Mini Autobiography

Mini-AutobiographyRay Murray

(Omniologist)

Genius For Hire!www.genius-for-hire.com

http://www.genius-for-hire.com/

Ray Murray: OmniologistPlease Note

My ability to explain Natural Law (The Law Of Creation) is central to my work as an Omniologist, Business Consultant and Educator.

Therefore, in order to better understand the potential of my work in these different areas, please be sure to watch at least Video #1 located below this presentation ~ ideally before reading the rest of this mini-autobiography.

This beautiful and poignant video is a Message From Native American Elders.

It clearly shows how vitally important it is for every member of our species to fully appreciate the importance of understanding and complying with Natural Law.

If the video below fails to play, please go to:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=61BCB2-OmRY




Ray Murray: Omniologist

Born on 27th September 1955, in the coal-mining village of Thornley, County Durham, England, I enjoyed a loving childhood. I was academically gifted, and perfectly capable of going on to University, but I chose instead to terminate my schooling at the age of 17 in order to enter the world of work.

With only 8 GCE “Ordinary Level” qualifications to my name, within two years of leaving school I became a Police Officer in the UK Police Service on 30th December 1974.

During the following 16 years, I remained in Police Service and furthered my education through night school and various courses. I married at the age of 20 on 27th September 1975 and in the ten years I was married to Pauline, we became the proud parents of Stacy, Tamsin and Anna Maria.

I also qualified for promotion to the ranks of Sergeant and Inspector, and I qualified as a Police Duties Instructor. I also obtained a B.Tech Higher National Certificate in Police Studies, added to this a B.Tech Higher National Diploma in Business Studies.

I would probably have still been a Police Officer to this day, but something happened in 1987 that changed my life.

Out of the blue, as a result of literally Soul-Searching whilst in the midst of going through my divorce from Pauline, my Mind opened to my Soul and I began to KNOW.


And what I was suddenly able to KNOW, were the most amazing things relating to how God, Love, Life and Nature are simply different versions of the same thing. Specifically, I began to KNOW:

How God, Love, Life and Nature work together in infinite harmony and unison, in order to co-create, sustain, maintain, develop, enable, enliven, enrich and enjoy all Natural Living Systems, and how they do this Wholly Naturally and Eternally.

In other words, I suddenly began to KNOW the central and holistic principle* that enables absolutely EVERYTHING to be and to function. (*The Law Of Creation or Natural Law)

To say that I “discovered” this central principle implies that I set out to discover something like this. But that was not the case. I simply wanted to make sense of my own life whilst I was going through this process of divorce. However, I had clearly done something that literally opened my MIND to my SOUL.

And so I began to KNOW about God, Love, Life, Nature ~ how the Universe works, and myriad other things, simply as a result of naturally triggering the opening of my MIND to my SOUL by unwittingly praying, or asking God, something along the lines of

“What on Earth is going on here?”.

(Maybe I should have been more specific! )


Of course I appreciate that this can sound rather “New Age”, but the fact is that back in 1987, when this process of being able to KNOW began (and it has never stopped since), I hadn’t even heard the term: “New Age”.

I was simply a very dedicated, intelligent, competent, ordinary Policeman. However, I am also naturally very compassionate, which I now appreciate is one of the main reasons that this kind of thing could happen in me, but I was not deliberately seeking Enlightenment. It just happened.

I did not have a Guru ~ and I still don’t have one, because I have no need of a Guru.

Whether you believe any of this or not, the simple fact is that when you allow or enable your MIND to become open to your own SOUL, you thereby enable your MIND to be capable of “downloading” any information that it would be appropriate for you to KNOW, directly from your SOUL, directly from HEAVEN.

You thereby become able to tap into an infinite reservoir of GENIUS. And if you do this enough, well, you eventually become a bona-fide GENIUS of some kind.

Anything that we recognise as being an expression of true GENIUS, in nature, in science, in the arts, in work, rest or play, originated from this infinite reservoir.


This all began in 1987, whilst I was still a Policeman, but it soon became clear that I was accessing Heaven-sent information, literally, that really could help make our world a much better place. So I stopped being a Local Police Officer on 27th September 1990 and dedicated my life to becoming a Global Peace Officer instead.

Now even though a part of this process enabled me to KNOW that the truly profound information I was being allowed to KNOW was correct, I still wanted to either corroborate this information, or refute it, independently. I wanted to be sure that this whole thing was REAL and VALID.

Furthermore, sometimes my MIND would not entirely understand something that I was in the process of KNOWING in my SOUL, and so on occasions I would need to carry out further research simply in order to clarify a specific theme or point.

In 1987, when this all began, I also began to study anything and everything that was relevant to any subject that I was in process of KNOWING via EMANATIONAL LEARNING. In the 22 years that followed I travelled throughout the UK, went to North Africa, Italy, to Spain and to America, either to meet with people who could help provide any clarity that I needed, or to learn whether or not something was valid ~ EXPERIENTIALLY.

And that is how I became an OMNIOLOGIST.


Omniology itself is a new science that may be accurately defined as being:

The study of: The TRUE NATURE of ALL

Raymond Murray

May 01 2009


In 1990 I had met and began living with Rachel, as man and wife, and in April 1991 we became the proud parents of Tobias, by which time I was no longer in the Police, and we were living on the island of Anglesey, in North Wales. In order to fund our general living expenses and my research, in 1992 I became a freelance consultant, facilitator and educator and have generally worked in this capacity ever since, but in the early years this was a struggle and Rachel and I parted in 1994.

Over the years my portfolio grew to include the following themes in my areas of expertise:

• Compassionate Leadership Skills Development• Advanced Management & Team Skills Development• Ethical Business & Humane Organisation Development• Sustainable & Prosperous Community Development• Globally Responsible Business & Responsible Global Citizenship• Global Recovery & Facilitating Global Unison• Economics For The 21st Century & Beyond • Profound Personal Development• Holistic Thinking (“Level 3 Thinking”)• Awakening of Individual & Group Genius• Living Authentically• Natural Law (The Law Of Creation)


My work has always centred around enabling people to learn and apply Natural Law. Work in the early days (1992 – 1993) mainly consisted of designing and delivering a variety of educational programmes for small training companies and their corporate clients, normally using hotels and the great outdoors as the Experiential Learning environment, in regions like the mountains of North Wales.

As a result of this work, in 1994 I was head-hunted by Senior Management within Thomas Cook Travel Management (TCTM) to join TCTM and use my unique knowledge to become, in effect, “The goose that lays the golden eggs” in order to create a new “21st Century Business School” within TCTM. I was one of a very small team of educators recruited to create this school, known as TEAMS.

The remit of TEAMS was to transform TCTM from a demoralised and under-performing global arm of Thomas Cook into a highly motivated and extremely effective global asset. We achieved this within six months, but what none of us had known was that even as we were launching TEAMS, negotiations were underway to sell the whole of TCTM (including TEAMS) to American Express.

One morning, before any of us were told about this, I intuitively KNEW that the days of TEAMS within Thomas Cook were numbered and that I should resign. Because I trust my intuition completely, I duly resigned, giving 3 months notice. A few days later, the announcement was made regarding the sale of TCTM to Amex. The corporate culture of Amex was completely different to that of Thomas Cook and when Amex took over TCTM, they promptly closed down TEAMS. (I was no longer there by then).


In 1996 I was asked to become the Coach to The Leadership Team of British Petroleum’s highly innovative and global Virtual Teamworking Programme (VT). This £19 Million project consisted of BP working with Intel to enable BP staff around the world to make use of “Desktop Video Conferencing and Application Sharing”. (The technology and software to do this is now commonplace, but it was this worldwide BP VT and Intel project which really made that possible)

I was recruited in the early part of 1996, which was the second year of the VT project, by its Director Kent Greenes. I was chosen mainly because the project had been treated as a Technology project, rather than as a People (Teamworking) project during its first year, and it had almost ground to a halt.

The project’s 60 or more personnel around the world needed to re-focus on this as being a People project, with a Technology plug-in, rather than the other way around, so I designed and facilitated the year 2 launch event which achieved this. Thereafter my main role was to challenge Kent specifically, and challenge the thinking of his team, primarily to help them think outside of the box and view the project with a more holistic perspective.

I had suggested that even though this VT project was due to end in December of that year, that the Knowledge-Management And Teamworking Services School (KATS School) that we set up in order to train Virtual Teamworking Coaches, should be kept alive after the VT project itself ended and the Technology was rolled out, worldwide. Kent and the Leadership Team agreed, and I was even asked to stay on in the following January to run this school – but when Kent asked for permission to do this from John Brown, CEO of BP, the request was refused, since the VT project was declared a success.


By then, whilst not surprised by the myopia of large corporations, I was pretty frustrated with this. On the other hand, the positive side was that I had learned a great deal EXPERIENTIALLY, plus this EMANATIONAL process of KNOWING was then (as now) still going on quietly in the background.

However, it was obvious to me that what the world in general and the world of orthodox business specifically were clearly missing, were entities which would nowadays be called:

• Schools Of Global Environmental Sustainability (SOGES)

And which I have been referring to since the mid-90’s as:

• Institutes for Sustainability, Ecology & Business which are also: • International Schools for Ethical Business (ISEBs)

And since then I have been doing my best to persuade major corporations to create internal ISEBs which could then evolve into profit-centres, selling their services locally and globally. The more visionary staff of such businesses saw the value, but tended to say, “Ray, you’re right – but you’re also ten or twenty years ahead of your time…This company just won’t support such a project.”

