inner growth – Page 6 – Notes from the Far Beyond

Nearly Went

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I did wonder whether I would make it through the night. In the 1990s I was editor for a publisher called Gateway Books, and we did a book called Today is a Good Day to Die. In the middle of the night, struggling for breath, it felt a bit like that. If I really had to go, this would be a good night to do it. But then, in the deep dark of night, sometimes it feels like that.

I had caught one of the throaty infections that are going around at present. With my immune system suppressed, as a necessary part of my cancer treatment, such an infection could kill me.

During the week I had been labouring. My spirits had been subsiding. Indistinct feelings, hovering between hope and despair, were bugging me. I had been looking ahead to the possible years to come where keeping my spirits up, no matter what, would be a key issue. If I felt bad or were faced with too much adversity, my health could deteriorate rapidly.

I was concerned about money, going back home to Cornwall, care and support issues… and one big, inevitable question. What kind of plans can I make? “Take it one day at a time”. Well, yes, but people and authorities want plans and timetables. When can they visit, when can I do an astrological session, can I take them on an ancient site tour next September? Um, the answer is, I really do not know!

In the morning, when Lynne came in, she was really worried. I was ‘out of it’, wheezing for breath and a shadow of my former self. Poor Lynne – I’m putting her through such a lot. She called the hospital. Anticipating possible sepsis, they called an ambulance. Bring him in. Quick.

The ambulance guys were great. They exuded competence and calm. One of the paramedics was in training, and I was impressed even with him. They listened to my lungs, took blood pressure, asked questions, tapped on their rather amazing mobile computer… Then the main paramedic decided it would be safer, given the infections that are rife right now, for me to stay at home rather than to go to hospital. Indeed, that made sense, but it was a bizarre truth too. There I was, ready to get whisked off to Torbay hospital with blue lights flashing, dressed in my Arabic jalabya and slippers, and suddenly I was back in bed again!

I was prescribed antibiotics, which Lynne later got from the local pharmacy. I don’t like antibiotics. But they are an integral part of the cancer treatment, counteracting the immuno-suppressant chemo and steroids. It’s a brutal system of medicine, but this is what was available when I was diagnosed, back in November. There was no holistic GP or hospital to turn to.

This sad fact goes back to the 1970s, when wiser heads could have adopted an integrated medicine approach to healthcare rather than suppressing complementary medicine and denying it facilities and funding. Had they done so then, we might not have the health and social care crisis we’re having now. It concerns money, politics and social control.

A holistic approach to myeloma would interest me but, in my current condition, I’d need proper supervision from someone who really knows their stuff. I’d need to pay lots for it and I’d need an emergency fallback system, as was needed yesterday. Also, if it involved fasting, forget it, because I’m already down to 60kg (9.5 stone) – there isn’t much of me left to detox! The only person I’ve found thus far who has specific knowledge of bone marrow cancer is Chris, a homoeopath who also has myeloma. But he’s going through the mill too, poor chap. Meanwhile, being treated remotely online without examination by someone in Oregon or Germany doesn’t quite give me confidence.

The paramedics left, and there I was, back in bed, with the fullmoon about to rise behind the hill outside the window. Quite a humdinger fullmoon lining up with Saturn, Pluto and Mercury for a hard-facts, gear-grinding, seismic few days of intensity that are part of the larger Saturn-Pluto conjunction happening at present. Not an easy time – except perhaps for viruses and their propagation needs.

I had a privileged glimpse into the dying process last night. When you approach the moment of death, the world narrows down as if like a funnel to squeeze through, and all the ten thousand things we normally concern ourselves with evaporate into irrelevance. The issue simply becomes taking your next breath. That is, until that ends too. You step through, over the threshold. Suddenly, a big, wide space appears – light-filled if you choose to see it that way. There can be feelings of relief and release.

It’s easier than you think and it’s important not to struggle against it. I know this because, when I was 24 I had a near-death experience. I went to the Pearly Gates and the Guardian told me, “Sorry, not your time yet”, but he took my friend Mike. So I came back, minus most of my childhood memory. I had been unconscious for nine days.

Life is precarious for the best of us, but cancer has brought me closer to the edge. I’m in a myeloma Facebook group where new entrants join, saying they were diagnosed just last week. But also people leave. Their carer comes online to announce that, sadly, their ward died two days ago, so they will now leave the group. It must be one of the more profound Facebook groups around. The solidarity is immense.

