A spiritual journey is a strange adventure. Well, at least mine is. You come to these amazing insights and promptly forget them again. And then they come back to you, sometimes years later, and you wonder why you failed to realise their importance the last time around.

At other times, you come across ideas in books that you reject out of hand, because they don’t fit your world view. And then something shifts and all of a sudden that very thing you rejected turns out to be what you were looking for after all.

One of those things is disidentification. I have come across it many times. The Course in Miracles is one of those places. I always rejected the whole concept of the Course because it starts with affirmations like “This chair does not mean anything. This hand does not mean anything. This foot does not mean anything.” I rebelled against this because it seemed to deny the essence of what my pagan spirituality is all about: seeing the deep meaning and the life of Spirit in everything, and being alive and aware in my body. But then I saw it explained in a different way, at a time when I was ready to hear it, and now suddenly it all makes sense.

Read the rest of this entry »

About a year ago I came up with a plan to start working with the spirits of the city, of the place where I live and work. I was really excited about this idea, about making relationship with the ancestors of the City of London, of the River Thames, of concrete and steel – all the things that make up this powerful, chaotic, amazing being that is London.

But at the same time I felt that this could also be quite dangerous. Because London, if you see it as a powerful spirit, is definitely a being that kills. It can chew you up and spit you out and leave your life in ruins if you’re not careful. It happens to many people who are drawn to its excitement and anonymity, to its power. So I decided that the first thing to do was to set up a sanctuary for myself, a place where I could be safe from London’s darker spirits.

Read the rest of this entry »