Becoming the person for the day

At 5.00 am I woke and forsaking the pyjamas, the bed and the warmth, took myself out to the garden and the summer house.  The remarkable thing about the earlier morning meditations is that time flies and with no effort, half an hour of meditation is effortless and simple.  There isn't the tussle with the mind's suggestions of things to be done and you seem to be bathed in the same becoming that is happening in nature.  There must be a period between night and day when each sleeping thing remembers its form and function and gets ready to display again, birds to be birds, roses to be roses and people to become the person for the day.

a better authority on stillness

Owing to having nothing positive to report from my own practice other than partying is great fun and that seeing old friends is near to being blissful, I am using the words of Marsilio Ficino to convey the message about why meditation is conducive to real connection.
"If a ray, descending from God Himself to the soul on the perpendicular, lights upon a soul set aslant at an irregular angle, it bounces off sideways, and naturally does not reveal God, but some empty flash in the soul... But if it has found a soul that is inwardly level and horizontal, it springs back straight to God and takes the soul with it to the happy embrace of its own object and end, where the mind at last enjoying God, enjoys itself also, that is, finding itself for itself in the Ideal Form."
Quoted from the History of Angels by Valery Rees

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not pyjamas, not the bed, not the flat, so what is it?

It isn't any good blaming the pyjamas, they are neutral, it isn't any good blaming the bed nor the location, nor anything else!  But looking more closely could it just be that sleep is the enemy or rather that by being attached to the idea of sleep is opposed to being fully conscious?  Imagine the delicious  nature of sleep as you, the person, are absorbed into its sweet embrace! This is so blissful that if you think about it, many of the other pleasures are akin to that feeling of becoming absorbed by something else.  A really lovely wine, a delicious meal, a holiday, falling in love, a warm bath, the company of someone who likes you, all of these things lull you (and me) into a false sense of security.  So, what to do with pleasures?  Should we climb a mountain and cut out all sensory pleasures?   I'm not sure that a householder disciple should do that, a householder disciple should be able to measure out the pleasure factor, know it for what it is and live lightly with it.  So, sleep is a challenge.  It is said that if you practise a new habit for 60 days, it becomes natural.  Having failed the 4.00 am challenge today, it means I will have to restart my 60 days.  I'm not sure if I have it in me to be that sharp, but I will take it day by day and I will stop blaming the pyjamas, they are innocent.

excuses excuses

We stayed in London last night and the early start didn't happen.  Not the pyjamas this time, but shall I blame the bed or the fact that if I had got out of it when I woke I would have disturbed my husband, my hosts or shall I just say that the individual person lying in the bed with the individual mind making its puny excuses won the day.  We got up at our old normal, had tea and then meditated before taking to the road to the West.

the key might be in the pyjamas

If you clamber out to meditate early in your pyjamas, no matter how good your meditation, the pyjamas suggest to you that you should be back in your bed afterwards, they are just the natural pair to bed so obedient to their insistence, you return to the bed.  Tomorrow, it's off with the pyjamas, never mind if it takes a little longer, and see if post meditation, the thoughts turn to study not to sleep.
The other pyjama story which really impressed me was from a man who said that he practises acute attention when he folds up his pyjamas every morning.   It connects him with what he is doing and makes him aware of the miracle of the human body working.
So pyjamas, your place in the blogosphere is raised to the level of teacher.

early connection

Made the 4.00 am connection again, I walked across the soft damp grass, lit a candle, covered my knees with a rug and meditated.  Again, a most uncomplicated meditation, the only requirement to keep the back straight and not sag sleepily.
If there are angels everywhere, they certainly want recognition if they are going to help so how do we do it?  Just remember that they are there and that the whole space round you and round those you like, you don't like and those you will have nothing to do with, is their space.  It makes you realise that you don't have ALL the responsibility, there are others there to help.

up there with the birds

Going to bed I made my mind up to get up on first waking and also that it would be at 4.00 am!  Amazingly, without an alarm, I did wake then but had to grapple with the eyelids which wanted to close and the body which didn't relish moving.  It took ten minutes and I set off through the garden to the summer house, put a rug around myself and meditated.  The time went by incredibly fast and without being fanciful the atmosphere really was just much less cluttered.
Do you find that when you try to be still at times when the world is in motion, that it can be a battle, ideas bombarding the mind, noises distracting? In the early morning, the only sounds were the birds.  Even the puppy didn't move when I passed by.

