The Forty Pilgrims Project - The Rift: Part 1

Day 13 to 25

We exist in a seemingly infinite Universe. We live in a constant evolving now that continually creates the very next moment. Each moment is unwritten and reveals untold potential. Anything can happen, nothing is written in stone and surprises and adventure abound. We are at a juncture in time and space where we are beginning to piece together the puzzle of consciousness, quantum physics and material reality.

Daring adventurers are cutting through the mainstream flow of thought to the very edge of human understanding. Scientists, meditators, creators, musicians, inventors, yogis, writers and explorers… people from all walks of life are beginning to wake up to their true nature. People around the world are pushing the boundaries of human understanding further and further. We are walking into the dream. We are beginning to realise that reality is an extension of our thoughts, that we are all connected, that consciousness is not limited to humans alone. We are beginning to see that we are magical beings, extensions of an unlimited universal field of energy that abounds in love, experience and expansion.

Quantum physicists are concluding that matter is mostly space and that reality exists where we focus. There is a leap to be made from observing the behaviour of atoms in a laboratory and observing the grand tapestry of life dancing in front of our eyes. If we can reduce the infinite potential of a wave of possibility down to a seemingly solid particle once we observe it, how then can we make the connection between the thoughts we think and the life we are currently experiencing?

The thoughts we think, the state of our mind and the thrum of our emotional levels are the tools we have in the grand experiment of life. Our thoughts and beliefs create our perceptions and our emotions are a bodily response to all that we think. We feel those emotions in our gut, our heart and all over our bodies. They are indicators of where we are right now. Think different thoughts, get different emotional responses. It goes deeper...

What if our body does not stop at our skin? What if we have an electro-magnetic field that extends outwards into ‘reality’ that interacts with everything we see? What if each living organism has a field and we are all living within the fields of each other, extending from the Sun to the Earth to the Moon and back again. What if everything we see is responding to us based on the thoughts and focus we choose? Just like the scientists in the lab observing electrons, when we are not focused on something, it is not there - existing as all possibilities. When we are focused on it, whether in reality, briefly, or in our imagination, up it pops! A song heard for the first time suddenly plays all day. A person in a crowd keeps popping up all over town. A friend we were just thinking of rings out of the blue.

Let us dive even deeper still. Thoughts create perceptions and vibrations to which all of reality is responding to. Matter is becoming stuff because of how and where we focus. This is complex and wonderful. Reality is literally forming around our beliefs and thoughts and our emotions are letting us know how we feel about these things. They are letting us know if we are in tune with our heart and soul. They are our inner guru - our personal guide to ourselves. We are all beautiful and amazing wonders of the Universe and when we think anything less of ourselves it hurts. Our emotions can tell us when the thoughts we have about ourselves are not true to our hearts knowledge.

As we grow up we gather a whole bunch of thoughts and ideas, beliefs and patterns. We know that some of these ideas and thoughts are great and make us happy. We follow our hearts and discover our passions. We fall in love, play and learn to focus on what makes us sing. We eat the food we like and avoid the food that tastes yucky.

The flip-side is that we also gather thoughts and ideas that do not serve us. Often we gather illusions of thought when we are young. These illusions hurt. They don’t feel good. We have emotional responses to the illusions. Remember, our emotions are trying to heal us and show us the way back to our heart so when we feel ugly or unworthy or useless, our emotions are trying to tell us to move away from these thoughts. They are asking us to listen to ourselves, to allow the flow of the emotion to move through our body and then move on to a better thought pattern.

We get stuck in these patterns but because life moves on. We push them down, glide over them, ignore them and keep a stiff upper lip. We live with a lump in our throat as we swallow our emotions. The patterns of thought that do not serve us get stuck in our bodies. Thoughts have weight. They are electrical impulses and we are electro-magnetic, organic beings made of atoms of Earth that came from stars! These stuck thoughts and related emotions wear us down and get stuck in our sub-conscious, forgotten by our forward focused mind. They get stuck in our muscles and organs and we become slow and stiff from the weight of unprocessed junk. We age and become cranky, thinking we are less than we are as some people excel to greatness, floating on the jasmine of life’s summer breeze.

We try new things or dream of other worlds of experience but can be held back by the limiting beliefs hidden within us. We tell ourselves we are not good enough, that we are unlucky, that life is disappointing or that we are blocked and guess what – life exists where you focus. The underlying belief manifests instead of the forward focused eagerness of our waking mind. When this happens enough, we become dejected, depressed, and tired of life. We think we are helpless. It seems ridiculous to hear that our thoughts create things. Life seems random and unfair. Don’t worry, things can change. Life is awesome and predisposed to wholeness. It is working to heal you even as we speak. There is a way forward and a way to let go of the thoughts that no longer serve you. There is a way to recognise the old patterns and move into a new paradigm of excitement, creativity and joy.

