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.

 

Blog 259 – Using Meditation to Leave The Pit, Part 5 – 23 May 2025

In Blog 258 I talked about the purpose of listening to music as a means of enabling you to stop being trapped by the never ending river of thoughts racing through your brain.

If you want to get out of the pit of Depression, you must gain control over your own thoughts.  The river of chaotic thoughts must be brought under your own control – and I fully realise this is not easy.

Although the only vehicle in existence that has the power to help you escape the Pit is you, you definitely have all of the skills necessary to achieve your own great escape.  You have probably been told the exact opposite of this for most of your life, but you are a genuine champion – every human being is a champion.

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I will again repeat my purpose.

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

You are the only hero in the central position in your own life and you hold within yourself, the only key in the whole universe that will ever unlock your exit from the Pit.  Use it.

This is literal truth.

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The creatures who share this world with us are startlingly intelligent and without them, the world would be such a dismal place.  This magpie paid me a visit on 13 March 2011 when I was in Western Australia.

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This is what the Ceduna foreshore looked like at sunset on 1 March 2011.  I was travelling to Western Australia and stayed in Ceduna.

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This is a stretch of the South Australian section of the Nullabor Plain as on 4 March 2011.  Nullabor comes from two Latin words; “null” means zero and “abor” means tree.  The Nullabor Plain definitely has no trees.  I took this photo while the car was speeding down the highway.

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 Look carefully and you will see someone scaling this tree by using stakes that were put into the tree trunk in a spiral all the way up to the top.  This tree is located in Pemberton, Western Australia.  Fire watchers used to scale it and keep watch for bushfires.  The Pemberton Tree is so high that on cloudy days, it goes through the cloud cover.  I was half way up the Pemberton tree in 1975 when it started to rain heavily.  That was frightening because it was just as dangerous to try and get down as it was to keep going up.  I steeled my courage and kept going up through the rain clouds.

I took this photo on 7 March 2011 at Pemberton, Western Australia.

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The beach at Yalgorup National Park, Western Australia on 12 March 2011.  This was as populated as the beach ever got that day and of course it did look much better than shown in my photo.

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How should you go about meditating?

Until you are used to the process of meditating, try and find somewhere that is relaxing.

Sit in a chair, sit on the floor; sit at the top of the Pemberton Tree - sit anywhere you are comfortable.

Find yourself a comfortable place to sit.  I use a cane armchair, but if you are comfortable sitting cross legged – for me that is impossible – then try that until your body tells you it hurts too much.

It is not necessary to close your eyes, but I always do.  It is hard enough to get rid of the rubbish in your head without giving permission for additional rubbish to get inside you by having your eyes open. 

I have read books where experienced meditators have said it is not necessary to close your eyes when meditating.  I know this is factually true, but when you start something for the first time, any distraction can completely eliminate your ability to learn.  Let the genius meditators leave their eyes open.

I always close my eyes when meditating and I have been meditating since 2014 – 11 years as at today’s date.

Try not to meditate in a noisy place.  The noise will distract you.

I found that the more comfortable the environment, the better I was able to get rid of the river of thoughts.

Once I was relaxed and “starting” to meditate, I initially played a cd on a music player.  That did not really help much.  Because the music was coming from an outside source, I focused too much on listening to the music.

I discovered that if I listen to music through headphones, I am more successful in getting the music to fade into the background while I carefully tried to eliminate the distractions rolling around in my own mind.

Can you actually empty your brain of all thoughts?

Maybe meditation saints can do this.  I cannot eliminate all thoughts, but I can stop the great river of thoughts from continuing to be a river.  I am very happy if I can slow the river down to a slow moving stream.  You can definitely slow the river down.

Do not beat yourself up just because you are not able to achieve what you think might be perfection.

The major point of meditation is to enable us to accept ourselves just as we are.

A beautiful hearted so called “idiot” is a much more pleasant person to meet that a mean spirited “genius”.

I will tell you more tomorrow.

