I wish I could say "eyes on the horizon" but I have no idea what is on the horizon and I do not dare to imagine what that should consist of...I work hard on my various projects and chances come up, but I am too petrified to hope for any outcomes as I know by now that, in general, nothing comes of those chances. Still I dutifully follow up until I am told again that I am/what I do is not suitable.
I am not being negative here, I am simply speaking of past experience. I am refusing to believe that this will necessarily repeat itself, I am willing myself to have faith that something will come of all this, and I am committing myself to preparing myself for and following up on any opportunities that arise...
I am gonna try keep things as close to my own style as possible though, as that is the only way in which I can sustain interest and courage, and be willing to suffer losses where it wouldn't have worked for me anyway...I am getting good feedback but as they say, "Now show me the money!" Or at least a means of getting closer to making my own living.
I have so much to do right now, there do not seem to be enough hours in the day to do all that I ideally should be doing...there is organising the Club Night with Vincent and Lorena, there is practising my mixing, developing my mixing, practising my piano, practising using Logic and writing songs (not happening at all but at least my class is starting up soon), there is theatre book reading to enhance my classes, there is publicising my classes, organising my classes, there is meditation practice (which I have been sticking to quite faithfully), there is keeping a journal (which is disgracefully sporadic), there is reading for enjoyment (which I am loving at the moment), there is listening to new music for DJing (very difficult as my computer very mysteriously refuses to speak to my iPod and it's better for me to wait till I go to Glasgow to get it looked at...), there is keeping up with correspondence, there was going to be brushing up on my German and Russian (which hasn't happened at all!)
And I still like to see my good friends amidst all that....And of course there is sleeping, which for some reason is sheer heaven at the moment. Since getting my homeopathic remedy, and in a strange way, since enjoying the Vampire books so much, my dreams have been so vivid and I have been sleeping so well. My room is a little bit warmer and my bed so cosy!
So what's happening? Well there are the possibilities of a couple of DJ gigs here in Galway - though the scene is so cliquey and depressing and unfriendly and backwards - though you have to chase people with the ferocity of a pit-bull in order to get them to come back to you at all - though I am not sure if there is an outlet for the type of music I play, even though it is fashionable anywhere else in the world! All I can do is keep trying...maybe it would be almost better to wait till I get to Berlin, so I have no reason to get too attached to this place.
I've recorded a few sets - a bar one which is nice, but kinda specific to a bar so not exactly setting me on fire - and then another one called "Valhalla By Twilight" which is a very beautiful slow-building deep and brooding tech house into techno mix and which I think is the best thing I've ever done. It's been getting alot of comments on Music V2 - one guy said it was one of the most beautiful things he had ever heard, this London girl DJ said she'd love to mix with me sometime (really sweet but I am so slow to get my hopes up!) and another guy is putting it in a music review as he liked it so much.
Strangely enough, Lorena was a little disparaging of it, saying the mixing is perfect but it "doesn't have enough breaks" and "doesn't make her want to get on the dancefloor". I thought this was a bit odd, considering she was saying my other mixes "weren't progressive in style" and that it's clearly a chillout mix. Not all mixes are for dancing. I know she didn't mean it badly, it was just her Argentinian bluntness. but if she wants to hear a dancefloor mix she can go and record it herself instead of telling me what I should be doing.
I take it as an opportunity to gain independence from her opinion. As she was my first teacher, I relied on her opinion alot, now it's time to stand on my own two feet and not be held back. It was the first mix where I felt I was really finding my own style and I am very very proud of it. Nearly everyone else loved it too! Lewis said you could put any major DJs name on it and sell it as a commercial release...
Then there is the chance of being signed with a good agent in Scotland, I think they might possibly be the best. I was recommended to them by a director I had worked with and he told me that they were interested and to send my stuff to them. Unfortunately I don't have any headshots here in Ireland and I certainly need to get new ones done and I can't do that until my hair has grown out a couple more inches so it can be cut into a more classic bob. So I emailed them with my updated CV, an older headshot and a theatre still. It was just before Christmas so I didn't expect them to get it for a while and I waited till the start of January to call them.
When I did the lady seemed very polite although she was very busy. She said she had just got back to the office and hadn't got through all the email yet and to resend it and she would speak to me soon. I told her I was in Ireland just now but in between Galway and Glasgow and she seemed to think that was cool. She seemed to know who I was when I said and said she would call me. So about a week ago I re-emailed the stuff and left it for now. No word. Not that I am worried...I just am so used to everything being a dead end that I am not very optimistic. And I am not sure how to follow up. Surely if she was interested she'd call me? I guess she was interested when Zam spoke about me but when she saw my headshot she thought "I can't get this girl work"!!!
The classes are ok, I did flyering this week and though many of my old students are coming back, I am slower to get phone calls from new ones. Could be something to do with the ole recession I guess...
I'm not down about all this. I just hope things don't follow the previous dead-end fashion. I'm going to commit extra hard to follow things through just to encourage change from my end.
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Faith. Show all posts
Thursday, 15 January 2009
Saturday, 4 October 2008
Will You Go?
I had a dream the other night and for the first time in my life I woke up and realised that this was not a dream, it was a vision. It seemed to come from beyond the mess of my subconscious, its content was so much bigger than me like something bigger than me was speaking through me.
I don't know where to begin with describing it, it was a synthesis of so many big things that made sense and yet when I woke up I knew exactly what was being said to me. It was a question being asked of me, a big question set so perfectly in the context of all that I have been preoccupied lately.
