Read more about the article Transgressing The Prescribed Spiritual Path

Transgressing The Prescribed Spiritual Path

In my life journey thus far I've had to transgress two* major spiritual paths/groups/movements that were both whole-life encompassing - Guru, lifestyle, friends and family, home, job, it felt like a lot could and would be lost. It's was for sure a very difficult thing to navigate but I feel it's important to share and talk about as I see a lot of people dealing with this, particularly in the realm of spiritual organisations. Over time I've actually come to see that it's a totally normal and healthy part of 'spiritual' development (I say spiritual lightly as I actually believe it's not spiritual, it's LIFE). Moving beyond our seemingly secure boundaries of experience, paradigms and conditioning - the known. It's a hugely vulnerable place to be - the unchartered territory of our life, where we let go of the known and step forth into the openness of the unknown. "You're losing your way", "you're falling off the path" these were ideas that were offered up and I became fearful of, that I would 'miss my chance' for enlightenment and make a wrong turn/decision. Choose the wrong door, and therefore closing the other doors forever. Take an irreversible action. Being judged…

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Read more about the article Nothing To Hold On To

Nothing To Hold On To

Can anyone else relate?.... The feeling of nothing to hold on to, of no solid ground, of no control and no stability, can bring terror to the forefront of our experience - particularly when we find ourselves in resistance to this free-fall. And yet when you realise that this free-fall actually brings with it the total freedom of no limits and no boundaries, when you realise that this groundless-ness brings with it the capacity for any and everything to show up - there, there is the moment that you sink into the feeling of pure joy that there is nothing to be fixed, just a new norm to be enjoyed.

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Read more about the article When The Chatter Ceases

When The Chatter Ceases

When the story drops away When the chatter ceases to be When the drama and ups & downs dry up When the endless dissatisfaction and seeking stops When the feeling of next, next, next is gone What are you left with then? This Just this This that is everything and nothing This that is life Everything that you once knew Or thought you knew Cease to feel relevant And yet here you still are Aware Alive Here Its a leap into the unknown A free-fall in life Nothing to hold on to Nowhere to put a stake in the sand Fresh in every moment No past No future No next No present No now Just This Beautiful, alive Isness

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Read more about the article An Exploration of Vulnerability

An Exploration of Vulnerability

This exploration of life requires great vulnerability, earnestness, openness, radical honest and deep inquiry. It’s a truly destructive process, one that burns everything that you are not with such a fire that not even a whisper of the false is left. But what this can mean is that which we hold so dearly, so tightly, for so long doesn’t fit into this new paradigm that is tenderly cracking open. Our once core beliefs and truths don’t feel like ours any more and so we’re required to drop them, to move on, to take a leap of faith into the unknown.

It’s this continuous release into the unknown where freedom lies. It’s not a position to take but a (more…)

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Read more about the article Stop And Smell The Roses

Stop And Smell The Roses

Life is such and unbelievable gift, how often do you stop and smell the roses? Appreciate the little simple ordinary moments? Without reference to the past or thoughts to the future.

We miss the beauty of the moment so easily. Ordinary life has become so throwaway, so undesirable. Instead marked with the next glamorous instagram shot, the next big ‘experience’, the next enviable goal. Next next next. We miss the sheer joy of this extraordinary, but divinely ordinary moment.

Whether that moment be filled with anger, joy, sadness or bliss it doesn’t matter. Just the fact we are alive, that we bear witness to all of this. Oh the magnificence that (more…)

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Read more about the article Getting In The Mud

Getting In The Mud

This morning I came across a beautifully articulated post on Facebook by Unmani (one of many I might add). She recently unexpectedly lost her husband and has been sharing openly her journey/processing throughout this difficult time - it's beautiful, raw and brave and I see that this is very much what she is being called to do, for the benefit of herself and for all those who read what she writes. She writes: In yesterday's online open meeting someone asked me a very interesting question that I feel has been coming up for many people around my recent sharing on Facebook. What is true spiritual attainment if a so-called spiritual person can be so human? Usually being or attaining a spiritual state is assumed to mean that you rise above the ordinary human emotions, sensations, thoughts etc. Here I am, as a so-called spiritual teacher, revealing that actually I am very human and have a wide range of human experiences that many people can relate to. If you have put me, or any spiritual teacher, up on any kind of pedestal as being the ideal to aim for, then you will most likely be disappointed by my down-to-earth humanity. I am…

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Read more about the article The Elephant in the Room

The Elephant in the Room

GETTING PERSONAL There's so much of my spiritual path/story that I haven't yet shared on this blog or social media. Not because I feel the need to hide it, I'm not particularly attached to privacy even, but because I'm still living it each and every moment. The implications not yet seen, the fullness of understanding not yet known. And yet the more I walk this path, this world, the less and less the need to understand, the need for certainty seems to matter to me. These days I find the words are there less and less. The *need* to communicate less and less. But somehow these last few weeks it feels like there's an elephant in the room that I've not been addressing, in the past few months its been somewhat stopping me from publicly writing more than a few snippets here and there. More and more my private writings seem to be addressing this. There's been a shift in my focus, but somehow to talk of it I feel the need to contextualise it with my story a bit more. Two and a half years ago I experienced a life shattering shift (just over a year after the first…

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Read more about the article Freedom to Freely BE

Freedom to Freely BE

I don’t require you to be anyone to turn up switch on to be someone Here in this space I have no use for concepts and opinions assertions and knowledge here in this space we can just BE Be as we are naked and vulnerable strong and fiery broken and lost angry or sad joy-filled and blissful or nothing at all Here in this space we can explore the depth of humanity traverse the fields of experiencing sit in this divine Isness of life but most of all be free free to be free to be without attributes free to be whatever and whoever we are free to sink into this moment again and again and again

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Read more about the article 10 Years Ago Today…

10 Years Ago Today…

10 years ago today Maharishi Mahesh Yogi died. I remember the day clearly, we were in the Dominican Republic on a holiday marking our 1st year wedding anniversary. I turned on the TV (probably the only time I did) to see it on the BBC news tick-a-tape completely out of the blue - “THE BEATLES GURU DIES”. At the time we were living in the epicentre of Maharishi’s Transcendental Meditation (TM) moment in the US; Fairfield, Iowa, the place we had called home for the last 2 years, and would go on calling home for the next 7 almost 8 years. But TM was much more to me, it was something that shaped and formed my whole life, my formative years, something that I had inherited, 20 minutes twice a day, as natural to me as brushing my teeth, I never knew life without it. I learnt TM when I was six years old, I had attended the Maharishi School in the UK, I had worked and lived in amongst TMers, both in the UK and the US for most of my life. My mother was a TM teacher from the 70s, almost all of my friends were TMers, I…

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Read more about the article Raw Unadulterated Living

Raw Unadulterated Living

I have gone from living the (American) dream... good job, beautiful house, wonderful friends, two beloved cats, more stuff than we could ever want or need, plentiful money, gorgeous and loving husband - I wanted for nothing… and now I have nothing (except the husband of course 😜 I’ve still got him thankfully). We have no home – not even a real base, we move from house sit to house sit every few weeks, new place, not knowing anyone, not knowing the area, living out of a hand luggage suitcase. No money to speak of – most people would be shock at how little we live on right now, no possessions - I literally mean it when I say all we have is a hand luggage suitcase each that fits all our stuff, no friends or people we hang out with (because of the said nomadic lifestyle) – just us two 24/7. Nothing really that we need or have to do, no purpose or meaning, no ambition and drive, no desires. And yet I'm the happiest I’ve ever been. So happy I could cry sometimes with overflowing gratitude and love for life as it is. This lifestyle isn’t for everyone,…

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Read more about the article Two Years On…

Two Years On…

It’s been almost two years since I had the Shaktipat Transmission that led to a massive awakening and fundamental shift in perspective and I just now feel like I’m getting the hang of this groove - the groove that has no particular way of being in its expression, anything can and does show up in my experience of daily life. However to say that this doesn’t have some general overarching characteristics and themes isn’t to say the whole story. When I had the transmission the immediate aftermath and reaction was good - for about two weeks - joyfully experiencing, pervasive and expansive silence and insights into the nature of existence, the nature of life, were bountiful, it was like an excited child exploring its new world for the first time. Then the first wave of 'detox' from the personal small self came, it was as if that joyful inquisitive experiencing of the world turned bad, the mind ‘attacked’, doubts and questions of whys and hows were abound. My mind was trying to ‘get it’. Every concept, every word, every experience was questioned for its validity in my experience, so much so it became distressing. I remember the best advice that…

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Read more about the article Compassion of The Heart

Compassion of The Heart

Again and again life has recently been showing up with this question of what is compassion? What is love? Compassion can look like a lot of different things, but for the moment I wanted to talk about compassion for those around you that act in ways that you don’t understand, don’t like and don’t find their behaviour to be acceptable at all – maybe they’re behaving like a complete asshole.

The most compassionate thing you can do is not write them off. Bring them into your heart. Their asshole-ness is covering up a non-acceptance of Self in themselves. When you accept your whole Self, when you accept all that you are and all that you experience, all the ‘world’, then you aren’t rejecting anything. You aren’t creating a sense of separation – all is you. So pull into your heart that someone, see that (more…)

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Read more about the article Just for a Moment

Just for a Moment

Keep letting go that dogged determination of seeking whether it be experiences and pleasure-seeking better and more ‘stuff’ vaster and deeper knowledge more experienced and valued skills let it all go just for a moment and experience this moment. Experience what it is to live life as awareness unadorned with the commentary of the mind theres nothing to get rid of, no bad thought all must be held in the tender embrace of acceptance for the real blossoming of life lived in truth and freedom to be recognised as your birthright all along.

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Awakening Is Not Like Baking A Cake

It’s so easy to fall into the trap of thinking that you have to do XY&Z in order to realise the Self…. as if it's like a cake that you put all the exact ingredients in the bowl in the right order and put it in the oven and ping, you have yourself a perfect cake. Except it doesn’t work like that, that's the mind’s imaginings of what it is. What I’m talking about is prior to the mind, and therefore can’t be grasped by the mind. Anything the mind thinks it knows or understands about this is just the mind imagining what it thinks. It’s not an adding to, it’s not a changing of, its a realisation of that which you cannot NOT be, that which you already are, that which you always were, that which you always will be whether you realise it or not. It’s like waking up from a dream; before… you were in the dream and you didn’t realise that you were dreaming, but you were. Then you wake up and realise it was a dream. It doesn’t change the dream, the dream is still there, playing out at it was, but you realise you…

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Read more about the article I Am

I Am

I don’t have any designs to be a teacher, or even a student, to be anything or anyone. I simply am. Living this life in the present moment of pure grace and spontaneity, meeting each and every moment with the fullness of my heart and the truth of this moment as I know it. Never is there anything to be rejected or avoided, never is there anything to be clung to and grasped; all is perfectly playing out on this stage of experiencing. For who am I that can possibly DO any of this, who could claim any ownership of this moment? What this isn’t is some spiritual pose, some ‘way’ of being. This is just a description of what naturally happens when the dropping of all pretences, the dropping of any held view, the total openness of Sahaja, the natural state, when What-Is is.

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Read more about the article Looking with Childlike Wonder

Looking with Childlike Wonder

We tend put value judgements on what we want any given moment to look like, and so when the present moment doesn’t look like how we want then we seek to change it; we seek for the ‘good’ to stay and the ‘bad’ to go. This futile seeking to change the here and now causes immense suffering because life can look like anything.

And yet in reality good or bad it doesn’t matter, it all comes, it all goes, nothing stays around for very long. NOTHING. If we can sink into the reality of that for a moment we can see the futility of trying to hold on to anything; then the peace and sense of freedom that opens up in its wake is quite glorious. The physical feeling of tension and heaviness is lifted, the space of being right here right now is felt. Nothing to change, nothing to do, nothing to be. (more…)

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Read more about the article Embracing Life

Embracing Life

Look at the world as if you know nothing, don’t draw any conclusions about what you experience, or who you are.   Innocently move through life experiencing what is without the burdens of ideas, judgements and conclusions.   Take each moment a fresh, knowing that this moment will never be again.   Lovingly embrace each experience of life, how lucky we are to have the play of life grace us with its beauty and light.   Embrace all, reject nothing - see that you are the master of none but the father/mother of all.

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Read more about the article Personal ‘I’ vs Awareness ‘I’

Personal ‘I’ vs Awareness ‘I’

There’s an assumption that when I say “you are awareness/consciousness” that I’m talking of I-personal/ego/individual I/you. Firstly I want to clarify that when I speak of I/me/you in conjunction with awareness I’m talking of the non-personal ‘I’ that is consciousness. That is awareness. The you (big Self, I-I) that IS awareness-consciousness.

It seems to be common that when someone realizes that who they took themselves to be (the mind-body ‘I’) is untrue, it’s seen that at the heart of experiencing there is nothingness/emptiness/awareness. This is true. But I urge you to not stop there, look/inquire deeper into this recognition.