I also sensed intuitively that I would be more valuable to the world of commerce, and thereby the world in general, if I deepened my understanding of how The Law Of Creation (Natural Law) worked.


And so it was in the winter of 1998 / 1999 that I left the world of business and moved with only a tent and sleeping bag to Almeria, Spain, unable to speak Spanish, without any money at all, in order to learn EXPERIENTIALLY what would happen to a person who totally trusted in the eternal Godflow of:

• God• Love• Life• Nature

….to provide for all their needs.

My agreement with Heaven was that I would never ask for a meal, nor would I ask for a bed, but that my way of measuring if trusting The Godflow (instead of relying on Cashflow) actually works, would be that each day I would have at least one wholesome meal, plus somewhere safe and comfortable to sleep each night.

And whilst it is fair to say that I do generally live in complete trust of The Godflow anyway, this was a deliberate and disciplined experiment in a pretty intense (Arizona-like) environment, which worked like a dream. I lived like that for approximately 18 months, before I decided that I had gained enough relevant experiences in this University of Life, to enable me to return to the world of Business and Community Education with a great deal more truly valuable wisdom and knowledge to impart.


This experiment gave me hundreds of relevant “This is how life really works” experiences, which I later used in my teaching work with individuals, groups and businesses. For example, when explaining the absolutely vital Soul Skill of TRUST (Taking Risks Unconditionally Supporting that which is True), people would often retort, “That was OK for you, you were a single guy with a rucksack and a tent. I have a mortgage to pay and a family to support”.

So I would provide real life examples which showed that if you are do become very skilled at being able to TRUST The Godflow, then you and your dependents are provided for by God, Love, Life and Nature ~ every time. The favourite example I still give regarding this relates to Pup the Cat.

Pup The Cat:

By the end of 1999 I had ended up living in El Fonte, Almeria, in a ruined farmhouse, which had a well, no electricity, and various rooms, only two of which were remotely habitable. I was living an actual “chop wood, carry water” kind of life. I had no “proper job” and so had no obvious access to money, but it too came along, in just the right amount and just when it was needed.

People would sometimes turn up, out of the blue, and ask me to do odd jobs. Even though I never asked for payment, sometimes I was paid in cash, which always happened to be just enough at the time to meet immediate needs.

I had also by this time acquired through serendipity ~ one dog, three horses and Pup, the cat.


Pup The Cat:

My “house” at El Fonte was the last ruin in the valley of Barranco Abuela and so although I had a rickety corral I made for the horses, and I had repaired the old stables to give them shade, most of the time they lived free, foraging in the mountains behind the house, returning on their own each afternoon for water and extra food ~ which I was always able to provide, either because I had cut grass for them, or I had bought food from the local merchant when I had the money. The horses became extremely fit. I also had to feed the dog, either by sharing my food with her, or by purchasing dog food.

I always made sure the animals were fed before I was. Pup the cat, however, took care of herself, mainly by eating the rats that lived in the cactus around the place. Two other she-cats adopted me, and they, plus Pup, all became pregnant one night when the local Tom came to visit. All “my” cats had kittens, but one night a fox (I assume) took the two new cats, and so independent little Pup was left with all these babies to feed, which she managed to do very well, until one day she came up to me barely able to walk.

She almost stood on her hind legs, showed me her chest, which was scratched red raw by the kittens, and she clearly could not hunt. She wanted food. She needed to make milk for all her babies. I had no food at all in the house and no money. So I said to her, “We’ll just have to see what the day brings, Pup” ~ because the day always brought something that was perfectly appropriate.


Pup The Cat:

A couple of hours later, I saw a car approaching in the distance, with a large “thing” on its roof. Since I was the last house in the valley, whoever it was was probably coming to my place. When the car stopped in my small courtyard, I saw that the large “thing” was a comfy armchair, and I realised that my visitors were an English couple whom I barely knew, but whom I had met about six months earlier in Mojacar ~ about an hour’s drive away.

Since they knew my furniture consisted of orange boxes, or similar, and six months earlier they intended to get rid of their old armchair, they had offered to give this to me. After the usual greetings, Viv (the lady) said, “We promised you this chair, Ray, but kept forgetting to bring it over. We are moving back to the UK now and have packed up everything to go, so we figured that we ought to bring the chair to you now, or you would never get it”

I was delighted and obviously thanked them. Viv then added, “We’ve emptied all our cupboards too, and have brought a load of food for you, and we’ve also brought six tins of cat food ~ would they be any use to you?”. Which, of course, they were.

And the moral of this (true) story being that we (the animals and I) were all living in TRUST of The Godflow (animals do this naturally, anyway), and we were not merely surviving.

We were all living like kings. Every day was an adventure, and a gift. And we appreciated it.


By the end of year 1999 I was in what I hoped, once again, would be a life-long personal relationship, and in March 2002 my partner Dawn and I became the proud parents of Samuel. By this time I was back in the UK, though we planned to move immediately back to Spain as a family after the birth. Unfortunately this was not possible for Dawn for medical reasons.

So for a few months I worked in a warehouse in the UK, packing boxes, before entering the world of Organisational Development again, commencing a piece of work with the British National Health Service (NHS) in late 2002, which continued for a further three years.

(I moved back to Spain with my family in 2003, but would travel to the UK for work, or NHS staff would come to appropriate venues in Almeria, Spain for various Experiential Learning events I delivered)

Working with a close friend and business associate (Roy Martin MBE) from 2002 to 2004 I designed and we co-delivered a range of extremely popular and highly effective Leadership, Management, Teambuilding and Train The Trainer programmes for various nursing, management and administrative staff of the Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust. (SWBH NHS Trust).

Then, towards the end of 2004, I received a phone call from Peter Ballard, whom I had met whilst hitch-hiking during a visit to the in the UK when I was still engaged in my “Trust in God, Love, Life and Nature” experiment. Peter and I had kept in touch, and although he was a Sales and Marketing Manager when we met, he had risen rapidly through the ranks thereafter, and by December 2004 he had become the Managing Director of Genus Pharmaceuticals. (Previously called Ethical Generics).


Peter’s call to me in December 2004 essentially consisted of, “Ray. I am now the boss and I want to save the world. So let’s set something up that will do that.”

This led to formal meetings with Peter and the Senior Management Team of Genus Pharmaceuticals in early 2005, which in turn led to a formal commitment by them as a team to set up a new and WHOLLY ETHICAL arm of Genus, to be known as:

• Global Recovery

That in turn led to all of their staff, with the exception of the Management Team, coming to my “school” in Almeria, Spain (a local hotel) during the rest of that year, where they / we jointly designed an entity that would become this new arm of Genus, as an autonomous enterprise that would proactively engage in facilitating Global Recovery. (Details available on request).

Around the same time Peter also initiated a truly innovative “Eradicate Tuberculosis” project and designed a physical pack that NHS Doctors, Nurses, TB Patients and their Carers could use to ensure that any patient suffering from TB in the UK would go through the whole course of treatment for TB, and thereby be cured of Tuberculosis.

Genus began distributing this pack free of charge to Hospitals and Doctors in the UK, undoubtedly saving many lives by doing so. Clearly, Peter was truly doing his best to do good, through Genus.


Peter was also fully aware of the fact that for some time I had been working with large organisations like Thomas Cook Travel Management and British Petroleum, trying to grow what I called ISEBs. (Institutes for Sustainability, Ecology and Business / International Schools for Ethical Business)

Whilst with TCTM, we actually did establish an entity (TEAMS) which was an embryonic ISEB, this did not survive the move from TCTM to Amex. With BP VT, the intended KATS School would also have evolved into an ISEB, but that was not allowed to go ahead by BP top management.

Knowing this, and completely behind the Global Recovery project, Pete encouraged me to incorporate an ISEB within the new Global Recovery enterprise, but he also advised me that he had not yet been able to secure formal support for such a project from Genus’ parent company in Germany, STADA.

This was not a surprise, since STADA was (is) a typical multinational pharmaceutical business, whilst Pete and his crew in Genus were mavericks and under his management and direction, with a lot of hard work by his staff, plus a tiny bit of guidance from me, Genus had become extremely successful:

Dear All, I can only agree wholeheartedly.... to the extent that our business has shifted focus totally from trying to do whatever it took to make money (and maybe treat a few sick patients) to doing whatever it takes to cure patients (and maybe make some money).... we are now the most profitable niche generic firm in the UK and spend more on patient care and professional care than our peers many times our size.... And I am totally convinced that Ray had a lot to do with it..... Best regards, Peter Ballard. BSc (Hons), FInstSMM, MCIM. Managing Director Tel. +44 (1635) 568410: Fax. +44 (1635) 568401: Cell +44 (7770) 444697


Thus by the end of 2005 all the signs were that Genus would find a way to formally support the creation of Global Recovery, either as a new arm of Genus, or as an autonomous enterprise.

And with regard to setting up a physical ISEB in Almeria, Spain (where Dawn, Samuel and I were still living) even though I had had the dream to create ISEBs around the world long before I started working with Genus, I had been consistently encouraged since 2005 by Pete to, “Go for it!”

