Title: seeker

Location: Dublin

Hi, my name is Shane. I'm just like everyone else here, trying to make the spiritual a reality in my life, trying to uncover the infinite beauty within myself and the world.

I have always been very lucky in the people who I have come across who have all given me a hand up along the way, and now I suppose I have the ultimate hand up in my spiritual teacher, Sri Chinmoy. My teacher is a constant source of guidance and encouragement, sometimes in his words but much more often in his powerful silence, in his tireless efforts to help his fellow man on the road to happiness, and simply in his way of being in the world, which just springs like a fountain from that inner source we all are trying to tap into.

I meditate with the Dublin Sri Chinmoy Centre, and one of the things that make us all happy and fulfilled is giving free meditation classes in Dublin every couple of months. It's just an amazing thing to be privileged to share the gift of meditation with people who might not have been familiar with it. People often ask 'why free?', but I wouldn't exchange a million dollars for seeing the blissful expression of someone in our classes who has finally found a way to mantain peace in this busy world.

Ive actually just started my own personal site, shanemagee.com, where I hope to have lots of articles about meditation, spirituality and inspiring stuff in general. I guess one more first-person account of the adventure that is the spiritual life can't hurt, and might even inspire a few people…

  Before that I had a blog on the Sri Chinmoy Centre website (sorry, it just beat zaadz to it by 3 weeks, but I still write for both occasionally - blogs have feelings too, y'know). I was rather suspicious at the start of whether blogging was actually a healthy activity, but I have a good heart-feeling about it now - it's great as long as I don't get too introspective and mental about it. We have quite a few good writers in our centre - perhaps you might care to have a look at the Inspiration-Letters section of the website. My favourite writers are Jogyata from Auckland, NZ and Sumangali from Cardiff, Wales (who now has her own site http://www.sumangali.org).

Poetseers is one of my favourite websites - the definitive collection of spiritual poetry. I like singing Indian spiritual songs a lot, they are a very easy way of diving deep into the core of your being and experiencing the love and sweetness to be found there. I mostly sing Sri Chinmoy's songs but I am also a big fan of other Indian composers, particularly Rabindranath Tagore and Kazi Nazrul Islam.

If you like spiritual music, you could do worse than to go to radiosrichinmoy.org - in addition to Sri Chinmoy's compositions, there are also performances by his students both of their own compositions and arrangements of Sri Chinmoy's songs.

I do quite a lot of running, and I find my running performance to be a very good barometer of how I'm doing spiritually! Most Saturday's I'll try and hare around a 2-mile course as fast as I can - my current record is 11:02. I also do quite a lot of marathons

Last Races:
Self-Transcendence Marathon, New York, August 25  - 3:20
Dublin Half-Marathon, September 23 -1:25:58
London Run, 10k - 37:57
Dublin Marathon, October 30 - 3:09:04 -read my blog entry….

Next goal: Self-Transcendence Marathon in August 2007…

I actually just started helping out with allaboutrunning.net, a site run by members of the Sri Chinmoy Marathon Team with a definite emphasis on getting as much joy  out of running as possible…


Another site I like very much is ramakrishnavivekananda.info - some tireless soul has uploaded the complete Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna and the complete works of Swami Vivekananda, and included all the footnotes as popups. My heart goes out to him.


Obligatory closing pearl of wisdom:

Hmmm. There was me thinking after all these years I would have some little pearl of wisdom to offer to the world. But no. I suppose the main thing is that one is only fulfilled when one is doing one's darndest to make other people happy. And that it doesn't really matter if you succeeded or failed because every little occasion where somebody thinks about making somebody else happy somehow finds its way into the storybook of the universe and makes it a better place.
(Note: The above is not so much a learnt piece of wisdom as a piece of plain common sense that life keeps trying to tell me again and again, thick beast of burden that I am)

Anyway, that's enough wisdom for one incarnation. Let's cut to the chase. I havent told you anything about what I do. How much money I earn. Have I bought the latest S-Class Merc. Is that oak panelling in my hallway…(er, what site is this again? Erm. Sorry)

Ok, lets start again. I'm Shane. I kind of half make a living as a high-end spalpín (Irish for migrant odd-job man). At the moment I teach maths to people who spent all college term partying and who need a miracle in the last four days to pass. But exam time' doesnt go on all year (I'm the only person on earth who wishes it would) so I'll have to find something else.

Anyway. I'm off to explore everyone elses pages. Be good.

Member Since: Saturday, September 16 2006

Last Visit: 125 days ago.

Profile Viewed: 1622 times (last viewed less than a minute ago)