Julian Lord has started his journey.

Julian first walked the Camino in 1992 – and then two years later. And then several times since. The Way when he first walked was vastly different to how it is today.

If there is such a thing as a “true” pilgrim, then Julian ticks all the boxes.

He will be posting regularly on this blog as he makes his way from Lourdes to Santiago, and then back again – or at least, part of the way back.

He’s an extraordinary fellow, and I feel very privileged to be able to host his writings here. So this is his first post from the road, on his way to Lourdes….

E Sus Eia At Last

Well — I’ve started !!!

First hike this morning was a short 4 km one from home to Monaco station, where I purchased my el cheapo ticket to Arles — which is where I’ll pick up my Credencial. Not sure how I’ll move on this evening towards Lourdes, though I am starting to think the wonderful Refugio in Saint Gilles might be a good place to make a night of it.

Feels a little strange today, as after all the anticipation and physical preparation and the various ups and downs over the past year since I decided to make this new Camino, somehow I hadn’t fully realised that this is my first pilgrimage since 1993 starting NOT from my front door !!!

I am of course pleased to bits right now, not least because this train I’m on has electrics and network (hence the blogging), and I am at last on my Way, but there’s still a part of my purist little self that thinks it’s cheating, whereas there’s another little part of me that’s thinking “Wow, I’ve just started my journey home…”

This time anyway, Santiago will be more than just the apex and half-way point symbolically, but also physically and geographically, as Marie-Dominique and I will be walking back to France from there. So this Camino, on my first day, is already its own beast, and is already unique in its own right.

So in fact it’s even a positive this time to start differently, and quite apart from any of the physical difficulties I’ll be facing, it’s good that the mental difficulties of the Camino should be a little less harsh this time.

Looming forward to Arles this afternoon, Lourdes tomorrow, to starting the walking Wednesday or Thursday, looking forward to hitting the Spanish Camino, and greatly looking forward to the rendez-vous and the walking together with Marie-Do.

I think this will be a buen Camino ;o)

Today’s stage is also full of personal memory for me, as this lovely el cheapo ticket requires travelling old style, from station to station, rather than just getting into a single train or plane and waking up on arrival.

I’m doing some food shopping and stuff along the line as I wait for the next train, and remembering how all train journeys were once like this, and revisiting many familiar sights and experiences. These memories are mixed with this day’s new experience as well as mixing with the memories of my Caminos past, and with that of our first arrival down here in the South of France at Saint Raphael station where I am typing these extra lines.

Of course, this Camino will not be always so nostalgic, but that’s most certainly how it is starting. It is as comfortable as it is full of hope for this Camino that I am only just starting to live.

I firmly believe that you don’t choose a book to read, the book chooses you.

If you let it.

When I go into a bookstore, I walk up to a shelf and I wait for the book to jump out into my hands. And it does. And by that I mean, the book yells out to me:

READ ME!

There are times when I’ve finished a book, and I’m considering what next to read, so I’ll go to my library and look at those books that I’ve bought but not yet read, and I ask what book shall I read? And the same thing happens: the book calls out to me.

With my Kindle, and also with my Audible (audiobooks) library, it’s the same deal – if I’m ready to take in what the book will give me, then it calls to me.

There are times in our lives when we meet someone, and we feel a connection, but we know we’re not ready for them. Or they’re not ready for us. Whether it’s a romantic relationship, or business, or simply a friendship – each person you meet, you learn from. But sometimes you’re not ready for the lessons they’ll give you – or you will give them.

And you sense that the relationship is destined for another lifetime.

It’s the same with books. Each book comes into your life for a purpose – whether it be just for amusement and entertainment, or knowledge, or wisdom. Or growth.

If you allow your PGS to guide you, you’ll be taken to the right books at the right time – for whatever purpose you might require from that book.

When I was seventeen, my parents took me to Tokyo. It was my first trip overseas, and we stayed in a fancy hotel. I remember opening up the drawer beside my bedside and finding a little black book – The Buddhist Bible. 

