Tag Archives: motherhood

March 28, 2013

What next…?

By Alice

Bertie (a whopping 6 years old) is… well… I guess boisterous is the best word to describe him. A little like Bagpuss (do you remember that kids’ programme?), when Bertie’s awake, the rest of the house is awake. He wakes up hollering, goes to bed hollering and does a fair bit of hollering in between. There’s no volume switch, no brakes. Bertie hurtles, headlong, through life, stopping only when he meets resistance, and even then only if he has to. And his demeanour is almost invariably one of noisy cheerfulness.

But just of late, as so often happens at around this age, he’s pondering the bigger questions. I guess Easter throws this up a little for children – they’ve been talking about it at school – death and resurrection. And it got me thinking about how confusing, and a bit scary, these big questions can be for our smallfolk.

“Can you ask god to give you a new body, when you die, so I can see you again?”

You see, one of his favourite bedtime stories just now is “The Mountains of Tibet” which is a rather surprising choice for one so apparently oblivious to the deeper potentials of his surroundings. “Gumboot’s Chocolatey Day” is far more up his street, you’d think. But the Mountains has obviously struck a chord somewhere. Resurrection at school, reincarnation at home… It’s beautifully written and illustrated, and provokes rumination on all sorts of levels… for an adult at any rate, I’d thought.

After all, his previous command had been far more in keeping with one his age:

“Be a boy. Then you won’t have to lay babies.” ;)

I’m not afraid of death. I don’t want to die, you understand. But I’m not afraid of it. For myself. (My feelings around pain are much more ambiguous…) I have young children, so naturally I have concerns about their well-being were their mummy not around to look out for them. And I see and feel compassion for their fears when they talk about it themselves. I want to tell them not to be afraid. That it’s just a transition. That it’s all part of the design. But I know they’re a little young for all that, and that they’ll have to work it out for themselves a bit…

“I don’t want you to die, Mummy” said my 8 year-old at breakfast this morning. One introduces a theme, another runs with it…

“I don’t want to die either, darling.” I tried to explain that these days people tend to live a good long time, although we can’t rule out accidents or illness. We can’t know when we’re going to shuffle off. And I tried to tell him that if I did, I hoped he would be thankful for the time we had together, and would show me what a good job I’d done being his mummy by living as full and happy a life as he could. At that he nodded, and smiled again for the first time since the conversation had begun.

But by now I was worrying. I had this terrible vision of a young man slogging his guts out trying to be happy, to prove to his dead mother that he could be, that she had been a ‘good mummy’! :)

It’s a minefield, death, life, happiness, spirituality, purpose… And it’s a sticky wicket when it comes to sharing it, too. I don’t subscribe to the theory that I have the right to tell my children what to believe. I can tell them what I believe, but to my mind they have no obligation at all to feel the same way. What they do believe, they will work out in their own good time. When they are ready and the time is right. They will, most likely, embrace, reject, struggle, and make peace with all kinds of channels of thought.

And that, as it is for the rest of us, is simply their journey.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Acceptance, Buddhism, Love, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Right Motherhood, Rites of Passage

November 4, 2012

Merrily, merrily, merrily…

By Alice

There have been a couple of things pootling around my head lately, on this bumpy old Path.

I was having a conversation the other day about forgiveness. This is not an unusual occurrence just now. In my experience, when there’s something you need to assimilate, it throws itself at you with such insistence and regularity that resistence proves  futile…

So, the concept of forgiveness is one that I have been grappling with for some considerable time.

My first observation is that we need to detach from the story. And by story I mean ‘Victim Story’. The concept that anyone else has any control over the life we are living now is, frankly, skewed. The only person with any control over your happiness is you. Nonetheless, people are successful at self-control to greater and lesser extents, and it is a sad fact that if we are unable to relinquish blame and attack, we are likely to be very negatively motivated. And who needs that in their life? Happiness is dependent upon your thoughts, on which of them you believe, and on how positive (or otherwise) they are.

