Throwback Thursday: Marriage

Tags

conflict, How to argue, Living together, love, marriage, relationships, spiritual awakening, Spiritual experience, Spiritual journey

Leonard Cohen:  You know that I love to live with you, but you make me forget so very much.  I forget to pray for the angels, and then the angels forget to pray for us.

From the early days of Rachel and Anthony/ John:

It’s easy, (even for us! as I am fond of saying,) to become bogged down, stressed by the things that don’t matter (decorating, paperwork) and neglectful of the things that do (how we are, how we are together) and before too long a distance is created, one or other or both of us are dissatisfied and then, well, nothing really, we might have a rubbish go at sorting it out the first time and end tense and cranky, me getting defensive and going off to bed, and then the next morning, he leans his leg in, I lean mine, we talk, we make plans.  It’s not about what things we were or weren’t doing, it’s all part of it, it’s just about getting back on the path again.

He’d been feeling distance, we hadn’t been doing anything together.  I’d thought it was all hearth and home or having ‘gone beyond’ but you never ‘go beyond’; and looking back it had been a bit distant, I mean, I haven’t been feeling that happy either.  Then he goes into a charity shop in Dereham (Norfolk) of all places and finds a George Harrison book (I Me Mine) and in the introduction by Olivia his wife it sets out what their lives were like, and John said, That’s like you and me, well, without all the massive fame and wealth and so on.  And I should have been happy and I was, but I struggle to appreciate things in the moment sometimes, especially unexpected big stuff and especially when we haven’t yet made up from some tension or distance (but that was him making up or trying to make up from tension and distance) and I poured cold water on it, mentioning his (George Harrrison’s) affairs etc- there was no reason for that, but John was better than me and didn’t appear to notice or mind.

Last night, I forced us to sit and watch something, and he sat through two episodes of a box set the same way a cat does when you are forcing it to sit on your lap when it doesn’t really want to. 

He checked the oil in my car on Sunday even though we weren’t really speaking

I had this sense re the margarine left out and the toothpaste lid left off and I suddenly saw it as endearing- wow, how much I’d miss those things if they weren’t there, because they are a marker of him, his presence in my life, in the house.  If they were the same as you you wouldn’t notice them or their presence, this shows they are here…

Talking about the shortest day coming and saying after that it will get lighter again, and yet not wanting to wish life and another year away, one less year to live, but John said, if you are truly living in the moment then that doesn’t matter.

I thought about that later when we had a few cross words and I was sulking and he was angry and I laid in bed wondering what to say to elevate us above this situation and change it, at the same time as going over the evening, how we got there, who said and did what, etc, etc, analysing it…  but then I remembered, it is only the present moment, and do I want to spend it like this or do I want to change it?  And I realised, before I can change us or him I have to change myself, so I lay and just focussed on my breathing and slowly, slowly I felt myself calm and come back to calmness, felt love come in again, felt love go out to him, then finally I rolled over and put my arms around him and said I love you, I’m sorry.  I never normally apologise and like magic, it was all washed away and everything was as it was.

In meditation: warning for the future:  you had everything and you threw it all away; So do the opposite, really nurture all that I have, appreciate it, give it my attention.

I don’t want your thanks.  I just want your time and attention.

(When I was in meditation, thinking, I should pray, I should say thank you)

When I first got together with John, I had a student who had been to Japan, and she ran a calligraphy group, I did John’s name, it means ‘God has given’ in Japanese.  I had forgotten that.  God has given, why would He take away?

The problem with living together is that your moods don’t coincide:  I come home high after listening to Jeff Buckley track 10 of Grace over and over.  I walk in, he’s about to go to bed and also is very grumpy.

I guess that’s why people have date nights, so you both gear yourselves up to be happy and looking forward to seeing each other so both in a good mood at the same time rather than leaving that to chance, as well as you both being feeling like going out at the same time, which it seems is too much to hope for- both wanting to go out and both being in a good mood, all at the same time!

Still, I coped; my bubble might have been burst- from being in the car, feeling full of love and magic. But I wasn’t distraught.  And maybe the still space I had was useful- I stayed up a little, read some Elizabeth Gilbert stuff online.  Maybe it was for me to do that, a little bit of  stuff for me, or maybe it was just a reminder that my mood need not, must not, depend on his.

