Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Song of The Stars
Song of The Stars
Annie Goodwin
Starsong Books
Torquay, Devon, UK
www.song-of-the-stars.com
First book in the series
All rights reserved. No part of this book [whether it be in any eBook, digital, electronic or
traditionally printed format or otherwise) may be reproduced by any mechanical,
photographic or electronic process, or in the form of a phonographic recording; nor may it be
stored in a retrieval system, transmitted or otherwise be copied for public or private use,
other than for ‘fair use’ as brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews, without prior
written permission of the author.
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Contents
Introduction
Endnotes
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Song of the Stars Introduction
Introduction
Woven within the tribal lore, culture and mythology of most indigenous peoples around the
world is their cosmology; their very own metaphysical stories of the origin of the universe and their
tribe’s place within that, handed down by storytellers over countless centuries to the present day. The
stories reminded successive generations of their place in the great scheme of things and how
connected they were with all they saw around them and the unseen worlds which lay behind this
physical reality which their senses showed them. Over time the storytellers have dwindled in
number leaving the stories themselves fragmented.
In Britain, the coming of the industrial revolution in the late 18th century probably put paid to any
tribal stories which might have survived here up until that point as almost every aspect of daily life
was influenced in some way and had a profound effect on the socioeconomic and cultural conditions.
The changes then swept on through Europe, North America, and eventually the world marking a
major turning point in human society. Long gone were most of the storytellers along with their stories
and in their place came the work ethic, the greater possession of manufactured goods and an ever
widening gulf between people and the natural world and an even greater gulf with the metaphysical
world [that which lies behind human sense perception of the objective world]. Tribalism gradually
started to be replaced by a sense of individualism with ever increasing numbers of people seeing
themselves as a unique entity separate from others and, because of the loss of the metaphysical
connection, divorced from nature, the planet on which we live and function and the rest of the
cosmos. Nature and the planet became things to be used and exploited as though they were there as
our playthings. However, beneath the surface tribalism still ruled ok as people still felt the need to
belong and be recognised as part of a group. As a result, certainly in the western world, the old
stories have been replaced by what we would now call urban legends many of which have been taken
into the consciousness of the group and many of these are in fact not based on any truth just a desire
to create a common reality in which to feel safe.
Cue the present day where change is sweeping through every single part of the globe like a
wildfire out of control. Whatever we thought we knew as being the cornerstone of our societies and
our cultures is being devoured within that fire. Nothing is sacrosanct! It’s as though the fire is
burning away the illusion from before our eyes and laying bare the realities which lie behind it. It’s as
though we are being shaken awake and being asked to take a more conscious part in creating the
world in which we live. It’s as though we are being pushed through a doorway to participate in an
adventure into the unknown.
The unknown puts us all in a state of uncertainty and, for many people, that catapults them into a
state of fear. However, we face the unknown every moment of every day. In a report of a recent
interdisciplinary study1 at the Australian National University, researchers argued that “..uncertainty is
central to human life and decision making – from planning for climate change to making decisions
about daily activities…..Uncertainty is generally viewed as negative, something to eliminate, but
doing so ignores the fact that uncertainty underpins many positive things, such as the concept of
freedom. For instance, people create and maintain uncertainty to add value, such as the surprise value
in a gift or the entertainment value in not knowing how a film or novel is going to end.”
1
Not Sure? Don't sweat it: Embrace Uncertainty from ANU News 7th May 2008, see
http://news.anu.edu.au/?p=347
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Song of the Stars Introduction
Do we really know what’s going to happen next in our lives? Do we really know what’s going to
happen if we take certain actions or make certain choices? In many ways we just fool ourselves into
thinking that we are in control of our lives by making choices in order to keep us within a well defined
comfort zone with occasional forays to the edges of our perimeter when we feel we are taking chances.
In many ways we fool ourselves when we think we live in a free and easy manner when in fact we
generally live like sleep walkers, unconscious of most of what impinges on our senses as our
crystallised patterns within only filter through what keeps us within our well ordered comfort zone.
We are generally unconscious of the fact that we actually inhabit a multidimensional world as our 5
senses keep us firmly fixed within the accepted three-dimensional one.
However, just because we have been left with only fragments of the old stories doesn’t mean we
have lost the connection to either the Ancestors who told of their original experiences or our very own
connection to the metaphysical world. That connection is part and parcel of who we are and has just
become overlaid with the interference of living in the consumer and technological age where science
and money have become the great powers behind the throne of life. When I was travelling through
southern Utah a couple of years ago I went on a tour of some slot canyons with a young Navajo man.
He spent a lot of time telling me how distraught he was that his father had not passed on the old
knowledge to him and, even when he found someone who was willing to help him, that person soon
disappeared out of his life. He really didn’t know what to do and wouldn’t or couldn’t entertain the
concept that he could find out for himself in a way that was more meaningful for him in the 21st
century. He brought his flute into one of the slot canyons and as we sat deep within the canyon he
played the most beautiful sounds for me. At some point during his playing I realised we had been
joined by two indistinct white shapes of energy. I chuckled to myself as I knew they were his
Ancestors who had come to connect with him and teach him all he needed to know. When he finished
playing he told me he had heard voices while he had been playing. I immediately told him that two
of his Ancestors had joined us and were, in fact, still with us and that all he had to do was to sit still
and listen. However, his link had been broken and he was unable to hear them, so I suggested that all
he need do was to come back at anytime with his flute and make the link again.
We are at a time in our evolution as human beings where we need to let go of old ideas, old forms
and old patterns which have left us crystallised in the past and listen with new ears and look with new
eyes. We have forgotten who we are and where we fit into the great scheme of things, not surprising
as the great scheme of things is changing. We now stand at the doorway of another turn of the
evolutionary spiral, at the end of one great adventure and the very beginning of another. It is time for
us to have our own experiences as individuals and tell our own stories. Here, at the beginning of the
21st century, people are gradually merging into a new synthesis, a more cohesive coherent tribe we call
humanity and a global perspective of how we are all connected is swiftly coming into being. It is time
to start telling these new global stories and maybe start constructing our very own 21st century
cosmology. The challenge we each face is to take personal responsibility for our life in such a way
that we uncover our own unique piece of the picture which then fits into the whole. That is the
greatest thing each person can do to assist the birthing of this brave new world we are being
catapulted into. Consciously come into the present moment, leave behind the crystallised patterns of
the past and the fear of what the future might bring and embrace the uncertainties we are all being
subjected to in seemingly ever increasing amounts.
Experience has shown me that lying within the uncertainty of each moment is a precious jewel,
the expression of your own greatest potential. The times I am able to let go of consciously knowing
what that is, let go of thinking I know what I need and how to get it and allowing the magic to happen
are the times when that greater potential is realised. In those magical moments I feel connected to
everything and everybody as part of a harmonious whole. The struggle of trying to create what I
think I need is left behind and for those precious moments I sing myself out into the world in the
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Song of the Stars Introduction
purest form I can be and join the new symphony of humanity which is starting to be written.
Humanity, that large jigsaw puzzle with in excess of 6 billion pieces and each individual has the potential
to be a perfectly fitting piece within the whole.
Now for my contribution towards the new stories for the tribe we call humanity. In 1990 I awoke me
from my slumbers and made a conscious choice to search within and find out who I really was. I didn’t
set out to prove anything or to answer any questions, only perhaps to find the questions themselves.
Perhaps that’s what research really is, we already have the answers we just don’t know what the
questions are. Most importantly, I didn’t have any perceptions about what I might encounter or what the
pot of gold at the end of the rainbow might contain. Walking that pathway and letting go of the old
restraints, restrictions and patterns within my life has been the most difficult task I have ever undertaken.
If the story I have to tell of my own awakening can help and encourage just one other person in the world
I shall be a happy woman.
This part of the story is based around a five week journey which a friend and I undertook in the
autumn of 1998 through many parts of America. On the surface it’s the light-hearted, humorous story of
two middle-aged English women who in 1998 undertook a 5 week, 7,000 miles road trip through the
heartlands of America with their trusty tent. However, it’s also the story of a modern day Odyssey and
you may be surprised by what you find within these covers. I won’t spoil your journey into the
unknown by telling you any more, just invite you to join us as we are about to set off and hope you enjoy
the journey as much as we did.
In the words of Joseph Campbell “…..each of us is a completely unique creature …. if we are ever to
give any gift to the world, it will have to come out of our own experience and fulfilment of our
potentialities, not someone else’s.”
Here is my gift to you
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Chapter 1 We’re Off! America Here We Come!
Imagine if you will two slightly unconventional specimens of British womanhood. Both middle
aged; neither in a state of peak fitness or even the second blush of youth. One about five foot two with
a rapidly crinkling face, slender body, slightly sagging at the rear – it’s amazing how the effects of
gravity seem to increase on our bodies as we advance in years – slender arms and legs, red hair which
has a touch of the untruthful about it. The other, a cuddly five feet six, a huggers delight with a
rotund body, large snuggly bosom, the lower half of the body sagging slightly both fore and aft but
thankfully the legs and arms retaining some of their original strength and firmness. The truth about
the hair is plain for all to see, a large brush of quite dark brown with distinguished grey streaks
encroaching from either side, starting around the ears and slowly moving upwards and backwards.
Not what you would call prime specimens physically.
Notwithstanding that, they are two women with a mission.
We meet them at London Gatwick airport where each is pushing a baggage trolley laden with two
large pieces of luggage and some rather hefty looking cabin luggage. On top of a red soft-sided bag
on one trolley rides a rather long-armed gorilla called Grumps and atop the other trolley we see a
rather faded apricot coloured pig called Horace. Horace, a very wise and ancient flying pig, has a
wistful look on his face, as though he is remembering something from the dim and distant past.
Grumps, a rather young, brash gorilla is almost jumping up and down with excitement. He has never
flown before and can hardly contain himself. He’s nearly fallen off the trolley at least a dozen times
and keeps asking Horace the same question over and over again “What’s it like?” Gradually Horace
comes back from his reverie and realises where he is. “What did you say Grumps?” asks Horace.
“What’s it like?” asks Grumps. “What do you mean?” asks Horace. “Flying in an aeroplane, America,
camping, everything” shouts Grumps excitedly. “Calm down a little and I will tell you all about it
between here and America” says Horace in the calmest voice he can find. Actually he felt rather
excited himself, as he had not been back to the home of his birth, America, since coming to the UK
some six years ago. Off he goes into his memories of car journeys and camping adventures again and
Grumps has to contain his excitement for a while. Remember these two as they will pop up from time
to time during the journey. Oh, and by the way, Horace told me to tell you he would be writing his
own book someday soon, including how he guarded a collapsed tent all night in a snowstorm!
Both women are scanning the departure boards for signs of their flight but, search as they may,
it’s nowhere to be seen. They decide to split up and look for the North West desk, the airline with
which they are booked. Jackie, the shorter of the two, goes one way and Annie in the opposite
direction. Very soon they locate the North West desks and, as they both push their loaded trolleys
towards the desk, they see an amazing sight: “NW45 CANCELLED” it says in large letters. In fact all
the NW flight boards show CANCELLED and there is an air of abandonment around. They look at
each other and shrug! Two rather underworked operators seem surprised to see them as they present
their tickets. “Haven’t you been told” says one of the operators. “Been told what?” they both ask in
unison. “All the North West flights have been cancelled as the pilots have been on strike for the last
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
few weeks. Your travel agent should have informed you” the operator continues. “No, nobody’s told
us a thing. What happens now?” Annie asks. “You’ve been re-routed onto a TWA flight via St. Louis
leaving at 11:55. You’ll reach St. Louis at 13:00 local time, the time you would have been arriving at
Minneapolis. There’ll be a 5-hour stopover and your connecting flight to Minneapolis will leave at
18:00. It’s due to arrive in Minneapolis at 19:30 local time” said the operator, “Here are your new
tickets and I hope you have a good journey.” And with that she returned to chatting to her
companion behind the desk.
We stood and looked at one another and just laughed then we both looked over our shoulders to
see where panic was standing. Surprise, surprise, panic hadn’t come to the airport with us today. We
remained calm, no emotion, no fuss, just acceptance – if this incident was anything to go by, we were
going to have quite an adventure! So, with new tickets in hand and laughing fit to bust, we strode off
to find the TWA desk. We were checked in immediately and our four hefty bags, minus Horace and
Grumps, were seen disappearing off along the baggage conveyer destined, we hoped, for the same
aircraft and destination as we were.
The two red soft-sided holdalls which comprised half the luggage must have given the baggage
checker a perfect view of a folded tent, two sleeping bags and two deflated air beds as they passed
through his x-ray machine. Probably not an unusual sight for him but if he had seen the owners of
these items he might have raised an eyebrow or two, for two more unlikely looking outdoor camping
types as us you probably could not find within the confines of the airport. We would have been the
first to admit that the prospect of the next 5 weeks spent touring great chunks of the centre of America
in a rental car and sleeping in a tent was quite a daunting prospect. Our combined camping
experience amounted to:
Jackie – nil, if you discounted the tent putting–up practice we had had about two weeks ago in
Annie’s living room as it was pouring with rain.
Annie, that’s me, – a veritable veteran with two months tenting experience in America during the
summer of 1993, some 5 years ago, but that had been with a physical body somewhat smaller than I
now possessed. Oh and Horace has just told me to tell you that he shared that 2 months tenting
experience with me, so feels he’s a veteran as well, although he’s not quite sure what a veteran is but it
sounds good!
Once check-in had been completed, there was just enough time for us to grab a well-earned
breakfast, find the ladies room and move into the departure lounge. Almost immediately our seat
numbers were called for boarding and we disappeared into the bowels of the aircraft which would be
our shelter from the elements on high until we stepped out onto American soil at St. Louis, Missouri,
some 8 or 9 hours later.
So, why were we, two middle aged English women, boarding an aircraft to take us to America?
What were we planning to do when we reached these foreign shores?
Hmmm, where does the story begin? It’s not as easy as once upon a time as ultimately there are a
myriad of threads to this story, many of which would only come to light later. So, for now, let’s leave
most of these to be unfolded in their due time, and concentrate on the one which brought us together
and prompted us to set off on a 5 week Odyssey to the United States of America. I use the word
Odyssey deliberately as one thing we did know was it would not be an ordinary holiday.
Until we reached Gatwick airport, there had only been two definite known parameters relating to
our journey plus a wish list of places to visit together with some very fuzzy ideas about what we
would be doing there. The two definite knowns were the air tickets and the subsequent car rental. As
a result we had arrived at the airport with tickets which said we were booked with North West
Airlines who promised to fly us from London, Gatwick airport in the UK to Minneapolis/St Paul
airport in Minnesota, USA. We also had in our possession a pre-paid voucher for 5 weeks car rental
which promised us we could pick up a car on arrival at Minneapolis airport on 8th September 1998 and
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
drop it off at Albuquerque airport in New Mexico on 13th October 1998. Now, even one of those
parameters had changed!
The idea for the trip had popped up some months before and initially I had been arranging a solo
journey, something which I had done before. Just book a flight, buy a ticket, pre-book a car and off I
would go, my idea of heaven! “It’s time for another trip to America” had crossed through my mind
just after Christmas. “Mmmmmm that sounds good” I thought, “where would I like to go this time?”
