We live in a world of shared agreements.

It’s a world of illusion.

What does that mean?

We see a round white object and we know it as a pearl, based on what we’ve been taught. There is an agreement in place to call this thing a pearl. We then place a value on this pearl based, once again, on what we’ve been taught. “This pearl is large and perfect in its shape and it has a luminosity and is rare and so it will be valuable.”

But it’s only valuable because of a shared agreement, an agreement that we all have bought into – that a round white object that we have collectively agreed to call a pearl and that is large and perfect in shape and is luminous and not often found is valuable.

In another culture, in another time, that same round white object might not be called a pearl, and might not be valuable. It might be regarded with indifference. It might still be rare, or it might be commonplace, but the culture at that time does not place a high value on it.

So which is real?
The valuable pearl?
Or the pearl which has no value?

It depends on your perspective.
The world you live in.
The time you live in.
The agreements that you have struck, and share.

What is the real truth of the pearl?

The real truth of the pearl is that it is neither valuable nor not valuable, it is an illusion, created by us collectively. Its value is only the value we invest in it, by a shared agreement.

We live in a world of shared agreements.

We agree collectively that a Mercedes Benz is a better car than a Ford Prius. We agree that a mansion by the sea is a better house than a shack in the woods. These are all agreements that we share, and have bought into, and that now define our lives – the way we live our lives – and the way we look at the world.

They also define how we look at ourselves.

How do we value ourselves? We value ourselves by saying “This is who I am. This is what I do. This is what I have created. This is what people say of me. This is how people see me.” We place a value on ourselves based on these agreements, some of which are inside us, some of which are outside us, but all are filtered through us.

These agreements state that you are the person you think you are. That you are the person that does these things. That you are the person that has created these things. That you are the person that others know you by, that see you as they see you.

But are you that person?
Your ego believes so.
You have created your world, and your self worth, based on these agreements that you have filtered through your ego, and from this you have created a personality based on those agreements which have morphed into belief.

And in seeing yourself this way, in believing yourself to be this way, you have created two things – limitation and separation.

You are limited by your agreement of who you are. In fact you are much much more than your limited agreement of who you are, but you cannot see that because of the limited view that you hold of yourself, based on your filtered beliefs.

Your filtered beliefs also hold that you are separate from everyone else. You are separate from that other man, that other woman.

As soon as you invoke separation, you invoke judgement.

You are better than that other man because you have a Mercedes and he has a Ford Prius, and you know from prior agreement that a Mercedes is better than a Prius. You are not as good as that other woman because you live in a shack in the woods and she lives in a mansion by the sea, and you know from prior agreement that a shack in the woods is not as good as a mansion by the sea.

Separation and judgement are the cause of all fear, hate, greed, conflict, pain, and suffering in this world.

As soon as you begin to see the world as one, as yourself as being no different from anyone else – no better, no worse; as soon as you start to see the artificial value we place on things, then the sooner you will rid yourself of fear and pain and suffering.

I was led to Amanda Guggenheimer.

She’s a channel – and an amazing one.

She lives in amongst beautiful forests in the Dandenong Ranges at the back of Melbourne, Victoria – and a friend, Peter Warren, led me to her.

This is now how my life works.
I’m guided.
And I don’t resist anymore.
I’ve learned not to.
I’ve learned to relinquish control.
To yield, as Amanda would say.

Her story is remarkable.

After a turbulent adolescence, Amanda at age seventeen retreated into the wilderness to train under the guidance of a very experienced channel. At the age of twenty-two, after completing her apprenticeship, she began channeling professionally.

She’s written several books, two of which I’ve read – The Light-Worker’s Companion, and The Channel’s Companion. 

(These links above take you to Amazon, where you can buy the books.)

The books have been a revelation for me. They’ve explained so much. They’re accessible, written simply, but it’s very apparent that they’ve been channelled because they’re technical. They’re like handbooks.

For me, right now at this point in my life, I’ve found them to be incredibly useful. They’ve helped me join so many dots. And yet I know there’s still so much to learn. I’m still very much on trainer wheels.

