28th May

Smallest group so far but still those that came enjoyed the delving into Jungian philosophy. Although it was a bit hard to follow. We also watched a video about how our thoughts tell how the body should react to anything so that gives us the ability to change our thoughts and thereby our reaction.
One aspect we did read about is this:

Synchronicity
Personality theorists have argued for many years about whether psychological processes function in terms of mechanism or teleology. Mechanism is the idea that things work in through cause and effect: One thing leads to another which leads to another, and so on, so that the past determines the present. Teleology is the idea that we are lead on by our ideas about a future state, by things like purposes, meanings, values, and so on. Mechanism is linked with determinism and with the natural sciences. Teleology is linked with free will and has become rather rare. It is still common among moral, legal, and religious philosophers, and, of course, among personality theorists.
Among the people discussed in this book, Freudians and behaviorists tend to be mechanists, while the neo-Freudians, humanists, and existentialists tend to be teleologists. Jung believes that both play a part. But he adds a third alternative called synchronicity.
Synchronicity is the occurrence of two events that are not linked causally, nor linked teleologically, yet are meaningfully related. Once, a client was describing a dream involving a scarab beetle when, at that very instant, a very similar beetle flew into the window. Often, people dream about something, like the death of a loved one, and find the next morning that their loved one did, in fact, die at about that time. Sometimes people pick up he phone to call a friend, only to find that their friend is already on the line. Most psychologists would call these things coincidences, or try to show how they are more likely to occur than we think. Jung believed the were indications of how we are connected, with our fellow humans and with nature in general, through the collective unconscious.
Jung was never clear about his own religious beliefs. But this unusual idea of synchronicity is easily explained by the Hindu view of reality. In the Hindu view, our individual egos are like islands in a sea: We look out at the world and each other and think we are separate entities. What we don't see is that we are connected to each other by means of the ocean floor beneath the waters.

16th April

Only six of us today to explore the most important questions we can ask about who we are and what this is. We outlined what was learnt about the Universe over the last 3 meetings the vastness of the stars and space taking a trip to the end of the universe with YouTube. We looked at the minute atom and its volume compared to the actual matter it is composed of. We tried to imagine what there should be - no space - no time - no consciousness but instead we are, we exist as part of existence. A way of seeing the wholeness of reality rather than the normal duality. We then watched a Jim Carrey short video about how everything is intended. Following that we explored the wisdom of Richard Carlson.

You Can Be Happy No Matter What
by Richard Carlson, Ph.D.
The Principle of Thought
1. Your thoughts, not your circumstances, determine how you feel. Blaming our unhappiness on our
circumstances makes us feel powerless over our lives.
2. We need not constantly be in conflict with those around us. You may have no control over what
another person does, but you can be immune to the negative effects of your thinking about that person.
3. It isn’t the circumstances, but our interpretation of them that determines our level of well being.
4. Because our thought systems are filled with our memories of the past (information we have
accumulated throughout our lifetimes), they encourage us to continue to see things in the same way.
5. If you understand the nature of thought systems, you can begin to see beyond them and sense the value
in other points of view. What we did interpret as criticism we can see merely as an opinion from
another person with his/her own thought system.
6. We can virtually eliminate unprofitable arguments in our lives and eliminate feeling resentful,
confused, or angry at others who don’t see things our way. When we understand the nature of thought
systems, we will not expect others to see things our way...........................

March meeting

On a damp day nine of us settled down to a morning of deep thought, first we looked at a short film illustrating how big the universe is starting from the sun it travelled out to the edge of the known universe 10 billion light years away.
We reminded ourselves of previous films showing the emptiness of matter and the size of the largest stars (suns)After a break we then read and discussed the 10 laws for living a good life - similar to the law of attraction.
Below is five of them.

Life Law #1: You either get it or you don't.
Strategy: Become one of those who gets it.

It's easy to tell these people apart. Those who "get it" understand how things work and have a strategy to create the results they want. Those who don't are stumbling along looking puzzled, and can be found complaining that they never seem to get a break.

You must do what it takes to accumulate enough knowledge to "get it." You need to operate with the information and skills that are necessary to win. Be prepared, tune in, find out how the game is played and play by the rules.

In designing a strategy and getting the information you need — about yourself, people you encounter, or situations — be careful from whom you accept input. Wrong thinking and misinformation can seal your fate before you even begin.

Life Law #2: You create your own experience.
Strategy: Acknowledge and accept accountability for your life. Understand your role in creating results.

You cannot dodge responsibility for how and why your life is the way it is. If you don't like your job, you are accountable. If you are overweight, you are accountable. If you are not happy, you are accountable. You are creating the situations you are in and the emotions that flow from those situations.

Don't play the role of victim, or use past events to build excuses. It guarantees you no progress, no healing, and no victory. You will never fix a problem by blaming someone else. Whether the cards you've been dealt are good or bad, you're in charge of yourself now.

Every choice you make — including the thoughts you think — has consequences. When you choose the behavior or thought, you choose the consequences. If you choose to stay with a destructive partner, then you choose the consequences of pain and suffering. If you choose thoughts contaminated with anger and bitterness, then you will create an experience of alienation and hostility. When you start choosing the right behavior and thoughts — which will take a lot of discipline — you'll get the right consequences.

Life Law #3: People do what works.
Strategy: Identify the payoffs that drive your behavior and that of others.

Even the most destructive behaviors have a payoff. If you did not perceive the behavior in question to generate some value to you, you would not do it. If you want to stop behaving in a certain way, you've got to stop "paying yourself off" for doing it.

Find and control the payoffs, because you can't stop a behavior until you recognize what you are gaining from it. Payoffs can be as simple as money gained by going to work to psychological payoffs of acceptance, approval, praise, love or companionship. It is possible that you are feeding off unhealthy, addictive and imprisoning payoffs, such as self-punishment or distorted self-importance.

Be alert to the possibility that your behavior is controlled by fear of rejection. It's easier not to change. Try something new or put yourself on the line. Also consider if your need for immediate gratification creates an appetite for a small payoff now rather than a large payoff later.

Life Law #4: You cannot change what you do not acknowledge.
Strategy: Get real with yourself about life and everybody in it. Be truthful about what isn't working in your life. Stop making excuses and start making results.

If you're unwilling or unable to identify and consciously acknowledge your negative behaviors, characteristics or life patterns, then you will not change them. (In fact, they will only grow worse and become more entrenched in your life.) You've got to face it to replace it.

Acknowledgment means slapping yourself in the face with the brutal reality, admitting that you are getting payoffs for what you are doing, and giving yourself a no-kidding, bottom-line truthful confrontation. You cannot afford the luxury of lies, denial or defensiveness.

Where are you now? If you hope to have a winning life strategy, you have to be honest about where your life is right now. Your life is not too bad to fix and it's not too late to fix it. But be honest about what needs fixing. If you lie to yourself about any dimension of your life, an otherwise sound strategy will be compromised.

Life Law #5: Life rewards action.
Strategy: Make careful decisions and then pull the trigger. Learn that the world couldn't care less about thoughts without actions.

Talk is cheap. It's what you do that determines the script of your life. Translate your insights, understandings and awareness into purposeful, meaningful, constructive actions. They are of no value until then. Measure yourself and others based on results — not intentions or words.

Use any pain you have to propel you out of the situation you are in and to get you where you want to be. The same pain that burdens you now could be turned to your advantage. It may be the very motivation you need to change your life.

Decide that you are worth the risk of taking action, and that your dreams are not to be sold out. Know that putting yourself at risk may be scary, but it will be worth it. You must leave behind the comfortable and familiar if you are to move onward and upward.

19th February

Nine of us got together for our exploration of questions about reality that few people look into.
After recalling the previous month where it was shown that stars can be so big that travelling round it at 999kph it would take a thousand years to complete and how there are as many stars as there is grains of sands in all the beaches of the world making the significance of humanity as nothing. But despite that we believe that we are in the centre as reality is a projection of consciousness. We then looked at a short video demonstrating the emptiness of atoms followed by a longer video about the law of attraction. Which we all agreed is true but it is not the final fulfilment of what we seek.

We will look at that next month.

January 15th

Three new members making nine of us for a hopefully instructive and interesting exposure to ideas that normally we do not consider. We watched a short video on the immensity of the Universe. The largest known star or sun is so big that if you travelled at 900 kph it would take 1000 years to circumnavigate. And as there are billions of stars as many as grains of sand in all the world's shores, it puts us in perspective. But we then discussed the all in the mind evidence so perhaps we are the centre of the Universe. Then we looked at an inspiring short video of a young man with no limbs who despite this handicap loved life.
We also discussed the following,
"Selflessness,"
Mark Epstein and the Dalai Lama in Thoughts Without a Thinker
"One of the most compelling things about the Buddhist view of suffering is the notion, inherent in the Wheel of Life Image, that the causes of suffering are also the means of release; that is, the sufferer's perspective determines whether a given realm is a vehicle for awakening or for bondage. Conditioned by the forces of attachment, aversion, and delusion, our faulty perceptions of the realms -- not the realms themselves--cause suffering. (pg. 16)
"Selflessness is not a return to the feelings of infancy, an experience of undifferentiated bliss, or a merger with the Mother -- even though many people may seek such an experience when they begin to meditate, and even though some may actually find a version of it. Selflessness does not require people to annihilate their emotions, only to learn to experience them in a new way."
"Selflessness is not a case of something that existed in the past becoming nonexistent. Rather this sort of "self" is something that never did exist. What is needed is to identify as non-existent something that always was non-existent." Dalai Lama.
"It is not ego, in the Freudian sense, that is the actual target of Buddhist insight, it is, rather, the self-concept, the representational component of the ego, the actual internal experience of one's self that is targeted."
"Conceptual thought does not disappear as a result of meditative insight. Only the belief in the ego's solidity is lost. Yet, this insight does not come easily. It is far more tempting -- and easier -- to use meditation to withdraw from our confusion about ourselves, to dwell in the tranquil stabilization that meditation offers, and to think of this as approximating the teaching of egolessness. But this is not what the Buddha meant by Right View.
Mark Epstein is a senior student of Vipassana meditation and a practicing psychiatrist in New York City. He is author of Thoughts Without a Thinker and Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart. The XIV Dalai Lama is the political leader of Tibet-in-Exile, a great spiritual teacher of Tibetan Buddhism, winner of the 1989 Nobel Peace Prize, and author of many fine books.

