Blog 266 – Successfully Dealing With Terrible Situations, Part 2 – 31 May 2025

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

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On that very first night that I was homeless after being thrown out of home by my mother because she wanted money I did not have, I slept in a Morris Minor.  It was uncomfortable and it was scary. But I got through the night.  I found an unlit part of the Monash university campus in which to park the Morris Minor.

I was cold.

I was worried about how to find somewhere to live.

I was worried about how I was ever going to be able to finish my law studies if I did not have somewhere to live.

I was only 19.

I had less than $5.00 in my pocket and in those days, because credit cards had not yet been invented, everything had to be paid for in cash.

I was genuinely in a terrible situation.

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I have remembered another thing apart from the hair where I looked much better in this photo from 1974 than I looked in 1969. In 1969, I weighed about 8 ½ stone (120 pounds or 54.4 kilograms) and I was malnourished.  Australians still used the old British system of weights and measures back then and I weighed well under 10 stone.  By the time this photo was taken in 1974, I had gained weight and I was at least 10 stone (140 pounds, 63 ½ kilograms).

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My mother Josephine Hankin had been mentally ill for many years, but great stigma was attached to the idea of anyone being mentally ill back in 1969.  She was officially diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1973.  She was hospitalized, medicated and given shock treatment (electro convulsive therapy).  She lived the balance of her life (until 2012) in a world where the medication dulled the pain but made it impossible for her to really feel alive.

I wish I could have helped her, but I was only a kid and I knew nothing.

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The biggest difference between me in 1974 and me in 1999 was the presence of Margaret in my life.  Margaret did not have cancer in 1999 and her health was good.  She smoked cigarettes, drank champagne and loved me exactly as I was, complete with every one of my faults.  This was a completely new experience for me.   I loved every moment that I was able to spend with Margaret.

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Margaret and me in 1999.  After not being able to find any place that could ever be called home, I met Margaret and I finally ceased being homeless.  She radiated compassion and love wherever she went. .

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Go with a clear, open and receptive spirit, and the universe will not treat you badly.”

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In 1969 I was studying third year law at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria with the help of a scholarship.  I had finished two years out of a five year course and had started on the third year of study.

Without any warning, I was made homeless by my own mother and thrown out into the cold, wet night.

I slept that first night in a Morris Minor on the grounds of Monash University.

After my night sleeping in the car, I went to the Monash gymnasium building.  There were free showers available in the gym.

What should I do next?  My head was a complete fog and my thinking was confused.  It was so hard to come up with anything that looked vaguely like a plan, but I worked something out.

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I keep stressing the importance of not trying to plan too far ahead, but I had to do some planning then.

In the 1960s, a Bachelor of Laws degree at Monash took five years of full  time study.  My fees for 1969 was covered by my scholarship.  At the end of my third year of full time study, if I passed every one of my examinations, I would be able to graduate with a degree called a Bachelor of Jurisprudence.  If I got the Bachelor of Jurisprudence, I would not have a law degree but I would have a degree.  Back in 1969, having any university degree meant I could get a job that paid more than the factory labouring jobs I had worked at until then.

I set my sights on getting the Bachelor of Jurisprudence.

That became my goal for the year.  

My most immediate goal was to find somewhere to sleep that was safer than the Morris Minor; then I might be able to graduate with the Jurisprudence degree.  Becoming a lawyer would have to wait.  Perhaps one day I could finish and become a lawyer, but right then I needed to survive the nights and try and rescue something out of the disaster mum had created by her greed.

The irony of throwing me out of home was that instead of being able to milk me every time a living allowance cheque arrived, mum would now get nothing.  By being so greedy, she had eliminated getting any money from me.

But the amount paid by the living allowance cheques would never be enough for me to live on if I had to pay rent – even in 1969.

I continued to live in the Morris Minor for the next two weeks.

I told myself each night that I only had to survive that night.  Every other night could wait its turn.

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I finally became a qualified lawyer in a different city and a different State in December 1987 – 20 years and 9 months after I started studying law in 1967.

I did not meet Margaret until 1998.

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Terrible situations can be overcome.  Try not to panic.

Add meaning to your life by acting with purpose.

