There is no better than Here*

Tags

awareness, be here now, change, cost of living, Great Yarmouth, GY, Moving, staying positive, there is no better than here

And just like that, everything changes.

There

23rd November 2022- I’m writing this from the boat, it’s past eight in the evening, a World Cup group stage game, Belgium vs Canada, is coming to an end. The wood burner is thoroughly going, and the boat is warm (except for the loo area). I’m wearing two pairs of socks, sweat pants, three vests, a long sleeved top and a jumper (and a hoody when I go to the loo!) I got home from work, ate strange week-before-payday economy foods (a stale white roll briefly soaked in oat milk, and drizzled with agave nectar (vegan honey), delicious, eaten in my coat before even starting the fire, and later a bowl of curry super noodles in lots of water, functional, warm and filling. This is more as an exercise rather than absolute necessity; I still have money in the bank, and savings. I acknowledge the privilege of my position. But when I’m here alone I often prefer to eat toast and cereal or a Pot Noodle, enjoying the freedom of not cooking or eating a proper meal.

I also enjoy eating out of the cupboards, which are stocked with packets of lentil dahl, rice and various tins. I still remember a before-pay-day cupboard meal of well over a decade ago: saffron rice followed by big bowls of custard, absolutely wonderful; the expensive saffron bought for some recipe and then left languishing, the tin of custard powder probably similarly gathering dust. Nowadays we usually buy ready to pour soya cream or cartons of vegan custard.** After I’d eaten I had a mug of tea, the pleasure of a hot cup of tea in winter.

It might not seem like the best time to be buying a house, taking on the responsibility of a mortgage and bills, being as I am in the UK, it is Winter, and I’m fifty-two years old, but I feel absolutely at peace with it. I’ve just put a few things into bags/piles at the bottom of the wardrobe; being a boat it’s not like there’s anywhere to pile things up ready to take. On Friday we are driving over with two car loads. On Saturday we are hiring a van and collecting various pieces of furniture and household items which have been given to us by family, friends and acquaintances, and which are currently in various locations around the area where the house is (a three-four hour drive away from the boat.)

In between

We got the keys on 30th September, moved in 15th December and I started work 19th December. In between, we went to Great Yarmouth every other weekend and stayed at The St George Hotel, a beautiful old hotel with wooden bannisters, an original old lift and chandeliers. The rooms very clean, usually with extra beds as well as a tv, a fridge and a microwave. It is being used to house people in need, on occasion it was noisy, twice the fire alarms went off with people smoking in their room. We ate Indian takeaway carefully in the room with a teaspoon, we microwaved ready meals. We miss it sometimes, as it was a second home.

Arriving at dusk and parking up, looking out to see Wellington Pier glowing its different colours. The feeling of gratitude when I paused outside after going out to the car: Tonight we have three places to sleep, the hotel room, the house, the boat. Plus family and friends who would take us in. In sharp relief to the people in need at the hotel.

The electricity didn’t work. I had my interview for my new job upstairs in the cold house sitting on a folding chair; the interview was 10am, checkout time at the hotel, I charged everything up before, hoping the portable internet and the charge would hold out. My husband, spending several days waiting in a cold house (British Gas refused to help at first, eventually they sent an engineer to replace their faulty meter), and then another waiting at the side of the road; both cars broke, one after another and had to be replaced. Then the boiler. We spent one very uncomfortable night on an airbed which went flat. Then we got a bed delivered, then a sofa and armchair both from a local charity furniture shop.  

Hanging up our Indian parasols in my room beside a simple clothes rail with a few vintage summer clothes items on it, waiting.

Space. Eight compartments where a door can be shut. Thick carpet in the bathroom. Warmth. The lights and heat on when I got home, after going for a walk; it was warmer outside than in the house.

** now we have a tub of original custard powder again, (accidentally vegan), we have had to economise a lot; and a couple of months in realised we really didn’t have enough money coming in. In a great example of Cosmic Ordering, the very next day I got an extra day at work, and John applied for two substantive senior jobs and got them both.