The idea that came was to visit some of the places I had not had time to see during my extended
camping trip in America in 1993 with Horace. Places like the Badlands in South Dakota, back to the
Black Hills again, also in South Dakota, as I’d fallen in love with them and wanted to see the free
roaming buffalo again. Oh yes, and this time I wanted to see some of the canyons, places like
Canyonlands in southern Utah; Bryce Canyon also in Utah and the pièce de resistance of canyons, of
course, the Grand Canyon. Sedona also called me and if I was going that far south I might as well go
and look up my old friend in Albuquerque. Finally the thought came that I could take the
opportunity to go back to Fairfield in Iowa (Horace’s home town) to sort out the personal belongings I
had left in the basement of a house where I had rented an apartment some six years before. Oh, and if
I was going to start my journey there, I might as well arrange to fly in to Minneapolis. That would
also mean I could take a look at the Mall of America, supposedly the largest shopping mall in the
whole of the country, complete with theme park, and give me a relatively short drive down to
Fairfield from there. I pulled out the map and looked at my possible itinerary. Wow!! This was going
to be some trip, so the next questions were “How long?” and “When?” I toyed with them both for
some time. The length of the trip kept varying between 3, 4 and 5 weeks, sometimes extending to 6
and August or September kept coming up as favourites for when. In the end there was only one thing
for it, draw the answers out of a hat! Before I started I had to make a solemn promise to myself that I
would abide by the answers. Firstly the start date. I put two pieces of paper into the hat August on
one, September on the other. September won the day or should I say month! Next, let’s see, oh yes 1
to 30 went into the hat, stir them up and out came number 8. This was working quite well. I now had
the start date. The only question now was the duration. 3, 4, 5 and 6 went into the hat. I was hoping
it wouldn’t be 3 but fate took a hand and out came 5. Wow! I was looking at the adventure of five
whole weeks in the States starting on 8th September and finishing on or about 13th October. “What
happened that made you change your mind about going alone” I hear you ask. Well, the idea of
having a travelling companion was put into my mind by a friend when we were chatting on the
telephone one day. I was telling her about my embryo idea and the places I wanted to visit and she
suddenly said out of the blue “Would you like a companion, its years since I went to the States”. Up
to that point it hadn’t crossed my mind so I said I’d give it some thought. By this time in my
preparations I had discarded the idea of renting a campervan, on the grounds of cost, and had decided
to either take or buy a tent. Unfortunately the friend in question had quite a physical disability and
when we spoke again we both agreed that camping would not be feasible for her. However, the idea
of a companion had now taken hold.
I had met Jackie the previous year during my first visit to a monthly gathering of people whose
aim was to explore the boundaries of consciousness and work with subtle energy. We had stopped
for lunch and I was in a small group chatting in the conservatory. It was a really hot day and Jackie
was standing right in front of me in a very low cut dress. As the conversation went on my eyes kept
being drawn to a scar on her chest. Try as I might I could not keep my attention away from it so
eventually asked her if she minded whether I work with the energy of it and hastily explained that I
did a form of hands off energy work! She said yes and I went to work. The most amazing thing
happened as the scar started to radiate an electric blue light which eventually filled her whole chest
area. We had only met at the group meetings a few times since then but when I was looking for some
temporary accommodation in the Surrey/north Hampshire area in March, she was the only contact I
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
seemed to have in that area. When I phoned to ask her if she would take a lodger for about 2 weeks,
she seemed rather reticent at first but after a few seconds of thought she said yes. She then told me I
couldn’t have phoned at a better time as her dog had died that day and she was very miserable and
lonely as he had been her companion for many years. It turned out that Jackie also had a love affair
with America and had a visit planned to North Carolina in June. To cut a long story short, the day
Jackie returned from her trip, 21st June, we were both at a gathering of people to celebrate the summer
solstice. Jackie arrived hot foot from the airport having landed that morning and a short while later I
found myself asking her if she would like to accompany me on my journey. Much to her
astonishment as well as mine she said yes. As she put it “other people do this sort of thing, not me!”
So, I now had my travelling companion.
As for the wish list of places to visit, I told Jackie where I seemed drawn to go. Over the last few
months the list had changed a little and now consisted of the Badlands and Black Hills in South
Dakota; the Rockies in Colorado and Wyoming; Four Corners area where Colorado, New Mexico,
Utah and Arizona meet and the Grand Canyon and Sedona in Arizona. Jackie, who had just been in
North Carolina working with the energy of rocks and mountains, added a couple more places which
her American friend had told her were places of great energy, Bear Butte and Devil’s Tower in
Wyoming. For those of you who have no idea of the geography of the United States of America, you’ll
find a map of our actual itinerary at the front of the book.
The fuzzy ideas about what we would be doing on the trip related to the fact that the whole of the
spring and summer had been rather crazily related to Stars and energy. Not the sort of stars which
Hollywood deals in but the kind which most of us never see a great deal of these days, those
twinkling, brilliant diamonds in the sky which we all used to sing about when we were kids. It was as
though we were being led towards something; something which for now we didn’t understand. It
was like being on a cosmic treasure hunt, the English leg of which had started in about March and had
led us to the airport and our departure from the UK for the American leg.
As we sat on the aircraft sipping our gin and tonics thousands of feet above the Atlantic Ocean we
mused over the events which had led us to this point. Our first meeting the previous September; the
events that led me to phone Jackie that evening in March looking for somewhere to stay and my
subsequent move into a rented studio flat deep in the Hampshire countryside, half of which consisted
of a glass conservatory, which was where the Star connection had first started. I had come across the
studio flat while lodging at Jackie’s house and looking for some more permanent accommodation. I
had taken a six month contract of work near the M3 motorway in a town called Frimley in the county
of Surrey and wanted to find somewhere to live which was not too far away yet out in the country. I
answered an advertisement in the local paper and, when I went to see the flat, could not believe my
luck. It was situated about half an hour’s drive from work, ideal, and deep in the north Hampshire
countryside. It consisted of one large room built over the top of a double garage. The garage rested in
the extensive grounds of a house and stood some way from the main building surrounded by grass,
shrubs and trees. The property itself was almost at the end of a narrow country lane, a road to
nowhere, so no passing traffic and, just as important, no street lights. When I walked into the flat it
was as though my dream had become reality. I could not have found a more perfect place if I had
tried. The walls of the flat were covered in a beautiful warm, honey-coloured pine cladding, as was
the floor. The whole flat was virtually just one room with a small area walled off area as a bathroom.
Beside the warm colour of the walls and floor the thing that struck me most was the light. Not only
was there a large conventional window straight ahead of me in the wall opposite the door but also
two large windows built into the sloping pitched roof on my right. However, the most unusual
feature of the flat and the one which produced most of the light was the conservatory. To my left, just
past the kitchen area was an opening into the most beautiful glass conservatory. It was five-sided
with the most wonderful pointed roof which gave it almost a cathedral-like quality. The roof itself
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
comprised seven glassed sections. The glass walls were about six feet high and curtained in a very
heavy cream material. At its centre point the roof was about 12 feet high. Oh, and the far glass wall
looked out onto an open-air swimming pool which I was going to be allowed to use! Idyllic!!
When I moved in I was very drawn to put my bed in the conservatory and sleep under the Stars.
What a wonderful way to go to sleep far, far better than camping as I could lie in bed and just gaze up
through the glass and see a myriad of beautiful twinkling Stars – the Star Nation. No streetlights or
the glow from any nearby towns to drown them, there they sat every clear night, slowly moving
across the sky. I had my own private show. However, as with everything, there can be a price to
pay! The flat itself was not centrally heated it had just three small electric wall heaters and the
conservatory wasn’t double glazed. Even in the UK the temperatures between March and May can
plummet very low at night, sometimes well below freezing. So, be warned, before you rush to put
your bed in your conservatory, you will need an iron constitution and some very, very warm
bedclothes! I even renewed my acquaintance with the hot water bottle, an item I had not used for
many years! Night after night I would wake in the early hours and there they would be twinkling
away above and somehow they seemed so close. I even bought a book
and started to identify them in the sky. As the weeks went on some
nights I would wake up and it was as though some of the Stars had
been in the room with me, crazy I know! Yet so real, and as I woke
they would withdraw back into the sky. The three Stars, which
seemed to be trying to attract my attention are called the Summer
Triangle and consist of Deneb in the constellation Cygnus, the Swan,
Vega, in the constellation Lyra, the Lyre, and Altair in the constellation
Aquila, the diving Eagle. It was to be quite some time before I started
to have any understanding of the significance of these three Stars and
still to this day my search for clues continues.
As we flew further across the Atlantic, we also talked of what, at the time, seemed a growing
number of very bizarre happenings. I am sure many people who read this book will have had
unexplainable experiences which seemed very real but which they have never told anyone else about
in case they were thought of as crazy. Oh, how we judge ourselves. Why can’t we just accept our
experiences and not push them away in case we are thought of as mad. You could almost call
judgement a human disease. In our case our experiences were easier to accept as there were two of us
and we could talk about what appeared to be happening. Even so, there were many times when we
heard ourselves saying the words “This is crazy …”, “We must be mad …”, “What on earth is going
on?” and “This is the fanciful version.” The one thing we had to hold onto from this period onwards
was that these were our experiences and, whatever anyone else thought about them, however they
tried to judge them and explain them away, no one could take them away from us. They were OUR
EXPERIENCES. Even now I see myself shying away from putting them on paper yet, having started
down this track, I suppose you would like to know. I just have to say that at this point, it feels as
though I am standing alone in the middle of a crowded stadium. In the tiers of seats around the
stadium sit thousands and thousands of people who watch as I strip myself bare; open and vulnerable
yet free and honest. Many of the spectators may have strong views and judgements about what is
being displayed before them. It matters not what they think and shout! I stand by my experiences
and offer them to you in the hope that your awareness of reality and the potential within your life as a
human being may be expanded. Nobody else in the whole wide world will have the same experience
as Jackie and I did. In fact Jackie and I had very different experiences which complemented each
other.
Having got that off my chest, here goes!
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During the two weeks I stayed at Jackie’s house in March we found that when we came together
something very strange seemed to be happening. We would sit down to chat after dinner and find we
just couldn’t keep our eyes open. We’d literally just fall into a different state of consciousness where
we were aware of being almost in a different dimension and working on a non-physical level.
Sometimes one or both of us would be poised with coffee mug half way to the mouth and, bingo,
suddenly it was as though someone had pressed the pause button! All movement stopped and we
would fall into a different state of consciousness. Then at some later date the play button would
return us to normal waking state and often a very cold cup of coffee. The most amazing thing was we
never spilled a drop! The same thing could occur in the middle of a conversation. Life became very
interesting and it seemed there was nothing to be done except accept the situation and trust that all
was well. Once again, it was to be some time before understanding dawned.
As the spring progressed these experiences seemed to increase and we gradually became more
conscious of what was happening during these excursions into other states of consciousness.
Sometimes we were aware of energy flowing through our bodies and other times it was as though we
were being made aware of situations around the world and thoughts of what we could do by
directing the mind to the situation would flow in unannounced. After each session we would chat
about what our experiences had been and usually find that, although they had been different, they
complemented each other. For example one evening Jackie’s experience had been of the need to open
up various geographical locations, mainly hills and mountains, and stir up the energy of these places.
I had experienced a similar call to work; however, the methods we both used were very different.
Jackie visualised peeling the hills and mountains concerned like a banana and pouring energy into
each of them. On the other hand, I visualised each as having a hinged lid which could be lifted up.
Once this was done I used a very large wooden spoon to stir up the energy inside rather like mixing a
pudding. For many of you who have worked with energy the idea of using the mind in creative
visualisation will be very familiar. However, others of you may be very sceptical about the fact that
just thinking something could make any difference. For now, I ask you to open your minds, put away
your judgements and just accept the premise that energy follows thought and that every thought we
have changes something in what we view as our reality around us. There is an ancient saying that
says the beat of a butterfly’s wings on one side of the world will immediately have an energetic effect
on the opposite side of the world.
As the weeks and months went by we found ourselves increasingly involved with our energy
work. It didn’t make any difference whether we were physically together or apart. As long as when
we were geographically separated we were connected energetically by the telephone, we fell into our
work mode, sometimes for hours on end. We were often aware of what we had been doing and
sometimes not. We seemed to spend most of the spring and summer in silence on either end of the
telephone. The other element, which crept in during those months, was the speaking in tongues. Well
not tongues exactly, I don’t know what the language was or even if it was or had been a language.
Jackie didn’t suffer from this affliction and it caused much amusement for us both. The experience
started one night, under the Stars, when I came into that half awake half asleep state. You know, that
state when it seems your body is still peacefully sleeping but there’s that little part of your
consciousness which is wide awake and active. Well, this particular night, it was as though someone
was pointing at each of the Stars in the Summer Triangle and as they pointed at each Star in turn they
spoke its name. Fine, I hear you say. The only thing was the language in use was not English. In fact
I don’t know what it was. The only sense I had was of something which felt rather Native American
yet very ancient. This happened over and over until I had the sense that I was supposed to follow suit
and point and name each Star, which I duly did. I have to say that it seemed the most natural thing in
the world to be doing in the middle of the night. However, to this day I cannot remember the names I
was told and it didn’t seem to matter. The main thing seemed to be to allow the experience even
though I didn’t understand it.
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
Imagine you are sitting with a friend and have spent a few carefree hours chatting. Your friend
asks you whether you would like another cup of coffee. You open your mouth to say yes, however,
what you hear coming from your mouth is “Ana tse unta”. “Pardon” your friend says. You try again
“Ini tsa ………..” Hmmmmm! Even the thoughts aren’t in English; however, you don’t actually
know what the words mean. The conversation continues and the laughter grows by the minute. In
the end we were rolling around the floor laughing so much we didn’t know what to do with
ourselves. Once again as the months went by the episodes of “ana, ini and huns” as we came to call
them became more and more frequent. As I was settling down to sleep at night words would just
spew to the surface, unbidden. I would wake in the middle of the night and the same thing would
happen, even the thoughts were in foreign. It was as though an ancient energy was coming closer, for
what reason I did not know although I would find out later!
I knew I wasn’t going too mad as I continued to go to work each day where I masqueraded as a
systems engineer within a major defence company and nobody seemed to find me too strange, well no
stranger than normal. But what was normal any more. Some days while sitting in front of my
computer in work, I’d come to and realise that I’d been off somewhere and hoped that no-one would
notice. There was one day when I don’t know how I drove home from work as I couldn’t quite return
to a normal waking state and the greater part of my consciousness seemed stuck out in a different
dimension. Try as I might I could find no way to ground myself fully back on planet Earth so I had no
option but to set off home in the car. My journey home usually took about 30 minutes through very
heavy traffic. This particular day, with the greater part of me off roaming the Cosmos looking for
something, I had great trouble keeping my attention on the road. All that was left was that little piece
of consciousness that seems to be the autopilot. All of you who are drivers will probably have
experienced something similar. You know what it’s like when you’re driving somewhere and you
suddenly reach a spot and can’t remember driving the last few miles! I eventually reached home
without incident and immediately sat in the chair and let go. I became aware that I was in what I can
only describe as the unmanifest sea which lies behind all creation. Like the stage before anything
manifests into substance and form and I realised I was looking for something. When I say looking, I
don’t usually see anything, I get knowings about what is going on. So, I knew I was looking for
something, searching, searching, farther and farther, deeper and deeper. As I went I seemed to be
picking up strands and when I eventually returned to normal waking state of consciousness, knew
that I had searched for and found 13 strands or strings or vibrations, although I was unaware at the
time what they were for. Well, it was getting to be all in a days work.
The intellect often needs to feel in control and tries to hang on to everything and make sense of it.
However, as we stand on the
doorstep of the Aquarian Age, Oh dear! Have I got everything! Where is
there is a great urge for each of that bit I just read? I’m sure I heard something,
what did it mean? I must stay in control!
us to say hello to our intuition
once more. That quiet inner
voice which we are unable to
hear when we are rushing
around doing things all the
time. I admit to having been
one of those people with the
hurry disease, always pushing
on to do more and more, never
really sitting down and relaxing
and just being. However, over the past few years I have made every effort to listen with my inner
ears.
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
Gradually, as the summer progressed, we started to listen to our more fanciful thoughts about
what was going on. One thing was for sure, neither of us had ever laughed so much in all our lives.
This spilled over into our everyday, third dimensional lives as well and life seemed to become filled
with JOY. Certainly not a word I’d ever used much about my life before. Now, suddenly it was
entering my conversations more and more and more.
