Inspired

Have you ever heard a thing and only later understood it, realised it?

I don't know how many times someone has said to me something like:

"Don't do anything, just rest in the silence now. Be completely present and aware of what this moment has for you now. Remain content in your experience as it is, without judgement, without wanting to change or it to be anything else than it is, right now."

The amount of times something similar has gone through my eyes or ears and always running was this idea that even to rest I had to do something. I couldn't sit back in the comfy sofa of awareness because there was something more. It was this Noble Thought - I want everything, and what I am experiencing right now is only a taster so I'll try a little harder, be a little more one pointed, be a better student.

It's so funny because its the littlest thing that kept me from resting, from experiencing what there is in this moment, from being free to be all that presence.

So there is just the experience of stillness. Everything still comes and goes but there is this central core, untouched by any of it. I love the saying "like paint being thrown through air". Just like that. It's just what I choose to make it.

Wonderful, simple, so simple and such fun, captivating...

Dropping Keys

The small man
builds cages for everyone
he knows
while the sage,
who has to duck his head
when the moon is low,
keeps dropping keys
all night long
for the
beautiful
rowdy
prisoners.

~ Hafiz

I stole this from Moni Vangolen and Tomas Stubb's website. They are wonderful, still and inspiring teachers. If you are ever near them, seek them out. I feel such a connection with these guys, they are a ton of fun. yay!

Surrender

Surrender to the Source.
Surrender to Awareness, this is the only place of protection.
Surrender your heart and you will know all.
Surrender to Consciousness and Bliss.

Surrender means to surrender your bondage and simply be Freedom.
Surrender is the ego bowing down to its Source.
No more demands or commands, but just putting all in the hands of the Source.
Surrender is to submit your stupidness, your wickedness, to the will of Existence, to Consciousness and Bliss and being happy.
That’s all.

Surrender.
Let Silence have You.

- Sri H.W.L. Poonja

Cultivating the ability is stay still and let whatever happens happen is so important in meditation, and indeed in life. It's incredibly simple but huge in terms of peace and experiencing the maximum of your Self that is there to be experienced. Totally letting go and getting out of the way results in such a joyful invincibility.

It is an act of absolute humility: "I know nothing. I know what I like, I know what is important to me. But I don't know how this universe works, what is best for me, how my greatest desire will unfold for me the smoothest and quickest.”

Absolutely surrendering is finally acknowledging the uselessness of the mind’s ability to give anything that lasts in terms of satisfaction. It allows the Grace of the universe to take over. Where before we would try and work out the best way, by surrendering in this moment we let the infinite wisdom of a power much greater than our puny mortal minds the space and permission to act. By giving up the mind and surrendering in this moment, we disappear. The Source is all that remains.

We’ll always have a choice, and rightly so. I’m not saying let life continue without your input. I’m saying act, but be free of the expectation of the result of action. Be innocent. There’s a huge difference, when we sit down to ascend or meditate, in life, everywhere.

We can make the choice to continue as we always have - trying to figure it out, to protect our interests, to secure our lives and our experience - or we can let go, giving everything including our grasping pride that we know up in exchange for resting back into the stillness of our inner awareness.

Stop fighting, you don't know anything.

It is just like a journey down a river, kicking back, letting the main current take us swiftly and smoothly to the re-cognition of who we really are, versus jumping in and attempting to control our descent by holding onto the side. The only thing that happens is that our journey is not smooth, fast or pleasant: we get pummelled and beaten by the rocks and branches.

The only time this happens to you - getting stuck or having a problem - is when you don’t fully surrender to what is, when you have an expectation or a position. The universe has a wonderful way of showing you all these places. It’s easy to make a half-hearted effort at surrendering. You can even surrender 99%, but that 1% will still get you. You’ll be shown if you’re hanging on in the slightest way. And it's a great thing if you are willing to be shown. There is God, knocking on your door, showing you where you can have more. Awesome. Being humble, being willing not to know, stepping back and letting whatever happens happen is the quickest way to regaining smoothness, peace and connection, and getting more.

So, don’t try and work anything out. Invest all of your attention in the Silence that remains in you when everything else is ignored. Surrender every impulse, every emotion, every great idea back to that. It's the easiest way. Nothing else has worked.

If not Now, when?

Babaji

"Love and serve all humanity.
Assist everyone.
Be happy, be courteous.
Be a dynamo of irrepressible joy.
Recognize God and goodness in every face.
There is no saint without a past and no sinner without a future.
Praise everyone. If you cannot praise someone, let them out of your life.
Be original, be inventive.
Be courageous. Take courage again and again.
Do not imitate; be strong, be upright.
Do not lean on the crutches of others.
Think with your own head. Be yourself.
All perfection and every divine virtue are hidden within you. Reveal them to the world.
Wisdom, too, is already within you. Let it shine forth.
Let the Lord's grace set you free.
Let your life be that of the rose; in silence, it speaks the language of fragrance."

Babaji

Stuck

"The only difference between a rut and a grave is their dimensions."

Ellen Glasgow

Perfection

It may seem at times that our search is for perfection, that one day we'll reach a state of ultimate purity and rest, finally fufilled, content, whole, finished. The reality I suspect, at least while we're still human, is of constant evolution, continual discovery of more.

Sure, there will come a time of an continuous experience of contentment and peace and fufillment, but as long as you continue to rest all of your awareness in the source of all, that source will continue to show you places where you can surrender more of yourself to it.

Which is a fantastic thing - a never ending, continually changing experience of being whole, and then even more whole, and then even more whole.

The great thing is that you can stop expecting that final stage, that final aha, because it never existed. You can give up getting it right, getting it perfect. What you are chasing is an idea of perfection based on a memory or a comparison of what you believe Truth to be. That either is gone, never to come again or it never was available to you in the first place.

Perfection is only available to you right now and you have no choice over how it looks.

In the same way you cannot be nearly full or almost there. It's not like that, there is no shallow and deep end to the swimming pool of God. You either are resting in Stillness or not. You're either wet or you're not.

If not Now, when?

Silence

"The purpose of all practice is Silence, your real nature.
Without Silence you cannot be in Peace,
so strive only for this.
Even while active, remain in Silence, as Silence, and be conscious of Silence always."

Poonja

Love Revolution

“At the risk of sounding ridiculous, I say all true revolutionaries are guided by great feelings of love.”

Che Guevera

Inspiration

I've just realised how important inspiration is to me. I've also realised how I can be a source of inspiration - I don't need that to come from outside of myself. Of course it is lovely and wonderful to be inspired by others but the responsibility for the constant creation of that comes from me.

It's this great cycle of never ending greatness - I tell people what excites and makes me passionate and then they get excited and up their dreams and then I get excited and oh my goodness its onwards and upwards...

It's inspiring to have my experience of stillness growing and changing within myself too. That alone provides ample inspiration for me to discover and create and live. It's fantastic. The more I go within, the more excited I get about my outside life. It's almost too much. There's so many things I want to do and not enough time to do them all at the same time!

I'm so grateful to see clearly my role in my life and having the tools to create what I want.

Life is good, truly a wonderous thing.

The power of a dream

One of the most valuable things I have realised lately is what power a dream holds.

One of the things that brought me to seek more in my life was that I didn't really know what I wanted in it. I knew the space of silence and love that I wanted to connect to permanently but beyond that I wasn’t clear. It felt rough - I felt like I couldn’t do anything or include anyone in my life until I knew exactly what my purpose was. It felt just like a shallow survival type existence.

For a while when I discovered the connection I longed for I felt like all I needed was it. I could be happy living in a cardboard box as long as the depth and ever expanding and embracing nature of the stillness remained.

A few years on and now I find that I do have a vision, that there are important things that I hold dear and want to achieve in the world. For a little time I tried to deny these by ignoring them and sinking deeper into the quiet, but they kept coming back.

I see I was given this life to live - to fully bring Arjuna to the world: To explore what makes myself more and be this, continuously. I know that I want to see the world in a state of celebration, and I know that I can’t be fully free while suffering remains. I also know it is only through me fully living my life, without limitations, that the world is also set free.

Piece of cake…

So. I have a vision. It is of a future not far away. There fear, doubt, worry, condemnation are a ghost of a memory. There people live motivated by joy and love and the pleasure of giving. There, all see clearly and simply the power of choice and of thought, and use it to bring celebration to themselves and the rest of the world.

Humanity is free, never basing their worth on anything on the outside. Only one thing is relied on - the constant connection with the source of their soul. From that, all are given divine perspective: Lifted far, far beyond a life of survival, all are free to live for the delight of living, free to create whatever they wish, whenever they wish.

Spontaneous, beautiful, authentic life spirals onwards, upwards, forever and ever…

Truth

"It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth.' and so it goes away. Puzzling."

Robert M. Pirsig

Be yourself

"Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition."