Yay, I’m still here! I’m more ‘with it’ today. Lynne was able to leave me alone (with tea and flapjacks) in order to go out shopping – and I hope she finds a friend to hang out with. She is so good to me, looking after me so caringly and tolerating me. It takes its toll on her. A sign at the hospital says that unpaid carers like her save the government £18,000 per year. Well, that’s good. But she is getting zero support herself for doing so. If she pulled out, the price-tag for professional carers and other issues would sky-rocket.

More another time, inshallah. ‘Inshallah’ is a useful word. In secular English it means ‘with luck’. In Arabiyya, the Middle East, it means ‘if it is the will of God’, and whenever they make a statement about anything, they tack the word onto the end of the sentence. It’s a statement of realism. It acknowledges the role of the Great Unknown in our lives.

God bless you all. Still your friend, still here. Palden.

Mild Despond

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I’d love to be there – at the place in the picture. It’s Pordenack Point. I thrive on walking the cliffs, feeling the wide-ocean sense of space you get at Land’s End in Cornwall, with Mexico over the horizon.

But I can’t. Most of the time I’m stuck in bed, though sometimes I clatter around the house with my walking frame.

Bone marrow cancer or myeloma has two elements. There’s the cancer of the blood and bone marrow, with a weakening, ultimately death-dealing effect if untreated, and there are skeletal issues typifying this kind of cancer, arising from weakening of the bones. In my case, two lower-back vertebrae (L1 and L5) have fractured and partially collapsed. This means I can’t stand without holding myself up.

And I get a lot of pain. It hurts, and hurting has become normal. I’ve got used to assessing pain levels. As I write I’m on 3-4 (out of 10) – manageable, but it’s wearing. It niggles, grates and aches. It goes up and down, and part of it is an issue of perception. It’s in my pelvis and lower back. When things are good, I’m down to 1. Nine is a killer – mercifully I get only moments of that, when heaving my creaky bones around.

My spirits are sagging – otherwise they have a way of holding me up. There’s a relationship between spirits and the law of gravity: when your thoughts are light and rising, gravity morphs toward levity, and when your mood is flagging and drooping, this bodily contraption we all wear gets bedraggledly heavier.

Well, I’m weighed down today. If I weren’t a compulsive optimist, I’d be depressed. Probably like Boris feels on a bad day, wondering how on earth to pull off the Brexit promises he’s made. Well, at least I’m not fat like him.

Overweight is normal in our country. I’ve been reflecting on ‘normal’, the yardstick in conventional healthcare and medicine. Last week I got some good blood test results. My para-protein count is down from 40 to 13 in the first of four cycles of medical treatment – the aim is zero. The registrar at hospital thought that was good. It was a nice surprise to me, but in another way it made sense.

It’s because I’m not ‘normal’. It isn’t that difficult being better than normal, because normal means unhealthy, rushed, out of balance – a normal state for many people. In the cancer ward I was in a few weeks ago, the guy in the bed opposite me – a nice chap – had a cup of coffee with three sugars in before bed, and that was situation normal for him.

For decades I’ve been a wholefood vegetarian and vegan, camping out, walking the hills, working with spiritual uplift and holding beliefs that, for many people, are way off their map. As part of my treatment now, I’m imbibing oils, vitamins, nutrients, homoeopathics and other helpers that most ordinary people would never touch or even know about.

I’m even connected radionically to an intelligent E-Lybra computer that’s vibing me with healing radiations from 25 miles away. In my meditation yesterday I let my ‘friends upstairs’ – spiritual guides, if you will – look into and through me. They see me from the inside out.

They examined my pelvis, ribs and blood, my energy-system and psyche, and I was glad to let them in. I let them see my guilt, shame and fears, for their interest, and offered up my life and efforts. To some this will simply be a sign of eccentricity or madness but, to me, it’s part of my spiritual toolkit and a source of relief, insight and sanity.

So when the doctors look at my better than normal results, an eyebrow rises but it goes no further. Perhaps it’s just an exception or good luck. Of course, according to the official line, there’s only scanty evidence that a holistic approach works and they assert repeatedly that there are horrendous risks and dangers to it.

Well, I’m doing it anyway, in the hope and belief that it will help. And faith matters. And the prayers, goodwill and reiki that you good friends out there have been sending me, for which I am genuinely grateful.

I don’t know what my life is going to be like in future. It’s grinding at me. Will I be able to stand on my own two feet? Will I be able to walk to Pordenack Point again? Will I be dependent and struggling or reborn? As yet unknown, these questions depend greatly on how these pharmaceuticals, these holistics and my life-force and spirits progress.

