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!

Marriage, Murder and Meditation! and Just this Day

You may think I am going dotty putting marriage, murder and meditation into one message but this week there were two reports.  One that divorce among the over 60's is on the rise and the second that if a married couple bicker, the risk of heart disease rises!! Click on the blue if you don't believe me! it's apparently been proved scientifically.  

from this

to this without too much stress!

Emily Johnston

Father Laurence Freeman OSB

Now, I am a married meditator! and I am over 60 and I agree with Sybil Thorndike, (famous actress mostly only known to others over 60!)  who famously said when asked if she had ever considered leaving her husband "Divorce, never!  Murder, often!  This is how the mind of a married person thinks from time to time and the older we are, the more likely it is that our life partner's habits and foibles will find just the spot to send us into orbit if we let them."  But here's the trick to make certain that you stay triumphantly together to the end and that you don't get heart disease from too much bickering.  If you meditate, you just have to let each other's unreasonableness or quarrelsomeness go, otherwise you just meditate on murder!! and when you come out of meditation, the world looks different, it isn't so compelling and you aren't cross or upset anymore, so I can commend it as a very ordinary over 60 (by quite a bit) wife, mother and grandmother.  But if you are in London next week on November 26th and you come to St Martin-in-the-Fields you can join in Just this Day an annual celebration of stillness and meditation.  You will hear 3 people telling you why and how meditation is the key to living well and finding balance even when the going is tough.  And if you look carefully at all the people there, you will see many a granny with a grandpa at her side who have stayed together and whose hearts are ticking away pretty well.  Your speakers are Father Laurence Freeman, B.K Sister Jayanti and Emily Johnston who all try to give this message  to all the people they come into contact with, with teachers and students, children and the old. They and I look forward to seeing you.  If you live in Australia, India, China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Russia or any place in the world, you will be able to watch the whole thing on You Tube the very next day.  Don't worry I will put the links up on the blog as early as possible on the 27th.

BK Sister Jayanti

You are the star in the firmament

Over the last few blogs you have seen some remarkable people, Father Laurence Freeman and Sister Jayanti are among the few who are both exemplars and teachers.  But there is an important message which both of them give and which all of us can take comfort from. They may be the angels and stars for us but they aren't asking us to become their clones and imitators.  The world needs a few saints, but it needs doctors and lawyers and bankers and cleaners and wives and husbands and sons and daughters, it needs dentists and engineers and scientists and adventurers, it needs you and me to be US but to be US remembering what those saints and angels and stars and exemplars are telling us.  We are all made up of that starry angelic stuff but knitted in different shapes and with different strands of talent and ability.  The one thing we share as long as we are well and in good health is to let that inner star shine brightly.  YOU ARE THAT so how about it!  Come and hear both Father Laurence and Sister Jayanti and Emily Johnston encouraging all of us to be our best starry self on November 26th at St Martin-in-the-Fields in the morning.

Granny goes viral! Wow!

Well who would have thought it!! Granny goes viral and it was all by chance or was it?  I went along to Global House for a meeting and there were the two film boys making this little film and they wanted someone to interview about what the Brahma Kumaris meant to them.  And there I was, hair newly done, looking like a cross between my own mother and the Queen and they put a nice white shawl in front of me and this is what happened.  It is true too, the Brahma Kumaris are remarkable, they only wish people to enact their own birthright which is to become the spiritual person they really are.  It doesn't matter if you are a formal Brahma Kumaris, there are plenty of them but it does matter that their message is known to be a universal human message.  It is just the same as Love your Neighbour as Yourself.  So, why not do that? why not?  And you never know, you might just go along to your friendly neighbours and find that there is someone with a camera and a shawl and you become a star, just for a minute.  Of course the real message is that everyone is a star and just needs to be assured of it! 

And the Dalai Lama had toothache

I think that I was told that when this interview took place, His Holiness the Dalai Lama had a toothache and Father Laurence had an ear ache.  It doesn't show which says a lot for whatever it is that they do!!! Father Laurence will also be at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 26th and I hope that he doesn't have earache then.  Come along to hear him.  To find out more about him and about the other speakers go to www.justthisday.org

Sister Jayanti, a woman who speaks to the world today

Here is a link to a film made by BK Sister Jayanti for Just this Day.  She made it a few years ago but as she is speaking on November 26th at St Martin-in-the-Fields, it seems a good idea to give you just a little taste of who she is.  I am deeply pleased that many of you who haven't met her will get a chance to hear her speak in person.  However, if you can't get to London on the 26th, you will be able to hear and see all the speakers on You Tube.  Hooray for technology!

