It really is … Just another WordPress site
This story got sent to me by someone who was trying to make a point. They were trying to show that if you end up in a situation where you are not appreciated you should move on.
Strangely I see this story completely differently as a good reflection of many things which are wrong with how we view the world around us.
One of the things that is pushed into our heads from a very young age is to become unhappy when we are in a situation, or see a situation, that we don’t like.
Later in life we will increasingly be told almost all situations are ones we don’t like and so we spend the majority of our time being unhappy … but it doesn’t have to be that way.
I tried multiple times to start meditating over the years, long before I had even heard the word ‘enlightenment’, because I had heard it helps with handling stress and I had plenty of it. I also liked this idea of attaining some sort of ‘Nirvana’ experience but each time I failed to make it work and gave up.
In this article I’ll explain how I made it click in the end and how you can do it right now.
Paul Brunton was one of those people who didn’t feel all was quite right with the way he had been bought up to view the world. Born in 1898 he had no internet to jump onto but lived in a time when stories of certain “wise” people living in India had reached the UK.
So he did what any other unhappy person would do (not!), took the long boat strip to India and travelled in search of someone who could explain his discontentment.
Continue reading “The Short Path and the Long Path to Enlightenment”
I’ve jut finished Sam Harris’ book Waking Up after it was recommended to me by a work colleague. I’ve got to say there were parts that were absolutely fascinating but other parts that had me shaking my head!
Let’s start with the good part. Sam Harris is a neurologist and he has done a great deal of research into the brain – most notably studies of patients where the left and right sides of the brain have been separated.
Continue reading “Sam Harris, Waking Up Review … great bits but generally shakey”
I’m not religious and I don’t believe in any of the Gods suggested by mainstream religions. However I cannot put my thoughts any better than the Catholic priest Anthony de Mello did.
After his death, incidentally, the Catholic Church disavowed de Mello the moment they took the trouble to read his works!
So often you might here someone ask a mystic what to do about a situation in life and receiving the reply “Who is the person asking?” which sounds like a sort of cloudy fob off.
But it is at the core of enlightenment because most people know about themselves but they don’t know who they are.
Continue reading “Knowing who you are versus knowing about yourself”
This is partly from Eckart Tolle’s A New Earth (page 114) but with some slight changes to make it clearer.
So to start off do you think any of the following three things about events of people: Continue reading “How to unblock happiness without becoming apathetic”
For years I regretted the job I choose after college, always pondering how I would have been much better off if I had made a different decision.
Now, however, I realise I’ve wasted a huge amount of energy on a pointless activity – how could I regret something I never experienced?
You may well have come across a number of characters on the internet who teach enlightenment but don’t make any claims to be enlightened themselves.
As Anthony de Mello put it when he was asked “Are you enlightened” – “What does it matter?”
Well surely it does matter. If you want to learn how to be a surgeon you pretty much want to make sure your teacher is one … right?
Continue reading “How can a non-enlightened person teach enlightenment?”