Curious, I read the book. It changed my life. It set me on a path of reading and study that would inform my young and pliable world view. That book chose me. I have no doubt.

I still have that book –

I’ve had a copy of Autobiography of a Yogi for years. I read it a long time ago, but in retrospect I wasn’t ready for it.

Now in preparation for my filming trip to India, I’m reading it again on my walks each morning, via my iPod and Audible.

I’m finding wisdom in the book that I wasn’t ready for before.

But now I am.

Why does life become more difficult as you get older?

Why don’t things fall your way anymore – like they used to when you were younger?

Why do you lack the courage to do things – things you once would have done without hesitation thirty or forty years ago?

Barnacles.

Yes, barnacles.

We’re like a ship, steaming through life’s waters. And as the years go by, barnacles begin to form on our hull, under the waterline.

Out of sight.

Barnacles and seaweed, which capture the flotsam and jetsam of our worldly experiences.

This debris of life clings to us.

It slows us down, makes us less manoeuvrable.

Less nimble.

It makes us cautious, hesitant, scared.

It tries to stop us going places we once went without a moment’s thought.

The barnacles finally get so thick we can’t move forward.

They burden us with their heaviness. We carry that heaviness with us as we struggle through our later years.

Finally, we give up.

But we can scrape those barnacles off.

We have to scrape them off, if we want to become nimble again.

If we want to be unafraid again.

We can do this, by walking the Camino.

I’m posting another article which has touched me – and I hope you don’t think me lazy because this now is the second time I’ve done this recently, however I think this is a very moving story about the power of love, and how love can heal.

It concerns a tourist who, on her second night in Sydney, was raped. And how the community where the attack occurred then came together to send her their love. And how that love then healed her. Or at least began the healing process.

This is the kind of story that rarely reaches us because the media usually concentrates on the shocking and exploitative aspects of news stories, and not these positive stories that emphasise compassion and love. That’s another reason I’m posting this here – to get it out wider.

So the story is from the Sydney Morning Herald – and here is the link:
Belgium woman returns to Australia   And here is the story: 

Since studying tourism it had been my dream to visit Australia. I was planning to discover Sydney and then to travel further. I arrived in November last year and hoped to stay for about a year.

On my second day in Sydney I still felt quite jetlagged and in the early evening I decided to go for a walk outside and see the neighborhood around Kings Cross where I was staying. 

As I was wandering, enjoying all of the lights and the sounds I found myself in a dark street that I didn’t recognise.

As I tried to orientate myself back to the hotel a man grabbed me from behind, and dragged me into an alley. He shoved me against a wall with his hand around my throat. I was paralysed with fear.

Then he sexually assaulted me. When he was finished he left me there; dazed, shocked. I never even saw his face.

I don’t remember much about going back to my hotel but I was strangely numb. All I wanted to do was get back to my room and never tell anyone about what I had just experienced, I was so ashamed. 

When I made it back to the hotel I just crumbled.  When I saw the hotel staff the words tumbled out of me. They called the police who were there in two minutes, and they took me to the hospital. 

My family said they would come immediately to take me home but it would have taken a few more days. I couldn’t wait. I did not feel safe and I was reluctant to even leave my hotel room. I saw something about it on the news and I was scared that someone would be waiting outside my hotel wanting me to talk about it. The next day I was on a plane home to Belgium, a completely different person.

I wanted everyone at home to think that I was ok, because I could see how worried they were and they didn’t know what to say or how to act, so I pretended I was fine. But I was scared of people, I was scared to go out. I was sad, and ashamed. I began to cut myself, and it felt better for a moment but then I felt guilty that I had hurt myself further.

Eventually I went to a counselor and being able to talk freely about it and not worry about their feelings was such a relief.

One day the Belgian Embassy sent me an email. They told me it was unusual for them to do this but a lady in Sydney had sent a photograph to them hoping the Embassy would pass it on. The photograph was of a group of people – women, men and children- standing together smiling at me and all I saw was love. I didn’t really see that they were standing in the alley I was attacked in.

