WAR! What is it good for?

There is nothing so incongruous to humanity as war. All combatants are scarred deeply for ever and ever. No one ever truly wins in battle. >>>

Meditation is water not Pepsi

In the world of meditation, TM (Transcendental Meditation) is Coca Cola and Mindfulness is Pepsi. These two ubiquitous brands are everywhere meditation is taught. They both use famous personalities to sell their product and to surreptitiously emphasise that theirs is the ‘real thing’. >>>

The Ego

Many times spiritual seekers put themselves inadvertently in conflict with themselves. The ego is an example of this. Many feel that the ego must be conquered or supressed or even completely disregarded or ignored. As though, for some reason, the ego was a mistake and we have to do all we can to ignore or overlook or disown it. The ego is not a mistake, it is not a hindrance, it is not a curse, the ego is our life’s curriculum of ‘doing’ for the expansion of our ‘being’. The ego is actually probably the most important aspect of us in this life and it is an absolutely awesome design. It tells the story of how we think about ourselves and our universe. Everything is mirrored in our ego. >>>

The Body and the Mind

As spiritual seekers we are often quite hard on ourselves. In these next two classes we are going to talk about being kinder, specifically the body and the mind whilst in class 50 we will be discussing the ego. To be clear though, even though we will be talking about the body, mind and ego, these are actually just labels for different aspects of the soul. In reality everything is soul, these are just distinctive aspects of the soul we are already familiar with. >>>

Don't just do it..

The iconic tag of Nike from the 90’s was “Just do it”. This advertising line did a few things, it told the public that the Nike corporation was interested in its customers being more driven, more ambitious to achieve not only their sporting goals but their life goals by doing more. >>>

Suffering

Is suffering really necessary? If this is heaven as many say it is, how then can we be free of suffering? In Sunirmalya's opinion, the masters of the past might be famous because they suffered so much and offered freedom from suffering after death, but he contends that if heaven is here now, then we have to deal with suffering and our attachment to it.
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Resistance

It turns out that we do not so much have to search for change but let go of our resistance to it. You see, change is a constant. It is natural. There is a flow to our evolution. It is always there, the more we resist it, the more difficult our lives become. There is a natural flow and a natural pace to that change. Our impatience is another form of resistance, telling the universe it is too slow or too fast and it is not to be trusted. We feel we need to inflict our own timeframe, so we disconnect from loving the universe from the natural flow and try and force things in our way and schedule.
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Authentic Love

Kobi loaded up his gun, adjusted his glasses and helmet and jumped down from the tank. As he ran towards the shot up wall of the small disused school in front of him, he thought for a second of his boys, Kai – the eldest, would have been at school in Melbourne right now, it seemed another planet away. He stopped and gazed through his sights for the enemy and not for the first time, wondered. He wondered why? How? How had it come to this and why do we still fight like this? It felt surreal in that moment, for just then he saw the ‘enemy’ climbing a tree behind a building looking for ‘him’. Or anyone like him. He had no helmet, no glasses, his gun was more of a rifle, but what struck Kobi more than anything was that he was a child. He could be no more than Kai’s age but most likely was younger. He was skinny and malnourished and wearing a scarf over his head, but Kobi could still see his eyes and they immediately haunted him, scarred him. There was so much hate and so much soulless fear.
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Perfection

There is an idea of heaven, of perfection in another place and time, as some kind of Garden of Eden where everything is flawless and nothing ever goes wrong and there is no suffering.
But what about the idea that what we have here and now on earth is heavenly but out of ignorance we choose hell?
The Garden of Eden scenario is born out of the idea that we are visitors, temporary inhabitants of this strange land with no real express purpose other than to be drifting through to our real final static unchanging destination, heaven. That we are sort of victims of a creator’s wish for us to be readied, to be made perfect, for our real life in the thereafter. That this world is imperfect and full of suffering for some grand reason we don’t quite understand but we will totally comprehend when we are sitting in the clouds free from all misery whilst somehow being oblivious to the suffering of the poor wretched souls still here.
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Authentic Prosperity

Many people that meditate make all sorts of judgements about their practice of meditation and their levels of material prosperity or financial success.
Whilst it is true that meditation creates the mental and spiritual environment for a more balanced and whole person, this does not have any direct correlation to our world’s judgement of success.
In fact to be really ‘successful’ or authentically ‘prosperous’ has very little to do with our old paradigms which may be more about being rich or famous.
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Your mission statement

Douglas Adams, author of the "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy", proffered the whimsical view that the answer was 42, and whilst way back in class 2 our view on the meaning of life was presented it seems poignant that we should revisit this important topic in this class 42 with respect to Mr Adams.


In class 2 the idea was introduced that rather than ask what the meaning of life is, we should just consider what moments in our lives have been meaningful so far. Once we spend a moment a two reflecting on this, we realise that every meaningful moment is a moment of love and that everything we do, every endeavour, every art, sport, every music, every thing in the end becomes an experience of love. The simple purport is that to be in the flow of love, giving or receiving love without conditions or expectations or obligations, is the highest thing we can do with our life. We realised that all suffering comes from our distance from the flow of love and all happiness from our immersion in it.


Dr Stephen Covey author of the spectacularly successful “The Seven Habits Of Highly Effective People” in habit 1, 2 and 3 speaks of the importance of a mission statement. He clearly details the importance of being proactive in our lives. This is the idea of having the ability to respond (“response” -“ability”) to any situation in the way we choose, we create our lives, that we are not victims (see class 40). This mission statement is really the blueprint. For a company or club or organisation, a mission statement gives the vision and goals of the group in a just a paragraph or two. He suggests that all levels of the group be intimately involved in the writing of the mission statement so that they take ownership when it comes time to enact the statement. But more importantly he suggests that mission statements should be written about our own lives. For us to be clear about our target, to be completely present and responsible for our journey, for us to be aligned with our life’s meaning, a mission statement, a proactive statement of intent, is invaluable. >>>