hoovering almost as good as meditating!

When Christmas gets to you and your peace of mind is shattered, get Henry out and as he busies about sucking up the bits of jigsaw puzzle and cracker contents you may rediscover the peace of mind which got lost under the Christmas arrangements.  But watch out, he has a mind of his own and as you are rediscovering the simple pleasure of hoovering and going for the long wire, he suddenly stops and the rest of him won't come round that corner and you have to go back and persuade him by straightening out the wire and coaxing him into position.  He is your mantra while you hoover, you depend on him to keep a singleness of attention.  Clearly he has his problems too because he tunes in rapidly to yours and he knows just how to trigger your irritations and equally how to soothe them.  Let Henry test your powers of detachment, he knows what it is to be connected!

God is a feeling, a Christmas blog

I may be wrong but this is what I feel.
I have heard about God and read about God.  I know that God has many names in many cultures and in many religions, many interpretations of what God is.  I have searched for God, prayed to God and wondered about God.  Is God male? female? personal? impersonal? Does God inhabit a place? or is God so ineffable that he/she or it can never be known?
But once this year I felt what God might be and here is the story in a Christmas blog special.  This year, in the autumn I was on a Sinai desert adventure and woke up early under the great big clear sky all set about with stars.  All my worst and most unhappy thoughts came roaring straight at me.  What was I to do?  I was under the marvellous canopy of heaven and here were the few things which had the power to snatch away comfort and sleep!  So, I lay there saying the Lord's Prayer over and over again and all of a sudden, instead of the Our Father being a concept, the Our Father was Father, was the feeling you have when you consider someone who loves you with no questions asked, the supreme parent.  He/She/It was the feeling you have when you are loved just for your self.  Where was that feeling? It was both inside and outside, both personal and universal, it was every single being's parent.  It was a feeling and the feeling was real, as real as the stars in the sky. It was a real Christmas moment.

Starry sky

Santa's little helper has trouble with a mantra

Watch out for this fellow, he's after you!

It's that time of year and my inner Santa (note not my inner centre) is calling the shots!  I am that inner Santa's helper and my goodness Santa keeps me busy.  I get that morning meditation in but as soon as that's over, the list of tasks begins to fill and Santa is so repetitive, no request comes singly, it's over and over again..."Have you got mistletoe? Have you finished the Christmas cards? Have you remembered him or her or them? Have you ordered the turkey, counted the glasses, cleaned the silver, the windows and oh yes, have you decorated the tree?  And when you have done that, don't you think you should start the wrapping up?
So, out of the window goes the mantra and into the space slots that insistent Santa.  It is that time of year and I can feel Santa ratcheting up the demands.  Sometimes Santa wins but just sometimes, I get through meditation, mantra in place and no jingle bells at all.
Good luck to everyone else dealing with that red hatted old tradition, keep him in his place and once Christmas is over, make certain he goes back up the chimney.

Oh dear King Lear! a poor old Grandpa in a wheelchair

This trendy Granny went to Islington to see an all women play based on King Lear.  Lear's Daughters is set around the presence of a King who isn't really there and it is the empty wheelchair that sets a Granny thinking because the whole play is set around that empty space.   The all women theatre company, the Footfall theatre are impressive, their footfall is quietly powerful:  whilst using Shakespeare's words they weave the story from their own perspective as Lear's inheritors. They are inheritors not just of his kingdom but of his welfare.  He has handed his kingdom and himself over to them in the vain hope that the gift will insure his future.  But they and we are facing the whole question of caring for the older person (the Grandparent!!) especially now when the grandparent is likely to live for some time.   While you watch the play, you are thinking that the wheelchair is empty, you are with the daughters dealing with the content of the wheelchair, they have their different stories as you do about their life in relation to the old man, he is an object with needs but his existence isn't his own, it belongs to them, the inheritors.  But they have their own lives with their own problems and their own tendencies to contend with.  And it suddenly dawns on you, that you and everybody else is the person or will be the person who inhabits the wheelchair.  And it suddenly dawns on the daughters that they have killed their own humanity in dealing with Lear as an object.
There are going to be so many of us grannies and grandpas shortly because we will be kept alive and we may be thinking we deserve good treatment because after all haven't we given them our kingdoms whatever that kingdom may be?   BUT what will they do, the inheritors, they won't know that the empty wheelchair is waiting for them as well, they won't necessarily know that this is "the promised end"  So if you are free over the next week or so, get along to the Hope Theatre and feel yourself edging towards the empty wheelchair.

