Just back from a few days at a monastery near Birmingham (Glasshampton).
How amazing it is to be somewhere with no agendas.
Nothing to get done, no-one chasing you for anything (no kids - I hope they are not reading this!) no phones ringing, no-one knocking at the door.
It really shows what a different experience it is just to 'be' for the sake of it.
So much of our lives are spent chasing our tails; and when we look back - for what?
We always seem to be pretty much at the same place as when we started:
Born naked, die naked - but how do you spend the time in between, that's the question!
Ended up at 'The best tea rooms in the UK' (see www.witleytearooms.co.uk) after a 3 hour walk - bliss.
Except that there was also a three hour walk back.
Still, I got no-where and really enjoyed doing it
Friday, 20 May 2011
Monday, 2 May 2011
The Sound of Silence
I surround myself with noise:
Music, the radio, television, children, chatter, and appliances.
And when there is no noise, I create my own; in my head or out loud.
I feel comfortable with noise.
It reassures me that all is OK in the world. That normal service has been resumed.
That things are going on as they should.
That I am alright with the world, and the world is alright with me.
Noise is the modern comfort blanket: Muzak, iPods, phones – reassurance that we are still living and that the world wants our attention.
But it’s all on the surface and, as with the proverb about the swimming pool, all the noise comes from the shallow end.
When we hear silence it is deep, profound, and life changing.
When we are open to silence we are open to that depth, to the possibility of our lives being changed.
But we do this so rarely.
We get up to the noise of the alarm, we turn the radio on, we clatter about, we exchange inanities with friends and family, we go to work with noise, we work with noise around us, and we go home to sit in front of noise, until we go to bed, where the noise in our heads keeps us awake.
And I am not much better with people.
The worst thing that can happen is for the conversation to dry up and leave us with an awkward silence – meaning a silence that causes us to feel awkward things. So we say something to cover up the awkwardness, to make it go away.
In fact we often shape the way we converse to avoid those silences. I find that my whole relationship with some people is built around keeping the conversation going. Filling the gaps, entertaining the person I am with, rather than letting us both be.
And, of course, there is a complementary position with the other person who tacitly allows you to ‘make the running’, while they just concentrate on getting the ball back over the net – for you to hit it again.
The sound of silence is the sound of the universe speaking to us.
It is more profound, more meaningful, more nourishing than anything that anyone could say, and yet we often do all we can to avoid it.
It brings peace, it brings harmony, and it brings understanding.
The problem is that it also makes us feel.
We are forced to feel what’s going on in our bodies, and what’s going on around us. And because that feeling involves an element of pain, we try to push it away.
However, that feeling, that pain, is what ultimately heals us.
It tends our wounds, and it brings us to wholeness.
Silence between people brings understanding, it allows love to grow, and it fosters intimacy.
Yet we avoid it.
We avoid silence at the cost of our health, of our joy, and of our ultimate happiness.
For it is the silence of the Eternal Nature that brings into contact with who we really are.
In it, we can hear that ‘still small voice’ which speaks to us in our hearts and which leads us home.
And we continue to wonder why we feel lost.
Silence is the most under-rated and under-used free resource that is available to all.
Each of us could seek to experience it more, could seek to practice it more.
To do so would make us all richer.
What is the sound of silence? It is like the sound of one hand clapping.
To listen for it is to hear it.
Music, the radio, television, children, chatter, and appliances.
And when there is no noise, I create my own; in my head or out loud.
I feel comfortable with noise.
It reassures me that all is OK in the world. That normal service has been resumed.
That things are going on as they should.
That I am alright with the world, and the world is alright with me.
Noise is the modern comfort blanket: Muzak, iPods, phones – reassurance that we are still living and that the world wants our attention.
But it’s all on the surface and, as with the proverb about the swimming pool, all the noise comes from the shallow end.
When we hear silence it is deep, profound, and life changing.
When we are open to silence we are open to that depth, to the possibility of our lives being changed.
But we do this so rarely.
We get up to the noise of the alarm, we turn the radio on, we clatter about, we exchange inanities with friends and family, we go to work with noise, we work with noise around us, and we go home to sit in front of noise, until we go to bed, where the noise in our heads keeps us awake.
And I am not much better with people.
The worst thing that can happen is for the conversation to dry up and leave us with an awkward silence – meaning a silence that causes us to feel awkward things. So we say something to cover up the awkwardness, to make it go away.
