I’m an academic neuropsychiatrist with deep interest in brain and mind. I only read 2 of your books, Buddha and Muhammad. What impressed me the most is your thorough understanding of the person in these figures. For me you seem to know that what is sacred is every moment we spend existing and not in what is “out there”. I don’t believe in god/gods or in religion and I feel that humans are miserable because they developed “consciousness”, an extension of the frontal lobe function that allowed awareness of time, what has passed and what to come, which created this eternal anxiety about life and death and all the complexity that followed. I think that the Buddha figured it out and gave us the only way to go through it with the least suffering. But when we die, we blend back to the energy in this universe, our soul is the set of experiences that we had and left traces behind, the noise of the working machine of our body and the products of that machine that is left behind. How far am I from the “Truth”!

I have been doing pranayama breathing which leads up to meditation.  However, I am still not sure if I am going deep enough.  How do I know if the mediation I am doing is going more deeper?  I am meditating at the Chakras especially on the heart centre which pulsates only on some occasions.  I need to find out how to go more deeper.  Would you please be able to advise?

I know everything is always as it should be and perfect in every moment when we are aware etc. I help many people to discover their hearts desire and ‘dharma’ so to speak but yet for myself i am on a secret self-destructive path that i just can’t seem to stop and its silly because i know my soul chose to come here but it surely wasn’t to help others while slowly killing myself in secret with eating problems etc! I have had bulimic behaviour for past 10 yrs. and it’s like a shield for me when it all gets too much i just don’t know how to stop. I know my heart won’t last much longer physically if i keep it up but the weird part is a part of me doesn’t care it’s like i want to go back to wherever i came from. I used to sing, dance, act, travel, and had all this dreams to make inspirational movies, books, music and run retreats and have a huge vegetarian restaurant world music cafe filled with arts, creativity etc! but now i feel nothing. i don’t see anything for me to visualise or do. I don’t feel an inner nudge or pull in any direction and its weird for me as i have always listened closely to my intuition but now i feel nothing. I just don’t want to be here. its like I’ve given up. I just don’t know what to do as there is so many things i could do but don’t know where to start and don’t know how to make myself do it. Also do you think it’s necessary to leave the environment/town that brings up a lot of past hurt and memories so that maybe will help? To start again and be free? Even though i know and understand the saying ‘wherever you go there you are!’ I just mean is it easier if you are physically not in the environment that triggers past memories etc?

I’ve been meditating for about 5 years. At the beginning of my meditation sessions I experience a pain in my sinus area, similar to the pain experienced when water is breathed in through the nose by accident. This pain was more intense for the first few years of meditating but has become almost non-existent now, except for the occasions I have let things get in the way and have not meditated for a few days or so. Now the feeling is not so much a pain as just sort of an opening up or a flow of energy through that area. Do you have any insight/opinions on what this could be?

My husband’s 35 year old son is a heroine addict. Says he has been clean for 5 years, but many problems have developed from this addiction such as he has been unemployed for the past 7 years, and has been asking and getting money from his father.  His father is an enabler and cannot say no to him no matter what he asks.  How do I stay in this relationship and not go insane?  We have been married for 14 years.