So, since establishing an ISEB obviously required the input of some fairly significant resources, which I simply did not have, the agreed plan was then to create the world’s first ISEB as an integral part of this Genus / Global Recovery initiative.

So that is what I set out to do.

But to understand what I did next, and why I did what I did next, it is necessary to understand just exactly what an ISEB is supposed to be!

Therefore, the slideshow on the following pages explains my concept of an ISEB:

ISEB

What is an ISEB?

You can think of an ISEB as a localised:

• Wealth Creation Engine

or

• Sustainable-Prosperity Generator

Each ISEB is actually several enterprisesin one, which jointly collaborate in order to produce locally owned and managed:

• Agencies of Abundance

• Catalysts of Creativity

• Environments of Enrichment

To get the idea of what an ISEB actually is, first think of a garden umbrella...

The umbrella also acts as a sun-shade so it's basic job is to safeguard andprotect you against extremes of weather.

It has a rock-solid base...

Solid Base

It has a rock-solid base...plus a firm pole

Solid Base

Firm Pole

It has a rock-solid base...plus a firm pole, and... a diversely-coloured “roof”.

Solid Base

Firm Pole

Coloured “Roof”

Metaphorically speaking, each ISEB will also have: “A rock-solid base, plus a firm pole and a diversely-coloured roof”.

Solid Base

Firm Pole

Coloured “Roof”

The rock-solid base of each ISEB is composed of its outstanding people

Solid Base = Great People

The firm pole of each ISEB is made up of its world class educational content andits “make the world a better place” range of services


Firm Pole = Great Products & Services

The diversely coloured roof of each ISEB consists of Ethical Enterprises it helps to create and nurture towards: VIABILITY



Strips on Roof = New Ethical Enterprises

And the difference between an ISEB and something such as an orthodox, but world-class, business school...

...is this...

An ISEB Top Business School

Rock-Solid Base = Great People





Coloured Roof = New Ethical Enterprises Created & Nurtured From Start To VIABILITY.

What is The Purpose of an ISEB?

Every ISEB will exist in order to do threethings ~ namely:

• Facilitate the Survivability of Humanity, ad infinitum

• Enable our species to be an integrous member of The Natural Environment

• Help to make the world a better and happier place, for the good of all.

What will an ISEB do?

Each ISEB will facilitate an increase in local:

• Wisdom

• Wellbeing

• Peace

• Joy

• Prosperity

• Sustainability

• Unison-with-All

Each ISEB will thereby naturally facilitate, at the

local level, an increase in SUSTAINABLE:

• Global Unison

Any local Institute for Sustainability,

Ecology and Business will also be an

International School for Ethical Business

and each ISEB will also connect to

similar institutes around the world.

Each ISEB will provide Globally Responsible and

Locally Beneficial services, which facilitate:

• Ethical Business Creation & Development

• Compassionate Leadership Development

• Prosperous Community Development

• Sustainable ~ Global Unison

For: Ethical Business

An ISEB facilitates Ethical Business Creation &Development by providing leading-edge:

• Ethical-Business Focused training, development and enlightenment services.

• Business Start-Up & Support services

• Business Growth & Diversification services

• Business Transformation services

For: Compassionate Leadership

An ISEB enables Compassionate Leadership

Development by providing world-class:

• Leadership-Skills related Training, Development and Enlightenment services.

• Awakening & Unleashing Genius services

• Profound Personal Development services

For: Prosperous Communities

An ISEB enables Prosperous Community

Development by providing world-class:

• Sustainable-Prosperity Focused Training, Development and Enlightenment services.

• Ethical Business Development services

• Global Citizenship related services

For: Global Unison

An ISEB facilitates Global Unison by helping tocreate vitally important NEW INDUSTRIES:

• The Global Wisdom Industry

• The Global Wellbeing Industry

• The Global Peace Industry

• The Global Joy Industry

• The Global Prosperity Industry

• The Global Sustainability Industry

For: Global Unison

And each of these new Positive Global

Industries will complement each other as part

of an overarching, and SUSTAINABLE:

• Global Unison Industry

For: Global Unison

The Global Unison Industry truly has the

potential to provide:

• Fulfilling, rewarding, appropriate and enjoyable employment for every person on this planet...

For: Global Unison

• ....and on any other planet wemay inhabit in future decades, centuries or millennia.

This Begins With ISEB's

The actual physical location of an ISEB is less important than the work of an ISEB,which will essentially entail:

• Enabling people to learn and apply the holistic and eternallyvalid principles of:

Sustainable Global Unison


Recap:

…by the end of 2005 the agreed plan was to create the world’s first ISEB as an integral part of the Genus / Global Recovery initiative. Before that was agreed, however, I had already invested several years in getting to know the land and the people of Almeria, Spain ~ essentially with the aim of somehow establishing an ISEB or SOGES (School Of Global Environmental Sustainability) in the province.

When I began doing so, I barely spoke any Spanish, and as you may recall I had deliberately moved to Almeria to conduct an experiment in what happens if you simply “TRUST The Godflow”.

During the time of that specific and focused experiment, which lasted approximately 18 months, I knew that there would come a time when I would move back into the world of “Ethical Business Consultancy”, where I would of course do whatever work was appropriate, for any given client.

However, it is important to appreciate that: I DID NOT STOP CONDUCTING MY “TRUST” EXPERIMENT.

On the contrary, having confirmed to myself experientially and absolutely the fact that: “If you completely TRUST The Godflow ~ IT WORKS!!!” I both KNEW and RATIONALISED that the next thing to do was to extend the parameters of this REAL LIFE experiment…


..So when I did re-enter the world of commerce and “normal” life, the experiment then became one of:

1] Given that if you TRUST The Godflow of:

• God• Love• Life• Nature

…your needs are always met and you actually are taken care of (even if that is often in ways that you had not expected)…. What happens if:

2] You place equal TRUST in:

• God• Love• Life• Nature• Man• Community &• Business


And the RATIONALE behind finding out what happens if you actually do place equal TRUST in:


…is simply this:

God, Love, Life and Nature are all working, each in their own ways. But they are also all working AS ONE, in INFINITE and ETERNAL UNISON ~ in accordance with The Law Of Creation (The LOC), also known as “Natural Law”. And their ways of working, quite simply…work.

Our SYSTEMS are supposed to SUSTAIN us, but it is clear that many of our ways of working simply don’t work, since we are obviously not, all things considered, actually SUSTAINING ourselves or the natural environment. And if that is true, if our SYSTEMS just don’t work, and they just don’t facilitate our own SUSTAINABILITY, then we need to change them.


So in an attempt to ascertain EXPERIENTIALLY why and how do our SYSTEMS either work or not work I gained a great deal of EXPERIENCE, that proved to me time and time again that:

There are two things which happen if you place equal TRUST in:


1) God, Love, Life and Nature never let you down. Never fail to deliver. Never lead you astray. 2) Business, Community (Society) and Man (Individual human beings), however, DO let you down. They DO fail to deliver. The DO lead you astray.

And the reason that you get these two different results, if you run this experiment (try it for yourself!), is simply this. The SYSTEMS of God, Love, Life and Nature are maintained via AUTHENTICITY, whilst the various SYSTEMS of Business, Community (Society) and Man are supportive of varying degrees of ARTIFICIALITY….. AUTHENTICITY truly does work……..ARTIFICIALITY does not work. Period.


It won’t surprise you to learn, therefore, that despite the truly valiant efforts of Peter Ballard at Genus, Pharmaceuticals he was never able to secure formal support from STADA, the parent company of Genus, to:

Create and operate a new and AUTHENTICALLY ETHICAL wellbeing, peace, prosperity, and happiness facilitation enterprise, to be known as Global Recovery.

However, in December 2005, Peter had been so confident that this Global Recovery Project would be approved by STADA and that it would really fly as a new arm of Genus, he asked me to be it’s Director once it was formally sanctioned. By March 2006, however, it was becoming increasingly clear that securing formal support from STADA was going to take some time ~ if it ever came at all.

This meant that there was ZERO formal budget for the creation of Global Recovery as an entity. And normally this type of project would be commenced and managed with a budget of several hundred thousand British pounds ~ at least.

But until such time as STADA formally approved one, there was no budget.

Peter, however, judged that there was a slim chance that eventually they might be persuaded to approve a realistic budget, and neither he nor I wanted to quit. So if this project was to continue, until such a formal budget could be obtained, it had to be funded in a different way.


Since I was committed to this entire Global Recovery Project now as much as Peter or anyone else at Genus, I basically funded its continuation from the monthly retainer I was paid by Genus and from any other monies I earned by working with other clients in the UK and Spain.

Whilst this amounted to several thousand British pounds per month, and would have produced a very handsome personal income, I was in fact using hardly any of this revenue as personal income. I was using almost all of it to keep the Global Recovery Project / ISEB Project alive.

Furthermore, by that time (March 2006) I had been consistently encouraged to “Go for it!” since early 2005, and me being me, not really doing anything by halves, I really did, “Go for it!”.

My “Going for it!” in reality meant that by March 2006 I had already personally funded the purchase and care of fourteen horses ~ almost all being rescue cases.

And I did this in order to establish what I hoped would become Almeria’s first Equine Sanctuary (A socially and environmentally responsible Community Enterprise), which would in turn be funded by at least one new ethical Equestrian Business.


Highly Professional People(With real integrity)

Great Products & Services

New Ethical Businesses orCommunity Projects

The Basic Structure of

An ISEB

You will recall from the description of my vision for an ISEB, that for any ISEB to be complete, not only did it have to provide appropriate Educational or other “Improve The World” services, it also had to proactively create at least one real Ethical Business or beneficial Community Project.

So with this endeavour in Almeria, my intention was to create valid examples of both an Ethical Business and a Community Project at once.


The approach I had adopted since 1999 in order to transform the concept of creating one or more new Ethical Businesses / Community Projects into a reality, consisted of the following:

• Find out what the Local People would like to see happen at any given location.• Check out, to the best of my ability, if this was also what The Earth would like to be used for at those locations (This involves the use of an intuitive skill I call, “Earthwhispering”) • Check out, to the best of my ability, if this was also in tune with The Godflow• Ascertain what it would take to make this a reality• Develop appropriate relationships that would help to make this a reality• Invest time, money, energy and any other resources at my disposal, in order to enable this to happen.• If specific resources were lacking, do my best to locate, secure and invest those extra resources too.

And all the while, consistently and consciously placing TRUST (Taking Risks Unconditionally Supporting

that which was True) equally in:

• God, Love, Life, Nature, Man, Community & Business


Well, as part of this whole saga, back in 1999 / 2000 I learned that the local people wanted to establish Rural Tourism in Almeria province, especially in the mountain ranges of Sierra Los Filabres and Sierra Alhamilla, which are like two arms wrapping around the The Spanish Badlands of The Desert of Tabernas.

This is the only desert in Europe, and it makes much of Almeria province look just like parts of South Colorado / New Mexico / Arizona ~ which is why it was chosen in the 1960’s by Sergio Leone as the perfect landscape for his “Spaghetti Western Trilogy” of:

• A Fistful of Dollars• For A Few Dollars More and • The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

…starring Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef.

In fact those Spanish Badlands had become a favourite movie location both before and after that, with scores of famous and not so famous movies being filmed in whole or in part in the region from the 1950’s until the present day

In fact, just for fun, you might like to see a selection (not an exhaustive list) of some of the movies, TV series and music videos filmed in whole or in part in Almeria…


http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/fistful_of_dynamite/


David Beckham Pepsi Ad


http://images.wikia.com/indianajones/images/7/7f/YIJopenlogo.JPG

http://www.soundtrackcollector.com/images/cd/large/Bud_Spencer_Terence_Hill_VCDS7011.jpg


Colorado Avenue(Swedish Film)(2007)

http://gb.asterix.com/olympic-games-the-film/pictures-gallery/images/affgb.jpg


As a result of the tradition of making “Spaghetti Westerns” and other movies in Almeria, a number of “Western Towns” and smaller film sets were constructed over the years. Whilst many of the smaller sets have crumbled to dust, three of the main Western Towns still remain, namely, “Mini Hollywood”, “Western Leone” and “Cinema Studios Fort Bravo”.

Locally, “Mini Hollywood” (Oasys) is the most famous tourist attraction, since it was the largest Western Town erected in the area, having been built for “The Good, The Bad and The Ugly”. However, it is not really a venue that is used for making movies anymore, having been transformed over the years into a fairly large theme park, complete with zoo.

Western Leone, at the other end of the scale, is a small family runtourist attraction, centred around the “McBain Farmhouse” which was a central feature in “Once Upon A Time In The West”

Mini Hollywood

Western Leone

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Close by, however, is the real jewel in the crown for Spaghetti Western aficionados. This is “Cinema Studios Fort Bravo”, also known as “Texas Hollywood”, which is the only “Poblado del Oeste” in the area that still primarily makes its living as a movie making venue. The owners call it, “The most important film set in Europe”, and they may be right.

.


So, with all of this in mind, and in direct response to the local desire to establish a Rural Tourism Industry in the area, little by little, since 1999 I had been exploring the possibility of creating an ISEB in Almeria province, that would help achieve this.

This ISEB would teach the holistic principles of Natural Law and their relevance to the world of business, of course. But to be a full-blown ISEB it would also have to create at least one example of an ethical enterprise which worked in accordance with those principles, as a “living demonstration”.

Blending together the stunning Mountains / Desert / Mediterranean Sea landscape of Almeria; the keenness of the local people (who generally had no money), plus the history of Spaghetti Westerns the obvious thing to do was to create such a new ethical enterprise in the form of an Equestrian Business and Equine Sanctuary combined… and do this with a Spaghetti Western “flavour”.

With the arrival of the Genus / Global Recovery project, this now seemed a doable thing.

So the plan in 2005 was to establish the Equestrian Business first, nurture this to a state of self-sustainability, and then use the revenue from this to fund the establishment of the Equine Sanctuary as part of the regular overhead of the business I named, “Horse World Spain”.


Furthermore, although I am a lover of horses, I did not (and still don’t) regard myself as being an expert with horses. Therefore, within the grand plan, the original idea was never that I should set up the Equestrian Business / Equine Sanctuary and fully own this or run this myself on a long term basis.

The plan was to find great people who were far better qualified then me, but who also wanted to do this kind of thing, and then I would do whatever I could to help them establish THEIR business, which would then, in turn, help to establish an Equine Sanctuary that would also ideally be supported by the local community. However, I also wanted to gently “police” this process and ensure that whatever was created was created in alignment with everything that an ISEB stands for - Supportive of Natural Law.

So the micro-plan within the business plan, within the grand plan, was that I would launch the business as its owner, and then, once these great people had proven their worth, my exit strategy was simply to formally hand the business over to them and let them enjoy their dream come true, when they no longer needed any input from me.

But of course, as the old joke says…

“If you want to make God laugh…

… tell Him your plans!”


By Spring 2005, various people who thought they would like to undertake the responsibilities of the equestrian business aspect of this project had been to Almeria, had stayed in an apartment I had rented for them for several weeks, and in some cases several months. But none proved suitable.

And behind the scenes, Dawn and I were of course just loving being the parents of our amazing little boy Samuel, but the longer we were together in Spain, the more obvious it became that Dawn was finding it very difficult to fully integrate with the local Spanish community. As time passed, it became increasingly obvious that our life there was not the kind of life she really wanted.

On various occasions between 2003 and 2005 some of my clients from the UK had visited Spain to go through my personal or professional development events. During these times Dawn and I had worked together. She is a superb complementary therapist and when we had worked together as a team, it was obvious to me that her work dovetailed perfectly into mine.

So of course I had hoped that we would simply work more and more together as a mini-team to eventually facilitate the establishment of an ISEB in Almeria and do that together as “Whole Life Partners”.

This had always been my dream for us, rather than just remaining together as “Domestic Life Partners” with me being the one to turn the possibility of an ISEB in Spain into a reality. One of the reasons that I had had this dream of Dawn being my Whole Life Partner was the fact that establishing an ISEB was not something that I could ever do alone.


But that was my dream, not Dawn’s, and so as time passed the personal and professional “WE” that I had hoped we would grow to be together simply didn’t happen.

The fact that I was funding potential equestrian-business managers / owners for several months at a time, and yet just not finding the right people was proving to be a very frustrating and costly experience. Dawn in particular found this very stressful.

And as time passed she simply wanted to be Samuel’s mum on a full time basis. Whilst of course I fully supported her in that, little by little it was becoming clear that in Dawn’s world, her “WE” consisted of her and Samuel. Eventually I felt like I was not really part of Dawn’s “WE” at all.

The core issue here was that Dawn’s focus was on “OWNERSHIP and her personal world”, whilst mine was on “UNISON and the whole world”.

Though I completely understood Dawn’s point of view, since like many people she has dreamed of having her own home, her own car and so on, I couldn’t care less about owning this, that or the other.

Since 1987 I have simply not been interested in being in OWNERSHIP at all, I have been, and still am, focused on becoming better and better at being in UNISON.


And whilst Dawn loved that about me, that was simply not her focus.

Like many women with a young child she was understandably focused on having her OWN home, and her OWN car and her OWN bank account, because for her, these were the things that represented REAL SECURITY.

So of course I provided these things, to the best of my ability, and although we were not living in the lap of luxury by any means, we actually had a very decent standard of living, and Dawn did not have to work, and was basically free to do whatever she wanted to do.

Even so, we were still not walking the same path, with the same dream or the same needs.

Basically we had opposing world views and although I did all I could to accommodate Dawn’s world view, by providing the EXTERNAL SECURITY she felt she needed and insisted on having, she really struggled to fully embrace my world view. And my world view basically boils down to this:

1] Relying on EXTERNAL SECURITY, in order to FEEL you are secure, is an unhealthy and unwise thing to do.2] Relying on ETERNAL SECURITY, in order to KNOW you are secure, is the healthy and wise thing to do

And of course with [1] above, a person has to have Cashflow and Things to feel secure, whilst with [2] above a person does not need to have any Cashflow or any Things whatsoever in order to be secure.


So of course I did my best to gently make it clear to Dawn that my life experiences had proven to me experientially, time and time again, that in reality the only TRUE security there is, is actually the ETERNAL SECURITY of The Godflow.

However, whilst she agreed with this in principle, or in theory, in practice she still clearly held fast to the world-view that REAL security lies in having as much EXTERNAL SECURITY and Cashflow as you can lawfully get.

And whilst the REALITY is that the predominant world view in every “advanced” society nowadays pretty much boils down to one of: “In Gold We Trust”, in my book holding on to such a view is about the biggest mistake we can make (have made) as individuals or as a species.

For me, the TRUTH is that the correct world view for every member of the human species to have and to hold, now and for evermore, is one of purely and simply living by: “In God We Trust”…

And this is not a religious thing.

It is simply what my life experience has shown me is the thing that works.


Consequently, by mid 2005 Dawn and I still loved each other, but we were not actually living in HARMONY with one other. Dawn really wanted me to be more focused on and more skilled at OWNERSHIP, whilst I really wanted her to be more focused on and more skilled at UNISON.

Neither of us were inclined to budge, and the fact is that you just can’t have a bias towards OWNERSHIP and a bias towards UNISON going on in the same situation, and still have HARMONY as the norm, because:

• The complicated and craving Ways of OWNERSHIP directly conflict with, directly oppose and subtly compete against the simple and loving Ways of UNISON.

•The Ways of OWNERSHIP feed Artificiality and ILLUSION

•The Ways of UNISON feed Authenticity and TRUTH

If I was simply to surrender to Dawn’s ways and wishes, which was super tempting to do because I loved both her and Samuel so much, and I didn’t want our little family to break up, then I could only do so by stepping out of TRUTH, which would inevitably reduce my own levels of AUTHENTICITY.

And to be honest, I actually did that on a few occasions, saying “Yes” when really I should have said, “No”, but ever time I did, well… I ended up off-balance, off-purpose and “reduced” on the inside in some way, with a mess to sort out on the outside as a result. At such times my MIND was no longer wide open to my SOUL, I was less AUTHENTIC and it was always hard work for this “reduced me” to get back to being my “whole me”. And eventually I simply refused to compromise anymore.


We realised that we were essentially “living on different planets” and that something had to change in our personal relationship. If that didn’t happen we knew that sooner or later, even though we still loved each other and of course adored our darling Samuel, we would have to live in our separate worlds.

Whilst this account of course relates to what was going on in my own small personal world, from the perspective of the experiential learning process I was going through, what I was witnessing and experiencing was merely a microcosm of the macrocosm that is the world of Man.

The basic problem between human beings who wish to live together in HARMONY, yet find that they are generally experiencing DISHARMONY between one another, always boils down to a conflict between:

• The ways of OWNERSHIP which are craving, competitive and controlling, versus • The ways of UNISON which are loving, compassionate and releasing.

The bottom line is this: “If you put these two things together they just don’t create harmony, they always create conflict, in one form or another”, and they do so because:

• The world and ways of OWNERSHIP are fundamentally destructive and NOT SUSTAINABLE.• The world and ways of UNISON, however, are infinitely creative and ALL SUSTAINABLE.


And where DISHARMONY is the reality that two or more people are experiencing, the conflict is not really between those two SOULS, the conflict is between their MENTALITIES which are essentially the product of whatever WORLD VIEW their individual MINDS have chosen to have and hold on to.

So the solution for two people, or two nations, or an entire planet full of SENTIENT human beings is the same, and that solution is this:

The people who are UNCONSCIOUSLY caught up in: “the OWNERSHIP of ALL movie”, just have to change their MINDS, and choose to CONSCIOUSLY live in tune with their own SOULS, and thereby shift up into: “a living and working in UNISON with ALL mentality”.

But here is the rub…

• The Ways of OWNERSHIP are basically able to achieve the results they achieve via INVASION• The Ways of UNISON may only achieve results via INVITATION.

Which means that no matter how much you love them, no matter how much you may want the best for them, you simply cannot adopt an invasive approach and force any individual, let alone a whole team, group, community, nation or an entire planet, to choose to be in UNISON instead of OWNERSHIP….

They have to want this for themselves...


Furthermore, because the way that The Whole Of Reality works and keeps on working really is via UNISON being maintained between God, Love, Life and Nature, (Natural Law or The Law Of Creation) the only way that the myopic and unnatural world of OWNERSHIP can exist, in an otherwise wholly natural world of UNISON, is at the expense of that world of UNISON.

Putting this another way:

In our higher or genuinely Heavenly reality, ALL the inhabitants of such a reality live and work in UNISON with God, Love, Life and Nature – creating and sustaining thereby a bona fide and AUTHENTICITY LOVING Paradise Reality. (This is home. This is our TRUE REALITY. This is where we are from and where we are all destined to return to, sooner or later)

The opposite of this would of course be a Hellish reality, in which all the inhabitants myopically live and work in OPPOSITION to (or attempted OWNERSHIP of) God, Love, Life and Nature – creating and sustaining thereby a contrary and ARTIFICIALITY CRAVING Parasite Reality.

If you put these two together, then the reality that you create and endeavour to sustain is a Hybrid reality, in which some of the inhabitants would be biased towards creating and sustaining a Paradise Reality, and some would be biased towards creating and sustaining a Parasite Reality, with a lot of folk in the middle doing their best to survive in and make sense of these MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE versions of reality, in a confused and confusing Paradox Reality.

Right now, we are living in a Paradox Reality, but there is also a global shift underway, taking us closer and closer to being the inhabitants of a real and tangible Paradise Reality, right here on Earth..


But I digress…So, back to this mini autobiography.

In Almeria by mid 2005 out of the three horses I had accepted responsibility for and began looking after in 1999, old Abuela, (Grandmother) had died a natural death whilst grazing in the mountains of El Fonte in 2000 and in 2001 Zar, the pure blood Arab gelding I had also been caring for had transformed from a near homicidal maniac into a solid star of a horse – and he went back to his owner.

This left me with an amazing mare called Sorca, whom I had purchased in 1999 (see later) and I am sure that she must have been half mountain goat. She was incredible in the mountains and totally bomb proof. She was the yardstick against which I evaluated all other horses for mountain work.

But the fact was that I had just not found the kind of people I knew I needed to find in order to create an ethical equestrian business as the “living demonstration” part of this first ISEB. And in fact I was on the verge of giving up the whole idea of getting anything going in Spain, when Dawn said, “The horse part of this project is only going to work, Ray, if you and I do it together”

And of course I had been thrilled with this – obviously because this gave new impetus to the whole ISEB project, which I had always known I could not do entirely on my own, but mainly because I saw this as the start of Dawn and I starting our Whole Life Partnership.Yippee!

So by end of June 2005 I had purchased another steady horse. A slow but sure-footed gelding called Cameroon who would be ideal for Dawn.


Although Dawn had a lot more experience with horses than I did before we arrived in Spain, I had learned a lot since I had arrived there. Still, neither of us regarded ourselves as experts and we knew that this needed a higher level of knowledge and skill than we possessed between us.

So we decided that we would do this, but ideally we would still do this in collaboration with others who had the necessary expertise and experience. However, if we simply couldn’t find such people, then we would gain the necessary experience and skills ourselves, over time, and just do this together.

We knew that if we had to do it that way, it would be harder and take a lot longer to make all of this happen if Dawn and I were the only people involved, but the huge bonus for me was that we would be, at long last, really doing something together.

In the meantime, I would still work with UK clients and sponsors to bring in as much money as possible to fund this project to create a full blown ISEB, complete with a “live demonstration” enterprise, which would be some kind of equestrian business.

By then Sorca who I was sure was the best horse on the planet had travelled hundreds of miles with me on the dirt roads of Almeria over the years. So I knew a huge part of the province on horseback and I had already gained many of the skills and experience that were needed to become officially recognised as a trail guide in Almeria. Though, that said, I still fully appreciated that if indeed I was to become a recognised trail guide, I had a lot more to learn.


El Saltador

Lucainena de las Torres

And that brings us back to Peter and Genus, who was my main sponsor / client at that time. By mid 2005 Pete had not only consistently encouraged me to “Go for it!”, he had also been sending his staff over to me in Almeria so that we could all work together and jointly design the super duper new “Let’s save the world!” Global Recovery enterprise for Genus.

The bonus for Dawn and I was that in doing so, it seemed that we were also beginning to establish the first ISEB, in Almeria, Spain, which was to be based at the superb farmhouse hotel of Cortijo El Saltador near the picture postcard village of Lucainena de las Torres, Almeria.(Dawn, Samuel and I lived just outside of this village)

This was the venue I used for the work I did with Peter and his staff, and the more of his staff who came over to co-create Global Recovery, the more real all of this became.

Then along came The BBC...


In mid July 2005 my daughter Stacy called me from the UK… “Dad, I’ve contacted The BBC because they are looking for British people who are setting up new businesses in Spain. I’ve told them about what you are doing and they are interested – so expect a call.”

The call came the next day, actually from Ricochet TV, who were the makers of a very popular TV series called “Living In The Sun” that was being broadcast by The BBC in those days.

Ricochet wanted to include what Dawn and I were doing in their next series – but they needed to start filming us immediately. Unfortunately, when that call came, Dawn was already booked to return to the UK a couple of days later to attend a course on Thai Massage.

Still, we realised that this could be great publicity for the whole project and so we agreed for the documentary to be made even though Dawn would be away for some of the time.

Two days later, as Dawn and Samuel were packing their bags in order to leave for what she intended to be a relatively short trip to the UK, the two person camera and sound crew from Ricochet TV arrived and began filming.


However whilst Dawn was in the UK her grandmother became very ill, and sadly died about three months later. During that time of course Dawn and Samuel remained in England and did not return until after the funeral. This meant that Dawn was in the UK until well after filming was completed.

It only became clear later, when the Living In The Sun show, featuring Dawn and Samuel and yours truly was broadcast in January 2006, that Ricochet wanted to give viewers the impression that all we were doing was setting up a horse-trekking business, and that they had been filming us / me steadily over a period of 6 months. But that was simply not the case. The camera crew had visited us / me three or four times, for a day or two at a time, from mid July 2005 until the first week of September 2005, which was less than 2 months.

During that brief time, for the purpose of their storyline, they clearly expected me to not only have found and purchased suitable horses but to also have my attracted my first paying clients – which was totally unrealistic, but, hey ho, that’s television I guess. Since that was unrealistic, plus the fact that what I was actually doing was not merely setting up a horse trekking business and I was all about creating something that would have a wider positive impact in the area, I brought a new business associate, Anna Twinney, over from the USA in the first week of September 2005.

Anna used to be the only Head Instructor of the famous Monty Roberts International Learning Centre in California. She is almost certainly one of the world’s top five experts on Natural Horsemanship. So I had asked her if she would kindly drop whatever she was doing, fly to Spain, and demonstrate world-class Natural Horsemanship, both for the benefit of local Spanish people and for the TV documentary.


Anna agreed and a few days later she was in Spain.

She and her husband Vin are the proprietors of “Reach Out To Horses”, and we had discussed jointly developing a world-class Equine Assisted Learning Programme for Compassionate Leadership Development, that would be part of the ISEB offering and also something which Anna could offer to her ownclients as, “Reach Out To Leadership”.

Anna, Vin and I actually completed the pilot programme for thisin 2007, but back in 2005, I simply wanted her to demonstrate the relatively alien concept of Natural Horsemanship to the local Spanish people, knowing that this would also be great TV.

This was the first time that Natural Horsemanship had beendemonstrated in Almeria province. Anna was amazing and completely wowed the Spanish audience.

(During the years that followed I brought Anna over severaltimes, not simply to do demonstrations, but to actually runcourses for local people on how to work with horses using her simple but astonishingly effective methods of Natural Horsemanship.)


It was during the making of this documentary in the Summer of 2005, as I looked everywhere I could throughout Almeria province, with the intention of purchasing geldings for the trekking business and to find the horses which we eventually used in Anna’s demonstration of Natural Horsemanship, that my focus began to shift from setting up a trekking business as being the number one priority.

Little by little I began to focus more and more on setting up the first Equine Sanctuary in Almeria Province. This was because even though I truly admired the Spanish people in Almeria, and elsewhere in Spain, for their focus on family and how brilliant they are with their children, ever since I first went to Spain I was often shocked at a very widespread attitude, especially in very rural areas, towards both animals and any people ~ even children ~ who were physically or mentally “challenged”.

I’ll come back to the point about animals in a moment, but before I do, it makes sense to explain a little about why I have said this about the attitidue of many Spanish people towards los minusválidos ~ physically and mentally handicapped people.

I had actually purchased my first horse, Sorca, back in 1999 because she was the favourite horse of one of the most inspiring people I have ever met, Barbara Napier. Barbara lived with her husband Lenox in the coastal town of Mojacar, Almeria. Sorca also lived and worked there, with about ten other horses, at Barbara’s pioneering Hippotherapy centre ~ the first in Spain ~called “Animo”.

Barbara and her husband had personally funded Animo for years and when I met them, they were finding it increasingly difficult to keep the centre going. The blog entry overleaf from 2006, written by Barbara herself, explains both Hippotherapy and Animo…


Blog Entry: Therapeutic Riding

There are many categories that fall under the term ‘Therapeutic Riding’, such as Sport, Education and Medicine. Then there is Hippotherapy which is a direct medical treatment incorporating the body and movement of the horse to acquire a benefit. Hippotherapy is usually used for students with severe physical disabilities and needs a professional to make and organize the class plan.

Many students with severe movement impairment need the use of a back rider who sits behind the student to help keep them in the correct position and to help with the exercises desired by the physiotherapist. The back rider must be a competent rider and understand the disabilities of each student. Hippotherapy is often performed bareback or with a sheepskin to protect against rubbing which can be a big problem for many disabilities and if not done properly can aggravate the problem and could even lead to amputation.

The benefits of any kind of therapeutic riding are many, from improved circulation, the massage of atrophied limbs to massage of internal organs, a sense of caring for another being when you are used to always being the cared for, the freedom of movement and, finally, the elegance of the gait which is impossible to achieve by traditional therapies on the ground. Almost all students achieve a feeling of well-being and a joy in looking down at their surroundings for once rather than their usual ‘up at everything’.



They also get the chance to cover terrain that is normally off limits to them. Just the action of sitting on a horse at a walk without doing any specific exercise can provide many of these advantages. In hippotherapy, unlike the other forms of therapeutic riding, the rider never learns to ride or indeed ever takes control of the horse. The horse emulates the walking movement of the human gait and sends this message to the appropriate part of the rider’s brain so it is clearly important to have a horse with a good stride and in balance.

The horse must also be calm and prepared for unusual noises and movements that the disabled person is likely to make. The preparation and exercise of the horse is one of the most important parts of any therapeutic riding whether it be sport or hippotherapy. Everything that will be done during a class must be practiced by the volunteers first, and practiced many times, until the horse is used to the movements and the objects used for the class such as toys, balls, rings and cups.

Before any type of therapeutic riding begins it is important to have a Doctor’s certificate to make sure there are no contraindications. The staff must be well prepared and have regular training sessions which help to prepare the horse as well. The equipment must be clean and sterilized as most disabled people are much more prone to infection. The sessions are usually boring to the horse as it is led around in circles and figure-eights with a leader and side-walkers and will stop at a stand for long periods. Therefore a good ride in the countryside or a good work-out prior to the session is very important so that the horse is calm.



Exercises include things such as reaching for the ears, lying down either frontwards or backwards in different positions depending on the desired effect, and face down hanging over the horse, which is used at the end of almost every lesson to help clear the lungs of the fluid which accumulates in people wheelchair bound.

Therapeutic riding has been practiced since the end if the First World War when it was used to help rehabilitate amputees. Many disabled people have gone on to competitions and even the Olympics. RDA (Riding for the Disabled Association) is the most common type of therapeutic riding and is practiced all over the world and almost anyone can participate and achieve great benefits.

If you are interested in RDA, the Diamond Centre in England is the main centre for training courses. For information on worldwide therapeutic riding centres the FRDI in Australia (www.frdi.net) has a complete listing of all qualified centres and NARAH in the USA offers university and private course in all of the aspects of therapeutic riding including hippotherapy.

Therapeutic riding is relatively new in Spain but is becoming increasingly popular, but please check with an official association, either national or international, before participating because there are a lot of cowboys out there who can do a lot of damage.

http://www.frdi.net/



Animo ran in Southern Spain for fourteen years with no charge to students and offered international conferences and courses.

All staff including the doctor and physiotherapist plus 40 some odd volunteers worked free of charge.

We were financed by fund-raisers and support from The Entertainer Newspaper.

Animo started way before its time and has now had to stop practical operations due to lack of funding and official support, but still continues to give courses and information to groups trying to set up.

Barbara Napier, President of ANIMO (2006)


I had first been told about Barbara and Sorca by an English friend of mine, back in 1999, just after I returned to Almeria with £1300 in my pocket, having done a couple of days work for a client in the UK.

That same friend and I had been walking together only a week previously when I had had a very strong intuitive feeling about something that would be a very good thing for me to do, and so I said to her, “Hey, Tonya, I think I’m supposed to buy a horse”…

Her response to me was, “Ray, you can’t afford to buy a meal! How on Earth are you going to afford to buy a horse?”… I replied, “I don’t know. But that is what my intuition is telling me”

Then out of the blue Snowdrop Systems, a client in the UK, phoned me up, flew me to England, I did the work they needed, and then they flew me back to Almeria – with the £1300 in my pocket. I met up with Tonya again, bought her a meal, just to prove I could, and she told me that whilst I had been away, since she is a reporter she had interviewed this amazing lady called Barbara Napier.

Amidst all the wonderful things that Tonya told me, she mentioned that Barabara was sad that she was going to have to say goodbye to her best horse (Sorca), because the lady who owned Sorca had decided to sell her.

So I went to meet Barbara, we talked, and I then went to meet Sorca’s owner and I duly purchased Sorca, with the agreement that she would simply continue to live and work at Animo. I had not actually planned on ever “owning” Sorca in the normal sense. I bought her to help Barbara.


Of course that then led to me becoming one of Barbara’s volunteers, and whilst I had done some riding in the UK in the mountains of North Wales a few years earlier, and had loved it, I only really started to learn anything at all about horses by helping out at Animo.

After I had been helping out each Wednesday and Sunday for about a year, by which time I was living in the rustic – nay primitive – farmhouse at El Fonte I told you about earlier, Barbara asked me if I could do her a favour. I replied, “Of course! Anything. What would you like me to do?”

Barbara then went on to explain that a famous Spanish Equestrian Centre had offered to give Animo five pure blood Spanish horses, and she would really like to accept them – but in order to do so, she needed to make room. And that basically meant she needed three of the horses she was caring for at Animo to go live and be cared for elsewhere.

“So I wonder if you could take Abuela, because she has very old now, she has blackouts and she can’t be tusted with the kids anymore. And if you could take Zar, (the Arab) because he is basically homicidal. And also take Sorca, since it is only fair you have one good horse out of the three”

My LOGIC was thinking, “But you don’t know the first thing about looking after horses on your own, Ray! What if something goes wrong? What if? What if?”…. And my LOGOS (intuition) was thinking, “Saying yes to Barbara is the right thing to do. All will be well. So go for it!”….

Which of course I did, and that is how I started out with horses in Spain.


But back to my possibly controversial comment regarding how I had been shocked by the attitude of many Spanish people who seemed to regard physically, and especially mentally challenged people of all ages as being something, well, less than human...

Of course this was not the attitude of all Spanish people by any means, but my time at Animo gave me insights into certain aspects of a mentality, a rustic world-view that was (and very probably still is) extremely common in parts of Spain and no doubt other countries too.

I saw that many people had a certain mentality, which was clearly recognisable but not easy to define, that led to the following attitudes and behaviours, especially in very rural areas:

1. Animals were often treated like they were merely machines. They were used, often abused, and generally not cared for in the way that they should have been cared for by a genuinely compassionate person, and they were often simply abandoned.

2. People with severe physical and mental disabilities were treated like they were less than human.

One of the starkest examples I came across of “2” above was during the time I was helping out at Animo, and it involved a young man whom I will call “Ricardo” – not his real name. He was severely physically disabled and had learning difficulties too. He was in his early twenties. Like many of the children and young people who attended Animo, he needed to be helped onto a horse, and getting on the horse was clearly not a comfortable thing for him to do.


So one day I asked Barbara why he kept coming, when getting onto the horse was obviously uncomfortable for him, and she explained (words to the effect of):

“Ricardo has been coming here longer than anyone. When I first found him, he was living in a small bath in his family’s house, because that was the easiest thing for them to keep him, and that was basically his life – his world. His family did not think that there was anything wrong in that, it was just the best way they could look after him. Like many Spanish people, especially in very rural areas, they just didn’t know what to do with someone with Ricardo’s difficulties”

So Barbara and her helpers (long before I had arrived there) would collect Ricardo, drive him all the way to Animo in Mojacar from his home and he would stroke and groom the horses, and could not wait until it was his turn to ride.

And even though getting on the horse was not easy for him, once he was on there, he had the biggest smile you have ever seen, and that smile never left his face, even after he got back into the car to be taken home again.

This was the LIFE in Ricardo’s life – the rest of the time he was simply existing.

Waiting for this chance to feel alive again.


But by 2005, because Barbara and her husband Lennox simply could not afford to keep it going as an active centre for Hippotherapy, Animo had closed down. (Barbara, however, continued to provide as much help as possible to others throughout Spain who were interested in such work – as indicated by her 2006 blog entry)

Furthermore, in my searching to find suitable horses for the trails, with no real luck in doing so during those few weeks the TV crew were visiting me for the Living In The Sun documentary, time and time again as I scoured the province of Almeria I had found horses, donkeys and mules that were kept in the most appalling conditions. With many of them destined to end up as meat.

Some were in stalls so tiny that they couldn’t turn around. Some were so caked in dung that you simply had no idea what colour they were. It was heartbreaking, and made me think of “Ricardo” and his life in a bathtub. Two different manifestations of the same mentality.

Many of the horses I found were perfectly fine horses, but they had obviously been psychologically damaged by the way they had been treated over the years, and would not be suitable as trail horses, without a great deal of TLC and therapeutic work being done on them first.

And whilst I don’t recall precisely when I decided to focus more on setting up the first equine sanctuary in Almeria, rather than put all my efforts into getting the horse trails business going, little by little the plan became one to set up Horseworld Spain as a multi-purpose Equestrian Centre, which would, at its heart, have “Special Horses helping Special People”. But then I met the con-artists.


Since at the time of writing this mini-autobiography, there is a court case pending against “The Con Artists” in Almeria, where I and another English couple are the plaintiffs, for the moment I will again use false names, but in this case in order to protect the (allegedly) guilty!

Soon after the crew from Ricochet TV finished filming, I was introduced to two English people, let’s call them Betty and Bill (not their real names).

They had purchased land and had constructed a house on it, somewhere in Almeria province, and I learned that their dream was to set up a multi-purpose equestrian centre, however they had badly misjudged their finances and whilst they had the land and quite a nice house, they had no money left to invest in their equestrian business.

I met with Betty and Bill, and listened to their story. Betty had pretty impressive riding qualifications and showed me photos and other evidence of an equestrian centre she had owned with her previous husband in the UK.

Their dream was basically to establish a riding school with Bill and to offer short distance trails into the mountains and desert of Almeria, but they had run out of money and did not own a single horse. They had no infrastructure in place on their land whatsoever that would enable them to start bringing in horses. Apart from a levelled off area of land with a small pile of sand on it, which they intended to turn into a sand-school, there was no fencing anywhere, no shelters – nothing.


When I observed to Betty that it would have been more sensible for them to perhaps have lived at first in a caravan or wood chalet, and to have invested their money into the business that was going to sustain them financially, she replied, “That’s what I did in the UK, and I hated it. So this time I wanted to start out with a nice house”

I wasn’t terribly impressed with their business acumen, but if they were really willing to learn, I thought that in time perhaps I could help them establish a viable and ethical business.

October 2005 was fast approaching and I had work to do with Genus in the UK, so I asked Betty and Bob if they would like to exercise my horses whilst I was away. Obviously the horses needed this, but it would also give Betty and Bob the chance to explore the area on horseback, with their own business dreams in mind.

I had moved my two horses, Sorca and Cameroon into livery at Cinema Studios Fort Bravo in August, whilst the filming for Living In The Sun was taking place. And in mid September 2005, after filming was completed, I had purchased three more horses, which were also in livery at Fort Bravo.

Betty and Bob were delighted to exercise the horses in my absence, and so at the end of September I went to the UK to do some work with Genus, and to have time with Dawn and Samuel.Then in mid October I received an email from Rafa, one of the owners of Fort Bravo, who by then had become a good friend. He was very sad. For reasons we never really discovered, several horses at Fort Bravo had suffered sever bouts of colic and one of mine had died. It was wonderful, amazing, beautiful Sorca. I can’t tell you how sad I was at the news.


Sorca


I returned to Almeria as soon as I could, and so arrived at Fort Bravo a couple of days later to find that several more horses were again suffering from serious colic. Cameroon, so far at least, had not been affected by this weird outbreak of colic. He simply seemed to be broken hearted.

Although I had only purchased him a few months previously, he and Sorca had known each other for years, and one of the reasons I had bought him, was because they were just like husband and wife when they were together.

Very early the next morning, however, I received a call from Fort Bravo telling me that Cameroon was in a bad way. The vet was already there and his opinion was that Cameroon had a twisted gut and was probably going to die.

If you don’t know anything about horses, well, that is about as serious as it can get. But my intuition was telling me that it wasn’t a twisted gut. I KNEW it was a combination of severe colic and depression.

Since I had dealt with horses before that had had colic, basically by walking them through it, I started walking with him. With occasional breaks and water stops, we eventually walked for over twenty four hours, at the end of which he was absolutely OK, having deposited over ten reasonably sized piles of droppings in that period (my rule of thumb for clearing colic).


Well, by Autumn of 2005 Dawn and Samuel and I were all together again in Almeria, and we had met with Betty and Bill on a few occasions. To be honest, whilst I didn’t think they were the brightest bulbs in the box, I did not take them for criminals and nor did Dawn. Betty clearly had many years of experience with horses, and those pretty impressive qualifications to boot, but Dawn and I were not entirely sure that she and Bill were wholly capable of managing our proposed “Horseworld Spain”.

The horse trekking business that Dawn and I had been planning on creating was primarily going to be a Spaghetti Western style equestrian adventure enterprise, offering medium distance to long distance trails – and we were deliberately intending not to offer riding lessons nor short distance rides.

Betty and Bill, however, primarily wanted to set up a riding school and offer short distance rides lasting only one or two hours. So potentially, there was no conflict of interest between us and a clear potential for collaboration. There seemed to be the potential to create something truly outstanding.

I had more work in December and January in the UK, and Dawn hoped we could all spend Christmas 2005 with her mum in the UK, and so, partly as a test, to see what Betty and Bill were like at making decisions and managing money, I agreed that I would purchase horses for use by Horseworld Spain, but that Betty and Bill could initially use those same horses to help them establish their own business.

We also agreed that Betty would use her expertise in order to find and purchase suitable horses – ideally geldings – and that she would do so either before Dawn, Samuel and I left for England, or whilst we were away.


In mid December 2006, on the day before Dawn, Samuel and I left for the UK, Betty and I checked out two horses from Fort Bravo, which on her recommendation I agreed to purchase from Rafa, and which we agreed that Betty would pay him for, with money I would send over to her and Bill, once I was in the UK.

Before leaving I had also purchased temporary electric fencing, poles and an assortment of water barrels, which enabled Betty and Bill to erect temporary paddocks and we moved all of my horses, including the two new ones from Fort Bravo, to the land of Betty and Bill.Then, just before Christmas 2005, having taken out a business loan, I transferred £6500 (six thousand five hundred pounds) into Betty and Bill’s bank account in Spain, in order that they could pay for feeding my horses, pay Rafa for the two I had just purchased and hopefully find and purchase two, maybe even three more geldings.

Almeria had proven to be poor hunting grounds for geldings, or indeed reasonably priced horses of any kind, but Betty and Bill thought they knew where they could find geldings, from people in Alicante. And in early January I had received an email from Betty and Bill, explaining all was well with the horses, and asking if they could spend €3000 (three thousand euros) on a superb gelding they had found. Betty felt he would make an outstanding lead horse.

Whilst I had not really intended to spend so much on an individual horse, remember I was still (am still) practicing TRUST in God, Love, Life, Nature, Man, Community and Business. I also needed to know, if this was going to be a long term business relationship, Betty and Bill’s standards as well as their real level of business acumen, expertise and management ability – including how they used money.


This was (is) a REAL LIFE experiment, with my own life being, in effect, the laboratory and proving ground. So I agreed to their request to purchase this gelding, even though I had not seen him for myself.

Whilst in the UK I had purchased a very inexpensive but great little car for Dawn for Christmas, a SEAT, which is a Spanish make, and I had also purchased a 4x4 and horse trailer for Horse World Spain, which of course I also envisioned being used by Betty and Bill for their business.

On 11th January 2006, I happened to be on my way back to Spain with Dawn’s car (she and Samuel were flying over) and I had stayed over at a friend’s house in London. I had a few hours to play with before I needed to set off for Dover to catch the ferry, so I put on the TV and just happened to catch the beginning of the BBC Living In The Sun documentary, entitled, “Cowboy”, which featured Dawn, Samuel and mainly yours truly.

Although the story as presented gave a fairly lopsidedview of what we were trying to do in Spain, and made no mention whatsoever about the fact that the horse business we were trying to create was part of setting up the first ISEB, as a piece of entertainment it was well made and would no doubt be interesting to viewers.


On my way down through Spain in the SEAT, I collected Dawn and Samuel from the airport and we arrived home together, though I would be flying back to the UK a couple of days later to collect the 4x4, the horse trailer and also collect my daughter Tamsin, who had a great deal of experience with horses and wanted to help out, and maybe even be part of this.

But before I returned to the UK, of course Dawn, Samuel and I were eager to see how the horses were doing and we were keen meet this wonderful new gelding. So as soon as we were settled into our house, we went to visit Betty and Bob and a young lady I’ll call “Jenny” who was now helping them,

Dawn and I were both astonished to discover that there was no new gelding, though there was a pretty new mare. But she was obviously not a €3000 horse, and was so highly strung that she was clearly unsuitable for an inexperienced rider. Apart from the areas that were contained by the temporary electric fencing I had already bought in December, there was no other fenced paddock for horses. However there was a craftsman built and relatively expensive sand-school nearing completion.

I had made it very clear to Betty and Bill before I had left Spain in December what they could and could not do with the money I was sending over. And I had specifically stated that the money I was sending to them was NOT to be used for the purchase of sand nor for fencing in their sand school.

They had not yet paid Rafa for the two horses I had purchased from Fort Bravo in December, and so I asked Bill to get me that money immediately, which he did. Of course I then went directly to Fort Bravo, paid Rafa and apologised for the delay. I was not impressed with Betty and Bill at all, but I decided to sort this all out when I got back with Tamsin and the 4x4, which I did just over a week later.


Because of the pending court case, it would not be appropriate to go into all the details here - but basically what happened next was that Tamsin helped Jenny with the horses for a couple of days, until I discovered that there was no money left and that feed bills etc had not been paid.

So I paid all the outstanding bills, took my horses away from Betty and Bill, and put them back in livery at Fort Bravo, but this time with Tamsin living on site in our old motor-home, to take very good care of care of them, which she did, with Jenny’s help.

Now you may be wondering, “Why on earth would an ex-Policeman turned ethical business consultant let himself get ripped off like this - especially if he is able to intuitively KNOW ?”. Which of course is a very good question – and here is the answer, which may surprise you:

In late Summer 2006 I was contacted by two long time friends of Betty and Bill who were now living in Spain. I’ll call this English couple Dick and Doris, but those are not their real names. They had been invited over by Betty and Bill, to join them as business partners in their struggling equestrian business. Dick and Doris had quit their jobs, sold their cars, sold their home to come to the aid of Betty and Bill.

Again, I can’t go into the details here, but the reason that Dick and Doris contacted me was because they had also been (allegedly) ripped off by Betty and Bill and had basically lost everything – something in the region of (allegedly) £70000 (seventy thousand pounds) and as soon as all their money had gone, they were (allegedly) thrown out onto the streets by Betty and Bill.


Now once Dick and Doris had explained to me what had happened to them, we all went to the local Police station to formally report a major fraud, and lodge a criminal complaint against Betty and Bill, with me acting as interpreter, since my Spanish is pretty good but Dick and Doris at that time did not speak any Spanish.What happened next astonished me.

The Police were very pleasant, and honest. They explained that this did seem to be a genuine case of fraud, and a major crime, but because almost everyone who was involved in any way was English and that official translators would have to be used to compile a very complicated fraud case, with no guarantee of successful prosecution, of course, the investigation itself would cost many thousands of euros even before the case reached the courts.

And so, regrettably, the Police could not justify investigating this case.

So I explained to the Police that I used to be a Police Sergeant, very familiar with investigating and reporting on fraud cases like this. I asked if there would be any problem if I interviewed all the witnesses and put the whole case together, with statements taken in English to be translated into Spanish later.

The Police agreed that this would be the best thing to do – and so for the next three months, along with everything else, I became a “policeman” again, and interviewed many witnesses, and compiled hundreds of pages of statements, which eventually ended up with a solicitor that Dick and Doris and I have hired between us as joint plaintiffs to formally prosecute Betty and Bill.


The thing is, in UK law at least, and no doubt in most other countries, including Spain, the main thing that you have to prove in a case of fraud is something referred to in the UK as “System” – you have to be able to prove that the alleged fraudsters actions were deliberate and systematic.

My case on its own, was not enough to prove “System”. Conversely, the case involving Dick and Doris alone would not, by itself, be enough to prove “System” and from their perspective, the only chance they would have of seeing justice done and maybe getting anything back from Betty and Bill would be if what had happened to them had already happened to someone else.

Which in this case, just happened to be yours truly.

Now – just think about this for a moment…

What are the chances of the person first defrauded by Betty and Bill being an ex-policeman who could professionally put together the paperwork which the Spanish Police refused to do, and who could also speak enough Spanish to make the whole process possible, without official and very costly translators having to be involved every step of the way?

Dick and Doris probably had more chance of winning El Gordo, the legendary Spanish lottery, than of something like this happening, because the simple fact is that at a practical level, given the response of the Spanish Police, they had no way of making any case at all against Betty and Bill.


Now the relevance of this, from a big picture perspective, may still not be immediately obvious – and so allow me to explain my views on this a little further…You will recall that I had bought Dawn a small car for Christmas 2005 and I drove this from the UK, and went through Spain via Madrid. On the outskirts of Madrid I was driving along the motorway, minding my own business, when a car drove up along side me with two men in it. Whilst both were wearing plain clothes, one held out what appeared to be a “Warrant Card” (Police ID) and they urged me to pull over and stop, which I did.

One man remained in the car and the other came up to me, smartly dressed and he quickly flashed his “Police ID”. We spoke in Spanish and he explained that he was a police officer and that there had been a theft of petrol from a nearby garage by someone driving a car with French registration plates – which was why he stopped me.

I was immediately suspicious, since the car I was driving bore UK registration plates, and any Police Officer in Spain would be very familiar with the different registration plates of different European countries. I was still in my car, with the window down, and he reached in and “patted me down” on my chest, asking if I had any drugs or weapons. Even though only a few seconds had elapsed since he came up to the car, because had been a Police Officer myself for 16 years or so, it was blindingly obvious that his behaviour was not that of a professional Police Officer, so I explained that I had been a Police Officer in the UK and that I was not happy with his behaviour and I wanted to see his ID again. At which he ran back to his car and the two men sped off….Clearly the men were not Police Officers, and this had obviously been a pretty feeble attempt to see if this “poor unsuspecting visitor” had anything worth stealing. Of course I reported the incident to the Police and carried on my way.


And the point I am making here is not to do with what happened to me at that time on that day, so much, as it has to do with what did NOT happen to someone else at that time on that day.

What did NOT happen was this: Some elderly couple driving a foreign car on that road on that day at that time did NOT get stopped by these two jokers, and a theft or even a robbery from such an elderly couple did NOT happen.

I took the “hit” instead, and as a result, a happy conclusion was achieved out of what could have been a very nasty situation….It’s a lot like that movie, “Sliding Doors”…And the same thing applies if you take the bigger picture view of everything that happened in the whole Betty and Bill movie…

They had been inviting Dick and Doris to be their business partners even before I met Betty and Bill – and if nothing had happened to me, if I had not already taken the “hit”, and Dick and Doris had had the same experience that they actually had with Betty and Bill – then they would not have a cat in hell’s chance of making a case against Betty and Bill.

So from my perspective, what happened to me in the Betty and Bill movie before Dick and Doris came over to Spain, did NOT happen so that Dawn, Samuel and I would suffer. It happened in order to minimise the potential suffering of Dick and Doris.

Hence the saying, “God works in mysterious ways.”


.

…to be continued!

Documents

Mini Autobiography