L E T T E R from Jac – Nature Is My Religion
I don’t have an official religion, but my temple is the ocean. My altars are the trees. Animals are my […]
I don’t have an official religion, but my temple is the ocean. My altars are the trees. Animals are my […]
There is a system within the Vedic lineages called ‘tapasya’ which is essentially the renunciation of something we enjoy, in […]
“Dust settles, I don’t” – Anita Kopacz I was listening to a podcast (Ancient Wisdom Today) a few days ago, […]
Life is this strange sequencing of events, isn’t it? And when we look at a year, it is like 12 […]
I raised this in our Tea Ceremony and Meditation Gathering last Saturday because someone asked it of me awhile ago and it really stuck […]
I frequently do this, write a YES list. What do I want in my life. It’s a very full life, so there has to […]
Too often we think, myself included, ‘I don’t have time for this’, surrounding anything that is nourishing, rewarding, spiritual and […]
Even the crap bits, shit bits all the bits in between. It’s funny how in hindsight we understand that everything […]
“I am a warrior of love.I am the light that lights the path of my soul” – Unknown Who’s ever […]
I know I bang on and on about Values, but I truly see them as anchors for our souls. When […]
Gah how I love this quote! I wanted to end the week with it. When we don’t know what our […]
There is a Zen saying Susan Murphy taught me, which is no matter WHAT is happening, you send out into […]
I have an immense amount to speak to on this topic, but I thought I would start with sharing with […]
I am so grateful for my lowest of lows. They formed and shaped me in ways I couldn’t ever possibly […]
“The oak sleeps in the acornThe giant sequoia tree sleeps in its tiny seedThe bird waits in the eggGod waits […]
It’s a worthwhile question, isn’t it? Sometimes, it’s lots of life. I love material things and I get great joy from […]
The Buddha spoke that every being has the capacity for enlightenment and as everything is connected, every single being has […]
Today is Letter 300. There are so many Letters behind these when I wasn’t tallying them up. But 300 feels […]
This reminds me of something my friend Sam from Cloud Hidden Tea told me about tea ceremonies; work with the […]
The other day in London, we discovered a street cart outside a mosque, where Kaz the owner makes some of […]
Okay ‘huge news’, we have moved our quotes to a neutral colour palette. I share this not because it’s going […]
What if taught all our kids that normal was beige, nothing to aspire to, and to totally and utterly embrace […]
The brighter you shine the more blinding it will become for those not attuned to it. I was recently chatting […]
I get this kind of question/pondering all the time, along the lines of…‘So I really really feel that meditation would […]
Our brains wire in ways of doing things for efficiencies sake. It’s to make the whole system flow more, things […]
As we round out January, there comes a sense of the year looming ahead. Will it be everything we want […]
In Zen, the tensho is the monastery cook. Every moment, every meal is seen as an opportunity to experience truth, […]
I love this quote by Condoleeza, for its many layers. What if we let go of former everything. Former anxiety.Former […]
I think writing yesterday’s Letter stirred up a lot for me. I pondered about all the (necessary) distractions I experienced […]
When I was young, I was a strange little kid. I didn’t fit in at all. Eccentric, hyperactive, skinny and […]
What if instead of considering creativity just as artistic ways of going about things, we widened the scope to include: […]
David Whyte said,’ How easily the thread is broken between this life and the next’. It’s a beautiful line, isn’t […]
Why is our personal purpose so hard to define for most of us? It took me decades to figure it […]
I had a conversation with a dear friend and meditation student on the weekend about the never-ending list of ‘All […]
I had soooo many people respond to the letter (What Would You Create) about what would you do if you couldn’t […]
Brene always delivers the pithy statements, doesn’t she? I love thinking about authenticity this way, a series of tiny commitments. […]
This is that tricky time of year I find when we bound in with full enthusiasm, transformed by new possibility […]
I’ve never met anyone like Arran, he literally doesn’t ever consider what anyone thinks of him. He’s incredibly neat and […]
One of my favourite questions as part of long-term workshops that I host, is ‘if you knew you couldn’t fail, […]
A little list of things I would recommend if you’re stuck making choices at the moment. It’s a big time […]
It’s the first day of 2019. If you woke today bright and alive, brilliant. If you woke hungover as hell […]
My absolute goodness what a year. For Arran and I, it was beyond what we imagined. I travelled to London, […]
I spent most of Friday emailing back students who had applied for the scholarship of Be Your Best Self. We […]
The Letter I wrote the other day about the need for planning and our common misunderstanding that planning depletes our […]
I had a really interesting conversation the other day with a long term meditator who had become disillusioned with spirituality, […]
I find this one of the most challenging of all the opposites we experience, the balance between simplicity and happiness […]
Being only a few short days to Christmas, I thought this quote was utterly perfect, as soon most of us […]
Conscious and Patient are not two words I have always been excellent at embodying in my life. I have been […]
