Further… A post about my husband’s ‘spiritual journey.’

Tags

books, Film, relationships, spiritual awakening, Spiritual books, spiritual enlightenment, Spiritual experience, Spiritual journey, spirituality, They live, waking up

My husband Anthony John Hill ‘became enlightened’* in 1985 in his mid twenties and the fact that he’s stuck around so long I sometimes take for granted.  Remembering explains why I cried so much when I watched the end of The Good Place on Netflix. (*my words not his)

They Live 1988 film

His words:

‘I became aware, or more aware, and began to question things, to question the world I lived in, and to see through the facade.  It was in 1985 that I realised I was here to ‘bear witness.”

How it started:

‘My girlfriend at the time,** her mother liked me a lot and lent me books; On the Road by Jack Kerouac and Memories, Dreams and Reflections by Jung.  Later I found The Electric Kool-Aid Acid test by Tom Wolfe, about Ken Kesey; Fear and loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson, The Naked Lunch by William Burroughs, and, most important of all, Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse’ (which we both regularly mention whenever we feel as if we’ve ‘fallen off the path.’) (**who he remains in contact with to this day)

‘Becoming vegetarian was the big thing.  You can read as much as you want but it’s the actual doing something that makes a difference.  That was the first thing I actually did in terms of self improvement.  From that moment I started questioning things more; I moved away, and started doing courses in personal growth.’

The Merry Pranksters were cohorts and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964.

‘Once you wake up the veil is lifted.  It’s like being on a hill looking down.  You have the opportunity to step out of it and look back and see it as it is.  Of course that could be all part of the illusion too, you can’t know.  All you can do is be as genuine as you can.  I still get angry, I still make mistakes.  I can still be unaware at times, a lot of the time, not be full of love to my fellow humans.’

Anthony John Hill at 25

My anchor and my guide

 

Throwback Thursday: Marriage

Tags

conflict, How to argue, Living together, love, marriage, relationships, spiritual awakening, Spiritual experience, Spiritual journey

Leonard Cohen:  You know that I love to live with you, but you make me forget so very much.  I forget to pray for the angels, and then the angels forget to pray for us.

From the early days of Rachel and Anthony/ John:

It’s easy, (even for us! as I am fond of saying,) to become bogged down, stressed by the things that don’t matter (decorating, paperwork) and neglectful of the things that do (how we are, how we are together) and before too long a distance is created, one or other or both of us are dissatisfied and then, well, nothing really, we might have a rubbish go at sorting it out the first time and end tense and cranky, me getting defensive and going off to bed, and then the next morning, he leans his leg in, I lean mine, we talk, we make plans.  It’s not about what things we were or weren’t doing, it’s all part of it, it’s just about getting back on the path again.

He’d been feeling distance, we hadn’t been doing anything together.  I’d thought it was all hearth and home or having ‘gone beyond’ but you never ‘go beyond’; and looking back it had been a bit distant, I mean, I haven’t been feeling that happy either.  Then he goes into a charity shop in Dereham (Norfolk) of all places and finds a George Harrison book (I Me Mine) and in the introduction by Olivia his wife it sets out what their lives were like, and John said, That’s like you and me, well, without all the massive fame and wealth and so on.  And I should have been happy and I was, but I struggle to appreciate things in the moment sometimes, especially unexpected big stuff and especially when we haven’t yet made up from some tension or distance (but that was him making up or trying to make up from tension and distance) and I poured cold water on it, mentioning his (George Harrrison’s) affairs etc- there was no reason for that, but John was better than me and didn’t appear to notice or mind.

Last night, I forced us to sit and watch something, and he sat through two episodes of a box set the same way a cat does when you are forcing it to sit on your lap when it doesn’t really want to. 

He checked the oil in my car on Sunday even though we weren’t really speaking

I had this sense re the margarine left out and the toothpaste lid left off and I suddenly saw it as endearing- wow, how much I’d miss those things if they weren’t there, because they are a marker of him, his presence in my life, in the house.  If they were the same as you you wouldn’t notice them or their presence, this shows they are here…

Talking about the shortest day coming and saying after that it will get lighter again, and yet not wanting to wish life and another year away, one less year to live, but John said, if you are truly living in the moment then that doesn’t matter.