One of the things that’s been a huge revelation to me is the concept of a personal “hierarchy.” What’s a person’s hierarchy? Here is Amanda’s definition:

“Every person on Earth belongs to a hierarchy. A human being is either a member of one of the original twelve hierarchies that established the Spiritual Hierarchy for Earth or from a hierarchy that joined Earth at a later stage in her development. One’s hierarchy is constructed of geometric light designs and sound, which houses and organises the many parts of one’s soul that one’s soul has chosen to send to Earth and other planetary worlds and realms for experience. One’s hierarchy, while participating in the grand assignment to restore Earth to the light, is connected to the Spiritual Hierarchy for Earth and the planet Earth herself.”

Here is a diagram, from The Light-Workers Companion, of a hierarchy.

Notice the little stick figure right down the bottom of the diagram?
That’s you and me.
Our corporeal being.
Our human being.
See how inconsequential we are in the whole scheme of things?

During the course of my making my film on intuition, I’ve had the privilege to meet some extraordinary mystics and channels. Caroline Myss springs to mind – and Dr. Norm Shealy, and Michael Tamura and James Van Praagh. And of course Lee Carroll, who channels for Kryon. These are remarkable and gifted people.

I regard Amanda as their peer.

She is a shy reclusive young lady. She lives with her family in a beautiful house in the Dandenongs, and last week Jennifer and I went and visited them. They live amongst the trees, they’re vegetarians, and whilst not being rigid about it, they try to eat only organic produce, a lot of which they grow themselves.

They are very sensitive to energy and eschew wifi and mobiles, where possible. It’s a life of wonderful simplicity, and yet they are very much connected to the real world. Amanda has a thriving business doing channelling work for clients all around the world. She’s  normally booked up two months ahead.

She’s a strong advocate for connecting with nature as a means for spiritual growth and healing. This comes through very strongly in her first book, The Light-Worker’s Companion, where she details various nature spirits.

I did a ninety minute interview with Amanda for my film. It was wonderful. On several topics she gave me quite a unique viewpoint. Later, she told me that after the interview, she felt a lightness – as though by talking with me she had fulfilled a longstanding contract – an agreement.

Amanda has promised to help me with the film, and with my personal growth, in any way she can. She is very generous. She has now done three channellings – two for me, and one with Jennifer and myself. She channelled Saint Germain and Archangel Gabriel. I was given information which I regard as very beneficial.

Do you believe this stuff? Do you believe in channelling, and spirits, and Ascended Masters, and angels?
You don’t have to.
I believe it.
Over the past two years filming around the world, I’ve seen things, read things, heard things that simply must have come from other realms. There could be no other way.

And remember, I started out a skeptic.

I’m currently reading John Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown. I came across this passage yesterday: There are some things won’t stand reason, but are so just the same.

Lately, I’ve taken to leaning against trees.

Not just any trees – but old gnarly trees.
Tall magnificent trees.
Trees that look like they’ve been there forever.

Trees with spirits.

I lean against these trees to get my spine as close as possible to the trunk of the trees – to get the energy of the tree, the spirits in the tree, into my chakras.

I’ve finally gone totally woo woo, right?
Maybe I have.

I would like to clarify – I’m not a tree hugger, I’m a tree leaner.

I look at some of these trees and I just know there are spirits within. Spirits with wisdom, spirits that can heal, spirits that can speak to me, if I listen.

Why not?

It’s something many indigenous peoples believe. They believe there are spirits in the rocks, and mountains and rivers and seas, too. That the earth is alive with spirits.

And spirit. 

This is what I believe too.

So most days I walk. And where I live, in Mudgee, it’s a three minute walk to a magnificent park by a river – the park is full of old wise trees – and then it’s a ten minute walk before I’m out in amongst the vineyards, and the bush, where there are some glorious stands of very old white River Gums.

Often I see kangaroos, always I see flocks of beautiful native cockatoos and other birdlife. It fills me up, each time I go out for a walk.

