Nimue Brown's Blog, page 423

A life in objects

I’ve moved home a few times in the last few years, and have another move ahead, confident that won’t be my final destination either. Despite having craved stability all my life, I don’t find that a static living arrangement gives me any particular sense of security. What matters, is the people I’m with, the wider community, and having the means to make changes when I need to.

The process of moving invariably requires me to go through all of my stuff, working out what no longer has relevance, what doesn’t fit any more, or has been grown out of. As a child, this kind of thing happened perhaps twice a year in response to both my mind and body growing. As an adult, it’s all too easy to settle into a rut, surrounded by stuff.

Everything I own came from somewhere, and carries stories and associations. Giving up the object can be a help in relinquishing an unwanted bit of history, and I’ve found that therapeutic. Letting go of clothes I never much liked, and slowly replacing them with things I do like. The simple recognition that I am not obliged to keep any of it, is wonderful.

One of the big and difficult ones for me has been my grandmother’s piano. The instrument is over a hundred years old now, and was bought for my Gran when she was about 11. My brother and I both learned to play on it. The boy used it to teach himself to read music a couple of summers ago. It featured at parties, on the back of a procession float, it has travelled widely and I’ve cried into its keys on a few occasions. Kittens and mice have explored its inner working, but not at the same time. It is full of stories. It’s also rather large, impossible to shift around without a professional, too big for the boat. I couldn’t let it go – my grandmother’s piano that she wanted my son to have access to. I’m letting it go. My mother is taking it in, and I shall do without a piano. I used to be a decent player, but time without access has weakened my hands too far and it would take years of really hard work to get that back. I’m not going to put in the time and may as well be honest about it.

Objects can become so infused with our care, so much a part of life that they are part of us. My violin, the bear I had from childhood, and other small items that connect me to myself and my past. Objects can also own us, taking over our spaces and lives such that we cannot move for them.

Henceforth, I am not going to own anything that I cannot carry, or otherwise shunt. I’m not going to own anything I don’t use, or hang on to things because of historical attachments. I own less all the time, and the more I let go of, the better I feel about it. A few of the right things, carefully chosen, are far more worth having than a heap of stuff. I’m paring my wardrobe back to a minimal collection of things I want and use. Why own more? Realising how little I need is an on-going adventure, and one I increasingly delight in.

Elements and Harmony

Quite a lot of Druids work with the idea of four elements, corresponding to four directions in ritual. These can also be correlated with aspects of the self. Understandings may vary, but I was given… Earth/North/body, Air/East/mind, Fire/South/energy and Water/West/emotion. Honouring the four directions in ritual encourages us to look not only at the human aspect, but how each element is present within us.

Most of us will have more of some elements and less of others. I am both fearful of fire, and someone who struggles with energy levels. I’m not bipolar, but I do oscillate between intense energy highs and fatigue. Some of this is due to my lack of ability, and often my unwillingness, to manage my energy. I’ll run hard to get something done, and then fall over. But, at least I know. I don’t have a great relationship with my body, either, so there I am on that north-south axis, knowing I have a lot of work to do.

I’m much stronger on the east-west axis and this is also where I prefer to be in ritual. Air and water. River and sky. I’m a thinking person and also deeply emotional and there’s never been any conflict between the two for me. This is where I am at my most comfortable and confident.

After a bit of consideration, anyone can figure out where in that circle of correspondences, they most naturally sit, and where some attention may be needed. Druidry does not demand that we are all balanced in the same way, but it does pay to understand what kind of person you are, and where your life may need attention. The things we do not want to tackle are often the ones we most need to sort out.

As well as those cardinal points and their opposites, we can think about transitions. North East is where air and earth meet. A hilltop perhaps? The physical structure of the central nervous system. South East is air and fire. Well, you can’t have much of a fire without air. Mind and energy. I might place awen here. South west, fire and water. That may extinguish, but it also means steam, steamy. Emotion and energy. Sex, for me, lives in the south west. (Coincidentally, I live in the south west of the UK.) North west, water and land, this is the mud of the river’s edge. Emotion and body, this is the chemical process of oxytocin and endorphin and all those other glands and chemicals making my emotions flow.

