So there’s been another unexpected development with my friend. I’m a little sad to say that she took an early flight home without allowing me any chance to work things out with her. It’s a huge shame, but I guess I have to respect her decision.

Although I screwed up a little, I’ve been completely honest about why, and I can’t do much more than that. But it seems that honesty is not what she wanted and I’ve received an email from her saying how happy she is to be back home with ‘normal people’, that I have my head stuck up my anus and that I’m living in a drug induced fantasy (a reference to the fact I occasionally work with plant teachers like Ayahuasca). Ouch!

Anyway, surprisingly, I’m totally fine about it all, in fact I’ve actually been feeling really good today, however it’s left me feeling like I want to have a bit of a rant about what’s generally considered normal in society. None of this is aimed at anyone in particular.

Now obviously what’s considered ‘normal’ is quite subjective and of course it will vary from country to country and culture to culture. However, I want to aim my sights squarely at western society, particularly in the UK and the US.

The sad fact of the matter is that our society has gotten really sick - and for most people, that’s completely normal. Our culture has become like a cancer to this planet. It’s rampant with greed, lies, corruption and injustice; and almost nobody wants to hear the truth about all that - and that’s considered normal.

Here are many other things that most people in western society consider to be ‘normal’.

It’s considered normal to lie or talk crap about people all the time. It’s considered normal to be superficial and mundane, to meet with your friends and talk about the same old nonsense time after time. Gossip about friends and family, gossip about your colleagues and work, gossip about celebrities and media bullshit, and sport. And let’s not forget about Big Brother or the latest soap opera storylines. It’s considered normal to spend your evenings watching trashy tv programs, reading trashy novels or watching trashy movies that feature a never-ending stream of degrading sex, violence and conflict.

Conflict is all around us, not just in the media, but in our relationships with friends, family, colleagues and even strangers - and it’s all considered quite normal. It’s considered normal to argue, put down, or fall out with people instead of trying to understand them and resolve differences and make peace.

Selfishness is normal too. It’s considered normal to go after whatever you want no matter that others might get hurt. It’s considered normal to be a nothing more than a consumer and spend insane amounts of money buying stupid shit you don’t need and probably will never use. It seems that the most popular type of therapy these days is ‘retail therapy’. Isn’t it considered normal to go out and splash your cash because you’re feeling down about yourself?

It’s considered normal to spend most of your life doing a crap job you really hate because you need to pay your mortgage and all that other debt you’ve acquired. Sadly it’s now perfectly normal to be up to your eyeballs in debt from bankloans and creditcards and storecards (and all because you can’t help buying useless crap to make yourself feel better).

It’s considered normal for both teenagers and adults to go out at the weekend with the sole intention of getting blitzed out of their minds on alcohol and/or drugs so they can’t even remember what they did.

It’s considered normal that the rich keep on getting richer while the poor get poorer and nothing much is ever done about that. It’s considered normal that a very small number of people control the vast majority of the worlds wealth. It’s considered normal that in many countries millions of people lack even the most basic human needs such as food, shelter and water, and that each and everyday thousands of children are starving to death. But let’s just leave it to Bono to sort that out shall we?

Tragically, war is also considered a normal part of our lives on this planet (just so long as it’s at the other side of the world, mind you). It’s considered normal that our governments are regularly committing genocide in far off places, and that the lives of many thousands of men, women and children are being snuffed out in increasingly more disturbing ways - just so that we can all maintain our ‘normal’ lifestyles.

It’s now considered normal that our governments are hell-bent on removing what few liberties and freedoms we have left. That they’re putting us under increasingly more surveillance - all in the name of our safety and protection of course! If you’ve got nothing to hide you’ve got nothing to worry about, isn’t that right?

It’s considered normal that corporations all around the world are destroying the planet all in the name of profit. Rainforests are being destroyed, rivers and oceans are being polluted, toxic waste is being spilled, millions of species are going extinct, indigenous peoples are being displaced from their lands where they’ve lived for thousands of years - all because corporations are legally obliged to keep making fat profits for their shareholders, no matter what the consequences - and it’s all considered normal by our society.

Now I’m not saying that the majority of people love war and violence and all the other terrible things that happen in our society and around the world. Most people seem nice, and they will usually say they dislike those terrible things and wish they didn’t exist. But all these things are generally accepted, and it’s that acceptance that allows these things to keep happening.

