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Vibration – the key to our wellbeing

May 18, 2024 by Andrew Marshall Leave a Comment

Vibration affects every second of our lives

Vibration is the key to all life. Everything in the universe, us included, is energy and takes and maintains its form due to vibration. A significant factor for our wellbeing is the effect of the vibration of things around us, and of the people and organisations we associate with. We similarly have a vibrational impact on others and our environment by the way we think, speak and act. To use a modern idiom, each one of us is an influencer, whether we use social media or not.

Vibration to make a difference

Many people can feel the “vibes” or energy a person or place gives off. These may be uplifting, which we could say are positive. A comparatively negative quality, on the other hand, might make us feel uncomfortable or even pull us down. If we want to make a difference to our world, we can. We can do it by aligning or associating ourselves with higher quality energy, and the highest form is love – unconditional, non-judgmental. The universe has an unlimited supply of it – we just have to be open to it. It really is that simple.

The best vibration is the simplest

Simply by being kind and by loving, we raise our own vibration – of our mind, emotions and our entire energy field. That’s all we have to do. When we love, our body heals faster because all our energy channels open up. Loving those around us helps them heal faster, too. When we love unconditionally, we help the world because all tension eases, both in us and around us. Everything responds to love. Whatever our day to day responsibilities, grand or small, spreading “good vibrations” is our role, too. Cheers to that, I say!


Awakening Heart – The Blissful Path to Self-Realisation

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  2. Thoughts: Why we need to think less
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Filed Under: Happiness, Health Tagged With: awakening heart, body, cause and effect, chi, choice, compassion, consciousness, earth, emotions, energy, environment, family, freedom, happiness, healing, humanity, inner peace, joy, kindness, love, loving kindness, mindfulness, non-violence, qi, wellbeing, world peace, zen

Autumn is here – does your body know?

October 30, 2023 by Andrew Marshall 4 Comments

As we head deeper into autumn, we may find that our energy is changing. Nature withdraws and becomes more yin – turning its energy inwards to strengthen and restore. Our bodies, too, need to adapt and change with the seasons. They are part of this world, not separate from it, and so they appreciate the nurturing aspects of the inward turning energy. If we fight that need by becoming more active instead of less, we create strain – and that will weaken the body rather than strengthen it.

Listen to your body because it is listening to you

Please take care of your body and listen to what it needs. Maybe it will not appreciate the cooling foods of summer so much now. Instead, it may relish warmer, moister and a little more unctuous, food more often. Soup, anyone? According to traditional Chinese health advice, and to Ayurvedic understanding, the autumn can be drying on the body. This can particularly affect the lungs, and to some extent the skin. A tendency to a dry cough or some itchiness may be a sign of this. Pears, incidentally, are said to be a very kind fruit for our lungs. Sipping warm water at times throughout the day (or, better, yin-yang water1) can help balance the body, too.

Spirituality includes flesh and bones

Being kind to the body is an important aspect of spirituality. Your body listens to the messages you give it. If we cannot be kind to ourselves, it is difficult to cultivate compassion and kindness for others. Not to be confused with indulgence, this is about living from the heart, fully and completely. Let’s celebrate autumn and indeed every change of season as it comes, and be happy and peaceful. The world needs us to be just that, particularly now.


  1. Yin-yang water is said to be very balancing for the body at any time of year. It is easy to prepare – simply add boiling water to cool or room-temperature water, 50-50. Drink it while it is still warm. Some people like to fill a flask with it to use during the day. ↩

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Filed Under: Happiness, Health Tagged With: balance, body, cause and effect, compassion, diet, energy, forgiveness, fulfilment, happiness, loving kindness, qi, qigong, spirituality, tai chi, unconditional love, well-being, world peace, zen

Smile, and tap into your joy

May 6, 2023 by Andrew Marshall 2 Comments

When we smile at someone, a genuine smile from the heart, we do more than just smile. There is a communication, of course – a communication of friendliness and perhaps understanding. Most say that love must be unconditional to really mean anything and the same must go with a smile, surely? And when we receive a smile from someone, does it not light us up in some way?

Smile and touch your essence

This world of ours is very technical and very materialistic. In a way there is good in this. Humanity has made major strides over the centuries to make life better – eradication of disease, improvement of hygiene, living conditions and so on. There is, some would also say, a curse with that. We have lost sight of our spirituality, our inner essence. If we are pleased to see someone, we smile without any thought. Our response is spontaneous. We don’t have to look it up on some database or search engine – we just smile and convey, dare I say it, love.

