bliss

I’m blissed, so is my wife and we smile at one another and it fizzes my heart. Today we celebrate our wedding anniversary, but this state we are in is due to what happens earlier. A friend gifted us a massage and the therapist came to our home. The past half hour since she left we’ve sat gazing in to space and at each other.

The endorphins are swishing about the body, making us feel as if we’ve won the lottery and win we have! What a great way to start our special Weekend. Thank you friend!

It’s been two years since we both felt this relaxed, precisely when Brexit began. And that moment of bliss happened when we took a break from having to pack up and sell our beloved house in France. We drove up the valley to a spa where one could, amongst other delightful experiences, enjoy thermal waters in an outside pool and watch the clouds drift across the mountains. It dawns on us today how blissful that was.

And today the shocks, troubles, ill health and financial disasters which have struck us more than once these past two years have temporarily slipped off. It is sheer magic.

It makes me realise I ought to spend more time in this mental space. It’d help. Brexit turned our lives upside down. Things are not at all easy. Perhaps I ought to begin my morning in a reflective fashion but that’s hard when your day is dominated by headaches, pains, feelings of illness and dizziness, for doing up this house kicked me back downhill. But then right now these things are easier to bear, so here’s the answer!

Actually, it has good history. My subconscious harps back to the years after I meditated in the Himalaya as my ultimate period. I was so clear that as I walked from India to England in bare feet, strangers in smart clothes frequently stopped me to discuss the meaning of life and the first time I, by now in tatty but clean clothes, walked in to London's most famous mediation centre, the proprietor asked me to take over. I was lauded as a guru, but people's sycophantic, self oriented behaviour made me walk away and doubt the whole seeking game, for it felt like an elaborate social game designed to avoid the truth of what is.

Unfortunately, strong as my clarity was, it wasn't based on wisdom and life-experience and so doubt took over. Today I saw that I've avoided the spirit of joyous-being which is inside each of us, but which is obscured by doubt, stress and all the stuff which occludes us.

OK, Iain, stop writing and go up to the top of the garden and do some Chi Gung, no more than a stretching ritual which, done mindfully, clears the mind. A clear mind is in touch with deep, deep emotion which arises from our root senses, and it is the mental place where empathy grows. It is a connection to your base self, the world around you in all its detail and to the complex process of nature.

Being in touch with life is what is lacking. When you are, a new set of clothes, a posh car, a trip to a fine hotel, these are as nothing compared to standing and admiring the clouds. You see other people's concerns, strip them back to their essentials, can avoid friction, avoid destroying that which is, allow situations to grow and generate a positive future.