I thought about that later when we had a few cross words and I was sulking and he was angry and I laid in bed wondering what to say to elevate us above this situation and change it, at the same time as going over the evening, how we got there, who said and did what, etc, etc, analysing it…  but then I remembered, it is only the present moment, and do I want to spend it like this or do I want to change it?  And I realised, before I can change us or him I have to change myself, so I lay and just focussed on my breathing and slowly, slowly I felt myself calm and come back to calmness, felt love come in again, felt love go out to him, then finally I rolled over and put my arms around him and said I love you, I’m sorry.  I never normally apologise and like magic, it was all washed away and everything was as it was.

In meditation: warning for the future:  you had everything and you threw it all away; So do the opposite, really nurture all that I have, appreciate it, give it my attention.

I don’t want your thanks.  I just want your time and attention.

(When I was in meditation, thinking, I should pray, I should say thank you)

When I first got together with John, I had a student who had been to Japan, and she ran a calligraphy group, I did John’s name, it means ‘God has given’ in Japanese.  I had forgotten that.  God has given, why would He take away?

The problem with living together is that your moods don’t coincide:  I come home high after listening to Jeff Buckley track 10 of Grace over and over.  I walk in, he’s about to go to bed and also is very grumpy.

I guess that’s why people have date nights, so you both gear yourselves up to be happy and looking forward to seeing each other so both in a good mood at the same time rather than leaving that to chance, as well as you both being feeling like going out at the same time, which it seems is too much to hope for- both wanting to go out and both being in a good mood, all at the same time!

Still, I coped; my bubble might have been burst- from being in the car, feeling full of love and magic. But I wasn’t distraught.  And maybe the still space I had was useful- I stayed up a little, read some Elizabeth Gilbert stuff online.  Maybe it was for me to do that, a little bit of  stuff for me, or maybe it was just a reminder that my mood need not, must not, depend on his.

A few weeks later we went for a bracing January walk on the beach and we spoke a little about the day where we hadn’t spoken all day, he couldn’t remember what it was he’d been pissed off about, but it certainly wasn’t watching two episodes of Twin Peaks.  I had made up a whole schema around it and it wasn’t even true.  He said, Seriously, you don’t ever have to worry about days like those, about silly arguments, about moods.  Nothing you can ever do will stop me loving you.  You have nothing to worry about.

Nice evening paying cards with John.  Played several games, me totally relaxed, even winning some hands, and him seeming so pleased- ‘look at you, I’ve created a monster’, etc.  It’s the small things that count.  So I am so glad I learnt to play despite how hard it was for him/me.  (I have a real aversion to learning and playing games).  He said connecting with the person you are in a relationship with is a spiritual practice.  He appreciates:  dinner, sex, playing cards, watching films with him.

‘God has given’ what to do?  Answer:  all we have to do is love and allow ourselves to be loved.

Is the nature of a marriage all to do with your own energy field, it’s just you, reflected back at yourself?  And if you aren’t careful you can blame the other person for things- convenient- but if you look back honestly you realise those things have always been there, your own problems or ways of doing things that you don’t like, you might think getting married will sort them all out, but of course it can’t, you don’t realise any of this consciously though, and then when things or problems arise, as they would have done anyway, it’s easy to blame the other person, as you have conveniently forgotten how you/your life used to be before you met them.

I went for a walk to the church, John said, Say a prayer for me, for my soul.  I didn’t actually go to the church in the end, my legs took me along the footpath, past the big ivy covered trees that marked the start of my spiritual awakening.  I said a prayer anyway though:  I pray that John will be happy and free from worries and that I will be able to rise above the day to day worries and stresses that sometimes cloud things between us, and connect again to that force of love that brought us so spectacularly together in the first place.  Anyway, it worked:  he said this morning, ‘let’s have an early night, let’s go to bed before we are tired so we can talk’ (!) and sent me nice messages at work.  I like the way one of us always comes forward, or should I say back.  Like sometimes I think he’s moody and distant and sometimes I try to be loving and cuddly and sometimes I am distant and stressed and he is all compliments and cuddles and come ons.  But we get there, the two of us, thank God.

