May 2005

Hi,

I thought I'd update you on the amazing day I had last Thursday. It was way out and weird.......

I wanted to go to Glastonbury to have a sound healing session with Tim Wheater. If you haven't heard of him, he's a well known flute player, well known in the New Age field for playing healing music while upside down, though he's older now and tends to stay the right way up.

I went to a concert of his some weeks ago and learnt about the magic bed healings that he does. You lie on a wooden bed with holes in it for an hour while Tim and his partner play gongs, flutes, harps and all sorts of other musical instruments under you and beside you. And it only costs £60. However the difficulty as anyone who lives in the UK knows is getting to Glastonbury.

A friend of mine Peter, likes this sort of thing and has a car, actually quite a few cars, so we booked up a couple of hours with Tim and went off to Glastonbury in rather a nice blue Porsche. Tim said it was 2 and a half hours from London. Well, we discovered that it was 2 and half hours if you were going to London but 3 and a half if you were driving from London. Glastonbury is like that.

For those of you who don't know Glastonbury: It's thought to be the Heart Chakra of England, if not Europe. However there is another one in Iceland - that is Heart Chakra of Europe. It's a place of Pilgrimage, a place full of tourists and pagans and Goddess worshippers of all sorts, particularly of the Goddess Brigit. It's full of shops selling crystals and brightly coloured clothing - the long flowing medieval type. It has an abbey - ruined of course, as it's centuries old - where St Joseph of Arimathea planted his staff and it grew into a tree. You can be an old fashioned Christian, an American tourist, a hippy, a pagan or a witch and you'll fit into Glastonbury together with everyone else there, as if you were just made for each other, or more to the point made for the shops, which don't care who you are, or your background, you just need to have a bit of money. Everyone is nice to everyone, laid back, you enter another world and the shops shut at around 5pm - this is relevant later on.

Glastonbury, like Puri near Calcutta, has people living there who never intended to, they just went to Glastonbury or Puri, and the effort of getting there was so much that they never found the energy required to leave. Also having got there, the other reality life style is so luring, that one never wants to leave it. I think getting to Puri is easier than getting to Glastonbury, on the assumption that one's in Calcutta at the start, of course.

Getting to Glastonbury by public transport necessitates at least one night in a hotel and one has to go in by bus, as there are no railway stations anywhere near. It's difficult with a car, and a hike of enormous proportions without one - though people say that if it's a pilgrimage centre it ought to be difficult to get to. 

Anyway due to the difference in driving time in the going to Glastonbury rather than the returning from Glastonbury, we got there late for our 2pm appointment. Peter dropped me off in the car park, so I went for the first appointment on the sound bed.

I walked through "Stone Age", a shop which sells crystals - galore - and found the room where Tim and his partner worked. En route I saw a huge, good quality chunk of Rose Quartz being used as a door stop. 

I lay on the sound bed as the gongs and the other sounds took me to a state of being outside of myself - I floated in an ocean outside of time and space. In the void of the beyond I listened to these waves of sound and of sea, as they covered me and enveloped everything I knew. I returned to the source, to that place were one exists before one learns about insecurity, the place that is love, when one only knows love and therefore doesn't think about it. I soared over mountain tops and into valleys and the ecstasy was only disturbed after a while by the discomfort of lying on wood. Towards the end of the session I was given 4 numbers which were added together - I was given these numbers by the void, by spirit, by the nothingness which is The All. The first and last numbers I forgot as soon as I heard them or even before I heard them. The second number was 568 - this number became firmly planted in my head. The third number was 568 and 1. I thought about lottery numbers and realised I didn't have enough numbers to do an entry. The experience ended soon after this. I gave Tim some feed back and mentioned the numbers. Peter turned up and I had to leave.

Back in the shop I enquired about the huge lump of Rose Quartz, was told I could have it for £80. I was too far gone to think properly, other than I knew I didn't have a spare £80 knocking around, and I also didn't have enough floor space for another rock. I said I'd think about it, I had to return to the shop anyway to meet Peter at the end of his session. The shop keeper said he'd put it aside for me - ominous I thought - as if he knew I'd buy it, even before I did. 

I wondered around the Glastonbury Experience - a courtyard of new agey, pagany type shops, I kept away from the main road, where the tourists were likely to bring me back from the void, quicker than I'd like to get back. I looked for a feather - an eagle's feather or some other large bird's feather. I am trying to get Peter an Eagle's feather for his birthday. He's doing an amazing course on Inca Shamanism and Eagles' feathers are very useful for smudging - that is for wafting sacred burning herbs over one, to cleanse away negativity. 

Eagles' feathers are difficult to get. If any of you people reading this can get me an Eagle's feather, please let me know. I have contacted a place in America which said they couldn't send me one as owning them are against the law and sending them in the post is a felony. I rang John, my childhood friend in the end, because if any one knew the whereabouts of Eagles' feathers in this country, it would be John. John is one of those rare individuals who never lost his sense of self, his sense of adventure. He's lived his whole life going from one amazing idea to the next and he never became the stereotyped robot that our governments want us to be. Through John's wife I contacted the keeper of some English eagles - feathers are growing on the birds at the moment - I will be able to buy said feather in September. Peter's birthday is now, so if I could lay my hands on an eagle's feather now, that would be nice.

Anyway Glastonbury didn't have any natural feathers - eagles' or anyone else's. 

Close to the time when I needed to meet Peter, I decided I'd better go and buy my huge pink rock. I have always had trouble with Rose Quartz and have rarely found any Rose Quartz that I like, and as it stands for love, I always feel I must have something wrong with me. Well this Rose Quartz is the colour and texture of a pink sugar mouse. If you don't know what I mean by pink sugar mouse, you must be young, though if you were around in the fifties, you would know the delights of sugar mice - particularly pink sugar mice!