Even though stressful, we pulled together, not apart. John got really into making soups and stews with soup mix, pearl barley and loads of vegetables. He would joke about ‘here is your gruel,’ but it was really tasty. I am taking porridge oats and a few sultanas to work in a nutribullet container, I add boiling water and put the lid on and it cooks into porridge for lunch, with bananas and bread and butter for snacks.

Here

The house in which I am writing this right now, with the net curtains which I love so much: butterflies, these are everywhere, in quaint guesthouses and people’s homes, alongside  korus, which I considered but don’t want to deliberately get, more just like to spot accidentally. We have 1970s or early 80s décor, a brick bench/storage area in the living room, old fashioned light fittings, all things to criticise but which I love and I will defend their honour until I am hoarse. Like GY.

No one can criticise GY to us.

Love letter to row 116

GY levelling up

Winter Gardens monies

Outthere Festival

Yarmonics

*Not being pedantic, just interested in language: I always thought of this as ‘Over there is no better than here where you are.’ But it could also be, ‘There isn’t anywhere that is better than here.’

My Instagram @always_evolving_ever-real

My GY Instagram @living_in_GY

My husband’s Instagram @travelswithanthony

My husband’s GY Instagram @love_4_GY

12 RULES FOR BEING HUMAN HANDED DOWN FROM ANCIENT SANSKRIT

1. You will receive a body

2. You will learn lessons

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons

4. A lesson will be repeated until it is learned

5. Learning lessons does not end

6. ‘There’ is no better than ‘here’

7. Others are merely mirrors of you

8. What you make of your life is up to you

9. Life is exactly what you think it is

10. Your answers lie inside of you

11. You will forget all of this

12. You can remember it whenever you want

I want to go to Mars

Tags

awareness, elon musk, spiritual awakening, spirituality, Work

What I mean by spirituality is perhaps more of a coming to consciousness. And to quote the often quoted Jung quote, ‘Enlightenment isn’t about imagining figures of light, it’s about making the darkness conscious.’ Which means it isn’t always the bliss moments; it’s also a sudden awareness of horror, sadness, personal mistakes, regrets, pain, times when we accidentally caused pain to loved ones, and so on.

Becoming suddenly sensitive- the pitchfork photograph jumped out from the newspaper, me suddenly seeing gardening as an act of violence, tearing up the habitat of all the tiny animals and insects. (I am a big fan of No Mow May, Let it Bloom June, and just letting gardens go wild so that they become filled with the sound of insects, rather than the silence of a perfect lawn. Worse still, Astroturf, which kills everything beneath it.)

Reflections that make us better, or intend to be better, e.g. realising that I dragged my husband out on a walk with me even though he had sore feet and we should have just gone back.

This awareness also includes moments out of nowhere of total spiritual resonance, listening to Park Life by Blur and understanding it in a completely new way, not just a laddish story of drinking in the park, as I used to think of it, but of how a moment of mindfulness, in this case, feeding the pigeons, can stay with you and sustain you all day; which was actually something I had been thinking about only days before. Another 90s/00s anthem: ‘Once you know where you’re going, you can lay back and enjoy the ride, soak in the sights and drowning the senses…’ also resonated strongly.

In a flush of oversharing I had given two people books at Christmas, including my very personal spiritual memoir, and then later regretted it when it was returned only partially read. So I was really unsure when I felt like giving out books at work again, this time my travel memoir. I had told K about it, he had said he’d like to read it, and I know he’s interested in writing. And I’d had a big chat with F re travelling and she’d seemed interested. But still. I waited until almost my last day. I had to go and find K, make a real effort, ask him to bring his bag so he could put it straight in to take home. He said, ‘I have something for you too. It came into my head to give it to you but then I thought it was too mad and I wasn’t going to give it to you, but when you said you had something for me I thought, ‘’I have to now, that’s fate.’’ It was a perfectly good phone, Android like I am used to, in a case, with a charger. Mine had died just a couple of days before.

