Repetition and Transformation

We live our lives in repetition.  So much of our comfort and discomfort is in the everyday cycling through sameness.  Repetition can bring a type of death.  It also can bring a type of renewal.  Renewal to what might have become mundane; the ordinary transformed.

I've taken to like ending my blog each year with a poem post. Below is a year-long series of tweets by poet Ian McMillan, describing the same walk he takes every day, wherein he illustrates the possibility of transformation in an ordinary, everyday sameness.  It is long, so freely skip and play in-between, allowing the impression of a new sameness to fall on open senses.

May 2014 bring the miracle of transformation in ordinary sameness to us all.

Each morning, I get up early and go for a stroll through my ex-mining village near Barnsley; just before 6am, I walk to the newsagent, then down a long hill and up a steeper hill and back home. It takes me about 40 minutes and I tweet about the stroll as soon as I get in. I’m excited by the idea of creating minimalist poetry about a limited canvas, trying to find something new every day from the same mile and a bit. The moon is a regular presence and so is the word “beautiful”. Here’s my selection of some of the tweets I’ve posted since  Christmas Day 2012:

25/12: On my early stroll, by the zebra crossing, one Belisha beacon working, one not, Like the cheapest open-air disco you ever saw.

27/12: On my early drizzly stroll I pretend  I’m in a film noir walking the mean streets of ~LA until a bloke with a dog says “ R8 kid!  Cold ’un!”

28/12: On my early stroll I’m battered by  the breeze, a skiff on the pavement’s lake. A  bit of old Christmas paper like a gull with  holly wings.

29/12: Early stroll. Find a pound coin on the pavement. Beats that 5p I found the other day. Moonlight alchemy!

30/12: On my early stroll I’m struck by the simple beauty of a No Entry sign. The red circle, the white line. It has the power of art.

5/1/2013: Different ways of looking at the moon: gaze, peer, peep, stare, glance, gawp. Pointing sometimes, like today. It was so beautiful.

6/1: Early stroll. The moon hasn’t turned up. I’ve been moon-jilted. Maybe it’s slept in. Sky like an empty purse with no coin in it.

8/1: Early stroll. Beautiful sliver of a moon low in the sky. I could almost touch it. I will. I daren’t. I might. Would it feel cold? I daren’t.

20/1: Just took the snowgrip things off my shoes. They feel like something you might find in the haunted wing of a lingerie shop.

21/1: Early snowy stroll. I find myself trudging, so I try to vary it: jazz trudge/hero trudge/tap trudge/thoughtful trudge/satirical trudge/trudge.

28/1: Early stroll. A man at the bus stop wearily lifts his arm as the bus approaches: it’s an exhausted hand-jive, an almost-signal, a wavelet.

16/2: Early stroll. I come across three discarded pens, and an empty pack of headache tablets. A poet’s passed by, I reckon.

23/2: Early stroll. Here we go, another day to seize, from aubade to nocturne, from first  kettle on to last light off!

1/3: Early stroll. Birds fly across the moon,  blossom begins to appear on a tree down the hill. I’m walking through a haiku, it seems.

3/3: Early stroll. I’ve eaten my apple then find another apple on the pavement. Tempted to eat it, so tempted. Barnsley: garden of Eden. Me: Adam.

8/3: Early stroll. I say Good Morning to a bloke in a camouflage jacket and he seems surprised that I can see him.

9/3: Early stroll. There’s a door in a skip and I’m tempted to open it, go through, find a mystical and magical land. Somebody stares at me from a bus.

10/3: Freezing early stroll. Grit wagon  trundles by and sprays me. Now I’m gritty.  I’ll go home and write a country song and a detective novel.

11/3: Early stroll. By the almost-demolished school, a bunch of red fire extinguishers  like chess pieces waiting for a game. Snow speckling them.

12/3: Early stroll. I see the bloke in the  camouflage jacket again, but walking behind is a man in a hi-vis jacket. His evil twin/ soul/conscience?

