Tag Archives: meditation

I AM A LOVE GODDESS

Posted on January 29, 2012 | 2 Comments

‘I am a LOVE GODDESS.’

John and Till stare up at me. (For those of you wondering who Till is – he’s our housemate – he’s like a German Larry David who’s been cross bred with Deepak Chopra and in our affections he sits somewhere between Lily and Alula.)

‘I am a Love goddess,’ I repeat, beaming at them.

Is that skepticism I see on their faces?

I have been listening in the car to a blissitation meditation thing. I know I’m not meant to meditate whilst driving because three seconds in the lady with the soporific voice tells me I should have my eyes shut and my hands open in my lap. I wonder out loud whether all the drivers in Bali are listening to this blissitation tape whilst driving – it would explain a few things. Still, I decide I can skip the part about keeping my back straight, eyes shut and hands in my lap and just do the listening part. After all, if there’s one place in the whole of Bali where I need to find the zen, the love – the bliss inside of me – it’s in the car.

Recently we started car pooling (because a) we go to green school and the irony of taking one child on her own in a car 30km a day had not escaped us b) Alula insisted that car pooling would save mother earth and c) because I was in danger of bringing forward the prophecy I was given that I’m going to die in a car crash when I’m 62 – now I’m driving 50% less I figure the odds have dropped). What I hadn’t factored in was how much I swear at other people on the road – and with other children in the car this has become a problem. I mean, it’s one thing Alula learning how to say fricking moron and quite another when a peace loving hippie mum asks you where her daughter has learnt to say arsehole.

As I drive the lady intones in a calm beatific way: I communicate with authenticity and integrity. I repeat it after her.

A car cuts me up.

‘Don’t even think about cutting me up you fricking eegit!’ I yell as I put my foot down.

I appreciate the awesome people in my life.

‘Get out of the damn way.’

I do random acts of kindness for people.

‘No, I’m not letting you out in front of me. Think again Bozo.’

I pull into our drive.

You are a LOVE GODDESS.

‘I am a love goddess,’ I repeat as I kill the engine.

‘I am filled with love,’ I tell John and Till, ‘I have just been listening to a meditation tape in the car and now I am filled to overflowing with love.’

They keep staring at me saying nothing. I think I see them exchange a glance.

I walk in the door.

‘Goddamn the fucking internet’s still not working.’

 

 

 

 

 

 

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged ,

I miss normal

Posted on December 26, 2010 | 2 Comments

I am starting to wonder if there’s anyone in Ubud who believes in the theory of evolution.

It’s not that Ubud is home to Christian fundamentalists all preaching creationism, hating on gays and believing we’re descended from Adam and Eve. Oh no, nothing like that. It’s that Ubud’s full of people who think we’re light beings descended from another planet.

Being English, when I’m confronted by crazy talk (of either the Christian fundamentalist or the thetan / light being variety) I feel an overwhelming urge to take the fucking piss.  My friends’ voices will pop into my head at these moments and say something that will make me giggle out loud. I have to physically restrain my eyeballs from rolling into the back of my head. Unfortunately I have no one normal to turn to at these times (other than John) but he’s not one for taking the fucking piss. He’s too nice for that. So I’m all alone thinking of snappy comebacks and have no one to turn to, clutch and screech with laughter. I miss British people.

I miss our self-deprecation. I miss people who say everything with their tongue in their cheek. I miss people who know that a conversation involves two way questioning and not one way yaddering about themselves mostly or about authenfuckingticity.   I miss people who think it’s totally acceptable behaviour to talk about everyone behind their backs and take the piss out of everything but that it’s unacceptable to show off. I miss people who eat pickled onion crisps and marmite and think of raw food as the state of being of a vegetable before it achieves its natural state of boiled or fried.  I miss being around people who ingested a healthy dose of cynicism along with their mother’s (or Nestle’s) milk and who now have a permanently raised eyebrow as opposed to intensely irritating yogi bug eyes.