Thank you very much for reading

Sick and Tired in Delhi PART TWO

Tags

Cloth sanitary pads, Delhi, family, India bus journeys, Main Bazar, Parent child relationships, Periods, Periods and travelling in India, Pushkar, relationships

Sick and Tired in Delhi PART TWO
‘You took the red pill’

Extract from draft book chapter about our time in Delhi in October

I sent my son some money and a message, ‘Well done, we’re both so proud of you.’ At same time, cutting the cord. You can cut the cord and still be loving. In fact doing that, rather than being distant actually sets you free. It sets you both free.

Same with my mum- little messages with pics, and no angst from me. This sets me miles and miles away. I thought being distant does that, but it doesn’t necessarily do that

Being all cosy cosy can keep you emeshed. This isn’t emeshed. It’s kind, it’s nice, it’s fairly non emotional- as in, it’s happy but not riddled with guilt or upset like before or feeling trapped by my mother.

My son’s doing better set free from me. I’m doing better set free from my mum. But with no angst to hold us in conflict. It’s so simple put like that.

Is this the magic secret, all there is to it, the how to transition from child to adult relationships that I never previously understood? How to transition from anger ridden despair teen breakdown, and overly emeshed thirty something into own life?
Yes, yes, it’s just like this.

Delhi is known for being polluted, and while we were there the air quality was particularly bad. Bryan Adams did a show and tweeted a photograph of himself, barely visible beyond the smog. We wondered whether it was better to have the ac on or to leave it off and keep the windows closed. We researched it and discovered that ac only gives a false sense of security and doesn’t get all the dangerous particulates out. We came across adverts for companies selling bottled air in Delhi. My heart went out to the people who live there all the time.

After Delhi we were going to Rajasthan for a month, a week in each city, we had booked the trains ages ago. But at least one of those cities was as polluted as Delhi. We’d just experienced a lot of pollution in Varanasi. After Rajasthan we had flights booked to go to Kathmandu, also known for poor air quality.

And there was an outbreak of Zika virus in Jaipur, our first stop in Rajasthan. Although very dangerous only for pregnant women, neither of us wanted to risk getting ill with something else.

We procrastinated for ages, the two of us struggling to make a decision, too much choice, not feeling well. Balancing what we want to do/feel up to doing in the present with will we regret not going to all those places once the trip is over. In the end we ripped up the plan, cancelled all the trains and decided to just go to Pushkar, the smallest and least polluted place on our plan.

All the trains were sold out- which was why we’d booked them so far in advance- we could only get there by bus. As there are no loos on buses we had to wait until we were well. We felt trapped in Delhi; we felt like the food and the pollution made us ill, or at least didn’t help, yet we couldn’t leave until we were well. We stayed six nights in that room in Delhi.

On our last morning we ate breakfast at the hotel sitting out into the rooftop, porridge made with water, with banana. It was so nice being out together, it felt like an outing. The past few days had been mainly spent indoors, one of us only going out for food or drink or to the pharmacy over the road. Once or twice we went to the cafe downstairs, which was a bit sad; greasy and with doors that opened into the pollution of the street.

We watched a Westerner, he lived right at the top above the dirty kitchen, completing Hindu rituals, or possibly just washing with a water bottle, we weren’t sure. We watched him doing his laundry on the rooftop. What a life. We wondered what his story was? Divorced? Living on a pension? Hindu convert? Disappeared?

That night we got a rickshaw from the hotel to catch the night bus to Pushkar and saw the Delhi smog close up.

I tried to soak up the sights of Main Bazar, the neon lights, the mopeds, the cows, I saw a cow and a calf with big floppy ears; knowing it might be our last time. I lost concentration, and Main Bazar was gone.

We were into a different area, we saw veg restaurants, pure veg places, I thought, Why didn’t we go here? Oh, yes, we were sick and ill and indoors!

And then, utter craziness, ‘worse’ than Kolkata. Cows, thin cows, cows with floppy ears, cows trying to eat non existent grass in the middle of road, like the central reservation, and licking a stone in the middle of the barrier. A group of calves eating from a trough.

