Early Beginnings: Meeting My First Spiritual Mentor

Fred came into my life in the early ’70s. A friend of his had said to me “you must meet Fred”.

“Who’s Fred?” I asked.

“Here is his address. You will find out when you meet him,” she replied.

I followed my feeling and a week later found myself walking down a long dark passageway in an old upstairs office block. I came upon a door with ‘Fred Arnold - Spiritual Healer’ written in small letters on it. I opened the door and walked into a large waiting room, full of people. I stood for a few moments wondering what to do.

“Take a seat,” someone said.

The room was silent. After a while, a door at the other end of the room opened and an old woman came out.

“Next...” called a voice from behind the door.

Someone else stood up and walked through the door. This went on for about an hour, until I was left sitting alone in the room. I waited and waited. I was beginning to wonder what I should do: maybe Fred had left by another door (after all I didn’t have an appointment), maybe he didn’t even know I was there.

Suddenly the door was flung open and a beaming face popped out. The old man beckoned me to come. I walked through the door as Fred was taking off his shirt and then he proceeded to lie on the treatment table. He was clearly aware of the look on my face.

“Come on,” he said. “Do your stuff!”

“What stuff?” I asked

“Healing,” Fred said. “You can heal me. I need it, have been healing people all day and need some help myself.”

“What do I do?” I asked, quite confused.

Fred just shook his head.

“Just stand here,” he said, pointing to the head of the table. “Put your hands above my head, close your eyes and pray. You will know what to do.”

I did as instructed and a few minutes later, my hands began to tingle and pulsate with heat. They felt like they were on fire and as if they had taken on a life of their own of there own. I felt compelled to place them on Fred’s head. The heat increased and continued for several minutes. When it subsided, Fred opened his eyes and smiled. I felt my face red with embarrassment.

“You have a spiritual guide called Nuko. He’s a medicine man. He stands on one leg looking across the desert. He is a powerful healer,” Fred said. “Thanks Peter, I feel much better now.”

“You also are a powerful healer,” he continued. "Nuko assists you to do what you don’t have the confidence yet to do yourself,” he explained.

My mind was bursting with questions.

“All in good time,” Fred said, answering my unspoken thought.

This meeting began an association between Fred and myself that lasted many months. I became his assistant with his healing work and also his driver (Fred had severe arthritis in his hands and feet, could hardly walk and definitely couldn’t drive). At the time, I was baffled by that: how could one be such a fantastic healer and have major health problems himself? Much later, I was to come to understand that so many of those in the health profession (both in orthodox and alternative fields) took care of others before attending to themselves.

One day, Fred said “there is a film you should see. It’s about the healers in the Philippines. Here’s the address. It’s showing tonight.”

The next day when I arrived at Fred’s place, his wife said that he wasn’t feeling well and she hoped I could help. Fred lay on his bed.

“The bloody doctor has just been. He thinks I am mad,” said Fred, pointing at the comfrey leaves that he had wrapped around his arthritic feet.

“How was the film?” he asked, shrugging off my enquiry about his health.

“I am going to the Philippines as soon as I can,” I replied.

“Thought you might,” Fred smiled. “When you go Peter, there is one healer that you must see. He is the original healer in the Philippines. His name is Terte, he is the best of the lot. Make sure you find him.”

Little did I realise then that Terte was to become my second spiritual mentor. But for now, Fred was there for me to learn from. Terte and many others were to come later.

I spent as much time as could with Fred and listened with deep fascination to his tales of trekking in the Himalayan Mountains and discovering his Guru in his early years. He was a fascinating man and a wonderful healer who assisted many, yet he didn’t get to address his own health issues.

“It’s my karma..." he would say.

I was later to learn that the reason for being born into our lives in this third dimension is not to help others,  but to heal ourselves and to assist others along the way. More on this soon.

Many blessings,

Peter

Karma: Will It Happen To You?

This post is in response to a very good question posed on Facebook recently: “do you believe in karma?”

The answer is yes - but only if you have chosen the karmic path. The karmic path is the hard path; it is the path of unawareness. There is another path - the path of awareness. If you choose this path, you can negate karma.

