Reconnecting with the Astrological Landscape

A is for Aries                                  The beautiful landscape of the Mendips                     The abundant Bronze Age mines near Priddy

Reconnecting with the Astrological Landscape

It's May and Spring has finally arrived. I think there is a growing consensus that we are being cheated of our warm weather seasons as Spring is arriving ever later and Winter seemed to be upon us in November last year. For me I always need to find reasons for everything and if I'm not sure of anything the land is where I go to find wisdom and answers to my questions.

I have my moon in Taurus, that means that the energy of Taurus lies within the heart of who I really am. It is also my north node which is where I am headed if I choose to move out of the stuckness I am holding in my south node: the past life issues I keep repeating. Taurus is all about abundance and being able to receive it from the land. It is ruled by our Earth. So Mother Nature is a key player here and I'm blowed if I'm going to miss out on the lesson this time.

For the past year I have been immersing myself in the energy of love, having found a wonderful new life partner and I realised that perhaps my mind has been off the track a little. However, to reel me back in, last month I was very excited to be part of the launch of a new book. Its called 'Signs and Secrets of the Glastonbury Zodiac' and contains 31 essays. These range from in-depth analysis to poetry and personal experiences (which is my contribution) on walking the Glastonbury landscape. Katherine Maltwood began investigating the idea of 'as above, so below' and with the help of obliging RAF men in WW1 and portable cameras the Universe synchronised events so that the landscape could be studied from an arial view point. From 1917 onwards a complete map of the constellations of the stars was found in the land, created by rivers, roads and other natural landmarks.  By walking the figures amazing things begin to happen and I have talked much about it in my essay and in my book 'Journey to the Golden City' which I hope will be published soon. 

I have been walking this landscape a little since 2009 when I became aware of it, but for the last year, as I said, my mind had been taken of it. So after feeling very stuck with the long, cold winter we all experienced and with the launch of this beautiful book inspiring me once more to reconnect with it, I set out in April to revisit the Aries walk. 

Aries is the first month in the astrological calendar and is all about birth, the creative spark and fire. It is ruled by the astrological figure of the ram. As soon my partner and I arrived in the roadside area of the Aries walk we could here gunshots repeatedly echoing around the landscape. Someone was having a clay pigeon shoot and we had immediately found the fire aspect of our walk. When I arrived I was not expecting anything more than a lovely walk in some woodlands with perhaps some ideas coming to me as we walked, that is usually how I work. However, my new partner was new to all this and needed some coaxing and help to understand what it was all about. The universe was obviously deciding to give us the big picture version and we were in for some fun. As we walked a little further we came across a field of sheep and there were many spring lambs leaping around and enjoying themselves. At first I wasn't sure, but as we looked closer we realised all the lambs had horns. Now I live in the country and every year there are lambs in the field opposite my house but I'd never seen this before! But yes, there they were, little ram lambs especially for us on our Aries walk. 

As we got deeper into the woods the energy was very beautiful with a wonderful light created by the sun we were only just getting used to seeing and then we came across the tree I've shown as my first photo above. It was a definite A for Aries and the doorway was inviting us to step through. It was an invitation to rebirth into the new energy of 2013 and an opportunity not to be missed.

Following that walk, some aspects that had been stuck began to be forced into motion and Taurus arrived with its invitation to recognise the abundance that is everywhere in our lives. 

I am about to leave the Mendips after having lived here for eight years and my partner had a life changing holiday to the Mendips when he was eleven which ensured that he moved West after being brought up near London. Priddy is a very special village in the Mendips with some ancient archeological ruins from burial mounds to bronze age mines. Last week, still in Taurus, we walked this landscape in the beautiful May sunshine and without thinking I chose to step off the path at one point only to come across this amazing ancient mine which my partner had seen on a television programme about the history of this area. I had stumbled across the largest mine, seen in my third photo above, where such abundance was brought up from the earth. I couldn't help but chuckle. I truly hope that I am in the process of finding my abundance, though I must recognise that it's not that it needs finding, it is always there, it's about being open enough not to block it and allow it step fully into your life. I am now ready for this. Hoorah!

