I’ve watched two climbing documentaries recently, Dawn Wall and Free Solo. Both set in Yosemite National Park on El Capitan in what may just be the most beautiful valley in the world. Meru is another I’ve seen over ten times, also filmed by Jimmy Chin who had a hand in Free Solo. I’m not a rock climber, but I’m drawn to these films by the strength of character of the people involved, and the raw exposure to the elements during days or weeks spent climbing the three thousand feet high granite wall. Alex Honnold, however, spent under four hours climbing El Capitan without a rope, or any safety equipment. The film still feels like a dream to me where I find myself thinking, ‘did I really just see that?’ Free Solo is about Alex’s quest to do something no other human has ever done. He achieved what’s been hailed as the greatest athletic feat of any kind. There’s no symmetry between what Alex did in Free Solo and what I’m trying to do with my writing, but films like that, Dawn Wall and Meru, only inspire or perhaps even reassure me that I’ve got to keep writing and exploring where the adventure my character is on, is heading. I understand the doubt in their minds about whether it’s really worth the time and effort to keep trying, but they kept on, and they triumphed.
These films also show Nature in all her majesty. Climbers are people who appreciate the outdoors, the views, they endure the risk, the elements and injuries for the opportunity to be one with Mother Nature, and I get that. They’re also about people looking for a place called the Edge where something can be achieved for the first time in history. When I heard that word, Edge, it brought back memories of the place I was at eleven or so years ago, teetering on the brink of self-inflicted extinction, but it also indicated where I’ve been recently.
With the Winter Solstice a few hours away, I’ve reflected on the last few months and how I’ve pushed myself, addict style, to the edge of exhaustion. I’m coming Out the other side of that, just in time for Christmas. Some of the trials of the last few weeks were intensified by an increase in my Transcendental Meditation and Siddhi programme. It just seemed like the right thing to do as the days got shorter, to go within, bear-like. Whenever time allows, if the inspiration to write has been missing, I’ll meditate, because creativity dwells there. It’s been interdimensional and enlightening as I’ve transcended to the edge of this dimension into others. Through my interactions with Nature’s energy field I’m frequently privy to fleeting supernatural drone footage of Canadian forest canopies and masses of English oak trees. I’ve flown down valleys, seen rain sprinkle the surface of a still pond and listened to a babbling brook. I’ve felt the power of a giant wave and the wind it generates, but it hasn’t always felt like I’ve been the viewer, it’s more that I am a part of whatever Nature I encounter. I’ve ended meditations with the distinct knowing that I’ve had conversations with people, strangers, yet unable to remember what we talked about. Twice I’ve seen a wall of mercury-like energy in front of me and a face peering through with a quizzical look on its face and unintentional psychic phenomena have been happening, more than usual.
These mystical experiences aren’t regular or predictable in any way and I feel they’re just embryonic, with much more to come. Expecting them to happen is just effort. TM should be effortless, I just wait for Nature to bring it forth. Deepening my TM programme feels the right thing to continue doing, something’s happening, something magical. While I’ve found these recent dark and tired days a challenge, they are now ending and the light is about to return. The Earth is due to start breathing out, rising up to meet the light, just as the full moon rises tomorrow evening. I’ll go with Nature’s flow as much as I can, after all, She knows best. Wishing you only light.
Trips spent searching for inspiration are times spent with the rawness of nature, always such a healing and empowering time for me. Mont St Michel is one such place, regardless of the man made architecture which, in my view, were built to celebrate the primal ley-line energy flowing though the site. The impetus for this trip initially came from a dear friend who suggested I might find Mont St Michel (MSM) inspiring. The full itinerary came from another friend who sent me details of a tour the author Kathleen McGowan was due to make of the Carnac region. So I decided to go solo and designed my own pilgrimage based on some of Kathleen’s destinations, and that is how this trip happened. Not for the first time, things fell into place easily and I felt supported from beginning to end, both by my family who afforded me the time away, and by the Universe. I’d never driven in France before, so the seven hundred mile road-trip I was about to embark on was slightly daunting as this was my first trip there for twelve years since last walking through the grotto in Lourdes, a time I wrote about in Awaken. Nonetheless, I felt there was an important piece waiting for me in France. My research confirmed synchronicity with ley-lines – Earth’s primal dragon energies, which are sparks and communicators where my writing is concerned.