14/3: Early stroll. A big piece of gold-coloured wrapping paper, lifted by a breeze, flies towards me like a primitive sculpture of a mythical bird.

23/3: Early snowy stroll. A craving for colour in the white. So, thanks to blue bag in tree, green sparkly hat in front of car, crushed marker pen.

29/3: Early stroll. Cold, brilliant blue morning. By the flats where the farm used to be I remember a fire, burning hay. I was 6. My face warms.

30/3: Early stroll. An empty bus passes and I crouch to look at the moon through its moving windows. The driver slows down, thinks I want to get on.

7/4: Early stroll. A mystery by the demolished school: a small box with HARMONICA  written on it but no harmonica in it. I stand and listen: birds.

8/4: On my early stroll my left shoelace unravels itself: so that’s what walking is, a gradual progression that leaves you naked. Better speed up.

14/4: Early stroll. I walk past a door and the smell of toast and the sound of someone whistling and I want to go in and eat and whistle.

15/4: Early stroll. Beautiful visual image of five garage doors in a row, each door a different colour: a green/a blue/a green/a brown/a blue.

20/4: Early stroll. A row of black socks on a washing line seems to be walking in front of a tree just beginning to sprout pink blossom. I find 50p.

21/4: Early stroll. I wish I knew the proper names for clouds, but I don’t. So I’ll call that one George, that one Thinking, that  one Yesterday.

25/4: Early stroll. Meet my brother who looks just like me. Our voices mingle in the morning air. Our breath hangs in sibling sentences.

26/4: Early stroll. I often see that horse in that tiny field but this is the first time I’ve seen that trampoline in the corner. Possibilities.

27/4: Early stroll. That house joined onto the dancing school is To Let. Imagine living there, living near rhythm. Living near jazz and tap.

2/5: Early stroll. I’ve walked up and down these hills for fifty years so I must have worn a groove. I’m erosion on my own.

4/5: Early stroll. I stand, as I often do, where the long-demolished football factory was,  to listen for the sound of ghost footballs  being made.

12/5: Early stroll. An abandoned ironing board near the paint shop. Six snails move towards  it. A bread van lurches as it passes: inside,  rolls roll.

16/5: Early stroll. A runner gasps by. The grumpy bloke who never returns my Good Morning returns it grumpily as we walk through fallen blossom.

18/5: Early stroll. Dandelion clocks in verges. Abandoned football on top of a bus shelter, looking like the moon. Clocks/moon: time/space stroll.

19/5: Early stroll. A tiny snail rushes towards a huge snail. A discarded lipstick sits on the floor, waiting for a smile.

26/5: Early stroll. Bright sunshine, and a full moon dawdling over my brother’s allotment, which is bathed in sunlight, moonlight,  lettuce-light.

30/5: Early stroll. It’s such a lovely morning that I feel my shadow wanting to skip. I try  to resist, but my shadow insists. Roof  pigeons watch.

2/6: Early stroll. Equine excitement on the street: four escaped horses corralled into a  front garden by a passer-by. House owner  still asleep.

3/6: Early stroll. A plane makes a chalk mark across the sky. Passengers look down and  say “there’s @IMcMillan on his stroll. We’re in his tweet”.

4/6: Early stroll. Under a sky the colour of boredom I hold my stomach in as I pass a Slimming World poster and almost tread on a slug.

5/6: Early stroll. Sculptures: the wheelie  bin monoliths, the single stone placed on the low wall, the imperfect pavement circle of spilled pop.

13/6: Early stroll. A home-made (stick and string) bow and arrow on the floor. I pick them up. On the corner: a hubcap that could be  a shield.

15/6: Early stroll. Muggy, damp. Two snails make their slow way towards two discarded beer cans near the roundabout. Party time  next Tuesday.

30/6: Early stroll. A helicopter flies very low over my head just as I walk by a huge white arrow in the road that’s pointing at me. I  walk faster.