Meditating Grandparents are the BEST

Isabelle looks happy doesn't she!

Mrs Laura Hyde

This is a message to mine and every other grandchild: Meditation helps you in life and is a lifeline to the part of you which watches the whole show, which doesn't change along with the hair and the teeth. Put quite simply if you don't find that space inside yourself when you can, going through the process of ageing without inner help can be difficult and meditation is the one thing which makes the ups and downs of life less confusing. 
When you are a Grandparent you are definitely likely to be over 50 but more likely to be over 60 or even 70. And there are only a few grandparents or people of grandparenting age who are likely to be climbing Everest, running marathons and sailing single handed across the oceans like Robin Knox- Johnston. Most of us are not going to be high-flying pensioners, we are mainly going to be low-flying! So it has to be a good idea to be prepared for this stage otherwise we might take it all too seriously and be full of regret that our toes curl inwards and that reaching our toe nails, never mind about painting them, is a triumph! No more stiletto shoes for us, we may be looking for the velcro fasteners. And our teeth aren't waiting to be whitened, they are waiting for us in a glass! We aren't thinking Jacuzzi, we are wondering if we should put a handle on the side of the bath in order to steady ourselves as we climb in!! It takes a rather determined state of mind to make it through this part of our lives. It takes a bit of humour, a bit of patience and an understanding that this is the way it is, was and ever has been and use cheerful reason to find a point to it. Most important though is to discover what YOU REALLY ARE. 
So find out about how to have a spiritual life while you are young or if you are a granny, find out because its never too late! And here is your chance....On November 26th in the evening, (7.00 pm) Just this Day finds itself at St James's Church, Piccadilly in London with two remarkable women, Laura Hyde and BK Isabelle Gauthier facing questions from a young panel on what having a spiritual life means. You can come along, you can bring a friend and if you can't come because you live too far away you will be able to see the film of it. .
Register by clicking on THE INSIDE STORY

Boethius and banana skins

blessed boethius severinus

There was a Roman called Boethius who lived in the 6th Century.  He had everything; intelligence, fortune, estates and long established family.  He came from a long line of brilliant and well known men of the time and had two sons who just been promoted to high position.  He loved Greek philosophers and was planning to translate the whole of Plato into Latin.   He was charged with treason and everything changed.  No longer able to translate Greek Philosophy, he had to become Greek Philosophy.  That's the only choice when life lays down banana skins in your path, you are forced to live the things you aspired to, you either live them or you don't!

Boethius with Philosophy

In Prison, he had an imaginary conversation, or was it a real inner conversation with Philosophy, his long time friend and he wrote it down.  In it, he complained to her, he tried to rationalise and understand the things which seemed to have happened to him. She stood by his side and because the circumstances were so extreme and there was nothing to protect him from accusation and disgrace, no rationalising what had happened, he  had to listen, he had to nakedly keep going towards what was going to be an end to this life of success and then disgrace. He had to give up everything else!

Meditation,worth trying early!

What he didn't have was the complete addition to philosophy, he didn't have meditation, he just had to think it through and reason it.  Meditation gives just one more defence against the wretched cosmic banana skin, it means that every time a banana skin looms up in your mind, you have a friend, you have a mantra or a point of light to put your attention onto.  Now, it may not do more than give you a tool to keep going but underneath it develops a strength of being which will stand you in the only stead you can rely on when everything shouts it's compelling message of division at you.

If you are interested in meditation and why it is a positive step, come and hear from 3 marvellous speakers at St Martin-in-the-Fields on the morning of Wednesday, November 26th.  To find out more go to www.justthisday.org

feel familiar, banana skin!!

The Great Cosmic Bake off! just desert!

When I was in the desert with the great big view of the night sky and all the myriad twinkling stars and the vast vast panorama of galaxies and shooting stars and all of them such miles away that the light I was seeing with my eyes had left some of those stars hundreds of light years ago, I couldn't help realising that having such an earth bound view of things was trying to put a limit on what was really there.

