Named after the really great book by Stephen King On Writing (I can’t actually read any of his books because I don’t like reading anything scary, but I love this book about the writing process.
The last time my mood got really low was during a period of stress at work, a minor distance from my husband, and loneliness in my female friendships. On top of that, I had stopped writing. At the time, I didn’t care, I didn’t even put it down as a hobby when I filled out an application form. Instead I put singing!* I spent the day alone watching Boyhood(real time film about families and growing up that shows just how fast it all goes). It showed the good bits and the mistakes and got me thinking of all the things I could have done differently. I called a few friends, they were all busy or unavailable. I panicked: should I go back to counselling? Was I depressed? Or was I, as I suddenly realised, just a writer who had stopped writing? My fingers tingled, and I began to write…
*I moved and had to find a new yoga class. The yoga teacher introduced me to someone who lived in my new town. That person invited me to join a pop up singing group. I was blissed out after yoga and agreed. I thought maybe it was about me getting rid of my inhibitions. It did do that, but it led onto something much more important. The singing group woman also invited me to a book club and gave me the names of the two books they were reading. I went to the library, it was closed, I went to the book shop, it only had one of the two books in- Orlando. I made my excuses about the book club but I read Orlando. It was better, much better for me than the singing; seeming to unlock my writing, focus and structure, and if I had to pay my dues in advance by wearing a silly hat and singing out of tune in public then it was a fair price.
The fact that I got so low over a film shows how fragile my state of being was and how sensitive I was that a film could put me in that place, and how this new found neutrality is quite literally a life saver, that now I can run over a baby rabbit on the way to work and barely give it a second thought.**
**If you are like I was, and find even reading that upsetting, let me ease you by saying: It ran out in front of me as I was driving along a main road, hurtling across the middle. I put on my brakes- I didn’t slam them, but nor did I check in my rear view mirror either, so that evens out the me-rabbit balance, but I felt it go under the front driver wheel. I wondered afterwards, would it have been better not to have braked? If I had been going slightly faster, would I have gone past it, or at least would the front wheels have gone past it? An old boyfriend of mine told me that animals have better instincts than us and it is best not to brake as they will have judged it. So are all the dead animals and birds at the side of the roads not as I always thought, due to people driving too fast, or animals and birds walking, running or flying unavoidably out in front of you, but are actually the result of caring drivers slamming on their brakes? Probably not. I think he was mainly referring to deer, as he had hit one a few years previously, driving through Thetford Forest. It had run out, no way to stop it. He said they made eye contact as it hit the windscreen. That was my Vietnam, he used to say. I don’t know if baby rabbits are as capable as grown deer of judging speeds and distances of traffic on main roads. Apparently they don’t even know what to eat, they just eat anything and everything and it’s just luck or trial and error if they survive. So it’s not that I didn’t give running over a baby rabbit a second thought, it’s just that I decided not to get upset about it.
Eleven years old. In the back of my mum’s Morris traveller on our way to school, via picking up two children my mum got paid to do the school run for. My school had given out Charles and Diana Royal Wedding bookmarks. I had written ‘Don’t do it Di’ on all of mine. My mum and her friends, i.e. all the people I socialised with in my home life as I mainly hung around with adults, all thought Diana was a vulnerable young woman who was being taken as a breeder, and that it was sick, not romantic in any way.
However, this was not a view shared by most of the population of England in 1981 and when the two children my mum took to school were about to get into the car, my mum said ‘don’t let them see those’ (the written on bookmarks). There was no sense of any shame or it being a dirty little secret of ours; it was simply that these naive, brainwashed children wouldn’t be able to cope.
I inhabited a different world to that of my peers. At boarding school in 1982, me telling my disbelieving, ridiculing dorm about female circumcision (FGM used to be called that), them saying ‘girls can’t be circumcised Rachel’.They didn’t even know about nuclear weapons, The Bomb. ‘What, is there just one bomb Rachel?’ Oblivious, their parents obviously told them nothing, while I was getting out at weekends on false pretences to go on CND demonstrations, getting a coach from Norfolk, eating sandwiches, marching to Hyde Park.
Having surreal calm nightmares of being out in the garden, holding hands in a circle, waiting to be evaporated, hoping the end would be quick. Thinking of, even though I knew the government advice of the Protect and Survive pamphlet which was delivered to every home was pointless (CND did their own version, Protest and Survive), I still wondered late at night, should we stockpile, should we make a shelter in the cellar? But how long would it last, and what about all our friends? Wouldn’t it be better to all go together? We were so close to the American airbases- prime targets.
Thirteen years old. Walking to Greenham Common as part of the Star March, a women’s march, one of many from all round the country. In Luton the locals drove round and round in between our tents whilst were in bed inside them. There’s still a photo on my mum’s wall of me and a young punk woman called Rosie sitting in front of the Greenham Common fence.
At boarding school, lots of RAF children there. The headmaster used to call us after breakfast if we had any post, one day a fat packet of Animal Aid leaflets came for me. He said, ‘What’s that confounded girl up to now?!’ I gave out graphic photos of monkey head transplants to my peers.
