It feels a bit weird sitting down to write now about The Bad but –
It’s like every time I think about writing a sequel to Discovering Beautiful
And I get overwhelmed by how complex the whole thing is
That there’s no longer the linear narrative of the road journey
And the steady progression of growth
But a mad web of things I don’t really understand
The life I lived
And the life I think I should have lived
The meanings behind the events
What I thought they meant at the time
And what I decided they actually meant later on
Decisions based on mistaken interpretations
Roads and tangents walked down
That should never have been
Lessons learned from that
But then later re-interpreted and transformed in my poor addled brain
And the overarching idea that so much of it was about being on the wrong track
Trying desperately to get back to the right track
Wishing it away
And wishing for something different
And like all these words I’ve just typed now
So little of it making sense
Or, at least,
So little of it making the kind of linear, narrative sense
That one hopes for in the written word
A jumble of times and experiences and thoughts
The horrible intricate weave of a human psyche gone awry
The impossible complexity
And the infinite depth
So many realisations, all the time
That I just can’t find the words
Yet always compelled to try
Realisations tracing forever back to the earliest days of my body
And the terrifying sense that so much of the life I’ve lived
Was lived not for what I am
But for something that went wrong
Before I could even speak
And now – just typing
More words
Reaching and grasping and forever falling short
But enjoying it, nonetheless
Ah, this life!
The wonders of it!
The –
Sitting by the fire and watching
Looking at nothing
As the sparks of understanding
Flare up
Little drops of consciousness
Falling in
And taking me…
To the next moment
The psychological universe within
Never tiresome
Ever new and surprisingly
A well-spring of information
A devious mad fairground
At least undull
Compared to the supermarket world
Women…
Provoking so much
Emotion
And therein, my greatest learnings
But – oh!
You can’t live with ‘em
You can’t live without ‘em
Wouldn’t want to
A strange conundrum…
And none of it makes sense
I came back up to Yorkshirethe day after Christmas. Ex’s dad was driving that way and I didn’t want to push my random divine wanderings too far, back once more to cold-dark-rain consciousness and seeking this time the path of least resistance: the back seat of his car silently slumbering and looking forward to my bed. I knew I had to be back down that way the next day – down to near Hereford, just along from Droitwich and Ludlow, to embark on a 10-day silent meditation retreat at the Vipassana Centre, my first in over a decade – but it kind of made sense. And yet…
Once again I’m wondering about the choices I didn’t make. The life I was perhaps supposed to live. The door I didn’t take. The places that might have brought me to.
And the corollary of that: the painful suspicion that the life one is currently living is not the right one at all – gone off track – not what the soul desired and imagined when it made this plan. Forever and ever grasping to get back to the right path. But how to reach there when forever and ever moving away?
And probably that’s not even real. But that’s the way it feels.
I…well, yes, the next part of this story is all wrapped up in women and sex and romance and the “tangled web I weaved” and I want to try and stop writing about those things here. It’s perhaps not nice for other people. It perhaps may cause me future problems, depending on who’s reading this. We’ve all had private histories and feelings but I for one don’t want to know about them – and I guess that makes me a hypocrite – or, rather, flamboyant, indulgent, ignorant, and flippant – for writing about mine here. I feel for other people. I curse this compulsion I have to write down every little thing. Even as I progress in it.
Needless to say, I hurt someone. I was riding along blissful and cocksure and thinking everything was great. Having my cake and eating it. Thinking I’d stumbled on the secret and the solution and that everything was grand. That I was grand.
And now off to Vipassana to finally get back into meditation and roll on into that blissful world wherein the final piece of the puzzle of satisfaction would slot into its place in my life and all would be complete. My little flat. My little job. My disinterest in the world. My “too much time.” And my longings for divine – truth – God – enlightenment – peace – bliss – love.
