Pondicherry

Tags

awareness, India, Pondicherry, Travel, writing

Pondicherry DRAFT chapter for book

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just stop trying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next up, Chennai Part Four, then Thailand.

Travel update

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

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

Writing update

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

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

 

 

Chennai, part two

Tags

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

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

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.

How not to pack and an imaginary interview with Eminem

Tags

Chennai, India, Kochi, Travel, writing

What’s on top?

Too many clothes, nothing to wear!

Over the next two months I will be in India (modest dress) then Thailand (beach dress) then Tokyo (smart summer dress (or so I imagine)) then back to India (modest dress) via travel with limited weight hand luggage…

I left a bag of things for our guesthouse manager in Varkala to take to the orphanage he helps at (my kurta (long top) that I bought from the khadi shop that is rather thick and doesn’t look that nice on me; some thick fawn coloured leggins that are too hot and look like I’m not wearing anything- rather defeating the object; a new pink Indian dress that is really tight across the bust; two scarves that have proved unsuitable, wrong colour, wrong material.  I binned a much loved spaghetti- strapped black vest top that the elastic had gone in and looked worn out and, with much sadness, a black skirt bought from an expensive outdoor shop in the UK that went bobbly and extremely tatty-looking very fast.  It was just right, stretchy, soft and comfortable and it even had a tiny zipped pocket inside.

This is what I have:

Six dresses- one long with long sleeves, three that can be worn without trousers depending on where we are, two with side slits so that they can only be worn over trousers; 3 pairs of loose black trousers; 1 long-sleeved tunic top; two comfy t-shirts (that have holes in them- they were bought from poor quality tourist trap stall) to chill out in room in and sleep in hostel dorm in (although for travelling and in Chennai I have been wearing them outdoors with a scarf as they are so comfortable); one sun top for Thailand; five scarves- to wear over shoulders to protect from sun and/or to cover up/for evenings, and to wear as sarongs in Thailand or for chilling out in room in.  Two lungis (2 metres of green/purple and gold material) useful as bed sheets or to maybe get made into dresses.  One white ‘scarf of freedom’ given to me by a shaman; 3 pairs of socks; two bras; four pairs of knickers -two pairs of old comfy cotton; one pair of fitted cotton lycra; one (relatively) ‘sexy’ silky material.

The downside is that three out of the six dresses are slightly too tight across the bust; it has been hard to find dresses to fit, even though one of them (the green check) was made for me.  The dark red dress with navy sides and flowers has been made for me out of a lungi I bought for the fabric.  I have had it made/remade five times so far!  First it was far too tight, sexy across the hips but boob-crushingly tight at the top, then remade far too big, then remade with armholes too tight and still too big, then to a different tailor, too tight under bust, now (fifth time) it is more or less okay except that the armholes are slightly loose and stick out and are too high at the same time.  Maybe I will try again in Chennai, sixth time lucky!

On a positive note, I am very pleased with the scarf-as-sarong with sun-top look for Thailand.

An imaginary interview with Eminem

What would you do if you suddenly found yourself backstage with Eminem?  What possible conversation topics or questions could there be that wouldn’t sound lame?  This was a situation that confronted my husband recently in a dream.

‘I had this dream where I found myself backstage with Eminen, just hanging out.  I asked him about American music venues, I said that in the UK we’ve only really heard of CBGB’s.  He kind of sneered at that but I explained to him that we just don’t get told about the others.’

‘Well I would never have thought to ask him about that,’ I said, ‘That’s really good.’

‘Well I don’t know how well it would prepare me for a real life meeting…  In the dream everyone was smoking weed and I remember making sure not to have too much, I didn’t want to get really stoned, I thought I need to keep it together, I’m talking to Eminem!’

‘I can’t think of anything,’ I said, ‘Everything I can think of to ask him he’ll have been asked a million times:  ‘How is your daughter, what does she do; Do you still have problems with your ex wife; What’s it like getting old and having younger people coming up; What’s it like being famous?’’

