day 13

Last night I watched the double episode of Charmed from season 7 where the sisters agree to help the avatars to create 'Utopia' a world beyond the duality of good and evil. It's a world hard to imagine but the conceptualisation of it in that episode was a bit flawed I think. People's mindsets were changed and they were happy and did not feel difficult emotions and those that persisted in troubled states that led to conflict were eliminated by the avatars, the guardians of this created Utopia. Since grief and mourning had been eliminated those that disappeared were not missed much as they were said to have moved on to a better place.

I think the biggest flaw in this idea of Utopia was the perception of conflict as violent and something that needed to be eliminated to keep peace. Peace in the Chinese I-Ching is described by the hexagram of earth being above that of heaven and denotes a state where heaven is on earth. The opposite of peace in the I-Ching is not conflict but standstill where the two hexagrams are reversed and so heaven moves away from earth. The Utopia the avatars wanted was stagnant. It was built on repression and the loss of free will and even though it felt light and happy it was in its essence oppressive.

It troubles me that so often conflict and violence are used interchangeably by the media. Conflict simply is a sign that something needs to change. It is a call to transformation. Conflict need not turn violent but often does because we have not been taught the skills to resolve conflict within ourselves, in our relationships and in our world. We would not fear conflict and suppress it if we saw it as useful.  If anything is Utopia for me it would be a state where conflict and feeling were dealt with compassionately. 

Inner Utopia would perhaps be akin to a state of enlightenment. Daniel Brown and Jack Engler in Mindfulness Meditation write that enlightened practitioners are not without conflict they simply are less defensive in the awareness of inner conflict and their reactivity to it. Internally in all of us there are states and times of no conflict but I would not want that as a permanent state of being. Inner conflict no matter how difficult makes me feel alive. 

Yes, I have a positive bias towards conflict. It has been the driving force in me to change and grow. It's made my relationships richer and more dynamic. Of course my thinking might be flawed too and I look forward to it being challenged and finding ways to grow in a permanent conflict free state.

Today is day thirteen of my experiment. I have missed writing on four days so far and the quality of the writing has been inconsistent. I am sad and sometimes self-critica; about this but I am accepting that my body is more sensitive to the haze than many others and being compassionate towards myself, spacing out my activities and giving myself more downtime. Today is a sunday and my main conflict is wanting to stay quiet and write or doing something with my husband. 

day 10

Yesterday I had a restless fever. The days of haze seemed to have weakened my immune system and I felt ill. I was angry. I had enough low productivity days this year and I wanted to rush forward to meet the goals I had set for myself. I worked slowly through the morning but had a meeting later in the day that went on much longer than I had expected. I did not accomplish much and went to bed very frustrated. The worst part was waking up again this morning to disorientation and confusion. My body was still uneasy and that made my mind uncontrollably restless. Many of my inner critics were also around telling me that I did not know what I was doing and that I made all the wrong choices. For a while I tried to ignore them and get on with things but it was too tiring and finally I sat quietly with them.

Most days I deal with my inner critics quite well listening to and integrating the messages of those who have important lessons for me and telling the brutal ones to 'buzz off.' Most days they don't pull me down like  today.

I don't really know why they emerged with such force today. Over the last two days my ears have been particularly sensitive in picking up some critical comments directed at me and getting angry. I seem to have internalized those voices. In my writing I am hitting some barrier as memories are chaotic or inaccessible adding to the feeling that I don't know what I am doing. To give myself some respite from the inner voice my mind turns outwards.

Indonesia has made nine arrests related to the fires. These seem to be small time farmers who were clearing their land for planting. It is illegal in Indonesia to set these fires, punishable by a large fine and ten years in prison. But the large Palm Oil companies seem to have remained unscathed? The next days will be interesting - will those truly responsible for this environmental damage be named or will these farmers become scapegoats dissipating the rising heat among the three countries? The Indonesian President has made a public apology for the haze and come under criticism from many in his own country who think it is a sign of weakness. I disagree and feel that this apology will go a long way in setting a more co-operative tone in discussions. But i worry that in the interest of maintaining good neighbourly relationships this might be the end of the dispute. Token arrests while the real culprits get yet another year to continue their criminal burning? 

The Asean meeting is brought forward to mid-July. I am looking forward to following how this issue is handled. Hoping that there is a blend of some hard accountability and gentle co-operation. The world needs new models for conflict resolution and maybe Asia can model some.