Elon Musk said when he was six people thought he was mad. He loved Sci Fi. He thought, What am I going to do with my life, for it to have meaning? Try and go to Mars. To have the self belief and determination to follow such an outlandish path having come from such a freakish base- being thought mad at six years old. Please let us not get stuck on Elon Musk, I know some people may not like him. It’s not about him and what he’s doing, it’s more about how can we do that within our own lives.

I was teased at school, felt like an outsider, an outcast at times. Can I go from that to believing that I can do something completely unique to me and in total accordance with my own values, in alignment with my own interests and talents?

Is it a quest, that we drop down into this world, everything set up for conformity right from the first days at school, peers, teachers. Creative thinking not encouraged, no real philosophical tuition. Teased, put down, alienated. But if you can rise above that, dare to be different, survive and then decide to do something totally mind blowing and say it with absolute confidence and work all day and all night to make it happen. Well maybe the reward for that is to see it. I want to go to Mars.

 

That sense of being in the present moment, of being on a different path, feeling my way along a totally different path, Journey to the East. At times at work I felt alienated like I did at school. But towards the end, when I really felt like myself, when I had done a workshop and made my plans to leave and do this independently, when I felt fantastic and full of confidence, they liked me just as much. More, really. Encouragement from all sides. Lovely words at my leaving do. A spiritual gift. 

The reward of nothingness, as I’ve called it before; The realisation that we are all doing our best or at least we are all navigating life in the only way we feel able to. You do the best you can with the information and abilities you have at the time. Okay so some people don’t do their best, they just do. Then again, who amongst us really does our best, every day, every hour?

Accepting that we’re just like everybody else. Which goes against the human urge to separate and judge. And as well as all that, to realise that not every problem can be solved. As I saw on Instagram the other day, ‘If you can’t seem to solve it, maybe it’s not a problem to be solved but just something to be accepted.’ Again, this goes against human nature to overcome and master problems rather than simply accept them. But trying to accept something you can’t fix does feel like work, is work.

So we come face to face with these facts. The realisation that the work, the place to get to, isn’t a place at all but a realisation: That what you do each day is the thing, the task and the lesson. It’s both much better and much worse than you hoped. What you do is very important as well as not important at all. How you respond is the lesson. Stepping outside of the day to day to see things as they are, and then going back in. The emptiness at the end of the road.

Life imitating art, or at least the news; there’d been a story on the BBC about how a discarded carrier bag with a photo of a lion on it had caused panic about a lion. Then John came into the spare room where we were sleeping and saw this koala bag and thought for a split second it was his mum’s dog on the bed.

My fleecy zip breaking, at the same time my mum giving me a fleecy a friend had passed onto her, that is just right, better, even, as it is big and baggy, and now that we no longer have cats it’s no problem having a black fleecy.

And, Aldi car park gets very busy. I was prepared to go out again and park on the road and manage the shopping somehow. I knew I wouldn’t want to reverse into a difficult space. And then there right in front of me was an easy space, easy to drive straight into and get out of. I didn’t visualise or even hope for it, yet it still happened. ‘I want what I need,’ as Robert from Switzerland (a remarkable person we met in India) said, re conjuring up things he needed.

Life update:

We have moved back to Northamptonshire. I am setting up relaxation/wellbeing classes.

Instagram rachel_hill_relaxation

No sex, No drugs, No complications*

Tags

awareness, Life on a narrowboat, Narrowboat, narrowboat life, Narrowboat living, self awareness, simple life, sober, Straight edge

• 

*I’ve been listening to Placebo on repeat, the Meds album, another charity shop find of John’s.

So we completed #NoSextember successfully. I told all my work colleagues about giving up sugar and caffeine, and actually told a couple of them about the no sex aspect. It’s the most open and natural place I’ve worked, emotional and expressive. People regularly say ‘I love you’ to me and to the whole team. Eyes fill with tears of empathy when someone shares a sad story. Hugs are freely given. It’s a strange and wonderful work office, hence I felt able to share.

One person said, ‘In all the religions there is fasting. And by stripping away all these things, you begin to find out who you are. Who am I without my morning coffee, who am I without this show on Netflix I always watch?’