As I mentioned earlier, it seemed we were on a cosmic treasure hunt; as though we were being
given clues which, if we found the answers, would help us in our understanding of what on Earth we
were experiencing and why. For instance, imagine you are driving home from work after a long day
in the office in front of your computer. You let your mind gradually fall into neutral. Your brain is in
autopilot driving the car for you and making all those sorts of decisions it’s good at, when suddenly a
thought comes drifting, unbidden, across the blank screen that’s now your mind. You look at it to see
what it says “Pi and epsilon.” Ok, I wonder what that means. You look again “Pi and epsilon, pi in
the sky”. What on earth does this mean? You take another look “Pi and epsilon, pi in the sky, it’s all
Greek to me.” The whole phrase runs through your mind in an endless loop like an advertising sign
which spells out a message in lights, over and over again, endlessly, non-stop until someone either
changes the message or switches off the electricity. Very interesting I thought. But what does it
mean? It seemed to have a great significance but I didn’t know what. The following day in work I
was talking to two colleagues when I was suddenly impressed to ask them if they were aware of any
equations containing pi and epsilon which related to electromagnetic energy. It just so happened that
both colleagues were physicists, one was in his early sixties and the other in his 20’s and just
completing his PhD. As though of one voice, they both spouted out the same two equations
containing pi and epsilon one of which related to the amount of electrical energy a body could absorb
and the other relating to the amount of magnetic energy a body could absorb. I was over the moon
and so excited I could hardly contain myself! I couldn’t actually say why I was so excited but my
intuition told me I had solved the first clue of the treasure hunt even if my logical mind didn’t actually
know what the answer was.
Over the second gin and tonic, high above the Atlantic we also likened the happenings of the
spring and summer to living in a jigsaw puzzle without a picture and with no idea of the dimensions
of the puzzle, how many pieces or where it would fit into our lives or the greater scheme of things.
How many of these experiences were purely personal and how many, if any, related to the Earth and
the Stars? Were we deluding ourselves about the cosmic link? Like the evening we rolled back the
Zodiac! One evening while working together, Jackie saw herself rolling back a barbed wire fence from
around the Earth. We came to an understanding that this represented the Zodiac, an artificial concept
anyway. Our belief was that, on some level, it had been acting as a filter for the energy reaching us
here on Earth and that the time had come for humanity to start to shift their realm of awareness from
the solar system and expand it out into the Cosmos. In doing so somehow this would enable
humanity to activate a greater potential of what Homo Sapiens is capable of. Not content with this, a
few days later it was as though the Gods came marching back to Earth. Never had we experienced
such strong energy, wave after wave and it felt as though they had hobnail boots on! It also seemed to
link in to my jigsaw piece of pi in the sky and it’s all Greek to me but, once again, I didn’t know how.
That was the same evening I suddenly felt a pain in my ears and Jackie told me to listen so I did. I felt
as though a very, very ancient energy was trying to surface and was unable to take form. When I
allowed it to flow into my body, I was aware of standing on top of a flat top pyramid in South
America wearing one of those hats with a large sort of horn coming from the back and bending
forward over the top of the crown of my head. I also had a sense of calling very loudly from the top of
my high vantage point, my mouth forming a large O. It felt as though I was straddling the two times,
one foot in the ancient past on top of the pyramid and the other foot in the present. I was in great
danger of doing the splits and it took a great act of will to pull that ancient energy into the present.
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
We also laughed at the way my body had shaken for most of the summer months, whenever we did
any energy work. Not a pretty sight! Rather like a large jelly just out of the mould, wibbly, wobbly!
Usually around the area of the sacral (or abdomen for those of you not used to that term). Oh, and the
many times our nervous systems were obviously coping with a change in energy and frequency levels
and we experienced loss of memory, shaking limbs, you name it we had it, heart attacks galore,
Parkinson’s, senile dementia, brain tumours and even strokes. Just strange happenings within the
body that we couldn’t explain so we laughed instead! Like the night I got up to go to the loo and for a
short while couldn’t remember how to walk. Having managed to stagger there and back when I
arrived at my bed, for the life of me, I couldn’t remember how to sit down. There I was in the middle
of the night, standing beside it wondering how on earth I could get back onto it! I decided there was
only one way so I launched myself and hoped it would take my weight. I had the brief thought of
how hard the floor might feel if I missed and the next moment landed safely. The bed shook a little, a
bodyquake but remained in one piece. You’ll be pleased to know that after a good nights sleep I had
remembered how to sit down, stand up and walk.
We certainly found a need for a good sense of humour that spring and summer. I think it was the
only thing that kept us sane! That and the fact that there were two of us and we were both having
similar experiences! We often used to feel as though our souls were pulling our strings, rather like
two puppets and we frequently imagined them swinging along on fluffy white clouds whilst cooking
up another part of the adventure for us! We also helped ourselves and put in place a couple of very
useful techniques. The first was what we called putting our heads together. This literally consisted of
having the intention of linking our minds, not quite like the mind meld of Mr Spock in Star Trek, but
you get the idea. I liked to think that, when we did that, we were consciously allowing our souls to
take charge and letting go of our individual need to control either the experiences or their outcome.
The second technique consisted of using our creative imagination to conjure up a large chandelier
which we then hopped onto and would wind ourselves up to a much higher level of vibration. It
worked a treat. Effective as these techniques were, the most useful thing we started using was flower
essences. Somebody told us that just 10 minutes drive away from my Star flat in Conford was an
Aladdin’s cave filled with flower and animal essences from around the world. I’ll never forget my
first visit there. Even before I walked through the door I could feel the vibrations from the essences
and, when I actually entered I went weak at the knees and could hardly stand up! I did manage to
stagger round and see all the essences on offer, there seemed to be hundreds of them. Some couple of
hours later I could be seen staggering back to my car with a large bag containing boxes full of three
different types of essence. First into the bag were four boxes of Himalayan Flower Enhancers which
are essences made from wild flowers growing in remote Himalayan valleys. In the words of their
creator, Tanmaya, “They are not remedies for something that is wrong in man, rather their work is to
enhance what is right, by shining their lights or vibrational frequency into particular parts of the
human body, opening them up and dispelling any darkness, blocks or stored negativity”. Snuggled
next to them in the bag were four boxes of Dancing Light Orchid Essences. I had chosen these, not
only because they spoke to me but also because in the information leaflet their creator, Shabd-sangeet
Khalsa, told me that orchids are considered to be the queens of the plant kingdom and have
exceptionally high rates of vibratory frequency. Their blossoms often take the shape of angels and are
said to create a link between the higher spiritual levels and mankind. It went on to say that because
orchid essences are potent energy medicine they can enhance your ability to live in balance, optimise
your health, well being and spiritual growth. The final clincher was when I read “Imagine a multi-
dimensional blueprint which overlights and infuses your energetic pathways. It takes the struggle out
of transformation when your energetic blueprints are renewed.” Just what we needed! Last but not
least in my bag were four boxes containing Wild Earth Animal Essences. The founder of these
essences, Daniel Mapel, described them as “Gentle remedies for transformation which, since 1996,
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
have been helping people around the world deepen their connection with themselves and their
world”. The information leaflet for these stressed that no animals are captured or harmed in the
development of these essences. They are natural vibrational remedies that are made during a
ceremonial process which includes attuning with and invoking the spirit of the animal involved. The
resulting liquid contains the vibrational imprint and energy of the animal but does not contain any
animal parts. At that time, something told me we were going to need all the help we could get in
working with these altered states of consciousness and higher energies and, from that day on, we had
started using the essences to assist us with our energy work. Their effects were very subtle and we
were still getting to know them, however, we already knew they were helping us come into resonance
with the energies we were starting to work with. Now, as we sat in our aircraft droning across the
Atlantic, all these essences were sitting quietly in my backpack in the locker above my head waiting to
be put to good use.
The hours passed rapidly in the aircraft. While some of the other passengers spent their journey
watching the in-flight entertainment and others slept, we sat right at the back of the cabin and
continued to muse over what had brought us to this point and why we thought we were going to
America. The summer seemed to produce a great deal of activity within the Earth. In parallel to our
physical experiences of increased energy input, almost like some sort of preparation, we were aware
there was a similar activity happening within the Earth. We talked of the many people who had been
aware of helping to set up of a new crystalline grid network within the Earth. In the same way as
energy is carried throughout the body in a series of energy channels or nadis1, the Earth has similar
energy channels which are often called ley lines, a term I’m sure most people have heard of even if
you’ve never experienced the phenomena.
Perhaps now would be a good place to introduce the concept of higher guidance or what some
call Channelling2 and the idea that we each have a higher frequency part of ourselves which doesn’t
exist within the dense frequency framework of the physical reality. It is still part of us but we cannot
access it with any of our 5 physical senses. I only introduce this term here as a prelude to some
relevant words of higher guidance which Jackie spoke one evening not long before we left for this trip:
As you surmise the flow of energy coming to your world from the Stars is increasing in capacity. It is as if the light
of the Stars is being received and spread abroad or distributed over the Earth along new pathways. These pathways
form a web of connection linking points or places of light with each other in ever expanding frequencies. Earth has
not seen herself in the past as cosmically connected. She is part of a living, breathing, conscious Universe and now
is the time for her to step forward into the fulfilment of this role.
We reminisced about the time I was passing Stonehenge and was almost overcome with a feeling of
celebration and joy and the words which came into my mind were, “The Ancient Ones have
returned”. Quite what that meant I did not know on the level of the logical mind but it sure did cause
a stir throughout my whole energy field. It was about this time, around the summer solstice, that I
became aware of the Pole Star as a doorway into other dimensions or worlds. Once again my logical
mind could not explain it but there was a definite knowing that this was true and I was not the only
one to experience this. I had agreed to run a small drumming workshop at the summer solstice
celebration and, in the weeks prior to this event, my interest kept being drawn to the Pole Star, Polaris,
the star which is the nearest to the celestial north pole and lies in the constellation of the Little Bear
(Ursa Minor). About 6 adults and 4 children gathered on the lawn for the workshop and, having sent
the children off on a mission into the grounds with a drum each, decided, on the spur of the moment,
to lead the adults on a Journey to the Pole Star. We sat in a circle on the grass, eyes closed as though
for meditation, and, as I started drumming everybody held the intention of journeying to the Pole
Star. Some time later when everyone shared their experiences at the end of the journey, the results
were quite amazing. The first person to speak was a man who had been a complete sceptic about the
whole thing and had told us he was only there to keep his partner company. However, he had found
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
himself journeying through the heavens and saw great bands of electromagnetic energy linking up the
Stars and the Planets3 and had spent all his time flying along from star to star. He reported that he
had visited the Pole Star and although he hadn’t entered the doorway he had looked through it.
Every other person in the group had had slightly different experiences but they all confirmed the
existence of a doorway into other dimensions/worlds. Some had been through the doorway and
others just looked but without exception everyone was unable to express their experience in words. I
was totally amazed, as I had deliberately said nothing to them beforehand about the possible existence
of a doorway so they would not have any expectations. It seems we had found another ubiquitous
sky piece for our jigsaw but were still no nearer finding the picture for the front of the box!
I suppose the major pieces which had come our way all related to links between the Stars and the
Earth. The first one seemed to link specific stars with pyramids in the ancient world, especially in
Egypt and South America. One of the books we bought to enhance our knowledge and
understanding of the skies was a book called The Secret Language of the Stars and Planets2 in which the
authors had included a Chapter on Sacred Alignments where they provided “compelling evidence of
deliberate alignments” of ancient architectural sites “to astronomical phenomena ……sometimes to
Stars and planets”. The chapter related the findings of a team of Egyptologists and astronomers in the
‘60s who discovered that the locations of the pyramids on the Giza Plateau provide a terrestrial map
of the Stars of Orion and the Hyades. The other piece also came from a book. As Jackie was waiting
with her friends at the airport for her return flight from North Carolina in June, they decided to buy
her a book as a surprise. The title was Starwalking - Shamanic Practices for Travelling Into the Night Sky
by Page Bryant in which she recounts what ancient cultures knew about the Stars and how the Native
American shamanic practices of Skywalking can be revived. Were we being told something? We
didn’t really know. We didn’t even know at this point whether these were pieces of another jigsaw
puzzle or whether it fitted into the one we were experiencing and living.
As the snores reverberated though the cabin and, a few people who couldn’t sleep paced up and
down the aisles to get some exercise, we talked about the coming trip. It seemed to relate to working
with the energy of the Earth and Stars. The places we were drawn to were South Dakota – Badlands
and Black Hills; Bear Butte and Devil’s Tower in Wyoming; the Rockies in Wyoming and Colorado;
Four Corners area where Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Arizona meet as well as the Grand
Canyon and Sedona in Arizona. However, nothing about our itinerary was set in stone. It did look as
though we were going to be seeing a lot of rocks though! What else did we think we knew?
All spring and summer long we had been preparing our bodies to take higher and stronger
energies;
there were great highways of electromagnetic energy flowing between the Stars and the energy
was somehow stepped down until it reached us in our human bodies here on Earth;
the Zodiac had been rolled back, one level of filter had been stripped away and, shortly
afterwards the Gods had come marching back in;
the Earth herself had also been preparing her mineral body all summer long with the crafting
of a new crystalline grid network;
the Ancient Ones had returned to Earth;
there was an ancient energy coming closer all the while;
we knew this was some sort of mission, an Odyssey, and not just a holiday.
Soon, the seat belt signs came on and the announcement was made that we would shortly be
landing at St. Louis, Missouri. We were told to have our passports and completed immigration
2
The Secret Language of the Stars and Planets by Geoffrey Cornelius & Paul Devereux
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Song of the Stars 1 – We’re Off! America Here We Come!
cards ready for inspection and reminded to collect all of our cabin luggage and not to get up from
our seats until the aircraft had come to a complete stop. "Thank you for flying TWA and we hope
you have enjoyed your flight” said the stewardess. The time, as well as us, had flown! The
excitement started to mount again as we readied ourselves to step, once again, onto American soil
with open minds and no expectations!
Let the adventure begin!
16
Chapter 2 Let’s Hit the Pause Button!
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real
security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in
movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Alan Cohen
Our intellect has achieved the most tremendous things, but in the meantime our spiritual dwelling has fallen
into disrepair.
Carl Gustav Jung
We are going to take a short pause before we go off adventuring. Don’t worry, America will wait
and we won’t take very long. I just want to set the scene to give you a better understanding of the
pathway which led me to this Odyssey. I didn’t just wake up one night in Conford and have my
wonderful experience with the Stars. That followed on from nearly eight years of personal
exploration and many wonderful adventures. After a lifetime of intellectual pursuits the quote from
Carl Gustav Jung above succinctly summed up my life until 1990 opened its doors.
What does it take to get us to make changes in our life? Sometimes almost getting run over by a
steamroller. As with many people I have met since, the catalyst for my huge wake-up call came in the
form of personal tragedy. 1990 turned out to be the worst year of my life. May saw the death of one
of my cats, in July my father died and on the very last day of the year, New Year’s Eve, my only
brother died at the age of 46. Someone once told me that somewhere in every event which happens in
our lives, no matter how big or small, there is a jewel to be found. Well, the jewel which came out of
those devastating events was an enormous push for me to look at my life from a different perspective.
One minute I had had expectations of silver wedding celebrations for my brother closely followed by
golden wedding celebrations for my parents, then, suddenly, those expectations had died along with
the two people I loved so dearly.
Initially I dealt with things in my usual way – KEEP BUSY. As long as I was doing something I
couldn’t really feel anything! Then, gradually, questions started to rise from deep within. What did I
really want from life, how did I want to live it? I knew something needed to change but what! My
answer came in the form of the feeling that I wanted to awaken and search for a greater sense of
fulfilment otherwise what’s the point when a life can be snuffed out in its prime. And so those
bereavements turned out to be the catapult that jolted me onto a pathway from which I’ve never
stepped off, the search for a more meaningful expression of my life. During the following twelve
months [1991] I managed to shift my life out of its rut-like quality into something akin to an
adventure.
In the spring of 1991 change came in the form of TM (Transcendental Meditation). I remember to
this day receiving my mantra and that first meditation, it was like coming home, experiencing
something so familiar it felt as though it had been a part of me for ever and a day. Within 3 months I
was learning the advanced TM technique, TM Siddhis, which culminated in attending a two week
flying course in October in order to earn my yogic flying wings. I’m happy to say I passed with flying
colours! The main aim of the Siddhi programme was, in the words of the founder Maharishi Mahesh
Yogi, to culture the nervous system to accept higher vibrational energies and, in fact, yogic flying was
a by-product of achieving a measure of coherence throughout the whole brainwave patterns. As the
year progressed light started to dawn about things esoteric as though I was just remembering them
17
Song of the Stars 2 - Lets Hit the Pause Button
rather than discovering them for the first time. The same with meditation, it was like coming back to a
state I already knew and was very familiar with. It felt as though I had stepped onto a personal
evolutionary express train which was just getting faster and faster, as though I had opened up to a
part of myself which, until then, I had not been consciously aware of. At last, I was turning my
attention to the repair of my spiritual dwelling.
