I have heard it a million times and a million times it has been a lie.
“It’s who you know!”

Success in film is all about who you know.

Becoming a publisher writer is about who you know.

The top job, the big break, the inside track; it’s all about who you know.
People contact those in the know, believing that by knowing them, they are assured success.

All the self help books recommend that you do this, but all the self help books are wrong.

The aspirational go to networking parties in order to network, to get to know complete strangers with big connections. Because – apparently – who you know makes all the difference. It is not nice to see people – the coattail capitalists – hovering around rooms of influence looking for the most important person to speak to and ignoring those that they deem less worthy. And when he/she speaks to this very important person, they put on their best mask and they deliver their best speech, and they flutter their very best eye-lashes. Then they do their utmost to intercourse with business cards in the hope that the link will be the catalyst to their illusive break.

Networking parties don’t work for me. They are too contrived. They tell you from the off that someone is out for what they can get, and they are looking for the most important person in the room to help them get it. Which also tells you something else; they are judging who they think is the most important person in the room, the most powerful.

Anyone that knows anything will tell you that no one knows who the most important person in the room is. And the very act of looking for the top guy is the very thing that will insure you don’t find him. The most important person is usually the one that seems least important, and he will be introduced to you not by the party host but by a serendipity that is so precise and so detailed that you will only be able to make sense of it afterwards when you join the dots. Carl Jung called this beautiful orchestration “synchronicity”; when your intent is certain the universe conspires to bring the right people together at the right time and under the most perfect of conditions.

A good example is how I won a BAFTA award:

I did a book signing in Manchester some years ago. It was well attended and there were many wealthy and (so called) powerful people in the room. I could have swapped cards, I could have networked, and I could have schmoozed the night away. I didn’t. What I did do, what I always do on occasions such as this, is I kept my intuition on high alert: I was looking for the person I was there to serve. I believe that when I’m placed in front of people, there is always one soul there that I am meant to meet and help. And in return (though it will never usually be obvious how, when or even why) they will help me. And they are usually the most unlikely person in the room.

This is what I like to call ‘divine networking’.

If I am vigilant the universe will nudge me, it will direct me towards the one and only person that I am meant to meet at that hour on that day in that city or country. And where it leads is always miraculous. On this occasion – surrounded by the names and the faces of Manchester –I was approached by a lovely, slightly shy young man called Ben Carlish. He was stacking shelves at Waterstones to subsidise his life whilst trying to make it as a professional writer. He asked me whether I would meet him after the talk for an interview, which he intended to write up and sell, hopefully to the Big Issue magazine. At the time I was on a 32 city tour promoting my latest book, visiting some 60 shops all around the UK, so I was buried up to my receding hair-line in busy. I felt the need to meet him. I could not really articulate why, only that the intuition was strong. I really felt something with this lad, and – as difficult as it was – I had to find time to meet him and help. Eventually, within about two weeks, I arranged to meet Ben in neighbouring Huddersfield, where I was doing another signing. I thought it would be nice to dove-tail his interview with my event; I was sure I could find an hour before or after the talk to do an interview. As it turned out I ended up spending the afternoon with Ben and we had a great time (and he eventually did sell the interview to the Big Issue). After the meeting we said goodbye and didn’t think about it again. Not even for a second. This is a very important aspect of divine networking; you never try and second guess why your intuition is directing you to a certain person, and you never deliberately try to manipulate the occasion to your own ends. You first ask yourself what it is you can do for this person, with no thoughts of recompense or reward. And you discipline yourself never to think ‘what’s in this for me?’ The moment you place your own interests before the needs of the person you have been divinely introduced to, you change the dynamic. It is not longer divine, it is contrived.
Two weeks after doing the interview with Ben I received a surprise phone call from a lady called Natasha Carlish. Ben’s sister. She introduced herself as a film producer, specialising in documentary. She was delighted that I had looked after her brother and wondered if I’d like to meet for a coffee and a chat. I met her the following week in Birmingham, with her director friend Michael and they said they’d love to make a documentary about my life. As it turned out they never did sell the documentary idea, but I did write a short film for them. They were just getting into drama themselves and wanted to collaborate with me. The film was called Bouncer and it starred Ray Winston. It was very successful; it won lots of awards (including a BAFTA nomination) and was screened in 32 international festivals. We followed Bouncer with a second short called Brown Paper Bag, which went on to win the BAFTA the following year. That one film enabled me to get a feature made (Clubbed – West End premier, BIFFA nominated) and has led the way to all the other features and shorts that I currently working on.

All from an hour spent with a shelf stacker at Waterstones who needed my help.

That is divine networking at its best.

It would have been impossible for me to know walking into Waterstones that the most important person in the room, the most powerful person in the world on that night was the kid staking shelves, a young man who had no idea he was important or powerful. In conventional networking Ben would likely have been by-passed for someone with a posh business card. In the divine economy the profit (or prophet) is always hidden in the meek.
I personally love people of all races and from every class. I have dined with kings and queens and drank builder’s tea with the common man. I have seen God in the eyes of the underclass, and I have watched rich men and women lock themselves in palatial prisons, and call themselves free. I love cultural diversity; most of my poetry is inspired by the light spilling out of the fractured and the violent. So I find divine networking easy. But many people I meet are so busy looking for powerful influence that they miss a dozen opportunities every day of their life to divinely connect.
I have trained myself to listen to intuition (the voice of God) and then act on that intuition using my finely honed will (the hand of God).
Twenty years ago a stranger emailed me from Australia to say how much he liked my book (Watch My Back). His name was John B Will. I didn’t know at the time (neither did he) that he was destined to become one of the most influential martial artists in the world. I didn’t know either that he’d be the man who, many years later, would introduce my work to the legendary Chuck Norris, who subsequently invited me to Las Vegas USA to teach for him. Chuck Norris put me on the world stage with his invitation. But his invitation would not have happened if I’d not written back to a stranger from down under. Even better than that, I later became firm friends with John, he has enriched my life, and we now meet thrice yearly in coomb Abby Coventry to walk and talk.

It is not who you know that counts.

It is who you are.

It is what you do.

And ‘who you are/what you do’ determines who you know.

In my early career I stood on coattails, thinking this was the way. I mingled with the great and the good, believing that my success relied up on it. And I often sold, if not my soul, certainly my integrity, to mould myself (chameleon like) to the industry mores. I always came away feeling imprisoned and cheap. My wife (sage that she is) advised me not to try and meet with people of influence, rather she suggested that I produce work that is so startling and so beautiful and so affecting that the people of influence would beat a path to my door, or the universe would contrive to place us in the same room at the same time for a divine collaboration. This method has been supremely successful for me. By being the right person (the only person I can authentically be, myself) I meet the right people, in the right place and at the right time. When you are not yourself and you meet people of influence, at some level they know that you are wearing a mask, and so the collaboration is destined to fail.

It is the feelings that I look for. It is the feelings that are true.
Another example (one of many):

Last year I met two men on one of my walk events (Jon and Eddie). There was something about them that really stuck with me. Even though I knew very little about them, I knew that we’d end up working together, although I was not sure when or how or on what project. My prophecy came true sooner that I imagined. This year Jon and Eddie financed and produced my latest film (Counting Backwards), and I have become partners in a film production company with them.

Some years ago I was contacted by two young lads (the Shammasian brothers). They were new to the film industry, they had no money but they wanted to meet me and make a documentary about my philosophy (Know Fear). When we met I felt the same intuition. There was something special about them that I could not quite articulate, and I had no idea where it would go only that I had the feeling and decided to follow it. They were ambitious but broke, they were thinking very big (Hollywood and beyond) even though they did not (at the time) have any work to back up their ambitions. I stayed with the feelings and some years later we worked together; I wrote a film for them (Romans 12:20) that went on to win international acclaim; the film was so successful that the Shammasians got a Hollywood agent off the back of it.
We are now working on two optioned feature films together.

All my best introductions happen this way. And always, without exception it was the people that seemed least influential that held the most sway. Usually, when you meet the right people, even they don’t know how much they are about to affect your life. And that is why it is so powerful.
So I rarely go out and hunt for powerful people, I just open my intuition and await the divine introduction.

This doesn’t mean that you should not reach out to the people you want to work with, it doesn’t mean that you should never attend a networking party – in and off themselves these things are fine. But they will not make the difference if it is not ordained.

‘Who you know’ means nothing at all, it is who you are that is important.
I have people around me right now that I love, but I can’t help them move forward in their careers because they have not yet made themselves ready. When they have made themselves ready, they won’t need me, there will be so many influential people trying to help them, they’ll be beating them off with a stick.

It is what you do, it is who you are that will change your world, not who you know.

When we made Brown Paper Bag, we had no money and no influence, all we had was an amazing script and an amazing team and a will to make the film. We eventually put the film together on a shoe-string; £3400 to be precise. And we were competing with films that had £100,000 to play with and the backing of Film4 and the Film Council. We still swept the board at the festivals. And film companies were eager to meet us all.

I was recently at a meeting with Film4 about a project I was working on and they told me that they’d just commissioned a feature film by a new director on the strength of a two minute short he‘d shot on his iPhone. It was not money that got him the job, neither was it ‘who he knew’ (he knew no one). Rather it was what he did. It was who he was.

The problem with waiting for influence and relying on contacts is that you put all your power in the hands of other people. You become emasculated as an artist. If however you take the power back, and rely on yourself, on your will, on your developing ability, you are much more likely to meet the people you need to meet, when you need to meet them.

If things haven’t tipped for you yet it is not because you do not have the money or the contacts, it is because you need to do a little more work, stretch a tad further, take the risks that others are not taking. Forget about who you need to know and concentrate solely on who you need to be.
Don’t be yet another coattail capitalist, relying on the momentum and influence of others. When you coattail you always end up being taken in the wrong direction. Instead, get busy making yourself and your work irresistible.

When you become who you need to become, you will automatically know who you need to know.

Be well
Geoff Thompson

Prince Arjuna is charging into the battle of Kuruksetra. His kingdom has been stolen from him and he intends to win it back. Riding on the war chariot with him is Lord Krishna, the Godhead. Before him and around him are thousands of soldiers, armed and ready for the battle. As Arjuna gets closer to the field of war he freezes in terror; in front of him, in both parties, his own and the opposition he notices familiar faces; he sees his friends, he sees his brothers and his uncles, he sees his sons and grandsons, he sees his teachers.

