Cliche cliche cliche

Cliches are cliches for good reason - pride comes before a fall is the cliche which came and snapped at my feet his week. Here's me thinking I'm on top of life, following bliss, learning to be kind, rising above petty nonsense, blah..... And then crash. The details of what happens aren't what matter, all the matters is I hit a wall. I must have let pride sneak in. 

Here’s some things I’ve learned...

1.       If I start to see someone as a potential new mate then the old flame I never quite got over will almost inevitably reappear on the scene as if by magic.

2.       If I ever think even for a moment that I am somehow better than anyone or above a certain situation, I will be taken down, usually by a small but embarrassing ‘fail’ in front of an audience.

3.       I don’t have to tell someone I’m becoming more interested in them or that I’m not.

All of these would seem normal lessons if I was 13 or 14. Not quite so great given I am a great deal older than that and either haven’t learned these things til now or, more likely did know them once, then forgot. Duh.

I started this blog as a bid to record attempts and failures to stretch my boundaries, to become bigger and better in life, in everything. I want to transcend the stupidest time-wastingly desperately tedious nonsense such as 1, 2 and 3 above.

I hoped to document that it was possible to rise above nonsense, to become bigger hearted, to live 100% conscious that we are all one, that life is bliss, full of joy and promise. And to somehow manage it while not on drugs (if you don’t count the wine, because we all know the “we are all love” stuff is not just possible on drugs, it’s kind of mandatory).  

I wanted to reach out and leap into this place and I will try again, but let’s just say for January 2014 I have become a lot more wrapped up in silly stuff than I’d hoped. Before the first month is out, my head has been turned, I’ve had a bout of jealousy so severe I had to leave the room and stomp around the block; I’ve become wrapped up in minutiae I had assumed, arrogantly, I had risen above (cue flagstone to trip over); I’ve fallen for a cliché life, like a wedding album with artful shots of shoes in black and white. The photos seem to be meaningful, an attempt to tell a story – here is my big day; here are my beautiful shoes – but the images themselves have become clichés and so, ultimately, devoid of meaning. That is what I want to avoid, becoming  a cliché, devoid of meaning.   

Roll on a new week.

We all know bliss. It is all we seek

Some of my attempts to follow my bliss have resulted in introspection, a sort of “poor man’s bliss”. Introspection can sometimes feel like a way of manufacturing transcendence or coaxing it back to life, like those paddles used in A&E to re-start someone’s heart. But for me, introspection is nearly always a cul-de-sac of self-absorption, a place where we consume ourselves, and get drunk on our own lies and hopes and self-talk.

I doubt any human has transcended being human, untouched by anxiety and fear and loneliness, except possibly Buddha, Jesus, Mohamed and the rest of that special crew. But I imagine if you say out loud you want to follow your bliss, to make transcendence a goal in your life, you would rapidly lose your friends and maybe even your livelihood. Most of us prefer to keep our mouths, our minds and our hearts shut about a deep longing to find peace, to somehow matter. It is easier to let the detritus, the nonsense, the lies and the constructs of who and what we are underpin our thoughts and actions.

And yet bliss persists – the idea of being able to rise above self-absorption may seem at once utterly real and utterly meaningless, as if transcendence is a shadow in the peripheral vision, there and not there, but we are imprinted with bliss. Like water, we fall towards it as inevitably as a drop of water falls towards the ocean.

I love how this guy, Sean Meshorer, describes bliss: http://seanmeshorer.com/what-is-bliss/

As part of his explanation is this:

Bliss is where happiness, meaning, and truth converge. everything—and I do mean everything—boils down to our (sometimes subconscious) pursuit of bliss. We pursue money or relationships because we think they’ll make us happy. We pursue our vocation, our hobbies, and our life’s passions because we feel they are deeply meaningful to us. We explore science, religion, and philosophical inquiry because we want to know the truth of our existence. Bliss is the universal place that these intersect, where all questions are answered, where every fulfillment is attained.

The phrase 'follow your bliss' is said to have been coined by Joseph Campbell who derived it from the Upanishads. Their complete works can be read here: http://hinduebooks.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/108-upanishads-with-sanskrit-commentary.html

They say that when you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you. Wherever you are—if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that joy within you, all the time.

Sounds pretty darn good to me! 

Thinking about love

I want her to love me and especially -- more -- her to allow me to love her. But she doesn't, won't. 

Is this love? I am trying hard -- sometimes minute by minute, at other times a whole day might go past -- to put her down, put her wrapped in my tortured feelings down gently but firmly on a shelf or, better still, in a cupboard with a door which can be closed. Out of sight, out of heart.

It's like pulling teeth. Part of me I didn't know I had screams and tries to hold tight every time I manage to surrender her. I remind myself over and over like a prayer, she is just human, she is not divine, she is merely human, full of known and unknown flaws and frailties, hurts, absences. She is not divine. And though my head knows this to be true, and I put her away repeatedly, something of me is locked away with her behind the closed door. It hurls itself against the lock. It quickens my breathing. It screams in my face. It will not surrender.

I want to love and to love others. Gently. Patiently. To reflect their goodness or brilliance or gentleness or hope or whatever fragment of godliness they possess back at them. And to wave softly across infinite time and space, my god to their god, fanning flames, rekindling my own, too.

And I think this dichotomy comes from love, ceaselessly hungry to multiply itself, expand itself, seep outwards and inwards like the tide, leaving its mark on our beaches where debris is flung, stealing it back sometimes, wiping us clean, so the shore, our hearts, our souls are ever-changing, ever the same, unaware of the moon, waiting for water and the salt of tears which tell our tongues yes, this is love, this is pain, be glad of it.

Bliss (is the answer)

My sister said once "Follow your bliss, sis".
When I follow what makes me happy, or more accurately, blissed out, I am (kind of obviously!) very, very happy. 
Here are some of the things which have blissed me out in the last week:
- Pilates class

- Huge, long walk followed by huge lunch followed by playing with an open fire on a freezing cold night with one of my best friends and her friend
- Seeing flocks of birds scatter and fly high overhead as I drive to work

- Eating salted butter on crackers for supper
I think we owe it to life, others and ourselves to seek out things which bliss us out. 

And so it starts

And so it starts

This blog is an attempt to try and soften or even lose the boundaries of who I am and what I expect and think I can be. I want to love more, live more, expand and stretch who and what I might be. My goal is to try to see others, be less introspective and more extrospective (that might not be a word but you know what I mean).

The idea comes on the heels of improvements in my life which started last April or May. Back then I had just emerged from a long-term relationship which had eroded nearly everything I had spent my life building or standing on and my first attempts at recovering were based on trying to open my mind to new ideas and people, to try new things, to try not to restrict who I would next become by wearing the small coat of what I had once been.

I figured that being devastated by the end of a love affair was an opportunity to go back to scratch and try rebuilding someone I could be proud of. And the more I reached out, the happier I became. In six or seven months I made more friends than I'd managed to make in the previous decade, I'd always enjoyed my job but I started loving it, I felt as if anything was possible. All this, I realised in the week between Christmas and New Year, could be just a start. My colleagues at work had called it my ‘year of saying yes’ but it was never about just a year and it was never about just saying yes – I want to live the rest of my life in hope, in love, in faith and in confidence. Wherever possible I am going to not let fear or any of its attendants - small mindedness, bitterness, anger – dictate the direction life will take.

This blog then is an attempt to write down the attempts, the failures, the successes as I try to be open minded, to try and see people and life as if everyone and everything is beautiful or holds the possibility of beauty within it, to be brave  and see what happens. Welcome to my naked soul blog.