Anima et Ignis

22/03/2026

The voice in us that judges others is the root of evil.

Sounds a bit emo; like staring into the rain while your hair dye quietly gives up… like Rudy Giuliani on a hot day.

And yet; watch that voice for a day. Notice what it does, quietly in the background, shaping everything from your mood to how you see the world.

This is what Buddhists call Maya.

Not illusion as fantasy; illusion as misperception.
A lens mistaken for reality.

Which is why they say there is no real spiritual practice; only the gradual stepping out of self deception.

So, how do we tell the difference between what is real and what is assumed?

The real rarely asks for explanation. The assumed cannot stop explaining itself.

As for the process…

Start with the one that puts the filter on and calls it clarity; our inner judge.

It is quick. Certain. Uninvited.
It decides before it sees. It labels before it understands. It turns passing moments into verdicts; no jury, no evidence, no appeal.

We all have it.
The ones who deny it have simply outsourced their thinking to it and adopted it as part of their chimeric personality.

The fascinating part is that it always happens with our consent; subtle, barely perceptible, yet like anything in the mental realm, it requires our participation.

Watch it closely.

How fast it assigns intent.
How easily it reduces a person to a sentence.
How confidently it gets it wrong.

That is the tell.

Outward; immediate, absolute.
Inward; quietly negotiated.

In therapy, we call this resolving internal conflict through cognitive dissonance; a neat way the mind keeps its story intact.

The smoker knows it kills; then edits the ending.
“I’ve got good genes.”
“I’ll quit soon.”
“It won’t happen to me.”

Same facts.
Different story.

We call it clarity.
It is bias with a firm handshake.

And then we wonder why things feel tight. Why conversations snap. Why life pushes back.

Of course it does.

A mind that hands out verdicts all day rarely notices it is also the defendant.

And it does not stop with others. As if the voice grows bold enough to claim a part of us.

Then it turns inward. Same speed. Same certainty.

Now it is your own judge; and suddenly the sentencing guidelines get… darker.

This is where people split when it comes to mental health and therapy.

You cannot maintain two standards for the same thing; you cannot remove one while conforming to the other.

This creates dissonance within us; it can either be faced directly and resolved, or divided into smaller justifications that only deepen the confusion.

When we avoid being brutally honest with ourselves, we use therapy as a crutch.
Better language. Cleaner narratives. Same behaviour.

That is not growth. That is PR. The head thinks it is winning; the heart aches; the soul yearns. And we are left wondering why it does not work; why the voice keeps sabotaging us.

Therapy is not here to agree with you.
It is here to interrupt the part of us that hides in plain sight; that demands control while shunning responsibility.

Therapy does not polish the story.
It dismantles it where it does not hold; across the whole being, not just the head.

No crutches for patterns we refuse to question. No shifting of responsibility because we refuse to acknowledge the active part we play.

And this is why therapy is for the brave.

Not because it is dramatic.
Because it removes your favourite excuses and leaves you alone with what is actually there.

No applause. No costume. Just you; without the commentary.

Strip the label and it becomes simple.

Observation aka mindfulness.

Seeing the moment before the judgement lands.
Noticing the urge to conclude.
Feeling the tightening; and not obeying it like an order.

When the inner judge speaks, pause and ask: “Interesting… who or what are you?”

Silence is a good sign.
If an answer comes back, notice it; you are now in a made up conversation, rooted in something that is not you. Your energy is being taken away from you with your consent.

Do not argue with it. You can never win the argument. Instead -
Step back.

If this feels difficult, look into guided mindfulness meditation; learning not to engage with thoughts is how you begin to take hold of the reins of your mind.

That is where it shifts.

You can start anywhere.

Waiting for a coffee, washing your hands, walking, driving…

A few minutes noticing your breath.
Catching one reaction and cutting it short before it turns into a story.

And if you want structure; here are a few techniques used in therapy; practical, direct, immediately usable.

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Future pacing

Rehearse what is coming; deliberately, with the outcome you want.

Example; a conversation you have been avoiding.
See it as you want it to go. Hear your tone steady. Feel your posture grounded.

You are not guessing; you are priming the mind toward the outcome you seek.

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Parts

You are not one voice; stop pretending.

Example; one part wants progress; another wants comfort.
Both have a reason.