However, after meditating so early, I popped back into the warm bed and slept until 6.00 am.  Tomorrow, I will use that time a bit better.  I thought of the nuns, of Sister Wendy, of the great lamas and rishis and I thought of the Brahma Kumaris, their leader aged 96, all getting up at 4.00 am and staying up in order to study and thought it was a bit wet not to get more of a grip of myself.

sharpen up he says

I asked my husband to read the blog to see what he thought!  He thought it needed sharpening up so here goes.
I need to sharpen up in order to sharpen up the blog and this is where to start.
It is the time of year when the sun rises and sets earliest and latest and where am I when it does this.  In bed in the morning and usually watching the news in the evening.  I am determined to get up especially now I have woken up to the idea of an angelic realm.  Clearly they are about with the sun up and not to join my meditation to the finest and quietest part of the day is a poor effort, after all, I am retired and my children are grown up and the grandchildren only visit from time to time plus the new puppy will be pleased to see me when I pass through the kitchen on the way to the garden house.
Watch this sharp little space!

cistern leaks, where are the angels?

Yesterday, I wrote about reading about angels.  You would hardly believe it but when I walked into Church, the congregation were singing Ye Holy Angels Bright! and the reading was about angels.  The whole idea of angels makes for great cheerfulness and a feeling of not being alone.

However, when the cistern sprang a leak in the downstairs loo, with gushing water being staunched by every towel in the house, it was the white van with the emergency plumber who appeared as the most immediate angel in the vicinity.

The second reading was about demons, and about the many demons which Christ sends into the swine who then rush headlong into the sea and drown.  The idea of demons gives a sense of a continuous battleground in the world of nature and the world of mind.  It makes sense of cultivating the angels and that benevolent world through reading, praying and meditating.

My morning meditator has increased her meditation to a 20 minute one and our early morning meditation is a wonderful way of creating a better state of mind.

better iamblichus than Ian Rankin

Sunday slower-found me reading Valery Rees' History of Angels, Chaper 2 called Filling the Space between Heaven and Earth which was a change in direction from reading gripping Ian Rankin detective novels.  It struck me that words fill that space and what you read makes a difference to the realm you live in.  Out of the murky world of criminals and corruption to the world of Angels was like coming up for air, like the smog lifting in Singapore and I was struck by a quote in the book which Rees uses.  It is from Iamblichus (c 250-325).

'For the human race is feeble and puny, it sees but a little ahead, and is endowed with a congenital futility.  But there is one remedy for its inherent straying, confusion and unstable changing, and this is, if it participate so far as possible in some portion of the divine light.'

You can't get much clearer than that.  So, off to Church to thank God for the Church Fete! but more than that, I will be down on my knees thanking God for the possibility of freedom from my feeble and puny state.

the two becoming one

Visiting meditation daily is getting to know the reality of who you are and of who everyone and everything else is.  You set yourself the goal of making that reality the single reality so when you have to leave the different persons that are the expression of that reality, you can do it without grief to yourself or others.  The key is getting the meditation into the pattern of your life, aiming to make it the most important thing, not just an add-on to enhance your life.  The second person, the running around, driving, thinking, being all sorts of things from childhood to old age then becomes absorbed in contemplating your spiritual being.  It is a high calling.

