Waking up amidst the gritty stuff

 Waking up amidst the gritty stuff

Nearly every “spiritual teacher” that I have ever heard speak has at some point mentioned their retreats, their teachers, their practices. There has been the indication (whether meant or not) that there was a journey which involved “spiritual places and people”. 

This wasn’t the case here. (Unless you include the one weekend retreat I did in Portugal as an attempt at the time to escape young children, a caravan and the searing heat of the Portuguese summer!) Other than those three days the story here was that of kids, a husband, arguments, friends, work... a very ordinary life. There was no teacher who wore robes and whom I bowed down to. There was a man from Leister who sat on my sofa and exploded my entire world in the most violent fashion while in the midst of kids, washing, cooking dinner and sleepless nights. It was messy, very messy!

It was not serein, it was not calm, it was definitely not up a mountain. There had never been religion, nor yoga, in fact anything that constituted spirituality. My home growing up didn’t have books, any kind of book at all! 

Then one night, out of the blue, there was an addiction - deep, dark, encompassing addiction. This lasted two years and took Zoe to the pits of hell and back. Finally she found the rooms - the rooms offered hope, they offered a way out - Surrender. This was the first and only opening to the door to Spirituality before "Zoe" began to die. Shortly after entering the rooms and embracing the twelve step program, A man came to visit - he wasn’t expected at all and arrived with a friend for a cuppa. 

Sat on my sofa he exploded my world with the simple words: “you know there’s no you, right?” What followed was indescribable. It was three weeks of feeling like I was having a psychotic breakdown. I had no idea what was real and what wasn’t. "Zoe" began to question everything about herself - Her marriage, motherhood, her job - everything! The floor fell out from under me and I was totally lost, i really went crazy.

After a month or so it settled and there was the realisation that something big had happened and that something had changed for ever. This was when I started searching. I began to read and hook into YouTube. Every modern teacher, every previous teacher, anyone who was talking about spirituality, waking up, and non-duality. For the next twelve years, further down the rabbit hole I went. I began to talk to a friend or two and we began meetings where people could come and we would talk from this new, different perspective. 

At the time the words would come out and stuff would get said but "Zoe" was also still very much there again, leading life and being in charge. 

As time went on, I began to take this perspective into my work with children, and the training that I did with staff. It began to penetrate my family and my marriage. It began to become part of who I was - A bigger part of the story, gradually, bit by bit - until I found myself sat on a piece of land with a group of people who had only come for this strange and non describable space outside of thought. The space between thoughts got longer, and the power of thought reduced. And with this, the desire to judge, or create a story, diminished.

Until - one day, I found myself sitting in a caravan listening to someone taking everything away. My home, my job, my community, my hope. In that moment the last everything fell away. Instead of the immense fear and worry, anger and pain, that might come with this kind of news, there was a flood of silence - pure silence. It was a stillness so unbelievably profound - It didn’t matter. What he was saying and what I was reading didn’t matter. Not because thought said it didn’t but because thought was gone. There was no one there for it to touch.

I left the caravan and over the next few weeks there was a shift from being "Zoe", who was in the world, to being the divine - "who" was everything in the world and yet sitting outside of it. There was no fear over the circumstances - no loss, no panic... Just silence. The only way I can describe it is like being held in the hands of God - there is no ability to move outside of this moment at all. No story being projected into an imaginary future, no imagination going into the past to review and decide how it should, could, or would have gone differently. Just what is unfolding in THIS moment only. 

It was like it had taken twelve years to finally sink in and penetrate. To finally break through all the layers. 

I don’t presume at all that this is the end - there’s an awareness that the rabbit hole goes deeper. It may all change in the next moment, and that’s ok too, We just don’t want to see it, as the pain and suffering are the known - It’s safer to stay in the known. 

The unknown is scary - but only to the structures of thought. To what lies outside of it. Everything is ok. Everything is perfect. 

The invitation is there. Even in the grit of real life. It is not reserved for monks, or priests, or the select few anymore. If a ordinary girl from Southampton can wake up and see that she was, so can anyone. There was pain and fear, but "she" died. Something is different now. We are all in pain. This pain IS the invitation, even for the most ordinary - Especially to the most ordinary! It is only the thought that we are not worthy, or that we are not good enough that keeps the door closed. We hold the keys to our own prison - they are there for the taking...