Words

Words flame out to fill the space and distance
between us....
i create the words,
and they create me.
The words escape, unheeded,
uncontrolled and controlling.
I let them go,
to flame you,
through the space and distance,
calling, arousing, carressing...
leaping from me to you,
maintaining your high,
and feeding your love...

They bind us, closer still, as i give life to
a new word, a phrase, a sentence
that forges another link to hold us together.
They bring you so close,
so close i can almost smell the skin of your neck,
see the blood pulsing through your throat.
Only words,
from me to you.

Delicious suggestions to promote a painless dinner decision.

Dinners


· BBQ
· Burgers
· Indian food
· Japanese Pancakes
· Lasagna
· Lingueeni and Rocket
· Noodles
· Omlette
· Pizza
· Roast (remember the gravy)
· Shepard’s pie
· Stir fry
· Mexican (taco,nachos)


Extras
Goats cheese salad
Pantomaca (bread, tomato, garlic, oil)
Jaffles

Dessert
Apple pie
waffles

What's your family's easy favourites?

Adults and Children

Differing view points

We went to stay with my dad's friend in Sydney. I was twelve.

I was an aspiring poet and while the 'adults' were drinking in the lounge I asked if I could have some paper and I'd write in the kitchen. That was fine by everyone and Malcolm (the friend) produced a typewriter.

'You can use this if you like.'

I smiled and lifted off the cover. It was larger than my one at home and it had a different font. After I had typed a couple of letters I realized the letters were all joined together in a very pretty cursive style. I was delighted. It added a new elegance to my name- Tiffany- right at the top of the page. Quite distinguished.

Malcom lingered in the kitchen and eventually sat down beside me. He wore a black beret, was thin and slightly effeminate. He was in the music industry and knew a lot of people, so my dad says.

'So what are you writing?' He leant towards me and there it was, the slack wet mouth pouring out that unenviable beer soaked breath.

'Just a poem.' I continually smiled. It was my only defense against personal attention.

'What's it about?'

I struggled to explain what was on the paper. But as soon as the words were out in the air, I knew the poem had to be read for itself, so he stood behind my chair, a hand rested on my shoulder, and he bent forward.

My step-mother came in to fill her glass and he didn't move his hand away. He actually patted me and I tried to grimace at her. But she wasn't interested in my reaction. She wanted his.

She spoke to him, tried to draw his attention, but he was only vaguely responsive and another woman came in to claim her bleary gaze.

Wilma was a fattish dyed blond with remarkably large breasts. I never developed beyond a 12B, and that was at my plumper stage of life. Allow me to say that from a small athletic girl's point of view, those wobbly bits of fatty tissue are intensely offputting. Frankly she revolted me and left me with an instinctive fear and facination of large breasted women. Although I’m disgusted, I can’t seem to look at these women enough... but that’s beside the point.

So Malcom went back to the gathering for a while. I finished my poem and drank fanta and tried to occupy myself without disturbing the adults.

Of course he returned. He was very impressed with my poem and wanted to speak to me about it.
It was entitled 'Reaching the top', an A4 length aa bb rhyming effort about walking up a mountain. To me it was that simple.

Malcom devised a sexual symbolism to the eventual rise to the summit that I admit, unfortunately, to having missed.

He was trying to get me to admit to his perception and as it began to sink into my brain what he was getting at, my face became as flexible as granite and my ears started to hurt. I tried to deny his meaning.

I discovered a problem. My denials or protests were of no consequence to either of us because I could not say no. I could speak the word but the power of denial had never been encouraged or respected in our house. What ever the adult wanted was his/hers without question. Dad was always right and what ever he wanted was unquestionable and may as well have been divine. There I was, seated with a self stimulated wanna-be paedaphile and he was demanding my submission and I smiled and quietly said, 'No, that's not what I meant. I didn't mean that.'

But Malcom saw and heard differently. He saw I was embarrassed about admitting to the meaning, he saw the smile and that's all he needed to visit me again later in the night.

They went out. I stayed in the flat watching TV and slept on the couch in their living room.

My heart woke me. The pound and thud of its pressure alerting me to his closeness at once. He was crouched beside me and shook my shoulder.

'Are you awake?' It was a loud whisper.

I murmured but my eyes were wide. He spoke about a woman at the party who had been pursuing him. He hadn't wanted her at all and couldn't think about anything but me ect... I have long since realized the common content of his pre-pounce speil. I did not realize though, at the time, where it was leading until both of his arms were about me and he was pressing his mouth to mine.
My right leg came up and I tried to push him away with the base of my foot. His mouth was wet and sloppy and merely distasteful. His drunkenness was enough to excuse his behaviour to me. I had enough experience with the stuff to know how it robbed the drinker of responsibility.

Finally a light was turned on in the hall and I looked up to see my Dad silouetted in the light. Malcom immediately begun to mumble that he was merely talking to me about the night and Dad told him to go to bed. Once his friend had gone he stood there a moment looking at me. I don't know what he saw, but he turned off the light and left me with Malcom's tongue imprint on my cheek and lips and never spoke to me about it.

Basically this was the first real shove I had from the realm of adults. It was designed to stimulate independant thought and for the first time that I could remember I thought my father was wrong and felt distaste in my stomach. It was unjust, wrong, hateful. My vision of him changed and if there was one chink in his armor then perhaps there were others. I was too well trained to ever allow my thoughts out of my head. I was not the type of teenager to talk back to my parents. And there began my life as an actress. Hatred and bitterness in my heart while I smiled like a serpent. I was evil personified.

Then there was the discrepancy in opinion about my poem. I have had a lot of problems with accepting differing perspectives. I rode on a double wave of acceptance and incredulous 'how the hell can you see that' until I was 21. I felt it was my duty to explain my point of view, to make everything very clear, leaving no means for misunderstanding. My early literary training didn't help advance this perspective. We were moulded to be the perfect reader. We were taught the correct meaning of the symbols used, and we are taught not to take the symbolism too far. There is a fine line between symbolism and reality. We as mere readers were trying to discover the author's intention. We did not create the text. It created us or so I was trained to believe.

Now to my reaction to Malcom's misinterpretation of my mountain poem.

Firstly I was sure he was wrong and that my meaning was the only one permissable.

Secondly I did not admit that there could possibly be another brain (Malcom's) that would give my poem another framework to be viewed from.

Thirdly, who was right? Who is closer to the truth? Malcom, in his beer soaked limply lustful disguise or me, shrouded in naivety?

And finally, how can there be an answer to number three? The answer is there is no answer.

I have to admit to giving my dad several chances to clear his record and make himself pristine. Though finally the blind was lifted. I sat in judgement and fried in my bubbling bitterness. The loss of illusion was too much to comprehend. I moved inwards and remained there.


A move towards 'adulthood'

I was fourteen when we moved to Melbourne. We stayed with my grandparents for a few days. It was a spacious, white house. Very clean and tidy. My grandparents were okay, gave me good food to eat. Then dad and Wilma said they were going to a friend's house, there was a race meet up in the country, and it would be better if I stayed with the grandparents. That was fine. It was two weeks before Wilma called again.

'Your father and I have never been together before, without one of you kids. We thought it could be nice if you stayed with your grandparents now.'

'Its up to you Tiffany, you don't have to stay there if you don't want to.'

'Its okay. I'm sure everything will be fine.'

My foldout bed was in the second lounge room. I pressed my face into the pillows to muffle my tears. It was the last time I cried in self-pity. It was the last time I thought of them with any feeling. I felt the chains of paternal love fall away, leaving me at once a small spot of bitter energy, fermenting in my own tears.

Children relationhips

Me and the step-sisters

One year we went to the Brisbane exhibition. It was a day full of stalls, people, chocolate and fairy floss. The step-sisters were with us then. Marty and Sal. Really Martha Genevieve and Sallamantha Augustus.

What I remember is lining up for the dodgem cars. The burning electric smell of zapping power- the press of bodies in the que. I’d driven them before but always with someone else. Now I was big enough to reach the pedals and go by my self. A man in a blue T-shirt strapped me in and showed me how to reverse- just keep the wheel spun to the left or right and it would move backward.
At first I drove carefully, excited my the power and sense of infallibility. I was testing the moveablitity of the little red car.

And someone bumped me from behind. My body lurched forward. I drove on and again was pushed from behind. Cars were wizzing by on the other side- some cars appearing faster than others. I looked over my shoulder and saw a boy grinning insanely at me, pushing and repeatedly bumping my car.

I understood. I pressed the peddle down and zoomed by. I saw Marty in front and steady as an arrow set my course. But a little blonde boy drove in front of me so I rammed him instead.
He whipped his head around and grinned as if I’d done him a favour. The agression I could feel building up in me didn’t allow for smiling. I turned my wheel sharply and went after my target. I was in a radius of permissable agression. People were able to bump, crash, collide and try to demolish others. It was a release of perfect energy.

Marty’s head fell sharply to the side. I reversed quickly, swung my wheel and propelled my car forward. Her body jolted again. Her car was stuck in a pile up now. She felt the intent of my mission and sent me a quelling look.

But I scurried on, intent on ramming as many cars as possible with as much impact as I could muster.

Marty punched my shoulder twice for that. But that time I didn’t care.

Disguises

Clothes

Basically clothes help to disguise or highlight aspects of your personality. I felt my style changing in my latter teenage years. I knew I was different. I didn’t like the way the others behaved. I didn’t like their fundamental lack of grit. They seemed like marshmellow puffs. I was different. I didn’t fit in with them and I wanted to mark my difference. I didn’t like their soft hair, I didn’t like their neat clothes and I didn’t like their preordained existence.

Though nobody would hear me shouting about it. I didn’t discuss my thoughts with any of them. So I put on a pair of red sneakers, I changed one shoe lace to green, I didn’t pair my socks, I wore baggy coloured pants, loose ripped or stained tops. I coloured my hair and eventually put super glue in it to hold it off my face.

