The Inner Temple Blog

Welcome

Readers often tell me they value the first‑person voice in my book because it offers a clear sense of how I think and creates a kind of intimacy... “in‑to‑me‑see.”
I believe we need more authenticity and less persona.
When we’re open, it becomes easier to recognise the “oneness” beneath our different experiences.
Here, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learnt about life, along with reflections on whatever feels relevant, topical, or simply interesting. There will be no schedule, no fixed purpose, just following where my inner temple takes me.

I hope you’ll read along…

Congruence: The Heart of Authentic Connection

December 2025

Today, I wish to discuss the old adage, “watch what people do, not what they say.”

In the context of fostering unity consciousness, this principle encourages us to look beyond words and observe the congruence between words and actions, which is a vital step towards genuine connection.

Since social media became an everyday part of our world, I have noticed there is an increasing number of people sharing advice; some with an air of guru-like authority. Nothing wrong with that but what we should all be mindful of (myself included) when sharing info and quotes is whether we practise what we preach.

In my book I mention the fact that it is all too easy to be a peace-filled Monk on a mountaintop, what's truly impressive is when the Monk visiting a city can keep his cool!

To be fair, no one can walk their talk all the time. Life is a learning curve, and none of us is perfect. What separates the self‑aware person from the personality‑driven individual though, is that if any hypocrisy or inconsistency is pointed out between word and actions, the former will readily accept it.

Hopefully you'd avoid doing any 'pointing out' publicly but, even if you did, the response to expect might be something like, “Oh my goodness, you’re right” or "Oops, you got me there." The person may still proceed to offer some defence or justification for the incongruence, however, the central premise remains: they'll quickly recognise and own the mismatch you have identified. Perhaps even laugh a little.

That is self‑responsibility and 'flying lightly.' Those who aggressively try to make you wrong for pointing out incongruency are likely to still be struggling with implementing self-awareness.

Others might react in a passive‑aggressive manner, saying, “Oh, you are so right, thank you for pointing that out,” but then ignore you for weeks. That’s ok, it's likely just embarrassment, but it’s not ok if they hold a grudge or block you or whatever.

Consistency is an important value to hold and to cultivate. I try to watch for incongruities and inconsistencies in my own actions and I'm alert to it in others. Not policing, just observing. Noticing may not always stop me saying one thing and doing another, but at least I'm aware of what I'm doing!

So the adage we are discussing here says, “watch what people do, not what they say” but, actually, we can dig deeper. Paying attention to the words people use can also sometimes offer great insight. For example, if someone is inconsistent in their contact with you, perhaps flipping from engaged to distant, when it is discussed, they may say, “Oh, I’m sorry I'm just so busy.”

One of the highly insightful quotes attributed to one of my favourite poet/philosophers, Kahlil Gibran, is this:

“No matter how busy a man is, he is never too busy to stop and talk about how busy he is.”

This observation reminds us that attention and presence are choices, and that genuine connection requires prioritising others.

Do be aware though that, for whatever reason, a person may choose not to prioritise you in a given moment. This doesn’t automatically mean they don’t care; often it reflects their current capacity, their bandwidth, or the level of congruence they’re able to embody at that point in their life. Still, patterns matter.

Simply take note of the consistency of their behaviour over time.

If you hear pushback such as, “That’s not fair, I am busy and everyone’s different and dealing with their own issues,” of course that is true - their feelings may be more complex or kinder than their actions suggest. However, their behaviour is showing you where you sit in their current hierarchy of attention.

No one is ever too busy to contact the lottery office if they realise they've won a big prize!

It speaks to a person’s character when they consistently show up for others and make time for them.

Valuing others as equal to oneself is not just a personal virtue, but a contribution to the collective harmony we all seek. Relational congruence should be a spiritual and psychological practice every day. I don't think enough people talk about this. Congruence is a very real indicator of self‑awareness.

Kahlil Gibran

December 2025

Kahlil Gibran was a poet–philosopher and artist devoted to simplicity, love, and beauty. He was a deeply religious man who refused to be confined to any single sect. He believed in a divine source of ever‑unfolding life, in the essential goodness of nature, and in the equality and brotherhood of all people.