‘You can’t ask him what it’s like being famous, that’s too broad, you have to break it down,’ my husband said.

‘Okay,’ I said, ‘Well what do you do when you run out of food?’

‘What would he do when he ran out of food?!’  My husband said, ‘Sack the housekeeper, probably.’

‘But can you go to a shop and buy food?  Is there a restaurant you can go to where you can just eat and not get hassled?  Do you ever just go and buy a loaf of sliced bread and make yourself some toast?’  I think I was almost crying with laughter by this point.

‘Really?’ my husband said, ‘That’s what you want to know?  I’d ask him about the nature of reality.  He’d probably say, ‘What do you mean,’ so I’d say, ‘Well, do you believe that what you see is all that there is; or do you believe in anything else, anything mystical, or spiritual?  Do you believe that this world is an illusion?  Do you believe that we live in a matrix and that this is a computer simulation?  Or do you believe that it’s all an illusion of the mind?  Or that the dream world is the real world and the waking world is a dream?’

You know, that kind of thing.’  I guess we’ve both got too much time on our hands…

Travel update

On Friday we went to Kochi, a four hour train journey from Varkala where we were.  On Sunday we went by train from Kochi (in the state of Kerala) to Chennai (in the state of Tamil Nadu) a fifteen hour journey, we arrived in Chennai on Monday morning.

See my husband’s Instagram travelswithanthony for good photos of Kochi and Chennai

Writing update

Before we left Varkala I had a burst of working on the Kerala Chapter, looking at the period we spent at Osho’s guesthouse which included a big spiritual and emotional upheaval.  It was tiring and a bit intense, mirroring, as writing often does, current feelings.  Still, I am pleased with the progress made on this chapter.

Right now, I am working on ‘Kochi’ and plan to publish the draft or part of it on the blog next week.  I am also handwriting and typing notes about my Chennai experience.

At some point I will need to go back to ‘Kerala’ and finish that draft, as well as going back over the other chapters but right now, stuff just keeps happening that I need to capture!

Thank you very much for reading

See you next week

Throwback Thursday

Tags

Cats, creativity, healing, spirituality

It’s sweet that I found life so lovely even in the midst of pushing myself so hard at home and work.  I would have done well to read the Osho quote below: 

“Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand ~ relax.
If you relax it comes, if you relax it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.”

Oh and my cats!  I really did have the loveliest, cuddliest cats ever but they couldn’t come to India (sob…)

I knew you’d find me, cause I longed you here. (Nick Cave) (First published in May 2014)

I felt the need to ‘heal myself’, to ‘rebalance my own aura’.  (I am still experimenting with how to conceptualise and describe all this stuff.)  Instinctively, I lay flat on my back on the floor in the dark and felt space tilt and slip away.  I always used to like lying on the floor when I came home from work, ostensibly to stretch out my back.  This new meditation method is so much more me than the cross legged sitting with pins and needles that I used to endure.  And for the first time in years, I had a whole period with no pains or cramps whatsoever.

A couple of times in meditation I felt something.  The organisation I am doing my healing training with believes in spirit guides but I am not yet sure what I believe in.  Other healing traditions believe in chi or auras or other systems of energy.  What would my spirit guide/guardian angel look like if I had one?  A nun, an angel, Maya Angelou, a young man named Ross, a scruffy long haired green shirted man, a badger?

I said to my husband that I couldn’t imagine any cats being nicer than the cats I have, they are so friendly, always willing to be picked up and cuddled, always waiting for me when I come home from work.   For me, they are the perfect cats.  I also added that I couldn’t wish for a nicer house than the little one we have.  My husband said, I know, we have a lovely life.  A few minutes later he shouted to me to come into the garden.  There was a rainbow right over our house, so that our house was right in the middle of it.  He said, I just felt the urge to go outside and then I saw it.

