WHERE YOUR TRUE POWER LIES

During my ten day Vipassana retreat where I, along with seventy-seven others, meditated in noble silence, the power of STILLNESS was achieved, felt and utilized. It took three days, 4 a.m. to 9 p.m. to quieten the monkey in my brain (those thoughts that bombard you like a meteor shower), but after that phase I entered a space of fresh, clear and crisp emptiness where thoughts and emotions simply shot by in a dull flash, not touching the STILL canvas I had created. There was no more centre or boundaries, no more attachment, tension, or reaction to thought or pain; this was surely freedom in its purest form.

My Vipassana experience confirmed, for me, that we truly are the programmers of our brain ... that meditation, prayer, affirmations, self-talk, etc. are the primary work we need to do before we consider dieting, healing, or embarking on any task that requires a deviation from the mundane.

Create a receptacle of STILLNESS inside yourself, because that’s where your power blazes.  

HOW TO WRITE ABOUT LIVING IN A HOME WHERE THERE IS SUBSTANCE ABUSE

The process of writing about living in a home where there is substance abuse is a delicate task especially because you are dealing with real live characters in your story. The writing process is personal for everyone, however, one thing is for certain, living under the same roof as someone with a strong addiction can shape the way you see life.
There are many aspects to write about here. I am going to use a young boy named Jamie, the victim of an alcoholic father, as an example to describe some of the areas to explore as you write about these difficult times.
1.                  Predictability - In your writing you can use a catch phrase to indicate when you knew things were going to go haywire. Every time Jamie’s dad, who was posted in Italy during WW1, started singing ‘Arrivederci Roma’ the family knew they were in for one hellova weekend. Every time you introduce your catch phrase your reader will be drawn into your anxiety as they feel the tension that you felt.  ‘The door slammed!’ ‘The bottle clinked!’
2.                  Deceit - Here you can write about i) The substance user’s denial and deceit ‘I promise to...’, ‘It will never happen again...’ ‘I have stopped ...’ and ii) Your own lies - to cover up, to pretend, to save face, to avoid shame. You can also describe the barriers built from the lies within the family and lies that saved or destroyed. ‘Jamie told his friends his father was dead.’
3.                  Neglect and Abandonment - I will sum that up by a profound statement made by Jamie as a grown-up. ‘I used to run away and hide in the storm drain at the bottom of the garden hoping someone would come and look for me. No one ever did. Sometimes I feel like I’m still sitting in that storm drain.’
4.                  The Waiting – An interesting way to describe this is by using a poetic style; e.g. an anaphora, starting each sentence with the same word or phrase. Waiting for the explosions ... Waiting for storms to blow over ... Waiting to have prayers answered ... Waiting to grow up and leave.
5.                  Solace – Write about your place of solace; a secret place, with friends, in church, in mood changing drugs, in nature, in the arms of someone.
6.                  If you had Faith, what was it? Faith in your ‘healthy’ parent? Your God?
7.                  Explore your love in your writing – Was there something deep down in the alcoholic that you loved?
8.                  And lastly, write a letter to the alcoholic describing a) how you saw them with the substance abuse and what you observed as the alcoholic fought his secret war and b) how you saw them without the substance abuse.
Writing about this difficult period in your life can be very challenging but at the same time your prose and poetry may become a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

‘There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.’ A. Einstein.

EXPLORING YOUR HIPPOCAMPUS

The Hippocampus, the small area in the brain shaped like a seahorse, originates from the Greek word ‘hippokampos’; hippos meaning horse and kampos meaning sea monster. This little sea horse with the tail of a fish and the forelegs of a horse houses a complex filing system where we store and retrieve memories.

The subject of memory is a mystery. Why do some people remember things before the age of two? I do. Others remember things only before the age of five, others only before seven.

The memories I speak of are not necessary recalled because they are traumatic; they could be trivial recollections like bouncing along in a metal stroller, perching on a grandfather’s generous lap, or crawling through the long whispering grass.

When we are writing about our childhood tapping into our memory can often be a challenge. My message to you is:

Don’t wage war against your memory; welcome it.

One way to evoke a specific childhood memory is to ‘show up at a scene’. This visual exercise will help you to visit a scene as a child, with a child’s reality and naivety, which you can then describe from deep within a reminiscent child’s point of view. Please note that this exercise should only be used to evoke pleasant memories.

Have a keyboard or pencil/paper handy to write down anything you experienced on completion of the exercise - random words, a sentence, a paragraph, an entire chronicle.

Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths to center yourself.
Think of a place, a setting, a scene, from your childhood.
Observe from a short distance the young child (YOU) there at the place, in the scene.
Now slowly start moving towards the child.
Stop. Breathe. Look at the child.
Step forward into child’s space ... become the child.
Now look down at your body (eyes still closed). Look at your arms, are there scrapes? Bruises? Gentle rounded joints? Can u see fine delicate finger bones? Dirty or chewed fingernails?
Look at legs and feet. Are you wearing shoes? Is there sand between your toes?
Now listen (eyes still closed) to the sounds. Can you hear children? Water? Insects? Wind rustling through the leaves? Listen to your heart beat.
Now smell. Is there a scent of flowers? Grass? A dog’s fur? Cooking?
Now taste. Lick your lips. Are they salty? Sweet?
How do you feel? Anxious? Content? Nervous?
Take a deep breath. You are the child.
Now let the child write!

Explore your memory with openness and wonder, not by trying to force memory, but by releasing and allowing - allowing yourself to be lost and found, to be led and to follow, to float in a timeless sea of awareness and vision.

