spiritual blogs – Page 2 – Notes from the Far Beyond

Antipathy

This started out as my usual weekly posting about the Sunday Meditation, but it turned into something else…

A Palestinian bagpipe band in Manger Square, Bethlehem – a leftover from British Mandate days

In Britain we currently have a kerfuffle about an anti-Semitic murder outbreak in Manchester, one of the most multicultural cities in our country. Though I’ve worked a lot with Palestinians, mercifully I’ve never been accused of anti-Semitism. Throughout my time working in the West Bank I had a lot to do with Israelis too – particularly former soldiers. A few of them helped me smuggle tofu from Tel Aviv through Checkpoint 500 outside Bethlehem – packaged tofu looks rather like Semtex, you see.

My grandfather was part of General Allenby’s British invasion force in Iraq and Palestine in WW1, and my father was in Egypt and Palestine in WW2. Some of my German ancestors were executed for opposing Hitler, probably at Sachsenhausen concentration camp for dissenters, and some of my Roma ancestors went down in the Holocaust. Jews have played a key part in my awakening, in this life and others. So I have some threads of personal involvement here.

But what matters is that all this concerns humans and the way we treat each other. We’ve reached a global-scale impasse where our mistreatment and exploitation really need to change – particularly, to start with, humanity’s self-destructive tendencies toward war and violence.

Early on in life, as I was beginning to awaken in my late teens, though I was then oriented toward ecological issues, I realised that we will not make significant progress with eco-stuff while we are committing acts of violation and warfare against each other. Such atrocities put the brakes on human and planetary evolution. Since then I have trodden a path with one foot in the spiritual sphere and one in the political – an awkward dualism if ever there was one, with deep and conflicting moral and human issues involved.

One basic thing holds universally for all people of all faiths, beliefs and inclinations, including seculars. It’s necessary to understand and to feel what it’s like being on the other side. That’s one reason I’ve been involved with Palestinians: they’re on the other side from me – or at least, from where I started in life. Stepping over that gulf has been one of the most rewarding aspects of my life. Stepping over not just in belief and viewpoint, but in practical terms and, on a few occasions, putting my life on the line.

It was Tibetans, another bunch of apparent perpetual losers, who shoe-horned me into this. They presented me with the option to take the Bodhisattva Vow, a vow to dedicate my life to the benefit of all sentient biengs. In this I cannot claim to have succeeded and I’ve made loads of errors, hurting people and getting things wrong in the process, though the centre of gravity of my life has tilted toward service as a result of taking the vow. And I’m really glad about that.

For me, there is a connection between the blood-and-thunder stuff of politics and what many might consider fluffy, useless, unrealistic stuff such as spiritual beings and extraterrestrials. It’s all about stepping over gulfs. Mentally and emotionally. Crossing that divide. ‘Going native’. Setting selfhood aside in order to open up sufficiently to empathise with those others over there, on the other side. In this, a statement by a Christian minister in Northern Ireland has had a big effect on me. It’s this…

It’s better to fail in something that ultimately will succeed, than to succeed in something that ultimately will fail.

It’s pretty profound, that. Write it on your toilet wall.

Two West Bank Palestinians chatting with an Israeli settler

Back to anti-Semitism. So, in your thoughts and beliefs and the way you structure and apply them, use your discernment. When your finger is on the trigger, you have a choice. You can kill or harm that person (even if only in your private thoughts), but the memory will stay with you forever, no matter how much you repress it. That’s an example of something that succeeds in the short term though it will fail in the longterm.

Or you can spare them and turn the occasion into a massive, pattern-changing mutual learning-situation for both of you. That’s your choice. And there are consequences to everything that we do. And there are consequences also to those things we avoid and deny, or we fail or omit to do.

We live our lives on each other’s behalf. Humanity is one being, and we are micro-cells within that being. Humankind is on a path of accelerated growth, both in population and in spirit. We’re now being faced with the future and with a choice to carry on as before, or to step over a threshold into a rather wide-open and at times scary space. This comes to a crunch when we face the Other, the person or the people over there – the people we don’t like. They test our capacity to understand, accept and forgive – and to see ourselves more clearly.

