David Attenborough

I have grown up to David Attenborough's nature documentaries. I remember watching "Life on Earth" and "The Living Planet" as a child and being absolutely mesmerised. David Attenborough played a huge role in instilling in me a wonder and love for nature and wildlife.  He has been such an inspirational figure in my life.

Reasons I love and admire him so much

• His sense of the wonder and sacredness of nature and wildlife.
• The way he makes nature documentaries so captivating and deeply personal.
• A lifelong advocate for preserving the environment and protecting endangered species.
• The way he has introduced so many to the wonders of nature and the importance of conserving it.
• His love of getting out into the world, being filmed on location, getting up, close and personal to nature.
• How he embodies a relentless curiosity about life on Earth, encouraging others to explore and learn.
• His sense of humour and charm.

Some favourite quotes

• An understanding of the natural world is a source of not only great curiosity, but great fulfilment.
• It seems to me that the natural world is the greatest source of excitement; the greatest source of visual beauty; the greatest source of intellectual interest. It is the greatest source of so much in life that makes life worth living.
• Every breath of air we take, every mouthful of food that we take, comes from the natural world. And if we damage the natural world, we damage ourselves.
• People must feel that the natural world is important and valuable and beautiful and wonderful and an amazement and a pleasure.
• We must rewild the world.
• Nature is our biggest ally and greatest inspiration.

Documentaries I was mesmerised by

I love this post from Gavin. So blessed to have such an inspiring friend.

It’s amazing how much you can get done in 12 months when you love the work you do! 

This year I have been lucky enough to travel the whole world. Shooting lessons in Antartica, finding polar bears in the North Pole, searching for sloths in Costa Rica, visiting the largest trees in earth in California and Bangalore and chasing rhinos through the jungle in Chitwan. 

Building schools and libraries in Nepal, climbing Everest for charity, speaking at conferences in Bali, India and Dubai. Opening our third Montessori training centre in Kalanky Nepal with Aand Devkota. 

In reflection, I can’t believe that I have squeezed all this in to one calendar year, but that’s thanks to the amazing team I work alongside each day and the kindness and generosity of the people out there in the world who have welcomed me into their lives. 

This work is designed to make the world better. To leave ripples of change in the universe that will last forever, and in the midst of war and famine, we must work collectively to put good positive energy out there into the world to let our children know that the future is not all bad. 

From darkness to light there is always hope and that hope is you!! 

Bernardo Kastrup

I learned of Bernardo through Rupert Spira. He is a wonderful philosopher who makes a very convincing argument for  idealism, the theory that reality is mental rather than physical. I read most of his books and listened to many hours of him very eloquently discussing this theories on Youtube.

Books that inspired me

Quotes

• Physics is a science of perception. We start with perception and then start to model the behavior of those perceptions. Bernardo Kastrup
• Science does not say what things are. It only says how they behave. Bernardo Kastrup
• Experience is already mind in motion. Bernardo Kastrup
• All of reality is a phenomenon of, and in, mind. Bernardo Kastrup
• The brain is like a whirlpool in the stream of mind. Bernardo Kastrup
• All reality is in mind, including your body and brain. Bernardo Kastrup
• We are all multiple personalities of a cosmic consciousness.  Bernardo Kastrup
• How can consciousness arise from something truly unconscious. Bernardo Kastrup
• Death causes us to remember all that we already know but cannot recall. Bernardo Kastrup
• Every whirlpool represents the subjective world of its respective human being. Bernardo Kastrup
• If you can be sure of anything at all, it is that your conscious perceptions exist. Bernardo Kastrup
• The whirlpool represents a partial localization of the flow of experiences in the stream. Bernardo Kastrup
• The whirlpool of mind ‘filters out’ of itself most subjective experiences unfolding in nature. Bernardo Kastrup
• The brain is like a whirlpool in the stream of mind that filters in our experience and filters out all else. Bernardo Kastrup
• Localized points-of-view become seemingly amnesic of everything that doesn’t fall within their respective vortices. Bernardo Kastrup
• According to idealism, all of reality – the entire universe – exists in mind, although not all in your egoic mind alone. Bernardo Kastrup
• In a sense, we have been deputized by mind at large to look back at itself and try to make something out of what we see. Bernardo Kastrup

Marion, wise seer and intuitive healer extraordinaire

I totally love this amazing and beautiful human being. A fellow South African, Marion is an intuitive therapist and energy healer and played a huge role in my life from 2017 - 2021. Recommended by Tina, her wisdom and insight has had a profoundly transforming effect on my life.  

