On a Roll

On a Roll

Living TimefullyOn the 27th February, which is a year to the day since we moved out for our house refurb to proceed, my audio studio was back in operation … and I am back on a roll.

What’s more, on the 28th February, the workmen left site and the drilling and banging stopped, the skip has gone and we can now park in our own drive. Thankfully we have very forgiving and generous neighbours!

Before the 27th, I’d already been busy but mainly remastering existing materials. I am aiming to migrate my esoteric archive of materials over to Insight Timer (whilst also paralleling them up on Soundwise for backup reasons).

The Keys to OverstandingSo on Insight Timer, you will find three new courses :

Living Timefully

Purposeful Living

Keys to Overstanding

– and very shortly, I’ll be publishing another course called Becoming a Channel.

I also squeezed in recording a brand new meditation specifically written for the leap year and published on the 29th Feb called Take a Leap (geddit) and you will also find a Norwegian version from the uber-talented Siri Opli.

Take a Leap

Siri’s version : Gjørrå et sprang

Soulwaves : A Future History : Insight Timer PlaylistI am also three parts (of ten) into the serialisation of my novel Soulwaves : A Future History : which you can find under this new playlist

But the biggest momentum, causing the ball to pick up speed, is the creation of a series of new courses based on my two books, Flavours of Thought and Planes of Being.

They came out when audiobooks weren’t much of a thing, Flavours being published in 2009 and Planes in 2012. They are contemporisations of the Major and Minor Arcana.

So this year, I am creating two three part courses, that’s six in total on the Flavours of Thought and the Recipes of Fresh Thinking. Then I will create two courses from Planes of Being.

Listen to this recent IT Live for an overview and more background …

… it is now also available on Insight Timer

This will make a huge archive of my legacy content to the millions of meditators on Insight Timer.

My hope is that by the end of this year, Insight Timer will allow us to upload other assets, by way of PDF and images, to courses on the app. Then, in 2025, I will be able to follow on by publishing the Tree and Cube of Overstanding materials.

Now all of this activity has caused me to think. When this is all done, my work is really done.

What next I ask myself?

Let’s hope the ball keeps rolling along eh?

New Auspices

New Auspices

Auspices DefinitionSo at the end of February 2023 last year, we moved out of our house ahead of a major renovation. We’ve been back in from just before Xmas but largely ‘camping’ on one floor. By the end of February this year though, virtually all the works will be complete and normality can resume but under new auspices.

This year has already started with everything being taken up a gear or three.

I’ve given my meditations and ambience a push in a new direction with more a series of meditative enquiries and a more compositional and layered approach to music. For examples, listen to …

What’s On Your Mind? (enquiry)

Flow and Ebb (ambient)

Riding Your Thought Stream (enquiry)

The serialisation of Soulwaves : A Future History is on track, with two parts already available via IT Premium. By October this year, I aim for all 10 parts (each consisting of 10 chapters) to be live.

There’s also a new course published this month called the Keys to Overstanding – it will be first of many where I share esoteric wisdom from my ‘magnum opus’ The Book of Overstanding.

I’ve also completed the first of a series of interviews with like minded souls with a wonderful conversation with the uber-talented musician, singer, actress and disrupter, Hannah Reimann.

… and it’s only week 1 of February !!

But what off these new auspices?

Well for quite a while now, I have used the Twelve Councillors of the Light as my muse. They ‘helped’ me write Soulwaves and Insertions, as well as the all meditations and music that accompanied them.

Last year, I was ‘introduced’ to a different set of intelligences called The Four … you can listen to a podcast about them below …

Now, I will admit that I don’t know if the Council and The Four are real or imaginary. What I can report is that, if I imagine that they are real, all sorts of wondrous magic pops along at the most perfect times.

… and here’s an image of The Four channelled by Sïrï Oplï

Taking Stock

Taking Stock

Insight Timer PortfolioFor the first time in well over a decade, I have started this year without much of a plan. I sense a New Dawn is coming, along with yet another death-less reincarnation.

Over the holidays, I mind-mapped the content I’d created since I morphed into being a storyteller, meditation guide and ambient composer. You will find a version of the map below. Note that there is another level of detail again to be seen, click here if you’d like to see it as it lists all my Insight Timer tracks.

Incidentally, I was a little surprised to find I had uploaded 300 tracks to Insight Timer in just over 6 years, that’s around 1 a week – and doesn’t include the courses !!

Having completed this task, it feels both cathartic and necessary in order to avoid running full tilt into 2024. This stock-taking has been brought about in no small part because we have been out of our home for nine months, while our home has been transformed into something more expansive, functional and eco. The refurbishment process will still take another month or so to complete but it’s getting there and we are now making our home into a home.

As a result, during this time, I am not doing too much apart from testing the water with a couple of ideas but largely just allowing the Universe to give me a sign or three … kind of having a sabbatical for an unspecified amount of weeks and months.

The first of these tests is the generation of a short meditation, with minimal guidance, but which invites the listener to embark upon their own journey of enquiry. If it goes down well, I have ideas for a whole series of them and their introduction will see the phasing out of the Just for Today style meditations (there are more than enough of those already).

