The following exercises are offered if you would like to try some of the techniques and approaches in this book. There is no particular order in which these exercises must be followed.
Cloud Gathering
Chapter two concerns the practice of taking guidance from nature, which relies on our surrender to chance and destiny. In its simplest form, it means holding a question in mind and walking out into the fields and forests with a desire only to be led by the whispers of spirit. The flight of birds across a valley, the play of sunlight on leaves, or even a gust of wind might then become significant and provide the answers we are looking for, since, as Adam put it, “nature is the visible face of spirit: a way of connecting with intelligent forces who know far more than we do.”
Cloud gathering, or cloud gazing, is a traditional method of Celtic divination. To try it for yourself, find a quiet place in nature on a sunny day when there are also clouds in the sky. Lie on your back and close your eyes, then ask the question (out loud if you wish) that you are seeking an answer to.
Open your eyes and “gather” the first cloud you see. Study it, making a note of its shape, the way it moves, its size, density, texture, and so on. What does it remind you of or seem to be saying?
Adam taught that it is best to look for three signs—or, rather, to allow these signs to find you—so you can check the information each provides against the others and then creatively assemble all three to reveal a final answer. So repeat this exercise two more times in exactly the same way, and when you have finished, use your creative imagination to develop a story or theme that unites all of the guidance you have received.
The story you create is the answer to your question and your gateway to the future. It doesn’t need to be a work of great poetry or even make rational sense. Your soul will understand its meaning.
Walking a Dragon Path
“What is a dragon path?” Cad asks in chapter three. “There are many answers to that question … but really they are threads of energy that link one place or soul to another.
“Beneath everything we know—or think we know—there is a web of energy that holds our reality together and exists beyond the visible world. A dragon path is a particular thread in that web that will lead us to someone or something—a place, a person, or a passage in time—with which we have some business because we share something in common: a mood or a taste or, more likely, a sacred purpose.”
To explore the dragon paths in your own life, look for coincidences or synchronicities—things that link you in some intangible way with another person or place and that may also come in threes (“The hallmark of a good omen,” according to Adam).
Perhaps you are reading a book, for example, and a place name leaps out at you. It may be somewhere you’ve never thought about before, but suddenly now its romance or intrigue starts to call you. Then, later that day, there is a television documentary about the same place, or a newspaper article, or a friend arrives unexpectedly and starts talking about it, unaware that it is on your mind too. Such events are more common than we think and signal a world opening up to us and beginning to let slip its secrets.
A dragon path now exists between that place and you, and to follow it may be to embark on a pilgrimage of your own to discover what hidden knowledge is there for you to find. Invariably, your life will change if you choose to make this journey.
An Experiment with Time
“Are you familiar with the works of John Dunne?” asks Cad in chapter four. “Some years ago, Mr. Dunne … began to have dreams of events yet to happen, which, on waking, he found either to be real, or he would observe reality change over the next days and weeks until the events he had dreamed of became real …
“And so Mr. Dunne began to wonder about the nature of a world where things like this could happen. Certainly, it was not the world that we are taught to believe in … but one where future, past, and present are a single moment, eternal and swirling about us in an infinite and ongoing Now … a world where distinctions of time are no more than descriptions of the mind and bear little resemblance to what is actually real … [instead] in sleep, dreams, and reveries, our souls wander freely and make contact with other dimensions.”
Dunne’s experiment with time was really an exercise in lucid dreaming: the willful creation of a dream-state where we receive information from the world of spirit about events, people, places, or circumstances that may be distant from us in space or time as we perceive them but are ever-present when we enter a shamanic state of consciousness.
To begin lucid dreaming, make sure you are relaxed, and before you sleep, set yourself a task to visit a person or place and gather information about a possible future that relates to a subject you have in mind. Then sleep normally but set your alarm for a time a little different from normal (about three hours into your sleeping cycle is usually good), and, as soon as you wake, write down your thoughts, recollections, and intuitions about the person or place you have chosen or the event you have seen.
The next step is to watch for similar events in “real life”—and to realize from this that reality is not as fixed or certain as we may think and that time, if it exists at all, is not linear but always “now” in some other dimension of our dreaming.
“Stop!”
To bring the soul back to balance and return it to its natural order, “we began a sort of physical work where we would run through forests, wade rivers, climb trees … aware that at any moment one of us could yell stop,” says Cad in chapter six. “Immediately then we had to end what we were doing and hold ourselves in perfect pitch, even if we were clinging to the high branches of a tree or perching on a rock above a waterfall.”
