I just want to say thanks to all my friends who left some really positive comments below my last couple of posts while I was away, I really appreciate the support and it’s always good to know who your real friends are! Anyway, I’m back from my trek to Machu Picchu and I’m feeling really awesome and happy again. It was a magnificent trek with awe-inspiring views literally every step of the way, I’m so glad I did it. I’ll be writing a report about it along with photos in the next few days.

In response to Asif’s comment, my friend wasn’t getting free accomodation with me, she was staying in a nearby hostel, however I just found out today that she left without paying or even leaving her room key behind. Anyway, I owe her some money for the deposit she paid towards the trek, so I’ll give that to the hostel. It’s roughly the same amount she owed them I think.

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.

(Thanks again to Sue for passing this on)

The Unforgettable Commencement Address by Paul Hawken to the Class of 2009, University of Portland, May 3, 2009

When I was invited to give this speech, I was asked if I could give a

simple short talk that was “direct, naked, taut, honest, passionate,

lean, shivering, startling, and graceful.” Boy, no pressure there.

But let’s begin with the startling part. Hey, Class of 2009: you are

going to have to figure out what it means to be a human being on earth

at a time when every living system is declining, and the rate of

decline is accelerating. Kind of a mind-boggling situation… but not

one peer-reviewed paper published in the last thirty years can refute

that statement. Basically, the earth needs a new operating system, you

are the programmers, and we need it within a few decades.

This planet came with a set of operating instructions, but we seem to

have misplaced them. Important rules like don’t poison the water,

soil, or air, and don’t let the earth get overcrowded, and don’t touch

the thermostat have been broken. Buckminster Fuller said that

spaceship earth was so ingeniously designed that no one has a clue

that we are on one, flying through the universe at a million miles per

hour, with no need for seatbelts, lots of room in coach, and really

good food, but all that is changing.

There is invisible writing on the back of the diploma you will

receive, and in case you didn’t bring lemon juice to decode it, I can

tell you what it says: YOU ARE BRILLIANT, AND THE EARTH IS HIRING.

The earth couldn’t afford to send any recruiters or limos to your school.

It sent you rain, sunsets, ripe cherries, night blooming jasmine, and

that unbelievably cute person you are dating. Take the hint. And

here’s the deal: Forget that this task of planet-saving is not

possible in the time required. Don’t be put off by people who know

what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it

was impossible only after you are done.

When asked if I am pessimistic or optimistic about the future, my

answer is always the same: If you look at the science about what is

happening on earth and aren’t pessimistic, you don’t understand data.

But if you meet the people who are working to restore this earth and

the lives of the poor, and you aren’t optimistic, you haven’t got a

pulse. What I see everywhere in the world are ordinary people willing

to confront despair, power, and incalculable odds in order to restore

some semblance of grace, justice, and beauty to this world. The poet

Adrienne Rich wrote, “So much has been destroyed I have cast my lot

with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary

power, reconstitute the world.” There could be no better description.

Humanity is coalescing. It is reconstituting the world, and the action

is taking place in schoolrooms, farms, jungles, villages, campuses,

companies, refuge camps, deserts, fisheries, and slums.

You join a multitude of caring people. No one knows how many groups

and organizations are working on the most salient issues of our day:

climate change, poverty, deforestation, peace, water, hunger,

conservation, human rights, and more. This is the largest movement the

world has ever seen. Rather than control, it seeks connection. Rather

than dominance, it strives to disperse concentrations of power. Like

Mercy Corps, it works behind the scenes and gets the job done. Large

as it is, no one knows the true size of this movement. It provides

hope, support, and meaning to billions of people in the world. Its

clout resides in idea, not in force. It is made up of teachers,

children, peasants, businesspeople, rappers, organic farmers, nuns,

artists, government workers, fisherfolk, engineers, students,

incorrigible writers, weeping Muslims, concerned mothers, poets,

doctors without borders, grieving Christians, street musicians, the

President of the United States of America, and as the writer David

James Duncan would say, the Creator, the One who loves us all in such

a huge way.

There is a rabbinical teaching that says if the world is ending and

the Messiah arrives, first plant a tree, and then see if the story is

true. Inspiration is not garnered from the litanies of what may befall

us; it resides in humanity’s willingness to restore, redress, reform,

rebuild, recover, reimagine, and reconsider. “One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept

shouting their bad advice,” is Mary Oliver’s description of moving

away from the profane toward a deep sense of connectedness to the

living world.

Millions of people are working on behalf of strangers, even if the

evening news is usually about the death of strangers. This kindness of

strangers has religious, even mythic origins, and very specific

eighteenth-century roots. Abolitionists were the first people to

create a national and global movement to defend the rights of those

they did not know. Until that time, no group had filed a grievance

except on behalf of itself. The founders of this movement were largely

unknown Granville Clark, Thomas Clarkson, Josiah Wedgwood and their

goal was ridiculous on the face of it: at that time three out of four

people in the world were enslaved. Enslaving each other was what human

beings had done for ages. And the abolitionist movement was greeted

with incredulity. Conservative spokesmen ridiculed the abolitionists

as liberals, progressives, do-gooders, meddlers, and activists. They

were told they would ruin the economy and drive England into poverty.

But for the first time in history a group of people organized

themselves to help people they would never know, from whom they would

never receive direct or indirect benefit.. And today tens of millions

of people do this every day. It is called the world of non-profits,

civil society, schools, social entrepreneurship, and non-governmental

organizations, of companies who place social and environmental justice

at the top of their strategic goals. The scope and scale of this

effort is unparalleled in history.

