Sue Vincent's Blog: Echoes of Life, page 1059
February 9, 2013
Stuffing Nemo
It wasn’t forecast snow today, so I regarded the heavy white flakes falling doggedly to earth as simply adding insult to injury as I faced the morning without my customary coffee. Not so much ‘out of coffee’ as ‘not allowed’. Which in itself is a horrific thing to inflict on any woman. The combination of waking and caffeine deprivation is not a good one. Particularly when a further two mornings minus my customary beverage must be faced and loom darkly over my weekend.
And I’m sorry, regardless of the suggestion on the paperwork, weak black tea is anathema to this Yorkshire lass. Unless it is the colour of mahogany, with enough milk and sugar to sustain a small army, you can keep it. Adding snow into the equation too was just plain mean.
Ani, meanwhile, with unconscious irony , is casually disembowelling Nemo, and is perched as usual in the inevitable open doorway while I freeze. She is eyeing the white stuff with expectation and a tongue lolling with delight. Sadly she will be disappointed this time. I, like Nemo, am going nowhere.
There will be no hours spent frolicking with her in its scintillating purity this weekend. No wandering through magical woodlands or the wide spaces of the manor grounds. Nope. I am not leaving the house.
Why am I being so uncharacteristically antisocial, you may ask? When the snowflakes are falling the size sherbet lemons and the dog so excited? Is the mere lack of coffee, of itself, such an impediment to joy? Does it have anything to do with a dear friend posting that pic about the stuff on Facebook last night…? Or the utterly delicious virtual breakfast that was emailed, including all my most favourite things? These beloved people are, I might add, at sufficient distance to ensure, at least, some modicum of impunity… for now. I had to chuckle though as another friend chose this morning to send me an article on preparing for death. I have some truly wonderful people in my life. And oddly, I mean that. I would much rather have the gift of their torments and laughter than anything else.
No. It has to do with the preparations for a hospital visit Monday morning that include serial fasting, gallons of water and a bottle of what I can only, for the sake of what is left of my ever diminishing dignity, describe as industrial strength drain cleaner. This I shall shortly be obliged to swallow.
It is not as if I can generally eat much to begin with these days. In fact the problem that they are looking at, with a scanner and the prospect of flashing blades, has had among its effects the reinstatement of a waistline of dimensions not seen for many years and my visual re-acquaintance with my ribcage.
I, of course, choose see the waistline as a silver lining. There always is one. Somewhere.
I am incredibly and joyously busy. My body, however, has a mind of its own and keeps reminding me that it is not as well as I am and has a small but effective arsenal of unpleasant ways to do so.
When these kick in at the vulnerable times, the sleepless moments of solitude, it is sometimes inevitable that the ‘what ifs’ creep in too. There are these gremlins in all our closets sometimes, I think, and unanswered health questions can raise the ones about mortality too. I could, of course, brush them aside and ignore them. But you may have noticed I don’t care for stuff lurking unseen so I stubbornly haul them out and have a look.
Am I afraid of death? No. Never have been. It seems no different from birth to me… the other side of the coin, a simple, natural and inevitable change of state. Every birth holds its own death. I do not fear the surrender of the ego, the dive into the unknown of who ‘I’ might be when I am no more. If I am completely wrong in my beliefs then there will be oblivion and ‘I’ will not be and so will not know. If I am right then what comes will be what should. Something will survive the transition, and that will be what is right and natural. It will not matter if I got the detail right from here, regardless of my convictions, for whatever remains will be there. I do not worry about who I will be tomorrow, only be the best I can be now.
Like most people, I think, only the manner of death concerns me. And the timing. I’m not finished with this little body yet, thank you. But I am not prepared to idly speculate and be like the chap in the story who read the medical book, ending up believing himself victim to everything except housemaid’s knee. I am no believer in dwelling on negative uncertainties. They can make their presence felt and niggle away in the early hours if they really must, but I choose to focus on the positive outcomes, having duly considered the varying possibilities and consigned them to Hades.
Regret always comes up with the question of mortality, I suppose. Do I have any? Really? Oh I still have a long list of to-do and to-see that is beautifully incomplete. I don’t regret that incompleteness… I’d have nothing to look forward to and work for without it, now would I? I like the fact that the story is unfinished and the possibilities open wide. And I certainly have no regrets for life so far… it has taught me a great deal. It is crammed with experience, with laughter and tears, friendships and adventures, love and loss… it is rich and vivid, a life full of Life. The only regrets I have are for hurts I have caused, and yet…even those are part of the continuing learning curve. I cannot change the past, only be in the present and welcome the future. So, no. I have no regrets, only hopes, dreams and joy at the wonders still to come.
So right now, as a kindred spirit and eternal optimist, and as the damnable medications kick in, I intend to re-stuff Nemo.
And I’m sorry, regardless of the suggestion on the paperwork, weak black tea is anathema to this Yorkshire lass. Unless it is the colour of mahogany, with enough milk and sugar to sustain a small army, you can keep it. Adding snow into the equation too was just plain mean.
Ani, meanwhile, with unconscious irony , is casually disembowelling Nemo, and is perched as usual in the inevitable open doorway while I freeze. She is eyeing the white stuff with expectation and a tongue lolling with delight. Sadly she will be disappointed this time. I, like Nemo, am going nowhere.
There will be no hours spent frolicking with her in its scintillating purity this weekend. No wandering through magical woodlands or the wide spaces of the manor grounds. Nope. I am not leaving the house.
Why am I being so uncharacteristically antisocial, you may ask? When the snowflakes are falling the size sherbet lemons and the dog so excited? Is the mere lack of coffee, of itself, such an impediment to joy? Does it have anything to do with a dear friend posting that pic about the stuff on Facebook last night…? Or the utterly delicious virtual breakfast that was emailed, including all my most favourite things? These beloved people are, I might add, at sufficient distance to ensure, at least, some modicum of impunity… for now. I had to chuckle though as another friend chose this morning to send me an article on preparing for death. I have some truly wonderful people in my life. And oddly, I mean that. I would much rather have the gift of their torments and laughter than anything else.
No. It has to do with the preparations for a hospital visit Monday morning that include serial fasting, gallons of water and a bottle of what I can only, for the sake of what is left of my ever diminishing dignity, describe as industrial strength drain cleaner. This I shall shortly be obliged to swallow.
It is not as if I can generally eat much to begin with these days. In fact the problem that they are looking at, with a scanner and the prospect of flashing blades, has had among its effects the reinstatement of a waistline of dimensions not seen for many years and my visual re-acquaintance with my ribcage.
I, of course, choose see the waistline as a silver lining. There always is one. Somewhere.
I am incredibly and joyously busy. My body, however, has a mind of its own and keeps reminding me that it is not as well as I am and has a small but effective arsenal of unpleasant ways to do so.
When these kick in at the vulnerable times, the sleepless moments of solitude, it is sometimes inevitable that the ‘what ifs’ creep in too. There are these gremlins in all our closets sometimes, I think, and unanswered health questions can raise the ones about mortality too. I could, of course, brush them aside and ignore them. But you may have noticed I don’t care for stuff lurking unseen so I stubbornly haul them out and have a look.
Am I afraid of death? No. Never have been. It seems no different from birth to me… the other side of the coin, a simple, natural and inevitable change of state. Every birth holds its own death. I do not fear the surrender of the ego, the dive into the unknown of who ‘I’ might be when I am no more. If I am completely wrong in my beliefs then there will be oblivion and ‘I’ will not be and so will not know. If I am right then what comes will be what should. Something will survive the transition, and that will be what is right and natural. It will not matter if I got the detail right from here, regardless of my convictions, for whatever remains will be there. I do not worry about who I will be tomorrow, only be the best I can be now.
Like most people, I think, only the manner of death concerns me. And the timing. I’m not finished with this little body yet, thank you. But I am not prepared to idly speculate and be like the chap in the story who read the medical book, ending up believing himself victim to everything except housemaid’s knee. I am no believer in dwelling on negative uncertainties. They can make their presence felt and niggle away in the early hours if they really must, but I choose to focus on the positive outcomes, having duly considered the varying possibilities and consigned them to Hades.
Regret always comes up with the question of mortality, I suppose. Do I have any? Really? Oh I still have a long list of to-do and to-see that is beautifully incomplete. I don’t regret that incompleteness… I’d have nothing to look forward to and work for without it, now would I? I like the fact that the story is unfinished and the possibilities open wide. And I certainly have no regrets for life so far… it has taught me a great deal. It is crammed with experience, with laughter and tears, friendships and adventures, love and loss… it is rich and vivid, a life full of Life. The only regrets I have are for hurts I have caused, and yet…even those are part of the continuing learning curve. I cannot change the past, only be in the present and welcome the future. So, no. I have no regrets, only hopes, dreams and joy at the wonders still to come.
So right now, as a kindred spirit and eternal optimist, and as the damnable medications kick in, I intend to re-stuff Nemo.
February 8, 2013
Work in progress
There are people who come and go in our lives, some who may seem all important for a while, yet fade away to nothingness, some who creep in almost unnoticed and take up residence in the heart and soul, kicking off their shoes and sharing the comfort of their soul’s fireside, some who resemble the flames of the fire itself, bringing an incandescent spark of Light into your life.
With these the distance that may lie in between does not matter. Heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul the communication is whole, sincere and true. And with a rare few that sharing reaches a very deep level and wanders down some very strange pathways indeed from time to time.
Of course, discussions like this tend to be punctuated by much laughter and silliness, peppered with a fair amount of ribaldry and naughtiness too. It is an odd thing, but a true one, that those I have met whom I count as the most truly evolved in the spiritual sense all share a decidedly earthy sense of humour. And when our discussions have addressed this, the answer has always been a take on the same theme…that those who have reached a certain level of being no longer hide behind a mask of quasi sainthood, but embrace their whole being with gusto, warts, as they say, and all.
