Blog right on! Snakes lying round the path!

You win some, you lose some!

This is what I have decided to do;  to write a weekly blog, not a daily one; better for you, better for me! And I will do it at the end of each week so you can chew it over during the weekend.  It has been so so interesting blogging my way along, seeing and sharing the trip wires which come with being a human endeavorer, to see what progress may have been made and then from a clearer observation point, see those things which are less tractable, less amenable to change and to determine that never mind how obstinate the obstacles are to moving, they will go if there is a vision of a space without them.
Yesterday I saw just how quickly the gates of the heart can swing shut and there was nothing I could do about it, nothing at all and me a meditator!  The eye (or the I!) perceived the object of discomfort, the heart shut, speech retired, smile froze and all this in the twinkling of an eye, or the shake of a devil's tail.    No horrid speech, just frozen speech but there it was, as clear as putting up a label saying "I am upset, hurt, and unable to find any kind words to improve yours or my state of mind".  I expect I will get other chances but the unfortunate part is that it took place and will have consequences, the only good I can find is that I can see its source lying curled round my inner being and its source is me as a separate individual.  So, blogging forward to freedom from the horrid black thing round the heart, I wonder how long it will take for it to dissolve?  Any thoughts?

Blog on or Blog off?

One space

Another's space

I said I would just blog until the end of November but I am rather enjoying it so should I blog on or blog off?  I started with the idea of creating a record for my grandchildren so they would know that apart from fish fingers and Christmas trees, there is a deeply held belief that finding a way to be still is a lifeline.  It is a lifeline when emotions run high, it is a lifeline when emotions run dry.  It is a lifeline when you are successful because it keeps you grounded  The payback to not being over elated in success is that it is a lifeline when things go belly up.  And the really big one, death or whatever death is; that moment when you lose sight of someone you love for what appears to be the forever of your life, at that moment, you might just find your way to the space in your heart where there is no changeability.  This no-change place is as close to God as you can get, it is how I imagine God is, a non-changing, utterly benevolent, loving totality.  See the spaces people have used to find God, so blog on or blog off?

Yet another's space

An old space

Moved by Misery

I was sent this link to Ali's Song,http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1sF-yhqIP8.  Please watch it because we should all do what we can to help those who can help those who need it.  
In the summer of 2013, singer and trumpeter Barbara Snow heard a BBC Radio 4 item on the work of Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders in the Syrian civil war. In it, a boy called Ali was reported to have said ‘you won’t believe what I have seen’. These words inspired Snow to write and record a song with her band Chico Chica and donate the proceeds of the sales to the Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders Syria Crisis Appeal. www.msf.org.uk/country-region/syria‎

Sitting here at my kitchen table with hens clucking outside, a big pot of coffee on its way, I wonder what is the best way to help.  And I wonder if meditation helps and if it does, how?  Possibly by just tuning us in to the idea that other people are not really other than us, they are our brothers, sisters and children.   They aren't any different to us, they just happen to be placed somewhere awful and we are placed wherever we are.                                             

Meditating might just help us become more human and a bit more aware of other people.  I am crossing my fingers  that it will do.

A History of Meditation and John Main

If you follow this link to the WCCM home page, and you wait until this video loads up, you can hear Father Laurence Freeman telling the story of John Main's adventure in discovering meditation and how the adventure was passed on ..and on and on.  It is a wonderful wonderful story and makes a compelling case for meditation in the Western world plus it is a superbly good tale.

Let them eat cake

This one is not made by Archie

you've seen this one before

Don't you feel for Marie-Antoinette, poor spoiled Queen who, when told that the people were hungry, said "let them eat cake".  She gets such a bad press, unfeeling, cruel and then of course the people said "off with her head".  And off it came……ouch!  But, people say things from where they are; she, being well fed and cared for, couldn't imagine the awfulness of the hungry people.  We often forget to look and see what is really happening, mostly we forget to say thank you or notice when people have done a marvellous thing.  Worse still, we forget to look and see how many things are showered on us daily, the light of the sun, the sweetness of the air and the growing power of the earth.  Just remembering that as a meditation would make us look more tenderly at the world and the people round us.  And sometimes a cake gets a conversation going.  It certainly started a conversation in my head.

