My first weekend of teacher training....

is over and it was just amazing. What I didn't know before I started this training is that Kundalini Yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan is about balancing the right and left sides of the brain. I couldn't believe when I was flicking through the teachers manual and I read this. From this point on I felt totally and completely at home. I have experienced the Kundalini so there isn't a shadow of doubt in my mind that this energy exists and is dormant at the base of all our spines.

Yogi Bhajan developed this method of Kundalini yoga to enable a smooth transition of human consciousness from the Piscean age to the Aqarian age. At present we are still in transition from Pisces and Aqarius which accounts for all of the chaos and conflict there is in the world. Pisces is largely about control, power, and separation. Aqarius is about harmony, co-operation and sharing experience, expertise and is about expansion. In all of us there are Piscean elements in conflict with Aqarian elements which leads to inner turmoil and conflict. The aim of this yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan is to strengthen the nervous system to make the body stronger for when the shift happens on a global basis. I had thought that the shift was going to be of the consciousness from left to right and I suppose if we see the left brain as Piscean and the right as Aquarian then this makes sense in this way too. However like it's not in balance to live solely in the left bran nor is it in balance to live solely in the right brain so where the consciousness is heading towards is whole brain.

For the first time in my life I am committing to a daily early morning Sadhana practice so that I can be fully prepared for when this shift happens. Some documents put this date at 2012 but this is the date when the consciousness is fully in the Aquarian age. I must stress that I don't know any of what I write to be the truth. The relief for me of this weekend is finding a place where the thoughts and ideas I have had for months if not years have been echoed in a training which I can now give my all to. I want to be a teacher who gives students an experience of what's possible by committing to a spiritual practice.

Writing this tonight I feel a level of peace but also of confidence to finally be who I know myself to be without any apology to anyone, to make a difference to people from the experience and expertise I have without hiding it under a bush and that....is something I am really looking forward to doing.

It's just a few hours before....I begin teacher training to be a Kundalini yoga teacher

It's finally happening. In just a few hours I will be beginning my first weekend of six to be a Kundalini yoga teacher and I am just so excited. I am settled and at home with the experience I had on a meditation retreat many years ago as an experience of Kundalini energy rising up through energy centres called chakras which are located in the subtle energy body of the spine. I know these exist and are real and for me to be training to be able to have mastery with this powerful transformative energy is nothing but a privilege and a pleasure. It is the energy that is present in all of us and as a yoga teacher my purpose is to work with the energy so that it will raise safely and naturally in my students.

I am doing this training not because I am a chosen yogi or a mystic but simply because I am right brain dominant and I am following the path other right brain dominant people have done over the centuries. For years I have been alone with this right brain theory but just a few days ago to my absolute astonishment I was sent through the email details of a video clip of a woman who was a brain scientist and who suffered a stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. The damage to the left hemisphere shifted her consciousness to the right hemisphere and she began to have experiences similar to what mystics and yogi's have described. This is just an amazing story and I urge all of my readers to watch it. I am not tech savvy so have no idea how to emed this video into this blog post, so I am just going to post the link here and really recommend that you watch it.

Link: http://www.ted.com/talks/jill_bolte_taylor_s_powerful_stroke_of_insight.html

The significance of what happened to this lady is I assert and I don't know for sure what is going to happen to the consciousness of humanity on a global scale. It is going to shift from the left brain to the right. I remember many years ago in the 60s' there was a scientist called Perry who did 'split brain studies' and his work was completely dismissed and I remember that there was always something in the way it was ridiculed which didn't sit right with me. I think something of the power of the right brain was discovered then but because the right brain is very powerful his findings were suppressed. But now evolution itself has taken the lead and scientists can no longer keep the lid on the power of the right brain which is why there is suddenly an explosion of revelations about it on youtube and other sites.

For me all I feel is relief that I stayed true to myself and didn't put myself out there as some chosen yogi or mystic. I am simply right brain dominant which is the result of only having one properly functioning eye. This has resulted in less stimulation going from the right eye to the left brain causing the right side of the brain to work harder to compensate. I don't know any of this to be true but it feels right and authentic to me. There have been times when I have let go of my brain theory and basked in the notion that I may have been 'chosen' but then something happens that brings me right back to earth. When I stay with my brain theory life works and is beautiful and magical which makes it right for me.

So this training is deepening the consciousness of the right side of my brain with a view to being a powerful teacher for others and I am so inspired by it. My plan once I am qualified to teach is to spend six months of the year teaching in England and then to go to India and teach for the other six months. It makes sense for a right brained person to be in a right brained country.

My training starts at 7.30pm and I think although this hasn't been confirmed that it will begin tomorrow morning with Sadhana at 5am which in this freezing cold weather will be something else for me to actually get up and attend. This training is going to test me in ways I have never dreamed off. There are going to be different barriers to overcome but....bring it on...I have never been more ready.

I have made a promise that I will write after every weekend of my training with both the highs and lows. And I promise that I will do that......

How long.....has it been...

I haven't written for a while because I've felt stuck. Not because my spiritual world has become dry but because everything spiritual I read resonates and I do not know where to start. I am noticing more and more how spiritual reflections of different kinds are becoming more and more common on such social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. The consciousness is definitely shifting that is so obvious to me.

I have also been quiet because I have been reading 'The Spiritual Brain' by Dr Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary and it is without doubt the easiest to read and understand academic book on this subject that I have ever read. The greatest shock for me from all the research done by neuroscientists is that I can no longer get away with that all of the spiritual experiences I have had is the result of any over active right brain. This is not true. Spiritual experiences involve both sides of the brain as every study to-date has shown and this discovery has really shocked me. I do not consider myself particularly spiriutal. I am the most ordinary woman that you could meet so for me to have been given the grace to have the permanent current of bliss, ease and contentment that I have without a physiological reason as I had thought for so long has really moved me and I am now allowing myself to feel blessed and emotional about it all. I am also incredibly grateful to this Divine Presence for its patience with me being like a dog with a bone desperate to prove that spiritual experiences could be reduced down to overactivity in the right side of the brain. I have now been forced to accept by the weight of scientific evidence that they are not.

So now what to do. There is no point in me writing another book. Everything that I can say has been said before. That is the thing there is nothing new to be discovered on the spiritual path. The ultimate revelation that what we take to be real and permanent is not and that the REAL hides within the unreal is not new. I am so excited to be starting my training to be a kundalini yoga teacher in December because it is here that I see a platform for what I know from my experience. I have experienced the powerful energy that rests at the base of all of our spines. I understand and have experienced the energy release from all of the seven chakras. It is amazing that until this experience I didn't believe in the chakras. I thought that they were something made up to make lots of money from and then innocently on one meditation retreat I was on I was given a full experience of energy rising through these different chakras. So being a kundalini yoga teacher where I work with people on freeing the blocked energy in these chakras so that the kundalini energy can move safely and naturally from the base of the spine to the top of the head where in Indian mythology Shiva meets Shakti is where I am going to focus my energies from now on.

When I start the teacher training I will write more often because it is a journey that I will want to document as fully as I can and I just love to write this blog when there is something of importance to say. Training to be a yoga teacher is going to be different to the training I have done to date with Landmark Education. I am an intellectual seeker so I have to reason out my shifts in consciousness. Others are devotees and can do the spiritual path on trust and devotion alone. This has not been my path. I question and it will be interesting to see how my approach to this path goes down with my spiritual teachers. One thing I know from experience of progression on this path is that it doesn't come from sticking doggedly and riggedly to one philosophy or faith. It only comes when one is willing to move from what's certain to that which is uncertain....

I begin my teacher training on the weekend of December 4th so if I don't write again rest assured that I will write following this weekend....

My dilemma.....around being a Kundalini yoga teacher...

I've sat here for the last 10 minutes gathering my thoughts about how to write this blog entry. I am due to start my training as a kundalini yoga teacher in early December. From my experience of the spiritual path it is not one path for the whole of one's lifetime. Many of the spiritual disciplines have an exclusivity around them which is not my experience of progression on this path. I was born and brought up a catholic and so I remained until 1988 when Mahayana Buddhism found me and I then went onto study and practice that for almost 10 years.

In 1999 I had what I am calling a conversion experience while on a meditation retreat in Southern England. Then in 2005 I found the transformative education offered by Landmark Education and through Landmark I have progressed through the second stage of spiritual awakening which is transformation. I firmly believe that without transformation the final stage of spiritual awakening - Enlightenment is not possible. Transformation is about taking responsibility for having created everything in ones life up to that point. In the taking of that responsibility transformation happens. Taking responsibility is the vehicle for Transformation. Having used the tools of Landmark Education to bring about a transformation in myself and my life. I am now moving to the final stage which is to have mastery over the incredibly powerful spiritual energy that rests at the base of all of our spines called the Kundalini energy by becoming a certified Kundalini yoga teacher trainer.

