I'M A LOVER OF G A P S

During the Easter hols I was fortunate to be asked to run some workshops at the Into Christ Consciousness gathering at Findhorn. I thoroughly enjoyed running the workshops; I also loved being present for many of the other sessions during the gathering. And what interested me was that what occurred outside of any of the official sessions and workshops seemed as valuable - if not more so - than what ocurred inside them. The after-session hanging out with friends and contributors, the sharing, musing, walking, celebrating that occurred unoffically was as profound as what occurred officially. And it happened in the gaps between events.

A similar thing happened a couple of weekends ago at the Solas Festival. I loved the music, the talks, the debating, the soul space workshops and running workshops. And what I loved even more was what happened in the gaps between them, when I found myself talking to someone I'd never met before over a meal; or when someone introduced themselves to me and shared something with me; or when someone came with a question; or they hadn't been able to come to my workshop, so we did a mini-version over coffee!

So I'm re-evaluating how I value the things I do. The 'official' things are valuable.....but they are not more valuable than the 'unofficial' things that occur in the gaps.

It's the same with my own life. It's so easy to put a huge value on the 'doing' of things, and less on the gaps of 'being'. One of my current aims is to consciously create and value my own gaps, those times when I don't plan anything, when I choose to sit in silence, when I allow something else of, maybe, even greater value, to come into my life.

I'm becoming a lover of gaps.......

Happiness and the Little Pleasures

I've just come back from a glorious walk down to the creek. The sky has plenty of blue in it and there is actually warmth in the sunshine for the first time in a long time! The birds are singing enthusiastically and the boats bobbing and clinking cheerfully. My sense of pleasure and delight is huge!

Which got me thinking.....one of the reasons my pleasure is so great is that what I've experienced just now is something I haven't experienced for quite a while. During the summer, such experiences, though delightful, have a less-pronounced effect on my levels of happiness. Happiness, it seems, comes along when we experience a pleasure infrequently rather than frequently. And I gues everyone has an optimal distance between experiences that they can use to influence their levels of happiness.

During term time I really look forward to, savour and enjoy my Saturday morning Americano at one of Truro's excellent coffee houses. In the holidays I often have coffee out more frequently....and though enjoyable, the enjoyment isn't quite as acute as the Saturday-morning-in-term-time coffee.

At the end of January, having not drunk any alcohol during that month, I found that I didn't want to revert to the pattern of having a glass of wine most nights with supper, because the enjoyment wasn't nearly as significant as when I have a glass of wine occasionally at the weekend.

I experience far more pleasure from one, or sometimes two, squares of 85% chocolate, than I do from eating a whole bar.

So.....I'm going to be noticing the things that give me pleasure....and - without becoming too fanatical! - notice the optimum frequency of enjoyment.

New Year, New You?

I love New Year! I love the ending of the old and the beginning of the new. I love looking back on the previous year, taking stock of what I've done, where I'm at, and what has been happening in my wider life. And then the real excitement for me is looking forwards to the new year stretching ahead and making some choices about how I would like to play things this year, deciding what changes I would like to make and how I'm going to do that.

New Year reminds me of the time when I was getting better. I remember my partner saying to me that the biggest problem I would face in getting better was deciding what to do with my life. It was a lovely problem to have! Having had a severely restricted life for many years, and being bed-ridden for months, it felt as if 'I' didn't really exist at all, and I began the process of deciding who I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. I still cherish this experience and the opportunity to re-design my life and who 'I' am. New Year reminds me of this time, and the opportunity we have at whatever stage we are at in our lives to make changes. We have choices. As my partner reminded me on our creekside walk this afternoon, the past has gone; all that we have is the present. And in the present we have choices....

Tomorrow I'm taking myself off out West for my annual review and planning meeting with myself. I can't wait!

Archetypes

When I was about half-way through my illness journey, I remember reading 'Sacred Contracts' by Caroline Myss. She presents a wide range of archetypes and we are invited to examine the way we are leading our own lives and to spot the archetypal patterns we are running. The archetypes she mentions include Priest, Poet, Martyr, Puppet, Prostitute and many more. One of the archetypes I felt particularly drawn to was 'Wounded Healer'. And one the huge frustrations of this time was that although I was wounded I definitely wasn't healing! Of course my definition of healing then was largely defined by phsyiological healing, as you might expect from someone in a wheelchair. Looking back I can see that the most important healing of the mind, spirit and emotions was taking place during those years of searching and journeying. Getting the physiological body back to health was the last piece of a complex jigsaw.

I have been reflecting on this archetype recently. Whilst I have learned to make enormous changes in many areas of my life - my partner sometimes says I am a 'completely different person' from the pre-ill me - there are parts of my life where I know there is still work to do. Occasionally I do nervousness. Part of me knows this behaviour belongs to a 'me' of a previous era and is outdated and unnecessary. But despite my tools, knowledge and understanding, I make slow progress in this one area. How fascinating! Though the truth is that I am more often than not infuriated than fascinated!

Working with this part of me I am learning to see it differently, to value it, and to learn from it. It is, in some sense, my membership badge to the group of people I work with. It is part of my identification with the wounded healer archetype. Wounded, I search for the healing, the learning. What brings me forward is also what enables me to help others.

So how do we respond to parts of ourselves that don't seem quite in line with how or what we want to be? As ever, I'm brought back to Love. Love and acceptance for these parts of me that aren't quite ready to be updated and move on. Gentleness and compassion for the parts of me that I know are doing their very best for me. Where does this take me? Out of 'me' and back into God/Love.

It's a rather appropriate time of year to be taken back into Love. 'Love came down at Christmas...'