Few years ago I had gone to a talk by someone from the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue. He said while a lot of foreign NGO's have been allowed into Africa to help with the conflicts there the Asian countries have resisted outside help preferring to struggle to find solutions themselves. He believed that this would prolong the conflict but I think there is much wisdom in looking within the region itself to resolve things.

The outward gaze has reduced the intensity of the inner critical voices. Now I can separate them into useful and mean and deal with them.

week 2 - day 8

I gave myself the day off yesterday. I needed it. I had stayed up all sunday night working on something that falls under the category of one of those things that's not my story to reveal. I had a few hours of restless sleep monday morning and then woke feverish and struggled to complete some work I had assigned to myself on my BF-memoir. But extreme fatigue made me slow and despite wanting to not miss a day of writing a post I really could find nothing to say. I began writing about my feelings around the two arrests Indonesia had made related to the fires. But after a few sentences I let it go.

Today too something in me rebels against writing a post. This is an experiment and to observe what happens to me while trying to complete it is the main purpose of it for me.

There is a part of me that strongly resists structure. Not just structure imposed from the outside but any that I create too. As a child this got me into a lot of trouble as I was constantly breaking out of the structures in the classroom or in my rigid traditional patriarchal family. This part makes it difficult for me to stay in full time jobs for more than a few years. I need my days to be ever changing. But, there is another part that likes structure and feels I need it to really move forward. For most of my life I have worked part time or free lance and if I didn't have some structures to hold me I would faff away my days. There have been times in my life I have done just that.

About fifteen years ago I was studying Dhrupad, a form of traditional Indian music. I was learning to play the sitar from an amazing young rudra veena player. Because music was so difficult for me I didn't rebel against the structures he imposed. Each raag has many rules that any player must conform to. The rules are related to the way notes can be combined and over the first two years all a new student does is play rigidly composed forms. Yet once the rules of the raag are understood one can improvise and create just about anything sometimes even breaking out of the box created by the rules.

It was while learning Dhrupad that I really understood the power of pre-determined structure and the necessity of having your basics down. Learning basics needs discipline, something that was then not very well developed in me. Everything I had done before I began studying Dhrupad had come fairly easily to me. Not having a natural inclination for music I found it extremely difficult and without structure and discipline I would have just drowned and let it go. There were long phases in the learning process where I felt I had plateaued out. My teacher would be excited by these phases. He said I would suddenly make great leaps in learning after a plateau and he was right.

I would never be an amazing sitar player that much was clear from the beginning. Yet I am glad I pursued it seriously for a while. It activated parts in me that were dormant and also taught me how to persevere. Something that had served me well now. I think everyone should learn something that is hard for them instead of just doing things that come easily.

Right now the hardest thing I do is karate. I have even less of a natural inclination for it than I had for music. I am movement and co-ordintaion challenged and have to work harder than most others who come to the dojo. Small achievements in it mean more to me than progress in things I do easily.

I guess writing too is hard for me and I think I might give myself a day off sometimes during this experiment but for the most part I want to persevere in it even when i plateau out.

day 6

I woke to clear skies but an inexplicable heaviness. Sometimes moods just drift in without warning. I decided to take advantage of the lowered psi and had a good workout in the gym giving space to the heaviness to unfold in the background. Only now after a shower I am beginning to know more about it. Its like a sad sense of loss but yet I don't know where it comes from.

Earlier in the day I had wanted to write but a paralysis seemed to have come over me. Some parts of my life are not my story to tell and I had been thinking of them. I saw how being in an inner conflict about what to share and what to keep private freezes me up. But some parts of my experience are really somebody else's choice to disclose or not. As I was thinking about this I realised so much of my life has been affected by something outside, often something related to people close to me but sometimes related to large scale events that are not directly related to me, have completely changed the course of my life. Plans and hopes just disappearing due to some force outside me. I know some people whose life seems to be much more their own. They seem to be masters of their own destiny and can escape the influence of outside events and continue on their path relatively undeviated. 

That's not my life path for sure and for a while I wondered if I would want my life to be like theirs and what could I do to change it? How could I be more independent of things outside? As I was thinking this the boundaries of inside and outside blurred. What really is outside me? Are my closest family and friends outside? Are not large events that effect people on the other side of the world also not just inside in some way? 

I do have porous boundaries. As I have grown I seem to have allowed people and the world to affect me more and more. But isn't this what an interdependent existence is about? Why should it not be like this? I have grown more from allowing things to really affect me than by sitting quietly and meditating - no, not really both have had their place. The meditation had allowed me to be able to stay a bit detached even when I am in the middle of the worst storms but if all I did was meditated on some solitary mountain I would probably never know whether the positive effects of the meditation would remain with me as I walked through this interdependent existence. 

