I loved writing at school and then stopped doing it. Actually, I stopped doing it and also forgot that I’d enjoyed it. I always wrote long, interesting letters home to my parents and enjoyed the process of that. However, I didn’t ever link that enjoyment to any desire or ability to be a published author. I just enjoyed writing letters and got on with the rest of my life.
Then, many years later, I started meditation. The discipline of doing that each morning (early) and evening started an internal discipline – I started listening and being aware of the thoughts, feelings and moments of greatness that passed through my mind.
The daily act of meditation also imbued me with an openness of mind. It dawned slowly and sometimes it didn’t dawn at all! However, there came into my mind, each time I sat in stillness and silence, a reverence and a remembrance of my greater self which floated in and rested there with its graceful presence. Even when it felt tiny, fleeting and distant, its creative beingness moved me.
Then, somewhere in the space this presence created, a recalling (a calling?) started to speak through the clamour of constant chatter. This still, quiet voice of my recall began to speak louder and louder. It felt, at times, as if the large, gentle hand of God was at my back, urging me forward to something. I knew not what this something might be – or was I just afraid of acknowledging I had something to accomplish? – but I knew a presence more potent and knowing than I was urging me on.
As I allowed the daily rush of rabid rubbish to fall from my mind, the void allowed my silent calling to float to the surface. Eventually, that calling voice inspired action.
Initially, I would have a sentence pop into my mind and refuse to leave. It would doggedly nag at my mind till I wrote it down. At times I would leave it for days, challenging it to stay with me – it always did. I hated rising in the early morning – probably because of the freezing mornings I’d had to rise to go mustering or on lambing beats, in my childhood – but that’s when the sentences would climb into my brain and play their constant, cheerful and annoying tune.
Eventually I would succumb. I would get up at five am, sit at my desk and write down the stupid sentence. As I was writing, another sentence would arrive and so I’d write that too … an hour later I’d pull away from that beautiful reverie, mind and pen in holy relationship, and see the pile of previously blank paper, now happily replete with words.
Having little idea of what I’d written, I’d make a space in my day and type my scribbles into the computer. Sometimes, when typing, I’d decide to “improve” the wording. Then, as I read the typed words back, I’d realise the original ones were better – always, the originals were better.
You see, we all have busy lives, things to do, things to plan, things to worry about. We’ve all got incomes to make, families to feed, relationships to nurture, skills to learn, holidays to endure, toys to buy … and on and on the list goes. Our minds are kept conveniently busy with the doings of or little world to help us avoid the bigger world we wish to inhabit. It takes courage to let that rush of rabid rubbish go for a while – even for milliseconds – in order to peer into the void of our greatest possibilities.
Whether your gift to the world is in politics, art, sport, business or in any other area of life, I’d suggest you find some way, any way, to rise through the daily din to that deep desire of a life lived creatively. Whether it’s meditation, seclusion, music, an absorbing hobby or whatever, find a way to drop the dross and raise the recall – you’ll be amazed at what’s waiting for you from your greater self.
And, from my greater self, is the story of Arthur Bayly and Mary Collins in the blockbuster novel, An Olympic Challenge, continued from the previous blog ...
"Oh Arthur, I'm sorry, I was sitting on your arm!" said Joan jumping up. He eased his arm out, with her help, and took her hand to reassure, while a jangling pain stabbed him in the head and several other unidentified places. He grimaced and gripped her more tightly than he'd meant to.
"Oh dear, did I hurt you, Arthur?" asked Joan, apparently blaming herself for everything.
"No, no dear, just my head a little … aah, wobbly," said Arthur, wondering why his head and some of his body on one side felt either sore or oddly out of sorts. As that question arose, he wondered why he was in a strange bed … a single bed with starched sheets and the smell of antiseptic all around. His hand went to his head and it felt like a bandage there. "Did I hurt myself somehow?" he asked tentatively.
And, from my greater self, is the story of Arthur Bayly and Mary Collins in the blockbuster novel, An Olympic Challenge, continued from the previous blog ...
Escape From Certainty
Wednesday, 15th March 2012, 4.00 p.m.
As his eyes drew a veil over a world both thoughtless and fearful, he relaxed into the glow of a home he'd never left. Behind him he left the pale and fading footprints of a dream he knew he'd dreamed but could not remember. As he quietly smiled himself into the growing light, he wondered if there had really had been a him, an Arthur Bayly, a dream, at all. His singularity grew into that ancient and massive oneness that encompassed and nurtured all.
