God Shaped Hole

It was a sunny day. Owen and I were walking down the river, hand in hand. I told him that I found the trees and the water, the ducks and the general air of peace quite spiritual. He laughed. He said that to him the word spiritual translated as ‘bullshit bullshit bullshit’ and he generally switches off whenever someone says it.

Since then I’ve been thinking about the spiritual path, or more precisely the one I am walking on. What does it mean to be spiritual? How would I define that in my own life? I do consider myself to be a spiritual person but I think I have a weird definition of what that means- on which I will elaborate later. I also see Owen’s point. There is a hell of a lot of bullshit out there. Most religious people, including many many Buddhists, anger me with their illogicality, superstition and intolerance. So, I’d like to do a series of three blogs dealing with different aspects of my journey and how my concept of the spiritual has changed over the years. For simplicities sake I’ll split it into the early past, later past and the present respectively.

So, the beginning. To say I had a very religious upbringing would be understatement of the decade. On the one hand it was wonderful. I was born into a close knit group of loving Christians in a small charismatic church. They were one large extended family and my early life was spent in the company of some of the kindest, gentlest, most generous and giving people I have ever met. My life was infused with love, acceptance, meaning and purpose. I felt close to God, my heavenly father and when you are a child that is a wonderfully enriching and joyous experience. Jesus, too, was my best friend and I loved him almost as much as my Mum and Dad (I was supposed to love him more, but I never quite managed that.) Every day was spent doing churchy activities; I studied the bible, played my saxophone in the music group, wore a camel outfit in the nativity play, sang in the choir, went to Sunday school and regular church twice a week as well as a multitude of ‘extracurricular’ activities. My love of justice and social issues stems from what I did in those early days at our church. We regularly visited old people’s homes and hospitals, we ran and campaigned for charities such as Tradecraft, Tearfund and Christian Aid. Through our missionaries we were always very aware of what life in the developing world was like and our youth leader slept in a cardboard box for a week on the streets of Sheffield to teach us youngsters about the sufferings of the homeless.

My whole childhood revolved around God, the first playgrounds I recall don’t involve slides and swings, but tombstones, as me and my brothers would play hopscotch over graves and clamber over stone crosses in the graveyard whilst waiting for the adults to finish a healing ceremony or a PCC meeting. Ritual and the supernatural infused every mundane event: we would pray together as a family to find a car parking space in Tesco and say another one when it ‘miraculously’ appeared- amazing on a busy Saturday! In fact, praying was the bee’s knees. We were encouraged to pray anywhere and everywhere and by the age of six or seven I had an almost unstoppable chatter to God in my head. We prayed before eating, sleeping and traveling and a million times in between. We would pray for everything: to heal grandmas gammy leg, for the weather to clear up before the church bazaar, to protect the house from fires and burglars when we went on holiday, for world peace, for the presents from Santa to be the ones we wanted, for our toothache to clear up, for Sheffield Wednesday to win the cup, that we would find the TV remote, the end of child poverty and that our hamsters would never, ever die.

Although we never called it this; mine was a magical childhood in the literal sense, dominated by the mystical. Our daily lives were, we perceived, being guided by the invisible hand of a loving but knee tremblingly powerful creator God. We were his special children and we knew it. As I got older, I got more into the heavy stuff. Encouraged by my parents and those in the church around me, I would have visions, really intense intricate ones and I started to speak in tongues at large rallies. Strangers would come to me on trains and in the streets at random and give me bible verses. I had a strong feeling of being divinely blessed, of being a vessel to channel God’s love and his all important message. I would go on marches with churches from the area; walking through the streets of my town with a banner in my hand shouting ‘Jesus loves you’ and ‘Be bold! Be strong! For the Lord your God is with you’. The kids from my school would snigger and laugh at me but I would wave my banner proudly safe in the knowledge I was going to heaven. When I was sick I would be prayed over by all my Mum and Dad’s Christian friends in their beautiful and personal holy languages, I remember feeling such peace, reveling in their divine lullaby as I shut my fevered eyes. I soon got baptized, then later confirmed. I drank the blood and ate the body of God incarnate. It tasted bittersweet. I loved God with every ounce of my being and he was so, so real to me. He spoke to me in words and in pictures, in music, song and through the words of others. He was present in the natural world around me, I saw him in the trees and the wind and the thunder. We were told, repeatedly, that he knows everything about you; he knows how many hairs are on your head and is listening to every single thought you have. There is no escaping him; we used to sing in Sunday school: ‘so high you can’t get over it, so low you can’t get under it, so wide you can’t get round it, oh wonderful love.’ My mother told us that if we were ever stuck for an answer to something, pray to Jesus and then open the bible at random. When I did this there always seemed to be something of guidance, so I did it a lot.