Having sorted out my personal questions for the moment I needed to revisit my original question: why are we  having to deal with more cold months while our warm months are getting fewer? I can only answer now that I feel that as the winter months are about the spiritual journey, the time when we hibernate, reflecting Mother Nature as she breathes in, when we go in and find the inner path. This time is in opposition to the Spring and Summer months where we concentrate on the physical growth of form, on youth, reflecting Mother nature as she breathes out her energy of growth. However, if you get caught up in that energy and forget the other side of the wheel this can lead us to forget our spiritual path. Perhaps we are being asked to spend more time investigating that inner, spiritual journey for without it we are doomed to a life of fear and individualistic, destructive power rather than a world of community that is rewarded by our connection to Mother Earth and her healing gifts of abundance. 

Peace or Conflict

Peace or Conflict

I have always been in conflict about war. Since the tender age of 14 when the Falklands War began I felt alone in the horror that we could be going to war. I have always felt that there must be another, better way. But no, in the so called Modern age of 2013, we still resort to fighting over who has the biggest toys. I say ‘we’ as I am talking about both men and women here as we all carry the energy of the masculine and feminine within us and there lies the conflict. Until we can resolve our conflict within then we will never resolve it without. 

About 10 years ago I read a book called “Emissary of Light” by James Twyman. In it he discovers a group of beings watching over a war zone and holding the space for peace. He is drawn in and shown how he can spread this news. It has been his mission ever since to bring peace to the world. This stirred something huge in me and my work ever since has revolved around this idea that we have the power and the ability within to choose peace over conflict.

As I sought out wisdoms and ancient teachings, knowledge of the chakras that we hold in our aura helped me to understand how we, in our Western culture, have shut down our desire to understand anything beyond the physical body and so shut down our chakras. With this loss of connection to higher energies comes great fear, which we hold when our root chakra is closed, and it has affected every corner of our lives beginning with fear of death, to fear of old age until it has seeped down to how we bring up our children and our ridiculous ‘health and safety’ laws. Basically we have become fearful of life itself.

Fear often keeps us in a place of non action saying ‘there’s nothing that can be done, it’s always been like this’. But life is a cycle. We rose out of the feudal system, but it took the plague and great devastation to force us to revolt. Keeping us happy, en masse, so that we will not choose to revolt again is a complex affair and war is very much a part of that recipe. I will not attempt to go into the intricacies of economics or the psychology of hate, the idea of divide and separate that allows us to even contemplate killing our fellow human beings, but it’s all there. For me, the sooner we wake up to fact that we don’t have to partake in this crazy story the better.

Edward De Bono has spent his life dedicating himself to teaching people to find an alternative way of thinking and if there was ever a need for a body of people, a council for peace, we would certainly benefit from his presence on it. The same would apply for James Twyman, the Dalai Lama, Jimmy Carter and so on. We have so many good people and that’s just the men. The women who can help tend not to be our leaders for they have often given up much of their femininity to jostle their way to the top. Looking back on the time when Thatcher took us to war confirms my feelings of distress for what we have lost. I truly feel we now need strong women not women trying to be strong men.

With the possibility of war that is rearing its ugly head over North Korea I am writing this in April and astrologically we have entered Aries: the great god of war. As, I understand, we have all come from the first spark of life, which is the nature of Aries, every atom in the universe is derived from that original singularity and so is a reflection of it. I have, with the help of the work of A. T. Mann built this idea into my work that a mirror can be found in all things and all journeys through life. In this way Aries, as the sign of Spring, is the birth of the seasonal year, and this also reflects the beginning of our life and the first chakra, the root chakra. This means that the energy of war is also deeply connected to the energy of fear.

We have been kept in fear over the threat of nuclear war for too long now. Even though we all know that no one believes that a country will start a war like that, if that is the case then why are we even playing with fire like this. It is monster we have created that is really beyond our control. We cannot keep these weapons telling others who and who may not have them. It is a dangerous game and the only way to stop it is to begin a gradual disarming programme and offer real peace to this world. Great Britain is in a prime position to start the ball rolling but that’s another story. 

If we must fight I would like the populace to stand up and fight for peace, equality and enough food and warmth for all. We could take to the streets but I don’t believe enough people are aware of the unfair deal that has been dealt to them or else they are so caught up in their own pain they do not have the energy to stand up and fight.

Personally I believe, it is up to the individual who has the desire for change to begin doing the work within. 

It is my desire that we join together as a body of powerful positive energies to bring a new presence onto this Earth; to ‘be the change’. This is not a new idea I know but one that keeps needing to be stated.

A few years ago I became aware of the fact that meditation can bring great changes to our environment. I learnt how meditation can affect the state of water and how molecules that were polluted had been transformed to being clear and crystal-like in appearance. We are 70% water and meditation can make the same transformation in all of us. 

I am inviting everyone who believes there is even a hint of a possibility in this to take a moment each day to send love and healing thoughts to North Korea. Even if you have never tried to meditate before just to spend a few moments each day with this intention is enough. To simply imagine your purest idea of love, to imagine sending it without any hint of anger, hate, fear or blame to all the people in North Korea that positive intention will make a difference. If enough people can activate this energy we can make a change on a huge scale. I know this this is not the first time something like this has been tried, however, this could really work if it is spread far and wide with positive intent. 

The invitation is to be a part of a grand movement for change, to choose love and peace over death and war. First we have to choose it for ourselves, choose to love ourselves and find inner peace. If you can truly do that then there is no room for hate for anyone else in the world. Once you know that the whole universe is one, that everything is connected like a golden web of threads linking every atom, every person and so on, then someone on the other side of the world is as much a part of who you are as the person you have chosen to live your life with. The human race is like one body and every atom in that body needs to be loved as a whole. I would love people to see that a life is never saved by the death of another. Let’s not cut the people of North Korea, or any other country for that matter, out of our ability to love. We need to rediscover this pure energy that lies deep within us, knowing that it contains no anger, blame or distrust and send it primarily to North Korea but there need be no limits. With the two amazing truths, the effect of meditation on our beings and the connecting power of the Internet that uses this understanding that the universe is a huge golden interconnecting web, we can choose to make huge changes if we bring them together.

Please join me with love and share this to all your contacts. Let’s see how wide we can get this message across the air waves.

Namaste.

Alchemy Of Spring

  Alchemy Of Spring

It’s Spring, so the calendar informs us, but I’d never have guessed it. With the threat of snow for the weekend ahead one might have easily mistaken this for January. Any other year and we’d probably be quite excited about the prospect but this year has been a tough one for many already. My last blog was so upbeat, as I cast my mind back, I’m wondering where I got all my energy from.

However, if my body is tired of trying to keep warm and my mind is busy and feeling exhausted as it tries to keep those upbeat ideas from vacating my thoughts, my heart is still strong and beating as solidly as ever. Thank goodness for that! I just received an image by email showing how the heart is 100,000 times stronger electrically and 5,000 times stronger magnetically than the brain. So by choosing to live our lives heart first we stand a much better chance of getting through the tough times and enjoying the good. It’s an all round good life choice.

I’ve just finished reading Natalie Fee’s ‘The Everyday Alchemist’s Happiness Handbook’. It’s such a joy to read. You know that she lives by her words as her happiness radiates out from every page and I’m not talking about a superficial sense of ‘everything’s fine’ but a deep inner knowing and contented feeling of connection and joy. Although when I read the book I knew there was nothing I didn’t already know, it was just wonderful hearing it again through Natalie’s individual filter.     

This helped me no end as I travelled to Brighton for the weekend to embark on a new venture. The venture was a collaboration with the wonderful work of Caroline Carey and her Alchemy in Movement, yes more alchemy. This seems to be the theme for the year and as we have entered the year of the snake Caroline showed me her pet snake and taught me how it goes into a trance like state just before it sheds its skin. You can recognize this by its blue eyes. At this point the snake goes through a process of transmutation, not transformation as I ignorantly suggested. This is exactly what we are being invited to do, we are not going to transform as the caterpillar transforms into a butterfly, we are simply going to shed our skin and step into a new and higher vibration of ourselves, retaining our existing form. How beautiful it was to be offered that visual metaphor.

I have been offering my sound and chakra meditation workshop for a year or two now and to join forces with Caroline and add the magic ingredient of movement, I knew this could only be a positive step forward. 

When, many years ago, I conceded how slow I was being in getting into yoga, something I most certainly needed, a friend reassured me by explaining that the meditation I was doing was as good as the physical work. In a way I totally agree and the years I spent just applying myself to meditation I did free up a good deal of physical tension and clear many blocks I was holding onto. 

However, there is nothing like getting off one’s arse and unlocking the energy that we hold so tightly in our bodies. Allowing the body to express itself is probably more important than giving the mind a voice, something we hold so dear in our society without truly understanding what we really need.

As we worked our alchemy inviting our guests to clear, express and sound our emotions to the accompaniment of harp, drum and flute I felt we were sowing a seed I have long been needing to sow.

Thank you to Caroline and all those who have helped me reach this moment in my alchemical development. 

www.keystothegoldencity.com

Welcome 2013!

Welcome 2013!

