Choosing a Wig

First of all, the tests for mylenoma came back negative. I can't remember ever feeling quite so relieved. So what IS causing my back pain is still an unknown, possibly to be resolved by an MRI scan next Friday week.

 

It's interesting to look back on how I dealt with this little bit of a crisis, bearing in mind that I have an unbudgeable faith, and three years of really good Buddhist teaching under my belt.

 

"Oh my God! I'm going to die!" This was my, not totally together, response to my husband's casual request to 'phone the doctor about my test results. The routine is, you get tested, and you call back in a week for the results. That, I discovered, is for when the results require no further action.

 

"There's a very slight elevation of protein in your blood ... Further tests ... Mylenoma ... Yes it IS treatable ... Prognosis - good ..." By the time I was having this conversation with my doctor, I was supremely calm. I posed all the right questions, I said thank you. I put the 'phone down and remained calm and quite reassured. "Oh well." I told myself, cancer looks unlikely, doctor just being cautious." I started to make light of it.

 

"Now that I'm dying," I would say, lifting the back of my hand to my forehead in the manner of a nymph on a Greek urn, " I think another cup of tea wouldn't go amiss." For days. Ray was perfect. He'd roll his eyes and make the tea.

 

Next off, comes the appointment from the hospital for four days hence. On Christmas Eve. Straight back to,"Oh my God, I'm dying! NOBODY has an appointment on Christmas Eve!" The letter advises bring a close friend or relative with you. I went with my brother when he got his diagnosis. I know what THIS means. The 'now that I'm dying' act ceased immediately.

 

I have to know. So, after vowing not to, I go onto the Internet and check my disease out. Don't do it, no, really, don't. I read the survival stats. (So generalised to be meaningless, as they will always be.) I watched the video on 'Caring for a patient with ... ' Not a good idea. I then set about checking out wigs. And reminding myself that I haven't yet picked the readings and music for my Requiem Mass.

 

My friend Catherine, a breast cancer survivor, says this, the time between suspicion and diagnosis, is the worst time of all. So, having abandoned the Internet, made the best of it. I asked friends to pray with me, and for me. This was great, I was so surrounded by love and concern: it warmed and comforted me, it helped me to bear it. I don't ask my Creator for special favours, though, this is my prayer:

 

"What comes to me, comes, it is neither reward nor punishment, it just is. This is what faith is for. Walk with me. "

 

I chose not to tell my daughters until there was definite news. And if there was bad news, not to tell them until after Christmas. My youngest spotted me leaving the hospital: a coincidence so unlikely, it's staggering, but there you are, random things randomly happen. So I didn't entirely get away with this piece of subterfuge!

 

I held, "Walk with me." close, and this became the open invitation to be awake and aware of both the wonder and the cruelty that is everyone's life. I walked my garden, dwelling on every seed head, every mossy stone, every sign of emergent life ... I visited friends at the project for recovering addicts and listened with heightened intensity, I played with my grandchildren as if I was as young as they are. Sometimes, however, I remembered, and panic arose. I let it be, I let it pass.

 

The hospital visit couldn't have gone better. Seen before my appointment, bloods done, specialist gave the good news, booked an MRI to find out what's causing the pain... And I took up the threads of my life again.

 

I am inclined to be a little ashamed about making a big deal about something I didn't actually have wrong with me. It was a bit like a test for when I REALLY have to make friends with illness and death. If I had to rate myself, I'd give me a B- .

 

I might skip the 'Greek urn' phase next time, but I'm sticking with the wig I chose.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Enlightenment At Last!

When I preach the gospel to the crucified people I meet on the streets, I hold hands and say little beyond, "Know who you really are. Infinitely loved, infinitely precious." Nothing else matters, truth be told.

I used to believe that to be "Saved" was to hand yourself over into the care of a deity, who would then make sure everything worked out for you, especially after you died. I am so glad that I never, as far as I know, convinced anyone. It simple didn't occur to me to realise that a cosmos in which the vast majority of conscious beings ( a much more satisfactory term than 'human' beings) were condemned to hell fire, made absolutely no sense at all. In fact, at no time, ever, did I actually believe this, much less pass it on. The mystery I still call God, simply wouldn't do such a thing, and I know this, or I know nothing.

I used to joke about that: knowing nothing, I mean, though I didn't really believe it. I was proud of my achievements: overcoming a set of fairly minor obstacles to become a reasonably successful professional became my identity. My story.

One day, I was telling my story, when I woke up. It was that sudden. Somehow, possibly out of sheer boredom, that who I really am flooded into Being, and I stopped.