Over the last two weeks I have been stuck in patterns that have been desperate to be healed; patterns that have been underlying most of my thoughts and actions for most of my life. Patterns that are only now being revealed through the Forty Pilgrims Project, in which 53 people have begun to focus on new beginnings, new ideas, new wholeness and new experiences. Imagine all of that power of focus!

We are free to change how we think and where we focus. We can leave the jungles of our mind if we so choose and graze in the pastures of our dreams

Join me in ‘The Rift: Part 2’ as I explore limiting beliefs and how we can make the journey back to our hearts.

Love, love, love...


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'The Forty Pilgrims Project' series is a blog inspired by a journey. Simon Welsh, poet, writer and new paradigm adventurer is walking the Camino de Santiago - a simple mission to put one foot in front of the other. Carving out a journey over 1000km of trails, roads and pathways, he is heading for Santiago, and further yet to Finisterre, the ‘End of the World’. He carries with him 40 prayers, one for each day, one for each pilgrim that is energetically walking with him. He is supported by 12 guides, energetically supporting him from afar. 

This is my journal of his 'Forty Pilgrims Project' - an observation from the outside, as one of his guides and friends. An exploration of my own journey by his side, as we connect in the quantum field.

Matt is a singer/songwriter, musician, poet and writer of words. He is exploring the forests of consciousness, time and space, and surfing the waves of thought, love and being. Getting lost and wiping out are adventures in themselves!

The Forty Pilgrims Project - Stormy Clouds

Day 3 and 4

Today was one of those days we have all had. It starts off great and gets a little more frustrating along the way, maybe it bounces back, maybe it doesn’t. I am currently wondering how Simon’s last few days went, up there in the north. Did he experience some frustration today and how did he handle it? I watched a video of him marching up a rather steep hill having just confronted some deeper aspects of himself. Such is a journey of the heart and soul. We have to keep taking the next step.

Lately I’ve been surfing my frustration with a growing skill that I have been slowly developing over the last twenty years. Before that, I was just another angry teenager with no wish whatsoever to curb my tempestuous temper. Back then I felt justified in my angst and heroic in my anger as I slayed my foes in a righteous quest for freedom, truth and justice. I think we all know the pattern. Life was unfair, people greedy and horrid, and school completely sucked.

Nowadays, I tend to listen to my emotions and try and make decisions based on acknowledging my feelings as guides. I then attempt to focus my thoughts in order to arrive at new actions and greater possibilities. Sometimes I win, sometimes I loose. The last few days have been tricky. It is a work in progress – a grand experiment into conscious creation that has picked up speed over the last few months. Perhaps I have always been at it… perhaps we are all at it, for it is always hard to pinpoint when one begins this quest - if at all we were never at it!

Anyhow, before I completely walk in the wrong direction, let’s get back to the Pilgrims. As I said, my experiences and experiments in conscious living have accelerated since I experienced the completion of an attunement of a new facet of myself. Just a few weeks ago I read a book by my reiki master, detailing the process of awakening the violet flame chakra within our bodies. Through her, I began the attunement to this energy and chakra centre over a year ago. Around about the same time it reached its completion, I began reading about Simon’s project. But more on the Violet Flame in the coming weeks as I don’t feel that now is quite the time to go into it. Suffice to say that I feel that this new energy drew me toward The Forty Pilgrims Project as a resonance of my concentration of focus upon potential, possibility and creative spirit. There are lots of resonant factors between the two. But what has all this got to do with experiencing frustration in our day to day lives?

Part of conscious creation and living is becoming self-referring. It is understanding that the life you experience is a reflection of your own mix of perceptions, ideas and thoughts. More than that, we draw to ourselves a specific mix of co-created events that help us to let go of the old patterns that no longer serve us so that we can move into higher paradigms of expression and creativity. We work in groups of family and friends, helping each other grow and expand. Sometimes we fall back and sometimes we suffer. Sometimes we hold on to the past or fear the future. Yet here we are, experiencing and creating life.

Put more simply, we have desires and dreams and fears and preferences. All of us are different and have a different mix of these things. Even trees and crabs and dogs and worms have preferences. Our fears and blinkered views can hold us back for a time whilst we can also be switched on, open and fruity! We can embrace life and expand, or hold onto limiting beliefs and stunt our growth. Today and yesterday were some of those days when I witnessed, from outside of my usual self, a whole bunch of those factors. I was subject to a very clever play of interwoven moments and consciousness.

I am beginning to get the idea that if you start the day with a more positive feeling then you can roll with that feeling. Waking up on the wrong side of bed, grumpy and rumpled often produces a day of similar qualities. The opposite is also true. A day begun with a positive outlook has more chance of staying on track and revealing rainbow in the sky moments!

