Pondicherry

Tags

awareness, India, Pondicherry, Travel, writing

Pondicherry DRAFT chapter for book

I dislike long bus journeys, I much prefer trains for the long distances.  The experience of having to ask the bus driver from Goa to Hampi to stop for me to have a pee is not one I want to repeat, but there wasn’t a train to Pondicherry so we had no choice.  The journey was three to four hours so not huge.  I felt anxious, but when the bus arrived and we got on, I relaxed.  It was very comfortable; blue luxurious seats, magazine racks on the seat in front like on an airplane and free small bottles of water.  The seats were comfortable and I sat next to the window.  I do love travelling, just moving and looking out of the window.  The trees had the brightest red-orange blossom.  We actually did stop for a food and loo break; there was a stray dog in the car park and a little stall, I bought biscuits and fed the dog.

Our guesthouse was down a run down looking alleyway, and didn’t look as nice as the pictures on the internet.  It had almost art deco style small chrome and coloured glass screens at the balcony, which reminded me of the coloured glass at the first place in Chennai.  Just beyond our room was an invisible step in the marble that we had to be mindful of, and beyond that another little balcony that looked out onto the alleyway.

The ‘spiritual journey’ can be lonely sometimes.  I wrote in my notebook:  I feel far away… maybe that’s part of it, necessary, and that I’ll come back, naturally.  I could force it, like I forced the grounding last time; through fear or guilt, but no, wait it out.  Who would notice, anyway?

My husband is used to me being quiet or chatty, and doesn’t get unsettled if I am off by myself either emotionally or spiritually.
I thought about D, completely devoted to the pursuit of self realisation, seemingly sure of his path, with a guru and long periods spent in ashrams, and C, a Christian with faith in God.

Should I be doing more?  I wondered.  Should I be more focussed on ‘the quest’ or associated practices, do something more ‘formal’ rather than this strange and ever changing way of mine?  But at the same time, feeling spiritual and sensory overload.

Maybe it’s all part of the same thing for me.  I knew there was a reason I’m walking round wearing a huge Om, it’s to remind me, not for others, about the different levels of consciousness, or rather the different places that our consciousness resides in.

Maybe I experience ‘the absolute state’ via experiencing the world through the five senses?  I can’t do any more, but maybe I don’t need to do any more.

‘Every enlightenment has its own melody,’ as R from Switzerland said.

It doesn’t feel like anything, not bliss or joy, although that comes on the way, it’s a clear minded observance, awareness (Osho emphasised being in a state of awareness), above pleasure and pain (the Worldly Winds described in Buddhism).

The hot windowless room of the guesthouse in Pondicherry was not conducive to writing, or maybe it was my emotional/spiritual state.  Plus we didn’t feel that well.  We’d been eating at different places in Chennai and had also been quite casual about drinking the water off the table even at new places, saying no to the bottles often offered to foreigners and drinking the free water* everywhere like locals.  Maybe we’d been too cavalier.  One of the catchphrases of the Pondicherry trip was coming out of the toilet and saying, ‘Well that wasn’t normal!’

Or maybe I just needed a break.  I am not that good at taking breaks though.  I didn’t do much actual writing except making notes, but I did stay up late reading blogs.  WordPress was especially inspiring and I was almost overloaded with things to think about.

I read a blog about family influences, about the process of working out the influences that have come from our parents, and which to keep and which to strip away.  I read a blog about not having any friends, and had a dream where I realised, ‘No one likes me.’ ‘No one likes me, and that’s okay.’  Really feeling, accepting and at peace with this realisation.  (Which isn’t actually true) ‘The most terrifying thing of all is to accept oneself completely.’  (Jung).  The next day I woke up and discovered that it was friendship day.

Those first couple of days in Pondicherry I was reflective, almost over inspired.  Engaging with other bloggers in the comments sections helped me, as it often does, to clarify my own thoughts:

I still over pressurise myself now re writing vs experiencing and going to see stuff vs just being.  But my focus now is, what benefits me, what strengthens my centre, what do I really want above all else and nothing else is going to distract me?  (For me, finish the fxxxing book, and self realisation, which may be the same thing?)  Which means I am unfit and look a mess and haven’t learnt any other language (other than a few words), but all of that is a price so very, very worth paying.

… the spiritual journey thing can become a kind of trap; it makes you think you should get somewhere, that where you are isn’t okay or enough.  Realising that you are already there, and that there’s nothing to find, that it isn’t all high bliss and blazing lights, (although that can come on the way, it’s not the aim I don’t think, although people are so focussed on chasing happiness and pleasure) it’s a calm clear awareness, an observy kind of state.  The hard bit is carrying it through into daily life, when things irritate, or the body is sick etc. 

I agree with Osho saying, ‘Don’t seek don’t knock, just be still and it will come,’ and Krishnamurty who said it’s all about getting to know yourself, and Buddhism, which says there’s nothing to find re sense of self, re who you really are, and with Bojack Horseman’s Diane who says, ‘I don’t think there is any deep down, there’s just what you do.’  Here’s to another day of observing and trying to iron out the kinks, after a day of calm observing mixed with mindless eating of cakes!

Where am I at?  Just stop trying.  Remember that you are both already there…  All you have to do is realise it.  Don’t get distracted re new development activities.  E.g. working out which traits inherited from parents and which deliberately abandoned, which opposing ones adopted, which to keep, even though that would be a great exercise.  Or reflecting on friendships and the ‘well of loneliness’… (also like re the book, I don’t get distracted by submitting articles or trying to get freelance work, that can be done later.  I don’t even read at the moment, although I have many things I would read if I did, I have a reading list.  (Okay I have names of books and authors scribbled randomly within the pages of my notebook))

Just stop trying.

It doesn’t feel like anything (sometimes).  But sometimes it does:  An orange cat sitting on a wall in a warm dusty alleyway, or the light glittering on the raindrops on the shutters of my room.

It doesn’t feel the same as four years ago when I was meditating and reading and seeking.  It’s in daily life now as opposed to a separate spiritual practice.  Now it’s all integrated and more stable.  All that seeking was to get here, and now we’re here (for now).