Most days I walk at least 10kms, some days 15kms, and on Sunday’s 20kms. This kind of mileage takes time, and so being a person who doesn’t like to waste time, I listen to audiobooks. In this way I’ve “read” many of the classics – Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Herman Melville, the Bronte sisters, and so on – as well as Graham Greene, Hemingway, John le Carre, Ray Bradbury – and most of the Booker prize winners.

But my taste in literature is wide. I also try to read what’s in culture, so I’ve “read” all of the Twilight books, the Hunger Game books, and I managed to get through the first of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” books. That was enough for me. I got it…

I read the Game of Thrones series though in book form. George RR Martin’s writing can’t be fully appreciated in audio form. His use of language is so delicious to read off the page, and the storytelling is too complex. Same with JK Rowling and the Harry Potter series.

I digress.
What has this got to do with me leaning against trees?

Books carry a vibrational energy – from the energetic Creative Will of the author, which, if written in truth, comes from the Creative Source. A book really sings to you when that energy is in harmony with your own energy at that time.

A while ago I shifted from fiction to non fiction – both in what I read read, and what I listened-to read. In particular I’ve been doing a big catch-up on esoteric literature. There is so much for me to learn. It’s a whole new field of study.

But now and then I still like to read a good work of fiction.

I was about to go out on a walk the other day and I had to choose a new book to listen to. I’d just finished The Heart of the Soul, by Gary Zukav, and I wanted a break from this kind of stuff. I decided I would start the second book in a recent Stephen King crime series – the book was called Finders Keepers. 

A lot of people deride Stephen King. They’re snobs. He’s a great storyteller, and a great writer. And I’ve read most of his books. But as I got into Finders Keepers I found myself getting more and more agitated. It just didn’t sit right with me, even though I’d enjoyed the first of the series, Mr. Mercedes. It’s terrific crime fiction.

I realised that my agitation came from the fact that the book, whilst well written and a gripping story, was vibrating at a low energy point. And I was needing something of a higher vibration. I wanted fiction though, and so on a whim I chose John Steinbeck’s To a God Unknown. 

Steinbeck is a Nobel Prize winner. He’s best known for Of Mice and Men, Cannery Row, East of Eden and The Grapes of Wrath. I’d read most of Steinbeck in my early 20s, and he became a huge influence on my own writing. Journal of a Novel, his daily account of his writing of East of Eden, tells you more about the writing process than any college Creative Writing course.

I’d read To a God Unknown more than 30 years ago, and remembered that it had a big impact on me at the time, but I’d forgotten it. And now the book called to me. It was asking me to read it again.

I couldn’t understand why, but I’ve learned now to listen to that voice, and so yesterday I started to read the book again, on Audiobook, as I walked out into the bush.

It’s set in the early 1900s, and it’s about a young man who settles in the Salinas Valley in Northern California – and he comes to believe that the spirit of his father, who has recently passed, has come to inhabit a huge oak tree near his house.

So I’m reading this book – or listening to it – and the synchronicity of it hits me hard. At this point in my life where I am seriously beginning to embrace the notion of spirits in trees, this book comes along, written by one of literature’s great minds, and in a sense Steinbeck validates what I’m thinking about.

I love my life.

I’m posting this from a New York Times article I just put up on Facebook.

For those of you who follow this blog but don’t follow me on Facebook or Twitter, I thought I should post it here too, because the sentiments expressed are worth considering –

The piece is titled: The Power of Altruism – 

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Western society is built on the assumption that people are fundamentally selfish. Machiavelli and Hobbes gave us influential philosophies built on human selfishness. Sigmund Freud gave us a psychology of selfishness. Children, he wrote, “are completely egoistic; they feel their needs intensely and strive ruthlessly to satisfy them.”

Classical economics adopts a model that says people are primarily driven by material self-interest. Political science assumes that people are driven to maximize their power.

But this worldview is clearly wrong. In real life, the push of selfishness is matched by the pull of empathy and altruism. This is not Hallmark card sentimentalism but scientific fact: As babies our neural connections are built by love and care. We have evolved to be really good at cooperation and empathy. We are strongly motivated to teach and help others.

