The Power of Love

It’s my birthday tomorrow, 1st August. I’m a Leo. It’s also my 60th. So it’s celebration time. So I thought I’d treat this posting as a celebration which I’ll share with you. It’s also a major milestone, or it seems so for me. So today, sitting outside in 30 degree plus temperatures here in South-West France, in a nice bit of shade in this lovely, peaceful garden overlooking the valley and the River Lot below, I’m reflecting on what’s most important to me as I reach my next milestone in my path of life.

It’s holiday time traditionally here in Europe. I guess lots of you may be off on some trip, or wishing you were. Many of you may be joining up with others or spending time with your partner or family. If you are working, it may be a bit more relaxing, and it might not be so.

We might also spare a thought for all those who cannot holiday this time, either because they are ill, have someone to care for, have financial challenges, as many are experiencing right now, or cannot leave for work reasons or are physically no longer able to travel. I can also remember a time when most people didn’t take holidays at all, except on what in the UK we call Bank holidays, or “Holy days”, religious holidays. And a time further back, we’d be in church, if Christian, doing prayer. It’s worth remembering the origin of the term holiday as holy day.

In what way might you, if you wanted, make some aspect of your holiday holy?

The word holy also links with the term “whole”, when we experience union with the divine, in whatever way that might mean for you. So, what might you plan to have during your break (or not) where you might give yourself time to re-connect? This is a precious time for relaxation, reflection, meditation, prayer, contemplation, re-visiting your intentions, thinking about your purpose - and just chilling. It is also a good time to spend with others. In our western society we’re just so busy, moving fast, absorbed in the seemingly relentless pursuit of……what? Is that what you want your life to be? Now is a good time to step back, to witness the process, and ask yourself what is most important, what you value most. And then set some intentions for having those values be expressed in your life.

So, pause for a moment and ask yourself what is most important for you. Maybe meditate on it.

This is when you can go within and contact your inner essence. Be still, and be present with It. Acknowledge It’s importance to you. Thank It. Remember the power of gratitude, of opening the heart. Let your heart open too. And now ask It…..what is most important to you?

And when you come back into the room, write it down and keep it where you see it frequently.

And set some intentions. Use Wayne Dyer’s book, “The Power of Intention” (see
Books I Recommend, page 2, on my website)

Which brings me back to my reflections on what is most important to me. Here are a few.

My passion is to coach and to teach. I have always done that. I have always worked to help people realise their potential. I now do that through my own facilitative humanistic/transpersonal coaching and my workshops. I love helping others get their insights and awarenesses that help them realise what they most want in their lives. I love helping others get their breakthroughs, I love teaching others about humanistic and transpersonal understanding about human potential – and about their own potential. I love doing that both in business and with people privately. Oh, and I don’t do retirement, in case any of you are wondering. There’s big work to do! It’s all happening now.

What’s your passion?

I don’t know what word stands out for you. For me there’s two words, “people” and “love”. And when I write those words I also notice a sense of upliftment, of joy. Joy, bliss, lightness, laughter, enthusiasm, energy, passion, excitement, fun, smiling, contentment, peace, stillness, all to me are ways that we experience who we really are. And that for me brings me back, as it always does to what lies at the core of who we are, the most powerful, beneficial, healing and uplifting experience available to us, love.

As a child, I learned to be uncomfortable with the word love. It was probably a mixture of my middle class, “stiff upper lip” English upbringing, where it was not “done” to express emotion, where one was supposed to “control” oneself and, in my case to put on a smile. Maybe it was….the moment when my mother stopped kissing me, or….the painful separation from my parents when I went to boarding school….or maybe it was….all those childhood interpretations of what happened that we made meanings of to enable us to survive. But I remember the sense of embarrassment when the word love was used. Thus did I keep myself separate. Very human. The experience of separateness is another core experience of the limited self. One major breakthrough in my personal development training was the release into the sense of love, love towards others, love within myself, and love for Source.

If you are thinking of your own personal development here, then what I’d say it needs to achieve, among other things, is the realisation that love needs to be released from its shackles, from for example: deficit need; from needing love from another (which is not love, by the way); from needing those love-related areas like respect from others, recognition, appreciation, praise; from conditional love (eg. if I love you, then I expect you to show up for me); from that trilogy of love-killers, need, expectation and jealousy; from anger and upset; from limitations which we put on our loving. Love is limitless, boundless, expanding, without end, for Its own sake, the nectar of life.

If there’s one thing that I think most uplifts and also troubles us as humans it is our capacity for love. Witness the pain we feel when it is interrupted. Love is at the essence of everything and yet for so many people it seems to be a cause of upset and pain. But never underestimate its power to bring us together, to discover what is in us that is most inspiring, what heals us, what calms us, what leads us to inner peace, what brings us together with the people we most want in our lives, what underlines our most noble visions, what we remember are the greatest of human achievements, what gives us ultimately that most complete experience of union with the divine that I know of.

Visiting a colleague’s site today, I watched a YouTube video she had posted there. I found it profoundly moving. It’s a Leo story, as you’ll see. You might have seen it already as it’s been round a bit already. If not, have a tissue nearby, especially if you love animals.



