New Vision

 New Vision

My journey to the heart, for those who have been following my blogs and journeys, has been a long one. That, however, is not a bad thing as far as I am concerned. A slow comfortable ride is, for me, always the best way to travel because you get to take in the scenery and really enjoy the whole process in a relaxed and contemplative manner. Anything I can do that brings me in to my body rather than into my head, or out of my body, I see as a step in the right direction.

As a musician, I have always been more interested in the aural responses in life rather than the visual. This, I feel, has kind of put me at odds with the rest of the world. Technology has highlighted this very clearly. If we look at our mobile phones every aspect involving the eye has got higher and higher in its specifications. Our cameras have more and more pixels, more than my ageing eyes would be able to notice as things become ever more blurry for me. On the other side, our music has become more and more squashed and the bandwidth narrower and narrower so the quality is hardly worth bothering with unless you’re prepared to use high-quality streaming in exchange for storage. I would go for that every time. If we look at our meeting places, in our bars, cafes etc., the decor has slowly been changing. Before we had comfortable soft furnishings that soak up the sound and make the room relaxed and easy to talk and hear what is going on. Now the carpets have been replaced with bare floors the furniture has lost the cushioning and every surface is a hard one. The sound clatters around like a ping pong ball and everyone has to speak louder and louder to be heard, creating a stressful and very unrelaxing atmosphere.

Why is this? About ten years ago I read two books by Joachim- Ernst Berendt called The World is Sound Nada Brahma and The Third Ear, on Listening to the World that explained this for me. Berebndt explains that the eye works with the masculine energy. It is the creative light that travels in a straight line from the eye out to the exterior world. From this we have created television and computers etc which takes ourselves out of our own ability to create and imagine and replaces it with outside images. As our journey into the left, masculine part of our brain pushes us to an out of kilter state, the separation from ourselves and each other grows year on year. The ear, conversely is the least understood part of the body. The cochlea is spiral in shape and reflects the life force that is all around us. It works with the fibonacci series, a mathematical formula, from which all life grows from leaves to trees to our bodies to galaxies. This is the feminine aspect of ourselves and brings us into our inner world. The spiral energy takes us from the third dimension in which we reside and spirals up through the sound, through the harmonics which are held within each note and raises our energy into the higher dimensions. 

It is in this place that we find who we truly are and here we can find peace. To close down this aspect of ourselves goes against our nature and creates a society of angry and unhappy people. I keep coming back to the toad in the boiling water analogy but only because it is so true. (For those who haven’t heard it, it is the scenario where if you put a toad in boiling water it will immediately jump out. If you put it in cold water and slowly turn up the heat it will sit there slowly adjusting to the increase in temperature until it dies. So far I believe we are that toad still happy to adjust to the worsening circumstances in which we allow ourselves to be in.) So I ask at what point are we going to decide that the heat is unbearable and make the necessary changes to choose to leap out of the boiling water. I know we have the ability we just need the desire and the awareness that things need and can change. If we continue to buy into what we are continually being sold, things which truly do not serve us, that make our traumatised egos feel better but our souls weep, will we ever change? I believe so. 

While so many are blind to this story (and of course it is only my story, well not just mine) I am ever hopeful that the blindness will somehow shift to a state of inner vision. This is where the truth can be found and I find it fascinating how the irony is playing itself out here.

Just the other day I decided to turn on the television; a rare occurrence in my house and went to the Ted Talks channel. I was just looking for some inspiration and came across a talk by a scientist who was speaking on behalf of the people who found the gravity wave. Apparently a scientist, 40 years ago, had the foresight to believe this could be achieved and managed to get the project funded all that time ago. It took till last September for the machine to be turned on and within weeks, I believe, they got their first result. How amazing is that. 

What was more amazing for me, and for them of course, is that they realised that they would never be able to see this event, however amazing their technology was, as they understood that that the cameras and our eyes are too limited. Firstly there is simply too much in the way between us and the event and secondly they know that the eye is far inferior to the ear as we can only see about ten percentage compared to what we can hear. So when the result came through it was of course as in an aural not a visual form. It sounded much like a whoop! I found this very amusing and very beautiful as indeed did the scientist and it showed me that, I believe, we are on our way home. We’ve a long way yet to go but I feel these are the first signs of our scientists recognising the importance of the ear over the eye and therefore the heart over the head. 

