Don't get mad get even!

A Report in today's press (see  http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/health/news/article4022272.ece) suggests that getting angry makes heart attacks and strokes more likely.  Think of all the descriptions there are of anger and you get the picture of a person on red alert.  Red mist! so angry he looked as if he would  burst!  or in Shakespeare, the call to arms in Henry V. In Henry's speech, the summoning of rage is contrived for a reason but of course the anger spoken about in the report is the habit of anger which eats up our consciousness.  So, why would meditation help you might wonder?  It is calming and you get to see what is happening, you can discover that you are not the anger until you join it and then you are able to view the anger in you and replace it with quiet.  A mantra helps, it has it's own power to clean up your problems.
So, go for evenness not anger.

In Peace, there's nothing so becomes a man

As modest stillness and humility,

But when the blast of war blows in our ears,

Then imitate the action of the tiger:

Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,

Disguise fair nature with hard-favored rage,

Then lend the eye a terrible aspect,

Let pry through the portage of the head

Like the brass cannon, let the brow o'erwhelm it

As fearfully as doth a gallèd rock

O'erhang and jutty his confounded base,

Swilled with the wild and wasteful ocean.

Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,

Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit

To his full height. 

Protect yourself with meditation!

This statue which is half perfect and half destroyed by time and conditions comes from the Antikythera Shipwreck.

I saw it at the Archaelogical Museum in Athens last year and was struck by the way the perfect part had remained so unblemished although it had been  at the bottom of the sea for nearly 2000 years.  You see the Antikythera had sunk somewhere between 60 and 50 BC !  and nothing from it had been touched until 1901.  I am showing it to you  now because it's condition is analogous to the way meditation preserves the fine qualities of the soul.  The right side which is perfect was buried in the sand and the left side of the sculpture was in the sea.   I wonder if you believe me that the soul can be preserved  by meditation when everything we know about anyone is so much on view.  And yet, don't you really know that your innermost part is quite quite still if you let it and that it will not age or suffer decay if you allow yourself time to realise it.  Two thousand years is a long long time and see how he is calling out his message to us still.

pants give a chance to pause

Some people say pants and some say knickers but I say pants!  Every  5 or so years, I dive into Marks and Spencer and renew the pants supply.  Just like the spring, this cycle of pants-buying happens, I must subconsciously look at the old ones and realise that it's time for new.  Anyway, this time the pants-buying took on a more sombre aspect.

from this 

to this

I found myself thinking how many more times will I buy pants in this lifetime?  If it's every five years or more, then it's a finite pants- buying cycle in a lifetime.  I bet you think you'll go on getting new ones forever but you won't.  Just as you suddenly realise when your feet have stopped growing that you won't need new shoes just because your feet have grown, so you realise that one day no more new pants for you!

stopped by beauty

Which is why meditation is a must, it is the one thing which connects you with something beyond the body, something you can only really sense when you are really still or you are all alone or you are suddenly stopped in your tracks by something utterly beautiful.

wherever!

I plan while I am in this present cycle of pants to maximise the things I do, I plan to go to Singapore and to Sinai but in the plan is making sure I keep my eye out for any exit signs.  You see, what would be the point of buying any more new pants if you weren't going to be a pants wearer any more, you were going to be free of the need to have or to do or to be anything particular.  You need to make plans for freedom and plan just how many more times you need to go to Marks and Spencer's lingerie department. After all, it would be really neat to get down to the last pair before you wing your way off to wherever it is to become whatever you really are.

Meditation helps the elderly and reduces loneliness

You wonder if you are on the stage or in the audience once you get the idea that life is a play.  And then all of a sudden you see that although you aren't two people, you are in both places, you watch the play but you also play a part in it.  It is only when you realise that the run of this play isn't going on forever, or maybe even realise that it isn't destined for Broadway or the West End of London, that you want to be more established with the part of you that is the audience.  The play has changed from comedy to sit com towards black humour and then on towards a conclusion, the actors have been dwindling, quite a few have left the stage, the curtains are a bit frayed and the orchestra want to go home.  Are you going to be left on the stage as the lights fade, bereft of friends and uncertain of where you are going, or are you going to be the witnessing person who can leave all the stories behind and go home untouched?  

When you are amongst Grannies and Grandpas, you notice that they aren't so fleet of foot any more, they love watching the children but can't easily join in with all the sport, they like to watch more than participate and some of them leave earlier than either you or they would like.  The point about a meditating person is that they have been practicing leaving every day when they meditate, they have been practicing knowing that they are really just in the audience and that the play is just a play.  It helps especially when things don't go so well, it helps if the play isn't such a success and the actors are booed off the stage, it helps when you don't get the parts you want and it helps when you or someone you love are called off the stage rather suddenly.  See below, the man meditating, he isn't missing any drama, he is quite happy just practicing being alone without being lonely.  Meditation helps loneliness. And see this article on Mindfulness and Depression from the Guardian on 23rd.  Serendipity isn't it.

