The Zen Diarist

Author website of Andrew Marshall

Archives

Categories

Home: four reasons why love in the home is crucial to your health

by Leave a Comment

Home healthHome is where the heart is, but is our heart in the place we come back to after work, where we eat, sleep and spend many hours of our life? It should be a haven, but for many people it isn’t. For far too many, there isn’t even a place they can call home.

Home life can affect health – and society

It is absolutely crucial to the spiritual, mental and emotional well-being of the human race, as well as the physical health, that each and every home is filled with love. It doesn’t matter if we live on our own or in a household of many. If love is absent, the home is not happy – and happiness is a major factor for good health.

So why not choose better?

Although that is obvious, or should be, it may not be at the forefront of most people’s minds that the greater the love there is in a home, the healthier and happier it will be for everyone within it. This isn’t something we reserve for our nearest and dearest; it is love for the whole of one’s home environment. This is something real and quite easy to do.

A sacred space?

When there is love for where we live, there is a deep respect for it and for everyone who steps inside. Here should be a place of sanctity, a sacred space, and a refuge from the bustle of the outside world. We should feel blessed as soon as we enter it. We can bless the house, apartment or bedsit, also – not in the form of words necessarily but simply from a level of feeling that comes from the heart. This may be a mixture of appreciation and gratitude, and perhaps an intention of goodness.

Our home should be uplifting

By doing so we immediately uplift our surroundings. Everyone who enters the home receives a positive effect from the general energy of the place. Whether we live in a grand house with beautiful gardens or in an apartment or bedsit is immaterial. The important thing is to create a pleasant, supportive environment or build on the one that is already present.

Be peaceful and at ease

Within the home we should smile and go about our activity easily. If we do everything with haste or a misplaced sense of urgency, we cannot fill what we do with the wonderful heart-energy we all possess. Be peaceful and at ease instead, and see how different everywhere seems. It’s magic!

From Awakening Heart: The Blissful Path to Self Realisation

Related posts:

  1. Love: why cosmic glue stops us falling apart
  2. It’s not all bad news – love heals, both inside and out
  3. Home improvements that strike at our essence
  4. Radiance and the energy effect: why we all need it

World view: why what we see has to change

by Leave a Comment

There is a truism that says the world is as we are. After all, the only world we can ever know is what we experience through our senses, our perceptions, beliefs, judgements and so on. How the world is to anyone depends on what is sometimes called their view. Due to the vacillations of the mind and the emotions, that view changes many times a day.

Our view is murky: it needs clarity

Our view of the world, however informed we think we might be, is World viewinevitably wrong. If we are driving a car, the view of the road will depend on a number of factors. The windscreen needs to be kept clear, our eyesight good and our focus and attention must be on where we are going.

Similarly, in life our view of what is in front of us must also be clear. That requires work on the heart as well as the head. Unless heart and mind are crystal clear and wide open, what we see is bound to be a distortion of reality.

Let go and let your heart melt

There are two essential areas above all else that affect how we react to the world. The first is how we see ourselves. The other is how we view other people. These are like two sides of a coin – each necessarily depends on the other.

Our heart needs to be soft and relaxed, at ease and accepting. If we are angry with the world or want to escape from it, it’s a sign we have some work to do.

Love and let live

We are not separate from the rest of the universe, but that is how we normally act and react. Our view of other people as being separate from each other and, indeed, separate from us is just as wrong. It is an ancient, entrenched view – and a false one. The cause of most of humanity’s problems lies here. We are all of the same essence, different forms but the same. If we know this, we can love and let live.

A gradual process

To change the way we see things is an enormous step. It is also the single most important and significant thing we can ever do. Because it is so enormous, we have to undertake it carefully and remain focused. There will be countless times when we feel we have fallen backwards. We mustn’t give up when that happens, otherwise we will simply “revert to type”.

