Jeez woz ‘ere. Looking over the Judaean Desert toward the Dead Sea and Jordan
Last night (Sunday 22nd October) I had a very profound meditation, more like trance – I was carried away and ‘out of it’, surfacing far later than the usual time, after more than an hour. I felt quite at peace. This morning I feel quite changed – a bit wobbly yet feeling alright too. A few thoughts came up this morning that might be of interest or value.
It’s important to remember that those who are killed in disasters like this are well dealt with. They are withdrawn before pain or horror cloud their passing. They are pulled out in micro-seconds and instantly taken into care, as appropriate to each soul. They don’t seem to experience the impact of whatever hits them or whatever is the cause of their death. If they do experience it, they are detached from it, without accruing psycho-emotional damage. They witness it (for the soul-learning therefrom) but they are put into a kind of state of grace and objectivity where they are not damaged by it. It’s a kind of fast-tracking transitional process.
I’m more concerned about the living and what they are going through.
A Palestinian dove
There are Christians in Gaza as well as Muslims – and also seculars, who are often forgotten. Many of the Christians belong to ancient pre-Catholic, pre-Orthodox churches. (By the way, Arab Christians also call God Allah – which means ‘the God’, to distinguish it from a pantheon of gods.)
Yet I find Christians can have more difficulty passing over – more of a struggle – than Muslims, who seem to have a clearer sense of returning to Allah. Perhaps Christians and Jews have more of a feeling of distance and separation from God, involving more striving, more doubt, more questioning, while Muslims seem to have more inner confidence in their relationship with Allah. Not totally, yet they seem inherently more inclined that way. Hence, perhaps it is the case that they manage dying a bit more easily. In my observation. Speaking as an aged-hippy esotericist with Buddhist inclinations.
If you’re tracking Gaza inwardly, remember the people of the West Bank and the Palestinians in Israel and Jerusalem. ‘Arab Israelis’ are 20% of the population of ‘Israel proper’ and 40% of the population of Jerusalem. Some are Christians and many are Muslims – and they’re both friendly to each other. Arab Israelis aren’t dying in numbers, but they’re going through extreme discrimination and insecurity. Meanwhile, the West Bank is simmering and in danger of boiling over.
However, as an individual, while being aware of the complexity of this situation, it’s better to do small things well than big things badly, so give attention to those aspects of this situation that you are drawn to. Between us, we’ll cover a variety of things.
A boy in Jenin. He knows the sound of flying bullets.
This is big – a paroxysm of human madness where the heat gets high and the light grows dim. Negative influences are having a field day and, to some extent, we cannot stop this and must let the fire burn out. We cannot really affect what actually happens (the forces at play are big and complex), but the secret lies in seeing if we can flip, ease or assist the way it happens, so that there are glimmers of light, more opportunities for redemptive things to happen amidst a disaster.
There’s a lot of opinion and propaganda flying around. Well, in the ‘fog of war’, everyone is right and everyone is wrong. So take note of what people say and understand what lies behind it for them, while also observing your own responses, biases and predilections. Don’t necessarily block off from it, but try to avoid buying into the frenzy. Form judgements slowly. This is a battle of thoughts and feelings, intermixed with anger, and it’s good to try to hold that perspective.
It is possible to hold such a perspective while still having your own personal leanings – if, for example, you are Jewish, or you empathise with Arabs, or you have friends on one or both sides, or whatever. It is possible to run these in parallel, at least for the duration of this madness-epidemic. It’s an awareness exercise.
Barr al-Khalil or the Judaean Desert
This part of the world is often called ‘the Holy Land’. Yet holiness manifests itself there in emphatically unholy, paradoxical terms. It is a magnified microcosm of the whole planet, like a crucible, and Earth’s core issues are all present there. It’s a very small patch of land, the same size as Wales, Albania or New Jersey, in which there is immense complexity, intensity and confusion.
Still, there’s a lot of light there, and the contrast makes the issues so much starker. As a microcosm, what happens there affects everywhere else far more than its size and population would otherwise suggest. It has a similar population to Tajikistan, Togo, Sierra Leone, Laos, Austria, Portugal and Greece, Virginia or Washington state.
The situation in Is-Pal is very much affected by influences from elsewhere – not just military and economic but much deeper, more profound and hidden.
This includes positive influences too: there has been no shortage of Native American medicine wheels, Tibetan pujas, Bah’ai prayers and interfaith ‘encounters’ in this land, and while I was there I met amazing people from all over – even Siberia, Indonesia and the Amazonas. Amongst Israelis and Palestinians there are amazing people. Do not fall for the idea that this is just a simple two-sided battle of hearts and minds – it is multiplex, and the quality of souls in the ‘holy land’ is surprisingly high.
Young peacemakers from a variety of countries, with the mayor of Al Aqaba (who was injured in the first intifada in the late 1980s – he spent ten years in Israeli jail too)
To some extent we must let it play out, and to some extent we can bring some relief, space and blessing to this conflagration. This is a classic high-magnitude soulquake. Above all, stay steady. Keep returning to centre. Stay benign and well-wishing. If you get steamed up and in a mess, go take a walk, get some space and let the knots within you unravel – and take that relieving walk on behalf of those who cannot.
