Friendliness

I hope I am not being a self-righteousness old so n’ so when I say that I try to be friendly with everyone I meet and to do my best to hold people positively in my heart.

OK, not everyone will be our friend. The friends we have are our choice. But we can be friendly to everyone, especially to those people who feel outcasts in our society, as it does so much to help them feel more included. And one of the sad things about the world we live in is that many of us learn to be exclusive, to separate ourselves, to only share ourselves with those whom we feel ‘deserve it’ or whom we know well. That was me in the old days and it played a big role in why I often felt unhappy. I lived disconnected from the world.

I remember so well being in my early twenties, living in London and feeling very lonely, and I was in the Kings Road, Chelsea, when an old lady saw me sitting on a bench looking miserable and she came up to me and said ‘You look so sad but you seem a nice young man!’ She spent fifteen minutes cheering me up , just being kind and funny, and I began to feel so much better.

Wow!!

She’d taken the trouble to go up to a stranger and talk to him. Again, in our ‘British society’ we learn not to do this ‘unless we’ve been formally introduced!’

Before she left, she said these wise words to me:

‘Don’t get lost in your misery.’ (I was.) ‘But go out and be kind to people. Connect with them. That will heal you. Be open. Just be your simple self with those around you and they will feel better and you will feel better’.

Easier said than done. I saw how hard this was for me, how closed I was and how closed so many people were. At school, our minds get trained, not our hearts. And that is a huge misfortune. It certainly was for me!

Well, her words stayed with me. It took me some years to learn to open up even just a little. I needed to work hard at it. But as I gradually did, all areas of my life also began to open up, and I discovered that it enabled me spontaneously to give of myself to other people, to hold them kindly in my heart and that when I could do this, I would also feel more connected not only to myself, but also to my world. I was also able to be kinder and less judgemental of myself.

I like what the Dalai Lama said about this:

‘Be kind and merciful Let no one ever come to you without feeling better and happier…..’

I think it is the way for us to feel better and happier as well!

The Spiritual Power of Friendship and Community A Webinar with Serge Beddington-Behrens and Steve Taylor

On the evening of Monday, July 31st, I am doing a webinar with my dear, lovely friend Steve Taylor on the theme of friendliness, friendship and community. If you are not busy that evening, please join us. We feel these themes are so important in today’s society.

You can sign up for “The Spiritual Power of Friendship & Community” on Eventbrite.

Love,

Serge

 

 

 

Introducing Amazing Grace: Memoirs of a Transformational Journey

My memoirs, Amazing Grace: Memoirs of a Transformational Journey” are being published later this summer. I think this is the most fun and interesting book I’ve written so far.

On the one hand, it’s an amusing story about the privileged world I was born into, and I gabble on a lot about the Swinging 60’s and what public schools and Oxford were like in those days, and myself as an entitled, eccentric, dandy man about town, an ardent ski racer and girl chaser.

On the other hand, it’s a serious account of what I learned from my close encounters with the paranormal, altered states of consciousness, Spiritual Masters in India, Shamans in South America, and a myriad of different sages, healers, mystics, wizards, analysts and philosophers.

All these things were a part of my journey to becoming a soul-centred psychotherapist, a teacher of spiritual retreats and an activist for a healthier and transformed society.

Visit the page on my website about Amazing Grace…

Visit O-Books to Pre-order Your E-book or Printed Copy!

 

From Disconnection to Oneness

A Webinar with Steve Taylor and Serge Beddington-Behrens
4 April, 2023

From Disconnection to Oneness - a Webinar by Steve Taylor & Serge Beddington Behrens

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Why do so many people feel disconnected from each other,
from themselves and from nature?

Why does disconnection create cruelty and fear?

How can we become more connected. and move towards oneness?

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Join Steve Taylor and myself as we explore how connection produces compassion and goodness and is the basis of a harmonious self, society and world.
Continue reading

Exploring Sacred Activism – Newsletter & Course Intro

Dear Friend,
Here is what António Guterres, the Secretary General of the U.N., said at a meeting last September:


Our world is blighted by war,
Battered by climate change,
Scarred by hate,
And shamed by poverty, hunger and inequality.
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My last newsletter came out just as the war with Ukraine was starting, and now it is nearly a year later and the atrocities continue to reign down on that country. What is it with the evil of this man Putin? What can we do…?

Soulful Activism

Today I am going to talk to you about Activism, about Sacred Activism, about Actively making the world a better place while maintaining Respect for all Life on Earth.

In the light of this great evil in the north and other very unpleasant things going on in our world today, I think that being an Activist for a more just world or for a transformed world is among the most important things that any of us can be doing with our lives at this moment. Continue reading

Understanding the Crises of the Heart, Climate Change, Crisis and Transformation

Today I would like to share with you a few excerpts from “Understanding the Crises of the Heart”, chapter 19 of my first book, “Awakening the Universal Heart”, as I find them particularly relevant to our world situation today and in tune with the recommendations that follow.

The Signicance of Crisis

“A time of crisis is also a time of opening up, when thinking that was consigned to the fringes moves to centre stage. When things fall apart, the appetite for new ways of seeing is palpable.”
~ Paul Kingsnorth ~

What many of our crises today are also helping bring home to us is how inextricably interconnected our planet has become…

Continue reading

Shining a Light in the Darkness – Webinar – 7 June 2022

Spiritual Awakening in a Disordered World

Dear Friends,
Here is my latest offering with my wise friend Steve. We both think this topic is very important as never has our world been in a more precarious and chaotic state. We both believe in the Chinese translation of the word crisis which is to regard it as a ‘dangerous opportunity’. We see many dangerous opportunities surrounding us all!