Ask what each is trying to protect.
When seen clearly, the tension loses its grip.

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Miracle question

Define what better actually looks like.

Example; you wake up and the problem is gone.

What is the first small sign?
You move without hesitation.
You respond without overthinking.

Now you have direction; something observable, not abstract.

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Reframing

Change the meaning; not the facts.

Example; heart racing before speaking.
Call it anxiety; you shrink.
Call it readiness; you step in.

You train the interpretation; the body follows.

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Grounding

Return to what is real.

Feet on the floor. Breath moving.
Name what is in front of you.

You bring attention out of the story and back into the present.

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Implementation

Decide in advance.

If I feel the urge to avoid; I act.
Small. Immediate.

You remove negotiation from the moment.

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And there are methods that work even faster.

BWRT works at the level before conscious awareness; interrupting the pattern before the emotion fully forms, before the familiar reaction takes over.
Not after the storm; before it gathers.

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And language matters.

With words we gain definition.
With labels we navigate.

• The map is not the territory
• Problems used to be solutions
• Name it to tame it
• You are not your thoughts
• Feelings are real; not always reliable
• Regulation before insight

Simple. Useful. Enough.

Most people are not stuck because change is impossible; they are stuck because the same pattern runs, unchecked, on repeat.

And it often begins with judgement; fast, certain, unexamined.

See it; and the grip loosens.

Not completely.
But enough.

Step by step; you are getting better and better.

If you are unsure where to start; reach out.
Based on what you want to change, the path differs.
CBT, hypnotherapy, trauma-focused work such as EMDR or EFT; knowing where to go matters as much as going.

We move faster when we stop pretending we do not need help.

15/03/2026

People say life is a journey.

It sounds harmless enough; the sort of sentence that nods wisely while saying very little. Yet clichés rarely survive by accident. Somewhere inside them lives a stubborn piece of truth.

A journey implies terrain.

Some stretches of life invite you to slow down; to notice the air after rain, the shape of a tree against the sky, the small miracle that breathing continues without asking your permission. Other stretches resemble a long uphill road; the kind that strengthens your legs whether you volunteered for the training or not.

And then there are the less poetic sections. No metaphor. No lesson. Just survival. Get through. Keep what matters intact.

Growing older does not make the road smoother; it simply teaches you to recognise the terrain.

Pause when the path allows it.
Push when the path demands it.
And do not confuse thinking with progress.

My preferred reset is walking.

Not power walking. Not fitness theatre. Just walking; the oldest therapy humans discovered long before we invented productivity.

Zen understood this. Daoist thinkers too. Not through elaborate theory, but through observation; the body often understands things the mind insists on complicating.

The mind has a curious habit. It travels everywhere except where the body actually is. It edits the past like a stubborn film director. It rehearses future disasters with admirable creativity. It holds imaginary debates in which it always wins.

Meanwhile the present moment stands nearby, patiently waiting for attention.

Mindful walking interrupts this circus.

The moment you notice the mind wandering off into its favourite theatre of “what if” and “what was,” you return attention to the body. To the breath. To the quiet pressure of your feet meeting the ground. To the small pockets of tension the body has been holding like unopened letters.

No lecture required. Just notice. Adjust. Continue.

Then something simple begins to happen.

The world returns.

You notice the space between yourself and a tree; not as philosophy, but as actual air and light. A bird cuts through that space without asking for meaning. A lake somewhere in the distance quietly does what lakes do best; it reflects the sky and refuses to participate in your internal committee meeting.

And a quiet thought appears.

If attention is the currency of the mind, spending it on yourself may be the most sensible investment you can make.

Not in the sense of endless self-improvement; the world already produces more “better versions of you” than anyone ordered.

The deeper work begins elsewhere.

It begins with noticing.

Because noticing is where the real work starts to move on its own. Clarity grows where noise once lived. Strength appears where tension quietly held its post.

No heroics required.

Just attention returning home.

And that may be enough to trust the process; and, quietly, to trust yourself ✊

08/03/2026

The Age of Buddhas & human mind

Have you ever wondered how many Buddhas there were before Gautama; the wandering sage from northern India whose quiet revolution still echoes twenty five centuries later?

I did. Which is exactly the sort of rabbit hole curiosity throws at you when you should probably be doing something more responsible.

