Discover how to de-stress, relax, feel healthier, feel happier, calm your mind, discover your inner peace and have more fun with meditation classes with Clare Josa.
What Is Meditation?
Meditation helps you quieten your mind, to reach beyond the everyday, mundane aspects of life and reconnect with a deeper sense of “who you really are”.
It is a journey that will take you from a place of stress, drama and discontent to happiness, inner peace, contentment and connectedness.
Along that path, we all encounter things that need to be released, in order to set ourselves free from the habits, thought patterns and limiting beliefs that have kept us stuck and separate for so long.
Meditation is not…
Clare Josa, Meditation Teacher
I had been practising meditation for about 20 years, when I decided to formally train as a meditation teacher, so I could help others.
That’s when I realised that I had never really “meditated”.
It was a bit of a shock! Sure, I had done classes, retreats and had a stack of “meditation” CDs at home, but few of them took me anywhere near that point of stillness, that point of peace, deep inside, that I had been searching for.
Why?
Because the “teacher” never shut up and there was always tinkly music in the background!
After 2 decades of studying, I had never been taught how to be “ok” with silence; with stillness. All the techniques I had learned were still about “doing” – following instructions that popped up almost constantly.
Even though there are many meditation techniques that can be performed while you are active – even in a noisy environment – I had never experienced the beautiful feeling of allowing my mind to come to rest and just “be”.
Everything I had tried before had, in fact, been based on deep relaxation or guided visualisation. And I experienced a huge difference in the effect of those, compared to deep meditation, which has been profound and life-changing for me. 🙂
Meditation is NOT about twisting your legs into a pretzel, hiding in a cave and chanting ancient Sanskrit all day (though it can be!).
It is a practice that helps you change your life. It brings you peace, calm, stillness and a vibrant sense of being totally “alive”.
What Are The Benefits Of Meditation?
Some of the benefits of regular meditation practice include:
Reducing your stress levels
Getting your life back into balance
Developing a “longer fuse” – being able to remain calm, even in emotional situations
Improved physical, mental and emotional health
Feeling happier – even moments of spontaneous joy
Clearer thinking – you have been training your mind to chatter less!
Improved concentration
A sense of inner peace and stillness
Feeling the strength (and desire) to finally deal with the “stuff” that’s no longer working in your life
Dispelling Meditation Myths
Myth: You have to train under a “guru” and change who you are
Fact: Finding a good teacher helps, but even just 10 minutes a day of mindfulness can have a big impact. Check out the latest research from Sara Lazar, showing that meditation can even make your brain grow!
Myth: Meditation drop-in classes work Fact: You need commitment and dedication, to make progress.
Just as with any form of skill, to see results, a meditation student needs to commit to regular practice. A weekly, local meditation or mindfulness class is the ideal environment for this, because:
you can ask the meditation teacher questions – they have been trained how to teach this stuff!
you can benefit from the fact the teacher has probably faced similar challenges to you, on their meditation journey, and will have discovered some short cuts
you can get feedback on your posture (meditating doesn’t need to hurt!)
you can learn how to prepare for meditation, to get maximumm impact from your practice
you can learn techniques to get back into that ‘meditative calm’ state, even when time is short
you can share the experience with other students and even make new friends
this moral support can help you find ways to fit yoga into your life, to help you feel happier, healthier and less stressed.
Over the years, we have repeatedly found that people attending drop-in classes make much slower progress than those who make the personal commitment to attending a term’s course.
Myth: You have to change your religious beliefs, to meditate Fact: Meditation is accessible to everyone, regardless of their personal beliefs
Although the practice of meditation is rooted in ancient philosophy, to enjoy and benefit from meditation doesn’t require you to adopt any particular belief systems and it certainly doesn’t ask its students to have any particular religious background.
If you can daydream, then you can meditate.
Most cultures have practices that are akin to meditation. There’s nothing scary or cult-based about it.
What Makes Beyond Alchemy’s Meditation & Mindfulness Classes Different?
Rather than expecting you to turn up, rushed and stressed, twist your legs into a pretzel shape and suddenly empty your mind and feel inner peace, our meditation & mindfulness classes focus on good preparation first.
In order to be able to meditate successfully, you need to be relaxed and able to concentrate.
Is it time to tame your 'grasshopper mind'?
Few of us can do that spontaneously, as part of our busy lives. Most of us are more like grasshoppers, flitting from one thought or action to the next.