It’s not people like me that are living in a drug induced fantasy world, it’s most of society. Since the moment we are born we’re conditioned to accept the status-quo, conditioned to believe that this is just the way things are. A combination of media (books, films, television etc), education, religion and the people all around us are constantly reinforcing what’s supposed to be ‘normal’. It’s essentially brainwashing, but the brainwashing is so subtle that most are never aware of it, and so complete that most will never escape it.

Anyway, enough of the normal stuff, let’s take a moment to consider what’s generally not considered normal in society. The kinds of people who are not considered normal are:

Anyone who rocks the boat or asks too many questions
Anyone who tries to point out all the lies and the bullshit and the corruption at every level of our society
Anyone who wakes up and realises that our governments and media are lying to us about just about everything (and they really are lying about almost everything!)
Anyone who sees a major conspiracy in the way our society is controlled
Anyone who seeks to know the truth about our reality, about God, about the universe
Anyone who tries to expand their consciousness
Anyone who loves and wants to live closer to nature
Anyone who talks to the trees and the plants and the flowers (and particularly those who get a response!)
Anyone who decides to downshift and simplify their lives and stop buying useless crap they don’t need
Anyone who doesn’t have a television in their house
Anyone who knows there’s a lot more to this world than all the things we can experience with our five senses.
Anyone who talks about unconditional love and acceptance and strives for those ideals (even though they may not get it right all the time)
Anyone who claims to see or communicate with the spirit world, or anyone who even believes the spirit world exists!
Anyone who claims (quite rightly) that civilisation is rapidly heading towards a major calamity that it may never recover from.

Isn’t it strange how the people who are trying to create a better world are rarely considered normal?

I’m ecstatically happy to admit that I’m not not considered normal by most of society. I feel so relieved that I managed to wake up and see through most of the nonsense and the bullshit, and that I feel like I’ve left it all behind. Right now I couldn’t think of anything worse than to be called ‘normal’. I might even consider it an insult!

I long for the day when truth is considered normal and lies are rejected, a time when conflict is a thing of the past and everyone is working together to create a better world and live in total harmony with one other. A time when all of humanity is united and not divided. Although it’s hard to believe sometimes, that time is coming, I’m sure….

PS. This post is a little rough around the edges, but I wanted to post it before I start my trek to Machu Picchu tomorrow. I have to be up in less than 5 hours and it’s definitely time for bed. I’ll be offline for the next 5 days.

Ok, so I’m starting to write this at almost 5am in the morning and I’m not feeling my usual self. I’m so upset, I’m so angry at myself and I can’t even begin to get to sleep, and I’m experiencing a rare moment of ‘what the fuck am I supposed to do right now!?’ There’s a background to all this which I should explain first.

I’ll start with my first San Pedro experience which took place about 3 weeks ago. San Pedro is a cactus that grows in Peru and it’s another plant teacher that people and shamans use for healing and spiritual growth. From what I understand, it’s very effective for healing, or bringing awareness to, emotional issues which are usually related to the heart. And it certainly did it’s job on me!!

Now I wanted to write about this experience several weeks ago, just after it happened, but I decided it was too personal and I just didn’t feel comfortable writing about it in a public blog. I still feel pretty much the same way, but after tonight, I just feel ‘fuck it’. Maybe getting some of my feelings out into the open will start a healing process that I really need to begin, otherwise I’m just going to keep repeating the same old patterns that are becoming increasingly more unbearable. We can’t have that can we?

To explain the problem I need to talk about my life a bit more….

It’s fair to say I’ve had a very comfortable and happy life. There’s very little I can complain about, I’ve never really wanted for much and most things have generally gone the way I’ve wanted them to. I think I have a life and a (predominantly) positive mindset that many people would envy. So, I’ve always been pretty happy with my life except for perhaps one thing - I’ve never found that special someone. I’m currently 33 years old and I’m slightly embarrassed to admit that I’ve spent pretty much all my adult life being single. Although I have to add that’s been mostly my fault and mostly my choice. Things could easily have been very different.

