A young Italian lass today, while activating my new Italian SIM card, said that Umbria was the green heart of Italy. And today, driving through the magnificent countryside, I could see why.

It was another glorious day – blue skies, sunshine all day, and the fields rich in colour. A perfect spring day in Italy – at stark variance to the savage storms which are currently lashing Sydney.

After getting SIM cards we drove to a hilltop town – Monterchi – to have lunch, but the restaurant was closed, Disappointing. I’d eaten there on the previous trip and it had been a lunch I will never forget.

Undaunted, I set my Garmin to find the nearest restaurant, which was only 1.5kms away. 12 kms later, and the Garmin was still dicking around, so I shut it down and used my own PGS to find a place to eat.

This involves “feeling” the right way to go. It’s a sense which I’ve developed, and it rarely lets me down. It doesn’t follow rational thinking. I see a lane and I ignore it and keep driving. I see another lane and I turn and drive down it, not knowing where it’s heading, but just trusting that the feeling I’m getting is leading me to the perfect lunch spot.

Invariably it does, and today it didn’t let me down.

We ended up in what turned out to be one of the great historic towns of Umbria – Anghiari.  This time of the year all these towns are virtually deserted. It’s wonderful. You wander through cobblestone alley ways and under medieval arches and you’re the only one there.

I found us a restaurant that was sublime. Buffalo mozzarella that was so fresh – followed by grilled chicken with white truffles. The mozzarella was €5 and the chicken with truffles was €9. Plus a 750cl of a carafe wine – a Montepulciano – that was unbelievable, and cost €10, but would have cost $80 in Australia.

After lunch we drove to Sansepulcro, which is a town on our tour. Another beautiful historic medieval Umbrian town. We checked out the hotel we’re staying in – and the restaurant – both of which are in the heart of the historic centre.

In the evening we went for a walk around the town, and later outside the old gates of the town we found a local bar where we sat and watched the sun go down and had a plate of hams, salamis and local cheeses, with a glass of red wine each.

Tomorrow we go for a walk along our route – maybe 10kms or so. We want to test out our GPX coordinates on our iPhone maps, to make sure they all work ok.

You might think from all this that we have it easy, but hey, this is work…

Right at the moment it’s 4:14am, I’m jet lagged, working on my laptop in a hotel which overlooks Dubai Creek.

Jennifer and I decided to break up the journey so that when we got to Italy, we could head off into the Umrbian hills while there was still some daylight.

I’ve been to Dubai once before. And wandering around the markets, as we did yesterday, I couldn’t help stop thinking about how we’ve demonised the Middle East, because of our fear of terrorism.

Late yesterday we were in a cheap backlane restaurant, eating mutton curry, and I was listening to someone at another table speaking on the phone. We’ve heard that guttural Arabic accent in recent films and tv shows about terrorists. And we now associate it with “bad guys.”

It made me think about how the West demonised the Germans during World War 2, and the Japanese too. How those accents at the time, and some time later, were always associated with hatred and fear. They were the bad guys then – and now they’re the good guys.

Yesterday as we walked along the streets I saw women in headscarves, and some were burqa-ed up so that all you could see were the eyes. And it made me think how this has become such a hot issue in some western and european countries – again because of our fear.

I spent some time in Egypt a while back, and now with this little bit of time in Dubai I have to say that all the Arabs I’ve met have been friendly welcoming people. They smile readily, and are always willing to help.

Now that’s a huge generalisation, I know, because there are some Arabs in Egypt who are serious bad guys – but then there are some serious bad guys in the west too.

Our fear breeds suspicion, suspicion leads to hatred, and hatred spawns racial vilification and stereotyping. We find ourselves sitting in a restaurant eating mutton curry and wondering if the man on the phone at the other table is a terrorist.

He’s probably just calling his mum to say he’ll be late home.

In our country at the moment we read in the newspapers how teachers and headmasters at the country’s most prestigious private schools have been involved in pedophilia.

There was a story the other day about how a Catholic orphanage turned a blind eye to the systematic rape of young children in their care. Nuns beat children who came to them complaining that they’d been raped. One of the young boys had blood streaming from a lacerated anus, and the nun whipped him for daring to say anything bad about the priest.

When I heard this on the radio news I felt disgusted.

People within our own society – people we trust, and whom we’ve entrusted with our children – have let us down.

These people – the teachers, the headmasters, the priests and nuns – they don’t wear funny scarves, or long flowing robes, or burqas. They dress like us, they look like us, they talk like us. They could be our father or mother, or sister or brother. They’re not different to us. And they’ve never roused our suspicion, because they’re one of us.

