top of page
BLOG
Search
UNCOMFORTABLE QUOTES #8: Kundera on Order-as-Death
“The longing for order is at the same time a longing for death, because life is an incessant disruption of order.” Milan Kundera I’d love...
Alistair Appleton
Jul 10, 20181 min read
3 views
0 comments
Between retreat
Moving from field to field It is a week since we packed up and left Croydon Hall in Somerset. That was the location of Reggie and...
Alistair Appleton
Jun 26, 20185 min read
2 views
0 comments
UNCOMFORTABLE TRUTH #7: Bernard on Evolution
“Evolution forged the entirety of sentient life on this planet using only one tool: Mistake.” Bernard in “Westworld”, Series 1, Episode 4...
Alistair Appleton
Jun 22, 20181 min read
2 views
0 comments
UNCOMFORTABLE QUOTES #6: Seneca on stinginess
“People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one...
Alistair Appleton
Jun 5, 20181 min read
2 views
0 comments
UNCOMFORTABLE QUOTES #5: Hillman on Feelings
“To feel something thoroughly does not mean to be it thoroughly. It is a mistake, a big bad mistake, to take feelings utterly literally”...
Alistair Appleton
May 30, 20181 min read
3 views
0 comments
Uncomfortable Quotes #4: angel Kyodo Williams on the whiteness of Buddhist meditation
“Buddhism was brought to the West mostly by young Jewish people and some Christians, who were white, mostly. […] White culture affected —...
Alistair Appleton
May 21, 20181 min read
1 view
0 comments
Uncomfortable Quotes #3: MLK on thinking poorly
I’d love to know your thoughts about Martin Luther King. Please leave a message with any thoughts, comments, questions, queries or...
Alistair Appleton
May 16, 20181 min read
5 views
0 comments
The Smelling Salts of Factfulness: how grateful we should be if we’re reading this
What percentage of the world do you think lives in poverty? 50%? More? Less? Hans Rosling in his great book, Factfulness, talks about the...
Alistair Appleton
May 16, 20184 min read
4 views
0 comments
New Holy Island Gallery 2018
This is a new gallery of pictures of Holy Island. They’re mostly taken from the Mindsprings summer and autumn retreats. There are views...
Alistair Appleton
May 1, 20181 min read
23 views
0 comments
Joys of a real Scottish meditation retreat
This summer (and again in October) Mindsprings is hosting our annual Scottish Meditation retreat on Holy Island. So I thought I’d take a...
Alistair Appleton
May 1, 20186 min read
26 views
0 comments
Uncomfortable Quotes #2: CTR on Spiritual Cowardice
“If you succeed in encasing yourself completely, you may feel secure but you will also feel terribly lonely. This is not the loneliness...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 26, 20181 min read
1 view
0 comments
Uncomfortable quotes #1: George Bernard Shaw on the false comforts of belief
“The fact that a believer is happier than a sceptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 20, 20181 min read
5 views
0 comments
Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now : On reading writers you might not like
Steven Pinker, a bone fide factual juggernaut On a random walk through London last year, I stopped at a lovely bookshop and splurged on a...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 20, 20185 min read
2 views
0 comments
Dissociation: Greying out the Mind
Since finishing my therapy degree 6 years ago, dissociation has haunted me. The image I often use to describe dissociation is the ‘greyed...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 16, 20186 min read
7 views
0 comments
Dancing directly with the holy terror of death
Ever since teaching a course on the Buddhist four reminders in February this year, I’ve been dancing with the holy terror around death. I...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 8, 20184 min read
1 view
0 comments
What is somatic meditation?
What does this word somatic mean and how does it relate to meditation? Somatic meditation means ‘of the body’ in contrast to ‘of the...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 6, 20183 min read
21 views
0 comments
FROM RETREAT#7: Candles and food
It’s been two weeks since my retreat ended in Sussex – and yesterday it snowed. All across the garden, the hellebores, crocuses and...
Alistair Appleton
Apr 2, 20184 min read
2 views
0 comments
FROM RETREAT #5: Sitting with the Jellyfish Within
It’s amazing over the course of a retreat day how many different Alistairs show up on the cushion. I was practising around 8 hours a day...
Alistair Appleton
Mar 31, 20183 min read
3 views
0 comments
THE THREE GREAT AGENDAS: #2 Greed and self-snugness
The second great agenda is Greed. This is the one I had the most problems identifying. I could sheepishly get in contact with my inner...
Alistair Appleton
Mar 31, 20183 min read
1 view
0 comments
THE THREE GREAT AGENDAS: #3 Ignorance or Melting the Iceberg of Dissociation
The last and final and most powerful agenda of all is not-seeing. The much-overlooked but ground-breaking American psychologist Harry...
Alistair Appleton
Mar 31, 20185 min read
6 views
0 comments
bottom of page