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ASCENT
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL SPIRITUAL ANTHOLOGY
Dedicated to Bhagavan Sri Sathya Sai Baba
Who continues to be my Guiding Light
“You are a child of God, and it is your God-given role to help others to remember that they are also children of God”
[Divine decree received 2010]
‘Energy cannot be created or destroyed;
It can only be changed from one form to another.
Everything is energy and that is all there is to it.
Match the frequency of the reality you want,
And you cannot help but get that reality.
It can be no other way.
This is not philosophy;
This is physics’
[Albert Einstein]
Why these Writings?
On completion of the Labyrinth here at Jacaranda Haven in 2010, I walked it on my own for the first time and then stood – silent and empty- in the centre. A loud voice spoke telepathically to me:
“You are a child of God, and it is your God-given role to help others to remember that they are also children of God”
Sai Baba had gifted me a pen and vibhuti (sacred ash) whilst leaving Puttaparthi in 1999, renowned psychic Joan Moylan had told me in 1998 to write, and psychic Jennifer Starlight conveyed to me from Spirit in early 2022 that I was meant to write…but what ?
And then I realised that all I could write about to assist others on their paths was my own experiences, teachings and learnings in order to “…help others to remember that they are also children of God”. Hence these autobiographical writings…
Modules
This is but one ‘module’ in this collection of autobiographical writings that I choose to call ‘modules’. Each one stands alone, but some cross-reference others. A completed book is a static thing once finished: however, these modules are flexible in that I can add to them at any time should new experiences/information comes to hand, and the reader can pick & choose which particular modules attract them. The collection of modules thereby constitutes an’ anthology’.
The intent of writing these is to share experiences and teachings that I have been blessed with along the way of a human incarnation – the ascent of consciousness – such that the reader may also benefit to illumine their own path/ascent to the ultimate inevitable goal for all humans: that of ‘self-realisation’.
Belief vs Truth
As a precursor to reading any of these Modules, there is a need to clarify the difference between ‘Belief’ and ‘Truth’: one may ‘believe’ eg it is raining outside by the sound on the roof, but when you actually see the rain falling/walk out and get wet, you actually then ‘know’ it is so – ie it is ‘true’, and so ‘belief’ about that instantly ceases.
Many go through life accumulating fixed ‘beliefs’ about people/things, and, as Krishnamurti taught:”… the moment you arrive at a conclusion/form an opinion/a belief, you block the possibility of further enquiry and discovery”.
So, a hot air balloon called ‘Ascent’ awaits: I invite you to climb into its basket with me, throw overboard the ballast of all those accumulated ‘beliefs/opinions’ you have acquired to feel safe, and therefore allow this balloon to rise free and drift to destinations unknown.
Because, otherwise, some of what you read herein may sorely challenge your accumulated beliefs…
Everything recounted within the Anthology is absolutely true, unless I have qualified otherwise.
John Stephen Butterworth
NORTH SYDNEY
A NEW OPPORTUNITY EMERGES
I arrived back home at my mother’s house from my USA trip in October1996 with very little money left, and no clear idea what to do next. A close friend who had expertise in career guidance offered to spend time with me to help me. She explored what training and skills I had , and then into what she termed ‘value added’ territory to see if any new opportunities emerged.
As a result of this kind assistance, I prepared a brief CV with photo and mailed it to 17 carefully selected Sydney metropolitan area Councils offering my services & experience as landscape architect/design practice director/expert witness in the Land & Environment Court/University & college lecturer etc either as a consultant in-house/external or employee.
I decided that, if this exercise yielded no results, I would then direct the same offer to relevant State, then Federal Government departments. Not necessary, as I received an almost immediate request to attend a job interview at North Sydney Council as they just ‘happened’ to have an appropriate vacancy.
This I did and was successful, starting in Feb 1997– although initially just as a rather strange combination of landscape/urban designer handling some aspects of streetscape improvement projects (which I’d had plenty of experience in) and as the Local Emergency Management Officer which I had no experience in ! This latter was a role that every Council has to provide for and I was given it as seemingly noone else wanted to. I had to convene regular meetings of the Local Emergency Management Committee etc and, as I was simply grateful to have a financially-secure job, I grudgingly went along with it. However, Spirit was afoot as always…
In September 1997, I had to attend a 1 day training course offsite with many other emergency personnel and heard that day sometimes harrowing firsthand accounts spoken by rescue/ambulance/police of the eg the Thredbo disaster when buildings at this Snowy Mountains ski resort had collapsed with loss of lives, injuries and trapped people. It was very humbling and ,at the end of that day,I suddenly felt privileged & enriched to be with all these silent heroes.
