Category: meditation

Posted on

Splurging

Do I want to write today? Some of the stress I was under earlier in the week has been alleviated, I slept a bit better last night – 71% according to the sleep cycle app, but then it was 79% two nights ago, so doesn’t necessarily correlate with a good mood in the morning. I don’t know what those percentages are based on – is it percentage of a ‘normal’ night’s sleep – eight hours, maybe? When I first installed the app, it spent the first few days saying it was calibrating, so maybe it relates to how much sleep I had in those first few nights? Or is it a kind of index which also takes into account factors like frequency of waking in the night or proportion of deep to light sleep? Whatever, it’s never 100%, and very rarely over 90, so 79% is pretty good.

In checking my sleep, I got distracted onto Twitter and came across this quote:

“You can’t say, I won’t write today because that excuse will extend into several days, then several months, then… you are not a writer anymore, just someone who dreams about being a writer.”

Dorothy C. Fontana.

Hmmm – that’ll be me, then. No surprises there. I retweeted it anyway.

Is there any other activity/artform where you create so much ‘stuff’ just to throw it all away again? Another tweet from the same person’s feed:

‘To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over….”

John Hersey.

That’s not quite what I meant – I was thinking not of the early drafts that become something in the end, but what I do: writing for its own sake that never does and never will go on to become ‘something’ – not about perfection, but just ‘splurging’.

Incidentally, after I’d written the word ‘stuff’, I tried to think of a better word for the products of ‘creative’ effort, and I thought of ‘material’ – which reminded me that my Mum – who was trained as a seamstress– used to sometimes call fabric/material ‘stuff’ – oh the wonders of language!

Where have I got to? Not very far is the answer, but then I very rarely do.

I wrote about Tara Brach a couple of days ago. One thing I struggle with in her teachings is the idea that to manage your emotions you need to identify where they manifest physically in your body and focus on that. But emotions occur in the brain, surely? I’ve had this problem with other meditation teachers – I once raised it with the leader of a meditation group and he was really dismissive: ‘oh, so you think it’s all in your head, do you?’ in a tone that implied I was being deliberately obtuse. But although there are conventional physical reactions to some emotions – mostly concerned with changing the heartbeat or breath – isn’t saying that love comes ‘from the heart’ metaphorical? To be continued (maybe).

Posted on

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.    

Posted on

Left, right, Verbalise, Visualise

Things in my head today, I don’t know if I want to share them or not – not because they’re angry or shameful thoughts that potential readers might be offended or shocked by, just because they’re so incoherent, not sure if I can knock them into any sort of shape.

In the last few days I have seen one post on Facebook asking if people ‘hear voices in their heads’ when they think, and another two where you look at images and depending on what you see tells you if you’re predominantly ‘right brain’ or ‘left brain’ To deal with the right/left tests and get that out of the way, the first one told me I was ‘left’ brained and the second that I was ‘right’ – which says more about the kind of tests that get posted on FB than anything important to do with my brain.

The discussion on thinking styles was more interesting, but in the end I stepped away, even though this is something I have given a lot of thought to in recent years, because I could feel myself getting frustrated and irritated. One friend made a very good point about it illustrating how little we are able to understand what goes on in other people’s heads. It’s a few years now since the conversation I had when I told a friend that I don’t ‘see’ things in my head (unless I make a deliberate effort to do so), but that my mind is full of words, a constant narrative. I’d always assumed that that was what ‘thinking’; meant, that it’s about the words and concepts in your head, but he spoke to me as though it was a kind of disability, an affliction that marked me out from the rest of the world.

In the FB exchange there were some contributors who, like me that day, were just shocked at the idea that anyone could think any other way than with words. Others started talking about having multiple voices, ‘hearing’ accents, even linking it to schizophrenia, although to me it’s not about ‘hearing’, it’s not a voice, it’s just more like a voice-over or continuous narrative.

Someone else was sceptical because, she said, the internal narrative couldn’t be ‘continuous’, it’s always possible to stop thinking. I thought about my years of meditation – I won’t say I’ve never had any moments of a completely empty mind – but it takes effort and practice and even then it’s incredibly difficult and frustrating. The same person said she wondered if verbalisers (I hate inventing labels, but don’t know how best to express it) can feel any pleasure in reading fiction if they can’t picture the characters – I wanted to scream, because fiction is all about the story, and what are the building blocks of stories if not words? It made me think perhaps this is why I prefer radio to the telly, and reading to Youtube.

I guess the real lesson is: don’t get caught up in stuff on Facebook.   

