Blog Archives

Seventy times seven

30/1/2020

The work is always inside you.
This knot does not get untied
by listening to the stories of other people.

The well inside your house
is better water
than the river that runs through
the entire town.

Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi

Well, I had quite a strong reaction to writing last week’s blog. Having written it Saturday, and posted it Sunday morning, I spent a lot of the rest of Sunday in waves of tears, source unknown. I just let the waves pass through me as best I could. Sometimes there was grief in a particular wave, sometimes regret, sometimes shame, sometimes loneliness – sometimes a nameless combination of currents and undercurrents.

During all of this emotional undulation I saw that one of the problems with last week’s blog was that I was trying to fit a very messy and chaotic and drawn-out and frightening process – or entanglement of processes – into a rather graceful analogy. And part of my being was reacting against that. Because that part of my being is hungry for coherence between my inner and outer worlds – and it’s particularly hungry for coherence between what going on inside me and what I communicate to others. I suspect that’s why my maverick churchwarden stepped in at the end of the blog, disrupting my high church sermon preparation with some low church mischief, reminding me that there is a price to be paid when you try to fit living, chaotic, possibility-rich analogue experiences into neat, wordy, formulaic, analogous boxes.

Yes, the caterpillar-to-pupa-to-butterfly-or-moth story is a rich analogy to play around with, but, no, it does not actually describe the fucking awfulness and lost-ness and stuck-ness and desperation of some of the times I’ve been through – and I suspect others in the middle of their own self-disintegration processes might concur. Could I have surrendered as gracefully and trustingly as a caterpillar? No fucking way. I was way out of my depths. Dread, despair and death – of old identities I took for solid – were sometimes daily company, as was a very delicate nervous system, which “tripped” under very little pressure. Did I enjoy having my old muscles of certainty broken down? I kicked and screamed most of the way.

These waves of tearful emotions carried on into Monday, and by Monday lunchtime I suspected I needed to do something more than just let them pass through me. So, I decided to do a little DIY ceremony. I was just following a hunch, that some sort of ritual and structure would help me find the information and insight and wisdom that these waves were carrying.

So, I did the washing up, swept the cabin, prepared the room, and lit half a dozen candles. And then I had some sort of arguable brainwave: if I gather together all the dog-end-of-winter recreational drugs in my possession, I probably have enough to launch me into a fairly altered ceremonial state. Did I want to do a DIY ceremony in an altered state? Yes. Were my motives pure? No – there was definitely some psychedelic greed in me. Greed for an extraordinary experience. Was there a deeper wisdom beneath this impure brainwave? Yeah, my inner wisdom felt like it could work through my inner stupidity – not for the first time – and I felt refreshingly enthusiastic for a bit of deep inner diving.

So, I mustered my end of season supplies: three quarters of an acid-infused fruit pastel (probably not vegan), a dozen old Scottish mushrooms (probably vegan), and the remains of a bottle of nicely-balanced CBD-THC oil (definitely vegan). Not quite a sacred cup of ayahuasca – but post-modern-higgledy-piggledy is how I sometimes roll. More Blue Peter than Songs Of Praise.

But, you know what? It all worked a treat. Dosage, set, setting, ceremony. The whole afternoon and evening – it was one of the more powerful ceremonies of my life. And somehow, I managed to journey deep whilst simultaneously holding and sometimes even directing the journey. I reckon I was focussed for about a third of the time, semi-focussed for another third, and drifting and daydreaming for the remainder. Given how far and easily my focus often strays, that’s a pretty good statistic for me.

Before I opened the ceremony, I wrote down my prayers and intentions.

I realised that a big part of the ceremony would revolve around forgiveness. In particular, I needed to forgive myself for the last seven years – because I have a lot of self-judgement about how crap I’ve been, and how much time I feel I’ve wasted. If only I’d been more skillful, if only I’d been more together, if only I’d known how to ask for help, if only I’d known what help I needed and so on and so forth... Painful to admit – to myself, let alone to others.

In order to forgive myself for these last seven years – whatever that phrase means – I realised that I also needed to truly accept what I have been through – whether my choices were wise or unwise, skilled or unskilled. To accept and to honour my experience as it’s actually unfurled. And to accept and honour myself, as I currently am. Otherwise forgiveness would run the risk of being a running away rather than a loving letting go.

My third prayer was both grand and specific: to ask Love to enter my heart and warm me from within; to really know Divine Love at the heart of my heart and the heart of my being. Why not? Why not just admit my lack of connection and my hunger and my thirst? I may love reading some of the mystics, and love quoting their words, but most of the time I feel on the other side of the mystical fence to them – and that they’ve definitely got something that I think I haven’t. Their grass looks a lot, lot greener, however much they try to convince me of the already-present-and-inherent greenery of my grass – or even the non-existence of the fence. I’m with Maggie the Mare on this one.

I stoked up the wood burner, curtained all the windows, smudged the room and myself, sounded the meditation gong, ate the pastel, drank half of the mushie tea, and took a couple of drops of the oil. I made sure the rest of the oil was at hand – in case I needed to smooth out the journey, bring myself back to earth, or perhaps even provide a gentle boost.

Quite early on in the ceremony, whilst looking for music to play, I stumbled upon my Funeral Playlist. In one of my slightly more melodramatic and thankfully-brief suicidal phases, I’d compiled a playlist of funereal music. Perfect! What a great way to honour both the dying process I have been through – and am still going through – and the fact that I didn’t actually kill myself.

Ah, and it was such a moving mix of music – it warmed my heart with sadness and longing and love. And I couldn’t but help think of James, who took his own life last month. One particular song – Flower Of Light by Nick Barber – particularly made me think of James, and I sang along to it, with him in my heart, especially the Rumi-infused chorus:

And even if you’ve broken
Your vows
A thousand times
Come home again
To the arms
Of the one who waits
In the stillness of the centre...

Even if James would have found it far too soppy.

It reminded me of one of those gentle, devotional Christian choruses I used to sing back in my evangelical teenage days. I’ll see if I can find it on Youtube and post a link at the end of this blog.

And then The Beatles came on with All Things Must Pass. Oh my – that song could be played at any funeral.

Sunrise doesn’t last all morning
A cloudburst doesn’t last all day
Seems my love is up and has left you with no warning
It’s not always going to be this grey

All things must pass
All things must pass away...

By which time I realised that I was in quite a high and altered state of affairs. The DIY cabin-shamanic brew was definitely working – not too little, not too much, but definitely pushing me to a liminal and creative edge.

It was time to turn and face my last seven years.

Seven years! I moved home to look after mum in March 2013 and she died in October of that year. What on earth have I been doing since then?

Simultaneously resisting and navigating my way through a fairly thorough and protracted breakdown, that's what.

How can I tart that up for my CV? I must have learned some transferable skills at least.

It’s almost amusing now – I thought it would take maybe a year tops to get over mum’s death, and then I’d be back on the film-story-writing horse, trotting out of sunrises and galloping into sunsets. Oh my... I swear that when I signed up to being me I should have read the small print.

Be Not So Fearful by Bill Fay came on, the last track of my funeral playlist. Don't know why that man and his music aren’t more well known.

Oh, I found myself sobbing properly snotty tears, and, once the music finished, a stream-of-consciousness forgiveness prayer began to tumble from my lips.

forgive me
my longing and my loneliness

forgive me my
broken heart
and my broken-heartedness

forgive me my violence
and self-rejection

forgive me my impatience
and my cruelty

forgive me my lack of wisdom
forgive me my lack of skill

forgive me my confusion

forgive me my powerlessness

forgive me my avoidance

forgive me my cowardice

forgive me my lack of love

forgive me my lack of connection to Source

forgive me my overload of shame

forgive me my lack of kindness towards myself

forgive me my self-judgment...

