Addiction, Depression And Miracles, Part Two

1:09:14

1:09:14

Addiction, Depression And Miracles, Part Two

by David Atkinson

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talks

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Meditation

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In Part two of Addiction, Depression and Miracles as I continue to tell my amazing story of self-discovery, with the self realisations along the way that helped grow my happiness. I delve into how meditation has affected my life and my experiments with mindfulness, including attempting to run a marathon distance run without proper training. Get inspired.

Addiction Depression Miracles Self Discovery Happiness Meditation Mindfulness Walking Community Shadow Work Energy Mental Health Biofield Tuning Addiction Recovery Spiritual Awakening Community Support Spiritual Growth Mental Health Care Spirits

Meet your Teacher

Avebury, Marlborough, UK

Meet your Teacher

Avebury, Marlborough, UK

Transcript

Hello, My name is David Atkinson and this is part two of Addiction, Depression and Miracles. Join me as I talk about my personal journey. I start with a question about addiction and how I gave up my addictions. I can't really explain, It was just the right time and it was just the right time for me to let it go and I tried for many many years, I tried for almost 14 years to give up my addictions and sometimes it would feel like I had made headway and was able to kind of give it up but then something would happen, I don't kind of slide back into it. One of the big things I have found about addictions was I had to walk away from a lot of friendships at the time and I had to have some space from those friendships. I've since gone back and kind of visited those friendships again and been all right with what they're doing and been all right with where I was but at the time I couldn't, I just couldn't do it and I needed to have that space from the people who were doing what I used to do. So yeah, I have to say that if you are dealing with addiction, Try and get some help for a start and just understand that even though sometimes it may feel like you're making a step backwards, You're not. Just know that actually every knock back, Every setback is still a step forwards because every time you step back or how it seems that you may have stepped back and come back at it again to try again, You're coming at it with a different determination. You may have just sorted out one little thing and then be able to move forward. Now the story continues with a few more tales from the Camino de Santiago and my time living at the Buddhist monastery before picking up where we left off in part one. Now when I walked to Santiago de Compostela, I never planned to go there, I took a mysterious route through France covering however many miles, I'm not really sure anymore, And then I did a two week trek through the Pyrenees right along the French Spanish border. If you know that part of France, It's the GR10, Beautiful, Beautiful footpath. And then I arrived down to the coast and at the coast I decided that I was going to walk the coastal route along the northern coast of Spain and then cut in down to the Camino Francés which is the main path that people take. So I came into Spain, It would have been the beginning of October, So it was already quite late into the season and instead of heading along the coast I took the wrong path, Or the right path, And I actually headed on an interior Camino that took me down to the Camino Francés I think at Burgos and that's where I joined the main Camino. Now when I came into Spain I was looking at the Camino, I was looking for a place to camp and I was kind of, I guess I was probably stood at a corner of a street somewhere looking, Scratching my head wondering which way to go. And I was approached by a guy and he started chatting to me, He said, Oh are you doing the Camino to Santiago? And he said, Well come and have a drink with me. I was like, Well okay. So we went and had a quick drink and he said, Look I know there's a hostel in town for pilgrims and I'll take you there and you must have your pilgrim passport right? And I said, Well actually no I haven't because I didn't ever figure that I was going to do the Camino to Santiago. So this guy said, Right follow me. And we jumped into his car, We drove into the town, We got into the town and nobody was there. So there was a phone number on the door so he phoned up the woman and the woman arrived and then the woman opened up and I was the only person staying there. And he explained to her that I didn't have a pilgrim's passport. She said, No worries. And she ended up creating a pilgrim's passport for me which then allows you to get stamps in the passport and when you get to Santiago then you can get a con postela, A piece of paper that says that you've completed the path to Santiago. So yeah this all kind of happened very magically and the woman looked at me, The guy left and the the woman looked at me and said, Well you must need something to eat. I said, No it's okay I have food. And she disappeared and then she turned back up again and she had a load of food with me, Kind of deposited a load of food with me. I was like, Wow this is amazing. And I went off and that happened again. I was taking a break outside of a church further down the line and somebody else kind of just offered a bed in the house and just took me back to their house and just said, Look there's a bed, You can take a shower, There's a kitchenette down there. They have like two parts of the house. There's a kitchenette and please cook your food. So again it was just another, It was very welcoming kind of feeling along the Camino, Especially when you take the more remote tracks. This was in 2011 that I did this. And then when I joined the main Camino I started to meet a lot more pilgrims. Well I actually started to meet pilgrims before I hadn't really. So yeah it was really amazing to be able to then meet with people and talk with people and it's a strange kind of feeling because everybody walks at different paces. So you might meet somebody one day and they'll end up going ahead of you but then take a day off and then they'll end up behind you and then you'll meet each other again. Or you might chat to somebody and they end up