The September roads were quiet on the way to MSM and the first sighting of it from miles away across the flat arable land was like a mirage, a spiritual oasis, with the abbey spire rocketing to the heavens. I arrived after a few hours’ sleep during a night-crossing spent in the reserved seating area, but with my ability to meditate in virtually any situation put to good use. Transcendental Meditation frequently lulled me back to a rest, deeper than sleep, turning four hours sleep into what felt like many more. I had no desire to join the huge queues for the shuttles across the bridge to MSM. These trips are personal pilgrimages, dare I say, spiritual quests, as they teach me more about being in my own company (something I have not always good at) and about rejuvenation. Somehow, the older I get the younger I feel. These days are like school for me, learning to live again, finding teachings in marriage, fatherhood, Nature, meditation, and following what I can only describe as a calling which would have never appeared had I not found the rock-bottom I was at twelve years ago when I ran my hand over the Lourdes grotto stone.
I spent the first day on MSM inside the abbey, meditating, looking out to sea from its highest ramparts and terraces. Listening for messages behind the noise of school children and tourists carrying selfie-sticks. Why was I here? What did the energy want to tell me? I couldn’t hear it. Civilization grated on me, but the powerful coastal wind contained me. No matter how strong the wind may be, it always contains me, giving me a point of focus, helping me to go beyond the people from the ordinary to Nature’s non-ordinary reality. I was impatient, seeking instant gratification from a choir of angels declaring my arrival. Then, as I slowed, the energy arrived and as the tour of the abbey progressed it grew in strength as I sat next to the rectangular grass nave where the monks used to meditate. I could have sat there all day and that was how it felt being on MSM, if I was to sum it all up in one word, it would be ‘effortless’ and as the tour guides came, gave their spiels and then went, I learnt to accept everyone’s presence and feel an energy which was subtle at first and then became undeniable. I found somewhere to watch the sunset at the base of the abbey, next to a yew tree and raw slanting rock race which supported the pyramid of Christianity towering above me. Bats woke with the moon rise, and as the tourists left, leaving the forty residents and those staying in the hotels on MSM – its magic appeared in the quietness.
I spent the next four days meditating in areas thriving with the Earth energy stimulated by some of the eighty thousand megaliths placed along thirty-one fractures of France’s most active earthquake zone, causing them to be in a constant state of vibration. I can feel my energy adapting to the experience, to the new resonance of my soul, and I look forward to reaping what will grow from the seeds planted in deepest transcendence with Mother Earth.
Several months into recovery I went to see a psychic-medium and the word ‘meditation’ kept coming up. At the time, I didn’t meditate and certainly didn’t know anything about calming my mind. Drugs and alcohol were a thing of the past, remaining behind firmly locked gates while other, new avenues, opened for me, but my head was still a dangerous place to be alone. Too often I confronted myself in the dark alleys that my all-too-vivid imagination took me to. Respite from my self-sabotaging thoughts was rare and precious as the drugs and alcohol weren’t there to numb it anymore. I was soon to be introduced to a new, natural high, which would protect me from myself, connect me with my Self and in doing so introduce me to the spiritual and creative energy now driving my writing.
The more I learnt about the simplest, yet most powerful meditation technique, the more I realised I’d found a huge piece of my spiritual jigsaw. Rehab helped me realise that Nature was my higher power, my G.O.D. or Great Out Doors. As the fog cleared, I saw Nature in new glorious technicolour. I felt the elements with new vigour, and connected with the Mother of all mountains, Table Mountain, in a way which is probably the closest I’ll ever come to defining what having a ‘religious experience’ means to me. Blessing’s came in many guises during rock-bottom and rehab. Being given the chance to heal in Cape Town was one of the biggest gifts, second only to meeting my soulmate and having the family I yearned for and now have. They only came to me because I’d found rock-bottom, though, because through the process of descent and return, I cleansed my life of the imposter claiming to be me. Funny how it works isn’t it. With this new-found love of the environment in my recovery toolkit, I was then given my TM mantra, a sound of Nature itself. A combination of two syllables, meaningless where the English language is concerned, but with a vibration which forms part of the primordial hum of the Universe. A sound of Mother Nature and the more I repeat it, the more powerful it becomes and the closer it brings me to Nature. Step eleven – ‘Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him/her,’ had just taken on new meaning. Nature’s natural instinct is to support and help grow, so I was tapped in to a force which would always look for the best for me.
I kept going to the meditation retreats at a country house in Kent where forty of us meditated in a group, seven to eight times a day. There I listened to the teacher talk about the power of the group, coherence. Three days of group meditation during the retreat gave each of us the benefits of three months of solo meditation. The most noticeable change was how I interacted with Nature, and it with me. I had moments when I felt trees acknowledge me, and I felt their joy as they basked in summer sunshine and danced in winds. I found myself overcome by love at random moments. Tears ran down my face in crowded trains after twenty minutes of TM as gratitude and a feeling of profound love washed over me. Yes, those moments were just that, moments, but they were so powerful I knew something magical was taking place.
