The Satsang Monthly Newsletter
The Sangha House
August 2021
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The Sangha House Community |
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The Satsang Newsletter
Welcome to the latest edition of The Satsang Newsletter from The Sangha House.
We have articles from our regular contributors including a delve into the subject of How long is a moment? by Andy Spragg.
Joanne Lawrence outlines the benefits of baking for self care and includes a lovely vegan recipe for you to enjoy.
Dorian Bass White this month covers the subject of feeling stuck and the need for a perspective shift.
Warwick Lydiate explores the three energy centres elaborating on last months article from the perspective of the Enneagram.
This month's books recommendations come from Andy Spragg and myself. I have also provided a film recommendation from Satish Kumar.
We really hope you enjoy this month's edition of The Satsang.
Namaste
PuddingMcPudding
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The Sangha House, not just a yoga studio |
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How long is a moment?
Andy Spragg
One of the most common phrases we hear, relating to mindfulness and meditation is “to be in the moment”. This is of course, absolutely right, but what does it actually mean?
I’ve talked on the show before about the mind and its two primary abilities. To be aware and to create. Pure awareness is where the mind connects to the world through the five senses. Plus it is also able to be aware of itself. To see the thoughts flowing through, see the memories appearing and understanding the emotions that are being triggered by it all.
Then we have ‘creating’. The mind here, generates images, plans, worries about things, regrets things etc. Essentially, it generates things that don’t actually exist in the world.
Thoughts exist in the world, they are genuine experiences in the mind, but the stories within them aren’t necessarily true. The mind creates them. This may sound a little tricky to get the mind around. But we can see a real world example. A feature film exists in the real world, but the story is entirely fictitious. We can see thoughts in this way. The creating side of the mind can create the stories that then flow through the mind as thoughts.
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Hopi Indian Chief White Eagle commented on the current situation:
′′ This moment humanity is experiencing can be seen as a door or a hole. The decision to fall in the hole or walk through the door is up to you. If you consume the news 24 hours a day, with negative energy, constantly nervous, with pessimism, you will fall into this hole.
But if you take the opportunity to look at yourself, to rethink life and death, to take care of yourself and others, then you will walk through the portal.
Take care of your home, take care of your body. Connect with your spiritual home. When you take care of yourself, you take care of everyone at the same time.
Do not underestimate the spiritual dimension of this crisis. Take the perspective of an eagle that sees everything from above with a broader view. There is a social question in this crisis, but also a spiritual question. The two go hand in hand.
Without the social dimension we fall into fanaticism. Without the spiritual dimension, we fall into pessimism and futility.
Are you ready to face this crisis. Grab your toolbox and use all the tools at your disposal.
Learn resistance from the example of Indian and African peoples: we have been and are exterminated. But we never stopped singing, dancing, lighting a fire and rejoicing.
Don't feel guilty for feeling blessed in these troubled times. Being sad or angry doesn't help at all. Resistance is resistance through joy!
You have the right to be strong and positive. And there's no other way to do it than to maintain a beautiful, happy, bright posture.
Has nothing to do with alienation (ignorance of the world). It's a resistance strategy.
When we cross the threshold, we have a new worldview because we faced our fears and difficulties. This is all you can do now:
- Serenity in the storm
- Keep calm, pray everyday
- Make a habit of meeting the sacred everyday.
Show resistance through art, joy, trust and love.
Hopi Indian Chief White Eagle
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Bake a Cake for self care!
Joanne Lawrence
One of my favourite self-care activities is baking. I love baking. It grounds me, I learn, I get to be creative. I may stress a little while doing it, but I love it. It’s a healthy stress. During the past year I have given myself more space to bake. I find when I am stressed, I now have a driver in me that makes me go to the kitchen and start getting all my ingredients and baking equipment out of the cupboards and bake what feels right at the time. I keep my ingredients topped up so I can do this whenever I feel the need.
