Non Duality Adventures

The spiritual journey can feel like a long and arduous one at times. At times thoughts torment and torture. They cry out in pain and scream. They throw a paddy like a small child desperate to be in charge. They try to assert the illusion of control and the belief that there is an “I” that is behind the thoughts, feelings and actions. They have to be in charge. They have to be talking about something that is real. This ME. This I. This Self. Of course it is there. Right? However, all that is needed is to watch. This seems easy. It seems simple but it is not. The habit of getting hooked into thought and its topics about imagined people, places and things is the most challenging feat we have to face as a human being. It is not for most. Most want to stay asleep. The contents is appealing. It’s seductive. The chase is still on. I must want, need and have. But for a few they are done.  Watching means seeing things we do not want to see at first. Then it means letting go of things w...

   "I" always believed very strongly that "I" was a kind person. The story held was that "I" am empathetic, caring and very compassionate. "I" would attempt to support others in any way "I" could emotionally. "I" had a strong sense that "I" was a good, honest and supportive person.  Then "I" began to enquire into how thought works. Why does it say the things that it does? What is its motive? What is it trying to get, achieve and control?  On the surface layer. Of course "I" was being caring. Of course "I" was being supportive. But in the exploration of the layers of thought underneath the action and the first layer of story were found to be beliefs of "being right", and of "knowing better". This led to the desire to explore and question more. So if "I" am doing something or saying something because "I" think "I" am being kind or giving my...

We (as consciousness) are taught to believe that what we are is a separate individual body moving through time. We are told this from a very early age by all those around us. As we grow up we don’t question this. Why would we? It is what everyone around us says, feels and thinks, it is what all of the structures of society back up. Our education, work and government say it is so. So why investigate otherwise? The answer to this is suffering. This perceived individual person is believed to navigate life while experiencing fear, worry, regret, anxiety, loneliness and loss. We cling to things for safety and grieve the things we believe we have lost. We constantly strive for an imaginary success that can never be gained as the goal posts continually move further and further away into imagined time. We may feel “we” have got there for a moment, but then it passes and the chase is back on for the “what next?”. We are never satisfied for longer than a fleeting moment. Thought is structure...

Life as the Guru When we begin our spiritual journey, we seek out practices and teachers that will support us to DO what we think we need to DO in order to progress. We begin to enquire into the thought system and we see that it is not the logical, organised, useful functioning of what we are, but a crazy, illogical rising of automatic content that we do not in fact have any control over at all.  When we see that we have no control over it at all and attempt to stop it or change it, we watch as it goes crazy. We then begin to detach from it and fall back into a position of watching it and observing the craziness. This then gives us the spiritual will needed to begin to detach from larger parts of our story that has been the cause of immense suffering.  Throughout this journey, we reach out to supposed others to get guidance and support as we flip-flop in and out of one moment, believing the story and everything that it says into the next, being able to objectively watch and ob...

  Being rather than understanding and knowing   The road to finally waking up in its fullest expression is ladened with pitfalls. Some are shallow and stoney and others deep and dark. The length of time we remain in the holes depends on what is needed to be learned and how fast we see we are in a hole and seek to climb back out.  One of these large pitfalls is that of understanding or knowing. When we begin to “learn” about spiritual awakening and non duality we take it on as information in the form of knowledge. We read, watch, experience and then it is stored within thought as memory. This allows for enquiry within thought to begin. Questions about the actual content begin to be asked such as “Why can I not forgive them?” or “What is it that I am expecting from this situation?”. As this evolves we then begin to ask looser questions about the content such as “Why do I feel this way?” or “What is at the root of this particular chain of thought?”. We then go on to ask...

Thought is never stronger than when creating fear. Just stop and think for a moment. Watch it. Can you write down what comes up as it does? Chances are it is about fear or control (ultimately the same thing). Simple thoughts about others, situations, and ourselves if examined are about thought trying to control and predict stuff or go over old stuff in order to attempt to analyse and judge. All of it is to go with fear.  Worry, anxiety, and unworthiness are one of its best fuels for those trains. It can grow and gain strength as these kinds of thoughts carry immense energy. Once in this track loop it can then cause emotions which are triggered by it and add on the train giving the sensation of impending danger and death. What a great way to keep itself going. How can you ever stop thinking now? If you do, you will die. The fear of death is the basic root of thought. When I first started this journey I would sit and write down thoughts as they would arise and watch the trains connec...