Nothing’s changed really, I just pretend to fit in, that’s all.
I am not aiming for balance, or a balanced life, oh no, Elizabeth Gilbert says you cannot do that and I largely concur. I am aiming for a happy life subject to circumstances and a ‘spiritual’ life whatever the circumstances, indeed friction helps me grow. I am glad to be developing and all my life is helping me to do that (all my life as in all that’s going on in my life right now and all my life as in past, present and future). I fully know I may concentrate on one part sometimes and other parts other times and that life will show me what to do next.
Money: ‘Studying’ (aka obsessively binge watching) Shameless USA, reading about the Buy Nothing movement, hibernating, in order to get my finances under control. I didn’t set out to watch Shameless in order to do this, but I am sure it helped. Spend as little as possible. Who needs money when you’ve got words. Not being flippant about people who don’t have money for food, I just mean that I can cope with staying in etc because I have this to do.
Work: I got locked in my pattern again: I take on too much, get too tired, or in this case, there just was too much happening (lots of people leaving/off sick); me pretending to everyone including myself that it is okay and not accessing support. I end up feeling burned out, thinking I have to meet the every emotional, professional, advisory and every other need of everyone in my team whilst also doing a good job for my patients, other dept. duties, answering emails, thinking up new stuff, keeping one step ahead, keeping everyone happy… all of which is obviously ludicrously impossible.
The next thing that happens is that I start to get self conscious and paranoid, worrying about what everyone thinks of me, wondering if anything I do is any good, wishing I could start over again and be different- stop being shy, communicate better, stop avoiding the strong senior managers because I’m intimidated. I avoid criticism, I am scared of it so I avoid people, and that just makes everything worse…
To contradict what I just wrote, I have actually in many ways been more relaxed at work. I have stopped to chat. I have worked slowly. I have left things undone. I have chosen the fun things and put off the boring ones. I have cancelled things to make my week manageable. I have noticed that I usually go around on full pelt (resenting others who stop to chat!) and the busier I get, the more I take on; working up to the last minute so I am always late and stressed, as if I don’t deserve to take it easy and sit calmly in a room waiting for a meeting to start (I have done this at least once recently!). It’s going to be an adjustment…
So although tonight’s writing mission was mainly about dealing with work stress, and was more about writing as therapy than writing, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to finish this book: Don’t get distracted by the idea that you should be so ‘spiritual’ as to be above wanting or needing to do anything. This might be idealised as sitting on top of a mountain meditating but in practice becomes eating oven chips and cold baked beans and watching rubbish on Netflix*. A creative mind is like a border collie, remember…
*There is really great stuff on Netflix but it is definitely possible to waste time on it as well.
April 2020
Ah, the joy of burning out! Now that I’ve left it behind there are things I miss and value about that job: The feeling of working at the outer edges of my capabilities; the sheer creative freedom: being given big projects with little support and direction, and having a team to lead meant I could at least in part set the tone and direction of my department; the buzz of so much pressure, both external and from within myself. Finding creative ways to postitively engage patients and provide hope within a medium secure forensic setting was what I was good at and felt rewarding. Working in such a heartbreaking and violent setting meant that what we did felt really important, and the fact that we were there meant that we were strong. But ‘You can have it all, just maybe not all at the same time,’ and right now, working three days a week in an easier job, I have the time and space to keep on finishing my book.
I read Elizabeth’s Gilbert’s book Big Magic, about creativity. In it she mentions ‘those dreams where you dream you suddenly find another room or rooms in your house that you didn’t know you had’, and I thought, really, that’s a thing? I have those dreams regularly. I usually dream about the same flat, not one I have ever had in real life, but in my dreams I return to the same one over and over. It’s one of those old terraced houses divided into flats; messy, lots of other flats around. Each time I dream it, I rediscover a whole other set of rooms that are a bit neglected and that I have simply forgotten about. In the dream I wonder what to do with them, which room to sleep in, what to use the rooms for; I suddenly have all this extra space I don’t know what to do with.
I also have other dreams, where I open a bag of rubbish or I open a drawer and it’s filled with old cat food tins that haven’t been washed and have gone off and are filled with maggots. I have to somehow make myself quickly pick them up and get rid of them without looking at them otherwise I would be unable to do it. And I’ve let all the other rubbish pile up as well, I can’t understand it, the cat food tins or the rubbish, and I am appalled.
In real life I can let my car get very messy, tissues, wrappers, dust and stones. I am somewhat ashamed even though I still do it. So I thought the dream was about that, that I was ashamed of myself.
Worse still, I sometimes dream about caged animals that I have forgotten to look after, that I somehow inexplicably forgotten I had and that are mercifully still alive despite no food or water. I thought all these dreams were about shame, or at the very least, clattiness.
