"If Women Over Sixty...

... Said what they really thought, there would be an outpouring of wisdom" 

So a nice lady called Marianne, Tweeted today and I laughed! Lord! How I laughed! Marianne says sweet things, and I do too sometimes, because they do no harm. As to whether they do any good, why, that's another matter entirely. We hope so, Marianne and I. 

Ekhart Tolle says that if humanity was a person sent for a psychiatric analysis she would be declared insane, and I thought about this for a bit, and I think it's true. Stupid, brutish, greedy, fearful, deluded, miserable, manipulative ( and manipulated) unconscious and ... . 

What am I thinking, that could make me so disgruntled? ( What a lovely word! Will I ever be "gruntled"? What are these "grunts" I am dissing?) 

I am thinking of the people who use Twitter to threaten and abuse. I am thinking of the 'Go Home' advertisements being trialled in areas of London, and then I have to stop thinking, because so many other and worse thoughts lie just beyond reach where I want them to stay. 

How does the wise-woman in me, now that I've reached the age of  wisdom, deal with the insanity of my kind? (Presumably, as I have been over-sixty for nearly three years now, I already am... Dealing with it, I mean. )

"Ninety seconds" is the answer. I will deal with it for ninety seconds. See, this is how it works. Your brain senses something that is going to upset you, and releases the bio-chemicals that are going to make you feel mad, and they will flood through you AND DISSIPATE in ninety seconds. How do I know this? Because I have just finished reading, 'My Stroke Of Insight' by Jill Bolte Taylor: she knows because she's a neuroscientist who did the work, and I know because I'm a wise-woman-in-training who did the reading. 

So for a minute and a half you just have to let the body do its  thing, and then the cave-person can go and lie down again and you can choose. I have been mad for a minute and a half, because that's how this body of mine works, and now do I want to go on being mad? That's the choice, and that's where being sixty- plus comes in handy. I have been mad many, many times before and I know it serves little purpose other than  to give me migraines. 

Being mad at a fool who tweets obscene things isn't going to stop him. Expecting the current administration to think with its heart isn't going to happen. I know this, you know this. So I'm just going to let the cortisol or whatever it is (I'm guessing) wend it's way out of my bloodstream and I'm going to accept my futility, my culpability, Then I'm going to do what I CAN do. 

I can write to my MP, calmly, quietly, and say that when your government attempts to further increase fear and insecurity in a woman whose home may not be safe, like yours, you do not do it in my name. When you arrest a man on suspicion of illegal activity because of the colour of his skin, you do not do it in my name. ( I guess, cynically and accurately, the idea of 'trialling' this behaviour is to find out whether ordinary people like me, are willing to stomach fascism, or whether we'll speak out against it.) 

I can resolve to be sweet on Twitter, and always wait ninety-one seconds before I decide not to respond to a madman. 

 Wisdom indeed. Will it get better as I get older? Not so much, I hope, I want always  to be open to the possibility of doing foolish things... 

Rambling On

I had to have two goes at it:this is because I am not prone to giving up. This stubborn adherence to the unlikely, the improbable and the hard to swallow is my one weakness. (Ho ho ho) 

The 'it' to which I refer in my opening shot, is a book: " The New Earth: Create a Better Life" by spiritual teacher and winner of my Peter Pan look-alike award, Ekhart Tolle.

The first time round, I found myself, after just a few paragraphs, in 'hard to swallow' mode. I am not THAT sceptical, in fact just the opposite:  it's scarily easy to lead me on and catch me out investing trust in the most outlandish propositions. I'll believe anything, and usually do. 

I once gave myself a migraine ranting in full-on indignation at the television set over an EU regulation specifying the length and breadth of carrots, the piece coming complete with the presenter holding the mould into which carrot seeds were to be sowed, in order to ensure compliance. It was a hoax. it was All Fools Day,  and I came top. 

I'm not stupid, however, so I have to believe that intelligence and gullibility are not mutually incompatible. I like being a trusting softie, it keeps me smiling, and out of as much trouble as it gets me into. 

Yes, I'm rambling. Let me take a sip of my tea and... 

In the back of my mind sits 'Number 45' in my '99 Things' book. 'Write A Statement of Faith'.

I have been a Christian since the date of my baptism which was in November 1950, and as I was only six weeks old at the time, I like to think some kind of pre-bap agreement had me covered even earlier. 

