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Book signing in Worthing Waitrose on 27 May

Many thanks to the people who bought a copy of Stairs For Breakfast yesterday. It was nice meeting you.

Some people who paid by card were charged £18 instead of £15. This was due to a new feature implemented by the card machine supplier that automatically added 20% VAT to the £15 I entered into the machine.

As my books are VAT exempt I will contact the supplier on Tuesday and ask (push) them to refund £3 all of you who have been charged £18. Please email me patrick@stairsforbreakfast.com if you one of these people and I’ll ensure you are reimbursed £3. My apologies for any inconvenience caused.

I would like to thank Karen Cahill at Waitrose for helping me set up the book signing. Much appreciated.

Would you like to experience less stress and more peace and joy every day?

Ultimately stress is caused when we are caught up in our mind and in thoughts.

Here’s a simple and fun game you can play anytime.

The game will help you to watch your thoughts, rather than being caught in them.

You can play this game on your own, with people you live with. Or with friends and family via Zoom or Skype

The game is simply to count the number of thoughts you have in 30 seconds.

  • Use your phone to set a 30 second timer.
  • Sit comfortably and close your eyes. Now for 30 seconds be very alert and gently and easily count how many thoughts you have.
  • If you have the same thought more than once, count it as a separate thought.

Have a at playing the game right now!

How many thoughts did you count? It was easy? Were there many thoughts or just a few? Don’t worry if you don’t find the game easy at first. I didn’t!

By being very alert and counting your thoughts, your focus and awareness is on watching for the next thought to come along. Your awareness isn’t on the contents of each thought.

I recommend playing the game 4 or 5 times until you become at ease with it. All you need to do is close your eyes and count your thoughts.
Laugh and have fun doing so!

Sometimes there are many thoughts, sometimes there are few. It depends on the state of the mind and the body at the time.

By regularly counting thoughts it will help you to become the watcher of your thoughts, rather than getting caught up in them!

It will help you to spend more time living in the present moment, rather than being in the mind.

Here’s a little secret. Thoughts are not real. Have you ever reached out and touched one of your thoughts? Point to where your thoughts are!

Babies live in the present moment. It’s our natural state of living. However from a young age we get conditioned to act and behave in certain ways. Hence we go from living in the present moment to living in the mind.

Practiced every day, counting your thoughts helps you to reconnect to the present moment – thus to experience less stress and more peace and joy.

Feel free to email me and let me know how you’re doing.

FREE introductory talk on Ascension Meditation

Come and enjoy a relaxing evening and find out about Ascension Meditation.

The Bright Path Ascension Meditation offers a direct experience of inner peace, joy and reduction of stress. Best of all it’s simple, effortless and mechanical. It can be used eyes closed for deep rest and healing, and eyes open for clarity and focus.

By ascending above the chatter and limitations of the mind, Ascension Meditation can release a lifetime habit of self-judgement and negativity.

It also offers:

~ Deeper Sleep
~ Improved Relationships
~ Better Health & Vitality
~ Clarity for Decision Making
~ A Sense of Well being

Imagine a life with less stress, free from limits and worry. Imagine a life of joy and freedom…

Garuda Steve Novak Ishaya and Patrick Samada Souiljaert are pleased to offer this free the introductory talk, on 19th February 19.30-21.30 at 110 Greenacres, Shoreham-by-Sea BN43 5XL

If you would like to learn Ascension Meditation we are teaching a First Sphere weekend course 22-24 February.

The cost for this First Sphere weekend (Friday 7-10pm and Saturday/Sunday 10am-5pm) is £360 for the weekend, which includes a 6 week follow up and lifetime support!

Repetitions of the First Sphere are FREE thereafter anywhere in the world!

For more details or to book a place, please follow the link:

https://www.thebrightpath.com/course/first-sphere-united-kingdom-shoreham-sea

Or contact Samada on samada@thebrightpath.com

Hope to see you there!

Ascension website:  www.thebrightpath.com

Thank you Maitreya (a good source of hilarity)

Here’s another extract from Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator

After meeting him at Guayrapa in 2015 we have stayed in touch via email and Skype.

There are certain people who really understand me and he is one of them. We have a strong bond and are like brothers. He has really helped and advised me over the last two and a half years.

Not only is he a great ascension teacher, I can rely on him if I have a problem and need advice.

When I went to Guayrapa last year Maitreya was there and got me food at mealtimes and did my weekly laundry for me. And he is going to be there to help me when I go back in September.

We like telling people stories about each other and I have a few about Maitreya!

This is an anecdote, from Guayrapa last year, that he likes telling even more than I do!

It wasn’t uncommon for Maitreya to get food for me first and then for him to go and sit at another table (with only room for six people per table). However on the day in question Maitreya sat with me twice.

At lunchtime we sat with four other people, one of whom was ‘Scott from Scotland’ (a golf instructor and one of my roommates). As the conversation was about golf it gave me a cue to tell my golf joke, which got a good laugh.

Then at dinnertime, Maitreya was sitting opposite me and we were at a table with three or four people, who had just arrived at the retreat. We hadn’t met them before and English wasn’t their first language.

After we had introduced ourselves and asked them where they were from, Maitreya (thinking it would make a good icebreaker) quietly said to me “Tell your golf joke, it’s really funny…!”

I thought ‘I’m so bored of it and I’m  eating’, so I replied “No, I can’t eat and talk at the same time. You tell it…”

After pausing for a moment, Maitreya turned to the rest of the people on the table and piped out “I’ve got a joke about Patrick……Why does Patrick like playing golf so much?……Because he’s got a good handicap!”