I just kept praying out loud and asking for forgiveness until I felt all prayed out and all forgiven out too.

And then I found a sung version of that prayer from the Hawaiian Ho’oponopono ceremony:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
And thank you
I love you

And I sang it over and over until I was both the one asking for forgiveness and the one granting forgiveness, and even the song of forgiveness itself. I wasn’t interested in who was wrong or right, or even if anything wrong had actually been done – I just wanted to be free of all the unforgiving bonds that were binding me to the past, and free from my interpretations and free from my stories and free from my projections and free from my judgments and all that heavy, heavy, sticky stuff that weighs us down and tangles us up and saps our strength and keeps the possibility of joy at bay. That obscures our true nature.

Phew. I got to a point where I felt I’d done all I could to forgive myself – and Life, including God – for these last seven years. I still felt there was some more work to be done – a deeper acceptance, perhaps, or perhaps a deeper letting go – but I’d definitely got stuck in, dug deep, and now felt much more loose and free.

I had myself a little boogie.

And then my dad appeared, in both my mind and my heart.

Now, unfortunately, me and dad never really got on. We could have a whisky and a laugh together, or have a political argument or philosophical debate, but I kept him at arm’s length and largely out of my heart. He’d been my headmaster when I was at primary school, which was quite a headfuck for a five-to-ten-year-old son. And then when I was sent to boarding school, what remaining trust I had in him largely disappeared.

I’m sad to say that I never really got to know him or properly love him whilst he was still on planet Earth. But I am happy to say that my love for him has grown and grown since he died. As has my appreciation for his good qualities. Bizarrely, it’s still a living, changing, ongoing relationship. But to get to this place has involved quite a bit of forgiveness.

What did I have to forgive him for now?

And then it hit me: no, I was the one who needed to ask him for his forgiveness. For all the shit I’d given him.

So, once more, I free-styled a prayer, speaking out loud, tears streaming down my face, asking dad forgiveness for all the emotional stress and psycho-political hassle I put him through whilst he was still alive – my lazy school ethic, my many arrests, my dropping out of university, my imprisonments, my rude poetry, my slack work ethic, my failed relationships, my partying and drug-taking – man, I’d given him as good as I thought he’d given me. Forgive me, dad, forgive me...

It was such a relief and release to clean out our relationship that bit more. I felt so much love for him, and so much missing too. I’ll never again get to see him in that particular Colin Hancock fleshy form. Oh my, where do we go, and where is “he” now?

At which point, quite a technical revelation occurred.

Several years ago, during a plant medicine ceremony, I was instructed to install my mum and dad, and their parents, and mum’s sister, Doreen, in a very particular order in my heart. Which I did.

But I was now shown that the version of dad I’d installed was both inaccurate and unhelpful.

I’m grasping for words here, because none of this came in words as such.

I saw that I was still holding onto a picture of dad as a bit sad and depressed, and suffering, and wounded – and I was carrying this frozen, and unreal, image of him around in my heart. But this image wasn’t helping him, and it certainly wasn’t helping me. Instead, I was instructed to picture him already free and already whole and already beaming with Divine Love – and to reinstall that upgraded version of him in my heart. My dad whole and free and beaming with Love! As soon as I did this, I felt light and lightness flutter about my heart. And I realised that I had to reinstall all of my relatives in this new form – but could do so at a later date.

And I further saw that I’d attached myself to a detrimental story: that if I healed myself, then I’d be able to heal my parents and ancestors. But as long as I was carrying around wounded versions of them, I’d struggle to get well myself. But if I installed healthy and liberated versions of them in my heart – that was the best medicine for them, and the best medicine for me.

I think this is a fairly accurate rendering of what I was wordlessly shown. Does any of this make sense?

I sat down and sang the Ho’oponopono prayer to dad, over and over again, love beaming and streaming between us:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you

I had myself another boogie, in order to digest what I was going through – also, my body really wanted to move and to be an integral part of the ceremony.

And then my mum appeared, or, rather, a sense of my mum. And even though I had thought that I had forgiven everything between us – and had been forgiven – I realised that there was still more to say. And I knew I wasn’t asking to be forgiven for things I’d done wrong – mum would have been aghast at what I was asking forgiveness for – but I needed to speak it out loud to her, anyway.

I was sorry for not being able to save her from her suffering and her pain, that I was not able – I’m weeping as I type this – to save her from her cancer and her dying and her death, that maybe I could have done more, that I couldn’t keep her alive, that I could have been wiser about how to support someone through death, that I could have been stronger... And in all of this I realised that I was still carrying this irrational “belief” that her suffering and death were somehow linked to my lack of skill, and to my lack of love.

And all sorts of strange sentences and sentiments came tumbling out of my mouth.

Oh, another wave of grief is passing through me right now. Time for a cuppa, and maybe time to do the dishes too.

The thing is, even though I knew I “didn’t need to apologise” – I gave mum the very best love a son could – just saying all this stuff out loud, well, it was medicine to my heart and mind and soul. I needed to get this stuff off my chest, however irrational it seemed.

And then I found myself apologising to her for the last six years, especially confessing my shame at not being able to cope. And it was obvious that I wasn’t just confessing – and releasing – adult shame, I was primarily confessing my boyhood shame at not being able to cope with boarding school, shame that I never got to share with her. Because I was ten years old and too ashamed and too vulnerable and no longer trusting, and because she wasn’t able – or emotionally and culturally equipped – to open up the deeper conversations that we both needed to have back then.

I prayed until I was exhausted.

And then I sat down and sang the Ho’oponopono prayer to her:

I’m sorry
Please forgive me
Thank you
I love you

Over and over again, asking for forgiveness, granting forgiveness, being forgiveness... Just wanting us all – me, mum, dad, my ancestors – to be free and whole and loved and loving.

And that phrase from the gospels about forgiving seventy times seven kept on coming into my head, like a chorus. When Peter asked Jesus how many times he had to forgive his sinful brother.

“Seven times?” asked Peter, half grasping the stick.

“Not seven,” replied Jesus. “Seventy times seven.”

The unfathomable mystery of forgiveness...

In the wake of these three journeys of forgiveness – of myself, between me and dad, between me and mum – something very sweet began to happen. I found an old ambient and electro Dub playlist on my phone, and was soon dancing around the cabin, feeling the forgiveness and the love and the release all percolating and circulating through my body and being. And as I danced, I was overcome with a real tenderness for myself.

As you may have guessed, one of my old survival mechanisms is to be very self-critical and self-judgmental (and, ahem, judgmental of others) – so it was really lovely to find myself genuinely acknowledging and appreciating myself: my beauty, my fragility, my vulnerability, my innocence, my kindness, my courage, my creativity, my imagination, my sense of humour, my faithful friendship, my generosity, my emerging wisdom, my compassion, my love of justice and peace, my playfulness, my honesty, my wordsmithery...

And I found myself praying out loud to God – almost the sort of “God out there” that I used to believe in when I was a Christian. I gave thanks for the mystery of what was happening in the ceremony, and for the cleansing and deepening of my relationships with myself and my parents. But I also shared with God my sense of distance and separation, and I shared my sense of hunger, and my tiredness at knocking at the door of the Divine, knock-knock-knocking at heaven’s unresponsive door. It felt good to be honest like that with a version of God like that. Even if the joy I’m looking for is supposedly already inside me, I’m still knocking and looking. I’m still a seeker. Still exhausting my seeking. My knuckles are sore.