And that was the turning point that Spirit/Sai Baba was waiting for me to accept and surrender to this ancillary role I had been given.
I say “turning point” because of what immediately took place.
To provide context, Council had commenced undertaking 3 major construction projects simultaneously being upgrade of North Sydney Olympic Pool, reconstruction of much of the Council Chambers and a new Indoor Sports Centre at Crows Nest on top of an existing multistorey parking station – in total at least $20million worth.
Council had been endeavouring to hire a project manager on a short term basis (?18 months) to run one/some of these and had two failures in quick succession. I said to my Director a number of times that a far better solution was surely to engage someone for, say 3 years initially. He apparently took that on board because, shortly after the second failure, he called me into his office and told me to shut the door.
He said that he’d had discussions with his boss, The Town Clerk, and they had agreed that my suggestion was the best option for Council. Then came the bombshell:
“We’d like you to be that person!” “And you’ll naturally have a higher salary, plus ample administrative/clerical support”.
I was stunned as I had NO prior experience in project management but only experience being Director of my own landscape architectural design practice with a small number of employees. (I do recall now some 25+ years later that I had earlier told my Director at Council that I needed to earn more as what they were initially paying me wasn’t making ends meet).
I went home to my partner Rosemary that night with my mind in a spin and shared with her details of the offer.
We decided it was too good an opportunity to decline and so accepted.
Thereafter, I was North Sydney Council’s Projects Manager managing building, fitout and streetscape projects for 20+ years until I ‘retired’ in August 2017 when Rosemary (at that time my wife of 19 years) put her foot down and said she was not prepared to continue traveling 3.5.hours on Friday evening to our house in the country and then 3.5hours back on Sunday evening to Sydney where we rented – as we had done for 13 years since buying the land (except for holiday periods there of longer duration)…but that is another story recounted elsewhere.
Suffice it to say, during that tenure, I learned on the run (an understatement) and managed the design, tendering, contract administration and construction of dozens of projects of varying types and budgets: from large scale construction through office re-fitouts to streetscape upgrade projects with large/sometimes more modest budgets – and everything in between.
So, in retrospect, was there REALLY more to all this than first meets the eye?
On the face of it, it sadly 20 + years at a computer & desk left me round-shouldered (photos show what erect posture I’d had prior) but it had provided us a steady, reliable income flow plus benefits (incl a Council vehicle totally free for unlimited private use NB 600km travelling every weekend for 13 years, superannuation, annual & Long Service Leave etc) that permitted me in 1997 firstly to move in with, then in 1998, marry Rosemary (as directed by Sai Baba), to rent us varying good quality accommodation in Sydney suburbia, some overseas travel, and ,after each of our mothers died, 3 months Long Service Leave to allow the country house to be built etc.
Hence, the job had meant we were financially secure and comfortable…but there was much more to it than that.
My History with the North Sydney Area & Surrounds
I was born into this present life about 10:15pm on 8th March 1945 in the Braidwood Private Hospital in Lytton Street North Sydney. From 1949 to 1956, I attended a remedial gymnasium in North Sydney every Saturday morning to strengthen my respiratory system due to being prone to asthma and hayfever from birth. My parents had me booked to go from primary school into a prestigious private school commonly called ‘Shore’ at North Sydney but I refused (as I didn’t want to have to wear a straw boater hat and be trapped into the tight discipline of a private school – which proved to be financially fortuitous for my parents not having to pay the very high fees, whereas public schooling was free…) (they had sent my sister before me to PLC Pymble with its high fees).
From 1957 to 1962, I went to North Sydney Boys’ High School (I repeated 5th year due to dismal academic results in ’61, and then attained equally dismal results in ’62). I had ‘green blood’ and music/sound in my veins and high school academia in those days did not encompass botany/horticulture/sound /jazz…
As I stepped out from 4 years of landscape architecture at the University of NSW at the end of 1980, I was immediately engaged by a joint architectural & planning practice in North Sydney; whilst there, I prepared a Street Tree Masterplan for North Sydney and administered 2 contracts for its implementation.