It involves a deep decision. An act of will. A resolve that infuses my bones. A re-irradiation of spirit. Today, that feels a remote possibility. But on other days, especially when I’m bubbling on steroids, it feels more doable. We shall see.

Life gets like this. My first Tibetan teacher in 1974, Akong Rinpoche, told me that when you’re lost and wading through treacle, that’s when the real work is happening, and when you’re inspired by clarity and vision, that’s like a holiday – good for you and nourishing, but not what really makes the difference. He was a Capricorn realist, yet the truth he served me is valuable now.

So, Happy New Decade, everyone. We deserve it. I conclude with a few observations.

When you think you’ve had enough and can’t handle any more, that’s when you’re being stretched into a new capacity to deal with what’s evolving here on Earth.
Second, there’s more, and it’s coming.
Third, it’s all going to be alright, even when it isn’t. This is a tricky truth to live with, and I’ve really learned this one by sharing time with people living in conflict zones.
Finally, to quote a sign at old rural railway crossings in Britain: STOP, LOOK AND LISTEN.

A new decade is a human, post-Christian construct but it makes us think longer term, and this we need to do more of. But remember: listen more closely to things than to people. Stop, look and listen.

And I’ll try to do that too.

With love, Palden

Great Fart in the Void

landsend-29107 — At Pordenack Point, West Penwith, Cornwall

All my adult life I have been an astrologer. People make the mistake in believing that it’s about predicting the future. Not so. It’s about understanding the present and the inner-outer situation we’re in.

Lo behold, my situation seems to be evolving in tune with new and full moons. At these points, key decisions are made (such as to come to Devon for treatment on one fullmoon, and receiving the diagnosis around the next fullmoon), or health developments evolve in stages.

So, it seems to be that, around the recent fullmoon on Thursday, I seem to have been getting a bit stronger, a bit more capable, a bit less spaced out with medications and the shock of it all, and a bit clearer about the coming time. It’s a process.

Nothing miraculous is happening, and this isn’t ‘recovery’ or ‘getting better’ (people seem so anxious about that!). But, provisionally, I can report that something is moving forward. We shall see what happens as time passes.

I’ve been on chemo and steroids. The medications for bone marrow cancer are not as intensive and gut-ripping as for other cancers. It concerns life-blood and bones though, and it can disable and kill, so it isn’t less serious.

The chemo is not thus far affecting me badly – I’m not losing hair, getting nausea or suffering over it. The steroids are weird: they deal with aspects of the cancer, yet they also have a psychoactive effect that I would rate as close to cocaine. It makes me mentally buzzy, a bit heartless, assertive and more confident, and it gives me shaky fingers and a busy head.

I have to be careful with my behaviour, avoiding saying things too abruptly, bossily or directly, inconsiderately. I imagine that, for mainstreamer muggles who encounter this drug, there can be difficulties. But, as you might guess, I have plenty of experience with psychoactive substances, and these symptoms are not strange to me.

Some people press me to go along a holistic healing route, and this I am doing, partially. I’m following an integrated path, trying to exploit the best of both tracks. Many holistic methods are under-proven, and when people advocate them I ask them for actual experience and real information, not just advocacy and sales-talk. The same is true for conventional medicine – it assumes it is the only way, and it is not. We have to form our judgements on these things and get the consequences.

I am on colloidal silver, vitamins, homeopathics, CBD, am considering Essiac, and I’m also being helped by an intelligent, biofield-balancing E-Lybra machine which reads me off and sends me corrective subtle energy-fields in response. I feel that all of these are having a strengthening and transforming effect.

They might mean that I can modify my copious consumption of medications as time goes on. Because, frankly, I seem to be popping pills endlessly, rendered into a peeing, pooing, farting wreck of a man!

This brokenness seems to be a key question. I’m a broken man and I know it. Life has gone ‘wrong’ on me. I’m incapable of standing up and bearing a man’s load – like Atlas who dropped the world and went “Oh no, I’ve totally screwed up”. I’m dependent on the love and care of Lynne, the support of the taxpayer and the help of nurses and doctors. But that’s okay: this is the 21st Century, and we men need to get broken.

There’s another side to this. At age 69, I’m glad to say I’ve done some stuff, seen a lot of things, saved and changed many people’s lives, been places, written some good books, given loads of speeches, started a load of initatives, done some secret manoeuvrings… and, with some regrets, I am happy enough with what I’ve done.

It will be different for people who set aside their true life-path for security, fear, guilt, status or circumstances – they will have regrets.