You may have a different story to tell, tapping into whatever language or imagery you find resonant. There’s no ultimate right answer to making correspondences, just a case of mapping experience onto an idea to see if anything useful pops out.

The circle of correspondence also shows us that no aspect of the self is separate from any other. No aspect of the world is separate. All are part of bigger systems, each whole can be diminished into parts if that helps us understand it better.

Insanity mathematics

When you want to expand a business, you invest, and do something new, or do more of something you had established was working. Your put profits back in, to pay for development, or you borrow some money against anticipated future returns. No one attempts to grow a company by taking money out of it, cutting staff, and doing less. No one sane, at any rate. Sure, you might do a bit of economising now and then, efficiency drives are good, but in a company that is, and will be thriving, the economy drive is there to free up time and resources for more productive things. You don’t just cut back and assume that will achieve something all by itself.

I’m not an accountant, or an economist, I have a GCSE in maths. I have worked as a self-employed person for a lot of years now and I know a lot of others who do the same. I’ve seen the working end of a number of businesses and I pay attention to things. No company grows by cutting back on everything. Maybe some strategic cutting back, but nothing more. Companies grow on investment, of time, money, ideas. I’ve talked before about working more effectively by doing less and picking carefully. That’s a strategy. It’s about using my resources to maximum effect to get the best return I can. All businesses do that sort of thing.

Here in the UK, we’re still in recession. Austerity has not delivered a reduction of national debt. There is a lot of poverty out there, a lot of unemployment, a lot of punishing the poor. The government were explicit in their assumption that if they cut public sector funding and jobs, the private sector would just magically fill the breach, do the work, hire the workers. Using all those magic spells and supernatural powers we in the private sector are known to possess. Sorry Mr Osborn, but economics don’t even work that way in Harry Potter stories. Of course it hasn’t happened, because to expand a private sector you need to invest.

We’ve been taking money out of higher education and research, which we could have invested in, to encourage the private sector. We’ve missed out on much of the potential for growth in new green technologies. The government could have led the way there. Much noise has been made about infrastructure, but no action. Do we need high speed trains? Not really. We could really use a bus network capable of getting people to and from jobs affordably, and delivering customers to our ailing high streets. We could use everyone being on broadband to stimulate the online economy. No government input there. We could use not having VAT on ebooks, crippling British writers and publishers. Our publishing industry is one of the few areas growing, not shrinking, you’d think a helping hand to keep that going would be an obvious call to make. How about investing in us as a cultural and tourism destination? No, we’re taking money out of the arts industries as well. How about supporting our valuable film industry? No.

The lunatics in power seem to believe that you can grow a country, and economy by taking money out of it. Your average five year old could work out there’s something wrong with the maths here. Mind you, if Mr Gove gets his way, we probably won’t have to worry for much longer about our five year olds being better trained to think than our politicians.

We could be investing in the good stuff: Green technology, creative industry, scientific research, and innovation. We could treat our people as a valuable resource, not as scroungers. We could be a great country to live in. The epic failure of courage and imagination is depressing, and I am heartily sick of being told this is the only way. There always were other ways.

Of Order and Druids

I gather that for some people, the apparent orderliness of Druidry is rather off-putting. We may look a tad organised from the outside. Collecting ourselves into something called ‘Orders’, the whiter than white robes (other nature worshippers used band x…) the going around being all intellectual. For those looking in from the outside, Druidry does not suggest chaos.

And yet, Orders beget Groves. Groves of trees are not the most orderly of things. Nature offers us an interesting mixture of apparent order and apparent chaos, and it’s not always easy to tell one form the other, with all due reference to Fibonacci.

Some structure is useful. Some framework for the vine to clamber over. Soil has structure. Wood has structure. It is structure that allows life to function in all its many forms. With too much chaos, mostly what you get is a sloppy wet mess that isn’t going anywhere. But at the same time, too much structure starts to look like crystalline forms, rock strata… there’s something glacial about too much structure. If you get too organised, what results is not moving or growing, because movement and growth are invariably a wee bit chaotic.

