Kaspa writes: Some of you know that I was a celibate monk when I met Satya… 

This week I’m writing about learning to trust. I started thinking about this because for the first time we are offering our e-courses with bendy pricing – you pay whatever amount you would like to for the courses. We’re trusting that you will pay an amount that values both us and you, but we have no way of knowing what the results will be. That said – I do trust that it’s a good way for us to move forward. Click here to learn more & register for Writing as Spiritual Practice or Finding Your Way Home, and read on to hear about a time when my trust was really tested.

Not long after we realised that there was a spark between us I flew to India to help with a project in Delhi. Satya and I emailed each other every day. As my return flight drew closer the conversation moved towards trying to figure out if there was a way we could be in relationship that worked for both us.

This was a time when my ability to trust was really tested. I tried to figure out if Satya was ‘the one’. If I was going to leave monastic life I wanted it to be for something worthwhile, and not fleeting. By the time I returned to the UK from India I had a pretty good sense that there was something serious going on; something that I wanted to make a go of.

The next challenge was talking to the people I cared about in the Buddhist community, whilst having a suspicion that some of them would think I was being rash. I didn’t think that I was being rash, but I placed a lot of importance on how I was seen by other people and I was worried about their reaction. Would it be supportive, and if it wasn’t would I be able to withstand it?

I could either let them know, or let Satya know that I wasn’t going to go through with it.

In a way I was forced into trusting. There was no way that I was going to let Satya down, so I had to face my fears of other people’s reactions. I remember sending a few emails and not being able to do anything at all until I received their replies.

The reactions were mixed. Some people were supportive, even happy for me, some were confused, and some were supportive until I told them I was going to move out.

Being in the midst of all of this was difficult. I wanted to do the right thing by my Buddhist tradition, and by Satya, and most of all I wanted everyone to accept me just as I was.

Some people took a while to come around to the idea. It was a struggle for me to live with their worries. They had to see that Satya and I were serious about each other, and that I was serious about being committed to my practice once I had left the community. Everyone did come around eventually, and it’s great that the story has a happy ending, but that’s not the most important thing for me.

The important part is that I was forced to trust other people and that even when I didn’t get the reaction I was hoping for I could still withstand that reaction.

Usually when we trust someone and are disappointed, we learn not to trust again – we protect ourselves against future disappointment.

I’d done that in the past, which was why it was so difficult for me to share my feelings about Satya with the community. But I’m glad not everyone reacted as I’d hoped straight away, because it taught me that I could trust in something greater…  I’m not sure what I’d call that – something like ‘it’s possible to be okay even when everything feels upside-down.’

I’m talking about trust because this month we have decided to take a leap of faith and trust all of you. Our e-courses starting on Friday are now with bendy pricing – you pay whatever amount you would like to, and we’ll accept it. We tried this with our email-package 31 Days of Positive Action, and the results were promising. I think that email package is worth around £15 – and on average that is what you have paid.

The two courses starting on Friday are Writing and Spiritual Practice and Finding Your Way Home. If you want to explore this idea of trust further, sign up to Writing and Spiritual Practice - the first week is all about faith (or in other words, what do you trust?)

In Finding Our Way Home we’ll use a series of writing exercises and reflections to think about our place in the world, we’ll use our journals to get to know ourselves better and to uncover our dreams.

We look forward to welcoming you.

“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” ~ Julian of Norwich

Kaspa writes: Do you want to slow down and settle into the world? Do you want to find some clarity in the middle of confusion?  Or are you just looking for a richer, more fulfilled and more content life?

I’d like to offer you a brand new article about mindfulness practice, which can lead us to a more settled place in life: What is Mindfulness (pdf). Do feel free to share it. 

I’ve also written a one page instruction sheet on Mindfulness of Breathing so you can get a taste of the practice straight away: Mindfulness of Breathing (pdf).

Mindfulness is a word that is in vogue at the moment – it means something like conscious awareness or attention. We make a choice about what to give our attention to in order to bring a particular benefit or insight – in just the same way that the small stones we write encourage you to put your attention onto the world.

If you’d like to learn more about mindfulness – perhaps you want to establish a meditation practice, or have support for an existing practice – think about signing up for a Mindfulness Session with me.

We’ll work together (in person or via Skype) on your practice. I’ll lead a guided meditation to ground you in the session, and then we’ll have time to talk. We might talk about ways of managing anxiety using mindfulness, supporting mindfulness in your daily life, or about anything that comes up during the session.

