Lay down your weapons

I'd like to talk about sex.  This isn't a cheap ploy to get your attention (though if it's had that effect, I'm quite happy to have it.)  It's more a way of saying that what follows is a little exploration of my relationship to some quite intense areas of human experience and I didn't want you to be taken completely by surprise...

Good. Hopefully we both feel ready now.  More accurately, I want to share with you about my relationship with attraction.

It's been dawning on me recently that I often find being attracted to someone quite difficult. I don't mean that it's hard for me to get turned on. That happens very regularly and quite easily. I mean that I then usually find myself in a state of confusion as to what happens next.

I know I'm in good company. Enough songs, books, plays, films and poems have been written on the madness that often happens when two humans like each other in that way to convince me I'm not alone. But it was only recently that I started to get an insight as to what's going on inside me, and the light that this sheds on my wider relationship with the world. And it's this that I'd like to share with you.

It was on the dancefloor last week that I finally realised that I often experience feeling attracted to someone as an attack.

I don't mean that I actually believe that the person I'm attracted to is attacking me, but my body often responds as if I do. There is contraction in the muscles along the front line of my chest, diaphragm and solar-plexus, a shot of adrenalin goes through my body, and an immediate sense of urgency arises within me.

I'm guessing that this has quite a bit to do with biology. The sympathetic nervous system, which governs this sort of activation is often referred to by teachers of anatomy as covering “the 3Fs”. (The first two Fs being “fight” and “flight” – the third F being one of the most usual conclusions of mutual attraction between adult humans).

Now you may think that all of this extra adrenalin and excitement is a Good Thing. And in many ways it is. But for me it often hasn't felt that way, and I'm now starting to realise why.

As a craniosacral therapist I've known for some time that too much of a good thing, is too much. If there is more input going into the body that it feels that it can take, the body treats this as a problem. In ordinary language we in the West have a word for it, it's called getting overwhelmed.

And when we get overwhelmed by strong feelings, the body usually does something like what your home electricity circuits do when there is too much current. The circuit breaker gets activated – and then the lights go out.

The body's equivalent of this is that we find ways of distancing ourselves from these strong feelings. For most people this involves some combination of clamping down their muscles in some way, freezing, or “spinning out” (going into a day-dreamy state in their head where they are not really able to feel their body and all the strong feelings happening there). An alternative is to go into thinking and analysing what's going on and getting really involved with these thoughts, which again is the body's way of metaphorically sticking it's fingers in its ears and saying to the strong feelings “la la la, I can't hear you!”.

The key realisation that I had the other evening standing in front of a beautiful woman at my dance class is that I usually experience attraction as a very strong feeling. So strong it goes past the “this is rather nice and rather exciting stage” and well into my body's red-zone of “Iceberg ahead! – Man the lifeboats, abandon ship!”

It was fairly obvious to me that this is not the ideal response to standing in front of someone I fancy, but it dawned on me that this is usually, in one form or another what I do. I've noticed that when this happens I find it difficult to look them in the eye, I get convinced that they will see how attracted I'm feeling and they won't be OK with this – so I try not to show it, or to hide it, or to at least tone it down. Or I end up saying something daft. And then I wonder why they have started to look at me funny!

What has occurred is that I've felt a very strong feeling, my system has gone into overwhelm, and one way or another I've left my body and left being in relationship with the person I'm standing in front of. Which, all in all, is pretty rubbish really.

But it wasn't all sobering reality - the second part of the realisation that came on the dancefloor the other night was that it doesn't have to be this way.

I'd received some pretty good preparation for this realisation. I'd just spent a week doing some amazing workshops with Joanna Watters, Colin Harrison and Paul Wolflight exploring what it is to live as a human being in a body and I'd picked up some pretty powerful insights along the way.

Something really unlocked for me during a workshop with Colin and Paul on anger, called Passion for Change. The revelation is around what we all usually do with strong feelings (anger being a good example). Most of us when we have a strong feeling – take anger, either express it “You bloody idiot! Look where you're going!” or repress it (which involves finding some way of squishing it down and pretending it's not happening).

