Why I am Leaving Hong Kong: The Lowdown

Central, HK Island, seen from across Victoria Harbour

One of the wisest and most perceptive women I ever knew once said something I'll never forget. She said that people don't grow when they are too comfortable. In fact this message was relayed to the spiritual group I was in at the time, by the group teacher Tracy. Jessica  had phoned her from a city several hundred kilometres away and told Tracey that the group was getting too settled and that Tracy needed to "Stir up the dust!" Jessica didn't need to be present to know that because she was the most powerful clairvoyant I have ever known. More than once she rang me personally to inform me about issues that were going on in my own life and to give me feedback about my 'consciousnesss field', including what I needed to do to rectify the problem. She was always right.

I can assure you that it was tough being in that group. Expectations were extraordinarily high. You either did what was expected of you, or you were shown the door! There is no hiding stuff from Spirit. In its essence the mind is transparent. 'God' and certain spiritual entities can see everything - and some people can see most of it too! It's only human beings that hide things from themselves, and from each other.

There's a reason why I mention these things. I've been living in Hong Kong now for eight years. It's hard to believe it's been so long! During this time I have continued to write and speak as futurist and as a person involved in the consciousness movement. What's more I have also held down a full-time job throughout those eight years - as high school teacher in Hong Kong's public education system. It's a pretty good job by most measures. The workload is not that heavy and the pay is excellent, probably the best in the world for a public high school job. If I earned this amount of money in Australia (given the low tax rate in HK), I would be well into the top ten percent of wage earners. My school here has been wonderful. I particular the teachers, administrators and students are simply 'lovely' (to use HK vernacular).

So I almost get it all here. A good income, great work relations and low stress.

 Discovery Bay

So why am I leaving?

I am leaving because it is too comfortable. I could certainly do this for the next 15 years and then retire. But it would be too easy.

I also had a 'vision'.

About two months ago I awoke in the early hours of the morning, in the pitch black of night, and a clear image came into my mind's eye. It was a map of Australia. The map was dark, but the coastal outline of Australia was clear. On the map there were four bright red dots. One was in far north Queensland, around the location of the city of Cairns. The other three were all situated very close to Melbourne in the far south-east corner of the continent. Then a song began playing in my head. It was part of the song 'Funky Town', originally sung in the late 70s by a band called Lips Inc (if I recall correctly). Specifically, the line that played in my head was the following:

Gotta make a move to a town that's right for me

Gotta keep me movin' keep me groovin' with some energy

There was no need for me to analyse what I had seen and heard. After years of working with my spiritual intuition (what I call Integrated Intelligence), I have learned to allow certain knowings to settle immediately in my mind without needing to process the information in linear, sequential fashion. It's actually a clairvoyant process, quite literally. 'Clairvoyant' means 'clear seeing.'

I was being told that it was time for me to move on. Hong Kong was no longer the right town for me. Australia, my home country, was beckoning. The red dots referred to places that were suitable for me to visit or live.

When visions are this powerful you don't forget them. In the old days, when I first started developing my Integrated Intelligence, I used to write down important dreams and visions. Now I rarely do. I don't need to anymore because the connection between the 'rational' and 'intuitive' parts of my mind is well developed (I do make an exception when I have a long and profound dream, where I know I won't be able to remember it all the next day).

But did I follow my spiritual guidance? Actually, I dithered! I was feeling so comfortable with my life in Hong Kong, that I was really reluctant to leave.

Then I got a kick in the pants. One day at school the principal called me into his office and said the school would not renew my contract. This is perfectly the schools prerogative after a standard two-year contract is complete. To be honest, I was shocked, as I had always gotten on well with the principal and everyone else.

But this kick in the pants made me act. I looked at my situation more carefully, and realised that my guidance was correct. It was time for me to leave Hong Kong. Bizarrely, as soon as I moved to this committed position, the new principal of my school (it is changing leaders right now) called me into the office and asked me to stay on at the school, saying she thought I was a good teacher. While that did make me feel better, I knew that I needed to make a break for it. I thanked her and told her I was leaving.

It's fascinating that the old principal had decided to let me go. If he had not done this, I might have stayed. So even though I felt bad about the initial 'rejection', it was actually a blessing in disguise. It was the universe's way of tapping me on the shoulder and getting me to move along.

The truth is that, just as my vision had suggested, Hong Kong does not quite have the right "energy" for me. It is a peaceful and well organised city. But on the downside it is very conservative and materialistic. The education system encourages repetition and an adherence to the 'one correct answer'. It's also a very hectic place, where people work long hours. Across the wider city it is difficult to find people who are committed to the kinds of ideas that I am. It's not the right fit for me.