6/7: Early stroll. Mist over the valley where the pit was. An empty eggshell on the floor as though the mist has escaped from the egg.

9/7: Early stroll. A fridge-freezer in a garden like the start of a fridgehenge, and a bus full of people in hi-vis jackets like a sun on wheels.

27/7: Early stroll. Dozens of snails climbing Mr Moody’s garden wall. Slow music on a brick piano. Rose petal patterns on the path.

28/7: Early stroll. Two small blue betting-shop pens on the floor tell a tale of hope. A single stick of rhubarb points Northward.

30/7: Early stroll. Someone has placed a hubcap on a low wall; it’s like a grey metal sunrise. I lean to try and align it with the real sunrise.

31/7: Early stroll. That brick-shaped piece of polystyrene means that someone, somewhere is building a polystyrene house. 4th little  pig, maybe.

2/8: Early stroll. I find a single jigsaw piece by the empty houses. Turn it over: a blue sky. The man on the mobility scooter waves.

19/8: Early stroll. A vivid sunrise over the old pit then, unbelievably, a single orange button by the bakery. The sunrise represented.

22/8: Early stroll. Mist over the valley, the  trees poking like broccoli. The man in the  Men at Work sign is still wearing wellies. The moon hides.

23/8: Early stroll. In the soft-edged rain I  buy a big bag of porridge at the shop then  trudge down the street like a disappointing/surreal Santa.

24/8: Early stroll accompanied by the nihilistic dance music of a burglar alarm. Three party poppers stuck to the wall of the betting-shop: win!

26/8: Early stroll. The few pink clouds fade, reflecting the pink rose petals scattered  on the pavement. Beside the chip forks. And that biscuit.

28/8: Early stroll. Moon like a half-constructed emoticon. A runner pounds by so I increase my walking speed momentarily. As does that  ginger cat.

30/8: Early stroll. Bright cool morning. As I pass the streetlights they go out and I try to ignore the stone in my shoe which nags like  a memory.

6/9: Early stroll. A few leaves on the floor like scouts for autumn’s wagon train. The temporary traffic lights are at red and I stand very still.

11/9: Early stroll. Three white vans pass,  followed by a black van, then a white van. Like a chess game on wheels. One overtakes. One turns off.

14/9: Early stroll. Couldn’t find my glasses  so the sunrise glowed like a three-bar electric fire and the grumpy bloke shone like a  shaky angel.

15/9: Early stroll under shifting, dramatic skies. A white van trundles by, the passenger holding a map. I see it twice more: lost, wandering.

20/9: Early stroll. The moon slips in and out of the clouds, auditioning for a horror film. I stand in front of the new CCTV camera,  holding a cucumber.

22/9: Early stroll. The moon hangs in the  sky like an idea I wish I’d had. Two carers  rush to change a flat tyre. Someone waits in a room somewhere.

23/9: Early stroll. Single lights: the security light illuminating the cemetery, the car  with one headlight like a radioactive monocle, a bathroom.

26/9: Early stroll. Dark and quiet. The man  on the mobility scooter nods as he rattles  by, crushing a discarded Bob Marley cassette, tape waving.

30/9: Early stroll. I eat an apple from my tree under a fingernailclipping moon. The two  grey-haired ladies walk by me laughing. I spit a pip high.

6/10: Early stroll. Vivid constellations remind me how small I am. A man says “Has tha seen a white dog?” Is that it there, shining in  The Plough?

14/10: Early stroll. Morning still as a coat  hanging in a wardrobe. I find a shiny penny beside a red removal van from Cornwall. A man’s cig glows.

15/10: Early stroll. Five minutes later than usual, so I pass different people. The bus shelter is empty. That light is on. That light is off.

19/10: Early stroll. Can you be dazzled by  the moon? This morning I was. A red necklace lies on the path like a jewelled snake. Two  shattered brollies.

21/10: Early stroll. A white cat looks at a white car, as though trying to decide what kind of cat it is. Two people ignore my cheery “Morning!”