So when I continued reading and Elizabeth Gilbert went on to say that those dreams are all about ‘expansivenessand your life having more possibilities than you previously realised’, that was very pleasing to me. Especially as this was exactlywhat I had been feeling: the evening before I had gone out for dinner with two people that used to work in my team, young women on their first jobs, with me the manager of the team and their supervisor. I had the sweet and rare experience of hearing about what I was like (it had echoes of a child asking its mother what was I like tell me what I was like when I was little…) That was a few years ago so I have probably changed a lot but still, no one really tells you what you are like, you can only guess.
When I said that I thought that senior management preferred a man in my team to me because he’s always the same, always unemotional, always smartly dressed, and his car is neat and clean and mine is always messy they looked horrified. Your leadership, your direction, your care, you’re amazing how you get it all done, we were so lucky we had you for support, they both said. They reminded me of all the different tasks I do and the skills I have, and said that if I ever wanted or needed another job I’d have no problem getting one with the agency they work for. The agency pays more so I could work fewer hours. Listening to them, I felt all the possibilities, being able to do healing as well, expansiveness… When I used to just think about all the bad stuff- I am messy, senior management probably disapprove of me, without realising, I actually have skills! One of the women invited me to visit her in Sweden, a genuine invite, and hearing about her life there, how she’d moved there from Suffolk, was so interesting and inspiring and made it sound so easy.
It made it sound so easy to change your life.
On a more down to earth level, it took away my fear of redundancy, knowing there are plenty of jobs and the world is more than just my current workplace. It’s such an amazing gift, the gift of peace of mind, and a sign that I am in tune with the universe.
I realised I had it wrong: those dreams weren’t about my clattiness or my buried shames, they were about the hithererto unknown expansiveness and potential of my own life. I have nothing to be ashamed of. At worst, the unfed animals were a gentle chide or reminder about my sometimes neglected creative work…
Because although I am where I want to be writing wise anyway really, in terms of where I was this time last year and where I am now, undoubtedly I am an inconsistent and unfaithful bride to creativity. I certainly don’t have Liz Gilbert’s dedication and approach; I have other things, true, an absorbing career which is practically a vocation- can you have two vocations, can you have them at the same time? I suppose so, look at Nick Hornby and countless others.
This time last year (Christmas), I did a little review of life and I had an idea for something to write this year. Then I got waylaid in Buddhism and other seeking and beyond seeking, even considering that writing was behind me along with all the different religions I had burned through, because, I had decided: I am to cease all seeking behaviour, and writing is a seeking behaviour. And maybe it was, maybe it is, but isn’t talking, isn’t breathing, isn’t yoga, and who makes up the rules anyway?
***********
The thing that got me writing again after I had abandoned it, was writing a spoken word piece for a friend’s 50th Birthday party, (a night of anything goes performance.) She said it could be about anything, so I wrote a‘my spiritual journey’ thing,the only thing I felt able to write about. I wrote it while listening to Rufus Wainright’s song Go or go aheadon repeat,which he wrote after a crystal meth binge.
Liz G says creative inspiration can either come in a skin tingling rush or it can be quiet and you just get there by following your curiosity and clues and it leads you there. Or it can be like this… I read a book, it mentioned a dream, I listen to a song at just the right moment, I recall a dream, I write it down. And now I am in such a clear eyed clear minded place, isn’t this the perfect place from which to write a book?
Thank you very much for reading
Rachel Hill
About the author
I am forty nine years old, married to John Hill, we live on a narrowboat in rural Northamptonshire, UK.
In March 2018 after selling our house and giving away 95% of our possessions we embarked on a year of slow travel in India and South East Asia. I’m writing a personal/spiritual/travel memoir of that year.
First published in July 2017. It doesn’t matter that it’s not really Thursday does it?
Sitting meditating:
Feeling roots coming up from the earth and wrapping themselves around me. At the same time the bones and muscles of my body turning themselves into vines. My whole body feeling more plant-like than animal-like.
And in my mind, beyond thoughts, I see a bird’s wing, at its edges iridescent rainbow layered feathers. And out beyond the edges of the bird’s wing, beyond everything, lies the sleek white edge of an aeroplane’s wing. And beyond that: nothing. And then, the why, the what: There is only the moment, you sitting there in the room- the wing enclosing all of it- and beyond it, nothing.
I had come up through the mind, through and beyond thoughts, not even interested in looking at the thoughts on the way; the past just a collection of thoughts after all, like a tangled ball of wool. If you are okay now what does it matter what happened in the past. Memories just seemed like a clump of thoughts, irrelevant, as I went beyond all that to the clean white surface of the aeroplane’s wing…
We are more than thoughts, and I passed through the complex workings of the mind to: Nothing. A bird’s wing closed around the experience, around me, around John, underneath the rainbow feathers a network of bones, complex and strong. Could fly but chooses not to, chooses to encircle, to be a protector instead. Bird’s wing chooses not to fly. Chooses to settle here.
You are a facilitator. Wanting to facilitate John for a change (he is usually the one who supports me as I work through stuff in my head). In life: you are a facilitator. Make life easier, and more peaceful. All I want is to be in touchwith this: my spiritual side. I don’t need to be or to do anything. We come here to remind our self who we really are, and then we go back to the day to day. Neither place is better or worse; it’s cyclical, in and out, like social-alone-together-apart.