And yet they are more dangerous, more disturbed, than these women wearing headscarves. Or these men with hooded dark eyes and flowing beards and funny robes.

I watch people in the street, and I often consider how we all come in different shapes and sizes. And how we spend so much time thinking about how we look, and how much money we have or don’t have, and we worry about things which are really inconsequential.

And I think about how alike we all are – underneath it all – and how much actually really matters. Not much.

I look at a distinguished gentleman rushing past in an expensive suit, polished shoes, grey hair, immaculately groomed. He could be a judge, or the CEO of a highly successful company, or he could be a doctor. He could be a heart surgeon rushing to save someone’s life –

– or he could be the headmaster of a private school that has silently sanctioned the sexual abuse of children for decades.

Who knows?
You can’t judge.

So why then should we judge these people in the Middle East, who worship Mohammed and the Qu’ran, and who hold religious and cultural beliefs that are different to ours?

One of the things that terrifies us the most is uncertainty.

It keeps us in jobs we hate, in relationships that are unfulfilling, in a day to day routine that is mindless and stifling.

We hate it, and yet we feel comfortable with predictability. Knowing what will happen with a degree of certainty. Even though we feel uncreative and shackled.

But when you think about it, nothing is certain.
Nothing is predictable.
Our whole world can change on a dime.
In a moment.

Why are we so scared of uncertainty?

Because implicit in uncertainty is the possibility of change. And whilst a lot of us want change, when it really comes down to it, we only want change within certain parameters.

Known parameters.

We want to change our lifestyle, but only if it doesn’t eat into our savings.
We want to leave a loveless relationship, but only if we can find a better one.
We want to do something that will better the world, but only if there’s not too great a personal cost.
We want to change our lives, but only if it’s not too disruptive.

Jennifer and I live intuitively.

We always have.

We met intuitively, we married intuitively, we make all our decisions – big and small – intuitively. If it feels right, we do it. And we don’t even think about it.

Because with thinking comes the wrecking ball of intuition – logic and common sense.
And then comes timidity.
And after that, fear.
Finally, stasis.
We stay the same. We don’t change anything.

My wife and I don’t do logic and common sense.
Each day we take a running leap at life – we hurl ourselves off the edge of a cliff and we freefall, knowing that we’ll land safely.

And we do.

We embrace uncertainty.
We relish it.
It’s what gets us out of bed each day.

Because within the realm of uncertainty lives a myriad of possibilities.

And that’s where the best stories are told, within that realm.
Nothing great comes from certainty.

On Saturday we’ll be in Dubai. The next day we’ll be in Italy, on the Via di Francesco – the Way of St. Francis. Two weeks later we’ll be in Istanbul, a week later in Konya in Central Turkey, hanging out with the Whirling Dervishes and the Sufis – all for the film I’m making on intuition.

I love living intuitively.

Conversation in the Bennett household this morning:

My wife: I can’t find my panty-hose.
Me: Would you like to borrow mine? 

Yesterday, in preparation for the Assisi walk, I went out and bought some panty-hose, which I use under my leg brace to stop rubbing on my thigh.

I like the Extra Tall, sheer support style, used by airline hostesses, whom I’m told spend a lot of time on their feet.This type of panty-hose works well for me.

And I like black, because it’s kind of sexy…

Jennifer eventually found her own pair of panty-hose, which was a sheer relief for me, because I don’t like sharing something so intimate and personal…

I have issues, I know…

Angie Mitchell and her husband Ken will soon be leaving Australia for Italy, to walk with us on the Assisi tour.

We’ll be meeting up in Florence, then taking a private bus to the Franciscan monastery at della Verna – where St. Francis experienced his stigmata – then walking 182kms through to Assisi. It promises to be a wonderful walk, although physically challenging at times.

Angie and Ken came with us on the Camino Portuguese tour this time last year – and in the intervening time Jen and I have got to know them as very special friends.

They’ve both been training for the tour – and Angie, being a writer, has put some thoughts down which I’m now posting as a guest blog.

AM I READY?

As we drove 5 km up the road yesterday morning at 5:45 for our regular walk up the little mountain at the Sunshine Coast called Mt Coolum, ‘Am I Ready’ kept playing in my head?

Thankfully I was the passenger looking at this sizeable mountain and pondering on my readiness for the Via Di Francesco Tour starting on 27 April in Florence.