I have two husbands! and he has two wives

That headline should get you interested! A woman who meditates and seems to be serious has TWO husbands!
And he has two wives, how can this be?
I only realised that I have two husbands, I have always thought I had just the one who was sometimes in one mood and sometimes in another.  But this week I watched this one carefully and observed that he has a spiritual being and one for the world and they aren't really related.  The one who mows the lawn and walks the dog and gets annoyed with other motorists doesn't really have much to do with the one who meditates and studies to know who he is.  And if I am honest, I expect that I have two beings as well.  You may say but of course it is like that and why didn't I realise this earlier but I think I have always tried to make one of the beings conform to the other and that can cause friction.  For instance, driving along getting annoyed with the driver in front who of course is in the wrong provokes my 'wife one' person to ask why someone who is meditative and wise is duped by an innocent driver.  And I expect he wonders why my worldly persona ever feels anxious or is caught in a busy world when the meditator is peaceful.
I hope that one day the two will become one but I believe that you can't force this to happen without producing a false extra person.
Meditation is our best hope!
Perhaps there are three, there is also the one who sleeps! This one walks the dogs!

Sister Wendy Beckett comes to visit!

Sister Wendy painted by Mary Cook

Today, an artist friend brought down her portrait of Sister Wendy Beckett.  As she told us about Sister Wendy and about painting her, it was as if we were all with her.  The undeniable influence of a person who spends a life devoted to God transmitted itself to all of us and the portrait touched all of us.  If you look at the portrait carefully, there are many things showing; one is the phenomenal aspect of brush and paint, of shading and colour, then there is a recognisable form of a nun and in this case, of a nun who is quite well known.  

Sister Wendy said in answer to a question about why she, who had sought the solitary life in order to be alone with God,would agree to talk about art and to talk about it on television, is that people today don't want to hear about God, but that “if you don’t know about God, art … can set you free, that art is a kind of disguised God”, and she hoped in her small way she might have helped some people “find God in beauty”.  

The conclusion drawn from this description and of the effect of the very real presence that the portrait conveyed, is that behind every form there is that which is expressing itself and if the gaze shifts from the purely physical to consider what else might be there, a true and lively image may be found.  This ability to discern a spiritual dimension and to convey it to others just must be a product of a spiritual life.

age no bar

We are staying in a house with 40 people, at least half of them are over 80 years old!  They put us to shame, and I saw two who I know to be over 90 joining in with washing up and that after a full day.  Their secret (of course you know what I am going to say), is meditation.  Alongside that is an attitude of active interest in knowing what enlightenment might be and great kindness to each other.  I am in awe of their approach to the daily round of life.  We ended the evening with all 40 of us singing some old favourites, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Amazing Grace and I gave my Love a Cherry and finished with the reading from Corinthians on the nature of charity.  It was just right.

Who am I?

Alongside meditation, here is a practice to make you think! and to consider exactly what a human being is.  A friend said that he had been asking himself this question every day, really letting it sink in and turn it over in the light of what he really thought he was. So, I am following his advice and starting this morning and asking the question as I get dressed and check my appearance in the mirror, it is clear that I am not what I see.  So, a start has been made.  Which of these is the real one for starters?

an early bird

When she arrived this morning, I was still getting ready but as her time is so short on the way to work, we went to meditate in the garden room.  We are now about a fortnight into this pattern; she comes early or at the end of her day to restart her meditation practice.  I had said when she got married that  loving her as I do, I wished her every good in the world and that included helping her set up her home, wedding dresses and wedding parties, but that the most enduring gift would be meditation because that gift would last beyond lifetimes.  She tried then but there was so much happening, so much to entice and distract, but now it seems different, and this is a mature decision.  Today, we seemed to arrive at a real peace with much less effort and the sense of her real nature being complete and peaceful and of the relationship of mother and daughter disappearing into that singleness was a lovely thing to start the day with.

