As the leaves turn and the pace of life shifts, autumn is the perfect season to nurture your creative self. Whether you’re a writer, artist, academic, or thinker, this fall I’m offering a range of events designed to support your practice, spark fresh ideas, and help you stay focused and inspired.
🎨 Weekly Creative Flow Sessions – Free Dedicated time to write, draw, or work on your projects alongside other creatives. No pressure, just presence, energy, and support. Quiet, structured sessions to help you start, focus, and finish your creative work in good company. RSVP here
📖 12-Week Artist’s Way Circle Dive deep with Julia Cameron’s classic book, The Artist’s Way, bringing the work to life in community with practical exercises and reflections to reclaim your creative voice. Weekly 90-minute circles for reflection, sharing, and growth. Join here
🧘 Mindfulness for Creatives – Evening Workshop Learn mindfulness techniques specifically for creatives and academics. Cultivate focus, flow, and inspiration in your daily practice in this 2.5-hour workshop filled with science-backed insights and practical exercises and tools. Reserve your spot here
Autumn is a season of new beginnings and renewed energy. Whether you’re seeking free flow time, structured accountability, or a transformative creative journey, there’s a place for you in these sessions. I’d love to see you there—let’s make this autumn a season of inspiration, focus, and creative growth.
If you were to glance at the cover of A Course in Miracles, you might find it a little intimidating.
Gold-embossed title. No back cover blurb. Dense text. Three volumes.
It doesn’t exactly scream “approachable.”
Add to that a name like A Course in Miracles—and it’s understandable why many people assume it’s either ultra-religious, uncomfortably mystical, or some obscure New Age self-help project from the 1970s.
But here’s the truth, and it might surprise you: The Course is none of those things.
It’s not a religion. It’s not a belief system. And it’s not trying to sell you a new worldview.
At its heart, A Course in Miracles is a method of mental and emotional clarity. A structured way of exploring your perceptions, undoing habitual fear-based thinking, and reclaiming the peace that’s already available beneath the noise of the mind.
So What Is It, Then?
Let’s step back a moment.
The Course was written in the late 1960s and early 70s by Helen Schucman, a clinical psychologist at Columbia University. She described it as a form of inner dictation—words that came to her during a time of personal and professional strain, in response to a growing desire to find “a better way” of relating to the world.
Regardless of how we frame its origin, the Course is remarkable in one key respect: it speaks in symbolic, poetic language, but offers psychologically rigorous insights into how perception works—and how often we are the source of our own suffering without realising it.
It doesn’t ask you to believe in anything. Not in the traditional sense. In fact, one of its opening lines is:
“This is a course in miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary.”
It’s not referring to belief or theology. It’s referring to a kind of deep inner retraining—a shift in how you meet your thoughts, how you interpret experience, and how you move through relationships, conflict, and uncertainty.
A Practice of Undoing, Not Adding More
Most spiritual systems (and most self-help programs) are about adding more.
More positive habits. More affirmations. More rituals. More goals. More ideas.
The Course is different. It’s not additive—it’s subtractive.
It says, essentially: you don’t need to become better, you need to remember who you already are beneath fear. And the way to remember is by undoing the thoughts that block your natural capacity for peace.
This includes thoughts like:
“I need to control this situation to be okay.”
“If I don’t prove my worth, I’ll be rejected.”
“Other people’s approval determines my value.”
“I can’t be happy until X happens.”
Rather than challenging those thoughts intellectually, the Course invites you to bring them into awareness and notice what they cost you. Not in moral terms, but in energy, clarity, and presence.
And then it offers an alternative—a quieter, more honest perception. One that doesn’t come from striving, but from stillness.
So, No Dogma? Really?
There’s a common misunderstanding that A Course in Miracles is part of a larger religious or spiritual institution. But it isn’t. There’s no church. No hierarchy. No initiations. y. And no penalties for disagreement.
The Course explicitly says:
“A universal theology is impossible, but a universal experience is not only possible but necessary.”
That experience, for the Course, is peace.
But not peace as a vague ideal. Peace as a felt experience of spaciousness. Of groundedness. Of being free from the constant effort to defend yourself against life.
