Glastonbury 2011

As I hit the refresh key for the millionth time I wonder if the past 3 1/2 hours have been a waste of my life which I will never get back, but hope shines through and I continue to hit the refresh in the vain hope that I will actually get to the buy tickets here page. Alas hope failed and they sold out and I didn't even get to see what the buy tickets page looked like, let alone get one.

4 hours gone with no result except the fact that my mind now feels sucked dry of any matter.

Why do i want to go to Glastonbury ........... to sell Krishna Conscious books of course.

200,000 people all looking for an alternate experience yet lining themselves up for a week of intense sense gratification and suffering (believe me I've been there loads and people suffer). What better ground for offering people another option, a higher option for enjoyment.

It's just the ticket buying process is like entering hell, a hell I am willing to enter for a spiritual goal but for the other 1000's of people trying to get a ticket it's a preview of the ordeal to come.

Home Alone Part 2

The music was rubbish and the club tacky but I was drunk enough to enjoy it. I had been in Kendal (Yorkshire) for nearly 2 months now training to become a scuba diving instructor and it hit me while at the bar. I missed the Hare Krishna devotee's. Bit of an awkward time to have an epiphany.

It was nice to see the devotee's again and I soon got a renewed taste for the chanting and the association of the small community of Krishna's in Cardiff.

To be able to talk of spiritual matters and mention the word God without worrying about being mocked or told to shut up was a breath of fresh air. My normal hang outs of clubs and parties tended not to suit in depth discussions on the nature of God, consciousness and the soul :)

Months passed in an eclectic mix of drunken hedonism and Krishna Conscious soul searching.

Leaving the house of the previous nights conquest I was depressed. This life was not for me. That was it, I had had enough. Yet here I was unable to break free of it.

I moved to Cardiff to be with the Hari's.

I am reminded this morning after a very nice couple of days in Swansea chanting with friends and devotee's from around Wales, of an old saying.

A single stick in a river will very quickly be smashed on the rocks and broken but if you bond many sticks together then nothing can break them along their journey.

Real friends matter, who we hang out with really does effect our state of Consciousness.

I can't wait for our meditation room to be ready so I can get back to chanting in the company of others.

Home Alone Part 1

I am one of those people that likes his own space ........... most of time. While we have been decorating the Soul Centre at Cafe Atma there has been no morning prayer program going on. Usually my day would start chanting for 3 hours with the other devotee's in the meditation room. However due to renovations we have not had the use of the room for a month or 2 now. At first I didn't mind, quite liked the space and relished chanting in my own space.......

Pause for a moment and come back with me to the bad old days of 1996 when I first started trying to get into Krishna Consciousness. Picture the scene if you will, a young man with a shared flat enjoying the summer and all it has to offer. Drinking, partying hard, out every night, lots of friends...... although I couldn't name them or remember most of them when sober. Fully sold out to the dream of becoming the next Marquis De Sade or at least the next Alfie Elkins.

Then out of the blue I started becoming attracted more and more to the habits of a higher more pleasurable life, a Krishna Conscious life. Soon I was chanting regularly, reading books on ancient vedic philosophy and hanging out with the Hari's.

After about 2 months of adopting a more spiritual, holistic way of life, still living on my own, I found myself in a night club with friends. I had given up drinking and all other vices for around a month then as the clock turned past 1am I found myself at the bar ordering a pint of stella................ £40 and an hour 'n' a half later I was on the dance floor giving it my all, friends cheering, I was back and making a speedy recovery to full hedonistic health.

Another 2 months pass, a moment of sobriety.

What happened?

How did I get back here????????

In Praise of Others

You really are a wonderful person. I have never met some one so kindhearted good natured and likable as you. whenever I need to be cheered up there you are making me laugh and whenever I need support I know you are there, my trusted and loyal friend. In fact sometimes all I need is a smile from you and that's enough to get me through the day.

Sounds nice, wouldn't we be happy to hear these things , or something similar, said about us.

Out selling books today I heard so much negativity towards people it disturbed me. No one seemed happy unless they were moaning about someone else. ( I know I do this a lot.) But at the same time seeking to be praised themselves.