I am doing my best to listen more and rely less on my sight. When my partner took this picture of me last month, neither of us knew why we took it and no one offered us any insight. But there was the answer right in front of me. I am proposing an enquiry into the world where our ears become king rather than our eyes; where we listen first and judge second. The eye has so much room for error, (optical illusions are a classic case here; we have no phases like this for our ears) yet our ears are far more accurate and sensitive. 

I am working on a year-long of course of meditations and today’s is based on the idea that everything we see is only a reflection, this is a known truth that when we look at something we are only seeing the light and colours in reflection. What I hadn’t thought of before today is that it is only a reflection of our own inner light. Could this help us to see more clearly?

I would like to leave you with that insight. Any reflections on that would be gratefully received.

The Time of Reckoning

The Time of Reckoning

2016, what a year it’s been and Spring is only just raising its head. I’m calling it the year of reckoning though we probably could have called any of the past few years by the same name. But this really is the one. If we haven’t sorted any outstanding issues already now is the time. 

I know I still have many skeletons in my closet, who can honestly say otherwise. Speaking and hearing my truth is probably the answer to most my issues though I know I can’t even get close until I start feeling my truth. Layer upon layer of life’s little challenges mean that there are many walls that I have put up between me and my real self to deal with my sense of separation with spirit. Neale Donald Walsh put it very clearly in his book ‘Communion With God’ where he explains the difference between our cultural understanding of a religious god and a spiritual one. As we are told through our religious stories that god is separate from us we deal with that in different ways. With the feeling of loss, fear and need to be able to return home, the possibility of failure leads to much judgement and pain. With these negative feelings we put up barriers between our selves and our heart as all feelings are too challenging and we gradually lose sense of our truth, who we really are. The painful illusion that we bring into being as we close down our powerful and beautiful being and replace it with a version of the ego completely detached from spirit, this dulled down lesser version ourselves, creates a world of lost souls.

So how to get back to where I know I want to be. A return to the heart means a journey back to the body, to the senses. I know I have been stuck in my head for so long and though I have talking about the journey to the heart for many years now, the journey is slow. I know also that that is not a bad thing. I have always said my journey is a slow steady incline whereas I see so many others having huge breakthroughs and epiphanies and try not to be envious of their huge leaps forward. 

As the end of the year brought a few emotional releases and that led to me damaging my back and causing an inch and a half pelvic drop, I knew that this was just the straw that broke the camel’s back. Consequently, I enjoyed a few bedridden weeks to contemplate my navel. Removing the tension that I was holding in my root chakra, or rather my ass, to be blunt, was necessary before I could get to the core of my issue. Two months later and a book falls into my hands whilst visiting the lovely town of Hay-on-Wye. The many books shops stuffed to bursting with books and how is it the right one just falls off the shelf? I bought it because I thought it would help me as I am at the point of trying to lay out my book and do as much pre-publishing work as I can before it goes to print. Little did I know it would offer far more than technical help.

It was Brandon Bays “The Journey”; even the title was similar. I was looking on the astrology shelf to see how broad that section would go and if my book would fit. To be honest I think it had been moved to the wrong section as it had no astrological connections at all. Funny how these things come about.

In the book she talks about healing her beachball sized tumour and then how she goes on to create a healing method for all. It is the most powerful journey and an extremely important healing tool and the sooner we learn to recognise its truth as a culture we will all benefit.

She goes on to teach people how to release their pain, pain that they have often been holding on to since childhood and release symptoms both physical and emotional in the most profound way.

This book became the subject of many conversations and one of the most profound was when discussing the decline of our National Health Service with my parents and how our government was intent on breaking it up. When my father asked if, in the future if our government has completely dismantled it, we were capable of recreating it in the same way we had brought it to life in the first place, I replied that I didn’t think we had the post-war blitz spirit necessary to want to spend that amount of money and also that medicines and operations are now so expensive it is almost impossible with the budget our government puts aside. This was my third dimensional head speaking.

Then I thought maybe this is the blessing. Maybe as we begin to lose the NHS we will, out of desperation, turn to alternatives such as Brandon Bays healing methods and realise that there is a better a way; a way that doesn’t involve going under the knife or filling our bodies with terrible poisons labelled ‘medicine’. I realised that we will soon look back at this era as a truly dark age and that the answer is actually already here if enough people are ready to trust themselves and stop putting their power into the those that wield it. 