Happy Christmas x

The BIG Picture

I've had a couple of weeks of interesting reading and experiences. Sometimes I experience things, then find a context or paradigm in which to understand them, and sometimes I have a cognitive understanding of something but the experience comes later. Recent influences have been The Wisdom Jesus by Cynthia Bourgeault, Laurel Mellin's The Pathway, Genpo Roshi's Big Mind and the funeral of a close friend.

I've been musing in the past few weeks about the different ways of 'being' in the world. It seems I have two options for the way I operate. The first way is to operate from a point where 'I' am the starting point, and my 'story', my 'perspective', my 'beliefs' become paramount, and consequently define my feelings and actions. For example, if someone shouts at me I can respond by thinking something along the lines of: 'How dare you shout at me? What have I done? I don't deserve to be shouted at?' And so on. William Blake expresses the consequences of this approach neatly in his poem 'Poison Tree'. 

The point to note about this is that 'I' and 'Me' take centre stage'; it is about the preservation - at all costs - of ego. 

The other way is interesting, and in some senses counter-intuitive. It involves stepping back from self, and into a bigger picture. As I do this I begin to lose my 'story' of what is happening. The more I do it the smaller my 'story' becomes and the less-identified I become with it. As I step into the much bigger picture, at this point I become limited by my language. We could call this bigger picture God, or the Universe, or Christ Consciousness, or Enlightnement.....but I prefer to simply use the word Love...as that is what it feels like. It doesn't feel like a neutral state, a sort of taking out of gear, but a positive, energy-filled, aliveness of celebration and love. 

In this state the old dualistic way of experiencing life disappears....there is no 'me' and 'you' ...there is simply one-ness. Judgement and justification melt away.....

Having experienced this a few times, and noticed the way it changes everything in my perceptual world, I am intrigued by the ways in which I can move into the big picture increasingly easily, no matter what else is going on. My current entry points to this expanded state include prayer (ritual and silent), meditation (again my version of it involves nothing rather than focusing on something), conscious choice, active acceptance, music, chanting, sharing with others. 

It's a bit early for New Year's resolutions......but I think the BIG picture is one I want to cultivate in 2012!

SLAMMED!!!

We've been 'slammed'.

This is another new experience for me.....and one that is proving a mite challenging!

For those of you who haven't yet discovered what it is to be 'slammed', allow me to explain.

On Thursday all was well. Our phone worked and so did our internet connection. On Friday morning we got up, switched on our laptops to check e-mails, news, weather etc....but couldn't get a connection. This is not particularly unusual....but when all the usual tricks failed to work, I decided to ring our provider....and discovered too that the phone did not work either.

A series of phone calls from my partner and myself ( and ok...I admit his were more effective than mine) to the provider and other providers lead to the pronouncement that we had been 'slammed'. Another provider had taken ( I think of it as STOLEN!) our phone line, either inadvertently or deliberately. Apparently it's not uncommon. And apparently it could take up to two weeks to either repair the mistake or to find us a new line. In the meantime I'm becoming a rather familiar figure hunched over my laptop in Wetherspoons....enjoying their free wi-fi. Bless Wetherspoons.

I'm fascinated by the word 'slammed' and the effect it has on the users. Its connotations of violence, power, victim etc. So many of the words we use have an onomatopoiec effect on us. This is familiar NLP stuff...but when you come across a new word used in a new context it allows us to realise again the power that the words we use have upon ourselves, our family, our friends, our colleaguees, our clients, our students.

It has started me thinking of the words I want to be using instead. I like softer, nurturing, loving, empowering, enabling words (do these words in some way embody the sentiment they convey?).

Note to self: listen gently to the words I use when I'm talking to me.

And send loving thoughts to those s.........!

'WE ARE SAILING....'

Sailing. There are always so many things I learn from the times - not all that frequent! - when I sail.

The last time was last Sunday. My plan had been to spend the morning doing school prep, ready for going back on Monday. Yet when I woke, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. It seemed madness to stay in and work when we were heading into Autumn and this might well be one of only a few sunny days. It didn't take very much persuasion to lure my partner out onto the water....

We decided on a limited venture across from Mylor to Loe Beach to grab a cuppa at the cafe, then head back to Mylor. I'm always struck by the choosing of a point to set off towards. I love the focus on a point in the distance, maybe a clump of trees or a building, on the far shore. I love the fact that it's in the distance, but as we sail towards it it becomes closer. I love the fact that knowing our final destination, in this case Loe Beach, we have to set off in different directions in order to get to it - zigzagging our way forwards - changing our course as the wind direction changes, but always keeping in sight our end destination.

I know in my own life that having a destination, a vision is vital. Once I know where I'm going, then I can plan my course, changing it according to the winds that blow across my life.

When we arrived at Loe Beach we took the inflatable, affectionately named the 'plastic doughnut' and paddled to shore. Not without some difficulty, as the wind had become much stronger. We had a brief cuppa, then clambered back into the doughnut and back onto Tiddy Oggie.

Sailing back turned into a bit of a challenge. The winds were stronger and sea choppier than we had experienced on this boat. A reef was put in the sail, the main sheet was let out, and still we heeled in a way that felt less than comfortable! I was aware of the need for calm. When things become choppy a calm response means that one can make sensible, rational decisions. Panic -yes, I did a bit! - wasn't remotely helpful.

I've always found regarding life as a sailing adventure a really helpful metaphor. At the start of September and the beginning of the academic year, at  school it seems as if we are just setting sail. Ship ready? The destination? July - lessons learned, exam syllabuses taught, exams sat, productions produced, concerts given, games played, fun had.  All on board? Here we go again.....