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Rachel

~ following the white rabbit…

Rachel

Category Archives: Personal growth

Rebalancing my chakras

29 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by Rachel in awareness, Life update, Personal growth, spirituality, Uncategorized

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

chakra rebalancing, chakras, detoxing, editing, energy healing, healing, Indian matchmakers, spiritual healing, Vyasar Ganesan, writing

20200829_093603The Guru I followed for a few months a few years back told us that ‘all chakras have been removed,’ which I went along with, even though going over people’s chakras, including my own, was one of my own personal favourite ways of giving healing. After almost losing my mind for a few moments over her predicted zombie apocalypse (probably best not to ask) and my husband unsubscribing from the channel- I have since come to think, well, maybe I could go back to thinking about chakras now and again. I mean it’s not like anyone can really prove whether they exist or not and if I think they’re helpful then they are. Giving love to me or others by thinking about specific areas of the body in specific ways even if all in my imagination, what’s the harm?*

So I just had a rather wild weekend, and spent the following week limping along in a queasy state of ravenous gnawing hunger and not feeling at all like myself (zombie apocalypse anyone?) My husband was off too, and we binge watched Indian Matchmakers on Netflix- the only thing we felt able to watch. I got tearful seeing Indian cities and streets and hearing the Astrologer speak about Vyasar ‘He makes everyone laugh, even a crying person is laughing… He feels no shame even when sweeping the floor. He has a golden heart.’ Single ladies, I understand Vyasar is on Twitter.

Towards the end of the week, I restarted a bit of yoga, even though I felt sick bending over, and the day before my husband went back to work we went shopping, to the launderette and for a walk.

But it wasn’t until I was on my own this (Saturday) morning, for the first of three days in a row of time on my own to write, that I was able to bring my own unique understanding to my situation. During party times rules get a bit slack, and a cat sneaked onto the bed before my husband went to work. Then another one.

I’d been ‘going through my chakras’ and been alarmed to find nothing there at my solar plexus, like all my emotions had just been hollowed out. At my sacral chakra an orange shape flipped like the tail of a dying fish or a boat propeller clogged up with weeds. Too much emphasis on pleasure drives, maybe? Onwards #NoSextember! And as for my root chakra- the red seat of all security- I’d spent one afternoon in a frenzy of thinking of buying to let or even just buying and living- I even found a job there- falling in love with solidly built old dear little one bedroom stone cottages in Yorkshire. ‘For security!’ I said.

I am an overthinker, comes free with the imagination, and I’d been debating to myself even as I was doing it about the whole chakra thing, should I be doing it, do they exist, etc etc, when I remembered that at some point over the weekend I had done a healing session for the first time in ages. No boundaries, no protection, and not with a clear head. I focused on areas the person had mentioned, but otherwise announced them to have nothing wrong with them, ‘Everything seems to be whirling away beautifully!’ In popular imagination, chakras are often visualised like little coloured windmills, whirring away if they are healthy. Or vortexes of light, if that’s more your thing. *Ahh, maybe I just gave away all my energy, I thought. That explains a lot.

But maybe, as Alfie the cat gently batted my face so that I lifted up the duvet and let him into the bed, to lay stretched out all along my belly and chakras, all I need to do is cuddle a cat. Our cats don’t have toddlers pulling them about or anything, so they lead life largely on their own terms and remain as I see them perfectly balanced and enlightened in their own way. Therefore, they may come to me for warmth and find it no trouble to rebalance my energies at the same time. As they snuggle in to get warm and settle down for a nap, they may feel a slight whirring or sicky feeling coming off me as I am rebalanced by their calm presence, but they are so calm that it’s not enough to upset their equilibrium, or at least, it’s a fair trade.  And all I have to do is cuddle a cat and go back to sleep for a bit longer…

I did get back to editing yesterday- Friday, a sickly lacklustre session but a session nonetheless, and now today- Saturday begins three days of editing work before I go back to paid work on Tuesday. Maybe I’ll even send something off?

As well as finishing the book, the other thing is to get back to India asap. My aim is for us to go December-March, if the borders open to tourists then of course. I need 1. someone to take in the cats and look after them at their house or 2. someone to live on the boat and take care of the cats on there. Your chakras will be in tip top condition!

Join me if you like for a September of detox, healthy food and frequency raising! See earlier post

PS On checking the spelling of his name I came up with this lovely picture of Vyasar- cuddling a cat- in a beautiful bit of blogging synchronicity! Twitter, ladies, Twitter!

 

#NoSextember Year 2

15 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by Rachel in awareness, karezza, Personal growth, sex, Uncategorized

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

detox, diet, food, giving up sex, Greggs vegan sausage rolls, losing weight, purification, Vegan

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A woman at work was talking about going out to eat with her friend, to be sociable, rather than about the food, and about how it was hard to get a table, and then super cheap because of the Government’s Eat out to help out scheme (where they pay half the bill Mon-Wed, I believe, to help the hospitality industry recover from lockdown.) The woman, a beautiful slim woman in her early thirties said: “My friend, she is this big (miming very overweight person), “She LOVES food; it’s like she lives only for food. Me I can take it or leave it, one toast two days, no problem.”

I felt a little envious. I am not like that, unfortunately…. I am a Taurean, a lover of food, with a lack of discipline, and sometimes hedonistic. My husband talks about how important it is to have control and not be addicted to anything, to be able to pick things up and put them down again. This only works if you can put them down again, which is why we are doing this programme. It’s as much to prove to ourselves that we can do it as well as to get a bit healthier physically.

It’s about attachment, practising what we preach and ultimately, it’s all part of the lifelong preparation for death, can you pick it up and put it down? Worldly pleasures, and ultimately, when the time comes, life itself? I’m misquoting George Harrison, but he said something like, You don’t want to have to come back because you left the cat out, or whatever. Or haven’t finished your book. The moment it comes, all that ceases to matter, and the focus is on letting go. When he was attacked by an intruder in his home he realised ‘This is it’ and had started letting go when Olivia hit the guy over the head with a lamp stand and saved him.

The programme:

No cigarettes, no alcohol.

No pointless food- crisps, biscuits, cake, teacakes, etc

We did this last year, a made up month of purification/self improvement, prompted in large part to my terrible addiction to Greggs Vegan Sausage Rolls. Regular readers may be surprised to know that I have completely conquered said addiction. Just before everywhere locked down, I was in my home town of Diss, Norfolk, UK, buying GVSRs with my husband, having first been to Grapetree to stock up on nuts, seeds, dried fruit, maca powder, cacao powder, hemp protein powder (like all people I am a mix of apparent contradictions.) The young lad at the counter and us were bemusedly talking about Corona virus, and the lad mentioned Greggs might close down. I was disbelieving, “Close down Greggs?” I said, “Never!”

Of course I was wrong, and spent much of the first part of lockdown grieving for my occasional trips to Daventry (my current home town) and Greggs for an Americano and a VSR (or two), or same on the way to Norfolk for our regular three- four hour drives to see friends and family. But when we did try them again, they tasted horribly salty and we ended up throwing them away! We overheard meat eaters saying the same about the meat ones. Was it a change of recipe? Or had our palettes just changed over lockdown? Anyway, for my body it’s a blessing.

