“Daddy, what did you do at the beginning of the 21st Century?”

Talk of a New Age, 2012 and a ‘quickening’, as well as general agreement that these are interesting times (credit crunch becoming recession, peak oil and more wars than ever) plus the very notion of post-modernism, all suggest these are transformational times for humanity. But don’t humans always think this is the case, whatever time they are born, live and die in?

Probably. However, I only know these times and they feel pretty turbulent and full of transformational energy to me. I don’t know about you, but I’m going for it. I’m convinced there’s more to life than medication, “education”, debt and fear (that’s my 4-word synopsis of peri-modern industrial society by the way, not just the editorial guidelines of the Western media).

I’m with Willis Harman, who in his book Global Mind Change, claims: (Read on …)

It’s not an easy time to be running a magazine, especially one that avoids the unholy trinity of celebrity gossip, preying on insecurity and rampant consumerism. Just ask the folks at Common Ground - the Totnes-based eco and lifestyle mag who I understand hasn’t been able to keep its head above water after just one edition. I remember too my own efforts in publishing (Vibes! - Sheffield’s guide to positive living) that almost drove me round the bend and certainly deep into debt way back in 1994. Being Assistant Editor at Positive News was also a big insight into the perils of postive publishing and the old adage that good news is still doing up its shoelaces, while bad news has gone round the world twice.

All that said, my deepest respect and admiration therefore goes to The Source, the “first stop for inspiration and information on all the things we all care about down here in the South West … our land, our community, our spirit and above all, our plans for a sustainable and positive future”. (Read on …)

When I had my first major life crisis (breakdown, enlightenment, spiritual emergency, ‘Saturn return’; call it what you will) about 20 years ago, one book that appeared in my life was E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful (pictured). Associated with it, was a subscription to Resurgence magazine (hear my interviews 20 years later with its luminary editor Satish Kumar), membership of the Schumacher Society and a pilgrimage to the Schumacher Lectures in Bristol - what a painful, yet glorious time in my life!

In recent days, ‘Fritz’ (as I think he was known among friends and family), popped back into view via the Tom Hodgkinson book I’ve been raving about (see last few posts) and yesterday, I stole his book back from my ex-wife’s bookshelves, whilst dropping off our daughter.

His ‘Buddhist Economics’ have stood the test of time. Check this out from the sleeve-notes: “Dr Schumacher challenges the doctrine of economic, technological and scientific specialisation and proposes a system of Intermediate Technology, based on smaller working units, communal ownership, and regional workplaces utilising local labour and resources. With an emphasis on the person not the product, Small is Beautiful points the way to a world in which Capital serves Man instead of Man remaining a slave to Capital.” (Read on …)

The inspiring, vindicating, validating words of Tom Hodgkinson are still ringing in my ears. His plea to have us live free of supermarkets (chapter 25 of How to Be Free) puts it simply: they are “evil”. If you need more than his completely understandable hatred, his claim that Tesco’s take £1 of every £3 spent in the UK on groceries should chill your blood, if you are in any way sentient.

I enjoyed buying one of Tesco’s finest loaves the other day for just 24p, imagining I’d hit them where it hurts - its fine taste made all the finer by my successful late-night, hunter-gatherer mission.  And today, as my youngest daughter and I hunted down bargains in the Boxing Day city-centre, I got a similar sense of satisfaction buying an £80 coat for just £30 as well as helping Zavvi’s new owners (or liquidators) by taking a few cheap, but brilliant, DVDs off their hands.

As a retail plains-drifting, punter-gatherer I feel like I’m doing my bit to exploit, de-value and bring an end to, the “crap towns” as Tom puts it; the kind that Tesco’s help create by driving small shops and businesses out of business. Tom states in his book that small retailers are closing at the rate of 2,000 a year and may be extinct - as a species - by 2015 (this from a UK government report, not just Tom’s idle, yet vitriolic being).

Do take Tom’s advice and as a hedolist, visit the independent, specialist shops that offer the best deal to you, the local community and the planet. And in so doing, restore (or, if you’re lucky, maintain) the individuality of your neighbourhood. They may not be the short-term cheapest, but remember the words of Ruskin who warned those of us who buy on price alone: “There is scarcely anything in the world that some man cannot make a little worse, and sell a little more cheaply. The person who buys on price alone is this man’s lawful prey.”

