Da Lat Vietnam Part Two

Tags

Dalat, Enlightenment, Minimalism, Spiritual experience, The matrix, Travel writing, Vegan travel Vietnam, Vietnam, Voluntary simplicity

For more photographs of Da Lat see a previous blog here

There were little dogs everywhere. One of the guesthouse dogs, a small whitish pug like dog, was, ‘Not friendly, she will bite you, she already lost one owner and is scared she will be taken away again,’ the hotel woman told me. The other dog was like a small brown poodle with curly chocolate fur, it looked like a cuddly toy and was very friendly. It was young and too bouncy for the other dog, always wanting to play; the woman told me that each day for a few hours it went to her friend at another hotel to give the older dog a break.

During our stay it had a haircut, we thought at first it was a different dog, not only was all its curly fur gone but it was huddled in its bed not greeting anyone. Apparently it was traumatised as she hates having a haircut. ‘She won’t speak to me, tomorrow she’ll be okay.’ The woman said. By the time we left she had began getting back to normal.

Again we had an An Chay restaurant right opposite our guesthouse, the woman who ran it was friendly with a tiny bit of English, and there was a woman assistant who had no English. We were confused by the menu, she showed us a small piece of paper which someone had hand written a translation on. It turned out it was all fake meat but we didn’t realise that at first. I ate rice, tofu and veg, it was very cheap, and beer. Once there was a big ginger cat, like a big cat from home, the size of a small dog, who let me stroke it. Another time I went in by myself to eat and to do my blog, there was a chatty American man there, he told me he had a Vietnamese girlfriend and planned to retire here, apparently there were lots of ex pats in Da Lat.

In Vietnam there are people who are totally vegan or vegetarian all the time and many other people have one day each month where they don’t eat meat. Although generally Vietnam is very meaty, where there are all vegan restaurants, they are superb. In DaLat we found an incredible place, again thanks to Happy Cow. It had signs up saying no meat, no eggs, no fish. At the front it had a Banh Mi stall, these were wetter with different flavours and sauces to the ones in Nha Trang, and inside was a big restaurant. There were lots of tables, and often big family parties would eat there. There were poster menus on the wall and big laminated book menus on the tables. They did a lot of fake meat; it’s not something I’m into per se, having never missed meat but it was nice to have a variety of food and plenty of protein. Everything was vegan. We ate lovely sausages, fake chicken wings, fake shrimp, tofu fake meat, fresh stir fried veg, and my favourite, the most lovely dumplings, dense like pie crust or short crust pastry. And glasses of warm soya milk, delicious and healthy, which I missed so much when I couldn’t get it.

I went to the hairdresser to get my unfortunate orange henna from Kerala dyed over (dying over henna isn’t usually possible which I knew but I tried anyway.) I was very excited about going to the hairdressers. ‘Make brown,’ I said. The hairdresser tried hard and looked far more disappointed than me when it didn’t work. She called a man over who spoke some English to ask if I was happy with my hair which was possibly ever so slightly less orange but I might have been kidding myself. Anthony had made me take his phone for the translation app, ‘Just in case.’ I used it to try to explain that it was henna, it wasn’t her fault, but they didn’t understand.

In a reverse to the waving cats aromatherapy thing, which I’d seen first on Atypical on Netflix and then seen in real life; we saw a cockroach in the room, and then cockroaches were mentioned on Atypical. We couldn’t catch it and so ended up living with it in the room which I was very proud of myself about. We never saw it again; they stay on the floor, they like the dark, they avoid humans. That’s what I said to myself anyway.

We found our way back to the area we’d seen from the taxi; a street full of small vintage and original fashion shops. We bought little cakes at a small bakery which also sold small waving cats, white or gold, in plastic boxes. Near the second hand/fashion street was a yellow wall where we watched countless tourists take photographs of themselves against its backdrop.

On a main road with lots of shops with big signs and hoardings, a little like Triplicane High Street in Chennai where Broadlands was, we were suddenly caught up in two schools pouring out, a crazy log jam of bikes. The uniform of one school was traditional trousers with long skirt overlay with a side split all in white silk, the other was sporty navy blue. Opposite a temple we stopped at a shop to buy water, the man in the shop encouraged two school girls who were in there to speak to us to practice or show off their English. We had a short chat and the shop man looked pleased.

Near the indoor clothes market area, big wide flights of stone steps led down to an outdoor market area with fruit, including tall perfect piles of strawberries in baskets, built one by one in an expanding wall, fascinating to watch, beyond the fruit endless cheap clothes. We bought grapes and satsumas.

We sat on the steps with our thin blue carrier bag of satsumas with the leaves on, and relaxed. It was good to just look. Behind us was yet another hotel called Dream something. Nice Dream, maybe. It’s like we’re being told, ‘It’s a dream!’ And just like that, everything felt trippy and shiny again; the two of us feeling high, feeling like it’s a matrix or an illusion.

Thank you very much for reading!

About me

Sold house, left career, gave away almost everything else. Went travelling with my husband for a year, mostly in India. Here are my India highlights. Now back in the UK, living on a narrowboat and writing a book about the trip, a spiritual/travel memoir, extracts from which appear regularly on this blog.

‘Order beer with your breakfast we won’t judge you’ Siem Reap Cambodia Part Two

Tags

awareness, Cambodia, Enlightenment, Siem Reap, spiritual awakening, spiritual enlightenment, Spiritual experience, spiritual memoir, The matrix, The Thirteenth Floor, Travel, Vanilla sky, writing

Draft extract from my travel/spiritual memoir

See you in another life, when we are both cats*  

*Vanilla Sky

I watched a couple of YouTube videos with Anthony about ‘the matrix’ and felt trippy and inspired, as usual.  I scribbled down quotes and ideas :

Words are spells that programme you

Make friends with your body, subconscious, conscious, make all one

People inside same age- body irrelevant look past this 

Don’t live in the past

Don’t live in the future

Stay in the NOW

Don’t live in fear

Raise your frequency

Dream where you are now

One of the comments mentioned language and conditioning; would we be freer without language?  I’d talked about this before when thinking about the man at Osho’s guesthouse in Kerala who couldn’t read.  If you didn’t see any ads, if you weren’t exposed to all those ideas and conditioning… But it is double edged: the good books get you there, wake you up, the bad ones keep you sleepy and distracted.  Who defines good and bad though?  I’ve had an inspiration moment through a car ad and they’d (car ads) would probably be banned if I was in charge…

Anthony had seen The Thirteenth Floor and told me about it but I hadn’t seen it.  In Koh Rong I had a conversation with a fellow blogger who had written a blog post about Westworld and its effects re thinking about consciousness etc.  I mentioned Battlestar Gallactica which we had recently finished and had similar themes.  Anthony said, ‘Tell him about The Thirteenth Floor.’  It turned out that The Thirteenth Floor was kind of like his (the blogger’s) The Matrix, he had gone to see it with his cousin, hadn’t known what he was going to see and had his mind blown unexpectedly.  The internet wasn’t strong enough at Koh Rong to download it.  We tried again in Siem Reap: bingo.

We switched off The Thirteenth Floor.  I went into the bathroom and looked in the mirror, still kind of in the film, feeling or imagining that I had just ‘arrived.’  I noticed two new moles on my body.  I came back in, still feeling floaty, as if I was a film character.  I looked out of the window.  There was an unrecognisable animal sitting on top of a car.  I couldn’t process what it was, and I couldn’t find the words to name it.  It was black and about the size of a monkey.   But at the same time it looked like a cartoon; with big orange triangles inside its ears and an orange ‘O’ shape for a mouth.  It was as if my brain didn’t recognise it at first.  A monkey?  A cat?  A completely unrecognisable animal, before coalescing into a recognisable creature; a black cat.  Or possibly a small monkey.  I remember returning home at seventeen and thinking the cats were enormous, having not seen them for a while.  Anthony didn’t look until it was almost too late; he thought it was a cat, although he admitted it did look weird.

We went outside, me tripped out on a drug free high, everything colourful and sparkly.  I pointed to a building, struggling to speak: ‘Look- orange- no- purple-.’  I couldn’t find the words, couldn’t say the colours.  I was looking at a small purple house set back from the road.  Next door to it was a bigger building, a guesthouse, peachy orange with shiny chrome balcony rails.  Draped in front were sparkly tubular lights, plastic tubing, it was still daylight, sunny, and the lights in the tubes were subtle like a prism or glitter.

I wanted to talk about the cat.  I kept telling Anthony off for not staying with me; I used to say this a lot when I was trying to explain something strange and he was either trying to ground me or finding it hard to follow me.  Plus he was hungry.  We went into the 7/11 next door.  I told myself:  ‘Don’t think about coffee or deodorant or mascara (things I wanted).  Don’t speak.  Wait for him to eat and go back’ (To the cat, etc)

We sat outside the 7/11 on a bench.  ‘Don’t let me get put off.  Don’t look at anything.  Pick the most boring thing to look at.’  But even just sitting on the bench, it was hard to keep my focus on my ideas, a man walked by, some interesting dogs, always distractions…

To wake up is to realise.  To unplug is to disconnect- no distractions, no phone, no unconscious actions/interactions; no actions/interactions that aren’t conscious.  Act in awareness.  Wake up.