18th December

Five of us met up today to understand what might seem heavy going philosophy.

IN THE SERVICE OF DIVINITY where Rachel Hillel dealt with a variety of ways of achieving self-understanding which she equated with living life in all its fullness and thus learning to know God. These ways include the psychological expressions of C. G. Jung, sayings of the ancient Chinese book of changes, and teachings to be found in Hasidism, the Apocrypha, and the Gnostic gospels.
In speaking of the search for one's soul as an essential part of the human tradition, she referred to a legendary "Golden Chain" of wise men, who have passed a central message down through all ages. Jung, whom she sees as a part of this chain, said, "Anyone who has insight should concern himself with his soul. Our destiny lies in the unconscious, for the unconscious is the source of everything… The word, unconscious, does not count. What counts is the true idea behind it."
Jung had an "ability to give new terms to the very mysteries which emanate from the eternal traditions of man … (enabling man) to penetrate his own being and to look for God … The archetypal idea of the Divinity within assumes in Jung's writing a modern, psychological terminology, but it remains a fundamentally religious concern." He is honoring a "living psychic reality … whose nature is bound to transcend human understanding forever. This has always been the essence of the religious experience."
"Helping people recognize their religious potentialities by providing a method for relating to numinous experiences" sums up Jung's view of the aims of analytical psychology. As Rachel Hillel put it, "Ultimately the individuation process is a religious process … To be healed is to become whole, and there is no wholeness without asking God into one's life as guide and partner." Jung concluded that "in order to gain an understanding in religious matters, all that is left us today is the psychological approach."
Rachel described a young man's dream, which clearly indicated that an institution, such as a church or a dogma can be an obstacle or hindrance to a direct experience of God. "Psychic contents break into life with a living force. (They) seem to come from another realm… a living manifestation of the transpersonal. The encounter (with them) … becomes a religious experience… The experience of God is a psychic reality because it comes from beyond one's self." Jung said, "God is the name by which I designate things which cross my willful path, which upset my plans, my intentions, and change the course of my life … Religious and spiritual events … cannot be made; they happen to us." She illustrated the point with poetry and dream material provided by her analysands and brought out the paradox that though God is perceived as an objective, transcendent reality, we know him through our own subjective experiences.
The Jungian goal of individuation "is essentially concerned with personal religious experiences. Yet experience of the numinous is a reciprocal process between man and God, since the contents which are revealed … have a gradual transformative effect on the unconscious and thus on God. In this way we have become active participants in the divine drama."
Rachel went on to relate these conclusions of Jung to Jewish Hasidism and Christian Gnosticism, which despite their differing origins had in common a search for the inner way to God. The central idea of Hasidic philosophy is "the reciprocity between man and God. God needs man in order to enter reality. Man is destined to be redeemed through the meeting of divine and human need." Also in the Jewish lore it was believed that there are humble, insignificant people whose saintliness holds the world together.
Jesus is revealed in a Gnostic papyrus excavated in the 19th century where (going beyond the familiar biblical quotation) he is quoted as saying," Whenever there are two, they are not without God, and whenever there is one alone, I say I am with him; raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave the wood, and there I am."
As with Jung's reliance on myth, the Gnostics interpreted events symbolically rather than literally. For example, they perceived the resurrection as symbolic, "a spiritual movement of enlightenment, from death to awakening." Jesus, in these gospels, is treated as a model of the spiritual potential in every person. Every person can become a child of God—as Jesus was—and, at a deep level, identical with Jesus.
"it is the unknown power of the Divine within, which guides (us) toward realization and demands loyalty to inner laws. Self-knowledge … the most difficult and challenging religious obligation … directs one to become what (one) was born to be."

November Meeting

Low in numbers again but it was a nice morning and all those who were there enjoyed the company. We didn't start until 10.30 after settling down from discussing various topics. We then went on to read about one man's idea on how to break through to the NOW by recognising the scripts we all play in our mind.

WARNING THIS SITE WILL SERIOUSLY DISRUPT YOUR BELIEFS
Activating the Seer with Ian Wolstenholme by Susan Barber
We all know that the great Boddhisatvas teach of our need to master the science of "nonattachment." And this idea of nonattachment perhaps communicates well to the Eastern mind. But in the West, that word often reaches our ears as a synonym for "indifference." In truth, however, indifference and nonattachment are worlds apart.
In order to find a way to communicate the inner meaning of nonattachment as opposed to indifference, we sought to speak with a teacher who approached his or her work with this distinction in mind. Such a one is Ian Wolstenholme. Ian sees it as his mission to help people relocate into that authentic Self where we may experience true Lightness of Being. He realizes the confusion that has been caused by the attempt to translate Eastern concepts for the Western mind. And out of this realization, he has developed a powerful and effective way-of-looking at the process of Being Here Now. Ian speaks eloquently of how we may achieve this state of being. For many of us, his words may well provide a missing link.
Susan: How have you ended up focusing on the task of applying Eastern traditions to the Western mind?
Ian: It's because most of the information that I get is about that. I work with people at the point where they reveal to me what they've made something mean.
Susan: I understand you've developed a way of talking about being in the Now that makes it easier for the Western mind to understand what that really means. Could you share this with us?
Ian: I'll begin by saying that the Western mind is extremely sophisticated. It needs to be given information. So the first piece of information that I communicate to people is that we have all been conditioned to believe that we are one person, but we are actually made up of many parts. For example, you may believe that you're Susan. But on a closer examination, you will find that Susan is many different "conditioned selves" — many behaviors and emotional states, each one with a script that gets played out when the part is triggered. And then there is the part I call the "Seer." This is the part that Buddha talked about to his disciples, the place of the Present or nonduality. The Seer is a space that everybody has experienced. It is only when we go into one of our conditioned selves that we become "dual." And in order to locate ourselves as the Seer of our experience, all we have to do is make the distinction between that and the many other parts of the self.
Susan: And how do you teach people to do that?
Ian: We can start in a very simple way. Having said that Susan has many parts, we can say that when she is not in the Seer part — the part that is in the Present — she must be in a part of herself that comes from the past. If Susan believes in this role she is playing from the past, then she is held in that part. And that part of her will do everything it can to get other people to play their parts in her script.
Susan: And if she doesn't believe in it?
Ian: Then she locates as the Seer, and she will now discover the set of attitudes and beliefs of that part. And she will discover the script. We "tag" our scripts, and that helps us relocate into the Seer. That's what it's all about. Location-location-location.
Susan: Can you describe this process of tagging our scripts? Give us an example.
Ian: The most important script is what I call the "resentment script." For example, if we are running a resentment script we may be saying something like, "I've got a right to do this," or, "This isn't fair." These kinds of ideas are good indications that we're in a resentment script. So whenever we feel that we've got a right to something or that the world is being unfair, we can notice that feeling. It's a kind of "tag" we can give to our emotions, to remind us that we've just switched into a part, into a script. We sit there and say, "Oh, I've done all this for them, and I've done this and I've done that, and they've not done this." There's always a huge list of reasons to justify our abusing somebody or dumping our resentment on them. The minute we find ourselves in the middle of one of these lists, we know we're in resentment. It's a wonderful place to "tag." And then we can come back into the present and just allow the present emotion to be whatever it is. It's like moving the cursor on a computer screen. If we put the cursor in one window, then that window is active. We can move the cursor into the Seer and activate the Seer.
Susan: Is the resentment script going to be just one part?
Ian: No. Unfortunately, the parts aren't easily labeled. They're much more complex than that. You can't say the resentful part, because quite a few parts will fit into the domain of resentment. But resentment is, I think, the most powerful source of our scripts, partly because it poses as anger. Some people say, "I'm really angry," but what they really are is resentful.
Susan: What's the difference? Ian: Anger is an immediate response. Something happens and you blast. Anger is a flash. Anger is raw. Anger doesn't sit there. It's resentment that sits there. Resentment is a really, really nasty, squirming place to be. We have a list of "hard done bys" as we would say in England — all the bad things we think have been done to us — and we use that list to justify that we're treating the other person any way we care to treat them.
Susan: In my experience, when people are running resentment scripts and we are not playing our correct roles, we may be accused of being cold or unfeeling. For example, I have a friend who has lost his job, and his wife is going ballistic trying to make him upset about that. She keeps accusing him of not caring about his family. How can he remain in the Now without being perceived as cold and unfeeling?
Ian: The answer to this kind of question is not simple. Because it's highly possible that although this man is appearing to be disengaged, he is actually withholding his true feelings. And withholding is also a resentment script! Let's say that the man you spoke of is only appearing not to be upset by his situation. Doesn't he need an income? Doesn't he need a job? What is he doing about it? There's a lot that happens with the emotional energy between people. It's not just the words that they use to communicate with each other. The emotional energy with which words are delivered is what's important. Emotional energy is the thing that really defines what's going on. We could look at this situation and say that although the wife appears to be the one who is upset and angry and out of control, it may be her husband's "calm script" that is driving her. The man may well be saying, "I'm not doing anything to cause this behavior!" when all the time he's withholding his true feelings. And that is part of what I call a resentment script.
Susan: Wow! I know these people, and I think you may be absolutely right about the dynamics that are happening. I never even thought of that. How can we get rid of these scripts?
Ian: The aim is not to get rid of them. We can't get rid of them. The aim is to know that this is what's happening when we are feeling a particular way. For example, if you talk with your mother, it's highly likely that she will get you to locate in "little" Susan — or one of the little Susans. The freedom in all of this is in knowing what it means when we are feeling upset or whatever we don't want to feel, and using our awareness to see where we are in ourselves. Being upset means that we've been triggered into a particular part of the self. It's the script within the part that triggers all the feelings that we're feeling.
Susan: And what about cases where others are really trying to get us to engage in their scripts and we're not buying it. Won't it create distance in the relationship if we refuse to play the game? How can we do that without being perceived as cold and uncaring?
Ian: The first answer is, we can't. In order to stay out of the other person's script, we simply need to know that it's the right thing to do. If we understand the way we work and have verified this in ourselves — in other words, we see that what I'm saying is not just an idea but is an accurate description of what happens — then we know that if we get drawn into the other person's script, we're colluding in keeping them there. But the second answer is to realize that the Seer in the other person doesn't want us to play the role in their script. When your friend rings up and tells you some awful thing has happened, it does seem supportive to say, "Aw, how terrible!" It does seem that your friend wants you to play your part in her script. But in truth, your friend is really saying, "Help me out! Don't buy this!"
Susan: I've been on this path a long time, and I talk to many others who have, as well. And we all understand about these things. And we have, most of us, been in the space of lightness of the heart. But we want to live there all the time, and this is eluding us. How can we make this state more permanent?
Ian: There's a lot we can do to prepare the space for this to happen. And one way is to make use of what I've been talking about. Use our awareness to see as quickly as we can when we are in one of our scripts. And then move into the Present. But how to make it a permanent state? I don't have any advice. We seek this, and then someday it happens by grace. The permanence comes by grace.
Ian Wolstenholme is a teacher, workshop leader, and author of the book Emotional Hostage — Negotiate Your Freedom.
In 1970, while working as a design consultant in London, Ian had a profound experience of "realization." In 1979 and 1981, becoming aware of a need to incorporate this experience into his life, he went to India and spent time in a community there with the enlightened mystic Osho. Later, he met the enlightened teacher Barry Long, and for ten years after that organized and ran the Barry Long Centre, which came to be a successful worldwide organization.
Today, he works with people in both the UK and Europe, facilitating workshops, courses, and retreats, holding satsangs, and giving private consultations. You may visit his website at Realised.org, or contact him by email at nutanian@Hotmail.com.
Ian lives in Somerset, England with his partner, Anna. (Repoduced from http://www.spiritofmaat.com)