I then read a beautiful piece by Rumi – Banners of Praise – and embarked on several other little branch line journeys – to do with my body, and my heart, and my relationship with the feminine – but I found I was increasingly losing my focus and could sense that the ceremony was coming to an end. It had probably taken three or four hours in all – I don’t know, I never looked at a clock, and I was in quite an altered state for most of it. At this point I really felt my DIY ceremony’s weakness – and I remembered those times, particularly with the Huni Kuin, when guitars had appeared and the ceremony leaders had brought us back to earth and back together with songs of praise to Pachmama, sung with pentecostal joy and innocence.

I wrote down some commitments that had arisen from the various journeys, smudged myself, and just as I was about to sound the finishing gong, I looked up and, there, through a gap in the curtains, I could see a sparrow hawk, sitting on a branch, twelve or fifteen feet away, staring back at me. I felt like it was a blessing direct from Mother Nature. But then hawkish she or he morphed into a very tall and comical pigeon with a gently pulsing iridescent chest, and then back into a proud and sage sparrow hawk, before flying off down the hill, low to the ground. Whether sexy shamanic hawk or mundane sub-shamanic pigeon, it was a thrilling avian meeting, and confirmed to me that the meat of the ceremony had been served and eaten.

And that I was still quite high.

I closed the ceremony, thanking all my helpers and guides, thanking my deeper wisdom and soul, and thanking the elements too – in particular Grandfather Fire.

I made up a bed on the floor next to the faithful woodburner, made myself a pot of fresh rosemary tea, and played music into the night, slowly drifting back down to earth, assimilating the wonder and intensity and information and insights of the ceremony.

Well, that’s one way to spend a soggy Monday afternoon.

It’s now Thursday. I’ve just been down to the sea for my daily maritime medicine and beachcombing. Even found a complete brick, sea-worn at the edges, but handsomely chunky! But it felt like a very old brick: solid red clay, no frog and no holes neither. I’ve heard that Seaton used to have a brick-making factory. Maybe every now and then one of the old sea-buried bricks rises and beaches itself? How long does it take for a brick to be rounded by the sea? Days? Months? Years?

Maybe that’s a better analogy. You’re a brick. The sea of life might break you into pieces, or maybe it will allow you to stay whole. But it will definitely smooth down all your edges. And there’s nothing you can do to resist it.
It’s been a satisfying beachcombers’ haul this week: one whole brick, one half brick, several rocks with sea-blown holes in them, several driftwood pieces for a driftwood spine I’m making, and a length of yellow and red rope which might well thread that spine. Daily finds and simple joys.

Hmmm, probably time I wrapped this blog up. As you can see, there’s been a lot to digest this week. I’ve been writing and pondering and dancing and moving with it all for three days now. Quite delightfully, my body is really involved with this process. There's a lot moving through my system.

This morning, during my morning prayers, I tuned into my freshly-reinstalled parents and grandparents – and they too were all dancing. I’m generally not a very visual person, but I could see the joy on their faces – and could see that they were all holding hands in celebration. And I could sense all my ancestors – a long and ancient spine of them – joining in the dance too.

I am still reeling with the delight of this vision, and the knowledge that these ancestral dancers are all in my heart.

One Love

Stephen
Thursday 30th January
Devon

Flower Of Light by Nick Barber, sung by Maneesh De Moor – I think:

P.S.
If you’ve made it this far – haven’t you got anything better to do? No, seriously: if you’ve got this far, I’m well chuffed, whatever you make of what you’ve read – or even whatever you make of me?

I’m not too sure I quite know why I’m writing this weekly blog. Just the decision – back in December – to begin sharing and blogging set in motion such remarkable inner events that I feel it must be good medicine for me. Whether anyone else finds it useful, or helpful, or entertaining, or annoying, or medicinal...

When I perform poetry, it’s often easy to see the eyes of the audience – and this makes the performance so much more enjoyable, because a sort of attentive loop of giving and receiving enters the room. It’s a bit more difficult out here in the digital world. I only publish the bloglink (sounds like a Lincolnshire bog sprite) on my Facebook page, and email the link to a self-selecting few (currently numbering three). Other than that I’m a bit shy. As you can hopefully see, I’m being quite honest and vulnerable and self-revealing here, even if there's often a part of me still trying to manage my image (haha). These are my choices, for sure. But any feedback or comments or encouragement or concerns or suggestions are appreciated – either to me in private, or in public below. Being a bit of a hermit, this is one of my major social outings...

If you want to be included on the weekly email list, drop me your best email address.

Phew.

Let's go out with a bit of Rumi – a great one for Imbolc.
If you're conceptually or linguistically allergic to the word "God", then just replace it with "Life" and see how it goes...

Banners of Praise
by Mevlâna Jalâluddin Rumi

Our fasting is over; it’s the feast day of Spring!
O dearest guest, welcome; sorrow be gone!
All praise be to God!

O Love once forsaken, abandoned heart be forgotten now;
your Beloved has arrived, and will forever remain.
All praise be to God!

Parting is forever parted; separation is severed at last;
union is united with no more delay:
All praise be to God!

Flight has flown and exile’s pain is banished;
distance is now distant; our nest is filled with joy:
All praise be to God!

The moon in the heavens, the rose in the heart of Love’s garden,
the King in his palace, the Queen upon her throne, proud banners show forth:
All praise be to God!

Life stirs in the root of a hair; fluid sap spreads through each tiny leaf;
green buds on the branches crown God’s dominion:
All praise be to God!

Let the despised enemy come, for he’ll meet our Defender;
we challenge his approach, for now in safety we say:
All praise be to God!

Flood me completely, with the fire of Love’s burning,
for now I can bear it and not burn away:
All praise be to God!

For now in certainty, my soul is free,
and all of earth’s sadness has dissolved in earth’s clay.
All praise be to God!

O chalice overflowing, poured out for these thirsty worlds –
we thank you, we bless you, and we drink while we pray:
All praise be to God!

The world lay parched for so long, an open desert,
until the dew glistened, and your breath
came on the wings of morning.
All praise be to God!

As we waited we were longing for Spring’s sun
to renew this life or ours.
Today, Jalâluddin’s warm breath arrived from the East.
All praise be to God!

(translated by Camille Helminski & William Hastie, with a few little tweaks by me)

1 Comment

These chrysalis days

25/1/2020

2 Comments

Well, despite overcast seaside days having their own ever-shifting misty-blue-grey entertainment value, they don’t put them solar shillings into that there solar lecky meter. So, here I am, down The Anchor on the seafront, all available rechargeable devices plugged into the spare socket next to the armless one-armed bandit, pint of Guinness and a packet of ready salted by my side, Saturday afternoon pen, paper and keyboard at the ready, walking stick by my side. Rock and roll...

On my way down the hill, short-cutting it through some self-wilded no man’s land I’ve nicknamed Troll Lane, I bumped into old Michael, aka the Bard of Beer, shuffling in the same downhill direction. Such a fey character, shock of white hair, long white beard, otherworldly trill voice and all – I swear he hails from a parallel non-digital England, which split off from this one about the time of William Morris and co. Hadn’t seen Michael in ages and was beginning to get a little concerned. Always good to greet and honour the older poets.

This week a friend posted on her Facebook feed a marvellous three-minute-long video of the life cycle of a Chinese luna moth. Hatching out of its egg, the tiny hairy creature – smaller than the pine needles upon which it feeds – nibbles and grows, sloughs its skin several times, changes colour (from black to red-brown to orange-brown to bright green), even at one point shedding its face, before spinning its own cocoon, from which it emerges four weeks later, swelling and pumping up its new – gloriously beautiful – Chinese luna moth wings. Oh my!

Hopefully I can embed the video at the end of this blog. It’s such a joy to watch.

OK, moths and butterflies are a bit different – for example, moths spin silken cocoons, whereas butterflies form hard chrysalises – but, as a analogy for human transformation, the journey from caterpillar through pupal stage into moth or butterfly sure takes the bio-poetic biscuit.