So, if necessary, I can feel sufficiently satisfied that I did what I could – to an extent. It involves letting go of hopes and aspirations – after all, at age twenty, I did want to change the world, and fifty years have passed and progress has been slow, especially in my chosen areas of war and peace and community transformation.

But that’s life. We didn’t actually come here to fulfill our dreams, though we try. We came here to stand willingly between a rock and a hard place and to do our best with that – to learn from it and to contribute toward making things a wee bit better while we have the chance.

Because that chance evaporates. We do not live forever. We taste the chocolate and the blood, sweat and tears, and sooner or later find out that nothing is quite as we were told.

The most wonderful moments of our lives come and then they go. As you grow older more appears behind you than in front of you, yet there are opportunities for rebirth and transformation at every age – at some ages more than others. The Saturn Returns at age 29ish, 58ish and 86ish are critical junctures, for example.

So it’s okay. Being broken is not such a crisis – it’s an opportunity and a healing. If we take it that way. Live or die, it will be alright. But having this attitude arises from having made life-choices earlier in life that have at times cost me high – I’m ageing and broke, with no medals or gongs, a threat to some and a bringer of blessings to others, and that’s okay.

I’ve made mistakes, I’m an imperfect Virgo, I’ve been accused of murder and treachery, I’ve failed to make a million, I haven’t been the father, taxpayer or employee I should have been and, while in some people’s eyes I’m just a pile of crap and a burden, there’s a deep smile in my heart.

There’s more to do and, if I live, I feel this cancer crisis is bringing things into focus. If I pass away, transitioning to another world, I’m sure there will be plenty to do there too. Even the best of astrologers cannot foresee what happens next. This is the way of things. As my Tibeten lama guru in the 1970s, the Karmapa, said at the time, the final truth is simply like a fart in the void. Not long afterwards, he passed away too.

Bless you for being you, and thank you for being with me on this trip.

Love, Paldywan Kenobi

More to Life

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Pills. I’ve been taken over by an incessant stream of pills. Not just cancer drugs but painkillers, semi-psychedelic steroids, vitamins and homoeopathics, with squirts of CBD and colloidal silver, all meticulously ticked off on the list by Lynne, Virgo that she be.

Today we’ve been to hospital for a bone survey, a blood test and a chemo jab – and we managed to get a cuppa and some glutton-free cake… and the hospital cafe was free of sickeningly culturally-insensitive Christmas music too!

This cultural sensitivity thing is an issue that has been coming up today. As a pedigree aged hippy and an Aspergery type (with ‘wrong planet syndrome’), believe me, I’ve had sixty years of prejudice, projection and, worst, actions taken and decisions made, that have been outrightly discriminatory and definitely a multiple breach of human rights. The pain of this is the current phase of my clearance and reconciliation process.

I’m glad to say it’s working through alright. It’s the past, and the past concerns memory and ingrained patterns. Here I have a message for friends in their 20s, 30s and 40s. It’s this. Whatever psycho-spiritual path you follow (this will change and develop over time), do follow your path and keep on following it. Why? Because I can report that I’m really benefiting from having 50ish years of shit-shifting, magical and transformative experience. It works and it’s worth it.

If, when you’re younger, you build a default pattern of inner growth, it will serve you well when you come to the tests of late life. I started on psychedelics, nature and prehistoric sites at age 16, meditation at 25, therapy at 30 and all sorts more after that, and these act as a spiritual bedrock on which I now stand. I’m really glad that this is so. I’m struggling with my situation so much less than otherwise would be the case.

In particular this concerns death. Life is precarious and a preparation for dying. When your time comes, you need to be reasonably at peace with yourself, with people and with life. This makes dying a very different thing, in comparison to people who pass on with lots of unfinished business. I could die in a month or in 15 years’ time, but I’m doing the business of it now, releasing, re-examining, forgiving, asking forgiveness, and incrementally laying the past behind me. This frees things up and opens doors. It also makes me a better and more interesting person for Lynne to look after. She actually enjoys witnessing my process.

It helps in her own process. This cancer issue has been a rocking side-swipe from life for both of us. She is dedicatedly setting aside much of her life for me. This is enormous and not easy. To add to it, benefits agencies are really mean (they should at least throw £150 per week her way for three months, to help with real financial needs now). Our country is so heartless in this regard.

But it’s not just this. It’s a big psycho-emotional challenge, bringing up deep stuff for her. I really admire her for that and am so blessed by being looked after by Lynne. Tulki, my son, has also helped enormously – not just ‘call of duty’ but in a heartfelt act of solidarity with his dad, even though he lives some way away.