Playground

building blocks

I read that in the beginning the Creator made the universe including all the stars and planets and galaxies and suns and moons.  I think it would also have included all the elements, space, air, water, fire and earth.  Then he/she made what is called Universal Soul and I imagine that to be whatever it is that makes us or any other thing alive.  Then He/She took some of the universe and some of the stuff called soul and made every living being, using different amounts of universe and different amounts of soul and made different mixtures so that different things have different percentages of one element or the other.  And just think what He/She made;  trees and all green things, fish and all the creatures that live in the sea and in rivers, He/She made lizards and creeping things,  He/She made insects and flying feathered things and He/She made us and gave us all sorts of different physical shapes, some tall, some short, some round, some long and to each one He/She gave the right sort of skin and hair for the place they were going to live.
Looking around that ancient desert with all the shapes in the rocks I think that He/She sat here and tried out all the shapes, moulding them out of all his created elements and then breathed  his life breath into the ones he had made and loved and then he scattered them all round the world in their right places and withdrew to a place he could watch them from.  That watching is the bit that makes us most like him.

mathematical formula or recipes

Granny in the desert without her rollers! what does she find?

Several Desert Grannies and Grandpas

Our new home!

There were quite a few Grannies in the desert on my desert odyssey plus at least 4 Grandpas! and this, oh you grandchildren everywhere is  a bit about it:
Can you imagine 15 people who didn't know one another, whose average age was probably 70 meeting at an airport, taking a bus to the desert and becoming best friends in under a week.   I'm guessing this average age by adding in the youngest at 30 and the oldest at 83.  Anyway we were well beyond the usual age of the average rucksack carrying, jeans wearing, sun seeking person on the flight to Sharm al Sheikh.  Most of the people on the flight were there for a good holiday in the sun with bikinis and sunblock but we 15 with our average age of 70 and our borrowed (mostly) sleeping bags and mats and rucksacks were quite easy to pick out among the rest of the travellers because we mostly wore our walking boots which were too heavy to go into our borrowed rucksacks.
Our adventure was an adventure into Sinai and an adventure into Silence.  Our guides were two, Sara Maitland whose book Silence had inspired most of us to try this out and Abi from Wind Sand and Stars, a travel company specialising in historical and spiritual journeys.  We were all there in our new togetherness for an exploration of silence as a spiritual journey in a place whose history makes your eyes swivel in your head because it is so remarkable.

More Grannies on adventure

You know I couldn't take my electric rollers (see earlier blog on rollers in the Sinai desert) but hey, who needs rollers when our hair would be covered with it's new black on white keffiyah to keep the sun off our heads.  But were we all prepared for camping out under the stars right there on the sand on our mats with our sleeping bags?  Were we all up for the splendidly basic hole dug in the sand in a rather flappy tent for our basic outgoing needs?  Well, not exactly used to it but definitely up for it and after 5 days we all with our average 70 years could have managed months like this.  What we were prepared for but were still surprised by was the deep deep peace to be found in this magical place and the deep deep companionship we discovered amongst ourselves in sharing the deep deep peace.

Father Justin in the library

On our last day of venturing into Silence, we went to St Catharine's Monastery at the end of the Sinai peninsula, famous for its icons and for being the longest surviving Monastery in continuous praying and living.  We met Father Justin (click on the link to listen to him talk about the ark in the wilderness) an American monk with special responsibility for the library.  Only a totally universal spirit, (aka God) could have summoned out of the whole world a monk with such expertise and knowledge of the texts but also of the technology he would be using to make these texts available, to bring them out of the sandy boxes and shelves of the ancient place and actually put them on line for ANYBODY to read.  He told us about the way some scripts hid even more ancient scripts which had been overwritten but which with the modern magic now available could be read.  This is the magic of the real detective, one who can read hidden messages previously only done by holding texts up to the light or by  dripping ammonia onto the papyrus.   But now it can be done by our 21st century techie magic.   This form of hidden message is called a palimpsest and it made me think that seeing the hidden thing is the magic working and that requires knowing that there might be a hidden message.
I found that the whole adventure was a sort of palimpsest, it magically showed that under every Granny there was an ageless person, that in the desert there is a hidden wealth and that nothing is really just as it seems.  You may have to leave behind some of your old ways of looking as well as your electric rollers if you want to read the secret but it is definitely worth it, definitely definitely definitely!