There was a time when the mountains called me strongly. When I believed that by the age of 50 I would want to be sitting in a cave somewhere seeking the truths of life. But things changed and here I am now. 

I think part of the sense of loss are seeing the different lives I lost because of the choices I made at every fork in the path. There will always be 'what if' moments in our lives.

Yesterday I was able to organise the BF-memoir into some sort of a time line and that process showed me why I might have had the boiling frog dream this year. It is a call to a deeper healing and I give myself over to it. It could hold the key to unlocking some buried parts of my psyche. Last night I dreamt that I had opened up a large trunk which stored some of my old clothing. I was pulling out and trying on the strange almost futuristic outfits its held. It feels like a time to seek the future in my past.

day 5

Woke again to dropping visibility and a severe headache. I had thought being out but indoors yesterday would make me forget the haze but it didn't work. My eyeballs felt like they would pop out of my face and I was disoriented and dropped and broke some crockery at lunch. For a bit everything had become blurry in my head. Then I waited almost 2 hours to see a doc and be given antihistamines, eyedrops and medicated lozenges. The high point of the day was a conversation with a young engineer from my husbands firm who told me how she thinks of him as her godfather. It was touching to hear about their relating and how she seeks him out when she needs advice. She was handling the haze with resilient equanimity and like many Singaporeans felt indignant about Singapore being chided for behaving like a baby. The smog cleared for a couple of hours in the evening as we rode the bus back home and it felt really good to see hope filled blue skies.

Today I cringe when I think about going out.  

A friend pointed out to me that unlike what I had felt world media was reporting this haze and she is probably right. Yet I have the intense sense of the forests, wild life and this little red dot disappearing and nobody knowing or caring. World media does report more widely now but it still is selective about which parts of the world, which issues and species get more coverage. At international seminars I always seem to know more about the Western world than they know about my world and if I had not been a teacher of environmental studies for a few years I probably would know very little about the natural world. But with news online from sources other than mainstream ones it doesn't have to be that way. I have days when I want to know whats going on in the world and I diligently check out different online sources and then there are days I just go inward. 

The haze has this effect of sending me inwards and its been good for writing the memoir. Things I thought I had forgotten have emerged from my subconscious. On thursday I really began enjoying writing for I began looking at those events from a different perspective and began touching what others in that story might have felt. I guess that is why I am really writing it - to get some knowledge about myself in those foggy years and recover lost parts.

There is a part of me that wanted to move towards normalcy despite this disruptive smog. But there is nothing normal about it. I have begun reading Jeanette Winterson's memoir, 'Why be Happy when you could be Normal?' Jeanette Winterson's adoptive mother says this to her when she tells her mother that she is in a relationship with another woman and happy. I think the key to what I do during these haze days is find a way to be happy and forget about returning to normalcy.

I think my husband and I will stay home today and talk instead of going to a film. He has been reading my blog and also been remembering and talking about those foggy years. I think we can put the time we are stuck indoors to good use to bring fresh life to the relationship.

day 4

friday, june 21

woke up to greyness. the psi had been below 100 through the night and maybe thats why i slept well. but its climbing again (256 at 9 am) and visibilty is the lowest its been so far. there has been talk of seeding clouds but it looks like nobody is going to do anything about it. probably nobody can. yesterday some indonesian official called this an act of god and said singaporeans were being babies complaining about it. aaargh i would love to smack the guy and dunk his face in a pail of concentrated smoke.

i think my mind must have acclimatised though for i am feeling less depressed and panicky today. maybe that will change through the day.

but i am also feeling angry - at racist world media that does not report this ecological and atmospheric disaster. i call it racist because news in certain parts of the world is more important than in others. i feel that if this was happening somewhere in the US all the world would know about it and maybe the UN would already be involved in putting pressure on whatever country was creating this disaster. world pressure to act sometimes does work. i really am wondering how the environmental biggies of the world have not got involved in this yet. rainforests contain zillions of species and apparently the average rate of extinction is 140 a day! thats a whole lot of forest burning and not to mention the plant and animal life suffocated by the fumes. how far can a bird fly to breathe?

yesterday i went to the gym hoping to release endorphins. i saw a flock of mynah birds sitting around the edge of the deserted pool dunking their heads in the water and wondered if they found some relief in the water. i hope they did.