At work, the sense of lightness continues.  I have been chucking things out and clearing out my office.  Someone even asked if I was leaving.  I had to go to a meeting that I was not looking forward to; I put on a positive attitude and arrived laden with nice food.  The difficult people didn’t show up and it actually turned out to be a really good day.

On Saturday I met a friend and we went round the shops together, meeting outside Top Shop just as we did twenty years ago and returning home laden with bags.  I bought something light and breezy, to make my outside match my inside.  That evening my husband and I went to visit friends for a couple of days.  It was good to take a step out of our environment and out of our routine and relationship, to freshen our perspective.  When we got home, my husband offered to go food shopping without me.  I hadn’t had any quiet time this weekend so when he left me in a cafe with my notebook and pen he really was giving me a wonderful gift, and not just because I hate going to the supermarket.  Forty five minutes of alone time in an otherwise busy although lovely weekend.  Plus a cheese toasted sandwich, a scone and plenty of tea.  That’s about as close to heaven as I can get.

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

Escape The Matrix Part 3

Tags

escape the matrix, Netflix, reality, The matrix

This weekend I have been pondering the balance between personal responsibility and ‘the matrix’.  It is for us as individuals to keep our emotions in check, manage our thoughts, and stay positive.  This helps us create our reality.  At the same time, there is stuff happening all the time around us.  This could be things that might affect us in different ways, which we need to manage and also includes opportunities being thrown our way.  So people describe this as like learning how to ride two horses, one being fate, the other being free will.  Then you’ve got people like Richard Branson, who appear to have boundless confidence and seem to see how everything works and ‘play’ ‘the matrix’ to their own advantage.

For me initially it began with realising (mentally) what I had, and what I could do, and then realising (as in making real, putting into practice) that.

I had anticipated that as I took the big steps of leaving work and selling the house I might be ‘rewarded’ with a burst of creative energy and opportunities.  So far that has meant that I have experienced a kind of further expansion of my mind.  I pictured myself looking back and reviewing this life amongst others and saying, Hey, remember that time when we sold our house and packed in our jobs and went off to India?

But as if that isn’t exciting enough, my mind has begun to come up with even more crazy ideas and possibilities, as if there’s this sense that this is it, this is your last time around, if there’s anything else at all you might want to do, best do it in this lifetime.   Watching BoJack, I thought, hey, maybe it would be fun to go to Hollywood, maybe it’s kind of like somewhere to go for creative people who don’t fit in where they come from, like art school.  To wander around, immune to the pressures of youth and thinness.  How and why would we be there?  Write a book, ‘Our Guide to Escaping the Matrix’ (just us, telling our story), find our very own Princess Carolyn (BoJack’s agent) and have our story made into a film starring George Clooney and Kate Winslet.  It’s important to write things down, to spell them out, however crazy they may sound.

Anyway, to return to my point, if ‘the matrix’ is just a reflection of us and not a thing of itself, then maybe all you have to really do is the self management bit, not concerning yourself with the matrix at all, and everything will just happen.  Is that an invitation to limitless self belief or a cop out excuse to do nothing?  (But we’d still need to actually write the book)  (and we need money/an income stream- we do need to eat after all- and you have to spend your days doing something)

Back to Richard Branson.  Maybe if you have a really strong sense of self you just know what to do.  You don’t have to learn how to read the signs or think about timing.  You just know, and whenever you decide to do it, that’s the right time.

What I’ve been watching:

Films:  The Fifth Element

The costumes are designed by Jean Paul Gaultier.  They are all amazing but it got me thinking that if you have hands and fingers and you want to learn you could sew and make costumes.  If you are interested in something, if you follow that interest, with dedication and devotion, then with practice you will get good at it.

Frank

This is such an interesting portrayal of creativity, particularly group creativity, as it follows a band making an album.  In the woods, for about a year, with loads of craziness.  It makes you realise how hard it is- by that I mean how much dedication it takes, and how it takes time and practice to become good at playing instruments and writing songs.  It takes dedication, time and practice, and of course you need to be interested and want to do it, or why would you be there in the woods for a year otherwise, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it.  It shows you how it is done and what it takes.  I found that to be encouraging rather than off putting, although I am glad I am not involved in a group activity like a band, I prefer the solitary creative practice of writing.