 Peak hour at Admiralty Station, HK Island

Still, I will miss Hong Kong. I have lived in beautiful Discovery Bay on Lantau Island for the past few years,. The ocean and the hills are just minutes away from my apartment. Hong Kong also has a vibrant nightlife, great transpiration systems, and is exceedingly efficient. Efficiency and comfort are the order of the day. But these things do not encourage 'growth'. The actually promote stagnation of the spirit.

Halloween in the Lan Kwai Fong bar area

Yet the bottom line is that I feel that I have knowledge and skills that cannot be readily used here. All of us are given certain gifts by God. I know what mine are. Living here I am a bit like the Biblical son who buries his talents (coins) in the ground, believing that his father will be proud of him when he later shows him that he hasn't lost any of it.

I am not doing the work that I am meant to be doing.

Thank you Hong Kong. I will miss you!

Blessings,

Marcus

Listening to the Spirit

Are you listening?

As I have mentioned a few times in the past, I have a very musical brain, and one of the ways that my psyche and spiritual guidance comes through is via song lyrics and music which enter my head at random times, especially when I am very relaxed, or when almost asleep. Quite often I awaken from sleep with a song playing in my head. In fact it is very rare for me NOT to awaken from sleep with some music playing in my mind. As I explain in Discover Yopur Soul Template - which is all about developing intuiition and what I call Integrated Intelligence - I once had no idea that this information within me had any importance at all. I simply ignored it, because there was no cultural model from which to work to integrate the knowledge or to think of it in any way as being meaningful. I could have gone my entire life ignoring such information, except that nearly twenty years ago I had a psychic reading from an Aboriginal kadaisha woman (shamen) who told me to start paying attention to my guidance, especially the music that came to me. In fact, she relayed a stern message to me from her spirit guides which was a direct admonition for my failure to listen! 

So in the weeks and months that followed I did just what I was asked, and soon discovered that I was being guided through my life every day by spiritiual forces that I had never previously even considered possible, let alone acknowledged.

The reason I tell you this is because a few months ago a rather peculiar song kept coming to me.

Are the Spirits of the Ancestors Still with Us?

Today's post is an extract from my unpublished book Light and Shadow at the Edge of Mind. I wrote this autobiography about four years ago, but when I tried to find a publisher I came to realise that autobiographies were really only marketable if you are famous, or having an intimate relationship with someone famous. Scarlett Johansson, if you are reading this I am willing to negotiate...

I believe that many indigenous peoples are correct in stating that the psyches of ancestors continue to influence the minds of people in the present. This occurs when an individual ancestor’s spirit continues to deliberately or unconsciously manipulate the psyche of individuals alive now. This may be malevolent in nature, but may also come in the form of guidance – which is essentially helpful. I have had powerful dreams where what I believe to be my on ancestors visited me.

About three years ago I found myself speaking to a woman in a dream-state interaction. The woman looked a little like my maternal grandmother,(deceased) ,but her ‘energy’ was much different – so I suspect it was not the actual spirit of my grandmother. We came together for a few moments. I asked her why I had such a natural inquisitive intelligence when nobody else in my family appeared to have this trait. She told me that she had been a linguist, and had written a book. There was the sense that there were writers and thinkers from her side of the family, going back a few generations. The most unusual thing about this dream was that the woman was not speaking English. I knew that she was not speaking English, but I could understand her nonetheless. She told me that she was speaking a Russian dialect. As I have mentioned, human beings are quite capable of telepathic communication in non-ordinary states of consciousness. This may transcend the need for a common language.

After this dream I became quite interested in my family’s past. That woman seemed to me to be Jewish. She did not say that she was Jewish. It was just a very strong sense. But my own family was not Jewish, as far as I knew, and nobody had ever mentioned Jews in my family. So the next time I met my mother ( a few months later) I asked her if we had any Russian ancestors. She did not know of any Russians, but she told me that on her mother’s side there were Polish people who were Jews. Poland borders directly with Russia – indeed their history is interwoven along with their borders. Polish and Belarusan are spoken in both countries. I have to say that I was not in the least bit surprised. I have come to trust certain ‘knowing’ that exists at a non-intellectual level. This kind of knowing is strongly associated with affectivity – feelings. Our education systems have effectively deleted these ways of knowing from existence. This is one of the great tragedies of the modern era.

However my mother knew nothing of any linguists. To this day I have no idea who that woman was, if indeed she was an ancestor.

