Simon Parke: An Extraordinary Life

When you think about an extraordinary life you normally think of things such as conquering Mount Everest or winning a gold medal at the Olympics. Yet there are other lives that fall into this category due to the very nature of the person living them; the life of Simon Parke is one of them.

The youngest of three children, Simon lived in Sussex until he was 18 years old when he moved to London. He says that he had a stable and happy family life with a strong and loving upbringing.

He currently lives alone in a one room flat in London, and enjoys an excellent relationship with his former wife and two grown children.

He is the author of 13 books, the latest of which is One Minute Mindfulness: How to Live in the Moment published in January 2011 by Hay House. He has also written a number of intriguing books of conversations with long dead but extremely famous people – such as Jesus of Nazareth.

The premise of the “Conversation” books is to consider questions that you might like to ask these famous people and then look for quotations from their lives that answer the questions. The books are unusual – they’re written by Simon Parke after all – and enjoy an enthusiastic following.

So he has enjoyed imaginary conversations with Mozart, Jesus, Tolstoy, Meister Eckhart, Conan Doyle and Vincent Van Gogh. He doesn’t feel that he channels these famous people as a Medium would. He reads their work and uses only their actual words. So the questions are imagined but the responses are not. ‘It’s a great way to get to know someone,’ he says. ‘In some ways, I feel I know the better than myself.’ (They’re published by White Crow books.)

All of which sounds very normal, born, lived in Sussex, moved to London, married and had children, now single, famous author. Until you consider that for 20 years Simon was a Priest in the Church of England, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.

Actually he still is a Priest because he’s never been defrocked, he just quit. We asked him why.

“I never intended to leave the Priesthood. I expected that I would be a Priest for life, yet one day I began to have the strange feeling that this adventure had come to an end. It was a shock and an unhappy feeling in a way. It was also frightening because I had nothing to go to or no idea what lay ahead. I just knew that I had to leave.”

Simon still attends church occasionally and sometimes takes services for friends and family; he officiated at his niece’s wedding on New Year’s Eve 2010, and is often asked to take funerals. He still writes a weekly column for the Church Times – but he says he doesn’t follow the church politics anymore.

If you didn’t know how happy and fulfilled Simon is now as he lives his latest adventure you might feel sad for him, particularly as his priestly calling was a dynamic and effective one.

“I never stood in a pulpit and lectured anyone. I enjoyed the work and involved myself in my local community seeking to support those living in my parish and be a positive and creative force.”

He also says that he doesn’t miss God because “God is everywhere, a church building is just a focus point.” What he does miss is “the creative things you can do in a community with a great group of caring people.”

He worked extensively with young people doing the only youth work of that type in his parish. One of his favourite pieces of work was putting on pantomimes at Christmas. “The event used to run for 4-5 nights and everyone who wanted to could get involved, often there were casts of 80 people.” It must have been a fabulous focus for young people, as well as giving them a ‘giving’ way to express themselves.

He also worked with Sure Start, who work with the under 4’s. They used the church every morning and Simon enjoyed working with the children before their brains had been “hard wired”.

He also did a lot of work with the elderly, and encouraged church members to participate in services. Often parishioners bought artwork or talked about things they’d done. They had a band in the church and anyone who could play an instrument was welcome to come and join in.

Surprisingly, he moved from the Priesthood to stacking shelves in a well-known supermarket. He did this because “I was in desperate straits financially, with a lot of ‘rejection’ letters from publishers. It was hard for a middle-aged ex-priest to find work. But I’d worked in a supermarket for 2 years when I was in my early 20’s and knew that I enjoyed the work. I applied to 5 different companies, 4 of which turned me down but I struck lucky with the 5th.

The company that did eventually employ Simon used psychometric testing so they didn’t know his background. He worked there for 3 years, stacking shelves, on the till and chairing the shop union and didn’t want to leave. But yet again he felt called to move on to pastures new “freelance work was beckoning”.

We asked him whether any of these events were generated by the idea of cosmic ordering or the power of intention, but he’s unfamiliar with those concepts. He says he just waits for a feeling and goes with it and “If something feels wrong don’t do it”.

He says that cosmic ordering wouldn’t appeal to him, because generally speaking most people don’t know what they want and/or what is good for them.

The idea that what you want you will have he finds rather empty. He believes it takes us away from acceptance and trust in the moment.

“If someone had asked me 10 years ago if I would want to work in a supermarket I would have said ‘no’ because I was a Priest and it was my life. However, working as a shelf-stacker was a wonderful experience for me and it came about because I accept and trust ‘what is’.”

He works on taking “one step ahead not two”, and waits for one dream to start dying before he asks the question “what’s next?” He encourages people to allow the present to unfold and love the here and now.

Simon writes a lot about mindfulness and we asked him what mindfulness means to him. “If I have to put mindfulness in a nutshell I would say that mindfulness is an awareness of your present experience with acceptance. It has themes of awareness, being present in the moment, acceptance and trust. They all feed into each other, in the moment.”

He explained it this way “If you hold on to past hurts and slights - for example if someone is rude to you and in the moment you accept it, but fume later - you have allowed the past to jump into the present and destroy it. ”

‘And there is no place in our body for the future because it simply doesn’t exist. The present is fresh bread, the past is stale bread and the future is no bread. It isn’t worth a moment’s consideration or worry; certainly not worry.”

