Inspirations
Over the years Phil has met and worked with so many inspirational figures. Here he share some of his personal experiences, stories and what he learnt from his top inspirational encounters.
"When you are born into a world you don’t fit into, it is because you were born to create a new one."
- Source unknown
Muhammed Ali
I couldn’t believe it. The man who had inspired me since I was a seven-year-old kid was coming to the boxing club I was a member of in Tyneside. He entered the sports hall to a sea of cheers and smiling faces. He climbed into the exhibition ring to an even greater roar from the crowd. Over the next hour Ali sparred with five well-known British boxers. He ‘floated like a butterfly, stung like a bee’, moving like a god, flicking out stinging left jabs. He joked around, making faces, did the Ali shuffle, and praised his opponents. The crowd, in that packed hall, loved every minute. Then he stood against the ropes and talked. I scrambled my way to ringside, just below where he was standing. For almost two hours I looked up, hanging on his every sentence, about life, about fighting, about taking a stand, about being a man. It’s what he made me do – LOOK UP - not just with my eyes, but with my heart. He brought out the fighter in me, brought out the love of life in me, taught me that showing up meant caring for people. I was seeing the world with fresh eyes.
As he slowly eased through the excited crowd to the exit, I instinctively placed my right hand on his shoulder. Looking back, I realise it was his presence, beyond anything, that shone out; something available to us all.
Ali was a ‘thinking boxer’. I learned how he would train in three-minute intervals so he would instinctively know when to increase the flurry of punches in the closing seconds of each round. He fought with his hands low, using foot speed and body movement rather than blocking to avoid being hit. He did things his own way, in his own style, not following convention. It was a good lesson in trusting our uniqueness. A male mentor like no other.
John Bradshaw
I discovered his work from my first therapist around 1996. When I found out he was delivering workshops in London I was first in the queue, having already bought all his books and tapes. He taught me that I still have a boy in me, a wounded boy who had to absorb so much hurt in his vulnerable and sensitive years. I had not registered how much rejection the boy had endured. John also taught that right beside my wounded boy was my wonder child, a sparkly-eyed wonder child that wants to be set free. He set out the process of healing that was essential to reclaim him.
Not only did he make human psychology simple and interesting, but John also shared stories from his own experience, which made it all real. His teachings grounded me in an appreciation of the wisdom of inner-child (needs, feelings and wants) work. He expressed how the wounded child shows up in the adult, and how the child must be ‘re-appreciated’ by our current day self. Another great male mentor.
Michael Meade
A storyteller and mythologist. When I heard about his men’s work retreat camp in the woods in Mendocino California, I got myself there without question. It was around 2008. With close to a hundred men of all ages and backgrounds I soaked up his knowledge and telling of myth stories and the way he interpreted them for us. I remember huddling in an old wooden hut very early in the morning to hear a round of men’s dreams. “Dreams guide us”, he said, and Michael gave reflections on what arose from the night that opened a deeper inquiry for the day.
There were days when conflict broke out between factions in the group. I recall how Michael took it all in his stride and grounded us in our deeper selves with ritual, poems and song. I left inspired and wanting more.
There was also important learning about the process of male initiation, and what happens when it is not given attention. A marvelous teacher of men.
Malidoma Some
A West African Shaman sent to educate the west in ancient practices. A year before taking courses at his retreat centre in upstate New York I had a personal cowry shell divination with him. Some things Malidoma said touched and activated the unfolding of my life purpose. That was enlivening. Then some things he asked me to do rattled my bones in fear at that time. They are still unfolding in me.
Spending weeks with Malidoma I was put through rituals of the five elements of the Dagara tradition, fire, water, earth, mineral and nature. I learned their importance, how to make invocations, how to honour ancestors, and make shrines.
Subonfu Some
A West African Shaman, wife of Malidoma. To experience a three-day grief ritual with a tribal elder is an experience I will never forget. Around 120 people gathered for the event in Germany. There were old people, young children, many different nationalities, some blind, some deaf, some carrying extreme recent losses or illnesses. Huge elaborate shrines were built. The room came alive with drumming and singing in support of people weeping out their losses, traumas and fears kneeling at the grief shrine. It was community healing at its most profound. As I carried my backlog of ungrieved experiences to the shrine time and again I felt the weight of them leave my body. I found a new friendliness in myself and was able to drop any conditioned acting out from fear when around people.