There’s something symbolic about the shape of our hippocampus, something primordial that mimics man’s beginnings in the sea world (tail of a fish) followed by his progression to land (forelegs of a horse). Become that child again as you flip through your past recollections, forever mesmerized by the mystery of memory.

WHAT’S IN YOUR FAMILY NAME?

No one invented peoples’ names; names simply developed and then expanded as the world became more populated. The history of names is a comprehensive one as not only did names advance differently in every country; naming customs within those countries kept changing from generation to generation.

Before William the Conqueror set out to ‘affix England to Normandy’ people were called simple names like Fox, Wildgoose, Smalldove, Toogood ... What do you think yours might have been?

When standardised spelling arrived in later centuries names became more creative reflecting landscapes and trades among many other identifiable themes. Smalldove might instead now be known as Mary of the Wood and Toogood - John the Butcher. As villages and towns grew and more than one John appeared they had to find ways to differentiate the two. This gave rise to names like John, son of Robert, which eventually evolved to John Robertson and so on.
Surnames became a requirement when rulers, starting back with William, began keeping census records for tax purposes.

Later on middle names further complicated things. At a time when children had a spiritual name plus a day to day name, the spiritual name was eventually adopted as a middle name. By the early part of the twentieth century, most people had middle names.

When doing your family genealogy you may find yourself hitting many roadblocks because your name could have changed several times over the centuries. My paternal surname ‘Byrne’, Gaelic for ‘raven’, was first O’Byrne, the ‘O’ standing for ‘son of’ or ‘God’. My ancestors did however drop the ‘O’ at some point. If they were Christians they likely didn’t want to flaunt their spiritual devotion during times of religious suppression.

Have fun tracing your paternal and maternal family names to their origin; the history of these names will add a fascinating layer to your life story.

Signed: Lesley from the Newmarket

YOUR LIFE STORY IS YOUR COMPASS TO SELF-UNDERSTANDING

Because we are primal beings we are continually wrestling with our modern traditions and our primordial instincts. Males may feel unworthy and disrespected when they underperform and women may feel vulnerable and confused in their struggle to build social alliances.

Many of us are searching for the key to happiness, and of course we all have the absolute right to be happy. We attend Self-Help seminars, watch Self-Empowerment programs, line up for the latest Self-Improvement book, mumble affirmations, master meditations, and yet we still are not happy.

To find happiness we try to live in the moment, connect with our body, tame our ego, resign judgment and conquer fear, but how can we succeed at these things unless we know the nature of our ego, the basis of our judgment and the origin of our fear?


“I didn’t want to have any kids; I didn’t want to preserve the genes I was so ashamed of.” A. K.

“If I couldn’t be like Jesus, I didn’t want to know about him.” T.L.

“What else was a Hindu supposed to eat in Birmingham in 1968? Scrambled eggs and beer became my staple diet.” N.N.


Your life story is your compass to self-understanding where you will learn about who you truly are, a vital quality which, in itself, will put a twinkle in your eye and a smile on your face.

IMMIGRANT ANCESTORS DID IT FOR YOU

Some of us can only imagine how bleak things must have been for our ancestors to leave the ‘knowing’ of their homeland and to set their sights on the uncertainty of the New World. Maybe it was an accumulation of troubles that made them decide to leave: smallpox, suppression, debt, food shortages, religious persecution, plagues ... Posters for their salvation flashed everywhere - ‘Come and own your own fertile land in North America!’

If you write about your family’s immigration local genealogy societies based in an immigrant’s homeland can help you to describe their life there, as well as provide possible reasons as to why they left. This may seem easy to do but because country boundaries are forever changing as a result of conflict and other influences, especially in Europe, this can complicate your research and it may have you checking out several countries to trace your lineage.

Another thing is that alphabets can vary from country to country, and this can affect the spelling of names. Some names were spelled phonetically on forms and the immigrant then signed with an “X”. This “X” does not necessarily mean your ancestors were illiterate.
Speak to as many relatives as possible to pick their brain for information about your ancestors. This is when you may have to draw from a pool of “already written” stories or archival sources that may depict your ancestors’ lives. Immigrating to a new country is a bold step to take. Much can be written here about courage, sacrifice, fear, uncertainty, weather, food, language, work, and nostalgia.

Dig deep into the psyche of your ancestors as you journey with them to the new lands they sought out so you could live and prosper today. Give your ancestors a regal place in your biography so that their faded names, grainy photos and X’s may blossom forever in your family tree.

ONE WORD TO ANYONE TRYING TO WRITE IN ENGLISH – BRAVO!

English - where all rules have exceptions. Where sounds and letters hardly ever agree.

Where we ‘see a movie’ but we ‘watch TV’. Where a ‘fat chance’ and a ‘slim chance’ mean the same thing, and where a ‘wise man’ and a ‘wise guy’ are opposites. Where a bunch of consonants are often strung together with just one vowel to help us pronounce the word – like in the word ‘strengths’. And what about a double negative forming a positive, but a double positive not forming a negative ... hmm, another exception.

And then we’ve got various countries pronouncing English differently; America, Britain, India, Australia, and where I’m originally from – South Africa. I still have a hard time saying ‘ba-na-na’. To me it’s still a ba-naa-na’. And what about the stuff English borrows from other languages? ‘Hors d'oeuvres’, from the French, ‘robot’ from the Czechs.

What a tricky language to learn to write, and here all are, with one foot in tradition and the other in creativeness, as we try to create a beautiful symphony of text, to express ourselves, to correspond.

Here’s to you, all you movers and shakers of the English language – Bravo! (By the way - that word is borrowed from the Italians).