People at school still treated me the same. I was just a bit wacky. But sometimes cars slowed down and boys yelled obscene things to me, or grannies would hold their purses tighter as I walked passed or children would ask their mothers what had that boy done to his hair?

It was all the same to me. I was me. I could feel comfortable without thinking about what the rest of the teenage world expected of me. I had stated with my abdication that I wasn’t in the running for Miss Teen America.

Those clothes and my hair gave me a shield. I was an unknown entity. I was capable of anything, I was an individual who said fuck you to all the crap about looking good for boys, about walking on the trodden paths, about agreeing to the society I was living it. Because I didn’t like what I saw. Abuse, lies, dishonesty, murder, transgressions, violence, drugs, evil, evil, evil. And I wasn’t going to take it. I was not going to sit here and drink wine to this world and eat bread to our future or past. I felt that new changes needed to be implemented before I ever wanted to associate myself with the rest of humanity.

Me and influences

D H Lawrence

The prose of the early Lawrence was like a puff of breath on smouldering embers. I rejoiced. Here was somebody whom I related to wholeheartedly. It was like reading myself as another. The phoenix rising from the flames was a brilliant motif. His calm, his passion, his thoughts. This was the kind of writing that I would aspire to.

Then I pondered the unponderable. Why write if it had already been written? Everything was passing before my eyes, but in a different shape from what I was accoustomed to. But it was basically the same. The purpose of living became to devour rather than to produce. Learn.

There were the heavy foorsteps in the hall. I knew them. It brooked no good for any member of the household. There were the intense moments between friends, every movement noted, every breath recorded. I knew it all. I lived like this. I felt the intensity of the moment.

My senses were so attuned to the moods of those around me that I fell silent often out of fear. I felt their emotions more fully than my own. In fact, I discovered I only possessed one emotion. It was smouldering anger. It was internal, consumming me like a disease.

I read the world through broken lenses. And so, I knew, did Lawrence. Discovering his work gave me power. I was no longer alone. I felt united with the past and with the intangible force left by his written work. He produced in me a feeling of kinship. Anne with an 'e' of Green Gables would have said I felt him to be a kindred spirit.

Funnily, I'd never liked red heads before. But I soon learnt to think of Lawrence's ginger beard and hair as a living flame. He was a pillar of light.

He really represented the first open door to my suffocating brain. Anything that came before him was a minor awakening. Here was an outside influence, somebody who created out of his brooding temperment. I loved his absolute passion, his wholehearted, sincere submergence into what ever emotion had a grip on him. The drama! The intensity! He gladened my brain.

My second wonderful English teacher gave us D.H.Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Gerald Manely Hopkins, John Keats, Jane Austen, Silvia Plath, Emily Brontë, Joseph Conrad, Christina Stead and so many others who helped to sharped my focus. It was heaven. I loved literature. I loved reading. I wanted to be an English teacher. I wanted to open this window for people who were like me. Literature allowed me a space to exist. It recognized me and I lost myself freely. It was a mutual exchange.

Mr Stewart
Mr Stewart said the word 'fuck' in class. He challenged my expectations. The others thought it was pretty wanky and who did he think he was impressing, but I thought quite a lot about it. For me, a girl who never swore, who ate correctly at dinner, who tried to withhold rage at all costs and always ate everything off her plate (or no dessert), it was a revelation. I can see his expression, his blandness, waiting, not anticipating our reaction. He was marvelous, entertaining and I adored him.

He had lovely sparkling blue eyes and a wicked sense of humour. He was really too intelligent for our school and I felt the first of a long succession of doubt about enjoying literature. If this man was so smart, what was he doing here? Was it really challenging enough for him to help us unravel the language of Shakespeare , year after year? Was it really interesting for him to mark our grammer and spelling and paragraph construction? Is that what I wanted? Was there nothing else?

Alcohol and children

Alcohol

Alcohol is not the culprit. The alcoholic is. Where is the responsiblity? Where is the awareness of the self? There's nothing.

Alcohol merely increases the state of carelessness. There is no real confrontation. There are only little turbulances, little puffs of trouble. Each time the large issue is skirted there appears another dozen little hassles to get through. Why face the big issues when you're concerned about the importance of Self in the relationship, the loss of youth, the missed opportunities that now look so good, the fact that he/she didn't squeeze the toothpaste in the right place, that you spoke down to me in front of my friends... Where lies the responsiblity?

As a teenager
I was living in an agressive, alcoholic household that alternated between repressed and unleased violence. The emotional currents that had helped conceive me, raise me and feed me reached a peak that lasted several years. My emotions became increasingly inward and although I was abandoned by the source of many of my problems (my father had dropped me with my nana to live), I was delivered into the hands of one ill equipt to sort my brain out. Namely myself. My life seemed pointless and intense and and turgid and muddy and yet the sun shone, the trees were caressed by the shifting zephyrs and the moon passed over my head at night.

And there was D. H. Lawrence.

I didn't drink with my friends. I tried a couple of times but after one or so glasses I'd begin to feel nauseous. I figured I must have been allergic to the stuff.

I didn't smoke cigarettes. I was athletic, jogging, aerobics, weight training. Putting smoke into my lungs seemed a pointless and distructive activity.

I didn't do any drugs (prescription drugs not included). I wasn't in a drug crowd when I was younger and by the time I was offered differing stimulants I had already formed my own philosophic barrier against drug taking.

I believe my mental state broke down because of the internal stress I was putting myself under with so much hatred in my system. I was totally unhappy. I felt that life was painful, torturous experience. I didn't know of an avenue of escape. I couldn't see out of my life.

I stopped seeing most of my school friends. They were boring, thinking only of money, jobs, possessions and boys.

I wore baggy relaxed clothing.

I sported what my Grandmother called anti-social hairstyles.

I ate a block of chocolate every day.

I drank eight cups of coffee a day.

I was in my first year of university when my vision changed. I saw things hiding in corners. I'd moved into a small unit in Auburn Road and the bathroom frightened me. It seemed to close in on me when I was in the shower. I felt victimized.


My first adult friend

The only real defect was his alcohol dependency. But it wasn’t like drinking every day, first thing in the morning. It was more about needing alcohol to relax, to socialize, to have a decent weekend. Obviously, I resented his need.

One night I came home and he was lying on his side by the toilet bowl. One of his friends was standing by his side. My heart was frozen. If anything I felt like kicking him where he lay. John was wary, he knew I didn’t aprove.

‘He’s had a little too much to drink. But he’ll be alright in the morning.’ He was whispering loudly. That beer scent oozed out of his mouth towards me.

‘And you brought him home?’

John nodded looking down at the unconscious body. I went to my room, leaving him to rot.

I didn’t like my friend Ivan to go out without me. He would always come home totally bewildered and so full you couldn’t get a straight answer from him. He never remembered anything the next morning. But I did. I couldn’t wipe the images and anger from my heart.

I was called late one night. Ivan in hospital, the car having run off the road. He’d been sleeping at the wheel. John was with him. Nobody was seriously hurt. Police had been driving behind them when the car had run into the side of the road and the nearest tree. He had to go to AA meetings as punishment. His lawyer told him to look spruce, intelligent and they would talk about his brilliant academic career ecetera. He lost his license for two years, but there was no cash paid out and Ivan didn’t suffer. He drove when he had to, daddy would have paid what there was to pay.
I made him promise never to drink and drive again. Threatening him with my absence.

I was unhappy though, dreading the weekend.

A packing list for Jett

Leaving for the weekend.

Jett is 8.

He's old enough to read.

I am a mother who fosters independance in my child. The benefits are for his self esteem, and for my ease of mind (I know he can take care of himself).

I wrote up a list (with his help), for stuff he was going to need for his weekend trip to his Aunty Linda.


This is the list -


Jett’s Packing List for Linda (8th February 2008)

· Toothpaste and tooth brush
· Two pairs of underwear
· Two pairs of shorts/pants
· Two T-shirts
· One jumper
· Crocs
· Glasses
· Hat
· Watch
· Give Aunty Linda a drawing
· uno

I printed out the list. Then Jett found all of the things on his list and layed them out on his bed.
I ckecked off the list and he packed his bag and had it ready at the door for when Aunty Linda came by to pick him up.

He took the list with him, and ckecked it off when he came home.

why?

If you're a mother, you already know why this is a good idea. If you are not, then the benefits are numerous.

The child learns independance. He feels capable and in charge of his life. He feels more secure in his relationship to life.

After a few trials, Jett will be able to modify the list.

He'll be able to print out his own list and pack his own bag and be responsible for his own things.

He's on the way to becoming a responsible adult.

(Every time I create new ideas for Jett, I think about if its going to create a person (particularly a male) I'd like to meet in the future. And if the answer is yes, I put the idea into practice.)

What kind of adult do you want your child to be?


post script -

Today (Friday, 22nd Feb) we went for day trip to a national park.

We didn't have enough water. We forgot a rubbish bag for the picnic and our binoculars.

The next list I'll be making is a 'day trip list'. But that is for another post.

What Happened to Jesus?

This is an excerpt from a previous post entitled 'Living with Revelation'.

(absolutely controversial and if you know you will be upset about a different point of view, please don’t read any further. The post is open to comment if you want to share your opinion)


Jesus

What actually happened to Jesus?

Jesus was baptised in the river Jordan. This event marks the beginning of Jesus' visions. He then went up into the mountain and disappeared for 40 days (please correct me if I’m wrong) and ‘spoke with god’. He underwent 'tempation'.

Once he had been through the experience (and what really happened, who knows?) and tried to formulate a way to express what he had been though, he came down and started preaching.

What language did he use to express his experience?

He used the language of his religion.

He used the vocabulary of his forefathers.

He used the language of Prophets.

Jesus had a revelation of some sort that guided him.

He viewed the experience from his upbringing – he was born a Jew.

The only thing that made sense to him at the time, was that he fulfilled the great prophesy.

The experience changed his relationship to life. Let’s say, almost over night, he became a man with a vision. He didn’t hold the same view of life as he did before. He was willing to put his ideas out there, regardless of the threat to his life. He KNEW that what he had to say was more important than anything else. He was driven.

What does Jesus say?

Love everyone (your neighbour) as yourself. (IE – we are one and the same)

Love the Lord God with all your heart and all of your mind.

LOVE. What does love do? It breaks down barriers and brings people together. It promotes compassion and forgiveness.

Memories

The first memory

I have one memory of my parents together. I was about five years old. It happens to be my earliest memory. The vision comes to my head with the noise of raised voices, the tension alive and vibrating in the house, within my heart.

They were in the hall, it was dim, it must have been late afternoon. I could hear the panic in my mother's voice and I came around the corner to see them. He was on top of her, straddled across her waist, pinning her arms above her head. I saw a two person battle, locked in a familiar ritual.

They couldn't see beyond themselves. Trapped.

But Dad turned and saw me, his brown hair hanging over the crease of his face.

'Look,' he said, answering my expression, 'I'm just holding her down. She wants to kill me. Its for her own good. Look.' I looked and saw the helpless frustration of my mother. She was pitiful and in my child's eyes was the weaker of the two. Her struggles were barbaric, animalistic, twisting desperately on the floor. She did want to kill him. I carried that image with me for many years before I reviewed it.


Watching in Silence

My father put James and I onto the vacant lot beside our house. We had been fighting viciously, so as punishment he placed us side by side and watched from the front door. I was in primary school. James is two years younger and he was laughing, his skinny legs tucked up and his arms making a hoop over them. I was beyond rational thought. I was hysterical and undisciplined. I began to push at him and tell him to shut up.

Shut-up!!

I yelled it over and over until my pushes turned into punches while James laughed, his body rocking, his face creased. My screams were loud, hoarse, making me dizzy so that I fell back into a daze of wide eyed hysteria. I ended by thrusting myself into the grass and rubbing my arms vigorously and violently until I was pulled up from the ground. I was immersed in the swirls of my mind. There was nothing beyond the void surrounded by wavering, pulsations of violet and red. There was no pain. That emptiness was sacred and gave me a glimpse of the meaning of peace.

It is the first time I can recollect moving outside of my physical body. Freedom. There was no demanding self. Just a disengaged, unattached soul, watching in silence.

Or some might just call it shock.


Flames

She was in the front seat. We were waiting for him. He was in the TAB. I don't know where my brother or sister were. I was quiet, waiting.

Its the 70's and the woman has an afro hair style, a fluffy sparrow coloured haze around her face. Her cheeks are sunken with drunkenness, her wet lips slack.

The two were in the white panel van, with his easels and paints in the back. He has had the lot stolen a couple of times. He took it in his stride though Mum felt the invasion like rat's claws over her skin when she saw the mess they made.

The woman has a black top and a long flowered skirt. She wears a black band around her wrist. Her body is hunched over, her hair falling forward. And then she began to light a cigarette, flick, flicking, the light flaring up in front of her face. The flare turns her skin warmly yellow for a moment. The cigarette is dangling from her partly painted lips. I watched, leaning over into the front seat. I knew what to expect, my hands were ready.

Then her hair was sizzling, frizzling up, the smell instantly bitter and ashy in my nostrils. I screamed her name, pure fear piping the word out, my hands grasping the fired hair, trying desperately to stop the lightening-quick barely seen attack.

Her head jerked forward several times but the woman really had no perception of her state. Flames or none, there was only one reality available for her.

I pressed myself back into the seat and felt the cold upholstery. My body was overheated with confusion. I turned so I could still see her bowed head.


She told me this one

He tore her books up in her face. It was her only secret pleasure, something that could take her away from the here and now of his needle sarcasm and deliver her.

I don't remember it. She says i was five or six. He'd been away a couple of weeks on a job. My older sister whispered that he was visiting his other family.

"There are three of them, we're the second family."

She had beautiful brown eyes, long brown hair parted down the middle like any 70's child. The cut of her hair emphasized her large eyes, the doe expression.

I didn't feel anything about what she said. I don't recall thinking. It was acceptance and adjustment and listening and waiting. I wasn't the little kid that suffered in silence and looked cute doing it. I smiled a lot. I was a girl. Cute enough to learn the fundamentals of female charm.

Mum was reading on the lounge, her feet elevated. He left the car around the corner; one of his tricks, so she didn't know he was in the house. Her surprise can only be guessed at. He was like living with a taut wire across your throat. The tension he created by being in the house was enough to rip your breathing to shreds.

She would have felt the air change before she heard him. He was light on his feet. He would have been watching her for a few moments, possibly minutes, before she became aware of him. Her throat tightened, her eyed widened. Her pose is fixed, the glare of his presence pinning her.
Only after tense and definite fear had caught hold of her would he begin to speak; low, sharp, his body deceptively casual, the coy lowering of his eyes drawing the moment to its peak with studied drama.

She wouldn't be able to avert the scene. It was impossible. She knew him and feared him and felt her stomach clench in horror at the thought of him. And he stood before her. Accusing her when he had been away for days...

He drank to get away from the spirit of wasted and befouled genius and she drank to get away from him. He drank to forget his life and she drank to live. They balanced each other by being Mummy and Daddy and pretending to the world out there (of school and dance classes and cannabis parties) to be a family.

So they argued and threw things around the room and there is nothing, to me, so harsh as an Australian man and woman screaming at each other. Its the accent, the stress they put on the words of abuse. The same cruel taunts came up every time. The same words, the same tone, the same screeching the wild whothefuckcares stance of both partners that ticks inside our heads. We heard the words a million times, but the desperate way she sometimes screamed his name shot straight into my stomach.

She didn't buy herself another book for about twelve years. Then I inadvertently brought her a book on hiking and heard the reason she only had a few magazines in her book shelf. I remind her of him, but I can't help it. There is nothing I can do to plug the memories she has. She's like a different person now, but it leaks through every now and then. A taste of bitterness, a tightening of her eyes.


Dad

My father used to take us fishing. Camping trips all around and sleeping all together in a tent or the back of the combie. He sat me on his knee and let me hold the fishing rod. I mostly remember warm sunshine and seeing mutilated and scaled fish in the bottom of the bucket. Or squiggly worms, still alive, being squeezed onto hooks. Right up their arses, he said.

He used to lay traps around the house so he would know what we had been up to. His room used to have invisible bits of string showing him if someone had been into his closet or had opened a draw. I never touched his things so this part of his life didn't concern me directly. Unless it was the threat of being falsely accused. Though this never happened.

I felt Dad managed his drunkenness better than many I have seen. He did have an explosive, violent temper. He brooded a lot. He was melancholy, distrustful and generally a foul personality.
But he had a warmth about it. As if he was lit up inside by a glowing flame. He was generous, he laughed a lot and his hand was comforting on my shoulder.

He used to wake me up in the middle of the night to perform tricks for his friends. I had to show my legs, they were athletic and he was proud of them. Wiggle your ears, roll your stomach, flare your nose, press your elbows together. Freakish circus tricks. Dad performed the finale by lifting James and myself up off the ground by holding a handful of our hair in each hand. The secret was gripping the hair close to the scalp. And he would raise us up, using the strength in his shoulders. Then we could go back to bed, to lay and listen to their laughter and the sound of glass bottles filling the corridor.

His mother is a compulsive cleaner. I mean, totally fanatical. Everything is cleaned and re cleaned every day, possibly three times. And vacuuming went on at all hours of the day. I have a theory that people tidy their houses so ferociously because its the only domain in the world they feel they are in control of. They feel the limitless expanse of the world, and in defense, so as not to fall off, they make sense of their house by buying things for it and tidying the little rooms and dusting and wiping and vacuuming and it goes on and on in circles, because circles are contained and any lateral movement might let them fall into some void of crazed insane possibilities. And so, she cleaned.
She's a neat, straight as a pin lady with not an ounce of fat on her. Not particularly a cuddly grandmother and not particularly kind. Though she did her duty by her husband and son.

When he was ten his father won some money in a lottery and left her. He took the boy, Daniel, my dad, and they travelled to the bigger cities. The money fled into the hands of pub-owners, hotel rooms, party-girls, and sure pals. Empty of pocket but with memories that were going to have to last the rest of his life, he returned to his cage. The door opened and my grandmother let him back in, where, with her silence, she never let him forget his wayward prance into the great unknown.
Grandad worked, came home, ate his dinner and sat in front of the television. He gave what money he earned to her.

She cleaned.

She took care of the boy.

My father told several stories about his childhood, but I think they were mostly made up moral tales, with a severe punishment in the ending. The things he said, in retrospect, couldn't possible have happened. That must have been my grandmother's input into his personality.

My mother actually believes that evil dwells in that house. Its a pretty horrific thought.

I've seen pictures of him when he was a boy. Dressed neat, like a little man. His hair parted severely to one side. He was in short pants. His face is so serious. I felt a genuine movement in my heart when I first saw that picture. It seemed to embody the beginnings of a life. A life seemingly capable of moving in many directions, yet only moving in one.

But he craved a warm family, a child to hold.

Though he couldn't do it. He tried, several times.

The family would begin, and his heart would be hardened and he would enforce his personality upon household until it couldn't breath.

There was a disease in his mind, holding him back from life. It was the disease of memory, of life experience, of upbringing. He didn't see the greater good. It passed him by while he dreamed life in bitterness.

