I feel that loving yourself or accepting yourself has a huge impact on the world around you and in turn in the larger world. If I feel accepting and loving to myself I am much more likely to be able to be compassionate towards others in the world. When I feel loving and calm towards myself the reality is that I feel more peaceful and when I am on public transport I have more room in myself to be peaceful towards others. When I am angry and distressed I can also feel angry and distressed with the person who bumps into me or rushes past me but when I am loving and peaceful I have room enough to be able to think that they may be in a hurry to get somewhere or that I may not know what is happening for them that day. When I am loving and peaceful I do not need to judge myself or others.
When I don't judge myself or others then in one sense I am not split as a person. In a sense I am whole, I am one person. I am not a person thinking that I would be better if this or that was different. If I am at peace with myself then I take that sense of peace into the world and my peace can then affect anyone I am in contact with. If I am peaceful then I can be considerate towards others, I can be productive and I can be a giver. This does not mean that I do not have different feelings, of course I do, but it may mean that I have a core of inner peace that I can draw on. And this means that if you think that everything is made of energy then the energy that I take into the world is one of peace.
But how to come into this place of peace? For me this is about slowing down and creating a simple life. I use the mantra "My life is simple" and I let this simplicity flow into my life. I also meditate and go to a spa to help me slow down. Today I looked after my seven month old neice and it was such a beautiful experience of total love, commitment and calm. She is pure love and pure open heartedness and just to be near her is to be brought straight into love and into being totally present. There is an African theory that if a childless woman would like to be pregnant then she needs to spend some time holding a baby. I can really understand this theory because when you hold a baby there is something very magical that seems to happen which brings you into the presence of love and being and relaxation. I imagine that this is because a baby can only "BE", there is no job for the baby to do except be, play, eat, grow and be loved. And yet the baby is doing so much at the same time, at the same time the baby is learning and growing and stretching and becoming.
I feel that when one is more peaceful actually there is more room for a person to grow. It sounds bizarre in a way but when I am peaceful then there is room for new ideas and new expansion. I can get way too busy with ideas and meetings but when I actually slow down then I often achieve more.
In this way I feel that when one becomes more whole and more loving then there is more room to open up to other ideas and perhaps ideas about what we can do for others.
Of course loving yourself, being peaceful with yourself, giving to others and thinking warmly of yourself and others are big areas of discussion. The key is love, the key is to start to think lovingly of yourself. I believe that someone is beautiful when they are centred in themselves. They are centred in themselves when they feel peaceful, they feel peaceful when they do things that help them feel good.
Perhaps this is all about thinking about what makes you slow down, feel good, feel peaceful and feel loving. I believe that coming into this place brings you into a potential place for being whole in yourself and this whole self you can bring into the world.
Wednesday, 25 March 2009
Tuesday, 17 March 2009
The Heart of Power
The Heart of Power
How do you want to be in your life? If you could go beyond your limitations and fear what would you be doing? What would you look like and how would you want to be? The reality is that you are already perfect just as you are, you are already as beautiful as you should be and that everything you need and want is right here and right now, The key is to realising this and to being here in the moment which as you know brings you into eternity and your power. Purely and simply when you fully enter the now, this moment and your being and presence you are the beautiful one and you already are who you are meant to be. Once you can release any judgements of yourself about who you are or what you should do or be doing you will see what I mean. The seeds of you are always with you and have always been with you. Your purpose is written in your heart. In order to allow this all to flourish you need to go within and be with you, honour who you are beyond all doubt and know that you are the one. You are the one and you are the beloved. Also know that others are also the one and also the beloved for we are all one and we are all the beloved. In this sense you are perfect right now and if you let go and be here now you will be able to allow such incredible flourishing and this you can allow your power. Being powerful is being in a place of allowing your true nature to flourish and expand. Being in your power allows for a range of emotions and feelings. It means that you nuture yourself daily. It means that you give for the joy of giving and receive for the joy of receiving and you can allow yourself to be strong and assertive, vulnerable and soft or a whole range of emotions. Being powerful has flexibility, strength, maturity and truth. It can move like the wind and be as humble as a mouse. When you know you are THE ONE, when you know that you are love then you can be ONE with love and love others and the world with freedom.
