Loving Kindness Practice at Cotton’s Farmhouse

Caroline Scattergood is a Bereavement and Spiritual Counsellor offering heart to hearts in a sacred space. Living in demanding times, the study of loving kindness meditation and practice for self and others is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself and the World.

The Tibetan Buddhist practice of mindfulness is a great stabilizer and helps us to face our fears and depression with a confident peace.

Spiritual practice is not just sitting in silence, it can be brought into our every day activities…such as Eating, Cooking, Cleaning and Gardening. All it takes is for us to focus our mind in this present moment, bring our scattered thoughts home and….. “BE HERE NOW!”

This is a powerful way to be totally present

Sit, Smile, Breath and begin with thinking….

Loving kindness for ourselves

Loving kindness for our loved ones

Loving kindness for our friends

Loving kindness for people that hurt us

Loving kindness for all sentient beings

Including the animals, insects and even

the slugs and snails that may devour our

beautiful plants.

This can then extend out to the World with the Mantra….

“How may I serve with the heart and mind of God…Buddha…and the Angels?”

I have been asked why we need spiritual practice. We may feel there is no hurry to study – plenty of time in the future.

THAT’S NOT SO….

Think of the farmer who starts to sow his seeds in the Spring –

He cannot postpone his task until the Winter can he?

The same is true of our spiritual seeds….our study.

Of course we will fall flat on our faces again and again (I have.) We will still continue to feel inadequate and suffering will come again and again…But we can use these experiences to wake up and connect with the suffering of all other beings.

We only have to remember the Tibetan people who have lost everything. Their Country, their lineage and they are still suffering greatly. Yet the light of their heart and souls shines out for others. They are my inspiration to keep going.

The Dalai Lama says

“Love and Compassion are necessities not luxuries…

…Without them humanity cannot survive.”

Compassion for me is suffering with another, to such a degree that you

forget yourself and your own safety and do what is needed to HELP!...

As if the other’s pain was yours.

My own personal example of loving kindness and compassion was my grandmother who adopted me from a baby but died when I was sixteen years old. Her legacy to me was…

“Never Give Up and Expect a Miracle.”

Her words and how she bore the pain kept me going when my mind

was lost in dark despair and depression

This is her true story, dedicated to Elizabeth Mary Scattergood.

Thought Never Dies

When I had reached the age that my beloved grandmother was when she died, 62, I felt a flutter of fear as I wondered what will happen to my possessions when the veil lifts and I pass over. A thought I am sure we all share but….. Have you ever thought what will happen to departed loved ones’ memories that perhaps only you remember and hold in your heart.

This came to me as I visited an Old People’s home; Edna aged 99 told me of her only daughter’s death at the tender age of two. Edna was the only person left carrying that child’s memory. As I left her I felt that the memory had passed on to me, as her Mother would soon pass on. Then I thought ‘WOW!!’ What will happen to my mind of treasured memories?

 My Grandmother who adopted me at birth, died when I was just sixteen. She had left me with many of her memories. As a child I used to sit in front of the coal fire, listening to Radio Luxembourg and playing dominoes, the room dominated by portraits of her departed children, and I always felt a sense of loss and yearning in the room for their childhood days.

There was “Lily” with the face of an angel surrounded by brown curls. She died aged eleven of TB. Next to her was cheeky faced Harry who drowned in the canal aged five. There was Fred who reached twenty, only to lose his life in the Second World War, and his photo sits behind me now as I write these words.

Finally, young Ted, fostered and loved then shot down by an enemy plane just as I was born. As an only grandchild, I now see the anxiety I caused when I stayed out late during my adolescence. I did not realise it at the time. When I was just fourteen, a neighbour’s child, four-year-old Johnny, who I looked after, was killed in a tragic accident. I still hold the memory of him in his white coffin so serene. It has never been lost in the turmoil of growing up.

For sixty-six years, I have carried these memories and, felt their presence around me. Proof that the soul’s energy never dies and, we are all here to live our life as a bridge to mortality. When it is time to meet the souls I never met on earth, I am sure they will be my guides to heaven. I have yet to solve the dilemma of who will carry on my memories of Nanny’s children.

Maybe some of you who read this and, are younger than me, will remember these words and find a small place in your heart for Lily, Harry, Fred, Ted, Johnny and even ME!!!

And Edna…who has now passed over and her two-year-old daughter, Isabel, united after a century. God Bless them all

But in the words of The Buddha….

Don’t Forget Yourself

You can search throughout the entire universe

for someone who is more deserving

o f your love and affection than

you are yourself and that person is not

to be found anywhere. You yourself, as

much as anybody in the entire universe,

deserve your love and affection.

God Bless You.

For more information, please do get in touch

Contact: Caroline Scattergood – Mobile: 07979 235894

Email: admin@cottonsfarmhouse.org