Born in Lebanon, he also lived at various times in Paris and the USA. While residing in America, at the age of 11 his name, Gibran Khalil Gibran, was misspelled and anglicised to Kahlil Gibran (switching the position of the h.) Nevertheless, he willingly adopted this spelling.

Kahlil Gibran is most well-known for his mesmerising work, The Prophet (1923) one of my favourite books of all time. However, he produced many other works in Arabic and English. All the quotes you see here are from those other books.

“Like you, I have been here since the beginning, and I shall be until the end of days.
There is no ending to my existence, for the human soul is but a part of a burning torch which God separated from Himself at Creation.
Thus my soul and your soul are one, and we are one with God.”

Major influences on Gibran included Buddhist and Eastern mystical traditions; the Bible and the figure of Jesus; the Islamic philosophers Avicenna and Al‑Hallaj; the Sufi poets Rumi and Francis Marrash; the visionary artists William Blake and Auguste Rodin; the philosophers Nietzsche (who, incidentally, believed Sir Francis Bacon to have been Shakespeare!), Rousseau, Voltaire, Henri Bergson, and Ralph Waldo Emerson; and the poets Walt Whitman and Lamartine. Artistically, he was strongly shaped by the Renaissance masters Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

"Darkness may hide the trees
and the flowers from the eyes
but it cannot hide
love from the soul."

Kahlil died of Tuberculosis in 1931 at the age of 48. He has become the third best-selling poet of all time, following only Shakespeare and Lao-tzu.

F. Holland Day (1864–1933) was an American photographer and publisher known for his dramatic, symbolist portraits. He photographed Gibran (as seen here) in the late 1890s

Do You Make Assumptions?

December 2025

This week I have been moved to want to discuss the human tendency to make assumptions. It is all part of a wider concern of mine about the lack of critical thinking that we see these days.

Have you ever, out of curiosity or playing armchair detective, Googled someone and used Street View to see their house? I’m not talking about stalkerish behaviour, just curiosity. Maybe it’s someone you’re doing business with or thinking of dating or your boss's new home.

Google maps will drop a pin and by selecting Street View it may show you a house, and from that, it is easy to make assumptions. But do you know for sure if it’s a residential address or an accommodation/mail forwarding address you have? I know a London Belgravia address - an exclusive area - where in a residential row of highly desirable mews houses, one is used by many, many people as a mailing address. It's quite a common thing to have service addresses.

So before you look someone up or take an online image of a property at face value, it’s worth pausing for a second. Is this really the home or business of the person?

And I am sure you realise how quickly things can change - the garden, the exterior, even the entire structure. The image capture might be a few years out of date and nothing like what’s actually there now. Plus, if a Google caption tells you this picture shows number 22, does it actually match the number on the house? Often it is the house next door or opposite, but sometimes it is one that is way down the street.

I once visited a new friend in an unfamiliar town. Before I departed I looked on Street View and I thought, “Ok, I’ll park there,” but I was surprised by the road of tightly packed terraced houses as it didn’t match some things she’d mentioned in our chats about horses and other livestock. I arrived but couldn't find her house. I called and she directed me to an entrance which was tucked away between two properties. The house had multiple barns and outbuildings - a huge sprawling property surrounded by fields.

Now imagine if someone was doing these searches to try and ascertain something about you and your lifestyle - they would be mentally making assumptions.

It can work the other way too. I once lived in a beautiful period flat with its own front door hidden away to the side. If anyone was checking out my address back then, they likely would have believed I must live in the whole house, one of the most attractive in the area, whereas I only had the first floor. They may have assumed I owned the house rather than that I was renting.

Does it matter? Not in this case, but you can imagine times when assumptions really might change people’s assessments or viewpoints. Potential employers, legal representatives, people you write to, they probably won't admit to looking you up online, but I'd wager they often do.

There are other examples. Listening to a YouTube video the other day, a person referenced their husband. It was only when I watched a very old Q&A that I realised her husband had died a few years before. My assumption was that he was still living.

Speaking of YouTube, how about old videos or posts online we might find that no longer reflect the views of the person, but they just never deleted them. You might assume those are their current views. People do change opinions.

I can keep going. What about those you meet or interact with in person? How often have you thought they are confident, or “sorted” in life, happily married, or whatever, then it later transpires that was your assumption?