Netflix shows:  The end of the f***ing world

Two young people.  Such good acting and really well done.

BoJack Horseman

What I’ve been listening to:

In a stunning example of awesome timing, my husband bought this CD in a charity shop for 25p, put it on the iPod and gave me the CD to play in the car.  I put it on for the first time as I left work for the last time.  Tracks 1 and 3 did give me goosebumps.

An object cannot compete with an experience

Tags

Beliefs, Ketamine, writing

I finished work and walked to my car.  For a few moments I sat in the driver’s seat with the door still open, feeling the fresh evening air, aware of the big tree nearby and the fields surrounding me.  I felt the pull of the outdoors, a longing to stay there a little longer.  But I also wanted to get away from work so I drove home, still feeling torn, wistful for the cool air, the big tree.

I decided it would be a disservice to myself and to my husband to arrive home not feeling right, so I parked outside town and went for a walk.  (Previously I had written off the idea of going for a walk after work when it is dark, except for around the town.  In the summer I sometimes go for a walk across the fields after work, and of course even in winter I can do this on my days off.)  I walked out of town along a footpath and down little lanes and roads, a circular route that we often do in the daytime but that I have never done in darkness.  I stopped to hug a tree, feeling its body against my belly and resting my cheek against its bark.  It was such a little thing, but it made such a difference, doing something different and realising I can have a proper walk after work even in wintertime.

So the next day I thought, that was so good, I’ll do that again.  Likewise, with doing a good yoga session, not eating late, and continuing writing an article, I made plans for the evening based on the previous evening.  But when the end of the working day came, I was tired and hungry, and it was raining.  I didn’t feel like going for a walk.  I went to the fish and chip shop and bought chips.  At home, I ate a whole portion of chips, followed by two vegan ‘magnums’ (from Morrisons).  Too full of food to do yoga now, so I sit down and write my article.

Yesterday it felt easy but today it feels hard.  I feel in a funk.  I’ve also got the bathroom to clean, as someone is coming round tomorrow, and duvet covers to change.  I think, should I do all that now, and come back to writing later, should I stop altogether for today.  Because writing is the most important activity, I keep writing and I do break through to a place where the work feels like its going well and I am back, enthused.  I clean the bathroom, change the duvets, then, breaking more of yesterday’s rules re don’t eat late or stay up late, I eat a plate of nuts and sultanas, have a cup of tea and stay up writing.  When I eventually feel like it I do plenty of yoga and really enjoy it and feel good afterwards.  Everything gets done, I feel good and apart from the early part of the evening, I enjoyed the whole thing.

Trust the process…  I don’t want to not enjoy my evening; enjoying the evening is more important than completing a manuscript; the two are interconnected; I want to enjoy the evening at the time of living it, not just afterwards in retrospect based on what I have achieved.

I can assist The Process by altering the order of tasks, by eating snacks (trail mix seems to be the thing to sustain me through an evening of writing, even though the little pieces of coconut are impractical and messy).

Learning to play the evening, not like a game, but maybe like a musical instrument, or like making something out of words…

Managing the dialectics of making and following through on plans versus doing what you feel like at the time.  Every day is a day to both make and rip up the plan.

Because, what is more important?  To enjoy the evening or to get things done?  Same re life.  Maybe by being a bit aware and a bit flexible, it’s possible to do both.

 

A little over a year ago I took ketamine for the first time and experienced the falling away of everything.  I knew that the carpet was red and we had a woodburner, but those things were very far away.  Lying curled up on the sofa, unable to move.  In the centre of a sensation of nothingness/awareness that at the time I conceptualised as being like one bubble within a sheet of bubble wrap.  Nothing physical was left, only feelings.  Lying curled up on the sofa with my husband, I said:  This is what love feels like.