“Kaspa is a kind, compassionate and interested practitioner.”  

Deborah Herbert MSc (Psych); RGN, RMN

You can find out more and book a session here: Mindfulness Sessions.

Lotus flower image by My aim is true under a creative commons licence.

Satya writes: On Friday, I didn’t go on the internet until noon.

I started the day with some Buddhist practice and a leisurely breakfast, I wrote long swathes of my novel, and I dealt with all my email in half an hour before stopping for lunch.

This morning, in direct contradiction with my plan, I decided to ‘just look once at my email and Facebook and my book stats before I settle down for work’.

I looked just once. I opened my novel manuscript. After ten minutes I thought I ought to reply to an email that had stirred me up emotionally. After twenty minutes I thought I’d check to see if I’d sold any more books in America.

At 10.15 I posted a photo of this vegan bundt cake on Facebook. Then I replied to the comments that ensued. At 10.35 I found myself buying a bundt pan online.

And so it went on.

I’ve been re-reading the Big Book (the bible for members of Alcoholics Anonymous) and musing about the nature of addiction. In one story, a man who’s been successfully sober for some time goes into a bar, with no intention of having a drink. He then has the idea to have a shot in a glass of milk with his lunch. The experiment worked so well, he thought he’d have a second. You can guess the end of the story.

I smile when I think about that shot in a glass of milk, as it replicates my crazy thinking so perfectly. I have amassed a lot of evidence that shows me it’s very difficult to just have ‘one look’ online. And yet there I was again, at the beginning of a fresh week, scrolling down through the Facebook news of people I don’t know very well and reading the new reviews on my books on Amazon.

I’m still clinging onto the idea that I am sufficiently in control to have one look before I start work. I am clearly not.

We are all mostly bundles of habits and addictions and compulsions, of varying intensity. Some have serious and obviously detrimental consequences. Most don’t. They get us into more or less trouble at different times in our lives. They can affect our health, our happiness, our bank balance, our loved ones, and our peace of mind. Watching television, buying scratch cards, perfectionism, caffeine, taking risks… Even ‘healthy’ habits can tip over into compulsion – running until we regularly get injured, or losing sleep as we try to get onto the next level of our computer game.

Our brains are mega-sneaky. Compulsions want to survive, and they will do whatever they can to trick us. They probably even think that they are helping. ‘You’re feeling stuck on which word to use next? You’re trying to avoid thinking about that difficult conversation you need to have later? Come, look at kittens on Facebook! You’ll feel much better!’.  

The first of the twelve steps is to acknowledge how truly out of control we are – how little effect our own efforts are having on our behaviour. This means acknowledging that we can’t afford to pick up the first drink – whether it’s in milk or not.

I’m supremely lucky in that this addiction (or any of my others) isn’t a threat to my life. A lot of addictions do lead towards complete self-destruction, either slowly or quickly, and if you’re unlucky enough to be dealing with one of those I hope you can reach out today for the help you’ll surely need to turn things around. But minor as it is, my addiction does result in lost income, peace of mind, productivity, and hours and hours and hours that I will never get back.

I don’t know if I’ve quite reached the first step yet. I might need to suffer through a few more mornings of broken work and scattered mind. I don’t want to give up an ordinary relationship with the computer. I want to be better than that.

The truth is, I can’t afford to take a sneaky little look at my email – even if it is on my phone before I even turn my computer on. Tomorrow, I shall hand myself and my will over to something bigger, and not go onto the internet before noon.

What habits do you struggle with? How close are you to admitting defeat?

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A reminder that we have two e-courses starting this Friday (24th) – Writing & Spiritual Practice with me and Finding Our Way Home with Kaspa. For the first time they have bendy pricing which means you can pay whatever you choose. There are still some spaces on both courses.

Photo: Chocolate bundt cake from Isa Chandra Moskowitz’ amazing blog. Go see.

Satya writes: This weekend we went to the Malvern Spring Show. We chatted to people on various stalls, and without fail they reported that their takings were down on last year, which were down on the year before.

We’ve been hearing this more and more in our daily lives. People are feeling the pinch. People are afraid of the future. People are clinging on to their money.

I’m no expert in the workings of the world economy, but I can see how a (justified) fear of scarcity leads to less spending which leads to less money swooshing about which leads to more fear which leads to less spending. Etc.