I'm not going to go into all the details, I'll just try to put the most important points. I wonder is it right of me to communicate a vision here, but maybe putting it into words will lead me into it again...
Before this part of the dream, I was dreaming normal dreams, there was something about the novel "War and Peace" and being stuck around two difficult men staying in my home who hated and were cruel to me and yet I was being forced (perhaps by my family or mum, I can't recall) to put up with them and suppress increasing violent rage...none of it really stuck out, it was one of those dreams that you knew was processing some emotion or other, I don't know and I don't know where the novel came in anyway...
It was a new sequence, the start of which is really really vague for me and makes no logical sense but yes has a kinaesthetic feeling of rightness. I was at the cinema watching one of the "Three Colours" movies, but there seemed to be some confusion about which one it was. The movie was over, but there seemed to be a bit at the end which I was compelled to stay on for. (Actually that is the case with that particular trilogy, a sequence at the end which ties together all three movies)
I was watching it, but suddenly I was in it...I was one of the extras and though the main female role was being played by Julie Delpy (the heroine of Three Colours White which is my favourite of the three) by the end of it, it was me.
I went through a post office to a garden where a man was waiting for something. (There had been something about a train station too which I couldn't recall.) He had been waiting there for some time and a crowd had joined him. I wasn't sure if the thing he was waiting for had already arrived and recurred on a regular basis or if it hadn't arrived yet.
It was night and we were waiting for the coming of something, we didn't know what it was and he didn't say what it was. He was an older man, like an older version of Jean-Marc Barr out of "The Big Blue", a man I think is really beautiful looking. He just played with children but he was waiting for the heroine too. She didn't know why she was there. It was an uneasy wait, people were jostling, someone fell into a pond and she fished them out. We were looking up into the sky. There was a sense of "What are we waiting for? Why are we here? Will it even come?"
The sky was grey with wispy clouds, the garden was dark. "Ah" I thought, wanting to make sense, wanting to know what I was expecting before it even came. "We are waiting for the dawn. Perhaps we are all waiting for the dawn to come so that we can see the new day together and realise how beautiful it is so we can all live new lives." This comforted me.
And then the dawn came and I was the heroine. Yes the dawn was beautiful, the sky illuminated with colour beyond anything that you can ordinarily conceive. Here I began to realise that this was coming from somewhere so far beyond me that it was so much BIGGER than what I had been expecting. And it was a terrible frightening beauty because suddenly the earth began to shake, things fell from the sky and the world as we knew it began to be destroyed.
The man drew me to him, he alone had known that this would happen, and that there was hope in this, it needed to be. As I drew close I lost my fear. "I have loved you forever and ever" he said to me (or something to that effect but MORE, the feeling was more than the words) "I have been waiting for you. Will you go?"
"Will you go?" I woke up with this question blazed at the forefront of my mind and a distinct certainty that "This is no mere dream."
A small postscript which could be my fancy and means nothing but strikes me as amusing and hindsightful...two days later I met an man who looked like an older Jean-Marc Barr!
I don't know where to begin with describing it, it was a synthesis of so many big things that made sense and yet when I woke up I knew exactly what was being said to me. It was a question being asked of me, a big question set so perfectly in the context of all that I have been preoccupied lately.
I'm not going to go into all the details, I'll just try to put the most important points. I wonder is it right of me to communicate a vision here, but maybe putting it into words will lead me into it again...
Before this part of the dream, I was dreaming normal dreams, there was something about the novel "War and Peace" and being stuck around two difficult men staying in my home who hated and were cruel to me and yet I was being forced (perhaps by my family or mum, I can't recall) to put up with them and suppress increasing violent rage...none of it really stuck out, it was one of those dreams that you knew was processing some emotion or other, I don't know and I don't know where the novel came in anyway...
It was a new sequence, the start of which is really really vague for me and makes no logical sense but yes has a kinaesthetic feeling of rightness. I was at the cinema watching one of the "Three Colours" movies, but there seemed to be some confusion about which one it was. The movie was over, but there seemed to be a bit at the end which I was compelled to stay on for. (Actually that is the case with that particular trilogy, a sequence at the end which ties together all three movies)
I was watching it, but suddenly I was in it...I was one of the extras and though the main female role was being played by Julie Delpy (the heroine of Three Colours White which is my favourite of the three) by the end of it, it was me.
I went through a post office to a garden where a man was waiting for something. (There had been something about a train station too which I couldn't recall.) He had been waiting there for some time and a crowd had joined him. I wasn't sure if the thing he was waiting for had already arrived and recurred on a regular basis or if it hadn't arrived yet.
It was night and we were waiting for the coming of something, we didn't know what it was and he didn't say what it was. He was an older man, like an older version of Jean-Marc Barr out of "The Big Blue", a man I think is really beautiful looking. He just played with children but he was waiting for the heroine too. She didn't know why she was there. It was an uneasy wait, people were jostling, someone fell into a pond and she fished them out. We were looking up into the sky. There was a sense of "What are we waiting for? Why are we here? Will it even come?"
The sky was grey with wispy clouds, the garden was dark. "Ah" I thought, wanting to make sense, wanting to know what I was expecting before it even came. "We are waiting for the dawn. Perhaps we are all waiting for the dawn to come so that we can see the new day together and realise how beautiful it is so we can all live new lives." This comforted me.