our bedrooms where we have stars at night

Grannies go on airstrikes to counter terrorism

BK Sister Jayanti

I asked this wise woman a question.  I said, it may be easy to wish people well who are suffering from disease and poverty and in every way deserve to be wished well but what about those whose heart seems to have hardened and who are full of hatred?  We read about these people everyday in the newspapers and we see them on the news and they seem to be all covered in black clothes as well as having what we take to be black hearts.  And there may be someone in your life who appears to be full of anger or hatred, a neighbour who doesn't like your hedge! someone who is jealous of something you have or do, it maybe what we call a righteous hatred of wrongdoing. That feeling of hatred may be right or wrong but it is hard on the heart.  So, what did the wise woman say and why did I believe her?
She said that you wish them especially well because hard heartedness is only a cover on an essential goodness and probably comes from some old old feeling of being other than themselves.  I believed her and because this question had vexed my mind I tried it out.  This is how I did it and you can try it too.  This is a Granny air strike!!!
You think of the person or the persons, but you don't think of them doing the hateful thing, you don't see them holding a knife or boasting of a beheading, you imagine them waking up in the morning before they have remembered that they have decided to fill their mind with hatred.  You know because you do it too that they have to do all the morning things, they have to do the washing up, feed the children (or maybe dole out porridge to feed their fellow terrorists), they have to brush their teeth and wash their faces and go to the loo, they maybe even tidy their beds and that's when you wish them well, before the horrid thought has got into their head and before they have put on the black clothes and the balaclava and before they have even started to speak the words of hatred to themselves or to another person.
I believe her because I have found it works and you would believe her if you heard her or saw her because she has a purity and kindness about her which are different to the everyday person trudging around Tesco.  She is tiny and beautiful and you could almost put her in your pocket but then you
would have her to yourself and the rest of the world wouldn't.  So, you thank her, I did, from the bottom of your heart and you go on your Tesco way and she remains at her place;  you do your work and she does hers but because you have encountered one another, you begin to see that your work is the same as one anothers and you must both go about and do your best in your work.
You can come and hear her tell you about how you do this work on November 26th at St Martin-in-the-Fields in the morning.  To find out more, go to www.justthisday.org
I hope to see you and your friends there to share in a great big airstrike of goodness.

Grannies wishing granddaughters everywhere well

one granddaughter

two granddaughters

One of you is off to another country, one is off to a new school, and one of you is about to be 13.  Where does a Granny fit in?  Good question.  She can't come to school with you, she can't go to a new country except to visit and that's a long way and what would the dogs and the hens do never mind Grandpa!.  You should know though that wherever you go, she is thinking the best thoughts about you, wishing you the best of life ahead.  You see, she has been through all the things that lie ahead of you, finding new friends in a new place, discovering that she is much sillier than one person, a little tiny bit cleverer than another, liked by one person but not by another so she is well qualified to wish YOU the easiest of ways through all the things ahead!  She is too old to think she could come with you, besides which, she must stay at home and look after Grandpa and he has to look after the dogs!

a gaggle of grandchildren

many grandchildren

So, you going to another country and you, already in Singapore, you, becoming a teenager and making lots of new friends in a new place, and you, the oldest and busiest, Grandpa and I, we can see you in our mind's eye and can wish you the best of days ahead.  And Grandpa, who is good at saying long prayers, says your name every night when he kneels by his bed.  Me, I say the Lord's prayer, think of you all and jump into bed quick but you are in that prayer especially.  

Won over by One

I have blogged about the BK's who I love and here is a chance for you to get to know them.  This week they have a global initiative which I hope that anyone who loves the idea that we are One will join.  There is bound to be a centre near you, they are in 120 countries at least and in every major city of those countries there will be an inner space centre with a smiling BK!  In London, Sister Jayanti will be speaking and reflecting on what this might mean on THURSDAY September 18th, 7.00 pm to 8.30 pm and if you can get there you will feel you have been with One very good friend.  Here is the link to the being with one website http://one.brahmakumaris.org. and here is what their wonderful 97 year old leader has to say to us all.

The Brahma Kumaris understand this to be a time for personal and world transformation. We believe this happens as each one remembers the ONE above, the parent of all souls. To support this transformation at this powerful time, we have created what we are calling The ONE initiative.

This is a wonderful initiative that has the potential to wake up the world. When each one of us makes a commitment to keep the company of only ONE from now (August) until September, this collective commitment will create a wave of powerful vibrations across the world. Such a wave will serve, not only the Brahma Kumaris’ family, but all souls of the world.