Spending less money can be bad for us. We might be tempted to cut our spending on the things that are crucially important to our well-being. We might justify continuing to spend money on our favourite compulsions (chocolate, clothes, cigarettes, wine…) because we work hard and we ‘deserve’ these things.

It can be more difficult to justify spending £45 on a massage or a book of philosophy or a therapy session or a day retreat. We don’t need these things, and they don’t give us an instant hit of feeling-better, and sometimes they even make us feel worse in the short run.

I believe that when we stop spending money (or time or energy) on these crucial-to-wellbeing things, we stop investing in ourselves. There is a loss. We are of less use to ourselves and to others.

So what do we do about it? 

First, take an honest look at where your money does go. Are you still spending on things that you don’t get any value from, and could this money be diverted elsewhere?

Be creative. You could think about how you could invest in yourself by spending less money, or none. Swap massages with a friend, or borrow a book from the library. Take time cooking yourself a delicious meal. Start writing a journal or a regular meditation practice.

Be curious about what ‘gets in the way’ of you investing in yourself. Do you always blame a lack of money or time for taking part in the activities you want to take part in? Do you put yourself at the bottom of the priority list? What might that be about? Do you feel unworthy? What might you be afraid of finding? Keep being curious.

And my fourth suggestion may be a little controversial. If you have found something which you think will be good for you, trust that you will find the money to do it. Keep your ears open for ways in which the Universe might be trying to help you. Leap and the net will appear.

We’d like to do our bit by offering you the opportunity to choose what you pay for our mindful writing e-courses starting on the 24th of May. Think about what you’re (and we’re) worth and what you can afford, and then simply pay that amount. Now that money isn’t getting in the way of you signing up, what is? Be curious ; ) Sign up here for Writing & Spiritual Practice or for Finding Your Way Home.

As I finish up writing this blog post, the radio is telling me that, for the first time in years, there is a strong case for optimism in our financial future. Yes, times are hard. But sometimes we need to take a leap in order for the net to appear. Take a leap. Invest in yourself.

*

Auricula by hddod with gratitude.

Recently I’ve been following the controversy surrounding allegations about a top yoga teacher in America. People in positions of authority are always getting into trouble. Spiritual or religious teachers, CEOs of companies, politicians, sports coaches…

As we come to trust & depend on these people, especially those we know personally (our doctor, or the head of our family) we become vulnerable.

Unfortunately, spiritual leaders & CEOs & doctors are also human beings. They are driven by a whole host of conscious and unconscious drives, some of which will be healthy and altruistic, and some less so. Serious allegations might come to light – of sexual misconduct, or financial swindling. Sometimes it’s a more ‘minor’ transgression that nevertheless transforms our view of them as ‘safe people’.

When this happens, it hurts. If we can’t trust this part of this person, then can we trust the rest of them? Can we trust anyone? Where are we safe?

One solution to this disappointment is to just not become vulnerable any more. If we don’t trust people, then we can’t be hurt by them, can we?

We can protect ourselves by building thicker walls, but these walls often keep out the good stuff as well as the difficult stuff. They mean that we throw the lovely baby out with the dirty bathwater. These walls keep other people out entirely, leaving us alone.

Kaspa & I are also a position of trust, on a much smaller scale. We head up a small local sangha and we run ecourses & other events where we’re responsible for holding a space for people. We’re both therapists. We’ve recently come back from running a mindful writing retreat in France.

If we’re doing our job properly, people will become vulnerable in the spaces that we hold. As people get to know us better, some of them (all of them?) will occasionally crash into our own blind-spots. Ouch. It will hurt. And they will be disappointed.

So what can we do with our own disappointment when this happens to us?

We can acknowledge that this experience is a part of being human, and allow ourselves to feel sad. We can remain curious about the relationship we’ve entered into. Are we ignoring aspects of the person we’re trusting because it makes us uncomfortable? Do we often get drawn to people with these particular blind spots/dysfunction? Why?

We can talk to the person. We can talk to others. We can be kind to ourselves and allow our wounds to heal at their own pace. We can go into our next relationship with our eyes more open. We can gently ask ourselves again and again, what is there to learn here? What haven’t I learnt yet?

Sometimes it’s the right thing to end a relationship. Sometimes it’s the right thing to stay. Sometimes it takes a very long time to decide which of these is best for you, for the person concerned, and for everyone else.

