No such place as heaven? is it a question or is it a statement?

She, in Singapore, just turned 7, says that there is no such place as heaven.  He, in Jakarta, just turned 7, asks if there is such a place as heaven.  Me, recently turned well up the 60's (and that says the Jakarta boy, is pretty close to 100!) is put to the test because I don't think you can get to heaven by any physical route.  No aeroplane will take you, no train, no bus and certainly not on your old feet and yet I don't think that this 60 to 100 year span of time here is the whole story.  So, Archie and Grace in your respective places, this is the best I can do to answer your question or refute your statement about heaven and what or where it is.

Grown ups say that someone has gone to heaven when they die and yet there is no evidence that they are somewhere real, so where are they?.  After all, they certainly haven't taken their bodies with them so what has gone and where might it be? 

new baby, old soul?

 I think you have to go back to thinking about where anyone came from even before a baby was in its mothers tummy.   That was just where it grew from a single cell to a very complex and defined individual looking a bit like Auntie so and so and a bit like Great Grandpa, with hair colour like Dad, and a mouth like Mum.  This baby which we are about to call by some very nice name like Albert or Albertine, Clement or Clementine is a beautifully blended small person which has various interesting things about it which we are going to call its character.  It may be sweet tempered or cross, serious or a joker, a saint or a sinner, perhaps it will be athletic or academic or neither, what is for sure is that it will have its marks and tendencies with which it has to make its way in the world.  Some of these babies will have very defined talents some people say they have done whatever they are good at before.  Some mathematicians are just way ahead of others, some piano players, some violinists, some artists or poets.  They arrive and get off to a head start in their own special field.  And it may not have anything to do with its parents or grandparents or other relations.  It may but it may not so where did it come from?  Why do we call some people old souls if they show a particular wisdom.  

Some very wise people who have studied these things say that the soul when it leaves a body goes to the place it has earned a right to be.  If it has been a good soul, it spends time with other good souls, if bad, with other bad ones;  a bit like being at either a very good party with kind friends or finding yourself in prison with some bad ones.  This could be called being in heaven or hell and doesn't seem to need a body.  Then after passing time in the place it is, they say that the time comes when it has to move on.  Each soul looks down and with all that it had learned and all that it still has about it, it chooses to be born in the very best place to continue developing its particular skill or talent but more important it gets a chance to meet the things which it needs to meet to make progress by perhaps righting some wrongs done the last time round.  These wise people say that one day, the soul may give up all its baggage and be free from being sent back and back to the world.  That pure soul will go straight back to its source which some call God and some call its Father and that soul will unite totally with its Father.  That pure soul doesn't have to return unless everything on earth is going particularly badly when it may come back just to help all the people who have forgotten that they have a Father both in heaven and above heaven whose nature is pure consciousness.

If that sounds too complicated, I'll read a bit more and try again when you ask me again.  One thing I am sure of is that nothing goes unnoticed and that goodness always goes to goodness.  And because your real nature is pure goodness absolutely nothing can possibly go wrong for you.

Singapore travel, Grandpa passes the test!

Happy in every place!

I have heard that there is a vast capital of consciousness built up by meditators over the years and that when you need to tap into it perhaps because your own practice is dipping a bit, it is an ever generous provider.  So, every day, just like saving your pennies, when you meditate, you add a little to the pile. You are banking with the best bank of all and your pin number is secure because it is in your own mind, a mantra or particular visualisation.  No hacker can get at that. Let's say that your tradition is your bank manager and occasionally you have to visit the bank manager to arrange a loan.  

Grandpa is a very disciplined meditator especially in his own home.  He sticks to the prescribed half hour to the last second, so much so that the dogs also know exactly when to move from their own somnolent positions in the meditation hut and expect a walk.  Me, I am a bit restless at 25 minutes and if it wasn't for him, I might jump out of my seat and set off on my own daily round.  

At home ABROAD!

However, Grandpa is not, or perhaps I should say was not a great traveller; he searches around his waistcoat and coat pockets often to make sure that he has everything in order; passports, tickets, boarding passes, glasses and reams of paper which have been printed off with all the terms and conditions of each airline held together with a bulldog clip.  He checks his watch, the departure boards and his wife's whereabouts frequently to be sure that the aeroplane (in whose timings he has very little confidence) is listed and then we are off to the boarding gate as soon as it is announced.  No hanging about the pret-a-manger, W.H Smith and Jo Malone area, we are going to be sat by the gate watching and checking those pockets and making sure that the air hostess is in place before any other travellers.