So our meditation classes typically take students through the following stages:
Physical movement, to help you release the body’s tension and start to relax
Deep relaxation – sitting or lying down – to help you let go and unwind
Concentration techniques, to help you train your mind to focus on just one thing, rather than being a mutli-tasking grasshopper
Training on how correct posture during meditation can impact the effectiveness of your meditating
Discovering meditation and mindfulness techniques that work for real people, with busy lives
Our students tell us that they really value the level of preparation they get during the classes and see it as a ‘gold standard’ of meditation experience. This helps them relax and de-stress more easily during their day-to-day lives, and means they are more quickly able to get into a relaxed state of body and mind, to meditate at home.
How will I feel afterwards?
Students leave their classes feeling more balanced, less stressed, energised, refreshed and revitalised.
The goal of our meditation and mindfulness classes is to help you find a point of stillness, deep within you, that you can connect with, no matter how busy and stressful life becomes.
Why Bother With A Meditation Class?
Why on earth bother going to a meditation class?
Why not just listen to a CD or read a book?
Clare Josa, our meditation teacher, shares her personal story on this one in the video on the right.
Our research shows that a regular meditation or mindfulness class can have a major impact on the results you achieve.
Books and CDs are a great start, if you don’t have a good meditation class locally. But they have their limitations, too:
Most ‘meditation’ CDs are in fact guided visualisations or deep relaxations. Whislt they help you relax, they are unlikely to take you to a real experience of meditating.
Books can teach you techniques, but the experience of being guided through that technique by a real, live teacher is very different.
You can’t ask a book or CD questions!
Meditating with other people creates an wonderful space that allows you to go even deeper.
A good teacher can tailor your meditation class to the needs of the individuals in the group. A book or CD has to be created to work for the ‘average’ student.
Attending a weekly class gives you the moral support (and kick up the butt!) that most of us need to actually commit to regular meditation practice. It’s by far the quickest and most effective way to make progress and experience deep-acting results.
Weekly Classes
Our spring 2012 term of meditation and mindfulness classes will be starting soon.
They will be held near Forest Row in East Sussex.
We’ll be publishing times and dates, as soon as they are finalised.
Find Out More / Reserve Your Place
To find out more and reserve your place, please call Peter or Clare on 07919 11 4440. Or you can fill in the contact form below and one of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.
Can’t Make It To A Weekly Class?
We run regular yoga and meditation weekend workshops in the East Sussex area (Forest Row / East Grinstead / Ashdown Forest). If you’d like to find out when the next course is running, please get in touch!
Discover how to de-stress, relax, feel healthier, feel happier, calm your mind, discover your inner peace and have fun with Dru yoga classes near Forest Row with Peter Briant.
Autumn 2014 Classes
Thursday evenings 8 – 9:30pm near Forest Row, East Grinstead
Check availability: Call Peter’s office on: 020 8242 6035 or email: hello {at} clarejosa {dot} com
What Is Yoga?
Yoga is an ancient system of postures, movements and breathing techniques, designed to create the “union of body and mind”.
In more modern terms, it’s an excellent practice to allow you to:
De-stress
Relax
Get life back into balance
Improve your health
Be able to stay calmer, even in emotionally-charged situations
Improve your fitness
Feel happier
Even modern scientists and medical professionals are now agreeing with the ancient wisdom that mind, body and emotions are connected. So gentle, focused movements that rebalance the body have the potential to also impact other areas of your life.
In fact, the latest scientific research has shown that even just a 6 week course of Dru Yoga can significantly impact your stress levels and inner calm!
Dispelling Yoga Myths
Myth: Yoga drop-in classes work Fact: Yoga isn’t a quick fix
Just as with any form of skill, to see results, a yoga student needs to commit to regular practice. A weekly, local yoga class is the ideal environment for this, because:
you can ask the yoga teacher questions;
you can get feedback on your posture (so you don’t hurt yourself and you’ll get maximum benefit from the pose);
you can learn how to prepare for postures, so you will be able to do them safely at home;
you can share the experience with other students and even make new friends;
this moral support can help you find ways to fit yoga into your life, to help you feel happier, healthier and less stressed.