A few weeks later we went for a bracing January walk on the beach and we spoke a little about the day where we hadn’t spoken all day, he couldn’t remember what it was he’d been pissed off about, but it certainly wasn’t watching two episodes of Twin Peaks.  I had made up a whole schema around it and it wasn’t even true.  He said, Seriously, you don’t ever have to worry about days like those, about silly arguments, about moods.  Nothing you can ever do will stop me loving you.  You have nothing to worry about.

Nice evening paying cards with John.  Played several games, me totally relaxed, even winning some hands, and him seeming so pleased- ‘look at you, I’ve created a monster’, etc.  It’s the small things that count.  So I am so glad I learnt to play despite how hard it was for him/me.  (I have a real aversion to learning and playing games).  He said connecting with the person you are in a relationship with is a spiritual practice.  He appreciates:  dinner, sex, playing cards, watching films with him.

‘God has given’ what to do?  Answer:  all we have to do is love and allow ourselves to be loved.

Is the nature of a marriage all to do with your own energy field, it’s just you, reflected back at yourself?  And if you aren’t careful you can blame the other person for things- convenient- but if you look back honestly you realise those things have always been there, your own problems or ways of doing things that you don’t like, you might think getting married will sort them all out, but of course it can’t, you don’t realise any of this consciously though, and then when things or problems arise, as they would have done anyway, it’s easy to blame the other person, as you have conveniently forgotten how you/your life used to be before you met them.

I went for a walk to the church, John said, Say a prayer for me, for my soul.  I didn’t actually go to the church in the end, my legs took me along the footpath, past the big ivy covered trees that marked the start of my spiritual awakening.  I said a prayer anyway though:  I pray that John will be happy and free from worries and that I will be able to rise above the day to day worries and stresses that sometimes cloud things between us, and connect again to that force of love that brought us so spectacularly together in the first place.  Anyway, it worked:  he said this morning, ‘let’s have an early night, let’s go to bed before we are tired so we can talk’ (!) and sent me nice messages at work.  I like the way one of us always comes forward, or should I say back.  Like sometimes I think he’s moody and distant and sometimes I try to be loving and cuddly and sometimes I am distant and stressed and he is all compliments and cuddles and come ons.  But we get there, the two of us, thank God.

Thank you very much for reading

Throwback Thursday: Dreams

Tags

aging, awareness, dreams, Fear, meditation, Personal growth

I dreamt I was about to go out in front of an audience, in a play.  I thought, That’s not me, then I thought, Well I obviously chose to do it, I must have signed up, gone to rehearsals and so on, been a willing participant, so it obviously is me now.

Are dreams something to do with it?  I dreamed of walking though the ruins of a once grand hotel, all red velvet, mahogany and broken mirrors, with arty alternative people, smouldering bonfires, and a cool punk band playing in the bandstand.  Twenty years ago this would have been the place of my dreams but I didn’t stop, I just walked on past.  I was hungry, I was looking for toasted sandwiches and a cup of tea.

Are dreams a pictorial version, an easy-read explanation of The Field of Possibilities and how to navigate and understand it?  As well as showing me that the things that I liked 20 years ago, however much I liked them, it is okay to not be interested in them now.

For the first time in forever I haven’t got a to do list or a pile of lists of half done things or scribbles on leaflets.  Stuff is done, put in the diary or on the mantelpiece or does not need to be written down (not that that used to stop me).  This is so much more momentous than it sounds.

‘Fall into the Vortex and let the Universe do its stuff’.  And this is what it does- it sorts everything out with the minimum of fuss, stress and effort (all you have to do is meditate).

I get hot, a lot of heat, hands, feet and heart, tingly, itchy, uncomfortable, like it’s burning through me, burning away all my mistakes, regrets, who I used to be.  Leaving only who I am now, who I am, who am I?  Who am I?  Echoes back, just an echo?

Is anything we experience just a sonar echo, just ourselves, plumbing and gauging the depths, pretending there’s something else out there when really we are all alone.  Except that we aren’t all alone, we have ourselves. 

Last night’s meditation: burning, searing, at my heart, clearing old issues, attitudes to middle age and also accepting my age and accepting that a lot of my antipathy was due to how I felt about myself getting older.  (I used to be very down on salt and pepper bobs, parrot earrings and yoga cliques; I was searching for my own role model)

Scary dream re Sydney bridge: wobbly, huge, glass floor, felt as if could fall in, etc, then the morning after I read in a magazine about ‘housewife dreams’- the nicer and calmer you have to be during the day, the more violent your dreams!  Maybe it’s the same with getting braver in the day= being scared in dreams?