When you add meaning to your life, the way out of the Pit is unmistakable.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

 

Blog 265 – Successfully Dealing With Terrible Situations, Part 1 – 29 May 2025

 

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

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I have had to deal with some truly terrible situations in my life and I will share some of the strategies I used to survive.

I am very aware that others have successfully dealt with much worse situations than me, but I can only tell the stories of what I have lived through.

My intention in telling you some of these stories is NOT to claim a hero badge, but to try and give you some tools to help you survive your own dark days.

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Many decades ago, I had hair everywhere.  This photo dates from about 1974 when I was about 25 and living in Melbourne.  This version of me lived through the events I am going to tell you about in this Blog.  If you can imagine me with a short “back and sides” haircut and without the beard, you will have a reasonable picture of what I looked like.

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This is a photo of my mother Josephine Hankin (nee Wood) in about 2,000.  She looks completely harmless in this photo (and she was by then) but this radically misrepresents what she was really like in earlier decades.  The events described in this Blog happened in 1969 when she definitely did not need a walking frame.

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This is a photo of me and Cathy Carey (sometimes surnamed Sparks) in about 1974.  Cathy was a great friend and I was an idiot not to have fallen in love with her … but we are all idiots for much of our lives.  Cathy died of a brain aneurism in 1983.

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Go with a clear, open and receptive spirit, and the universe will not treat you badly.”

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In 1969 I was studying third year law at Monash University in Clayton, Victoria.  I had obtained a Commonwealth University Scholarship which paid the university fees and which also paid a living allowance.  The amount of the living allowance depended on how much money mum and dad earned in the previous financial year.  In 1967 and 1968, the living allowance was $85.00 every 2 months.  Mum used to demand that I give her $50.00 out of every living allowance payment and I paid all of my expenses for the next two months out of the remaining $30.00.  I had barely enough money to survive.  I had to buy all of my own clothes, books and stuff like that.

In 1968, mum got a job and my living allowance was reduced to $64.00 every two months.  I had no idea the allowance was going to be cut until I got home from university one evening in April 1969 at about 7.00 pm.

Mum was waiting for me when I got home.

She had (of course) opened my mail and found my living allowance cheque.  She handed the cheque to me and said “I want $50.00 board money tomorrow”.

I took the cheque from her, thinking things did not look good.  I cashed the cheque next day and paid the bills I had to pay.  I had $40.00 left over to give to mum.

When I arrived home, mum was waiting and demanded her $50.00.  I said I could not pay her $50.00 because the living allowance had been reduced and I could not survive for 2 months on only $14.00.

Mum’s response was immediate.  I had to pay her $50.00 and there was to be no argument.  If I did not like living at home, “I knew what I could do.  I could pack up my bags and leave.”

I tried arguing with her, but it was useless.  I had heard the phrase “Pack up your bags and go” so many, many times and in the past I had always knuckled under and accepted whatever she was demanding.  This time she had misjudged me.

There was no possibility of me paying her the $50.00.

The $50.00 she demanded did not exist.

I went into my room, packed a few items of clothing, grabbed a worn out nearly useless sleeping bag and threw the stuff into my car – a tiny Morris Minor.

I drove into the cold and rainy night.  

I had nowhere to sleep. 

I had no money.

Credit cards had not been invented in 1968.

I had been thrown out of my home by my own mother.

I was a full time student at university studying law and I hoped one day to become a lawyer.

I was only 19.

Anyone willing to bet that I would even survive the night would have been risking their money.

I slept that night in my Morris Minor.  I was able to remove the screen between the boot and the back seat.  By curling up my legs and lying across the width of the car, I was able to mostly stretch my legs out.

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Decades later my brother Bill, who also had a scholarship to go to Monash, told me that mum had never demanded that he pay any board money at all out of his living allowance.

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On that night in April 1969, I had no need to think any further ahead than how to survive the night. 

I could not begin to work out a solution for every aspect of the terrible situation I was in, and I did not need to. 

Stripped of the irrelevant factors, on that cold, rainy night I only had to find a way to make it through the night.

I did make it safely through that night.

This is what a Morris Minor looked like (photo from Wiki).  It was tiny.  Wiki gives these dimensions for the Morris Minor.

