Death......has left its mark on me....

Firstly I must say a huge thank you to the brilliant person who invented sat nav. That little piece of gadgetry has given me freedom to travel and be independent. For someone like me who has no sense of direction and would go into orbit when being asked to read a map that little piece of equipment is the same to me as the blind man is about his white stick. It's really improved my quality of life.

I got up early yesterday morning and keyed in the name of the church where my friend was being burried. Delighted I got a postcode so I knew that the sat nav would be accurate. I set off in plenty of time and it was a brilliant sunny day. I felt so at peace and I knew deep down that Tracey has forgiven me for being such a lousy friend. I knew that the church was in Abbess Roding but for some reason when I put in the cost code and Loughton came up I completely forgot about Abbess Roding. I arrived in Loughton at what I thought was the correct St Edmunds church and it looked really quiet to me, but then again I was extremely early. I wanted to be early to make up in a clumsy way for not being there. I wanted to be there early so I could be with her coffin when it was taken out of the hearse.

At about 2.25pm when the funeral was due to be there I began to panic and the horrible thought dawned on me for the first time that maybe I was at the wrong place. I saw a couple of workmen and said to them questioningly 'St Edmunds, Abbess Roding'. One guy said I've seen you around here for a long time, there's nothing happening here today and anyway this is Loughton, not Abbess Roding. I went hot and cold and glanced quickly at my watch...noooo....it was 2.30pm and I was nowhere near where I had to go. Not getting to that church was not an option so I raced back to my car. Rigged up the sat nav typed in Abbess Roding which I should have done in the first place and put my foot on the accelerator and sped off. Luckily the roads around there are similar to the ones in Ireland so I was safe in my manic overtaking. I arrived at the church and was shaking like a leaf. It was a small country church with the entry to go in right in the middle so when I made my grand entrance a myriad of heads turned to look. I stood there awkwardly taking in quickly that there was no-where for me to sit.

Then I caught the stern eye of my former boss who motioned to me that I could squeeze in beside her. She felt me shaking and said 'where were you'. I said 'don't, I've been in the wrong church'. I don't think I have ever felt so stupid in my entire life. I was just in time for the final hymn and the burial of the coffin. I read the tributes that were paid to Tracey in the memorial booklet her husband had done and they were so moving. After reading this the whole enormity of not being there for her even for her funeral was just too much and I broke down and cried. I had wanted it to be so different....or did I. Had I said to myself that I didn't deserve to be at her funeral and then went and sabotaged it. The truth is that I don't know. What I do take from the fiasco is that I am creating being more responsible in the future. If I had been responsible and made sure that I knew where I was going that wouldn't have happened. I was struck as the coffin was being lowered into the ground by the shortness of life, 48 short years, where she made a difference to a few people but in the end was put in a box and dirt was thrown on her face and then we all went and had a drink. Put this way, I know that it sounds callous and doesn't make death glamorous but that is truly how I saw it. Is this the lot of human being, is this the only thing we have been put on this earth for. Surely there must be more.....

I went with the others for a drink and it was lovely meeting some old familiar faces that I hadn't seen for a very long time. After a while I said my goodbyes and left because I had another commitment that evening in central London. Driving to London I suddenly felt so drained and tired. I arrived at the place where I had to and parked up. My mind was still thinking about how I could have been so stupid as to spend an hour and a half at the wrong church. I was still reeling from that. When I finished I came out to the car to find that a kind parking attendant had slapped a parking ticket on my windscreen for parking in a residents bay....it was yet another lesson to me about not being responsible.

I arrived back in Brighton at 2am tired and dejected having set off in the morning feeling like I could do anything......

I woke up this morning with the humiliation of yesterday still uppermost in my mind. I dragged my carcass out of bed and into the shower. I was meeting the lady I met on the train who wants to set up a meditation centre in Brighton in the afternoon and wasn't feeling in a great space for the meeting. But I had given my word and more than anything I know how life works when I honour my word and do what I said I would do instead of honouring my thoughts or feelings. So at 3pm I was ringing the doorbell. The woman came down the stairs and opened the door and when I saw her again I was really glad that I had come. She brought me upstairs to a small but lovely decorated room and we sat down. She explained that she wanted to base the centre on the work of the Buddhist writer Tich Nat Hahn. I had heard of this Buddhist man but haven't read any of his work. She brought me downstairs to show me the room that she is having done up as a meditation room and I could see that while it was still very much in a building state that it had lots of potential.

