Monday, 14 December 2015

Ambition and Spiritual Life

Dr Eve Poole
Jeremy Sinclair
Eve Poole was one of a panel of speakers addressing this question at Just this Day in London in November.  Click on her name or her picture to hear what she had to say.  She also has a live journal, a blog, Eve's Commonplace which is a marvellous window onto a well used life. The other speakers, Jeremy Sinclair and Rosalind Wyatt are also available to listen to via You Tube, just click on their names and hey presto you may learn more about where ambition fits into spiritual life or you may, like me, end up questioning your own life, its spiritual aspect and where ambition sits within that reality.  I have come to think that ambition is just a name for the creative driving force
Rosalind Wyatt with someone who recognises creativity!
which is part of every being and part of what makes them particular.  Eve is a wonder, a young woman with charm and intelligence and with many interests and talents.  The world has been charmed by her and no wonder.  She uses that special charm to connect with people in an easy way and then to simplify what they need to hear, what they need to be able to understand and helps them to realise their own ambitions in an ethical manner.  That to me is what she must have been made for by the Creator who is the One and only one who knows what and who the world is going to need.  Listen to her and you will smile and come away a bit clearer about what ambition might be. Jeremy Sinclair is interesting too.  Admitting to knowing that he wanted to be successful, he explained that success is perhaps just wanting to do things well, to do a thing as well as you are able to.  You can find out whether he has done that by finding out who he is!  That is your Christmas test!
Rosalind Wyatt is an artist and when she talks, you are right with her at the end of her pen or her brush or then her needle and you feel the way that ambition has taken her to create works which are beautiful, careful and which reveal the fulness of human nature.  You can find out about her and what she does by listening to her recent interview 
I have just listened to these three again and what I hear is an expression of each speaker,  an expression of spirit, an expression of the ambition of the One we call God.  He or She didn't put us here to do nothing, he made human beings in his own image to do the best they could for one another and to use every inch of their creative talent to do it with.  Besides for which he made us able to smile and to make others smile too so even if you aren't a chief executive or a brilliant artist or musician, you have the ability to smile and to make others smile too.  Go on, you know you can and you probably know you should.


Sunday, 6 December 2015

Being happy just by yourself


Do you think you could be happy without your own place to live?  Do you think you could be happy without a family?  Do you think you could be happy without what you think your life is?
Here is Isabelle, a modern day renunciate with the Brahma Kumaris.  She looks happy and she is happy and when you meet her you are happy too.  Hear why she is happy and why giving up the things of the world doesn't matter to her by clicking on this link.  She is leading a meditation and reflection on the meaning of being a soul right in the centre of London at St Martin-in-the-Fields.