Life was just so deep, so rich and so intense. There were layers within layers within layers. Signs and symbols abounded everywhere, we wore our fish badges on our clothes and on our cars and eagerly spotted them on long journeys like other kids do to Ferraris. God didn’t keep his views to himself; everything was charged with significance. Turning the TV on in the morning to find a story about local traffic congestion was God personally telling you to set off early for school that day. There was an unseen world beyond our world brimming with angels and demons and, we were told, they were every bit as real as you or I. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny might have been fictions, but in our house the devil was alive and kicking. It was possible, even, to see the future, although this was dangerous territory for a mere child. Possession was real, the occult a deadly threat and in our church exorcisms were not unheard of. After all, ours was a battle, a spiritual battle. There was a judgment day coming, it could be any day now, any minute. We were at war with evil and what’s more we were on the winning team, the Bible told us that was so. I believed so much I gave part of my £1 pocket money every week to the cause. I went to emotional praise services where I raised my arms in the air and sang, ‘hallelujah’ over and over again with tears of joy streaming down my face. I went to healing groups where men who hadn’t walked for twenty years threw away their wheels and went tottering down the aisle like a fifteen stone baby taking its first steps. I saw grown women collapse through the power of the Holy Spirit and heard grown men speak terrifying prophecies of things that surely would pass, (praise be to Christ our Lord). At the age of eleven I was more in love with God than any boy at school and I was more than secure in the fact that the feeling was mutual.

I write this now, read it back and I think, fuck. Actually, that paragraph explains a lot. Because I’m so close to my parents now, I always forget how fucking fucked up my childhood was, in some senses. Goddammit, is there any wonder that I am writing these words through the hazy filter of a cocktail of some of the worlds strongest antipsychotic drugs? I mean, I spent my childhood chattering away in a divine language to a god who could read my mind, who paid for my sins with the blood I drank every Sunday, who could give or take away everything I had and smite at will; instead of thinking fairies and pop stars like most kids I was, at least some of the time, caught in a cataclysmic battle between good and evil.

No, this love affair did not end happily. In fact, it ended very badly.

When I was thirteen or fourteen my dad got a new job at a different church, and I was wrenched away from the bosom of St James, the church I grew up in, and transplanted to a new one where I never fitted in. The church was a lot less charismatic, a lot more ‘normal’ and I couldn’t really cope with the implications of that. I missed the community, I missed the friendship of St James, but more than that I missed the intense fusion of the spiritual with the everyday, the raw, emotive worship of an awe inspiring god. At the new church, they were more likely to argue for hours about the colour of the choir robes and the grape variety of the communion wine rather than harnessing Gods power to heal lame men. It was all a bit middle England and the teachings were totally different. The spark died, the romance began to fizzle out. I also began to read more widely than the children’s literature and Christian books I had been brought up on. I started reading newspapers, and a lifelong curiosity towards other cultures and their belief systems kicked in. Doubts arose- Why is there suffering? Why is homosexuality a sin? Is the bible really the divinely inspired word of God? What about dinosaurs? What about Feminism? For the first time my unshakable faith faltered. Over the following years the doubts grew and grew. I stepped further and further away from my roots. To my parents dismay, I became a ‘liberal Christian’ then a ‘Unitarian Universalist’ then an agnostic until, when I left home and consequently the church, I took a deep breath and proclaimed myself an atheist. My house, as they say, was built upon the sand.