Steve Jobs, Apple Computers

Easy does it

I teach meditation. Not meditation as commonly pictured or practiced, sitting bolt upright with legs crossed. Not meditation as in taking a trip or visualising colours. This is meditation as in union, a joining of one’s self to one’s fullest, greatest Self. It has no rules other than the more you use it, the more you get out of it. It is a simple movement into the heart of the Stillness within. It is totally effortless and absolutely rewarding. The reason for it is to allow life to be lived fully, richly and completely. The experience it gives me is the reason I wake in the morning, the reason I write this now.

Many people I have met say that all spiritual practices are the same. Maybe they say that because they are tired of looking, searching. Maybe it is their way of temporarily placating their heart’s longing for expansion. To me saying that is like saying all cars are the same. It’s true - on the surface - and yet infinitely untrue when you look closer.

Finding a way of permanently living in connection to the silence within, that ‘at home’ quality of yourself that you know so well, should be the purpose of all spiritual practice. In this way some cars simply do not start. Some are take eons of instruction to learn how to drive. Some go, but are exhausting to drive. Some are too small, too slow, too unsatisfying. What you want is a luxury car, easy to handle, relaxing to use, simply nothing but comfort as you speed past all old outmoded ways towards your heart’s desires.

I say this because it’s important. Crucial even. Spiritual practice has nothing to do with pain and suffering or even force, trying or straining. Zero. Your mind responds to what it loves far far better than punishment. Love conquers all. The path is the same as the goal.

So take hope. There is a way back home. There are tools that fit you, that allow you to stretch out and, as you do so, discover all the places where you are holding back the fullest expression of yourself. There are ways and means that allow you to experience everything of your inner and outer life. It can be absolutely easy and enjoyable. You can be experiencing nothing but joy from here to forever. True. I tell you no lies.

A life worth living...

It’s the doubt that kills all, any dream any love any aspiration any miracle. That belief that it can’t be done. Awful. If anything I want to live with both feet solidly in the dream. Definitely not in believing that it’s not even possible because that’s the way its always been, that’s the way it’s done, that’s the way everyone does it. No way, no more.

I want to live life fully and hugely and pay no attention to those grey little contractions that see and judge the world as half empty. That’s not how I want to live. I want joy and expansion and love and beauty and dreams and miracles.

I want it all.

I love the people I live with. They are the most inspired bunch I have ever come across. We feed off each other, it’s a continual expansion of hope and reality, of dreams and experience. I guess you could say that I’m lucky, but this is what I wanted always and now I have it.

I have it all and I want more.

I always wanted to live a life where I never regretted not doing something. One where I could look back and say I did it all: There is nothing that I wanted to do and did not try. It’s friggin scary to begin, and still takes boldness to launch into living each moment guided by my heart. But there is nothing else I can do, really. So I resolve to do that in every second of my existence – not to exist, not to put up with, but to fully engage my dreams and that which is important and vital to me right now.

One thing I have faith in is that I can look after my interests first and everyone wins through that. I full know the value and joy of giving and of making a commitment and sticking with it. My resolve has nothing to do with small minded and constantly changing selfish ego stroking. And I trust all those around me to tell me if I ever get arrogant enough to fall into that. What it has everything to do with is a life dedicated to Truth, to Love, to Beauty and to Freedom. In that, there can be no losers.

On Freedom

From the Prophet - Khalil Gibran

At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,

Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.

Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.

And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.

You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief,

But rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.

And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?

In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle the eyes.

And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?

Do you realise how wonderful you are?

Do you realise how wonderful you are? How beautiful and amazing your presence is? It shines like the sun! Not that you do anything to be like this, just you being fully present in yourself is all that is required for your light to come alive. It’s so wonderful to share either words or silence with you. Yet it’s the weirdest thing to feel that uniqueness, that wholeness that is you and then realise you doubt that who you are is good enough. The words that sometimes come out of your mouth and what I experience is so different it’s shocking. Good enough for what? Good enough to be here? To live?

Let me tell you what I see. You are perfect. All that you wish to become is there, sitting, waiting for you to realise and accept and love all that you are. It’s all there right now. You don’t need to change, to add or lose any part of yourself. Every desire, interest, love and dislike of yours is part of the gift that you bring to the world. You do not have to know more, heal more, gather anything else to you before your fullness can be appreciated. You are all that you want, already.