We walked down to the river.  I had to sit down again.  Even under normal circumstances I can get overstimulated walking and talking.  It’s easier for me to be still when talking about something serious, and if the visuals around are interesting I can’t take both in and process everything.  So we sat down on a bench.  I looked down- it was made of shells, like a mosaic.  Like the paving in Otres Village, like the path to the village in Koh Rong.  Even the bench was overstimulating.  Shells and mosaics seem to be kind of a thing for me, maybe they signify arrival?.

So are there blank lives we go into, available slots that we light up on the circuit board?  I have visualised this like a ball of stiff string, with many intersections, our lights/us moving around it and lighting up different places.  Like a circuit board crossed with a ball of wool attacked by a kitten; like The Thirteenth Floor?  Or is it remembrance of other lives?

It was hard to focus on thought.  So many distractions- a man acting weird, on drugs, two weird dogs.  Keep focussed, wits about.  It felt like it was a matrix.  Experiment with thinking it’s a matrix.  Stop saying hi to everyone- waste of energy.  Don’t worry about what others think; people near/walking past. Parents, possibilities; if not real then not scary. Personal power.

We kept looking for a quiet road- but it just got busier- and then the neon lights of Pub Street with the multi coloured tumble blocks of lights. Eventually we came to a dusty road, three stools were set out at a mini table; I felt like I could sit there.  ‘I think that’s just where the staff go for their breaks,’ Anthony said.  It was the back of a hotel.

Even underfoot, so many distractions, so much to focus on, sand, uneven paving of all kinds, constantly watching footing, feeling footing, small chairs in the path to go around, being aware of obstacles, constantly aware/distracted, how much variety/stimulation can there be?

Home….  The plastic cable lights of the orange-pink and chrome guesthouse were brighter now that it was dark, I could see all the different colours, blobs on a loop…

Day after, had I changed reality?  Egg off the menu- avocado egg sandwich.  I used to order without the egg, almost every day, a wet, full sandwich chock full with avocado and salad, absolutely delicious.  Now it had a blank sticker over the egg!  I was excited, Anthony not so much, he said he tends to just notice and accept things like this and move on rather than focus so much on them as I do. Aside from whether it was exciting or not, we agreed it was a sign of being in flow like Instagram synchronicities, like all synchronicities.  Like ‘conjuring’ sheets, towels, beans on toast at the ‘wrong time,’ in Kerala.  Why so hard to believe, when people have vision boards of Porsches and trips to Australia?  Because people think the little things are just coincidences.  As if The Thirteenth Floor wasn’t enough, we also watched Vanilla Sky:  exploring consequences, the little things, decisions… ‘There are no bigger things.’

The hotel had really lovely staff but ultimately they weren’t all that effective; they never did fix our window mosquito mesh which we improvised a repair for by stuffing tissue in the hole, and they didn’t book our cab for the correct time to get to airport.  Still, it didn’t matter.  The happiness of Siem Reap, me experiencing a work-pleasure balance, or at least, both things; us both physically well and feeling close again, the out there experiences…  It was a very full six or seven days, and we didn’t even go to Angkor Watt…

Thank you very much for reading

March 31st 2019 The Matrix 20 year anniversary

Tags

Anything is possible, escape the matrix, The matrix, The Matrix 20 year anniversary, The Matrix 20 years, The Matrix 20 years later

I believe in following the white rabbit.  Do you?

I’m not necessarily braver than you.  I’m not necessarily any more mentally intact.  I actually physically went somewhere else, but that isn’t necessarily necessary for everyone.

I woke up in my life and realised I had to do something in order not to die without having lived.  Watching, and thinking about, The Matrix, and Alice in Wonderland- see blog, helped me break free and dismantle my old life.  Placebo provided the soundtrack see blog explaining their impact.  My Escape the matrix posts one two and three

It is twenty years since the Matrix film was released see my previous post.

I watched The Matrix with fresh eyes once I started ‘waking up,’ at the time I didn’t get it.  It was the same with Blade Runner.  Later I watched  Black Mirror and Battlestar Gallactica.  Westworld will do it too, but that’s too violent for me to watch.

I sometimes think about where we ‘really’ are, and the nature of reality.  I sometimes think of being a brain in a tank, or going ‘back into the tank’ to regroup, especially when I was in the capsule in Tokyo! 

