I hope you are well and have been enjoying the summer (or the winter, if you live in the Southern Hemisphere of our planet!). I’ve been having a fairly quiet summer, working on my new book, which I’m supposed to send the publisher in September. However, last weekend I was in Lisbon, Portugal, leading a workshop on transpersonal psychology and spirituality. My favourite section of the workshop was on gratitude. As I do in my book The Adventure, I shared the experiences of astronauts who went to the moon at the end of 1960s, and felt incredible gratitude for their lives on Earth, and for the Earth itself. So I guided people through a visualisation exercise in which we leave the surface of the Earth, travel through space to the moon and stare back at the Earth from space. I asked people to contemplate all the things they feel grateful for, as they looked at the Earth, this tiny blue-green oasis in the midst of the nothingness of space. Then we returned to the Earth and wrote and talked about all the blessings in our lives, the blessing of life itself, and the blessing of the Earth itself. We became aware of so many blessings that the exercise lasted for around 45 minutes, and it created a powerful celebratory atmosphere. 

We human beings have a strange tendency to take our blessings for granted. We ‘switch off’ to them very quickly and easily. But they are always there, just waiting for us to focus on them. As one of the astronauts, Rusty Schweikhart, put it, ‘On that small spot, that little blue and white planet, is everything that means anything to you…This tiny planet that keeps us alive, which gives us everything we have, the food we eat, the water we drink, the air we breathe, the beauty of nature.’ Or as another, Alan Bean, said of his trip to the moon, ‘Since that time I have not complained about the weather a single time. I’m glad there is weather. I’ve not complained about traffic - I’m glad there’s people around…Why do people complain about the Earth? We are living in the garden of Eden!’ 

The important point is that we don't have to travel to the moon to develop a sense of gratitude. We just need to remind ourselves of our blessings. 

Workshop in Edinburgh on Saturday 6th September

On Saturday 6th September, I am holding a one-day workshop at the Arthur Conan Doyle centre in Edinburgh, Scotland. The workshop is based on my book The Adventure and entitled ‘The Adventure of Awakening.’ We will focus on cultivating qualities that arise in awakening, such as presence and acceptance, with poems meditations and other exercises. We will transcend the separateness of the ego and gain access to the essential harmony of our deep nature. In doing so, we will travel further on the journey of spiritual awakening. It would be great to see you there!

Further information at this link or write direct to me for further details.

The Leap Audio Book 

Recently I spent a few days in London recording the audio version of my book The Leap: The Psychology of Spiritual Awakening. It was a challenging but rewarding experience, reading aloud for a several hours a day and re-engaging with the book, eight years after its original publication. I don't read my books once they are published so I was glad to find that I still agreed with the content, and pleased to find that the book expresses my ideas so clearly. The Leap is the most popular of all my books, and I still regularly receive emails about it, with people telling me that the book has brought them self-understanding and self-acceptance. So I’m very pleased that it is now available in audio form - or at least, about to be available. It is officially released on August 12.

It is available for per-order here (UK)  or here (US)

                                  Prayer of the Day

For the last four years, I have been a presenter on ‘Prayer for the Day’ on BBC Radio 4. Every year, I present six episodes, making up a whole week (excluding Sunday). This year I’ve been speaking about topics such as presence, acceptance and gratitude for the body and for life itself, as well as reading some verses from my poems. It's great to think that I'll be waking up people all over the UK with my inspirational messages and poems! You can listen to all my prayers here – from ‘Gratitude for Life itself’ to ‘We Are Each Other.’

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qmpj/episodes/player

Poems

As always, let me end with a couple of my recent poems, on the themes of presence and acceptance. 

The Guru  

When success inflates our egos 
failure arises, inevitably 
to bring us back to our true selves.

When ambitions fill our minds with the future 
obstacles arise, inevitably 
to bring us back to the present. 
    
When activity drains our energy 
Illness arises, inevitably 
to bring us back to being.  

When familiarity obscures our blessings
danger arises, inevitably 
to bring us back to gratitude.

Like a guru who guides us to knowledge
life always corrects our course 
and brings us back to calm contentment

The Perfect Landscape

I pause for a moment between activities and thoughts 
to see my life in overview
like a hiker who stops to look at the landscape.
I’m surprised to find nothing but harmony. 
I look from every vantage point
but can’t locate problems anywhere.

Surely there must be a situation
that needs to be adjusted
a mistake to make amends for 
or a challenge to prepare for?

Surely there must be an activity 
that requires my attention 
a plan that needs pushing further forwards
a duty that I’ve forgotten to perform
or a request I should respond to?

But no – situations are as they’re meant to be
just as rocks rest in the right place
and trees stand in the right place
and can never be anywhere else.

Events unfold inevitably 
just as mountain streams flow downhill 
and clouds float across the sky
and can never go anywhere else.

There is nothing to feel guilty about 
nothing to be anxious about
nothing to complain about
no one to be angry with
no disagreements to resolve 
no predicaments to correct.

Why would I rearrange rocks and trees
try to change the course or rivers
the colours of morning, or the contours of hills? 
Why would I veer from the path that has led me here
and curves further through forests and fields?

The landscape is exactly as it is 

and can never be anything else.

All best wishes and blessings

Steve