Cluny’s Garden unfolded a most unexpected confrontation! March 2012
I’d arrived at Cluny a good 2 hours before the start of a workshop I was due to attend so took the opportunity to go for a walk in the adjacent garden.
As always, when I’ve descended the steps into Cluny’s Garden, I paid my respects to the very tall tree near to the bottom of the steps and gave it a heartfelt hug – it’s been there for as long as I can remember and have come to regard it as a kind of sentinel keeping an eye on everyone. Making a physical connection in this way seemed to help me begin to loosen day to day concerns and relax more easily into the scene. Today was no different as I soon found myself free of nagging thoughts and able to just enjoy being there!
I was still in this detached frame of mind when reaching the far end of the garden - to my right was the gate leading into the ‘Chakra Garden[1]’ and the bottom gate onto the public road was just a few yards ahead. Deciding to go back through the Chakra Garden, I opened the gate and entered - it had been the middle of winter on my last visit, with only the remains of what must have been a colourful display, but now it was the height of summer and was curious to see how it had changed.
When entering I’d no preconceptions as to what the Chakra Garden would look like which was just as well, as stood before me was the magnificent figure of Pan! Yes, it was the God of Nature I’d read about in Roc’s (Ogilvy’s) account of meeting with this being at the Botanic Gardens in Edinburgh. He stood a good metre taller than myself and much more muscular and hairier than any man I’d ever met but for some reason he didn’t frighten me?? This very stern looking Pan instantly demanded to know what I wanted, with an intimidating glare that changed to a playful laugh when I said in an equally stern and demanding way that he steps aside – and he did!
Many encounters with subtle beings initially appear as a transparent image made up of shimmering lines of energy overlaying the scene and are often accompanied with an exchange of feelings from which a conversation can be transcribed. On this occasion, Pan had the appearance of a Greek God and didn’t have the horns or cloven feet described by many. (The shadowy figure on a photo I took at Bruar Falls in 2018 looks similar to the Pan I encountered)
Pan walked by my side for a few paces but faded away as excitement at the encounter changed my focussed gait of detachment with an eagerness to return to Cluny to share the experience over breakfast which, to my amusement and perhaps Pan’s, resulted in three fellow explorer’s following close behind when repeating the walk the following morning!
We did however meet again ..... in my garden eight years later!
[1] The Chakra Garden is separated into seven beds planted with appropriately coloured flowers to represent the seven Chakras of the human body
Was that Pan in my garden? May 2020
I was awe struck when reading the messages from the intelligences of nature in Dorothy Maclean’s books, a wonderment which became the motivation to follow the advice of the subtle beings she held conversations with and began expressing love towards all aspects of nature - an intention that eventually bore fruit as I moved away from trying to make things happen to just being ‘present’, with many subtle being encounters in the forty years since, ranging from the sound of a Deva’s heavy footsteps approaching when sat alone in the depths of a highland forest, to the sparkling rainbow-coloured displays of Nature Spirits and Angels who are always accompanied with overwhelming feelings of joy.
The undergrowth of an ancient woodland close to home was my playground as a child where many hours were spent building dens, playing hide and seek and climbing trees with friends, and perhaps why I accepted as my own, the messages given to Dorothy so readily, and why I’ve always felt uneasy when pruning shrubs and trees in our garden - a concern that changed instantly after a visit from Pan, the God of Nature, in the late spring of 2020.
This uneasiness about pruning had taken its toll on our garden, the shrubs and trees had become oversized for the space available and needed more than a prune but felt it was definitely not the way to express love towards nature but did need to resolve the issue, returning time and time again to the same group of shrubs which were at the centre of this conflict, but I could still only trim them lightly. These particular shrubs were planted to form an enclosed space around a water feature which my wife and I were using as an outdoor sanctuary - a place to meditate.
After trimming one of these ’sanctuary bushes’, a Forsythia, which had not long completed its glorious display of masses of yellow flowers, I moved onto the next - a Dogwood that should display bright red branches to give the best show every winter and needed to be pruned down to the ground to stimulate loads of new branches over the summer, but that had never happened. Due to light pruning in previous years it had become a tangle of intertwining branches with no chance to display its true beauty, and still in deep thought tussling with what to do, the atmosphere around me became surreal and a sense of joy and expectancy filled my being. At that very moment the smiling figure of Pan appeared as he pushed his way between the Forsythia and an adjacent Camelia shrub to become a towering father figure at my side!
