English spiritual teacher Helen Hamilton is one of the newest teachers holding online satsang to cross my path.
I discovered Helen by accident while on Facebook and was not immediately attracted to her teaching style which is quite slow and gentle. However, her energetic presence is undeniable and comes as a result of many years of chasing awakening including with teachers such as Adyashanti.
My understanding is Helen’s final breakthrough came in Adya’s presence while he was on tour in England.
In her own words, Helen talks about much pain and suffering that motivated her on the path. Despite making a life and having children, her childhood dissatisfaction continued to escalate during her late 20s until she recognised she was experiencing severe depression.
“Little did I know at that time that this was the best thing that could ever have happen to me as my ideas about what I was and what the world was, had begun to disintegrate,” she says.
“The bigger the void inside became; the more urgent the pull to find out how to fill it.”
Introduction to meditation changed everything, and after that she found the teachings of enlightened teachers mostly of the Advaita Vedanta tradition including Papaji which sharpened her focus on the goal of awakening.
Despite all of that, Helen claims she still had many dark moments of struggle and in her own approach as a teacher claims to have developed “faster” ways towards enlightenment as a result of having to come up with them herself.
Based in West Yorkshire, Helen follows the traditional model holding free public satsang online every Thursday. She also runs a subscription-based program for her following she refers to as her sangha. Her offerings include a specifically-titled “dissolving the ego” course for students which is also the name of her book available for sale online.
At last check, Helen also runs intensives in Spain as part of her outreach work, with much of her focus on self-inquiry and other pathways into finding true self.
“When your mind has seen the truth of your Being, of what you are and what everything really is, it will rest in the supreme peace of the awakened state and it will be restless no more,” she says.
“There are only a few things to understand completely to achieve this state and it need not take a long time or be difficult.
“The right understanding naturally brings your mind to peace all by itself.””
She also promotes a method she calls “contemplation” that is more akin to deep inquiry work similar to Byron Katie’s “the work” undoing belief systems.
Helen is more directly involved in her sangha than some teachers, though as growth as occurred, she has increasingly relied upon a middle tier of students to manage sangha affairs. She also encourages direct interaction between her students and uses technology such as WhatsApp to facilitate this more easily.
In part acknowledgment of her inquiry-based teaching, Helen also works at a sedate pace and models this for her students too. Monthly topics are set for contemplation and for the sake of students giving these considerations their full attention.
Helen is a very warm and gentle teacher, drawing heavily upon what I perceive as Krishna energy in her interactions. While some students prefer teachers who might more strongly encounter them or push them to realisation, Helen’s focus remains on guiding us towards the discovery of what we already are – and from that perspective conveys that kindness for those of us who remain lost.