the window

14/04/2013

Today I’d like to share with you a small incident which happened a few weeks ago. It brings a smile to my face to recall it.

I was staying, with a lover, in a cheapish hotel in Kathmandu. The bathroom didn’t seem to have any ventilation and I wanted to open a small window, that was the only hope of letting some air circulate. However, the room had recently been painted and the window frame was stuck. I pushed at the frame with as much of my weight as I could bring to bear on the high window. It didn’t budge. Then I tried hitting the window frame with the palm of my hand. Increasingly vigorous efforts were to no avail, so I gave up.

Next, my companion used the bathroom. When she emerged, she said simply, “You do know that the window has no glass in it.”

It was true. I had been pushing and shoving and getting increasingly agitated in my attempts to open a window that was already, in a different way, completely open. I hadn’t really looked to see whether there was glass in the window. Even though it was right in front of me, I had just assumed that there was glass there. It shows just how much of what we “see” in the world is coming from our preconceptions, rather than reality.

Another reason I like this little anecdote is that, for me, it symbolises something about our connection with the divine. We tend to assume that there is something blocking that connection, that we have to struggle to reconnect with the open skies, that there is a window which must be opened before we can breathe. In truth, there is nothing blocking that connection, it is always open to us, it always has been, it always will be.

the feeling of maturity

10/04/2013

I remember the first time I felt like an adult. I was with a girlfriend in Paris. The relationship between us was well established and healthy. In that moment in Paris, we were in a hotel room and I was looking over her shoulder into the bathroom mirror. Seeing us together, naked, this feeling of adult maturity came over me. It was very clear because it was in stark contrast to the adolescent feeling I had had as long as I could remember. I was 35 years old. And perhaps the most amazing thing was that I hadn’t previously realised how immature I felt. (Thank you Svenja, for helping me to grow up!)

The feeling of maturity didn’t last, and I slipped back to being twenty-something, on the inside. At least I didn’t return all the way to the teenage level I had been stuck in.

I am writing this now because something similar happened just the other day. It was after love making (with the lover whom I mentioned last month). The sex had been strong, with waves of energy releasing some ancient constrictions, stuck energy being liberated, the miracle of spontaneous tantra. Afterwards we were flopped once more in that state of post coital softness. And then came the feeling of maturity. I can’t find other words to describe it, something to do with an absence of self-doubt, or an absence of feeling inferior. Whatever it is, it felt great, and I can still feel it now, a few days later. I wonder if it will last!

to laugh or cry

02/04/2013

I have just come from the kitchen, where I found myself fighting with a roll of cling film. The cling film was fighting back. I was losing. After a while my frustration reached breaking point and I let out a cry of anguish, followed by a short burst of expletives, directed at the cling film.

Earlier in the day, another happenstance occurred (oddly, I have forgotten what!) which could have been equally frustrating. On that occasion, though, my reaction had been to laugh.

Is it just me, or does this happen to you too? A small mishap, a moment where something does not quite go according to plan, can induce a feeling of either frustration or humour. And which of these arises depends not on the particular little mishap itself. The reaction is showing something about oneself, one’s inner state of stress, in the case of frustration, or one’s inner state of relaxation, in the case of humour.

Having seen this, I am almost looking forward to the next time I drop an egg or stub a toe. Will I laugh or will I cry?

a strand of hair

10/03/2013

This afternoon I found myself in the bliss of post-coital slumber with a lover, a working girl for whom I am a regular client. As we lay there resting I could feel my mind hovering in a delightful state, right at the boundary of wake and sleep. Then came one of those delicious moments of spontaneous meditation. I was gazing at her hair, a lock of which had draped itself over her shoulder. And amongst this lock, my eyes alighted upon a single hair.

As I drank in the sight of the strand of hair, some curious things happened in the consciousness. Firstly, the hair appeared utterly beautiful, a beauty beyond measure, and somehow larger than life. Then as I continued to gaze, with not a thought in the mind, there came the feeling, the knowing without words, that all the world was here, in this one strand of hair.

From that timeless moment came memories of a poem. With apologies to William Blake:

To see a world in a strand of hair,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.

the eyes of a child

10/02/2013

The other day I saw a small child, not more than three years old, standing in front of an ATM (cash dispensing machine). She was standing on tip-toe and reaching up. In her hand was a folded bank note, which she was trying to feed into the slot intended for a bank card. My heart melted upon seeing such innocence.

Sometimes I would love to see the world through the eyes of a child. As grown ups, we like to think that we know it all, that we have a logical, rational understanding of the world. But in a way, the child’s view is more coherent.

After all, why is it that pieces of paper come out of a machine but don’t go into it? What is the difference between the plastic that goes in and the paper that comes out? And why do some pieces of paper get crumpled up and discarded, whilst others are neatly stashed away in a wallet?

Over the millennia, we have constructed hugely complex systems of social interaction. These systems often rely on us all agreeing, implicitly, to assign arbitrary values to things. There is nothing wrong in that. However, it is salutary to be reminded, once in a while, by a small child, that it is all arbitrary. These manmade artefacts and protocols have a certain utility but they are not what is really important.

Thank you, small child!

life is like a Thai massage

02/01/2013

I’ve just received a Thai massage from an innocuous looking masseuse. She asked at the outset whether I would like gentle, medium or strong and I, in my naivete, opted for strong. It was a decision I was to spend most of the following hour regretting, as she trod, pummelled and racked her way over my body.

A while into the massage, I noticed that the pain was proportional to my resistance. Where the muscles were relaxed, things were relatively bearable. Where there was chronic tension in a muscle, on the other hand, it was truly excruciating as a knee or elbow or foot kneaded it into submission.

I write all this because it seems to me that life is rather like this Thai massage. When we do not resist the flow of life, when we melt and meld to life’s ever-changing contours, there is no suffering. But when we are stiff with resistance, rigid in our beliefs about the way things should be, the suffering can be intense. So let’s abandon ourselves to life; for otherwise, existence will beat us into submission as uncompromisingly as the masseuse worked on my body.

And now that the massage is over, everything feels wonderful!