Noting all the bad publicity constantly in the news, regarding the NHS. I would like to share my experience, with you.

I had an unfortunate and unforeseen accident, whereupon I required the NHS ambulance and emergency hospital services. I want to thank the NHS ambulance and hospital staff in London. They were nothing but kind, compassionate, calm, caring and knowledgeable. They truly care about the work they do and I am greatly indebted to them for all the help they offered me.

It is only when you require their services that you realise how deeply grateful you are to have them there for you. Life is so unpredictable and you sometimes forget how dependent you could be on services and people you don’t otherwise, spend any time thinking about?

I will say there was one part of the experience that wasn’t particularly pleasant, and that has nothing to do with the staff who work there, but is about the waiting times for the ambulance service and to see the staff in the emergency rooms, it was deeply uncomfortable for some patients.

The NHS system is being reshaped and remoulded into something else other than what it was intended to be and we who live in the UK, are aware that we need to support the nhs so that in the years to come it will still be there for those who need it and that it will still be free at the point of use.

We often forget when we listen to the differing news on the NHS that at its core, it is about people. People who have joined a profession to help others, and people who at a certain point in their life, require that help. Over and over that night i encountered people who must have been truly exhausted from the trail of patients and yet they never rushed me and gave me all their attention as if i was the only person they had to see that night!

Money is what is always brought up in relation to the NHS. Healthcare should be about health and should not be about profit. Although I have been noticing that in every area of government, there is now a conscious effort made to see how we can take government agencies and turn them into profit making and cost cutting services rather than about how we can use them for the benefit of its citizens, be it education, health, transport, or any other area of government policy.

Money is required to keep this service going and the people of this country need to decide whether this service is something that is worth holding onto and therefore require that the government budget needs to include monies for this purpose.

Health is a human necessity. The nhs at its core is about helping people who are at their most vulnerable and when ill, we all need help and support. We need to always keep that in mind in any and all discussions about the nhs.

The people who work for this organisation are proud to be part of a service founded to help all regardless of the ability to pay, and we who utilise their services are truly truly grateful.

No need for proof, no need for the courts, the accusation is the judgement. Condemnation is all you need to win support.

When did we forget that an accusation is not proof of guilt? It needs to be proven? In the court of public opinion however just the accusation is sufficient to sully a person’s or a company’s good name.

Do you feel we are living more and more in a society, where individuals and companies are being accused of causing any individual or a small group of people discomfort and they are being pressurized to apologise and renege, instead of the individual either going down the route of the law and courts or having to come to grips with their own discomfort?

Why is every issue today about accusing others for almost everything? I am not saying there are not individuals or companies to blame, I am saying why do we have to blame? Why can’t we move beyond blame and start changing things within ourselves to create the society we want through our actions?

We now are more and more living in fear of someone condemning us of anything, real or made up, and these people with a small band of supporters, through unrelenting social  media put into the limelight their grievances, forcing their views and will onto others.

We never get to ask the question what next? What after the incessant accusations, the public condemnations, the supposed backtracking and apparent superficial change? See I think it feels good to accuse someone publicly, or for the hurt and pain they have caused you. Of course it does! However anyone who has been through hurt and pain knows there is no healing from it, until forgiveness is brought into your life.

I think when you accuse others of anything, regardless of the offence committed, you may  well feel empowered by doing so. However real empowerment comes from having the courage to forgive and thereby taking control of the situation by healing yourself. No amount of hurting another will ever remove the hurt within you.

I want us to live in a fair and just society. However there are grandparents and great grandparents who understood that society is never exactly the way we would all want, but it needs to be accepted for what it is before barriers can be worked through with personal determination and strength of character and not from the injured party, space.

Pointing at all the things that are wrong and looking to sort things out by force brings with it backlash against that which you are looking to improve. Real change always begins with you. No, nothing is ever ideal, but what are you willing to accept responsibility for?

Generations have faced all sorts of adversity and never held anyone to hostage for their suffering, their sacrifices, their discrimination. I am not saying society is fair, it cannot be as the people living in society, us, humans are imperfect. You could choose to live in a perfect dreamworld, or you could choose through your own personal effort to better an imperfect one. You choose.

