I’ve been off air on this blog this last little while. I apologise, but I’ve been busy, and distracted – and I only really like to post stuff if there’s a reason to.

The year has kicked off busy for me.

For starters I published the first book in the WHITE WITCH BLACK WITCH series – and sales on that have been steadily building, which is pleasing. Here it is if you want to take a look – WHITE WITCH BLACK WITCH

By the way, those that I gave free copies to – how about a review on Amazon guys… That was the deal, remember? But only if you like it!! Don’t post a review if you think it’s crap!

🙂

The tour side of things has also begun with a bang. The Portuguese Camino tour is now closed, with fifteen people coming with us from Porto to Santiago in early May.

We’ve also been approached by a foodie group to mount a food tour in Mexico later in the year – and so we’re putting that together at the moment.

Then there’s the Mother Ganga Spiritual Tour which we’ll be doing again in September. Looking forward to that!

Mother Ganga Spiritual tour of India – Sept 2016

The Romantic Road Christmas tour in Bavaria is now almost full – it looks like we have eight people already booked for that one, and we’ll close that off at twelve.

On other fronts, as some of you know I’m an Adjunct Professor of Screen Studies at the Queensland University of Technology, and for the past several years I’ve been in a joint venture with QUT to create a large scale online educational resource. Just before Christmas I delivered them a beta version of the first couple of modules – which they have since reviewed – positively, I’m happy to say – and so that’s now starting to gather steam.

But my real focus has been PGS – my intuition film.

I’ve secured a post production investment deal from the country’s largest post house, and so we begin editing on March 14th. I’ve been working on the script, which has taken all my attention and time – and this is the real reason why I’ve been MIA on this blog.

I’ll keep filming while I’m editing – and in fact there is a very real chance that we might be going to Columbia to film with a remote tribe high in the mountains. They have particularly fascinating spiritual practices – and because they’ve been cut off from civilisation they have a direct heritage line back to the Aztecs. That trip should be amazing, if it comes off…

And in June I’m returning to Dallas Texas – (Joni, if you’re reading this, YES, I’m coming back for more Cosmic Rays!) – but there will be more filming to do in the States, and by that stage of editing I’ll know exactly what I need to pick up.

As busy as it seems to be, I have plenty of time. Time to walk, time to read, time to think. And the reason I have time is because my life isn’t complicated by decisions. I make decisions now totally intuitively, and I trust the process and surrender to the outcome.

Man o man it makes life easier.
Way less complicated.

For a start, it takes the anxiety out of living.
And you make decisions fast. No messing around.
You default always to happiness.

I have a good friend who is desperately unhappy. He’s in a very high powered and well paying job that he hates, he has teenage children that are problematic (what teenage kid isn’t!), he never has time for himself, is always stressed, and whenever I call him for a chat I always hear how rotten his life is.

We have choices.
We choose to live the life we lead.
We aren’t the victims of life.
We are the victims of our own choices. 

This guy feels trapped. He feels trapped financially, and yet if he made the big decision to sell up his house and his investment properties and all the stuff he’s accumulated and step away from the materialism that he craves, then he would find he had sufficient money to live a simple, albeit frugal life, but a happy life.

His only happiness comes from buying things.
But that wears thin very quickly.

We constantly subsume our inner voice. Our inner voice knows what’s best for us. But we ignore it. And do what we think is right. This guy is doing what he thinks is right, by holding down this high powered job, going on a couple of international vacations each year, buying a new car whenever he feels depressed, and putting his kids through expensive private schools. But he goes to work each day miserable.

After talking to this fellow recently, I wondered when he would ever feel happy. Would he feel happy once he’d retired? In twenty years time? He would retire with some serious accumulated wealth. But what if he keeled over and died the day he retired?

It happens.

Happiness is something we have to embrace now. Not in ten or twenty years time, not even next month or next year. And we can do this, if we shift into a state of awareness, if we honestly appraise our lives, and if we have the courage to make choices to fundamentally change things.

Don’t whinge about your life.
Change it.
And if you’re not prepared to change it, then stop your whingeing.
You have no right to whinge, because that’s the life you’ve chosen.

I learned on the Camino to ask, when confronted with a difficult decision: What’s the worst that can happen? Invariably, when I considered the worst, it wasn’t that bad.

Same with making choices –

It might seem really scary to change something about your life that you’ve clung to, out of fear most probably. But if you let go of that fear, if you choose to change that one thing, you might actually start feeling happy…

But it takes guts.
Are you that brave?

I love walking.

I’m walking quite a bit at the moment, getting fit again for the Portuguese Camino tour which is coming up in May.

Jennifer and I are taking 16 New Zealand carers from Porto through to Santiago. Carers are people who care for someone – perhaps someone elderly, or with health issues.