However, we’ve managed to put on weight via plenty of other means: crisps, teacakes, and for me, alcohol, starting with my lockdown birthday and sliding into regular G&T or beer on the deck after work.  And cigarettes. I love being outside, but what to do with myself? The last couple of days after work I sat on the deck and had a glass of lemon water and a bowl of trail mix or a banana, and it really was okay.

Walk/yoga daily

I really slacked re exercise during this big period of writing/editing.

Increase cooking from scratch and Avoid eating so much processed food

With the boom in ready made vegan food it’s tempting to go to Aldi or Tesco and pick up something ready made, new potatoes and a pack of salad for ease, rather than, what can I make out of what we have, and the more fiddly things/things that require going out of the way to shop for get sidelined or forgotten.

No caffeine- no coffee, no fizzy drinks, decaf tea, herbal/fruit tea, lemon water, water only. (from around 10 Aug I went to just caffeine tea first thing then no more tea or coffee or fizzy drinks, to help with the headache of abrupt coffee/caffeine stopping.

“Can I do it if I drink decaff coffee?” Someone at work asked me. “Yes of course, it’s just a made up thing,” I said. No real rules, other than what you make up yourself.  We’ve focused on our biggest weaknesses- last year, GVSRs, this year, crisps, smoking, and lack of exercise. Some things are fixed for us- no cigarettes, no alcohol- some are more general not 100% e.g. I’m sure we’ll have the odd processed meal, and processed is a definition that can be strict or loose- we’re reasonably loose- but we know where we need to make improvements.

So if you want to join me, I’m giving you some notice- particularly useful for caffeine as if you go from four cups of coffee to none in my experience you get a banging headache for a half a day- just make up your own programme but we could do it together, and share a blog about it? Do I need to tell you I am not a doctor? And that stopping excessive alcohol consumption abruptly can be dangerous and you need to seek proper advice re coming off that.

Talking about sharing the blog- if anyone would like to write a guest post for this blog do get in touch via the contact box. Promote your blog/ book/ music; tell us your story, about the detail of your daily life, comment on something on the blog that interests you…

No sex- this is the one I don’t tell people at work when I’m telling them about my September purification month, and the one people find most weird. But I refer you back to the intro re attachment.

Thank you very much for reading!

Rachel

‘If you think you’re enlightened, try going home for Thanksgiving

29 Friday Mar 2019

Posted by Rachel in awareness, escape the matrix, family, Personal growth, Uncategorized

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Anything is possible, artists, confidence, mother daughter relationships, mother son relationships, Parenting, Self realisation, separating from adult children, Shaman, shamanic ritual


For SMUT and Self-Esteem, a very wise and perfectly written blog. Reflecting on everyday experience through tools such as mindfulness and Buddhist teachings.

Even at the age of forty seven I was scared about telling my mum of our plans to give up work and go off to India, particularly about selling the house. And on the way to telling her about the boat I was as nervous as if I were on my way to hospital for an operation. I played the song above, ‘You say you can’t, I hope you can, I hope you can…’

My mother is an astonishingly capable individual, potentially a lot to live up to, and who has very strong opinions. But feeling as if I’m not free to live my life as I wish to because of what she might think or say isn’t on her, it’s on me.

Again and again people say, no one can have power over you without your consent, and such like. Certainly in the run up to going away I said the same kinds of things to myself and tried to deal with it on an intellectual level. I did what needed to be done, but I made a big palaver about it, putting things off and getting stressed out, and expending a lot of time and energy on it all.

On Thursday of last week we made our first trip back to Norfolk to visit people. Firstly we went to see our dear friend K, who made us a lovely lunch*, let us go on about India, and was very supportive about my book and our ideas. She asked us each if and how we thought the year of travel had changed us. We both said we felt it had, but that we didn’t know exactly how yet.

Then we drove over to see my mum. Towards the end of the year of travel I had had dreams about this meeting, and woken feeling anxious and intimidated, as I was when I visited before I left. This time, I didn’t feel even a flicker of nerves on the way there, and sailed through the visit authentically and confidently. We showed her photographs, she made us a delicious meal**, and we chatted about general topics. We all seemed happy to see each other, and had a nice time.

In the past I had involved her too much in my life, and I had felt shadowed by her strong opinions. The year away provided the opportunity to reset boundaries. I’m sure she doesn’t approve of everything I’m doing but she appears to have accepted that I’m doing it anyway, and didn’t question or comment.

I know it’s because she cares but I have to have this bit of separation in order to fully realise my own personal potential.

I wasn’t fake friendly or fake tough, I was totally myself during that time, and that is best described as relaxed and powerful. And it just happened that way, that’s how I’ve changed. (Just got to keep it up!)

Then we went to see my son. He’s not, as far as I’m aware, working on the same things with me, but I know he’s done better the less I’ve been involved in his life, culminating in him being offered, while I was away this year, the chance to exhibit in New York in May.

(I still have to work on resetting habits and expectations re money though, now that he is almost thirty and I am not working at the moment.)

We all acknowledged that he’d done the best all by himself, and I told him what the Swiss shaman I met in Kerala had told me, that when you have a baby it is your job to ‘Give them the bliss,’ but then when they grow up you must set them free. The shaman said I must set my son free so that he can become a great artist.

*beetroot and chickpea burgers, pasta in tomato sauce and broccoli
**vegetable curry, rice, samosas, and apple crumble and (soya) custard
We were thoroughly spoiled that day!
Thank you very much for reading

What’s next?

07 Thursday Feb 2019

Posted by Rachel in Minimalism, Narrowboat, Personal growth, Travel, Uncategorized, veganism, Voluntary simplicity

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Change your life, escape the matrix, Minimalism, Narrowboat, Narrowboat living, Travel, Voluntary simplicity

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Okay so we’ve bought the flights home and have five weeks left of this trip, so I’m allowing myself a look at ‘What happens next?’ whilst otherwise staying in the trip, being open to possibilities, and knowing that we don’t ever really know what’s going to happen…
Our flight arrives in the evening so we will stay a night or two in London then get a morning train to Northampton, then a bus to our village.  That way we have time to get coal, kindling, firelighters, water, food, etc.
Food and smaller items can be got from the local shop which is walking distance, and near the bus stop.  We think we have some coal, but if not there is a yard over the road we can walk to and bring back using a wheelbarrow.  (Must ensure we don’t arrive back on a Sunday when yard will be closed…)
Our clothes and bedding have been left on the boat for a year, so we’re hoping that everything is not mouldy…
We’ll need to get the car MOTd, we will ask our landlord to recommend a garage and book it in in advance.
As soon as the car is MOTd and the boat is basically set up i.e. dusted and warmed and bedding aired/at worst replaced, we will go to London to see my husband’s kids, bring one back who wants to come and stay; go to Norwich to see my son, and see the rest of family and friends.
There’ll be several trips to Norfolk and London and some longer trips over the coming months to visit people further afield.
And amongst all that: job applications/agency sign up; sell India stuff (we sent some stuff back to sell); finish the book, and maintain the blog.
I’m looking forward to being home on the boat and cooking proper meals from scratch in my own kitchen.  In the two weeks that we lived on the boat before we left, I really enjoyed that.