My dilemma is this, that as a teacher I am going to recommend that everyone I teach do the weekend Landmark Forum offered by Landmark Education. This weekend is so powerful that it can cause conversion and transformation in one weekend if one is spiritually inclined. Landmark is not a spiritual programme but energy will go where attention goes and for people like me who uses everything she comes across in life to act as a spiritual catalyst there is nothing that comes close to the experience of the Sunday evening when responsibility is taken and the past is put firmly back into the past, leaving a future that is like a blank canvass just waiting to be created on.

The way that I have done the spiritual is not the usual way. The usual way is that you take on a practice and stick doggedly at it for life. I agree with this to a certain point. After all I spent almost 10 years studying and practicing Mahayana Buddhism but there will come a point where there is a letting go of all that and I assert that it is because there is so little of this letting go amongst spiritual masters and guru's that there is so little enlightenment in the world. It takes courage to let go and move deeper into the unknown and the uncertain. It is easy to remain cushioned among like-minded people and be obedient and sell out on reason and intuition but to do this is to close on the door on any future enlightenment.

Going for Enlightenment before experiencing conversion and transformation is like a child wanting to run a marathon before it can even crawl - impossible. There have been accounts of people who achieved enlightenment without seemingly going through either of these experiences but I have never met one so can't verify that. From my own experience which is all I will ever and only speak from there are three definite stages to this path; conversion, transformation and enlightenment. All three are necessary to experience fully. The ultimate end of enlightenment is no witness, nothing or nobody to write.....but that cannot come before the other two stages.

Given my declared commitment that everyone becomes spiritually enlightened in this lifetime my insistence on those I teach doing the weekend Landmark Forum is likely to bring me into conflict with kundalini yoga authorities. Spiritual disciplines are rigid in their thinking that their discipline and only theirs can deliver enlightenment. I had an experience of this with my kundalini yoga teacher who I have a great deal of respect and admiration for. I have met many people on the spiritual path and he is one of the most authentic I have met. But even he when I tried to explain about what there is to experience on the Sunday evening of the Landmark Forum was rigid and inflexible about it 'going against his beliefs'. In that word 'belief' lies the trap of rigidity and inflexibility. I never had beliefs just a deep unshakeable faith that when Buddha said the enlightenment was possible in this lifetime I never had any doubt that he spoke the truth. It wasn't a question of belief but of faith. And faith doesn't adhere rigidly to anything...it goes with the flow....for what is possible.

Everything......is grace...

This is the realization that hit me when I was in the gym yesterday. Absolutely everything that has happened to me has been a gift of grace and I couldn't see it because I was too busy searching for evidence. What I realized ia that whether or not the lack of sight in my right eye has anything to do with the spiritual experiences and insights that I have had that everything is a gift of grace. This realization has left me profoundly humbled. At the moment I am reading Osho's Book of Secrets and everything I read resonates so profoundly. I would like to think that I am the female version of Osho as he writes everything that I think. I can't believe that I dismissed him for so many years because I decided that he was a guru who had feet of clay just because of his Rolex watches and fleet of limousines. But what I also see is that I didn't reject Osho but my identity did because it knew that once I touched Osho and his writings that its days were numbered and yet the identity is never totally transformed, it has layers and layers just like the layers of an onion. The identity put simply is our animal nature. It's sole purpose is for survival. To embrace and be compassionate to this animal nature of ourselves is to be well on the way to freedom.

Many years ago I did a 10 day silent Vippasana meditation retreat in India. I was totally amazed at how when the silence was broken on the 10th day at how difficult I found it to speak. I knew what I wanted to say, but somehow the words wouldn't come. I have thought back on this many times and from it I saw just how powerful silence is but there was something else that I knew was there about silence but couldn't put my finger on it. Last night I read it in Osho's book of secrets where he explained that it is easier to go from sounds to the soundless than to come back from the soundless to sounds. He gave the example of Meher Baba who kept silent for 40 years. At certain times he would write a note about when he would break his silence but he never did. According to Osho if you remain silent for three years then the mechanism for sound is gone and talking becomes impossible. This is the missing piece of the jigsaw for me. I could see this process beginning in how difficult I found it to speak and that was only after 10 days. I would love to know if it is like this in the silent orders that still remain. Of course, I am taking all of this on faith from Osho. Part of it corresponds with my own experience which is so important when on this path. Vigilance about being hoodwinked is one of the most important qualities to have on a spiritual path. To be spiritually discerning.

This brings me on to the subject of the types of people who follow a spiritul path. Essentially they are of two types. The intellectual and the devotee. I definitely fall into the former category. I am always reasoning and trying to fit what I read with my own experience. Not with my thoughts and feelings about what I have read but about what my own experience and intuition tells me about what I read. This is why the writings of Osho resonate so strongly with me at the moment. Yet even my intellectual seeking had humility. I remaining saying to the Divine 1% of me is true and authentic, you make that stronger and let me work on the 99% that is arrogant, superior, out to prove that you are just a mechanism in the brain. I think it is this that has kept me safe thus far on this path.......

The spiritual path....happens in cycles....

Many years ago after I had been following a Buddhist path for many years I was in my flat one Saturday morning and I remember feeling so disillusioned about this path. I had returned from a trip to India where I had tracked the life of the Buddha and I felt lost and didn't know where to go next. Then I heard either my own thoughts or a voice that said just three words. These were 'give it up'. I couldn't believe it. The pursuit of the spiritual was something that had become a part of me and wasn't something that I did and so to have this thought of giving everything up was shocking for me. Yet I listened and gave up reading any spiritual books, writing or going to workshops/talks. I can still remember the emptiness I felt.

Then I had what to most people is a normal common everyday experience where an emotional situation triggered a reaction in me in a normal everyday setting of a work situation. Weeks later I accidentally grabbed a book from my bookshelf to take to read on a bus journey that I was making. My heart sank when I saw that it was a spiritual book that I had promised to give up months ago but still I opened the book. As my eyes glided over the sentences I realized that I had a different ease of understanding that definitely hadn't been there before. I was so engrossed in reading that I completely missed my stop.

Now why am I writing this in the blog when it has been written in my book? I have seen in myself that events that happened years ago are happening again which is why I say that this path happens in cycles. A while ago I went to see the film 'Eat, Pray, Love' and I really enjoyed it. I was particularly interested in the experiences of the ashram that were shown. Then a woman who I work with asked me if I had read the book and I said 'no' and she said 'I will lend it to you'. She was true to her word and on Monday she produced the book for me.

Last night on the bus going home reading it, I missed my stop to get off. Why did I get so absorbed in what I was reading? The reason is because to my absolute astonishment I read the closest account I have read about the energy that lies at the base of the spine and what happens when it rises. The film was the ideal opportunity to bring this information to the world and it didn't happen..why? Why didn't the film bring this information to the world. It could have been done in a dialogue between two of the actors in the ashram. To me this was such a golden opportunity and it would have shifted how people saw the spiritual. This energy at the base of the spine is common to all therefore it's not purely a spiritual energy. It is a human energy which when it is experienced gives the realization that we are spiritual beings having human experiences.

As I was reading it I realized with a jolt that I had experienced what is called the 'blue eye' in meditation. The closest I can relate this to is the view from a kaleidoscope where the eye suddenly opens up and 'something' is seen. I vaguely remember this happening but because I was so against 'seeing' anything in meditation I didn't give what I saw any importance. This is unlike my yoga teacher who told us that when he experienced this eye that when it parted there was a big spider there. As he was terrified of spiders this broke his meditation. So at every stage of this path there are challenges to overcome.

The writer of Eat, Pray, Love has a Guru and all I can think of is that when she was involved in the making of the film that she consulted the guru who advised her not to mention the powerful kundalini experience she had while meditating. I don't have a guru which is why I'm more objective/scientific about the whole thing. I think that this is such a shame as to have had the kind of conversation about it that she has written in the book would have profoundly shifted the spiritual path from one which is thought just for certain people to a path that everyone has a right to and indeed what is at the root of the profound emptiness that is so often found in the west.

She writes on page 142 'I fall asleep for a while (in meditation. When I awake I can feel the soft blue electrical energy pulsing through my body in waves (the 'waves' is exactly the same experience as I had'. It's a bit alarming but also amazing. I don't know what to do, so I just speak internally to this energy. I say to it 'I believe in you' and it magnifies, volumizes in response. It's frighteningly powerful now, like a kidnapping of the senses. It's humming up from the base of my spine'. There is more but this is the most important part. Over the next pages to page 146 she investigates kundalini but nowhere in the film is there a discussion about any of this and this just amazes me. I was so absorbed in this part of the book that for the second time in my life I missed my stop on the bus. What is also familiar is the process of letting go which came before.

Yesterday I declared that I would let go my story about the right brain and spirituality. I don't know though how I have shifted by reading this book. All I am left with is a huge frustration that knowledge and information that could have been brought to the world wasn't. A couple of my friends who read the book before seeing the film expressed a disappointment in the film but couldn't say why. Maybe deep down they also feel there was......a golden opportunity lost.....

I have had.....a shocking realization...