chatting to somebody else and then you meet somebody else and go oh yeah I've heard of you. And yeah it's a really really strange kind of temporary community that's always moving and changing and it's really really interesting. I think as a long distance walker, Especially having never experienced that, To then walk the Camino and experience that was was really amazing. And there was a woman, And I can't remember her name, She was from Devon which is where I grew up. And she had bought two horses in Greece. She'd basically rescued these horses. And she walked from Greece, She walked up the coast, Caught a ferry across to Italy, Walked up to the Pyrenees with these two horses, Basically as pack horses, Then crossed over the Pyrenees, Sorry the Alps, The bottom of the Alps, And then walked across the corner of France, Crossed over the Pyrenees into Spain and then walked the rest of the way to Santiago. And when she got to Santiago she then shipped her horses back to her stables in the UK and rescued them. So you meet such an amazing group of people on the Camino to Santiago. Walking something like the Camino really does, Just walking in general I think, When you get out there and walk you start to see a different side to humanity and you definitely see that on the Camino to Santiago. Just purely because you're all walking for a purpose, You all have different purposes, But actually we're all the same. In some way or another we can be fragile beings and in some way or another we need to work through that. And walking for me was just an amazing way to be able to start to realise what was going on in my head. And even though at the beginning, Especially when I was walking the Camino back then, I didn't have the tools to deal with that. Where I left off the last time, I had just got to the monastery, Citeres Buddhist Monastery. Now I just want to kind of speak a little bit about my time there because actually it was really, I had a think about it and I didn't really touch on it much. It was a really interesting time, But I'm just going to explain in a little bit of detail. So where I lived was above the workshop and they had an amazing workshop with lots of woodworking tools and they originally built it because when they converted what's now their meditation hall, They did, The monks did a lot of the work with the lay people, They had some contractors in to do some parts, But a lot of the work was done on site by the monks and by lay people. And they actually had this workshop all set out with all the tools that they could need and it was amazing. As somebody who likes carpentry, It was fantastic, You know, Table planers, Saws, The lot. And up in the attic there was a little room and that's where I lived. That was my bedroom and I had, What can best be described as a foam mat on the floor and some shelving for my personal belongings and yeah, That was it. My heating in the winter was the fire downstairs, The chimney breast came up through the room and that actually kept the room warm. So it was great. And I really enjoyed getting up early. I'm an early morning person anyway, So I would get up at half past four, The same time as the monks would get up. And it was always optional as to whether you joined in or not. But I wanted to make the most of trying to understand why monks did what they did and what I could gain from it. So I tried to just join in with everything and I would get up and meditate. I would chant with them. I have to say I preferred chanting in Pali, Partly because I wasn't so attached to the words. And it did take a little while to get used to the pronunciation of words and things like that, But with repetition you can kind of get there. So that was another great part of being in the monastery. This particular monastery, It was Chittas Buddhist Monastery, They only did teaching on a Saturday evening and then they would do a guided meditation on a Sunday evening. The rest of the meditations in the evening and morning, Morning and evening, Were silent meditations. And it was for you to just join in. And I have to say this, There is something special about being in a group and meditating and being in a place that is only used for meditation. There is something very magical about the energy there and for those of you who've never experienced it, I would say if you can, Go and experience a place where it is solely used for meditation and be with a group of people who have meditated a lot, That energy is amazing. And in some ways it can really help. But one of the things that I found with meditation and is true of mindfulness as well, Is that you can be a very seasoned meditator and still feel like you've just stepped into the meditation hall and sat down on the meditation cushion for the first time. And sometimes your mind will be very focused and very in the moment. And other times it just seems to wander here, There and everywhere. And it's really good to be able to have lots of tools to be able to direct your mind. And I found that myself, It's quite easy to fall into a little bit of a trap where you find a meditation that works and your mind is really focused and you think, Right, I'm just going to keep doing that meditation. And you do it for three or four days and it seems great. But then you get to day five or day six and it just doesn't seem to work anymore. And the mind gets used to it. And because the mind is used to it, It's already, On automation it's like driving a car, You know. You can drive a car and your mind be thinking about something else. And yet somehow you manage to stay safe. And sometimes when you listen to the same meditation over and over, That can happen as well. So it's really good to have different sets of tools and different types of meditations to be able to change up so that the mind doesn't get too used to the same thing. And you know, You can use a meditation once and come back to it in a week or two weeks time and find that you're not too used to it. The first, I think, Three months of being at the monastery, My dad ended up having a heart attack and ended up being a bit of a rift in the family. And I just had to step back from it all and just say, Look, You guys get on with whatever you need to argue about. I just, I'll be back in a little while and just keep my space from the situation. And it took a lot to be