Category: Crystal Space

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Non-attachment

What will I write about today? Therapy day. What will I talk about? I have two blog posts to read out, at least.

Is anything shifting inside my mind? If it is, it’s probably due to the lockdown, which has given me peace and space to be by myself. But it can’t last forever. How will I cope when I have to start engaging with the world again? Well, I have some control over that. When I first moved here I felt I needed to get out and make contact with other people. Now that seems less important. When I was a child I was told that shyness and introspection are things to be conquered, but these days I can see my self-containment as a gift. Am I getting any better at managing my response to and interactions with other people when they do happen? I suspect not, but I’m more comfortable about avoiding them, and less concerned about ‘missing out’. I can look back on memories of happy times with friends without feeling an urgent desire to repeat them – which is a good thing, I see that now. I can have my own happy times,

Trying to explain how I feel about that at this moment, I’m grasping for the right words. Contentment, maybe? No, too mealy-mouthed. Maturity, a feeling that I am on a mountain top, where I can look back and see my life and the things I’ve done, experiences I’ve had and people I have known laid out below me – no that sounds arrogant, which isn’t at all what I mean. Enormous peace that I can be who I am. Gratitude to all those people who have loved me and whom I have loved, forgiveness of those who’ve hurt me and of myself for hurting others, and knowledge that I no longer have to seek after love, but can be whole and by myself. Non-attachment, not detachment.

Well, what a wonderful epiphany for a Thursday morning – one which won’t last, I realise that. But it is there, and might return. I want to sit with this, be bathed in it, but also to keep writing, to complete this task, this daily commitment to myself, if for no other reason than that I can then get dressed and have my breakfast.

I’ve just expanded the sentence about being on a mountain top, and it’s brought back to me a quotation I first read almost fifty years ago, when I was a student and I have to admit I got it from the cover of a Strawbs album, but I think it was originally from Lao Tzu (a name which would have meant nothing to me then). I will have to look it up…

For once Google let me down, but I did manage to find the album on my shelf and scan it in – and lo and behold, it’s from the Buddha. Doesn’t quite say what I wanted though.

I expect Lao Tzu would have said it better.    

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Roads Not Taken

Shopping day disrupts my routine. I had breakfast when I got home, in the garden, trying not to think about the fact that I hadn’t done my yoga/tai chi routine or my writing. Well, does it matter, when these routines are self imposed? That’s the slippery slope, you let yourself off for one day and then down and down you go till suddenly you’re back to… well what? Formless chaos, a sense of emptiness, hopelessness, pointlessness… are there any positive words that end in ‘ness’? Goodness me, I can’t think of any.

There are the things I know need doing, and the tasks I’ve set for myself, and the overwhelming temptation not to do any of them… Just to sit in the sunshine, making another scarf, drinking coffee and eating biscuits, ignoring the weeds pushing up through the gravel and these thoughts popping up into my awareness (oh, note to self, that one’s fairly neutral). Kindness, hopefulness, carefulness, busyness – I wonder why business is spelt the way it is? Or should that be: pronounced the way it is? English is wonderful, actually all languages are wonderful, and fascinating. In some ways I wish I’d followed the path from mathematics into linguistics, rather than into statistics, when I chose my first university course. Maybe if my sixth form had been able to accommodate my wishes to do double maths and German at A level, instead of having to compromise on double maths and economics, I would have done it – though I considered applying for a maths and linguistics course anyway – I can’t remember where that was, but it wasn’t Southampton. The road not taken – I would probably still have ended up going into computer programming after graduation, but I would be in a different place, with different people – and that would have made all the difference – I assume.  But how much of what I’ve done in my life has been down to the inherent personality and characteristics that were laid down in those first eighteen years of life? Maybe things wouldn’t be as different now as I think – different places, different people, yes, but thinking about the last fifteen years or so, the different places and different people don’t seem to make that much difference to the inner me.

Ooh, this a bit deep, and it’s starting to give me vertigo. It goes back to my ideas of the Crystal Space, the paths we take and the ways through the mirrored labyrinth, the network of possibilities, probabilities and improbabilities, the book that I’ll probably never write but that haunts every now and again.

Well, I came back from my shopping expedition and now I seem to have written quite a lot after all.

I’ve even got a poem, of sorts, which I cobbled together yesterday from a cluster of little poems or ideas which had popped up at different times, each too long to be haikus, loosely connected but all a bit rough and ready – as my poetry often is.

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Paradoxes

If nobody reads what I write, have I been wasting my time?