In fact we often shape the way we converse to avoid those silences. I find that my whole relationship with some people is built around keeping the conversation going. Filling the gaps, entertaining the person I am with, rather than letting us both be.
And, of course, there is a complementary position with the other person who tacitly allows you to ‘make the running’, while they just concentrate on getting the ball back over the net – for you to hit it again.
The sound of silence is the sound of the universe speaking to us.
It is more profound, more meaningful, more nourishing than anything that anyone could say, and yet we often do all we can to avoid it.
It brings peace, it brings harmony, and it brings understanding.
The problem is that it also makes us feel.
We are forced to feel what’s going on in our bodies, and what’s going on around us. And because that feeling involves an element of pain, we try to push it away.
However, that feeling, that pain, is what ultimately heals us.
It tends our wounds, and it brings us to wholeness.
Silence between people brings understanding, it allows love to grow, and it fosters intimacy.
Yet we avoid it.
We avoid silence at the cost of our health, of our joy, and of our ultimate happiness.
For it is the silence of the Eternal Nature that brings into contact with who we really are.
In it, we can hear that ‘still small voice’ which speaks to us in our hearts and which leads us home.
And we continue to wonder why we feel lost.
Silence is the most under-rated and under-used free resource that is available to all.
Each of us could seek to experience it more, could seek to practice it more.
To do so would make us all richer.
What is the sound of silence? It is like the sound of one hand clapping.
To listen for it is to hear it.
Tuesday, 29 March 2011
I’ll show you mine, if you show me yours
Our own inner world is a very secret place.
It contains all the things we would rather no-one else knew. It is also a treasury of all the wisdom we have ever gathered. And we keep it to ourselves. It is precious. It is who we are, and is it provides us with the information we use to navigate our way around our lives.
And yet it is limited to what we have been told, known or experienced.
We cannot know what we do not know. And because we do not know it we do not consider the possibility that it might exist – whatever it is.
We learn from each other. We learn how to love from our parents, from our friends, from those we come into contact with.
Before I began to learn how to love, I did not think there was any other way, than the way I was doing it. And yet I wondered why I wasn’t able to form any lasting relationships. I thought that there was something wrong with me. But there wasn’t, I just hadn’t been shown how.
We cannot know what we are unconscious of.
Consciousness is such a difficult thing to get a hold of. The International dictionary of Psychology describes consciousness as “ impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means” and goes on to say “it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it”.
Which is very liberating for us ‘non-experts’. Normally science tells us what to think about everything, and here is a scientific tome admitting that it doesn’t know – pretty amazing. Science giving us permission to work it out for ourselves.
And that is what the meaning of the word consciousness implies – ‘con- scious’ , from ‘scius’ – to know, and ‘con’ – together, ‘to know together’.
By sharing the truth together about what we experience we can form a library of knowledge, beyond our own experience.
A range of perspectives, rather than our just our own.
We are very attached to our own perspectives. We will often be prepared to die for them. And yet they are only the sum of all the good ideas we have ever had.
To live our lives to the full we have to be prepared to broaden our outlook. To really hear from others as to how they experience life; what other dimensions of experience might exist; what other ways of being.
Being open minded is more about hearing than it is about considering. Because when you hear something that you have not heard before it broadens your mind and gives you a different perspective.
The considering of the implications of that perspective comes later.
Love is just one of the areas we can develop a perspective on.
We can open ourselves to different ways of thinking, of experiencing and of being. And this can take us into new dimensions of existence - in spirituality, in healing, in self-acceptance, and in the very nature of reality.
Because consciousness, like opinion, is not fixed. There is more to life than any of us ever know, and there is always more to experience.
So be prepared to explore, open yourself to what others have to say, and don’t think that all life is as you experience it.
There just might be a whole new world out there.
It contains all the things we would rather no-one else knew. It is also a treasury of all the wisdom we have ever gathered. And we keep it to ourselves. It is precious. It is who we are, and is it provides us with the information we use to navigate our way around our lives.
And yet it is limited to what we have been told, known or experienced.
We cannot know what we do not know. And because we do not know it we do not consider the possibility that it might exist – whatever it is.
We learn from each other. We learn how to love from our parents, from our friends, from those we come into contact with.
Before I began to learn how to love, I did not think there was any other way, than the way I was doing it. And yet I wondered why I wasn’t able to form any lasting relationships. I thought that there was something wrong with me. But there wasn’t, I just hadn’t been shown how.
