Melbourne: Thornbury to Taylors Lakes

I left my friend at the Northcote Uniting church having put all my things in storage and met with another friend in the city for lunch. I met Julia at the National Enterprise Industry Scheme program which educates budding entrepreneurs in a Certificate IV of Small Business. I did the course to develop my ideas with my peace education work combining peace, teaching and clowning. Julia was coordinating the program and she and I hit it off as she also has a wicked sense of humour.

We met for lunch and she told me she was renovating her flat. She told me she is still feeling very stuck. She doesn’t like her job and can’t seem to move from a depressed feeling. I think she has been on anti-depressants and I have found over the years increasing numbers of people take them. I would advise not to at all as they suppress the bodies natural inclination which is to feel down when something is not going well. It is better to investigate the thoughts that lead to that feeling and change one’s thinking. Drugs don’t solve problems they only numb people and people use them as a crutch as they don’t know how to understand what is making them feel down. This friend has had this numbness for a long time and she also suppresses her feelings. She came from a polish family where the mother was always complaining and never really hearing the children. She learned to suppress her feelings from her mother who actually silently taught her not to speak about how she was feeling. I find suppression far worse then coming from a family where it is all out there. That was mine, nothing hidden from my mother. On the other hand my father suppressed and he is now living in fear and says he feels life as risk. I am the total opposite I see life as opportunity and I am not afraid of getting out there, nor afraid of people.

Anyway, I could only speak of my own experience, the idea of stepping out of the comfort zone, to step into the unknown. I know this scares people, but when you are on a track that never ends, you have to try something different. Some say feel the fear and do it anyway, that is also my philosophy because it is never what I feared, quite the opposite. You have far more resilience then you know and life in my viewpoint, is kind. Always something comes. I see my life as no more special than anyone else’s as we are all human and can make choices. My friend has strong beliefs around security and after work she typically feels tired, so doesn’t do anything to springboard out of her feeling. she is into movies and actually would make an excellent movie producers, but alas, she is working as a administrative person in a government organization, far removed from the creativity and investigative nature of movies. I also have another friend working on reception who also has an excellent mind for movie producing but she doesn’t have the confidence to go for it. This is the case for many women, who see themselves in terms much less than their capabilities. Society mirrors this and there is definitely mindsets that do regard women in specific ways. When they have children this limits their ability to follow their dreams as the society is not geared up to support mothers and extended family in western society are less involved or living further away. We don’t have in our culture the extended family support and if parents are single, it is even tougher.

So we talked about Byron Katie and inquiry. I suggested she come to a inquiry circle on Sunday which my friend is running and explore the thinking that is keeping her stuck. Her eyes lit up and my hope is she is motivated to come. As her motivation wanes, she does say yes and change her mind at times, so it is up to her. I feel The Work is one of the ways to free yourself.

So with that I left her and went and got my car from Brunswick. I then drove to meet my other friend at Swinbourne University. I was to stay with her overnight. She has much of my gear and I want to collect it, take it to Canberra to leave with family, then continue on this journey.

I went and met with her at work and she came in my car and guided me to Taylors lakes. My friend is a medium and she is the real deal. You would never know looking at her, very ordinary with an extraordinary life experience. I see books in her life story. She has a gift where she can read energy and she can communicate with spirit. She sees this work as done in integrity and for her truth is absolutely imperative. She is very generous with her time and even when exhausted will read for you and channel to assist you. It is definitely a vocation of service and she has much wisdom she taps into.

I have seen her channel and I can tell you 100% it was not her I was talking to. I know her well, even her facial expressions changed at the time and the words she used. In the case I am recalling now I was speaking with a male who was very famous on the planet. When she channeled him I had many questions. There was one point in the discussion where he suddenly announced her flatmate was coming home and he didn’t believe in this and Donita had requested that he not be present when the flatmate comes home. I was so interested I suggested we talk in the bedroom. What happened was a few minutes later the headlights hit the driveway and the flatmate was home. I was so certain this wasn’t my friend that I opened the door for the flatmate. I looked at my friend and I could sense it was her. The energy of the channel was definitely male, now I sensed her, female. We didn’t say anything until the flatmate went and then I said to her, were you present when he was speaking to me. She said yes. She said he is a big talker and he did hang around and then left. This is the world of a medium. Different energies come to her and tell her, she has seen the face of an ascended master, she has been lifted up and has experienced healing. She is similar to the guy John Edwards who talks to people who have passed over. She also does what she calls platform and will come to people and describe the person standing next to them, perhaps a father, son, daughter, grandparent and she will ask spirit for proof of life. They come to her in energy patterns which she recognizes or she will see them standing behind the person. I took her once to one of these events, as she didn’t have a car. I remember being really tired and just sitting on the chair with my legs stretched out and having a bit of a sleep. To my amazement she came to me and the first thing she did was bow to me. I was somewhat surprised and smiling as she wouldn’t bow to me in ordinary life. She was conveying a message from spirit to me. I was thanked for my work in peace. Anyway, she said more to me. Later on I said to her to explain what happened. In the session she uses the first initial of the spirit communicating. I thought she said ‘J’ but she said ‘G’. She explained to me that Gandhi had come to her and the energy was very clear as he had come before. He wanted to be channeled but they have rules on platform to not channel (where they communicating through the body) but they give messages which are passed on. This can frighten people so, they keep it in a format that ordinary people can accept. Anyway, he wanted to speak to me. She said he wanted her to bow to me to give thanks and that he was pleased I was doing nonviolence work. She then saw him standing behind me. I’ve had another friend who does readings tell me that Gandhi is my guide in this life. She hadn’t spoken to me in many years and the extent of her knowledge of my interest in Gandhi was on my website ‘to be the change’. I had spoken to her hardly at all that I had studied his work and I have always felt compelled to communicate the message of peace as nonviolence, but with humour. Gandhi himself was a bit of a clown and was known to crack jokes. When I saw the Richard Attenborough movie, I was crying when I watched it as I felt I knew him. So that was my experience.

