Spiritual Sundays | Number 8

Small Town Uprising

Dear Friend,

I’m staying in a hotel on the outskirts of my home town. The morning sunlight is golden, illuminating the crows, who are going berserk. Their urgent cawing sits like a raft in an ocean of bird song. The hotel’s heating system buzzes outside my window, which looks out onto a corrugated iron roof.

I’m thinking about asking at reception for a better situation.

The wifi doesn’t reach my room, so I’m tethering my laptop to my phone, sitting on a pile of cushions as this chair is way too low for the desk. There’s a mysterious strip of bare MDF tacked to the wall above the bed and the art print over the radiator has slipped in its frame.

My false self is on the hunt, in what is a converted stately home, and not exactly budget.

You can’t have a personality without part of it being made up of victim mentality. In an unfair world, our victim mentality is the part of us that identifies with being the kind of person who attracts unfair treatment.

And then resents it.

Paying for a substandard experience is a potent thorn in the mind. In a culture where we conceive of our security as coming from money, a spark from which the false self can flare.

And yet.

Here I sit with my false self hopping from foot to foot. A cocktail of emotions washing through my nervous system.

Relatively at ease, thanks to this practice of watching.

It’s not as if we need to be free of ego to experience peace. It is enough to see it. Crows cawing is music no less than the call of the thrush and blackbird.

Being British by culture, the idea of requesting to move to a better room causes a feeling of embarrassment to creep up into to my throat. The false self’s push and pull.

“I bet everyone else has a nice view, why should put up with this, you should say something!’

But oh, to say something.

“Let me just strangle that voice box of yours.”

The false self likes a bit of masochism.

What creatures are we?

I have a warm comfortable bed, someone is cooking me breakfast. I’ve a private bathroom with a hot shower.

Tomorrow we will commit the mortal remains of my parents to the family grave. Mixing their ashes together, they will be buried with Nana. Now the sadness rises. The deeper emotion beneath the irritation is the pain of separation from loved ones. Missing them.

Deeper still is our fear to be without love.

My false self temporarily needs a nice room in which not to be sad.

Great big sobs wrack the air from my lungs as the flood gates open. In a few moments the storm will pass and the internal sea will calm once again.

I prefer to be here and let the sweetness of the pain bloom and fade. A now familiar shiver of energy surrounds me. I feel held. Connected.

I’ll have a chat with the receptionist and enquire about a more comfortable room. See how the play changes. No need for drama or conflict.

The false self has a role to play. It notices what’s going on ‘out there’.

Our role is to notice what’s going on in here. To live from spirit, for a time dancing with the false self, not being jerked around by it.

All the world is a stage and we merely players. Good old Bill.

Our return to oneness will take time. Who knows how long. For all of humanity it may be millennia before we realise ourselves as immortal spirit.

For you and I perhaps this life time or the next or the one after. It matters not. The end is sure.

To be self aware, to value connection and to give compassion can only lessen the time it takes. Bring comfort to those who suffer. Hasten peace.

I may even have a word with reception before breakfast, to reduce the likelihood of an audience.

May your day be blessed.

Till tomorrow

Love

Mikey

P.S. I’ll let you know how I got on with the room tomorrow.