I’d also like to make my own natural cleaning products; and also toothpaste, shampoo, hand/body wash, hand cream, face moisturiser and body lotion, to reduce plastic waste and chemical use.  If I do a couple of products, I’ll be pleased.

There’s some activities/organisations/online movements that can support our lifestyle: meditation; going to classes/getting involved at the local Buddhist centre; LETS schemes; Vegan events; the Buy nothing, Minimalism and Voluntary simplicity movements, should we need/want.

I feel that our return to the UK and our new life on the boat will be a whole new adventure.
Thank you very much for reading
For pictures of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Chennai Part 4

14 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by Rachel in India, Personal growth, spirituality, Travel, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

awareness, Chennai, India, Self realisation, spirituality, Travel, writing

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I fell in love with you and I cried:  Chennai Part 4 (Draft chapter for book)

The taxi driver stopped at a garage that was open, he got fuel and we went to the loo.  When we got to Chennai diversion signs were up, our driver followed them and ended up at the beach, where buses and cars and scooters and people walking had all descended.  There were men waving flags and some of the vehicles had flags on them; we realised it was to do with The Minister.  People ahead of us were just parking up and leaving their cars, so it got more and more congested.  We had seen police everywhere on the way home, but not a single one trying to organise the traffic jam.

We were obviously in a taxi, and conspicuous as foreigners.  Not only that, there were only a very few women and children amongst a big crowd of men.  I was nervous, but the atmosphere of the crowd was fine, and aside from the usual few glances at me as a Western woman, we had no extra attention.  We realised the road was a dead end and our driver did an almost impossible u turn and we made our way slowly out of the jammed up area.

While we were in the traffic jam I saw on the beach the signs, ‘Live and let live’, ‘Pigeon feeding station,’ ‘Donation station.’  It warmed my heart to see.  I thought about how some people in the UK despise pigeons, and even grey squirrels who I used to love feeding in the UK.  My friend’s husband used to shoot them in his garden, not even to eat, just piling up the corpses at the bottom of the garden.

Roads were closed and the driver pulled up to ask someone where to go.  Everywhere was shuttered and closed, no one was around.  I saw a lone flower garland hanging up still and realised we were on the corner near where we went for dinner; everything looked so different with all the shops shuttered up.

An Indian man who had just got out of a taxi told us to walk, he explained that the Minister’s funeral procession would be coming down the road, and that the only way to get to where we wanted to go was walking.  It wasn’t that far, so we thanked and paid our driver, put on our backpacks, picked up our bags and walked back to Broadlands.

The manager at Broadlands hugged me and kissed me on both cheeks like a father.  It was about five o’clock.  He told us to go up and have a sleep and that when we woke up at six thirty, seven, everything would be open again.

We were in the same room as before but people had been in it since us, there was a folding camp bed put up, and glitter on the sheets.  It hadn’t been cleaned, probably due to the events of the previous day, perhaps the cleaning staff hadn’t come in.  ‘I’m going to assume they (the people) were clean,’ I said, but the truth was, I didn’t really care, I was just so glad to be back.

We woke up later when it was dark and went downstairs.  Nothing was open.  We saw the Italian woman, she said that the evening before, The Minister’s death was announced then everything shut in ten minutes.  She’d only had biscuits and bananas.  One of the staff who worked at the hotel appeared, he apologised for our room not being cleaned.  He went out to see if there was any food places open.  He came back once saying that everything in one direction was closed, then set out again, we and the Italian woman gave him money just in case.

We thought there would be somewhere, Y had told us you can always get food, as there are lots of bachelors in Chennai and they often eat parcel meals (takeaway) from the restaurants.  About forty-five minutes later the man returned, with little plastic bags of sambar (curry) and orange sauce and parota bread.  We ate on the little table in our room.  The little plastic bags that the sambar was in were tied with a twist of fine twine that wasn’t even knotted, just wound around neatly and expertly.  The parota was thick and filling and the sambar was hot.  It felt so good to eat hot food after an evening and a day of crisps, biscuits and nuts.

The mosque sounded very loud again the first morning, then on the days after we slept through it or half slept through it like we had before.
As usual in India, the caw caw of crows was a near constant noise.  One morning very early the crows were especially loud.  I mentioned it to my husband.  He said, ‘There was one on the ground below the window making loads of noise, and another sitting right on the shutter not making a sound; I said to it, ‘What’s the other one’s problem?!’’

Also as usual, there were barking dogs, a pack of dogs seemed to live on the waste ground below our window.  Sometimes the barking and howling of the dogs was so much it made us laugh, like when we were at Osho’s (guesthouse in Kerala) and a dog over the road would start up the most ridiculous sounding howling just as we were going to bed.   ‘Dogs in the UK don’t have the freedom just to howl and express themselves like that,’ my husband said.

We saw an Indian squirrel climbing on the outside of the window mesh, all four feet clinging on, upside down and doing acrobatics as if it were in the circus.

On Friday the mosque car park was filled with lots and lots of scooters, a handful of cars and on the waste ground beside the mosque, some rickshaws.  There were people praying in the outside part of the mosque, there were so many people that they couldn’t all fit inside.

The mosque car park was a beautifully clean paved area.  One day when it was quiet I saw a man and a little boy arrive on a scooter.  They fed the pigeons, who arrived and left in great beautiful clouds.  When they had finished the man put the boy on the scooter, patted him on head, threw the empty food cup over the wall into the street, and left.

At night the flats on the other side of the mosque car park had their lights on and curtains open; the colour of their walls lit up, one green, one mauve, with the silhouettes of house plants making shadows on the walls.

The mosquito mesh on the windows was bent and folded, gently undulating like a sheet of fine wire mesh.  When the light caught it it looked like taffeta, the colour of burnished gold.

Sitting on the bed in my favourite indoors outfit, I caught myself in the mirror: black scoop neck t-shirt, black and grey sarong, colourful tattoos on both arms.  The t- shirt had tiny holes in it.  The sarong was a bit bobbly close up.  Everything was soft and thin and comfortable.

 

The quest for fresh vegetables led us to a Chinese restaurant where we ate vegetables and noodles, big florets of broccoli and chunky carrots, in a thick and glutinous msg sauce.  We sat beside a fish tank full of big fish swimming sadly back and forth.

I brought up some of the things I had been thinking and feeling in Pondicherry.  We agreed that being happy can’t be the aim, it’s a pleasure seeking and a Four Winds pain-pleasure trap.  That kind of bliss cannot be sustained and anyway it would be boring, people need challenges.  We agreed that the spiritual journey is a red herring and that the ‘goal’ has to be to feel overally neutral:

Observe yourself and how you are and what you do like a character in a film.  E.g. do you react impulsively?  Drop down and forget all this for an evening and reflect afterwards, how did I do?  That’s the work.  The trick is to try and maintain the clear awareness even when the key breaks in the lock or the Uber is late.  If not you’d have nothing to do.