Yesterday I realized with a sickening jolt to my stomach that I am more interested in proving that I am right about my brain theory and spirituality than I am about enjoying my spiritual transformation. This obsession with wanting to be right about this is limiting what is possible for me. What I have been doing though is no different to what we all do as human beings and that is that we all have to be right about our view, opinion and we make being right more important than being happy. Is this why both the scientific and the spiritual community in their own ways have distanced themselves from me. Both communities cannot believe that given the gift of grace that I have without any doubt been given that I should dare to look for a scientific reasonable, rational explanation to account for it.

Yes, there are certain facts about me which can be verified to be true. I have been born with an uncorrected lazy right eye but everything else I have made up as a story and then I have systematically gathered the evidence to support the story. This is also what we do as human beings. We make a decision about something or someone and then the rest of life is spent gathering the evidence to support the story. But the story by virtue of it only being story is not real and yet I have lived my life like my story that the lack of sight in my right eye was the cause of all the profound spiritual experiences and insights I have had was the truth. It wasn't and isn't....it's just a story I made up to give what happened to me meaning. But any story no matter what it is about limits what's possible. It limits what's possible because a story can never be the truth. A story is fiction....it has no basis in reality.

So what is possible for me if I give up my story and stop trying to find evidence in the way that I have? The first thing that comes to mind is complete freedom around the experiences I have had. The experiences are real and I will never deny that they happened but what I can be responsible for is the story I made up about what they meant and then I lived my life from this story. The story limited me because I was always trying to fit it with whoever I may have been writing to or speaking with. If I can let it go and just be with what happened, without making it mean anything then I can be totally myself. I can tell my story from the facts and deal with the facts of what happened and this will give me a level of ease and freedom that up to now I haven't experienced.

Where did I get this revelation. Many readers of my blog will know that from 2005 I have been participating in a transformative education which has been run by Landmark Education. I am presently doing a seminar on Excellence which is where the revelation came from last night. What I saw was that I have a story around why I can't be excellent and that is because I haven't got two proper functioning eyes and therefore I can't be excellent which is a total story. As I said there is a fact there that I have been born with only one functioning eye but all the rest of it is a story and it limits me from being excellent. A story also takes up the space for excellence; the two cannot co-exist, there is either story or excellence.

From my spiritual journey I have identified three distinct stages. The first is conversion and there are many examples of this. It is when the consciousness shifts from the outer to the inner. The second stage is transformation which is why I am so heavily involved in the programmes offered by Landmark. It is the only education I know that offers transformation. It is why I unreservedly recommend its flagship programme the weekend Landmark Forum. And the final stage which I am clear that I am working towards is Enlightenment. Transformation is not Enlightenment, but without Transformation Enlightenment is not possible. Transformation is putting the past back into the past, recognising that a story is just a story, not the truth; giving up the right to be right for what is possible. Transformation creates the space for something new to be created. For me that space is for Enlightenment but I fully appreciate that it's not the space for everyone, nor does it have to be.....

Evidence is mounting.....that my theory about the right brain....might not be the entire story..

It is slowly occuring to me that the powerful experiences and insights that I have experienced since beginning a spiritual path when I was 12 may have little or nothing to do with my theory that I have accelerated right brain development. That in some way that I still find incredibly hard to believe that my intention made at the age of 12 that I was going to be spiritual and not religious has been like rocket fuel for everything that has happened. It is impossible to underestimate the power of a decision made in childhood and early adulthood. These are the decisions that go on to shape who we become as individuals. They are what make up our ego/identity/personality and they come about as the result of the development of mind. Mind is the structure that holds all the decisions that we made when we were growing up.

Why have I suddenly gone less than certain on what was for me a definite reason for why I was the way I was. Well the strongest reason is that I have come across the work of Dr Mario Beauregard who has written a book called 'The Spiritual Brain'. In it he suggests that mystical/spiritual experiences involve the brain but are not limited to it. In my theory I had completely limited what happened to me to the workings of the brain and more particular to increased activity in the right side and nothing else. A couple of weeks ago I put pen to paper and sent him an email briefly outlining the experience where I experienced the rising of an energy from the base of my spine to my head and the transformation that happened afterwards. I explained about the lack of sight in my right eye and the link between the eye and the brain and asked him about the possibility of having some brain scan done on my brain to see the level of right brain activity vis a vis the left. He replied to me the next day which I was really grateful for and told me that spiritual activity involves both sides of the brain and gave me some advice on how to go about getting a brain scan. There was no indication that he wished to be further involved with me.

I am used to this reaction by now because of all the experts in this field I have spoken to and I have a great deal of respect for Dr Beauregard. I have only just begun his book but I want to copy a sentence which has resonated. There is an old Sufi saying that says 'I thought about you so often, that I completely became you; little by little you drew closer; And slowly but surely I passed away' What this is saying is that to be focussed continuously on something is to bring it about. Now in Dr Beauregard's book, he says on page 33 when he is speaking about the field of quantum mechanics 'Experiments have shown that because the brain is a quantum system, if you focus on a given idea, you hold its pattern of connecting neurons in place. The idea does not decay as it would if it were ignored. But the action of holding an idea in place truly is a decision you make' So here we have a sufi and a scientist saying more or less the same thing. I think this is why also that when we focus on what we don't want in life, we get more of the same. The key to effortlessly manifesting is to focus continuously on what we do want.

For me from the age of 12 I wanted nothing more than to be spiritual. I had no idea what that looked like. I was born into an Irish Catholic family so I knew religion but I had no idea of spirituality yet I knew that there was a fundamental difference between being spiritual and being religious. I could also look at it like the continuous focus on being spiritual has driven my brain to develop in the way that it has. In this way we have a chicken and egg scenario, what came first, the brain development or my desire to be spiritual? The truth is that I don't know. One thing I am committed though is to be true to myself no matter what the experts try to tell me.....

Had my kundalini class.....and now I'm irritated.....

Irritation seems to be a common and lasting feeling at the moment. Am doing my practice of being aware of it but I feel like a coiled spring in danger of springing out. I am feeling a build up of tension which is increasing in pressure and intensity. Regular readers of this blog will know that things that can't be seen with the eyes, I don't have much time for. This goes for reincarnation, past lives and stories of people appearing in subtle energy bodies. I deal with what I observe and experience and that is all. I feel this gives me a level of groundedness when so many in this field don't seem to me to be connected to reality. This goes also for authorities in this field.

Today in my class the teacher started speaking about it being the birthday of a famous guru over the weekend and how he (the guru) appeared many times in his subtle body after he died. The woman who was with me was really fascinated with all of this and I listened to it with mounting irritation. Finally when I could bear it no more I said 'surely if the mind wants to see something enough, a form will be created, desire will create a form in the imagination'. There was this uncomfortable silence for a minute and then my teacher who is so great started to speak about the field of quantum mechanics which is something I have trust in. That this phenomenon of a particle appearing in two places is a recognised and proven phenomenon. This stopped me somewhat in my tracks but I still found it too much of a leap to go from the qantum physics to an actual human being. That awkward moment passed and we got on with the class but all during the class I was irritated. The length of time I had to hold my arms up at an uncomfortable angle irritated me. I know that this is the purpose of these exercises to feel the pain and go beyond but I was just irritated. What was revealing for me was that the last meditation was one to do with cultivating trust and it was this exercise that I found the hardest of all to do. I had to stop many times to have a rest during the exercise. I think my teacher was trying to show me something in a very subtle way.

After the class the conversation moved onto reincarnation and past lives. This was just too much for me. There is so much to uncover and create in the present life, what on earth is the point in going back over past lives. What purpose can it serve. I see it as just more attention to that which is not-self. The conversation came up because of a fear my teacher has of spiders and he found that in a past life he had been killed by a spider!!! How on earth am I going to train to be a kundalini yoga teacher if this is the way I am about common spiritual conversations. And yet if there was nothing for me to learn I wouldn't be having this reaction around these conversations. I have been on this path long enough to recognise that anything where the behaviour is a react and not a response is an area where I am not being totally honest with myself......hm.....more work to do.....

To take on a spiritual path it is not necessary.....to take oneself away from the world..

What I am realizing more and more is that the spiritual is not a path as such but a way of being. It is a declaration that I am a spiritual being who is having human experiences. When this is the context then everything that happens is fodder for spiritual growth and development.

To pay my bills, I work as a fundraiser for a number of charities. Each call presents itself as an opportunity for me to choose who I am going to be on each call. As you can imagine given the nature of the work some calls are more harmonious than others. What is invaluable about this job for me given my self-declared path towards self-realization and enlightenment is that when the energy of anger is there I can watch it impassively, like an observer. I don't get identified with it and I certainly don't project it onto the person I am speaking to. I just watch it rising up. Everything is energy and anger is just one form that the energy takes. In another instant that same energy can transform into love or compassion. What is important is not the form that it changes into but to be aware of its presence and to watch its rise and more importantly its fall. To follow it back until it dissolves into the formless. Only then will it result in a deep and abiding peace.

The person who caused me to get angry has no part to play. The anger was within me and it is only when we take responsibility and own that we have anger, but anger is not who we are that a level of ease and freedom can be experienced around anger and indeed around any energy whether this is hate or love. It is all the same energy but the form in which it is expressed is different. But the principle is the same for whatever form it takes. Become aware of its presence, don't act out or project and follow it back to its source.

