Here’s a few photos from the weekend

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You are going? no-where, you’ve already arrived.

This moment is all that exists. The future is nothing more than a rubbish guess, it’s just a projection of your mind, and it exists no-where other than in your head. You are not ever going anywhere, because there is no-where to go.  There is only now. You have already arrived!

You are always arriving, you are always arriving in this present moment. Mindfulness is about celebrating your arrival and fully experiencing the present moment as intensely as you can. It’s about realising that this moment is the most precious thing there is and aligning with the eternal now. It’s never about going anywhere.

Who are you becoming? No-one. You already are. There is no-one to become.

You can not be any more than who you are in this moment. How is that possible? Realise now that in this moment you are already enough, you are not broken, there is nothing wrong with who you are right now. You are complete and whole and perfect as you are in this moment, there are many wonderful  expressions of you yet to be discovered, but it can only happen now, an in trith you are are only really uncovering what is already here, you are already in this moment a perfect expression of consciousness.

How can you be more than this?

This is this is paradox of mindfulness, if there’s no-where to go, then there is nothing to do. If you are not becoming someone then there is nothing to do. And if you arn’t broken then you don’t need to be fixed. There’s nothing to do.

Mindfulness is simply about deepening your experience of where you already are , and a fuller more profound experience of who you already are.

Confused? Excellent!

Enjoy The video

adrian

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All I will say is that when we came out of the meditation on Sunday morning I could not believe what I saw. 30 faces looking back at me and not a thought between them. Fully awake fully alive, but silent inside, holding an intense state of mindfulness and at least half of them thought that they were complete beginners only the day before.

I don’t know what’s happening,  but it seems that all our hard work is bearing fruit.  These weekends are transforming people’s lives,  take a look at the Facebook comments, and we can’t begin to describe how enriching that is for us.

We’ve got only 2 more retreats this summer and they are booking up fast. If you haven’t already booked your place go for it, you’ll never look back

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It’s easy to use words like family without much care for the meaning, but it really does feel like family to me. I could call them friends but that’s not enough to adequately explain what is going on, because there’s something more here, a common connection a shared understanding an a real sense of belonging. Mindfulness gives you a glimpse of who you are beyond the “little me” and you begin to discover connected nature of reality, and your role in the manifesting of it. A sense of belonging to something more than yourself as an individual, being part of something important and valuable.

Like any family we have our differences and there are ups and downs but we are supported by the love of the family and we genuinely care for and help each other. Love and compassion are a natural by-product of mindfulness, so it’s not something you have to work hard at, it’s simply a natural expression of the practice.

The unconditioned warmth of a mindful family, that doesn’t judge, label or make you different is a rare experience and in this environment real healing and growth happens. It’s a safe place to open up, a safe place to be open to new ideas and experiences and to possibilities beyond understanding, and also a safe place to look within, and explore the vast universe within that we are generally too busy or too distracted to acknowledge.

It’s scary to look at first, the shadow will make you want to run and hide again, but with great delight I witnessed each of our new guests find the courage, and with the support of the family, take the light of mindful awareness into the shadow and realise there is nothing to fear other than their own glory. Isn’t that right Tania, Gary, Sean, Christine, David, Andy Leslie and all you other brave adventurers. How you all shine.

About half of our guests have been involved in our work before, they’ve been on retreat or one of our classes so they know what to expect, and they still come back! It’s always lovely to see familiar faces, and talking to you all quickly revealed how you’ve grown in mindfulness. My ego doesn’t like it (so that must be good), because your mindfulness is deepening far quicker than mine did and I’m seeing people make the kind of progress in a few months that it tool me years to achieve. And it’s not as though you’ve had an easy time of it either. Some of our guest have faced real challenges and potentially devastating life events and it struck me how with each life challenge you faced, you’ve become more centered and aware. There’s no going back now. The tougher it gets the more mindful you become.

