Fourth Form of Madness

So I am on a five day mini break in the countryside. Okay so I did pack a lot of uni work, yoga reading and got my iPhone hooked up so I could check my emails at work but a funny thing happened, I got down here and haven’t been able to stop staring out windows at the countryside for hours on end. Even when I finally managed to pick up a uni book with all good intentions today, I must have read barely one paragraph before allowing my glaze to float out the window to the trees on the hillside. Oh well best to go with it, I get the feeling I am up for a busy period soon enough.

That’s not to say we haven’t been doing anything whilst down here, though admittedly the “anything” does seem to involve a lot of eating. The whole reason we came down here was to go to a long table lunch that my husband read about in a newsletter from one of the wineries we visited a few years back when we were in this region. It was only on the way there that I pondered “I wonder who else will be going to the long table lunch” – a valid question seems it was on a work day and in the country. It turns out the “who else” seemed to consist of those that owned planes and had flown there or at the very least owned a small country or had a link to royalty. And then there were us! Hubby looking resplendent in his freshly ironed UFC t-shirt with tattoos on full display and I looked like a walking rainbow in my new funky dress my hubby brought back from the US thrown over my somewhat crumply and dirty levis. And there was also the fact that we were the youngest there by about 20 years. To borrow from Kenny Rogers “You could have heard a pin drop…” when we got out of our car and walked up to the verandah where pre lunch drinks were being served.

Now a few months back one of my yoga teachers had given some good advice to use when walking into these very situation, put on your uddiyana bunda (kind of like body locks used to work with harnessing and dissipating energies) and come from there. Would have loved to do that but last Sunday I suffered the mother of all migraines which left me with the sorest spine and no ability to use this aid. So I used another aid to help me through this uncomfortable situation, from a teacher I met quite by chance and on the street. About six months ago I met Jane (not her real name but I haven’t asked her permission to write about her so I don’t feel comfortable using her real name). Jane is homeless and sells the big issue. Jane is also a transexual who is not afraid to make this fact known when you speak to her. She loves nail polish and pretty dresses. I don’t think I have ever had a conversation with her where she hasn’t started with a critic of my outfit. Jane is everything the social world often rejects and disowns and yet there she is living the life she wants with all the dignity and grace of a superstar!

As well as being the external optimist, Jane is also a hugger and really knows how to hug. Now I’m not a hugger, in fact, I’m pretty much a person that is terrified of human contact. I quit studying physiotherapy because I couldn’t stand to put my hands on people. So the first time Jane lays a hug on me, I tentatively hug back with all the enthusiasm of a rag doll. Jane is persistent, week after week, she hugs me until eventually, and without me knowing it, she has worn down my defences, until one morning I am hugging back, no fear of contact with other people. Jane has taught me a lot about living as you are and with dignity and I now hold her in my heart as I approach the silent and judging crowd. I feel myself relax into myself and know that I got this one all squared away inside, so the outsides influence seems to fade away in importance. And then a crazy thing happens, we go and have the most amazing time at the lunch. At the end of the day all of us on our table declare “same time next year with exactly the same people”. Its amazing how well we can all get along when we let fear and judgment drop (and in this instance I guess it was me that mostly needed to drop them :-)). I send a silent thank you to Jane and make a mental note to give her an extra big hug next time we meet.

I used to think that the mind was everything. I was a real big fan of soul too. But lately I have really come to feel the wisdom of the body and its innate phenomenal wisdom. I believe in its way the body guides the mind with the willing assistance of the soul, if you let it. I used to think it was the relaxing of the mind that led to the relaxing of the body but I guess I have been converted through experience to feeling that it is the relaxing of the body that allows the mind to unwind and rest. Focussing on the breath is a good way to see this connection. By slowing and calming the breath, the mind will (eventually) follow. You can tell everything about the state of your wellbeing and mind, through your breath, a bodily function. A bodily function, that without the involvement of the mind, will still occur.

