Derren Brown and luck

I watched Derren Brown’s latest show the other day, all about luck: he’d created a rumour about a statue of a lucky dog in Todmorden and watched as the rumour spread across the town and people started believe it was true, some age old story. Naturally, the townsfolk who touched the dog and noticed good fortune in their lives made the connection and the belief grew stronger. Derren’s hypothesis, I suppose, was that there’s no such thing as this kind of ‘superstitious luck’, that it’s all a matter of attribution. More than that, though, by highlighting the case of one chap who believed himself cursed with bad luck and showing that, in actual fact, he simply wasn’t open to opportunities that could be called good luck, Derren seemed to be saying that luck is merely a question of how aware we are, our perceptions, and our willingness to let life in. In a nutshell: you truly do make your own luck, and the power’s right there in your own hands and mind. Not through any magical process, however, but simply through inviting it in. This was ‘proved’ when the unlucky man had a change of heart, chanced his arm, and saw his luck pay dividends. Touching scenes. Derren, I think, made a very good point.

All this is very interesting to me, of course, given my belief in what I think of as the mystical, magical side of life – and because I do generally think of myself as one of the luckiest people around. Although I suppose ‘blessed’ is the more appropriate term, in my current state of thinking. But maybe there’s more – or less – to it than that.

Phrases like ‘you make your own luck’ require explanation. How does one do that? How does that work? I suppose Derren answered those questions by showing how it’s perhaps linked to our willingness to pay attention to the opportunities that life brings us – to investigate intriguing doors that sit slightly ajar – to not walk around with the blinkers up but see more clearly that life is full of all kinds of things we might term ‘luck’ – good or bad – and that it’s up to us to grab them. Really, in that sense, there is no such thing as ‘luck’, there’s just awareness and the decision to either interact with life or shut it out. Still, I can’t help feeling, looking at my own experiences, that there’s more to it than that. And that’s what I want to write about this morning. I have this idea, see, that the blessings in my life began with my so-called ‘spiritual awakening’ – that tapping into that ‘greater power’ is what began the long and lovely procession of goodness I’ve had in my life. I go from there, I suppose, to thinking it’s something to do with God, and something to do with being Godly, and that the reason and the attribution lies outside myself – or, at least, that it’s a co-creative partnership. But is it even that? Was it merely a change of perception, of behaviour, that opened those doors? A rewriting, even, of my own story and the way I see the world and believe it works, fashioned only by my own brain? Let’s investigate.

I want to start by thinking about certain events that have happened in my life that when I look back on I ascribe to the miraculous – the things which make me feel lucky. This, I hope, will be an interesting exercise for the both of us.

1. In 1999 I was hitchhiking on I-10 near Tucson. At the time I was travelling without money, living merely on faith, and concentrating solely on the pursuit of my spiritual dream. While walking across a truck-stop in between rides I realised that I’d lost my toothbrush: big bummer. I loved brushing my teeth and apart from my passport it was about the only thing I didn’t want to lose: everything else I required – clothes, food, transport, shelter – I knew would come. But a toothbrush? No one was ever going to randomly give me one of those. Except, right then, a man on an old bicycle made a bee-line straight for me across the wide expanse of concrete, put a plastic bag in my hand, and then cycled away without saying a word. Naturally, in the bag was a brand new toothbrush. I was flabbergasted: you just didn’t see people on bikes in America, never mind in a truck-stop on the interstate miles from town. Not only that, it was the only time I was randomly given a toothbrush in all my travels: and it was the only time I needed one.

2. The miracle of the plane ticket. It was later on that year and I was really getting the sense that it was time to go back to England: my feelings, and various weird signs and ‘messages’ – that I won’t go into here – were telling me so. But I had no money: how was I ever going to get there? Well, right at the end of my first Vipassana meditation retreat, while sitting quietly and being aloof, not really wanting to talk to anyone, a man came over to me, said a few things, and then apropos of nothing said if I ever needed a plane ticket to anywhere he’d sort it out for me. I emailed him a few weeks later and not long after that I was on the plane back home.