Myth: You have to change your religious beliefs, to do yoga Fact: Yoga is accessible to everyone, regardless of their personal beliefs
Although the practice of yoga is rooted in ancient philosophy, to enjoy and benefit from yoga doesn’t require you to adopt any particular belief systems and it certainly doesn’t ask its students to have any particular religious background. Yoga techniques can have a profound impact on your life and are accessible to everyone.
Myth: Yoga should feel like a work-out Fact: Yoga should never cause pain – either during the class or the next day
Over the years, we have experienced a number of yoga teachers who either pushed their students to go too far in postures or didn’t have techniques to help their classes warm up and prepare for yoga postures, so you would wake up the next day with aching muscles – and worse.
Dru yoga should never hurt. The postures are never done “cold” – yoga classes always include “activations” (to get the body moving) and “Energy Block Release” sequences, to help shift any stiffness. Postures that challenge the body are only ever done after suitable preparatory postures have been completed, so your body and mind are ready and can gain maximum benefit from the poses.
What Makes Dru Yoga Different?
Dru Yoga is a graceful and potent form of yoga, based on flowing movements, directed breathing and visualisation. With its foundations set firmly in ancient yogic tradition, Dru works on body, mind and spirit—improving strength and flexibility, creating core stability, building a heightened feeling of positivity, and deeply relaxing and rejuvenating your whole being.
It is designed to be practised by people of all abilities, all fitness levels and all age groups.
For example, if you can’t go as far as you would like into a particular posture, a Dru yoga teacher can help you use visualisation techniques, to relax the body and gently ease yourself further into the posture, over time.
Dru yoga is truly accessible.
One of our friends attended her first Dru yoga class in a wheelchair, having had repeated operations on her spine. She is now fit, active and is a wonderful Dru yoga teacher. How did she benefit from the early classes? By being taught how to visualise her body doing the techniques and being incredibly gentle.
Local Dru Yoga Classes
Peter Briant, an experienced, formally-qualified Dru Yoga teacher, runs weekly classes Forest Row and East Grinstead, in Sussex (UK).
He specialises in making yoga accessible to all, helping you to gain maximum benefit from your classes, whilst also having fun.
What Is A Dru Yoga Class Like?
A typical class structure would include:
Activations: These are warm-up exercises, to wake you up and warm up each muscle group in turn, in preparation for the yoga postures.
Energy Block Release Sequence: This would be a carefully-constructed sequence of postures and movements, specifically designed to help you release blocks in the body, mind and emotions.
Posture Work: Traditional yoga postures, performed in a more flowing way than you may have come across before. These postures help various areas of our body, mind and emotions. For example:
Twisting postures can aid digestion
There are postures which ground you, helping you increase your energy and reduce your stress levels
There are postures which promote clear thinking
Some postures and movements will help you sleep or relax
There are postures specifically intended to produce balance
How will I feel afterwards?
Students leave their classes feeling more balanced, less stressed, energised, refreshed and revitalised.
The goal of a course in Dru yoga is to help you access a point of stillness within you, no matter how chaotic life becomes.
Weekly Classes
Peter runs weekly yoga classes on Thursday evenings at 8pm near Forest Row & East Grinstead.
This is a 1 1/2 hour yoga class with deep relaxation techniques, which is a real treat. Combining yoga and deep relaxation can have a huge impact on your body and mind.
When: Thursdays 8pm Where: near Forest Row & East Grinstead Cost: Suggested donation of £10 per class.
If the suggested donation is too much for you, please contact Peter to find out how to apply for help from our scholarship programme.
Find Out More / Reserve Your Place
To find out more, please call Peter on 020 8242 6035. Or you can email hello {at} clarejosa {dot} com and one of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.
Can’t Make It To A Weekly Class?
Peter runs regular yoga and meditation weekend workshops, with his wife Clare Josa, a formally-trained meditation teacher, NLP Trainer and author. If you’d like to find out when the next course is running, please get in touch!
The Little Book Of Daily Sunshine – ISBN 978-1908854407
The Little Book Of Daily Sunshine brings you bite-sized doses of inspiration, each with a powerful message, life-changing technique or motivational insight.
You could choose to read it cover-to-cover
you could read one message each morning, to inspire your day
you could open it at random, to discover what you most need to know today
It’s pocket-sized, so you can take it with you whenever you need it.
The inspirational messages take less than a minute to read, yet they can light up your day and help you to make deep-acting changes in all areas of your life.