It’s just there, isn’t it? Totally, completely, utterly satisfying.

Know the power of love. Have a truly wonderful, expansive, uplifting love-full day, and also a great holiday if you are having one. And if not, the same applies. After all, there are no limitations. Love just is.

Take care.

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When you meet your polar opposites, it’s time to get interested!

I am seated on a crowded train going back home, with lots of people from all sorts of backgrounds who are clearly travelling long-distance to the South West. Holiday time is coming. It’s noisy, with lots of buzzy talking. There’s various digital gadgets in use, someone is broadcasting his music, and there are loud conversations on mobile phones. A tinny sound emits from someone’s iPod headset.

I am aware that my initial reaction to this “mob” is to retreat inside, to want to push it away, to resist it. And then I start to reflect on differences and my awareness of my reacting to them.

You might like to imagine the distinctions implicit in what I’ve written just now. I write that the train is crowded, there’s lots of different people, its noisy, I can hear digital equipment in use, there’s loud talking, I use the word “mob”. In each of these words there’s an implicit comparison with something different.

What would be your preferred alternative, if any, to this experience? What picture comes to mind? For me, perhaps the alternatives might be a partly empty train, with business travellers, who are quiet and maybe absorbed in their work, the equipment is in silent mode, mobile conversations are unobtrusive, - and whatever isn’t “mob” about the group.

I wonder what opposites came to your mind. And in thinking of these opposites might you be describing yourself in someway?

What always strikes me about any difference that I notice is that it also has some relevance for me. I find it very useful to pause and think about what facet of me I am experiencing in the other person. I am referring to the Shadow of course, what we disown about ourselves in some way that we project on to others. A useful clue that the Shadow is at work is when I have a reaction of some sort.

However, this time what I also thought was how, when I make a difference, a distinction, there is always anther side, another part of the self, an opposite maybe. What people tend to do is view the world and themselves in terms of polarities. So when I perceive a group of people being noisy, I’m occupying another polarity of preferring quiet, or when I experience a place as crowded, maybe I prefer open, empty spaces. By being sharply in one polarity I might be resisting the other polarity and, by the process of the Law of Attraction, draw it to me. What I resist, I get. So if I’m preparing to travel, I might anticipate having a crowded, noisy train because I don’t want that, and lo and behold, I get exactly that. I gave my thought to it, even by thinking I didn’t want it. Thus do we create our own reality.

With polarities, what is lacking is middle ground. One side is too sharply distinguished. The other side is denied and pushed away. Of course it then keeps popping up in ways that aren’t wanted.

Difference needs to be accepted and embraced. It requires an effort of will, to go out and include the experience in our awareness, because it is also a part of us. After all, we are really all one. It’s the human experience to live in separation and distinction.

Polarities are often worth exploring. I often help people work with the other sides of themselves so as to see what it’s got to teach them. There’s frequently a great learning there. A quiet person could experiment more with his or her noisy side, tap into lots of energy and contact inner aliveness.

When we reach out, accept and embrace the other polarity, and include it in our awareness, we transcend it and move to another level. It then loses its resistant energy and our vibration harmonises. And thus we can enter a place of inner stillness.


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Being grateful for what you have

Today in the UK it is, surprise, surprise, pouring with rain. It’s been wet all day here in the south west. It defies all our expectations, especially those with memories of long, hot Julys, seeking shade where possible, sitting out in the evening with a gin & tonic or beer or whatever, and hot nights. We have an expression, “it never rains but it pours”, as though when we get rain, we do really get it. It also means that when you get trouble, you really get it. What do they say, trouble comes in threes? Talk about a set-up for unwanted things to happen.

Even the meteorologists have a word for our wet weather; they call it a depression! It’s as though we’ve given our negative moods to the weather, or we think the weather conditions how we feel. There’s also another weather expression, “some walk in the rain, others get wet”. It depends on how you view it.

In India, they deliberately go into the hills before the monsoons, to where it’s cold and wet, to escape the heat and the humidity of the cities and plains. The monsoons are welcomed as a boon after the long hot summers. A different view.

It is worth sparing a thought too for all those drought-stricken areas on the planet, which are expanding with climate change. Some might gladly swap places.

It can be hard to think how lucky we are here to have plentiful supplies of water, freely given. Complaining about the weather is a national pastime. Conversations start with it.

But have you ever tried starting your conversation with, “How good it is to have this rain”? Of course not, you might think, are you mad?!

Perhaps you could have this thought instead: how lucky I am to be given bountiful supplies of water, to drink, to grow my food, to refresh me when I am thirsty, to clean myself, my clothes, my family, my house, my car, to help me cook, to supply industry which employs people and creates wealth, to fill our rivers and lakes, and so on.