Robert Holden, a longtime student and teacher of the Course, often describes it as “spiritual psychotherapy.” He calls it a practical, heartfelt path that clears away the false self—not by condemning it, but by recognising it was never needed in the first place.
What Happens in the Study Group?
This is why the Course is best approached with others.
Not because we need to believe the same thing—but because this kind of inner exploration thrives in gentle company. Somewhere between a book club, a reflection circle, and a slow-burn inner workout, our Sunday evening study group provides a regular space to unpack and embody the Course’s core ideas.
We meet weekly (Sundays 7.30–9.00 pm UK time) and work through the Text in small, digestible sections. There’s no pressure to speak, and no prior knowledge needed. The readings are thoughtfully paced to allow insight to land and ripple in your daily life.
Each session is rooted in quiet attention—not performance. You can reflect aloud, or simply listen and take in what resonates.
Over the course of 18 months, we’ll move through the entire Text—the foundation of the Course—together.
When you sign up, you’ll receive the full reading schedule so you always know what we’re covering.
A Language of Peace, Not Preaching
Because the Course uses words like “miracle” and sometimes borrows spiritual terms from Christian mysticism, some readers initially worry that it’s trying to impose a worldview. But the language is symbolic, not doctrinal.
If a word doesn’t resonate with you, you’re encouraged to reinterpret it in a way that does. The Course doesn’t ask for obedience—it asks for honesty. And it reminds us that truth doesn’t need to be defended; it simply needs to be experienced.
I often tell people: don’t let the language throw you. The Course isn’t asking you to believe in anything “supernatural.” It’s inviting you to recognise how many of your perceptions are distorted by fear—and how peace becomes available when those distortions dissolve.
It’s less “join us” and more “come and see.”
This Is a Practice of Clarity
And clarity, for many of us, is in short supply.
We’re overloaded with information, overwhelmed by choice, and often undernourished when it comes to stillness. What the Course offers is not a shortcut—but a framework. A rhythm. A return.
It’s not for everyone. But if you’re someone who’s felt that traditional paths don’t quite fit… or who’s looking for something deeper than the usual spiritual gloss… you may find in the Course a friend you didn’t know you were waiting for.
We live in a time when personal development is everywhere. Books, podcasts, apps, retreats—offering promises of clarity, balance, transformation. Yet for all the tools we now have at our fingertips, many of us still feel stuck in cycles of stress, comparison, anxiety, and low-level unease. We meditate, journal, affirm—but underneath, a quieter question lingers:
Why do I keep thinking in ways that don’t serve me?
A Course in Miracles doesn’t answer that question in the way most programs or teachings do. It doesn’t try to fix your life. It doesn’t teach you how to manifest your dream job, or how to wake up feeling inspired every morning. It doesn’t even really give advice.
Instead, it offers something far more radical: a training in how to undo fear at the level of thought. Not by fighting it. Not by spiritually bypassing it. But by recognising how much of what we call “reality” is coloured by unconscious habits of mind—and learning, very gently, to choose a different lens.
The Course tells us: “Nothing real can be threatened. Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.”
That sounds mystical, and it is. But it’s also incredibly practical. It points to a profound principle: most of what we spend our time defending, controlling, resisting, or avoiding… isn’t actually real. It’s based on thoughts we’ve inherited, stories we’ve absorbed, and fear patterns we mistake for wisdom.
And yet—there is another way of seeing. And we can learn it. That’s what A Course in Miracles invites us to do.
Not a Religion, But a Mindset Shift
For many people, the word “Course” suggests a study program, while “Miracles” sounds like something out of a spiritual fantasy novel. It’s no wonder people hesitate to pick it up. But behind the slightly intimidating title is something remarkably down-to-earth: a process.
The Course is made up of three parts:
A Text that lays out the underlying framework for how we perceive the world, and how we might begin to shift our perception.
A Workbook, offering a lesson for every day of the year, each designed to undo a particular block to awareness.
A brief Manual for Teachers, which clarifies how to embody and share the Course’s core principles.
What’s unique about the Course is that it doesn’t ask us to adopt new beliefs. It doesn’t claim to be the only way. In fact, it repeatedly says it’s just one path among many. But it is precise. And if you feel drawn to it, it works deeply.
