Interview
Interview
In January 2019 I was interviewed by a well known magazine. I thought it might be fun for you to read the transcript.
Janet :- Hi Nick. It’s so great to have you here. Tell me. How did it all start for you.
Nick :- I was at a dinner party, there were 6 or 8 of us and we were talking about religion. Usually this would be a big mistake but then our host said that the nearest thing he had to a religion was a Pipe-Circle he went to once a month. I asked if I could come and off we went to Hebden Bridge to meet Sky Horse. He was a Native American, ex Marine, married a local girl. Maybe a dozen of us chatted a while and then he got the pipe out. The ritual and the ceremony involved was phenomenal. Sky Horse and I became great friends and my curiosity started there I guess.
Janet :- You and SkyHorse. What did you do ?
Nick :- We were invited to go to Southern Ireland to run some Sweat Lodges which was fascinating. Lots of people turned up at the Hill of Tara, Ireland’s answer to Stonehenge. We harvested all the raw materials and built this big Sweat Lodge. That night with the hot stones and the drumming we were away. Off with the fairies. It was wonderful. It was a solstice so we watched as the sun came up and like a laser beam, shone right into the doorway of one of the sacred mounds. Fabulous.
Janet :- What happened next
Nick :- I went along to a weekend course with Kenneth Meadows. It was in Hatfield, North London and it just said – Come and learn how to go on a Shamanic Journey. I though that sounded interesting so I went along. Kenneth was fabulous. There we were, there were 20 or 30 of us, all sat round in a circle, and we were invited to listen to the drums and go off on a journey to places and do certain stuff.
Janet :- How was that for you
Nick :-Rubbish. I didn’t go anywhere. All the people in the room were coming back and telling us all where they had been playing with various animals, climbing mountains, running through the grass and making it all sound fabulous – and I didn’t go anywhere. Nowhere. I just laid there listening to the drums.
Janet :- So what happened
Nick :- Well it got to Sunday afternoon. The last journey. Kenneth said we were to go on a Shamanic Journey and bring something back. The Intention of the journey is ever so important. I turned to the girl next to me. She wasn’t having any luck either. I said to her - “when this is all over you say you saw eagles, I’ll say I saw dolphins and they will think we are wonderful.” So off we went. The drums started and I laid there and bang…….. I was in Etretat, Northern France. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid. I saw the beach and the raft tied up just off shore and the majestic cliffs and the sand and I was in heaven. I wandered about all over the place and then I heard the return drums. I thought, “oh I have got to bring something back”, so I bent down and picked up a small rock. Then I came back into the room. I was so excited.
Janet :-What did Kenneth say ?
Nick :- I told him all about my journey and the cliffs and everything and said I had brought back a small stone. He paused. He went to his bag and took out a stone. He said “It wasn’t this one was it ?” And it was. That was the very stone that I had picked up off the beach. It had a thunder-bird etched into it. How fabulous is that. He said a lady had given him it a few days ago and that it was for someone. I was so excited. Kenneth gave me the stone and I still have it to this day.
I was hooked.
Janet :- So what happened next
Nick :- Well I just wanted more and more. I took the drumming tape home and practised. It was phenomenal. I would pick an intention and journey. It was wonderful.
Janet:- Did you go back to see Kenneth
Nick :- Oh Yes. He ran a course each month. After we had learned to journey, the intentions got more ambitious. We journeyed to the Lower World, then we moved to the Upper World and on from there. We played with Soul Restoral, Past Lives, it went on and on. I did the 12 month course and then came back to supervise and help the new students. I was there for 3 or 4 years before Kenneth sadly died.
Janet :- What next?
Nick :- We wanted to study the North American Shamanism so we had a month in South Dakota. Pine Ridge and Rosebud reservations. It’s the home of the Oglala Sioux nation. We went to see Albert White Hat and the local university, we met John Around Him, we did Sweat Lodges and that’s when we met Rose.
Janet :- Rose?
Nick :- Yes. She was the great great great great grand-daughter of Black Elk, the Oglala Sioux Medicine Man. She’s was fabulous. Hard, but fabulous. We travelled all over the place. The Badlands, Sylvan Lake, Mount Rushmore Monument, Wounded Knee, Little Big Horn. She taught us about the colours, the directions, the totem animals. All great stuff. I remember she took us to a number of holy sites and you could really feel the energy. Everywhere we went was magic.