Serge with Steve Taylor

We are living in a time of political turmoil and ecological crisis. What are the challenges of spiritual awakening in this context? Steve and Serge will discuss how spiritual awakening can help heal the world, and how crisis can be the spur for collective awakening.

Please join us for our webinar on 7 June, 2022!
Click here for further details and registration

What Liberates?

The Oxford Dictionary defines liberation as:
the act of setting someone free from slavery, imprisonment or oppression’.

Liberation, therefore, has both inner and outer dimensions which are intrinsically inter-related because if we are not free inside ourselves, it will inevitably limit our ability to live a liberated outer life, even if the society we live in is a relatively free one. The same can hold true the other way around as well.

Many of us, therefore, need liberating not only from what oppresses us internally and which prevents us realising who we really are, but also from a society where economic, religious, societal and cultural forces oppress us. It is just as incarcerating to being a slave to negative habits, restrictive thoughts and tendencies to feel paranoid and depressed, as it is to live in countries with regimes that spy on us all the time, or where societal fault lines means we have to devote so much effort simply to survive that we are allowed no space to be creative or time to experience enjoyment.

I see one of the great problems of the world today is that too many of us are enchained both ways and the result is a huge amount of unhappiness all around. In many Western nations, fault lines in society may activate predispositions inside many of us to feel soulless and empty resulting is us having hearts full of greed, aggression, insecurity, pain, fear and resentment as opposed to love, compassion, altruism and wisdom. And this huguely weighs us down.

In my last book, Gateways to the Soul, I explored certain societal conditions required that I felt would encourage external liberation and in so doing, create a context favourable for possible internal liberation. Here are a few of the most relevant ones…

Continue reading

Essay: Looking to the Future

This essay looks at:
a) the state of the world today
b) what I see happening on the planet over the next eighty years and
c) the new society that I see rising, phoenix like, out of the ashes.

It is a hopeful essay but suggests that to get to the light, humanity may need to go through some more dark times…

Looking to the Future
OK, it is time now to look forward and say a few words about what I think might possibly lie ahead for humanity in the future. As I feel very much part of the whole, I regard this issue as an integral part of my memoir. Indeed, I am increasingly realising that the more I can own my human-collective self – realise I am not separate from but deeply part of humanity as a whole – the more fully me I become!
Continue reading

Creating Peace

Dear Friend,

As I write this, my heart is full of sorrow. Our world is once more plunged into the insanity of war, with thousands perishing in the name of Putin’s insane idea to restore Russia to its former ‘greatness’, to wage war against democracy, poke a finger in the eye of NATO’s expansion and in his words, to ‘de-Nazify’ Ukraine.

As in all wars we see the usual projection of one’s own Shadow onto another people, for as the whole world can see, the one who is behaving like Hitler is the KGB-trained Putin himself. Over twenty years of being president, a monster has gradually marinated inside him and all his actions now proclaim the truth of Lord Acton’s remark that ‘power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely’.

I am so glad that Biden, who has been so effective in arranging the coalition against Putin, is President and not Trump, as Trump admires Putin’s ‘manliness’ and strength as do many other Republicans. Indeed, it is not impossible that in 2024, Trump or a Trumpite – someone equally deranged and fascistic only much more intelligent – returns to power bringing with them their own brand of autocratic insanity, and that a country whose aim has been to champion democracy in the world, finds itself gradually becoming an authoritarian state?

Here, we keep our fingers crossed that this will not come to pass. Perhaps world events are showing everyone that demagoguery is not the slightest bit attractive and that it has a very, very dark face!

To return to the issue of war, I am so glad that the world has responded so strongly to Putin’s enormous mistake. Today, I attended an anti-war group in the square of our little Mallorcan town and I felt great kinship with everybody present. I felt my own heart open and realised that, on one level, this terrible tragedy is serving to open up the collective weeping heart of humanity and is also releasing a tremendous power of camaraderie on the planet.

I am glad that the strongest of sanctions have been levied on Putin and on his henchmen who have enabled him over the years. Sadly, his people – the vast number of Russians who don’t want a war – will have to pay a price, as will we in the West, as the effects of the sanctions will soon start percolating back. I am half Russian and I have many Russian friends and I can also feel their pain as well as that of the Ukrainian people. I ask myself: will Russians rise up against Putin? I mean, if millions take to the streets, surely they can’t all be arrested….

Dalai Lama

All wars have a similar tragic pattern to them. Violence and killing is let loose. Huge lies are told. Soldiers and civilians, women and children die, people are tortured and a vast 

amount of trauma and suffering is generated for all concerned. Yes, wars start for very specific reasons, but essentially ‘a space’ for them to emerge also lies in the fact that so much hostility, hatred, trauma and anger lies inside so many of us. Many people in the world today are very angry at the system and at the impossibilities they face in trying to improve their lot. But as the Dalai Lama put it:

If we use violence in order to reduce disagreements and conflicts, then we must expect violence every day.

Continue reading

Essay: Embracing the American Shadow

“Everyone carries a Shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”
~ Carl Jung ~

Challenges

In this essay, I want to talk about the challenges currently facing America, as it is a country I have very fond memories of. I lived and worked there for thirteen years in the 70s and 80s and got an enormous amount out of the experience and was privileged to have encountered some of the wisest people I have ever met anywhere. Like many of my American friends, I have found it very painful to see what has been going on in their country for the last four years, and in these pages I want to suggest a slightly different approach both to viewing and to dealing with the many challenges which America is currently facing. Continue reading