I come back to the issue of balance a lot. I think it’s a key part of Druidry. One part of our tradition belongs very much to culture, order, law, civilization and reason. The other part belongs to the wilderness, the wildness of inspiration, the ever changing tides of growth and decay. We need both, and we need to be both. The order in our Druidry needs to be there as a sturdy frame off which to grow the gorgeous rambling roses that are the other part of our Druidry. You get the best wild roses where they have something to hold them up. You get the best icicles where they have something to grow on.

Order, discipline and structure are terms that have become anathema to the more liberal minded. The cry for freedom, ease, and chillaxing doesn’t leave a lot of desire for making a solid framework. And yet we plug ourselves in to all kinds of social frameworks and structures without a moment’s thought. The 9-5 job, school, cultural norms, fashion… these are also frames we can grow ourselves around. Do they liberate us to grow to the best of our ability, or do they restrict us? The frameworks we need are the ones that help. Like the frame of a tent, which won’t otherwise stand up. Like the bones in our body, that give us strength and enable movement.

Although I still think we’re long overdue a Druid Chaos, to balance the Orders up a bit.

The urge to be elfin

Comments on my recent ‘stuff going on in my life’ blog queried why it is that I want to be thin. A valid point and worthy of a ponder. I’ve spent my entire life considering myself to be overweight, and wanting to be thinner than I am. Photographic evidence suggests my child self was not as obese as I then believed myself to be. Post having a baby, I was quite large. In my teens I was certainly buxom, and at the moment I’m the smallest I’ve ever been as an adult. A few years ago I would have said I stood no chance of being this thin, and wouldn’t aspire to be thinner, and yet here I am, and still too big, by some elusive measure.

I absorbed very early on the simple message that only very thin people can be attractive. Super-waifs were fashionable and I longed to be visually appealing. So much pressure is put on girls to be attractive – not good, or clever, virtuous, kind or pretty, just thinly beautiful. I was ‘funny looking’ and too fat, from as far back as I could remember. I couldn’t fix my face, but in theory I could be thin…

The funny thing is that I’m perfectly capable of finding women who are not bone thin, visually attractive. I like curves, when I’m looking at other women. I admire feminine figures. Not my own body, though.

I’ve noticed a thing with weight loss… the idea of lose some pounds every week. There’s no end point, no sense that it should stop when you get to the right place. The kudos is for losing, week after week, even though if you did that forever, you would die. None the less, the concept of getting thinner, as something I should always be doing, is hard to shake off. No matter what clothes size I am, it never seems small enough and the reflection in the mirror looks podgy like a suet pudding.

Intellectually, I know that I am thinner than I have ever been, that bone-thin is not something I find attractive in others, nor is it healthy, but the impulse simply has not gone away. The only bit I found resonant in the otherwise tedious Bridget Jones’s Diary, was her observation that she had always imagined the ideal was to consume no calories at all, to somehow exist without eating. Irrational, troubling, wholly familiar.

It’s been drilled into me from so many sources and for so many years, that this particular demon will take some silencing.

The trouble is that I wanted to be an elf, a willowy fey creature, a nymph, a dryad… something delicate looking and romantic. I have always been solidly built, tall, robust looking such that people are quick to assume that I am all of those things, and emotionally robust as well. I do not look like a delicate little flower, ergo I do not need to be treated like one. There are times when looking like a fragile orchid might have elicited more helpful responses. People see, and make judgements, and I’ve dealt with that all my life. I’m a big girl, I shouldn’t be making a fuss. Smaller, more innately feminine and delicate girls have seemed, from my jaundiced perspective, to get cut a lot more slack. I wanted some of that.

On the other hand it makes me furious, this culturally ingrained idea that in women, only small is beautiful. The less space you occupy, the better. Appetites of any kind are unladylike, and vulgar. Ghosts of the Victorian parlour haunt us yet, with their eighteen inch waists and fainting fits. Half-starved models and actresses modified by surgery. Air brushed pop stars. Disney Princesses with their wasp waists and nice dresses. I know where these ideas come from, but they got in early, and there isn’t much to counter them with.

I spent a lot of years thinking that, if only I was thin enough, I would be loveable. Finding someone who loves me as I am has been a revelation, but there’s a lot of history to this one. I suspect I’m not alone in these experiences. Encountering tales of what other young women endured in order to be thin, and thire fear of weight, have made me realise that no one gets to win with this. The thin girls aren’t happy either, and they see fat girls in the mirror too. There’s an enormous wrong around how we portray ideal femininity, and I’m afraid the Pagan community is as rife with it as any other. Take a look at our representation of goddesses. Waifs predominate. Young, fashionable waifs, often scantily clad. I’d like to live in a world in which the ideal feminine is not profoundly unnatural.

Druidry and relationship

Part of the process of becoming a Druid is recognising that we have a relationship with everything. It can be a bit mind boggling to start with; ‘everything’ being difficult to think about. We tend to be conscious of some of our human relationships, but not all of them. Working with the elements is one way of starting to consider what our relationships with the wider world, are. Just recognising relationships takes us forward, and being conscious, we can do a better job of them.

Thinking about the earth, we can consider food and bodily waste, the land we live on, the landscapes we move through. What relationships do we have with those? How could we improve that? What is our relationship with rain, the water we drink, the polluted oceans and endangered sea life? How could we have a better relationship with water? Think about the essential air we breathe, and the pollutants we put into the atmosphere. Again, how can we improve? What about fire? The sun, the energy we consume, how are we doing on that score?

It’s a daunting prospect to rethink your whole life in these terms. Start small. Pick a change you can make. Recycling is easy. A bit more walking, a bit less driving, perhaps. Plant a tree, change your cleaning products. Once you feel confident in those changes, look around for another one that doesn’t seem to tricky, and do that thing. Step by step you change your relationship with the planet, and you become more aware of how your life is part of the same web as all other life. You are part of nature, too.

Human relationships inform a lot of the bad environmental choices we make. Pressures to earn, travel for work, consume, own, demonstrate wealth – in doing these things we perpetuate poor relationship with the planet, and those people around us. How much of what we do comes from unreasonable workplace demands, unsympathetic family, judgemental peers? That need to have status, to impress people, can put us under a lot of pressure. Making a lifestyle change to honour nature can bring human relationships into critical focus. Why am I working all these hours to pay for all these things that are destroying the planet? Could I do something else?

If we are unkind to the humans around us, if we dominate them, push them around, take from them, use them… what kind of relationship can we hope to have with anything else? And if, (as I suspect is more likely for a proto-Druid) we are on the receiving end, trying to do the right thing in face of the unreasonable, how can we make that work? The bullying boss, the demanding family member, the snide remarks from a neighbour, the pressure to give our kid what ‘everyone else’ apparently has… how can we have a good relationship there? In my experience, challenging the unreasonable outright does not tend to resolve much. The demanding and bullying ones do not like being wrong, and will feel threatened, angry and will dig in.

How can I have an honourable relationship with nature, if I cannot honour the nature in myself with a sufficiency of sleep? I should have started asking that one a decade ago.

Good relationship, on the other hand, is a joy. Supportive, nurturing, encouraging connections help us to experiment with life, cheer us on when we try new things, mop us up when we fail. Good human relationships enable us to live lightly. A good friend won’t judge you for not wearing the latest fashions, won’t laugh at you for not wanting a faster car. A good friend accepts you, and may well join you in a quest to do differently. Where there is mockery, discourtesy and unkindness, there is no kind of friendship at all. If stepping onto the Druid path reveals some less than lovely things about the people around you, that can really hurt. It may also be a necessary learning experience. It is better to know. In seeking good relationship, you can and will find good people to relate to, and better, happier, more rewarding ways of being.

Learning to live

I’m actually feeling rather pleased with myself. Yesterday I spotted the signs of impending crash, and I stepped back, rested, calmed my panicky body. Today I am tired and moving slowly, but am not being crushed to death by depression or shredded by anxiety. This is the first time I’ve both recognised the danger and managed to avert it. I’m aiming to make a habit of this, as it will radically improve the quality of my life, and keep my activities sustainable.

