Fall.

Five Minute Friday with Lisa-Jo Baker. Five minutes of writing on a prompt.



I have started my life from scratch four times in this particular lifetime.

(Tangent: While I believe in reincarnation, I am not one for going back into all the past lives trying to work out what karmic shit is manifesting and how I can change this or that from a previous life. I intended to write a post on the dangers of past life regression, but haven't got around to it yet. Needless to say, this life, right now, is the one I am living, that I am aware of, and the only one I can affect any change on)

Finding myself at the "from scratch" part was always preceded by some or other dramatic lifechanging event: divorce, then two years later moving from London to rural England after I got out of an abusive relationship, ending another relationship and then moving back to South Africa from England. The before-you-get-to-scratch part is hairy and frightening and earth and soul shaking. It's not pleasant when all these emotions fears surface to challenge you.

And then comes the decision to make a change. And you can stay forever in the decision place because it seems a lot more hopeful than the The before-you-get-to-scratch part or even the from-scratch part. It's comfy over there. Like being swallowed by a nice warm cloud.

The hard part is the fall, the leap, the letting go. After the decision place. After the decision place you actually have to take action and the thing is, the fear hasn't left. But you do it anyway, trusting that it will be okay in the end.

Nearly six years ago, I let go of all I knew in England, gave most of my stuff away, packed 22kilos into my suitcase and returned to South Africa with nothing. Not a thing except the 22 kgs of clothes, books and CDs I brought with me and R 4 000.00 which was enough to get me through one month.

I made the decision. I leapt. I fell. I did it. Was I scared? Yes. Was I unsure? Yes. But sometimes, as the picture says, the only mode of transport is a leap of faith.





Imagine.

Five Minute Fridays with Lisa-Jo Baker. This week's prompt: Imagine. Take five minutes. Write without stopping, editing, backtracking. See what happens.

I was quite taken in by The Secret when it first came out. The whole idea that you change your destiny using ONLY YOUR MIND! I like things like that. You can imagine yourself healthier, fitter, richer, with the partner of your dreams and hey presto the Universe will hand the things you want to you on a plate. How nice is that? Ask and you shall receive. Thoughts become things. Manifest your desires.

What The Secret failed to mention is that you also have to put in the work. It's really nice to think that if you just sat in your lounge and imagined your life as you would like it, the Manifestation Fairy (or, more accurately, according to The Secret, the Manifestation GENIE) would descend from the heavens and grant your three wishes.

No.

Decide what it is you wish to create. Imagine it in detail. Yes, by all means. But also, get off your butt and find a way to make it happen.

My dad was a deeply spiritual Christian and he always said that God helps those who help themselves and who are prepared to meet him halfway. I may be a Buddhist, but I incorporate what he taught me in my Buddhist practice: The Universe helps those who help themselves. Navel gazing, on its on, while nice, will not bring about the realisation of goals.

Om shanti om and all that.

Making Peace With Mother (Part Two)

My mom and dad on their wedding day
2 March 1961

I have written in a previous post that I had a desire to make peace with my mother. As part of that exercise, I was determined to find the good things about her and the good things about our relationship. I was trying to remember the love I felt for her as a child, and the love I had hoped she had felt for me too.

For so very long, I have hated (yes, hated, not disliked, not didn't-get-along-with. HATED) my mother. Yes, she's been dead twelve years, but despite that I continued to hate her for twelve bloody years more after she had left this world and her body turns slowly to dust in the coffin beneath my father's at Westpark Cemetary. Good, I thought. It's good that you're dead. I didn't want to look after you in your old age - you would have been impossible. I am glad you went before dad. I am glad you're dead. Now you can't make my life a misery anymore. I am free! Mwahahahaha!

Except, I wasn't really free. Hate is Tartarus. It's a maximum security prison of our own creation where we allow ourselves to be tormented and punished. And the goalposts continuously change. We think we are doing something when we are hating, but in reality, we are not. Nothing constructive anyway.

I have been seeing a spiritual counsellor because of all my anxiety attacks. He suggested that I write an angry letter to my mother listing, in detail, all the times she hurt me and every event and every time she went nuts and did crazy weird shit. I started the exercise and only got one page in. It seemed like a redundant exercise. I didn't feel it was getting me anywhere. "You must release this anger, get it out, or else you will get sick," he told me, "The energy of your anger is already sitting in  your gall bladder. If you don't release it, you'll get gall stones."

It's nothing new to discover that my mother 'galled' me. And, while I am into all this Louise Hay "your body has a spiritual reason for being ill" thing and that the physical, mental and spiritual are all intertwined and all that, something about vomiting out my anger like this didn't resonate completely. Why? Because, in the car, on the drive to my uncle's funeral, I spewed all of this out for four hours of the six hour drive to Tzaneen, after my cousin Melt made the mistake of telling me how "mellow" my mother was.