I started to get more into baking when I changed to a vegan diet and towards a vegan lifestyle over two and a half years ago. This was inspired by my oldest friend, Kat. She explained to me her thoughts behind going vegan and told me about what she ate and when I started to try her vegan baking I was pretty much sold. You don’t have to be vegan to bake obviously, but that is how I found my passion for it. I also like the fact that when people who aren’t vegan try my baking, they can appreciate plant-based baking and can’t tell the difference.
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Counselling at The Sangha House
In Person or via Zoom
We offer various types of counselling (Emotional Therapeutic Counselling, Solution Focussed Hypnotherapy, CBT, mentoring and trauma therapy) to help with issues such as anxiety, depression, addiction, eating disorders, phobias, PTSD and many others.
Price on application depending on length of course of treatment.
For further information please contact us at [email protected] or call us for a chat on 01823 428156.
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5 Vital Steps to Starve the Ego and Feed the Soul |
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We are so fortunate to be alive and possess the potential to create the life we truly imagine. However, at times it may not feel this way due to the overwhelming stress and suffering that seems to take over our lives. How can our lives be so much different at times and what can we do to tap into our infinite potential and experience peace and stillness in the majority of our lives?
Ultimately, it comes down to whether we choose to live our lives according to the demands and delusions of the ego or make the conscious intention to align ourselves with the infinite soul. Choosing to always be conscious and to live according to the soul provides you with infinite possibilities and the peace, passion and purpose that you deserve as a human being.
Conversely, living unconscious and according to the ego results in stress, unnecessary resistance and much less desirable consequences that you do not deserve. As a unique and awesome human being, you deserve much more than the ego offers you. You have two alternatives to choose from and I’m positive you want what the soul has to offer you. You must simply slow down and journey into your inner being and decide between the two. Soul living offers you complete peace and infinite potential while ego living offers you stress and the ordinary life that you are seeking to transcend.
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Most Inspirational Read
Book recommended by Andy Spragg
After the Ecstasy, The Laundry
by Jack Kornfield
Jack is an incredibly experienced Buddhist thinker and Writer. Helping to establish one of the first modern Buddhist centres in the west. The premise of this book is that many of us head off on regular spiritual retreats but we always have to come back to the laundry! Actually, in order to find true contentment, we have to work on our meditation and spiritual practise so we can find that place of retreat and therefore contentment in our own home surroundings. In the muck and glory of our busy modern lives. Although a Buddhist book, it draws on all manner of spiritual traditions with quotes from spiritual leaders. I have re-read this book many times!!!
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Inspirational Film Recommendation
by PuddingMcPudding
Natural World, Earth Pilgrim
with Satish Kumar
Satish Kumar is an Indian British activist and speaker. He has been a Jain monk, nuclear disarmament advocate and pacifist. Now living in England, Kumar is founder and Director of Programmes of the Schumacher College international centre for ecological studies, and is Editor Emeritus of Resurgence & Ecologist magazine. His most notable accomplishment is the completion, together with a companion, E. P. Menon, of a peace walk of over 8,000 miles in 1973–4, from New Delhi to Moscow, Paris, London, and Washington, D.C., the capitals of the world's earliest nuclear-armed countries. He insists that reverence for nature should be at the heart of every political and social debate.
Earth Pilgrim is a spiritual journey which sees conservationist Satish Kumar spend one year exploring the beauty of England's Dartmoor National Park - the largest and wildest area of open country in southern England. The film pays homage to the heather-covered moors and deep-wooded gorges, craggy granite outcrops known as tors, and the wonderful variety of wildlife that has made this place home. Satish, acts as a guide to this remarkable environment, presenting the sacred beauty of the forests, rivers and moors in a very new light.
"I bought this DVD many years ago and would recommend it as a way to immerse yourself in the reverence this great environmentalist and peace activist has for this great landscape and its abundant nature throughout the cycles of the year. A truly grounding watch".