22/10: Early stroll. The scaffolding on the pub throws beautiful shadows in the pavement. Raised voices from an upstairs room. A  hedgehog bustles by.

30/10: Early stroll. I wish I could save this morning’s light in a shoebox and release it on a gloomy December afternoon.

1/11: Early stroll. In the heavy mist, a discarded 2p coin gleams like a fallen moon. I pocket it. Hens cluck at me from behind a hedge.

3/11: Early stroll. The sky is a delicate,  questioning blue. That green box I moved off the road yesterday waits for me on the  pavement, frostily.

5/11: Early stroll. Rain flecks my glasses and a man in a black coat and black hat passes with a black dog on a lead. Only the lead is visible.

18/11: Early stroll. A light goes off in a bedroom and on in a kitchen, as though light has  fallen downstairs. Loaves are put on the  bakery shelves.

22/11: Early stroll. Perspective and slope make that man as tall as a tree. A red van parked by a white van: wine on wheels.

24/11: Early stroll. A tennis ball sits in the  pavement like a failed idea; the two older women who walk most mornings smile at the Christmas lights.

26/11: Early stroll. The moon is a huge grin in the sky. The dead cat by the Post Office looks oddly peaceful. The paper boy’s head is down, hood up.

28/11: Early stroll. The moon is in and out of the clouds. My old house is empty, but it has new windows. I lift a fallen bin. It clatters.

30/11: Early stroll. A clear sky vivid with stars and an astonishing sliver of almost-orange moon. Two skinny men in tracksuits appear from shadows.

2/12: Early stroll. Over several months that cardboard box has turned to mulch. It has a time-based beauty. I slip on it, laugh, slip again.

3/12: Early stroll. I’m held by the sight of leaves falling from a tree in the cemetery. The man in the paper shop draws his wife a map.

5/12: Early stroll. Those hedges have been trimmed so the view down that back street  is different. I refuse simile, even when I see a red glove.

6/12: Early stroll. A woman in bright white shoes waits in a darkened bus shelter. A kid goes by on a bike with his hands in his pockets. Puddles.

7/12: Early stroll. Sign on a lamp post: LOST BLACK LAB. A man whizzes by on a bike, coat flapping like a super-hero’s cape. Cycleman!

8/12: Early stroll. A man comes out of his house, looks at the ladders on top of his van as though he’s contemplating climbing them to the moon.

13/12: Early stroll. The ginger cat beside the tarpaulined caravan. The tattered circus poster. The lit snooker table in the empty pub.

Rest

"Rest is the conversation between what we love to do and how we love to be. Rest is the essence of giving and receiving. Rest is an act of remembering, imaginatively and intellectually but also physiologically and physically."*     --David Whyte

Out of the four stress management principles I advocate in my teaching to others and in my own practice, rest is the most difficult for me (and many of my clients) to grasp. (Maybe we should try NOT grasping...) Not being able to relate to rest must be an American thing.  Or maybe its a 21st century thing.  We have trouble not multi-tasking.  We resist sleep.  We struggle with stopping, not doing.  It might seem we are hard-wired to 'accomplish' or that our worth and value is seated in purposeful activities.


In my post, A Right Rest, I speak about the many varieties of rest that are available to us, that sleep or napping might not always be the right rest we are looking for.  It delights me that only a poet (Whyte) could so eloquently speak about rest being a conversation about loving and being.  It must be our tendencies to leave feeling out of our purposeful driven doing activity and the disinclination (due to discomfort?) to stay far from a closer connection to our being.

"We are rested when we are a living exchange between what lies inside and what lies outside, when we are an intriguing conversation between the potential that lies in our imagination and the possibilities for making that internal image real in the world; we are rested when we let things alone and let ourselves alone, to do what we do best, breathe as the body intended us to breathe."*

Whyte's quote above and in his excellent essay, Rest*, eludes to the play of outer and inner and the ability to let go, to be closer to our more whole selves through the influence of our breath.  Many of our indoctrinations have us resisting quiet or rest because it is a type of death; we have little to externally show for it; and that is unacceptable to the most of ourselves.  In short, we most likely have an attitude distortion about rest: what it looks like, feels like and what it does for us.

