Stillness in a high speed whirl

Things do not get simpler, what can change is how we deal with life, how we accept what is happening, how we process it all and how impersonal we can make it.

This last part may need clarity: We take things personally, we get upset and stressed. But most of what happens is not personally directed at us as a punishment, it is just life, it is just how things are, what is… resistance changes nothing and in fact can make it all a whole lot more unmanageable and painful both physically and emotionally. As the fabulous Stephen Levin says: “Hell is your resistance”. A sentence that I spent two years meditating upon.

An interesting way of sitting with this as a possible attitude to your reality is to stand still. Calm and peaceful.
(I find it easier outside as I feel as though I am more a part of the madness when I am outside of my calm and beautiful house and aware of the speed with which life screams past.)
Look at your feet and then take your attention up your instep, into your ankles, through the shins, knees and thigh muscles. Follow the energy up through the hips and into the main torso.
Around the centre of the chest is where the Soul is said to reside in the body.
Let your attention sit here for a while, becoming calm and still, open-hearted and present. Aware of sounds, sensations, perfumes and the pieces that want to pull you away from the present moment, but stay with yourself.
From this still and perfect place look out and let your self see life roaring past, fast, noisy, high speed and determined. But become conscious that you can stand there and refuse to attach yourself to any part of it. You can stand still, ware and awake, and let life and the dramas, stories, pain and intensity of it all fly past you without having to grab onto any part of it.
This awareness can be rather startling if it is your first time with it, but just keep breathing and take stock, take a distance and see that your need to attach to the dramas and grab them into you is what creates the dramas and pains that you are ultimately, endlessly trying to escape from.

Take a deep breath. Feel your feet and relax. But as you walk back into your life be aware that you attach yourself, nothing else does it for you.

Such fun, the boys and their competitions.

I am finding rather challenging at times to tell which party paid for the poster! But hey, this is how it is done here and what a glorious waste of money it all looks to be.

Politics are ever the tricky topic and I am happy to steer sideways from here into stress levels, and management of the aforesaid using several tried and tested methods.

It is a testing time, It is hard to see the future as rosy and despite all the bank’s bonuses I think there are many who still think there is another dip to come. The uncertainly can raise stress levels and after so long, who needs more?

So, my tips and tricks here may well help you to move forward with a smile.

If you understand what happens when you feel fearful or stressed it makes it easier to understand how to deal with the feelings and restore balance and a sense of humour.

When you get agitated, stressed, fearful or the sensation that it is all too much and there is too little time it is usually caused by the kidneys shooting out a hormone called cortisol in response to a strand of thinking that may have caused you to feel a little fear. Many of us shoot huge amounts of cortisol very quickly and sadly the easiest way to tell is if you have, or you easily gain weight around your waist…

Cortisol is a hormone that produces the feeling of stress in the body. It also generates the notion that you want to eat because somewhere inside you know, subconsciously, that the eating can bring on an endorphin rush. Endorphins are our pleasure hormones and they eat the cortisol which can last for up to three days in the body. It is easy to see how one can spiral round and round and end up overweight and chasing your tail.

There are various things that will produce endorphins. It is a long list, but the top favourites are:
Any exercise which raises your heart beat, so swimming, running, briskly walking, sit ups, etc
Dancing to a great piece of music
20 press ups
Lying on a bed of nails. This one I cannot recommend more highly. I do it every night, reading in bed. Currently I am stressed so I lie in bed reading Georgette Heyer novels and sleep beautifully after.

The trick is to produce endorphins to eat the cortisol and lower the stress levels this way. The gain is huge in as much as most of what you can do is good for you, self esteem goes up and you have the sense that you are in control of your emotions. The art is in the remembrance, that is the tricky part.

I also have a list of 25 ways to master depression which I am happy to email should this be part of your current experience. It is scarily common right now.

As I write I am sitting in Delhi Airport. A 5 hour drive to get here which was fairly uneventful beyond the usual camels all going the wrong way down the motorway, trucks with no lights looming out of the dark, stray dogs everywhere and the small fires lit by the truck driver who all huddle in small groups wrapped up in filthy shawls against the chill spring morning.