I have on occasion believed I just arrived in this day or moment, and that all my memories are a feed.  I also sometimes think, Wow, if I created this back story for myself, I really did a number on myself.  It’s not glaringly dramatic, I sometimes think that much more extreme lives might have been experienced by this consciousness, but that this is the last one and so is fine tuned to have any experiences that were missed previously; the things that upset me are so complicated and subtle and detailed and just keep on hurting, and therefore keep me emeshed and prevent me waking up fully.  In Blade Runner, they implanted memories, families, a back story, into the robots ‘to make them easier to control.’  I still feel a bit goosebumpy thinking about that

In Siem Reap we watched The Thirteenth Floor and afterwards went for a walk.  Me feeling like I’d just arrived, Look at that, look at that.  A purple building, a row of neon lights.  I had to sit down on a bench, but even that was overstimulating, pictured above; shells and mosaics are kind of a thing for me.  I decided to have a working hypothesis that it’s a matrix.  That would mean: don’t worry about what people think, in cafes, walking past, don’t get distracted.  Instead focus attention, choose, consciously choose, don’t go around saying hi to everyone, don’t waste energy, don’t feel self conscious, don’t be scared of mother, believe I can do anything that any similar person can do i.e. write book.

Since then I’ve been lower, and right now I’m higher, confidence and frequency and understanding wise.

There can be many signs that awareness is increasing.  It can be seeing the beauty and feeling bliss.  It can be seeing the beautiful things even when feeling very bad.  Beyond that, it can be seeing things in real life that I’ve just seen on Netflix , or vice versa.  Or hearing similar conversations.  Or timing.  Or meeting people you need to meet.  Or the clock whenever I look at it saying 04:40 or similar: when I turned on my tablet to write this post and looked at the clock it said 07:07.

It’s about fearlessness.

Beyond all the films, books, the spiritual teachings, the New Age philosophy, it’s about waking up into your life.  And realising, really  realising, that you are a being, that you are here, in a life, in this world.  That you are conscious, that you are alive, but that you will die and that that could happen anytime.

Once you realise this, as Neo said, what you do with that information is up to you…

Thank you very much for reading

Simplicity

Tags

Illusion, Maya, Self realisation, spiritual awakening, The matrix, The search for meaning, Travel, Truth, writing

I like the place where we are staying.

It kind of looks like it’s in transition, like it used to be more hippie-ish but has been taken over and is in the process of being changed.  The toilets used to be compost ones, the instructions for them are still painted on the wall, although the toilets are all newly fitted ordinary Western style ones.  The bathroom walls are decorated with murals of wildlife.

There’s an alternative pharmacy, now closed, and a very smart newly refurbished restaurant.

I found a ‘creative space,’ a big table, some art, positive messages on the wall, now unused.  Nearby was another smaller table, I cleaned it up and made it my work space.

Each morning we go out to one of the cheaper places and get breakfast (beans on toast, fruit salad, the most enormous coconuts), maybe have a short walk, then we come back and I write (first) and do any internet stuff (second) for a couple of hours.

Then snacks, or chips and Sprite at the on site restaurant at lunch time; the only thing that stops me coughing is Sprite or water with copious amounts of ice.  Then I rest in our hut for a while- I am currently watching Billions on Netflix.  God knows why I like it, but I really do.

Then later we go out for dinner (vegetarian Khmer soup with tofu- a delicious clear soup with lots of veg).  On the way home we pass a pop up stall selling vegan energy bars and, wait for it, vegan Snickers!  (a homemade version of, but the most delicious, and guilt free thing I have tasted since March last year!)

One of the subjects my husband and I spoke about in the sea in Koh Rong (see previous post, and the red pill blue pill definition in The Matrix post previous to that one for more context/supporting info), was, is the whole ‘spiritual journey/search for meaning’ a trap, or at least, a cul-de-sac?  There’s nowhere to get to, and nothing to find.  Does even beauty fall into that category?  Is even the luminous beauty that I notice and document every day all part of the illusion?

Maybe it’s okay if, like everything else, it’s not taken too seriously.  So, like, ‘That’s nice, now get back to work.’  And maybe, well, ‘Whatever gets you through the night.’

I don’t know exactly what I believe right now, but here’s some pretty things I noticed about the place.  I seem to have a thing about shells, specifically crushed shells under foot on beaches, or in the design of corporate hotel lino, but any shells will do, as well as mosaics.  These all come up a lot in the book, I’ve noticed.

The above were all taken where we are staying.  The photo below is of our bathroom door in Hampi, just to prove some kind of point about themes.

Writing update

The end is in sight for completing a half decent draft of the Kerala section (23,000 words- that’s like two dissertations you know!).  For anyone struggling with writing, editing or doing their dissertation, this is my advice:  ‘Get yourself a cup of coffee, put your hair in a bun, and handle it.’   (I’m sorry that only long haired people may get that.)

Travel update

We leave here (Otres Village, Sihanoukville province, Cambodia) on Friday night for a twelve hour sleeper bus journey to Siem Reap, where we will stay for six days before leaving Cambodia and going to Vietnam.

Thank you very much for reading

All the best

Rachel

The Matrix film 20 year anniversary

Tags

Blue pill red pill, Take the blue pill, Take the red pill, The matrix, The Matrix 20 year anniversary, The Matrix 20 years, The Matrix 20 years later

This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill—the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill—you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember: all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.