During the Yogic Flying course I kept noticing a poster on the wall talking about Maharishi
International University (MIU) in America and every time I saw it my heart did a leap. A very strange
idea gradually and quietly entered my awareness “YES” it said “that’s where I’m going, that’s where I
need to go” whilst at almost the same time my head said “YOU MUST BE CRAZY you’ve got a house,
a well paid job and everything you desire”. But did I? For years I had felt as though I was looking
for something more but didn’t know what. Every time I moved job, moved house I would be satisfied
for a while and then the longing would start again. Longing for what? Could I ever satisfy it? All I
knew was that, since starting meditation and addressing the spiritual aspect of my life which
previously had been buried beneath desert sands, that longing was not screaming at me any more and
I was starting to have quite a few periods of feeling more fulfilled. To cut a long story short, for the
first time in my life, my heart won and mid August 1993 saw me renting out my house, leaving my
well paid job, selling off many of my possessions and, with three large suitcases, setting off on my first
great adventure. I had no idea how long I would be away or what I was letting myself in for but, for
the first time in my life, I felt as though I was following my destiny. Every single part of me was over
the moon and in agreement about this decision.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi called MIU the washing machine of North America. His theory was that,
when the square root of one percent of a population does the TM Siddhi programme together, it lifts
the negativity from that population. Well, in North America that needed something like 1600 people.
The days when that total was reached and exceeded the meditation programme felt great and was
easy. However, in the middle of winter, when the numbers fell well below that mark, it was like
sitting in treacle and being ground down by North America’s dirty washing!! What an extremely
different lifestyle it was as a student in an accredited North American University which was also an
Ashram. The meditation programme, which took place twice a day at 7.30 a.m. and 5.30 p.m., was
part and parcel of the course and we received credits for attendance while the academic programme
was crammed in between those times. Academic classes were segregated, as were the meditation
domes, as men’s and women’s nervous systems react to the higher energy in very different ways.
Men become very loud, rambunctious and over the top while women become extremely sensitive and
quiet and the two definitely do not mix!! For 9 months this was my life. A significant period of time
to gestate the new me! The meditation programme was like a roller-coaster ride as it brought many
unrecognised-and-stuffed-away-for-a-long-time feelings to the surface which kept rising rather like
magma in a volcano. At the end of each meditation programme I never knew how I would feel,
sometimes I was on an absolute high and other times I felt as though I had just dropped into a pit of
dark feelings. How to cope? Unfortunately the MIU staff’s answer was yet more meditation.
However, my answer was to put in place a support network outside of the campus and seek out
sessions of both bodywork and spiritual counselling to help me deal with the issues which arose.
One plus for me was that I started to get acquainted with my intuition, something which I didn’t
even know I possessed when I arrived there. People kept telling me I was very intuitive but it was
like telling a baby it could talk and walk, yes the potential is there but it needs to be realised, the same
with my intuition. It was to be some years later, during the summer of following my feet and finding
feathers, when I really passed the toddler stage and started learning how to run with it.
I also became aware of Tsunamis and kept being made aware of giant tidal waves which had the
potential to just be energetic or could resolve into actual physical ones. What would determine that?
At the time I didn’t consciously know. Everything was suddenly about huge incoming tidal waves in
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the near future. I saw them both in waking visions and in my dreams; even my sister-in-law back in
the UK had dreams about me saving the family from huge tidal waves by lifting us all up into the air
just as a giant tsunami rolled towards us to engulf us. It would be years before I became aware of the
significance of these visions and I now have a better understanding of what is causing these incoming
waves and what effect they are having on us as individuals, as a group [humanity], and on the Earth
but more of that later.
The evolutionary express train had now become an evolutionary rocket ship!
In the spring of 1993, when Maharishi came out from his annual retreat period and met with other
spiritual leaders, they agreed that there was a distinct possibility that great Earth changes could take
place. Apparently the sort of thing discussed was that the Great Lakes could empty causing extreme
devastation over a huge part of North America. At the time I had no conscious awareness of why
these should occur just a deep knowing that they were possible and yet, also with a deep knowing,
that we, humanity, could avert them somehow, someway but at the time had no conscious awareness
of how. Soon after this, around the end of April, I decided to bring my time at MIU to an end. Money
was running out and, more importantly, I needed to get away and give myself time and space to
enable me to get some sort of perspective of the experiences I had been through. I also needed to
allow time for understanding to dawn as to who I now thought I was and consolidate and synthesise
all the changes which had occurred. Before returning to the UK I decided to go travelling for a couple
of months to Colorado and Montana. I was advised not to leave Fairfield before the end of May as
Colorado would still be very snowy and cold until then. Early June saw me heading west through
Iowa and Nebraska as fast as I could and, for the next 8 or 9 weeks, my car, a borrowed tent, Horace
the Pig and I travelled through a great deal of Colorado and Montana. Yes, this was Horace’s first
great adventure. I had found him in a toy shop in Fairfield some months earlier when I had been
doing some Inner Child work and he had become my constant companion. During the weeks Horace
and I travelled through Colorado we had many experiences and adventures, however, that’s another
story in itself and maybe I’ll write that book one day. Suffice it to say that at some stage, as I drove
over the state line into Montana, I felt as though I was coming home. It was truly amazing. There I
was many thousands of miles from the land of my birth and yet, for the first time in my life, I felt truly
at home on planet Earth.
The climax of this road trip was a 10 day wilderness camp in Montana which was to include a 48
hour Vision Quest. After the Indian Vedic traditions of MIU I found the traditions and ceremonies on
which the vision quest was based quite foreign. It seemed that everybody else in the camp had
experienced Native American spirituality and ceremony before and I felt like the new kid on the
block. Obviously there was something which had called me to that place at that time but I didn’t
know what it was. The first few days brought up all the processing issues I had been dealing with
over the previous months and, initially, I saw the vision quest as just two days and two nights of
deprivation due to the fears I was holding about being alone in the dark with no tent to protect me.
Then along came the day my dam broke and all the pent up emotions from my time in America
rushed to the surface seeking expression. The volcano had eventually erupted! I desperately wanted
to run away! However, help was at hand and once the watery lava flow had diminished words
poured out and were listened to. As the flow stopped completely I was told that I always had the
option to carry out the Vision Quest in my tent, nobody would think any the less of me and there
would be no judgement within the group. My world brightened considerably at that point. I decided
to stay and, IF I did the vision quest, it was going to be in my tent. I suppose in my heart I knew that,
even if I ran away from the camp, I would just be taking my fears along with me as I couldn’t run
away from them. The other reason for not leaving was that I suddenly felt part of the group. My
barriers had been broken down as the volcano erupted, my heart had opened up, I had allowed
people in and, from that moment on, everybody was very supportive. Over the next two days my
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attitude to the Vision Quest changed considerably and by the time we were due to set off I was quite
looking forward to it. My barriers had also stopped me from viewing the vision quest as all the others
saw it, a stepping stone to help them on their spiritual pathway. I still had some trepidation about
being alone on a hill in the dark for two nights in bear and mountain lion country; not something one
can prepare for in the UK! Still, fear is there to be walked through and, when the vision quest day
dawned, with due ceremony I left camp with all the others and was to be seen climbing my hill to
reach my designated questing spot.
Soon after I had settled myself in my circle a huge thunderstorm swept through and, as I
sheltered under my tarpaulin, the words which came unbidden into my mind were “Let go of
everything you brought with you”. My thoughts turned to the processing I had been doing of the
problems I encountered in the womb prior to my birth. The feeling in my makeshift tent was as
though this was my second chance. I was here to come back to the womb and be reborn, this time in
happy and joyous circumstances rather than the one of fear, disconnection from my feelings and a
feeling of complete abandonment which I had had at the time of my birth from my mother. Quite a
long time after the rain stopped I felt the need to enter back into the world, to be reborn without the
old fears and with a new sense of my feelings and emotions. No longer would I need to cringe in fear
from anything. This was the biggie, the thing I had come to this world to overcome. I emerged from
my makeshift tent and felt the need to strip naked, to be in the same state as the day I was born. My
connection with mother Earth was so strong it was as though she had allowed me to emerge from her
womb and bond with her in a way I had never known before. How long I lay there I do not know.
All I know is it gave me the most wonderful sense of happiness, joy and, most of all, freedom. Just
within my field of view was a beautiful orange flower. I don't know the name but it looked very like
the gaillardias I used to grow in my garden back home. It instilled a wonderful sense of happiness
deep within me, it was joyous. It had been blessed with the rain during the thunderstorm and now it
was happy sitting in the sun and feeling its warmth. Its joy radiated everywhere and I lay naked on
my bedroll and laughed and laughed and felt the joy and happiness permeate to the very heart of my
soul, my inner Being. It was my very first taste of true joy, a dip into the very essence of my being.
What a wonderful taste it was, to feel completely whole, unified, at one with myself, my inner being
and all around me. I had a feeling of unshakeability, that whatever happened, nothing could take
away that experience; a reconnection which, in writing about it now, I can experience again. It was a
true rebirth, a choice I made while in my womb-like shelter with the thunderstorm raging outside; my
choice to be reborn, to start the exploration of my true potential by consciously reconnecting with my
soul. My joy shone forth from every cell, every pore of my body, from every breath, every word and
every thought. I lay on a hillside alone and naked and found the very heart of who I am, my full
purpose and potential in life. Happiness Lights Her Way. That was the spiritual name I was gifted at
the closing ceremony of the camp two or three days later. My soul had spoken to me and I had
listened. It was the culmination of a year in which I had let go of my job, let go of the idea of who I
thought I was, let go of the possessions which for years had been part of that identification. Finally,
on my hilltop, I opened to the potential of what lay within in that seemingly empty space. A different
identification of self, stripped of all the trappings of my life up to that point, reborn into the arms of
my spiritual mother, Mother Earth, watched over by my spiritual father, Father Sky. Mother Earth
held me in her arms, nurtured me and provided me with my companions the tree people, creepy
crawlies, the plant people, the stone people. One lone flower pointed me to a new life, a new
identification and showed me that I was not alone and never would be. Father Sky cleared away the
storm clouds and showed me that the light of the sun can shine through and transmute even the
darkest storm clouds and bring lightness and joy to all beings who share the comfort of Mother Earth.
The Vision Quest also gave me my first magical taste of what can happen when you truly
reconnect with all around you. As I lay in the sun some hours later watching little fluffy white clouds
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float across the sky, a little fluffy white thought floated through my mind “Why not draw an energetic
line in the sky and have the intent that every cloud that reaches that line will disappear!” Well, why
not? During my camping exploits in Colorado some weeks earlier my companion had made me
aware of working consciously with the forces of nature. We had been camping out in a wilderness
area and she had invited some friends to come for dinner including two very boisterous children and
a dog. As they arrived we both noticed large thunder clouds gathering close by which were making
their way towards us. We just looked at one another and I immediately knew that MJ was telling me
telepathically that we could keep this storm at bay. So, that was our intent and hitting the storm
pause button worked. However, a couple of hours later we had both had enough and exchanged
looks again and nodded. From the point where we both hit the storm play button again to the time
the rain started to fall took less than two minutes and our guests took their hurried departure. Now,
here I was alone on my hillside in the wilderness of Montana, my intent was set, the line was drawn in
the sky and as each fluffy white cloud reached the line it vanished like a puff of smoke. Some time
later I noticed the clouds were sailing on past my line and realised that when my awareness was
distracted elsewhere the magic stopped and all I had to do to start it again was to reset my intent and
place my awareness on the task.
In the weeks and months which followed, the circumstances in which I placed myself made it
very difficult for me to reconnect with that joyful vision quest experience. Most times it was very
elusive and that was what provided the impetus for change. The desire and the will to reconnect with
that joyous essence I knew existed within, express that out into the world and fully own it, be it and
live it, became the driving force which spurred me on. As the years rolled on, a feeling of joy started
to permeate through my whole being more and more often. Throughout the journey, the torch of joy
has shone and allowed me to see into many dark, hidden, secret corners of my personality, some of
which put up quite a resistance to being brought into the light. However, the joy was never lost, just
went walk-about for a while, as it lies at the very core of who we are as human beings. My whole
being was gradually becoming more and more infused with the qualities of my soul - joy, lightness,
laughter and humour and, as it did, gained a much better understanding of the process of being a
perfectly imperfect human and the purpose which had brought me into human form again. With the
joy came a feeling of connectedness back to the Divine3 and removed the feeling of total isolation
which had been part of my life since birth. The feeling of not belonging was beginning to disappear
and being replaced with a connectedness to all beings on Earth.
Having torn down the walls of who I thought I was during my adventure into spirituality in
America and started to reconnect with my feelings and emotions for so long locked away, I found it
extremely difficult to accept being back in the UK and wanted to return to America where I had tasted
true FREEDOM for the first time. I couldn’t have defined what I meant by that as it was just a feeling
that had swept over me one day while walking down a road in Colorado and had remained with me
until I landed back in the country of my birth almost a year to the day after I had left. It was to take
me another thirteen years until I could put words to the definition as it took me that long to move
from an intellectual idea of what that phrase meant to the embodiment of the experience of it. Now, I
see that true freedom is gained when you take away all the rocks that you use to hide behind and step
out into the floodlight of your life naked and vulnerable and consciously choose what you wish to
experience in any and every moment.
I spent the last four months of 1993 and the whole of 1994 finding a new footing in the world and
getting back to paid employment as the coffers were very empty! However, probably the biggest
challenge was coming back into contact with the people who knew me before. I had gone through a
radical change while I had been away and yet, the interactions of all those who knew the old version
of me was the same as it had been pre-America, as that was the only me they knew. However, what I
3
The underlying creative and sustaining force in the Universe.
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was to find was that when one person in any relationship makes a change that relationship can never
be the same again. My mother was so confused about the changes she saw in me and the different
way I related to her that she was convinced I had been brainwashed while at MIU! Nothing I could
say or do would change her mind. So, 1994 became a year of building new foundations. The process
of contacting my inner child and balancing the emotional body which I had started whilst in Fairfield
continued at a fast pace and this allowed me to start synthesising my experiences, lessons and changes
from my time in the States where I had stepped out of the life I had known. 1995 can best be summed
up by a few words from my journal “Now is the time to cast aside the veil of fear; to let the very core
of my body’s memory express itself; to lance the boil of darkness which has caused so much to be
locked away for so long. Break free from the old fears, the old patterns and find, what? “ I was ready
to rebuild but had no idea what shape that would take. It took me until October to realise that I had to
surrender any ideas I might have and stop trying to control my life. As I wrote at the time “From time
to time I can’t seem to hack my big adventure because of the fear which gets in the way. I seem to
start off with great enthusiasm which then gets eroded as the jumps get bigger and bigger. Let this
adventure really open up into areas which I have not even considered and have not even entered my
mind. I SURRENDER TO THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE AND ACCEPT WHAT IT BRINGS.”
As a result, 1996 became a year of profound change and exploration of new pathways, not least of
which was learning to become a parent to my inner children. Alongside this, my integration process
continued in a much stronger way by addressing the control my mind had over my emotions. Last,
but not least I, was also taking conscious steps to open up my intuition and 1996 also became the Year
of the Feathers. I really learned to open up to my intuition by following my feet. This started one
day as I was walking through a beautiful yew forest and suddenly had the
thought “Follow your feet”. Surprised I mentally asked “Pardon?” “Follow
your feet” came the thought again. So, off I went until my feet stopped,
suddenly. The rest of my body was quite surprised and I all but fell flat on
my face! Something made me look down and there between my feet was a
feather. As a collector of feathers, I was very thankful but didn’t really think
too much about my find. “Follow your feet.” came the thought again. Who
was I to argue! Off I went once more and I’m pleased to say the rest of my
body was catching on by now and all the bits managed to come to a halt at
about the same time. Once again something made me look down and, lo and behold, yes, you’ve
guessed it, another feather. And that’s how I spent the rest of the summer, following my feet through
the forest! I quickly learnt the subtle difference between when I was following my feet and when I
thought I was following my feet. It really is amazing how wily the mind can become at times and
how well it can imitate the intuition.
