the now

Day 276

Posted by

2

Twenty-six years ago I had a job I liked, I had a nice enough place to live, I had a few lovely friends, I was in a steady relationship that was beautiful and I lived miles away from my parents which was difficult but I managed.

Today is the same, yet completely different.

I have a job I like, I have lovely friends, I am in a beautiful relationship and I live miles away from my parents which is difficult but I manage.

What makes today different?

It’s not that I am terribly self- aware but may be just a little bit more than before.

Not all that much travelling has taken place, but I have travelled a bit further in body and mind.

Many mistakes have been made – some lessons learnt and some mistakes repeated.

A lot has been lost and an immeasurable amount of enrichment has also taken place.

Many people have touched my life and vice versa.

A few more words have been added to my vocabulary, such as “being centered” and “equanimity”.

My ‘being’ has added a few more dimensions to itself.

On the journey from head to heart, I have moved closer to the heart.

In the brief time we have here, there is so much joy and love, the full range of human emotions to be experienced, so much more to be learnt and celebrated, so many more hugs and smiles to be shared, so many more possibilities to be opened up to.

“We shall not cease from exploration,

And the end of all exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.”

-T.S Eliot. Four Quartets.

Day 273

Posted by

1

My dearest Darling,

Today is the 16th.

It is a Thursday. It’s 9 months.

You are in my heart as always.

I wonder if you can see and know how much love is here, for you and me.

I wonder how life would be if you were still here, for you and me.

I wonder how these 9 months have passed by.

I wonder how the rest of my days will be.

I am learning. I am living. I am struggling.

But I am not alone.

Acceptance refuses to come.

I believed that I could have anything if I worked hard enough for it. Now I know there is no truth in it.

You probably thought I would be better off without you.

Really? It’s not true.

I believed I was strong but now I know I was wrong.

I wish I could write something for you or do some magic which would bring you back to me.

But that is not to be.

I believed I was free.

Now I have no clue what that means.

I have no aspirations for freedom or any other ‘dom’.

I just want to be.

Be here.

Be love.

Be now.

Be the seer.

The witness.

Be with what is.

Just be.

I love you.

Mamma.

 

 

Day 269

Posted by

0

Everything resides in the ‘isness’ of the present moment.
It’s my choice to either accept it or agonise over it.

When I use my body and all my senses to focus my attention on this moment right here, inside which I exist, everything else ceases to be.

I am where I am. I look around. Just look, not interpret. See the light, shapes, colours and textures. Aware of the space that allows everything to be. Listening to the sounds and then to the silence underneath them. Feeling the warmth of the water dripping over me from my scalp all the way to under the soles of my feet in the shower, standing completely still. Observing the rhythm of my breath. Feeling the flow of air inside my nostrils. I feel the subtle life energy flowing inside me. Anything I touch, a curtain, a scarf or a pencil, I feel it and acknowledge its Being. Becoming one with smells and tastes that I experience. Feeling the stretch in my hamstrings as I bend forward. Allowing the smile on my lips to spread to my eyes and heart.

I narrow my life down to this moment.

“Leave the abstraction of time behind. Get out of the insane mind and awaken out of the dream of time into the present. Break the mind patterns that have dominated human life for eons.
Nothing is anything but what it is.
Everything is to be honoured, but nothing matters.
Forms are born and die yet you are aware of the eternal underneath the forms.”

Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now

Day 265

Posted by

2

My joy is tinged with sorrow.

It never seems pure or complete.

In fact, the interesting, the funny, the beautiful, the mundane – all the stuff that life is made up of is incomplete. I feel it is not for me to experience joy in all its fullness. It just doesn’t fit me anymore. For now, I accept that this is how it is. It’s normal. It’s OK. I am not missing out on anything. I don’t want it to be any other way. No one can say how it ‘should’ be. It is what it is. No adjectives. For now, this feels right.

As I rode my bicycle today, I thought about the wheels rotating just like the earth, metaphorically speaking. While the earth has a fixed orbit, the cycle has a random start point and an equally bizarre finish. How does this place work? How do we come to live in the houses that we live in? How do we pick our friends or our jobs or our hobbies – randomly or through a predetermined trajectory? In another 100 days it will be 1 year! Does the earth know that, as it rotates endlessly, pointlessly and meaninglessly?

