David Shaw - Ghost Writers

What we are about to embark on today is quite unique. This book will endorse ten spiritual commandments. However, there will be no parting of the Red Sea, nor will Charlton Heston need to search for his wooden staff and sandals! These commandments are only meant for guidance, so they’re more like polite requests. It’s your choice whether you wish to heed this advice or carry on with your merry way. That’s the beauty of the spiritual world – it won’t strike you down with lightning if you make different choices. But if you’re like me, and every now and again you tend to drift away from your spiritual roots, then this book may just give you the gentle kick up the ass that should hopefully bring you right back on track.

To help us along the way, there will be some celebrity guests appearing. Ten different spiritual authors will grace this book with short, fictional stories that will hopefully marry the factual words brought forward by my guides in spirit. At this stage I do not know who these authors are but I do know that their influence will be remarkable.

So, non-fiction and fiction in the same book! What next? Is there anybody else invited to the dinner table? I can’t wait to find out.

As before, my role in this book is to simply receive knowledge from the spirit world and pass this information on to you. And if you choose to dine with such divinity then I can promise you that you will leave this book a far better person in the eyes of those whose journey you share.

And when the last ass has been firmly kicked, we can reflect on this momentous feast of knowledge received, before embarking on the next part of our voyage of discovery.

Napkins at the ready – shall we begin? Why not?

Chapter One: Materialism

Now then, where did we leave it? Oh, yes, at the conclusion of New Mediumship – our second helping of this lung-sapping marathon of knowledge brought to you by Spirits Inc. And now, the end is near, and so we face the final episode (sorry, Frank) of our trilogy of hope for the future…for mankind …for the sake of true and unconditional love!

STOP right there! No more lovey-dovey nonsense; angels in heaven spreading their wings over our manically depressed flock; love and light all around us like some kind of halogen stalker; Archangel Metatarsal and his cosmic ramblings from a nicer Galaxy than ours… NO!

As before, we are not that kind of book. So, if you’ve just joined us and you don’t want to know the score, you can look away now. There are numerous self-help books aplenty that empower the notion that only positive thinking can save the world and they’re beautifully written. And they will make you feel good. But so will morphine – for a while. In actual fact, if you are living a life of extreme poverty, where just finding enough food to eat is a marathon in itself, then no amount of positive thinking alone can realistically break this ingrained mould. Nevertheless, a life borne through this means is no less important, nor valuable, than any life of material luxury. Of that, I can promise you.

To be fair, positive thinking is important to all of us. It can give someone living within extreme hardship the willpower to keep going; to feel a part of life itself and to feel love in its most powerful form. But it won’t necessarily get you a BMW.

This spiritual kick up the ass is simply a reminder to all of us that life is merely a test of our worth as individuals. There are many trapdoors set throughout our journey. This book will show you how to avoid falling down them. It will also show you that if you do fall down one, you can easily climb back up a more knowledgeable soul, and a more spiritual individual.

An Average Joe was the first instalment and highlighted my own roller-coaster ride through life’s perils and permutations. New Mediumship then gave us the impetus to seek meaning in everything that surrounds us, aided by the knowledge of Master Guides, Mr Chung & SiBir. Now, Ghost Writers sets our wheels in motion. So, let’s now attempt to put everything that we have learned into practical use. Let us try to help our neighbour live a life not less worthy than what we would expect of ourselves. And please let us do this regardless of the choices that anyone has made, or the path that they have selected for themselves.

You may have heard this quote before and I make no apologies for going over old ground. ‘There was never yet an uninteresting life. Such a thing is an impossibility.’ Mark Twain.

Please remember these words and you will never stray far from the correct path.

* * *

When the dinosaurs first roamed our Earth in search of food, and perhaps other dinosaurs ‘to play with’ (it’s a family book!), there wasn’t technically that much wrong with our world. Okay, the big guys would normally eat the little guys, but has that changed much today? Not really, except for maybe the smarter guys eating the thick ones. No, what’s really changed is the complex nature of our lives today. Back in the days of Barney and Godzilla, our Jurassic friends lived a life of simplistic harmony that revolved around a natural cycle of being born, breathing, sleeping and dying. Freud suggested that man and beast will never really alter their primal instincts to hunt and survive – but realistically, who are we kidding? We don’t need to hunt for food now that Tesco delivers twenty-four hours a day. Nor do we need to fight each other to eat this food, unless it’s Lindor Milk Truffles (I’d kill for them!).

Our world today is based on the hypothesis that the more you have in the way of possessions, the more you strive to increase your load. Materialism in any fashion is simply just the result of self-progression through fears of being left behind. The effects of stimulation ensure that our brains are motivated just enough to stay in the race and the more we are motivated, the more we feed off every branch of the material tree.

But is this addiction to bettering oneself responsible for much of the world’s problems today? No – it’s responsible for all of the problems in our brave new world, and the sooner we address this problem, the sooner we can start again – right back to when Barney was just a little purple egg!

But wait! If we have nothing left to motivate or stimulate us then what’s left in the cupboard to keep us from eating each other like our prehistoric friends? Hasn’t man developed significantly enough through centuries of iconic inventions and innovating discoveries to deserve the right to choose his own way of life? The answer is, undoubtedly, yes . After all, we are here in the physical world to experience the effects of emotional involvement in every capacity. But, if the results of these endeavours lay privy to the detriment of many who are unable to follow in these footsteps, then perhaps a revaluation is indeed in order.

If that is the case, then what should we do with our precious timeframe here on Earth, whilst the strands of time welt our bodies like the melting wax from seven billion candles? Well, we could maybe talk more openly to each other and discover what values we appreciate in life. We could listen more intently with a view to appreciating those values without fear or judgement. We could even tear off all of our clothes, run naked into the street, before shouting out to the world that it’s simply great to be alive and to be able to feel everything around us in all of its natural beauty.

If we were to strip ourselves (not again!) of all material possessions, what would we have left to stimulate our poor insatiable brain? What would we do when all the talking, listening and streaking had left us scratching our heads with boredom? One answer could be to assist those less fortunate than ourselves to live a fulfilled life where a caring, compassionate society exists. This sounds a fairly straightforward task. But, in all the millions of years that man has walked this Earth with a self-professed superiority based on pure intellect alone, we have never completely managed this feat on a universal scale. Sure, we’ve had notable periods like the 1960s, where music and culture rose up against the war machine and for a while gave it a run for its money. But, inevitably, power and greed prevailed as the prime motivation for the young and the restless, and the world returned to an endless cycle of incessant stimulation, resulting in ever-increasing divisions within society.