Dimensions Wheelbase       7 feet 2 inches (86 inches or 2,184 millimetres) Length            12 feet 4 inches (148 inches or 3,759 millimetres) Width             5 feet (60 inches or 1,524 millimetres) Height            5 feet (60 inches or 1,524 millimetres) Kerb weight   0.76 Imperial tons (1,708 pounds or 775 kilograms)

 

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Terrible situations can be overcome.

When you act with purpose, you add meaning to your life.

When you add meaning to your life, the way out of the Pit is unmistakable.

Take things one step at a time.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

 

Blog 264 – Having A Purpose Helps You Leave The Pit, Part 2 – 28 May 2025

In Blog 263 I again talked about the need to identify your purpose and how valuable the purpose is for leaving the Pit of Depression.  Yoga and meditation and walking are the tools that helped me to leave the Pit, but before tools can be of any use, you must make firm decision to actually leave the Pit.

Having a purpose will give you the courage to do what you have to do.

In this Blog, I will continue to talk about the necessity for you to identify your purpose and the need for you to make a lasting decision to carry out your purpose.

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Although my current purpose looks simple, carrying out that purpose can be difficult.

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

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To leave the empty spaces that look just like locked cells, every one of us has to make the decision to walk away from the empty space even though it looks like a cell.  Only you can do that.

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In the middle of the vast desert that surrounded Karijini National Park, I went for a swim on 20 March 2011.  Eventually, I had to leave the water.  I was cool but covered in mud.  Life is like that sometimes.

Sometimes, staying in the Pit feels comfortable, but if we want to come alive, we have to move around in the mud to leave the Pit behind.

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This shows the desert landscape in which Karijini National Park is located.  How the vegetation in this photo survives is one of nature’s great mysteries.

Photo taken 18 March 2011. 

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 Contrast this lush, ancient rainforest vegetation with the desert vegetation only a few metres further up the slope – and all of the vegetation is located within the very same ferociously hot desert.

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This is a photo of Fortescue Falls - a second water hole located withing the Karijini National Park desert.  The vegetation in Fortescue Falls is even more luxurious than that in Circular Pool. 

I took this photo on 20 March 2011.

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This is a photo of the Coongan river, near the town of Marble bar in Western Australia.  The outstanding feature of the Coongan River on 21 March 2011 was the presence of water in the river.  nearby Marble Bar is the hottest town in Australia and once had had 137 days in a row when the temperature was in excess of 37.5 degrees Celsius (100 degrees Fahrenheit).  In most years, the Coongan River has zero water in it.

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Go with a clear, open and receptive spirit, and the universe will not treat you badly.”

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I chose the four desert countryside photos above to once again point out appearances are often very deceptive.

When I was camped in the middle of the desert, I would have laughed if you had suggested I could walk for half a kilometre and have a swim.

When you are in the Pit, it seems there is no way out and nothing is worth living for.

That is why you need to recognise your own purpose.

Once you have found your purpose, you must do something else.

You must start living in the manner that seems to best match your purpose.  If you do this, the way out of the pit might still be difficult, but the exit signs for the way out will be very clearly marked.

Write your purpose down and place it where you can see it often – just like I do at the start of these Blogs.  Remind yourself of your purpose whenever you feel the blues creeping back.

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This is a photo of how I have written down my purpose.

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When you act with purpose, you add meaning to your life.

When you add meaning to your life, the way out of the Pit is unmistakable.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

 

Blog 263 – Having A Purpose Helps You Leave The Pit – 27 May 2025

In Blog 262 I again talked about the value of yoga in helping me to meditate and leave the Pit of Depression and how I used breathing exercise drawn from yoga to increase my lung capacity.  As the repetition of the yoga exercises and the meditation gradually took hold in my body, not only did the rubbish thoughts start to disappear from my brain, but my ability to breathe increased dramatically.  As a noticeable side effect, the constant cloud of sadness began to lift.

There is one factor that I have not mentioned as yet.

A crucially important factor in my departure from the Pit was my awareness that I had a purpose.

When I was gasping for air in hospital, my purpose was easy to identify.

Margaret had untreatable and incurable cancer.  My purpose was to make sure I was there for every second that she needed me.  If I let myself die, she would die on her own and probably in needless pain and loneliness.  That was truly a purpose to live for.