Meditation was the answer. The solution. The next logical step that I’ve avoided for too long. With that, everything would be groovy. No more distraction. No more pointless time-fillers/killers. Just me and my little necessaries and then – every day, hour after hour, sitting in my perfect peaceful cave journeying into the wonders within. Except…
Wow, it was hell. And it was all wrong too. The first day, I couldn’t get a ride. I tried two different spots. I got nowhere. Eventually I gave up and shelled out a monstrous amount of money on a train ticket, thinking abundance and striking a blow to my ever-increasing and sometimes crippling financial tightness. And then the trains were late anyway, and there was no way to get there, and I had to come all the way back to Yorkshire, which is where the pain and mess exploded. But seemed okay. And then the next day…
I made it to Vipassana. Five or six hours on trains when it should have been like three. Legs killing me. Sit in the hall. Flu setting in.
I lasted four days.
I swear, it was the worst four days of my life.
Number one, I couldn’t meditate. From a combination of football and trains my hamstrings were tighter than this Yorkshireman’s purse strings. I couldn’t sit still, get comfortable. Me, who in that very same place some eleven years before had sat meditating ten hours a day, full lotus, feeling nothing but bliss and contentment, satisfied merely with the slow soft flow of my breath as it drifted caressingly into my nostrils and dropped like liquid ecstasy into the enormous cavity of my heart. But even twenty minutes was too much.
I asked them for some help with my legs; just a little stretch or something, I was sure that would make it right.
They said they couldn’t touch me, that I would have to meditate through it, that it was probably my mind-stuff manifesting in the physical and that it would pass.
Mind-stuff?! Dude, I know what it is and where it came from: it was ‘cos I played football last week, after three months of not playing. They were tight then and a friend stretched them out and everything was fine.
But no, smiles the teacher, it’s against protocol.
I rage inside. Compose liturgies about lack of compassion. Search the Buddha’s teachings to show how heartless they are.
This teacher – pah! Now I remember why I left there in the first place. All that talk and peaceful smiling and sitting still such long hours, as though ‘not moving’ is what enlightenment is about. But zero heart, little love.
They say “May All Being Be Happy” but inside I just don’t see it.
Ego. Superiority. Silly games.
Is Goenka enlightened?
No.
Therefore how can he lead the way, when the top of the mountain eludes him?
Fuck them teachers!
And that wasn’t even the worst of it.
Oh, my head! For suddenly, out of nowhere, I’m bombarded with regrets and confusions and simply enormous and overwhelming realisations that my whole life has been a massive waste and I’m a complete tit and I’ve done just about everything wrong.
The choices I’ve made. The ways I’ve behaved. The physical movements about this globe. The beliefs and ideals I’ve constructed. The hurts I’ve caused.
And the cockiness, the ego, the…
I really can’t put it into words. It’s been nearly two months and I guess it’s subsided. But it was fuckin’ hell: the worst hell I ever remember feeling.
To top it off, I got flu too. Had a fever one night. Coughed up some blood. Couldn’t sleep. Was in physical agony whether I sat cross-legged or in a chair or on a thousand cushions or even laid in bed.
I tried to stretch out my legs. Begged for help. Couldn’t get any.
On New Year’s Eve, I decided enough was enough. The whole thing was wrong. I should never have been there. I should never have tried it. But –
That wasn’t the worst of it either; the worst of it was this:
All these years I’ve been in the material world and farted around and procrastinated – chased women and attempted to build lives with them – dwelled in the realm of careers and mortgages and wondered muchly about that – run around with my sports and entertainment – shopped and moved cities – discovered amazing things and then got bored of them – watched movies – all throughout my dalliance with this concrete universe I’ve had this idea of myself that I would one day get back to meditation – that it always lay just on the other side of my distractions – and that on that day I would do it easily and be good at it and that God and enlightenment and wonders and true joy would be there waiting for me and that’s what I would do for the hours and days of my life.
An idea of myself. An imagination and a vision. A glorious dangling carrot assuring me always that there was something more, something better, something that I would be good at and that would satisfy, so that I needn’t worry.