Since then my mind has been much quieter. Cracks let the light in. A certain amount of friction, strife, variety and challenge creates learning, and keeps me ‘spiritual’. I am a safe harbour.
I have moved away from throwing myself too much into being something to make up for being me not being enough. I don’t need to go around ‘being a healer’ although I do healing and I like doing it, but I have a tendency to over schedule. And I feel there is something more than me just rushing around being me at work. There’s Me.
Rather than being a collection of labels or skills, being very open and flexible is nice. A facilitator. A safe harbour. Can do healing. Enjoys exploring the mind and ‘spirituality’. Tries to eat a mainly vegan diet. Complex and strong. Like nailing jelly to a wall, but describing self in an open way is nice…
About the author
I am forty nine years old, married to John Hill, we live on a narrowboat in rural Northamptonshire, UK.
In March 2018 after selling our house and giving away 95% of our possessions we embarked on a year of slow travel in South East Asia, mainly India.
I’m writing a personal/spiritual/travel memoir of that year. This is my personal blog.
Thank you for visiting
Follow me on Instagram thisisrachelhill
A book should be an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us
Franz Kafka
For Book, you can substitute Love. This is my story:
In 2009 I drove to work in the morning and watched the pink and gold sky split open. Driving home in the evening I passed outrageously lit up lorries that looked like fun fair rides. Somehow I managed to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible. For the next six years, I followed the trail. I always joke that it was like Eat Pray Love but without the travel.
I meditated and felt as if my skin was being bathed in soap and soft water. I saw situations worked out from behind my closed eyelids. I had the most amazing physical sensations. I took up Yoga. I had deep tissue massage and experienced profound physical and emotional release as she worked my knots out until her fingers got down to my bones.
I practiced Paganism and Wicca, I went for walks and stared at leaves, gathered foliage, wrote spells and held rituals every full moon for almost a year. I was invited to a women and Islam open day. I bought books and began praying five times a day. For a few weeks my life was illuminated.
I chanted the Hare Krishna Mantra every morning for three months. Things led on from each other. I felt purified, and wanted to feel even better. I had trouble with someone at work. In meditation I said, I have no protection against this person. The answer came: ohyes you do, you have this.
I did an evening class in Buddhism. Stepping out onto the top floor of the car park after class, the sky filled with birds, the breeze cool and warm at the same time. Listening to The Stone Roses on the way home: This is the one, this is the one she’s waited for, yes, I thought, yes, this is it. But no sooner had I filled the house with Buddhas than I woke up one day and realised I had burned through that as well. Or it had burned through me, whatever.
I read The Secret and practiced The Law of Attraction. Not to get cheques in the post or to get parking spaces, but just because it made life easy and more beautiful. Simple things like walking up to a crossing and it turns green just as I get there. To the sublime: Arriving home one night I pulled into the car park, and in the second before I turned into the parking space the headlights lit up the hedge in front of me and I saw a mouse on a branch. A mouse on a branch! Almost immediately, the thought came into my head: I hope you enjoyed that, because it won’t happen again. I thought straight back, yeah, I did enjoy it, and no, I don’t expect it to happen again, who would. And I don’t need it to happen again, because I saw it the first time.
As well as experiencing anything and everything I was also searching for a spiritual or scientific explanation that made sense to me. A unifying theory, if you like. After about six years of searching it arrived in my mind fully realised in a dream: We’re all green mist, we created these bodies because without bodies we can’t pick up a pen and write poetry or kiss each other. But the kissing and the poetry are so distracting that we forgot that we’re green mist come down for a human experience… but maybe that’s the point. You can’t enjoy a party if you stand at the door with your coat on and maybe spiritual beings can’t enjoy a human experience on earth unless they fall in feet first and forget their previous incarnation….
I woke up on the massage table as if I had just arrived there and looked at this new person in the mirror: hair everywhere, skin glowing, mind wiped clean of all previous concerns. But you wake up again every moment, and in this moment I can’t imagine anywhere else I’d rather be than right here.
Those of us who are awake to the Universe but who have not adopted or been adopted by a particular faith have to be flexible, I believe, in where we get our support from. The whole world is ours but we need to be discerning in order to read our own Bible from the world around us, as it presents itself, in each moment. It’s like running your fingertips along a fence and on one in every thousand railings there is a message written in Braille that seems just for you.
Perhaps especially for women, with no religion that’s female led or totally okay for women other than Paganism or Wicca or some New Age stuff; and with the toxic nature of much of the news and advertising, we have to keep our ears pricked and eyes wide open for those helpful messages that still abound in listening to Radio 4 on the way to work or seeing adverts at bus stops or watching box sets at home.
I learned almost everything I needed from the streets, the rest I learned from films and books (Mozart in the Jungle watched during a free trial of Amazon Prime over Christmas).
Starve your ego, feed your soul (sign outside Earlham road Norwich shop)
From the moment we’re born we’re seeking (advert on YouTube)
There is no time for regrets, it’s far better to see where you are now and work from there (my stars in a magazine at the hairdresser’s).
