Spiritual Sundays | Twenty Five
That Voice In Your Head
Dear Friend
I’ve a small black trolley on wheels and I’m walking at pace over the bumpy litter strewn pavement towards my local tube station. On my back a smaller leather rucksack which I’m particularly fond of. Strapped to the outside of it a beautifully designed burnt orange and white water bottle.
Feels kind of swish. Like I’m travelling in style.
In my head there’s a voice I often mistake for myself.
“I’ve got my passport and Chiara’s driving license. Her walking boots, was there something else? No, check again. That’s all. I’m pretty sure that’s it. The plants are watered, the bins are emptied and clean, so they won’t smell. The floors are clean. I’ve set the lights, I checked in. Did I check in?
I’ve saved my boarding pass, so yeah, I’m checked in. Am I flying from Gatwick. It’s definitely Gatwick. LGW. That’s Gatwick.
I haven’t bought my train ticket for Italy yet, but I can do that from the airport.
I’m five minutes ahead of Google maps. The coffee pots are cleaned. I’ve got my phone charger, swimming trunks. One pair of shorts one pair of jeans, my sandals, these linen trousers. It’s going to be hot. Straw hat and baseball cap, two hats is a bit extravagant but I’ve got the space. It’s British Airways, not you know who, Ryan Air.
Water. I could get a sandwich at the tube station, will that be cheaper than the airport? Yeah but stupid to risk missing the flight for the sake of a couple of quid. Be a lot more expensive.”
Just in case I ever give the impression that I’m floating through life on cloud nine. The inner monologue is still very much alive and kicking.
But there is something else here. An aware presence, with one eye on the life inhabiting this temporary body of mine. It’s a bit like a toddler exploring under the loving gaze of their mother.
I keep looking back to her. Are you there? Oh good, you are and then off you go deeper into the world.
It’s a parent child relationship with the divine. Different from the one with our earth parents, it’s just father, mother, sister, brother are the closest language can get to it. Lover maybe, beloved.
Friend.
Remembering to look for the eyes of God. Basking in the loving unconcerned emotional warmth of the connection that often only comes to us only after years of separation and suffering.
“I see they’ve opened the park. Oh look there’s the first bit of litter. Where are the bins? You’ve forgot the bins. Picnic Benches and no bins! Why’s this bit fenced off? So you can leave a few tools lying around? Is that a pond?”
The voice continues.
The benefits of regular meditation is you’re less likely to mistake the inner radio play for something essentially real. As if it’s of primary importance.
There are times and there were for me when the voice is pretty mean, it can be viscous. At those times it seems so real, like having an authority figure pulling the rug out from under you, making you doubt your own sanity, or yelling in your face so you hate yourself.
Like the self doubt we see Michael go through in Clint Dyer and Roy William’s astonishingly powerful and relevant play “The Death of England”.
Breathe.
Just breathe.
The most important thing you can do in any moment is to take a breath.
Then another.
It gets rough sometimes, being human on this planet
It’s easy to lose your way.
Giants come out at night and rearrange our cities.
Recently they’ve been messing with London’s transport hubs. The giants have a taste for steel and glass malls into which opportunistic human friends throw up their franchised retail units. Two times in two days I’ve exited a familiar tube station and not had a clue what I’m looking at.
I asked a passer by where the station was. The underground signage seemed to want to keep it a secret, or maybe I’m just ready for a little bit of a rest.
I find Victoria station and my platform and suddenly there’s a clatter behind me and I’ve dropped my water bottle down the side of the train and onto the tracks.
I’m definitely tired.
I swore out loud, worrying my stressed out fellow passengers. I lay face down on the platform, asked staff for a litter picker - not happening. You don’t really want to be messing around on rail tracks in central London.
It’s a beautiful bottle, lying there in the shadow of the train, full of water on the dirty stone chippings.
Maybe I’ll get in back from the lost and found department on our way back.
The irony is not lost on me.
Perhaps someone else will enjoy it. You have to let go. I’m missing it now sitting in an Itsu writing to you and reading Thomas Merton.
Waves of people come and go.
“I’ve bought my train ticket, and I’ve checked in,” the monologue starts up again. This time it flashes me a picture of the ticket inspector who sat me down and patiently explained why, even though I’ve bought a ticket, am clearly unfamiliar with the system and the system makes you jump through one more hoop that you think you should, I’ll have to pay a fine, that’s more than the cost of the ticket, that she knows I bought, but I’ve not followed the rules, which are explained in the small print, that nobody reads.
It’s the greatest show on earth, and we’ve each got our own private theatre.
Gotta go get on the plane.
“Imagine if I came all the way to the airport and missed my flight by sitting too long in an Itsu.”
It’s the show that never ends.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey