Annie’s Notebook 7
WAKING UP TO OURSELVES
A regular review: For those who feel there’s something more.
This month’s topic
MAY THE BEST MAN WIN
The death of Margaret Thatcher has reminded us just how divisive she was – and is. Out of her policies on the free market and her views such as ‘there is no such thing as society’, there certainly were, and still are, winners and losers. How often, though, it is the ‘inspired failure’, ‘the loser’ who emerges from the deep, and who finds something more meaningful to offer than the old-style ‘winner’.
Guidelines
“So many people are flailing right now because they think they are failing. And when you fail you are not succeeding and when you feel unsuccessful you fall down a hole. So many people are in those holes at the moment because they feel like failures. The whole world feels like a failure and guess what, the world is failing – badly.
What does it take to feel successful, to become a person in your own eyes rather than in someone else’s? The trouble is the modern world has so much you can fail at. You can fail at celebrity, you can fail at becoming the manager of the bank, you can then fail at being the managing director of the bank, all because you are trying to succeed, to be the best man, or woman of your dreams.
And there’s the rub. It is a dream, a fantasy. Most people are trying to succeed in an ephemeral world that in fact has no reality. You cannot succeed by ambition alone. Ambition is by nature competitive, and competition is your downfall. Life is changing, evolving. The ‘dominant male’ of the old worldview is no longer the most successful. The dominant male is the one who strives, who has the ambition to be top dog. And yet, the top dog is no longer who he used to be. He is not the one who fights to the death, conquers all, and continues to dream more conquering dreams.
No, the winner now is not the one who wants to conquer. He who wins now is the one who sits down and knows how the world is changing. The world is no longer working by becoming more competitive. It is, in fact, underneath it all, emerging as more egalitarian; more gentle on the body, more gentle on the mind. Have you noticed that those in competition are now seen not to be succeeding?
The bankers are failing, and being called to account. Rape and pillage – considered weapons of war and taking possession of the defeated – perpetrated since time immemorial is no longer acceptable. The rapists are being denounced and hunted down. The conquerors will be conquered.
There is a huge change coming into being. The dominant male is becoming extinct. A new body of light is coming on to planet earth. Rather than slaying the dragon, St Michael, the once and future king, the dominant Knight of the past, will return to Earth in a gentler guise. The Life Force will no longer be red in tooth a claw, but will become a gentler more egalitarian chooser of Life, not death.
Humanity will no longer fight to the death, but ‘fight’ for the right to Life. The winners will be the losers as we see they are becoming. Those considered ‘losers’, will find they have the inner resources needed to know their place in a changing world of changing values.
In its own way social networking is externally heralding this inner, energetic change. No one is allowed to be top dog any longer; everyone can be called to account.
For now the movement is crude. This new relationship to what it is to be human and awareness of a new system of value is still emerging. But it is imminent. The world is changing. It is a powerful transition time.
Many people feel they have ‘lost the plot’ – but it is the plot itself that is changing. Stay cool, keep calm, keep doing what you do and then …we’ll see.”
What triggered the bigger picture for you and set you on your spiritual journey?
James’s story: “In the 60s I was on tour with our Band. I had started to read books about flying saucers and Atlantis. The lead singer and I shared a room and we’d talk about these things; having long discussions, lighting candles, playing music.
But I was opening up in the wrong way. One time in 1967 I took LSD and it didn’t do me any good. It set me into a long period of depression for six months. I was so depressed I couldn’t play, and they had to get someone else to fill in on tour. It was a miserable time.
I gradually came out of it and my first wife introduced me to a healer at the White Eagle Lodge (a healing organisation based around the teachings of a native Indian guide, channelled through the late Grace Cooke).
This guy gave me healing after all the depression, and it was such a strong experience, I gradually got involved. I attended regular absent healing services they held in Kensington. We would have a list of names and would visualise appropriate colours into the chakras.
The band broke up in 1968, and I went on to do different musical projects. I developed my own meditation. Listening to classical music I’d find I could relax; a different state of being relaxed. Around that time I recorded several albums of New Age Music.
In the 1980s I met Tony Neate for guidance sessions. He suggested I do a channelling course at Runnings Park, their centre in Malvern. He said that as I was doing inspirational music, channelling might help me.
I was always open, looking, and always interested in Buddhism. In 1995 I went on a ten-day retreat led by an Indian Guru and after that for many years I enjoyed Tibetan Buddhism, following the teachings of Gyalwang Drukpa with pilgrimages in Nepal and China.
I found somewhere along the line that the channelling work seems to fuse with the musical inspiration, and creatively it has been a great help. I feel that my music has now gone quite a lot deeper, and I love to perform what I feel is a real expression of that.”
Next Notebook May 14th: