Dear Friend,
Some memories shine brighter than others. I have this one from 1990. It’s a Spring morning. I know it’s Spring because there are daffodils in patch of earth at the front of our house.
I live in a huge dilapidated stone house that was once a lodge way back when that area of Sheffield was countryside. The hallway is wide enough we can kick a football around and on the stair landing is a stained glass window, which lights up gloriously once a day when the sunlight hits it.
There are several families of mice, a couple of university students in the basement and two rock bands in residence.
On this morning we’re loading up our singer’s van heading to Norwich for a show we’re playing at an arts centre. The air is warm. We’ve a rider for the gig, so we’ll be fed and have something to drink. The freedom of it. My heart open.
An internal sunshine.
Being in the right place doing the right thing with the right people.
When we got to Norwich we were shown round the town by a volunteer from the venue. By this time all I could think about were the white triangular sandwiches waiting for us in the dressing room. I recall a wine bottle floating in the river. I have no memory of the gig at all.
You forget what it’s like to be young. It’s good to recall it, to feel it on the inside.
A friend and a mentor of Chiara’s left behind some stellar advice for her two daughters and for all who knew and worked with her.
She said for us to do the things that energise us and follow our curiosity, be playful.
Not to take life so seriously.
She was a remarkable woman.
Don’t carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.
We can’t do that.
Not our role.
In meditation I had one of those flashes of insight that come sometimes.
Often you might be sitting and all you can perceive is the whirling or stubbornly repetitive activity of your mind. Or maybe a weakness or uncomfortableness in your body.
That’s okay.
Yesterday I realised that each meditation is a holiday from the world.
My body, seated, mind activity continues, the river flows but I am watching it. I watch my body and I watch my mind. I’m free. The part of yourself that was there in the beginning, before birth you recognise yourself as that.
In the world but not of it.
You can go on a holiday sometimes and you need a holiday to get over it. The world can be exhausting.
Sitting in meditation is different. For me a true holiday. Speaking as someone who’s tried to get out of it in as many ways possible I feel I know a thing or to about escape.
Sex, drugs and rock n roll, then ceiling surfing, all of them escape attempts. Darker thoughts too that eventually led me to the spiritual life.
We are free.
We just don’t realise it.
A lot of energy goes into convincing us that we need to be something other than who we are. That we’re powerless to effect change.
Through forgiveness, kindness, compassion, gratitude, appreciation, courage, meditation, art, poetry writing and song to name a few, we can realise that we are already free.
What we’re looking for is here, closer than the beating of our hearts.
Such a strange idea from the perspective of the false self.
So ordinary for the kid we once were.
Everyone’s experienced peace at one time or another.
Spiritual practices, you could just call humane living, help uncover the peace within.
We want a peaceful world?
It can’t come from judgement and condemnation, no matter how demanding a path it is, we must forgive ourselves and offer the same to everyone we meet.
Every one makes mistakes.
Over and over till we learn from them.
It’s only human.
Ah ne’er so dire a Thirst of Glory boast, Nor in the Critick let the Man be lost! Good-Nature and Good-Sense must ever join; To err is Humane; to Forgive, Divine. An Essay on Criticism, Part II , Alexander Pope (1711).
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey