meditation – 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.

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

Sunday Meditation

One reason I’m not writing as much nowadays about the Sunday meditation, or doing written blogs, is that my physical capacity to write is slowly diminishing. It’s all about fingers on the keyboard, and brains. This is the way of things. Yet there is cause for gratitude.

A few days ago it was six years since my life suddenly changed, one afternoon in 2019 while doing gardening. Four of the bottom vertebrae of my back collapsed and, since then, I’ve been partially disabled and also much aged. At first it seemed I had a bad back problem – the pain was total – but after three months I was diagnosed with a blood cancer, Multiple Myeloma, and it looked and felt as if I had a year or two to live.

I’m still here.

“Mr Jenkins, I don’t know what you’re doing but, whatever you’re doing, do carry on.” So said the haematologist in charge of my case, not long ago. The pharmaceuticals and the holistics I’ve been on since then have definitely saved me, but there are two extra things that I believe have made the crucial difference, beyond the medications, supplements and therapies.

The key one concerns being ‘spirit-propped‘ – that’s what it feels like. Being held up by spirit. And doing things to make it so, to prioritise spirit. Of which the Sunday meditation is one. There are times when my spirits flag, I droop terribly, and my body is half-dead, but I bounce back after surrendering, handing myself over to soul and spirit. In a recent podcast I told about the ‘inner doctors‘ I work with – they have helped tremendously. And spirit and attitude keep me going, even through the worst times.

But there’s another one too, which is related: having a mission. I’m a relentlessly mission-driven person and, once I had adjusted to living with cancer, the prospect of having a short life ahead activated something in me: a deep wish to bring my life’s work to some sort of conclusion and to hand it on for others to do something with. After all, all of a sudden I had a lot of available time, and I’ve been on my own a lot too. I was given the space to do it.

So I’ve been doing some remote humanitarian work, and writing and podcasting, and completing my geomancy research, and building an archive of former work on my website. Currently I’m working on an audiobook version of Shining Land, about earth-energy, geomancy and the ancient sites of West Penwith, where I live. That’ll be ready soon.

I have no idea what happens after that, and my strength and abilities are declining, and winter is coming on. Spirit has clearly told me to do only things I am asked to do, and not to push myself. Okay, yes.

But there’s one thing I’ll continue to the very end, which has helped greatly thus far – the Sunday meditation. I hope it has been good for those of you who have joined in over time. I know that my friends upstairs – the Nine – are happy with people they’ve met, and in some cases re-met, in the meditation. And if anyone chooses to continue with it after I’ve gone, the channel will still be open, and there will be times when you’ll sense me there with you.

Because it helps. It helps raise our planet, inch by inch. It helps with the resolution and healing of many things – even during times when it feels like everything in the world is going backwards. Your thoughts and prayers help the oppressed, and they help transform and turn around the great destruction and the great delusion.

If you’re wondering what this Sunday meditation is, check out this page and, if you’d like to join in, you’re welcome:

https://palden.co.uk/meditations.html

It’s dead simple. Just sit with us for half an hour, wherever and whoever you are. There’s no prescribed method or mantra, no sign-up and you don’t need to be online: just do meditation in your own way, however you do it, being in the zone with us. The times are below, for different countries. Come with us to the wordless world, the world beyond and within all things. It drips with sparkly diamonds of light.

Love from me, Palden

Meditations: https://palden.co.uk/meditations.html
The Inner Doctors: https://open.spotify.com/episode/7ukL7efuNJMJciDIWAHyPh…
Shining Land: https://palden.co.uk/shiningland/
Podcasts: https://palden.co.uk/podcasts.html

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 8-8.30pm
West Europe 9-9.30pm
East 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

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

Sunday Meditation

Yes, it’s Sunday, and the meditation continues whether or not I announce it here. You’re welcome to join me and us in this open meditation. There’s no formula, mantra or prescribed method: do it your way, as you always do or have done.

It’s a joining together of souls, to share inner space togther by entering the zone and bathing in a universal energy-stream. No need to be online – switch off your technology to be more, not less, in contact. There’s no sign-up and there are no strings.

Times in different countries are below.

For further details, go here: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

Sometimes I can’t or don’t announce the meditation, but I’m there every week anyway.

I’m feeling rather tired of the daily round being alive, mostly alone and untouched, and of an aching body and the rather uphill climb of being lodged inside it – with a blood cancer, radiation-related, that affects my bones and various parts of this creaky body.