If I have one main regret about my life it’s that when I was younger I always took the idea of relationships far too seriously. Ever since I was about 19 and I discovered spirituality (way younger than most people) I’ve been searching for my soulmate - whatever that actually means (I’ve decided I don’t know anymore). But whereas most young people don’t think about these kind of things too much and usually just date, go out, or have sex with whoever they please, I usually judged every girl I met as a potential ’soulmate’ or not. And if I didn’t think she was then I usually wasn’t interested in anything other than friendship. As a result of that particular mindset I turned down the possibility of many relationships that might have been casual or otherwise.

Now, I have had a few short, casual relationships and a few one-night stands over the years, but they’ve been fairly few and far between and although I don’t regret any of them, I don’t feel particularly great about them either. I know a few of those could have turned into relationships had I wanted them to, but they just never seemed right at the time.

However, over the years, there have also been several girls that in some way or another have really captured my heart and this is where things have always gone wrong for me (or I’ve completely screwed things up) and I’ve usually ended up getting really hurt. On the few occasions I’ve let my feelings known to someone (and usually, for some reason, believed they felt the same way about me) I’ve always ended up being rejected. And each and every one of those times has really hurt like hell!! However, usually within a week or so I’d start to feel ok and start to believe I was completely over it and I’d just get on with life as I always do. I’ve never realised how deeply I was affected by those rejections until I did San Pedro a few weeks ago.

This plant teacher showed me that I was still carrying all these emotional wounds from all these years of rejections that I had never properly healed from. And it showed me that if I don’t heal these wounds then they’re going to keep causing big problems in my life and prevent me from getting what I want. Well tonight I experienced another example of how they are still capable of causing big problems in my life.

Some of my friends know that I have a friend from the UK visiting me right now. If you don’t know who she is then it’s not important. But she is someone I’ve known for about 7 years and I once believed she liked me, and just over 3 years ago I decided to ask her out but she turned me down. Now, of all the rejections I’ve experienced this probably affected me the least because I never actually believed she was my soul mate or anything like that. I just really liked her and for the first time I was just intrigued to see what would happen. Unfortunately I never got to find out.

We did stay good friends though, even though I rarely saw her, particularly after I left Leeds almost 3 years ago. About a month ago I invited her to visit me in Peru, and a few days later she (very unexpectedly) bought a ticket to visit me for about 4 weeks.

Anyway, she arrived here just over a week ago, and although we’ve been having a good time together, a lot of my feelings for her came back which has been a little problematic, especially tonight…

[stuff edited out]

To cut a long story short, I was kind of hoping we might have a bit of fun and romance for a few weeks. However it became pretty clear to me quite early on that that wasn’t going to happen. Fair enough I thought, I had no expectations, and I certainly wasn’t upset about that, and ultimately I was just very happy and grateful to have some good company for several weeks.

But tonight something happened that I wasn’t prepared for, and I repeated some old patterns and lost the plot a bit (alcohol played a major role as usual). It was clear my friend was getting rather too friendly with some other guy we’d met earlier in the evening, and I suddenly felt these huge and horrible waves of jealousy and feelings of abandonment. It was basically another form of rejection. I made quite a fool of myself, and I won’t go into the details about that, but I know I’ve gone and made things very awkward between us and I’m feeling so angry and upset at myself, and stupid and depressed - and I never get depressed.

My behaviour has shown me that there are some important lessons I haven’t learnt yet, but I now realise from taking San Pedro a few weeks ago, that I keep repeating this pattern because I’m still carrying these old wounds with me that I’ve never really healed and whenever I feel rejected it’s like someone rubbing salt on open wounds. I’m not sure what to do right now. I’m feeling like I may have ruined my friends holiday and so that’s making me feel worse. I don’t usually feel like I want to climb into a deep hole, but that’s how I feel right now. Hopefully things will be ok in a day or two.

I’m mostly just upset because I feel like I’ve let myself down again. This isn’t the first time I’ve behaved like this, and each time I’ve felt bad and convinced myself I’d learnt my lesson and would never behave like that again. Yet here I am once again, repeating the same old patterns and feeling totally upset and shitty about it (again). I guess the main (and very important) difference is that for the first time I feel like I know exactly why I’m repeating these patterns. I guess that’s the first real step to healing. You can’t solve a problem unless you know exactly what’s causing it.

Hopefully I’ll get back to my usual positive self a few days from now

Just want to recommend a really good article by Charles Eisenstein that I read yesterday. I’ve enjoyed a lot of Charles’ articles (many of which can be found on Reality Sandwich) but this one really resonated with me.