Meditation, a new message

Abracadabra girl

friendly dog

The message taken from the meeting of people yesterday at St Martin-in-the-Fields was that the one thing meditation does is to show the innate indwelling spirit in each person.  To be spiritual doesn't mean just wearing the  outer clothing even though the outer clothing has a function and does send out a signal so we are able to recognise a vicar or a monk or an imam or a rabbi or a Brahma Kumaris.  To be spiritual is to recognise your own self as spirit and then to see that everyone and every jolly thing is spirit.  By pulling back for a length of time from the projected world, we find a space beyond time, the present and then when we open out again, everything seems more lovely.  And there are consequences, we may feel better about ourselves and more understanding of others, we may be just a bit more patient, a bit kinder, we may see Christmas lights in everyone.  And oh yes, the Christmas lights were at St Martin! they had camel coats on though but their smiles and greetings shone through the camel coats too.
So, be encouraged to find out about meditation from somewhere good, and if you meditate, keep going, it will help you and others you meet and make life sweeter.  Click below for what happened in Brisbane! where a philosophy school offers meditation and quiet time.

the smallest dog

https://soundcloud.com/612abcbrisbane/the-peace-found-in-a-few
Nice to be back at home though, fish pie bubbling in the oven, dogs walked, shopping done and a weekend ahead.

The King pin 

                               

tomorrow, today, Just this Day

Today is the day I said I would blog to, actually it is tomorrow because we will need to get up early early to get to St Martin-in-the-Fields to be there when the doors open.  The Church fills immediately with those poor homeless who haven't had anywhere to sleep the night before and who come in to the warm and lie along the back pews in the warm Church for a bit of a sleep.  Today, I was there doing a sound check with tomorrow's chanting Nikki and no matter how loud we turned up the register, they slept on.  But tomorrow, people, I don't know how many will come to hear Nikki and the speakers representing different strands of traditional meditation and meditation as it is offered today.  I will be there with the roving microphone with my fingers crossed that everything has been remembered and that people come and love hearing about meditation and go away really inspired.  Before that happens, I have munched my way through fish and chips and several chocolates and I am crossing my fingers for a good night's sleep.  Hope to see you there!

Taking your own advice is much the most difficult.

keeping calm like a lotus leaf

viewing things from a distance

You are in a position where you tell people how to avoid getting upset!  You write a blog about it, you meditate your socks off and people think and you think yourself that you are teflon coated.  Then a couple of blows fall on the ego and there you are, struggling for equanimity.   My daughter, who I usually advise on the very same subject, advises me with the very words I would use to her and I must pull myself together and take the advice.  So, to the person who has caused the ripple, I offer no resistance and to the daughter who has offered the advice, thanks.  Bearing a grudge is childish even if it seems justified so get over it quick is her message to me and my message to myself.  Am I over it? time will tell!

Taking a view

Christmas lights

You have read before on the Grannyblog about the Brahma Kumaris.  Yesterday evening was spent at their magnificent building in London, Global House where they had a programme of World Meditation.  I want to write about them again because they are so remarkable and if you ever get a chance to meet a BK, or go to a BK place or a BK event, you will immediately understand why I am saying this.  I am going to call them the Christmas lights because being with them is just lovely.  You immediately feel amongst friends and without anything in the way, they greet you as if you were the one person they wanted to see.  The genuineness of their greeting isn't packaged, it isn't forced, it is how they are and I can tell you, that if you were feeling low, a B K would cheer you up right through.  Their own meditation and spiritual practices are profound and committed but you don't meet a face which indicates superiority or one which wears it's spiritual effort as a cover.  There they are, beaming, dressed in white, smiling, laughing and out of their white pockets come mobile phones and they are brilliant at all the techie stuff and they give you sweeties, little delicious sweets which taste of cardamom and which they have made in their spotless modern kitchens as an act of devotion.