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Read more about the article The Lion Roars

The Lion Roars

Wow I feel like a lion has been unleashed. This brutal honesty in service of truth that cuts with the precision of a well known blade is quite a surprise to me. This sharp intellect that can spar and duel with words unknown to me, spilling out like nobodies business. There’s still a tendency that’s been around all my life – that when confronted with an assertion by someone, to shy away, to back down without even looking, to assume that they must be right… "who am I after all? I know nothing." But I’m finding this tendency more and more untenable. There’s a nauseating energy, I guess we would call it adrenaline, that surges in me and so this hiding, this backing down from looking to my own experience doesn’t last. It’s like I cannot NOT look to see if what is being said is true – no matter how much the tendency to hide from that looking still shows up. And so I find myself, for the first time in my life, facing full-faced to what life is showing me. Responding to the assertions of others, looking at the fabric of what they are saying. And… well then the…

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Read more about the article Stand in Truth

Stand in Truth

I stand in truth. Can I accept that I may be judged, I may be questioned, I may be ridiculed? Can I accept that, can I be brave? Can I stand in my own truth, without qualification and explanation? Can I stand sure, knowing that it’s the right thing, it’s the only thing? Can I stand in truth, unashamedly without reason, and with no excuse? Can I stand up for mySelf, stand tall for the realisation of my very being? Can I stand up for the truth of my own reality that I know so well, so intimately? Can I live my life without the influence of shoulds and should nots? Can I say to hell with it all and be as I am? Can I stand in all my glory, warts and all, honest and vulnerable? Can I accept all of it, every aspect of me, every aspect of life, can I embrace it into my heart without exception? So I stand in my truth and in turn encourage others to stand in theirs. For it’s the most loving thing I can do for myself and others. Drop all the games, all the masks, all the pretences, all the…

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Read more about the article Living the Obvious

Living the Obvious

Life has become about living; living not in past regrets or future worries but life lived in this moment... None of the second guessing, the questioning, the “is the right thing?”, or shoulds and should nots. The age old - before awakening, chop-wood-carry-water and after awakening, chop-wood-carry-water is so so true it's laughable. Being a seeker you imagine some different 'state' where everything will be beautiful and blissful – life will be perfect. Well… life is perfect, but not in that way, perfect in that it IS. It’s happening exactly as it is, nothing to do, nothing to change, nothing to be; even in amongst every imaginable phenomenal occurrence. That’s where the miracle of life is to be found, in the very ordinariness of existence. You are, and always have been exactly what you seek. You are the freedom that was/is always here, it’s only a matter of seeing through the trees of ‘personhood’ to see that the ‘person’ that you take yourself to be is such an incredibly limited and narrow view of you. We take ourselves to be the body; the body that has changed, morphed and grown since birth, the body that will die. We take ourselves…

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Read more about the article The Attachment of Relationships

The Attachment of Relationships

The image of relationships and enlightenment don't normally go hand in hand. The stereotyped image of the 'enlightened monk', shunning the material householder life is something that’s been around in spiritual traditions for a long time. So out of this there comes the common misconception that you can't be in a relationship and be successful on the 'spiritual path'. But being in a relationship doesn’t necessarily mean that awakening can’t be there too. The relationship doesn’t have to go, only the attachment to the relationship has to go. Don't get me wrong, the result of that dropped attachment may actually be that the relationship ends. Ultimately that’s what was meant to happen, and all attachments do eventually fall away - what's left is what’s left, maybe the relationship will be there, maybe not. My own relationship has taught me that relationships in themselves aren't some obstructive thing that stops you from realizing your own nature. Having said that, I lived through the often painful dropping of the attachment to my relationship with my husband Martyn. We found ourselves at an impasse after he had a spiritual awakening that in the wake of he felt he could no longer be at the ashram where we were…

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Read more about the article This Suffering Will Pass

This Suffering Will Pass

I feel your pain, your suffering. If I could, I'd tell you that this will pass, just as the clouds pass in the sky, just as the ripples of the dropped stone disappear, just as the passing wind that rustles the tree leaves, just as the forgotten pain of yesterdays cut finger, just as the heartbreak of first loves breakup, just as the treasured childhood wellington's long outgrown, just as the wishes of birthday candles past. Don’t hold on, for this too shall pass.

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Read more about the article Taste the Strawberry

Taste the Strawberry

I’m pretty much an open book these days, but I’m not some kind of spiritual google that people can ask any amount of questions and I give them the answers. Someone on twitter recently asked me “…does that mean people have no individual purpose?” A perfectly normal and unassuming question as questions go, but all of these questions, do they need to be answered? If you have the answer will it stop all questions, or will it just satisfy that particular question for a second then another one will fill it’s place? Is there a question that will end all questions? Is there an answer that will end all questions and answers? Will this cycle of questions and answers ever stop? Is there something in you that is nothing to do with questions and answers? (Wow, see how many questions I just asked there!!!) Throw out all questions, throw out all answers. They are just more of the same stuff, empty and meaningless. Keep quiet and see if any questions or answers come in this quietness of being. (more…)

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