Is our basis as humans empathic? Are we all descended from the same two people? Do we, therefore, hunger to support and look after each other? Is there a chance for us as a species?

This fabulous animation illustrates a talk on the subject. Listen and learn and, most of all, enjoy.

What do you think? Do you agree? Is there a chance for us?

The Midnight Coach for London departs. The bright red traffic lights, the road closure ahead – they are all irrelevant. I greet my trusted friends: neck pillow, earplugs & eye mask. I feel so happy inside. It has been a while since we have travelled, I think to myself. After settling into my seat, I lose myself in memories.

Two and a half months in the Netherlands have flown past. Months of working intensively, of joining forces with actors, director, musician, lighting designer and theatre to create my play. A time of drive, of inspiration, fun, learning and growing; of connecting with the other Moon Scouts, a nearby spiritual centre, several women groups; of long cycling tours; of philosophical discussions.

I am woken by the passenger beside me. My eyes squint in the bright lights. The red digi-letters show 3:28. Customs – twice. Back in my seat, I float off again.

Here I am on the bus to London. My project has finished; with raving reviews. The time to move on is approaching. A wonderful circle of friends has grown in a short period of time. I feel at home within the local community. At the same time, I am looking to the next adventure.

People know I’m only passing through. That doesn’t mean they keep their distance though, because I don’t.

One of the secrets of being an Earth Pilgrim is to deeply connect with those around you. Connect on a personal level. Connect like you will always be there. Because you are. It doesn’t matter whether it is only for an hour, a day or three months. It is all about how well you connect with people in the moment!

I think most people nowadays misunderstand this. With tools like texting, email, skype, VoIP and facebook, nobody really leaves anymore. You can keep in touch. True, but often these become tools to hide behind. Great, you can talk to people anywhere. But how about connecting to those around you, in the moment? That is still up to you!

This evening, in London, the colouring in the sky was phenomenal. On the train, no one was paying attention, they were all too busy “connecting” on their phones. Occasional glances were just thrown to check if I was watching them. Is that real?

Connecting is more than just texting, or spending hours together. Do you remember that lovely guy or couple you met on holiday? The same kind of people live next door to you, two houses down in the next block.

It is you who opens up when you are on the road. You can do the same at home. When you run into your neighbour next time, make an effort to go beyond: how are you – have a nice day. You’ll be surprised!

Even better: imagine really connecting with your partner – again, or maybe even for the first time. Now there’s a thought!

Spare five minutes, thirty minutes, even an hour and genuinely listen to what others have to say. All they want is to be heard. Your contribution to make the world a better place.

Everyone is an Earth Pilgrim, whether you are on the road or not.

Issues of ‘Conscious Living’, ‘Independent Working’ and ‘Travel Culture’.

There is so much writing and blogging in this area that the reader can get quickly overwhelmed, This  glance at what’s going on will help  understand the range of what is out there and help get some perspective.

Alex at Blogussion is a 16 year old with the kind of sharp, pithy thoughts only the young seem to have. In ‘Interviews are Boring, Reviews are Fake & Lists are Kind of Lame. Let’s Get Real‘ he takes a pop at all the bloggers out there who are lay in their writing, and there are many. I plough through a lot of stuff to find the material for this compilation, and sometimes I wonder if I am wasting my time! I love writing and I hope that I am putting me into the stuff I write, I suppose if not you won’t be here reading it.

For most of my life I have been a Lighting Designer, I am currently in Aylesbury, England to complete the lighting of a new theatre. My passion is light and lighting. Dave at Go Backpacking has just posted a great video on the ‘Berlin – Festival of Lights‘. Go and see, I promise you it’s worth it, great filming and cool music. Oh and the lighting’s good as well!

Jonathan Mead has a great site, Illuminated Mind full of advice about creating your own life or, as he puts it,

“To create a revolution based on authentic action. A movement of people liberating themselves through living on their own terms.”

In a recent post, ‘Lessons from One Year of Self Employment‘, he celebrates his one year anniversary of being self-employed. He draws the lessons he has learned. The first is the one I like,

“This may seem like an overly-simplistic lesson, but it’s probably the most important one that I’ve learned. Doing what you want and having your business and life be exactly the way you want it is possible. It just takes continual and deliberate direction.”

That continual and deliberate direction is one I am following.