If you come to St Martin-in-the-Fields this Wednesday morning for Just this Day which as you know, I recommend as THE meditation event not to miss, you can look around and see my Brahma Kumaris friends, they will be dressed in white and if you catch their eye, they will smile and you will feel better.  Two things to add, first their Christmas play for all the family which is FREE, is at Global House from the 6th to the 11th December, www.wondariya.org.  Go, if you can with your children, because you and they will meet people who are a wonder in themselves and you will see why I call them the Christmas lights.
See Sister Jayanti, the European Director talking about the essence of Just this Day on YOU Tube and cross your fingers that you can meet her one day.

Tendulkar

 There is a model of a man which is transcendent, its quality is simple consciousness.  Sachin Tendulkar is perhaps a modern version of a man who transcends the ordinary but the charioteer here on the right is an ancient Greek one.   Both he and Tendullkar are perfected models on a template of transparency.  You are that as well, a form on a model of pure perfect transparency.

Share your Meditation

Yesterday was a bad bad day for news;  the news was about people I really really only want good news about and it was bad bad bad.  It couldn't have been better to have read yesterday about the difficulty of giving comforting words because in this particular case, the words are like sawdust and all I feel is sad and sort of paralysed.  My husband was the meditator in the evening, I just put myself into a warm corner and read a mindless detective novel, I just couldn't meditate.  But gradually his meditation and the warmth of the fire seeped into my bones and the day passed and we clambered wordless into bed and the night passed.  And with the morning, hope dawns and meditation is possible again.  This makes me realise that there is a vast resource out there created by people who have meditated and prayed over the millennia, it gives comfort to feel that goodness is there to tap into all and all the time.

Helping one another is good

Mind your language when comforting friends

Friends and a cup of tea help

Keep sociable

In a survey by AXA insurance company, more than a fifth of those questioned said that they were at a loss to know what to say when faced with a friend or colleague in a crisis.  Humour and philosophy were more welcome to someone in difficulty than being given hearty advice like 'get a grip'!  Rather late on in my life, I begin to see how clumsy 'good' advice is and also that everyone is working their own stuff out;  you can only really keep them company and be nice company too.  The little report by Patrick Kidd on this subject is on my favourite page of the newspaper, where there are little bits of random rather interesting things; Nigella and Gordon Ramsay tussling over roast potatoes, a recipe for pasta and then on the left, a sad fact that people are going to see their GP because they are lonely and don't see anyone from day to day:  Kate Jopling, director of the Campaign to End Loneliness, is quoted as saying "far too many people are feeling so lonely, and are so at a loss about what to do about it, that they end up going to see their doctor."
So clearly when you have finished meditating, get out there and be nice, make someone happier than they were before they saw you.  This will also help doctors who can get on with mending wounds and curing illness.  Meditation definitely shouldn't be a selfish thing, it should be a way of making us more useful by becoming more tuned in to others.

Mystery!

Mystery, mystery,mystery, it is all a great big mystery and this is not Hercule Poirot kind of mystery, it is the mystery of being; being something or just being.  We seem to have a life with a shape but from time to time you see that it is just a shape, a small happening on a great sea of mystery.  But the great sea of mystery certainly isn't chaotic, it seems to be full of intelligence, fully blissful and complete without endings or beginnings, difficult to explain but sometimes clear to the unwavering inner eye.  Meditating on this mystery, the inner eye can connect with and recognise itself in that mysterious totality.  And then it turns outwards again and gets back on with whatever it has ahead.

In you go into the great sea of mystery! 

Good words and true from Shri Shantanada Saraswati

If you begin to be what you ARE, you will realise everything, but to begin to be what you are, you must come out of what you are not.

You are not those thoughts which are turning, turning in your mind; you are not those changing feelings; you are not the different decisions you make and the different wills you have; you are not that separate ego.