It’s like how people who live near a park, even if they never go there, get a sense of well-being and a psychological boost simply knowing that it’s there.
It’s like having a goal to aim for. A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Even if the destination takes decades to reach, at least you know it’s there, and worthwhile, and that there’s something to look forward to despite whatever hardships the journey may throw up.
It’s like not ever minding the procrastination and time-wasting, because you know that if you do one day get bored of it, there’ll be something awesome waiting on the other side of the curtain.
I guess somewhere in my psyche and in my being I’d carried that comforting idea and it had sustained me. The thought of myself as a “spiritual being just waiting to happen.” Coiled-up potential. A true me inside the superficial, shambolic me.
A thought to retreat into whenever the world or criticism or failed romance threatened to call me out, tried to make me conform to their ideas of themselves.
They didn’t understand. They didn’t know what I was really up to. They didn’t know that I had that curtain to step through any moment I chose.
But one day they would. And then I’d show ‘em…
I used to be awesome at meditation. I had the clearest and purest and sweetest mind. The light shone forth and the light was undeniable.
But those days have gone; only the idea remains.
The ego: one’s image of oneself. But not necessarily based in reality.
Perhaps, hardly ever.
My ego crumbled. My hopes and dreams. Those four days showed me what a wretch I was, and that I had nothing waiting for me beyond my current existence.
I couldn’t meditate, and I probably never would. Dreams of ten-hour sessions in my own flat were over. Now those ten hours were…what? What to fill them with? What now, knowing the truth of my procrastinations and time-fillings? That they were just that: a horrible waste of life. And the years ticking onwards. And the gap between me and the ‘normal world’ ever-increasing, and yet no better world to enter into, left abandoned and floating in this void, unable to break into either.
What am I but a man who flew too high to ever come down, but who never had the wings to truly soar?
A man who could write a little bit, and had the compulsion, but never really the talent or the motivation or the disposition to make it all the way.
A man who saw something of spirit, but lacked the dedication and discipline and inherent ability to break into it full-time.
A man blessed with looks and some semblance of charm and the good fortune to meet a steady succession of gorgeous and interested young women, but whose character flaws and upbringing ever ruined it for him.
A man whose intellect and curiosity saw him transcend the world of violence and coal and pubs into which he was born, but who could never take the next step, find an occupation that could hold him, do the creative and interesting and wonderful things that those he admires are doing.
A man chained to this material world, for one reason or another, yet bewildered by its pace and stench and harshness and tedium.
A man who loves people so much it hurts, yet finds them almost always annoying and disappointing and stupid.
A man, in a nutshell, stuck forever in some netherworld which is neither here nor there, mostly alone, confused, compelled ever onward, yet with nowhere to go.
A man, I suppose, on the edge of madness. And yet, even there, neither willing nor able to go one way or the other.
And, yes, I’m feeling sorry for myself, and maybe being a little melodramatic and perhaps even just waxing lyrical for the sake of it like some Victorian Gothic writer whose plight was always and forever “the most wretched state ever visited upon a man” but –
Well, that ain’t nothin’ compared to the four days I had at Vipassana, nor many of the days I’ve had since. Today, like I say, even though I know I still dwell in the space between all those myriad worlds, I can’t say I feel it so much. But then that’s because I’m writing, and writing always make me feel good, no matter what the content. Should perhaps do it more. Should, perhaps, fill my pointless hours with the ever-stacking up projects and ideas that niggle away at my brain, that I’m forever fending off, that I –
I came home on New Year’s Eve. The train ride was interminable but at least there was something at the end of it. I used to think trains were the way to go, the luxury and the smarter choice when compared with the hell of long-distance coaches, but even that is being taken away from me. Four, five hours on an English train, with nothing to distract with/read…it makes me want to never leave Leeds again, even as I spend my days plotting my escape from here, future travels and movements brewing, always an urge to GO! and just keep going…
Another two worlds floating between. Stay or go; stay or go. But like The Clash sang…
I came home on New Year’s Eve. I fell sick and deflated into my bed. I stayed there for about four days solid. And then pretty much the whole of January. I couldn’t think of a single damn reason not to.