With some social media platforms you only have a tiny profile photo to go by. Often we don't know how tall or small a person is, if they are abled or disabled - even wheelchair bound. We don't know whether it's a recent photo or old. These things don't matter - but we do fill in the unknowns with assumptions.

Then, of course, there is hearsay! Something is said, someone else confirms it, so it is easy to think it must be true, but then later something is said by the person themselves, you realise it was complete “Chinese whispers” nonsense.

I'll tell you what sparked my wanting to write about this. The other day I Googled someone and their name is quite a common first and surname, but their profession isn’t. Two images came up - same name, identical job titles, and exactly the same nose shape and hair. They looked like the same person to me so I clicked on one. Only in the wording far down the page did I read he was from the USA, so it was definitely not the right person. Up until that point I was convinced I was learning about the person I had searched.

What if I had not read that far down and assumed it was the right person and proceeded to form an opinion or say something to others based on what I had found?

I’m also particularly sensitive to this “don’t assume” rule because of my own experience. As you’ll read in the book, part of my early training in alchemy, esoteric studies, and consciousness work included a professional qualification in Astrology. And the moment you say that word "Astrology" people tend to leap to conclusions.

They assume you “believe in it” in a particular way. They assume you must be into divination, tarot cards, or palm reading. Some imagine you as a certain “type” - crystals everywhere, vegetarian, eco‑warrior, the whole stereotype. There’s nothing wrong with any of those choices, of course, but it’s still a narrow box that women interested in anything labelled “woo” often get placed into.

In my opinion, life would be so much fairer if everyone avoided living life on a superficial, fast-paced level. If everyone just gave a few minutes of time when assessing any and all information instead of just blindly accepting what they read, parroting what someone else says, making assumptions and arriving at incorrect conclusions about so many things.

Indeed, this could be one of the hidden benefits of the introduction of AI and deepfakes because it is forcing the collective to stop and ask question like, Is this real? Is this true?

In this day and age of rampant misinformation and disinformation, critical thinking is key.

Don’t assume. Be open to surprises.

That's going to be my New Year's Resolution too.

Unquestioned Family/Parenting Scripts

December 2025

Following on from my previous post, another one of my big bugbears around the lack of critical thinking, is how easily people parrot social mores without ever thinking about them deeply.

When it comes to parenting, we hear the same lines repeated over and over:

“Charge them rent.”
“Don’t let your kids treat your house like a hotel.”
“Don’t give them money - they need to learn to stand on their own two feet.”
“They’ll thank you for it later.”

I couldn’t disagree more.

Children are not a right; they are a gift.

If you’re lucky enough to have them, remember: they didn’t choose to be here. You chose to bring them into the world (and unless you have been through infertility or loss of a child, no parent will ever understand how very lucky they are to have children).

The responsibility flows downward, not upward. Your job is to give them as much security as possible; a home that feels like sanctuary, and parents (or a parent) who are steady, supportive, and safe.

None of this prevents you from instilling good ethics or strong values. It simply means you don’t weaponise independence.

If your child takes a little longer to “flee the nest,” you don’t need to coerce, shame, or panic. Your job is to guide, listen and stay consistent.

If they’re working, yes, you can ask them to contribute. If you’re financially comfortable, you might quietly save what they give you and hand it back to them later as a surprise nest egg. Or maybe if funds are tight you just ask them to chip in now and then. There are a hundred ways to teach responsibility without turning your home into a transactional arrangement.

What bothers me is how often people repeat these harsh little slogans as if they’re universal truths, when really they’re just inherited scripts; social conditioning dressed up as wisdom. They’re rarely examined, rarely questioned, and often completely disconnected from compassion or reality.

Parenting and the family home isn’t a training ground for poverty mentality and scarcity. Whether large or small, whether you are wealthy or struggling, it's a place to create the conditions in which a younger human being can grow, flourish and feel safe. It's a place where you create memories, warmth and bonds. It's a place where parents should model unconditional love, compassion and right action (accountability, self-reflection, the Golden Rule, good morals, kindness, politeness, etc.)

The best thing that can happen is your child leaves at a time which feels right for them. Some trees blossom later than others.

As long as they leave with excitement and desire for an independent life, equipped with all the right skills to survive but with a tinge of sadness about leaving you, you'll know you've done well. They need to know beyond doubt though that they can call on you or come back at any time, and you will always welcome them.

Children don’t need a hotel manager; they need a home that tells them they matter.