Suddenly the prince loses his heart, he does not want to war with those he loves, even if they have stolen his kingdom. What’s the point of victory, the frightened prince asks his companion Krishna, if I cannot share the winnings with my family? Arjuna decides on the cusp battle that he would rather not fight if it means harming those he loves. Lord Krishna recognises that his erstwhile friend has fallen into Mia (the great illusion), he tells Arjuna that he must do his duty and win back the kingdom, and killing his family, killing his friends and killing his teachers is not only necessary, it is mandatory.

Arjuna is horrified by the very idea and decides to renounce his kingdom, run away from the battle field and retire from public life where he will hide in the woods and beg for food. It is at this point that Lord Krishna tells Arjuna the truth; that his family, his friends and his teachers are already dead. Their karma is written. Stepping away from the fight will not change their destiny. He must take courage, he must step into the breach and do his duty; fight for the kingdom that is rightfully his.

This is one of the most powerful stories in the Bhagavad-Gita (take originally from the Indian classic The Mahabharata). When I first read it and when I first saw the drawings of Prince Arjuna and Lord Krishna, riding chariot into a sea of warring enemies, I never really understood its true meaning. Killing family and friends and teachers just for a kingdom! It made little sense to me. Then very recently, on the morning of my Sunday masterclass, I asked in meditation to be directed towards a subject matter that might bring benefit to my students. I knew that many of them had massive potential but were afraid to utilise it for fear of upsetting their mum, their dad, their wives and husbands, their children – all the people around them. I wanted to offer some sage advice, something that would bring them the clarity and set them free. I was directed towards the Gita, sat permanently on my conservatory table. I re-read the words (Text 25-36 Bhagavad-Gita As It Is) and I found a deeper understanding of its meaning.

This became the subject of my talk, and now the premise of this article.

This is my interpretation of what I read: the Gita is not telling us that we should literally go out and kill anyone, least of all our family and friends. And the stolen kingdom does not only represent our temporal physical reality (although it does affect and include all things physical and ethereal), rather the Gita is using the metaphor as a blue print to the universe. Much like the Torah, much like the Holy Quran, the Dhammapada, The Tao Te Ching, The Guru Granthe Sahib and many of the other worthy religious tomes. It is telling us that we all have direct and unlimited access to everything there ever was, everything there ever is and everything there ever will be (the kingdom), but that access is often denied to us by the negative influence of our family, friends and teachers.

Sometimes the access is denied us in literal terms; our influences scare us into conformity. Like religious zealots or jealous husbands they tell us that theirs is the only way, without it we are lost, and that everything outside of their way is dangerous and corrupt, they will even supply us with (subjective) evidence to underline this truth. Other times the access is denied us by their ignorance, they teach what they have been taught, what they know, even though what they know and what they have been taught is (at best) severally limited and (at worse) simply wrong. They say things like; it is not for the likes of us/who do you think you are/why can’t you be grateful with what you already have/don’t get above your station (etc). Or they might say ‘be realistic’ or ‘we need to manage your expectations’.
If anyone ever tells you to be realistic sack them. If they say they need to manage your expectations sack them twice.

These people are small thinkers!

If I was a realistic man I’d still be sweeping floors in a factory. If I allowed other people to manage my expectations, I’d be on anti-depressants and married to the wrong life.

What they are really talking about is their limited reality, what they are really saying is ‘make your aims smaller so that they can fit inside my finite thinking.’ Like the kangaroo in Horton Hears a Who (book and film) they believe that if you can’t see it, if you can’t hear it and if you can’t touch it, it does not exist.

Other times our censor is the subtle (but powerful) conditioning that most of us have been weaned on unconsciously since childhood. We are given an education/religion/way/culture that we are told cannot be challenged and will not be changed, not under any circumstances and even under the threat of death if we question the teachings. Sometimes the death is emotional (we are kicked out of the tribe) other times it is political (we are black balled/even sent to prison and tortured) and of course there are times, if a belief is fear-filled and fundamental, when death may be as literal as a bullet in the head.

This is what my life has taught me:

The kingdom belongs to anyone. It is owned by everyone. It is not limited to certain people. It has no specific name that can contain it. And there is no place of origin or special people that can claim sovereignty over it. You do not need to be a member of a group to access it. You do not need to follow a dogmatic ritual to enjoy it. No one can give it to you (but you can take it – it’s already yours) no one can take it away from you (but they can frighten you from accessing it – but only if you let them).

Like electricity the kingdom is dangerous and corruptive to those that misuse or mishandle it (even inadvertently) and it is healing and infinitely profitable to those that use it with practiced skill and genuine humility.

These are just people that have used or misused the energy; they are neither angels nor demons. We do not call electricity evil when it kills a clumsy technician, neither do we call an electrician a prophet or a saint when he uses his skills to fix our heating.

What Krishna is telling Arjuna is that he is the prince of the kingdom, it is his to access and use, but the opinions and schooling and influences of his family and friends and teachers have stolen that access away. In order to get it back he needs to kill those negative opinions, dissolve all the damaging miss-truths, half-truths and full-fat lies and rebel against the subjective and limiting scripts he has been given.

He has to cleanse himself of them and become an individual.

When I was an aspirant working in a factory but dreaming of becoming a published writer I was surrounded by such influences. They were very strong. They frightened me into small living for my first 32 years.
A good mate said ‘don’t get above yourself.’

A lover told me I was ‘making myself look like a **nt’ (to quote her words). Even when I got my first book published a ‘friend’ on the door pulled me to one side and told me that I had ‘done OK’ to get my book in print, but I should not forget that I was just a local bloke who’d had a bit of luck and that my book would do nothing outside of Coventry (I am now published in 20 languages around the world, including Arabic).

He was being kind (he said). He claimed that all my friends felt the same way, he was the only one honest enough to tell me.

People thought I was pretentious and above myself. Many were frightened by my ambition. My teachers – who had taught me their limitations – told me to be realistic and head straight for the factory floor with its oily labour and its canteen porn. When I told people of my ambitions I was seen as a dreamer. When I asked for more I was labelled ungrateful and greedy. And when I finally realised my dream and became a published author they said ‘you think you are something special’.

I don’t think I’m something special. I know I’m something special.

We are a miraculous species the human race. The light of the world. The salt of the earth.

We are all something very special.

Even a rudimentary understanding of science tells us that the billions of cells we are made up of connect to every other cell in the whole universe, all at the same time. We are a beautiful, complex, multi-faceted organism that has an infinite potential. Most do very little with their potential because they are afraid of what others might say. They hide their light under a bushel for fear of being judged.

For me to change the reality I was living in and access the kingdom that was my inheritance, I had risk that judgment, and I had to kill the influence of my family, friend and teachers. I had to kill them dead.
Since my first book was published in 1992 I have accessed a plethora of fresh realities, and always on the periphery of the old world, as I enter the new, I have to do battle all over again and I have to kill people, all over again.

They say that to create a new reality you first have to destroy the old.
Every time I step into a new realm and someone tries to scare me back to the past, I take a hammer to their opinion and shatter it like china.
As I ascend I try not to make too many announcements. Announcements scare the horses. I am patient with those that can’t breathe when I go where the air is thin. I wait for friends if they ask me to wait. I go back for them if they call. I love them, why wouldn’t I?

I leave no one behind.

Unfortunately, many people choose not to come with me and then accuse me of abandonment.

That is their bad, not mine.

Similarly, when you start to explore your rightful kingdom and experience success after success, reality after reality, people will accuse you of being lucky, of being nothing more than ‘local’. Some will say that you have forgotten your roots. Others will accuse you of being dishonest. Some might even suggest say that you have sold out.

The dog barks but the caravan moves on.

These people are our friends, our family and our teachers no more.
They are small bundles of dead influence. Some are malicious, others are well meaning but misdirected, all are scared. If they were not scared they would not attack.

They want to steal your kingdom.

Do not allow it.

They are in the enemy line. You have to kill them.

Anyone that tells you that you are limited is wrong.

Anyone that thinks you are small or local, they are merely telling you their own life story.

When they point one finger at you they are pointing three fingers at themselves.

If someone insists that you can only access the kingdom through their church, it is time to leave. Remind yourself that you are your own church.
Every man is his own church.

Don’t listen to the kingdom thief.

Equally, do not become a kingdom thief yourself.

Stealing kingdoms is easy. Any fool can do it, and many fools are. Creating kingdoms is where the real courage lies, that is why so few people are doing it. And helping others to access their kingdom must be our raison d’être. It is where the real joy is. It is the rich vein of divine profit.

That my friends is worth getting up in the morning for.

When you regain your kingdom, when you take your rightful throne and these people come looking for solace, asking for forgiveness and searching for their path (which they will), do not turn them away. Love them. They might be our enemy, but they are also our family, our friends and our teachers.

Like a forest oak our duty is to serve everyone that is placed before us without discrimination of favour.

Be well
Geoff Thompson

What dwarfs television and radio as a medium for affecting universal change?

What is a galaxy more effective than the World Wide Web (and its infant brother Face Book) for spreading a (global) causal message?

And what outshines Twitter as a viral seed-spreader for higher universal consciousness?

_____________________
I’ve had a lot of conversations lately with perplexed people.

They are perplexed about the world, or more specifically by the dire state of our planet.

Fat greedy bankers make them apoplectic.

Corrupt politicians have them calling for blood.

And religious fundamentalists get them frothing at the mouth with rage.

They get so upset by the injustice of it all that they are almost (and sometimes) fired into action: a tent outside St. Pauls, a march along Whitehall, eggs thrown at the wall of a local church or mosque.

It is easy to understand why folk choke at the throat with indignation and anger.

How dare they be so greedy with OUR money?

How shameful of them to fiddle their expenses when WE pay their wages?

How unintelligent of them to treat their fellow citizens in such an inhumane way.

I’ve presented a minute sampling from the current crop of world abuses, there are a great many more countries who call themselves God fearing and yet treat their citizens like cattle.

Abuse of power has been in situ since the dawn of man.

Usury has always been a part of society throughout history, ever since bartering was the fiscal way.

And corrupt politicians are old news, they have had their seat in the ‘big rooms’ of society for many decades: the great roman philosopher Boethius (see Consolations of Philosophy) was falsely jailed and sentenced to death by the politicians of the day because his virtue so affronted them.