Since then, we discovered the person I have referred to in previous posts as my ‘awareness advisor’.  From there we realised that beyond all emotions, beyond love even is awareness, and made that the goal.  Whilst raising our awareness we also explored the ideas around why we are here, what is the world, what is the real truth, and so on.  The central idea is that we are living in some kind of generated reality, some may call it a computer simulation, some may call it a dream.  Right now, I can believe that this world is a creation.

(If I were going to label myself, I could call myself a vegan, a minimalist, a hippy, an atheist, a creationist.  But it’s probably best not to, as I doubt there’s a club for me to fit into).

A creation made out of my thoughts, and/or the creation of mine and others’ thoughts.  At the height of being deep into all this theorising, I did spend some time contemplating everything being a creation of my thoughts, meaning, everything is in my head.  Everything, even all the people I know.  Now, when trying to embed a theory or wrap your mind around a strange new idea, it is useful to be completely immersed in it.  This particular belief is also really handy for dealing with difficult people, and for encouraging oneself to look inside at ones thoughts, responsibility and actions.  It can create more of a sense of personal agency, and that’s useful.  It also helped me conceptualise my reality.

But, then here’s the thing:  life is a richer experience when you regard it as real (even if you don’t believe it is).  Riding these two opposing horses is I suppose what it’s all about for me right now.

And so by being really there within an activity or when with a person, it’s possible to engage completely, to have an experience to cherish and value whilst at the same time maintaining an underlying belief that one is living in a dream of one’s own creation.  Because if that’s true, one has the agency to make each person to person and activity experience even richer.

But beliefs are objects too and it seems that as we declutter our possessions our beliefs seem to fall away too.

My husband saying that right now he does not believe in anything.  Although it felt true, he felt disconnected and unsettled for a few days.

The ketamine experience, me desperately trying to hold onto the red carpet and the woodburner.  If all we are left with is nothing, no possessions, no beliefs, what do we hold onto?

Green Mist Theory 08:08

Tags

dreams, escape the matrix, reality, The matrix

All this came to me, fully realised, in a dream.

You created a machine, a robot cyborg of flesh and blood, the movies etc. are clues or faint echoes of this truth.  We think they are fantastic fantasy but they are nowhere near as exciting as the truth:  We were ‘mist’ (we are energy) and we created a vessel that can cry and feel and we created the world we live in.  But then we got distracted by our bodies and sex and forgot.  (I even got/get distracted by that in the dream/my dreams).

Look in the mirror, at yourself crying, at your face melting, at it going through all ages.

Me to my mum: ‘Mum, are you awake?’  (Use of the word ‘Mum’ as a mindfulness bell (or spinning top, or programmed pendulum) as I don’t call her that).  ‘Is there a club for people who are awake?  Is there training?’ ‘Yes, in a mental institution.’  Oh yes of course, you’d think I’d gone mad… But it’s everyone else that’s mad, the mad people are the sane ones.  But fair enough, you’d think I’d gone mad if I said ‘None of this is real’.  The trick is, to know the truth but to still carry on living in the world (to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible).  We did this for a reason, perhaps we forget for a reason?  Maybe sex, and beauty etc was a trick we inserted to help us forget.

We made the body like people make robots but then it began to become real (like robot AI stories again) so yes, when you feed something, it grows.  And so we began to feel emotions in our bodies, emotions began to live and be processed in our bodies; so that our bodies became more than just a vehicle to hold the mist in or to transmorgophy the mist.  We only really need to remember this at death, that these bodies were only made up, and that we go back to being mist, and that this adventure was just a dream.

You get more out of the experience of being here by not being locked in a mental institution so it’s best to follow the earlier advice and keep most of this to yourself.

 

My attempts to ‘start a conversation’ and wake everyone up, were hey, let’s talk about being little kids, about when you toilet trained, about toilet stuff, hey, I wet myself once, or what about sexually when you are a child, did you ever, or let’s talk about sexual abuse… (groans from John)  okay, okay, let’s talk about… and John as old, lots of grey hair, beard.