stop the mind? or just see it for what it is

Meditating with 4 young girls this morning in a school where there is a rising tide of excitement, of communication, of people working and general noise, this analogy suddenly helped.  We imagined a river in flow and then imagined taking a glass of water out of the river to drink.  The water in the glass is immediately quite still and thirst quenching.  To sit with the whirling sound of life round you, the only effort we had to make was to concentrate on our own centre, and let the whirl and flow go on around.  They found it easy and we all found it made us feel better.

passing by

Passing by houses which were occupied by people we knew on our way to a wedding, we thought about how they seemed to have belonged to the owners at the time.  In our minds we could see those old owners coming and going, gardening, cleaning, entertaining, drawing the curtains and going to bed there feeling that that very house and place was theirs.  We feel like that about our house but in fact, the houses outlive us so it would be much more accurate to say that they own us!  Meditating on the unchanging amid the changing world alters your vision of how things are; they all seem much less convincing but also much more beautiful in their own right.  It makes me realise how I take things for granted, seldom think how blessed I am, don't you find that too?
See this house, it is called Houghton Hall; someone once thought they owned it and then they died and it belonged to someone else and so on and so on until today when someone else has all the work of owning it.  I think it has owned the people and by its huge and imposing being has had all of them working hard to keep it alive!

Houghton Hall is not my house! Someone thought this was their house once and then it passed on to someone else. 

facing facts

In the newspaper today, a celebrity says she forgives but doesn't forget and if she wants to get someone back she'll get them back even if revenge takes years!  Meditation might help here!  If I were to put something on my wish list for a result from meditation it would be to harbour no bad thoughts about anyone.  If the mind ceased to associate names with past actions and resolved itself into a peaceful state, not only would life be easier but what we call death might be easier too.

broadband goes, electricity off, what do you do?

Just as if to test yesterday's blog about determination, the tests start arriving one after the other.  It is as if the controller has pressed fast forward and I find myself in a farce not a serious play. I have a string of appointments, I get up early to complete the relevant tasks and I trip trip trip over each thing, the electricity is on the blink, the broadband wire has been chewed by a mouse so those important e mails can't go and they were so urgent! my morning meditation is about to be shortened, even cancelled!  But I remember what I wrote last night and there is no getting away from the fact that the words are there in black and white.  And my morning new meditator is here so the test is do I believe all this stuff about activity or do I believe that stillness is the reality.  I meditate! and when I get back all those things are patiently waiting for attention.

getting serious!

There are so many reasons to meditate but there is one problem, meditation takes effort, it isn't just an easy peasy way to be relaxed, it is a discipline.  The only reason for any discipline is having a goal, so for instance, dieting is to lose weight, exercising is to get fit and working is to provide cash for the household.  Meditating is to become still and focussed and more important to become free from the world of duality.  Of course just a little meditation will take you just a little way and you will feel better and more relaxed but are you up for the longer line? Read on tomorrow and the next days and see if I can make a good case for the discipline of meditation.

Another good reason to meditate especially if you're a child

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10114132/Transcendental-Meditation-may-boost-student-grades.html

See this article from today's newspaper.  Mind you, meditating for academic results is only one reason for meditating, there are many many more so keep reading!

you can't mend the coffee grinder when you are meditating

Have you noticed how your mind does things when the thing isn't there?  Sometimes it seems useful, say when you are driving along and you replan your house/wardrobe/diary! but this habit of drifting into a future which doesn't exist follows you straight through the door of meditation and there you have to be determined to stay focussed on your practice and not try to mend the coffee grinder until later.

BK's best friends and best at discipline

Have you met the Brahma Kumaris, they are the best!  You may have seen BK centres in different cities, often called Inner Space.  They dress in white and they smile all the time.  You may wonder why they manage this and I can tell you the secret now.  They meditate, and they do the job properly, rising and meeting at 4.00 am every morning and then discussing the traditional teaching given through their founder Brahma Baba and all this before going to work!  Many of them give up all their worldly lives and fully participate in spreading the word that meditation and kindness are needed in the world today.  They get my highest marks for commitment and kindness.  I am more of the householder type of disciple and whilst my admiration for their self discipline is a source of inspiration, householders also traditionally have a really important place in the spiritual scheme of things.
Keep your eyes open for the Brahma Kumaris, you will know them by their qualities first and you will want them to be your best friends, they certainly are mine.

she used to meditate, who is she?

