Throwback Thursday: The Fairytale Past

Tags

Being a writer, childhood, healing, Memory, Self healing, The 1970s, Trauma, writing

First published in July 2017

The Fairytale Past

Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all.  Maybe I had a lot more agency that I have previously admitted:  because to be honest, a bit of me had realised, realised even at the time, that I did.  I knew I was different, and even in the midst of being humiliated by their I-bet-you-get-all-your-clothes-from-jumble-sales taunts, I felt superior.  I made no effort to fit in.  I remember that time as friendless, and yet it turns out I did have a friend after all:  Miranda, who also went on to become a healer and a yoga person.  I met her again recently at a yoga class, she recognised me and said we used to sit beside the tennis courts and talk, and when we went up to high school and I went to boarding school she was devastated.  ‘I didn’t think I had any friends,’ I said.  ‘Well you did,’ she said, ‘You had me.’

And then I remembered that at junior school I used to stay in at break times with a boy called Keith and work on our stories that we’d been doing in class because we didn’t want to stop writing.  I used to choose to stay indoors and write, instead of going out to play.  So nothing’s changed then, in forty years.

I lived through all that, experienced it all and so I can travel back there to that 1970’s school play ground and take a fresh look.  No time machine required, because my body was there, wasn’t it?  Its imprints are in my body, passed from cell to cell like batons in a relay race.

And later, now I return to my past, to myself with illumination

I sometimes wonder if we as we are now make up our pasts- because they don’t really exist do they, except in our minds.  Why is it that we talk about them?  To make ourselves seem more substantial?   Like John telling people he’s been to India, or me telling people I’ve lived in New Zealand for a year- except last time I met new people I didn’t and just presented myself as I am right now.  As my friend Jane said, it is feelings and how you are that are important.

Wouldn’t we look at ourselves as we are now and make up our pasts exactly as they are?  Me with the Albion Fayres, John with the hard drinking family that made him teetotal and the craziness that made him such a survivor.  Do we look at what we are now and make up a back story that explains it, that offers us an explanation?  (Me:  Sexual appetite and promiscuity= sexual abuse.  Social awkwardness= bullied at school)

What if you were brave enough to offer yourself up (to others and to yourself) without explanation or apology?   What if you were brave enough to live with yourself as you are now- no back story, no past, just living right now in this now moment, this now place?

 

Thank you very much for reading

Like nailing jelly to a wall

Tags

dreams, Getting started, spirituality, Travel, writing

An update on my ‘spiritual position.’

Honestly, working this stuff out is a full time job.  (See previous posts:  The story so far.  Green Mist theory).

If there is a God (and when I say God I am usually referring to a kind of vague yet huge concept that encompasses The Field and The Collective Consciousness; like a kind of golden light or the feeling that you get when looking at a butterfly.  It goes beyond my explorations of different religions and Buddhism and beyond being an omnist (someone who acknowledges the truth of all religions).

What I think right now is this:  If there is a God and God has a plan for me then it’s this:  It’s what I am doing right now.  It’s what I did in the recent lead up (Orientation) and it’s what I intend to do next (go back to the UK, live on a boat for a bit, then go off travelling around the USA*).

Whilst of course being aware that it’s only ever right now, plans change, and that although all this sounds so easy, unless we are going to turn into full time spiritual devotees and only meditate, study spiritual texts, discuss spiritual matters, and eat, sleep and use the bathroom, life as it is distracts us.  As in Journey the East, it is so, so easy to allow oneself to get knocked off the path and for one’s awareness to slip.

* possibly combining it with a DIY book promotion tour with readings at independent bookshops and vegan cafes

My husband and I have been having a lot of talks about the nature of reality, etc etc.  Last Thursday night I couldn’t sleep so I got up and wrote last week’s blog post.  In the morning I finished the blog post and then we talked some more and I came up with my new spiritual position as described above.  I then typed it up and then went to work on the book (can you see where this is going?)  I don’t usually do anything on the book on a Friday, but I thought I had free time as I had got the blog done early (by dint of being awake typing through the night…)

My eyes began to blur and I couldn’t focus.  I tried to push on through but in the end I had to give up.  I laid on the bed and closed my eyes.  All I could see was a bright white, like a blank page on a computer screen, with distorted tool bar icons making a row of triangles across the top.  I took off my t-shirt and put it over my eyes.  I tried to send myself healing and to relax.