In this modern day world where insecurity is rife and the almost constant validation is needed to keep us going we all like to to hear ourselves praised.

Yet according to modern research into depression and anxiety disorders this constant searching for glorification is exactly what is leading to insecurity and the breakdown of all types of relationships.

In his book "The feeling good handbook" Dr David D Burns suggests a radical answer to our problems. He suggests that if we spend more time thinking about and praising our friends and families good qualities then as a natural consequence we will become liked more and feel more peaceful in the mind and have better quality ,deeper relationships.

The Veda's have been saying this for over 5000 years. Part of the krishna conscious teachings is that we should never look for praise but always be ready to praise others even if all the praise we can muster is " at least he wears clean clothes".

This actually works. if we make an effort not to see the faults in others ( we all have em) but to let people know when and how we appreciate them, then actually we do feel happier. If we feel happier then we will see less and less others bad and more and more peoples good qualities and naturally become content and peaceful in our selves and our social dealings.

It ain't rocket science :)

gettin back into it

Ok I have been a way for a while. Lots of excuses non of them good.

But I am back.

One of the reasons I started this blog was to give some insight into life as a Hare Krishna monk a peek into what a life of devotion is the progression towards a spiritual reality. The problems we face, the highs we experience, challenges we have both internal and external. I wanted to show an honest view of my devotional life and share my realizations with you.

Well a big challenge recently has been wether to remain a monk or to get married...... whoooaaa hold on there I hear you cry........ about 3 months ago I made a choice that I could move forward spiritually and it would be better for me if I got married. It was a desire that had been in the back of my mind for a couple of years and finally I kinda realised that it wasn't going away and was stopping me getting closer to krishna. I'm going to write a bit more about this change in a couple of weeks.

I am still as devoted to krishna as ever and my devotional life isn't going, in essence, to change. Self realization is still my goal.

This blog will continue weekly (see the subtle name change) I promise, and if anything will be a bit more colourful as I go through a new part in the adventure of my spiritual life along the path of devotion.

and no I'm not married already :)

In Praise Of God

While I've been away traveling the UK selling books on Krishna consciousness for the past 2 weeks I have been noticing some wonderfully beautiful buildings. On the way to Salisbury, in a small village, there is an amazing Tuscan style church. It is a truly amazing building in the middle of no where. The only explanation for such a grandiose building is that at sometime in the past someone with a connection to that village wanted to spend a lot of time and money in establishing a very ornate place of worship in glorification to God. It isn't the only place, there are so many wonderful and gorgeous churches, cathedrals and Abbeys around the country. Some over a 1000 years old some newer and it brings to mind a time when people where willing to dedicate their life's work in praise of the Supreme. Anyone who has seen the Sistine chapel will be struck with wonder by the sheer beauty of Michelangelo's finest achievement. The worry is that in this day and age no one seems to be willing to invest their time, money and skill in a work that will stand as an earthly monument in praise of God. What a shame that in the UK we can invest millions in new shopping malls and cineplex's as monuments to our material greed and need for sense gratification but do not think like these people of our past and enquire how we have glorified Krishna lately?

The Past Month

Some of you may have noticed that there has been a severe lack of activity on here recently.

An easy excuse would be that I have been very busy with the new cafe, and for a few weeks this was true. Not so though for the past 3. In truth there have been a lot of things going on recently some of which I will discus on my next blog. To keep what could be a long blog very short there are going to be some big changes in my life and the past few weeks have been taken over, thinking over these changes and possible other ones to make sure that I can continue my quest for Krishna's love and service in the right way and the way which will be most beneficial to my progression. Dum da dum daadummm.

It all sounds very mellow dramatic I know but I just haven't been able to put my mind into this blog or many other things while I've been mulling over these things.

Anyway more on that soon I promise.

This is just a quick post to let you all know I'm still here and to apologize for not keeping up with a regular post recently and to try and explain a little bit why there hasn't been anything.