Everything grey, dust, dark, dust. Buildings that looked like they had been derelict for decades or were for demolition, by UK standards. Birds nest wiring amongst them and then, a few inflatable toys, bright pink balloons, and big brightly coloured teddies wrapped up in cellophane.

It looked like a market had finished and was packing up. There was every type of transport; lorries, cars, rickshaws, oxen and cart, men with carts, and men with sacks on their heads. Men pulling carts, some with another man pushing, but some alone, with huge loads. A man carrying a huge load on his shoulders, wrapped, two leg ends and castors poked out, a chair or a table, he carried it up to the top of a ladder to a vehicle alone, then men at the top took it.

Dust, dark, dust, and traffic jams. A sign said: Men at work. Oh God yes. If ever that sign was valid, it was there. And everything within a thick smog. It seemed unbelievable how anyone survives, does this every day. How there’s any old people in Delhi.

A cycle rickshaw got caught on our rickshaw. Everyone around just shouted instead of helping. Usually touching of vehicles, even a scrape, does not result in shouting, not like in the UK. Maybe this was because it held up the traffic, and maybe it was a status thing, with bicycle rickshaws considered lower in the pecking order than auto rickshaws.

On previous night bus journey I/we were worried about needing a pee, this time, that was eclipsed by worrying about diaorriah. And then, Oh great, blood, my period started as well.

The bus depot was dusty, with rows of numbered stalls of travel agents, each with a desk and a tiny office with seats. To get to the toilets we had to go down a path to the side of one of the stalls, then along another. There were lots of men hanging about, and big dogs, and next to the toilets there was a big room with men sleeping on the floor, like a paying homeless shelter or very low cost accommodation. There was a hand washing sink outside but nothing inside the loos, just Indian style toilets which was fine, but no sinks like in the trains and not very clean. Even if I had taken a bottle of water in with me like I would on the train, I’d not be confident enough with hand hygiene to use my moon cup so cloth sanitary pads and a lungi would have to suffice.

On the bus a dreadlocked young woman across the aisle spread out a white lungi on the bus seat, it’s good to do for hygiene anyway. I did mine double layer just in case but my cloth sanitary pad didn’t let me down, as they say in the ads. The only thing it meant was not being sure if my pain, was urge to go to the loo, period pain, or hunger; we didn’t eat anything in the hours prior to the journey. But we managed the journey okay, we stopped for the loo and not eating beforehand worked.

We changed buses for the last part of the journey. Outside the window were bushy trees, mountains and desert. I saw a wall painted mauve, and another with delicate scalloped shapes cut out of the bricks, and then we were in Pushkar.

Thank you very much for reading

The complicated stuff…

Tags

Alternative living, Enlightenment, family, India, Minimalism, Personal growth, relationships, Self realisation, Travel, Traveling, Travelling, Voluntary simplicity

These photographs were taken by my mum on a recent holiday.  Once a month or so she’ll send me a photo of something of interest with a few lines.  I do the same.

My son and I communicate mainly via messenger messages and occasional video calls.  We exchange news, everything’s going okay.  A couple of times recently he’s needed money and I’ve sent some.

It’s been a source of some anxiety and a fair amount of guilt that these relationships aren’t as close as, as what?  As some other people’s family relationships look from the outside?  As my idea of what these relationships should look like?  (except that I have no idea…..)  As what they were?  No, that had to change.

Anyway, in the midst of my painful illness I had a moment of clarity:  I realised suddenly:  Maybe they are happy with it being this way.

When I went to live and work in New Zealand for a year I had a similar experience of interpersonal conflict to that which I wrote about in my post ‘Every day beautiful, Every day shit,’  only without the self awareness to deal with it or take any responsibility for my part.  I emailed my mum, she emailed me back a long pep talk, and was probably quite concerned.  Even when things were going well, I used to phone her from New Zealand a lot.  I was thirty-five years old.

My son seems to do better the more independent he is from me, without me worrying about him.

I’ve written about my relationship with my son here:  This is life

Because of her own experience; property, security, inheritance were pillars for my mum.  Again due to her own experiences; as a child, teen and young woman I was conditioned to be anti-marriage, anti-men, anti-relationship.  Anti creating a world with another.