There is a deep connection between the mind, the intellect and the heart. When the intellect is free from all attractions and connected to ONE alone, and the mind is filled with thoughts of only ONE, then only ONE will sit in our heart. When enough souls have the same thought and radiate the same vibration, then the ONE Source will be revealed. The vibrations of these pure deep feelings (bhavna) will reach every soul and bring them great happiness. This is the only desire in my heart, that all Baba’s (God’s) children become complete so that Baba (God) is visible from each one’s face.

The world is waiting for us. We are the hands on the clock of world transformation. The week of September 15 – 21 will be focused on a global wave of ‘Being with ONE’. According to the time and according to signals from the ONE, let us all participate fully in this initiative so that we can restore our world to its original state of peace and happiness.

In remembrance of The ONE,

BK Dadi Janki
Chief, Brahma Kumaris

Plato gets it right about the cave! but didn't know about oompaloompas

Oompaloompas come from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which wasn't written down in ancient Athens by a man called Plato

Through the words of Socrates, Plato paints a graphic picture of man stuck in a cave facing one way towards a sort of early cinema.  There wasn't a cinema in Socrates Athens, so in his cave the images at the front are carried along on sticks by something or somebody that I see in my mind as a bit like an oompaloompa.  We, the watchers, see the objects and name them as they go by not realising that there is much much more than we can see, there is a great big world outside the cave with flowers and birds and sky and everything just perfect.  But in our seat, facing forwards, we are condemned to a repeating performance of objects which we associate with different feelings and until we get really really bored of their repetitive nature we are transfixed.

This all sounds a bit distant and of course because we walk around and get in cars and aeroplanes and talk on telephones or even Skype to one another we think this refers to a bygone age whereas we/I am free.

However, try a bit of disturbed meditation and you will see like me that the mind is just like a mechanical cinema screen which has various favourite objects giving rise to every sort of emotion, there is the acquisitive emotion where we replace old objects with new and feel better…there is every sort of emotion relating to people; affection, animosity, admiration, denigration, jealousy…there are future plans and a mixed bag of memories giving rise to both feelings of success and feelings of failure, feelings of happiness and feelings of shame.    And then, you/I wake up to what is going up and feel our way back to the peace we really seek, we listen to our mantra, we try to stay steady but then those old oompaloompas go back into the box and bring out all the old favourites.  This is not a good way to spend half an hour but it shows that Plato knew what he was talking about even if his carriers weren't called oompaloompas.

Oompaloompas come from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory which wasn't written down in ancient Athens by a man called Plato

Perhaps a little stress is good for us

In today's newspaper there is a great big article with pictures on Why we're now more stressed at home than in the office.   To an old hand like this Granny this finding isn't a bit surprising but it does bear a little looking at.  If you are at home surrounded by the natural accretion (chaos) which goes with the job of looking after small children with all sorts of different routines, scant regard for cleanliness or order, needing food and bathing and everything else including a bit of fun at the park or in the local pool, you are likely to be pulled and pushed in different directions.  This is stress, this pulling and pushing but hey it makes you strong and surely strong is what you want to be.  You aren't going to be in this stressy old situation forever, even my family spanning over 30 years of continuous adolescence in the house came to it's own end.  It is true that when the last yowly yowly baby coincided with an onrush of puberty at the top end of the family, sneaky smoking teenagers who needed to be taken to rugby, tennis, sea scouts in a car with the yowly yowly baby, I was nearly defeated but it passed.  The yowly yowly baby survived and is a terrific gregarious person, the smokers have nearly all given it up and I am strong enough to get through the Granny and Grandpa chapter which has it's own stresses.   If I had been at work attending to one thing at a time

having grown up conversations with my work colleagues, sipping a cappuccino without it being spilt and not undergone the stress of the job I had at home, I might have found the new regime with Grandpa at home needing lunch and being without a proper secretary and needing someone to help him with his i pad, much more difficult.  Any job which stretches a person is likely to be worthwhile, being a doctor or a teacher or a nurse or a mum or even a banker will ask the extra bit of patience but it will be good for the person getting strong and probably good for the people they look after.  Go on, treat yourself to a bit of stress, it's just a different kind of workout and you might even benefit.  Actually the thing which made the difference was…..you guessed….meditation!!!

Can you reconstruct a Grandpa?

Attention captured

Another reader

They, our good friends that we are staying with have been married for 48 years and we have been married for 44!  They are still together and so are we!  HE, the Grandpa was given the book you can see him reading…How to be a husband  by Tim Dowling and he, the Grandpa started to read it.  He shook his head a bit at the way marriage has evolved since we were the ones evolving from the pattern our own parents had found to be the normal and then had a little sleep and then I picked up the book and of course found it funny and thought provoking because even we are still evolving! and minor transformations take place from time to time.   The really interesting thing is that the author found some research which suggested that like doesn't necessarily go to like, that nature drives us into the arms of the unlike in order to improve the Gene Pool.  I would echo this and say that it is in the unlike with unlike that the real transformation comes.  If you were weaving a piece of cloth, you would have threads going up and down and threads going across and you have to have tension to make certain that the cloth will fulfil it's function.  So it is with marriage, a little bit of tension, some resolution, some movement towards a common goal makes for strength.  We still bicker about silly stuff but we understand each other.   I really quite like driving but realise that he needs to be in control.  I did object though to being told to get in the back with the dogs this week, well, wouldn't you?

A seaside breakfast read

A mixed reaction!

Marriage is such a funny thing but it works.   Even if you are having a bad day with Grandpa, if anyone suggested that he was a silly old fool, you would jump to his defence.  He is, after all, yours!  And of course you hope he would do the same.  There are so many more things shared than a gene pool, there are shared meals. shared happiness, shared friends, shared sadnesses and particularly shared meditation! So I think when Tim Dowling writes a How to be a Grandpa book and he wants any advice, he could do worse than come to the ones pictured here.

A bit surprised?

You can't take your electric rollers to the Sinai Desert

You can't take those rollers to Sinai Granny!
Every so often, the abracadabra girl comes to stay and after sharing a bath, my morning routine of putting in rollers is observed with some curiosity!  And no wonder because although the hair comes out in lovely curls straightaway, by the time I have been out to the hens in the damp old English early mist, the curls are already compromised and I look much the same as I do before I ever put them in and just as I will look when the day has come to an end.  So, no wonder that the abracadabra girl expresses some surprise at the morning schedule.
In October, with my very old friend Mary, I am off to the Sinai desert for a week of Silence and a visit to St Catherine's Monastery. The adventure into Silence is led by Sara Maitland, she of the Book of Silence which I loved.  We are told that there is nowhere more silent than Sinai.  So, am I worried about the silence of the huge desert or am I worried about unrest in the region, am I concerned about strange exotic viruses or wild bedouin.  No!  I am just worried about leaving my good old electric rollers behind!  So worried that I have cut my hair so short that I can only just get two or three of them into the top bit, this is a slow lessening of dependence.  I don't think they make much difference to anything but my own image of myself.

richard attenborough democratised every space

I remember meeting Richard Attenborough, it was just once and I wasn't a celebrity friend, I just happened to sit next door to him at a memorial service lunch and the thing I remember was that he was interested in meeting me as if I was a star.  Ben Kingsley said that he democratised every space he inhabited and I can echo that.  The greatest people who have ever lived democratise the space they inhabit, they make it available to whoever meets them there.  This is unusual, most people want to put a fence around their own chosen space, their belief, their speciality, their religion, their philosophy but it just means that there are those who are inside that space and those who are outside.  It takes a great soul to recognise the person opposite them with their plate of sandwiches and their need for a seat as exactly the same as themselves.
Thank God for people like this who believe that the person in front of them is just the same as anybody else.

what we could all learn from the remarkable South African Granny

You get back from your holiday and pick up the newspaper or turn on the news and you are horrified by the sheer violence which is going on in so many places in the world.  Tit for tat, rocket for rocket, bomb for bomb, life for life, child for child, so it ticks on and the casualties mount and the fury incites further fury.
I thought back to my South African mother and grandmother and how she had dealt with the loss of her only son, shot and killed 16 years ago and I wondered how many people whose child, caught in between one side and the other, killed for no apparent reason, could focus her damaged eye and heart on the pain of all mothers whose children were being killed and not focus on the effect on herself and her family, not seek to find and hurt and prosecute the murderer but simply focus on all the mothers and grandmothers who were meeting the same horror, the same knock on the door, the same sit by the bed and the same identification process.
Then I thought that unless you have an example of someone who does this, how would you ever be able to take that remarkable route.  And unless you heard her story, you wouldn't even consider it an option.  So, if you know anyone who knows anyone who has a son who has been killed or has a son about to go out and take revenge on someone else, tell them that there is another way won't you.