The God shaped hole physically hurt me. It left a void in my life so huge it nearly consumed me. It ached and itched and gnawed away at me. I could not feel peace. I was haunted by guilt and doubt and anger. I was sure I was going to hell, an eternal separation from happiness and peace. My head did not know how to cope without my hotline to God. Who now would I turn to for help, for guidance? All my coping mechanisms were taken from under my feet. My black and white worldview dissolved, leaving only a huge grey area that confused and disturbed me. My whole interior world basically collapsed. I did not know what or who to believe about anything. I found it hard to trust anyone. When I discovered alcohol and marijuana, I saw the oblivion as a refuge from the whirlwind inside me, but this would ultimately (as you’d expect) exacerbate rather than solve my problems.

My ultimate refuge, as it still is, was the written word. I immersed myself in books. I wrote and wrote and wrote. By now I was deeply suspicious of the techniques our church employed to recruit and gradually shape the faithful, I sneaked books in from the library to the house and hid them under my pillow. They dealt with emotional and religious manipulation, spoke boldly about brainwashing techniques and various forms of propaganda and I read them avidly from cover to cover. I found that there were many correlations between what I had experienced and the things that people who were in so called cults had gone through. Even if the examples in the books I read were more extreme than my experiences: I had never been told to have sex with the priest or give all my possessions away, however a lot of the emotional processes had been the same. I came to the conclusion that all religions were basically cults, were harmful and dangerous. I began to think of what I had been through as abuse. Unintentional abuse, I must stress. My parents 100% believe that they acted in my best interests and they hold that view to this day. But the truth is that the church did a lot of harm to me. I found for many years reality hard to deal with and in the sober light of day, dwelling in a world without angels and demons and an omnipresent God, I struggled immensely. To have a god shaped hole is the most painful thing that to this day I have experienced. It is the loss of a father, a friend and an eternity of bliss. It is the loss of a community, a world view, a coping mechanism and a purpose. It is a loss of self, in a sense, a self that you have to rebuild from scratch without the help of your family or support networks. For many years I teetered on the edge of the God shaped hole. Sometimes, I thought I would be sucked in completely and just cave in on myself, never to return. The recovery process has been long and is not over. It was helped by many years in therapy, but still part of me aches for my unshakeable faith never to have wavered and for me to be writing this to you with my bible in hand and fish badge on my collar. But that is not my path. Once you have seen through something and identified it as a lie you can never go back.

Aged 18 I’d turned my back on God for good. There were just too many doubts and intellectual contradictions, too much guilt. As much as the church meant to me, I knew if I were ever to be happy, I had to leave it behind. I came to see God as my parent’s fictional friend and Jesus as a man who was quite inspirational but ultimately made up. I no longer believed in miracles or the mystical, I came to see my experiences as a manifestation of mass hysteria. None of it, the prophecies, the conversations with God, the healing, the miracles were real. I had been duped, good and proper and all I had to show for it was a broken heart and a disintegrating bible. At the age of eighteen I felt like a country that had been ravaged by war, torn apart and fractured into many parts. The rebuilding process would take years and the practice of forgiveness even longer. The years that lay ahead would be difficult, taking me to the edge of sanity and back but nothing, nothing I have ever done in my life was as hard as the day I finally closed my eyes and said:

Dear God

I don’t believe in you any more.

This is the last time we will ever talk.

Goodbye.



(to be continued….)

Through a glass, darkly.

5. I undertake the precept to refrain from intoxicants which lead to heedlessness.

My response when I first read this precept was a bitterly muttered, brow knitted ‘fuck that’.

It hasn’t really changed much since then.

