Day 692: Mixed Cursings

Times of mental suffering are times of long-term blessing, in the end. That’s not to say that they’re a thing to be aspired to, or to spend too much of life on, only that their discomfort is not in itself a sign of wrongness.

I know I’m rephrasing what the Buddhists say and countless spiritual teachers. My aim is not to be original, but to get this out somehow and to express something, make sense of it with words. And I’m also aware that I won’t be winning any trophies for accepting where I’m at right now. I have not scored my personal best at that these last few weeks.

If time were other shapes

I am not myself and not my best right now. What I’m finding hard to stomach, in a very physical way, is that this is still me. This is what you get. 

I am not photoshop perfect, not even close. I’m not always nice or wise or reasoned. I’m not always a person I want to be around, but here it is, this doughy mix of undercookedness that I am in this moment. It’s what makes the tasty cake. 

And if we let linear time burn off like steam, it could be said that this is a necessary part of being, with time wrapped around it, or weaving in and out.

Go and see Arrival for a beautiful examination of linear time (and language, communication, love). That’s an aside, but take it to heart, treat yourself, go.

I am blessed-afflicted with a physical illness, a virus that has wiped the floor with me and keeps dunking me back, a dirty rag on the end of a stick, into the grey, filthy bucket for another rinse. I’m not able to eat properly – and that in itself is an education. 

I’m robbed of unhealthy comfort – I physically can’t swallow this emotion back down with food, because my body will reject it if I do. I must just feel it in all its acidity and give thanks for the awareness this is giving me. How often do I swallow down what’s going on inside me with a coffee, a cake, a something to draw the presence away from unpleasantness. Thank you… it took this.

Maybe I’ve taken sugar and spice to heart too deeply. It is not all I am. My mind, that sneaky labyrinth-weaver, tells me that nobody in all of time would ever have called me nice, but I know from out-of-body distance that this cannot be true, it’s just my thoughts, sirens of distraction, leading me off to crash upon the rocks instead of follow the course I set.

It is all part of this great symphony. Without discordance, harmonies can slip into saccharine, bland soundtracks. Wake me up with contrast, so I taste the notes that intertwine at pleasing intervals in all their sweetness, every one a gift.

Thank you Lilley, Ben, David, Rob. Thank you, Ruth, for your patience, care and generosity. It can’t be easy having this half-cooked creature in your home right now, and I am very, very grateful that you do.

Day 691: Surrounded

For a long time, I’ve been trying to build a better relationship with my ‘crew’. There are a number of other ways to put this. I want to be in constant, respectful, clear relationship with those voices of higher wisdom that are around and inside me.

How you see this phenomenon depends largely on how you paint your world. I have no fixed beliefs about this, but I do have a number of concepts that I like and often return to. There’s the inner mentor – the older you who knows what steps you can take now to become that same future self that’s giving you advice. Thanks to Coaches Training Institute and Tara Mohr for that way of seeing things. CTI also has a whole raft of others – your captain, who is the leader in you, the observer, and the child, among others.

I also love the idea that the ether that I cannot perceive (though I have friends who can) is peopled with beings, spirits, souls, whose sole purpose in this fraction of existence is to be my guides, lovers, and champions. They do their work through me, or guide my hands and mind to do mine. They show me what that work is. They give me that glowing, flowing buzz that lets me know that ‘this is it’ when I do. I don’t care about the truth of such a concept, only about its comfort and its joy.

Another name is ‘higher self’ or ‘inner knowing’ and of course yet one more is God, a term that defies fixed definition, even just within myself, let alone when we each try to compare our diverse concepts of it/us/him/her/them…

Because I hear it, this guidance, in words quite often, with the part of me that hears without my ears. There’s a marked difference between these words and those of my internal dialogue, which is often (though not always) pissy and unhelpful.

There’s a different tone to the answers than the voice that asks the questions, which is so fallibly, humanly mine. The answers come from a simpler place, like when you tune a radio and finally, the satisfying crispness of a voice without white noise to muffle it tells you that you’ve finally tuned in.

Today, I realised that I have this access, I have this channel, these voices have been speaking all along, waiting for me to hear. And I do hear. The difference is in the action that I take (or don’t take).