Let me put it out there now, I am not anywhere near being a mountain climber, I don’t even like going up big hills and my goal in life was to go nowhere near any walk that looked like a hefty climb!

I have always been very happy walking on reasonably flattish ground, even brashly boasting on my daily walks to any willing listener.

It was only last year that Ken and I nosedived into long distance walking on the Camino Portuguese and despite sore feet and blisters I loved everything about the experience. It is funny isn’t it how easy it is to forgot any tough up hill trekking?

But oh my goodness what I have done agreeing to go on this walk asks the fearful anxious side of my brain? Really Angie what were you thinking?

Because you see, the looming walk in the Umbrian part of Italy has lots of steep inclines and declines and a good level of fitness is needed for pilgrims, says my friend Bill!

It was when I saw a table detailing the distance and height for each day that I swiftly upped my fitness regime.

I recalled that Bill talked about his brother Bob doing 100 squats a day as part of his preparation for his recent Camino Frances, so I increased my number of squats to 70 a day. That would surely strengthen my muscles in my thighs and get me up those high inclines of over 800m!

And since I don’t live near Mt Misery, the name says it all doesn’t it, I decided that Mt Coolum would have to be conquered. Or better still my extreme reluctance to go up big hills would have to be overcome.

It was definitely time to change my irrational thinking. There was no way around it. I told Ken we really need to include climbing up this mountain in the fitness plan. Ken’s reply “Aren’t our long distance walks enough” fell on deaf ears!

My ever-patient good husband humours me by coming with me a few times a week. The great thing is that I have increased my fitness level and better still; I have overcome the fear I initially experienced at a scary section of uneven rocks.

Yes, I have to confess I went down on my hands and knees, just for a second! Now I nearly jog at this point!! Sorry, I got carried away; there is definitely no jogging!

I just have to be ready says my rational brain! D-day is coming at a fast pace. Everything else is organised; the backpack, the euros, the plane tickets and the hotels.

I am ready to be reunited with my Camino buddies to have lots of chats about weird and wacky things, ready to walk on the paths that St Francis strode, and better still ready to enjoy the food and wine.

And seriously, I will only know how ready I am when walking those steep inclines/declines, and slogging along the kilometres everyday.

Hang on, maybe it is time to readjust the plan and walk up and down Mt Coolum every morning!

One of the most astonishing things that I saw while at Uluru was a machine that was described to me as being “the future of medicine.”

And it might well be.

If that sounds a little cautious, it’s not because of the machine’s capability, which is truly remarkable. It’s more because some Western scientists and medicos are reluctant, or simply refuse, to embrace anything that doesn’t fit into their empirical world view.

They still live in the world of classical physics, which states that there’s a separation of mind and matter.

Quantum physics however has proven there is no separation of mind and matter.

It’s what the Eastern mystics have been saying for thousands of years. And yet many in the West still cling to this notion, even though it’s no longer relevant in our modern world.

For two thousand years, Chinese healers and philosophers have believed that the mind and the body are interconnected – that they are all part of one whole – and that our mind and body are connected through a system of energetic channels, punctuated by meridian points.

This is what acupuncture is based on.

And within our body, one of the largest concentration of these meridian points is the tips of the fingers and thumbs.

Enter the machine.
Let’s give this machine a name –
The GDV.

What does GDV stand for?

Gas Discharge Visualization. 

What does that mean?
Now it gets a bit technical, so let me just explain.

Consider the possibility that your energetic field within your body – your “subtle” body – is constantly monitoring your state of health. And that this energetic field is sensitive to any issues or maladies which might threaten the well being of the body.

In other words, your energetic field has your back. It’s developed an inbuilt early warning system that alerts you to possible medical problems way before they become life threatening.

Now what if we could tap into that early warning system…

If we could do that, then we’d be able to pick up health issues long before they become problematic. What we’d be looking for are spikes or dips in the energetic fields associated with particular organs or systems – abnormal fluctuations of energy that indicate that something is amiss.

That’s what this machine does.
The GDV.
It reads that early warning system.

By reading your subtle energy field through the tips of your fingers and thumbs, it creates charts of your entire energetic system. A trained person then analyses these charts, and determines if there are any abnormalities in your energetic fields.

How does it work?

The GDV machine is a box with a hole in it – like a large pencil sharpener. You put each finger (and thumb) into this hole, and the machine then discharges a very weak electric pulse into the fingertip for a microsecond.

This creates a corresponding bodily reaction – an “electron cloud” of light energy photons.