And then the dawn came and I was the heroine. Yes the dawn was beautiful, the sky illuminated with colour beyond anything that you can ordinarily conceive. Here I began to realise that this was coming from somewhere so far beyond me that it was so much BIGGER than what I had been expecting. And it was a terrible frightening beauty because suddenly the earth began to shake, things fell from the sky and the world as we knew it began to be destroyed.
The man drew me to him, he alone had known that this would happen, and that there was hope in this, it needed to be. As I drew close I lost my fear. "I have loved you forever and ever" he said to me (or something to that effect but MORE, the feeling was more than the words) "I have been waiting for you. Will you go?"
"Will you go?" I woke up with this question blazed at the forefront of my mind and a distinct certainty that "This is no mere dream."
A small postscript which could be my fancy and means nothing but strikes me as amusing and hindsightful...two days later I met an man who looked like an older Jean-Marc Barr!
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Song: If You Seek … by Thomas Merton
If you seek a heavenly light
I, Solitude, am your professor!
I go before you into emptiness,
Raise strange suns for your new mornings,
Opening the windows
Of your innermost apartment.
When I, loneliness, give my special signal
Follow my silence, follow where I beckon!
Fear not, little beast, little spirit
(Thou word and animal)
I, Solitude, am angel
And have prayed in your name.
Look at the empty, wealthy night
The pilgrim moon!
I am the appointed hour,
The “now” that cuts
Time like a blade.
I am the unexpected flash
Beyond “yes,” beyond “no,”
The forerunner of the Word of God.
Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers:
For I, Solitude, am thine own self:
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen!
Tuesday, 5 August 2008
Home
It is so good to be home, albeit under sad circumstances. Although the circumstances have allowed me to witness and appreciate what a wonderful wonderful family I have, of which my aunt Geraldine (who passed away on Saturday after a 9 year battle with cancer) was, and will continue to be by the shining example of a life well-lived, an integral part. Over the last few years, even though I have been away, I have felt us all being pulled closer together all the time. I see my Mum and my Uncles grow into their middle years with such grace and integrity and I see them being drawn ever nearer and nearer back into a family unit in spite of (or maybe because of) the absence of my Grandmother as a unifying figure.
I see my Uncle Michael, a zealous born-again Christian, who has mellowed alot in recent years - having ceased trying to save us from the fires of hell by converting us, to extending to us all an acceptance and a grace in spite of his very sincere fears of the repercussions of our not having Jesus in our hearts - I see him wrestling bravely with placing this tragedy into a context he can understand and find comforting. Although I may not agree with some of his ideas, I look for where they do meet with mine, and I feel privileged to be there to listen to him and gently encourage him as he struggles to make sense with this. I noticed when I arrived that he addressed all his thoughts to me as he spoke, perhaps he felt comfortable to do so, as his religion has been such a bug-bear in the past among his siblings and with me he was on more neutral ground. I didn't propound any of my own thoughts except where I could agree and elaborate on what he was saying. I just felt so glad there was some way in which I could be there. And whatever form it may take, whether I agree with the tenor of it or not, I know his faith is strong and will bring him through.
My cousins, his children are such lovely children, or young adults should I say. I think it meant alot to Matthew, the eldest that I had come straight over, and that meant alot to me! Mum and I went over last night and we could feel how constricted they felt, being bound to the house while still unable to grasp what had happened, yearning for a little normality, so I started taking the mick out of Mum and she gladly let me just because it was so good to see them laughing. And I am so glad that I will be home for a few months in September to be there for the two girls when they go back to school. My plans to come home for a while are making more and more sense in the broader scheme of things.
First of all there is greenery everywhere! I haven't been in town yet, except for when the bus pulled in. I miss nature so much when I live in the city. I understand why I feel so trapped at times, yes there are parks, but it is not the same. And this is my corner of nature. I know it so well...I always feel so much more creative when I am home with Mum as well. Our family are not big ones for getting together and have big family chats although we do do that at times. We much prefer to just be together in the same house and potter about doing our own things. I get so much done that way...Mum and I spent a long time this afternoon together, her making flower arrangements for the funeral (she is truly an artist when it comes to floristry) and me putting a set together with all my new tunes for the DJ gig which Ryan has so kindly offered me on the 15th August. I think it's one of the best sets I've ever played and I hope I can build on it. I look forward to being home and continuing to be creative in many ways. I've felt so blocked for so long, because I always thought of it as a means to an end. Now it is coming clear that it is just a way to be and if something comes of it good and well but my only duty to the world is to feed and clothe and shelter myself, one doesn't need a fancy job that makes one miserable to do that!!!
I was reading, finishing actually, "The Gift of Change" by Marianne Williamson today - a book I look forward to rereading - and in the last chapter she discussed change and how it takes time. She talked about in-betweeny stages where a new self is being born and how these transitions cannot be rushed or forced as you need to grow into this new self. And in the chapter before she talked about God's plan and how it is synonymous with your happiness, they are not things you need to choose between. I feel so certain that coming home now is the right thing to do. Why I do not know, but I know.
