This last moonth has been one where flexibility has had to be the key. The next few moonths are poised to be similar in flavour.
The reason being is that my main two initiatives for 2024 are in a state of flux, with uncertainty around their aspects and timing.
So I have prerecorded two introductory shows for the new Soulwaves channel on Ethereal TV. Their launch date of June seems to have slipped, which doesn’t surprise me at all as it’s a massive undertaking on their part, not least with herding many cool cats. If I am honest, I prefer doing interviews outside the summer months anyway when I prefer to be outside! So I am not rattling that cage and am happy for it all to run its course.
Slightly more unsettling but also potentially really good news is that Insight Timer are changing the way that they remunerate teachers. As this is my main revenue stream, as I am loyal to them for the opportunity they gave me, I will have to adjust and potentially augment some of my plans.
I was planning to put all of my Magnum Opus on to the app and have already re-published the first part of my trilogy, the book Flavours of Thought, on the app. I was about to upload the companion book in an eight part mini-series, Recipes for Fresh Thinking, and have two recipe-themed courses up already with a third lined up for July.
My intuition is to hold off doing any more. Partly as they are not getting the traction I had hoped for but mainly as my intuition is to re-publish and re-purpose the second part of the trilogy, Planes of Being.
The third and most expansive part of the trilogy is The Path to Overstanding. This was going to be tricky to upload as it has so many materials as attachments and Insight Timer do not allow them to be appended to courses. What they are about to launch though is our ability to sell events and mentoring services through the app.
This means access to The Path to Overstanding could be repurposed as a subscription-based monthly mentoring programme. I already have it hosted on MySoundwise and can augment access with live sessions that themselves will get uploaded, thus augmenting the level of Overstanding.
So for a moonth, I plan to do nothing apart from observe and post my current mix of free meditations and music, the serialisation of the audiobook version of Soulwaves and courses.
By way of fitting example, let me share a guided visualisation with you here, that I just happened to upload last moonth … funny how art emulates life !
And you can see the interview with the CEO of Insight Timer, Christopher Plowman, on the ringing in of these changes here https://youtu.be/t_NgITxD324
Seven years ago, in May 2017, I was approached by Siri Opli who asked if I would like my daily Just for Today memes to be illustrated. I had no reason to say no so we embarked on a journey with no plan to reach any destination but just to enjoy the ride.
We flipped the order of creation over the years. Sometimes Siri would send me art and I would write having been inspired by it. Other times, I would write the words and Siri would be inspired to draw or paint accordingly.
Last month, the scheduling software I was using to batch schedule JFTs stopped posting to Facebook Groups, a change at Meta’s end apparently, so this month we are changing the way we are doing them.
We will still record Just for Today themed meditations – here’s one recent one for example. This one incidentally was one that I did following a reading from a medium who suggested I create content for younger people, perhaps with ADHD and autism.
Siri will be now be collating and curating old and new groups of illustrated memes on the Deckible app as card decks – here’s an example
Now there is a modest charge for each deck but Siri would love your support and the big advantage is to get all the associated JFTs in one place – many with the associated meditation. Better still is the ability to be able to journal against each card and even do spreads of cards.
So I throw the gauntlet down to any reader of this blog to stop doing something, out of habit, that no longer serves. This allows something else you did not expect to pop along.
Now this has already happened to me and I hope to be able to announce it after the next orbit of the moon.
I leave you with one of the first ever illustrations that Siri did – it is still our favourite – as well as the meditation it inspired.
On 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).
So on Insight Timer, you will find three new courses :
– 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.
I 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 …
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.
For 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 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 !
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.
You may have picked up a theme in this moonthly blog where life and art emulate each other.
So, after looking at plans for 12 months and a set of wide gaping holes in our new extension for five months, the windows have been fitted. We are now watertight and can really appreciate the views we have to enjoy once the refurbishment is finished.
We’re also out of our moho now into rented again. The moho is going up for sale and our roving adventure is coming to a close.
So these are the two main things happening in my life right … first world issues I know but what’s happening in my art is of more cosmic significance, I hope and feel
In art, a new clarity is emerging, as I come to the end of the creation of the Path to Overstanding materials. Someone asked me where the Path fitted in with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It made me realise that the Path starts where his triangle of needs finishes.
So it takes a person who is self-actualised to an entirely new level again. In the last section of the Path – around the Cube of Overstanding – ‘travellers’ will undergo 10 levels of initiation above the self-actualised state. Of course, this is not the limit but it’s pretty transformative nonetheless.
I’ve just got three more moonth’s worth of materials to generate and have now got a new clarity of where to take it from next year – both with mentoring individuals and trainers.
The video below tells the story of how I came to this place and where it leads from now. If you are ready to step up, get in touch. I would be honoured to guide you along this path.
Seven years ago, in May 2017, I was approached by Siri Opli who asked if I would like my daily Just for Today memes to be illustrated. I had no reason to say no so we embarked on a journey with no plan to reach any destination but just to enjoy the ride.
For 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.
The refurbishment and extension of our home has taken nine months – this seems appropriate for a rebirth I suppose.
So it takes a person who is self-actualised to an entirely new level again. In the last section of the Path – around the Cube of Overstanding – ‘travellers’ will undergo 10 levels of initiation above the self-actualised state. Of course, this is not the limit but it’s pretty transformative nonetheless.