Deepak Chopra
Deepak’s writings and lectures spoke to me in a way that shifted my consciousness into a more inclusive world. It was a joy to be in a residential with him at Schumacher College. His reminding us we are spiritual beings having a human experience, not the other way around, brought me to a deeper starting place to go about my days. His simple exercises to illustrate this and his gentle ease around meditation have stayed with me.
Patch Adams and Susan Parenti
Activists for peace and a new world order. Here at Schumacher College in Devon the exercises Patch engaged us in centered around joy and love and brought me closer to my natural home. “Modern medicine and psychology studies illness, not wellness, has writings on all kinds of mental illness, yet no advice about joy”. It was a clear indication of what we put our attention on grows.
Patch made fun of the film about his life, and where they took license with the truth. His wife Susan Parenti introduced us to her School for Designing a Society. She brought new thinking to how we inhabit the earth.
Marrianne Williamson
A student and teacher on The Course in Miracles. I think I wrote down everything she said in the three-day seminar in London. She is articulate and a great teacher.
“It’s a fraction of the cost to prevent a war than to engage in one”.
This is something I’d always thought but not put into one sentence. It made me realise this applies at the level of personhood as well as the level of nations. “Healing is the path, and we do that from the inside”. Not something that is common knowledge in our modern education system.
Byron Katie
Having heard her message of ‘loving what is’ I wanted to experience her in person when she came to the UK. A beautiful and radical teacher who brought me back time and again to my own experience, when I wandered off in my head. “There are two types of business”, she said, “your business and gods business”. It was a succinct lesson in keeping our inquiries about life focused internally rather than the life of others, which mostly took the form of mind chatter.
Jeannie Zandi
A non-dual teacher of Living as Love. I learned the importance of embodiment for awakening. “Jeannie gets under the skin of my male conditioning like no other teacher has”. To reeducate myself into beingness, and YIN, is a life changing, life affirming art. I cannot stress just how important this education is to my journey as a man, as well as how to relate to the feminine, in all its forms.
Lennon and McCartney
Two soul mates that stand out in the field of songwriting. Growing up in the sixties it was impossible not to hear their music radiating from every transistor radio or record player. There is an aliveness and vibrancy in their music that brought out the aliveness in me. As they progressed, I soaked up their music and lyrics that became deeper and varied. I remember unexpectantly having Rubber Soul given to me one Christmas. I played it endlessly, especially the song In My Life which, even though young, had a way of bringing me closer to myself and my feelings. Listening to the feast of songs on The White Album was a journey into a larger life. Later I learned how they both inspired each other into their creative grooves by making spontaneous play throwing out words and sentences however silly to get out of their heads. That is news to my headspace.
Martin Shaw
An extraordinarily gifted storyteller and mythologist. Attending a two-year course here in Devon educated me in the old ways or oral storytelling, of fairy tales and of myths from around the world. Martin gathered in the parts of me that was hungry to remember the importance of story, and of the many layers of wisdom that awaits us when we invite in these old tales.An extraordinarily gifted storyteller and mythologist. Attending a two-year course here in Devon educated me in the old ways or oral storytelling, of fairy tales and of myths from around the world. Martin gathered in the parts of me that was hungry to remember the importance of story, and of the many layers of wisdom that awaits us when we invite in these old tales.
I also took a solo four-day rites of passage initiation in the wild folds of Dartmoor.
Daniel Foor
An educator of Ancestral Medicine and shamanic practices of healing and ritual. Daniel came to Devon some years back and took us through his ancient process of healing our ancestral lines. He is a beautiful holder of space and teacher of how to heal what has gone before us so we can rely on our ancestral lines for support and creative inspiration.
Billy Connoly
“I don’t know why I should have to learn algebra, I’m never likely to go there”. A beautifully expressive man, though I never met him in person I always considered him to be the answer to wars. Put him in the middle of warring factions and let him loose. They will be too busy laughing to carry on fighting. Another striking male mentor.
Major General Sir Jeremy Moore
His title speaks for itself. I will never forget his speech on leadership back in my art gallery days in my thirties. “You cannot lead by using punishment as a tool for discipline. You must love your men, and they must feel it”. That was a WOW from my conditioned parts that wanted to bully his way to success. I thought to myself, ‘if it’s the right attitude for this military man him that’s good enough for me’. I recall taking a review of myself and how I engaged with the staff at my gallery. Great learning from a great male role model.
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