Grace and the amazing story of John Newton

Amazing Grace touches a universal human theme, that forgiveness and redemption are available to all humans, no matter how much we have “sinned.”[vi] There is another layer of existence beyond our story of despair and suffering, and it involves a deepening awareness of an intelligence that is not within our immediate control, forces that our small-s-self can barely sense. This is why “Amazing Grace” is one of the most sung of all songs in the English-speaking world, with thousands of recordings. With every orbit of our planet about the yellow star, individuals of our species sing the tune around ten million times.[vii] Many of us live life acting out a story that we did not consciously choose, via a self that has not understood who we truly are. If we can accept that without judging ourselves or others, without making it wrong that we have not quite been true to ourselves, then our Authentic Self is ready to emerge.

The Power and Presence Project

Power and Presence begins with the disturbing proposition that the ITopian nightmare has descended and possessed us. The weaponization of the internet, politics and society is all but complete, and our souls – our authentic selves – have been defeated. Our awareness has shifted from the inner wisdom of the psyche to become ensnared in a virtual MemeWorld, which we now confuse for reality. Power and Presence is a confronting but (I hope) ultimately uplifting volume designed to shake readers from the illusion and empower them to rediscover their authentic selves, and from there to build a truly meaningful and empowered life.

Dancing With the Monster

Perhaps it is that in the internet age of memetic reality, we have not so much created our monsters, but distorted and expanded them to the point that they have become virtual caricatures; dehumanized leviathans towering menacingly over us, and who can only be met with brute force, and never engaged personally or in presence. Perhaps we have helped create our own Wizards of Oz, given our power away to them, then recklessly, and sometimes violently rebelled against the images that we have helped erect. Could it be that we are fighting the shadows within our own psyches, as much as fighting genuine demons, genuine oppression? Are we fighting ourselves?

Reclaiming Your Power from the Machines in the Age of the Sick Click

It is helpful to think of the E-Word of media and social media as the mass monkey mind. In meditative traditions, the “monkey mind” is the term used to describe your chattering, unchecked inner world, which (if I may mix my metaphors) has a tendency to wander about indiscriminately like a blind man stumbling along a crowded street without a walking stick. The blind man keeps bumping into people, either cursing them or apologizing frantically in order to deflect their anger, even as the other pedestrians apologize or curse him back. Because he cannot see, the blind man doesn’t realise that all the other pedestrians are equally as blind, and all without their canes.

Do you really have a soul calling?

The following is an extract from my upcoming book, Champion of the Soul. Calling what? In recent decades there has been a great enthusiasm for the idea of “following your bliss”. This is another subject I have written about in depth (in Discover Your Soul Template) and in the three years since I published that…