And yet that’s exactly what I’ve done with my husband and it’s amazing.  Right now, reading Krishnamurti, discussing ideas, being on a joint quest…

Here is a blog post summarising the life changing decisions we took to dismantle our previous lives and get to India here:  Orientation

And the impact it had on my relationship with my mother here:  The price of freedom

But what can I do, what is my part in fixing or accepting responsibility for these relationships?  Mother and son.  Past and present?

And what about our decisions?

I’ve been a big fan of the idea of illuminating the darkness, and taking responsibility for everything that’s ‘wrong’ in one’s life, for any sadness.
But I’ve realised that it’s also about accepting responsibility for my own happiness.

My husband and I discussed, Could we live with later thinking that we had gone crazy and regretting it and own it, the good and the bad?  We discussed the charge of, will we regret it? worst case scenarios and solutions, but still I say, It’s better than dying without having lived.

What, pregnant at eighteen, getting a career to support me and my son, getting a mortgage at thirty-five years old that would last until I was sixty, so that on my deathbed I’d say Well I couldn’t have done that (any of the exciting things- I imagine possibilities flitting through my mind on death), and then realising, Oh my God, you could have done!  You could have done!  You could have gone out and done x, and x, and x, there wasn’t anything to worry about.  There was never anything to worry about.  Your life is your life*, best message for all even with kids.

We had lunch and talked about keeping hold of this attitude to life once we return to the UK.  How?  Manage fear.  Don’t take life too seriously. Remember the people we’ve met travelling and how it works for them.  I wrote a post about some of them called Sab Kuch Milega (everything possible).

We’ve cemented voluntary simplicity minimalism and ideas about reducing consumerism, by having bought a boat to live on.  There’s no space to accumulate.  There’s a physical check on it!  The moorings are in a completely new area of the country.  There won’t be any old influences.  We’ve given ourselves the best chance we could.

So if the reason for doing all this is the pursuit of enlightenment and the definition of enlightenment is to see things as they really are…

Can you have light in some areas and not in others, just as some bits of life can be going ‘well’ and others ‘not so well’?

While we were in Pushkar my son had his teeth done.  It was such a good thing (after ten years of rotten teeth and poorly gums etc the problems are gone, and he quickly recovered and was so over the moon about facing his fears and it being resolved);  but at the same time it was so sad (that they ever got that bad, that it went on for so long, and that he had so many teeth removed).

I spent that night talking, processing, again, wishing to go to a place that can’t exist, where he’s an adult with no teeth problems, or to go back to his childhood and somehow do it all again correctly whatever it was that I did or didn’t do that could have altered it.  I don’t know what that would be and I don’t know if I could do it even if given a chance, so impossible, pointless….

Just days after, even hours after, he seemed okay, and a month later, it was as if nothing had happened at all.  It doesn’t escape my notice that he was able to finally take charge of himself while I was away.

 

The night I asked myself all these big questions about my family relationships, I dreamt about going round to my mum’s old house (a sixteenth century farmhouse that she’d lovingly restored and lived in for forty years (true)) as she was preparing to sell (true), and her pointing out memories, including a bit of plaster on the wall where a butterfly had landed and made a print (dream only!).  Maybe you could get someone to cast it, I said, in the dream.  Her so attached to bricks and mortar, making that house her whole life.  She regarded herself as custodian of the house, she put it above a relationship (she said she couldn’t marry or live with anyone as they would be able to claim half the house if they separated).

I thought about what I could have done differently on my part.  The thing would have been to keep separate, not share boyfriend details, not spend each holiday there, not run every decision by her, not do everything she said… yet at the same time it was hard as I was nineteen with a baby, twenty and single mum of a toddler…..  So maybe like with my son’s teeth there’s nothing that could have been done differently by me at that time.

And of course now there’s definitely nothing that can be done.  No time machine.  It- things, all things, can only be fixed in the present.

So exchanges of emails with photos, a few lines, and me living my life, in India, writing a book, discussing Krishnamurti and deepening my relationship with my husband, really it is the way things are.