I feel blessed that at least once each day I am given the opportunity to engage with this process and it has led to deepening peace and calm. In this way there is no need for me to take myself to an ashram or even have a teacher. The willingness to take myself on at every moment is enough.....

10th October 2010 - 10.10am - highly significant for humanity....

Some weeks back I received notification of a workshop which was being given by a Clairvoyant called Edwin Courtenay who I rate highly. He says this about this date today 'On this day, at 10 minutes past 10, the masculine and feminine Christ energies will descend strongly on the planet downloading their codes and energies into the hearts of those ready to receive them. Some people have these already but even they will have their existing Christ Codes updated!


Now I had completely forgotten about this until just before I fell asleep last night. This morning I found it very difficult to wake up and when I did had this overwhelming compulsion to meditate from just before 10am to 10.30am. Since then I have felt this incredible restlessness and agitation. I am writing now because I have a strong inner urge to do so, it seems important. Wearing my right brain hat I can speculate that what may have happened is that there has been more of a shift to the right side of the brain in which case I don't think I can be any more brain lateralized to the right than I am! What I would have hoped has happened is that new neural pathways have been built between the right and left brain. There is no doubt that some more left brain activity for me in terms of going out and making things happen for myself either personally or professionally would be a good thing, but for those who operate solely from the left brain consciousness the shift today is going to be welcome for some and bewildering and unsettling for others. Ironically I seem to be in the latter category!

However this is also a golden opportunity. I wrote a few days ago about being a witness of everything that happens, just like a rock is steady when the waves are crashing around it. Well in my mind everything is crashing, there are crazy thoughts, agitation and yet there is also that which is watching all of this going on. I know all there is to do is rest in that which is watching but then why do I feel like there is something I should be doing. And why doesn't this shifting of my consciousness to that which is watching disappear all of this agitation and restlessness. But this is the test of the spiritual path to have trust, faith and most importantly surrender to that which watches.

I must also issue a word of warning about pursuing a spiritual path seriously. Firstly the spiritual is real and achievable I hand on heart can state this from my experience. Yet one must be careful because on this path certain experiences happen whereby it's very easy to lose one's perspective. I was reading the story of a man who for years was a life and business coach and a very successful one at that. However on the side he had been pursuing some powerful spiritual practices without guidance. Then he had this experience which I cannot write too much about and his third eye opened which gave him supernatural powers. However when he tried to speak to his landlord about all this his landlord said to him 'I don't care what happened to you, you are two weeks late with the rent'. For some reason this resonated very strongly and shows the paradox of this path. The experience of bliss and all knowingness that comes along with this kind of experience is a lonely experience because it is for oneself only. Ultimately the experience cannot be explained or shared only hinted at and in this is the acute aloness of the spiritual path. I say 'aloneness' and not 'loneliness'. There is no loneliness, there is much uncertainty. Experiences of this nature throw the consciousness from the known to the unknown and the unknown is always uncertain but there is no loneliness - how can there be the consciousness has come home to itself....the search is over...in fact it never was...

I will be one year living where I am at the end of this month and it is time for me to move on yet the thoughts of all that 'doing' just makes me want to curl up and retreat into my spiriutal books and writing but life is about balance and so finding somewhere else to live has to be my project for the next couple of months. My conventional life in London seems so far away now. I will be starting my training as a yoga teacher in December. Maybe it is this that is at the root of my restlessness. The inner energy bursting for the kind of expression that can only be expressed as a teacher.....my right brain.....is demanding expression..

Go.....where there is no path.....and leave a trail....

The spiritual path is a tried and tested path where everything hinges on the words of sages and gurus who have left this life. These sages and gurus are dead and have taken their enlightenment to the grave. There is little to be gained by following dead sages. All these writings can do is provide a guide but the guide is not the experience. In every field new paths are blazed. I'm thinking of quantum mechanics and nanotechnology in science and yet in the field of spirituality everything has stayed the same and then we wonder where there are so few enlightened beings.

I assert that the grace of the guru is only obtained by following a living teacher. By writing this I am going against the grain of my beliefs because unashamedly my most influential teachers have been Sri Ramana Maharshi and Osho and of course beloved Buddha and from these I have learned so much but if I am to achieve the ultimate goal then I have to go where there is no path and leave a trail. This doesn't mean re-writing spiritual literature. The goal has always been the same spiritual enlightenment but all the past teachers have done is to offer devices or techniques to reach enlightenment.

Enlightenment for all is not an 'if' but a 'when' and I am a hundred percent sure of this. What makes me so sure? Every one of us born a human being has an inner centre which connects us to the whole of existence. No training can be given to develop this centre it has to be discovered or uncovered. Every enlightened master uncovered this centre and then taught from another centre which they developed. For some the centre they taught from was the heart and so the teachings contains the importance of being devoted. Others developed the head centre and then taught from there so the method that was advocated was self-enquiry or reason. But all first uncovered and immersed themselves in this inner inborn centre and from this centre everything else came. The really great thing abut this and what is to be celebrated is that this centre cannot be developed it is inherent to all of us. So there really is nothing to do. This is why for me the advocates of the thinking, we are already enlightened we just haven't had the experience yet is so true. I have to stress again because it is so important and I am so excited that I want to repeat that this centre cannot be trained or developed, only discovered.

One way of looking at this centre is to think about the Witness consciousness. The Witness is that which watches everything that goes on in the mind dispassionately and objectively. To see this - consider what is it that knows you have a thought or a feeling. When you say 'I have a headache', who is it that knows you have a headache, something is watching you have the headache. If you were the headache, you wouldn't be able to see it as something separate to you. But the fact is that we do see a headache as separate to us which is why we reach for nurofen.

This inner centre is like the rock in the ocean. In the ocean waves crash around the rock, but the rock remains stable, unattached and uninvolved. For me this rock is the same as our inner centre. When we operate from this centre, events of life happen but we don't lose our balance and also from this center we respond and not react to these events.

I have allowed for comments on this post and apologies I always mean to but often I forget....

Why be special.....when you can be yourself..

In May 2010 I went to Satsang with a teacher called Mooji. I had a specific question I wanted to ask him which was around a woman ever being a spiritual master. My belief is that a woman can be a devotee, mystic, even spiritually awakened, but a Master..no, no that's a job for the boys. It took me two hours to get to ask my question and when I finally did I was amazed at Mooji's response to me. He totally understood where my question was coming from and he spoke about the desire to be a Master and the title of this post is one of the most profound that he said to me. Being myself is something I have now taken on and am so committed to.

So what does it mean to be 'yourself'. It means to be completely natural. To live in the present and to be self-expressed about your feelings in each moment. The latter is a challenge for us as human beings because for the most time we hide behind 'I'm fine' when asked. But to be natural and authentic demands that we are honest about our feelings in every moment and are honest about how experiences with ourselves and others are for us. This is also to live the way of the Tao - effortless action.

My spiritual journey has moved from effort where I put so much in when I was studying and practicing Mahayana Buddhism to now being completely effortless. I have a spiritual practice which I do every morning now not because it's effort or I feel I have to do it to sustain the state of peace, calm, bliss that I have permanently but because I enjoy it. The mornings that I don't do it, I acknowledge that I didn't do it and am straight with myself about why - I don't hide behind excuses, reasons and explanations. To be authentic and natural it is vital that the consciousness is always in the present. Past and future do not exist. The past was once the present and the future will one day be the present so all there is the present, THE NOW. With this naturalness with nothing forced the state of enlightenment will reveal itself in the way it is meant to....naturally and effortlessly.

Tuesday.....is my kundalini yoga class...

I just love Tuesday mornings because I have an hour and a half of kundalini yoga. One thing I have learned about the spiritual path is never to be definite about what one will or not try. I never thought that I would train to be a kundalini yoga teacher never mind to be so committed to my regular Tuesday morning class but I really am. Mind you each time I am doing kriya's (set of exercises designed to have a specific effect) I am still in the conversation about is this just only about the right side of the brain or is there more... For some reason I am so reluctant to move away from my view that my spirituality has more to do with me being right brain dominant than that it is the result of good karma.

I have decided to train to teach this form of yoga because having experienced the powerful kundalini energy it makes sense for me to train with this energy. However I know what I'm like also and I have a real dislike for the show-manship/woman-ship that often goes along with a spiritual path. This is why I cling to my right brain theory because how can I be a show-woman over something that is completely natural to me. I have no desire to be anything other than ordinary. My hope is that I can start and complete this training and then with a mixture of my training with a powerful personal and self-development company which I have been doing since 2005 I consider that I can be a powerful kundalini yoga teacher. But already I have had my first point of tension and that is in buying a spiritual name which is what all yoga teachers are advised to do. My view is that I already have a name which I like and which means pearl in Latin and I have no interest in getting another.

