Don't mess with my meditation!

Shri Shantananda Saraswati, 

Yesterday there was an article by Oliver Moody in the newspaper on Meditation messing with your head.  The Times Newspaper which Grandpa and I share because we both like different bits of it, he likes the editorials and political articles, me the main news stories, photos of babies, menus and articles on meditation!  So, for the first time in ages, there was a negative article on meditation, how it shouldn't be taken on lightly because it can mess with your head.  The sentence not undertaken lightly reminds me of the sentences which are read before the marraige service. It goes like this.. "Marriage is an honourable estate which should not be undertake taken lightly, wantonly or without due reverence".  Of course this is true, marriage is definitely not for pansies, it

Father Laurence Freeman OSB. 

takes courage and perseverance coupled with love, affection, patience, kindness, tolerance, attraction and understanding to make it through the up to 50 or more years you are going to be together.  And you should be faithful to it if you want it to work.  I think of it like being in a house, it gives you the protection you need but you have to look after it.
Meditation should be given the same seriousness when you take it on.  It will serve you well it you keep to it's simple guide lines and you make sure it has a good provenance.  It isn't just mood music and incense, it is a method of bringing your mind to a still point, of dissolving the impediments to that stillness.  A proper meditation technique will have been perfected and given by a person who has achieved it's benefits and knows it's science.  It isn't to be undertaken lightly but it is worth undertaking as a disciplined practise.  It also helps to have a guide and help, someone who has meditated for a long time.  So, you see it really is very much like marriage and the initial magic of attraction and ceremony is the best way to begin both.

Birthday blog for a boy in Dubai. HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAX

Happy Birthday from him

Happy Birthday from him

 Here is a Granny who only just remembered a birthday.  There in Dubai is the boy who had the birthday on the 27th April.  Here is a Grandpa mowing the lawn, here is a Granny snipping and weeding the garden.  That's how she remembered the boy in Dubai with the birthday as she snipped snipped snipped and thought about the summer and that boy and his  brother and his cousins skipping about in the garden.  She then thought about putting up a tent for the boy and his brother because they are about that camping size and then she remembered that the biggest had turned into a ten year old on the night of the 27th or was it during the day.  Oh dear she thought, what sort of Granny am I snipping and weeding and meditating too and not remembering on THE day.  Well, that's the sort of Granny I am, a snipper and weeder and meditator with hens and dogs and a Grandpa who likes bacon and eggs for breakfast but a Granny who doesn't think in dates.  So, I thought I would write a birthday blog for that nice boy so he would know that there are people in Russia, Spain, France, America, Ukraine, China and the United Kingdom, Singapore and Dubai who would think about that boy today and how his Granny missed his birthday and would all send him the very best wishes a ten year old boy could have.  In the meantime, there is a tent and a tenth birthday present waiting for him when he gets back to England.  HAPPY BIRTHDAY MAX from me and Grandpa and Algie and Butty and the hens and all the people who click on the blog today.

Parallel Universes? really comforting advice from Stephen Hawking

A man you can't ignore

Stephen Hawking's advice to a teenage girl in Sydney last week is a great comfort to anyone, Granny or Grandchild or teenage fan missing someone in their life.  Click on this link to hear what comforting words he uses

He was asked by a teenage girl “What do you think is the cosmological effect of Zayn [Malik] leaving One Direction and consequently breaking the hearts of millions of teenage girls across the world?”

He answered.."My advice to any heartbroken young girl is to pay attention to the the study of theoretical physics because, one day, there may be proof of multiple universes.  It would not be beyond the realms of possibility that somewhere outside of our own universe lies another, different universe and, in that universe, Zayn is still in One Direction."

We already accept parallel existences in what seems like real time, Grandpa in his study doing his thing, me blogging away, Butty the technodog stretching and snoozing, dreaming of hares.  That is already 4 and we are all in the same apparent place.  And where are all the others who lived or stayed or played here?  Getting on with their stuff, going to school, scootering around Singapore, playing rugby in Dubai, riding in Suffolk or in the case of the ancestors who are apparently dead and looking at us from photographs, where they might they be, they certainly aren't having coffee with us but something persuades us that they haven't really gone anywhere, they are just enjoying a parallel existence.  Thanks to Stephen Hawking for blessing that feeling with a probable reality found to be so through study of what actually is.