Life Happening
I wake. Drink water. Make tea. Check messages. Drink tea. Empty dishwasher, load washing machine. Make eggs. Reply to messages. Shower, dress, tidy room. Sit at computer. Begin work. Thoughts and feelings happen like that too. Just one appearing after another....
The World Needs an Awakened Heart
There are many reasons why we may personally want to return to an inner and outer state of peace, power, tranquility, creativity, joy, happiness and wholeness. Every human arrives here with pain and no one is immune from suffering, old age and death. So, we all have...
Being Present in all States
Present Moment Awareness is not ONLY about reaching states of calm and bliss and contentment. Often, spending short amounts of time in Present Moment Awareness can provide us with the motivation to take inspired action and to embrace positive transformation.
Begin Again
On any given day, at any given moment, we can begin again. We can clear away the cups and plates from yesterday, straighten up our desk, take a deep breath and begin again. Sometimes, it takes immense courage. About 6 years ago, I was not in such a good place. A...
Free to Be Your True Self
I was always wary of any teachings that promised a return to 'your true self'. Mainly because this much sought after being seemed always to be presented as some kind of pristine version of myself that just didn't ring...well... true! Words such as limitless, pure,...
Only The Dimension of Spirit Will Quench Your Thirst for Truth
At some point in our lives, for some of us, the thirst for truth arises. At first, this existential longing can be quite unsettling. In my own life, I recall feeling a constant sense of dissatisfaction and a deep yearning in my gut that simply would not ease, no...
The Healing Power of Present Moment Awareness
The Healing Power of Present Moment Awareness Mike gives a recorded talk on Present Moment Awareness and the healing power and wisdom it can provide for us.
Present Moment Awareness
Exploring the healing power that is already awake in the wisdom, clarity and unconditional openness of Present Moment Awareness. Turn Toward the Open Space of This Moment and Awaken to Witness Consciousness These days, Mindfulness is one of those buzz words that we...
The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence
So very happy to see my friend Fiona Robertson has written a new book: The Dark Night of the Soul: A Journey from Absence to Presence. Fiona and I met via my blog (which at the time was called Nothing Saying This) and eventually met in Leicester when I spoke about my...
The Joy of No Purpose
I used to feel dreadful if I felt what I was doing had no real purpose. I would avoid meaningless tasks and activities, choosing instead to fill my mind with theories of philosophy or art or politics. I wanted to be intellectually stimulated and to feel that what I...
How Does Awakening Change Everyday Experiences?
How Does Your Insight and Experience of Awakening Make a Difference When Challenges Come? For some of us, there are still things to achieve and work towards in our everyday incarnation. In our relative lives, in our work and relationships, many of us still have things...
What Is Your True Self Anyway?
I was always wary of any teachings that promised a return to 'your true self'. Mainly because this much sought after being seemed always to be presented as some kind of pristine version of myself that just didn't ring...well... true! Words such as limitless, pure,...
Returning to Your True Self
This week I decided to re-name my website, changing the name from Nothing Saying This to Heart of Presence. Seven years ago, I began writing about awakening experiences on this blog and titled it 'Nothing Saying This'. To me at the time, nothing was not merely an...
The Embrace of Yourself
Whenever I invest in a self image that is not wholly true, I suffer. What is wholly true, embraces the absolute and relative realms of our directly experienced reality. It may be relatively true that I feel fear and doubt at times but those feelings are not ultimately...
Home in the Heart of Presence
I have just written and recorded a guided meditation called 'Home in the Heart of Presence'. This meditation can be used to help you make contact with the timeless dimension of presence already within you. By becoming more and more familiar with this dimension, you...
Awakening Is Not a Magic Pill
For so long I imagined and dreamed that waking up would be like taking a magic pill. I dreamed that depression and anxiety and other mental and emotional difficulties would just vanish into thin air. When I was really honest with myself, like so much of my desperate...
Be and Be Free
When it feels like the world is closing in around your head and the pressure feels unbearable, take a moment to just stop. Stop and notice the silence. Stop and notice the space. Stop and notice that there is something here that is not pressured, something here that...
The Eternal Discovery
Extract from Fragments of Being - by Mike Jenkins Purchase Fragments of Being This is the eternal discovery. Discovering that being is being all that arises is this living realisation. It’ so easy to settle and get comfortable with understanding or clarity, to make a...
The Embrace that Transforms
Extract from Chapter One of my new book. Like so many spiritual seekers, I was hoping to win the spiritual lottery and finally wake up an enlightened being. I imagined this would fix me and my life and bring all sorts of wonderful prizes. I dreamed that I would never...