So, if you freely will, keep on with the meditation whether or not I announce it. For there are other people doing it with us, at the same time, in a number of countries – not just us in this group. Hidden away in the world’s quiet corners, we form a network of light, holding the world in place. Holding hands with people of all cultures, backgrounds, faiths and times. Perhaps it’s a secret conspiracy.

We’re sliding into a time of accelerated change, a growing avalanche of events. It’s good to hold the tiller and keep it steady while the world goes into an increasingly swirly, crunchy period of intensity before breakthrough comes. Which it will.

There are, in the end, no winners or losers – we’re all in this together, all humans, sharing a planet that seems big, yet it is so small.

It’s no longer a matter of taking them to our leader – there is none, despite the beliefs of many. It’s a matter of where humanity really is at, as a whole.

One thing that life has taught me is this: those times when everything seems stuck, unlikely to change and seeming to get worse and worse… these are times of prelude to change. So stay with the process.

Such times are part of the cycle of life. They come to oblige humanity to clarify what it truly, ultimately wants and is choosing to create. Then come times when the wave breaks. So getting used to riding our psychospiritual surfboards is a good thing to do. Or perhaps the only thing to do.

It falls on some of us to help bring about that change. Yet it also falls on some of us to look further, to help lay the tracks for what unfolds afterwards and as a consequence. It’s good to look further than the reflective boundaries of our own reality-bubbles.

Bless us all, and here’s a hug to you from me.

With love, Palden.

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

Freedom of Attitude

I’m continually reminded of the extent to which the present is a gift. Everything comes from Spirit, from the Void, from what we call God, and everything returns to Spirit, to the Void and to God. And everything exists within them.

It doesn’t matter how we see the nature and meaning of life, the universe and everything – it’s still the same. We are the eyes, ears and hands of existence-consciousness-beingness. It’s dead easy to forget, to get lost in our stuff, but it remains true.

Some people are in the midst of nightmares right now. Some days ago I did a joint online presentation to a support group in Britain with Ibrahim Issa, director of the Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem, in the West Bank of Palestine. Western governments, aid agencies and donors have withdrawn a lot of support, so we’re having to do some remedying of that, especially since life in the West Bank is getting harder and harder.

I was amazed at his composure. Or perhaps he was just too tired. He and everyone around him had been kept awake through the night by missiles, planes and sirens. And fear.

Even so, they keep on at the school, driving by the seats of their pants – attending to the needs of the children, their families and the local community. On a shoestring.

The latest measure they’ve taken – since Israeli roadblocks all over town make movement difficult – is to take trauma-support services to the people, in a Volkswagen van. It’s a sort of trauma-ambulance, for people losing their rag because of the tensions, dangers and offensive experiences they’re living through.

In my contribution I mentioned the Arabic term, sumud – hanging in there, never giving up. The secret is to stay in the present, to make the best use of the gifts it yields. When the past is being obliterated and the future holds little to hope for, there remains the present – the only time we actually have agency.

My own body is gradually deteriorating – a new health issue is slowly immobilising me – yet I’m continually amazed at the gifts that life presents. One is this: lessons I’m learning from people younger than me. In this case, it’s Ibrahim, teaching-reminding me about the present moment. Doing what you can with whatever is available right now and making the best of it. Because the past is gone and the future is but an idea.

People bang on a lot about freedom of speech, though really we need to learn more about exercising our freedom of attitude.

In the immediately-impending future, on Sunday (times below, for different countries), there comes the Sunday Meditation, and you’re welcome to be present with it. It’s free, no sign-up, no strings, do it your way, and wherever you are.

Perhaps give some attention to feeling what it’s like to stand in the shoes of someone whose life could be snuffed out tonight, for no understandable reason or purpose. Hold their hand. There’s no shortage of available souls in need of good-hearted soul-company, in plenty of places. This is what we can do.

With love from me. Palden.

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More about the meditation: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html
About Hope Flowers school: www.hopeflowers.org – click ‘support’ to find out how to make donations from different countries.
Here’s an interesting talk by Ibrahim, during a recent visit to UK (36 mins long): https://open.spotify.com/episode/0gW1m1QSbrknFftmjzkA2f…

Meditations

And a meditation on leadership

I’m not sure how many people join the Sunday meditations. In a way it doesn’t matter. I know and feel some people are there and joining in, including people doing it because of their own relationship with the same spiritual source as mine, the Nine.