Just water

When we begin, we may be surprised how stuck we are in our outlook. It can be a little frightening. It seems easier to hold onto our traditional view. But once we become aware of our rigidity, we can begin to soften it and gradually let our old beliefs melt. Then we will feel better. The world is not an insurmountable problem. Ice is, after all, just water once it has thawed.

This post based on an extract from my second book, Awakening Heart. Please share it if you feel it is relevant.

Evening workshop 5th June 2017 in Staffordshire “Pacifying the Mind”. Details here.

Related posts:

  1. Heart: why we have to listen to what it says
  2. Passion is life: why we are dead if we don’t have it
  3. Mindful living isn’t easy but it’s worth it
  4. Light lies ahead – we just have to see it

Passion is life: why we are dead if we don’t have it

by 2 Comments

Passion is not something we get very excited about very often. Let me re-phrase that. Passion is something we don’t get excited about often enough. Why? Because without passion there is no heat, no fire and no life. A person who chooses not to be passionate about life is like smouldering coal or damp firewood. The energy is there, inside – but produces little warmth. When we are like that, we are half-asleep. Something in us is slumbering and needs waking up.

Passion is light, life and fire

When we are enthusiastic about something, it is as if we have thrown a switch. The lights come on, our eyes sparkle and our skin seems to glow. We feel good, don’t we? When we feel passionate, it is as though we have become more alive. Our speech is more animated and we have the power to motivate. Passion is good! Or is it? Is it just trouble ahead?

passion fire

Emotions are not bad

I have met many people over the years who want to become “more spiritual”. In their quest, they have come across teachings that describe emotions as being problematical. So following that logic, they decide that they need to train themselves into overcoming them. Or avoiding them. They aim to become the colourless sap of the tree instead of being the glorious effulgence of the tree itself. The error there is that if we do that, instead of allowing consciousness to flow, we tend to block it. In blocking the flow of consciousness, we also obstruct the natural flow of energy in and around us.

Love life and all is good

To have passion for life is not to let the emotions run riot. Rather, it is about letting our natural inner light do its job of illuminating what we do. And all we have to do is be interested and love. We don’t need to make a drama out of mindfulness or turn it into a tough discipline. Just loving what we do, being genuinely interested in others and our world will naturally generate mindfulness. Let the awareness expand and fill the senses. Be natural, be life, be alive. It’s so much better than being dead.

This theme will be explored further in our evening workshop Mind – The Way to Bliss on Monday 3rd April 2017. More information.

Read more on passion in life in the book Awakening Heart: The Blissful Path to Self-Realisation

Related posts:

  1. World view: why what we see has to change
  2. Light lies ahead – we just have to see it
  3. Love: why cosmic glue stops us falling apart
  4. How to live softly with ease and help the planet

Power: how to realise yours for a better world

by Leave a Comment

Power is extraordinary, isn’t it? People with power are making the news left, right and centre at the moment. So much so that we might think that ordinary people – the likes of you and me – are insignificant. If we fell off the face of the planet tomorrow, would the Earth shudder? In my case certainly, there would be no big bulletins. But powerful people are different. When they sneeze or cough, others jump.

Where do powerful people get their power from?

What makes someone powerful?power gorilla Historically, it came from physical strength. Just as in the animal kingdom there are fights to determine the dominant male or female, in more barbaric times there were battles for strength. Leaders emerged because people followed them, either for protection or out of fear. Wars are a remnant of this crude approach.

As humanity evolves, there is a gradual shift from brutish strength to a more subtle phase. Power now, more than at any other time, is the ability to change minds – the manipulation of mass consciousness.

It takes three to tango

A leader can only remain while others, the followers, allow it. The head of a democracy is there only by permission. Power is a loan, not a gift or a right.

So there are three aspects, not two, to a position of power: 1. a leader 2. followers or the led, and 3. the relationship between the two. 1 & 2 are visible but 3 is a matter of consciousness. Without that bridge, 1 & 2 cannot exist, just as a tango cannot take place without the dancers, and there are no dancers without the tango.

The world may be alarmed at the choice of president of the American people. But it was their choice and was a product of their collective consciousness. He was put, and remains, in power by the mandate of ordinary folk.

Why we must help create a peaceful collective consciousnesspower common good

We may feel pretty helpless to do much to influence the way of the world, yet there is much we can do. And the main thing is that we have to find our own peace.

If we take care of our own consciousness and make it strong and peaceful, we contribute to the consciousness of the whole. It’s automatic, like pouring clear water into a muddy pool. If enough of us do that, the muddy waters become clearer and lighter. That’s much more useful than stirring the mud with a dirty stick.

Find your heart first

It may well be that we need to act, to speak, to protest or just do things differently. But we have to do so from a position of inner peace. If we are in touch with our full presence, we can help very much. We will be guided by our intuition and less likely to make mistakes. Passionate we may be, but from the heart, not the gut.

Living from the heart, we harm no-one nor wish harm. Only the good of the whole is of interest. Fearlessly able to love and be loved, we exude peace. Then we influence. Now that’s real power.

There’s more on finding peace for the good of the whole in this book.

Related posts:

  1. Heart: why we have to listen to what it says
  2. Attachment or love? Why we have to let go
  3. Sex or celibacy – which is better for the soul?
  4. Mindful living isn’t easy but it’s worth it

Love everybody – is that possible?

by Leave a Comment

It is a rare human being who can love everybody. We all want to be happy, but even though loving others brings greater happiness, we don’t love everybody equally.

In energy terms when we feel love, the vital heart centre opens. It is like a flower opening to the sun. It can give us an amazingly deep experience of joy. But sometimes the heart centre is open only a little and can even be shut tight. To love everybody is an ideal but right now we will probably find that although at times we feel loving, at others we don’t feel love at all. If we are honest with ourselves, there is just neutrality or indifference towards the majority of other people.

Why it is difficult to love everybody

There is in essence one reason for our difficulty – we see others as separate from us and as being different in nature. When we love, it is love everybody choicebecause we recognise in the object of our love something akin to our own nature. When we don’t love, that recognition isn’t there. There is something alien about the other person.

Beneath the veneer of our personality, we all share the same spiritual nature and the purpose of life is to find that nature within us. At times we may see it and we recognise everyone else as exactly the same as us at the very root of their being. Then a resonance occurs that can cause ripples of energy that trigger a sensation of deep joy in the heart.

So often, though, that recognition isn’t there and that lack is the cause of all conflict. Disputes, jealousy, anger and dishonesty all arise from this. All negativity and all indifference stem from this wrong view. Yet the truth is that if I give to you, I give to myself; if I take from you, I take from myself. If I love, I enrich myself; if I feel anger or hostility, I deprive myself.

How this selectiveness affects our happiness and well-being

By failing to see that everyone is of the same nature as us, the heart centre oscillates. It opens and it closes.

The effect of this is that our happiness fluctuates. When love is present, our vitality increases – we radiate energy and our aura expands; if we don’t love, they recede. This happens because love connects us to the universe; when we love, recognise and connect with others, we “plug in” to universal energy, so to speak. At other times, we run on our own batteries, which have limited life and power.

We have choice

By choosing not to love – and whatever we may think, there is a certain amount of conscious choice in it – we restrict ourselves. We decline to engage fully with life. Okay, painful experiences in the past may be the reason for some of that non-engagement; but much of it arises from apathy and selfishness. Love is passionate, fiery and outgoing and its radiance nourishes, increasing our happiness and well-being. By not loving at times, we cut ourselves off from that.

Some might argue that it’s human nature to be selective because we have been conditioned in this way. But that doesn’t mean we can’t do anything about it. Indeed, we should do something about it because surely our spiritual duty in this life is to improve ourselves as human beings and so help to improve the world.

Based on an extract from The Great Little Book of Happiness available here.

Please subscribe to this blog to receive an email notification of new posts.

Related posts:

  1. Heart – and its secret energy
  2. Opening the heart, no surgery
  3. Love is a real power so why not zap someone?
  4. Stress? Cut it in 5 minutes or less