23rd October

Only six of us so instead of the planned progam we discussed the Horizen TV show about exploring the mind. Some interesting experiments were conducted. The investigator reporter's seat of consciousness shifted to another person and different angles while viewing through a minature TV screen direct through a head camera.
Also he was shocked to find technicians analyzing the brain pictures knew 6 seconds before he did as to what decision he made.

Quote "If you change the way you look at things the things that you look at change."
After tea we looked at the following.

"Our basic problem is the identification with ourselves as the 'doer'", he went on to say. "As long as we are identified with the 'doer', we think we have choices in life, chasing pleasures, avoiding pain. We think we are making wrong choices and feel guilty. Or we make choices because we are afraid to live out our own truth. But every action we take is simply a result of our current conditioning and our genetic inheritance. They are all choices based in fear. Do we really have free will?"
"We are free only when we no longer identify with the doer," he went on to say. "Then we become a doing, and life becomes a happening. No longer identified with the doer, we no longer live in fear of making the wrong choices, or that somehow the universe can do us harm. We release our guilts and our fears, and engage spontaneously with life in the present moment."
"To be enlightened is to accept the divine flow as it moves through us without identifying with a personal doer. To be enlightened is to no longer live in fear. To be enlightened is to recognize that there is nothing and no-one to blame for anything we might encounter in life, since everything that happens is part of God's will, divine destiny, and cosmic plan."
"The problem is not with the ego," he emphasized. "We are all subject to the subconscious influences of the personal ego, the psychopath as well as the sage. The difference is that in the case of the enlightened sage the sense of personal doership has been uprooted."
"If we are not the doer", he went on to say, "how can there be karma? Karma is only real for us if we are identified with the physical form, trapped in a world of duality, subject to the wheel of responsibility and consequences. Once beyond this limited identification, we are free to manifest the full power of our divine destiny."
"Once we recognize that we are not the doer, everything changes. Our identity shifts to someplace beyond, we recognize that everything is governed through cosmic law, and therefore there is nothing to resist, nothing to fear. The doer becomes one with the doing, and our destiny unfolds each moment in a spontaneous flow of life."
"A personal 'entity' and enlightenment cannot go together," he concluded. "There is no 'me' or 'you' to seek enlightenment. Indeed, there is no such thing as enlightenment, and to truly grasp this is itself enlightenment!"
Thus, the essence of enlightenment is to understand that I am not the doer, simply a vehicle for doing to happen. If I am not the doer, then 'who' remains to feel guilty, fearful, or judgemental about anything life has to offer?
Our memories of the past, our hopes and fears for the future, all arise from our identity as the doer. Life is meant to be lived in the eternal moment of spontaneous doing birthed in our identity as multi-dimensional consciousness. We become trapped in a world of time, however, once we identify with ourselves as a doer.
We are simply a witness to divinity passing through us, creating itself in each moment fresh from infinitely creative source, according to its own wisdom, its own timing. As we practice shifting our identity from the doer to spontaneous doing, from ego to soul, we realize that it is ALL divine will. This is a perspective that our limited body-mind organism cannot easily grasp. Enlightenment is simply realizing that this has always been true, and not resisting the perfection of what already is!
Ultimately, from this perspective, we realize there is nothing we can do to silence the ego, drop the mind, or gain our enlightenment, because all these attempts to change ourselves come from resisting the perfection of what already is. All we can do is simply to love and understand the perfection of our place within the whole, exactly as we are. As soon as we acknowledge this, the curtain lifts, and we realize that we are not so much the actor on the stage of life, but life itself desiring to express itself in each moment of existence.

18th September

Interesting morning with good contributions by everybody that we never got round to watching a film. We discussed the philosophy of the Masons as some of us having visited a temple found it interesting. On searching we find that its aims are the same as ours in searching and hopefully finding the same spiritual truths that are in all religions.
Geoff brought up about the difference in morality between people but we know that if we had been born in the Islamic faith we would have a far different code to believe and live by.We then finally read from 2 texts one on Masonry and the other on enlightenment.

Next's month meeting is a week later on the 23rd October

Is there Enlightenment, Realization or Awakening?
Your own true nature is an "expression of the One Life" - the Aliveness - Consciousness - Awareness. It cannot be anything other than that - as this would be Dualistic.
Your own essential nature - Aliveness - Life itself - is not personal. There is not a separate entity there which is 'you'. It is pure Life itself. NonDual.
We have a sense of self when the conceptual self-image builds up - and it is just that - a mental image. It is not who or what we actually are.
That self image becomes a reference point. But it is a 'cherry picked', modified and edited version of your characteristics, your foibles, your personality, your attributes, your history, your good points, your faults, your tragic qualities, etc. Just a mental image - not 'you'.
It is insubstantial and has no existence other than the content of thought. The apparent 'me' actually does not exist and when looked for cannot be found.
The 'me' is an abstraction. The actuality of what you are is what exists in the immediacy of the moment - which is Presence - Awareness / Aliveness.
All the rest is a mental construct - an abstraction. What that means is that 'the one who you think you are' is a mental abstraction and is 'not it'
So then comes the 'desire' to become enlightened, or to awaken, or become self realized.
But your essential nature, which is present and aware right now as you read this, is an expression of the One Life. It is completely NonDual and completely untouched by the travails of life.
Your essential nature does not need to become enlightened, or to wake up, or to become self realized. It does not need to 'learn' how to become 'more Present', become more compassionate, be able to 'surrender' or 'go 'deeper'. It is already 100% Present and the concept of 'surrender' does not arise.
Who then 'wants' to be come 'Enlightened'? Who wants to 'Wake up'? It is the one who feels incomplete, unsatisfied, unhappy. Who is the one who suffers? It is the Self Image, the Reference Point, the Ego, the one who we think we are. The one who we believe is us.
It is entirely a case of mistaken identity. We are not who we think we are and we want to fix that one up.
Our real nature does not need 'fixing up'.
Our true nature does not need to become 'enlightened'.
Our true nature was never asleep and does not need to 'wake up'
Our true nature does not need to become 'realized' as it is already fully Real.
The reference point, the Ego, has no existence beyond the content of thoughts, has no aliveness of its own and has no awareness whatsoever in its own right. No wonder it feels incomplete and miserable! No wonder it suffers.
Who is the one that is the "I" in "When I awoke" or "I am enlightened", or "I am self-realized"? The only 'one' there that regards itself as a separate entity is the Ego itself - the reference point.
In fact there is no one there at all. The reference point, the so-called ego, does not exist beyond the content of thought. It has no substantial nature at all.
Our essential nature is Aliveness / Presence Awareness /Consciousness - but that is entirely non-personal - there is no separate entity at all. No Self, as the Buddha puts it.
So there are three good reasons to discard the old concepts of enlightenment, awakening and self realization.
Firstly there is no separate 'me' there to 'achieve' enlightenment, an awakening or self-realization.
Secondly, our true nature does not need enlightening, waking up, or self-realization.
Thirdly - 'enlightenment', 'waking up' and 'self realization' are actually concepts - more than that - they are abstractions.
Far better to look into the matter of mistaken identity - just that and only that.
There-in lies the end of suffering and the end of seeking.
Written by Mike Graham, 19 Jan 2008, last edited 29 Apr 2008

August Meeting

Low in numbers like may other groups this month but we still went ahead and I believe we all enjoyed the get together.
We first listened to a recording from a team building life coach - interesting but only applicable at certain times when set a task her philosophy of belief in ones self that you can win is useful at times.
We then read up on the technique of centering the self (below).
finally we listened to David Icke talking about the Law of Attraction and like him we agree that it is mainly true.

