Thursday 6 February 2014

Rain and thinking and unexpectedness and changes

Sitting by the fire thinking, this rainy day.

The storms have been relentless, and the expected snows of winter turned out to be rain, because the temperatures never fell.  Snow is inconvenient surely, but it slows down the soaking of the water into the land; this ceaseless rain has brought so much damage and misery – here in Hastings, there have been falling chunks of cliff and cracking crumbling houses, down in the West Country the damage has been devastating, and everywhere rivers are overflowing, flooding homes.

We live on top of a hill flanked with trees, and even here the garden is one big mud puddle.  

After yesterday’s storms (my beautiful mama phoned and cancelled my visit to her, alarmed by the wild weather) the trains have been cancelled for today.  “February Fill-dyke” – I’ll say!  Wet, wet, wet!

Plunged into the world of juicing fruit and vegetable and distilling water, not to mention Gerson upside-down coffee (!) to get my health back on track (with brilliant results so far), and surrounded by mud, I have hardly even been in Komorebi these last ten days, and I’m worried about mildew in the mould-prone things – fabric, books etc.  If I were to actually live in a tiny house, the consistent heating and airing would keep everything dry and toasty, but being there only part of the time is different.

I’m glad to feel so much better than I have for a long, long time, and grateful to have found a properly workable regime that builds a firm health foundation, but I feel a bit bewildered – that I only just started something and suddenly everything changed.  A bit upsetting.  I thought my days and mind were to be occupied with off-grid tiny-house-ness, instead of which I’ve been mastering the routines and machinery of Gerson health principles.

I have found one or two profound changes in how my body works, with all the de-toxing.

One that I find hard to put into words.  I only noticed it when Hebe played a wonderful song today and I felt like dancing.  I always used to love dancing – it was a joy to me; but gradually over the last few years I couldn’t dance anymore; like my body just didn’t want to dance, couldn’t dance.   But today, unexpectedly, the music danced in me, in my body, again.  I remember one time a nutritionist saying to me about de-toxing the liver, that some people’s livers are just held together by accumulated grot, and they can be a bit fragile after de-toxing, because the liver gets a bit flimsy – needs milk thistle to re-build it.  What it felt like, today, was that the cells of all my tissues had been insulated in grot, and now they are getting cleansed out, they are clear enough for the music to get in and dance in them again.  As though my cells could hear again.  That may sound dodgy, but it’s what it felt like.

The other change is that since forever I have relied on the glorious combo of tea, sugar, white flour and fat to make me stronger than I really am, leaned on its energy spikes to help me do everything that needed doing.

With all that sluiced thoroughly out of my system, my energy is zingy and bright, but also somewhat fine – not heavy duty.  I can’t keep slogging on with things like I used to.  The other day I tackled the typing up of the church council minutes – it takes ages – and by the time I’d done I was so tired I just crawled into bed.  And, I find where I was travelling further and further into a withdrawal from everyone, just basically wanting to be left alone, I’m feeling a need to be near the people I love – just in their aura, in their company.  Where we each had our own living pod in this household, I’ve crept back into the Badger’s pod, his high-in-the-clouds garret, to be near him – even when he isn’t there.  

I spent ages wondering whether to post all this.  Somehow this blog, which always had my thoughts but judiciously filtered, seems to have strayed into very private territory.

This is an odd journey.

It seems, Komorebi is going to be a praying, peace-soaking, talking, chilling, healing space more than a leave-everything-behind living space.   It lives up to its name.  Each time I have been there in these soggy days, I have marveled at the light-through-trees dappling the wooden walls, the sense of lightness and calm, its quietness and serenity.  It is full of presence, ready for what is emerging.  Its joy transfixes me whenever I stand inside.

As always – in this situation, in life generally, in everything – I think the secret is in owning less.  The less one owns, the more one slips easily between one context and another, like a cat found curled up now on this sofa, now on that chair.   The less one owns, the more realities emerge.  It’s as though possessions peg a person down into definitions and attachments, adhering personas to the living soul.

