Wordless Wednesday: Wheels of impermanent time

Isle of Avalon IV

Healing centre
Lui Krieg, a Glastonbury resident and owner of Stone Age jewellery, believes that the reason Glastonbury is so special is that the town amplifies energies. ‘This causes people to face their individual truth and facilitates deep healing and transformation,’ he says. ‘The veil between the dimensions here is thinner than in other places, thus allowing people to tune into energies easier and to actually have a ″Spiritual Experience″. This is supported by the natural earth energies and ley lines with the Michael and Mary Line meeting, supporting the claim to be the Heart Chakra of planet Earth.’

Instant Calmer

After a season of overindulgence, reconnect with the purer things in life by preparing a feast of ‘temple food’, sprinkled with a pinch of magic

These days, the frantic pace of modern life means it’s hard to prepare food with the loving care it deserves. Meals are often hastily thrown together with scant regard for their content or value. The concept of temple food involves cooking with more thought and maybe saying a little prayer of thanks to Mother Earth as you do so. It’s all about simple, low-fat food, mainly consisting of vegetable, rice and noodle dishes that ease the stomach and soothe the soul.

For Buddhist monks at the Tongdosa Temple in Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea, the traditions behind preparing everyday meals involve strict procedures, like rinsing dishes with water that’s then drunk to make sure even tiny grains of rice aren’t wasted. The entire process disciplines the monks about the value of food, sustenance and self-control.

The mildness of the Asian-inspired recipes we’ve featured here is important. With the exception of a few female communities, most Buddhist temples in South Korea ban the use of certain spices, like garlic and spring onions, which are reputed to increase male stamina—potentially a distraction for meditating monks! Most of these dishes are not heavily spiced.

If this all sounds like a dreary detox, be assured it’s not. Domestic goddess Nigella Lawson, known for serving up indulgent meals, describes the temple diet as comfort food, and what better time for a bit of nurturing than in the long, dark nights of January, when a few balanced dishes can provide a welcome opportunity to heal and regenerate.

To usher in the new year, we chose our four favourite temple food dishes and then asked our resident witch, Silja, to add her own brand of magic to boost the properties of each recipe and help us achieve our new year resolutions.

Rescaling: A trick that unravels larger knots

Long-term patterns, addictions, bad habits and major illnesses rarely have quick fixes but require a deeper process for healing. The purpose is to attain either complete remission or acceptance.

One of the ultimate goals of Zen Buddhism [700 AD] is to be at one with the world, and the purpose of rescaling is to attain this in relation to a serious problem, moving into 1-to-1 scale with the world, seeing things as they are. It is also the condition for awakening enlightenment, or full embodiment of spirit.

This trick often works best with a friend, one of you guiding the other. The person with the problem starts scaled far out of proportion to the issue, as if seeing it through a telescope or microscope, and makes a drawing of what they see. Zooming out, they make a new drawing of the factors around the original. Progressively zooming out and making new drawings brings them to the same scale as the problem, looking out through their own eyes in a younger self that was present just before the moment that was the source of the problem. This reconnects the frozen part of the younger self back to the here and now, effecting a rapid growing up that sometimes may take a few days to integrate.

Scaling can be applied to any drawings, words, gestures, movements, nonverbal sounds, and feelings that a person might have. Ask your friend simple questions like ‘and does anything else go on there?’, ‘and what could be just around that?’, or ‘and what could be over there?’ Your job is to bring their attention to spaces, actions, or words that are adjacent to, but just outside, their present focus of attention. It’s easier than it sounds!

From Mind Tricks, Ancient & Modern by Steven Saunders (© Wooden Books, 2008) – All Rights Reserved

Zest Tricks: Increasing your energy

The central doctrine of Buddhist practice is the Eightfold Path, a useful box of tricks involving right understanding, resolve, speech, conduct, livelihood, effort, mindfulness and meditation. So, by first knowing your resolve, you can then choose your perfect livelihood and other aligned ways of being. Because this minimises resistance, it also minimises down time, and limitless enthusiasm and energy emerge. The path can also serve as a powerful business tool. Try it!

Deep within us all is an indomitable rock of inner strength that, once accessed, bestows invulnerability. To find this secret space, seek deep within the solar plexus/sacral area, named the hara by the ancient Japanese. A related trick is to recall a time when you felt unbeatable, winning a game, or knowing something with such total confidence that nothing could touch you.

Putting any dependence on something external, for instance, a ‘performance-enhancing’ drug, associates life-force out of the body, reducing overall zest. Like body, like mind. A simple trick is to get the body going early in the day, generating momentum and energy for a good day’s thinking. Go for a morning jog, or try Tai Chi, practiced for thousands of years by the Chinese, which teaches the art of flowing with the body’s movements, and where, for example, a raising arm lifts itself and stays up without effort.

Charisma is a kind of zesty magnetism projected through the eyes and body. To boost your charisma practice loving yourself and loving those around you. Assume that everyone is acting through love, and discover the true nature of others and yourself. The more you love your neighbor the more your charisma grows.

From Mind Tricks, Ancient & Modern by Steven Saunders (© Wooden Books, 2008) – All Rights Reserved