All night I dreamed of zombies.

They clamoured at the door. They wanted my blood. I spent the night running & hiding.

This week I am on holiday. I am seeing no clients, writing no novels, running no courses. I am recuperating and rejuvenating and refurbishing my tired soul.

I hadn’t planned on dreaming of zombies. I hadn’t planned on the tyre bursting on Monday, waiting three hours for the recovery van, or spending Tuesday morning getting it changed. I hadn’t planned on my tooth starting to throb. I hadn’t planned on the emotional storms of yesterday, or the heavy rain this morning.

This morning I woke early and walked around the garden, before the heavy sky started shedding its water. I looked for signs of cyclamen bulbs periscoping their alien buds above the earth. Slugs feasted on a fallen apple. I watched the silhouettes of two wrens as they flicked their tiny bodies from eucalyptus branch to branch. The train roared past. Everything was green & moist & growing.  

I came inside, lit the candle on the shrine and read Bits of Rubble Turn into Gold. I listened to the soft steady sound of the rain. The rain put a cool hand on my forehead and reminded me of the ground underneath me. Reminded me of the light, illuminating the gold of Buddha’s plump cheek, sparkling the gold on a thank you card from a friend, shining on me.

It’s still ordinary life, when you’re on holiday. It’s still brimming with dukkha. Impermanence and decay and slugs and rotten teeth and deep wells of painful emotion and burst tyres.

Ordinary life. With the cheerfulness of wren’s tails. Dentists with late-notice appointments. Clumps of monbretia splashing orange against dark green as if alight. Pink wheelbarrows waiting to be of service. Crisp apples. Text messages from friends, finished with the crosses we make that mean love.

Try to praise the mutilated world.

*

Cyclamen by sierrian with thanks.

Fiona writes: This is Snowdonia.

Next week we’ll be on the shore of that estuary, walking through the landscape, spending quality time with our kindles, eating hearty veggie breakfasts and watching the occasional C.S.I.

If I’d had my way, we would have stayed at home instead and spent our time steaming and scraping hideous anaglypta wallpaper from the hallway. Kaspa talked sense in to me.

I confess. I am terrible at holidays.

I spend a great deal of time and effort ‘getting everything done’ so I can relax, and then as soon as I sit down with a cup of tea I catch site of the iris bulbs which needs planting or a mug that needs washing up. I have annoyingly exciting ideas about new projects as soon as the current ones are finished. If I’m not careful, even the novels I’m reading get onto the ‘things to get finished’ list.

From today for two whole weeks, I will not be seeing psychotherapy clients, not writing my novel, not talking to coaching clients, not running an e-course, not studying. The thought simultaneously fills me with joy and causes a shudder of anxious horror to run down my spine.

So what’s the deal? Why is it so difficult to enjoy down time?

I guess it’s the usual thing that’s causing all the problems – my samskaras. These aren’t (as they might sound) a fancy pair of sandals or a strange inner ear infection. They are deep habit-formations – stories I have about ‘who I am’ – which probably originate from way way back in the murky distant past of my childhood.

These samskaras say things like ‘I am only worthy when I am producing something’ or ‘I can’t trust anyone else to do it so I’ll have to do it all myself’ or ‘we never have enough money to keep us out of danger’ or ‘it’s not safe to take my eye off the ball’.

These kinds of stories-about-ourself exist way underground, and influence us much of the time without us even realising. Mine make it hard for me to enjoy a holiday in Snowdonia. Other people’s samskaras might make it difficult for them to form close relationships and not get jealous, or to stay in the same job for very long, or to feel happy-as-they-are.

These samskaras are pernicious devils. We cling onto them as if our lives depended on them (which in one way they do – without them all I would no longer be ‘Fiona’). But we can loosen them. This is an easier job if we can take refuge in something bigger than our little self, as a place to rest and to feel secure. This might be nature, or the love of our friends and family, or something ineffable. It doesn’t matter too much what – it matters that we relax into this safe space and feel loved. (Those interested in a Buddhist take on this might want to read what David Brazier says about everything not being impermanent, here).

And so I shall go forth into my holiday, knowing that it might be difficult, knowing how deeply human and foolish I am, and also knowing that it is possible to get better at having holidays. I’ll lie back into all those things I take refuge in, and I’ll feel safe enough to start loosening those stories.

Wish me luck : )

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People usually sign up for our ecourses at the last minute. As we’re going to be on holiday next week, it’d be lovely if those last-minute-signer-uppers could sign up now instead. You’ve got three to choose from – Eastern Therapeutic Writing, Writing Ourselves Alive and a Creative Intensive. They’ll give you a good old look at your own samskaras, and help you create space for yourself and for creativity. Give yourself something lovely.

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Mawddach estuary by Kevin Richardson, with thanks.

I sometimes lose my way.

There are a multitude of reasons. Too much work. Too much worry. Hormones. Hungriness. Forgetting to see the space in between and underneath everything.

Last night, as a part of our usual Wednesday Buddhist service, I heard these lines from the liturgy afresh.

…if you can practice in this simple minded way, Amida will receive you, and you may fear for nothing, since all is completely assured. Dwelling in this settled faith, you may then use your secondary faculties, your knowledge and skills and accumulated experience, as tools for helping all sentient beings….

I thought back to the first time I heard these words. It was my first Pureland service. I was in a big shrine room, surrounded by people dressed in red who were chanting and bowing. I felt a little like I’d landed on an alien planet. I

Fiona writes: I smile a lot.

I have deep smile-crinkles around my eyes. I used to be called ‘smiler’ at school.