Karma is the term given to cause and effect: if you do something that wrongs someone, you will receive a payback i.e. someone will do the same or similar to you. Because we have all lived many, many life times and have been involved in a great deal of interactions with others, there is a huge potential for us to have gathered a lot of karma.

There is however another way.

You and I are here on this 3-dimensional plane to learn to come to know who we really are. In order to do this, we need to learn. Learning brings knowledge; this leads to wisdom and understanding and ultimately to knowing who you really are.

There are two ways to achieve this: the karmic way or the way of awareness. It is entirely your choice, which way you decide to do it; either pathway will lead you to your goal. However the karmic way involves a great deal of suffering; it is the long-way around. In fact many eastern religions say that suffering is the only way to reach self-realisation. This is true only if you follow the karmic path.

When travelling the karmic way, the individual gets trapped in victim consciousness. How often do we hear people say how they are “battling” along when they are asked how life is going? The karmic path is one with hardship and constant challenges and the traveller feels trapped on a wheel that they cannot get off. Additionally, if they have religious teaching behind it all, then they will embrace the suffering believing it to be a necessary part of purification and purging of the ego.

The other path is the path of awareness or the path of the ‘student of life.’ Those who embrace this path stop looking at life as a battle and begin to see life as a continual series of opportunities to grow and deepen understanding. The student learns that every day they receive signs and omens that if followed will guide them to realisations of themselves and life. They learn to travel the path of least resistance just as water follows such a path. The Irish have a saying “may the path rise before you”. This means that you don’t need to make it happen - you simply allow it to happen.

So the choice is yours: the hard way – the karmic way - or the way of the student of life - the path of least resistance. The karmic way is the old way. My advice is to travel the new path of awareness and learn to recognise the signs have faith and courage that they will guide you to the place you seek.

Remember your ego wants to stay with the old way, because it is safe and known; the new way is unknown and the ego trembles at the thought of the new. Be bold enough to step out of the karmic way and become the student of life, no longer bound to the ways of suffering and struggle. Make your journey one of adventure and learning so that each day guides you to the understanding you need to help you deal with life in wonderful ways.

On this path you will learn that there is no right of wrong, good or bad, there is no evil. All of life is simply a reflection of how you perceive it to be and all perception flows from our conditioning, which in turn is a reflection of your learning.

Let go of the old way and embrace the new.

Happy travelling,

Peter.

Are You Wired For Abundance Or Lack Of Abundance?

Our belief system is wired for either abundance or lack of abundance or something in between. Most people are programmed for lack - these individuals struggle and never quite find the abundance in life that they seek. As a result of their conditioning, their central unconscious belief is that they don’t deserve. These beliefs create their reality.

I recall reading the story of a fellow who “died” while on the phone during an electrical storm. He was carted off to hospital and pronounced dead on arrival. They wheeled the poor fellow into the corridor placed a sheet over his body and left him to be taken to the morgue.

However, he wasn’t dead - but his body was paralysed and he couldn’t move, so he floated around the ceiling, wondering what he should do. He knew once he was in the freezer, it was all over.

As he watched two young fellows coming to get him, he summoned up his focus, got back in his body and blew on the sheet over his face. The two young guys freaked out, rushed him into the theatre and he was revived.

While he was having his out of body experience, he had found himself in what described as a beautiful crystal city. As he walked along the road admiring the perfection of this celestial place, he noted these magnificent rays of violet light. His guide explained that these were the prayers of people on the earth. They had reached the highest place in the universe and only remained in a suspended place because the individuals who had asked for help didn’t believe that they deserved the help, so it never actually reached them.

The conditioning we carry has developed over time from the programs, people and situations we have been exposed to. These come from parents, forefathers, society, culture, schoolteachers, peers, siblings and past lifetimes; in fact everything that we have been exposed to in our history.

These imprints, which evolve into our personal beliefs, condition us and build our internal programs; our wiring for thought is born from these controls and creates our reality.

Many of us have come from parents and forefathers who struggled to survive to make ends meet. This means that for many of us, we too have ended up believing (either consciously or unconsciously) that this was all we deserved - our belief systems have been reinforced with LACK of abundance. Even if you have decided and think that you won’t mimic your predecessors history, you will still be controlled by it until you set about truly changing things.