Eitherwhichway, I’m always there, every single Sunday, whether or not I say so. Those of you who like to join in, whether often or occasionally, are welcome to continue. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, it’s all explained here:

www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

and the meditation times for different countries are below.

As a cancer patient with my ups and downs, there are times when I cannot do my customary pep talk. However, even if I’m really unwell, I’ll still be there at the meditation. Even when I kick off my earthly clogs, you might even sense me there on the other side. It’s an inner commitment I made to the Council of Nine thirty years ago, and I just keep beavering away at it.

Whatever path you follow, it makes a difference if you stick with it for a long time, since nowadays there’s a spiritual commitment problem that itself is rather problematic for world transformation. We all need to step up, each in our own way, to contribute proactively to something much larger than ourselves – personal growth and fulfilment is only the start of the great pathless path through the gateless gate.

An ancient pathway on our farm, here in Cornwall

But that’s not what I wanted to write about. I want to give an astrologer’s insight. It’s all about Neptune in Aries, which started at the beginning of April 2025. It has been in Pisces since 2011 – a time of reality-slippage, geopolitical confusion, underlying transition, flailing beliefs, mental ill-health, tech dreams and military and climatic nightmares.

We have Neptune in Aries for 14-15 years until 2039. So this is a chapter, a phase, in which the world lives out Aries-type experiences, hopefully to progress them forward. On a 165 year cycle, Neptune last did this between 1861 and 1874 – the time of Abraham Lincoln, Gladstone and Disraeli, Bismarck, Queen Victoria, Karl Marx, and of roaring, steam-powered industrialisation, warfare, power battles, nationalism, early popular movements and Euro-American colonial expansion.

As Neptune trawls its way round the zodiac, chapter by chapter, it pushes us through periods of preoccupation with certain themes – the rise and fall of beliefs and perspectives which themselves influence the way the world sees things, acting out its anticipations, beliefs, fears and its light and its darkness. There’s a visionary side, a place where dreams and big ideas are born, of revelatory situations and realisations, and there’s an illusory and delusory side, mingled with fantasy, fakeness, projection, hypocrisy, glamour and horror. It’s all dreamstuff, yet it percolates into our reality, both helping and harming us and the wider world.

When Neptune is in Aries restlessness, impatience and frustration come up. Though there’s a lot of noise about freedom and identity, there’s a seeking for social-political-cultural examples to follow, align and identify with – it becomes a parade of leaders, public figures, accidental heroes/heroines (Florence Nightingale was one, last time round), who manifest the best and the worst of human possibility.

Some prominent people represent what is hoped for and dreamt of, or perhaps they represent integrity, genius or a human touch, with their finger on the pulse. Some represent what we most fear and dread, or they capture the hearts and minds of followers to promote or impose their own agenda. Either way, they have a lot of push, even of force – or also they reveal or portray themselves and their flock as victims, as the weak. This often gives rise to strong resistance and counter-measures – last time we had the rise of socialism and workers’ movements. It’s then a matter of how intelligent the wider public is in choosing what ideas and initiatives to subscribe to, and how clear their sight is to exert an influence on the strong.

I think you’ll be gtting the gist of this by now, and seeing how this is playing out round the world today. We’re seeing reformed terrorists gaining power as reformers, Popes calling out the status quo, dictators and billionaires acting out their fantasies, a massive generational change and an ongoing movie in which the best and the worst of human power-plays and moral choices process before us. This action-packed movie demands that we get off the fence to exert a moderating influence on those who lead the public discourse or precipitate evolving facts, whether helpful or harmful.

We’re getting an array of leaders and prominent figures who variously represent different aspects of these issues – and different people will see different facets of them, judging them differently. We’re getting a diversity of realities and viewpoints that partially clarifies things and partially adds confusion. It’s all a matter of perceptions and viewpoints, inspired sometimes with vision and purpose and sometimes with false hope or coloured by predisposition or prejudice. It’s a question of whether big ideas and beliefs attempt to override reality or whether reality clips them back to workable proportions.

There’s a conquering undertone to this – ranging from taking territory or power to overcoming obstacles and pioneering new possibilities. The bottom line is that, in the final analysis, there are no winners, and the idea of winning is inherently flawed. Victory is transitory, and everything turns to its opposite in the fullness of time.

Aries is ruled by Mars which, customarily seen as the God of War, in our time is showing itself also to be a God of Peace – a peace arising from stalemate and from the calculus that further conflict means that even the winner becomes a loser. There are limits to the extent to which the strong can push their agenda.

Each sign unconsciously faces its opposite – in this case, Libra, the sign of agreement-disagreement, values, fair-dinkum and relationship. Neptune was last in Libra in 1942-1956, leading to the formation of the United Nations and the ‘rules based’ order that is now disintegrating as the Global North loses its primacy and the Majority World accrues its true power in world affairs.

This has best been symbolised in Gaza, which in the end is a war between the People and the Megamachine, acting as a tipping point where the power of the Global North betrays itself and the Global South is challenged to find a unified position and agenda of its own, sufficient to replace the old order.

Thus spake Zarathrustra, looking over St Just toward Scilly

Underneath this lies a necessary historic tilting of all and everything, a slow and fundamental shifting from a competitive to a cooperative model in the very nature of society and civilisation. Multiplex issues are bound up with this, and we’re sliding into an avalanche of events that push those issues forward. This multiplicity of issues is pushing us out of our habits, avoidances and complacencies, demanding attention, backed up by the threat of unwanted consequences that will surely arise from inaction.

Historically, we’re surreptitiously entering a new chapter. Last year Pluto shifted into Aquarius and next year Uranus shifts into Gemini. Such shifts or ingresses create a change of themes, realities and atmospheres, which themselves indirectly prompt and colour events and developments. History moves slowly most of the time, though sometimes it moves really fast, and we’re entering such a period.

But it’s all in the way we see things and do things. We can make it easier or more difficult. Our problem is that we have a habit of entering the future facing backwards, of obeying fear, thereby complicating, undermining or blocking the very developments we deeply seek. Our own freedoms, benefits and rights can no longer impose themselves on the freedoms, benefits and rights of others or of nature, reality and the collective good. Change does not have to be as difficult as many people visualise. Its reward is eventual relief from the oppressions we already carry on our shoulders.

With love, Palden

PS. Here’s an example of a new leader who is taking on a big agenda and putting himself on the line. This man, part of the Megamachine and Old Order, is seriously acknowledging the agenda of a younger-generation military dictator who is playing a strong hand of cards. We’ll see more of these agenda-changers in coming years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=navBX2A37ls

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The Plughole

It’s the Sunday meditation again, and I have revived sufficiently from an illness that floored me last week to be able to elbow you about it! That is, you’re welcome to join us in the zone – times for different countries are below. It’s an open meditation space lasting half an hour. To quote Van Morrison: no guru, no teacher, no method – just you and me in the garden… Follow your own path, together with us following ours. We shall be blessed.

If needed, details are here: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

The illness was a fluey thing. My energy was low, and I’d been pushing hard and under pressure in my remote humanitarian work. So when I got cold and wet during a trip to Falmouth, my soul pulled the plug and I went down through it. Next day I was semi-conscious, stiff and hurting, with sluggish brains, wobbly balance, burning feet (peripheral neuropathy) and I was right out of it, gone, hardly here.

A pertinent sign at Gurnard’s Head, in West Penwith

My predominant emotion was grief, over things that have happened, and particularly over moral dilemmas and painful moments in my humanitarian work over the years. I’ve seen people face hardship, suffer and die who, in my estimation, should not have died, and at times I’ve been unable to help – often quite simply I did not have the funds needed for medical treatment for an amputation or to save a life.

This is a deep dilemma being faced by many humanitarians now, as governments blithely withdraw funding and the public shrugs its shoulders. For me, in late life, it has left traces of regret, even though I know that the net value of my work was positive overall, and there’s a lot I’m glad about.

But the illness enabled me to go deep, deep down to a place where the hidden roots of life’s experiences and events ferment and bubble. This is one of the big virtues of illness that many people try their best to avoid – the consciousness changes it can bring about. Sometimes our soul needs to cut us down and render us helpless, to help us work through something – burn through something. Whether or not we actually do this is a life-choice and an exercise of profound free will.

It is an act of free will to choose to go through a turning in the deepest seat of consciousness. You have to go over the edge and take the plunge. Getting into the habit of doing this throughout our lives sets us up for one of life’s greatest and most moving of experiences – dying.