So here we are in 2013 and happy New Year to you. I hope you've had a good festive season, whatever you do at the this time of year, and are ready to start 2013 with a cheerful heart and renewed enthusiasm. Easy to say, not so easy to do when Spring seems so far away and the nights still draw in so early. In just a few weeks time we have Imbolc, a much forgotten festival, there to reignite our flame and celebrate the first signs of Spring. I will certainly be lighting a candle to begin bringing these ancient gifts back into our lives.

So what is this year all about? When I first heard all about Solstice 2012 about twelve years ago, I  believed there was going to be huge shifts and changes on a massive scale. As time progressed I began to see that this is just part of the human psyche and our desire for the dramatic. However, I do believe these shifts are happening although they are on a more subtle level and what we think of as over night transitions, or changes in a blink of an eye, is possibly more like 300 years in the bigger picture. This length of transition is what the astrologers and the I Ching foresee.

For me this year is all about choice. With my interest in the world of science, the quantum field and the Schroedinger's Cat theory has taught me that anything is possible. In fact, everything is not only possible, but actually happening all at once. It's up to us which road we choose. Happiness is a choice and soon as we decide to step through that gateway we can choose the positive road at every cross road, it all depends on how we choose to view it. 

When I was offered a healing which removed my creative block, in 2001, the first song I wrote, or rather received, in the form of a dream, was called 'Living the Days of Love'. Immediately I understood that is what we are doing now, it's not about the future. Now I believe the gateway is fully open and I intend to make this year a year of love.
To learn to totally love, forgive and thank yourself for your journey so far is not always so easy, but is totally necessary to move forward into a place of harmony with everything in your world around you.
I chose this journey 12 years ago and I am finding the process is constantly intensifying. What we view as 'bad' or 'negative' is totally a view we hold, not a truth. Understanding and letting go of the judgement we hold about deeds acted out from a state of pain is the only way we move forward. The more we can forgive ourselves, the more we can forgive others. The more we can love ourselves, the more we can love others. What might seem like a quantum leap only needs to start with a step and the first step is about believing that it's possible.
That is my mantra for this year: that the gateway be opened to begin this quantum leap to make 2013 the beginning of a whole new way of being.

Experiencing the Oneness

Experiencing the Oneness

Through much of my life I suppose I have felt on the edge of it all. I think many of us feel that way. A sense of missing out, of not fully engaging in all that life has to offer. It's a hard one for the ego for it is really impossible to experience everything in life. The thing to do, I have found, is to find appreciation of what you have done and find a way of dealing with what you haven't experienced.

Two things happened to me in the last month that really helped me with this one. First, in my last blog I spoke of a trip to the Scilly Isles and I how I saw the idea of riding the waves help in the broader aspect of riding the waves of life. While I was physically struggling with the rolling waves I stayed below deck for most of the journey, which is most unusual for me. At the end of the trip when my group met up I was told that dolphins had been spotted and how exciting it had been to have been able to see them. I was immediately disappointed that I'd missed this experience. However, I had recently finished Richard Bach's book 'One' in which he and his wife meet many of their alternative selves and how it teaches them that we are all just many aspects of the one and we can see and enjoy other people's experiences through them rather than feeling diminished by them. This really helped me let go of the disappointment.

A week or so later driving in Wiltshire my partner and I spotted some starlings in the field next to the road. Now I know that I always miss the beautiful displays that the starlings put on for us each year as I never take the time out to find them but always say how much I'd like to see them. We're all good at that one (as a saxophonist, if I had a pound for every time someone told me that they've always wanted to play the saxophone!) but here was an opportunity right in my hand. We quickly pulled over and though it only looked like there were a few little groups of starlings, suddenly they were all gathering together and flying over our heads into the field where we were stood. I immediately ducked, well with that many birds its always best to take cover as there's always going to be a few managing their waste disposal. All clear, so I stood up straight to the sound of the flutter of wings overhead which was amazing and although there were only hundreds rather than thousands the closeness of them and the display they put on was simply gorgeous. I was reminded how it is now known that there is no leader, they all just work as one connected body and it was breathtaking the shapes and kaleidoscopic visuals they created in the sky. 

At last I was truly experiencing this and just to bring home to me the reality and closeness of it all, as they changed direction one more time right over our heads we received a direct hit. My partner was splattered on his forehead and my gift was in my hair. Some say it's good luck. I don't believe in luck myself but I certainly felt very much in the heart of what life was offering me. We had to laugh.

