholding lies at the root of our planetary problem today. If everyone increasingly got on with their true calling, things on Earth would start resolving quite rapidly. It’s amazing what comes out when the channels start getting unblocked. And yes, the toilets would get cleaned, because there’s a way of making even cleaning toilets a divine act of soul-enriching service.

Climate change, war, systems disintegration, injustice, poverty, toxicity – all these we can resolve. It’s going to take more effort, time, energy, sacrifice and change than we currently believe, but we’re going to do it and we can’t not. There will be payoffs, good news and miracles amidst the crises and crunches. What’s interesting here is that the drift of events in the world is forcing us to face big questions and do something about them for our own survival. There’s an urgency to it. It’s becoming clear that it is in our self-interest to work together and prioritise collective interest. We have to devise a way of coexisting on Earth in a way that fosters diversity and cultural variegation while becoming one planetary people, consensually cooperating in maintaining our world, rendering it safe and decent, and building a new world out of the structures and rubble of the old.

Here’s a question worth addressing, regarding death and what happens afterwards. Do you choose to return to live out one or more further lives on Earth, to contribute toward that planetary resolution, and perhaps to be here when the breakthrough happens or afterwards? It’s hard and risky work though it has its rewards, as you probably know. Or would you opt for heading off to other realms and leaving the Earth issue to those of us who remain? This has its validity too, and this life might be designed to be your last. Consider this carefully because you will face it sometime. Sorting out this question can help you refocus your current life so that, whatever your choice, you do it well while you’re alive.

Because once death comes, there’s no going back. There’s no delete or undo button. That’s when you set sail for other horizons and, if indeed you are to come back or move on, that will be finalised later on, once you’ve gone through the full post-death process. You’ll have a conference with your angels and members of your soul tribe.

I awoke at six this morning with a cacophony of thoughts that permitted me only to make a round of tea before getting on with them. That’s what I’m like. But also I’ve been on Dexamethasone for the last two days, a once-monthly part of my cancer treatment, and as a steroid it gets my mind buzzing. Something usually comes out of it – I’ve trained myself to make use of it. That’s perhaps why you got another blog thrown at you quite quickly after the last one.

I’m on antibiotics too for an osteo-necrosis infection, which I’m not happy about, but I do not see any alternative to them at present, so I’ll continue till I find one that actually works – since this is potentially a killer issue and I can’t mess around. My back is getting weaker, and exercise doesn’t necessarily help it. Cancer caused four of my lowest vertebrae to soften and collapse and my bones shrank marginally – you ought to hear my back clicking when, several times a day, I click myself back into place…

Myeloma is a blood and bones issue, and that’s pretty fundamental. It’s not tumorous, but it permanently changes your constitution. Blood is about life-force and will-to-live, and my bones hold me up, allowing my body to hang itself onto them for the purpose of functioning on a densely-gravitational planet. Myeloma is not very common but it’s one of the fastest growing cancers today – because of increasing EM radiation and use of certain neurotoxic chemicals. My functionalities are much reduced, but I manage, with a little help from my friends. Sometimes, by late afternoon, I can’t hold myself up any more, it hits my life-force tremendously and my brains conk out. I have to hit the horizontal, allowing myself to relax and float off for a regeneration session – it takes about half an hour. That’s when visitors need to get out their knitting.

A number of Paldywan events are taking shape in Glastonbury, Avebury and Totnes in the coming months and, when things are firmed up, I’ll let you know. This will be networked, not greatly advertised. For those of you who cannot come, it will be possible to devise a way of tuning in – news about that later. Other places are possible in due course, though I must pace myself and my helpers. These events will perforce be ‘limited edition’, even if I manage to continue with them for two or three years. Electrosensitivity means I cannot work in cities. Besides, everyone will be far more in contact with things with their phones switched off.

It’s time for breakfast. The sun is shining and I’m going to potter in the garden. I might or might not be alone this weekend, depending on whether anyone chooses to come visit. One other gift cancer has given me has been loss of agency – control over my circumstances. I’m in Neptune’s capable hands, and have gone through another lesson in acceptance. In life, we get what we get, and that’s the way it is, and we’re here to do the best with that. But the amazing thing is that other things happen instead, even if we don’t get what we want, and the universe does indeed look after us.

Love from me, Paldywan

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

Photos by me (in the woods), Miriam Naccache and, on the cliffs, Julia Aisha

The view from my window one early morning

Costs and Benefits

A new Paldypodcast

Here’s a new podcast. My creative mojo seems to be returning and I’m churning it out at present… erk. This is what it’s about:

In our time we’re going through an intensification of events and pressures, globally, socially and individually. We’re heading into harder times, and it’s not going to go back to normal. But there are things we can do about this. It doesn’t have to be as bad as currently it looks.

The costs and difficulties we have in life can be made a bit easier by not grinding on about it quite so much, by making things less difficult inside ourselves. Sounds easy, but it takes some work.

