15th March

Low numbers today just six of us but we covered quite a few things starting with an image of a ballerina turning round and round first one way then the other but it depended on who was looking as our brains changed the direction without any clue as to why for we all saw the change at  different times.

I told the good news that beingness or being in the now reduces the cell's telomeres reduction giving us a longer life.

Telomeres have been compared with the plastic tips on shoelaces because they prevent chromosome ends from fraying and sticking to each other, which would scramble an organism's genetic information to cause cancer, other diseases or death.

Yet, each time a cell divides, the telomeres get shorter. When they get too short, the cell no longer can divide and becomes inactive or "senescent" or dies. This process is associated with aging, cancer and a higher risk of death. So telomeres also have been compared with a bomb fuse.

Afterwards we watched a video of a neuroscientist who died and flew away on a butterfly into the stars in a field of love. Sounds good to me - we then discussed the possibility that the universe is struggling to understand itself through us and maybe behind all of us the watcher is the same just the ego mind is different. No need for a creator, it just is, and is baffled as we are. Something to think about.

After our break for tea and biscuits we read the following a mixture from various web sites.

The Mirror

Two weeks ago, I noticed a small advertisement in the local newspaper. Someone called Gangaji was speaking in my town. I had never heard of Gangaji. I didn’t even know how to pronounce the word. Apart from the vaguely spiritual context of the ad, I had no idea what she represented, let alone what she would say.
Gangaji was radiant. I have rarely seen anyone with such love and compassion. Once, when a woman in front of her was fighting tears, she did not try to fill the silence with words, instead she just smiled at the woman. It was a huge smile, wider than a dawn, and it was the right smile.
Unlike the woman in tears and the other three who went forward, I did not volunteer. I had no desire to be a centre of attention and no burning question. I was there to listen. But Gangaji clearly thought otherwise; when there was no one else on the stage, she looked directly at me and beckoned.
“You have a question,” she said.
I was startled. I looked around at my neighbours, back to Gangaji, and said, “Who? Me?” (Okay, call me slow on the uptake.)
“Yes, you,” she smiled. “Would you like to join me up here.”
“Okay,” I said. I went up there, I sat on her right, I talked with her in front of the crowd.
I did think of a question to ask her, which she answered. But that’s not what stayed in my memory. It’s what followed. I was so captivated by her presence that I said, “I know what I want… I want the look in my eye to be like the look in your eye.”
To my astonishment and the crowd’s amusement, she chuckled, produced a mirror (!!!), and thrust it in front of my face, forcing me to look at myself.
“But you do have that already,” she said. “See for yourself.”
No, I’m not planning to parade as the next Gangaji. In fact, as I left the stage, I was puzzled. Her manner suggested more than stage playfulness… there was serious intent there. What was she really saying to me? What was the point? Well, now I have to laugh at myself. How could I have missed it? It took my friend Tom Newnam in Philadelphia, to take off my blindfold with an email. His words, summarised: What you saw in Gangaji is not only who she is, but also who you are.
Of course, of course. In admiring Gangaji, I was primed to see—in her—the best in myself. We don’t see things as they are; we see things as we are. We don’t see people as they are; we see people as we are. She didn’t say that in words, but it’s what she was telling me. More to the point, she made me feel it.
Could there be a finer illustration of the second universal truth: that your life is your mirror. How extraordinary that she actually held up a mirror. How subtle, how playful, how mischievous. (And how startling… did she have that mirror ready?)
Had you or anyone else expressed the same desire as me, she could have made the same reply.



Turn it around. When 100 people look at you, they each see a different version of you: the version that best reflects them, their beliefs and aspirations. It’s not you that affects them, but their version of you. Not one of those 100 versions is the real you. So who is the real you? You’ll only find the answer by looking into the looking glass that is your life – yes, that life which seems to happen to you, but is really created by you. In this incarnation, your life, and everything and everyone in it, is you. Literally. The universe is not objective, it is subjective.
On the face of it, that stretches credibility. You could, for example, be in a coal mine one day and a cruise ship the next; so you might ask, How could I change so much overnight? But your physical surroundings are only the shallowest reflection of you. Instead, look to your relationships, the events you attract, and the attitudes you take with you from one place to another.
Here’s some Sufi wisdom,
Once upon a time, somewhere between the mountain peaks and the shores of the azure sea, there was a village in which there dwelt a Sufi master renowned for his wisdom. One day, a stranger entered the village, and immediately looked for the master to ask advice. He said, “I’m thinking of moving to live in this village. What can you tell me about the people who live here?”
And the Sufi master replied, “What can you tell me about the people who live where you come from?” “Ah,” said the visitor angrily. “They are terrible people. They are robbers, cheats and liars. They stab each other in the back.” “Well now,” said the Sufi master. “Isn’t that a coincidence? That’s exactly what they’re like here.” So the man departed the village and was never seen there again. Soon, another stranger entered the village, and he too sought the Sufi master for advice. He said, “I’m thinking of moving to live in this village. What can you tell me about the people who live here?” And the Sufi master replied, “What can you tell me about the people who live where you come from?” “Ah,” said the visitor in fond remembrance, “They are wonderful people. They’re kind, gentle and compassionate. They look after each other.” “Well now,” said the Sufi master, “Isn’t that a coincidence? That’s exactly what they’re like here.”
You do, most comprehensively, take your mirror with you wherever you go. You want to find yourself? You don’t have to go anywhere. You want happiness? You don’t have to wait. There’s joy to be had, even in the difficult times.
I have Gangaji to thank for the reminder. And also for the moment when she looked around at the audience during a silence, and said softly, “It’s all so very simple.”
“I have known good and evil,
Sin and virtue, right and wrong;
I have judged and been judged;
I have passed through birth and death,
Joy and sorrow, heaven and hell;
And in the end I realized
That I am in everything
And everything is in me.”
(Hazrat Inayat Khan) 

What are the oddes that you exist, as you, today?

It is the probability of 2 million people getting together (about eight times the population of Southampton) each to play a game of dice with a trillion-sided dice. They each roll the dice and all come up with the exact same number – for example 550,343,279,001

Answer Zero

Carl Jung said, there is no coming to consciousness without pain. We need, it seems, the experience of pain and suffering in order to go beyond it. Mindless creatures do not experience emotional suffering as we do… simply because they have no ego-mind with which to do so.  Many animals, of course, have a level of conscious awareness that allows them to experience a wide range of emotions – more than some (damaged) humans in fact.