School

The first full length memory I have of myself sprouting my individuality was in a tantrum I threw about going to school. I said I wouldn’t go, I screamed it, I cried and frowned and my face was red with unhappiness.

‘You don’t have to go. Don’t go. But you’ll have to go and get yourself a job if you stay home. I won’t have a pack of loafers in my house.’

I went to school, slamming the door as I left. Tears of rage, my feet in brown strap sandals.

What Happened to Siddhartha?

(This is a snip bit of another larger post entitled 'Living with Revelation')

I have to admit I love this story.

So, a young man leaves everything he owns. Not just any young man, but a prince. He leaves everything he knows, all of his comforts, all of his familiar things and goes in search for something else. Something spiritual.

He was looking for answers.

It is said that Siddhartha was searching for the ‘ truth and eternal peace’, to ‘subjugate his ego’, to ‘search for the ultimate truth’, ‘for enlightenment’ and for the answer to human suffering.

He wandered into the world and began his search. For years. He tried different methods that were already being taught by other traditions.

What ever it was that Siddhartha was looking for, he didn’t find it following other people. He found it, and this is important, when he gave up the traditions he had been following. He had learnt all there was to learn following those paths, and when he realised he was no closer to the truth for all his searching, he stopped, sat down (under a now famous bodhi tree) and resigned himself.

He stripped himself bare. He had, in a way, given up.

Then, after seeing the futility of his previous struggles, he finally cast away the last of the past, and discovered himself in the ever living moment. And (easy as it sounds) voila – enlightenment!

Now Siddhartha didn’t begin to preach right away. He thought and contemplated and found words to describe what had happened to him. He met a group of his old fellow ascetics, and he spoke to them. He used words they could understand. He spoke to them in the context of their mutual tradition.

Remember that Siddhartha was born a Hindu. He used the language of his forefathers, just as Jesus used the language of the Jews.

He had undergone an experience that had no context. Can you imagine how it must feel? To try to explain something that seems to have no living history?


What did Siddhartha discover?

For me, its important to remember, that they say, Siddhartha's first thought was 'Its impossible to teach this'.

He then tries anyway, and puts his revealed state of understanding into language that UNENLIGHTENED beings can understand.

If you see something, and nobody has seen it before, how will you explain it? Probably in comparison with things they do have previous knowledge of.

So, people undergoing a spiritual revelation, must use concepts we can understand.

And even if its close,its not really the same thing.

For a very simple explanation of what the Buddha taught (and i think simplicity is best in this circumstance) , click here

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/pbs2_unit04.htm

Shifts in Awareness

The first time

The first time I felt it was during the autumn. The leaves falling - golden coins in the breeze. I walked towards those flashing flickering gold leaves, my arm in a sling. A car had hit me as I was coming home from school. My rendition of the accident could never be like coloured pencils flying high-reminiscent of a circus- slow motion.

I was walking towards the falling leaves. Time was not apparent. There was only the moment- strangely warm on my face, the tall poplars, the white fence, the shutters on the cottage house.
Norma Crescent.

And I was transported. Removed from my physical self. There was only that moment, and I was of it. I can still recall the sensation with vivid impact.


Sometimes

I gave up athletics when I was fourteen but I never stopped running; around the block, at the grass oval, up at the National Park, on the country roads- flat as a tack, on the beach. I’ve tried running on a treadmill but its not the same. Its the warm breeze on my flushed cheeks that I like. Its the movement, of landscape passing by, trees, cars, people, shop windows. It feels good to have the power in my legs, to push myself further. Its good to breath in that dry air in the country, that humid air on the coast and to feel the sun on my back, or see it glinting through the trees.

Running makes me feel as if I’m going somewhere, as if I’m being pointed in a direction and I’m moving forward to attain that goal.

I like the air expanding my lungs until my chest hurts, I like the salt on my upper lip, I like to look at myself in the mirror and see my red face, the sweat dampening my clothes.

But I don’t enjoy bending down in a line with other girls and racing them. Dad said I didn’t have the killer instinct. He’s right. He took the light out of my step. With him there was always a catch. So I gave up jogging around the stadium to take up running around the suburbs where my grandmother lived.

I was twenty-one when I felt God's breath on me again. I was positioned, ready, seeking transportation. My life at this time was geared towards the inner-self.


The Red Gums

I began meditating for ten or so minutes every day. Just relaxing and trying to release the hold the world had upon me. I read a lot about many different religions. I was searching, looking for an answer. Looking for something that would make sense and hold the world together. I was looking for something that would make life worth living.

I'd been in the country for about six months, helping the family I was living with in the garden for board and lodgings. I disliked the people very much. They were materialistic, pompous and geared towards living a life that the world would think highly of.

The woman always introduced me as 'Tiffany, English Literature Graduate, writing a novel...' I had several heated discussions with the man of the house. Though often they were in Melbourne and I took care of things while they were away. Peaceful times. Perfect for my conscious search.

My mind was wavering between 'determined to produce better happy times for myself' and 'sometimes I really can't help my depression. It just happens and I can't lift myself our of it. Sad in a way. Must be accepted with everything.' I wasn't sure at all how to go about making life better.
I'd been studying the tarot for several years. In the country I used the cards often as a guide to my inner life and stopped foretelling the future. It occurred to me that all this worrying about the future meant that we weren't thinking about the life we were leading now. That's one of the reasons I feel so repulsed by lotteries. The advertising encourages people to look forward to a trouble free future with lots of money. So millions of people give millions of dollars towards some totally mind-projected vision of the future. There is no now. And the slogan 'Get me out of here' sung in such a deceptively mild tone indicates the frustration and unsatisfactory lives people are leading. That more and more money is the answer for so many people should make us wonder about ourselves and our goals in life. Anyway, I was trying to focus on my life as it was happening without projecting into the future. The tarot was helpful in many ways, and the symbolism on the cards helped expand my consciousness when I needed it.

One day I walked out of the house and looked up at the sun. Golden. It was in the morning. I was feeling good- refreshed. And I looked up and breathed the air and felt the world open up before my eyes. The blinds of my eyes were taken away and the earth became heaven and I was transported.

I moved to the country in January. It was a hot summer.

I lived in one of the small self contained huts closer by the river. The previous owners had three huts built for enthusiastic canoeing weekends. We were on the Goulbourn River. My hut was the furthest away form the main house.

I had a huge pink protia bush by one side of the hut and rosemary and lavender bushes along the other sides. There were many bees. I was about ten steps away from the river bank. Two long tailed honey suckling birds with a beautiful song woke me each morning. They fed on the syrup from the half grown banksia by the door.

I’d open my eyes to a dusky light. Then I’d hear Tammy pad across the roof trying to catch the singers. Half and hour later she would meow at the door and I’d let her in and unchain the dogs.

My life was suddenly, most deeply changed. I wasn't sure what to do with my new sight. I felt my new knowledge was secret, sacred and silent. Not for all ears. So I braced myself for continual learning, experiencing and recalling.

'Dearest Freshness Deep Down Things'


Information was streaming into my mind, unbidden. I have several theories where it was coming from, but none can really explain the reality. It was merely from a higher realm. Something above and beyond the physical plane. I used Christian words such as God and Lord only because they came natural to me, from the community and the society I was brought up in.

During the early months, while it was hot, I would begin the day with a quick swim in the river. There was a gravel path down to a sandy bend in the river. The dogs would bound around chasing each other, racing in and out of the water like children. Only old Rags would lower himself slowly and stately in. He’d stand there sniffing and then walk out to shake and lie in the sun. Dame and Jake usually left him alone. It took me a month or so to become confident enough to immerse myself in the river. I never liked the ooze of mud or leaves or sticks under my feet. I was used to the clean pressure of sand at a beach. The river seemed full of unpleasant surprises. But I soon became used to the feel of sludge between my toes, and the icy feel of the brown river passing me by.
There was a huge old tree trunk further out. Sometimes Dame used to swim out to it and lie there, barking to us left on the bank. Sometimes I’d grab my towel and run up the path, the other two following, and Dame spluttering in the water trying to get to us before we were out of sight. Delight in peeving her. Delight in being the master. I don’t know why.

I put my overalls on and tramped up to the house. They had, ridiculous to me, several gardens with European exports wilting in apparent splendour. I weeded, mulched, watered, fed and planted. I spent a couple of hours a day in different parts around the house. Though mostly I paid attention to the vegetable patch, carrots, potatoes, zucchini, tomatoes, capsicum, cauliflower, beans, spinach; interspersed with Jen’s favourite roses, onions and nasturtiums. Queer girl.

I let the sun burn my shoulders and arms- I wore gloves and a hat. I put snail bait in careful places so the animals wouldn’t eat them. Apparently cats love them. I let the dirt rub my knees, get into my boots and embed itself into my fingernails. I wiped the sweat with my shoulder or forearm. I picked wild strawberries and ate them with a prong in my hand. I fed almonds to Dame who also learnt to unshell them. She was a beautiful Border Collie with light tiger eyes. The three of them would sit around and watch me. Sometimes padding off to sit in the shade if it was too hot or lap carelessly at their bucket of water.

Tammy and Jimmy played in the over grown ‘cottage garden’. They stuck their paws out of thick bushes, frightening the living daylights out of me.

‘Jesus, you bloody stupid cat.’

I laughed though, my heart beating too quickly.

I had dinner with Jen and Dave. Nice enough. They did eat chicken. Society will not give up the convenience of meat. When one talks about it they say, 'Sh, don't mention it.' 'Don't think about it.' is another phrase frequently used. Ignorance. Deliberate, lazy ignorance. But I do not yell this in bitterness. A still day. Its hard for me to live.