The message was that the community was sorry for what had happened to me and they wanted me to know that they cared. I could see that although the day was grey the sun was shining at the end of the alley and something began to change inside me. It was my first positive association with Australia.

The lady who orchestrated the picture, Claudia MacIntosh Bowman, and I started an email friendship and I began to think maybe I could return one day and have the adventure I had set out to experience the first time. My therapist thought returning would be good for me, and my parents encouraged the idea.

I was nervous about coming back. I was worried that it would be too difficult, or maybe these people who were being so nice to me would not like me when they met me, but when I arrived and saw Claudia at the airport it was like coming home to family.

Claudia had sent out messages to the community of my imminent arrival and people opened their homes to me. I have been given experiences, have been fed and taken out and shown how wonderful this city really is. I have been treated with such love. It’s overwhelming.

Claudia told me she had a friend who is a documentary maker and that she would be interested in documenting my experience here. I was unsure at first but when I met Rani (Chaleyer) I just knew that I trusted her with my story.

I realised it was important to show my journey to inspire other women to come forward if they experience something like this. You don’t have to go to the police, but you need to tell someone you trust. You can’t just hide it away.

When I told Rani I wanted to go back to the alley I was attacked in she questioned if it was a good idea. I had discussed it with my therapist before I left Belgium and I just knew it was something I needed to do. I went during the day, and it looked different to how it looked the night I was assaulted. As I stood there it felt so heavy in my bones, in my heart. I didn’t cry, but I felt so much pain for a minute and it was all right there. And then it wasn’t.

Suddenly, that space was not his anymore. That alley, that horrible experience, and now this new experience, it was mine and I reclaimed it.

What happened to me is awful, I still have bad days and I will carry it for the rest of my life, but this thing does not define who I am. And this trip, and these people in this community have restored my faith in humankind.

Steve McCurry’s latest blog –

As part of the research I’m doing into intuition, and before Jennifer and I head off to India to begin filming, I came across this piece on Steve Jobs, intuition, and India:

People often talk about how intuitive Apple products are and how Steve Jobs had a powerful sense of  what is natural to people’s emotions. His affiliations to Hinduism and Zen Buddhism are well-known and they are often reflected in the aesthetically minimal products that he allowed to come out of Apple’s production lines.

In his teenage years, young Steve travelled to India in search of a spiritual guru, only to find out upon his arrival that the guru he sought had died. Without money, the starving teenager walked to many remote spiritual places in the northern states of India, where he learned something about intuition.

“Coming back to America was, for me, much more of a cultural shock than going to India.  The people in the Indian countryside don’t use their intellect like we do, they use their intuition instead, and their intuition is far more developed than in the rest of the world.  Intuition is a very powerful thing, more powerful than intellect, in my opinion.  That’s had a big impact on my work.

Western rational thought is not an innate human characteristic; it is learned and it is a great achievement of Western civilization. In the villages of India, they never learned it. They learned something else which is in some ways just as valuable, but in other ways is not. That’s the power of intuition and experiential wisdom.

Coming back after seven months in Indian villages, I saw the craziness of the western world and its capacity for rational thought. If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things – that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment.  You see so much more than you could see before. It’s a discipline; you have to practice it.

Zen has been a deep influence in my life ever since. At one point I was thinking of going to Japan and trying to get into the Eihei-Ji monastery but my spiritual advisor urged me to stay here. He said there is nothing over there that isn’t here, and he was right. I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door.” – Steve Jobs

It is a telling quote from a man who was so famously adamant about what is and what is not right for products that would be shipped to millions around the world. While so many companies strived to design for the lowest common denominator, Apple always had one choice to make – Did Steve Jobs like it ?

Only with a clear understanding of his own mind and the confidence that his intuition will lead him to the right answers, he was able to command such compliance from his company men and deliver such massive successes.

