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 isme 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?
Adie of From Adie With Love tagged me in a question and answer post. I’m supposed to answer those questions, then come up with three questions of my own to ask three other bloggers, who I will tag.
It was very nice timing to go with me changing to my real name and my husband taking a photograph of me that I didn’t make him delete immediately- the above was taken on Saturday in Varkala just before we left for Hampi.
Adie has been a kind supporter of me and my blog and it’s been nice connecting with someone across the pond, Adie has answered questions that had mystified me (e.g. why do Americans all have such nice teeth.) Adie blogs about all different subjects, and their writing is absolutely flawless.
Like Adie, I had a slight hitch this week which getting tagged to do this saved me from. We left Kerala on Saturday, due to arrive in Hampi on Sunday, but because our flight from Trivandrum to Bangalore was delayed by three and a half hours we missed our night bus to Hampi. I had planned to do some pics of the journey and our arrival in Hampi and do a travel update for my Sunday (today) post. Instead we had to book into a hotel in Bangalore- for two nights as we need it for today as well- and get a new bus ticket for tonight. On the plus side, there was a bus agent right by the hotel and last night we got the last two tickets on tonight’s bus, two minutes before he closed. And the time at the airport meant I got most of this post drafted then, intending to post it next week, so it all worked out!
Anyway, here are my questions and answers:
What has been the happiest moment of your life so far?
I had a child at nineteen and was the sole carer. This had the effect that I was very cautious about my health and safety. Even though the 90s spanned my twenties, I never took Ecstasy because of this. Also, I was an alternative/punky type who when I did go out frequented, in my late teens and very early twenties, The Jacquard an alternative nightclub and gig venue frequented by Goths,* Punks and Crusties.
*The DJ actually listed himself as King of the Goths in the phone book, and had an immaculate looking Goth girlfriend who was only allowed to wear black and purple.
This was downstairs only though. At some point there started to be a night put on upstairs. The DJ was someone from a local record shop who a friend had a crush on. She and her best friend looked like more punky/gothy/alternative versions of the women from Strawberry Switchblade
but because she liked the DJ she started dressing in orange and yellow tie dye and going upstairs with all the ravers. We, the downstairs people, were appalled at all the colourful clothes, and I didn’t find out what I was missing until many years later.
Fast forward to 2009. I met my husband at the age of thirty-nine and fell in love, and he fell in love with me, in a way that was real and reciprocal, and that I realised I hadn’t ever experienced before. (I’d thought I’d been in love; I’d liked people who hadn’t liked me back; and I’d experienced people being convinced that I was the one but not feeling it myself). This, though, was so powerful it triggered a full on ‘spiritual awakening.’ I documented all this in a little book called How to find Heaven on Earth: Love, spirituality and everyday life, 99p on Amazon UK.
At the time I didn’t know what was happening, I even searched love and spirituality on the internet and got a very interesting article that I printed out, highlighted, and still have I believe! There were many moments of bliss from that time, but the stand out one that springs to mind is the first time I took Ecstasy.
Great Yarmouth, in Norfolk, England, can be described as a faded sea-side town, an area of serious deprivation, tacky, even. But my husband’s choice of destination for that night was inspired. With its colourful faded grandeur sea front buildings and beautiful, outrageously bright neon lights, Great Yarmouth beach and its sea front at night will stay in my heart forever.
Driving down the Acle Straight towards Great Yarmouth, I began to feel the effects come on. I felt as if the G force was pushing me back into the seat. My husband put on How soon is now by The Smiths.
‘I’m not crying,’ I said. ‘I just have tears coming out of my eyes.’
‘It’s okay,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t be the first person to cry coming up on their first E.’
When we arrived at the beach, I wound the window down and experienced the breeze on my arm, which felt incredible. Likewise, smoking a cigarette, having a sip of cool water. After a while my husband said, ‘Come on, get out.’
‘I can’t, I can’t walk.’ I said.
‘Of course you can walk, people dance all night on this!’
Walking on the sand, having a drink with ice cubes in it, let alone when we got home(!), that whole night was amazing.
But the How soon is now moment is the moment.
If you hadn’t decided on the career choice you’ve found yourself in, what would you have done instead?
I wanted to be a writer as a child, if I wanted to be anything. I certainly wrote. Then I got a career to support me and my son, this involved a few years of studying, volunteering and working, then three years of training, and twenty years of working at it. I left my occupational therapy career in February. Right now I have this year of travel. It was a few months in before I realised that having this year off meant I could write a book, and a little while before I actually started doing it in earnest.
What do you do to keep yourself motivated?
On the surface I don’t seem to have much of a problem with this.
But when writing and reading the above, self confidence and committing to personal goals has clearly been a problem. Underlying a lack- or excess- of motivation are other factors. Committing to writing and feeling I can do it only really happened this year, the year when I turned forty eight.