Nothing is new.

Little has changed.

Even right back then there were marches, there were campaigns and there were wars and killings all done in the name of freedom, democracy and God.
When you look closely enough, especially when you watch the news three times a day and read the tabloids over breakfast dinner and tea, you will find hundreds of different causes, thousands of worthy campaigns and ten thousand ‘potential’ enemies, all trying to get your attention, and all vying for an input of your energy. And believe me, like most people, I have sat in my chair at home, pickling in righteous indignation about the heathens, the harlots and the butchers of the world. I have perplexed over the injustice of it all and despaired at how nothing seems to have changed. But all my wild rumination did was disempower me. There was so much to attend to that my myriad choices caused a bottle neck, in the end there was such a log-jam of causes to attend to and I ended up attending to nothing at all.

Every which way I looked at these causes and campaigns I could not see how I – one man – could make any difference to them, no matter how much energy I invested, no matter how upset and outraged I felt. Not just because ‘one man’ is not enough, rather it was because (I admit) I personally don’t know enough about politics to argue a good point. I know very little about banking and finance, certainly I am not informed enough to deduce whether the fat cat bonuses on perennial debate are genuinely performance linked or stolen from the pockets of ‘honest working people’. And religion! Who knows enough about the religious pantheon to have a valid opinion? It can take an entire life time of dedicated study to understand even one faith.

I realised though that there was one thing I do know a lot about, that I have spent 52 years studying, and that I am a world expert in. Me.
All I can really truly know for certain are the things I myself have experienced. And what that experience tells me unequivocally is that everyone eventually reaps what they sow, everything they throw out – good, bad and indifferent, with good intention, with ill intent or with no intent at all – eventually comes back at them with profit and in like form: one big f**king boomerang. So no need to worry too much about people getting their comeuppance.

As was intuited to the great mystic, Julian of Norwich in a divine vision (see Revelations of Divine Love) in the end ‘all will be well and all will be well and all manner of things will be well.’

In other words if you sit by the river bank for long enough you will see the bodies of all your enemies float by.

It helps to know this. It means that (to a large degree) you can predict your future by your present endeavours. In the Dhammapada (often referred to as the Buddhist bible) the opening line says that what we have today is as a result of what we thought/did yesterday, and what we get tomorrow will be as a direct result of what we thought/did today. None of us are exempt from our actions (and our actions begin with a thought), no matter how well we think they are hidden, and no one will fail to profit if they invest their energy wisely. When I look back at my own life I realise that I am only enjoying my current fortune because I invested all my money, my energy and my hours into self sovereignty. I took my opportunities when the universe tapped me on the shoulder, and I stepped up even when I was scared, perhaps especially when I was scared. For me to develop I was always asked to give more than I thought I could manage, and I was always encouraged to stretch just beyond my own reach. I was never disappointed by the results. And of course, when I took the easy path, as I often did mayhem followed, and when I sat on my arse and took no path at all I regressed: the universe repays everything with something, even idleness.

I don’t know a lot for sure, but I am in no doubt about the reciprocal response. I have felt it first-hand. I have experienced its fortune, I have tasted its wrath, I have learnt how to co-operate with this Vastness – it is what makes my life so potent.

When I watch the experts debating on television about of the volatile subjects of the day, it is clear that most of them are not as informed or as knowing as they seem, certainly for every strong and convincing view in one direction there is an equal and opposite stand that seems just as compelling.

With so much convincing contradiction where are we to go, what are we to do?

All I can reference, congruently, is the expertise in my own incarnation and the consistent results I have collated from my experiences, from my own feelings and senses. We each view the world through our own particular lenses, and whilst these may be coloured by heredity and conditioning, they are all that we can truly rely on when it comes to an assessment on living and dying in the world.

The confusion that I felt (that many feel) led me to deep contemplation: I meditated on an answer to this perplexing issue and I was offered options:
I could learn more about politics/banking/religion and enter the debate.

I could, but honestly I just don’t feel the love for it and in my life I try hard to seek that Holy Kingdom in all I do, because love always leads me to gold.
In the latter trinity, I have neither love not interest, I am not inspired, not even by the leading lights, many of whom I know do an amazing job.
I could choose a cause and make it my raison d’être to become a world authority and really make a difference.

But there are so many causes to choose from – and every one of them worthy – that I am left spinning and toiling over which is the neediest, and where my attention might be best spent.

I could start an angry blog (many people do) and trigger a nationwide/worldwide campaign using the immense power of social networking.

Or….
I could make a placard in my back shed and march the valiant march against racism, communism, capitalism (or any other of the isms), using only my vitriol, my Costa Cappuccino and an egg sandwich, for fuel.

I could but I know deep down, in my heart, in my soul, that I’d be placing my shoulder behind the wrong wheel, for me it would be little more than a juicy, easy, convenient distraction from the one thing that I can make a difference with, the one thing that I should be working on night and day.

I am not saying that campaigns against despots and ball-bags and greedy bastards are not worthy or worthwhile, they are, and there are many people in the world righting wrongs. That is their calling and I applaud their courage and their selflessness. I think they are splendid. But in my own life what I have learned and what I know is this: if I (personally) want to cause a revolution in others, I will only affect it by nurturing an evolution in myself.

Some people have to go out into the world to affect this inner and outer change, others start the revolution (to quote a great song) in their own head.
Your great success creates an immense allowing for the success and greatness of others. In the material world of course it helps if people know about your success, it inspires, it directs and it offers proof that what once was impossible is now achievable. In science (and in faith) we are told that success does not have to be visible to have an affect; when one man lifts his level of consciousness – even when unannounced – the consciousness of the whole species will be lifted as a direct result (see Power Versus Force, David R Hawkins) because everything affects everything.

For me, external causes and campaigns have always been a secondary action to self change, a by-product if you like (or what Buckminster Fuller called the Processional Effect (see Critical Path) which says that often the by-product of our purpose is far greater than the purpose itself even if we don’t consciously know it) when I change me for the better, it changes everyone for the better, even though the latter might not be my conscious intention.

Personally I could never see the logic in demanding temperance in faraway countries, while I am still treating myself and the people around me – my wife, my kids, my neighbours – with intemperance.

I don’t have to leave this city to find greed.

I do not have to leave my own neighbourhood to stumble across corruption.

I only have to look out of my bedroom window to witness the awful degradation of women by men, men by women, and children by men and by women. And the greater majority of these abuses do not involve bankers, politicians or religious zealots. Just ordinary every day people going about their ordinary every day abuse.
I found even greater causes closer to home that would affect the world more profoundly than a million angry marches, and these causes resided inside me, in my own body, in my own mind.

This does not mean that I would or could or should ever ignore someone in need, that has never been my way, I believe that the quickest route to happiness is through service, and anonymous service is always the most potent. What it does mean is that I do my best to untangle my own ball of wool before I start offering advice to others who are in a tangle. As the I Ching says, “not every man has an obligation to mingle in the affairs of the world. There are some who are developed to such a degree that they are justified in letting the world go its own way and in refusing to enter public life with a view to reforming it. But this does not imply a right to remain idle or to sit back and merely criticize. Such withdrawal is justified only when we strive to realize in ourselves the higher aims of mankind. For although the sage remains distant from the turmoil of daily life, he creates incomparable human values for the future.”

I personally have a lot of work to do on my own game before I realise this level, but strive I do.

If I am a real warrior, if I have the courage of ten thousand men, I will attend to ‘him inside’ before I go to war with ‘them out there.’

The ‘him inside’ is the Demon (one of the many) that resides inside all of us.

I am not referring to the archetypal Satan, with horned brow and curling tail. Rather I am referring to the Greek (translation of) Demon, the daiesthai (meaning ‘to divide.’)

Whenever we harbour conflicting and contradictory energies inside us, it creates a division, and that split (if not resolved/dissolved) becomes a source of deep conflict, which at some point will act up, which at some point must act out (See Hunting The Shadow).

Nearly six hundred year ago Leonardo da Vinci said that when a bird lands in a tree the whole world changes, because everything is affects everything else. When I look out into the world, and when I see the many causes crying out for my attention, and when I am conflicted because I want to address every one of them, but concurrently feel unable and unqualified to address even one, I remember this and I am uplifted. I remember the fact that I am attached to every single thing in the world. And if I am in motion, if I am acting, if I am striving, my movement will be felt not only across all the continents of our beautifully dangerous planet, but also across the depths of space and time.

This inspires me. It gives me great hope. It means that every investment I make in myself, in learning, in study, in sovereignty will not be in vein.
When I make a positive investment in me – I make a positive investment in the whole universe.
I do not have to choose one cause, I can choose all causes. I do not have to become an expert in all things in order to affect their change for the better, I simply have to affect a positive change in me, and in doing so I will ‘instantly and imperceptibly be in communication’ with every one of those worthy causes begging for an investment of my energy.

By lifting the level of my own consciousness, I automatically lift the consciousness of everyone and everything in the cosmos.

So rather than choose a cause and fight a battle that I know little about, I do what all the scriptures since time immemorial (and now science) recommend: I change myself.

I change myself for the good.

‘Be the change you want to see in the world’ said the great mahatma.

I am unlikely to make the 10 o’clock news with my internal Jihad, and some may accuse me of sin by omission but I am lead by that indivisible angel: faith. And she tells me that in triggering a microcosmic change in me, I am affecting massive change in the macrocosm. And though my actions might be imperceptible to others, science offers undeniable proof that when I (you, us all) move, the whole universe responds instantaneously.

As I said at the onset of this contemplation, some go out into the world to make a difference, some go into themselves to trigger change (some do a bit of both) but at the end of the day perhaps it doesn’t matter too much which way we take, as long as it has heart, because whether our journey takes us to the inhospitable climbs of Nanga Parbat or the scorching sands of the Sahara desert, it will all eventually lead us back to the one and only person that can make our life better.
I have friends who travelled to Japan and trained with the masters to find themselves, others I know needed to bounce off the floor of addiction before they found joy in living. I personally found my inner self on a night club door in Coventry city centre where I faced down my fears and was shown that everything I needed was already in me (see Watch My Back).

