Waking up in a world of hurt
I can’t remember if I’d fallen out with the world or my wife.
Really, I should be able to tell my world and my wife apart quite easily, but If you know anything about type 9 enneagram profiles you’ll know we crave harmony more than anything else in the world. A marital conflict of a certain flavour triggers deep seated internal conflict. A psyche screams into the void.
The photo above was taken when I woke up on the forest floor having spent an impromptu night out some 9 or 10 years ago after a row.
Looking up at those trees was all the proof I needed that I’d found space—I could breathe again. The trees had their breathing space too.
Silent Night
It happened again on Christmas Day.
Emotionally charged I bolted from the house.
Where I was going I don’t know, but I knew I had too get there urgently.
I put on all my warmest, waterproofing-est clothes and headed out in an unpleasant bleak wintry cloud-filled night.
Don’t Fence Me In
Our house is surrounded by farmer’s fields. In one sense, we’re miles from anywhere, paradoxically we’re also hemmed in because farmer’s don’t like you walking on their crops…it turns out.
Close to midnight, my forced march took me down empty country roads where cars and tractors are the usual order of the day…but this wasn’t an ordinary day.
It was Christmas Night and whatever energy I was giving off that evening it was enough to attract a lone police car who pulled up alongside me.
It was dreamlike in its bizarreness. I’ve never seen a police car on that road in the 8years I’ve lived here. There’s nothing here to police. Perfect cow rustling territory but cow rustlers generally need some cows to rustle and I was miles from the nearest cow.
So, here we were.
Him and me.
Me and him.
Me in the driving biting rain with my wool hat and headphones taken off my head and now in my hand. Him in his thermostat controlled, toasty police car “What’s your name?” “Where are you from?” “You haven’t fallen out with the Mrs have you?”.
“No.” I lied.
Doing my best to answer his questions in my best ‘I’m really not a psychopath’ voice.
He was seeing the wind soaked me but, in the words of a Dr Seuss character ‘could not’ ‘would not’ see transcendental me. The me that exists across all space time.
Not in the park. Not in the dark. I do not see you in the wet. I do not see you all upset. I could not would not in a dream.
We’re all related.
What does it mean?
Before the police car had approached, I had been mindfully and attentively feeling the sensations of every right step as I walked. Chaos in my mind I needed an anchor. I felt into my body as my psyche used whatever part of the cosmos it needed before feeling safe enough to return home.
I should perhaps point out that I’d been listening to Chögyam Trungpa’s The Path is the Goal ‘Crazy Wisdom’ Lectures on my headphones.
Trungpa made my 2hr walk around the block look like the toddler tantrum that it was.
Having escaped from Chinese occupied Tibet, it took him 9months, crossing over the 18,000-foot Himalayan mountain plateaus, wading through rivers under gunfire, and surviving on eating the leather belts and bags they were carrying, he and his compatriots eventually arrived safely in India.
From India, and destined to bring “Dharma to the west” he eventually found himself in the UK (and later the US).
I’m endlessly puzzled by this man who was reportedly a fully realised human being but one who had also at one time crashed his car whilst drunk into the window of a joke shop where I was raised in Gateshead.
Yogis say the universe speaks to them in colours and dreams. The universe seems to speak to me in Wikipedia articles and joke shops I unknowingly visited as a child
And why wouldn’t it?
Cars.
Alcohol.
A gritty urban back drop.
Being shot at.
A flawed human being. These are the things I can relate to.
Less so, gold, frankincense and myrrh.
Existence itself brought fourth a flawed human being to bring us back home. The 21 century is way out beyond the sacrosanct.
Way too soiled for the teachings of Jesus or the Buddha.
One night I remembered looking at the full moon only to immediately avert my eyes once I realised her beauty was undressed.
I, having left the garden of Eden and put on clothes, had not the purity of gaze to behold such an innocence.
When we stop searching for sacredness it starts to search for you.
And it’s there in all the silliness of our day-to-day lives.
Like the silliness of going for a walk on Christmas night and being stopped miles from anywhere by a police officer who has no idea who he is let lone who I AM.
Here’s to keeping our feet on the ground,
David
This is the bit where I appeal to my readers.
Where I explain how important it is for me to write and have a sense of nurturing energy out in the world. This quote from Substack’s page summed it up for me.
“A reader is not a passive vessel, but a consciousness that is being nourished.” Sophia Efthimiatou (from the recent Substack Reads)
My Substacks take a long-ass time to write. My life has unfolded in many difficult, and often contradictory ways, and to distil it into anything that remotely resembles useful advice takes a lot of time and even more care.
I think my voice is important. Not more important than anyone else’s but I’m saying the most important things I can say.
In a time where compassion is regarded as weak - especially by men and young men have zero role models in this area - I’m committed to not putting a paywall between those young men or anyone who might find some succour in my writing.
So I ask those who can pay for a subscription to support the work that I do here. And by paying you’re paying not just for yourself but for those who aren’t in a financial situation to pay just now.
And if you can’t pay for a subscription, don’t worry about it, enjoy the writing knowing that someone out there has been gracious and heartfelt enough to pay for a stranger’s space at the table.
Isn’t that a lovely thing for us all!
Mark here --yes, crown shyness. The poet David Whyte’s most recent “Three Sundays” talk is on the Shyness of Love. I am not sure if I ever “grew out” of this shyness in those years of my marriage to Barbara. I, too, am a Type Nine in the Enneagram.
Last winter, I struggled to walk the trail that runs through the forest abutting the back of our home. We had two significant sleet storms within a week of each other. Both sides of the trail were proliferated with American Beech saplings that had doubled over by the weight of the snow and sleet. More often then not, it seemed as if the majority of these saplings were bent towards the trail rather then away from the trail. After slogging along in and out and under the saplings, a strange revelation came to me. There has been a blight and infestation killing off the beech trees for several decades now. So this strange juxtaposition was how all these young trees were paying homage to me and to the sentient forest. Somehow these doubled-over saplings, in a genetic drive for excessive procreation, and in the face of such a terribly stunted lifespan, could make a collective gesture. A gesture of great honor and grace in the winter stillness and quiet that morning -- “crown honor”.
Love the dream-like quality of this piece 😊