Well then, what are you?  You will find when you have come out of what you are not, that the ripple on the water is whispering to you 'I am That', the birds in the trees are singing to you 'I am That', the moon and the stars are shining beacons to you 'I am That'.

You are in Every Thing in the the world and Every Thing in the world is reflected in you, and at the same time you are That - Everything.
                                      (Shri Shantananda Saraswati: Good Company,p22)

Looking for inspiration?

Noisy gig over, it is on to Just this Day and there is just one last job to do; editing and finishing the programme.  So, I am looking to all my spiritual heroes, Sister Wendy Beckett, the Dalai Lama, the Pope, various people who have a vision of the real stature of a person.  There are the obvious ones and then there are those we meet in our everyday lives who inspire us through their actions.  We can't change the external things in our lives, we can't stop typhoons or halt disease, we can't easily stop someone intent on burglary or violent crime and we will never know for certain if our meditation will affect another person.  But perhaps we can know that if we meditate faithfully and with the aim of clearing the heart of troubles caused by anxiety or hurt or jealousy or lack of love, we will succeed even if it is just a little by a little, bit by little bit.  The great heroes and heroines of this way of meditation and contemplative prayer are all inspired by love and their inspiration and their lives filter through to us as examples.  So they are all going to find their way into the St Martin-in-the-Fields programme just by having inspired me to put it together.

Place of inspiration

The Magic of a Person

When someone does something with their whole heart, it is magic.  Yesterday's gig, Free to Fly was a showcase of magic.  Each person performing, comedy writers and actors, guitarists, singers, drummers, stitch up acts and Beam me up Scotty on the piano were each one, a wonder.  I want to introduce anybody who happens to read this blog to Gabriella who is like Ariel in The Tempest, a creator of magic, a changer of atmosphere, a lightener of mood, a tuner in to people, someone you would want to have as your friend as well as your entertainer.  She will write a song for you, amuse you, entertain you and altogether make you feel good.  Isn't that the magic of a person? to make you feel as if you're a star too.  And she did and they all were, so thanks to Isabel Saunders, Poppy Pickles and the Frockettes, Andrew Scott, Adam Green, John Cook, Lucy Story, Tony Knox, David Leach, Sam Story, Tom Johnson, Will Purves and Ed Meltzer of the Rapscallions, thanks to Emma Rasmussen and Don't Shoot the Mermaid, and Alex Lato of the Fuse and to everyone who helped.  And thanks to meditation for keeping me and my ever-loving husband sane and to paracetemol for bringing my head back to normal.

Grannies up for a gig

In the hall is a great mound of things; candles in hurricane lamps, cushions, crisps, table covers, plants in gold-coloured pots and black tissue paper, there are dog beds and dog food and a suitcase and a rather trendy black top hanging on a hanger.
So, where do you think this Granny and Grandpa are off to today?  Would you believe it if I told you that we are putting on a gig!  6 different acts from young and moderately young and not so young performers at the 20th Century Theatre in Notting Hill Gate this very Remembrance Day evening.  We feel so trendy but even in all the excitement of packing all this in the van and explaining to the dogs that London is not like Cambridgeshire, we have remembered to meditate.  And this is why; we are oldish and we have realised that all the merry days and even the dreadful days only last so long. Our still fairly active limbs will only keep going as long as they can so to avoid the moment when we can't climb into a van and head off wherever we want, we spend an hour a day getting familiar with the unmoving and unchanging so it shouldn't be so difficult to leave behind  the things we have identified ourselves with when the time comes.
In the meantime however, pack in as much joy as you can and share it so it doubles and trebles and multiplies.  And if you are in the vicinity of Westbourne Grove, London today at 7.00 pm with £10 in your pocket and you have read this, come and feel FREE to FLY https://free-to-fly.eventbrite.co.uk.  There are still tickets available on the door.