What does it look like?  Peaceful, stable, with moments of illumination.  Interspersed with dark nights of the soul, keeping the faith, and all turning out okay.  Guilt, and permission to be happy.  That’s my desert-without-water.

It means living in the moment, fully, then letting go (Thank you to Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha for this).  Act silly, make a joke, snuggle up with my husband.  Eat something nice.

Use all experiences to reinforce my centre.  Do not allow others to destabilise it.

In quiet moments I sat on the invisible step and looked through the railings into the alleyway below.  I thought how I had travelled there, how I had the room, money, a plan for what I was doing next.  I thought about creating a little pocket of safety.  I thought about should it be more edgy, is it too easy?  I thought about how even people in more edgy environments would still have little pockets of stillness like this, a place to sit and at least eat safely, a place to sleep.  (I’m always comparing myself unfavourably to others; hard core backpackers, war correspondents.  I know, weird huh?)  I thought that if I have that, a safe place to sleep, and somewhere to sit and have a quiet moment, I am okay.

The other catchphrase of the Pondicherry spell was in restaurants after eating, ‘Well it wasn’t brilliant food was it?’  A lot of the food was fusion or Indian food with a European twist and we didn’t enjoy it that much.  We got excited about a shop almost next door to the guesthouse that sold dried fruit and nuts, soya milk and health food type items.  I drank almost a whole big carton of soya milk in one go.  One day I bought hummus, crisps and fancy lemonade for lunch.  Everything was expensive, and none of it tasted particularly nice.

Meeting the Yoga teacher in Chennai, who was so surprised that I did yoga; meeting the Italian man who asked us if we were right-wing (we’re not, if I have to say it); and the covering up, and wearing of ill-fitting or unflattering clothes that weren’t always my style in India, triggered yet another minor identity crisis.  I read somewhere that style was about saying who you are without words.  Really?  Maybe?  Yet at the same time, I can feel myself dissolving under these sartorial experiments.  Playing with sense of self, identity…  Being here, that is the work.

We saw Indian women tourists in Pondicherry in short dresses and shorts, albeit near the beach, but I decided to relax my self-imposed modest dress code a little while we were there.  My husband supports me whatever I do, but I know that he thinks I am overly covered up sometimes.

So I went for a walk by myself wearing my lungi dress- above the knee, with side slits- without loose black trousers underneath and without a scarf over my shoulders.  I had got so used to walking around with trousers and a scarf that I felt half-naked and vulnerable.  I walked down the road and to the park, feeling a little self-conscious.  I saw no one dressed in as little as me, then at the park, although there were people around and it was daytime and there was a policeman outside the gate, I still felt uncomfortable.  This could have just been me, I get anxious, you could say I have anxiety except I haven’t been diagnosed or labelled; anyway I get paranoid the drop of a hat.  I didn’t stay long, came home, put some trousers on and grabbed my scarf.

We went to the beach at Pondicherry which was completely different to Chennai beach.  It was very clean, no rubbish, bins everywhere, and a new looking wide pedestrianised boulevard.  There was a beautiful statue of Gandhi.  There were lots of Indian tourists, well off looking; we saw lots of expensive looking gold sarees.  We sat on a low wall between the boulevard and the beach.  We saw a little Indian owl like in Panaji.  I drank takeaway coffee that tasted bitter.  I foolishly said hi to some kids selling plastic tat and then they wouldn’t leave us alone until we got up to leave.

(My favourite shop window in Pondicherry, or possibly, ever!)

We went to a big weekly street market.  The length of a big main street was lined with stalls selling leather belts, parts for cars, all kinds of everyday household items and products and clothes including God dresses, gold gowns and dresses that looked like little girls’ princess dresses in adult sizes.  In the street I saw a woman wearing a floor length fairy tale gown of red and white net with red velvet applique flowers.

Plastic animal face masks were sold on stalls and in bunches like balloons by street sellers.  The smell of coffee, citrus fruit, and occasionally toilet smells.

It was the first time I had seen women’s underwear since leaving the UK.  First plain white then padded bras in bright colours with polka dots and slinky night dresses.

My husband bought pants (underpants), they had a pocket in them!  The man explained that that, plus the top pocket in the short-sleeved shirts that India men wear, was where Indian men kept their money and their phones, as they wear lungis that are essentially a piece of material and so has no pockets.  D told us that some Indian women sew a tiny pouch into the tucked in end of their saree and that is where they keep their money.  The man on the stall explained how money was safer in the pants pocket as it could fall out of the top shirt one when you bend over to pray.  Later my husband tried on his pants and put his mobile phone in the pocket.  It did indeed seem safe and ideal.  He even thought about keeping the passports there!

Pondicherry streets were a mixture.  Down one side pretty coloured buildings with intricate lattice iron work, on the other side grey and dusty concrete, people living in very basic pavement dwellings.  Metal grills like big drain covers propped to make ramps at kerbs and pavements, outside shops and restaurants, like in Chennai.  Chalk rangoli patterns decorated the pavements outside shops, like in Kanyakumari.

We didn’t go to the temple that the Italian man we’d met at Broadlands in Chennai had recommended.  We went to a different one, that Y had suggested.  We didn’t feel like going to more than one, involving as it did a trip in a taxi.

If we go everywhere people recommend we won’t have any space to just be spontaneous and discover things for ourselves.  We both really enjoy just discovering the local area, getting to know the shopkeepers a little, the guesthouse staff, and just being there in the immediate surroundings and the place that we are staying in.

We went to the temple at Chidambaram.  Chidambaram is where the God Lord Shiva is represented as Cosmos.  That, plus the fact that Y had recommended it, was why I chose it.  The temple that the Italian man had recommended, Tiruvanramalay, is dedicated to Shiva as Fire.  Kanchipuram, not far from Chennai, is for Shiva as Earth.

The driver stayed with us and took us around.  This was good in that it meant we didn’t accidentally walk in a wrong area or the wrong way, but bad in that he whisked us around so fast we could barely take anything in.  He’d been there maybe thirty times before, he said.  He didn’t have enough English to explain things so we didn’t know what we were looking at.