I had to get up at 4.30am to be ready to leave. The usual platoon of staff were all up, too, hoping for tips. I know all their life stories, how much they earn, what they send to their families, how much they would like in tips… I confess I find it irritating rather than endearing, so just to wind them up I gave the tips all in one bundle to the hotelier to pass on. I know he will, I just do not feel like Lady Bountiful so early in the day.

By 8.30am I was awake and hungry. We still had a 100 or so kilometers to go and I asked the driver to stop somewhere. He knows I like bhuria chai (good chai) so he pulled over to a famous truckers stop where they are renowned for their parathas.

Of course all the customers stop in mid mouthful as I glide past and head for their divine toilet. How long can I really hold my breath for? And can I pee standing….? Minutes, and yes, of course I can.

Sitting at a rickety table under an acacia tree on a crooked plastic chair I arranged myself. Water was brought in a lovely red plastic jug, black with grime and the table was diligently wiped with a cloth that musty have just given the toilet a once over. Squirrels tried mating under my table and the sparrows were having such fun.

The driver was thrilled that I took it all in my stride and personally wiped down the newly delivered, wet, greasy plate. Once it was gleaming it was mine. The obligatory swarm of flies had discovered his bare arm and all waited there, patiently, knowing that food was on it’s way. A couple of mangy curs came and hung out, too, great long black nipples dangling from their exhausted bellies. One of the dogs had lost the ability to pull in it’s tongue and it just lolled there dribbling, hoping that the site would induce me to give up and throw my breakfast at her. But I held fast. Declining the fly ridden chutney I just went straight for the most delicious paratha, dripping in fresh ghee, filled with hot potato and sliced chilli. It was delicious and I was transported away from the roadside cafe with the endless flies and sounds of horns into a culinary bliss which did also require constant waving with my hands to stop my food being engulfed in flies.

I got up from the table feeling so very much better. Only one dog had the patience to wait till the end and I threw her my crust.

I do love India….

A long dusty day in the sun

I came to shop and I confess to having been somewhat reticent until today. Not entirely financial withholding as everything here takes hours. Time is not always mine and the best laid plans often go awry off the bat. The last few days have seen my open-mindedness swell to exquisite proportions as I expand to allow for Muslim Demonstrations, Suicides int he street, arrests of politicians and credit cards being switched off.
Today it was the turn of the banks to slide my day into disorder. My first attempt to shop after my morning chai was thwarted by the bank closing down all my cards. I stood in a shop handing over one after the other until I have to give up. I returned to the hotel with not enough cash for a cup of tea and waited for the bank to open in London. Charm personified, mine, got things opened up again and I headed back out, this time into the nether reaches of Jaipur where, strangely, I have never been before. All army barracks, mess halls, smart soldiers and tree lined shady avenues with pavements. Quite bizzarre, but then lots about this trip has been odd. I feel as though nothing exists until I arrive to see it!

We, my delightful driver and I, were on our way to meet a Charity Bus that drives to a different temple each day to sell spiritual accessories. This day was the main Shiva Temple.

Arriving there was unexpected. I had not thought about it. It was like arriving at a farm. Cows everywhere and piles of methi or fenugreek leaves that they are given to gain boons. The perfume of cow dung and fenugreek was great. We walked down a long wall past all the beast and methi hawkers. Along the wall were ranged all the Shiva Sadhus with their begging bowls and colourful clothes. Shiva, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is the God of Creation and Destruction. He governs addictions, depression, our inner demons and in perfect balance is a delightful being but he is also all our darkness manifested. The temple was an interesting display of his darkness. Thick sweet piles of incense buring all over the place, the floor was awash with swarms of flies, trees bark blackened by the endless smoke from the burnt offerings and the temple itself had two huge statues of Shiva Rampant, looking really scary. I covered my head and went in to see the Lingham and yoni being washed and prayed to. Shiva is worshipped with a symbol of an erect penis set in a female vagina and it is always washed with water and venerated with flowers and incense. The act of washing is continual and very serious, the intensity of whoever is taking part is quite something to witness. It was a darka nd excessive place. Rather lovely, as I like that kind of thing. Lots of longing and desire all mingled with the malas and curling smoke. Om the way out I had a Shiv Tilak painted in blood red on my forehead and it is there, still.