In your everyday life do you notice more and more people misrepresenting the truth? No matter who we interact with there is constantly some level of concealment. What is it that causes us to have to conceal? Sometimes it might be done to protect someone you love, sometimes we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, other times we might just be protecting ourselves from the truth we are unwilling to face or confront, still other times it is done on purpose to produce the result you want.

I have mostly come across the reason why we deceive ourselves and others, is to protect our ego. We are consciousness, spirit, soul. We are not our ego. Our ego deceives us into believing, it is us. It isn’t. It tricks us into playing its game. Either way be careful. If you use it as a tactic, it might work for a while but used over and over as a weapon of choice, and you may notice it stops working for you.

When your ego produces negative thoughts and we buy into them, we are being played. When our ego produces negative emotions and lures us into stories about past or present painful situations, we are being played. We play the game because we are being deceived into believing we are IT, we are not, we are that which observes IT.  You, the real you, doesn’t need to be protected. Your ego does.

When you lie and rearrange the truth to suit your needs, your ego makes it acceptable and pretends to protect you by making it seem like your reasons for doing so are noble and good. When your deception is revealed to others, your ego makes it acceptable and pretends to protect you by rearranging things to make you appear the victim. Your ego does all this only ever to protect itself and get its own way constantly. The less you identify with it, the less its grip on trying to control you.

The more you deceive and suppress things, the more they have a way of coming to the surface. Have you heard about the law of reversed effort? Sooner or later that which you have tried to keep hidden, will find its way out. This may take a while to happen, sometimes, but once it does, its like the floodgates have been opened, and it cannot be stopped.

No one can control the deception told to them. The best way to counteract your own deception is by asking yourself to prove the facts you believe about yourself. So if you say you are kind and compassionate and caring, then can you come up with examples from your life that would validate your belief? I also find it helpful to pull away from one’s own viewpoint and start to see things from the other person’s perspective. This way ensuring you are not deceiving yourself, as you don’t need protecting.

You can handle the truth!

We seem to be in a maze between trying to figure out what is true and what is fake. We are moving towards governments telling us what is true and not, as we humans are deemed unable or incapable of deciphering that we have been ably figuring out for centuries!

What is the truth? Well before you can figure out if something is true or not, you have to change the way you listen to the news. When you listen to the news, notice how they move from information to information, topic to topic, never quite allowing you to be able to piece things together. For example, news of the economy is never related to any news about the banks, debt, companies being granted monopolies, tax avoidance, layoffs, or zero hour contracts.

Listening to information in isolation, is the beginning of the end of truth. Not only do they never connect the dots, they never want you to either! It would lead to the end of all news readers, although real journalistic endeavours, and those who present the full picture, will become the truth seekers, this world needs.

One key to putting the puzzle together is personal judgement. I have always lived by this saying, just because someone says something doesn’t make it true.

Many times in my life i would listen to the news or read articles and I would hear the government say things like we need to help people eat more healthy foods and then you notice the government allows the most unhealthy foods and ingredients to be allowed into everyday food items! Then you hear the government say we need people to save more but they allow the banks to offer practically 0 interest rate to savers! Then you have news about needing a strong military and the next thing you hear is there are more cuts to the military!

Sometimes I would ask myself what is going on, here? Why is all the information contrary to each other?

Information given without context is given to manipulate public opinion. Without context you cannot put things together for yourself in a cohesive way.

Another key to piecing the puzzle is perspective. A wide perspective. See perspective can only be gained if you step away. The way they try and get you is by sucking you into the day to day trickle down information, never allowing you to see any issue from a long term perspective, but rather getting you entwined into this or that issue that just occurred, that is urgent, requiring your complete, total and undivided attention, which of course it doesn’t. It’s the veil they use to distract, isolate and incubate us.

So here is my question to you. Can you handle the truth, when you are presented with it?  Do you shy away, from it? Intimidated. Do you mull it over and decide for yourself , whether an issue is being portrayed with neutrality or biases? Through facts or half truths and manipulations?  Through cohesive analysis or incoherent psyops?