As I walked through the shop I noticed a lovely looking green and citrine stone bracelet going slowly round and round in a mirrored glass case. I asked how much it was, we waited as the bracelet came round to the front so it could be got out of the case. The lady picked it up and said it's over £500. Well, that didn't phase me - I don't spend £500 on bracelets. I said I would look at it anyway. I put it on my wrist and I looked gorgeous in it - the most amazing bracelet on earth. I sat and looked at it idly and then I noticed it's price tag. It had the number 568 attached to it. 

I did a double take. I checked with the shop assistant. Yes it was £568 - she hadn't told me the exact price earlier as she thought it was rather an odd price. Who do you know who sells anything for £568? £570 maybe or £575, perhaps £565 or even £569, but not £568. I went into an immediate dilemma. I had not got £568 lying around, I didn't even have it lined up for something else. However spirit had given me the number 568 and here was a bracelet - that looked gorgeous on me - handmade in Bali - unique - and it carried the number 568. 

Peter appeared - muscle tested me - told me it was good for me - left to go to some shop - leaving me with the dilemma of what to do next. Everyone around me was fascinated, but I was left to make my own decision about what to do next. The shop owner appeared, was bowled over by the story of 568, but even he left me to come to my own decision about what to do next. Financially I couldn't afford it, however when spirit speaks it is not a good idea not to listen. I nearly died once when that happened before, but that's another story.

As the assistant had said they would take a fair bit off the price if I wanted to buy it, I asked how much. The shop owner said I'd have to buy it for £568 so as to keep the magic number, but he'd give me the Rose Quartz rock for free. 

After much heart ache and wondering - Peter said later that everyone knew that I would buy it - thanks Peter! I produced my MasterCard. The payment wouldn't go through and came up with a message to phone them. The shop keeper asked me for another card as he wanted to shut, and every one knows that ringing a credit card company usually takes about 45 minutes. However Visa worked. Peter picked up the Rose Quartz for me - it's so useful to have a man when one is buying something heavy - last time I was out with him I bought a gallon of olive oil. Anyway Peter picked up the Rose Quartz and said "568 and 1", which was the other number given me by the void.

When I got home later I found two messages from the relevant fraud departments of both MasterCard and Visa, asking me to ring them immediately and before 8pm. It was then midnight, so I had to ring next day. Both companies thought I'd had my card stolen. As I've had my Visa card for about 7/8 years now and I've never put anything on it bigger than a £30 telephone bill, I can see perhaps why they flipped. Both companies had rung up at exactly the same moment that I had tried to use my card in the shop. It's nice to know that my credit card companies are looking after my interests so well.

Peter and I walked off towards the car park and en route Peter pointed out a perfume shop. I loved the old fashioned glass bottles in the window. Surprisingly the shop hadn't shut with the rest of Glastonbury. I went in, Peter followed - it was either that or staying alone on the pavement. The lady who owned the shop told me that people could design their own perfume - it took about 15 minutes and you didn't have to buy the final product if you didn't want to. The 15 minutes session cost nothing. If you did want to buy the final product it cost between £23 and £62. After the £568, this seemed minimal. I looked at Peter - yes 15 minutes was O.K. Men could make their own perfumes too. All the perfumes were 100% natural - no chemicals involved.

So Peter and I sat on high chairs, like you have in some pubs at the bar and filled in a quiz, with pens made of brightly dyed feathers. We were offered cocoa or alcohol free wine. I went for the former knowing I didn't like the latter. Peter went for the latter - he'd never had it before - so didn't know that it's not O.K. We were given base perfumes to test on ourselves from the results of the quiz - a bit like wine tasting. We were given a pot of coffee to smell between perfumes. I said I was allergic to coffee and would die rather than sniff it, so was given chocolate biscuits instead. As I kept eating the chocolate biscuits between sniffs, I had a really nice time. We were also given pistachio nuts to keep us going. 

Peter was a bit worried about being male and having a perfume, so he kept conservative and his final perfume had only 3 perfumes in it. I loved most of the ones I tested, and my final perfume had 13 perfumes in it. We could choose to have a perfume, an alcoholic spray or a body cream, we both chose the perfumes. We then had to wait while these were being made up, put into little bags with rose petals and scrolls of heavy paper with our formulas written on them and tied up with ribbons of our choosing. This took time - we were in another reality - both of us smelling ourselves and each other every few minutes. Time belonged to another reality - one which had lost it's relevance.

Then the shop keeper produced Aphrodisiac Dip. A plate full of raspberries, strawberries, grapes, lychees, figs, and lots of bits of white bread. And an enormous bowl of whipped cream! They were left beside me. I feasted and I feasted. I really would recommend Aphrodisiac Dip. Then pink champagne was offered around. So there we were at 8pm in the evening on high chairs in an old fashioned perfume shop, sipping champagne, eating aphrodisiac dip, and sniffing ourselves and getting everyone else to sniff us. We were on another planet, another time space, a place in the void where it is nice to be. We could have stayed all night. However we had a car and therefore were able to leave Glastonbury. Peter unfortunately had to go in to work next day. Otherwise we might still be sitting there, more victims who went to Glastonbury and got stuck and remained forever, blissed out in the void of another reality.

On the way out Peter was given one of the brightly coloured feather pens, not a substitute for an eagle's feather, but still very nice - for writing that is, not smudging. Triumphant we left, to drive the long way back to the world we had left behind and all but forgotten about.

Oodles of love from this reality and an embrace of pure bliss from the void.
Iona
ps to make an appointment for a session of pure bliss with Tim Wheater, call 01458 833644 or email timwheater@aol.com

Love Iona