As you approach death, life tends to take you down in stages – a series of crunch moments or crises where your worldly powers and agency are reduced, your world shrinks, and you bodily functions deteriorate. This incremental withdrawal yields the possibility of a new seeing, a new understanding, if we so choose it. Though it involves perceiving truths that can at first be uncomfortable. Yet facing and accepting these revealings becomes a relief too, an understanding, a forgiveness. For this life had simply been a short visit on an ongoing pathway. It begins and it ends.

Back in the 1990s I was privileged to help and spend quality time with Sir George Trevelyan, who was in effect the grandfather of the New Age movement in Britain. Very much a man of the Twentieth Century, born in 1906 and dying in 1996, he was an aristocratic philanthropist, thinker and educator, planting the seeds of the new age and the green movement in the 1940s-70s. He was a four-planet Scorpio. At the very end, he died by decision, announcing that he should not be disturbed or given any food or drinks. He was gone in 4-5 days.

Here’s a video of him talking in 1988, in his eighties. Thank you, Sir George, for being you, for what you did with and for so many people, and for pointing the way in my life too.

Meanwhile, if you care to join today’s meditation… see you there!

Love, Palden

Fullmooning

Kilgooth Ust or Cape Cornwall, with The Brisons behind

First things first… The Sunday Meditation continues, whether or not I announce it. Sometimes I can’t, and there’s no one to cover for me. Yet I’m always there meditating at the appointed time, and so are quite a few other people.

You’re welcome to join us. It’s a recipe-free open meditation, especially for independent souls who follow their own path or live relatively isolated from others. All you need is half an hour, a cushion and your inner presence. Join us in the zone. No need to be online.

I might not be able to do regular meditation calls from now on. A lot of things are happening and I’m rather overwhelmed! Much of it is good stuff, and some is difficult – mainly my humanitarian work.

I three-quarters wrote a blog about this, about compassion fatigue, but I’m not fully clear how to write about a few delicate issues, so that’s gone into in the ‘later or never’ pile. For me, as a lifelong author and editor, getting stuck on some writing is unusual and strangely frustrating!

Even so, things are happening.

– I’m doing a talk on Tuesday 15th April, 7.30 at Gwithti an Pystri, the Museum of Folklore and Magic in Falmouth (book ahead);

– then there’s a visit to Gloucester to see my old friend Ibrahim Issa from Hope Flowers School in Bethlehem, Palestine, on 2-4 May (I’m still looking for a driver-minder for that, or a workable way to get there and back);

– and a talk at the Pathways to the Past conference in St Just, Cornwall, on Saturday 24th May (I’m really happy about that);

– and another at the Just Live Camp near Morvah in Penwith a day or two after, on 25th or 26th May.

Then there’s the Belerion Project, about which I’m really happy too. It’s a research project into the subtle energy and psychoactive effects of the system of ancient sites in Penwith. We did our first field trip to Portheras Common Barrow recently and, despite weather challenges, it went really well. Thanks to everyone who came. The next is on Wednesday 7th May.

I’ve always been rather workaholicky but, age 75 and doing a cancer trip, recently I’ve been running at capacity. Just getting ready to go out can wear me out, requiring a rest, and everything requires twice the effort it took in pre-cancer days. My brains aren’t handling all the messages, chats and enquiries involved – apologies to people I fail to answer.

I’m a hyperfocused Aspie, you see – good at concentrating for hours in a right-brained way but bad at hopping from thing to thing in a left-brained way. Aged brains do get creaky and slow! This is a mixed gift that has come with cancer: I’ve done some of the best creativity of my life, though I have a decreased capacity for admin, lists, names, timetables and even time itself. Or remembering to have dinner.

That’s the way it goes. Ideally I need an assistant (who lives close by and knows me well – not online). But I cannot pay such a person. That’s been one of the issues of my life that I was trying to write about in the latest, as yet unpublished blog: I’ve never had an expense account to finance projects and missions. It’s mostly come out of my own pocket.

A plus with this is that I’ve pulled off some mighty stunts on a slim budget, and I’ve been a free agent, but it is wearing too, and many good things could have happened if I’d had better funding.

For those who suggest I should ‘just’ do some crowd-sourcing (takes ten minutes, it’s easy and the money floods in, haha), I ask, do you require soldiers to fund their service at the frontline? Soldiers are paid salaries and pensions while peacemakers are told it’s our choice, our risk and why don’t we get a proper job?