Compassion means ‘with-feeling’, standing in others’ sandals and boots and feeling what it’s like. Agreement or sympathy are not required. Just feel what it’s like.

This isn’t about giving way, losing your precious sovereignty or getting guiltily floppy. It’s about a new kind of strength that requires discernment. There are things in our world that are wrong, regrettable and ultimately flawed, and we are challenged to stand up and do something about correcting those. Not just to wring hands and grind our angst over them, but actually to do something about it – at least within our own sphere of possibilities.

And there are situations where we need to stop, look and listen – we need to be willing to review our position, our habits, preferences and patterns, and make a change. If a stranger knocks on our door seeking help and refuge, what is our choice?

Israelis and Palestinians can and do have fun with each other

So, if you are pro-Palestinian in inclination, make a stretch and put yourself in the shoes of a variety of Israelis and international Jews. Feel what it’s like being them and being in the situation they find themselves in. And if you are pro-Israeli or Jewish, stretch over to feel what it’s like being a variety of Palestinians, whether in Historic Palestine or in the diaspora. And if you’re not bothered, feel what it’s like being bothered.

Because it’s good for you. It broadens your horizons. This is about humans – and you are one of this crazy, self-immolating species. Would you like being shot at or bombed? Would you like being hungry, having your home destroyed or seeing your father carted away at gunpoint?

Discernment is tricky to work with. Quite often I am approached for help, and I have to say No. That’s because helping them will overload my capacities and harm the people and things I am already working to help. Better to do small things well than big things badly. Guilt does not work in this context: if guilt is involved in altruism or political activism, things will go wrong. Guilt distorts true giving and sharing.

The world is polarising right now, more and more. We’re each and all faced with a question: are we ourselves adding to it, or are we bridging gulfs, whether with a smile or by giving our lives to something that builds bridges?

Jews have been victimised and persecuted for many centuries – particularly by Europeans claiming to be Christians and followers of that Jew called Jesus. Secretly, we Brits, though we righteously fought Hitler, we were quite happy to get rid of Jews and send them to Palestine, one of our colonies – though we’d have preferred them to go to Uganda. We taught those Jews all the means of oppression that we now see imposed by Israelis on their neighbours.

This doesn’t mean we should guiltily go along with what the Israeli state – Netanyahu and the Judaeans – currently do. Because this is about People and the Megamachine, and Israelis suffer this problem as much as anyone. There are young IDF soldiers who, today, are eating their hearts out over serving in Gaza or the West Bank. There are Israelis and diaspora Jews who are in a deep moral confusion and pain over this. It’s Christian fundamentalism more than Jewish extremism that is really driving the Gaza catastrophe.

John, a Palestinian Christian, outside his souvenir shop in Bethlehem, now closed by Israeli soldiers. I wonder how and where he is now?

In the West Bank, one thing that impressed me was that the majority of Palestinians didn’t dislike Israelis as such. Only a few Israeli friends would dare to visit me in the West Bank – the rest feared for their lives, and largely incorrectly. I forget the Arabic word for it, but what Arabs feel strongly about is not Jews, but assholes. They have a strong sense of the difference between a good person and an asshole. As a Brit, by rights I should have attracted the anger of some Arabs, because of history and what we were at that time doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, but I did not.

People would ask me whether I was a Christian, a Jew or a Muslim and, when I said No, they couldn’t figure out how I could be ‘a good man’. Well, the Hand of God moves in strange ways. But they were willing to rise up and stretch beyond their customary social judgements. That was a big teaching for me.

One Palestinian Christian, John, said to me that he felt pity for Israelis, despite all the wrongs they had done to him and his family, because many were Europeans, Americans and Russians who had gone through so much. “As a result, they are individuals, on their own, and they even question and defy God, while we Arabs have each other and we love Allah in ways you Europeans do not understand. We fight them because of our current pain, not because of the pain of the past – their pogroms and Holocaust. So, when the pain stops, we’ll stop. But they find it difficult stopping. If we stop, I fear that they will fight each other. So perhaps it is better they fight us.“

It’s also true that in times of bloodshed and violence, Palestinians polarise against Israelis, and those who don’t polarise have to keep their heads down. But when times of relative calm come along, Arabic attitudes tend to be more forgiving.