To express appreciation for what we have does not easily come to mind. We are more often focused on what we do not have, the belief that “there is not enough”, scarcity consciousness. This is a contracted place. Yet saying thank you, expressing gratitude, being grateful, is an open-hearted gesture. It is a giving, from the heart. It expresses abundance and in return it attracts abundance. In doing so, we move from consciousness of lack to that of abundance. It is expansive. We nurture the cycle of giving and receiving, we acknowledge and value others and nature. We express pleasure in what we have. And we open ourselves up to the flow of abundance coming back to us.

So, perhaps try having a day of gratitude. Start by thinking of all that you are grateful for; write a gratitude list. They call it “counting your blessings”. Then focus deliberately on saying thank you to people. Take any opportunity to acknowledge others. Notice what you value in others and say it, like you mean it. Be generous. Give something to charity. And think of those who need help, and imagine yourself sending them energy of healing and abundance. Most of all, you could practice giving your love to others, the most powerful positive energy that there is. Give it unconditionally, with no expectation of anything back in return, because you care and that’s it. So, when you appreciate someone or say thank you, say it with love.

And notice your heart fill up. Love is abundant.

Not for nothing do Indian sadhus practice unconditional seva, the practice of selfless service to the guru, that they may know the joy of the Self, of Atman, within.

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When economic woe offers you a new dawn

Noticed how glum people are at present? Are you feeling glum, or least a bit anxious? Times are difficult. Belts are being tightened and people are worried about their homes and their jobs. Confidence in the economy is lower even than during the last recession in the early ‘90’s. And there’s a whole generation now in employment who have had no previous experience of this.

We seem to be headed towards another of those economic downturns that threaten recession and the upheavals that that can imply for large numbers of people.

This time we have the nasty combination of fast rising prices in key areas that hit people at the survival level, fuel and food, along with a slump in the housing market. Government can’t easily intervene as it’s strapped for cash. Also this is now a global phenomenon: we live in a global economy.

When you are thinking of cutting back by not going out for that meal, spare a thought for those elsewhere, and not just in the developing world, who are wondering about having a meal at all.

This pushes all our ancestral survival buttons about poverty consciousness. “There’s not enough for me”, we think.

For those of you who are interested in where we can go in our minds in times like these, there are some important tools to use. Of course, it depends on your “take” on this. So use those bits that seems useful and move on from any that seem too whacky. What we are doing here is intentionally, deliberately using thought to manifest. Remember that as you think anew, your thought impacts others.

Right, so here’s a few of them in, as they say, no particular order:

“Poverty consciousness” is a state of mind to get out of, to drop, irrespective of what seems to be happening. Remember, what we think, comes about.

Lack is a state of mind. If you take responsibility for your mind, then you need to think abundance, not lack. You shift your mind into abundance awareness. The mind does not know the difference between “fact” and “fiction”. What you think, you become. Each time your mind slips back, challenge it, use the will, and bring your awareness back to abundance. It’s like a meditation. Take yourself back to your centre, if you like to Source, and act positively from that space. What you ask for from that space, will come about. As your Self, in your centre, as Source, you have infinite potential, irrespective of conventional belief systems.

You choose to create abundance in your life. So you design and act on ways to do it. Recessions are great times for creativity. It’s at these times that the old has given way to the new in terms of technology, industry, trade and commerce. So, what new things are you choosing to invest your energy and creativity in?

Recessions bring redundancy in train. Now’s the time to be re-inventing your career. When Richard Branson was faced with a crisis, his policy was to move up to the next level. If what you are doing is in danger, notice if you are finding yourself on the defensive and trying to defend the status quo. If things are pulling away, it’s for a reason. In the seeming crisis lies a new opportunity. That is what you need to embrace. We are constantly in process; we are constantly in change. So, start to design and develop the new project to give your life renewed meaning.

What is your vision? What is your statement about yourself that you are now choosing to create? What is your purpose in the world right now? What would give your life meaning right now? Think and reflect and meditate on this. And then take the courage to act. Because it’s probably calling to you, if you only choose to look. This is what we’re doing at the new level of sensitivity. Tuning in, being aware, and manifesting in physicality what we sense.

In adversity lies opportunity. It’s the opposite, hidden polarity with which you probably need to integrate. What we need to do is turn it around and focus on what we want, what we are about.

This is the time to write your mission statement and then your CV. Even go on-line and post your CV on the many networking sites that are around. Embrace this rapidly expanding medium. Who could you link in with who thinks like you do, is inspired by the same things and can support you in growing in the direction you wish to grow? Remember that in all networking you first need to be a resource to others. Help others – unconditionally. They’ll reciprocate. Just don’t expect it.

Set yourself powerful intentions. Read Wayne Dyer’s book, The Power of Intention, and discover the power of intentions for your self. Then act on the intentions. And stay on purpose with what you intend.

Cherish and build your career. Choose new ways you can build it. Explore ways you can raise it to another level. Are you currently in something that’s past its sell-by date? Look at your skills, interests and experience and investigate what’s new and growing out there. Then put yourself out there to meet with people of like mind who are doing it and need some help.

Or develop a business to meet the need yourself. Anyone can set up a business. And the information is readily available to learn the basics of doing that.

We are in an age where it is all about how we take control of our destinies, where we intentionally, deliberately create our own reality. Are you doing this?

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