Mindfulness is becoming how you live and through your practice you are creating a new environment around you. Every mindful interaction changes your experience of the world and the world’s experience of you. Through your mindful compassion, acceptance and non judging you bring peace and healing into the world. No darkness can exist in the light of your awareness and your very being is a catalyst for change. A new world is coming onto existence through you.and so the family grows.

We still have spaces for our next retreat in couple of weeks, dust off your sleeping bag and come and join us. The family is growing.

adrian

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There are many things that stand out for me about the weekend. Marcus’ terrific Qi Gong class, Paul’s crazy yogas in the big bell tent and that mind blowing emotional clearing session on Sunday; but what really stood out for me were those simple, beautiful moments of mindful interaction that happened throughout the weekend. The quiet chats, the dawning awareness and the epiphany moments when the penny drops and suddenly someone sees through their mental confusion. There was a sense of real warmth and acceptance and although lots of guest came on their own, they couldn’t feel alone for long. When you share that space of mindfulness together something magic happens.

One of the most touching moments was when a couple ladies who were laughing and joking together, said to me, that although they had never met before this weekend, they felt like they had known each other forever. As unlikely as it sounds, it is really quite common and I know of many firm and genuine friendships are made on these weekend retreats.

One of the most touching moments was when a couple ladies who were laughing and looking together, said to me, that although they had never met before this weekend it felt like they had known each other forever. As unlikely as it sounds, it is really quite common and I know of many firm and genuine friendships are made on these weekend retreats.

Maybe it’s because there are no egos on our Mindfulness Retreats. From the outset we help our guests to enter a state of mindfulness and we work hard to keep them there, deepening their experience as the programme unfolds during the course of the weekend.

When you greet a person mindfully, it is with pure acceptance. There are no beliefs to make you right and the other wrong, no competition to be “more than”, no inner dialogue to tell you that you “are less than”. There is no judgement to create separateness. When you great someone mindfully and you are free of your mental narrative, you discover that there is no separation between any of us, you have reach through to the person beyond all that mind made stupidity and you connect directly with your common humanity.

Being greeted mindfully is a rare treat, you are being welcomed with absolute acceptance and an unconditional warm embrace of your humanity. A mindful person has cultivated compassion, a deep connection to the others and so highly developed is their empathy that they experience the suffering of others as their own. A mindful person would never consciously hurt another as they would experience the suffering created as their own and with mindful attention to every interaction they conduct themselves with tolerance, acceptance, with love and a sincere regard for the well-being of others. To be greeted mindfully can shift your experience in an instant, conflicts dissolve, perceptions crumble and it is common for our guest to let go and simply be themselves, held safely in a mindful connection.

That’s what The Now Project is really about, to help you live mindfully, to connect with others and bring love, compassion, and healing to the world around us.

The retreats are getting booked up fast, so if you want to be part of this and join us this summer you need to book soon. We still have places on our next retreat on 10 -12^th July. See you there

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There is no greater privilege than working as a butterfly farmer. It was an incredible weekend and I loved every second of it. The weather was fantastic and the team were amazing, Brad, Paul, Jason, Barry, Sophie and Paulette were on top form and are pretty amazing butterfly farmers too. But what made the weekend so successful was you, our amazing guests, who by the end of the weekend had broken free and filled the sky with your colourful wings.

Sophie has put up the pictures from the weekend on our flckr pages and Teresa tells me that we still have a few spaces left for our retreat next week. So all you caterpillars out there struggling to live in your own skin come down to Butterfly farm, we’d love to see you

And so we suspended our judging minds for the weekend and learned how to to delight in the wind and rain and even found the learning contained in the inconvenience. As I explained to our guests, “if you listen to the rain on the roof, it will teach you more about Mindfulness than I can.” Because mindfulness is simply listening to the rain. It’s letting things be with out judgement.

It didn’t rain all weekend. Saturday was mostly glorious sunshine and Sunday afternoon defied the forecast to give us a summer sun and a warm wind to dry the tents off, and that was okay too. The weather was fantastic, it rained and it shone and the wind blew, the weather became our teacher, we used the conditions to teach us surrender and how to appreciate what emerges in the moment without discrimination. Rain or shine it’s all fine if you are mindful.