I see my Uncle Michael, a zealous born-again Christian, who has mellowed alot in recent years - having ceased trying to save us from the fires of hell by converting us, to extending to us all an acceptance and a grace in spite of his very sincere fears of the repercussions of our not having Jesus in our hearts - I see him wrestling bravely with placing this tragedy into a context he can understand and find comforting. Although I may not agree with some of his ideas, I look for where they do meet with mine, and I feel privileged to be there to listen to him and gently encourage him as he struggles to make sense with this. I noticed when I arrived that he addressed all his thoughts to me as he spoke, perhaps he felt comfortable to do so, as his religion has been such a bug-bear in the past among his siblings and with me he was on more neutral ground. I didn't propound any of my own thoughts except where I could agree and elaborate on what he was saying. I just felt so glad there was some way in which I could be there. And whatever form it may take, whether I agree with the tenor of it or not, I know his faith is strong and will bring him through.
My cousins, his children are such lovely children, or young adults should I say. I think it meant alot to Matthew, the eldest that I had come straight over, and that meant alot to me! Mum and I went over last night and we could feel how constricted they felt, being bound to the house while still unable to grasp what had happened, yearning for a little normality, so I started taking the mick out of Mum and she gladly let me just because it was so good to see them laughing. And I am so glad that I will be home for a few months in September to be there for the two girls when they go back to school. My plans to come home for a while are making more and more sense in the broader scheme of things.
First of all there is greenery everywhere! I haven't been in town yet, except for when the bus pulled in. I miss nature so much when I live in the city. I understand why I feel so trapped at times, yes there are parks, but it is not the same. And this is my corner of nature. I know it so well...I always feel so much more creative when I am home with Mum as well. Our family are not big ones for getting together and have big family chats although we do do that at times. We much prefer to just be together in the same house and potter about doing our own things. I get so much done that way...Mum and I spent a long time this afternoon together, her making flower arrangements for the funeral (she is truly an artist when it comes to floristry) and me putting a set together with all my new tunes for the DJ gig which Ryan has so kindly offered me on the 15th August. I think it's one of the best sets I've ever played and I hope I can build on it. I look forward to being home and continuing to be creative in many ways. I've felt so blocked for so long, because I always thought of it as a means to an end. Now it is coming clear that it is just a way to be and if something comes of it good and well but my only duty to the world is to feed and clothe and shelter myself, one doesn't need a fancy job that makes one miserable to do that!!!
I was reading, finishing actually, "The Gift of Change" by Marianne Williamson today - a book I look forward to rereading - and in the last chapter she discussed change and how it takes time. She talked about in-betweeny stages where a new self is being born and how these transitions cannot be rushed or forced as you need to grow into this new self. And in the chapter before she talked about God's plan and how it is synonymous with your happiness, they are not things you need to choose between. I feel so certain that coming home now is the right thing to do. Why I do not know, but I know.
Thursday, 31 July 2008
A Course in Miracles
I am at as loss in terms of knowing what to write about this because I am finding it all so confusing in my mind. But since starting this blog, I have found it good just to start writing about what I am experiencing as I get to know some of my thoughts about it. Having to express it in a way that makes sense is good mental discipline and almost makes me feel like I am gettin back in touch with my creativity.
I have been pretty much faithfully doing the course for twenty-three days now, reading the daily chapter and doing the exercises that go with it. I don't hugely enjoy reading the chapter. I find it difficult to penetrate the meaning of what is said, even more so to apply it to my everyday life. Not understanding makes me feel a bit stupid at times and that is somewhat uncomfortable for me! Sometimes what I read one day clarifies what I have struggled with before, but overall what irks me is that I really don't know what I think of it all! Is that the product of a mind that has become somewhat lazy - in the sense of avidly reading so many ideas and just taking them in with out seemingly processing or wrestling with them - or am I just going through that inner confusion which heralds true learning? Or is it all just a loada bollocks???
See, having read "A Return to Love" and most of "The Gift of Change" by Marianne Williamson, I really cannot agree with the last statement. But Marianne Williamson's books make so much more sense than "ACIM". At times I ask myself, is this book just contradicting itself? But I don't have a good enough grasp of the material to answer that. I feel so far behind it. I wish I could bring up some of the cases in which I thought this happened, but I am sorry to admit that alot of it just goes over my head and does not commit to my memory. The basic gist of the Course comes across and I am familiar with it from Williamson's writings - it fits in with the mentality of the lovely Florence Scovel Shinn books which got me through some very difficult times - and I like it. I think it is a positive way in which to use my mind.
It's just got me panicking a little because I begin to think "Oh God what have I done wrong to cause this?" when something negative happens or I have a bad day in spite of all my hard work. These things pass of course, but instead of feeling mentally empowered, at times sometimes I feel at the mercy of the power of my mind, if that makes any sense! I think it good to take responsibility for my thoughts and how they manifest in my life, but at times it is a huge pressure and terrifies me. My faults and shortcomings become clearer to me and they just seem endless! How can I ever sort them all out? If I have an uncharitable thought or react badly to something that upsets me, I always pray afterwards and say to God "Please help me to see this differently" I try to bless those people and situations I am having most difficulty with, I ask God to remove the thoughts which are unworthy of my better self. But at the moment it is tiring and disheartening to say the least. I wanna go back to my ignorance and have a good old moan or bitch, but that feels uncomfortable too!
Ach, this is probably a part of the process and transformation will occur subtly and for the best. I find the exercises easier to access than the readings. I do them with as open a mind as possible. Sometimes the premise is a little obscure like, "What I see is a form of vengeance", but then on the obscure days weird little insights come to me, seemingly unrelated to the central lesson and on the days where the exercises seem to make sense, I don't really seem to get anything out of them. And sometimes I disagree, "Is this the world I really want to see?" is supposed to be answered in the negative, but at times I am happy with looking around and seeing things just as they are.
