Dear Yogis,
HAPPY NEW YEAR GANG. I HOPE YOU ARE READY FOR A NEW AND SURPRISING TIME. We are in the “quickening”.
We have turned a page. If you didn’t notice it is 2021, and the sun is shining after days of dreary here. I hope that you have got great plans, and one of the biggies is to follow through on your plans for the year ahead. Your New Year Resolutions. Don’t just think about them. Act on them.
For myself, I am painting more and doing a series of “Secret Memory Boxes” plus I am going to be teaching you how to make them for yourself…. I am making one for my mother – I didn’t love or understand her when she was alive and this little box will contain love tokens for her now, plus a little box for the sons I lost. I can have sentimental, personal memories in the little box sitting unobtrusively on my bookshelf looking like a book. I have called them “PRECIOUS GIFTS”.
NEW BEGINNINGS:
I was wondering what I would call these works, and then (whilst I was in the shower) I thought about Sri Prabhupada, The man who started the Krishna movement. He left India when he was 70 with $20 in his pocket, the clothes he stood up in, and a small suitcase with his manuscripts and a typewriter. Why? Because God told him to teach in America. Imagine that. He couldn’t afford the voyage so more or less hitched a ride on a cargo ship that took weeks to get from India to New York, added to that he had a small heart attack on the way (and you think you have it tough!).
He was taken to the Bowery, the backwater in New York inhabited by the outcasts of society. A small dark man in a monks robe and an army great coat he was given, and a suitcase. That is all He had no friends and relied on God’s help. For shelter, he was taken to a small shop which had been gutted long before he arrived on the doorstep (I am sure you can imagine it, you’ve seen the TV shows) and only the grafitti’d shell left. The walls and roof were intact, it did have windows and a door, and that is where Prabhupada started his Ministry.
Only one thing was left from the previous occupants – the sign above the door – which read “PRECIOUS GIFTS”.
There was no internet, no mobile phones, and he relied on God. He sat there in his tiny empty space, sleeping where he sat, writing, meditating and chanting. People came and so began a movement which now stretches across the globe.
I like to have an inspirational story to help me when things get difficult, (which they always do before the sun shines), on the basis that if we allow our spirit to shine, all will be clear. You know you are on the right track when you lose interest in looking behind you. You are then on track for a new beginning.
HERE IS MY THOUGHT FOR TODAY:
THINK ABOUT AN EGG…
“If an egg is broken from the outside, life ends.
If an egg is broken from the inside, life begins”
HAPPY (FRUITFUL) NEW YEAR..
SEE YOU ON THE MAT – NAMASTE JAHNE
Here we are (or here I am), in what feels like “The Great Covid Pause”. 
holiday – I needed more and more of you. I only have another 10 days to go and we can start back!….