Down further to the bottom of the property is a huge cluster of red gums. Most of them have been chopped down along the river, but Dave and Jen were lucky enough to find this spectacular reserve. The grass was lush and green in the winter. It was shaded from the too hot sun in Summer. I have a beautiful photo of Dame black and white in the long grass. She was such a beautiful dog. There were rabbits down there. Jimmy used to bring up freshly killed baby rabbits to eat in front of me.

I saw magpies, kookaburras, cockatoos, galhas, finches, tiny little red breasted dancing birds, pelicans, hawks, king fishers-flash of blue, willy wag tails. I walked down there in the evenings. The animals following or racing ahead according to their dispositions. There was a trodden path, over logs, weaving between the tall white trees, leading down to the river. Rabbits would scuttle at our approach, Dame and Jake excited and never quick enough. Birds screamed to each other, the breeze jostled the leaves. From a distance the trees stood tall, changing clour with the rise and fall of the sun, but inside it was as if time was stilled, and there could be no change.

There was a lush richness in those trees. The area was full of moisture and life.

Closer to the river there were lines and rows of wattles. They drooped their branches into the water and marked the twists and turns of the rivers passage.

I can feel madness creeping up to me, laughing with delight at my unstable state. A tick of a clock could have me falling in a moment.

There is no such thing as evil. It is man made.

To know is to take away the question. To understand life is to take it away.

There is a large elongated oval in front of my vision. It is darker, than on the outside of it. I can not see the lighter bits clearly. People put significance on objects, ideas, visions not on anything divine. WAKE-UP. Remain true to yourself. Do not batten yourself down under routine or expectance. You have been offered something more, something more real than all of the illusions around you. Grasp it! Take life and do as you will!

Life is this continual struggle to support both spiritual and physical health. If one is well, the other is sure to be tortured. Must keep the light of All within our breast to help guide the way. Starlight and future.

Whatever is recognized as wrong is wrong. Each for each person. We all contain our own Orisis in our heads. As soon as we fly against our natures we are suffering. Judge yourself. There's no need. Just listen and be guided by the inner self. If it is 'right' then you will know. Accept change as natural, not something that you must fight. If you must fight change, you must begin with trying to hold the earth still.

If I could explain this tingling awareness. But it must remain unexplainable to be passed on. A feeling, a power. Not dominace over me, but a steadiness of being.

Love of all. Nothing, for me, should be above this.

That is the folly of preachers, to make everyone, even those who are not ready to know, pretend to a higher life. So you enforce religion and it becomes hypocricy.

'The outward ceremony is Antichrist.' - William Blake.

One morning I opened my cabin door and looked out to the red gums. They were stark white, the leaves dark, the sun low on the horizon. And there, at the start of the forrest stood two tall kangaroos, their front paws at their chest. Their ears high, they saw me at once and stood still, their slim faces turned to me.

After several moments they bent and moved low to the ground, feeding.
The dogs were whining. They had heard the sound of my door open and I hadn’t let them off their chains yet. But I didn’t want them chasing the kangaroos.

So I watched them until they moved off into where ever they came from.

The dogs hadn’t scented them. They waited for me to go down to the river but I changed the routine and went down later in the morning.

I want to join society.

A large flock of Galahs came to us every morning and evening during late summer and early autumn. They were incredibly loud and were the largest group I’d ever seen. They rose as one, their wings flashing pink and white. They were magical to watch, wheeling this way and that, adhering to some kind of brilliant system that moved them from A to B while looking spectacular at the same time.

They settled in the grasses, moving with their head low, pecking grass seeds. Sometimes it was impossible to see them they were so low, and then a little movement and I saw dozens of them appearing like a visual trick becoming clear. But they were noisy little buggars and Dave hated them. Used to threaten to shoot them. But it was just to here my protests.

It is a beautiful morning. The kind of beginning to a day that perfects part of your heart.

New fresh leaves jostling, twinkling, rustling in the cool breeze. Blue, blue sky with a faint mist on the horizon and thin insubstancial clouds.

So green! And the daisies yellow a springy carpet, a faint sheild over the earth.

Its the breeze, the air itself that is so special.

What I catch the most in my heart is the broken, curved, straight, purely white bark of the redgums.
So pure straight noble. Hardly of this world. Unrecognizable. Queer how the young fresh apricot tree looks more familiar than these sparce, dominant redgums. And their indifferent foliage! The light slashes the bark, blanching it bright, ghostly, with its shadow too.

And it wasn't until the delicate white cup sat in a stream of sunlight that its strark reality came upon me. Its outline, its full body, its reality. So much sharper, more distinguished in the bright sun, than in the pasty, pastel shade. Its shape was lost. And then the dark glitter of the tea. Rocking smoothly in the cup as I softly move my pen across this page. The darkness says 'I am a hollow! In this cup I am the hollow!' To remind us that a cup has a purpose and is not really only pasty white, but filled, a darkly black inner, and a shine of pride, a holding, used cup. It stands so distinguished with this dark liquid.

A most facinating drawing day today. Absolute. Freshening. A caress upon my anxiety for newness. Its smooth soothing calmness. Nothing intense. Nothing forced and brooding as when clouds cluster to hamper the sun and blot the sky. Just clearness and fresh bright life. An enjoyable, sweetly scented day.

Self! A search for the essence of self. There must be a protective veil over the found parts so that the pain of regret is not so often. Its not so bad as it was. A finding of self, and then to live. No wonder people don't think if it is going to lead to this unease.

There were floods that winter. The water level rose several meters above the previous record. The slight curves down by the river became pools. I heard a squealing noise and the dogs barking wildly by the river. I ran out to see, and splashing in the last throes of a horrific death was a rabbit.
I hadn’t seen a wild adult rabbit so close before- but its eyes were empty, its body spazmodically tried to keep itself from going under. I picked up a stick and tried somehow to bring the thrashing animal closer to the bank- but then there was me and the dogs barking. Its eyes were empty black holes.

The river was only half a meter or so from the top of the back. The wattles hardly flowered that year. It was my coldest winter. My feet and finger tips froze. I tried to conserve the gas heater while Jen and Dave were away. At night I wore several layers of clothing and had four blanckets but I still froze.

And I slept 10-11 hours. I would lay in bed waiting for the light. It was just too cold to inspire me to move. Though hot porrige greeted me in the winter and I was still drinking coffee. A great comfort then.

This is most important to remember. Love should never be first, and the falseness of the popular love song is a lie and a false value. Self and God is the most distinctly important. If love comes to undermine the loyalty to All, it should be cast aside. Why does love excuse so many atrosities within the family? STUPID. False loyality.

I find it difficult to keep up with it all. I have tried today, to join myself into the general jovial spirit for our new adventure and I find that I soon fall low and find a distaste in my mouth for the empty joys of mindless living.

‘Girls just want to have fun.’

‘All I want to do is have some fun.’ Insanity.

Then it comes to out an out stupidity and I feel my whole body freezing over in coldness and lack of understanding.

Living with Revelation

My Religious Background

My mother and father were atheists. More, my mother sneered at (and still can’t believe how stupid Christians are) most religions in a superior tone and taught me to disregard religious belief.

My father taught me ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ he said, just to be on the safe side.. (in other words, in case he was wrong).

I was exempt from religious studies in school (Religious studies - in the 80’s that meant learning about Christians) and spent the religious studies time with a child who wore a turban, a French blond boy and two girls that had their hair covered, sat close to each other and never spoke to anyone.



The revelation

What happened?

I was 21.

It was August 1993.

I was walking the dogs around the small farm property I lived on in Nagambie. I looked up at the sun. It was golden.

I was feeling good, refreshed, relaxed with my lifestyle.

I looked up and breathed the air and felt the world open up before my eyes.

It felt like the blinds were taken away and the earth became heaven and I saw everything merge and become one.

I saw through the individuality of each object and saw, with my own eyes, another dimension of reality.. what seemed obviously the REAL reality, and how every one thing, was actually the same as ALL things.

Tears began to stream down my face… and my heart was too small for my body… my chest felt like it would cave in and I was incapable of receiving the information without a dramatic emotional response.

The impact of that moment, with all of its ramifications, changed intrinsically my relationship with life.

I cried for three days.

I tried to put words to what I saw as the visual unveiling of the world.

And ‘something’ was talking to me. And that something is still always consciously there, when I call it into awareness. But it doesn’t feel like me. It feels like something that is always there, but I am unconscious of its presence unless I open myself to it.

When it first spoke to me, I thought, honestly, that it was the voice of god. (see 'Diary extracts' further down the page if you're interested in what was happening at the moment or revelation. Be warned, it sounds kooky, even to me)


Revelation - then what?

My life was suddenly, most deeply changed. I wasn't sure what to do with my new sight. I felt that people wouldn't understand. I should wait to be approached. I felt my new knowledge was secret, sacred and silent. Not for all ears. So I braced myself for continual learning, experiencing and recalling.

I tired to write about what happened and discovered that as little I knew about Christianity, it was the only language available to me to describe what I had seen and what I was feeling. I used words such as God and Lord because they came naturally to me, from the community and the society I was bought up in.

Information was streaming into my mind, unbidden. I have several theories where it was coming from, but none can really explain the reality. It was merely from a higher realm. Something above and beyond the physical plane.

Learning How to Be Human

Since 1993, I've studied 'being human'. I had been an emotionally frozen figure with too many hang ups to list. And I am using my time to discover humanity through my own experience and by engaging with people in the world. Something I had never done before. (I had been known to take books with me to parties was obliged to attend)

I'm learning about the body.

I study anatomy and train hard physically.

I've competed in Fitness and worked in a gym.

I teach yoga, qigong and basic belly dance.

I studied sex and why we do it and how to do it.

I'm learning to cook.

I learnt about a humans social obligations, and how to small talk. I went to Japan and learnt what was expected of members of society.

I contemplate the levels of responsibility I have. Beginning with my immediate circle, (my body, my son), secondary (my partner and family and friends), then, my neighbourhood, my country, my world.

