Why Are We Afraid?

Why does that which is in our minds eye frighten us so

That shimmering possibility

That expanded sense of self

Why are we afraid?

Why does that which is in our minds eye frighten us so

That shimmering possibility

That expanded sense of self

That living openly

That Living freely

Why does it frighten us so?

Why do we expend so much energy keeping the nightmare alive?

To keep that suffering going

To keep that story alive

Is it because we do not believe?

Is it because we lack faith?

Have we forgotten our innate greatness?

That created in Gods image we are capable of so much more

That to live in quiet servitude is not our lot

That to release this fear is to release the world

From the bondage of separation

From what holds us back

Relax

Take a breath

Breathe

Really breathe

And…

Fall apart

Let the story go

Cry

Scream

Regret

Feel it

Really feel it

Collapse as the story leaves

As that mass of energy leaves

Collapse

Sleep

Sleep like you will never wake

Feel the tiredness of having held onto a lie

For so long

For so many years

Tired carrying this burden

Sleep

Lose the sense of self

Lose you

STOP…

Something stirs

Like the dawning of a new day

I rise

I open my eyes

I stretch

I yawn

I am not me

At least not as I was

A rebirth?

Something differs in me

I am not me

As the day dawns

A new possibility stirs in me

I want to say so much more

I want to do so much more

To make a difference

To be

Now I can

Now I can

The ghosts of the past are gone

I have so much to say

The open road beckons

Will you travel with me friend?

Will you hear my stories?

My musings

My thoughts

My heart laid bare

My truth finally revealed

A Call To Simplicity

Strip away the unnecessary and what are we left with?

In a world of increasing complexity; simplicity now seems the answer to navigating what is happening.

Our complex theories and pointers are increasingly showing themselves to be hollow and impractical. Unable to answer the questions of our time. In such an instance we find that simplicity is once again standing the test of time and showing itself to be the answer to the questions being thrown up by society.

The answer is quite simple. To strip away what is unnecessary.

What remains is simply this - a moment devoid of need or explanation. An immediacy where the idea of a subject or object, an apparent or real is seen through and yet nothing exists to witness this.

What is incredible, and a joy to know is that this simplicity is our inherent nature. An operating system made so advanced due to its simplicity that it offers us all we need to navigate these turbulent times. What is then needed to access and rest in this natural simplicity. The answer is quite simple. To strip away what is unnecessary: The fanciful explanations, the conditioning, the ideas that tell us that our salvation lies in the next moment, the ideas that we have formed about being here and now and being present. Anything that is rooted in the temporal.

What remains is simply this. A moment devoid of need or explanation. An immediacy where the idea of a subject or object, an apparent or real is seen through and yet nothing exists to witness this. A singular moment in which anything manifests and in which anything can happen, but it is always known it is just this.

A play such that Shakespeare wrote

“Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

And yet in that nothingness is everything and with that ,the play continues. The story continues to tell itself and yet in this moment of nothingness it is seen that it always is. Time, space and knowing collapses. Language and explanation fail. And yet what honour in this loss. What joy in the letting go of the idea of effort, of doing, of being and realising that the dance is dancing itself…

Transitions And Trusting The Process Of Change

Much has been written about transitions and the change that occurs when we are transitioning from one stage of life to another. Sometimes the ending one chapter and starting another is not a smooth transition and can be quite jagged. Sometimes the transitional period can be longer than we envisioned causing concern and sometimes it can be that we change so rapidly that it is unnerving and makes us question our sanity. The purpose of this article is to offer some pointers and share my experiences with managing transitions and trusting the process of change.

I did not think when I started, I would ever have envisaged that teaching people would lead to such dramatic growth in me as a person. At times it has been dizzying and at times manageable. At times I have felt like I am sitting here, and nothing is happening and at times I have stepped into change and actively forced things to happen. Here is what I have found helps in managing transitions and change.

Life is efficient and its wisdom unsurpassed

and as such knows us better than we know ourselves.

Firstly, trust the process.

This is easier said than done but what I have found over time that by trusting that everything will work out and being more accepting with not knowing what is going to happen, makes the process much more manageable, leading to less turbulence which in turn leads to a faster transition. Trust is something you will have to work on but over time as you change and adapt you find yourself becoming more undaunted by it all.

Secondly, become aware of how your conditioning will affect the process.