The red pill and its opposite, the blue pill, are a popular cultural meme, a metaphor representing the choice between:

Red Pill:	Knowledge, freedom, uncertainty and the brutal truths of reality
Blue Pill:	Security, happiness, beauty, and the blissful ignorance of illusion

The above from a very interesting Wikipedia page about the origins of the blue pill red pill cultural meme with some great links at the end to take you down the rabbit hole…

The movie The Matrix was released in the United States on 31st March 1999, twenty years ago this year!   So I thought we (!?) could do something for its anniversary.  Of course by ‘do something’ I mean write a blog post about it!

This year 31st March falls on a Sunday.  Conveniently for me, this is one of my posting days.  It is also just after my arrival back into the UK and I may be adjusting to culture shock/relative extreme cold.  Therefore I am going to write my post before then and schedule it as a present to my future self.

This post was partly inspired by a conversation I had with Jonathan Erdman about films and tv shows exploring consciousness and the nature of reality.

If anyone else wants to join me, there’s plenty of time to write a post and to watch the film if you’ve never seen it, before then.  The Matrix film means many different things to many different people, and I would love to hear your thoughts and observations.  If you do decide to join in, please tag me so that I don’t miss it, thank you.

Thank you for reading

All the best

Rachel

Escape The Matrix Part 3

Tags

escape the matrix, Netflix, reality, The matrix

This weekend I have been pondering the balance between personal responsibility and ‘the matrix’.  It is for us as individuals to keep our emotions in check, manage our thoughts, and stay positive.  This helps us create our reality.  At the same time, there is stuff happening all the time around us.  This could be things that might affect us in different ways, which we need to manage and also includes opportunities being thrown our way.  So people describe this as like learning how to ride two horses, one being fate, the other being free will.  Then you’ve got people like Richard Branson, who appear to have boundless confidence and seem to see how everything works and ‘play’ ‘the matrix’ to their own advantage.

For me initially it began with realising (mentally) what I had, and what I could do, and then realising (as in making real, putting into practice) that.

I had anticipated that as I took the big steps of leaving work and selling the house I might be ‘rewarded’ with a burst of creative energy and opportunities.  So far that has meant that I have experienced a kind of further expansion of my mind.  I pictured myself looking back and reviewing this life amongst others and saying, Hey, remember that time when we sold our house and packed in our jobs and went off to India?

But as if that isn’t exciting enough, my mind has begun to come up with even more crazy ideas and possibilities, as if there’s this sense that this is it, this is your last time around, if there’s anything else at all you might want to do, best do it in this lifetime.   Watching BoJack, I thought, hey, maybe it would be fun to go to Hollywood, maybe it’s kind of like somewhere to go for creative people who don’t fit in where they come from, like art school.  To wander around, immune to the pressures of youth and thinness.  How and why would we be there?  Write a book, ‘Our Guide to Escaping the Matrix’ (just us, telling our story), find our very own Princess Carolyn (BoJack’s agent) and have our story made into a film starring George Clooney and Kate Winslet.  It’s important to write things down, to spell them out, however crazy they may sound.

Anyway, to return to my point, if ‘the matrix’ is just a reflection of us and not a thing of itself, then maybe all you have to really do is the self management bit, not concerning yourself with the matrix at all, and everything will just happen.  Is that an invitation to limitless self belief or a cop out excuse to do nothing?  (But we’d still need to actually write the book)  (and we need money/an income stream- we do need to eat after all- and you have to spend your days doing something)

Back to Richard Branson.  Maybe if you have a really strong sense of self you just know what to do.  You don’t have to learn how to read the signs or think about timing.  You just know, and whenever you decide to do it, that’s the right time.

What I’ve been watching:

Films:  The Fifth Element

The costumes are designed by Jean Paul Gaultier.  They are all amazing but it got me thinking that if you have hands and fingers and you want to learn you could sew and make costumes.  If you are interested in something, if you follow that interest, with dedication and devotion, then with practice you will get good at it.

Frank

This is such an interesting portrayal of creativity, particularly group creativity, as it follows a band making an album.  In the woods, for about a year, with loads of craziness.  It makes you realise how hard it is- by that I mean how much dedication it takes, and how it takes time and practice to become good at playing instruments and writing songs.  It takes dedication, time and practice, and of course you need to be interested and want to do it, or why would you be there in the woods for a year otherwise, but it doesn’t mean you can’t do it.  It shows you how it is done and what it takes.  I found that to be encouraging rather than off putting, although I am glad I am not involved in a group activity like a band, I prefer the solitary creative practice of writing.

Netflix shows:  The end of the f***ing world

Two young people.  Such good acting and really well done.