 When it comes to the present Simon suggests that you can’t think about it. “You can appreciate the present, but your thoughts cannot – for they live either in the past or in the future. To be present, we must leave our thoughts.’
 
He went on to say that “Mindfulness pays no attention to thoughts, because they hijack our lives. We’ll be walking along looking at a blue sky and a negative thought will pop in; for the next 10 minutes we’ll stomp along thinking bad thoughts and our lovely walk is ruined.”

As this is clearly not just an important subject to Simon but something of the cornerstone of his work, we asked him how he feels that people are compromising their happiness by not being aware of the present moment.

“People are unhappy because they are lodged either in the past or future. They’re either carrying the baggage of the past or they’re hallucinating about a future that does not exist. The present is created one moment at a time, and everyone is happy there.”

We asked him how one becomes mindful? “A good thing is to listen to your breathing. While your mind is remembering a grievance or planning tomorrow, your breathing is always present. Breathing takes us into the body and away from the mind.”

We asked him about the Psychic field and whether he considers himself or his work to be part of it.

“Probably not. I’m not particularly familiar with the field nor, sadly, do I have any gifts. However, I did once have a client in the field who gave me a very comforting message so I do feel that I have personally benefited from the work.

He was a very nice man who said he wasn’t going to say anything to me but I asked him a question which triggered the message he gave me – which I had a very peaceful figure looking after me. This man was very gentle and unassuming, and his answer to my question gave me great comfort and hope.”

Simon is clearly a very positive man who believes in aiming for the positive whilst remaining realistic about the negative. He doesn’t believe in pure positivity teaching, feeling that it’s dangerous because it’s unrealistic. “It takes people into the territory of denial, which is seductive; but of course it’s denial teaching that allows us to ignore what’s happened and this is never a good idea. You can’t say goodbye to something until you’ve said hello to it. Only that way can you let it go. You have to acknowledge your pain and if you don’t, it remains a part of you”

Simon currently works as a therapist, through which he helps people to name the feelings they’ve never named, and then walk free from them. He cites the case of Freud who didn’t realise that he hated his father until he was leaving his father’s funeral. “Once you realise what you feel you can do something about it.”

He feels that positivity teaching wouldn’t have allowed Freud to acknowledge his true feelings and would have called to him to repress it and thus prevent him from turning negativity into genuine good.

One of Simon’s strongest beliefs is that all human beings should take responsibility for their own lives. “As human beings we all have to reach the point where we stop blaming others.” He also feels people are their own best healers, but need to be brave. He encourages those clients you aren’t ready to face their truth to wait until they feel ready. “Nothing will happen until they are ready.”

Simon used to write comedy for television and radio, including the famous puppet satire Spitting Image. He also wrote for Three of a Kind, and Radio 4’s Week Ending.

He now writes a weekly column in the Daily Mail, and focuses on books, the last two of which One Minutes Mindfulness and The One Minute Mystic have been a study in simplicity. We asked him why he is only allowing his readers one minute.

“Commercially they’re snappy titles, of course, but most importantly, I believe that if you give it a minute, there’s a doorway into mysticism and mindfulness. Everyone has time for the truth if its only sixty seconds away.’

Simon runs regular retreats once or twice a year. He runs his Beautiful Life Retreat at the Abbey Retreat House in Glastonbury. It is a mixture of community and silence taking place in ten sessions over 4 or 5 days. The Sessions are quite still, and attendees are welcome to speak or remain silent.

Each day beings and ends with a meditation, and attendees can have a one-to-one appointment if they require it.

“It’s a very personal journey with a different story for everyone that attends. It’s also an interesting time when all sorts of things happen. There are strong emotions, crises, anger, but that’s to be expected if you give people a safe space, things will always arise that have previously been repressed. You can have anger, fun, laughter and peace in one day.”

“Many people come to get rid of past life baggage, look at their lives, see what holds them back from happiness and hopefully leave appreciating the present moment more.”

Although to us Simon is a very successful man, he has no sense of being successful at all. “It isn’t a word that’s ever touched me,” he says.

He rents one room above a public house on a very noisy road, and it doesn’t bother him that he doesn’t own a house. For Simon success is “accepting the present. If you accept the present you always have the potential to be happy. You can live in Beverly Hills or Kensington Palace and be really unhappy. Our real address is not the house we live in; our real address is our state of mind, a spiritual state, and success is a spiritual state of happiness.

He is still a supporter of religion, but with his usual realistic edge. “Religion is fine as long as no one takes it too seriously. Everything becomes a problem if we take it too seriously, whether it’s our politics, our relations, our theories or our religion. Religion’s role is to keep people in touch with God, spirituality and community.’

We asked Simon what work he has coming up in the near future, but because he lives mindfully – in the present – he rarely has any idea of what’s about to happen. However, One Minutes Mindfulness was published in January.

Speaking to Simon was a fascinating and refreshing experience. He has his own views yet he is open to discussing other viewpoints and experiences. In fact we got into quite a deep and meaningful conversation about Vision Boards versus mindfulness, yet at no time did we feel expected to alter our viewpoint to suit his.

He embraces new ideas with fervour, asking questions and trying to understand how other people feel about their deeply held beliefs.

We thoroughly enjoyed interviewing him, and we’re sure that many people will be mindful of Simon’s work for many years to come. We wish him nothing but good luck in the moment – we wouldn’t dare say ‘the future’, that would not be mindful.

© Deb Hawken - First published in