3.A month or so before that I was sitting in LA waiting for a bus – I had merely the dollar fifty fare, probably earned from a quick blast of devil-sticking – and I suddenly got this notion that I was hungry. At that exact same moment I remember making eye contact with this woman who was walking past. Anyway, a few minutes later she reappeared and said, this is for you, placing a tray of lovely vegetarian Thai food into my hands. Then she walked away. I couldn’t believe it: I may have been on the road and penniless but I certainly didn’t look it. Nor would I have appeared anything other than well-nourished and happy. Magic.

4. Similarly, in India in 2000, having given all my money to charity and left myself penniless in Delhi with a few days to kill before my plane back home, I experienced perhaps one of my most striking examples of being provided for: for I never expected it to work in a place like India – the white guy no doubt assumed rich in a poor ass country. Except it did. I was sitting in a Sikh temple one morning chatting to some locals when this old bearded guy walked straight up to us – it was the parting of the waves, I swear – and pushed a hundred rupees into my hand and walked away. Double flabbergasted. A hundred rupees may not be much – about one pound forty – but it was a hundred rupees more than I had and plenty enough to live on for a couple of days. But how the hell did I know I was in need? Who would think such a thing of a young white traveller? It makes no logical sense.

And I’m suddenly realising this list is going to get very, very long. Skip to here if you want to get past the end of it.

5. I was in France in 2002 visiting my ex-girlfriend: we’d had a bit of a row and I’d walked out of her Paris apartment without a penny to my name. I was so mad I didn’t care. I headed up towards La Defense and still pretty much smack bang in the middle of the city I started hitchhiking: unbelievably, I got a ride almost straight away and was shuttled out to the suburbs by a nice man in a Mercedes. From there, a girl picked me up, offered to feed and shelter me for the night, and said she’d drive me to the station in the morning to catch a train to the ferry. I kept schtum about not being able to afford a ticket figuring I’d cross that bridge when I came to it. But she bought the ticket anyway, and gave me about sixty euros to use for the ferry. Madness. Turns out she was in the process of getting rid of all her possessions and with her sister was going to embark on a big ass pilgrimage living on trust. She was paying it forward, I guess, and said that my stories and general vibe had really inspired her, given her faith.

6. Which reminds me of the time I was staying in Albuquerque with this girl I was briefly seeing in 1999: she was feeding and sheltering me and was down with that arrangement, pretty much insisting, but her roommate wasn’t. Roommate said I needed to contribute some dollars: girl said she’d sort that out but me being me I felt like I’d be best off fleeing the tension and the sense of burden and try to work something out. I hitched up to Santa Fe – where I was randomly given twenty dollars – and then from there headed on towards a hot springs; one ride took me out of my way and dropped me in the middle of nowhere – big headache, I thought at the time – but while walking back to the highway an old lady standing in her garden shouted me over, disappeared into her house, and came back with some food for me. Also with the food was sixty dollars. Later that day another guy gave me five bucks. I headed on back to Albuquerque and gave it all to the roommate, who was stunned. I was too: in all my tens of thousands of miles of hitchhiking I’d been given maybe a total of twenty or thirty bucks – but in the one day when I needed it, triple that amount had come.

7. After Albuquerque – and before, I suppose – there was just this general sense of being taken care of. I pretty much never told people that I didn’t have money or that I may have been hungry – don’t think I got hungry in those days – but every day, day after day, I ate three meals, no matter what. When hitching, whether I rode with 2 people or 20, I’d get breakfast, lunch and dinner – though I’d only realise it when looking back. Indeed, my final trip, right back over to Charlottesville from New Mexico in January 2000 I didn’t even think about what I’d do for food I was so out of it – spiritually stoned – but the food always came, and by several weird twists of fate I managed to avoid all the many blizzards and sub-zero temperatures, horribly underdressed as I’m sure I was. I guess I just didn’t think about it anymore: it was so ingrained in me that the needs of the body would be provided for that I was able to devote my entire attention to other matters. I remember in LA this old woman coming over to talk to me in the street and after a few hours of chitter chatter and all that – and for once realising that I didn’t have anything – decided to press twenty dollars on me. All I could do was laugh: not being currently hungry, and knowing that all future requirements were assured, I had no need of it. I gave it immediately to some charity and continued on my merry way. In Santa Monica I met some people who offered me a place to stay: that happened a few times in LA.

