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…

******

“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!

Caroline Myss features in the film I’m currently making on intuition.

If you don’t know who Caroline Myss is, or rather, Dr. Caroline Myss – well, she’s probably the most famous medical intuitive in the world. Her books on healing, sacred contracts, and archetypes have become best selling classics.

Her workshops all around the world are immediately sold out as soon as they’re announced. She is a fiercely intelligent, eminently scholastic and highly articulate woman.

She is a genuine mystic.
And I’m very proud to have her as part of my film.

I was checking out her blog today and thought I would post her piece on the massacre at Orlando. Here it is:

*****

I’ve been guided to a very important book, and I know it’s for me right now because I answer an emphatic “yes” to all the questions it poses in its preface –

Do –

• Topics such as philosophy, metaphysics, religion and spirituality call you now more so than ever before?

• You crave reading material and in depth discussion on the above issues?

• You have thought-provoking, insightful, futuristic or even disturbing dreams?

• You experience a strange lethargy at unusual times of the day as though someone has unplugged and then plugged you in again?

• Some friendships seem no longer compatible?

• You have a lack of interest in pushing forward to keep up with the Joneses?

• You have a desire to be in nature?

• People and literature keep appearing that relate to personal and spiritual discovery?

• You crave time alone or with genuine and loving people only?

• You find that communication is becoming increasingly more important to you, yet at the same time recognise challenges in truly connecting with others?

• You find that your body is going through shifts that are hard to explain?

• You talk to a higher power, or guiding spirit more frequently now than before?

The preface goes on to state:

If you answer yes to most of these ‘symptoms’, welcome, you are awakening to your true destiny… As a Light-Worker you have agreed to awaken earlier than many, to pave the way, to clear debris from the path. This handbook has been designed to aid you in your task.

The book is written by an Australian channeller named Amanda Guggenheimer, and the book is called The Light-Workers Companion. 

It’s a technical book – and fascinating. And I’m learning so much.

I called Amanda yesterday to say hello, and she said to me: They’re here with me now. Do you want me to channel? 

How could I refuse?

And so for the next half hour she channeled my guides, and told me stuff that was very very helpful – particularly concerning my film. It was amazing. Later she sent me an email with a link to a recording she made of the channeling.

I  offered to pay her but she resolutely refused.

Here below is her book. If you say “yes” to the majority of those questions above, I suggest you buy it.

Here is the book’s web page:
http://lightworkerscompanion.com

Here is the Amazon link –

According to my Fitbit I walked 458.57kms in the month of May – along the Portuguese Camino and thereabouts, and then later in France and Hungary.

Why does this make the news?
Or at least this blog?

Because I walked those kms on a knee that doctors told me needs replacement.

As some of you who follow this blog might know, I have bad knee issues. On my first Camino I walked in extreme pain, and only completed the pilgrimage on painkillers.

Later, after an MRI, I was told I was bono-a-bono; that is, bone on bone – and that a knee replacement wasn’t a matter of if, it was a matter of when. 

I was told to get an elaborate knee brace, which I then dutifully wore on all my training walks, and on the 2014 Portuguese Camino, then last year’s Via Di Francesco Camino.

Let me be quite clear –
I don’t like doctors.
I don’t like medicines.
I don’t like knee braces.
And I particularly don’t like invasive surgery.

I have the odd and quaint belief that if you listen to your body, and you’re not silly about it, you can heal yourself.

Late last year, on my training walks, I began to walk without the brace. Short distances at first, and slowly. My knee railed against it. I got pain, and swelling. And I thought this would be a short lived experiment.

But I rested the knee, then began again. And gradually the knee settled down. And gradually I increased the distances, and the pace.

In preparation for this year’s Portuguese Camino I increased the intensity of my training so that I ended up doing about 100kms a week at about 6km/hr pace.

And my knee, surprisingly, held up.
So I decided to head off to Portugal without the brace.

It was a risk on my part. I really didn’t know how the knee was going to go. My training had been on relatively flat stretches of road. No hills, no uneven surfaces, no cobblestones. On the rocky and stony climbs of the Camino, would it give way?

