Title: Cartoon Dog

Gender: Male

Age: 45

Sun Sign: Cancer

Chinese Sign: Wood Dragon

Location: Luleå, Sweden

Passionate about protecting our natural environment and human rights, I am a great believer in people and the power of collective action to bring about change.

I love walking along the coast, a big sky, quiet country places, wild weather, rivers in the daytime heat and lakes at dawn. I have a fascination with secluded carp ponds; the carp seem so serene and playful. Maybe it is the way the water reflects our world back to us, and is also a doorway to another world. Very Zen.

My dream is to create a small communal retreat centre, growing and cooking our own food and meditating together. With Tipis and camp-fires, fresh spring water, a wind-turbine, a carp pond (of course!) and tree leaves rustling in the warm coastal breeze. There are places I have seen, old broken down farm buildings with a few acres of land. I just need to get the dream out of my head and onto the soil.

A Child Alone:

When a child/youth my Father used to buy up old wrecked out-of-town buldings and fix them up. We moved several times so I was always exploring new places and living in buildings that were partly falling down. The downside was that I never had friends for very long and was always the outsider. As a consequence, perhaps, I developed an adventurous and independent but somewhat solitary nature. I was fascinated by the paranormal; ghosts, UFOs, psychic powers, astrology and Kung Fu on TV.

The quest to know lead me for many years down the path of scientific enquiry, but I became disillusioned when I realised the important questions were not even being asked, let alone answered.

Flicking the Switch:

Three times (so far ;o) in this life I have (unconsciously) unleashed a storm that shook the foundations of my world, like a tornado ripping me up by the roots and hurling me out somewhere far-removed from the person I thought I was. Curiously, the decisions that lead to the changes were very easy at the time of asking: learning TM (1991), receiving deeksha (2005) and returning to Oneness University, India (2007).

My Life as a Dog:

Learning to meditate was a huge awakening, all I had worked towards and felt important beforehand just fell away. The brewery I was working for suddenly closed down, I was moved (by the company) from the beauty of Scotland's capital city to a dirty old town in the midlands of England and hated everything. It took two years to plot my escape. I wrote diaries during this waiting-time to keep myself sane, but threw them away as they were so depressing. My focus had shifted to meditation and deeper questions than mortgages, career and social status; I didn't follow the first in last out office protocol, refused to play company politics and frequently took excessively long (2-3 hour) lunch-breaks to walk in the park, yet was promoted 4 times in the 2 years I was there. For my last 6 months working for the brewery I was on a national project team earning good money and feeling quite significant. But there was a hunger inside that gnawed at me, and I saw in the faces of the other (older) managers a future I wanted no part of.

Then things suddenly fell into (another) place and I gave notice, moved to a meditating community and soon found myself earning a lot less ;o) though I consider this to be fair exchange for meditating with 80 other people morning and evening, and all the other wonders that come bundled living in such company. Although I left some 5 years ago to follow a more individual (buddhist) path, I am left with no doubt about the power of meditation (especially in groups), whatever form that may take. Being together in this way is deeply transformative, both individually and on a social scale.

Waking from the Dream:

My second big awakening (if we must use a label) came about after stumbling across an amazing (website) video testimonial by a swedish woman called Anette Carlström, who had been to Oneness Univeristy in India. Travelling 100 miles to meet a somewhat ethereal swedish doctor and have him place his hands on my head, to the backdrop of a didgeridoo workshop next door, certainly felt surreal enough. Something happened, some kind of mental switch got thrown, and within 2-3 months I had been on retreat in Scotland (Penninghame House) for a course that shook me to my very core and wrenched open the door to my heart, and to India for the 21 day process at Oneness University.

Travelling to India was everything I had hoped it would be, and nothing like I had expected. People who have been will know what I mean, those who have yet to see it, you absolutely must go.

When I returned all hell broke loose; the life I had left behind no longer existed. I dropped everything and moved to Penninghame for a year, initially in the office then the kitchen (much better!). A year of living dangerously.

Things changed. I stopped trying to be something. My future life (the one I had been working towards) had disappeared. I became like the wisps of mist clinging to the river banks in the early morning. So much happened in such a short time: rage, emptiness, despair, insanity, beauty.  What can you do when your life falls apart and some of the pieces go missing? You go back to the fire to be re-made…

Lost Again:

I travelled back to Oneness University in January 2007 to find some answers, only to find there weren't any questions. No answers and no questions - just emptiness. An emptiness so vast and so devoid of anything that words cannot do it justice.

When I returned my life became a David Lynch movie: always lurking shadows … black lodge and white lodge … my life was a lie … and the world was no longer real. There was no talking to people, they thought I was going mad.

Through these dark days I found someone, here in this on-line community, who understood what was happening, who was going through a similar process. And for 3 months we exchanged messages of despair, humour, rage and doubt. Like a lifeline thrown to a drowning man I found a way to hold on through the storm.

What to do? I waited and found sense in the waiting. Then I found this poem, which expresses everything perfectly, by T.S.Eliot …

I said to my soul, be still and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.

Who Am I?

Am I a cook, poker-player, copywriter, web consultant, no-one remarkable? Or just someone who has somehow become more human … it no longer matters to me, but sometimes still I wonder where it is all leading.

Having seemingly come back to Earth in Wales, which is a beautiful rugged country where it rains a lot (the beaches are almost empty of people and spectacular - see my photo album), I now find myself in Luleå, Sweden. I left the UK with just two small suitcases and a laptop. I discarded or gave away everything else (bar a small box of photos and books left with my brother). Even that felt like too much stuff …  ;o)

I have no idea what is going to happen next … I am not sure if I even have a plan any more …

Member Since: Friday, May 18 2007

Last Visit: 8 days ago.

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