At the end of 1982, that practice was affected by a ‘recession’ and I was ‘let go’: I started marketing myself, was given a large design commission and suddenly had to set up a design office of my own. This I ran until it shrivelled up at the end of 1995; during those 13 or so years, my office designed many projects for the North Sydney area including for Shore School and also the new St Aloysius Junior School which I’ll come to shortly in a very different context.
And then, as recounted above, I then worked for North Sydney Council from 1997 to 2017.
By 2001 ,I started to question whether there was any deeper significance to this lifelong involvement with the North Sydney area…”coincidental” I mused , but immediately remembered Robin Miller’s almost prophetic words to me in Sedona USA in 1996 “…there are no coincidences”.
So I decided to seek further by having another session with the trance channel in Sydney I’d been to immediately prior to going to Hawaii and mainland USA in 1996 – ostensibly for my eldest daughter’s wedding, but utilized by Spirit for so much else – notably reconnecting me with heritage & culture from former lives and to complete karmas.
On 3rd May 2001, I entered his room, he put up the ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on the door, laid himself out supine on the massage table and started to breathe deeply…
His Tibetan gatekeeper promptly entered his unconscious body and welcomed me saying that the world of Spirit had known of my question(s) weeks in advance ie from the moment I had decided to seek further, and now had communicant(s) from that ‘world/dimension’ ready to explain all.
He then withdrew and a Native American man introduced himself as John Beartooth saying that he and I had an incarnation together (In the 1700’s?) on the North shore of Lake Michigan USA as brothers in the Cree Nation.
As for my question about my life-long association with North Sydney up to then, he explained in one life, my name was Andrew Collins from Aberdeeen ,Scotland and that I had been gun captain of the personal barge of Phillip Gidley King (one of the first European governors of Sydney). King was especially pleased with my services and so gifted me a plot of land across the Harbour at what is now called Milsons Point area (at the far end of what is now called Alfred Street South – where North Sydney Olympic Pool is located NB This was one of my major ongoing projects for the full duration of my working for Council ie1997-2017: another so-called ‘coincidence’ I don’t think!). I had built a cottage (long since demolished) and came into a relationship with an Aboriginal woman Kjinimatu (my phonetic spelling). This was most unusual in those days for a European man and Aboriginal woman to cohabit. We had 3 children and Kjinimatu set up a ‘subscription school’ (NB refer above to St Aloysius Junior School which took over the former Milsons Point Primary School and I was appointed landscape architect for the project: another so-called ‘coincidence’!).
I was also very friendly with the (now) renowned Billy Blue (several businesses, road, college bear his name) who was the West Indian coxswain of Gidley King’s personal barge and I assisted him smuggle rum & food to escaped convicts. I fished, sailed, was associated with explorer Matthew Flinders, and loved the harbour views, preferring solitude and being in tune with nature.
Most significantly, I made a commitment to be a guardian to this sacred site and was initiated into the local Aboriginal tribe (John Beartooth said Wallumedagal, even though I was later told by Council’s historian that they were more located around the Lane Cove River?)– most unusual for a European to be so honoured. This was a sacred site and used by these people for a variety of purposes including initiation, and rites of passage, plus there was a ‘singing rock’ important for the singing of the whole of Australia (now gone). The whole foreshore was important for the balance of country. John went on to explain that the Aboriginal shamans (as he called them) were very active assisting souls trapped in the astral plane to go to the Light. There had been an epidemic of smallpox (brought by the Europeans) which caused many Aboriginal deaths and many murders.
DESECRATION OF THIS SACRED SITE
I feel it is appropriate at this juncture to step back and soberly consider all this.
Aboriginal peoples of this country were invaded by Europeans who they reportedly initially welcomed but then were murdered (directly and indirectly by introduced diseases eg smallpox, venereal for which the indigenous people had no immune resistance), raped, driven off their lands and had their children stolen (‘The Stolen Generation’): it was attempted genocide. And we of European birth are raised to believe that ‘European culture and customs’ are the norm, superior and that ‘colonisation’ was the norm – even though it was actually invasion.
If Aboriginal people sailed up the River Thames, landed in London, raised their flag and declared they took possession of the land called England… we would all – from our childhood and onwards – brainwashing declare this to be preposterous, and not to be taken seriously…
Yet, reportedly, that is exactly what occurred here in Australia…invasion by a foreign force, with no consultation with the people of this land. Just as Russia continues to invade the Ukraine (as I write now in 2022), the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, and so forth throughout the ages.