We have been conditioned by family, peer groups and society to be a certain way. When we start changing and transitioning those ideas are normally the first to be challenged. The mind will throw up thoughts like how I will manage? what is going on? Am I able to transition to this new way of functioning? Any manner of thoughts will arise, and it is in this situation better to focus on the longer-term picture. Sometimes the mind can throw up a variety of thoughts simultaneously which can overwhelm. The Sufis state that “this too shall pass” and I feel for transitions or change this is important to realise that whatever is happening and however bad it may get it will pass.

Thirdly, do not try to force the process.

I personally am coming out of a period of silence. I remember finishing a talk and declaring that I had nothing to say. What happened after that was that extraordinarily little if any new content appeared. This silence panicked me initially as I wondered if this meant that I would no longer talk. In my panic I tried to make things happen, going from talk to talk. I found myself getting increasingly tired and eventually I had to stop. I realised then that I was forcing the process. Sometime later slowly but surely, I started to transition out of this period of silence and found myself busier. I realised then that life had given me a period of rest which I should have taken advantage of. Instead by forcing the process and trying to remain busy I had squandered valuable rest time and an opportunity to reflect and grow further.

Fourthly, Patience. I am naturally impatient and always wanting to be doing something. This attitude I have found has not really helped and combined with conditioning and trying to force the process has led me sometimes to have difficult transitions. When we transition and our ideas are challenged, we can find we are directionless. We may find that initially we are welcome to some sort of change but over time thoughts such as how will I pay my bills? I am appearing irresponsible to others around me. Am I lazy? And others such questions start to rear up. It is natural then due to conditioned responses for us to become impatient and try to force the process. Instead of accepting what is and transitioning smoothly we lengthen the process by our very interfering in it. This can lead to people trying to make a change while half cooked and invariably this leads them back into the transitionary process.

Life is efficient and its wisdom unsurpassed and as such knows us better than we know ourselves. By trusting its wisdom, we can use these moments of transition and change to realise more of who we truly are. Life as I have said before is the ultimate teacher. If we let go and let god and regardless of what is going on and regardless of the machinations of the mind, we may find that this trusting leads us home to where we already are: here and now.

In Life

Life is the greatest teacher and as such will teach us the lessons we need.  I have been moving away from speaking about spirituality and simply speaking about life.  What is interesting is how several members of my group have also commented that they feel it is time to go back into life. 

My last article also dealt with this topic, and I am finding that I am being led to explore this area more. For as beautiful as the gatherings, as sweet as the discourses.  We cannot stay longer than we need to in the ashram or dargah as much as we wish too.

What liberation offered me was…

a way to see life so much more expansively than if I had continued to live in the story

In my own experience “losing” my teacher and school was a traumatic experience.  I was, or so I thought unable to make decisions and the teacher and his teachings offered me a way to hide from life. Even though at that time I would never had said I was hiding. 

Being a student offered me an effective way to bypass the problems in my life and to give myself some consolation that I was on a more enlightened path than most people.  This attitude was encouraged by several of the other students, as no doubt they also needed an excuse not to face life too. When finally, I found myself cast out I confess I struggled.  I had left under a dark cloud and had during my time there been told that he who did not have a teacher took the devil as a teacher.

For someone already suffering from depression and anxiety this was a scary proposition and I desperately looked for another teacher. None appeared, but unbeknown to me Life was now my teacher.

I moved to Glasgow and the peace and solitude of being by myself offered me an opportunity to take stock of my life and to pursue the goal of liberation much more intensely. When the idea of seeking came to an end, life had another journey in mind. One of teaching and traveling, again unknown to me I was being brought more into life.

I could never have imagined that someone who went days without eating or washing or generally doing the things we consider normal was now in front of rooms of people speaking. I had another move to Manchester where I met my partner and I published a book and then wrote another. The shy, depressed and anxiety ridden boy turned into a confident man and the journey continued.

The world was stopped by a pandemic and I found myself on the other side of the country away from my family. Again, life gave me another time of solitude and my ideas about liberation became subtler and moved more towards speaking of the joys of simple living.

Returning to Manchester as the lockdown eased. I noticed life trying to show me something more. I had always spoken about the ordinary, and I started experiencing it more in my own life. Life was about the simple things. People and relationships I had destroyed as they were not spiritual enough started to return and I noticed a wisdom in them that had eluded me.  Whereas avoiding my pain I had taken another journey, had I been braver and faced what ailed me I may never have taken the journey and yet I found that I was glad that I had taken the journey to liberation.