So, while it is not only possible but vital to learn to forgive, it will not always lead to a healing in your relationship. That part is very much dependent upon the relationship between you and the person you are forgiving. After all, if you are forgiving a past hurt, and there is a genuine change of heart, or behaviour, then your relationship has great hope of being healed. If, however, there is no change of heart or in behaviour, you may need to give it up. This I have mentioned many times before: if you can’t say ‘no’ within a relationship, you may have to say ‘no’ to the relationship. None of which is easy. Until you understand, that is.

Until you understand. It isn’t about looking backwards and becoming mired in the past. That’s already been and gone. It is about moving forward, the lessons assimilated, your heart and mind open to new experiences. Which will surely come.

In short, then, it is not difficult – once you have taken the decision – to forgive. It will set you free. Sounds trite, doesn’t it? But it’s true. All the while you have been holding a grudge against your ‘violator’, you have been keeping yourself locked up. That is the biggest and saddest irony of all.

So forgive.

As far as forgetting is concerned, I’d argue that it is important to forget the hurt, but I would argue that it is just as important not to forget the lesson. “Hurt me once, shame on you. Hurt me twice, shame on me”. It’s rather a blunt way of putting it, and leaves out the possibility of any wriggle room in between the hurts, doesn’t it? But it holds merit all the same. There’s a message in it. You don’t need to keep going back for more. But you don’t need to hold onto the hurt or the resentment or the blame. You can let that go, too.

On a much lighter note, I was listening to Wayne Dyer the other day (just how many times have I written that?!) and he was talking about singing a song with his little daughter many moons ago. The song, and we all know it, is Row, Row, Row Your Boat

And this is what he said (I’m paraphrasing):

Row, row, row your boat.

Not my boat. Not someone else’s boat. Not a boat someone else has told you to row. And don’t let anyone else row it, either. Row your boat.

Gently.

Not angrily. Don’t force it. But go gently. With compassion. And… gentleness.

Down the stream.

Don’t row your boat up the stream. That will just bring you difficulty. Row your boat down the stream.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

Keep cheerful. Row with joy. Not sadness or unhappiness. But with a merry disposition.

Life is but a dream.

It’s fleeting, isn’t it? And here Dr Dyer quotes Henry David Thoreau. I cannot remember the exact quote, but here’s another of his that fits the bill perfectly:

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.”

So here we are again, eh?

Row your boat.

Yourself.

And enjoy the journey.

With love.

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October 11, 2012

Day 15… Creativity to soothe the savage…?

By Alice

Number two son: “I’m just… I dunno… I’m not happy… but I’m not unhappy…”

I got it.

Restless soul syndrome.

He was looking for an outlet.

I was sitting on the sofa knitting (a rather alarmingly frequent sight at the moment, much to the dismay of the hoover, casting me doleful glances from the corner of the room) and it occurred to me.

“Do you want to try knitting?”

I had tried to teach him a couple of years ago, but he was still a bit young, impatient and frustrated. Now, though, he’s 10, and I remember my lovely grandma teaching me at just his age. She took me to the wool shop in her town, helped me pick out a fluffy blue yarn and a pattern, and I started knitting a jumper. She extracted a faithful promise from me that I would finish it. Thirty years later with not a stitch knitted in three decades, I found a plastic bag with the needles, balls of wool and half a jumper in it. I’m sure grandma would forgive me, especially since I turned that half a jumper into a pixie hat with integrated scarf for a *very* grateful 8-year old. It wasn’t wasted…

“I’ve got a new routine,” he said to me before he went to bed tonight. “I get home from school, walk the dog, and get knitting.” He’s making himself a scarf, and he’s already on the 7th row! ;)

Focus, concentration, creativity, channeling the energy into something positive…

In the meantime, I heard this today:

“Only to the extent that a person exposes themselves again and again to annihilation can that which is indestructible be found within them. In this daring lies dignity and the spirit of true awakening.”
~ Karlfried von Durckheim

Aka the long, dark night of the soul?

Food for the next meditation, methinks.

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Meditation, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Personal Responsibility

October 10, 2012

Day 14: Fear

By Alice

“Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.”
― Marie Curie

It would appear that no sooner has one insight come and punched you in the nose than another, while your hands are cupped around your face, swipes you around the back of the head… I speak, mostly, with my tongue in my cheek.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been pretty anxious for as long as I can remember. Anxiety takes so many forms, there are so many things we are afraid of in our daily lives, but today it was put to me that it is pretty much the biggest obstacle to peace and happiness (along with forgiveness, of course, as previously discussed).