[In 2019, a friend Paul Bryden sent us a copy of a book he had written: ‘The First Boomerang’ (pub. 2018 ETT IMPRINT Exile Bay) . I spoke to Paul about the research he had carried out, and discovered he had researched widely including major libraries in Australia.
On p.137, he cites a rare 1841 publication from the South Australian Museum ‘The Manners, Customs, Habits and Superstitions of the Natives of South Australia’ by a German Missionary to the Aborigines C.J.Teichelmann in which he states:
‘ ..they considered the Europeans their ancestors, after they had become white and had attained all the knowledge, were returned once more to see their native country and would then go back again…’
Very sobering in view of how they were treated …]
And it didn’t stop with just the human population.
On Sydney’s North Shore, a railway line was built in the early 1900’s running all the way to Milsons Point where passengers boarded ferries to take them across the Harbour to the City. This necessitated the excavation of vast amounts of sandstone from the naturally-rocky slopes to provide level terracing for the railway. When it was decided to build the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the railway was terminated temporarily at North Sydney until a new rail line was built across the Harbour and the now-abandonned level terrace down at Harbour edge became the site for the Dorman & Long workshops to build the Bridge.
Once the Bridge was built, that same site was utilised for the construction of North Sydney Olympic Pool and then Luna Park adjacent.
As mentioned before, I worked as Council’s Projects Manager on the Pool site on numerous projects from 1997 to 2017 in which time water was a continuous challenge: trying to keep it out/in/corrosion.(I won’t bother you with boring details).Buildings leaked, the 50mPool leaked, corrosion was continually rampant in this severe salt-laden marine environment.
John Beartooth explained that the Pool site and environs is forever a sacred site and that The Great Water Snake was very unhappy about past and ongoing desecration: eventually, an earthquake will cause all this to be consumed by the sea. [As Sai Baba teaches: “Karma is karma”].
The Great Water Snake is coiled up (etherically) below Milsons Point/Lavender Bay and I was informed by John that I could do ceremony to attempt to appease the Snake: the best time for this was at night 5-6 days before a full moon.
I should go holding a vision of this mighty spotted serpent, greet it, acknowledge its governance and send propitiation ie all my love and peace – asking forgiveness for all European wrongdoings as a guardian. Then I was to seal the area over the Snake with white light. The area could have been cursed, but not so. He closed by reiterating that I had obligations and close ties as a guardian along with other souls – some of which not incarnated).
[Post Script: I indeed went to the park above Lavender Bay one evening in 2001 and sincerely did ceremony, but it somehow did not feel very effectual and yes, the watery problems with Pool projects continued].
To further enquire, I checked historical staff at The Stanton Library in North Sydney as to what records they may have of an Andrew Collins from that period: they found that at least 2 bearing that name are buried in the North Shore Cemetery at St Leonards. As I pondered whether to explore this now non-operational cemetery on Pacific Highway, densely screened by vegetation, and adjacent to Royal North Shore Hospital, Spirit stepped in and took me astral traveling one night.
As I drifted over that specific area, I looked down upon the cemetery and knew instantly that the physical body of the Andrew Collins I had occupied for that incarnation had been indeed buried there. On awaking, I knew that to be the truth and thereafter let the matter go.
When I was preparing to leave Council in 2017, I was’ told ‘in sleep (?) to do ceremony to hand over my guardianship as I was physically relocating to our home in the country in the NSW Lower MidNorth Coast hinterland where I had been given to understand I had past-life Aboriginal history and was also a guardian (refer ‘Jacaranda Haven’ module elsewhere).
So in August 2017, I went down to beneath the Harbour Bridge abutments one evening after dark and , in the shadows, performed ceremony as I had been directed – offering food(biscuits/bread), water and blue flowers – calling on the Ancestors, explaining what I now needed to do, and sincerely handing over my guardianship so that I could proceed to assume my role of guardianship on the Lower Mid North Coast.
This I felt was completely effective as I felt an immediate detachment which continues to this day: if I see anything of this area eg on TV or in person driving through this area on rare occasions eg to/from Sydney Airport, I feel absolutely no ‘draw’/attraction: it would seem that the karma there for me is complete.
I give thanks to the Ancestors and Spirit/Sai Baba for allowing me to complete this in this life.
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