The primary purpose of Turbulent Priest is to provide a safe space and a forum for the crafting of myself, an ongoing work in progress, an iterative process of dialogue between the world as I experience it and the ideas that these experiences elicit.

More recently my life has been focused upon the Pilgrimage I made in India and Nepal between 2019 and 2023, so the underlying premises offered are mainly of a spiritual nature and constitute the lens through which I sharply observe the world. In them I bring together the modern psychological perspectives and insights drawn from Analytical Psychology (1) and the palimpsest of experiences and spiritual research from the four year Pilgrimage Cycles that are its precursor (2).

The early posts in this blog date from the conclusion of the Pilgrimage Cycles, when the website was initially called ‘Forever Sadhu’, as I made the slow transition from the life of a Pilgrim and renunciate on their higher quest for eternal truths, to the traveller returned bearing the wealth of those experiences back into the world. Encounters with the disingenuous, the reprehensible and the absurd, and, more occasionally, the inspirational and the wonderful from the world through which we journey, constitute the inspiration for many of the tales that find their way into these posts.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1. Analytical Psychology is the school of psychology founded by the renowned Swiss psychiatrist Carl G. Jung. Reference citations in support of the ideas and views made here are offered sparingly as relevant, together with suggestions for further reading, given the aim is to produce a well informed, insightful, but accessible set of observations and narratives, not formally argued academic treatises.

2. The Pilgrimage Cycles were carried out between 2019 and 2023 in India, with a short sojourn in Nepal in 2021. Originally recounted as a travel blog in an earlier website ‘In the Spirit. A Journey to Self‘ these are now being prepared into a monograph ‘The Road to Salvation’, which includes information and advice on spiritual traditions and the spiritual journey, arguably the most meaningful life journey we ever undertake.

3.  The term  ‘turbulent priest ‘ actually refers to the name purportedly given to Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Beckett by King Henry II, as with “Will no-one rid me of this turbulent priest?”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_no_one_rid_me_of_this_turbulent_priest%3F

Header image. Author in a delicatessen in Granada, Spain. June 2018.

4. The range of delicacies for sale at the same delicatessen in Granada, Spain. June 2018.