The Course teaches that the world we see is shaped by the thoughts we think. But unlike most positive psychology, it doesn’t suggest we simply replace negative thoughts with nicer ones. Instead, it asks us to recognise the root of our misperception—fear, judgment, separation—and to bring those habits into awareness, where they can be gently released.
This is not about willpower. It’s not about becoming a better version of yourself. It’s about becoming aware of the part of your mind that thinks it has to struggle for worth, and learning how to soften its grip.
A Path Practised by Many (Even If You Don’t Know It)
You may have encountered the Course without realising it.
Marianne Williamson’s A Return to Love—a breakout spiritual classic in the 1990s—was drawn directly from her experience as a Course student. Oprah, who championed the book, has spoken about how the Course shaped her understanding of forgiveness and emotional responsibility. Gabrielle Bernstein built much of her early work around making Course ideas more accessible to a younger generation.
And yet for all this quiet influence, the Course remains relatively underground—a word-of-mouth path. That’s partly because it’s not easy to summarise. It’s not designed for social media snippets. It asks for attention, and offers clarity in return.
Why Study the Course in a Group?
Like many spiritual texts, A Course in Miracles is best read slowly, with space to reflect, question, and apply. It isn’t something you power through. In fact, many people return to it again and again over years—each time discovering something they didn’t see before.
That’s why I’ve created an18-month study group, meeting weekly on Sunday evenings from 7.30 to 9.00pm UK time.
We take the Text section by section—reading together, reflecting aloud or in silence, noticing how these teachings meet our real lives. There’s no pressure to contribute, no expectations of previous study. Just an invitation to explore what happens when we train the mind for peace rather than protection.
Once you register, you’ll receive the full reading schedule. You can join each week or come when you can. The rhythm is slow, sustainable, and designed to create space for integration rather than overwhelm.
Some people come with a long-standing interest in the Course. Others are completely new. Some are therapists, teachers, or coaches looking to deepen their personal practice. Others are simply seeking an anchor—something intelligent and transformative that doesn’t ask them to leave their critical thinking behind.
Miracles, Redefined
In the Course, a miracle isn’t a supernatural event. It’s a shift in perception—from fear to love, from control to trust, from attack to understanding. These are the quiet revolutions that can change a life from the inside out.
And they happen, not because we force them, but because we create the conditions for them to arise.
In a world that often feels fast, fragmented, and fraught with uncertainty, the Course offers something rare: a path of steady, unhurried insight—one that helps us see ourselves and others more clearly, and respond from a place of genuine freedom.
You’re Invited
If something in you feels curious, even if you’re unsure what to make of the Course, you’re warmly invited to join us. There’s nothing to prove. No need to sign up to a belief system. Just a willingness to explore what happens when we start training our minds not to panic, but to listen.
They arrive quietly or crash down like thunder. A diagnosis. A betrayal. An ending we didn’t choose. These ruptures don’t come with warnings or exit strategies. One moment we’re on the path we thought was ours—and the next, we’re somewhere else entirely. In the space left behind, there is pain. Sometimes profound, sometimes quiet. And there is uncertainty.
What now?
Our culture doesn’t always offer satisfying answers. Instead, it tends to give us two dominant narratives: either we bounce back, stronger and shinier than before—optimized by adversity—or we break. Disintegrate. And carry the trauma like a scar we learn to hide or over-intellectualize.
But what if there’s a third story?
A gentler, more soul-honest possibility.
What if suffering isn’t always a sign that something has gone wrong—but an invitation to deepen? Not in a performative, “turn your pain into power” kind of way. Not a heroic tale where you conquer your demons and emerge with a gleaming smile. I mean something quieter. Something alchemical. Something like… transmutation.
A way of sitting with what hurts, deeply and patiently, until something shifts.
This is what I want to explore today: a third way of meeting pain. One shaped by Stoic wisdom, modern psychology, and contemplative insight. A path that doesn’t bypass grief but lets it speak—and even guide us, if we’re willing to listen.
A Personal Threshold
Some years ago, I hit a threshold. It wasn’t a neat turning point or a poetic unraveling. It was chaotic, disorienting, and utterly real. Everything—externally and internally—began to fray. Plans fell apart. Identity fractured. No amount of productivity tools or project management could rescue me from what was happening.
I was forced inward.