I don't tell the old stories any more. I am just here, experiencing a raw, splendid and joyous existence,, so vivid, so different from the pedestrian me tied to the past, trying to make a future ... The Kingdom of Heaven is how one teacher put it, is here, now and within.

Well, yes, I'm still grumpy, selfish and unreasonable, still capable of monumental foolishness. This too, is who I really am. Infinitely loved, infinitely precious. Not the stories I tell about myself. Just me.

This post was prompted by Dr David Parrish's book: "Enlightenment Made East: Discovering The Obvious" It's free with Kindle. Which makes it amazing value

You can't become what you already are. That's about it, really. You either get it, and stop telling a story, and start living a life, or you don't  Simples.

Posted with Blogsy

Are You A Psychopath?

Of course you're not! You are as empathetic as the next person, I'm certain of it. And yet ... And yet ...

Taking the focus off you for the moment, let's look at how I react to stories of people I can't, or won't understand. There's this woman at this group I belong to who drives me round the bend. She is loud, domineering, self-publicising and smug. I possess all of these amiable qualities to a degree, so I guess what really got under my skin was that she out-competed me at my favourite game - being nice to people and geeting praised for it. Oh dear me, yes, I know myself and I'm not always pretty. Anyway, the point is, I laughingly spoke of the horrible Emma to friends with the rider, "I could take an axe to her, I really could."

 

After about the third time of postulating murder, I stopped to take a good look at the feelings I was experiencing. I was upset and  angry. Underneath this pleasant exterior, something ancient and reptilian was asserting itself.

Fortunately, I've been here before with other Eights on the Enneagram, and I know when to stop. The cure is to befriend. To listen, to reassure and to empathise. It takes a few short weeks for this to take effect, and now I bear with Emma's passion, enthusiasm and wholeheartedness (note the rethink here ... ) with equinimity. It was a pratice well-worth making perfect.

So I was alert to a letter written to the New Scientist by Darach Conneely, "Voting For Empathy Or For Negativity" that quoted some research by Harris and Fitch (Princeton) "Dehumanising the lowest of the low".

You think you know how it works: Populist politiicians incite in perfectly ordinary and respectable people the fear of 'the other'. Turn a young man or woman who has fallen on hard times, and is in need of a helping hand, into a 'benefit cheat' and the helping hand is snatched back pronto. Your reptilian brain is switched on and empathy flies out of the window - the fact-finding rational being that you can be, has been short-circuited, and consequently, some rather unpleasant people now hold power. (Thinks: Do you really want this person grasping the money bag when it's YOU that's down on your luck? Self-interest can be a very long game.)

Quote from Conneely's letter:

"Brain scans appear to show very clear differences between psychopaths and people who feel empathy. But when normal people were led to believe that they were observing a person suffering and that this person was a cheat or not part of "our tribe" their scans looked the same as those of psychopaths, with no sign of any empathy. ..."

 

Managing your empathy is your affair, and I'm confident you do well at it. My plea would be, don't let someone after your vote manage it for you.

Posted with Blogsy

Pure Gift

I am overcome, right now, this minute, with an urge to write. I wouldn't get too concerned if I were you. Even if concern were your metier, by the time you read this, the Muse will have moved off to torment some other poor soul.

I am reading a book by ( Pause to write in author's name later. Don't forget) called, (Surely not. I HAVE to remember the title!) anyway it's about discovering my true self, a topic about which, being such a fraud, I am practically obsessed with.

I discover to my amazement that I am not doing all that badly. I say this to encourage you, Dear Readers, because if I'm getting 'B+' in the 'Knowing Who You Really Are' class, chances are that you are too. There are one or two tips that I would like to pass on, especially as at least two of you are my daughters, and mothers have an obligation:

1, Remember who you really are. I borrow this piece of advice from the Bhudda, whom I wish I could meet. Religion tells you that you are an eternal and embodied soul, doing time In a wonderful incarnation that isn't actually out to get you, so don't take the tough stuff too personally. Science will have a different take on the same theme: you are part of the cosmos knowing itself. Yes, really, I got that from one of those wonderful physicists on BBC 4, possibly Professor Brian Cox. Either way , you are pretty special. Gloriously, magnificentky, amazingly unique. So. Just SO.

2. Spend a significant part of every day doing something you really want to do. I often find this the most effective kind of prayer.

3. Practise being a better person. You'll know exactly how to do it, because the good stuff is innate.

4. And Finally. ( I pinched this one from Nelson Mandela, whom I would also like to meet one day.) Treat everyone as if THEY are good. This is a great tip, I find it really works.