crisps and red wine don't improve meditation

Those who advertise crisps and red wine entice us by making us think we will feel better when we open the packet and eat the delicious crisp made from an innocent potato grown in our good old English fields!  The wine advertisements show happy merry people sipping ruby red wine and having conversations round a polished table with all the people we might like to imagine ourselves to be friends with.
Government health warnings say something different:  they say that we are much more likely to be overweight from all the saturated fat in the enticing crisp and we are much more likely to suffer diseases from drinking too much red wine or any of red wine's alcoholic relatives.
So, as we reach out for the glass and open the packet of cheese and onion crisps we are torn between our desire for the first and a slight concern that we might actually be turning into a roly-poly alcoholic medical statistic.
There is a third point...and this is familiar ground...How does crisp eating and red wine drinking affect my spirit!  Not good say I!  My good friends the Brahma Kumaris don't drink wine, I am not sure about crisps and I know that they are up earlier than me, the red wine drinker.  Their discipline gives them more time for God and more time for helping others.
Watch the film from Just this Day 2014 on You Tube, you will meet Sister Jayanti and two other speakers.  I don't know how many crisps the other speakers might munch or how many glasses of wine they drink but I do know that Sister Jayanti keeps clear of the enticing messages of the advertisers, you just can't imagine her WITH a packet of crisps let along eating one nor could you see her with a glass of wine, it just wouldn't fit.

Go Ego Go!? An Inside Story

Before you read this blog entry or maybe after, listen to The Inside Story to get a sense of what Ego as a tool can become. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iqe0GhObL70&feature=youtu.be

All dressed up for the Queen 

It is a well known fact that people think that to become spiritual they have to get rid of their ego but is this really possible?  While we are alive in a body we HAVE an ego and that surely means we CAN'T BE the ego. We know we have a face and feet, ears and eyes and which are useful but WE AREN'T THEM; they may partially define us to ourselves and to those we meet but we really know that although we have a face, feet, ears, eyes and nose, we aren't them. We don't try to get rid of them do we? We have them for life and we take care of them; wearing shoes to protect our feet, covering our face in the wind and the rain, blowing our nose, cleaning our ears and generally keeping these useful things serviceable.  Our ego is what we face the world however once we get the idea that we aren't the ego, we have a chance to decide what to do with it. We don't have to let it decide what to do with us, we are the one in charge.  Just as we might dress in suitable clothes each day, in garden clothes for gardening, garden party clothes if we are invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party, we can choose to use our ego in the most suitable way for whoever we are being at any moment.
So if we really can choose what to do with the ego we have to begin to understand what we are. The wise have told us that we are pure spirit and if that is the case, the ego is just a part of the way we express that spirit.   We may not think we have a choice but if we know we aren't the ego, then we must be able to choose what to do with it.  We can be careful what we do with it, we can tend it, not allow it to be selfish, we can resist anger and temper extreme emotion, and if we find that steady place we become like the sovereign who plays her part with equilibrium.  I am confident that meditation helps us find that place of spirit by resting in stillness.    Then we get a chance to become the person we are really meant to be. And that person is not ruled by an untamed ego, it is ruled by a tender, loving Self.

Who you might see on the bus on the way to St Martin-in-the-Fields!

Look carefully at the passengers getting off the buses at Trafalgar Square, on Wednesday morning, especially those from Willesden!! You may a smallish woman dressed in a white sari (maybe with a white macintosh if the weather goes on like this), she has a lovely smile and everyone on the bus may be so enchanted with her that they may follow her off the bus and into St Martin-in-the-Fields.  I will be there!! and I will be as pleased as pleased to see her because she is Sister Jayanti, European Director of a worldwide movement called the Brahma Kumaris, a group of world well wishers who wear white and get up at 4.00 am. She may come by car though which will be sad for the bus driver but she will still be in Trafalgar Square heading to St Martin-in-the-Fields.

Emily Johnston

I have written about them before and about her but never before about her travel arrangements.  I think I had imagined that she travelled by lightship or at least by a most sophisticated method, not just on the good old London bus like you and me.  But this is a woman who will surprise you by her humanity as well as her special light, you are bound to like her just as I do because she will make you feel worthwhile, feel your very best self and her smile will spread itself across your face without you thinking you have moved a muscle.   Because she reminds you of your best self, it reminds you to do the same to others you meet and if we all tried to do that we might really make a difference to those people who travel on the bus with US.  She is coming to talk to people who are interested in meditation, (many Grannies and Grandpas as well as young people) in the morning.  There will also be Emily Johnston in there, another great speaker and lover of meditation. And coming along too you may See Father Laurence Freeeman, stepping  into St Martin -in-the-Fields to lead people from all faiths and maybe some from none in a meditation.  This is Just this Day 2014 and if you want to come, there will still be room for you!