Another thing you might like to do is surrender your loyalty cards. See the article I wrote on the full horror of being loyal and thinking you’re getting a good deal from a symbiotic retail relationship. Don’t kid yourself!

Just as it’s said a prophet is never known in their own land (a good way also to ease the indignation of not being listened to), I figure you don’t get the most open of ears and minds when it comes to your own kids. I’m a father of two and feel I have a pretty good relationship with my two daughters, aided - I suspect - by the fact that they are daughters, but don’t doubt their indifference to my ‘wisdom’.

Older daughter has, for years, ridiculed my interest in holistic matters, summing it up one afternoon (taking inspiration from the communal, organic, hippy-fied dwelling where I lived) in a mock-guru-ish way, saying, with flipchart pen in hand: (Read on …)

Several weeks ago on a CopperStrings journal, I made a post - “Why I won’t be celebrating Christmas”

Thinking about it, the word berating can be found in the word celebrating and I suppose that’s what I did; I scolded the event and those who take part (especially those who take part against their better judgement).
It’s Christmas Day as I wite, and I’m on my own. No surpise really. My abstinence (from the mindless custom, not necesarily some of its associated actions) and protestations have drawn surprise, pity and the one I’m most familiar with - that knowing and understanding posture from those who understand, but have no intention from the ridiculousness they see, but can’t quite let go of.

I’ve had a fry-up. Communicated with nearest and dearest by phone, text and email. I’ve been out on my bike (ear is healing nicely - see yesterday’s entry) and it was a joy to ride through a post-apocalyptic-like Exeter city centre (just a few muslims wandering around waiting for things to blow over). Dropped off my divorce petition to the deserted County Court building. Called in on a friend and gulped some lovely port. Dinner is in the oven, chocolates have been eaten and I’ve nearly finished Tom Hodgkinson’s puritan-bashing How to Be Free book, which informed me that Christmas was banned in 1647.

It’s not that I want to ban it. How can I put this? (Read on …)

Some way into a ‘guilty pleasure’, fry-up breakfast in a supermarket this week, I was upstaged by a more nutritionally reckless individual – a schoolboy tucking into a pot noodle accompanied by a cola drink.

I’d caught sight of him as I was reading with great interest, the work of another newspaper columnist, bemoaning the fact that most people don’t understand the significance of Easter and just make good use of a couple of work-free days – oblivious to any spiritual significance.

The combination of the nutritionally-challenged youth and a spiritually-challenged nation got me thinking, and excuse me if this is sounding like a sermon, but as sure as food is nutrition for the body, spirituality is surely nutrition for the soul – or whatever you choose to call that hidden, yet deepest part of yourself.

Put another way: as sure as what we put in our mouths builds our bodies; whatever we put into our hearts and minds builds our ‘being’. And to push the analogy further: if it’s junk food we eat, it’s likely we’ll build a junk body, prone to disease and lethargy; and if we starve or compromise ourselves spiritually, it follows that we might feel a bit empty and lack the resources to face the facts of our lives with strength and courage.

Going back to my brother in print, he seemed to take it further by suggesting that our general lack of understanding in the Easter department caused a national crisis of character. And whilst I’m with him on the idea that putting worship before - or at least within - bank holiday-based leisure might make the world a better place, I’m not sure that you necessarily need to be a Christian to be an upstanding pillar of the community.

And anyway, why should living a good and principled life be confined to one church-going day of the week, or even a couple of bank holidays a year?

But let’s return to the way we nourish our souls for a moment and consider the folk - a majority according to a recent BBC report - who “believe in God, pray and think of them selves as ‘Christian’, despite not going to church”, those who are “believing without belonging”, as well as those who follow the world’s other spiritual diet plans, the many millions, if not billions who get their soul sustenance elsewhere.

Let’s remember that church-based, corporate Christianity is a means (not the means) to an end. And of course that end is not an end in itself. You cannot be a Christian, or any moral position, once and for all. Like any true spiritual practice it lives or dies in the moment, and the challenge to live what you believe to be right and true, is there in every second and opportunity of your living life.

