“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will […]
[This is a second excerpt from the recent ‘Tender Heart’ Scarborough Retreat held in March 2019. The first is here. This is a transcript from day 3 looking at the ego phase we all need to grow through… Alistair has just been talking about how when things feel ‘too much’ in meditation we lurch towards […]
Tapping and meditation are my guilty secret There’s a thing that I have been keeping quiet about and I’m not sure why. Many years ago, when I was finishing five years of therapy with my wonderful therapist, Ruthie, she looked at me and said: “You realise that we’ve been working together all these years and […]
“I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public […]
[This is an excerpt from the recent ‘Tender Heart’ Scarborough Retreat held in March 2019.] Q: You mentioned the Earth being already enlightened and that it was the Earth that made us enlightened, not our own efforts, Can you elaborate on that? A: The truth is that the thinking mind, the ego, can’t get anywhere […]
Alistair Appleton LGBT video Survival of the Gentlest A few people have mentioned this YouTube clip of me giving a ‘sermon’ at the wonderful Brighton Metropolitan Community Church a few years back. So I thought I’d post it here since I didn’t put it up here the first time around!
The need to be a ‘know-it-all’ I have a problem with teachers. When I was little – for various reasons I won’t bore you with – I always felt that I had to know the answer before the question was asked. The possibility of being wrong or not being ‘perfect’ was a big problem for […]
Wordsworth is a key figure in Reggie’s understanding of dharma. Strange that a 19th Century Cumbrian poet should feature so strongly in a 20th Century American Buddhist scholar’s worldview but he does. I studied Wordsworth’s autobiographical poem, ‘The Prelude’, at school and was always struck by some of his childhood recollections of moments of sublime […]
Friends whispered that Winter on the Island was the most magical I’ve been going to Holy Island for almost two decades – sometimes twice or three times a year. But until this January I had never been there in the Winter. Most of the Mindsprings retreats take place in the Summer and Autumn when vivid-green […]
the sweetest, fondest, brightest dog I’ve ever had Ok, so we have a dog. A puppy. A 40kg puppy. My husband promised that our Spanish rescue was a small boy, the little one of the litter and probably wouldn’t be any bigger than 35kg full grown. When he hopped out of the transport van that […]