Expressing it feels good, at least in the short term. We've thrown away this strong energy and it is no longer troubling us. The problem is that we've usually thrown it at someone and they are now feeling the consequences. And assuming that they are not happy about this, we'll soon feel the consequences. We've also probably turned that person into an object, made judgments about them, and this usually ends quite badly one way or another.

Repressing the feeling is even worse. We lose contact with our body and with what is really happening, we leave relationship with our environment or whoever we're with, and we squish down this uncomfortable energy, where it gets stored in our body like toxic waste, ready to leak out or explode at inopportune moments.

As you've probably guessed by now, there's a third way. And it doesn't involve anyone getting blasted or squished. It's called conducting.

Here comes the hard part for me. I'm going to do my best to describe something that is fairly new to me, and which can't easily be put into words. A bit like a person who has tasted 1 or 2 strawberries trying to describe the taste to someone who has never tasted one before. (Although I may be about to describe something that you know very well and that you do all the time. In which case, well done to you – I only wish you'd told me about it. A long time ago. It would have saved me a lot of heartache!)

Conducting is having the feeling. (Imagine an east-end London accent at this point) – really “ 'avin it!” - 'avin it large. It's really inhabiting the feeling, breathing the energy of it around your body. Perhaps even moving your body a little to allow the energy to circulate. Letting the feeling be what it really is, which is a felt sense of a particular flavour of energy in your body and enjoying and celebrating that energy (rather than getting bothered about where it came from or where it's going).

This is the opposite of catharsis, which is trying to throw away the energy. It's inhabiting the energy, letting your body hum with it, and then using it creatively or letting it simply pass through.

On the workshops I experienced consciously doing this with the strong energies of attraction, anger and hostility. It was really empowering to realise that I could feel these things – really feel them, without feeling that I needed to do anything about them. I didn't need to express or repress – I could conduct. And the great thing about conducting is that I was able to stay in my body and stay in relationship with myself, with my environment and with anyone I was with.

And standing in front of this very lovely dancer last Tuesday night this is just what I did. I felt the strong feelings running through my body and breathed into them – not being scared of them as I often am, but really allowed myself to have the feelings as mine. “This is my attraction, in response to you”. I felt amazingly energised and excited. I felt completely in my body and I felt comfortable with the feelings. I felt no need to hide them or make excuses for them. I felt no compulsion to act awkward or weird. I felt lit up like a torch – a beacon of attraction and I was beaming myself right at my dancing partner – loving being me, loving being me with her. It was beautiful. And it didn't mean anything anymore than an flower, a lion or a waterfall means anything. It was just what was happening, and I was loving it.

The dancer in question confided in me afterwards that this dance had been a particularly beautiful experience for her too and had really opened her to dropping into her body and her sexuality, which was amazingly touching for me to hear.

I realised that I had from time to time stumbled on this way of being in relationship with strong feelings by accident on quite a number of occasions in the past, but without being aware what I was doing. The difference is that this time I was able to make a conscious choice to feel what was happening and to love it. It tasted like freedom.

I recognised that I now have the possibility of doing this whenever I'm feeling strong feelings, whatever those strong feelings may be and to taste the freedom that comes with embracing my life.

And I recognise that the old patterns are still running. That my reflex reaction to feeling a strong feeling will often be to slip into “identification” (thinking that the feeling is part of me, and therefore not something that I can choose to feel). Once I'm in identification the strong feeling becomes a “problem”, the person or object that caused it becomes my oppressor and I become the victim. I become fixated on what's happening out there, instead of feeling what's happening in here. I then feel that I need to “do something” about the perceived problem. I feel unsafe. And I start trying.

And there is another way.

To conduct my feelings is to leave the victim identity behind, to stand in my power and to love my life, in relationship with the world.

My prayer is that I do that more. Lots more.

~

Lay down your weapons

You're not under attack,

Though it often seems that way.

Yes, there are big waves coming in.

Big feelings, huge sensations, gigantic emotions.

So massive they threaten to engulf you.

Big BIG waves.

And they are coming this way.

You know what to do with big waves.

Grab your board, jump on,

turn it around and start paddling.

Feel the Ocean under you as it grabs your board,

Stand up in your glory and ride,

Celebrate the turbulence and the froth,

The curves in the swell.

Revel in the conversation between you and the sea.

