Hey ho, yes I am still alive and yes I do intend to post i again in the near future.  I’ve mainly been occupied with re-immersing myself into my work after 3 weeks off, plus I’ve been doing a load of other stuff too that has kept me away from the blogging keyboard.  Rest assured though folks, I’ll be back soon and hopefully with some cool stories to tell.

Peace

I said goodbye forever to an old friend this weekend.  We’ve been through a lot together.  I once saved him from being eaten by crocodiles and he once saved me from losing and eye during a mountain bike accident.  After all the miles we’ve traveled together and the many adventures, he finally met his end.  And it was a humble little bee that did him in.

When you turn 40, you look for something to do.  My 40th came and went without much fanfare.  I did however commit myself to change a few things or more accurately to re-remember some things I had forgotten, like to stay in top physical fitness, to not play silly games (only intense ones will do), to not neglect the nourishment of my spirit and my soul.  All this was weighing on my mind as I threw my camping gear, hiking gear, and mountain bike into the Frontera and headed to the Dark Peaks for a solo weekend retreat.

More than one person has patted me on the back this past week and told me that life begins at 40.  To my thinking, that means a rebirth.  I fantasized about some ways I could recreate this rebirth symbolically.  The Christians use a baptism of water to symbolized being reborn into Christ.  The U.S. Army uses a baptism of fire to turn young boys into men.  I chose the way of the traveler.  “When you travel, you experience, in a very practical way, the act of rebirth,” wrote Paulo Coelho in the Pilgrimage, a book about his journey on the Road to Santiago.  “You confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and on most journeys, you don’t even understand the language the people speak.  You are like a child just out of the womb.”  I certainly had had plenty of childlike experience on my recent road journey across Europe.  And now I wanted a bit of time to myself to digest some of the lessons I’d learned on the road.

I took along some classic tunes to keep me company on the drive to the Dark Peaks – Credence Clear Water Revival, George Thorogood and The Destroyers, and SuperTramp.

I drove into Edale and stopped at the first campsite I found, which was really just a field with fifty or so tents packed together like sardines in a can. The guy was only charging £7.50 a night so I couldn’t complain.  I found a spot to squeeze my tent into.  Erected it with no hassle, threw my sleeping bag inside and hurried up and changed into my mountain bike gear.

After a quick survey of the map, I decided to head west out of Edale to circle around through Winnats Pass, go down into Casteton and then through Hope and complet the circuit back to Edale.  It looked easy enough on the map.  But as I am often fond of saying to people, “The map is not the territory.”  And boy those little brown contour lines on the map didn’t do justice to the 2.5 mile incline I had to face.

Now I am a person who used to pride himself in being physically fit, but I must admit over the past several months I have been just ticking along with basic maintenance level fitness.  My legs, lungs, and heart had no qualms about letting me know that they were in no shape to be tackling such an uphill.  I came off the bike after about a mile and a half, my heart about to burst.  I wanted to push myself, but not kill myself in the process.  I took a few snapshots as an excuse for stopping.  The ego can be a real bastard sometimes.

I finally made it to the crest of the hill and the downhill ride into Castleton made the climb worth the effort.  The ride from Castleton to Hope was pleasant.  This part of the Peaks is busy on a normal weekend, but being a Bank Holiday weekend, there were tones of people everywhere.  I was feeling good, renewed, glad to be out on my bike doing my thing.  And then it happened.

I was on the back stretch coming into Edale on the east-side.  A humble little bee flew underneath my sunglasses.  In my attempt to keep from crashing whilst dislodging the little vermin without getting stung, I broke my favorite pair of shades. The shades that had traveled with me through jungles, mountains,and various countries around the world, were finished.  One of the arms snapped off.  Now that is my cool rendition of the accident.

What it probably looked like to somebody passing by was some big bloke on a mountain bike frantically thrashing himself in the face while trying not to crash.  And so sadly the day ended with the demise of my old friend, the sunglasses that have been with me through thick and thin.  I think I’ll add them to my own archive of Clay artifacts for some future generation to find.  Maybe when I become a famous explorer, they will sell for a ton of money on eBay.