I keep myself quite busy but I also like being quiet and reflective.
At home I do sometimes find it difficult to summon the motivation to do housework etc, and my car is always an absolute disgrace.
If there is a God (and when I say God I am usually referring to a kind of vague yet huge concept that encompasses The Field and The Collective Consciousness; like a kind of golden light or the feeling that you get when looking at a butterfly. It goes beyond my explorations of different religions and Buddhism and beyond being an omnist (someone who acknowledges the truth of all religions).
What I think right now is this: If there is a God and God has a plan for me then it’s this: It’s what I am doing right now. It’s what I did in the recent lead up (Orientation) and it’s what I intend to do next (go back to the UK, live on a boat for a bit, then go off travelling around the USA*).
Whilst of course being aware that it’s only ever right now, plans change, and that although all this sounds so easy, unless we are going to turn into full time spiritual devotees and only meditate, study spiritual texts, discuss spiritual matters, and eat, sleep and use the bathroom, life as it is distracts us. As in Journey the East, it is so, so easy to allow oneself to get knocked off the path and for one’s awareness to slip.
* possibly combining it with a DIY book promotion tour with readings at independent bookshops and vegan cafes
My husband and I have been having a lot of talks about the nature of reality, etc etc. Last Thursday night I couldn’t sleep so I got up and wrote last week’s blog post. In the morning I finished the blog post and then we talked some more and I came up with my new spiritual position as described above. I then typed it up and then went to work on the book (can you see where this is going?) I don’t usually do anything on the book on a Friday, but I thought I had free time as I had got the blog done early (by dint of being awake typing through the night…)
My eyes began to blur and I couldn’t focus. I tried to push on through but in the end I had to give up. I laid on the bed and closed my eyes. All I could see was a bright white, like a blank page on a computer screen, with distorted tool bar icons making a row of triangles across the top. I took off my t-shirt and put it over my eyes. I tried to send myself healing and to relax.
It came to me that by overdoing the spiritual talks, not sleeping and overdoing the writing I had triggered some kind of episode in my brain and that my mind was being somehow cleansed and reset. A feeling of otherworldly peace came over me and for a few moments I thought, I have a choice, mental illness or a higher state of consciousness, I can’t have both.
After a while I got up and felt very strange so I did a load of stuff to ground myself. I went out onto the balcony and ate a banana ball and a banana. I counted five things I can see, hear, feel etc. I stood on one leg. I went on YouTube to listen to a song my friend told me about (the one at the top of this post).
The ad below came on (‘Sometimes to find your way you have to lose your mind’)
My husband came home and gave me a pep talk about how my mind is really strong and I am totally sane, and reminded me of a line from one of the first books I read on this journey (the spiritual one not the travel one) ‘The last vestige of the ego is to tell yourself you are going mad.’ (The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying)
In hindsight it might have been better to just allow myself to stay in a slightly altered state of consciousness; by trying to get out of it I probably made it feel worse, but I suppose I was scared.
Anyway, as Jung says, this stuff isn’t all about butterflies and rainbows, it’s also about making the darkness conscious. Last night I also couldn’t sleep, but this time I let myself go down into the things that I am afraid of, my childhood memories, the meaning I extrapolate from them, the effects I have allowed them to have. And I realised that there was nothing to find… I have explored the worst case scenarios and survived.
At the risk of looking and sounding like cliché, I bought a chunky silver Om pendant. It caught my eye and overcame all resistance to shopping and spending and seemed a fitting souvenir for my altered consciousness last week. I looked up what it actually meant (previously I knew it as the sound of the universe, and the man who sold it said it offers protection but I didn’t really know what each bit meant).
It explained to me what I had instinctively felt; when we are in one state we aren’t in the other. One level of consciousness is the normal level, where we experience the world through the five senses, another is deep sleep, another is dream state, another is a higher state of consciousness which is the aim of spiritual practices. We move between them and they are separate states.
Travel update
We will be here in Varkala for another month and have been busy planning our trip and getting excited about moving on.
Writing update
I have been working hard on Goa Part Two (Anjuna, Arambol, Panaji) this week and hope to have a draft completed on Monday. From Monday I will be working on Kerala, bringing it up to date, as well as looking at the proposal for Hay House.
You created a machine, a robot cyborg of flesh and blood, the movies etc. are clues or faint echoes of this truth. We think they are fantastic fantasy but they are nowhere near as exciting as the truth: We were ‘mist’ (we are energy) and we created a vessel that can cry and feel and we created the world we live in. But then we got distracted by our bodies and sex and forgot. (I even got/get distracted by that in the dream/my dreams).
Look in the mirror, at yourself crying, at your face melting, at it going through all ages.
