This is about the spiritual journey which we are all on because we are humans. This journey is the hardest journey that one can make. There are all kinds of forces that are hell bent on sabotaging this journey. In my book 'Journey to the self' which I have just sent to the publishers I document all of the stages of this journey. What I realise is that the journey is not so much of a one off but one that goes in cycles. The book represents my experiences going through one cycle, this blog is going to details the experiences of this 2nd cycle.

One of the key signs of resistance is not wanting to get up in the morning to read some spiritual writings or meditate. In the early stages of the path this is so characteristic and so it is again with me as I begin my 2nd cycle. This morning I woke up at 5am and that small voice said 'get up and read some of 'Daughter of Fire'. This is the diary of Irwina Tweedie and the spiritual training she received from a Sufi master. Instead of listening and getting up I rolled over and slept again for another hour and now there is no time because I have to go to work. Walking through the park I will berate myself for my lack of willpower. As it is my 2nd cycle I should understand the traps that are there and not fall into them but this force which will be hell bent on sabotaging my spiritual journey is never going to go away. I must learn to be stronger and not give into the temptation to be lazy. I know that laziness will get me nowhere and I have had a glimpse of the peace, joy, love, serenity and balance which comes when a person wants to experience truth as badly as a drowning man wants air.

I wanted it this badly once. The evening I went to my first Buddhist beginner class and heard about the concept of the Bodhissatva that was who and what I wanted to be. A Bodhissatva is someone who has realized truth and the nature of suffering but who refuses to leave the world until everybody else is releived of their suffering. Words cannot explain the force that gripped me when I heard those words. My body became rigid and I was filled with the greatest yearning I have ever experienced. In that moment there was nothing except me and that aspiration. For those few moments the world stood still as if in a freeze frame. After this I studied and practiced Mahayana Buddhism for 9 years. I feel that all that study and practice was part of this path of the Bodhissatva.

During my first cycle I experienced the rising of energy from the base of the spine on many different occasions. This energy is the sexual energy which arises during orgasm but none of my experiences of this rising of energy was through sex. The most profound arose on a meditation retreat in Devon in 1999. It is as a result of this that I enjoy the kind of peaceful, calm stress-free life that I do at present.

Yet that is the past and to progress I must not be attached to the past or the experiences I have had in the past. I know that I am at the beginning of a new cycle. I know that I have learned much but now I have to let it all go and use this blog as a diary to record dilligently and with integrity my thoughts and experiences now I am at the beginning of the 2nd cycle of this journey from the non-self to the Self. The non-self is everything we take to be ourselves that is our thoughts, feelings, behaviour. We think this is who we are but I have direct experience that this is not who we think we are and the spiritual journey is all about getting at who we are by identifying and giving up we are not.

I can appreciate that the last sentence is difficult for the mind to grasp. The irony is that although the mind will try to understand it never can. The understanding comes from no-mind or the intuition. The spiritual journey is about strengthening the intuition and weakening the mind.

So now I leave this very important part of myself and go into an office environment which is slowly but surely killing me. But I am afraid, afraid to leave it and make a living teaching what I know and have experienced. This is the coward in me. This is the part that doesn't want to upset the comfort that I have. Sometimes I think what a waste of time and effort it was for the universe to have given me so much when I'm such a coward. But then I think of my commitment as the Bodhissatva and I commit once more to the path and at work today I will demonstrate my spiritual commitment by really being there for my work mates in terms of listening from a place which has nothing to do with me and my own self interest.