They have often lived colourful lives, experiencing a rich tapestry of emotions and events beyond the humdrum normality of the ordinary. And these few recognise and accept their humanity, seeing in it only the action of the Divine Life. They cheerfully accept their own frailties and foibles and those, it seems, of everyone else around them as simply part of the beauty of life in motion, a perfection unfolding rather than a flawed actuality. When they hit a stumbling block, as we all do from time to time, they simply roll their sleeves up and get on with life.
There are, for all of us at some point, mornings when we must drag ourselves from bed to face a world we do not want to see or be seen by. Where that hour around 3am seems to last an eternity of ‘what ifs’ and all choices seem to lead to heartache. Mornings where the night has broken trust and we face the dawn with only the bitter kiss of ‘why?’ upon our lips.
We can face the day hidden in brittle laughter or withdraw into silence, closing the windows of the soul and drawing the blinds to incubate our misery. Or shout the hurt from the rooftops in anger to gather sympathy or attention.
Or we can look ourselves squarely in the eyes in the bathroom mirror and say, ‘Today you are lucky. Today you have reached another crossroads. Today you have an opportunity for change. Today you can take responsibility for the next phase of your journey.’
Quite often we expect both too much and not enough of ourselves, I think, once we have set our feet firmly upon a path of faith and growth, regardless of how we see that Light. We expect perfection now and are disappointed with ourselves when we fail, forgetting perhaps that we are works in progress, experiencing rather than experienced. Then our inner failure can plunge us into despair… which we may also see as another failure… and we wade through the treacle of dark emotions, instead of remembering that we ourselves are in charge of the sticky stuff and can choose to see opportunity for change instead of the molasses of negativity in which we have caught ourselves like flies. Sometimes, I think, we are too hard on ourselves. We are works in progress, but the perfection we strive for is already part of us. Maybe we need to be a little gentler with ourselves.
“Every Warrior of the Light has felt afraid of going into battle.
Every Warrior of the Light has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone.
Every Warrior of the Light has trodden a path that was not his.
Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons.
Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light.
Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties.
Every Warrior of the Light has said ‘yes’ when he wanted to say ‘no.’
Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved.
That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this
and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.”
~Paulo Coelho
With these the distance that may lie in between does not matter. Heart to heart, mind to mind, soul to soul the communication is whole, sincere and true. And with a rare few that sharing reaches a very deep level and wanders down some very strange pathways indeed from time to time.
Of course, discussions like this tend to be punctuated by much laughter and silliness, peppered with a fair amount of ribaldry and naughtiness too. It is an odd thing, but a true one, that those I have met whom I count as the most truly evolved in the spiritual sense all share a decidedly earthy sense of humour. And when our discussions have addressed this, the answer has always been a take on the same theme…that those who have reached a certain level of being no longer hide behind a mask of quasi sainthood, but embrace their whole being with gusto, warts, as they say, and all.
They have often lived colourful lives, experiencing a rich tapestry of emotions and events beyond the humdrum normality of the ordinary. And these few recognise and accept their humanity, seeing in it only the action of the Divine Life. They cheerfully accept their own frailties and foibles and those, it seems, of everyone else around them as simply part of the beauty of life in motion, a perfection unfolding rather than a flawed actuality. When they hit a stumbling block, as we all do from time to time, they simply roll their sleeves up and get on with life.
There are, for all of us at some point, mornings when we must drag ourselves from bed to face a world we do not want to see or be seen by. Where that hour around 3am seems to last an eternity of ‘what ifs’ and all choices seem to lead to heartache. Mornings where the night has broken trust and we face the dawn with only the bitter kiss of ‘why?’ upon our lips.
We can face the day hidden in brittle laughter or withdraw into silence, closing the windows of the soul and drawing the blinds to incubate our misery. Or shout the hurt from the rooftops in anger to gather sympathy or attention.
Or we can look ourselves squarely in the eyes in the bathroom mirror and say, ‘Today you are lucky. Today you have reached another crossroads. Today you have an opportunity for change. Today you can take responsibility for the next phase of your journey.’
Quite often we expect both too much and not enough of ourselves, I think, once we have set our feet firmly upon a path of faith and growth, regardless of how we see that Light. We expect perfection now and are disappointed with ourselves when we fail, forgetting perhaps that we are works in progress, experiencing rather than experienced. Then our inner failure can plunge us into despair… which we may also see as another failure… and we wade through the treacle of dark emotions, instead of remembering that we ourselves are in charge of the sticky stuff and can choose to see opportunity for change instead of the molasses of negativity in which we have caught ourselves like flies. Sometimes, I think, we are too hard on ourselves. We are works in progress, but the perfection we strive for is already part of us. Maybe we need to be a little gentler with ourselves.
“Every Warrior of the Light has felt afraid of going into battle.
Every Warrior of the Light has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone.
Every Warrior of the Light has trodden a path that was not his.
Every Warrior of the Light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons.
Every Warrior of the Light has, at least once, believed he was not a Warrior of the Light.
Every Warrior of the Light has failed in his spiritual duties.
Every Warrior of the Light has said ‘yes’ when he wanted to say ‘no.’
Every Warrior of the Light has hurt someone he loved.
That is why he is a Warrior of the Light, because he has been through all this
and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is.”
~Paulo Coelho
February 7, 2013
Plus ça change…..
Last night I had multiple tabs open across the computer screen, a to-do list from Hades and the mind set to accomplish it all. Instead, I spent hours on the phone talking about subjects completely unrelated. And my heart felt like it was going to burst with sheer joy and pride as I talked with my son.
As parents we do our best for our children. We try to give them the strongest grounding we can in all the things that matter to us, be that manners or morals, education or faith. It doesn’t matter where we are, what social standing we have or lack, it is just what we do. We love them. What else could we do? The same thing applies to teachers. It is often said that the greatest joy of any teacher is when they see the student surpass them. In that there is very little difference between the two roles.
My own upbringing was, as I have mentioned before, eclectic to say the least. I tried to pass that along almost single handedly to my children, and have told elsewhere of the fun and games we had at primary school, caused by my very young son deciding God must be a ‘she’… and later, a ‘he-she’. The one thing I never wanted to do was give my sons all the answers and ask them to swallow them like a pill. After all, I don’t have all the answers, and the ones I have may, in all fairness, be wrong. They work for me and give me a philosophy and faith that guides me. That, I think, is all one can ever truly claim.
But if I couldn’t and wouldn’t give them the answers, I could, perhaps, point them in the direction of the questions. And answer the ones they asked from as many alternative viewpoints as I could, giving them the freedom to follow their own hearts, while I shared with them what was in mine.
The dramatic events that touched our family over the past few years threw up many such questions and at a time where the only place we could find the answers was within. I could say faith is a purely subjective thing, but I don’t believe that to be true. I think that at times like these when we reach ‘further up and further in’, as C.S.Lewis put it in ‘The Last Battle’ we can find Something… call it what you will… that reaches out also to us.
Part of last night’s conversation centred around Divinity. Does it matter what Name you put to your idea of that Force of sheer Being or the symbol or mind picture you use for yourself in the silence of the heart? This was one of the questions asked. Personally, I don’t think so. What matters most is the intent behind the way you choose to live.
I was reminded of another passage from Lewis’s Narnia books, where the young Calormene, Emeth, who has worshipped Tash all his life comes face to face with Aslan. The Lion seems to the young man to be all that his heart has ever sought, yet he has been true to his own god. He is welcomed by Aslan, but admits this to the Lion. The Lion explains that all good that is done is taken as service to him, no matter what the name used. Even as a small child that passage stuck. As did the final part of that encounter. As Emeth tells the tale:
“Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”
And that, I think, is true. We will find what we seek…in faith, in love and friendship… in all aspects of life, if we pursue it with the passion of a whole heart.
It occurred to me then, speaking of Aslan, that the Lion was perhaps the earliest point in my life where I felt Love, both for and from Divinity, even though being so very young I did not understand it as such at the time. It wasn’t difficult to simply feel it back then.
Of course, we grow up. We go through the questioning times of adolescence and into adulthood, and the simplicity of childhood can be lost under the weight of responsibility, the constraints of everyday life and the active intellect. Listening to my son last night, answering him from the heart, as we discussed the meaning of life, I realised something I had barely noticed creeping up on me.
Having spent decades seeking understanding down many strange pathways and ponderings, devouring books and tying my mind in knots with abstract thought, I eventually came to realise that what I sought outside was already there, ‘inside’ That there was no separation, no distance, no need to reach outward. Only further up and further in. Only to Be.
I realised I had come full circle… or perhaps back to the same place I was as a child, only on the next level of a spiral of understanding. But it is just as clean and simple after all.
As C.S.Lewis wrote in ‘Prince Caspian’:
“Aslan" said Lucy "you're bigger".
"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.
"Not because you are?"
"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger".
It is still Love.
As parents we do our best for our children. We try to give them the strongest grounding we can in all the things that matter to us, be that manners or morals, education or faith. It doesn’t matter where we are, what social standing we have or lack, it is just what we do. We love them. What else could we do? The same thing applies to teachers. It is often said that the greatest joy of any teacher is when they see the student surpass them. In that there is very little difference between the two roles.
My own upbringing was, as I have mentioned before, eclectic to say the least. I tried to pass that along almost single handedly to my children, and have told elsewhere of the fun and games we had at primary school, caused by my very young son deciding God must be a ‘she’… and later, a ‘he-she’. The one thing I never wanted to do was give my sons all the answers and ask them to swallow them like a pill. After all, I don’t have all the answers, and the ones I have may, in all fairness, be wrong. They work for me and give me a philosophy and faith that guides me. That, I think, is all one can ever truly claim.
But if I couldn’t and wouldn’t give them the answers, I could, perhaps, point them in the direction of the questions. And answer the ones they asked from as many alternative viewpoints as I could, giving them the freedom to follow their own hearts, while I shared with them what was in mine.
The dramatic events that touched our family over the past few years threw up many such questions and at a time where the only place we could find the answers was within. I could say faith is a purely subjective thing, but I don’t believe that to be true. I think that at times like these when we reach ‘further up and further in’, as C.S.Lewis put it in ‘The Last Battle’ we can find Something… call it what you will… that reaches out also to us.