For me, always an outsider, to have some of the individual/unusual things I do, be understood… well it is very gratifying.

So without caffeine in the morning or during the day, you find out how you really feel, and if you are tired, if you need to go to bed earlier. I was in bed by ten, sometimes half past nine. Also without morning caffeine and guarana (natural caffeine) my anxiety was much better.

On occasion I actually felt as if I could just get up and go to work, without the usual worrying and fretting and wandering maze of thoughts and mini existential crises that accompany my mornings. Also my OCD was better; one day I even left a light on! (a sin on a boat)

I’d already experienced a biscuit sugar spike and crash; this month I experienced one from eating white bread. Avoiding sugar in sweet snacks increased my sensitivity to it in bread. It made me think how many people are lurching from sugar spike to sugar crash, exhaustion to caffeine buzz, all day, every day, without even noticing.

So it was nice to notice awareness increasing, which after all is the primary purpose of all this, not (only) a health thing per se.

We’ve been living the life of continuous cruisers, moving every two weeks. We said goodbye to the swans of Kings Langley, my first swan friends since my dearly beloved in Northamptonshire. The Kings Langley swans were very pushy, not only tapping to get us to come out like swans do, but continuing to tap on the boat with their beaks while I was right there! At the next place the swans were different, younger (paler beaks) not as forceful.

There were birds I had never seen before, like a cross between a moorhen and a mallard, black with blue and red, matching the big rusty boat opposite. Each evening a woman in the house nearby fed a group of almost-grown goslings, again a variety I had never seen before, a milky orange colour, whilst mum, hardly any bigger than them, watched from atop the rusty boat. ‘I love it here,’ I said. ‘You say that every place,’ John said.

The boat next door had a giant cactus or aloe vera plant outside the back door. One day they were gone. ‘We never even got to meet them,’ I said. ‘That’s the way it is,’ John said.

I’ve started swimming again, three times a week, primarily for the showers before and afterwards but also hopefully the beginning of a long road back to some kind of physical fitness, that like many seekers, I have neglected on the spiritual path.

I fill up a 2 litre bottle of drinking water at work and bring it home each evening. John fills up the 5 litre bottles either at work or right now at the water point which is not too far away, and we put it through the freestanding water filter just to be sure. Soon we will pass the water point and fill the tank up.

Electricity has been manageable; John bought a little USB smoothie maker- the USB chargers are a different circuit and so far always work, as do the lights. The Nutribullet- which has to go into the normal plugs on a different circuit- runs out after a while, and the hairdryer is a complete dead loss. I give it a blast at the swimming pool but the only time I have shiny silky properly dried hair is once a month when we stay at John’s mum’s.

Getting rid of rubbish in public bins discreetly is another challenge…

For photos and more follow me on Instagram always_evolving_ever_real

Throwback Thursday: On Writing

Tags

awareness, depression, Films, Personal growth, writing

First published in July 2017

On Writing

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.

Life Update: Lockdown in the UK countryside

Tags

awareness, Corona, Covid19, India, Narrowboat, narrowboat life, nature, patriotism, question everything, racism, simple life, Travel memoir, Vegan, Voluntary simplicity, Work, writing

Sitting outside after work or on days off the canal has been busy with ducks, ducklings, a moorhen and swans and new babies, way, way better than tv! I am working three days a week, my husband three or four days per week, as we both work in care. There have been some adjustments to working practices but I’ve really enjoyed the way people at work have come together.

There are a lot more walkers, cyclists and joggers both on the towpath on the opposite side of the canal, and also on ‘my’ walk. Living quietly on a narrowboat our day to day lives haven’t really changed, it’s the monthly social/family trips to London and overnights with family in Norfolk which have stopped, although we’ve been to Norfolk to get prescriptions and seen my mum in her garden, wearing masks and keeping a distance.