She used to meditate, or perhaps she found boring when life picked her up and said come on and live a bit! but a few years down the line she found it difficult to focus.  Recognise this anyone?  When I was young my mother said I couldn't be still for a minute and this girl is the same, full of get on and go and good fun to be with.  She asked if she could try again and 'come and join us from time to time;' of course we said 'yes.'  I'll tell you how she gets on.

feeling better and worse

Everyday dawns and the fact that I am the same person waking up fools me into thinking that everything is the same.  I don't notice the constantly changing world.  Oh no you may say, we know that the years roll by, we see that dates change, seasons change, children grow, but the fact is, we don't notice that every single thing is in a process of change ALL the time.  Meeting friends and relatives, they seem to be the same even if their hair grows grey or they change shape and it isn't until we suddenly face the fact that we are losing someone that we realise the changing.  Having been caught up totally in a busy changing weekend, people, events, conversations and exchange of smiles, kisses, opinions, I didn't think that I might never see such and such a person again.  It is only recognising the changing and the inevitability of losing everything and everyone we think are there for ever, that we perhaps recognise that their preciousness lies in their being.  And we get a flash of realisation that we should treasure them for that reason.

Mozart Thursday, Rodriguez Friday Searching for Sugarman

Mozart on Thursday evening with supper in a garden with 60 gentle meditative souls, Rodriguez, (Searching for Sugarman) on Friday at the Apollo, Hammersmith with 2000+others, not apparently meditative.  But maybe not.

Have you seen Searching for Sugarman?  What a wonderful and inspirational film about surprise success.  A musician from Detroit makes an album, it fails to sell but a copy goes to South Africa and becomes the iconic sound for the young South African anti apartheid movement.  He knows nothing, goes back to work on a building site and 20+ years later, some music journalist teams up with a record company executive and they find him.  They bring him to South Africa where he plays to sell out audiences, he is bigger than Elvis! and in between these visits he simply goes back to his house in Detroit and work and gives his money to family and friends.  The journalists make a film about the story and now the whole world knows about him, knows his songs and is at his feet.

He is 70 and tired tired tired but his performance last night had an intimacy and kindness to it which somehow quietened the audience who were waiting to go wild for him.  At the end, he collapsed with sheer effort but it was hard to know who might have seen that.  I wondered if Mozart would have applauded; I think he might.  Both lives are thought-provoking and each show in some way, that the energy flowing through the music is extra-ordinary and that the lives of the musicians are part of the requirement of the music to find expression.

Setting a goal

I am awakening to the idea that any effort made in a lifetime needs to have a goal otherwise it tends to go to waste, so in the smallest sense, if your goal is just to have a cup of tea, you have to assemble the bits and boil a kettle.  Therefore meditation needs a goal and that might vary between people; it could be just to become calmer or it could be an aid in conquering an addiction, or it could be for freedom and enlightenment.  Reading what the Dalai Lama says in regard to meditation, Buddhist tradition includes a systematic meditation/reflection on the virtues and on detachment and also developing compassion for all beings as goals along the way to enlightenment.  To accept these requirements means that we understand that we are still prone to non virtue and attachment and more so, we are not in a state of universal love for all beings.  Fortunately he says that we need to be patient and proceed with one thing at a time.  Simple meditation as a practice of clearing the mind of whatever impedes the focus of meditation, is a general practice which will help all these other goals.
Onward Ho!

a little lesson from the dog

There was a squirrel caught in a trap this morning and when the dogs went past it, they changed from being two docile and friendly family pets to a couple of feral creatures.  We had to get hold of them and drag them away into the house.  As soon as they were out of eye and earshot of their prey, they returned to two docile and friendly family pets.  What I learned from this is that the emotion only belongs to the event, and if I were like Algie or Muffin (names of dogs) I would leave any emotion, positive or negative just where it belonged and not drag it like an old bone into meditation.