Part of last night’s conversation centred around Divinity. Does it matter what Name you put to your idea of that Force of sheer Being or the symbol or mind picture you use for yourself in the silence of the heart? This was one of the questions asked. Personally, I don’t think so. What matters most is the intent behind the way you choose to live.
I was reminded of another passage from Lewis’s Narnia books, where the young Calormene, Emeth, who has worshipped Tash all his life comes face to face with Aslan. The Lion seems to the young man to be all that his heart has ever sought, yet he has been true to his own god. He is welcomed by Aslan, but admits this to the Lion. The Lion explains that all good that is done is taken as service to him, no matter what the name used. Even as a small child that passage stuck. As did the final part of that encounter. As Emeth tells the tale:
“Yet I have been seeking Tash all my days. Beloved, said the Glorious One, unless thy desire had been for me thou wouldst not have sought so long and so truly. For all find what they truly seek.”
And that, I think, is true. We will find what we seek…in faith, in love and friendship… in all aspects of life, if we pursue it with the passion of a whole heart.
It occurred to me then, speaking of Aslan, that the Lion was perhaps the earliest point in my life where I felt Love, both for and from Divinity, even though being so very young I did not understand it as such at the time. It wasn’t difficult to simply feel it back then.
Of course, we grow up. We go through the questioning times of adolescence and into adulthood, and the simplicity of childhood can be lost under the weight of responsibility, the constraints of everyday life and the active intellect. Listening to my son last night, answering him from the heart, as we discussed the meaning of life, I realised something I had barely noticed creeping up on me.
Having spent decades seeking understanding down many strange pathways and ponderings, devouring books and tying my mind in knots with abstract thought, I eventually came to realise that what I sought outside was already there, ‘inside’ That there was no separation, no distance, no need to reach outward. Only further up and further in. Only to Be.
I realised I had come full circle… or perhaps back to the same place I was as a child, only on the next level of a spiral of understanding. But it is just as clean and simple after all.
As C.S.Lewis wrote in ‘Prince Caspian’:
“Aslan" said Lucy "you're bigger".
"That is because you are older, little one," answered he.
"Not because you are?"
"I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger".
It is still Love.
February 5, 2013
Telling Tales
It was one of those mornings today when every conversation, across three continents has seemed to lead to the same place. The scraps of paper upon which I’ve been writing notes are strewn across the desk, and it is just as well I can deal with some of these letters online, given the half formed thoughts scrawled over them, for they would tell a strange story taken out of context.
I was talking with a friend, as you do, comparing notes over coffee and a few thousand miles. He described his own spiritual tradition as ‘walking in Beauty’. That, I thought, was a wonderful way to describe any path. Yet it came to my mind that if I had to describe as simply the path that has drawn me, the path we seek to share with the School, I would have to say that we ‘walk in Love’.
For me there is little difference in essence between the two. They are, perhaps, facets of the same thing seen through a different lens. As with many concepts, the words carry some powerful personal emotions. Beauty looks different to each of us, though there may be common points between observers where all will recognise something that goes beyond time, culture and the rest of the conditioning filters that superimpose themselves upon our eyes. Not everyone will see beauty in the barren rocks and treeless landscape of the high moors, but most will see it in the trusting smile of a child.
Love, too, covers a huge emotional landscape. Again, there is the common ground that seems to speak to the heart of humanity and again it is stretched across the extremes from the nurturing and caring to the catabolic. It may not, at first glance look like Love when it strips us bare and leaves us naked in the desert, in a seeming act of cruelty, but which is, ultimately, a great gift of Love for in that vast emptiness we may find the core of Being.
As the literature of the Silent Eye School is written we have had to find a way to carry the student beyond these filters, beyond thought and logic, beyond the personal emotions that may be associated with a particular word, system or concept towards something more universal. We need to speak to a deeper level, leading the intellect to the heart and the emotions with the mind. So what else would we do in a modern Mystery School than fall back upon probably the oldest way we know? The power of stories.
It is no coincidence that we have chosen the Song of the Troubadour for the launch weekend in April. The storytellers have told of the magic of music across all ages and cultures. The bards of old carried wisdom and knowledge in their tales from fireside to fireside. Many of these tales still linger in our cultures and societies, and the roots of myth and legend weave through our lives no matter where we live.
If you think back to childhood, your own childhood, there will be great swathes of time you do not remember. There will be snapshots of memory here and there, but most will have merged into the mists. Yet if I were to ask you what was your favourite story as a child, ask you to tell me about it, I’d be willing to bet that you could. And in that retelling you would see the mental pictures you saw as a child. It would recall time, places, people, emotions… and it may even remind you of what you learned from it. But then again, it might not, as children absorb the lessons so simply from a story... they do not analyse every word, wanting to know why the writer chose this phrase or that… they just embrace the magic of the moment.
The landscapes thus created in the mind are given life by the child’s belief and become real on their own plane. To the child there is truth in Aslan, or King Arthur and Camelot, or dragons and griffins. And I think something of that reality remains with us as we grow up. Regardless of the dawning awareness of historical accuracy, fiction or fantasy, there is a hidden place within us that still believes in that childlike truth for it marks us at a very deep level. And in that place, they are still real for us.
Stories bring the world to life in a very special way for a child. I know a huge number of adults to whom the back of a wardrobe is still a magical place… and I count myself among them. From folk tales to fantasy, through science fiction and film there is something in the essence of a story that reaches beyond logic to a subtler level of meaning and which speaks to us more deeply than conscious understanding. Stories engage the imagination in a way few other things can and this opens a whole new world of possibilities.
In the School we will use a family of archetypal figures to tap into the unconscious understanding of the Beyond. They will accompany the student on a symbolic journey into the Self on a quest for a truth we cannot give, but only find, each of us, for ourselves. The symbols of the journey are an expression of the essence of something higher and finer and we will use the tools of fantasy so that the student does not become fixated on the symbols themselves, trapped behind the walls such limited vision can build. “The finger and the moon” as a friend said this morning.
So we begin with the Song of the Troubadour at the launch of the School in April. And the Troubadour has a tale to share that begins one stormy night…..
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk/Events....
I was talking with a friend, as you do, comparing notes over coffee and a few thousand miles. He described his own spiritual tradition as ‘walking in Beauty’. That, I thought, was a wonderful way to describe any path. Yet it came to my mind that if I had to describe as simply the path that has drawn me, the path we seek to share with the School, I would have to say that we ‘walk in Love’.
For me there is little difference in essence between the two. They are, perhaps, facets of the same thing seen through a different lens. As with many concepts, the words carry some powerful personal emotions. Beauty looks different to each of us, though there may be common points between observers where all will recognise something that goes beyond time, culture and the rest of the conditioning filters that superimpose themselves upon our eyes. Not everyone will see beauty in the barren rocks and treeless landscape of the high moors, but most will see it in the trusting smile of a child.
Love, too, covers a huge emotional landscape. Again, there is the common ground that seems to speak to the heart of humanity and again it is stretched across the extremes from the nurturing and caring to the catabolic. It may not, at first glance look like Love when it strips us bare and leaves us naked in the desert, in a seeming act of cruelty, but which is, ultimately, a great gift of Love for in that vast emptiness we may find the core of Being.
As the literature of the Silent Eye School is written we have had to find a way to carry the student beyond these filters, beyond thought and logic, beyond the personal emotions that may be associated with a particular word, system or concept towards something more universal. We need to speak to a deeper level, leading the intellect to the heart and the emotions with the mind. So what else would we do in a modern Mystery School than fall back upon probably the oldest way we know? The power of stories.
It is no coincidence that we have chosen the Song of the Troubadour for the launch weekend in April. The storytellers have told of the magic of music across all ages and cultures. The bards of old carried wisdom and knowledge in their tales from fireside to fireside. Many of these tales still linger in our cultures and societies, and the roots of myth and legend weave through our lives no matter where we live.
If you think back to childhood, your own childhood, there will be great swathes of time you do not remember. There will be snapshots of memory here and there, but most will have merged into the mists. Yet if I were to ask you what was your favourite story as a child, ask you to tell me about it, I’d be willing to bet that you could. And in that retelling you would see the mental pictures you saw as a child. It would recall time, places, people, emotions… and it may even remind you of what you learned from it. But then again, it might not, as children absorb the lessons so simply from a story... they do not analyse every word, wanting to know why the writer chose this phrase or that… they just embrace the magic of the moment.
The landscapes thus created in the mind are given life by the child’s belief and become real on their own plane. To the child there is truth in Aslan, or King Arthur and Camelot, or dragons and griffins. And I think something of that reality remains with us as we grow up. Regardless of the dawning awareness of historical accuracy, fiction or fantasy, there is a hidden place within us that still believes in that childlike truth for it marks us at a very deep level. And in that place, they are still real for us.
Stories bring the world to life in a very special way for a child. I know a huge number of adults to whom the back of a wardrobe is still a magical place… and I count myself among them. From folk tales to fantasy, through science fiction and film there is something in the essence of a story that reaches beyond logic to a subtler level of meaning and which speaks to us more deeply than conscious understanding. Stories engage the imagination in a way few other things can and this opens a whole new world of possibilities.
In the School we will use a family of archetypal figures to tap into the unconscious understanding of the Beyond. They will accompany the student on a symbolic journey into the Self on a quest for a truth we cannot give, but only find, each of us, for ourselves. The symbols of the journey are an expression of the essence of something higher and finer and we will use the tools of fantasy so that the student does not become fixated on the symbols themselves, trapped behind the walls such limited vision can build. “The finger and the moon” as a friend said this morning.
So we begin with the Song of the Troubadour at the launch of the School in April. And the Troubadour has a tale to share that begins one stormy night…..
http://www.thesilenteye.co.uk/Events....
February 4, 2013
Fragments
I woke this morning after strange dreams with an odd yearning. It floated around the edges of my mind over coffee and as I tried to pin it down it kept melting into the background, almost as if it was shy. A fragile, fleeting impression, ephemeral, vague and unrealised.