My friend Richard directed me towards a great truth last time we spoke: in my life (he reminded me) I had to go out into the world to trigger inner growth, I just had to, I could not have found what I found without the world. And consequently I had to go in, deep into myself in order to find the courage to go out. I could not have coped with my outer challenges without a strong inner foundation. The two worked together concurrently, like the roots and the branches of the tree.
In that respect then, perhaps going out and going in is the same thing. If everything is everything then there is no ‘out’ and there is no ‘in’, the separation is illusory. We are (as the Buddhists say) one with everything.

It is so simple it hurts. But then aren’t all the great truths.

I remember a story I heard many years ago that didn’t make a lot of sense at the time. A lady was visiting a famous monk in Tibet. In a bid to impress him with her worldliness she told him of her travels around the world, ‘London is beautiful’ she bragged ‘you should really visit London.’

The monk looked at her and smiled, ‘lady, I am London.’
_____________________
So, to go back to our original questions:

What dwarfs television and radio as a medium for affecting universal change?

What is a galaxy more effective than the World Wide Web (and its infant brother Face Book) for spreading a (global) causal message?

And what outshines Twitter as a viral seed-spreader for higher universal consciousness?

You!
You!
You!

Be well
Geoff Thompson

Is the next Masterclass for right you?

What will you have to do?

Is it worth it?

Recorded on Sunday, this is what people had to say after completing the Masterclass.

For more information and to watch the course trailer – click here

Many years ago someone wrote me a letter suggesting that I ban one of the guest writers from my web page. He’d been outed by the newspapers as a liar and the ‘letter writer’ felt his presence on my page somehow condoned what he had done, and therefore threatened the integrity of my work. In other words, it threatened my integrity. I thought about this for about thirty seconds and came to the conclusion that allowing this man (a very old and dear friend) a presence on my site would not threaten my integrity at all, what would really threaten my integrity would be kicking him off when there were so many others liars, thieves, adulterers, hypocrites, judges, fornicators, gluttons etc. thirsting over my material for a little spiritual quench.

What I am saying is this: If I banned everyone on my site that had made a mistake I’d have no one left. I’d actually have to ban myself, because my own failings were much greater than his. In my time I have been a thief, an adulterer, a big fat liar, a seething hypocrite, a judge of men, a fornicator of the first order and a greedy glutton.

We have all fucked up at some point. No doubt.

Me more than most.

But I am not ashamed of my past, rather I am proud of my return. There is great potential in sin, if we use it as a fertilizer for growth. Luther actually went as far as to say that God only dwelled in sinners.  David C Doel in his book That Glorious Liberty says ‘the actual recognition that one is in a condition of sin is the necessary pre-requisite, the absolute condition, for the receiving of the gospel as ‘good news’.

In other words, being in sin (or error) is never the problem, it is being in denial of sin that causes us harm, because the dark that we do not acknowledge, is the dark that creates chaos in our lives. It is when we assimilate these shadows into an integral whole (Holiness, or wholeness) within the psyche that they are able to find creative expression in the world.
This is why I always congratulate people when they turn away from their very dark past, and why I always inform people with a traumatic history that they are sitting on a mine of gold. Imagine what you can create when you turn that reservoir of negativity into a creative energy for the good, an empire is awaiting those that can take the lead of error and transmute it into gold.

This is how I live my life. I have erred. I have been in hundreds of physical fights, I have stolen, I have lied, I have broken nearly every commandment and felt at times that there was no way back for me. But when I turned towards good, It raced towards me. And the shit that I had been displacing into a decade of depravity and violence turned out to be very rich soil for my future success.

One of the things (I have found) that stops people from really living and creating and thriving (in the now and for the future) is their past.
Or rather, the dark nature of their past.

But we all have a past.

Not everyone wants to admit it but we all have errors in our history, some of more than others, and in our erring, many of us have become stuck. If we have hurt others, if we have been criminals, if we have lied, cheated, or even killed, who are we to change and become better, happier and more successful people?

Who are we not to be?

Nelson Mandela was a terrorist.

Ghandi was a sex addict who visited prostitutes.

St Paul (formerly Saul of Tarsus) condemned and murdered Christians.

Jacob was a self interested entrepreneur.

Paul had his moment of clarity on the road to Damascus after killing many people, David and Moses were both murderers, but they all still found favour with good, and showed that you can commit the most heinous crimes ‘and yet, still, unwittingly, fulfil the purposes of God’ (David C Doel).

In Talmudic traditions these people are known as the Masters of Return ‘…one who, not ashamed of having sinned, and proud of the accomplishment of return, stood higher than the angels.’

Higher than the angels!

Now that is inspiring.

This revered place (it was said) was reserved only for the masters of return. Even the completely righteous could not attain such elevation.
‘Where sin abounded, grace abounded even more abundantly.’

How exciting. What this tells us is that we are all invited to the great party. And the prodigal son will be first in the line.

What I have learned from my own life and what I know is this: I doesn’t matter what you’ve done or haven’t done, we are not concerned about your level of sin or the height of your righteousness, we have no interest in the fact that you are thieves, adulterers, liars, hypocrites, judges, fornicators or gluttons, and no one is impressed by your health, your wealth or your wherewithal. If you come from old money, new money or no money, it is of no consequence. All we are interested in is the fact that you (me all of us) are sat in the middle of an abundant universe that – like the Delorion in Back To The Future – can use anything as fuel, it can use everything as fuel.

Once we recognise that ALL is fuel, we can stop holding ourselves back, because we feel unworthy of goodness, and we can convert the old, the used and the abused into massive success.

Who are we to be great?

Who are we not to be?

Be well.
Geoff Thompson

If you know anything at all about economics (most people don’t know a lot) you’ll know that good business should always first and foremost be about offering service. A lot of people place the word service into their mission statement but don’t really back it up.

This is not a judgment, merely an observation; I have made the mistake myself, many times in my life and always to my detriment. When it comes down to serving on a daily basis, for most people it is much more ‘statement’ than it is ‘mission.’

The spiritually judgmental tend to attack anyone who makes the money shape in their service, they deem it as being material. This is a naive observation: we are all material. You can’t live in the world without being material, the moment you put on a coat (corporeal or otherwise) and eat three square meals a day and cycle to a job and earn your weekly wage you are being material, and compared to the vast majority in the world (who dream of such riches) you are, relatively speaking, very wealthy.

If we own a body, we are material. We might be souls having a human experience, but we are doing it (gratefully) through a material means. How material we are, and what constitutes wealth and excess is purely relative. A woman I met some years ago, who’d moved to Britain from a third world country, felt herself wealthy beyond measure in her cleaning job at the local cinema (she said to me, ‘it is so easy to make money in this country, all you have to do is work’), and compared to the life she had left behind she was indeed rich. I know other (poorer) people who feel broke and fearful because they are down to their last £million.

You can be in paradise, living in a caravan in a field, you can also be imprisoned in the ninth circle by your country pile and your seven figure income.

When I hear that someone has won millions I am never sure if it is their good karma or bad that has brought them their lottery.

Certainly is alters their life irreversibly, either way.

It is a perspective thing.

I know people who are imprisoned by excess and others who have been freed by penury. I also know people who are brave caretakers of vast amounts of wealth (they keep thousands of people in work), whilst others just laze around and throw uninformed criticism from an embittered and uneducated perspective.

One thing is for sure, if you own an iPhone and enjoy a cappuccino a couple of times a week you are far richer fiscally than the great majority that roam this blue planet.

It is a tricky balance.

Even (and often especially) for those of us with a spiritual bent.
Often we (Christians, Buddhists, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus etc) worry more about making the mortgage than we do about making a difference. This is nothing to be too perplexed about, the struggle is historical, it goes right back to the prophets. Abraham for instance was continually in angst about living in the material world, he was always questioning God about his promised progeny. Solomon is history’s wealthiest merchant (he only lost his riches when he forget to use it in service), Mohammed too was a very successful businessman before his divine revelation in the mountains of Saudi Arabia. And the three magi who brought gifts to the infant Jesus in Bethlehem were, also, accomplished in the ways of commerce, they were very wealthy merchants.

It’s not what you’ve got that matters, it’s what you d with what you’ve got.

All of these people made a big money shape and all of them used their wealth to build an infrastructure that allowed them to serve nations.
These inspiring examples did not just make big shapes (with their health, with their wealth, with their happiness), they were schooled and developed so that they could make big shapes.

They exchanged their energy for knowledge and skills and knowing.  They also learned – often painfully as in the case of St. Paul – to convert all the negativity (shadows) that resided in them, into useable revenue.
How did they do this?

Initially they invested all their time and all their effort and all their resources in (what economists call) ‘human capital’.

In other words they invested in themselves.

They invested in skills, they invested in knowledge, they invested in learning and the invested ultimately in self conversion. The placed themselves fearlessly before great and proven teachers, (people that have worked their skills prolifically in the world) and they self-cultivated.
We are artists you and I, but we forget that we are artists.
We are born into a body that we can sculpt into a prolific creating machine; we do this with our minds. And we are born into an environment that we can shape and manipulate with our hands ‘and’ our minds. We do this with our practiced Will.

And we are born into a universe that wants to help, it is heavily and selflessly invested in our success, it wants to serve us.

But first we have to equip ourselves.

We have to master our basic faculties – the physical, the psychological, the emotional and ultimately the spiritual – so that the Great Universe can work through us.

You do not put a thousand watts of energy though a hundred watt bulb and expect it not to explode.

If we are to be the conduit for Greatness, then it is important that we are not fractured conduits.

If we are working in the world, and we want to thrive in the world, and we want to be prolific on this earthly sojourn, if makes sense to understand the ways of the world.  Most people don’t even understand the ways of their own body. They want to change the world, but have not they mastered the discipline of changing their socks once a day.

We need to first understand biological economics (the profit and loss of the human body), about (as my friend Rob calls it) ‘absorption and reflection’, what we absorb in our everyday life, through our senses (food, drink, habits, influences), we will reflect back into the world. In other words, we become our influences. We need to understand the assets and liabilities of the living organism that carries us across the earth for four score years and ten. If that sounds complicated it really isn’t: as in any business (and the body is a 24 hour a day business) an asset brings in revenue, and a liability takes revenue away. It is simple enough: if you take out more than you put in it results in collapse.