Sometimes the purpose is not so easy to identify.

what possible purpose could I have after Margaret had died?

i had not just lost my wife.  I had lost the very reason I had struggled so hard to stay alive.  Finding my purpose after that was very hard.

In this Blog, I will talk about the importance of identifying your purpose and the role of your purpose in helping you leave the Pit.

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My current purpose is deceptively simple.

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

If you have no hope, I want to show you that hope really exists.  If you know there is hope for you, you will do everything you need to heal yourself.

There is no cell and there is no lock.

Walk away from the cell you think you are in.  It does not exist.

Even the cancer ghosters can walk away from the empty spaces they think are cells.

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In the middle of a vast desert and in the middle of Karijini National Park located in the middle of the desert, I went for a swim on 20 March 2011.

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Circular Pool is located in the middle of the desert within the boundaries of Karijini National Park.  It was 40 Celsius on 19 March 2011 and it was 37 next day when I took this photo.  Below the floor of the desert was an oasis with vegetation that had survived from thousands of years earlier – from before the desert became a desert.  I went for a swim! 

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I do not know the science names for these plants but I do know there were not eucalyptus (gum trees in Australian slang).  A few metres above me, the gum trees struggled to live.  Here, next to this spring set below ground level, there were rain forest plants.  How extraordinary.

I took these photos on 20 March 2011..

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 The below ground level pool was a large one – have a look!.

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The four photos I show above, underline something very important – appearances are often exceptionally deceptive.

When you are sitting in the bottom of the Pit, everything looks black and meaningless.

When I was camped in the middle of the desert, I would have laughed if you had suggested I could walk for half a kilometre and have a swim.

The desert hummed with heat and I had driven hundreds of kilometres through bleak, waterless land.  I would have said it was impossible to swim in Karijini because the nearest water was hundreds of kilometres away.

I would have been wrong.

The nearest water was just a few hundred metres away from the sweltering, shadeless spot where I had pitched my tent.

To find it, all I had to do was follow a sign that said “Circular Pool”.

Even when I followed the sign, I did not believe I would actually find any water.  The start of path to the pool was very unpromising.  And yet the water was truly there.

When you are in the Pit, it seems there is no way out and nothing is worth living for.

That is why you need to recognise your own purpose.

Everyone has a purpose.

Nothing except your own heart can tell you what your purpose is.

If anyone insists to claim to know what your purpose really is – turn away.

Your purpose is whatever your heart tells you.

Your purpose does not have to be Presidential.  Who wants to have that type of responsibility?

Perhaps you want to pick up lolly wrappers in the local primary school.

Perhaps you want to teach you daughter how to drive a car.

Perhaps you want to learn how to bake scones.

perhaps you want to watch the grass grown and listen to the wind blow.

Whatever your purpose is, it is a good one.

Write your purpose down and place it where you can see it often – just like I do at the start of these Blogs.  Remind yourself of your purpose whenever you feel the blues creeping back .

When you act with purpose, you add meaning to your life.

When you add meaning to your life, you will immediately see the way out of the Pit.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

Find your purpose and walk out of the Pit.

You can do it.  

 

Blog 262 – Using Meditation and Yoga to Leave The Pit, Part 3 – 26 May 2025

In Blog 261 I talked about the value of yoga as a tool in helping me to meditate and the circumstances in which I began to do yoga.  When I combined meditation with yoga, I found that my brain started to get rid of the rubbish that constantly filled it up.  As the rubbish started to disappear, the constant cloud of sadness started to ease.

Sadness is contagious – and it has a definite attraction.  In a weird sense, there is a sick enjoyment that we get from being sad.  It is not that anyone wants to be sad, but when we are in the Pit and feeling really bad, there is a tiny part of us that wants to stay in the Pit.  This is probably the same part of us that whispers in out ear that we are in the Pit because we deserve to be in the Pit.  This voice whispers we don’t need to leave the Pit of Depression because we are there for the very good reason that we deserve to be in the Pit.

Ignore the siren call claiming you deserve to be in the Pit.  The idea that you are there because you deserve to be there is just more rubbish cluttering up your brain.