Painting

So for the past two weeks I have been getting the new Cafe/meditation centre together. With a lot of help from friends we have managed to strip what was there and re-decorate (including moving a wall). When we first got in the place looked like it would need very little work but as we started to sand and remove things the extent of the work became apparent. What we thought was a simple few days job has turned into two weeks of hard work. it seemed that when we started on each wall thinking "oh that looks ok" we would find so much filling to be done some times things had to be replaced totally. The closer we looked and the more work we did in preparation for painting the worse the place looked, but after some hard work by all involved now it is finished and just waiting for furniture.

It seems that this is just like our spiritual practices, at first we think this is easy then the more we look deep into our hearts the more dirt and damage we see that has to be cleaned and repaired. yet with some hard work, determination and help from spiritually advanced friends our hearts can once again become full and pristine with krishna's love. No one expects it to be easy to reverse a lifetime of being brain washed into gross materialism to be easy and yet in a very short time we can taste the love that Krishna is offering us simply by meditating on His names Hare Krishna Hare Krishna Krishna Krishna Hare Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama Rama Rama Hare Hare. Please try it and see.

Time I Am : part 2

Yeah I know it's a day or 2 late, sorry:)

Today is my friend Danda-krt's birthday.

Is this to celebrated???

YAY you decided to try and be the lord of your life left Krishna and came to the material world to try and enjoy through the exploitation of your body, others and Mother Earth. We chose the temporal material sphere. Lets celebrate the fact that everything we do is withered by the unforgiving nature of time.

Happy birthday, good choice.

But is everything we do withered by time?

Bhagavad Gita states that the soul cannot be burnt by fire, worn by water or withered by wind. It cannot be destroyed, it is unborn, eternal and can never die. So it would stand to reason that if we act on the spiritual platform not the material then time cannot touch these activities they are also not withered, never worn or reduced. Always fresh

That is the nature of the spiritual it is ever fresh. We have the chance to experience a nature that the ravages of that great destroyer, time, cannot touch.

What are we waiting for?

Time I Am : part 1

Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer in response to the final results of the Manhattan project famously quoted the Bhagavad Gita " Time I am, destroyer of worlds".

Oppenheimer was considering the devastating effects of his creation the atomic bomb but if we look around today we can see that this statement is true of our everyday life also.

When Krishna was speaking this to his friend Arjuna He was pointing out the inevitable futility of trying to enjoy material existence.

The fact that all material activities are ruined by time. That without a spiritual centre to our lives guiding us towards self realization everything is destined to be destroyed.

We can see the material effects of time on peoples lives being played out in the media daily. Whether its on a community scale or on a more personal level (John Terry I'm looking at you) we can see how when left to our own devices given time, we make a mess of it.

continued tomorrow

Broken Door

The door to my bedroom has been hanging down. Of the 3 hinges 1 had come off completely. This has meant that to close it I have had to lift it. Last week after over a year I fixed it. It only took 5 minutes??? The door now closes normally, so why am I still lifting it every time that I go to close it. I have to put effort into not lifting it. How easily we can become habituated to things. There are so many things that we become used to doing so much so that they become 2nd nature, we don't think about them. Hanging my door and seeing my automatic need to lift it has reminded me of a valuable jewel that we receive from meditation. Most days I think of my meditation as setting me up for the day or clearing away my material desires. But it is also habituating me to think of Krishna, so that I almost without thinking during the day think of Krishna, it's a natural automatic thing. More seriously it's making me ready to face death, oohhhhh the big D word. Well it's going to happen one day and if I can think of Krishna then, at that most important time. If it's a natural thing to always be thinking of God. Then no more reincarnation for me buddy I'm off. Away from all the rubbish and suffering of the mortal coil, escaped to be with Krishna.

Looking Back

It's funny how events in the world change the way you look at it. I used to be a big fan of the New Year thing, looking forward 'n' all that.

Then a few years back, Christmas eve, my Mother was rushed into hospital with very advanced cancer. She was dead 2 weeks later.

Now the new year just brings back thoughts of her. Every year at this time I find myself looking back at her.

As far as Krishna Consciousness goes we realize that we are not the body, but spirit souls and my Mother ( for this birth ) has continued on to where ever her karma has led her. The Bhagavad Gita states in the 2nd chapter that the soul is eternal, it cannot die which gives us comfort.

But today I miss her.

And thats OK.