I felt that my desire to investigate this issue, this problem of feeling left out, that others are getting more out of life than I am, was being answered. I was being shown how this feeling is a truly ego led view of life. That we need to learn to respect the ego and led it grow with experience rather than giving it a hard time for making mistakes. We can't all experience everything but when we accept this and stop feeling hard done by and less than we are, we can be open to allowing some really beautiful experiences in and live our one life to the full and enjoy the rest through the experiences of the other as an alternative version of ourselves.

Riding the Seas of Change

Riding the Seas of Change

My dad was in the navy in the second World War and always claimed it was the best time of his life. For years I struggled with this concept until I was able to grasp a wider view of what this meant for him. I realise that as I see him now at the grand old age of 89, an amazingly fit and healthy, easy going person in all senses of the word, I realise how his few years at sea stood him in good stead for the years to come. Unfazed by the great changes he has witnessed since the 20's he has been able to ride the seas of change with ease.

Last week I was lucky enough to be invited to play with one of my bands in the Scillies. These are islands, 3 hours by sea off the coast of Cornwall and what a truly beautiful place it is. However, in September it is a lottery on what kind of crossing you may in encounter. As the waves threw the ship rocking from side to side, even after years of being brought up with boats as the love of playing on the sea never left my father, I felt the need to stay below deck and keep an eye on the horizon. As I concentrated on relaxing, it came to me how this had a much greater importance than merely handling a rough crossing. 

Aware that the universe is purely vibration from the very fast to the slow and dense, life is about riding these waves and at the moment we are being battered by the energy waves our sun is sending us as we are all shifting together. As the Earth is hit by these extraordinary waves from the sun so are we all affected. Now I know that if you are on the sea and the rise and fall of the choppy waves is making you feel sick the worst thing you can do is tense your stomach  muscles and try and fight the flow. The best thing to do is relax and go with it so you're flowing in harmony with the incoming energy. I feel this is what is happening for so many people now. The waves of change - which are actually beautiful if you prepare yourself in a way that allows you to let go of the old, however attached you may feel to it, and bring in the new - can be almost impossible to get to grips with if you create a feeling of fear, tension and stress. Trying to block the new frequencies arriving at our door is as futile as putting your hand up to stop a tsunami. 

As I continue to watch my father with great respect, I thank him for what he has unknowingly taught me ( a man who shows the way most effectively by his actions and not with words) and have found this year to be an extraordinary gift of challenges and changes, all of which I have managed to cope with so far.

Let's see what the next three months bring. Remember, though, don't forget to breathe and don't put up a struggle. Enjoy the ride.....

  

The Power of Music

The Power of Music

"A dream you dream alone is only a dream,

A dream you dream together is reality."

John Lennon

I don't really want to say too much about this subject really as it should speak for itself and so many have already said so much.

This is my life, as a musician, as a teacher and a healer. To me there is no separation and music does all the work. The vibrations and the places it takes you goes beyond anything else in this world except love and light. The thing about music though is that it brings people together in so many ways and the words remind us of this whether we are talking about harmony or good vibrations etc. To me everything, the universe, is made up of vibrations or frequencies whether it's light, sound, brain waves radio waves or solid beings such as ourselves and the earth which we all know vibrates with the understanding of string theory. The higher the vibration the higher and lighter the density and energy. All this carries its own wisdom and if we take time to listen it teaches us just by our connection to it. We just have to learn to join in and sing along.

I have had the good fortune to catch a wonderful television programme about Paul Simon's Graceland and the controversy it brought up. It was a beautiful story though hampered with issues from the start. All those old enough to remember those dark times of trying to resolve the apartheid situation in South Africa, although it is far from over like any political crises it takes more than a few years to heal, music certainly played its part. Paul Simon was severely criticised for working alongside the black South Africans as were the South Africans. They thankfully laughed at the politicians and said you can't victimise us twice! They all stuck to their guns and chose to write and play music that defined an era. They chose to write songs not of a political nature but about what they as brothers loved to sing about most, that has made the album timeless. 25 years on and Paul Simon recognised and apologised for going against rules that had to be upheld if the politics was going to work, but knew he had to do it anyway. The ANC are finally at a place that Paul Simon was at all along and recognise that the music rides above all politics, above race and all issues we humans choose to cling to and forgave him whilst also feeling humbled by the wisdom of the music the musician carries with them everywhere they go. It was a beautiful moment. Music can break down all barriers and create accordance, love and harmony for all those who wish to participate and sing the universal song together. I leave it to you if you'd wish to join in.