As Pluto enters Aquarius, we’re entering at least 15 years of ‘the battle for the hearts and minds of humanity’. This conflict is one such situation and there will be more, so get used to it and try to work with it. Because it is necessary. As is the case with Is-Pal right now, many of the world’s problems arise from issues we have not tackled and sorted out before. Chickens are coming home to roost in droves, in every department of life and every country. Issues are being brought to our awareness through the events manifesting in our time. These are the material through which we work out these issues.
There will come a point in coming decades when we get to The Big Issue. In this sense we are being given a gift, a collective training, through being given escalating waves of crisis to face. We’re being loosened up and forced to think, to see things in different ways from before, and from a larger perspective.
Palestinian kids on the whole have good fathers
In this sense, something right is happening here – we’re at a ‘never again’ point. This isn’t about cease-fires: this is about ending war and oppression, historically, and events like this will repeat until we get it and do it.
Oh, and by the way, put in a prayer for people in the UN and NGO sectors, from all over the world, who represent a neutral, global viewpoint in the conflict, and who take the strain in very practical ways. For some of them, it’s at great risk to themselves and, for others, it’s round the clock, every hour of the day and night. Stressful and often unthanked – they’re holy warriors.
With love, Palden.
Marwan Barghouti, regarded as Palestine’s Mandela. He’s been in Israeli jail for the last 20 years and they’re likely to keep him there. A mural on the separation wall at Qalandia, West Bank
In the 1990s I ran some meditation camping retreats called the Hundredth Monkey Project (M100). We worked in a circle of 70-80 people with world issues. We didn’t prescribe meditative methods but, to help people get oriented and give them ideas, a method was suggested as a basis to work with. If this interests you, it’s here: www.palden.co.uk/cs06-m100meditation.html
If you’re a member of a group working with issues such as these, then you might be interested in this material about talking-stick processes: www.palden.co.uk/cs07-talkingstick.html
Finally I’ve written an autobiography. It’s online and shortish, the equivalent of ten pages. I was reluctant to write an autobiography, partially because I feel it’s not greatly important and partially because my memory of past events is foggy. In it I explain why this is so. Lots of people have said I ought to write one. I dragged my feet. Standing on stages in front of people comes naturally to me, but I’m also a quietish, Saturnine Virgo who’s happy beavering away behind the scenes and not making a big deal about it.
Yet writing it has been therapeutic. I did it in two rounds. In the first, a year or so ago, I wrote down all I could remember. Letting time pass and recently reading it again, I remembered more events, details and issues. Though really, it’s not life’s events that matter: it’s what goes on inside, prompted partially by those events and partially by stuff coming up from within.
There are general, lifelong issues and patterns too, which are difficult to weave into a short autobiography without making it lengthy. Even so, while working on it I’ve been reminded of something that has been important throughout my life. I’m not sure what to call it. It’s all to do with working with contradiction and paradox. In a way I’m a radical extremist in my spiritual-political views and, to some people, I’m right off the map, not even a decently normal left-winger, conspiracy buff, new age glitteratum or a proper anything. But in another way I have always been measured, considered, anchored in lived experience and seeking balance in my thinking.
My politics – particularly in international relations – comes from my heart. Being with Tibetan Lamas in the 1970s clarified this. They showed me how everyone suffers, rich or poor, privileged or deprived, and that we need to practice compassion and loving kindness toward each and every person and living being. The secret here is to put ourselves in others’ shoes, to see what life looks like from where they stand. You don’t have to agree, just to bear witness and comprehend their situation. I firmly disagree over a lot of things, though I’m not into pointing fingers or demonising people. Such a non-polarised approach isn’t complacency but a way of seeing life that can unlock doors to effective activism or concrete action.
Revolution, to me, involves building the future while letting the past dwindle of its own accord and in its own time, perhaps with an occasional strategic shove. I’ve always been focused not so much with rousing people to rise up as with looking beyond the next perceived horizon and laying the ground for what happens afterwards.
Of course, everyone needs to do whatever they’re moved to do, and to do the best they can with it, preferably without harming others. In the end we all learn from what life has taught us. It’s all part of a bigger, wider movie with a cast encompassing the whole of humanity. If people die in war or by starvation, it is indeed tragic and wrong – one young friend in Gaza has just been killed – yet it is also a sad part of humanity’s learning process, its aversion therapy. It happens because we humans have not remembered the main agenda and what the endgame is.
It’s both a personal and a collective process and, today, the pendulum is swinging toward collective priorities. Our attention is being drawn to the collective dynamics involved in facing the future, which are incrementally overriding the personal preferences and envisionings we all variously might have. In the Global North there’s a lot of braying about personal rights and sovereignty, but much of this is the sad complaining of affluent Westerners, scared of losing the power, advantages and comforts we have had. The future no longer lies with us whiteskins, though we do have a place in it. Around 15% of the world’s population, having banged on about democracy and human rights for decades, to our surprise we’re faced with being but a minority, with equal, not superior, rights to everyone else.