You are in the Pit because something bad has happened to you.  This something bad has triggered your body to manufacture a whole bunch of chemicals and those chemicals have given you a bad dose of the blues.

In this Blog, I will continue to talk about yoga, its usefulness in meditation and how I have used yoga and meditation to help me leave the Pit.

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Continue to drink these words deeply inside you.

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

I even want to give hope to the cancer ghosters who completely abandoned Margaret and me when we so desperately needed love and understanding.

I want all of you to be filled with hope.

Once again I say there is no padlock on what you think is the cell in which you think you are locked.

There is no cell and there is no lock.

Walk away from the cell you think you are in.  It does not exist.

Even the cancer ghosters can and should walk away from their non existent cells. 

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When I was in Western Australia in 2011, I visited a spot called Monkey Mia on the coast of Shark Bay.  Something the travel brochures no longer tell you is that when the dolphins started to swim in to the shore to visit humans, they paid special attention to children – especially children who were sick.  The dolphins sensed that the children were sick and tried to comfort them.

Creatures that are completely different from humans tried to comfort sick humans – and some of the time, we do not have the energy to comfort members of our own species who are relatives who are sick.  We all – including cancer ghosters - have much to  learn from dolphins.

I took these two photos on 17 March 2011.

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Some of the rugged desert country in the north of Western Australia.  The whole of Europe could be placed inside of Western Australia and Western Australia is only about 1/3^rd of the total land area of Australia.  Photo taken 18 March 2011.

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 I slept in the tent in the foreground of this photo when I drove through Western Australia.  I took this photo on 19 March 2011 in Karijini National Park.  I had left Exmouth at 8.20 am and drove 710 kilometres before finding a place to camp in Karijini National Park.  Compared to the countryside I drove through, Karijini was an oasis of greenery - and Karijini was devoid of creeks or rivers or rain.

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This was the advice given by the Park Rangers at Karijini to park visitors.  Dingoes are native Australian dogs.  They look so cute, but they attack and kill children if they are hungry.

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After my “breath attack” episode when I came close to death while already in hospital on the night of Tuesday 4 May and Wednesday 5 May 2021, it became clear to me that I really needed to take steps to improve my lung capacity and my ability to breathe.

My lung capacity was measured in July 2021 when I was hospitalised for the third time.  It was 42% of normal capacity – and I was giving everything I had to try and make the testing gear show I was still breathing.

Increasing my lung capacity meant I had to focus on my breathing and focusing on the breath is one of the features of yoga that distinguishes it from normal exercise in the gym.

Before I did even the simplest yoga movement, I breathed in as deeply as I possibly could.

Once I had filled my lungs with as much air as I could get in, I counted in my head.

I started with a count of 6; that was the maximum count I could hold my breath for.

When I finished the count, I breathed as much air out of my lungs as I could.

I then held my breath for another count of 6 before I drew in more air.

as my lung capacity got better, I increased my count to 30.

This very simple exercise trained my brain to focus on my breathing.

While I was focusing on the breathing, there was not much room left inside my head for the rubbish to swirl around in there.

Gradually, I got better at breathing.

My lung capacity started to improve and my current lung capacity is now 115% of normal capacity.  I also started squeezing out of my brain, the constant river of worry because my wife had cancer and was dying.

While Margaret was so very ill and dying, I was not able to climb out of the Pit, but I was able to stop myself being overwhelmed by it.  Because the Pit did not overwhelm me, I avoided becoming a permanent resident of the Shadow Lands.

The same techniques will help you too.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

 Blog 261 – Using Meditation and Yoga to Leave The Pit, Part 2 – 25 May 2025

In Blog 260 I talked about the value of yoga as a tool in helping me to meditate and the circumstances in which I began to do yoga.

In this Blog, I will continue to talk about yoga, its usefulness in meditation and how I have used yoga and meditation not just to leave the Pit of Depression, but to stay alive when I should have died.

Although yoga is a set of physical exercises to help with meditation and helping with meditation is the fundamental reason why yoga was invented, yoga is also valuable as a means to physical fitness.

This Blog ignores yoga’s impact on physical fitness.

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I am still alive and writing these Blogs because I learned how to meditate and because I started yoga 10 weeks after I had open heart surgery.