Because most of us carry a very tidy picture of the Buddha. In popular imagination he often appears as a cheerful, rather round fellow sitting cross-legged with a generous belly and a knowing smile. A comforting image; except it has very little to do with Gautama himself. That figure is Budai, a wandering Chinese monk from around the 10th century who, through centuries of folklore, became mistaken in the West for the Buddha.

Popular imagination can be wonderfully inventive.

The early Buddhist texts, however, tell a far more intriguing story.

In the Buddhavaṃsa, a chronicle preserved in the Pali Canon, Gautama is described as the 28th Buddha in a remembered lineage.

Twenty eight Buddhas!

Which means twenty seven others are said to have walked the inner path before him. And this just one recorded lineage.

That number makes curiosity lean forward.

Because the next question arrives immediately.

Fine. Twenty eight Buddhas.

So how far back does the story go? When did the first Buddha this lineage remembers appear?

Here the timeline dissolves.

The texts avoid precise dates and offer a simpler observation; a Buddha appears when the world has forgotten the path, when understanding fades and someone must rediscover it from the ground up.

Curiosity then did what curiosity does.

The last Buddha we know about lived roughly 2,500 years ago.

With little else to anchor the timeline, I made a reckless but serviceable assumption.

Twenty eight Buddhas.

About 2,500 years apart.

Follow that line backward and the first Buddha the lineage remembers appears roughly 70,000 years ago.

That number should make you pause.

Because around that same horizon anthropology places the cognitive awakening of Homo sapiens, when symbolic thought begins appearing in the archaeological record.

Cave paintings on one side.
Pure wisdom on the other.

Which leaves a striking contrast.

On one side; seventy thousand years ago, the archaeological record. Cave paintings. Ochre markings. The first fragile signs of symbolic thought.

On the other; a lineage remembering a Buddha.

Pure wisdom entering the human story.

One account built from fragments of stone.
The other carried through memory and tradition.

Neither gives the whole picture.

But together they point to something uncomfortable for modern pride.

Wisdom may not be the final achievement of civilization.

It may be something far older; something human beings occasionally remember and just as reliably forget.

A small clarification.

In Buddhism an enlightened person is not someone who suddenly knows everything about the universe.

A Buddha simply sees clearly.

Free from the compulsions of illusion and the endless turning of what the tradition calls the wheel of karma.

Wisdom.

Not cosmic trivia.

The last Buddha walked northern India about twenty five centuries ago.

In the scale of human history that is barely yesterday; just enough time for a few civilizations to mistake themselves for the final draft.

Which leaves us with a striking contrast.

On one side; seventy thousand years ago, the archaeological record. Cave paintings. Ochre markings. The first fragile signs of symbolic thought.

On the other; a lineage remembering a Buddha.

Pure wisdom entering the human story.

One account built from fragments of stone.
The other carried through memory and tradition.

Neither gives the whole picture.

But together they point to something uncomfortable for modern pride.

Wisdom may not be the final achievement of civilization.

It may be something far older; something human beings occasionally remember and just as reliably forget.

Civilizations grow clever.

They accumulate knowledge, institutions, technologies.

Yet clarity does not seem to scale with complexity.

Which leaves a quiet possibility.

Human beings have been capable of profound wisdom for a very long time.

Civilizations rise.

They mistake themselves for the final draft.

Then somewhere, someone remembers.

And the path appears again.

For readers who appreciate the tougher side of Buddhist insight; Chögyam Trungpa’s book Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism is worth a look. Its argument is direct; the ego is remarkably skilled at turning even spirituality into another possession. Buddhism instead points to three simple anchors known as the Three Jewels; the Buddha, awakened mind; the Dharma, the truth that reveals reality; and the Sangha, the community that helps keep us honest on the path. Not decoration. Not ideology. Just reminders that awakening is less about collecting wisdom and more about seeing through the machinery that keeps us asleep.

01/03/2026

Letting go is often the hardest thing to do.
So is bringing your awareness back to here and now.

It sounds trivial. Yet try it.

Close your eyes for a moment and keep your awareness on what is happening in your body right now. The breath moving. The weight of your body on the chair. The pressure of your feet on the floor.

Most people will last only a few seconds before the mind runs somewhere else.