We finally found the bus parked in a layby on the main road in the full sun. Packed to the gills with books, malas, incense, beads, trinkets and puja kits it was great to sit on the floor inside whilst the man unpacked yard after yard of beautiful malas. All perfect, all lovely.

Lunch at the Anokhi Cafe was the usual parade of westerners in Jaipur and the food was delicious. Pasta, good pasta, in India is such a treat. From there to the Lucknow salesman who is charming and efficient. I spent a fortune in almost no time at all and then decided to go back tomorrow and pick it all up. I walked the 3 miles back to the hotel and was harrassed every step of the way. If not by salesmen, it was beggars, women, kids, monkeys, chai wallahs, rickshaw wallahs, dogs, fruit sellers, chappall wallahs, rickshaw drivers, skinny boys in tight trousers holding hands with each other…. the list is endless but it was fun and I arrived back feeling clear headed and very happy.

I am amazed how much slips out of the memory and the journey from Delhi Airport to Jaipur triggered an acute awareness of so much that I would experience in the next few days.
My first camel was waiting in the shade of an acacia tree, flicking it’s tail and chewing with beautiful almond eyes closed against the mid-day glare of the sun.
Looking down the embankment of the motorway with cars weaving all over the place, a jeep coming the wrong way towards us and a herd of goats waiting to cross I was suddenly held by the stillness of the water buffalo standing tethered beside a mud hut, the neatly stacked patties of dung in the corner, the brushed mud yard and the woman with the glittery veil miking her.
I lay down in the back of the cab and slept to the sound of endless horns, the shouts of vendors as we slowed to go through towns and villages, and the chattering around me when we were stopped by roadworks.
Arriving in Jaipur was so lovely. Strangely like coming home, and I found that aching longing to spend more time here. I have only a week this trip. a short burst of commerce which gives such an amazing insight into an aspect of how this amazing country functions. The steaming chai opening the deal, the whispered calculations between the men selling, the focus and determination that each side has to do the best deal possible and then the laughter and more chai when the deal is struck and it works all around, the dusty credit card machine that cranks out the receipt and the faithful receipt hand written and stapled together with such firm deliberation. The erotic charge of taking the money passes and I am free to leave and they are open and ready for the next customer. Lights are all turned off and newspapers opened, not to miss a moment of relaxation before the adrenalin rush fires up again.
I have had a day of commerce and come back feeling as though Jaipur froze whilst I was away. In my mind’s eye, progress had swept through the city and all tradition was gone, the sweeping arm of change had erased all that was familiar and known: the dust, the dogs, scrawny cows and bone thin farmers in their traditional camel skin shoes and huge madly wound turbans, their clothes a strange shade of pale blue from the whitener added to the river water washes. But it has not changed at all. Not a moment. The shops all have the same assistants, the same stock, all just a little dustier and they are a little more tired. The recession has trashed tourism and business needs a lift.
So the welcome I received all around Jaipur today was so delightful, from the Chai Wallah to the Chappal Wallah (shoe seller) it was all smiles, asking about my children and longing to know if my hair had grown again.
I am happy to be here. There is a burgeoning row of bags lying in the corner of my room all waiting to fulfil their karma and come to England.