And watching this mesmerising video reminded me of one of the more mysterious events of my life.

Four years ago, when I first realised that I was not just dealing with grief and depression, I was dealing with old, unhealed boarding school trauma, I was signposted to a trauma-informed therapist. Alas, I never really trusted them – maybe I wouldn’t have trusted anyone at that time – and as soon as there was a reprieve in my symptoms, I beat a hasty retreat into the hills of self-isolation. However, one therapy session in particular stood out, and still stands out. It involved us exploring this caterpillar-to-butterfly analogy in some detail – especially the unsung process within the chrysalis, when the old caterpillar is broken down, and imaginal cells begin to divide and grow into the new body of the emergent butterfly. It seemed quite an optimistic process – and maybe, I thought, this unhealed trauma business was going to be over and done with quite quickly, a little bit of therapy here, a little bit of EMDR there, maybe with a few cups of ayahuasca thrown in for good shamanic measure, and then, voila!, butterfly me emerges back into the world. Plus: the butterfly was one of my mum’s favourite symbols – her being a priest and all that.

At the end of the session, when I left the practice room, I was hit with the strangest of sensations – it felt slightly eerie, and my body hairs bristled in response. It was as if an intelligence outside of myself was trying to communicate with me. I tried to interpret it. Don’t cycle home. Instead, cycle to the river and you will be given a sign. I was perplexed, as this kind of thing was not a regular occurence – in fact, I considered myself quite thick-skinned and slightly allergic to such metaphysical malarkey. For, whilst I am a balding hippie perfectly capable of believing half a dozen implausible things before breakfast, I also spent nine of my adult years in the utterly convinced materialistic-atheistic-realist world, and am aware that it’s probably a good evolutionary human trait to see too many tigers in the grass than too few. Obeying a message to cycle along to the river and await a sign – this could well be a sign of incipient madness. Still, what was there to lose? It was a beautiful autumnal day, and time spent by a river is rarely wasted.

So, instead of cycling back to suburban Florence Park, I headed down to the Thames – or, more precisely, to that stretch in Oxford they call the Isis. And I started cycling towards Sandford lock. Maybe I was going to see a kingfisher? That would be a delightful enough sign for me, and acceptable to both my inner mystic and my inner scientist. At a particular bend in the river, I was “led” off the beaten track and to a grassy curve, where I sat down – so it seemed, waiting for the aforementioned promised sign. I was quite excited about seeing a kingfisher. But, in my poetic experience thus far in life, kingfishers are a bit like rainbows – and rarely come bidden.

Hmmmmm. Maybe I am going a bit mad. Still, this ain’t a bad place to sit and ponder. Maybe I should wait until a kingfisher appears?

I waited five minutes, ten minutes, scanning the river bank for a kingfisher’s iridescent presence. Maybe this waiting for a sign is actually a message? To slow down and be patient...

And then I heard the prosaic chug-chug-chug-chug of a narrow boat, idling round the river bend. I looked up as it approached, and there on its prow was its name: Caterpillar.

I was gobsmacked. And tears began rolling down my cheeks – oh, I didn’t realise how utterly lonely I felt and how hungry I was to know that I was in safe hands, that all this pain and madness would pass. But how the fuck has Life arranged this?

And then another boat came chugging along. And upon its prow: Imagine. Imagine! Quiet laughter now mingled with my tears. I couldn’t make rational sense of it at all, but the bones of my soul sang with some sort of recognition. The Universe, I felt, was simultaneously reassuring me and playing with me.

And then I heard a third boat approaching from the rear: chug-chug-chug-chugging into view... If this one’s called Butterfly, I’ll eat my hat and retire on the spot.

But it wasn’t called Butterfly. It was called Dragonfly.

I sat there shaking my head. Caterpillar Imagine Dragonfly. Of course, as any self-respecting materialist-atheist-realist would enthusiastically point out, caterpillars don’t actually turn into dragonflies. But if that was the best the river sprites of the Isis could do with their available Scrabble-boat letters, it was plenty good enough for this landlubber of a doubting Thomas.

I cycled home in a wondrous daze, swinging by the Iffley yew to tell her my news and my woes and my readiness and eagerness to become a butterfly.

Oh, I’m feeling quite shaky now, having remembered all this. The hell of the intervening four years suddenly feels quite real, and my apparent progress quite vulnerable. Hmmmmm.

A problem with analogies and metaphors and similes and aphorisms is that, as well as enlightening us, they can also lead us astray. Or, rather, when I’m struggling, I’m more than happy to be led astray. The number of times I’ve desperately declared myself to be out of the woods, or emerging from my chrysalis or cocoon – well, I shudder to think.

Still, that post-therapeutic riverside message has remained with me throughout these self-disintegrating years. Maybe it was one of the secret things that actually kept me alive?

And, I’ve been researching the teleonomy and poetry of the caterpillar’s metamorphosis ever since.

What follows is what I have thus far gleaned – and I hope that any biologist friends will gently point out any errors in my understanding.

It seems that a certain caterpillar hormone – called ecdysone – is what causes the wee beastie to moult several times, but so-called juvenile hormones stop this process from prematurely proceeding to full pupation. A caterpillar moults perhaps four or five times in its leaf-munching life before it finally spins its own lepidopteral cocoon or encases itself in a snugly-fitting chrysalis shell. It appears that it is a diminishing of juvenile hormones that allows this irreversible journey into profound metamorphosis.

And this is where the action really begins. The bulk of the old caterpillar is forthwith broken down into proteins by a specialist enzyme called caspases, but a few of its old structures remain and are adapted – for example, its tracheal tubes and large parts of its gut system. But the bulk of the caterpillar’s muscles are broken down, forming a chunky broth of proteins. Meanwhile, imaginal cells - from the Latin imago, imagine – clustered together in imaginal discs begin to use this protein broth to grow and divide and multiply, dozens of cells becoming scores becoming thousands, becoming eyes and legs and mouth parts and genitals and wings. Scientists still don’t fully understand this process – tricky it is to observe objectively without affecting the subject in question, but it’s an outstanding example of fiendishly efficient biological upcycling.

At some point, when only it knows when, the former caterpillar emerges, eyes blinking, wings pulsing, readying for first flight – and nectar! Because butterflies don’t eat what caterpillars eat.

“Within the chrysalis, an inching, cylindrical eating machine remakes itself into a beautiful flying creature that drinks through a straw.”

Oh my, I’m suddenly really knackered. Time to head back up to the Cabin. Word count’s about 1600, computer’s on 96%, and phone’s on 88%, so it’s been an acceptably productive Saturday afternoon. Laters.

So then, vicar, do you think you’ve got enough material for tomorrow morning’s sermon?

You rude little churchwarden!

Going to say something profound, are we, vicar? About sloughing skin, and juvenile hormones, and breaking down old identities and old habits, and feeding those imaginal cells with the fuel of this disintegration, and trying not to resist the process, and leaving old food stuffs behind, and having faith and having patience and not rushing towards butterflyhood, but honouring the wisdom of the chrysalis stage...

That’s quite enough, churchwarden. My parishioners might be reading this, I'll have you know.

I'm not convinced they all come just for your sermons, vicar.

You’ve made your point, you cynical little low church caterpillar.

At least this cynical little low church caterpillar knows whether or not it’s going to become a beautiful butterfly or a hairy moth on the Day of Judgement.

How exactly does one know that, churchwarden?

I’ll see you in church in the morning, vicar.

No, churchwarden, come back! Come back! It’s a very serious question!
Am I going to emerge from all of this malarkey a beautifully blooming butterfly or a bloomin' hairy moth?