Never one to balk at a mystery, especially one lurking around the periphery of my own consciousness, I sat down to contemplate it.
To begin with thoughts of the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes fluttered like a mischievous butterfly just beyond vision. As I do not like the substrata of conscious worry to intrude at these times, I thought the best thing to do was net it and have a look.
It was an innocuous image, just a small bottle of medicine. Of course, in itself, there was no problem with that. But as with most things, the association chain led a bit deeper to the hospital letter that lies beside it, the unpleasant nature of the impending procedures and the inevitable underlying wondering about what, if anything, they might find.
I can’t say I’m worried really. I am sure it is just a mechanical problem, if you like, and hopefully they can tweak the ageing machinery back to a decent level of performance. I don’t expect Formula 1 … not from a vintage model. Still, I’m not too happy about the prospect of other people rummaging around my innards. There’s not that much more they can stick in a specimen jar, to be fair, that I wouldn’t actually miss.
So okay. I accept all that. The up-side is that it is being dealt with, finally. *Files that thought…
So what was this vague lurker on the edges of awareness?
As I tried to get a better look at it, it was that phrase, ‘bits of me’, that was hovering around. As that was the only observable detail, I focussed on that.
Bits, facets, fragments…Now I was getting somewhere.
I thought how fragmented we are most of the time. Bits of our attention are given or called here and there, certain of our skills and talents required but seldom more than that. If I am asked to hang a picture, for example, it has no relevance that I can bake a fabulous chocolate cake or speak decent French, and (unless they have an urgent desire for cake with a little je ne sais quoi) the person who asks me will have no interest in those talents at that moment in time.
How seldom is it that we are asked to give ourselves whole to any task or area of our lives? Even rarer, perhaps, are the occasions when we choose to do so, simply because we can.
Of course, from there it was a natural progression to wonder if anyone is ever really known, except in a fragmentary way, through the facet of the self in action in a particular arena or relationship. Even our nearest and dearest have things they do not share with us… my sons, for example, though I know them very well… too well, they will tell you, sometimes… have areas of their lives that are not, as Nick puts it, ‘Mum-friendly’. And that is as it should be.
But that wasn’t the whole story. There was something else. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it somehow, but I could see the shadow it was casting on the moving thoughts. I was getting close. And my curiosity was piqued. So what was it?
We seldom, consciously, know and accept our entire self, of course. We readily admit our flaws to ourselves once we have become aware of them. Yet, while we may admit, nay boast, even, of the glories of our respective chocolate gateaux, few of us will admit to those personality traits which are seen as ‘good’. We may admit to the socially acceptable ones... the type we put on job application forms… flexible, adaptable, good with people… but the really good ones, we seldom recognise in ourselves. Possibly because those who voice that recognition of their own better qualities rarely seem to actually have them.‘I see myself as compassionate/empathetic/generous’ … the vast majority of the time these things are said by those who aren’t and we have all known those who voice them and yet wouldn’t know true humility or compassion if it hit them in the face with a wet fish.
But voicing it is different from feeling it. To speak of compassion and to feel it working through the layers of your being, reaching out, that is a different thing. And perhaps we need to take that scintilla of time to simply recognise the good within us as we feel it, in exactly the same way as we recognise the darker bits of ourselves in action… the ones that make us cringe and squirm occasionally. We all have those.
That, I think, was where the yearning came in. Because unless we are prepared to admit who we are to ourselves... the good equally with the less good, accepting our wholeness in all its balanced beauty, how can anyone else ever see that in us too?
Don’t we all yearn for that on some level, to be loved and accepted for who we are in our entirety? Yet we hide the good, even from ourselves, behind a socially acceptable modesty while brandishing our flaws and frailties as if they alone define who we are. They do not. We define who we are. As much by how we choose to see ourselves as by anything else. If we see ourselves whole, perhaps others may too. They cannot until we do, as we project outward only a fragment of who we are. The saying 'love thy neighbour as thyself' comes to mind. Maybe if we love our whole selves we can love others wholly too.
Astrophysics tells us that the very physical fabric of everything we know, including our own bodies, is made of the matter from which the stars were formed. Our physical forms exist because somewhere, aeons ago, a star died. If that is so, why shouldn’t we shine?
Never one to balk at a mystery, especially one lurking around the periphery of my own consciousness, I sat down to contemplate it.
To begin with thoughts of the last thing I saw before I closed my eyes fluttered like a mischievous butterfly just beyond vision. As I do not like the substrata of conscious worry to intrude at these times, I thought the best thing to do was net it and have a look.
It was an innocuous image, just a small bottle of medicine. Of course, in itself, there was no problem with that. But as with most things, the association chain led a bit deeper to the hospital letter that lies beside it, the unpleasant nature of the impending procedures and the inevitable underlying wondering about what, if anything, they might find.
I can’t say I’m worried really. I am sure it is just a mechanical problem, if you like, and hopefully they can tweak the ageing machinery back to a decent level of performance. I don’t expect Formula 1 … not from a vintage model. Still, I’m not too happy about the prospect of other people rummaging around my innards. There’s not that much more they can stick in a specimen jar, to be fair, that I wouldn’t actually miss.
So okay. I accept all that. The up-side is that it is being dealt with, finally. *Files that thought…
So what was this vague lurker on the edges of awareness?
As I tried to get a better look at it, it was that phrase, ‘bits of me’, that was hovering around. As that was the only observable detail, I focussed on that.
Bits, facets, fragments…Now I was getting somewhere.
I thought how fragmented we are most of the time. Bits of our attention are given or called here and there, certain of our skills and talents required but seldom more than that. If I am asked to hang a picture, for example, it has no relevance that I can bake a fabulous chocolate cake or speak decent French, and (unless they have an urgent desire for cake with a little je ne sais quoi) the person who asks me will have no interest in those talents at that moment in time.
How seldom is it that we are asked to give ourselves whole to any task or area of our lives? Even rarer, perhaps, are the occasions when we choose to do so, simply because we can.
Of course, from there it was a natural progression to wonder if anyone is ever really known, except in a fragmentary way, through the facet of the self in action in a particular arena or relationship. Even our nearest and dearest have things they do not share with us… my sons, for example, though I know them very well… too well, they will tell you, sometimes… have areas of their lives that are not, as Nick puts it, ‘Mum-friendly’. And that is as it should be.
But that wasn’t the whole story. There was something else. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it somehow, but I could see the shadow it was casting on the moving thoughts. I was getting close. And my curiosity was piqued. So what was it?
We seldom, consciously, know and accept our entire self, of course. We readily admit our flaws to ourselves once we have become aware of them. Yet, while we may admit, nay boast, even, of the glories of our respective chocolate gateaux, few of us will admit to those personality traits which are seen as ‘good’. We may admit to the socially acceptable ones... the type we put on job application forms… flexible, adaptable, good with people… but the really good ones, we seldom recognise in ourselves. Possibly because those who voice that recognition of their own better qualities rarely seem to actually have them.‘I see myself as compassionate/empathetic/generous’ … the vast majority of the time these things are said by those who aren’t and we have all known those who voice them and yet wouldn’t know true humility or compassion if it hit them in the face with a wet fish.
But voicing it is different from feeling it. To speak of compassion and to feel it working through the layers of your being, reaching out, that is a different thing. And perhaps we need to take that scintilla of time to simply recognise the good within us as we feel it, in exactly the same way as we recognise the darker bits of ourselves in action… the ones that make us cringe and squirm occasionally. We all have those.
That, I think, was where the yearning came in. Because unless we are prepared to admit who we are to ourselves... the good equally with the less good, accepting our wholeness in all its balanced beauty, how can anyone else ever see that in us too?
Don’t we all yearn for that on some level, to be loved and accepted for who we are in our entirety? Yet we hide the good, even from ourselves, behind a socially acceptable modesty while brandishing our flaws and frailties as if they alone define who we are. They do not. We define who we are. As much by how we choose to see ourselves as by anything else. If we see ourselves whole, perhaps others may too. They cannot until we do, as we project outward only a fragment of who we are. The saying 'love thy neighbour as thyself' comes to mind. Maybe if we love our whole selves we can love others wholly too.
Astrophysics tells us that the very physical fabric of everything we know, including our own bodies, is made of the matter from which the stars were formed. Our physical forms exist because somewhere, aeons ago, a star died. If that is so, why shouldn’t we shine?
February 3, 2013
Notes from a small dog V
Good morning! It’s a cold, grey Sunday here. I’ve taken her out for her walk and let her make my breakfast. She’s been writing stuff ever since. Honestly, she is never away from the computer for two minutes these days… how am I supposed to write a decent note to you when she hogs the thing? I’ve been quite insistent about it… I owe it to my readers, of course, to write occasionally. I’ve explained this to her, and even tried to forcibly occupy her seat. But to no avail. She mutters about duty and responsibility and things. I know she has work to do, but there is a limit. I have tried everything I can think of to distract her, resorting finally to desperate measures.
Well, she’s busy for a while now, working her magic. I’m not quite sure what she does with the stringy stuff and the sharp little silver thing, she won’t let me close enough to see. But every time I pull the stuffing out of the duck she quietly gathers it all up and, as if by magic, the duck reappears good as new a little while later. So I de-stuffed it again for her. It will keep her occupied for a while.
I keep unstuffing it, just so she can practise… and so I can work out how she does it… I do try to be helpful like that. I remember the first time. Well, how was I to know what the inside of a duck looked like? And it was such fun. Then, when I looked around, it seemed to be everywhere…There was nothing I could do about it really. I tried hiding it under the sofa, but I’d barely started when she came home and caught me. I mean, she taught me to clean up after myself when I was little. Gave me a flower pot to put my ball away in. How was I to know I wasn’t supposed to borrow the other ones.. the ones she’d put the baby plants in?
Anyway, I digress. I was really expecting to be in trouble for the stuffing.. But she just laughed and pointed the camera at me again. She does that a lot. I’ve got used to it now, so as soon as she picks it up I stop whatever I’m doing and pose for her. She doesn’t seem to appreciate that the way she should and just sighs and puts the camera away again.