And still that’s not the worst of it.
Or maybe it is…
I guess at some stage I thought the worst of it was a couple of weeks back, when I caught my ex in some lies to me – lies to my face so she could spend the night with another man instead of me – but after last night I don’t feel so bad about that. Time passes and time is a healer. And expression and thinking and effort and communication too.
Still, there was a time when I really didn’t think I could take any more. After Vipassana. After the deflation of my meditation dream bubble. After the idea I’d had of myself as anything worthwhile had been shown for the shit it was and shoved in my face. After I’d screwed up and alienated a good friend and lover. And after I’d realised I had no interest in this crazy world whatsoever and couldn’t think of the tiniest little thing to do but had to go on living in it anyway. Yeah, that was pretty bad.
Lonely times. And I don’t get lonely except those moments when I feel so desperate and flooded with feeling and know how wonderful it would be to have someone to talk to and hold and then when I look around I realise there isn’t anyone. Sports buddies who are good and nice and fun but who don’t know the first thing about listening. Young people. Girls who were closer to me than anyone’s ever been but who no longer want to know, have moved on…
Then it hits me, what an all-alone life I live. All the bestest friends I ever had over three thousand miles away in America. Me here in concrete Leeds, the loveliest city I know, but so shiver-inducing when feeling this way and cycling its grey streets to buy bread in Morrison’s ‘cos there’s nothing better to do.
I feel this way and I look at the world and suddenly everybody seems alone. People walking everywhere on their own. Young attractive people coming home from work. People shopping. People hither and thither and for all their real-life friends and facebook friends and social lives and giddy times – so much aloneness too.
Well, I shouldn’t talk like that because it’s so rare I feel that way and, anyway, the world is but a mirror for what I’m feeling inside. When I leave the house today I won’t notice it at all. But back in those days when I felt and knew that I had no one…wow, how harsh and sad the whole world seemed.
How did it change? How did I exit those doldrums days of January, when I did literally spend all day in bed? Not depressed but – oh, how I longed for the blesséd relief of sad, switched off depression where at least the mind might have some respite from thought and restlessness and lie inert and hibernating, bleak misery surely better than the ceaseless churnings of these fevered braincogs as they endlessly seek answers and solutions and mull over all the ways in which we went wrong –
I…
I watched movies. I watched all the comedy shows I’ve already watched. And I watched Derren Brown. I watched whatever I could get my hands on and even though it hurt my brain and even though lying in bed hurt my legs, I didn’t know what else to do. And I kind of rejoiced in it, and I guess built up this idea of myself that I could celebrate and find amusing – dashing handsome Rory so used to adventure and sport now having given up on life and retiring depressed to his bed, dressing not and eating weirdly and –
Yes, I dressed it up in eccentricity, and made myself a hero. Too sensitive and colourful for this dreary world. Defeated by it and doing the only sensible thing left to do. Bored of the tedium, I claimed victory by leaving it alone. Oh, how we laughed…
And, yes, the students came back and my squash and football busyness kicked in again and gave me a reason to enjoin in activity. The buildings opened up and I had the internet once more. And I found a good fresh supply of movies and watched a ton of them, and mostly watched each one at least twice, to save me from thinking.
And I guess, too, time passed and all the trauma of Vipassana faded into memory, or integrated, or I was created anew. Now the thought of myself as someone who exists without that future meditation blanket doesn’t bother me. But back in the beginning – wow, it pained me so. I would contemplate the world and my place in it, and how pants it all was, and then my mind would begin to tell its same old story – don’t worry, Rory, one day you’ll give it all up and cross your legs and close your eyes and – poof! But the story couldn’t go on. All it gave me was a bolt of pain and sadness. That me was dead. I was grieving, I guess – but forgetting, too. Is that what it’s like when a loved one dies? You have a moment of thinking about them and just for a second you forget they’re gone? And then it hits you and –
Oh, fuck: they’re dead.
