mindfulness – Notes from the Far Beyond

Sunday Meditation again, and…

It happens again this week, on a cushion just under your bum – and the times in different countries are below. Do it your way: there’s no prescribed method, faith or mantra – just a bunch of good souls scattered around, meditating together. No need to sign up, be online or subscribe – just be there, wherever you are.

Information: www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

This meditation was started in 1994 in response to a request from the Council of Nine that we humans do so. It’s at a fixed time so that The Nine can create a field that surrounds us, for that half hour. You’ll feel it, and it begins and shuts off bang on time. To find out more about The Nine: www.palden.co.uk/nine.html

They do not seek followers. Follow your spirit, soul, heart, mind and intuitions and, together, we’ll get there.

I’ve been working through the book I compiled for them thirtyish years ago, ‘The Only Planet of Choice‘, as a kind of revision course. It’s good to re-learn things I learned earlier in life. Or was that another life? They had a big influence on me.

I found some interesting lines from them…

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You must understand that your thoughts are a living reality. If you do not monitor and guard your thoughts, exchange joy for dissension, exchange compassion for disdain, then it is difficult for planet Earth to move forward. We mean planet Earth collectively. If you have gathered but a small understanding of the importance in your moving forward, to benefit the elevation of planet Earth, then you have attained a great step forward for humankind.

It is not necessarily a path of great difficulty, for it is a joyful path, if you understand the truth of who you are. It is a path of happiness, for when you find the essence within yourself, then fear, which creates conflict, cannot completely control you. It is also true that on your path there will seem to be times of trailing backward. What is important is always to understand who you truly are, for you will then move forward. This is your planet, and you have not come here in error.

Every human being who is upon planet Earth has come here by choice. At this time in particular there are many who have come for the purpose of service to planet Earth. Because of the variety and the beauty of planet Earth, and also because of the density that has come into being through unbalanced-negative influences, many souls are now stuck on planet Earth. For these influences try to be in competition with Creation, not understanding that in reality they are of Creation itself – and yet they choose to be in competition, not in obedience, and not in forwardness.

When we talk about obedience, we do not mean that obedience should be blind, not in the way used in your world. We mean that you need to be conscious and aligned to the forward evolution of the universe.

At this time we wish you to appreciate that planet Earth is congested and bottlenecked, since many have chosen to reincarnate here when they could have gone on to other experiences. They became entrapped in what they believed to be reality. It is now time to transcend that.

There are many upon Earth who are trapped in their addictions – if it be addiction to power, addiction to ingestion of substances, addiction to physical sexuality, and to habits, or addiction to attempting to find one’s self in others – and humankind has desecrated planet Earth because of lack of understanding, when in reality it is undoubtedly the most beautiful planet available to experience.

It is important that you not give your free will away: you do it when you permit yourself to lose control of yourself, whether it be with ingestion of addictive substances, or in anger, or other things. You are always responsible: that cannot be removed. This does not mean that you should not have joy in dancing and singing, and all those wonderful attributes that are generated in humankind, for we wish only joy upon planet Earth, and we wish you to enjoy all that has been provided for you. For variety in experience of this kind does not exist in any physical civilisation in the universe.

Always walk in gentleness, in kindness, in joy, and remember this: when you are laughing, the universe is also in laughter and joy. Many of you humans have lived before on planet Earth, as you have all lived in other places of existence. This time you have come here to help planet Earth transform itself. You will continue in future to live also in other planetary civilisation systems, but that does not mean you can escape the responsibility of this existence.

You are a universe within yourself, and your universe affects all universes. As you generate love and kindness, you touch other universes and infuse them. As you generate despair and anger, you also do that to others, for you each are powerful individuals within yourselves.

Some would say that when they die, when they make the transition, they are transformed. But that is not what we mean by transformation. For if in their transition they take with them their problems which they maintained upon planet Earth, then they have created a transformation that is heavier than what transformation truly is on planet Earth.

We wish them to know the importance of transforming who they are during their life on Earth, their direction and their understanding of their responsibility for planet Earth, its inhabitants, its life in all forms, including the seas and the minerals within the Earth – to have respect and to bring about the transformation of planet Earth by elevating it out of darkness. That begins with the individual. Is that explanatory enough?

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With love, Palden

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 7-7.30pm
W Europe 8-8.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 9-9.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
EST, Cuba 2-2.30pm
CST, Mexico, Jamaica, Colombia 1-1.30pm
PST, West Coast North America 11am-11.30am

Sunday Meditation

Those of us who like to do this meditation will be there in inner space at the usual time – times below. You’re welcome to join us – yes, you! Just do your meditation, contemplation, mindfulness, prayer, t’ai ch’i or whatever is your path, in your way, together with us.