The Muse has reminded me of something. I shall have to write it down, or I'll have no peace.

Last Spring, I was at Llansor Mill, sort of 'on retreat' except that THAT sounds holier than I mean it to. There's the Camping Field down by the river and I am hanging over the gate. The sun is behind me, and bright, despite the earliness of the hour, and the meadow grass is wet with dew. Yet, for a few amazing minutes, before the world turns, it's not: it's ablaze with diamonds, refracting light of every hue. I stop, I daren't breathe for fear of missing out on an amazing experience - that of knowing that I am the cosmos knowing itself. And in a moment of pure rapture, certain that creation is mine too, and that it's pure gift, and that I am thankful.

Goodnight, and God Bless!

 

PS: The Book: "Becoming Who You Are: Insights On The True Self From Thomas Merton And Other Saints"

By James Martin, SJ 

Posted with Blogsy

Contemplative Prayer

Because I speak in tongues - not an unusual accomplishment for a Pentecostal, but slightly embarrassing for a Roman Catholic, someone asked me if I was a mystic! How I laughed! I am not.
The speaking in tongues began as spontaneous outpourings of love and gratitide, not even too sure as to Whom or What, when I was a child. Still is.
I have long since moved from noise, however mystical, to silence. I am learning ( who could ever say they have learned?) to open my heart and still my mind and observe, compassionately, what arises. It's a fantastic practise, neither easy ( or it wouldn't be worth the effort) ... Or difficult (or I couldn't do it) just liberating!
Imagine! Not having to work out what's best for me, you, the planet, the universe and ask God to do it. Instead, to wait, and stand under His knowing, and trust Him to let it be, and to let it be good.

Nobody Special

I have been attending to your soul for you, as I know many of you are too busy to do so for yourself. It's a great work.

Once, shortly before being deselected from a Church Parochial Council - a real achievement as you Anglicans will know, because the challenge is usually enticing someone ONTO the PCC, not throwing them OFF -I was asked, "Who do you think you are?" Well, back then, I was young and arrogant, and knew everything, and thought I was SOMEBODY. I wouldn't have said that, of course, I would have said something humble, and clever, and not quite a put- down. I wasn't a nice person. Not saying I am now, mind, but I might allow, 'nicer'. 

So the years have rolled on, and I observe my younger self engaging in all kinds of worthy deeds, none of which amount to a hill of beans now. Interesting. None of it mattered. All that posturing and striving, and making something of myself. All pointless. 

You might think this thought makes me sad. Well it doesn't. It has me laughing like a drain. A real good, heartfelt, unladylike spluttering roar of a laugh:  you should hear it! 

I heard it said, not so long ago, "You can't give away your own enlightenment." I was much struck by this thought. You can't. My wisdom is not yours, and may just leave you puzzled. But I reckon you can mix a whole pudding of metaphors by switching the light on and off until the penny drops. 

So forty years after someone in a temper threw the question at me like a missile, I am ready to answer it. I'm NOBODY SPECIAL. 

That's the only way anything I write can hold any meaning. I have found a role in my almost-but-not-quite religous state of mind, and it's to quietly invite people who might be interested to begin the interior journey. 

My laughter comes from that place. I'm nobody special because I know who I really am.  Amazing. Utterly fantastic. A conscious being in a largely unconscious Universe. Capable of great acts of forgiveness, fantastic acts of kindness, and splendid works of compassion. We all are. You are.

I invite you to discover your own depths. Or wait, like me, until they find you. 

Having A Life

It begins with noticing that the floor needs cleaning and finding, for the very first time, that to bend down with a dustpan and brush, is really going to hurt. I stop to consider this  novelty as if analysing it is of greater importance that feeling it, and I decide that it is. 

I have a high pain threshold. I am capable of observing discomfort as an interesting phenomenum, wondering... ?  It's not going to overtake me, or stop me, but it is here to make me think. I am alive. Yes, and the sensations I have are pressing and real: not entirely pleasant, admittedly, but a reminder and a remembering, to have a life is a gift, or so it has always been to me. A strange reaction perhaps, and one that always makes my inside surface, and my outside smile. So, I may not be  able to bend much for a while, but I am resourceful, and I will learn to sit, or lie down to do the new things that hurt, and take on a different perspective. 

I sat old-age down and gave him a good talking to. "You and I are are going to be together for quite some time, so we're going to have to learn to get along!" Can't swear to it, but I think I hear laughter. Perhaps it's yours! 

The Beforelife

Two weeks ago I met with like-minded people to explore death. It's a queer thing, death. We don't much want to talk about it, which is hardly surprising, because contemplation of our demise isn't terribly cheerful. It's not the topic, when otherwise lost for words, that one would usually raise, when one has 'football', or 'Coronation Street' to fall back on.

One of the would-be participants in the Death Weekend obliged by dying the week before the meet. This is not so dramatically spooky, as she was over eighty (an achievement that is an ambition of mine) but her appointment with her maker did mean the Death Group could attend her funeral. A worthy and wonderful woman emerged from the Event. We Deathers later eulogised over what a marvellous woman she was;how special; though we never met her, we knew we would  have been friends... . 

"That's precisely BECAUSE,"  I remarked, sagely, "You never knew her. Nobody discusses the tough stuff at funerals." A trend I fully intend to have perpetuated when  I pass on. 

I died once. I was much too young to remember where my consciousness went in the process, but I returned as I am today, totally unphased by the prospect of extinction. Wherever I went, I was pleased to be there. Pretty pleased to come back too, accepting with a child's surrender to what is, that whatever will be will be. 

The point of this weekend hosted by Grim Reaper Elves, was to get death out of our systems. To tell death stories, thus removing the trauma from them. To look forward to what remains of life, and to drink tea and eat cake. I intended to plan my funeral too, but never got round to it. I will, I will, - stop nagging! 

Last Wednesday, I visited my friend Margareta. We talk about death a lot, because she's very, very ill, and we know her time is short. She's worried about leaving her only son behind, but otherwise rather looking forward to the Afterlife. Neither of us speculates much about what it entails. We are Catholics. We are trained to live with mystery. 

Bearing in mind that she's so sick, I really shouldn't have quarrelled with her about Hell. "You don't want to believe in it, because it's too hard," says Margareta. "Not at all, " I retort, "I don't want to believe in it because it's an obscenity!" 

An obscenity. For there to be a hell, there must be no love. And God is Love, or a waste of space. 

"If people I love have to go to hell. then I choose to go with them. In protest. Suck THAT up God!" 

Oh dear! That's torn it. 

Meandering on to a conclusion:

Speculation about what happens when we die is intellectually stimulating, if rather pointless. We are practically pure energy, as is all matter, and energy can neither be created or destroyed, so survival is guaranteed in some form by a Universal Constant... . There's food for thought... 

The Afterlife can, and will, wait. It's the Beforelife that concerns me now. Whatever comes next for me won't be a physical entity like this one, no matter what. So I am going to make the most of what I experience now. Even the sad and bad bits. Everything is amazing.

I would like to leave you with something uplifting after this rather gloomy piece of introspection, so I'm going to end  with Garrison Keillor's postscript to his 'Writer's Almanac' Podcast:

"Be well, do good work, and keep in touch."

Love,

Mary

"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. 

The Spacious Soul

I am reading, slowly, The Immortal Diamond by Father Richard Rohr, my teacher, who has played a guest role here in the past. Richard knows, as I do, that I, like you, am both good and bad, light and shadow, blessing and curse. I just am. We just are. The sooner we allow this, as God does ( yes, really) without judgement or condemnation, we lose the impulse to judge and condemn others, and the world becomes, in that moment, a tangibly better place.

There are two passages that impressed themselves on me today, tonight, indeed, and I want to record them here, for you, perhaps, but for me, certainly, to mark the instant when a penny dropped:

The Spacious Soul ( p23)

There is something in you that is not touched by coming and going, by up and down, by for or against, by the raucous terms of totally right and totally wrong. There is part of you that is patient with both goodness and evil to allow them to gradually show themselves, exactly as God does. There is part of you that does not rush to judgement. Rather it stands  vigilant and patient in the tragic gap that almost every moment offers. It is a riverbed of mercy. It is vast, silent, resourceful, and it receives and also lets go of all the comings and goings. It is awareness itself ( as opposed to judgement itself) and awareness is not as such "thinking". It refuses to be pulled into the emotional and mental tugs of war that most of life is - before it is over and gone. To look out from this untouchable silence is what we mean by contemplation. ... This is your soul. It is God -in-you. This is your True Self.

The Song Of True Self (p56)

Within us there is an inner, natural dignity ( You often see it in older folks)

An inner worthiness that already knows and enjoys ( You see it in children)

It is an immortal diamond waiting to be mined and is never discovered undesired.

It is a reverence humming within you that must be honoured.