This quote has been playing around in my mind like a Zen koan for some time. It can be viewed […]
I was standing on the shore of the beach the other day chatting to Gabriel. Gabriel is Argentinean and I […]
I absolutely adore this quote and have had it pinned above my desk for years. When I am stuck, feeling […]
This Weekend Edition we are proudly introducing you to Kate Pascoe Squires, who has been making some significant and inspiring […]
When Emily or I teach Integrated Meditation, we both drill into our students to not chase perfection. You will never […]
This is the time of year we all sit back and start to either feel incredible gratitude for the year […]
My wonderful friend Jeff Kober included this in his daily newsletter last week and I loved it so much I […]
It’s so much easier to look at someone close to us and see their flaws. Their unrealistic nature in certain […]
There is a downside to living a full and abundant life. I mean at first you’re like, seriously, could there be […]
I really wish to use The Broad Place to share important messages. Erin Lovell Verinder who was recently interviewed at […]
Last weekend, I hosted with my insanely talented friend Kim Amos a Creativity and Consciousness Workshop at her property, River […]
I am trying hard to help my daughter be empowered to make the choices that are right by her. To […]
When we are constantly moving, it’s so hard to be still. Not still in meditation, still in life. When we […]
As an enthusiast (someone with obsessive tendencies coupled with deep excitement), Arran is always nervous when I start getting into […]
I looked after our friends’ little boy called Sonny the other night, the whole night and morning while they went […]
I am up in glorious Byron Bay on the east coast of Australia preparing for our Retreat, studying tea, spending […]
Meditation these days is a name for a lot of different things, a lot of which is not meditation. Something […]
Consciousness is defined in so many different ways, sometimes as a state of awareness, or the quality of that awareness. Sometimes as […]
One of the examples I use when teaching in workplaces is this: Last day of work before a holiday; everyone […]
Charles and Ray Eames have been an endless inspiration to me. When I was 19 and studying interior architecture, one […]
I meet a lot of people who comment they’re too scared to learn meditation because of what they might discover […]
When living a conscious life, it’s not all unicorns and rainbows. People sometimes think that they can walk a conscious […]
I used to play a game many years back, that I nicknamed Ram Dass Roulette. I listened ferociously to Ram […]
I still remember reading The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand’s pivotal book. I was maybe 21 at the time and it fried […]
Around this time of year, Arran and I start formulating our ideas for the following year. 2018 was massive for […]
We have been preaching this from the rooftops for years, it’s a tool within our 7 Day Mind Cleanse and […]
Today we are going to gift you something special, because trust me, you need it. Everyone, especially at this time of the […]
Grounding is about being connected to within, to the earth, and to nature and taking our heads out of the […]
Amanda is a dear friend of ours, and we have not only worked together, (you might remember Hiro her little […]
What’s fascinating about consciousness is that it’s hard to describe, hard to quantify and yet everyone wants more of it. […]
We are so good most of the time at looking back, and admitting, sometimes admiringly, that everything was for the […]
Frequently people think ‘creativity = art’ and it’s time for us to broaden our horizons around this. Creativity is at […]
I often ponder why it’s so hard to follow our hearts and even harder sometimes to hear what they have […]
There is so much talk of the power of positive thinking, so much science to back it up, yet I […]
I used to have a terrible aversion to saying no to people. I had, (and still do) a big fear […]
This quote is for me literally something to live by ‘Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything […]
Wow, this weeks’ Letters seem to have really triggered a lot of thought and reflection from many of you!! So, […]
If you haven’t read the first and second part of this Letter series, you can check Part 1 and Part […]
If you haven’t read the first part of this Letter series you can do so here. Continuing on from yesterday! […]
In Buddhism, Dukkha, which is originally a Pali word, is translated most frequently as suffering. Specifically the suffering of the […]
Having a teenage daughter, the essence of telling the truth is really up in our grill at the moment. And […]
If you missed yesterday’s Letter, Part 1, you can see it here. After changing my flights and wrapping up the […]
Our recent trip to India took a year to plan. The major component was our Broad Place Retreat which had […]
The only thing we are really trapped by is our thinking mind, with its limitations and prejudices and biases that […]
Beauty can be so underrated in our modern way of life. Tiny moments of beauty can light me up for hours […]
We can’t help it a lot of the time. It’s automatic. Our egos are constantly sizing everything up against that […]
For our recent India Retreat, I had it all mapped out. Tightly organised, planned to within an inch of its […]
A student messaged me last week saying she felt disgusted with herself and angry, as she still longed to buy […]
There is so much confusion when we decide to live ‘spiritually’. It’s really a nonsense idea because everyone is trying […]