We went back upstairs to discuss how the centre would happen. The woman came up with a name for it which I liked very much which is called 'Deep connection'. We talked about the importance of setting a date by which the first evening would happen which would give a reason to have everything ready which is Wednesday 4 November.....thank you Tracey...all of this has happened between the days of your death and your funeral.....you will always and forever be in my heart...

It's the funeral of my dear friend Tracey today....a very sad loss to me and the world

I woke up early this morning with a deep sadness and the face of my dear friend Tracey sprang into my mind, closely followed by a despair that I will never see her again to say what a fool I was for not keeping up the close friendship we enjoyed for over 15 years. Since she died such a lot has been happening. I am meeting with the lady I met on a train to speak about setting up a meditation centre tomorrow afternoon. I have been asked to submit ideas for a regular column for a magazine. Things are now moving around me which have never moved and I am sure that it is her. I had terrible blackness the days after she died but that has now lifted and I am looking forward today to meeting her friends and family who she had talked so much about.

I know and accept that there will be awkward moments and I am prepared for the questions for why I lost contact. I can't undo the past, that has happened and I did what I did but out of it I can create myself as a powerful and compassionate friend for my other friends. Tracey taught me that friendship is not 50/50 the way I saw it, but it is me taking 100% responsibility for having my friendships work and be rewarding. This is a great gift that Tracey has left me. So 10.30am me and my trusty sat nav are going on a 2 hour journey to Tracey's funeral. I know that she will know that I am there. I have felt her presence so strongly since she died and more importantly I know that she has forgiven me.

The body dies, but the consciousness and soul lives on. I don't have proof of this I just feel so strongly intuitively that this is the way it is. Tracey was the kindest, warmest, funniest, most compassionate woman and a dear dear friend.....today and always may she rest in peace....

A relaxed mind.....is a creative mind

As readers of this blog might have guessed I have been very upset over the death of my friend Tracey. Not so much her death, but that I wasn't there for her. What is amazing to me is that many of my other friends have been so supportive of me at this time. I can't understand this because I have proved what an awful friend I am so why should all this support be around me like this. One of these friends is the Brazilian woman I stayed with when I first moved from London. I was inclined to lose touch and so I sent her a long email saying everything about how much she means and how happy I was when I stayed there. She came to visit me and brought some flowers, bread and herbal tea. Her warmth and friendship was so unconditional in spite of me losing contact with Tracey for my own selfish and childish reasons. I looked at her with renewed love and appreciation like it might be the last time I would see her. Tracey's death has really shifted something in me.

Tonight I took out the herbal tea she had given me and to my absolute amazement it turns out that it is a tea which the kundalini yoga master Yogi Bhajan used to give to his students after they did the kundalini yoga. There is no way that she could have known this because I never told her that I was doing kundalini yoga. Her reasoning when I asked her 'why that tea' was that it said 'Bedtime tea' and she bought it for me in case I wasn't sleeping. I am in training not to make things mean anything but for some reason I made this very significant in terms of support for me to get through what is happening. And it worked, today I am feeling so much better. The blackness that was everywhere has lifted and I am thinking of things I can do in Tracey's memory.

Each of these teabags comes with a thought and I have been wondering how to continue this blog without referring specifically to the training I am doing. Having a different thought on each teabag has given me the idea of writing my blog posts around the thoughts. This is also going to be a challenge for me because they will be my explorations around these thoughts and they will be just my views. Take this blog entry- the thought for tonight is 'a relaxed mind is a creative mind'. Why should this be? What is is the link between relaxation and creativity. Immediately what springs to mind is Einsteins 'Eureka' when he was in a very relaxed state. I think he was drinking red wine, or else he was in the bath but his state was relaxed. Energy flows naturally and easily when the mind is relaxed. A tense mind freezes energy so it is not free to flow and be creative. The aim of meditation is to relax the mind by seeing that the thoughts and feelings that make up the structure of the mind are not who we are. The tense mind identifies itself with thoughts and feelings and becomes obsessed with these and then there is very little creativity.

Creating some space of silence and stillness is important for the mind to relax. and creativity to emerge. In todays busy world silence is unfortunately very underrated.

