Questions, questions...

Allow me to preface this snargle and say that regardless of the subject matter or tone, today is a good day.

Beautiful view in French translates to Belle Vue.  It conjures up images of swathed vistas of green hills leading down to a dark blue ocean somewhere on the French Riviera.  For me anyway...you might have other views in mind. Perhaps I'm just having a wistful moment, but by golly, I'd love to be here...

Belle Vue...hmm...a mental sigh.  Sometimes I have days like this and I have no doubt that we all do.  Days where I mind-munch on things and become unaware of the battle between my mind and my heart until I realize the dialogue goes something like this - Mind: "Look at this or remember that?"  Heart: "Yes, yes I do.  But I don't want to...go away and eat biscuits!!"  See, there's the mind throwing all those uncontrollable thoughts down the emotional windpipe to the heart.

Learning how to open my heart and allow whatever I feel, to feel, is difficult, because sometimes what I feel doesn't feel good.  And therein lies the paradox.  Feel it all in order to feel good.

I read this a while ago and of all the crap I Like on Facebook...all the quotes, the affirmations and soul boosters, this is the one that I tend to come back to.  Things that happened before really do feel like books written in a foreign tongue if I concentrate on them.  Not focus...that's a different practice entirely.  But when I concentrate or reflect, even...events, happenings, people, things said and done...they are ethereal and wispy...untouchable.  Much like a child who sees but doesn't understand, I have questions that I alone, right now, cannot answer.  However, as the saying goes up there, if I allow my heart the room to breathe the questions, not fear the questions, just ... let them be, in time I hope to fully understand and feel resolved with the answers.

So.  On days like this when I have shadowy parts in my heart and an ache in my solar plexus, I breathe in healing light through my nose and blow out (imaginary) smoke through my mouth.  I use a lot of imagery during meditation.  Sometimes I think it's a bit kooky but I do it anyway because I guess the spirit understands the quality more than the mind does.  There goes that pesky mind again, being all decoyish and redirective!

I imagine that the negativity is cleansed and I do my best to set the intention in my heart to allow myself to be at peace with all that I feel - the stuff that hurts and the stuff that brings me joy.  And that's all I can ask of myself, to be sincere and authentic.  It doesn't have to be a perfect meditation with absolute silence.  Quite frankly, I don't think there is such as a thing as a "perfect" meditation.

As long as I am in a state of restful awareness, I can see those questions, I can feel how they affect me but I am able, in part, to let them go.  On good days.  On not so good days?  Well, that's a whole nuther snargle entirely...

Lisa ...

Tadpoles, Abba & Meditation

First of all, I'm opposed to the word "blog" and even more so to the word "blogroll."  It sounds like something hanging in an English toilet that you wipe your arse with.  I don't know what else to call this though...it's not a diary, it's sort of a missive, it's undoubtedly narcissistic and blog just sounds...heavy and dull.  How about snargle?  Welcome to my snargle!  Or brinkle?  That's cute.  Too cute.  Anyway... bollocks to blog.

But...no bollocks to meditation.  I had no idea of the importance of this daily ritual.  In fact, like many people I know and others I don't, I never thought I'd be able to sit still for more than ten minutes without the intrusion of annoying thoughts.  Uncontrollable, unstoppable thought.  Because that's what the mind does, right?  It thinks for us and controls us.  Right?  Wrong.  Now, I'm not writing this to teach Grandma to suck eggs (or for my American friends - "preach to the choir"), I just wanted to write about my own personal experiences about meditation and it's beneficial qualities on this new path of mine and in so doing, hopefully pay it forward.

I've sought others like me through search engines and the like.  I'd type in vague parameters like "New to meditation" or "Meditation techniques" but most results I found were too technical with links to various teachings, religious explanations, read this book, or stand on your head in the corner and picture thousands of people dying in the ocean.  Ok...the head in the corner wasn't a found item (thankfully) but the ocean of dying people, was.  Very disturbing.