Most people are locked into feeding the pleasure centres; the ‘reward of nothingness’ wouldn’t appeal to them as worth it for a lifetime of searching.  Anyway, most people aren’t actually actively looking for enlightenment.

But if you are prepared to accept this peaceful serenity, this above-ness from the senses, so that food isn’t really much of a thing anymore; this distance, beyond love, beyond joy…  If you are prepared to accept that, then maybe the reward will be to understand everything.  That’s what makes renouncing worldly pleasures, or rather, drifting away from them and letting them fall away, (like when following Buddhism) worthwhile.

 

The Broadlands manager told us that a film crew was coming to film at the guesthouse; apparently the film had a famous film star.  It took a whole day to set up with all kinds of props including chicken coops being brought in.  In the UK they would have closed the hotel or at least closed off part of it.  There, we were shown different routes to and fro our room, via different staircases and courtyards.  When they were shooting in the central courtyard below our room, we just had to peek out.  ‘Shooting,’ they’d say, or not.  One could be annoyed but aren’t.
Sometimes we had to walk through their chill out area, in between the plastic chairs arranged in a circle for lunch.  Huge pots of food were carried in at lunchtime, the pots of food, filled with all different kinds of curries, laid out on trestle tables.

We went down separately to use the internet, the famous actor sat on the sofa going through his lines next to husband then next to me, he turned the fan on to keep cool.

At the end of the filming day they all gathered for a group photograph and there was lots of clapping.  I had a cigarette and hung about outside soaking up the atmosphere and watching them pack up.

The Italian woman had complained about the film shoot and told us it would start at six am and go on all night, with flashing lights and loud music.  We weren’t concerned; there’s nothing we could do about it and it’s not as if we had anything to get up for or do, we could always sleep during the day.  I sympathised with her for getting woken by building work above her though; they were doing some pre season alterations, and she was woken at six am.  She asked for a day’s refund but I don’t think she had any luck.  The film shoot was over in one day though in the end, it wasn’t noisy and it didn’t start early.

I can see how one could get really stressed, being woken up, building work, dogs, mosque, crows; plus re coping with things being different, food, people, and each other, but we’re ok.  I do have the odd thing (hand cream).

There’s things I could get annoyed about of course, if I had a mind to:  Many rooms only having one plug socket available so that we have to take turns charging our phones and tablets.  The traffic, the pollution, the rubbish.  The food all coming at different times.  The complicated menus with strict times, this 12-2, this 3-6, this all day, this 12.30-9.30.  The occasional restaurant bureaucracy, ‘Can I have a cup of tea or coffee?’  ‘No, only after 4pm,’  ‘Can I have tea or coffee with my breakfast?’  ‘No, juice first, then afterwards we’ll take your order for coffee or tea.’

Not being understood, not understanding things.  Some things remaining a complete mystery, others tantalising only half explained… Missing friendships.  The poverty.  Being sometimes viewed as a walking ATM machine; even after giving the hotel cleaner so much stuff (he’d asked us to give him anything we were shedding), he still came and asked us for money.  How sometimes it seems as if almost every conversation invariably turns to money or trying to sell us something.  It’s the natural consequence of the actual or perceived disparity of wealth between us as Westerners and people we meet.

But the secret is to accept it all, and not to judge.  If my few days in Norwich Travel Lodge in the winter taught me anything, it’s that the UK isn’t perfect.  The level of homelessness in affluent Norwich city centre was shocking.  And if things are different to what I’m used to, of course that’s to be expected, and that is my issue.  And there’s so much beauty all around me that my attention is taken up with that.

I went out feeding cows again, early evening seemed to be the time when more cows were around.  A man gave me advice in sign language, don’t bend down, due to the horns? throw on ground, or put on hand and put hand out.  I misinterpreted his facial expression as gruffness at first.  People sometimes watched and even stared but did not seem unfriendly.

We drank chai tea at a little stall in the backstreets on the corner of Big Street.  The first time we sat outside on little stools and smoked cigarettes, the second time we were seated inside amongst the flies and heat.

We saw Indian men feeding street dogs in the evening.  Even a very humble looking shop had put out puri on the pavement for the crows.

In the street parallel to Broadlands the houses were painted pretty colours.  Just around the corner, at the end of an ordinary street, was an incredibly beautiful temple.

I wished I could show my Grandma the clothes, or describe them to her.  She was a dress maker and interested in clothes until the end of her life.  In Chennai I saw flouncy dresses, just below the knee, slightly shorter than I’d seen before, with scalloped hem, and lacy lemon or white flowers at the hem and on the bodice.  Saree prints in a bold block print making a three dimensional pattern, others in bold flowers, and lots of yellow and orange sarees which matched the colours of the Tamil Nadu rickshaws.  In restaurants we saw whole families colour coordinated and wondered if it happens naturally or if the woman picks out the family’s clothes?  I’ve maybe seen three outfits ever that I didn’t think worked perfectly.

There were lots of sweet shops and stalls in Chennai, although we managed to resist and just admire them from a distance…

We’d found a little tea shop at the side of the road that did the best coffee, sweet and milky, as well as nice little samosas and melt-in-the-mouth homemade biscuits in jars; it became our favourite place for those last few days in Chennai.

We’d got our photocopying and printing of tickets and so on done at a little copy shop, got glasses for my husband, ticking jobs off the list, and were feeling pleased with ourselves and went to the tea shop afterwards.

We bought cigarettes and offered them to the staff and fellow customer; cigarettes can be a good icebreaker when you don’t share a language.  We sat and watched the traffic and the people crossing the road.  The smell of traffic fumes, rubbish and occasionally animal or human waste.

We watched two people lifting a big drum onto a scooter.  It was common to see scooters loaded with sacks of onions, even sacks of cement, or a family of four riding all together.  That is the mode of transport that the family has, they don’t have a car, so scooters are used for everything.

A truck went past laden, absolutely laden with plastic pots, urn shaped but big like garden pots.  Instead of being terracotta colour to pretend to be made from clay or green to blend into the garden like they would be in the UK, these were shocking pink, bright leaf green and bright unsubtle primary colours; as if they were saying, were plastic, we’re plastic and we’re proud to be plastic.  Not for the first time, we wished we could say to India, don’t do it, don’t let the plastic in, don’t fall in love with and get taken over by plastic.  In India not everywhere has formal rubbish disposal and recycling systems in place; the plastic drinking water bottles alone present a huge problem.

A girl, a young woman, came skipping down the road.  We made eye contact and she came over and said, ‘Hi,’ skipped off, then came over again, pointed to her cheek and said, ‘Kiss.’  I couldn’t kiss her, I’m British and can’t easily kiss total strangers, but I offered her my hand and we shook hands.  She went skipping off again, almost dancing across the road.  She dropped her scarf in the road, and picked it up scarily in front of a rickshaw.

 

When we checked out of Broadlands the manager shook hands with Anthony and hugged me.  ‘I love Anthony,’ he said, ‘He has a good heart.’