Me to my mum: ‘Mum, are you awake?’ (Use of the word ‘Mum’ as a mindfulness bell (or spinning top, or programmed pendulum) as I don’t call her that). ‘Is there a club for people who are awake? Is there training?’ ‘Yes, in a mental institution.’ Oh yes of course, you’d think I’d gone mad… But it’s everyone else that’s mad, the mad people are the sane ones. But fair enough, you’d think I’d gone mad if I said ‘None of this is real’. The trick is, to knowthe truth but to still carry on living in the world (to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible). We did this for a reason, perhaps we forget for a reason? Maybe sex, and beauty etc was a trick we inserted to help us forget.
We made the body like people make robots but then it began to become real (like robot AI stories again) so yes, when you feed something, it grows. And so we began to feel emotions in our bodies, emotions began to live and be processed in our bodies; so that our bodies became more than just a vehicle to hold the mist in or to transmorgophy the mist. We only really need to remember this at death, that these bodies were only made up, and that we go back to being mist, and that this adventure was just a dream.
You get more out of the experience of being here by not being locked in a mental institution so it’s best to follow the earlier advice and keep most of this to yourself.
My attempts to ‘start a conversation’ and wake everyone up, were hey, let’s talk about being little kids, about when you toilet trained, about toilet stuff, hey, I wet myself once, or what about sexually when you are a child, did you ever, or let’s talk about sexual abuse… (groans from John) okay, okay, let’s talk about… and John as old, lots of grey hair, beard.
(Not, how you used to always have in your draft manuscript as a footer, ‘all you have to do is meditate’- all you have to do is write, (which you are doing) so you don’t actually have to do anything: stop studying, stop meditating, stop all ‘spiritual practices’).
Looking in the mirror and crying, saying, what if I could create a machine that cried and moved how I wanted and could change its expression, and, and, and, that I could totally inhabit, so that even my emotions would be felt in its fleshy parts, because this machine is flesh not plastic and metal. Oh look, I did.
Re aliens: we are aliens. We transmorgophied, and dropped into, or integrated into, living spacesuits, hence all the sci fi things along this line (no wonder I don’t like them). They distract us by giving us something that seems fantastic yet the truth is far more amazing- it’s not made up on television, it’s here, in front of the mirror, take a look, if you look carefully, you can see. (And if you take magic mushrooms, you can literally see)
Bodies are important as they are our vehicle to live on here and do things, so look after them.
Practical application: do my best to look and act normal at work; do as little as possible, for now, out of work, in order to leave space to remember to remember and to write it down. Cease all spiritual practices. Allow maintenance, allow reminder activities? Cease seeking behaviours but allow documentation? My reminder activities: read my writing, write my writing, old stuff, and maybe new stuff, read books e.g. Russell Hoban and Krishnamurti and Liz Gilbert. Quiet time, meditation, contemplation, self healing, exploration. Do healing, do writing, food and exercise of course, no fb just check for messages.
Mum: ‘People used to say, remember to remember, but I’ve forgotten what that was about.’
But we must have done it for a reason (made these machines to live (love?) in and come down to live in this world) and seeing as when we die we go back to being green mist again, then that must mean that whatever the reason is it is what we do on the planet with physical bodies.
So it’s not correct to say ‘none of this matters’ and maybe it’s not actually correct to say ‘none of this is real’ because it’s what we’ve got- it’s all we’ve got, until our bodies expire. You can spend some time hanging about as green mist (e.g. meditating, doing metta bhavna) and that is very nice but I wonder if it is not what you are here for? You weren’t given, you don’t transmorgophy into a body and arrive here to sit in a room on your own and play at being mist again.
It’s useful to look down at yourself from the point of view of the green mist. E.g. when to take a break from the computer, when to leave work on time.
In the dream I kept trying to write this all down but kept falling asleep or not being able to read it back, or kept getting distracted by sex, and then someone said they would read it out to me from a book, so I thought, oh well, it’s in a book, of course it is, I thought I’d thought of that myself…. but it isn’t in a book, unless I write it.
(This really did come to me in a dream, a couple of years ago now. It’s old, but it’s still pretty good!)
So, in the midst of family members having health scares, dentistry, offers and counter offers, blah blah blah, stress everywhere, blah blah blah, this happened:
About a week ago I got out of the bath (I try to only have two baths, with hair wash, per week. For me, being a ‘dirty hippy’ is now something positive to aspire to) with the mirror all steamed up. All I could see of my reflection were two blazing circles, like silver metal discs where my eyes would be. I thought of zombies for a moment (I am very scared of zombies, too much Walking Dead) then realised, no, not like a zombie, more like a robot.