                         

Even Justin Bieber must have a Granny

What would his Granny think

I am wondering if Justin Bieber has a Granny or maybe even two Grannies and how they might have felt about his arrest.  It isn't a lot of fun seeing a son or grandson getting into trouble but if you were sitting at home thinking that all that success and money was bound to be bad for any boy let alone your own, perhaps you would be relieved that he had been brought up short.  

What any Grandmother would wish for their own grandchild would be happiness, and as most Grannies have been around a bit, it's fair to say that they have seen what things give short term happiness but don't last and what can give sustainable happiness.  

This Granny thinks meditation helps.

As a Granny, I don't want to be a killjoy but it isn't rocket science to realise that we are fooled by life itself into thinking that we will live for ever and that our good health and happiness are our own right.  If I could persuade anyone, especially my grandchildren and their friends that they could cushion themselves from the shocks that life can deliver by meditating, I would do so.  But I know that whilst life is still dishing up the excitement I am not going to have much luck.  So if, like Justin Bieber, your boy is driving a lamborghini along a Highway which has been cleared by his followers who are all applauding him, is he going to listen to his old Granny at the side of the road waving her stick at him saying "Stop and think and take up meditation?"  No he isn't!  He is only going to listen when all the things that compose his life are falling away; the friends have gone, the lamborghini is reclaimed and the money has run out.   But his Granny might have gone on meditating right through all of his wild life and then when he finds himself bereft he might wonder why she is still out there, gardening and meditating and perfectly happy and he might want to find out why.  And of course he would find that his Granny was one person who had always loved him.

There's an App for it!

The Headspace App man

Andy Puddicombe's handy app for meditation comes from the  getsomeheadspace website.  The New York Times says that Andy has done for meditation what Jamie Oliver has done for food. Lots of people have found having access to the App has given them the possibility of bringing meditation techniques into their busy lives.

Father Laurence WCCM

 But you have to use it and keep using it and rather like food, you need it to be delivered regularly into your system to be really satisfied.
There is another aspect to meditation which maybe should be born in mind given that meditation is now so easily accessible.  Meditation has a spiritual aspect to it, a very real connection with God if that is what you're after.  Of course you may only want to get less stressed or find it easier to take exams or to concentrate on whatever you need to concentrate on but you can find a meditation which will give you that plus a sense of the great Being which lies behind and through and is hidden in the whole creation.  The App you need for that is the desire to go further plus a meditation which has provenance in that area.  If you are a Christian, the World Community of Christian Meditation might be for you, if you are interested in the Vedic Tradition, the Study Society or School of Meditation  might be for you, if you are philosophical, the School of Economic Science might fit the bill, if you are devotional, perhaps the Brahma Kumaris Raja Yoga would suit you.

Dadi Janki BK 

Sri Shankaracarya

So if Andy's app gives you an appetite for meditation and you want to realise you are really a spiritual being, take the extra step!

 To have a teacher who has taken the steps before you is like being roped to an experienced mountaineer when you climb a difficult peak.  They support your efforts without your even having to ask, they support your effort because they have created a path for you to follow easily.

Go on, you know it makes sense!

Don't forget the best stories for God's sake!

Simeon cradles the Christ child, Rembrandt

Just one week after Candlemas which is the celebration of  Jesus' presentation at the Temple in Jerusalem where he is  recognised by the two elders, Simeon and Anna, we hear that a third of children don't know that the story of Jesus came from the Bible, 54% of children are never read or read Bible stories and  one in three Britons don't know these stories either.  Read all about this in today's papers.  This may be bad news but my optimistic self is with Simeon and Anna who were faithful for many years to the promise of God that they would see the light of God before they died.  They kept coming to the temple and were rewarded for their faith because they saw Him and knew He was the promised one.  This is a great story, one of many which we should be telling to our children.  

So grannies ho! you are the ones holding on to traditional beliefs, grannies are still going to Church, grannies believing in the stories they were told, grannies tending graves, grannies singing hymns, grannies saying their prayers, grannies meditating.   (When I say Granny, it includes Grandpas too!).  

We shouldn't be afraid of telling these stories, they are about heroes and heroines with real spiritual power.  Children love the magic of Harry Potter, and they would love these stories if we told them with the same imagination, they are full of magic, after all, Harry Potter didn't turn water into wine did he?