Egocentric Living and the End of Suffering
After months of prevarication, I have finally started to write my next book! Here is an extract from an early chapter. Egocentric Living and the End of Suffering After about 5 years of working as a professional actor, with some promising but ultimately false starts, I...
The End of Longing
For most of my adult life, I lived with the constant sensation that somehow, something very important was missing. I lived with an almost permanent niggling feeling of lack. This sensation took various forms and led me to look for various fixes... from smoking,...
In The Stillness of the Heart
Here, in the stillness of the heart it ultimately matters not what storms rage around. Indeed, all the storms of feeling, emotion, sensation and thought eventually come to rest in and know the stillness of the heart. It is the final winner, this stillness. It has the...
A Whole Lot of Nothing
I know nothing.. nothing knows me... and nothing as it turns out, is a lot. Nothing is emptiness, is silence, is space. There's a lot of that about, within and without. Silence and space are the the only true teachers. When you need clarity, space helps. When you need...
The Glass is Always Full
Your glass is not half empty and it's not half full. It's always completely full. The glass is you and the life you are and it's brim full of aliveness. Every moment is THIS moment: totally alive, totally powered up and engaged, even if it's engaged in being powered...
I’ve Been Looking
https://soundcloud.com/nothingsayingthis/ive-been-looking
When Nothing Arrived
Play the video after reading the scene from nowhere. A Scene from Nowhere Somewhere, someone is waiting for something... tick, tock, tick, tock. Someone speaks. SOMEONE: Something will turn up sometime. This can't last forever. Something has got to happen at some...
I’m Too Sexy for My (shirt) Label
I had some brilliant and engaging conversations with writer Tony Green this past week about sexuality and identity (check out his page here) Something that has felt true all my life is that human sexuality is flowing and free and that many people (me included at...
Hopeless Romantic
I've always been a hopeless romantic which is plain to see If you see me As I am Am I as I am as The hopeless the causeless The clueless and blueless drunk on the moon and The riff of that tune That plays when you walk Or sit or talk In the room or the way the air...
What I Remember Now
What I Remember Now (First Draft - 8:55pm Tuesday 27th January 2015) I remember that when I was in pain and felt small and alone and hated and rejected it was easy for me to poke fun the ones who were different or the ones who were strange or the ones who were not...
Living Freely
More and more these days I get a sense of both being here and not being here. It is one of those divine paradoxes that makes no sense to the reasoning mind but which is understood through living it. Language can paint a picture but it is limited because it assumes...
Expressions of Fear and Lack
Question: I look at the news and I see the horror and the suffering happening all over the world and I feel despair. It seems like things are getting worse, not better. I want to do something to help but feel totally helpless. All of the acts of violence that play out...
Heart Breaks Bigger
Just when you think you can't love any more, when you get to the point where you think your love is spent, something splits and cracks open... and wide inside, rooms burst open, the house is suddenly a mansion. With every heart break, the heart gets bigger not...
I Met Love
I met love on the dance floor of a basement club, on a crowded New York subway train, up the side of a mountain in Thailand, on the cancer ward and on the Old Kent Road... and it told me: I am everywhere, there is nowhere I am not. You will never reach the end. The...
Out of Control
I can of Myself do nothing John 5:30 The Bible; New King James Version We cling so firmly to the idea of free will and choice because the thought of not steering our own ship terrifies us. Without the freedom to choose, without a sense of agency and control we fear...
Walking Here
It's all me really (and it's all you too)... this last glass of surprisingly good white wine, this Gregorian chant, this memory of the citadel in Gozo, this sensation of dust in my shoes, this glowing screen, this feint smell of soap on my fingers, the feel of stubble...
Here I Am
Here I Am Here I am, sitting on the bed, pen in hand and writing once more. Here I am, as the air in the room and the space in the room and the wind blowing through the window. Here I am as the sound of birds singing in the trees. Here I am, as the light spilling...
Falling into Innocence – The Joy of Not Knowing
I don’t how the grass grows or how the sun shines or the waves crash and swell (how they crash and swell)…
From Silence
Sitting in a Quaker meeting yesterday, immersed in silence and stillness with others, these words came to me: "There is nothing that does not come from silence, that is to say there is nothing that is not of God. There is nothing that is not the creation of stillness...
An Irish Wish
May your wee thoughts of yonder there and yesteryear, be blessed to rest and leave you here
Hibernation
Hibernation I am taking a break from writing, speaking and meetings over the next few months. Please come back in the Spring when something might be appearing from nothing. In the meantime, feel free to explore the blog writings here and the videos on my YouTube and...