This is the secret that many Israelis fail to understand. If they let Palestinians get on with their lives and have a decent life, all will be well, and eventually Israelis and international Jews will have the safety and security they deserve. This will take time (perhaps three generations), and there will be mishaps, but this is how endless war and jeopardy will turn into mutual appreciation and cooperation, even if it takes time.

The Manchester killings happened on the Day of Atonement, giving them extra poignancy. It’s a day of recognition, understanding and forgiveness. A day of consciousness, awareness of options. The Council of Nine, a bunch of non-earthly cosmic beings I had the priviledge of working for, thirty years ago, put it very well. They said that Jews are not the Chosen People – they are People of the Choice. The choice to ‘obey the laws of God’ and the covenant that we as humans have with God or the world of spirit, or of nature.

They also said something else. Although Jews can be clannish, separative and exceptionalist, throughout history the vast majority have melted into the wider world population, through exile, intermarriage, conversion or change over the centuries. This means that you could have Jewish genes, even if you don’t know it. Think about it. I’m part-Welsh, and the Welsh claim historic connections with Jews, going back millennia.

So, if you have strong feelings about Israel and Jews, just remember, there’s something inside you that might need facing. All the things we blame Israel for now, well… actually we all do them and we and our ancestors have all done them in the past – so own up. It helps not to carry those patterns into the future. Because this concerns humans and the future of our planet.

Thus endeth today’s sermon!

As for the Sunday Meditation, you’re welcome to join. There is no mantra, no scripture, no method, no sign-up and no obligation – it’s just a group of us in various countries meditating together for half an hour on Sundays (times below), and doing it each in our own way, together. If needed, further details are here: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

May all beings be blessed, whether they are upstanding citizens or horrendous terrorists, on the right or the wrong side, and whether or not they have a right or an ability to defend themselves. For we all are here on Earth anyway and, in the end, we all seek happiness. And that’s the main thing. Oh, and, if you really want to find a cure for cancer, it’s forgiveness.

Love from me, Palden

If you seek further reading, try these:

The Problem of Israel. (I wrote this article in 2008 for a Bangladeshi newspaper.)
Brinkmanship. (An extract from Healing the Hurts of Nations, a book I wrote in 2003 at the time of the Iraq war.)
A Palestine historic timeline. (The pages that follow it might interest you if you seek insights into Palestine’s history).

Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 8-8.30pm
W Europe 9-9.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 10-10.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
EST, Cuba 3-3.30pm
PST North America 12noon-12.30pm

PS. In my last podcast I mentioned how I’m finding writing more difficult now, and this is still true. Normally I’d write a piece like this in 1-2 hours but this took six. But I did it. Or it did me.

Equinoctial Newmoon

You don’t have to be an astrologer to understand this. Just take a close look at the chart here. It’s an example of a planetary configuration with a strong coherence to it. This sets up a thrum in the energy-fields of the Earth, and it has a quantum effect on what is happening and developing worldwide, both above and below the surface. That is, it has an effect that is more and bigger than it looks like at the time.

If I had to sum it up in a few words, it would be… the turning of a page. Not just short-term, but long-term, and changing the nature and rules of the game – to some extent, without many people being fully aware of it, because we tend to walk backwards into the future. But it is indeed a turning of a page. Or many different pages.

This was the chart for the newmoon yesterday, 21st September 2025. Quite a configuration, with Uranus-Saturn/Neptune-Pluto involved and lots of planets cuspal (changing signs).

Amongst other things, a good time for recognising Palestine – turning the page on the past, and a turning of a tide. But this configuration means far more than that. Look also at things that news media and public discourse are not talking about. Or at what lies behind the events of the day and the next few weeks.

Listen more closely to THINGS than to people.

I think it could be a tide-turning in many ways. But actually, when the tide is turning, nothing much actually happens right then. Or the events that do happen can be symbolic of what is to come. It’s what happened before and what happens afterwards that is what matters when a tide is turning.

History changes because of changes of ideas and sentiments. It sometimes takes time for these to surface and emerge as visible, newsworthy events, but they start at times like this.