The serenity powered through him as acceptance took his tentative hand to lead him deeper into the light of lights - the shadowless light of peace - which beckoned his heart to approach. As a long-lost son of a loving father, he was drawn to join and extend, to co-create in stillness. Where strength and gentleness met in oneness, he absorbed himself into their sweet and inviting light as his formless smile beamed its extension of acceptance and love, born in the eternal and growing light of forever.
With no doing to interrupt his creativity, he was free to be the ancient greatness he'd never not been … just forgotten while he dreamed a dream now gone. Kindness seeped into him and showered forth in quiet beams of luminescence that warmed the soul of all he ever was.
Decisions rode gently through him and he was free to ride on them to where their creator imagined them to be. Choices were gone and, in their place, was certainty that all was done, all was deeply right and all was being done by stillness and silence. Had his soul a mouth and eyes it would have shed a smiling tear but, instead, he knew with relief, the struggleless life was upon him and it had ever been so.
Then a spark of specialness crept into his mind. A part of a dream returned; a decision to be unique and separate recalled itself and, as the decision was made it was unmade and a veil fell over that microsecond of timelessness, as he returned to the glow of the power and peace of oneness. This was where he belonged, out of time and space, out of control and fear, out of struggle and vanity.
He was in the deep sigh of unity, forever untouched and unmoved but the memory of that desire for separation and control let a small shard of ice slide through him. He tensed himself, fearing expulsion from this ancient arena of awareness and immediately regretted the desire to control … and he was gone, back into the constricting capsule that clumsily plodded a sorry earth. The more he fought his expulsion the more tightly he was tied to the plodding body. As he struggled to remain, that endless expanse of peace was lost to his grasp and the dream of fear, loss and control was reborn.
The grasping fearful mind knows only one direction to go and it took him there - back to the pain and frustration it so feverishly fought against. He knew this. Despite his gentle, knowing strength whispering to him to let go, to let be, the screeching maw of his terror-stained dread yanked him into its ghastly, cobwebbed cavern of restriction and avarice.
He had trapped himself back into this parlous state and, despite his strong and silent knowing, the weak and flailing whimper was what he fell into step with … and that step was a body he fell back into; a body of physical pain with mental guilts and fears.
Miserably, he knew he must open his eyes and feel the loving judgement of those around him. There must, he knew, be physical pain, many questions to be answered and many answers to be questioned. On a one-way trip to the demon of judgement, he knew he must accept his fate and, as best he could, slog through the swamp of desire, plans and affairs of the world of tangible and corruptible form.
He opened his eyes a little, anticipating a strong and stinging light to be adjusted to. It was a bright light, yes, but nowhere as bright as the light in the dream he'd just emerged from. He shut his eyes again, hoping he'd find himself back in that deep and silent light. It was not to be. Noises started up as if his opening lids had flicked a switch on a sound machine. He was trapped in this clumsy body and he knew he must return, for now, to the dream of pain and separation.
As he woke into a denseness, he felt himself a stranger, as did King Harun-al Rashid in The Thousand and One Nights who, as the sun went down, left his palace in beggars clothes in order to mix with the poorer people and hear what they said about him. He really didn't belong. He knew that. He'd always known that and yet, here he was in this strange and straining land again, a stranger in beggars clothes with the burden of guilt, yet again.
With a grim smile he sneaked his eyes open a little and saw a movement and smelled a whiff of familiarity - a fragrance of her, restored to memory.
"Are you awake, Arthur?" asked Joan quietly. Her concern pained him for he knew (or felt) he now had to deal with her pain as well as his. He sighed inwardly and smiled.
"Yes, yes, I'm here, love," said Arthur, trying to lift his arm to pat her hand and finding it trapped in the bed clothes on which she sat.
Wednesday, 15th March 2012, 4.00 p.m.
As his eyes drew a veil over a world both thoughtless and fearful, he relaxed into the glow of a home he'd never left. Behind him he left the pale and fading footprints of a dream he knew he'd dreamed but could not remember. As he quietly smiled himself into the growing light, he wondered if there had really had been a him, an Arthur Bayly, a dream, at all. His singularity grew into that ancient and massive oneness that encompassed and nurtured all.