BoJack Horseman

What I’ve been listening to:

In a stunning example of awesome timing, my husband bought this CD in a charity shop for 25p, put it on the iPod and gave me the CD to play in the car.  I put it on for the first time as I left work for the last time.  Tracks 1 and 3 did give me goosebumps.

The Gift of Freedom

Tags

escape the matrix, family, Guilt, Mom guilt, The matrix

This Valentine’s my husband gave me something far more useful than flowers.

I could wallow forever in the dirty water where the fish won’t go.  I could never get up again.  I could say to myself, how can I live.  I could rake over and over the past, looking for a possible way things could have been made different.  I could cry forever and it wouldn’t change a thing.

I did everything I was able to do at the time.  I remember us both going to the dentist in New Zealand and me buying us electric toothbrushes to use out there as we’d left ours in the UK.  He was fifteen.  Everything was okay then, teeth wise.  But not long after, I stopped being able to make him do anything he didn’t want to do.

Since he’s been an adult, I have watched his teeth deteriorate, and no amount of encouragement from anyone in the family was able to persuade him to go to the dentist.  Realising nothing I said made any difference, for the last few years I have stopped saying anything in case it actually makes him even less likely to go, and also because I don’t want to spoil the times we have together.  But every now and again I’d think, am I being remiss, am I copping out, am I wasting opportunities…  all the time they are getting worse and worse, and I am not saying anything.

But of course he has mirrors, and eyes.  And as I write this I’m thinking, Oh my God, did we do this?  Did we make him dig his heels in more by trying to encourage him to visit the dentist?  But would a person really do that to themselves, not brush their teeth, not go to the dentist, just to be oppositional to their family?

I don’t talk about any of this to anyone but the night before Valentine’s Day my son messaged my husband and said he was finally ready to go through with the required treatment.  This will involve sedation, anaesthetic, and because things are so very far gone, implants.  So I ended up talking (and crying) about it until way past my bedtime and the conclusion I arrived at was that there is absolutely nothing whatsoever I can do.  A person needs to psych themselves up to face dentistry, blood tests or open heart surgery themselves, no one else can do it for them.  They need to be brave and they need to be a grown up.  My son is 28 years old and anxiety or no anxiety, the only thing I can do is think of him as an adult who is capable of facing this.

It is time for it to cease being my problem.

The next morning I felt a little better, like the day after an argument has blown over, still a little fragile, but recovering.  I still have CDs to go through so I put on The Jesus and Mary Chain album Stoned and Dethroned.  Track one is above.  It felt like the first day of the rest of my life.

Today, in an ironic twist I went to the dentist, which meant I got to sleep in and go into work late.  I came out into the warm sunshine and felt… happy.  I bought a birthday card and a box of vegan chocolates for my step grandma, and new spare cat name tags as they keep losing theirs.  Getting these things off my list and not having them to do on Saturday when we are already busy gave me a sense of elation out of all proportion.

Walking back through the town, thinking, yes, the post office, the chocolate shop, the pet shop, the cute alleyway, yes, they are all nice, just as dressing nicely for work is nice, but, it isn’t everything.  It should have been easier to walk away from our last place which was not pretty and was boring, but it’s been being in this lovely place that has inspired and propelled us to give up everything.  Is it because we needed to be happy in order to be able to dream, whereas before we were just surviving?

We have both been unwell for what seems like ages, colds etc, plus last-minute wobbles re vaccinations/not, water purification options, malaria, plus a long to do list, a house to clear and work to finish.

But as I said to my husband, I’d feel really good right now if I wasn’t feeling ill.  I had my bloods done and my doctor put my thyroxine up, which feels like it did when I first went on it, like the clouds clearing after a storm, everything shiny, wide awake, excited.

I said re our to do list, it seems as though simplifying our life is actually really complicated.  That’s because the matrix doesn’t want you to do it, my husband said.  The matrix wants everyone hooked into the complexity of everything, that is why it makes unhooking yourself feel so difficult.

See you on the other side.

I have set up an instagram account for when we are travelling followingthebrownrabbit

 

Thank you for reading.

 

Escape The Matrix Part 2

Tags

escape the matrix, The matrix

This could be viewed as a metaphor; on the other side of fear, or the reward for facing fear, is enlightenment.

Black Mirror Series 4 Episode 3 scared me for a couple of days, but I still went back and watched Episode 4.  I am so glad I did.

Episode 4 just blew my mind, again.  How many times can a mind be blown and still go on functioning?  I suppose I will find out…

My husband said, they don’t have any friends, it’s all about being in relationships.  That is always something I’ve been against, the idea of being lost in a relationship; it’s also a big part of my conditioning from my mother to be independent and not to set great store by romantic relationships and men in general.

But it turned out that only the two of them were real, and everyone else was just programming.