8. Two years ago, when I was hitching from Cozumel in Mexico down to Guatemala I decided to give myself a little test and see if it still worked: entering Belize I skipped the money changers and said I’m going to cross the whole country without spending anything. Belize is a small country: I figured two or three days and if I didn’t eat then so be it, no big deal. I started walking and within thirty minutes of crossing the border I felt the hunger arise – and with it, the fear, and the wondering whether it might just be a really bad idea. Certainly, I wasn’t the man I used to be in respects of faith, of trust, of the whole spiritual drive. But just then a car stopped and I jumped in with this lovely Mexican family: after a while they stopped for lunch and I was like, oh, I’ll wait outside. The dad said nonsense and ushered me in. I sat down, not wanting to eat anything – hunger had probably passed – and a plate of food appeared in front of me: dad had ordered for everyone. I felt bad about taking their money – it wasn’t like the old days, I had cash in the bank and my pocket this time – but I saw a solution: they were Mexicans and I could give them some Mexican pesos. Dad, of course, refused, and off we went again, a little while later stopping at a display of Japanese culture that had a free buffet. Lovely people. My last ride that day was with an American who offered me a place to stay – bed, fan, shower, after a couple of days of sleeping on roofs and beaches – and also dinner, snacks, breakfast, and the following day – a Sunday – lunch with an Amish family. That night I ended up invited to eat and sleep with some evangelical Christians, and after they breakfasted me, I exited Belize. Two and a bit days, seven meals, and two nights of shelter, all without telling anyone my situation, without asking or begging or fishing for a thing. Him upstairs knows, I thought, and having satisfied that it still worked left it at that. In Guatemala and back in Mexico I had money in my pocket – and for the most part, I had to use it.

There is, of course, more than the being providing for – which is rather a basic and even non-essential thing once you’ve proved it to yourself – the understanding of the way things weave together: the random meetings that turn out to be perfect, the apparent getting lost and wasting time only to realise that it brings you something greater. Like on that Mexican trip when I spent two days trying to escape Palenque, then turned south instead of north, then stumbled along a muddy river bank for a few hours investigating a mad and pointless scheme to build a raft – only to immediately jump into a pickup truck with a lovely Israeli who introduced me to several dozen lovely people in Mexico City, whom I stayed with for nearly two months, and whom I met again in Israel earlier this year. That kind of thing is the overwhelming remembrance when it comes to living on trust – the real boon and benefit of putting yourself out there and saying to life, ‘I don’t know what’s best for me but I trust that you do, and if I give myself to you I believe you’ll bring me to it.’ That’s probably happened more than the basic thing of being given food – when I think of the people that came into my life because of that – life-changing people such as Dave Shapiro, Lindsay Young, Shawn and Shane and Saram and John Milton – and so many more…that’s the real blessing. Without that, I dread to think where I would have been – and again I do believe it’s all thanks to the higher power – or at least the co-creative relationship with the higher power – which may actually just be me, or a part of me that I’m not aware of, and that’s what I’m here to investigate. But back to the list.

9. I’m in the kitchen in Vipassana preparing parsnips a week or so before Shawn’s due to visit England; I’m supposed to be taking him on a tour but the organising of such a thing has always been beyond me and I don’t know where to start. I’m starting to fret. I’m thinking all this as I top and tail and absent-mindedly stand the parsnips up on their fat ends in a loose ring when a co-worker walks by and points and says, ‘Stonehenge.’ I laugh: it feels like my answer. I have my beginning and everything will flow from there. It does.