We will be seeing more configurations like this over the next 2-3 years, because of the Uranus-Neptune-Pluto configuration that’s hovering around at present (I wrote about this a coupla weeks ago).

When faster-moving planets swing into this configuration, big thrums, bongs and rumbles start up, affecting all of us, globally and personally. At present, a conjunction of Saturn and Neptune is amplifying this – forcing the issue.

We cannot stand still. This period is what I have earlier called an avalanche of events. We’re heading toward a point, or a series of them, where cards are coming down on the table and things just have to move forward. Because, if we don’t move them forward, systems will be overwhelmed, the fuses will get hot and the trip-switches will trip. Then there’s trouble – avoidable trouble.

This configuration is quite balanced. This is a chord with harmony and resonance to it – and a few dischords thrown in to give it a sharper edge.

The big problem today is that things are stuck yet they are also loosening up. It’s like a thaw – and thaws create avalanches.

It’s time to look at our own stucknesses. One big stuckness we all must face is that it is no longer good enough to blame others for our problems. Our problems start with us.

Also, within every problem lies a solution. But, to see it, we must get our stucknesses out of the way and face forward into the future.

One thing that changed around 2012, when there was another significant historic configuration (Uranus square Pluto), was that the future has started exerting a bigger causative influence on the present, overwhelming the stucknesses of the past. That’s why there’s a big conservative backlash happening right now – people are scared. But the past is going and gone. Things will be alright, as long as we respond well to what life is throwing at us – that’s the harmonic chord in operation.

With love, Palden

For more overview stuff (I wrote it in 2020):

The 2020s

and if you want some serious historical astrology, try this:
https://www.palden.co.uk/ephem/6configurations.html

Gaza

A Spiritual Humanitarian Mission

This is a change of course. I’d like to take you on a spiritual humanitarian mission to Gaza, in this weekend’s meditation on a rather strong newmoon. It’s here, as a podcast, and it takes around half an hour:

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

Something prompts me to share this with you. It’s something I’ve been working with for years, and with others (such as https://flyingsquad.org.uk ). It’s spiritual humanitarian aid and inner work to help progress things in our world.

I’ve worked quite a lot in Palestine itself, and that’s why repeatedly I suggest connecting with real people there, whether online, in meditation or by actually visiting. They’re just like you and me. Here’s an audiobook about life in Palestine when I was there twelve and more years ago, in better times than now – it explains a lot: https://www.palden.co.uk/bethlehemblog.html

So many feel deeply frustrated that they can’t do anything much to help people in and around Gaza and the West Bank.

This is one way to work with this feeling, to make something of it. It’s good to make the best out of a bad situation. This is one thing Palestinians teach the world: how to hang in there.

If you haven’t done this kind of thing before, then follow this guided meditation as a starting place. I encourage you to be imaginative, to follow your own way and path, to develop this over time, and to be fully human with the people you meet on journeys such as these. It’s an energy-exchange.

You can do it on your own, or you’re welcome to join the Sunday Meditation each or any Sunday – it’s free, with no complication.

It’s simply a circle of good souls in various countries who meditate together each week. I have a feeling it would be good for the group to work with Gaza for a few weeks. https://palden.co.uk/meditations.html

This is special. With love. Palden

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 8-8.30pm
W Europe 9-9.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 10-10.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
EST, Cuba 3-3.30pm
PST North America 12noon-12.30pm

Shining Land

The ancient sites of West Penwith and what they say about megalithic civilisation.

Audiobook version

I’m happy to say that the audiobook version of Shining Land is now done and ready. I’ve been working on it for the last month.

I tried to finish it before my birthday (on Friday 5th) but, well, life always has something to teach. I had one episode (of eleven) yet to record, but for two days there was a lot of noise from the rain, and from things going on around the farm, and I couldn’t do it! C’est la vie. I got it done eventually.

So now there is an audiobook version of Shining Land. Although it’s about the ancient sites in this area, West Penwith, at the far end of Cornwall, UK, I’ve adapted the audiobook to make it interesting to listeners far and wide who might never have been here.

