Dear ,
I hope all is well with you. Things are quite busy for me at the moment - partly because New World Library in the
US have agreed to publish my new book The Leap, and I’m supposed to deliver the complete manuscript to them by June 1st. June 1st? Is that really only three months away? Well, hopefully a wind of inspiration and energy will take hold of me and carry me over the next few weeks.
Things are also really busy family-wise. I think I mentioned a couple of months ago that my mother had come out of a coma -
that was great news, but shortly afterwards the doctors told us that she was in a minimally conscious (or vegetative) state, and that the brain scans showed no sign of activity in the front parts of the brain. That was very bleak news - they told us that she would be in hospital for a few weeks and then go to a nursing home. (She was down as ‘not for resuscitation’.) It seemed like she was in a vegetative state for a few weeks, but in mid-January she made a very unexpected recovery, and became
lucid quite suddenly. She had a bright alertness in her eyes all of a sudden, and although she couldn’t speak (because she had a tracheotomy in) but she wrote answers to questions. The doctors were quite shocked (and it shows how unreliable brain scans are). Then the tracheotomy came out and we were amazed that she could speak clearly - and quickly she began to feed herself and now she is learning to stand up and hopefully to walk soon. She’s a little confused sometimes, and her memory isn’t so
great, but it’s great to have her back! She will probably be in rehab at the hospital for several months though, so my poor old father is having to learn to look after himself. He’s a man of his generation - never washed the clothes, never vacuumed or cleaned the house, rarely did the cooking - so he’s had to learn to be independent at the age of 75. He's not in such good health himself either, so he’s needed a lot of support. But things are starting to look up
now.
New Articles
I’ve had three new articles just published. One is my first ever article in a philosophy publication
- an article called ‘Reclaiming Freedom’ in Philosophy Now magazine. This is my attempt to prove that free will really does exist - and not only that, but that increasing or developing our free will is one the keys to a meaningful life, and the essence of personal and spiritual development.
The other two are articles about the Russel Williams book which I edited, Not I, Not other than I. There’s one article about the book in Mind, Body, Spirit magazine, and an interview I conducted with Russel in the new issue of Kindred Spirit.
The book has had a fantastic response, and is selling quite quickly, and is certainly one of the most rewarding projects I’ve been involved in. All the royalties for the book are going to The Buddhist Society of Manchester - Russel didn’t want any money, and I didn’t either, partly because I see the book as a present to Russel for all the guidance he’s given (for free!) over the last 18 years or so. So the charitable
element adds another positive aspect too. Ego Inflation In my book The Leap I was recently writing about ego-inflation, and the dangers of
becoming a spiritual teacher - I also wrote a blog article about a couple of weeks ago.
I honestly have no idea what I have done over the past year to merit these accolades. Personality of the year? I’ve been living very quietly over the past few months, and have hardly put my head above the parapet at all. Is there a danger of ego-inflation? Well, that’s something I’ll have to watch. The important thing is not to take these
things seriously - and my wife Pam (and my three kids) would surely be quick to pop my ego if it did become over-inflated.
When I was a younger and looking for a partner, I used to go for girls who were very similar to me - and it never worked out, precisely because they were too similar. And later I organically developed a relationship with Pam, who is quite different to me (although we have
very similar values and ideals) - and it works because when you put us together our similarities and differences form a whole. Pam is so dry and down to earth that she certainly keeps me grounded. (Hmmm, I’m thinking now that this could be an idea for a poem….)