We do not watch tv and I limit the amount of news media or commentary I absorb. I have taken a light interest in and listened to anyone I know sharing conspiracy theories but I avoid totally believing in anything that will scare me (whether conspiracy or on the ordinary news.) Aside from a few moments right at the start neither of us have felt anxious. I could be accused of being a Pollyanna or an ostrich but that is the same as usual.

I was interested to hear some of the news from the US, parts of mainland Europe and Ireland, about protests against the lockdown. And also news about how countries such as Sweden and The Netherlands have done things differently. In the UK we have seen very little in the way of protests. I sometimes question if it is really as bad as we are being told and is the lockdown proportionate, but I do go along with it all because I don’t think we’ll know until afterwards, and maybe not even then.

I like that care workers and supermarket staff are being valued. I am not a fan of the patriotic sentimentality of the clapping, although I go along with doing it, or the fact that some people on Facebook shamed someone for not joining in! This duality, the good (appreciating the NHS) and the bad (shaming people publicly) of people, is the same as always.

Extroverts in the UK are having Skype dinner parties and nights watching live lockdown performances etc. For us, a few extra phone calls made and received, that’s it. But then we are both still seeing lots of people at work, living together, in an idyllic setting, with a place to walk on site and a footpath right across the road. I feel for those in cities and in flats with no gardens, and those who live alone. I think it’s harsh not to be able to meet a friend at a distance.

Duality again, a sense of us being one world, vs casual racism, which I have been disappointed to hear. I have enjoyed reading blogs from Japan, Cambodia and India. WordPress is great for connecting all of us.

The newspapers report daily deaths and pay tribute to individuals who have died of Corona, which is nice in one way, although it induces a lot of fear, but what about all the other people who have died and will continue to die, of suicide, road deaths, and cancer?

Already people are noting the costs of the UK lockdown: a doubling in domestic violence killings; several instances of whole families being killed in murder-suicides due to worries about money as a result of the lockdown; people suffering and even dying due to all non urgent appointments and surgeries being cancelled; a rise in suicides as people are isolated and mental health support systems taken away; and children at risk or just really missing their friends and extended family.

There has been some confusion amongst both the general public and different police forces about what things are actually part of the new Coronovirus law and what are just things the Prime Minister has said in briefings. Me too so I won’t go into too much detail but for example according to the law we shouldn’t be out without ‘reasonable excuse,’ eg food and essentials shopping, caring for relatives etc, exercise, going to work if you can’t work from home. Non essential shops closed, although some more shops are beginning to re open. As my husband said, the list of what is essential begins to expand as time goes on eg items for repair around the home etc, rather than just food and medicines.

Police forces have differed in their approach. One police chief said the powers they have been given are normally only seen in a dictatorship, and that they were mindful to police by consent and that particular force had only issued one fine at that time. Other police forces have been much more heavy handed, threatening to search people’s shopping trolleys for non essential items such as Easter Eggs; The Government had to step in and say that if a shop is open you can buy anything in it. One police chief said a few days ago that some of the rules don’t make sense to police let alone the public, such as, why can’t people sunbathe in a park at a safe distance but they can queue for an hour outside DIY stores?

Some local councils shut parks, later the government told them they had to open them, but I don’t know if they all did. Some benches in parks had tape over them for people not to sit down, what about old people who need a rest when out for a walk?

Most people myself included shop for necessaries and then add the non essentials with them (for us, some chocolate or alcohol on top of necessary food items.) Shops limit the number of customers and often have queues outside with people spaced out. I have made one trip to Superdrug and bought things I needed such as moisturiser and some nice things such as face packs. I really enjoyed that nice, quiet shopping session, and I was glad to support them as they are treating their staff well and also have lots of vegan items.

I’ve managed to get some potting compost and some onions, bought at the same time as buying logs, and have planted one lot which are coming up, the second lot had to wait until I was able to get another bag of compost.