I think that it also helps if we can find a deeper faith – something that lies underneath our fallible nature as human beings. This person might let me down, but I will learn something necessary as a result. This person might mess up, and I might discover deeper levels of compassion. Seeing your messiness might help me feel better about my own.

It’s not easy. But love can transform disappointment into hope, if we give it enough time and if we can let it in.

*

‘I Hate How Much I Love You’ by shewatchedthesky via Creative Commons with gratitude

Once upon a time…

I tell stories for a living. I told the story of Leonard who thought he knew his beloved wife until he found something in her handbag that changed everything. I wrote about Ruth who gave herself three months to decide whether or not to kill herself.

Why do I tell these stories? What drives me to write?

Because my main characters turn up in my head and ask me to tell their story. Because I am deeply in love with language. Because I find things out about myself and about the world as I write. Because I want to be heard.

But for me, the most important thing about writing is that it helps me to uncover the truth, and it helps other people to uncover their own truths.

People read about Violet’s awkwardness in relationships and they recognise parts of themselves. They read about the very worst of Ruth’s depression and they feel less alone in their own darkness. They read Joe’s journey and it helps them to understand their friend’s son, or to acknowledge their own need for acceptance.

When we uncover our own truth, layer by layer, when we can be more honest with ourselves and with others, we are led to a deeper understanding of why things are the way they are. Through truth (when we get past the ‘ouch’) we find compassion for ourselves and for others.

The most important thing about truth is that it leads us towards love. It helps us to love others and to love the world. And it reminds us that we are loveable, just as we are.

…and they lived happily ever after.

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This blog is for ‘What I Live For‘, an online event to celebrate the re-launch of my novels under my new name. Read other people’s contributions here & on Facebook here.

Find out whether Ruth does find enough meaning in her own life & buy her three-month diary for just 99p / $1.49 on kindle today (also available in paperback).

And if you’d like to explore meaning in your own life during May, join me for one of our mindful writing e-courses - Writing Towards Healing, Journalling Our Way Home or how to be idle with a Mindful Moodle -  all starting today.

“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” ~ Augusten Burroughs

Read about my flaws, yours, and why we’re all okay just as we are over at my author site:
http://www.satyarobyn.com/?p=235

Satya writes: This red-shuttered building is Chateau Ventenac in the south of France. Last week, it was my office.

Kaspa and I have just returned from teaching a week of mindful writing, graciously hosted by the lovely Julia. From our third floor bedroom we could see the diamond-like contours of the Pyrenees. The grand terraced garden is stuffed with sage, bay trees, lavender & rosemary. We were fed delicious food three times a day, and the pain au chocolat were plentiful. We worked with poems and small stones and went on slow walks around the village and listened to Rumi and explored and mused and cogitated and lay happily like beached whales in the hot sun.

So did I enjoy my work?

If I said no, you might hate me. Just as well that I can say that I did. But what made the week joyful? For me, the amazing surroundings were the icing on the cake, not the cake.

The cake was being able to do the work that is important to me. The cake was engaging with the world around me as it is, not as I want it to be. The cake was learning some difficult things about myself, and getting things wrong, and knowing that I’m acceptable just as I am nonetheless. The cake is my Buddhist faith, my faith in other people, my faith in nature, my faith in love.

Just in case you’ve got the wrong idea. Real life happens in the south of France, just as it does anywhere else. As well as the sun there was a lot of rain, illness, doubt, grumpiness, sunburn, boredom and all the rest. Especially, for me, during our second silent day. There was darkness as well as light.

But I returned home to Malvern feeling privileged that I can make my living through working with people in this way. Through writing blogs like this one and running mindful writing e-courses and sharing the stories of the characters in my novels. Work = Joy.

So how can we move towards joy in our own life’s work? And when I say work I’m really including all of it – the deeply important work of raising children, the making of art in your spare time, the work of interacting with strangers at the supermarket…

A few pointers.

1. Pay attention. My favourite half-hour from the week was the second time we did walking meditation down through the terraced garden. It was cold, but the cold wasn’t a problem – I was transfixed by the giant pearlescent iris, the wafting herby aromas, the tiny conical snails going about their business…

2. Start to let go of your self. We are very fond of our selves, and this gets us into a lot of trouble. We cling tightly to who we are and who we aren’t, and pull at what we want and push at what we don’t want. When we can begin to loosen these tight samskaras, more of life gets in. We become more intimate with the world and with others.