As Matthieu Ricard notes in his rigorous book “Altruism,” if an 18-month-old sees a man drop a clothespin she will move to pick it up and hand it back to him within five seconds, about the same amount of time it takes an adult to offer assistance. If you reward a baby with a gift for being kind, the propensity to help will decrease, in some studies by up to 40 percent.

When we build academic disciplines and social institutions upon suppositions of selfishness we’re missing the motivations that drive people much of the time.

Worse, if you expect people to be selfish, you can actually crush their tendency to be good.

Samuel Bowles provides a slew of examples in his book “The Moral Economy.” For example, six day care centers in Haifa, Israel, imposed a fine on parents who were late in picking up their kids at the end of the day. The share of parents who arrived late doubled. Before the fine, picking up their kids on time was an act of being considerate to the teachers. But after the fine, showing up to pick up their kids became an economic transaction. They felt less compunction to be kind.

In 2001, the Boston fire commissioner ended his department’s policy of unlimited sick days and imposed a limit of 15 per year. Those who exceeded the limit had their pay docked. Suddenly what had been an ethic to serve the city was replaced by a utilitarian paid arrangement. The number of firefighters who called in sick on Christmas and New Year’s increased by tenfold over the previous year.

To simplify, there are two lenses people can use to see any situation: the economic lens or the moral lens.

When you introduce a financial incentive you prompt people to see their situation through an economic lens. Instead of following their natural bias toward reciprocity, service and cooperation, you encourage people to do a selfish cost-benefit calculation. They begin to ask, “What’s in this for me?”

By evoking an economic motivation, you often get worse outcomes. Imagine what would happen to a marriage if both people went in saying, “I want to get more out of this than I put in.” The prospects of such a marriage would not be good.

Many of our commitments, professional or civic, are like that. To be a good citizen, to be a good worker, you often have to make an altruistic commitment to some group or ideal, which will see you through those times when your job of citizenship is hard and frustrating. Whether you are a teacher serving students or a soldier serving your country or a clerk who likes your office mates, the moral motivation is much more powerful than the financial motivations. Arrangements that arouse the financial lens alone are just messing everything up.

In 1776, Adam Smith defined capitalism as a machine that takes private self-interest and organizes it to produce general prosperity. A few years later America’s founders created a democracy structured to take private factional competition and, through checks and balances, turn it into deliberative democracy. Both rely on a low but steady view of human nature and try to turn private vice into public virtue.

But back then, there were plenty of institutions that promoted the moral lens to balance the economic lens: churches, guilds, community organizations, military service and honor codes.

Since then, the institutions that arouse the moral lens have withered while the institutions that manipulate incentives — the market and the state — have expanded. Now economic, utilitarian thinking has become the normal way we do social analysis and see the world. We’ve wound up with a society that is less cooperative, less trusting, less effective and less lovely.

By assuming that people are selfish, by prioritizing arrangements based on selfishness, we have encouraged selfish frames of mind. Maybe it’s time to upend classical economics and political science. Maybe it’s time to build institutions that harness people’s natural longing to do good.

Sorry for the mess up with the previous post.

I was trying to get this text from Kindle to Evernote to Word Press.

Not a happy marriage.

Anyway, here is what I’m currently reading, in preparation for doing an interview with the author, Amanda Guggenheimer, early next week in Victoria.

Thought some of you might find it interesting – the following of a spiritual path…

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“When individuals work to create a stable foundation they build a home life and/ or working life, social life and activities so as to keep passion and interest in living. If they have a family, they work to ensure the financial security of the family and endeavour to be helpful and useful in the extended family and community.

For the most part, this is considered a happy life. Why then, do so many people seem unhappy with such a plan? Others, seeing the result of the plan, believe they can safeguard against unhappiness and try to make changes such as earning more money, not having children, travelling overseas, educating themselves or living alternatively in some way.

Regardless of the alterations to the formula, the individual comes to the point where they have established their framework for life but feel unfulfilled as though there must be something more. For some, the awareness of being unfulfilled does not come quite so easily and may follow a personal crisis or trauma. Whether it is a smooth transition into this level of awareness or a painful one, it is here that the individual may choose the spiritual path.

