Your mind or mine is like a fish tank

You may find at the start of the journey of meditation and self-discovery that your mind is like an aquarium filled with all sorts of life.  What you thought was you yourself turns out to be a seething mass of these fish like slippery shapes, like fish amongst predators who rise from the deep and swirl with their great strong tails, snapping and snorting their way around the smaller fry.  Your (our) job is to watch them all, large and small and discern what emotions they provoke .  This is your chance to change the legacy of your mindset.  So, here is a guide to the way the Aquarium works;  first, remember that it isn't natural, it is a quasi real environment and remembering this is the most important thing.  So remember that this mind and its shenanigans  aren't the natural way of being;  this set up of aquarium/mind is a world made to resemble reality where  the water and food are brought in by the owner, that very person also chose the fish who would be in there.  You (or I ) am the person whose aquarium is being watched.  In my aquarium/mind I can see the movements of the fish ideas, little familiar flashes of this and that, no threat at all to the peaceful clear water but then something moves on the back of a sound, maybe a name is spoken and stirs an emotion, a memory and then swirling up from the bottom of the tank comes a dark shape, a shark or a whale sort of shadow and with it fear or anger or resentment moves the golden tiny fish into a rush.  This is where you (I) watch unmoved and our watching of the tank of our mind over time will make the dark sharks and his friends smaller and eventually even totally disappear.  It is the oddest thing that the sharks and sharks mates were ever allowed in by the keeper of the aquarium but they were and our job is to let them go again and again and again until they never rise again.

Do they get newspapers in heaven do you think?

An icon in a Monastery keeps the faith

When my imagination runs away with itself, I like to imagine heaven like a very nice English country house hotel with angelic butlers and smiling maids looking after a thoroughly good clientele.  God in this particular version of heaven is probably like the Earl of Grantham in Downton Abbey.  In this version of heaven, the newspapers are delivered and laid on marble surfaces for God to examine.  He, having lived as long as the whole creation and been several different important people in many different places and centuries, is used to seeing the changing ideas.  Today, he will have picked up the Times (I'm sure he reads the Times first) and sees right at the top the headline LOSING RELIGION CAN BE SERIOUSLY GOOD FOR YOUR WEALTH.  He sighs and confides in an angelic Mr Bates that he has seen it all before in cycle after cycle.  Religion and Wealth;  one rises, one goes down and at the moment Wealth is in the lead.  The people outside the gates of Downton Heaven are less religious now and have rejected the idea of God and this has been proved by academics who have found by asking questions and noting the current answers that nations become increasingly secular the wealthier they are.  Surely everyone knows this, says God, Wealth has always promised that if you believe in her, you won't need to make any provision for your future, wealth will pave the way, will in its own way become a God to you, she will look after your children's happiness, offering sweeties and trips to the zoo and rides on bumper cars.  To you, the sweeties will take on a different shape, perhaps just high class chocolates but maybe high grade cigars and cognac and more, trips to the zoo become extravagant safaris in faraway places and rides on bumper cars might deliver you a Porsche or a Bentley.  Nothing wrong with that but once your run of luck along with your wealth  runs out and you can't drive the car because you are too old, or travel abroad for the same reason, no more skiing or safaris, no more dinners out in swanky restaurants, you might feel a bit depressed especially if you hadn't read the health warning on the packet.  Wealth, it says, runs out!  Now, if wealth departs from you and health too, that is one thing but if wealth departs from the society you live in and economic health declines, where are you going to turn because there won't be any money in the coffers to pay for your benefits?  Maybe then, if we are lucky, there will be some old man or woman or some old Rabbi, Monk, Nun Priest or Teacher, a holy person, man or woman who will have kept the words which religions are built on, words which tell of the God who takes the form of light and air and water and earth, of life itself.  Those are the words you are going to be treasuring when everything in your world has gone a bit dark and those are the words that this old grandmother would have wishes every one of her grandchildren to have heard so that they can find them when they need them.  That's why religions work in hardened times, they have the words you really want to hear.

It's true by the way! but not the bit about God being English and like the Earl of Grantham!

Tears are doing their own thing

My  friend  is a really good cryer, I am not!  I think that it isn't grown up or very British to cry.  So, having found myself crying a bit I have taken a look at it and here is what I have found.

The word tears, means not just those briny wet things which come our of your eyes, it also means to split, to tear apart, to rip. That word with its different apparent meaning is meant to be like that.  It takes a split or a tear to send the tears out to wash your face and purify your heart

When you are a grown up, particularly a really really grown up sort of Granny, about to be 70 years old for heaven's sake or you are Grandpa, you don't cry over things, you pick yourself up, maybe meditate a bit more determinedly but you know that your role is to accept things and keep the show on the road.  Tears don't fit in!

You, the two old grandparents don't even cry together over things because you try to sort them out, you are after all a grown up.  Then, just when you are off your guard, you watch some innocent thing, a baby, the Queen's face at the RAF fly by, you hear that those 12 boys and their coach are all rescued, you hear a hymn or just a song which has meaning or God forbid, someone plays you the Pacobel Canon perfectly, up they come, they come creeping into your voice while you are trying to speak clearly and running down your cheeks and generally making an outlet for all the sad things which you haven't been able to cry over.  Tears are your humanity and they connect you with the sadness of human beings and others everywhere.  They can be tears of sorrow or tears or relief.

If you know you have a bit of well of tears waiting to come and show themselves, better to go watch a really sad movie (I took myself off to watch Breathe) where in the dark in St Neots Cineworld you can just let them roll down your face and not even bother to dab your eyes or your nose which also shares the rolling stream.  Somewhere in the tears is the reason for them and the reason will be about kindness or lack of it, it will be recognising that you and all human beings are the same, have the same needs and are looking for kindness among people.  That is why, it is the beautiful and the kind and the innocent that suddenly tear the fabric of your 70 year old brave face.  

If tears have to come, you know that inside you, there must be love because if you didn't love, you simply couldn't cry about sad things happening to you or to others and they wake you up to the fact that your needs are just the same as another persons and maybe you will watch out more carefully for the signs of sadness on another person.  You certainly won't be wanting to add sadness to them.