As the Christian God once said, somewhere in the Bible, when several are gathered together, tuning into divinity, love and peace, there shall Divinity be. It’s true. The power of it skyrockets.

If needed, full details are here.

Times for the meditation will change with the clocks soon. Why? Because we’re staying with natural time – it’s humans’ clocks that change. We go with the birds, animals and the rising and setting of heavenly bodies. Natural time.

In UK and Europe the clocks change on Sunday 26th October and in North America it’s on Sunday 2nd November. Subtract one hour from the existing time, wherever you are – so, for example, in UK, it goes from 8pm to 7pm (20.00-19.00). Yet it’s the same time!

If thus far you’ve been working with Gazans in your meditations, please stay with them. Things are progressing, but it isn’t getting easier and, in some respects a postwar period can be more difficult than war itself. A few weeks ago I did a podcast with a guided humanitarian meditatation, which can also be applied in other places and contexts, and if that interests you, you can find it here: https://open.spotify.com/episode/0Dl3rJ46VJ7l2PLHIP5dsW?si=dyC2wwmKSHKPEEGVtGVIUw

Some weeks ago, on an eclipsoid newmoon, I wrote that we had just gone through a turning of the page in the wider world. We see this unfolding now. It simply makes everything look different – it’s a deep and fundamental change of optic.

Ultimately, this is how the world, or humanity at least, changes – and that affects the natural world and the wider universe greatly. Since optic is a psycho-spiritual matter, subtly affecting the perceptions, feelings and behaviour of eight billion souls, this is where meditation has quite a big influence.

Love from me, 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
These times will change by one hour in a few weeks. I’ll remind you.

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

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

Sunday Meditation

Without uncertainty there would be no faith. I heard that on the radio this morning. It’s true.

Faith is not just about religion – it’s about beliefs of all kinds. Even belief (or disbelief) in that voracious phantasm called Donald Trump. Uncertainty makes us build a body of interconnected, multi-level beliefs, a world-view, by which we attempt to navigate the mizmaze of reality we’re presented with when we get born on earth and attempt to live out our lives.

This is where change starts, in our beliefs. Occasionally they need shaking up because they can coagulate into set ways and conventions that are not ultimately helpful. This applies to us as individuals and to human collectivities.

If we wish to contribute to changing things and making the world good, we can do so on many different fronts, whether working with overarching principles or with the building of buildings. This is where meditation comes in, because its realm is that of spirit, beliefs and the roots of human thought, feelings and actions.

We can have revolutions or other radical changes, but where revolutions fail is that basic beliefs don’t automatically change with them – though things can indeed get shaken up, stimulating uncertainty and thus a potential reformulation of collective belief and faith. Change needs to start both from above and below.

In meditation, by generating positive vibes and working within the vibrational field of collective human awareness, we’re working with change from the bottom up. We might not see things that way – we might simply be wishing to calm down, or do our practice, or pray for healing or peace – but that’s what happens anyway.

Whatever we seek in meditation, it’s worth adding a prayer that we help humanity raise its level, to look again at its realities, to see things in new ways and to become more conscious. Just this creates world change.

That’s my thought for the day (or the week).

Last week I lost my internet for three days, so no message was possible. So much for uncertainty! But as always I was there in meditation at the appointed time and I felt others of you there too.

You’re welcome to join us in the Sunday meditation. Just join us at the appointed time (see below) and do your meditation in your own usual way, together with us. If you’d like more information, click here:

www.palden.co.uk/meditations.html

On Wednesday 12th February I’ll be doing another Aha Class here in Penzance, Cornwall, and it’s called ‘Getting Dead, and what happens afterwards‘. Since many of you don’t live in Cornwall, audio recordings of the class will be online within a week afterwards. If the thoughts I wrote above are of interest to you, the next Aha Class in March will be about inner aid and geopolitical and planetary healing, consciousness work to help the world progress and to participate spiritually in specific world crises and issues. It will include an inner journey to do some work on that front.

With love from me, Palden

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Current meditation times, on Sundays:
UK, Ireland & Portugal 7-7.30pm GMT
W Europe 8-8.30pm
E Europe, Turkiye and the Levant 9-9.30pm
Brazil-Argentina 4-4.30pm
EST, Cuba, Jamaica, Colombia 2-2.30pm
PST North America 11-11.30am

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