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Tuesday, 9 June 2026
On this day of your life
I believe God wants you to know ...
... that you can only succeed, you cannot fail.
Failure is impossible; it is an illusion. Nothing is a
failure. Nothing. Everything moves the human story,
and hence the process of evolution, forward.
Everything advances you on your journey.
You will not have to think but a second to know
exactly why you received this message today.
Feeling Stuck (OM)
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In the Quiet, I Think of You.
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Do you ever really forget a past love?
Or do they pop into your mind from time to time? Do things still remind you of them? Do you allow those memories to grow into a colourful visual in your head, or do you push them down almost too harshly? Too quickly? Do you give yourself permission to feel, or is there nothing left to be felt?
In the quiet, I think of you.
Not in a longing way, although I used to. Not in a way that says “I miss you,” although those words used to hang sadly and heavily in the air. Not in a way that hits me in the heart, because my heart feels full and healed. Not in a way that I hold, because I let go, long ago. Not in a way that affects me anymore. Not in a way that matters.
But the truth is, in those moments I think of you.
I think about what you taught me about love. I think about what you taught me about pain. What you taught me about desire and beauty. But also about ugly and messy. About how you made me feel. The good and the bad. What my skin felt like when your body touched mine. And what my heart felt when your words would cut through it like sharp shards of glass. I think about the level of patience I learnt. And what you taught me about the art of projection, which you did more and more as the relationship progressed. I think about the ambiguous loss I struggled with when it finally ended. I think about these things because they are an important part of the process. The forgiveness. The gratitude. The lessons. The past. The me I am today.
Yes, in the quiet, I think of you. Without attachment. Without need. Without regret. And I reflect upon how far I have grown from that woman I was.
And I allow the thoughts. In the quiet, I allow them to move through me. A gentle kaleidoscope of visions. Soft and calm. Emotion no longer attached. Reflection of who I once was and who I am now. The key, I’ve learnt, is not forgetting because that formed part of who I am. The memories form part of the reflection. A reminder of the healing. A reminder of the growth. A reminder of the cracks I so clearly had back then that have now healed into soft scars. Barely visible, but I know they are there. Like witnessing a timeline of where it started, to where it finished. Why I allowed what I did. I don’t forget because it’s important to remember. It’s important to recognise the moment I forgave you. And the moment I forgave myself.
In the quiet, I think of you, as I’ll always carry a small piece of you. It’s the way it is. The truth of the matter. You can’t love someone at some point and simply pretend they never existed. That’s not healthy. It’s not realistic. It’s not honest.
You weren’t who I thought you were, and that’s okay. Maybe I wasn’t who you wanted me to be. Maybe I was and that scared you. Doesn’t matter anymore. That chapter is closed. I was in my truth, and I stand proud of that. I said what I meant, and I meant what I said. I wore my heart on my sleeve. And I put you on a pedestal. Funny thing about pedestals; it’s a swift fall when the blinkers come off. And you were exposed for who you are, a man with faults. A man with wounds. A man who buried his truth and instead chose to live a lie. That’s not bad. Nor are you bad. You were just fallible, and I couldn’t see that.
In the quiet, I think about that. The imperfections of you. Of me. Because that’s growth. That’s how you break cycles and patterns.
I rediscovered who I was in the depths of our ending. There’s such beauty in that. I can feel gratitude for the pain you inflicted, the pain we both felt because it gave me a choice. I could either give up. Bound into another unhealthy dynamic, and I say unhealthy because we both know it’s true. Sometimes those intense connections that feel all encompassing and addictive are just not healthy. It’s one of those life experiences. Something you hopefully learn from. I chose to look inward to reconnect with me. I think about that choice a lot. Because it was the catalyst for change. I got to walk my path alone. Not in a lonely way but a way that taught me to fulfil myself. A way that showed my resilience. A way that highlighted my strength and courage. A way that helped me process my grief. A way I got to unlearn those parts of myself that didn’t serve me anymore. A way I reconnected to my essence.