Porthmoina Cove, West Penwith
For better or worse, I’m seriously moderate. I regard Bilderbergers as humans. They do things that are beneficial and things that aren’t. They’re like you and me, really – thoroughly imperfect beings. Yes, they have a certain power to swing things their way, though not as much as some of their critics believe. We need to help them change their thinking, their hearts and their behaviour, since no system of social-political organisation will work well without people’s hearts being in the right place.
If we see those at the top of society as Them, by implication making Us into their underdogs, we tend to reinforce the masters-and-slaves mentality. Even so, we apparent slaves far outnumber them, and we aren’t always stupid sheeple who obey our masters, so ‘the Cabal’ doesn’t control everything. We are co-responsible.
It’s all to do with how we choose to see things. Personally, I see a transformation of the current system to be inevitable and unavoidable. It’s taking longer than many of us first thought, but it is happening. It’s up to us to do what we can to nurture and channel that inevitability, in order not to prolong the agony, since what’s really at stake is the amount, the depth and intensity of suffering and damage that people and the world must go through before we reach a breakthrough point.
Seen in this light, the latest outbreak of violence between Israelis and Palestinians, or between rival factions in Sudan, is a tragic saga of the thrashing of the tail of a slowly dying dragon. In WW2 we had an example of dying dragons: the greatest destruction in the war took place after 1942, when its course had already pretty much been decided at Stalingrad, Alamein and Midway – yet it took a lot of further destruction to confirm that inevitability. Mainly because of masculine bull-headedness. But the matter was eventually harrowingly resolved amongst the ruins of Berlin and Hiroshima.
Carn Kenidjack, West Penwith
In the last thirty years, on top of other projects and activities, I’ve worked with meditation and psychic work. Many political types and rationalists think this is woo-woo, a joke, or peripheral or impractical, and they may hold that view if they wish. The way I see things, a tide is turning, nothing is permanent and we’re working with the historic trends of centuries and millennia. We’re working with the underlying thoughts, feelings and beliefs of people, and that’s what shapes the future.
Those of us who elevate our individual freedoms as benchmarks upon which everything else should be judged are having to swim against a growing tide moving the other way. Individualised self-interest, though indeed relevant and part of life’s equation, is not actually in everyone’s best interest – and the endangered state of our world demonstrates that. Our world problem derives from self-interest. We’re at a stage in history where the survival and benefit of humanity and of the natural environment as a whole have become the top priority. Global circumstances push things this way, and the big question is how fast and fully we respond and adapt. The future is nowadays having a greater causative influence on the present than the past has. We’re being sucked toward the future.
So I don’t rail against the banksters, the billionaires and the secretive manipulators, though I do twiddle their knobs while they aren’t looking, when I can. I do my bit. In my innerwork I sometimes penetrate the backrooms of Davos, or tweak the energy-fields around certain cloud computers, or drop thoughts into prominent people from afar. This probably sounds like fantasy or even megalomania, and there’s truth in that observation too, but feeding and seeding the collective psyche with such perspectives is the beginning of change. All man-made change begins in the psyches of people.
I tend not to see things in black-and-white, good/bad, right/wrong terms – that, to me, is a prejudicial, blinkered comfort-zone allowing us to avoid seeing clearly. When working in Palestine I was not really like many of the other activists. I believed in staying in Palestine for long periods and participating personally in people’s lives, rather than visiting in an activist group for an exhausting and short week picking olives, doing conflict tours and leaning on the copious hospitality of Palestinians.
I wasn’t anti-Israeli either, even though I found some Israelis difficult to relate to, especially if politics came up. Also I don’t agree with the agendas of the state of Israel. But I don’t agree either with the minority of Palestinians who wish, at least in heated moments, to eliminate Israel or drive the Israelis out. To me, it’s not about Palestinians and Israelis – it’s about people, and I worked with those who sought my kind of input.
So when I went through Israeli checkpoints, I regarded the soldiers scrutinising me as real humans, and my behaviour and body-language reflected that – and I got through, often by simply brightening up their day and being a nice guy. I wasn’t there to do battle with the poor grunts on whose shoulders it fell to protect a screwed-up system.
It is easy, popular and sexy to bang on about the badguys at the top of the pile and to dish out neatly packaged certainties about the solution to the problems we face. It gets the hits, royalties and votes, but those who do it then become part of the psychosis of the divisive system that they oppose. Yes, it’s easy to regard Them as the reptilians, the child-molesters, the evil ones, the exploiters, and this neatly places Us in a position of being the pure, the innocent and deserving – and anyone who disagrees with this is clearly on the side of The Cabal.
Near Carn Boel, West Penwith
For me it all started at the London School of Economics in 1969, when I was a student. A situation was brewing where quite a few students were getting confrontative, hurt by the treatment the police and authorities were meting out to us. But I did not believe in confrontation or violence – this would not get the people of Britain on our side. Even if we, the goodguys, won, violence wouldn’t simply subside since it would already be baked into the character of the revolution itself, leading to new atrocities and the subsequent rise of Napoleons and Stalins. So I advocated working toward creating a new future rather than fighting the agents and symbols of the past – a fight we would not win, given the circumstances we were in. I and people like me lost that argument, and eventually the revolution sadly exhausted itself, mainly by tilting at windmills.