This explains his seemingly magical power: 

This is a guest post by Rebecca Bishop, who will be walking the Camino for the first time next year.

She sent me a story about something that happened to her last year. It involved an intuitive “voice” that she heard, and it changed her life. Rebecca is a Mormon – and she interprets that voice as the Holy Spirit.

I’m currently researching the subject of intuition for my upcoming film. Those that adhere to a scientific world-view would explain that voice in terms involving quantum physics, those holding spiritual beliefs would interpret it as a communication from the Higher Self or a Guardian Angel, those with a religious view other than Christian would describe it in ways consistent with their beliefs, or their particular deity.

That to me is what makes intuition such a fascinating subject. Because it can be interpreted in so many different ways.

However, Rebecca’s story is interesting not because of the source of the voice so much, as the subsequent impact it had on her life. In part it led her to the Camino.

Here’s her story:

THE STILL SMALL VOICE – Rebecca Bishop

It was Christmas morning, 2013.

In the weeks before, I had made some very cute gingerbread treats to take to some of the women in my ward. I made up a small package for each of them and set out to make the deliveries.

As I was driving up a deserted arterial in north Tacoma on the way to the last stop, I ‘heard’ a voice say, “You are going to die.”

It was very clear. It was calm. It wasn’t urgent, but it also wasn’t me. It was a still, small voice that I heard in my head.

As member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I have no question that it was the Holy Spirit communicating with me. The problem was, I didn’t know what to do with the information.

Was it a warning? Did it mean it was going to happen soon? Was it a confirmation of what everyone knows is inevitable? Or was there something I needed to avoid so it wouldn’t happen right at that minute?

Many thoughts ran though my head in a matter of seconds. I slowed down and felt paralyzed and more than a bit fearful. I wondered if I was going to die right at that moment.

When that didn’t happen, more questions started running though my head: Do I keep going? Maybe there will be an accident. Do I stop here? Maybe I’m going to have a heart attack and if I stop I won’t hurt anyone else.

I had to stop.

I pulled over and just sat there for a few minutes. I thought of my dogs and what might happen to them if I never got home. I wasn’t crying, but there were tears running down my face. My heart was pounding and I felt like I was in some kind of heightened reality.

My mind, my soul, was searching to know that was meant by: “You are going to die.”

Seven months later, I’m still not completely sure why I heard that voice or exactly what it means, but I can say that I have been worried for several years now that my financial means to keep me comfortable would run out before I die.

One of the things I’m hoping to figure out on the Camino is how to earn more money. I have a lot of talents and experience, but I don’t know how to use them to my advantage. I think if I listen to the spirit and ponder these questions, I can find some answers as I walk.

The logical extension is that if I’m going to die sooner rather than later, then it’s time to have some fun. It’s been liberating. I’ve wanted to travel my whole life. So the idea that I have to step out and do something big before I die makes me sense to me. Why wait?

I feel compelled to walk the Camino and I believe these things are intertwined. Perhaps the voice I heard was telling me to get busy. What I know for sure is that it changed everything.

It set me on a new path and I am grateful for that.

There’s a new film coming out soon in the US. It’s called Wild, starring Reese Witherspoon. It’s based on the best selling book of the same name.

It tells the story of a young woman in a state of distress because of the death of her mother, a failed marriage, a heroin addiction and bouts of promiscuity. So on impulse she begins to walk the Pacific Crest Trail up the west coast of America – a journey of some 1,100mls from the Mojave Desert into Washington State.

The book was championed by Oprah, which immediately made it a huge best seller. I found the book to be very moving, very engaging.

Here is a trailer for the film: WILD Trailer

I mention it here on the blog because of two separate conversations I had yesterday with some people about to begin their own long walks.

One was with a woman – a friend of Jennifer’s – who is a very spiritual lady. She’s been considering walking the Camino for some time. She has recently married a fellow who’s a walker – he’s done long walks all around the world – and soon they’ll be undertaking a trek through Turkey.

