My quest for spiritual and alternative knowledge started back in my early twenties after reading vast amounts of material on UFOs and spiritualism, especially much of the older books from the Victorian era that covered the many book shelves in the alternative section of the Barbican library in London.

My thirst grew even more after my twin brother experienced an out-of-body experience where he visited me in my room, where I was playing on my piano; he later described exactly what I had been doing.

For some strange reason he just brushed this episode off, however for myself this experience left me with an even greater yearning to learn more about consciousness and the true nature of reality.

After spending a couple years reading every book under the Sun, life got back to normal; sometimes I can overload myself with so much info that it’s a nice to take a break. All my alternative books were now filed away in the back of cupboard, although I did try to live a spiritual existence, I did struggle because once you get on that path at a young age you don’t know whether you should be saintly or true to yourself and still have fun, in the end having fun always won.

Anyhow it was around this time that I co-foundered a band with a group of close friends, we started an electronic band producing an album, hoping like most young people to have a crack at the big time and share our music with the world. Like all chapters, this stage of my life finally came to a end with the onset of fatherhood, so no conquering the world with our music, maybe the next the life.

The next stage was where my wonderful daughter Nieve was born but not without heartache, as she spent two weeks in intensive care after suffocating on her own stalls and being without oxygen for several minutes, we were warned by the doctor that she may have challenging learning difficulties because of it. Nieve was diagnosed with autism at two. Autism is a very challenging lifelong condition where some can lack the normal social awareness and communication skills that others take for granted. It can be very challenging for both child and parent but well worth it if you can learn to accept and understand it. I wouldn’t change what happened for the world, she is an amazing character who melts the hearts of anybody who is lucky enough to spend time with her and a true teacher too. I for one have learnt so much from these amazing kids, you could say they are already enlightened, they are constantly in the NOW and don’t worry about being accepted or trying to fit in. Whenever life gets me down, I just try to look through the eyes of Nieve and how an autistic would see the world.
During this time my wife's mum; Brenda was struck down with cancer and sadly died just a couple of weeks before our wedding.

These two events had a huge impact on me and those around me, especially my wife and her dad.

It was then that I decided to get all the books out that I had accumulated on spiritual and esoterical subjects and encouraged my father-in-law to read them if he so wished, mainly to try and help ease his pain by realising that loved are still there, even when we believe it's the end.

This was a real turning point for my father-in-law and myself, I was determined to try and turn a negative in to a positive and being a computer programmer by trade, I set about helping in the only way that I knew and build a website where people could share their own knowledge, post events and network with like minded people.

If there is one thing that I have learnt on this journey, is that it's ok to be humble, in fact it's the best way to be, the teacher should always be humble enough to also be the student, and the student should be given the space to sometimes be the teacher. We are all part of the puzzle and bring our own qualities and ideas to the table. I feel that expansion comes through change and allowing old beliefs to drop away as they no longer serve us, basically building your own form of religion that is malleable, rather than fixed and always seeking new things to help expand our minds and hearts.

Brightest Blessings
Ian Jones
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