Centering Yourself: The Key to Sustaining Healthy Boundaries
Martha Baldwin Beveridge is a psychotherapist

You can handle whatever tough situations you encounter with grace and wisdom. The key to doing so is keeping yourself centered in love and firmly grounded in your space – with your boundaries held securely about you.

Centering and grounding yourself are processes you practice – ideally a number of times everyday. Healthy boundaries flow from your steady center. They embrace the whole of you, define you as distinct from others, and protect you from harm as you interact with others.

Healthy boundaries make intimacy possible. Without them partners can't connect as two complete people who love and respect each other. Instead they become entangled. They function as if one of them wears a T-shirt that says, "We are one, and I am the one," while the other's says, "We are one, and you are the one."

That kind of thinking comes from the relationship model that was our cultural standard before the women's movement took hold. In the past thirty years, relationship roles have shifted significantly. Yet many people still are running mental software that dates back to the first half of the twentieth century. Though they may pay lip service to equality of the sexes, old ways of thinking determine much of how they relate to their mates. Especially when they are stressed, they automatically default to their most obsolete but firmly embedded behavioral programming.

When this happens, they violate each other's boundaries in a variety of hurtful ways. We'll take a look at how boundary violations happen and what we can do about them in my next article. In this one, we'll get clear about what boundaries are and how centering and grounding help us sustain them.

Do you remember having a protractor when you were in grade school? Your teacher showed you how to use it to draw a circle. You placed the arm with the pointed end where you wanted the center to be, adjusted the arc of the radius to determine your circle's size, and then traced it with the little pencil attached to the other arm of the tool. A perfect round emerged on your paper – and you could make others like it again and again.


The core of you is like the expanded center of that circle. The rest of you flows from your center out to the boundaries that define you as unique and distinct from everyone else you meet.

Your boundaries encompass the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dimensions of your being. Your physical boundaries are easy to see. They are defined by your body which obviously is separate from everyone else's. But there is more to you than meets the eye. Your physical form is not all of you. This is because you are not inside your body. Your body is inside you.

Beyond your physical form a field of energy surrounds you. Your emotional, mental, and spiritual boundaries are like concentric circles of light that extend far beyond your body and radiate all around you. Your energy field reflects what you feel, think, and believe. It moves and vibrates at different rates as your emotions, thoughts, and spiritual experiences vary.

The hurt you feel when your physical boundaries are violated is clear and visible. If someone hits you, you have cuts and bruises. If you fall or suffer other accidental injuries, you bleed. If another person steps on your toes, you feel pain. You instinctively do your best to protect your physical boundaries because your survival depends upon your body remaining healthy and in tact.

When someone violates your mental, emotional, and spiritual boundaries, you feel hurt, angry, confused, misunderstood, and discounted. Emotional, mental, and spiritual wounds are very real, but they are not clearly visible. You may try to hide them from others and sometimes even from yourself. Protecting your emotional, mental, and spiritual boundaries is just as important to your well being as protecting your physical boundaries.

Healthy boundaries allow you to relate in loving ways with others without intruding upon them or being intruded upon, without neglecting them or being neglected, without freezing them out or being frozen out. Ideally your boundaries are both firm and flexible. You can expand or contract them as you deal with different people and different kinds of relationships.

You can best establish and sustain healthy boundaries by being centered in the loving core of your Self. Being centered is like firmly planting the point of your protractor in the heart of you and expanding the love you feel there – then drawing a beautiful circle of light that radiates from your center and surrounds you as you interact with others.

A long time ago, I asked one of my wisest teachers, "What is the most important thing people need to learn to live life well?" Her answer was simple. "Teach them to center themselves."

Since that exchange, I've shared centering experiences with lots of others over the years. Like most things that are really valuable, centering is basically a simple process. And it is one that most of us intuitively recognize and easily embrace.

One way to center yourself is by putting your hand over your heart in the center of your chest. As you press your hand gently against your chest, take three deep breaths and slowly release them. You can say to yourself, "I give thanks that I am centered in love," or "Come Loving Spirit and fill me." Ron Roth suggests saying, "I am," as you inhale and "God breathed" as you exhale.

Let your face relax and soften. Feel light flowing throughout your body and all around you. Imagine that strong roots are growing from your feet, nourishing you, grounding you, and anchoring you to the center of the earth. Then rest in that peaceful place with your eyes open or closed for as long as you like – a few moments while waiting for a traffic light to change or several minutes in the midst of a busy day or a stressful situation.

The more you practice centering at odd times, the more naturally it will come to you when you find yourself feeling frightened, anxious, defensive, confused, discounted, or overwhelmed. When you center yourself, you automatically set your invisible energy boundaries in place. As long as you stay centered – and keep returning to center if you feel yourself slipping into fearful reactivity – your loving presence overrides whatever negativity others send toward you. Centering firmly establishes and sustains the healthy boundaries you need for all the ins and outs, ups and downs of living.

Centering gives you genuine power as you connect with your partner and everyone else. Genuine power is quite different from competitive force. It flows from your place of essential wholeness – a place where you embrace all of yourself and are not afraid of the shadow parts when they show up – in yourself or in others. Genuine power pours forth from an attitude of gratitude and forgiveness rather than dissatisfaction and judgment. It manifests as tender toughness and gentle firmness rather than challenging confrontation.

The Love of God that is the core of your being is always stronger than fear and negativity. Centering yourself – moment by moment – gives you the clarity and genuine power you need to face whatever challenges are before you. Centering establishes and protects your boundaries and makes intimacy possible. Centering yourself in Love gives you miraculous moments of healing – again and again – miracles that are yours right now in each instant of your opening to receive them. Try it out! Being centered is your natural, God given, healthy and most satisfying way of being. And it is yours – simply for the allowing.

July Meeting

No written thoughts today we first explored Spiritualism and its faith after seeing a short film. Not too impressed.Then we tried our hand at seeing who had psychic power with a pendulum and a hidden coin - none of us.
We also looked at a film describing the weird world of quantum theory with its multi dimensions and parallel universes. After that we looked at a film of an Australian woman who gave out a peaceful vibes to help the meeting end on a good note.
Next month something different life coaching.

19th June

Anne joined us today so thought best to go over the three enquiries that in my opinion philosophy is all about
1. What we know about the world
The Greeks Romans thinkers thought that if you divided any substance continuously you would come to halt when you reached an atom a solid object the building block of life. Science now tells us that an atom is not solid it is almost empty space. There is a trillion atoms in a grain of sand. The center of an atom is called the nucleus. Tiny electrons spin around the nucleus in shells a great distance from the nucleus. If the nucleus were the size of a tennis ball, the atom would be the size of the Empire State Building only round.
Total stellar population in our galaxy the Milky Way
Recent numbers give about 400,000,000,000 (400 billion) stars, The Hubble Space Telescope has found there may be 125 billion galaxies in the universe."
There are far more stars in the Univese than grains of sand on all our shores of this world
Most astronomers believe the Universe began in a Big Bang about 14 billion years ago. At that time, the entire Universe was inside a bubble that was thousands of times smaller than a pinhead. Then it suddenly exploded
Modern ideas of the world compares favourably with Alice in Wonderland.
2. How do we know the world?.
All the five senses rely on electrical signals to the brain. The nose analyses molecules of scent and then turns that into an electrical signal, so does all the other organs. The eyes transmit digitally a picture as an electronic signal to the brain so that all of the world as we know it is in our own brain. You are now "seeing" inside your head. If true there are no "things" no more than there are "things" in a television film. And there is no person looking at what is happening otherwise you have the same problem how does the person see. There can be no movement. So is it true?
3. Who am I?
The prize is finding yourself or enlightenmight. But maybe there is no "I" and we are free now.