What liberation offered me was a way to see life so much more expansively than if I had continued to live in the story. There was a great freedom in entering into life without the veil of seeking. In that sense I started appreciating my time in the school so much more, including my leaving and spending what I thought was years in the wilderness. A newfound humility and gratitude towards life arose and I saw life’s hidden hand in my life and how I had always been where I needed to be. The realisation that I had always been in life was revelatory and taught me more about acceptance.

We sometimes rail about being in the wrong place at the wrong time or that we do not have time and that we have to wake up in some specified time frame and yet life in its perfection always has us in the right place at the right time. So even retreating from life meant I was in life. I realised my conditioning and the conditioning of others sometimes did not let us accept that we were exactly where we needed to be and if we just accepted that then everything would open up.

I titled this article In Life as the journey I appear to be on is the culmination of so many years of trying to gain some understanding or some miraculous event that would make sense of it all. I am reminded now of the saying, “everything at the appointed hour”.  We are not going into life after some understanding, we are already in life. Sometimes we do not understand that and maybe we are not meant too. Maybe there is a reasoning that life must withhold understanding as to why something is happening. The joy of discovery and realisation allows us constantly to reveal ourselves to ourselves. For are we separate from this life we seek to understand or are we one of a myriad of manifestations of this incredible play called existence.

I feel excited after so much turbulence that I am finally settling, going from seeking all those years to seeing. What I see now is so expansive and so alive. The moment is all we have and yet this moment offers so much. It is like the lover meeting the beloved and realising it is meeting itself. There is a bittersweet sweetness of being and witnessing the being. That love story in which the lover frantically tears at the veils of separation only to realise that he is tearing at his very existence. Those moments of rest constantly leading to a humbling and gratitude to life, that I knew so little and yet I was elevated by you.

Life is simpler now. It is observed, it is lived. There is laughter where once there were tears. A growing old in which there is an eternity meaning there is no death only an idea of it. An acceptance, an openness. A perfect love story in which the Sufi poet Amir Khusro sang:

Khusro baaji prem ki

Main khelun pee ke sang

Jeet gai toh piya more

Jo main haari pee ke sang

Khusro plays the game of love

I play with my dear one

If I win, my sweetheart is mine

If I lose, I am still with my dear one

Being Normal…

I had for years led a turbulent existence.

Moving from place to place and seeking out teachers and teachings hoping enlightenment would spell an end to my troubles.

In a recent conversation with a friend, I stated that finding my life becoming increasingly normal was both scary and exciting. I had for years led a turbulent existence. Moving from place to place and seeking out teachers and teachings hoping enlightenment would spell an end to my troubles.

It was after seeking ended that I noticed the troubles were still there. Old issues started appearing and slowly but surely, I started to deal with them. Life started to improve. I also noticed my communication of this reality became simpler and more focused on the ordinary and everyday existence of our lives. Something about an ordinary existence was so much clearer and simpler than the expansive and ecstatic utterances of my past. As life became even more ordinary the subtleties of existence started to make themselves apparent to me. Going further into this ordinariness, the need to speak a certain way was seen as redundant and almost an impediment to effectively communicating this reality of who we are.

Seemingly ordinary experiences such as going shopping or mowing the lawn felt so much more alive and I started looking at my life and realising that had I just dealt with my problems than maybe this whole journey may not have been needed. The term spiritual bypassing came into my life and I realised how incomplete our understanding of spirituality was and how we in the West are chasing the big enlightenment experiences, and yet sometimes it can be as simple as tidying your room.

That a complete teaching is practical and focuses on the ordinary and the extraordinary and then collapses the apparent separation to reveal it is all one reality. That whether we are on the mountaintop or whether at home washing the dishes that it is the one reality and that there is a myriad of ways to realise this. This seeing everything as it is allows us to fully engage in living instead of waiting. That what we spiritually bypass offers us the greatest opportunity to realise ourselves. That when we chase the big ecstatic experiences the answer may well lie in the pile of dirty washing and if we were to accept that our search could be over.

Life is infinitely simpler now.
I have travelled and loved and lost.
I have had my heart broken and screamed at my very maker.
I have been high, and I have been as Oscar Wilde stated, “in the gutter looking at the stars” and yet as beautiful as this adventure was, I have now found something so much more.

Life in all its form is beautiful and yet terrifying. For those of you who have dedicated your lives to truth. I say look around you. That which you are fleeing from may in fact be the answer. That broken relationship, that reminder from the debt collectors, that impossible situation may provide more of an understanding into your true nature than any holy man or holy book.

If you would but stop and see.