(Not, how you used to always have in your draft manuscript as a footer, ‘all you have to do is meditate’- all you have to do is write, (which you are doing) so you don’t actually have to do anything: stop studying, stop meditating, stop all ‘spiritual practices’).

Looking in the mirror and crying, saying, what if I could create a machine that cried and moved how I wanted and could change its expression, and, and, and, that I could totally inhabit, so that even my emotions would be felt in its fleshy parts, because this machine is flesh not plastic and metal.  Oh look, I did.

Re aliens:  we are aliens.  We transmorgophied, and dropped into, or integrated into, living spacesuits, hence all the sci fi things along this line (no wonder I don’t like them).  They distract us by giving us something that seems fantastic yet the truth is far more amazing- it’s not made up on television, it’s here, in front of the mirror, take a look, if you look carefully, you can see.  (And if you take magic mushrooms, you can literally see)

Bodies are important as they are our vehicle to live on here and do things, so look after them.

Practical application: do my best to look and act normal at work; do as little as possible, for now, out of work, in order to leave space to remember to remember and to write it down.  Cease all spiritual practices.  Allow maintenance, allow reminder activities? Cease seeking behaviours but allow documentation?  My reminder activities:  read my writing, write my writing, old stuff, and maybe new stuff, read books e.g. Russell Hoban and Krishnamurti and Liz Gilbert.  Quiet time, meditation, contemplation, self healing, exploration.  Do healing, do writing, food and exercise of course, no fb just check for messages.

Mum:  ‘People used to say, remember to remember, but I’ve forgotten what that was about.’

But we must have done it for a reason (made these machines to live (love?) in and come down to live in this world) and seeing as when we die we go back to being green mist again, then that must mean that whatever the reason is it is what we do on the planet with physical bodies.

So it’s not correct to say ‘none of this matters’ and maybe it’s not actually correct to say ‘none of this is real’ because it’s what we’ve got- it’s all we’ve got, until our bodies expire.    You can spend some time hanging about as green mist (e.g. meditating, doing metta bhavna) and that is very nice but I wonder if it is not what you are here for?  You weren’t given, you don’t transmorgophy into a body and arrive here to sit in a room on your own and play at being mist again.

It’s useful to look down at yourself from the point of view of the green mist.  E.g. when to take a break from the computer, when to leave work on time.

In the dream I kept trying to write this all down but kept falling asleep or not being able to read it back, or kept getting distracted by sex, and then someone said they would read it out to me from a book, so I thought, oh well, it’s in a book, of course it is, I thought I’d thought of that myself…. but it isn’t in a book, unless I write it.

(This really did come to me in a dream, a couple of years ago now.  It’s old, but it’s still pretty good!)

I’m here

Tags

dreams, mental health

So, in the midst of family members having health scares, dentistry, offers and counter offers, blah blah blah, stress everywhere, blah blah blah, this happened:

About a week ago I got out of the bath (I try to only have two baths,  with hair wash, per week.  For me, being a ‘dirty hippy’ is now something positive to aspire to) with the mirror all steamed up.  All I could see of my reflection were two blazing circles, like silver metal discs where my eyes would be.  I thought of zombies for a moment (I am very scared of zombies, too much Walking Dead) then realised, no, not like a zombie, more like a robot.

Then this morning, same thing again, except that this time they weren’t just silver discs, there were also circles in rings around the discs like a metallic target.  Like a cyborg, as if there were something inside, light blazing out through the eyes of a suit or casing.

A reminder:  In the midst of everything, don’t forget this.

I tried unsuccessfully to photograph this phenomenon, almost making myself late for work (where I had a really good day).  To the middle right you can see one of the disc/circles although in the photograph it doesn’t appear over my eye.

It reminded me of a previous post that I don’t think many people read, so I shall re post it.