Inner Light

One of my favourite newsletters (in fact, the only one I make a point of reading) is from Dan Joseph who runs spiritsite.com. His teachings are based on A Course in Miracles, which I haven't read since the 1990s, but which I am slowly re-reading now. It's nice to ingest a little bit of wisdom every day before I start my day.

Anyway, for his year end issue, instead of his traditional article, he shared three questions he has received throughout the year.

I will be sharing them here one at a time, because I believe, they need to be reflected on individually.

Q: I've read dozens of self-help and spiritual books about "the inner light" and "the spirit" and so forth. I get the concepts, but I hardly ever feel what the concepts mean. This whole thing about spirituality is just a set of ideas for me, not an experience. What am I doing wrong?

A: This is a question that I receive quite a lot – so you're certainly not alone. Let me share a few observations:

To begin, I believe that it's very common (even universal) to have some resistance to the experience of our inner light. The experience of the light is an experience of connection, of receiving and extending love, of separation-transcendence. The experience of the light shines away our old self-concepts. It essentially ends the "illusion" of who we thought we were, and ushers in something new.

It's quite normal to feel some resistance to this type of inner transformation! (The newness alone, if nothing else, might feel a bit intimidating.)

So you might find it helpful to ask yourself, "is there part of me that is afraid of the felt-sense of my inner light?" If you can first get in touch with a sense of fear or resistance – and "observe" it from a higher place – you might find it easier to slip past it for a few moments and touch into the light.

That brings me to a related point: it's enough to aim for just a single moment of awareness of your inner light. You don't need to aim for a permanent, perfect awareness.

If you find it helpful, you may want to practice "coaxing" your resistant mind gently toward this moment. For example, you can say to yourself:

"It might be nice to open up to a sense of being loved."

"It will just be a moment or two."

"Perhaps I can allow myself to feel a little of that inner warmth."

"Even just a little touch of it might feel comforting."

Doing this with another person – a partner, a friend, a therapist, a spiritual practitioner, or someone else – can also help to ease a sense of resistance. Many people attend spiritual groups or ceremonies for just this reason.

Finally, as I've written about extensively in my book Inner Healing, "willingness" is key. You can simply hold an attitude of willingness to allow the light to enter your awareness. The light wants to illuminate your experience; you clear an opening for it by your willingness to let it enter.

Tea and ease

As last year flowed into this one, I was given to reflect on ease and the lack of struggle.

I saw the new year in at Penang this year. Getting there was a bit of a struggle, both for me and Mary, whom I was meeting there.  

My flight was first retimed and then delayed. At one point, sitting at the gate, having already checked in, I wondered if I would ever take off. Turned out later that there was much wrong with the plane and they needed to fix it. I'm lucky it took off at all. I made a mental note not to book flights on budget airlines. Also, not to book a flight so late.

Mary came over from Kedah by ferry. The ferry was also twice delayed and there was such a press of people she could hardly breathe. It brought up all her customary anxiety. When she landed, she ordered a Grab and couldn't find him. They were both waiting on opposite sides of the road. And when the driver dropped her off, she struggled to find the entrance - a few steps down from where she was. 

She's usually efficient and organised. But today with all the little and not-so-little roadblocks, she was back to feeling list, unsure and uncertain. Not a prepossessing start to a holiday that had been much looked forward to. 

Last year seems to have been characterised by struggle. Even working and planning ahead (with the aid of my trusty bullet journal) I seemed to be always scrambling to finish things at the last minute.

On the first day we both simply caught up on sleep. Yes, we had a nice meal at Kesum, met the lovely waitress Azimah who paid us so much attention and spoke to the lady running the place about the art on the walls. Turns out the artist is her father, Rosli Jaafar, who used to be an architect in a government department, and who only started painting 5 years ago. But his pieces were so stunning, they drew me into the place. Turns out they are all for sale.

Mary with Azimah

The art on the wall

Then we visited Areca Books which was just down the road from our hotel and I bought myself a copy of My Father in his Suitcase by John Corner, the last remaining copy at the bookshop. The last time I had cone, there were loads. Apparently, they had just flown off the shelves. 

We went back to the hotel for a rest, which lasted a lot longer than we both had anticipated. But we were tired. And rest when weary is time well spent.

Waking late, there were few choices...so we strolled down Lebuh Chulia and had some kueh teow, oyster omelette and (for me), nutmeg juice...

Strolled back to our lovely hotel. 

So ended our first day in Penang. 

I decided the next day to make a list so we would not while the time away without doing or seeing anything. 

So we did. 

And we saw... 

And we met people

On our last day, I realised that things had become effortless. We were no longer chasing the clock, found our way round easily with time to spare, made it to the airport and jetty respectively with loads of time and everything just...flowed.

And so I decided that would be my word for the year -- flow. Life does not have to be such a struggle. And we don't get brownie points for enduring rather than enjoying an experience. 

Find The Grace

Find the positivity. Find the grace. Find it and hold it and cling to it like it is your lifeline and only breath of air before everything sinks. Find the silver linings. Hold them in your lungs and search for them in the bubbles and rubble of all that pours down around you. Find the bright spot in the dark clouds, listen for the sounds of the birds when the winds pick up and tear down the house around you. It is there, shhh, it is there, it is always there and it is waiting for you to reach out with both hands, bloody and shaking, and hold on to it like it is the last thing you will ever learn how to let go. Find the glory, the glory through the ache, and understand that it is what we cab endure that defines who we become. That it has never been about the punches we can throw, but the punches we can absorb and still stand up from. It is the standing up and the refusal to lie still and quiet as the numbers count towards 10 and the knockout becomes complete.