Have just seen....interview with Gordon Brown

I've just watched a snippet of an interview with Gordon Brown where he was asked about his vision. He said that he had 'lost the sight in one of his eyes'. Why didn't he say that he had no sight in his left eye. There is something about his not revealing which eye that has left me feeling uncomfortable. Is it a co-incidence that the lack of sight in his left eye (going to the right brain) has meant that his left brain has compensated to the extent that before Prime Minister he was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Is it any surprise that with the superior left brain functioning that he was the man who put together a package to take the UK out of recession which other countries soon emulated. Is it any co-incidence that his lack of right brain abilities in terms of charisma and charm maybe the cause of the alleged refusal by the American President to meet him. The right brain qualities are not there because the sight through the left eye to stimulate the right side of the brain is not possible due to the non-conductance of the visual stimulus to the brain.

I liken it to the two kidneys. When one kidney fails the other kidney takes over. No difference in functioning is found because both kidneys peform the same function. The right and left side of the brain performs different functions so when one half is not operating effectively the other side takes over to compensate. This results in accentuated right or left brain abilities. It makes perfect sense to me and I feel frustrated that nobody else can see it. Everything happens in the brain. There is nothing else but the stimulation of different areas of the brain that result in different experiences and perceptions.

I am the other side of the spectrum. The lack of sight in my right eye has meant that my left brain abilities are limited. In contrast the abilities of the right brain are advanced which is why I can have powerful spiritual experiences and still be grounded. I can read all kinds of spiritual texts and there is no learning involved. I have no proof for what I write here just a gut feeling. There are just too many 'co-incidences' for me to think that Gordon Brown having had the highest left brain job in the land but unable to demonstrate the right brain abilities of charm, charisma and me having powerful spiritual experiences that are usually attributed to the right brain is merely co-incidence. There is something else at play in this. I am sure of this. Why didn't he say which eye he had lost the vision in.....something about this is bugging me....

Maybe I will find an answer in my dreams.....

My friend Tracey might be dead....but I have never felt her so close

Since hearing of the death of my friend Tracey I have been in a very black space. I pride myself on always being there for my friends and the truth was that I wasn't there for her. I dedicated my kundalini class last night to her and at one point I thought I could hear her laughing at some of positions I was putting myself into. The postures we did last night were all to develop tolerance and it seemed apt in that it was tolerance for ourselves for when we don't behave in the way that we want to. Tolerance starts with tolerance for ourselves and then we can have tolerance for others. If I want to know how much tolerance I have towards others I have only to look at how tolerant I am of myself. I have moments where I am OK and then others where I dissolve into tears and beat myself up. I am so used to being able to call up my friends and fess up about how bad I have been at keeping in touch and its usually been OK. This time I can't do it. I am never going to hear her voice or see her smiling face and the finality of that has been very hard for me to take and bounce back from. But the strangest thing is that I feel her so close.

On Monday morning I didn't want to get out of bed. I knew though that I had given my word to do certain things and part of me also knew that these feelings of not wanting to do anything were not me. It was a strange experience watching that part of me that had the feelings of not wanting to engage with the world and that part that knew that I had given my word to do things. The battle between these two parts was raging and I was the witness of it all. I eventually dragged myself out of bed and had a shower. I took out my list of things I said I would do and methodically went through them. All the while I had Tracey's face before me. I was committed to do an agreement in London and I had a real struggle to get myself ready and go. At East Croydon a woman got on the train and came into the same seat as me. She smiled at me and I said 'hello'. We both busied ourselves with doing our own thing until she took out a book which I saw was a Buddhist book. She caught my eye and I asked if she was a Buddhist. It turned out from our brief conversation that she wanted to start a meditation and spiritual centre in Brighton, had premises that she had just finished renovating and was a filmaker, interested in making spiritual films. I told her a little about me and she asked me for my contact details and asked if I would be interested in creating something new with her.