10. I’m in Germany and I’m suddenly overwhelmed by the feeling that I need to go to Canada. I’m penniless: I’m working in a castle for my bread and cheese just down the road from Mother Meera’s. Some English women arrive, take a shine to me, invite me out for dinner and between them for some reason give me about forty-five pounds. I think, there’s a start. I set off hitching for England, wanting to save it, but then I say, no, trust, the universe is infinitely abundant and more will come. I buy a train ticket. I get back to Yorkshire. My nan and dad weirdly decide to give me my Christmas and birthday money over a month early. A woman who’s owed me seventy quid for some work I’d done four months before finally pays up, despite me hassling loads earlier. I bump into a guy who owes me twenty-five quid at a bus stop. The train I took back from Germany was two hours late and I get a free ticket which I sell for thirty quid. I’m about fifty pounds short and I hitchhike down to London and get weirdly diverted towards Heathrow airport: I think, wow, maybe something amazing will happen and I’ll get a wicked cheap ticket on standby and be on my way tonight. I ask around but standby’s a thing of the past, there’s nothing wicked cheap no more. I check out everything at the airport and there’s nothing there – but I’m convinced I’m there for a reason. Dispirited, I get in an elevator and the guy who’s already in there with his girlfriend looks at the guitar on my back and says, hey, you’ve got a guitar, do you want another one? He hands me this Washburn acoustic, tells me he can’t take it with him, and, knowing guitars as I do, I instantly clock that I can sell it for about the exact amount I need. I do. I buy my plane ticket. I have three quid to spare. And I fly to Canada.

11. In Canada, two main things happen. One is that a man I’ve only said hi to offers me a place to stay for about a month, and feeds me, and we become really good friends. Another is that the night I’m about to set off penniless hitching to Toronto from Vancouver – probably about three thousand miles, and this is mid-January – the friend I’m staying with (different friend) offers me some work which will pay the exact amount of money to buy a plane ticket instead. Plus it’s where I learn the real value of the I Ching.

I’m digressing here. I’m opening myself up to ridicule, in the face of some pretty good evidence already presented, when I bring up something like the I Ching. I’m not, in fact, much of a believer in things like the tarot, pendulums, that sort of thing – not any more – but the I Ching…the I Ching, I believe, is different. And it’s my experience that has got me believing this way. I’d been using the I Ching throughout ’99 and 2000 and I’d always found it useful: but Canada 2001/02 really changed that. See, I did this really stupid thing – tried to go down to America again, pumped up on longing and hope and forced optimism and the belief that just because so much of what I did went right, that meant everything I did was right – and they didn’t let me in, doubled my ban (which went from 2008 to 2020), and I got a whole load of shit when they bundled back into Canada. Real bad times: a total fool. But thinking the I Ching as something that exists beyond time – not just a tool that can see into the future, but also the past – I went to it and said, hey, what would you have told me if I’d asked you about going down to America? The answer I got was a big stonking NO. I resolved then and there to go to the I Ching whenever I was going to do something potentially stupid or life-changing and, on the whole, I have. She’s never let me down, even when she’s directed me into things I didn’t necessarily want to do. My best example is this:

I’d done my first year at uni and I was hating it. I didn’t like Religious Studies and I wanted out. Two plans I had: to switch from Kent to Canterbury Christchurch, which I believed offered a much better course; and to move to Exmouth to do a degree in Steiner Education, which would qualify me as a Steiner teacher. Both of these things I organised so that I didn’t have to repeat a year and all was green. Which one to do? Surprisingly, Steiner fell away first – can’t remember why – and I resolved to go to Christchurch. Everything about it felt right – I felt at home on the campus, I preferred the vibe of the students and the teachers, and the course had a much higher rating. But remembering my last dalliance with the US I thought I’d better just get confirmation from the I Ching. I remember so clearly sitting down to do the reading – the feeling of goodness that overwhelmed me – the smile I had on my face knowing that I was taking the right path – an improved path – and the I Ching was about to confirm it for me. I tossed my coins and everything felt amazing – but the reading came back very clearly saying, “stay where you are, don’t change anything,” and I slumped knowing I would be doing exactly what it said.

