Dear ,
I hope all is well with you. Apologies that I didn’t send out a newsletter last month. I’ve been busy making my final corrections to The Leap, which
is due to be published this coming March. Everything is ready to go now, and I’m very pleased with the book. It’s exactly as I wanted it to be, a summary of the insights and theories and research I’ve been developing in relation to spiritual awakening over the last ten years so.
I’ve also been busy with two new research projects. I have a research assistant this year (and probably only for this year) at my university so I’m taking the
opportunity to make to get as much research done as I can. In particular, I’ve been doing a new project on awakening experiences, looking at the situations or triggers that give rise to them, and at their characteristics. Some of you have been kind enough to send me some reports of your own ones, after I sent out a request last week - many thanks! If anyone else could help out by giving me some examples that would be wonderful. You can write to me at [email protected].In Spain and Ireland
At the end of October I was in Barcelona for a few days, for some
promotional events for the Spanish translation of Out of the Darkness, and also the re-publication of The Fall (or La Caida, in Spanish). I love Barcelona - it has an artistic, bohemian feel, and doesn’t seem to have the atmosphere of tension that is common to a lot of big cities. It’s also wonderful to have a fantastic beach so close to the city centre. Apart from going to the beach, the highlight of my trip was being taken for a white-knuckle motorcycle ride through
the busy rush hour traffic by David, the manager of the publishing house. It was the first time I’ve been on a motorcycle for 20 years….
Best of all though, I was pleasantly surprised to find that The Fall has become a popular book in Spain (or at least in Catalonia). A lot of people congratulated me on it and told me what a big impact it had had on them. Of
course, I knew the book was published in Spain 7 years ago, but I had no idea it had been spreading and growing all that time. I don’t know if you’ve seen the film ’Searching for Sugarman’, but it felt a bit like that. In that film, the singer Rodriguez realises that, 20 years after he had retired from music, he had been famous all that time in South Africa, during the Apartheid regime. My experience was on a much smaller scale, but very pleasant nonetheless.
Here’s an interview I did with a national Spanish newspaper called La Vanguardia. The title reads, ‘What we consider as normal in our culture is actually madness.’ Note the picture of me in formal attire….
I was also in Ireland in mid-November, speaking at the Infinite Arts conference in Cork. I met some wonderful people there. There are some things that you feel 'called' to do - that you just know you have to do, that it's somehow your duty and mission
to do them. I felt this when I edited Russel Williams' book Not I, Not other than I. And another thing that keeps cropping up for me is research into soldiers' experiences of spiritual awakening. It sounds strange, but every so often I meet people (ex- and sometimes present day soldiers) who tell me that they've undergone a spiritual shift, often when facing death in combat, or after going through PTSD. I met a women at the conference in Ireland who had had this experience, and she said
she knew of other soldiers who had had 'awakenings' too. So this is definitely an area I'm going to research more and write about at some point. The Calm Center Audiobook One thing I’ve begun to enjoy more and more recently is reading my poetic pieces aloud. When I do talks, I always take care to read a few pieces, often to illustrate the points I’m discussing. I’ve found that the pieces have a meditative quality and can induce a deep sense of stillness. I especially enjoyed reading the pieces at the Eckhart Tolle conference a few weeks ago,
because the large audience seemed to amplify that sense of stillness until it became very powerful.
I also enjoyed reading the pieces for the The Calm Center audiobook, which was released just a few weeks ago. (I also enjoyed providing the intro and
outro music with my guitar!)
The audio book is actually available for free at Audible if you sign up for a free
trial.
I've also been releasing some audio recordings (straight forward guided meditations and my poetic pieces) through Insight Timer - it's great resource for guided meditations, if you don't know it already: https://www.insighttimer.com My Fantastic Dream I had a fantastic dream last week. I was cycling through the streets of Coventry, the town I lived in at university. I had just recently arrived on the train, and for some reason I felt I had to get back to the train station to show my ticket. I was lost, and asked a man directions, but ended up even more
lost, in the countryside. I saw a teenage boy, asked him the way to the train station and he said, 'Who cares?' I said, 'I do - I've got to go back there to show my ticket.' But then the thought struck me: 'I don't need to show my ticket because I'm already here!' A massive wave of electric ecstasy shot through me, like the arising of kundalini. 'I don't need to show my ticket because I'm already here!' I repeated to myself. I had a giant sense of relief and freedom, knowing there was nothing to
stop me just wandering around the town looking at the houses I used to live in. Then I woke up. It was one of those rare (for me anyway) dreams that have a definite symbolic meaning. (Now I just have to decipher it.)
I’m not quite sure what it means, but I have felt different since then. Two days afterwards I was sitting the playground at my
kids’ school, looking at the sky while they were playing a game of ‘tig’. It seemed like the most beautiful and intensely real sky I’ve ever seen, and I was filled with a sense of oneness with the whole of the landscape (and skyscape) around me. I wrote a poem about it, called ‘My Guru.’ I will leave you with the poem: My Guru I loved to sit with my guru -not at his feet, but across the room
so that I could sense the fullness of his being
and absorb as much of his radiance as I
could.
I loved to ask him questions,
so that, as he answered, he would look directly at me
and the whole room would shimmer with golden light
and my mind would slow down, and my being would open
and my energies would flow so softly and
smoothly
and my solid skin and bone seemed to turn to vapour
until there was no outside or inside
and my self disappeared like a ghost.
Then the world became my guru.
Now I love to sit and watch the graceful gliding clouds
with their constantly flowing
foaming forms.
Now I love to walk amongst the trees
and feel their calm wise sentience.
And now I love to gaze across the hills and fields
and sense the landscape’s ancient soul.
And the longer I watch, the more I’m filled with reverence.
The
world’s majesty and beauty stuns me, and silences my mind
until I’m transfigured and transported,
and the endless open space of the sky is my own space
and the soul of the landscape is my own soul
and my guru is ever-present and everywhere.
All best wishes and blessings for the holiday period, and the new year,
Steve
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