After my Vision Quest in 1993, drums and feathers become quite prominent in my life in many
ways and everywhere I went I started collecting feathers. Even my friends got in on the act and
would collect feathers for me. I had so many I had to buy a hatbox so I could store them. On return
from the States I had leant Reiki as this form of healing had been so effective during my time at MIU.
This was closely followed by a course in holistic massage and I then began to practice both on a
regular basis. One day, during a session, a small voice inside my head said “Pick up a feather.” had I
heard right? Yes, there it was again “Pick up a feather.” So, I picked up a feather and allowed my
hands to be guided as to what to do. How amazing. It was like a remembrance, I could actually feel
the energy flowing through the feather and I felt as though they had always been a part of my life.
From then on they became a part of my healing sessions. While journaling one day I started writing
about the power of the feathered beings and I offer you the words I wrote at the time:
“My new found openness and flow of creativity has brought a new dimension to this area of my
life [healing sessions]. I have opened to allow a new power to flow through me. I call it the Angelic
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Force and it seems to be a synthesis of the great Atlantean power of the mind and the somewhat
unknown power of, and here I am at a loss for descriptive words, all I can call it is the power of the
feathered beings. Both are powers which I have used before but which have been locked away within
me for a very long time. I am now able to channel them because of the work I have done over the last
four years, to clear away the dross of lifetimes. I have found the gateway through which I needed to
go to access these powers again. The Atlantean power is being felt by many at this time and is a
vibrant, mental energy which can only be accessed with an open heart. The power of the feathered
beings is very different and at the moment I do not question what it is or where it comes from. I only
know that somewhere, sometime and some place it has worked through me before. It is a potent
healing force which I think somehow allows the person receiving healing to access a clarity of vision
concerning the area of their life which needs attention. From that point on, it is, as ever, up to the free
will of that person whether they wish to use the information they see. It is as though the power of the
feathered beings allows them to soar above their life and see it from a different perspective. For me, I
feel this energy flowing through me in an extremely vibrant way. It is as though I am translating
some of the energy into thoughts which I then pass on in a telepathic way to the healee. I also find I
use feathers to clear blocked areas, to assist the flow of energy through the body, to draw in energy
where it has leaked and subsequently patch those areas, almost like darning a hole in a sock. While I
have experienced the Atlantean energy before on this Earth the energy of the feathered beings comes
from a different dimension but one that has been very familiar to me in the past. I know the
knowledge I need will be uncovered soon and I will have a much greater understanding of what it is,
what it can be used for and where and how I will channel it. For now, I just have to open to it and
trust my intuition.”
I went on to write: “I have come to an acceptance of my humanness. I understand and accept
that I am here on Earth not only to experience life through the physical senses but also to raise the
vibration of the physical body to enable me to experience higher energies/frequencies both through
the physical senses and the inner, finer senses. A complete integration of all aspects of my being
bringing about a transformation, the alchemy so long sought after and highly prized through the ages.
The task of integration has only just started but will now move on quickly. I have much to learn and
will spend the rest of this lifetime exploring and opening to new energies and continuing the
integration of these within the capacity of my human body. Of necessity, the frequency of my body
will need to change to enable these energies to flow through, otherwise it would be like trying to put
too much current through a thin wire, the fuse would blow, which is what is happening to a great
many people at this time. Their inner resistance is too great in comparison to the power they are
attempting to draw through them and the end result is that the fuse blows. This need not be serious
as long as there is an awareness of what has happened and they take steps to resolve their inner
conflict, the resistance. The present change of frequency which is occurring at this time is presenting
an opportunity which has never been possible for a human being. A great ending is occurring and the
stirrings of a new birth, a golden age, are taking place. As ever, each soul in human form at this time
has the free will to choose whether to experience this rebirth or to remain locked into the tidal wave of
fear which has washed this planet for aeons.”
I was not a stranger to the energy of drums as, during my time in school, many years before, I had
had the opportunity to play timpani in a school orchestra in my home town. So, when I came across
hand held frame drums during the wilderness camp in Montana I was hooked and my desire was not
just to buy one but to make my own. This desire was fulfilled during 1995 when I attended a drum
making weekend and became the proud owner of my own handcrafted drum. As my drum and I
came into resonance with one another, there was another remembering as I started using it for healing
and journeying. Eventually, I started my own drum making workshops as I kept coming across so
many people who had a similar desire to craft their own. Gradually I came to realise that I was
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acknowledging my ownership of the energy of the shaman within, not something I had consciously
set out to be, rather a part of me which was as old as the hills and which I had been unconsciously
reclaiming. Between 1995 and 1997 I added to my use of vibrational tools by learning another form
of healing, Esoteric Healing4 and, alongside that, served what I can only call a two year apprenticeship
in the use of sound from a fellow esoteric healer. Once again this turned out to be a time of
remembering and integrating a part of myself which already seemed to know what to do. All in all,
by the end of 1996 my links with the world of spirit were now very strong indeed and the vibrations I
was working with on an every day basis were becoming finer and higher. My spiritual dwelling
certainly had new and very sturdy foundations and the building blocks were in place to reconstruct
the main body. Many inner resistances to change had been dissipated, many old patterns within my
body had started to dissolve and the whole process was becoming more and more joyous. Humour,
laughter and lightness, compassion both for myself and others, simplicity and willingness to accept
change had become the cornerstones of this process.
As I sat to write my journal on New Year’s Eve 1996 I reflected on what had been a year of
profound change. It felt as though the shift, which I had consciously started in 1990, had now allowed
me to reach a new understanding and experience of who I was and the words which came into my
mind were “I am ready”. Ready for what I didn’t know and, whereas in the past the not knowing
would have caused me worry and concern, now I felt a sense of adventure percolating through every
fibre of my being. The words I wrote in my journal were:
“I am not the person who entered 1996 - I am far less fearful; have uncovered much more of my power
and inner strength; have learned the extent to which I enacted the ways of my parents within my life,
coming to understand how I treated my inner children in the same way as they had. I have learned
new ways of parenting my inner children - I am still learning these new parenting skills and I ask their
forgiveness when I go astray. I have started to learn to listen, not just with my outer ears but all my
senses both inner and outer [esoteric and exoteric]. I have found toning5 and the use of sound, to be of
extreme value. I forgave myself, I stopped the self-hatred, self-loathing, self-guilt and self-shame over
the abusive situations within my life and have started to love myself, honour myself and listen to my
soul.
For now, I have one thing to say to all the various parts of me: “Well done, I’m proud of you. We
have reached a level of synthesis I wouldn’t have believed possible at the start of the year, it’s beyond
my wildest imaginations”. Thank you to all my ancestors, guides, helpers, totems and, not least
Mother Earth, Father Sky and Great Spirit. Farewell Annie of 1996 a new Annie is in the process of
birth. May 1997 see the completion of that birth and the growth of Rainbow Annie.”
And so the stage was set, although I didn’t know it at the time, for an adventure which, even in my
wildest dreams, I could never have imagined!! From there on in, although the personal synthesis
carried on and will carry on to my dying day as I shift and grow into ever higher aspects of who I am,
a new transpersonal dimension started to open up in my life.
On to 1997 which brought the beginnings of my awareness of humanity and my own inner
desires and visions. A year of resolution of old hurts and a growing awareness; an acceptance of inner
parts of me which were now reaching the surface, as though I was collecting into the present all that I
ever had been or would be and starting to express them into the present day. The year my true
EXPLORATION began and I became a pioneer of a new kind, a pioneer into consciousness and the
energy that was hidden below the surface of everything. The words which spurred me on and which
were whispered in my head time and time again during the year were “look through and beyond”,
“look through and beyond what you see on the surface”.
On a personal level, the highlight of the year was the reclaiming of my power. This process had
various strands which played out throughout the year including the joining of my masculine and
feminine, the reclaiming of my abused teenager and the journey to the very core of who I was. The
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year started with a frightening experience during one of my counselling sessions when I spent about
one and a half hours in what I called my frozen state. I had never experienced it quite so fully before
and, as I said, in a way it frightened me. I had trouble drawing breath, my adrenals were pumping
energy although I did not have the feeling of adrenalin flowing through my body, all my muscles
were tense and I was unable to move and speak. Try as I might I could not get my physical body to
respond to my wishes! What was it about? How could I contact that part of me if it didn’t wish to
communicate? I was certainly rather pissed off with it as somehow I knew it was always there in the
background but was no longer saving me or defending me and had become a hindrance to my
progress. Using meditation, I came to understand that this frozen state reached back to my time in the
womb and I needed to find some way to contact that non-verbal part of me and communicate with it.
I came to call it my martyr. An NLP practitioner friend of mine came up with the answer, use of a
Timeline, where I would go back to the very first time in this lifetime that I had entered that state. I
saw my mother in a hospital bed with a doctor next to the bed telling her she needed an operation to
remove an ovarian cyst otherwise her life may be in danger. He was also telling her that it was very
probable I would not survive. We moved on to the time of the operation and I was very scared as all
sorts of strange things were going on and I felt very unsafe. Part of me wanted to leave there and then
but it seemed very important to fight to stay and be born and use my will to enter the world in a
physical body once again. The frozen state kept me alive during the operation, it was my only means
of survival, almost like being in suspended animation but the fear was intense. However, that tiny
baby had chosen to fight hard to come into the world and live when the easier option would have
been to die. Even now when I meet a difficult situation I occasionally feel my survival instinct start to
kick in and the frozen state is an option I have to consciously choose not to enter.
After the revelations of the Timeline, we went on to Parts Negotiation and I was asked to bring
the energy of the martyr into my hand. It was definitely in my left hand as I could feel its weight. It
was like a pebble, very smooth, not even a chink on its surface, cold and hard! I knew it held my truth
and integrity and ensured that nothing could impair that, to the extent that it had defended them, to
the very end, on many occasions in the past. The opposite of that, in my right hand, turned out to be a
two inch high green leprechaun who made me laugh just looking at it and brought a feeling of
lightness and freedom. I felt such joy. It really wanted to fully experience and enjoy life but had no
great regard for any of the heavy necessities of life! As mediator, I asked these two if they could find
it within themselves to start talking to each other about their needs and intentions instead of doing
their own thing all the time, without any discussion with each other. The outer shell of the martyr
immediately disintegrated and became soft. What was left was like a fluffy cotton wool cloud. The
pair said they would like to get together, so, I placed the imp on the cloud and sat with them for a
while. They felt as though they belonged together and had melded into one. I then put them both in
my heart.
This session was closely followed by a very profound series of dreams where I was climbing
down a long tunnel built into the Earth with a number of other people (presumably aspects of myself).
We would climb down, then find that the radiation was too powerful and climb back up again. In
each dream we would climb further and further down the tunnel towards the core, the source of the
radiation, but each time I would say it was too strong and climb back out again. The resolution of this
came not in a dream state but in full waking consciousness when journaling one day and I wrote the
following words “Deep inside something stirs. My father has come alive inside me, down near the
very core that I had been so fearful of finding as the radiation was too strong. In unlocking my father
within I have discovered my mother energy. That soft, gentle, compassionate, loving energy which,
when called on to keep her children safe, turns into the she-wolf, fangs bared, growling a warning to
all who intend harm. If her posture, raised hackles, and warning growls are not heeded, the intruder
into her children’s sacred space had better beware as she will defend her young in every way she
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knows, to the death, if necessary!” At last I had broken through the barrier which was one of my own
making and had been there as a defence mechanism for a very long time.
The next step in the process came when I did a guided meditation for me to meet my masculine
and feminine and for them to meet and communicate with each other. My feminine came in from the
West, the place of personal truth and inner answers, riding on Deer to signify gentleness and
accompanied by Squirrels, Rabbits, Fox, Badger and Birds - her friends. She presented herself as a
fairy and was laughing and very happy. She was very, very old and at the same time very, very
young and I knew she could show me the magic in life. She was full of such love, compassion and joy
- my heart felt wide open. She had a magic wand in her hand with which to sprinkle fairy dust.
People don’t always understand her. She brings joy and lightness and some people try and capture
that for themselves and try to change her. She can only work her magic when she feels very, very
safe. She has spent many long years in captivity and was very close to death. There was only the
faintest whisper of life left within her and it has taken a long period of recovery and rehabilitation to
enable her to reach a state of full energy and power. She still has a little way to go but is rapidly
growing stronger each day. Her power is returning and with it the tools she has used in the past,
empathy, telepathy and all her psychic powers and the fear of using them is receding.
My masculine entered from the East, the place of the greatest spiritual challenges, the place of
illumination. He was walking slowly and had no animals with him. My first sense was of an old man
with a cloak. As I watched he grew taller, more like a warrior, with a crown on his head, then he
changed into a dragon. He had many forms and could change them at will to keep us safe so that
whoever we meet he will be daunting to them. He has some anger at himself, as he doesn’t believe he
always protected us, especially as a child - he was too immature. However, he made up for that and
has been doing too good a job at keeping us safe. He is a magician as well.
They met in the clearing in the wood, talked for a long time and came to a place of
communication which allowed them to agree to combine their magical powers and live and work
together in harmony. The feelings inside were wonderful at this point. They left the clearing, hand in
hand, surrounded by ALL the animals and at one with everything. They walked out of the clearing to
the North, the place of wisdom and power. As they left they allowed their true selves to be seen, a
regal handsome couple very much in love, both of whom have magical powers and the ability to
shape shift. They have truly joined together and now dance together in harmony. It is now up to me
to keep listening and working to keep that balance and harmony.
The culmination of the whole process came when I received a message from my inner child
during a journaling session. Her words were “I’m not bruised, battered, crying, hurting, hiding from
the world, needing to stay cocooned inside where it is safe but WANTING TO BREAK FREE &
EXPLORE!”
That exploration really got underway in about May or June ‘97 when I joined a group of people at
regular get-togethers in order to explore our awareness of subtle energy, the qualities of empathy and
how it affected us as individuals and as a group. The aim was to explore the boundaries of our
consciousness by widening our views of normal and so pushing out our own boundaries both as
individuals and as a group. We would come together about once a month, usually with a slightly
different mix of people each time, it didn’t matter who, we would just come together to open our
awareness and experience wider and wider. We continually, openly and honestly shared our
individual experiences within the group to enable each of us to come to a better understanding and
experience of the fact that, as individuals we each have a unique experience, and, in accepting that
fact, become more tolerant of one another in the process. We explored the qualities of empathy by
pooling our experiences and so widening our understanding. The main way of doing this within the
group was to speak out whenever we felt a restriction or funny feeling anywhere in our bodies. For
instance, one day we had been sitting within the group for about 15 minutes and I suddenly felt as
26
Song of the Stars 2 - Lets Hit the Pause Button
though my throat had closed down, it physically felt very restricted and painful. We immediately
stopped what we had been doing and, in the group discussion which followed it turned out that, just
before she left home, one of the participants had had an argument with somebody on the phone and
had not resolved her feelings about it. As soon as she said those words we all felt her energy change
as she let go of her anger at not speaking out and the restriction in my throat immediately dissolved.
These were powerful experiences and insights into true group dynamics and how we all pick up
emotions from others especially when they are unexpressed emotions which hold an enormous
amount of energy.
We also explored the boundaries of our consciousness, both as individuals and as a group, so
widening our views of normal and allowing us to explore ever widening vistas of consciousness.
Each one of us was different and we experienced things in a different way, a unique way. To give you
an example, after one meditation one of the people in the group said she had not experienced
anything. When the group leader challenged her saying there’s always something, even the smallest
flicker of a feeling, she said “Well only the usual red dots”. “Hands up who else sees red dots when
they meditate” the group leader asked and, of course, there was not a hand to be seen. Another good
example came after we had had a coffee break and there were a number of dirty cups and mugs on the
table. The group leader asked whether we thought it was possible to be able to determine who had
used a particular mug by feeling the energy of them. Two of us immediately said “Yes we do it all the
time” which I found rather interesting as, until that moment, it was not something I had been
conscious of doing.