"To rest is to give up on the already exhausted will as the prime motivator of endeavor, with its endless outward need to reward itself through established goals. To rest is to give up on worrying and fretting and the sense that there is something wrong with the world unless we are there to put it right; to rest is to fall back literally or figuratively from outer targets and shift the goal not to an inner bulls eye, an imagined state of perfect stillness, but to an inner state of natural exchange."*

*David Whyte, Essay #21 "Rest" 

Layered Impressions

I've been in awe lately of the seeming truth that when one speaks or writes about something, one soon after then receives another layer of understanding through a circumstance or event. Even after all these years and life-miles trekked, for some reason it is surprising that knowledge, understanding and impressions are layered.  The experience frequently is as if the universe provides an inkling and then a completely unexpected "lesson" follows; one I could never have asked for or anticipated (making it also apparent my imagination is not what it could be).  "Laws" are at work.  "Knowing" is relative and probably always partial. I am a pawn on a mega-universal chest board, an intimate set of related threads in a tightly woven cloth.

The often repeated adage:  "You teach best what you most need to learn" must be true.  And that probably goes for any of the communication arts such as speaking, writing even energy exchanging. Could it be any type of manifestation is the Guide presenting the next layer of understanding in the provided impression?  In this arena, choice, visioning or determination has little do with it.  If anything, that type of force only gets in the way.  In this way, the idea of manifesting a destiny, forming a purpose appears negligible.  Those past times are the ego's playground?

\Which brings us to two almost-popular holistic approaches to life.  1."Visioning": One feels into one's vision and purpose opens, and allows (universal?) energy to be attracted to the vision.  In this approach, the concept is that the magnetism of your wish attracts what is necessary to meet the vision, the allowed openness receives it. This approach is limited by ego involvement and imagination. 2. "Reception": One feels into oneself and aligns, priming receptivity for the universe to seamlessly direct. One does not determine the direction as in #1, but allows oneself to be led.  This approach is limited by one's capacity to maintain adequate relaxation, hence receptivity.  Because it is not directed by self, it is easy to lose the thread of intention.  These are two very different ideologies.  In one, we primarily believe in oneself (ego driven or not). The other believes the universe knows better than the self as far as determining the needed direction.  Both believe in the power of the macrocosmos to impact one's life; in the first instance, it is almost an adjunct, in the second it is the master.

The question is where does my executive self, my ego play a useful role?  Maybe, once the direction is established, the useful aspect of ego, the performer, the doer, can provide the needed manifestation toward fulfilling the direction. Possibly, this is not a question to be answered until I am quite familiar with the workings of the ego.  How has the ego been experienced? In First person ("I") or Second person ("She/He/It")? How have I experienced the hindrance, the passive, the positive of the ego engaged?  Most importantly, who in me experiences ego?  The ready judge? The alter-ego?  Is there in me a space of objectivity, a suspension of the many buffers that color and hide ego's work?  In "Visioning", it is difficult for it not to play a role (useful or obstreperous). In "Reception", there is almost an abdication of an ego role, at least in the pre-direction aspect.

Regardless, the sense of an impression being layered is profound.  It brings to mind the layers of fascia and sinewy ligaments that layer gorgeously over each other to create a whole slice of optimally functioning musculature, a working organ and system. These layers are timely; coming both in sometimes quick succession or with long pauses in between.  Our human experience.

\"As Schopenhauer says, when you look back on your life, it looks as though it were a plot, but when you are into it, it’s a mess: just one surprise after another. Then, later, you see it was perfect. So I have a theory that if you are on your own path things are going to come to you. Since it’s your own path, and no one has ever been on it before, there’s no precedent, so everything that happens is a surprise and is timely.  — A Joseph Campbell Companion: Reflections on the Art of Living.