I recommended all my spiritual friends to her and Shushann, Nic, Sharon, Xenia, Aimee, Lydia, Jane and Chris all ended up seeing her and swear by her.

I don't see Marion on a regular basis right now but just knowing she is there if I ever need her makes all the difference.

Marion's husband is also wonderful. We have met up for lunch on several occasions and had deep philosophical discussions. A wonderful meeting of the minds.  He got me interested in Iain McGilchrist whose books on the left and right brain I subsequently read from cover to cover.

Marion and Alun

Some insights and breakthroughs

• Help connecting to my greater Self and to a sense of oneness with All.  Felt connected for days.  All mental aspects fell into place. 
• Anger as 4 or 5 year old. A powerful "Fuck you!"  Then release and laughter.
• Marion drew a diagram of my head with a line up my neck and across the sides of my head. She said it was something for me to have looked at. Extraordinarily, I had experienced pain up my neck the night before, causing a headache to manifest along the sides of my head exactly as she had drawn. I had never mentioned my discomfort with my neck before.
• Confinement in the womb as the source of my fear of being trapped? Release and compassion for my baby self.
• The source of my strident, incessant voices: "Sergeant Rush More!" and "Sergeant Do More!"  Marion asked "What happened when you were 16?" My answer: "I was depressed and coped by immersing myself in hard work." That was the birth of those voices.
• I am worried that I will cause upset. I am sensitive and I pick up on others' upset energy. Marion's advice: "Give them permission to get upset.  Honour that. Remain centred in being caring and loving."
• The terror is not a place but a momentary experience contained in the One. I am not separate from That.  Be the space for the Fear. Be with it as a sensation.
• What would not needing to try look like?  There is no need to try! Allow creativity to unfold through me from Universal Intelligence.
• I have an attachment to Wisdom Trove being popular. Marion: "That's not the true measure of its success. The true measure is if it deeply effects one person who goes into a position of influence.  What you do (and the wisdom gained in the process) goes into collective consciousness for the benefit of the all."
• Visioning is good and fine as well as surrender. It’s God doing it after all.  Surrender is letting go of attachment to results.
• Disapproval is not personal. I’m as they need me to be to process their own stories and projections.
• Profound experiences of disappearing into stillness.
• Mackie chose to go down the stairs and gave up in order to allow me to goto Nepal. It was a fearful experience but also an act of love.

People I referred to Marion

1. Nic
2. Alessandro
3. Aimee
4. Sharon
5. Xenia
6. Jane
7. Chris
8. Lydia

Michael Singer

I read Michael Singer's book "The Surrender Experiment" thanks to a recommendation from Nic. It had a huge impact on me.  Surrender is now a core spiritual value for me. I also read his book "The Untethered Soul" which I also found very powerful. 

Books that inspired me

Some favourite quotes

Just sit in the seat of awareness and never leave

• Come to know the one who watches the voice, and you will come to know one of the great mysteries of creation.
• Now you are in your center of consciousness. You are behind everything, just watching. That is your true home.
• Consciousness is the highest word you will ever utter. There is nothing higher or deeper than consciousness. Consciousness is pure awareness.
• If you aren’t centered, your consciousness is just following whatever catches its attention.
• You are sitting inside the center of consciousness watching your personal TV show. But there are so many interesting objects distracting your consciousness that you can’t help but get drawn into them. It’s overwhelming. It’s three-dimensional. It’s all around you. All of your senses draw you in—sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch—as well as your feelings and your thoughts. But you are really sitting quietly inside looking out at all these objects.

Withdraw attention from and identification with the mind

• Withdraw your attention, and the thinking mind falls away.
• My sense of me no longer included the neurotic thought patterns that were passing in front of me.
• When your mind is disturbed, don’t ask, “What do I do about this?” Instead ask, “Who am I that notices this?”

Stay open and aware in a state of relaxed allowing (non-resistance)

• Acceptance means that events can make it through you without resistance.
• Your only way out is the witness. Just keep letting go by being aware that you are aware.
• Stop defining the disturbed mind as a negative experience; just see if you can relax behind it.

