Standing on the Edge

This is about our life's work and the journeys of our souls through living life on Earth. If you have a sense of calling, even if you're not sure what it is, this is for you.Throughout my life, for both better and worse, I've been an annoyingly mission-driven person, so I have a few tales to tell about this.With a few tips about how to save the world too, for good measure.This is a talk I gave at The Hive in Penzance, Cornwall, on Friday 30th October.It might be the last public talk I give in this lifetime - I've done hundreds. As a cancer patient it's getting more difficult to summon the energy to do public talks, and to foresee what state I'm going to be in, on a certain date, and in the evening. But we shall see.Love from me, Palden

A personal pod about me as a cancer patient who feels like he's entering the final stages of life - whatever that truly will mean.It's about the ins and outs of the late stage of life and about life as a whole - for us as souls having a human experience.In that late stage of life you get to see and acknowledge life from another viewpoint. I have a few glimpses for you.And what are we really here for?Here's some music by an old friend, John Cartwright: https://youtu.be/mRxu9XkAPGE

A recording of a talk I gave in late Sept 2026 at The Hive in Penzance, Cornwall. Some stories from my life and reflections on its meaning from the viewpoint of its last chapter.And why did each of us come here? What about our instructions and our purpose, and what we are doing about them? Earth is an experiential school from which it's necessary to graduate.

I went up the hill to be with the solar eclipse, down'ere in Cornwall, and these were the thoughts that came up. Well, those which I could put into words.All about the nature of reality and the way it is changing. And about miracles, reality-overrides, and random small matters like that.With song and chirruping by the birds of Botrea.

With Palden.This was the first part of a three-hour programme on Past Lives, in which I impart some of my own thoughts and experiences.A deep-level near-death experience I had at the age of 24 changed my life, and past life regression has been a key part of my growth path. Buddhism has affected me a lot, and reincarnation is baked into Buddhist philosophy.It's not the final answer to everything, but getting insights into past lives sure can help you clarify who you truly are. That's what it did for me.

Palden welcomes the late Atasha MacMillan (Atasha Fyfe), then a Glastonbury regressionist, to talk about past life regression.She shares her experiences of what happens when you do a past life regression, and what life-enhancing insights, benefits and results come up.We discuss the connections between our lives today and deep memory of previous and even future lives.

Acceptance is quite difficult for Westerners. We tend to want life to go the way we want it to go - and it doesn't. Life has its own agendas and game-plan.This becomes very apparent in late life, or when we contract debilitating, life-threatening illnesses like cancer, or when we acquire disabilities.That is, when we face death, over which we have little or no control. Death makes its own decisions.But in the 2020s, a bigger agenda is taking over, and we have many unknowns and normality-disruptions ahead. Our grip on reality is loosening, and even billionaires and other sundry titans cannot buy themslves out of it.It's all about acceptance. Reality-street. That's what this is all about.#cancer #myeloma #latelife #dying #economicdownturn

With Dearbhaile Bradley, at the time (2007) the Chaired Bard of Glastonbury. She's a true warrior of the heart and, like me, she has one foot in the world of spirit and one in the world of politics and society.Dearbhaile tells about Bardism and being a Bard, about her experiences growing up in  the conflict in Northern Ireland, about the Save Tara Campaign (saving a significant sacred site in Ireland, threatened by a motorway), and the Goodwill Patterns (a peace process of the heart).She also recites some of her inspired poetry - after all, she was the Bard of Ynys Witrin - Glastonbury.

I'm an historian who is deeply interested in prehistory, and I have an historian's viewpoint, looking at longer-term processes at work over time. Over the last fifteen years I have done a lot of research in West Penwith, Cornwall, where I live, and here are a few new thoughts on that matter.By examining its alignments system I was able to demonstrate that Penwith constituted a complete, integrated and focused magical landscape, an upgraded ecosystem and a cultured people, who were at their peak in the Bronze Age.This is about the transition from a matrifocal to a patriarchal culture, incrementally taking place during the Bronze Age.Now a peripheral place, in that time Penwith was a central place because long-distance travel took place by sea and river - the land was extensively wooded and tracks were muddy. Penwith lay on an ancient maritime trading and cultural corridor stretching from Iberia to Britain and Ireland, so boats came from Europe every summer, landing at St Michael's Mount.This pod is about the social and psycho-spiritual changes that went on through the 1,200 years of the megalithic part of the Bronze Age. It was a sustainable culture, eventually overtaken by events.An enchantment, uplifting the land and people, was shattered. The megalithic period came to an end, around 1200 BCE. It was the end of a world - the Bronze Age Collapse, affecting Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia too.Recorded in the bluebell woods on our farm. For more about Penwith's ancient sites, look here: ancientpenwith.org

This is all about the energy-fields within ancient sites such as stone circles or chambered cairns and barrows. For these energy-fields have a psychoactive effect - they change our mood, optic and spirits - and it isn't difficult to experience this.And this, I suggest, is what draws us to them. Not just this, but it's also the reason the people of the Neolithic and the Bronze Age went to the trouble of building them.This podcast is all about that - with some magic anecdotes thrown in. It's extracted from my book 'Shining Land', about the ancient sites of West Penwith in Cornwall, where I live.