And what confuses me too...should I have no dreams or plans whatsoever in case they have nothing to do with God's Will for me? Sometimes I feel guilty when glimmers of fantasy of ambition arise and other times I get worried that this course will cause me to lapse into some form of apathetic fatalism. All of this seems to be contributing to some form of spiritual lethargy.
I think I have had my surfeit of spiritual books for the present. I have a few to finish of course and I am really enjoying them, but my brain is becoming so overloaded with all that stuff, it's having no chance to process. I need a bit of fiction in my life! I read Jane Austen's "Persuasion" on a complete whim the other week and it was a breath of fresh air!!! And the other night, for the first time in almost a year, I picked up a book that had to do with theatre "The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit" and I am enjoying the little bit I have read so far...
Of course I will stick with ACIM but I need to relax...
I have been pretty much faithfully doing the course for twenty-three days now, reading the daily chapter and doing the exercises that go with it. I don't hugely enjoy reading the chapter. I find it difficult to penetrate the meaning of what is said, even more so to apply it to my everyday life. Not understanding makes me feel a bit stupid at times and that is somewhat uncomfortable for me! Sometimes what I read one day clarifies what I have struggled with before, but overall what irks me is that I really don't know what I think of it all! Is that the product of a mind that has become somewhat lazy - in the sense of avidly reading so many ideas and just taking them in with out seemingly processing or wrestling with them - or am I just going through that inner confusion which heralds true learning? Or is it all just a loada bollocks???
See, having read "A Return to Love" and most of "The Gift of Change" by Marianne Williamson, I really cannot agree with the last statement. But Marianne Williamson's books make so much more sense than "ACIM". At times I ask myself, is this book just contradicting itself? But I don't have a good enough grasp of the material to answer that. I feel so far behind it. I wish I could bring up some of the cases in which I thought this happened, but I am sorry to admit that alot of it just goes over my head and does not commit to my memory. The basic gist of the Course comes across and I am familiar with it from Williamson's writings - it fits in with the mentality of the lovely Florence Scovel Shinn books which got me through some very difficult times - and I like it. I think it is a positive way in which to use my mind.
It's just got me panicking a little because I begin to think "Oh God what have I done wrong to cause this?" when something negative happens or I have a bad day in spite of all my hard work. These things pass of course, but instead of feeling mentally empowered, at times sometimes I feel at the mercy of the power of my mind, if that makes any sense! I think it good to take responsibility for my thoughts and how they manifest in my life, but at times it is a huge pressure and terrifies me. My faults and shortcomings become clearer to me and they just seem endless! How can I ever sort them all out? If I have an uncharitable thought or react badly to something that upsets me, I always pray afterwards and say to God "Please help me to see this differently" I try to bless those people and situations I am having most difficulty with, I ask God to remove the thoughts which are unworthy of my better self. But at the moment it is tiring and disheartening to say the least. I wanna go back to my ignorance and have a good old moan or bitch, but that feels uncomfortable too!
Ach, this is probably a part of the process and transformation will occur subtly and for the best. I find the exercises easier to access than the readings. I do them with as open a mind as possible. Sometimes the premise is a little obscure like, "What I see is a form of vengeance", but then on the obscure days weird little insights come to me, seemingly unrelated to the central lesson and on the days where the exercises seem to make sense, I don't really seem to get anything out of them. And sometimes I disagree, "Is this the world I really want to see?" is supposed to be answered in the negative, but at times I am happy with looking around and seeing things just as they are.
And what confuses me too...should I have no dreams or plans whatsoever in case they have nothing to do with God's Will for me? Sometimes I feel guilty when glimmers of fantasy of ambition arise and other times I get worried that this course will cause me to lapse into some form of apathetic fatalism. All of this seems to be contributing to some form of spiritual lethargy.
I think I have had my surfeit of spiritual books for the present. I have a few to finish of course and I am really enjoying them, but my brain is becoming so overloaded with all that stuff, it's having no chance to process. I need a bit of fiction in my life! I read Jane Austen's "Persuasion" on a complete whim the other week and it was a breath of fresh air!!! And the other night, for the first time in almost a year, I picked up a book that had to do with theatre "The Complete Stanislavsky Toolkit" and I am enjoying the little bit I have read so far...
Of course I will stick with ACIM but I need to relax...
Wednesday, 30 July 2008
Faith Matters
My Faith is becoming like the rest of my life. I don’t know where I fit, and worse still, I don’t know any longer where I want to fit. I think I have been reading too many spiritual books and have reached overload, to the point where I don’t know what I think or believe. I like many things I read, I agree with much of it and I see that much of it has in common. Rather than choosing different frameworks, I feel comfortable accepting them all as valid and am highly interested in how they are constructed. I see so much potential for them to interlink and enhance one another, but my lazy, messy brain prefers to just take it all in rather than organise it in any way...
For some reason I call myself a Catholic. Perhaps because I was baptised Catholic or perhaps because I was sitting in a Catholic church in Edinburgh waiting for my friend to come out of confession (I had gone to give her moral support as this was a big deal for her), staring at an icon of a Saint, when a big rush of energy came down upon me and filled me with a sense of the Divine and a need to get closer...Some might call this the Holy Spirit, whatever it was, it was a very tangible feeling and not of my own making. I started going to Church again, I started reading everything about the Divine I could lay my hands on. It became a way of curing me of the depression I had been suffering from.