One Love

Stephen
Saturday 25th January
Devon

holometabolic haiku

caterpillar sleeps
dreams of things beyond its ken
all aflutter, wakes

2 Comments

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

15/1/2020

0 Comments

Ah, sunshine – sweet, sweet January sunshine. The battery monitor has gone from straight-mouthed to smiley for the first time in days. Storm Brendan, it seems, has passed. The sea got fantastically choppy back there, and the winds, well, they got properly stormy too. Such a joy to watch a tempestuous sea from a distance – wave after wave thrashing the shore – and such a thrill to stand on the moonlit beach and to feel its force up close and impersonal.

Was going to write this blog yesterday, but felt flat and grumpy and disengaged, which doesn’t make for great copy. But that’s giving up ciggies for ya – for the one hundred and twenty-seventh time...

A tad perkier today, although if someone offered me a ciggie right now I’d casually go, “Oh, go on then,” and proceed to suck its very soul out. Stupidest drug ever. And such a sacred herb too. Typical Whitie behaviour: take something sacred and turn it into an addictive, cancerous source of taxes.

I’ve been back at the Cabin a week now, and have settled in quite well. Something is shifting quite deep inside me, and whatever it is, I’m enjoying the occasional taste and smell of it. Fuck knows, I deserve some sweetness in my life. All the good habits I’ve haphazardly developed during my wilderness years – prayer, meditation, chi kung, frugality, gratitude, presence, immersion in the natural world – well, it now feels as if they are beginning to bud.

[superstitiously looks over shoulder to see if the gods are listening in]

It’s taken Cyril/Cecily the squirrel a whole week to rediscover the bird table and its easy pickings. We locked eyes today – and seemed to understand our different roles in the ensuing drama, nothing personal, I’d do the same as you if I were you.

A rook has been checking out the bird table too. I stood stock still yesterday for a good ten minutes and observed her/him suspiciously contemplating the whole scene from a variety of angles, before flying off without even a compensatory sunflower seed. “If in doubt,” seems to be the rookish wisdom, “leave it out, and live to fly another day.” I’d love to have a corvid for a friend.

Yesterday some sheep managed to find their way into the Cabin garden. I was about to usher them off the property, when I realised that the shaggy winter lawn could actually do with a good mowing – so, it was win-win, with some fresh sheep shit thrown in to seal the deal.

All these details fill my wintered belly with springlike warmth.

One of the drawbacks of solitude, though, is that I find it really hard to make myself laugh. I can induce the occasional smirk, or the odd wry smile, but rarely any proper laughter. I have to surprise myself in order to make myself laugh. So, this morning, at the beginning of my morning practice, when I heard myself saying out loud, “I’ve always wanted to be a monk,” I didn’t half chortle out loud. Oh my, it’s true: part of me has always wanted to me a monk, and here I am, leading a rather monkish life, hoodie and crocs and celibate socks included.

During my teenage years I cross-faded from a rather right-wing evangelical public school Christian into a nonviolent revolutionary evangelical Christian – but, in both guises, I was quite pious. I was serious about following Jesus and discerning God’s will – fair play to teenage me. And I remember when I first saw Zeffirelli’s film about St Francis – Brother Sun, Sister Moon – and what an impact it had on me. Here was a rich young man responding to the gospels in a way that made sense to me – and there was the beautiful Clare too, close yet chaste, which was a combination that suited me at the time, terrified as I was of both women and sex.

I’ve had a fondness for the Franciscans ever since. The only time I've done a "past life regression", when I looked down at my feet they were clad in leather sandals, and I was clothed in a rough brown robe – I was a Franciscan, some time in the fourteenth century...

Maybe if I’d remained a Christian, I’d have followed my predecessor. I’m not too sure how that would have worked out, although in my twenties I would have looked very cute in a full Franciscan robe.

But here I am, thirty-five years on, most days talking to animals more than I talk to humans, pondering the mysteries of Life, living simply enough, in daily gratitude, in love with Brother Sun and Sister Moon, still half terrified of... Ha!

Time to go feed Maggie the Generaly Indifferent Mare.

Ah, the sun has begun its afternoon descent, and a wave of loneliness has just washed through me. A desire, perhaps, to be held and to hold. The sight of a friend’s smile, the brightness of a friend’s eyes, the inimitable warmth of fleshy human company – someone to make me laugh out loud. And yet, and yet – this is my choice right now, to live like this, to be intimate with solitude and with myself and with my experience, whatever the weather. To be intimate with Life as it moves through me – sea waves and lonely waves and funny waves and all.

That’s new in my life: this sense of choice. This inhabiting the choices I make. On the whole, I'm not feeling like a victim at the mercy of forces I don't really understand – which is how I've felt for years. Is the worst behind me? Who knows?

But there is some peace percolating around my veins right now, and I give thanks.

One day at a time, and all that sensible jazz.

Stephen
Wednesday 15th January
Devon

My heart sings

Like an open book
that gently rises and falls
upon the chest of its dozing reader
is my love for Thee, oh Lord
Who art the ink of every word
and the very heart of the sun
that gave the light
that fed the tree
that made the page
upon which each word is printed.

Paper and skin and ink art Thou.
Intimate with all things.

Like the sweetness
of the salt
of the tears that mark the end of suffering
is my gratitude to Thee, my Lady
Who art the very iron in my blood
and the pulse
of the heart
of the moon
that pulls the earth
that tugs the tide
that makes the waves
that lap about my feet.

Sea and flesh and iron art Thou.
Intimate with all things.

Like the song
of the petals
of the flower
that opens each morning
to the grace and the hum
of the humble bumble bee
is my praise for Thee
oh Creator and Creation.

Nectar and pollen art Thou
honey and taste and tongue.

Intimate with all things.

0 Comments

Back to Cabinland

10/1/2020

1 Comment

Ah, only got back to the Cabin two days ago, after two weeks inland: doing the Christmas and New Thing, partying, being ill, drinking whisky, smoking ciggies, eating vegan sausage rolls, catching up with friends and family, enjoying unlimited electrickery and Netflickery, drooping with central heating, floating in baths, indulging in a bit too much Facebook, pondering about the year gone by, and wondering about the year to come. Quite a lazy, hazy fortnight. Definitely in need of some sea breeze and sea-salty spittle to sting my cheeks and wake me up from my suburban slumbers.

It always takes a day and two nights, at least, to settle back into Cabinland. But today has been – still is – a fairly peachy day. I was even topless at lunchtime, collecting windfall twigs for kindling, and chasing off errant sheep – so gorgeous to feel the sunlight and sunwarmth upon my skin. I’ve reacquainted myself with my neighbours – Maggie the generally indifferent mare, the blue tits, the great tits, the robin, the blackbird, the wren, the finches. I even had a magpie visit the bird table – wow, such formidable presence and intelligence and awareness – although it flew off as soon as it heard the twitching of my nostrils through two panes of glass.

I’ve been drinking in the sea, so to speak. Oh my. It’s full moon today, and so low tide was particularly low. From my hilltop perch, I watched the waves beginning to form far out to sea, at first faint bruised lines of colour, swelling and deepening and clarifying as they approached the coast, shadow-waves lit by a low-slung sun, and then furling and quickly unfurling against the shoreline in explosions of froth and foam...

Half way down the hill, rabbits are now gambolling about in the late afternoon sun. I could be forgiven for thinking that all is well with the world.

This morning when I woke, I felt strangely vulnerable. I must have had a tense dream or two, and was slightly sweaty, and when I got up, my body felt exposed to the cold morning air. I lit the fire, pottered around, had a shower, made some breakfast – but I could feel that I was delaying my morning practice.