 

Blog 258 – Using Meditation to Leave The Pit, Part 4 – 21 May 2025

I finished Blog 257 with these words.

The music is only an efficient tool to help you eliminate clutter from your brain.  You need to eliminate the clutter because the clutter is the reason why you are still in the Pit.  Toss the clutter into the rubbish bin and the way out of the Pit becomes so much clearer. If you simply get lost in listening to beautiful music, this gives you the same effect as asking the doctor for some pills.  It dulls the pain, but the muted pain stays with you forever. If you simply listen to beautiful music without getting rid of the mental clutter, you are just rearranging the furniture in your room in the Pit to make the room more user friendly – but the room remains located in the centre of the Pit. Don’t use the music to rearrange the furniture in the Pit. Use the music for its intended purpose – getting rid of the mad mess of thoughts in your head so you can walk away from the Pit and never go back.

I am serious when I say that you must avoid the attractive trap of avoiding your genuine escape from the Pit by thinking you can escape just by listening to wonderful music.

The wonderful music will certainly make you feel better while you are listening to it, and for a short while after it has finished, but music is not your escape vehicle.

The only escape vehicle that will ever exist is a hero called YOU.

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I keep repeating my purpose.

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

You are the hero and you hold within yourself, the only key in the whole universe that will ever unlock your exit from the Pit.

That is not a fantasy but the literal truth.

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Photo of me next to the 4 wheel drive that got me into the camp at the base of Mount Ragged on 10 April 2011.

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I took this photo on 8 April 2011 when I camped at Cape Arid National Park on the eastern coast of Western Australia.  There is no phone reception and no services of any kind; bring your own water, food and everything else.  If you do not bring everything you will need, there is a good chance you will die.

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This is the track that eventually brought me to the Mount Ragged campsite on 10 April 2011.

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Contrast the wild ruggedness of the dirt track I drove along, with the fragility of this glorious butterfly!

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Dawn on 11 April 2011 at the Mount Ragged campsite.  Dawn actually looked so much better than shown in my photo.

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I camped in a bush camp at the bottom of Mount Ragged on 11 April 2011.  The nearest living human being was no closer than 200 kilometres away.  If you get into trouble in this area, it is not possible to phone a friend.  If you break a leg climbing Mount Ragged, you will have to crawl down the mountain; even if you do crawl down the mountain, you will probably die.

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In case you did not completely understand what I have been saying, I will repeat myself.  The purpose of listening to the beautiful music is to enable you to develop the ability to focus your thoughts.  If you focus your thoughts on the music, this will automatically drive the usual mental clutter out of your brain.  The usual mental clutter is what holds us in the Pit.

When you are able to focus on music which is beautiful but repetitious, you are on the way to being able to focus your thoughts by consciously excluding things that bring your spirit down.  This is why I have described musica as a tool and not as the end result.  You train yourself to control the thoughts going through you head in a similar way to how you train yourself to be a good cricket or basketball or football player – practice, practice and yet more practice is needed.

You are no more likely to become a master of your thoughts in a short time than any professional sportsperson is likely to master a sport in a short time.  To conquer the flow of rubbish constantly flowing through your brain, you must practise until you acquire the necessary skill.

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Here are some more chant artists that I have found helpful.  Some chant artists focus on the repletion of the chants rather than on making the chants sound exceptionally beautiful.  This is because these artists want to help you master the skills of meditation in preference to making gorgeous sounding music.  You should not assume that the music is boring.  The intent is to enable you to concentrate on the chant and drive the rubbish out of your head.

·         Kamini Natarajan (https://www.kaminimusic.com):

o   Chants for Meditation.

o   Chants for Meditation 2.

o   Shiva Meditation.

·         Ajeet Kaur (https://www.ajeetmusic.com)

o   Haseya.

o   At the Temple Door.

·         Dechen Shak Dagsay (https://www.dechen-shak.com):

o   Day Tomorrow

o   Jewel, Joyful Heart Through Precious Tibetan Mantras

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Tomorrow, I will tell you more about how to meditate.