Mind health

Let’s look now at diet and health. 

We were talking in a small group recently about binge eating. One of the participants told us their eating pattern was totally out of sync with what they want it to be. They were eating junk food every evening and then were full of self blame which then led to more feelings of hopelessness and more binge eating. 

What to do about that? 

It can look like the way to make the self stable or stop the neediness is through more control of what we’re eating. It ca…

In his book, ‘The Body Says No’, Gabor Maté writes in great detail of the indisputable link between stress and a wide variety of diseases.

He demonstrates how stresses, often imposed on the developing psyche in childhood, continue to play out in patterns of behaviour in our adult life that create physically debilitating and even fatal illness.

This field of medicine is called psycho-neuro-endocrine-immunology. It investigates the link between stress within the system and the emergence of disea…

What is your ask of the world?

What is your ask of your spouse or partner?

Of your children, parents or siblings?

Of your clients or customers?

Of your colleagues or employer?

Of your bank manager or landlord?

What is your ask of politicians?

Of individuals or groups?

Of businesses?

Of health-care providers?

Of your pets?

Of God, nature or the universe?

What is your ask?

It’s important to know.

Our ask is our most powerful means for navigating our lives and for interacting with…

[Excerpt from the book WELL]

We could consider that all reality - of self, other, past, future, everything - is essentially a film. A film created from thought, belief, association and imagination.

And the immediate question (especially in a conversation about physical and mental health) might come ‘Well that’s all very well but I need to know how do I get into a new film?  A film in which I am healthy/happy/strong/clear-minded/loved/admired/free? A film in which I am not depressed, anxious, l…

[Introduction to the book WELL]

This book must come with a warning.

It is a warning based on what people embarking on courses or conversations or books about the nature of the self can find themselves saying: 

‘I came here to feel better. But actually I feel worse: my sleep is terrible / my anxiety is increasing / I’m more depressed than ever / my physical complaint is intensifying / the suffering is worsening.’

And that, of course, looks like a failure of the course provider or author. The …

[excerpt from WELL]

This is an invitation to the absolute and infinite.

Maybe you are old enough to remember a time when television was something that began and ended.

Programmes stopped at midnight. And began again at 9am the next day. And sometimes there was no television in the afternoons. When there was no television, the screen displayed the test card or lines or static.

Not only was it tightly limited in time, television was of course also limited in scope.

In the UK, for example, unt…

[Excerpt from SANE]

Without an understanding of what the mind really is, mind management is just a playing out of confusion.

The self exists as a thought or belief or as a state of mind. It arises in that moment in whatever appearance it takes on. It doesn’t exist outside of that. The idea of who we are is whatever the mind is doing in that moment.

For the self to try to manage the mind creates a false separation and unfulfillable effort. Because self and mind are the same thing. A belief try…