Instead of the savage pleasure taken by most in New Year’s Eve, try something new: A meditation for change and transformation. The sensation of being in the state of meditation as the year changes is a spectacular thing. The ethers open and a wonderful timelessness arrives. You literally float in the Heavens.
Use this time to shed limiting thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and memories. None of it serves. We need to be as free as we can to stand up to the next year. With no regret, no fear and without distraction. Use the pain on your shoulders as you work with this energy to burn off all your limiting structures.
I have chosen a wonderful meditation to do over this time:

Aim for 11 minutes, starting 6 minutes before midnight and carrying on for 5 minutes after.
Sit cross-legged with a straight spine. Use a pillow under the buttocks if that helps you to stay vertical. Chin in, chest out. Raise the right arm straight up so it is vertical and hugging your right ear, the palm of your hand faces forward, the fingers straight but split open, two each side of the split. Thumb at a right angle. Stretch your left are straight out to the left side, parallel to the ground, palm facing down, fingers split as on the other hand. Close your eyes and meditate.
This is an amazing and intense meditation. It will be challenging on the shoulders but use your breath, long and slow and mentally or out loud chant Wah Hey Guru to help you to keep going. When you need release from the shoulder discomfort lean forward rather than putting your arms down.
To finish, inhale deeply, hold your breath for 10 seconds as you stretch your arms and your entire body. Exhale and repeat the breath two more times.
This is good to go for 40 days. If you do take it up as a practice alternate your arms each day. So one day left out, the next right out.
This is the most powerful self purification you can do. It can give you complete control of your being. It improves intuition and makes you powerful and healthy.

We accumulate our life experiences as a blanket, a wall, a series of blocks or scars and in many other ways, carrying this with us into every interaction, expectation, experience and desire. We are moulded, good, bad, indifferent or exquisite, by all that we experience in our lives and how we
subsequently process those events then shapes and colours our continuous stream of present moments.
For some, life is like water moving through and around us, for others it becomes a scar that is frequently tripped over, for more, a drawing pin that holds us fast, stopping the sense of all freedom of choice.

Some of us who can see all of this within ourselves and are at different stages on the path of releasing, unravelling, letting go and climbing on top. Some of us are drowning under the weight of our perceived problems, some, many, of us are totally numb to it all. Life is just one big party and pass me the next drink/joint/line/purchase/ sugar hit etc. The wall is still ahead and will eventually be hit.

I have great affection for the wall when it is hit. So much pain so fast, but the raft of opportunity that is fallen upon is so very mind-blowing. Hitting the bottom, landing in the mud, fingers just grasping at the edge of the raft, is an awful experience, I know, and please do not think I am making light of it as an experience, but for all it’s trials, pains and agonies it is a Mantle of Grace that softly falls around our shoulders and gives us the ability to fly upwards into the light. To change, to transform, to finally see what is happening, to truly feel how divine our short time here can be.

There are names for this experience: The Dark Night of the Soul is the classic, but these are rarely referred to now as the chosen method of dealing with excess emotional pain is medication. “Numb me, please, I beg you. I cannot bear another moment of recognising how I really feel.“

The swathes of mind-numbing legal medications available are wild. The figures telling how many people are using the option means one must look around and think: Gosh, that is an army of people I know who are dead to their opportunities, options and experiences. Please do not think I make a judgement. I do not. I know how painful it can get and the amount of exercise, meditation, yoga, mantra, acceptance and letting go it takes to alleviate the agony is becoming a real adventure.

The past two years have seen an intense escalation in stress levels, fear, intensity and violence for all of us. What we have become inured to, in our daily life, is so sad: images that 3 years ago would have been unthinkable are now commonplace for 2 year olds to stare at from their prams. Nothing appears Sacred to the masses, life is cheap, the future is over and we stare at a Hollywood projection of what is to come believing that “they” must know because a celebrity is in it.

Fell peeled. It is what is happening. Feel raw. We are. We have been flayed by all that has passed these last few years; all boundaries are broken, nothing is as it was and it cannot return there. The innocence has gone.

The date changes in a week. 2010. All adjusts, all moves into another place. Personally I cannot imagine it will be easier but does it really have to be? Can it not just be what it is? An opportunity to hone ourselves, personally, to grow, to change, to move beyond the small confines of all that we decided we could do, of all that our experiences led us to think that we are capable of? We are each of us so much more than we think, believe or know.