What are you afraid of?

Disapproval?
Rejection?
Running out of money?
Ill health?
Death?
Hidden costs?
Your children’s safety?
Being hurt?
The unknown?

Every day, every minute of every day, there lurks potential fear. What if you did run out of money? What if you do meet disapproval? I mean, really, what if? Won’t you just find a way through it? Clearly some fears are of things far more beyond our control than others, and we have to face them anyway. But so much is just a ‘what if’?

Jack Kornfield (yes, I’m still with him, though I’m onto his “Your Buddha Nature” talks just now) made this following very good point. I sat stunned. Literally. Well… you know.. no one actually hit me over the head, but they might just as well have done.

You’re walking in the woods and you’re afraid of being chased by a bear (the fear is not of walking in the woods, so your fear is not realised now)
You’re being chased by a bear and you’re afraid it’ll catch you (the fear is not of being chased, but of being caught, so your fear is not realised now)
The bear has caught you and you’re afraid of being mauled (the fear is not of being caught, but of being mauled, so your fear is not realised now)…

… you see the point? The fear is never in the moment, it is always based on a potential future reality…

But more than that – the things we fear sometimes do come to pass (though they often don’t), and we fear them until they happen, until they are the now, at which point we survive them, and somewhere the other side of them, we’re fine. It’s still now. And, ironically, we have found something new to fear.

So, as radical as it may seem, what about giving up fear?

I’ve lived through some experiences I would never have imagined possible. But it’s now. Right now, and here I sit writing this with nothing to fear. I know I could give you a long list of things I could fear, but what’s the point? If now is all we have, if the future is a total unknown, why waste now fearing then?

What if we just made the most of now?

“I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear.”
― Nelson Mandela

Or, I suppose, feel the fear and do it anyway?

On a lighter note, knitting has been keeping me sane. I believe it was Reverend Kusala who first switched me on  to the idea that even doing the washing up could be meditative. Well… knitting really is. :)

Winter is in the air over here, and I’ve put a few handmade snugglies in my shop. Pop over and have a look if you feel like it.

With knitting therapy in full flow, there’s bound to be more!

 

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Jack Kornfield, Meditation, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Personal Responsibility, Products, Reverend Kusala, Right Motherhood

October 7, 2012

Day 12: Shoulder-Shaking

By Alice

Forgiveness seems to be the order of the day.

I can’t escape it.

Everywhere I turn, everything I listen to, every book I pick up, every unbidden thought: all keep coming back to the same thing…

It’s Sunday. I have five boys enjoying a day of rest, of watching movies, eating home-cooked food, playing with their toys, and together, and on their computers. It’s a chilling-at-home kind of day.

So it’s not very quiet either.

And I resorted to listening to Jack again.

Guess what?

Yup.

Forgiveness meditation.

Two prisoners of war, talking.

Prisoner 1: “Have you forgiven your captors yet?”
Prisoner 2: “No! Never!”
Prisoner 1: “Then they still have you in prison, don’t they?”

This is what I was trying to get at the other day. This is the problem with the idea of forgiveness.

Do you suppose that either of those prisoners will be seeking out their captors? Will they be looking to find them, to tell them they forgive them, to try to be ‘friends’? I mean, I am aware that Nelson Mandela did, but… he’s kind of an exceptional case, isn’t he?

This is it! This is where I have, in the past, so very often come unstuck. If I have been hurt by somebody, baffled by their actions, and I want to move on… the first port of call is: “I must forgive them”. Because forgiveness means letting go of the pain, the anger, the resentment, the hurt, that keep you tied to the past. But what has always kept me teetering on the brink of this idea, of achieving this forgiveness, is the assumption that forgiveness means allowing those people back into my life in some way.

But today I learned something different.

As Mr Kornfield says:

Forgiveness does not in any way justify or condone harmful actions…
Forgiveness does not mean you have to seek out or speak to those who’ve caused you harm. You may choose never to see them again…
You can do whatever is necessary to prevent further harm.

