Project Me

Mindfulness has become such an unobtrusive part of our cultural landscape that we can forget how radical and counter-cultural Buddhism really is. It’s become subsumed into the well-being movement: if we take five minutes to close our eyes, breathe slowly and relax, then we can live our normal lives on a slightly happier and more even keel. That’s the promise of mindfulness.

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The Princess and the Pea

I’m back from a 10-day meditation retreat, at Vajrasana in sunny Suffolk. That might seem a bit of a doss, but it’s also an investment – I really want to improve my meditation practice, for my benefit and others', and it’s ten times easier to learn on retreat than at home.  It’s like trying to light a match indoors versus trying to light it on the top of a windy hill.

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Kanye West and the five elements of creative genius

I went to see a publisher the other day, who said they had a project for me. The project turned out to be a series called ‘Great Philosophers’. Could I suggest any great living philosophers to write about, other than myself obviously? ‘How about a book about Kanye West?’ They laughed. Pause. ‘No, really. Make a series of little books about great cultural influencers. I’ll do one on Kanye West.’

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Invitation for submissions to book on spiritual emergencies / archetypal crises

The fundamental mistake was supposing that the healing process was the disease, rather than the process whereby the disease is healed. The disease, if any, was the state previous to the ‘psychosis’.  The so-called ‘psychosis’ was an attempt towards spontaneous healing, it was a movement towards health, not a movement towards disease . . .  it could be called mystical, a re-owning and discovery of parts of myself.

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Tenzin Palmo on escaping the prison of the ego

This week I saw Tenzin Palmo speak at the Rigpa centre in London. She’s a remarkable woman, the daughter of a fishmonger from East London, who left Bethnal Green at the age of 20 to learn about the dharma in northern India. She became a Tibetan Buddhist nun – the second Western woman ever to do that – and then spent 12 years meditating in a Himalayan cave.

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The lazy mysticism of Alan Watts

The only thinker whose popularity on YouTube comes close to prophet-of-rage Jordan Peterson is Alan Watts, the British popularizer of Eastern wisdom. Watts’ talks from the 50s, 60s and early 70s have millions of views on YouTube, and are often edited to the accompaniment of orchestral or ‘chillstep’ soundtracks and jazzy collages of modern life.

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Life is a game

The other day I came across one of those ubiquitous articles about the Problem with Men. And it had this line: 'life is not a race, it's not a game, and it's not a fight'. The problem, the author suggested, was men were attached to the wrong metaphor for life. He preferred 'life is a dance' - that frames life in a non-competitive and open way.

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How to fake vulnerability

It's a confusing world, but there are some things we know for sure. We know for sure that it's good to be vulnerable, don't we? That humans - particularly men - need to learn to open up more, because that's the way to better connection and higher self-worth. That much we know. Right?

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Integrating ayahuasca into western healthcare (part 2)

Here is part 2 of my interview with pioneering researcher Milan Scheidegger, who works in the psychedelics lab at University of Zurich. You can read part 1 here. In this half of the interview, we discuss how to translate aspects of indigenous ayahuasca rituals - such as the shaman or sacred plant songs - into the context of western healthcare. We also discuss Milan's plans to establish a psychedelic healing clinic in Switzerland.

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Integrating ayahuasca into western healthcare: an interview with Milan Scheidegger

Milan Scheidegger is one of the most interesting young researchers in psychedelics, because he integrates several different perspectives. He's a clinical psychiatrist at the University of Zurich, who's spent a decade studying the effect of psychedelics on subjects in a laboratory, and on a meditation retreat.

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