[Mary Attwood]

Hi Dan, Thank you for posting this – may I ask if this is something you spent a while meditating on or did it come to you in an aha! moment?

Mary

[Mary Attwood]

Thank you Mark and everybody for your feedback. As a newly launched discussion forum this will take a little while to populate and get used to, plus it seems a very small percentage of members are using the discussion forum.

At this stage, the layout of the replies and feed from people writing is working fine. You should be notified of responses if you click the box below “Notify me of replies via email”. I have checked it and it works for me so if it isn’t working for you, please let me know.

Regarding the slowness of the site, we are aware of this and the tech team are looking at improving this, so it is in the pipeline.

Anybody can start up a discussion thread or group and invite other members to it to engage with them. We will take a look at the groups every couple of months to see what is working and what isn’t and tidy them up. We won’t be looking at getting yet another platform for the discussion forum as this one needs to flourish fully first so we need to give it time to see how things develop.

As guests come and do talks with Iain they are being invited into the forums too to discuss any thoughts and ideas so again, this is something in its fledging stages and will develop over time.

Do please keep the feedback coming!

Many thanks

[Mary Attwood]

Here is a message from Mark Vernon that he asked me to post here in the discussion forum:

Thanks very much for the thoughts and comments. At heart, I think that attentional freedom, or moving from left to right types of perception, might be summarised as a process of receptive opening. So any moment or experience or practice that presents such a possibility, without trying to possess or fully understand, is valuable. Included in that are moments of breakdown or ordeal, too, which might with time become known as undergoings of transformation.

For myself, I’ve pursued a mixture of practices, including my own psychotherapy, which was much to do with my own suffering and resistances, as well as meditative and yoga practices, and increasingly at the moment, practices of devotion – Bhakti yoga, in Indian traditions, or worship, in Christian/Sufi. I’m finding freeing lighting candles, bowing before images, singing, talking about loving the texts or figures in Christianity and elsewhere – not fully understanding why, but letting the devotion do its expressive and liberative work. Studying figures like Dante and Blake are guides in this, deeping my sense of devotional possibilities: they help me see how sadness, suffering, even raging, as well as longing, delight and communion are part of the letting go to let loose and let in the more.

I sense it’s important to pursue what feels genuinely at the edge of opening – that sweet spot of yearning, risk and love – which might vary substantially from person to person, and also across time for any one individual. We might need to practice and stick at something, so as to settle any knack required (like learning to use the breath as a support in meditation) and exploring the riches, which take time coming because they only come as we change and are able to receive them. But we also need to feel free too, so any practice or religious activity keeps its essential quality of vitality (which can be a subtle matter to discern because all the spiritual adepts tell us that dryness can be part of the process).

Mark

[Mary Attwood]

Welcome Matt and you seem to have a very comprehensive understanding of the mind and body in a much broader and deeper context than the typical mechanisation of the body and mind in modern medicine. Welcome to the forum. I think people are still getting used to using the forum as it is now a new platform but I am sure more and more we will see other thinkers reaching out to communicate in this way too.

[Mary Attwood]

Hi Don,

I think some other members seem to now be finding the forums and posting a few comments and discussions. This statement which Iain wrote to the members last year in a newsletter has now been posted on the homepage of the mina website and I feel it is such a crucial and moving statement. There are echoes of this in Iain’s recent talk with David Fuller, who is a brilliant interview and especially good at interviewing Iain. It is now on YouTube and can be found here. https://youtu.be/686heq5QFPk