Being able to control the river of chaotic thoughts rushing through my brain meant that when I should have died, I did not die.  When I hovered so very near death, I meditated, used yoga to breathe and I stayed alive when I should have died.  This enabled me to keep living when Margaret needed me more than ever.

If I had not learned at least some yoga, I would not have been able to meditate when my body wanted desperately to stop working.

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Continue to drink these words deeply inside you.

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

I am continuing to give you information I have put together over a lifetime because I want every one of you to live a life filled with as much joy as your spirits can cope with – with even more joy on top of that.

I want you to be filled with hope.

I want you to know there is no padlock on what you think is the cell that you think you are locked in.

There is no cell and there is no lock.

Walk away from the cell.  It does not exist.

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This is a photo of me on 16 March 2011 at Kalbari National Park in Western Australia.  I was noticeably overweight in 2011.

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This was Pinnacles National Park in Western Australia on 15 March 2011.  The wind shapes the sandstone rocks into figures like these.  Pinnacles National Park is filled with statues just like these.

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This little lizard (it was not really little at all) was not interested in posing to have a photo taken when I was at Coronation Beach, north of Geraldton in Western Australian on 16 March 2011.

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This was the spectacular view I got of Kalbari National Park in Western Australia on 16 March 2011.  Most of Western Australia is desert and there are few permanent water sources.  The Kalbari National Park is spectacular – and it is also a sanctuary where flies breed in their uncountable millions and try to eat all humans who come anywhere near them.

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Within days of Margaret being diagnosed with fatal, untreatable cancer in July 2020, I started experiencing my own extreme health symptoms .  My symptoms included a vastly swollen stomach together with extreme stomach pain, optical migraines (migraine symptoms but without the headaches) and extreme difficulty in being able to breathe.

I was admitted to hospital on 30 April 2021 and my symptoms were so severe, I know I would have died if I had not been in hospital.  On the evening of Tuesday 4 May my life was especially grim.  By 11:00 pm that evening, my inability to breathe was acute and the stomach bloat had me in agonising pain.

To calm my body, I began slow, methodical walking around the hospital room.  While doing my very slow walking around the tiny hospital room, I listened to meditation music through my headphones, willing myself to remain calm.  I knew that if I panicked, my breathing difficulties would turn from acute to deadly.  While doing my slow walks around the room, I practised my yoga breathing exercises. Somehow I was able to stay calm and keep breathing.

My salvation came when the night duty nurse came into the room.  She nurse immediately put tubes in my nostrils and put me on oxygen.  Every four hours after that she made me get up. sit in a special chair and placed me on a nebuliser, with a mask over my nose and mouth.  The nebuliser contained medication to help open my airways.  I had to breathe through this machine for at least 20 minutes every time she made me use it.

I remained on the oxygen until 11.00 am next day.

At about 6.00 am on the Wednesday, I began to believe I would live.  It had been a terrifying night.

When Margaret visited me on the Wednesday morning, she saw a bent, haggard, old man walking towards her as she came out of the lift.  She did not recognise the old man until I hugged her tightly.

Meditation is the only reason I survived that night.  Without meditation, I would have done what any same person would have done in those circumstances.

I would have panicked.

If I had panicked, I would have died.  Nothing could be more certain.

And if I had not started yoga the year before, I would not have been able to meditate when I knew that I could not breathe and that the Angel of Death was waiting nearby to snatch my life.

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I will tell you more tomorrow.

 

Blog 260 – Using Meditation to Leave The Pit, Part 1 – 24 May 2025

In Blog 259 I talked about the physical aspects of meditating – how I do it and what things I find useful in helping me slow down the river of thoughts racing through my brain.

In this Blog, I will talk about yoga and why I started yoga

You probably see yoga as an exercise regime, but although yoga is indeed in a practical sense, an exercise regime, yoga is not really an exercise regime.

Yoga is a set of physical exercises designed to help you meditate.

The principal aim of yoga is to provide people with a set of physical exercises that will help them to slow down the river of thoughts that races through their brains.

The most important aspect of yoga is not the physical fitness that you can derive from yoga, although yoga will certainly improve your physical fitness.