We also spent some time with a bus driver called Dawson-Has-No-Horse. He told us the story of Wounded Knee and Wounded Knee Two, the recent version. He took us to all the sites and told us all the stories. Wounded Knee was a particularly sad story and on a trip to Rapid City I was particularly saddened that he, being Native American, couldn’t go in to some of the shops like the jewellery store. He took us to the confluence of two rivers where RedCloud was born.
Janet :- Where else did you go
Nick :- We climbed Bare Butte from the film Close Encounters in Montana, you know the mountain where the extraterrestrials congregated behind. Sylvan Lake was gorgeous. And we had a pipe made from the rock at Pipestone in Minneapolis. It was a wonderful trip.
One day, we were sitting on a big rock overlooking Sylvan Lake. The wind was blowing ripples on the lake and there was snow on the ground. There was a bus full of kids screaming and shouting over to our right, there was a group of lads behind us all drinking and shouting – being lads. Anyway, I sat there and I went quiet. Everything became peaceful and still. I stared at the silence. Then I noticed the wind had dropped and the lake was like a mirror. The kids drifted away as did the lads behind me. All was still. It was fabulous. Now, about that time my youngest son was being bullied a school and into my quiet mind came a thought of him. I wondered how he was doing. That thought disturbed everything. The wind came back, the kids were shouting again and the lads were dancing to some music. The scene was back to normal. I had lost it. Shame.
Janet :- Where did you go next
Nick :- It was then that we became fascinated by Hawaiian Huna. The Shamanic tradition of the Hawaiian Islands is wonderful because being 3000 miles from anywhere else it was the tradition that was least messed with. Here in England, we have been raided and taken over by so many cutlrues over the years, so finding the original Celtic Tradition is hard. There, nobody had messed with it, so it’s pure.
Janet :- Who did you study with there ?
Nick :- I did a course with Tad James on Big Island. He had been gifted a set of symbols that dated way back and was teaching courses around that. I then struck up a friendship with Serge Kahili King. The chap who wrote all the books on Huna. He was wonderful. He had an organisation around him and I did many of his courses. We played in the magic of it all. I recall I went to an ancient site up in the hills on Kauai. It was just a series of small walls like every other ancient site but as I sat there I could see it all as it was way back when. All the houses, the alley ways. I went for a walk through the encampment and spoke to all the people there. It was amazing. I learned so much.
Janet :- What did you learn there
Nick :- We got into Kane or Aumakau, the Lono and the Ku. The Higher Conscious, the Conscious Mind and the Unconscious mind. We played with that and that’s when I learned to grock, to become that which you are focussing on. The tide, a tree, the rolling lava from the volcano.
I went to see the active volcano on Big Island. The lava was running down the hill and dropping into the sea. That day the clouds were at 500 feet so the lava came out of the mist and when it fell into the sea it turned to steam with a hiss. There was a storm with thunder and lightning just above us. Bright red molten rock flowing, the hiss of the steam, the rolls of thunder and the sharp lightening. I remember thinking “and we think we’re in charge!” I could feel it all shooting through my chest.
Some time later we got married there
Janet :- Married?
Nick :- Yes. On the beach with lots of friends. Serge Kahili King came out of retirement to marry us in a fabulous ceremony with a nose flute on a secluded beach on Kauai. We had a big reception with fireworks and cake and she looked so gorgeous, with her long blue dress and a fresh lei In her long blonde hair. It was wonderful. What a day! She was loving and caring and just the sweetest of ladies. Sadly she died this year. Very sad.
Janet :- I am so sorry to hear that.
What else did you do in Hawaii
Nick :- I swam with wild free dolphins. There this bay on Big Island. Every morning at 8.00 am a pod of 30 or 40 Dolphins would come into the bay. I jumped in with mask and snorkel and fins to go and play with them. One dolphin saw a leaf some 6 feet down, just suspended in the water. She caught it with her fin and took the leaf down to 20 feet and let it go. She turned to see what I would do. I dived down, fetched the leaf and brought it back to six feet. Then the Dolphin did it again. Caught it on the fin and took it down to 20 feet. I went and fetched it again. We did this several times. It was so much fun. When I got out back into the boat, exhausted after an hour I said “I can die now”
Janet :- And all the time you were learning ?
Nick :- Yes. It’s all been wonderful. We have had a fabulous time. I continue to use this time to share what we have learned. To pass it on to anyone who will listen. It’s our gift to those who want to see how life can be, to consider the possibility of doing life another way.
Janet :- Well thanks ever so much Nick for that trip around the world. You definitely have something important to say and I wish you all the very best
Nick :- Thanks for that, it was my pleasure