Furthermore, I have done near death research and have been told by people who have died and come back that there is indeed another world they experience. All the people I spoke to didn’t want to come back, they felt surrounded by love. All lose a fear of death and they explain the love they felt was indescribable. What I have learned from these experiences and reading Raymond Moody’s books is that love is it. We are here to love each other and especially to learn to love ourselves. We grow up with so much fear and expectation that many lose their way. We are not encouraged to follow our dreams but instead told to be realistic and practical, just get a job. I’ve had comments about getting a job, yet I have worked in 400 workplaces and didn’t find one person jumping up and down to go to work. All felt they have to, to pay the bills. The spiritual life, the life that senses there is more, inspires you to see more in life not a rigid structure where you are dependent on money and others. I do feel you can free yourself through your thoughts and being open to possibilities in life. My friend the medium has shown me proof of the spiritual and she has been spot on in her readings. As she is being impressed upon by spirit as she reads. She has even started singing a song I had in my mind smiling. So we think our thoughts are private, indeed they are known, but not judged. We are part of something that is extraordinary and when you start to feel this spiritual life inspiring you ambition drops away as does the desire to be rich etc. Those desires appear to be meaningless and empty. That is why I can travel around Australia with little money and I have no concern about whether my peace work is picked up or not. I see my life as peace work and there I am working on it, observing, reflecting and acting on my impulses all the time. I call this the flow as it is seamless and I feel my self flowing with life, not planning, resisting, living in fear, just allowing life to be what it is. It is no different from nature which has signals and flows that naturally occur without any thought or effort. This is the natural life in truth.

Donita and I go to her house. She is living with her best friend and down to earth lady who doesn’t believe in any of this, but she is a good friend of Donita. They have a 5 bedroom house which is enormous, two loungerooms and inspiring pictures everywhere. It is a beautiful place. They’ve been there 1 month. So newby’s.

Anyway, I showed Sharon and her partner Ivan and Donita my presentation of clowning around the world and my work in indigenous communities as a clown. I also showed this wonderful piece of footage. I call it ‘clown cam’, whereby I filmed the kids whilst I was at assembly, and there sweet shining faces are responding to my question about ‘what makes you happy’. They all sing out in a chorus ‘you’. I say what else makes you happy ‘they say clowns’. I feel this is becoming like John Cleese, I say apart from clowns what else makes you happy. One kid goes ‘television’. What makes you happy about television, he says ‘the Simpsons’. Then the kids tell me they like my giant dummy, my bracelet and the love heart and peace symbol painted on my cheeks. It is so inspiring to watch this. I so love children.

I explain to my friends the joy of clowning and that the real world is behind the mask of people, and all I see is beauty, which is true.

We had a good laugh and then decided to go to bed.