But there were things I didn’t like. Especially in my interactions with a certain Catholic friend of mine who was delighted I was going to Church. (Even though she didn’t go to Church herself, but this is not a discussion of her faith, is it?) She used to talk to me in a delighted, patronising way when we brought up our beliefs and found we differed, saying “Oh you’re only at the start of your journey now, but someday you’ll understand the Truth about this” As if our belief systems would homogenise when I “caught up” with her.
Or “Oh I know you don’t want to think this is true, but I have read all about it.” Yes but where did you read it? Did you read the other side of the story?
Sometimes I was afraid to bring things up because it seemed as though they had to pass muster with her. She seemed pleased that she had someone as part of her club now, but displeased when I didn’t conform to the membership rules. “Yes, very good you’re saying the Rosary. Ooh I like this book you’ve given me but what’s this? It has the word occult in it. What do you mean, it’s in a different context? Oh, hmm I’m not sure, yeah yeah whatever. What, you don’t believe in the Devil? Oh, no, his trick is working on you, he’s fooled you, he wants you to think that he doesn’t exist, that’s how he gets his power. Oh I’ve read all about the Devil and I’ve talked to priests who did exorcisms, I know all about it.”
The one highly offensive thing she said was to suggest that the reason I had had a nervous breakdown and suffered from depression was because I had been reading about Taoism and had visited lots of Hindu Temples while in Bali the previous year. I had been “possessed by a spirit of depression” because I had left myself open to it. I was furious. What utter mumbo jumbo! What an ignorant denigration of everything that I had been through to bring me to that point.
It didn’t put me off though, I just stopped taking religious conversations with her seriously anymore and focused on the more frivolous aspects of our friendship, of which I am delighted to say there are many and which make her a very enjoyable person to have around on so many other levels. I took into account that we are all brought up differently and that even if she can’t respect my outlook, it is a very big part of my moral code that I can allow her to have hers.
I still went to Church spasmodically, I read voraciously - Julian of Norwich, the Big Book of Women Saints, C.S. Lewis, St Theresa of Avila, St Therese of Lisieux. I said the Rosary for a while until I felt there was no substance in my prayers and I wanted something else to happen before I could go back to it. I still prayed regularly...I went to Church even less, but still kept involved in my faith. I kept it very private though, like it could be hurt if I revealed it to anyone. I would say to someone if it came up that I had faith, but I didn’t discuss the substance of it. Partly because I wasn’t quite sure yet what it consisted of, besides a belief in God, and also because no one would really ask me what it consisted of once they had garnered this information. They would usually just presume that they knew exactly what I believed and would go on about Catholicism and organised religion and kiddy-fiddlers and there would be nowhere to go with the discussion because I would be in complete agreement about the organised religion bit and I wouldn’t find the words to explain how my attraction to the mass and the sacred space of the church is a very private and mysterious thing for me that I don’t fully understand.
The other thing was “How can you take drugs and be a Catholic?” I can’t answer that, I just do and its no one’s business except mine and God’s. I feel that God will accept me as I am and that as I engage with him my soul will sort itself out slowly through his will as long as I remain open. And that has definitely been the case. My lifestyle has subtly altered, I just don’t seem to be taking anything or even drinking very much over the last few months, and this is without my having to make any grand sweeping gestures that can just as immediately be gone back upon.
I went to a Catholic Youth Group last week which another devout friend of mine had been organising and I wanted to support her. This friend is very open and accepting of other people’s beliefs, she is interested and asks questions and yet maintains what she believes when she needs to without any defensiveness or self-righteousness. It was a lovely mass and afterwards I had a tea with the other young people. They were all very nice, but unfortunately as I am used to having a good joke with my friend over these matters, I may have overestimated their capacity for humour about the Pope when I said he looked like a “Scary Old Rascal” (in a nice way!) and mused over how different it must have been for him presiding over the Youth 2000 conference in Australia in comparison to the Hitler-Jungend rallies he attended in his youth!
I was unlucky enough to fall in conversation with a girl that even my friend finds “difficult” as she explained to me later. I made it clear to her that I had been joking and I listened with great interest to her defence of the Pope, to the extent that I was glad I had made my joke otherwise I wouldn’t have heard an alternative viewpoint to all the negative stuff we hear in the media (which can hardly be objective for, after all, the Church is hardly fashionable). At first it was all very pleasant, we mused on how lovely it would be to have a “Good News” program on the tv which reported all the nice things that people do for others. I then started talking about the Carolyn Myss book that I have been reading which is full of lovely stories of services and good deeds people have done for others, all organised and defined around each chakra.
That word was enough to bring the conversation to a halt, she was no longer listening to what I was saying. She tensed up and said she had to warn me that “Chakras are dangerous. That’s all New Age stuff. I just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t warn you.” I knew where this was going, I felt myself clamming up immediately, I didn’t want to discuss this and yet I gently tried to explain that chakras are merely an ancient way of understanding how energy moves around the body and that it stems from forms of Eastern spiritual practice that are far older than Christianity. Her face remained blank as if to say “So what?” “Take Hinduism for instance, Brahman/Vishnu/Shiva are a trinity just like God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit. It’s so interesting to see how these religions are interrelated. And I love learning about all the different frameworks other cultures use.”
“I don’t understand how you can believe in two religions at the same time” she looked disgusted and I couldn’t think straight because something in me was hurting. I ended up backtracking and saying that while I chose to practise Catholicism, I still liked to read about other cultures religions. Or something to that effect. It wasn’t quite the truth but at the time I just couldn’t do justice to my thoughts.