Rise my soul, rise through the flame and the ash, rise through the waters that fill the spaces under your arms as they crawl toward your throat. Rise and find the grace for it is all around you. 

Find it. Find the grace. 

(Tyler Knott Gregson) 

It's Never Too Late

The Spirit of Tea

Esther gave me a book about tea for Christmas. Kevin gave me a tin of very expensive tea. And I received a gift from someone pitching a story, a flask with an insert that could be used to hold the tea.  When I opened the book, I found this, and felt that I should share it here.

Here's to tea and it's effects, bringing peace and calm to the world. 

Just the idea of making tea for myself shifts my consciousness into a sort of dreamtime. Especially if I am alone, I know that I can now hang my mind up on a hook in the mud room and close the door behind me. The ritual has already begun. 

Because I like to be intimately involved with every step of the process, I boil water in an open saucepan and I brew the leaves in a clear glass tumbler. This way can watch everything that's going on. I then decant through a gourd strainer into simple porcelain. 

With this first sip, there is another shift. We make tea in an empty vessel and then we become an empty vessel to receive it. The practice of maintaining this emptiness runs through all of the world's mystical traditions. In the West, there is a prayer that says, "Lord make me decrease so that you might increase in me," but this "Lord" can be any "lord". The point is to get out of our own way and become a kind of receiver, a radar screen if you will, for whatever comes to us.

The ritual of making and tasting tea becomes what I call an "entry ritual", a doorway into other realms. My attention shifts to my pelvic floor, where the tea's warmth has settled. And this is where Thea, the goddess of light after whom tea was named, begins to illuminate my soul.

The sensation of light is that of mobilising forces, the feeling that new synapses are being formed. As an image, it is one I liken to moonbeams shining out from inside me. Things are clearer. 

The Chinese say that tea "brightens the eyes" but this, like all things Chinese, can have several meanings. Sometimes tea brightens my entire perspective on the universe and my place within it. That is why I write of tea as an "entheogen", because it is a plant that affects my consciousness and my heart in a beneficent manner.

So there are these opening, flowering sensations in my heart: broad, expansive feelings of pure, unadulterated joy.

So where do we go from here?

Do I make myself another cup of tea?

No. 

I just sit. 

Perhaps I am not done with my tea. Perhaps all this is the result of a single sip. It's happened before. I peer down into a porcelain cup and, lo and behold, it's still full. 

Tea is such a sensual experience. There's the handling and holding of warm vessels as we brew. There's that initial fragrance when we moisten the dry leaves with a few drops of water and bring it to our nose. There's that first sip, when our lips break the surface of our brew and our whole body fills with the essence of the leaf. With the first taste we encounter the silken viscosity, the floral notes and fruity tones, the earthen depths, wooded bite and all of it bathing our tongues with waves of unfolding complexity before it slides down the back of our throats. I muse that it might be more accurate to say "waves of cascading epiphanies" for such is the way it feels when Thea shares with us her deepest mysteries and stirs us to our souls.

And so she stirs. And she mobilises. Tea tastes good in my mouth and feels good in my body. It lifts my spirits and opens my heart. What more could we ask of a friend?

I have landed in my body. If I'm lucky, I can hang out here for a while in this peace and calm, for that is what it finally ends up being, and that is why tea has been grown on monastic properties for a thousand years. It brings us to a place of wakeful tranquility. I call it reverie 

Perhaps it is that tea pulls me back so far into myself that my senses become attuned to a different set of coordinates. Perhaps my senses align themselves with a subtle, more refined resonance. Someone once said that tea muffles strident noises. It certainly seems this way to me, but then, I have never been known for my powers of deductive reasoning. I would prefer to lay down under tea bushes on the green, terraced hills of Yunnan...and dream.

By Frank Hadley Murphy

And so we begin

I don't know why I've decided to restart this blog. Maybe it's the discipline that requires looking for good things all around me or in what I see or the videos I watch. Or the moments of beauty that I will be forced to capture because filling a blog every day for 365 days will take some doing.

Believe me, I know. 

I've done it twice before. 

I believe 2020 will be a special year and I will not allow it to pass unrecorded. 

I will celebrate and hold on to the beauty in my life. 

And then, I will let it go. 

Lots of love

Oh gosh! Six months later I write my second post for the year. What is that all about? Anyway, I've fallen off the bandwagon with so many things - and need to restart to give myself a boost. The key is not in never falling but in not losing hope every time you fall.

I've just come back from church. I took Dadda there and because it was Corpus Christi - there was a procession after Mass, and after the procession, a couple who had been married for nine years, "convalidated" their marriage. That is, they did not get married in the Catholic church before, and now they were taking their vows there. Father Gregory, a very cheerful, joyous priest, made a tremendous fuss of the couple and got most of us to stay back and share in the moment.

So, yeah, we're at the half year point and I am going to have to take stock and make myself happy.

How to do it?

I am not sure.

I'll let you know.

(Sheba is seated next to me and keeping me company - she's a perpetual joy to me).