3. Attend to the darkness as well as to the light. For me, joy is blocked when I start to deny the truth of the things I’d rather avoid. Allow it all to bubble up into the light. The jealousy, greed, impatience, the deep grief… make space for it, honour it, share it with others, allow yourself to slowly heal.

If you’d like to work in this way with me or with Kaspa, we have three e-courses starting on Friday – Writing Towards Healing, Journalling Our Way Home or how to be idle with a Mindful Moodle.

Do let me know in the comments what gives you joy in your work. Deep bow.

Satya writes: I was going to write something else today about my new novel covers and my propensity at these times to tip into full ego-mania.

And then I thought, god, how boring.

I get the same feeling when I read through my old diaries. Those old familiar patterns…

Trying to eat less. Not caring about eating less. Trying to eat less.

Putting too much into my diary. Feeling overwhelmed. Cutting back. Putting too much into my diary.

Spending too much time on the internet. Setting myself limits and sticking to them. Spending too much time on the internet.

And yet.

When I read through those old diaries, familiar as that old person is to me, I am also reading about a different person. She was in a very different relationship. She was unaware of the depth of her foolishness. She wasn’t a Buddhist. She hadn’t published any books and she didn’t have a private psychotherapy practice. She even had a different name.

Eating too much. Being greedy for attention. This kind of pattern-of-behaviour goes DEEP. However you want to make sense of it, through early childhood wounds or through karma that lasts back many lifetimes, our favourite compulsive habits have deep and insistent roots. They cling on for dear life. We can recognise the terrible destructiveness of one of these habits and carry on regardless. We can be in a great deal of denial. We can harm others.

I want to say, go easy on yourself. It’s not as easy to change as you’d think. Sometimes we make progress with our bad habits only to encounter them again, as if we’re on a merry-go-round. I’d like to suggest that we’re actually on a spiral, so although you come round and it all looks very familiar, you are actually in a different place to last time. You are moving away from the gravitational pull at the centre of the spiral. You will reach a point where you can fly free.

Until then, I will continue to struggle with my ego-mania. I will continue do the things that help – writing about it in my journal, doing Buddhist practice, noticing noticing noticing, focussing my attention outside of myself, attending a twelve-step programme, writing blogs, drinking tea very slowly in the sunny garden.

These things may get me out of the hole, and they may not. There will be holes in the future, and I will trip into them and fall onto my face. Ouch. How embarrassing. Sometimes the wounds will take a  while to heal.

And.

I will make progress at the speed of a very slow snail. I will move around and around (and around and around) on the spiral.

I am changing. I can’t help but change. None of us can.

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Photo: ‘Origin of Symmetry’ by SplodgusMaximus

“For there’s more enterprise / In walking naked.” ~ W.B. Yeats

Here I go again.

My four novels all have new covers, to re-launch my writing career with my new name. I feel like I’ve just bought a strange new hat and am wearing it for the first time. I think it suits me, but I could be horribly wrong…

Most of us would rather everyone liked our hats.

We ask our friends what they think and then we pay close attention to their reaction. Are they just being polite? We ask again. We ask some strangers and share a photo of our hat on Facebook. One person pays us a compliment and we get a nice warm glow. Another pulls a face and we put the hat in the back of the cupboard and never wear it again.

This is the trouble with relying on others to validate us and our hats. When we become constrained by this needing-to-be-approved-of, it limits our ability to do our best work. Our best work might alienate the people we’re currently in touch with. It might ask disturbing questions and raise people’s defenses. It might be just ahead of the zeitgeist. 

Gez Smith talks here about how addicted most of us are to these ‘positive strokes’, and yet: “…to do our most interesting and creative work, we need to get away from this need for approval, do something genuinely new, and do it because you believe in it, not because others will approve of it (although it’s nice if they do).”

Some people will like these new covers, and some will much prefer the old ones. That’s okay. Some people will like my books, and some people will hate them. That’s okay.

I love them. I love my characters very much – Ruth, Leonard, Violet & Joe. I love the stories they have to tell, and I have faith in the message they are taking to the world.

I shall wear my strange hat with pride. What about you?

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You can buy the books on kindle now, but we’re officially launching the novels on the 10th of May with a free online event, ‘What I Live For‘. People will be writing or making art about the things that make their lives worth living. If you’d like to join us, read more here or say yes to our Facebook invite and invite your friends.