You might hear a thread of resentment there. That’s why I didn’t complete the blog. I’ve got stuff around it. It’s still happening now: I and others I’m working with in Ghana, Mali and Palestine are all being seriously obstructed by, would you believe, the actions, errors, denials and avoidances of two banks, one in USA and one in Australia.

It’s not simple, this game. Paldywan Kenobi stares down the banksters! Who’d have thought I’d get sucked into teaching banks how to be human, at my age? Oh, and dealing with a few crime gangs, Wagners and drug-addled murderers along the way, remotely from my eyrie here in Cornwall. Well, I’m quite good at it, actually, and many people give up on such things when things get big or dangerous. I tend to hang in there.

When you step into what used to be called The Great Work, the rules of normal life seem to levitate out of the window and disappear. Retirement is something other people do.

For astrologers, I’ve just gone through Saturn opposing my natal Saturn (and square Moon and Ascendant). So I’m doing Saturn, yet again. When I started my cancer trip five years ago, I thought I had 1-3 years left, so I put my rather mission-driven, saturnine sense of life-purpose to the side. But it has started up again!

Well, my dear old late Mum used to say, “There’s no rest for the wicked!”. Well, yes, perhaps so, or perhaps not. She was a do-gooder too, handing me down that pattern, bless her. In our self-centred times, it’s not a sensible strategy, doing good, but some of us choose it or get sucked into it anyway.

Compassion fatigue, versus ‘To give and not to count the cost’. Non-attachment to the fruits of our labours, versus ‘Give me the compensation you owe for your frigging corporate errors’. Yes, these things have been rattling around in my heart during those Saturn transits. Well, life is for the learning.

I’ve been reminding myself of something a young Berliner taught me while standing (as you do) in the Sinai Desert. I repeat this here, particularly for people infected with the Trump virus:

It’s okay in the end. If it’s not okay, it’s not the end.

Love from me – as you might sense, in a rather saturnine mood on this fullmoon!

Palden

Geopolitical Healing

The seventh Aha Class, in Penzance, Cornwall
Weds 12th March, 6.30pm, at The Hive

A settler incursion and tricky situation in the historic souk in Hebron, Palestine

Inner journeying, meditation, remote healing and peace-building. Doing our bit toward tackling the world’s problems – instead of wringing hands and feeling helpless.

In recent times many of us have been moved to join meditations, prayers and link-ups when major crises break out. Waves of mass empathy and concern over such crises can have a wide and deep psycho-spiritual influence – it goes deeper than mere ‘public opinion’.

Praying for peace or showering light over a benighted area are good, though often they are of a generalised nature. They can affect the collective psyche and sometimes help swing things.

But it’s possible to get closer in. It’s possible to penetrate actual situations and play a more targeted part in them – literally rescuing people or souls, or participating in situations, meetings and crux-points at the frontline of human experience.

That’s what this evening is about. This might be a valuable inner tool to add to your repertory. This is not ‘lightworking’ but spiritual humanitarian work – bringing in truckloads of spirit, rescue and healing.

This is not simple. It carries responsibilities, and it’s not a matter of imposing our wishes – benign or biased – on world situations. The key issue is to help humanity learn, to become more aware in making the choices it makes, for the longterm resolution of what are often deep-seated problems.

In the first half of this evening, I’ll outline considerations and issues involved in such work, how we choose issues and crises and work with them, and the blessings, delusions and dangers involved and what it’s all for.

In the second half we’ll go on an inner journey to work with a particular area of focus that is currently afoot in the world. (And, first time round, we won’t be working with polarised Trump-related issues!)

You might or might not wish to go into this kind of work but, even if you don’t, world situations do come up at times, touching our hearts, to which we respond, and inner journeying (conscious dreaming) is one way we can play a part in world affairs as situations arise. Once you get the gist of it, it can be applied in areas that interest you – socio-cultural, ecological, geopolitical or simply encouraging forward-moving change.

If you’ve done this kind of thing before, this class might help you clarify a few things and take it a step further. If it’s new territory, it’s a good place to start.

Since most of you will not be able to come, audio recordings will be posted online within days after the class (no charge) – just follow the link below. Recordings of all of the Aha Classes can be found here. If geopolitical healing interests you, you might find this site useful: The Flying Squad.

https://www.palden.co.uk/ahanotes-geo.html

With love, Palden

Site: http://www.palden.co.uk
Podcasts: http://www.palden.co.uk/podcasts.html
Books: https://www.palden.co.uk/books-by-palden.html