We were called over by two monks who gave us a blessing and asked us to write our names in the visitors book, then asked us for money.  We gave money, we would have done anyway, for our visit.  The monks blessed only us, and asked only us to write our names, even though our driver was the only one who was a Hindu, which I felt a bit uncomfortable with.

The temple was made of several buildings, each one incredible to look at, and beautifully coloured.  I could stand and look at one area for hours and still not take it in; sensory overload, again.

We came outside and sat in the shade on the stone floor of the grounds.  I went for a little walk across the courtyard by myself.  People and cows were asleep under the cool stone walkways.  I stood and soaked up the sight of blue sky above a row of gold minarets, and below, a beautiful white cow statue.  Those two sights alone filled me to the brim with beauty.

The evening before the temple trip an important political figure died in a Chennai hospital, he was a much loved ex Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu.  In India each state has its own political parties and Chief Minister.  We had been out for a very late lunch/early tea, we’d eaten light as we’d intended to eat again later.  On our way back we saw that the street was almost dark and the metal shutters of shops and restaurants were half closed or closed.  We thought at first there was a power cut.  In Chennai the power had been scheduled to be off from nine am to five pm for maintenance.

We got back to the guesthouse, several men were gathered in the lobby.  The guesthouse staff explained what had happened and advised us to go out and buy bread, as there would be nothing open that evening or the next day.  We went back out and joined many others in a shopping rush.  The restaurants were already closed, but from street stalls and shops we bought nuts, biscuits, crisps, bananas and water.  Within an hour everything had closed.

Literally overnight there appeared framed photographs on tables, with flower garlands and coconut shells, like little shrines.  Huge billboard posters of the Minister’s face and shoulders, some with huge real flower garlands hung around his neck.  A level of adoration UK politicians could only dream of.

In the morning we checked out of the guesthouse as planned, intending to go to the temple and then get our bus back to Chennai.  We got a message confirming that the temple trip was still going ahead, but in the car on the way to the temple we got a message saying that the bus to Chennai had been cancelled as part of the closures.  We asked the driver if he’d take us to Chennai, he said it was too dangerous, that later would be better.  His manager said he could arrange for us to be taken back by another driver later on, but we’d still have a few hours to kill in Pondicherry.

When we got back to Pondicherry we met some Westerners that were trying to get back to Chennai, they decided to get a rickshaw to a halfway point and stay there the night, they said that people had thrown stones at taxis in Chennai (for being disrespectful by working).  We didn’t want to stay in Pondicherry,  which we hadn’t liked much for a fifth night and were eager to get back to Chennai, which we loved.  Everything was closed, there was nowhere even to go to the loo.  We asked the guesthouse if we could rent a room for just a couple of hours but they said they would charge a whole day.  We weren’t prepared to do that, the room wasn’t very nice and it had been at the top end of our budget anyway.

We sat on a big concrete step at the side of the road around the corner from the guesthouse, with our bags of snacks and our backpacks and wondered what to do.  Just then a taxi pulled up on the opposite side of the road.  We asked the driver if he’d take us to Chennai.  We told him what we had heard and asked him if it were safe.  He asked us which area we were going to, he called a guesthouse in that area and then said yes, it was okay to go.

*usually comes from big bottles like gym water bottles, or is carefully boiled tap water.  But if it isn’t a regular place you visit you don’t always know if it is okay for you.

Next up, Chennai Part Four, then Thailand.

Travel update

Koh Phangan, Thailand.  We moved from Haad Rin, party bit, North to Thong Sala which is more of a proper town and our place is right on the beach and very quiet.  Tomorrow we move further North to the yoga and vegan area.  About a week later I will travel to Bangkok and then to Tokyo.  My husband is going to Cambodia, and we are meeting again in Kolkatta, India on 1st October.

In a bar the other night I caught the end of an advert for India.  ‘Find the incredible you…  Incredible India.’  Amen.  See you soon, India.

Writing update

This week I worked on this piece, everyday except Saturday, day off, and Tuesday, when we went to Koh Samui to extend our visas.  I have more to add in from notes and notebook that I didn’t have time to put in this week, that can be added in later for the book.  These drafts on the blog are a great way of me testing things out and your feedback is much appreciated!!  It shows me what is working well and what needs fuller explanation or description.  Dear Indian readers please forgive me if I make mistakes, and feel free to correct me.

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

 

 

Agonda beach

Tags

Agonda, Goa, India, Travel

We book one night ahead on booking.com then choose somewhere to move onto in person.  We got a taxi to Agonda from Colva (about an hour), we could have got a bus but I needed the  journey to be as fast and as comfortable as possible.  It was a wonderful journey, through small towns and villages, past tree covered mountains (possibly hills, but coming from super flat Norfolk, England, they look like mountains to me) and lots and lots of cows some with big curly horns (I love cows).  All the windows were down and the car was filled with a lovely breeze.

And then we were in Agonda.  Agonda and Colva are as different as Southwold and Great Yarmouth (for UK readers only sorry).  We arrived too early to check in (we had got up early to travel before it got really hot) so we went and sat in one of the many beach front bar/restaurants and had breakfast (toast and ginger tea).

Whearas in Colva and in Delhi I had been marooned in a hot hotel room during the hottest part of the day (which is most of the day, to be honest), here I realised I could be ‘outside’ (under shade) and with the breeze blowing in off the sea it was entirely bearable.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief.  Earlier that day in the hot hotel room in Colva I had envisioned months of being shut in a room all day.  Good for writing productivity, but there are limits.  I had been very apprehensive of going to India, or anywhere in South East Asia, at this time.  Most people go to India between November and February, when it is not so hot.  But if we’re going to be out for a year, we are going to be in the hottest time at some point.  And we had to go when we could go, i.e. when the house sold, and with all the obstacles that the matrix seemed to put up I wasn’t inclined to wait a moment longer to leave.