The second conversation I had was with my brother, whom I love dearly. He’s eighteen months younger than me, lives in Brisbane, and we’re very close. For sometime now he’s been considering walking the Camino with his son, aged 21yrs. His son saw the film The Way, and suggested to my brother they do the Camino together. Father and son.

I called my brother yesterday while he was going over options with his son. He asked me questions about the various Caminos – the Frances, the Le Puy, etc. They’re still undecided as to which route to take. And then he said: “But we might also do a walking holiday through Tuscany.”

Both conversations got me thinking about the spiritual quotient inherent in the Camino.

There’s no doubt it’s a walking holiday for many. It has all the ingredients; food and accommodation are cheap, it’s in an exotic land, you get to meet interesting people, it’s a healthy way to spend your holiday, and if you want, you can party until all hours in a country where the booze costs very little.

But the Camino is also a pilgrimage – an ancient pilgrimage – and for those who are seeking something deeper – a spiritual or religious experience – then it offers that opportunity.

I began to ask myself: Would I be interested in doing a long walk other than on the Camino? The Pacific Coast Trail for instance? Or doing a walking holiday through Tuscany or Turkey?

The bigger question is: Do you have to walk the Camino de Santiago to have a spiritual experience?

I’m firmly of the belief that the Camino has a spiritual energetic imprint along its sacred path, and that imprint subtly infuses itself into your soul as you walk.

That imprint is the result of millions of pilgrims walking that same route for hundreds upon hundreds of years. Each footfall of each pilgrim has left a subtle energetic residue which has leached its way into The Way.

There is a feeling of something inexplicable, something much greater, that resides there along the Camino, and which you can osmotically access should you wish to.

And yet, I’ve also been reading – researching – in preparation for the start of my filming in India in less than six weeks now. For those of you who don’t know, I’m starting filming on PGS – Intuition is your Personal Guidance System. It’s a feature length film about intuition.

I’ve been reading up on Quantum Mechanics and the Bootstrap Hypothesis, the Holy Spirit and it’s association with the Christian concept of God, Theosophy and Madam Blavatsky and her Secret Doctrine, the Eye of Shiva and the Eye of Horus, the Ancient Universal Religion during the Antediluvian Golden Age, glandular links with the chakras, Shackleton’s Third Man Factor and the Higher Self. And so forth.

Some heavy reading. And fascinating. (This is why I’ve been away from the blog a bit lately!)

And one of the things that I’ve been reminded of is that you can access a metaphysical state anywhere, anytime, if you know how. But first, you must have the intention. 

The young lady who walked the Pacific Crest Trail, in Wild, had a profoundly transformative experience. But she had the intention to change. She knew that if she didn’t change, she would die.

I’ve always maintained that most people who undertake the Camino do so wanting a question answered. Often they’re not even aware of it, often they don’t even know what that question is. But I believe that question sits there within them during the walk, and somehow the Camino prises it out into the light, and provides the answer.

Sometimes the answer comes during the walk, but more often it’s well after the walk is done. The Camino creates resonances that sit within you for a long time.

So to answer two questions I’ve posed here: Do you need to walk the Camino to have a spiritual experience?

No – I don’t believe so. You can have a spiritual experience in your back yard, or doing the dishes, as some Zen masters would propose. I think walking the Camino helps – because of that spiritual energetic imprint – but I don’t think that’s the only long walk where you can commune with whatever your concept of God might be.

The other question I raised was: Would I be interested in doing a long walk other than on the Camino? The Pacific Coast Trail for instance? Or doing a walking holiday through Tuscany or Turkey?

No, it doesn’t interest me.

And that’s probably because I’m seeking something more spiritual and metaphysical when I undertake a long walk. I’m contradicting what I’ve just stated above – I’m aware of that – but perhaps I need that energetic imprint. Perhaps my nascent spiritual wiring needs the kind of jump start that a traditional pilgrimage route can provide.

Two conversations yesterday got me thinking. And it’s a fundamental question that almost everyone who walks the Camino asks: Why am I doing this?