Let joy and universal law support you

For life to be worth living, it has to have joy in it. Joy springs from the heart, as does love. We may not have what we think we should have and others may have what we think is an unfair proportion of wealth. But if we think in that way, it is like pouring water on the fire in our heart. If we can simply be, smile and be grateful for whatever we have, however small, and without judgment of others, the quality of life – the internal quality that springs from deep within us – can manifest. Then the laws of the universe, the unseen support that comes from way beyond the realms of man’s little thinking, can be tapped and flourish in our own lives. And it all starts with a smile.

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Filed Under: Happiness Tagged With: abundance, awakening heart, compassion, consciousness, emotions, ethics, freedom, fulfilment, happiness, hardship, heart, inner peace, joy, kindness, love, radiance, resentment, spirituality, transformation, unconditional love, zen

Worrying: how to stop this pointless habit

April 8, 2022 by Andrew Marshall 6 Comments

Live fully in the present instead

Worrying has become more commonplace these days and mental health is at a low ebb, so many reports say. That’s bad news. Better news is that most of us can do something about everyday worrying and improve our sense of wellbeing. Those nagging thoughts are completely pointless, totally illogical and we don’t need to entertain them at all.

Worrying is a plague in itself

Worry is part of the plague of thinking too much, and being overloaded with information that comes at us from all directions only exacerbates matters. If we observe our thinking processes, we will quickly notice that one thought inevitably leads to another. Worry is simply a chain of thoughts with a backdrop of fear – a fear of something either not turning out as we want it to, or turning out as we don’t want it to. It’s a harmful habit that we need to quit.

Worrying – the opposite of our true nature

Our true nature is clear unbounded consciousness. In rare moments of clarity, we may have brief glimpses of it, like a completely cloudless sky. It isn’t out there somewhere, nor inside us. There is no inside and outside. It simply is, and that pristine unboundedness is who we are. After a few seconds – longer if we are lucky – something stirs, thoughts come and the clarity is lost again. However, if we learn to become still by being relaxed and focused in the present, some of that clarity will return and start to infuse our lives, in everything we think, say and do.

No magic fix – but there is magic to be found

There is no magic fix, we just have to keep training ourselves to come back to the present, taking time to gaze, to stop and breathe, to wonder, to love. Those moments are the magic of life. Yes, there will be things we need to do for others, but we are of far more use to this troubled world when we become a still and loving presence than if we fill our life with “what-ifs”.


How to live now is the theme of the book: The Art of Not Doing

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Filed Under: The Art of Not Doing Tagged With: anxiety, awakening heart, balance, breath, cause and effect, compassion, consciousness, fear, happiness, health, love, mindfulness, spirituality, tranquillity, world peace, worry, zen

Why freedom and happiness are here now, if we want them to be

August 8, 2021 by Andrew Marshall 2 Comments

Freedom and happiness are fundamental universal human rights. In spite of that, these basic qualities have been rather elusive for much of the world for quite some time now. The UK Government purported to hand its citizens “freedom day” on the 19th July this year. An odd turn of phrase, some might think, if not a little ironic.

Real freedom is here, not somewhere out there

Liberation is much more than escaping legal or physical restrictions, though, and if we really want to be free and happy, we have to transcend normal thinking. Real freedom can only occur in the mind. It is as much an inner state as an external one. There are stories of people who have been wrongly incarcerated yet, due to their spiritual training, they have felt completely free. Such are extraordinary people, of course, but there is no reason why we cannot train ourselves to be freer and happier.

The big problem? The conditioned mind

The way we think and react to things depends on how the mind is conditioned. That conditioning comes mainly from our past experiences and what we have been taught or led to believe. At the root of all that is the very basic sense of “I”, which gives rise to a belief in “me” and “mine”. The mind is very clever and will do anything to defend itself and the personality, the “I”, it has created.

Selflessness brings freedom

To lessen the mind’s grip, we need to cultivate selflessness. Instead of maintaining our imagined position as the centre of our own little universe, which takes a great deal of energy and effort, we might try letting go a little. It’s a very relaxing thing to do; quite liberating, in fact.

The real crisis

It is selfishness, not Nature, that has driven humanity into the throes of a climate crisis and only a reversal of that will free us from it. It is far more of a threat than coronavirus. As individuals, we cannot change the world overnight but we can change ourselves. By beginning to train the mind to be calm, clear and open, we can be free wherever we are.


Awakening Heart—The Blissful Path to Self Realisation

Meditations

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Filed Under: Awakening Heart Tagged With: altruism, attachment, awakening heart, bodhicitta, cause and effect, choice, climate change, compassion, consciousness, coronavirus, disaster, earth, ego, freedom, happiness, humanity, identity, mindfulness, pollution, self-liberation, selfishness, selflessness, wellbeing, zen

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