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Anima et Ignis, Reading (2026)

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.

07/12/2025

Most of us are harder on ourselves than life ever was.
We push through days, override our limits, hide our fears and call it normal.
But strength is not in pretending.
Strength begins the moment you admit what every human quietly knows:
something in me needs my attention.
Not judgement. Just attention.

There is a part of us we tend to overlook; not because it is hidden,
but because it is honest and raw.
The thoughts we whisper when nobody is watching.
The patterns we repeat until they feel carved into fate.

Here is what sits beneath all the theories.
Whatever we practise in the dark becomes who we are in the light.
Neurons that fire together wire together, yes,
but the point is not the science.
The point is ownership.
We are the ones shaping the pathways we walk.

Most of our worst habits were once survival.
In therapy we say that problems used to be solutions.
An old Slavic idiom says that habit is an iron shirt.
Once it is on, good luck taking it off.
Those old agreements made by younger versions of us
keep running the script long after the danger passed
and the world around us changed.
There is no shame in this. It is simply human.
Noticing it means you are already outgrowing the old code.
Your body is asking for your attention.
Give it freely, even for a few minutes a day.

Here is the good news.
The mind is loyal to repetition.
Give it a new instruction and it follows.
Shift one small response and the whole pattern begins to move with it.

Fear spirals when we leave it untouched.
It softens the moment you observe it.
Not by fighting, but by saying:
I see you. I know you are hurting. Not me, not today.
I am here for you. Stay with me.
Let me hold you for a moment, and watch the fear soften in the presence of love.

So start small.
One breath you control.
One thought you stop feeding.
One quiet act that says:
I have no obligation to carry this old story.
It belonged to who I was, not who I am.

It all begins with one honest moment of attention.
That is how real change starts.
Quietly, steadily, without performance.
This is stoic love in motion; the kind that heals rather than hides.

27/11/2025

You are here for a brief moment,
yet the light in you is older than the sun

20/11/2025

Every scar is an unfinished sentence; a comma between who you were and who you are becoming.

We break, heal, rebuild, and call it progress.
The mystics of old whispered per crucem, lux; through the cross, light. Alchemists called it calcinatio, the burning that reveals what is pure. Writers like Dostoyevsky saw beauty inside suffering. Philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard said that suffering is the school of the soul, the place where a person learns who they truly are.

So if you are tired, good. It means you are in motion.
If you feel uncertain, even better; awareness often begins where confidence ends.

Keep walking through the noise, through the ache, through the strange quiet that follows.
You are not falling apart. You are being tempered.

And here is the hidden irony that every old soul eventually learns; the obstacle is never just an obstacle. It is the whetstone. It sharpens you as you move through it.

Anima et Ignis. The soul and the fire.

02/11/2025

Welcome to Anima et Ignis

There’s more to self-care than scented candles and borrowed quotes.
It isn’t found in mantras or quick fixes, but in the quiet work of showing up for yourself.
Discipline is a form of kindness; honesty, the highest form of self-respect.

I’ve worked with systems and I’ve worked with minds. Engineering taught me structure; psychology taught me depth. Somewhere between the two, I learned that the real work is always within.

Hypnotherapy taught me something practical — that small, deliberate shifts in behaviour can reshape the mind. Whether it’s your morning routine, a workout, or a school project, the subconscious can be trained to work for you, not against you. That’s the warrior’s approach — the path of least resistance.

My aim is to share my journey with honesty and prudence; to offer lessons learned, insights tested, and to invite genuine connection along the way.

Most of us forgot how to tune into the body. We got lost in translation — between what we think and what we truly feel. Here, we learn that the words we whisper in our minds shape the physical world more than we realise.

Buddha warned: avoid idle thoughts. I say — make them useful. Give them direction. Train them to serve your growth. As Émile Coué put it: “Every day, in every way, I’m getting better and better.”
If you can’t silence a thought, give it a job to do.

We realign here. We ground the work in the body — the ancient teacher so often treated as a machine. Trauma lives there, yes, but so does wisdom. Together, we’ll tap into those forgotten wells of knowing.

So tune in. Sit by the fire. Pass the gifts from left to right.
Share your warmth, your stories, your stillness.
We remember who we are together.