I once knew someone who made a great deal out of the spiritual name she was given and I found her to be so false. Now I am willing to accept that perhaps her willingness to throw herself hook, line and sinker into this aspect of the spiritual path triggered me because even with all of the powerful experiences I have had I am still so reluctant to do this. Again I come back to the same point. Why should I have a spiritual name for something that is just so natural to me. I can see my frustration deepen as my training to be a kundalini yoga teacher progresses. I am not going to be silent about my view about my spirituality being more to do with an overactive right brain than it is to do with anything else and I can foresee conflict in the months ahead. Oh well....what is that famous quote 'to thine own self be true' and this is all I am trying to do in this blog as well as in life.....

When the shoe fits.....the leg is forgotten....

The title of this post is also the title of the book I am reading by Osho. It is so strange how I dismissed him earlier in my spiritual journey. And now, I just can't read enough of what he is written. It is such a shame that he died at 54. For the past couple of years I have engaged in an enquiry with myself which is about the need for continual practice. Why do monks/nuns anyone who takes on the spiritual journey have to do continual practice. Why doesn't the altered state of consciousness last. In this book Osho gives me an answer which I have recognised intuitively but never seen in print before. That is because....the holy grail of enlightenment will never be achieved by effort!....All effort is a projection towards some desired state. For that reason it may be experienced for the time of effort, i.e. meditation, spiritual practice but if the practice is not sustained then neither is the experience or the state.

In his book Osho meets a man who has been doing a continuous sustained practice for over 30 years and he asks him to 'drop it all'. The man has full confidence that the state will remain without effort but on the fourth day he runs into Osho's room at 4am claiming him to be an enemy because he has now lost the state of consciousness that he had. In complete calmness Osho explains that what there is to do now is to be a witness and then the state will return naturally and permanently. This really resonates for me because of an experience I had. I had been studying and practicing Mahayana Buddhism for almost 10 years. And before that on and off since the age of 12 I had been following a spiritual path. When I returned from a trip to India where I tracked the life of the Buddha I was in my flat one Saturday morning wondering what my next spiritual step was when I heard either my own thoughts or a voice which said 'give it up'. I remember this as clear as if it happened yesterday. I was filled with dismay because interest in all things spiritual was something that was who I was and I couldn't imagine life without my spiritual books, going to talks, workshops. But I listened and gave up and then some six months later I had an experience which on the face of it wasn't spiritual at all. But when I accidentally grabbed a book from my bookshelf and started to read it, to my astonishment I had a complete and total understanding that I know wasn't there before for that book. From this experience I once again entered the spiritual path.

There seems to be something in 'letting go' or 'dropping' that results in an expansion of consciousness. Trust and surrender is required for 'letting go' and this is rewarded with a permanent experience of an altered state of consciousness. I remember also reading a sentence from a book called 'from onions to pearls' where the author said something to the effect of 'I had been on every workshop there was to go on, tried every spiritual practice there was to try' and it was only when I completely gave up everything that I got everything'. The challenge is to know when is the right time to 'drop', 'let go' because the timing is right and the next stage must happen without effort and when the temptation to let go is just resistance because the spiritual practice is too challenging. This is where intuition comes in and learning to trust the inner process. It is very much an individual subjective thing and I can offer no definites here in this blog. It really is a question of trust and surrender.....

The shift....from left to right....will not be easy...

It appears that what I have been saying for years about consciousness shiting from the left brain to the right is gathering momentum. Just today I received details of a workshop which is being held next Sunday. The workshop talks about spiritual ascension and the alignment between the left and right hemispheres of the brain. Now the possibility of alignment is not one that I considered. I had the idea that the consciousness would do a direct and dramatic shift but if the shift is towards alignment then that is just brilliant, taking the right and left and aligning the consciousness. It is the polarity between the right and left up to now that has manifested itself in the outer conflicts. With alignment we can expect to look forward to a peaceful harmonious world.

Yet my feeling is that there is more polarity to come before the consciousness aligns. In particular I feel there is going to be a loss of left brain abilities. In some way we have already seen this with the banking crisis. The thinking and logic failed here and it still hasn't recovered. One could view this as the first major failing of the left side of the brain. On the other hand I have had correspondancce with someone who I knew years ago when he was president of a public speaking club. He has obviously had some kind of spiritual experience because now he quotes the bible and is so evangelical proclaiming what he says as 'truth'. I don't deny that he has had an experience of some kind for him to be like this but if the experience involved a vision as I believe it did I want to issue a warning. It is from the book 'A Course in Miracles' and those readers who are familiar with the book will know how many pages are in it. Out of all those pages one sentence stood out when I read it and that was 'perception is always of the ego'. The mind is very cunning and the spiritual path is the biggest threat to its existence and so it will do everything to throw the consciousness off the path. Having a great desire for something will have it manifest. This is why a Christian would almost never have a vision of Buddha and vice versa. There is no desire associated with an idol where there is no feeling.

I took this sentence from the book very seriously and so when I hear of people 'seeing' angels, visions I remain far from convinced. The state of sunyata or emptiness has no form, there is also no witness because everything is ONE. There is no longer a subject/object; seer/what's seen - all duality is gone.

More evidence.....for the power of the right side of the brain...

Now I am like a dog with a bone because after so many frustrating years speaking about and getting rejected and villified for my right brain theory, it seems like the idea of the shift of energy from the rational, logical, sequential left brain to the intuitive right side is gaining momentum. I feel like Osho who also intuitied something similar and didn't have his ideas taken up. I've come across a paragraph in a book written by Osho called 'Intuition' and this is what he has to say about the right side of the brain.

'Your brain is divided into two hemispheres, the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is joined with the left hand and the left hemisphere is joined with the right hand - crosswise. The right hemisphere is intuitive, illogical, irrational, poetic, platonic, imaginative, romantic, mythical. The left hemisphere is logical, rational, mathematical, Aristoltelian, scientific and calculative. These two hemispheres are always in conflict. The left hand is concerned with the right hemisphere - intuition, poetry, myth - and the left hand is very much condemned. The society is of those who are right-handed - right handed means the left hemisphere'. He speaks about how in the past children who had a natural tendancy to write with their left hand were forced to write with their right hand and I remember this very well. This leads me to believe that the powers of the right side of the brain has been known about and kept secret for many many years. Osho continues 'Children who are born left-handed are basically irrational, intuitive, non-mathematical, they are dangerous to society so it forces them to become right-handed. It is not just a question of hands, it is a question of inner politics: the left handed child functions through the right hemisphere which society cannot allow, it is dangerous, so he/she has to be stopped before things go too far' Osho Intuition page 123.

Like everything I write and reference I am not claiming that this is the absolute bona fide truth but it mirrors a feeling I have had since a young girl when I knew that I was different but never understood why. My mother paid for me to have grinds in mathematics but the teacher gave up and left because there was no left brain ability there. Years ago I submitted the outline of a book to a publisher called 'right brain woman living in a left brained world' which got a deafening silent response. But I really do feel that the day of acknowledgement for the power of the right brain is fast approaching helped along by 3D films such as Avatar. When I was watching this I was struck by how the consciousness is being exposed to greater depth perception. Normally our consciousness is two dimensional, films like 3D Avatar give the consciousness the experience of 3D which is where evolution is shifting our consciousness to.

So with all of these developments I should be so excited and yet I'm not. I am quietly calm and confident that sooner rather than later spiritual awakening will be undeniably linked to right brain development....

Such a powerful energy....rests at the base of the spine

Today is my Kundalini yoga class. Kundalini is the eastern name given to the energy that lies dormant at the base of the spine. It is said to be coiled like a snake three and a half-times around the spinal cord. Even though I had studied Mahayana Buddhism for almost 10 years the idea of energy at the base of the spine was something I had never heard of. So when this energy rose naturally and spontaneously when I was on a 10 day silent meditation retreat in 1999 I had no idea what was happening. Afterwards I was and continue to be so in awe of this magnificent secret that the body holds and that's for all of us. This for me....is the energy of spiritual awakening if not enlightenment. I know what I was and what my spiritual understandings were before this energy rose and I know what I am now and what I underwent was a spiritual transformation.

And yet I am also a spiritual scientist who wants to investigate objectively what this energy is. At a certain level everyone has experienced it in its crudest form which is the energy of orgasm but experienced in a non-sexual setting it transmutes from the sexual to something much higher and powerful. The challenge becomes one of how to have this energy transmute. I believe that as the consciousness shifts from the left to the right side of the brain that this energy is going to transmute in a more intense way. Therefore, it is important to prepare the body to receive this by doing a certain amount of spiritual practice to strengthen the body. My experience of this energy is that it is not so much an energy as a fire that burns away a thin web of energy that separates the emotional from the mental resulting in a harmonious personality.

When this energy erupts and the body and brain is not ready to receive it what happens is what is called a 'spiritual emergency' and I assert that psychiatric hospitals have many people who have had this but nobody has known what it is. I assert that the only difference between the mystic and the psychotic person is who they spoke to. That is why when one first experiences this energy it is very important to know when to speak up and when to shut up. Because this energy activates areas in the brain that are normally dormant very strange thoughts, ideas can come and it was my training as a Buddhist to use the concept of the Witness which enabled me to integrate the experience into my everyday life. The experience shatters consciousness which is why adopting a witness mentality which is watching everything that is happening as a dispassionate observer is so important and then gradually the experience will be integrated. I remember in the early days of this experience feeling very manic having rapid and intense thoughts and having all kinds of conspiracy ideas and then a few days or a week later feeling very low. In medical terms I would have been diagnosed with possible manic depression. But throughout all of this I watched everything that was happening to me as an observer and gradually it all calmed down.

