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Perspective
The Secret to .....
At first, everything is an adventure.
There is so much to explore and see and listen to and do and make and learn and take apart and experience. You reach and crawl and pull yourself up and toddle, investigating your world, awed by the miracles of light and sound and texture around you.
Sometimes you cry and sometimes you laugh. Sometimes you are cross and sometimes you are not. Sometimes you are tired and you sleep and sometimes you are wide awake and ready for adventure. All of life is in you. T…
There is so much to explore and see and listen to and do and make and learn and take apart and experience. You reach and crawl and pull yourself up and toddle, investigating your world, awed by the miracles of light and sound and texture around you.
Sometimes you cry and sometimes you laugh. Sometimes you are cross and sometimes you are not. Sometimes you are tired and you sleep and sometimes you are wide awake and ready for adventure. All of life is in you. T…
The Game Of Life
There are two games taking place.
In the first game, the surface game, let's call it 'Drama', all the twists and turns of the game, all the other characters and events that provide such tension and excitement for the character only serve to make the character more absorbed in The Game.
In the second, hidden game (let's call this Realisation), the same characters and events have an entirely different function: to show that the character is not real, that The Game is not as it appears to be.
Like the…
In the first game, the surface game, let's call it 'Drama', all the twists and turns of the game, all the other characters and events that provide such tension and excitement for the character only serve to make the character more absorbed in The Game.
In the second, hidden game (let's call this Realisation), the same characters and events have an entirely different function: to show that the character is not real, that The Game is not as it appears to be.
Like the…
'Stress is just your thinking…’… so why can’t I change the thoughts?
An enormous liberation occurs the moment it is realised that reality is not an objective truth. That it changes in appearance, meaning, association, import with the perceiver.
This is huge.
Because up until that point it was believed that the world was exactly how it appeared. There was no space. Life was just a continual attempt to control, manage or deal with an objectively fixed reality. Until one day, a teacher speaks in such a way that their words create a crack in the concrete and, through …
This is huge.
Because up until that point it was believed that the world was exactly how it appeared. There was no space. Life was just a continual attempt to control, manage or deal with an objectively fixed reality. Until one day, a teacher speaks in such a way that their words create a crack in the concrete and, through …
Stress: approaching as simply as possible. But not too simply…
Today we begin our month long on-line course 'STRESS, getting real with challenge'. The challenge for me is how to do justice to such a multi-layered, enormous topic in 30 days.
Because understanding stress isn't as simple as telling ourselves 'it's just my thinking'.
There are stressors that are humanity-wide (eg. violence, poverty, captivity, discrimination...). There are variables that which, when not right for the individual, can also create stress (eg. noise, temperature, stimulation, slee…
Healing
‘Spiritual bypass’ is perhaps the biggest risk as we explore what is true about ourselves and about the world.
It is a term coined by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist and refers to the ‘tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks’.
And it raises the question,
How do we understand the two aspects of what we are: the pure intelligence, presence and beingness of life …
It is a term coined by John Welwood, a Buddhist teacher and psychotherapist and refers to the ‘tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks’.
And it raises the question,
How do we understand the two aspects of what we are: the pure intelligence, presence and beingness of life …
To see you
Shakespeare, Byron, Baudelaire could search the furthest corners of language and still not find the poetry to convey who you are. Nothing can come close to describing you. No words, no music, no painting, no sculpture can bring you to life. All falls short. You are beyond words. Unique, unmatchable, unquantifiable. The indefinable essence of you. Only you.
The miracle of you.
And I can’t see it. I can’t see you because I look at you and all I can see is what I need. I need you to be more this and …
The miracle of you.
And I can’t see it. I can’t see you because I look at you and all I can see is what I need. I need you to be more this and …
I'm terrified. How awful / amazing / neutral.
On Monday evening, I'll be giving a talk on what I have learned about how people can easily start living the joyful, peaceful, creative and loving life they are designed to live.The simple fact that I am giving a talk is all the evidence I need of how this works.
For decades I had an abject fear of public speaking. Even the mention of a presentation at work made me feel sick and faint. I couldn't even ask a question in a meeting. I tried everything to get rid of that terrible anxiety: courses, de…
What do you believe?
"Beyond our own galaxy lies a vast expanse of galaxies. The deeper we see into space, the more galaxies we discover. There are billions of galaxies, the most distant of which are so far away that the light arriving from them on Earth today set out from the galaxies billions of years ago. So we see them not as they are today, but as they looked long before there was any life on Earth.” www.nasa.gov
Are we experiments in a cosmic Truman Show? A version of the matrix? A creation by an omnipotent God…
Are we experiments in a cosmic Truman Show? A version of the matrix? A creation by an omnipotent God…
What do we want?
I read an article yesterday about ‘Wantologists’ in America who help people identify exactly what it is they want in their life (link below for anyone wanting to read it). Wantology originated as a process to help businesses make purchasing decisions and is now offered by consultants for individuals.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/the-outsourced-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
It is easy to scoff at the idea of course and at the ways we are increasingly relying on buying in help fr…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/opinion/sunday/the-outsourced-life.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
It is easy to scoff at the idea of course and at the ways we are increasingly relying on buying in help fr…
Stillness or change?
I was teaching yoga to a group of beginners in Amsterdam and about four weeks into the course I introduced a 10 minute meditation session. For all of them, it was the first time they had ever done any meditation. At the end of the lesson we discussed what it had been like. A couple of people said that is was the first time they could remember not having constant mental chatter going on in their minds. This silence only lasted a minute or so of the ten minute session but it was a revelation that …