On the matter of shrinking congregations and the “curse of apathy”, maybe the churches aren’t empty because we are becoming an increasingly god-less lot; maybe they’re empty because we are ‘cutting out the middle-man’ and finding our own, new ways to connect with the divine. For me, worship is gratitude, contemplation, meditation, awe and love; what better time than a Bank Holiday weekend - free from the stresses of every-working-day life - to remember to do these things?

But insiders don’t share my positivity about ‘disintermediation’ – the aforementioned side-stepping of the middleman that’s happening in many areas of our daily lives like the Internet, where consumers connect directly with manufacturers, upping convenience and cutting costs.

Recent research by Christian charity Tearfund, says 26 million adults claim to be Christian, whilst 32 million have no connection with church. Terafund’s President Dr Elaine Storkey, a Christian academic and broadcaster, seems to think it’s a sign that people want everything - including Christianity - on their own terms.

She says: “People are used to instant gratification, they are used to having what they want, when they want without putting in too much effort. Having a connection with Christianity is not a problem for most people; it’s when something is asked of them that they start to struggle”

“Some sort of ‘vague Christianity’ acts as a way for people to keep their options open, they don’t have to think too hard about life and aren’t pushed outside their comfort zone,” says philosopher Dr Julian Baggini, adding to the idea that most ‘believers’ are part-timers or are in some way cheating.

I’m not sure. In my experience, more and more people are seeing themselves as ‘spiritual’, rather than ‘religious’ and for the churches it’s a problem of ‘market-share’ because they just don’t get it. Modern spirituality, though understandably critcised as “having things your own way”, is a much taller order than generally portrayed.

Rather than following dogma and doctrine, the people I know - who might say they are more spiritual than religious - are well-read deep thinkers, open to discussion and put things into practice that make sense to them at the deepest level. Their lifestyle choices are conscience-driven and they see the ups and downs of life as an education that allows personal development and spiritual awakening.

I think the image of a secular UK where everyone has embraced consumerism as their modern-day God, is misplaced. ‘St Pixels’, an internet church complete with daily prayers, readings and a chat room for its online congregation proves there’s a timeless human need that longs to met in new ways. Whether religious or spiritual, I maintain we’re all looking for God – to be nourished spiritually - each in our own way; however strange, shallow or fickle it may seem from another’s point of view.

There’s no doubt about it, I meet some interesting characters in my work and I don’t know if it’s the shape of my face, the size of my ears or the cut of my jib, but they often seem to open up and tell me a lot about themselves, their lives and their beliefs.

Just recently, against the background of declining numbers wishing to marry and parliament having a kick-about on the subject, I had one such remarkable conversation with Life coach, oxygenation expert and musician, Ruth Gilmore, who firmly believes in the power of marriage and she told me why. Ruth has had an extraordinary life - certainly by my measure - with more tragedy and trauma than most of us have to bear.

She’s an extraordinary lady, but to her absolute credit, she doesn’t quite see it like that. As is often the case with people who have experienced the sort of shocks in life that would have many of us curled up in a ball for weeks, months, if not years, she seems to have developed a beautiful, philosophical outlook based on the “tragic” events of her life.

One of the things that really got my attention in our, at times intense exchange, was her assertion that she “loved everyone”. More than getting my attention, I have to say this comment got right under my rather uncharitable skin. How on earth can anyone love everyone?

Believe her or not, looks like Ruth is getting there.

“I believe love is a gift from God, unconditional and always there - ready to flow in abundance - to and through us,” she told me. “I do not believe we have the right to limit its flow towards others and I do not think it is up to us to decide if someone deserves it or not. What right have we got to play God?”

Interesting. But, as we all know, life isn’t quite like that. You may, by now, not be surprised to hear that Ruth has got that figured too:

“We may have issues with others which prevent us from being able to pass that love around freely and abundantly,” Ruth continued, adding: “yet are those issues really with others or with our self?”

“Have we allowed circumstances from the past to dictate how we feel about someone now? Why bring the past to the party?” she asks.

Ruth has realised that this rationing of love allows her to now understand what her mother was often saying to her as a child: “I will always love you but I may not always like you.”

With regard to relationships, Ruth has realised that this awareness is not always used by the significant others in her life. They, (and to my shame, I realised I do this too – could be a man-thing) use a very different principle of withdrawing love if they do not like her in a given moment.