There have been lots of lessons this week. The only answer to fear is to face it, and keep facing it until it has been beaten into submission. Sometimes this results in me getting a further kicking, but just surviving that means something. Every pasting endured is proof of my ability to keep going, and that is enough. Often, just not being totally defeated is all it takes. So long as I can keep going, there is hope. I’ve faced fear repeatedly this week. Yesterday I gave up and took a break, today I was back in there, and it does look like there are whispers of progress on The Canal & River Trust front.

I’ve watched a number of bold ladies on facebook doing amazing things with their diets, fitness activities and lifestyles, and shedding the pounds. My bloke is also making noises that way, although he’s far slimmer than I am. I cycle three miles most days, sometimes more, I get odd days off, I have a passably healthy diet and am smaller than I was a few years ago, but not the shape I want to be. A part of me reads the facebook updates of slimming success and wants to radically cut back on calories and push my body to more activity. The trouble is, I know from bitter experience that leads to chronic physical pain and the kinds of energy lows that put me on the floor and keep me there. I feel like I’m being lazy, letting myself off the hook, but at the same time, I’m learning to listen to the voice of experience. If I tried to lose 8 pounds in a week, I would not be able to do anything. I can be thin, or I can be functional but right now I can’t manage both. I have to settle for the slow size reduction that goes with being functional.

I’ve been reminded of the importance of feeling part of something bigger than me, a place to belong, a community to be part of. Warmth and support from other people has made so much odds. I’ve been reminded also of how important it is not to internalise powerlessness, not to believe those people who have a vested interest in convincing you that you cannot make a difference. I look at the power of people united around causes (The 38 degrees folk are amazing) and I feel hope. There is always hope.

There are so many balances to find – quiet time and busy time, ease and challenge, rest and activity, time to think and time when no thought is called for. I find myself drawn to extremes in all kinds of things, and needing the balance of opposites to keep life viable. There is much to learn.

Solstice time

I will admit to not seeing in the dawn. I woke at seven with the alarm clock, with a body that hurts and no energy at all. This did not come as a great surprise to me, such that I had not made any solstice arrangements. This used to be one of the festivals I went to considerable effort to celebrate, with trips to Stonehenge, overnight vigils, dawn celebrations and so forth.

I can’t do it this year. My body simply isn’t going to take more abuse and I can feel the creeping warning signs of depression and exhaustion. Other people have greeted the sun today, I am not needed, I feel, and Druidry is not about martyrdom.

I’ve got a hard fight on my hands right now, one that I’ve been caught up in for years, but have finally got some movement on. You may have seen yesterday’s post about how charity should be charitable. If not, please do swing over and read that one, it’s important.

The trouble with fighting, as I’ve said before, is the fear of being hit harder and suffering more as a consequence. It may be that some of what has happened to me recently is as a direct consequence of putting in a complaint about the atrocious driving of the patrol boat. As ours seems to be the only boat round here hit by the latest insanity – a demand that we sit on our mooring, for which I can see no legal basis, I have to wonder if this is an attempt at harassment. I’ve heard stories about Canal & River Trust staff, back in the days when they were British Waterways, coming out to threaten protesting boaters in person. That may, of course, be hearsay and I have no direct evidence. But at the same time, the local enforcement officer has made sure everyone knows he’s ex-military, and (again, I only have this second hand) “here to sort us out” so I am nervous that he might turn up in person and that some serious stress awaits me. I find him intimidating.

On twitter, @canalrivertrust told me yesterday that they do not want to make anyone homeless, which I pointed out rather begs the question of why they go round threatening boaters with just that thing. Apparently someone is going to contact me. I’ve not checked my email yet, I do not think I can handle it today without getting ill. Anxiety is a ravaging sort of ailment and this pushes all the buttons. I won’t meet up in person to ‘chat’ though, I need written evidence so that I can put it in the public domain. I’m not looking for a deal that gets them off my back, I want justice for all boaters, and freedom from harassment for all boaters.

Others online have asked why I don’t take this to the Charity Commission, whose job, supposedly, is to monitor and police charities. I have done this, and so have others. Complaints are dismissed either because they do not consider it their place to involve themselves in disputes between boaters and CRT, or because (second hand here) they don’t see any conflict between making people homeless, and charity law. They certainly don’t have any problem with the idea that a charity has attempted to pressure me to act illegally. Nice one. That gives me so much faith in the Charity Commission, that frankly, I could weep.

