Simon Macnab

Let’s talk about skiing, a sport practised by millions. People back home pack heavy suitcases with equipment and warm clothes, lug them often with skis, through airports and travel thousands of miles to brave the cold air, treacherous icy paths to queue to enter a mechanised machine called a bubble or egg to transport them up the mountain. Why?

Skiing is all about harnessing the force of gravity, like a surfer harnesses the force of the wave. A skier, by allowing two planks of wood, or these days laminates, to slide into the fall line of descent play on the tightrope between fear and perfection. A skier ensures his survival in the face of a menacing tree line, by learning to turn, to make an arc, firstly towards the danger of accelerating vertical descent then continues the muscular effort through to the safety of a completed turn where he or she may either stop as the skis face uphill or initiate a second turn. So the skier derives pleasure from releasing his skis into danger and then returning to the safety of skis facing the side of the mountain.
In addition there is the pleasure of the scenery, mountain peaks and valleys, the feel of the snow cushion underneath one’s feet, the pleasure of a groomed twisting slope or ungroomed field, the company of friends, the sunshine and blue skies if lucky and the fresh mountain air. All together they present the ingredients for a relaxing if active holiday enjoyed by millions and providing economic well-being to thousands of mountain communities around the world.

But let’s go a little deeper. A ski holiday is also nourishment for the soul and a royal road to personal liberation and enlightenment.

How so? Let’s take each of those happy ingredients in turn. Firstly the scenery the setting for this potential transformation. Above all the tone is one of beauty. But the mountains are not beautiful in themselves they just are what they are. Our minds see the patterns of light and shade and we recognise beauty in what we see. Pull the gaze from the object seen and it is your own beauty that is mirrored back to you just like a painting awakens beauty in your heart.

Being with friends; skiing is a solitary activity there is only one of you on one set of skis, your decisions are autonomous. And yet we gather together in groups to share the slope and dinner table. While conversation may often be inconsequential and light, the shared experience of being together, the eye contact or touch feeds the urge for connection and relationship, and for a while there is a chance not to feel alone in a shared communal experience. Because when we identify with our minds and the personal identity it conjures up, aloneness and loneliness are it’s signature note. And so in compensation we find solace with our friends.

But let’s return to our skis, these anodyne items of 175cm long, waisted at the center with bindings for our heavy boots. Take a close look at them, cast your eye along the edges and see that divine curve. Divine because the curve of the ski is an invitation to a life of effortlessness. Skiing is a metaphor for life. How we ski is how we live. Are you an inconsiderate bomber, rearing down the slope in selfish adrenaline -fuelled frenzy in a hurry to get to the bottom of the piste, hurting people as you flash by, or are you aware of all that is around you ready to take evasive action to protect children and adults alike, just like when you are behind the wheel. And going at a pace where it is the journey that is the pleasure not the destination.

Let’s us focus a little deeper into ski technique- tbe turn. We skiers seek the perfect turn like the surfer the perfect wave. As we descend, the piste surface presents itself to us and almost without a decision - it’s so fast-we initiate a turn towards the fall line. Actually our minds tell us we made the decision to turn based on the bumps and hollows of the piste in front of us, but actually scientists have proven the brain activity linked to action occurs a fraction prior to the mind claiming a decision for itself, saying to us in effect “ I decide therefore I exist”. At speed what is experienced is the feeling that the skis are in charge and we are merely being carried from one angled turn to the next like a motorbike pillion rider.

This is all the more true with the carving turn where you let the ski’s curvature make the turn without any effor at all. All you have to allow is to release the brakes of fear ( always of the mind being concerned for its own safety) and let the skis fall into the fall line. Once there acceleration occurs rapidly and if you stay calm and relaxed your skus will take a gradual line away from the fall line, decelerate and you finish stopped facing partly uphill. This is skiing with the complete absence of yourself. It is effortless, free of fear based ego and a wonderful metaphor for a life lived without fear, each carved turn is a little death, a surrender to gravity and a trust in the maker of the skis. It is self abandonment at its best and it is deeply enjoyable. There is a tightness of being and it is this experience - the perfect turn - that skiers seek, but mostly don’t find as fear forces premature turns away from the fall line to ensure control and the personal safety of the skier. In just the same way that a fearful posture of leaning away from the mountain slopes causes you to lose adhesive edge on skis so a posture of bending at the hips and leaning into the fall line provides maximum safety with the best grip by the edges of the ski. Leaning into death, facing it, living with it knowing that there is a chance that by nightfall you maybe a co**se in pants and socks on the mortician’s slab makes you wear clean underwear in the mornings. Ski accidents happen, loss of control and hitting a tree is not unusual so prepare for the day with joy. Each turn is a magical transformational experience when lived consciously.