These Daily Sunshine messages can touch your life, inspiring you to dump your old excuses, to set yourself free from limiting beliefs and to head towards the life of your dreams.
Perhaps you might like to order Daily Sunshine from your favourite book seller?
Daily Sunshine Paperback ISBN 978-1908854407
Daily Sunshine Kindle ISBN 978-1908854414
It is shared with you, with love, by Clare Josa.
Clare is an NLP Trainer, Meditation Teacher and Dedicated Happiness Experimenter. Her dream is to inspire people to reconnect with the beauty of who they really are and to spread a wave of sunshine around the world.
She lives in Sussex, UK, with her husband, 3 young boys and a very bouncy Jack Russell.
Want To Get Your Daily Sunshine Right Away? Download A PDF Copy
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I’d love to be able to share Daily Sunshine with you. 🙂
P.S. Watch out for the Twitter hash-tag for quotes and insights from the book:#dsunshine
P.S. Please help the Daily Sunshine message to spread – perhaps by telling your friends or sharing this page on Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest?
What People Are Saying About Daily Sunshine
Dear Clare
“I love my Daily Sunshine messages! They’re exactly the thing that is needed to jolt me out of early-morning-grumpy mode every day and make me think about what makes me and others happy. Thank you for them and bless you.”
“I love reading these reading. Sometimes I am having a difficult day I look on my e-mail and I have a breath of fresh air.”
“Whether you just want to start the day with a smile on your face or be inspired to change your life, Daily Sunshine fits the bill. Titbits of deep thought; bursts of rainbow thinking; flashes of heart opening clarity, the Daily Sunshine has it all. Give it a try, it’ll brighten every day and it might just change your life (it has for me!) “
“Hello Clare,
I have been enjoying a dose of “Daily Sunshine” from you. Many of the quotes have had an impact on me but none more than this one. I now realise that I have been looking for happiness in all the wrong places. Yeah, sure I’ve read that happiness comes from within, but this has hit home with me “ BIG TIME”. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You……..
Peace to you & yours,”
Clare Josa’s unique and inspirational work has been described as
‘DynoRodTM for your Soul’ – clearing out the hidden blocks that had kept you stuck for years; reaching the parts others can’t reach.
As an Author, NLP Trainer, Meditation Teacher and reformed Mechanical Engineer, she is famous for applying her Inner Engineer’s common sense to demystify Ancient Wisdom into practical actions you can take today, in less time than it takes a kettle to boil.
Clare’s Big Mission is inspiring you to bring Enlightened Living into your everyday life, so that no one has to put up with mediocre or ‘ok’ any more – and you can live authentically, letting your inner light shine.
[testimonial_slider disable_height_animation=”true” autorotate=”7777″] [testimonial name=”Dr Steve Williams” quote=”Clare Josa really walks the talk. She is a centre of calm in a raging world and I could not recommend her more highly to lead you on your journey.” id=”t1″] [testimonial name=”Pendella Buchanan, Author” quote=”I still remember the first moment I met Clare… she greeted me like a lifelong friend, with open arms and a spectacular loving smile. Clare is full of ideas and an enthusiasm for life I have never known in anyone before or since. And yet she is real, she has her own limitations and demons which she embraces and works with and her honesty about that makes it so much easier to relate to her.” id=”t2″] [testimonial name=”Joy Shallcross, PBlogger, Wife, Mum and Grandmother.” quote=”Clare has helped me in so many ways. Firstly with her ‘Little Book of Daily Sunshine’, which I have on my desk and refer to regularly, and then back in early 2012, when I was experiencing a great deal of stress due to a complicated house move, I had the opportunity to be a guinea-pig for her ’28-day Meditation Challenge’, which was extremely helpful and enabled me to see beyond the stresses of the moment. I have also bought, and use daily, Clare’s ‘Gratitude – A Daily Journal’, which gives me the chance to look back over each day and record all the good bits. Thank you Clare!” id=”t3″] [testimonial name=”Lex” quote=”I love your voice. And that a 15 minute video can make me cry (in a good way!) and answer more questions than 6 years of counselling. Epic.” id=”t4″] [testimonial name=”Joanna” quote=”Just had to let you know that wow…! Yes I do sabotage my abundance but never quite understood that I was doing this. So watch this space I intend to manifest the perfect home for me within the next year.