Call it the soul, the unconscious deep, consciousness, or the Indwelling Holy Spirit.

Call it nothing.

It does not need the right name or right religion to show itself.

It does not even need to be understood. It is usually wordless.

It just is, and shows itself best when we are silent, or in love, or both.

I will call it the True Self.

It is God-In-All-Things yet not circumscribed by one thing.

It is enjoyed only when each part is in union with other parts, because only then does it stand in the full truth.

Once in a while, this True Self becomes radiant and highly visible in one lovely place or person.

Superbly so, and for all to see, in the body of the Risen Christ.

...

Once you have encountered this True Self - and once is more than enough - the False Self (ego) will fall away on its own. 

This will take most of your life, however, just as it did in Jesus.

                                    *******************************

Those of you who know me, will have listened to me going on and on about the saga of Bob's Bed.

I have been trying for months to help Bob get the money from a charity for a new bed. Between us, we failed to get the papers filled in correctly, we missed each other at the Mission, we took the forms to the wrong place. It was a nightmare. 

Last Monday, not yesterday, Bob turned up at the Salvation Army for lunch. He was agitated and angry. He was in pain. ( He suffered with Huntington's disease) he shouted at me.

"I want painkillers! You're not listening to me!" 

"Sorry Bob, I can't help. " and I couldn't. I brought him his tea and fetched a second dinner when his first was cleared away in error. I was impatient with him, but I let it pass. I just did. But I wasn't  sorry when he left, after petulantly throwing the bread he didn't want back at me. 

Yesterday Bob died of an overdose. I'm told he killed himself. Perhaps he did. 

Right now, I don't feel anything except relief that Bob doesn't have to suffer the horrors of death by Huntingdon's disease. 

Bob isn't  defined by his disease, or his petulance. I am glad that within him there is an immortal diamond, and that he knows it now.

Eternal rest grant unto him O Lord

Let perpetual light shine upon him

May he rest in Peace

Amen

Never Too Old To Learn...

I was idling through Twitter yesterday, when I came across this link:

http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/five-important-things-women-dont-know-about-men/

Oh, no! I thought, here we go again, more lust-driven twaddle about how to be better in bed. I don't need this, I am as good in bed as I want to be, thank you.

Already, in my first pronouncement, my bias is evident. I read all I can about the plight of women, (and I'm not retreating from my views as expressed earlier this year in, 'Ain't I A Woman.' ) but I have NEVER seriously made room in my thinking for the worldview of men. Never, not once, in sixty-two years. 

'Maybe I should read this,  maybe I will.' I thought, and I did. 

I can't speak for other women, but I have, usually unthinkingly, treated men rather badly. I have contributed, sometimes, not always, to the anxiety, quiet rage, and feelings of powerlessness that were so eloquently described in that blog. I haven't, at the very least attempted to understand the true nature of gender differences. 

For the future? At least I know a little more about the masculine ego and it's drivers - as described by a MAN. I can TRY to proceed with a little more caution and a lot more understanding. 

The Pendulum Swings

God knows how. It's a mystery.

I expect you think I'm being metaphorical on the pendulum question. Poets have the write. But no. This post is not a plea for politicians to behave themselves, or family values to go this way, or that. It's about a remarkable timepiece. 

Three years ago I bought a rather kitschy clock in Aberystwyth. It's a glass-fronted pretty little thing with flowers and songbirds etched around its face. I gave it to Kate as a house-warming present, but somehow in her going from here to there, and back again, the clock, still boxed, ended up in the spare room with a rich collection of my daughters' left overs. 

Well, I like it. So I deboxed it, and hung it on the wall in my bedroom. 

It's a stupid clock in some ways. It has birds and flowers, but no numerals, so timing is never quite exact, and the pendulum is purely decorative. Or has been. For three years the pendulum has hung stubbornly and uselessly down. In the beginning, I tapped, pulled, adjusted, swore, tinkered and, in desperation, bashed, but to no avail. The pendulum moved not a twitch. I gave up. 

This is hard for me. I don't usually give up, and, believe me, this is not always a good thing. Eventually I allowed the pendulum BE a metaphor:

There are some fights you can't win.

Some things you just can't fix.

There's room in my life for the purely decorative

I reconciled myself to a clock with a pendulum that wasn't going to work. 

Then a window opened, the sun shone in, and the pendulum began to  swing.

Early morning sunshine struck the silver disc and reflected a shiny penny of light, which oscillated gently, left-right, left-right, on the wall over there > >>>. It was this movement that first caught my eye. It took me less than a second to  look up that way < <<< to discover the clock proudly presenting me with a fully functioning pendulum. Left-right, left- right. Tick-tock, tick-tick.