In business an asset would be a product or service (a commodity) that brings in money. A liability would be something (like an expensive company car) that takes revenue away from the business. In the body an asset would be great information/experience/skill that brings in/creates new energy (if this article is inspiring it would be classed as an asset). A liability would be something that takes energy away. A ‘vampire’ relationship for instance (or an internal shadow); someone who consistently undermines your confidence thus sucking energy out from you (the Dementors in harry Potter are a graphic example of a vampire).

A liability is any habit that takes energy from you whilst giving nothing back.

The skilled body manager, or business man, keeps his assets high and his liabilities to a minimum. And if he decides that he wants to enjoy a liability (expenses, a posh car etc) he will create an asset in order to pay for it.

If I want a cake (a liability to my body), I’ll create the space for it by training harder, if I want a posh car I’ll serve more, thus creating the revenue to afford the luxury.

Simply put, it is all about the exchange of energy.

And ultimately everything is energy. Your body is energy, your car is energy, everything that you see all around you is energy, money is probably the best known and the most sought after energy. It is also, probably the least understood. It might not seem as though it is energy but it is. And the exchange of money, is nothing more than an exchange of energy.

The good news is that we are surrounded by energy that is ripe for conversion. We all know how to convert energy into the money shape, most of us do it every day, we turn up for work, we exchange eight hours worth of labour-energy for eight hours worth of money-energy. Those that have diligently invested their time and converted their energy into higher levels of skill (through academia or through the university of life), can command a better exchange (higher wages) for their hours of labour.

Some people are brilliant at converting their energy into a certain shape, but are unable to duplicate that across multiple shapes. I know amazing, amazing martial artists and musicians and writers (for instance) who can make a global shape with their art, but can’t even make a big enough money shape to cover the rent. Few people have developed the skills necessary to convert their energy into the money shape. It is just a shape, the same as any other shape, but due to people’s conflicted perception of what money is, they are unable to make the conversion.

The skilled and wise architect does not discriminate between shapes. It would be below his game to allow a wrong perception to affect his judgment. If he feels a conflict with any shape-making, he goes into the conflict quickly and he stays there until the conflict is dissolved.

Making the money shape, the health shape, the relationship shape, the esteem shape, the power shape, the car shape, the house shape is an inside job.

In the Upanishads is says ‘they took abundance from abundance and abundance still remained.’

There is an abundance of energy.

It is all around us. We are in it, we are off it, we are it. It is ours, it belongs to us. I was about to say that it is our heritage, but it is closer even than that: it is our sustenance.  We can deny it if we want to, we have free will, that is our choice, and we can castigate it if that pleases us, we can shake and angry stick at it – and a lot of people do – we can attack those we feel take too much of it, we can judge those who we think are greedy with it or tight with it or corrupt with it. This internal conflict will greatly affect our own ability to enjoy abundance, but it will not affect that fact that abundance exists.

The denial that there is abundance is like a fish swimming in the ocean whilst denying that the ocean exists.

If we have a conflict with abundance we will always live in lack because abundance will slide off us like water off oil.

Let’s be clear about one thing: money is only one of the many shapes that we make with our energy. As a commodity, it doesn’t really exist. Not in real terms. In antiquity, before coin was invented as a means of exchange, we simply bartered: I’ll paint your fence (because I like to paint) in exchange for two chickens (you like to keep chickens). Or, I’ll build you a wall, in exchange for one of those pigs that you rear. The value of the exchange was worked out between bartering parties. As economies started to grow outside of village life, especially with the introduction of international commerce, this form of exchange became untenable and clumsy. If you make carpets, and need a wall building, you might have to search far and wide to find not only a layer of bricks, but a layer of bricks that wants to swap his skills and his time for your carpets. And so coin became the order of exchange, and coin was based largely on trust, hence your note of debt (£10, £20 etc) holds the words ‘I promise to pay the bearer.’ You then exchanged money (a physical representation of the energy that you promise the bearer) for goods or services that the holder of the note could use to swap for the goods and services of other traders.

Commodity Money.

As economies grew bigger still countries like America introduced Commodity Money. A commodity, like gold bullion, represented a physical token of underlying worth. So when they exchanged their $ as an I.O.U, people had faith in it because it was backed by a valuable commodity.
Gold isn’t really valuable; it has no proper use other than the fact that there is a shortage of it in the world, and because of its rare and aesthetic nature people find it desirable.

Value therefore is perception.

What is desirable has value. Purely because people perceive it to be valuable.  And the more desirable it is the higher its value. If the perception changes – and it can change very quickly – value will disappear overnight.

Fiat Money

After 1971 when growing economies struggled to mine enough gold to represent their money requirements (in other words when the amount of paper money they needed to print became greater than the amount of gold bullion in the vaults) Fiat money was invented.  Fiat money does away with the need to back a promise of exchange with a physical commodity (like gold). It takes its worth in the same way as gold, by means of people’s faith or perception, but in reality it is still just a promissory note.
Fiat money is an apprehension of worth.

If I go to the bank for a mortgage they will give me the loan on their apprehension of my ability to pay it back, and that apprehension will be judged by my means, or my previous credit history. If I have proven to be reliable in the past, or if I have a an asset of value (another property for instance) that can act as  a security against the loan, their apprehension of my worth is elevated so they will let me have the money, if I have been a bad re-payer in the past, their apprehension of my worth is lowered and no one will want to loan me anything.

This happens in all aspects of life: if I cheat on my partner, the apprehension of my worth/trust is lowered in her (and everyone else’s) estimation. This will make it harder for her or anyone else to trust me with their love/emotion-energy in the future.

If I cheat on my partner my apprehension of my own worth is also lowered, at some level I won’t even trust myself, and this makes the business of good health unlikely, because my lack of self trust creates an internal conflict (a shadow) in me, and a house divided will eventually fall.
This is why the development of the virtues (and ultimately faith – investing in Divine Capital) has to be the ultimate goal.

But we have to build up to that.

Well, let me qualify my statement, let me be more specific; ‘I have had to build up to that’. There is an infrastructure, it is layered, we cannot skip stages, any more than we can go from a white belt judo player to fifth dan, just by buying a certificate. I am forever encountering people who are trying to master the mysterious before they have even understood the mundane.

If we place new wine into an old wineskins they it will split.

There is a process that has to be observed and followed and honoured.
A student went to a guru, he said, ‘how long will it take me to become a master if I work every day?’ The guru said ‘five years.’ The student asked, ‘what if I work twice as hard?’ The guru said, ‘then it will take you ten years.’

The point is this: the very act of trying to obtain three before three has occurred means that you are in a hurry. And if you are in a hurry it will always take twice as long.

Value is all about perception.

If you want to be more valuable in the world, you need to change people’s perception of you as (ultimately) a reliable commodity, someone that can be trusted with their vital energy (in whatever shape that takes). Now you can fool people into having a better perception of you (and many people do try this and it works for a while) with tricks and gimmicks and games, but it will not have longevity. Ultimately the only way to change people’s perception of you (and for it to be real and for it to last) is to change your own perception of you.

And you do this ‘not’ with words, but with congruent works. And I am not talking about ethical works, because ethical protocol can vary from place to place and from person to person. What is justified as ethical in a fundamentalist mind (and that could just as easily be your neighbour who is psychotically jealous/controlling of his/her partner as it is the much maligned religions of the world) would be pretty abhorrent to a balance person.  I am talking more about works that derive from the frequency of love, and these arts are rarely public displays of charity, they are usually always acts where our right hand does not know what our left hand is doing. In other words the acts are anonymous, only you and your God know what they are because they are done silently and privately. Here we hit the rich vein, where your investment returns one hundred fold.

Divine economy.

This is the higher game, dare I say the highest game, where we are working on a divine economy. Our investments and assets are acts of selfless love, and we have faith in the fact that everything we invest in that frequency will always bring a healthy return, even and perhaps especially when it seems it might not.

If you are not working on the right frequency, every investment will be precarious and no amount of understanding and knowledge will bring a sustainable profit.  As Paul says (New Testament) you can have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge and have faith that can remove mountains and bestow all your goods to feed the poor, give your body to be burned, but if you don’t do it from love it will be little more than tinkling symbols and it will profit you nothing.

I have to stipulate here though, that whilst it is imperative to work through love, having a profound understanding on world economics will give you the physical infrastructure to work through. I know many people who are waiting on God to take them through an economic flood , but they are not building the ark to help God help them.

If it is all about perception, then it goes without saying that the perception of you needs to be changed. The only way to change your perception of yourself is to change you.

In this sense the perception is no longer a perception, it is real.
And you change yourself through intense self-scrutiny, by hunting out, numbering, retraining, re-framing and reintegrating your anti-virtues (and thus regaining your own power) and by investing in the only capital that has any sustainable worth: The Divine Capital.

You invest in divine capital by being like the tree (the greatest business model I have ever seen): everything you take from the soil you process (make shapes) and use it to create great infrastructure (roots, trunk, braches, leaves) through which you serve.

Ultimately everything you take from the soil you give back to the soil.

By willing taking part in the Great Cycle you bed yourself in abundance.

A great business takes gratefully and abundantly from the soil, with this energy-revenue it is able to finance an infrastructure that enables them to serve people all around the world.

Guides.

In my own world I guide people to the level they want to be taken, the level they are ready for and not beyond.

Beyond is dangerous.

Some are schooled by free articles. Others invest a small amount of energy and read a book. Others still want physical time with a congruent and gentle teacher, so they invest bigger in themselves and come on a course. Other still find themselves fully immersed in our life, because they are ready for an escalated growth.

That is their choice not ours.

We can teach the same lesson on (for instance) shadow hunting to a class of thirty aspirants, and each individual will take something different from the instruction, each according to where they are and each according to how far they want to go.  Some will make the physical shape (a technique that we are teaching) and simply burn off the shadow-excess (stress hormones, bodily residues etc) and it will give them some relief.

Others will engage a little deeper and start dissolving the capital of their shadow (burning away the actual psychological block that is in them), by engaging the next step and taking the external technique, to the internal. They do this by starving the food-supply of blocked energy/shadow, through palate control and abstinence (abstaining from shadow-feeding habits).  Others still (those that are ready) will go from the external technique to sitting directly in the shadow (they shed light on their fear by facing it and observing it internally) with dedicated and deep meditation.

This shadow then dissolved back into them, and the energy that was once displaced in negative acts, is now put to use as a power for the good.
Our job as a teacher (it has been intuited to me) is to give thirsty souls a drink, while they are on their metaphoric forty year desert trek, on the way to the Promised Land.