To stay happy, keep your heart open

• Most of all, keep your heart relaxed and  open.
• No matter what happens below you, just turn your eyes upward and relax your heart.
• The moment you feel a change, relax your shoulders and relax the area around your heart. The moment the energy moves, you simply relax and release.
• Every single time you relax and release, a piece of the pain leaves forever. Every time you resist and close, you are building up the pain inside.
• If you close around the pain and stop it from passing through, it will stay in you.
• The more open you remain, the more  energies and experiences are able to pass through you

In so doing, you are able to fully embrace the experiences of life

• Don’t be afraid of death. Let it free you. Let it encourage you to experience life.
• To see, to experience, and to honor is to participate in life instead of standing back and judging it.

Use your human energies and disturbances to awaken and transcend

• Awareness transcends what it is aware of.
• Now what used to hold you down becomes what wakes you up.
• That which is holding you down can become a powerful force that raises you up.

You now become aware of a universe behind your seat of consciousness

• When the drop of consciousness that knows itself as an individual drifts back far enough, it becomes like the drop that falls into the ocean. The Atman (Soul) falls into the Paramatman (Supreme Soul). The individual consciousness falls into the Universal Oneness. And that’s it.

This is how you know something about God. You become one with Him.

• Such a state exists; one can merge into the Universal Absolute. One can merge into God.
• If you move your search for God down to the mental level, somebody will dispute it. You can’t know God that way. It must come from actual experience. Michael Singer

This centred state of awareness is a state of freedom

• The only way to inner freedom is through the one who watches: the Self.
• To feel great love and freedom, to find the presence of God within you, all of this stored pain must go.
• Let go of the need to control everything with the mind
• Life is continuously changing, and if you’re trying to control it, you’ll never be able to fully live it.

Realise there is a creative Intelligence running the show that is far vaster than the limited human mind

• If life can manifest the DNA molecule on its own, not to mention create the human brain, how is it that we feel that we have to control everything on our own?
• If the natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to?

Surrender to life’s unfolding

• Life was asking me to get out of the way and let her do her thing.
• I was willing to roll the dice and let the flow of life be in charge.
• I was not in charge, yet life continued to unfold as if it knew just what it was doing.
• It seems as though life knew exactly what it was doing, and as usual, my mind knew nothing.
• What would happen to me if I just inwardly surrendered my resistance and let the flow of life be in charge?
• My personal experience is that aligning one’s will with the natural forces unfolding around us leads to some surprisingly powerful results.
• I decided to stop listening to all the chatter about my personal preferences, and instead, start the willful practice of accepting what the flow of life was presenting me.

Quotes on Wisdom Trove

Rupert Spira

Apart from Eckhart Tolle, no spiritual teacher has played a greater role in my spiritual awakening and evolution.  I have read many of his books and listened to many hours of his teachings on You Tube.

Books that inspired me

Some favourite quotes

• Happiness is in the knowing of our own Being.
• Happiness is simply to allow everything to be exactly as it is from moment to moment.
• In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.
• Love is the experience that others are not others. Beauty is the experience that objects are not objects.
• Give your attention to the experience of seeing rather than to the object seen and you will find yourself everywhere.
• There are not two things—one, the screen and two, the image. There is just the screen.
• The greatest discovery in life is to discover that our essential nature does not share the limits nor the destiny of the body and mind.
• Only that which is always with you can be said to be your self and if you look closely and simply at experience, only awareness is always ‘with you’.
• The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity: the activity of thinking and feeling that our essential nature of pure Awareness shares the limits and the destiny of the body and mind.
• Just as a screen is intimately one with all images and, at the same time, free of them, so our true nature of luminous, empty Knowing is one with all experiences and yet, at the same time, inherently free of them.
• Quotes on Wisdom Trove

Key insights

• All I can be certain of is the awareness of experience and the awareness of being aware. In other words, all I can be certain of is the existence of consciousness. The existence of a world external to consciousness, consisting of matter, is pure conjecture.
• Experience is indisputably real even if what is experienced is an illusion (not what it seems). The ego (the sense of being a separate self) is an experience I am having. It is an activity in consciousness.  But it has no stand-alone existence except as an experience in consciousness being had by consciousness.
• Consciousness is not only the Knower of all experience but also the Substance of all experience. Consciousness always only knows Itself. There is only God, Godding.