That was twenty minutes ago. It's still going. I am thinking perhaps the slight breeze coming in through the open window is the cause. I don't know, I'm afraid to touch it in case it stops. Instead, I shall revisit my metaphors:

Never write anything off.

Sometimes broken things fix themselves.

There's still room in my life for the purely decorative.

Time to get up.

Oh! By the way, Kate - if you read this -  you're not getting your clock back. 

Meaning What, Exactly?

In my absence, Dear Reader, I have been busy with You Tube, furthering my  search for Enlightenment.

I confess to feeling rather enlightened already, but that's a big fat illusion. So what? When you're comfortable with the quantum enigma, you know that illusions are pretty  much all we have, so pick one. (Note: Comfort  does not equate with understanding.) 

You Tube offered me Ekhart Tolle, Richard Feynman, Albert Einstein and The Dali Lama. Oh! And for some strange reason, adding to the burden of proof for Chaos Theory,  Dave Allen. How I laughed.

I gave Richard Dawkins a hearing too. It's hard to refute him, or  take a swipe at the fervour of his secularism when bad religion does such terrible  things.

I am awash with insight. You wouldn't care who said what, so I'm letting precision go hang. One or two of these  quotes I probably made up. Possibly:

The purpose of life is to be happy.

That this mysterious universe has no purpose doesn't frighten me. 

Without consciousness the universe doesn't exist

When the creative power of the universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests as joy.

If you cannot accept what you're doing as 'this is just what is' - stop doing it. 

If you drink at your own funeral you drink alone  (Dave Allen:  I give you that one, to save bewilderment.) 

I bring a long-suffering smile to my husband's lips when I play a game called,'That's A Title I Want':

'Lord High Chancellor',  'Minister Without Portfolio', ' Her Holiness', 'Head Mistress', ' Sergeant At Arms', 'Director General of the BBC' ... . These are on the short-list. The impossibilities abound, and have me rocking with laughter, as I explore the differences I could make to the lives of my fellow citizens/believers in that alternative universe where I make it to the top. ( Yes, I do have a very strange sense of humour.) 

This game, which I heartily recommend to you, is played whilst lying in bed listening to Radio 4. Or any news programme that threatens you with an interview with someone who might make you seethe.  It's best not to be alone though. More fun. 

A strange sense of humour. Everyone knows by now that I am convinced   that  you can make up what you believe as you go along, and get away with it. I regard this as being a healthy and life-enhancing state of being, as it holds out the opportunity for you to reflect on your prejudices, and opens you up the possibility of change. I look upon change as a good thing. The butterfly mind is no longer a grub, that's what I think. 

In conclusion, my butterfly mind, shielded by a quirky sense of humour, has given me a special work to do. To discover which title I have today, and to play the role with enjoyment and enthusiasm. 

Don't let anyone else define who you are. That's what I'm saying. 

Head Full of Sky

I am living, for a spell. In a country at war. Coming from another country at war, I realised with a shock, though I  hardly ever think about it. Why don't I think about it? I wonder.

War is hateful. Hate starts war, fuels war and, so it seems, needs to spill an ocean of blood to exhaust itself through war. 

Why is it so easy, so necessary, for us-kind to find a reason to hate? Where does it originate? Why does it persist? 

I remember a Monty Python sketch of so long ago, where an upper-class twit and a lower-class slob were debating the ownership of property:

LCS:   Where did ya git yer Stately Home an' all this land from then?

UCT:   I inherited from my father.

LCS:    An' where did 'E git it from then?

UCT:    He inherited it from HIS father... 

Imagine  this conversation delving back into the mists of time ... . Until, ultimately:

LCS.  And where did HE get it from?

UCT: He fought for it

LCS (Raising his fists ) Alright then! Stick yer mitts up! I'LL fight YOU for it! 

And so,it goes on. And so it will I guess. I read cute things, I write cute things, but I'm not very optimistic. I toy with Eckhart Tolle's conviction that a new consciousness is evolving : a better human being is arising from the murk of who we are now -  but I see little sign of it beyond the bounds of the better-off and well-educated living in settled communities in secure countries. Please, someone, tell me I'm wrong.

There must be consolation.

I tend to bury my head in the sky, to let go of reality, to read someone else's news, to live and to love as if terrible stuff wasn't happening. No-one ever tried to teach me to hate. I am SO lucky that I found someone to despise all on my own. 