As it turned out I only had a few days where my knee spat the dummy and pretended it wasn’t going to play anymore. But once again it settled down, and I think there was only one occasion where I took painkillers to get me through.

According to my surgeon I have no cartilage in my knee joint.
Zero.
Zilch.
So what happened?
How can I walk these distances then, largely pain free?

I really don’t know. Other than I’ve been determined not to get a knee replacement, which is what the doctors say I should have.

I can’t explain it, in the same way I can’t explain how my eyesight returned after I walked my first Camino. I’d had glasses for fifteen years.

I haven’t worn any since.

It’s so easy to accept what the doctors, the nurses, the western medical professionals tell you. If you walk the Camino and you get a bad blister and you go to a doctor, what are they going to say?

It’s their duty to tell you not to walk. And in some instances they’ll tell you your Camino is over and you should go home. And in some instances that’s exactly what you should do.

But in a lot of cases instead of racing off to a doctor, why not simply rest up, listen to what your body is telling you, and trust in the healing power that’s innate within you.

I have settled back into home life in Mudgee.

Taken a week to get over jet lag, not helped by my internet which went down for two days. Don’t ask me about the correlation between jet lag and my internet not working, because I can’t explain it, other than I know it exists.

It’s cold here. Jennifer and I came back to minus -3C mornings – yes that’s minus three degrees Celsius. After balmy Portugal and Spain, it was a shock to the system.

I’ve been working on the script for my intuition film, which has been very difficult to crack. Man o man it’s a complex subject. How do you find a simple accessible line through it all without dumbing it down? That’s been one of my difficulties.

And whether it should be a personal film or a didactic film.

These are fundamental decisions which you think should come easily – and in fact they did when I began to realise that what was messing me up was my intellect. As soon as I let go that, and began to base my decisions on my intuition, then everything became so much easier, and I began to see it with clarity again. Doh, you might say, and rightly so!

Play by the rules Bill, play by the rules… you dummy.

I’ve come back wanting to keep walking, even though it’s cold and rainy here. I’ll do about 95kms this week. I have such a sedentary job, writing, so it’s important I allow a certain amount of time each day to exercise.

I listen to audio books as I walk. At the moment I’m re-reading, or rather listening to, Autobiography of a Yogi. This is my third reading of the book, and I’m getting more from it than from the past readings. As you learn more, you become receptive to more.

I’m also though listening to podcasts from Kryon, which is an entity channelled by Lee Carroll, perhaps the most famous and respected of all the current channellers. Lee features in my film – and his contribution will be significant. He’s a brilliant man, and his channellings are extraordinary in their wisdom and compassion.

Jennifer by the way put me onto Kryon originally. She’s been reading his channellings, and listening to them, for the past fifteen years.

His channellings are free. Just go to http://www.kryon.com and go to the Free Audio section and you can listen to literally hundreds of his channellings since 2002.

I thought I would post an excerpt of one here, because it relates to intuition, and synchronicity.

Trust and follow your first instincts. This rule is to trust and follow your first intuitions. How many times have you had a situation where you said, “Oh, if I had only done what I had first thought?” This is actually part of the system, and that’s the way it occurs to you. It is often the very first instinct you will have about a situation. Some call it intuition, but it’s much more than that.

Synchronicity is defined as energies that align with purpose. These situations look like accidents, but they are not. Listen. This is the key. You have heard there are no accidents, but there are those outside of your belief system who say, “That’s crazy. That’s not right.” Synchronicity looks and appears like coincidence. It often looks like an accident, but it is not. It is you at the right time, at the right place, with the potentials aligned that you asked for. But if you’re going to have synchronicity and aligned potentials, you’ve got to be there to experience them, don’t you?

So you’ve got to take some action, and whether it’s a phone call, or it’s an electronic communication, or whether it’s you with your body, you’ve got to put yourself in places where the synchronicity and the system can work. And I say it for those in these rooms and those who are hearing and reading now. There are those of you who still will not do this, for you believe there’s some kind of sacredness in staying put and just praying. Instead, try to understand the balance of things. There is a time for asking, and a time for receiving. They are done in separate places! If you spend all your time in the asking place, no receiving will occur.

The first one, the most difficult for Human Beings, is timing. Yesterday we said that your clock is not God’s clock. We also told you that it’s impossible to apply a 3D time frame to an interdimensional potential. It’s frustrating to Humanity that God delivers things not when you ask for them, but only when you need them. You see, to us it doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to give you an answer to put in your pocket. Because when you get to the place where you thought you’d need it, and pull it out of your pocket, it’s the wrong answer! Instead, it must meet the scenario of the synchronicity and the energy of the moment.

Here is the link to this channelling – http://www.kryon.com/k_chanelhandbook05.html

We’re mounting another Mother Ganga Indian tour this year, in September.

There are places still available.

Last year’s tour was a hoot.
Everyone had a great time.

This year’s tour will be the same, with highlights being:

• Visiting the Taj Mahal

• Visiting the magnificent Golden Temple in Amritsar –

• Visiting the Dalai Lama Temple in Dharamsala

• Staying at the best ashram on the Ganges in Rishikesh – including the incredible Aarti ceremony each night on the banks of the sacred river…

• Shopping – Jennifer and Bill know all the best places to get amazing fabrics, clothing, footwear and Indian souvenirs…

• Taking part in the incredible Ganpati ceremony on the beach of Mumbai

• Last day buffet lunch at the JW Marriott in Mumbai – the best buffet in India!

Accommodation is luxury – except for the ashram – but we do offer a view of the Ganges from your room!

And food is excellent!  You’ve never had Indian food until you’ve visited India, and Jennifer and I know the best places!

We make visiting India safe, healthy, and fun!
Here are some testimonials from the last tour…

Here are some details –

• Sept 3rd – 16th, 2016
• 13 nights / 14 days
• Cost: AU$4850 / US$3850 / €3450 (twin share, ground cost only)

For more info, go to the Gone Tours website:
Mother Ganga Indian Tour – 2016

If you wish to book, or want more information, please contact me, Bill Bennett –
bill@gonetours.com

Jennifer and I have been coming to India regularly for the past eight years. We know India, and we love it. Join us – it will be the experience of a lifetime!

It’s been a busy five weeks and a bit. 

First Portugal, and Fátima, and spending time with our friend Julie Stafford just prior to the launch of her new and astonishing global smoked salmon business. 

Then prepping the tour. 

Then the tour itself, where I was privileged to spend time with some remarkable and courageous people. 

Then the Cannes Film Festival. And meeting Julian Lord, which was a treat. 

Then Budapest, for research for my second WHITE WITCH : BLACK WITCH book, and to meet up with my two buddies – Balazs and Laszlo – from my 2013 Camino. 

And now I’m looking forward to getting home to Mudgee, and getting back into a routine again. 

I have my intuition film to finish, and possibly a new film to shoot, along with finalising arrangements for our next two tours this year – the Mother Ganga Indian tour in September, and the Bavarian Romantic Road Christmas tour in December. 

What was the highlight of the trip? 

I think it was getting to know some of the New Zealand carers on the Portuguese Camino. I learned a lot from some of them. I learned a lot about the nobility of the human spirit. 

I think as well a highlight for me was spending that short time on the Santiaguino rocks at the back of Padron. I found that time there to be a greater spiritual experience than arriving at the Cathedral at Santiago. 

There was also one day on the Camino when, for a period, I walked by myself and I felt like I was flying. Transported on angels’ wings. It was truly transcendent. I’ll never forget that. 

What was the biggest lesson I learned? 

It came via something very pragmatic – when Jennifer and I arrived in Budapest and discovered the airline had lost one of our checked in bags. It was a bag that not only contained some purchases we’d made – gifts mainly – but also some personal belongings which would be hard to replace. 

At the time the airline – a low cost airline (the fare from Nice to Budapest was amazing!) – had no record and no idea where the bag was. It looked like it had disappeared for good. But three days later it thankfully turned up. 

I learned from that experience that these things which you think have value in your life really don’t – and they’re not important. In a previous incarnation I would have been anxious and recriminatory and worried for those three days, and ruined my time in Budapest. 

That didn’t happen. 

I did all I could to help find and retrieve the bag, I then went out and brought those necessary things that were in the bag that I urgently needed, and then I let go of all emotion and let it be. And trusted that the bag would turn up. I didn’t lay blame on the airline, or the baggage handlers – I trusted that through their care and professionalism, they would find the bag and get it to me. 

