Spritual Teachers

I would like to Honour my Spiritual Teachers Venerable Namgyel and Sri Devamitta Holland with this "reflective" article in appreciation of everything they do for Humanity and for me personally.

After a spiritual retreat, I become a little withdrawn and go very deep introspectively to search for, and process, all the possible things I’ve learned that can help me to become a better human being.
The end of this retreat has been no different and one of the many focal points of my learning has been to come to a deep appreciation for my spiritual teachers who have guided me along my journey’s path.

The question floating around in my mind, over the last day or so, has been: “Do we really, and truly, appreciate our spiritual teachers and everything they have been through in order to be in the position they are in to teach us?”

We are all teachers to one another and, every day, we are in this perpetual cycle of learning and teaching - but are we fully aware of it? Or does each lesson pass us by without us giving it the appropriate amount of attention?

Everything we say and do is the product of a lesson we have learned from someone at some particular moment in time - and, although we may not realise it, at the time, everything we say and do also serves as a lesson for someone else.

However, it is my humble opinion that Spiritual Teachers (especially travelling ones) are so very precious, and genuine ones may be a little rarer to find in this day and age when everyone can become a self proclaimed "spiritual guru".

Some Spiritual Teachers travel long distances; enduring the hardships of airports and sleeping in a different bed every week in a different country. And, whoever has travelled a lot knows how difficult airports can be with their policy of being there 2 hours before, the stress of security checks, queues, extortionate prices for food and let’s not mention the need to get up at absurd times of the morning, perhaps with little to no sleep, in order not to miss their flight.

They spend so much of their precious time, and their life, on a plane and suffering chaotic travel conditions for our sake.

I wonder if we fully appreciate how much constant flying, and crossing multiple time zones, in a pressurised cabin, affects the body and, ultimately, health itself.

I, also, wonder if we fully appreciate how tired a teacher must feel when he/she spends his/her day giving so much of himself/herself - sharing precious wisdom, answering all our questions and giving each and every one of us enough attention.

During each retreat/teachings, a teacher may have 30, different, people to respond to. It must be very taxing mentally and physically. That’s not to mention how many emails a teacher has to answer nowadays of other students far far away from the retreat in course.

I think we, sometimes, fail to remember that a Spiritual teacher is still a human being, like us - made of flesh and blood. The only difference between us is that they have optimised their full spiritual potential whereas we haven’t even started to scratch the surface. 



We take so much from them, and, perhaps a little selfishly, expect them to just keep giving and giving and giving but I ask myself how much we, actually, give them back and when I say give back, I mean by looking after them, and their well-being, so that they may always have their batteries fully charged, be in good health, and be able to benefit even more people on their journey’s path that takes them around the world. 



As a event organiser, and a devoted student, I reach out to all retreat organisers around the world to truly value the precious teacher you are hosting. It’s imperative to let our teachers rest appropriately. We all benefit from a refreshed mind in a relaxed body.

It costs nothing to let our teacher rest a day, before any retreat, after a long trip, and it costs nothing to let them rest a day or two after the teachings so they may fully recover.



My wish is that, as retreat organisers, we may show the same compassion, love, patience and kindness to our Spiritual Teachers as they show us. After all, are love, patience, kindness and compassion not the very things our Teachers are trying to teach us?

What use is learning if we can’t put what we learn into practice with the very people that show us the way?

Wherever you are, whoever you are, as a fellow student, I ask you ... please ... love, take care of, and appreciate all teachers in this world because, if they are no longer able to teach, through ill health, who will we all turn to?

All of our "Life" Teachers give us wings (some more than others and some literally) and they also give us the ability to consistently transform/improve ourselves. It's up to us to choose whether to fly or not and what greater Honour is there, for our Teacher, than to see us fly the way they taught us to!
Have a beautiful day one and all.

A simple act of kindness

Dear New World citizens,

Yesterday I spoke about how a simple smile can change the world, can you imagine what a random act of kindness could do?

You may not believe it but a simple act of kindness can travel across the world and last for decades and decades. It is something that, to you, could mean very little but, to someone else, mean the world. Perhaps the person in front of you has never received an act of kindness from anyone. How sad is that?

If you have ever been on the receiving end of kindness, you know how nice it feels. You know how special it is to have been the centre of someone’s attention; albeit for just a few moments. The simple fact that someone shifted their focus from their own world to direct their attention to you and give you their time is an act that should be honoured and treasured.

Before the days of commerce and having to pay for things, we all gave each other our time. We hunted together in community spirit, we shared our food, we protected each other and knew the name of everyone in our village. We had no money. So, all we had to give was our time. Our time spent together is what made our bonds grow stronger and kept us together.

Nowadays, in a society where we cannot, conventionally, survive without money, the last thing we have for each other is time. It is this lack of time that keeps us separate. 



We have children but we don’t really watch them grow up because we are too busy providing for them. 

We mortgage ourselves to the hilts for a house that we end up spending no more than 10 hours a day in - and for 8 of those we are, most likely, sleeping. We get so stressed, with our jobs, that we end up leading unhappy & unfulfilling lives. This leads to frustration that, then, might get vented during the first opportunity you have to spend with your family.


We all only have a certain amount of time on this planet and most of it is consumed with surviving. So, giving someone your time, no matter how small, no matter how insignificant you think it is, is, in fact, the MOST PRECIOUS gift you can give anyone.