Not because they are incapable.
Because attention is untrained.

And yet this quiet ability may be one of the most important skills a human being can develop.

It is also one of the most overlooked.

Why does it matter?

Because the state of your attention directly influences the state of your nervous system.

Your body operates through two complementary modes.

The sympathetic system; often called fight or flight.
The parasympathetic system; often called rest and digest.

Fight or flight is brilliant when danger appears. Heart rate rises, breathing quickens, muscles tighten, attention narrows toward threat. The system mobilises energy for action.

The problem is that modern life triggers this system constantly.

An email.
A deadline.
A disagreement.
A thought about the future.

The body reacts as if something urgent is happening.

Studies show that psychological stress can increase resting energy expenditure by roughly five to fifteen percent. Muscles stay partially contracted. Breathing becomes shallow. Hormones like cortisol remain elevated.

In simple terms; energy is being burned preparing for battles that never arrive.

Parasympathetic regulation does the opposite.

Breathing slows.
Muscles soften.
Digestion and repair resume.
The system becomes efficient again.

This shift changes more than physiology.

When the body is tense; the world feels hostile.
When the body settles; the same world feels manageable.

The circumstances may not change.
Your response does.

This is where awareness of the body becomes powerful.

When attention returns to the body; to breathing, posture, sensation; the nervous system gradually shifts away from chronic fight or flight. Muscle tone decreases. Breathing deepens. Regulation returns.

You are not creating energy.

You are stopping unnecessary loss.

And that matters more than it sounds.

Consider a perspective from physics.

According to Einstein’s equation E equals mc squared, one kilogram of matter corresponds to roughly nine times ten to the power of sixteen joules of energy. If the mass of an average human body were converted to energy, the theoretical output would equal roughly fourteen hundred megatons of TNT. The largest hydrogen bomb ever detonated was about fifty megatons.

You will never access that force.

But the point is humbling.

What we casually call “a body” is an extraordinarily complex, energy intensive system. The brain alone uses around twenty percent of the body’s total energy.

How that energy is spent matters.

If the system is constantly braced, anxious, rehearsing threats and imagined scenarios, energy is wasted. Muscles remain tense. Attention fragments. Decision making suffers.

When the system is regulated, the same energy becomes available for clarity, creativity, and repair.

Less internal friction.
More useful output.

Nature prefers efficiency.

A relaxed muscle moves better than a rigid one.
A steady mind makes better decisions than an agitated one.

Less noise.
More signal.

Your mind will still wander. That is not failure.

The practice is simple.

Notice when attention has left the body.
Bring it back.

Again.
And again.

Five seconds at first.
Ten.
Thirty.

With training, the mind can remain grounded in this embodied awareness for long periods while still fully engaged with life.

Not withdrawn.
Regulated.

And you do not need a perfect meditation setting.

Use the queue for coffee.
The pause before a meeting.
The moment before you reach for your phone.

Return awareness to the body.
Here.
Now.

Practice this quietly for a few months and something subtle begins to change.

The world may remain exactly the same.

Your response will not.

And when that becomes unmistakable; we talk again.

For readers interested in the psychosomatic science behind this body based approach, a strong reference is the book Sensorimotor Psychotherapy by Pat Ogden and Janina Fisher.

15/02/2026

What happens in a therapy session?

I read a post from one of the leading male influencers.
He said that only weak people go to therapy to cry about their childhood.

I thought; what a foolishly dangerous thing to say.

There was one part I half agreed with though;
therapy is wasted on people who want to remain innocent.

Some people go to therapy to get better.
Self development.

Others go to therapy to get better at what they already do; manipulation, control, self deception.

Therapy does not make you virtuous.
It makes you accurate.

It is not about crying or softness.
It is about facing what actually runs you; unconscious reactions, conditioned responses, habits mistaken for character.

For some, anger is not an emotion.
It is an identity.
Defence is not a response; it is a lifestyle.

Therapy threatens that structure.

Do people cry in therapy; sometimes.
Tears are released energy; a legitimate form of catharsis.

Reducing therapy to crying is like saying a car moves because the wheels spin.
Technically true. Entirely missing the point.

As for therapy itself.

Can you start therapy for one issue while avoiding a bigger one you know is there; yes, to a degree.