A week or two later I was in the modules office signing up for the year’s classes: they looked dull and uninspiring but I knew I had to follow the I Ching. Then a young guy came up next to me and started asking questions about the Creative Writing course. Creative Writing? I had no idea they offered it at Canterbury. All summer I’d been thinking about my situation and had basically come down to the conclusion that what I really wanted to do was write: and now here was an opening. I quickly scribbled out my choices, put the Creative Writing classes on my list, and things soon got better. I loved the classes, felt like I was really learning something, doing something I enjoyed, and I felt like I had the I Ching to thank for it. And even more so when the head of English called me in one day for an interview…

“What are you doing on these courses?” he asked. “You’re second year Religious Studies and these are third year Creative Writing classes.”

I shrugged. I didn’t know. I just signed up for them and they put me on the class list and as far as I knew everything was hunky-dory.

He frowned.

“I don’t know how you’ve done this,” he said, “sneaking in the backdoor like that…it really creates a problem for us.”

He paced. He did his best to let me know that he thought I was naughty. He hit me with his bombshell.

“You’ve completed the classes,” he said, “and your tutors tell me your work is good. Only thing I can see to fix this mess is to move you over permanently from Religious Studies to English and Creative Writing.”

The way he said it made me think he expected me not to like it, but that I was going to have to suffer it for the problems that I’d caused. Inside, though, I was dancing.

They did the paperwork. They got me out of the tedium of Religious Studies – it really was pants, so dry and insubstantial compared to the life of actually living it – and they got me full-time on Creative Writing.

I remember so clearly that feeling, walking down to Canterbury, veritably skipping, and all through my being the sense that I was finally in the right place doing the right thing. Everything just slotted. And the rest of my degree was a dream.

This is what I think of when I come to the I Ching. Ever since then I’ve used it for all my important decisions and it’s never let me down. Funnily enough, I just found that original post-border crossing shenanigans reading the other day and, boy oh boy, does it make for sober contemplation…

12. Talking of uni: when I went there I had a very strong sense that I didn’t want to get into debt: never have been in debt and never wanted to be beholden to anyone in that way. I had in my head that I wanted to live in a caravan – not only the saving money, but also the link to my previous way of existence – but how would I go about that? Well, after my interview, on my way out of Canterbury, a man in a van attracted by my backpack offered me a ride and told me of a place he knew that might need my needs. I checked it out: it was a piece of beautiful woodland on a dead-end road about ten minutes’ walk from campus. The owner liked to have someone stay there, for security, and he rented it me for five pounds per week. With the sixty quid I was given from opening a student bank account I managed to find a caravan (I’d rolled up to uni with about three quid in my pocket) and in it I lived for my entire first year. It was a fantastic experience. And rather than being in debt, I saved enough money through work and busking to take several trips abroad.

13. Also, this year, I was awarded a full-fees bursary to do this MA. That, I think, was marvellous luck. And perhaps no coincidence that I got the news right after going to see Mother Meera.

14. Speaking of Mother Meera: I remember visiting her once (early days I was always penniless) and, in the morning, I’d been with a German family (see campervan story below) who had put on a big spread for breakfast, which even included cake. I’d had a piece, and they’d said, go on, have another, but out of ‘politeness’ – the kind of politeness that isn’t really politeness at all – I’d refused. ‘Cept all day long all I could think of was that cake and what a fool I’d been in not taking it when I knew of course that I wanted it. Well, I got to Mother Meera’s and as I was sitting outside on a bench – was very early, no one else around – a woman walked over to me, opened this box, and presented me a lovely big slice of cake. Apparently Meera means miracle. No coincidence there.

15. Another time at Mother’s I’d rolled up in freezing late-November – actually, I think it was the same time, so would have been later on that night – and, without money or suitable clothing, etc, I was looking at a very cold night, snow on the ground, etc. Anyways, I’m walking down the dark, deserted road looking for somewhere to lay my head when a car pulls up and the guy inside says, Mother says you need a place to stay. I do, I say (I don’t know why I take this on board so easily!) and he drives me to an old castle where they give me a room. I stay there for the entirety of my visit – that’s the same castle and occasion as mentioned in number 10.

