I’m offering you the chance to free yourself from suffering. To live from a place of peaceful acceptance and clarity of mind. To meet life as it unfolds with an open heart and a clear head. To bring back the joy of simply being alive.

This is a place within you – you won’t find it outside in the world of people, places, or possessions. This is deep within, at the very core of you. You don’t have to find it; all you need to do see through the ‘story of you’ and it will reveal itself. I will teach you to see through that story.

The story of you is the conditioned mind that has been developing since you were a child and that now forms your persona – ‘your story’. It lives in the past of guilt and regret and in the future of fear and concern – it creates anxiety and conflict. This is your false self. Your true self is the pure presence buried beneath. I will help you uncover that truth by seeing through the false self and letting go of the anxious, fearful and neurotic story of you.

There is a peace and a serenity and a clarity of mind waiting to express through you, all that is needed is to recognise the filters that have built up over the years obscuring this freedom. Once those filters have been removed you will be seeing from pure presence and life gets very simple very quickly.

In this simplicity you fall into a harmonious relationship with life and life in turn falls into a harmonious relationship with you. This is because it’s one and the same thing – you are life, you are what is happening, there is no separation. The true self is in fact life itself expressing through you.

 

We will get to that place through guided self-enquiry – this is an inner journey. You won’t find the answers in the world outside, nor will you find peace or harmony there. Life begins and ends within you. I will teach you how to practice Self-enquiry, which will facilitate your personal transformation and bring freedom from suffering.

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​​The freedom I’m referring to is freedom from your negative thoughts and the emotions that follow - emotions such as anxiety, fear, anger, sadness, guilt, regret. Most of our suffering is psychological in nature and you will no doubt be familiar with how it can lead to frustration, loneliness, helplessness and perhaps a persistent low mood and depression.

 

You may be less familiar with the ideas presented here of freedom from this suffering - perhaps you’ve never considered the possibility that you have a choice in the matter. Suffering can be subtle, as in the discomfort felt in a situation where you feel under pressure to impress or fulfil another person’s expectations, whether that’s a job interview, a presentation, or a social interaction.

 

And then there’s the suffering we create within our heads without needing an external stimulus; lying in bed, for instance, unable to sleep as racing thoughts create an imaginary future of problems and catastrophes.

 

All this suffering has one thing in common - our thinking; thoughts about what’s happening or what could happen or what has happened – thinking is both the cause of our suffering and the potential solution. Because thinking produces our suffering it has the potential to free us from that suffering.

 

A caveat before continuing: If you’re suffering from physical pain such as toothache, then freedom comes from painkillers or dentistry, it does not come from philosophical or spiritual understandings (that said, even with regard to physical pain our attitude towards it can help reduce our suffering).

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