We exchanged details and when I returned I sent her an email stating that I would like to meet up for a longer chat to see what we can create. She replied and next week we are meeting up to discuss possibilities. She sent me her website url and when I looked she is an experienced documentary and filmaker which is amazing because I have talked about making a film of my own experience that would inspire others to really take on the spiritual as opposed to the religious. I feel sure that it was Tracey that made this happen for me. I had been feeling so bad and wrong for breaking contact with her and it was her way of showing me that I'm not a bad person for not keeping in touch. I'm always aware also that my ego will take any negativity on my part and use it for its own ends so I have to manage that also. There is also a payoff in me keeping myself in a powerless position and that is that I don't have to take responsibility to generate or create anything new. By staying in the victim mode and making myself bad and wrong I can take myself out of the game of being responsible and the temptation not to be responsible is very strong at the moment.

What I also see from the way that I cut off contact with Tracey when she didn't respond to my texts or messages was that this was very much like how a child would behave; a kind of tit for tat and I was reminded of what was said to me when I was removed from being accountable for a team about a year ago. I was told that having me in charge of a team was 'like having a five year old in charge'. At the time I dismissed the comment but seeing my behaviour with Tracey - it is all coming from the same consciousness, the right brain consciousness, the childlike consciousness. What there is for me to do so it try to get more of a balance. But how on earth am I going to do this given how right brain dominant I am.

The worry for me is that as I get older I seem to be getting more childlike not less. I'm beginning to have a wariness when speaking with adults that wasn't there before. It's like before I even begin I have told myself that they won't understand me. It's getting to the stage that I would much rather listen than speak at all. I think I can understand people like Sri Aurobindo who took himself away from the world, retreating into his right brain when the consciousness shifted. I don't want to do this because I believe that I can make a difference to people but I'm also aware that as I get older my right brain consciousness is likely to get stronger which is probably going to lead to adults feeling more frustrated with me than they already do. .....

What is ironic is that in order for me to be a powerful leader for children and young people I have to be a powerful leader for adults first.....how likely is my dream now.....not very I would think........

Two years ago my friend was diagnosed with cancer....today she is dead....she was 48..RIP Tracey Wotton - my dear friend

This entry is a sad entry for me because of the death of my good friend Tracey. My sadness is also tinged with guilt because since Christmas I had no contact with her. I knew that she had the cancer diagnosis, and I didn't keep in touch and that is something I am finding it hard to forgive myself for. I moved away and never gave her my forwarding number or address and am now tormented with thoughts that she had tried to get in touch with me before she died and she couldn't. The news was given to me by a former boss who phoned me when I was walking on the street and it was all I could do to get myself back home. Once in home my flatmate was great, she made me some sweet tea because I was shaking so much. Tracey had been on my mind for a lot of the day on Thursday and I had said to myself that I must send an email and see how she was getting on. She died Thursday night.

I think the shock of this has created a shift in that I feel different. I really see the impact of me not being responsible around giving my new number and address has had. I said she was a friend, yet I wasn't a friend to her. And yet, even as I write this I can see her smiling face and her saying 'don't be silly'. It's hard to believe that I'm never going to hear her voice or see her smiling face again. Tracey is the first friend I have lost to the grim reaper and when it happens something in life shifts. I feel numb and really really sad. I feel sad, restless and unsettled. I thought that I had experienced the utmost in certainty but with Tracey's death I have plumbed new depths.

I'm sure that I will come out of this and bounce back but it has taught me one thing and that is the value of relationships and not to take them for granted. There are so many people I have lost touch with who I was good friends with while we were able to meet but once either they or I moved, the contact stopped and it was stopped from my side. I can be responsible for not nurturing many of my relationships. It is only when I have lost one that I see the value of all of them. So when I have finished writing this blog I am going to root out all of the people I have lost contact with and clean up what a fickle friend I have been.

I don't know if it's this training I am doing that seems to be throwing up a lot of the past up at me to deal with but this is what I seem to be spending a lot of time doing. While I did receive authorisation to continue this blog and it was commended which I was pleased about, the point was made that I am now representing Landmark Education and for me to have integrity around what I write about this training programme. I completely understood and agreed with what was said and requested of me and from here on in this blog is not going to be specific about this training. I will write around it and it will come from a spiritual perspective and will be along my usual theme of the game that is played between the ego and the soul in spiritual language but it won't directly reference this training. I'm also going to give serious consideration to writing a fictional novel which will render more palatable what this blog is trying to achieve!

So tomorrow Monday I am going to an agency to see about some work temping. Some structure is what I most need now. I'm feeling very fragile and yet I know that this is part and parcel of the spiritual path, and all that is required of me is courage, trust and surrender......