Skiing offers you the gateway to freedom, freedom from the oppression of the little fearful self. Every piste descent is an invitation to enlightenment, if only we can forget ourselves. Each skier experiences a hint of that freedom from mind, when on skis and has the possibility to take that freedom home with them in amongst the Swiss chocolates.

A week in the Austrian Alps, skiing, one of the great joys of life. Virgin snow each snowdrop a marvel of unique crystals form a white crunchy carpet in which to play like children. Descending, lazily swinging from side to side in rhythm to gravity, gliding on planks of wood and plastic is a feeling so joyful people will travel great lengths to experience. To be with 22 friends is a wonderful way to enjoy this nature’s playground.

Here is an excellent talk on the heart and mind as they face the issue of human suffering and how best to respond to it.

Ram Dass Here and Now – Episode 32 – Battle Between Mind & Heart Ram Dass Here and Now – Episode 32 – Battle Between Mind & Heart: https://youtu.be/U-qazB7aD3ARam Dass Here and Now – Episode 32 – Battle Between Mind & Hear...

The inaugural global security conference on child welfare concluded last Wednesday at Claridge’s, London finest hotel in the heart of Mayfair, a hotel renowned for its heavenly quality of peace, beauty and the angelic welcoming service of staff.

We had prepared a cake in honour of the birthday of the - yet to be registered- charitable Trust that will promote security for the vulnerable, young and old, around the world. Claridge’s also upgraded the conference facilities to the best on offer so the setting and preparation was superb.

Despite terrible weather, we had 40 representatives from charities in the UK and Africa and all the speakers were inspirational in their determination to end the scourge of many of the worst social ills. Let us remember who are in our thoughts; those who are victims of sexual abuse, su***de victims and their bereaved families, the mentally ill and the homeless. We intend to stop this wave of humanity falling into the sea of misery into which brave charity volunteers reach a helping hand to pull them out to dry land.

Our charitable trust, The Rachel Heron-Maxwell Trust, in honour of my 109 year old mother, will achieve this by going to the place where victims fall into the sea of unhappiness in the first place; that is to say, the root cause of misery, the fountain of unhappiness and stress both physical and mental, is our identification with the body as the basis of our identity.

We need to educate the public to disidentify from what is not true and what is left after this process of self-enquiry is completed, is the rainbow of our true self whose natural expression is peace and happiness, and whose perfume is joy.

The very qualities you will find expressed in Claridge’s by the happy staff who are clearly well respected and loved. A hotel whose qualities chime so beautifully with our own values.

For Claridge’s as a commercial enterprise offers the same respite to its tired international clientele as our Trust. A solid architectural presence in the heart of London, an oasis of expression of the true Self, with the beauty of magnificent bouquets of fresh flowers, the perfume of scented candles, the perfection of design, colour and texture, all bathed in the smile of staff overjoyed to treat you as old friends and relatives.

So, Claridge’s is home and a reminder to us all of our true nature as sons and daughters of God, and if he ( or she) lived anywhere it would be there, in London at this heavenly place that is Claridge’s.

DANCING ON DEATH’S GRAVE

I am rocking baby
Ear pods in my ears
I dance my mind away
As I speed back in time

I find myself gyrating
On the dry gravestones
Foot tapping the dead to life
Dusty skeletons gather their bones

Join the cemetery rave
I am the King of the dead
Here to wake up the living
With the army of dread

I was there dancing,
Waiving my arms at Agincourt
Standing still as all around me
French knights fell off their chargers

On green fields I swung my hips
Among the grizzled Grenadiers
Of La Grande Armée as
English cannon laid them in tiers

I danced my way among the lines
Of grey, snaking into Katyn forest
I fell laughing into the pit of lime
As they dropped on top of me

I was there every time,
Under those fake showers
Naked as the day I was born
Laughing gas, a big raspberry.

So dance on death’s grave
Even God is buried here
So dance, dance and dance
To the rhythm of Heaven.

Michael Jackson
On his cloud

Instead of reading philosophy or studying theology I recommend, if you are a seeker of the Truth, to listen to my late colleague Alan Watts, another Englishman.