able to do that and just ask my dad for a bit of space, Even though he was trying to recover from what he was recovering from. He actually had a quadruple heart bypass. And it actually was the right thing to do, Even though it was quite difficult thing to step away from. And I think I just needed two or three weeks for other members of the family to be able to sort out the differences and not put me in the middle of it all. So, Yeah, And it was a great space to be in whilst things like that were happening, Was happening. And the monks themselves, Yeah, Very, Very grounded group of people. One of them I actually met up with about 10 days ago, Who was a monk for seven years and recently left. He left last year. And we hadn't seen each other for six years, I think. And it was really nice to catch up and just talk to him and actually see him as a lay person, Not a monk, And to see how much he could gain from being a monk. And that's, It could gain from being a lay person as well as being a monk. And that's partly what this talk is about today. It's about how I went from being a monk to being from meditating morning and evening and being around very mindful people, Or at least people who are practicing mindfulness, And then going into normal life. It's really, Really interesting. And it really helped me because I guess about eight months prior to getting to the Buddhist monastery, I had managed to leave my addictions behind. And I won't go into too much detail, But basically, After being on another long distance, So no walk, I quit the walk, I went to Salzburg expecting something. And on the way from Salzburg to Verona, I was on the train and I realized that I needed to look within and stop looking outside myself for the answers to my life. And that changed my life. About three or four weeks later, I ended up having a spiritual awakening or nervous breakdown, Depending on how you want to look at it. And it really did change my life. I think it was about a couple of months after that I was able to leave all my addictions behind. And six months after that, I ended up at the monastery working as a maintenance man. And yeah, So that was an interesting journey out of addiction. And all the while I was getting further along with the line of not being so maybe drowned in depression, I think might be the right word. The right way I like to explain depression and maybe just life in general is that, You know, At the beginning, It felt like the waves and the troughs of the deepness of the lows within the depression were quite deep. And then the highs end up coming up quite high and then going back down into a deep depression. But the further you come along through life and the more layers of the onion you manage to peel back, The smoother the roller coaster becomes and you end up not going so low within the depression. So your life becomes more of a steady flow, If you like. So before I go to leaving the monastery, I just want to share that the last couple of months I was really lucky. So in the monastery they had I think about 50 acres of forest. And in the forest they had 11 meditation huts. There was no electric, There was no water, It was just a floor to sleep on. So a couple of them had a table and chairs but they were really, Really basic and they were spread out in the forest so that monks could go and have two weeks at a time, Sometimes a bit longer, And just have quiet meditation time. And they would just come back to the monastery for food and come back to refill their water or maybe take a shower. The rest of the time they would spend in meditation in the hut. So the last couple of months while I was at the monastery, They needed to change the stairway into the room that I was staying in. And so they didn't have room in the main house for me to stay, So they offered me a hut in the forest. Why not? Yeah, For sure. So I went and stayed out in the hut in the forest and it was amazing to be able to spend time. I spent probably a little bit more time in the monastery than the monks would just because I was doing work during the day. But yeah, It was so incredible to wake up and be in a forest and just to look out, Sit out on the veranda and see the deer walking past as you're meditating and things like that. It was fantastic and such a privilege, Really such a privilege. I left the monastery towards the end of 2016. I didn't really know what I was going to do at that point and was thinking, Well, Maybe I should do more energy work and try and get into that. And so I tried to set up a business doing astrological birth chart dowsing, Which is an interesting modality and can be quite healing as well. As well, While I was doing that, I was applying for various jobs and just seeing what came up. I eventually got a job with an overland travel company. I do have many different directions that my life has gone in. So I ended up getting a job with an overland travel company and it happened very quickly. My first job was in the army after leaving college and I trained as a mechanic. So this travel company normally trains people for eight weeks, But they really needed somebody out of South America. So they gave me two weeks training and on Boxing Day 2016, I flew out of London and landed in Lima, Peru. And I started a job as an overland tour guide and mechanic and driver, Driving a 15 ton overland bus. And it was interesting. I started working with a lovely woman called Lou, An Irish woman, And she had only been with the company a month. And so we had a third person with us who worked with the company for quite a while. And we ended up going off down through Peru and then across the Altiplano of Bolivia and into Chile, Down to, Across to Argentina. And then I'm just trying to think where, Oh, We went all the way down to Patagonia. So Santiago to Chile, Back to Chile, And then on crossing over the Argentinian and Chilean border all the way down to Tierra del Fuego in Ushuaia, Argentina. And it was amazing. It was incredible. And I did several trips around South America and kind of, I went up and down the West Coast about three times and up and down the East Coast about two times. And one of the things that I noticed quite early on being all of a sudden in a job where I was sometimes working ridiculous hours, You know, 60 hours a week, Trying to keep on top of everything