Category Archives: Books

Books by Serge Beddington-Behrens, PhD

Upcoming Release for late 2022 / early 2023
Amazing Grace: Memoirs of a Transformational Journey

Released August 2020:
Gateway to the Soul – Inner Work for the Outer World

Released in 2013:
Awakening The Universal Heart – A Guide for Spiritual Activists

The Art of Letting Go

Posted on by
Reply

In a lecture I gave recently, someone asked me this question:

“Serge. Could you give me any advice as to how one may best let go? I am making some new year resolutions for myself and I realize that in order to carry them out effectively, there are some things I need to surrender and I am finding this process quite difficult.”

Here was my reply:

Yes, letting go is always challenging. The Art of Letting Go - Serge Beddington-Behrens, PhDIt is much harder to let go of things – be they possessions, people, values, beliefs, habit patterns – than to take them on, as that first process often happens spontaneously without our even being aware of it.

A relationship, for example, is always much easier to get into than to get out of, but as you say, often we cannot move on to the next phase in our lives unless we start divesting ourselves of what it is inside us that stands in its way. Continue reading →

In Praise of Tolerance

Posted on by
Reply

toleracneNovember 16th is the International day of Tolerance and maybe it could be an opportunity for all of us  to examine where we personally stand on this issue. Do we consider ourselves to be  tolerant? Or are we often intolerant?  If so,  what are we intolerant about? Here, we also need to remind ourselves that there can be a tendency in some of us to be pots calling kettles black, that is, to be intolerant of those who possess faults similar to our own, as that enables us to shift the burden of responsibility away from ourselves, and onto them, which results, as it were, in getting ourselves ‘off the hook’! Continue reading →

Awakening the Universal Heart – The Book Launch

Posted on by
Reply

The second week of September was some crazy London week for me, as I went to two launches for my book, Awakening the Universal Heart, one on the 10th of September and the other the next day.

Awakening the Universal Heart Book Launch - Serge Beddington-Behrens, PhD

On the 10th of September I invited only my oldest friends – those I’ve known since we were kids – and it was fitting that it took place at the wonderfully eccentric flat of Peter Adler, dripping with tribal art and exotic ethnic jewellery and artefacts. About sixty people came. It is special when you have your oldest friends around you – and we’re all getting pretty ancient now – as you can let your hair down. Nothing to prove. They know all your many idiosyncrasies.

Continue reading →

Spiritual Maturity

Posted on by
Reply

One of the things we need to remember is that we all have multiple intelligences and that different aspects of ourselves exist at different levels. Thus, we may be pretty evolved in one or two areas,  whereas in other arenas of our lives, we  may be less adept and  in some areas pretty hopeless.

Let us look, for example, at six aspects of life: our cognitive (intellectual) skills, our interpersonal skills (how adept we are at relating with others), our ‘street cred’ (how practical we are at handling the everyday nitty gritty challenges in life),  our emotional, moral and spiritual intelligence. Some of us may be highly skilled at a cognitive level (two Ph.D’s in astrophysics) but have absolutely no interpersonal or emotional skills. Someone might be very emotionally and cognitively skilled but have absolutely no moral sense, i.e., we are a total shit, and  we use our intelligence primarily to dupe and  manipulate others. (I can think of a couple of CEOs of large companies who fit into this category.)

Continue reading →

An Interview on Spiritual Activism

Posted on by
Reply

Serge Beddington-Behrens Spiritual Activism

Question.

Serge, you have just written a book on Spiritual Activism and the emergence of the Global Heart. Let me start by asking you  a few questions. First, what do you mean by the global heart and why is it ‘awakening’ today, and how does it relate to spiritual activism? And secondly, how does spiritual activism differ from other forms of activism?

 
Serge. Good questions. I’ll  try to answer them in order. When I talk about the global or the universal heart, I am referring to the heart of humanity as a whole or the collective human heart which, if our own ‘personal’ hearts are sufficiently open, we can potentially link into or connect with.