The truth is out there. The key to finding it, is to look at the same issue from as many different viewpoints as possible. Seek and ye shall find. Let’s use the truth to set us free!

Are there things in your life you would like to transcend? If only you could, you say to yourself. Well there is a concept that allows you to do just that, the realization and practice of it provides you the ability to transcend.

To transcend something is not to get rid of it, it is the capacity to rise above it. The present moment is the only space, where you can transcend anything. The past is just that, it cannot be altered as you have already made those choices. Those choices bring this moment into being. The future depends on the choices you make moment by moment.

The reason we keep making the same choices is because the same situations keep coming round, and you react the same and that brings round the same situation and the circle keeps going. Transcending the situation is going to require you making a different choice to the same situation.

To do this, it is helpful to learn to detach from the five senses. What decides your state of being is your thoughts, your emotions and your actions. If you want to transcend your life situations, this requires learning to control your thoughts, emotions and actions, from moment to moment. Another helpful concept is to allow yourself to get into the practise of observing yourself, your thoughts, emotions and actions.This is not a new concept by any means, but it is a life changing one, once you put it into effect in your life.

Detaching yourself from your thoughts and emotions, allows space and space allows you to make a different choice and that results in a different outcome, which brings a different result and this break, frees you to transcend.

The space, that this creates, is what is required for you to transcend. I am not saying the problems you have will disappear. In fact the chances are they are not going to disappear, however, your reactions to them need to get to a neutral space, so that your problems are no longer holding you hostage. Therefore creating a space where you are able to decide for yourself how you want to react to your life situations, is essential. If you work to create the ability to detach and rise above it, you will be able to cope with the issue, maybe not solve it immediately but it will not be all powerful in your life anymore.

So how do you create this space?  The practice of meditation is a good start. This simple exercise allows you to silence your thoughts, and center yourself away from the non stop constant dialogue going on in your head and allows for some peace of mind.

Peace of mind allows you to choose your action in a way that then allows you to transcend the situation you are facing, by allowing you to react in a new way which will bring about a new set of consequences and thus guide you onto a new path, ending the merry go round effect in your life.

And so begins with baby steps your journey into transcendence.

The good life does not exist, not in the conventional sense anyway. Not in the easy, comfortable, floating in the clouds way, you may imagine life is possible. Thinking and imagining your life this way is a sure fire way to dwell in constant discontent.

The good life is one where you choose to do good in your life daily. The faith I was born into teaches, good thoughts, good words and good deeds. I would include good [positive] emotions as well. This would most certainly be called living the good life, not the easy life but definitely the good life.

This life is not the less challenging life, far from it. Love, goodness, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, caring, generosity, righteousness, peace and joy are not worked on easily. It is a constant choice. Everytime you choose to do the right thing you open yourself up to opposition, all who speak their truth, know this from experience.

While you are deciding whether to do good, it almost feels like suddenly the lure to go negative appears out of nowhere. It is the mind that tries to get you to choose the easier option giving you reasons for doing so. However if you stick to your decision to do good, then the real opposition steps in to block you, and thwart your path. It is always you that decides. You can ignore everything and do what you believe is right regardless of difficulty, or you can stop in your tracks. The more good you do, the greater the challenges and blockades that come your way which is a fact you have to know and understand.

So i hear you ask the follow up, well why should we choose to live the good life, then?

Well i see it like this. There are two reasons why. One is doing right for right’s sake. For those of us who try daily to live this way, it isn’t really a choice, we just try and do so because it is right, and no other reason is necessary. Another reason is this, everytime you choose to do good, it’s like you are putting aside money for a rainy day. When the storms arrive you are protected more than you can ever imagine.

I have experienced this personally, there have been so many times I was unaware, I required protecting but i know I was protected only by looking back at events in hindsight. This is the thing, when you do good, and just keep at it, it may appear as though all the good you are trying to do is amounting to nothing, because you are still not getting what you want. However all you do adds up and you receive your blessings in ways that are not always plainly visible and may not be visible till after the fact. So don’t despair, it is working.

