Triggered

I feel the cold of the key as I turn it in the lock. Then the wondrous smell of the morning spring sun-blessed air, and I’m outside. It’s cherry blossoms, tranquility, sunshine…I pick some litter, send love to the apartments around. Feel the weight of the body and it transfers from one leg to the other as I walk.

I pause for a few minutes and look up at the blossoms all around, the birds hopping in branches, the seagulls soaring in the background. They trace a perfect shape around the tree without knowing it. I breathe. There’s cool air on the skin of my hands. Body is cosy in layers.

I can still connect with the larger field of beingness. It’s by a thread, I’m not collapsing into it fully, and seamlessly blended with it as I have been.

The mind is busier this morning and I have to focus today. Being present is not coming so automatically. I enlist some focussing help with breathing consciously, and a mantra, the Gayatri. I recite that several times in a whisper into the air down the back lane. I breathe. There’s some agitation present, the mind wants to think. It tugs away.

An initial trigger yesterday opened up a lot of inner chatter. A future I have been relaxing any focus on now demands attention. Thoughts of the future line up in a procession to be engaged and entertained by me. I go off into a little rivulet of thought in one direction after the next. There’s no work lined up, you should worry. You’re going to run out of money and it will be ugly. Yes I hear you. They burn and they don’t get very far, but further than they have been this last week. I had been simply dropping them effortlessly.

The feelings are the origin. Let’s drop into those and see what’s what. An open enquiry and willingness to meet whatever is there.

I drop out of my head into the body. I feel my hands, the inside sensation of their aliveness. Wrists, arms shoulders, and into the trunk. There’s a knot in the solar plexus. I’m open to it.

Hello there, I notice you. Oh and little bit of tightness in the throat too. Some contraction there. It’s okay you can just be there.

Yes it’s uncomfortable and I can definitely manage to suffer a little here. It won’t harm me. I’ll just let it all be here. Allowance and openness.

Maybe you have something to say? Maybe you want to express in movement or colour or texture?

It’s moving in a swirl. Swirling around and around. A kind of inner lunging feeling.

A vivid picture of a 60cmx60cm bright red rage spiral I made with paper mache in my 20s comes into the mind.

Oh, rage! Ohhhh. I didn’t expect that. You’re raging angry. Interesting. Well how about that.

It makes sense. My boundaries. I did not look after those. Allowed them to be stepped over and got angry. Mostly with myself but initially aimed at her. Not really her, she was being who she is. I forgive myself for that sabotage of my peace. It’s an opportunity. Old conditioning says yes to all social encounters, with whatever energy they bring, but there are times to say no. Times to be gentle with ourselves and our inner opening up.

Yesterday I agree to a late afternoon visit though realise quickly I might have instead paused on that decision and had a peaceful evening and got some work done. I am in a solo zone and a magical transitional space. Oh well I’ve said yes now. I ponder that it would be a good test of how stable I am in the here and now. Well not very, it turns out.

I have to abruptly change channels when she arrives, we have a limited range of communication, mostly worldly mundane, we do emotional sharing well though nearly zero in common other than a shared history.

I realise quite soon that she is only here to use my place to smoke grass since now she can’t do it at home. And until then I hadn’t minded the odd time she did it. Now that’s what she’s here for mostly. She brings her lovely though very untrained dog that jumps on the furniture and makes Elsa agitated.

I notice it’s a strain to merge. I’m uncomfortable on my own sofa. She doesn’t like the silence so I put a podcast she’s interested in on in the background for her and she talks over it. Competing for my attention. Dogs are wanting wanting too. Food, up on the sofa and out. I find it all pretty disturbing. I like silence. She voices that she doesn’t like a subject I bring up regularly, accuses me of being obsessed with it. Wow. I struggle to find anything in the social political cultural sphere which she likes to talk about with her and so yes, I probably return to a couple of themes. She talks of the rage and anger in her house between her sons and husband. I wonder now how much she’s bringing of that residue here. She gets stoned.

I suggest we go to the allotment, and being outside is better, the dog gets a second walk, it’s a beautiful afternoon. We put colourful flower decals on the summerhouse window. Drink tea. She smokes more grass. I get her to plant potatoes, she’s enjoying that. I feed the birds. It’s fine. Better. And not to be repeated very often.

This morning I’m still feeling out of sorts. I lost touch with my equilibrium. Thoughts are aroused, and they go over and over that interaction. Till I dropped into the feelings. I put my needs aside to suit the wants of another. That’s kind of noble sounding, but it’s really just fakery.

Then a text from a bright and depressed 20 old, son of another friend, asking if I can give him a contact for buying Marijuana. What what, is this a theme! I don’t smoke the stuff, I don’t think it has a positive effect on anybody especially not young people whose brains are still changing. Arghh. How to respond in a wise way.

I do the iChing and the last sentence reads “Ensure that you are associating with people who are right for you.”

I bathed in unity all day yesterday, through 2 garden client meetings, a visit to my mum, chat with N and an hour in the sun by the river paying homage to the oak tree, and in the grass just being. Marvelling at the shining everything in the unified field. Sat with an old man for half an hour looking at baby ducks and listening overlooking the big pond. A chance encounter with that wildling ex employee. What are the chances of that…hmm.

The drawing is progressing.

“Nothing has to happen right now
but what is happening right now.

Nothing has to be right now
but what is right now.

You have to be nothing right now
but what you are right now.”

Anon