The look on the new people’s faces was one of horror and confusion. They were speechless!

Not knowing what to say or do Maitreya reiterated “…It’s a joke…”. He looked at me as if to say ‘Help me out of this hole I’m in…”

So I put my hands over my eyes and started pretending to sob, saying “How can you make fun of someone who’s disabled?”

Still speechless, the new people looked even more horrified and perplexed. They probably thought ‘Who are these strange people and where have we just landed?”

I’m sure Maitreya just wanted to run away! But he continued trying to recover the situation, scrambling “No, no, it’s okay, he’s joking…”

He then went on and tried explaining what a handicap in golf is (without much luck)!

I was just enjoying the moment.

And that’s how Maitreya got his reputation as someone who makes fun of disabled people!

Come September I’ll have three months of this kind of thing!

I love spending time with my ‘brother’. He’s not all bad. He’s good at selling my books for me. And being an author himself, he has helped me self-publish this one on Create Space.

Maitreya has written two books under the name Oliver Seligman. The Broker Who Broke Free and No Rest for the Wicked.

I’ve read them and they are both GREAT reads. The latter is a laugh-out-loud book.

You can get your copy of Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator HERE & NOW

Thank you Steve Norman from Spandau Ballet

Here’s another extract from Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator

To cut a long story short, Steve tweeted me a few months ago to say how much he enjoyed Stairs For Breakfast and he is full of praise for me. However I think he was disappointed that Spandau Ballet aren’t mentioned in my first book, whilst their ‘arch rivals’ Duran Duran are!

There is no question, Spandau Ballet are one of the biggest pop groups of the 1980s. I was a thirteen- year-old schoolboy when ‘Through The Barricades’ was in the charts. I remember hearing a small cluster of twenty-something-year-old teaching assistants chatting about Spandau Ballet, and which band member they fancied the most. I’m sorry Steve, I don’t recall hearing your name.

Without a doubt ‘True’ is one of the greatest ballads of all-time. When I hear the saxophone in the song, I think of you Steve.

You seem like a great human being with a heart of GOLD. It was fun having lunch with you recently. I like people who I can have a laugh with, and you are one of them!

You can get your copy of Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator HERE & NOW

The day my car started smoking

Here’s another extract from Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator

About the time of my twenty-seventh birthday in November 2000 there was still a problem with my car. By that time it was stalling once a day.

Ten days before I started at the fire brigade, prior to a fund raising commitment due to start in the afternoon in central Brighton and which was likely to extend into the evening, I arranged to meet my friend Stuart in the Churchill Square shopping centre for lunch. I had time to do this before meeting up with my Prince’s Trust chums.

On my way to meet Stuart, turning off Brighton seafront into the road which leads to the side of Churchill Square, my car stalled.  After restarting my car, I went a few hundred yards up the hill, past the shopping centre’s multi-storey car park, before my car stalled again. More accurately, the car conked out! The engine wouldn’t restart and smoke started to escape from under the bonnet and drift upwards, ominously.

The commotion quickly gathered a crowd of onlookers. Before I knew it, somebody had dialled 999 and called the Fire Brigade!

People were telling me to get out of my car fast! I didn’t think it was that bad and replied, “It’s alright, it’s only a bit of smoke.”

While I was on the phone, telling Stuart what had happened and where I was, I heard the siren of a fast approaching fire engine. Stuart arrived just as the firemen were putting out the dying embers of my smouldering car!

I thanked the firemen and said, “You might find this hard to believe but I start working with you guys the week after next!”

Stuart and I decided to have lunch in the adjacent pub, whilst we waited for a recovery truck to take my car to the Renault garage and I remember it being a very funny lunch!

I’m not a mechanic and might be wrong here. I think all that started to smoulder was the rubber seal around the engine. Having said that, I don’t even know if car engines have rubber around them! Obviously there was an underlying problem with my car. Had my car been able to travel a few more yards, I would have got it into a parking space.

After my car had been taken away, I had a good story to tell people while fund raising. That evening I went home on the bus with Claudia, who also lived in Shoreham.

The next day the Renault garage was extremely apologetic for not having spotted the problem with my car sooner. They fixed my car in double quick time, ready for me to start my job with the fire brigade.

 You can get your copy of Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator HERE & NOW

Thank you Adur East Lions Club…

…for gifting me the opportunity to have a flying lesson with Aerobility in Camberley.

Last weekend I attended the event at Blackbushe Airport with my friend Susan.

Unfortunately the low cloud weather conditions prevented light aircrafts from flying
(I plan to book a flying lesson in the summer).

I had great fun on the flight simulator

And I got the opportunity to sit in a plane and asked a pilot a load of questions!

It was also good to see Val there from Adur East Lions Club

It was a highly enjoyable day.

Thank you very much Susan for driving (and taking the photos). We had great conversations about inner peace and meditation 🙂

Here’s the proof!

Here’s a funny video I made yesterday

As I say in the video, Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator is the second part of autobiography and covers the years 2001 to 2017. If we’ve met over the last few years you’re probably in the book!

I’m planning to publish the book on 15th April. I have already got about 50 pre-orders of the book but I need more pre-orders to have it printed.

On the THANK YOU page of the book I am going to print the names of the people who pre-order it.

Thank you very much if you’ve already ordered the book. You’re on the list!

You can pre-order Screw It, I’ll Take The Elevator here and now

I love how funny my new book is and I’m very proud of everything I have achieved.

Thank you very much for your support. I look forward to publishing the best book I’ve ever written!