There are also gifts in any situation that become visible if we shift our focus, take a deep breath, own what we’re responsible for and focus on what’s really most important.

I’ve faced some stuff in recent times and seem to be gaining something from it, deep down, underneath. It’s a lot to do with finding what’s available in any situation – anything that can cheer us, lift us up and open up pathways – and going on from there. Following a path.

If your spirits have some sparkle, you’ll be alright. Though often, ‘alright’ isn’t what we originally thought.

17 minutes, with love from Palden.

Listen on Spotify:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/5W7HTEsIrryRSqs0syUK0w?si=36bw0NqbS1CFS_NnDo1Yyg

If you don’t want to use Spotify (or Apple or Google Podcasts – it’s there too), then go here: www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Being in the World

And out of it too

Carn Gloose and, behind, Kilgooth Ust or Cape Cornwall

I’m lucky to be a writer. With my cancer-derived disabilities I can still more or less carry on with my work. If I were a farmer, work would be mostly impossible and my life would fall apart. There’s another side to this though: I get fed up with sitting at the computer – being nerdy and scholastic, I’ve done a lot of that over the last fifty years! My major hurdle at present is fatigue, though even that has its compensations because the rest and the floating-off that fatigue induces gives me space to cogitate things more than I’ve ever done before.

So my current book is taking time, but I’m now on the finishing touches – checking footnotes, indexing and sorting out pictures and maps – ready to send to a printer and publisher I do not yet have. That’s the next hurdle. Fatigue means I have to take things one thing at a time – handling complexity, arrangements and details is distinctly difficult. But I’m really pleased with the book.

The ‘council circle’ at Bosigran cliff sanctuary

In some respects it’s rather obscure – about the ancient sites of West Penwith, here in Cornwall, and what they show us about ‘megalithic geoengineering’ – but in other respects I’ve never been able to give a book so much thought and consideration. It might be one of my best (it’s my eleventh). There has always been a rush to meet a deadline or before other things start happening. But I don’t have a lot happening, and I’m no longer striving to be a successful author – I’m seeking simply to pass on my knowledge to whomever will benefit from it, before I go.

A dear soul-sister, Sophia, suddenly went recently. She was about to stage a big exhibition of her remarkable art and ceramics when she died quietly in her sleep, in her early seventies. It’s one of those deaths that was a surprise – she was in good enough health and spirits, with good prospects. Yet there’s a feeling it was not actually wrong that she passed away there and then. Sophia is a deep and sensitive lady who has done consistent spiritual practice (Subud Latihan) for a long time. We worked together on local and world healing in the 1980s, with an occultist called Gareth Knight and others. Her angels clearly, cleanly and calmly took her out at what they consider exactly the right time.

It’s stirring, when someone suddenly blips out like that. But we’ll probably meet in heaven when I blip out too. It doesn’t bother me the way it seems to bother a lot of people who, in their confusion over death, seem to experience such loss and regret when a person dies. Some people judge that I don’t care when I say this, but they misunderstand me. Yes, there’s an enormous gap, a silence, and it raises big questions about life, bringing up mysterious feelings, and the person is no longer physically present, but why do people stop talking to a person when they die, as if they no longer exist? I’ve sat at funerals where the departed soul says to me, “But can’t anyone see I’m here?“, so I talk to them. Then they, and the attendant angels and beings, seem to wonder why I am not running the funeral myself.

At times in the past I have done so, encouraging the living, standing around the grave, to address the person directly in their thoughts and words. We’d do a talking-stick circle where everyone could say their bit and recount their chunk of the life-story of the walked-out person and their abiding impressions. I’d encourage everyone, silently to themselves, to say all they needed to say to the person, to round out their relationship, and to hear the departed person’s truth, and thank them for their presence and for whatever, knowingly or not, they taught us while they were alive.

Anyway, Sophia is now very much at peace and in good hands, and she is going home, and the quiet manner of her departing was true to form, for her. A death like hers leaves the rest of us in an altered state because part of us goes with her, drawing attention to the wider and deeper meaning of life and what we are doing about it. This leads me to my latest podcast about Soul Education – recorded in early September. It’s not about death but about life. My starting premise is that we as souls did not begin our evolutionary journeys here on Earth, and that we come here for two primary reasons: to learn and to make a contribution.

Carn Euny iron age village, 2,000 years old

Cancer has been something of a gift because it gave me an indefinite though possibly imminent death sentence, which has brought forward this question of the contribution I have made and still make. It sharpens me up, in my constrained and slightly helpless state. Soon after getting diagnosed, in mid-November two years ago, on my back fighting for my life and amidst my pain, I was moved to write down all I knew about prehistoric culture – something I had not properly done before. This knowledge would be lost and wasted if I didn’t get it down. It gave me a focus through the next two years, and now it is virtually complete and ready to ‘put to bed’.