Oh, Christ: I’ll never see them again.
And: oh, shit, how much worse it is to have lived that moment when you’d forgotten they were gone and then the pain of remembrance had rushed in, a constant spear in the side, before the days of acceptance.
But what then, beyond acceptance, when even though the option of going forward has been removed, going back or simply staying where you are is impossible too?
Plans. The mind makes plans. The mind finds some other way.
A compromise, perhaps, between the recovered ego and its old idea of itself.
Whatever – I don’t know. I’m typing these things and they’re not things I’ve thought about before. They might have some meaning and might even be highfalutin’ – or they might just be bullshit. Alls I know is – things have got to change. The good things in my life right now may be good and awesome – but they’re not enough to keep me here, to satisfy me.
I could of course get a job – just about everyone’s solution to anything – but I’ve tried that and nothing’s arisen and past history has taught me that when that happens – when I haven’t got jobs I was even too qualified for – it’s because I’m in the wrong place. Indeed, the new story I’m telling myself is that I should have quit Leedsback when I first had the impulse, and felt the inner approval, just after my LSD trip and all the realisations that I had with that. I mean – Christ! – all these things I do – my uni squash league, the refereeing stuff, and whatever job I could imagine – they could all easily be done by someone else, someone who wouldn’t be pretending that they meant something, who wouldn’t be made miserable by them, who believed in them and aspired to them and wasn’t just doing them ‘cos they couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Sure, there’s a big part of me that thinks a job might be the answer to my problems – but then…
Well that’s another thing I’ve been battling with the last month or so – the myriad voices in my head.
The voice of society tells you you should work and buy things and go out to movies and eat in nice restaurants.
Drive a car and take a couple of holidays a year and get married (to one person).
The voice of society says you’re nobody if you don’t do those things. And much as I’ve dismissed that voice and rebelled against it, it’s still there deep inside my brain, and holds sway over me.
Still, we all know that story. And there are other voices besides – perhaps even more damaging ones…
The voice of Mother Meera. Mother Meera is that supposéd/maybe real Indian spiritual lady in Germany who I’ve been to see a bunch, and who I tell myself works as a force of good in my life. She doesn’t say anything, or do anything conspicuous, but that’s what I tell myself. Certainly, the first time I saw her I was undeniably moved, and felt changes within that transformed things in a positive way. Other times I can’t say I’ve felt that much, but things still seem to happen. Like how when I’ve been out to Germanypenniless and without a place to stay and it’s always worked out really well. Although that kind of happens anywhere, so I guess it could just be God. Or that time in Dublinwhen my leg was effin’ killing me and I literally wanted to die – and then I cried out “Mother!” and I was instantly made better. But I suppose that could just have been my mind. Or Amma. Or God. Also in 2011 when I went to see her not knowing what the future was going to bring and then I got the news the day I left there that I’d received the bursary to Leeds. Or in 2002 when I rang up massively lost and confused and through a few simple words ended up at university and on some sort of track. Or the times I’ve been miserable and wanting to change my situation, and then written her a letter and felt immediately better and also seen my situation change pretty quick.
Well, lots of things that I can tell myself to say, yeah, perhaps she is a mystical good-energy woman who can do unseen and wonderful things all through some mysterious power that us spiritual people call “God” and just about hardly anyone else believes in or experiences.
But then there’s her voice. And by her voice I mean the words of hers that I’ve read in a couple of books that are really just compilations of answers to questions other people have asked her about their own situations. Obviously, a lot of it doesn’t apply to me – but over and over she advises people to “stay where they are, continue in their jobs, get married and raise families and develop love and spirituality there, in their homes, and in their communities.” I like the sound of that – I just seem totally unable to do it.
Number one, I find it almost impossibly hard to stay in one place. I get bored. I find people boring. I find the way society has constructed itself to be weird and unhealthy and to have very little to do with what life is actually about. Sure, I can find my own way to live – but what you get then is this friction and loneliness and the constant battle with having to think always that just maybe the drunk and smoking and angry and begrudging masses are the ones who have got it right and peaceful and content and joyful but poor and possessionless and cold, shunned me is the one in the wrong.
Number two, I’m absolutely terrible at relationships, and even though I’ve been offered a tremendous string of lovely women who would all have married me at some point during our time together, I’ve always found some reason to push them away – and generally some petty and misguided reason at that. Now I’m thirty-seven and it’s starting to feel like the time for being in love and making babies is beginning to slip away…
Number three, I don’t even know if I want babies, and could probably never afford them anyway. I’m even worse at working than I am in relationships – God, I get bored so quickly! – and so money has pretty much always eluded me. Even though, as I type that, I realise that I’ve always had plenty more than I’ve ever needed and right now still have that two grand in the bank that’s been there for, like, ever.
But, jobs; yeah.
So Mother is in my head and it bothers me. How I wish that all I’d got from her was her energy, her influence, her silent guidance and help in doing what was in my heart to do rather than these confusing words that are perhaps well-suited to many other people, but probably not to me! How I wish I’d never read those books, nor ninety-nine percent of all the other self-development and spiritual books I’ve read over the years! All they really do is confuse you – make you schizophrenic – put a wedge between who you really are and who you’d like to be; give you ideas about that, but dangerous ideas because it’s nearly always more head-stuff than heart. I feel at breaking point with all that. I feel at breaking point with all things I’ve ever read that was supposedly uttered from the mouth of Mother Meera, even if I could never turn away from what she has given me elsewhere.
It’s a battle, and just one of the battles I’m currently waging, however subtly and without due disturbance as I go about my business, buy my bread and referee my football games. I had a bit of a battle with it in 2009, when I was living in London but filled with an urge to go off to Mexico. Stay put and be normal versus the mad idea to do what you really want. Mother Meera’s words versus my own desires. My own desires versus the confusion and the questioning of which part of me they’ve come from. I dwelled on it for months and turned it over every which way I could think of. I reached the point where I decided I just wasn’t like the vast majority of people and that, actually, my spirit and my being came to this Earth as a wanderer, as someone for whom movement about the globe was their very lifeblood. A hobo, yes. A travelling sort. A beatnik and an adventurer. A Columbus and a Kerouac. As if any of them could have stayed at home and lived the normal life. And what of Buddha and his family-abandoning antics? Even Mother Meera herself, who has neither children nor, as far as I can see, any kind of ‘normal’ marriage and who left her native Indiafor Germany. Why is it always a case of “do as I say, not as I do?”
This is the battle that rages in my head. You meet these amazing people, realise they know a whole bunch of shit you don’t, and then learn abut surrender and devotion and trusting the teacher and you think, boy, I’d better do that. But it’s hard. And confusing. And in my case, doesn’t seem to work.
Back in 2009 I broke free from this struggle thanks to the I Ching. I’d got everything set and knew where and when I wanted to go but still I doubted myself and my desires. So I did an I Ching and got the chapter ‘The Wanderer’ and it was like that magical old book – which I trust more than any other, for it only tells you what’s specific to the time and the moment (unlike, I suppose, every other book that was ever written) – endorsed me for what I actually was, and for what I wanted, and said, “go ahead, be yourself.”
Which is basically the only thing that Momma Lucas ever told me when I asked her what I should do, even if I was begging for something more complex and challenging and specific: “just be your sweet self, honey.”
