Consciousness the New Currency
Brandon Bays and Kevin Billett
Journey Publications Limited
REVIEW BY NICOLA SILVA

On a jasmine scented spring evening some years ago I attended one of Brandon Bay's meditation evenings in Sydney. The minute she came on stage, Brandon's innocent joie the vivre and vivacious spirit captured the audience's attention.

In fact, there is something about Brandon that positively sparkles! NOVA readers may recall that Brandon healed herself of a massive tumour and that healing gave rise to The Journey process work which has transformed the lives of hundreds of thousands people around the world. Thus it was with a keen sense of anticipation that I approached her latest book Consciousness the New Currency, co-written with her partner and co-founder of The Journey, Kevin Billett.

Those of us interested in a spiritual path cannot help but be aware of the conflicted paradigms that swirl around money, abundance and prosperity. Our great spiritual leaders and teachers have espoused little interest in accumulating wealth. One recalls the ascetic Gautama Buddha who turned away from a king's inheritance to open up a radical new spiritual path, the humble lives of Jesus and Mahatma Gandhi, and Mother Teresa who urged her followers to give to others until it hurts.

At the opposite end of the spectrum is our practical realisation that money is required for comfortable living and to give our children a happy future with perhaps less of the daily struggle that we ourselves may have experienced.

Our human make-up includes numerous hopes and fears; among the latter appear to be a deep-rooted survival fear that lacking money, friends or support, we may die destitute and alone, perhaps unloved and unmourned. Or so it was for Brandon who, after the breakup of her 20-year marriage, was forced to make her own way in the world. Brandon took a radical step: she refused to run from her fears and instead looked the tiger in the eye. What arose from this exercise wasn't pretty, but it was liberating. She suggests that most people have unacknowledged fears and unhealthy conditioning that is literally running their lives.

In Consciousness the New Currency, Bays and Billett invite us to "get deeply real" and face our hidden fears that lurk like silent assassins, undermining all our efforts. There is a logical simplicity to this idea that I like. It presupposes maturity and a sense of responsibility for our lives. Indeed, the gift of the global financial crisis is that it's brought many people to a point where they are finally willing to have a long hard look at what they truly value. The book uses highly effective Journey process work and tools to allow the reader to uncover, at the cellular level, whatever is preventing their true potential from shining forth.

Bays and Billett write elegantly and profoundly that everything and everyone in our lives - indeed, our very Earth - is on loan to us. If acquisitiveness, and the greed underlying it, is the cause of many of the ills assailing our modern world, non-attachment is a loftier ideal. It inevitably leads to gratitude, for all of life, and encourages a culture of sharing freely our gifts, our goods, our smiles.

There's a world of change going on right now, some of it potentially disastrous. Thus, individual acts, when driven by conscious integrity, have enormous potential not merely to avert disaster but to create a joyful and sustainable future for all on Earth. This book is a wake up call for more and more people to contribute their consciousness at this critical time in our evolutionary journey. Bays and Billett propose that consciousness is the currency for the future; it's hard to argue with that.

Meeting Fairies: My Remarkable Encounters with Nature Spirits
by R Ogilvie Crombie
ALLEN & UNWIN
REVIEW BY ROSAMUND BURTON

I pick up this beautiful little hardback book expecting a whimsical tale about small winged creatures. But to my delight I am soon engrossed in an extraordinary account of an extremely pragmatic man's encounter with nature spirits.

Robert Ogilvie Crombie, known as Roc, was born in 1899. A decidedly Renaissance man with an interest in science as well as the arts and the esoteric, he was also a musician, an actor and a marvellous storyteller.

In 1915 he joined the Marconi radio company and served as a radio operator in the Merchant Navy in the First World War. He studied physics, chemistry and mathematics at Edinburgh University, but after three years his studies were cut short due to illness. Then, aged 33, he had a major heart attack and was told by his doctor to retire.

This left him free to pursue his interests which included the occult, and his love of nature. During the Second World War, he was ordered out of Edinburgh by his doctor in the event of German bombings, and spent the next 10 years living in a cottage in Perthshire with no electricity and a water supply from a nearby spring.

It was only when he was in his mid 60s that he first saw nature spirits. He was in the Edinburgh Botanical Gardens leaning against a tree when he saw a faun.
Initially amazed that Roc could see him, this little nature spirit with his shaggy legs and cloven hooves told Roc that his work was to help the growth of trees. Roc goes on to describe his later encounters with the great god Pan.

Meeting Fairies is published by Inspired Living, an imprint of Allen and Unwin. The material for it had come from the Findhorn Foundation, the community in northeast Scotland, which was established in 1962 by Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. In 1963, the community was working in close cooperation with nature when Dorothy Maclean discovered through meditation that she could communicate with devas, the angelic spirits responsible for each and every species of plant.

What resulted from following the devas' precise instructions was the phenomenal Findhorn garden, including its famous and now legendary 40 pound cabbages, which amazed horticulturists given the barren sandy soil and windswept location. In 1966, a year after his first encounter with nature spirits, Roc saw the miraculous Findhorn garden, and subsequently became closely associated with Findhorn and its work with nature spirits.

Roc died in 1975 and Meeting Fairies is a compilation of his own accounts of his experiences and those of members of the Findhorn Community about him and his work.

This book is a fascinating insight into nature spirits and Findhorn's work in the 1960s with them. But also, I think, it has an enormous relevance for us today. There is an increasing awareness of the environment, but to a great extent nature's gifts are being seen by many people as commodities. When I read that the nature spirits are responsible for the lifeforce of each and every plant, it really hits home how important it is to make a connection with nature at this level, and not just assume that we are like gods and able to control the world around us.