And so for midsummer I offer tears, sweat and panic to the gods of justice, trying to fight a whole system that has been set up in inherently crooked and unreasonable ways.

What is charity?

Legally speaking, a charity should be all about providing public benefit. Usually this means raising funds to do things that need doing, but cannot be paid for in more commercial ways – medical research, environmental protection, famine relief… we know perfectly well what charity is supposed to look like. I gather there’s a growing scandal in the USA around how little public money donated to charities finds its way to where it is needed. If you’re aware of this and want to add details in the comments, do pile in. I think it is important to publicise this kind of thing and to know how our money is used.

How much money should a charity pay people to work for it? Many charities have employees and could not possibly run with just volunteers. I think, for example, of the nearby Wildfowl and Wetland Trust, which needs experts and a lot of person hours to function. I take no issue with them paying people who do vital work. I don’t think most of us would object to paying people to get the job done. However, if most of the money seems to be paying for something other than getting the job done, I think it’s fair to ask questions.

I think we are entitled to expect charities to uphold the law in all ways. That seems like a fair ask. No charity should exist to benefit the powerful and affluent at the expense of the poor and vulnerable. I also think that charities should be entirely transparent about how they spend the money they are asking people to give them.

So here’s a thing. Over at canalrivertrust.org.uk it says this “Every penny you donate will be spent directly on work to conserve, restore and enhance your canals and rivers – and to educate people about them”. (It’s on the donate page, if you want to check.)

What it doesn’t say, is that this ‘charity’ has an enforcement department. That’s a whole team of people who are paid, not voluntary, and whose job it is to monitor the movement of boats. The enforcement department is paid to write letters (employee time plus postage costs here) that pressure boaters who live on their boats into taking moorings (CRT owns many moorings, there is a financial benefit to them in doing this). The enforcement department routinely threatens people who have no mooring, with homelessness. You can legally have a boat and not have a mooring. This department is a legacy from their time as a government outfit, but I question what a charity is doing even having an enforcement department in the first place.

The website does not say “some of the money you will donate will be used to pay for threatening letters to be sent to boaters, and if we take people to court, we’ll use your money to pay for that, too.” They do take people to court, incidentally.

Do we feel comfortable with the idea of donating to a charity that could use that money to take a person’s home from them? In what way does making a person homeless constitute public benefit? They say it is to protect the canal, but boats that sink are left on the bottom, apparently less dangerous than one that has not PAID THEM to have a mooring. Isn’t that interesting?

If you want to take this up with them directly, @canalrivertrust on twitter, or consider swinging round to this site – http://you.38degrees.org.uk/petitions/charity-should-be-charitable

In the meantime, if you are aware of any other uncharitable charities that need bringing to public awareness, do mention them in the comments. Name and shame.

A free mind

Guest blog by Tiziana Stupia

‘Often, the search for meaning does start with a sense of restlessness, which can carry us all over the world. But sooner or later every serious student of life sets aside passport and visas and settles down to look within.’ — Eknath Easwaran

This morning, I read a chapter by the great Swami Satyananda Saraswati, in which he talks about what having a free mind means. ‘The mind remains free whether you live amidst pleasure or pain, wealth or poverty, young people or old. The mind must not identify itself with the external circumstances and think, ‘I am poor’, ‘I am rich’, ‘I am in pain’ or ‘I am very unfortunate’. As sannyasins, we live a life of poverty by choice. Why? Because our minds must be free. Wealth, name, fame, passion, all these things hold down this great energy of man. We are trying to simplify our lives on the physical, mental and emotional planes so the mind will remain free. If we can keep the mind free, awakening will take place automatically, even without any sadhana.’

This is a subject close to my heart, especially now, having just returned from India. India is always transformational on many levels. In the last few months, I have been contemplating the real meaning of freedom.

