Didn’t wear a bra yesterday for the first time in around 15 years, don’t like the feeling of them and I wanted to break a routine. It was more comfy but I felt oddly vulnerable without one, a little like without armour in a sense, and felt self conscious at one point.
Yesterday started with a therapy client which went very well, then I put my other hat on and saw a design client which also went well. Potentially more work. then to a different park, another old stately home and walled garden with a woodland around it. And a cobbled courtyard outside a cafe for soup and cake and a chat to a member of staff I know.
Then some hours here resting, then 2 hour chat with Marc Leavitt, which was highly enjoyable. A note to self to talk less next time and let him roll. He wrote this great book Enlightenment Behind the Scenes I read some years ago. He has turned his life upside down. Quit the cushy well paid job, sold house, moved to the beach, trading crypto for the exercise and discipline of it. He talked a lot of about fear and desire and how he wanted to go deeper and deeper. He said he was too comfortable and wanted to shake things up.
This all made me see how unattached he is to his ‘security’ and how easily he changes his whole scene in full trust. And made me consider my deepening commitment to being aware we are the space behind and that gives rise to everything. Where might this lead?
I do have it pretty cushy too. Not that cushy is bad, it can just lead to complacency perhaps. Though for me life is a lot edgy. The terror I’m facing of realising that I am not a little separate Susan me, and instead something oceanic and barely describable. That’s well uncomfortable enough thank you very much.
And then in the evening back out to the park. That odd guy was there again. Maybe I could stop calling him that. He’s obviously coming across my path for a reason. Not friend material though. A little previous chat revealed he is into the very Qanon material beliefs I’ve distanced from 2 close friends for entertaining.
I have been approaching life as such recently – face each experience as if you have chosen it. So life challenges that, my allotment gets trashed, and this guy keeps appearing in a place I go to for solitude in nature. My head tugged around about that for a while hissing and spitting. Till I reminded myself to face each experience as if I have chosen it.
And on the way home I joined some neighbours sitting outside the pub, drank not very much alcohol and feel unwell now. That’s that.
Keep going back to try these old pleasures and it’s just madness, since nothing that used to work satisfies. Pleasure in food has nearly completely gone too. And recently even the enjoyment of cakes and sweets is starting to wane. Movies too, even a good series binge doesn’t hold the attention at all these days. Reading about nonduality and Buddhism also no longer satisfies. Sex and desire, gone. Desire to travel gone.
And also I notice the enjoyable pastime of imagining a better future and having a vision and goals, none of that works either now. It’s so strange! All these escape routes from pleasure to the hope of better future – just gone. For now the delighting in the beauty of nature has not faded thankfully.
There’s nothing to get. Nothing is missing. This is hard to swallow. Is this just what the end of a separate me person feels like?
Learning to Rest with it All 