Josh Fulmer at The Wander Project created a ‘Travel Blog’ before he started travelling. He has just posted that ‘The Wander Project is Dead‘. He does not find it interesting and worries about how it is going to affect his trip, he wants to just travel. For me this is a perfect example of the need to be authentic, only write about travel if that’s what you do, and the need for passion, only write about what you feel passionately about. I am passionate about travelling, it’s what I do all the time. Come back to it, Josh, when you are on your journey.

Nancie (LadyExpat) over at Budget Travellers Sandbox has a great time around South East Asia. I love her recent post, ‘Are Koreans More Polite When They’re Naked? — A Visit to a Korean Bathhouse’. I was interested in some of the comments about the problems of getting naked for Americans! I am staying in Holland at the moment where it is very acceptable to spend all day naked at the local sauna. You sit around in the sun, swim, sauna as well as drink and eat, all naked and mixed. It’s all very normal.

Anil Polat at Fox Nomad has been writing extensively on travel for four years now with a lot of great stuff there. He recently list ‘9 Unorthodox Travel Heroes‘. Despite what was said above of list posts I like this one because he takes the rare step of giving us some role models in our travelling. Let’s have lots more of these.

They have been working on the concept of ‘Transition Town Tilburg’. This is an initiative to make Tilburg part of the Transition Network. This network was started in a small town in the UK, Totnes, a town not many people know or have heard of, but one that started a worldwide movement.

As the Transition Network admits, they don’t know if their initiative will work. They see it is a social experiment on a massive scale, based on the idea that if we wait for governments to act, it’ll be too little, too late; if we act as individuals, it’ll be too little; but if we act as communities, it might just be enough, just in time. It is a response to what they see as the pressures of climate change, fossil fuel depletion and economic contraction.

They believe that you can only create what you can first vision. If you can’t imagine a positive future you won’t be able to create it, a positive message helps people engage with the challenges of these times. They see that change is happening and that we have a choice is between a future we want and one which happens to us. Their primary focus is not campaigning against things, but rather on positive, empowering possibilities and opportunities.

There are two important concepts behind this initiative, sustainability and resilience. Sustainability is the  capacity to endure, the ability for biological systems to remain diverse and productive over time. It is the potential for long-term maintenance of well-being for humans dependent on the well-being of the natural world and the responsible use of natural resources. Resilience is the ability to recover quickly from change, the capacity to deal with shock in a positive way, particularly in areas of food, economics and energy on a local and a national scale. It’s about the need to develop the basic skills needed for life.

It’s a worthy approach to the problems that are perceived to exist in the world but is it realistic or is it small-scale idealism that makes people feel good but does nothing to change the real world?

Looking at one local initiative I have come to the conclusion that it is good and worthy but doesn’t really do anything. There is an initiative for ‘Sustainable NE Seattle’. It’s mission is “to support the transition of our community toward resilience and sustainability”. They have goals of raising awareness, promoting pathways to the future, learn to share, connecting and cooperating and participating. Their values are inclusiveness, relationship to nature, celebration, respect, communication and creativity.

These are all fine words, created by a committee, but they seem to add up to no more than talking together, growing vegetables and some small scale, local energy discussions. This is not going to change the world and is not dealing with the significant large-scale problems they say we face in terms of climate, change and energy depletion. This is not to criticise the approach but just to realise that a bigger idea is needed.

In the recent climate change film, Home, there were examples of where things are changing, showing that it is possible to make a difference. The examples were all common in that they were all small! If anything is happening to the climate, and I mean if, then big issues are at stake and big solutions are needed. Growing your own food is not the answer!

I don’t have the answer except that I know that Planet Earth will survive but, maybe, we, as humans will not. The planet will, if necessary, take the ultimate revenge and kill us all, then it will re-balance itself. However, I won’t be here to see that happen. I do what I can to mitigate my journey here on earth, but I don’t pretend it’s about saving the planet.

To get a flavour of the scale of the Transition Initiative see this vidwo from their 2010 conference. There’s some great stuff being talked about, but world shattering it is not!

Issues of ‘Conscious Living’, ‘Independent Working’ and ‘Travel Culture’.

There is so much writing and blogging in this area that the reader can get quickly overwhelmed, as I do. This weekly glance at what’s going on will help me understanding the range of what is out there and help you, the reader, to get some perspective.

My aim is to keep it to a couple of items under each issue, to highlight not necessarily the best but certainly good, interesting and possibly quirky work. If you have suggestions of where I might look or what I am missing please let me know in the comments.

Enjoy reading.