I type all this and I wonder why I ever tried to be anything but. Feel sad for my sweet innocent youthful travelling days when I lived the best years of my life and was only ever doing what felt right in the moment. Before I’d even heard of spirituality or read any books that told me how I was supposed to be. When life guided me purely, because my life and my head were so pure and empty and all the knowledge that came to me came from within, naturally and unforced, and at the steady trickling pace of a crystal clear brook rather than the muddy tumult of the wildly thrashing floodwaters of our bookstores and libraries. Beginning to read was one of the worst things I ever did. If I could inspire only one thing in the eager young minds of future seekers it would be this:
Don’t search out books, they’ll only confuse you. If someone tells you you should read a certain book, shrug. If a second person tells you to read it, smile. And when the third person puts that book in your hand, read it, and apply whatever magic it has for you at that particular time in your life, and then forget it and move on.
It’s like signs. Signs appeared in my life and I felt them guiding me. I learned to read them and it was a thrilling and wondrous time. And then I got addicted to them and started seeking them out. Saw signs in everything. Got confused attempting to decipher them when they weren’t even signs to begin with. And descended into a dizzying hell where I could no longer tell my arse from my elbow and eventually decided the best thing to do would be to plant a stick of dynamite under the baby’s bath and blow the whole house to smithereens and pretend it never happened.
Pretty frustrating.
Ah, if I could turn back time…
But what I was talking about was voices. And what I’m thinking about right now is Conversations With God. Now there’s a book that I can recommend – one of about five in this whole damn universe – and a book that I feel has stayed true to me ever since I first read it back in the summer of ’99. A book also, not incidentally, that was given to me by a guy who picked me up hitchhiking, and which proved remarkably ‘in synch’ with everything I was living at the time.
A few weeks back I bought Mother Meera’s ‘Answers Book II’ thinking that since I believe in her and my life was a mess, perhaps embracing her teachings more fully would sort things out. But I read it and it just confused me. Couldn’t really apply any of it to my life. Even though the answers were good and logical and sound I felt nothing and put it down. Then I picked up Conversations With God and, wow, even though I’ve probably read it and several of its sequels many times now, all I found there was inspirational, true-feeling, and an endorsement to be what I am. Liberating. Encouraging. And heartfelt.
Christ, I love those books. I’ve loved them from the first moment I flicked open their pages and felt the impeccable poetry and reasoning of their words set my body all a-tingling, vibrating with the “ring of truth”, resonating with my soul.
Nothing’s changed in the years since. I know they are my Bible, and only ever make me feel good – so why these other words that intrude upon my brain?
This is the point I’m at with the words of Mother Meera. As with many other things, it’s breaking point, I feel. I’ve tried it and now I’ve decided it doesn’t work for me. I want to throw it all away, pretend I never laid eyes on those pages. Let Life teach me. Let Mother herself teach me. But let not my journey through life be swayed and bedevilled by instructions she and others never intended for my ears. Christ, those poor Christians constantly seeking to take instruction from words intended for one very specific group of people – or even person – at one very specific place in space and time. It’s laughable really – and yet it’s exactly the boat I’ve put myself in.
It’s a boat I now want to capsize. To climb out of. Or to sail, maybe, to the edge of the world. Like –
The Truman Show. Now there’s something I can take inspiration from. That may be mad but – well, wasn’t it watching that movie in ’98 that set me on the road to Mexico? And I’ve watched it again a few times lately and it’s always the same response. To abandon the known and the safe. To reach out beyond one’s limits. To forego everything everyone is telling you. To trust in your own heart and desires. And to put everything on the line.
He was a man between two worlds, once he realised the emptiness and illusion of the only one he knew. He didn’t know what was beyond that, if anything, but he went for it, risking everything he had. And he made it.
I guess I’ve been thinking about setting sail for a very long time. And maybe sometimes I have set sail, but I’ve always turned back when the storm’s hit.
Breaking free.
Breaking free.