We have dumbed down our energy for too long and now we are being asked to reawaken and shine and know that we are all self-healing beings and if we are willing to step into our feeling senses, into our bodies and get out of our heads, all the answers are there.

I know I need help getting there, into my body, so I can listen to it and hear its wisdom. But I also know that as I already know what I am hoping for and desire it, the end is in sight. I also know that as I journey through this work there are many way ahead of me and many following close behind. 

The Problem Of Time

The Problem of Time   

Weaving the classical physics and quantum world together 

On reading Greg Braden's amazing book 'Fractal Time' he states that scientists have reached a sticking point they are calling 'the problem of time'. It set me to thinking. 
As I understand it, if time is relative then our relationship with it is the imperative. The problem is that we can only view time from our perspective. We have to learn to look as if we are outside the box. 
In a talk I give I compare the Russian Doll model to the idea that all the beings in our universe exist like this within the Fibonacci mathematical model. This I know is not new. I express the idea that each body from an atom to the universe itself are all just mini dimensional versions of our Universe. I remember one gentleman afterwards being quite upset and tried to explain to me that a cell was not at all comparable to the solar system as I had implied. He told me that electrons do not travel around the nucleus in the same way the planets go round a sun. 
I wanted to question this but couldn't find the words. I needed to sleep on it as all Pisceans know (this talk had an astrological theme which always upsets scientifically orientated people). After some thought I began to query whether the random movement of the electrons around a nucleus were possibly only apparently random to us because being so small and so fast we couldn't actually track the movement of the electrons. Just as when we move something fast, like wagging a pencil between our fingers, our eyes only pick up a single image out of the blur. Maybe if we could slow the movement of an atom down and increase the size to that of a solar system then it would travel at a speed our eyes could handle because it's nearer to our own sphere of existence, now that we have computers that can track these large scale movements. Similarly if we sized down a solar system to mirror that of an atom then maybe the planets too would seem to appear in random places or in two at the same time. It is all relative and it is all relative to us. Surely that is the whole crux of the new science we are having to embrace: the new laws of relativity. 
I think this can also be seen on much closer sections of the dimensional spectrum, if we choose to see it as a spectrum, which works for me with most ideas I explore. If we contemplate the idea that as time is inseparable from space so that it should only be called 'spacetime' then objects of a slightly different size will also work within a slightly different time frame. When I read A T Mann's 'The Divine Life' He explains it as if we work on a varying spectrum of frames per second. So a moth that has a life span of one of our days would experience many more frames per second in the their body pulses, heart beat, cell rejuvenation and of course visually, literally, how many frames per second it would see, than us. The opposite would be true of an animal such as a tortoise. This is why when we see a bird fly past the bonnet of our car and we feel we have experienced a near miss situation, the bird, working on a much faster time frame than us, has sailed through the gap thinking it had as much time as if we were on a boat sailing through a swing bridge. It's all relative and the sooner we grasp this the quicker we can move on with our understanding of time and its so called problem. 
I find it funny that whenever we humans discuss great ideas we always forget to put ourselves in the middle of it. Surely this is the only place in the physical world we can see the world from. But whether it is ecology - I am still waiting for the term to become 'our environment' rather than 'the environment' so that people can start to understand the importance of our part in our responsibility here on this beautiful Earth - or science the lofty view of the Aquarian style average scientist always forgets that it is impossible to experience the world in any way except through themselves. 
So when we contemplate the weird bendiness of time surely we have to put ourselves in the centre again. 
When we watch our clock ticking away on our phones or in our cars it seems like it is a constant, an immoveable force that we have created out of own amazing logical, systematic calibration of time. 
However, when I get in a car and plan to arrive at a certain time, even though I know it is probably an impossibility, whether it be too long or too short, it all to often makes me turn into the drive or where ever I am arriving just as the clock ticks onto the time I'd set in my mind. How can this be? 