The body’s greatest guide, feelings and emotions, will tell you everything else you need to know with regards to the soul, provided you leave them at the body level. Here I am going out on a limb (hee hee) as I understand that there are many that do not believe that feelings and emotions are of the body. But try this experiment. Next time you are angry or upset, try to pay attention to what is the first thing that registers that emotion. Usually I find the first place I feel anger is in my throat when it constricts to try to stop me from saying what I really want to say or as a burning in my stomach. Later my mind comes to the party and says “Hey I’ve got a burning stomach and a tight throat I must be angry!” And with that judgement of the mind, it spins out of control into justifying and creating reasons why I have a right to feel angry etc etc until I truly believe I am angry. But you aren’t angry (so to speak), you have just thought your way there, in a way you judge yourself and justify your way there. Your body provides you with the bodily clues that something is not sitting quite right with your soul when it comes to balancing the internal world with the external reality. You could leave it at that and observe it and register the feeling/emotion on that level. It is your mind that creates the illusion around the raw feeling/emotion.

But the mind is not without her virtues. The mind is an excellent tool for solving maths problems, for preventing you from putting your hand on a hot stove or wearing a pair of jeans that are clearly to small for you but ask your mind to feel and its like asking a blind person to see. Now I know it’s popular to bag the ego but I consider the ego to be one of the greatest gifts of mind. The ego is kind of like that annoying friend that always tells you the truth and pushes you to grow even when you don’t won’t to. Even when it is spinning off the rails it is telling you the truth, showing you the areas you need to work on and with, to befriend so to speak. Embrace it, love it and learnt from it, it will guide you home. The ego will be the first to take hold of your vision for yourself and help facilitate its creation into being, and in this way it truly earns its best friend title.

Returning to the body, all one has to do to hear her wisdom is to be quiet and still by relaxing, first the body itself and then the mind. I believe yoga is one of the pinnacle practices for teaching this skill. With practice you hear through every part of the body, you feel through all nerve endings the space that is there to be filled. You feel your limits and then you feel these melt away with each breath. The mind can’t help but follow such a beautiful and wise teacher.

Another week, another train incident! This particular morning the train was packed due to there only three carriages on the train instead of the normal six. I was sitting in priority seating because I’m special hee hee – no as there were no other seats and the only other people standing were abled bodied, not pregnant, not too old beings. I had with me more books than a library and about 3 bags so I thought I looked the most needy so I got the seat. Beside me was a lady in her late fifties and I could tell she was going to be a fun travel partner.

We had not gone very far, when she was squirming in her seat and started doing over exaggerated gestures with her hands to indicate she had a bad back in-between bending over her Kindle and reading a few lines. Now my head admittedly was stuck in my philosophy reader for my latest unit and I was having enough trouble struggling to understand Leibniz’s theory of monads without her dramatics. As I read on, I allowed her about 10% of attention to monitor if she was for real or just wanting to get my attention and drag me into whatever drama she was requiring to get through life. It didn’t take long to realise it was the later. I kept reading as she kept bitching on about this and moaning about the state affairs of this and shooting me side way glances. No sorry lady, not going there with you. Then the train filled up to breaking point and she was forced to escalate her moaning to a level perceivable by all, I cursed myself for not putting my iPhone earphones in!

On and on she ranted as we travelled through the suburbs. At all times shooting glances at me and expecting my participation. Now I am not a callous person, but I have become one that likes to focus my energy and time on people that don’t create dramas for the sake of them without any intention of trying to fix the things they are moaning about or without any intention of treating people well. She then proved me to that she was the later person as well. One of the young guys standing next to us, had his iPhone music up really loud and even though he had his ear phones in we could all hear it. Now the music wasn’t overly loud to my hearing and it was rather pleasant and secretly I was pleased to be hearing what the young people 🙂 listen to these days as all I seem to listen to these days is yoga music which is probably why hubby is always saying our home is like living at a yoga retreat!

Anyway, back in the train my travelling buddy in her loudest and most obnoxious tone, prods the youngster in the leg with her finger and asks him to turn it down. Now the young man, took one ear plug out for long enough to say “It is loud isn’t it” and then promptly put the ear plug back in ignoring her request to turn it down. Now at this point I’m not interested in taking sides or saying who was right or wrong, I’ve spent enough time doing that in life and seriously at this level, it can all be a bit of a waste of time. However, my now highly angry and outraged travelling buddy starts screaming at the youngster “You’re such a prick, your nothing but a prick” amongst other nasty, vile obscenities. Seriously all this ugliness over someone not doing what you want. Let it go. Pick up your Kindle and continue reading at all times feeling grateful that you woke up this morning and have an able body to go about your day and enjoy this absolute gift of consciousness – seriously the rest is just matter (hee hee).