We all search in different ways (advert on YouTube).
Charlie Higson on R2 Chris Evans, he said, ‘If you write something that’s good, it will get published, there’s no magic trick or secret doorway.’ (okay, it was advice to kids who want to become writers, but I was listening to it at that moment, so I am taking it).
How do you know it was meant for you: you were listening/looking at the time, no one ‘put it there for you’ you, I don’t believe, to quote Nick Cave, in an interventionist God, it’s all just us, learning to read our path out of all the billions of possibilities that exist within every second.
It’s about being open minded and flexible and the more you notice these things, the more of them appear, so it goes from every thousandth time to every other rail you touch seems to have a message for you…. and then it becomes about balancing keeping your feet on the ground and head in the clouds.
I am noticing that the answers to everything are all around me- sometimes people tell me things directly, sometimes they are chatting or advising each other and I hear. Sometimes it is less immediately interesting to me and then when I review it I notice things for me. This is why it is important not to do too much, not to expose yourself to too much stuff, to be discerning about who you spend time with and what you do and where you go, because, although the energies of the universe are unlimited, the hours in my day are not.
Driving on the dual carriageway, I see ‘DIE’ on the number plate of a lorry and wonder if I should move into the inside lane. But maybe you just see what’s reflected, i.e., everything is there, but you notice what matches what you are feeling- the number plate matches my anxiety about driving. Even the Earlham road shop sign (a blackboard with a different message on each day) that I like so much, why am I so keen on looking at it? What do I want to it to tell me? So maybe signs are just a reflection of what you feel- a visual interpretation of what you feel; useful if you don’t know how you feel, but if you do, then perhaps it’s best to look inside not outside.
I hardly EVER go in record shops but I was with a friend who collects vinyl so we went in one, and there in front of me was a Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy poster. I thought it was an original old one, I didn’t realise it was advertising a 30 year anniversary tour. If I’d said anything out loud the record shop man or my friend might have realised I was confused and put me right, but I didn’t.
Thirty years ago I was fifteen and so desperate to see them, I was at boarding school and not allowed out. A boy in my year went, his dad made an excuse so he could go, I was so jealous. They played for fifteen minutes with their backs to the audience and walked off but still, it had been one of life’s big regrets.
But luckily for me the universe gave me another chance. A few weeks later a patient asked to go to a concert- this is a fairly unusual request- and I also fairly unusually offered to get involved and look up local gig programmes… I looked up the UEA programme and there it was, Jesus and Mary Chain Psychocandy 30 year anniversary tour £25.
Oh, thank you, thank you, so much pleasure. I went on my own to just soak it all up. A sound bath; the lights red with gun like firing of individual white lights, a wall of dry ice lit white, almost all the stage eclipsed. Seeing mosh pit kids, a girl with dark hair, her face lit up with happiness. Images on the screen, a serious, sad looking girl (me, at fifteen, thirty years ago) and then at the end a pair of infrared heat image hands, (me now, healing hands).
I don’t want anything to come between me and this awareness. The bar tender gives me free sparkling water, a man gives me a token for free car parking. You don’t need to ask for help to make your path, you have created this life, and it is perfect.
More Everyday Gratitude:
Swimming pool empty and friendly- two people talked to me.
Car park almost full, spaces looked a bit tight for me but then I find two spaces next to each other and what was more, one also had a space in front of it so I could drive straight through to be facing ready to go.
Two staff at the whole foods shop, astonishingly friendly, talking at length about their cats.
Driving home in the dark, I noticed the pretty pointy silhouette of a chapel; a beautifully illuminated pink neon No Vacancies sign, and a pretty yellow window lit up.
A meeting got postponed so I only have to do one report not two this week.
The secretaries next door offering me biscuits just as I was getting hungry at 4pm.
All falling into place ‘live life as though everything is rigged in your favour.’
Sitting on floor, stapling papers, staples ran out and I remembered I’d found a little chunk of staples the day before and put them by my computer just within arm’s reach.
A member of staff I don’t know being extra nice and friendly, like the staff in the whole foods shop.
Finding some extra pouches of cat food so I don’t need to go shopping today.
Home, stars, little walk.
My stepdaughter saying ‘let’s go home and have hot dogs* and watch Buffy on the sofa with blankets and one cat each, what more could we want?’ *vegetarian ones
Someone at work introducing me: ‘this woman is one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet, and you can tell by looking at her that she is just like this at home too’.
Someone else saying that I have the happiest team in the hospital.
One of my staff bought me a posh houseplant ‘because you’d been having a hard time recently, I wanted to give you something happy.’
A moment shared with a member of staff on her last day. ‘As you go up the ranks it can be, ‘Lonely’’, we both said at the same time.
After going to a friend’s party, John saying, that’s the most relaxed I’ve seen you in company, even making jokes!
An old friend asking, are you still writing and me saying yes, he said I’m glad and me asking, are you still drawing and him saying yes, but it’s just a hobby, I’ve accepted that and me saying me too (except I haven’t, not really).
