What DO you do when you meditate Granny?

Abracadabra girl with Granny

The abracadabra girl is back in town, one year older but sharp as a pin!  "Granny, what do you DO when you meditate?"
I say this;  "You do your best to get still, you get your body still and your mind as still as it will be,  you might have your own magic sound to say in your mind or you might meditate by just keeping going back to being still".  
She says, "Why DO YOU Meditate?"
I say this; "You work hard at being still and you use your meditation as a way of changing any bad thoughts of feelings into good ones."
"Like what?" she says.

The swimming abracabra girl with aunts and uncles and cousins

I say this;  "Well suppose you feel busy or angry or jealous or cross or sad or even joyful , you can see you aren't them and if you need to you can change those feelings for better ones.  You are the winner in your own mind, you are
the person who is in charge of the feelings.  You can do this bit of good work when you meditate."

high five

She says, "Oh, that's a bit like Inside Out isn't it Granny?"
I say, "That's right abracadabra girl, your Granny is as up to date as the latest film, how I about that.
We high five!
You can see the trailer by clicking here or on the name of the film any of you Grannies out there who are wondering how to tell your own abracadabra children about meditation.

Two meditators find different ways to cope with henvasion! see film!

Henry the cockerel i/c hens

Grandpa with meditating dog

We bought some extra hens before the wedding ahead to bolster up the supply of eggs.  The 4 new hens spent the first few days cowering in the back of the hencoop while the others made it quite clear that they weren't welcome. Even Henry (see picture) who is the large and splendid cockerel in charge of the hens was fairly unpleasant to the new young hens.  However, 5 days on, things have changed and although he keeps his two sets of wives apart, he has shown favour to the new ones who consequently have joined the free range facilities offered here and become excessively bold.  So bold indeed that two of them came to inspect our house.  We tried two approaches to get them to leave; persuasion (Granny) and brute force (Grandpa).  You can see them online as they coax, giggle and then take action to evict the wild black hen.  At least they don't try to join us to meditate!!! although the dogs do

guarding against a henvasion!

granny's countdown to a wedding! Meditation plus make up!

hair do!

made up and ready to go

3 weeks to that wedding, lists to complete, shoes to match the outfit, shall we wear hats? heels how high? what flowers? who will collect her wedding dress? who will drive her to the Church? who will come? who won't?  I am taking all of this seriously!  And every rose is being cut back and encouraged to flower again by the wedding, every morning swim is accompanied by a little bit of light weeding and inspecting of the flowers for the bouquet.  My morning routine has had to change and after swimming in the pond below and inspecting the garden I have had to move beyond the meditating hut and rise to the challege of ?glamour? or at least respectability!  Today is the day to take on the challenge so I go to Selfridges where a most beautiful beautician takes me on!  Layers of make up glide onto my granny face cleverly masking the random wrinkle and line.  Eyes down for sparkling eyeshadow and glossy mascara inspires me to promise to make far greater efforts to cleanse and tone.

Early morning swimming pond

Djokovic the meditator!

a hero

You probably know this already but I didn't know that Djokovic, the wonderful tennis player, handsome chap with pin up good looks is a meditator.  This very day in an interview with The BBC, he said that he used meditation to keep himself fit.  I searched about the internet to find out more and discovered that in an article in 2013, Theo Merz revealed that Djokovic calls into a Buddhist monastery and temple when at Wimbledon to spend time because he says"it's a very calm and very beautiful environment".  That same year,  one of the monks at the temple, Phramaha Bhatsakorn Piyobhas suggested that meditation improves concentration and focus, which could in turn help someone play tennis, or any sport, better. 

Matthew Syed, in today's Times says that Wimbledon, though a place of civility and tradition is also a jungle.  where "the painful beauty of sport" is so clear. He describes watching "a succession of dreams being shattered, .....humiliation so graphic that the head and shoulders of one loser literally dropped as the second set reached it's" end.  

One pointed attention.

If Wimbledon Tennis is a jungle, it is because the highs and lows of success and failure are clearly on display  alongside strawberries and cream, pimms and champagne and the great and good watching coolly from the Royal Box.  If Djokovic finds that meditation is a key to his success, it must be because it is a key to the part of him which doesn't get stressed ever.  Meditation has been given to realise the beauty and peace of the soul in the midst of the maelstrom of life.  Grannies do it to realise that they are unchanged when looking at the legs and arms and face and hair, everything thatsuggests that you have become old.  In meditation, oldness and youngness disappear and this Granny is happy that Djokovic should be standing up for such a wonderfully intelligent choice of practice.  And good luck to him say I!  

1 million shades of white

blogger granny getting the treatment

I went to the hairdresser this week to get ready for the summer.  Hideshi the hairdresser wears white and all the other hairdressers in the salon wear white; it is a sign of summer.  In the winter they wear black. They are kind and skilful and I go out looking quite a lot better than when I walked in.  I wouldn't say I could be mistaken for Angelina Jolie or Liz Hurley but certainly it is a big improvement on what went into the salon! The same thing is happening to all the other clients, they all come in feeling one way and go out feeling smarter and of course happier.

Dadi Janki doesn't need a hairdo

At the start of the week I went to see my friends the Brahma Kumaris who also wear white. The remarkable Dadi Janki, aged 99 had just flown into England and was meeting up with several hundred people, mostly also dressed in white.  Her beauty treatment is of a different kind, she reminds everyone that they all have beautiful souls and that they can keep them like that if they remember how important the soul is.  Her beauty regime isn't snipping hair and painting nails, it is meditation and kindness to all creatures.  It is absence of anger and no desire, no jealousy or malice and particularly not basing your happiness quotient on gains and losses.  It is contentment and it shouldn't be hard to come by.  I recommend meeting her sisters and brothers dressed in white to feel how real this wave of contentment is.  See the photograph below, all in white, all happy, no sign of hairdos or artificiality, just very sweet and committed people with open hearts.  It does though take a different kind of work to realise that beauty.  Even if you aren't ready to do it now, you and I can be very glad that Dadi and all the Brahma Kumaris are there doing it and holding the door right wide open for any of us to follow when we are ready.

This is hundreds of brothers and sister Brahma Kumari in Mount Abu, hundreds of shades of white.

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.