You see I guess I reckon I was naive in thinking that as young people they wouldn’t be all caught up with the organised part of it and just saw Catholicism as a meaningful way of practising their spirituality. I guess I saw hope for the Church to reenter the world in a way that does not scare or exclude people, that allows them a sense of humour and mischief, that moves with the times and responds to people’s needs in the here and now, reevaluate things so as not to press any undue guilt on people. I think I am silly to expect that, and I am not saying that certain standards shouldn’t be adhered to, but to have to confess playing with yourself in the confessional, as if that were a sin!!!
It scares me how ignorant they are about the history of their own religion and of the wider mythological, historical and anthropological contexts in which it has evolved. I am but scratching at the surface and I can already to see that the belief systems they revile are far closer to them than they think. It scares me that they can’t think for themselves. It saddens me that their close-mindedness undoes alot of the good work their devotion to goodness could otherwise accomplish, let alone the fact that it puts other people off having faith or becoming involved in the Catholic faith in any way.
It has definitely put me off. Something about that conversation has hurt me and I can’t put my finger on it. It has probably hit on a wider sense of not being able to find somewhere that I belong. At times I feel trampled on by both the atheists and the believers. They each seem as closed-minded as each other, certain words seem to unleash diatribes that have no bearing on the subtleties that are working themselves out inside me. (That, or I have a lazy mind. Part of my reason for writing this is to see if I can clarify things for myself somewhat.) They keep trying to pigeon-hole me, or get me to explain something which is as yet not intellectually tangible for me.
My faith is so important to me, it is a huge part of my life, but not as something I subscribe to and fit myself around. It is a growing entity in itself, like a child I do not yet know who it is. I know what interests me, what resonates. It is gradually showing me a more positive way of perceiving and interacting with my world, and I am becoming more and more aware of when I fail to do justice to my better self, but also happier when I find opportunities to do just that.
I guess it’s about my private relationship with God and not any religion. I see him in every belief system, in every sacred space, in every person. There are so many way of communing with him, so many forms of meditation, of prayer, of worship, so many theologies. And they all seem to intersect in fundamental ways. Another day I want to write a bit further about this topic, to explore in a more positive way what exactly it is I do believe, what makes sense to me. The big question I am left with this week though, is “Is it necessary for me to be a Catholic? Or am I trying to find a home in place where I do not really belong?”
For some reason I call myself a Catholic. Perhaps because I was baptised Catholic or perhaps because I was sitting in a Catholic church in Edinburgh waiting for my friend to come out of confession (I had gone to give her moral support as this was a big deal for her), staring at an icon of a Saint, when a big rush of energy came down upon me and filled me with a sense of the Divine and a need to get closer...Some might call this the Holy Spirit, whatever it was, it was a very tangible feeling and not of my own making. I started going to Church again, I started reading everything about the Divine I could lay my hands on. It became a way of curing me of the depression I had been suffering from.
But there were things I didn’t like. Especially in my interactions with a certain Catholic friend of mine who was delighted I was going to Church. (Even though she didn’t go to Church herself, but this is not a discussion of her faith, is it?) She used to talk to me in a delighted, patronising way when we brought up our beliefs and found we differed, saying “Oh you’re only at the start of your journey now, but someday you’ll understand the Truth about this” As if our belief systems would homogenise when I “caught up” with her.
Or “Oh I know you don’t want to think this is true, but I have read all about it.” Yes but where did you read it? Did you read the other side of the story?
Sometimes I was afraid to bring things up because it seemed as though they had to pass muster with her. She seemed pleased that she had someone as part of her club now, but displeased when I didn’t conform to the membership rules. “Yes, very good you’re saying the Rosary. Ooh I like this book you’ve given me but what’s this? It has the word occult in it. What do you mean, it’s in a different context? Oh, hmm I’m not sure, yeah yeah whatever. What, you don’t believe in the Devil? Oh, no, his trick is working on you, he’s fooled you, he wants you to think that he doesn’t exist, that’s how he gets his power. Oh I’ve read all about the Devil and I’ve talked to priests who did exorcisms, I know all about it.”
The one highly offensive thing she said was to suggest that the reason I had had a nervous breakdown and suffered from depression was because I had been reading about Taoism and had visited lots of Hindu Temples while in Bali the previous year. I had been “possessed by a spirit of depression” because I had left myself open to it. I was furious. What utter mumbo jumbo! What an ignorant denigration of everything that I had been through to bring me to that point.
It didn’t put me off though, I just stopped taking religious conversations with her seriously anymore and focused on the more frivolous aspects of our friendship, of which I am delighted to say there are many and which make her a very enjoyable person to have around on so many other levels. I took into account that we are all brought up differently and that even if she can’t respect my outlook, it is a very big part of my moral code that I can allow her to have hers.
I still went to Church spasmodically, I read voraciously - Julian of Norwich, the Big Book of Women Saints, C.S. Lewis, St Theresa of Avila, St Therese of Lisieux. I said the Rosary for a while until I felt there was no substance in my prayers and I wanted something else to happen before I could go back to it. I still prayed regularly...I went to Church even less, but still kept involved in my faith. I kept it very private though, like it could be hurt if I revealed it to anyone. I would say to someone if it came up that I had faith, but I didn’t discuss the substance of it. Partly because I wasn’t quite sure yet what it consisted of, besides a belief in God, and also because no one would really ask me what it consisted of once they had garnered this information. They would usually just presume that they knew exactly what I believed and would go on about Catholicism and organised religion and kiddy-fiddlers and there would be nowhere to go with the discussion because I would be in complete agreement about the organised religion bit and I wouldn’t find the words to explain how my attraction to the mass and the sacred space of the church is a very private and mysterious thing for me that I don’t fully understand.