They realise that finding happiness may not be solely based on making changes to external things. A faint urge or calling emerges from within and grows louder and stronger by the day. Those that listen to this calling and allow it to guide their next move find the doorway of spiritual awakening.

Although they may experience fear, they long to walk through that door. There is a level of nervous apprehension mixed with excitement. They can feel that the key to happiness and fulfilment is close. They crave every bit of information they can get their hands on as a way of speeding up the awakening procedure.

Messages may start to come in dreams or through interesting people who cross their path. Where they used to walk around with eyes closed, now they insist on having them open. As a result, they begin to notice the many signs the universe sends them every day. These signs contribute to awakening, connecting, reminding and teaching the initiate.

Their Higher Self gently makes its presence known and the initiate begins to realise that there is more to them than their external measure. The initiate is in fact a spiritual being in a human body, awakening to his/ her true nature.”

From “The Light-Workers Companion” by Amanda Guggenheimer

We get tested every day.

I know I do. Now that I see what’s going on.
And most of the time, I fail these tests.

It might be a test of generosity.
Or kindness.
Or anger.
Or compassion.

What happens is that you are confronted with a situation that tests your reaction.
Your response.

Will you act out of love, or out of fear?
Which often manifests in anger or contraction.
Greed is contraction.
Selfishness is contraction.

Someone cuts in front of you while you’re driving. Do you yell and honk your horn and curse? Or do you react with calmness, and wonder what sort of a horrible day that driver must be having. Or why they might be so impatient. And you hope their day improves.

That’s a test.

Someone in a shop treats you rudely. You’re Asian. Or an ethnic minority. You immediately feel that they’re treating you disrespectfully. They’re being tacitly racist.

You raise your voice.
They raise their voice.
Soon you are both shouting.

You failed the test.

Instead, perhaps you could have responded with understanding and kindness. Perhaps the shopkeeper wasn’t being racist at all, but was just having a bad day. Perhaps they have personal problems. Perhaps he or she is feeling enormous pressure from their bank, or maybe their child is sick, or their landlord is forcing them out of the building.

If you’d responded with a smile, and with understanding, you might have made their day a little better for them.

If you look at these everyday incidents and situations as tests, put in front of you to give you an opportunity to grow, then suddenly the world becomes a lot more interesting.

And a lot more interactive!

Here’s the thing – if you fail the test, they will test you again. And again. And again. You will be given many more other opportunities to grow. Because that’s why you were incarnated into this lifetime. That’s your purpose here. You think it’s to pay off your mortgage and ride around in a nice car and have dinner parties where you trot out your vintage wines and tell everyone about your last trip to Venice?

It’s more than that.
Much more.

Some of us go through our lives continually failing our tests.
Some of us gradually “get it,” and pass the test, or tests.

I had a situation last week where I was tested. I only realised later, after I failed.

I got a phone call from a young lady asking me to take wedding photos. I don’t usually do wedding photos – only for friends, which I do for free – but I have a website saying that I’m available for this kind of work, and a lot of people get married in the town where I live – Mudgee – and so it’s something I do on the side, if I’m in the country.

My rate starts at $2K. This young lady told me that she and her fiancé were on a tight budget, and that she had contacted another photographer who had told her he would do it for $800. She had contacted me though, she said, because she loved my portfolio.

She said that they were so short of money that they would pay me week by week, because her fiancé was on unemployment benefits.

I told her I would do it for $1K – half my normal rate, but still $200 more than she was hoping to pay. But she seemed happy with my quote, and said she’d get back to me.

I never heard from her again.

I should have done it for her for free.

If they were doing it that tough, I really should have done it for free. It’s no big deal for me. And they would have had great wedding pics. It was only later that I realised it was a test of my generosity of spirit, and I had failed.

But in a sense, I’d also passed.

Because in realising it was a test, and realising I’d failed, I’d taken the first step towards passing the next time I’m tested.

That’s the thing about these tests. They will keep coming at you until you realise, and in realising, you hope that you will be more self-aware next time around, and you will pass.

And then you will be given another new test!