This could be the one, the big one. More challenging than the lying and the stealing and the killing and the lusting that I have already quite openly admitted I indulge in. Those, push come to shove, I am prepared to forsake in the name of enlightenment and release from samsara. However, turning my back forever on a glass of Shiraz over a home cooked meal, or a crisp, ice cold bottled larger in the beer garden of my beloved local, I am not. At least not right now, anyway. And yes I know how lame that sounds.

I am not a booze hound but I like a drink. I would say I get fairly sloshed at least once or twice a week. If it was up to me I would drink something most nights. Especially wine, but I love most alcohol from stout to asti to whiskey to just plain run of the mill 3.99 bottles of plonk that are on offer at sainsburies. It’s the taste, yes, but not only that, it’s the intoxication. Definitely the intoxication. I like the numbness that spreads from the tips of your fingers and loosens your muscles and your tongue. I love the feeling of detachedness, I adore the way it makes me want to laugh and laugh and talk and talk and even, scarily, (at least for observers) dance. I am less into the whole vomiting- crying- arguing- depression vibe that sometimes comes along with it. But I, over the years and many bad trips have basically got to the point where I can control my drinking so I hardly ever get bummed out.

The catalogue of strict rules I have created to govern my drinking is quite impressive: I don’t drink when I’m having a bad day. I don’t drink when I’m depressed, or, god forbid, because I’m depressed. I don’t drink when I’m nervous or in a crowd of people I don’t feel comfortable with. I don’t drink in very busy places, I usually only drink with food. I don’t drink alone, unless it has been specifically cleared that I can and even then this is a very rare indulgence. I don’t drink neat spirits and treat spirits full stop with great caution. I don’t drink the day before something important. I don’t ever, ever, drink in the middle of an argument. I don’t drink on antibiotics or painkillers. I don’t mix my drugs; Valium and booze is a big no no. I very rarely mix my drinks, either, I tend to have a wine night or a beer night or whatever; I’ve just found it works better that way. I don’t drink and watch horror films. I don’t drink and listen to sad songs for hours on end. I don’t get sloshed in places I don’t know very well unless I’m with people I trust who do. I do drink a pint of water before I go to sleep. I fetch a bucket to keep by the bed; just in case. I do sleep on my stomach. I usually eat something before unconsciousness hits me. I do sleep straight through. I do set an alarm. I do eat breakfast. I don’t let the hangover wreck the next day, however bad I feel.

Each of these rules (of which I am sure there are many more) has a history and have been devised over many years of mistakes and practice. They may seem strict and not very rebellious, but I don’t mind keeping them, as they in turn keep me safe.

More importantly, they keep me drinking.

The beauty of booze to me in a nutshell is lubrication. I can do without the giggling, without the double vision and the crazy stupid dancing. But the systematic destruction of inhibition glass by glass, the way it turns an awkward group of strangers into a dancing, hugging, swaying rowdy crowd is just magic. Talking as someone who sometimes finds speech very difficult, alcohol has saved the day on many occasions. Even amongst close friends, I find there’s nothing better than the sensation of an alcohol induced revelation; the more shocking the better. The times when you confide, push boundaries, deepen friendships, delve deep into your psyche and your relationship and talk straight from the heart you are proudly wearing on your sleeve. It makes people closer and gets people talking. It kick starts an evening that otherwise may have collapsed from nerves and tension.

I totally know it’s a crutch that I am leaning on here. From a Buddhist point of view this reliance on alcohol is a massive hindrance to my happiness; taking me regularly away from the virtues of seeing true reality, clarity, and awakening. Hopefully I will do without it one day. The long term plan, in my own mind at least, is that I will get so strong in my meditation practice my personality will become properly integrated and I will become so self assured that the very idea of having to pour chemicals down my throat to cope with a night out seems ridiculous. But for now doing without it is beyond the realm of possibility. I have always turned to chemical assistance to avoid reality or at the very least to blur it. Alcohol and intoxicants to me have always been the mental version of taking my glasses off; in drunkenness everything seems that less bit dangerous, less intense as the edges blur and swirl into each other. Inside, the damn inner monologue shuts the hell up for a couple of hours. I usually pass out in a state of happy oblivion. It is bliss. Is that a sad admission?