I’ve always held a gap-straddling line. Only as I grew older did I come to understand why. I came to see the situation on Earth as part of a larger, deeper, wider scenario. Here comes the button-pressing extremist in me: I fundamentally believe we are not alone and isolated here on Earth – though we are to an extent quarantined. Many people who are into ETs focus on galactic locals such as Pleiadians, Arcturians or Zetas, but it gets bigger, wider and deeper than that. [Here’s an audio talk of mine about this: Life on Earth, Life off Earth.] This has big implications for us on Earth. Bizarrely, the only public figure of recent times to mention this was Ronald Reagan, who once said, “I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world“.
Beings from other worlds are mostly not ‘aliens’, and our origins as human-type souls lie amongst them. But we earthlings do like to see things in polarised terms, and we need to understand that we also are rather daunting to ETs since we’re fitful, unpredictable, inconsistent and we even have divided selves.
It’s a matter of how we choose to see things, and how much fear we weave into it. If you want to see lizard beings and regard them as dangerous, that’s what you’ll tend to see. The same goes for our relationships with all ‘others’, including foreigners, criminals or simply people who share our planet while living in different worlds. It applies also to creepy-crawlies and sharks, or cancer cells, Covid viruses, refugees or lightning strikes.
It’s time to step beyond the judgemental constraints of good and bad, right and wrong. There’s more to life than this. We need also to look carefully at the notion of ‘evil’, which is so easily bandied around – again, to make ourselves look like goodguys. I’ve been accused of being a criminal, traitor, toxic male, dictator and asshole myself, but that doesn’t make me so unless I buy into it. However, it’s still my duty as a human to work on those aspects of myself where I do fuck up.
The way I see things, evil doesn’t exist in itself – it is simply poisoned, blocked, polluted, diverted life and naturalness. The Tibetan story of Padmasambhava is instructive. When he took the Buddha-dharma to Tibet, he did not cast out the old gods and render them into evil entities, as Christians did over in Europe. He made friends and, as a teacher, he raised their perspective so that they could see beyond their situation. He co-opted them to become wrathful protectors of truth – scary, yes, but embodying the fears and defilements that we must face in the process of progressing spiritually. They were given a bigger, broader and deeper job.
This is similar to the legend of Lucifer, the angelic bringer of light, who sheds light on our darker sides, obliging us to learn through hard but necessary lessons. Except the notion of Lucifer got twisted, he was made into a badguy, the light and awareness bit was removed and his badness was made permanent. Poor chap, he’s misunderstood.
Yet there is always redemption, and we can do things to further it. I’m not at all perfect in this, and there are issues I need to sort out before I’m gone. But the main thing is to work at it. The Council of Nine were emphatic about this. [The Nine was a group of cosmic beings I compiled a book for thirty years ago and continue to work with.] They didn’t prescribe an ideal world or state of enlightenment that we should strive to attain – because there’s always further to go, and this is what evolution is all about. They spoke instead of simply creating forwardness and a feeling of progress, because the more it happens, the more it grows in momentum.
That in itself, in any situation big or small, is all that is needed. Whether it’s gardening your allotment, bringing up your kids, doing your work, being socially active or weighing in on large-scale issues, creating forwardness is what we’re here for, as souls. It all adds magnitude to a growing current. It’s about making Earth a good, safe and happy place to live.
In our time, our big advantage is this. Amidst darkness, one candle makes a big difference. In the sunshine, a candle is hardly noticed. We’re in a time when small things matter more than we tend to believe, even though it sometimes feels like the darkness is overwhelming. Yet keeping our eyes on an aged neighbour, changing nappies (diapers), fishing plastic from a river, cooking a nourishing meal for hungry people, or even joining a meditation once a week can make a difference in a beshadowed world.
On Pordenack Point, looking toward Carn Boel and, behind, Tol Pedn Penwith
I have not done well in terms of money or status, though toward the end of my life I’m happy about what I’ve done in other spheres. I’m aware also of times I’ve failed or omitted to step up, but the net balance is, I hope, positive. It feels that way, and in recent years this feeling has helped me deal with cancer: I chose to treat cancer as a crash course in being alive and making the best of what I’m given. Over many years I had gathered a quiverful of growth-tools that have served me well in my cancer journey, and I’m glad I did that. Because cancer and, later, dying, involve a loss of control, and our success in handling them rests on where we’re really at, not in what we’re trying to be. It’s our actual spiritual fitness and muscle-tone that matter here.
This gives us access to a miracle zone where it’s possible to bend, break or bypass the constraints of normality and expectation. Life is a strange dance and, if the one we are dancing with doesn’t dance to the same tune, or seems to oppress or constrain us, then the secret is to step out of the way, out of the set patterns and moulds in ourselves that render us into being victims. The degree to which we feel oppressed, and what we do about it, is something we can change. It can take time and it can be a struggle, but that’s the direction to go in.