Yesterday was Memorial Day. I spent an hour or two in a cemetery near here. I observed, I am an outsider. I am British, my grief is rarely a public spectacle. I'm not saying that's a good thing. By no means. I was moved, profoundly moved,  by the sea of flags on Veteran's graves. I wept in the tent where a table was set for the men taken as prisoners of war, and who are not coming home. 

I couldn't go on. I need to stop, to see where hate gets us, in order to wonder ... Does it HAVE to be like this? 

Whom do YOU hate? Foreigners? Gay men and women? Criminals? Anyone? Do you call it something else to disguise your sin? I do. We all do. 

Can you stop? Do you want to? 

There must be consolation.

And there was.

A putting green. Complete with tee-off, putter, flag and sand trap. It was life-sized; it was splendid; it was built for the dead. 

I thought it quite, quite marvellous that some of us can be so untroubled by war, if not by grief, that we can be laid to rest in a quiet spot on a lovely day behind a marble plaque beside the 20th green.

I had to smile, and to be thankful.

Still, My Soul

My friend Wendy and I are utterly unalike. She is highly intelligent, militantly atheistic, acerbic in her opinions,  (especially of men) and a spendthrift. I am none of these things, so it's surprising, perhaps, that we get on so well.

We met through an advertisement in the Gloucestershire Echo fifteen years ago. Writing and posting advertisements is Wendy's hobby. I was the only person who replied to her appeal for a woman friend: we hit it off,  and have met fairly regularly ever since.

Wendy has very high expectations of the men she draws into her epistilatory net. She meets none of her hopefuls. She corresponds for a while until familiarity, poor spelling and grammar, or libido, breeds contempt. Time passes, then, the cycle begins all over again. She is currently awaiting replies to her adverts in ' Private Eye' and 'The London Review of Books' (where she used Latin, I believe.) 

'They all want SEX my dear!' Wendy shudders. I am surprised that she is surprised. I try to be kind to the victims of the sharp end of her tongue ... But it's a stretch sometimes. The gentleman who sent a  photograph of himself, in close proximity to a horse, in a river, naked, deserves all the derision he achieved. That's what I think, and I'm a softie. 

I squirm when Wendy confronts me over God. I know my viewpoint is irrational, I can't explain away the suffering in the world, I don't believe in hell, and ( because I am one of them) I know that religious people are among the biggest hypocrites on the face of the earth. I simply cannot be an atheist, and believe me, it's not for the want of trying. Whenever this impasse is reached, Wendy rolls her eyes and changes the subject.

Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when Wendy announced last month that she was attending a meditation class. 

 I didn't know what to expect when we met for lunch on Friday. When  I broached the subject, I wasn't too surprised to discover that the class she had been attending had proved unsatisfactory. 

"Thirty minutes! We had to sit in silence for thirty minutes! Then there was a video of a talk by a guru that didn't make any sense to me... . The final straw was being asked to bring a poem on a spiritual theme next time. I emailed to say, ' Thank you very much, but the word 'spiritual' doesn't mean ANYTHING to me.' 

That's not the end of the story, however. Wendy confided that she had found ten free meditations on the web, and she was working her way through them and quite enjoying them.  'Then you have to pay.' She sniffed. I guess she won't.

Wendy's story highlights a plight that is probably not that uncommon: an awareness of a need for soul food that isn't attached to religion. 

I discovered a meditation recently that I pass on to those who  have difficulty with the concept of God, but feel the need to let go of emotional pain:

'Don't retreat from the anguish. Acknowledge it as you breathe in. Feel it, accept it. Take the breath down below your heart. Hold it for a moment. On the out breath, let the feeling go, and replace it with gratitude. For what was good in the  relationship, the happiness that came before loss, for the warmth of the sun, the beauty of the day, the closeness of a friend... Something, anything, that reminds you that you are alive, and that life is a gift. '

It is. It really is.

Say, 'Cheese.. !'

"Say Ommm to keep your genes healthy."

So advises an article that caught my eye in this week's 'New Scientist'.

I am a haphazard practitioner of the meditative arts, finding sitting still a rather difficult thing to do, but I have long since lost my scepticism over the value of it. This article makes me want to dash for the yoga mat. (No, I don't possess one, but two of my daughters did. They now take up space in my shed. I claim squatting rights over them.)

I am so amazed by the implications of this article for health and well-being, that I am going to plagiarise it for the common good.

' "it's not New Age nonsense," says Herbert Benson of the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. He and his colleagues analysed the whole genome of 26 volunteers - none of whom regularly meditates - before teaching them a relaxation routine lasting 10 to 20 minutes. It included reciting words, breathing exercises and emptying the mind.