How do you want to be in your life? If you could go beyond your limitations and fear what would you be doing? What would you look like and how would you want to be? The reality is that you are already perfect just as you are, you are already as beautiful as you should be and that everything you need and want is right here and right now, The key is to realising this and to being here in the moment which as you know brings you into eternity and your power. Purely and simply when you fully enter the now, this moment and your being and presence you are the beautiful one and you already are who you are meant to be. Once you can release any judgements of yourself about who you are or what you should do or be doing you will see what I mean. The seeds of you are always with you and have always been with you. Your purpose is written in your heart. In order to allow this all to flourish you need to go within and be with you, honour who you are beyond all doubt and know that you are the one. You are the one and you are the beloved. Also know that others are also the one and also the beloved for we are all one and we are all the beloved. In this sense you are perfect right now and if you let go and be here now you will be able to allow such incredible flourishing and this you can allow your power. Being powerful is being in a place of allowing your true nature to flourish and expand. Being in your power allows for a range of emotions and feelings. It means that you nuture yourself daily. It means that you give for the joy of giving and receive for the joy of receiving and you can allow yourself to be strong and assertive, vulnerable and soft or a whole range of emotions. Being powerful has flexibility, strength, maturity and truth. It can move like the wind and be as humble as a mouse. When you know you are THE ONE, when you know that you are love then you can be ONE with love and love others and the world with freedom.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Tuesday, 24 February 2009
Compassion
Today I wanted to write to you about Compassion. Compassion is such an important part of loving. I imagine that it means with passion. And of course when one has compassion one feels love or passion again for someone. But if I judge someone or see them as different or wrong I am suddenly separated from them and the oneness of life and I feel cut off and can feel alone and also judging of myself. But when I can love someone as they are and see that they may need to behave as they are behaving for reasons I may not know or not understand then I can also love myself and my ways of being and my quirky ways. When I judge I also judge myself-it is always two way. Discernment is also important, if I know that someone has difficulty doing something then there is no point expecting or wanting them to do that. But I can still have compassion for them and still love them however or whatever they are.
I feel that I learned compassion from my darling Mum who, as anyone who knows her will tell you, is the epitome of egoless compassion. When I grew up she volunteered tirelessly for Amnesty International, writing letters and fundraising. We had a big house and she welcomed all kinds of people who needed help a refuge and often a bed. We were brought up as Catholics but she got my sisters and me to deliver the newsletters for the local Anglican Church. We were a little confused as to why we were doing this at the time but now I can see that she was teaching us that we are all connected, we are all one, one heart, one love (in the words of Bob Marley) and I thank her deeply for that. As teenagers she drove a bus for the homeless and we helped give out food and soup. Like I said sometimes I did not understand why we were welcoming so many different people into our lives but now I have work that takes me to meet so many people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. And I love it, and love the diversity and I do feel it was growing up like this that has helped me to be open to different individuals. I love being in a mixed society and would not want it any other way. Of course I can have judgements and I can be rigid but when I work with my groups my judgements are melted away for when you come to know someone in a connected way then all there is your humanity and their humanity.
A beautiful group I have worked with for many years is my dance group at the Bromley By Bow Centre in East London www.bbbc.org.uk
In this group I have young and old, disabled and non disabled, black and white, Indian and Bangladeshi, African and Jamaican, working class and middle class, men and women, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian, workers and volunteers and each week we dance share the love and pray that others in the world may be looked after in their hour of need and feel the love they need. In this group we have difference and yet we find also our commonality and our connection and oneness. It feels like it is a great model of the possibility of peace in the world. We also have a beautiful cafe at Bromley By Bow which is open 9am to 2.30pm Monday to Friday so if you want to come and visit a wonderful arts community centre please do.
Wishing you love and joy in your heart and courage to be you
I feel that I learned compassion from my darling Mum who, as anyone who knows her will tell you, is the epitome of egoless compassion. When I grew up she volunteered tirelessly for Amnesty International, writing letters and fundraising. We had a big house and she welcomed all kinds of people who needed help a refuge and often a bed. We were brought up as Catholics but she got my sisters and me to deliver the newsletters for the local Anglican Church. We were a little confused as to why we were doing this at the time but now I can see that she was teaching us that we are all connected, we are all one, one heart, one love (in the words of Bob Marley) and I thank her deeply for that. As teenagers she drove a bus for the homeless and we helped give out food and soup. Like I said sometimes I did not understand why we were welcoming so many different people into our lives but now I have work that takes me to meet so many people from all different backgrounds and walks of life. And I love it, and love the diversity and I do feel it was growing up like this that has helped me to be open to different individuals. I love being in a mixed society and would not want it any other way. Of course I can have judgements and I can be rigid but when I work with my groups my judgements are melted away for when you come to know someone in a connected way then all there is your humanity and their humanity.
A beautiful group I have worked with for many years is my dance group at the Bromley By Bow Centre in East London www.bbbc.org.uk
In this group I have young and old, disabled and non disabled, black and white, Indian and Bangladeshi, African and Jamaican, working class and middle class, men and women, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Christian, workers and volunteers and each week we dance share the love and pray that others in the world may be looked after in their hour of need and feel the love they need. In this group we have difference and yet we find also our commonality and our connection and oneness. It feels like it is a great model of the possibility of peace in the world. We also have a beautiful cafe at Bromley By Bow which is open 9am to 2.30pm Monday to Friday so if you want to come and visit a wonderful arts community centre please do.
Wishing you love and joy in your heart and courage to be you
Letting go of the Form of Love
The Formlessness of love
I wanted to write to you today about letting go of the ideas of love. I wanted to write about the idea of welcoming love in but focussing of welcoming the feeling in rather than specifying exactly a list of what love should look like.
What I mean by this is that I have people on my workshops sometimes who would like to meet Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie as a partner. Apart from the fact that they are not free to be anyone else’s partner, the idea of being so specific about who the love partner should be automatically sets up a block to love. For what a person has done is define love as Brad Pitt. Love is so much bigger and wider than that. People do it with other things and other people too when they decide that an unavailable person is the only possible love partner for them or a particular job that has not taken them on is also the only job for them in the world.
If for a moment you could see the bigger picture you might see that love or God has so much more to offer you than you could possibly imagine and to limit it by putting so many blocks on it is to reject love.
The key is to learn how to receive love and be open to unconditional love. When people say love happens when you let go what I feel is really meant is that love happens when you stop judging and declaring what love should look like. If you focus instead on learning how to give and receive unconditional love and what you actually want to feel in your love relationship or job or family or wherever you want to bring love in.
Allow yourself to contemplate the quality of what you want to feel. Would you like to feel an authentic soul connection, with faithfulness and commitment, humour, delight and service in a loving partnership? Think about what you might really like as a true desire in love and in life and focus on the feeling-that is the key.
I wanted some specific help with my web site and my work a while ago and when thinking about it I knew that I wanted someone who would work with me and my ideas and help me to build a web site where I could be at their side and part of the decision making process. I also wanted help on other areas of my work and I prayed for these but in a way that was person centred and constructive for me. And amazingly 4 different people have come into my life to help and support me in the way I wanted and needed.
The key was not just the wish but the quality of the feeling around the wish. You may want a kind soulmate but how do you want to feel around them?
If you start to become open to love, to the expansion and light of love, to beauty to kindness and to compassion then you will also go on a journey where you come across and find out what is blocking you. This is so good because as you find out what blocks you, you can also start to clear it and keep opening more and more to love. As you feel the pain and the heart ache it can actually start to melt and to clear. If you suppress it and avoid it it stays stuck. It is the way it is.
The beauty of this journey to opening to love and unconditional love is that you learn to love and you learn to love yourself. As you learn to love yourself you become love and you become the ONE in your life and you become whole and complete as you become whole and complete the ONE whoever they are can subtly and oh so beautifully come into your life (like attracts like) and you may not even notice as they may be no drama and they may have been there all along all the time but you only just noticed them as you came into love.