Then this morning, same thing again, except that this time they weren’t just silver discs, there were also circles in rings around the discs like a metallic target. Like a cyborg, as if there were something inside, light blazing out through the eyes of a suit or casing.
A reminder: In the midst of everything, don’t forget this.
I tried unsuccessfully to photograph this phenomenon, almost making myself late for work (where I had a really good day). To the middle right you can see one of the disc/circles although in the photograph it doesn’t appear over my eye.
It reminded me of a previous post that I don’t think many people read, so I shall re post it.
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.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 12: Green Mist Theory 8:08
This came to me, fully realised, in a dream:
You created a machine, a robot cyborg of flesh and blood, the movies etc. are clues or faint echoes of this truth. We think they are fantastic fantasy but they are nowhere near as exciting as the truth: We were ‘mist’ (we are energy) and we created a vessel that can cry and feel and we created the world we live in. But then we got distracted by our bodies and sex and forgot. (I even got/get distracted by that in the dream/my dreams).
Look in the mirror, at yourself crying, at your face melting, at it going through all ages.
Me to my mum: ‘Mum, are you awake?’ (Use of the word ‘Mum’ as a mindfulness bell (or spinning top, or programmed pendulum) as I don’t call her that). ‘Is there a club for people who are awake? Is there training?’ ‘Yes, in a mental institution.’ Oh yes of course, you’d think I’d gone mad… But it’s everyone else that’s mad, the mad people are the sane ones. But fair enough, you’d think I’d gone mad if I said ‘None of this is real’. The trick is, to knowthe truth but to still carry on living in the world (to keep one foot in the visible and one foot in the invisible). We did this for a reason, perhaps we forget for a reason? Maybe sex, and beauty etc was a trick we inserted to help us forget.
We made the body like people make robots but then it began to become real (like robot AI stories again) so yes, when you feed something, it grows. And so we began to feel emotions in our bodies, emotions began to live and be processed in our bodies; so that our bodies became more than just a vehicle to hold the mist in or to transmorgophy the mist. We only really need to remember this at death, that these bodies were only made up, and that we go back to being mist, and that this adventure was just a dream.
You get more out of the experience of being here by not being locked in a mental institution so it’s best to follow the earlier advice and keep most of this to yourself.
My attempts to ‘start a conversation’ and wake everyone up, were hey, let’s talk about being little kids, about when you toilet trained, about toilet stuff, hey, I wet myself once, or what about sexually when you are a child, did you ever, or let’s talk about sexual abuse… (groans from John) okay, okay, let’s talk about… and John as old, lots of grey hair, beard.
(Not, how you used to always have in your draft manuscript as a footer, ‘all you have to do is meditate’- all you have to do is write, (which you are doing) so you don’t actually have to do anything: stop studying, stop meditating, stop all ‘spiritual practices’).
Looking in the mirror and crying, saying, what if I could create a machine that cried and moved how I wanted and could change its expression, and, and, and, that I could totally inhabit, so that even my emotions would be felt in its fleshy parts, because this machine is flesh not plastic and metal. Oh look, I did.
Re aliens: we are aliens. We transmorgophied, and dropped into, or integrated into, living spacesuits, hence all the sci fi things along this line (no wonder I don’t like them). They distract us by giving us something that seems fantastic yet the truth is far more amazing- it’s not made up on television, it’s here, in front of the mirror, take a look, if you look carefully, you can see. (And if you take magic mushrooms, you can literally see)
Bodies are important as they are our vehicle to live on here and do things, so look after them.
Practical application: do my best to look and act normal at work; do as little as possible, for now, out of work, in order to leave space to remember to remember and to write it down. Cease all spiritual practices. Allow maintenance, allow reminder activities? Cease seeking behaviours but allow documentation? My reminder activities: read my writing, write my writing, old stuff, and maybe new stuff, read books e.g. Russell Hoban and Krishnamurti and Liz Gilbert. Quiet time, meditation, contemplation, self healing, exploration. Do healing, do writing, food and exercise of course, no fb just check for messages.
Mum: ‘People used to say, remember to remember, but I’ve forgotten what that was about.’
But we must have done it for a reason (made these machines to live (love?) in and come down to live in this world) and seeing as when we die we go back to being green mist again, then that must mean that whatever the reason is it is what we do on the planet with physical bodies.
So it’s not correct to say ‘none of this matters’ and maybe it’s not actually correct to say ‘none of this is real’ because it’s what we’ve got- it’s all we’ve got, until our bodies expire. You can spend some time hanging about as green mist (e.g. meditating, doing metta bhavna) and that is very nice but I wonder if it is not what you are here for? You weren’t given, you don’t transmorgophy into a body and arrive here to sit in a room on your own and play at being mist again.
It’s useful to look down at yourself from the point of view of the green mist. E.g. when to take a break from the computer, when to leave work on time.