Back at the campsite, I shed my bike and put on some dry clothes.  I am amazed at the varied types of people who come out to camp in a field.  Some are young, some are old, others are funny shaped, overweight, skinny, underdressed, overdressed, groupies, families, and forty year old geezers with no mates.

I wander over to the Rambler Inn for a pint.  The barmaid is young and dark haired.  She is foreign and amusing.  We get into a discussion about whether I can have cheese on the hamburger I ordered.  The menu doesn’t include an option for a cheeseburger.  Finally one of the other girls goes to kitchen to ask the chef if I can have a burger with cheese on it.  After several minutes, she comes back and says it’s OK.

“When you are moving toward and objective,” writes Coelho, “it is very important to pay attention to the road.  It is the road that teaches us the best way to get there, and the road enriches us as we walk its length.”

As I nurse my pint of Foster’s, I wonder about the metaphorical road that lies before me as my life begins anew.  The words of Joseph Campbell and Henry David Thoreau echo in my mind.  “Follow your bliss.”  “Follow your genius.”

My thoughts are interrupted by the barmaid.  She wants to know if I want another pint.  I decline.  I want to get up early the next day to go for a hike in the hills.  Just as I leave the pub for my tent, it starts to rain.  Typical.  I read a statistic that claims that it rains one day in three in England.  This week, the statistic is right.  I go to ground in my tent, read some more of The Pilgrimage and fall asleep to the loud cackling of laughs from my neighbors.  There are about 10 of them, a mix of family and friends it appears.

It rains through the night.  Periodically I wake up to the sounds of the rain pelting the flysheet.  I feel around in the dark for any signs of leaks.  It’s  a new tent that hasn’t been field tested yet.  Thankfully there are no leaks.  I drift back to sleep.  It’s after midnight and my neighbors are still laughing away.

The morning comes.  The rain has stopped.  I pack my tent and my gear.  I eat some dry Frosted Flakes and chase them with a can of Redbull.  Mary Lou Retton didn”t know what she was talking about, this is a breakfast of champions.

My plan is to follow Grinds Brook which takes me in a northwest direction, climb up the waterfall and then turn north for a bit before turning and walking north east for a few clicks, turn south toward The Nab and then cut across Heardman’s Plantation to get back to the Frontera.

The beauty of an early start is that there is no one else around.  I have the hills to myself, which is a perfect time for a Chautauqua.

“Follow your genius closely enough,” writes Thoreau, “and it will not fail to show you a fresh prospect every hour.”

As I meander up the trail, I think about my future prospects.  I have focused the first half of my life on career and family, living up to other people’s expectations.  And that was fine.  Life is a learning process and some times you have to experience what you don’t want in order to gain clarity of what you do want.  I’ve plunged and plodded along many different paths searching for the usual culprits: acceptance, esteem, security, fortune.  I looked for these things external to myself, which of course is a fool’s errand. The only path worthy of pursuit is the path that leads to self-actualization.  The only way to that path is through the exploration of one’s inner landscape. At this point, I have to speak out against all the new age pyschobable, flowers in your hair tripe that’s batted around these days in the name of a panacea for life.  I am not afraid to admit that I have at one time or another been seduced by these new age follies. I can even be accused of leading others down that path.

That being said, I’ve come to realize that the true path to wisdom has to have three things:  First, it must involve love (love of self and love of others).  Second, it must have practical application in your life.  And lastly, it must be a path that is unique to you, in other words, have the courage and conviction to be an individual and not follow the herd mentality.  Others can guide you, offer advice, teach you, but in the end, you must find your own path.

I reach the point in the trail where I must turn easterly.  I pause to look back over the climb I’ve just done.  The beautiful thing about the Peak District is that on a good day you can see for miles.  Today is a good day.  To my left, I have great views of the open moors.  To my right, I have a spirit boosting view of the lush green and purple valley.

I crack on for a few more miles taking in some of the interesting rock formations along the Hartshorn Ridge.  And then I witness a good omen.  A raven, flying below me, calls out.  I follow its flight until it disappears behind a hill.  It’s almost as if it called out to me and said, “follow me.”  I follow. When I crest the hill, I see three ravens flying together.  Two split off from the one and play with each other in flight and then they fly back to rejoin the third raven, and together the three of them fly into the distance.  As I start to descend, a strong wind blows up from the valley.  The wind is so strong, it feels like I am skydiving.  I let the wind cleanse me.  I now feel light enough to fly like the ravens.