and trying to, You know, Help everybody out and going to socialize. And it was also interesting then being around people who are getting drunk and not drinking myself. I started to realize that my mind was getting caught in patterns. And I thought, All right, Well, I need to sort this out. I need to kind of hunt this down and work out what's going on. You know, I've sat in meditation while I was at the Buddhist monastery, And it was amazing. And it brought a lot of stuff up and really helped me. But now I'm at a point where I need to actually push forward and find a way of working out why my mind is in these loops. So I started doing shadow work and started looking at archetypal characters and how that was affecting me and how that was in my mind and what that was kind of how that was playing out. And whether I could then find a way to then undo these, These cycles that my mind was in. So it was quite a bit of a quite an interesting thing to go from being sat in a quiet, Peaceful place where people are aware of mindfulness and trying to be mindful to a job where it was go, Go, Go. And people were there to enjoy themselves and not everybody was up to get drunk. You know, Some people just just wanted their experiences of being in a different country. And it was amazing to be able to to take people on those journeys. It was it was great to be able to to spend what little free time I had being able to try and chase things and sort out those cycles in my mind. And I was in South America until April 2018. Literally three days before I leave South America, I was in I think I was in Argentina and I think I was heading up to Buenos Aires or I really can't remember but so many different places. Yeah, I think I was going to Buenos Aires and I was and my sister sent me a message and just said, Oh, Have you heard from your mum or our mum? Said, Oh, No, What's going on? And yet, Half an hour later, My mum rang me and said, Oh, I'm in hospital. I've had a bit of a heart attack. Okay, Right. I'm going to be home in a couple of days. So yeah, I ended up being back in England at the perfect time in some respect. But I wasn't actually in England for very long. I spent 10 days in England, Then I went out to Ethiopia. So at that time, I was having a relationship with somebody else who worked for the same company. And yes, We worked with we'd met each other. Whilst I was in South America, She came and trained with me. And then we worked together for a month. And then she went off to Africa. Her itinerary was already planned. And I was still in South America. So I managed to after my 10 days off, I managed to get a trip out to Ethiopia. And it was quite funny, I got loaded up with a whole heap of truck parts that they needed in Ethiopia. And I flew out to Ethiopia for two weeks to to go and repair the truck and join join the trip. And it was amazing. It was really amazing place to go. It's some some people explain Ethiopia as the African India, Just purely for the fact the way people just seem to seem to surround you and be asking you for something or you can be absolutely in the middle of nowhere. And you stopped to be in the middle of the road and you stopped to have a truck lunch by the side of the road. And you you literally pull off the road, You cannot see a building for love nor money. And somebody walks out of the bush. Invariably in Ethiopia, It's a bit of a status symbol to have a rifle. So invariably, They'd pull over their shoulder, Which can be slightly disconcerting. So yeah, It's it's a very interesting place. And I actually really, Really liked it there. And in some respects, It's quite stressful. It's a stressful place to drive. That's for sure. It's, It's not quite the same as India. India's really intense to drive. But it's still it's still up there. It's still pretty intense. So yeah, That was an interesting little introduction. So after Ethiopia, I returned back to the UK and pretty much spent one night, One or two nights in the UK and they prepared my next overland truck for me to drive to Kathmandu. And I set off the next morning, I had a problem with the lights, Had to fix an electrical problem with the lights. And I was a bit panicked because, Because I had to catch a ferry across the Holland. And it's a really interesting, Interesting thing when you do have a stressful situation to see how you react and to remind yourself to just calm down to be able to take a breath and so yeah, That is an amazing thing to be able to do. I picked up, I was working with a Dutch woman, Lovely Dutch woman, Rianna, And I picked her up in Holland and met her family. And then we we transited off to Turkey via Greece. We had to go and pick up another truck. Yeah, That was that was a whole other story. But on the way, On the way through, We decided to do some bulk food shopping, Just for emergency supplies on the truck. And we saw this coconut palm growing in a pot in a shop. We said to each other, Shall we, Shall we take, Shall we take a coconut palm with us? Shall we see how far we can get with it? And so we bought this coconut palm and we had a coconut palm on our overland bus. And surprisingly, I'm not going to ruin it yet. So yeah, We called it Marco Polo and we gave it fresh air whenever we camped wild. And we, I ended up repotting it. It was great and everybody loved it. So yes, I ended up driving to China, All the way to Xi'an. And when we got to Xi'an, Our trip actually finished. So from Turkey to Xi'an was with passengers. And it's an incredible, If you ever get to drive along the Silk Road, It's an incredible places to go. I think I have to kind of stretch my memory. So I went through Turkey, Georgia, Then Azerbaijan, Across the Caspian Sea to Turkmenistan, Then to Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Then to China. And then once we had finished in Xi'an in China, We did a transit back to the Pakistan border. And then we had nine days going through Pakistan, Which was incredible. And we didn't have any passengers either. So we went all the way down through Pakistan and then had a couple of days across northern India, And then drove the last bit to Kathmandu. And at that point, I decided I needed a break. So I had my next trip planned at back in South America, Back in November 2018. And I think at this point, It was September 2018. And I decided