The other day I was feeling particularly overwhelmed by things – my feelings, my chattering mind and my perception of the world around me. It’s at these times that my general wellbeing can be balanced on a knife edge; either I will fall deeper into the chatter of my mind and get horribly lost or my […]
Category Archives: lessons in mindfulness
Top Tip #8 – Be a Non Believer
Be a non-believer. Don’t believe me. Don’t believe anyone, and most importantly of all, never ever believe yourself. Beliefs are for fools you see. They are constructions of the ego and simply a product of your conditioning. Most of them aren’t even your own beliefs, they were programmed by your culture your background, your parents, the […]
Top Tip #6 – Mindful Walking
When you are walking, be on the step you are on. Forget the idea that you are going anywhere at all. You may be on your way to somewhere, but that somewhere is still just a future thought. There is nowhere to go really, in truth you have already arrived! You’ll never get to […]
Disobedience and the Cultivation of Compassion
If you only got into Mindfulness because you had tried everything else and were desperate to find relief from your mental suffering, to escape some neurosis, or you simply wanted to quieten your mind so that you could get the edge in a competitive world, then you need to understand one thing now. Before you […]
Top Tip #5 – Give up being Master of the Universe
Mindfulness is paying full attention to “what is” in this present moment and learning to embrace whatever arises and offering no resistance to the truth of this moment. That is not so say you can’t take action to change “what is”, if your hand is on fire, put it out, don’t waste energy resisting the […]
Top Tip #4 – Delight in the Mundane
The whole essence of mindfulness is to be fully where you are, and to be here comfortably in the present moment without any desire to be anywhere else. Once we realise that nothing other than now exists, it makes perfect sense to be here, fully engaged in reality rather than away in our heads, lost […]
Resentment and the Power of Forgiveness
A few years ago, whilst attending my first retreat, I sat listening to one of Adrian’s talks and I remember him asking us all “Is anyone here holding onto resentments?” Quite a few people raised their hand (I’ll come back to whether I did or not in a moment). With hands raised and resentments being […]
Beware the Head Monsters – The Angry Monster
You need to watch out for this one, you REALLY must, because the angry head monster is a really nasty one. It’s responsible for so much suffering in the world and along with is close cousin the hate monster, it’s the cause of wars and conflicts everywhere. Every conflict begins with an angry thought which […]
Beware the Head Monsters – The Worry Monster
Do you have monsters living in your head? Come on own up, we’ve all got them. We’ve all got monsters living in our head and unless you practice mindfulness, there really is no escape! Head monsters come in many shapes and sizes, they lurk in the shadows of your mind and they creep up on […]