16. The aforementioned campervan: this was me going around Europe with Amma in autumn 2001, broke of course, but not really worrying about that, as there were always places to sleep and plenty of leftover food you could rescue from the bins: I’d made Paris no problem and was thinking about the rest of it when a young guy came up to me and asked me if I had a driving license. Sure, I says. Well there’s a guy, he says, who needs a driver: he’s got a campervan but he’s bust his leg and can’t work the clutch. I meet the man and he says he’ll give me a place to sleep and food everyday if I drive him – and we drive from Paris to Toulouse to Barcelona to Turin and then back up to Germany, where we say goodbye at his friends’ house – the people with the cake – and he gives me money for a train ticket up to Mother’s.

I think that’s all I need to mention. There were lots more little ones, of course – not to mention dozens of odd synchronicities in other fields (the meetings, the questions, the answers, the perfections) – but I guess there’s no need: the energy’s gone from that line of expression and I suppose has moved onto somewhere else. Where that is I imagine I’ll find out after I’ve been for a pee and started the next paragraph. Pssssss.

Hm. So what I thought this paragraph was going to be was musings on the theories of Derren Brown and linking it all in to what I’ve just said above. But what I was thinking while I was pissing was, wow, I’ve had a really charmed life and met some extraordinarily wonderful people; and also, oh yeah, remember that time you won that guitar with a raffle ticket you were given when going to a concert with a ticket someone gave you? And probably a load more things like that besides – except what I think there when I muse on that is, ah, yes, but that really was just luck – something nice coming into my life unexpectedly – but not the miraculous provision of something I need, or direction, or growth. Different categories in my brain: I observe that I really have no interest in investigating ‘luck’ such as the guitar story above. But why not? What is the difference? If there is one, that is.

I suppose I also ought to look back at the time ‘pre-spirituality’ – given that I see all these blessings having arisen because of and since my connection with the so-called higher power. But was it happening before then? Well, yes, I see that it was – but, then again, I wasn’t really living on trust – I always had cash; I always believed I needed it – so it’s not really the same. Still, things like that did on occasion come into my life, it’s just that, a) I would never have recognised it as such; and b) it didn’t really happen that often. It was all bonus, I guess – when a kindly driver bought me fries; when somebody slipped me the occasional five dollars – but not necessity because – well, I could have bought my own fries, I already had five dollars, and that’s why I see it as bonus.

I’m blabbing, I know – but what I’m getting at is this question: was it not always thus? Was it not merely that my perception changed, and not my experience?

First answer that springs to mind is: no. Certainly, before spirituality there was nothing like being given plane tickets; after, it happened three times in less than a year (which reminds me that Lindsay told me a story about being bought a plane ticket once, in Japan – did that open the door?). Food and shelter, though, did come, even though I could have always provided it for myself: indeed, during my first fifteen days of hitchhiking back in ’98 I was put up by seven different people, which is pretty good going. That time it had the effect of opening me up to the goodness of the people of the world, developed my trust in humanity; later on, I came to see it as more of a divine providence sort of thing, that all humanity was part of the one great whole, and it was the great whole that was being good and doing the providing. Mere change of perception? Or deepening understanding of the true nature reality? I’m not sure I know.

The other thing about pre-spirituality, when I look back, is that it’s very clear that I was being ‘guided’: that something was at work. The links that led me to the canyon, for instance, where everything happened, were incredibly well orchestrated: a guy in Wyoming sees me three times on the road; the third time he picks me up; he gives me Dave’s number in Missoula; I end up in Missoula after riding a freight train; Dave invites me to stay; I bump into Dave again in San Diego four months later when I’m not even supposed to be there; Dave’s on his way to Mexico and persuades me to go with him; we’re about to leave Baja when we bump into those girls; the girls tell us about the canyon; and we get to the canyon and Lindsay’s there and everything begins. It’s beautiful. Sometimes I think it worked better before I knew about it – before I tried to second guess it, figure it out – but I don’t know if that’s really true. The main difference is awareness – is living with awareness – and living without it. And I guess that brings us right back to Derren Brown.