For me to more fully commit to the idea of it being total, total trust, just us and purely us, would smash some sizeable holes in the matrix.  You have to Believe-Act-Believe to keep on rising up through the levels of awareness.  The feeling:  no rush, infinite- we set it up to feel rushy and as if time is short because really time is infinite, that’s the trick!  None of it is real.  EVERYTHING we’ve been told is a lie:  No wonder he’s never in a hurry…  Mission:  To help each other with things the other finds hard and we find easy to smooth the way.  Deal with stuff calmly, as it arises.

The last time I felt like this, that night in a hotel room in London, I got scared (just us)  (just me, even scarier!).  Why would you be scared, you just would Be, that would be your reality.  We’d have to make up stuff to stop being bored.  No point other than that.

Why now?  It would have been so hard to keep it up all those years- all through twenties, thirties, forties, without succumbing, and now- it’s better.  We are middle aged.  We are invisible, no need to be cool, no makeup, who cares, I will go out in any old thing, immune, low profile, not distracted by sex, except with husband.  So why now, why so late?  Everything before was training.

What about when you get old, what about savings, what about this what about that.  What about your family what about your commitments.  Well what if, like in Black Mirror, none of it is true, none of it is real.  What if, in the immortal words of The Matrix, everything you’ve ever been told is a lie?

This spacey awareness is already dissipating, but no matter.  It is action that is mainly needed anyway, rather than thoughts.  I feel this was just to show me/us that we’d ‘levelled up’; that we’d passed the recent tests of fear, stress, vomiting bug and been rewarded with a new level of awareness.  All we have to do is keep on smashing it down with a sledgehammer, keep on tearing it up by the roots.  (I don’t know what this metaphor of mine looks like, but that’s the action required.)  I’d already decided to burn all my certificates.  I knew that it went against everything, that no one would think it was a good idea, and yet I knew it was needed.  Tonight’s feeling validated that.  No half measures.  It’s no good watching stuff like The Matrix and Black Mirror and going, oh that’s interesting, that sounds true, and then not acting like it/on it.  It gets more believable, becomes more true, the more you act on it.  Like how a cat gets softer the more you stroke it.  You have to take practical steps.

What’s next:

Tear Down the Matrix:

1. Burn degree certificate, CPD folders, A level Certificate, registration card, membership card
2. Share blog with everyone*, don’t care, no shame
3. Be sure, be steadfast
4. Use blog to document, to remind me, and to have fun!

*with the exception of family members

But please don’t think I’m some kind of cool beacon of awareness.  Only a couple of days ago I was completely undone by a long, cranky work meeting that lasted from 09.30- 14.15.  Despite my best intentions, I got totally involved in it:  I had many urges to contribute, I felt disappointed when I wasn’t able to (there was no way of speaking without interrupting and then the Chair moved the agenda on).  I felt hurt and annoyed when someone disagreed with me and said something that I knew wasn’t true.  I had the allotted fifteen minute break for lunch taken up by my manager asking me to find and print health and safety policies.  No stretching of legs, no sunshine, not even for five minutes, not even for two minutes.

I’ve noticed that as my leaving date has got closer, when people ask me what I’m doing I’ve begun to answer more openly and in less socially acceptable ways.

I’ve started saying things like, we’re selling our three bed house and buying a narrow boat to reduce overheads so we don’t have to work so much.  I’ve done the career thing but now I can leave it.  I don’t care about what to say if people ask me what I do.  I’m going to burn my degree certificate and registration card.  I’m going to do cleaning.  It’s (travelling around SE Asia) the only solution I could think of that would enable me to stop doing this.  I should never have done this job, it’s been too much for me.  It’s either leave, or go mad, or kill myself.

Whereas, I’m going travelling, yes, isn’t it exciting, would probably have sufficed.

And I am sure it is definitely not socially acceptable to say, I am Escaping The Matrix.  No really, this whole thing is about me pursuing in earnest the idea of Escaping The Matrix.  You know, Freeing My Mind.  I’m going to write a blog about it, in fact I already do, you can read it if you want.

I am very excited about leaving work and can barely keep up the ‘I’m a professional’ act.  All that energy I use at work will be mine, all this preparation…  like a coiled spring, I can already feel it, my personal creative energy source.

Other people are talking about things with me, one with a four year plan to extricate  herself, others realising our workplace is untenable and looking for different jobs.  People talking to me is nice.  Me talking to them is nice.  Realising no one is themselves at work, not really.  This idea of professionalism, a made up concept; we dress and act at least somewhat not like our real selves, and it stops us connecting at a deeper level.  (You can see why that and the constant feed of sensational, judgemental and scary news stories to witter about around the water cooler helps The Man…)

I just can’t do it anymore.  All I want from any future work is the opportunity to be myself.  I mean, I’m friendly, honest, kind and I don’t swear hardly at all, so surely it should be  pretty easy for me to do something  like house cleaning or home help and just be me?