For photographs of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Getting in touch
Comment on posts (comments are public)
Send a message via the Contact Box (private message via email)
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Part of a reflective review inspired by illness, our return to Kerala, and by being eight and a half months into our twelve month trip.

* Your life is your life, go all the way (Charles Bukowski)

For photographs of our trip see Instagram travelswithanthony

Getting in touch
Comment on posts (comments are public)
Send a message via the Contact Box (private message via email)
Follow/send a message via my new Instagram: Sadie Wolf so_simple_so_amazing

Throwback Thursday

Tags

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

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

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

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

The possibility of ease (first published August 2014)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Throwback Thursday

Tags

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

In Love with Life (first published July 2014)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Push where it moves

Tags

awareness, escape the matrix, Law of Attraction, marriage, relationships, spirituality, writing

I used to think this a lot when I was in the midst of searching for a ‘spiritual’ path and exploring ideas such as the law of attraction.  I used to think of finding the panel in the wall to push, or the right part of the bookcase to touch, to reveal a secret doorway or hidden room.  I also used to think of it in terms of go with the flow; if it’s coming easily, it’s the right path.  My husband says that if things are too hard then maybe you aren’t doing them the right way and would find it easier if you changed method.  This is the opposite of the ‘no pain, no gain; life is hard’ conditioning we are all subjected to.  But as one of the last bits of spiritual advice I listened to said:  look what the herd is doing and do the opposite.

But what does ‘push where it moves’ mean to me right now?  Because right now I don’t seem to have to push much at all.* I don’t even seem to have to ‘write’ anymore, it just comes.  And although I am not looking externally for signs and assistance (as I used to when I was first getting into all this stuff), they seem to be coming anyway:  coming out of the supermarket with no clue as to where I had parked the car, I see a shiny red car and remember walking past it on my way in.  Later the same day I park at the beach car park, look up and see a shiny red car parked next to me.  It had a parking ticket in the window facing me, which reminded me I needed to get one; I would certainly have forgot otherwise.  (The other week I parked at the train  station and although I remembered to buy a ticket, I left it in the machine and didn’t put it in my car.  Happily I did not get a penalty ticket.)

Maybe I don’t need to push where it moves anymore.  Maybe all I, or anyone, needs to do is to raise myself up to my highest vibration and let ‘it’/ the universe/me do the rest.  This is beautifully described here in an interview on Desert Island Discs with the violinist Nicola Benedetti.  This is such a great interview, I really recommmend listening to it, nothing to do with whether you know who she is or are into the music, it is just fascinating.  (I have written about this before in my book about my spiritual awakening, but this is what I was listening to on the day I drove to bathe in the North Norfolk sea in early January, as part of my commitment to the spiritual path.)

Also, although I wouldn’t have described it that way at the time, it is how I met my husband:  I had just done a swimathon which had meant ten weeks of training, towards the end swimming 160 lengths three times a week, so I was fit and healthy.  I was baking cakes all the time and writing women’s erotica.  I was going out all the time, including to weddings by myself, following the ‘never refuse an invitation’ advice, which meant, it was pre vegan days, eating a lot of pizza.  John told his friend about this new woman he had met who had brought him homemade cake and had her erotic stories for sale in Waterstones and his friend said, you might as well just marry her.

New motto:  All you have to do is nothing**

New little writerly rituals:  putting a song in and then listening to it as I proof read (not always successfully I know).

Anyway, for me now, ‘push where it moves’ means Jenga.  But why bother being gentle?  It’s going to fall anyway.  It’s really just about making something fall but other people taking the blame for it, or everyone making something fall but one person taking the fall.  And all the time you could just knock it down with one swipe of your hand anyway.  Or not build it in the first place.  Or build something else, a car, a house, a path.  Yes, a path:  straight or windy, zigzag, steep, broken…  But I don’t suppose that would make a very good Christmas game would it?

*Except to make myself do decorating/cleaning; of which I am proud to report that I have done two hours of today already, and so can happily justify being snuggled up in bed right now with the heater on, writing this ensconced in a pile of pillows and blankets.

**Except painting and cleaning, of course…

As good as it gets?*

Tags

gratitude, happiness, marriage, relationships

This is a photograph of me and my husband at our wedding party in 2013.**  The wedding day is supposed to be the best day of your life, but really that is only helpful if it provides a foundation for now.  The best day of your life can be now, with special events serving as a reminder to have fun like that again.