Upcoming Events
On April 4th, I’m taking part in a dialogue/conversation
with the American spiritual teacher (and ex-Franciscan monk Francis Bennett) in London. We’re going to be talking about the meaning and the characteristics of spiritual awakening. Francis is a very interesting guy, with a refreshingly new take on non-dual teachings. You can book for the dialogue here:
I have a weekend workshop at the Omega Institute in New York State, in August.This is already available to book on: Masters Degrees You may know about this already, but I wanted to
let you know that the master’s degrees I teach on are now open for applications for next September. They’re both related to spirituality and transpersonal psychology. One is an on-line MSc in Consciousness, Spirituality and Transpersonal Psychology: http://www.aleftrust.org/academic-learning/masters-degree/
The other is an MA in Interdisciplinary Psychology based at Leeds Beckett University. This has six modules altogether - at least half of them related to spirituality or transpersonal psychology - with all the sessions held on one day. More info here: http://courses.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/interdiscpsychology
From The Leap
I was really grateful for all of your comments about my poetic piece The Wave in the last newsletter - it seemed to really strike a chord. Lately though, I’ve been concentrating on writing The Leap, so have written very few new poetic pieces. I find that I don’t usually do both at the same time - it’s usually either prose or poetry. So rather than offering you a poetic meditation, this month I’ll offer you a passage from The Leap, which is
poetic in a sense. It’s a passage which expresses how I understand spiritual awakening, and how the sense of self changes after awakening occurs.
“The open space of our being could be called spirit
or essence. It’s the part of us which is an influx of the essential spiritual reality of the universe - in Indian Upanishadic terms, the atman which stems from brahman, the all-pervading spiritual energy. It has a radiant, blissful nature which we experience in moments of stillness, when our self-system becomes inactive and its boundaries soften.
You could think of this in terms of a natural landscape, perhaps a lush, wild landscape of forests, mountains and rivers.
In one small part of this landscape, there is a town - an urban area of streets and dwellings, and infrastructure and amenities. This is the ‘self-system’ within the wide open space of our own being, with its psychological functions and structures. And we shouldn’t forget the space above the self-system and the rest of the landscape. This is the space of the sky, which expands out into what we normally call ‘space’ - the space of the universe itself. In this analogy, this space is the being of
the universe, with its all-pervading spiritual force. This is of the same nature as the space that fills the whole of the landscape, so that there is no separation between them. They are essentially one.
The self-system isn’t really separate from the landscape around it - it’s made from the landscape it, and part of it. But the self-system of our normal state believes that it is separate from the rest of the landscape. It has built walls around itself, like a Roman
city, and sees itself as a, independent, self-enclosed entity. It exists in apparent separation from the rest of our expansive being. This self-system also believes that it is separate from the space above it. It is separate from the being of the universe, just as it is separate from our own expansive being.
In our normal state, the most important part of our self-system is the ego. The ego is the centre of our identity and our individuality, the ‘organising centre’ of the
self. In terms of our analogy, you could see it as the king, who lives right in the centre of the city, with his palaces and government buildings and so forth. The ego-king completely dominates our self-system, just as it completely dominates our whole-being. The ego generates a constant stream of thoughts and associations - almost as if the king is slightly mad and constantly chatters away to himself. Because it is so powerful and so active, the ego uses up most of the energy of our
self-system, in the same way that an absolutist king uses up most of the resources of his kingdom.
The wakeful state has a kind of self-system too, but a very different one. (I don’t believe that wakefulness equates to a literal state of no-self, for reasons which I will state later.) Continuing with our analogy, in the wakeful state there is a a kind of town (or settlement) within the landscape, but it’s a much smaller and more unobtrusive one. There is little (if
any) sense of separation between it and the landscape. Sometimes it’s difficult to tell where it ends and the landscape begins. As a result, it can always feel the energy of our expanded being (or spirit). That radiant spiritual energy - with its natural quality of well-being - fills it, so that it always feel a sense of energetic well-being.
There is also very little sense of separation between this settlement and the space above it. It senses that it is part of the
universe, that the essence of its own being is also the essence of the universe. There is an organising centre with a sense of identity, but again, it’s much more unobtrusive. It’s not a king, so much as a simple administrator or executor, who simply does what has to be done without claiming any authority. This identity is much weaker and much less active, without the constant chattering of the normal ego. As a result, it doesn’t use up anywhere near as much energy.
Wakefulness can be seen as a shift from the normal self-system to this other self, which is so unobtrusive, so subtle and unboundaried that one might not even sense that it is there at all.”
All best wishes, Steve |
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