Thank you for the wonderful workshop. I have no words to describe how I felt, it was wonderful, inspiring, I felt bathed into the ocean of love. Your loving words dived straight into my heart, melting it away. It was indeed one of the happiest days in my life: for a long time I had wanted to feel much much love like I had never felt before and you made that happen, I put the wish out to the universe and you turned up! that must confirm to you that you deserve the title of Love Goddess.
Everybody's heart was so open and pouring out its beautiful beams onto everybody else. I used to think that I was the only one to need love so much, well I am glad to have realised that the whole humanity probably does, some are just more aware than others.
It was lovely to meet you, I am so grateful that I did, and you will see me again, that's for sure. Thanks for being a love beam in this world, you are very special and very blessed. Keep doing the wonderful precious work that you do, you are contributing enormously to making this world a much more 'awaken' and loving place and I want to thank you for that. Claudia Carlet after the workshop at The London College of Spirituality
I wanted to write to you today about letting go of the ideas of love. I wanted to write about the idea of welcoming love in but focussing of welcoming the feeling in rather than specifying exactly a list of what love should look like.
What I mean by this is that I have people on my workshops sometimes who would like to meet Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie as a partner. Apart from the fact that they are not free to be anyone else’s partner, the idea of being so specific about who the love partner should be automatically sets up a block to love. For what a person has done is define love as Brad Pitt. Love is so much bigger and wider than that. People do it with other things and other people too when they decide that an unavailable person is the only possible love partner for them or a particular job that has not taken them on is also the only job for them in the world.
If for a moment you could see the bigger picture you might see that love or God has so much more to offer you than you could possibly imagine and to limit it by putting so many blocks on it is to reject love.
The key is to learn how to receive love and be open to unconditional love. When people say love happens when you let go what I feel is really meant is that love happens when you stop judging and declaring what love should look like. If you focus instead on learning how to give and receive unconditional love and what you actually want to feel in your love relationship or job or family or wherever you want to bring love in.
Allow yourself to contemplate the quality of what you want to feel. Would you like to feel an authentic soul connection, with faithfulness and commitment, humour, delight and service in a loving partnership? Think about what you might really like as a true desire in love and in life and focus on the feeling-that is the key.
I wanted some specific help with my web site and my work a while ago and when thinking about it I knew that I wanted someone who would work with me and my ideas and help me to build a web site where I could be at their side and part of the decision making process. I also wanted help on other areas of my work and I prayed for these but in a way that was person centred and constructive for me. And amazingly 4 different people have come into my life to help and support me in the way I wanted and needed.
The key was not just the wish but the quality of the feeling around the wish. You may want a kind soulmate but how do you want to feel around them?
If you start to become open to love, to the expansion and light of love, to beauty to kindness and to compassion then you will also go on a journey where you come across and find out what is blocking you. This is so good because as you find out what blocks you, you can also start to clear it and keep opening more and more to love. As you feel the pain and the heart ache it can actually start to melt and to clear. If you suppress it and avoid it it stays stuck. It is the way it is.
The beauty of this journey to opening to love and unconditional love is that you learn to love and you learn to love yourself. As you learn to love yourself you become love and you become the ONE in your life and you become whole and complete as you become whole and complete the ONE whoever they are can subtly and oh so beautifully come into your life (like attracts like) and you may not even notice as they may be no drama and they may have been there all along all the time but you only just noticed them as you came into love.
Thank you for the wonderful workshop. I have no words to describe how I felt, it was wonderful, inspiring, I felt bathed into the ocean of love. Your loving words dived straight into my heart, melting it away. It was indeed one of the happiest days in my life: for a long time I had wanted to feel much much love like I had never felt before and you made that happen, I put the wish out to the universe and you turned up! that must confirm to you that you deserve the title of Love Goddess.
Everybody's heart was so open and pouring out its beautiful beams onto everybody else. I used to think that I was the only one to need love so much, well I am glad to have realised that the whole humanity probably does, some are just more aware than others.