I study the mind and how it works.

I learn about memories and how to view the future.

I study life, living, being, shifts in awareness, growth, development, motivation.

I study religions and read sacred texts.

I practice meditation.

I practice gratitude.

Positives of Being an Atheist and an Australian

Honestly, I could not be me if I was not born an atheist.

I had no religious tradition to ‘view’ my experience from. I didn’t interpret my experience through any theory on God. All I know is that we are all the same. We are one. I didn’t say Jehovah said, or Mohammad said, or Vishnu said. I just saw the ‘all’. Nothing else. With no dogma, no history, no frame work.

It was just a fact. We are one. All else is illusion.

I could not be me, if I viewed what happened to me from the stand point of being a member of another religion.

It helps me to have an open mind to other people' spiritual point of view. I don't put one religion above another. I understand that we are all doing 'our best' in our relationship to the unknowable.

Of course, being born Australian also helped kick any traditional view in the teeth. A nation who prides itself on being 'new' and a conglomerate of many nations with a tradition of BBQ's and reality TV.

I feel I'm in a neutral place.

Only, I know there is a 'all', a 'god', an 'energy source', a deeper reality than we can see.

Yoga and Buddhism

Discovering that yoga meant 'to unite', to be as one, instantly peaked my interest. Its the study of being one. Someone has already seen what I've seen, and they begun to propagate 'methods of unity'. Yoga. To me, its that simple. Yoga offers different methods of practising 'unity'. They either appeal to you, or they don't.

Everything is just a TOOL to use in our search for UNITY.

What makes it different for me? I know we are one. I'm practising integrating my every day life with this spiritual truth. And its here, that yoga helps.

Its the same for me, with Buddhism.

Buddhists study the workings of the mind. And they do it from love. They bring a delicate, light sense of humour to a subject I have always taken too seriously. They practise being one with absolute compassion and love. This can be embodied in a master, or saint, but the point is merging the inner self with the deathless, ever present awareness.

Any renditions I have read about this deathless state seems identical to what I witnessed in my experience.

So I study both yoga and Buddhism above the other spiritual traditions because they seem to ring true to the experience I have.

And now?

Its time for me to talk openly about what happened. I've felt in the past, honestly embarrassed, with the experience. It sounds so far fetched. I sound possessed. I sound like a missionary.

I have enough experience to begin to speak openly and honestly about my view of life. I feel comfortable with myself.

I see my life as a success story. As proof that life can be more than misery, unhappiness, criticism and escape.

And we keep learning.

My Responsibility

Imagine that right now, something extraordinary happened. You honestly believed that a 'higher' power spoke to you, and told you a secret of life. What do you do? Keep it to your self, or tell someone? If you decide to tell someone, who do you tell? Your family? Your friends?

Just because you heard what seemed to be the word of god, it doesn't mean anyone else did. They are still going to think you are kooky.

At first I only told my closest friends and family. Every time I mentioned it, I stared to cry (mind you, I still do). I didn't understand what I was suppose to do with this kind of knowledge. And I was 21. I felt ridiculously young and inexperienced.

Having read about other spiritual traditions, I felt more comfortable and less alone. Being a mind and body teacher offered me a frame work to introduce the topic of spirituality. And now, I accept myself as I am.

I have a responsibility to myself. To live the way I think best, to be available to learn, and pass on information in appropriate circumstances.

What About Other People Who Experienced Spiritual Revelation?

(absolutely controversial and if you know you will be upset about a different point of view, please don’t read any further. The post is open to comment if you want to share your opinion)

Jesus

What actually happened to Jesus?

Jesus was baptised in the river Jordan. This event marks the beginning of Jesus' visions. He then went up into the mountain and disappeared for 40 days (please correct me if I’m wrong) and ‘spoke with god’. He underwent 'tempation'.

Once he had been through the experience (and what really happened, who knows?) and tried to formulate a way to express what he had been though, he came down and started preaching.

Jesus had a revelation of some sort that guided him. He viewed the experience from his upbringing – he was born a Jew. The only thing that made sense to him at the time, was that he fulfilled the great prophesy.

What language did he use to express his experience?

He used the language of his religion.

He used the vocabulary of his forefathers.

He used the language of Prophets.

The experience changed his relationship to life. Let’s say, almost over night, he became a man with a vision. He didn’t hold the same view of life as he did before. He was willing to put his ideas out there, regardless of the threat to his life. He KNEW that what he had to say was more important than anything else. He was driven.

What does Jesus say?

Love everyone (your neighbour) as yourself. (IE – we are one and the same nobody is higher or lower)

Love the Lord God with all your heart and all of your mind.

LOVE. What does love do? It breaks down barriers and brings people together. It promotes compassion and forgiveness.

Siddhartha

I have to admit I love this story.

So, a young man leaves everything he owns. Not just any young man, but a prince. He leaves everything he knows, all of his comforts, all of his familiar things and goes in search for something else. Something spiritual. He was looking for answers.

It is said that Siddhartha was searching for the ‘ truth and eternal peace’, to ‘subjugate his ego’, to ‘search for the ultimate truth’, ‘for enlightenment’ and for the answer to human suffering.

He wandered into the world and began his search. For years. He tried different methods that were already being taught by other traditions. What ever it was that Siddhartha was looking for, he didn’t find it following other people. He found it, and this is important, when he gave up the traditions he had been following. He had learnt all there was to learn following those paths, and when he realised he was no closer to the truth for all his searching, he stopped, sat down (under a now famous bodhi tree) and resigned himself.

He stripped himself bare. He had, in a way, given up.

Then, after seeing the futility of his previous struggles, he finally cast away the last of the past, and discovered himself in the ever living moment. And (easy as it sounds) voila – enlightenment!

Now Siddhartha didn’t begin to preach right away. He thought and contemplated and found words to describe what had happened to him. He met a group of his old fellow ascetics, and he spoke to them. He used words they could understand. He spoke to them in the context of their mutual tradition. Remember that Siddhartha was born a Hindu. He used the language of his forefathers, just as Jesus used the language of the Jews.

He had undergone an experience that had no context. Can you imagine how it must feel? To try to explain something that seems to have no living history?


What did Siddhartha discover?

For me, its important to remember, that they say, Siddhartha's first thought was 'Its impossible to teach this'.

He then tries anyway, and puts his revealed state of understanding into language that UNENLIGHTENED beings can understand.

If you see something, and nobody has seen it before, how will you explain it? Probably in comparison with things they do have previous knowledge of.

So, people undergoing a spiritual revelation, must use concepts we can understand.

And even if its close,its not really the same thing.

For a very simple explanation of what the Buddha taught (and i think simplicity is best in this circumstance) , click here

http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/buddhism/pbs2_unit04.htm

Muhammad

Muhammad retired for meditation.

At the age of 40 or so, he began to have visions of God.

Then, think about this, he waited 4 years before preaching. Why wait?

Muhammad and Siddhartha were a bit more canny than Jesus in this respect. They thought about what had happened to them and formulated a teaching that could be easily understood and followed by those who were NOT in communication with 'God' or the 'Universal mind'.

Muhammad says 'God is one'.

Muhammad was born into a Abrahamic religion. (Just as Jesus was.) However, he didn't speak the same spiritual language as those from Judaism. He spoke from the tradition of Islam. So he won and lost different tribes according to the language he used.

Those from Judaism noted that he did not comply with what their ancestors preached and the Christians were similarly sceptical of Muhammad's claims.

Does it mean the revelations did not occur?

Let's keep it simple.

Muhammad had a revelationary experience.

He used the language of Islam (the 'real' truth of Abraham according to Muslims) and preached according to his tradition.

He comes, as does Jesus and Siddhartha, from a tradition where prophets and holy men and healers were part of their every day.

What language, what tradition, what history would you use to express YOUR revelationary experience?

Diary Extracts

9-8-93
The answer is God, but not God. At each moment one must recall God in the supreme sense; being ALL. And one must rejoice in serving the All of God and recall the reason for life. Remember your current life.

With realization of every moment one feels all and singular. Encompassing.

If you recognize a wrong, do not blind yourself to it out of convenience and laziness. This is abnegation of what God is.

Subtle guidance. Never forget. Keep it fresh.

Life is guiding you. Be ready and accepting of death at any time. Have no cause for regret.

It is not love but joy. Joy born of acceptance. Mild or ecstatic. Love is not real in our sense of what love is. It is a false value. We must search and attain joy. So possible. How fulfilling.

At once important and nothing.

At once powerful and less than dust.

To realize is but to recognize life in a purer, higher sense. Can we then say that this is the highest sense? After just stepping on the ladder I must yell NO!!! So much more available for us. Not religion, but All.

It is not love but awareness that is the prime ingredient to human 'being'.

The tarot is not anything in itself. It is only by attaching it with symbolism, learnt signs, that it can be of any use to humans. It is merely a rung on the ladder, a helpful stepping stone. It is but a reflection of ourselves. It reflects our perception, our knowledge, our own higher and lower selves.

It is Buddha who says 'ignorance is the greatest sin'. Ignorance is the root of all evil. Nothing else. Awareness is everything...


10.8.93
Why say 'Amen'? Why ever finish a prayer? Should not our entire life be a type of prayer, acted out for the supreme consciousness. The all is fully aware, anyway, surely?

I have to fight against over enthusiasm. Its difficult to refrain from jumping around and screaming in a kind of Dionysian Ecstasy.

It is very strange to try and get used to this queer feeling. Continual prickles on my arms, running at all times to my scalp. Rushes of warmth in my chest. A pure delight in colour, shape, breathing, light. All. Always so close to breaking into tears of rapture. As now.

I'm 21 years old. I feel so grateful and so full of love and joy for being given this blessedness now. Thank-you. How can this consciousness be taken from me?

