I remember asking my mentor, "is there a God?"

He replied: “That’s a two part answer, Franky. Part one, yes there is and part two, it’s not you.”

What an amazing answer. He went on to tell me that the closest that I would get to God was the person next to me.

That’s one that I had to chew on for a while and now I know that it’s true.

I can see when I look around me at others that I am being continually taught how to grow up.

In Zen, we say that a good man is a bad man’s teacher and a bad man is a good man’s teacher.

The big question is, am I willing to learn? My dad used to say that he believed some people die at 18 and are buried at 85 and of course what he meant was that we die when we stop learning.

God grant me the serenity to accept the person that I cannot change, the courage to change the person that I can and the wisdom to know that it’s me.

Everyday is a school day, and if we take time to give ourselves permission to shift from doing to being we’ll learn a lot about ourselves through others. Remember, if you spot it you’ve got it.

The practice of mindfulness includes mindfulness of thought. Thoughts are like waves; they rise and fall, ebb and flow. If you dive deep, you will find calmness and in that calmness we come to realise that we are all one. We are the ocean.

Let’s try a mindfulness exercise, sit on a comfortable seat, in a dignified, upright posture. Take a moment to settle into your body. Notice what’s happening now; where your attention is right now, without judging or analysing.

Now give yourself permission to shift from doing to being. Bring your attention like the beam of a torch to your breath and allow your breath to take centre stage. Notice how you breath. There is no right way, no wrong way. Notice the quality of your breath, no effort, no judgment. Like a wave rolling onto the shore and returning to the ocean, sense the ebb and flow of your breath.

Allow your attention to rest on your breath and if your mind wanders, gently with kindness return to your breath.

Do this exercise for a few minutes each day and you will connect with that ocean of human kindness. 

There is a version of the serenity prayer that goes like this:

God grant me the serenity to accept the person that I cannot change, the courage to change the person that I can and the wisdom to know that it’s me.

As we go about our day let’s listen to each other in a non judgmental way. Let’s step out of ourselves and perform a random act of kindness, without wishing for anything in return. Research by Stanford University in California into kindness and compassion shows us that without knowing we benefit from such actions.

We all know what kindness is; we all know what good acts of kindness are. So let’s begin to grow together in kindness, human-kindness.

Let’s discover fire again as if for the first time.