I know all about cameras. They were one of the first bits of your technology I learned about. I was barely a day old the first time one was pointed at me. And it hasn’t stopped since. Mum explained them a bit, how you catch memories with them. I don’t remember much about Mum, or the rest of my family, but I do have some of your photos.
My Dad looks nice, don’t you think? Nice smile. A handsome chap. I never knew him, of course. He’d stayed with Mum when she was waiting for us to be born. When some humans found my parents in the waste ground they took them both where it was warm and dry. They had run away together as Mum was very unhappy where she lived and wasn’t treated very well. Mum said she had been sent on a boat to where I was born.
She, the two-legged, hairless one, says that’s a beautiful story. I think she likes to know I was made from love. Love matters to her. She seems to think that as long as we have that, everything else falls into place. I suppose she has a point. I wouldn’t make sure she didn’t overeat by sharing her food, or throw my toys for her so often, or even protect the house from postmen and pigeons if I didn’t care about her. The cat next door is a different ball game though… ’nuff said.
I don’t know much about my parents really. Mum was an aristocrat, of course, a setter and very beautiful. Dad looks a bit of a charmer, don’t you think? Sort of a red haired retriever type of guy… but my markings tell a tale. I have collie colours, so there must be some stories to tell about our ancestors. The charm of the Irish, of course, runs in my blood, ’cause that’s where they both came from.
When I think about it, I suppose that makes me almost an exotic foreigner, even though I was born here. Not that it is important. I was born in another county too from where I live now… so was she, for that matter. Everybody seems to move about so much. But home is where love is… where the people I love are close. And it wouldn’t matter where that was. Not to me. All I need is somewhere warm for her to sleep, somewhere to take her for walks and somewhere to cuddle and I’m happy.
It is an odd thing, this love business. You don’t need a suitcase to move it, you can take it everywhere you go and the odd thing is that the more of it you have, the lighter you are. And the more of it you give away, the more you seem to have. I don’t need much apart from love.
And the occasional stuffed duck, of course.
Tiring this typing lark… wonder if that’s why she paints her claws red? Does it help? I must investigate.
Anyway.. time for a nap. Think I’ll get my head down.
Love,
Ani
Well, she’s busy for a while now, working her magic. I’m not quite sure what she does with the stringy stuff and the sharp little silver thing, she won’t let me close enough to see. But every time I pull the stuffing out of the duck she quietly gathers it all up and, as if by magic, the duck reappears good as new a little while later. So I de-stuffed it again for her. It will keep her occupied for a while.
I keep unstuffing it, just so she can practise… and so I can work out how she does it… I do try to be helpful like that. I remember the first time. Well, how was I to know what the inside of a duck looked like? And it was such fun. Then, when I looked around, it seemed to be everywhere…There was nothing I could do about it really. I tried hiding it under the sofa, but I’d barely started when she came home and caught me. I mean, she taught me to clean up after myself when I was little. Gave me a flower pot to put my ball away in. How was I to know I wasn’t supposed to borrow the other ones.. the ones she’d put the baby plants in?
Anyway, I digress. I was really expecting to be in trouble for the stuffing.. But she just laughed and pointed the camera at me again. She does that a lot. I’ve got used to it now, so as soon as she picks it up I stop whatever I’m doing and pose for her. She doesn’t seem to appreciate that the way she should and just sighs and puts the camera away again.
I know all about cameras. They were one of the first bits of your technology I learned about. I was barely a day old the first time one was pointed at me. And it hasn’t stopped since. Mum explained them a bit, how you catch memories with them. I don’t remember much about Mum, or the rest of my family, but I do have some of your photos.
My Dad looks nice, don’t you think? Nice smile. A handsome chap. I never knew him, of course. He’d stayed with Mum when she was waiting for us to be born. When some humans found my parents in the waste ground they took them both where it was warm and dry. They had run away together as Mum was very unhappy where she lived and wasn’t treated very well. Mum said she had been sent on a boat to where I was born.
She, the two-legged, hairless one, says that’s a beautiful story. I think she likes to know I was made from love. Love matters to her. She seems to think that as long as we have that, everything else falls into place. I suppose she has a point. I wouldn’t make sure she didn’t overeat by sharing her food, or throw my toys for her so often, or even protect the house from postmen and pigeons if I didn’t care about her. The cat next door is a different ball game though… ’nuff said.
I don’t know much about my parents really. Mum was an aristocrat, of course, a setter and very beautiful. Dad looks a bit of a charmer, don’t you think? Sort of a red haired retriever type of guy… but my markings tell a tale. I have collie colours, so there must be some stories to tell about our ancestors. The charm of the Irish, of course, runs in my blood, ’cause that’s where they both came from.
When I think about it, I suppose that makes me almost an exotic foreigner, even though I was born here. Not that it is important. I was born in another county too from where I live now… so was she, for that matter. Everybody seems to move about so much. But home is where love is… where the people I love are close. And it wouldn’t matter where that was. Not to me. All I need is somewhere warm for her to sleep, somewhere to take her for walks and somewhere to cuddle and I’m happy.
It is an odd thing, this love business. You don’t need a suitcase to move it, you can take it everywhere you go and the odd thing is that the more of it you have, the lighter you are. And the more of it you give away, the more you seem to have. I don’t need much apart from love.
And the occasional stuffed duck, of course.
Tiring this typing lark… wonder if that’s why she paints her claws red? Does it help? I must investigate.
Anyway.. time for a nap. Think I’ll get my head down.
Love,
Ani
February 2, 2013
Don't panic
Don’t Panic
There are books one refers back to again and again through life, stories that get under the skin in some way or another, touch a nerve, move the heart or feed the soul. It is perhaps no coincidence that many of these that are fictional come as trilogies or series… think Lord of the Rings and Narnia, for example. The deeper the road inwards, the more there is to explore and discover with the writer.
One of the trilogies that remain with me is that series of four books (which says it all really) by Douglas Adams. I speak, of course, of that great work of science, fiction and Vogonity called the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”.
Not, though indeed I agree with the principle, because it has the words “don’t panic” in large, friendly letters on the cover, but because it opened my eyes to several aspects of humanity I had never considered. Plus, of course, it made me laugh. Always a winner.
The simple beauty of the lunatic science in these books would doubtless have gone straight over my head had I not been introduced to them by a professor of physics. He delighted in explaining to me why it was, theoretically at least, possible to use the example of Brownian motion in a nice cup of hot tea and extrapolate the universe from, say, a small piece of fairy cake.
Favourite among these concepts was the SEP field. The Somebody Else’s Problem field is described by the character Ford Prefect as:
“An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye……This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain”.
I saw this in action yesterday. The blog stats hit some significant numbers, and, after posting a gentle piece in the morning before noticing the figures, I thought, all of a sudden, that I should do something with them. Make them count... highlight, perhaps, an issue close to my heart and too close to home for too many people. So I posted 'Freedom and Fear' .
Meanwhile, synchronistically, my dear friend Alienora Taylor was also posting on her blog about a similar subject but from a different perspective.
As usual the links were posted to our respective Facebook pages where we immediately saw the coincidence and being of a similar mindset decided it was no such thing. If we had both chosen to address this topic independently and on the same day, there was a reason for it somewhere. So given the seriousness of the subject we put out a joint post. The silence was deafening.
I had been given the usual magnificent response by the blogging community, the article had been read, ‘liked’ and responded to. But there were few comments. I could understand that, it is a difficult subject to respond to. What neither Alienora nor I could come to grips with however was the silence on Facebook, where our posts are generally the subject of a fair amount of discussion. There were one or two shares and likes, a couple of wonderfully supportive comments. Yet people were evidently looking and reading. So what was the problem?
I think we had inadvertently generated an SEP field between us. And I could understand this.
You see, we had both addressed a sensitive issue. Abuse. And the fallout from abuse. Both were relatively gentle articles and a great deal more could have been said in graphic detail. Yet many simply could not, it seemed, find a way in which to acknowledge or respond.
Sadly, this is the very reason abusive behaviours continue, because we do not know how. It is not that people do not care, simply that we do not know in what manner we can address these issues. We are afraid to press the wrong button, say the wrong thing, afraid sometimes to ‘get involved’. Yet abuse and related behaviours are all too common.
Abuse takes many guises, seen and unseen, sexual, physical, psychological and emotional. The scars are deep seated and heal but slowly, sometimes not at all. Chances are that among your friends and acquaintances someone is suffering or has been the victim of abuse. It can be so insidious it can go unnoticed, unrecognised for what it is at the time by both abuser and victim. It need not even be deliberate, but can be caused by the abuser's own emotional fragility and damage.
In the UK alone, according to Women’s Aid, 1 in 4 women will be a victim of domestic violence in their lifetime – many of these on a number of occasions. One incident of domestic violence is reported to the police every minute. On average, 2 women a week are killed by a current or former male partner. These figures do not include those for emotional or sexual abuse. And this is ‘just’ domestic abuse.
Contrary to what is often believed, it is not just women and children who suffer. Men too can be victims of abuse and even if they manage to break through their own fear it is, in our culture, so bloody difficult for a man to speak out and admit it.
And we shy away from looking too close because we don't know what to do. Nor do those trapped in these situations, their confidence sapped, freedoms controlled, children and pets used as tools of blackmail...
Sometimes it is simply the awareness that matters most and the willingness to look at what is a very difficult subject. To have eyes and heart open to the fact that there, but by the grace of the Divine, could go any one of us. We are all linked by a common humanity. It isn’t somebody else’s problem.
There are books one refers back to again and again through life, stories that get under the skin in some way or another, touch a nerve, move the heart or feed the soul. It is perhaps no coincidence that many of these that are fictional come as trilogies or series… think Lord of the Rings and Narnia, for example. The deeper the road inwards, the more there is to explore and discover with the writer.
One of the trilogies that remain with me is that series of four books (which says it all really) by Douglas Adams. I speak, of course, of that great work of science, fiction and Vogonity called the “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”.