It was the same dear Pan I’d first seen in Cluny Garden in Forres, Scotland several years before, and if you look carefully at the photo below which was taken halfway up Bruar Falls in Scotland, you can just about make out Pans shadowy upper body. On this occassion Pan had visited to give reassurance that I needn’t be concerned, and said that the love I was pouring into the garden was causing nature spirits to dance with glee and, as if to affirm what he said, the Dogwood I was reluctant to prune, suddenly became transformed as the most beautiful nature being I’ve ever seen became superimposed with the figure of a giggling young woman, her dress, a breath-taking myriad of sparkling multi-coloured rays, flowed within the shrubs outline. Seconds later, and the garden had returned to ‘normal’, but was left with the insight that I could prune as needed, that one of the most important attributes the nature kingdom yearned for from humanity was love, it's literally their life blood - do you believe in Faries?
Pan - the god of Nature A Waterfall Deva?
The Angel of Love? June 1984
It was the summer of 1984, working in a recession hit industrial area close to the centre of Sheffield that I began to experience yet another round of deep-seated anguish. With hindsight, I now know it was brought on by my developing field of awareness picking up the general mood of the locality, back then I assumed it to be ‘just’ another round of inner cleansing.
These feelings subsided after work, but returned with greater intensity when returning the next day. This carried on for several weeks until one bright sunny morning the feelings became unbearable - I literally walked away from the job, out of the confines of the construction area and into the adjacent derelict city streets! I couldn’t think straight; neither could I talk to anyone, nor even carry out the simplest of routine tasks. Even though I’d responsibilities, I needed to get away, to leave everything behind. Carrying what seemed to be the burden of the ages on my shoulders, I walked around and over the dust and rubble that had been, just a few years earlier, a world-famous stainless steel making district but now appeared war ravaged.
The feelings remained - God wasn’t to come to my aid on this occasion as he had so many times before - these feelings were apparently to be my responsibility. Was this part of an ever-expanding role on the pathway towards oneness, to take full responsibility not just for my life, but also for feelings cast into the atmosphere wherever I go?
Past experience had taught me to embrace such dreadful feelings, to love them better, in order to transmute and lighten them, to stay with them until they dispersed – it had worked in the past but this time the intensity was too much to bear, but my sense of duty presented no alternative but to return to my desk, and with a deep sigh headed back.
The security gates loomed large ahead of me, and so did the feelings of dread. Where are you God? Have you forsaken me? Taking a deep breath, I stepped through the gates and stopped in my tracks - what is this? In my path stood a glorious fountain of colour, an out of this world shimmering rainbow of colours radiating outwards from a form I’d never seen before but instinctively knew to be an Angel – and the love this being radiated, wow! Eight feet tall and six feet wide, this majestic and benevolent form lifted my depression instantly and I entered into a moment of ecstasy. My God hadn’t forsaken me after all, how could I have ever doubted? Overflowing with joy, heads turned as I danced across the construction site …. God does love me….
Angel of the Mineral Kingdom 1985
A keen interest in collecting crystals and fossils began when attending a geology course at college and continues today, particularly when walking the Yorkshire coastline, so it was with delight that I accepted an invitation to a meditation session which intended to use rock crystals as a source of attunement several years later.
We were all friends joining in what was to be an experimental session held at an alternative health centre – one of our friends, a natural health practitioner and the focaliser for the session, had used rock crystals in her natural healing work for many years and wanted us to experience what it was like when attuning to them as a group and provide feedback.
After we sat down, our focaliser friend let us look at and then arrayed the assortment of crystals she had on the floor in a large circle around where we were seated, and explained when joining us, to be mindful of them after she had guided us into a silent meditation. Personally, I was intrigued by the idea of using crystals in this way - I’d been practicing meditation for nearly ten years at the time and had never used ‘props’ of any kind before.
Soon after sitting down I began to feel a very powerful presence, and when released into the silence my whole being was instantly ‘taken in hand’ by what I knew to be an Angel - I’d recently met with my very first angel who had, in the twinkling of an eye, ‘lifted’ a dreadful feeling of heartache when embraced by its all-encompassing love as I reluctantly returned to work, and here again was the same sweeping feeling but this time, it wasn’t love that enfolded me but an incredible power.
The feeling of empowerment was intense as the Angel overlighted my consciousness and blanketed my mind with a wealth of knowledge that provided insight into any crystal I brought to mind as to what part of the human body it related to. It was as though I’d become part of the Angel’s consciousness with the only limitation being my mind’s ability to expand into what seemed to be unlimited proportions to capture all that this majestic being had the potential to give - I’d attained a certain level of detached awareness at the time, but it fell far short of being the ‘non-duality’ needed, though I guess, these angelic encounters had since given me a push in that direction.
The meditation unfolded a magical journey that not only revealed a crystal’s association with the human body but how its vibration acted in unison with all the other crystals to create and maintain life – a clarity of knowing that faded soon after the session ended though still retain an understanding of many body/crystal associations.
Though it may not be its conventional name, I’ve chosen to call this being the ‘Mineral Kingdom Angel’.
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