In the taxi on the way to the airport, the driver said, ‘Look, look,’ said something and pointed.  We couldn’t understand him, then just at the last moment, my husband realised, ‘Parrots!’  About fifty small parrots were sat on the electricity wires across the road.  ‘That is their house,’ the driver said.  ‘1,000 parrots live there.  At 6pm every day you see them.’  It was around 4.30pm.  We were a bit sad that we hadn’t known about this before, but happy that we had heard it then and seen some of the parrots.

I kept thinking we were going back there, to Broadlands, to Chennai, when we went to Thailand, and had to remind myself that was over and we were going to Kolkatta when we go back to India.  I know we were only there for eight days in total but…  If it weren’t for the pollution, which the Tarot man in Thailand said wasn’t good for me, although I don’t need him to tell me I don’t suppose, I’d like to live there, at least for part of the year.  What would I do?  Write, feed cows, put up posters at the bins re tip food waste onto the floor don’t put in plastic bags (the cows eat the plastic bags and can get sick and die); get involved with some kind of rubbish clearing/recycling initiative (my husband’s idea).  Learn Tamil, teach English in return.  (But Tamil seems so hard! I feel like Hindi would be easier so maybe pick somewhere where the main language is Hindi…)  But that’s all dreams, I haven’t seen hardly any of India yet, I may yet fall in love again many times over during the rest of our travels.

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Photos of Chennai by Anthony Hill Instagram travelswithanthony

Travel update

In our third week and third place in Koh Phangan, Thailand.  We are in the vegan/yoga area.  It’s absolute paradise but we are looking forward to getting moving on proper travelling again.  In a few days I go to Tokyo, my husband goes to Cambodia and we meet up back in India on October 1st.

Writing update

Did this this week, worked on it every day except Saturday.  Also scheduled five weeks’ of Throwback Thursday posts which is harder than it looks sometimes with patchy internet.  Next up, Thailand.

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

Pondicherry

07 Friday Sep 2018

Posted by Rachel in awareness, buddhism, India, mental health, Personal growth, reality, spirituality, Travel, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 15 Comments

Tags

awareness, India, Pondicherry, Travel, writing

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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.

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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.

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(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!

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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.

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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

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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

 

 

Throwback Thursday

30 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by Rachel in awareness, happiness, Personal growth, relationships, spirituality, Throwback Thursday, Uncategorized, writing

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Tags

anxiety, creativity, relationships, spirituality, stress, Work, writing

What strikes me the most when reading these old posts is that I was trying to do too much; working full time in a demanding job, swimming several times a week, writing, spiritual seeking/meditation etc, trying to keep in touch with friends and family, and enjoying and being present for the relationship of my life with the love of my life.

Yes, creative people need time alone.  Yes, I had been used to solitude as a child and as a single parent with those lonely evenings and weekends.  Yes it was an adjustment living with someone.  But I think it would have been easier if I hadn’t been rushing around doing so much, if I had made some space and learned to prioritise the most important things and let go of the rest. 

I still have those tendencies (to overdo the busy-ness), but I am more aware of them.  Right now we are living and travelling together, and are with each other most of the time.   I can write when my husband is there, and I don’t worry about doing much else.

The possibility of ease (first published August 2014)

When the going’s good I find it almost impossible to imagine feeling down, low in energy or less than totally happy and supremely grateful for my life.  When things occasionally dip a little, I find it so hard to get out of and such a puzzle to work out how it happened.  That’s because I am a thinker, an over thinker, and it is not easy to think yourself out of a slump.  Easier to think yourself into more and more happiness, if one is already happy, like a snowball of prayer and gratitude and bliss…  When actually down, thinking is not the answer.  Waiting, or waiting with faith, is.  After a few days it comes to me: what it is that’s the matter, what I did or didn’t do to get me to this place.  Sometimes it’s PMT, sometimes I’m just tired.  This time, it was neglecting my need to be alone sometimes.

I prayed for my house to be filled with Love and I realised, it’s me who can fill it, God gives me the support and motivation to do so, but it’s me who actually does it.  When there’s any friction, it’s all the more noticeable because it’s such a happy house usually.  On the other side of friction there is learning, closeness and new insights.  But in the middle of friction is such confusion and muddy thinking that I couldn’t even write anything for a few weeks.  Now, however, I am bursting, I had to take the morning off work just to write down all the thoughts that were pouring out of me and to organise all the little scraps of paper with notes and ideas on.  But in the middle of friction, everything bad is magnified.  It is easy to become irritated and irritable, even whilst wondering fearfully about what is actually happening, where all the bliss went…

One day after work I stopped at the supermarket and instead of rushing home I paused in the car park for five minutes.  It was close to sunset and the sky was shot with yellow and gold, the clouds luminous at their edges.  The air was cool and warm at the same time.  I had bought myself a little tub of fresh olives and I leant against the car, eating them carefully so as not to spill any oil on myself, whilst looking at the big, open Norfolk sky and feeling the air on my skin.

I have just finished reading Whit by Iain Banks.  It is about a religious cult that tries to operate in the spaces, to be creative in all that they do, in order to be closer to God.  So they travel the most complicated or unusual way rather than just hopping on a train, because in those interstitial places, is where God is found.

In the supermarket car park that evening, I realised: Be Creative.  It doesn’t have to be at home.  I have Saturdays or Sundays most weeks to myself anyway, I also swim two or three times a week, I drive an hour each way to work five days a week, composing my thoughts, my writing.  Sometimes I pull over and write things down in my notebook.  I realise driving is not quite the same as being alone not having to do anything.  Reading Iain Banks, I realised I’ve always enjoyed interstitial time.  Like when I pull up at the pool and instead of going straight in I read for a while or just listen to something I’m enjoying on the radio.  Or when I pull over and park up for a nap during a long journey (or let’s face it, not that long, it’s just me, creating a little pocket of space, although the talcum powder footprints on the passenger door hint at something more exciting than just curling up on the back seat and dozing to The Archers).  Often it has revolved around food, especially ‘naughty’ food that I am happier not admitting to eating.  Smokers do it with cigarettes, I suppose, that little bit of semi forbidden or secret time.

Sometimes I’m a bit slow when it comes to realising things about myself.  In the middle of the friction time, I was chatting to a work colleague I hardly know, in a rare moment of sharing and we were both saying about how we struggle to get any time alone in the house, as our partners are usually home before us.  She told me the story of how the other day she had hoped and looked forward to an hour and a half at home, but what with being delayed at work, a phone call from her mum, and new neighbours deciding to pop round and introduce themselves, this time dwindled as she counted it down in her head until she was left with just five minutes.  I understood completely.  I said, but I feel so bad, I so longed for my man to come to live with me and now he’s here I’m talking about wanting time on my own.  She replied smartly, but you must do it, because otherwise you will get irritated.

But it still wasn’t until the olives in the car park a week or so later that I realised what had been the cause of my uncharacteristic irritation.
I will endeavour to make the most of the little spaces of time alone I get in the house, to use them for writing or reading or napping or whatever I want to, and appreciate them!  But I must also accept that they are rarer and learn to be flexible and to create little pockets of alone time outside of the house: really feel it when I go swimming, for example.  Go upstairs and nap or write even when I am not alone in the house.  Create a pocket of independence and stillness whatever and wherever.  It doesn’t take much.  An afternoon alone in the house to write once a week.  Ten minutes alone with a tub of olives and a pretty sky.  And then I am back, full of love.