Ride the waves,

all the way back to the shore.

You can't fight the waves.

But you can surf them.

Lay down your weapons.

You're not under attack.

It's just the Ocean being the Ocean.

You and the Ocean are two parts

of the same whole.

Of the same love.

~

love

Daniel

Waking up

~



The most precious

The most precious,

is

The Union
between

what is happening
in my experience
right now

and

my capacity to
love it
completely -

to cherish it,

to prize it beyond

Anything else.

To value
my life.



~

Coming home to be healed

Amma came to me last night.  I don’t mean that she came in a dream by some sort of astral travel, if that’s the sort of thing she’s prone to do, but more that (at 3am today) I had a palpable sense of who she is and what she offers, and it opened my heart.  More importantly, I had a sense that it is something that is a potential in me, you and in everyone.  It was a profound experience and I want to share it with you.

It’s not really important for you to like or even know Amma for the purpose of this story.  Her role in proceedings here is metaphorical.  But in order to understand what I have to share it might help for you to have some idea who she is and what she does, if you haven’t met her yet yourself.

Amma is a large jolly looking Indian woman who hugs people.  Lots of people.  She goes all around the world doing it and people queue up to be hugged by her.  Many people believe that she is a living saint - an enlightened avatar, and that her hugs have mystical and healing properties.  This is why they queue up for hours and late into the night to receive her blessing and her embrace.  They come to her to experience her love, they come to her for healing.

I’ve met her and been hugged by her on 2 occasions in the past.  Actually, the hugs were not life changing experiences for me.  Frankly, I’ve had better hugs from the people I love and more transformative esoteric energetic experiences from other beings and teachers.  There is no denying, however, that the feeling of the room when you are sitting there with her and the other participants is a delightful one and it does feel to me like bathing in a sea of love.  There are many worse ways to spend a Tuesday evening, especially in Alexandra Palace.

Anyway, this story is not a discussion of Amma and her work and whether or not it is a good use of anyone’s time to seek her out for a cuddle, it’s much more about what I realised at 3am this morning and how it reminds me of what she does and what we all can do.

At 10pm yesterday I arrived back from an amazing tantra workshop with Jan Day (Living Tantra 1, since you ask) where we had spent the entire week practising saying “yes!” to all of our human experience.  Yes to the pleasure, yes to the pain, yes to our sexuality, yes to our wounding, yes to it all.  It did feel like something had started to shift in me during the workshop, that I was finally ready to start to embrace parts of my experience that in the past I had at best tolerated and at worst had actively been resisting.  I offer my deep heartfelt thanks and my gratitude to Jan for holding such a safe space for me to start this part of that journey. I sense that I will be working with her some more.

But doing it on a workshop is one thing.  Doing it in life is quite another.  And doing it at 3am in my own bed when I can’t sleep is not something I would have believed possible.  And yet it was.

I woke up at about 3am feeling intense discomfort in my body.  This is not an unfamiliar experience for me.  There are old patterns in my body (probably trauma from childhood, perhaps not) that play out at various times and whilst I’m asleep is one of their favourite times to express.  I often wake feeling internally contorted and churned up and in such physical/emotional discomfort that I’m unable to sleep.

What I usually do is try to find a way to soothe these patterns away.  Essentially finding the places that are tight and gently bringing my attention to them telling them that it’s ok for them to relax.  And they usually do, eventually.  And then I can go back to sleep.

And this is fine, up to a point.  Except it feels like a bit of a sticking plaster.  I simply relax the tense places enough for me to sleep, but the underlying patterns themselves are not addressed.  They are not addressed because I don’t really want to engage with them, to meet them and to know them.  I feel a little like a teacher who has learned to be able to calm down the children in class who are misbehaving, rather than being willing to sit down with them and really help them to work through the pain that was causing them to misbehave in the first place.

And that’s what was different last night. 

Last night when the pain came, for perhaps the first time I was willing and able to welcome it.  Not to try to soothe it away, not to try to deal with it, but simply to be genuinely curious about who had come to visit and to welcome it as a long-lost cousin from a far-away land (which in reality is not so far away at all).

The experience was incredibly moving and the response of my body was astounding.  The pain came – I said yes.  The tears came, I said yes.  My body contorted into strange shapes – I said yes.  I said welcome.