Thank you very much for reading

Throwback Thursday: Hearth and Home

Tags

Hearth and home, Magic, Mid life, Midlife awakening, mindfulness, paganism, spiritual awakening, Spiritual journey, Spiritual practice, spirituality

There’s a theory in magic/paganism that there are times for spells and otherworldly things and there are times for just concentrating on ‘hearth and home’.  Neither is considered better than the other, both equally ‘spiritual’.  Like my favourite saying, one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible, that I used to keep me sane enough or behaving sane enough to not to mess up all my jobs and relationships, but it was at the same time exhausting to do this.

At the yoga class I do at the Buddhist centre sometimes, she gives little slips of paper out about mindfulness and metta in our day to day lives.  I have one at home, one in my car, and one on my monitor at work.  Thinking about it now, all that just made it harder for me:  it was harder for me to manage at work if I was simultaneously trying to hold onto something of what I did outside of work spiritually, it was doing two things at once, which isn’t very mindful, and it didn’t always help.  Whereas hearth and home implies more a switching between states, and doing one or the other, not both at once.

Contrast this with a period just leading up to Christmas, when I was driven with energy and did all the objectives for the year, loads of client contact, staff appraisals, etc, and felt almost like I was on the edge of mania (fear again:  just like when you first tip into  a spiritual journey/awakening and fear that you are going mad, just like when things are going really well and I start worrying about how things could go wrong, this is just  a nasty habit that a bit of the mind, or some say the ego, has a tendency to do) and just was totally immersed in work while I was there, and that was so much better in terms of how I functioned.  If we are on a spiritual path, then isn’t everything we do a spiritual practice?  And isn’t the best way to do a spiritual practice to totally devote oneself to it in the time you are doing it, whether that be meditating or replying to an email?

It’s like when people who are alternative outside of work try and express themselves at work and fight the dress code instead of just going with it. Maybe it’s easier to forget about the other worldly stuff…  Just as I thought this, an outrageously lit up lorry passed me, then immediately after, just in case I hadn’t got the message, another one.  Validation that I am thinking along the right lines, or reminding me that the otherworldly is everywhere, always, whether I think about it or not.  Or even, reminding me that this is the otherworldly…

What is my life’s purpose/mission?  I just want to pray all the time, to drop to the floor and say:  Thank you.  I’m here.  What can I do?

For sensitive people, the smallest things can set you off on the path to growth again.  That’s why you sometimes see those little articles in magazines that suggest things like sleeping up the other way (head to toe not upside-down like a bat) or walking to work a different way.  Even ‘awake’ people can find a seemingly conventional event can do the trick.  In fact, if you are used to thinking unconventionally, maybe the conventional really can knock you sideways.

We got given a red sofa, it had been handmade in Tunbridge Wells, we collected it from a mature, wealthy couple who lived in a huge and breathtakingly expensive looking barn conversion.  They were nice to us and only wanted a donation to the local arts centre, and even invited us to a party they were having.  The sofa had a small cigarette burn in the arm, evidence of a previous party.  We borrowed a friend’s van and got it in with barely an inch to spare.

For a few weeks, no one ate on the sofa, and we somehow kept the rest of the house cleaner too, and even told each other not to sit on it in old clothes, ‘You have to consider we have a middle-class sofa now you know.’  We bought a new carpet after years of living with a filthy one.  (In an insane fit of optimism I had bought a cream carpet when I moved in, with the idea that everyone would ‘step up’ and keep the super smart environment clean.  This didn’t work on a teenager let alone a dog, and the once-cream carpet was stained with blackcurrant juice and years of carelessness.   I said to Anthony, do you think we will look back at the time we got the red sofa as some kind of locator beacon, before and after, that was before, that was after.  Will it mark some kind of change?

But since a sofa is where you sit it’s natural that it is the home of all the big stuff.  My previous sofa was big and blue with removable cotton covers and big squashy cushions.  I had bought it from a man who lived in some very nice riverside retirement flats, it was in immaculate condition and was a very good price.  It came apart so I could fit it all in my little car.  I got a parking ticket but it was still worth it and didn’t dent the happiness I felt.

Scenes from the blue sofa:

Newly in love, lying with each other

‘It doesn’t matter if you’re happy balanced on the edge,’ Anthony- he was actually referring to our position on the sofa

Telling him of my childhood shame; DIY therapy for PTSD

Later when it had completely bottomed out and broken, Anthony took it out into the front garden and chopped it up with an axe. 

