Yesterday I bought an electric fly / insect zapper – this morning I found something I’d pinned up on my notice board written, by me, a few months ago, “I have let go of all ideas of what a successful life should look like – I am open to what comes” – well done you!

Since I wrote it my brother has been run over and killed,  and my father now can’t understand times and dates on his appointment letter from the doctor – my mother finds this more disconcerting and unnerving than the fact he doesn’t know who I am and often comes back to her and says, “HOW does I make coffee?” even though he may have already done it once that day…  It is amazing what we can get used to and accept as normal – but then be thrown by a new difficulty…

So “I am open to what comes” – what comes has also been a wrist injury so that I can no longer massage – deep tissue or Thai; and my brother’s death seems to have left me with a block do doing any emotional therapeutic work and so years of training in this area are not currently being utilised…

So on one level I feel as if I am in free fall – with so many things that I knew, that filled my world, that gave my life meaning, pleasure, and reward, either suddenly halted – or disintegrating before my eyes … and simultaneously there is – logically – space opening up – this enables me to spend time – lots of it – with my parents – and this is SO precious to me; and more than this … I found myself two days ago spending the morning just sitting on a beach looking at the waves, and running my fingers through the shingle on the beach, whilst sitting next to a dear friend – sometimes we spoke, sometimes we didn’t…

I spent an afternoon this week gardening in the sunshine – it has been a while since I found the time to do that… and I marvelled at the beautiful place in which I get to live…

And in a few days I will be spending a whole week with one of my daughters when the two of us stay with my parents and go out and do fun things in and around London…

As some of you may know, I am currently very taken with The Three Principles – Sydney Banks’ way of describing the nature of human experience – recently re-coined as “The Inside-out Revolution” by Michael Neill. They present this as the truth of how things are – not a theory or hypothesis – but the truth – like gravity – this is how it works whether you understand it or believe it – gravity is gravity and affects us all in predictable, consistent ways.

And I believe they are right and this is the truth of how human experience works – that we experience life from the inside out – so if I feel that I am in free fall and everything is disintegrating then that will be my experience – and if I open up and allow in other thoughts of my life being more like being semi-retired and on holiday half the time surrounded by people I love – then again – this will be my experience.

And Michael Neill would say emphatically that I don’t need to MAKE myself think / feel one way or another – just not cling to any thought and let life unfold … sounds like the thing I pinned up was pretty spot on then … and this is true … welcoming whatever comes doesn’t guarantee a constant stream of happy smiley thoughts and happenings … but it does stop me creating a downward spiral of gloom and despair out of the natural unfolding of life …

And in case you were wondering about the sticky things – that’s my parents’ crockery – my father’s washing up is not as it once was… 🙂