You can read it at: http://www.realitysandwich.com/gathering_tribe

Love this bit

Who are these missionaries from the more beautiful world? You and I are surely among them. Where else could this longing come from, for this magical place to be found nowhere on earth, this beautiful time outside of time? It comes from our intuitive knowledge of our origin and destination. The longing, indomitable, will never settle for a world that is less. Against all reason, we look upon the horrors of our age, mounting over the millennia, and we say NO, it does not have to be this way! We know it, because we have been there. We carry in our souls the knowledge that a more beautiful world is possible. Reason says it is impossible; reason says that even to slow — much less reverse — the degradation of the planet is an impossible task: politically unfeasible, opposed by the Money Power and its oligarchies. It is true that those powers will fight to uphold the world we have known. Their allies lurk within even ourselves: despair, cynicism, and resignation to carving out a life that is “good enough” for me and mine.

But we of the tribe know better. In the darkest despair a spark of hope lies inextinguishable within us, ready to be fanned into flames at the slightest turn of good news. However compelling the cynicism, a jejune idealism lives within us, always ready to believe, always ready to look upon new possibilities with fresh eyes, surviving despite infinite disappointments. And however resigned we may have felt, our aggrandizement of me and mine is half-hearted, for part of our energy is looking elsewhere, outward toward our true mission.

Have you found your way into the tribe yet? we’re waiting for you!

“As we acquire more knowledge, things do not become more comprehensible, but more mysterious.” - Albert Schweitzer

I’m in the process of formulating  and writing a number of articles that will follow on from my recent What is spirituality? post. One article is almost complete but before publishing it I decided there’s something else that needs to be said first, which is the subject of the great mystery.

What mystery? you might ask. The mystery of EVERYTHING! The mystery of the origins of life, God, consciousness, spirit, the universe and everything that’s ever come into being. It really is all a big mystery and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

The question of ‘why is there anything?’ has always (and I’m sure always will) troubled the greatest philosophers. There really are no answers to that question that make a great deal of sense.

It doesn’t matter if you’re religious, spiritual, philosophical, or only a believer in science, the question of how something came from nothing is probably never going to be adequately explained (not from the average humans level of consciousness anyway).

Or perhaps there never was nothing, and maybe there’s always been something. But that doesn’t make any more or less sense either does it?

Perhaps you believe in the big bang. Fine, but what banged? And how and why did it bang? Does it make any sense at all that there was once nothing, and then that nothing banged and an entire universe came into being? I don’t think so.

If you’re a religious person then you might say that God created the universe. Well how did God first come into being? “Oh, God’s always been around!” you say. Does that make the slightest bit of sense at all? Of course not.

The trick is to agree that it’s all a great mystery and be totally comfortable with that.

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” - Albert Einstein

One of the things that almost all mystics, spiritual adepts, shamans, yogis and enlightened masters etc agree on is that the source of everything is a mystery. They often call it the great mystery, or the unfathomable mystery.

So one of the things I want to make clear as I begin delving more deeply into the spiritual realms is that I don’t pretend I have the answers to everything. I accept the mystery for what it is.

Having said that, I definitely do believe that we as humans can certainly come to know and understand many things that current science tells us is not possible to know. That includes the reality of other worlds/dimensions, higher states of consciousness, communication with other beings/intelligences, the multi-dimensional nature of reality, the ability to heal, astral projection, telepathy, remote viewing, psychic powers and much much more.

If you think that sounds crazy then stick around, you might learn something

“The real mystery of life is not a problem to be solved, it is a reality to be experienced.” –J.J. Van der Leeuw

'Wonder' by Alex Grey - www.alexgrey.com

Now that I’ve posted this blog to my Facebook newsfeed I’m guessing there’s going to be a rather eclectic bunch of people from many walks of life taking a look at this blog. I think many of my Facebook friends are on a fairly similar wavelength to me, and this post is not really aimed at you. It’s more for the people who I went to school or uni with who perhaps don’t know about or understand the direction my life has taken over the last 10 to 15 years.

I want to emphasize that this is not an attempt to preach anything or convert anyone to a particular way of thinking, but if nothing else I hope to pique your curiosity so that you might look further into some of these facinating subjects.

