Angels present

Two major errors today, one white lie, and a booking gone bad.  Perhaps the mistaken booking was a direct reaction to the white lie.  I'll tell you what happened, first the little lie!  My new friends (much to be valued new friends) had invited us to join them next week and I thought we could but when she rang to confirm, I realised I had made a mistake, I was already going to London! I rang her back wishing it would be an answer machine but oh dear - it was the nice new friend - so I rehashed the fact of my husband's cancelled cataract appointment, I just didn't say straight out that I had made a mistake.  How's that for a poor show for a truth seeker?
The possible pay back came when the booking I had made for all of us to stay near Art in Action for 3 nights said that he was expecting us in 2014!  His mistake apparently but they look to me like a fair match of mistakes.
The angel is my niece, who lives in Oxford and has a house full of teenagers but said as soon as I called her that we could stay with her for those three nights, all 5 of us plus the dogs.  If this is Wimbledon for the angels on one side and the old foes on the other, I reckon the angels won hands down.
New resolve, never never, even for the sake of peace and quiet and new friends, tell even the smallest little lie.

Meditation and Prison

You may have heard of the Prison Phoenix Trust which does marvellous work  offering prisoners meditation and yoga.  We think this is a marvel, those poor prisoners but we probably don't realise that we are also likely to be in a prison but one of our own making.  It has some windows, good deeds,  so we look out and don't realise that we are stuck! We just like those walls, they are hung with our favourite things, our old coat, our i pad, our photographs, all things which give us comfort and identity.  Meditation, although it seems like a discipline allows us to practise an exit route, our own heroic tunnelling out of Colditz, but each time we turn to our mantra or our chosen focus of meditation, we make inroads into the walls.  The curious thing is that that is what we are really here for, we're here to find our way to freedom.

meditation and depression

When I told my husband that I felt a bit depressed some time ago, his response was that "in the olden days they would have taken women like you outside and beaten them!" Fortunately I found this very funny and it broke right through the rather less illuminated state of mind and made me laugh.
The interesting thing about this story though is that changing the mind through changing its state is a way to shift depression.  Meditation techniques have become part of therapies offered to people suffering from depression,
http://www.nhs.uk/news/2008/12December/Pages/Meditationanddepression.aspx.
This morning I woke from a dream in which I was running (not something I find easy for long) miles and miles round London because I had left my keys behind and had no telephone and needed to find my husband.  Up Richmond Hill I went, no problem, running for what seemed like hours and even in the dream I was rather pleased that I was so fit until I found him, oh relief, and asked for a handkerchief whereupon he gave me a child's shoe.  Work that one out!  It was such heaven to get out of that bed of dream and into a more real and stable world.  Meditation is like that sometimes, you can leave the curious world of thoughts and activity behind and come to a much more real state where your mind surrenders to whatever is behind it.  This is a photograph of my husband in his corner of heaven.

Dalai Lama and the Open Heart

Before meditating in the evening, I read from the Dalai Lama's book called the Open Heart.  If you are wondering what enlightenment means, this is a simple exposition of something that might take a little time or none at all.  If you accept and practise the premise that no thing lasts and that the All is the reality.  So, while on the way, he says that the heart can have no corners of distrust or hatred or jealousy  and that to have an open heart is our daily practice.  Whenever the mind suggests to the heart that there is something to be liked, to be hated, to be appreciated, to be shunned, to be loved, to be eaten or to be drunk, the heart makes itself into that shape; it has you on one side and the object on the other side and it is a divided heart.  The cheering thing to remember is that this isn't the natural state, this is the Open Heart and we have simply generation by generation forgotten our real nature so much so that the real One has to keep sending messengers; Buddha, Christ, Mohammed, Hermes, Socrates, all the prophets and angels have to keep acting in our world to flag up our remembering and forgetting.   How it would be to be enlightened and still be in the world, I think it would all seem quite different.

meditation and self belief

There comes a time when the invitations to parties say "70 not out" and "80 and still going" and when you go to them, you see your companions in life have grey hair, less hair, have changed shape a bit, sometimes have stick like legs and sometimes are rounded out a bit.  The thing is that you can't see  your own self, it is part of the big illusion; you may see mirror images or photographs but you can't walk round your person and view yourself from every side, you just don't know what you are really like to meet.  You hope that you are nice enough but suspect (still at that advanced age) that you aren't really up to the mark.  However you get over that and spot the people you think you know, or maybe a lost soul that doesn't appear to know anyone and you set about recalling theirs and your life stories, their apparent identities.  We just daren't think that none of us will be here that much longer! even if we or they have been ill.  We cling on to some idea of reality through our children, grandchildren, our woes and joys, changes of house (bungalows and downstairs bedrooms loos).  We really think we will outlast everyone and we still plan forwards.  The changing nature of the world, the people in it and us is something to meditate on( especially if we aspire to meditate as a practice for detachment) because the real life we seek must be different to this.  Really we should probably think each time we meet a friend or actually anybody, that this might be the last time we meet here and we should make certain that we value both the being of them and the real being that we can't see.

Meditation at Dawn

It is lucky that we are both early birds because otherwise we would be totally taken in, taken up by being busy with things.  This house as I blog, has 4 small children, 5 adults, 3 dogs, one a puppy, 8 hens, 1 broody, 3 chicks, and roses asking to be dead headed  There are spinach and beans to be picked and if I didn't do it before they all needed attention, I wouldn't have a chance of meditating.  Fortunately, I wake early, tread across the slightly damp grass in the very early morning before the heat of the day and although still slightly woozy from sleep, turn to meditation.  This not only makes the day better and means that I have breakfast on the table before the breakfast eaters are down, but reminds me kindly that behind all of this movement is a benevolent Being who makes no demands but re offers daily a whole total wonderful creation to play in.  It is so easy to take that for granted.

Meditation and Reprogramming the Mind

This is a really helpful quote from His Holiness Sri Shantananda Saraswati, Shankaracharya of the Advaita Tradition.
He says that "True meditation is a highly indiviudal thing.  It fulfils each person's deepest desire which no-one outside can guess, and the person himself cannot express.  We can only encourage people ... to seek joyfully one's own divine nature at every possible opportunity.'
On the television the other night there was a programme about reprogramming thought.  A fellow blogger saw it and described in Tears Amid the Alien Corn: how her meditation on Bible passages and prayer helps to reprogramme thought.  This wise woman is quite right, whatever we keep company with will become the way we think.
Today's newspaper examines the nation's drink habit which is escalating into a problem.  It is because drink is now such a part of our leisure culture, we allow it to keep us company too much.  Far better to keep company with a profound expression of good such as the Bible or your own preferred scripture and allow that to change your thought patterns towards the good.  But a glass of wine does certainly alter the state of mind even if it doesn't last.
Thanks Michele for your thoughtful words.