Posted on

The Hermit (Part 3)

I’ve been to Tesco. It was going to be Sainsbury’s, but when I got there there was a barricade across the door. I looked though the window but couldn’t see anyone inside – this was just after 8 and they normally open at 7. So I crossed the road to Tesco (again). When I came back, Sainsbury’s was open. Bit late by then.

Walking home, I started fretting about what it will be like when things start opening up again – whenever that may be. Yesterday evening I joined in with a Zoom meditation session from the group I used to go to on Sunday evenings. On Sundays now they have a Crowdcast with guest speakers, and are getting 200-300 people from all over the world connecting (or whatever the word is). The difference between that and Zoom is that the ‘viewers’ are not visible but can contribute through an online chat area, so I like that because it’s nicely anonymous. I do join in properly with the meditation, but during the talks I quite often sit crocheting, as I would if I was watching telly. On Zoom, it’s possible not to share your video and audio, but it’s a bit awkward when there are only half a dozen people involved, and not only that, but mainly people I recognise from the regular group (and who would presumably recognise me).

Anyway, the guy leading it mentioned in the chat afterwards that he has been quite enjoying the lock down, but felt guilty admitting it – the lady who led the session last week said something similar – and then we were all putting our hands up and agreeing, and saying what a relief to hear someone else saying it.

Now, there could be a whole complex of reasons behind this. To put a negative spin on it, maybe people who join meditation groups – more specifically, online meditation groups – are all geeky, introverted loners who want to hide from the world and keep away from people in general. On the other hand, maybe they are thoughtful, contemplative individuals, interested in learning to detach themselves from the materialistic pleasures to which we are all addicted to a greater or lesser extent, on a path to self realisation and acceptance of the world as it is.

In the fifteen years I’ve been actively pursuing this path, I’ve met both sorts of people – some who are in conventional terms ‘damaged’ in some way and some who are intellectually fascinated by the life of the mind and disillusioned by the modern world, and many (like myself) who are a combination of the two. I mentioned to a friend the other day that it’s noticeable how many people I’ve met in meditation groups are educated to PhD level – all disciplines, but I think it reflects a certain kind of thoughtfulness and curiosity. On the other hand, there are also a fair number of recovering addicts.

This feels like the start of an interesting chain of thought, to which I’ll return.

Posted on

Corrections and Clarifications

The anger came back this morning, in the I-should-get-out-of-bed-but-not-yet time. I suppose it may have been partly triggered by the new uncertainty caused by images of commuters on trains and station platforms. However, as always, it was turned against myself. How can I keep writing about my real feelings and put it on show? How can I come on here and share my true thoughts, take that risk of being seen for who I am, all that self-pity and negativity and doubt? I’ll stop, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll give up again as I always do with everything.

But I got up and did my half hour practice, and when I went downstairs and made coffee I realised how valuable that is, that it actually does help – or something does. Routine and discipline, you see – it makes life possible. Which I guess includes this as well. Here I am at my keyboard with Miko on the desk beside me, supervising the street outside, both of us listening to a sudden outburst of gulls. Blue sky and sunshine, and I can’t really tell whether there are more people and traffic, though I can see that there are at least six empty parking places across the road whereas they’ve been full for the last few weeks, but I guess the consolation is that at least six drivers aren’t taking the bus.

I didn’t speak to my daughter yesterday, but I assume she for one hasn’t gone back to work. She’s not waitressing any more, but she still works in the leisure/hospitality business, her job involves visiting pubs, so I’m guessing she’s reprieved until they reopen. Anyway, she has two children at home.

I am still in my cosy bubble, for as long as it takes. I may never come out. I still feel that life is less stressful like this, but I keep panicking that eventually I will have to engage with the world again, and wonder what exactly that will mean. It’s like when I was travelling and would every so often get a reminder that, at some point, I would have to come back and face up to life again.

Just remembered that I have some corrections and clarifications for my quote from the Joni Mitchell song yesterday (I finally looked it up). The song is Barangrill and the corrections are: it’s three waitresses (not two); they’re talking about Singapore SLINGS (which makes so much more sense than ‘sleeves’, a mistake I’ve been making for almost 50 years), and there’s ‘not one ANXIOUS voice’ (I think I said ‘angry’).

So there you go, I’m not perfect (as if I ever claimed to be).

Oh my goodness, I just glanced through the window, (checking for swifts) and saw a plane flying over – it looks like a commercial airliner, rather than anything naval/military. Strange how something so familiar can disappear without being missed until suddenly it’s there again.