I’m sure these carers are quite extraordinary individuals, and I’m looking forward to spending time with them, and hearing their stories.

But the walking I’m doing at the moment is less about training, and more that I just simply love walking. Most days now I’m walking 12kms -15kms, with 20kms or so on the weekend. I’m averaging between 85kms-100kms a week.

I love the simplicity of it.
I love the easy grace of a stride.
I love the regularity of my breath.

I love getting out into the bush, or amongst the wineries and the vineyards – and seeing flocks of cockatoos or kangaroos and sometimes a snake slithering away.

I love the smell of wildflowers.
I love the chill of an early morning.
I love hearing the sound of my boots on the track.
The only sound, other than sometimes wind in the trees.

There is a road I take which leads to the vineyards. People wave at me as they drive past. I wave back. Often I don’t know who they are. Or I can’t see them properly because of the sun reflecting off their windows. It doesn’t matter. I still wave.

I wave when an oncoming driver gives me space. Sometimes their cars veer onto the other side of the road. I always wave to them, for their courtesy.

Sometimes I see friends driving past, and every now and then they stop, and we have a chat. There have been times, on a long walk when I’m a fair way out of town, when a concerned driver will stop and ask if I want a lift. I laugh, and say No Thanks. 

I walk the same route every day. And often at the same time each day. And so people get to know me. On Sunday I take a longer route which loops around the town.

I walk the same route because I’m competitive. With myself. I like to know how I’m going from day to day – comparing my times, my pace and heartbeat, with previous days. I wear a Fitbit so I track everything. And then later on my computer I look at the stats.

But walking isn’t about stats.
It’s about feeling.
And seeing and hearing.
It’s about connecting to the elemental side of life.

I like to see how the light changes, how the vegetation changes. Today I noticed that some of the vine leaves are starting to turn golden. The first sign of autumn coming.

I like walking the same route because strangely, I see something new each day. Even though I’ve walked this route for years. But every time I seem to see something different.

And I listen to audiobooks. Because each walk is about two and a half hours, I use this time to “read.” It’s a valuable time for me. It enriches me in so many ways.

Walking grounds me.

It grounds me so I can fly.

I love it.

These are by no means Steve McCurry’s best portraits – he’s one of the best portrait photographers in the world, if not THE best – but they’re still pretty damn amazing…

I’ve just posted the Romantic Road Christmas Tour page on the Gone Tours website –

Here it is, with all the details –

Romantic Road Christmas Tour / Bavaria, Germany

It’s going to be an amazing tour.

Jennifer and I travelled the Romantic Road a couple of years ago, in late November, It has to be one of the most beautiful road trips I’ve ever done – particularly as we’ll be there this time to visit the amazing Bavarian Christmas Markets.

Here’s a description of the markets from the Bavarian website –

Christmas markets in Bavaria

If you’re interested, please contact me –

bill@gonetours.com

I guess I can call myself an intuitive…

At least, I now live each moment of my life intuitively.
And have done so for quite some time.

To use my parlance, I follow my PGS.
My Personal Guidance System.

A small example –

Yesterday it was raining when I woke up. Raining quite heavily. I never look at weather forecasts. Never. I always use my PGS to tell me how the day is going to unfold, and how I should prepare.

I didn’t know what the forecast was for the day – and Jennifer and I had to walk 4kms to a business meeting in the centre of the Sydney CBD.

I asked my guys, and they said it’s not going to rain.
And it didn’t rain.

By the time I was ready to walk and I stepped outside, the rain had virtually stopped. There was a slight drizzle, but it was refreshing.

The walk was glorious.

The business meeting was with a financier whom I’d been introduced to through a New York based documentary maker. I’d met this filmmaker briefly while she was on a visit to Sydney, and given her some advice about financing and distribution. She in turn very generously gave me an introduction to her funding source here in Australia.

That doesn’t happen often in this business – and I was very grateful.

As most of you know who frequent this blog, I’m currently making a major international film on intuition, called PGS – INTUITION IS YOUR PERSONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM. 

So Jennifer and I met this financier lady, and there was an immediate connection, as if it was a meeting of old souls from past lives.

She’s currently doing some philanthropic work with aboriginal people in Queensland, and I mentioned that I wanted to get more of an indigenous perspective for the film, and could she recommend someone I could talk to.

She told me immediately I had to go to Columbia.

Columbia? I asked. You mean Columbia South America? 

She did.

Turns out she’s doing some major work there with some indigenous people, who have a special connection to the intuitive realm. She explained this to me, and immediately I felt we had to go. I don’t know why, or when this will happen, or what it will mean to the film, but I just felt this is something I should do.

This is how this film is being made – totally intuitively.