The Stop exercise is one to practice with a partner. Individually, you or the person you are working with will begin some activity—running, climbing, reading, thinking, meditating, gardening, painting … it doesn’t really matter what. At a certain point into this practice, the inactive partner gives the other an instruction to stop.
At this, the active partner ceases what he is doing and pays attention to his body, emotions, and thoughts, noting how he feels and where his mind has taken him.
The next stage is to track these thoughts, feelings, and sensations back to where they came from. You may be thinking (consciously or otherwise) of a job interview that is coming up, for example.
Level 1: How do you feel about it (excited, nervous, worried, etc.)?
Level 2: When have you felt like this before?
Level 3: What activities or circumstances unite the situations in which you have felt or feel this way?
Level 4: When was the first time these feelings ever arose—and in response to what?
And so on.
In this way, the Stop exercise begins to reveal our habitual thought processes and emotional reactions so we can bring them back under our control. We can then align our energies to our purpose instead of wasting them or falling victim to habits.
“It sounds simple,” said Cad, “but through its practice, we learned a great deal about ourselves and strengthened our resolve to become men of destiny.”
“I Am That Which I Am”
“Our final practice was a movement technique,” says Cad, in chapter six. It looked and felt like tai chi. The moves were completed slowly in a continuous and gently flowing rhythm that began with us standing quite still and facing the sun, feeling its warmth as well as the breeze on our skin and, with eyes closed, listening to the sounds of nature with relaxed awareness to bring ourselves into balance. Our arms were then extended to the sides at shoulder height and, with eyes now open, we twisted at the waist, turning left and then right, as if to look directly behind us.
Through an act of visualization and tuning in to the environment, this movement enables you to draw power and awareness from the air, as if your fingers are antennae receiving wisdom from the world around you.
The next movement is to bend your knees, keeping your back straight, and to extend your fingers downwards until they touch the ground, so you absorb the power of the earth in the same way as the air. Then, standing upright, your arms are raised above your head to allow the energy of the earth to cascade over you and to receive the power of the sun.
Finally, your arms are brought to the sides and your body returns to its first position. The movement ends with an affirmation, spoken aloud: “I am that which I am.”
A daily practice of this movement not only wakes up the body, mind, and spirit, but is a reminder of our place in the world:
I am me;
I am not you.
I take responsibility for myself
While honoring your right to be.
With that realization and caveat,
I care for and express myself
As I will.
The Pilgrim’s Way
While there are many “official” pilgrimage routes (such as that of Santiago de Compostela, which Cad describes in chapter seven), in fact, as Adam says: “Any action we make might be a pilgrimage, whether the journey takes a moment or a lifetime—because we are always acting … To be pilgrims is what we came to this world to do. It is our destiny.”
To undertake a pilgrimage requires, in this sense, only mindfulness: an “otherworldly” mindfulness, where we set our intentions and are led by intuition. Even a country walk or a trip to the shops can become a pilgrimage, then, because we are open to guidance from the world of spirit around us, beyond our normal concerns and agendas.
Wherever you are going and whatever you are doing today, slow down and walk at the pace of nature. Observe and look around you. Slow your breathing. Be part of the world.
Set yourself an intention that you are on a spiritual quest to use your journey as a way to deepen into spirit and increase your connection to nature. When you reach your destination, look for the signs that will answer you.
Even a supermarket can become a shrine of knowledge if you use your intention in this way and pay attention to the world.
The Vesica Piscis
Fittingly, in chapter eight I arrive at the Chalice Well in Glastonbury, which is protected by an oak and iron cover decorated by the ancient symbol of the vesica piscis: an elaborate figure eight dissected by the magical sword of King Arthur.
The figure eight, or lemniscate, was also the pilgrim’s mark used by Adam and, as Cad explained it, a symbol of protection and security since it returns upon itself, leading away from and then back to the center: the place we have come from and return to on our travels. Through its use, therefore, “no pilgrim can ever lose himself.”
Another of the moving meditations Cad taught me also uses this symbol. Its purpose is to still the mind and allow our spirits to flow so they blend with that of the wider universe.
Walk slowly, tracing an imaginary numeral eight on the ground as you walk. Breathe deeply and free your mind from everyday matters and concerns. Simply walk the labyrinth of the lemniscate.