There are new, adorable Easter card worthy lambs in the field right by us. Last year I struggled with this, knowing what lay ahead for them. This year I seem to have managed to switch off more. This week we have both struggled with watching wild birds trapped in cages; the sheep man traps crows and magpies and kills them later. We have checked and he is allowed to do it so there’s nothing else we can do. We considered leaving but have decided to stay. He’s moved the cages slightly so they are not right by where we sit. I cope by reminding myself this type of horror is everywhere, we just don’t always see it. Other neighbours are not upset by it but they love the swans and ducks. My mother in law has pet chickens but eats other chickens. But I have not always been vegan, and I use a car and fly, against some people’s ethical code; as my husband said, we’re all of us responsible for everything.

My book is almost all at the stage of being ready to be read, and then it will be a finer edit to do, as well as submitting to agents.

We still hope to go to India a few days after Christmas and return around 18th March. Flights are still cheap and oh so tempting to book as they might go up but we know that would probably be unwise, as India may not let us in, or may not be open, depending on a second wave, etc.

Wherever you are, I hope you are doing okay and I wish you all the best

Thank you very much for reading

Rachel

Throwback Thursday: The story so far

Tags

awareness, buddhism, Hare krishna, meditation, spiritual awakening, spiritual enlightenment, Spiritual experience, Spiritual journey, Spiritual practice, spirituality

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

Franz Kafka   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thank you very much for reading

Throwback Thursday: Signs

Tags

awareness, signs, spiritual awakening, spiritual enlightenment, Spiritual experience, Spiritual journey, spirituality, The Field, The law of attraction, The Secret, The Unconscious

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.

Thank you very much for reading

Throwback Thursday: Everyday Gratitude

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awareness, gratitude, happiness, healing, Law of Attraction, Music, Psychocandy, The Jesus and Mary Chain

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, I am 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, I sleep 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!

Thank you very much for reading!

 

Throwback Thursday: Dreams

Tags

aging, awareness, dreams, Fear, meditation, Personal growth

I dreamt I was about to go out in front of an audience, in a play.  I thought, That’s not me, then I thought, Well I obviously chose to do it, I must have signed up, gone to rehearsals and so on, been a willing participant, so it obviously is me now.

Are dreams something to do with it?  I dreamed of walking though the ruins of a once grand hotel, all red velvet, mahogany and broken mirrors, with arty alternative people, smouldering bonfires, and a cool punk band playing in the bandstand.  Twenty years ago this would have been the place of my dreams but I didn’t stop, I just walked on past.  I was hungry, I was looking for toasted sandwiches and a cup of tea.

Are dreams a pictorial version, an easy-read explanation of The Field of Possibilities and how to navigate and understand it?  As well as showing me that the things that I liked 20 years ago, however much I liked them, it is okay to not be interested in them now.

For the first time in forever I haven’t got a to do list or a pile of lists of half done things or scribbles on leaflets.  Stuff is done, put in the diary or on the mantelpiece or does not need to be written down (not that that used to stop me).  This is so much more momentous than it sounds.

‘Fall into the Vortex and let the Universe do its stuff’.  And this is what it does- it sorts everything out with the minimum of fuss, stress and effort (all you have to do is meditate).

I get hot, a lot of heat, hands, feet and heart, tingly, itchy, uncomfortable, like it’s burning through me, burning away all my mistakes, regrets, who I used to be.  Leaving only who I am now, who I am, who am I?  Who am I?  Echoes back, just an echo?

Is anything we experience just a sonar echo, just ourselves, plumbing and gauging the depths, pretending there’s something else out there when really we are all alone.  Except that we aren’t all alone, we have ourselves. 

Last night’s meditation: burning, searing, at my heart, clearing old issues, attitudes to middle age and also accepting my age and accepting that a lot of my antipathy was due to how I felt about myself getting older.  (I used to be very down on salt and pepper bobs, parrot earrings and yoga cliques; I was searching for my own role model)

Scary dream re Sydney bridge: wobbly, huge, glass floor, felt as if could fall in, etc, then the morning after I read in a magazine about ‘housewife dreams’- the nicer and calmer you have to be during the day, the more violent your dreams!  Maybe it’s the same with getting braver in the day= being scared in dreams?