One classic time was when leaving London late after the theatre, with a group of friends, to return to Somerset I had said in my mind and possibly to my partner who was asking when he should expect me, that we should be home at 2am. I was probably over estimating it so he shouldn't worry if we were late and allowing for things that often crop up, late after show drinks, getting lost, you know the kind of things you don't plan for. Well, we actually left early and we should have been home by 1am as traffic through London was quiet at that time, which isn't always the way but this time it was. 
We were making good head way and the mood was light. We left the M25 and as we went to turn off to the M3 the exit was closed, the motorway was shut. This seemed bizarre. We somehow had to turn back on ourselves and make our way to the M4, not a terrible detour but not great either. We'd thought we'd turn off at Chippenham and not lose too much time. After half an hour down the motorway we saw a big sign 'M4 shut junctions 12-14'. This was getting outrageous why would two motorways be completely shut at certain points, well, more importantly the points we wanted to use. So we turned off at junction 14 and our poor driver who was tiring by now had to drive down a whole sequence of B roads to try and get back to the M3. We were hoping that this far down it would be open by now. Half an hour later and time is ticking on, we reach the M3. It is open, thank the Lord and on we go. By now, I Spy and any other silly games we can remember are brought out to keep our spirits up and our driver awake. As we begin the home stretch and turn to the A303 which was always our invented route the cones started to multiply, I've never seen so many and again we soon realised that this was because the entire road had been shut down. Our last leg was being denied us and another major road on our route was completely closed. Exasperated, we made our detours and after a while someone asked what the time was. I began to see a significance. It was 1.40 and we were about 20 minutes from home. My good old clock setting mechanism had pulled rank and the Universe had colluded to get me home at the time I had requested. 
Now I can hear you laugh and so did my passengers when I begged forgiveness that I had made all this happen (in a light-hearted funny way of course) but I cannot recount without completely boring you how many times things like this have happened to me. This was just one of the more outlandish. Well I mean, 3 major roads just to get my physical world and my world of intention to collide is quite a feat to manifest but isn't that what the quantum world is helping us to understand: that our thoughts create the world. The world is how it is because we are not the observers but the participators. 
So, does time move? Yes if course it does, it bends. That's nothing new. But what I'm trying to show is that we don't see the time bending because firstly we are part of the bending so can't see it. But also the increments of movement, like those of an atom, are too small for us to observe. We can watch the second hand tick we we can't feel the minute bending of time that we create because it's too small, literally, on a different dimension from us. 
The bottom line is of course that time doesn't exist. It exists only as part of our experience of life in the third dimension as we travel through spacetime in our projected expanding experience of the Big Bang. It's real to us because our experience of it makes it so and that is real enough. However, when we learn to expand our consciousness out of our limited physical realms, like our ancients did, then our conceptual understanding of the universe will grow many fold and start to resemble the understanding that our ancients had and many indigenous communities still hold. How else did we understand the layout of our Solar System to invent the ancient wisdom of Astrology. How else could we understand the deeper aspects and wisdoms of our universe, if man had not been able to go beyond the physical world and see the it from beyond the limits of our human perspective: understandings that our scientists are only just beginning to see themselves. 
I believe science is slowly realising the huge potential that we have at our fingertips if we go beyond the fear of the unknown and dive in. Then we will realise that there is no problem with time, because time will disappear as something to be tied down and will be allowed to move and change in much the same way we can change our whole world if we choose to. 
Our thought waves are the things that are really real and they shape and form our world and our movement within it. So let's decide to use those thoughts in a positive way and see what kind of reality we can truly create. I don't want to stress the urgency in this because, of course, there is no time to lose.