Massage today, didn’t have the surface niggles, so went deeper.
I ‘woke up’ on the massage table, hair everywhere, enlivened, thinking, what if I just arrived here, what would I observe about myself? I am hungry for good healthy food, I have a nice job, Iam a healer in training, I am married,I have an adult son and two step children, I drive around a lot and go away with work no problem, Isleep well, I exist separately to my thoughts.
Postscript 12.11.19
It took a lot of work to get this happy. I suppose that’s what all the self help books mean when they say you have to ‘do the work.’ If you’re on this path Please keep going: the rewards are worth it!
John (Anthony) started a course in Buddhism, bringing home information sheets to read which I fell on and read each week and we discussed them in preparation for the next week. They advise don’t start with meditation, as most people do, me included, instead start with the theory and the ethics, then do the meditation, because then you have a framework. I look back to how crazy I was when I first started meditating, and realise this makes sense. So on John’s course they didn’t get onto meditation until later, but as they did, I started doing it too. I switched from the Hare Krishna mantra to Buddhist meditation, one day Metta Bhavna and the other day mindfulness of breathing.
Breathing:
Focus on the breath not the breathing, as you follow it, it quietens and disappears, so you think, what am I following, and then, I’m not breathing, I’d better breathe, and then you are focussing on the act of breathing not on following the breath which you are doing consciously, so you are doing two things at once, actively breathing, and following the breath, which doesn’t work. So you have to let go, and let the breath be as it is, sometimes big and fast and gasping, sometimes so faint you can hardly find it, and sometimes disappeared or stopped altogether, but you have to trust your body will take care of breathing when and as it needs to.
I started a different Buddhism course a bit later, each week we were given homework, such as The Four Winds (Loss and Gain, Pain and Pleasure, Praise and Blame, Fame and Obscurity): We were told to pick a pair and focus on that for the week. I focussed on Loss and Gain, or how I specifically in my life seek to avoid loss and sought to gain: thinking about mine and other’s air time in conversations; wanting to be asked questions, wanting to ask questions but not asking them, also like praise and blame or fame and obscurity, at my mum’s seeing an old family friend, I wanted to say, look at me, look what I am, look what I’m into, but he just wanted to talk about old age, house prices, people I don’t know, and although he seemed pleased to see me, he was not interested in any of the things I was interested in, and even poured cold water on my plans, (I felt) and I came home in a bad mood.
But it did have a positive effect, the Buddhism course(s):
Before work, John and me had one of those hugs that are really close, well almost all of the hugs he gives me are like that, where he folds me in really tight, and I put my hand on the base of his neck, in between the shoulder blades, where it always feels hot for me, a healing point/love point, and it felt really good, the hug, and I said, ‘things are good’ and he said, ‘yeah, things are good.’
I went to see my son and as there was no parking at his we went straight to the park and had a walk in the only break in the weather. I did an extra hour of healing at the mind body spirit fair and even though I’d got up early and been out for hours, I felt relaxed and unpressured. I went home and made a complicated new vegan meal effortlessly with no stress.
One night after my Buddhism class:
I stepped out of the double doors and into the open air of the top floor of the multi-storey car park. I always park on the top floor, ostensibly for exercise, and while that is true, it’s also because it’s always got plenty of empty spaces and I get anxious about parking. And at the end of an evening or an afternoon of shopping I like to look at the view, the big sky, the cathedrals, the whirling flocks of birds that always seem to be there. My husband and son find my choice of parking annoying and always complain about the six flights of stairs or make us go up in the lift. I do it for me though, for the view, to take away the parking anxiety, to test my fitness, or perhaps, just to give me this moment tonight:
It was cool and warm at the same time, the sky grey with clouds, still light at around 9.30pm. I paused, leaning on the barriers, looking, and I just thought/felt: This is it
Earlier, the teacher had said, ‘if you catch Buddhism… but you may not, you may leave this and go off onto something else’, my neighbour said, ‘Islam’, which was funny because I’d been through an Islam phase a few months back. But I thought, please no… I wanted to say, ‘Don’t let me be out there again’ (like that bit in When Harry met Sally when the couple say to each other, ‘please say I’ll never have to be out there (dating) again’); but I am working on not talking as much and certainly not interrupting, so I didn’t.
I have tried things: Islam, Paganism, various different New Age Practices, Hare Krishna, worship of a man, self abasement, therapy, all for three weeks or three months. It’s over
In the car, I put some music on The Stone Roses: This is the one, this is the one she’s waiting for. Windows down, warm cool breeze, lights bright…
This turned out to be yet another one of those moments when I think, this is it, I’ve found it, this is the thing, this is what I believe in, that later slips away. And yet, I don’t regard any of it as a waste of time. And even though this was one of the strongest incidents in recent times, as the same Buddhist course later taught me, there is nothing to find.