I understand The Fool symbolism now, more than I did. I feel as though people will see my whole head glowing with blessedness. It feels glowing. Radiance. Not illumination. I am offered up to the All.

11-8-93
My God consciousness has sunk beneath the surface. It can be called into being but it has faded so that I can continue learning and forging my way. I need to be in tune with the material, to be able to create something fresh with my writing. The All is acting on acute wisdom and goodness to me.

11-8-93
I was again entranced by the All, just now. Refreshed, blessed. Reminded of first hand experience. How can this be? All.

'But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord.' (Numbers 14:21)

The day began sky blue and warm. Within moments the mist had risen to become clouds over the blue and over the sun.

My body swayed. I was drowned in my own tears. Tears to cleanse. My burning secret locked inside of me. How will I be able to communicate with anyone? I offer myself. Vividly, my body, my limbs, are electrified by All's love.

While I write, and through the past few days (the only important days of my life?) I am visited by a smile. Shining out. I have no way to still it.

Its very cold today.

I feel as though people will stop me and ask me why my head is ablaze. I wonder if anyone can see me, or rather, what is springing from me.

Must guard against falseness. I'm here to learn how to control myself. Watch over-enthusiasm. Must hold my tongue. The power is from within. So blessed!

I am being driven to give up all religion. I had thought Churches were a stepping stone, to awaken God consciousness, but it seems the All does not agree. No religion. Just love of God. No more diversity in belief. What I'm suppose to do about this I don't know. My Lord is being cautious, knowing that 'prophets' are hounded and brought down to suffer. This is no longer acceptable for the future. How to unite the world in love of God and without religion?

It is up to the Lord. I am at your disposal, of my free will.

I know that there are others out there, suddenly being enlightened. We shall come together.


12-8-93
This morning I awoke early. Sixish and I lay in bed communicating, in my vague way, unto the All.

It is so:

All is illusion.

Nothing is real. Literally. Everything; the beauty, the terror, the joy, the horror: all is such a false value of reality. It is untrue.

I questioned.

Yes, we must enjoy, fear, love, hate, strive, yet recall that all is but a reflection.

I gave my worship to the sun and immediately the sun was covered to remind me that if I interpret the All as beauty, then I must also interpret All as misery as well. For if God is All then it is truly everything that is. Then there is no good or bad, it is just an interpretation of events. Humans make good and bad.

Place nothing on a higher value but receive it all. I shall be delivered. Always remember the true value of this world: nothing. It is transitory and a fast fading illusion.

I'm going into the town tomorrow. I'm most hesitant. I know there must be a balance, but I almost cringe at the thought that I must think of my physical self. I am trembling with unease. My self is so new. Hard to know how to behave. I'm unsteady on my feet.

Already I have laughed loud and nervous, excused my flashes of 'insanity'. Quite painfully shy. Distressing. And then, I remember the All. (Found out that All is Pan in Greek) and I smile and nothing matters. I must not disclose my secret to anyone who does not ask to hear.

If any old weariness or dissatisfaction comes upon me I merely think and bring to consciousness the 'dearest freshness deep down things' and I am smiling!

13-8-93
Last night I was beginning to doubt my sanity. I wandered 'perhaps all this illusion is only an added illusion to my life'. And then, seemingly with no reason, I selected William Blake's poetry to read.

Thank-you, again, for this. Once Blake was obscure, but I see more clearly.

He has been touched with the same hand as myself. He knows the All and knows much more than I...so much to discover. He has a tingle of fanatical desperation, but I tell you it is because of the era he was in. Sanity is in the eye of the beholder.

14-8-93
Its an overcast, nothing sort of day.

I feel very strong.

The glory is below the surface but I am receiving the benefits of my last few days renaissance. Hard to know how to live. I can only breath encouragement into those who fail. A helping hand. If I am so strong inside, I have ample for others, if they want it.

I had dinner with the neighbours. Nice enough. They did eat chicken. Society will not give up the convenience of meat. When one talks about it they say, 'Sh, don't mention it.' 'Don't think about it.' is another phrase frequently used. Ignorance. Deliberate, lazy ignorance. But I do not yell this in bitterness. It is a fact, so not subject to emotion... A still day. Its hard for me to live.

Is nihilism the way? Destruction before pure construction? Is it only myth?

People will still be people. They will murmur. It can only be individuals, meeting together in love and joy of the All.

19-8-93
Life is peculiar! Strangely enough. I know all the craziness of living and I can still be caught up with silly bits of life. Why? Inevitable. My eyes are aching. Too much reading.

Oh but life is a labyrinth....

23-8-93
Reading Blake I feel I can keep perspective of my ideals. I must not make those try to see who can not.

To find one who can guide me! I feel pressured by my boss to stay here, but I must have a change. It's the balance thing.

I know that I can easily be swept away with false living but underneath I know it is a facade. It is a joke. I just need more time before I can continue writing.

25-8-93
More beauty.-'Vibrating heated innocence.' Something so unbeleivably pulsating. It holds its own warmth in those words. I will write again that I am ready for death at any moment. Death of my body. I live being aware of each moment, and accepting death. Not pessimistically, just naturally. Life is good. But I do not clutch it, either indignantly or righteously. Love. Too full a word. Love is death. Too full. Love. Rounded curves and full. Over indulgent.

Only occassionally do I hear the silence. The black vacuum of silence. I realized its because my brain is always so full of questions and probable answers and memories and imaginings. My brain never stops to hear the silence. I can't literally hear nothing. Its just a feeling. An atomosphere, rather than actual.

My ears always have a humming ring muffled in them. I don't like it. I'm anxious to be moving around people again.

26-8-93
Capitalism is basically a test. Not in the old Christian sense, but it offers people a choice. Which god will they chose? Not only does Capitalism and its effects (marketing, consumers, banking fanaticism....) help conglomerate all material aspirations, but it adds the respectibililty and 'worth' to rise to. Money is a traditionally held virtue. Society created this, not the All. Jesus didn't want everyone making false images of him and worshiping him in golden palaces. Sociey did this for what ever reason. Jesus spread the word of God, not the worth of money. False values. Capitalism offers people a choice.

I do not renounce material things, but there is a falseness in clutching at this mirage. Why else do I come to the country, with poverty as my life, and then find the way?

I don't wish to leave behind my human excitements and impulses and desires. That isn't my aim. Its basically to acknowledge the truth of the All, or the wholeness of Everything. This realization brings its own advice.

A certain excitement and anticipation for unexpected events is missing. Nothing happens here. That is why I must leave. I am passing days. Yes, with appreciation, but time is laughing at me while I am here. I will not regret a stage in my life, knowing it had to be, but I do ask for change...

Just the feel of another human being. Solid feeling to touch another person. Substancial. Real life force. Obvious life force, not the intangible life that I am keeping company with. It drives me tight with desire to touch. To hold onto something throbbing with life. I know that I am alive, but to touch reinforces the reality. Makes me more aware of life.

29-8-93
Having my knowledge of the All doesn't stop the silly or unreasonable desires. I can see through them and they aren't so persistent, but it doesn't stop them from happening. This is a reminder from Temperance, that everything has a balance. There are ups and downs, and one must know their true worth and then go about living through the obstacles and deliverances.

I can feel madness creeping up to me, laughing with delight at my unstable state. A tick of a clock could have me falling in a moment.

There is no such thing as evil. It is man made.

To know is to take away the question. To understand life is to take it away.

To call a person by a name seems wrong. They are not that name. They are a myriad of names. For social reasons they are used, but otherwize, no names. Or take your own symbol. This is you. Not a name. We try to pin a label, but if you do not recognize the label, it isn't yours. Its only what is recognized.

There is a large elongated oval in front of my vision. It is darker, than on the outside of it. I can not see the lighter bits clearly. People put significance on objects, ideas, visions not on anything divine. WAKE-UP. Remain true to yourself. Do not batten yourself down under routine or expectance. You have been offered something more, something more real than all of the illusions around you. Grasp it! Take life and do as you will!

Life is this continual struggle to support both spiritual and physical health. If one is well, the other is sure to be tortured. Must keep the light of All within our breast to help guide the way. Starlight and future.

'For where your treasure is,
there be your heart also.'
St. Mathew 6:21

'Therefore, by their fruits ye shall know them.'
St. Mathew 7:20

It is imperitive to renounce Christmas and Easter. Any rememberance of Christ should be personal and not ordained by a government. If there is any celebration it should be of the New Year. A regeneration.

How to keep within my heart the massive amount of teachings? How to be true at all times? But this is false. It is from within and will always change. Nothing is lasting....

Whatever is recognized as wrong is wrong. Each for each person. We all contain our own Orisis in our heads. As soon as we fly against our natures we are suffering. Judge yourself. There's no need. Just listen and be guided by the inner self. If it is 'right' then you will know. Accept change as natural, not something that you must fight. If you must fight change, you must begin with trying to hold the earth still.

If I could explain this tingling awareness. But it must remain unexplainable to be passed on. A feeling, a power. Not dominace over me, but a steadiness of being.

Love of all. Nothing, for me, should be above this.

That is the folly of preachers, to make everyone, even those who are not ready to know, pretend to a higher life. So you enforce religion and it becomes hypocricy.

It is true that what we do should be between ourselves and god or All.

'The outward ceremony is Antichrist.' William Blake.

The same as Jesus telling his disciples to wash when fasting, for it is for the All to see, not for humanity to praise us for our 'holiness'.

7-9-93
There are two main lessons for me to learn.
1. The surface, material beauty isn't truth, real or important.
2. Relations between people should be balanced and not overly emotional. If one can leave all behind without becoming involved then one has learnt the lesson. Transitory. A key word to understanding.

'This is a warning. Heaven is watching.' Front 242.