And in that inward turning, I began to revisit old teachers. Old books. Old practices that once steadied me. The Stoics were among them—those austere, misunderstood philosophers from a couple thousand years ago who have, in recent years, made an odd comeback in the worlds of tech, business, and self-help. But unlike the modern caricature of Stoicism—cold logic, emotional detachment, a stiff upper lip—what I encountered was something else entirely.
Spiritual steadiness. Fierce gentleness. An unflinching honesty about pain.
Marcus Aurelius, who had long been a companion in my intellectual life, began speaking to me differently. More intimately. One line in particular lodged itself in my psyche:
“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”
At first, it sounded like something from a TED talk. But as I sat with it—really sat with it—I began to understand. What I most wanted to avoid might be what I most needed to face. The blockages weren’t detours from the path. They were the path.
The Alchemy of Suffering
To use the language of alchemy might feel out of place in a post-empirical world, but I think it has its uses—especially when we’re talking about transformation. The Stoics didn’t talk about “post-traumatic growth” in the way we do today, but their ideas revolve around the same principle: that adversity reveals character, and character reveals truth.
Not truth in a doctrinal or ideological sense. But truth in the soul-deep, meaning-making sense. The sense that something in us is trying to become more real.
When we go through something that breaks our ordinary world—be it loss, betrayal, burnout, illness—we’re often tempted to seek shortcuts. We look for ways to “get over it.” To return to baseline. But baseline no longer exists. The ground has shifted. The person we were before is not the person who must now move forward.
So what do we do?
This is where the idea of post-traumatic growth becomes relevant—not as a prescription, but as a possibility.
Post-Traumatic Growth: The Research
In the late 1990s, psychologists Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun began studying people who had undergone severe trauma—bereavement, serious illness, violent assault—and noticed a curious pattern. Many didn’t just survive their experiences. They grew. Not in every case, and not in a linear, upward fashion. But in a measurable, meaningful way.
They identified five dimensions of what they called post-traumatic growth:
Greater appreciation of life
Deeper relationships
New possibilities in life
Increased personal strength
Spiritual or existential development
These are not “silver linings” or cheap reframings. They are hard-won realignments. And crucially, growth does notnegate suffering. People who grow after trauma still carry pain. But that pain has become a doorway to something else—something that wouldn’t have emerged otherwise.
In other words, what stands in the way becomes the way.
Three Tools for Transmutation
Let’s look more closely at how one might practice this path—not as a tidy formula, but as an orientation toward life.
1. Stoic Framing
The Stoics teach us to distinguish between what is in our control and what is not. Illness, heartbreak, loss—these are often outside our sphere of influence. But how we meet them? That is where our freedom begins.
This isn’t about suppression. It’s about perspective. Seneca wrote, “A setback has often cleared the way for greater things.”
When we learn to frame suffering as material—not obstacle—it shifts our orientation. We move from resistance to participation. From avoidance to inquiry.
Ask yourself: What is this moment asking of me? What capacity is it calling forth?
2. Contemplative Practice
Stillness matters. When the world turns upside down, we need anchors. Breath. Awareness. A place to witness the storm without collapsing into it.
Whether it’s mindfulness, centering prayer, or simply sitting in silence each morning—contemplative practice builds the inner spaciousness needed for transmutation. It doesn’t erase pain. It makes us capable of holding it.
And over time, we start to feel something unexpected: a quiet intimacy with our own suffering. Not self-pity. Not indulgence. Just presence.
3. Inner Narrative Work
The stories we tell about our pain matter. Are we a victim of cruel randomness? A cautionary tale? Or are we a pilgrim—still walking, still learning, still becoming?
Psychologists have found that the ability to integrate trauma into a coherent narrative is one of the strongest predictors of healing. This doesn’t mean rushing to make meaning. It means allowing meaning to unfold, slowly and honestly.
Sometimes, the most powerful narrative isn’t one of triumph—but of tenderness. A story where you didn’t conquer the mountain, but you learned how to rest halfway up.
Gentle Awakening
I don’t believe in quick fixes. I don’t believe that every hardship hides a gift. And I don’t believe that pain makes us better people by default.
But I do believe—fiercely—in our capacity to meet life deeply. I believe that suffering, when approached with courage, patience, and honesty, can become a site of transformation. Not because pain is inherently good, but because we are inherently creative.