A good friend wrote to me as I was writing this. She was concerned about the new outbreak of violence between Palestinians and Israelis. It’s happening yet again. It’s terrible, and it’s easy to get locked into hand-tied consternation about it. Peace will indeed come to the Holy Land, and many people there already subscribe to it. But the dragon’s tail is still thrashing, and it’s tragic and painful for those who are personally affected and involved. Sadly for Israelis, it’s also shutting down an enormous domestic dialogue about the future of their divided nation – predictably, that suppression will charge a high price later on. Yet step back from this conflict and look at it another way, and this is not a war between Israelis and Palestinians so much as a war between the dehumanising drivers of conflict on both sides and ordinary people of both sides.
We can do things about this. We can visit Palestine or Israel to add our bit, or we can make friends with an Israeli or a Palestinian online, or we can donate money, or in meditation we can work at creating a vibe where the people involved are raised up to see things another way, to see the futility of their situation and get a clearer sense of what is genuinely best for the future. It’s not for us to prescribe what that might be, but it is for us to help create a psychic field in which they might progress with what’s genuinely right for them.
Once a conflict starts, it’s not helpful simply to oppose it – it’s too late and, as is often the case, the opportunity for preventing conflict came earlier and we missed it. The trick is to take the situation as it stands, working to twist and weave it another way, to introduce new, unlocking factors, to help those who are suffering, to work with wider public awareness, and even to conduct direct dialogues with generals and fighters in our inner universe.
It’s not a matter of taking sides: we need to step beyond our preferences and biases. No matter how much we believe that past history is important in this or any conflict, it’s the future that really matters.
A young friend in Gaza, Basma, is going to have a baby any day now. What a way for a child to be born. Her brother Moh, a male nurse, escaped Gaza in 2015 and was one of the boat people crossing from Turkey to Greece. He landed up in Belgium, working as a nurse, and died of Covid in 2022. What a life these people have. He had been the hope of the family.
In this week’s meditation, if you join it, I encourage paying some attention to this issue. However, this world is full of worrying problems, and good-hearted people can get overwhelmed with it all. To deal with this, it’s advisable to do small things well rather than big things badly – that is, to focus on the particular issues that mean a lot to you, and to stay with them and proactively do something with them. If we all do that, we’ll cover things better.
It’s also true that everything is interrelated. What’s happening in the Holy Land affects other people and places. Each time something like this breaks out, the collective psyche of the world becomes more disappointed, dismayed and depressed. Explosions and bloodbaths make sensitive, delicate, human issues seem irrelevant, and the problem with this is that empathic sensitivity is a key ingredient in making the world a better place. Wars, meanwhile, are useful to the status quo – they suppress not only the people in war zones, but also the spirits and hopes of humanity as a whole. They make the public jaded, accepting conflict as a given, shrugging shoulders and turning away.
We’re faced with many paradoxes and knife-edge choices in our day. It isn’t simple. This has been the saga of my own life, and many of you might share a similar story. Yet it’s what we’re faced with, and we can fret and worry about it or we can do something, within the scope of our lives and possibilities, and at times beyond it. That is our choice.
Back in 2011 I gave a speech at a conference called ‘Will they still serve tea in 2023?‘. This was the moderate in me, speaking. Some people thought the world might end, or at least radically change, in 2012. Well, life went on after 2012 passed. So, apparently nothing happened. The catastrophists were proven wrong and the normality-freaks seemed to win. But this was a lot to do with the dramatic utterings of advocates who desperately wished to be the one who got a big prediction right. Things did happen. Discreetly, the tide turned. Before 2012 we had a future global problem and, after 2012, we had an actual problem, and as the decades roll on, we’re going deeper into it.
In Britain there’s a legend that King Knut (Canute) tried to demonstrate his power by turning back the tide – and he got wet feet. No, historians are now seeing this differently. He sought to demonstrate that even he, with all his worldly power, could not turn back the tide. He didn’t write an autobiography either.
Castle Rigg stone circle, Cumbria. 4,200 year old sustainable architecture
You’re welcome to join our circle of souls doing a meditation together on Sunday, all at the same time, wherever we are. It’s rather special.
It’s all to bring relief, healing and forwardness to ourselves, people around us and the great wide world. Or perhaps to imitate a mountain for half an hour. Or just to sit there and give ourselves some time and space (go on, pamper yourself!).
In UK we do it at 8-8.30pm, in W Europe 21-21.30, in E Europe, Turkey and the Levant it’s 22-22.30, in Brazil and Argentina it’s 5-5.30pm, in EST USA and Canada, Cuba and Jamaica it’s 3-3.30pm and in West Coast USA and Canada it’s 12 noon-12.30pm.
Makes me feel a bit like Chronos himself when writing all that down!
No sign-up, no recipe, no strings – just turn up in inner space.
Summer solstice sunset, as seen from Trencrom Hill, Cornwall
One thing I like about doing a regular, weekly, ‘booked’ meditation is that I do it regardless of whatever is happening or how I am feeling. I just do it – no question, no struggle. Over time this has created a parallel space in my life with a life of its own, and it has a tremendously steadying effect. It pulls me back on track, helping me step outside the ‘wheel of life’ a bit, to remind me of the main issue or the heart of the matter.