I’m not exactly getting better, but I am in process. In this three-ish month period we’ll discover whether or not this bone marrow cancer is going to subside and what my future life-chances are. Myeloma cannot be got rid of, but it can be managed. My intention is to shift toward increasingly holistic treatments after this deep-shit phase is done – immunity-building.

In the end it all hangs around matters of spirit. Happy spirits mean happy cells and bones. Life is an act of will, and spirit drives our will – and it’s blocked by our won’t. Inner conflict leads to inevitable, inescapable challenges from which no one is exempt. However, relative inner peace leads to challenges too: our soul, given space and attention, has ways of stretching us and moving us forward into new initiations, and this does not stop in late life. At times this stretching can feel to be too much, but it isn’t – you’re simply being taken further.

This is what we came into life for, to learn and to make a contribution. Planet Earth and its people need a lot of contributing right now. Even as an older person, if I am to stick around some years more, I seek still to be a net contributor. There is no such thing as retirement: the work is not done. Earth is not safe, neither is it a secure home for all of its beings. Too many people, animals and environments are having a hard time and are under threat. I don’t like the idea of passing on from a world where this is so. But it’s going to happen anyway.

This is one of life’s final secrets. We think we are so significant but, actually, we get munched up by the passage of history and, in time, we are totally forgotten. Even those who are remembered are not necessarily remembered for reasons they’d prefer. We are important only in the small domain and timeframe we have existed in, and then we evaporate and are gone.

One day you’ll become a memory, and then even this will disappear. So, get a life while you’re here. Try not to hang on too much to things and situations that have a beginning and an end: there’s something more in the silence within your soul – an alignment to the unborn and the undying. The rest is a kind of multidimensional movie. And for me, right now, the current episode involves guzzling a load of pills!

Bless us all. Your friend, Paldywan Kenobi.

Magnetic Resonance

I’ve just had an MRI scan at Torbay hospital. The two guys doing it were great. One of them knew of me. The scan involved lying down flat on a wheeled thing that was moved to the scanner, and I was mechanically drawn into a tube-like chamber.

The scan involved lying there dead still while the machine made all sorts of loud mechanical noises, vibrationally penetrating me. I could feel it slowly going up and down my body. Heat built up underneath.

Inside the tube I felt entirely enclosed. I went inside myself and stayed there while the process went on, for a long 20-30 minutes. When I was ejected I was cemented to my position and spaced out. The two men had to pull me up to sitting position and I sat there like a blinking owl before detachedly swivelling into my wheelchair, to be propelled along the corridors by Tulki.

On the journey home I felt once-removed. Tulki and Lynne were chatting and I felt far away. At home I settled into an armchair for my weekly meditation (7pm GMT on Sundays for 30 mins, every week). My aura was shattered, gone, yet I felt deeply interiorised in a void space.

I could feel my friends upstairs looking intently at, or through, me, as if analysing my state and seeking to understand what had happened and the technology that had been used. They’re strangers to this Earth, and they watch me closely – when I let them in. Yet I was protected, held and safe, enclosed in a calm cocoon of energy.

I had a strong feeling of empathy for people experiencing illness, injury and incapacity in places like Kiva, Congo, Yemen, Gaza, Afghanistan and Syria. I thought also of friends in Uganda, Kenya, Rwanda and Palestine – all fine people doing their best with what they have, yet they don’t have what we have.

The great paradox is that they hold the keys of the future in their hands: we Westerners have created an enormous planetary problem and they are the the ones who will eventually fix it. Their way.

I’m so fortunate to have the medical facilities, knowledge and technology of modern medicine – invasive and violent as it is – and the complementary care and knowhow available here in Britain. No wonder people from benighted and crisis-ridden countries want to live here. There’s little or no sane reason for them to stay where they grew up when we have all this. And our health service depends on them as staff.

People in tough, insecure countries just have to suffer the pain, feel the illness or injury and slowly die. Cancer? Just die. Unless you’re very lucky. I’m so medically privileged. I sobbed deeply over this. It’s not right.

I thought of my Tuareg friends in Tinzibitane, Mali. They are holding together, rebuilding the integrity and heart of their village after a crisis of war and drought in 2012. They now have a new school so that their children can stay in the village and receive an education that both strengthens Tuareg culture and enables them to face the encroaching 21st Century world. It’s so heartening to see them rebuilding their lives, and to be of help in doing so. Together they stand, and they will survive.