Because when I finally got round to it, I experienced what I feared: a sort of catching up with a sense of disconnection, like I hadn't quite put my body and soul and mind on the right way, and they were all a bit twisted and tangled. No wonder stopping still is sometimes one of the hardest of human activities. I had to really muster as much spiritual wisdom as possible to let everything just be. To allow this unease, this sense of disconnection – not to will it away or wish I was someone other than I am. To breathe my experience in. And to breathe my experience out. And to keep breathing, throughout my exercise and meditation and prayer. To keep opening to Life as it was showing up in me, not as I wanted it to be.

But this mustering of spiritual acceptance seemed to work, and by the end of my practice I felt established in an unusual peace, which has remained with me all day. It’s not always like this – I succeed in tangling the knot of self-contraction more often than I succeed in allowing it to loosen itself – but today I welcomed the knot, and felt it relax in the face of such genuine acknowledgement. There’s hope for this learner driver yet.

Truth is, I am quietly excited about the year ahead, and today somehow feels like my New Year’s Day.

I think that’s my blog for the week. Short and sweet. I did entertain ideas about writing about vulnerability, complete with Latin etymology et cetera – but then I realised those ideas were coming from a slightly pompous place. It’s a constant battle for me – between my armies of under-estimation and my armies of over-estimation. Ha! To be even vaguely realistic about oneself is quite a challenge. Say no more.

Peace between all warring factions!

Love and warmth to all knots!

One Love

Stephen
Friday 10th January
Devon

1 Comment

Gratitude

4/1/2020

2 Comments

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you,
it will be enough.”
Meister Eckhart

It’s New Year’s morn, and I’m up in Buxton at my brother’s new gaff, which is actually an old Georgian town house – cabin life this ain’t. I was in bed before ten last night – flat out with a bad cold, a seized lower back, an anxious nervous system and a glass of whisky. I think this is my body’s way of saying I’ve been doing too much these last few weeks – too many big emotions, too many parties, too many shocks and delights. Time for some serious horizontalism.

I’ve got a lovely photo from New Year’s day, 2013. It’s of my mum, half-enfolded in a yew tree. We’d both been down to my brother’s – then living in Tunbridge Wells – for New Year before going on a mini-road trip to Pennant Melangell in Wales, to visit the shrine of St Melangell. The yew was in the churchyard, as yew trees often are – or maybe, the church was in the old yewyard... Whether the pagan chicken came before the Christian egg or vice versa, it was such fun larking around with mum in an ancient yew. It was our last carefree time together.

A few days later mum received news that the “cancer markers” in her blood were up. “Probably nothing to worry about,” she said, in typical mum fashion – but we were both concerned. Within a few weeks, she’d begun radiotherapy, and I was able to move in with her, to support her through cancer and dying and death.

One day I’ll write about my time looking after her. It was both beautiful and gruelling – profoundly awesome and profoundly awful.

After mum died, I spiralled down into depression, but didn’t realise it was depression – I just thought I was crap at grieving and crap at life in general. It took me a year to realise I was depressed, and another year to realise that underneath the depression was my old unresolved trauma of boarding school. I spent the next four years both fighting and having a proper breakdown, whilst learning to deal with the uncovering of a highly traumatised system – and the correlating “belief” system that ten-year-old me formed in order to be able to survive the hell of boarding school. I know it’s possible to have a breakdown without falling apart, and it’s possible to face and manage and heal post-traumatic stress without falling apart too. Alas, being a self-isolating boarding-school-survivor English poet with tragic tendencies, I broke open, broke down, fell apart, and fought the process every step of the way. It wasn’t pretty.

But, somehow, I’ve survived. It wasn’t always guaranteed. I just lot my mate James – as I said in my previous blog, there but for the grace of Life and friends go I.

And so today, at the beginning of a new decade, I’d like to express gratitude for all the elements of Life that have held me through these self-disintegrating years:

Friends and family

First up, thanks to my friends and family for holding me in your hearts. I know it’s been an ordeal for you, seeing me suffering, and seeing me self-isolating, but I have always known your deep love and concern for me. I would be dead without you.

The random phone calls, the regular phone calls, the texts and audio messages, the hugs, the resisting the urge to fix, the reassurance, the compassion, the patience, the truth-withholding and the truth-telling, the advice withheld and the advice given, the walks in nature, the little acts of kindness, the little presents, the invitations, the holding me during retraumatisation attacks, the self-education about trauma, the food, the parties, the holding me in your arms and letting me sob out my ancient grief, the medicine of connection offered for my illness of separation, the laughs in the midst of everything... thank you.

My ancestors

During an ayahuasca journey several years ago I was given clear instructions about installing my immediate ancestors within my heart – my mum and her parents on one side, my dad and his parents on the other, and mum’s sister – my auntie Doreen – in the middle. Doreen had Down’s Syndrome and was the heart of both lines of my family – whenever she was present, there was love and kindness and laughter. So, these seven souls are forever in my heart, and when I connect with my ancestors, I imagine my ancestral lines radiating backwards through their hearts – and through the hearts of my great-grandparents, my great-great grandparents, all the way back to humanity’s common ancestors, and then back further, through billions of years of life on earth, and sometimes even all the way back to the Big Bang – after all, everything I am now was also present then, quarks and awareness and all.

Whenever I open a new bottle of whisky, I always pour the first dram onto the ground in honour of all my ancestors – especially mum and dad, who both enjoyed a good single malt. Dad used to scoff at this wasteful tradition. I hope he appreciates it now.

Alas, both mum and died quite young (dad at sixty-nine; mum at seventy-three). I miss them both, and, ninety-eighty per cent of the time feel unconditional love for them, and am aware of their unconditional love for me too – I just wish, especially with my dad, I could have shared this level of connection with both of them whilst they were still dressed in mortal form. But the truth is that they loved me as best they could, I owe my very existence to them, and I owe my existence to millions and millions who went before me – what an amazing ancestral mystery to ponder. We’ve all got an amazing pedigree, and remarkable back-up, and I believe that any love and gratitude sent back through our ancestral lines loops back into the heart of my being. Gratitude to my ancestors is a win-win practice.

The kindness of strangers

Oh my, the kindness of strangers – it rarely makes the headlines but sure makes the world go round. As any one who has spent time with me knows, I love chatting to strangers. As a well-seasoned hitch-hiker, I’m happy talking to any Tom, Dick, Harriet or Charlie – it’s one of my favourite pastimes. Quite often it’s just friendly-hearted babble, but I find that the more honest and vulnerable I am with strangers, the more remarkable our conversations. Some times people are so kind, so attentive. Even a gentle smile, or the briefest meeting of human eyes, can linger through a day. Over the last seven years I’ve met complete strangers who have ministered to my soul in ways they could never have imagined. Thank you.

The Cabin

Four years ago now, my mate Annie approached me to see if I wanted to buy into a cabin on the south coast that she owned with two others. Having stayed there once, I didn’t need any decision-making time. I was in. And, since then, it’s been my main home – although whenever I vacate it for my co-cabinistas, I do tidy up, smudge the place, and make it feel like it’s actually co-owned! It was, and is, the perfect English seaside bolt-hole, both comfortable and elemental: mains water from the local stables, a gas boiler and cooker, toilet and shower, wood burner, solar-panel-fuelled 12 volt system (with an inverter), and a million dollar land-and-sea-and-sky view. It’s held me well through over a dozen seasons now.

I’ve even learned some basic DIY skills. Fancy that – an English poet with power tools. You can’t imagine how manly and productive this makes me feel.

And whilst, in the beginning, I disappeared into Cabinland urged on by chronic patterns of self-isolation and shame (at not being able to cope), one of the gifts the cabin has given me is...

