Euan Semple's Blog, page 32

All you need is love

Over the years I have read round and around the subject of love, and the idea shared amongst all enlightened beings throughout history that our innate state is loving and peaceful. We deep down know this but we drive ourselves crazy by listening to the ego’s lie that we are fragile and separate, and in doing so destroy the planet and each other.

[If you’re interested my path has flowed from Buddhism, to Advaita, to Sydney Banks’ Three Principles, and now I even find myself fighting my way past the Christian terminology of A Course In Miracles]

I am working towards an answer and I’m getting closer to achieving my own peaceful world view. But time is running out.

We have a good friend who is the kindest, gentlest, most thoughtful person I know. I have never heard a harsh word from her and she listens with a focus and care that is disconcerting.

I used to think she didn’t grab life by the horns, and was in danger of being bypassed or overlooked. I used to frankly feel superior.

What a fool. What an utter fool. I now aspire to emulate her gentle strength and loving contribution to the world around her.

I may be too late to change, but I am determined to try.

The upside of being ill

Over the last few years I have become significantly better at shrugging off my Protestant background and it’s infamous work ethic, and am increasingly capable of spending days at a time doing not a lot.

Ironically though there is still work to be done shrugging it off entirely. I still have residual feelings of guilt, of letting people down, of not doing enough, of not trying hard enough, of not being good enough.

But then there is being ill. Culturally being ill is like having a get out of jail free card. You are allowed to do nothing, expected to do nothing, indeed praised for doing nothing.

That dropping away of expectations is such a release – but the moment that the insidious thought that you might just be feeling better appears the whole lot come rushing back to the fore!

Thank goodness my throat is still so sore that I am having trouble speaking. I’m off back to bed to enjoy the luxury of staring at the ceiling for a bit longer.

Organizations Don’t Tweet, People Do

It’s a small, very small, but not insignificant pleasure, after all these years, when I receive a royalty payment for my book.

Nurse Albert

Last night when I went to bed I had a really sore throat and was shivering badly with a fever.

Alby came into the room and was miaowing at me over and over in the way he usually does when he wants something. I was in no fit state to get up and tend to what I thought were his needs and I was beginning to get irritated.

But the next thing I know he has crawled under the duvet, walked the length of my body to my chest where he looked at me with big eyes, (which I am going to anthropomorphise and interpret as a look of concern), and then went and curled up, still under the duvet, behind my legs when I turned to lie on my side.

He stayed there until Penny moved him when she came to bed.

He never usually does this with me and we are convinced that he knew something was up and he’d come to look after me.

We don’t deserve animals.

Think again

Think Again

Beliefs dissembled have no further form.
Dissolved by clarity and shift,
They float away,
No use to those who used to hold them dear,
Nor those who never could.
They only leave a memory of a me
Who used to run in circles,
Tangled up by cords of thought
Which I’d crocheted into a web,
Until a string broke free
And pulled apart the meaning and the shape,
Leaving behind a chuckle
And a newer, lighter structure of belief
To be dissembled later.

Marilyn Wendler

Sometimes my phone can be cruel.

Penny and I were meant to be spending the weekend in the Brecon Beacons with friends.

I was also hoping to go to the Lake District with Dave Snowden this coming week.

I’m going nowhere and look at that weather!

Failed to dodge the bullet

Oh well. Penny and I tried to keep separate in the house since early in the week when she tested positive for Covid but…

Identity

Of all the made up stories we tell ourselves the one that causes most harm is the one about national identity.

It is a daft enough story on an island like Britain where the edge is where you meet water, but on the European mainland where a border is just a line on a map – and even more so in The Middle East where the border is an unnaturally straight line drawn by people from another part of the world altogether – it is madness.

To then pin our identity on such arbitrary concepts and fight wars because we have crossed those imaginary lines is tragic.

Now that we are able to choose what gender we identify as – why not go the whole hog and have pronouns for those of us who feel connected to the entire human race rather than someone else’s crazy idea of a sub-division of it?

Putin’s killing and destruction is so old fashioned.

For years I have been saying “Forget long, expensive and destructive wars. If you want to bring this country to its knees take out a few logistics mainframes and we’ll be fighting each other outside Tesco for food”.

It would appear that the same fragility of the modern supply chain, and a concerted economic front being presented by the rest of the world, is starting to make Putin’s macho tank convoys stuck in the mud look pathetically retro.

The next moment

The way the world should have been is a story.

The way it differs from this is also a story.

These stories are made up.

We don’t have to believe them or allow them to distort our lives.

All we can do is meet whatever, and whoever, is in front of us in the next moment with kindness.

And this includes ourselves.