  All too often we don’t realise it but feeling lost or lonely is perfectly ok. That it is bound to happen. It is part of the structure of thought. Create separation and then get lonely . The feeling from the presence of god/ consciousness will do this! On such occasions, we are in conflict with our selves and the so-called suffering or pain is bound to take place as we replace our actual sensations, which are momentary energies, with labels and explanations from memory ABOUT the story and how it is effecting us. We do not see that it is the story that is causing the pain. No story, no loneliness. We so desperately try to make sense of all this, simply because everyone else seems to be doing the same. The story runs in thought. "They look happy!" "Why am I so alone and unhappy?". Facebook and other social media have ramped this up to unbearable degrees. The "look at them and how great it looks" scenario feeds the story coming up within thought and the s...

  Waking up amidst the gritty stuff Nearly every “spiritual teacher” that I have ever heard speak has at some point mentioned their retreats, their teachers, their practices. There has been the indication (whether meant or not) that there was a journey which involved “spiritual places and people”.  This wasn’t the case here. (Unless you include the one weekend retreat I did in Portugal as an attempt at the time to escape young children, a caravan and the searing heat of the Portuguese summer!) Other than those three days the story here was that of kids, a husband, arguments, friends, work... a very ordinary life. There was no teacher who wore robes and whom I bowed down to. There was a man from Leister who sat on my sofa and exploded my entire world in the most violent fashion while in the midst of kids, washing, cooking dinner and sleepless nights. It was messy, very messy! It was not serein, it was not calm, it was definitely not up a mountain. There had never been reli...

  The difference between pity and true forgiveness. We walk around every day - full of opinions and judgments about the world and the supposed others in it. We criticise and judge, in the attempt to make us feel better about our place in it all. Underneath this we know in our core that the void that is there cannot be filled by putting others down in order to make ourselves feel better, and yet it is all we know.  When we offer another support, we assume that this desire to help comes from a place of good intention. We never for a moment check out the validity of this. If we did, we would see something that we do not want to. We would see that in our movement towards helping them we are being as selfish as if we were not helping them at all.  “Why?” I hear you ask. “That makes no sense!?”  If we were to truly follow thought back to its root, we would see that its movement comes not from an unattached movement of love but from the desire to make ourselves feel better ...

  Are you ready?  We believe ourselves to be made up of a mind and a body. We wander through life, feeling and thinking that situations, people, places and sensory input affect this system and that this system sits outside of all of these supposed other things.  Thought rants all day long, as it narrates over the top of whatever is unfolding and talks about the people, situations and stories that affect it - It flips backwards and forwards telling stories about the ast and the future and how it has impacted this system supposedly made up of the mind and body.  What thought could be silent? What if thought had absolutely nothing to say about anything? What would that be like? Liberating, freeing? Well... - this is the silence we all seek. THIS is what we are all looking for. We believe our pain is caused by those around us and external factors that happen TO us. What if this is not the case? What if WE are causing our own pain by what thought is thinking and...

Yesterday the money stopped. The security stopped. The hope stopped. All that remained was potential. Nothing solid remains. No foundations. All gone.  No home, no money, no job, no business, no big dream of what we will build. No partnership. No more promise. The money, the dream, the goal, the enough.  Now there is nothing. It’s all gone.  Did it start up? The worry, the opinions, the judgements, the Fear? The desperate need to make it right for ME, and for everyone? To fix it, to find an answer - to cover up the emotion and the pain? The need to carry everyone and their stories. The need to be working towards success and the dream? The fear. Are there the questions? What next? What now? What about the kids, the house, the staff, the plan? The panic that would follow. The Fear.  No. There is just this. Just typing on a laptop. Just the sound of the keys clicking, just the sun shining through the window. No one is  home. No one is here. No story to run....

  The illusion of positive thinking There are so many approaches out there that say they can support you to think more positively. The growth mindset movement has made its way into schools teaching children that they can have power over what they think and that they can change up negative thoughts for positive thoughts. The issue is that this whole system is built on the belief that we have power over what we think and that it is us doing the thinking!! I sat in a session the other day with a child who was telling me about how she had a poster in her classroom with an image of a tree. On one half of the tree were positive thoughts with a green background and on the other half of the tree were negative thoughts, with a red background. Now this interested me, and as we sat there and drew out the image of the tree with the thoughts on either side to represent positive and negative, I watched her response as I explained how thought functions.  I explained that thoug...