15th May

Lively discussion this morning after a review of all the revelations we have learnt during the last year or so we read the following summary:
Contemplating the Nature of Experience The Perennial Understanding
The essential discovery of all the great spiritual traditions, including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Zen, Sufism, Kashmir Shaivism and Judaism, is that experience is not divided into a perceiving subject, an entity known as 'I,' and a perceived object, world or other.
The apparent separate entity and the apparent separate, independent world or other are understood to be concepts that are superimposed onto the reality of experience.
If we look for this Reality, for the essential ingredient in every experience of the mind, body and world, we find Consciousness or Awareness, a Knowing Presence that we intimately and directly know to be our own Being, and that is experienced simply as 'I am.'
This understanding, sometimes referred to as Non-Duality or Advaita, lies at the core of all these traditions and although it cannot be expressed directly, teachers, sages, mystics and poets use the language of their culture to point towards this Reality.
This non-conceptual or experiential Reality or Knowingess, although in fact always present, embedded in all experience, is veiled in most cases by beliefs. The primal belief, upon which all others are based, is that Consciousness or Awareness is located in and/or as the body.
With this fundamental mistake we shrink ourselves into a separate entity that resides in and as the body. That is, Consciousness seems to contract into a tiny, vulnerable entity and, as a result, the peace and happiness that are inherent in our true nature, in Consciousness, are veiled and seem therefore to be lost. This is the beginning of the search for happiness.
Consciousness seems to contract into a separate entity that we know and feel to be 'I,' and the world (including all others) simultaneously seems to become outside, separate, other, 'not me.'
Although this division of experience never actually takes place, it is a powerful illusion that seems to divide the Oneness of experience into two separate things. With this apparent division suffering is born.
In most cases a friend or teacher is required to point out this fundamental mistake, and through association with him or her, through the sharing of Being in conversation, meditation, contemplation, silence, self-enquiry, investigation, exploration and simply spending time together in silence and in normal everyday activities, the dense web of beliefs and feelings that comprise the knot of separation is dissolved.
This is sometime called Awakening. It is the awakening of Presence, Consciousness, Awareness to its own Being as the Reality of all things.

Afterwards we listened to Florian Tathagata
People have always loved sitting and sharing in the presence of an awakened human being and experiencing that tender beingness. For about 7 years Florian Tathagata and his life companion Julia have travelled around the world untiringly inviting seekers to recognize in their own experience who they really are and to live as an embodiment of truth in everyday life.

In his unmistakable manner he embraces the daily and simple life that he is sharing with a constantly increasing number of 'friends of truth', as he calls all those being interested. Again and again visitors of meetings tell of spontaneous awakening, of an all penetrating silence, of simple clarity and presence and of overflowing love and gratitude which they experience in Florian Tathagata‘s presence.

With both legs firmly rooted in normal everyday life and at the same time in the heart deeply connected with Ramana Maharshi, Papaji, Jiddu Krishnamurti and his teacher and friend Isaac Shapiro, Florian Tathagata speaks and is silent, laughs and cries, is present with everyone who would love to savour the truth of awareness.

20th March

Interesting discussion this morning after talking about last month's subject of the Absolute we looked at two videos of Oprah and Eckhart on the sacred NOW and his book The New Earth.
We then went on to read that at the end of Candide, Voltaire writes, "We must cultivate our garden." This philosophy of working to change the conditions and circumstances of the world, instead of accepting it as "the best of all possible worlds," is strongly advocated by Voltaire in his satire of optimism. Superficially, it seems that Hegel's writings advocate an opinion contrary to this position.
finally we read about the dance of Siva the Indian Way of expressing the same thing.

Gurudeva sums it up beautifully in Dancing with Siva: "The world is seen as it truly is - sacred - when we behold Siva's cosmic dance. Everything in the universe, all that we see, hear and imagine, is movement. Galaxies soar in movement; atoms swirl in movement. All movement is Siva's dance. When we fight this movement and think it should be other than it is, we are reluctantly dancing with Siva. We are stubbornly resisting, holding ourselves apart, criticizing the natural processes and movements around us. It is by understanding the eternal truths that we bring all areas of our mind into the knowledge of how to accept what is and not wish it to be otherwise. Once this happens, we begin to consciously dance with Siva, to move with the sacred flow that surrounds us, to accept praise and blame, joy and sorrow, prosperity and adversity in equanimity, the fruit of understanding. We are then gracefully, in unrestrained surrender, dancing with Siva."

21 February

Only 5 of us again but we enjoyed a good discussion from viewing a short film of Peter Russel's explanation of how we know the world as realized by Plato many years a go without the benefit of science.
We then viewed a film of a young person who claimed that he was enlightened. We disagreed although the NOW is rewarding it does not happen when you have toothache or stomach ache. We went on to discuss the Aboslute that which is outside of all the appearances the perfect unblemished being which we are.

16th January 2009

A smaller group than usual but all of us enjoyed the discussion and the short film.
We first watched the TED film of a French scientist turned Buddhist who lived in the Himalayas. He believed in training the mind and seemed a very good representative of a person who enjoyed life. Then we went on to discuss the immanent and transcendent philosophy from various sources including this.
The influence of Bergson's thought upon religion and theology may be put finally as follows: We must reject the notion of a God for whom all is already made, to whom all is given, and uphold the conception of a God who acts freely in an open universe. The acceptance of Bergson's philosophy involves the recognition of a God who is the enduring creative impulse of all Life, more akin perhaps to a Mother-Deity than a Father-Deity. This divine vital impetus manifests itself in continual new creation. We are each part of this great Divine Life, and are both the products and the instruments of its activity. We may thus come to view the Divine Life as self-given to humanity, emptying itself into mankind as a veritable incarnation, not, however, restricted to one time and place, but manifest throughout the whole progress of humanity. Our conception will be that of a Deity, not external and far-off, but one whose own future is bound up in humanity, rejoicing in its joy, but suffering, by a kind of perpetual crucifixion, through man's errors and his failures to be loyal to the higher things of the spirit. Thus we shall see that, in a sense, men's noble actions promote God's fuller being. A Norwegian novelist has recently emphasized this point by his story of the man who went out and sowed corn in his late enemy's field that God might exist! But it is important to remember that in so far as we allow ourselves to become victims of habit, living only a materialistic and static type of existence, we retard the divine operations. On the other hand, in so far as our spirit finds joy in creative activity and in the furtherance of spiritual values, to this extent we may be regarded as fellow-labourers together with God. We cannot, by intellectual searching find out God, yet we may realize and express quite consistently with Bergson's philosophy the truth that "in Him we live, and move, and have our being."

December meeting

We first watched an interesting interview where Dr. Robert E. Carter talked about self-cultivation.
The we read and gave our views on the following.

In the Past or in the Present?
Are you walking dead or are you walking alive?
"Behold, the former things have come to pass, and new things do I declare; before you they spring forth."
Isaiah 42:9
In the Greek myth of Orpheus Descending. Orpheus went into the underworld to rescue his wife from death. He was told that he could do so as long as while on his way out, he didn't look back. Well, he looked back. Consequently, she was lost forever-frozen in time! The same similar story is found in the Bible. Lot and his wife are spared by God from the fiery destruction of the evil cities, Sodom and Gomorrah. They are told by the angel not to look back at the city as they are leaving. Lot's wife looks back; she is turned into a pillar of salt.
The same is true for us when we don't let go of the past We become frozen in the past like Lot's wife who became a pillar of salt and like Orpheus looking back at his wife sees only a frozen memory. Lifeless. We are dead to life. And like a pillar of salt we become bitter like salt. Bitter over the fact something was taken from us or something didn't last forever. We are no longer moving or changing. Stuck! The only change that is happening is the deterioration of our body and our minds because we lack the vitality of ongoing life. Like a pillar of salt, rigid, with time, we begin to crumble. We cease to be moistened and renewed by the current of life. We like Orpheus are in the underworld visiting the frozen images of yesterday. We see people doing the same thing to us as in the past, the same failures, the same relationships with different names, the same attitude and outlook, the same insecurity, the same outcomes- we always keep winding up in the same spot. Stuck in time! We ARE in the same spot! We are a tombstone. Petrified like a pillar marking some past event or past person we won't let go of. A lost marriage, unrequited love, tragic events, a dead companion, past hurts, past regrets, past cherished moments, our childhood. Whatever we want to go back to. We avoid the pain of letting go and the price we pay for that is death! We cut ourselves off from the flow of LIFE. Our thinking and actions becomes become old and rigid. We are dead to Life.
It is ironic that those who live in the past age quickly and are prone to alcoholism and addictions. While those who change and live in the present stay younger, happier and are not addicted. Mother Theresa once said, "Being in the Present is to be with God."

Get Back to the Present: Since Life is a series of deaths starting with the loss of childhood into adolescence. By letting go, we can be reborn into new and greater things. In other words grow or "grow up". By being constantly reborn we enlarge our capacity to experience greater capacities of blessings and opportunities. When we get stuck to someone or something that we need to let go of, we stop in the flow of life. Prosperity and Health cease. Medical science has proven that brooding over the past can bring rapid old age, arthritis, failing vision, heart trouble, high blood pressure, depression and death. With God's help we have to constantly let go of people, memories, ideas, yesterday. We must be in the present to experience Life. We have to renew ourselves daily to attract the blessings in life. We must save our energy from depression caused by being stuck. Youth is only an eternity in the present. In the present we attract prosperity, health and joy! Good things occur regularly. We move ahead in the flow of Life. We are ALIVE!

November meeting

First of all we watched "Tony Robbins motivates you in 20 minutes: TEDTalks" a very inspired speaker but seemed rather hyper for us and then we read and discussed the following. (Shortened)

The Fountain of Youth

Jesus answered and said unto her, (the woman at the well)
Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again:
But whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him
shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be
in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.