All I did was watch your videos and do the exercises as we went through – and yet I can really feel the shifts already! I have changed my future in just minutes. Thank you! ” id=”t5″] [testimonial name=”Mandy” quote=”I love your style of communicating because you are very clear, informative and warm but also very illuminating. I have played with so many of these ideas in the past few years, stumbling around searching for ways forward.
Yet you bring something very fresh and new that is helping me to understand why I have had such difficulty with some of these techniques. I appreciate the way you cut through ‘the fluff”.” id=”t6″][/testimonial_slider][/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” bg_position=”left top” bg_repeat=”no-repeat” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” top_padding=”22″][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]
You’ve been there, tried it, and given the proverbial t-shirt to the local charity shop.
Positive thinking gets you so far, but somehow those old destructive habits keep coming back to get you – when you’re least expecting it. And you’ve had enough of them.
I know how you feel.
I used to be a passenger on the very same rollercoaster that you’ve been riding on. And I felt totally stuck, too. In fact, I didn’t realise it, but I was subconsciously cranking up the speed and making things so much worse than they needed to be. I had tried everything. Life was falling apart around me.
There were days that I got through literally one breath at a time.
I was a world expert in that emotional rollercoaster. My Inner Critic ruled the airwaves. But, deep down, I knew there had to be more to life than that.
I remember one day hitting a total rock bottom and realising that the only thing keeping me going was my kids.
That day, I made a decision: I wasn’t going to be a slave any more to the drama, fears, excuses and out-dated beliefs that were keeping me stuck.
I was going to set myself free from the rollercoaster ride. And it worked.
Over the following months, I realised some little-known Universal Truths that were the keys to setting myself free from that old destructive journey. And that’s exactly what I want to share with you.
Over the past decade or more I have refined, tweaked, experimented, learned from mistakes and taught these Insider Secrets to tens of thousands of women – just like you – and just like me – who are ready to reclaim their power and step into their world-changing Soul-Shoes.
I promise you, if you dive in and apply what I’m sharing with you with an open heart and mind, you will change your life forever. Fast.
Clare originally qualified as a Mechanical Engineer, being awarded a first class Master Degree in Mechanical Engineering and German by the University of Sheffield (UK) and Ruhr Universitaet Bochum (Germany).
Her research reputation led to her being offered the chance to study for PhDs in tribology, thermodynamics and automotive warranty psychology. However, her deep-seated aversion to leather elbow patches meant she didn’t stay in academia and instead spent 10 years in the automotive industry. She reached a senior engineering position in a world-famous diesel engine manufacturing plant before becoming Head Of Market Research for an international consumer brand, driven by her passion to find out how people tick – not just machines.
In 2003 she left the corporate world to follow her passion for inspiring people change their lives, full-time.
She runs regular workshops and retreats, worldwide, as well as inspirational online courses, and her books are published internationally:
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Clare’s Qualifications
In addition to her academic qualifications, Clare has been a certified Trainer of Neurolinguistic Programming for over 10 years and holds the following qualifications:
Meditation Teacher
Clare is an experienced meditation teacher, running classes in the Forest Row / Hartfield / East Grinstead areas of East Sussex, UK.
Certified Trainer of NLP (INLPTA)
Experienced in running bespoke or INLPTA syllabus courses, up to Master Practitioner Level
Certified Consultant in Language and Behaviour Profiling
Experienced in consulting and training others in recognising unconscious motivation traits that we accidentally give away in the words we use.
Hypnosis Practitioner
Experienced in using hypnotic language and, if desired by the client, full hypnosis, to help break unconscious habits at the deepest levels.
Reiki Master
Experienced in working with the body’s more subtle energy layers, to help rebalance physical blocks that may be hindering success on a practical level.
Yoga Teacher
Clare is a Student Yoga Teacher and incorporates the life-changing benefits of yoga asanas and sequences into her retreats and one-to-one work with clients.
Languages
Clare speaks near-native German, has been fluent in South American Spanish, can cope with most everyday situations in French and has been known to eavesdrop occasionally in Italian. She studied Russian during her ‘A’ levels, but the only bit she can remember nowadays is “I love you,” which she figures isn’t a bad place to start.
Clare takes her personal development seriously, to remain at the cutting edge of her field, and regularly attends courses with industry thought-leaders – and beyond.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/2″][vc_column_text]
Her background in engineering means she brings a huge dose of common sense and practical application to her training and mentoring, whilst also working intuitively with clients – and she is famous for her smile.