I am tempted to run down the mountain, but restrain myself and instead break into a light gait.

Speaking of being practically.  I near the bottom when I suddenly realized I forgot to pay the £5 car-park fee.  I am feeling too light in spirit to worry or care if I get a parking fine at this point.  But luckily when I reach the car-park, I see that The Man has been kind to me and I have no parking fine on my window.  I thank my luck stars, change into my city gear and head for home.

(taken at the American Cemetery in Luxembourg, where General Patton is buried. Click here for a larger view)

I turned 4o today. And at first I thought I should spend some time reflecting over the past 40 years of my life. But as I sat down to write this post, I didn’t feel like looking back. The past is history baby. Gone. Done. Finished. I think it’s cool to learn from the past otherwise you’re doomed to repeat it. But to spend time dwelling in a nostalgic haze wistfully thinking about all the places and faces that have floated in and out of my life over the past 40 years, would be wasting time I could be using to enjoy the present moment.

I’m very much looking at 40 as a rebirth. The half-time show is over. My inner coach has given me a kick-ass pep talk in the locker room and now I am ready to go out on the field and play hard and fast, crossing my bridges when I come to them and burning them behind me. Okay maybe not quite so ferocious as that, but definitely intense and focused. I guess the natural question would be: “Focused on what?” And my answer is: Focused on the art of living by living every moment of every day fully awake and free.

To be awake is to be alive. And I must learn to reawaken and keep myself awake, not by mechanical aids as Thoreau says, “but by an infinite expectation of the dawn, which does not forsake us in our soundest sleep.”

One of my first tasks is to simplify my life, to let go of things I’ve been hanging onto for years that act as anchors to my past. To sail free, I have to lose the anchors. I know I am quoting heavily from Thoreau these last couple of posts, but as he was one of my travel companions on my road trip, I learned a lot from him. And he says that a person is rich and free “in proportion to the number of things which he can afford to let alone.” So today, the first place I am starting is with my desk, which is cluttered with stuff both on top and in the drawers. To be cliche about it, “out with old, in with the new.” Whatever “new” is.

As for my 40th birthday celebration, it will be a quiet one. Tonight I will have dinner with my family. Nothing fancy. After 3 weeks without a proper hamburger, I have a hankering for a TGIF Ultimate Burger to make up for my burger abstinence on the road. Oh and I also have this odd compulsion to splash into a cold lake to symbolize my rebirth and then spend a night alone on a mountain…man-style.

Peace, out.

Home sweet home. I’m finally back from my 19 day road-trip around Europe. I’ve gotten so used to the rhythm of the road that it is now a bit of a shock to the system to be stationary again. I woke up this morning thinking where I am driving today? Sadly nowhere, except to town to take care of some much needed admin and logistics that have piled up in my absence. Oh, the Ordinary World where is thou release?

The Hero is suppose to return from his journey transformed and carry with him the elixir that will help changed the world. I need some time to process the journey to see if and how I may have changed as result of my 2,962 mile journey across Europe and back. And that doesn’t include the mileage spent being lost driving around in circles looking for places without names, restaurants with killer jaeger schnitzel, and the various other day trips from our nightly base-camps. Although I still have more processing to do, I can recall immediately two very distinct messages.

One I picked up from Thoreau: “There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but not philosophers. Yet it is admirable to profess because it was once admirable to live. To be a philosopher is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but to so love wisdom as to live according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust. It is to solve some of the problems of life, not only theoretically, but practically.”

And the other is that the broad themes of my way of life as I approach 40 tomorrow will be focused on enlightenment, adventure, and travel or E.A.T for short.

I suspect over the next week or so I will be filtering parts of the journey on to the blog along with pictures of the trip, so stay tuned. For now here is a link to the road-trip route on google maps and here are some pictures of the aftermath of a 3,000 mile journey:

OK.  Finally I have done every thing that needs to be done before I hit the dusty trail.  The plan is to hobo around Europe for 3 weeks mit packed out 4×4 and tent.  I have a very loose plan, but mainly plan to play it by ear and see what happens.  On the list of countries to visit are:

The Netherlands
Belgium
Luxembourg
Germany
Czech Republic
Hungary
Italy
Liechtenstein
Switzerland

Apart from Hungary and Germany, it’s been at least 15 years since I last visited these countries. The first time around I was a brand new wet behind the ears 2nd Lieutenant Infantry officer serving with the Black Knights (3rd of the 5th Cavalry Regiment).  My fascination with Europe was born of my love of history.  I found it extra-ordinary to be visiting countries I had only read about in my youth and in my studies as a history major at university.

This time around I am going back a little older, a little wiser.  The question I am holding in my mind as I travel this time is: how do you have an authentic spiritual experience in a society that values materialism over the soul? Kind of a heavy question for what’s meant to be a vacation.  But it’s a working vacation.  Besides as the saying goes, “If you love what you do and do what you love; you’ll never work another day in your life.”

I do hope to update the blog from time to time while I am on the road. We’ll see how I get on.

Imagine me now, standing out my back door and howling to the moon.  Howling a joyous howl of freedom, power, and connection…a primal howl of a beast roaming the plains, embracing life as one should embrace life with total abandon.

One last thing before I sign off, last night I gave a talk on mandalas for the Kent and East Sussex NLP Practice Group. I received some superb feedback from many of the attendees, which is nice high note to finish on before holiday.

The time for our trip is growing closer. I can feel the pull of the open road. My mind has already begun to dissolve the ordinary world. I am now in that twilight period where I am neither here nor there.

I am becoming more aware of the wisdom contained in the phrase, “The more you know, the less you understand,” which of course is from the wisest of wise books, The Tao Te Ching.

I found these little gems down a side street in Oxford, near Radcliffe Square:

click on the photo for a larger view.

Nihilism – A view point that traditional values and beliefs are unfounded and that existence is senseless and useless.

In the province of the mind, what is believed to be true is true or becomes true, within limits to be found experimentally and experientially. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended. In the province of the mind, there are no limits. – John C. Lilly

Lao Tzu wrote a wonderful book called the Tao Te Ching, the Book of the Way.  In the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu expounds upon the teachings of the Tao, the universal force that governs all things.  Technically speaking, one cannot be taught the Tao directly because as Lao Tzu writes:

The Tao that can be told
is not the erternal Tao

You come to know the Tao by letting go of small-mind think and allowing yourself to experience the flow of the Tao through your mind, body, spirit, and soul.

Today’s reflections is taken from chapter 3 of the Book of the Way:

If you over esteem great men,
people become powerless.
If you overvalue possessions,
people begin to steal.

The master leads
by emptying people’s minds
and filling their cores
by weakening their ambitions
and toughening their resolve.
He helps people lose everything
they know, everything they desire,
and creates confusion
in those who think they know.

Practice not-doing
and everything will fall into place.

*translated by Stephen Mitchell

may the road rise to meet you
may the wind be always at your back
may the sun shine warm upon your face
the rains fall soft upon your fields
and until we meet again, may God
hold you in the hollow of his hand

I’m in Newcastle for the next couple of days. This is my first visit. I’m not quite sure what to make of the place yet. It’s been less than a day so I’ll reserve my opinion until later.

How do you get to know a city?

Hold that question because I didn’t get a chance to answer it before I got distracted with this question: how do you develop a champion mindset?

Well according to an article in Think Big, potency of desire is one. Apparently high achievers know what they want and have a deep desire to achieve it. They have a ‘do or die’ attitude toward their goals.

High achievers also have a clear vision that they will succeed no matter what. More often than not, they can even see the steps they need to take that will lead them to their success.

A third characteristic of a champion mindset is comfort with taking high risks. High achievers have the courage to take on tasks that are beyond their skill level. They the capacity to believe in their ideas without proof, and they have no doubt they can accomplish what they set their minds too.