This exemplifies/perfectly illustrates our lifestyle: for a few weeks all talk was about The Field, but then that is quickly dropped- when Anthony finishes the book and we begin talking about something else, but also, we don’t always talk about stuff like that- the sofa was almost as much of an event, in some ways.

Photograph: the red sofa a few years later, in the next house. The previous occupant had left behind 1970’s furniture which we kept, and we bought the old black record player from a charity shop. One night we played Are ‘Friends’ Electric by Gary Numan and Tubeway Army and for a few minutes we were transported back to the 1980s. Oh and the cats! You can’t take a cat in a backpack around India (sob).

Thank you very much for reading

Thowback Thursday: The Field

Tags

Albion Fayres, Collective unconscious, Festivals, gong meditation, healing, Law of Attraction, Lynn McTaggart, meditation, Rumi, The Field, The Secret, Yoga

Around the same time as I was in the Hare Krishna phase, Anthony was reading Lynn Mc Taggart’s book The Field. 

The idea is that there is a field around us that holds all the ideas and possibilities that we can connect to and that it connects to us.  Like the collective unconscious, a reciprocal entity like The Secret and the Law of Attraction, the feeling that it’s a two way thing.  Living, alive, a love on both sides.

One winter’s day I went to the beach at Weybourne, North Norfolk.  I stood on my own looking out at the sea, watching the waves come in.  It was a bright day and the waves were lit up silver and shiny, the horizon a dark blue line against the pale blue of the sky.  Me just standing there watching as if rooted to the spot.  Hello Universe, I said, looking at the waves.  Hello Rachel, The Universe said back.

My yoga teacher always said that I was good at being still: when he went around the class dishing out specific praise, Karen is good at boat pose, Sarah is good at head stands, well, I knew I was never the most bendy or fit and so I wasn’t surprised when he paused for a moment when he got to me.  You’re very still in the poses, Rachel, yes, that’s your thing, you’re very still.  I was pleased, I knew what he meant.  I take it very seriously; I concentrate, I try hard, I’m really there.

It’s not just Yoga.  Even when I’m standing looking at the sea, I’m really doing it.  Later in meditation I saw a blue planet, at its edge a line of paler blue against the black of space.  I was focussed on the edges, the place where things meet.  Those words again, Hello Universe, Hello Rachel.  I held onto them, suspending myself in the sweet moment of introduction.  The place we arrive at before thoughts come in.

Like Rumi’s field:  Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.  Or Pulp’s: Oh is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel/Or just 20,000 people standing in a field? 

I also wondered whether the idea of the field could be taken more literally as well; like when I go to the Harlequin Fayre and feel so free, a group of us all go and live in a field for a few days at a festival, with healing areas, yoga, gong meditation, music, cooking and eating together, lying in the sun, sleeping in tents.  I like things to be concrete as well; I get just as excited about the concrete as I do the mystical. (You can read about my previous experiences at Harlequin Fayre HERE and HERE.)

I’ve got this lovely quote that I got, strangely enough, or at least I used to think such things were strange, from an interview in the council magazine they deliver free when they empty your bins.  I tend to read everything and I’m glad that I do:  ‘Life has its own hidden forces, which you can only discover by living.’

In order to gain all the knowledge and insights of the collective consciousness, perhaps I have to let go of the idea of being an individual altogether, at least while I am actually doing it.  I feel my sense of self dissolving.  Like being on a boat bobbing around, uncertain, unsettling at first, because I am letting go of control and allowing myself to feel something of the way the force field operates.  Faster than the speed of light; in fact no sense of speed or time whatsoever.  The dinosaurs were yesterday, a dream, an idea and the past, simultaneously.  You think it, it happens, that’s how fast it can be.

This is the way angels and guides operate, this is why Maya Angelou or Archangel Raphael or anyone else living or dead for that matter could be with me and with any number of other earthlings simultaneously.

So the visions, the planets, the strange experiences we are warned about in meditation, are not inconsequential side effects, but communications from the force field/collective unconscious.  Buddhism is too reductive for me, dismissing such experiences as ‘beginners mind’.  Most religions are too one sided, simply asking for things passively when praying, and only a few lucky or special ones hear messages or get guidance.

We are not passive recipients of force field controller’s whims, we are not passive worshippers asking for things, we are active.  Anyone can commune, receive ideas, insights, that we can choose to select or not.  We can ask for support and choose which answers to act on.  We can tune in and re-power so that we can have the energy to live and do.