It was nice to see so many new faces, and to my delight nearly all of our new guests threw themselves into it. And that takes courage, or desperation, but either will do. Like the weather a good storm is all part of it. I love a good storm, don’t you?

anyway this weekend it really wasn’t an issue, many of our new guest were already dropping into thoughtless awareness on the Friday evening. The rain stopped and the moon shone as we sat round the camp fire, we’d only had the introduction talk but our guests were waking up as they sat there lighting up one by one like the moon through the breaking in the cloud.

Mindfulness techniques and principles can bring you to awareness, but when you are in awareness they are no longer necessary, and if we are not careful they can in fact become an obstacle. This weekend I hadn’t even had the chance to do any teaching and our new guests were already getting it. Just goes to show how unimportant my teaching really is. It also shows how ready our guest are, it takes nothing to wake them up, because the are already waking.

It’s always lovely to see people who we’ve met before on our journey into awareness and this weekend there were some guests who we last saw two years ago when our little project was very much in its infancy. I couldn’t believe how much they’ve grown in awareness in just two years, they’ve all had their ups and downs, but they’ve all reached a place of acceptance and alignment with what is and evolved beyond measure.

I observed Jackie, with great admiration, mindfully handle a crisis which nearly prevented her from coming on retreat, but she rode the storm, which is the true test of the practice and she discovered the learning contained within. And it would appear that she isn’t the only one who can ride a storm, I overheard someone who two years ago had a life threatening cocaine addiction explain that they only drink herbal tea now because coffee makes them too wired, they’ve cracked it (excuse the pun). They went on to say that they neither judged their addiction as good or bad, they weren’t proud of the suffering they created, but all their pain had brought them to awareness and they could see now that it was all part of it.

It’s easy to see the progress that our guest are making, there is such a dramatic change each time I see them. But it wasn’t until they pointed out how much The Now Project has changed over two years, did I realise that we have made a complete transformation too. Two years ago we were entertaining groups of 12 – 15 people and we only had the tepees and the use of the Holistic centre but thanks to Richards fantastic support for the retreat facilities have been completely transformed in two years.

But what stands out for our returning guests most of all is how each of teach of the team have grown and developed into wonderful expressions of the teaching. I am blessed with the finest bunch of mindful teachers and helpers you could imagine. I know how much work they do on themselves and some of the challenges they’ve faced but they meet each new challenge with non judging acceptance and everything is just falling into place.

Jason has blossomed, he’s used dark depression as his vehicle and has grown into a fantastic teacher, gentle confident and funny he has taken his teaching and turned it into simple fun. I watched amazed as he helped raw beginners into awareness simply by becoming conscious of their body. He made them feel the grass, taste the sun, find their balance and catch a ball without a thought to distract them. He’s taken the mindfulness practice ,“The way of the body”, and turned this powerful portal into awareness into a game. The work of a true master.

Barry too has worked through some turbulent times and but has used it for growth and is cultivating an unshakable stillness. His presence is enough to calm and reassure anyone who need support in riding the storm. Paulette works harder than anyone and she hasn’t had it easy, but her non judgement of what is just mikes her smile even brighter.

Paul is coming into his own. Directed by awareness he’s been succeeding with things he was afraid to try, he is flowing with the universe and wonderful new expressions of the teaching are emerging. The Sufi dancing and Kundalini yoga are powerful portals to awareness, Paul makes them such a lot of fun and our guest love it.

Sophie is growing by the minute, her mindful drawing workshops are an art in themselves, drawing people into awareness through drawing is simply genius. And to witness her grow and flourish with each new challenge, and to meet difficulty with peaceful acceptance is the greatest testimony to her strength and the power of this work.