The first one is entitled “What’s On Your Mind?” and can be listened to for free on Insight Timer

The second is available exclusively for Insight Premium subscribers. I am merging and morphing the audiobook version of Soulwaves : A Future History and the ambient album of the same name into a multimedia version. The 100 chapters will be split into 10 parts of 10 chapters each. I plan to create one part a month but may publish them more quickly if the demand is there. The first ten chapters are available from today.

p.s. If you have any ideas or requirements for materials that will inspire, edutain and help you, let me know by way of comments below …

p.p.s. I plan to move all my legacy courses, as well as the Path to Overstanding materials, to a new platform (for me) called Systeme.io. Note though, if Insight Timer reinstate PDF and video uploads, I would rather consolidate them there … just putting that out there !

Taking Stock

It Takes 9 Months

It Takes 9 Months

The refurbishment and extension of our home has taken nine months – this seems appropriate for a rebirth I suppose.

In this time, we have relocated over 35 times, squeezed in a couple of mini-holidays, met and caught up with old friends and spent a humungous amount on the refurb. You can’t take it with you, they say.

Has it been worth it? 

Well the old house was exactly that : old and tired, damp, draughty and mouldy. The new house is fully insulated, fully electric with temperature and humidity controlled by our new MVHR. With the solar panels going back on in the New Year, as sun behind the hill at the mo, we are aiming to be close to net zero. So yes, definitely it will be worth it.

In addition, we have 50% more space. We didn’t need the space per se but all the old rooms were a less than ideal shape. Now the house and garden are married together with a living room/diner in the new upstairs extension, opening up into the gardens. The bedrooms and wet rooms are now mostly downstairs in the ‘European-style’ we understand. All rooms have had new floors, walls and ceilings and triple glazing fitted. 

The journey had ups and downs of course. We had a really fast demolition and rapid construction of the new extension, with piles driven six metres into the ground and three one ton steels man-handled in : due to cranes not being able to operate with overhead electricity cables.

Discovery of asbestos set us back a month and the best part of £20k. We probably lost another month as our main contractor had taken on too many projects and there’s at least another month of exterior insulation, rendering and cladding works to be completed early in 2024.

Now though, the scaffolding is down and the skip has left the property. We have now moved back in before Christmas.

If you have been following my blog, you will have noted that, in parallel, the materials for the Path to Overstanding have been flowing out regularly and I only have a moonth’s worth of content to create in the New Year. There’s been much new freemium and premium content added to Insight Timer and some ‘waves have rippled around the planet as a result. 

I need a break, as perhaps do those walking the path with me.

So 2024 will augur in a new way of being from a personal level. As my creative output is personal in its very nature, it too will inevitably change. For the first time in over 20 years though, I have no plans for any project. I have some ideas milling around but next year, I will go with the flow and really allow my soul to guide me.

p.s. All suggestions and nudges for what you’d like to see more, or less, of much appreciated.

Room for a View

Room for a View

This moonth two large projects are approaching completion – namely our house refurbishment and my ‘paving’ of the Path to Overstanding.

When you come to the end, or near the end, of a project a certain melancholy can tend to set it. 

Firstly, you might wonder what’s next and even if it’s your last project? 

Secondly, you might feel it was a waste of time or it didn’t quite meet your objectives.

Thirdly, and perhaps most crucially, you realise that the ‘real work’ could just be about to begin.

With the house refurb, we are weathertight, glass is in, 1st fix done and awaiting plastering to dry out so decorating can begin. Then it’s 2nd fix and a phased move back in. In 2024, we’ll tackle making the outside as good as the inside and bringing the home and garden to each other.

At the same time, my explorations of the Path to Overstanding are virtually done and dusted. The main body of work comprises of 100 or so audio modules which are a mix of explanations, explorations and overtasks. This ‘magnum opus’ is augmented by 22 meditations on the keys of the Major Arcana and 22 ambient tracks which are similarly inspired. 

There’s a bit of content yet to be generated which I plan to do early in 2024.

I am faced with a quandary though about what to do next. It could just be converted into a book and sent out into the world, at relatively low cost, in order to reach a wider audience. This involves a considerable amount of marketing effort and none of my previous 18 books has ever gained wide reach or commercial success.

The other option I am mulling over is to train up Tour Guides to take others around the path. This again will take a considerable amount of effort. I did try doing this over a decade ago to no avail. I hadn’t of course developed the materials for the path then.

Such negative thinking can hold any artist back from really enjoying and celebrating their achievements. So I am going to pat myself on my back for completing what essentially the third in a trilogy of metaphysical tomes and my magnum opus.

Then the next thing I am going to do is nothing. The next move is to simply move back into the house, spend some time making it liveable and enjoying a new room with a spectacular view.

p.s. The ‘lungs’ of the house are being installed today – our MVHR system will help the house dry out by reducing humidity and introducing some distributed heat

Tatton HPV1

p.p.s. The ladder to the new extension has been removed and we now have a staircase