Our job is not to tip people. Our job is not to tell people how far they should go, or how deep they should immerse (that can only be their choice). And our job is not to go out into the world and hunt down and expose the corrupt and the unjust and the depraved.

I have a greedy banker in me that I am working on, he wants more out that he puts in, he has forgotten to serve (and we can’t have that).

I harbour a corrupt politician who I am in the process of dissolving (because he wants to fiddle the expenses and I won’t let him) and I have a fundamentalist in me (Freud might have called him the super ego, or perhaps the Id) that wants to covet my wife, and attack heathens (but I don’t believe him so I don’t listen).

There is a rage in me that could quite easily kill if I didn’t convert it, as I do daily, into pure gold.

This is not easy for me to say because I don’t want it to be true. I want you all to like me. I want to be the paragon that I know I am capable of being, but I am not there yet, nowhere near.

I don’t have to be perfect, but I do have to be truthful. I can still serve when I am imperfect, but if I am untruthful I am just a noisy gong or a clanging symbol.

It is only when I refuse to see the truth in me, that this energy becomes dangerous.

Because I know this, because I am self knowing, because I understand that these blocks are energy forms and that they need converting into goodness, I feel no need to go out into the world and campaign against injustice.
Why attack others when I have so much work to do on myself?

I figure that if I can work on my own energy, if I can get ‘the man’ right, the world will look after itself.

In my life, everything that comes in goes out.

If at any point I suffer a forgetting and try to become autonomous in the process, if I pretend that this revenue belongs to me, that it is mine, and if at any time I stop the flow of energy by hiding my wealth in a biscuit tin under the bed, I arrest my behaviour immediately. I know from old that this stemming of goodness will create corruption in me, and then my infrastructure will fall.

I make shapes with energy. I make big shapes.

I have spent my whole life investing in and developing this ability. I am still only scratching the surface of what is possible.

My own fear stops me from going further. God knows how scared I am (but I still turn up).

I am working on that.

Believe me I am very, very excited about the possibilities I am being shown.

I use energy to teach other people to make similar shapes.  One of those shapes is the money shape.

What is Money?

If you take it right back to its core money represents energy, and the exchange of money represents the exchange of energy. Its value is determined by market conditions, which are wholly determined by perception.
If you go to Sainsbury’s today you can buy a bottle of water for 59 pence. If you are in the desert a thirsty many might give you his Ferrari for the same bottle of water.
What’s changed?  Nothing.
Only the perception.
A good question to ask yourself, if you are in business or if you are simply in the business of life is this: what is my water (or commodity)? And where is my desert (or marketplace)?

The paper and coin and credit card number that you exchange for goods are really just a promise to the bearer, a promise that your exchange will be equal and fair. If people have faith in your promise, your money will have value, you will have value. If they do not have faith in it, your money will become what it is, paper and metal and numbers with no intrinsic value at all.

Of course at some point in time that perception has to be proven in the world, it has to be profitable to you and to the people who you serve, or, like many countries at the moment, your economy will collapse. If a business promises to supply a commodity or a service (the bottle of water) that it cannot, will not or does not back up, faith in that business will falter, perceptions will change and his business will collapse.

In terms of commerce this might mean bankruptcy, in bodily terms (when we cannot deliver on our promises) it might mean illness, in mental terms it might mean breakdown, in spiritual terms it means a disconnection from Source, which is the greatest tragedy of all.

Wheel of fortune.

The great Roman politician Boethius (who coined the phrase Wheel of Fortune) said that virtue was the ultimate commodity, one that neither fate nor famine could take away from you. He said money and possessions and riches could be taken from you at any time by the wheel of fortune, virtue on the other hand was recession proof.

As I said, value is based purely on perception (I will go into the subject of perception in a moment).

Why would a canny business man pay thousands of £ or $ (more than most people earn in a month), for little more than advice, where others won’t even invest £10 in a book, and many complain ungratefully even when they are getting the information free?

Because the wise trader knows that congruent advice can be transformative, even revolutionary, in his life, in his relationships, in his business and in his own personal development. As the mysterious Shaman tells the Sheppard Santiago, in Paulo Coelho’s classic tale of alchemy, ‘some days, the exchange of money can literally save your life.’

The businessman knows that Tony Robins (for instance) or Deepak Chopra or Ken Wilber have decades of proven experience in the area they are bartering, so he gratefully makes the exchange.  One month’s worth of money-energy for fifty years worth of knowledge-energy has got to be a bargain.

Well, it sounds like a good deal to me.

I exchange thousands of my energy £s a year for the teachings of more learned men and women than I.

Some people I know have exchanged gold for life, and others have clenched onto their wealth until their heart burst.

Whilst some exchanges of energy seem, on the surface, fiscal, ultimately all and exchanges are simply an exchange of energy for energy.

Whilst the exchange varies (fiscal, physical, carnal, emotional, psychological or spiritual) according to the barter, there is always an exchange. Always. Without exception. If we are not prepared to spend our old energy we do not make room for new energy. And the more we invest of the old, the more room we make for the new.

To the small thinkers out there, the exchange often seems disproportionate even greedy. But that is a perspective thing again. The wider your perspective the more you are able to ascertain true value.

As the old adage goes, for those that don’t see the value, no amount of justification will be enough, for those that do see the value, no justification is needed.

Lau Tzu said that people often condemn the Way, it would not be the Way if people didn’t condemn it.

Even free stuff demands an exchange of energy: it will cost you an allotment of time to ingest the free articles/books/podcasts that are available on line and in libraries.  And time is a very expensive commodity, because none of us are quite sure how much of it we have left.
The information ingested – even the free stuff – needs to be invested in action: practice, study and cultivation.

For those that will not even offer the investment of time, nothing will change.

Artisans.

So it is true, we are all great artists in the making, all of us are great sculptors honing our skills. But our skill with the craft will not grow on its own. Talent that is not invested is taken away from us. Talent that is invested will be added on to.

This is the universal law.

And we all have access to as much energy as we can make room for, we all have 24 hours in each day that we can use to practice.

What shapes do you want to make?

There are no limitations, other than those that you place on yourself.
What shapes are you afraid to make?

This is probably a great place to start, the best place.

What are you waiting for my friends?

Let’s make shapes.

Be well
Geoff Thompson

Recommended (further) reading:

Consolation of Philosophy. Boethius.
Hunting the Shadow. Geoff Thompson.
The Alchemist. Paulo Coelho.
I Can Make You Rich. Paul McKenna.
Integral Spirituality. Ken Wilber.
The New Testament (Paul’s letters to the Romans).
Solomon, The Book of Kings
The Upanishads.

On my customary walk around the beautiful grounds of Coomb Abbey the other day I exercised my usual mediation with nature. I have been told strongly (in my intuition) that when the consciousness is expanded we (as a species) are capable of ‘seeing’ universal law through the medium of the natural world.

When evolved we act as a fleshy element between the world and God.
On this particular day I noticed an acorn on the ground and (as acorns are prone to do) it spoke to me. It was one of many hundreds of acorns that had dropped from a nearby branch, the progeny of an ancient oak.

Some of the acorns (I noticed) had fallen on the soft soil around the tree, no doubt these would be the future shrub that would one day become the giant oak. Others had landed on the stone path that cut through the forest, many would be eaten by the wildlife, some are crushed under the footfall of man (who is not in tune with nature).

I picked the acorn up and asked it to reveal its secrets.

In my opening discourse I asked ‘how does an acorn less than one inch in diameter become a 900 year old tree, 110 feet tall and 29 feet wide at its widest point?

The immediate and succinct response I received in my meditation was this:
‘I do not do it alone.’

A good start and something that resonated deeply with me.

I am forever encountering people who want to claim autonomy over the world and over the work they do in the world: martial artists who think they taught themselves, movie directors who believe they are the auteur of their films, writers who are precious about ‘their’ words, husbands who believe that they run the household all by themselves and politicians who think that they rule the country. Everyone wants their name over everything they do because they believe it belongs to them. In reality, even if we live to be 200 years old, we would still only be short term tenants of the things (including our bodies) that are placed into our care. In all honesty we can do nothing on our own. What we have is created by many hands, both corporeal and invisible.

The acorn does not do any of it alone.

It also recognises that the ‘harsh’ is often the ‘kind’ in disguise.
That was the next thing I was told by my new friend the acorn.

Some acorns might feel cast off by the branch, thrown down by the leaves and abandoned by the tree. And when they suffer the falling these small seeds, it would be easy for them to feel bruised by the hard ground as they land, devoured by the beasts of the forest when they are eaten and crushed by the foot of man. Even those that find haven under the soil might at first feel swallowed by the earth, consumed in a dark damp hell.

But the wiser seed knows better; he would see the wisdom of being thrown far from its home by the wind and the potential of being fully immersed in the fertile soil. He would eventually see too that nothing in the natural process is wasted, cast off, lost, crushed or devoured. Eventually, under foot or through the digestion of a forest animal all acorns find their way back into the soil and although they might not be the initiating seed they will certainly be sustenance for its roots, and in as much eventually become a part of the oak.

How true this has been of my own life: I have often felt lost, abandoned, crushed, devoured and plunged into a darkness that at times I felt sure was hell. Only in retrospect can I look back and see how the universe favoured me in all things: embracing the north wind took me away from fallow ground, being crushed allowed my best self to bleed into the receptive earth. Even the pain of being devoured under the hands of animals (who were wearing people suits) in my youth produced in me a honey nectar in the fullness of time.

I can see now that any good I have created in my life was really a co-creation. And all of my collaborators – the good, the bad, the ugly and those indifferent – have as much claim to my successes as I.
I can also see that the ‘only’ times I experienced success were the times when I definitely and unequivocally immersed myself deep into the soil of my endeavour: I became an accomplished martial arts only when I fully engaged the arts. My writing was not acclaimed until I made it my life and death by marinating in the written word. And spirituality – perhaps the potentate of oaks – only really made sense to me when I closed my eyes and worked consistently and emotively from the inside out.
Ultimately (the acorn informed me) success is guaranteed for all.
Everything in nature, even if we resist life and just sit down and stop breathing, will eventually return to the soil and become a part of the great cycle.

But here’s the thing, this is what was intuited to me very clearly: we have a choice.