Bradley’s ridden a few storms in his time and he knows how it’s done. He’s been teaching mindfulness and pain management for a couple of years now.  He’s master of art of surrender and uses his physical pain as vehicel for transformation.  I can get into a lot of trouble for claiming healing, only mainstream doctors and pharmaceutical companies can claim that. But last year I started getting emails form people Brad had worked with at our retreats. They claimed that he had helped relieve chronic and “incurable conditions, and reported improbable if not impossible improvements in their conditions. This year the pattern has continued and I’ve seen with my own eyes someone unable to get out bed with the pain dancing around like there is nothing wrong with them only a few minutes later. I’ve seen someone who had to drag themselves about with sticks, walking upright like they haven’t done in years, I’ve seen someone with chronic neck pain recover completely in half an hour. I’ve no idea what is happening but it’s happening anyway.

Perhaps hardest of all is to see the change in myself. We’ve been videoing my talks and at some point we’ll put them on the website to help remind you and bring you into awareness. The editing process, requires me to watch these talks a few times. Which is helpful for me because I never know what I’ve said. The teaching comes through me and watching it back has been a real surprise, it’s happening through me and there is a new understanding coming through, way beyond what I’ve taught before.

There’s a video of us all in the teaching barn and I’m talking about the painbody and exploring how we might integrate that shadow part of ourselves. How we can ride the storm of our emotions and act more consciously in the world without reaction and without spreading more disturbance into the world. Then bang on cue the weather colludes with a clap of thunder to add atmospheric effect, the storm breaks and we all emerged from the barn into bright sunlight.

That’s when the realisation hit me, it’s all coming together because everything is in tune. No one is resisting the weather now, everyone is flowing with what is, the guests, the team, the project, they are all flowing. It is a play of light and dark, rain and shine, this moment whatever it presents is the play of life. You can resist that, but it’s just like resisting the rain, it’s painful and pointless, you’ll block the flow and create suffering. Or you can surrender to now, you can ride the storms without judgement and then you align yourself with what is and the universal intelligence that creates it, you become active part of the play of life and that’s how transformation happens.

Rain or shine it’s all fine

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After Richard’s qi gong class on Sunday morning I hid  in the wheat field for a few minutes, preparing myself for the morning talk. I sat in Mindful presence, meditating on the sound of the ripening wheat kernels popping in the summer sunshine, feeling the breeze and tasting the harvest dust in the air. I was still inside and out.

And then there it was, a curious butterfly landed right next to me. It slowly opened and closed it wings, fanning itself, coyly showing me the glorious pattern on the upper wing and then hiding it again as it closed them. I sat there for a while giving this wonder filled moment the full attention it deserves; then I noticed another butterfly flitting about in the wind, and then another and another, there must have been dozens of them, butterflies everywhere. What a spectacle, a truly wonderful moment, it was one of those moments that come when you are really connected, the moment when something comes through beyond the beauty you can witness with your eyes, something way beyond that, beyond that to the source all natures beauty to the source of all things.

The symbolism of this mystical moment didn’t escape me. The butterfly spends much of its life as a caterpillar crawling on its belly, consuming everything in its path, with no knowledge of it’s real potential, and then one day it reaches the point where it can no longer live in its own skin and it finds somewhere to hide, where it pupates. And then one glorious day in July, it breaks free from the cocoon, emerging into the world as entirely new being, A beautiful butterfly, flying free,gently celebrating life with each fan of the wings.

It occurred to me that although we still had nearly a whole day to go on retreat, I had already seen this transformation take place amongst many of our guest over the weekend. It started on Friday evening but then one by one they found that quiet space in their minds. No longer cocooned by their thoughts, free of the limitation of beliefs, prejudices, expectations and other mental obstruction they discovered their wings and flapping them gently in the sunshine they took off for the first time.

First there was one, gently flapping their wings coyly showing their radiant colours and then there was another then another and soon they were everywhere, radiant new beings, flying free in the July sunshine, with no care care for past and future, simply revelling in their glorious expression of the moment.

There is no greater privilege than working as a butterfly farmer. It was an incredible weekend and I loved every second of it. The weather was fantastic and the team were amazing, Brad, Paul, Jason, Barry, Sophie and Paulette were on top form and are pretty amazing butterfly farmers too. But what made the weekend so successful was you, our amazing guests, who by the end of the weekend had broken free and filled the sky with your colourful wings.

