‘What our deepest self craves is not mere enjoyment, but some supreme purpose that will enlist all our powers and give unity and direction to our life. We can never know the profoundest joy without a conviction that our life is significant – not a meaningless episode.’ Henry J Golding There’s so much talk about...
For me the recent death of Pope Francis brings into sharp focus the quality of conscious presence. Of course, I never met him and yet he seemed the living embodiment of all he believed and espoused – peace, humility, simplicity, compassion for all and especially those less fortunate and disenfranchised in our world. Amongst the...
Have you noticed how often heart comes up in our everyday speech? Take heart, put my heart and soul into it, heart in the right place, heart of gold, wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve, heart in your mouth, change of heart, heart to heart. I could go on, and you will have your own...
We’re likely the best informed, and possibly most manipulated, version of humanity there has been. We have vast amounts of knowledge at our finger tips, quite literally. We have access, courtesy of our ever-expanding, 24/7 media, to the scary, surprising, inspiring, wonderful and, on occasion, plain weird, imagination-defying happenings across our planet. That window on...
The dictionary defines intention as an idea that you plan to carry out; a goal or purpose or aim; something you mean to do whether you do it or not. In this context the intention is often self-focused, on our own plans, and not looking to a far and elevated horizon. If we look deeper...
Another day, another week, more grisly headlines…this time the fall of a dictator, the grim legacy of inhumanity left behind. An uncertain future for a nation. With the full on, full frontal and ever-present nature of the media it is hard to avoid what is happening in our world. And the worse it is the...
A walk in nature often leaves us awed at the beauty of creation. The perfection of leaves, of trees, of flowers. The springiness of some grasses. The perfume of flowers. The rustling of life unseen. The occasional scampering across our path of squirrel or rabbit, maybe even the shy stillness of a deer. In these...
A recent picture on Facebook showed 1 million children across 6,000 schools meditating for peace in Thailand. Whether the image is real or not, the idea is still a profound one. Imagine the combined impact of 1 million people focused on one outcome. Meditation studies over the years have demonstrated the impacts that can be...
The discovery of fire is generally thought to date back to between 300,000 and 400,000 years ago, though archaeologists have unearthed possible traces of campfires that flickered 1 million years ago. Whatever the discovery date fire has transformed human existence and has continued at the heart of that experience through time. We might consider all...
It’s said that the natural world offers everything we need to cure all the diseases that ail humankind. Firstly we have to believe that to be true and then we just have to discover them. We might also surmise that we have all the knowledge we need to tackle the challenges facing our planet and...