Directly Know That You Are
It's so easy to become convinced that what you are looking for is out there, separate from you, in the future. Or that what is missing is some special, exciting, illuminating or exotic experience that some teacher, author or guru has had that you now need to have. The...
Out of Nothing
Out of nothing this comes. Little black squiggles, marching out here on parade... prancing about like presentation ponies on the open page. And so it is with everything, spilling out of nothing. I sit in utter emptiness and out of this falls the fullness of the world....
A Prayer
May all who find their way here Come to know that they are the love that does not end May you come to see the fullness that you are and to live the freedom that is life in love May you rest when you are tired and eat when you are hungry and know that you are loved May...
The Perfection You Are
Meeting this eternal moment is to encounter the perfection you are. Most of us end up with some story about ourselves that says in some way that we are not good enough, that something is missing and that something has to change for us to be at peace. Discovering the...
I am – Re-Imagined
I have often enjoyed the poem, 'I Am' by John Clare. The original has a melancholy feel to it, as the poet longs for a time and place that he seems to feel is lost to him. As I was reading this the other week, it struck me that this place he seems to so long for is...
The Day is Ever New
Here is an article I wrote the other morning, sitting in bed as the day began... The Day is Ever New It's dawn. The birds are just starting to stir. The wind rustles the leaves on the trees outside my bedroom window and I can hear the sounds of the day beginning in...
Seen Through The Being of It
When you look at what is here without any agenda to fix, get rid of, improve or move beyond what is really here, all you are really doing is being as you are with no mental game of wriggling for escape. Scott Kiloby writes about this activity of spiritual bypassing,...
Memo from God
Memo __________ To: You From: God Date: Now Subject: The Truth About Me and You I thought it was about time I cleared something up. For ages now, you’ve been running around thinking that you and I are separate. You’ve been thinking and believing that I am some greater...
Free in Prism
Sometimes when we have appeared to have dropped all seeking, suddenly it feels like we are seeking again... the feeling of wanting something... something other than this. You might want something to stop happening, like a painful pattern or you might want something to...
this being we are… as us… as me, as you… is just so thrilled to explore it…
this being we are… as us… as me, as you… is just so thrilled to explore itself … as ideas, creations, relationships, happenings… adventuring and exploring as emotions appearing and fading… as the sun rising and setting.. as words tinkle-tap…
We struggle and struggle against the current, swimming upstream and wondering wh…
We struggle and struggle against the current, swimming upstream and wondering why we're not getting anywhere or wondering why we're so exhausted, so fed up and so disheartened. We reject this moment and all it offers in favour of some bette…
I have two one to one Skype sessions available this week. Contact me if you'd li…
I have two one to one Skype sessions available this week. Contact me if you'd like to book a slot. The Relief of Not Knowing The relief of not knowing is timeless, always available and very familiar. Despite appearances it is where we meet, wh…
I know you so well. You with all your dazzling colours of day… you with the dr…
I know you so well. You with all your dazzling colours of day… you with the drizzle of dark and grey… you with the light of rest in the night and you with adventure of bird in flight. I have met you in every clench of every gut and every furrow of …
This is the meditation stool my uncle made for me. Nothing shows up as this beau…
This is the meditation stool my uncle made for me. Nothing shows up as this beautiful creation. Why does nothing show up as something? Why not? It comes from nothing, returns to nothing and in between there is laughter, tears and words and pictures. Wh…
Knowing Me Knowing You There is nothing I can do. That nothing I can do is, ri…
Knowing Me Knowing You There is nothing I can do. That nothing I can do is, right this moment, writing these words. This blank page before me is, without words on it, nothing. It fades into the background… happy and content to allow these words to …
Planted in Happiness Thich Nhat Hanh says in a beautiful talk that 'happiness…
Planted in Happiness Thich Nhat Hanh says in a beautiful talk that 'happiness is to see people around you happy'. I have been caught before in the trap of believing that happiness is dependent on conditions.. believing that when I have enou…
The Changeless is Dancing As the changeless, you are free from the tyranny of…
The Changeless is Dancing As the changeless, you are free from the tyranny of changing conditions and fortunes because even though conditions and fortunes change and shift, and they always will, you have come to know yourself as the changeless presen…
Nothing can harm you. You are eternal and enduring. You hide as all things forev…
Nothing can harm you. You are eternal and enduring. You hide as all things forever in view. Wherever I look I find you… already whole and already complete. To know myself as you is such sweet and powerful peace that my heart could break a thousand ti…
Emptiness is Creating Here, on this screen where these words appear there is em…
Emptiness is Creating Here, on this screen where these words appear there is empty space. As my fingers move over the keyboard, words appear on the screen. Something is appearing out of nothing. More and more I come to know myself as this emptiness ta…
Admit One – The Movie of My Life
Around this time three years ago my life as I had known it fell apart and not for the first time. Looking at my past as a story, it’s had all the hallmarks of a tragic/comic, bitter-sweet drama with all the familiar moments of tension, suspense, surprise, very human...