And suddenly, the whole idea of forgiveness becomes a release, doesn’t it? I can let go of the hurt, the resentment, the grief. I can move forward. But, crucially, I can learn from it, too. I can choose not to put myself back in the firing line. I can remove myself from the situation without anger or judgement. I can replace those negative feelings with a universal love for my fellow human beings. And I can move on.

Hatred, he says, never ceases by hatred, but by love alone is healed.

Put simply, and as implausible as it may at first appear, I can love my aggressors from a safe distance. Because when the realisation is fully absorbed that we all make mistakes, that we are all flawed human beings, that we all hurt, that we can learn from both the hurting and the being hurt, that from all these experiences we can grow… where is there room for hatred? How are we different? Simply through our choices. Through how we choose to act or react. Whether we choose to remain locked into the negative and growth-inhibiting cycle of blame, recrimination, victimhood and hurt, or to face it head on, feel it in its awful, amazing, painful, essential entirety; learn…

… and grow.

;

3 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Integrity, Jack Kornfield, Love, Meditation, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Personal Responsibility, Right Motherhood, Victim Consciousness

October 5, 2012

Day 10: Harvest Festival and Giving Thanks.

By Alice

After the usual flurry of preparing packed lunches, stuffing porridge into small people, making sure everyone had the appropriate equipment for the day’s school activities, and shooing them out of the door, today began ‘properly’ with Harvest Festival assembly at the primary school. My children are new at the school this term, and they have been welcomed with open arms. But I think that what impressed me most this morning was that everyone, every single one, of the school’s pupils was involved. Every single one had a part to play. (I confess that I shed a tear when they sang Edelweiss. In spite of the fact that the solos were, for the most part, painfully out of tune, it was sung with enthusiasm, gusto, and when they all sang the last verse together it was, actually, beautiful… *sniff*)

Still tired after the emotional wringer that was yesterday, I took it easy this morning. I found a book that I started about three years ago. I know this because I found a ‘to-do’ list in it as a marker, referring to rooms I no longer have :) and I took a leisurely bath and started it again.

It talks of the inner voice. Or the inner monologue. Or, actually, the inner dialogue. “I like those shoes. No, I don’t. I don’t? No. They’re too clunky. They are? But they’re so pretty. Yes, but I’ll never walk in them…”

I exhaled heavily.

I have an inner dialogue all the time. For the past week, I have been holding conversations in the early hours of the morning with people from all walks of my life. But they were all me, of course. I also, just as an aside, have an inner juke box. It’s most peculiar. I’ll find that I’ve been thinking about something – say, for example, I’ve received an email following a tired old pattern, trying to draw me into a tired old power-play – and I’ll become aware that it has all been happening to the soundtrack of “There she goes again” by the La’s… just for example. It is constant. And, frankly, maddening.

This book suggests that stepping back from that inner voice and recognising its patterns and, crucially, that it is not you since, after all, you are the one hearing and witnessing it, so how can it be? is the only way to learn to tame it.

Before I go any further, the book I am referring to (and I haven’t finished it yet, so don’t spoil the end for me ;) ) is The Untethered Soul by Michael A Singer.

There was one line that knocked my socks off, though. One line that contained so much in so few words… It was this:

True personal growth is about transcending the part of you that is not okay and needs protection.

There is so much beneath the apparent simplicity of that sentence… The layers and layers of ‘protection’ we build up over ourselves in order not to have to face reality. But in not facing reality, we cannot grow. So whilst unconsciously what we are doing is in the name of self-preservation, it is in fact self-sabotage. It can only keep us locked in those same tired old patterns that end up baffling and frustrating us. Why is this situation not improving? Because rather than face the pain and allow it to teach us, we try to kill it, to smother it, to cover it over with something else, other and out there.

I have a lot more thinking to do about this.

Before my children came home, I performed a simple breath meditation. Calming, soothing, in and out. Breathing in… Breathing out… Breathing in… Breathing out… Clearing my mind… Wandering mind… Bringing it back to the breathing in… Breathing out… You know? I don’t want to speak too soon, but in the face of past and gathering storms, I have an equilibrium just now that, without this meditation, simply wouldn’t make sense to me. I am grateful for it.

And it isn’t coming from out there.

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October 3, 2012

Day 8: The Game of Life

By Alice

Following on from yesterday’s discussion on forgiveness, today (after tea and before bathtime) I delved a little deeper into lovingkindness meditation (with Jack Kornfield again).

There is a formula. It isn’t just a case of sitting there and feeling fuzzy ;) And as with so many great perspective-shifting practices, you start small and work your way up.

I remember a couple of years ago listening to Reverend Kusala talking about the Five Precepts – the Buddhist ‘Code of Ethics’, if you like – and he started, logically, with the first: I will not take life. He was speaking, I believe, at a university and he suggested to his students that they should start with the easy stuff.

“Today,” he said “Just today. Make the decision to try not to kill any lions, tigers or bears”…

Naturally, he got a laugh. But you get the point. Start with the easy stuff.

Well, the idea with lovingkindness is that you start with yourself. If you can’t love yourself, you will really struggle to love anyone else properly.

Okay, on second thoughts, maybe that’s not so ‘easy’. Loving yourself, for some of us, is no mean feat. But it is something we can all do. And why wouldn’t you? Why are you worse (or better, for that matter) than anyone else? Why should they deserve your love and not you? So… if that’s where you come unstuck, then that’s something to work on, isn’t it? Examine, honestly, why you struggle to love you. And work on accepting yourself. And then on loving yourself. Just as you are. Perfect and imperfect, all at once. A fabulous paradox.

It could take time. It could take moments. But it won’t happen at all if you don’t try.

In your sitting position, you repeat these phrases:

“May I be filled with lovingkindness
May I be well in body, and in mind
May I be safe from inner and outer dangers
May I be truly happy. And free.”

All great (and achievable) aspirations. And while you are repeating these mantras, focus on the heart. Picture, and feel, it opening. Letting you in. Looking after and loving you.

Then, you move on to the people you love. People who are positive and happy influences in your everyday life. And, with them in your mind, you begin your mantra again:

“May you be filled with lovingkindness
May you be well in body, and in mind
May you be safe from inner and outer dangers
May you be truly happy. And free.”

The circle of influence moves ever wider as you then encompass all those around you, to include them in your lovingkindness. And the words, of course, can be adapted to sit more comfortably with you. As long as they are loving!

But then… Oh, then! Then… you hit the tricky stuff. Which is where Day 7 comes in. Then, you extend your lovingkindness to your ‘enemies’. And, I guess, the trick is to keep your heart open when you think of them, to keep it open as you repeat your mantra, to keep it open without allowing it to close up in self-protection, as it is instinctively inclined to do… And if you have truly forgiven, it isn’t so difficult. And if you haven’t, then forgiveness meditation is next :)

Forgiveness is letting go, after all, isn’t it? Don’t let the hurt snag you any longer. Don’t let the anger hold you back. Look forward, because that is the direction you are headed.

Bertie made me laugh today. He put into innocent five-year old words what, at forty-one, I struggle to articulate adequately.

“It’s like a game, isn’t it mum?
I control my arms and my legs and my mouth.
I point the way I’m going.
But I can’t see my face!”

This body is borrowed for the duration of the game.

And at the end of this level, points accrued or lost, you’ll get a new one.

As Bertie would say: How cool is that?!

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Acceptance, Buddhism, Integrity, Jack Kornfield, Love, Meditation, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Personal Responsibility, Reverend Kusala, Right Motherhood, The First Precept, The Five Precepts, Wayne Dyer

October 1, 2012

Day 6: Apple Crumble and LovingKindness

By Alice

Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I’d rather see you in better living conditions.

~ Hafiz

Oooh, but Day 6 started with an uphill battle…

It was a little after 5am when my bedroom door was pushed open. I have a suspicion that mothers are born with in-built springs that contract, even in sleep, at the slightest sound from their offspring. I was up and out of the door before I realised I’d been woken up.

Fortunately, it wasn’t an emergency. Just a bleary-eyed five-year old who thought it was ‘too dark’ to go to the bathroom alone. I mumbled an “Off we go, then” and kept him company till he was safely tucked up again.