The nub of this book and audiobook is megalithic civilisation. It was deeper and far more advanced than we are taught. Their high-tech achievements involved consciousness and energy, working on the nature of matter and the issues that life presents from the inside. It was a sustainable civilisation – in Britain, the megalithic periods of the Neolithic and Bronze Age lasted 500 and 1,200 years respectively.

And there’s a wee chance this might interest you! Audiobooks are great for listening to during long journeys, or while doing other things, or if you’re stuck in bed, or if you need a rest from radio stations.

Both the online book and the audiobook are available free, and voluntary donations are welcome.

https://www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/audiobook.html

With love from me, Palden

Reality Fields

A new podcast

The ancients worked with a kind of consciousness technology, and they designed their sacred sites for this purpose. They located them carefully, building them over underground water and energy-vortices, orienting them to the rising and setting points of the sun and moon, constructing them to reflect and embody the fundamental principles of the universe.

They did this to create spaces – crucibles – in which to go into altered states of consciousness. Here they could generate reality-fields that enabled them to reach into things and fix them from the inside.

They lived in a very different world to ours, with no need to build cities or empires since they were advanced in a completely different way. There’s something about this that we need to re-learn in our day, because it concerns our future. And that’s what this podcast is all about.

With love, Palden

It’s an extract from my book Shining Land, which is available online. A new update of the book is coming out soon.

Or go to my podcast page: https://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

It’s a Mega-Twang

Here’s a little astrology lesson, pertinent to what’s happening at present. Take a look at the chart here, for this morning, Thursday 7th August. Even non-astrologers will notice a pattern, a configuration, that is quite orderly and structured.

When this happens, the energy-fields of the planets of our solar system start syncing with each other and creating a mega-twang, a super-thrum, a chord, and in these energy-circumstances things start happening. They start shaking up and rattling loose.

What’s interesting here is that, astrologically, this is not exactly a crisis situation. This configuration is dominated by sextiles (30 degrees) and trines (120 degs), which are aspects (angles) of flow, movement, progression, slip-sliding, letting go and accelerating evolution. It’s not exactly about crunches, shocks, crises and disasters.

It’s about things simply progressing fast. It’s an avalanche of events that push things forward – with an element of overload that itself forces issues out, up and forward. There’s an element of inevitability to it too – that is, things happening now relate to things that happened or failed to happen before, and also (get this) things that are yet to become visible and come into being. This is a case of the future having a formative influence on the present.

If you look at the green lines in the chart, the core issue here is a triangle that is being formed by the slow-moving outer planets, Uranus (in Gemini), Neptune (in Aries) and Pluto (in Aquarius). This is rare, slow, and happening now and over the next few years. It has been building up since Covid-time and it is historic in effect.

A lot is going to change during the late 2020s, and the key issue here is overload. An overload that makes everyone think differently, choose their priorities, urgently seek fundamental solutions and juggle hard to keep everything going.

There’s a useful analogy in geology. The erosive power of a river increases as the square of its volume. In other words, if the volume of flow increases three times, the erosive power increases nine times. We’ve seen this in recent floods worldwide, though a flood is simply a dramatic increase of flow, a releasing of energy. Yes, it destroys a lot and is difficult or deadly for the poor people at the receiving end of it, but the river is constructing a new path by which things can flow better. It is preparing the future.

These three planets will shimmy in and out of exact aspect over the next few years, and they ard pretty exact right now. Since they move slowly, they influence slow-moving, historic processes and mega-trends. Often we don’t notice these except at critical junctures.

An example is Gaza: this is a longstanding issue spanning many decades, even centuries, but the recent famine and starvation event and the war before it made it into a global issue in the forefront of the world agenda. And it concerns bigger and wider global-scale issues than Gaza itself.

When faster-moving planets move into configuration with these three, we start getting a mega-twang. In this chart, Saturn, Mars and Mercury are involved. A day later (8th Aug), the Moon will swing into it too, just for half a day, cranking it up even more. In other words, events happen that precipitate the bigger issues that lie underneath.

This concerns not just world events, ‘out there’, but individuals too – depending on how your own astrological chart works. If you have planets in the first degrees of certain signs, then you might have quite a few planets aspecting one or more planets in your chart. Stuff happening. Make the best of it – seize the time.