As I write these words I suddenly hear the imaginary voice of my teacher ringing in my ear. He is as pesky as a gnat sometimes that man!

He sits down beside me, smiles that peaceful smile, adjusts his robes slightly, and speaks:

“Jen, there is a better way to seek bliss than at the bottom of a glass. You know that deep down or you wouldn’t have sought me out in the first place. Stop fighting, stop struggling. Just learn to let go. Through meditation I have taught you a way to still your thoughts and bring you release in a gentle way that will not rot your brain and your liver. Use it.

You know that the peace and confidence you seek can not be bought at an off license, but already lies within you. You know that the heart of this precept deals not with outlawing the odd glass of Chardonnay in the summer sun but eliminating the dependence and desperation you still feel when you are sober and a night of socializing stretches ahead of you.

You know where it is to be found; the real deal, not a chemical band aid. Strive for enlightenment in all you do, through that process you will find the peace you so desperately seek. ”

It is then that I realise that the root of this clinging to the bottle is not a love of a harmless beer with my chicken drumsticks at the family BBQ, it is much darker than that; it is my deep yearning for oblivion that I can’t relinquish. This is something that is hard for me to dwell on and is tricky to explain. It is a difficult thing for people to grasp that right now I am extremely happy, leading a fulfilled life with a loving partner and lots of friends and family. I have a very happy life and have no complaints. Yet for as long as I can remember; day in, day out, I have battled deep suicidal urges. Even when I have been incredibly happy I have had the visual image of myself as a dog chasing its own tail, going round and round in circles and a lot of the time I just think ‘enough’. I’ve had enough.

When I discovered Buddhism it was mind-blowing because here was a group of people who had this same image in their heads. Here was a religion that wasn’t demanding I rejoice in the splendor of all God’s glorious creation. Buddha said the first noble truth is that life is suffering. I can relate to those words more than anything. Not in a really miserable eeyore kind of way, I do laugh a lot and go outside and walk with the birds and in the mountains; I do so often enjoy a rich fulfilling life. Not either because I have a hard life. Yes I have a few health problems and I don’t lead the regular life of an average 25 year old. But I have, in many ways, had a very easy, comfortable existence. I was blessed with many talents, a wonderful family and now a fantastic husband. I am not materialistic, I think I have my priorities right in terms of how to be happy. I may be on speaking terms with despair, it is true, but in my life so far I have also experienced genuine joy and love. But it has always been there; even in the happy times this dull voice that says ‘enough’. It is not, actually, me or my life I have a problem with. It is the act of living itself I find so difficult. The process of birth, growth, decay, death. The suffering I see all around. The corrupt society. The miserable people. The madness. The greed. The lies. The disease. The eating, the shitting, the washing, the dressing, the walking, the endless endless talking. Even the laughter, sometimes, when it often rings so hollow. The act of breathing is so difficult, sometimes I just feel like I don’t ever want to take another one. The empty futileness of it all often weighs heavily on my heart.

Anyway, happy thoughts.

But that is why I drink I guess. That’s the root of it. It’s my own way of saying ‘enough’, of hovering for a couple of hours in the exit without actually going the whole hog and jumping off the Ouse bridge. If I didn’t have the release of alcohol then I’m scared where it would end up. Getting trashed is like a valve being released in a pressure cooker, at least sometimes, anyway. Not that I’m trying to paint a bleak picture, its not like I consciously think ‘oh I must get wasted tonight or I’ll kill myself’. It’s not like that at all. But I think the drinking does act as a release of these negative feelings and allow me to take a break from reality for a while, a reality that sometimes I find difficult to exist in.