There is nothing permanent, nothing lasts, nothing exists, only interactions. We all just knock against each other but all our scaffolding stops us connecting properly. Re finding yourself, your identity, personality, Buddhism says there is nothing to find= Scary. We are not fixed, we can change= Comforting. Suffering doesn’t last either. We do have a ‘relative self’- it’s good to be predictable to children (and patients) etc but with others this can be limiting (e.g. how we behave in our family). It’s hard to be your (new)self with family as they like to keep you the same.
The death of spiritual ignorance, is when you see things as they really are, e.g. work. Things are both much better and much worse than you previously thought.
Meditate on our bodies being made of the same things as everything else
Our teacher, in meditation, became aware that a strand of hair, attractive on the head, becomes repulsive in a plate of food. Same with toenails, she put all her nail clippings and hair onto her shrine and thought, is it ‘repulsive’ because it reminds us of death and decay?
The mind changes much more than the body; at least the body persists relatively the same week to week, year to year; whilst the mind changes all the time, likes and dislike change. Tastes change with Buddhism (me and The News Quiz on Radio 4, I used to think it was funny, suddenly it just seemed mean). People refine their tastes with Buddhism (or with anything that increases your awareness?)
Meditation:
Where is yourself? Your self? In front? Above? Colour? Shape? Can’t find it? Because it isn’t anywhere; it doesn’t exist.
It is the clinging to the sense of self that causes all the suffering.
Get out of yourself. With more happiness and helping others. A cause outside of themselves, a musician, artist, all else swept aside in the service of what is. Really focussed; most people don’t do this and are dissipated. What is it that we really want and go for it. Hone in on (one) something. Realise how we dissipate our energies.
See ways that we let life happen to us rather than directing life in a way that can be more fulfilling.
Buddhism advocates doing creative things, artistic things, if you decide you can, e.g. live without much money etc. Self expression is a generous act.
Homework:
Contemplate impermance
‘The spiritual life is a continual process of purification and elimination of unskilful states.’
‘Our experience is much richer than we realise. We are much better and much worse than we realise’ Deeper meditation helps to integrate this.
Buddhism helped, but I don’t know about the future… don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater- this clear awareness is great, don’t mess it up with caffeine, drinking, etc, yoga is good, meditation is probably good. Everything I’ve done has been part of what got me here, but what got me right here was not meditating for a week or so, and going to bed early. I’m even wondering if helping others really is all that, maybe it could just be about yourself, and those around you…
Re working, re healing, re thinking up an alternative career: when do I get to just enjoy life as it is, to do what I’m doing with both feet and not always be thinking I should be doing something else?
So right now, reading this, I feel wistful: I feel, I want to meditate, I want to do the Buddhism course, I want to get back into being spiritual again. But what would that do? What do I think that would do? I could do a load of yoga and meditating, do more healing, whenever I do it it feels so good, I want to focus on that… But what about the writing, not sure what is happening with that…
How do I get to a place where I can conceptualise what it is I am doing- every time I get to where I think ‘this is it’, it changes, so where is my vantage point? There isn’t one, or there is, but it shifts from (and form) moment to moment. Suggestion: Pick one and write from that? What is the vantage point that I want to select and choose to write from- with so much choice I can choose one- after Buddhism, when I am into Krishnamurti? When I am just coming back from practical house selling and working mode? When I am back to meditating? When I am reflecting on all the things that have got me here? All the spiritual processes, yoga, body work, healing, reading?
Why not just admit that there’s nowhere else you’d rather be than here: waking up on the massage table and realising, I am the kind of person who has this in her diary, and this, and this, and does this, and does this, and does this, and laughs at this and cries at this, and cannot watch horror films and is scared of big ships and on and on and on and on…
Paradoxes:
Work going both really well and really badly, as always
Loving being married at the same time as longing for more time alone
Ceasing all seeking behaviour yet knowing this is just another ‘thing’ I’m doing on the (seeking) path
Happy with life as it is and thinking of new things to do and be
Everything is good, you are just making up things to worry about because you are scared of realising how good things are.
Leonard Cohen: You know that I love to live with you, but you make me forget so very much. I forget to pray for the angels, and then the angels forget to pray for us.
From the early days of Rachel and Anthony/ John:
It’s easy, (even for us! as I am fond of saying,) to become bogged down, stressed by the things that don’t matter (decorating, paperwork) and neglectful of the things that do (how we are, how we are together) and before too long a distance is created, one or other or both of us are dissatisfied and then, well, nothing really, we might have a rubbish go at sorting it out the first time and end tense and cranky, me getting defensive and going off to bed, and then the next morning, he leans his leg in, I lean mine, we talk, we make plans. It’s not about what things we were or weren’t doing, it’s all part of it, it’s just about getting back on the path again.
He’d been feeling distance, we hadn’t been doing anything together. I’d thought it was all hearth and home or having ‘gone beyond’ but you never ‘go beyond’; and looking back it had been a bit distant, I mean, I haven’t been feeling that happy either. Then he goes into a charity shop in Dereham (Norfolk) of all places and finds a George Harrison book (I Me Mine) and in the introduction by Olivia his wife it sets out what their lives were like, and John said, That’s like you and me, well, without all the massive fame and wealth and so on. And I should have been happy and I was, but I struggle to appreciate things in the moment sometimes, especially unexpected big stuff and especially when we haven’t yet made up from some tension or distance (but that was him making up or trying to make up from tension and distance) and I poured cold water on it, mentioning his (George Harrrison’s) affairs etc- there was no reason for that, but John was better than me and didn’t appear to notice or mind.