It came to me that by overdoing the spiritual talks, not sleeping and overdoing the writing I had triggered some kind of episode in my brain and that my mind was being somehow cleansed and reset.  A feeling of otherworldly peace came over me and for a few moments I thought, I have a choice, mental illness or a higher state of consciousness, I can’t have both.

After a while I got up and felt very strange so I did a load of stuff to ground myself.  I went out onto the balcony and ate a banana ball and a banana.  I counted five things I can see, hear, feel etc.  I stood on one leg.  I went on YouTube to listen to a song my friend told me about (the one at the top of this post).

The ad below came on (‘Sometimes to find your way you have to lose your mind’)

 

My husband came home and gave me a pep talk about how my mind is  really strong and I am totally sane, and reminded me of a line from one of the first books I read on this journey (the spiritual one not the travel one) ‘The last vestige of the ego is to tell yourself you are going mad.’ (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)

In hindsight it might have been better to just allow myself to stay in a slightly altered state of consciousness; by trying to get out of it I probably made it feel worse, but I suppose I was scared.

Anyway, as Jung says, this stuff isn’t all about butterflies and rainbows, it’s also about making the darkness conscious.  Last night I also couldn’t sleep, but this time I let myself go down into the things that I am afraid of, my childhood memories, the meaning I extrapolate from them, the effects I have allowed them to have.  And I realised that there was nothing to find…  I have explored the worst case scenarios and survived.

At the risk of looking and sounding like cliché, I bought a chunky silver Om pendant.  It caught my eye and overcame all resistance to shopping and spending and seemed a fitting souvenir for my altered consciousness last week.  I looked up what it actually meant (previously I knew it as the sound of the universe, and the man who sold it said it offers protection but I didn’t really know what each bit meant).

https://goo.gl/images/ARZtQC

It explained to me what I had instinctively felt; when we are in one state we aren’t in the other.  One level of consciousness is the normal level, where we experience the world through the five senses, another is deep sleep, another is dream state, another is a higher state of consciousness which is the aim of spiritual practices.  We move between them and they are separate states.

Travel update

We will be here in Varkala for another month and have been busy planning our trip and getting excited about moving on.

 

Writing update

I have been working hard on Goa Part Two (Anjuna, Arambol, Panaji) this week and hope to have a draft completed on Monday.  From Monday I will be working on Kerala, bringing it up to date, as well as looking at the proposal for Hay House.

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

This is life

Tags

family, Mom guilt, Parenting

 

So, family…  I have been processing some family/me stuff.  My son had some personal/life problems recently and called up my husband who went and supported him.  When I got home from work my husband told me all about it and said, you just need to phone him up and tell him you love him and that you are proud of him.  So I did (when I am out of my depth and don’t know what to do my husband gives good advice).

Then on Saturday we went to see a show that my son had curated and exhibited in.  All the artists have mental health problems.  My husband is at ease at these events, talking to the people from Rethink who sponsored the event and knowing just the right thing to say about my son’s work.  I think the work is good and I say so.  I know he has worked hard and that he’s come a long way and I recognise his achievements.

But I feel like I am expected to say more and that whatever I say isn’t enough.  I dislike the feeling of pressure on me, the fact that what I say is so weighted, so that my words seem to sound awkward.  I am not good at dealing with this stuff.  Why does it matter so much what I think, I’m just a human being, I don’t mean anything.   That’s not for you to say, you are his mother.  It’s for the child to come to that realisation themselves.  In the meantime, just be a parent, act the role, do what’s needed.  Sometimes you just have to give people what they need, and he just needs praise off his mum.  Why is it so hard to do that?  I noticed my mum was much less forthcoming than me; I was chatty, I gave out praise, even though I wasn’t as at ease as my husband.  On the way home we talked and talked until I worked out why I feel uncomfortable at these events.

