Around the same time as I was in the Hare Krishna phase, Anthony was reading Lynn Mc Taggart’s book The Field.
The idea is that there is a field around us that holds all the ideas and possibilities that we can connect to and that it connects to us. Like the collective unconscious, a reciprocal entity like The Secret and the Law of Attraction, the feeling that it’s a two way thing. Living, alive, a love on both sides.
One winter’s day I went to the beach at Weybourne, North Norfolk. I stood on my own looking out at the sea, watching the waves come in. It was a bright day and the waves were lit up silver and shiny, the horizon a dark blue line against the pale blue of the sky. Me just standing there watching as if rooted to the spot. Hello Universe, I said, looking at the waves. Hello Rachel, The Universe said back.
My yoga teacher always said that I was good at being still: when he went around the class dishing out specific praise, Karen is good at boat pose, Sarah is good at head stands, well, I knew I was never the most bendy or fit and so I wasn’t surprised when he paused for a moment when he got to me. You’re very still in the poses, Rachel, yes, that’s your thing, you’re very still. I was pleased, I knew what he meant. I take it very seriously; I concentrate, I try hard, I’m really there.
It’s not just Yoga. Even when I’m standing looking at the sea, I’m really doing it. Later in meditation I saw a blue planet, at its edge a line of paler blue against the black of space. I was focussed on the edges, the place where things meet. Those words again, Hello Universe, Hello Rachel. I held onto them, suspending myself in the sweet moment of introduction. The place we arrive at before thoughts come in.
Like Rumi’s field: Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. Or Pulp’s: Oh is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel/Or just 20,000 people standing in a field?
I also wondered whether the idea of the field could be taken more literally as well; like when I go to the Harlequin Fayre and feel so free, a group of us all go and live in a field for a few days at a festival, with healing areas, yoga, gong meditation, music, cooking and eating together, lying in the sun, sleeping in tents. I like things to be concrete as well; I get just as excited about the concrete as I do the mystical. (You can read about my previous experiences at Harlequin Fayre HERE and HERE.)
I’ve got this lovely quote that I got, strangely enough, or at least I used to think such things were strange, from an interview in the council magazine they deliver free when they empty your bins. I tend to read everything and I’m glad that I do: ‘Life has its own hidden forces, which you can only discover by living.’
In order to gain all the knowledge and insights of the collective consciousness, perhaps I have to let go of the idea of being an individual altogether, at least while I am actually doing it. I feel my sense of self dissolving. Like being on a boat bobbing around, uncertain, unsettling at first, because I am letting go of control and allowing myself to feel something of the way the force field operates. Faster than the speed of light; in fact no sense of speed or time whatsoever. The dinosaurs were yesterday, a dream, an idea and the past, simultaneously. You think it, it happens, that’s how fast it can be.
This is the way angels and guides operate, this is why Maya Angelou or Archangel Raphael or anyone else living or dead for that matter could be with me and with any number of other earthlings simultaneously.
So the visions, the planets, the strange experiences we are warned about in meditation, are not inconsequential side effects, but communications from the force field/collective unconscious. Buddhism is too reductive for me, dismissing such experiences as ‘beginners mind’. Most religions are too one sided, simply asking for things passively when praying, and only a few lucky or special ones hear messages or get guidance.
We are not passive recipients of force field controller’s whims, we are not passive worshippers asking for things, we are active. Anyone can commune, receive ideas, insights, that we can choose to select or not. We can ask for support and choose which answers to act on. We can tune in and re-power so that we can have the energy to live and do.
More than just a space to work stuff out, the force field is simultaneously an agony aunt, a power source, an oracle and a monk. Bring your problems to the force field. Bring your everyday problems, however small, because these are the things that cause dis-ease (worry, fear and over thinking) and get in the way.