It was lovely to meet you, I am so grateful that I did, and you will see me again, that's for sure. Thanks for being a love beam in this world, you are very special and very blessed. Keep doing the wonderful precious work that you do, you are contributing enormously to making this world a much more 'awaken' and loving place and I want to thank you for that. Claudia Carlet after the workshop at The London College of Spirituality
Tuesday, 17 February 2009
Living from the Heart
For me Living from the Heart is about doing what I love and one of the things I love is running my community arts workshops. One of these groups is a homeless and mental health group I run at www.baronscourtproject.org.
I teach drama, dance and coach people there regularly and have being doing so for the last 5 years. I have a few people who have regularly come for the whole time I have been there and I really value their commitment to coming and to trying new things out. Sometimes I have wondered whether I can make a real difference to people when the goals might not be about getting a job but might be more about feeling steady in your life or doing a creative project or even having a weekend away (which can be a very brave thing to do for some) or learning how to speak up for yourself. But I have learned so much from this lovely group of people that I can make a difference and I have learned about the importance of love, commitment and consistency. It has felt, to me, that if people have a safe place to go or be when they feel vulnerable then they can have an opportunity to get some steadiness and from this place they can grow their wings however small or big. And it does not matter how big the wings are. What matters is that people are loved and accepted and have a safe place where they can feel this.
I feel that we all need a safe place to go and that safe place is ultimately coming inside ourselves and into relationship with ourselves. So what is it that helps you feel safe enough to come inside yourself?
I know for me that my workshops and connections with others are very important, my community arts grounds me and takes me straight into a feeling of soul love but I also need Turkish baths, I need to melt in the heat of a sauna and really let go, I need to dance and feel the flow of the divine and I need to see the sea and my beloved Welsh Mountains in South Wales where I spent my childhood holidays with my Welsh family. For me the key is to know what grounds you and keeps you safe and connected, to make sure you do this regularly and then from here to allow your dreams to flourish.
The Barons Court Project is one of these safe havens for people. It is a lovely house in West Kensington and has the feeling of coming into a home. People can come have a delicious meal, sit in the garden, shower, wash their clothes, get medical advice and attention, learn computors, watch television, talk to other people and the fantastic staff.
Email me if you have any questions.
Wishing you love in your hearts, communion with your dreams, ability to share your gifts and opportunities to share who you are
I teach drama, dance and coach people there regularly and have being doing so for the last 5 years. I have a few people who have regularly come for the whole time I have been there and I really value their commitment to coming and to trying new things out. Sometimes I have wondered whether I can make a real difference to people when the goals might not be about getting a job but might be more about feeling steady in your life or doing a creative project or even having a weekend away (which can be a very brave thing to do for some) or learning how to speak up for yourself. But I have learned so much from this lovely group of people that I can make a difference and I have learned about the importance of love, commitment and consistency. It has felt, to me, that if people have a safe place to go or be when they feel vulnerable then they can have an opportunity to get some steadiness and from this place they can grow their wings however small or big. And it does not matter how big the wings are. What matters is that people are loved and accepted and have a safe place where they can feel this.
I feel that we all need a safe place to go and that safe place is ultimately coming inside ourselves and into relationship with ourselves. So what is it that helps you feel safe enough to come inside yourself?
I know for me that my workshops and connections with others are very important, my community arts grounds me and takes me straight into a feeling of soul love but I also need Turkish baths, I need to melt in the heat of a sauna and really let go, I need to dance and feel the flow of the divine and I need to see the sea and my beloved Welsh Mountains in South Wales where I spent my childhood holidays with my Welsh family. For me the key is to know what grounds you and keeps you safe and connected, to make sure you do this regularly and then from here to allow your dreams to flourish.
The Barons Court Project is one of these safe havens for people. It is a lovely house in West Kensington and has the feeling of coming into a home. People can come have a delicious meal, sit in the garden, shower, wash their clothes, get medical advice and attention, learn computors, watch television, talk to other people and the fantastic staff.
Email me if you have any questions.
Wishing you love in your hearts, communion with your dreams, ability to share your gifts and opportunities to share who you are
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