It should never about money, but it should always be about love.

* Before you think I am being utopian, I am fully aware there is a whole other discussion to be had about the breakdown of marriage or those who have abusive parents.

Patterns, Presentiment, Perspective

January 2026

I called this blog The Inner Temple, not because I intend to share information from inner sanctums connected to secret societies or ancient orders (there is plenty of that in my book), but simply as a place to document what is swirling around in my own inner temple - my head.

While my book and other articles explore symbolism, allegory and ancient ways of understanding the world, this blog is where I reflect more personally on ethics, self‑realisation and how we choose to show up - with curiosity and a willingness to think beyond familiar frames. Much of this comes from lived experience, which has shaped my perspective in ways that aren’t always visible at first glance.

When I wrote the post that appears prior to this one, it was quite an opinionated piece, and I distinctly remember thinking, where did that come from? what sparked that? I posted it anyway. In this blog (which is a long-form one) I want to explore why it has since taken on a particular relevance.

Over the course of my life, I’ve noticed that a particular phenomenon seems to recur, and I’ve often wondered whether I’m simply wired a little differently, or whether this is something many people experience but don’t speak about openly. Perhaps you’ll recognise it in your own life too.

The Dinner Party Phenomenon
This phenomenon appears to involve some form of tuning into the unseen and the unspoken. Imagine this, if you will.

You’re invited to a dinner party. There are ten or twelve people around the table. You begin chatting to the person next to you, and during the course of the conversation something prompts you to raise a particular topic. You don’t know why it pops into your head; it’s just part of the flow of conversation. Let’s say it’s a news item about someone who gambled an extraordinary amount in Las Vegas and lost everything.

As you’re speaking, you notice (imperceptible to anyone else) that a woman further up the table, on the opposite side, who had been deeply engaged in conversation with her neighbour, flinches slightly and glances towards you. Later, you notice that she is the first to leave.

Weeks later, you meet the host of that dinner party. They were completely unaware of anything you’d said that evening, and you haven’t mentioned it either. You then ask why that particular guest left early. The host tells you it was her first night out without her husband and explains that they are in the midst of a divorce after she discovered his gambling addiction. He had lost everything.

Would you make a connection? And if you did, would you brush it off as coincidence?

Do I consider myself psychic? Not in the slightest. What I do know is that I am highly sensitive to atmospheres, undercurrents and micro-movements - and I’ll explain in another blog how I believe that came about.

In this situation, what the host later revealed would explain why the woman might selectively hear my conversation and flinch at the mention of gambling. But it doesn’t explain why that subject surfaced in the first place.

It has happened often enough that if I feel a sudden urge to reference something (even if it seems left-field in the context) I tend not to self-censor, unless it would be wholly inappropriate. Experience has taught me that I’m probably picking up on something.

I’ve noticed the same phenomenon across a wide range of subjects. On one occasion, I found myself talking about long-term affairs - the kind that remain hidden for years, where no one would have suspected a thing. Months or even years later, it emerged that the very people present had been engaged in precisely that sort of duplicity at the time.

Affairs and gambling are, sadly, commonplace. But this can happen with far more obscure topics too.

What Is This?
So what is going on? In my view, it may be that we share some form of consciousness matrix, and that from time to time we pick up on unspoken issues swirling around us. This can happen on a personal level, in small settings like a dinner party, or on a broader, impersonal level, within what is often described as the collective unconscious.

Next time you are in a gathering, take note of conversations that spontaneously come up via you or others, and look around the table!

Returning to the post I published on 13 December, I didn’t know why I was suddenly writing about adult children living at home. I remember that same fleeting inner voice - why are you saying this? - and again, I chose not to censor it.

Near the start of that post, I wrote:
When it comes to parenting, we hear the same lines repeated over and over:
“Charge them rent.”
“Don’t let your kids treat your house like a hotel.”
“Don’t give them money — they need to learn to stand on their own two feet.”
“They’ll thank you for it later.”

The following day, those exact sentiments (particularly the latter three) were suddenly being debated publicly and vociferously. Not because of my writing, of course, but because of the deaths on 14 Dec of Rob and Michele Reiner and the arrest of their son, Nick, who had been living on the property, apparently in the guest house.