John 4:13-14

Look first for the Kingdom of Heaven. And all things will be provided for you. Mathew 6 the kingdom of Heaven is within You Luke 17:21
Yes it's always been INSIDE YOU!
Youth it has been said is a "state of awe or bliss"
Among those who had lost their youth it was imagined that there was such a thing as a "Fountain of Youth" which had magical waters which sprung up from a special spring that would give those who drank from it or bathed in it healing and rejuvenation. In effect it would reverse age and return those who drank of its waters back to his youth. Well, many people set out to look for it; sadly, none ever could find it. Why not? Because it was always inside of themselves. What they had of the Fountain of Youth-its healing and rejuvenating powers were inside of them. Then why could they not reach it if it was inside themselves? Because they had abandoned themselves in pursuit of things outside of themselves and found sadness instead. To set out looking for romances, people, power and material possessions to make us happy is to set out on a voyage to nowhere. It is like leaving your house to look for your bedroom.
The important point is that because it is a state of mind, it can be accessed in our minds.
Youth is a feeling of wonder, innocence, freshness; the opposite of cynical and worn out. So in that case younger in age or older in age it doesn't matter, we can be cynical and worn out at 25 years old and we can be full of wonder at 75 years old. Youth is a state of mind that can be found or lost at any age. Youth is a spiritual state! Youth is alive and full of feeling. Youth is vibrant and unafraid. Youth is very much a part of living, changing, discovering and yes, actually staying physically young without the help of cosmetics, fad diets, and work-out regiments. Youth has nothing to do with acting juvenile, crazy, arrogant, irresponsible, or aloof. Youth is child-like - fun, spontaneous, alive, energetic, emotionally responsive, in touch with reality, intelligent, creative and adaptive. Youth is full of wonder and surprise. And above all youth is very much in the "present"!
Pleasures outside of ourselves are seductive powers. They get us hooked and because they can never fulfill us, we drain our life energy pursuing them. We've plugged into a power drainage rather than a Power source. And the source of all Power is within ourselves! So when we hook into pleasures outside of ourselves, we direct that Power from within us to something outside of ourselves. And because those things outside of ourselves need our Power to keep them alive, they can not give us any Power back to replenish the power they have taken from us.
They take our Youth, our innocence, our wonder. They disappoint us and constantly let us down. We become miserable, diseased, insatiable, lonely, bitter. Because our energy is draining, we do not have enough energy to sustain our health. Thus, we become ill, stressed, depressed (drained), diseased, physically aged and inevitably dead.
So, to help with their illness and depression, these people look for cures to replenish their energy and restore them to well-being and health. Or even try moving to a new place, or having a new romance, or maybe it will be a new job, more money, a new project, a new relationship, a brand new drug, a new vacation spot, a new car, a new face lift. more vitamins, a vacation to a spa, a new exercise, a new look-change of clothes, a new house or a remodeling! And as we all know, these things don't last and furthermore, do not give us what we think they should be giving us. We get let down. Does that stop some of us? NO! Pursue and consume and pursue and consume, ad infinitum.
They get "high" on the new, on the pursuit, on consuming, and so forth. And all the while they can not understand why they are getting depressed and why their doctors tell them they have high blood pressure or anxiety disorder or manic depression, or panic attacks, and insecurities or hypertension. And still some of them keep trying to change the outer body to cause a change within themselves. So these people get hooked on plastic surgery, exercise regimens, cosmetic treatments, and so on. In actuality, the more money you have to spend on something to make you happy or to look good, it isn't going to work. That's why it's expensive! Because most of us know that the best things in life are free or minimally priced! It's the spending, the hype, the idea that they can afford it, the status and all the "mind games" If they believe in the "hype" (hypnotic) enough it will cause them to feel a certain way! And for how long? Until the newest invention comes along!
And like the powers they depend on for happiness and health and youth, they become just like them: short lived, worn out, unreliable, dependent, moody, unstable, used and abused, and discarded. An object! The saying "you are what you eat" is the same as you are what you touch, what you consume, etc...Depend on objects become like objects! Depend on the people you depend upon and you become like them. The same is true about ideas, depend on those ideas and you become like those ideas.


And another reason why outer dependency brings disappointment: all things outside of ourselves to make us happy, including people, have to be there for us. That means we have to rely on them being there. That means we have to pay some kind of price to maintain those things or people to be there for us. Very expensive! In a way, we have become dependent or even enslaved or addicted to those things to be there for us to make us happy and healthy.
So when they are not there or are unreliable, they cause us distress. The person or object we depend on becomes the source of power now. They actually control us! Look at how much money and how much energy people waste on others and things they depend on.
If we had to truly depend on ourselves we would find an awakening within ourselves. Throughout history including our own country's Depression in the 1930's people actually got stronger, more creative. Many great statesman and creative geniuses came out of that period. WHY? Because they found their REAL POWER! And that inner Power we always have access to. And we can replenish our inner Power from within through spirituality. And we can draw from it at anytime. And it doesn't matter what is around us or where we are. It's not like a car on a road that runs out of gas 40 miles from the nearest gas station. Whenever, we run out of energy, we can go within and draw from our "fountain of youth" - our source of vitality, strength, wisdom, happiness, creativity, and joy!
No matter who you are or what has happened in your life; whether you are young or old, rich or poor, religious or not, unlucky or lucky, famous or not, youth can be found inside yourself. YES! Everybody! When you find it, you will definitely know it! You will have found YOU! Nothing more needs to be said. You will never need to be like someone or dependent on someone or something ever again!

17 October

Just the six of us met up again for perhaps the last time to discuss the final aim of what philosophy is all about, enlightenment. We looked at a video of Tony Parsons author of The Open Secret in which he chronicles his Awakening. None of us believed that it was truly the complete answer. Like previous claimants they seem to lose the sparkle of the intellect a price none of us thought right.
This is description of his nirvana.
The Hypnotic Dream of Separation
There is no me or you, no seeker, no enlightenment, no disciple and no guru. There is no better or worse, no path or purpose, and nothing that has to be achieved.
All appearance is source. All that apparently manifests in the hypnotic dream of separation – the world, the life story, the search for home, is one appearing as two, the nothing appearing as everything, the absolute appearing as the particular.

There is no separate intelligence weaving a destiny and no choice functioning at any level. Nothing is happening but this, as it is, invites the apparent seeker to rediscover that which is . . . the abiding, uncaused, unchanging, impersonal silence from which unconditional love overflows and celebrates. It is the wonderful mystery.

Septembers meeting

Another small group but not in enthusiasm, we went back to basics discussing how can Samsara be Nirvana. Despite the wisdom that he who says he knows doesn't, we tried to clarify the meaning by seeing the mind when attachment is withdrawn. The ordinary mind that is the container of all things is spotless when unattached. We then looked at a video of a brain specialist describing her experience when she had a stroke in the left side of the brain. Afterward we read a paper on being a slave or master

August

Only five of us again but we still had a good discussion after watching the sixth instalment of the Kabbala where he explained why we should appreciate all things as a gift and in doing so it gives enjoyment to the giver - God.

July meeting

Only four of us but again we all watched the fifth video from the kabbalah school of philosophy. This one was less appealing with too many names but we got the gist of it and next month we will be shown a tool to gain enlightenment. Should be interesting. We then discussed the paper that proposed the trend for people to get fatter is through trying to fill an emptiness of a spiritual yearning rather than a hunger for food.
Broke up at 12.30 so must have been enjoyed.

20th June

Only six of us but everybody seemed to enjoy the fourth video from the kabbalah school of philosophy. This time a great emphasis was placed on knowing the creator directly without an understanding or intellectual concept held in the mind.

17th May

As we had a guest today we reviewed the main points of philosophy we have discovered. One the world is not "real". More akin to a hologram than a solid "thing". The "world" is in our minds as all knowledge of reality is an inward awareness of incoming senses. We do not look "out". The ego is not our true self but the unknowable watcher is the same in all of us.
We then watched the third short film of the kabbalah. The instruction given is that we are all on the path to the return to the creator but it can be done the easy way or the hard way. We then had more discussions on on our opinion of this that we never got round to reading the prepared article.

18 th April

Not many today at today's meeting but still enjoyable. We once again continued with studying the Jewish Kabbalah by listening to a half hour film first then after a break we then read a written summary and maybe you too would like to read it.

Cracking the Happiness Code
In Kabbalah—the science of happiness—happiness stops being a mystery. This elusive notion can be broken down into component parts and understood. And just like e=mc2, there's a formula for lasting happiness
"Quick: think about what would make you really, really happy."
This was the opening line of the cover story in the May, 2007 issue of Newsweek, dedicated to the subject of happiness. Top international psychologists, sociologists, biologists and economists tried to answer the eternal question: "What is the secret of happiness?" or more precisely, "What would it take to make us happy?"
The Dollar Is Always Greener on the Other Side
"Maybe money?" the researchers asked. "If I had the money," claims the typical happiness fantasizer, "I could have, or do, anything I want: travel around the world, buy anything I please, be independent, and take charge of my life... In short, money is bound to make me happy, isn't it?"
Surprisingly (or not), many recent studies show that once we have enough to meet our basic needs, money ceases to make us happier. One famous study showed that even lottery winners who were very, very happy when they won soon lost their euphoria. After a while, their moods were exactly the same as they had been before their big win.
In fact, once we have more money than we need for our basic needs, our ability to enjoy it becomes overshadowed by questions like, "Am I keeping up with the Joneses?" because no matter how much we earn, it always seems as if our neighbor's dollar is a shade or two greener.
Happiness Economics
What about free time? If we worked less and rested more, would we have our longed for happiness?
The happiness researchers flatly dismiss this hypothesis as well. On the "World Map of Happiness," recently published by the school of psychology at England's Leicester University, the hard-working USA takes a whooping 23rd place, while vacationing France staggers behind in 62nd place.
One by one, the happiness researchers revoked the most common theories about the road to happiness. They concluded that in the long run, things like a successful career, a happy marriage, and even good health will not make us happy.
So what would make us happy? That's precisely the question that leaves researchers dumbfounded. Somehow, it's easier to identify the factors that do not make us happy, than to offer a practical formula for true happiness.
"Happiness is everywhere—on the best-seller lists, in the minds of policymakers, and front and center for economists—yet it remains elusive," concludes Rana Foroohar, Newsweek's senior economics writer.
So how do we grab hold of that fleeting happiness?