Thank you very much for reading

Throwback Thursday Hare Krishna

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awareness, Hare krishna, London meditation, Mantra, meditation, mindfulness, Seeking, spiritual awakening, Spiritual experience, Spiritual practice, spirituality

Hare Krishna

On New Year’s Eve 2014 I took my step daughter back to her mum in London and then I had several hours until my return train.  I had no desire to go shopping.  I went to the Hare Krishna Temple near Tottenham Court Road.  It seemed to me like an appropriate thing to do on New Year’s Eve.

I’ve felt like that a lot since.  When asked what would I like most of all, or what would my dream experience be, and when trying to guess what a surprise day experience present was*, I’ve refined it down to this:  To go into a room, like a church but not a church, all alone, with perhaps maybe some kind of a priest or a monk on hand to answer any questions I might have.  That’s it, that’s my dream experience.

The Hare Krishna Temple Room was as beautiful as I had hoped.  A radiant young woman sat next to me, befriended me and gave me books to take away.  There were musicians.  We chanted the Hare Krishna mantra for a long time.  On the way out I picked up a leaflet that said:

Every now and again it’s good to pause in your pursuit of happiness and just be happy.

And so 2015 began with me chanting (in my head) the Hare Krishna Mantra every morning before work, using the beads of a choker my mum had given me for Christmas.  This exemplifies my do-it-yourself, just-do-it-now, no-need-to-shop-for-all-the special-equipment approach I take to spiritual seeking (and to exercise, I will do a yoga class in my work clothes if I haven’t had time to change, and I go to the gym in ancient trainers and any old clothes); as well as my practical approach:  I didn’t have time to do a whole circuit on Japa Mala meditation beads (those long strings of beads that are traditionally used to meditate with) but I did have time to do one or two lengths of the choker.  You do one full recitation of the mantra on each bead, rolling each bead between your fingers and gradually inching your way along the whole string.  The beads help you keep your place as to how many you have done and help keep concentration and focus as well.  (And enable you to time your practice so you aren’t late for work).  The radiant woman at the temple had given me a little card with the Hare Krishna Mantra printed on:

Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare /       Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.

Chanting a mantra: the idea that you are meditating and praying without actually having to think or do anything other than just say those words over and over, was very attractive and very easy to do and yet it was so purifying, the effects were so strong:

Feeling my lungs expanding and the whole mantra like a wave rising and falling, heading towards the light: We are always heading towards the light; it’s just that dying concentrates the mind so that we notice it.  Dying is the same as living, just keep on heading towards the light.

Noticing the little stillness that lives underneath everything but that is normally buried in my chest under my breathing and in my mind under the chatter of thoughts.  I breathe and I notice it.  It feels good.

Thinking in meditation one morning about how maybe God is an abstract concept like time, something we make up to conceptualise the impossible to conceptualise, something to hang our thoughts on.

I turn over hard decisions or stuff I am stuck with or unsure of to God and/or The Universe, or to Time (maybe they all the same thing) and then later I come up with the answer.  So that in time, inspiration strikes or the way becomes clear.  Could be due to Time, or could be God or The Universe but could equally just be our future selves like in the film Interstellar, or even The Future Itself, presenting the answers as it and them arrive and arise.

How much personal responsibility are we able or willing to take on and credit ourselves with?  Like when we ask God:  ‘Why don’t you do something, why don’t you send someone?’ and God says:  ‘I did send someone, I sent you.’

What did for me with the Hare Krishnas was that to get right into it you start at the bottom as a book distributor, giving out books on the street.  I’m sorry, but I’m not going to do that.  Maybe that’s why I haven’t thus far ever fully signed up to any one particular religion, because I baulk at doing anything that I don’t actually want to do….

Anthony’s sister wants to talk to me about spirituality- strange stuff is happening for her, she has just started meditating.  I reconnected with my friend  from years ago; she said ‘I want to talk to you about spirituality’.   Anthony said, ‘See, you always wanted someone to talk to about that stuff, now you are the person people talk to.’

*it was a flotation tank session, the photo was taken during the trip to London for it

Thank you very much for reading