You see, in the grand scheme of things, I'm like a little tadpole and I'm just beginning to grow, which reminded me of this Abba song, so I thought I'd stick in here and share.  Although, listening to the lyrics, it does have some bearing, as if I were addressing the light inside of me, instead of some chump I was singing a love song to in a cafe in Sweden.

We've all had or got crap in our lives.  Some of it just piles right on top of the other dollop of crap that just rained down on the one before it.  I'm no different.  Although, my pile of crap has been stacking up for seven years. In seven years, my family, that is my husband, kids and I (although the kids are sort of sheltered from most of the emotional crap) have seen three businesses close, one gorgeous house returned to the bank, bankruptcy, court summonses, two house moves and my Mum almost died but left paralyzed.  Not to mention the daily struggle of finding money for bills, clothes and food.

It's a lot to bear the weight of over a long period of time, no?  The oppression left me feeling resentful, angry, bitter, negative, expecting nothing to go right, hopeless and worst of all, believing that everyone was out to get me.  Even people on the street.  Strangers saw only the shadowy, dark side of me with a scowl of judgment and rotten perception of their judgment of me...a fine mirror, don't you think?

Then, one day in October, without fully realizing that I was turning a spiritual corner, I had the opportunity to meet a wonderful woman at The Healing Room.  Patty helped open my eyes to the road in front of me, one that I had already taken a few steps on with the help of returning to the theatre.  Between rejoining the theatrical world and running with Patty's suggestions, I discovered the light inside that I think I had known was always there, I just hadn't figured out how to access it.

Around the same time, and no coinkidink either, Deepak Chopra offered his 21-day Meditation Challenge which I took on with much gusto.  Well, no gusto as such during the meditation but I surrendered to the process completely and words cannot describe the gratitude, joy and sense of peace that came over me.  Every day.  Once or twice, during those days, I actually felt the sensation of being bigger than my body.  It was amazing.

So, that's how I came to discover the benefits of meditation.  My family struggles even more since our last restaurant closed and my husband and I send out our resumes in hopeful, daily flurries.  Some days, I struggle, but mostly I can't help but sing out "I'm feeling positive!" as I strap on my boots and go pay the water bill...just in time.

Lisa ...

Major Biscuits reporting for duty...

Virgin blogger at the ready!

This was my husband's idea, so hats off to the hubster for giving me a nudge.  Actually, he is also working on starting his own and as we sat down together in the computer room upstairs, me with the pc and him with his laptop, he said "Look at us, all modern," or something to that effect.

I like to write and have had a passion for it since before I was a teenager.  I lost it for many years under a daily haze of pot smoke and bad relationships, but the creativity is returning.   With a bazillion ideas jerking around my head, I tend to have trouble getting past the first couple of chapters.  You see, I am determined to write a book this year and have already written a one-act play which is currently being rehearsed and worked on and will be brought to life in February by the Reedy Point Players.  Lovely group, we are...or 'troupe' as my husband calls it, which sounds vaguely circus-like.  Rest assured, we do not juggle anything more than time, talent and schedules.

Anyhoo, back to the crux of this here blog, which really does have a lot to do with my love of the Arts but more specifically, the self-awareness that I mentioned that was so very lacking for a long, long time.  Maybe it was my soul feeling out of sorts being in the wrong place (I was born in America and moved to England as a toddler), or certain traumatic things that occurred when I was very young, which  don't have a place here.  Whatever the cause or reason, here I am with a tale to tell and a journey embarked upon.

Doing what I love and loving what I do has opened up a whole new world to me.  The world inside of me.  It sounds corny, I know.  I feel twee writing it, but it's true.  I'll be eating my toast with marmite, shoveling beans on toast in my mouth and dunking my biscuits in my tea along the way.  And, before anyone comments snortily...yes, my punctuation will probably suck.

Lisa ...