Well, I continued with my new daily habit of yoga, meditations and guide prayers specific to the Project. I walked to work, feeling good, but slightly conscious of knowing that I was holding onto a few thoughts based on someone else’s opinion plus some of my own shadowy aspects. We are hosting a new group of people at the retreat I work at and had been informed from various sources what this would be like. The outlook was less than positive.

We can be influenced by other people’s opinions and actions when we let them in – whether the words of our parents, teachers, well-meaning friends or glossy magazines. Over the course of the day, I watched the play of other people’s words upon my mind. I watched how some things slowly got me stressed and how sometimes, instead of brooding and growling in my head, I focused on breathing into my heart. I watched myself growing in frustration and then letting it go as I decided to make my own assessment of the situation. Sometimes I didn’t make it and found myself barking in a corner of my head, cursing the world and all who stand in it! ‘Breathe… come back into me’, said my heart.

Part of conscious living is also taking each moment as brand new. So I watched my mind throw up old reactions to dramas that were thrown as me. I paused to listen rather than reacting. I embraced my crazy mind. Gave it an inner hug. Then I moved on. I stepped out of my frustrations with work, people and life. I focused on the things in front of me. The music that was playing, the vegetables I was chopping. Dramas seem to fade away when we immerse ourselves in the moment and then seem trivial after all.

It seems that dramas create dramas, even before you get to the drama. The opinions of others playing on your mind will tune you into that opinion if you let it, leaving you looking out for the pitfalls and foibles of other people’s woes.

If you take life as fresh, and each moment as individual, then you can shift your relationship with old patterns of thought, allowing space for solutions and insight to enter.

We each have a unique and individual relationship with every facet of life, whether it be a concept, a person, an animal or a thing. When we take on board the ideas and opinions of others as our own, especially before the moment we have experienced that relationship for ourselves, we are not truly living our own life, but the ideas of another. This serves us of course, because our life is our life and our experience is our experience and we bring ourselves to things through our choices and grow as a result of them. Yet it is useful to recognise that embracing the opinions and ideas of another is a choice as well.

We could just as easily let those opinions and ideas go and choose to experience now - fresh. Just for ourselves. As if nobody had ever been there before in that way… which is true.

No one has ever been you in this moment.

Love, love, love xxx

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'The Forty Pilgrims Project' series is a blog inspired by a journey. Simon Welsh, poet, writer and new paradigm adventurer is walking the Camino de Santiago - a simple mission to put one foot in front of the other. Carving out a journey over 1000km of trails, roads and pathways, he is heading for Santiago, and further yet to Finisterre, the ‘End of the World’. He carries with him 40 prayers, one for each day, one for each pilgrim that is energetically walking with him. He is supported by 12 guides, energetically supporting him from afar. 

This is my journal of his 'Forty Pilgrims Project' - an observation from the outside, as one of his guides and friends. An exploration of my own journey by his side, as we connect in the quantum field.

Matt is a singer/songwriter, musician, poet and writer of words. He is exploring the forests of consciousness, time and space, and surfing the waves of thought, love and being. Getting lost and wiping out are adventures in themselves!

The Answer is You

Anger, sadness, bitterness, dejection, disappointment... such have been the emotions reflected around social media networks after the news that the Conservative Party won the UK elections this week. A new government for 2015 and people seem thoroughly fed up. As if they have no control over their life, thoughts and decisions...

But that is not true surely? Let us look on the bright side. This gives us a new direction to look in. It gives us new ideas because now we know what we don't like. How about moving away from the idea that what we need is government? The government is not a savior. The government stands as a bastion to a patriarchal system that has long since seen the masses as peasants (stay with me) that need to be controlled (think religion and laws). Evolved it has, more cunning it is, but still, it does not hold the needs and well-being of the planet and all the species upon it as its modus operandi (which really is a no-brainer). Harsh but true perhaps...
 
The thing is, humans do not need governing. Nor do forests, seas, deserts, animals, bees or birds. Get that... nothing in nature needs governing. It governs itself through its own self-balancing system. Our bodies and the extension of them into nature are homeostatic. We are stewards and guests on this planet. Interconnected, united and one. A simple look at life and your existence will prove that. It is the governing, economic system and corrupt power systems that create the divisions that create the bullshit we see... humanity in and of itself is a beautiful thing that can and will self-regulate itself given half the chance. Grand societies need services that are public, not a bullshit patriarchal system that dictates a stream of irrelevant laws that increasingly bow to corporate demands before environmental, natural and human concerns.

The government (and monarchy) have traditionally been fear-mongers rather than truth givers. Besides which, no one votes on the House of Lords, the European Parliament, boards of directors and corporate lobbyists. These are the game changers in politics. I am not saying your vote doesn't count but I am saying change can happen another way.