We can whine and whinge and lament and charge life with abusing and abandoning us, we can hide behind our bushel and bury our talents and gird our backs against the winds of change. Or we can be grateful for our fortune (even and especially if it feels like misfortune). We can stop seeing obstruction and instead ‘see’ where our intuition is leading us and then follow; away from the tree, into the forest, through the belly of our devouring fears. And – if we are really brave – deep beneath the soil.
We are going to end up there anyway so why not choose a direct path, the courageous route. Shed the old beliefs that say ‘this is good’ or ‘that is bad’ and instead recognise that the clement and the inclement alike can all be turned into liquid asset. Stop being the fodder of a conditioned thinking that only sees limitation and restriction and the cynical way. Be your own thinking. Take your inch diameter of potential, plunge it under the live giving soil and turn yourself into the magnificent, 110 foot oak that you were destined to be.

Be well.
Geoff Thompson

I realised recently that the Christian bible (perhaps all the bibles) is probably a book of science, it’s all about mathematics. And the great prophets, they might (possibly) be scientists (or mathematicians) trying to teach us about universal laws using a simple language. The five books of Moses (The Torah) the parables, the commandments, Paul’s letters to the Romans and the Corinthians, Revelations – they are all screaming at us ‘this is the schematic of the cosmos, and these are its laws’.

For instance: there is a very famous line in the New Testament (much quoted, often misunderstood) where the Christos says to his apostles ‘those that have are given more, those that have not it is taken away from them.’ This could easily be interpreted (and more often than not it is) in a negative way, as though God (the universe, the collective unconscious) is a personal, individual entity who gives to the rich whilst taking from the poor, or even worse (and even more ridiculous) a random god that chooses favourites on a whim. If you misconstrue his words, it appears that he takes from the poor ‘specifically’ to give to the rich. In the Holy Qur’an the equation is even easier to misread, it actually (seems to) enforce this belief when it says ‘God favours those that strive; he does not favour those who do not strive.’

It is easy to get confused; God favours me, God favours me not, God is pleased with me, God is very angry with me. All of this personalisation draws us away from the truths, the facts, the schematics of the universal vehicle, and the instructions we have been offered on how to make it work.

If you look at what Mohammed or the Nazarene said as a mathematical equation (rather than a commentary on the minutia of life) explaining a great universal law, what at first seems personal and confusing suddenly makes perfect sense. It is basic arithmetic, in this case addition and subtraction. If you have a talent and you add to that talent (by using it) your talent will multiply. If you have a talent and you don’t use it (you subtract from it by withdrawing use) it will decrease. It doesn’t matter if the talent is material, spiritual or metaphysical the rule still applies. Money not wisely invested will diminish, muscle not actively worked will atrophy and relationships – with man, with God – that are not nurtured and cultivated die.
We are being told and shown law in very simple terms; what we pay attention to grows, what we take attention away from diminishes.

What we do not use we lose.

Exciting, inspirational, simple. Feed the parts that you want in your life. Starve the things that do not serve you.

What we feed will seed. What we famish will vanish.

The Torah is filled of mathematical equations.

Here’s just one of the many; we are shown in the story of Abraham and (his nephew) Lot that a negative and a positive will always cancel each other out, so if you want to create big, you have to separate yourself from negative thoughts (or people), because if they are consistent and emotive they will create destruction. Lot – a lazy man (we are told) without vision, who was always looking for the easy route – managed to lose even his promised land (in Canaan) with his limiting beliefs. Whereas Abraham (a ‘seer’ who was blessed, because he cultivated great imagination and vision) could see God (or love) in the most desperate of places. Because of this he was able to transform his barren land and his barren life into fertile and rich pasture. Lot – who was always drawn to the easy pickings – ended his life cowering in a cave, his fortune lost and afraid of the world. In Genesis it is indicated that Abraham knew that he could not work in the same land as Lot because their attitudes were so disparate, and that Lot’s negativity would always undermine and negate Abraham’s belief that God was below of the surface of everything. If they had worked together they would have been like the biblical house divided against itself, destined only to fall.

This is subtraction at its most basic. It is how the mind works. It is how the universe works.

1 (Lot’s negativity) – 1 (Abrahams positivity) = 0.

It is a fantastic parable because it shows you that with positive and powerful imagination you can create anything from nothing, but equally with no imagination (or a powerful but negative mindset) whole realities can be destroyed. That is why it is imperative that we cleanse our mind of negativity, and cultivate our visionary imagination for the good. Otherwise we will always be random and accidental creators. Our progeny will be the good, the bad and the indifferent. Either that or we will become stuck in a purgatorial reality where our negative thoughts are always cancelling out our positive thoughts and we spend our whole life is stasis, neither wiser nor wealthier in spirit for our experience.
For those that like to complicate biblical lore, this all might appear a little too simple to be true, but I have found it to be a powerful and pragmatic law that works again and again. It stands the scientific protocol that says for something to be proven it has to be capable of replication under scrutiny.

What we are being told in biblical paraphrase is that the universe is at our behest, the success we dream of is within our own grasp. We just need a clear enough intuition to hear and heed its laws, and a strong enough will to put them to work.

Another example; the New Testament talks (many many times) about the kingdom; ‘seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all other things will be given unto you (Mathew 6:33)’. It doesn’t make a lot of sense when you first read it, because you find yourself (like many before you) thinking, what is the kingdom of God and how do I seek it, and how do I find out what His righteousness is? If however you look at it as basic arithmetic it is simply saying ‘the kingdom of God + righteousness = unparalleled success.
If you break it down even further it gets clearer still; God is universally synonymous with love. The great Indian philosopher Krishnamurti saw love not as an emotion but rather as a highly powerful frequency that we should all, through diligent self inquiry, seek to occupy. Like tuning a television set to a specific station, we attune ourselves to the frequency of love. Love (or God) is always there, always. Just like Sky TV is always there, it is in the air for anyone who decides to tune in. But, if your dish is out of alignment, even by a little bit, you get nothing but a snowy screen. Our job is to learn how to pick up the love frequency, access it, and stay in it. And not in some namby-pampy flowery-power way, where we talk about love, and we preach about love but do not feel love in our very bones, but in a powerful and muscular way.

The aikido legend Morihei Ueshiba was once asked if he ever worried about people challenging him to fight. He laughed and said that he did not worry about it because if anyone every approached him they would realise very quickly that in challenging him they would be talking on the whole universe.

Morihei Ueshiba was in the spiritual frequency of love.

(Ueshiba’s spiritual awakening came as a result of three separate incidents, the last happened in 1942 during the worst fighting of WW11 where he had a vision of the ‘Great Spirit of Peace’ and was shown that the art of the warrior was not about war and destruction rather it was the art of ‘peace, the power of love’.)

Love is the highest frequency we can attune to, and below it everything else dissolves. When I am searching for a new project this is what I look for, the feeling of joy you get when the idea is infused with divinity (I had this only recently when I was presented with a gift in my mediation, an idea for an inspirational film called Counting Backwards – soon to be released), the feeling of love, the feeling that I want to do this at all and at any cost.
When I get that feeling and I act on it, I am in the frequency and I always find success.
Then we come to the righteousness part of the equation, which (in old English) means ‘right ways’ or ‘right path’ or ‘the ethical way’. The word is used frequently in all the scriptures, 500 times in the Hebrew bible alone.

We all know what integrity is, we all know what it is to be ethical even if at times we kid ourselves that we do not. People on the whole think they are ethical, but they still marinate in denial when they choose to lie on their tax returns, or work expenses (and believe me, no matter what anyone says, you cannot be part ethical any more than you can be part pregnant, you either are or you are not; you cannot be an ethical employer or employee whilst you are not an ethical husband or parent. They are not separate. If you can betray the person you have betrothed your whole life too, you cannot be trusted with anything). People like to call themselves righteous but still project hate for those that the media paint as evil, or that they see as different from themselves. Others consider themselves good Christians or Buddhists, or Hindus, or Sikhs or Muslims, but they spend an awful lot of time judging and hating and hurting those that choose to follow a different way.

This is an observation and by no means my own judgment; I have too many sins in my cannon to ever point the finger at anyone else. I reference it here only because it is an important part of this equation (and a part that I am still perfecting myself). If you don’t get the ethical part right, the rest of the sum will not calculate.

To be truly ethical is to know yourself, inside and out, this takes brutally honest self inquiry and self change, it takes time and it also takes a great act of will.

Ethics are also a universal equation. You cannot rationalise dishonesty, doing so will only add to the lie that you have placed on the balance sheet. The truth is not affected by opinion or subterfuge. Whatever you put out there will affect all the other numbers and it must return with profit.  When you understand this, and have a strong enough will to act upon it, you can start to control your own destiny.

So, it’s all arithmetic, wrapped up in a language that a simple people (us) can understand (and there is much more in the big books, this article is just scratching the surface, it is an appetiser). Once you see this, suddenly what at first presents itself and a confusing enigma starts to make perfect sense; seek first the frequency of love, and an ethical path, and you will hit a rich vein of success. In mathematical terms; if you want to find a successful idea, or a successful life, make sure that the search + the purpose + the love + the ethics all number in your calculation.

When I wrote my most acclaimed work (so far) Brown Paper Bag all of these elements were in place (in fact when I look back at my most successful episodes they all worked to this same equation). I felt love when the idea of writing the film came to me, I did the work with love, I made sure that every step of the process was ethical and the film won (amongst many other awards) a BAFTA.  As it says in Genesis, the beginning of all things starts with purpose, and when that purpose is infused with love it become love. And when there is love, you have the backing of the whole universe.

People get really wound up about religion, their defences lift the moment you even mention the word ‘bible’. I understand that, there have been many atrocities enacted in the name of one god or another.

I have a lovely old friend, Liam, a man of strong opinion and powerful intellect. He recently had a moment of clarity. A God experience. After his moment of clarity he was at odds; his beautiful vision of God did not marry well with his views on the well publicised hypocrisies of religion and the church. He went to see a local catholic priest to process his growing internal angst. Liam said to him, ‘listen, father I’ve had this experience. I felt the presence of God but it’s doing my head in because I can’t equate what I felt with all the politics of what is going on in the church and what is going on with the pope in Rome.’

