Well, the first day of my 50th year on this planet has been a good one, which bodes well for the next fifty. Transcendental Meditation has made my recovery quite a simple process and as I finished another round, sat on the beach, with the sun beating down, the tide rolling toward me, and such serenity surrounding me me, I knew I was exactly where I should be, with all my grandest dreams laid out before me. 12 years ago, the last thing I wanted was to be alive. How times change, as in that moment I saw all that had gone before as the platform I now stand on to launch into the next void. Why quit when the miracle is always about to happen, with that miracle being the next breath we take and the next beat of the heart. (Photo @jagsbean)
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.
That magic is still with me, and it is bold and powerful and oh so primal, yet tinged with the Divine. Archangel Michael was right to be so persistent with Bishop Aubert. MSM is a vortex now, swirling with forces I feel drawn to. I saw so much sitting there in the quiet of the night, my mind’s eye, alive and electrified, showing me things still so vivid and which I will now channel into the Earth Guardians books.
I woke early the next morning for dawn mass at the abbey. If you ever stay overnight on MSM, be sure to make the dawn mass. I was the only person around at six-thirty in the morning with the only activity being the first autumn leaves blowing over the ancient stone steps underneath an overcast sky. Only six guests arrived for a mass held by as many Benedictine nuns and priests in an abbey which was otherwise deserted. The sacred silence I’d searched for the day before was so tangible as our small group climbed the steps inside the abbey walls to the church and took our places to hear the hymns fill every alcove of the vast church as the sea crashed outside and the wind flew through the upper terrace door as though the wings of Archangel Michael himself had arrived to bask in the beautiful sounds. I have never, and doubt I will ever experience thirty minutes like it again in my life.
I left MSM feeling blessed, awestruck and changed. I didn’t care to know how. There was a sense of relief that the decision to stay on the Mont had been the right one, and one I would be glad to make again. I drove to Carnac on the first day flares of the Autumn Equinox. I’d chosen to make this trip at what I considered to be an auspicious astrological time which exactly one year earlier had seen me singing and laughing in the centre of the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney. This time the moon would be full in two more days, a time when I always feel more energetically charged.
Following a visit to Merlin’s Tomb in the Arthurian Forest of Broceliande and a powerful meditation way off the beaten path where thick moss covered the trees, I continued to the alignments and giant menhirs of the Morbihan region. Some kind of exchange happens when you meditate with these giant stones, and if you approach them with an open heart and humility, the energy will give you what you need to help you on your personal journey.
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.