At the time of writing, Nick Reiner has been charged, bail has been refused, and the case is awaiting trial. He is, quite properly, innocent until proven guilty.

In the immediate aftermath, social media posts and YouTube crime blogs were filled with certainty. People weighed in on how he must have been raised, how long he had lived at home, whether his parents had indulged him, whether he should have been forced to stand on his own two feet. Phrases such as they should have kicked him out or he never learned to stand on his own two feet appeared repeatedly.

I’d like to refer back here to my even earlier blog on the dangers of assumptions. No one (except those in, or closest to, the family) should be making claims about how Nick Reiner actually lived in recent years, how he was financed, or the nature of his mental health or addiction issues. No one knows what goes on behind closed doors.

Nor am I suggesting that Rob and Michele Reiner failed to offer love, guidance or support.

It’s also important to note that Nick Reiner is 32 years old, whereas my article was referring to far younger adults, typically those between 18 and 25. The situations are not the same.

That Familiar Feeling
What struck me though was not simply the coincidence, but the familiarity of the feeling that accompanied it. The same quick, fleeting inner voice that says why are you writing this now? The one I’ve learned, over time, not to ignore.

Was it coincidence? Possibly. Am I drawing a connection where none exists? Maybe. But there was another layer to this particular instance that made it more resonant for me.

Many years ago, I was in a relationship that lasted three intense years. This former partner later lost his life, not too long ago, in remarkably similar circumstances, at the hands of his son in the United States, in a situation involving drugs and serious mental health issues. His son was much younger than Nick Reiner. A life sentence without parole was mitigated to an open-ended term in a medical facility on mental health grounds, so there remains at least some hope that his son may one day live outside incarceration.

The Toll on Everyone Left Behind
The true toll of such events is not borne by the person who dies - though they are mourned and remembered - but by those left behind. A wife and siblings who in an instant lose not only a husband and father from their life, but the sibling perpetrator as well. In this case, a person who has hardly lived. It is life-shattering.

The devastation ripples outward: grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews, colleagues, friends (and even ex-partners from the past) all carry the weight of it.

These tragedies do not belong exclusively to low-income families, nor only to those at the extreme end of wealth. They occur across the spectrum, in ordinary middle class homes, within intelligent, kind and upright families. Those who rush to label the accused as monsters show a profound lack of compassion and only deepen a much larger societal problem, rather then learning lessons from it.

These perpetrators of patricide are not monsters. They are often the product of complex psychological and psychiatric conditions, combined with a form of societal hypocrisy in which addiction and mental illness are condemned when they end in tragedy, while some of those doing the condemning may have their own unexamined relationship with drugs. I have never touched drugs but I know that Cocaine and “Molly” etc., are very popular recreational drugs. This hypocrisy, so easily brushed aside, deserves scrutiny.

Tackling drugs and mental health issues needs a societal shift.

Before It Happens
There is something else worth noting about the timing of that previous post. As I say, I wrote it the day before the Reiner tragedy occurred. Some might describe this as a form of precognition of an impending topic within the collective consciousness. I don’t make that claim.

There is, however, some emerging research into what is known as presentiment - studies suggesting that the body may sometimes show physiological responses to future stimuli before the conscious mind registers them. Research by Mossbridge and colleagues (2012; 2018), including work associated with the Institute of Noetic Sciences, has produced results that some researchers find compelling, though the field remains controversial and many scientists remain unconvinced.

This is not precognition in the fortune-teller sense. It may simply be that we are, at times, sensitive to patterns forming beneath conscious awareness i.e., events that have not yet crystallised, but are gathering momentum somewhere in the shared space or matrix we all inhabit.

Although I’m fascinated by every facet of consciousness, we obviously don’t yet understand how it operates or if time is just a construct of the mind. I only know that I’ve learned to trust that fleeting inner question, the one that says Why am I bringing this up? because more often than not, there turns out to be a reason, even if I won’t understand it until later.

I touch on shared consciousness in my book. It is a book shaped by a life that has, in many ways, been a book in itself. These are not theories assembled solely from philosophy or reading. They are understandings and insights forged through experience; through losses, through relationships that altered trajectories, mine and others.

This blog is simply one thread among many. It’s an endlessly fascinating pursuit to me to learn about other people’s lives and how they view the world and navigate it, so I hope you find these types of posts interesting and will return for more.

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