Therapy is not an all or nothing excavation.
Subjects overlap; depth is adjustable.

You can work on anxiety around an interview without dismantling your entire childhood.
You can improve sleep, focus, or confidence without opening every sealed box at once.

Avoidance, however, has a cost.

What matters is intention and guidance.

If I want to get somewhere, I choose someone who knows the terrain.
If not, someone I trust to read it accurately.

Different destinations require different guides.

A good therapist does not carry your weight.
They help you identify it; especially the parts you avoid out of fear, pride, or inconvenience.
They push you out of comfort; and keep you far enough from the edge so you do not fall.

Will therapy fix everything; no.
It is not a genie in a bottle.

What it does is sharpen your responses.
It clarifies what is in your control and what never was.

Many problems used to be solutions.
They simply outlived their usefulness.

Therapy is maintenance.
You do not wait for your car to break down before servicing it.

It updates the toolkit.
It does not erase the past or declare war on the self.

Will therapy remove toxic people from your life; not directly.

What changes first is your relationship to yourself; your self worth; your tolerance for what you allow near you.

From that comes space.
Not isolation; boundaries.

You may not control who is around you.
You do gain control over what has access to you.

That is where real change happens.

How do you know a session worked;

Sometimes relief comes quickly.
Sometimes nothing feels different at all.

The real shift happens later.
In how you respond.
In what no longer hooks you.
In the pause that appears where reaction used to live.

There is no timetable for this.
Just as there is no timetable for grief.

The pace does not matter.
The direction does.

11/02/2026

07/02/2026

Talking to Yourself?
You Might Be Highly Intelligent.

Did you know that talking to yourself is an actual sign of intelligence?
Yes; I was telling that to myself earlier. We both laughed.

Jokes aside, while self talk does not equal higher IQ, there is a very close correlation between self talk and higher intelligence.

Not because it sounds clever. It rarely does.

Self talk tends to appear when the mind slows itself down; when options are weighed, impulses paused, reactions delayed. It shows up when thinking chooses restraint over speed.

Children do this out loud when tasks get tricky. Adults still do it; they just keep it quieter and deny it publicly. Same mechanism. Better camouflage.

And there is another aspect people rarely mention. When you speak to yourself, you are not just thinking in words; you are also hearing them. That routes the information through auditory processing networks as well, engaging different parts of the brain. Same thought; more circuitry involved. Efficiency by redundancy. Or redundancy by intelligence. Choose your own adventure.

Interestingly, whispering works too.
Which is comforting.
Immensely comforting.

This is not rumination. It is regulation. Language used inwardly to organise behaviour, hold a direction, or stop the loudest thought from passing as the right one.

People who dismiss self talk often confuse speed with clarity. Or silence with depth. Or certainty with intelligence.

And you?
Do you talk to yourself; or do you avoid it knowing how stubborn you can be?

Life is better, connected
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Selected research references

Vygotsky, L. S. (1934). Thought and Language.
Alderson-Day, B., and Fernyhough, C. (2015). Inner Speech: Development, Cognitive Functions, Phenomenology, and Neurobiology. Psychological Bulletin.
Alderson-Day, B., and Fernyhough, C. (2016). The psychology of inner speech. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews.
Kim, J. et al. (2021). Self-talk and neural mechanisms of cognitive control. Frontiers in Psychology.
Hatzigeorgiadis, A. et al. (2011). Self-talk and sports performance. Perspectives on Psychological Science.

01/02/2026

We live in a time where everything is explained, advised, optimised, and sold.
And yet almost nothing is actually understood.

Everyone seems eager to change us.
To reframe us.
To offer the missing piece that stands between us and success.

One more book.
One more course.
One more insight and we’ll finally be fixed.

It’s solid marketing.
Like all good marketing, it knows where we’re vulnerable.
It speaks directly to our desire to be one step away from relief.

What it quietly forgets to mention is this;
the next step is rarely another technique.
The next step is almost always observation.

Pause.
Silence.
The space where something real can actually appear.

Ancient systems understood this well.
Before any transformation, there was confrontation with the self.
Hermetic initiations began with a mirror;
not to improve, but to see.
Light on one side. Shadow on the other.
Reviewed regularly. No shortcuts.

