Perhaps like me, you now feel that things have been increasingly chaotic for so long that you've dropped your hope that they'll settle down anytime soon. If so, how can we make the best of a life that's ever more uncertain and uncontrollable?

     When easy questions, like 'Now what?', no longer give us useful answers, it's time to try questions that may look foolish: for example, where are the upsides in all this turbulence? What if the suffering and nastiness in our world today is pushing us towards a better future?

     Please note, I am not writing this in a spirit of confident hope: my default mood these days is alarm and vulnerability, but I refuse to abandon hope! We know that hope, faith, and meaning are vital to human wellbeing, and maybe this blog offers some clues for the journey. Read more

Co-creativity is a core part of Alan's newest book, Natural Happiness: it's a set of skills to help you to dance with uncertainty, and use your intuition and subconscious to find innovative responses to complex, messy problems. See more here.

The Sufi Garden is a life-affirming evening of meditation, body prayer and poems, led by Alan Heeks and Karim Hadden. No previous experience needed. 

     This evening our theme is The Upsides of Upheaval: in these turbulent times a helpful approach can be to explore the gifts and divine intent behind the human challenges. We will journey into surrender, deepening our faith and aligning with divine purpose through our usual mix of chant, dance and embodied spiritual practice.

     For more information and registration, see here.

As material reality gets more uncertain and alarming, I have found that using spiritual practices to find my way forward is really helpful. I’ve been exploring Sufi teachings for over 20 years, and want to share a couple of processes which have helped me.

     So what do I mean by Sufi? It’s an elusive idea: there’s no creed or text to define it. Here’s one summary I like: a Sufi is one who takes a heart-centred approach, seeing the divine unity in all forms of life. I’ll share examples of how I put this into practice. Read more