I miss people who know what ‘suis-je bovvered? regardez ma visage,’ means. I miss people who say ‘yeah, whatever,’ when confronted with idiocy and who call a spade a spade or a tool a tool rather than smiling sweetly, acknowledging the other person’s authentic expression and honouring them as a fellow light being as opposed to the total tosspot they really are.

I guess what I’m saying is that I’m missing normal. Any Ubud inhabitants / believers in the theory of light beings as opposed to Darwinism will no doubt see me as a non-light being who needs to meditate my way to spiritual enlightenment and niceness.

I have just one thing to say ‘Regardez ma visage – suis je bovvered?’

 

 

→ 2 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,

My to do list for 2011

Posted on December 21, 2010 | 1 Comment

At the start of every year I always make a list of all the things that I want to do in that year.

2010’s list went like this:

1.     Travel around the world

2.     Get published

3.     Find a new home

4.     Write two more books

5.     Learn to meditate

6.     Road trip USA

7.     Swim every day

8.     Take up yoga again

This year I achieved nearly everything. Even the yoga. Just this Sunday I dragged my sorry arse to the first yoga class I’ve been to since Alula herniated my L4 L5 discs trying to be born.

I didn’t learn to meditate. But I did get myself a maid and I think that maybe tops the meditation. It certainly brings calm, happiness and joy into my life and clears away the clutter.

Meditation has been on my list for three years running and has consistently earned itself a big red X.  I will put it on the list for 2011 again with note to self to try harder.

So, anyway, because I believe wholeheartedly in the power of a) lists b) manifestation c) telling the universe what I hope for (wait – is that the same things as manifestation?) here is my list for 2011.

1.     Have a book launch or two or three (including one at Ubud Literary Festival)

2.     Make a book trailer in LA

3.     Start to make oodles of money

4.     Do a house exchange somewhere gorgeous

5.     Go to Thailand or somewhere else in SE Asia for a little jaunt

6.     Ecstatic dance regularly

7.     Give up cooking, although this will bankrupt Bali’s aluminum saucepan producing factories.

8.     Write 3 books

9.    Write 1 screenplay (because, hell, why not?)

10.     Eat only Raw chocolate (in chocolate terms, not as in eating nothing but raw chocolate. Though that does sound tempting).

11.   Stop swearing

12. Get reviewed by Lainey Gossip (well)

13. Learn Indonesian

14. Hire a PA and a driver

15. Ensure channel 4 makes misfits season 3 by whichever means necessary

16. Spend NYE 2011 at the Four Seasons drinking magnums of champagne, toasting another superlatively amazing year.

17. Woops I almost forgot. Meditate. Daily. In order to…

18. …Find spiritual enlightenment but not if that means forsaking no. 3 (om shanti shanti om)

19. Buy furniture finally for the house.

20. And a swimming pool

let’s see how well I do at ticking these things off the list.

 

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , , , ,

Bad, bad, bad vibrations

Posted on November 29, 2010 | 4 Comments

‘I want you to introduce yourselves and give me one word which describes how you’re feeling now.’

Bored. Can I say bored? No, that’s rude. What about highly sceptical? No, also rude. Resistant? Well if she can read my aura she knows this already. I’ll go with tired. Tired is inoffensive.

Oooh crap, my turn. ‘I’m Sarah and I’m from London and I’m…’ an alcoholic. Say that. It would be funny. No say fucked off. Say I think this is all bullshit…’tired.’

‘Now begin by swaying your arms in front of your base chakra point and imagining a rainbow of light. Red light is filling up the room.’

You what? Urgh my arms are getting tired.

‘Now move your arms up to your third eye and start swaying and visualize the colour purple.’

Oh my god seriously? My third eye? My arms are really fricking aching – how much longer do I have to sway for? Oooh, everyone has their eyes shut. Maybe I can just drop my arms…woops busted. Sway those arms. Sway those arms. Stop smiling. You look like you’re taking the piss. I am taking the piss.

‘We are balancing our chakras. Feel the energy swirling around you.’