Lighting A Candle For Peace

 Lighting A Candle For Peace  

 

So, as we are heading towards the end of the year and Christmas is nigh what are our hopes and dreams? Who would have thought it would be war? Sadly the truth is that if that is what we have collectively created then that’s what we have been collectively wishing for.  Although this is clearly very sad, acceptance is the first step towards change and I have come to learn to accept the journey we are on.

Any of you who have come across my Keys to the Golden City project know that the number 12 is very important to me for many reasons. It feels ironic that I only have to look back 12 years to find myself in exactly the same position that I am now only hopefully slightly wiser to the story we are creating. 

After years of not feeling the urge to march, especially after the grimness of the poll tax march in 1990, in 2003 I took to the streets again, terrified that the government (I had ironically voted for) had no idea of what they were stirring up. It’s taken until now for Blair to admit that he was wrong and that the war created the new Islamic State and the ironies continue because it was he who called those that marched against the war ‘naive’. Well, the mirror always shows the truth revealing the leaders to be the ones who were naive.

Now, it seems that just as our leaders of only 12 years ago are beginning to understand the fire they have been playing with and apologising for it, the next generation of politicians are already put their hands to their ears and are refusing to listen to those that made the mistakes before them, thinking they know better.

Until we realise that we are all victims here, until we realise that blame has no place in this story, because once you begin playing that game you find yourself right in the firing line.

We are a people at war with ourselves and we continually turn that inner conflict into sibling rivalry. Seeing ourselves in our brother, the Cain and Abel, Isaac and Ishmail we then play that conflict out with our neighbours, and this was stated so clearly by the Dalai Lama when asked why he didn’t fight back against the Chinese. 

He was quoted as saying "Well, war is obsolete, you know." Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said, "Of course the mind can rationalise fighting back ... but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the mind, and the war would be inside you."

The idea that believing in peace is naive, as I have often been told, fascinates me as does the idea of love. To my mind there is absolutely no other way of being, no other solution. The fact that most people find this impossible is a small stumbling block that I refuse to let get in my way. The fact that war not only fails to solve any problems but as in most cases and especially this one, hugely adds to them doesn’t seem to stop people thinking it’s the only way. In a society that prides itself on logic I remain constantly baffled. I, on the other hand, do not believe in logic and war proves its downfalls time and time again. This is probably best left for another blog but I will just say that Edward De Bono’s lateral thinking ideas beats logic any day.

I would like to illustrate my thoughts with a little story, a true story, well, true as I saw it.

I grew up in Bristol and for most of my young childhood Bristol suffered from conflict between its black community and the police as did most cities in Britain. This climaxed in 1981 with the first of the country’s race riots in St Pauls. As the riots beaconed around the country, five years later it came full circle back to Bristol. By the nineties, after nearly two decades of a conservative government, the country was struggling with growing tensions between rich and poor and all the problems that brings and Bristol, which is essential quite a gentle, artistic city began being visited by the North, particularly the gangs from Manchester and then closely followed by the Yardies, the hard drug runners from Jamaica. Many of these brought guns with them and a level of violence the Bristolians simply weren’t prepared for and didn’t want. What followed was an amazing thing. Suddenly the enemy at home seemed far less like an enemy when these outsiders came to stir things up. The only solution was to work together and remove the common enemy. Now this is not a new story, but the oldies are always the goodies and the black community and the police combined forces and got rid of the scary invaders. When they were gone all that was left was relative harmony. (I don’t want to imply that there are no race issues in Bristol, just that things were greatly improved. We are still a people in conflict after all). The gift had been received.

I believe that when we understand that the West has been responsible in many ways for creating the unrest in the Middle East, but that the responsibility lies with the other side too and that this goes back millennia, we can see that the IS is our gift. As the brothers, Isaac and Ismail have played out their sibling rivalry through the centuries, we now have an opportunity to join forces to remove the common enemy, remembering that this common enemy, IS, is just the mirror of our deepest fear and anger. Just as we created it, it is up to us to learn to love and forgive ourselves and therefore remove this enemy, the enemy within that has been manifested without. 

I believe, guns simply add to the pain and anger and with each bomb that is dropped we fuel the fire as an endless spring of angry muslims are radicalised by our actions and join the rivers that flow into the ocean in the Middle East. It is simple cause and effect, as we continue to bomb the Middle East, young Muslims will be drawn to continue to join up. How long are we prepared to keep this endless, terrible cycle alive?

It is the coming together which is the gift and if we use the force of love to unite our nations that have long been in conflict, we will discover it is far more powerful than any guns or bombs could possibly be. If we all woke up tomorrow with peace in our hearts this story would be an irrelevance. With peace in our hearts the enemy and conflict within would disappear and in that instance so would the illusion that we have physical enemies.

Peace be with you.

The Pantomime of Politics

The Pantomime of Politics

What has happened to our politics? I know it’s always been a farce but these days it seems beyond ridiculous. I’m trying to get my head around it now but we all know how incredibly complicated it is.

Science and quantum physics tells us that everything is connected and although it appears we are separate, that is the illusion and we are in fact one body interacting like individual cells in the body of the human race.

Just like the atomic structure of the universe, energy wants to find a state of balance. All chemical elements in our universe try to move to the middle ground so, for instance, an element that has a low atomic number is very unstable (out on the limb of our periodic table) will easily bond with another to form more complex structure and so become more stable. Whereas the elements with high atomic numbers such as uranium, which are also unstable being out on the opposite limb of the table, are trying to break down in order to reach that state of stability and balance which is held by elements such as lead with elemental numbers holding the middle ground. And so our universal order adheres to this way of working, on a general level. Of course there are always exceptions but humans, en masse, do not tend to be exceptional beings as yet, only as individuals. I do, however, hold the belief that we could be.

We are at the moment at the very unstable situation of some humans having very high numerical numbers attached to them and some very low. This of course creates instability and those with any view of the bigger picture of the race as a whole can see that. 

What stops us from attempting to reach a place of stability is fear, fear of our potential, I believe.

What would happen if everyone had enough to eat and a roof over their heads and enough money to get by. What indeed. The fact is there actually is enough for everyone but we have a sickness in our society. It starts with fear and ends with greed and addiction.  It is the addiction to money, hoarding great sums of it, that means many others do not have enough to live. 

You would think that those with not enough to get by, would want to vote for a political party that helps those with little. You might also think, as there are so many with not enough and only a few with far too much, how is it that the party that only helps those with far too much continually gets into power.

This is the state of our world party politics and I am trying not to be awe of those that have continued to make it stay this way for so long. You have to hand it to them, to keep people in the dark for so long takes power, energy, manipulation and most of all fear. Of course these all need money too. It is an amazing feat and of course it is an insanity. However, most of the population are too caught up in their own fear of either losing their hoards or trying to keep their heads above water to see what is really going on to think of choosing a better way. That is, of course, the crux of it. While most people are drowning in the insanity of the merry-go-round of our society’s needs only a few have the ability to raise their heads enough to see what is really happening. It takes a broad minded attitude to be able to see a world that can be for the good of all and I feel, we are still very much in the minority with those who wish to conserve (dictionary meaning: to hoard, store up) the old way. What does it mean to be conservative, dictionary meaning is: to be conventional, die-hard, guarded and reactionary. Not good attributes to lead our world, or to be led, into a free and beautiful state of balance and harmony.

Once you step off the merry-go-round all becomes clear, but of course not in a good way. 

Recently we have seen that Kids Company, an amazing project that created a safe haven for thousands of our youths in need, has been shut down for the sake of a few million and on the other side I remember banks being upheld by billions. Are we a society that wants to be seen to be looking after corruption in our banks or the young people who are the consequence of this corruption. What is this saying to our young? I sense that even the austere Victorians took better care of Barnados than we are of its off spring, Kids Company. Whatever problems the company encountered, and I’m sure there were many, surely we owe the children a better outcome.

I left the Labour party after they stopped being a Labour party about a decade ago though  still dream of the party getting back to its purpose of serving the people and not the corporations. 

Now I am outside of it and watching the craziness of fear at work as so many try to stop the left becoming left again. I am saddened and bemused. I am holding on to faith and wanting to believe that the new generation will bring us back to our senses, too young to have a huge vested interest in a lot of material wealth as yet, I hold to the idea that they will not be dragged fully into the madness. As we head towards the party leadership votes, the media tells us that some people are being prevented from joining because of their, so called, subversive ideals, being too left wing and others are joining the Labour party, as conservatives, to try and sabotage the outcome by voting for the left wing politician, thinking they will create a party too left wing to get voted in. This is debatable, I’m hoping people are nearly ready if the right party was in place to vote for. But either way, the concept of actually doing this leaves me flabbergasted.  

As I remember not to believe a word I hear from the media I soon hear a story that some young conservatives really are doing this crazy thing. The problem is that, to me, they are actually voting for sense, the irony is not lost on me. Then as we hear that these saboteurs, who are voting for the left are being weeded out we all cheer for the upholding of justice but in fact as the true left-wingers are still being excluded form voting the right wing has won again. 

I watch as the house of cards fall again. 

I keep saying it obviously has to get really bad before people fall into such chaos that they will stop and see what is really happening. Those of us in the middle, like standing on the middle of a see-saw need to just hold onto our sanity.  

A Play For Freedom

A Play For Freedom

For the last year or so I have been on a little journey. If you know my writing or my talks, you’ll know I love journeys! Well this one hasn’t taken me much further than the limits of my new homestead, the wonderful Somerset town of Frome.

A few months after moving to Frome I joined the Frome Friends of Palestine (FFoP) and if anyone read my blog following the Gaza march in London you’ll have an idea of how much this has drawn me in and awakened me to the traumas the people of Palestine are suffering under the duress of Israeli governmental law. It is a complex and distressing situation especially for Jews around the world who are not at all connected to this situation but are, by their very nature of being Jewish, feeling either upset or caught up in the fear mongering of Israeli propaganda. It’s this imbalance that I am trying to reconcile.