We had great fun exploring our awareness of subtle energy. As a group, we’d practise bringing
the energy of something into the room, usually a living creature, then, as individuals, we’d dip into
that energy, bring it back inside ourselves to see how it felt to us, how we sensed it. For example,
we’d each of us bring the energy of a buffalo into the room in whatever way was unique to us, then,
almost like dipping a straw into lemonade, we would draw some of the essential energy of the buffalo
into us. Having done that, as a group, we would release the buffalo and experience what it felt like to
each of us individually. Each of us had a different experience, our own unique experience. Some
would maybe see colours, others scenes where buffalo would roam. Some would have feelings within
their body; others would maybe hear words or sounds and some would simply know things. Nothing
was right, wrong, good or bad, an experience was an experience and not to be judged by you or
anyone else in the group or compared in any way, just accepted and acknowledged. To end the
session we would usually spend some time bringing in energy for the whole of humanity by giving
our awareness and energy to the forming of a better sense of unity or envisaging the One Heart, the
one Mind and the one Soul of Humanity starting to take form and becoming a reality.
What other experiences were relevant in the lead up to the Odyssey? I suppose one of them has
to be the opening of awareness on a more global scale by something which I can only call the Birthing
of the World Citizen – the alternative society. During late ’97 and on through ’98 I became aware of a
global, I was going to say Movement, but that does not fully describe the coming together of people
using the power of the internet and e-mail; almost instantaneous global communication, cutting
through the barriers of race, creed, colour, society and country. People, who had never seen each
other but knew instinctively that they desired the same values to be expressed in the world, were
being attracted into loose knit groups with no leadership just a common bond in their vision for the
world and humanity. The vision had no particular shape as the important factor was the qualities to
be expressed. The links in the chain for the e-mails were a number of people across the globe who
chose to gather together the alternative news and sent it out on a regular basis to ever expanding
numbers of interested people. There was also a growing use of the term Lightworker which had
gradually crept into being over a number of years and related to people who had awakened from the
slumbers of their ordinary lives and were starting to fulfil the reasons why they were on Earth at this
27
Song of the Stars 2 - Lets Hit the Pause Button
time. This certainly resonated with me and, for the first time in my life, I could say I really felt
passionate about what I was doing which was having the intention of living the purest, highest,
clearest expression of my own true note in every moment of my life. Believe me I was no saint and
my process was still very up and down but, after the long years of personal development since 1990,
my intent was to commit myself to work for the good of humanity in whatever way my guides and
companions on the higher planes saw fit. Little did I know what they had in mind!
And so to 1998!
All sorts of events and choices led to the set of circumstances that entrained the adventure which this
year was to bring. Some people would call them coincidences but, when I look back with my 20/20
hindsight vision, I would say not only was my soul pushing me in the direction that I went and to
make the choices I made but also that my soul and Jackie’s were in collusion! It felt as though all
roads had led to this moment; all the personal development I had gone through had been a prelude to
what was to unfold. The first time I consciously heard my soul speak to me was back in 1992 when I
listened and went to MIU. Now some of the choices I made didn’t seem logical but I went with them
anyway as I was listening and trusting what I heard. February saw me renting the bungalow in East
Brent as I expected to get a job in Bristol some 30 miles northeast up the M5 motorway. Wrong! A
few weeks later the job that turned up was the one in Surrey some 129 miles east, almost into London.
That was when I contacted Jackie who lived some 30 miles from where I was to work to see if she
would put me up for a couple of weeks while I hunted for some more accommodation nearer to my
work, somewhere I could stay Monday to Friday then spend my weekends down in Somerset. That
phone call opened up the door which, unbeknownst to me at the time, would lead us on a quite
magical adventure.
Now you’re up to date, let’s open the cabin door, step out onto American soil and really get this
Odyssey underway.
“Not before time.” shout Horace and Grumps as they are almost uncontainable in their excitement
28
Chapter 3 Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
In the universe, there are things that are known, and things that are unknown, and in between, there are
doors.
William Blake
Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
This is the end of our fourth whole day on American soil and today’s aim was the Badlands
National Park in South Dakota which lies towards the western side of the state. We started off this
morning at a campsite in Iowa, where we pitched our tent for the first time two days ago, and have
driven about 380 miles today. We had hoped to be out of Iowa before we set up camp for the first
time. However, if you’re British and you’ve ever driven in the States, you’ll know how it is, you look
at the map and distances don’t look very large. Somehow your mind coverts what it sees on paper to
your experiences driving round the British Isles. “Oh, it’s only about 3 inches” your mind says, “We’ll
be able to do that in about 2 hours”. It always seems to take quite a few missed targets and quite a
few days longer than you think for the mind to start comprehending that the distances on the maps
are VAST. South Dakota alone is about 400 miles from east to west and presumably the same size
west to east!
Just to bring you up to date with the travelling so far; having gone through immigration at St.
Louis, Missouri, we eventually flew on to Minneapolis/St Paul, called the Twin Cities, still courtesy of
TWA, arriving much later than planned after a very long, tiring journey. We had already decided to
let ourselves in gently and book into a hotel on the first night, which is exactly what we did. Luxury!
Possibly the last little bit of luxury for the next 5 weeks. A hot shower and large gin and tonic each,
dinner via room service and we were more than ready to curl up in the two queen sized beds. Jackie
was in seventh heaven as smoking was allowed in the hotel lobby. She was to be seen, curled up in
the most amazingly large armchair which almost seemed to swallow her whole, making up for lost
time on the nicotine intake due to the non-smoking rule on the flights and in the airports!
The following morning, refreshed and renewed and with a very large American style breakfast
inside us, including hash browns, we set off for the airport to pick up our rental car. During the trip
there in the hotel courtesy bus I was making mental notes of all the turns as I knew I would have to
find my way back to the hotel behind the wheel of the car to pick up our luggage. I must confess to
being the teensy weensiest bit nervous as it was a good two and a half years since I had last driven in
the States and here we were right in the middle of a large city. The driver of our bus was a most
cuddly man who asked us where we were planning to go and, when we told him our possible
itinerary, asked whether we could wait while he went and packed his bag! To our amazement there
was hardly any traffic although it was getting on for mid-morning and the driver explained that
Minneapolis was the home of North West Airlines which normally carried about 80% of the visitors to
the area. However, the city had been almost deserted since the strike started some weeks ago. Our
car turned out to be a large silver Ford Mercury with Florida plates, the Sunshine State it said.
Obviously a long way from home, just like us! Very originally we nicknamed her Flo and as we
walked towards her my feelings of being a little lonely, lost and scared shot to the surface again.
However, once behind the wheel and, having talked through turning left and right a few times, we set
off. A piece of cake! The driver me soon took over and in no time at all I was back in the groove of
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
driving on the wrong side of the road. Before we set off for Iowa we couldn’t resist a visit to The Mall
of America which, as the brochure states is “the largest fully enclosed retail and family entertainment
complex in the United States”. It is HUGE!! We reckoned it would have taken a few days to get
around all the shops. Right in the middle is an indoor themed entertainment park called Camp
Snoopy which covers 7 acres, complete with a big Ferris wheel. In addition, there are about 520
speciality stores, together with 4 major department stores. As we were eager to start our journey
south and, more importantly, we didn’t want to get lost inside such a giant complex, we only saw a
tiny fraction of it. Sandals for all eventualities were the order of the day, although I did succumb to
the most delightful statue of two wolves entitled Soul Mates which now resides in the UK with me.
Feet shod, coffee and brownies devoured and luggage collected, in that order, we set off to find the
interstate, Highway I35 South as our first port of call was to be Fairfield in Iowa. It was quite late in
the day when we left Minneapolis/St Paul and it was a 100 mile drive just to take us out of Minnesota
and into Iowa. At ten o’clock that evening, a further 200 miles later, we were still nearly 70 miles short
of Fairfield and, as this didn’t seem to be the right conditions to start our camping exploits, we found
a motel for the night.
Fairfield doesn’t show up on many maps of the U.S.A. as it is quite small and tucked away in the
south east corner of the state, about 50 miles from the great Mississippi River which forms the border
with the state of Illinois. What’s that, “A strange place to start a holiday.” I hear you say. Well, as I
said earlier, for me it was unfinished business. In August 1993 when I returned to the UK after
spending the best part of a year in Fairfield, I was hoping to return there quite quickly and had left
most of my possessions in the basement of the house where I had rented an apartment. So, 6 years
later, I decided to take the opportunity to return and sort out my past once and for all. The climate in
Iowa is extreme, to say the least, both winter and summer. Summer is humid and very hot, while
winter is very, very cold. During the time I had been away, my possessions had obviously been
subjected to a great deal of dampness and what I found was a rotting mess. In fact as we entered the
basement to search for my possessions the air was so hot and humid the metal frame of my glasses
bent. When I picked up a half-rotted book and read the title, Reclaiming Your Inner Child, I knew I
could let go of that episode in my life. The only items I managed to salvage were a few books of
slightly damp piano music. With these safely stached in a plastic carrier bag in the boot of the car we
set off to purchase the camping items we needed for the remainder of the trip.
Wal-Mart, on the outskirts of Fairfield, turned out to be a camper’s dream. $200 bought us two
trolleys bursting with all the camping items you could possibly imagine and with this safely tucked
away in Flo’s boot, or should I say trunk, we set off west on Highway I34. I said my fond farewells to
Fairfield knowing that I would probably never go back again, after all what would ever draw me back
to that small corner of a state renowned only for its flatness, corn and pigs and “Bridges of Madison
County”. Oh, I’m sorry Horace, and you. Fairfield was his hometown and Iowa his home state. In
fact I think I saw a little tear roll down Horace’s cheek as he finally said his fond farewells from the
back seat where he and Grumps and a new friend were perched on top of our bags. The new friend
was Frizzle, a beanie wolf cub who I had rescued from the bottom of a bin full of beanies at
Minneapolis airport. As I listened to their conversation I heard Grumps asking Horace where the
mountains were as it seemed so flat in Iowa. Horace replied “make the most of these rolling hills as
you’ll probably have had your fill of mountains by the end of this trip”. Frizzle was saying that he
somehow knew he was destined to live in a forest but as he had never yet seen a tree, he wasn’t quite
sure what forests and trees were. As they continued their conversations on the back seat I turned my
attention to the road ahead as I heard Horace start to tell Frizzle a few things about humans and life.
After the previous day’s journey, we vowed that we would find somewhere to stop for the night by 6
p.m. each day and, by 5.30 that evening, we found our very first campsite at Red Haw State Park,
about 75 miles west of Fairfield. The park was situated in an area of woodland and, as we pulled in,
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
Frizzle was to be seen jumping up and down on the back seat as Horace had just told him we would
be camping overnight in a small forest! As with many other American campgrounds, there was a
good scattering of trees, many sites for RVs (campervans in English English) with electrical/water and
sewage hook-ups and a number of sites specifically for tents. All the sites were large and well spaced
out. We chose a site which was relatively flat, had the greatest amount of privacy, overlooked the
lake, but not too near that we would get munched during the night by flying marauders and, most
importantly, was relatively close to the washrooms. After all middle-aged bladders are not what they
once were! All the sites were stony so we chose one that would give us the flattest and softest pitch
possible. Thank goodness we’d had that one tent practice back in the UK and had some idea of how
all the bits were supposed to fit together. Although we didn’t experience any difficulty, getting it up
it took us a good hour and a quarter before we were satisfied with its integrity. After a meal in a
nearby café we sat under the Stars for the first time since landing in America two days previously. It
was lovely to breathe in the fresh air, rather than the conditioned air of aircraft, hotels and motels.
The adventure had begun.
We decided that we would dowse for some flower remedies. As I said earlier, we had found these to
be an essential tool during the spring and summer back in the UK so had brought them with us. It
was our first session of energy work since we had landed on American soil. Jackie’s experience
related to the opening of a much deeper connection with nature. Not only did she see an energy
funnel opening at the back of her heart, a beautiful soft pale magenta/silver colour, which was the
start of her connection with nature in a different way, she also saw an image of a grotesque frame like
the one’s surgeons screw into people’s legs to hold bones in place. She said “It’s as if I have allowed
this framework to be screwed into place somewhere in my psyche by society. It's the whole process of
thousands of years of civilisation - the framework of separation from Nature; both inner and outer nature
- and I don't want it there any more, but haven't removed it yet. Maybe it will take a while and happen in
stages. Perhaps that's what stopping in Red Haw is about - the gradual dismantling process.”
You will find as you progress through these pages that Jackie usually sees things, whilst I usually
know things. It appears that there are 3 ways of sensing, other than with the 5 physical senses – seeing,
feeling and knowing and an individual usually has one of these more highly developed than the others.
That doesn’t mean to say that they don’t use the other two. So, Jackie and I usually sense things
differently although we usually find that when we review our experiences they are telling us more or less
the same thing. Actually having said that, my experience that evening was very different from Jackie’s.
As soon as we had taken our flower essences I had the impression of someone standing next to me. I
could both feel them and almost see them as a shadowy figure. Being very much still in my left brain
what with being only 4 days away from a very cerebral office job and all the driving, I chose to ignore
what I almost saw and felt. You would have thought that all the experiences during the summer would
have taught me that you cannot just ignore energy you have called in and that if you put up any
resistance within the physical body the result is likely to be painful. But no, resistance and denial was
what I put in place and very soon I felt very strange indeed. I decided that I needed to use the washroom
before climbing into my sleeping bag but found it very difficult to walk. After about an hour’s sleep I
woke up with a terrible pain on the right side of my head, especially above the right eye and a strange
sensation at the top of my spine. I felt heartbroken, very uncomfortable and very sad. At this stage Jackie
woke up and I started to tell her about the earlier presence which I had ignored. As I did, I was aware of
the presence yet again, tall and strong. Jackie said she was getting the impression of my father. As by
now I was very much in my right brain and listening to my intuition again, I said it wasn’t my earthly
father I felt it was more like my father in heaven. Immediately the thought came in that it was my
heavenly father. I felt humbled and quickly apologised and said I hadn’t meant to turn him away. I
started to feel better immediately, having taken away the resistance to the energy. It was a salutary
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
lesson that the mind always wants to put some logical explanation on things and when it can’t it tries to
ignore what is happening. From now on I would have to become even more aware of my thoughts in
order to stay balanced between the right and left brain – logic and intuition. We had our usual tea and
brownies, very soothing, and went to sleep straight away.
The next morning we went back to the nearby café for a very leisurely breakfast. Little did we
know it then but, throughout our trip, breakfast would become the time when we reviewed the
previous day’s happenings and understanding would dawn - sometimes. Over our bacon, eggs (over-
easy), hash browns and coffee we talked about our journey so far and last night’s happenings. Of the
need to ease ourselves into nature in order to establish a strong link with the Earth and all the other
kingdoms – mineral, vegetable and animal, especially the animal, within which designation I include
all the creepy crawlies of which there are many species in the United States of America, especially
when you are camping! As we were talking, energy started coming in, in a big way. I became very
hot and Jackie saw a connection from the golden sphere of the star Aldebaran (the eye of the bull in
Taurus) to a golden sphere at the right side of my head. This
was right at the spot where I had had a pain last night prior to
sending away my Father in Heaven. She also saw a connecting
tube from the sphere through the alta major6
an energy centre at the back of the head, through the throat and
into the heart. This was the first time either of us had been
aware of any direct connections between the Stars and our physical bodies and we had no idea of the
significance of it. It seemed that whatever we had come to America for had started.
Although Jackie was very keen to get moving and leave Iowa, we decided we would take time to
catch up on our journals and write some postcards. We had already done a lot of travelling in a short
time, and would see whether we felt like travelling later on in the day. So, breakfast over and review
complete, we meandered back to the campsite and dowsed to see whether we should take some more
flower essences. Only for me this time and, having taken them, I went to sit under a tree close to the
lake while Jackie decided to sit on the wooden pontoon which stretched out into the water. While she
wrote her postcards and caught up with her journal, I spent the next few hours lying under my tree in
what I can only describe as a most ecstatic state. My whole body, every cell seemed to tingle with joy
and time seemed to lose all meaning. I was still aware that I was under the tree but it was almost as
though I didn’t have a body in the physical sense. I was amazed when I eventually staggered up to
the tent to find that three hours had passed. As far as I was concerned time had disappeared. Still no
understanding of what was happening, although I had experienced something similar the day before
we left the UK. That experience had been even more delightful as I had been swimming in the sea
and the Cosmos with whales and dolphins!