I haven’t been me for so long- twenty years or more- that it’s going to take a bit of practice.  I automatically go along with people.  My step-grandma was a teacher here, shall we walk , shall we go through here, and me all yes, yes, all cheery.  ‘You don’t have to say yes you know’, she said, but I thought about it and I did want to do it, I wanted a walk and anyway, she’s having the cats, it’s no big deal.  But the ability to notice when I am doing something I don’t want to do and then deciding do I want to do it for some meta reason or not, and am I being myself.  Do I start conversations about my own topics?  When I disagree with what is being said do I say anything aloud?  I have had twenty years of brainwashing, of not feeling like I was good enough, of feeling that I had to pretend, hide, and over-compensate:  Twenty years of pretending, hiding and over-compensating.  From wearing stretchy bandages over my  tattoos at my very first job (we had a short sleeved uniform), to not knowing who I am anymore.

I mentioned to someone at work about having a blog and she said, ‘Let me know the details and I’ll follow you’.

‘It’s a personal journey type thing, about how I managed to do this,’ I said.  She said, ‘I’ve got to keep going a bit longer, I’m still too conditioned.’ (She’d mentioned ‘conditioning’ to me before, the only person at work I have ever heard say that word).

‘Watch The Matrix, that will help,’ I said.

‘I did, I didn’t understand it.’

‘Nor did I when I first watched it, but then I watched it again and it blew my mind.’  (not for the first or the last time as I think I’ve already established).

So in a way, if this blog is for anyone, it’s for her.  If it’s for anyone, it’s for people on the cusp of waking up.  I’m not meant to try to wake people up, at least, I’m not meant to go around trying to wake up individuals in person.  But just putting something out there, for people to find if they are looking, I feel like that’s okay.

And in a lovely demonstration of universal reciprocity, I had this email from my friend David Walker.  It feels so good to have another person understand and validate our choices:

What you’re both about to do, I believe, in our consumer-stuff-mad western world, is one of the most difficult things that anyone can undertake.

Our whole society is now designed to keep people working and spending all their money on mortgages, loans, credit cards, utilities and lots and lots of stuff.  It’s the actual foundation of our entire economic system and we are literally being brainwashed to believe that there is no other reality 

It is really a fucking matrix. And it’s really difficult to escape from it.

You need a lot of strength to just be able to firstly make that mental leap, followed by the actual physical actions required to make it a reality.

 

Thank you for reading.

Narrowboat shopping and to do list

Tags

escape the matrix, Living on a boat, Minimalist living, Narrowboat, The matrix

Warning: another list post

Clothing from proper outdoors shop: one super warm, waterproof and windproof coat.  Two very warm funnel neck fleece type tops, two pairs of lined trousers, two long sleeved tops, two sets of base layers, all quick drying.  Extra warm socks, hat and scarf.  Bootie style thick lined slippers with proper soles.  Guest slippers.  A very warm dressing gown.

Buy/have made proper seating that converts to a guest bed.  Buy large Moroccan style floor cushions.  Buy electric heater(s) from chandlery (for when there’s not time to light the stove).  Buy an electric blanket.  Buy a MyFi internet box from BT.  In order to save space, instead of having dinner plates, side plates (which are pretty pointless anyway) and bowls, buy dinner plate sized bowls, shallow enough for dinner and sandwiches, deep enough for cereal.  (I am hoping such things exist outside of my imagination, if you have seen them do let me know!)  Buy proper working gloves.

Get bilge pump fitted.  Buy a new centre rope.  Buy and fit a horn.  Buy and fit cratch cover to keep wind off the doors (thank you to writer,  blogger and narrowboat dweller Ian Hutson for this).  Paint walking board with paint and sand to make a non slip surface.  Add a rope for safety when walking around the outside of the boat, if possible.  (Did I mention I am Little Ms Health and Safety?)  In the/a summer, get boat taken out of the water and blacked, and also paint outside if needed, if not just give it a good wash.  Attach tyres around the outside as extra bumper protection.  Upgrade the solar panels.

To summarise, I have two lists on the go:  a going travelling list and a living on a narrowboat list.  The narrowboat is for when we come back, although we may spend a few weeks on it before we go, just to make it real.  I also have notes for a new about page and plans to upgrade to a paid plan (is this a good thing to do fellow bloggers?  If so, personal or freelancer business package?) once I leave my job and can be both more dedicated and more open; there won’t be thirty intense hours of my week that I can’t write about, and I won’t have to worry about protecting my professional reputation.

Green Mist Theory 08:08

Tags

dreams, escape the matrix, reality, The matrix

All 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 know the 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!)