Trouble is, it’s tricky getting back to sleep at that time of the morning, isn’t it? I’m guessing that this is one of those times that learning to meditate is its own reward. Because before you’ve mastered it (and I surely haven’t yet), this is the time of the night when your mind decides to take the driving seat. Everything you are worrying about; worrying about happening, worrying about forgetting, worrying about not happening; jostles for position at the forefront of your mind, even while your mind itself is, to no avail, shouting at them all to STOP! I need to SLEEP!

So it’s a tired day. But, to put it in context, not nearly as tired as, say, the weeks (or months) it takes until your newborn decides to sleep through the night. You know… perspective!

But tired days are often days filled with mini-frustrations, too. You know, you slave over a hot stove and produce a delicious homemade risotto and your little one refuses point blank to eat it, even though porridge is his favourite food, and it’s not so very different, right? And then he completely wolfs the apple crumble his daddy made. Harumph! ;)

Fortunately, though, the threatening rumbles of distant thunder stayed distant, and after the children’s tea (which seems to be the ideal time) and before their bedtime, while they were winding down (or winding each other up, in some cases), I carried myself off for today’s meditation.

I leaned on Jack again. And today he was talking me through Lovingkindness Meditation. It’s hard to explain this, but although really all I did was listen to the theory of lovingkindness meditation, there is just something about the way he talks that opens your heart in preparation, calms you, steadies you. I came away as though I had had half an hour of complete, uninterrupted, focused meditative peace.

Truly, it was more food for thought, too. He explained that lovingkindness meditation is taught as an ‘antidote to fear, and anger, and confusion. And a closed heart.’

And that makes sense to me. Fear, anger and confusion… they constrict your heart, don’t they? If you close your eyes and think about the physical reactions brought about by those emotions, doesn’t it actually feel as though your heart is being squeezed, just a little? If you live your life in fear – which could just as easily be called anxiety – then you won’t allow love in. And people are afraid of so much, from the smallest things that appear utterly insignificant to their fellow human beings, to the biggest which, I suppose, is death. And that’s pretty significant too. You worry till you die? Doesn’t that seem to you a crazy way to ‘endure’ this life we’ve been gifted?

So, if the antidote to that kind of fear-laden doom is love, what do we have to lose? Which is pretty much verbatim what I said to a doom-laden son this afternoon. He had a list as long as your arm of perceived injustices. It’s so hard, at that tender age, to understand how easy it would be just to let them go. So I settled for
“Just try to be kind… I mean, what have you got to lose?”

In the meantime, my head and heart are full of Jack Kornfield’s words. In his soft, gentle, loving voice, he said:

The evocation of lovingkindness is what matters..
…and in the end of our life, when we look back, what matters is very simple:
“Did I love well?”

2 comments   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Buddhism, Jack Kornfield, Love, Meditation, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Personal Responsibility, Right Motherhood

September 30, 2012

Day 5: Gingernuts and Righteous Indignation

By Alice

Day 5: Sunday

I’m sure I must already have mentioned how much I like Sunday. In our house, it’s a real family day. We all pootle about, meeting over a big brunch, watching films, making things, and occasionally sorting out a quarrel or two… ;)

Today was no different. A few weekends ago, our Saturday adventure took us to Craster to visit Dunstanburgh Castle. But it is also, of course, home of the world-renowned Craster Kipper, and we didn’t pass up the opportunity of getting a few for Sunday breakfasts. Sadly, the last of them was consumed with poached eggs last Sunday, but we still had some of their home-cured bacon, so today was different, but equally delicious.

When the youngest of us needed to go down for his nap, the second youngest had got over his bout of righteous indignation, involving a few minutes on the stairs ‘to have a little think about it’, the laundry (including millions of school uniforms) had been hung, rather last-minute, to dry, and the other boys settled down in front of a Sunday film, my opportunity arose. My eldest son had decided to try another recipe (a new and delightful interest of his – last weekend he made churros with chilli chocolate) and was assembling the ingredients for gingernuts. Since my even looking at what he is doing constitutes helping and he is utterly determined to do it alone, taking myself off to meditate seemed like the perfect solution to the urge to stick my nose in and make sure he was okay.