In the dream I kept trying to write this all down but kept falling asleep or not being able to read it back, or kept getting distracted by sex, and then someone said they would read it out to me from a book, so I thought, oh well, it’s in a book, of course it is, I thought I’d thought of that myself…. but it isn’t in a book, unless I write it.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 11: Signs
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.
Like just now: I misspelt seeking for seining, I didn’t know what it meant so I went on the online dictionary and there on the home page was the ‘Word of the Day’: ACCOMPLISH, to finish something successfully or to achieve something.
Maybe that was it, just a little encouragement that I will finish this book, and if you are reading this, it’s because I did. (and btw, ‘seining’ does not even appear to be a word at all according to the Cambridge online dictionary, it’s just that for some reason* my spell check doesn’t pick it up).
* I needed encouragement?
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.
Arriving home late one night, I pulled into the car cark and in the second before I reversed into the parking space the car headlights lit up the bushes in front of me and I saw a mouse on a branch. A mouse, on a branch! Almost immediately, the thought came to me: I hope you enjoyed that, because you aren’t going to see that again. But that’s not really the point; 1), I did see it, and I am very grateful for the fact that I did; a mouse on a branch, how many people get to see that! 2) I have the memory;I wouldn’t expect to see it again. 3) There are other things to see: and often in a series, more and more beautiful as long as you are open to this process.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 10: Every Day Healing
Going through boxes as part of getting ready to move, old photos of me as a child- how terribly sad I looked at ten, better a bit later. My school books, I threw out. My son’s, I kept. My mum’s CV- travelled the world hitchhiking alone in 1968, all sorts of different community projects, renovating a derelict house singlehanded with two young children. My grandmother’s travel diary from when she took me as a sulky fifteen year old to Italy. Photographs of me in dresses my other grandmother made. A note from my grandmother after my grandfather died, ‘from grandpa with his deep love for you’.
Ancestors give you stuff; they pass on their attributes, and their weaknesses, they give you experiences, they show you how to be, as well as how not to be. They invest in you, give their love and time and attention, but the fruits of their labours may only fully blossom and then ripen once they and most of their things are long gone.
My mother’s mother commented on others’ lives right up to the end. She tried to control my mum’s life, or at least she commented on it, right up until she died, by which time my mum was in her sixties. Right up to the last months of her life she would tell me I was fat, in front of visitors and other family members. My mum doesn’t say anything directly to me, which is an improvement. And if I can learn not to tell my son what to do with his life and not talk about him behind his back, then that will have improved things even more. (Don’t tell my son how to live his life- this includes indirect references to things that could be construed as, or actually are, unsolicited advice- telling him about the Hare Krishna mantra was borderline at best.)
I used to just have guilt around my mother and my son, then I learned to have a little bit of anger as well, to be able to say aloud (or at least, to write down): bringing up my son was very difficult, I had a difficult child to bring up. (He was brought up by a teenage mother who didn’t know what she was doing, so he probably has loads of anger too, but that is for him, not me.) Into and throughout my adult life, I have had a mother who has very strong opinions and judgements about most things, especially men. It’s not so much the views themselves, but how stridently they are held, so that it’s hard to be free to be yourself. Myself.Funny how that’s hard to write. (But it’s not about her needing to do anything or that she should do anything- it’s for me to do the work, it’s for me to set myself free, to be free, and just do whatever I want without defending or justifying myself).
Emotions to deal with: anger: access and make friends with it, enjoy allowing myself to feel it and then let go, but I can’t let go until I stop repressing it. I could even be angry with my younger self, instead of always being so compassionate, poor her, etc. etc. You could have done so much, you were hot, you were powerful; you silly stubborn thing, determined to be miserable! I am perfectly happy now, but I am just saying; Wow, you made it hard for yourself/us!
Maybe instead of guilt being my default response to everything I could experiment with other things, like anger, like hedonism, like self care comes first, for example.
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.
On healing… I don’t believe in spirit guides or anything like that, not for me anyway, they may well be true for other people. I’ve been doing it a while now, and with experience comes confidence that it will come, and so it comes… I only have to think about healing, or raise my hands above a person and they heat up. I relax and tune in to all that feeling, and concentrate my mind and energies on giving healing- just thinking that that is what I am doing is enough really, and then just staying in focus. I start with resting hands lightly on shoulders, then go over the chakras, then back to the shoulders. And, often, bliss: like being ensconced in a bubble of love, feet swaying, body swaying, dizzy, feels almost the same getting it as giving it, except when giving I stay in focus that that is what I am doing. I see green light sometimes. A lovely warm feeling, purposeful, like I know what I am here for.