Going for a walk I saw two horses in a field. I realised, it’s not just dinosaurs, it’s everything. Horses, cats… okay maybe some have been ‘made out of’ or followed on from others ideas-wise, which we link together and see as evolution, but that’s because for us time is linear; in The Field, it isn’t, they all just plonked down fully created. They/we kept trying until they/we created us.
Opening yourself up to the field of possibilities can be scary, as in theory it means opening up to all and everything: wars, racism, murder, but of course you aren’t just a passive vessel waiting to be possessed by an idea. You have what you want to do; you have discernment and you have free will. It’s just that we scare ourselves, the possibilities scare us. We look for things to be afraid of, rather than opportunities. Like when people go mad.
Like how you see lots of whatever car you are looking into buying, not because you create more of them but you see what is already there, the universe holds everything, you just pick it out. So don’t focus on bad stuff more than necessary, e.g. people get obsessed with crime or fire risk, you need to think about it briefly and just enough to action it i.e. locks to stop burglars, smoke detectors, you install them, but you don’t spend all week looking at burglary or fire tragedy stories. Nothing new here- same as the old sayings, don’t dwell on it, think positive etc, but this is a more scientific way of presenting it and also provides a way of not doing the ostrich bit which can be a side effect of relentless Pollyanna-ness (I should know), where you refuse to even look at any bad stuff.
What is the one true thing I can rely on: Anthony, I guess, family, maybe, but even them, even him, will die, even if we stay happily together forever which I hope and intend to. The only thing I can really be sure will be with me until the end is me, my breath. I can’t even rely on a body part really, or maybe my heartbeat, okay, my beating heart and my breath, these are the only certainties in life, these are the things that will be with me until the end. Maybe I should write an anti smoking advert? Why would you want to poison and disable your only lifelong companions?
Certainties came up as constraints on the spell check and I thought, yes, our certainties can be our constraints too.
What would it take for people to believe? Something on the News at Ten? Basically, we are telepathic, able to do remote viewing and healing but most of the time the signal is drowned out by all the distractions- activities, media, our unfocussed, haphazard thoughts etc. What if the ordinary way, of success being about money, career, what you do for a living etc, what if it isn’t about that at all, it’s about being able to connect with the force field and connect with each other e.g. by telepathy, that these are the new skills and values, nothing to do with jobs and money. Also having empathy would make it hard to hurt others as we’d feel and connect.
In meditation I saw red curtain fabric, like in Twin Peaks going into the other world, and I got scared. Twin Peaks was creepy, about spirit possession, and then I got a flier for a conference on spirit possession. In Twin Peaks, fear opens the door to the bad world, but love opens the door to another, good world. Healing, is good, feels good. Energy forces exist, like nature, they are morally neutral. It is the intention of the person accessing them that determines whether they are good or bad. We have the power to direct energy, to channel it, and to use it for good or bad. The power exists, outside of us, it is strong, and it is morally neutral.
Me saying to someone at work, I am so thin skinned, and her saying kindly: ‘It’s the flipside of being caring’. I’ve almost no protection when I bump into people who aren’t very nice. Wondering if what we call ‘evil’ is really just a profound lack of empathy for others. Like how a greyhound needs a coat in winter because they have almost no natural protection from the weather, I have almost no natural protection against people who aren’t very nice. Or have I? Last night before bed I meditated. I thought about this, thought, I have no natural protection against people who aren’t very nice.
‘You do’ the answer came clearly.
‘You have this’.
Today, on the way home from work, Monday, I noticed a rare moment of the absence of worry, I wonder if that’s the goal, the absence of worry, leaving one to revel in the still moment. But our minds search for problems, and those moments are rare.
This was just one of several times where I’ve felt, this is it, I’ve got it, my unifying theory, my one true thing I can hold onto… and just when I think that, it’s gone. But when I’m in it, whatever it is, I’m hot, I’m connected, I’m awake.
Photograph: sunrise at Ramsgate during a trip away. We got up very early and the kids and I went to see the sun rise, afterwards we got hot chocolate.
Thank you very much for reading