that I was going to meet my then girlfriend in Thailand when she finished her trip. So yeah, She was a month and a bit behind. So I had a month and a half to spare. So I flew to Thailand. I did a course in northern style Thai massage, Which was really interesting. It taught me a lot about the energies and how the Thai people use the energy lines and meridians within the body, Which is slightly different from the Chinese meridians. In Thai, They all start and finish in the belly button at the navel and go all the way around the body. So it was really interesting to learn those circuits. And I think they're kind of similar to some of the Chinese systems. I know in Qigong, They talk about the meridians going all the way around. So yeah, Very interesting to do. A little bit out of my comfort zone, I have to say. But yeah, I did it for a month. So it was really cool. And then from there, I went, Because I still had a couple of weeks left, But my visa had run out. So I went to Indonesia, Went to Central Java and had an amazing time around Central Java. Just went backpacking across Central Java, Which is very different from what I'd been doing before, Being a tour guide. It was a bit outward, Not really outward, But it was very different. So it was really cool to go and do. And then from Indonesia, I then went back to Thailand and had a couple of weeks with my girlfriend. And from there, I then went saw a friend in Switzerland for a week. I went to see my goddaughter and her family at the front of the farm in France for a week. My sister was living with her family in Barcelona. So I went and spent a week in Barcelona. And then I flew off to South America and up to Colombia to start a trip round to Rio Carnival, Carrying on up to the Guyana, French Guyana, Suriname, Guyana, All the way through Brazil and then transiting back down to Southern Brazil. And then I finished there and decided that I really needed a break from that lifestyle. And I returned back to England. And again, I didn't really know what I was going to do. Decided that I was going to actually do some driving and just save a bit of money and kind of reconfigure what I was going to do. And I went and bought a really cheap car because I decided that I needed the car to get around. Literally on the day that I bought the car, My sister phoned me up and said, Look, A friend needs some help clearing some energy in their house. Do you think you can help? Yeah, Yeah, I can do that. So it ended up they had a really strong ghost, Ghostly energy in their house. So I ended up clearing the ghost and then doing some earth energy work on their house. Then I ended up working with the people who were in the house and working on their energy and helping them with their energy readjusting. So you know, When you move into a house and the energies aren't quite right, It's not a mistake that you've moved to that house. I believe that especially when we're not quite aware of energies and we move to somewhere where the energies aren't right, You've invited that energy into your life and you've invited it into your life so that you can learn from it. So if somebody clears that energy, You then need help to understand what it was that you needed to learn. And it's really good to kind of integrate clearing energies in your house with actually understanding your own energies and clearing your own energies and helping you move forward with that as well. And so that's what I ended up doing. So instead of going and getting a job driving trucks, I just decided I was going to set up a business clearing energies. I decided that I was going to buy a tent, Chuck it in the back of my car and head off across Europe on a three month road trip as you do. So whilst I was on that road trip, I spent a lot of time really looking at doing shadow work and again looking at the patterns that my mind was taking and really concentrating on what it was that I needed to change within my own mind. And it was a really interesting trip. Like I say, I was hunting a lot of what was going on in my mind. And at the time I didn't quite have enough of a business to have that as my sole work. So I ended up getting a temporary job at the end of 2019. And it was, Happened to be as a postman. And I just did that for about a month and a half. It was before Christmas. And I'd applied for a couple of other jobs, Just part-time work. And this agency phoned me up and I love this story. This agency guy phoned me up and he said, Oh, And you've applied for this job as an electric and gas meter reader for a company. I said, Well, I actually don't recall applying for that job, But tell me more. I'm interested. And so he explained about the job. I said, Yeah, Okay. Put me forward. And he said, Right, I'm just going to pull up your CV. Then he paused for a moment. He says, Could you actually send me your CV? I don't have it. Okay. So I sent him my CV and with, I think it was the next day, The, Well, That day, The area manager called me up from this company and asked to meet me and said he could meet me the next day. And so within two days, I ended up with a job with this company. And I didn't really, I didn't really know whether it was the right job for me. It just fell at my feet. And I just thought, You know what? I'm not going to argue. It's fallen on my feet. I'm just going to take it and go with it. I started this job and I was about two and a half months into it. And it wasn't kind of given me the flexibility that was explained that I would have to begin with. But I, You know, Kind of stuck it out and was thinking, Well, I might leave this job. And all of a sudden COVID happened. Then I found out why I had this job because all of a sudden I got furloughed and was being paid 80% of my wage to then study. And I spent, I think it was three months studying whilst I was paid. It was great. Did lots of, Lots of kind of short courses online. And I knew the furlough scheme was ending and I knew that the agency that I was with wouldn't continue the furlough. So I had arranged to go out to France and do some work on my friend's farm. They were doing some building work and I just said, You know, Let me, Let me come out. We're missing the sunshine. Let me come out to France. So I jumped on a ferry and headed to France. And I spent three months out in France doing some building