The good news is that you can change anything you want to. If you are wired for lack, have decided it no longer serves you and want abundance, you must find a way of changing or ditching this wiring. You must reprogram your internal belief system. Go into it and have a deep look at your beliefs. Be honest with where you are. Set about changing your beliefs and your reality will change. You will likely find that an abundant belief system will serve you in a much better way.

Many blessings,

Peter

The Art Of Stillness - How To Meditate

What is meditation? What is the purpose of meditation? What’s the benefit of meditation? And how do you do it?

These are very common questions and I will attempt to answer them here for you!

Meditation involves a process, which will - with practice - take you from your everyday mind state to a connection with your higher consciousness. Your everyday mind could be described as the chatterbox mind, which we all have; there is no stillness in this mind and therefore no peace.

Meditation is a search for peace. In order to find peace, you must quieten the chatterbox mind; this is the purpose of meditation.

Most people say they meditate but actually they only sit and battle with their overactive thoughts. In my early ‘20s, I would sit in a quiet place twice daily for 30 - 40 minutes believing I was “meditating”. Looking back with more wisdom and understanding from years seeking a deeper perspective on life, I now believe I either went to sleep or was run around in circles by my monkey mind.

A more accurate description would have been to say I was attempting to meditate and wasn’t getting very far.

When you truly meditate, your awareness of everything around you is heightened. I recall “meditating” while an accident happened outside the house I was in. The accident took place 20 metres from where I sat in my “meditation”.

I was completely unaware that people needed assistance, hence I wasn’t meditating like I thought. I was stuck in a process that obviously wasn’t working. I have since learnt that when one is meditating, they are connected to something beyond their normal thoughts; they are in a state of expanded awareness, not diminished awareness as I was back in the early days and in this particular instance.

There are literally thousands of methods of meditation – what you need to do is find a process that works for you. This may take some experimentation and remember also that different methods may work better at different times of your life. I myself have found that my meditation processes have evolved from tight, structured methods to more spontaneous, simpler methods.

Here is a list of thoughts and things to do, even though there are no rules here:

1)    Don’t try too hard. This is not a project - don’t approach it like you would a daily task. It works better without effort, although you will need self-discipline to make the time to do it.

2)    If you are new to meditation, I would strongly advise an audio guided meditation. This will give your mind something to do and something to focus on; if you have ever closed your eyes and tried to stop your mind, you will know how hopeless that is.

3)    Find a quiet place where you will not be disturbed! This means turn the phone off, put the ringer on silent and tell everyone not to disturb you. Wait until you can’t be distracted or go find a quiet spot somewhere else if need be.

4)    Meditation will work best if you sit upright in a comfortable position with a straight back. Lying down only works if you are well practised at it, otherwise you will just go to sleep.

5)    If you are using meditation to seek clarity on a particular situation, say a small prayer right before you start and ask to be shown the right path.

6)    The first part of meditation is developing the ability to focus, so whatever method you use you need to focus.

7)    Always begin by concentrating on your breath: nice, long, deep breaths. Try to actually become the observer of your breathing process. You want to breathe with an awareness of the feeling of inhaling and exhaling. Breathe through your nose, then out through your mouth. Your mind will tend to wander off at first to other thoughts. Don’t worry; just bring it back to focusing on your breathing. 

8)    Focus your visual attention on the point between your eyes.

9)    LISTEN to the silence. It is out of the silence that the peace that you seek comes.

10) Meditation is about learning to see with your eyes closed and listening to the stillness between the sounds of the world around you.

RELAX, LET IT HAPPEN, PRACTICE AND IT WILL WORK!

Many blessings,

Peter.

The 7 Universal Laws: A Reminder

You may remember sometime ago, I wrote about the 7 Universal Laws... if you missed them the first time around or you need a reminder, here they are once again.

1. The purpose of living in the three-dimensional world is to come to know yourself.

2. There is no good or bad; there just is.

3. Fix yourself, not everyone else.

4. Do not interfere in other peoples journeys unless you are invited to do so.

5. We are divine beings and as such, we decide and agree with our soul group on how we will help facilitate each others lessons in life.

6. There are no coincidences. Everything has a purpose.

7. To truly understand something, we must experience it on all levels and in all its facets.

Peter.