Let’s dance with this next year. Spiral and spin into new realms of consciousness, let go of limiting beliefs about ourselves, swirl into the next year with a smile ready to catch all that is thrown at us and hold it with as much grace and acceptance as we can muster. Stand up and be original in thought and expression.

Let’s dance with this next year. Spiral and spin into new realms of consciousness, let go of limiting beliefs about ourselves, swirl into the next year with a smile ready to catch all that is thrown at us and hold it with as much grace and acceptance as we can muster. Stand up and be original in thought and expression.

I do like this time of year: layered dressing, the drama of hats, shawls, boots and heavy jewellery. I long for the northern Lights and heavy snow. I suppose it is the extremes of the cold and the glowing embers in the fire, being warm inside and the freezing breath in the crispy mornings, the endless darkness and then the exquisite busts of low sunlight when the clouds part that brings such pleasure to a time that most seem to wish past.

The energy all around is low. The sap in plants and trees has descended, All the leaves have fallen, the longest night is on the 21st and from that moment it all starts ascending again. The spell of darkness is broken and a sense of renewal comes in. The lights of Christmas are linked to this whole cycle. The celebration of the whole seasonal movement starting again.

It is a good time to re-evaluate, to look over the past year and take stock. How was it? What happened? What can I change or do differently? What have I had enough of? What do I want to start to do?
For so many of us it has been an extreme year. A lot of stress, many people experiencing severe illness. There have been big changes in how we think and assume things ought to be and the joys of moving forward, in a world that seems to be drowning in mediocrity, are hard to list. Core values have been profoundly challenged and we have to find a new version of ourselves. This may not be true for all of us, I recognize that, but daily conversations all point to the majority of us feeling very similar; that there is a need to approach life in a different way.

So taking stock, an overview, is a good way forward; it is empowering and life-affirming. It feels pro-active and it is something that each of us can do for ourselves. The Global Warming Crisis so totally overwhelming, all the fighting and arguing is driving all confidence to an all-time low, it is easy to turn away in confusion but on an individual and personal level there is so much we can each do to affect our own environment and those immediately affected by us. Ever just calming ourselves with meditation, breathing techniques, taking up running or something that brings self-esteem, can have a great impact on other family members and friends.

My way forward is to make a list of the major events of the year, positive and negative. Really see what happened, how was it, how did I behave, react and respond. Honestly recognize where I could have done better and then move forward with a clear set of goals in the New Year. What do I want to achieve, change, make, do and see? The consciousness of where have I been and where am I going gives clarity and purpose. It may be time for major changes: stopping a habit, loosing weight, leaving a job or a relationship. If there is emotional honestly and a clear vision then the consequences are less of a shock and the path is easier to follow. I found one of my lists from 1991 whilst clearing this week. It made for interesting reading and I could remember so clearly how I felt and how much I moved on.

If you take no pleasure in the transition to the New Year try doing a meditation starting 6 minutes before the midnight hour approaches and for about 5 minutes after it passes. The experience is rather trippy and a nice change from the usual savage pleasure taken by most on this night. Time opens and there are interesting places in the ethers that become available. I will put up a meditation on the next newsletter if this is something that appeals.

Looking around, especially at the media right now, it is easy to see that there is a strong desire for everything to go back to how it was “before”. The general push is that the financial markets need to be as they were, the housing market has to become buoyant again, the credit crunch must pass and if all these things happen everything will be “fine”.

This stubborn view is hampering change. Things have to change. It is the only constant in life apart from Now. Everything is rising, falling, emerging and decaying. There is nothing that does not follow this cycle. There can be a refusal to admit this as the reality and it is easy to see how this manifests in many ways around us: plastic surgery, the government policies, bank’s attitudes to money, our fears for the future, to list a few. We are conditioned to be scared of change, to fear the future, to expect our imminent demise and it distracts us so far from the here and now that it has become a major part of all policy to make sure that we do not ground ourselves and look around us to see who we are and what is happening. We are fed huge amounts of stress and misinformation by the media and there are vast swathes of the population who buy into it on a daily basis.
I could appear to be a conspiracy theorist but I am not at all. I am nothing more than a woman running a business in a recession, a mother and living clean and sober on a daily basis and so watching all that comes my way and recognising how it alters my daily experience.