That’s enough thinking for one day.

And you?  What do you think?


29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Now in my sixties I have taken up dancing again and it makes me feel so alive and free.Now I just have to get singing again.
As always, so lovely to read your thoughts Pen. You speak for so many of us.
Stella

Pen Wilcock said...

"I don't know, but I've been told, if you keep on dancing you'll never grow old…"
God bless your singing and your dancing! xxx

Sandra Ann said...

I am going to see if I can borrow the gerson book from the library and if not will buy it. Dave and I are both struggling physically in different ways, our sprits are good due to a combo of practising gratitudes and daily meditation.

Your comment about things changing unexpectedly is so true of life and of God, after all if you want to hear him laugh tell him your plans?!! I think however you use Komorebi will be right for you and that is all that matters. It takes enormous courage to be open and vulnerable so thank you for sharing your thoughts and allowing those of here as part of the kindred community a chance to support you.

Love and blessings

San xx

Pen Wilcock said...

San - the Gerson therapeutic principles are brilliant, but take BIG getting used to. For a general introduction, there's a superb video (The Beautiful Truth) on YouTube - the project of a homeschooled teenager:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cMOKTlBlDk

Unknown said...

Sometimes I wish I had a more organised brain. I read things & promptly forget my source so I can tell you I read the results of a study that say our very DNA is programmed to read like a Bach score & can be set to music ~ but I can't tell you who did it. A Japanese neurobiologist I think.

I think in the garden everything was tuned to everything else; harmony & counterpoint but no discords. Now we have discords & we forget who we are & what we were made to be. Even the stars sing, as the book of Job declared so long ago.

I am fascinated that better wellness is bringing you closer to others. Interesting.

Pen Wilcock said...

Ooh - if you remember the name of that Japanese neuro-biologist, let me know!

ebgindc said...

Mother-in-law of my son: I remember your dancing a few years ago when you were in the beginning stages of Tony! Glad you're moved to dance again. I'm wanting to take hula lessons because my mom used to hula so beautifully and I know it would make her happy. Michael and I dance to old rock and roll sometimes. Love from America's heartland! XO Ellen

Unknown said...

lol Pen, you can find similar things on~line. I'm not scientifically enough inclined to really understand but here are a few links:

http://www.mimg.ucla.edu/faculty/miller_jh/gene2music/home.html

http://www.yourdnasong.com/

Hope that helps the curiosity factor. :D

Sandra Ann said...

Thanks will check out the link x

Gerry Snape said...

No matter how tired I am....when I come home from two hours singing in the choir....my chi is restored.....possibly that could really be my spirit!!!

tonia said...

This post makes me happy for so many reasons, mostly because I hear happiness in YOU and I like that. I work ridiculously hard at my health and I'm one of those annoying people who doesn't eat this and that and can't have the other thing, but if I don't, my body, mind and spirit fall apart completely. I want to dance and feel joy, so it's worth it. Happy for you.

Rapunzel said...

"Possessions peg a person down into definitions..."

Yes I see that. I'm thinking of how a person, inconsciously I think, behaves in one way at home with his/her 'stuff' all around, another way out in the public streets, and still another way at
work surrounded by the material goods and various personalities in that particular environment.
Perhaps, and I'm feeling my way as I go here, perhaps what it means to be whole is to get to where we are just the same person no matter where we are and no matter what material things we do or don't have around us.
And I wonder if I shall ever be truly whole like that.
Of course I wouldn't want to be wholly rotten. I'd prefer to be someone who's easy and nice even in situations where it doesn't matter whether I'm nice or not.
I am so glad pen that you're getting a bit of perkiness back.
I've figured out long ago that our bodies are positively built to heal themselves if we can figure out what we're doing to muck them up and then stop doing it and get out of the way to make room for the healing. But I know from a good deal of up and down experience that figuring out and Doing are two very different things.
I feel at the moment like you're a good chapter or so ahead of me on this, which is much more heloful and encouraging than someone who is so far far ahead they're nearly out of sight.

Toddling off now to watch The Beautiful Truth.

Pen Wilcock said...

Thanks for your good thoughts, dears xxx

Rebecca said...

What do I think????

I think we ALL are on a sort of "odd journey"....

I think "Komorebi" is more than an (is it) 8'x12' enclosed place. It is an expansive state of soul.

I think you're spot on about possessions.

I think that's enough thinking for me right now.

Be well. Dance like no one is watching!

Pen Wilcock said...

:0D

Waving! x

DaisyAnon said...

I'm struggling to put into words what I think. First, I am so grateful you do 'put yourself out' here with your very private thoughts. That is what I find so helpful and valuable.

I'm fascinated that as your physical health has improved so has your spiritual/emotional outlook and how this affects how you want to live.

And yet your previous state is not invalid, you just express it differently, use it differently in a better state of health.

Since I retired and had more choice about how I lived my life I have found that while my choices might seem selfish or self indulgent to others; if I try to do more active things (good works, organisations, committees, meetings, whatever) it all goes pear shaped very quickly.

I do not know what God's will is for me, it may just be psychology or psychiatry; all I know is that life goes easier for me and those around me if I behave like a lily of the field, neither toiling nor spinning. Which is in accordance with my deepest desire and always has been, except I repressed it for most of my life.

So now I follow the flow of the Tao and am grateful the wonderful nature of these final years.

This next is a bit cheeky, but I am dying to know and I thought about it recently after one of your posts, and you mention it in this one - why are you still doing the Church minutes? It seems like the antithesis of everything you are trying to make of your life?

May your good health continue

Pen Wilcock said...

:0) The church minutes? Because, in fairness to all concerned, I need to see this through to the end of the year. Our Annual Parochial Church Meeting is in April. There is one more PCC to go before that. After the APCM I am standing down. TONIGHT (hooray!) I am meeting with the lady who is to take over from me as PCC secretary, and I am hoping we will have enough volunteers for the PCC that I can come right off the council, as well as standing down as secretary. What a blessed relief!

DaisyAnon said...

I remember you did a post about the minutes, called a living Celtic Knot or something like that.

It was one of the funniest things I have ever read.

Pen Wilcock said...

:0)

http://kindredofthequietway.blogspot.co.uk/2011/10/endless-knot.html

xx

Anonymous said...

Ooo..Ooo...Pen...if you want dancy music this is the BEST pick me up song..well you might not think so but a bunch of my friends love it :-D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcxEDy-lr0

Anonymous said...

Hi Pen,
Lovely post. Life always does seem to be filled with the unexpected. I am glad you are feeling joyous and have Komorebi for whenever the need arises.I will think of you Gersoning as I do my ultrametabolizing.
blessings,
DMW

Pen Wilcock said...

Thanks, Deb - I'll listen to that - and thanks for the beautiful bag that arrived with me safely xx

Hi DMW - I don't know about ultrametabolizing - I'll look it up xx

Anonymous said...

Yay, glad it arrived and that you like iy :-D

Jenna said...

(Catching up after ice-storm induced power-less-ness.)

Pen, I love that you are as transparent as you are. It gives me permission to admit things to myself, as well. x
--Jenna

Pen Wilcock said...

Hello my friend :0) Waving! x

mari said...

I leave for awhile and return again...yet, you always make me look at myself deeper and cause me to stop and be still.

I have read your past posts, and what resonates with me is that you are changing fully. You mentioned in a post awhile ago, that all you want to do is be happy. Live, eat, and just be.

It has taken me many long years to finally say these words to myself and accept them! Fully.

Just be Pen... just be.

Good to read your words once again ... what a blessing you are.

maria

Pen Wilcock said...

Hello my friend - good to hear from you again. I hope all is well with you xxx

Anonymous said...

Actually Pen...it has been a very rough two years. Painful, but so enlightening. Living day to day. Good to be back writing again and sharing on this medium.

maria

Pen Wilcock said...

:( Well, God bless the time, and uphold you. May you be happy, may you be peaceful xxx