The gift of solitude

What are the differences between self-isolation, loneliness and solitude? I wish I had a pithy answer. The thing is – so it seems to me after six years of living out of the way and largely by myself – is that any exploration of aloneness will inevitably involve explorations of self-isolation and loneliness, and of both healthy and unhealthy solitude.

As long as my nervous system is faring well enough and I’m feeling relatively connected, I’m more than happy to spend a week by myself. Maybe that’s it: aloneness can be hell if you’re feeling separate, and can be a quiet heaven if you’re feeling connected. In both cases, loneliness ebbs and flows like the tides – if already feeling separate, a wave of loneliness can make me feel even more separate; if feeling peaceful enough, loneliness rides through me as a sweet and natural and tender sensation. If it lingers, then maybe I need to phone a friend and tell them I’m feeling a bit lonely. Or maybe I need to pause and say a loving kindness prayer?

Of course, there is no real substitute for human hugs and skin-to-skin contact. As for sex – I can count on the fingers of one hand...

Nature

Ah, one day I hope I can write poems that express my true gratitude to Mother Nature for holding me all these years. Tears are beading in my eyes as I write these words. Without Nature, I don’t think I would have ever returned from the labyrinth of suffering that I entered six years ago. In the Cabin, I am surrounded by Nature, some of it cultivated – in the English fashion – some of it coastal and raw and wild. Even when I’m having a horrendous day internally, ever-shifting beauty surrounds me, and provides a deeply-humming reality check – I can always see the Divine outside, even if I can’t feel or fathom the Divinity within. Even dull days are never dull – mists constantly shift, light ebbs and flows, the sea never stops lapping or slapping the shore...

The Sea

Ah, the sea, the sea. These last four years I have fallen in love with the sea. Several days inland and my body and soul begin to pine for it. A week locked within the land and I’m already planning my return. My body and soul can breathe properly and deeply in the presence of the sea.

To go down to the mid-winter sea just before dawn, and to watch the sun rising from its calm depths, first a pin-prick of fiery flame, but very soon a rising orb flinging forth a shimmering, dancing pathway leading all the way from the shore to the horizon...

To follow the sun rise’s annual clock – sweeping out to sea for winter solstice, and then returning over the cliffs and inland for summer solstice...

To go down to the pebbly harbour on a stormy winter evening and to feel the sea’s wild fury and brute strength...

To float around on my back, buoyed by ancient salt water, on a warm and sunny day...

To follow the tides – the Cabin tide time table is as important to me as the kitchen clock – and to find walks and caves only accessible around new moon and full moon – to keep on pushing the edges of my knowledge and exploration...

To watch the morning river mouth pushing out a comic sausage of river cloud several miles long, and then – now far out at sea – for the sausage suddenly lose its internal binding and to dissipate as misty haze...

To dive into a gentle wave with a nervous system on hellish fire, and to emerge seven seconds later feeling like a man reborn...

Cliffs and rocks

And meanwhile, the cliffs stand immutable. And the immutable cliffs they crumble. And a hundred million beach pebbles have their edges ground down daily, and Greenwich Rock Time makes me feel wonderfully insignificant, a mere flea’s fart in the grand scheme of things. The company of rock is solid, enduring company indeed. A quirky pebble is pocketed for the garden, or perhaps for a present. A fresh tumble of rocks has already received the attention of the fossil hunter’s hammer. Tens of thousands of tons of pebbles can be remoulded overnight – a shallow beach one day, a steep climb the next.

And one day, the last rocky outcrop of Britain will finally succumb to the tides of sea water and time...

I realise that I am giving thanks for the elements here: to sea and sky and land and fire – whether the fire of the sun or the fire of the burner. And giving thanks also for that quintessential essence that binds all four. Ameyn.

Animals

Ah, my daily creatures. The beady-eyed robin reminding me of my breakfast duties; the liminal wren skirting the edges of the decking on its morning meanders; Cyril – or perhaps Shirley – the squirrel raiding the bird table with cheeky timing; Maggie the mare and her loving indifference; the fearless rooks giving the encircling buzzards a good run for their money; the sparrow hawk on its early evening perch; the gangly-legged foals in spring; a badger bimbling down the lane, lost in uffish thought; the deadly patience of a bedroom spider; a passing dog offering and requesting a moment of love and connection...

Plants

The hedgerows, the local trees, the kitchen herbs, the winter rose, the black berries and yew berries, the daisies and the dandelions, the handfuls of sweet grass fed to my neighbourly horses, the snow drops that remind us that the bulk of winter is done, the lonely primrose, the unfurling ferns, the wind-shaken twigs and branches collected for kindling, the slathers of seaweed upon the beach – all this juice and all this joy...

Mushrooms

Every autumn is magic mushroom season across the British Isles. Wherever there’s sheep shit, keep your eyes peeled. Nibble one, pick one, nibble one more, see three more, nibble another and, lo, quietly-pulsing hamlets and villages of the blighters begin to appear all round – spiralling you down the rabbit hole of mirth and earth and laughter. Every now and then, a couple in the morning for the health of my system. Psilocybe semilanceata – abundant liberty caps of these isles – thanks for your medicine, insight and entertainment.

Music & dance

The world might be rolling downhill towards the fires of hell in a burning handcart, but it’s the best time ever to be alive for music – we have access to the most amazing ocean of music, past, present and futuristic.

Especially when I was looking after my mum, escaping daily into my music was fundamental to my wavering sanity. Or, rather: allowing music to transport me elsewhere, far away from cancer and looming grief...

Getting a digital radio and discovering BBC 6Music was a joy. Sure, some of the DJs are as annoying as fuck, but the range of new and old music keeps me well entertained, and several times a day I Shazam a new tune that tickles my musical biscuit. I just have to be quick enough to switch off the news when it comes on, because it acts like naloxone against the previous hour’s opiate vibes.

Buying a little Minirig speaker for Cabin life means I can entertain myself and have a cabin boogie whenever I want. It don’t rattle the walls, but it booms merrily enough. Well done, that Bristol crew.

Not to mention all the parties I’ve danced at, or played at, through these dark years. The dancefloor takes it all.

Music and dance seem to be two human activities that we humans do, on the whole, quite well – and without too many destructive side effects. Maybe a few people end up at their local A & E having been elbowed in the face during the Birdie Song, and, yes, there were Nazi swing bands, but on the whole we should be proud of ourselves.

Would I have made it without music? Who knows? Thanks – all you artists, producers, DJs, dance teachers and assorted musical people. More movement and dancing please, vicar, for me in 2020.

Booze

Booze is a controversial substance to give thanks for, but it can be a very rapid and effective nervous system calmer for someone with PTSD. The number of times a pint – or a gin and tonic, or a glass of wine – has made me feel human again – not in terms of taking the edge off a stressful day, but in terms of allowing suffering me a welcome hour or two of something passing for soulfulness... It would be churlish not to give thanks for this alcoholic influence. I’ll probably write more about my story with alcohol and drugs – and other forms of addiction – in a later post, but right now I give thanks for the grape and the grain and all those billions of transmutative yeasty beasts. Cheers.

Grandmother Ayahuasca

Ayahuasca is also a controversial brew, and yet it’s a medicine that I have profound respect and profound gratitude for. Apart from the first ceremony I ever attended – which was not held very well – all the other times I have taken ayahuasca have been in safe hands, in well-held spaces, and have been times of both healing and insight. These last seven years I’ve been on perhaps a dozen such journeys, and each one has given me jewels. One thing I’ve learned is that any ayahuasca ceremony is not just about the ceremony – it involves good preparation (fasting, intention and prayer setting, an attitude of trepidation and trust), the ceremony itself, rest and digestion, and then doing the “homework”. And the best advice I ever received for the ceremony itself was to constantly give thanks to Grandmother Ayahuasca – whether going through heaven or hell or the purging of purgatory.