The living world is not “out there” somewhere, but in your heart. What

do we know about life? In the words of biologist Janine Benyus, life

creates the conditions that are conducive to life. I can think of no

better motto for a future economy. We have tens of thousands of

abandoned homes without people and tens of thousands of abandoned

people without homes. We have failed bankers advising failed

regulators on how to save failed assets. Think about this: we are the

only species on this planet without full employment. Brilliant. We

have an economy that tells us that it is cheaper to destroy earth in

real time than to renew, restore, and sustain it. You can print money

to bail out a bank but you can’t print life to bail out a planet. At present

we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross

domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on

healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the

future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the

other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the earth we exploit people

and cause untold suffering. Working for the earth is not a way to get rich,

it is a way to be rich.

The first living cell came into being nearly 40 million centuries ago,

and its direct descendants are in all of our bloodstreams. Literally

you are breathing molecules this very second that were inhaled by

Moses, Mother Teresa, and Bono. We are vastly interconnected. Our

fates are inseparable. We are here because the dream of every cell is

to become two cells. In each of you are one quadrillion cells, 90

percent of which are not human cells. Your body is a community, and

without those other microorganisms you would perish in hours. Each

human cell has 400 billion molecules conducting millions of processes

between trillions of atoms. The total cellular activity in one human

body is staggering: one septillion actions at any one moment, a one

with twenty-four zeros after it. In a millisecond, our body has

undergone ten times more processes than there are stars in the

universe exactly what Charles Darwin foretold when he said science

would discover that each living creature was a “little universe formed

of a host of self-propagating organisms, inconceivably minute

and as numerous as the stars of heaven.”

So I have two questions for you all: First, can you feel your body?

Stop for a moment. Feel your body. One septillion activities going on

simultaneously, and your body does this so well you are free to ignore

it, and wonder instead when this speech will end. Second question: who

is in charge of your body? Who is managing those molecules? Hopefully

not a political party. Life is creating the conditions that are

conducive to life inside you, just as in all of nature. What I want

you to imagine is that collectively humanity is evincing a deep innate

wisdom in coming together to heal the wounds and insults of the past.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once asked what we would do if the stars only came

out once every thousand years. No one would sleep that night, of

course. The world would become religious overnight. We would be

ecstatic, delirious, made rapturous by the glory of God. Instead the

stars come out every night, and we watch television.

This extraordinary time when we are globally aware of each other and

the multiple dangers that threaten civilization has never happened,

not in a thousand years, not in ten thousand years. Each of us is as

complex and beautiful as all the stars in the universe. We have done

great things and we have gone way off course in terms of honoring

creation. You are graduating to the most amazing, challenging,

stupefying challenge ever bequested to any generation. The generations

before you failed. They didn’t stay up all night. They got distracted

and lost sight of the fact that life is a miracle every moment of your

existence. Nature beckons you to be on her side. You couldn’t ask for

a better boss. The most unrealistic person in the world is the cynic,

not the dreamer. Hopefulness only makes sense when it doesn’t make

sense to be hopeful. This is your century. Take it and run as if your

life depends on it.

Paul Hawken is a renowned entrepreneur, visionary environmental
activist, and author of many books, most recently Blessed Unrest: How
the Largest Movement in the World Came into Being and Why No One Saw
It Coming. He was presented with an honorary doctorate of humane
letters by University president Father Bill Beauchamp, C.S.C., in May,
when he delivered this superb speech. Our thanks especially to Erica
Linson for her help making that moment possible.

www.paulhawken.com

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

Two weeks ago I finally got around to enrolling at a Spanish School which has led to some interesting developments.

In Cusco there are well over a dozen Spanish schools so it wasn’t easy knowing which one to choose. I must have looked at around ten different websites and most of them had a very similar spiel and cost roughly the same. The main difference between them is that some are privately owned and some are part of NGOs that put their profits towards various community projects that help many of the underprivileged people in Peru.

Initially it felt right that I should enrol at one of the schools run by an NGO so that as well as learning Spanish my money would be going towards helping people in need. However, my intuition was pulling me towards a privately owned school called Máximo Nivel. It didn’t seem like the most ethical choice, but I’ve learned to trust my feelings and that’s the place I felt I had to go. And what an amazing choice that turned out to be!!

At the beginning of my 2nd week I find out that my Spanish teacher, Norma, was about to leave the school because she was in the process of establishing her own Spanish school and tour agency with her husband. She told me they had just moved into a new office (which includes 3 rooms that will be used as classrooms) in the trendy San Blas area of Cusco (less than a 10 minute walk from where I live). Not only that but she kindly invites me to work out of their office if I want to.

One of the things I’ve been doing a lot this last month is working out of a couple of bars in central Cusco. This is simply because the wifi connection is much better than my home connection which is a bit unreliable and can be painfully slow at times. Now I don’t mind working out of bars, however it does prove to be quite expensive because I will usually keep buying drinks (rarely alcohol) while I’m working. I figure it would be a bit rude to use their electricity and internet for several hours at a time and not buy anything. But all those, sandwiches, coffees and fresh orange juices (and the occasional beer, I must admit) soon add up, and it had been on my mind for quite awhile that it would be really nice if I had an office I could work out of during the day. I hadn’t even made it a specific intention, but the universe still got to work for me and provided me with just what I wanted. How amazing is that?

Of course I’ve now left Máximo Nivel to remain Norma’s student and I’m her very first student at her new school. They’re not quite ready to promote the school yet as they still have a few things to finish, so as of today I’m lucky enough to be getting one-on-one lessons with Norma and I can really feel the benefits of that already.

As for how I’m actually getting on with learning Spanish, well I’m doing ok. I’ve always found learning foreign languages really difficult and this is proving to be no exception, but I’m pleased with my progress so far. However, I think it’ll take a good few months before I’m anywhere near being at a conversational level.

Hasta luego mis amigos!