Hazel Courtney who used to be Health editor for a well-known newspaper experienced a spontaneous awakening which she has written about in her book 'Divine Intervention'. This is the most moving account of a spontaneous spiritual emergency that I have read and it's made more authentic because of how normal she apparently was before the experience. The energy will never rise though without some practice being engaged in beforehand which is why not doing any form of this yoga alone is so important. It is why I am now going to train to be a teacher so I can work with this energy safely and naturally. One of the first books I read after my experience was called 'living with kundalini' by Gopi Krishna and I resolved after that not to have anything to do with this energy. However I was drawn to yoga and had tried every kind but none of it resonated. Then I joined a gym and I couldn't believe it when one of the classes was a kundalini yoga class. With great reservation I went to my first class which I think I wrote about on either this blog or the other one I had and from that moment felt like I had come home. Since then a weekly kundalini yoga class is part of my lifestyle and now instead of being scared of this powerful energy I am now looking forward to working co-operatively with it.

But this has been a journey and I have been lucky in that my consciousness didn't have to shift from left to right for me to have this experience. It is my feeling and is something to be celebrated and looked forward to rather than feared that many more examples of people having this shift are going to be reported. There is going to come a time when the logic and rationalism of the left brain is not going to work...this will mark the most fundamental shift of all.....

My writing....is not polished enough

The title of this post was the response I eventually received to the two articles I submitted to the 'No 1 Premier Enlightenment Site'. I have my suspicion that the refusal to publish the articles had more to do with the reference I made to the right side of the brain in spiritual awakening then that my writing needed to be 'polished'. As a result I am now going to focus on putting all of my unpolished writing on this blog. However I really must stress that nothing of what I write I assert to be the Truth. In fact there is no truth there are only points of view and in that way one point of view is just as valid as another.

Why I am breaking away from the spiritual supermarket is because I believe that spiritual development is solely to do with the right side of the brain. What is my basis for this? It is how much I have struggled all my life with what I call left brain abillities like logic, mathematics, problem solving, map reading and on the other hand how intuitive sensitive, perceptive I have always been. The former are left brain qualities and the latter are right brain qualities. It was only when I was studying psychology and learned about the connection between the eye and the brain that I put together the possibility and I must stress that this has never been verified by science that because I have had no sight in my right eye from birth that the left side of the brain has not been stimulated causing the right to take over and to give me more spiritual insights and intuitions than is possible where both sides of the brain function equally.

I subsequently found out that Gordon Brown has a glass eye in his left eye which was caused by a rugby accident when he was 11. Diminished sight to the right side of the brain could have been compensated for by more activity in the left side of the brain so is it any surprise that he was Chancellor of the Exchequer before beooming Prime Minister and the reason why he lacked the charisma associated with the right side of the brain.

In 1988 on a meditation retreat in Southern England I had a profound experience of energy rising from the base of my spine, going to my head and descending. My assertion is that this is what happens when the right side of the brain is at a certain level of development and has absolutely nothing to do with spiritual rituals and practices. Many years ago in response to many exasperated people who told me that if I didn't stop looking for a rational explanation to account for the ease with which I could understand spiritual literature and the experiences I have had that I would lose the joy, bliss, oneness with life which is a constant presence for me. I abandoned all of my brain theory and threw myself into living the life of a mystic only to have it all come crashing down.

When I recovered I once again took up the mantle for recognition of the right side of the brain in spiritual development and I will not abandon it again. I remember always being struck by the line in the bible 'he is seated at the right hand of the father', why is it the right hand and not the left if this wasn't a veiled reference to the brain. Why in the past were children who were natural left hand writers made to write with their right hand. I assert it is because the left hand and right brain are connected and society values the qualities of the left side of the brain more highly. And up to now everything has conspired to keep consciousness located in the left side of the brain but this is now shifting at a phenomenal rate spurred on by all the discoveries in the field of quantum mechanics. I made this point about quantum mechanics acclerating the shift of consciousness from the left to the right side of the brain and I was attacked verbally for it.

So...you can imagine my surprise this evening when I received an article from a man who I had spoken to about the shift of consciousness from the left to the right in the run-up to the major and most fundamental shift in 2012 when in the middle of his article he wrote 'These are all things in which we are all going to experience this will occur simply because as the energetic shift takes place so do our mental hemisphere’s in other words from left to right'. This from a man who when I wrote to him something similar months ago completely rejected it. This leads me to ask why has he now suddenly introduced the idea in his article. Perhaps the evolutionary shift which is happening is way stronger than the conspiracy of the past which kept the power of the right side of the brain a closely guarded secret. Is the right brain the holy grail. What I want readers to take away from this post is never ever to give up on something you believe in. Keep being a stand for it even if everybody says you are wrong. Don't ever sell out on something you feel is intuitively right....

I had forgotten....how much enjoyment I get from writing...

Recently I came upon the writings of Osho and it is a measure of how much my spiritual journey has shifted in that I now read his work. In the past I had dismissed him when I heard about this fleet of Rolls Royces and his Rolex watches but now I see that what he was doing was making a statement about materialism and consumerism Oshos total philosophy was that anything that is repressed in consciousness is a barrier to enlightenment. This is why the free attitude he had to sex has been so heavily criticized. But one only has to look at the effect of the repression of the sexual energy in the Catholic religion and see how destructive that was in terms of the men of God who have been convicted of paedophilia. The sexual impulse is one of the strongest because it is driven by instinct. Instinct is animal and has as its motivation the continuation of the species. To deny the expression of the impulse and to twist its nature so that it becomes something to be ashamed or guilty of is unforgiveable but this is what the Catholic religion has done down through the ages.

Desires and attachments are not disappeared by fasting, austerity, denial. In fact they grow stronger when dealt with like this. These can only disappear when they have been fully experienced. Buddha was only able to give everything up when he had experienced everything. This is why we have been born as humans to enjoy to the full everything that life has to offer and then to 'see' the emptiness of it and realize something higher. This is what is meant by surrender. It is having it all and realizing that 'all' is empty. All of us at one point will have this moment but unfortunately what so many choose to do is to 'stuff' that moment rather than to 'see' clearly the moment and the opportunity that it brings.

So for one day, enjoy and participate fully in all of life, the next day there may come a moment when the realization dawns that things material can never bring the holy grail of enlightenment and then surrender is not forced but a willing and joyful letting go.....

I received a comment.....which has prompted me to resume this blog...

Yesterday someone thanked me for a post I had written in August 2007 and it has prompted me to return to my old style of writing on my old blog. Yes, I know that it's not as sophisticated as WordPress, but it is where I started out writing and the site I am most comfortable with. My spiritual journey continues. Although I am convinced that more than being spiritually chosen I am right brain dominant. And I assert, that what is happening out there in the world is that the consciousness which up to now has been tied up in name and form of the left side of the brain is now shifting to the right. I don't make this statement as the truth only an idea to be considered and one that fits with my own experience. At the end of the day that is only always what I will write from and that is my own experience.

Another trigger that has sent me back to writing my own way and publishing what I want to write is that I joined a 'premier enlightenment site' to write articles and because the articles were to do with the involvement of the right side of the brain in spiritual awakening they weren't published. We live in a democracy, my words as I am always keen to point out are not the truth just ideas and I personally think that if spiritual awakening could be linked to right brain development then more people would see the state of enlightenment as much more achievable than they do today. For most people living from an enlightened state is the preserve of saints and mystics and I say 'no', it's not. It's simply a function of the consciousness shifting from the left brain to the right which is an evolutionary shift. Yes, there are certain spiritual practices that can be performed but if the consciousness is not ready to shift then these practices will be absolutely useless.

However, when the consciousness is ready to shift then nothing on earth is going to prevent an experience of spiritual awakening and then depending on the depth and scale of the shift the experience of enlightenment. So let's get straight about the spiritual path and how it develops. Yes, my writing is threatening but only for those who have such an inflated spiritual ego that refuses to accept or acknowledge the involvement of the right side of the brain. This is the highest of spiritual fraud and something I will not take part in.

I have had powerful spiritual experiences but I also only have sight in one eye and the eye and the brain are connected. Everyday I ask myself the question 'if I had two properly functioning eyes would I have had the profound experiences I have had and the automatic intuitive understandings and insights' and I feel absolutely sure that the answer is 'no'. I haven't spent years meditating or getting a spiritual name and going off to spend time in ashrams. I am so ordinary in that way that to attain the state that I have without having to have put in years of practice, says to me that something else is at work. However, the spiritual powers that be fail to acknowledge this or even to give me a platform for my views, so I am once again falling back on my trusty blog that has been with me for most of my spiritual journey.

If I still have readers on this blog, then thanks very much for staying with me and my commitment is to once again write regularly on this blog.

Am no longer....writing this blog...