If you look at your life as a mirror and what you do gets reflected back to you, don’t you want love, goodness, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, empathy, caring, generosity, righteousness, peace and joy reflected back to you? I do.

When you look at your life, are the imperfections all you see? Do you focus on all the things that are wrong, do you dwell on past mistakes, do you rehash stressful situations? Do you long for the perfect life? Your mind will give you what you choose to focus on.  If you see your life as though your hopes have been crushed, your dreams have been shattered, and you are struggling with negativity and dread your life, then more of the same is heading to you, as that which you think and feel, you bring into focus and will attract to yourself.

There is no such thing as a perfect life. You may choose to create a series of situations in your mind that if came true would be the ideal version of your life. Some parts of this may come true, however there will always be something lacking which will not allow an all encompassing happiness because there needs to be a lack, in order to bring gratitude into focus.

In the beginning all being grateful does is get you out of the headspace of constant negativity and constantly thinking about what is missing in your life and who is to blame for your unhappy state. As you begin to make being grateful a daily practise, you will begin to see how many things there are in your life to be grateful for and the more you see the good there is in your life the more positive you feel and that then brings more things into your life to be grateful for and positive about.

Gratitude is saying I am aware of all that is in my life and i am acknowledging and appreciating all of it in this moment. Doing this brings you into the present moment and into the life that is present for you right now.

Gratitude also brings into your vision people who are far worse off than you are and you will start to feel compassion and understanding for others in ways you never did previously. It opens your heart in ways you never thought or dreamt possible. Gratitude opens one up to giving and helping, this is not about the amount you give, it is about the intention with which you do what you do, so give and be grateful for your ability to give, help others and share with the world not just financially but in any way you have the ability to do so.

If you view your life in a deeply negative way then you will need to begin by keeping your statements of gratitude basic at first. It would maybe just include simple thanks for a roof over your head, for the food you eat, for your health, for friends and family who are there to support you. Subsequently you can always ask for help with things you would like help with. No matter how difficult and uphill your life, there are always people worse off than you, so always try and bear that perspective in mind, regardless of your circumstances.

Being grateful is simply about saying thank you, and doing so to anyone is acknowledgement of gratitude and this action bypasses the brain and goes straight to the heart and we can all use more heartfelt actions in the world today.

What does being of service feel like? Initially being of service often feels like you are allowing yourself to be taken advantage of, and may not feel like a blessing at all. If you are not used to being of service, it might feel like you are doing and doing and no one is reciprocating. This is just a temporary illusion. Staying with it, will be the proof you need.

We live in a world that encourages us to be the taker, not the giver. Giving requires us to put ourselves and our needs second to another’s. This is not a comfortable place for most of us.

When we serve there is the something within us that requires us to humble ourselves. To serve is to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and show gratitude to them regardless of whether they deserve it or not, in your opinion. We are asked to serve, not judge.

Intention is everything. If you are doing for others only to later ask for things you need or want help with, this is not true service. The doing has to be about just that and not about anything you want from the person or organisation. Giving to get something in return is not giving. A lot of people have the mentality of thinking which asks, ‘what do i get if i do this?

You have the satisfaction of knowing you have been of help to another. This way of being is not self serving. You just do for others and let your actions speak for themselves. Actions do speak louder than words for a reason.

Why should we be of service?  Happiness comes from being of service to another. What is the point of life if you cannot do nice things for people? Joy comes from doing not receiving. Start and see.

You can keep waiting for someone to serve you or you can get a head start and learn this universal principle that you have to give before you can receive. Serving is about caring, and caring is a part of loving. When you care about someone or something and you begin to serve, something happens. You begin to put out into the world something special and the way you know you are doing it right is noticing, the world that is reflecting back at you. Your life should reflect this new way of thinking and behaving. If you are serving others, your life will reflect others wanting to serve you. If you are showing care and consideration towards others that will be reflected back, also. It has to.

The highest way to serve humanity is to start by beginning to heal yourself. Healing your hurts and pains, your fears, your negative thoughts, emotions and actions.