Agonda is touristy, but in a palm trees, beautiful sandy beach, luxury holiday look kind of way.  The beach is long and framed at each end by green lush tree covered mountains (?hills).  Our beach hut had a veranda that was shaded and cool enough to sit out on even in the middle of the day.  The owner said, don’t worry that it’s hot inside in the day, at night it will be okay.  And it was.  It was the first time I had slept under a mosquito net.  We would have happily stayed there but it was fully booked, so my husband went off and found us an (even better!) place.  Up high, reached from some steps, more space in the room, and a big cool veranda shaded with palm trees.  And right on the beach.  We are staying here for two weeks.

I was so relieved to unpack (I am such a homebody, but can make myself at home easily too), and do things like cut my nails and wax my face and floss my teeth properly.  (I still haven’t shaved my legs yet though, if I put it off much longer I’ll need a lawnmower.)

The beach huts are amazing.  I had imagined beach huts like we get in English seaside towns, but these are more like wooden chalets, with proper washrooms and everything, and the incredible thing is that they aren’t allowed to stay here permanently so they get dismantled at the end of April.  I wondered how they go about that, do they label all the bits, or do they just know?  I struggle to remember how to put my tent up once a year.

I once wrote an utterly heartfelt review on Amazon for Eat Pray Love, my bible for many years.  I had read that book seven times, written notes in it, folded over almost every page…  I knew I was genuine, so when someone commented, ‘This review is as pretentious as the book itself,’ it only made me laugh rather than hurt my feelings.

The first day here I did a bit of yoga out on the veranda (too hot indoors), using a rug from in the room, and then without even thinking about it just dropped into meditation, sitting half against the door jamb, resting after a set of one of those super strong hip opener poses (sleeping swan, half pigeon?), pulling the ends of the rug so as to buffer my ankle bones from the wooden floor.  I adjusted my position to be straight against the wall, but otherwise I was right there, for quite a while, despite the fact that I haven’t meditated for ages.

This wasn’t meditation aimed at or coming from a religious or spiritual angle, although it would probably be best described by the Buddhist meditation ‘Just sitting’, because I did nothing other than just check in with myself, deep inside.  And what I noticed was fear.  Fearful breathing, anyway, which I took to mean there’s fear there, or that fear is the thing going on for me, deep inside.  I had recently, possibly even only the day before, read a blog post by Alexander Bell about how if you calm your breathing so it isn’t fearful, then you won’t feel fear.  Try as I might though, my breathing remained shallow, tight, almost painful, and seemed to get worse the more I focussed on it.  So I remembered what the post had said about if you have a pounding heartbeat, just observe it, and observing it will naturally calm it.  I didn’t have a pounding heartbeat, but I used this approach for my breathing, and eventually, at last, I broke through to a place where I felt at peace, no fear.  As often used to happen to me in meditation, images came to mind; me opening a door, only to drop down an empty lift shaft and arrive, on a seat, in a room, and then again, somewhere different.

We’ve done a lot of moving about, and I’m a real homebody as I said.  I’ve hardly even been on holiday, and coupled with the pre leaving stress, it’s not surprising there’s fear in me.  And of course I’ve been sick, but then tummies are emotional too aren’t they?

(Just in case I sound pretentious here, writing about doing yoga and meditating on a beach hut veranda in Goa, please know that I did this on the train from Norwich to Nottingham (the meditation) and yoga in any hotel room I’ve been in with work in the UK using a towel or a jumper.)

We’ve had three nights here, and each day I have got up at 6.30 or 7am, had a paddle and a walk on the beach, a walk to the shops before it gets too hot, before retreating to the balcony/indoors for a siesta until the evening.  This is much better than sleeping late as you get to experience more time outside.  Also the beach in the morning is amazing, with incredible (must be teachers) people doing yoga, it is awesome what they can do with their bodies.

For my part, a short walk in the waves and/or a few stretches in the afternoon is all I can manage at present.  Today is day seven of traveller’s diarrhoea and today my husband took a Tuk Tuk to Palolem to go to the chemist and came back with gut flora and strong antibiotics for me.  He has looked after me all the way through and apart from the first night in Delhi when I went out to buy fruit and this morning when I went to the very nearby shops to buy water, juice and crisps (rehydration, sugars and salts) and fresh local bananas (potassium), I haven’t done anything on my own.  I also haven’t always been that nice, and I am realising how much I hurt my husband’s feelings when I get annoyed about stuff he has or hasn’t said or done, when all he is doing is looking after me.  But I don’t often know until later what it is I am unhappy about, and then I struggle to express it.  I tend to come across as annoyed when in fact I am feeling overwhelmed or vulnerable, I just don’t like to admit it.

A couple of times recently, if I’d stopped and thought about it, I could have said, that’s a great idea but I can’t manage that just yet.  Or, actually, can you come with me, I’d rather not be on my own.  In that way I am literally like a chicken, they are prey animals, therefore they don’t show their vulnerabilities.  I don’t like to feel, let alone admit to, feelings of pressure/ inability to deliver, shame, or fear of abandonment.  In other ways I am like a child, if I get sad my tummy hurts more, and I’ll seek comfort and attention by describing my physical ailments.   We are both much worse and much better than we realise, is a Buddhist quote I read about becoming more aware of ourselves.  India has a lot to teach me, which is good, because I have a lot to learn.

My husband has just started doing a vlog, if you want to check it out here is the link.

Thank you very much for reading!

Lots of love

Rachel xxxx

Instagram followingthebrownrabbit

 

 

No More Advice!

Tags

spirituality

The thing about self improvement is to know when to stop.*

When I was into Buddhism I learned about the Worldly Winds of Praise and Blame and so I do try to take praise lightly, understanding that it is only of its moment.

The reference I got from my first job described me as ‘unfailingly friendly and helpful’.   At my appraisal a couple of weeks ago my manager said I had tackled every problem with a calm, assured approach.  Both these descriptions pleased me very much.  The first one is nice, if a bit Golden Retriever-ish, and the second, well, if before I aimed to please, more recently my main aim has been to remain calm.  Maybe that doesn’t sound like a lot of fun, but perhaps it was an inbetween stage, between wanting to please and how I feel right now.