We cannot know what we are unconscious of.
Consciousness is such a difficult thing to get a hold of. The International dictionary of Psychology describes consciousness as “ impossible to define except in terms that are unintelligible without a grasp of what consciousness means” and goes on to say “it is impossible to specify what it is, what it does, or why it evolved. Nothing worth reading has been written about it”.
Which is very liberating for us ‘non-experts’. Normally science tells us what to think about everything, and here is a scientific tome admitting that it doesn’t know – pretty amazing. Science giving us permission to work it out for ourselves.
And that is what the meaning of the word consciousness implies – ‘con- scious’ , from ‘scius’ – to know, and ‘con’ – together, ‘to know together’.
By sharing the truth together about what we experience we can form a library of knowledge, beyond our own experience.
A range of perspectives, rather than our just our own.
We are very attached to our own perspectives. We will often be prepared to die for them. And yet they are only the sum of all the good ideas we have ever had.
To live our lives to the full we have to be prepared to broaden our outlook. To really hear from others as to how they experience life; what other dimensions of experience might exist; what other ways of being.
Being open minded is more about hearing than it is about considering. Because when you hear something that you have not heard before it broadens your mind and gives you a different perspective.
The considering of the implications of that perspective comes later.
Love is just one of the areas we can develop a perspective on.
We can open ourselves to different ways of thinking, of experiencing and of being. And this can take us into new dimensions of existence - in spirituality, in healing, in self-acceptance, and in the very nature of reality.
Because consciousness, like opinion, is not fixed. There is more to life than any of us ever know, and there is always more to experience.
So be prepared to explore, open yourself to what others have to say, and don’t think that all life is as you experience it.
There just might be a whole new world out there.
Sunday, 6 March 2011
Guess what makes the world go round?
It was Eric Fromm who said that “The deepest need of man is the need to overcome his separateness, to leave the prison of his aloneness”. Failure to do so, he goes on to say, leads to insanity, because the only way of escaping the isolation from the world is to pretend that the world does not exist.
We try many ways of dealing with our aloneness before we resort to insanity. We take drugs, we drink, we sleep with anything that moves, we throw ourselves into careers, we undertake creative endeavours, we busy ourselves, quite literally, to distraction.
Ultimately, however, there is only one holistic way of overcoming our separateness, and that is to love.
In his masterpiece “The Art of Loving” Fromm describes loving as not ‘falling for’ but ‘giving’.
Love is what makes the world go round. Not money.
Love is the most basic of all currencies.
We are given life out of an act of love. None of us asked to be born, we are freely given life. And from that moment on, all our relationships are built around the principles of love, even the bad ones.
The best definition of wealth I have come across is ‘the ability to give’. By that definition, even the financially richest of us can be actually seen as being poor.
The more we are able to give, the richer we become. We become more alive.
The secret of love is in giving.
When we moan that we are not loved enough, or we cannot find love, the answer invariably lies in what we are prepared to give, rather than what we are wanting to receive.
The laws of nature even comply. Every schoolgirl knows that ‘for every action, there is an equal and opposite re-action’. Now why should that not be true in personal relationships.
And yet the perceived wisdom is about ‘getting a partner’, ‘getting love’, of lack, of missing something, of not being given to.
Love has been ‘comsumerized’. We try to consume love, like everything else – as proved by the mushrooming trade in pornography.
We try to buy love wherever we can, to trade for it, to scheme for it, but it will not be ‘had’.
Love is the natural flow of energy from one part of our universe to another – it is the very building block of life.
As humans we have to learn to manage it as we have learnt to manage electricity or nuclear power. Until we do that we remain in our own shells, isolated, resentful, and in danger of going insane.
It is amazing that we do not teach ‘how to love’ in school. It is assumed that parents will know – but they often do not.
How can you teach your children to love, when you have never been loved yourself?
Whether we know it or not, the chief lesson we have to learn in life is ‘How to love’.
It is the ultimate lesson that lies at the root of most of the problems that we face today: war, poverty and man’s inhumanity to man.
Surely it is something we should all be working at.
We try many ways of dealing with our aloneness before we resort to insanity. We take drugs, we drink, we sleep with anything that moves, we throw ourselves into careers, we undertake creative endeavours, we busy ourselves, quite literally, to distraction.