How much this is a crisis depends a lot on you. Yes, it’s difficult when stuff is rattling and banging and it’s all too much, but this is also a mechanism by which things change, and you can make that change easier or more difficult.

And here’s something: the advantage of a crisis is that a lot of issues can get resolved at once, and pragmatically in response to real-life circumstances – instead of dragging out over a long period of time, or being avoided or sidelined. We are being given a future instead of simply trudging along through life living with the effects of the past.

This is a time of accelerating solutions hiding behind apparent problems. It depends how we see things, and how much we are willing to let go of old ways of seeing things. This is about the future, not the past.

There will be more of these configurations in the coming few years and it’s worth keeping an eye out for them. This isn’t the end of the world, or the beginning of the new age, but it is definitely a time of white-water canoeing through a fast and rough stretch on the river of life and of history. By 2030 more will have happened and progressed than we thought possible.

With love, Palden

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And if this kind of thing interests you, then my book Power Points in Time is all about it: https://penwithpress.co.uk/product/power-points-in-time/
and a free online archive version, the now rather dated 1987 Living in Time. is here: https://www.palden.co.uk/living/

Amendments

Life has been quite a grind and a test recently. Living as a partially disabled cancer patient makes wading through life twice as difficult, and sometimes I get deeply weary with it. That’s been happening recently.

But there’s a weird psychological program in me that has meant that some of the best work I’ve ever done has been done during such periods, when my Saturnine tough-it-out programming gets activated by life and its grinding difficulties. I tend to tough it out by engaging myself in doing something. A project.

It’s an Aspie hyperfocus thing: if you can’t change your circumstances, change your mood by doing something creative and ultimately useful – even if it yields no immediate benefits. That’s how the program goes – for me, at least. Except there is one big benefit: it changes my mood. And, bit by bit, that can change everything.

That’s how, somehow, over the last forty years, I’ve managed to write fifteen or so books on quite a variety of subjects. Many were written amidst difficult circumstances, or arising out of them. The gratifying thing is that I still agree with pretty much everything I’ve written – or spoken about, broadcast or taught. I have few regrets about it. Which is quite remarkable, really.

Just recently I’ve been at it again. I had a crisis a month ago where I felt uninspired, feeling that I’d said everything I needed to say, and were people interested anyway? Well, as such crises do, it represented a deeper fermentation process going on in the nether recesses of my psyche, and an inner repositioning was going on, unbeknownst to me. I started looking at ‘outstanding issues’ and ‘unfinished bits’ in what I have done. After all, as a disabled oldie who spends more time alone than I would prefer, I do have lots of time.

Just yesterday, my friend Brian Charlton was here. He’s another Glastonbury defector now living in West Penwith – there’s a little secret cabal of us, actually. He lives the other side of St Just, our local village, and he is part a local support group, the ‘Friends of Palden’, that is a blessing in my life. He was on his weekly visit, and benignly badgering me about these unfinished bits. Very perceptive. I realised he was right. I needed to beaver away at clarifying and finalising the signals I’ve been putting out, and there are unfinished bits, and bits yet to evolve further, if life allows.

But there was more: I realised was already instinctively doing it, though I hadn’t realised it until then. It had started with two podcasts, both of which came up spontaneously, about Inner Doctors and Intuition. That got me flowing again, unblocking the logjam that had scrangled up my psyche. That’s one secret that many creators need to understand: if you get blocked up, do something, anything, to get yourself unblocked. And it’s best to forget what you think you ought to be doing, and to be spontaneous and creative instead – because that’s where the taproot of creativity lies.

Then suddenly I found myself starting doing a revision of one of my books, Shining Land, about the ancient sites of West Penwith. Well, there were some typos, readability issues and tweaks to attend to. So I thought. But as things progressed, I realised that new work I have done in the last few years, since I wrote the book, needed adding. I’d gained some new perspectives too, blessed as I am with lots of thinking time.