I’m tired today. The end of the week usually takes me that way. And I was concerned I might not be able to make the most of it. But I stumbled across something on my MP3 player that I must have downloaded a long time ago: Jack Kornfield’s Guided Meditation and I decided to give it a go. I have been a fan of Jack Kornfield’s for a long time. His gentle approach is a breath of fresh air, there is nothing in his voice for your mind to snag on, and he talks you through the idea in the simplest terms until you find you have been meditating without actually realising you’d begun…

I’m still tired. But I feel rested and peaceful. And that can’t be a bad thing.

Today has also included a conversation attempting to explain to a child who proclaims not to want affection, though you know very well he does, that resisting it will give people the message that you genuinely don’t want it. And they will stop trying. And then you will wonder why it seems that no one loves you, or gives you affection any more, without realising your central part in it.

It was a much simpler version of the concept that we teach people how to treat us. If they get away with pushing us around, we teach them that it’s okay to push us around. That doesn’t, of course, mean that our protests are guaranteed to be heard or that they will stop trying, but if you don’t want to be pushed around, you need to register the fact. Calmly, without evaluation and without judgment.

Equally, if you want love, don’t push it away.

Self-examination is the only way to determine the role you are playing in your own drama…

…and who needs drama? x

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September 29, 2012

Day 4: Adventure. And Finding Your Moment

By Alice

Day 4… Saturday.

Saturday is a ‘hit the ground running’ kind of a day, in a house with five boys under 13. It isn’t a leisurely day, it isn’t an “I’m just going to take myself off to meditate” sort of day.

Saturdays have become family adventures of late. We get up, pack up some food, walking boots, waterproof coats and water bottles and off we go! We are exploring our new environment and today’s adventure took us to a fabulous rocky outcrop (or ‘mountain’, if you’re five) delightfully named Roseberry Topping. Some of us got to the top. Some of us got to the top and back a few times.  One of us got to the top and managed, even at his advanced age,  to get lost coming back down… And some of us didn’t quite make it to the top, since we were escorting the person with the smallest legs (who was still very determined, nonetheless).

And I have a confession to make: If I hadn’t taken up this challenge, I think I would have let today slide… given myself the same old excuses… let myself off the hook. But, as I have discovered (much to my own dismay, actually, since it means I can never give myself a pass-card again), there is always a little corner of the day somewhere…

Teatime out of the way, little ones quietly occupied, older ones quietly occupied, I slipped away to my bedroom. I got comfortable and it didn’t take long at all to get into the zone today, which is testament to the fact that it is day four without a break, so it is getting easier, more familiar. And the circumstances surrounding each meditation session the past four days have been different, which means I’m learning to do it anywhere. Tonight, I could hear the gentle sounds of the Bedtime Hour on television, the dehumidifier going on and off, my eldest two larking about together in the room next door, a couple of kids on the village green and the odd car going past. But although I was aware of them all, they didn’t prevent me focusing on the breath. A fact about which I am enormously heartened. If that is the state of play after four days, then imagine how much more I will gain from this after forty! ;)

Tomorrow, for us, is a day at home. The week is spent at work and school, Saturday off on an adventure, and Sunday is about big, cooked breakfasts, creativity, and relaxing. That sounds far less challenging from a meditator’s point of view than a Saturday so I have high hopes.

But today, too, was a lesson in positivity.

One of my darling boys tends towards the squeaky wheel… He has become something of a master of the sour face, of blame-dodging (and reassigning), of rewriting history, of ducking responsibility… And he didn’t want to go. He began, on getting into the car, with attempting to corral everyone else in: “Nobody else wants to go on an adventure either!”, added a bit of pressure with “I feel sick!”, and sat in the backseat muttering and making a bit of a fuss, frankly. Were it not the case that a) he does it every week, and b) it never bears out during the day, I might have taken it a bit more seriously.

Later on in the day, as the beautiful September sun was beginning his slow descent and we were following, back down the ‘mountain’, I looked at my three middle boys (of which our protester is one) hiding behind trees, leaping out at each other, laughing, giggling, play-acting… I should perhaps have resisted saying, with a laugh in my voice, “It’s a shame these days are so awful, isn’t it?”…

… but I didn’t.

And I might even remind him next week ;)

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Meditation, Mindfulness, Motherhood, Personal Responsibility, Right Motherhood

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