A simple act of kindness is giving someone your time and, within that time, taking the opportunity to make someone’s life a little easier, a little less stressful, a little lighter and definitely a little happier.

The beauty of kindness is that it is infectious. It’s like a virus. Once it’s been carried out, it will carry on producing good energy for days, weeks, months and, in some cases, for decades and decades to come. Maybe for a few people, your one simple act of kindness will be remembered with affection and create warmth for the rest of their lives.

Just think - How amazingly beautiful is it that You were able to give that gift to someone. If you are on the receiving end of someone’s effort to be kind to you then think about what a beautiful gift it is for you too and be grateful. 



Our Universal consciousness loves gratitude. When we’re grateful, we attract more of what we’re grateful for.

Idiopathic Intracranial Hypertension

Death and Rebirth

Teach children to remain innocent

Yesterday, I said that you could help the planet by planting a tree. Well, today I'm going to show you another way you can help.

You can teach your children to keep their innocence instead of showing them how to lose it.

Yes, we, as adults, are responsible for the loss of innocence in our children. We don't do it intentionally. We probably don't even realise that we're doing it. We think we are giving them life skills but, in reality, we are teaching them to judge and be discriminating.

By teaching children what is right and wrong, we are giving them our opinion based on the opinion of the majority that we've accepted as resonating with us as our truth. But, It might not be based on fact nor be an absolute reality. By introducing them to the concepts of happy/sad, good/bad, hot/cold, we are teaching them to judge so that they may avoid unduly suffering. Our intentions are good. We want to protect them from the pain we've been through in our lives.

Yet suffering serves a purpose, too, and it teaches us invaluable lessons; lessons that perhaps we cannot learn any other way than facing our pain head on, learning from it and releasing it.

All of us lose our innocence when we start to discriminate. If we are to live on this planet, as the one Human Race that we are, we MUST teach our children to NOT discriminate. I understand that, with all the tragic fighting and wars, death and devastation, it's very hard to teach our children not to judge BUT ... the majority of you, reading this, probably have the privilege to live in a war free zone. So, you can teach your children to show love, kindness and compassion.

Do we all not search for love our entire lives? Is the hope, then, that love will, eventually, heal everything - even the deepest wounds? Well, what if love is never lost? It is inside us the whole time but we never see it until, one day, someone comes along who reflects it right back at us.

When we teach our children how to discriminate, we are effectively teaching them how to judge and while we're distracted, by judging each other in the physical plane, we miss the beautiful qualities that truly make up who we are, and who we are is one and the same. There is no difference between you and I. When we realise there is no difference, we can no longer live in separation and that is when we become one - The One Human race we have always been.

Health and Walking with Fitness Expert Louise Jones

Plant a Tree

I hear a lot of people saying they don't know what to do to help save the planet. They fall into the trap of believing that they can't help, because they think the problem is too big, and so they stop there and give up. It's not that they're unwilling or incapable, they genuinely don't know what to do.
Well, all you members of New World Citizen, here's one thing you can do to help - Plant a Tree - You heard me ... Plant a Tree - It's not difficult ... you can do it anywhere and you'll be saving a life. Yes, saving a life - and that life could be of your mother, father, brother, sister, friend, neighbour, county, country - even planet.

The air, we breathe, is sadly not what it use to be ... Gases, emissions, pollution in general, is affecting our air very badly ... just look at all the factories and the gases they send up into the atmosphere. Think of the amount of plane emissions that get dumped every day. Think of the amount of fumes emitted by cars, buses, trains etc etc. All of that goes into our lungs when we breathe in and it doesn't matter where you live, you ARE affected.

I hear you say: "I live in a beautiful part of the countryside. The air here is pure. The water unspoiled. The land untouched" - but you're wrong.

That air, no matter where you live, is the same air we all breathe ... ALL OVER THE WORLD .... The air in your country is NOT exclusive to you. It travels ... and every breath you take in and then breathe out will, one day, come my way, and I will breathe it in and then breathe it out before it goes on its way to someone else.

Don't believe me? ... ok, well, watch how far cigarette smoke travels when it's blow out of a moving car window or how far smoke travels up and out of a chimney. Or, look up at the trail a plane can leave behind it. Air is not a containable substance. It cannot be isolated.
 
Air, is what keeps us alive. If we stop breathing, we know we die. So, air is, technically, the most important substance for our survival. Yet, so many people are dieing because of the quality of their air. Many cancers are caused by our polluted air and many diseases, as we know, can be transmitted through the air because viruses, like everything else on this planet are energy, (atoms), which are the very fibre of the air we breathe.

The air is cleaned by trees. They act like a big filter ... They suck in the bad stuff, cleanse it and send it back into the air in a clean format that we can breathe harmlessly.

The problem around the world is that too many trees are being cut down too quickly. Therefore, our filter is falling apart. It needs replacing like the filter in our cars.

The great news is that it's not too late to fix it. All we need to do is plant trees. If we all did, we would be giving ourselves and others the gift of life. If you plant a fruit tree, you give the world the gift of nourishment as well as life. You, also give the gift of anticipation - the excitement of waiting for the fruit to appear and ripen to consume, and hope - that the tree may bare fruit.

A tree isn't just a tree ... it's life itself ...
So, please plant a tree, be a hero and save a life.