All I’ve been the last God only knows how many years is pacing up and down this beach and staring out to sea, wondering if I had the guts to really go for it. And I haven’t. I keep dipping my toe. Wading out. Coming back. Yet slowly, slowly, the attractions of the beach are losing their charm, closing down and falling into ruin, the very sand that I stand upon being drawn back into the ocean and the beach itself growing smaller and smaller, becoming an island, an atoll, a tiny protrusion that I struggle now to balance on.
Nothing here. One coconut palm, maybe, but even its days are numbered.
Is that the choice? To make a break for it or to sit and wait while everything crumbles around you and you end up in the water anyways?
Breaking point. The choice needing to be made. The struggle within and the scales tipping this way and that. Women and jobs and dreams of fame – but all of it nothing in the grand scheme of things.
The ocean beckons, and the end of the world – but am I man enough for the ride?
Voices. The voice of society and the voice of Mother Meera. That moment when the True Man finally says “no” and decides it’s his own voice he’ll follow.
The voice of spirituality that tells me I should be doing something good, helping the poor and the needy, feeding the starving and working to save the planet. Yet all those things too currently on this side of the ocean, part of the material world, the illusion. Without true understanding…
Everybody knows what they really are, in their hearts. A great dancer or painter or writer or lover. And me? In my grandest moments I know that I’m a wanderer, a traveller, an adventurer, with dreams and desires placed in me from some unknown source, but a good source. Mexico 2009 was meant to be, was truly right. Leeds 2013 feels like nothing of the sort. What other guidance system should there be except one’s own feelings? Except feelings are scary, because feelings can run counter to just about everything the external world will try and tell you.
Society. Mother Meera. Teachers. Even friends and lovers.
Who knows the truth except the architect of all and perhaps your own heart?
“Be yourself” – that’s all Momma ever said to me.
And Amma? No instructions, not direct. Except to say, “I love you.” And, “Amma is in everyone, Amma is in every thing.” And: “We are none of us perfect, take it easy on yourself.”
And Mother Meera? Really, honestly, beyond those books? Nothing except, “have you got a job, a partner?” in 2002 when I was lost and bewildered and in some serious need of grounding.
It took me to university, it took me to Sophie, and that was all good.
But times move on. What worked back then doesn’t necessarily work now. I want something different. I want…
Plans. I have a dream. I’ve handed in the notice on my flat – again – but this time I can’t see me not doing it (unless Life, of course, brings me something wonderful within the next four weeks). There’s no way I can continue this life as I’m currently living it. Leedsis great but there’s not enough in sporadic refereeing and playing squash to sustain me. Really, that’s all it does – but I’m looking for more out of life than simple sustenance, survival. I need more. I want more. I choose more.
And if Life don’t bring it, don’t think that I could make it here – well then I’ll create it elsewhere.
I’ll go. I’ll jettison my possessions. And I’ll head off somewhere. I’ll get back in touch with the signs and I’ll follow them. I’ve an idea to either walk to Greece– or bike, or hitchhike, or take the train, or a combination of all four – or there’s always that mad scheme to break into America. But even that’s seeming less and less mad, now that I’m rediscovering my belief in myself and in what I want to do rather than someone else. To hell with the laws of man and his silly boundaries and ideas that it’s wrong to go against that! There truly is a higher law and I don’t think doing what I want to do could violate that. I need to be myself, free from every possible outside imposition. Or to at least try.
God, writing makes me feel amazing! I write like this and I feel like one kickass human being after all. I love you, typing. I love you, expression. I love you, computer and internet and blog. I really have been trying lately to do it in the real world, with real people – but, still, there’s something about doing it here to which nothing can compare. The unmatched openness and imagined audience attention, I suppose. That this nobody that I’m writing to is actually interested in every word I say, and understands it and loves me for it. Difficult – nay, impossible – to find that in the real world, amongst humans. Hell, I couldn’t give it and nor can they. But I can give it to myself.
Writing, I love you. Thanks for the way you make me feel.
You’re welcome, says Writing.
Now there’s a voice I can trust. :-)