Alan Watts: Inevitable Ecstasy – Being in the Way Podcast Ep. 9 – Hosted by Mark Watts Illuminating the truth of the relationship between awareness and self, Alan Watts naturally opens us to the inevitable ecstasy of surrender.This series is br...

A full English breakfast at the Wolseley restaurant in London; one of the joys of visiting this most beautiful cities. England may not have the greatest reputation for cuisine but breakfast and tea cannot be surpassed. We may focus here on the nature of consciousness, and that great illusion - the notion that you are a person, but let’s stay grounded in life’s many joys.

I say personhood is one of life’s great myths because we live our lives believing we are a person, with our memories of a life lived, who does things, takes action, and makes conscious choices all day long every day, that has a name, knows when they were born and, has relatives and loved ones, and ultimately will die. Well guess what? All these statements are untrue.
We know that all this characteristics are untrue because we can examine them each in turn and reveal that they are false.

Yes you have a name, but you don’t have to be identified as a person or even with your body. Philosophers of identity who study the question since Plato and Locke may say you are a person because you are an animal with a body existing in time. But you can observe the body as an object of perception. Therefore as the subject, the perceiver, you cannot be both subject and object. Seeing your car or hand does not make you either a car or a hand.

You believe you were born on such and such a date, Yes, your body was, but were you? This is second hand information told to you by your parents with a birth certificate to prove it. But your parents also fell into the trap of believing they were persons.

You say you have siblings, a wider family and friends, but if you are not a person are they too illusions of personhood, for you are literally no different from them in your essence, as the knower of all experience.

Philosophers may say then that you are a psychological self by dint of being an entity who thinks and dies and has a narrative solidity of choice making. But again is it not true that the person in hospital in a vegetative state is also in essence a being. The mind throws up a continuum of experience, that like a film roll, indicates personhood but if slowed down into individual frames reveals in the stillness an absence of a doer, there is only happening, without free will, like all the thoughts that flow like an unending river through your consciousness.

Other philosophers may then say well if you are not an animal and not a psychological self with memories that cannot be trusted, then you are a spiritual being, a soul. But again close examination will reveal that this too like the image our mind conjures up of God is a projection of personhood. The idea of an individual soul is just a light projection of an image of the individual self that mind desperately throws up to insist on its own right to exist. But actually it’s just a habit of thought, a reflex of fear that needs to defend itself from tbe oblivion of nothingness or nobodyness that we truly are. An emptiness that may seem terrifyingly bereft of humanity but is actually full of our true nature -
Impersonal love.

So enjoy your breakfast but just because you taste delicious food in your mouth don’t believe there is a “you” tasting it. There is only taste occurring in your awareness, an awareness that is ageless, that has never been born and will never die, in which the body moves, generates sensation moment by moment. Your true nature does not need tightened muscles and a stressed mind to defend, but has a natural welcoming presence without judgement, opinion, belief or concept attached. Free of such barnacles the smooth hull of your Being can sail joyfully through the sea of experience untrammelled by worry or fear. Love is the wind that blows you forward, and the gurgling of the water passing your pristine boat merely the sound of bliss.

Followed by champagne at the Park Hyatt with a friend then lunch at nearby Coste Hotel right in the middle of Fashion week. Stsrters snails and oysters, followed by ceviche and steak wrapped up with the best baba au rum ever.

A little bit of Parisian luxury. A visit to a watch shop in Pace Vendome in Paris followed by the wash rooms at the Ritz.

The memorial stone of this French unrecognised saint tells us who Pierre Ruibet, a young 18 year old is.
I translate the text taken from his final letter to his parents during the Second World War.

WHILE I AM ATTACHED TO LIFE, I PLACE MY COUNTRY ABOVE MY HAPPINESS FAREWELL TO ALL, VIVE LA FRANCE.

What did this boy do? He single-handedly blew up the largest N**i naval munition dump in all of France, containing torpedoes and shells destined to blow British sailers to smithereens.

After lighting the fuse in the place where he had got a position as a worker, he was caught red-handed by a German officer and after a brief struggle, the German fled shouting his alarm, Pierre had managed to seize his gun. Rather than flee he waited gun in hand until the fuse reached the explosives. Horribly mutilated by the ensuing explosion he died.

His selfless heroism had saved the lives of hundreds of Allied soldiers. As it turned out at 16 he had worked in my Voiron host’s grandfather’s factory.

The memorial garden, a rather sad and uncared for plot is near the cathedral, if you ever go to pay your respects. Voiron is a short car and train journey from Lyon the second largest city in France and also well worth visiting for its excellent gastronomy.