Why do we not learn before?

Because we are not ready to accept and learn. When the time comes the doors open and show another world. And then more doors. Always more to travel through. Very important.

I'm not patriotic or nationalistic. But I want to join this country. For the first time I feel a sense of unity with the rest of humanity.

I want to join society.

There must be a group of people who live from the basic goodness within. To be involved, positively, with the concerns, with the joys of life. To recognize the All, and to rejoice. First in that which is good. Learn to live.

Make a concious effort.

Accept All and find the way.

22-9-93
Life is depressing me today. Wake-up, wake-up. Stop this troublesome worry. Relax. Admit people are necessary and accept that you must return to live with them soon.

Be glad you have learnt what a dark place lonliness can be and rejoice in being able to know yourself.

23-9-93
I am fighting this dispair. Really. I'm doing my damnedest to keep sane and moving so as not to let this creeping madness overcome me. I recognize the All in a swift thankfullness. It is only the knowledge of love that saves me from too much darkness. I do need company. Only another pair of human eyes.

The neighbours are avoiding me. Its my intensity, and nobody wants to wake up. Violence lurks. My body is tense with supressed anger. I will write then read, and then sleep. Relax. Deep breath. Its this damned Women and Fiction that spoils my brain. Too emotional, too stabbingly deep and personal. It seems as though I take every pain into myself, feeling each hurt, each fall. None of the stories want to lift me up, to be joyous. Just my mood or just women writers?

24-9-93
I closed my eyes to the morning sun and saw 'The Fructification of the Pyramids'. The Egyptians believed themselves the highest civilization; a pinnical of success they had alone reached. This is the true /\

The sun ¤ is also a pyramid. But it is evolving. changing, develping from a /\
to a (), to a 0, and eventually a pure O, a perfect circle. Its the global sign. The more world conscious we become the more we will learn the cycles of life and begin to ready ourselves for the next stage.

26-9-93
I have been forgetful. I have felt anguish and frustration, and found peace within myself. I didn't do the obvious. I didn't tap into the light, the divinity, within my heart. We all have this channel of pure cleanliness inside our bodies and the catch is to remember. Its time to learn how to exercise this ability.

It is a beautiful morning. The kind of beginning to a day that perfects part of your heart.

New fresh leaves jostling, twinkling, rustling in the cool breeze. Blue, blue sky with a faint mist on the horizon and thin insubstancial clouds.

So green! And the daisies yellow a springy carpet, a faint sheild over the earth.
Its the breeze, the air itself that is so special.

What I catch the most in my heart is the broken, curved, straight, purely white bark of the redgums. So pure straight noble. Hardly of this world.

Unrecognizable. Queer how the young fresh apricot tree looks more familiar than these sparce, dominant redgums. And their indifferent foliage! The light slashes the bark, blanching it bright, ghostly, with its shadow too.

And it wasn't until the delicate white cup sat in a stream of sunlight that its strark reality came upon me. Its outline, its full body, its reality. So much sharper, more distinguished in the bright sun, than in the pasty, pastel shade. Its shape was lost. And then the dark glitter of the tea. Rocking smoothly in the cup as I softly move my pen across this page. The darkness says 'I am a hollow! In this cup I am the hollow!' To remind us that a cup has a purpose and is not really only pasty white, but filled, a darkly black inner, and a shine of pride, a holding, used cup. It stands so distinguished with this dark liquid.

A most facinating drawing day today. Absolute. Freshening. A caress upon my anxiety for newness. Its smooth soothing calmness. Nothing intense. Nothing forced and brooding as when clouds cluster to hamper the sun and blot the sky. Just clearness and fresh bright life. An enjoyable, sweetly scented day.

8-10-93
Jimmy just ate one of those little, special dancing birds. At first my bewilderment was too intense to understand and I felt a tear in my heart, unable to consider.

And then I hope I passed my first test in death. The death of a little bird is cruel, but my horror was awakened by its flesh being eaten, especially since Jimmy has plenty of food. So it is killing for killings sake.

I feel ghastly. A mixed up madness.

This anxiety is bursting in little sharp pangs and ripples of physical madness. It is upon me, as it used to be, three years ago, in Auburn Rd. Rock the baby rock, madly swinging, the mad, dead, crying child. Baby is dead. Must fix it. I must try to keep awake and up and light, light.

Self! A search for the essence of self. There must be a protective veil over the found parts so that the pain of regret is not so often. Its not so bad as it was. A finding of self, and then to live. No wonder people don't think if it is going to lead to this unease.

I'm still half here. I am here. A mist is over me, that is all.

Must must stay tight to self ideal, for what else is there? After recognition of the All, and recognition of the All in self, how can one betray it?

Has it entered your head that this is hell? That we are actually here and must do our best to get out or live with it.

I am not so slack as this. If I have learnt anything here its a sort of discipline. I shall use it right now. I will determine to sleep and rest.

10-10-93
My head is aching. My turmoil hasn't passed. Strange. It doesn't usually last this long. Last night I was called for. A light flickering, as a strobe, though dimly came, and my body was preparing itself to give up the spirit and I had to fight and yell for my life. I'm surprised in a way to be awake.

I'm beginning to find delight in little things. My body is very cold. I'm fairly drained of colour.

A torture of twisted, scrunched senses in my mind.

I so wished to begin this notebook with a brightness to recall the gift of my 21st year; the divine gift of awareness of the All. And here I am communicating to this book because no one else will understand. They force a false situation, a flaseness over my anguish.


Returning to Society for the First Time

I find it difficult to keep up with it all. I have tried today, to join myself into the general jovial spirit for our new adventure and I find that I soon fall low and find a distaste in my mouth for the empty joys of mindless living.

‘Girls just want to have fun.’

‘All I want to do is have some fun.’

Insanity.

Then it comes to out an out stupidity and I feel my whole body freezing over in coldness and lack of understanding.

Not only is alcohol an evil tempter but it distorts reality and allows a life to pass without thought. There has to be strength of mind to resist the illusions of what seems to constitute joy and pleasure in this society. I must try to keep my goals in a firm grasp. The outside gaieties are so false and finally repulsive and depressive. Joy of life and the supreme being. I try to wrap myself in rememberance and try to live each moment in awareness.



A little background information
(putting my state of mind into some sort of context)

When I moved to the country for a year, I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with my life. I'd finished my degree and decided that English Literature not what I thought. It seemed Literature was about having a vast understanding about Marxism, feminism, post modernism, psychoanalysism and all those kinds of isms. I’m not complaining, I wouldn’t have it any other way, but English Literature was too difficult for me to follow. I could talk to five people about the same text and they'd all have a fixed way of reading the book. It wasn’t personal and insightful, it was learning to read through a blind of theories. To read the book from a theoretical point of view. I was bored by it all. It seemed to me, if you didn’t get the right tutor who sympathised with your pet theory then you may as well have study accounting. So I moved to the country and tried to write a book.

So I started writing a book.

Writing stimulated self analysis in a way I wasn't prepared for. For the first time since living it, I began to remember some of my early childhood. I'd accepted my beginnings in life with what I considered a relaxed mind. Basically I forgot most of my past. I was living with a short term memory. I was living on the moment, but I was balanced precariously between my nerves and my focused study mode. When I was studying or writing I was perfectly stable. At other times there was the feeling of simmering hysteria. It wasn't until I was half way into the first draft of my novel that I realized the impact my childhood had made upon my current mental state.

I didn't know that I had repressed everything in an attempt to live a stable, normal life. I didn't know that my sometimes hectic behaviour was little spurts of hysteria slipping out the sides of my cocoon.

As I was writing about my youthful heroine Sonorah, I began to realize the grip the past still had on me.

So I wrote about it. I wrote down everything I could recall, everything I remembered people speaking about.

Writing brought the atmosphere of those early years back to me. I realized why a slammed door could freeze my stomach, why raised voices could make me feel sick and why the smell of a beer soaked breath made me want to vomit.

I was depressed, but at the end of every day I felt my eyes opening more. My life wasn't quite so narrow and I was willing to admit that the parents treated us badlly and we had a right to feel angry and aggressive or hurt at their behaviour. What we saw and felt was not our responsibility. We were children, buffeted by the course of our parents and their problems. But it was time, I was 21, to take full responsibility for myself and my actions.

I began meditating for ten or so minutes every day. Just relaxing and trying to release the hold the world had upon me. I read alot about many different religions. I was searching, looking for an answer. Looking for something that would make sense and hold the world together. I was looking for something that would make life worth living.

I'd been in the country for about six months, helping the family I was living with in the garden for board and lodgings.

My mind was wavering between 'determined to produce better happy times for myself' and 'sometimes I really can't help my depression. It just happens and I can't lift myself our of it.' I wasn't sure at all how to go about making life better. I was, to say the least, ill-equipt for my search.

And it was in exactly this frame of mind when it hit me.


Something to think about in the middle of it all

I’ve been watching people. I’ve been trying to interact with them. I see behaviour, speech, movement and little real fundamental change.

We’re learning, trying to see more clearly, trying to live better lives. But all I see around us seems to be disintergrating.

Its okay, our parents survived, but its just not good enough to survive any more. Our vision is clogged by what we see.

I can’t make out anything. And then in a flash there is something greater, some higher instinct that guides my mind to a new plateau of thoughts and concepts. Yet I have to frame my new vision in the cloth of my old experience. To understand. To grasp it in terms I’ve been familar with.

But why? Why does this have to be the answer? Why can’t I open my mind and let the light shine and let it be without interpretation, without soiling the vision.

I can’t see a new system. I can’t see truth and beauty being expressed in innocence. There is only tradition, expectation, well played patterns of behaviour.

But here I am, I have the courage to fly against the walls. Fill me with ease of expression. Fill me with love! And let it be enough.