For so long we have run in circles looking to do right, looking to please, to become loved by making people happy. We want to become and change and heal. We have become neurotic that something is wrong with us. It’s so terrible because it is absolutely untrue. We are more trained to react to other’s opinions of ourselves than we realise, or would like to admit. We give up our beauty, our uniqueness, our gifts to the world far too easily. We constantly compromise our hearts’ longing, because our dreams, our vision is not good enough, not quite right.

There is only one thing that you have to do, only one thing that will complete you. That is living in constant contact with the truth of your soul. Of your soul! Not your parent’s or your partner’s or even Jesus’s or Buddha’s or Eckhart Tolle’s. Rest fully in the truth of who you are, right now, and walk. Live the life that you love. This is Truth, this is living free as you were meant to be. And the only thing that can stop us experiencing our full potential is doubt – that doubt that who we are right now is not good enough. Not yet, not until we get this knowledge or position, lose this block, are in this relationship. You see that and you are free, you are no longer the monkey on the chain.

The payoffs for even beginning this journey are immense. When you realize how wonderful and complete your presence is, never again will you hurt yourself. Never again will you base your happiness on what happens on the outside. You will be complete, full and satisfied with that simple awareness of yourself. You will find love, joy and gratitude in even the simplest things. Dignity, respect, awe, magic, peace, constant stability are all yours, growing surely as you give your attention back to yourself.

This is the greatest gift you can give the world: your Self. You will never buy your presence in a store or on eBay. Nor will you find it in a book. By simply settling back into your awareness and bringing the fullest expression of yourself back from the jaws of doubt, the whole world is transformed. Everything of the world, right down to the smallest energetic potential rejoices when you remember because it’s what the world needs – people who have come alive.

Your Heart Awaits...

Something I wrote a while back to explain why I teach and practice the meditation technique I teach and practice. Hope you enjoy it.



You are all that you seek to be, all that the sages have written about throughout time and space. You are at once a child of this Universe and the Creator of the cosmos. Your destiny, your purpose in life is to realise this, to be this, to live your fullest potential. God is here and God is Now and God is You. You are not here to be a mere channel for God, but completely inseparable from It. God loves you so much that the Truth waits - for all Eternity if need be - for you to make the only choice that matters: To return back to Yourself. This is the only life that will fully satisfy your heart, which remembers your perfection very well.

At some level you know this to be true. Your flawlessness already exists under the concerns and fears of your day-to-day life. It is stillness, peace, and childlike wonder; it is the Beloved on the inside. It is total freedom from all limitation. Living it is a shift from unconsciousness – believing that the surface drama of life is Reality - to constant awareness of the Source that underlies all creation. The fruit of this communion is the obliteration of all fear, all need for protection, all idea of lack of any kind, leaving only the constant perception of perfection, joy, clarity, laughter and love.

Returning to Innocence is not difficult, nor does it involve force or even seriousness of any kind. The only thing you have to do is have a willingness, a commitment to be who you are and to give up your belief in limitation, in separation. You do not have to follow a particular belief system, diet or exercise regime. You do not need to heal yourself before the Universe embraces you, although you will be fully healed when you fully commit to Being God. You need not do anything else but focus on what is Real, right Now. The promise has always been one of instant forgiveness - instant purity - when you Remember in this moment. The more you do this the more life is lived sweetly and perfectly. The growth of awareness of God in you affects Everything, the whole of Consciousness. The choice for peace in you is the choice for peace in all humanity. Here is absolute service, absolute selflessness - for truly you are giving up the hold of the small self in exchange for dissolving back into that which endlessly gives.

The Ishayas have held the vision of, and the means for, a completely free humanity ever since the rise of ego and selfishness. Ishaya in Sanskrit means ‘of the Lord’ or ‘of the highest consciousness’. The vision is one of universal faultlessness, of life submerged in endless joy and love and adventure and divine grace, utterly without a hint of suffering. The means is called Ascension, which is ‘to rise above the entire limiting structure of the mind’. The Ishayas well know that God is the peace that passeth all understanding, something that can be experienced fully but never adequately described in mere words. People from different cultures and backgrounds refer to Themselves in different ways but yet they are the same. The Ishayas’ Ascension is a mechanical tool for all, regardless of belief, that leads directly back to what is Real. In all its simple purity, this teaching is a re-alignment with the Truth of who you are.

Everything you need is already in place inside of you. There is nothing than can hold back your destiny. The only thing that can slow this growth is human stubbornness. If you accept the summons of the One it’s possible to live your dreams: It can be nothing but joy from hereon in. Let your heart guide you… don’t put it off any longer. What more invitation do you require?

Originally published in Rainbow News