Ultimately, however, there is only one holistic way of overcoming our separateness, and that is to love.
In his masterpiece “The Art of Loving” Fromm describes loving as not ‘falling for’ but ‘giving’.
Love is what makes the world go round. Not money.
Love is the most basic of all currencies.
We are given life out of an act of love. None of us asked to be born, we are freely given life. And from that moment on, all our relationships are built around the principles of love, even the bad ones.
The best definition of wealth I have come across is ‘the ability to give’. By that definition, even the financially richest of us can be actually seen as being poor.
The more we are able to give, the richer we become. We become more alive.
The secret of love is in giving.
When we moan that we are not loved enough, or we cannot find love, the answer invariably lies in what we are prepared to give, rather than what we are wanting to receive.
The laws of nature even comply. Every schoolgirl knows that ‘for every action, there is an equal and opposite re-action’. Now why should that not be true in personal relationships.
And yet the perceived wisdom is about ‘getting a partner’, ‘getting love’, of lack, of missing something, of not being given to.
Love has been ‘comsumerized’. We try to consume love, like everything else – as proved by the mushrooming trade in pornography.
We try to buy love wherever we can, to trade for it, to scheme for it, but it will not be ‘had’.
Love is the natural flow of energy from one part of our universe to another – it is the very building block of life.
As humans we have to learn to manage it as we have learnt to manage electricity or nuclear power. Until we do that we remain in our own shells, isolated, resentful, and in danger of going insane.
It is amazing that we do not teach ‘how to love’ in school. It is assumed that parents will know – but they often do not.
How can you teach your children to love, when you have never been loved yourself?
Whether we know it or not, the chief lesson we have to learn in life is ‘How to love’.
It is the ultimate lesson that lies at the root of most of the problems that we face today: war, poverty and man’s inhumanity to man.
Surely it is something we should all be working at.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Happiness is…?
What makes some people happy and others not? It is the great conundrum. We are all faced with it every day. Should I do this or do that? What is going to bring me the greatest happiness and satisfaction? Is there a gap between what I ought to do because it is the right thing to do, and what I want to do – for me?
If we must grapple with definitions, what we are talking about here is contentment. That great peace that enables us to rest in what we are doing.
We struggle to see the wood for the trees. “I know I should go and visit my aged aunt, but I would prefer to stay at home and dig the garden.” “I know I should go and exercise, but can’t I just potter around the house?”
Our level of contentment is definitely down to the choices we make. The effects of those choices visit us in the future as the feelings we have about the circumstances we end up in.
“I have decided that the love of money is the root of all evil, therefore I am going to live an ecologically balanced lifestyle” often leads us into struggling on benefits, fighting for the next pound and being miserable because “life is all about the money I haven’t got”.
Similarly “ I am going to make sure the my family never wants for anything” can lead to a lifetime of commuting where one never sees one’s family.
We have to somehow make wise choices that leave us in a state of peace about where we are and what we have got.
The great cliché about this is “It is not about getting what you want, but wanting what you get”. And like all clichés it has a lot of truth in it, if you can deal with the triteness.
If we objectify our happiness – make it about some object or other - then we are distancing ourselves from our contentment and saying “ I am nearly happy now, because I know that when I get the thing I want, then I will be really happy”.
The trouble is that often, when we get what we think we want, we realise that we are still not happy. “I am chairman of the Board, my lifetime ambition, and I am miserable. My husband has left me, I am surrounded by sycophants – what has my life been about?”
The key is that we have to make peace with where we are now. To know that we are in the right place now, and that we have everything we could possibly need to make us happy, now and in the future. And if that means we are hungry for something, we have to be at peace with that hunger, not try to get rid of it.
This is not some passive surrender to all that life throws at us, it is an active acceptance that where we are is the perfect place to lead us to where we need to be next.
Albert Einstein was once asked what he thought was the most important question in life. His reply: “Is the universe a friendly place or not?”.
Your answer to that question will affect your whole attitude to life.
Can you be happy where you are right now, and with what you have right now?
Only you can say.
If we must grapple with definitions, what we are talking about here is contentment. That great peace that enables us to rest in what we are doing.
We struggle to see the wood for the trees. “I know I should go and visit my aged aunt, but I would prefer to stay at home and dig the garden.” “I know I should go and exercise, but can’t I just potter around the house?”
Our level of contentment is definitely down to the choices we make. The effects of those choices visit us in the future as the feelings we have about the circumstances we end up in.
“I have decided that the love of money is the root of all evil, therefore I am going to live an ecologically balanced lifestyle” often leads us into struggling on benefits, fighting for the next pound and being miserable because “life is all about the money I haven’t got”.
Similarly “ I am going to make sure the my family never wants for anything” can lead to a lifetime of commuting where one never sees one’s family.
We have to somehow make wise choices that leave us in a state of peace about where we are and what we have got.
The great cliché about this is “It is not about getting what you want, but wanting what you get”. And like all clichés it has a lot of truth in it, if you can deal with the triteness.
If we objectify our happiness – make it about some object or other - then we are distancing ourselves from our contentment and saying “ I am nearly happy now, because I know that when I get the thing I want, then I will be really happy”.
The trouble is that often, when we get what we think we want, we realise that we are still not happy. “I am chairman of the Board, my lifetime ambition, and I am miserable. My husband has left me, I am surrounded by sycophants – what has my life been about?”
The key is that we have to make peace with where we are now. To know that we are in the right place now, and that we have everything we could possibly need to make us happy, now and in the future. And if that means we are hungry for something, we have to be at peace with that hunger, not try to get rid of it.
This is not some passive surrender to all that life throws at us, it is an active acceptance that where we are is the perfect place to lead us to where we need to be next.
Albert Einstein was once asked what he thought was the most important question in life. His reply: “Is the universe a friendly place or not?”.
Your answer to that question will affect your whole attitude to life.
Can you be happy where you are right now, and with what you have right now?
Only you can say.
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
The Power of Wow
Name the seven wonders of the world.
When asked that question, most of us probably start with the pyramids, move on to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and then start to scratch our heads for the others.
Legend has it that when a children’s class was asked the same question one came back with the answer: ‘Touch, taste, smell, sight, feeling, laughter, and love.’
We take life for granted.
We take the fact that we are alive for granted.
We take the miracle of our senses for granted.
And we miss the real wonder of being alive.
We struggle to be happy, to change our circumstances, to make things better; when all the time we have the miracle of consciousness right in front of us.
But it never quite feels like that. We have got used to it. Made it ordinary. Downgraded the wonder to a point below even awareness of it being special.
The nature of reality, what is really around us, has become dimmed.
We see reality as facing up to the problems that we encounter. As ‘water is wet and stones are hard’. As a gloomy, harsh and imposing structure that contains us, and upon which we are fated to dash ourselves in some Promethean horror (Prometheus was the God who was punished by having his liver torn out every day, by an eagle, only to have it grow again in the night so the eagle could do it again the next day).
OK, so life isn’t that bad, but we have made it pretty dreary. Our level of engagement with the world around us is at a pretty low level.
The ‘wow’ factor in our lives is not the most overused of our expressions, and we tend to endure more than we enjoy.
It is up to us.
We are the ones who are receiving the data about life around us through our senses.
We are the ones who decide what to focus on – the beautiful colour of the trees, or the fight to get into town.
The way we make sense of the information we receive governs the way we respond. And it is completely different for all of us.
Two people, standing side by side, can witness the same event. One will be cynical about it, another will be inspired.
And it is all down to the way that we have painted the picture of the reality that is in front of us.
One person will see the event, remember times in the past when similar things happened to her, remember that nothing good came of it, and will see the worst in what she has seen.
Another will see the same event, remember having had the same thing happen to him and the good that came out of it, and be inspired by what he saw.
Same event, different realities created for each person.
Which begs the question – What is reality?
Reality is that which continues to exist, after you have stopped believing in it.
Reality does not depend on our belief to make it so. We do not have to believe in gravity for it to be true.
Whether we believe it or not, we will still plummet to the bottom of the building if we jump off.
Reality is something that we discover by looking for it.
It is not enough to simply draw conclusions from our own life because we are all biased.
Each of us has built up a different picture of the way life is, and none are absolutely true.
When we look with only one eye we get an incomplete perspective. So when, similarly, we look at things from the perspective of our life alone, so we miss part of the picture.
Which is why the word CONSCIOUSNESS comes from two words – CON (together) and SCIOS (to know)- to know together.
It is by listening to others, getting their perspective on the way life is, that we begin to truly understand the nature of reality.
And that also means listening to all our senses.
Even the ones we have begun to take for granted.
Next time you are going to town, decide to fully engage your senses: The sights, the smells, the tastes, your feelings, your thoughts, the way you are touching the ground.
Become aware of all that is around you, and keep that awareness going for the length of your journey.
See how different you feel about life.
Consciousness is not just about what you think of life.
It is about synthesising all the information you receive, even that which you have learnt to take for granted.
When you do that, the power of WOW! begins to re-appear in your life.
When asked that question, most of us probably start with the pyramids, move on to the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, and then start to scratch our heads for the others.
Legend has it that when a children’s class was asked the same question one came back with the answer: ‘Touch, taste, smell, sight, feeling, laughter, and love.’
We take life for granted.
We take the fact that we are alive for granted.
We take the miracle of our senses for granted.
And we miss the real wonder of being alive.
We struggle to be happy, to change our circumstances, to make things better; when all the time we have the miracle of consciousness right in front of us.
But it never quite feels like that. We have got used to it. Made it ordinary. Downgraded the wonder to a point below even awareness of it being special.
The nature of reality, what is really around us, has become dimmed.
We see reality as facing up to the problems that we encounter. As ‘water is wet and stones are hard’. As a gloomy, harsh and imposing structure that contains us, and upon which we are fated to dash ourselves in some Promethean horror (Prometheus was the God who was punished by having his liver torn out every day, by an eagle, only to have it grow again in the night so the eagle could do it again the next day).
OK, so life isn’t that bad, but we have made it pretty dreary. Our level of engagement with the world around us is at a pretty low level.
The ‘wow’ factor in our lives is not the most overused of our expressions, and we tend to endure more than we enjoy.
It is up to us.
We are the ones who are receiving the data about life around us through our senses.
We are the ones who decide what to focus on – the beautiful colour of the trees, or the fight to get into town.
The way we make sense of the information we receive governs the way we respond. And it is completely different for all of us.
Two people, standing side by side, can witness the same event. One will be cynical about it, another will be inspired.
And it is all down to the way that we have painted the picture of the reality that is in front of us.
One person will see the event, remember times in the past when similar things happened to her, remember that nothing good came of it, and will see the worst in what she has seen.
Another will see the same event, remember having had the same thing happen to him and the good that came out of it, and be inspired by what he saw.
Same event, different realities created for each person.
Which begs the question – What is reality?
Reality is that which continues to exist, after you have stopped believing in it.
Reality does not depend on our belief to make it so. We do not have to believe in gravity for it to be true.
Whether we believe it or not, we will still plummet to the bottom of the building if we jump off.
Reality is something that we discover by looking for it.
It is not enough to simply draw conclusions from our own life because we are all biased.
Each of us has built up a different picture of the way life is, and none are absolutely true.
When we look with only one eye we get an incomplete perspective. So when, similarly, we look at things from the perspective of our life alone, so we miss part of the picture.
Which is why the word CONSCIOUSNESS comes from two words – CON (together) and SCIOS (to know)- to know together.
It is by listening to others, getting their perspective on the way life is, that we begin to truly understand the nature of reality.
And that also means listening to all our senses.
Even the ones we have begun to take for granted.
Next time you are going to town, decide to fully engage your senses: The sights, the smells, the tastes, your feelings, your thoughts, the way you are touching the ground.
Become aware of all that is around you, and keep that awareness going for the length of your journey.
See how different you feel about life.
Consciousness is not just about what you think of life.
It is about synthesising all the information you receive, even that which you have learnt to take for granted.
When you do that, the power of WOW! begins to re-appear in your life.
Saturday, 29 January 2011
Aggghhh – Not Enlightenment again!
Enlightenment seems to be a dirty word these days.
“The Enlightenment”, by which we mean the age of reason (as opposed to the age of superstition which preceded it) no longer gets a particularly good press.
Scientists and modernists and other rationally based ‘ists’ are often portrayed as the ‘baddies’ of the new age:
Responsible for a lot of harm, and for stopping new ideas entering the marketplace by insisting that all ‘valued’ ideas be measured by the yardstick that they themselves created – rationality.
Then there is the other sort of enlightenment: The one that you used to get by sitting at the feet of an Indian guru for 20 years.
The Gurus all moved to the west and set up shop in Central London Hotels. They promptly bought Rolls Royces and left a generation disenchanted with the search for knowledge.