Nope. Not feeling anything. Except intense frustration and I’m hot and starting to sweat. And this is a new dress. I don’t want to sweat. Urgh for god’s sake when can we stop swaying. Why does everyone else look like they’re in some kind of trance? Why is no one else laughing?

‘Everyone take a crystal love necklace. When we surround ourselves with things which have a higher vibration like these crystals our cells start to vibrate at a higher frequency and we can heal ourselves.’

Are you fricking serious? If my eyes roll back any further in my head will I dislocate my optic nerve and end up staring at my frontal lobe for the rest of my life?

‘Now I want you to send out a colour to your partner.’

You what?

‘Start making the noise of that colour. Send out the intention of that colour.’

Does that mean I can yell? That is the noise my colour wants to make. My colour wants to scream. Can I scream?

‘Err, what do you mean exactly by noise?’

‘Like this – mmmmmmmmmhmmmmmmmmmhhhhhhmmmmmmmmmmm’

O-Kay. So like a mental patient. But I want to yell. Good job I didn’t. That could have been embarrassing. Everyone else is humming. I can’t just sit here silent. I need to make some kind of noise. Ok, here goes.

‘Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm’  Now I sound like an inpatient on Shutter Island. Why am I here? Why am I doing this? I want my money back. No stay. It’s a good blog post.

‘Now what colour were you sending out to your partner?’

‘Red.’

‘What colour did your partner see?’

‘Green.’ Funny that.

‘Well when we can’t see the colour this is because we’re too in our masculine side which is limited and can only do one thing at a time.’

Hey, we agree on something. But isn’t that like a bit rude to say it outloud? I know we’re all women here but err, I think you just called me a man – and in an insulting way.

‘You need to be in the feminine which is boundless and infinite.’

I do?

‘Try thinking of your mother.’

What the serious fuck? My mother is many things but infinite is not one of them.

‘I see auras.’

And I see dead people. If she’s a healer I’m the Buddha. Shit can she see my aura right now? Is that why she’s looking at me funny? Maybe she can sense that I’m thinking ‘CRAZY FRICKING CRYSTAL LADY’

‘And I hold regular healing sessions using the power of sound and crystals.’

Ok, someone’s not been taking their thorazine.

‘I also do eat pray love soulmate love readings where you can discover love in your aura and find your soulmate.’

Translation: I rip off middle aged women coming to Bali looking for their Javier Bardem.

‘Now, at the end of the session how do you feel?’

I feel murderous rage. And like I feel like I want my money back. And I feel that tomorrow I’m going to blog about this and be healed.

→ 4 Comments

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

I feel the need, the need for speed! Actually no I don’t.

Posted on December 3, 2009 | 1 Comment

I am, according to the man whose penis I grabbed, ‘immensely enlightening’. He wasn’t referring to my genital grabbing technique, though perhaps he was, in secret code that I failed to pick up on at the time. Perhaps he found Nirvana in those few seconds I honked his bits whilst trying to break my fall.

In seriousness, I think it was just a polite way of saying that my stupidity was eye opening.   But it got me thinking again about enlightenment and my failure to meditate myself into a calmer, slower mental space. When I try to do this my mind cranks up a notch becoming a hotbed of tangential thoughts and random synapse firing, usually about underage or Swedish hotness.

The problem is speed.  I feel the need, the need for speed, as the GMD once said in Topgun. Sometimes I think that if I actually did a line of speed it would have the opposite physiological response – slowing me down till I was dribbling and standing static in a stairwell staring at a wall or something. Speed is my natural state – although I don’t do running or fast movements or any kind, not even if there’s a bus coming at me and I’m facing a future as road kill. I don’t perform any fast movements involving limbs because my mind is using all the calories – and yes, well probably I should be using all that speed to discover the answer to Dark Matter or how Lloyd stayed in so long but that requires IQ too and I’m not laying claim to IQ points, just to speedy ability to process thoughts.

