Vision, Mission, Values

Throughout my life, I have always thought of myself as a hero on my life’s journey - somehow special. I am a big fan of Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings and so I tended to identify myself with the heroes of those journeys. I always wanted to be a Gyffindor, with its qualities of courage, daring, nerve and chivalry, just like the main characters Harry, Ron and Hermione. My sister Helen, has always identified with Hufflepuff House and I just couldn’t understand why this house, who would take anyone and valued hard work, would appeal to anyone. However, over the past decade of working with Helen, I have come to discover that she is always right and I have now come to realise the importance of the values of Hufflepuff House.

I had an insight on a recent retreat about how this idea of being special came with a sense of entitlement, of being better than. This was quite an embarrassing insight and it was a painful process to reassess myself as a normal person who has had very fortunate opportunities in her life, rather than someone who was inherently special. This opens the door to a sense of compassion for those who have have less fortunate opportunities in their lives, as well as to a sense of gratitude for the opportunities which led me to my life today.

It also encouraged me to explore the quality of humility, an antidote to entitlement and egocentric pride, which I was then keen to develop. I listened to a very interesting audiobook called Learning Humility: A Year Searching for a Vanishing Virtue by Richard J. Foster. Foster is an elderly American and as well as drawing on his Christian faith, he draws on the twelve virtues of the Lakota Indians of the Black Hills of Dakota, to explore how cultivating humility can lead to a life of freedom and joy. Entitlement and ego-centric pride is based on insecurity and low self-esteem and so to cultivate a healthy humility we are called upon to practice self-compassion and build a healthy, confident sense of self.

A healthy sense of self comes from what Buddhists call the wisdom of essential sameness, which means that as human beings we all have the same potential and that we all wish to be happy and to be free from suffering, we just go about it in counter-productive ways. What helps here is to remember that the human condition is not one of perfection and that being human is a messy business for us all, with challenging emotions and troubling thoughts tripping us up all the time. So the trick is to acknowledge we are a mess and then become, as my meditation teacher Rob Nairn famously said - a compassionate mess. We can be compassionate towards our flaws and celebrate our strengths in a healthy and balanced way.

This then becomes our view of ourselves and others. We celebrate and appreciate the strengths, life’s opportunities and all the things which make us happy and turn towards and seek to support ourselves and others to overcome the flaws, life’s obstacles and all the things which make us unhappy.

So when I set up Beachcomber Meditation I wanted to do this in accordance with the values of being down to earth, dedicated, appreciative, trust-worthy and cheerful. I wanted to create a community of meditators who value everyone equally, based on kindness, loyal friendship, fun and fair play. This is the aspiration - let’s see how we get on!

Humility is about adding value to others and so our aim is to help people to discover their innate natural state of peace, strength and joy - it is already within you, and believe me it is closer and easier to connect with than you might think. We want to make meditation training fun, flexible and affordable so that it is available to everyone regardless of their income or the busyness of their life. Again, this is an aspiration- let’s see how we get on!

Join us for Meditation Mondays, starting on Monday 13th April, for an early morning 15 minute meditation at 6.15am to prepare you for your day and for a late evening 15 minute meditation at 9.45pm to unwind and relax before sleep. These meditation will be guided by Heather, live on Zoom. Then recordings of them will be available all week to stream from the website at a time to suit you.

I look forward to seeing you there.

Kind Wishes

Heather