From Where Does Inspiration Come?

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Caravaggio's The Inspiration of  Saint Matthew

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 Marcus T Anthony's new web site and blog can be found at: www.mind-futures.com.

From where does inspiration come? I have long believed that at least some of my own creative insights and ideas come from external sources. Let me be blunt. I see, hear and feel information which comes from external sources of consciousness. 

The idea of divine guidance is thousands of year old, of course, so I claim no credit for it. I prefer to call these helpers them spirit guides. When I am meditating, sleeping, or half asleep I often get ideas flowing through me. I even get poems and songs coming through that I have never heard of. I sometimes wish I’d put more time into learning to play a musical instrument, because some of these songs sound pretty good to me! Other times I see book covers, page numbers, tv channels, specific magazines and so on. When that happens, I almost always go and read the page, the book, the magazine or turn on the tv channel. This is an almost daily occurrence to me. 

Two nights ago, just as the idea for my last blog post about social narratives and hatred, the number “71” appeared before my eye very clearly. I turned on the light, picked up the book by my bed, and read a short passage by David R. Hawkins. It said that below a certain level of consciousness development, spiritual ideas are incomprehensible. These lower levels of mind are dominated by animalistic drives, including the need to survive. I realised straight away that it was senseless blaming hyper-nationalist for their hatred. They are simply operating at a level of mind which makes their worldview inherently xenophobic. I felt more compassion for them after this realisation.

I don't think we can attribute all creative impulses to external sources, but I believe that  some definitely can be.

Enough from me. Let’s listen to someone else talk about the same subject area. Writer Elizabeth Gilbert spent a year of her life travelling through Italy, India and Indonesia, and in the process managed to write the best selling book Eat, Pray, Love. I have not read the book, but it is, I am told, a book of self-discovery.

It’s interesting that I found this video today, because I have been contemplating doing something quite similar – taking a year off, and travelling while writing and videoing. My idea though is to completely give the process over to intuitive guidance. That is, merely having a general idea to write a book called (maybe), A Year of Inspiration, but applying Integrated Intelligence to every step of the journey.

Presently, it’s just an idea – but whose idea?

Let's listen to Elizabeth. 

Marcus

The Hole in Evolution?

 Strange Evolution: The Tasmanian Tiger (extinct)

The theory of natural selection is undoubtedly one of the greatest theoretical formulations in human history. However my sense as an intuitive is that it is not quite right, or perhaps a better way to put it is that it doesn’t go far enough. Today I present you with a little food for thought. This is purely a philosophical issue, but one that has important implications for evolution and human futures.

Is Your Spirituality Delusional?

Several days ago on Rob and Trish Macgregor’s synchronicity blog there was a post entitled “Synchronicity or delusion?" . That blog post received a large number of responses, including one from me. I thought it would be good to elaborate on the answer that I gave there. I am also going to expand the topic a little, and talk not just about synchronicity, but about the idea of spiritual guidance in general (as synchronicity could be interpreted as a sub-category of the ‘spiritual’).

The post-rational stages of cognitive development have often been confused with the lower, prepersonal stages. Philosopher Ken Wilber makes this point, and he's right. One of the commonalities is seeing and hearing things that others don't perceive. How is anybody else supposed to know whethrer the person is a compete loony, or a prophet? How is the person perceiving the spiritual guidance to know whether he/she is a complete loony? Many sceptics would not even bother to make the distinction, but as someone who has had many spiritual experiences, I think it is not only worthwhile, but extremely important. We don’t want to spend time going down the wrong track in life because we followed the advice of some guidance that was nothing more than a delusion. And we don’t want to dismiss all guidance out of hand, because it can be very helpful

First a distinction that anyone who deals with intuitive or psychic realms has to know.

Go West!

 The peak behind Discovery Bay, Hong Kong, today

I live in a very beautiful part of Hong Kong – Discovery Bay, on Lantau Island. Lantau is the biggest island in the territory, apart from Hong Kong Island itself. It’s great to be able to come back here and relax after a long day of work (or blog writing!)

But I didn’t always live in this part of Hong Kong. I Hope that the story of how I came to live here will be instructive for anyone who wishes to follow their Integrated Intelligence to live their Bliss.

I have only lived in Discovery Bay for less than six months. Before then I was living on the 50^th floor of a high-rise in the eastern side of Hong Kong. I found the experience less than blissful! Being so far from the earth was very ungrounding. At times I felt almost soulless. Still, the place was close to my workplace, so I endured it.

Then one night a song came to me as I was sleeping, as so often happens to me. It was a line from Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.