More than just a space to work stuff out, the force field is simultaneously an agony aunt, a power source, an oracle and a monk.  Bring your problems to the force field.  Bring your everyday problems, however small, because these are the things that cause dis-ease (worry, fear and over thinking) and get in the way. 

Going for a walk I saw two horses in a field.  I realised, it’s not just dinosaurs, it’s everything.  Horses, cats…  okay maybe some have been ‘made out of’ or followed on from  others ideas-wise, which we link together and see as evolution, but that’s because for us time is linear; in The Field, it isn’t, they all just plonked down fully created.  They/we kept trying until they/we created us. 

Opening yourself up to the field of possibilities can be scary, as in theory it means opening up to all and everything: wars, racism, murder, but of course you aren’t just a passive vessel waiting to be possessed by an idea.  You have what you want to do; you have discernment and you have free will.  It’s just that we scare ourselves, the possibilities scare us.  We look for things to be afraid of, rather than opportunities.  Like when people go mad.

Like how you see lots of whatever car you are looking into buying, not because you create more of them but you see what is already there, the universe holds everything, you just pick it out.  So don’t focus on bad stuff more than necessary, e.g. people get obsessed with crime or fire risk, you need to think about it briefly and just enough to action it i.e. locks to stop burglars, smoke detectors, you install them, but you don’t spend all week looking at burglary or fire tragedy stories.  Nothing new here- same as the old sayings, don’t dwell on it, think positive etc, but this is a more scientific way of presenting it and also provides a way of not doing the ostrich bit which can be a side effect of relentless Pollyanna-ness (I should know), where you refuse to even look at any bad stuff.

What is the one true thing I can rely on:  Anthony, I guess, family, maybe, but even them, even him, will die, even if we stay happily together forever which I hope and intend to.  The only thing I can really be sure will be with me until the end is me, my breath.   I can’t even rely on a body part really, or maybe my heartbeat, okay, my beating heart and my breath, these are the only certainties in life, these are the things that will be with me until the end.   Maybe I should write an anti smoking advert?  Why would you want to poison and disable your only lifelong companions?  

Certainties came up as constraints on the spell check and I thought, yes, our certainties can be our constraints too. 

What would it take for people to believe?  Something on the News at Ten?  Basically, we are telepathic, able to do remote viewing and healing but most of the time the signal is drowned out by all the distractions- activities, media, our unfocussed, haphazard thoughts etc.  What if the ordinary way, of success being about money, career, what you do for a living etc, what if it isn’t about that at all, it’s about being able to connect with the force field and connect with each other e.g. by telepathy, that these are the new skills and values, nothing to do with jobs and money.  Also having empathy would make it hard to hurt others as we’d feel and connect.

In meditation I saw red curtain fabric, like in Twin Peaks going into the other world, and I got scared.  Twin Peaks was creepy, about spirit possession, and then I got a flier for a conference on spirit possession.  In Twin Peaks, fear opens the door to the bad world, but love opens the door to another, good world.  Healing, is good, feels good.  Energy forces exist, like nature, they are morally neutral.  It is the intention of the person accessing them that determines whether they are good or bad.  We have the power to direct energy, to channel it, and to use it for good or bad.  The power exists, outside of us, it is strong, and it is morally neutral.

Me saying to someone at work, I am so thin skinned, and her saying kindly: ‘It’s the flipside of being caring’.  I’ve almost no protection when I bump into people who aren’t very nice.  Wondering if what we call ‘evil’ is really just a profound lack of empathy for others.  Like how a greyhound needs a coat in winter because they have almost no natural protection from the weather, I have almost no natural protection against people who aren’t very nice.  Or have I?  Last night before bed I meditated.  I thought about this, thought, I have no natural protection against people who aren’t very nice.

‘You do’ the answer came clearly.

‘You have this’.

Today, on the way home from work, Monday, I noticed a rare moment of the absence of worry, I wonder if that’s the goal, the absence of worry, leaving one to revel in the still moment.  But our minds search for problems, and those moments are rare.

This was just one of several times where I’ve felt, this is it, I’ve got it, my unifying theory, my one true thing I can hold onto… and just when I think that, it’s gone.  But when I’m in it, whatever it is, I’m hot, I’m connected, I’m awake.

Photograph: sunrise at Ramsgate during a trip away. We got up very early and the kids and I went to see the sun rise, afterwards we got hot chocolate.

Thank you very much for reading