Giving Receiving

We are in a perpetual state of giving and receiving.  It’s lawful.  What ascends, descends.  What comes around goes around.  Energy is being spent or obtained.  This fluctuation can be beguiling.  The scales of giving and receiving run from minute to wildly large.  It’s easy to forget these transactions are constant.  It is the wise one that recognizes this inner and outer tide and is knowledgeable enough to turn the straw into gold.

The holidays and times of troubling shifts are ideal conditions to inquire, observe and experiment with giving and receiving (energy).  To be in this fuller intelligence, one needs to be more available to the subtle, which means, my cognitive mind is somewhat suspended (in the effort).  My usual thinking brain just gets confused, doesn’t know how to operate in this inquiry, so, best to give it another job--- like recording the details of the observation the larger Intelligence gleans even if ordinary mind doesn’t understand the stimuli.  The larger Intelligence is fast and flexible.  It’s smart; it knows the less important points, the info that can slide, the small, sometimes barely perceptible details that merit an attention.  It is willing to pick up what it doesn’t understand, willing to suspend usual understanding, it’s cousin, “cognition” depends upon.

In trying times, raw energy is prevalent and plentiful.  One’s body almost vibrates with the availability.  It’s challenging to be in the necessary relaxed state, the state that is available for a transformation from raw and frenetic to something a bit finer.  Mostly, in the state of a lot of raw energy, one assimilates it (unconsciously) and it almost always turns negative.  One of the reasons why this happens is the larger Intelligence isn't given the reigns, isn't allowed to be active.  Instead my usual intelligence starts to run things (without enough trust in another intelligence and no designated "job", what's a brain to do?),
and before long she gets confused over the loaded (energetic) stimuli, what it is and what to do with it, as well as the smoke-screen reactions that are part of the confusion.  So, usual intelligence does what she usually does in these circumstances, which is to shut down, minimize, react, whatever is her survival mechanism.  It's what she knows and Intelligence isn't strong enough or had enough experience being in or with this type of energy.  It is an education the at large culture doesn't give us.

So, what is this education in giving and receiving energy?  There is no road map, no curriculum for this; to each his own path.  But all paths seem to include a cultivation of quietness, less tension and an interest in "other" more subtle manifestations of energy.  Also probably, a respect for the healthy suspicion of the status quo, and the outward workings of what is generally regarded as "reality". A beginning of this education often transpires in periods of being in nature.  Nature is slower. Nature is simpler.  It is common for one's energy field to begin to match nature's when one is surrounded by that influence.  One's awareness has less obstacles to surmount in that energetically resonating  petri dish.  Possibly, childhood experiences that are quite natural and even usual still pulsates strongly in a person, won't go away, are often remembered.  This can be the beginning of an adult's education in what is possible when giving and receiving.

This opportunity of abundant raw energy has to be experienced a lot (decades?) before Intelligence begins to note it as an opportunity and the notion of transforming it a glimmer in the back of the eye/I.  Detaching from beliefs that limit the possibilities of transformation is necessary.  Physical beliefs (attachments to symptoms, ideas), moral beliefs of what consciousness is, transcendance, even what being whole (holy) is.  These beliefs anchor us in an outer reality that won't budge in the face of this other reality.  We are fixed.  Becoming unfixed, and fully uncomfortable in the sea of the unknown is mandatory.

In light of this, it is easy to understand why it takes a life time (or a moment after a life time) for probably only a few to experience the incredible phenomenon of human transformation. It is all of our potentials to do so; however, most of us are not conditioned to realize it.  Frequently, the universe provides conditions we have no choice but to participate in, usually kicking and screaming.  This can be a state of grace we are granted, the universe's nudging us to enter the possibility which is our legacy.

Giving and Receiving is the vigiliant practice of this legacy.  A practice without expectation.  A practice only of a consummate interest in what is.  No attachments.  Free.  It is a practice of study, non-action.