Fortunately for me Buddha’s four noble truths do not end with the fact that life is suffering. In the rest of the truths and in fact in the whole body of his teachings he details a ‘cure’. It is the fact that Buddhism provides a practical system for finding genuine happiness (and eventually genuine oblivion, I suppose) detailing a way of escaping the cycle of suffering that makes it so appealing to me. I have already learnt so much from its teachings and found so many of them to be sound. I am already, since discovering the Buddhist path, that bit less desperate on a Friday night to get off my face. I am finding my teachers words to be the truth; through my meditation I am more peaceful, more satisfied and most importantly, now I have the goal of nirvana in my life, it makes the notion of suicide seem inferior and unappealing. My steps might be small, like those of an infant, but I am making progress all the time.

So one day maybe I will be writing this not with a vodka lemonade in my hand, as I am so accustomed to but a cup of green tea. Maybe I will take this precept or maybe I won’t. What I would like to live without though is the need to escape. I would like to face reality and myself without the crutch that alcohol gives me. Maybe one day I will actually listen to my wise, wise teacher and seek my release in more constructive ways than drinking. But for now I am drawn to the allure of the booze: Tom Waits is on the radio and Bukowski is in my bookshelf. I realise that for the time being, at least just yet, I’m not quite ready to hop on the wagon and ride into the sunset.

In Praise of Omelette Makers

The feminist movement has a slogan, I don’t know who coined it or anything but it’s on a hell of a lot of the T shirts and posters that are out there. It reads: “Well behaved women rarely make history.”

This is one of the truest things I have read and these are words I hold close to my heart. Partly because I believe they are true and partly because I think they hold a great challenge for me in my life.

An incident that happened yesterday can illustrate the point nicely:

There is a woman who I work with (I call it work but it’s really volunteering, and most of that seems to be taken with tea breaks) who is fairly obviously a committed feminist. I’ve never really spoken to her about her beliefs in great detail as the opportunity has never arisen, but all the signals are there. Anyway, I really like her, she’s a good 30 years older than me and whether she’d technically call herself a feminist or not she’s a really good example of a woman who is self reliant, opinionated and totally committed to both her family (she has 6 kids!) and her career. She’s caring and clever and genuinely assertive; not in an insecure loud way but in a solid, self assured kind of manner. All in all, I have come to view her as a bit of a role model. Her independence shines through in everything she does, she’s not afraid to take the lead, crack a bad joke, organise the team, and speak her mind. The funny thing is though, when I first met her she really got my back up. I think she gets other people’s backs up too, it is quite challenging having such a strong woman in our midst. The guys in the group are flummoxed. They hold the door open for her, she waves them in first. They offer her a chair, she firmly refuses it. She won’t laugh at their jokes when she doesn’t think they’re funny, she tells them when she thinks they’re wrong.

Yesterday, one of the guys got quite upset by something she said, which wasn’t anything mean, but was just a forceful disagreement with something he had asserted. As bad feeling settled around the room and she looked blissfully unbothered, it triggered me to look at myself, almost like I was in a mirror. Yes, she’s a lot older than me and has the confidence that age and experience often brings but the differences between us are quite resounding. Whereas I have admired her as a forceful character, which she certainly is, I am more “well behaved” in many of my social circles. Going with the work example, I am well liked within the group. Partly because I am gentle and kind and ask a lot of questions about other peoples lives and then respond with lots of sympathy. Also, I think they appreciate me for giggling like a school girl at many of the bad jokes that the men proudly banter around (the group is 90% male). I often just nod my head and smile even when they are saying ridiculous things. I am afraid to take the lead, to organise, to boss. Very few of them know what I am really like; speaking my mind is usually the opposite of what I am doing. I do not really assert my will onto the group, even when I have an idea that could make it run better. Often, I am too cowardly to even mildly dissent.