Sophie has put up the pictures from the weekend on our flckr pages and Teresa tells me that we still have a few spaces left for our retreat next week. So all you caterpillars out there struggling to live in your own skin come down to Butterfly farm, we’d love to see you.

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Most of our guest have never been to one of our events before and many had no previous experience of mindfulness at all, which is great, because with no preconceptions anything becomes possible.  You were all fantastic and by the end of the weekend you were shining as bright as the sunshine, which is quite an achievement because the sun shone all day long  and it was the longest day of the year, so that’s a lot of sunshine.

he new facilities were finished bang on time and worked without a hitch, apart from the gas tea urn which doubled as a blast furnace and one collapsing camp bed, type of hitch.  The new star shaped marquee was a magnificent addition, it provides lovely shaded living space to eat and chill out and it will also keep us dry if we get rain. We rolled the sides up to let the cool breeze through and at night it was lit with a thousand fairy lights.

It’s nice that nearly everyone was able to arrive on Friday because it gave us all a chance to get properly acquainted and clear our minds of distraction and plug into the beautiful place around us.  Dinner was great as always. Tonia s food was sensational. I’m not going to even attempt to describe it you’ll have experience it for yourself. All I can say is that’s it’s an all-round sensory experience and even the flower decorations are edible. For breakfast on Sunday morning I had wholemeal porridge with kiwi fruit, which shouldn’t work but was staggeringly good; clearly the invention of an insane genius. Tonia you are without question an insane genius.

I’m surrounded by insane genuis’s you know.  I’m blessed with the most conscious team you could hope for. They are extra ordinary in their ordinariness. The most unlikely mindful bunch you could meet. A carpenter, a roofer, a city trader, graphic designer, fathers mothers, real authentic people who don’t need to pretend anymore.  But they are the real deal, they live like this every day of their lives, they would never chose to live another way. They aim to model mindfulness in every interaction and are developing into unique expressions of the teaching.   There were eight of us in the team,  there’s lots of work to do running an event like this, but, the team’s main job is help our guests to maintain a mindful state of awareness for much of the retreat as possible. Being immersed in nature really helps and if we can keep your attention present for a long period then the learning happens all on its own. The team are an embodiment of the practice and they are a joy to be around.  By bed time on Friday many of our guests were already well in the zone.

The morning meditation or chi gong classes are optional and some people prefer a lay in, but I was excited to see everyone up and ready eager to learn.  Richards’s chi gong session is my favourite start to the day, he demonstrated the key standing chi gong meditations and helped each guest with the subtleties of the body. For those preferring something more sedate, but no less intense, Paul lead a simple breathing meditation in the school of meditation. And so the pump was primed.

My teaching in the barn was pretty damn good too. I’ve got a watchful eye on that ego, but the truth is it was good. We’ve videoed some of it and by popular request we’ll add extracts to the website over the next few weeks so you can judge for yourself.  The Zen hens were vocal in their attempt to get in on the act and the cameo appearances of two pairs of swallows during the morning teaching in the barn was a special treat. My teaching was good, but the swallows really know how to teach mindfulness!

The purpose of these retreats is to give you a direct experience of awareness, yes the teaching is interesting, but, it’s the practice that is important. We want to hold you in awareness for the whole weekend and the expressions of mindfulness workshops were a great success in doing this.

Jason’s Way of The Body class is very popular. He helps the class literally get out of their minds and into their body, and teaches how to experience wakefulness through balance movement and body awareness. Jason makes you laugh at yourself and the ego dissolve.

Brad’s mindful pain management and reconceive healing classes are a must for anyone with pain issues. He also did several one to one reconnected healing sessions over the weekend. Bradley “over did it”, as always, and he’ll have to spend some time working on himself now, but that’s Brad, he always gives all he has.