“For me,” says Ruth, “this makes it very hard to understand what makes the other tick because if I have to censor what I question or what I feel in case the other does not like it, and withdraws love immediately as a consequence, then how can these issues be explored and how can we grow?”

Good question. See what I mean about her extraordinary view of life?

“That is why I am in favour of marriage rather than living with someone. To me marriage is a commitment to constantly ‘love’ one’s partner and knowing that the love is constant. You have the freedom of being able to ‘question’ anything without having to phrase it in a certain way or reduce the feeling as you have to do with others,” says this loving life-coach who tackles these big issues in the songs she writes too.

“I have experienced such a marriage and it is fab,” she heart-rendingly added.

Ruth realises that this understanding is not one shared by many and may account for why so many want to live together instead. But here’s one woman who won’t be throwing out the baby of eternal truth with the bathwater of social trends.

Postscript: I have since heard that Ruth is getting married on July 7th. Congratulations!

The idea of going for a scan can create anxiety. Whether for the purposes of routine screening or to double-check a medical suspicion, scans also tend to be rooted in the physical body. So the idea of a metaphysical or holistic scan – to look for energetic blockages – caught my interest.

It’s Kimberley Jones, a Torquay born and bred Art Historian turned healer and artist, who offers this insightful and unusual service under the banner of Quantum Coaching and Healing, and for anyone remotely interested in the connection between the emotions, the mind and health – she’s a must-see.

Sure I was intrigued to learn that Kimberley “reads” bodily energy with her hands and can feel colours - red, blue and green - which reveal different types of energetic information all over the body. But I was relieved to be greeted by a very normal looking and sounding person when I went for my initial consultation.

“I have sensed ‘energy’ since I was a child - although I wouldn’t have called it that,” Kim told me when I quizzed her about her background. “I just knew what people were thinking and feeling.”

“Growing up I found my sensitivity made it hard to be in the world so I started numbing myself with alcohol and cigarettes at a very young age. I convinced myself I could get a respectable job and perhaps be a ‘businesswoman’, whatever that meant,” Kim revealed.

“Nothing satisfied me and I moved jobs regularly. I buried my abilities deeper and deeper until I forgot about them. I got more and more stressed,” added Kim whose mother it turns out was also highly psychic.

Following her mother’s death in 1997, Kim started experiencing violent psychic events and her abilities were blasted wide open again, far stronger than before.

“I went into a ’spiritual emergency’, a crisis that often leads to a breakdown of some kind,” Kim told me. “I also became physically unwell. Diagnosed with Fibromyalgia in 2000, I became unable to function in any normal way and had to stop work.”

“The one thing that had a strong effect on me during these years was healing. Whether spiritual healing or Reiki, each session led to a huge improvement in my condition and my reawakened extra-sensory abilities.”

“Eventually I was strong enough to start my own research and training, using myself as my own guinea pig,” she explained. “I began by studying Reiki and am now a Reiki Master.”

Soon after Kim trained in “energy mastery” and the “energetics and spirituality of business”, followed by a voluntary apprenticeship to a leading European re-birthing therapist, which enabled her to learn more about how pain, both emotional and physical, is just energy held in the body’s energetic fields.

“This is when I started to see and sense how energy behaves in and around the body according to what we are thinking. It was a huge breakthrough for me,” she said.

Kim has now developed all of her learning into a system called Quantum Coaching and Healing where she uses her abilities as an “energy intuitive” to scan people’s energy fields and offer guidance and healing according to what she finds.

“I have found this cuts through to a truth that is validated by my clients time and again,” she told me. “People are regularly referred to me by their psychotherapist or body work therapist. Your energy fields never lie. They always speak the truth about the deep issues underlying anything you want help with.”

Kim reckons our masks, inherited beliefs and attitudes are like our ‘words’, and she calls the real us revealed by our energy, our ‘music’, claiming that if our words and music don’t go together we get imbalance and eventually dis-ease of some kind.

“I see my job as something resembling a choir master, bringing your words and music together so you can sing your own unique song in the world with health, confidence and joy,” says Kim who also offers support to those highly sensitive to the energy of others at work or at home.