Question which arose from a comment I received yesterday, pointing out that I keep repeating myself, suggesting that maybe I should try writing things that other people might find interesting, and offering an idea of how to do that. I replied that it was an excellent idea and he should try it, but I might just decide not share my writing any more.

I also realised that someone who was commenting earlier in the week telling me how wonderful I am might just have been taking the piss, and I got quite angry, not so much at him but at myself for not noticing at the time and responding in a suitably cutting fashion. Gremlins again – Gremlin 2 getting angry because Gremlin 1 didn’t step in and sort him out. Or maybe it did, and that’s why I didn’t hear a peep out of him yesterday.

Oh, the paradoxes of wanting people to take notice and then getting annoyed when they do. Or, probably more accurately, wanting to be anonymous and invisible and then being disappointed when they don’t notice.

Well, here I am again, shouting into the void. It is paradoxical though, I admit that. Why write about my deepest thoughts and feelings and then share it where it can potentially be read by anyone in the world (or anyone with internet access)? My usual answer is that I never expect anyone to read it, so it doesn’t matter, but then why bother at all, why not leave it where no one can read it but me? There’s a long and respectable history for that kind of writing.

I guess I keep coming back to this because there was a time when the people I met and the things that I shared in a blogging space had consequences in the real world which genuinely did change my life in fundamental ways. Of course, I have no way of knowing how my life would have been if I hadn’t met those people and done those things, but I can be sure, for example, that I wouldn’t be living where I live now – and that has made all the difference to the future I was anticipating, say, fifteen years ago – though there might have been other alternatives that would have turned out ‘better’, who knows?

So I am here, and I’m writing still/again, and maybe it’s because somewhere inside me I’m still looking for that flash, that transformation into another self, the portal into another world, the rabbit hole or wardrobe that will flip the dimensions, the two roads diverging in a yellow wood, the Crystal Space where all is potential and decisions must be made blindly, the ‘fast running rivers of choice and chance’ (David Crosby, ‘Delta’). The micro-choices that we make every day that can affect our lives and those of others – as the current situation reminds us only too well. Life is fragile. Writing is important.

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The Crystal Space

I went to my first kundalini yoga class last night. When I walked in, the teacher said:

‘You must be Lynn!’

‘LinDA’ I corrected her. ‘My name’s Linda.’ I’ve always disliked beng called ‘Lynn’. When I was a kid, I hated it, because I knew lots of Lindas and lots of Lynns in my school, and, well, if I was called Lynn I wouldn’t expect anyone to call me Linda, would I? These days I’m a bit more tolerant, but I still prefer being called by my actual name.

‘Oh, okay, Linda’ she said, with emphasis on the second syllable, but a smile on her face. Then the next time she addressed me she called me ‘Lynn’, and continued to do so right through the class. I didn’t bother arguing, but at the end, one of the other ladies said: ‘Are you Lynn or Linda?’ and I said, ‘actually, it’s Linda’ and the teacher said: ‘I’m so sorry, I’ve been getting it wrong all the way through haven’t I? My memory’s terrible’ and I smiled and said: ‘that’s ok’ because what’s the point of getting arsey about it?  But I was glad the other lady had brought it up.

The class itself was a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar but definitely worth doing. There was quite a bit of chanting – which I don’t mind – and breaks between postures, but the poses themselves were pretty tough and held for quite a long time (I always went for the easy versions). Also some of the breathing was different from what I’m used to and quite hard to get right. The meditation wasn’t as guided as I’d been expecting – I may have to find another group for that – but it was all nicely balanced and the 90 minutes went surprisingly quickly.

And I did my half hour this morning, as well as going to tai chi later (actually I need to go in a few minutes so probably won’t finish writing and posting this before I go.)

I think the kundalini is going to be good for me. The thing it reminds me of most of all is the original yoga classes I went to from 1990 onwards, back in Turvey when Laura was a baby. That was Iyengar, and we didn’t do any chanting, but there was a lot of emphasis on the breath and also a long relaxation at the end – and it was an hour and a half.

So, now back from tai chi, and supping tea with my friend Ali. Sometimes, you know, I think my life is pretty amazing. Other times, not so much – but why not? What makes the difference?

I was thinking last night about an idea that came out of the meditation group in Bedford, years ago when I was first separated from my husband – I wrote about it in my blog and will have to look it up to be sure, but it came from a mishearing of something said by the teacher. I think it was ‘the crystal space’ – I thought he said it, but when I spoke to him later he didn’t know what I was talking about. It seemed to be a space of possibilities, where everything was open and life could lead in any direction, but the whole thing was about liberation.