This cloud is captured by a camera within the box, and that digital file is then sent to a computer, loaded with a sophisticated software programme which then creates the energetic charts.

The whole set up was created by a team of esteemed scientists in Russia, led by Professor Konstantin Korotkov – a highly distinguished research scientist. The system has since undergone rigorous testing and analysis by scientists and health organisations around the world.

Read the attached PDF below for information about the machine, and its accreditations.

The two people who introduced us to this machine at Uluru are Doug Strandly and Grace Moy O’Brien. Doug is the geek and Grace is the doc. Doug has brought the GDV to Australia – he went through extensive training in the US, and now trains others. Grace is a Chinese doctor who analyses the charts.

They make a great team.

At Uluru they did Jennifer and my charts. It’s a completely painless process that takes only a few minutes. What takes longer is the analysis of the charts, and that’s where you need a trained professional like Grace to interpret the data.

Legally they are not allowed to call this a diagnostic tool – they are not allowed in their reports to say: You have cancer in your pancreas. Instead they have to say: We have picked up an energetic abnormality in your pancreas. You should go see a doctor and have some tests done. 

As well, the software can chart your chakras – and as those of you who read the earlier post from Uluru would know, Jennifer’s chakras were in near perfect alignment, however mine were considerably larger, in fact one might even describe them as gi-normous – even though they were a little scattered…

In fact, they were all over the shop!

To be honest, I was terrified that my chakras would look like shrivelled frozen peas. I was mightily relieved to discover that they were in fact of appropriate proportion to my massive spiritual stature.

Ahem –

Anyway, if you’re interested in talking to Doug or Grace, or making an appointment to have your charts done, then here are their contact details:  (they’re in Melbourne)

Doug Strandly,
info@onewon.com.au
+61 439 955 199

Grace Moy O’Brien
grace@esolab.com.au
+61 3 9696 0469

Here is a 13 page pdf on the machine, and how it works –
The GDV-EPI Technique

Just to finish – when Jennifer and I had our charts done, Doug and Grace picked up some medical conditions that no-one would have known, other than our doctors. For instance, I had lost a filling from a tooth, and infection had set in. That showed on the chart.

It was amazing.

And with Jennifer, well, it seems that she’s developed an unusually high build up of epidermal tissue over her body, from living with me for thirty three years…

…commonly known as a thick skin –

Okay, jokes aside –

Dr. Korotkov and his team have managed to take the age old principles of eastern medicine, and have created a system of hardware and software that can measure your energetic fields, and determine where there might be health problems.

It can tap into your subtle body’s early warning system.

If the West can begin to embrace the concepts that the East has been working with for more than two thousand years, then yes, this machine could well be the future of medicine.

Have you thought about meditating but didn’t know how to do it or where to start?

I got interested in meditation at an early age – with my interest in Buddhism when I was in my early 20s.

Since then I’ve read a lot of books on meditation – some have been very technical, some very esoteric, and some completely incomprehensible.

But yesterday I found a book that’s simple, easy to understand, and great for anyone wanting to start meditating.

It’s called: Meditate Now, by Elizabeth Reninger.

It’s only about $3 on Kindle – worth taking a look at, if you’re interested. But what’s most important with meditation is practice. Regular practice.

This book starts with a one minute meditation. Very simple. Very easy. Here’s the link again:

http://www.amazon.com/Meditation-Now-Beginners-10-Minute-Meditations-ebook/dp/B00S5M9HMW/ref=pd_sim_sbs_kstore_1?ie=UTF8&refRID=17C07DGQVET2TGQWK2E2

For those of you coming on the Indian tour in September, we’ve added another great attraction to the itinerary – the Golden Temple at Amritsar, in Punjab.

It’s the holiest site in India for Sikhs, and it’s one of the great tourist attractions of India.

It’s also a great addition to our tour of the spiritual centres of India.

Here is the wikipedia link to the Golden Temple –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harmandir_Sahib

Check our website for the revised itinerary.
http://gonetours.com/mother-ganga-tour-sept-2015/

Not much has changed to accommodate this – but I’ve also decided to do a day trip to Agra to see the Taj Mahal, and not overnight. We’ll see the Taj at sunset, as the sun goes down, then have a beautiful dinner in Agra, then make our way back to our luxury hotel in Delhi. The following day we’ll head to Rishikesh, and the Ganges.

For those of you considering the tour, there are still places available. If you’re interested, contact me on: bill@gonetours.com

Donald Rumsfeld, the United States Secretary of Defence from 2001-2006, famously said to a news briefing in 2002:

Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tend to be the difficult ones. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or vice versa.