Not, though indeed I agree with the principle, because it has the words “don’t panic” in large, friendly letters on the cover, but because it opened my eyes to several aspects of humanity I had never considered. Plus, of course, it made me laugh. Always a winner.
The simple beauty of the lunatic science in these books would doubtless have gone straight over my head had I not been introduced to them by a professor of physics. He delighted in explaining to me why it was, theoretically at least, possible to use the example of Brownian motion in a nice cup of hot tea and extrapolate the universe from, say, a small piece of fairy cake.
Favourite among these concepts was the SEP field. The Somebody Else’s Problem field is described by the character Ford Prefect as:
“An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye……This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain”.
I saw this in action yesterday. The blog stats hit some significant numbers, and, after posting a gentle piece in the morning before noticing the figures, I thought, all of a sudden, that I should do something with them. Make them count... highlight, perhaps, an issue close to my heart and too close to home for too many people. So I posted 'Freedom and Fear' .
Meanwhile, synchronistically, my dear friend Alienora Taylor was also posting on her blog about a similar subject but from a different perspective.
As usual the links were posted to our respective Facebook pages where we immediately saw the coincidence and being of a similar mindset decided it was no such thing. If we had both chosen to address this topic independently and on the same day, there was a reason for it somewhere. So given the seriousness of the subject we put out a joint post. The silence was deafening.
I had been given the usual magnificent response by the blogging community, the article had been read, ‘liked’ and responded to. But there were few comments. I could understand that, it is a difficult subject to respond to. What neither Alienora nor I could come to grips with however was the silence on Facebook, where our posts are generally the subject of a fair amount of discussion. There were one or two shares and likes, a couple of wonderfully supportive comments. Yet people were evidently looking and reading. So what was the problem?
I think we had inadvertently generated an SEP field between us. And I could understand this.
You see, we had both addressed a sensitive issue. Abuse. And the fallout from abuse. Both were relatively gentle articles and a great deal more could have been said in graphic detail. Yet many simply could not, it seemed, find a way in which to acknowledge or respond.
Sadly, this is the very reason abusive behaviours continue, because we do not know how. It is not that people do not care, simply that we do not know in what manner we can address these issues. We are afraid to press the wrong button, say the wrong thing, afraid sometimes to ‘get involved’. Yet abuse and related behaviours are all too common.
Abuse takes many guises, seen and unseen, sexual, physical, psychological and emotional. The scars are deep seated and heal but slowly, sometimes not at all. Chances are that among your friends and acquaintances someone is suffering or has been the victim of abuse. It can be so insidious it can go unnoticed, unrecognised for what it is at the time by both abuser and victim. It need not even be deliberate, but can be caused by the abuser's own emotional fragility and damage.
In the UK alone, according to Women’s Aid, 1 in 4 women will be a victim of domestic violence in their lifetime – many of these on a number of occasions. One incident of domestic violence is reported to the police every minute. On average, 2 women a week are killed by a current or former male partner. These figures do not include those for emotional or sexual abuse. And this is ‘just’ domestic abuse.
Contrary to what is often believed, it is not just women and children who suffer. Men too can be victims of abuse and even if they manage to break through their own fear it is, in our culture, so bloody difficult for a man to speak out and admit it.
And we shy away from looking too close because we don't know what to do. Nor do those trapped in these situations, their confidence sapped, freedoms controlled, children and pets used as tools of blackmail...
Sometimes it is simply the awareness that matters most and the willingness to look at what is a very difficult subject. To have eyes and heart open to the fact that there, but by the grace of the Divine, could go any one of us. We are all linked by a common humanity. It isn’t somebody else’s problem.
February 1, 2013
Freedom and fear
This week in the UK is National Storytelling Week. Stories are very close to my heart, be they the shared experience of truth or the flights of fantasy and imagination. I learn more from stories shared heart to heart than from any text book.
On 3rd July 2009 I wrote a story. I know the date, it was the day before my world was turned upside down by the attack on my son, and it is odd to know precisely where my attention lay the night before That Morning. While my son’s evening was unfolding 150 miles away, I was tapping away at the keyboard, writing a tale I hoped would help a woman in trouble on the other side of the world.
Abusive relationships are also a subject close to my heart. I know from the inside the damage done by abuse. It does not always have to fall neatly into the categories of sexual or violent abuse, it can be more insidious than that. Less easy for both the abuser and the victim to realise and understand, less obvious to the observer. Yet it is just as damaging, if not more so. A physical bruise will heal, the inner scars seldom do without help or a major shift in perspective.
So, from my heart to yours…..
Freedom and Fear
Once upon a time there lived a woman. She was very far from her homeland but that didn’t matter. She had her children and a little home. One day, she found that she had fallen in love unexpectedly, and as her lover also had children, they decided to make a home and journey towards happy ever after together.
It was hard work sometimes, trying to meld the two separate families into one, but love was enough to help the couple through. Steadily they made progress. Then the problems began, cracks began to appear in the household and everything the couple had strived for was on the verge of being lost. The man became very depressed, drank and began to talk of suicide, while the woman struggled and juggled to keep them afloat, trying to protect the man from any further worries, scared that anything else would push him over the edge. The stability they had achieved, the home they had worked for, everything was at risk.
The depression became the primary factor in his life and little by little had become the ruling factor in hers. Unconsciously he controlled her every action through fear of upsetting him, causing more instability and disturbing what little peace they had. She lived on a knife edge, waiting for the next outburst of anger, the next plunge into darkness and it took its toll as these things do, eroding her energy, her sense of self-worth and her ability to act. Every word had to be watched, money had to be available. She was so wrapped in worry and fear for him she failed to see how much of herself she was surrendering to his control and her own fear.
Finally a letter arrived, giving the little family three days to leave their home. Three days. They had nothing, and nowhere to go. Yet, the sun was shining and the woman never gave up. She tried for those three days to find a solution.
And little by little, as all other means hit a brick wall, a solution occurred to her.
She could not see her family without a home. She knew that they only needed to buy a little time for it to be possible to avert disaster. She tried all the official and normal avenues, but finally, she could think of only one way. The woman did not believe anyone could be so cruel as to throw her family onto the streets on a day of tragedy. Logic gave her a solution. Fear and love blinded her to its flaws.
It never occurred to her that the one thing that made any home special was the family within it... all the family.
Now this woman did not believe in suicide as a solution to any problem. Unless it was a symptom of a real mental illness, that was different. She saw it as running away, and she knew that whatever one runs from keeps coming back over and over until it is dealt with. The Karmic debt of suicide was, she believed, a heavy one and would take lifetimes to pay. She accepted that. She loved her family and could not see them homeless. She had tried to talk to the man, but he was so imprisoned within his depression he did not hear what she was telling him. She had nowhere else to turn.
She knew that no-one would understand her actions. Knew she would be hated... and hoped that hatred would lessen the grief for her loved ones.
Of course, her logic was flawed. Home is where people are, the people one loves. Family is about facing problems together. And of course, her children would rather face anything than the loss of their mother.
Yet, she could think of no other way to protect them. She felt she had failed them somehow, by allowing disaster to touch them, forgetting that it was not of her making, not seeing that by taking the responsibility to herself, she had robbed them of a chance to learn and grow together. Fear for her family made her blind to many things.
So, those last three days she was calm and happy. She stored up each moment of joy with her man, she treasured each smile from her children, and then, on the last day, she set her alarm very early, and settled down beside him, revelling in his warmth.
She didn’t sleep much. There was no longer any reason to sleep. As she got up before dawn, the man opened one eye and she smiled at him, taking one last look with her heart aching. She wished she could look at her children too. She went downstairs and wrote a note for them, telling them how proud of them she was and how much she loved them. She wrote a note to her man, telling him she was sorry, that she loved him, and why this was the only way left; giving him detailed instructions on what to do to save their home, knowing he would not be able to think clearly.
Then she took every pill she could find until she knew she had taken enough and more than enough, and she closed her eyes, smiling, with the image of her children in her mind and knew no more.
Yet, fate took a hand. An hour or so later, one of her children came downstairs early. The alarm was raised and an ambulance was called. The woman was within minutes of death when they arrived, and over the next few days she hovered between the worlds. The only thing that held her was her youngest child, holding her hand, stroking her hair, willing her to live and pouring love, strength and understanding into her.
Strange dreams and visions peopled the silence where she hovered, many things became clear in the darkness and she was sent back.
As she awoke once more to the world, inconceivably, it seemed that her ridiculous solution had worked. A miracle of human kindness saved their home, the man had snapped out of his insulated bubble of pain and began to live, doubts were laid to rest and the two families learned they could act as one.
Yet there is always a price to be paid, and the price of her action was a double edged sword.
The doctors pronounced that there was no mental problem. Fear had offered a logical, if radical, solution to an actual problem, and desperation had blinded her to the desperate errors the plan contained. Only her youngest child understood the extravagance of her actions and forgave her with unconditional love. One or two stood by her with understanding and empathy. Some despised her cowardice, some hated her for the hurt she had caused, friends turned their backs on her and on the family, and some believed she owed them a debt because they had not turned their backs. Some used it as an excuse to cover their own mistakes and justify their actions.
She herself could not forgive herself for her blindness. She had given everything for love and had said her goodbyes. And yet, all she loved most dearly was given back to her. But fear had gone. She was no longer afraid to speak her mind when things went wrong. No longer afraid to see the weakness in her man and admit to herself that his very human weaknesses were an echo of her own. No longer afraid to risk losing the things she loved, simply because she loved them. No longer afraid to see the deeper problems which had placed her family at risk in the first place. No longer afraid to see her own fear, faults and weakness.
The woman had voluntarily relinquished all she had and all she was... and nothing had a hold on her any more. She had the freedom of strength to choose her path and her actions. And the blinkers were removed from her eyes. And as she began to grow in strength and understanding, the man withdrew from her, challenged by her clarity until finally they parted.
Many things that she had believed were essential to her life she found herself discarding. Her own viewpoint had changed and she was, for the first time, able to see how fear had defined her life so far… fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of disapprobation... and most of all, the fear of not being loved.
She felt herself at once to be empowered and adrift in an unfamiliar sea. As the weeks and months passed and her life, to all outward appearances settled back to normality, she knew in her heart that this was not so. She was even able to finally see that her desperate action had not been inspired by love, as she had truly believed, but by fear… the fear of letting her family down, the fear of failing to protect them, the fear of allowing them to be responsible for their own choices.
Finally, the woman saw that life had come full circle and she had the chance to break the cycle of fear, handing back to her loved ones responsibility for their own lives and actions. She learned that loving does not give one any rights over the object of that affection… only the responsibility to be the type of person that one believes the loved one deserves to be loved by. She learned that true love, even a lifetime long, is a precious thing that is lent to us for just a little while and should be treasured like a jewel, for it may be as lasting as the rainbow caught in a diamond, or as transient as the prism in a dewdrop in the morning sunlight.
She learned too, what she had always known, but never understood. The only thing to fear is fear itself.
On 3rd July 2009 I wrote a story. I know the date, it was the day before my world was turned upside down by the attack on my son, and it is odd to know precisely where my attention lay the night before That Morning. While my son’s evening was unfolding 150 miles away, I was tapping away at the keyboard, writing a tale I hoped would help a woman in trouble on the other side of the world.
Abusive relationships are also a subject close to my heart. I know from the inside the damage done by abuse. It does not always have to fall neatly into the categories of sexual or violent abuse, it can be more insidious than that. Less easy for both the abuser and the victim to realise and understand, less obvious to the observer. Yet it is just as damaging, if not more so. A physical bruise will heal, the inner scars seldom do without help or a major shift in perspective.
So, from my heart to yours…..
Freedom and Fear
Once upon a time there lived a woman. She was very far from her homeland but that didn’t matter. She had her children and a little home. One day, she found that she had fallen in love unexpectedly, and as her lover also had children, they decided to make a home and journey towards happy ever after together.
It was hard work sometimes, trying to meld the two separate families into one, but love was enough to help the couple through. Steadily they made progress. Then the problems began, cracks began to appear in the household and everything the couple had strived for was on the verge of being lost. The man became very depressed, drank and began to talk of suicide, while the woman struggled and juggled to keep them afloat, trying to protect the man from any further worries, scared that anything else would push him over the edge. The stability they had achieved, the home they had worked for, everything was at risk.
The depression became the primary factor in his life and little by little had become the ruling factor in hers. Unconsciously he controlled her every action through fear of upsetting him, causing more instability and disturbing what little peace they had. She lived on a knife edge, waiting for the next outburst of anger, the next plunge into darkness and it took its toll as these things do, eroding her energy, her sense of self-worth and her ability to act. Every word had to be watched, money had to be available. She was so wrapped in worry and fear for him she failed to see how much of herself she was surrendering to his control and her own fear.
Finally a letter arrived, giving the little family three days to leave their home. Three days. They had nothing, and nowhere to go. Yet, the sun was shining and the woman never gave up. She tried for those three days to find a solution.
And little by little, as all other means hit a brick wall, a solution occurred to her.
She could not see her family without a home. She knew that they only needed to buy a little time for it to be possible to avert disaster. She tried all the official and normal avenues, but finally, she could think of only one way. The woman did not believe anyone could be so cruel as to throw her family onto the streets on a day of tragedy. Logic gave her a solution. Fear and love blinded her to its flaws.
It never occurred to her that the one thing that made any home special was the family within it... all the family.
Now this woman did not believe in suicide as a solution to any problem. Unless it was a symptom of a real mental illness, that was different. She saw it as running away, and she knew that whatever one runs from keeps coming back over and over until it is dealt with. The Karmic debt of suicide was, she believed, a heavy one and would take lifetimes to pay. She accepted that. She loved her family and could not see them homeless. She had tried to talk to the man, but he was so imprisoned within his depression he did not hear what she was telling him. She had nowhere else to turn.
She knew that no-one would understand her actions. Knew she would be hated... and hoped that hatred would lessen the grief for her loved ones.
Of course, her logic was flawed. Home is where people are, the people one loves. Family is about facing problems together. And of course, her children would rather face anything than the loss of their mother.
Yet, she could think of no other way to protect them. She felt she had failed them somehow, by allowing disaster to touch them, forgetting that it was not of her making, not seeing that by taking the responsibility to herself, she had robbed them of a chance to learn and grow together. Fear for her family made her blind to many things.
So, those last three days she was calm and happy. She stored up each moment of joy with her man, she treasured each smile from her children, and then, on the last day, she set her alarm very early, and settled down beside him, revelling in his warmth.
She didn’t sleep much. There was no longer any reason to sleep. As she got up before dawn, the man opened one eye and she smiled at him, taking one last look with her heart aching. She wished she could look at her children too. She went downstairs and wrote a note for them, telling them how proud of them she was and how much she loved them. She wrote a note to her man, telling him she was sorry, that she loved him, and why this was the only way left; giving him detailed instructions on what to do to save their home, knowing he would not be able to think clearly.
Then she took every pill she could find until she knew she had taken enough and more than enough, and she closed her eyes, smiling, with the image of her children in her mind and knew no more.
Yet, fate took a hand. An hour or so later, one of her children came downstairs early. The alarm was raised and an ambulance was called. The woman was within minutes of death when they arrived, and over the next few days she hovered between the worlds. The only thing that held her was her youngest child, holding her hand, stroking her hair, willing her to live and pouring love, strength and understanding into her.
Strange dreams and visions peopled the silence where she hovered, many things became clear in the darkness and she was sent back.
As she awoke once more to the world, inconceivably, it seemed that her ridiculous solution had worked. A miracle of human kindness saved their home, the man had snapped out of his insulated bubble of pain and began to live, doubts were laid to rest and the two families learned they could act as one.
Yet there is always a price to be paid, and the price of her action was a double edged sword.
The doctors pronounced that there was no mental problem. Fear had offered a logical, if radical, solution to an actual problem, and desperation had blinded her to the desperate errors the plan contained. Only her youngest child understood the extravagance of her actions and forgave her with unconditional love. One or two stood by her with understanding and empathy. Some despised her cowardice, some hated her for the hurt she had caused, friends turned their backs on her and on the family, and some believed she owed them a debt because they had not turned their backs. Some used it as an excuse to cover their own mistakes and justify their actions.
She herself could not forgive herself for her blindness. She had given everything for love and had said her goodbyes. And yet, all she loved most dearly was given back to her. But fear had gone. She was no longer afraid to speak her mind when things went wrong. No longer afraid to see the weakness in her man and admit to herself that his very human weaknesses were an echo of her own. No longer afraid to risk losing the things she loved, simply because she loved them. No longer afraid to see the deeper problems which had placed her family at risk in the first place. No longer afraid to see her own fear, faults and weakness.
The woman had voluntarily relinquished all she had and all she was... and nothing had a hold on her any more. She had the freedom of strength to choose her path and her actions. And the blinkers were removed from her eyes. And as she began to grow in strength and understanding, the man withdrew from her, challenged by her clarity until finally they parted.
Many things that she had believed were essential to her life she found herself discarding. Her own viewpoint had changed and she was, for the first time, able to see how fear had defined her life so far… fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of disapprobation... and most of all, the fear of not being loved.
She felt herself at once to be empowered and adrift in an unfamiliar sea. As the weeks and months passed and her life, to all outward appearances settled back to normality, she knew in her heart that this was not so. She was even able to finally see that her desperate action had not been inspired by love, as she had truly believed, but by fear… the fear of letting her family down, the fear of failing to protect them, the fear of allowing them to be responsible for their own choices.
Finally, the woman saw that life had come full circle and she had the chance to break the cycle of fear, handing back to her loved ones responsibility for their own lives and actions. She learned that loving does not give one any rights over the object of that affection… only the responsibility to be the type of person that one believes the loved one deserves to be loved by. She learned that true love, even a lifetime long, is a precious thing that is lent to us for just a little while and should be treasured like a jewel, for it may be as lasting as the rainbow caught in a diamond, or as transient as the prism in a dewdrop in the morning sunlight.
She learned too, what she had always known, but never understood. The only thing to fear is fear itself.
January 31, 2013
The Dancing Years
Long ago there was a very little girl who wanted to dance. It was not unusual when I was a child, many of us went to ballet classes, quite a few dragged unwilling by mothers conforming to a trend and just enjoying the socialising, or pushing daughters and the occasional son into a fashionable pursuit with vicarious ambition. Some of us, however, wanted to dance.
My mother was a ballroom dancer and some of my earliest memories are of the young woman in pretty net frocks. I don’t remember where it began for me. I was already learning to dance when my true memories begin. It feels as if I had always danced. But I remember when I first began to learn about passion. I was about four, up ‘in the gods’ in the darkened theatre watching Swan Lake. I have seen it many times since that night, but only Nureyev and Fonteyn ever put that same fire into the dance.
Of course, the theatre itself had me before the curtain came up. There is something about the swell of the orchestra filling the air with vibration that moves me to tears even now. I never want that to stop, never want to get used to that crescendo of sound and emotion.
I was lucky. My mother took me to every ballet she could and I saw many of the great ones of that golden era dance ; Beriosova, Helpmann and Ashton, Sibley and Somes.. and saw the greatest classical ballets as I grew. I wanted, desperately, to be a ballerina, short and chubby though I was.
We saw musicals and opera too. And oddly, for someone who cannot now sing for toffee, as the saying goes, musical comedy was perhaps my forte. There were some memorable performances… mainly because of costume failure. Well you try dancing in a whale-boned crinoline!
Perhaps the worst offender, as far as costumes go, was ‘Primrose’. The number was a little song from Novello’s ‘The Dancing Years’. For some still unexplained reason, my teacher at the time decided to choreograph it as a can-can half way through, inappropriate as that may seem for a very young girl. My mother valiantly found a way to make a chocolate box costume that hid a can-can skirt beneath. Hair pinned up and augmented with false locks and a hat perched on top, I hit the stage.
Sadly, this was a pre- Lycra era when knickers, even elaborate can-can drawers, were held in place with elastic. And as I broke into high kicks, the elastic broke also.