Yesterday the cats woke me up, I was momentarily irritated until I saw that it was 8am.  I had gone to bed at 10pm so I had had loads of sleep.  I fed the cats, made a cup of tea and went back to bed with my tea and my tablet.  I looked up things about Thailand:  TEFL courses, animal sanctuaries, homeless westerners, women’s projects, ex pats, what to bring…   I ordered cute homemade baby clothes from Etsy for a work baby shower.  A man knocked at the door, a modern version of ‘any old iron’, and took the shell of the broken storage heater.  I answered the door with unbrushed hair and no bra.

I got up and ate breakfast:  a hot cross bun and a banana and more tea, then put on my painting clothes and the ipod and painted the skirting board, a second coat from the day before and a first coat on a new section.

I drank coffee.  I washed my face and got dressed.  I made a smoothie.  I went for a walk across the fields.  It was the tail end of the hurricane and it was very warm, warm enough for sunblock.

Whilst I was walking the idea and content of yesterday’s blog came to me.  I came home and called the council and asked for two new bins, ours are too small.  It was one of those jobs I’d thought I’d never get around to.  I wrote to a successful blogger to ask about a guest post.  I wrote my blog and posted it.

I painted the second coat of the new section.  I had a wash.  I went to the local grocery shop.  My husband came home from work.  We ate a late lunch together:  sos mix vegeburgers, butter beans, avocado, tomatoes.  More coffee.

We drove to Southwold and had a walk along the promenade.  It was very windy and the sea was rough but it was warm at the same time because of the hurricane.  We found a new cafe that was open late and had dinner there; the proprietor was extraordinarily chatty.

We drove home.   It was still only 7pm.  I made a couple of calls.  I did some yoga.  I looked up Russell Brand’s cafe.  I read some people’s blogs.  I was in bed by 11pm.

I had had plenty of time for everything.  I hadn’t felt rushed in any way.  I got ‘tasks’ done, I did exercise, I did writing and I had plenty of time for cuddling cats and messing about on the internet.  I felt relaxed and slow.  It felt as though there was no discernable difference between any of the things I did:  No, this is a chore; this is fun.  Everything just seemed to flow.

It’s on days like these that I really think, that’s it, I’ve cracked it.  I want to say thank you, or, well done, or just, ok, that was good.

*one of my favourite films

**We got married with no fuss, just two witnesses and the kids.  My husband’s family had a small party for us at their house.  I made the cake.

How to not have sex with your husband

Tags

awareness, erotica, love, marriage, relationships

 

Those of you that have read previous blogs will be aware that my husband and I have been experimenting with tearing ourselves away from wild and crazy sex and practising abstinence, karezza, or at least some measure of control.

Up until now this has largely taken the form of imposing rules on ourselves, not only about when and how much to have sex and orgasms, but also rules around behaviour, in order to ‘make it easier’.

Us being us, these rules fluctuate week to week and are frequently broken, but nonetheless, we have given it a go.  Things like no groping each other, no kissing, no spoon cuddling in bed, no getting naked, no looking at each other ‘like that’.

And then at the prescribed time, usually the weekend, we ‘switch it on’ or set ourselves free and turn, briefly, into sex maniacs again for 48 hours.  Well sometimes we do, sometimes we might be more restrained than that, but it is basically on or off.

And even though one of ‘our songs ‘ is called All Or Nothing, this approach didn’t actually work all that well for us.

Although we talked about it a lot, it wasn’t until we did things differently that we realised why, and more importantly, what might help it work in the future.

So the other night, we got into bed, it was the weekend but one of us had floated the idea of that not necessarily meaning we had to have sex, so neither of us were sure, although both were prepared to do it if the other one wanted to.  We ended up having a kiss and a cuddle and falling into a deep and refreshing sleep.