The most important aspect of yoga is that it provides a set of exercises which strengthen your ability to focus on the yoga exercises.  By focusing on the yoga exercises, you discover that a great many of the other chaotic thoughts generated by the river of thoughts, disappear.

When you control the river of chaotic thoughts rushing through your brain, you are meditating. 

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Drink this purpose deeply inside you.

My purpose is to give hope to those who have lost hope. Without hope, we remain lost in the Shadow Lands.

When I set out my purpose, I am trying to tell you something important about me.

I am not trying to sell you anything.  Selling can wait.

This is the 260^th Blog I have written and I have not tried to sell you anything in any of the previous 259 Blogs.

I am giving you information I have put together over a lifetime and I have done this for zero price.

I have done this because I want to give you hope.

I want you to know there is hope and that there is no padlock on what you think is the cell you are locked up in.

There is no padlock and there is no cell.

All you need to do is walk away … and I am trying to show you how to do that.  Follow my steps and walk away.

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Ten years before she cancelled me, Ann was one of my favourite people.  On 7 March 2011 in Western Australia, she was wearing my hat.  Perhaps one day, Ann will stop being frightened by the existence of deadly diseases like cancer, learn how to meditate and walk out of the Pit of Depression.  When she does, she might stop disliking herself and remind those around her of the woman they used to know.

Walk out of the Pit, Ann.  Do it for your sake and for Margaret’s sake.  Stop hating yourself and stop being so frightened.

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This character liked the environment of the Pemberton Tree.  He stayed still long enough for me to take many photos.  This one was taken only a few metres from the Pemberton Tree.

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This is a photo of Preston Beach.  It is adjacent to Yalgorup National Park, to the south of Perth in Western Australia; I took this photo on 12 March 2011

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Another photo of Preston Beach, south of Perth.  The coast of Western Australia has many, many miles of beaches that are all just as unspoiled as this one.

I took this photo on 12 March 2011.

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I had open heart surgery on 20 November 2018.  My surgeon was James Edwards.  After he had used a chain saw to cut through the ribs of my chest and gain access to my heart, Dr Edwards fitted my heart with something called an Annuloplasty Ring.  The ring repaired my heart valve.  My heart valve was leaking and blood that was supposed to be circulating through my body, kept flooding backwards instead of going forward to give me the oxygen I needed to stay alive in the long term.  While he was having a close up look at my heart, Dr Edwards noticed that three of my arteries – pipes that feed blood around the body, had become too narrow, so he also gave me three arterial bypasses.

What is the relevance of my Chain Saw Operation to yoga?

I had my very first yoga class on the first Monday in February 2019 - 4 February 2019.  the class was precisely 10 weeks after I had my open heart surgery.

I was still very sore all over my body.

I had this long wound running down the front of my body and if I sneezed too vigorously – which I did a lot – I was in danger of having bits of me explode all over the inside of my shirt.

I did gentle yoga at that stage because I was barely able to do anything.

I did yoga because someone had told me that it would help me with my meditation.

Why did I so badly want help with my meditation? 

When I was in the Intensive Care Unit for the three nights after the heart surgery, I was in horrendous pain that the pain killers had little impact on.  The only thing that helped me stay alive in ICU was meditation.  I would struggle my way through the very long hours of darkness by meditating.

No one can feel your pain except you.  I was so very alone.

Only you have the ability to make the pain recede into a bottomless drain hole leading into the next universe.

I had to make the pain disappear down the drain hole into the next universe.

If I did not succeed in making the pain go down the drain, I was going to die.

And I definitely did not want to die.

I had been offered the option of dying during the operation but rejected it.  I somehow knew a semi-trailer load of awfulness was heading straight down the highway right at Margaret and I could not let her face it alone. 

So I meditated the pain down the drain hole to stay alive.

I stayed alive because Margaret was going to need me very, very soon.

When I got the chance to learn yoga and meditate better, I grabbed it.

Yoga meant I could get better quicker, and be stronger faster.

I had to get better fast, because when I was being offered an easy death during the operation, I was given some hints about what was in store for Margaret.

She was going to REALLY need me soon.

Very soon after I started yoga, I became grateful that I had started.

The sh*t sandwiches soon started flying everywhere.

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I will tell you more tomorrow, mostly about yoga and meditation.