We will know when we are connected or when the universal heart has stared awakening inside us, when we start feeling furious about the many huge injustices in the world or when we find ourselves minding what happens to people who live right at the other end of the world from us, or when we suddenly experience a mysterious love for our fellow human beings whom we’ve never met, or feel moved to commit to championing some cause where there is no direct, personal gain to ourselves.

Continue reading →

A Message of Hope

Posted on by
Reply

Crisis = Dangerous OpportunityNight, it has been said, is always at its darkest just before dawn and if we were to apply that image to what is currently happening in our world  (the dire situation in Syria, the horrendous scenario in Egypt, Iran going nuclear, our global financial problems, the problems of  youth unemployment, the environment – my list can go on for ever), we can say that, species wise,  we are definitely in the middle of a dark night.

And the problem about dark nights, which is well known to anyone going through the early stages of  a ‘dark night of the soul crisis’, is that when immersed in them, it  often seems as if there is no way out and that the forces of darkness truly have the upper hand.

Continue reading →

Does Evil Exist and If So What Should We Do About It?

Posted on by
Reply
Question: ‘Serge, do you believe in the reality of evil? Do you think it exists? if so, what should we do about it?

Serge: I do believe in evil, yes, and certainly feel that if we are to have a better world  that we should  understand  it and, if we feel strong enough,  confront it and not bury our heads, ostrich-like, and pretend it is not there. You know that old saying about evil being allowed when good people do nothing.  Well, it’s true! However, if we are to ‘do anything’ about evil, we need to recognise its many different faces. The way I see it is that there are two kinds of evil: obvious evil and non-obvious evil. Obvious evil is, well, obvious.  It is about Hitler, Robert Mugabe, Darfur, Stalin, Genocide, Auschwitz, murder, torture, Saddam Hussein, Stalin, Etc. Continue reading →

The Challenge of the Spiritual Path – Celebration of the Quest

Posted on by
Reply

SBB. Today, I would like to explore some of the general challenges that a person may encounter if they make a commitment to following a spiritual path and seek to live a spiritual life. I am not going to be specific and deal with the many different kinds of individual problems that the seeker can face. In other words, I am not going to look specifically at spiritual emergencies or go into detail over the many different kinds of trap which can beset the seeker, especially as he advances along his path. This is the subject of a further dialogue. Here, my focus will simply be on what it means to embrace spirituality in an essentially secular culture and what the spiritual journey means and what it might be asking of us. Continue reading →

The Emergence of People Power in the East

Posted on by
Reply

What do you feel about the emergence of people Power in the Middle East?……… Do you feel hopeful for our future?

‘We seem to be seeing a strong impulse for freedom springing up in the world today – especially in the Middle East, with all the manifestations of ‘people power’ that we have been witnessing, especially with what has just been going on in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain and now Libya . Do you have hope that a better world is in the offing? If so, what do you think of those prophecies that foretell the end of the world in 2012? Doesn’t that sound rather scary?’ Continue reading →

Can We be Political and Spiritual?

Posted on by
Reply

Can We be Political and Spiritual?Question: I have often heard Spiritual gurus say that we should not get attached to the drama of world politics, that we should individually aim for evolutionary change but that politics can draw us into unhelpful dramas. Could you advise on whether you agree with this stance, especially with reference to the sweeping evolutionary changes in the Middle East at this time?

Serge: This used to be typical ‘guru advice’ half a century ago, i.e., focus on your own development and let the world ‘out there’ look after itself. Change yourself and the world will change. Spirituality and politics shouldn’t mix. Well, times today have changed. With most of us, I don’t believe we can be effectively ‘spiritual’ without also involving ourselves in some way with the betterment of our society, and what this means is that a lot of the time we can’t avoid being political, which I define very broadly as being willing to live as our stance for the kind of world we want to see emerge.

Continue reading →