I was left after about 30 minutes feeling more relaxed than I had ever felt when I had been trying to soothe the pain away.  I felt like a little part of the pain had really been met and having really been met had been able to let go.  But even this is beside the point.  I felt that I had been really inside and celebrating my experience, even though it was a difficult one.

I was reminded of what my teacher Adam had said to me recently about the absolutely fundamental importance of really being willing to have the experience I was actually having and that when I was refusing to do so I was rejecting and devaluing my life.  I was starting to have a deeper glimpse of how it might be to really embrace all of my experience and so to be present in all of my life, celebrating it all.

I am now starting to see that there is no end-goal in life beyond this, being present in and celebrating our experience.

I was reminded of the metaphor of life as a record player that came to me recently.  (I know record players are rather old-skool now, but updating it to CD technology seems to squish the romance). Our still-conscious nature is the needle, our ever-changing experience is the vinyl.  When consciousness touches experience, there is love.  When the needle that we are as source touches the vinyl of the experience that appears and changes, we are the music that plays.

I was also reminded of something that Pamela Wilson had said when I had explored the question of pain with her.  She had said that the pain comes to you as the guru, in order to be seen and loved by you and to be set free.  I had understood what she had said at the time but had had no sense that it might actually be possible for me to do and try as I might had been able to relate in this way with my pain.  Except last night at 3am, that’s just what I did.  And it was so, so beautiful!

I was moved to pick up my pen and write some words.  These are the words that came:

Coming home to be healed.

It’s not about even allowing tension/pain to soften.

It’s about the patterns of pain coming to you, for you to love them and set them free.

Don’t ask “How can I be free from this pain?

Do ask: “Who comes to me just now for healing?”

“What is your nature?”

And then say:

“Ah!  You’re like that!”

“Yes!”

“Welcome!  Welcome just as you are!”

“There’s no need for you (the tension, the sadness, the pain) to change”

“Welcome home”

“You are loved.”

~

Ask simply: “Who comes to me next for healing?”

Sit, as Amma sits, in front of the queue of beautiful hurting pieces coming to you for a hug, and one after another love them.  Say: “Yes my child, welcome home!”.  And hug them to your chest as they sob in your arms, and the two of you cry and laugh together.

Some of them have traveled many miles to be here, as they have heard that you are a saint of extraordinary power, a living embodiment of god.  You tell them: “I don’t know about that, but you are very welcome nonetheless and I love you.  Yes, my child, it’s OK to cry, mummy’s here.  Yes, sweet one, it’s all OK”.  And rock them gently in your arms as one by one you welcome them home.

Don’t play favourites, take them into your arms in the order they come to you.

Don’t try to change them.

Don’t even try to set them free.

Just ask “who comes to me for a blessing?”

And love them one after another.

Because that’s what they need.

And because you are the only one who can.

A perfect moment

"Perfect moments" often crop up when you least expect them to.  The one that inspired the piece of writing that follows occurred on the not-especially-wonderful-but-quite-nice Manly Beach in Sydney after I'd spent 45 minutes wandering round the surf shops deciding that I couldn't find a T-shirt that I was prepared to pay the asking price of $60 for.  Not a very auspicious background for a realisation of bliss, you might think (as I did).  On this occassion we would both have been wrong...

As I sat looking out to sea, waiting vaguely for my friend to finish her shopping, a sense of complete wellbeing arose, along with some realisations that caused me to pick up my pen and my notebook, as I luxuriated in a perfect moment, in the sure knowledge that I could not hold onto it.

Of course, all moments are perfect, it's all about our relationship to reality, and that is the real subject of the little meandering poem/exploration below.  I hope you enjoy it.

~

The absolute bliss
of a perfect moment,
which is any moment
when you know
without a trace of doubt,
that all is well,
everything is as it should be,
and nothing needs to be done.

You are home.
You are home -
knowing that there is no distinction
between you and home.
You are, we are, it is
One.

From here
it seems almost incredible
that you ever believed
that there was anything wrong,
that there was a problem with life,
that you needed something
in order to be
complete.

And yet,
checking the record books,
the archives,
the Polaroids,
you realise that you've been here
many times before.