The Mechanics of Happiness
To crack the happiness code, we must start by realizing who we really are, what our nature is. And that is something very simple: we are the desire to be happy. In other words, we all want to receive pleasure, to enjoy, or as Kabbalah calls it, we are "the will to receive."
"... The will to receive pleasure constitutes the entire matter of Creation, from its beginning to its end. … all the myriad types of creatures and their varieties are but rates and modified values of the will to receive."
Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal Hasulam),
"Preface to the Wisdom of Kabbalah"
Perhaps this sounds like something you already knew. But our nature, the will to receive, is more sophisticated than what we might think. It's not just a constant desire that's always nudging us to find happiness. This will to receive actually motivates everything we do, down to the smallest actions we make, and even every thought we have.
The will to receive seeks satisfaction every at moment and makes sure that we don't rest until we fulfill its demands. It also constantly determines how we feel: if we satisfy it, we're happy, we feel good, life's a song; if we don't, we become frustrated, angry, depressed, and even violent or suicidal.
Perhaps you also guessed this. But the thing that so often escapes our notice—and the key to cracking the happiness code—is the fact that once our "will to receive" is fulfilled, the pleasure we feel disappears.
The great Irish author, Oscar Wilde, certainly knew about this when he wrote, "In this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it. The last is much the worst; the last is a real tragedy."
Kabbalah explains the mechanics of this process: initially, we want something and make efforts to acquire it. The moment we get what we fervently desired, we feel pleasure, joy and delight. Or, in Kabbalah's language, the first encounter between the desire and its filling is the peak of the pleasure.
So far so good—but the process isn't finished yet. The moment we get the thing we wanted, the desire abates. In other words, we gradually stop wanting what we attained, and as a result, our pleasure starts fading… until it disappears completely.
For example, you know what it's like when you're really hungry: you could eat a steak so big it needs its own area code (vegetarians: consider that a tofu loaf). But what happens when you start eating?
The first bite is pure ecstasy, and the next bite is wonderful. The next bite is good, and the next bite is… okay, and the next is whatever it is. And the next one is: "not another bite, I'm gonna be sick..."
This happens with everything, not just food. We can spend years dreaming about a fancy sports car and when we finally get it, we're thrilled—well, at least for a few moments or days. But soon we find ourselves enjoying it less and less until it stops giving us any pleasure. And then every time we look at the car, the only thing we feel is the weight of the gigantic loan we have to pay back for the next ten years!
Economics Professor Richard Easterlin of the University of Southern California, a pioneer of happiness research, calls this phenomenon "hedonic adaptation," which means, "We get a new car, and we get used to it. We get new clothes, and we get used to it again... We adjust very quickly to the pleasure we get..."
But that can't be the end of the story, can it? After all, even as we describe this, we all long for lasting pleasure. Did Nature place us in this vicious circle to remain forever unhappy? Could happiness be just a fairy tale, a Santa Claus story that will never come true?

The (Secret) Happiness Formula
Thankfully, Kabbalah explains that Nature is not cruel at all; in fact, its only desire is to bring us the happiness we seek. If our aspiration for happiness was not meant to be realized, we wouldn't have it to begin with. Nature's purpose is to let us independently attain a feeling of complete and total happiness—not "sort-of" happiness or "most of the time" kind of happiness, but the kind that is absolute, perfect, and eternal.
And we're actually closer to it than we think. In fact, the recent trend of happiness research and our growing realization that we are never satisfied have actually brought us closer to true happiness. We are beginning to identify the pattern: happiness has nothing to do with how much money we make or how good our marriage is—in fact, it has nothing to do with any other kind of pleasure we try to receive. We're starting to uncover the fundamental fact that happiness can only be felt using a different principle of enjoyment.
At this point, Kabbalah helps us solve the happiness problem at its root. We've already explained why we never feel lasting pleasure from anything: because the minute the pleasure meets the desire, the desire becomes neutralized. And since our desire is neutralized, we can no longer enjoy the pleasure.
So the secret of happiness, Kabbalah explains, is to add another ingredient to this process, the ingredient of "intention." This means that we keep wanting just like before, only we put a different spin on our desire: we direct it outward, as if we are giving to someone else. In other words, this intention turns our desire into a "passageway" for the pleasure. Thus, the pleasure we feel won't stop; it will keep going through our desire, following our intention. And our desire will be able to keep receiving continuously, without ever being quenched.
And that's the formula for endless pleasure, or lasting happiness. When a person applies this formula, he actually goes through a profound transition and begins to feel different kinds of pleasures. Kabbalah calls them "spiritual," and precisely they are endless.
In Conclusion—a Short Summary
What is happiness?
It's what we feel when we fulfill our "will to receive."
Why does it go away?
Because the pleasure neutralizes our desire, and without a desire, we can't feel pleasure.
What's the formula for feeling endless pleasure?
Adding an "intention of giving" to our "will to receive," so the pleasure will keep flowing through our desire, endlessly.
True happiness is just around the corner, waiting for us to learn how to feel it, how to add an intention to our desire. Studying Kabbalah, we naturally acquire this new, spiritual intention and start receiving the way Nature wants us to—perfectly. This is why "Kabbalah" is Hebrew for "reception"—it's the wisdom that teaches us how to receive.

21 march

Today we again looked at the Jewish Mystic philosophy of Kabbalah. First with a 30 minute film. It told us that since 1995 kabbalah became available for Gentiles to read and learn after a 4000 year hidden practice.
After a tea break we went on to read about practical Kabbalah from a woman's perspective.
I believe we all enjoyed the morning and intend to continue to learn more as there are 20 more films to continue the journey of discovery.

15 February

Down in numbers through an epidemic of colds but the five of us had a good meeting where we first looked at a short film about the Kabalah. According to this we are only aware of the 1% of reality which is physical the 99% is a hidden spiritual realm. Afterwards following a break for tea and biscuits we then read about this philosophy. (an extract below.)
The Freedom Blues
Did you ever wonder why you like going on vacation? What are you looking for in another place that you can't find at home? Kabbalah explains that what we're looking for is actually right in front of us, or rather, right inside of us.
Looking for a Getaway
Freedom of expression, freedom of religion, freedom of information, freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to create, freedom fighters, academic freedom, economic freedom, free time… In the 21st century, it appears that almost everyone can make up his own kind of freedom.
But is there such a thing as absolute, unconditional freedom? Not freedom of something, but simply limitless, unbounded freedom in every imaginable sense? Is there such a thing as simply, freedom?
Kabbalah says there is, but it's very different from what we usually imagine. For most of us, freedom means getting away from the daily grind and the troubles of day-to-day life. We want to be liberated from the worries, the pressures, the boss at work and the overdrawn bank account. In short, we'd like a bit of escape from real life so we can catch our breath.
So we work hard all year and save money, so as to finally get a few moments of mercy on a sandy beach.
And between you and me, something always doesn't work out quite the way we wanted. One time it's the hotel, another time it's the flight, and if it's nothing else, then the kids decide that now is the perfect time to get sick... Somehow or other, most vacations don't end up being exactly what we dreamed of.
And even when we get lucky and go on that perfect vacation, every passing moment reminds us that it will all be over soon and before we know it, we'll have to plunge back into "real life."
If you stop and ponder this for a moment, some interesting questions will pop up: Does getting away from the routine really make us freer? What if there were a way to live differently so we would not want to escape our lives in search of freedom? And is there such a thing as an endless, perfect dream vacation?

18th January

As we had two new members attending our meeting for the first time we summed up the main findings from our last years meetings. Then watched a short film of the enlightened Eckhart Tolle explaining the joy of being in the now. Although we are all in the now as that is all there is most of us are either thinking of the future or the past but Eckhart tells us to regard all events as transient and not to expend our mindfulness on what is not real.
After tea and a biscuit we read and discussed Reality and Consciousness: Turning the Superparadigm Inside Out, Peter Russell, an abridgement of Russell's book, From Science to God.
His main conclusion is that to ask how consciousness arose out of the physical is wrong. This is trying to account for consciousness in terms that are themselves manifestations of consciousness. Space, time, matter, and all the forms and structures we observe in the world, are aspects of the phenomenon arising in the mind; they are aspects of the image of reality appearing in consciousness.
The question we should be asking is the exact opposite. How is that consciousness, which seems so non-material, can take on the material forms that we experience? How do space, time, color, sound, texture, substance, and the many other qualities that we associate with the material world, emerge in consciousness? What is the process of manifestation within the mind?
But this is not a question that science may ever be able to answer. It is more in the domain of the mystic, and others in the more contemplative traditions, who have chosen to explore the nature of consciousness first hand.