She is well travelled and has lived in the UK, USA, Germany and Argentina.
She now lives in Sussex, UK, on a beautiful six acre retreat centre, with her husband, 3 young sons, a bouncy Jack Russell, two very self-assured cats and a random collection of mindful chickens.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/2″][image_with_animation image_url=”18294″ alignment=”center” animation=”Fade In” img_link_target=”_self”][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”full_width_background” bg_position=”center top” bg_repeat=”no-repeat” bg_color=”#990066″ scene_position=”center” text_color=”light” text_align=”left” top_padding=”22″ bottom_padding=”22″][vc_column width=”1/1″ enable_animation=”true” animation=”grow-in” column_padding=”no-extra-padding”][vc_column_text]
The Great Gratitude Challenge: 10 weeks of life-changing awesomeness – all yours, free, as my gift.
Please note:
Clare Josa and her team are unable to address individual personal challenges outside of a formal mentoring agreement. If you’re interested in mentoring, you can find out more about working with Clare here.
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And it got me thinking about something our meditation master shared with us during a retreat last year.
Some of us in the group, who were training to become meditation teachers, had profound experiences during a particular meditation. Whenever you have an experience like that, it will be unique to you, and it is likely to change your life – forever.
For me, I knew I had connected with whatever it is that I call “God” or “Source” or my “Higher Self”. I had somehow made it past the fears and barriers created by the ego and discovered the pure light and love that it at the core of all beings.
In that moment, I realised I had found what I had been looking for. Though I couldn’t have told you beforehand what it was that I had been hoping to find. All I knew was that the search was over.
My meditation master explained to us that, once you have found what you are looking for, even for just a moment in time, you are no longer a seeker. You are a finder.
He described the shift this produces in a very similar way to Andrew Cohen’s article:
Once you have “seen”, you are a “seer”. Instead of spending the rest of your life “seeking” and searching for something abstract, your focus changes. The focus of your personal and spritual development shifts to deepening that experience and finding more of it.
He told us that becoming a “seer” or a “finder” would change our life forever. And he was right.
I have no idea what others “saw” that day. I know for me it gave me a clear, deep knowing that we are all one and that there is no separation or division between us, at our Source. I also experienced that this Source is simply Light and Love. And that it is infinite, boundless, endless and always available to us. Words make it sound somehow defineable. But, as we are reminded in the first verse of the Tao te Ching, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao” – you cannot define Source, God, or whatever that is for you, with words.
Our job isn’t to find what we’re looking for. Our job is to allow what is already there to become real for us.
This experience didn’t suddenly turn me into a Saint. It didn’t suddenly remove all my “character flaws”. It didn’t suddenly make me permanently happy or free from destructive habits and anger. But it did mean I had seen through the lies of my ego, my monkey mind, and I could tell when I was playing ego games, rather than being true to my “true” self – that boundless source of love and light.
I found this really challenging because, having “seen” oneness and the Truth of “who I really am”, I had suddenly expected it to be easier to feel happy more often and to always act from love, not fear. I gave myself a hard time over this, until I realised what was going on.
Having “seen the light” means that the mirror which shows us behaviours and thought patterns that cause us (and others) pain became even bigger and more highly polished. That light shone on every shadow aspect of my ego and kept boshing me on the nose, to deal with my “stuff”. This “boshing” usually took the form of some willing volunteer “pressing my buttons” (behaving unkindly), to highlight my auto-pilot computer programme-style response, to allow me to choose whether I wanted to make changes.
Over the coming months, I had the experience of “finding” and “oneness” a number of times – sometimes during meditation, sometimes spontaneously. (Twice in Wagamamas in Salisbury, which was plain weird!) But then it stopped.
I took a long while to realise what had happened.
Our ego, or personality, isn’t who we really are. It’s just a “uniform” that we wear, made up of our thoughts, habits and beliefs. We spend decades honing it, though ultimately we become its slave, as we give up freedom of choice on how to respond to life and believe the lies of the ego that we’re powerless victims of fate – or other people.
If our inner being is, say, a ball of light and love, our ego sees its job as being the thick layer of crud that blocks out that light. The ego’s greatest fear is that we open to that light, because then the ego thinks it will die. And there’s truth in that. Once we reconnect, ongoing, with that love and light, we no longer need the habits and fear-based behaviours that our ego has used to protect us for so long.