Some writings are such that every time I read them, something fresh emerges. I have been reading this particular text regularly for the last 25 years and yet it seems as if it’s new. “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran.

“Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.
When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”
But I say unto you, they are inseparable.
Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.
Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.
When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall”.

Day 261

Posted by

3

For a while my friends and I have been planning to make a YouTube film for prevention of suicides. Here is the proposed script for it. It is inspired by http://www.metanoia.org/suicide/. I would be grateful for your comments and feedback.

“I am not a therapist. Only someone who knows what it is like to be in pain. Just like you.
I don’t know who you are. But right now you are here, which is good.
You are not alone.

I assume you are feeling pretty bad and considering ending your life.  If it were possible, I would be there with you at this moment, to sit and talk, face to face and heart to heart. But let us just do this for now.

I have 5 practical things that I would like to share with you.

In the deepest darkness of despair, being unsure about dying is okay and normal. The fact that you are still alive right now means you are still a little bit unsure. It means that even while you want to die, at the same time some part of you still wants to live. So let’s hang on to that, and keep going for a little longer.

Suicide is not chosen; it happens when pain exceeds resources for coping with pain.

That’s all it’s about. You are not a bad person, or crazy, or weak, or flawed, because you feel suicidal. It doesn’t even mean that you really want to die – it only means that you have more pain than you can cope with right now. If weights are piled on your shoulders you will eventually collapse if enough weights are added, no matter how much you want to remain standing. Willpower has nothing to do with it.

What might be bearable to one person may not be bearable to another. The point at which the pain becomes unbearable depends on what kinds of coping resources you have. Individuals vary greatly in their capacity to withstand pain.

When pain exceeds coping resources, suicidal feelings are the result. Suicide is neither wrong nor right; it is not a defect of character; it is morally neutral. It is simply an imbalance of pain versus coping resources.

The five things to think about are:

  1. Firstly, people do get through this, even people who feel as badly as you are feeling now. Statistically, there is a very good chance that you are going to live. I hope that this information gives you some sense of hope.
  2. Give yourself some distance. Say to yourself, “I will wait 24 hours before I do anything.” Or a week. Remember that feelings and actions are two different things – just because you feel like killing yourself, doesn’t mean that you have to actually do it right this minute. Put some distance between your suicidal feelings and suicidal action. Even if it’s just 24 hours. You have already done it for 5 minutes, just by being here. You can do it for another 5 minutes by acting on the advise here. Keep going, and realize that while you still feel suicidal, you are not, at this moment, acting on it. That is very encouraging to me, and I hope it is to you.
  1. People often turn to suicide because they are seeking relief from pain. Remember that relief is a feeling. And you have to be alive to feel it. You will not feel the relief you so desperately seek if you are dead.
  1. Some people will react badly to your suicidal feelings, either because they are frightened, or angry; they may actually increase your pain instead of helping you, despite their intentions, by saying or doing thoughtless things. You have to understand that their bad reactions are about their fears, not about you.

There are people out there who can be with you in this horrible time, and will not judge you, or argue with you, or send you to a hospital, or try to talk you out of how badly you feel. They will simply care for you. Find one of them. Now. Use your time to tell someone what’s going on with you. It is okay to ask for help.  Try calling:

Samaritans UK- 08457909090

Hopeline UK- 08000684141

Calm UK – 0800585858

Carefully choose a friend or a minister, rabbi, imam or anyone else who is likely to listen.

Don’t give yourself the additional burden of trying to deal with this alone. Just talking about how you got to where you are releases an awful lot of pressure and might be just the thing needed for you to regain your balance.

  1. Suicidal feelings are traumatic. After they subside, you need to continue caring for yourself. Therapy is a really good idea. So are the various self-help groups available both in your community and on the Internet.

Well, it’s been a few minutes and you’re still with me. I’m so glad.

Since you have made it this far, you deserve a reward. I think you should gift yourself a coping resource. Remember, earlier I said that the idea is to make sure you have more coping resources than you have pain. So let’s give you another coping resource, or two, or ten…! until they outnumber your sources of pain.

Now, while this may have given you some small relief, the best coping resource we can give you is another human being to talk with. If you find someone who wants to listen, and tell them how you are feeling and how you got to this point, you will have increased your coping resources by one. Hopefully the first person you choose won’t be the last. There are a lot of people out there who really want to hear from you. It’s time to start looking around for one of them.

Now, I’d like you to call someone. Please.”