Leo Babauta at ‘Zen Habits’ has an amazingly clean and uncluttered blog. It takes great confidence to do that, as well as being so well known that he doesn’t need to keep people on his site. He writes about some interesting stuff and his recent “The No.1 Habit of Highly Creative People” is a typical, well-researched, masterpiece. Read it and go away somewhere and think about it. Then start writing…

Everett Bogue is another Minimalist Guru. At ‘Far Beyond The Stars‘ he is currently pushing at helping us all to become more minimalist in our business life. In “How To Pursue The Work That Matters” he is moving down the same path as Leo but focusing on what we do in the process of our business. “I’m absolutely convinced that most businesses fail because entrepreneurs insist on spending time on assumed requirements of doing business instead of actual necessities of doing work that matters.” See Seth Godin below for another take on this issue.

Sean Ogle at ‘Location 180′ is having an amazing time working out in Bangkok. I met him there recently and had a great time. He wrote an amazing piece recently on the troubles in Bangkok and his reaction to them, “Deadly Riots, Tropical Paradise and One Very Dingy City“, but the piece I want to highlight is his last post on “The Evolution of Confidence“. He talks about how his confidence has grown over the past year of writing, out in Bangkok. It’s a lesson to all us writers, keep going, it only gets better.

Seth Godin is a Jedi Master. If you’re in any doubt see “But What Have You Shipped” on his blog. Wow, that really hurt, and it was meant to. Well, what have you shipped? For that matter, what have I? Maybe I should stop writing this post and get my products out…

(Actually I did stop and get an eBook out on ‘Male eXperience‘, go to ‘men and.. Male Energy‘ and have a look!)

Cindy Peterson at ‘Briefcase to Backpack‘ has an interesting interview with her husband as goes back into corporate life after travelling. In, “Trading In Your Backpack For The Briefcase” she looks at how Bill is adjusting back to a home and working life back in the US. I find this interesting because I only travel and have no intention of going back to an ‘employed’ life. Which are you?

Jodi at ‘Legal Nomads‘ is still travelling after nearly two years on the road. In, “Why I Quit My Job To Travel Round The World“, she talks about why she left and why she is still going, “and so here I am in Thailand, almost two years of travel later. I am a happier, more relaxed person with thousands of stories and pictures from some of the more fascinating places on earth.” She talks about the pressure from family and friends to explain why she is doing it, why is that people don’t understand?

An authentic life means being true to who you are and what you feel and believe. It means being willing to go where your life takes you and it means knowing what that direction is.

Many of us (I include me because that’s where I used to be…) seem to drift through life without any great vision or purpose. We live from day to day and let others take control. We lose the ability to decide for ourselves and, worse of all, we don’t even realise it. We make money, or not, we have relationships, or not, we enjoy ourselves, or not, but we are left feeling unsatisfied with ourselves and our life.

We wonder how we can change this, we wonder how we can turn our lives round, we wonder if it’s too late. We look for motivation, we look for someone to help, we look for someone to tell us what to do.

I found Tony Robbins and he helped me to help myself. He, metaphorically, kicked me in the ass and made me look at my life anew. Through his work I found myself, through his work I found my purpose, through his work I found life. But that approach is not for everyone, indeed it puts many people off. Recently Chris Guillebeau was writing on ‘How to be a Motivational Speaker‘ in which he said: don’t…. He quotes a lady called Colleen who said,

You can’t just BE A MOTIVATIONAL SPEAKER. No one likes that shit. What you should do is BE PASSIONATE ABOUT SOMETHING. Show up and talk about something you give a damn about. Your passion will be motivational in itself.

And how right she is. Passion is what I found, passion is what drives me now.

I love seeing passion in people and I love experiencing that moment when what’s deep inside a person takes them over. It’s that moment that they become passionate, that moment when their life takes on meaning, that moment when they start to live consciously.

Today I read a blog post by my son, Robert, in which he talks about the growth of this over the last year. It was fantastic to read of his passion as an artist and the depth of his commitment. I quote from it below along with a song by my other son, Richard, on the same subject.

Before I moved to London I started working as a Youth Social Worker.  At this time in my life Art was very much on the back burner as I felt the need to do something that seemed less ridiculous and indulgent.  The job turned out to be massively negative and only strengthened my passion for being creative, making me feel less guilty and selfish about the artistic pursuit.  Quitting that job finally drove me to move to London and commit myself to making art, and now, just over a year on, I have no regrets, am making work that excites me and finally feel I am moving closer to living a more authentic life.  Thank you to my brother, who wrote this song.