Paradise found,
has somehow,
always become
paradise lost.

The glorious holiday you took last year,
is now reduced to a collection of
fragments of fading memory,
as is every other cherished experience
you've ever had,
or ever will have.

And the joy, which was welcome
has been replaced by flatness
or discomfort,
which aren't welcome at all.

How can this be?

It is simply the experience of being
human.

It seems you have been
holding on to
the superficially plausible myth,
that a single perfect moment
can save your soul.
And it can't.

No experience is it,
and yet any experience
can be the gateway
to recovering your birthright.

To knowing yourself
as the ocean,
the wave,
the grain of sand,
and as god,
as love.

So,
how to live?
If nothing is it
and everything is it?

I shrug and admit,
that I don't know.

What I do know
is that
living will happen,
choices will be made,
and life will unfold.

And the only choice remaining
that's worth the candle
is to love it,

over and over
and over
again.

~

love

Daniel

Heading home

The dance-meditation of 5 Rhythms was ending for the evening and I lay sprawled on the floor in exquisite stillness, wanting nothing, needing nothing, knowing that there was nowhere to go and nothing to do.  Once again I had remembered what I often forget, that life is essentially simple and living it can be very very simple.

As I sat in the silence of the closing circle I remembered the words of my teacher Adam, when I thanked him for the retreat I’d done in Portugal, telling him that it was one of the richest experiences that I’d ever had.  He said:  “It was a rich experience, because you were there for it”.

I reflected on the moments in the dance when just for a moment I fall totally in love with the way that my arm is moving or the angle my foot makes when it touches the ground, and how that moment feels precious and perfect, and was reminded that what Adam had said was spot-on.  My experience was satisfying because I was there, loving it.

And this goes for difficult or painful experiences as well.  That same evening, I heard a dancer in the circle speak this very clearly when she spoke of a transformative and joyous experience of loving the pain and heartache that were arising for her and how this allowed her to appreciate love and joy simultaneously, and knew that I’d similar experiences of opening to what I often push away and how seeming lead was transformed instantly into gold.

I reflected on those times when although I was dancing my heart out I metaphorically had my fingers crossed behind my back, willing my painful experience to go away, or the times when rather than feel the discomfort I distracted myself by getting very interested in what other people were doing, judging them or letting my mind develop strategies for getting close to them.  Of course, what I was doing was leaving the reality of myself in order to meet an idea of them.  No wonder it didn’t feel satisfying.

I also reflected on the times when people have said to me “wow, I so loved your dancing tonight” and how if I hadn’t been loving my dancing, no amount of praise from others could turn an empty experience into a full one.  If I had been loving my dancing their love and appreciation would always be the icing on the cake.

The blindingly obvious truth is: the only one who can be there for my experience is me.

And if I’m not there for it, either because I’m pushing it away or distracting myself from it using thoughts the result is that I feel “split”.  The lights are on but there’s no-one at home.  My experience feels dissatisfying.

I realised sitting in that circle of silence, that I often under-value my experience, having a “hard wired” assumption that what’s happening somewhere else in the room is more interesting than what’s happening here, leaving myself to go on a fruitless search for salvation.  The flip side is that when I don’t, when I dare to be there for myself, I discover infinite riches.  From that place of being truly at home I can go out into the world and meet other people in a different sort of way and to have something exquisitely valuable to share with them.  Me.

After the circle broke up, I accepted an invitation to drink tea with some friends at a local café - we left in separate cars.  Driving there and sitting at the red traffic light I had a choice of two directions – left to the café and right for the road home.  I'd chosen my lane and the indicator was blinking left. Surprisingly, I found myself in a conflict about whether or not to join my friends having accepted their kind invitation only minutes earlier.  

I checked in with myself to discover what was going on inside and the answer was clear.  I realised that I wasn't feeling sociable - there were some painful feelings bubbling and what in fact I wanted was to spend some time with myself gently feeling them. With relief, I recognised that I could simply do what felt right in that moment - my friends would understand. As the light turned green I changed the indicator from left to right and headed home.

Freedom

"What is freedom?" sounds like a dry philosophical question, but it isn't.

The answer to the question has real practical value when it is known.

But I don't know it.