Yes, I know there are different personality types. I’ve read Jung, I’ve taken the Myers- Briggs test (I am an INFJ) I also know I we all have different strengths and weaknesses and you can run yourself ragged or even make yourself ill comparing yourself to other people. I am not beating myself up for this, per say. I know my diplomatic nature has often helped further the feminist cause in many other areas, and my empathy and tolerance are qualities that I quite like about myself. But there is a distinct difference between being diplomatic and a doormat. There is something to be said for standing up for your beliefs at whatever cost. I believe it is important to face conflict and say what you really think, even if it offends the other person or could lose you something. I think in some of my social circles I am simply too well behaved, too fucking polite, too scared of the consequences. It’s not just about whether or not I’ll make history, it’s not my legacy I care about. It’s thinking about those terribly cliched but still resoundingly true phrases like ‘all it takes for evil to prevail is for good men to do nothing’. It’s about nodding to these, then realising that in a lot of your life you could be doing good work; challenging ignorant opinions, changing minds, really living what you believe when in reality you are simply going with the status quo for fear of rocking the boat.

So, you see, if I were to get a tattoo right now, it would probably read “well behaved women rarely make history”. The message for me is clear and it throws down the gauntlet in a lot of ways. It means stand and be counted, put your money where your mouth is! If you want to change the world, like you so often wish for, you have to resist resist resist and that’s not going to happen by simply writing long rants in personal diaries or publishing a little read internet blog. You have to act in the real world, with real people. You should be taking risks, raising eyebrows, generating anger and if it comes to it, losing real friends. You know the thing about the necessity of breaking eggs to make an omelette, well that’s the truth. At the moment I am carefully carrying my half- dozen free range eggs around with me (each wrapped individually in cotton wool) too scared to commit them to the hot sizzling oil of the frying pan. The problem is that when you don’t break eggs, they eventually rot inside their delicate shells and then what good are they to anyone?

I don’t like conflict but I am so at odds with this society. That in itself is a strange position to be in. There is so much I think is wrong going on right under our noses. I am sure there are many of us who feel the same. Above all, we must learn to speak out against the injustices we see. Being well behaved, whether you be a man or a woman, is the path that they, (the people who are most profiting from all this misery) want you to take. Toeing the line and simply doing as we’re told is paving the way to a fear filled world full of oppression, control, and paralysing terror. We must strive to cultivate a questioning, free mind and learn to say the important word that is ‘no’.

Here’s to all the brave omelette makers of the world who are standing up and putting their necks on the line for what they think is right. I’d like to think that one day, even I might add my eggs into the mix.

The Importance of Exercise

Walking down the street yesterday, I tried to be mindful of my inner monologue. Not to try and still it, as I do in meditation, but just to watch it, as a passive observer might. So I walked and watched the thoughts, feelings, desires and reactions that welled up in me as I walked down a busy high street full of shoppers.

The things I learnt were numerous, and I am still reflecting on them now:

My mood doesn’t fluctuate daily. It doesn’t even fluctuate hourly. It fluctuates every few seconds! I’m not saying this is unusual, even though I do have a mood disorder. In fact I suspect it’s very common if not universal. Example: I would walk along and one second see a beautiful blossom tree. It would make me feel vital and great in the sunshine like everything is ok with the world. Then I would look to the ground and see a beggar sitting underneath it and feel a pang of guilt. I would start thinking about the nature of capitalism and feel a wave of despair and guilt for my own luxurious possessions. I walk on, then smell donuts and feel tempted and stimulated and then worry that I am obsessed with food and oh my god no wonder I’m so fat! Then I spend a few seconds feeling ugly and depressed until the sun comes out from behind a cloud and I get my devil may care vibe going on and I walk with a swagger. Soon, I’m back looking at the trees and feeling great, all in the time it takes from walking to one end of the street to another!

I know this isn’t a startling observation, but I was surprised at just how wildly my mood would oscillate, in such a short space of time. It made me realise how inconstant and unstable and conflicting everything that goes on in my head is. I really felt like my head was a tumble drier with lots of jumbled and fraying thoughts spinning around inside, only settling at random for a few seconds, and then spinning on again. By the end of the walk (only five minutes) I felt so out of control and dizzy I had to stop thinking about the whole thing and, interestingly, I put on a CD from my childhood to ground and comfort me.