Every morning I wake up with the same question.....how badly do I want to be a Landmark Forum leader for children and young people

The title of my blog entry is how I wake up each morning. Having declared that this is what I want to be I am finding myself so challenged by everything. I am doing this training in the grip of huge physical and emotional tension and also with much more awareness than I have ever had before. I have written of how I was gripped to do this when I was sitting on a tube. I had a flash and a strong inner instruction that this is the path I am to go. How do I know this? How can I be so sure that it is an instruction from higher intuition. I know.... because it is not the first time it has happened. The last time it happened....it resulted in my book.

In 1988 when I first heard the Buddhist concept of the Bodhissatva I was gripped with a burning desire to be a Bodhissatva and I remember the inner shift that came with that desire. But because it was something I had never experienced before I quickly forgot about it and lived the life I lived which was to study and practice Mahayana Buddhism for nine years. That intense desire was not kept active by me but it must have been the power of the initial desire that has brought me to where I am today. Where I am today has happened in spite of me really and not because of me. Yes, I believed firmly that enlightenment is possible in one lifetime, the Buddha declared this and there was no doubt in my mind that it is achievable. I still have faith that this can be accomplished.

What is present for me now from this powerful inner intuition or instruction is that it is going to take something from me to achieve. What it is going to take is a massive breakthrough in structures and statistics, things I have firmly relegated to the left brain which I maintain I have a very poor functioning of. It is also going to take me keeping active a burning desire for this result and to take actions to make it possible when I least feel like taking any action. In other words, it is going to require a level of co-operation from me that there hasn't been in the past. In the past I was guided, this time it is down to me and to how badly I want to be this kind of leader. One thing I am clear about, is that I am serving a purpose, the exact nature of it I am not sure but this is always the way it has been through history. The Divine has a purpose or more to the point a game for the consciousness, a receptive consciousness becomes the vehicle for the game, but the game is not personal. The vehicle is there for the game, for no other reason and when the game is over, so is the vehicle through which the game was played. And yet it is the ONE playing a game with its many parts, one part playing a more significant part than the others for a certain time and then another of its parts at another time. But ultimately there is no tragedy because it is only the ONE which has split itself into parts to play the game.

I have to be aware too that I am living with a raised and awakened kundalini. Some of the energy is in my heart and is what gives me my connection to people, but some is also in my brain and is giving me insights and intuitions. I am aware that this energy has also been linked to mental illness and I am careful always to have the witness - that which watches me have different thoughts. I must also be careful to maintain balance. The kundalini energy can manifest as obsession. Yes, I want to be a Landmark Forum leader more than anything but what is it that is really driving that - what am I being used as a vehicle for. The moment I lose sight of that distinction is when my boundaries and my world as I know it disappears. So the level of self-awareness I have these days is painful in its clarity.

I've informed Landmark Education about my book and about this blog. There are policies for graduates on mentioning Landmark in their websites and I want to be clear that I am not breaking any policy with what I am writing. I don't feel I am but for some reason I am feeling very uncertain about the impact this blog and book is going to have at corporate headquarters. I feel like I did many years ago when I was in boarding school and a young girl was caught reading a book she shouldn't have. The girl under pressure confessed that the book was mine. She came to find me distraught that she had said who the owner of the book was because I had warned her when I gave her the book that if she was caught with it, it wasn't mine!

I reassured her that it was OK but my heart had plummeted to the floor. I went back to class and waited for what I knew was inevitable now. I watched the corridor through the top of the window. I watched and waited. It wasn't long before I saw the figure of a tall woman all in black sail up the corridor and knock on the door. She came in and said something to the nun who had been taking the class. The nun looked shocked and then the eyes of both of them bored into me. The nun who was the head of the school came up and asked me to leave what I was doing and go with her. The rest of the story is not important I just want to illustrate that awful feeling of sitting... waiting for something.... to happen.

Now again...so many years later as I wait for something to happen I have those awful feelings of uncertainty. What is it in me that is driving me to make life so difficult. I am giving everything I've got to make a difference to human being in a world which has no idea what it is I am trying to show never mind take on in a serious way exposing the game of human being so that the consciousness can move to the next level. Looking at it rationally it is completely mad. How much easier life would be for me if I turned my back on all of this and played small........but something won't let me do it.