Matrix Revelations

Tags

ageing, Art, creativity, escape the matrix, middle age, sex

 

On Saturday morning I was the body for my husband giving a massage lesson (I know, it’s a hard life…)  As I listened to him patiently and professionally deliver a one hour comprehensive introduction lesson to a complete beginner, that was pitched just right, that created just the right atmosphere, and that in the time available, did everything it could; I reflected that wow, we know stuff.  We know stuff because we have been around for a while, learning stuff.  Because we are older.

I have spent such a lot of time thinking about what I don’t know and what I can’t do, that this weekend it was really nice to spend a bit of time thinking about what I do know and what I can do.   I used to think I wasn’t very well read because I compared myself with Oxbridge educated Guardian journalists.  But the other day I casually mentioned Rebecca (by Daphne Du Maurier, a book and films) in a big work meeting and no one had heard of it.  No one.  I was surprised; I didn’t think any less of the people, I just thought, okay, my reality is different to what I thought.

At work on Friday, someone was talking about starting yoga, and about how the teacher had talked to them about the chakras.  I found myself talking a bit about them, and sending a link to a page so she could learn more.  I don’t really do spiritual/chakra stuff anymore, but for a while I was pretty into it.  Focusing on the different chakra points, their colours, their corresponding mental, psychological and physical aspects, is a very powerful tool for self healing and development.  I used to think:  Root Chakra (red) safety, security; Sacral Chakra (orange) drives, creativity; Solar Plexus Chakra (yellow) emotions; Heart Chakra (green) love; Throat Chakra (blue) self expression, communication with myself and others; Third Eye Chakra (indigo) direction and seeing my path; Crown Chakra (violet white) connection with above.

So I thought, be proud of what you know, not sad re getting old.

Of course, there are loads of things I don’t know, loads of things I haven’t learned, loads of things I have refused to learn, e.g. DIY and reverse parking.   I feel totally okay about that.  The longer you live the more things you find out about or hear about, so the list of things you don’t know how to do keeps on growing, even as you keep learning, because you can’t learn how to do everything you come across.  You have to specialise.  (Rather than feel bad about the things you don’t know about.)  Knowing things, being good at things, takes time, energy and devotion.  (I want to learn a bit of Hindi.  So far I know about 5 words, and that’s only if I keep looking at them every day.)

I thought about what’s good about getting older, which is actually what’s good about me as I get older.  And as I am older, I could just simplify that to say:  What’s good about me.  (Making this list was nice.  I recommend it as an exercise in compassion and a little pick me up!):

What’s good about me

I have no inhibitions about my body

Yesterday I stripped off in front of someone I have only just met and lay on the massage table feeling fine with nothing on except my knickers.

I am sexually liberated 

I had kind of a thing recently with a woman, and we can see each other and it is all fine, no issues.

I can say what I want in bed.

(in both senses of the meaning)

Sex just keeps on getting better and better.

That’s what no one tells twenty somethings.  If you are in a loving communicating relationship, sex just keeps on getting better and better, in new and surprising ways!

I know:  your art is the most important thing

More important than alcohol, socialising, FOMO, peer pressure, or any other ephemeral distractions.  Your art is what makes you you.  By honouring your art, you honour yourself.  By spending time with your art, you spend time with yourself.  By getting to know your art you get to know yourself.

I understand:  ‘The matrix’ is really just your own thoughts limiting you  

Re bands and art, you have to want it, and you have to stick with it, for ever if need be, enjoying the process not just aiming for the rewards of fame etc.  If you are in a band you either all have to want it, or you have to be single minded enough to drive it yourself with interchangeable musicians.

It is a myth that it is too hard to make it.  Like Charlie Higson said about writing, there’s no magic trick or secret doorway, if you are good you will be picked up.  There’s so few people who can stick at anything, look at new year’s resolutions, diets, exercise regimes.  All you have to do is stick at it, and want it, want it enough to stick at it (1% inspiration, 99% perspiration), despite all the matrix pressure to ‘be realistic’, etc etc.

In fact the only thing people can stick at is what the matrix wants them to stick at, the everyday drudgery, the oh hi, another day another dollar, oh well, maybe I will win the lottery, soon be the weekend, I have a holiday to to look forward to, or oh look a charity jeans day or a Christmas jumper day, just enough to make it seem not too bad and everyone’s doing it so it must be okay right?

And every now and again they’ll scare you, a round of redundancies, or a crisis that causes stress so you take the whole thing even more seriously, you stay late, you give up the hobby class and exercise routine, or worse you never eat or sleep properly, you’re always at work, always unhealthy…  and for what, not for personal freedom that’s for sure.

So the lesson is:  Look at what the herd is doing and do the opposite.  Look at what the herd believes and believe the opposite.  As Jon Rappoport says, in this consensus reality we live in, the limits we see there aren’t real.  I can be a writer.  I am a writer.  Or rather, I am a ………  as yet to be labelled……..  and I document it on my blog.  But let’s get away from labels altogether.  If we aren’t labelling, if we aren’t preoccupied with what people do for a living (the herd again), then we don’t need to say anything.  I can just say, in answer to  what do you do, I am a human, I live.  (And I document it on my blog)

I have set up an Instagram account for when I am away followingthebrownrabbit

 

Thank you very much for reading.

Act Opposite!