For entries to this blog please go to"http://www.whatlieswithin.co.uk" I am going to focus on becoming super brilliant at managing this new website! Apologies to anyone for whom this change inconveniences.

Spirituality is all about.......choice.....

It took everything I had to honour my word and do what I said I would do yesterday. Every fibre of me was screaming to go to bed and not get up for the entire weekend but I know that feelings and thoughts don't produce any results. What produces results is performance and action so I dragged myself out of bed. Forced myself to pack a bag with some kind of clothes because I would be staying with friends for Friday and Saturday night. Dawdled around my room but in spite of all of this blackness I still caught the train that I intended to. Once at my agreement it was picked up immediately that there was something about me that was distant and cut off and the enquiry began. I know that the training I am currently doing to be a bold leader one who listens for and reliably delivers what it is that people care about and what matters to them has nothing to do with being spiritual. So when I tried in my clumsy way to explain how the spiritual Presence which I have grown so used to has now gone it was met with a blank stare. I didn't feel any frustration about this I listened to what was said to me about not dwelling in the past but to create something powerful for the future.

All these were just words for me at this point but I must have put on a good enough show because the attention turned to someone else who was also dealing with something else. I did my agreeement but still couldn't shake the blackness. At the end of the time, a woman who is on the same training course but who I haven't spoken to very much at all came up to me and said 'I can understand exactly where you are at'. I couldn't believe that there was someone who could see' and I just looked at her with eyes wide with surprise and she said yes. And in her lovely soft Welsh accent she explained that as a little girl I had that spiritual consciousness as a gift of grace. I didn't have to ask for it or make a choice about whether or not to have it. It is like a fish swimming in water but doesn't realise the water it is swimming in. With this shift I can now choose powerfully to continue along this spiritual path. I have often written that the spiritual path is solely about choice but the truth was that while I kept my consciousness spiritual I wasn't choosing, I was just hanging onto what I had.

Now...I can choose. I know by choosing it is going to require more generation and creation from me because it is not there naturally anymore. It is only going to be there if I create it. These words of hers said so simply and with such love and joy resonated and I looked at with eyes so full of gratitude. I was also grateful to the universe because in that moment this woman became my teacher. She also explained that the little girl and that spirituality will never fully go. It is that part of me which is going to make it possible for me to move and touch people very deeply but I will also be an adult...steady in everything that is said to me and how everyone is to me. I had never looked at it this way. I had seen the loss of the spirituality I had which I can only compare to being wrapped in an electric blanket as in some way a punishment now I see it as me being asked to consciously choose this path....and I do.....unreservedly.....

What was quite funny and ironical was before I went to do my agreement I was early so I went to my usual cafe to have a white coffee that they make especially for me. I had just been given my coffee when the door opened and in walked a nun and a little girl. It didn't look like the nun was used to coming into the cafe because she flustered a bit with all the cans of drink. Then she ordered what she ordered and then spent ages faffing through all the layers of her robe to find her money. I watched all this happening with curiosity. When she finally produced her £5 with a flourish it wasn't enough and there was a conversation about her returning with what was owed. Then to my horror she took a look around and I saw without any hesitation that she was heading over to sit beside me. She then tried to open the box of ribena she had bought for the little girl who was with her and then couldn't find the straw and I had the realization that if I hadn't shifted would I have turned out like that nun. Is that the product of not growing up....would that have been the ultimate outcome for me if this shift hadn't happened.

I know it doesn't mean anything that this nun came to sit beside me and I could see just how much she struggled with simple practical things and for a moment I could so see myself in her......she was also Irish as is my bood!

The game is up for the little girl.....but she doesn't want to let go...

I am struggling to keep it together these days. I feel such inner turmoil and conflict going on. The little girl has been exposed but she is still hanging on. I am struggling to understand how this process could be spiritual. I think now it is only psychological. This leads me to ask if there is anything about the process that I say is spiritual (and the purpose for this blog) is really spiritual at all. This is a dark place for me and the last thing I want to do is to write this blog. As I write it is slowly dawning on me that everything I have taken to be spiritual may in fact be psychological. My ease with spiritual literature was not because I am a mystic but because I made a decision not to grow up and by so doing I preserved the consciousness of the right side of my brain. What is spiritual about this? I am reeling from this at the moment and it is a crisis point in my life. I feel so unsure and uncertain and have no-one to talk to about it or nowhere to go.

I am also re-editing my book to get it ready for the India translations and it is adding to the uncertainty I am feeling. I see now so clearly how it is written in the style of a five year old child and now that I have moved on all I am feeling about it is embarassment. It is like the rug has been well and truly pulled out from under me. I feel exactly the same way as I did a number of years ago when something else I thought was spiritual turned out not to be. That time too I was devastated but I picked myself up and continued. This time it is deeper. In some ways I should be celebrating as I have proved to myself the fact that the consciousness between the right and left side of the brain is different but that is poor consolation when I have staked myself and my life on the spiritual dimension. What if there is no spiritual dimension, just the workings of the right brain which give certain experiences and the left which give others. Gosh, I so miss Manuel Schoch. If he were still alive I could speak to him about all this and he would understand what was going on.

That's going to be it for now....it's been an effort to even write as much as I have it's like I see for the first time just how vulnerable I have been in my writing. It is like I have been naked and not able to see it and now that my consciousness has shifted I see it. It's like I was in a state of grace whereby I was completely vulnerable and now I have fallen from that state of grace..similar to Adam and Eve being told not to eat the apple and then they did and then they realised that they were naked. What I have experienced feels somewhat similar....my fall from grace happened the moment I unconcealed the decision I made as a five year old child not to grow up because the adult world was unsafe. The moment that decision was unconcealed...I fell from grace.

Now I understand what my friends who read this blog used to warn me to be careful about what I wrote. In the past I could see none of that because to write openly and honestly and fully is so natural when the consciousness is located in the right brain, the tendancy is to be open and vulnerable and not hide anything. Once the consciousness shifts this way of being no longer feels right. I am feeling a distance now to things spiritual which I haven't before. I still have my memories but the actual experience of that powerful Presence which was always close to me is not there anymore. I don't know if this also applies to spiritual literature because all of my books are packed away. I suppose I could go on the internet and start to read something and see if I still have the same resonance....but to be honest I am a little scared to...

I am truly at a crossroads...maybe the time has come for me to let go of this journey...spiritual or pscyhological....only time will tell

Had my blood pressure checked......GP says it's that of a 15 year old!!!

I had confirmation from my GP today that my horrifying realization that I decided when I was five not to grow up into an adult was confirmed by the GP today who told me that my blood pressure reading was similar to a 15 year old. This makes sense given the shift of consciousness I have had where finally my consciousness has shifted from the right to the left brain. I have now officially entered puberty! Even now it is so hard for me to get my head around and walking around today I felt myself being dragged down into the impact of that insight and how so much about my life and how it has been for me in the past is making sense. What it is leaving me with is terrible restlessness and inner angst. I feel a sense of urgency and I don't understand why. I am so lucky in having had the right brain consciousness for the length of time that I had it and I am sure that I can bring a completely new and fresh view of the spiritual. I have already started working on the re-editing of my book.

I was delighted to get the news from my publisher that I have had the first sale of my book in the Czech Republic which I never expected. The promotion of the book throughout India and the two translations is also going ahead. It is a strange feeling reading it again with a view to re-editing in that I can see the childlike way in which it is written. There is a limit to how much editing I can do on this edition but I intend to take bits out and bit more bits in for the India translations.

I have been restless and uncertain today. I recognise these periods of black as the dark before the light of a powerful insight into something. I never run and today I decided to go on a 20 min run on the treadmill to have a breakthrough into why I will not work under pressure. I set myself the target of running continuously for 20 mins which is something I never do I have always given up in the past. This time I started running and after 16 mins gave up when my shoelace became undone. I left the treadmill and went on other equipment. Then something snapped and I said 'no, I am going to run for these 20 mins'. I started running and at about 16-17 minutes everything was screaming at me to give up but I continued running and then at 19.50 I couldn't believe it when the runner ground to a halt. I am in training not to make anything that happens in life mean anything and all that happened was that the runner broke down but for a moment for me I made it mean that there is still more for me to learn and go through before transforming this refusal of mine to work under pressure and for now I must be patient. I understand this process from how restless and uncertain I feel a few days before the insight comes. It's like it is working itself up from the depths of my subconscious, to come into consciousness to be transformed. Then the energy that was trapped is free to create something new which in my case will be the material for a new book. I have gone through the process many times that now it is so familiar but each time it doesn't get more comfortable it is still a mentally and emotionally exhausting time.

I see all of these shifts like some kind of initiations that I have to go through if that doesn't sound really weird given that there is no teacher or guru giving me any initiations. I remember reading once in an Alice Bailey book about the initiations that are given on the metaphysical realm. Each initiation occurs for me like an expansion of consciousness where the depth of my spiritual understanding and experiences intensifies. But again this is not the Truth just how this unfolding is occuring to me.....

Am writing this blog.....at 11.30pm...unheard of for me to be up this late..