Healing a woman who said she felt as if she had stress in every area of her life, but was ‘trying to think positive as there’s other people worse off’ (i.e. telling herself off for feeling bad). I think trying to be positive when you don’t feel it is self invalidating and can cause more suffering and I also think the message has been corrupted; it’s more about remaining intact, having faith no matter what, not being happy no matter what. It’s like how people have interpreted mindfulness to be stopping all your thoughts- which my counsellor says is nonsense.
I am finding my own opinions, my own way of doing things. My own levels of healing: I had met John as I started to heal, more stuff came up, re childhood stuff, I dealt with that and moved on. Later, more stuff came up, I began counselling, and as I am healed, I become a better healer. I am a stronger healer for having gotten better (lately got really strong, same time as the counselling?
My teacher said, ‘this is Sadie, she is a very powerful healer.’ I remember her saying a while back, you have to sort yourself out first, i.e. before you become a healer, well yes, to a certain extent but then the healing helps you to further heal, in ways you may not have identified without embarking on it (like art therapy and having to have your own psychotherapy along the way as part of it). It’s perfectly natural really that it should be this way.
Practiced healing on Kim after yoga. She is a healer and I worried, what if she doesn’t feel anything, but afterwards she said it was the strongest energy she had ever felt from a healer. She doesn’t work full time, each morning she does chi gung and meditates and sends healing to people- goes through their bodies, sometimes does an hour as she has time and it made me realise, it validated: This stuff is important, even though work is the thing that pays the bills, or, the fact that work pays the bills doesn’t mean it is the central thing of value in your life. Meditation and healing are the pivotal things around which life can revolve (this concept of pivots etc comes up a lot in yoga). Build my life outside of work, invest in these things, and they will invest in me/all will be well.
Did healing on John- he said my hands felt so hot he could feel the heat off my hand which was on his chest, he could feel the heat on his throat, under chin, and when my hands were on his shoulders he could feel it all through his body.
At work I saw someone at lunch that I hadn’t seen for ages. I think it was to show me that I am different now. Sometimes you only notice by encountering a person or situation from past and finding that you respond differently and feel different. I noticed the way he seemed so supportive yet it is just business; the way he criticised people I liked, the way he gave me advice… And I realised, I don’t need your advice and support, I have outgrown you. I am not that anxious awkward person in awe of having dinner at the Premier Inn with people from head office. I am capable and confident.
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.
I get up early in the morning, compared with John anyway, who gets up half an hour before he needs to leave, I allow about an hour and a half or two hours. Partly because I faff around a lot and also this year I have been meditating but the real reason I like this time is that now and again I will have a little treat: I will put the internet on and check my emails or I will sit at the bottom of the stairs and read for five minutes or I will do a little sorting out job, something that I wouldn’t normally do in the morning before I leave for work. I had one of those moments looking at my bookshelf. John’s sister was coming to stay with her friend and spiritual guru so I had been getting the room ready. I started thinking about books and the bookshelf as it is in the spare room. I thought first about if I had anything to lend John’s sister, and then I thought about if they looked through the books on the bookshelf, and wondered if I should put them in any sort of order.
I looked at them impassively, as an outsider would, and this is what I saw: John’s books, sci fi, psychedelic, spiritual novels, and mine: New Zealand literature and creative writing books; a set of women’s erotica, all containing a short story written by me; Eat Pray Love, various other spiritual journey books, all mixed up and mixed in with Lace (from when I was 11 or 12, not the original copy, although it looks like it, old and battered. I can still remember the woman being fingered and brought to orgasm in the cellar, whilst wearing a primrose suit). Princess Daisy, ditto, loved for the hot lesbian scene; When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and Goodbye Mog by Judith Kerr, and The Fault in my Stars. All the books I have listed are my favourites. If that paints a picture of me, I feel it is strangely accurate. Looking at myself reflected back to me via the medium of my bookshelf was a thoughtful and nice experience, a concrete illustration of my eclecticness. That I am made up of a lot of different things that are strangely synthesised into something pretty. I like the way the bookcase is, I am happy for people to look at it.
Call off the Search: How I stopped seeking and found peace
Chapter 9 Discernment
Last night
Two episodes of House of Cards and then he puts my hand on his trousers and we have sex on the couch and I swear it was exactly like being on MDMA but with no side effects, no horrible head fucking thoughts. It felt like being in a film, so turned on it was surreal, happy MDMA-type tears, eyes watering by themselves. I said afterwards, ‘I went somewhere else’. The light, the room, juddering and flicking from side to side like it does when you’ve taken a ton of MDMA and him going up the stairs to bed saying what we were both thinking, ‘Who needs drugs’. We haven’t spoken about it since but oh my God, proof of everything, if we needed it.