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We would love to hear about your most inspiring reads so please do contact us to enable us to share with our readership. |
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Two Crazy Questions
Feeling stuck? Perhaps it’s time for a perspective shift
Dorian Bass White
Most of us feel some discomfort around change. Put more bluntly...change (or at least the thought of change) can suck. Really suck.
Of course, this is the part where I offer the magic formula for solving all your change-related anxieties and woes. Yep, I’m super...or at least I would be if I actually had such a formula.
Instead, what I offer are two questions – both of which are the opposite of the more obvious ways to think about change.
These questions acknowledge that, yes, change sucks. It's uncomfortable, and we don’t like being uncomfortable. There are legitimate reasons for this, and it can be hard to overcome.
But if we can dig a little deeper and observe the feeling of resistance we experience when faced with change, we can gain some pretty valuable insights. The aforementioned questions can help with this.
Here they are:
Question one - What's GOOD about NOT changing?
What are the benefits of things being the way they are now?
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Coming up at The Sangha House |
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Find your Djembe Rhythm with Marion - Sunday 15th August 4pm to 5.30pm
This is more a party than a workshop. Marion's incredible passion for drumming and her vibrant approaches soon discovers the rhythm in all of us. The Djembe is often incorrectly called a bongo. It is a traditional African drum and when played correctly, many different types of sound can be found. Marion artfully brings in multiple rhythms within the group all beating together. There is something magical about the drum and its wonderful synchronicity with the heart.
This event will be held in our physical studio at The Sangha House in Taunton.
Tickets £13.50 each.
If you are able to attend please click on the link below to book your place
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/156218081487
Further dates to be added.
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Pause for Thought
Pudding McPudding
Wouldn't the world seem a kinder, more peaceful and accepting place if we all were able to experience one another's lives?
The dictionary describes empathy as the psychological identification with – or the vicarious experiencing of – the feelings, thoughts or attitudes of another. Empathy requires us to be willing to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and try to understand.
In my own experience, to sit and listen to another's story as opposed to telling mine has enabled me to see situations from different perspectives. This in turn helps to keep me at peace as all I am ultimately able to control is my own destiny not another's because their journey is based on their experiences not mine.
We are all amazing, intricate, unique, fascinating individuals doing the very best we can for ourselves and those we love and care for.
Let’s use the present moment as an opportunity to stretch the boundaries of our own perspectives, to tune into new ways of seeing, to detach ourselves from the assumptions that populate our minds – and open ourselves up to what it may really be like in someone else’s shoes.
Then we might find peace in this world.
As within, so without.
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Exploring the Three Centres
Warwick Lydiate
A number of spiritual traditions and disciplines recognise that humans have three core centres of intelligence, or perhaps energies might be a better way to describe them. These are the head, the heart and the body (or gut / belly). This idea is certainly central to my own area of interest, - the Enneagram. All three centres have distinctive ways of experiencing the world, and they all have intelligence and memory. In the West, we have tended to prioritise the head or thinking centre to the detriment of the others.
The body centre is the area of the life force, of energy, of feeling grounded and rooted. It is where we find resolve and determination, and where we sense injustice. This centre can have a shadow side, that of experiencing anger, and whilst this emotion is certainly potentially unhelpful and even destructive, it may also provide the necessary motivation for action to change things for the better. Whereas the heart and head can ‘wander off’ in imagination, the body is always ‘present’, and may usually be the first point of attention in any mindfulness practice.
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I want to age like sea glass.
Smoothed by tides,
but not broken.
I want my hard edges to soften.
I want to ride the waves
and go with the flow.
I want to catch a wave
and let it carry me
to where I belong.
I want to be picked up
and held gently by
those who delight in my
well earned patina and
appreciate the changes I went
through to achieve that beauty.
I want to enjoy the journey
and always remember that if
you give the ocean something
breakable it will turn it into
something beautiful.
I want to age like sea glass.
Bernadette Noll
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