Now what I find interesting is the last sentence, which normally isn’t quoted:

The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, or vice versa.

Let’s take that concept out of a militaristic and political context, and apply it to our life more generally.

The unknown unknowns.
The ones we don’t know we don’t know. 

Science is based on evidence. It’s based on a theory being provable time and again. We in the West live in a quantitative age. We believe what we can see, measure, and what is validated by scientific research.

We know what we know.
And to an extent, we know what we don’t know.

But we also live in an age where we don’t know what we don’t know.

Let me give you some examples –

It was less than 140 years ago that we discovered germs caused disease. Something so basic – that we take for granted now – that’s so much a part of our understanding of how the world works – yet, what? only seven or eight generations ago our forebears would have died from cholera or typhoid because physicians did not know that these diseases were caused by certain microorganisms.

Robert Koch, in the mid 1880s, came up with his “Four Postulates” which led to the discovery that a disease was caused by a particular organism. That groundbreaking work won him the Nobel Prize for Medicine in 1905.

1905

That’s only 110 years ago.

Let’s go back further, and look at something even more fundamental –

The earth revolving around the sun.

It was less than 500 years ago that the common belief was that the sun revolved around the earth. It took astronomer, mathematician and Catholic scholar Copernicus to come up with a theory that in fact the earth and other planets revolved around the sun.

This was blasphemous at the time, and the church reacted strongly.

Later, Kepler and Galileo would further warrant that Copernicus’s theories were correct. But they enraged the Church, which was firmly of the belief that according to scriptures, the earth was the centre of the universe. They cited Biblical references:

Psalm 93:1, 96:10, and 1 Chronicles 16:30, that include text stating that “the world is firmly established, it cannot be moved.”

Psalm 104:5, which says, “the Lord set the earth on its foundations; it can never be moved.”

Further, Ecclesiastes 1:5 states that: “And the sun rises and sets and returns to its place.”

Galileo had to face the Spanish Inquisition in Rome to defend his theories.

Now that was only five hundred years ago.
In the whole timeline of human history, that’s nothing. 

For several thousands of years, Eastern philosophy, religion, and medicine has acknowledged and accepted that the human body has energetic channels, including a system of nodal points called chakras.

This notion that our bodies are full of energetic pathways and meridian points is what Chinese medicine is based on, and how acupuncture works. The Chinese have used acupuncture and herbs and massage for more than two thousand years – working in accordance with their understanding of this energetic system.

Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Yogis, and others, all hold beliefs in an energetic system within each of us. They call these energies by different names, but they’re the same thing. We’re talking billions of people here who believe this – India has more than a billion people alone, and then there’s China, and Asia –

Yet in the west, science and medicine won’t acknowledge the existence of these energetic pathways, or of chakras. Their belief is that if it’s not in Gray’s Anatomy, the definitive medical textbook, it doesn’t exist. If you can’t find it in an autopsy, then nah – it’s not there.

I find this astonishing – that chakras aren’t acknowledged in the west by science. Chakras and chi and prana are such an integral part of life in the East.

Western doctors know that our bodies run on electromagnetic transmissions. Electrical impulses.That’s how our brain gets messages to our organs and limbs. That’s how our heart pumps blood. Surely then there must be some way these energies are disbursed throughout the body, beyond the central nervous system.

Perhaps in five hundred years science will “discover it”, and then once validated by it will be accepted by the West.

Full disclosure:

I started off doing Medicine at Queensland University. Both my mother and father were dentists. My brother is a veterinary surgeon. My elder sister has three degrees in medical related fields. My youngest sister is head of a Social Work department at a huge hospital.

I’ve been brought up to believe that science has an answer for everything. I’m only now starting to see that science is playing catch-up, and not doing a very good job of it. And hasn’t been for a while.

In researching this post I discovered that it was the ancient mystics in India, long before the birth of Christ, that originally came up with the theory that the earth revolved around the sun – over a thousand years before our scientists. But they could never prove it.

Back to Uluru –

Kryon, through his “partner” Lee Carroll, says some pretty weird and whacky stuff. I used to dismiss it as New Age white noise.

I don’t anymore.
I listen, and I listen carefully.

So the biggest thing I’ve learned coming away from Uluru is that I’m now prepared to be more open minded about things. I won’t immediately discard a concept, no matter how weird and whacky it might be, just because it doesn’t fit into what I know.

I know I don’t know a lot, but I’m starting to realise there’s also a lot that I don’t know I don’t know…