Check out Barangrill, if you like Joni. I hadn’t heard it in years.

Posted on

Happy Days

A couple of weeks ago, a friend said to me on Twitter: ‘This must be a good time to be alive for people who don’t like to go out’. Which incensed me because what I’d been saying was that I need to make myself go out and interact with people, because otherwise I’m worried that I will close down and disappear inside myself. Anyway, who was he to tell me how I was feeling?

But, strangely enough, I am enjoying life at the moment – well, I know I wasn’t a few days ago, but that was for other reasons. The relief of not having to think: ‘It’s such and such a day, I need to be there by this time and be with them…’ is actually helping me to relax and accept life. My simple routine is starting to sort out my days. I aim to do my half hour of exercise and meditation, feed the cat and let her out, and be at my computer with a cup of coffee by 8 o’clock – it doesn’t always work out that way, but I don’t beat myself up if it doesn’t. No one is expecting me to be anywhere else.

My health is good, my finances comfortable, my freezer full. The sun is shining; I have breakfast outside every morning after I’ve finished my 500 words – sometimes it’s as late as 11, but it doesn’t really matter. Last week there were three times when I connected with people through Facebook, Zoom or Skype: for meditation, tai chi and my weekly session with my psychotherapist. The fixed points of my routine are more frequently dictated by the radio schedules – 1 o’clock on weekdays for the half hour drama serial on 4 extra, and 3 pm every day for an hour of drama on 4 or 4 extra (though I can always catch up online). I’ve had to go out to the shops on four days out of the last seven, but for now I’m fine, until the milk runs out, which will be about Tuesday.

Having reduced housework to the level of: ‘I’m out of clean knickers, better put a load of washing on’, I’ve caught myself once or twice spontaneously tidying up some small area just to make my living space more pleasant, rather than because I’m frantically looking for something vital – yesterday I even started weeding the garden, and found myself enjoying it – I think partly because it’s quite satisfying to be pulling things out, rather than trying to coax them to grow. I crochet and weave – I tried something new in my weaving the other day, which didn’t work out, so had to undo it, but that’s ok because now I can do it again but better. My paper crafting stuff is all over the kitchen table and has been for weeks now – I keep thinking I’ll do something with it. Might even revive the idea of making a book from the haikus I wrote for NaPoWriMo in 2018.

Posted on

Knife Edge

This morning I added ten minutes of tai chi to my ten minutes of yoga and ten minutes of meditation. Now that the beds have been dismantled (not anticipating any visitors any time soon), there’s room in the spare bedroom/meditation room to do the first four moves to the four directions, and mostly for the rest of the moves I know so far, with a bit of adjustment. So the routine from tomorrow (because I did all the tai chi today at the end as an afterthought) will be: 5 minutes stretching/standing postures; 5 minutes tai chi to the four directions; 5 minutes for the rest of the form; 5 minutes floor stretches; 10 minutes meditation. It sounds like quite a lot but it’s not so much really. I started the yoga routine when I was in Prague and had a big room but hardly any furniture – or maybe before then, when I had the flat in Ramsey – anyway, I’ve never been consistent. When I was having chemo in 2017 I started again with a scaled down version that was mostly stretches and lying on the floor.

Now the clocks have changed, and sunrise is an hour later (by clock time), it occurs to me that the next few weeks are the best time for sunrise walks on the beach – added advantage being that there’s less likelihood of contact with other people. When I first moved here and was living in the flat on Beach Road, it was so close – 2 minutes up the road and then through the Rock Gardens – that I went all the time. Now there’s a 10 minute walk past boring houses before I get to the park, it’s not so appealing. That first summer was quite idyllic now I look back on it – that wonderful sense of getting away from the past and starting again (again!) but this time with the sense of finally finding the place where I needed to be, a place which was exciting and new, but where I could see myself staying for the long term, without a future where I would have to go back, or move on to somewhere else. A place where I could make a home – and have – more comfortably and easily than I would once have thought possible.

It’s been nearly five years, at the end of next month. I was asked a few months ago to choose: past, present or future? I replied: future, because if you expect the future to be worse than what went before, why bother carrying on? Now the future is confused and uncertain, hard to see, but that’s always the case, for each of us individually but also collectively. Throughout our lives we walk on a knife edge between what has happened and what might happen next. Though we may feel secure and comfortable in our certainties, none of us knows for sure whether we will see the sun rise tomorrow.

So tomorrow I will go and find it. Maybe.

Posted on

Cycle of Emotions

Are human emotions just illusions that conceal the deep heart of everything? Or are they the deep heart of ourselves?