And last but not least - thanks for stopping by.

Rad May

25/10/2025

“Truth is a pathless land. You cannot approach it by any path, by any religion, by any sect.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti was once raised to be the new world teacher. The Theosophical Society built a movement around him, convinced he would lead humanity into enlightenment. And then, standing before thousands, he dissolved it all. Refused the crown. Walked away.

He said no one can give you the truth. A true teacher points, then disappears.

The irony is that even the pathless land has stepping stones. One of them is Atmavichara - self-inquiry, the art of using duality to dissolve itself.

See the distinction between the thought and the one observing the thought. This is the first spark of awareness, the witness noticing itself. When you see it, do not name it. Do not label it. Simply stay with it. Become it.

This observer is you. It was you all along. This is what teachers mean by unlearning.

It is what Jesus pointed to when he said, “Unless you become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” To see as a child is to see without prejudice, with humility and grace. To return to the beginning before the mind divided the world into this and that.

In our longing to be closer to the divine, we personified it. We called it God, the Universe, Cosmic Consciousness. We wanted to touch it, so we made it in our image. Yet with every description, we stepped one word further away from the truth into illusion we created in order to understand on the intellectual level. It’s the cost we pay for logic and reason. It’s the great philosophical schism that is here to unite us all.

For the truth cannot be spoken. It can only be lived - through awareness.

And remember this: you do not owe your thoughts to be completed.
Next time they disturb your peace, draw them back with your next inhale and think quietly, come back where you came from - I owe you nothing.
Then ask again, who is the one realising this, who is the one observing?

Each time you do, the illusion thins - until only truth remains, the one that has all forms, and forms all. Thank you, Jiddu, for being true to yourself, for not being swayed by fame and power like some others eg o(sh)o 🤷🏼 love and light

22/10/2025

What is your archetype?

When I first read Terrence Watt’s Warriors, Settlers & Nomads, it reminded me of something ancient; the truth that every system, from modern psychology to Vedic philosophy, builds its own language to describe the same mystery. Watts used three archetypes. Jung used many. The mystics spoke of paths, the alchemists of elements, the theologians of virtues. Different shapes, same core.

All schools of thought begin and end in the same place; the human heart and the restless mind that longs to understand itself.

The more I study, the clearer it becomes; none of these frameworks are about labelling. They are about remembering. About learning to see your strengths, your blind spots, and the quiet truth that runs underneath both.

Every seeker, whether spiritual or psychological, eventually finds themselves drawn toward one of five archetypal streams:

The Mystic — the path of surrender and silence. Truth is not reasoned but revealed. They dissolve the self through stillness.

The Philosopher — the path of reason and reflection. Truth is questioned into clarity. They build understanding one thought at a time.

The Magician — the path of transformation and will. Truth is tested in fire. They embody what others only study.

The Healer — the path of empathy and service. Truth is shared through restoration. They mend others to become whole themselves.

The Warrior — the path of courage and confrontation. Truth is sharpened by struggle. They find peace by walking through conflict, not around it.

Each path speaks a different language, yet all translate to the same sentence; awareness is freedom.
How you get there depends on your nature.

So, know your nature. Find your stream. Do not follow blindly, but walk consciously. Read, study, pray, experiment — whatever brings you closer to stillness.

Because all teachings, when stripped to their essence, point to one thing - what you are searching for is already looking through your eyes.

Whatever you do, make it unique to your journey. Do not compromise on your values, but always seek compromise with those you love and care about

19/10/2025

THE PATH INWARD: Ancient Science of Awakening the Modern Mind

They say that before the universe was born, silence dreamed of knowing itself. From that stillness came movement; from movement came mind; and from mind came the search to return home. That search is what we call life.

The wise have always known that the meaning of life is self realisation. The path does not lead upward but inward. It takes us through worlds unseen; through the libraries of the ancients where the truth of consciousness was inscribed long before modern science learned to measure thought.

Vedic teaching is not a belief system; it is a precise map of awareness. What psychotherapy and neuroscience now begin to glimpse, these texts explored with breathtaking clarity thousands of years ago. They show us how to cross the storms of our modern age; how to remember the peace that hides behind noise; the stillness that breathes beneath our endless pursuit of more.

There is nothing new to discover; only to remember. The truth waits quietly behind the mind’s curtain, whispering that less is more; that peace lives in stillness; that silence is not absence but alive presence.

Words are symbols; they are torches that guide us through the fog. Two lights illuminate the way; the teacher who appears outside; and the inner guide who awakens within. Both point to the same destination.

Let us walk the ancient path step by step.

⸻

1. Aarambha; the beginning
Every true journey begins with unease; the sense that something is missing even in comfort. This restlessness is sacred; it is the soul remembering itself. Here the seeker learns sincerity, the art of seeing without illusion. Viveka, discernment, and vairagya, dispassion, take root.
Neuroscience hint; the brain’s reward system begins to shift from pleasure seeking to meaning seeking; the default mode network starts to quiet; curiosity awakens in its place.

⸻

2. Dhyana; the still mind
With practice the mind learns to rest. Through pratyahara and dharana, attention gathers like light through a lens until it holds steady. The waves of thought no longer disturb the depth of the water.
Neuroscience hint; activity in self referential regions drops; connectivity between emotional and attentional networks strengthens; awareness becomes stable and clear.

⸻

3. Savikalpa Samadhi; union with form
When meditation ripens, the boundary between observer and observed thins. The seeker merges with the chosen object of contemplation; bliss arises; time fades. Yet a faint sense of I remains.
Neuroscience hint; high gamma synchrony links sensory, emotional, and cognitive regions; perception becomes unified; the brain functions as one luminous field.

⸻

4. Nirvikalpa Samadhi; union beyond form
Here all distinctions dissolve. No subject; no object; only awareness aware of itself. This is the silence beyond silence.
Neuroscience hint; global quieting of self based processing; minimal energy use; sustained coherence; awareness persists though content disappears.

⸻

5. Sahaja Samadhi; the natural state
When the silence becomes effortless, life resumes but without clinging. Action flows; thought moves; yet the center remains still. This is freedom in motion.
Neuroscience hint; the quiet mind becomes the baseline; low default mode activity even in daily life; balanced nervous system; increased resilience and compassion.

⸻

6. Turiya and Turiyatita; beyond all states
Beyond waking, dreaming, and deep sleep lies Turiya; the silent witness of every experience. Beyond even that lies Turiyatita; the pure consciousness that contains and transcends all states. Here there is no separation between spirit and matter; the dance and the dancer are one.
Neuroscience hint; coexistence of deep rest and sharp alertness; overlapping alpha, theta, and gamma rhythms; stable awareness across all modes of being.

⸻

The path begins with discipline and ends with grace. It begins with seeking and ends with seeing. Nothing is gained; only revealed. What remains is what has always been; still; luminous; infinite.

The key to remember; struggle belongs to life as water belongs to fish. Learn to breathe through the struggle rather than holding your breath until it gets easier.

Ramay

18/10/2025

💬 My teacher used to say:
Therapy is like taking your car to the garage.

Funny how nobody calls you crazy for servicing your car,
yet many still think you must be if you service your mind. 🪞🧠🔧

⚙️ Maintenance isn’t madness. It’s wisdom. For cars it’s mandatory yet so few regularly service their mind.
🚨 Check in before you break down. 💭

12/10/2025

Only a madman does the same thing over and over, expecting a different result.

Fail, learn, adjust. That’s it.
Move when you can, rest when you must, but never drift off course.
Direction is paramount; pace is arbitrary.

You are the Ship of Theseus. Rebuild yourself according to your goal, not your circumstances.

Aye, captain. You got this!

Anima et Ignis

01/02/2026

11/01/2026

21/12/2025

07/12/2025

27/11/2025

20/11/2025

02/11/2025

25/10/2025

22/10/2025

19/10/2025

18/10/2025

12/10/2025

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Monday	5:30pm - 10pm
Tuesday	5:30pm - 10pm
Wednesday	5:30pm - 10pm
Thursday	5:30pm - 10pm
Friday	5:30pm - 10pm
Saturday	9am - 6pm
Sunday	9am - 6pm