I have felt in touch with the calm stillness within, but the past few days I’ve felt something else, something more solid.  A strength, a power.  So if before I valued feeling calm, now I value feeling strong.  ‘Be the boulder’ is a phrase that keeps popping into my mind.  And ‘Why feel good when you can feel really great?’

And part of this is taking a break from being told what to do, or even listening to suggestions of any kind (re the ‘spiritual path’, I’ll still take advice on car maintenance or Excel).  After all, I know what to do right now:  paint the skirting boards, paint the cubby hole.  Not only that, having been through a phase of exploring, listening to opinions on everything from cutting my hair to the energy in and out of cat stroking, I just feel I want a bit of space to explore this for myself.

In the past I have oscilated between what I have called theory and practice, or immersion and integration.  Falling off the path, getting back on it again.  Following new people, philosophies or practices to get me back on again, then wanting to go it alone again, falling off the path until a new person or philosophy sparks my interest…  You get the picture.  I don’t think I would fall back to sleep again now, but I suppose one can never be sure…

*This is the title of a blog, I didn’t read it so I don’t know if it’s a joke or not.  And although I kind of agree with the sentiment right now, I am sure I will be back on it again before too long.

 

The story so far

Tags

dreams, gratitude, Law of Attraction, meditation, reality, religion, spirit, spirituality, therapy, writing

So simple, so amazing: a journey into awareness

Chapter 1:  The story so far

 

A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.  Franz Kafka   

For Book, you can substitute Love.  This is my story:

 

In 2009 I drove to work in the morning and watched the pink and gold sky split open.  Driving home in the evening I passed outrageously lit up lorries that looked like fun fair rides.  Somehow I managed to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible.  For the next six years, I followed the trail.  I always joke that it was like Eat Pray Love but without the travel.

I meditated and felt as if my skin was being bathed in soap and soft water.  I saw situations worked out from behind my closed eyelids.  I had the most amazing physical sensations.  I took up Yoga.  I had deep tissue massage and experienced profound physical and emotional release as she worked my knots out until her fingers got down to my bones.

I practiced Paganism and Wicca, I went for walks and stared at leaves, gathered foliage, wrote spells and held rituals every full moon for almost a year.  I was invited to a women and Islam open day.  I bought books and began praying five times a day.  For a few weeks my life was illuminated.

I chanted the Hare Krishna Mantra every morning for three months.  Things led on from each other.  I felt purified, and wanted to feel even better.  I had trouble with someone at work.  In meditation I said, I have no protection against this person.  The answer came: oh yes you do, you have this.

I did an evening class in Buddhism.  Stepping out onto the top floor of the car park after class, the sky filled with birds, the breeze cool and warm at the same time.  Listening to The Stone Roses on the way home:  This is the one, this is the one she’s waited for, yes, I thought, yes, this is it.  But no sooner had I filled the house with Buddhas than I woke up one day and realised I had burned through that as well.  Or it had burned through me, whatever.

I read The Secret and practiced The Law of Attraction.  Not to get cheques in the post or to get parking spaces, but just because it made life easy and more beautiful.  Simple things like walking up to a crossing and it turns green just as I get there.  To the sublime:  Arriving home one night I pulled into the car park, and in the second before I turned into the parking space the headlights lit up the hedge in front of me and I saw a mouse on a branch.   A mouse on a branch!   Almost immediately, the thought came into my head:  I hope you enjoyed that, because it won’t happen again.  I thought straight back, yeah, I did enjoy it, and no, I don’t expect it to happen again, who would.  And I don’t need it to happen again, because I saw it the first time.

As well as experiencing anything and everything I was also searching for a spiritual or scientific explanation that made sense to me.   A unifying theory, if you like.   After about six years of searching it arrived in my mind fully realised in a dream:  we’re all green mist, we created these bodies because without bodies we can’t pick up a pen and write poetry or kiss each other.  But the kissing and the poetry are so distracting that we forgot that we’re green mist come down for a human experience…  but maybe that’s the point.  You can’t enjoy a party if you stand at the door with your coat on and maybe spiritual beings can’t enjoy a human experience on earth unless they fall in feet first and forget their previous incarnation….

I woke up on the massage table as if I had just arrived there and looked at this new person in the mirror:  hair everywhere, skin glowing, mind wiped clean of all previous concerns.  But you wake up again every moment, and in this moment I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be than right here.

Chapter 9 Discernment

Tags

Art, depression, dreams, family, gratitude, happiness, healing, Law of Attraction, love, marriage, meditation, mental health, mindfulness, reality, relationships, religion, spiritual awakening, spiritual healing, spirituality, therapy, writing

Call off the Search:  How I stopped seeking and found peace

Chapter 9 Discernment 

Last night

Two episodes of House of Cards and then he puts my hand on his trousers and we have sex on the couch and I swear it was exactly like being on MDMA but with no side effects, no horrible head fucking thoughts.  It felt like being in a film, so turned on it was surreal, happy MDMA-type tears, eyes watering by themselves.  I said afterwards, ‘I went somewhere else’.  The light, the room, juddering and flicking from side to side like it does when you’ve taken a ton of MDMA and him going up the stairs to bed saying what we were both thinking, ‘Who needs drugs’.  We haven’t spoken about it since but oh my God, proof of everything, if we needed it. 

We’d spent most of 2015 completely straight:  no drugs, no alcohol, I had also given up caffeine, John had also given up sugar.  And then the Buddhism wore off…

But at its height it (Buddhism) felt ironically like being on drugs (high after class, the air cool and warm at the same time).  We both realised it was over at the same time.  We were standing in the kitchen by the backdoor and both realised we didn’t want to do the next class after all (we had planned to do the year long foundation course).  John said, we burn through things quickly now don’t we?  I had just bought him all this Buddhist stuff (we still have a Buddha in almost every room of the house) but neither of us were offended about the other suddenly going off it.

Shortly afterwards I went out to dinner with a friend and tried to explain, referencing Krishnamurti (don’t follow anyone) and John and Yoko (I don’t believe in magic, mantra, etc.)

‘It sounds like you’ve gone through some kind of enlightenment,’ she said and then asked, ‘are you still vegetarian?’

I was puzzled, thinking, it’s not that I’ve given up on awareness, and once you have it you have it.