Spirituality is so important and fundamental to my life, however most people seem to have no idea what spirituality means, so this is my attempt to explain it, or at least explain what it means to me. One of the things you soon find out is that it’s a very personal subject and it can mean many different things to different people.

First of all I want to say what it’s not. It’s nothing to do with religion. I can’t emphasize that enough. That’s not to say you can’t find authentic spirituality within religion, but you certainly don’t need any religion to find authentic spirituality.

I don’t consider myself religious, or certainly not in the way most people understand the word. I’m actually fairly anti-religion in many respects, although I try to be respectful of other peoples customs and beliefs particularly if it really is having a truly beneficial affect on their life.

Although I’m very aware that religion does do a lot of good in the world, I personally think the negative side of religion outweighs the positive side. The negative side is of course the wars, hate, violence, intolerance and suffering that religious people have inflicted on each other (and the so-called heretics) down through the ages. Which is ironic because the true teachings of practically every religion actually promote peace, harmony and understanding between people (even those that believe something different to yourself!). Anyway, I’m getting away from the point, so back to spirituality!

I tend to find that people who are not spiritually aware think they only have three options in life when it comes to matters of God and spirit. You either join a religion and become a believer in God (theist). You reject ideas of god completely (and become an atheist). Or you sit on the fence and happily admit that really you have no idea (agnostic). This is what I remember learning in RE at school and I’m sure this is what most other people think are their only options.

However, there’s a fourth option I want to tell you about. An option that sadly too few people are aware of right now. You could call this option gnosis or gnosticism. The essential meaning of those words is knowledge, but for now let’s use the more general umbrella word of spirituality. Believe it or not, you positively and definitely can acquire real knowledge of the spiritual worlds if you’re willing to open your mind (and perhaps more importantly, your heart).

The path to this kind of knowledge can be an arduous one, that usually involves leaving your comfort zone far behind you. It often means realising that everything you thought you knew about the world is in fact quite wrong, and your life will never be quite the same again. Sometimes it means you have to let go of your friends and family because you can’t relate to them any more, although it certainly doesn’t mean you will love them any less. The rewards however, are immense.

So, what is spirituality?

For me it’s about love, knowledge, sharing, connection, and understanding the deeper mysteries of life. It’s about finding  answers to the questions of who am I? Where am I? Why am I here? And what do I do now? It’s about not being afraid to question absolutely everything, and to always think for myself, and not to believe something just because someone has told me it’s true. It’s about making the most of my life each and every day, and being the best person I can be.

Perhaps more than anything it’s about remembering. Because I know that this knowledge is not exclusive, and it is in fact hidden within each and every person on this planet, but for most people it’s just been deeply locked away in a place where they fear to look - deep inside themselves.

I would also like to share a definition I got from a course I did last year with a British spiritual teacher called William Bloom -

“Spirituality is our natural experience of the pure wonder of life; and our instinct to deepen that experience and explore its meaning.”

Perhaps you think you’ve never had a spiritual experience. But have you ever had a moment, perhaps out in nature where you’re staring out at a most beautiful scene, may be the sun is setting and everything is glowing and suddenly you’re completely awestruck by the incredible beauty of your surroundings and you start to feel a deep but unexplainable connection to everything around you? Welcome to the world of spiritual experience. That’s where it all starts for many people, although it’s certainly not where it ends.

Authentic spirituality is not really about beliefs (although some beliefs may come into play), and it’s certainly not about dogma and imposing your views, although there’s certainly nothing wrong with sharing what you know. People will come when they’re ready, or not at all.

If you had to boil it down to two things I would say it’s about love and connection, although the two are practically the same thing, because when you love someone or something then you’re deeply connected with them.

Through this blog I intend to explore the subject of spirituality (inner journeys) more deeply, as well as talking about my adventures (outer travels) in Peru. I hope you will follow along, and if you haven’t been stirred already, I hope I can somehow stir that place deep inside of you that is longing to be free and awake. However, if you want to reject it all as a load of old new-age hippie bullshit then that’s ok too. I wish you nothing but a happy journey through life and I hope that all your dreams come true.

With deep love and respect

Andy

PS. For those reading that already consider yourselves spiritually aware. Perhaps you would like to share what spirituality means to you in the comments below.