Smiling is mostly a very good thing. I smile because I’m happy, because I’m pleased to see you, because I just spotted a rust-breasted robin perching on the washing line.

And yet.

Sometimes I smile because I want to make other people feel better, because I want to show I’m submitting, because I’m afraid of being rejected.

I was thinking about smiling last night, at our usual Wednesday Buddhist service.

I sit quietly with my legs crossed in the shrine room as people arrive. Usually, I open my eyes as each person enters and give them a smile, to help them feel welcome. Last night I decided to focus instead on my breathing and keep my eyes shut. Instead of greeting them, I offered them a space where someone was sinking deeper and deeper into calm. Their gentle settling-down noises didn’t disturb me. Golden light spread around me in a clear pool.

As the service went on, I continued to dwell in this deep calm, in a settled faith, with a feeling of being loved just-as-I-am. The need to check up on people, the worries about how many people were coming to our services, slipped away like silk falling to the floor. They were absolutely unnecessary.

I remind myself again. It isn’t my job to make everyone else in the world feel welcome. To constantly monitor others and change myself accordingly. To be responsible for everyone’s happiness.

I want to let go of this kind of smiling, and focus more instead on my own practice. To feel (and be) non-smiley when I’m non-smiley. To not use my smiles as a way of influencing (controlling) other people.

To let the smiles well up from inside of me, spontaneously, from that golden pool.

If you see me smiling now, know that it’s coming from the inside out.

*

Join us in September for one of our mindful writing courses and investigate your own relationship-with-the-world.

Get Happy by Olivander with thanks.

A post from the archive for people struggling to be kinder.

Fiona writes: This week we bought chocolate biscuits for our neighbour and left them in her porch with a card.

We’d seen her in town a couple of days ago, looking tired and drawn. She told us she’d been having a difficult time. We thought we’d buy her something nice.

When she found them, she phoned us to say thank you. She was very moved by our gesture. It cost us £2.50 and ten mintues of our time.

If it costs us so little to be kind, then why don’t we do it more often?

At the moment I’m reading ‘On Kindness’ by Adam Phillips and Barbara Taylor. Their proposition is that being kind to others makes us happy, but it also opens us up.

“The terror of kindness is that it makes us too immediately aware of our own and other people’s vulnerabilities (vulnerabilities that we are prone to call ‘failings’ when we are at our most frightened.)”

And, of course:

“Bearing other people’s vulnerabily – which means sharing in it imaginatively and practically without needing to get rid of it, to yank people out of it – entails being able to bear one’s own.”

Maybe our neighbour, who we don’t know very well, might start pouring out her troubles to us. Maybe she’d become too dependent on us. Maybe her troubles would echo our own worst fears, a little too closely for comfort.

It cost us £2.50, ten minutes of our time, and a small unveiling of our aching, vulnerable hearts.

—

Suggestion: do one kind thing today. Can you get in touch with the other’s or your own vulnerability?

—

“A man’s true delight is to do the things he was made for. He was made to show goodwill to his kind.”
~Marcus Aurelius

“People need other people, not just for companionship or support in hard times, but to fulfil their humanity.”
~Adam Phillips

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After sending this newsletter Thom Woodruff replied with this poem…

“Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control.”
― Julia Cameron

Our desire for control rests on a human need to feel secure and to affirm life. The reality is that control is an illusion. 
~Staci Boden, from ‘Turning Dead Ends into Doorways’

Fiona writes: This weekend, thousands of people downloaded my newly revised book, A Year of Questions: how to slow down and fall in love with life. Ten hours ago I started charging for it again, and so far nobody has bought a single copy.

Why am I struggling with this?

Is it because I need the money? We’re saving for a greenhouse for our tomatoes next year, but not really. Is it because it makes me doubt whether it’s a good book or feel anxious about my authorly abilities? No. So what is it?

Let me tell you about my trip to the dentist last week.

I’d been feeling anxious about the prospect of having my first crown fitted since I’d booked the appointment. Fifty minutes sounded like a very long time. What were they going to do?

They started by ramming a huge gum-guard thing filled with pink goo onto my top teeth. It pushed against the roof of my mouth and the back of my throat. I couldn’t breathe very easily. I felt sick. The panic blossomed in my stomach and grew and grew. I was properly scared.

Eventually they yanked it out, and the rest of the appointment was a breeze.

Afterwards I reflected on why I had been so frightened.

I didn’t know how long it would be in my mouth. I didn’t know if it was going to make me gag or not. I didn’t know how to let the dentist know if I wanted him to take it out. What scared me was the unknown, and not being ‘in control’ of the way my body felt or what was being done to me.

So what does pink goo have to do with book launches?

The unknown.

Will the book go back into the charts? Will people like it? I want to know these things. But I have absolutely no control over the outcome. I’ve written the best book I could write, I’ve given it the best send off I could give it, and now it’s over to the universe to decide about the rest.

I’ve got very gradually and slightly better at loosening my grip on attempted control. At having faith. For me, faith doesn’t mean an assurance that all will be well. Things often don’t go well. Instead it means being able to relax back into the dentist’s chair, and trusting that whatever happens, whatever discomfort I’m in, it will pass.

And a deeper holding, too. Something harder to put into words. Something about it being okay even when it’s not okay.

It will pass, and I’ll find myself on the other side.

The book will sell, the book won’t sell. I will rest on a deeper security. Control is an illusion. What a relief. I can let go.

*

‘tomato in square’ by jacki-dee via Creative Commons

A post from the archives by Fiona before she was married…

As you read this, I will be in the middle of rural France with my love, writing, reading, walking, and hopefully eating lovely crusty French bread.

Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything.