A student at the 2018 Summer Retreat asked if meditation can be guaranteed to make you calmer, more self-confident and stronger. His answer was an emphatic “No”. Meditation helps us grow up and take on the full remit of being human. Something we all – including the POTUS – have to work at.

Alistair Appleton reveals that much of what we think about the ‘ego’ being a problem is wrong. Much of the ego is not a problem – just one aspect of it… Taken from the Summer 2018 Retreat on Holy Island. To find out about 2019’s retreat look here: mind-springs.org/courses/summer-m…y-is-the-ground/

In his opening comments to the 2018 “Being Still, Still Being” retreat Alistair outlines the neurobiological underpinnings of our obsessive busy-ness and how we need to work with that not against it. The Summer Retreat on Holy Island, suitable for all levels, is open for booking here.

Most of us exist in a frenzied haze of continual distraction from our real experience of life. The traditional posture of sitting meditation creates a framework that makes the distraction fade out, and life appear.

Most of us are compulsive do-ers and actually afraid of being still and silent. Alistair explores the three interlocking states of being-enjoying-doing and how they can help us relax.

In an excerpt from the 2018 Summer retreat on Holy Island, Alistair explores some of the current thinking about introverts ruling the world and how discomfort can often bring wisdom.

Alistair starts to explore with the retreatants on Holy Island the realm of “non-thought”. If we no longer identify with our thoughts then what is left? What is our true identity?

In this excerpt from the 2018 Retreat ‘Being Still Still Being’, Alistair looks at the experience of thinking as a phenomenon. What is thinking? And how does it feel?

In a second excerpt from the 2018 Summer retreat on Holy Island, Alistair looks at the potent connection between Tibetan Buddhism and poetry. Touching on Trungpa and the Beatniks and Reggie’s strange love of Wordsworth.