Fuck this job.  It’s not everything I want, I thought it was but now it’s not. Good faith ruined me, now I’ll ruin good faith.  Safety nets, in a bad place. I’m going to move to the city and dedicate my life to art. A life drawn outside the lines, anything else would be a lie. Plateaus, the middle, shades of grey.  I can’t and I won’t live my life this way. I’m going to move to the city and dedicate my life to Art. I’m going to draw outside the lines.

So my message to you is find your passion. Live consciously in your life and follow where that takes you.

And finally, let me know about it. How does this work for you, where does it take you? Travel, work, letting go? Let me know about it all.

But all that is about to change, we are about to move into a different way of life, for a while.

In the past 18 months the longest we have stayed anywhere is around three weeks. That has meant a lot of travelling and a lot of movement. While we have enjoyed it, it has had its toll. Work has been affected by the time we are on the move. Deadlines have been slipping on my lighting design work, posts have not been written on the blogs, finances have not been dealt with. We have talked in the past about how we need to stay somewhere with an internet connection to get work done, we have looked at that situation and decided to make a shift.

The first change is that for the next three months we will be staying in a house we are renting in Tilburg, The Netherlands. We have come back to Europe because we both have work commitments that need us to be around occasionally for the next few months. I have a project, a theatre in England, completing and I need to be around to complete the commissioning. This is likely to be my last large lighting project, and a complex one at that, so I want to be around enough to get it right.

Cheta has a show in Tilburg on Monday June 21st. She is part of a year long piece of work by Zeus Heunderop, the city’s ambassador for the arts and music scene, the Nachtsburgermeester. Each of the 13 moons in the year has a moonscout and Cheta is one of them. She is looking at the area of femininity through the eyes of Amanda, the heroine of her show. So she needs to be around to work with the actors, musicians and technicians (including myself as lighting designer!).

This period will give us a breathing space to work on the specific projects as well as develop ‘Earth Pilgrim’, ‘Male eXperience‘ and ‘Female eXperience‘. In addition I am working a new online project to bring the world of Lighting Design onto the internet, but more on that later in the year. We have both made a decision to combine the writing we have been doing on ‘Rising from the Ashes’ and ‘ChetaLive’ into ‘Earth Pilgrim’. You may already have seen an increase in the articles on this site, you will in the future see a greater posting frequency on the site. We are focusing ourselves to make best use of the time we have available.

The second change is an even bigger one. From the end of July we are starting a house-sit in southern Spain. It’s a beautiful house in the hills above the Mediterranean. The fantastic thing is that this will be for a three to four year period! We will talk more about this later but for now all I can say is WOW! This will be an amazing time for us as we get used to settling in a house, with all that entails.

The great thing about it is that the owners will be going there, from Belgium, on a regular basis so we will be travelling for around four periods a year. We have great plans for this.

So when is a traveller not a traveller. In my view it’s when he stops travelling, at all…

It’s a mistake to think that you have to be travelling all the time, it’s the attitude of mind that is important. For us it is important that we are not settling into our house and leaving our life as Earth Pilgrims behind. Our aim to let go of possessions and concentrate on the nature of our lives is still at the forefront of our lives. We have reduced our footprint in the world and it is our aim to retain that. Settling in Spain, for a fixed period, is just part of our aim to explore and understand the culture of travel.

We are still Earth Pilgrims and we still see our lifestyle as substantially different fro what we lived in the past. That is important to us and will remain so.

What do you think? How do you live your life? What is crucial for you?

Let me know in the comments, I would love to explore how other people live.

It’s not travelling it’s collecting a badge, a button, that makes you feel good.

Don’t waste your time blogging on it, nobody wants to read it.

So now I’ve pissed off half my readers, both of you, why am I saying it.

Catchy headline – YES! Controversy – YES! Genuine message – YES!

My cousin is typical of what I am talking about. He is a great salesman and worked in the UK for Coca-Cola. He married a New Zealand girl, a colleague of his in the IT department. They had a great life, money, home, then they dropped it all to ‘travel’. Everyone said, “What about your jobs” (read “Why People Don’t Travel” for further clues as to what happened), they said, “it’s OK we’ll find something when we come back”. So off they went, threw caution to the wind and started travelling. They did the usual stuff – South East Asia, Trans-Siberian Express etc.

Then back to the UK and back to the J-O-B. They eventually moved to Singapore and Bali, so it did help them to open up their horizons, but otherwise it was life as usual. That’s what usually happens with RTW. There is a period of intense activity and then life pulls you back, society wins. You blog about it and feel you are different, then it fades away as the responsibilities of home take over.