I'm guessing that "I" never will!

And yet beyond the knowing of the I, there have been some delightful flashes of recognition here about freedom that I felt to share with you, and to share with you how they occurred.

~

So...I was listening to a podcast by John Wheeler on Charlie Hayes's blog on "the practical value of this" and I came across a pointer about the nature of freedom and choice that felt like it might be true, but it was also clear that I couldn't quite connect with it. As is often the case, it certainly didn't "make any sense"!

The suggestion was that although there is no-one who chooses, there is a choice. Paradoxically, the choice is to choose what is actually occurring, as opposed to fighting it.

(It's true that doing this doesn't sound much like a choice in the conventional sense).

Then I had two quite strong experiences of knowing that it is true - the first walking down the street where there was a powerful experience of shifting from resisting "my" experience to embracing it. The second was on the dancefloor doing meditative dance, which was very similar - a powerful experience of loving every aspect of what was arising through me and in me.

Once again, revealing the gap between hell and heaven to be paper-thin.

What follows are the words that emerged...


~

Freedom is always available here and now through choosing what is.

It is not freedom in the conventional sense of “freedom to do anything” or “freedom to choose anything”, which are illusory anyway, because they are just ideas.

It is not freedom from the circumstances of life, but freedom in the circumstances of life.

And although it is not freedom from life’s circumstances, it is freedom from suffering.

It is freedom in the sense that you are unbound and you know yourself as that.

In the paradox of the dream, where it appears that there is someone who chooses, it appears that there is a choice to embrace life as it happens or to resist and reject it.

In the moment of choosing to embrace what is happening, it may be realised that there never was anyone to do the choosing, although there was an apparent choice to be made.

This is tricky to speak of, because to speak of it is to touch on the heart of the mystery of life and who we really are.

And yet we must speak of it, because beyond escape from physical incarceration, it is the only freedom worth the name.

~


A previous question I posed myself was:
How to be with strong/difficult feelings or sensations that arise?

It turns out that this is a misstated question. Or even a non-question.

Being with the feelings isn't just easy, it's more fundamental than that -
It's a done deal.

The feelings are already the case.
That I am with them is already the case.
I am with the feelings whether I like it or not.
There is no choice here.

If there is a choice it is to choose the feelings (that I'm already having).

The question now becomes: how can I enjoy the feelings I'm actually having?
Where is the satisfaction in the feelings I'm having?

In answering this question the focus shifts from the future-oriented trying-to-change-how-it-is to the present oriented loving what is.

And as it does, there is freedom.

~


love

Daniel

If life appears to be a question

So, it was the last day of 2009, I had finished a session of meditative dance and there was this pain around my heart.

It was a familiar physical/emotional pain that I've known in many forms for many years. Not a sign of medical emergency, but a well-known pang that was dull and sharp all at once.

And in that moment I didn't like it. Not one bit.

The familiar questions arose to accompany the familiar pain:

Why do I feel this pain and tenderness again?

What can I do to make it go away?

What is wrong with me?

And then, as if by magic and certainly by grace there was a shift, something softened and I realised that (and this doesn't really make sense to the mind) the pain/tenderness around my heart was the answer. It wasn't a problem, it was what I was looking for. The following words arrived as I walked home through the snow and picked up my pen to write...

The pain in my heart is the answer.

The sound of my breath is the answer.

The snow melting on my tongue is the answer.

The sound of my pen writing is the answer.

The page of my notebook turning is the answer.

These words appearing are the answer.

And they would be so if they were written in Chinese...

...or indeed a language long-forgotten that no-one understands anymore.

~

If life appears to be a question
Then life if the answer.

~

Why does my heart feel tender again? Because it does.
What can I do to change it? Nothing.
What is wrong with me? Nothing.

~

There is only what's happening.
The why is not important.
"Why?" presumes that you need to understand something, which you don't. Not really.
It refers to the past with reference to the future.
It is functional.

You don't need to understand something to love it.

You don't need to know why.

You just do.

Because you are.

~

You don't surrender in order that you might get what you want.

You surrender in order that you might want what you've got.

And you don't surrender.

But surrender may happen.

~


If life appears to be a question
Then life is the answer.

With love

Daniel