I think: if I didn’t fight it every moment of every day, I would cry every moment of every day.

This morning I did something I’ve been thinking about for a while, restarting my morning routine of 10 minutes yoga followed by 10 minutes meditation. And the above two paragraphs are the thoughts that came into my head at the end of that time. Which some might say is an indication that yoga and meditation in the morning are not a good idea for me.

Yoga, meditation and writing 500 words first thing in the morning are very old habits, tried many times, discarded many times. In the quiet street outside my window I spot the occasional vehicle, the occasional jogger. Sunlight illuminates the top storeys of the red brick houses opposite; the bottom storeys shadowed by the terrace that includes the house where I sit at my computer.

The bucket has brought up some odd thoughts from the ‘writing well’ this morning, not at all what I was expecting to write about when I sat down, or planned yesterday evening when I thought about writing this morning. Maybe I’m getting back into the swing of this.

I don’t want this blog to turn into a whine-fest. That’s what I was thinking yesterday, when I walked by the sea. I can’t let it degenerate into a mire of self-pity, it’s too public for that. And I freely acknowledge that on most scales that mean anything in this everyday world, I have far less cause for self-pity than many people – most, even. Maybe I could even offer it out as something that might help others, a way of showing them: this isolation isn’t so bad, this lack of structure and excess of choice over how to fill the time, can be survived, can be dealt with and got through – look at me, welcome to my life. All those good, strong, positive people out there who are putting their efforts into making this situation better for others – that may sound sarcastic, but it’s not intended as such, I admire people like that, I really do, but I’m not brave enough to count myself among them. And if I tried, I’d only f*ck up whatever I tried to do – that’s my lame, selfish, mealy-mouthed excuse.

Self pity or self compassion? How do you tell the difference between the two? The former evolves rapidly into its close correlatives, self-disgust and shame. Ah yes, shame, the driving force of my vicious emotional circle – I am ashamed of myself for not being a better person, and that makes me angry and frustrated with myself, and that makes me unhappy which makes me sorry for myself which makes me more ashamed which makes…

Is this cycle of emotions an illusion that distances me from the deep heart of everything? Or is it the deep heart of myself?

Posted on

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.

Posted on

Sitting on a cushion on the floor

New blog day 2 – aha!!! Not sure why I said that but I had to start somewhere.

Got up okay this morning, did my yoga although I got stressed out at the start because I was trying to light incense sticks which kept snapping (or rather, an incense stick which snapped in half, then I tried lighting the halves, then I got another one and lit it and every time I tried putting it in the holder it snapped again so I ended up with about five pieces and I’m running out of matches and the windowsill in the meditation room/spare bedroom is a mess of ash and dead matches and snapped bits of incense stick because I never clean it up, excuse being that I never remember to put a clean bag in the bin…) Well, that’s how my life is, even when I’m specifically trying to bring serenity into it.

In the end I sat for the extra ten minutes at the end of the audio file because my mind was such a mess during the yoga and the sitting, though when it’s like that I’m not sure whether sitting for longer actually adds anything to what happened in the first place. It’s hard for me to distinguish ‘meditation’ from ‘sitting and thinking about crap’, although I’m pretty sure that most of what I do is the latter, and that can happen at any time, not just when I’m sitting in my meditation room on a cushion on the floor. So is it worth persisting even when you feel that way? Most of what I read and know about meditation implies that it is, and that that happens to everybody, but I think: ‘well, they don’t know exactly HOW crap my mind is, and I’m probably much crapper than them, they just don’t realise…’

I think that’s why I give up such a lot. But there again, I give up on everything – and probably for the same reasons.

I think I’ve got to a good place in terms of letting go of the idea that happiness is to be found ‘out there’ – in material things, external circumstances, other people etc etc. I don’t do the: ‘I’ll be happy when/if…’ thing any more, but there again, I don’t think I’ve taken that seriously for years. But… my therapist, B, talks about being kind to myself, doing the things that make me happy – and how is that not looking to external things? Maybe it’s a matter of degree – a world cruise vs popping to the café for a cream tea to improve my mood for an hour or so, something like that. Are café-sitting, cream teas and crochet forms of addiction? The contentment they induce doesn’t always last that long, but at least they’re relatively cheap, non-damaging and easy to reproduce. And I’ve yet to start escalating on to a harder version of any of them (interesting to contemplate what that might be).

Side-tracked again. What was I going to move onto? The idea that happiness is found in getting to know ‘one’s true self’. Ah, that’s a lovely can of worms for another time.