there are so many things happening in the world that don't get reported in the media. just because i/u dont know something does not mean its not important. 

i have lost touch with a part of myself here in singy. the activist part. if i had still been in india i would know how to make noise about this so more of the world would know. that part really knew how to research and write so people would feel something was important. that part would know how to get a petition going. it feels like it would be a long inner journey to reach that part again but perhaps its not. i miss that part - it was always full of passion and intensity. very alive but maybe a tad reactive. more exploration needed. 

this is a rushed post since i have an appointment this morning and must leave soon. yes, thats why i am not bothered with grammar maybe i will come back and edit and add...

day 3

The haze outside seems to exert a considerable power on me safely inside my apartment. I, like many others, am feeling angry and helpless. Till Tuesday evening i could see a bit of the blue sky and some happy, light clouds even when on ground level it was smoky. Since yesterday there is only the grey acid smoke covering everything. I watch my mind as it looks for a target to pit it's anger against but blaming Indonesia or anyone else makes no sense - though yes, i do take great pleasure in blaming the palm oil companies supposedly responsible for this. That doesn't change my lack of control over changing the environment. I could control my own path through it but with it triggering my allergies I feel somewhat drowned. I find myself feeling angry with my weakness and my vulnerable body. I see others walking around and at least getting to work - actually right now being able to just keep up the appearances of normalcy would feel very good. Some part of me calls me a sissy for giving in to my allergies and a battle rages inside around this.

The truth is I don't have much will to go outside and I also don't have the ability right now to forgive myself for not being able to keep going. 

My mind and body were dull this morning. I had woken at 5 am with the smells invading my nostrils despite my closed room. The smells do feel stronger now with the cumulative effect of many days of depletion of fresh air. No birds flying around or chattering on the balcony. I miss them. As someone said the mosquitos too are gone and the geckos, though I suppose that the cockroaches and the rats are surviving. 

I reluctantly texted my Sensei that I won't make it to training today. I will try to get a mask and move on with things tomorrow. Who knows how much longer this haze will be around for and i too need to get on with things.

I am half-way through Ursula Le Guin's, 'The Lathe of Heaven.' Its a book about a man (Orr) whose dreams change reality. The man is reluctant to use his ability and wants to be cured. His psychiatrist (Haber) on the other hand is quite willing to change their dystopian world into a more peaceful one and directs Orr to makes changes. Last night I just read the scene where Orr confronts Haber once again and Haber tells him thats its man's purpose on earth to change things to make a better world. Orr says the Universe is not a machine with parts each with a function and he doesn't believe that things or he himself have any purpose. Haber insists on playing God but each change he asks for has some disastrous consequence.

So, the question everyone asks about the characters is which one would you root for? the man with the power to change the world but who does not feel he can play God or the man who is willing to use his powers. Of course in our way of thinking the latter could be labelled evil especially since he also orders changes that make him more powerful. Every change has consequences and like the charmed ones many of us are taught that using power for personal gain has negative consequences. But as one of the sister says in the episode I watched yesterday, 'demons do anything without worrying about consequences.'

In books and films the same laws that tell us that the consequences of personal gain are ultimately negative do also apply to the evil ones and we gleefully watch them meeting painful ends. Something feels right about this but there is an element of righteous vengeance too there. What if instead of being vanquished the evil ones learnt some lessons that changed them from the inside? That to me might be very satisfactory but as a writer I often read how nobody wants to read about such peaceful things. Actually if I had read books that showed such changes I might not polarise the world so much nor fear the darkness within but know that it could be shifted.

I myself at one time believed that the ends justified the means. Only through slow soul searching I do now believe that the means already contain the end in them. Violence can never lead to peace. Non-violence is the only way. Kind of limiting in this world of ours where wars are waged to bring peace. So much of my search is to find my purpose on this planet but what if like Orr says I too have no purpose or do not matter in the large scheme of things. Something inside shudders and I can't think like him either. So I don't have an answer to what I would do if I was given powers that could change the world. How passive would I remain? What risks would I be willing to take to make change? Though most risks that involve others are not mine to take.

Fortunately expressing what I feel does give some energy to body and mind for as the PSI climbs once again  to 198 after dipping to 127 at 7 am hope dips.

Day 2

I was woken this morning in a peculiar way. My phone which I put on silent and put away in my desk at night began vibrating. Normally I sleep through texts but phone calls wake me and people close to me know that and will call if it's an emergency. It was 8 am and I had planned to sleep till i naturally woke around 9 am. The call was from my husband but even before I called him back I knew that he wasn't really trying to reach me but the call button had been accidentally pressed on his phone. It jolted me out of an antihistamine tinged sleep.