So, travelling and keeping the calm built up in the meditation hut is always a test for him but oh readers and relations, I can announce with joy that travelling from Heathrow to Singapore and then  from Singapore to a small island 3 different methods of transport away, and then back again has been a seamless joy to me as his companion.  If you had ever thought that it was impossible to change the wiring which seems operate as soon as any identity is activated, I can confidently say that meditation and all its ancient stillness is the best bank in town.    One more travel today to Jakarta and instead of checking his watch, he is sitting peacefully on the balcony reading a book listening to the thunder of a short Singapore tropical storm rolling round the skies.  

Airports no longer trouble him! Meditation calms the most built-in agitation.

The buddha from the bric a brac reminds me

Lama Zangmo

buddha now in Singapore

www.justthisday.org

Discombobulated by travelling from London to Singapore, Singapore to Bintan, Bintan to tropical paradise, I find meditation disappears even though I think about it.  However, returning to Singapore with the granddaughters, I find that the Buddha from the bric a brac sale who came with Grace to Singapore after last summer is sitting on the bedside table. Amongst all the wonderful possibilities, the dim sum, the swimming pool, the botanic gardens and the timeless nature of being on holiday, the feeling I really couldn't miss and which was coming from him was an invitation, a coming home to myself.  Suddenly meditation wasn't a far away thing, it became easy again.  Originally bought  in a village bric a brac sale I now wonder if he came from somewhere much more important and that was what gave him that special quality of stillness.  His name, the Buddha is akin to the word Buddhi,  an ancient Indian name for your intelligent being, the place where you know what really is and can discard the things which pass one by one as objects to enjoy.   He seems to fill your whole heart space when you allow him in.  The lady on the right is Lama Zangmo, she has made becoming her Buddha like self, her whole life and you can see how the light streams out of her eyes and her smile.  A bit more of this may make the same thing happen to all of us.  You can meet Lama Zangmo on November 23rd either by coming to St Martin-in-the-Fields in the morning or by clicking on the sparkly globe on the www.justthisday.org website and joining from wherever you are in the world.  Go on, you know it must be worth it!

St Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London, you can join in wherever you are.

A test for Grandpa?

This could be us!!!

A patient man?

We are in a queue for travel to the Far East.  This is a test for Grandpa mostly because waiting is not his bag!!! Some of you who know him will be conjuring up pictures of him at airports in the past.   I say that this is a test for his years of meditation.  Of course meditation isn't just to get you through Heathrow with a beatific smile on your face.  It is an aid to combatting the tendencies to negative emotions which you seem to come into life with, it helps to clean up the neural pathways and this is where science and spirituality agree.  Grandpa isn't that interested in his neural pathways, he quite likes them I think, he enjoys the challenge of a traffic jam or a cold call on the telephone. He likes the drama of enacting the part of a gangster chase.  He is a really disciplined meditator, 30 minutes twice a day and never a minute short.  His interest in meditation is as a way of understanding that he isn't the drama, not the gangster or the Grandpa, he is just the director consciousness behind it.  My test is letting him  play all the Grandpa games without rising to the bait of his more dramatic confrontations with people doing their best to carry out the rules!!!  Our meditation isn't, I suspect going to change that drama but I hope it will come to our aid today as we hang about Heathrow waiting to be called.  Watch this space though to find out where we are going and who we are going to see!

taking the medicine as prescribed

It is the easiest thing in the world to take medicine when you need it; when you are feeling poorly and your appetite for everything else has gone.  Then you are so grateful for the way back to health that you swallow antibiotics, anti-emetics, anti-inflammatories, anti this and anti that.  The same thing with meditation, you are very grateful for it but until the habit is firmly established, you can easily fall away from a twice daily practice.  The other thing is that once you have missed one meditation for some very good reason; a visiting aunt or an urgent call or you have been somewhere you just don't seem to be able to make the move to a meditation seat, then it is much harder to get back to it and much harder to do the whole half hour.  This has given me cause for thought especially as I think what other things in my life I seldom miss.  A morning cup of tea or lunch for instance, a riveting programme on the telly or the radio (not the Archers, you can catch up on that!) and the irresistible call of cheerful voices in another room just asking to be joined with.   The pull of meditation is there but you have to develop a taste for it above all other temptations because reasonably one day the other things won't have the same hold over you and you will want to be able to naturally move into the space which meditation provides.  The speakers at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 23rd are there to show how it is possible to establish and unshakeable practice of meditation.  You can listen directly by coming to St Martin in Trafalgar Square, London or you can tune in via the www.justthisday.org website by clicking on the sparkly globe.  It will be worth it I can promise you.