After eight weeks of performing the routine daily, gene analysis was repeated. Clusters of beneficial genes had become more active and harmful ones less so.

The boosted genes had three main effects: improving cellular energy efficiency, upping insulin production ... And preventing the breakdown of caps on chromosomes that prevent cells wearing out and ageing... .' (PLoSOne,doi.org/mfj)

What I find really interesting, is the possibility of changing my genes. I had thought them to be rather passive little critters, now resting serenely on their laurels having successfully been passed on to the next two generations. Job done, I thought.

But no! There they are, beavering away still working hard on my behalf, making me, at the cellular level, the wonderful creation that I am.... and helping me to continue to be... .

I get it, I really do. Ever wondered why those yogis one admires for there serenity, always appear to be at least one hundred years old? Now you know.

They are actively, if unconsciously, altering their genetic make -up. Stands to reason really. The negative effects of stress on life expectancy have been doing the rounds for years. How heartening to find that a positive outcome from de-stressing can have a similar powerful effect in the other direction.

Fifteen minutes a day of dropping everything and following your breath around your body. Not too difficult is it? And I suspect that any word that stills the mind from it's endless task of accusing you of your past mistakes (or worrying you to death about your future) would do... .

Fluffy God

I have to come clean. I don't believe in Fluffy-God.

I did. Once or twice, when the sky was cloudless and I didn't know very much. I was about ten, I think. Or thirty.

I have been following up on some of the inspirational people who Tweet at me. And I have come to believe in a Collective Unconsciousness.

I have found lovely mums with big hair and big hearts revelling in the Beatitudes who strive to be pure in heart and deserve to make it.

I have found skinny, bald prophets who have found emptiness through wanting nothing, and I am happy for them.

I describe, you understand, I do not criticise.

It makes me think: thinking does me good.

I started thinking when my friends began dying off. I was younger then, and embarrassingly selfish. How dare they leave me? Fluffy God got a good kicking, let me tell you. And when my family started dying off too - well, I ordered him to pack his bags and leave.

That's when I discovered another embarrassing thing about myself... . I'm not cut out To Be An Atheist. So what now?

I wish I knew. I'll have to think some more about THAT.

One chill day, fifty kilometres from Umtata, I watched a scrawny child fill a plastic bottle with filthy river water to sell by the roadside. I just watched. She haunts me sometimes, this little girl dressed in rags. I ask myself, 'Why didn't I try to do something? There are many things I could have tried to do, but I couldn't move.

I couldn't take it in. That's the truth of it.

This little one, wasn't part of my world, she didn't fit, she couldn't be happening. This is what Collective Unconsciousness does to religious people. Fluffy God doesn't allow this. IT CAN'T BE HAPPENING.

True God, I think, and I think there is one, opens our eyes to the suffering of others, and whispers, 'Go on, TRY...' He doesn't need religious institutions, or religious people. She just IS.

My Work...

Unsubstantial Walls

When a man (sic) has once broken through the paper walls of everyday circumstance, those unsubstantial walls that hold so many of us securely imprisoned from the cradle to the grave, he has made a discovery. If the world does not please you, you can change it. You may change it to something more sinister and angry, to something more appalling, but it may be you will change it to something brighter, something more agreeable, and at the worst something much more interesting.'

I have quoted this passage from HG Wells, 'The History of Mr Polly' before, because it raises a delightful prospect.

On the first Thursday of the month, I have a rendezvous with my soul. I have to drive to South Wales to make the date, and when it's wet and dark, it IS a bit of a trek, but It's worth the effort.

There are ten of us in our Contemplative Prayer group. We eat supper together, then we sit in silence for twenty minutes. We stop. Doing, thinking, striving, worrying, planning, hoping, praying, believing... Stopped.

It's not easy, not always possible, but something emerges - the simple knowledge that it IS possible to stop.

So what? For twenty, often very long minutes, I put myself on hold. Everything I think I am, I lay down to rest in liminal space - a particular place, on the edge of being, that is pure life without the wearisome effort of having to live it.

What Mr Polly, in his ponderous way, invites me to do, twenty-one minutes after the singing-bowl rings, is to consider very carefully what I take up again.

My life, like yours, is great, and terrible, is pleasure and pain, is truth and make-believe... . Would I like to change some things? I would, yes I would... Will I? Not necessarily. But when I emerge from the silence of my deepest self, I know I have taken up, even the hardest things, voluntarily.