I now face a new question. My life might (or might not) be longer than the few years I expected. But I do not know what will happen, especially since, just two weeks ago, I was again not far from death’s door. I need to face the world and to supplement my income, since my pension and allowances no longer cover all my needs and costs and I have nothing to fall back on. But I cannot make arrangements, keep timetables, remember details and deal with the intricacies and obligations of conducting business – I don’t even know what state I’ll be in next Thursday, next month or next year, so making promises and agreements is just not realistic.

Working for a living (such as editing books or doing astrological sessions) is not easy now, even though I’m a solid workaholic. You see, when I fall ill, I cannot sit at the computer renegotiating arrangements with multiple people and giving them a reliable answer when they ask when I’ll be better and back to normal! If I died suddenly, lots of threads could be left untied. My recent health encounter took three weeks and I’m worn out, running on three cylinders. I’m destined to fail in dealing with the details of working for a living, and I know it, and I’ve had instances already where I have let people down or forgotten something, because I’m in an altered state with chemo-brain and fatigue. Or they’re in more of a hurry than I can keep up with.

I’m just not ‘up to speed’ or ‘in the loop’, and neither should I be. I’m still shielding. But I’m a Virgo with an inbuilt need to do my bit. I need to focus on what actually I can do, such as writing this cancer blog until I no longer can, or churning out podcasts and my forthcoming book, or doing psychic work and playing a part in the lives of people close by and far away. I do these not just for self-entertainment, though they do keep me occupied, but because I believe they bring some value.

Neolithic Chun Quoit as seen from bronze age Boswens menhir

Last week Lynne picked me up and I went to stay in Devon with her. That worked well, and the change and being with her after a too-long pause was good. But while I was there I encountered another issue: electrosensitivity. It has increased since I got cancer. It’s a blood cancer, and iron-rich blood is electronic and magnetic. Lynne is herself electrosensitive, so this is not what otherwise could be a difficult issue between us. But it affects my and our social life a lot.

Most people don’t understand radiation, and many think they are exempt from its effects when this is incorrect. Problem is, it takes me just three seconds of close exposure to mobile phone or wi-fi radiation to set me off for 36 hours. I go through a sequence of cumulative symptoms, depending on the amount of exposure. It starts with an agitated, embattled, uncentred, inarticulate, locked-in kind of feeling, progressing to a high-pitched whine in the centre of my skull, then some sharp, pulsing, show-stopping headaches, then a thumping, irregular heartbeat, then distinct feelings of flu-like illness lasting about 24 hours after exposure has stopped. This is upsetting, especially when it’s friends, loved ones and interesting people killing you. No one understands what they’re doing because it is not recognised as a problem.

From my own perspective, I think that EM and nuclear radiation probably account for at least 20% of the environmental damage, climate change, social stresses and health problems happening right now, globally. The world doesn’t want to know. Many people groan when I come up with things like this, and I have been criticised many times for awkward utterances, only to watch them come true in the longterm. I’m not right every time, but I’m correct enough times for it to matter. It’s the price of being a seer and choosing to live ahead of our time – I’m sure a lot of you know that one.

I turned vegetarian-vegan in 1971, but now is it no longer regarded as a deficiency or weakness, but that took 40-50 years. Twenty years ago I was involved with ‘talking to terrorists’ (Hamas) at a time when it was risky and taboo. But now, British soldiers tell us we should have talked more to the Taliban in Afghanistan – ahem, yes, precisely. It’s painful, living with this wilful blindness and watching the wider costs and hardships rise so high. This is the case now with the question of EM radiation – it is nicely invisible and deniable, and mobiles and wi-fi are so useful, but it’s harming us and our world. Even Extinction Rebellion and the Green Party have a blockage over this issue, and I do wonder why.

Caer Bran, the possible bronze age parliament site for Penwith, as seen from Grumbla in the valley below

It’s past lunchtime and time to go to bed. Fatigue is funny: when it comes, it’s like pushing through treacle. The law of gravity gets switched up, my mind dulls out and it’s like being muffled in wool. It can arrive quite suddenly, often in the afternoon or following a lot of activity. The secret is to accept it and not grind myself up feeling guilty or inadequate. I’ve pushed energy writing this blog, and now I need to put my body-mind system into freewheel for a recharge. Besides, it’s a grotty, rainy, grey, blustery day, and bed is the best place to be. With a cuppa, a few munchies, music by Brian Eno, and a good case of metaversal megaflop.

Thanks for being with. This time you get a podcast too, introduced by a nightingale.

With love from me, Palden.

www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html – for the latest podcast from the far beyond
www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/ – about my book Shining Land
www.facebook.com/palden.jenkins – my Facebook page

And the pics here are made for but not included in my book.

Truth Time

A personal podcast about seeing and struggling through the bogs and brambles

We choose what we want to see

Here’s my latest podcast, recorded on Saturday 28th August.

Truth time.

It’s a personal one, this, and it concerns revelation. Uncovering. Curtains opening. Seeing things as they actually are and show themselves to be.

And pain, the pain of the soul, and of being a growing soul struggling through the bogs and brambles of evolving truth.

That’s me. That’s you. It’s here:

palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

With love.

Palden