Freedom, like most other things, is a journey. When I was younger, I thought that freedom meant financial independence and the freedom to do what I wanted. Doing only work I am passionate about. So I went forth and did just that – I founded a record label in my early twenties and became successful beyond my wildest dreams. I bought a beautiful house, a nice car, expensive clothes, flew business class, and I had a certain ‘name and fame’. I admit, it was a great time, being barely twenty-five. But slowly, or perhaps not so slowly, dissatisfaction crept in. A certain emptiness. Was this really freedom, to be able to buy what I wanted, to have ‘made it’? The uncomfortable feeling increased, and by the time I was twenty-seven, I was clear: this wasn’t it. I couldn’t live like this anymore. This wasn’t freedom: I felt imprisoned, in a golden cage of my own making. To the disbelief of many people, I closed down my company at the height of its success, took a year out and then enrolled at university to study psychology.

Fast forward seven years from there. I’d sold my house, downsized greatly, and was living a much more satisfying life. I wasn’t earning much, but felt fulfilled doing projects I loved. I worked part-time as a spiritual advisor in prisons, performed pagan rituals in the community, and worked on creative projects. Admittedly, this was facilitated by the money I made with the record label and which I had invested wisely. And yet, still, I did not feel free. I still had rent and bills to pay, shopping to do, a car to maintain, appointments to keep and so on. So though my life was more pleasant because I was actually doing what I loved, I felt shackled. So I decided to take it a step further. I sold my car, gave up my apartment, gave away most of my possessions and decided to travel the world by train. Perhaps this would give me the sense of freedom I craved.

At first, it really did. Sitting on the different trains crossing continents, I felt free as a bird. No appointments, no schedules, no bills. Just me, my backpack and the ever-changing landscapes of Siberia, China, Tibet, Nepal, Pakistan and India. Being so high up in the Himalayas added to the freedom I felt in my heart.

This was five years ago. I have not settled down again since, living in different countries and still moving around a lot, though at a much slower pace. Lately, however, freedom has taken on a very different meaning for me. Yes, it’s great to have (relative) financial independence, to be able to travel, to do work that I like and not be answerable to a boss. It’s what many people aspire to, and I was blessed enough to experience all this early on in life. For this I will always be grateful. But what has come into the forefront for me now is something very different. Freedom of the mind, freedom of our conditioning, our likes and dislikes that really imprison us, whether we are aware of it or not. This has been inspired by my love and practice of yoga and meditation (a result of my travels to the East). I started to realize that actually, I am not free at all. As long as my mind does its own thing, as long as I am influenced by my early childhood conditioning, by anger, by things my society or parents or friends deem as ‘acceptable’, as long as I react in ways that are not fully autonomous, I am still a prisoner. Making autonomous choices is key: choices that comes from my inner being, my soul, choices that are not my mother’s or my father’s or my grandmother’s, or heck, my neighbour’s choices. As long as I am driven by anything, be that insecurity or hunger for recognition or ambition or an old chip on my shoulder, I am not free.

Seeing this so clearly has been a revelation. It has put everything else in the background. It doesn’t mean that I can’t travel or do what I enjoy. But it has made those things optional. What we have to liberate and purify is our mind that is so full of unconscious patterns and conditionings. Then we can truly be free. We can be in any situation, good or bad, we can be rich or poor, cold or hot – whatever. But we will be at peace. Right now, most of us hanker after pleasure and run from pain. This is what all our actions lead towards. This may be fleetingly satisfying, but it doesn’t bring us true freedom and peace. True freedom is a state of non-duality, of being at peace with all there is at any moment.

How to achieve this? Meditation and yoga are a good way to start. At the very least, meditation gives us an experience of being in the moment and of watching ourselves. It slowly removes our veil of ignorance and helps us to see things as they truly are. We begin to wake up from the dream. We begin to see that there is more to life than what we perceive with the five senses and that there is a deeper purpose to it all. And: meditation shows us that we have a choice. We have a choice to not react and we can learn to control our minds and emotions through purifying the mind. And this, in my view, is true freedom.

If you are interested in yoga and meditation, I can recommend Satyananda Yoga at http://www.yogavision.net/and Vipassana Meditationat http://www.dhamma.org/

Tiziana’s book, Meeting Shiva: Falling and Rising in Love in the Indian Himalayas is available here –

Meeting Shiva: Falling and Rising in Love in the Indian Himalayas