I must pull back my aura and re-centre it. It has been exploded, dissipated, shattered. Yet it allows the doctors to see inside me. This is amazing. And I am still here. All will be well. This feels like the beginning of the serious phase of my cancer treatment.

Isn’t it so strange – the life-experiences we manifest in our lives on Earth?

Myeloma

Carn Les Boel, Land's End, Cornwall — Carn Les Boel, Land’s End, Cornwall – a great place for dancing one’s last dance. But, for me, inshallah, not yet.

One of the bizarre aspects of modern life is that, even for one blighted with cancer, it’s necessary to spend lots of time online and on the phone! Not least because of NHS complexities. But also, I went public on this, so I asked for it!

As before, please understand that I cannot answer all messages, though thank you for them. Also, having been an internet nerd since 1994 and having spent bazillions of hours writing books and websites in the last thirty years, it’s good for me to be offline, living in real time.

I’m still alive, and things are progressing. In the last few days I’ve had a meeting with the specialist doctor in Torbay hospital, planning out my treatment. Had a session with a homoeopath who himself has myeloma (bone marrow cancer), and with a cranial osteopath who has worked on my spine and ribs. Myeloma eats away at my bones, making me susceptible to skeletal issues, and this is critical.

I’ve had a scoping talk with someone who does energy treatments using a radionics-related E-Libra machine, and the prospects arising from this bring me great hope. This will go alongside the chemo treatment I shall start this coming week, bolstering my underlying condition and working on the deeper causes of the cancer.

I like this integrated approach, using conventional and complementary therapies in parallel. This should be practiced generally, making use of the virtues of each – though there are big political and business issues around this. The suppression of traditional and complementary medicine is one of the big crimes of our time.

It is also one of the ways in which the rich West, with its vested interests, is driving itself into a backwater – though mercifully the developing world is correcting this, especially in India, China and Africa. Integrated medicine is the way of the future, and watch for enormous developments on this front in the 2020s, mainly in the developing world, driven by necessity.

I hope that my case and recovery by taking this approach will give doctors something to think about. The specialist at Torbay, Deborah, is interested to see what happens. I like her as a person and as a doctor, and clearly she sees me as an interesting case where normal medical rules and expectations might not fully apply.

I am still mostly confined to bed, owing to wedge fractures in the base of my spine (very painful). This arose because, before my back problems emerged in late August, my lower vertebrae were being eroded by the myeloma. These fractures can hopefully be corrected by getting the myeloma under control and by osteopathically rebuilding my lower spine. We shall see.

Thank you so much to all who have sent healing vibes and also much needed financial support. Not least to Tomten the ageing three-legged cat, who lies beside me as I write, healing me in his own way.

And to Lynne, who has done such a valiant job looking after me – she’s the greatest healer of all. She has set aside her own priorities, acting with astounding love and care. What’s most special is that she is not making the kind of age-old sacrifices that many modern women rightly wish to free themselves of – she has done this entirely consciously and willingly and I respect her greatly for this. From the bottom of my heart, thank you and bless you, Lynne.

Also to my son Tulki, who has given generously of his time, intelligence and dedication – you’re a star, Tulki, an outstanding man, and I am proud of you. Yes.

Who are you, Palden, what are you doing here and what is yet to come? These questions have percolated through my tears, fears, pain and also the joy of being alive and receiving so much help and support. I’ve gone through a tremendous insight and forgiveness process and am newly grateful for the way that my life has gone. It’s like a re-commitment process, born in a time of extreme weakness and dependency. Answers are emerging slowly.

A book about my understanding of the deeper meaning of the ancient sites of West Cornwall is likely to result from this, but that’s just one thing. There’s something more awaiting attention. I’ve worked for world change, for peace and love, for fifty years since the revolution of the late Sixties, and the task is incomplete. It will remain incomplete in my lifetime, but I’m still dedicated to making a difference, and this life-and-death experience is sharpening my focus and resolve. We shall see how this pans out. There’s more to come.

Meanwhile, the next few months are critical. I’m only now beginning the healing process. Now comes the crunch. I am at peace with this, and with my friends Upstairs who sent me here and exert their influence from where they sit. Now comes the spadework – chemo, healing and repair.

And a change of fortunes: I’ve soldiered on, repeatedly proving how much can be achieved on minimal resources, but it’s going to be different from now on. Thus shall it be. But now, it’s time for a cup of tea, a stroke of the cat and a rest.

All will be well. Thank you for being with me – it means more to me than I can express.

Your friend, Paldywan Kenobi.