I immediately trusted that the meeting with this financier lady was meant to be – that she had come into my life for a purpose, not necessarily to finance the film, but to aid me in some way. Perhaps going to Columbia is the reason I was meant to meet her.

I left the meeting, and checked my emails. I had an email from Kurt Koontz, who has become a good friend. He wrote the very popular Camino memoir book, A MILLION STEPS.  In the email, he asked me what I knew about South America, because he was thinking of going…

In the evening Jennifer and I had dinner with the film’s editor, Rishi Shukla, and the film’s sound design team, Wayne and Libby Pashley.

If any of you have seen the two sizzle reels for the film, well, Rishi cut them. Here they are again:

SIZZLE

PRODUCTION UPDATE 2

Wayne and Libby are the best sound design team in the country, and amongst the best in the world. There recent credits include MAD MAX FURY ROAD, THE GREAT GATSBY, and every film that Bill Bennett has made in recent history… haha.

They’re great friends and supreme crafts-folk. And their contribution to the film will be extraordinary, I know.

We had a terrific dinner, and talked through the creative aspects of the film – because we start editing in about a month – on March 14th. At the start of this year I felt, again intuitively, that even though shooting hasn’t finished, it’s important to get the film into post production, to enable me to see what I’ve got, and what I need to get.

Again, it was an intuitive response.

At the meeting yesterday morning with the financier lady, I told her that I was just the tiller man on this film – and my job was to keep the vessel, the film, away from the shoals. I explained that this is the first film I’ve ever made where my main aim it to “stay out of the way,” and not impose my will.

I also explained that this is the first film I’ve made where I am not riddled with anxiety. I trust in the process, I trust in my guidance, and I know that only the best will happen, whatever that might be.

Sometimes rejection is ultimately the best that can happen. The Secret was rejected by Channel 9, and went on to become a global cultural phenomenon. That wouldn’t have happened if Channel 9 hadn’t initially rejected the film.

I have learned to surrender. 

And that gives me unbelievable strength.
That makes me unstoppable.

PGS First editorial meeting. From L to R – Bill Bennett, Rishi Shukla, Jennifer, Libby Pashley, Wayne Pashley.

Today is Jennifer’s birthday.

It’s a big one.

So I got her a present – a Camino pendant, made by the jeweller who made my Camino ring which Jennifer gave me when I turned 60 a couple of years back.

John Tarasin had designed the ring based on a photo I took of the large shell on the exterior wall of the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela.

He used that same design to do this pendant for Jennifer. So it’s a replica in miniature of the St. James symbol on the outside wall of the Cathedral.

Soon, in May, we’re walking the Camino Portuguese again with a group of carers from New Zealand.

The Camino continues to resonate in our lives.

And Jennifer continues to grow more beautiful with every passing year.

I’m reading two books at the moment, but the one that I’m thinking most about is Gary Zukav’s SEAT OF THE SOUL.

Readers of this blog will know that I hammer on about what Science doesn’t know. It was less than five generations ago we didn’t know that germs caused illness.

So what else don’t we know?

Science takes the view that what’s not known doesn’t exist – and when we begin to discuss such things as intuition, and the Higher Self, and the soul, by their very nature they are not possible to prove empirically, which is what rationalists require.

Here’s an interesting take on it by Gary Zukav…

“The soul is not physical, yet it is the force field of your being. The higher self is not physical, yet it is the living template of the evolved human, the fully awakened personality.

The experience of intuition cannot be explained in terms of the five senses, because it is the voice of the nonphysical world.

Therefore, it is not possible to understand your soul or your higher self or your intuition without coming to terms with the existence of nonphysical reality.

Knowing in the cognitive sense cannot produce proof of nonphysical reality any more than it can produce proof of God. Proof of nonphysical reality does not exist in the dimension that the rational mind seeks it.

Therefore, when you ask from the perspective of the five-sensory personality, “Does nonphysical reality exist?” what you really are asking is, “If I cannot prove the existence of nonphysical reality, do I decide that it is nonsensical? Do I decide that there is no answer, or do I expand myself to the level at which the answer can be given?”

When a mind asks a question that suggests a different level of truth, no matter what the question, expansion has always been the way of the scientist, the pursuer of truth.

At one time in our evolution, for example, the question was asked, “Are there forms of life that are smaller than the eye can see?” From the five-sensory perception, the answer was, “No.”

Someone did not accept that answer, and the microscope was invented.

Then the question, “Do parts of nature exist that are smaller than what can be seen through a microscope?” was asked, and, again, from the five-sensory perception the answer was, “No,” but we did not stop, and instead discovered, and developed a rich understanding of, atomic and subatomic phenomena.

As we created the tools to see, that which was once considered nonexistent became existent, but we had to expand first.

The challenge, and the task, for the advanced or expanding mind is to expand to a level at which questions that cannot be answered from within the accepted understanding of truth can be answered.

