Summer, 2014 – As I fumble with my alarm clock & drop it to the floor, I think of Eric. Eric was one of my mums’ cats. Specifically a Norwegian Forest cat – huge, long haired with a gorgeous grey colouring which gave him a handsome & noble bearing. One time when I was staying with my mum, Eric was trying to sleep in my room but was repeatedly woken (as was I) by three energetic kittens charging in, noisily wrestling with each other & rampaging out again. I could have kept the door shut but was just down for a long weekend, so the situation was novel enough that their cuteness outweighed even the primal frustration of disturbed sleep. For me, anyway. When morning came, Eric was finally just getting off to sleep, bless him, when I opened the curtains & the fresh sunlight inadvertently woke him back up (sorry, Eric, I had a train to catch). The groan he uttered was identical to ones which humans make in the same situation.
Indeed, I have just uttered the same sound myself. That’s because its 6am on a work day & my body is used to getting up at 7. So getting ready is postponed in favour of lying back down & groaning for a while. The relaxing nature of this impromptu groaning session is undermined by a nagging feeling that I ought to be Getting Up & Doing Something. This feeling gradually builds & its crescendo heralds my sudden leap out of bed & ushers in the realisation that I'm now Running Late & Must Be There On Time.
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| Hwa-ha-ha! |
Karen Armstrong's insightful account of what was written about karma in Buddha’s time confirmed my suspicion that it was merely a pre-scientific attempt to articulate genetic inheritance (e.g. if you’re male & your father is bald then it is your karma to become bald in future). Fanciful notions of abusers being reborn as future victims were added on later when Buddhism was exported to other cultures, which – typically for their time – were too hard-nosed to help the hard-done by & instead used karma as an excuse to explain their otherwise unjust suffering. Nevertheless, it’s fun to imagine that I was once too like a Cute Girl in a Carry-On film who tittered at Bernard Bresslaw earning the wrath of Hattie Jacques for emitting an indiscreet ‘blimey’ as I sauntered past. And that the otherwise dispassionate universe was so offended that it deemed it necessary to rectify my ways by making a future incarnation who doesn't even like Carry-On films fall off his bike decades later.
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| Ooooh! |
No time to contemplate the mystery now – this morning, the pavement (which I'm fairly sure it’s legal to cycle on here #whomeofficer) is littered with traffic cones, many of which have fallen onto their sides. So for an exciting few seconds, life imitates Mario Karts (I assume it’s spelled with a ‘K’ as stuff aimed at da kidz is always written like that nowadays) but there’s no more ladies in sight so I'm confident I won’t hit anything. The pavement in front of a car park has been sealed off with warning tape, so I cut through the car park itself. Pot-holed, unkempt gravelly surfaces are always an interesting experience on a commuter bike with no suspension but it’s either that or risk Hot Metallic Death on the dual carriageway. And I'm not talking about a thrash metal band.
But that’s all behind me now - I've arrived! The university. And somehow I’m still early. Enough time to quickly look over my bike & spot that the brakes have taken quite a battering from the fall. Then my friend arrives. There are three of us in our little group, which has only been meeting for a few weeks but today it’s just us two.
Running Late + Falling Off Bike + Mario Karts-induced adrenaline + the prospect of getting back in time for work with knackered brakes + characteristic Sam-like underlying anxiousness = unsettled mind, firing off random thoughts & self-criticisms faster than a machine-gun.
But as my friend greets me, my mind begins to calm itself in anticipation. It knows what’s coming & while parts of it are still resistant (that’s another blog in itself), other parts are learning to embrace the process - as it was a nice cup of tea after arriving home or a thick duvet when it’s raining heavily outside. Comforting & natural.
7:00 & we’re ready. The Chaplaincy is semi-lit from the corridor outside. The décor is functional & non-distracting - plain tables, stacked-up chairs, standard educational-establishment blue carpet; the only ornamentation is a large yet unobtrusive cross on one wall. We sit apart from each other, facing the same wall. She’s cross-legged on a pillow with a blanket underneath it. I'm perched on the edge of a chair, positioned so that I'm balanced on my sitting bones & can sit up straight with my back unsupported. Sit for as long as we do with your back leaning against something & you will quickly become drowsy. A memory pops up of a large room where over 100 people are sat cross-legged on the floor – of watching through half-closed eyes as the organisers’ quietly rush round, trying to figure out whose baritone snoring is cutting through the resonant silence. When my awareness returns to the present, it acknowledges the usual fleeting guilt that I am not sat cross-legged on the floor as well. Then the Mindfulness techniques I’ve recently learned kick in & I remind myself that my injury is involuntary & feeling anxious about it will change nothing - all I can do is accept it, work around it like water. We close our eyes, breathe in & focus on the sensations of breath & body.
