This is a ‘re-run’ of a blog I wrote more than 10 years ago but still seems relevant – especially to the 5th Being of the Beingfulness practice: Being Emotional. I’ve been filming down in Herefordshire and Dorset for ‘Escape’, which means I’ve also been out in the cold a lot in this chilly Northwind. […]
This is a tidied up transcript of an answer I gave in the Live Sessions in February 2021. Tamsyn mentioned her dislike of reading Freud during her therapy training, and I jumped to his defence… The thing about Freud is, he is a stylist. Freud is a Viennese writer of the 1900s. He’s an amazing […]
When I was growing up, the mother of the family across the road, Marilyn Chapman was a teacher at a local school . I remember talking to her at some party at their house when I was 17 or so. I was talking about my French ‘A’ level set texts and was moaning about how […]
It’s over here in Newhaven. The zero winter, when everything is hard-frozen like stone and the rain, when it comes, is cold and steely. It’s already been and gone. The pagans say that Imbolc (Feb 1-2) is the beginning of spring Today, the first day after Imbolc, the rain comes down like spring-water. Clear, sensuous, […]
This is a transcript from a recent lesson at The Mindsprings Practice Space There’s a lovely teaching, by Pema Chodron about not mistaking control for love. If you want to control somebody or something or control your experience, we might think of that as being meditation or- even worse – we might think of it […]
I’m back filming for Escape to the Country and away from Daniel and the dog for the first time in months. The first time filming in a year. And after a day shooting in the Lake District, I leave the crew and head down on foot to Coniston Water. Like a piece of wrap-around sound […]
The final two quatrains of W.H. Auden’s Fall of Rome have been circling in my mind during this extraordinary time in lockdown. Especially as I think of my friends in New York. I had to search hard to find this photo I took from the top of the Empire State in the summer of 2005. […]
My friend Jane posted this from a shut-down Manhattan. It’s a quote from an elder of the Hopi Nation. And it sends shivers down my spine. “You have been telling the people that this is the Eleventh Hour.Now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour.And there are things to […]
“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 […]
“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 […]