The show must go on, especially when there is a row of judges out front. By dint of some nifty footwork, unchoreographed moves and much brandishing of satin, I got through the dance with dignity intact. I even won a medal for it.
The next time we reinforced the elastic… but that didn’t save me from the wig and hat slowly slipping forward through the entire routine till I couldn’t see a thing. The dance was jinxed.
But the passion remained. There is something about standing alone on an empty stage, waiting for the curtain to go up, every muscle poised, a mix of terror and joy …. greasepaint and rosin, bloodied pointe shoes and rows of hanging tutus… something that demands the focus of all that you are in that moment, then the music begins…
However, it was not to be. A series of accidents ended that dream. Who knows if I would have made it? I only know I would have tried. Rather than wallow, I learned ballroom instead. The show, you see, must go on.
I wonder now if that is perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned from dance. More important even than the posture rapped into my frame by Mrs Goddard’s cane. That no matter what happens, we can continue. To be a trouper. We may have to change the steps, muddle through and move forward in unexpected ways, but we can keep dancing even when the music becomes an unfamiliar melody. We may falter, get stage fright, or long for the music to end, but we can improvise, endure and when the curtain comes down we can smile and bow to the unseen audience and know we did our best.
Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?
Margot Fonteyn
The main thing is dancing, and before it withers away from my body, I will keep dancing till the last moment, the last drop.
Rudolf Nureyev
My mother was a ballroom dancer and some of my earliest memories are of the young woman in pretty net frocks. I don’t remember where it began for me. I was already learning to dance when my true memories begin. It feels as if I had always danced. But I remember when I first began to learn about passion. I was about four, up ‘in the gods’ in the darkened theatre watching Swan Lake. I have seen it many times since that night, but only Nureyev and Fonteyn ever put that same fire into the dance.
Of course, the theatre itself had me before the curtain came up. There is something about the swell of the orchestra filling the air with vibration that moves me to tears even now. I never want that to stop, never want to get used to that crescendo of sound and emotion.
I was lucky. My mother took me to every ballet she could and I saw many of the great ones of that golden era dance ; Beriosova, Helpmann and Ashton, Sibley and Somes.. and saw the greatest classical ballets as I grew. I wanted, desperately, to be a ballerina, short and chubby though I was.
We saw musicals and opera too. And oddly, for someone who cannot now sing for toffee, as the saying goes, musical comedy was perhaps my forte. There were some memorable performances… mainly because of costume failure. Well you try dancing in a whale-boned crinoline!
Perhaps the worst offender, as far as costumes go, was ‘Primrose’. The number was a little song from Novello’s ‘The Dancing Years’. For some still unexplained reason, my teacher at the time decided to choreograph it as a can-can half way through, inappropriate as that may seem for a very young girl. My mother valiantly found a way to make a chocolate box costume that hid a can-can skirt beneath. Hair pinned up and augmented with false locks and a hat perched on top, I hit the stage.
Sadly, this was a pre- Lycra era when knickers, even elaborate can-can drawers, were held in place with elastic. And as I broke into high kicks, the elastic broke also.
The show must go on, especially when there is a row of judges out front. By dint of some nifty footwork, unchoreographed moves and much brandishing of satin, I got through the dance with dignity intact. I even won a medal for it.
The next time we reinforced the elastic… but that didn’t save me from the wig and hat slowly slipping forward through the entire routine till I couldn’t see a thing. The dance was jinxed.
But the passion remained. There is something about standing alone on an empty stage, waiting for the curtain to go up, every muscle poised, a mix of terror and joy …. greasepaint and rosin, bloodied pointe shoes and rows of hanging tutus… something that demands the focus of all that you are in that moment, then the music begins…
However, it was not to be. A series of accidents ended that dream. Who knows if I would have made it? I only know I would have tried. Rather than wallow, I learned ballroom instead. The show, you see, must go on.
I wonder now if that is perhaps the most valuable lesson I learned from dance. More important even than the posture rapped into my frame by Mrs Goddard’s cane. That no matter what happens, we can continue. To be a trouper. We may have to change the steps, muddle through and move forward in unexpected ways, but we can keep dancing even when the music becomes an unfamiliar melody. We may falter, get stage fright, or long for the music to end, but we can improvise, endure and when the curtain comes down we can smile and bow to the unseen audience and know we did our best.
Life forms illogical patterns. It is haphazard and full of beauties which I try to catch as they fly by, for who knows whether any of them will ever return?
Margot Fonteyn
The main thing is dancing, and before it withers away from my body, I will keep dancing till the last moment, the last drop.
Rudolf Nureyev
Reflections
‘Know thyself’… Pausanius tells us it was inscribed in the court before the temple of Apollo at Delphi. We are given to understand it is associated too with the Inner Temples in ancient Egypt. It is one of the first phrases we come across in esoteric studies and where else could we begin? It is not the easiest thing to look into the mirror of the soul and admit to oneself what one finds there. Even less to share that openly with others by dropping the social masks and simply being who we are.
I first learned the concept as a child from my grandfather, but it was one it took years to begin to truly understand and longer still to try and put into practice. As we grow through adolescence and youth our self-image constantly shifts, changing as it reflects the desire to become who we think we ought to be, the image we feel the world should see, the mirage of our desire to become something different, perhaps, from who we are.
I have a feeling that it is only later that we have the inner space to truly look into that mirror, and by that time the masks we wear are so firmly in place it is difficult to strip them away and see what lies beneath. Many of us find it difficult to admit our worse characteristics, our fragilities and weaknesses. Even more, perhaps, do we find it difficult to truly admit our good points, gifts and talents as human beings. Our society tends to call this pride or ego and we see that as something to be shunned. Yet why should we fail to recognise the good when we can, it seems, accept the flaws far more easily? We are complex creatures.
Of course, unless we know ourselves from all angles, understanding who we are, how we move in the world, what the impulses are behind our reactions and actions, we cannot even begin to make a conscious change. Without that knowledge the changes that occur naturally through time and experience are simply reactions. Yet there is a difference , too, between knowledge and understanding. A child may know that fire is hot and learn not to touch. A parent sees the danger of the invisible ‘fire’ in radiators, hot irons, cookers… and understand how to keep the child safe.
I want to learn, to know. To understand. Both inwardly and outwardly… my inner self and the life around me, for I feel the two to be inextricably linked. Life, of course, involves me in a very personal way, the ultimate intimacy. It demands that I take account of, and responsibility for, thought, word and deed… it demands my awareness and my active participation in my own conscience, my own being. And this awareness is not separate from the rest of my life, but permeates every part of it. It provides the matrix by which I can live with my eyes open, allowing me to begin to glimpse the pattern.
Yet I was reminded recently that there is more to the phrase than the two words so often quoted. It is said that in learning to know oneself one can begin, however dimly, to see God. Whatever Name we choose to give to the Divine, there is that small spark of Light, a memory of our origins, and perhaps a foreshadowing of our destination, burning brightly like a jewel in the soul. Perhaps we have to look beyond not only the masks society sees us wearing, but also beyond the complex contradictions of the human personality we assume, to see that spark of Light within.
Not only is there a need to understand the impulses and characteristics that move us through the world daily, wearing a familiar face, but there is, I think, a need to look deeper towards the inner mysteries of who we are. By turning inwards in silence, which may at first glance, seem a self-centred thing to do, perhaps we are actually opening ourselves to a reality wider, vaster, deeper than we may see elsewhere, and by looking within we open ourselves to the whole wonderful vista of manifestation?
I first learned the concept as a child from my grandfather, but it was one it took years to begin to truly understand and longer still to try and put into practice. As we grow through adolescence and youth our self-image constantly shifts, changing as it reflects the desire to become who we think we ought to be, the image we feel the world should see, the mirage of our desire to become something different, perhaps, from who we are.
I have a feeling that it is only later that we have the inner space to truly look into that mirror, and by that time the masks we wear are so firmly in place it is difficult to strip them away and see what lies beneath. Many of us find it difficult to admit our worse characteristics, our fragilities and weaknesses. Even more, perhaps, do we find it difficult to truly admit our good points, gifts and talents as human beings. Our society tends to call this pride or ego and we see that as something to be shunned. Yet why should we fail to recognise the good when we can, it seems, accept the flaws far more easily? We are complex creatures.
Of course, unless we know ourselves from all angles, understanding who we are, how we move in the world, what the impulses are behind our reactions and actions, we cannot even begin to make a conscious change. Without that knowledge the changes that occur naturally through time and experience are simply reactions. Yet there is a difference , too, between knowledge and understanding. A child may know that fire is hot and learn not to touch. A parent sees the danger of the invisible ‘fire’ in radiators, hot irons, cookers… and understand how to keep the child safe.
I want to learn, to know. To understand. Both inwardly and outwardly… my inner self and the life around me, for I feel the two to be inextricably linked. Life, of course, involves me in a very personal way, the ultimate intimacy. It demands that I take account of, and responsibility for, thought, word and deed… it demands my awareness and my active participation in my own conscience, my own being. And this awareness is not separate from the rest of my life, but permeates every part of it. It provides the matrix by which I can live with my eyes open, allowing me to begin to glimpse the pattern.
Yet I was reminded recently that there is more to the phrase than the two words so often quoted. It is said that in learning to know oneself one can begin, however dimly, to see God. Whatever Name we choose to give to the Divine, there is that small spark of Light, a memory of our origins, and perhaps a foreshadowing of our destination, burning brightly like a jewel in the soul. Perhaps we have to look beyond not only the masks society sees us wearing, but also beyond the complex contradictions of the human personality we assume, to see that spark of Light within.
Not only is there a need to understand the impulses and characteristics that move us through the world daily, wearing a familiar face, but there is, I think, a need to look deeper towards the inner mysteries of who we are. By turning inwards in silence, which may at first glance, seem a self-centred thing to do, perhaps we are actually opening ourselves to a reality wider, vaster, deeper than we may see elsewhere, and by looking within we open ourselves to the whole wonderful vista of manifestation?
