Living Words That Ignite The Flame Of Life.

Just over forty three years ago I stood in a room full of smoke with  people chatting and laughing. I was there shivering and shaking and full of extreme fear and panic, very ill and chronically addicted to alcohol. I had just been given three months to live by my doctor. A man approached me and said "my name is Don and I have the same problem as you". I  looked at him standing there in a Saville row suit which must have cost about three hundred guineas while I was there dressed in rags, unwashed for weeks. My shoes were stuffed full with cardboard to keep my feet dry in the rain. Don said to me the living words of life, which ignited a living flame within me. The words were simply, "Michael, I was like you once. Those six words that Don spoke to me opened up a whole new world that I never dreamed ever existed.
Over the past forty three years I have discovered a whole new inner world. I  started meditating in the winter of 1974 and have been daily doing so ever since.The life that I had lived before was like being caught up in a negative spiral that was constricting and strangulating me slowly and would have eventually killed me. By adopting this new sober life and getting support from others like me at regular meetings, and by the daily practice of meditation, my life started to open out and became expansive, ever opening wider as the years came and went.
I discovered that we each have a living flame within us, that  is called the soul or higher self. This living flame when contacted through the practice of meditation flows down into our consciousness and further ignites the conscience, which I found to be the inner monitor of my behaviour. Thinking practices would tell me if I was straying off the path of inner alignment and towards the negative
ways of selfishness, arrogance and false pride. It  was up to me to heed this inner warning from the monitor within. If  I ignored it I would pay the price, which usually meant further pain and suffering. The inner voice told me often that you have free will, but added to that was the reminder that there is a price to pay for all our actions. My  earnest wish is that anyone out there in cyber city reading this blog will receive the joy and happiness that I have found from going within and finding that inner fire, the soul. May  peace and joy be your constant companions.
warmest regards Michael.
email kirkpatrickmichael17@gmail.com