The next morning we woke up, kissed, cuddled and then talked:  my husband said, I feel like I am on the edge of a precipice.  I said, perhaps we should follow the American virgins* and only do it if we are really sure.  We also reflected on how nice it was, and how satisfying, to be intimate and affectionate, without having sex.  I realised then what I hadn’t liked about the ‘All Or Nothing’ approach:  the having to switch off and on my sexuality and my affection.  I want to be able to be warm and affectionate and to feel sexy and attractive, according to the mood and colour of the present moment, not the day on the calendar.  I think we can do this, and that a more natural approach will work better for us.

*This is in no way meant to offend any Americans, it was just me referring to True Love Waits and those kinds of movements, which we don’t really have, or don’t have to such an extent, in the UK.

 

The Time to Be Happy Is Now

Tags

awareness, marriage, reality, relationships, spirituality

So simple, so amazing: a journey into awareness

Chapter 13:  Time to Be Happy Is Now

I used to live life looking down, you taught me to look up.  I want to say thank you.  I love you.  I see you, I believe in you, and as long as we’re together there’s nothing we can’t do.  (Sense 8)

When I lived at our old house, the light bulb reflecting on the bathroom wall made an image of a tiny high window.  Thinking the worst, I thought it was a prison cell window.  I thought that perhaps I was in prison but didn’t realise it.  Maybe that was true.  But now, instead of looking ‘down’ or ‘backwards’, to something worse than my current situation, it’s the other way around.

From where I am right now, which is good anyway, I am seeing windows and doors everywhere, windows and doors to something even better.  Walking around the town I notice haylofts, alley ways with little gates, high lit up windows and huge wooden doors.

If self analysis and ruminating about the past is like trying to untangle a ball of wool that a kitten has played with*, then it suddenly dawned on me that I could just chuck it out and buy a fresh ball.  I could forget all my mother’s conditioning about recycling and not wasting and just go out and buy a new one.  Or even decide that I don’t like knitting after all and go and do something else.

*As I was thinking this, I saw a sparrow pecking one of those mirrors people have to help them reverse out of their driveways, it kept flying around to look behind, then back again to the front and pecking, totally futile.  A much better metaphor (than I could have made up) than the tangled ball of wool, for our endless introspection (re the past) and navel gazing.

Saturday morning in bed, talking, in the moment, really in the moment, so that we felt like two Gods looking down at what we had created.  Reviewing our lives, how we got here, what we gave to each other (money and security, fun and happiness).  What we mean to each other now that we don’t need anything.  Experimenting with the idea of letting each other go, to travel separately, to take a job in another country.  Even thinking the unthinkable, the possibility of separating:  Maybe my work is done here John said, we had a good run.  Is this how divorce happens, just an idea that gets spoken aloud?  Of course not:  you fight, and make each other unhappy.  We are not like that.

Long talk with John about setting ourselves free, e.g. selling the house, moving away from the kids:  what would you do if you only had one life?  Both felt tingly all over.  Looked up properties and jobs in Scotland just to get in the zone of putting it out there, that we are up for it…

Enjoying friendships more, finding friendships more satisfying, even though one might think the opposite would be true.  Realising that this world and most of the people in it are illusionary doesn’t lessen the pleasure I get from nature or good company.

I saw a black and white cat using a zebra crossing today, the woman in the car behind me saw it and laughed too.

Where is this book going to go?  Back to the beginning, with illumination.

This is what a good man looks like:

When I was still into healing and chakras**, John had a hernia operation.  He was quite poorly in the recovery and in severe pain.  Later I looked up the emotions associated with that area according to my chakra book: anger, resentment and frustration.  He said he ‘always holds it in’ and ‘is left with it’ (this is about difficult interactions with his children’s mother).  A hernia is a hole in the wall of the intestines.  So anger, resentment and frustration had literally burned a hole inside of him?!  I thought, right, maybe the cure would be to let her have it, to say all the things he never says?

Much later, when I told him all that, and suggested letting her have it, he said:  If that’s true, if that’s why I had the hernia and if that’s the cure, and if I had the choice between letting her have it both barrels, and having the hernia and this operation, well then I’d take the hernia, because I know how much my actions hurt her.

** I have shredded my healing logs, reflections, student journals and my certificates and registration card.  Why?  I realised I don’t know what it is I am doing; that people should probably heal themselves; that I should focus on myself; but above all, to make space for newness.