Several years ago, in late 2001 I was woken in strange way every morning around 4am. After initially cursing and resisting it I began getting up and meditating. It was a time in my life when I was most connected to myself and that universal force that guides us all if we listen. I felt close to my destiny (yes, i have been watching a lot of charmed). I have a feeling that something is waking me up and telling me 'you have work to do. stop faffing.'

My closest Singaporean friend and I have a joke about how hard it is to hear the voice of the Universal Force in Singapore. We both have trouble meditating here but slip easily into meditation in other places. Its like a fog comes over us when we enter the Singaporean field at Changi. She said she's felt it all her life and it was a relief to talk to someone about it and not have her thought crazy. So if this is a call from the UF I am surprised that it got through.

The haze was clearer this morning and when I woke I could see the  CBD buildings fairly clearly instead of just the silhouettes I had been seeing since saturday. The smog had lifted a bit but when I opened the window the smell of things burning rushed in and filled my lungs and reluctantly I shut them tight. Those hours of keeping windows open yesterday have left their mark and my throat and chest burn more today. My nasal passages feel constricted and head unclear.

I do have to get busy. Yesterday I did write words on my BF-memoir but I am discontent with it. Its has no coherence yet and I need to find some thread in it that I can follow and write on but yet I can't. I worked a few hours on some other work I am responsible for but by about 5pm I felt unable to focus. My karate training got cancelled but I could not bring myself to get into some self training as the haze had thickened and being outdoors was impossible. I consolidated some of my training notes from previous gasshuku's. By 8pm I gave up trying to work completely and began watching Charmed.

Charmed is a delightful concept. Magic, powerful sisters, good and evil and incredible characters. I watched all of season 4 over the weekend and the character of the Seer flirted with me. I loved watching the way she talked, her manipulations and most of all I loved hating her. She was so evil. Her thirst for power was endless and ultimately it killed her. In the real world the quest for power is often rewarded and the person or organisation seems to grow and grow. Often it seems that even if one wants power to 'do good' ultimately it corrupts.

Perhaps this is my own belief and one that has kept me running away from power. Perhaps it is one of the barriers that keeps me from connecting to my destiny. If wanting power is evil then does it mean that good remains powerless? I used to be scared that I had a large dark side and if I had power i would use it badly but now strangely I know that I am essentially good and some of my ideas of dark and light are shifting. I wonder if the way that good works in this world is not through power but in some other way?

On yesterdays post a couple of my friends commented on the nature of authentic being. I realised then that I was more interested in authentic relating for it feels even harder as it involves me and another. It feels more important to my current path though its unclear why.

Time to get going. I am hoping to meditate, get some exercise in the gym and then work on finding the patterns in my memoir. I know I am writing essentially for myself but also because sharing my healing journey is useful to others. My fantasy novel draft seems to have fallen to the side unfortunately.  Until tomorrow.

experiment?

Ok so this is an experiment. I am here alone for 30 days. This is the first time since the beginning of the year that I have had this kind of time to myself, and I am going to experiment with writing a post everyday, keeping a record of sorts. I will not think too much about what i write. Just put down whatever thoughts, concerns and fears that float up through the day. Every morning for 30 days till I get on the flight to Milan I will write. I am unsure yet whether i can reveal all i feel and I suppose its partly an experiment of how much of myself I can bare in a public space? But it's more than that I am experimenting with though I am unsure what exactly it is. A part of me wants to know what and why I am deciding to do before starting but another is urging me to just do. So here goes.

I feel like I am here today where I should have been at the beginning of the year. There is an urgency to make plans to accomplish a lot. Write 1500 words a day on the BF-memoir and work with 2-3 scenes on my fantasy draft and train well so I don't arrive at the European gasshuku unprepared. There is much i need to get done before I leave on the 19th of July. I feel I must be in doing mode and I can only allow myself to feel anything after I accomplish these targets and the other work I do. But is it really wise to function this way?

My daughter left yesterday. I felt such an empty ache in my heart as we sat together after she had checked in. The ache was there all last week as a dull certainty and continues on today but its easier to handle after the parting is done. I am happy too that she is gone where she needs to go and I also know that i need this time to myself, but i feel a knot within. We barely had enough time together this time. Though the time we did have was richer and deeper than before. Open conversations, authentic relating and hardly any huge fights. Its hard to let that go.