At 7:55 the alarm on my friends’ phone goes off & our eyes open. Relief at being able to move stiff joints again is tinged with the melancholy of knowing that for now it’s come to an end. There’s a certain irony to the experience. When I'm tired & can’t concentrate, I will often have to fight the urge to look at my watch as a small voice within me worries that the alarm has failed to go off because it feels like I’ve been here FOREVER. Yet once the familial beeps come, I always find myself reluctant to stop. We move a little at a time - stretch slightly, stand slowly, begin to collect our belongings & straighten up the room. Small-talk resumes just as gradually. And that’s it. Meditation is done for another morning.
Sorry it wasn't more exciting but there were no gunfights today. Just a couple of people sitting still for a bit, in the same room. No flying kicks because I insulted the honour of her dojo (maybe I should try that some time – except she’s Korean & may have had secret ninja training). We merely sat in silence for almost an hour, focussing on the sensations of body & breath, pushing aside any random thoughts, pointless anxieties, dramatized imagined encounters with whoever’s bothering us at the moment, worries for a non-existent future. Then we went our separate ways – hers on foot, mine on two dodgy wheels. Re-joining the rest of the world.
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| Ahhh, that's better! |
The only slightly dramatic bit was the journey home. At least dramatic for me but not so, perhaps, for you, dear reader. I never, ever, at all, ever cycle on roads but figure I’ll be okay on the uni’s private roads at this time of the morning. Going down a steep hill. With damaged brakes. What could go wrong? So of course within seconds I'm closely pursued by a bus as I careen at a faster speed that I can manage towards a mini-roundabout, where a sinister-looking car waits to cut me up from the left, just beyond which at the bottom of the hill is the busy dual carriageway of Fast, Metallic Death. On the whole, not the best time to discover that despite my brake levers being fully depressed, I'm just barely slowing down. Oh well - my subconscious tries (and fails) to reassure me with an untimely reminder that one of my favourite singers, Melody Gardot, began her recording career from her hospital bed after she was run over on her bike & her doctor recommended music therapy to restore cognitive function. Not a particularly helpful reflection but my subconscious had always been pretty tactless… Yet I somehow defy my own expectations & manage to wobble my way onto the legal (probably) pavement, have to careen around a tight corner at speed & but luckily there’s nobody there to crash into. If the shallower section of kerb at the pedestrian crossing had been a straight one with no incline, I would have come off in the road, in front of a bus. So thanks, road designers!
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| Steeper than it looks :-o |
Something which once would have caused me to panic proves to be no problem whatsoever, thanks to a brain full of meditation-induced calming alpha waves (bless them). My conscious mind is fully aware that worrying is as pointless waste as it is counter-effective but it nevertheless remains the number one pastime of my subconscious. Aside from the usual inherited evolutionary instincts which cause us to fear the worst (hence why the pile of washing seen from the corner of the eye looks like an intruder with a knife) I come from a family of introverted over-thinkers who have a propensity for the depression which usually accompanies these tendencies. This is my karma/genetic inheritance/early conditioning. Meditation is scientifically verified to be an effective means of tackling these problems, which is why I've started getting up so early. Progress is being made but it takes time & discipline.
We haven’t been meeting like this for very long & began gently, initially once a week. Yet despite doing only a little in a short space of time, I am already feeling profound benefits. I'm calmer, more accepting, more at peace. It brings out my best side & makes it stronger. And apparently I'm a better dancer for it - one of my modern jive teachers said that something had changed but he couldn't pin down what. I reckon it’s purely because I'm significantly less self-critical. Don’t get me wrong - the old insecurities which have held me back for my entire adult life haven’t just vanished. But their intensity & the control they have over me have greatly diminished. And as I continue on this path, they will diminish all the more. That’s got to be worth getting up early for.
* Pirsig's seminal book contains a disclaimer which says it has nothing to do with Zen & doesn't say much about motorcycle maintenance either but that he couldn't resist the title. The same applies here – the meditation technique we use is Vipassana rather than Zen. There’s a definite lack of bicycle maintenance, though :-)