You may feel like all the work you are doing on yourself and all those you are helping are not producing any effects, for you. However nothing could be further from the truth. All who interact with you are affected by what you do. Let service, be your way to help humanity.

Good people are being sidelined. All media and television channels seem filled to the brim with news of and from people with nothing of insight to offer, instead filling our homes and our minds with information that lowers us further and further into an ever larger growing abyss.

Nothing ever is just about goodness, kindness, positivity just for its own sake, Always something to manipulate and misappropriate, Always looking to give only to receive. It is never just about giving or doing for its own sake, why?

I ask myself this question, every time there is news of sexual misconduct, or misinformation, or misuse of power, where are the good people in these organisations and why do they not feel comfortable enough to come forward, and speak their truth? In order to stand up and be counted, we are all going to be confronted with this question, what are you willing to sacrifice in order to stand up for your truth and your righteousness?

Good people everywhere, want to speak out, and are doing so in larger and larger numbers, but have to face severe obstacles and fear of reprisals. Look at the way our media and society treat those who stand up and speak out, we condemn instead of investigate. We are made to choose, in whom we trust, the individual versus either governments, or corporations [sometimes state funded] or supposedly independent organisations which are never really or truly independent. All you have to do is look at their funding.

The biggest challenge to revealing the truth as I see it is fear. I am not immune from the menace this feeling brings with it, but it needs to be faced and then sidelined. Unless and until we are willing to confront our fears, we will not be able to live a righteous life, nor have the society we want and crave.

A saying by Franklin Roosevelt says courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the assessment that something else is more important than fear. What is more important to you than fear? The things that need to become more important for us all, than fear has to be speaking up for the voiceless, the suppressed, the weak and the vulnerable.

I think most people just want to be left to live their life in peace and relative comfort. We do not have the time nor the inclination to get involved in large scale issues, nor constant protests. We can scale down the issues to our own lives. We can stand up in small ways, for all people, affected by the inhumanity of human behaviour.

We can stop allowing ourselves getting sidetracked by one marginalised group or another and instead focus on all people who are being dehumanised. We need to rise above what divides us and bring into focus what unites us. We are human.

We really and truly are all one. When we live knowing this, we will be willing to stand up not just for ourselves but for all humanity.

Reading the news is like a never ending lesson in what not to do, in life. Can we continue to have faith in us humans doing the right thing at all, anymore? I know simultaneously there are good people doing good things all the time, we just never get to see that in the news!

Do you wonder what kind of world we would be living in, if bankers, politicians, lawyers, teachers, Ceo’s, doctors, nurses, newspaper editors, and each and every one of us, would all just do the right thing? Doing the right thing is not always compatible with your own self interest, therefore it is hard to put into practise and execute. This self interest is the reason why we see the level of depravity we are witnessing.

Do you want to live in utopia? Where there is harmony within yourself and in all that surrounds you and in nature too?  Do you think this is an achievable goal? I think the answer lies with people who are willing to stand up for the right thing and be counted no matter the risk, to themselves and their families. There are people doing this daily, the question is are you going to be one of them?

Doing the right thing is an exercise in patience. I know from my own life that good actions take time to work and bad actions often work instantaneously. I know this sounds counter intuitive.  However when you begin to practice doing the right thing, you will begin to see that being made to wait for your good actions to work through the system is often the way it plays out. Positive action always works in the long run. Negative actions never have the power to go the distance. So in doing the right things you will win in the end, and in doing the wrong things you might well win temporarily but you will lose in the final analysis.

We all, I believe deep within us want to do the right thing, but circumstances sometimes coerce us into doing that which we feel we have to do to preserve our circumstances and survive. Thinking about people in history and today, who are willing to take the heat that comes with doing the right thing is what we are all going to have to be prepared to do, if we want to strive for the ideal and not the imperfect.

Standing up for someone who is being treated unfairly or cruelly or inhumanly, is the cornerstone of compassion and what it means to be human. Our humanity is being eroded, by behaviour that is abhorrent and is being silently acquiesced to. My survival at your cost spells the eventual end for us both. As the Edmund Burke saying goes, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching you. Utopia beckons.