After the summer, the FFoP embarked on a grand project to help bring the Freedom Theatre of Jenin, in the West Bank, to Frome. The theatre company had written ‘The Siege’ - set in 2002, during the Second Intifada, inside the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem - especially for this tour. We were to be one of 12 destinations on their first ever UK tour and I believe we were the only amateur group acting in conjunction with our local theatre, the Merlin. Although I have never been drawn to the fundraising or organizing side of the Arts I thought it might do me good to join the core group and get really involved.

As you can imagine, what happened was way out of my expectations. Firstly, I had to remember that there were many other factors at play here and the whole story will form the main thrust of the book I am writing. But for now I will try to give an overview of the whole nine month period to attempt to make sense of it all.

During the summer I had been lent a DVD, called the ‘Two-Sided Story,’ set in a reconciliation centre in Israel. In September I joined some friends in a new, beautiful meditation group led by my wonderful friend and healer, Louise Chalice and she introduced us to a mantra that worked with your creative fire. At the same time, a teacher at the school I work in told the staff there that she was going to Palestine in the Autumn half term with her women’s football team. She wasn’t going to say anything at first about the trip as she didn’t want to worry her colleagues but she decided to speak up after all my ‘harping’ on about the work I was doing with the FFoP. The first day I saw her after her trip I quizzed her about her time there and she had some very moving stories which of course didn’t surprise me. When she finished talking it came to me to tell her of an image I had been carrying in my head for the last few weeks or so but hadn’t spoken of before. I told her the image and then flippantly said ‘it could be a play, couldn’t it!’

Now, I have already written a book, which is simply me regurgitating my stories, but I have never written a play. However, the following morning I awoke with scenes literally playing in my head. So much so that I had to reach for my iPod, as I have done before, and speak the words into it before I forgot the intricacies of what was being uttered. It was a very busy time for me as I had a gig the following week with a new music venture and also had a great deal of family upset going on but this play was waiting for nothing or no one. In ten days the whole play was written. I did not have to make notes or plans, the structure made itself clear to me as I wrote it and I kept waking with scenes in my head until it was finished. I can’t tell you how exciting it was and I knew it was inspired by the new mantra and the DVD I had watched and the image in my head and everything that was going on for me with the FFoP and the Freedom Theatre. It was a cultural bombardment!   

Then after this huge gift, I found I was also surrounded by all the people I needed to help me clarify and correct my mistakes and lack of knowledge in this area. I can’t tell you how amazing and profound this felt. It began with my neighbour whom I knew was a first Nation Canadian actress, she then reminded me, that was her mother’s side. Her father was Israeli and had worked in a peace and reconciliation centre (which you may have already guessed is the setting for my play) for a year and she had visited him there. Again that beautiful warm glow when the synchronities arise and you know that the Universe is playing with you makes all the craziness worthwhile. 

As I looked back to see how I had reached this point I began to see how it had actually started way back before all of this. About 15 years, I participated in a meditation on the Middle East, again at Louise’s house and when I went to sleep I remember asking that if there was anything I could do I would be glad to be of service in this area. Ask and you shall receive I hear resounding in my ears. 

As I worked with bringing the Palestinian theatre company to Frome and at the same time worked on putting on my play, the two worked beautifully in conjunction with each other and were both staged, though mine was just a script-in-hand rehearsed reading, within two weeks of each other.

Receiving the Freedom Theatre from Jenin in the middle of their visit to the UK was fantastic, knowing that we had played a part in raising the money and organising all the logistics for their time here so that they could put Frome on their tour schedule. They were, of course, an amazing group of people and their production was very inspiring. As the play began I was continually aware that this company has been born out of a refugee camp where resistance is an everyday part of life and each of the actors had their own story to tell. 

From the start, as they spoke in Arabic and the surtitle machine was way above their heads, it meant that my eyes were constantly being taken away from the action so my heart remained a little separate. However, what made it difficult to stay disconnected was that they used real film footage projected on to the walls of the church for the events that were occurring outside. It was as the story drew to an end and outside pressure from their own side was entreating them to surrender as they were not the only ones under siege, that the conflict started to ignite between the characters. The moment when one soldier realised he would have to leave his fiancee and homeland for a life in exile and kissed the holy ground, I let go of the translating machine and arrived back in my heart. The complexity of their plight and injustices was so powerful that as the play came to its end and the real footage of the men surrendering was projected onto the church walls I could do nothing but weep. 