So, whatever’s happening, and however I’m doing, I just do it anyway. That’s a bit different from doing meditation by choice, or doing it daily. Doing it daily is a distinct choice and, certainly at some stages of life, it can be really good, if life allows it. And sometimes it can be made to fit in with life: I often used to go into meditation while sitting with my kids as they went to sleep – and we’d all mutually benefit from the vibe-change. It was a moment of special closeness.
The weekly meditation is very doable. It’s not a relentless habit and it doesn’t require a disciplined or diligent attitude. At minimum it’s a half-hour deeper-relaxation space, once a week, and at best it can sometimes be a game-changing shift, or a blast of insight, or a healing, or an inner journey.
At times I get into some really remarkable inner experiences – for example, when visiting a disaster zone or a world situation, or when communing with people dealing with life. Other times, I just have a quiet meditation. Or I have two or three parts to it, one of which might involve letting my inner doctors scan and work on me, or inwardly being with a friend who needs standing alongside, or simply working over the events of the time, to release them or lift the clamps they’ve put on me.
It varies a lot. It’s a kind of extra dimension in life that goes on anyway, whatever else is happening.
It has certainly been valuable to me as a cancer patient – especially getting involved with ‘inner doctors’. When I had a lot of fatigue a few years ago I found I progressed a long way in meditation. I didn’t have a lot of available focus, but I had time, allowing myself to float and glide, to let be. If you have Longcovid or disability or something similar, I suggest taking a positive approach inwardly and looking for the gift that is available in fatigue or immobilisation.
It’s currently at 8-8.30pm UK time (other times elsewhere – see link below), and quite a few of us are doing it, including people who aren’t aware of these postings – they started doing this ages ago, or because they read the Nine book, or through other connections.
It’s especially good for folks who are doing it on their own, perhaps because of geographical or social isolation, or just because they can and do do it that way. It’s not complex, you don’t have to go anywhere or do anything for it, it’s free and it’s a gift of the present and The Presence.
And here’s a thought. I’m not certain about this, but it’s worth contemplating. In the world’s collective psyche, there’s a certain amount of infection with the psychological thought-virus of war. On the whole, it cannot spread and grow any more than the host body, humanity, will allow – the extent to which it is susceptible. But this thought-virus does not decrease unless humanity as a whole shifts its values to build increased immunity to it.
I’m not talking about conscious thoughts or thought-through policies or actions. It’s on an unconscious level. But I’ve sometimes noticed how, when a conflict subsides in one area, another conflict will come up elsewhere, as if the virus hops from an arena where people have developed immunity (often exhaustion and a desire for normality), to an area where the population is susceptible. It will be vulnerable because of divisive politics, ethnic tensions, oligarchic manipulation, outside intervention and proxy-warring, and sometimes outright madness.
I first noticed this in 1990, when the long Lebanese civil war ended and the multiple wars that broke out as the former Yugoslavia disintegrated.
This dynamic happens in other ways too, and we’ve recently had an example. It’s as if the outbreak of war in Sudan has vacuumed up some of the available violence energy, draining some of it away from Ukraine, where a much talked-about escalation of conflict isn’t really happening – some of its motivating energy has been siphoned off by Sudan.
Sometimes the grief that is experienced in conflicts can be overridden by other forms of grief. This we see in eastern Congo at pesent, where recent flooding has sucked much of the energy out of the complex conflict there. it has shifted the emotional focus.
The recent earthquake in Syria came at a time when the Syrian civil war was subsiding, converting the sump of conflict-grief in Syria into another kind of tragedy. On the other hand, in 1999, earthquakes in both Turkiye and Greece brought a simmering longterm conflict between them to an end.
So if we look at humanity’s collective psyche as an enormous, seething ball of blobs, representing mindsets, and interweaving threads, representing themes and issues, all in perpetual motion, then on the whole there will be a fluctuating balance over time between different forces at work.
This includes positive and multifaceted beliefs too – at times there can be outbursts of negativity or positivity which, over time, balance out. Though despite this, there will also be a slow net shift of values happening underneath. In the last century or so, deaths and injuries from conflict, seen in proportion to the size of population, have actually been decreasing significantly.
It’s useful looking at things this way. This isn’t about Russians and Ukrainians, Democrats or Republicans or the people and the regime: it’s about conflict and polarisation, whoever the current puppets and victims are, and whatever they’re in conflict over – which, to confuse things, might not even be the same issue for each side. It affects all of us variously.
So when we look at current events, it’s important to step back, looking behind and underneath those reported events at the underlying dynamics prompting them. One interesting polarity which I have been personally experiencing is this: strangely, as world population has risen (and dramatically so in recent decades) so too has social isolation and loneliness. That is, with much of the world feeling crowded out with other people, a compensating grouping of isolated people has been growing too.
Even so, those with busy lives and lots of people to relate to will often have a shallowness of relationship leading to an underlying loneliness, even if well-distracted, while those with lots of time tend to be factually isolated, left behind in distant villages or shut in unknown rooms, and they feel it in a different way.