work. And again, I would still go off and do bits of camping. I met up with a few friends in France and still going out and checking energies and just seeing what the energies were like and doing a bit more work with ghosts. And from there, I returned back to England. I think it was the beginning of November. And at the time I didn't have much work and didn't really know what was going to happen. And I was taking a lot of camping, Just going wild camping, Camping a lot up on Exmoor. In the national park and just taking some time just to be out in nature. And sometimes it was absolutely freezing. But I'm a photographer as well. And actually, I remember one night in particular, It was freezing. The wind was howling through. There wasn't much much to hide behind on that part of Exmoor. And I remember waking up super cold. Just thought, You know what, I'm just going to open the tent doors, Watch the stars, Watch the sun slowly, Slowly break through and just have a cup of tea on my camp stove. And it was amazing. There was this beautiful picture. I had my camera just set up in the doorway, Just ready for any pictures. And I was doing long exposure shots of the cars driving along this road in the distance. And then the sun started to rise and this Exmoor pony, They're quite short ponies, Just came along and there was this small pond not far away from me. So the pony was silhouetted against the sun. It was such a beautiful picture. But you know, You don't get to experience things like that if you're sometimes tucked up somewhere nice and warm. But I remember, I think it was the 28th of December, I was camped wild again. It was another freezing, Windy night. And I remember thinking to myself, You know, I'm just going to accept the fact that 2021, I'm not going to travel anywhere. I'm just, Just, Just, It's probably not going to happen. And I'm okay with that. Four days later, I then had a phone call with somebody out in Nicaragua who owned a raw food retreat center. And they needed somebody to help them grow vegetables and just kind of expand their growing capabilities out there. And I just thought, You know, What, What better opportunity is there to go to Nicaragua, Go and experience something different, Practice my Spanish and go and grow vegetables in a climate that I've never grown vegetables. So in January, The 10th of January, 2021, I barely managed to get out of London on my flight with all the craziness that was going on at the time. And I landed in Costa Rica and then traveled overland up into Nicaragua. It was, It was amazing. And I met some really lovely people up in the north of Nicaragua and had a great time. And after about three and a half months, Three and a half, Four months, I was doing a lot of meditation. A friend had lent me Joe Dispenza's Becoming Supernatural book, And it just really captured my imagination. I was doing lots of meditation around, Around the stuff that he had written about. And it was fantastic. And I kind of decided that I needed to move on from, From where I was. I didn't know what I was going to do. I didn't know where I was going to go. I just knew I needed to, To go somewhere else and do something different. And I went off on a trip to the mountains where they grow coffee and chocolate in Matagapa. And I spent 10 days, Two weeks, Two weeks in Matagapa and just really kind of knew after that trip that I had to kind of go away and find what was next. So a friend of mine wanted a lift down to the Costa Rican border and was going back to the States and they offered to loan me their car. So I drove them down to the Costa Rican border and on the way we stopped over at friends, A mutual friend's house. And the mutual friend had offered for me to go back and stay for a few days. And so I dropped my friend off at the Costa Rican border and then went back to my friends and I was just, I was in a beautiful place called Rancho Santana. And from there, I actually met up with another friend who had met at the retreat center, Who also lived at this place called Rancho Santana and went for dinner and explained to her what I did with clearing ghosts and earth energies and things like that. She said, Well, You know what? I have a house here. I'd really like you to work on it. So I then went and worked on my house and I remember it. I can still feel it. Going across England, There's Michael Mary Ley Line and it's one of the most well-known ley lines across England. And I'm there in Nicaragua and I'm, I had just been working on my friend's house. I'm walking down the road, Checking where the ley lines were coming through the house and I get to this ley line and I just knew instantly that it was the Michael Mary Ley Line. And I ended up getting a map online, An online map, Not Google, Because they draw curved lines on Google and you make it really long. But yeah, Getting a map and actually drawing a straight line and finding that it went straight through Nicaragua, Right where I was. And it was just so incredible to find this. And the friend's house I had been dowsing said to me, You know, Her and her husband were property developers. They had several houses in Nicaragua and they wanted me to work on all of them. And there was one of them in particular down in a place called Rancho Big Sky that was a little bit further south near San Juan del Sur. And she said, You're more than welcome to go and stay there. And I remember driving up to this place, Driving up the hill. This place was right up on top of the hill, Almost on top of the hill. About two kilometers from the beach. And you drive through the low part of the rancho and there's just cows. And then you drive up this really steep hill all the way up to the house. And I just felt this intense energy. It was so amazing. Just made all the hairs on my body stand up, You know, On my neck. And it was incredible. And I got to the house and it was just this amazing, Amazing house that my friend had lent me. And I started working on the energies. And what was really interesting there was the more I worked on the energies, The more negative energy I found, Just in little patches. And it's like working ourselves, You know, You take off that layer of the onion and you come to the next layer and you couldn't see the negativity that was under that layer until you take it off. And then when you