And so: if you’re in a season of rupture, if the story you were writing has been torn open, let me offer this as a small encouragement:
There is no shame in grief. There is no weakness in disorientation. And there is no rush.
What hurts may also be what heals.
And healing, in this deeper sense, is less about fixing and more about becoming. Becoming more truthful. More rooted. More available to the life that is still yours.
If you want to start putting these ideas into action, you can sign up for Integrative Meditation (Level 1). This course represents the culmination of years of learning, practice, and personal growth. Integrative Meditation is a comprehensive framework designed to enhance your mental and emotional well-being. It draws on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), positive psychology, neuroscience, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), journaling, and breathwork to support you in reducing stress, enhancing focus, building emotional resilience, and discovering your true self.
Do you need a teacher to learn how to meditate, or can you do it entirely yourself? The answer is a complex one.
When we begin thinking about meditation, we recognise that we’re not discussing some sort of endpoint or final destination. Meditation doesn’t have an ultimate goal we are striving toward. Instead, what we encounter through the development of a sustained meditation practice is the ability to connect more fully and regularly with our own inner teacher—our intuitive, present awareness.
Now, while we can reach that stage by ourselves by cultivating communication with our inner teacher, having a real-world teacher, whether through courses, face-to-face sessions, or even apps, can significantly accelerate the process. I’ll come back to that point in a moment, but first, let’s talk a bit more about the nature of the inner teacher that we cultivate through meditation.
Our inner teacher isn’t an external guru. It’s our own capacity to listen really deeply to ourselves. Meditation builds our self-awareness, clarity, and intuition. And here’s where a fascinating paradox emerges: even though meditation is self-directed, solitary, silent, and quiet, without structure, we can easily drift or plateau.
That’s where real-world teachers come in: helping prevent us from drifting or stagnating, and ultimately speeding up a process that we could, left to our own devices, still achieve just much more slowly.
When I talk about a “real-world teacher,” I mean many different things. It could be face-to-face meditation teachers at retreats, courses, group sessions at yoga studios, gyms, community centres, or church halls. It could also be free online courses, guided meditations, or structured programs you find online.
Ultimately, what we’re aiming for is self-discipline in our busy, tech-saturated lives: the discipline to maintain a daily meditation practice. That’s what’s key. Thousands of years ago, meditation practitioners didn’t have apps, YouTube videos, or timers to track how many minutes they’d meditated. They relied on real, face-to-face teachers in their communities.
Today, in a tech-driven society, I think what we’re moving toward is a hybrid approach—a blend of self-guided daily practice and teacher-led guidance.
However, if we only meditate alone, or only use the same app or the same recording every day, we won’t continue to deepen and develop more nuanced phases of our meditation.
That’s where live teachers come in:
Attending weekly or monthly meditation classes.
Working with a mindfulness-based coach online.
Going to your local yoga studio.
Participating in regular retreats.
Developing an in-person student–teacher relationship is what will truly accelerate our meditation journey. In the same way that just sitting alone at home won’t lead to rapid growth, attending only the occasional class or retreat isn’t enough either.
A hybrid approach—a daily, self-directed practice supported by regular real-world teaching—is what provides the richest environment for growth. This approach helps us better understand and navigate the many unique, subjective experiences that arise in meditation.
So in answer to the question: Do we need a teacher to meditate? Yes, we do. But the nature of a “teacher” in the 21st century looks very different from what it did thousands of years ago, and will often be supplemented by digital tools and must always be supplement by our own personal meditation practice.
Rather than resisting digital tools and apps, we can use them to support our daily practice. And rather than relying only on weekly classes or quarterly retreats, we can integrate those as vital touchstones for learning, sharing, and connecting with others. Let’s use everything we have to develop our own unique meditation journeys—because that’s what they truly are: individual, unfolding, and lifelong.
If you want to start putting these ideas into action, you can sign up for Integrative Meditation (Level 1). This course represents the culmination of years of learning, practice, and personal growth. Integrative Meditation is a comprehensive framework designed to enhance your mental and emotional well-being. It draws on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), positive psychology, neuroscience, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), journaling, and breathwork to support you in reducing stress, enhancing focus, building emotional resilience, and discovering your true self.