Your mindset shapes you belief and your beliefs determine your destiny

I decided to go for an early morning walk.  I like to watch a city wake up.  Even at 5am London is alive and pulsing.  Workers are turning up to the big department stores to clean them and stock shelves.  McDonalds is serving coffee.  A call girl is on her way home after a night’s work.  I wanted to see the Marble Arch.  I would have taken a few pictures, but there was so much construction around it, the photo would have been ruined.

I can see how easy it is to be surrounded by hundreds of people and yet still feel lonely.  I am sitting outside a coffee house on Oxford Street watching all these people walk past.  The odds are I will never cross paths with any of these people again.  We have been bouncing through the sands of time and have come into each others lives for the brief-est of moments.  All these people going to and fro.

Some of my favorite quotes from Spinoza:

“The rational person is the one who strives always to increase his power, to change passion to action, and to secure for himself joy, independence and serenity that are the true marks of freedom.  To achieve this condition, however, is to amend our emotions – to master that in our nature which otherwise master us.”

“There is only one true wisdom, which is to increase our power, and to ensure that, in so far as it is possible, the things that happen to us are also produced by us.”

“The one who lives by the dictates of reason is the ‘free man’ – the person who is active rather than passive in all that involves him.”

The server my blog sits on crashed, which is why the site has been so flaky these last couple of days.  Everything has now been migrated over to a new server.  I now have to upgrade wordpress.  Fingers crossed that the process goes well.

Today was a standard day. I was out most of the day. During my morning reading session I finished Bernard Williams’ essay on Plato. I didn’t know Plato is considered the father of philosophy. I am amazed at how much Western Thought even after all these years is shaped by Plato’s thoughts. I learned from Williams that a great philosopher has the following qualities: intellectual power and depth; a grasp of the sciences; a sense of the political, and of human destructiveness as well as creativity; a broad range and a fertile imagination; an unwillingness to settle for the superficially reassuring; and in an unusual and lucky case, the gifts of a great writer. I think that is a tall order, but a great one to aspire to reach.

Actually now looking at my notebook, I realize it was John Cottingham’s essay on Descartes that I finished this morning (I finished Plato yesterday).
Descartes main concern of the day was trying to answer the question: “What exactly is the nature of consciousness and what is its relationship to the physical world?”

Then I started on Roger Scruton’s essay on Spinoza. I was immediately blown away by the Spinoza’s division of his work, Ethics:

1. Why does anything exist?
2. How is the world composed?
3. What are we in the scheme of things?
4. Are we free?
5. How should we live?

As I said, I was blown away. Powerful questions to which I am looking forward to reading Spinoza’s answers to the questions.

I did a Google search on Roger Scruton. The man’s stats are impressive. I marveled over his accomplishments. He’s written 30 books, numerous articles, broadcasting, lectures at university level, set up 4 businesses, and still has found time to write fiction, poetry, and even music! Reading about Scruton made me realize how basically lazy I am, either that or very dumb. Or worse yet, dumb and lazy.

That realization prompted a new motto for myself: STFU Do It. (Shut the fuck up and do it).

After my workout, I went into town to meet Fan. It’s her 25th birthday today. I thought it would be nice to have a cup of joe with her and wish her a happy and prosperous birthday. I gave her a book of Zen poems as a present.

We chewed the fat for a couple of hours, basically tackling some of life’s biggest questions like where does the divine spark go when you die? What is the nature of addiction? Who are we really after you strip away everybody else’s shit they’ve dumped on you during the course of your life.

I said goodbye to Fan and then skipped over to the NLP course we have running at the moment just to sit in observe how things are going. And since of course there is no rest of the wicked, I zipped home for an hour before driving over to Leicester to catch up with Jenny. We always meet at the big Borders Books there, which is good news for Borders, but bad news for me as I always walk away with a smaller bank balance. This time I bought: Affluenza, by Oliver James; Fermat’s Last Theorem, by Simon Singh; The Elegant Universe, by Brian Greene; the Oxford World’s Classics title, Travel Writing 1700 – 1830, in addition to those titles, I received Matsu Basho’s A Haiku Journey, Basho’s Narrow Road to a Far Province, and H.D.F. Kitto’s book, The Greeks. I have a lot of reading to do.

Oh yeah, and I potentially picked up a new contract today.