Lesser gurus took their place and set themselves up in the far flung corners of the UK: Totnes, Wales, Findhorn – all sorts of places began offering ‘The Infinite way’ in different low key forms.
The more strident aspects of the teaching were appropriated by modern corporate culture and took the form of sales training manuals and ‘Intensive Management Programmes’ .
Books with names like ‘The Tao of Success’ or ‘Sun Tsu for the modern Salesperson’ became readily available.
Once again ‘Enlightenment’ had become a dirty word. Tainted by those who sought to use the teaching for financial gain.
It was for losers, opportunists, charlatans: poor sad weak people who obviously couldn’t cope with life.
All of which is the way it should be: It screens out all those who are not truly serious about seeking ultimate truth.
Such a search flies in the face of reason, common sense, rationality, conventional wisdom and all the other clichés that are used to describe the status quo by those who have a vested interest in it staying the same.
The true seeker is encouraged by the fact that the truth, as Aldous Huxley wrote, “may be found among the lore of primitive people in every region of the world, and in its fully developed form, it has a place in every one of the higher religions”.
The search was there before us, and will be there long after we have gone. It will survive every vagary of fashion, every dictator, country, people, and disaster.
Wherever there are sentient beings, the search for true knowledge and reality will continue to be the ultimate search.
Many are called, but few stay the course.
We say “no…. not now… not for me…. not true…. not the right time…. surely not….. it will never happen to me…. I can’t… I won’t…… it won’t…… anything but start in earnest on that search that will take us further than Armstrong and Aldrin ever went, to the centre of who we are.
The transformation of consciousness is surely the one thing that will make poverty history. It is the very nature of our evolution. It is the one thing that will ultimately make a difference.
Knowing that you are in me, and I am in you.
Knowing the nature of our connectivity.
What do you believe?
Whatever it is, it’s worth remembering that the truth will continue to exist long after you’ve stopped believing in it.
“The Enlightenment”, by which we mean the age of reason (as opposed to the age of superstition which preceded it) no longer gets a particularly good press.
Scientists and modernists and other rationally based ‘ists’ are often portrayed as the ‘baddies’ of the new age:
Responsible for a lot of harm, and for stopping new ideas entering the marketplace by insisting that all ‘valued’ ideas be measured by the yardstick that they themselves created – rationality.
Then there is the other sort of enlightenment: The one that you used to get by sitting at the feet of an Indian guru for 20 years.
The Gurus all moved to the west and set up shop in Central London Hotels. They promptly bought Rolls Royces and left a generation disenchanted with the search for knowledge.
Lesser gurus took their place and set themselves up in the far flung corners of the UK: Totnes, Wales, Findhorn – all sorts of places began offering ‘The Infinite way’ in different low key forms.
The more strident aspects of the teaching were appropriated by modern corporate culture and took the form of sales training manuals and ‘Intensive Management Programmes’ .
Books with names like ‘The Tao of Success’ or ‘Sun Tsu for the modern Salesperson’ became readily available.
Once again ‘Enlightenment’ had become a dirty word. Tainted by those who sought to use the teaching for financial gain.
It was for losers, opportunists, charlatans: poor sad weak people who obviously couldn’t cope with life.
All of which is the way it should be: It screens out all those who are not truly serious about seeking ultimate truth.
Such a search flies in the face of reason, common sense, rationality, conventional wisdom and all the other clichés that are used to describe the status quo by those who have a vested interest in it staying the same.
The true seeker is encouraged by the fact that the truth, as Aldous Huxley wrote, “may be found among the lore of primitive people in every region of the world, and in its fully developed form, it has a place in every one of the higher religions”.
The search was there before us, and will be there long after we have gone. It will survive every vagary of fashion, every dictator, country, people, and disaster.
Wherever there are sentient beings, the search for true knowledge and reality will continue to be the ultimate search.
Many are called, but few stay the course.
We say “no…. not now… not for me…. not true…. not the right time…. surely not….. it will never happen to me…. I can’t… I won’t…… it won’t…… anything but start in earnest on that search that will take us further than Armstrong and Aldrin ever went, to the centre of who we are.
The transformation of consciousness is surely the one thing that will make poverty history. It is the very nature of our evolution. It is the one thing that will ultimately make a difference.
Knowing that you are in me, and I am in you.
Knowing the nature of our connectivity.
What do you believe?
Whatever it is, it’s worth remembering that the truth will continue to exist long after you’ve stopped believing in it.
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