To me their message was clear: they had made the call, how are we going to answer it?

Up until now I have always found myself left with those feelings of helplessness and guilt. Now I feel a shift. 

Although I have no idea how far my play will move beyond the boundaries of this beautiful town I am hoping that it will be my peace offering, my ‘play’ for freedom. It feels only right that I should do whatever I can to honour all of this and I will continue to do so until it has run its course.

My play is called “Return to the Golden City’ and poses a question to the audience: are you ready to move to a place of forgiveness and return to your Golden City, your own truly open heart? The mechanics of the play, which came through me but not from me, I feel, offer a chance to see things in a way that is not often shown and I hope will bring the transformation that is so needed in our hearts. 

If you are willing to step out of your anger and forgive on all levels then you are literally saving your soul. In Schindler’s List he is told a quote from the Talmud "Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire."

I believe we can all do this one by one and I hope you will be willing to join me.

A Vote from the Heart

 A Vote from the Heart.

Who would have thought it: that politics could change so rapidly in so short a time. Well may be nothing’s changed on the surface but underneath it all there are rumblings, of that I am sure.

I feel like I’ve been on a roller coaster since the end of 2013 when Russell Brand was interviewed by Paxman and new possibilities started bouncing around in my head. A dream I have had since I was about 15 began looking like it had roots and may be not just roots but green shoots.

Change is really an imperative and although part of me is worried that we will miss the boat the rest of me knows that the Earth is making a evolutionary shift and we are a part of that shift. It would be impossible for one to leap without the other, however, we do have a choice as to how we make that leap: we can choose a smooth ride or a bumpy one. I know which I’d prefer.

Politics has always interested me but I never really got myself involved other than the odd discussion and voting. Now I have become as fully politicised as I can handle! I have, for the first time, joined a party, and never have I felt so positive about the growth of a new movement. Knowing that revolution is rarely a good thing, evolution has to be the way forward. The growth of the Green Party over the last few decades and now in the last few months, seems as perfect, for me, as the early stages of growth of any living being could be: slow, sure and steadfast. 

Ultimately I would call myself an anarchist in the truest sense of the word, believing that when people understand themselves fully and know that what is best for them is also best for everyone, we will come to a place where we will be totally self-governing. I also understand that it feels like it will take a long time for humans to arrive this point, may be centuries. But at the same time I also feel that once the idea takes hold and a few people truly get it, like the hundred monkeys theory, we will all get it and just maybe that’s not as far as away as we think. I always believe in being an optimist but in the interim we need a positive direction.

The quantum scientists are saying that the world we create in our imagination becomes our reality, that is fact and we can no longer see our existence here in this world as mere observers. It is now understood that our presence has a direct effect on our environment. So it is up to us. What kind of world do we want to live in for ourselves and create for our children? Our world of disappearing habitats, growing corruption and poverty in mind and body is a direct response to the belief that we think we cannot have better. That is an old-school belief system hard wired into us with generations looking back and seeing how things never seem to get better but not understanding that it takes a leap of faith to choose to make the change.

My mother told me she is a realist so she is voting Labour. And I agreed with her, she is a realist, she is continually creating her own reality and her reality is one where she believes we do not deserve better than what we have now. I told her that some of us have to dare to dream, to want to bring into being the chance of a reality where everyone has their basic needs met and that that is not impossible, but can be a reality if we dare to choose it.

This week is not going to see any changes on the surface. We are going to end up with a Labour or a Conservative government. I am very excited about what cocktail we might end up with, though we may just plump for the bumpy ride and get a Conservative government. I understand that my actions might help create that catastrophe but where I live there is no chance of a Labour candidate getting in and it is anyone’s guess between Conservative, Lib Dem or Green. However, I have elected to vote with my heart for the Green Party, as for me, tactical voting belongs to history and old realities. If you walk around my town centre the only posters you’ll see are green ones and it feels like a huge majority of the heart of the town has come together in this way. It’s a very amazing feeling and although it’s only a start I feel like the green shoots are showing that we are choosing a better way. The more people see that others are making that choice the more they’ll feel confident to join in the movement back to our hearts.

It may take years, it may take generations but to know that I am a part of making this new heart led community grow fills me with joy. Join me on thursday and vote with your heart.