And in the quiet, I think about that journey.
It makes me smile that I landed in a place where I can think about that without sadness. Without attaching emotions and feelings to you. Everything used to be so raw. But it’s not raw anymore. It’s not numb either. It just is. Sitting there in silence. Time has passed, and I am here and you are there. I am me and you are you. But the me I am is different to the me you knew. She has a depth to her that only comes with the experience of profound loss. And in that depth, there’s self-love. Belief. Happiness. Strength and resilience There’s no fault in that. There’s no blame. No yearning. No desire for what was. There’s just the simplicity and gentleness of grace.
Yes, in the quiet, I remember that. I remember the you I put on a pedestal. The you when that pedestal crumbled. I remember the me that thought you belonged there. And the me that realised the facade once you began to wobble.
It’s like seeing you in the distance. You’re not clear and there are shadows. You’re almost unrecognisable. I can’t read you. But I can still feel your energy. I don’t know you anymore, and you don’t know me. Two people who shared intimacy on so many levels, now strangers. Two bodies that once fit together so easily, no longer familiar with each other. Two lives that were so intricately intwined, now so separate, like they never shared a bed, their bodies, their minds, deep conversations, and their emotions. I can watch you for a moment and then turn away. There’s no need, no want to come toward you. The distance is too far. From who we were, to who we are. It was just a moment in time. With some beauty and some ugly. With some voids that needed filling.
And in the quiet, I recall that chapter. Not because I yearn that time but because every chapter is crucial in creating the book. No more or less important. Just part of the story. Part of the plot. A shaping of the characters. An intriguing weaving of events. Highs and lows. A revealing. Openings and closings. Beginnings and endings. Colourful words to describe the colourful story. It’s a small chapter in the scheme of things but important nonetheless. I am not me without it.
And in the quiet, I’m reminded how far I’ve come. And I’m proud of that.
You were meant to come in. To create that chapter. Not to stay. It was meant to be fleeting. You were meant to be fleeting. A transient connection, no matter the depth. It was meant to strip me back to my core so that I could rebuild. Rediscover. Reconnect. It was meant to undress my soul. To momentarily intwine it with yours. But just for the briefest of moments. It wasn’t meant to define me. It was meant to teach me. To break me. So I could find my voice. Find the parts of myself that lay hiding. Meet my inner child and my shadows. It was meant to be the way it was. No more, no less. It was my lesson.
And in the quiet, I’m reminded of that lesson. Gently. Compassionately. Because it was my fork in the road. And I chose the road less travelled. And that was my blessing.
Time passes by. We get older. Wiser. We get the opportunity to challenge ourselves. To change beliefs. To change the trajectory of our life. To tackle our fears. To look hard at our ego. We get to learn the veracity of who we are. We find our space. Our people. To grow into the person we were meant to become.
In the quiet, I think of you because your exit, our ending, led me to my wholeness.
And that will always be a gift.
~
7 Benefits of Deep Meditation you Didn’t Know Existed.
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Meditation is most commonly associated with reduced stress and improved focus—benefits I recognise as genuine, but limited.
As a meditation teacher, I’ve learned that most people come to meditation hoping to feel less stressed, calmer, clearer in their thinking, or more harmonious in their relationships. Those benefits are real but they’re often just the early benefits.
If we imagine meditation on a spectrum from one to 100, where one is a complete beginner and 100 is full enlightenment, most modern meditation methods sit around a two or a three. And that’s being generous.
But there are lesser-known benefits of deep, traditional meditation practice—experiences that rarely feature in mainstream mindfulness conversations.
Here are seven benefits of meditation that most people don’t even know exist:
1. Access to Extraordinary States of Bliss
One of the biggest and least talked-about benefits of advanced meditation is extraordinary states of bliss. The Buddha said, “If you want big happiness, give up small happiness.” Most people never give up the small happiness because they don’t even know the big happiness exists.