So there I am still plugging along reading Leibniz which now has become almost impossible (however i think it might still have been impossible even if I was at home). I am mentally counting down the minutes until I can squeeze myself out of the train and escape this hostile energy. And then she screams out my favourite of her ensemble – “I hate this train, I hate the awful, horrible people you find on it, they make it an unpleasant journey”. I drop my philo book to my lap with the irony of her statement. No where in that statement do I think that she might have considered the possibility that she just made a train journey very unpleasant for a whole carriage full of people purely through her choices of whether to react or not to react to things that did not suit her liking. There are a lot of things in life that probably do not suit her liking, is she going to react that violently against all of them? She is going to be very tired, and very angry if she does.

Then as a parting gesture she treads on my foot as she departs and I truly feel touched by this meeting.

My husband is heavily tattooed. Seriously I hardly notice them any more, which doesn’t say much for my level of awareness, but to me they are just part of his skin, part of him. He just loves tattoos. I believe this love may have started when he was small boy living on a farm in New Zealand and he saw a tattoo on one of the shearers. My dear sweet husband said to the shearer “Wow you must have been really good to get that stamp!” I think the writing was on the wall from there on in!

When he is all dressed up in his computer nerd working clothes (hee hee) you would never even know he had ink. However, when we are say down at the beach there is no doubt. The last time we were down at the beach together I kept wondering why everyone was looking at us, we are no Posh & Becks. As I looked at my husband in all his tattoo glory; his two beautiful colourful arms both sleaved to the elbow, his heavily worked tribal chest and stomach, his proud family Celtic cross the span of his the side of his calf, the dragons on his ankles, the cultural significant hand tapped Borneo eggplant swirls and my favourite, his Japanese hand tapped warrior mythology piece, I started to see that they might be admiring the walking art gallery making his way to the water’s edge.

Not everyone embraces tattoos. I remember the first time I introduced my now husband to my father. Now for many years my father had been a detective and had seen a good many tattoo. To him tattoo had come to mean criminal – he couldn’t help it, the only tattoos he saw were usually on people he was arresting – I guess this faulty association factor was to much to refute in his mind. So in walks hubby glowing tattoos. At this point we had only been going out for around two weeks and my father proceeds to launch into a “what are your intentions with my daughter speech” in the most earnest of voices. I believe it was the tattoos talking!

Then there was the time that I was watching hubby compete in a competition. At some point in the wrestling action hubby’s top came up the people behind me said “Did you see that tattooed freak” or something to those words. At the end of the fight when hubby came to see me and give me a kiss, I chuckled to myself at the squirming people behind me. However, my favourite time was when I was waiting at the front of my house at the bus stop (how convenient for us) and started talking to a guy, that as it turns out, lived a behind us a few house across. We had been talking for a few minutes, I had established that he was, like my father a cop, he was very religious and that he didn’t like the noisy neighbours that lived either side of him. Now he didn’t know I lived in the house in front of the bus stop, that’s too bad for him, as he then started to tell me how he had been looking out his back top floor window of his house the other day(this sounds very Mrs Manglish doesn’t it) and had seen a tattooed, bearded bikie in the back garden of this house. He finished the story off with “Now we don’t want any of those kind of people living here”. Now I am not to switched on at 5.45am in the morning but eventually as I stood there mulling over what he said and feeling quite offended at his statement, it suddenly dawned on me that he was also talking about my husband. Now I am a quiet person but I have always stood up to people that bully or say detrimental things about others. Fuelled by the fact that this might be the only time ever I get to use all my sociology studies in real life, I launched into a sermon that started with “And who would be “those” people that you speak about?”. Needless to say he didn’t sit next to me on the bus when it came. I hoped to never see him again but a few days later he was at the bus stop that I was waiting at. We stood at apart, ignoring each other. Hubby must have been looking through the window and texted me “And then there was an awkward silence…..”

Hubby might be a tattooed freak, but he sure has a sense of humour!