Paul’s school of meditation got some rave reviews too. You Kundalini yoga addicts need to understand that it’s not about chasing the high, but then again, maybe you need to discover that for yourselves. But if you can incorporate some formal meditation into your practice you’ll find it really helps you to be more mindful.  Having some simple meditation techniques in your armory is a really good idea and Paul shared some powerful Indian techniques with his class, I’d recommend Paul’s school of meditation to everyone, these meditation techniques really work, but don’t believe me, go to the class, take the meditations away, practice and see for yourself.

Sophie’s mindful drawing workshop is a bit like porridge with kiwi fruit. It’s a lot of fun and everyone really enjoyed it, but it is also rather good for you. Sophie has an art of drawing people into awareness through drawing, she teaches mindful concentration and awake observation. She got our guests to really look and see, to ignore their inner dialogue and flow with now.  Teaching the art of mindfulness through art, now tell me that isn’t the work of insane genius.

The weekend flowed with a few happy accidents but no real hitches and by the close of the retreat our guest were anchored in awareness.  It worked. It really worked. Thank you everyone for your kind comments, I’ll start to put these up on the website testimonials widget this week. But the best way is to come along and find out for yourself.

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My neighbour Ron came as my guest, it’s always good to have conscious neighbours you know. Lucky me. My eldest son came for the weekend along with his partner and my unborn grandson, it’s always good to have conscious parents,  lucky baby. And my second son visited on Sunday with his partner Leonne who is making a documentary about mindfulness. I’ve got my whole family practicing and my friends and neighbours too and Paul brought his wife Sarah along so it seems this little bubble of consciousness is spreading.

As the summer months passed and our reputation has spread the retreats have been getting bigger and bigger and we have been full to capacity. The retreats have also been getting much more powerful, we seem to be attracting lots of guests who are bursting to break free, our guests are awakening fast, we are entering uncharted territory and our learning curve is sharp. But learning we are.

Learning can only really come after the observation, the solution can only really arise from honest acceptance of the mistake.  Defending our mistakes, is the highest insanity which is guaranteed to keep us trapped in wrongness, so I won’t bother defending our mistakes.  We’ve made mistake,  countless mistakes, but mistakes from mindful awareness are welcome,  we love them.  We love mistakes because each one forms part of our new learning, and we can take steps to rectify the mistake and minimise the possibility of it happening again.

By rectifying a mistake I don’t mean doing it the way someone else wants it done, or seeing the situation from another person’s perspective or even making sure that we don’t upset people. I upset a couple of people on this retreat one lady got very angry. It is never our intention to cause harm,  we are in the doing good,  spreading love and healing business.   We are not here to harm you, but we are not here to please you either, no most definitely not, on the contrary the truth can be very  displeasing particularly when we are very attached to our illusion. If you are attached to the illusion then we will upset you. We are here to destroy illusion, to see beyond perspectives, so I refuse to go there and some people aren’t ready for that. I can’t get involved in perspectives and I have no desire to get you to see my perspective and I have no interest in exploring yours. This  I’m afraid upsets some people who believe their perspective needs defending or worst still enforced upon reality.

Can you see that by definition a perspective is nothing more than an illusion,  a perversion of the truth! A perception is an interpretation of truth clouded by our judgements, prejudices,  and layers and layers of past conditioning.  Your perceptions are not how things are, they are simply how you think things are and like most of our thinking it is almost certainly wrong. For the tiny minority who thought otherwise I offer no apology, no mistake was made.

The weather was very wet on the Saturday so we were confined to the big barn for most of the day. We had the fire going and it was warm and dry and there was plenty of space, so it wasn’t a problem,  but it made for an interesting dynamic.  The retreats have increased in strength as the summer has gone on and being together like that in the barn made it very intense. As the presence strengthened I noticed an increasing polarity developing within the group.  Nearly all the group are really getting it, they are discovering that quiet space of awareness and the illusion was simply falling away. The experience so powerful that the ego has no energy to protest. For these people these weekends are a life changing experience. Once awareness has been known it can never be unknown, that knowing is permanent.  Yes we can still get lost in unconsciousness and that will happen again and again but at some point awareness always returns. As it returns it illuminates our mistakes and that’s how learning happens. There really is no going back for long.