Today we skip that step.
We go straight to solutions.
And then we’re surprised when nothing changes.

You can buy the course.
You might even enjoy it.
But without space, without stillness, without honest self seeing,
it usually passes through without landing.

What does land is quieter.
Watching the gap between thoughts.
Sitting without an agenda.
Walking, moving, breathing with intention.
Noticing what is already here.

Gratitude helps.
Not as a slogan, but as orientation.
There is always something to be grateful for,
and nothing easier right now than forgetting that.

If you want more, that’s human.
Just make the more calmer.
Softer.
Closer to who you actually are.

The unglamorous truth is this;
what you’re looking for is not ahead of you.

It’s already here,
waiting for you to stop long enough to notice.

11/01/2026

New Year, Same You (Good.)

So, have you done it yet?
Started your new routine? Written your list?
Thrown out the wine, bought the yoga mat, said something vague about “alignment” on social media?

No judgment.
It’s a tradition by now.
The yearly self-upgrade. Version 2.0. A better you, with cleaner habits and no fear.

Maybe this time it works.
But if it doesn’t, that doesn’t mean you’re broken.
It just means you started from the wrong place.

We fail when we begin with fiction, not with truth.

You wouldn’t knit a jumper for a creature you’ve never seen.
So why build a life for a version of you that only exists in theory?

Start here: acknowledge what is.
Not what should be.
Not what you wish you were.
Just what you are.

Then add gratitude. Quietly. No one has to see it.
Not as decoration, as perspective.

Then step one:
Just turn up.
Don’t optimise it. Don’t overthink it.
Whatever your plan is, just show up to the thing.

If it’s writing, open the document.
If it’s fitness, just go to the gym.
Loiter around with a water bottle in your hand and a sweat face.
No one needs to know it came from tying your shoelaces.

Play the system that’s designed to play you.
Even if you do absolutely nothing while you’re there, turn up again tomorrow.

This, my friend, is the path of a warrior.
The path of least resistance.

That’s where it starts. Not with intensity. With consistency.
Not because it looks good, or feels profound.
Because repetition creates reality.

You don’t need to fly.
You don’t even need to move fast.

You just need to stop running away from yourself.

Grow feathers first.

Every now and then, create a space just for yourself.
One without noise or performance.
Sit alone. In silence. Undisturbed.

And when you do, invite your fears to sit by the fire with you.
Not to talk. Not to fix.
Just offer them a hug.
Say it, “I give you my love, come to me.”
And be amazed at what happens next.

Problems used to be solutions.
They protected you.
They kept you small so you could stay safe.

But the world changed.
And now, you are the new solution. Realise this and you are free.

And always - be true to yourself - this is the most radical thing you can do ✊

21/12/2025

If I could leave only one message, it would be this.

Your life is not a mistake.
Your struggle is not proof of failure.
It is proof that you are alive in a world that asks much
and explains little.

Most of what hurts in you was formed before you had language for it.
Old patterns, old fears, old agreements
still echoing through a body that is trying to protect you.
There is nothing wrong with you.
You adapted.
You survived.
Now you are allowed to outgrow what once kept you safe.

Every person carries two selves.
The one shaped by the past
and the one waiting quietly beneath it.
Call it soul, call it atman, call it the observer,
call it the one who never leaves even when you do.
It is older than your wounds and softer than your fear
and it waits for your attention like a child left in the dark
hoping someone will finally strike a match.

You do not heal by force.
You heal by noticing.
You heal by meeting yourself without turning away.
One breath at a time.
One honest moment at a time.
One small act of courage when everything in you wants to retreat.

Let yourself be human.
Let yourself be flawed, tired, messy, magnificent.
Let yourself be held by your own awareness
the way a parent would hold a trembling child
without judgement
without hurry.

The world will push you toward noise, comparison, distraction.
Return to yourself anyway.
Return to the body that never lied to you.
Return to the breath that has carried every version of you.
Return to the quiet place inside that cannot be damaged,
only forgotten.

And remember this.
You are not here to be perfect.
You are here to wake up.
Slowly.
Honestly.
Without shame.

If you forget everything else, then take this:
you are enough to begin
and beginning is everything.

Sit by the fire.
Come home to yourself.
We walk from here together

Anima et Ignis. Fiat lux in anima tua.