Grantchester conversation on Plato would have appealed to with Ruby Wax,

Meeting under the trees in Grantchester, Cambridge, a small group of us discuss Socrates' approach to death.  As I have just signed my will which states that I want my body to be cremated, this is rather appropriate. The actual sentence, with and I and the body separated by a verb is stating that the I and the body are different, (however, this doesn't make me want it to happen right now).  Socrates gently presses  the idea that life and death are just two sides of an opposite with a flux of states between them.  There are five of us looking at the possibility that the other world might be just as real as what seems so real about us now.  Everything though about the garden setting and the summer sounds made this world seem very attractive.
Plato's laying out of Socrates' argument move our ideas around so we begin to think about things differently.  In the Times today, there is an article about Ruby Wax and her intelligent use of the mind to change ideas which affect the state of her emotions.  I think she would think that Plato was an advocate of cognitive behavioural therapy and Socrates was what could now be called a facilitator.

How does this lead to meditation as a practice?  An idea to consider is that meditation is a sort of practice of death, it is a death of attachment to the passing ideas, a disbelief in them for just that part of each day.  Good luck with that one!

meditation and sleep

The reason sleep is blissful and meditation is meant to be blissful is because when you set yourself off to sleep, you consciously stop the aggravating thoughts which keep you awake.  At least I do, I just turn off the light and get into the sleep position, shut my eyes and heigh presto, sleep comes.  So, I had a little look at how this happens and I am pretty sure that I have programmed myself to stop thinking.  When I started meditating today, I watched carefully, and adopted the same conscious choice to not think that 'I do' when going to sleep, and it was good.  I noticed that as in deep sleep, there are no emotions running counter to the state of being and that was good too.

a longer line

There is a story of a mathematician who answered the question of how to make a line drawn on a board shorter, took the chalk and simply drew a longer line, making the original one look shorter.  Meditation is the longer line.  This morning, meditation allowed a large large inner space to become real, rather like the sky but with a feeling of great benevolence.  Of course, a few old thoughts and some new flitted across the space, but weren't captivating.  It may be a frivolous analogy but it is rather like being in a room with a lot of people who are all interesting, attractive and talking, but you are with your best friend, comfortably at home with them or consequently not attracted to the melée.  It is friendly and without any walls.  It is a larger space, a longer line, but extraordinarily familiar.

sunday, under the tree

Having failed to make it to formal meditation, I sat with the little girls under a tree.  First cuckoo cuckooing, little girls picking up fir cones, pigeons swooping and circling, last blossom blown off the trees, what a vast area of perception and how completely marvellous too.

sympathy for the busy

Having had 2 small children for the weekend, I totally remember what it was like trying to find time to meditate when my own children were small.  It isn't the fault of the children, it is just that a complete mechanical person gets up inside and becomes involved with the detail, whizzing round with a damp cloth after the marmite and toast crumbs and the dropped Cheerios.  But hey ho, I am determined to turn that off, let the cheerios shower onto the floor and march forward to stillness.  Of course, the other thing is that I could have got up even earlier than them.

abracadabra

I creep out to meditate in the summer house because Grace, aged 3 is staying and we usually meet early for Cheerios.  There I sit, eyes shut and just starting and a small voice outside calls my name.  Clearly I am not in deep meditation! because I know I have to respond, after all, its quite cold outside.  So, in she comes and asks me what I am doing.  Meditating I say, and she then asks me what that is.  I say, well, I just sit very still and close my eyes and say my magic word.  Oh, she says and then asks if she can join me.  We sit for a short time, both with our eyes shut, and I hear from my side of the summerhouse a small voice saying abracadabra!!  I find it hard to finish meditating after that so we go in for Cheerios and the day gets started.