What is nonphysical reality?

Nonphysical reality is your home. You came from nonphysical reality, you will return to nonphysical reality, and the larger part of you currently resides in, and evolves in, nonphysical reality.”

In April & May of 2013, I walked the Camino de Santiago.

I decided before I left Australia that I would “dedicate” the walk to a film I wanted to make on intuition.

I knew the film would be called PGS – which stands for Personal Guidance System, which is what I believe our intuition is – a system which attempts to guide us through life.

I wanted to keep in touch with family and friends, and figured that a blog would probably be the best way to do it – given that I wanted to put my thoughts down along the way using images and words. Or words and images.

And hence this blog was born – PGS THE WAY. 

Oh yes, I decided that I would walk the Camino intuitively. And my blog was a bit unusual, in that I decided to document my inner journey rather than the outer physical journey.

And so the blog took off. Went viral, And soon I had literally thousands of followers.

I came back, confused as to why I’d done the walk. I’d had no great epiphany on arrival in Santiago. No parting of the clouds. No angelic choir. Nothing. So I had to come back and write a book to make sense of it all. I had to write a book that would enable me to complete my walk.

That book was called THE WAY, MY WAY. 

Like the blog, it took off. And coming on three years later, it’s selling more each year. It seems that it’s become required reading for those wishing to walk the Camino, or those who want to relive the experience.

This is old news for most of you, right?
You know this stuff.

Here’s what you don’t know.

Just as I dedicated the walk to my PGS film, so I dedicated the royalties of the book to the film. Investment has been, at times, spasmodic – and when we’ve needed funds I’ve dipped into the book royalty account and paid for whatever needed paying.

I made the decision from the get-go that the money earned from the book would go towards the film.

And then we got a bunch of investment and I didn’t need the royalty money anymore. And so I decided to use that money for a long walk I wish to do after the film is finished.

I want to walk from my front door, from my house in Mudgee in Central New South Wales, to Cape Finisterre. A journey of about 2500kms. 

As soon as I made that decision – to use the funds from the sale of the book to cover the cost of the walk, and not the production cost of the film – sales of the book began to slow.

For two years sales had increased month by month – sometimes they plateaued – but they’d never gone down. But as soon as I switched the use of the royalties from the film to the walk, the sales began to go down.

It was disturbing. Nothing else had changed. Only my decision to switch the use of the funds.

Sales kept going down – slowly, but inexorably. Maybe the life of the book had run its course, I thought. And yet I still kept getting terrific reviews. All five star. People were reading the book and liking it still. It’s just that the sales were diminishing.

And then yesterday Jennifer and I had our morning chat – and she told me that she had a message for me from her Higher Self, that had come to her in a dream. She told me that I had to redirect the purpose of the book’s royalties back to the film.

Lately we’ve had quite a bit of investment come in – thankfully – and so I told her that there wasn’t a financial need to do so. She said it didn’t matter. I had to promise that I would keep true to my original intention – that royalties of the book would support the film.

And so I promised.

And today sales surged.
I’m not kidding.
They surged –
– for the first time since I decided to switch the use of the funds.

This is yet another example of how weird things keep happening around this film.

Actually Caroline Myss would admonish me for saying this. I used the “weird” word in her presence when I interviewed her in Chicago late last year. She asked me, very forcefully, what’s “weird” about what’s happening? It’s not weird at all, she said.

Everything is happening as it should.

This Christmas we’re mounting a tour along the Romantic Road, in Bavaria Germany.

The Romantic Road links all the medieval story-book towns in Bavaria – towns like you’d see in a Disney movie. And in that month before Christmas, all these towns have their Christmas Markets open in the main square.

The Christmas Markets sell locally made handcrafts – Christmas decorations, nativity sets, and other wonderful Christmas stuff – plus there are markets that sell Christmas foods from the region.

With a bit of luck it might even snow during the tour too!

Jennifer and I traveled the Romantic Road in late November in 2013.
It was magical.
Here is a link to my Road Food blog at the time…
Bill’s Road Food blog – The Romantic Road

And here is a link on the road itself –
The Romantic Road – Germany

We already have definite commitments for this tour. It will include a night in the historic centre of Frankfurt, then seven nights staying in the glorious towns on the Romantic Road, and then two nights in a luxury boutique hotel in the Old Town of Munich.

The hotel is a 2 minute walk from the centre square and markets, and it’s just around the corner from the city’s most famous beer-hall. I’ve stayed in this hotel several times in the past and it’s in the best location possible – and it’s authentically Bavarian.

Let us know if you’re interested – and I’ll send you details of prices, dates, itinerary etc…
bill@gonetours.com

Steve McCurry’s photos continue to astonish me. He is extraordinary….