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The Tea Meditation

I am happy to tell you my first TEDx talk has been published on YouTube. It’s called the Tea Meditation and it’s about experiencing everyday abundance and unreasonable happiness. I gave my talk at Findhorn, Scotland, in the Universal Hall, which is a truly inspiring place to speak at. My wife Hollie, my children Bo and Christopher, were in the audience, along with lots of friends from the Findhorn community. My son Christopher, who is six years old, was so impressed with what his dad was saying, his front tooth fell out during the talk!

 

The inspiration for my TEDx talk came from something that happened during a 90-minute keynote talk I gave at an I CAN DO IT! Hay House event in San Diego 2010. During the talk, I spontaneously went into a rap (a rant, some say) on the infinite number of choices of tea that now exist on our planet and that despite the dramatic increase in herbal teas, medicinal teas, spiritual teas, flower teas, environmentally friendly teas, and ergonomically designed teabags, our levels of happiness have not increased.

My rap became known as “The Tea Sketch.” Shortly afterwards, I began to receive requests to give keynote talks with the specific request to include “The Tea Sketch.” I also received e-mails from people who’d listened to The Tea Sketch on my Follow Your JOY audio talk. I remember receiving an e-mail from a woman in Finland who told me she had to stop driving because she was laughing uncontrollably. By the way, Follow Your JOY is available as a free download at my website when you sign up for my newsletter.

Static Happiness
I begin my Tea Meditation by pointing out that more and more of us are living now in the Land of More. Ours is a multiple-choice society in which we experience more freedoms, more civil rights, more democracy, more spending power, more shopping outlets, more malls, more TV channels, and more choices of tea! We also have more expectations than ever before. More of us want an above average life. And more of us are feeling less satisfied. Happiness research shows that our happiness levels have remained mostly static in the last 50 years.
The Wanting Self
Rumi, the Sufi poet, referred to the ego as “the wanting self.” In the multiple-choice society, the emphasis is on having rather than being. If you live in a modern urban dwelling, you are exposed to an average of 3,000 advertisements each day. We are targeted as “consumers” rather than as “souls”. We become so identified with “wanting”, “having” and “getting” that we forget about our spiritual inheritance and natural abundance. In The Tea Meditation, I encourage you to reflect on this question: what is it like to be me when I don’t want anything? No chasing. No consuming. No getting. Pure Being – feeling the inherent richness of your being.

The Real More
Living in the Land of More, an important question we need to ask ourselves is what do I want? Why? Because when you know what you really want, you stop wanting more of everything else. The next time you sit down with a cup of tea, take a moment to meditate on “the real more” that you really, really want. Shift your focus from “things” to something greater. For example, contemplate these three other types of more:

One way I could be even
more authentic in my life right now is . . .

One way I could be even
more present in my life right now is. . .

One way I could let myself feel even
more loved in my relationships is . . .

When we lose touch with our heart, when we forget we are a soul, we feel like something is missing, and that’s when we start chasing “more.” Whenever you think something is missing in your life, maybe it is “more” of the real you. I hope you enjoy The Tea Meditation. Please do share the link with your friends. The more the better!!

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