I’ve only experienced joy on a handful of occasions during these last few years – oh my, I could cry at how little joy I’ve experienced – and most of these occasions have been during dawn singing following a night of a ceremony. Some of the purest joy I have ever experienced, thus far in my life. These brief joyful hours have given me untold hope – an experience of myself freed from my usual shackles of separation. The Grandmother Ayahuasca that I have come to know is benevolent, precise and expects me to fulfil my “homework” before I return. I give thanks for her intelligence, and for the phenomenal intelligence and bounty of Pachamama, whom she serves, and of whom she is a powerful manifestation. And I give thanks for all the leaders and organisers of these ceremonies. Haux! Haux!

Teachers

As well as having access to the world’s cathedralic library of music, we also now have access to the whole of the world’s wisdom. If only we know where to look, and how to discern.

The field of trauma studies is a burgeoning field, with new insights and studies and modalities appearing all the time. It can be a bit perplexing keeping up with it all. My entry into this field of understanding was through two early classics: Waking The Tiger by Peter Levine and Ann Frederick, and The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk. Oh my, everything that I was taking personally wasn’t personal at all – and these people had explanations and maps. This was a revelation. I wasn’t mad. I was just suffering from unhealed trauma.

When I first read Trauma, Abandonment And Privilege by Nick Duffell and Thurstine Basset, it was like finding my long-lost instruction manual. Written mainly for professionals working with boarding school survivors, I’d recommend it to anyone who ever went to boarding school, or who lives with someone who did.

When I came across the work of Thomas Huebl, my understanding of trauma went to another level, particularly of its collective and inter-generational dimensions. Even if you haven’t experienced severe trauma in your personal life, all family lines have unintegrated trauma running through them, and we are all born into traumatised collective fields.

Craig Hamilton – a North American spiritual teacher – and Joy Hicklin-Bailey, a local lass, have been godsends on my spiritual journey.

And, of course, Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī, aka Rumi, has been a regular companion.

Big shout out too to the irreverend Ken Wilber and the Reverend angel Kyodo williams.

What I’m more and more realising is that, unless a teacher is specifically trauma-informed (either through their own experience, or through self-education), you have to tread really carefully when applying their psycho-spiritual advice to your own traumatised state. Insights into the perennial existential, psycho-spiritual and neurotic tendencies of human being don’t always translate into the fields of trauma – and if you’re not careful you can exacerbate your distress, or soon feel like the one loon in the classroom who don’t get it.

Iona

The holy island of Iona deserves its own prayer of thanks. I’ve been visiting Iona since I was nineteen – it’s seen me through my evangelical Christian pacifist days, my militant atheist days, my wannabe mystic days, both haggard days and holy days, and will surely see me through my dying days and beyond.

My brother, sister-in-law and I scattered half of mum’s ashes from the top of Dun I back in May 2014 – and of course a sudden flurry of wind blew the ashes all over us – and every year since I’ve returned to check in with my soul, and with mum. This October I spent a weekend wildcamping on the south of the island, and I experienced a level of connection – to my heart, soul, the land, the Divine – that I hadn’t done in years. A glimpse of things to come, in a place where truly the “veil is thin.”

Iona of my heart,
Iona of my love,
Instead of monks’ voices
Shall be the lowing of cattle;
But ere the world come to an end,
Iona shall be as it was.
St Columba

My practice

Although I’m sometimes a crap practitioner, I’ve developed a daily spiritual practice that – when I actually put it into practice – has held me through all manner of weathers and times. On a bad day, I feel like I’m going through the motions, but on a good day, a steady wisdom guides me, and reminds me that I am not just a bundle of self-contraction.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a remarkable concept, and an even more remarkable practice. One day I’ll explore it in more detail, but suffice to say it is one of my main practices, and a vital part of my healing process. Of course, premature forgiveness can easily send you miles out of your way, but delayed forgiveness keeps you in chains. When genuine forgiveness occurs – and, for me, it’s not about forgiving perceived or actual “wrong”, it’s about letting go of “the bonds that bind” – it’s as sweet as a summer stream on a hot and sweaty day.

Even though my mum and dad made some strange decisions about my life, and inadvertently wounded me very deeply, I know that they always meant the best. Every now and then, when I come across an old layer of, say, anger towards them, I try to allow that trapped energy to move through my system and try to integrate it and release it as best I can, and then try to discern when I am ready for another level of forgiveness. And when a deeper forgiveness arises, I feel it radiating through my ancestral lines, and love flowing even more freely in both directions. Forgiveness is vital for my health and vital for my liberation.

The mystery of suffering

I once came across an Indian mystic – I forget who – who said something like, “You only give thanks for the good things in life, and not the bad, and that is part of your problem.” Except he or she said it much more poetically and profoundly than that.

Giving thanks for the mystery of suffering – wow, that’s a really hard thing to do. But, otherwise, I’m at war with reality, which tends only to tighten the knot.

Maybe one day I’ll look back on these years and give heartfelt thanks for the burning away of falsehood and misperception and false identities and karma. I’m definitely not there yet – I still feel sorry for myself on a regular basis – but every now and then, during my morning prayers of gratitude, I try my best to give thanks for the mystery of my suffering, and the mystery of human suffering in general. Who knows how these things work?

My heart

Ah, my heart. My beautiful, wise, protective, loving heart. My heart that closed shortly after my mum died, and only re-opened a few weeks ago, but now – through a couple of recent shocks – has closed once again in self-protection. At times I have felt let down by my heart – who doesn’t want to live their daily life with an open heart? – but more and more I am coming to see that my heart has been holding me all this time. Thank you.

The Divine Heart

As has the Divine Heart at the centre of my mortal human heart, and at the centre of all hearts. I wish I could say that I currently feel in touch with the Divine Heart, but I can't because I don’t. If undigested trauma is fundamentally a dis-ease of separation – and I think it is – then most of the time I feel separate from the Mystery and I envy the mystics, however much I like to quote them – the lucky, lucky bastards.

I have argued countless times with God, and have almost exhausted my concept of a God who one can have arguments with.

One day grace – or exhaustion – will allow me to truly surrender. And then perhaps I’ll see that me and the Divine Heart have never been separate, not even in my darkest days. What's that verse by Rumi?

While he dreams of the pangs of thirst,
The water is nearer than his jugular vein

Thank you, oh Mystery.

(But please can you start using a bit more lube?)

Wow, it’s now midday on Saturday, three days since I began this blog. As they say, you can’t hurry gratitude. It’s been a good meditation with which to begin the new decade. Makes me realise how important a practice of gratitude is. And makes me realise how blessed I truly am, and – despite all my bouts of self-pity and self-attack – how well held I am, and how well loved I am. Which sure ain’t a bad thing to remember.

Peace to you – and all that you love.

Stephen
Saturday 4th January
Buxton

Keeping the faith

To open the stove door at dawn
and find some embers still aglow
within their comfy bed of ash
and to build this morning’s fire upon them
and with focussed breath
to burst it into flame

It’s as if some kind old soul
has been praying for me all night long
watching over me
keeping the faith

To peg my shirt and underwear around the warming chimney pipe
and to put the kettle on
to make my morning cup of tea

To clothe my nakedness
in the welcome warmth
of this relay race of grace

To sit by this window
and write this poem
whilst the sun
(from whom all light and fire and flame proceed)
rises gloriously through the morning clouds
to burst upon the sea
a path of such dazzling and inviting light

This
is the medicine
that daily
brings me back to life

2 Comments

Seventy times seven

These chrysalis days

Brother Sun, Sister Moon

Back to Cabinland

Gratitude

Stephen Hancock

Archives

Categories