The other thing was “How can you take drugs and be a Catholic?” I can’t answer that, I just do and its no one’s business except mine and God’s. I feel that God will accept me as I am and that as I engage with him my soul will sort itself out slowly through his will as long as I remain open. And that has definitely been the case. My lifestyle has subtly altered, I just don’t seem to be taking anything or even drinking very much over the last few months, and this is without my having to make any grand sweeping gestures that can just as immediately be gone back upon.
I went to a Catholic Youth Group last week which another devout friend of mine had been organising and I wanted to support her. This friend is very open and accepting of other people’s beliefs, she is interested and asks questions and yet maintains what she believes when she needs to without any defensiveness or self-righteousness. It was a lovely mass and afterwards I had a tea with the other young people. They were all very nice, but unfortunately as I am used to having a good joke with my friend over these matters, I may have overestimated their capacity for humour about the Pope when I said he looked like a “Scary Old Rascal” (in a nice way!) and mused over how different it must have been for him presiding over the Youth 2000 conference in Australia in comparison to the Hitler-Jungend rallies he attended in his youth!
I was unlucky enough to fall in conversation with a girl that even my friend finds “difficult” as she explained to me later. I made it clear to her that I had been joking and I listened with great interest to her defence of the Pope, to the extent that I was glad I had made my joke otherwise I wouldn’t have heard an alternative viewpoint to all the negative stuff we hear in the media (which can hardly be objective for, after all, the Church is hardly fashionable). At first it was all very pleasant, we mused on how lovely it would be to have a “Good News” program on the tv which reported all the nice things that people do for others. I then started talking about the Carolyn Myss book that I have been reading which is full of lovely stories of services and good deeds people have done for others, all organised and defined around each chakra.
That word was enough to bring the conversation to a halt, she was no longer listening to what I was saying. She tensed up and said she had to warn me that “Chakras are dangerous. That’s all New Age stuff. I just wouldn’t feel right if I didn’t warn you.” I knew where this was going, I felt myself clamming up immediately, I didn’t want to discuss this and yet I gently tried to explain that chakras are merely an ancient way of understanding how energy moves around the body and that it stems from forms of Eastern spiritual practice that are far older than Christianity. Her face remained blank as if to say “So what?” “Take Hinduism for instance, Brahman/Vishnu/Shiva are a trinity just like God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit. It’s so interesting to see how these religions are interrelated. And I love learning about all the different frameworks other cultures use.”
“I don’t understand how you can believe in two religions at the same time” she looked disgusted and I couldn’t think straight because something in me was hurting. I ended up backtracking and saying that while I chose to practise Catholicism, I still liked to read about other cultures religions. Or something to that effect. It wasn’t quite the truth but at the time I just couldn’t do justice to my thoughts.
You see I guess I reckon I was naive in thinking that as young people they wouldn’t be all caught up with the organised part of it and just saw Catholicism as a meaningful way of practising their spirituality. I guess I saw hope for the Church to reenter the world in a way that does not scare or exclude people, that allows them a sense of humour and mischief, that moves with the times and responds to people’s needs in the here and now, reevaluate things so as not to press any undue guilt on people. I think I am silly to expect that, and I am not saying that certain standards shouldn’t be adhered to, but to have to confess playing with yourself in the confessional, as if that were a sin!!!
It scares me how ignorant they are about the history of their own religion and of the wider mythological, historical and anthropological contexts in which it has evolved. I am but scratching at the surface and I can already to see that the belief systems they revile are far closer to them than they think. It scares me that they can’t think for themselves. It saddens me that their close-mindedness undoes alot of the good work their devotion to goodness could otherwise accomplish, let alone the fact that it puts other people off having faith or becoming involved in the Catholic faith in any way.
It has definitely put me off. Something about that conversation has hurt me and I can’t put my finger on it. It has probably hit on a wider sense of not being able to find somewhere that I belong. At times I feel trampled on by both the atheists and the believers. They each seem as closed-minded as each other, certain words seem to unleash diatribes that have no bearing on the subtleties that are working themselves out inside me. (That, or I have a lazy mind. Part of my reason for writing this is to see if I can clarify things for myself somewhat.) They keep trying to pigeon-hole me, or get me to explain something which is as yet not intellectually tangible for me.
My faith is so important to me, it is a huge part of my life, but not as something I subscribe to and fit myself around. It is a growing entity in itself, like a child I do not yet know who it is. I know what interests me, what resonates. It is gradually showing me a more positive way of perceiving and interacting with my world, and I am becoming more and more aware of when I fail to do justice to my better self, but also happier when I find opportunities to do just that.
I guess it’s about my private relationship with God and not any religion. I see him in every belief system, in every sacred space, in every person. There are so many way of communing with him, so many forms of meditation, of prayer, of worship, so many theologies. And they all seem to intersect in fundamental ways. Another day I want to write a bit further about this topic, to explore in a more positive way what exactly it is I do believe, what makes sense to me. The big question I am left with this week though, is “Is it necessary for me to be a Catholic? Or am I trying to find a home in place where I do not really belong?”
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