The priest was one of those old Irish, wizened theologians who’d been around a few corners. He said to my perplexed friend; ‘Liam, I don’t give too much of a f*** (sic) about what goes on in Rome, and I’m sure that they don’t give too much of a f*** about what goes on with me. All I do and all I can do, is look after my own relationship with God.’

We live in an age of information. We are very privileged. We have free access now (pretty much) to every great book ever written. I don’t take anyone’s word for anything when it comes to knowledge. I simply go out there, I find the books, I read them and I see if they concur with my own experiences of living in the world.

The information I’ve read thus far has been little short of revolutionary in my own personal development.

My hope is that you will read this article and do likewise; seek the knowledge, for yourself, read the books, and don’t let well meaning people – through the popular media, through social conditioning, through strong opinion and fear – implant their beliefs into the thinking that makes up your mind.

Be an individual.

Make your own mind up.

Be well
Geoff Thompson

Other reading:

* Genesis (AKA The Torah, the five books Moses, at the beginning of the Christian Bible.
* The Holy Qur’an – Ayatullah Agha
* The Art of Peace – Morihei Ueshiba & John Stevens
* Warrior – the Path to Self Sovereignty – Geoff Thompson
* Power versus Force – David Hawkins
* In the Beginning, A New Interpretation of Genesis – Karen Armstrong

It’s been quite a year so far for me. Those of you that are regulars of Geoff’s podcast know that I have transformed myself, losing the best part of four stone, resolving health issues that have hindered me for over 20 years and being in the best shape of my life.

Earlier in the year I became aware of a young lad in the same year and school as my daughter Lucie. His name is Matty Coombes. In July, aged 11, he died, less than six months after being diagnosed with cancer. It was truly sad for all those that knew him. He was such a happy lad in life and battled bravely throughout his illness.

His story was recounted in our local paper and one thing that he said struck me. Matty said that, “Ward 15 of Birmingham Children’s Hospital wasn’t as the nice as the one next door” because of lack of funding. Ward 15 is where he received his cancer treatment.

I wanted to do something about this in Matty’s name and honour his memory.

With my new found fitness I set myself the challenge of doing a Triathlon. It’s this Sunday, 25 September in Buxton. It’s a real race and won’t be easy. I’ve had 5 weeks to prepare. In that time I’ have had to learn to swim front crawl and learn to ride a road bike. Let’s just say the saddle has left quite an impression.

Would you kindly consider to help with raising funds. The funds raised will go directly to Ward 15. They need things like soft furnishings, re-painting for the high dependency unit, better lighting. Simple things that make the ward feel more welcoming for children who are very poorly. Can you help?

The details of the event and more about the story and how to donate are here – http://www.justgiving.com/richardbarnes1

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

Richard Barnesсвети георги

I don’t know if any of you are Star Trek fans, I have watched the modern day parables ever since I was a kid and Captain Kirk threw cartoon aliens around a plastic movie sets. I particularly loved the Voyager series with Captain Catharine Janeway. My favourite episode was End Game, the final in the series. By way of telling you why I loved it so much, I’ll give you a short synopsis of how the story goes; Captain Janeway is back on earth. After getting lost in space with her crew and spending hundreds of episodes trying to find her way home again, she is finally on terra firma, but at the cost of many Voyager crew members who lost their lives on the return journey. An old woman now, the stalwart Janeway is at the Star Trek academy doing a talk for the new recruits about her adventures. The film goes on to explore the very complicated journey that Janeway takes. As the film unfolds she goes back in time in order to convince her younger impetuous self to make a decision that will save the lives of her lost crew. It is a great story, but that’s not what excited me about the film. What I loved and what inspired me most was the moment of awed and reverential silence that hit the academy lecture hall when the veteran walked in. Here in their midst was not just a ship’s captain, rather they were in the company of a legend, a woman that had lived a life of adventure, someone who’d tripped the light fantastic and lived to tell the tale. She had balanced on that very dangerous edge of life, travelled through space, even jumping through time to get home again, fighting and prevailing against just about every kind of malevolence that the universe could throw up; she even went toe-to-toe with the chilling Borg Queen and won.

Captain Janeway was a walking, talking, living, breathing encyclopaedia of colourful experience.

As the Irish are fond of saying, ‘she had been around a few corners.’

There was not a single person in the whole academy that did not reserve their seat, that did not excitedly anticipate her talk, and who would not have sold their very shirt just to be in company with, and touch the hand of experience. They sat in front of our traveller with breath baited and marinated in her knowing.

Why did they do that?

Because when a captain returns from her hero’s journey she brings back the elixir of her experience. And that elixir opens portals in everyone. It offers a proof that all things are possible, that everyone has the same potential and that, for anyone brave enough to leave safe harbour, the great adventure awaits. And to be honest, what she says to the recruits is mesmerising, but it is not the most important thing. And what she writes in her journal and in her published memoirs, as exciting and as inspiring as they might be are not as important as her life accomplishment. Even being in the company (which of course is highly recommended) and marinating in the aura (which you definitely should do) is not anywhere near as powerful as the shift in collective consciousness that her daring-do has created.

I was talking with a spiritual guru recently. I was perplexed about my life’s direction; should I write more books and articles about how I gained a higher consciousness through a hard contact with life; should I do more talks, or films – what should I do (and why?). He told me that whatever I put my heart into would be worthwhile but in the whole scope of things, it was not overly important. What was vital, imperative even, was that I continued to expand my consciousness by doing the things in life that scared (excited) me the most. By expanding my own conscious net, he intuited, I automatically expanded the conscious net of every human, without them even having to meet me, because everything effects everything. Even if I never talked about it, wrote about it or lectured on the motivational circuit, in fact if I renounced the world and lived out the rest of my days in a cave in Devon, it would still not stop my spiritual growth from acting as a catalyst to all spiritual growth. This is why the Holy Qur’an, the Dhammapada, the Old Testament and the New say that when you save one man you save the whole of humanity.
When you save yourself you save the world.

Equally (and worryingly) one man’s heinous actions can lower the consciousness of everyone.

We all need to take great care about how we live, and how we act. It has a greater effect than we perhaps realise.

I digress.

What excites me (and scares me) most about life is the fact that I already know this. I know that what I do, how I act, who I am effects not only me, not only those around me, not only those that know about me or read about me or watch me on DVD, it effects even those to whom I am a complete stranger.

When you add sugar into the water, there is not a part of it that is not sweetened to some degree. Equally if you add salt, or poison, there is not a single person (yourself included) that will not be drinking bitter.
My own aim in this life is personal liberation, freedom through expansion : I want to know what’s in the kingdom.

And my knowing will automatically become my children’s knowing, my wife’s knowing, my neighbours knowing. I want the whole world to know. I want to walk into a room filled with strangers and awe them with my knowing, my gospel, but I don’t want my knowing gospel to rely on mere words; my presence alone should be my Torah.

My purpose is to serve. Why wouldn’t I want to serve? The secret to the perpetual universe is service. Everything I give is returned with profit. It is the perfect business model.

We cannot underestimate the power of purpose; it is (literally) at the genesis of all creation.

In the Old Testament (Genesis, John 1:1 – and mentioned some 47 in the bible) it says ‘in the beginning was the world, and the word was with God and God was the word.’

It doesn’t make a lot of sense until you decipher the meaning. In old Greek ‘word’ translates as logos, which means ‘purpose’.

In the beginning was the purpose, the purpose was with God, and God was the purpose.

Everything we create starts with purpose.

I wrote my first book Watch My back because I was tired of being lied to about fear, I wanted to know fear, and I promised myself that when I did gain some knowing (though hard experience) I’d share what I’d learned, I’d let everyone in on my knowing. That book has been an incredible success and is still in print after twenty years because the purpose was powerful. Purpose (if it is to bring an anabolic profit) must be righteous, it must have integrity, it must serve others (it must be with God).

In the beginning was the purpose, the purpose was with Service and the purpose was Service.

Victor Frankle survived Auschwitz, an infamous Nazi concentration camp in WW2 because he had a powerful, righteous purpose. He wanted to serve humanity by sharing his knowing. His experience taught him that if the purpose was right, the Universe (God) would conspire to help him. He later wrote an acclaimed book about his experience (Man’s Search for Meaning) and developed a healing system he called Logotherapy, helping people to find meaning in their life. He taught us that if we have a strong enough ‘why’ (purpose) we can cope with anything, we can create anything, and we can heal anything.

This brings me back to Janeway and Voyager. The story is set a couple of hundred years in the future where people are no longer motivated by money or wealth or fame. In fact money as we know it no longer exists in their elevated reality. Their purpose is to advance humankind by exploring new frontiers. So Captain Janeway had a very powerful reason to go ‘where no man had gone before’ and when she returned from her adventures just her presence alone, in any room changed people for the better. In fact, like Ghandi, it was impossible to be in her company and not be effected. It has long been known in spiritual circles that consciousness is highly contagious; like electricity, it can jump from person to person. That is why so many people make the pilgrimage to be in the presence of great men and women. Even if they are dead, people will travel to the places that they lived, or the place of their birth and death. Even the garments worn or touched by the Avatars are revered, because (it is believed) one’s consciousness can be advanced simply by touching something that was touched by an elevated being. Their consciousness even pervades space and time; it hangs around long after physical death.

I always think of Janeway if I am feeling scared or feeling down or if I am without motivation. She reminds me of my purpose; she helps me to understand that my purpose is with God and that God is my purpose.

If you have purpose, and your purpose has righteousness then you have the whole universe at your back. If you don’t you’ll always be hacking away in the wrong jungle.

This is worth remembering if you are currently lacking direction or motivation or power; it is what you do with your life, the risks you take, the dangers you face and the courage you develop on the journey that determine your effect on the rooms you walk into. For me I ask only that people see God through me, that they feel God through me, that they sense God through me. Then, when I walk into any room, people will be awed and reverence will abound; not because of this weak and temporary body that transports me onto the podium, rather it will be the spirit in me that transports me onto the podium. For that spirit to be present, it needs to be cultivated, and it is best cultivated when great demand is placed up on it.

What better incentive can you think of for stepping out of the safety that has become your comfort and into the adventure that is your life?

The cultivation of spirit.

Be well
Geoff Thompson.

Recommended reading:
Man’s Search for Meaning – Victor Frankel
Power versus Force – Davis Hawkins
The five books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy – found at the beginning of the Old Testament).
Watch My Back – Geoff Thompson