A friend of mine has just got back from this shamanistic slash meditation slash drink peyote in the desert whilst communing with nature retreat type thing in Mexico. It sounded cool. At least the peyote drinking sounded cool. And he said that when walking in the desert even there it was impossible to switch off. So what hope is there for me?

Probably none but to give it its best shot, and to see whether we can switch off from the relentless speed and pace of London before tramping the world proper we’ve decided to rework our route and spend longer in India. In fact we’re going to find an idyllic Keralan beach house and rent it for a month or longer.  And there we will work on beating our speed addiction and I will work on my meditation so that the next person I speak to will say that I’m immensely enlightened.

→ 1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , ,

I am unenlightened, like Marty McFly, but can still do ‘deep’.

Posted on October 13, 2009 | Leave a comment

Recently I’ve been trying to meditate. I say recently but actually I started trying at the start of the year and I’m still unelightened. Here is what happens when I try to meditate:

ok, ommmm, one breath two breath three what’s for dinner is there any wine in the house no maybe I fancy a beer I wonder what time John will be home and whether I can get away with watching True Blood without him knowing I hate Bill why did they cast him it should be a whole hour dedicated to Eric have to make lula’s lunch and damn have to call the bank and ask for big amounts of money will they ask  I wonder what it’s for should I tell them or go with the bathroom story need to take lula for her jabs focus focus one breath two breath this is boring why won’t my brain turn off too much to do I wonder if my brother is right and I’ll get killed going round India on my own…

So you see not much enlightenment going on. I’m trying very hard to live in the now. John says that’s very funny because I spend my life living in the future. I’m renowned for it. I’m like Marty McFly,  always trying to get back to the future. I can’t help it.  It’s because my brain never turns off (see Feeling the fear and a little thing called status anxiety for proof of how it doesn’t even switch off at night). Plus, it’s a really difficult thing to do to harness the power of now, despite what the book says.

Try it, how many times a day do you look back thinking ‘oh no I can’t believe I said that (in my case about two dozen times) / ahhhh those were the days (pre-baby)’ or forward thinking ‘oooh I can’t wait (until I’m lying on a beach in Goa) / oh no I’m dreading that (having no money coming in, sitting through a meeting about gant charts).’

It’s a lot. I bet you you’re thinking about something you have to do tomorrow or next week or maybe in ten years’ time. Living in the now takes practice. The only time I can honestly say I inhabited the now completely was during labour. It really was quite bizarre. I remember thinking at the time, ‘This is now, I don’t like it.’ And as I don’t want to recreate that particular situation on a daily basis or ever again infact, I’m not sure how to find it. (Perhaps I could invest in a gas and air tank and try that as a meditation tool – and maybe some DMT too whilst I’m at it because Bruce Parry made that look pretty cool). I’m getting off track (see why meditating is so hard for me?)

The thing about going travelling is that you spend a long, long time planning for it and then you go and sometimes you forget the journey is the thing, because you’re focussing so hard on reaching the destination. In Lula’s case Disneyland, CA. In our case, finding home. I know, I know, go ahead start calling me Rimpoche.

But the interesting thing I’m finding about this period, the pre-journey time, is how brilliant it is. I’m actually really enjoying the now. I can see John reading this and his eyebrows raising a couple of inches. He’s thinking – enjoying the now? What, like you were the other day when we were trying to pack up the house?

Yeah, ok, there are times that I slip. Times when I hate the now and just want to be on our way. But then I remember that this time now is brilliant in so many ways. We might not be on a beach yet in Bali. I might still be having to work. I might still have a house of toys to box up and a three year old to bribe with Percy Pigs whilst they stick her with needles to innoculate her against all sorts. But now is also good because so many old friends have reconnected with us sharing beautiful thoughts and messages and lots of new friendships have begun off the back of it. So the planning is as big and exciting a part of this as the journey will be and they’re both as brilliant as hopefully the destination will be (let’s face it, so long as it’s not SE London it’ll be great).

by Dalai Sarah

→ Leave a comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged , , ,