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12th February
There is a saying that goes: “pain is inevitable, suffering is optional”. This refers to the changing nature of the world around us – the world of matter. Finances, relationships and the health of our own body and those of our loved ones are constantly changing. Whether we suffer that change or not depends on one thing alone and that is, our ability to embrace, accept and be at peace with the change. This is essentially what living in presence and in the present moment is all about.
6th February
Life does get busy in today’s world with more and more things to do and places to be. This mostly has to do with the external world. Let us lay two intentions for each activity that is before us or that we must perform – the first, that we may give it our fullest attention; and the second – that more important than the activity is that we remain connected to the world within us so that whether or not the activities go according to plan, the priority is to be centred within this state of Being. Of Being Here Now, fully and completely.
5th February 2025
We now live in a world where profit and money appear to be our gods. Those who have are celebrated while those who do not have are shunned and to a large extent become invisible. We hide them away in sweat shops and slums somewhere far away or walk past those who sleep on the pavements or under bridges in cardboard boxes and tents. Those who have accumulated wealth and are comfortable still find something missing – a gap within them that the advertisers assure them can be filled with the next new product of service, yet this quest becomes a never ending shopping spree that often arrives with homes that now look like warehouses and debts that then need to be paid back at the expense of freedom and peace of mind.
Ultimately, if we are all One indivisible Being that transcends our bodies, then so long as there is someone or something out there that is suffering and in pain, we will feel it too since we cannot separate ourselves from them even as we place ourselves in islands of affluence or build walls around us to keep those “others” out.
We are approaching a time in the evolution of our species where this kind of living can no longer be sustainable for the planet and our own communities wherever we may be. It begins with us seeing the value in every life that surrounds us, irrespective of how much it is worth financially or appears clothed, their sexual orientation or their ethnicity or belief system. Seeing involves the sense of sight, while closing one’s eyes and feeling the breath and the very life force within our bodies will give us that greatest gift of all – the experiencing of our Oneness and connection to each other. It must be a knowing and an experiencing because it is only then that we might help others to also experience this truth. It remains academic and mere theory until realised.
Join us for a day of sitting, breathing and experiencing this together at Claridge House, Surrey on the 1st March 2025, and then on 6 day retreats with Assisi Retreats in Umbra, Italy from March until October 2025
4th February 2025
What many of us refer to and label as Consciousness, Awareness, God, “All That Is” or Truth is meant to contain all of the known and unknown parts of the Universe – which has now come to also include the multiverse, the dimensions beyond this tangible universe that we humans appear to live in. It is becoming clear that our five senses and mind are incapable of grasping even a single droplet in this one Universe that we occupy simply because of its sheer scale. Our sun and planet sit in a galaxy called the Milky Way. Scientists have estimated that our galaxy aline has approximately 100 thousand million stars, while there are estimated to be another 100 – 200 billion more galaxies out there in a universe that is continuing to expand. Each galaxy could have any number of stars ranging in the billions. As we look at these words, calculations, theories and estimates, the actual reality of such vastness and space almost feels inconceivable and beyond our wildest imaginings.
This is why many religious and spiritual traditions advocate practices such as meditation. Many of the greatest scientific minds also advocated meditation, even if they may have called it by different names. Until we begin transcending our five senses and our minds, we will be attempting to understand something that is beyond our five senses and mind with tools that have limits, our mind and senses. Whatever we imagine God or consciousness to be will be limited by our imagination and what knowledge we have accumulated within it. This might be why our Gods have over the centuries taken on very human characteristics such as anger, vengeance, hate and jealousy, with countless wars fought over them and far too many lives lost. It is in the practice of meditation that we begin to transcend the mind and its five senses to move beyond thinking and imagining into actually realising and experiencing Truth, whatever label we may choose to call it by. It is through the practice of meditation that we will begin to move beyond form and the feelings of “us” and “ours” against “them” and the “others”. It is through meditation that we will experience ourselves as One and as love, that invisible force that draws us together.
3rd February 2025
It is so easy to get caught up in the political, economic, environmental and social events that are taking place in the world, especially when it effects our most basic needs such as shelter, food and security. For many of us, our concerns transcend our own physical needs as we feel the pain and suffering not only of our loved ones but our neighbours and those living further afield in lands touched by wars, scarcity and the environment. After we have done all that we believe we can physically, it is time to begin the inner journey of balancing and finding harmony with the world around us so that we might find some peace amidst the seemingly mad world. In determining whether we have “done all that we believe we can”, a Teacher of mine would ask her students their age and, for example if they said they were 20 years in age, she would instruct them to spend 80% of their time in physical service or activism to bring about the change that they desired to see and 20% on the inner journey with meditation and the practice of allowing and accepting the world exactly as it is. If the students answer was that they were 80 years in age, She would instruct them to spend 80% of their time on the “inner” journey and spiritual pursuits that would help them to be at peace with the world and 20% of their time on changing the world.
As helpless as we sometimes feel in light of what is happening around us, many of the religions and spiritual teachings point toward one teaching and that being, we are all connected to each other in ways that are not so apparent when we rely only on our five senses. Citing two examples, from Christianity comes the teaching “love thy neighbour as you do thyself” while in Hinduism the Advaita philosophy speaks of non-dualism or there being just One, indivisible existence that the senses mistakenly take as diversity in form. It is from here that we might begin to understand how the journey inward in finding the peace and stillness within each and every one of us makes the world around us a better place. If our inner worlds were but a reflection of the world around us, the reverse must also be true and experiencing and living this peace from moment to moment can only balance itself out in the world, be it the politics, economics, environment and social conditions.