Most of the book has just needed tweaks and small improvements, but the chapter on Hill Camps has had a rewrite, adding my thoughts on Bronze Age circular enclosures such as Caer Brân, built around the 1800s BCE for tribal gatherings, and their significance. Also, I’ve added new material to the final part of the book, about Megalithic Geoengineering, breaking the last chapter into two and adding new work to both, about landscape temples, wildwood cover in the Bronze Age and ancient trackways in Penwith. And there are some new maps and pictures. I’ve worked on the indexing too (it’s rather tedious).

But here’s the rub. I can’t write books any more. My brains can’t do it. I can do blogs, podcasts and small projects, because they are done and dusted in a day or two. But books? No, they’re big projects. Even so, I can revise books I’ve written before, and the great virtue of revising a book is that the big thinking has already been done. So I can focus on style, details, text-flow, images, maps and new ideas. I can make it a better read.

I discovered this ten years ago when revising an astrology book first published in 1987, Living in Time. It was a good book but it had dated, with out-of-date examples in it from the 1960s to the 1980s. It also needed another spin, since times had changed and many more people were aware of what the book writes about. This is how Google’s AI assesses it:

“Power Points in Time is the title of a book by Palden Jenkins that explores the concept of time and its influence on various aspects of life, drawing on astrology and other cyclical patterns. It examines how understanding these patterns can provide insights into events, decisions, and even the meaning of life. The book uses examples like lunar phases, planetary alignments, and ancient festivals to illustrate how time can be understood as more than just a linear progression.“

Actually, that’s a pretty good summary. That’s the first time I’ve used AI in any of my writings, and it’s likely to be one of the last, since I am decidedly AI-free and Patreon-free in my outpourings. And, for better or worse, I prioritise eyeballs and ideas over monetisation too.

So I revised Living in Time and it came out in 2015 as Power Points in Time. I really enjoyed doing that revision, precisely because the big thinking had been done, so I could focus on other things. But there was another matter too: in 1987 I had pitched the book to people interested in astrology, though later I found that it was most popular with people interested in ancient sites – a different circle of readers. Meanwhile, over the quarter century that followed, I had developed a clearer idea of the combined importance of power points in space (ancient sites) and power points in time (peak periods). So I re-pitched the book toward this ‘power points’ idea.

Then a few years passed, and a big change came to my life – getting cancer and becoming disabled – and, reviewing my life, I realised I hadn’t written a book about ancient sites, even though, on and off, I had studied the matter for fifty years and had done a lot of research in Cornwall for ten years. So along came Shining Land – the ancient sites of West Penwith and what they say about megalithic civilisation. My core proposition was that ancient sites were built for conducting shamanic consciousness work, and that the 600ish ancient sites of West Penwith actually constituted one big, integrated ancient site.

By making a ‘landscape temple’ out of the whole cliff-bound Penwith peninsula, it was possible to raise this consciousness work to a higher level, to benefit not only the local area and its people but the whole planet. The planet is one being, that we have come to know as Gaia, and if the ancients got themselves into enough of an elevated state to do so, they could commune with Gaia, adding a human touch to her work as a planet-being.

They were practicing what I’ve come to call Megalithic Geoengineering. Big stuff. Planetary stuff. And, of course, there’s something to learn from this today.

So, you see, in health and life circumstances I have been labouring somewhat, though in other respects I’ve been quietly chiselling away at generating uplift and raising my spirits by doing those things that I can do, and being creative with it. It fires up my circuitry. Meanwhile I’m de-focusing on those things I can’t do and can’t have – things that weigh me down. As a result, a new, 2025 version of Shining Land will come out shortly as an online book. So there are results to this. Results germinated out of a time of hardship.

Two things happened to help turn things around. One was the spontaneous eruption of the ‘Inner Doctors’ podcast, which revived my creative spirits, and the other was a session with a homoeopath, my neighbour Anna Jenkins (no relation – we Jenkinses are a big Welsh clan). I think the remedies she prescribed have dislodged some fixities and rigidities within me. Well, to be honest, I cannot tell yet, because the last week has been low, lonely and dark and I cannot tell whether my cancer and demise are getting worse or whether this is what homoeopaths call a ‘healing crisis’. But I think I’ll opt for the latter.

It has more hope in it. And hope and belief are motivators. Not as an imposition on evolving reality, but as a way of intersecting fruitfully with it. Hopefully.