I believed nothing at six weeks, of course, and in the course of the following fifty years or so, I came to believe A LOT. Sometimes,  I even acted on my beliefs, with a startling caveat. I never really swallowed hell. Or punishment of any kind. I nodded in the direction of it, and never wasted my breath opposing it, I just knew at a deeper  level that a God who spends your whole life telling you he loves you, then throws you into a fiery pit because he caught you out doing something you didn't ought to have done, which he allowed you to do, didn't add up. 

I don't know that the insights into the incomprehensible world of the Spirt that I gained from Ekhart are 'right' or 'wrong', I don't even know if 'right or wrong' works with the unknowable.  I guess you just have to go with the intangible, but ever-present inner witness, that whispers a silent, 'Yes!' and warms your heart. You may not be comfortable with that concept, but you know it's there. Recognising its Presence is  the beginning of awareness of your spiritual evolution that has nothing to do with hell, and everything to do with truly knowing who you are, and what your purpose is. 

Ekhart writes that your purpose is to bring consciousness into the world. To walk through your day fully aware, totally present, not harking back to the past, or concerning yourself with the future. There's more, lots more, but that, I think, is enough.

Is he onto something really big? I don't know. How could I? I do know that a lot of what I believed for more than fifty years served no useful purpose whatsoever. So my Statement of Faith, when I get around to writing it, isn't going to be very long. 

Correction!

I was a little jaded when I write the last post but one, and feel duty bound to give way to the right brain to redress the balance. I allude to this dated neuroscience metaphor, because all that remains true of it, is that my left brain really doesn't know what my right brain is doing...

It doesn't matter. First Tenet of Quodlibettan Spirituality, 'You can believe what you like and get away with it.'  I don't offer this profundity with any great conviction, but as a working hypothesis. I turned away two door-to-door peddlers of enlightenment this morning, and am more convinced than  I was yesterday, that I'm on to something.

I write only for amusement, mine if I'm lucky, yours if you are, but there are many good blogs out there that offer something far more interesting. I have used Fr Michael Hudson's 'OrdinaryMindfulness' before, as he pulls me ever closer to the Centre, and for this purpose I quote him today.


 God is sung best in a psalm without words


The quote below is from Eckart Tolle (with a mashup from one of the Desert Fathers, John the Solitary). This is what we used for our lectio this morning in the Monday group.

Tolle can sometimes seem bone dry--but 'bone dry' can also be the same thing as 'clear and to the point.'

One of the great ironies of mindful practices is that they can appear to be self-focused and self-absorbed. Yet the sweetest fruit of mindful practice is freedom from this very thing--the sticky gravity of our small selves.

Through mindfulness we see the many habits and patterns that keep us stuck. Over time, recognizing and recognizing and recognizing these habits and patterns, it becomes easier and easier and easier to let them go.

Tolle is very helpful describing how this works.
---

Since ancient times, spiritual masters of all traditions have pointed to the Now as the key to the spiritual dimension. Despite this, it seems to have remained a secret.

With the timeless dimension comes a different kind of knowing, one that does not “kill” the spirit that lives within every creature and every thing. A knowing that does not destroy the sacredness and mystery of life but contains a deep love and reverence for all that is. A knowing of which the mind knows nothing.

If you find it hard to enter the Now directly, start by observing the habitual tendency of your mind to want to escape from the Now. You will observe that the future is usually imagined as either better or worse than the present. If the imagined future is better, it gives you hope or pleasurable anticipation. If it is worse, it creates anxiety. Both are illusory. Through self-observation, more presence comes into your life automatically. The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.

Be present as the watcher of your mind — of your thoughts and emotions as well as your reactions in various situations. Be at least as interested in your reactions as in the situation or person that causes you to react. Notice also how often your attention is in the past or future. Don’t judge or analyze what you observe. Watch the thought, feel the emotion, observe the reaction. Don’t make a personal problem out of them. You will then feel something more powerful than any of those things that you observe: the still, observing presence itself behind the content of your mind, the silent watcher.
---



There is a silence of the tongue,
and a silence of the body;
a silence of soul
and a silence of mind.
There is silence of spirit, too—
and, of course,
the vast silence of God.

Within this silence
we sing God best
in psalms without words.

--John the Solitary
Posted by Michael Hudson at 6:23 AM
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