The Sanctuary Blog

  You are the Changemaker Satsang is like the sowing of the seeds. The sadhana plows the field and the satsang sows the seeds. It’s all very well having a plowed field, but you have to plant in it, otherwise, the same old stuff will grow. Even when you sow new seeds, the old stuff will still grow alongside the new stuff; weeds still grow in a planted garden. You have to continue to go over your shrub bed before you have a handle on the weed situation but the main thing is that the new growth is taking place within that. Gradually, the new growth gets stronger until it is a forest, the weeds no longer get the light and the ground clears by itself. In that situation, even if weeds start to grow, they become irrelevant next to the huge forest that you are.  One of the greatest messages to plant inside us is that we carry the power of change within ourselves. That message is sometimes palatable and sometimes not. Only you carry the power of change for yourself.  We can change...

Gathering in Satsang Receiving nourishment together is really important. As a family, it is important to eat together. As a sangha, it is important to come and be in satsang together. Recognising togetherness is a movement towards oneness.  Being able to get on in large groups together is a massive yoga in itself. To keep putting the stuff that is not important aside to keep remembering that which is important. Our species has the capacity to squabble and get into endless conflict with itself over meaningless things but this also means we must have the opposite capacity. Someone who is abiding in a great deal of effortful hatred has immense capacity for love, it is just that they’re choosing one end of the spectrum currently.  To come together and celebrate existence, that thing which is common to us all, but out of which we also all derive our uniqueness, is a really wonderful thing. We create a certain energy together, then we all move out from the ashram and spread that ene...

  "I have something that I have compiled over some time, I call them my confessions. I have a whole list of them, maybe one day I’ll get around to sharing them. They are good tools. They are also good fun because for me they are humbling and they remind me of some deep truths. One that I normally put at the top of the list of these confessions is “I confess I don't know anything” and I really try to mean it because it’s true. Nothing. You can’t know anything. I’ve got information. You’ve got information in your noddle too. Plenty of it that you’ve collected along your journey. You might be proud of some of the information that you’ve collected, but it is only information. You have yours and I have mine depending on the sources that we’ve been exposed to and the experiences we’ve had but it’s still just information about Life. So I have to confess that before anything happens I cannot already know it. I cannot know anything about what’s going to happen in the next second until ...