Rummaging Through The Mystics

Being rather unwell, having cancelled all I was supposed to do, I spent the afternoon surfing the gurunet searching for enlightenment. Richard Rohr, a Catholic priest whom I much admire,  teaches that you cannot give away your own enlightenment. A truer word was never spoken, I have discovered that you have to flog it.

Now everyone has to make a living, and this is not a knockblog, so I am not going to pour scorn on the varied and marvellous offerings that I sampled today, I am just going to offer the seekers of this world the complete enlightenment package for FREE.

There are seven stepping stones across the River of Life to The Gardens of Eternity and here they are:

1. Put yourself in touch with your soul. (Tip: This is the part of you that gets you crying at weddings, if you are female, and at football matches if you're a man. )You could try hours and hours of meditative practices, or you could have a couple of beers. Both work, though not necessarily to the same extent.

2. Have a good look at the stories you tell about yourself, and rewrite them. I'm not suggesting that you tell porkies, just that you start a whole new narrative that begins, 'Today is going to be a good day. ' Believe me, you might as well.

3. Shut up. Now a true mystic would call this, 'entering the great silence' but personally, I find buttoning my lip just as effective. It's amazing how enlightened people think you are if you don't open your mouth.

4. Smile a lot. Faked benevolence is the next best thing to true benevolence, and you never know...

5. Learn to play a musical instrument that rings, vibrates or bangs. One that bangs is my choice for beginners.

6. Wear floaty clothes, learn to attach your heels to your thighs and ( when not observing #3) chant. 'Om' will do if you lack imagination.

7. Skip steps 1-6 and love your neighbour as you love yourself.

Now comes the sales pitch. It is obvious that palms must be crossed with silver for the PIE (Programme for Instant Enlightenment) to work, so keep enough change in your pocket to buy a large latte ,and give it away to the first beggar you come across.

Bring On The Dancing Girls

Budget setting is a very boring proposition, and I wonder why I am even thinking about it, let alone writing on it. It is an inexact science, and doesn't do to be taken too  seriously. I learned this lesson the first time I had to set a budget for the effective running of a very small school that had a minuscule allocation. When I had employed the teachers and paid the utility bills, I had £400 left for books and equipment.

(I had failed, by an excusable, I think, oversight, to put sufficient money into the maintenance pot, and spent a whole year cleaning the staff toilet. This taught me all I needed to know about ' budget responsibility'. I digress.)

£400 doesn't go far, so I hunted around for an alternative source of funds, and I found The European Union.

I think, being a True Brit, that I had been rather against The European Union in an offhand, polite sort of way. Now I am a new creature. I have seen the light.

The EU paid me a generous amount of money to promote understanding between member nations, and as I wrote the programme ( conforming fully to the National Curriculum 1.2, naturally) I saw only the good. The second, and by far the most satisfying part of the programme, were the project visits.

France, Spain, Romania, Austria, Norway, Estonia...

I marched in the National Day parade in Norway, was attacked by an elderly nun in Romania, visited the scene of a riot in Estonia, got stranded overnight in an airport with eight pupils in France and watched palm sculptures being made in Spain...


Above all, I saw Don Giovanni in Austria... Oh bliss! My first and last visit to an opera.

I LOVED it!

Somewhere up in the gods in the opera house in Klagenfurt, I allowed Mozart's heavenly music to  flow over me and through, me,: it was ecstasy. For about an hour.

Then my mind began to wander, and my eyelids began to droop. I don't blame Mozart, I blame my daughter. When she was nursing, she kept me awake most of the night, and I got into the habit of nodding off whenever I could, and I can't get out of it - especially when the lights go down...

Part of the problem was the language barrier. I laughed out loud, only quietly, when somewhere after the second act I realised that the overhead electronic text was not in the same language as the one singing out from the stage.

Our hero was, just before I finally succumbed to forty winks, lamenting over a grave stone, dressed as a teddy boy. (It was one of THOSE productions). I am uncertain as to the whys and wherefores, and paid scant attention

I awoke with a start when the naked dancing girls appeared.

Afterwards, Barbara, our charming Austrian host, asked Turid, Tuii, Cecilia, and myself, what we thought of the production. Language completely broke down at this point, we all replied, in turn, with the same word...

'Interesting!'

Tapping Away

Being at a loose end this morning, and wide awake somewhat earlier than I chose to be, I opened the ghost of my kindle and started to read the bargain of the day of a week ago, which is called, 'The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of The Window And Disappeared,'

I hazarded twenty pence on this book in honour of its title, and I have read three pages and was so inspired that I reached  for this blog and began tapping.

I am going to live to be 106.

Some years ago, I was suckered by Gordon Brown, the then Chancellor of  the Exchequer into buying  into a scheme that was almost guaranteed to enhance my pension. It doesn't. It went down with the stock market and delivers into MY exchequer the sum of twenty pounds a month. I have to live to be one hundred and six to get my money back. And I will.

Hence my interest in stories about centenarians. I am going to be one of them, and I want pointers on how to do it in style.

In the course of the three pages that I have read, the hero has climbed out of a window in his carpet slippers and headed for the bus station. He is uncrashing his 100th Birthday Party, thus avoiding the mayor, his retinue,  and a surfeit of iced cake. I am cheering him on as he stops to rest his knees in a graveyard.

I am liking this man more and more. I have knees, and a fascination with graveyards. I love where this is going....

Phoney Baloney

http://psychologistmimi.com/2013/01/27/the-psychology-of-workplace-dynamics-its-ok-to-be-a-phony-as-long-as-it-is-authentic/

I have often mused out loud that I am amazed at how, considering the mind-blowing complexity of the human brain, how ANYONE manages to give the impression of being sane. Note: I had to use, 'give the impression of', because I doubt the existence of such as thing as 'sanity' except in the abstract.

I have already lost my train of thought, so I might just recommend the website italicised above, and let you get on with it  - BUT that wouldn't be my way. Besides, apart from a good place to begin this ramble across the playing fields of my consciousness, it wasn't a terribly good read.

I long ago gave up the drive for (or to) authenticity. I have a problem knowing how real I am to myself, so am not much concerned with how real other people think I am. I try, I really do. I mean, I don't set out to be 'Other than Who  I Truly Am' so, on the whole, what you see is what you get. But but but... Who is, 'Who I Truly Am'. Damned if I know.

Vanessa hears voices. She is a friend of mine, who has a bloody tough life, and hears voices because she used to take drugs and has chemically blown her brains out. I am fascinated by Vanessa's voices, and don't waste any time telling her they're not real. She clearly distinguishes between herself and the others, so I advised her to be kind to herself and tell the others to sod off. And - for the record - keep taking the tablets.

I hear voices too. Except that 'hear' and 'voices' are short-cuts for impulses that I can't describe. There seems to be some sort of  inner dialogue going on, that has always been present, that is me talking to me, or God, or somebody. So that's alright then.

I am becoming aware that I'm probably not entirely consistent in my approach to a personality, and this is the beginning of a more authentic selfhood. Please don't  mistake me, I am still prepared to take full responsibility for what 'I am' is doing, but I may first have to decide which, 'I am' I AM.

There's the staid and sometimes serene sexagenarian grandmother at one end of the spectrum, and the...well,  you know ... the opposite, at the other,  and lots of shades of opinion in between.

Now I have completely lost my thread, and the writer is about to bow out to the sloven and curl up on the sofa and watch tv...

And that's perfectly OK with me. Whoever SHE is.

Oh! I want to add, that if whoever you are is getting you down, get real and try being someone else for the day!