That is being a tourist. There is nothing wrong with that, I am often a tourist. But it’s not ‘travelling’ in the sense that many people understand it. It’s not living consciously and designing a new lifestyle for yourself.

So what is travelling? What is living consciously? What makes the difference?

1. What is your purpose?

What’s your reason for travelling? Is it to see the world or is it to make a difference? Make sure you know what it is all about.

2. What have you left behind?

Is it unresolved? Is it pulling you back? Make sure you ‘clear’ the old life, leaving you free to take the new one where you will.

3. What does the future hold for you?

Are you open to receive whatever comes? Do you worry about what is going to happen? See the future as an open book and expect to be surprised by what is going to happen to you.

4. How are you integrating and networking?

Are you making any friends as you travel? Are you building your connections? Treat your travel as your life, your whole life, and build your connections as you go.

5. How is your travel funded?

Are you supporting yourself? Are you making a living? If you are travelling on savings you need to make a shift to independent working. Invest in your future and make it you life.

6. What are you contributing?

Do you give more than you receive? It is important in life to give greater value than the money you receive. Give back and make that central to your travels.

Think about what you are doing, give to others and let go of where you are going.

Earth Hour is an annual event around the world for people to switch off their lighting for a specific hour on a set date. It is intended to demonstrate how switching off lights could save our planet. As earthhour.org says,

“[It] is a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community throughout the world. It is a call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future. Iconic buildings and landmarks from Europe to Asia to the Americas will stand in darkness. People across the world from all walks of life will turn off their lights and join together in celebration and contemplation of the one thing we all have in common – our planet.”

You see I am NOT a supporter of this misguided and misdirected attempt to show concern for the planet. It is a way for people to pretend they are compassionate, concerned individuals and feel good about our headlong dash for extinction. So what do I think, why am I against it?

The primary reason is that I spend my life being creative in order to improve the quality of people’s lives through lighting design. I do a lot of work on the exterior environment preparing lighting strategies for cities and towns so they can improve the visual context of people’s lives. We live crowded together and we tend to make of mess of the areas we live in. Our engineers blast our streets with glaring yellow/orange lighting just so cars can drive too fast without the drivers killing each other. We collaborate in creating over-lit, unpleasant streets that alienate people. So when it comes to expressing our concern for the environment we turn of the very lighting that makes our surroundings pleasant, the Brooklyn Bridge, and leave on the lighting that makes us feel like we are in a prison camp, the streetlighting. Hmmm… Perhaps this is not an effective thing to do.

The real issue when it comes to energy is the politics of power generation. It is about the influence of the firms with financial interests in particular ways of generating electricity. If we used ‘green’ methods of generation we would not need to switch off our lighting. Put the pressure where it is needed and we will have some effect, don’t waste time on useless gestures.

The other reason I don’t support it is that ultimately it is not about saving our planet, it is about saving ourselves. I am in no doubt that the planet is more than capable of saving itself. It has survived the onslaught of terrible catastrophes during the aeons and will continuing to be able to do so. It is quite capable of killing us all off through natural disasters in order to preserve its existence, and be sure, if necessary, that is exactly what will happen. Is that not what climate change is all about? Our fear is that we human beings will not survive. That is a completely different matter. We should at least be honest and admit that this is about our own self-interest and not some nebulous aim the save the planet!

OK, I can come off my high horse now and connect this to the reason for my stay in Chicago. I am here to go deeper into the subject of our emotions and learn how to help people through their Emotional Matrix, emMatrix. This is a process created by a friend of mine, Deb Battersby, to enable people to clear their way through the emotional blocks that prevent them leading whole and healthy lives. Our emotions are all there to serve us, even ones that appear to be negative, and they all want to communicate what is best for us. By listening to them and resolving the issues they bring up we can lead more open, honest and effective lives.

This is important to me because I believe that this is a more honest and effective route to saving our species. We need to evolve solutions for ourselves that are intelligent and inventive. We need to truly understand the problems that we face and deal with them in a clear  way. Einstein is attributed as saying, “The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them.” Empty gestures will not resolve our current problem but a re-alignment in the way we think and act towards each other just might.

This is what I believe Conscious Living is all about, finding effective and intelligent solutions to the problems we face not indulging in the politics of gesture.  Yes, we need our politicians to properly deal with this situation, but we will not achieve this by switching our lighting off. Think, however, what can be achieved if we change the way we think about and deal with each other.

What do you think?