This morning, I had a clear, helpful download of information about a course I’m leading soon – how to structure it to do the almost impossible task of concentrating two and a half days’ worth of course into five hours. I even heard what to say and when to say it. That didn’t feel like thinking, just receiving, like that privileged place of awe that happens when a poem comes, already mostly formed, or when an idea drops in from… somewhere… or a song.

And maybe, here’s another take, more scientific and less magical, that it’s just a creative process, where rumination lives up to its roots. I have an idea in my mind our mouth and then I swallow it for processing. It makes its way round all my thinking stomachs, occasionally coming back to consciousness for a further chew, before (and this is where the metaphor falls down a little) being processed into a steaming turd full of everything that’s needed for the execution of said idea. If only cows spat up PhD theses, just to prove my point.

Whatever. The beginning of the metaphor hit the spot, for my process, at least. And the result is a clean download of formed words, ideas, instructions, that comes from all that masticating below the line of conscious processing.

Thank you. I’m very grateful for the tip-off, wherever it came from. Thank you, guides and crew and mind and body. Thank you for letting me in on this. You rock.

Day 690: Autumn

There is no more beautiful time to be driving around the country than this. On my trip from Somerset to London yesterday, I made not one but repeated, involuntary moans of beauty appreciation pleasure as I drove along. The words are overused because they're true. Honey yellows and burnished, bronzy golds. Heartfelt browns and sudden, surprising reds. One tree, just minding its own business, busy being golden yellow with a splash of red like a beating heart expanding from its chest. 

Colours sitting alongside each other like some kind of beauty prank. I almost feel their glee. It's the proms. It's carnival time. I bow my head and dance.

Welcoming Brunhilde Concepción Cheese

And my car. This is the first time I can speak those words. I have a car. Brunhilde Concepción, a little haven on wheels. She's a shiny silver Toyota Yaris, compact, with thighs of steel and patience like you couldn't believe. When I crunch her gears or stall her, she just breathes through it and takes me safely onwards. I like her very much. 

We've been a long way already, for my first full week or so of driving. From London to Totnes, then Dartmoor, Bristol, Bath, Stroud, Frome, Glastonbury, Wells and back to London, with a few backs and forths and labyrinthine weavings in the mix. That's big stuff, for me, having passed my test in 1992 and hardly driven since. I've reversed backwards, badly, up a hill with no more than a body's width on either side. I had to get the gentleman in the other car to help - I kept pooching into the hedgerow wall and stalling. That was only day two, though, so I forgive myself. Parking has got easier, and stalling rarer. We know each other better, Brunhilde and I, and we're finding our stride. I am very grateful.

And liberated. I had no idea how freeing it is to have a car. I've never owned one, so any driving (which I've always kind of loved) has been with permission, and limited in scope. Now I have my car. I can get in it and go somewhere, change my mind without changing a ticket, take turnings for the sake of it and visit people just like that. I'm stunned. A whole world has opened up. I think I'll drive to Hungary soon. Why not?

I am in the arms of humility at the moment, in a 'bow down now' way. I've been out of sorts within myself, unable to ground, unable to take the moment by moment appreciation of the wonders in my world. I am appreciating, but from a long arm's length of removal. And yet I see the incredible people in my life, their gentleness and giving, the fact that even though the loneliness sets in and stories tell me I am not loved, not held, not wanted, the forest floor of this rich autumn is scattered with gifts... homes that open themselves to me with the hearts of those who live there, generous acts of love from so many different sources and in so may forms.

I see that, as always, it's not a problem with what is, but with how it is perceived... the filter's been set to dark, but the light has kept on shining. Thank you, so many people, to many, here, to name. From friends to dogs and cats, to random strangers inviting me into their homes.

I have to tell you about Margot... a woman I did not know who found me, god knows how, and pursued me on the phone and through the web to ask me to come and live in her attic, just for a while. She had a strong feeling, she said, that this would be just right, so I must come and eat a chicken with her, see the room and sleep in it. This at a time when my every cell was trembling for want of a base, a safe space, a haven. 

I arrived with stress tugging at my neck and shoulders, my mind all tangled and my jaw tight like a deadblolt lock. I left suffused with love, well rested, dog-spoilt (a 5-month old chestnut collie with doleful eyes), familied to the nines and welcomed, nourished in every way. I may just take her up on her offer of short term stay while I find my actual home. I thank you, Margot, and your inexplicable insistence that this particular lost stranger belongs, for now at least, at the top of your house, looking out at the sky.