Which is what happened. 

A big lesson for me. 

Letting go. 

And trusting. 

Soon we will be landing, and then I’ll have to acclimatise to a chilly Mudgee – but there is a lot of very exciting work ahead, and now after five weeks I have fresh eyes, and I feel I’m ready to see things clearly. 

Edited with BlogPad Pro

A few months before I set out to walk my first Camino in April of 2013, I arranged via a forum site to share a taxi from Biarritz airport to St. Jean Pied de Port.

The three people who shared that taxi with me – two Hungarian fellows and a beautiful young lass from Holland – would become friends for life.

Laszlo

Rosa

Balazs

Foolishly, I had started my Camino with a dicky knee, born from too much over zealous training. By the time I’d walked to Pamplona, the knee had ballooned out to the size of a bloated grapefruit, and I was in a lot of pain.

As I was limping up to the massive walled city I met up with the two Hungarian blokes – Balazs and Laszlo. The three of us checked into an albergue, then they arranged to get my knee iced. Balazs bound the ice against my knee with his expensive hi-tech towel.

Later that afternoon he took me to a large department store where he urged me to buy some walking poles, because he said there was no way I would get to Santiago without using poles. Later he would tell me he didn’t believe there was a chance in hell I would finish the Camino. He thought my Camino was already over.

The next morning he and Laszlo prepared to leave the albergue to continue their walk, and as a parting act of generosity Balazs said I could keep his towel, as long as I promised to keep my knee iced.

I remember waving them off – sad that I would never see my two Camino buddies ever again.

Laszlo (L) and Balazs (R) at Pamplona about to continue their walk.

I spent the day resting, and fuming.

I wasn’t going to let my knee thwart my desire to complete the Camino. So the next morning I set off, determined to try and catch them up. But both Balazs and Laszlo were fast walkers. I heard along the grapevine that they were now way ahead of me.

I knew what day Balazs was due to fly out of Santiago, so I set my sights on being there the day before so I could give him back his towel.

During the walk I criss-crossed with Rosa several times – always a delight – and Laszlo too, who had surprised himself by walking so strongly.

I got to Santiago two days early – but Balazs had gone to Muxia and Finisterre. So I waited, and the day before he was due to fly out the four of us met in the square in front of the Cathedral where I ceremoniously gave Balazs back his towel. 

It was Balazs’s towel – or at least the need for me to give him back his towel – that got me through the Camino.

The four of us then went to the midday Mass, after which we had a very long lunch at the O Gato Negro where we ate too much pulpo, drank too much wine, and laughed way too loudly.

Since then we’ve kept in touch – and when Jennifer and I decided to come to Budapest I let Balazs and Laszlo know. Yesterday morning Laszlo picked us up from our hotel, after driving for three hours from his village to come and collect us – then he drove a further hour to where Balazs lives – in a beautiful town to the north of Budapest.

Both men took the day off work to show us around the town – Szentendre – one of the most picturesque towns in Hungary.

We then returned to Balazs’s house where we met his lady friend, a beautiful woman named Kinga – then he cooked us a truly amazing meal. Several courses of restaurant quality fare – the highlight being the best duck breast I’ve ever had, cooked to perfection – 12 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius, said Balazs.

It would be the catchphrase of the evening.

Balazs also provided some magnificent Hungarian wines. Man o man this country makes some good plonk

Laszlo is an architect and during the evening he showed us on his laptop the wonderful work he’s been doing, and later he sang several traditional songs from his village. It was very moving.
A great dinner and evening. Our only regret was that Rosa couldn’t be there with us.

This morning Balazs got up early and went down to the bakery and brought back some beautiful fresh pastries, then made us coffee which was of a standard that an Australian would accept – meaning that it was bloody good.

After breakfast we said our goodbyes – sadly – knowing though that we would see each other again sometime, somewhere, some other place.

This is the thing about the Camino – in a very short period you can develop incredibly strong bonds of friendship that can last years, even lifetimes. It kind of defies logic really.

Who would have thought that a taxi ride from Biarritz to St. Jean could be the start of such a friendship…