And suddenly I was empty. But I didn't know I was empty until yesterday.

Absently, I pulled out a bracelet of my mother's that she gave me when I went to live in England. I never wore it, but it has followed me across an entire continent and to several places in the UK and then back again. Just like that, I snapped the bracelet onto my wrist. Surprised, I looked down at the bracelet and felt... nothing. No animosity, no anger, no hatred, no pain. Just the thought that this was a rather nice bracelet and I was pleased I had kept it.

Looking at that, I realise you might be thinking "big fucking deal.". To me it was. Because I was so opposed to anything to do with my mother, I refused to wear the jewellery I inherited or that she gave me. I kept nothing of hers after she died apart from her rosary and the ring she left me. And the bracelet of course. It was as though everything she had touched while alive was tainted and by that same brush I too, would be tarred.

On Monday I was reminded that every relationship, every encounter with anyone in our lives, is a mirror to ourselves. I was angry at the mother for never giving me a chance, for not understanding me, for hating me, for not being compassionate, for hurting me, for not loving me. But, when I looked in the mirror, what I saw was that I never gave her a chance, I didn't understand her, I hated her, I was not being compassionate, I too hurt her and I too did not love her as much as a mother deserved.

This revelation was the point of transformation for me, a place for forgiveness to creep in. Because let's face it, my mother probably doesn't give a shit one way or the other how I feel about her. She's been dead for twelve years. The only person keeping her here is me and I am keeping her here just to yell at her and tell her how shit she is and how she fucked up my life. And these are all things that I accused her of doing.

It's not that I am 'better than that' or that I am 'being the better person' by forgiving her. That's not what it's about and that is not what forgiveness should be about. By 'being the better person' all I am saying is that I am superior to her, and that is not consistent with the spirit of forgiveness.

Forgiveness, I believe, is a letting go. A release. A realisation that all this shit stuff that I believe fucked up my life doesn't actually matter in the here-and-now present moment. In her way, my mother did what she felt was best. I am not saying I agree with what she did, or that it is all suddenly okay and that anyone's mother can treat their kid the way I was treated and it's fine. No. That's not what this is. This is a decision from my side to stop hurting my mother and myself. To let it go. To stop the process of hatred and pain. My mother hated her mother before I hated her. I saw nothing wrong with Ouma, but she did. Just like my nephew adored his Nonna and I hated her. The cycle of hatred for mothers in my family needs to end. It's time.

And I am done. I am done being angry and upset and tired and exhausted. I am done telling the world how crazy - institutionalisably crazy - Yes. I made that word up. And the punctuation that went with it - my mother was.


I am done with blaming you, Mom. I am done with the hurt. I am sorry I hated you so long.

Forty.

So. I have reached the milestone of forty. They say that life begins at forty. Two days in and I am still waiting for the drum roll, the angel dust, the fireworks. No angel has descended to hand me a certificate to congratulate me on making it this far. Or to hand me the "Your Life's Instruction Manual" I've been waiting for. Has my midlife transformation transformed? No. Have I achieved enlightenment while sipping wine and sitting under the pepper tree? No. (And if age is an indicator of enlightenment, and Buddha achieved his at 35, then I am long bloody overdue. Maybe it was the wrong tree. Or the wine.)

I was considering sharing tales of my adventures through my thirties (becoming a Buddhist, returning to South Africa, marrying my lovely wife), but I am done looking back.  I could share some pieces of advice I've received over the years, which have always stood me in good stead (always take a breath mint when it is offered), but people rarely follow the advice of others. I did think about sharing some wisdom (everyone is a reflection, we are all Buddhas), but frankly, I can't be arsed right now to sit and type out all that stuff about What It All Means. Besides, not every slice of wisdom is for everyone and not everything I may consider to be wise, is. After all, I do believe in flying saucers and space aliens and the existence of the chupacabra. And the yeti. And a whole host of other things.

I thought I'd go all Oprah instead and tell you what I know to be true:

LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO BE DRINKING CHEAP AND NASTY WINE.

View.

This week's five minute Friday prompt is VIEW. Take a look at Lisa-Jo Baker's blog for details, do your own five minutes, post it and leave a comment so I can go take a look at yours.



" ...the journey from Kamakura to Kyoto takes twelve days. If you travel for eleven but stop with only one day remaining, how can you admire the moon over the capital?" - Nichiren Shonin from The Writings of Nichiren Shonin

In Nichiren Buddhism there is a concept known as Ichinen Sanzen, meaning that each moment of each day contains three thousand possibilities, containing each of the ten worlds. or ten lifestates (These are Hell, Hunger, Animality, Anger, Humanity, Heaven, Learning, Realization, Bodhisattva and Buddhahood).

Coco choosing her view
from the apricot tree

Our view of our lives is coloured by which ever world/lifestate we are standing in at any given moment. Each world is interlinked and exists within the other. We can be in a state of anger, yet we can also find Buddhahood in there. And Hunger, and Learning and Bodhisattva and all the rest. We could be in a state of Heaven (also known as Rapture) and still experience the lifestate of Hell simultaneously.

The good news is that we can shift our lifestate. We can choose how we view each moment of each day.

Richard Causton, in his book, Buddha in Daily Life, tells a story of how he and a friend are driving together on a gray, cloudy day. Richard thinks the landscape and the sky is beautfiul, his friend thinks it's depressing and terrible. Why? They are looking at the same scenery. How should it be different?

It's not the view that changes, it's the viewer. And the viewer changes according to the lifestate we choose to view things from. And the keyword here is CHOOSE. You choose your view.

Thirty.

This is my favourite photo of me. I was 28. It was taken at a time in my life that was in terrible turmoil and I was experiencing a great deal of emotional pain, and, for some reason, this small portrait from a difficult time is so very beautiful.

It serves, sometimes, as a reminder, that even in the face of the greatest adversity, there are small moments of beauty, which are worth acknowledging. I wasn't a Buddhist then, but as a Buddhist now, it makes sense as there is Buddhahood in every moment - even the awful ones. We just need to go find it. And often, we only get to see it in retrospect

When I got to thirty, I had already been married, divorced, lived in four different countries, had my dream job, lost my dream job, survived an abusive relationship and came out of the closet.

I had realised that none of what I believed to be true for my life was  true. I walked away from the Catholic Church and was spiritually drifting. Still a little shell shocked from the experiences I had had, I was cautious in the world, yet determined to reclaim every single ounce of my power and to rediscover who I was.

I lived in a little village called Greetham in rural England. It was idyllic and calming and just the thing to help me calm down and return to myself after a rather eventful decade.

I realised that I knew nothing about life and the world and that was okay. The smug Catholic I once was, who thought that all the answers were found in the Bible, was gone. I had a clean slate. I could become anyone I wanted to be, and still make mistakes and still know nothing, but it would all be okay.

I had an eccentric group of new friends. I was reading books on spirituality and finding one's purpose and getting past trauma. Even though the years leading up to thirty were harrowing, thirty itself was a good year to just take stock of my life and the direction I wanted it to go. I still had no idea what that was, though. I still don't, even now.

Twenty.

 I was outted in karate class when I was 19 by a 14 year old kid named Matthias. We were sparring with each other, and the conversation went a bit like this:

punch-block-punch: "So, T, there's a rumour going around that you're gay. Is it true are you a lesbian?"

kick-block-punch: "Yes. It's true. I am indeed a lesbian."

Despite my spontaneous admission, so bravely made to a teenager, I still went on to date (and later marry) a guy named Tim.

I began wrestling with my sexuality at 13, shortly after discovering what girls and boys were supposed to do together. My solution? Become an ultra-devout Catholic. Which is why my admission surprised both Matthias and me.

I was grateful for my exit from my teens. My mother was completely nuts (I am sure she had several undiagnosed psychological disorders) and I yearned for freedom. My mother dictated everything in my life: the clothes I wore, what I studied, which friends she never wanted me to see again, my curfew, which was set at a very ridiculous 9pm. I had hoped that twenty would mean my mother's grasp on me would loosen a little, but instead, it tightened to a choke hold.

By the time I reached 20, I had gone through Hepatitis A, German Measles, adrenal burnout, two bouts of clincal depression and I had broken both wrists (on two separate occasions, not all at once.) I was hopeful that things would still work out they way I wanted them too. I felt very grown up and I needed an adventure. Desperately.

I felt that the world was there, waiting for me, and I was trapped in a glass box, looking out at everyone being alive and I was stuck there, with no hope of ever being free.

I had no friends. I lost touch with some of them from High School and my mother forbade me from hanging out with one of my closest friends, Dori, because she believed she was a bad influence and a Satanic lesbian to boot. I didn't bother wasting time making friends at college. I was never going to be allowed to hang out with them. I was a very sad and lonely person. I read a lot of Stephen King, which my mother blamed for my depression a few years earlier, resulting in me having to give my entire collection away. I started reading David Eddings and other fantasy novels instead.

The only respite I had from my mother was at karate (my sister and I both attended all the classes - including the ones for kids - from 4pm to 8pm each Tuesday and Thursday) and church.

If there is anything I want to bring with me from twenty, it's that sense of adventure and the belief that something magical is waiting just around the corner. I seem to have lost that a bit.