Missed it!

this

or that

The weekend won, it created its own illusion on top of the reality of simple consciousness!  We rise early;but hair-washing before a jolly weekend slows everything down and although my Granny locks are short and easy, they take just as long to dry as they ever did and so sitting back in bed with the Nigel-delivered Saturday paper meant that by the time we were up, so was the sun and so were the hens and the dogs were waiting to be walked and our lives were begging to be our one single reality.  A telephone rings; fairly urgent matters need to be resolved, we need to get out there but somewhere nagging the mind behind the idea of all this busyness, is that meditation is not done.  What this shows so clearly is that without committing to meditation, our lives seem to be the only reality and our spirits rise and fall with the ups and downs that come along.   So, I see my husband coming up the road with the dogs, I'll feed them and then I promise to complete 30 minutes of meditation however much the mind suggests I can get away with 10.

or this

caught out by Bernard

Bernard said, just as we were leaving yesterday evening that we should remember the dawn, that 45 minutes around the dawn is the most magical and most auspicious time to meditate.  How did he know that the autumn mornings, the warmth and comfort of the duvet, the early morning cup of tea in bed with a dog or two for company and a book had taken such a hold?  Of course he was right on cue so despite getting back home so late and watching Question Time and Newsnight and catching up with pressing things, the morning call was answered.  It felt good to be out with the Buddha as the sun came up.  Can I commend it? Yes! But does it take a little extra autumn effort? Yes it does.  Of course as Bernard said, this is the best time of year to restart the early bird scheme because the sun also doesn't get up tooooooo toooooo early.

The Best Gurus in town?

Leto, mother of Apollo Goddess of motherhood.

Down the side of Hannah Betts' article were 4 best gurus for meditation.  Now, be careful here, meditation isn't just lighting candles and tapping on a Tibetan bowl and thinking beautiful thoughts, meditation is a distinct science and not to be confused with a spa day.  Meditation has been practised for millennia and transcends the everyday.  Buddhists train themselves to meditate, Sadhus practise with austerity, Monks spend years concentrating their thoughts on one thing alone so just by waving a few incense sticks around and shutting your eyes and stopping you aren't going to achieve immediate enlightenment.  We may, as her article indicates, sleep better, feel better and our skin may improve but the real deal is a commitment to a daily practice which connects the individual meditator with a tradition of meditators, both past and present.  For access to this capital of peaceful practice, it is good to fall in with the right people, to make sure that the traditions of the practice you are about to become a part of have this connection.  After all, if you were going to put your money in a bank, you would want to make sure that it was safe wouldn't you?   So take care to find your teacher and make certain that they will support you on the way.  Make certain too that you will respect your teacher or your meditation so much that you will commit to it.  Your teacher commits to you so you should try to commit to your teacher or your tradition.

There's an app for it!

You may have read about it, you may have the app for it, but meditation is the thing!  To quote Hannah Betts in yesterday's Times 2 talking about mindfulness, " What was once an obscure yoga term has become the buzzword du jour, meditation the crucial means of acquiring it."  So there is not only an app but also an appetite for meditation and no wonder, it is just the best antidote to stress.  The numbers of high-flyers and celebrities who now meditate is legion; actors, pop stars are all apparently taken by it and say it improves everything from your skin to world peace.  Now, there are a few Grannies around who could have told them that and let me just say for all the meditating Grannies out there that we are thrilled to bits that people have taken to something so perfectly wonderful.  If you are interested, come along to St Martin-in-the-Fields on Nov 20th by at least 9.30 to get in the mood for meditation and to hear from 4 great speakers. www.justthisday.org is the website to register your attendance.

He definitely meditated

When in disgrace!

These three dogs were found this morning having emptied the contents of their entire stomachs round the kitchen and they are in disgrace!
Of course, they can't do anything about it, they can't tell you what happened, they can't clear up, they can't hide the evidence or tell you why it happened and more, they can't apologise.  You just put them out in the garden and get clearing, mopping, dousing everything with dettol and then taking them into the shower and shampooing them.  It gives two opportunities, the first one is to realise how helpless they are and how reliant on you, and the second, that they don't carry disgrace or upset any further than the next tin of Winalot.
Human beings get to do a lot of jobs and some of them aren't just what they want as an early morning activity but at least we can see what is going on in our bodies and in our minds and in our hearts and turn each thing to whatever purpose seems best.

