“When one door closes another door opens,” Alexander Graham Bell was right. I did not even get a chance to wallow in regret after last night’s realisation that it was time to graduate from the brand & buck translators of spiritual concepts to the original works of some of the great masters. My next teacher appeared to me in the body of Michael Fassbender the cute actor playing Carl Gustav Jung in A Dangerous Method, which I saw last night. At the moment, I am finding that the mainstream spiritual lecture circuit is about more about selling books and courses than the sort of insightful discussions that I crave. They have, however, been instrumental in opening my mind, giving me ideas and ultimately getting me to the place I am now. There are still of course many great teachers living that I want to learn from, but the time has come to look to look beyond the gurus to the teachers that inspired them. I was feeling rather deflated after Stephen Russell’s two hour monologue about his new book The Message on Thursday and more convinced than ever that it was time to take a [...]

St. Paul’s Cathedral is a stunning landmark in London and one of my favourite buildings. I walk past it most days to and from work. When the sun is setting on the Sir Christopher Wren designed façade I never fail to be inspired by its beauty. At the moment it is “occupied” by a group of people that might have had a purpose when they started their protest a few months ago but now seem to have lost their vision and message; not too differently to how I feel right now. Although, unlike the occupiers, nine and a half years in the same job and the process of inner transformation well under way, I feel I am on the cusp of change. To me St. Paul’s is more than a landmark, it has become a metaphor for my own life’s journey, which like the Circle Line, can go round and round endlessly unless one remembers to get off. St. Paul’s is a place I always seem to come back to learn my lessons in both work and life. My work as a financial journalist over the last 18 years keeps bringing me back to the cobbled stones [...]

It is 11:11am on 11 November 2011. In Numerology, 11 is the master number of prophecy, vision and inner knowing beyond the need to know. “The number 11 carries the resonance of the spiritual messenger,” says Davina Mackail, shamanic coach and Feng Shui expert and master in the esoteric arts. November, the 11th month, brings inspiration to the world, which is the reason why I have chosen today to release The Life Detective from its protective bubble. The number 11 is composed of two masculine numbers that add up to two, the first feminine number. Eleven, which is seen as the union of the masculine and the feminine, is about speaking with inspiration. The Life Detective has been built as a place that people will find through Serendipity and Synchronicity when they start to look for answers, about the meaning of their life and role in the world; a bit like the door to Narnia. My Intention is that they find jargon-free place to explore the many tools, teachers and books that I have uncovered so that they feel safe and grounded to continue their travels in their own way. For me it is my vehicle through which I explore [...]

I really must stop goading the universe. The other day I was feeling happy and serene, tapping away at the article on The Four Principles of Spirituality feeling that everything was in balance and exactly where it should be when a triple whammy hit in one week. I don’t know what I was thinking when I said to a friend as a joke, “If I carry on like this I will run out of challenges to write about in The Life Detective.” How arrogant can I be? No-one ever stops learning; actively or passively, the lessons keep on coming. One of the key’s to my Happiness is staying physically, emotionally, and spiritually fit, so that my recovery rate these days is so much faster than in the past. It all started with my nascent Yoga journey: a whole 28 yoga classes since October in fact. I was feeling rather happy with my new routine of yoga twice, sometimes three times, a week. I discovered that I had let go of the past as evidenced when Synchronicity kindly re-introduced two old friends, now since married to each other, to a local Friday yoga class I had discovered. [...]

Late one night a lady was busy working in the office. She was a journalist in the middle of a really exciting story. She had hardly noticed time pass as she dealt with the US in a bid to unravel the truth; or at least one person’s version of it. At around 9pm, from the corner of her eye, The Lady saw an email with an intriguing headline had popped into her inbox. In that moment her insatiable curiosity seduced her away from the task at hand. The email was belated birthday wishes from a man now living on distant shores. A man she had first met some 13 years previously, and had only ever seen or communicated with a handful of times. Although over the years their paths never had occasion to cross, The Lady still remembered that their first encounter had left her feeling as if she had met him before. The smile and the piercing eyes the colour of aqua Aura quartz remained with her even though now she hardly remembered what he looked like. As The Lady opened the email and photograph attached, she suddenly understood why she had been thinking about unicorns recently. Her correspondent’s hair had [...]

My first encounter with Deepak Chopra, described as a global authority, on spirituality and personal empowerment, was via his book SynchroDestiny. My life had thrown at me one hell of a coincidence about five years ago and I just could not process it as simply “just” a coincidence. In fact, in periods of major Stress in my life, unbelievable coincidences appeared to show me, sometimes forcefully, the way. The other day I took a workshop on getting to know your Spirit Guides and I realised my guide that I was born with, seems to “speak” to me in coincidences. Or maybe for now it’s the only way to get my attention. It is certainly the path I took as I set off on my own internal adventures. I have now been to two of Deepak’s London talks. The two I have been to have been designed around the launch of a new book and the format very similar. He is not only an accomplished speaker, but a great marketer.  The first talk I found inspirational, but in the second late last year I found I was hearing the same stories. This talk, however, was full of [...]

Synchronicity is the meaningful coincidence of two or more events, where something other than the probability of chance is involved.

When I first read The Alchemist, I cried when I came across the sentence “It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting.” I don’t remember exactly when that was, but I was clearly lost, without a dream. Because of the emotion it triggered I knew in my heart that The Alchemist was a powerful book. To me it was more than just a fable about following one’s Dreams; it felt like a “how to” guide or manual to life even if back then most of the concepts flew above my head. What I did know was that if Paulo Coelho kept repeating “When you want something, all the universe conspires to help you achieve it,” this idea had to be important. As I started to open my mind to the possibility that life had a purpose and I started my own quest into finding that purpose in my life, I kept finding books and teachers, including Wayne Dyer and Deepak Chopra, that all repeated this same concept of Intention and manifestation. These days, I am almost more influenced by the story of the authors than the content of their books. I was reading Paulo’s [...]

“It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts,” says Sherlock Holmes in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’ A Scandal in Bohemia—The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes     To her, he is always the man. Just as to Sherlock Holmes, in A Scandal in Bohemia, Irene Adler is always the woman. In none of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s books about Sherlock Holmes did women ever feature, giving rise to questions about the great detective’s sexuality. “It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler…And yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.” The man in question appeared in her life one seemingly average summer. Just a face at a party she had gone to thinking she was on a date with someone else. A curious face, not conventionally handsome, but a face that had felt a thousand pains. Not just in this life time, but in many many others too.  The man did not look like anything she could conjure up [...]

Contact me at: ask@thelifedetective.com If you have found yourself on this website, you are either a loyal friend of mine wondering what I have been up to recently or Synchronicity and Serendipity have guided you here. My hope is that you allow yourself some luxury time to meander through the stories on the site guided by words or concepts that resonate with you. Allow The Life Detective® to act as a mirror as you explore your life as it is now. No-one know who you are better than you know yourself, but sometimes it takes someone else’s story to help you make sense of your own. I love the idea that events in one’s life, however hard or incomprehensible at the time, can be opportunities even though has taken me years to hone the skill to read the clues. I hope that through the stories on this site you will be able to look your life from a fresh perspective.  The Life Detective® does not aim to answer the questions but simply stimulate your mind and other senses to get curious about what your life is really about. Always remember that you have the answers to any question [...]