Changing the way we see things: inside every problem lies a solution, as long as we allow ourselves to see it.

Sometimes I struggle with that. So, in case you thought you were the only one in this vast universe who struggles with it, think again, for you are not alone.

Love, Palden

Shining Land: https://www.palden.co.uk/shiningland/
Power Points in Time: https://penwithpress.co.uk/product/power-points-in-time/
Podcasts from the Far Beyond: https://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Notes from the Far Beyond: https://penwithbeyond.blog

Inner Doctors

When cancer came into my life nearly six years ago, I found myself adapting some inner visualisation techniques I had learned earlier in life to my new situation. It was a spontaneous thing and a way of dealing with my situation.

I met a group of ‘inner doctors’, engaging in dialogue with them and allowing them to examine me and work on me. The amazing thing is that, in my experience, it has really worked.

So this podcast is about the inner doctors. It’s for people with life-changing or terminal ailments or disabilities, or their helpers, friends or families. But it could be useful to anyone, if only for future reference – after all, especially as you grow older, all sorts of things can happen. They did to me.

I’ve been greatly helped by the inner doctors. They even seem to have helped my outer doctors in hospital, as they treat me. So this might interest you and prove useful.

Though you do need to believe.

Note: in the podcast, at times I did not distinguish sufficiently between inner and outer doctors! Sorry for the confusion.

It’s here:
http://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
and here:
https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/palden-jenkins/episodes/Inner-Doctors-e35nonf/a-ac2c57l

Sunday Meditation again

Listen more closely to things than to people.

We spend so much time listening to talking heads, megaphone diplomats, clickbaiters and politicians, though here’s some news from Kay in Iceland, who’s in our group, about things (not people)…

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Reykjanes fissure eruption update: Both the flow rate and the parts of the fissure that are erupting have reduced markedly, and the general consensus is that it will stop within the next day or two.

Although the positioning of this eruption was rather convenient from the point of view of keeping infrastructure safe, it has not been without some consequences. The magma set vegetation on fire, and thus, pollution and smoke combined with volcanic gases being emitted. The wind direction pushed the gases and pollutants into Eyjafjörður, with Akureyri, the 2nd largest city in Iceland, being afflicted with a bizarre blue haze that has dulled visibility. Sulphur dioxide levels are above-normal but very safe, although some sensitive people may experience irritation. Hopefully, beautifully fresh and clean air and the wonderfully clear light that normally graces Akureyri will soon be restored.

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Now that’s something, isn’t it? Thanks, Kay.

Oh, and yes, it’s the Sunday Meditation this Sunday. If that twiggles your antennae and you wish to find out, it’s here (and times are below):

www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

Thinking on it, I guess why Kay’s report twiggled my antennae is that it was distinctly parallel to my own life at present!

Even so, I plug on… I’ve just posted a new podcast about Inner Doctors. Haven’t got along to announcing it yet though (it’s rather laborious) – and it’s time for breakfast before it gets to lunchtime.

Love from me, Paldywan

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 8-8.30pm GMT
W Europe 9-9.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 10-10.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
EST, Cuba 3-3.30pm
PST North America 12noon-12.30pm

Creeping Mists of Disillusion

All about the warfare, strife and trouble we find ourselves in today – the thoughts of an old peace-freak.

It’s like a virus in the world psyche, ready to pounce on any population that’s losing its way, or damaged, or hurt, or susceptible.

Yet some societies are strong in themselves. Even if they are invaded and occupied, they are not beaten.

What stops many wars is a deep tiredness, a wish to go home and get a life. A societal consensus forms, building resistance to the virus of conflict – an unspoken immunity that decides not to go back there again.

In this episode there’s a moving contribution from two old friends, the late Jaki Whitren and John Cartwright of the Court of Miracles, the greatest rock band you never heard of. They’re making music in heaven now.

Introduced by a stream in Botrea Woods and outroduced by the wondrous birds of Grumbla, Cornwall.

https://creators.spotify.com/pod/profile/palden-jenkins/episodes/Creeping-Mists-of-Disillusion-e35fu2o/a-ac222cj

and also here: https://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

Love, Palden