Meditation out of character? what do you say?

Grandpa the country person

You might be surprised that today we went out shooting! Tweed coats, hats, guns, cartridges, beaters, other people with guns, sloe gin, good lunch and lots of dogs.  This may seem out of character for a meditator but it isn't out of character for a countryman almost born with a tweed babygro.  The miracle is that this man meditates and that takes him beyond character twice a day for half an hour.  So thinking a bit about this idea of the character of a meditator made me wonder what you would make of the shooting meditator.  We think of meditators in a certain way, meditation goes in our minds with robes and religious practice, with vegetarians and with the naturally eco-sensitive person who practises non harm to all creatures.  Those people are to be commended, there are not all that many of them who manage to practise all these commendable things but there is not a scrap of doubt that peacefulness in all things is conducive to meditation.  However, the message of this blogger is that meditation is the thing which is conducive to changing your thoughts and deepening your understanding and taking you beyond the realm of character and upbringing.  My observation of my particular country pursuit meditator is that you would probably just take him for an English country gentleman until you asked him a question that needed a really considered answer and then his years of meditation would give him that extra perception and his advice would be free from reference to his character or ego, he would be able to just listen  to YOU.

Life without a mobile phone

If you think you are free from attachment, a good test is to lose your mobile phone!  It isn't the dear little metal and glass thing that you are attached to, it's your own identity, all those contacts stored in there with numbers that you can bring up and touch and speak to.  And what happens to your meditation when you lose a part of your identity is that the mind plays havoc; thinking of ways to find it, to replace it, and what to do while you haven't got it.  Then, the reasonable mind suggests that you should take this opportunity to be without it, to just drop that identity.  Meditate? then take a walk without it before going to Lost Property at Peterborough Station and then the 02 Store.

The Wonder of One!

Yesterday David put me on the spot!  He asked how One becomes not two!  I asked him to give me a day to try and put into words something which is a feeling for One rather than a science.   I hope that putting it into words will turn the feeling into something understandable!

One boy

One and one and one and one makes 4 boys

David works with pianos, sound is his primary way of receiving information.  If David presses one note, it is just one, then he presses several, one after another and although he has used many notes you have made one piece of music.  Or you have one instrument playing solo, then the one is joined by several others and you have one group.  Within the one group there are several ones but they are now one group.  Or, two musicians play a duet together, it is one duet.  The thing itself is always One no matter how many components it has and each component is One.  The same with words, all made up from several letters but each letter has its own integrity.  One is wonderful is you start looking out for it, constantly changing and multiplying but always detectable in anything which is.
Here is a question, does One change?

No Exit from Burial Site?

Burial Mound

The sign which made us laugh!

When we went to Sutton Hoo yesterday, we saw this sign on the right which this blog is here to disprove!   All the good men and women of true conviction say that death is an illusion.  And why? Because life is an illusion?  Not that life doesn't exist but that it just exists to either point us to or delude us away from an existence which isn't dependent on something and is beyond what we see, hear, smell and touch.  But then are we meant to turn away from life while we have it?  Oh no! I don't think so, I think that we are meant to use it and to leave a good record of what we really are and of what a wonder a human being is.  The mound on the left  is the mound of  King Radewald where his treasures were piled up  to accompany him on his journey forward.  The treasures still exist  but where is the King?  He only lives on  in the collective memory, he definitely exited from the Burial Site.  So what might a record mean? What is a life lived well?  You can see Mary Cook, my artist friend painting a portrait which will be a record of somebody.  And words and actions if they are good may live on in people's memories of us.   And if there is an afterlife what then?  Surely our good deeds or the King's heroic deeds will carry us and him forward to wherever we and he go.  So it is better to do well and be remembered for that than to be mean or jealous or unpleasant to your relatives and friends.