Last night, I forced us to sit and watch something, and he sat through two episodes of a box set the same way a cat does when you are forcing it to sit on your lap when it doesn’t really want to.
He checked the oil in my car on Sunday even though we weren’t really speaking
I had this sense re the margarine left out and the toothpaste lid left off and I suddenly saw it as endearing- wow, how much I’d miss those things if they weren’t there, because they are a marker of him, his presence in my life, in the house. If they were the same as you you wouldn’t notice them or their presence, this shows they are here…
Talking about the shortest day coming and saying after that it will get lighter again, and yet not wanting to wish life and another year away, one less year to live, but John said, if you are truly living in the moment then that doesn’t matter.
I thought about that later when we had a few cross words and I was sulking and he was angry and I laid in bed wondering what to say to elevate us above this situation and change it, at the same time as going over the evening, how we got there, who said and did what, etc, etc, analysing it… but then I remembered, it is only the present moment, and do I want to spend it like this or do I want to change it? And I realised, before I can change us or him I have to change myself, so I lay and just focussed on my breathing and slowly, slowly I felt myself calm and come back to calmness, felt love come in again, felt love go out to him, then finally I rolled over and put my arms around him and said I love you, I’m sorry. I never normally apologise and like magic, it was all washed away and everything was as it was.
In meditation: warning for the future: you had everything and you threw it all away; So do the opposite, really nurture all that I have, appreciate it, give it my attention.
I don’t want your thanks. I just want your time and attention.
(When I was in meditation, thinking, I should pray, I should say thank you)
When I first got together with John, I had a student who had been to Japan, and she ran a calligraphy group, I did John’s name, it means ‘God has given’ in Japanese. I had forgotten that. God has given, why would He take away?
The problem with living together is that your moods don’t coincide: I come home high after listening to Jeff Buckley track 10 of Grace over and over. I walk in, he’s about to go to bed and also is very grumpy.
I guess that’s why people have date nights, so you both gear yourselves up to be happy and looking forward to seeing each other so both in a good mood at the same time rather than leaving that to chance, as well as you both being feeling like going out at the same time, which it seems is too much to hope for- both wanting to go out and both being in a good mood, all at the same time!
Still, I coped; my bubble might have been burst- from being in the car, feeling full of love and magic. But I wasn’t distraught. And maybe the still space I had was useful- I stayed up a little, read some Elizabeth Gilbert stuff online. Maybe it was for me to do that, a little bit of stuff for me, or maybe it was just a reminder that my mood need not, must not, depend on his.
A few weeks later we went for a bracing January walk on the beach and we spoke a little about the day where we hadn’t spoken all day, he couldn’t remember what it was he’d been pissed off about, but it certainly wasn’t watching two episodes of Twin Peaks. I had made up a whole schema around it and it wasn’t even true. He said, Seriously, you don’t ever have to worry about days like those, about silly arguments, about moods. Nothing you can ever do will stop me loving you. You have nothing to worry about.
Nice evening paying cards with John. Played several games, me totally relaxed, even winning some hands, and him seeming so pleased- ‘look at you, I’ve created a monster’, etc. It’s the small things that count. So I am so glad I learnt to play despite how hard it was for him/me. (I have a real aversion to learning and playing games). He said connecting with the person you are in a relationship with is a spiritual practice. He appreciates: dinner, sex, playing cards, watching films with him.
‘God has given’ what to do? Answer: all we have to do is love and allow ourselves to be loved.
Is the nature of a marriage all to do with your own energy field, it’s just you, reflected back at yourself? And if you aren’t careful you can blame the other person for things- convenient- but if you look back honestly you realise those things have always been there, your own problems or ways of doing things that you don’t like, you might think getting married will sort them all out, but of course it can’t, you don’t realise any of this consciously though, and then when things or problems arise, as they would have done anyway, it’s easy to blame the other person, as you have conveniently forgotten how you/your life used to be before you met them.
I went for a walk to the church, John said, Say a prayer for me, for my soul. I didn’t actually go to the church in the end, my legs took me along the footpath, past the big ivy covered trees that marked the start of my spiritual awakening. I said a prayer anyway though: I pray that John will be happy and free from worries and that I will be able to rise above the day to day worries and stresses that sometimes cloud things between us, and connect again to that force of love that brought us so spectacularly together in the first place. Anyway, it worked: he said this morning, ‘let’s have an early night, let’s go to bed before we are tired so we can talk’ (!) and sent me nice messages at work. I like the way one of us always comes forward, or should I say back. Like sometimes I think he’s moody and distant and sometimes I try to be loving and cuddly and sometimes I am distant and stressed and he is all compliments and cuddles and come ons. But we get there, the two of us, thank God.
Rachel 