We’d spent most of 2015 completely straight: no drugs, no alcohol, I had also given up caffeine, John had also given up sugar. And then the Buddhism wore off…
But at its height it (Buddhism) felt ironically like being on drugs (high after class, the air cool and warm at the same time). We both realised it was over at the same time. We were standing in the kitchen by the backdoor and both realised we didn’t want to do the next class after all (we had planned to do the year long foundation course). John said, we burn through things quickly now don’t we? I had just bought him all this Buddhist stuff (we still have a Buddha in almost every room of the house) but neither of us were offended about the other suddenly going off it.
Shortly afterwards I went out to dinner with a friend and tried to explain, referencing Krishnamurti (don’t follow anyone) and John and Yoko (I don’t believe in magic, mantra, etc.)
‘It sounds like you’ve gone through some kind of enlightenment,’ she said and then asked, ‘are you still vegetarian?’
I was puzzled, thinking, it’s not that I’ve given up on awareness, and once you have it you have it.
Suddenly it just seemed pointless, the rigid no drinking at all, no caffeine, even the Buddhist teacher had said it doesn’t necessarily mean no wine can pass your lips, it’s just about not being intoxicated. It’s a barrier between me and friends who drink, so I decided that the day we went to another friend’s I would have a coffee and some wine. We made dinner while we got a bit drunk and we couldn’t mash the potatoes because they were still raw and it was all a bit chaotic for a bit. Maybe just one glass of wine is good for me now. And then when I went out the other night with friends I had a glass of wine, felt better re barriers, they were drunk, and we all got on really well, and I felt really relaxed.
So how does that lead onto MDMA? The MDMA is me, wanting that again, we both were, but now he is talking about never doing it again, maybe we just needed to remind ourselves we can if we like, maybe. Or just remind ourselves what it is like, the good and the bad- 3 or 4 days recovery. No music, singing along to YouTube, lying paralysed, naked and sweating. Marrying you was the best thing I ever did with my life. Or for my life: it gives me all this freedom, and it gives me excitement and bad boy tendencies without the angst and drama that wrecks and destabilises lives.
MDMA is like a searchlight, but this time at last there was nothing to find, we lay in each other’s arms on the couch, for an extended period with no tv, film or music, just us, talking, and aside from a bit of smutty sharing of sexual fantasies, there were no surprises, no dark secrets or hidden longings to discuss, no marriage, no children, no family secrets, no adolescent incidents of previously paralysing shame to heal…. It wasn’t boring by any means: it was wonderful, that we could be so free, relaxed and spacious, but at the same time, have we reached a clearing, a clear place? So maybe we can give it up now? Certainly, we have had sex sober that was every bit as amazing as sex on MDMA, and with us both entirely present in every way, from the cerebral to the mundane to the spiritual to the tantric ecstatic.
We said at the time, we should make time for this: lying together, smelling each other, just love, no conversations re kids etc., and if you can have a spiritual drug free rave and get high with strangers and no drugs, surelyweshould be able to do it alone in our house?
Well I guess we already did, last night. Sometimes you have an idea and realise you’ve already executed it, like life or the forces of life were faster than your ideas and imagination, which I guess is often or maybe always the case but doesn’t always get realised….
Christmas 2015: slacking off re caffeine, chocolate, sugar, alcohol and drugs and then realising I actually prefer life as it was: getting stoned really stoned once or twice after not doing it is great, and sex was amazing, but doing it every nights for four nights, it wears thin, and leads to eating chocolate, and being sluggish next day, sleeping in and being too lazy to do exercise. I prefer walking and doing yoga every day with the occasional blow out. It’s the same re the internet and facebook, food, shopping and time- discernment and awareness is the key.
Christmas
Thinking about what it would take for me to enjoy it- what do I enjoy that could be done at Christmas?
Things I enjoy or that make me feel good that with some effort, dedication and single mindedness I can do in spite of Christmas: a Yoga class on YouTube, an hour long walk, eating healthy-ish, even doing a bit of writing- just a snatched half an hour while everyone goes out (this is probably not even so much about the writing but about having a little oasis of alone time during the festivities)
Things I like about Christmas that go on anyway and I can just join in with: not going to work Fri, Sat, Sun, Mon, drinking Baileys at any time of day, staying up late watching films with my step son, sleeping in, eating whenever and whatever I like(contradicts previous bit I know!)
Funny things such as realising for what seems like the first time, why people/a person/me might enjoy Christmas: the change of routine, the party atmosphere, the laying around, drinking, not having to go to work, holidays. Ignore the shopping and the stress and the religiosity/consumerism debates, the hand wringing, the sad stories and the stress. Just look at the lights and think of chocolate.
(I haven’t written any Christmas cards, nor did I last year, and possibly the year before. I used to make them all by hand and deliver them on foot!)