The other thing I learnt about myself is just the sheer amount of comparison I do with other people, and snap judgements I make about them. My head, (despite my alleged radical leanings) is a very prejudiced place. I inwardly sneered at fat people, felt indignant at Polish people, gawped at a lesbian couple, crossed over the street to avoid a disabled person and got frustrated when an old dear spent more than two seconds crossing the road in front of me. These were more behavioral and emotional reactions than thoughts, but I was being very mindful, and I noticed myself doing them. Sometimes I felt guilty, but mostly not. Why then the inconsistency? I profess to follow a philosophy which encourages equal love for all sentient beings, and politically I have been spouting left wing polemics for as long as I’ve been able to talk, yet I’m embarrassed to interact with a person in a wheelchair? As they say on the net: “WTF?”

These observations distressed me, as you can well imagine. I’ve been feeling unsettled ever since. I have known on an intellectual level for a long time that everyone is prejudiced to a greater or lesser extent. Intolerance is subtle and camouflaged and it is often easier to say you’re not prejudiced than to actually act that way. I remember the argument I had with a close friend in my first year at university when they said everyone is racist, and I was so venomously opposed to that idea at first, but over time I realised the truth in what they were saying. Still, to do the mindfulness exercise and to discover that nearly 7 years after discovering this hard hitting truth, your mind is still as fear filled and prejudiced as ever, it’s a bit depressing. Yes I know all about media influence and social pressures, and the fact that no one is immune, but still.

And then I got on to realising that these snap judgements could lie at the very heart of human misery. Because after all, if I’m walking down the street calling a random person a fat crazy old bitch in my head, or a terrorist, or stupid, or ugly, or a slag, or whatever, then deep down, rightly or wrongly I assume that some, if not all people are doing the same to me. After all, I’m a fairly content, happy and loving individual. I cried at Forest Gump, laughed at all the ironic bits of peep show and read the guardian! What must daily mail readers be walking along thinking to themselves?! (Half kidding) How can you really trust people, relate to people, fully love and open your heart to them when a simple walk down the street is steeped in this deep well of judgment, fear, paranoia and suspicion?

Then I started thinking about my friends, about my family. I started to think about trust, and about how much you can or can’t do it. I mean, if you can’t trust a smiling stranger not to be thinking you’re a fat ugly scrubber, then how can you really, truly trust anyone? When I reflect, I can honestly say, there’s a lot I don’t say to my friends and family that I could, or I should but I won’t. I like peace. I like a quiet life. I don’t think it’s my place. I don’t want to hurt them. I’m too proud. I’m rubbish in conflict.

So of course, it begs the question. What are they all really thinking about me??? If there’s a lack of genuine trust and no ones got your back, then it logically follows that they just might stab you in it.

All this seeks to divide us and I think with all the shit in the world this paranoia certainly has us conquered.

This morning I was awash with mistrust. I still am to a certain extent I don’t believe in tying up loose ends that are still loose for the sake of a good yarn. But amongst all the doubt, the questioning comes two things to the forefront of my mind that are both challenging me and giving me peace:

1) Matt. 7:1 "Judge not, lest thee be judged." Somehow to me this is a command, a reassurance and a solution. If I can concentrate and stamp out this behaviour in myself then maybe I will not feel the judgment of others, both real and imagined weighing so heavily on my heart.

2) The Buddha’s noble eightfold path holds the promise of the eradication of suffering for its followers. Could its claims be true?

It’s a sunny day and I’m going to go out for a walk. This time though, I’ll be taking my walkman with me and blasting away that bloody inner monologue. I’m not saying it wasn’t a useful exercise, and it has thrown up valuable questions but I find there is a time where a little mindfulness goes a long way.