Chennai, part two

24 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by Rachel in awareness, happiness, India, mental health, Personal growth, reality, Travel, Uncategorized, writing

≈ 21 Comments

Tags

Broadlands, Cats, Enlightenment, Hindu stories, Hindu temples, India

2018-08-18 01.26.05.jpg

I fell in love with you and I cried:  Chennai, part two

(Draft chapter cont’d, with extra bits for the blog)

When we arrived in Chennai, I said out loud to my husband, ‘I’ll finish ‘Kochi,’ then I’ll just do a bit for Chennai; there probably won’t be much to write about, it’s a city and I’ve probably used up all my noticing everything energy on Kochi.’  ‘Ha ha ha,’ said the forces of the universe.

We stayed one night in the first guesthouse then moved to Broadlands which had been recommended by Y who lives in Chennai (who we met at Osho’s guesthouse when we first arrived in Varkala).  The guesthouse, set on a dusty side street off the main Triplicane High Road, didn’t look like much from the outside except for its quirky welcome sign (see Instagram travelswithanthony for Broadlands pics).

Stepping inside though, was like stepping inside an old French chateau; the guesthouse has around thirty to forty rooms, built around a central courtyard with a square balcony, with stone floors and dusty hallways, and winding stone staircases leading to tucked away rooms and a roof terrace.  The rough- surfaced old walls were painted faded old white, the paintwork of the banisters of the balcony and the many doors leading off it old baby blue gloss, (the same colour as my Goa birthday ring).

In the courtyard below there were plants in big old white painted stone plant pots and a big green tree, full of crows, its branches growing up above the banisters.  On the dusty stone walkway of the balcony there was an orange cat; one of the guests was taking care of her.  ‘She’s sick, and pregnant, she needs to drink, she’s dehydrated,’ the guest said.

Our room was big and spacious with white washed walls, blue doors and concrete floor.  The high ceiling had wood beams painted baby pink, and lots of cobwebs.  There were three big windows in the room and one in the bathroom, all fitted with mosquito mesh and blue shutters.

From the windows in the room we could see the big white mosque next door, the flock of pigeons on the waste ground between us and the mosque, the neat paved grounds and car park of the mosque, houses and flats in blue, green and peach, and a red flowered green tree.

From the window in the bathroom, white buildings with a glimpse of bright yellow house in-between.  The balconies at the corner of one of the white buildings made gaps like two windows; through the top one I could see the yellow building, through the bottom a green one.  I looked again another day, the green had changed colour.  I was momentarily confused, that scene had been so strong, had I misremembered?  No, there was a sheet or a towel on the balcony!

I saw Indian squirrels for the first time since Panaji, before that I’d only seen them in Hampi, running about on the abandoned sheds of the waste ground outside our window.

At night with the light off, when we opened the double blue doors to the bathroom and put the bathroom light on, the bathroom glowed blue like a portal.

In the morning we were woken at 04:45 by the call to prayer.  We were so close to the mosque that it felt almost painful on my ears.  I went back to sleep, and despite the early morning wake up we have both loved it each time we’ve stayed near a mosque; there’s something timeless and quite magical about hearing the call to prayer.

The next day I sat on the blue painted wooden threshold between the space outside our room and the balcony walkway.  I was writing or should have been writing and having a few moments to myself.  Instead of writing I was trying to find a title for my book, the kind of thing writers can waste hours on.  Going over and over, searching, trying to come up with something, even though I knew that wasn’t how it was going to happen, that a title needs to just come.

At least I’ve set my intention, put it out there that I want to find one, I thought.  I wondered if there was an Indian word, like Namaste (‘Namaste India’), but something less well known, that I could use…  I could ask Y, I thought.  (Y was coming round in the evening to take us to a temple.)

In the courtyard below were three women, part of the house keeping staff of the hotel, standing together in a group.  They were wearing everyday cotton sarees; everyday for them but beautiful to me, like so many things in India.  One red with purple swirls of colour; one an orangey pink with black print; one pale blue almost matching the gloss work with a printed pattern of creamy yellow buttermilk and orange pink leggings which matched the orange-pink saree of the other woman.

The woman with the red-purple saree was wearing a big gold nose stud which flashed like a light.  She was standing with the sun on it in just the right place.  I was sitting in just the right place to see it, and looking at just the right moment.

The three women standing in a circle, or a triangle, in the courtyard and the nose stud shining in the sun was like a scene from a film; easily as beautiful as if they had been dressed in Indian wedding finery and as special to me as the orange cat from the night before.

I forgot to ask Y, but he gave me a title anyway.

I got ready for going to the temple and had a little time to spare, (interstitial time*).  My husband was downstairs using the WiFi and talking to C from Detroit who was staying across the walkway from us.  Y was on his way.

It was raining, we had been surprised by the rain in Chennai, apparently it doesn’t always rain at this time.  The mosque and its lights were white in the dark and the mosque’s pool of water glittered.  I moved the cane chairs with their cushions and our clothes hanging on them back from the windows with their open shutters and sat down, my feet propped up on the other chair.  I had only the low light on so as not to attract mosquitos.

In front of me was a little red table.  Spread out to cover the bed were my lungis, purple and gold and green and gold.  The light from the mosque shone on the rainwater on the blue painted shutters, they looked as if they had been sprinkled in blue glitter.  A fork of lightning flashed in the sky in the gap in between the shutters, one open, one closed.  As the wind blew the shutters the light danced over the raindrops and they glittered even more.

Is it okay to just to be happy?  And what do you have to do to get there?  A lot, because of how things are set up in life.  I thought of the John Lennon quote:  His teacher asked him, ‘What do you want to be when you grow up?’  ‘Happy.’ he said.  ‘She told me that I didn’t understand the question.  I told her she didn’t understand life.’

(Here, I got a notification that I had to resign into the WiFi. I went on WordPress for a break and saw, ‘For my life to have any meaning, I have to live it for myself.’  That’s the meaning of life, to live it.  To live it for yourself, via escaping conditioning, family, everything that gets in the (your) way)

Y arrived and the three of us got a rickshaw to a completely different part of town.  The area around the temple was busy and colourful with stalls selling, ‘Everything to do with visiting the temple,’ Y explained.  God clothes, which I had previously thought were children’s clothes, fresh flower garlands; the smell of the blossom sweet and strong, the same as the blossom I had put in my hair at the temple in Kanyakumari), ‘And of course food,’ for afterwards.

We walked (clockwise) around the outside areas (non-Hindus are not allowed inside).  The rain had pooled in puddles on the stone floor under our bare feet.  The outside of the temple was decorated with beautiful coloured mouldings.  Coloured electric lights, like fairy lights, were placed around, decorating a statue of Ganesha, a juxtaposition of old and new.

There was a stable full of well fed, happy looking cows, some milk white, the others different shades of browns.  Keeping cows at the temple was a mixture of cow rescue and to use the milk.

Y told us Hindu stories (I couldn’t find the one he told us, but here’s another)  and pointed out religious devotional writing on the stone walls.  ‘It’s all like love poetry,’ Y said, ‘Like, ‘‘I fell in love with you and I cried.’’

I felt myself well up.  Even though Y is one of us, we’ve said anything to each other (I’m beginning to believe you find your people via travel, or on the internet?), and the other person there with us was my husband, I choked back the emotion and changed the subject back to the cows.  But when Y said I could go see them, that made me all the more emotional, thinking of how gentle they are, of the street cows left to eat out of garbage, the horrors of the dairy industry.

At the temple there are poojas six times a day; we saw the last one of the day, which is longer and bigger as it is the closing ceremony of the day.  Everyone stood outside the main temple and looked in.  The crowd began to chant, a low, repetitive singing that wrapped itself around us.  Clouds of incense filled the temple and the courtyard where we stood.  The main statue of the God was being bathed in milk.  Lots and lots of milk, poured over like a fountain or a waterfall.  Y told us it’s not just milk that is used, it’s fruit salad, all kinds of offerings…  I was bordering on being overwhelmed.  Nothing can beat this, experiencing a Hindu temple with a Hindu and a good friend.

In another temple room, the God’s wife was dressed up in a gold and green silk dress.  The dresses are changed during every pooja; people bring the dresses, hence the stalls outside.  At the end the God’s feet were carried on a small chariot from his temple to hers, where they spend the night, symbolising the God spending the night with his wife.  ‘Even the gods need sex,’ Y said.

I had wondered what happens to all the milk.  Afterwards, walking away I saw cats.  ‘There’s lots of cats,’ I said.  ‘There’s a lot of milk!’  Y said.  People take some of it, some of it runs off, the cats drink it.  Rivers of milk, for cats.  There were cats on a wall just outside the temple, just beyond the wall was a little house.  I could see into their downstairs room, there were lots of orange and orange and white cats inside, like a cat cafe.

Later I admitted to having a moment.  I told Y about the poetry, about the title for my book, that ‘I fell in love with you and I cried,’ could be my title, although I forgot to tell him the bit about asking him for it.

I told Y about the women in the courtyard, the beautiful scene, the nose stud.  He told me that in Kanyakumari (my favourite place in India, so far) there is a statue of the Goddess Kanyakumari, apparently the nose stud of the statue shone so bright sailors thought it was a lighthouse and ended up getting caught on the rocks.

(I’d always thought a lighthouse was to warn sailors of rocks, to tell them where not to go, rather than somewhere for them to head to.  Discombobulated that I could have totally misunderstood something so everyday I looked it up on Wikipedia.  Yes lighthouses were originally built to guide ships in to a safe harbour.  Later in more modern times they became warnings re where not to go.  Here is a link to the page and another to a surprising interesting biography about a famous lighthouse designer and builder, a great story about getting gifted opportunities and making the most of them.)

Back at the guesthouse the three of us chatted, swapping ‘spiritual’ experiences we’d had since the last time we’d last seen each other.  Y told us about returning to Chennai the day after we’d met and spent our evening together, he’d had to get a fifteen hour bus ride back to Chennai then go into work to prepare for teaching.

At work he had loads to do- photocopying and getting ready- and only half an hour in which to do it.  He felt spaced out, paranoid, thinking he looked stoned; but everyone was smiling at him and offering to help.  Y realised he hadn’t eaten for fifteen hours.  He asked for some water, one of his students poured some Red Bull into a glass; it looked like a potion.

He thought of what R (who we met at Osho’s guesthouse at the same time) had said about drinking the potion when you are born, the potion that causes us to forget who we are.  ‘Don’t drink all of it, then you’ll remember,’ R had told us.  Y remembered this, and only drank some of it.

Y felt a force of energy crackle all the way up one side and pass all the way though his head and body.  Time altered.  He felt full of energy.  He did all the work, that he had so much of and so little time to do, the work that he’d had only half an hour for but that should have taken even more.  He looked at clock, only ten minutes had passed.

Chennai…  Pondicherry…  Chennai…  Thailand… to be continued…

Travel update 

For pics see my husband’s Instagram travelswithanthony

We are in Thailand, Koh Phangan, same place as last week; my stepdaughter came out to Thailand for a holiday with us.  Thailand is clean, orderly, great food, beach, sea…  Did I mention the food?  Noodles, tofu, fresh vegetables!  Heaven.  But I am still looking forward to getting back to India.

My husband left on Wednesday with my stepdaughter to get the ferry to the mainland, stay the night in the town there before getting the all day train to Bangkok on Thursday.  They will spend one night in Bangkok, then on Friday my step daughter flies home, and at around same time our friend arrives from the UK.  My husband and our friend will stay the night and the next day in Bangkok before getting night train here on Saturday.  They will arrive here around lunchtime on Sunday.  So I have four nights on my own.

First night, couldn’t sleep, and stricken with anxiety especially after we had a spider a couple of days ago.  (My brain fuzzed this out so it looked like fluff, and my husband dealt with it while I cowered crouched on top of the toilet in case it ran into the bathroom).  (My strategy while he is away is to stay outside the room as long as possible then keep the lights off in evening and at night so if there is anything I won’t see it.  I trust that we will keep out of each other’s way.)

The next morning, I pulled myself together, tidied up and put all our stuff away, and arranged for the room to be cleaned, especially dusted.  I went for a swim, a walk on the beach, and wrote.  Kind of like a retreat, in the midst of an idyllic holiday resort that’s gearing up for the Full Moon Party…  Be flexible Rachel, it’s all experience…

Writing update

WordPress, as well as daily life, and discussions with my husband, has been inspirational recently and I hope to get onto that over the next few weeks.  Thank you to Des and Dirty Sci-Fi Buddha for almost giving me more than I can process.

I’m seeing patterns in my writing, which I’m seeing as helpful re writing and as validation re being on the right path.

Sat- day off, (over did it Fri, lack of sleep, travel, etc).  Sun- typed over breakfast and after lunch while the others were doing other stuff, just typing from notebook, organising, moving bits, reading notebook.  Mon- no, busy/out.  Tue- some typing up from notebook.  Wed, Thu, working on this.  I got it done on Thursday evening, so proud of myself!

*Whit by Iain Banks  Talks about interstitial time, religion, cults, and (healing hands) healing.  I recommend it!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

Throwback Thursday

23 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by Rachel in awareness, creativity, Menstruation, Periods, Personal growth, Throwback Thursday, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

Art, creativity, Menstruation, Periods

The crash that follows too much seeking.  I don’t eat Dairy Milk anymore (think of the cows).  And the Farrow and Ball painted room looked horrible.

In Praise of Magnolia and In Praise of PMS  (first published July 2014)

In Praise of Magnolia

When I was in my twenties I painted my bedroom shocking pink.  I spray painted Hey where the fuck were you when my lights went out?* and Under neon loneliness motorcycle emptiness** below a string of multicoloured fairy lights.

Twenty years later my husband and I have spent hours poring over paint charts trying to choose something pale and neutral.  So what happened, have I become boring?  Driving to work I flicked from a CD to Radio 4 and came across Martin Creed (Turner Prize winner in 2001 for an empty room in which the lights went on and off at 5 second intervals) being interviewed about Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square (a square of black oil paint on a white canvas) and whether or not it is art.