Her Quantum Coaching and Healing sessions involve clients lying down fully clothed and relaxing on a treatment bed. Kim then passes her hands over and around your body sensing energy fields as though she has “eyes in her hands”.

Kimberley’s approach – after an initial and thorough pre-treatment discussion - is a really interesting blend of off-the-beaten-track energy work and hi-tech methodology. Lying on her treatment table, I was at first aware of her ’scanning’, but soon drifted off into a much-needed snooze, comfortable in the safety of her already-healing space.

Before I fell into too much of a slumber however, I saw how Kimberley transcribed the sensations felt and ’seen’ through her hands into coloured shading on an outline of a human body – representing me and my energy on this particular day - on her laptop screen, for later interpretation.

It must have been around 30-40 minutes, when I felt Kimberley’s healing touch on my arm inviting me to rejoin the conscious world. A little fuzzy still, I returned to the consulting area to be greeted by a pretty map of my metaphysical energy and to hear Kimberley’s insights, findings and ideas about what it all meant.

Depending on what is needed, Kim uses healing, visualisations, breathing, relaxation techniques and energy meditations, drawing on her toolkit of training and experience combined with intuitive and psychic sensing.

She’s good and she’s accurate. Coming from a very loving and supportive place – and not in any way ungrounded or annoyingly new age – Kim really gave me something to think about and a number of useful tips to help me through what she saw as my energetic blocks. I’ve always thought the body never lies, and Kim’s energetic extension of this theory takes things a convincing step further.

Kimberley Jones’ Quantum Coaching & Healing is available in Totnes and Netwon Abbot. Call 01803 868282 for more information or a consultation. Or visit: www.quantum-coaching.co.uk

Testing times for a former Olympian got me thinking about men and spirituality this week.

It seems Jonathan Edwards - acknowledged as the world’s greatest ever triple jumper - has had a ‘crisis of faith’, leading to him to quit as a presenter of BBC’s Songs of Praise programme, because he is no longer convinced of God’s existence.

In the same week, with Robbie Williams checked into a Californian rehab unit, on his 33rd birthday, on account of his alleged addiction to prescription drugs and the leader of Her Majesty’s opposition under the media microscope over alleged drug use years ago – I’ve been pondering what used to be called “moral fibre”, male role models and where men, in particular, might look in times of personal trouble and turmoil.

With these “weaknesses” revealed, what’s of most interest to me, is not that these men are having a crisis - that’s understandable; it happens. But given this public airing of doubt and vulnerability, the question I have, is: where do they turn? Because who - among men - IS leading the way, with strength, courage and wisdom, leaving an example worth following in their wake?

Looking at key figures in society, one could seek help and vision from the prime minister, but most probably wouldn’t take it right now - he’s about as role-modelable to young men as Bernard Matthews is to a would-be vegan.

And what about royalty? Surely, once long ago, the first place one might look for leadership. Well, with a female monarch at the helm for over fifty years, holding sway over her often-ridiculed eldest son, young men may not get much help there either.

So it’s to the boardroom, sports field and entertainment screens and stages that we must look. And I can’t say I’m impressed. Are you?

In those environments, once the somewhat shallow markers of extreme wealth, winning streaks and fame have been removed, I can’t think of anyone that remarkable. Is it me? Or are men lost right now?

I’d say that in their worship of material gain, competitive thrust and celebrity status, modern men have turned their backs and ultimately lost contact with the noble, spiritual qualities that are so desperately needed in our society.

What with women tending to do better in the work environment (when allowed) - queens, as they are, of multi-tasking and taking a motherly overview of things rather than being supremely task-focussed and single-minded as men often are, it’s time men looked deep within instead of going without.

Isn’t it time for a return to gentlemanly standards of conduct? To courage, honour and service – rather than the selfish, self-serving behaviour that seems to have possessed the male of the species at every level of our world from street-level “chav” to finance-world fat-cat?

Looking beyond material madness, religious dogma and social mores – as it seems Messrs Williams, Edwards and Cameron have been invited to do – men could learn a great deal from the great men of mythology including the enlightened Buddha, the inscrutable Samurai and noble Knights of the Round Table – all men with a spiritual awareness that still holds an attraction.

With no great male role models coming to mind in our own times, perhaps it’s time we looked into history if we are to create a masculine future we can be proud of.