21 December

This month we viewed a short film All You Need to Know about Angels, an Interview with Dr. Joy Philippou, President of Body, Mind & Soul International.
We do have an open mind and who is to say it is impossible, living is a miracle so why not another, although not persuaded that Angels exist we accepted that Joy is joyous through having the belief in Angels and a cosmic Christ who acts as a intermediary to God.
Her obvious health intelligence at an age that most of us are getting very tired she sparkles with a glow that is a testament to her faith.
We then went on to look at another person who claims to be enlightened A man, indeed, who was spiritually enlightened twenty years ago. Eckhart Tolle (pronounced Toll-ee) says that while “there are shifts in intensity”, he remains in the same state of “bliss and peace”. He no longer sits on a park bench but lives in a high-rise in Vancouver and teaches others how to attain enlightenment, among them Gillian Anderson of The X Files; Cher, who says he “has changed my life”; and Meg Ryan, who introduced Oprah Winfrey to Tolle’s first book, The Power of Now: A Spiritual Guide to Enlightenment. Last year, Winfrey chose the book for her Favourite Things show, saying she had read it eight times and keeps it on her bedside table. Sales skyrocketed: The Power of Now — with an original print run of 3000 — became No. 1 on Amazon.com and spent 20 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, selling more than one million copies in North America. Released in Australia in 2000, it was still on the top 10 list this year, and has been translated into more than two dozen languages.

Not having time to see a film of his we just discussed his philosophy of living in the "now" by letting go of the ego, where the world is enshrined with the light of God. We are not sure that this is the state we ought to live in constantly although it may be needed each day to help centre our being.
I have read A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose by Eckhart Tolle and found it very "enlightening." It is in the Totton library

Will look at this subject again.

November meeting

After settling down we watched a video of the Rev. Tom Honey on the subject of How could God have allowed the tsunami?


We then discussed the implications related to the video before our tea break afterwards we read two papers one short one on the Bushido way of life which although to be admired in some respects we were not that persuaded that it was a healthy philosophy. The second paper's topic, extracted from Farley Malorrus's show on July 20th 1987, discusses how we can all Expect a Miracle just by affirming this as thought within a Mantra. A cheerful note to end on

October meeting

For a light hearted but thoughtful introduction to today's meeting we watched Julia Sweeny recounting her presentation of Letting go of God. Chapter one "There is no Santa Claus"

After this we had a free ranging discussion before reading a collection of sayings from masters who have reputedly found enlightenment. We then discussed our views as to what enlightenment is. This topic engaged us even through our tea break.

21 September

Today we started by watching a short film about the origins of Christianity. The revelations that the three kings was a reference to the three stars pointing to the star of the east on the 25th December and the same virgin birth, twelve disciples and the cross story that date back far into the past long before the reputed time of Jesus. Even the Egyptian god Horus was born of a virgin all linked to the worship of the sun.

"Stories from the life of Horus had been circulating for centuries before Jesus birth (circa 4 to 7 BC). If any copying occurred by the writers of the Egyptian or Christian religions, it was the followers of Jesus who incorporated into his biography the myths and legends of Horus, not vice-versa.

Author and theologian Tom Harpur studied the works of three authors who have written about ancient Egyptian religion: Godfrey Higgins (1771-1834), Gerald Massey (1828-1907) and Alvin Boyd Kuhn (1880-1963). Harpur incorporated some of their findings into his book "Pagan Christ." He argued that all of the essential ideas of both Judaism and Christianity came primarily from Egyptian religion. "[Author Gerald] Massey discovered nearly two hundred instances of immediate correspondence between the mythical Egyptian material and the allegedly historical Christian writings about Jesus. Horus indeed was the archetypal Pagan Christ."

We went on to discuss many other ideas as to the right way to live including discussing "The tribe" where Bruce learned that suffering was caused through desire. Then further discussion on the permanence of the ego and the realization of the Self.

August Meeting

We studied a philosopher who died this year at the age of 98. He was still vigorous in manner and speech until the end. At the age of 30 he made a discovery that seems bizarre yet obvious to everybody when told. His Revelation gave him a life long crusade to pass on his discovery, helping people to discover a new richness to their lives. Curious? Come along to next month's meeting on the third Friday and I will tell you about him.

We had a shorter philosophical meeting as after a break we watched the DVD that Dave made of the general meeting's high spot listening to the U3A's own music group.

13th July

I did have a subject to discuss but we carried on with last month's discussion so we never got round to anything else. What we did discuss is the esoteric knowledge in this context meaning the "inner" (eso-), in the sense of the inner consciousness; the contemplative, gnostic, wisdom perspective, as opposed to the "outer" (exo-) or Exoteric, i.e. the outer or surface or everyday consciousness. Esoteric and Exoteric are the two basic ways of looking at reality - the intuitive and the rational.

Back to the 3rd Friday next month.

June

An amusing meeting today. AS Geoff joined us for the first time we started to review the previous year's monthly discussions. We agreed that philosophy is a life extending practice although this depended on it being a positive philosophy - that led to what is a negative philosophy.Then we covered Gnosis (Union with God) and the esoteric teachings in most world religions. The following month we read part of the "In tune with the infinite". The author Ralph Waldo Trine appears to see the world as the kingdom of God in his book. Where God is both transcendent and immanent. That led to what is the meaning of the words. We touched on Nietzsche's ideas - the complete antithesis. Nietzsche believed in nothing except the self in time and his loathing of those who believed in the timeless being.

Because of the time being limited we broke off to look at the film "The secret beyond matter" This led to a lively debate.
Next meeting on the second Friday of the month.

May meeting

Today's investigation as to reality was a touch hard to grasp. If science explains how our senses work in the objective world by receiving only electrical signals from all of our five senses then logically we live within our own brains. No sentient being now or ever in the future will know reality directly. But is science right?

April Meeting

Interesting discussion at today's meeting. We first reviewed the report in the new Scientist that confirms our feeling that there is a law of Karma.

ANTISOCIAL behaviour doesn't just harm society - it may also harm the perpetrators' health. That's the message of a 30-year study examining the hidden costs of petty crime to society.
The researchers, who monitored 500 children for 30 years. "It's the first study to demonstrate the link between children who engage in antisocial behaviour and deficits in physical health when they grow up," says study leader Candice Odgers of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. As well as accounting for more than their share of crime in later life, "they also incur hitherto unrecognised medical costs", she says.
Although these individuals accounted for just 10 per cent of the sample, they were responsible for 18 per cent of traffic injuries, 29 per cent of the days spent in psychiatric hospitals, 72 per cent of the months spent in jail and 42 per cent of the total months where study members were homeless or taken in by others.
Persistent offenders also had three times the healthy blood level of C-reactive protein, a marker that indicates raised risk of heart attacks or stroke. It is surprising to see this marked risk for heart disease in such young men, Odgers says. "As we follow them to their 50s and 60s, the health burden will likely get even worse."

We then went on to learn about the emptiness of matter.

"Can anyone imagine this entire planet squeezed down to the size of a pearl? But that's what matter is without empty space between particles.
All this shows that matter is 99.99999 percent void - just an illusion of whirling electrical charges. If a c.c. of matter from a pulsar weighs 10 million tons, how much actual matter is in a 200-pound person like me? If the empty space were squeezed out, there wouldn't be enough to see with a microscope. We think we have substance, but we're composed of NOTHING."

After this it was easier to understand David Bohm, whose work inspired many people all over the world, his contributions to science and philosophy are profound. Bohm says that the universe is like a hologram.

16th March meeting

For a change we studied the text of a speech made by Vaclav Havel
The Need for Transcendence in the Postmodern World
In this postmodern world, cultural conflicts are becoming more dangerous than any time in history. A new model of coexistence is needed, based on man's transcending himself.
Vaclav Havel is the president of the Czech Republic. The speech was made in Independence Hall, Philadelphia, July 4, 1994.

Amazing, a politician with intelligence and spiritual wisdom.

Joke
"Make me one with everything." said the buddhist monk to the hot-dog vendor.
The hot dog vendor prepares the hot dog and gives it to the monk. The monk pays him and asks for the change. The hot dog vendor says: "Change comes from within."

February meeting

To start the meeting off we played a DVD showing the traditional Buddhist philosophy with its emphasis on meditation and cultivating the right mind over many years to gain enlightenment. We went on to read various quotes on the immediacy of zen type enlightenment with the realization that samsara is nirvana.

The Secret: First 20 minutes

This is the first 20 minutes of the global film phenomenon "The Secret". It is authorized by The Secret LLC for personal use only.

Keith Ward

Keith Ward is Regius Professor of Divinity at http://resources.theology.ox.ac.uk/staff.phtml?lecturer_code=Kward Oxford University. For more info go to www.meaningoflife.tv.

January Meeting

This month we examined two philosophies. We watched an introductory twenty minutes of THE SECRET on the Internet at The Secret

We all thought this was mainly true. Hard to take in if you have chronic sickness and maybe in poor circumstances. Have a look and see if you think the secret is right.
We then examined another philosophy which is directly opposite including studying Shakespeare's King Lear in his not understanding "nothing". We also thought this too is right but perhaps a philosophy more appealing for those who have already succeeded in living a full life.

December 8th

We never got far in reading about Alan Watts and Zen as each controversial description of man's alienation led to a discussion on whether we agreed or not. To start us off I quoted the message on a display board outside of the church in Salisbury Road Totton. "Man is born with an emptiness inside that only God can fill" I agree with the statement except that God is a word that is interpreted by every religion and belief in many different ways.