Mark Kahn

There are worldwide, 37 million people in slavery. More than at any time in history.

The rest of us think we are free to live the life we want.

Think again.

We live enslaved, by our a conditioned minds. [Read more…] about Are You Living In Slavery?

It’s Wednesday morning and I’m bouncing joyfully along the sleek tiled floors of the Mall of Africa on my way to having a haircut.

I walk past a shop that smells absolutely delectable.

It’s called Cinnabon.

You might know that I have this chronic fatigue thing and I can’t eat wheat and sugar and a gazillion other things, so beautiful, warm cinnamon buns – or whatever else they sell, I didn’t look – as delightful as they might seem, are the worst thing in the world for me.

Short-term, I want the pleasure of eating them, long-term they are a train smash.

I’m sure that you know the story well.

You want something now but the cost of having it lurks in the recesses of your troubled mind.

It is perhaps one of the greatest challenges we all face as human beings.

Managing our addiction to pleasure. [Read more…] about Escaping The Pleasure Trap.

I had one of the most spectacular moments ever in a therapy session last week.

I’m working with a mother and her 18-year-old daughter.

They have communication problems. The mother really cares about her daughter but she is controlling and wants to rescue her from all of the problems the daughter has in her life, particularly with men – not exactly a rare event!

The daughter is very sensitive and feels the mother’s anger and need to control her, which threatens the daughter and she withdraws.

This has been happening for many years. [Read more…] about How To Stop Being A Rescuer.

I’m sitting down at my desk on a Sunday morning to write this blog. The room is bright with sunlight, I feel at home in this beautiful space.

There is a picture of myself on the desk.

I am four years old.

I’m bright and awake and happy.

There are certificates on the wall in front of me, all of my credentials – whatever that means – and pictures of Mozambique, of Cathedral Peak in the Drakensberg and a very small mountain called Rhenosterkop, which I used to look at from my home north of Johannesburg, many years ago.

I’m thinking about what I should write for my next blog. I’ve written dozens of them in the last 18 months and I know that they just come to me unannounced, spontaneously, out of nowhere…or perhaps from Pure Consciousness.

They come as a gift to me. Largely speaking I don’t have to work out what I’m going to say. More and more I sense that there isn’t a particular ‘me’ that is doing this, which is why they are just a gift to me and hopefully, to you.

Yet subtly beneath this trusting and knowing that what I want to talk about will come of its own accord there is, every so often an anxiety. Much softer and more subtle than in the past, but there nevertheless, lurking and wanting to pounce and dilute the true magic of this creative energy that comes through me.  [Read more…] about The Right Way To Live.

Opening into the day,

Playing at life

A smile releasing…being

Lightness dancing into the world.

 

I’ve been fascinated for decades with our cultures inability to dialogue issues of suicide and death and indeed wrote a blog about the former a couple of months ago.

Mathew O’Reilly is an emergency medical technologist. He gives this extraordinary TED talk where he describes how for years he protected critically injured people that he was assisting at the roadside, from hearing the news that they were going to die.

He did this because he felt he was being helpful to them. He believed that if he told them the truth, that they were about to die, they would die in terror and fear. Then one day when a patient asked him if he was going to die, Matthew said, “Yes.”

He was stunned by the fact that instead of the person going into shock and anxiety – which I believe is created by our society’s fear of death – they went into a state of inner peace and acceptance.

“From that moment forward” he says, “I decided it was not my place to comfort the dying with my lies.” [Read more…] about Living And Dying Without Regret.