Tags

DBT, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Dialectical Behaviour Therapy, Housework, marriage, sex

Act Opposite is a DBT skill.  Dialectical Behaviour Therapy (DBT) was invented by Marsha Linehan, a US therapist, primarily to treat a particular client group for whom regular Cognitive Analytic Therapy (CBT) appeared ineffective.  Her clients were mainly women diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD) who frequently self harmed, often severely, made multiple suicide attempts, whose lives were chaotic and whose therapists were frequently burned out.

These were women who had grown up in invalidating environments.  Just being told they needed to change was often experienced as further invalidation.  Enter the paradox:  DBT says, yes, the current situation is untenable and you do need to make changes, but given your circumstances it is completely understandable that you feel and behave this way.  I am going to support you in making the changes you need to make but I am also going to accept you just as you are.  And however difficult I may sometimes find this to do, I am going to hold fast to the belief that you are doing your very best.

That’s quite a long explanation;  when I am in a hurry I just say DBT is like CBT with Buddhism.

There is also a very tight framework which supports the therapists in delivering high quality consistent therapy, this is important as many therapists working with this client group can’t cope and end up abandoning their clients, who have often already been abandoned by previous therapists, friends, etc.

In DBT, the client has an individual therapist who helps the client to talk through their week, focussing on the most dangerous incidents first, in a strict hierarchy, using chain analysis to see what triggered the event and where the client could have employed alternative skills and strategies.  Separately the client attends a skills training group, where they learn the skills of interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation and coping in crisis.  That way, even if individual sessions are dominated by chaining suicide attempts and self harm, the client is still getting protected time to learn the skills that will help them in the long term.  Oh and there’s lots of mindfulness.

I trained in DBT and learned all the skills myself.  So when on Sunday I found myself in a slump, groggy, no energy, slightly depressed, feeling kind of incapable, I knew what to do:  Act Opposite.

I wrapped the Christmas presents and actually didn’t hate it.   They look very pretty all together on a shelf in the dining room, surrounded by fairy lights, wrapped in brown paper and bright pink metallic ribbon.  I cleaned the bathroom, all of it, including the black and white lino floor.  (A word of advice, you might think a black and white checked floor will look nice, but it shows every mark, every piece of fluff, every strand of hair…)  I vacuumed everywhere.  All three of these tasks I dislike intensely, but I did them- with sensible breaks for food and smoothies and cat cuddling- and afterwards, my slump was over.  By the time evening came and I put my feet up on the sofa to read and write, I felt much, much better.

So what caused the slump?  Well, it was the weekend and at the moment that means sex:  Saturday night, early dinner, a roaring fire, the floor of the sitting room covered with rugs, blankets and cushions…

It was so good that the next morning we were hungover even though we’d only drunk tea!  In bed in the morning, we weren’t going to come, but then we did.  Afterwards we dragged ourselves out of bed and went for a hazardous walk in the ice, and about halfway back we both just felt the energy drain out of us.   Yes, it really is a thing, orgasms drain your energy.  Plus, we’ve both been slightly ill with colds.  Then at bedtime I realised my period had arrived.  I don’t follow a lot or read a lot, I manage my media and sensory input, and I don’t like much stuff.  But what I like, I really like, and I remember.  I remember this tweet from when I was on twitter about eight years ago:  ‘Do you ever get your period and think, wow, that explains a lot…’

See yourself as beautiful (Warning: sexually explicit)

Tags

healing, love, marriage, sex

I’ve got a perfect body, though sometimes I forget

I’ve got a perfect body cause my eyelashes catch my sweat

(Regina Spektor)

We went a week without having sex after getting back from Marrakech.  The sex we had in Marrakech seemed to be some kind of unlock, releasing things/me.  It felt like healing had occurred.  When we had sex again my husband took me to another dimension.  It was as if I had been waiting, searching, all through the intervening years since the first sexual encounter, until now.  I feel like I finally worked out how my body works.  Or rather, like I finally remembered how it works.

Because I used to know, and then I forgot.  It became layered under peer pressure (actually from my female peers this was often anti not pro sex), my mother saying about me:  where is she, whoring around again.  Relationships, unrequited love.  There was no place, no mirror I could find that supported or reflected my own particular brand of feminism.

Anyway, this is a personal not a political blog so back to the other night, in bed with my husband:  He took me to another dimension.  I feel like I’m in a special place, I whispered.  And there we were, both tripped into somewhere else.  I often go somewhere else during sex but I often go there by myself:  drifting in and out of tried and tested fantasies that help me relax enough to come.  Like I’m avoiding just being  present.  But that night, I thought to myself:  here you are, having sex WITH MY HUSBAND.

WITH MY HUSBAND.  I realised, of course, we are designed so perfectly.  He puts his penis into my vagina, it touches me just there and I…  Yes, I come, I come.  Oh my God, I came and came, without stopping, one orgasm rolled into another, began as the previous one was ending, as if the sensation of one ending was enough to trigger the next one.  And even just laying there afterwards, the slightest brush, the slightest movement, the slightest thought started it all off again.

FYI we weren’t doing anything unusual, we were in the missionary position which is good for sensation and touching the right spots inside.  But like everything, sex is really a mind game.

Looking in the bathroom mirror I saw myself as beautiful.  For a few precious moments I understood why he doesn’t like me wearing any make up on my face.   He wants to see me.