Suddenly it just seemed pointless, the rigid no drinking at all, no caffeine, even the Buddhist teacher had said it doesn’t necessarily mean no wine can pass your lips, it’s just about not being intoxicated.  It’s a barrier between me and friends who drink, so I decided that the day we went to another friend’s I would have a coffee and some wine.  We made dinner while we got a bit drunk and we couldn’t mash the potatoes because they were still raw and it was all a bit chaotic for a bit.  Maybe just one glass of wine is good for me now.  And then when I went out the other night with friends I had  a glass of wine, felt better re barriers, they were drunk, and we all got on really well, and I felt really relaxed.

So how does that lead onto MDMA?  The MDMA is me, wanting that again, we both were, but now he is talking about never doing it again, maybe we just needed to remind ourselves we can if we like, maybe.  Or just remind ourselves what it is like, the good and the bad- 3 or 4 days recovery. No music, singing along to YouTube, lying paralysed, naked and sweating.  Marrying you was the best thing I ever did with my life.  Or for my life:  it gives me all this freedom, and it gives me excitement and bad boy tendencies without the angst and drama that wrecks and destabilises lives.

MDMA is like a searchlight, but this time at last there was nothing to find, we lay in each other’s arms on the couch, for an extended period with no tv, film or music, just us, talking, and aside from a bit of smutty sharing of sexual fantasies, there were no surprises, no dark secrets or hidden longings to discuss, no marriage, no children, no family secrets, no adolescent incidents of previously paralysing shame to heal….  It wasn’t boring by any means:  it was wonderful, that we could be so free, relaxed and spacious, but at the same time, have we reached a clearing, a clear place?  So maybe we can give it up now?  Certainly, we have had sex sober that was every bit as amazing as sex on MDMA, and with us both entirely present in every way, from the cerebral to the mundane to the spiritual to the tantric ecstatic.

We said at the time, we should make time for this: lying together, smelling each other, just love, no conversations re kids etc., and if you can have a spiritual drug free rave and get high with strangers and no drugs, surely we should be able to do it alone in our house? 

 Well I guess we already did, last night.  Sometimes you have an idea and realise you’ve already executed it, like life or the forces of life were faster than your ideas and imagination, which I guess is often or maybe always the case but doesn’t always get realised….

Christmas 2015: slacking off re caffeine, chocolate, sugar, alcohol and drugs and then realising I actually prefer life as it was:  getting stoned really stoned once or twice after not doing it is great, and sex was amazing, but doing it every nights for four nights, it wears thin, and leads to eating chocolate, and being sluggish next day, sleeping in and being too lazy to do exercise.  I prefer walking and doing yoga every day with the occasional blow out.  It’s the same re the internet and facebook, food, shopping and time- discernment and awareness is the key. 

Christmas

Thinking about what it would take for me to enjoy it- what do I enjoy that could be done at Christmas?

Things I enjoy or that make me feel good that with some effort, dedication and single mindedness I can do in spite of Christmas:  a Yoga class on YouTube, an hour long walk, eating healthy-ish, even doing a bit of writing- just a snatched half an hour while everyone goes out  (this is probably not even so much about the writing but about having a little oasis of alone time during the festivities)

Things I like about Christmas that go on anyway and I can just join in with: not going to work Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon, drinking Baileys at any time of day, staying up late watching films with my step son, sleeping in, eating whenever and whatever I like (contradicts previous bit I know!)

Funny things such as realising for what seems like the first time, why people/a person/me might enjoy Christmas:  the change of routine, the party atmosphere, the laying around, drinking, not having to go to work, holidays.  Ignore the shopping and the stress and the religiosity/consumerism debates, the hand wringing, the sad stories and the stress.  Just look at the lights and think of chocolate.

(I haven’t written any Christmas cards, nor did I last year, and possibly the year before.  I used to make them all by hand and deliver them on foot!)

‘The family that I have chosen’, I said on Boxing Day when I crashed through the door, falling on the couch with a bottle of Baileys and all family visits done.

Friendship

Looking through my old, much scribbled in address book at all the names that are no longer a part of my life;  old landlords, hairdressers, work contacts, book clubs I am no longer in, people who have died, people I have lost touch with, people I never really was in touch with…  Hopeful contacts, someone I met at work that I thought might have become a friend.  People I’d met through work who once the work finished I never saw.  People who I had been to their house once: a mum at the school, who invited me to her house for lunch, she cooked lasagne, we saw each other now and again but didn’t really become close.  The doctor from work who invited me and my boyfriend for dinner with her lawyer husband in their huge barn conversion.  We were too in awe to return the invitation.  Some relationships hopeful, some forced, some I wonder about calling, I think they would be happy to see me, but wonder if we really have anything still, or maybe just feeling awkward that it’s been so long.  Others I know I will not call- it never was anything, and I am happy to let them go.  And some of course long standing friends that I am still in touch with even after all these years.

The point of all this rambling and reflection is that I have always had some difficulties/concerns around friendships- namely, that I haven’t got enough, that I don’t call people enough (although actually with the exception of one or two people I don’t think any of them ever call me), and I often don’t feel myself with them.  Or that I don’t know what sort of friends are me, or that I want.  Because I haven’t known who I am, how can I expect to know what friends I should have?  And how can I expect other people to know me when I don’t know myself?

Looking back I have felt so awkward with a lot of these people, it’s surprising we are still friends.  When I lived in a council flat I felt awkward just going to anyone’s who had a reasonable house.  I overcompensated: when I was in a middle class book club in Norwich I remember one night it was my turn to host it at my flat.  Only one person came, and there was all this cheese, I must have spent twenty pounds on cheese alone.  I understand now that my attitude must have created something of a barrier.  But I also think that maybe I have struggled to meet people who I really click with because I haven’t really clicked with myself.

One of the side effects of a spiritual awakening is loneliness within your friendships.  I don’t need to talk about it anymore, but I needed to when it was first happening to me.  I told one friend that it felt like a miracle, meeting John, and she said yes, I think it is a miracle, which was nice.  Several friends read my book, and put up with me.  But still, it’s not the same when your friends are not going through the same thing and I often felt worse for trying to explain what was happening as I just sounded crazy.  Nowadays I have a few people I can talk to, as they have discovered it since and some have come to me or come into my life and talked about it, but back then it was only me, and John.  Not that I want to be with the really ‘out there’ people either- I want the down to earth.  Which is why it was so nice at Yoga, the healing, with Kim and Melinda, feeling instantly comfortable, they are both down to earth and into healing.  They don’t wear robes or anything, are not false or pretentious or over the top.   I don’t need to find people that believe in exactly the same things, I just need people who have an awareness of something else, but in a genuine, quiet way, not in a provocative or statement way.

It’s well reported on that during or in a spiritual journey it can be lonely; you can feel disconnected from your friends, you can even feel critical of them, of their negativity, of their asleep ness, of the fact that they don’t have  a spiritual practice and of the fact that they don’t ‘get you’.  But aside from the advice of the Dali Lama which is that it is more useful to identify a single shortcoming in yourself than a hundred in others, which I will endeavour to remember, your friends have every right to feel at least as disappointed in you as you do in them, after all, they haven’t done anything wrong, they haven’t changed.  You, on the other hand, could be seen to have to a certain extent abandoned them.

Sometimes I visit a good friend and feel distant, unable to connect.  I feel more connected with a person I just met on my yoga class and the thought flits through my mind of abandoning all my friends and making new ones.

Sometimes I just have my usual old problem of not really planning or living my days according to my needs:  I make a list of friends like a to do list, contact everyone, do loads of visiting, regret the time alone I lost.  (I have read since that as your vibration level rises, or your frequency rises, friends do sometimes fall away.  Also, that you don’t desire to see people as much, and need more time alone.)

Other times I visit an old friend, feel relaxed and connected, talk about all sorts of things including politics (her topic) and healing (mine).  I maybe meet her halfway by raising politics (a subject I normally avoid like the plague) re getting active with food cycle, and she maybe meets me halfway by having healing, getting into it and talking about feeling a spiritual shift.

This ‘process’ I am going through is having a cleansing and purifying effect; spring cleaning me, applying search and destroy, finding residual issues to work on.  ‘It’ works in a different way to worry, where the mind skates around, looking for things, real and imaginary, to worry about.  This works on an unconscious level so that, for example, when I need to work on my thoughts, I pick up a book and open it at the ‘thought lab’ page containing everyday thought exercises.  I keep it open there for weeks, and when I do pick it up to look at other exercises, all the other things I find are so totally not me that I scurry back to the thought lab page and leave it open there in the bathroom for another few weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chapter 7: Buddhism

Tags

Art, healing, marriage, meditation, mental health, mindfulness, reality, relationships, religion, solitude, spirituality, therapy, Work, writing

Call off the Search:  How I stopped seeking and found peace

Chapter 7:  Buddhism

Throughout January and February I meditated almost every morning with the Hare Krishna mantra, following the visit to the temple on New Year’s Eve.  The advantage of this mantra is that even if you get distracted, even if your mind wanders whilst you are doing it, as long as you keep saying it, you are still doing it; and what you are doing is chanting God’s name.  I was too worried about the neighbours and self conscious about my own voice to chant aloud so I did it in my head, which probably doesn’t help with distraction as if you say it aloud, enunciating each syllable clearly, it is more to hang onto.   But still, I credit the Hare Krishna mantra with the purification and development I experienced during these two months:  my counselling, working on my OCD, maybe even John getting into Buddhism and us giving up drugs for the best part of a year, who knows, a lot happened from those two months.

In March John started a course in Buddhism, bringing home information sheets to read which I fell on and read each week and we discussed them in preparation for the next week.  They advise don’t start with meditation, as most people do, me included, instead start with the theory and the ethics, then do the meditation, because then you have a framework.  I look back to how crazy I was when I first started meditating, and realise this makes sense.   So on John’s course they didn’t get onto meditation until later, but as they did, I started doing it too.  I switched from the Hare Krishna mantra to Buddhist meditation, one day Metta Bhavna and the other day mindfulness of breathing.

Breathing:

Focus on the breath not the breathing, as you follow it, it quietens and disappears, so you think, what am I following, and then, I’m not breathing, I’d better breathe, and then you are focussing on the act of breathing not on following the breath which you are doing consciously, so you are doing two things at once, actively breathing, and following the breath, which doesn’t work.  So you have to let go, and let the breath be as it is, sometimes big and fast and gasping, sometimes so faint you can hardly find it, and sometimes disappeared or stopped altogether, but you have to trust your body will take care of breathing when and as it needs to.

I started a different Buddhism course a bit later, each week we were given homework, such as The Four Winds (Loss and Gain, Pain and Pleasure, Praise and Blame, Fame and Obscurity):  We were told to pick a pair and focus on that for the week.  I focussed on Loss and Gain, or how I specifically in my life seek to avoid loss and sought to gain:  thinking about mine and other’s air time in conversations; wanting to be asked questions, wanting to ask questions but not asking them, also like praise and blame or fame and obscurity, at my mum’s seeing an old family friend, I wanted to say, look at me, look what I am, look what I’m into, but he just wanted to talk about old age, house prices, people I don’t know, and although he seemed pleased to see me, he was not interested in any of the things I was interested in, and even poured cold water in my plans, (I felt) and I came home in a bad mood.

But it did have a positive effect, the Buddhism course(s):

Before work, John and me had one of those hugs that are really close, well almost all of the hugs he gives me are like that, where he folds me in really tight, and I put my hand on the base of his neck, in between the shoulder blades, where it always feels hot for me, a healing point/love point, and it felt really good, the hug, and I said, ‘things are good’ and he said, ‘yeah, things are good’, and I said, although I didn’t need to, ‘and we’re not even on drugs’.   I went to see my son and as there was no parking at his we went straight to the park and had a walk in the only break in the weather.  I did an extra hour of healing at the mind body spirit fair and even though I’d got up early and been out for hours, I felt relaxed and unpressured.  I went home and made a complicated new vegan meal effortlessly with no stress.