The people from Rethink might judge me as a bad mother because my son has mental health problems.  He might even have spoken about the tumultuous teenage years and said critical things about me.  But mainly it’s this:

The whole event revolves around having mental health problems.  Everyone’s talking about it, it’s right there.  And there on the wall is a series of three of my son’s paintings.  Yes they are very good.  As my husband said you could see them in a gallery and you wouldn’t think they were out of place.

But they are unsettling/distressing.  The paragraph of text beside them explains that they are all about living with a mental health problem and what that feels like.  That’s fine when it is someone else.  But when it is your own child you are looking at something no parent wants to see.

Yes of course the exhibition is a great achievement, as are the paintings, but it means coming face to face with my child’s suffering.  I think this is even worse for my mum, because I think in some ways grandparents can get even more upset.  I noticed she didn’t even read the text.  I read it, to be polite and supportive, but it was sad.  And as the artist’s mother, it was really sad.

This post isn’t about self pity, it’s about playing detective.  So that’s why it’s hard, because it’s upsetting.  I am expected to give praise and be happy about his achievements, which I do and I am, whilst experiencing distress from having to literally look at his mental suffering.

So that all makes sense now.

That’s why it was so nice going round to his place the week before the exhibition.  He answered the door in a paint splattered t-shirt and a lungi, and showed me into the sitting room.  He and his girlfriend were working on several huge canvasses, sheets spread over the carpet, creating a makeshift studio.  It reminded me of the places I lived in during the late 80s.  For a moment, everything just looked exactly the way I would have wanted.

I am very pleased and amazed he got into art school, with no prior qualifications, it is a towering achievement.  But what I am most pleased about, even though it hasn’t been easy for him or us, is that he has followed his path.  Despite pressure from everyone, including me in the past, he has resolutely devoted himself to being an artist.

 

Thank you for reading.

The Fairytale Past

Tags

alternative childhood, writing

So simple, so amazing: a journey into awareness

Chapter 6:  The Fairytale Past

Maybe it wasn’t that bad after all.  Maybe I had a lot more agency that I have previously admitted:  because to be honest, a bit of me had realised, realised even at the time, that I did.  I knew I was different, and even in the midst of being humiliated by their I-bet-you-get-all-your-clothes-from-jumble-sales taunts, I felt superior.  I made no effort to fit in.  I remember that time as friendless, and yet it turns out I did have a friend after all:  Miranda, who also went on to become a healer and a yoga person.  I met her again recently at a yoga class, she recognised me and said we used to sit beside the tennis courts and talk, and when we went up to high school and I went to boarding school she was devastated.  I didn’t think I had any friends, I said.  Well you did, she said, you had me.

And then I remembered that at junior school I used to stay in at break times with a boy called Keith and work on our stories that we’d been doing in class because we didn’t want to stop writing.  I used to choose to stay indoors and write, instead of going out to play.  So nothing’s changed then, in forty years.

I lived through all that, experienced it all and so I can travel back there to that 1970’s school play ground and take a fresh look.  No time machine required, because my body was there, wasn’t it?  Its imprints are in my body, passed from cell to cell like batons in a relay race.

And later, now I return to my past, to myself with illumination

 I sometimes wonder if we as we are now make up our pasts- because they don’t really exist do they, except in our minds.  Why is it that we talk about them?  To make ourselves seem more substantial?   Like John telling people he’s been to India, or me telling people I’ve lived in New Zealand for a year- except last time I met new people I didn’t and just presented myself as I am right now.  As my friend Jane said, it is feelings and how you are that are important.

Wouldn’t we look at ourselves as we are now and make up our pasts exactly as they are?  Me with the Albion Fayres, him with the hard drinking family that made him teetotal and the craziness that made him such a survivor.  Do we look at what we are now and make up a back story that explains it, that offers us an explanation?  (Me:  Sexual appetite and promiscuity= sexual abuse.  Social awkwardness= bullied at school)

What if you were brave enough to offer yourself up (to others and to yourself) without explanation or apology?   What if you were brave enough to live with yourself as you are now- no back story, no past, just living right now in this now moment, this now place?