The Gift of Eternity
The Gift of Eternity Today, as the sun shone I noticed that I felt this day would never end. All through my life, especially as a young child, this feeling has visited. I've come to recognise it these days as a sense of the eternity we truly are. It's a blessed moment...
Look and Be
I was listening to the news on the car radio as I drove over to my friend’s house and there were reports of nuclear threats, financial crime and snow in England, in spring. There certainly was snow, falling in hurried flurries – a strange mix of spring and winter, for...
Being Confident
I've always been a naturally confident person, on the whole. There have been times however when I don't feel confident in some situations. And that still happens now and then. Over the years, I've spoken with many different people who feel lacking in confidence and...
See it NOW: Seeking vs. Looking by Mandi Solk
Mandi Solk has written a guest post here on the blog this month. You can find more of Mandi's blog posts at her own site: www.mandisolk.com See it NOW: Seeking vs. Looking Guest Post by Mandi Solk If you think of yourself as a ‘seeker’, you will be seeking all your...
Nonduality Meditation
At the deepest level, meditation is what we are. We are the meditation of life happening. One of the ways life meditates, is to meditate as itself believing it is a separate individual, cut off from its source and that it has to practice at getting back there. That's...
You Are What You Seek
Radical Loving of What Is
The freedom we long for is literally being everything that appears. This might seem confusing when teachers often say you are not what appears, you are not the feeling of sadness or the sensation of grief or anger. And while this is a good pointer and can bring about...
What You Really Want
"Well, tell me what you want, what you really, really want, I'll tell you what I want, what I really, really want, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna..." The Spice Girls I never thought the time would come when I would be quoting The Spice Girls! But I could have...
The Flow of Being
We spend so much time and energy rejecting the reality of what is. A feeling of boredom or restlessness shows up and we want to work out why it's there or what it means or how to get rid of it. Sadness arises or anger or frustration and we want to analyse and process...
Life’s Feast
What is it that moves me from the sofa to the laptop to write these words? What is it the beats the heart, that grows the grass, that moves the planets round the sun? Who speaks these words? Who writes? Whenever I look for the source of the one who experiences all...
The Invitation to Disappear
Lost and Found
I have Lost all of this over the years: My Possessions (too numerous to list) My Mind My Respect My Dignity My Pride My Confidence My Identity My Health My Money My Jobs My Belief My Patience My Faith My Control My Happiness My Stability My Lovers My Status My Reality...
The Mystery of Living
Most of our thoughts, actions and behaviors are geared towards experiencing pleasure and avoiding experiencing pain. My spiritual seeking began in response to a life that wasn't working out the way I’d dreamed and hoped it would. I frequently experienced what I...
Escape To This
Whenever life gets difficult I have felt desperate to escape. Life presents me with fear or confusion or situations that are not welcome and I feel trapped by them so seeking for escape begins. There is no end to the thoughts, feelings, sensations, situations and even...
Living the Mystery
When I speak with people about this mystery of oneness or Nonduality or consciousness or whatever name we decide to give it, I usually explain that for me awakening has been a gradual unfolding and that there are times when unity with all that appears is very much...
Meeting What Is
This past week I've been challenged to meet emotions, thoughts, sensations and story lines that usually we try to escape through spiritual seeking. Seeking is so much about rejection of those feelings, thoughts and sensations that don't fit with our idea of awakening...
Life is an Olympic Sport
I've never been much of a sports fan so the Olympics have generally passed me by. There is something to be said however about non-duality and sport, even from the weedy kid who always found excuses to get out of PE (Physical Education). We've just finished hosting the...
Healing and Wholeness
This week I went to my dentist. As a survivor of oral cancer, trips to the dentist can generate a great deal of fear. Fear of pain, fear of illness, fear of disease and of course ultimately fear of death. It's been 6 years since I was diagnosed with cancer. And in...
Being As You Are
Being as you are. This is the enlightenment that cannot be avoided. At every moment through life you are already being as you are. Wholeness does not exclude any experience and nothing is rejected by the unconditional love of wholeness. All of your calamities, all of...