We live also in a world where there are hunger and obesity, and extremes of wealth and poverty, advantage and disadvantage. The issue here is that these polarities have become more extreme, and the natural relationship between them has dwindled – and they live in different worlds.
Same planet, different worlds. Yet even though New York City and the Tian Shan mountains are like different worlds, and though our current obsession with identity obscures our common ground, we are all unwitting participants in one planetary group psyche.
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players; they have their exits and their entrances, and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages.
This evening, Sunday, at 8pm UK time (7pm GMT) you are welcome to join our little circle of souls meditating together, wherever we live, for half an hour each week. (Check out the right time in your time zone.)
Do it your way – however you meditate, pray, chant or whatever you usually do – or simply spend some quiet time with us.
It’s all for encouraging forward progress, resolution and repair to humanity; benefit to nature and all beings; uplift to our planetary world, and welcoming higher powers to work with us and through us – HP Source.
Here’s a prayer for the people and the land of Sudan. This is an attempt by self-oriented forces in our world to take control and overpower a people’s movement for democracy. The ordinary people of Sudan have been making admirable progress in constructing a new way of being and designing their society, and this has, for now, been destroyed by force. It is now time for this kind of control agenda, force and destruction to come to an end. So may these sad events in Khartoum become a profound learning experience for the world, a revelation of the fundamentals that are involved and a moment of social re-empowerment and collective healing for the people of planet Earth, holding the Sudanese in light. May we as a people learn collective maturity so that we can steadily hold the circle of power, holding true to the needs and rights of humanity and all of the species that we share this world with.
There’s no sign-up, subscription, logon or strings – just join us in the energy-field of our circle of souls at the time when the channel is open.
As usual I shall be vegetating from 8-8.30pm UK time, with a number of soul-friends dotted around this weirdly spinning planet, and you are welcome to join!
There’s no sign up or log on or subscription. It’s open. Just find a nice place to sit, and join at that time (adjust for your time-zone – follow the link for details). Be in peace, or practice whatever meditation or form of uplift or consciousness work you normally practice. Do it your way. This is all about spiritually-diverse souls working together toward one basic aim…
…to help humanity and our world progress and evolve in positive ways, to find solutions to our global issues, healing to our wounds and transformation of our historic patterns.
Or words to that effect. You know what I mean, and we know what we need to do.
The bonus here, especially for those of you who often do meditation on your own, is that there is an open channel at that specific time, for half an hour, and it has a way of upstepping the frequencies and giving extra meaning to your meditation. Anyone who joins in participates in that energy-stream.
The beings that have fixed this simply seek to assist us in doing what we need to do, in terms of consciousness work to help our world. They don’t need us to adopt their mantra or perform their method, since they like the variety and uniqueness of each person who participates. It interests them, and they can weave together an energy-stream from that.
It’s just that ‘God’ has a staff shortage here on Earth, and so they welcome all the help they can get, to help us pull off some sort of a miracle on our planet. And this is one way of doing it.
Besides, it’s really quite nice sitting there on your own in the etheric company of a really good bunch of people! So do join if this tweaks you. We’re there every Sunday evening at the same time.
First of a series about my thoughts and experiences around world healing consciousness work.
Over time I’ve gathered quite a lot of experience in this, in my own explorations and working in groups. In the 1990s I ran the Hundredth Monkey Project – camping retreats for 100 people doing inner work with world issues of the time. Afterwards I was involved in the Flying Squad, a smaller group that worked together intensively for twenty years.
Last year I got the message that I should write and record all I know and understand about this. My aim here is to set people thinking about translating their concerns about the world into activities to help it. Together with activism, campaigning, pursuing our life’s work, volunteering, fundraising and things like that, consciousness work is also something worth attending to. We need to co-create a new reality on planet Earth by working with its underlying patterns.
We need to think through the issues around this. Not because everyone should do the same thing, but because, whatever we do, and whatever method we use, whatever faith and belief we have, it’s good that we’ve clarified a few things, for ourselves and with others.
That oft-quoted adage, ‘be careful what you pray for’ is quite profound. So that why I’m doing this series, to bounce things around and give some things to consider. Sometime it will emerge in website form as well as audio.
In the podcast I’m asking questions about what we’re really aiming to do, and underlying considerations about how to go about it. If you’re interested in helping the world, or if you practice any kind of meditation or spiritual work, this might interest you. Because we have a big problem in our world today, and it’s all hands on deck.
It’s 33 minutes long. Music by Galen Hefferman.
If it interests you, there are also the Sunday evening meditations, which loosely concern this very matter. A regular weekly meditation that anyone may join with, wherever you are. Information here.
Walking meditation on St Michael’s Mount, Cornwall
I’ll be doing the meditation this evening as usual at 7-7.30pm GMT and, if it feels right, you’re welcome to do the same.
Some of you might want to do your normal practice, whatever that is. Some might just wish to be still for a while, to get some space inside. Some might be called to focus on the earthquake and the people affected by it. Do whatever is right for you. This is a half-hour open space.
It’s about making a choiceless choice to pursue a pathless path through a gateless gate. That’s a Zen saying.
