I’m still me

Tags

healing, love, marriage, mental health, religion, religious conversion, spiritual awakening, spirituality, writing

 

I’m still me

 

A few nights ago I was in front of the bathroom mirror thinking about Gwyneth Paltrow* when I had a sudden realisation: I am not her, I am me.  I’m me.  I’m me!  I thought about her in front of her bathroom mirror, being her.  I thought about all the time women waste wishing they were more like someone else.  I thought about how it doesn’t really matter what you look like anyway.  But most of all, I thought: Wow, here I am, in this life, in this body, in charge of myself.

I had the same feeling driving to work the next morning, listening to Muse, in a car that is not an old banger, is full of petrol and if I need any petrol I can just go and buy some; I always have enough money for food, I have the best job I could possibly want, my legs and arms work, I have no serious aches and pains, and despite a wild and careless youth** I have been left with nothing more serious than an occasional cold sore.  And, my God, I have my husband.  The fact that I have a husband is amazing enough, but my husband is so fucking cool, he lets me be so free that I don’t even recognise myself sometimes.

I thought, how did I get here?  How did someone so unconfident get to the top of their career? (I could go a tiny bit higher but it would be hideously boring)  How did someone who used to be so frightened that I thought I was going to wet myself on the bus on the way to college, get here? 

So, did you reach any conclusions? My husband asked, when I told him about all this.  I didn’t have an immediate answer.  All I could think was, I made it hard, but I made it interesting.  I spent a year doing a millinery course and two years doing a fashion course.  I wondered why I didn’t take up writing earlier (because I was too scared to read my stuff out to a class until I was in my thirties).  I wanted to go back and say thank you to all those people who helped me. 

So, have I reached any conclusions?  The only one that really seems to mean anything at all is this: someone must have been looking after me all along, because I really don’t see how I did that journey all by myself.  

 

I am going to say a tiny bit about religion here.  I am looking at it, yes.  Not because I ‘need to be told how to live my life’ as atheists sometimes sneeringly say about organised religion, but because I want a framework, a method, a route to be closer to God.  Yes, in theory, I can remember God just by myself, every minute of every day, but in practice, I forget to remember.  That’s what a prayer habit or regular practice of any kind is all about, it’s a cue to remember.

In January, I thought my spiritual journey of the previous five years was over.  But unless you get stuck and stay stuck life is a journey… a journey home, a journey to God?  Anyway, despite what I thought at the time, my spiritual journey hadn’t ended.  I had just paused to look at the view, and to catch my breath.

It’s important that I pause and catch my breath regularly because there are two fears that come up for me.  One is the classic, am I going mad?  The other is, will it affect my relationship with my husband?  Will I find I don’t need him anymore?  Will the presence of a third party affect things?  If I get into a religion will it end up affecting our lives and relationship so much that we end up breaking up?  But as someone who had embraced a religion said: I’m still me.  And as my healing teacher told me: you won’t lose yourself, you are in control.

So don’t stay up all night watching you tube clips about people’s religious conversions (I haven’t done this I just know someone who has and know it is an option!).  Distract myself with light and frivolous stuff e.g. rom coms and light books that have nothing to do with spirituality or religion.  Exercise, sleep and eat right.  Look after myself.  Whatever I had decided to do before, keep doing it; writing, healing.

Remember that I can love God through loving my husband, the two aren’t mutually exclusive.  That’s why religions prescribe charity, because it’s no good just having faith, you have to act on it in your life.  My husband is my life. 

*I have no idea why it was she who popped into my head

** When I say ‘youth’ read ‘teens, twenties and thirties’

Inside I’m dancing*

Tags

healing, love, mindfulness, religion, spirituality, writing

 

Inside I’m dancing*

My healing teacher lent me a book a few weeks ago.  She said she had been ‘guided’ to lend it me.  This did not fill me with joy as it was all about grief and life after death.  Was I or my husband about to die I wondered (I may be a healer and a therapist and into a spiritual life but I can imagine catastrophes with the best of ‘em).  Anyway, this morning I started reading it:  Beyond our physical bodies and our physical world is the world of thoughts.  Beyond the world of thoughts is the world of feelings and emotions.  Beyond or within that world is a world of pure love:  Heaven.  We can all access that place whether we are alive or dead.  But like my healing teacher, the book was ever down to earth and pragmatic:  of course, it said, even the dead cannot live on the top of the mountain forever.  And the living must take care of their day to day life and responsibilities.

Just as I was drifting off into wondering about getting together with a group of people and us all raising ourselves up into that world of love, my husband who is suffering terrible toothache woke up and I found myself back in the practical application of love:  calling dentists, making food, fetching painkillers.

Religion or spirituality can help guide us to walk along that bridge between the visible and the invisible, between this world and the world we cannot see, between theory and practical application.  As each world both supports and enjoys the experiences that belong to the other, there lies Bliss.

Yesterday I had the rare for me experience of a day that was both busy and peaceful**.  I accidentally slept in until 9am; I was due to be at a friend’s house to give healing at 10am.  By some miracle I managed to get out of the house at record speed and arrived there only five minutes late.  The healing went well and we both took our time to relax and chat before and afterwards.  Afterwards I went into town.  I went into a large department store, well known for its book department which has existed for as long as I can remember.  When I walked in I was alarmed to find that I couldn’t see it anywhere.  For a few moments I wondered if I had been fast forwarded into the scary reality that people talk about, a reality of no books and no bookshops left.  I pulled myself together and went out and in again through the main entrance.    The book department had moved downstairs, that was all.  It was a peaceful, library vibe and I felt an almost religious sense of calm as I dropped into the world of books and let myself choose, or be chosen by three books.  As I paid for them, I wondered if there was anyone else anywhere who had bought the same three books at the same time:  a strange and beautiful looking book about an exiled person and a hare, Iain Banks’ last book and an Introduction to Islam. 

Then I went to see a friend and we sat in her garden enjoying the breeze and the sunshine and her garden full of flowers.  The best type of friend, she is simultaneously interested, knowledgeable and non judgemental no matter what new and crazy ideas I bring up. 

The hours of the day ran though but driving home towards the end of the day I didn’t feel panicky that I hadn’t yet done any housework or other chores or tired that I had been out all day, or  worried that I had used up all my alone time on visiting and shopping and not writing.  I didn’t feel any of that.  I wonder if it’s the quality you bring to the day or that the day brings to you that determines the peace, rather than what you actually do in terms of quiet versus busy.  

 *   ** I should make reference to the film and literary title and quotes I have used.    The phrase ‘busy yet peaceful’ comes from one of my favourite books The Idea of Perfection by Kate Grenville.  It is filled with many beautiful and moving lines and descriptions.  Inside I’m dancing is a film.  I haven’t actually seen it, but the words just keep coming into my head these past few weeks.  I am rubbish at dancing, hopelessly self conscious and uncoordinated and yet, I so feel like leaping and stretching out my arms and spinning and flinging myself around.  I am so full of joy that it seems like such a natural way to let it out.  I don’t though, I just think about it.  Maybe, one day soon I will wait until I am alone in the house, draw all the curtains and double lock all the doors and just go for it.   

     

Maya Angelou died just after I posted my last blog, in which I had cited her as a potential angel (as a writer I am ashamed to admit that I only just noticed that her name includes the word angel).  If I feel in need of guidance, she leaves her many books of autobiography, her poetry, her Radio 4 Desert Islands Discs and Front Row interviews as well as many other interviews and many wonderful life affirming quotations and teachings.  I give my sincere thanks.  Rest in Peace Maya Angelou.