We decided that it was too late to move on from Red Haw and would stay another night. As
Jackie had spent the whole afternoon waiting for me to come to, the least I could do was to volunteer
to cook supper – a stir fry. It was to be one of only two meals we cooked for ourselves the whole trip
due to the fact that we had no means at our disposal for keeping food cool. A stir fry over a camping
stove causes a great amount of heat, combine that with hot, sticky weather and you have one hot chef.
Add a large number of wasps, some of which keep flying into your ears, a great influx of campers into
the site as it was the weekend and I felt that I just had to get out of the place. My throat felt as though
it was about to burst and a good scream would have come in handy. So, after supper I suggested we
go for a drive in the car. Oh, that lovely air conditioning under the armpits! Just what the doctor
ordered. One thing about the States is they don't have leafy country lanes like Britain. They have
Interstate highway, equals motorway; ordinary highway equals A roads then immediately they seem
to be down to dirt roads which don’t really exist in the UK. So, we swung west on I34 for a short
while and I tried some toning to release the energy which seemed stuck in my throat. However, all
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
that seemed to happen was that Jackie caught the condition as well, so I pulled off the highway at the
edge of a dirt road. The light was fading fast and we decided to see if we could find out what was
going on. It seemed that we needed to speak about something so we both sat quietly in the car. After
a few minutes I started to get the thoughts in my head that we were in an area of the country which
had seen the deaths of many Native Americans in unpleasant circumstances and that the spirits of
many of those who had died were still in the area. This seems to be quite a usual phenomenon,
especially where people have died in sudden and violent circumstances. It’s almost as though they
keep recreating their physical existence even though they do not have their physical bodies any more.
In other words they aren’t aware they are dead – hence ghosts. Well, it seems we had linked in with
the energy of these people and we had the understanding that we could help them become aware of
their situation and build a bridge to assist them in crossing over fully into the spirit realm. We had
both had experience of such energy work in the past, so the concept was not new to us. Well, if that
would make us feel better and help these souls, so be it. We metaphorically rolled up our sleeves
ready to start, once Jackie had had a cigarette. By now the light had almost gone, we were miles from
anywhere, sitting at the edge of a dirt road in the car. We were just about to close our eyes when a
police car drew up. Whoops!! “Would he come at us with a gun in his hand” was my first thought.
I’d obviously been watching too many American programmes on TV because as we let the window
down he strolled up to the car and asked if we were ok. Without thinking I said that we had been
driving for a very long time and were so tired we needed a rest so had pulled over to sleep in the car
for a while. “Ok ma’am he said” and with that off he went.
Once the rescue work was over we returned to camp and while we were waiting for the kettle to
boil Jackie had some higher guidance come through. She spoke about the fact that once all the Indian
nations had lived in peace. They were connected up to the Stars and the elders knew the Starlore and
lived by it, so the tribes lived in harmony and peace. The Starlore wisdom was held by the elders, not
the ordinary folk, but the tribe respected the elders and were content to follow their ways. Then some
of the folk sought adventure and independence and wandered further and further out from the tribe
and heard other things. As they separated out their links to the elders and the Starlore thinned and
eventually dispersed. The tribes no longer lived under the Starlore and the wisdom the elders held.
They began to war among themselves and peace and harmony were lost to the land. Now the time
has come to return to the ways of living under the canopy of the Stars and according to their lore.
Wow, it was as though the land was speaking to us; as though we were unconsciously linking in with
the energy of the past which somehow was held within the land. What a day! We decided to have an
early night, get up early the following day and finally leave Iowa. Looking back on this period with
20/20 hindsight I can now see that we needed this slow start to allow us time to link in with and come
into resonance with the different energies in the USA.
Oh, calamity! I woke very early and for some reason the airbed felt very uncomfortable. Not
surprising as I found it was as flat as a pancake! The stony ground and my weight had conspired to
puncture the one item of camping equipment which was an absolute essential for me, my comfortable
bed. After breaking camp and breakfast in the local café, we set off to find a replacement bed. This
time I went for a camp bed with a sprung-canvas top stretched over a tubular steel frame. During this
shopping expedition I came across a very lonely looking teddy bear sitting all by himself on a
supermarket shelf. He was just begging to be given a good home as there was no one to look after
him. Having asked him whether he liked travelling “I don’t know” he said “I don’t know what
travelling is” and whether he minded sharing the back seat of a car with a pig, a gorilla and wolf cub,
he said he didn’t, I added him to my shopping basket. Tanner had joined us on our adventure and,
when we reached the car, Horace immediately said he would look after him and tell him all he needed
to know. So, for the next few days Horace and Tanner were inseparable and Tanner sat quietly
between Horace’s legs drinking in every word the wise pig said. With my new bed safely tucked
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
away in the boot [trunk], off we set to find South Dakota and the Badlands. We wiggled our way west
and north through the rest of Iowa and entered South Dakota at Sioux Falls.
Now you’re fully up to date and here we are at Lake Vermillion, about 86 miles inside South
Dakota, on the eastern side of the state, it’s Saturday 12th September 1998, and we’ve just pitched our
tent. Conservative estimate of mileage to the Badlands is about 300ish miles. “Well it didn’t look far
on the map” we said to ourselves and made a vow that each day we set off to travel to another
location, we would not have any expectation of when we would reach it. We would just travel, at our
own pace, stopping whenever we felt like a break, meandering wherever we were drawn to go and
would accept that we would arrive at our next destination sometime! What freedom that gave us as
the mind could let go of its job of continually reminding us of where we were expecting to be that
night and how long it was likely to take us. Oh mind! I love you dearly, but do you ever take a
holiday? Please, please take a break we are not in any hurry!
We’ve had quite a strange evening again. It started with a wonderful sunset. The sky’s been blue
all day, in fact since our arrival in the country the weather has been very hot and sunny every day and
very warm at night as well. As the sun was starting to set a few clouds seemed to come from
nowhere, as they often do, and formed themselves into what can only be described as angels wings. It
was so beautiful it almost defied description. Having sat and just watched the sky until the sun was
almost gone, we then went in search of food. Montrose, population 420, seemed to be the only place
around and it sported just one eating house, which was a bar. As we walked in we realised there was
a wedding party going on. The bride was resplendent in her traditional white wedding dress and veil
and sitting at a table with four men, one obviously the groom. All the men had their jackets and ties
off and sleeves rolled up and all of them, including the bride, were supping their ale straight from the
bottle. From time to time whole families would come in, spend a few minutes congratulating bride
and groom and leave again. It was a joy to see such a spontaneous celebration without the formality
of the traditional English wedding party! We eventually returned to camp and sat under the most
glorious canopy of Stars. They were magnificent this evening the clearest and brightest we’d seen so
far, especially the Milky Way which meandered clearly across the whole sky. My body had been
feeling strange in various places since late afternoon. Bottom of the spine, sacral and throat felt very
over-energised and as we sat and looked up at the myriad of Stars above us the feelings worsened.
Jackie offered some Reiki and all hell broke loose. I felt as though the ancient energy which had been
drawing closer all summer had at last arrived and was meeting resistance in various parts of my body.
Obviously my nervous system wasn’t quite ready for it yet and there was a certain disharmony
between my energy and that which was merging with me. Shaking everywhere! What a time for
higher guidance! Jackie suddenly said to me “if you had a chance to clear all the old Indian stuff from
out of the Earth – the pain, the anger, revenge, mistrust – in one fell swoop, for all time, would you do
it? I think there’s a way, though it sounds crazy, and that is to somehow connect it all up to the Stars.”
I said “Yes.” and with that the ana, ini and huns started for a while then I broke out into English.
Hooray!! At last a language I understood and I heard myself saying “Yes, that is true, we could do
that in a couple of week’s time, not now.” Jackie was quite worried as I seemed to be overloaded
energetically and asked what she could do. I said that all that was needed was to hold the energy
space, that is act as an energetic prop for me, and I would recover quite quickly. That’s exactly what
happened. I could feel the ancient energy withdrawing from my body and as I looked up at the Stars I
felt a great connection, as though I was drawing strength directly from them. Within no time at all I
was fully recovered. Definitely time for coffee and brownies! We sat under the Stars until the early
hours munching our brownies and talking about the Great Star Nation and the iniquities which had
befallen the many tribes who had lived on this land for many thousands of years and who had been so
cruelly decimated. We talked of the most beautiful idea that each Star is the campfire of Ancient Ones
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
who are now in spirit. We really felt as though we had settled into our journey. The UK and work
were left behind and we felt as though the Odyssey had truly started.
You might find a diet of bacon, eggs and hash browns, coffee, chips (fries in American) chocolate
and brownies rather strange for two people in our position. Perhaps if I had said we were vegetarians
and only drank green tea and mineral water that might have fitted the image better. However, during
the past few months we quickly found that when we had been working with energy of greatly
increased power and frequency it was absolutely essential to be completely and utterly grounded, to
allow the energy to flow through the physical body and down to Earth. When we weren’t and it
didn’t we really knew about it. That was when we would feel strange sensations in the body as the
energy tried to find a pathway through or just got stuck somewhere. We found that, when we had
been reaching out to the Stars to draw the energy down to Earth, we sometimes remained a little
spaced out. The quickest and easiest way to ground ourselves seemed to be to eat certain types of
food and experience had shown us that the quickest and best were coffee, chips and chocolate. We
eventually decided a good name for our version of this down-to-Earth, mundane spirituality would be
the 3Cs, and, in Jackie’s case, as she was a smoker, there would be a 4th C - Cigarettes. We also found
that after an evening’s energy work a really good filling breakfast the following morning put us back
on the right road again ready to face the day job! Hence the diet!
Sunday dawned sunny and very warm again and, although there was a temptation to just laze
about in the sun, the Badlands were calling us. So, we packed up and set off west again, stopping at a
very homely café called Edith’s in a town called Salem. For those of you who don’t know, Sunday in
America is the day for brunch. It seems the whole population of the country goes out to eat on
Sunday morning and every eatery provides brunch. The idea is you serve yourself and can return as
many times as you like to refill your plate. Usually on offer is every type of cooked meat you can
imagine such as bacon, steak, chicken and pork; eggs done in every conceivable way including fried,
scrambled, coddled; biscuits and gravy; french and ordinary toast; hash browns and fruit of every
description. The list is endless, and so are the number of dishes to choose from. Mmmm, you can
seriously overeat if you’re not careful! So we filled our boots at Edith’s, bought some buffalo
postcards and set off. We soon had to stop again as my head felt a complete mess. My third eye and
alta major were feeling very, very sore and my whole body had turned quite stiff. All I wanted to do
was rest, so Jackie took over at the wheel. As we drove west through the flat lands of South Dakota I
started to drift off from time to time and became aware of being up among the Stars laying cables
everywhere. Energetic cables which seemed to come out from my third eye and alta major. After a
couple of hours I had returned and was compos mentis again and took over the driving from Jackie.
Almost as soon as we set off she disappeared and on her return told me she had been dancing in
spirals along the cables I had laid, scattering pink and silver-magenta stars from a large bowl. Well,
what else would you be doing as you drove through the open, flat prairie lands of eastern South
Dakota!
Time for a break!
It usually takes Jackie quite some time to become grounded after her energy exploits and this time was
no exception. We stopped at a café where they had large steaming bowls of homemade potato soup.
The only trouble was that to begin with Jackie had trouble finding her mouth! Great hilarity!
However, a few mouthfuls later, she had fully returned and managed the rest with no trouble at all.
Only 75 more miles to go to reach the Badlands, one more hour and we would be there. At least on
the American Interstate highways you can accelerate to the legal speed limit, sometimes 75, sometimes
even 85, it varies from state to state, set the cruise control, then just steer and one hour later you can be
guaranteed to have covered 75 or 85 miles. No traffic jams or blockages on all lanes with the fast lane
crawling along at 50m.p.h. if you’re lucky like UK motorways. Oh what joy and freedom!
35
Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
At last we came to our turning off the interstate, only a few more miles to go now. We stopped at
the Amoco Trading Post primarily to fill up the gas tank. One thing it’s always advisable to do when
touring in the wilds of America when you find a gas station, fill up the tank, as you never know where
the next one will be. I also had an ulterior motive for stopping there as the Trading Post seemed to be
full of Native American-style goodies and I was looking for a drum. Drums mean a lot to me and as
we were so laden down with camping gear when we left the UK, I had made a conscious choice not to
bring a drum with me as it was a good excuse to buy a new one. No drums in the Trading Post.
Everything else you could imagine – feathers, rattles, jewellery, clothing, moccasins – but no drums.
How could I survive in the Badlands without a drum? Well I would just have to be patient.
Almost as soon as we left the Trading Post and started on the final few miles to the Badlands
National Park, we both felt a feeling growing in the area between the heart and the throat, around the
area of the thymus. It grew and grew so strong that when we crested the last hill and looked down on
the expanse before us it took our breath away. The landscape was utterly amazing! Millions of spires
and pyramids weathered in rock. Very soft colours! Whitish pale pink and green in bands! Utterly
beautiful! The rocks looked like cities in the sky – fairy palaces, cathedrals, mosques, pyramids –
everything!
As we reached the bottom of the hill and drove towards Cedar Pass trading post we saw a few
tepees set up outside. One of my wishes was to camp at least one night in a tepee during this journey.
However, my hopes were dashed as, when I asked about renting a tepee at the reception desk, I was
given a rather withering look and told they were just for show. Ah well! Another time! However, my
disappointment didn’t last for very long because, as I entered the shopping area, what did I see but
the most beautiful painted drum. The picture on the front was called Lakota Love and what a voice the
drum had! We’ll gloss over the price but suffice it to say they gave me a reduction as I also bought a
beautiful rattle made out of a turtle shell. I couldn’t wait to get the tent up and sit and try out the
drum. I was in seventh heaven! The campsite was quite close to the Lodge and after great
consideration decided on a site which was quite isolated, not too far from the toilet block – no showers
here as water was quite scarce – with a great view of some of the rocks. However, the sun was beating
down relentlessly and it was extremely hot and dry, so we decided to put up the tent when it started
to cool down a bit. At least we hoped it would cool down a bit! You could tell that the weather here
was relentlessly hot in summer as with no trees to provide shade, each site had its own shelter which
obviously shaded the picnic table from the worst ravages of the sun, not to mention anyone who was
going to sit there!
We’d arrived at the very first place on our wish list. We didn’t know why we were here but,
based on experiences so far, we were sure we’d soon find out. However, first, off to the Lodge to
sample their brownies and ice cream. We couldn’t think of a better way to start our visit.
This was the first place we had visited where there was a potential danger from the local
inhabitants.
Rattlesnakes!
There were warnings everywhere. However, I have to say that in all my time camping in America I’d
never seen one and I put out the thought that I was happy for that situation to continue. So, making
sure the tent was as far away as possible from the scrubby brush, we set about putting it up, let’s see,
for the third time. We’re certainly getting much quicker and it gets easier each time. Reckon by the
end of 5 weeks we’ll be able to do it with our eyes shut!! With the inner selves satisfied and the tent
securely tethered to the ground, we set about catching up with the journaling. It seems to be an
ongoing problem that I don’t think is going to improve. So much is happening both during the day
and the evening that we keep falling behind with our journals. So, as from tomorrow we are going to
switch to keeping a voice record as and when experiences occur, or as soon as possible afterwards. At
the last moment I threw my small hand held tape recorder into my suitcase before we left home, but
36
Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
didn’t include any tapes. Sounds like a shopping expedition tomorrow to find some. That way we
won’t lose too much of what is going on. The only drawback to that will be the mammoth task of
transcription of the tapes on our return home. Never mind, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to
it.