The next morning Donita decided to do a reading. I have to confess I felt a bit sad the night before and had a cry over an issue that has been a source of pain for me for quite a few years. I didn’t feel to tell Donita the problem as she has heard me speak of it before. So I just told her I was very tired, which was true. My eyes were puffy. Anyway, she started to shuffle the cards. I didn’t care about the reading and felt hopeless. I don’t often lose hope but I really felt it this morning. I didn’t care for anything. So I was flat. Anyway she said choose 3 cards. The first card she said straight away ‘I feel this is ….’. I won’t say his name here but she was spot on. We hadn’t talked about this guy, and I knew she was definitely channeling. She said there is still some residual here. She then went onto tell me they are impressing on me that you have been free and you will be free from this. You have grown a lot and you are trusting life. My friend was very positive that all will transform, and deep within I do know this. The next card was abundance and she said they are saying to go to Western Australia and I will be working there. I’ve also thought that. I also was told I will have contacts to meet there and they said I have contacts there, which is true. They said I will be feeling like stopping there a while and that I may ask ‘where to from now’. I’ve already projected ahead and asked that. As I don’t feel to go to Darwin as it will be very hot. I need to feel the pull to go further. In my minds eye I feel perth is the destination right now. I was also told I am meeting a love there. This was really nice to hear. My friend then proceeded to say about the spiritual path that it can be lonely. Most of the time I am fine but of course I am human and I do see the world having families etc. around me but the strong desire to work for peace is stronger than the desire to have a partner and family. This was addressed in the reading and had been a part of the pain I had felt, as I had loved someone who had not been kind to me. However, I do regard him as a teacher and I don’t feel ill will toward him at all. I just want to move on and get on with the peace work. Yet I recognize this is the peace work. She then saw happiness and that my life and work is protected. This I know as I swanned around the world with nothing going wrong, even this trip, 6,000km not even a flat tyre. I feel that sense of all is fine. So I don’t see myself as courageous. My friend mentioned this and said you don’t think you are courageous but you are living it. She then said my blue eyes were beautiful and she said they are so clear. I was deeply touched as she spoke and told her I also thought her eyes were beautiful. Which was true. She is a deeply gentle person and I see so much kindness in her eyes. I could feel my energy changing as I felt some hope filter into my life. She said without me saying, she felt my energy change. She said when she does platform, last time in particular, she was reading for a young girl and said that spirit impressed on her the message was for everyone in the room, it was a message of hope. So many feel hopeless and lacking in inspiration. She felt impressed to share with others the hope that is here now. She is doing the same work as me, peace work, it is to bring light to others lives. It is indeed enlightenment.

So with that beautiful reading I packed up all my gear into my little hatch back. Amazing almost miraculous what I can squeeze in. Her flatmate Sharon gave me a hand. We all hugged and I followed her down the freeway until my turn off. We tooted and waved.

Funnily enough when I got to Brunswick I realized I had left my phone. I was supposed to be staying with Natalie tonight and going to a party. It turns out her address was on the phone and I don’t have her number. You guessed it, on the phone. So I ended up going to another friend Misha, nearby and had a chi whilst using her computer to try and communicate to people. She is an installation artist and she is a philosopher, her works are amazing pieces and they evoke you to think further. Her sign up on her studio is ‘alchemy in progress’. She lives in a big warehouse where she climbs a ladder to go to bed. She is independent and extremely intelligent and a free thinker. We just get on so well as we are on the fringes of society but at the same time I see myself at the heart of society. We talked about life and how people can come in and out of your life. She found a lot of problems with conflict with others and had some runins with friends which ended up finishing the friendship, she had felt hurt by that. But she soldiers on. She said she had a knee infection and had operations on it. She is hobbling around with a stick. A nice irish guy is there helping her weld her large trailor which will house her exhibition. She got the opportunity to show her art at Flinders Lane which is a prestigious part of Melbourne. She is an excellent artist and has lived on nothing to do her work. She is constantly reflecting inwardly and is a person that will challenge you. I love that.

I played on her computer and was able to email another friend who had Donita’s number to tell her I’d left my phone. I then emailed the friend I was to stay with but it is unlikely she saw her emails as she was putting on a party. So I decided to go and see Eliza not too far away, for some reason I couldn’t find her street and was driving up and down, the GPS didn’t seem to be getting it. If you put in the wrong street number it sends you somewhere else. As I know Melbourne, I knew it was wrong and just had to drive up and down this main road until I found it. I get to her street, park. I walk up to her flat and blow me down she drives in. Good thing I was delayed. So I spent the night with her. She teaches Byron Katie so will attend one of her circles. We caught up on much. She is quite young but incredibly wise and into biodynamic farming. She is a philosopher in her own right (as is Misha) and very much interested in community and a better world. She is into health and healthy thinking seeing life as a teacher. So I have many incredible friends around me. Very independent, switched on and on their own path of truth. I feel very privileged to know them, and interesting they came into my life the last 10 years.

So today I will go to the inquiry circle and do the work on the problem that has caused me great pain. I’ve asked for guidance here as it has to shift. I want to be able to give more to the community therefore, I must be in peace. After that I head to Ivana’s and spend the night in her new place.

So all fun and great to catch up.

Just note the world is not what you think, mostly you see the world through what you feel. If you have a feeling for truth it will guide you to where you need to go and we are supported. Without doubt there is love in this life and it is all around us. Many are not aware to see or feel it, but I can assure you from my own experience it is there. If you are not feeling it, give it to others and it will return, but don’t use love to manipulate. You can practice it until you genuinely feel it or what they say ‘fake it until you make it’, eventually the heart opens if you keep opening yourself up. Then the real life floods in. The key is to unblock all resistance to truth and life.