We are getting so many guests coming back for more and so many coming as a result of recommendations from previous guests that we must be doing a lot right and never a week goes by without someone telling us how this works has transformed their lives. But for a small minority the challenge to the ego is so threatening that they can react with considerable anger or defensiveness. Eager to protect their perception they’ll try to draw me into opinion and mind stuff.  sometimes becoming frustrated when I refuse to go there. If I’ve triggered your anger to rise in this way then i don’t apologise for that, but I’m at a loss as to how we can do it differently.  My job is to teach you mindfulness and mindfulness as we’ve already explored is not opinion or perspective it’s a state of awareness, its what happens when your mind is quiet and free from all this stuff. It’s a shame that this happens but that’s how it is and maybe some acceptance is necessary. Do I not teach mindfulness because for a small minority it’s too threatening?  No of course not.

It was amazing weekend, I watched the illusion fall away as our guest became present, dropping in an instant issues and patterns of behaviour that they’ve held onto for years. Now that’s liberation. I can’t stop doing that.

​The weather on Sunday was lovely and we were able to get out doors and make full use of retreat farm. One of the highlights for me was Richards chi kung session. Richard is like a orchestral conductor when he teaches chi kung,  he conducts the silence, the focus of attention is on the empty spaces? Like all top conductors Richard knows there  is no music without silence, music without silence, without space between the notes is just noise. Conducting is as much about the space as the notes,  Richard knows that the space between the chi kung moves is more powerful than the moves themselves and he holds the space with his own attention timing it to conscious perfection..

There is a standing chi kung meditation called wuji. Wuji means emptines,  it means silence, wuji means infinite nothingness it means oneness. Nothingness and oneness are not contradictions, space is infinite, it is the nothing that allows all things to be,  the source of all things,  the zero point where all things are one. As we stood holding the position watching the sun low in the sky shining through the mist, I got it. With the perfect timing of the conductor I got  it, I experienced Wuji and disappeared in the mist. I wasn’t the only one either.

Thank you everyone who came on the weekend,  it was the biggest to date, and a great success even with all the rain.  Such a success that four of our guest booked themselves into the next retreat too.

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It’s not often that I get to fly like the swallows,  but at our last retreat I did and it felt wonderful.  Have you ever watched the swallows fly? They swoop and dive and perform aerial acrobatics in perfect union with each other, they fly at incredible speed and miss each other by centimeters,  but they never collide, their connection is so complete the whole flock is in perfect synergy as if all is one bird.

The swallows treated me to their display as I sat quietly in my hiding place.  I watched thoughtless and perfectly still as they swooped and dived feeding off a cloud of tiny flies. Turning at speed they picked them from the air, playing as they hunted they were having so much fun

Then it occurred to me that this was serious work,  the swallows have young to feed with ever demanding gaping beaks.  They must be fed almost constantly to keep them alive and keeping them satisfied is an all consuming task. It’s the most serious issue for the swallows an issue of life and death importance,  but they don’t worry or stress they just fly and delight in life whilst plucking food from the air. Unfettered by thought they are free, free to be.

My teaching is challenging and at times confrontational. My ego often tells me to tone it down, to ease people in gently, it tells me that i’ll upset people, that I should hold back and I should place restrictions on my teaching. it tells me that this is serious work, and if I am to be taken seriously I must be professional i should at least try pay some lip service to the illusion that is ordinary reality

It’s important that people know this stuff alright, it’s important that we wake up, that we wake up fast. Ordinary consciousness driven by ego will destroy us all unless we wake up, unless we learn to see beyond the illusion of our conditioned reality.  Unless humanity wakes from the dream we’ll sleep walk into disaster. We must evolve to a new state of consciousness or like many millions of species before us  pass on to extinction  From humanities perspective, this is important work, a matter of life and death. Not of great significance on a cosmic scale, but pretty damn important to little me.