As the sun went down the colours of the rock changed in a display which was breathtaking, they
positively glowed! Eventually they turned to a deep grey and we turned our attention heavenward as
the spectacle was now above us, a clear big sky and seemingly millions of shining Stars. As I looked
upward to the Stars, the connection seemed to grow very strong again and I had the same feeling as
the previous evening that of the ancient energy surging up into my body. However, there was a big
difference this evening, far less resistance within and the words changed from foreign to English quite
quickly! At last we had some specific guidance about what we have come to accomplish. We were
told to energetically connect the points of the Badlands up to the Milky Way. In the same way as the
pyramids connected with the belt of stars in the constellation of Orion, we are to connect the Badlands
to the Milky Way. Wow! What a task, there must be millions and millions of points as this is such a
huge area. We were just contemplating how we would do this when the guiding energy came back in
again. We were told that before we connected everything up to the Milky Way it was very important
to connect all the points at three levels-above ground, at ground level and under the ground, and only
when that was done, connect them to the Milky Way. Well, who were we to argue! We had no idea
yet why these connections needed to be made, however, we’d do it anyway, as that’s why we came.
We decided we would make a start with our task straight away and connect those points which were
in our local vicinity then tomorrow we would jump in the car and tour the whole area making
connections as we drive around. When our immediate task was complete we sat staring into the
heavens. Not only did we have the spectacle of the myriad of Stars but also a few very large clouds
had gathered. For the rest of the evening we were treated to the most spectacular display of lightning;
wonderful sheet lightning which lit up the clouds and the whole sky. Flash after flash after flash with
hardly any thunder and almost no rain. Silent lightning, as though the lightning was showing us the
power of the connection between Heaven and Earth. The energy of the Badlands certainly felt very
electrical, very masculine somehow, very hot and very dry.
We eventually turned in for the night with the prospect of a busy day ahead of us tomorrow.
However, some hours later, I was woken by a piercing scream from the other side of the tent – Jackie!
“What’s the matter?” I shouted. “There’s something outside” she said in a small voice. Nothing
would have enticed Jackie out of the tent at that moment, so, not really feeling very brave, I reluctantly
grabbed the torch, oops flashlight, put on my shoes, having first checked for scorpions and spiders
lurking in the depths and slowly crept outside. The idea was that I would make so much noise that if
there was something outside trying to get in, it would be frightened away. I tiptoed slowly around
the outside of the tent – nothing. However, in the time we had been asleep the wind had risen quite
considerably and the outer skin of the tent was flapping in the breeze where the guy ropes had
slackened off as the temperature dropped slightly. I was very pleased to report that all was well and
the only culprit was the wind. Well, of course, this called for tea and brownies to settle our nerves
then back to the land of nod. However, not for long, as all the cups of tea and coffee I had drunk that
afternoon and evening came back to haunt me and I soon needed a loo break! Now I was faced with
the prospect of lighting my way through a couple of hundred yards of scrubby brush, in the dark.
“Do rattlesnakes prowl at night?” was the question that rushed through my head. I didn’t know. The
next question was “Should I take it slowly or make a run for it?” In the event, I walked slowly and, of
course, didn’t meet up with any living creature during the round trip.
We woke early just as the sun was rising and watched as the light moved across the rocks rubbing
out the night camouflage and painting them in their daytime colours. A new day and now we really
were women with a mission. CONNECTION that was today’s task. Monday 14th September and we
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
were going to make connections throughout the whole Badlands area, or as much of it as we could
reach by car. It was just as well we were planning to drive not walk as this was one of only a handful
of no-mascara days for Jackie during the whole trip. I came to learn that no mascara meant she was
really feeling rough! Following the intruder incident she had felt a pain start in her head, mainly in
the area of the ajna and alta major and the pain was still with her when she woke this morning.
Sounded like mine - was that only yesterday! How did she describe herself? Oh yes, “white faced
and looking about 90” were the words she uttered when she looked in the mirror in the washrooms. I
wasn’t about to argue with her either! After a hearty breakfast during which we decided on our
possible route for the day, we set off in the car. The temperature was already climbing fast so it was a
joy to be in the air conditioned environment which Flo provided for us. I have to say that there aren't
too many roads throughout the Badlands National Park, which is just as well as I think we covered
them all. We also included a shopping trip to Rapid City, about 50 miles as the crow flies but on the
scenic route, the way we went, at least twice that distance. Still, all the time we were driving we were
consciously making energetic connections. At one stage Jackie started laughing and when I asked her
what was so funny she said that for some time now she had been aware of a great tall pole coming out
of the top of her head with a yellow triangular flag or pennant fluttering from the top. After about 30
miles she’d decided to look closely to see what it was and had just realised it was the Royal Standard,
with yellow trim and a lion, and had instantly realised this represented the Royal Star Regulus, in the
constellation Leo! She said obviously there must be a Regulus connection somewhere and she was
feeling very pleased to know that her intuition was working well. Gold star for the intuition!
Having taken Rapid City by storm and bought some mini tapes for the recorder – last of the big
spenders - we returned to the campsite, through the National Park on what was the longest dirt road I
have ever driven. I suppose we were lucky that it hadn’t been raining or else it would have been a sea
of mud but it’s a toss up whether that would have been worse than the dust, especially whenever we
were overtaken by another car. I felt safe driving at about 40 m.p.h. because when I say dirt road I
mean it. The dusty dirt was a good few inches thick and it was rather like driving through a few
inches of slush. On the bends the car was quite happy sliding sideways from time to time. However,
the locals were obviously used to the conditions and flashed past us in a storm of dust which, even
though it was dry, stuck to the windshield necessitating a rather messy wash wipe sequence. Mile
after mile it seemed endless. We were about half way home, 20 miles gone and 20 to go, and just
bemoaning the fact that we could murder a coffee but we obviously weren’t going to find a café out
here – how wrong can you be. A large sign suddenly loomed out of the dust left by the last maniac
driver to pass us. Was this a mirage, was someone playing a joke here? When we looked to the right
we could see what looked like some ramshackle farm buildings. They were
probably closed and it was probably an old sign someone had forgotten to take
down. There was only one way to find out. Oh we of little faith! We drew up
outside the largest building which had two dogs basking in the shade acting like
guardians of the doorway. They didn’t move a muscle as we stepped over
them, just quickly flicked open one eye each and just as quickly shut them again.
We opened the door on what immediately struck me as an old fashioned farm-
style kitchen except it had not one but about 4 tables. Seated at one of the tables to our left was a large
woman of indeterminate age who did not even lift her head when we entered. In fact there was no
acknowledgement at all of our entry into her domain, not a twitch of the head or a flicker of an eye.
She just carried on with her crossword, apparently engrossed. There was only one other person in the
place a slightly younger, much slimmer woman behind a counter to our right. She seemed very
nervous, like a wasp flitting back and fore over a glass of lemonade. We ordered two coffees and two
pieces of what looked like the most gorgeous homemade cake and sat down. It turned out the woman
sitting at the crossword was Freda, the owner, and the other woman behind the counter was her
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
sister-in-law who had arrived from the city a year before when her husband had died. How much
longer she would be staying was anybody’s guess as you could cut the atmosphere between them
with a knife. Freda was very much in charge – totally – and it was obviously going to stay that way.
Freda didn’t say very much and as we sat there wondering whether she ever saw many people she
suddenly produced a visitor’s book for us to sign. Well, blow me down! The book we were given was
just this year’s she told us and it was almost full of people from all over the world. She must have
been sitting on a little gold mine. We were at least 20 long miles from the nearest tarmac road and
that dust was very thirst making!
By the time we returned to out tent we felt as though we had made as many connections as was
humanly possible. When the Stars came out we started working again, consciously remaking the
connections, just to make sure. As soon as we started working Jackie’s headache just vanished,
another inexplicable event! I was rejoined by the ancient energy which came whooshing into my body
once again. I still haven’t managed to take away all the restrictions when this happens, so various bits
still wobble up and down for a while (you’re not getting a picture of that one!), and the recognisable
English words are still prefaced by some foreign. The message was to tell us that we had done well
with making all the connections so quickly and now the time had come to link them up to the Milky
Way. We were to just make the connection but it would not be switched on yet, that would come later
when the whole grid was completed. Whole grid? This was a new concept – we just had to trust that
all would be revealed in its own time!
We took our flower essences and, some time later, when the work was complete, or so we
thought, I recounted my experience to Jackie. It had been like taking off in a rocket ship – very
bumpy, like trying to get out of the atmosphere in my own personal rocket, then suddenly everything
was smooth. I found myself soaring along the Milky Way dropping off the ends of the connections
from the Badlands, like webs, and attaching them first one side then the other. It was a really lovely
experience and I felt as though I was floating and going very fast at the same time. It went on and on
and on and at one stage I found myself wondering “How long will I be up here?” When all the
connections were complete I just gently floated to a halt and there was somebody standing in front of
me. It was my good old Father in Heaven again and I didn’t turn him away this time! Instead I
apologised for ignoring him last time he came calling. With that I felt myself gently coming back
down again and knew I’d landed when I felt a slight bump. Then words started to come; there was a
slight resistance to start off with as I thought the question “Can’t I have a break here?” However, the
answer seemed to be no as the energy flooded back in again and there was no way I could keep silent.
This time the message was to link the energy from the Milky Way deep down into the Earth. Jackie
looked rather pleased that there was some more work to be done that evening as she had wanted to
make the connections to the Milky Way but hadn’t done anything yet. So, we settled down again and
off we went on Round 2. This time Jackie was not disappointed. She experienced shooting up to the
Milky Way and bringing down white streamers which represented the connections. She pulled them
down through all the points which we had connected up, took them deep down into the Earth and
decided she had better tie them down. Then she experienced very strong vibrations through her body
and found she had something which resembled a series of many neon striplights, each one being
slightly longer than the previous one. She found herself building with them, placing them carefully in
line so that they were graded just like organ pipes or a xylophone and found that each strip had its
own note. Eventually they reached right the way from Earth to the Milky Way, like steps, and she
suddenly realised that that was literally the pathway to the Stars. Once the pathway was built,
streams and streams of people appeared and started climbing the stairway. The queue seemed to go
on and on for ever as did the steps. The Milky Way seems to be the road through for the Earth to
Spirit connection.
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
My experience had been of having my feet firmly planted in the Earth while the top part of me
stretched upwards to collect the strands of energy from the Milky Way. Then it felt as though the
energy came down through me and out through my feet like lightning bolts. Choong, choong, down
they went over and over and over. A little later it seemed I had refined the way of bringing the
connections down into the Earth as I had the sense of rocking back and fore. Each time I rocked
forward it felt as though I was picking up a bundle of strands with the top of my head then as I rocked
back, they shot down through my body and exited somewhere in the nether regions! Obviously it
takes a while to find out the most efficient method for this energy work.
Well, what an evening. I have probably made it sound very easy but I can assure you that,
despite a spring and summer of preparation with ever increasing energies, our bodies and nervous
systems were really feeling the pinch. We seem to be alternating between highs and lows, sometimes
full of physical pain, sometimes absolutely zonked out or disappearing. At times it’s proving quite
physically challenging working with the energies, whatever they are. However, if someone said “You
can stop and go home tomorrow” the answer would be a resounding NO. Having started whatever it
is, we will see it through to the end - if there is an end! We just fell into bed, after coffee and brownies
of course. Tomorrow we break camp and we’re off to the Black Hills and, thankfully, only a mere
50/60 miles to drive.
Tuesday 15th September dawned clear and hot. We had both slept well but felt rather fragile after
the previous day’s experiences. We longed for a shower but that would have to wait until we reached
our next destination. We were both in need of a large breakfast to provide the fuel for the coming
day’s experiences, whatever they might be! So, having dismantled the tent and packed up the car, we
set off to Cedar Pass Lodge in search of food. As we parked the car I was very drawn to put it facing
towards the area of rocks known as the amphitheatre and, as we entered the restaurant, I almost felt a
magnet drawing me towards a particular table. When we sat down we remarked on the fact that we
could both look out at this spectacle then thought no more about it. We decided to finish our
breakfast before reviewing events so far. I was on my third cup of coffee when I suddenly looked
down at the piece of toast in my right hand. I had unconsciously bitten it into the shape of a perfect
arrow. Jackie saw the toast-arrow at about the same time and we both looked along the direction in
which it was pointing. Straight at the amphitheatre! Why? The answer came as a thought almost
immediately. The amphitheatre was shaped like a crucible with a large rock positioned right in the
middle of it. This was the crucible from which the link would be made to other sites, rather like a
computer highway node. Well, this was another new concept. We would have to keep this in mind
when we visited the other sites, wherever they were. Look for the nodal point, the earthly connecting
point.
We decided to review what we now knew before we went any further, or should I say what we
thought we now understood about our journey.
We had been presented with the possibility of helping to clear old thoughtforms out of the Earth
by somehow lifting the energy up to the Stars. That would be in about two weeks time.
We didn’t know whether the rescue work had been a one-off or whether other possibilities would
present themselves.
The main task seemed to be to facilitate connections between rocky points at three levels-above
ground, at ground level and below ground-then connect them up to the Stars and bring the energy
back deep down into the Earth.
We had already achieved this for the Badlands and the Milky Way and had been told the link
would not be switched on, whatever that meant, until the grid was complete; another loose end.
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Song of the Stars 3 – Now, Let the Adventure Begin!
The concept of the connection between the Badlands and the Milky Way was further strengthened
when we read in a guide book that the only river which flowed through this area was called the
White River due to the milky white consistency of the water!
We knew we were going on to Cathedral Spires, an area of the Black Hills, Bear Butte and Devil’s
Tower, but where did they fit in. We didn’t know yet.
Were there going to be any more areas to visit to complete the grid? Another unknown.
What else?
Oh yes, there seemed to be some sort of link between Regulus and the Badlands area but as yet we
didn’t know what or why.
It also seems that each area will have a nodal point from which it will connect with the other areas
on the grid.
Definitely only the dawn of understanding, daylight seemed to be a long way off. Many, many
questions remained unanswered and we just had to put them out of our mind for now and move on.
This was certainly not an intellectual exercise and it was no good allowing our minds to roam free or
we would probably end up in straight jackets!
We had mixed feelings about leaving the Badlands. What a place- electrical energy, very dry,
very hot with magnificent, if stark, scenery. That we would miss. We had also had great fun donning
our shawls and dancing through parts of the rocky landscape to the beat of my new drum. What an
experience! It had been as though we were the only two people on earth at the dawn of time and we
were dancing the dance of creation! However, it was not a place where one felt nurtured by mother
Earth. It was a very basic, primal landscape, and, after two days of camping and travelling and
putting the tent up and down again, we would certainly not miss the Spartan washing facilities. A
shower, a shower, my kingdom for a shower was very much to the fore!
Oh, by the way, you’ll be pleased to know we didn’t meet up with any of the locals in the
Badlands. Not a rattlesnake in sight!
Next stop the Black Hills. Eat your heart out Doris Day!
41
Endnotes
1 Nadis – [Sanskrit for tube, pipe] are the channels through which, in traditional Indian medicine and spiritual
science, the energies of the subtle body are said to flow. They connect at special points of intensity called
chakras. Nadis seems to correspond to the meridians of traditional Chinese medicine.
2 Higher Guidance/Channelling involves consciously shifting your awareness to achieve an expanded state of
consciousness. You have to learn to concentrate and get your own thoughts out of the way so that you can
become receptive to your higher guidance; in this receptive state you can bring in the higher energies.
3 Science eventually catches up with intuition! Article Ride the Celestial Subway published in New Scientist 25
March 2006 describes gravitational corridors between all major bodies in our solar system rather like
underground tube lines. See New planet freeway could transform space travel by Richard Stenger CNN 22Jul02 at
http://archives.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/07/19/planet.freeway
4 Esoteric Healing is a form of hands off healing which helps a person to contact their higher purpose or true self
and bring this into harmony with everyday life. See www.ineh.org & www.esoterichealing.com
5 Toning is use of the voice to elicit a healing response from the body. The voice has special resonant
characteristics that can help to change the energetic patterns or thought forms that you have been holding onto
throughout our life. The tones you make act like waves of sound which help to release the structure of negative
thought forms held in the cellular memory of your body. By modulating the pitch and tone of a sound you
can create a vibration that allows free flowing movement of energy throughout your body.
6 Alta Major - this chakra lies at the opening of the base of the skull, above the first cervical (neck) vertebra and
connects with the Crown Chakra at the top of the head. Also called the Mouth of God or Bindu Center and has
been identified with the Medulla oblongata at the base of the skull, in the proximity of the brain stem.
See www.kheper.net/topics/chakras/Mouth_of_God.htm
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