Time has shown me that although there are many around with whom I can chat, let off steam and confide, the real way forward through it all is when I really take responsibility for myself and do what I need to do to take care of myself physically, mentally and emotionally. It is from this place, calm and clear, that I can be there for others, function appropriately and let things be as they are without endlessly resisting my reality.
So this is the point of it all: Can I be the space for this right now? This question is powerful and takes time to implant in the consciousness. It is to be asked when the brambles of the mind get too tight and the stress is rising. Stop and ask “Can I be the space for this right now? “ An interesting thing starts to happen; there is a space that opens and the resistance melts. The painful thinking changes, the stress dies down, (although the question may have to be repeated several times), and it becomes just what it is. No projection, no invention, no fear. Just a neutral allowing it to be and to then take, if needed, steps to address the issue as a functioning adult. If no steps are needed then move into the present moment.

It is a step away from the drama, the victim and the intensity that can become daily habit and requires an awareness that one is in fact stepping into a different way. Once this is engaged then the different way is calm and peaceful. There is a clear tool, the above question, to use when the body manifests the thoughts in the mind and we feel and become fearful, stressed, overwhelmed and unable to cope, but practice of this tool simplifies things and acceptance is a relief.
A different path can then start to emerge. Taking on change as a personal, rather than a global project becomes possible. The options as to how to make a difference widen, there is so much that can be achieved within each of our personal spheres of daily life. Turning off lights, radiators, walking to the shops, switching to locally produced food, being aware of and responding to our neighbours needs, recycling unwanted clothes and books etc.

For books that deal with these issues look at Practising the Power of Now, and I am That, The Mind and Still Here.

I find it hard to write at the moment. It is an accumulation of reasons, some interesting, others not to be said out loud, laziness and too busy. The accumulation of experiences leads to large gaps between things being said.
I think the most interesting thing about writing weblog is the personal censorship. I censor myself. I have so much I want to say but I know I cannot. Why not? Because it is too personal, possibly unkind, not necessary to voice, mean, rude, non-pc… the list is long. So each time I hit a point where I am struggling with an aspect of life I hit all these things and realize that I cannot be appropriate or positive without violating my own codes and ethics and I silence myself.
I have thought long and hard about all the things I/we cannot say and think often about writing a book or just opening wide up and saying “this is how it is”. But not yet. So I go the other way and work at becoming more emotionally neutral; I try to have less attachment to the dramas, the highs and lows of my daily experiences as a mother, a wife, an addict in recovery, a business woman in a recession, a teacher, a friend, a runner…. Such a long list of different beings to neutralise.
So my state of extremis has been a major journey towards a calmer daily experience. Over time I have tried all manner of tips, tricks, techniques, methods, postures, mudras, meditations and mantras. As I flirt with 50 I can see that it is an ever-evolving journey. But truthfully certain things work. If I see myself in an open-topped car moving through my life in high speed I can see that certain things get chucked out as detritus along the route and other things accumulate into the bits and pieces vibrating gently along side me as I drive to where ever it is that the Universe in all it’s wisdom and vicious irony has decided I am headed.
My current new experience is very coloured by listening to Eckhart Tolle CDs which I download from iTunes. I used not to be able to listen to him. It used to depress me endlessly, waiting for the next word to dribble from his lips, he spoke so slowly, but now I find his words amusing, liberating and relevant. Which of us has changed? I guess it is me, and thank god, frankly. Endlessly boring inner journey through barbed wire, brambles and personal mud which is so endlessly boring and futile.
So the result of my neutrality is less weblog. Less to say out loud, less reaction, less time spent oozing thoughts into the ethers. I do not think anyone suffers.