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.