Give us this day our daily marmite. A Meditation.

Crumpets without marmite, Julie Fleming-Williams

What do you think is missing from this picture on the left?  It is by my good friend Julie Fleming-Williams who paints a mean steaming picture of our favourite mealtime comforts.  I have a picture on my wall of one of her pictures which has a pot of marmite alongside a boiled egg and toast fingers.  In the picture of crumpets there is no marmite and as of today, marmite has been taken off the shelves of one of the nation's supermarkets.  Don't they realise that marmite isn't a product to be messed about with, it's our British birthright; almost every British child has been weaned from mother's milk to Marmite via a couple of mashed bananas.  Marmite should be given free as part of our heritage.  What I love about watching marmite eating in my house is how many different ways there are of having marmite.  Grandpa puts it on as thick as marmalade and we all groan and say how can you eat marmite like that with which he responds by actually having a spoonful, straight into his mouth just to show what it means to him.  My Grandfather used to have a spoonful of marmite in boiling water with a slug of sherry for elevenses.  My son butters his toast right up to the edges and does the same with marmite.  I just put lots of butter, preferably unsalted onto hot toast so that it melts in and then a thin layer of marmite.  Sometimes I put more butter on the top of that.   

The pot that transcends taste!

Marmite has enticed the sick  back to appetite and health, it has I'm sure got a place at Buckingham Palace on the Royal tea table as well as down below in the staff quarters.  It is meat to a vegetarian, and vegetable to a meat eater.  It is a leveller, a social leveller and a leveller of people with different diets.  It is like meditation, anyone can do it even if they do have their different methods of realising how delicious it is.  And of course there are a few people, (to  be pitied in my view!) who don't like marmite at all. Imagine what the world will do without marmite being readily accessible and canvas for change.

Wherever you are, you can join this meditation and perhaps make a difference

www.justthisday.org

I sometimes wonder how it happened that Just this Day slipped unnoticed into my mind and came to exist and take over the kitchen table for a couple of months before it happens.  But that was what did happen, one moment I was reading about meditation helping people at a much more profound level than anything we could do in the physical realm and the next moment I was walking past St Martin-in-the-Fields when I heard myself say...This is where we should do it.  One thing led to another and meetings with surprising people took place.  I expected at every moment that someone would say it was a mad idea but they didn't!  What they said was oh yes, come in and you can do it and we will help.  So, 9 years on and we have a great programme to bring people from different groupings together to meditate, to hear about meditation as a way of transcending our differences and to maybe make a small or large difference somewhere in the transcendent space.  I like to imagine all that good will going upwards rather like inverting a drop of red colour in clear water but it going upwards and spreading out and maybe just stopping one person from hitting another, help another person move towards a kind way of treating someone they wouldn't normally treat well and maybe maybe maybe open a tyrant's heart even just a crack to allow something better to happen.  I have heard it on good authority that meditating creates an auspicious energy which people in need can tap into and I believe that to be true.

www.smitf.org

The speakers this year personify good will.  Father Laurence Freeman, Neville Hodgkinson and Lama Gelongma Zangmo.  Each one has given much of their life to help others.  Each one has a core practice of  meditation and each one of them help others to meditate.   And even if it isn't possible for a person to learn to meditate, somehow the meditation and goodwill of these truly disciplined practitioners can change lives.  If you know any one of them, you know what I mean but if not, here is a chance to meet three remarkable people and hear them talk about the transcendental possibilities which meditation offers.  Come and join us wherever you are, go to the www.justthisday website on November 23rd and click on the sparkly globe you see above and you will be with us even if you live in the furthest part of the world

So, every year since the start, on we go and The Just this Day Newsletter was sent out today!!! Yippee for Mad Mimi which is the engine which does the sending and yippee for me that we are only one newsletter away from Just this Day itself.    Click here to read the newsletter.  Then register for the day at St Martin or get in contact and let me know what you are doing via the www.justthisday.org website and if you want it advertised on the website.