So the ego spends its days splatting on more layers of crud, while our deeper self is yearning, seeking, to reconnect with the light that it vaguely remembers is there.
Sometimes, through spiritual and personal development practices, we can create chinks in the layer of crud, that allow us to slip through and experience who we really are. But after a while, the ego cleverly plasters over those chinks, so the light can’t shine through.
We have seen, we have found, but we can’t find our way back again.
The Ancients tell us that clearing this crud is the way to being able to connect with the love and light that is our true being. There are many paths to set ourselves free from the painful cycles we have unwittingly created, to reconnect with “God” – and this is the core intention behind most, if not all, religions. But it takes dedication and commitment.
The more we let go of our “crud”, our “stuff”, the thinner the ego’s layer becomes, until there reaches a point where there is light, dimly visible, through that layer. The crud layer becomes thinner and thinner, like stretched rubber. There are still thick, chunky areas, but there are also patches where a gentle tap will finally allow you to break through to that light. And you know that, once you have tapped that area, the ego won’t be able to regrow it. You have set yourself free.
But what happens as you near that place?
The ego, knowing its demise is imminent, makes desperate last-ditch attempts to save itself.
It throws every last weapon in its arsenal at you, trying to knock you off course, distracting you from your goal.
Everything that is ready to be released comes up to do that nose-boshing thing.
Everything about your life that is inauthentic, not based on Truth, comes up for inspection.
Every habit or thought pattern that has kept you from being who you really are comes up to be observed and, hopefully, released.
And your ego even turns up the “drama dial” to 10, to really make sure you’re entering in to all of this as intensely as possible.
It can feel as though everything you know is falling away, as though people you love are rejecting you, as though everything is going wrong.
“Stuff” can come up daily – or more.
You can feel deeply mentally and emotionally exhausted – an exhaustion which sleep alone cannot touch.
But, as long as you keep letting go and releasing these painful auto-pilot scripts, trusting completely that this clearing out is for a higher purpose, what you are ultimately doing is moving towards freedom.
And then there comes a point where you realise you are nearly empty. It starts to feel like you’re almost “done” (for now!). You have dealt with some really big, deep, old “stuff”. You feel like you have cleared out pretty much all you can imagine clearing out. And that’s a strangely peaceful place.
Suddenly the drive to seek or even deepen what you have found melts away. There’s no rush. There’s no urgency any more. There just “is”.
There’s no seeking. There’s no finding. There’s just being.
Every breath becomes a spiritual practice. Every interaction with anyone or anything becomes an opportunity to connect at the deepest levels. The illusions melt away.
Then you know you have finally arrived home.
You are no longer a human being having a spiritual experience.
You are a spiritual being having a human experience.
And that is why we’re “here”.
How many excuses do we make about why we can’t let the past go and set ourselves free?
I spent the afternoon with a friend who has a similar background to me – putting the world to rights. We reached the conclusion that, since none of us lives in “reality” anyway and our experience of life is just an illusion, so is our experience of our stuff – our baggage, our problems, our limiting beliefs.
So we could choose to drop it at any moment.
In any instant, we could choose to set ourselves free.
What Is Meditation?
Yoga is an ancient system of postures, movements and breathing techniques, designed to create the “union of body and mind”.
Local Dru Yoga Classes
To find out more, please call Peter on 020 8242 6035. Or you can email hello {at} clarejosa {dot} com and one of the team will get back to you as soon as possible.
It is shared with you, with love, by Clare Josa.
She is well travelled and has lived in the UK, USA, Germany and Argentina.
Some of us in the group, who were training to become meditation teachers, had profound experiences during a particular meditation. Whenever you have an experience like that, it will be unique to you, and it is likely to change your life – forever.
I have no idea what others “saw” that day. I know for me it gave me a clear, deep knowing that we are all one and that there is no separation or division between us, at our Source. I also experienced that this Source is simply Light and Love. And that it is infinite, boundless, endless and always available to us. Words make it sound somehow defineable. But, as we are reminded in the first verse of the Tao te Ching, “The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao” – you cannot define Source, God, or whatever that is for you, with words.
The Ancients tell us that clearing this crud is the way to being able to connect with the love and light that is our true being. There are many paths to set ourselves free from the painful cycles we have unwittingly created, to reconnect with “God” – and this is the core intention behind most, if not all, religions. But it takes dedication and commitment.