The tide can turn but it must turn through the idea that each of us, as individuals are self-governing. We are all the best experts at what is best for ourselves. No-one else can tell you that. Imagine a world where we each empowered our self, and began to listen to the kind, loving voice at the heart of ourselves instead of the endless litany of voices that tries to convince us what best to do next.

We live too much in our heads... the voices of others are powerful and the voice of our own fearful mind is often the loudest. I reckon, once we start listening to the deeper truth of our self, a truth we all have inside us... a direction to what we love, what we have a passion for, what excites and inspires us, then the government we need, that is a balanced, non-patriarchal, servant of society and the planet will arise. Perhaps it is already happening. I think it already exists, in our hearts. But the power lies in you... It lies in us, not in government. What world do we want to live in?

Let us not bow to fear, media and propaganda. We have to be strong, focus on the world we want, trust in our hearts and human spirit. We are kind, compassionate, creative, inspirational beings. Yes we are! Individuals change the world. We are the power within our lives. Take heart. Really. Take your power back. I believe in a world of love, unity, peace and opportunity.

I wish you all the best in seeing and discovering your passion and power and heart.

Love, always.

Dance in the Rain

Today is a great opportunity to focus on everything that works - apart from all the wonderful benefits of having a fully healthy body, a world to live on, air to breath, food to eat, a place to sleep, freedom to think and gravity!

In the last week I have read about more states and countries legalising industrial hemp (which is the perfect sustainable replacement for all oil-related products amongst other things), a 19-year old who has invented an array that filters plastic out of the ocean, a considerably larger push of inventors coming up with alternative fuels (oil is SO last century), more evidence of cannabis being extremely good for your health, an increasing number of countries seriously doubting the validity of GMO products, the growing body of evidence and techniques on forming a conscious coherence with your heart - which greatly improves your health and stress levels - and countless people, innovators, artists and creators that are all working to improve, document and express the quality, magic and uniqueness of life here on Earth as a human! Well, if I can't see something positive in all of that today I must be purple unicorn eating dangleberries!

More people than ever are waking up to the fact that they are the one true power in their own lives. More people are taking inspired actions and letting go of worries and old redundant habits. I see more creativity and ingenuity in the world now than I have ever seen in my life due to the amazing phenomenon of the internet. Daily, I am inspired as I hook up to writers, artists, thinkers, inventors and genuine, loving souls that want to make a difference on this planet. Everyone I know has a good heart... Everyone! There is more positivity, hope, love and creative solutions on the planet than we may be aware of. We just have to make a conscious choice to start looking in different directions.

After years of getting heavy and bogged down with 'terrible' news stories I have realised that I don't have to listen to mainstream media anymore. Why should I read stories that clearly have an alternative and biased agenda and don't resonate with my heart? Of course, like many others, I feel obliged to know what is going on in the world. What we allow into our frame of perception heavily influences our emotional state. Sometimes we don't even realise it. Within our own sphere of compassion and perception we read about climate, war, crime, money, food and poverty and do not realise that we are absorbing the burdens and heaviness of these issues. In doing so, we are doing nothing to solve or help the issues we care about, dragging a weight of baggage around on our shoulders in a vain bid to empathise with our fellow adventurers in time and space.

I do not prescribe to the notion that we are being force-fed negative stories by the media. Each of us has the choice to stop and read something else; take a new angle on the issue. I am not suggesting burying our heads in the sand either and ignore the problems or contrasts of the world. Instead, we could become more discerning about the content of what we read and of what we think. If there is a 'problem', then you can be assured there is also a bright human being somewhere in the world making light of it in a way that has not been thought of before whether that is through discussion, humour, art or innovation. There are positive sources of news and we always have the choice to start looking toward the solutions rather than keep focusing on the problems.

We could dwell on good things that have happened rather than bad things that have yet to pass. We could energise our minds and bodies with stories of triumph instead of worrying about invisible futures. We could stop listening to the pessimists and naysayers and fill ourselves with the mystical field of pure potential where anything is possible. We could release our limitations of what is to come and know that a better world and elegant solutions will always blossom and thrive. After all, this is where luminaries such as Einstein, Marie Curie, The Wright Brothers and Tesla lived. They saw problems and created new paradigms. There are many alive today who do just this.

Ideas contain solutions, or at least , the seeds of solutions. Solutions brighten the soul. There is always another way. Humans are always innovating, creating and imagining. That is our nature. We have the choice to focus on the rain, feel sad, fetch an umbrella, or to dance in it and get wet...

Focusing on solutions releases the pressure and burden of problems. More than that, it starts a creative process whereby we can begin to move forward. It doesn't matter whether our problem is small, personal, global or immense. If we can but start... then we are moving in the right direction.

As one friend once said to me... 'Face the sun and the shadows will fall behind you'.

Love, love, love.