I am sure I have been guilty of saying dismissive things about conceptual art and certainly I have often been at a loss as to what to say at friends’ art exhibitions.  But with Martin, I’m going to call him Martin from now on, a light went on (a terrible pun, I know).  He refused to get into making judgements about whether or not things were art; he said it only matters if you like it or not.

He explained that the purpose of things like black squares or white squares or lights that just go on and off is that there’s nothing but your own thoughts and reactions.  In this busy world it’s nice to just sit and stare at a plain canvas and see what comes into your head.

Yes!  That’s it!  In my twenties I needed all my stimulation outside of me.  I repainted my room every year or so.  I wore homemade gold dresses and leopard faux fur hats.  But at forty-four, the inside of my head has a whole lot more stuff in it, and more importantly, I know my way around in there now.  I long for simple clothes, because I am interesting enough.

So rather than thinking that to paint everything magnolia smacks of a lack of imagination, perhaps the opposite is true!

As with most things, there is a middle ground, and in this case the middle ground is called Hay or number 37 by Farrow and Ball. ***

In Praise of PMS

Maintaining my equilibrium was hard this week.**** My emotions skittered all over the place, my confidence wobbled, I felt anxious and panicky.  But is there anything good about PMS?  However challenging I find it, I do think there is something valuable there.  The veil between my emotions and the world is so thin.  It’s so hard to fake my feelings.  And even though I do not enjoy the few days each month of feeling a sudden loss of confidence and capability, I can’t help but wonder, if I were to scratch the surface a bit more would I find that the emotional state it unleashes could actually be useful?  It might need a couple of days off work though, so that instead of normal activities I could explore doing whatever it is that would be best done on those days.

On Wikipedia it gives a biological explanation, saying that the woman at this time finds her man so annoying that she breaks up with him, thereby freeing her to find someone who will get her pregnant.  It also quotes a man in 1873 saying that women should stay at home due to their uncontrollable behaviours when they have PMS.  A different man said that women were at the height of their powers at this time and so should be freed from mundane concerns and distractions.  A woman researcher said that women need time alone when they have PMS but rarely get it.  And it said that some countries give women menstrual leave.  (I always admired a woman at my last job who was so open with her (male) boss about asking for a day off during her period, saying, ‘I could come to work but I’d have to sit on a black plastic bin bag and I think the patients might think it was weird.’  ‘Enough information,’ he said, but gave her the day off).

I think I could take something from all the Wikipedia theories and opinions.  So, PMS shines a light on everything that irritates, from the trivial to the important.  It shows us what is not in harmony with our temperament and needs, what is bad for our soul.  Of course some things will be minor that on reflection we decide to live with.  Sometimes it might show us what we need to change: I suddenly fell out of love with work, suddenly couldn’t stand the late hours and the drive and the lack of support.  I calmly decided to look for another job.  And sometimes, all we need is some time alone, if only to eat a family size bar of Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut and watch romantic comedies, and contemplate how wonderful we are.

*Hole
**Manic Street Preachers
***I know, but I probably won’t do it again for another ten years
****But I still prayed five times every day.  I still felt creative, connected and insightful.  I still got stuff done (my proudest achievement- I took off, washed, dried and put back on, the sofa and sofa cushion covers, a feat akin to climbing Mount Kilimanjaro).

Throwback Thursday

16 Thursday Aug 2018

Posted by Rachel in awareness, happiness, Personal growth, reality, spirituality, Throwback Thursday, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

anxiety, prayer, relationships, religion, spirituality, Throwback Thursday

In Love with Life (first published July 2014)

This week I have bought and drunk two kale and spinach smoothies.  This would have been unheard of before now.  I have always been very reluctant to even try vegetable juice, been vehemently anti food fads and super foods and so on and until recently I was fairly lax about eating properly.  But I do not necessarily know what’s best.  I used to be similarly dismissive of spirituality and religion, maintaining there was nothing whatsoever spiritual about me and that I didn’t believe in anything!  I wonder now whether I should track back all the things I was sneery about as an angry young woman and cynical about as a grown up woman, and embrace them: starting with vegetable juice and moving onto, let’s see, success, money, forward planning, and miracles.

I went through a phase of being into the Law of Attraction and practicing The Secret but I could never get that excited about finding a parking space in a busy car park (partly because I would hate to have to reverse park into the one remaining space with a queue of cars behind me, parking not being my strong point), or visualising cheques in the mail.  But I did and do believe in maintaining a level of serenity, openness and optimism which does inevitably make the day (and life) go better.

I’ve moved up a level now though.  Recently I have been praying five times a day: in the morning before I go to work, at lunchtime, at the end of the working day before I go home, in the evening at home, and before bed.  I kneel on the floor and say thank you and feel connected with God, and send distant healing to anyone on my list for the week.  That’s it.  And, oh my, what an effect it is having!

Everywhere, people seem so happy and friendly.  At the swimming pool, I heard three lots of children having a really fun time with their parents, lots of laughter and no stress.  In the supermarket a dad was having a laugh with his adolescent daughter, threatening to embarrass her by dancing, they were both laughing and caught my eye.  The lights blew on my car and a man at a garage helped me for ages for free.  My friend who has been very depressed suddenly shifted and sounded so full of change and light.  I visited the university where I trained; I was glad to be able to tell my old tutor what I was doing and so touched when she said that every time she drives past the hospital where I got my first job, she thinks of me.

I had the bravery (re spiders) and the motivation to go up in the loft and get rid of stuff and tidy the house, I also had fun seeing friends, I did healing and writing, all effortlessly, seamlessly, as if this week was a microcosm of a perfect life.  Shopping in the city and then going to a family barbecue, with none of my normal anxieties about time, getting everything done, getting ready, what to wear, what to say.  It was all so easy, just sitting on the grass, chatting away, entertaining the kids so totally unselfconsciously then sitting with the adults later, no shyness, no blank spaces, no tiredness, just total ease…  Home at 10pm, a quick tidy round and wash up without even thinking about it and certainly without any stress about getting things done.

Me and my husband both independently deciding that one evening was the evening to reconnect with each other, to ‘party’ (by which I mean a bottle of beer, a cigarette and an episode of something funny), but still, we were so happy with each other, taking a step out of the routine of the week which usually just revolves around cooking and eating and going to bed early enough to get through the next day.  Thinking that evening how lovely everything is, how all this extra stuff keeps happening, all these things that I hadn’t even known I wanted but that have just been so nice, and that all this has happened since I started praying.  I had this sense that it’s like my life will improve in ways I can’t even imagine.  I can’t imagine, but God can…  Immediately after I had this thought, my husband looked at his rota and said, ‘I don’t have to get up at 5am, I have to get up at 6am!’  I said, ‘so just when you thought life couldn’t get any better!’  Him, laughing, putting on a cool American accent, ‘Yep, it just keeps on getting better!’

The drawback with The Secret is that we are limited by our own imagination, you have to visualise it all yourself.  This way (the prayer way) opens up possibilities I can’t even imagine.

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