In deep meditative absorption, you can be fully immersed for hours in uninterrupted rapture, and when the rapture falls away, it actually gets even better. More spacious, more refined.
When you’ve experienced that kind of happiness, you’re much less dependent on chasing small pleasures—food, entertainment, other people. When they come, they come. When they don’t, you’re fine, because you’ve found something far more satisfying.
2. Freedom from Thoughts—and from Identifying with Them
For most of us, a huge amount of our life experience is just thinking. One early benefit of meditation is learning to notice our thoughts and clean them up, leading to fewer negative, angry, or resentful thoughts.
In advanced meditation, you can be without thoughts altogether for long stretches, hours at a time. When that happens, there’s no avoiding the fact that you are not your thoughts. Life is so much better when they’re not there.
You realise thinking isn’t actually necessary. Dinner still gets cooked. Life still functions. And when thoughts do arise, you can see clearly whether picking them up will help or harm.
3. Extraordinary Precision of Perception
The real difference between shallow and deep practice is subtlety. At first, we notice truth on a coarse level—pain in the body, distraction, obvious emotions. But as meditation deepens, we start noticing truth on a much more subtle level.
Right now, if you try to feel the sensation at the root of one hair on your head, you can’t. In deep meditation, that’s easy…and we go thousands of times more refined than that.
This applies not just to the body, but to consciousness itself. We begin to observe perception, attention, and awareness directly. It’s like particle physics for the mind.
4. Insight into Personal History and Cause and Effect
One of the most fascinating aspects of deep meditation is insight into cause and effect. Not just what’s happening now, but why it’s happening.
Some causes lie in the present moment, some earlier in this life, and some before this life began. This becomes directly observable.
As understanding deepens, we stop wanting to blame. We stop wanting to be a victim. We see that experiences arise from countless causes and conditions—not just one thing.
5. A Transformed Capacity to Love
One truth in the Buddha’s teachings is that every moment of mindfulness is also a moment of love. As meditation deepens, mindfulness becomes more continuous, and so does love.
We learn that love doesn’t depend on who we’re with or what we’re paying attention to. It depends on the quality of our attention.
In deep practice, we remove from the mind everything that isn’t love—all the distraction, all the grasping. What’s left is a wide-open heart. And that kind of love doesn’t need another person to activate it.
6. A Fearless Relationship with Death
In deep meditation, impermanence stops being an idea and becomes something we experience moment by moment. Things don’t just change, they arise and vanish.
When you see that reality itself is perishing in every moment, it sounds like it should be terrifying. But it’s actually blissful. It’s a huge relief.
This experience does a lot to dissolve the fear of death, because you realise it’s already happening—and it’s okay. It allows you to live more fully, less burdened by fear.
7. Freedom from Clinging and Aversion
We tend to think that what makes us happy is getting what we want, and what makes us unhappy is being near what we don’t want. But what actually hurts us is the movement of craving and the movement of aversion themselves.
In deep meditation, there can be long stretches where craving and aversion simply aren’t present. And that is bliss. A deep, embodied contentment.
Once you know that kind of well-being is possible, you stop orienting your life around chasing things. You realise something far better is available in a much simpler way—by training the quality of your attention.
Why these Benefits are Rarely Discussed
These experiences remain largely unknown because advanced practice is quiet. People holding the most advanced practices aren’t making a lot of noise. Modernised techniques serve as a valuable gateway, but they don’t always point toward what lies beyond.
We all need to start somewhere. But it’s important that people know there’s a whole world of practice beyond the first step.
Meditation can be a tool, and it can also be a life path. If someone wants to dedicate themselves to it, the rewards are immense— far more immense than most worldly paths. At one level, it helps us see ourselves and the world with more love. At the deepest level, we begin to understand that neither the self nor the world exists in the way we thought.
~
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