To Derren, there are people who embrace the opportunities life presents us and those who don’t. He illustrates this with the supposedly unlucky man – who is actually just blind to what’s around him – won’t play a loaded scratchcard; won’t answer a pointless question that would have actually rewarded him with twenty quid – and with another guy who brushes off a stranger in need when helping him – as a naturally open person later does – would have brought him great reward. But what does this mean then? That life is constantly showering us with blessings and good fortune and whether we feel ourselves to be lucky or not is merely a question of how much we ourselves accept? I can sort of buy that – that it’s a constant, impersonal, merely natural and non-miraculous thing – and yet, when I look at the examples I gave above, I think it needs more than that: and the answer that comes to me is that life is somehow responding to our expectations. And that’s where the magical comes in.

When I travelled, because of various experiences, I came to believe that I would be provided for, no matter what I needed. It began small, but the more I experienced, the more I believed. And, perhaps, the more I believed, the more I experienced. It’s was a self-fulfilling prophecy, I suppose: some sort of circular, perpetual motion machine that just grew and grew. Experience led to belief led to experience led to belief led, ultimately, to expectation. After a certain point it wasn’t that I had to consciously believe anything to make it happen – I simply expected it. And that sort of expectation was beyond thinking: that sort of expectation was pure being. It was in the way I walked and it was in the fruits of that. So things came because I knew they would: I just knew it. Can it be that the universe, or life, is responding to that? That it’s our level of belief, expectation and knowing that create our experience?

Listen, little by little I came to believe that I didn’t need money to travel, that my transport and food and shelter would be provided for. Developing this involved slowly letting go of the things that said otherwise: for instance, if you’re travelling with money, and trying to save a little for tomorrow, that’s basically saying, I don’t trust that I’ll have enough and the future is uncertain. But supposing you keep experiencing that things get taken care of – as I did during my first six weeks in the canyon, when despite having some cash food always seemed to appear out of nowhere? You’d start to believe in it. You’d let go and you wouldn’t worry about it so much. You’d be down to your last five dollars and you’d spend it and not think about tomorrow because you’d trust that tomorrow would take care of itself. And those things are statements of faith – for belief is not just in what you say you think – in fact, not really at all – but in how you act.

Are you, for example, a Christian? And do you, therefore, believe in life after death, and in going to heaven – assuming you’ve been good – and that heaven is better than here? That’s nice. But saying it is one thing – and acting on it another. If you walk in fear of death – if you overly grieve the passing of another – if you cling to this life as though it was the only life you have – then all words of belief are meaningless. And, conversely, if you say you’re afraid of dying but live joyously and fearlessly comfortable in the inevitable prospect – well, again, it’s the actions that speak the loudest.

That, of course, is a different sort of example: a better one might be that of a Christian who says they believe that God will provide for them and that money isn’t the true reward in life but who goes around acting as though it is, hoarding it and worrying that there one day won’t be enough. That’s not trust or faith – and it’s not what brings the results of feeling provided for either. I guess I’ve been lucky: I’ve experienced it enough to know that it doesn’t matter if I lose everything and have to start from scratch I’ll be okay. Take all my possessions, my wealth, my home – it won’t really make that much difference. I’ll still be here (take my looks, my health – that’s a whole different matter, a level of faith I haven’t yet approached) and I’ll be okay and smiling. But that’s what I know from experience. Man, I really think everyone should experience that.

Imagine watching your house burn down, and everything in it, and knowing deep in your heart that it really is just stuff.

Imagine losing all your savings. Your work. And yet still having your body. You’d still be free to travel, to exist, to interact with the world and its people and experience the good things in life. You’d still have nature, some monastery you could go to, wonderful decades-long, global adventures to undertake. Or the opportunity to build it all back up.

All that I could handle: my health – to be crippled, disfigured, chained to a hospital bed or machinery – I’m not so sure about. To not be able to run or kick a ball? To never type again? Tough. But human beings do overcome the most incredible obstacles (thinking book-writing paraplegics; My Left Foot and all that). Better human beings than I.

I’ve got off topic; I can’t remember what the topic is. I guess ultimately I like the things that Derren Brown says: he challenges my perceptions and, sometimes, he shows them as being based on wrong beliefs. He seems to genuinely enlighten people, to shatter superstitions and self-defeating ideas, and that can only be a good thing. He deserves the stage and the accolades he has and long may he continue. Better him than some kiddy-fiddling priest propagating lies and convincing others of their worthlessness. But, ultimately, for me there’s more to his theories than mere physicality: there is still some power which, at our level of understanding, does appear ‘magical’. To say ‘we make our own luck’ doesn’t fully explain the hows of it. To dismiss the apparent healing powers of the mind by saying it’s just the ‘placebo effect’ tells us nothing of how that actually works. None of that is, in my opinion, in contradiction with Buddha’s assertion that “our thoughts create our reality” – or Jesus’s “by our faith so shall it be done” – or the New Age belief in manifestation and in harnessing the powers of creation. What I suppose I’d like Derren Brown to do is explain my list to me – to show how its nothing miraculous or linked to the so-called divine – to prove that this mysterious ‘higher power’ is nothing more than our perceptions and beliefs, that it can all be rationally accounted for in some other, atheistic philosophy. What I’d like Derren Brown to do is look at someone like Ammachi when investigating and supposedly disproving God rather than the hoary old Bible and its ridiculous stories, which, as I’ve said before, is a bit like walking down Wakefield Westgate of a Friday night and declaring impossible the existence of an intelligent human being. It’s just, simply put, looking in the wrong place, and debunking one crackpot scouse fake medium hardly debunks the whole concept of life beyond the human physical body. Still, having said all that, he’s probably doing more good cutting through all the fakeness rather than doing unbiased and balanced reporting of the issue as a whole, and I heartily applaud him for it. ‘Tis, probably, his divine machine after all (he types with a wink). And I don’t suppose he can help it – the poor man’s Evangelical upbringing has set him up quite naturally for the big swing to the other side – just as my atheistic upbringing did for me: ain’t none so pious as the converted, eh?

More digression. Not sure I really wanted to say anything questioning DB because, as I’ve said, I really do think he’s great. And he’s a whole lot smarter and more talented than I am. And 99% of what he does I’m at a loss to explain – other than maybe he really is magic after all (although after learning about thumb-writers…) – so all I can really say is, wow, keep it up, good on you. I mean, how the hell did that dice come down as a 4 on that third roll? How did he get that woman to win on the horse that time? Plus a thousand other things besides. Marvellous man. I’m convinced it’s all gonna lead somewhere grand one day, despite his occasional hiccups. Big things in store for that dude, I’m sure.

In conclusion: luck. You make it yourself, partly through keeping your eyes open, partly through your positive attitude, and partly through expecting it. And the more you expect it, the more you experience it, and on and on and on. Doesn’t mean, of course, that you’ll win the lottery – that’s what, I suppose, we all think of when we think of luck – and the big grand test when one says they’ve harnessed the power of luck: go on then, win the lottery if you think you can do anything – but then who says winning the lottery would be a good thing anyway? Not sure it would be of great benefit to my life, given what I believe my soul wants to achieve, which is what life’s about anyways. I’d get lazy, man, just bum around, forget about my growth, my aspirations, wouldn’t write. I’d have a big house with a 5-a-side football pitch and squash courts and just stock it with people who wanted to play games all day. I’d have a whole bunch of kids and they’d grow up spoiled and make me shake my head and wish I’d never bothered. I’d get into romantic entanglements attempting to prove the ‘many wives’ theory. It’d be a mess!

So, no, I suppose I’ll just keep what I have – my home, my plentiful supply of food, my every need provided for, my sexy girlfriend and my happy heart and body, and the promise of a good future, as well as my challenges – and try and feel grateful for that. Like I say, it really has been a charmed life – and if you’ve digested some of the evidence above, you’ll no doubt agree. And that, my friends, is just the surface of it.

Amen.