‘The family that I have chosen’, I said on Boxing Day when I crashed through the door, falling on the couch with a bottle of Baileys and all family visits done.
Friendship
Looking through my old, much scribbled in address book at all the names that are no longer a part of my life; old landlords, hairdressers, work contacts, book clubs I am no longer in, people who have died, people I have lost touch with, people I never really was in touch with… Hopeful contacts, someone I met at work that I thought might have become a friend. People I’d met through work who once the work finished I never saw. People who I had been to their house once: a mum at the school, who invited me to her house for lunch, she cooked lasagne, we saw each other now and again but didn’t really become close. The doctor from work who invited me and my boyfriend for dinner with her lawyer husband in their huge barn conversion. We were too in awe to return the invitation. Some relationships hopeful, some forced, some I wonder about calling, I think they would be happy to see me, but wonder if we really have anything still, or maybe just feeling awkward that it’s been so long. Others I know I will not call- it never was anything, and I am happy to let them go. And some of course long standing friends that I am still in touch with even after all these years.
The point of all this rambling and reflection is that I have always had some difficulties/concerns around friendships- namely, that I haven’t got enough, that I don’t call people enough (although actually with the exception of one or two people I don’t think any of them ever call me), and I often don’t feel myself with them. Or that I don’t know what sort of friends are me, or that I want. Because I haven’t known who I am, how can I expect to know what friends I should have? And how can I expect other people to know me when I don’t know myself?
Looking back I have felt so awkward with a lot of these people, it’s surprising we are still friends. When I lived in a council flat I felt awkward just going to anyone’s who had a reasonable house. I overcompensated: when I was in a middle class book club in Norwich I remember one night it was my turn to host it at my flat. Only one person came, and there was all this cheese, I must have spent twenty pounds on cheese alone. I understand now that my attitude must have created something of a barrier. But I also think that maybe I have struggled to meet people who I really click with because I haven’t really clicked with myself.
One of the side effects of a spiritual awakening is loneliness within your friendships. I don’t need to talk about it anymore, but I needed to when it was first happening to me. I told one friend that it felt like a miracle, meeting John, and she said yes, I think it is a miracle, which was nice. Several friends read my book, and put up with me. But still, it’s not the same when your friends are not going through the same thing and I often felt worse for trying to explain what was happening as I just sounded crazy. Nowadays I have a few people I can talk to, as they have discovered it since and some have come to me or come into my life and talked about it, but back then it was only me, and John. Not that I want to be with the really ‘out there’ people either- I want the down to earth. Which is why it was so nice at Yoga, the healing, with Kim and Melinda, feeling instantly comfortable, they are both down to earth and into healing. They don’t wear robes or anything, are not false or pretentious or over the top. I don’t need to find people that believe in exactly the same things, I just need people who have an awareness of something else, but in a genuine, quiet way, not in a provocative or statement way.
It’s well reported on that during or in a spiritual journey it can be lonely; you can feel disconnected from your friends, you can even feel critical of them, of their negativity, of their asleep ness, of the fact that they don’t have a spiritual practice and of the fact that they don’t ‘get you’. But aside from the advice of the Dali Lama which is that it is more useful to identify a single shortcoming in yourself than a hundred in others, which I will endeavour to remember, your friends have every right to feel at least as disappointed in you as you do in them, after all, they haven’t done anything wrong, they haven’t changed. You, on the other hand, could be seen to have to a certain extent abandoned them.
Sometimes I visit a good friend and feel distant, unable to connect. I feel more connected with a person I just met on my yoga class and the thought flits through my mind of abandoning all my friends and making new ones.
Sometimes I just have my usual old problem of not really planning or living my days according to my needs: I make a list of friends like a to do list, contact everyone, do loads of visiting, regret the time alone I lost. (I have read since that as your vibration level rises, or your frequency rises, friends do sometimes fall away. Also, that you don’t desire to see people as much, and need more time alone.)
Other times I visit an old friend, feel relaxed and connected, talk about all sorts of things including politics (her topic) and healing (mine). I maybe meet her halfway by raising politics (a subject I normally avoid like the plague) re getting active with food cycle, and she maybe meets me halfway by having healing, getting into it and talking about feeling a spiritual shift.
This ‘process’ I am going through is having a cleansing and purifying effect; spring cleaning me, applying search and destroy, finding residual issues to work on. ‘It’ works in a different way to worry, where the mind skates around, looking for things, real and imaginary, to worry about. This works on an unconscious level so that, for example, when I need to work on my thoughts, I pick up a book and open it at the ‘thought lab’ page containing everyday thought exercises. I keep it open there for weeks, and when I do pick it up to look at other exercises, all the other things I find are so totally not me that I scurry back to the thought lab page and leave it open there in the bathroom for another few weeks.
Adie of 
Rachel 