The serenity powered through him as acceptance took his tentative hand to lead him deeper into the light of lights - the shadowless light of peace - which beckoned his heart to approach. As a long-lost son of a loving father, he was drawn to join and extend, to co-create in stillness. Where strength and gentleness met in oneness, he absorbed himself into their sweet and inviting light as his formless smile beamed its extension of acceptance and love, born in the eternal and growing light of forever.
With no doing to interrupt his creativity, he was free to be the ancient greatness he'd never not been … just forgotten while he dreamed a dream now gone. Kindness seeped into him and showered forth in quiet beams of luminescence that warmed the soul of all he ever was.
Decisions rode gently through him and he was free to ride on them to where their creator imagined them to be. Choices were gone and, in their place, was certainty that all was done, all was deeply right and all was being done by stillness and silence. Had his soul a mouth and eyes it would have shed a smiling tear but, instead, he knew with relief, the struggleless life was upon him and it had ever been so.
Then a spark of specialness crept into his mind. A part of a dream returned; a decision to be unique and separate recalled itself and, as the decision was made it was unmade and a veil fell over that microsecond of timelessness, as he returned to the glow of the power and peace of oneness. This was where he belonged, out of time and space, out of control and fear, out of struggle and vanity.
He was in the deep sigh of unity, forever untouched and unmoved but the memory of that desire for separation and control let a small shard of ice slide through him. He tensed himself, fearing expulsion from this ancient arena of awareness and immediately regretted the desire to control … and he was gone, back into the constricting capsule that clumsily plodded a sorry earth. The more he fought his expulsion the more tightly he was tied to the plodding body. As he struggled to remain, that endless expanse of peace was lost to his grasp and the dream of fear, loss and control was reborn.
The grasping fearful mind knows only one direction to go and it took him there - back to the pain and frustration it so feverishly fought against. He knew this. Despite his gentle, knowing strength whispering to him to let go, to let be, the screeching maw of his terror-stained dread yanked him into its ghastly, cobwebbed cavern of restriction and avarice.
He had trapped himself back into this parlous state and, despite his strong and silent knowing, the weak and flailing whimper was what he fell into step with … and that step was a body he fell back into; a body of physical pain with mental guilts and fears.
Miserably, he knew he must open his eyes and feel the loving judgement of those around him. There must, he knew, be physical pain, many questions to be answered and many answers to be questioned. On a one-way trip to the demon of judgement, he knew he must accept his fate and, as best he could, slog through the swamp of desire, plans and affairs of the world of tangible and corruptible form.
He opened his eyes a little, anticipating a strong and stinging light to be adjusted to. It was a bright light, yes, but nowhere as bright as the light in the dream he'd just emerged from. He shut his eyes again, hoping he'd find himself back in that deep and silent light. It was not to be. Noises started up as if his opening lids had flicked a switch on a sound machine. He was trapped in this clumsy body and he knew he must return, for now, to the dream of pain and separation.
As he woke into a denseness, he felt himself a stranger, as did King Harun-al Rashid in The Thousand and One Nights who, as the sun went down, left his palace in beggars clothes in order to mix with the poorer people and hear what they said about him. He really didn't belong. He knew that. He'd always known that and yet, here he was in this strange and straining land again, a stranger in beggars clothes with the burden of guilt, yet again.
With a grim smile he sneaked his eyes open a little and saw a movement and smelled a whiff of familiarity - a fragrance of her, restored to memory.
"Are you awake, Arthur?" asked Joan quietly. Her concern pained him for he knew (or felt) he now had to deal with her pain as well as his. He sighed inwardly and smiled.
"Yes, yes, I'm here, love," said Arthur, trying to lift his arm to pat her hand and finding it trapped in the bed clothes on which she sat.
"Oh Arthur, I'm sorry, I was sitting on your arm!" said Joan jumping up. He eased his arm out, with her help, and took her hand to reassure, while a jangling pain stabbed him in the head and several other unidentified places. He grimaced and gripped her more tightly than he'd meant to.
"Oh dear, did I hurt you, Arthur?" asked Joan, apparently blaming herself for everything.
"No, no dear, just my head a little … aah, wobbly," said Arthur, wondering why his head and some of his body on one side felt either sore or oddly out of sorts. As that question arose, he wondered why he was in a strange bed … a single bed with starched sheets and the smell of antiseptic all around. His hand went to his head and it felt like a bandage there. "Did I hurt myself somehow?" he asked tentatively.
No comments:
Post a Comment