Authentic relating with myself and others have been my biggest need after the events of this year. I feel that most of the problems of this year could have been avoided if I had just paid attention to my core feelings in every moment and acted from them. I have needed to find that core again and relationships have been one of the ways to do it for in them I have a 360 degree mirror.  A mirror that sees right through me and reveals my innermost self, beyond the masks that I may have put on for the world.

To use my relationships as mirrors I need to be authentic and truthful in every interaction. Not all relationships can really stand totally honest relating and some have fallen away to the side. But others have strengthened and its been good to find that even on this lonely island I do have scope for very real friendships. 

Honest relating does not mean being totally open and just spilling everything with everyone. It does mean though knowing clearly what I am feeling and showing it to the extent that the relationship needs and wants. It means acting from my core in every moment but also distinguishing which interactions and situations can take how much honesty. It may not be possible to be deep in every relationship but it is possible to be authentic.

It's hard to breathe and focus today. The haze is triggering my allergies and it's oppressive and suffocating. Since yesterday the air quality has been in the unhealthy region and its supposed to stay that way. I don't know how others are functioning through this but its scary for me to not know when i can breathe fresh air again. It is clouding my thoughts and It's a challenge to express what I want to and I am wondering how I will be able to train when I can barely breathe.

Thats all for today.

Dancing with Vertigo

Last Sunday disappeared as I was struck by my nemesis, vertigo. It’s my fourth or fifth attack. Each time it gets more violent and debilitating. This time for about two hours I could do nothing but sit upright on my bed, follow my breath and try not to throw up or fall off the edge of the earth. I just stared into nothingness waiting for the symptoms to ebb. If I even moved my eyeballs too quickly I felt the world spinning out of control.

It is my most frightening body symptom. For some reason I hadn’t noticed till this episode how similar it is to a bad hangover - the heaving stomach, the constantly moving ground, the jelly like muscles, the slurry thoughts - multiplied about a hundred times over. I felt gripped in the unbreakable metal claws of some large being that was turning me round and round, shaking me up and down, wanting me to listen to some message that I couldn’t hear. Yeats line, ‘The falcon cannot hear the falconer’ echoed through my head.

I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that my scariest body symptom resembles my most lethal substance (a potent mix of alcohol and tranquilizers) addiction. This addiction almost killed me when it put me in a coma for five hours sometime in 1999. Dates and the linearity of events are unclear around that time in my life. Under the addictions crushing grip life had plunged into anarchy and Yeats poem 'The Second Coming' had begun to make sense on a very intimate level.

How I acquired that addiction and how I rid myself of it is one of the stories I want to write about in the BF-memoir. But today I want to continue to dwell on the message vertigo has for me. It is a spiritual message I know but my meaning of the term spirituality itself is something I have to re-discover.

I close my eyes and slowly feel the sensations of the vertigo. Sufi dervishes whirling in repetitive circles appear out of nowhere. I find my way into their ecstatic trance, their direct experience of the sacred truth of life. Something I long for even when I have forgotten I do. Something I seek in the sudden feeling of being in flow when immersing myself in karate or the surprising heart opening I experience when I fall madly in love. Multiplied a hundred times over of course.

When I had my first attack of vertigo I thought it was directing me to align myself with my ‘true north’. I thought then that being a good person was the way. But today I know it’s more than that. As I experience a loss of external hearing I hear other sounds. The life affirming roar of a powerful waterfall, the thundering silence of the beginning of the universe, the ringing of a million stars on a moonless night.

My addiction did have a spiritual message for me too. I only discovered it in 2001 after I had wrestled back precarious control from its physiological and psychological pull. I walked back to the edge of the dark abyss and risked losing it all to get a glimpse of its meaning. I used to drink to forget the million conflicts surrounding me. When I approached the drinking with awareness I discovered that the cocktail of alcohol and tranquilizers would take me outside my body and for a brief moment, before i passed out, I would have a 360-degree perspective and a forgiving heart. To find that state without using any substances was my task then. Today I don’t have any serious addictions - though I stay up late to finish a book or beat my own score in a game or to simply procrastinate - and I have travelled far along the spiritual path the addiction led me to.

I feel on the edge of another unknown path. But some part of me has a memory of it. 'This was where i was before I was here,' it says. The task now I think is to once again push the boundary, feel beyond the senses, give up the illusion of control and allow the spirit to leave the body in search of deeper truths. I don’t know how to do this today but others have done it and so it’s possible.