take it off, You can see the other bits of negativity that you have to work on within yourself. And it's the same with the air. When you start to clear the earth's energies, Whether it's ghosts, Ley lines, And other types of earth energies or problems with geopathic stress, When you start to sort those things out, You have to come back and revisit it again to see what's come out in the next layer, What next layer of negativity had come out. And I had been there for quite some time and done a lot of work in the area on the energies and found that the place in Rancho Santana was on another line that I called the San Miguel and Santa Ana line. And that went, Basically ran up the Pacific coast of kind of the Americas really, At least Nicaragua. And yeah, I was able to follow it in as far as I could down to the border in the south and then about 20 or 30 kilometers up to the north. And the more I kind of worked on it, The bigger the ley line got, It was really incredible. Also while I was there, So I was working in, I was doing some work on my website and I was working away. And I, If I, If there's a negative earth energy, I will sometimes get pressure right in my forehead and know that I need to sort it out. And I'm sat in the kitchen, I'm working away. And I get this pressure in my forehead and I think, Well, I've worked on the energies in this area pretty intensively the last few months. How come there's all of a sudden more negative earth energies? And I started to douse and look for these earth energies and they were everywhere. I couldn't work it out. And it was taken off a layer and all of a sudden this new layer of layer of negative earth energies just appeared. And once I cleared it, I'm not going to go too much into the archangel part of which archangel I used now. I'm going to leave that for my next talk on the 22nd. But after I cleared it, It opened up this massive spiral. And at first I thought, Well, This spiral was probably, You know, 50 meters wide. So I walked out the door with my dowser rod, Didn't bother with any shoes, Walked down the road and I got about 300 meters away. I thought, I still haven't reached the outside. I'm going to go and get the motorbike and jump on the motorbike. So I jumped on the motorbike. I rode a kilometer down the road and still couldn't find the outside. So the next day I knew I was going to ride into, I was going further north, Going up to see a friend. And so I was stopping and dowsing along the way. And I found that this spiral had opened up to about five kilometers wide, Which is absolutely incredible. First time I'd ever experienced anything like that. It was just really incredible to be able to tap into the Earth's energies. And I think I'm not going to go too much into, More into that right now. I'm going to come back and talk about mindfulness. So at the end of, In October, I actually returned back to the UK. I didn't really understand why I was coming back. And I'm not going to fully go into that this time. One of the things that I noticed was about mindfulness and perhaps I wasn't being as mindful as I felt I should. And I'd been doing a lot more meditation. And I found that I was able to find more mindfulness through running and actually keeping my mind focused on different things. Now, As I explained earlier, For those of you who missed it, I said earlier about having different tools to use or different meditations to use when you're meditating. And it's really, Really helpful because if you use the same meditation all the time, Your mind gets used to it and then can go on automation and follow the meditation whilst also thinking about something else. And as I explained earlier, It's a bit like driving a car automatically. You're driving along, But you're not thinking so much about what you're doing as a driver, But you're thinking about what you have to get at the shops, Whether you've got your shopping list right or what you have to sort out for your next talk or whatever it may be. So it's really useful. And even with running, It's really useful to be just aware and have different tools to be able to change as you're running on what your focus is. So what I was finding with my running was I would sometimes get problems with my knees. Now, Through my work with biofield tuning, I know that for me, The knees, When I get problems with my knees, Right knee is to do with casting my mind too much into the future and trying to think about what's going to happen next. And my left knee is too much about what is going to happen or what has happened in the past and maybe basing what I'm thinking about on past experiences. So when I run, I can sometimes get problems with my knees. Now, I am going to say, If you get any problems with your knees, Please go and check, Get it checked out by somebody in the know, Whether it's a physiotherapist or a doctor. I was running in the mountains in Wales and I started to get a problem with my knee and I was coming to the end of my run. So I didn't think anything of it. I just carried on, Finished my run. And then the next day, Or maybe I had a day off and then the following day, I was going to do a talk on Insight Timer and I went for a run. And a short way into the run, My knee started to hurt and I thought, Well, I'm just going to go for it. I know I've got the determination to make it to the top and make it back, Excuse me, And make it back to my car with a problem with my knee. Whether I walk it, Whether I run it, It doesn't matter. I know I can do it. So I carried on and I found that by the time I got to the top, My knee was really hurting. It was my right knee and I was actually thinking about what I was going to talk about. And on the way down, I realized I really needed to focus my mind and bring it back into the present moment. And it actually reduced pain down to about 50 percent. And on the really steep downhill bits, I had to walk. But apart from that, The rest of the time I was running. And it really made me think, Well, How far can I take this? How far can I take running mindfully? Having run, My average run is probably about 10 kilometers, About six, Six miles. So that's my average kind of run. And I run sometimes three times a week, Sometimes a bit more. Occasionally, It will be two times a week, But generally around three times a week and always, Well, As much as I can off road. I really love running off road. So for Christmas, I don't really subscribe to the excesses of Christmas, Just my personal, Personal feeling on it. So I decided that I was going to try and run a marathon as mindfully as I could, Concentrating on my energy and putting positive and love back into my body and back into my energy and back into my mind and therefore back into the earth and try and run 26 miles having not trained for it. It probably sounds like a stupid idea, But really, I just wanted to see what I could do, What I could achieve just from being mindful, From doing an average run of round about six miles. So Christmas day, I drove to a national footpath, The trail that I know quite well. There's really well signposts, Don't have to think about where I'm going. Yeah, So I parked my car and I kind of figured that if I ran 10 miles one way, Then I had to run at least 10 miles back and then I could do the last bit on the other side of where my car is. So off I went. The first mile and a half, Two kilometers, The night before Christmas Eve absolutely poured down with rain. It was really, Really heavy, But I just thought, You know what? I'm still going to go for it. So Christmas day, Actually on my drive there, It was great. I was driving through one of the towns, Aylesbury, And it was Father Christmas running down the road. So yeah, That was a funny thing to see. So I get up onto the Ridgeway footpath and the first mile and a half, Two kilometers was really slippery because it had been so wet and it's quite a clay region. It was quite difficult running, I have to admit, But I ran the 10 miles and I got to a church in a place called Nuffield and I knew I could fill up my water bottle at the church. Then I set off back, Took me two hours to get to the church, Took me two hours to do the first 10 miles. I think it was pretty spot on the two hours. And then I started to run back. Now up until that point, My mind was really, It was really good as to where my mind was going. By the time I'd got to the church, My feet were soaking wet. I didn't have any problems with my feet. So I just thought, You know, Let's carry on going. I didn't really stop at the church, Just filled up my water and off I went. The next hour was really good as well. Really managed to keep my mind positive, Was doing a lot of body scanning and concentrating on putting positivity and love back into the cells and rejuvenating the energy. And yeah, It felt really good. And I just smiled the whole way. It was amazing. And about after the third hour, Probably more towards the three and a half hour mark, I noticed that my mind was slipping a bit more. It was becoming less focused and going off on little tangents. And then I'd have to bring myself back and concentrate on what I was doing. And it was, It was amazing. And I, On the way back to the car, I knew once I'd got back to the car, I wouldn't be going on beyond. So I did little dog legs, Up little side tracks and back just to add on a little bit of distance. I got back to the car in five hours. The last hour was really, Really tough. Mentally, I was getting less and less focused. I didn't really have any problems with my knees, Which was incredible. Considering only three or four days before I was having a lot of issues with my knees, The rest of my body felt good, But it was tired. And I managed to achieve 22. 1 miles with having only really trained for doing six miles. So it was an incredible, I think it was really amazing way to understand what we can achieve with mindfulness and being able to focus our mind and being able to bring ourselves back and bring ourselves back. And also to understand that when we do get tired, It is much harder to then deal with what goes on in our mind. And it's to really be aware of that fact that when we are tired, We do need to be kinder to ourselves, Be kinder with our mind. Quite often, If you can have a little nap or at least just to lay down for 10 minutes, It's enough to break what's going on in your mind and bring yourself back and be able to be more mindful and ready for the rest of the day, Whatever that may be. It was an incredible, Incredible time. The only thing I did was I bruised my toe about the three and a half hour mark. My mind was elsewhere. I didn't spot a tree root and I kicked the tree root and kind of stumbled. I actually kicked it with my left foot, Stumbled a bit and bruised the big toe on my right foot. And that was the only real problem that I had. And the next day I went out for a short, Very short run just to kind of stretch off my legs. And in general, My legs were pretty good. So yeah, I think just really wanted to tell you that story, Just to kind of highlight what you can achieve with mindfulness and just understand that actually it's not easy to bring our mind back time and time again, Back to a positive place, Back to a place where it's calm, Where it's focused. Our minds kind of have a negative bias so that they can pick out dangers and evaluate. And so they do naturally have a bit of a negative bias. So to be able to always bring your mind back to the positive and focus it can be difficult, But it's not impossible. And it does take work and it does take effort. But the more effort you put in, The more you get out. And that's the same with addiction, How I was trying to explain it earlier about addiction. And sometimes it will feel like you take a step backwards and the same with depression as well. It can sometimes feel like you take a step backwards, But in fact, Whilst you're taking maybe a little bit of a step backwards, You're integrating what you've learned. And as you step forward, Because you're integrating what you've learned, You are actually managing to move further forward than you ever went before. So yeah, Just as a word of encouragement, Don't give up if you have addictions or depression. Please try and seek help for it. If you can speak to friends, Speak to family and yeah, Just be kind to yourself as well. And you can get there. It does take some effort and maybe you might not get there on the first, Second, Third, Fourth or fifth go. But don't give up. Keep trying. You will get there. Thank you so much for listening and for joining me on an insight into my amazing life so far. I hope to have you join me again soon. Thank you.