It is good to start (and end) the day like this. By walking the eight for fifteen minutes or so, you will experience stillness, and your spiritual resources will be gathered around you so that any concerns you have can be viewed from a bigger and more central perspective and are no longer overwhelming. It is also an excellent prelude to lucid dreaming.
The Oaken Giants: A Tree Meditation
“Almost without thinking, I sank to the ground and sat cross-legged before the trees, drawn into a meditation. My eyes became unfocused, and I found myself gazing at the trees, dreaming myself into them and the evolution of the world that they had watched and been part of … I was one with the memory of the trees, flowing like water through their season-rings and merging with the history contained there. I saw, as they had, the people who had made their prayers and offerings, and I knew what they longed for.”
In chapter nine, I describe my encounter with Gog and Magog, the great oaks of Glastonbury. Although my own meditation was, in this instance, spontaneous and unplanned, it is possible to receive great wisdom from trees in a more deliberately meditative way.
It begins with slowing down and, as much as possible, losing yourself to nature. In this dreamlike state, find a tree you are drawn to and sit with your back against it. Close your eyes and allow yourself to dream more deeply so you make a spiritual and emotional, as well as a physical, connection to the tree you have chosen.
Trees, especially the great oaks, have been on Earth far longer than we have, and it may therefore be that, through the dreaming connection you make, a great deal of wisdom is offered to you in the form of ideas or thoughts that pop into your head or the feelings or body sensations that arise.
Don’t dismiss it. Think about it, and you may find that the counsel you receive is exactly what you need to hear, even though it came from a source beyond the “normal” world.
The Oracle
In chapter ten, I write about an otherworldly encounter with Adam and the oracle he refers to as the Maid of the Hill:
“He led me to the end of the cave where, in the center, a throne of carved oak was standing on a stage before a curtain of red velvet. A woman dressed completely in white sat there unmoving, a veil draped over her head so that her face could not be seen. Beneath her oaken throne, a bowl of sage and bay leaves smouldered, surrounding her with aromatic smoke.”
The appearance of the oracle and the words she spoke seem curious, but such is the way of oracles. The oracle priestesses of Delphi (also known as the Pythia, or Pythonesses) were the channels for Apollo, the god of light, sun,truth, medicine, healing, and poetry. They were usually older women, chosen from the peasants of the area, who had led a blameless and sin-free life. They sat on tripod thrones over an opening in the earth from which intoxicating fumes arose, so they fell into a trance where Apollo could possess them, and from him their prophecies would flow. Often they spoke in poetry or riddles, which were interpreted by the priests of the temple. Always their faces were hidden.
Such practices, therefore, have history to them, and it is as well to follow them if you wish to become an oracle, or Pythia, for others.
Cover your face and place a bowl of smoking sage and bay beneath you. Inhale deeply and begin to speak in a poetic stream of consciousness. Your words are for interpretation later. For now, let the spirits speak through you.
Good and Bad Seeds
How we know sin and how we avoid it are the questions posed in Adam’s journal, which I write about in chapter twelve. For Adam, the answer was straightforward: “Pay attention to our actions and the results they produce.” Then, “sooner or later we will learn what is useful for us and what impoverishes our souls …
“The good gardener plants good seeds and tends to them so they grow strong in the sunlight and add their beauty to the world.”
In a sense, knowing sin (and avoiding it for the good of our souls) is trial and error, but “good gardeners” are shrewd. They test their actions in “the field of deeds” that is our world and, more importantly, they learn from them.
Not many people are good gardeners but rather, as the stranger explained it, are led by habits and conditioning so that only “five of twenty of twenty” will break the cycle of planting bad seeds and expecting nourishment from them.
Observe yourself. Keep a journal if you need to. Practice for yourself a sort of Stop exercise and record your thoughts, feelings, and responses and the outcomes they produce. Look back over it from time to time and you will become clearer on what are the good and bad seeds for you.
What is required next is purpose: a willful decision to act differently so that better outcomes result. This is the planting of good seeds—those which make the world more shiny and beautiful for you and others. Then we can lead lives “without regrets.”
This Path of Purpose is not an easy one to follow, even though it is all we really have. So remember to forgive yourself for your errors as well. Then learn from them and try again. This is how the evolution of the soul—and the world—takes place.
