When the World Feels Out of Control

Come Home to the Self

Dear friend,

It looks like we’ve got a mouse living under the stairs. Zara is tracking them as I write. Her shiny black nose is pointing straight at the skirting boards. The space under our stairs is walled in, so whoever’s in there won’t come into the house. At least there’s no signs yet. I’ve checked the cupboards. I’ve no idea where they are getting their food, but someone’s moved in.

How to deal with it is beyond us at the moment, expensive I imagine as it will involve structural work. So it gets pushed off to the side.

We’ll live with it for the time being. Chiara says that maybe the mice need someplace to live. As long as they don’t try to move into the house, let’s see how we get on.

It’s grey and wet this morning. The pigeons are sitting preening themselves on the rooftops looking sodden in their grey duvets.

It’s quiet here. At least externally quiet.

I made the mistake of looking at my phone before breakfast.

I don’t watch or listen to the news, or read any newspapers, but information comes to me through email and general osmosis.

In Nature magazine I read that children in Gaza are at risk of a polio epidemic. Three cases are confirmed, the youngest a ten month old baby.

Petitions are being made to pause the bombing to vaccinate six hundred thousand children.

Hell on earth.

How do you live with the knowledge?

My phone also tells me that my Ebay purchase is with my Evri driver and is scheduled for delivery today. Reminds me we’re going to see a showing of our friend’s documentary at the Bayswater Curzon this evening.

I can see the bodies of flies trapped behind our window shutters. Black particles illuminated by the diffuse light.

Attention is pulled to one thing after another.

From the mundane to the existential.

The buddhists call it monkey mind. Jumping restlessly from branch to branch. It’s a mix between frustration and panic arising in my body, a loss of perspective caused by information overload and it’s just gone 9am on a Saturday morning.

Thankfully I know to meditate.

Stop everything and sit.

Eyes almost closed, lifted as if looking out through the point between my eyebrows.

I breathe out in three short breaths releasing carbon dioxide from my lungs. Spine straight. Breathing in for a count of ten, hold for ten, out for ten. As my body calms I repeat a mantra on the in breath, another on the out breath. It becomes quiet inside.

The monkey melts away. The tree becomes golden and melts also.

My heart slows and I’m now breathing like a feather.

Peace you discover, is inside.

Not out there in a world that not only feels out of our control, but is out of our control.

Do you imagine for one moment that political leaders know what they are doing?

Even the ones you respect.

The higher you climb the more you realise we’re making it up as we go along.

The turbulence in our minds is reflected in a turbulent world.

Were humans peaceful, so would be our planet.

One day there will be peace in our world and we all have a part to play.

We can cultivate inner peace within ourselves.

We act from peace.

Inner peace and outer harmony.

Even a few minutes a day makes a difference on a personal level.

Imagine if every human being were to join in, in their own way, whichever method suits the personality.

That to me is a movement worth joining.

Till tomorrow

Love

Mikey