I've had such a busy weekend that I haven't had time to write this blog. I was assisting at an event for the entire weekend. The hours were long from 7am - 11.15pm but we did have breaks. I woke up early on Saturday morning and did my 20 minutes of TM and felt great. I was staying close to where the event was so didn't have far to go. I couldn't believe it when I woke up on Saturday morning and peered out of my high window to see a blanket of white on the ground. 'Not snow again' I inwardly moaned. I donned my coat, hat and scarf and set off for the event. The morning was so crisp and fresh and the moon still high in the sky. I felt such contentment as I saundered along without a care in the world. I got to the event at around the same time as everyone else and there was great atmosphere between everyone. 10 minutes before everything was to begin I was asked if I would take on a supervisory role due to the supervisor not turning up. The moment this request was made of me I felt a sickening feeling in my stomach and everything in me screamed 'say no'. Instead I pushed this feeling down and covered it with the reason that I couldn't let people down and so I said 'yes, I would do it'.

Well it was a complete disaster. I have made no secret in this blog of the fact that I am challenged by things like organisation, structure etc and this was organisation, structure, being thorough taken to its ultimate degree. Suddenly people were looking to me to find handouts, put together packets, make sure everyone was taken care of and ensure that everything ran smoothly. I was so challenged and I resisted everything that anyone tried to say to me. I had all kinds of rants going on with myself and what was most frustrating was that I didn't seem to do anything right. How I missed out a whole row when I had to collate handouts was just a mystery to me. At 8pm on Saturday night I was feeling so tired and had my usual irritability. Then I remembered that I hadn't done my 20 mins of TM in the early evening. I requested an additional break which was agreed to and I went off to find an empty room to do my meditation. I did my 20 mins and 5 mins after the usual drowsiness of meditation I was wide awake and came back into the room much more alive and awake and ready to make things happen. But while I was more alive and awake my enthusiasm for putting together packs and arranging chairs was still zero.

Sunday was worse and I spent the say in confusion and bewilderment wondering why I find things like organisation and structure so challenging. At end of the evening everyone who had worked to make the event possible was thanked. To my horror when we were all on the stage the leader singled me out and acknowledged me for stepping in and taking on a role at the last minute. I wished the ground would open up and swallow me I was just mortified. At least I was awake which was thanks to the TM which I had done earlier in the evening. This morning I woke up and I was in such a black space. I knew that me not being thorough in the work I did over the weekend was down to the destructive part of me that sabotages everything when I feel I have been pushed in to it. But I wasn't pushed, I had a choice. I took on the role when I didn't want and then made it mean that I was pushed and then I set out to sabotage. I was reminded of when I was young and my mother made me dry the dishes. Mysteriously two plates just fell out of my hand! My mother was so angry and said 'you did that on purpose' and sent me off. At the time I remember wondering how I could have dropped the two plates but I saw the exact same thing happening this weekend. It's like my way of getting out of things that I but don't want to do but lack the courage to say 'no'.

What I have realized about this is that I sabotage because I haven't been straight. Agreeing to do something because I don't want to let someone down has no integrity and therefore will never work out. I see that now and from now on I will choose powerfully yes or no because I now realize that if I choose and want to then whatever I take on will work. In the past the only reason I had for saying yes when I wanted to say no, was 'to say no might upset the other person'. This is really spineless on my part and I am stating in this blog that from now on I say yes or no depending on how I really feel because now it is a question of integrity. The only reason I wasn't thorough this weekend was because I hadn't chosen freely to take on the role. I sabotaged it because I felt pushed into it and this what my mechanism does everytime. Now that I have been able to see it, I know that it won't have the same hold over me.

The TM meditation is absolutely amazing. I did my 20 mins at 6pm this evening and it is now almost midnight and I feel like I could write for hours. But over the weekend I got hit by an insight that may have nothing to do with the meditation. It suddenly hit me that because up to November 2009 I was still emotionally aged five, that staying up late at night was never going to be possible because five year olds are not up working late at night! But five year old children love to get up early in the morning. These days I keep getting flashes of insights like this. With each one that comes I feel a sense of relief because I am released from giving myself a hard time about not working late at night in the way that I used to. There may be no substance to this claim but when I got this insight it seemed so loud and powerful that it rang true for me.

This evening I met the lady that I lived with when I first moved here and I was aware of how well I could listen and really understand what she was saying and the things she is dealing with. I have created a new way of being for myself which is powerful, exciting and playful. What being powerful means to me is being straight and taking what I get and when there is no fear or nothing to protect or defend I can take and be with everything that is said to me. In the past it wasn't possible for people to be straight with me because I got upset and drammatical now when I share my new way of being it is an invitation for all my friends to feel that they can be free to say what they want to me without fearing my reaction or upsetting me. I have to accept that as a leader I am going to upset people and I have to be OK with that. The only way that I can be OK with that is that it is in line with my Boddhissatva vow and I am accountable for my actions inside of that vow......

So now...even though I am not in the slightest bit tired....I'm going to end this blog for today.

Beneath anger.... is fear....beneath fear.. is sadness....beneath sadness is love....

Since I started practicing my 20 Min's of Transcendental Meditation in the early evening my attitude to everything late at night has completely transformed. Yesterday I was travelling to London with a colleague for a commitment we both had. When we were planning our journey I had a thought that we were going to be travelling at the time when I usually do my evening meditation. In the past I would have sold out on myself by not doing the meditation so as not to make it awkward for who I was with. Not this time. I realize that this selling out on myself was the five year old child's need for approval. That child is now an adult and doesn't sell out on herself in the way that she used to. Finally my consciousness has shifted from the right brain to the left and with it I have a clarity about people and life that I never knew existed. I gave my friend the option of me either meditating in the same seat as her or going to another seat and joining her after 20 Min's. She opted for the former which was OK with me. We chatted for a little while and then I announced I was going to do my meditation. It felt strange and I felt a little awkward but my friend was great and immediately buried herself in the newspaper she had brought along.

When I started meditating I was conscious but then something must have happened because when I looked at my watch there was only 5 Min's left of the 20 Min's....where had the time gone. Now that I'm not beating myself up about the wandering mind or am concerned with taming the monkey mind allowing it wander back to the source of its bliss I have no idea what goes on. I am aware at some points that I am no longer mentally repeating my mantra but I also have the deepest peace and joy. When I finished the meditation I was a little tired but within 10 Min's had perked up no end and was ready for my evening. At one point in the evening I did something which was irresponsible and it brought forth a fierce anger from a woman towards me. Hand on heart I have never been spoken to so angrily and yet it didn't phase me and I didn't flinch from it. I didn't feel any need to protect or defend myself and when there is no fear and nothing to protect or defend then it is possible to be really with the person and what they are saying. Without fear I could really see her commitment to the situation I was very close to sabotaging. It is only fear that makes us protect and defend.

But...what is it that we are protecting and defending? It is the irrational fear that anger directed towards us is in some way a threat to our survival. Anger is never just the expression of an emotion it is made to mean that our very survival is under threat. When that is the context through which anger is viewed is it any wonder that anger creates such fear in human beings. Beneath anger is fear, beneath fear is sadness, the sadness of not being able to express love, or receive love and beneath sadness is love; ultimately love transforms fear. Where one is the other cannot be. Without any fear for me in the situation last night what was there for me was love. After last night I know that I can be with anything anyone is going to say to me in the future and that for me....is freedom. When my consciousness shifted with the realization that I had made a decision to stop myself growing up, all the fear I had lived with up to that point transformed to love. Did someone say that it is impossible to live a life without fear....I am living proof that it is.

That is not to say that if I was walking along the street and someone produced a knife or a gun that I wouldn't feel fear. I probably would, a health fear for my survival. That kind of fear is not what I am referring. I am speaking about the irrational psychological fears that are a part of what it means to be a human being. I am free of these. Or at least I think I am! But I have travelled this path too long to be definite about anything when it comes to the path of spiritual transformation. I just put one step in front of the other, slowly and mindfully ever vigilant of the chameleon type nature of the ego that is always and ever hiding in the shadows waiting for that one opportunity to sabotage the consciousness from its ultimate goal which is the transformation of self. This is achieved when one realizes that life is inherently empty and meaningless. It is only human beings that give meaning to life. Life itself has no inherent meaning. Really getting this at an experiential as opposed to a conceptual level shifts the consciousness so that the transformation of self as that which is 'not self' is realized.

Whether it is the effect of recently practicing TM but I find it so easy and effortless now to think and write from the aspect of the Transcendent. What I write is not channelled because I am consciously aware but I do feel that now it is coming from a deeper part of me. It's the ease and effortlessness of the practice and yet how effective it is that has completely surprised me. Now my most sacred parts of the day are those 20 Min's in the morning and 20 Min's in the early evening....

Today I had a lovely surprise. One of the tenants who I am renting out my flat to called me to explain that the standing order for the rent had mistakenly been cancelled and re-installed but wouldn't be received by me on the usual day and the tenant was calling me to explain this so that I wouldn't be concerned. I was so moved by this that the tenant would take the trouble to call me and let me know. This is the magic of life....when we allow it be just the way that it is and just the way that it isn't.....