That’s when the swallows lesson sank in.  If like the swallows  I play in the now and let it flow I can fly an swoop, without fear of crashing. If I let the teaching flow I will on occasions upset some people and I make no apologies for that. I have devoted my life to easing human suffering, it is never my intention to cause harm and it is my nature to be kind and loving.  But I don’t mind upsetting people in fact that is my job, my job is to upset you, my job  is to turn your perception of reality on its head, to upset everything, to destroy illusion to help you see things as they really are.

I’m not afraid to destroy illusion I love it. That’s my job,  to give you a shake and to wake you from the dream that is your own mind, to bring you wakefulness and see things as they are. Not everybody wants to hear what I have to tell , but tell you I must because for you to be free,  the truth must be seen.

Only half way into the first teaching session and ive already told our guests that their past and future are just thoughts in their heads, that their identity is just a story and their beliefs are just pre programmed perceptions that distort reality and obscure the truth.  And no protest from anyone. I’ve seen people shout and scream stomp off in disgust and even on one occasion throw things.  Just a sea of smiling faces nodding in agreement as I destroy everything they believed in.

Encouraged by the absence of resistance I decided to fly like the swallows and pretty well every one there flew with me. A couple of our guest didn’t feel quite ready to leave the ground, but they flapped their wings anyway which is all I can ask of anyone. Thank you.

But all the others flew with me and it was wonderful.  We swooped and dived and by Sunday the synergy was complete and we moved together in unison with the teaching and we were free to be.

We’ve had many mind blowing weekends down at Retreat Farm this summer each one special in its own way but this one stands out for me, it was the largest one so far and could potentially have been fragmented,  but it wasn’t at all. There was still plenty of room for personal space,  and personal space was enjoyed by many,  but there was a synergy to the group, a collective flow and in a space of collective being huge shifts in awareness took place.

We had several guests who are well acquainted with our work who have been to our classes on previous retreats or had personal coaching, so are already well on their way with their practice, but each of them in that space found awareness blossoms. Karina shone, Tony forgot the world, Scoti discovered her energy body,  Laurence discovered his reggae roots and Sophie you star what can I say? I won’t mention you all by name for fear of litigation, but you know who you are and I want to thank you for coming, for daring to take your feet off the ground and for flying with with me. Great innit Tikki?

It was really lovely to see Jan again, she was there right when we started and it was a joy to show her how our little project has grown and moved on.

We had some personal guests too this weekend, Teresa dragged her friend Alison along. I just love it when I see the penny drop.  Great to be free of that one eh Alison! And we also had the pleasure of Tonia’s company.  Tonia does the catering for our retreats, and her food is out of this world,  she did her best to hide, but such was the volume that she couldn’t hide from all the compliments – much to her egos distress. Go on Tonia accept the compliments its only a reflection of the love you put into it.

What really made the weekend for me were the beginners,  not that in truth they were really beginners, because although new to our work and even new to meditation they were already awake enough to be there, awake enough to shed preconceptions and open their minds. Either that or they were in such mental distress that they have no choice, which is even better!

But either way they these brave explorers flew with me into the unknown, they experienced something beyond what they thought they knew and discovered what it is to simply be. You’ll never be the same as you were, you can never unsee what you’ve seen. Your experience will deepen with or without us, but we are here to help you on your way if you choose.

We are also starting to attract people who have been looking for each other.  Awareness is still so very rare and until very recently we’ve been largely waking up alone. It’s often easier to isolate ourselves from unconscious than to try and survive within it. When we no longer do our own head drama’s its hard to get involved in other people’s and sometimes head drama is all some people want to do. Solitude is not a problem for someone who has learned the art of being with themselves, but there comes a time when that urge to come together becomes a strong drive. I’m delighted that our retreats are increasingly becoming a sanctuary, a place where unconsciousness doesn’t prevail and a place of safety with like minds – correction no minds. It’s wonderful that we found each other because that’s what this little project is about, a coming together so just like the swallows we can fly and swoop and dive and be free to be.

We still have a few spaces on our last two retreats of the summer,  the accommodation is pretty much fully booked,  but if you don’t mind camping or staying in a local B&B we’d love to see you.

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