One night after my Buddhism class:

I stepped out of the double door and into the open air of the top floor of the multi-storey car park.  I always park on the top floor, ostensibly for exercise, and while that is true, it’s also because it’s always got plenty of empty spaces and I get anxious about parking.  And at the end of an evening or an afternoon of shopping I like to look at the view, the big sky, the cathedrals, the whirling flocks of birds that always seem to be there.  My husband and son find my choice of parking annoying and always complain about the six flights of stairs or make us go up in the lift.  I do it for me though, for the view, to take away the parking anxiety, to test my fitness, or perhaps, just to give me this moment tonight:

It was cool and warm at the same time, the sky grey with clouds, still light at around 9.30pm.  I paused, leaning on the barriers, looking, and I just thought/felt:  This is it

Earlier, the teacher had said, ‘if you catch Buddhism… but you may not, you may leave this and go off onto something else’, my neighbour said, ‘Islam’, which was funny because I’d been through an Islam phase a few months back.  But I thought, please no…  I wanted to say, ‘Don’t let me be out there again’ (like that bit in When Harry met Sally when the couple say to each other, ‘please say I’ll never have to be out there (dating) again’);  but I am working on not talking as much and certainly not interrupting, so I don’t.

I have tried things:  Islam, Paganism, various different New Age Practices, Hare Krishna , worship of a man, self abasement, therapy, all for three weeks or three months.  It’s over

In the car, I put some music on The Stone Roses:  This is the one, this is the one she’s waiting for.  Windows down, warm cool breeze, lights bright like on MDMA.

Yes, (the clue’s in the title of the book) this turned out to be yet another one of those moments when I think, this is it, I’ve found it, this is the thing, this is what I believe in, that later slips away.  And yet, I don’t regard any of it as a waste of time.  And even though this was one of the strongest incidents in recent times, as the same Buddhist course later taught me, there is nothing to find.

There is nothing permanent, nothing lasts, nothing exists, only interactions.  We all just knock against each other but all our scaffolding stops us connecting properly.  Re finding yourself, your identity, personality, Buddhism says there is nothing to find= Scary.  We are not fixed, we can change= Comforting.  Suffering doesn’t last either.  We do have a ‘relative self’- it’s good to be predictable to children (and patients) etc but with others this can be limiting (e.g. how we behave in our family).  It’s hard to be your (new)self with family as they like to keep you the same.

The death of spiritual ignorance, is when you see things as they really are, e.g. work.  Things are both much better and much worse than you previously thought.

Meditate on our bodies being made of the same things as everything else

Our teacher, in meditation, became aware that a strand of hair, attractive on the head, becomes repulsive in a plate of food.  Same with toenails, she put all her nail clippings and hair onto shrine and thought, is it ‘repulsive’ because it reminds us of death and decay?

The mind changes much more than the body; at least the body persists relatively the same week to week, year to year; whilst the mind changes all the time, likes and dislike change.  Tastes change with Buddhism (me and The News Quiz on Radio 4, I used to think it was funny, suddenly it just seemed mean).  People refine their tastes with Buddhism (or with anything that increases your awareness?)

Meditation:

Where is yourself?  Your self?  In front?  Above?  Colour?  Shape?  Can’t find it?  Because it isn’t anywhere; it doesn’t exist.  (So therefore who did that mean senior manager hurt when she told me off on Friday?  No one).

It is the clinging to the sense of self that causes all the suffering.

Get out of yourself. With more happiness and helping others.  A cause outside of themselves, a musician, artist, all else swept aside in the service of what is.   Really focussed; most people don’t do this and are dissipated.  What is it that we really want and go for it.  Hone in one something.  Realise why we dissipate our energies.

See ways that we let life happen to us rather than directing life in a way that can be more fulfilling.    

Buddhism advocates doing creative things, artistic things, if you decide you can, e.g. live without much money etc.  Self expression is a generous  act.

Homework:

Contemplate impermance

‘The spiritual life is a continual process of purification and elimination of unskilful states.’

‘Our experience is much richer than we realise.  We are much better and much worse than we realise’  Deeper meditation helps to integrate this.

Buddhism helped, but I don’t know about the future…  don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater- this clear awareness is great, don’t mess it up with caffeine, drinking, etc, yoga is good, meditation is probably good.

Everything I’ve done has been part of what got me here, but what got me right here was not meditating for a week or so, and going to bed early.

I’m even wondering if helping others really is all that, maybe it could just be about yourself, and those around you…

Re working, re healing, re thinking up an alternative career:  when do I get to just enjoy life as it is, to do what I’m doing with both feet and not always be thinking I should be doing something else?

So right now, reading this, I feel wistful: I feel, I want to meditate, I want to do the Buddhism course, I want to get back into being spiritual again.  But what would that do?  What do I think that would do?  I could do a load of yoga and meditating, do more healing, whenever I do it it feels so good, I want to focus on that…  But what about the writing, not sure what is happening with that…  How do I get to a place where I can conceptualise what it is I am doing- every time I get to where I think ‘this is it’, it changes, so where is my vantage point?  There isn’t one, or there is, but it shifts from (and form) moment to moment.  Suggestion:  Pick one and write from that?  What is the vantage point that I want to select and choose to write from- with so much choice I can choose one- after Buddhism, when I am into Krishnamurti?  When I am just coming back from practical house selling and working mode?  When I am back to meditating?  When I am reflecting on all the things that have got me here?  All the spiritual processes, yoga, body work, healing, reading, MDMA?

Why not just admit that there’s nowhere else you’d rather be than here:  waking up on the massage table and realising, I am the kind of person who has this in her diary, and this, and this, and does this, and does this, and does this, and laughs at this and cries at this, and cannot watch horror films and is scared of big ships and on and on and on and on… 

Paradoxes: 

• Work going both really well and really badly, as always
• Loving being married at the same time as longing for more time alone
• Ceasing all seeking behaviour yet knowing this is just another ‘thing’ I’m doing on the path
• Happy with life as it is and thinking of new things to do and be

 

Everything is good, you are just making up things to worry about because you are scared of realising how good things are.