The Failure of The Failure Story
Last night I got drawn into the drama of my personal story. After a day of sitting about not really doing very much my mind wandered into the narrative of what is perceived to be happening to me. And with that came emotions that felt very strong. I was pulled into...
The Freedom You Are
Hey. You remember me, don’t you? I’m that feeling you had when you were stood in the bluebell wood during the summer holidays and that sense of right-ness you had when the rain made the hot concrete smell like childhood and the taste of coffee at the airport cafe as...
Welcome Home
Come home sweet child! Look and see that wherever you are, you are home. You needn't journey one step away from where you are to be home. Home in and as the feeling of loneliness, in and as the desperation even of searching for home. Look! What is this? Yearning...
Jewels From The Mud
Over the past week I have been swept up in the drama of my life situation. Depression has visited as has anger, confusion, sadness and sobbing. And all this in response to what I perceive is happening to me. The drama flares up and for a time I believe that I am angry...
The Dark Cafe
Here's an extract from my short story, The Dark Cafe. With much thanks to Nic at Nonduality Network for his time and expertise in recording the audio version of the short story. Listen to the full recording at www.nondualitynetwork.com Transcript of the Extract: Maria...
Perfection
Over the last couple of years so many words and concepts have been re-born for me. The word and the concept of perfection stood alone for me in the past, separate from imperfection. Perfection was something that could never be achieved and there is of course great...
Can Nonduality Heal?
Nonduality is pointing to the wholeness that is life itself, so in that sense it is simply a word describing life happening. Can life heal itself? It certainly seems to at times. Funnily enough, life appears to have a preference for living! Healing is really...
An Invitation to Wholeness Video
Here is the video to accompany the eBook, 'An Invitation to Wholeness'. Download the book here.
Poem – Nothing is Sexy
What is nothing? It could simply be pure potential. An empty space in which something happens. Nothing could be whatever you think/feel or desire it to be. Right now, below this line of text appearing on the screen there is an empty space... ...
Nonduality, Health and Healing
'Can Nonduality Help Me Heal?' Nonduality is simply pointing to the wholeness you already are. And when this wholeness is seen, it is seen through the being of it. And that is already happening, right now, wherever and whoever you appear to be. The separate self...
Invitations to Freedom
I've been more and more drawn to recording videos lately and made one today. So, for your viewing pleasure here it is!
Eternal Discovery
This is the eternal discovery. Discovering that being is being all that arises is this living realisation. It' so easy to settle and get comfortable with understanding or clarity, to make a cosy bed in the ideas of oneness, the phrases, the concepts. This misses the...
No Argument
In the total free fall of life happening there is no one to argue with what happens. So anger flares, sadness descends, irritation prickles and any number and flavour of emotions, feelings and sensations bubble to the surface of awareness. Ordinarily, we argue with...
Pink Panther Teaches Nonduality
My good friend Nic Higham has compiled a wonderful video that overlays an audio of Alan Watts over a popular Pink Panther video. The result is quite breathtaking as the imagery comes alive in a new way with Alan's words of widsom. I hope you enjoy this as much as I...
Object Consiousness
One aware of or experiencing another is a dream. There is only experiencing, only this happening. This seamless, timeless, whole. As a separate individual I see objects in space. I see the things in the world around me, other people, nature, events. As a separate...
Nothing To Believe
What a relief! Nothing to believe! I have to admit that I struggle to describe this but when life lives freely as this, when the structure of separation is revealed to be but a dream then it is clear that there is nothing to believe any more. In the story of me on a...
The Dark in The Light
Life shows up in infinite forms, the dance of being is eternal. The horror of life is just as much oneness as the beauty and the joy. Horror is not pleasant of course, it's not enjoyable the same way a sunset is enjoyable. Watching thousands of children starve or to...
An Ordinary Life
The belief that awakening causes your life to become radically different, to transform into your idea of a successful life is a persistent belief in the world of spiritual seeking. We so want to become better people, to secure our future, to say we've arrived that we...
Everything Is Special
When awakening happens it is seen that this is enough, whatever this happens to be. The ordinary is no longer ordinary but has an infinite depth. There is infinite depth in everything, in the simplest of things. A cupboard door, a pair of shoes, a bright harvest moon;...
The Miracle of This
What if none of it mattered? I'm too lazy, I get angry too easily, I should be more forgiving, I ought to exercise more or work harder. So what? In the game of becoming a 'better' person there is always something else to work on. There will always be something about...
Look For Yourself
When I used to think about awakening or enlightenment, I always thought about it as something that would or could happen in the future. Awakening was always the big plan that I had to put into action. I imagined that maybe this would happen after studying enough...