The main thing that connects us is that we’re doing it at the same time, with an underlyingly shared intent of positive wishes for humanity and Earth.
If you want the full lowdown on it, read this – the first page is the short, need-to-know one, and the rest give additional thoughts.
If you live in another timezone, than adjust the time to your location. If in doubt, just google ‘time now in GMT’ and work it out.
The view from my window on a rare snowy day – it melted in a few hours. It’s not cold enough down’ere in West Penwith, and we’re surrounded by the ocean
There’s something interesting about doing it at the same time each week. Often we might do meditation at varying times when we feel right for it. But doing it at a fixed time means that we do it regardless of our current state and situation.
It becomes a kind of reality-check. What is the is-ness and the beingness of you at 7pm GMT each Sunday?
Some weeks it might even be a bit of a struggle, other weeks it can be inspiring and other weeks it can be just a tick-over thing, nothing special. And that’s the beauty of it.
At present, as you might have noticed, I’ve been rather in the thick of it and, believe me, it stirs me up. I’m being tested and beaten into shape. But the great thing with a meditation at a fixed time is that if I do it regardless of anything, whatever’s happening or wherever I am, it kinda highlights the way in which my inner life and my outer life are both connected and also somewhat independent and unconnected.
Some of the most amazing meditations I’ve had over the years have been in busy or dodgy circumstances – in one, there was distant gunfire going on, but somehow the gunfire prompted me to focus on the heart of the matter. Or there might be loud music next door, or I might be meditating in a busy car park, or I might simply be in a rather stirred-up state. The nature of the meditation, as it unfolds, is often not what was anticipated shortly before.
So in the meditation today I personally shall be offering up all that has happened to me recently, with a wish that it is all for the best, leading to good outcomes. Otherwise I’ll be leaving it open. Perhaps I need a bit of a rest too.
No big deal. If you don’t have time-space this week, that’s okay – just join whenever it works to do so. We’ll be there anyway, whether or not it’s announced online. If you’re happy joining every week, of all the habits we can develop during our lives on Earth, it’s not a bad one, is it?
Love, Palden
This is me at work in The Lookout. (Photo by Penny Cornell, soul-sister extraordinaire)
Here’s a new podcast and also an update on recent developments with the ‘operation’ I reported recently.
The podcast is about World Healing.
It’s a notion that can at times be rather lightly taken, but it’s really important, this. Especially if you feel a need to make a contribution to the world’s future, increasingly shaky as it is becoming.
There are different ways of doing world healing innerwork, and this is what Palden has learned along the way, especially from the Council of Nine, and through gaining experience by running the Hundredth Monkey Camps in the mid-1990s and being part of the Flying Squad thereafter.
There are many applications of this general method of working, in relation to world events as they arise, and particularly to the underlying issues and deep learning experiences that lie beneath and behind them.
This podcast looks into a few of the issues around healing the world. Recorded down in the woods on our farm on Monday 28th November 2022. 30 mins. It’s here:
The ‘operation’ is kinda progressing, a bit edgy, but getting there. The latest crisis is that child Phyllis, 3, has just contracted cholera. The children’s daycare centre in whose care we left her was not the best (it was urgent, though Phyllis thus avoided the car crash), and we need to bring her and Felicia back together – they need each other.
Phyllis
So we’re going to retrieve Phyllis tonight (it’s a five hour drive each way) so that she’s under the care of the doctor I’m working with, who is a 100% good Christian man, and we’re getting on well. The taxi-driver who saved the lives of Phyllis and the agent, bringing them to hospital, I gave the job of fetching Phyllis – he’s another really good man, and I’m going to try to give him work over time, to reward him for his efforts.
Felicia is conscious and steadying, and agent no 2 is in intensive care under the doctor. Agent no 1 is still in captivity somewhere, though I’m not focused on him much, except holding him psychically (as things calm down, I’ll be able to focus on him a bit more – see if I can get some clues).
New funds are coming thru today or tmrw – that’s a relief. Corporations and their accounts depts can be annoyingly slow when you’re in the middle of a metaphorical gun battle. How is it that Paldywan suddenly finds himself working for a transnational bank? I was supposed to be retired and frittering away practicing independent self-care and watching TV. Or moaning about the government…
Anyway, if you are able, please surround child Phyllis, 3, with love and healing, and we hope she will be back on Tuesday so she can be treated by the doctor. Without really knowing it, with her mum Phyllis has been a heroine. I get a feeling this is a formative experience for a potentially formidable lady, in coming times.
My prayer is that Felicia and Phyllis will emerge from this in a positive way. Under great pressure, Felicia has acted very sanely and effectively, hanging in there through a traumatic time, and I would have no difficulty recommending her to an NGO or similar for a good job.
All is well enough with me: this is challenging but I’m holding up, and there are some occasionally really rewarding moments. I’m not at it all the time – it comes in bursts through the day, but they can be full-on when it happens.
One thing my parents gave me, for which I am eternally grateful, is a gift of diplomacy. I’m not sure where I got patience and perseverance from, but thanks for that anyway! Erk.
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