Do you know where you're going?

We are in the Other days, the Omen days, the days outside of Time. According to Celtic tradition, this is a time of signs. Each day, from Christmas Day until Twelfth Night, holds an oracle for the year ahead.  Thus Christmas Day governs January; Boxing Day February and so forth.  So be aware - what attracts your attention? What flirts with you? What catches your eye?  Inside or out, it doesn't matter. So I ask myself the question. What is catching my eye today?  And the answer is: mandalas. Oh yes, we're right back in Labyrinth territory. 

Of course we never really left it.  There is no One Way. And really, it's not a case of leaving the mundane behind but rather of dancing between the two - between the practicalities of everyday life and the mysteries of the life within/without/beyond.  Truly All is One.

Are you meditating yet? Have you found a way of tuning yourself into Everything?  Did sound not work for you?  Maybe try image.  It doesn't matter; it really doesn't...there are a million ways into the Labyrinth...it's just a case of finding the one that lets you slip past the siren calls of the mundane and allows you to slip sideways (sidheways) to the sun...

I love mandalas. I always have. I have made them in nature. I have scribbled them on the covers of my schoolbooks. I have run my finger around them in the crocheted blanket that still sits on my bed. I have painted them. I have stitched them. I have danced them. I have dreamed them. I have shaken them in a kaleidoscope. I have sung them.  I have meandered through them on the earth and in my mind. Perpetual motion combined with perpetual rest.

The mandala is a map of the cosmos. Limitless space. Wholeness. Unity. Gateway to the divine. Circle. Nierika. The face of God. Your own face. Look out into space and there are mandalas - universes dancing.  Look into the tiniest speck of creation and there are mandalas - universes dancing. Oh yes there are. Infinity.

You can use the mandala in so many ways. You can draw your own as Jung advised his patients to do. Finding yourself in the circle; figuring out your place in the world.  You don't have to be an artist. You can draw it with your eyes shut if you prefer. Just the motion of a hand circling is sweet balm to a troubled soul.

Or you can use other people's - either ancient or modern - gazing calmly, reflectively at the centre point - or just allowing your eyes to wander where they will. Tumble into the rabbit hole if you dare...who knows where you might end up?  If you look on YouTube you will find a myriad of mandalas - moving meditations. I will leave the right one to find you...

There are mandalas in pretty well every tradition - Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, Bon, Tantra, Kabbalah,  shamanism... how could there not be?  One of my favourite mandalas is the one at the top of this post - it comes from the eighteenth-century, from Rajasthan and takes the form of a labyrinthine swastika - the path  the initiate must walk to Oneness.

Look around you and you will find mandalas in nature, in shell and leaf, in bark and snowflake, in a circle of pebbles on the beach, in the ripples of a lake in the centre of a forest or in an inner city puddle.  Blink at the sun; gaze on the moon; smile at crop circles; tumble into fractal geometry.

You can feel mandalas inside yourself, your spinning chakras, your own cosmos within... The mandala is not only a cosmogram but a psychocosmogram. Or should that be psychosomatocosmogram? *smile*

The mandala can also be an astral doorway, a link to other places, other times, other dimensions... sometimes you should tread carefully, very softly... Do you know where you need to go?  Do you know whom you want to meet?

A mandala can be a springboard...a key...a seal...a promise...a gateway. No, those elements do not contradict one another.  Will you use the key? Will you break the seal? Are you sure? Are you sure you're sure?

"Leave the past behind; leave the future behind; leave the present behind. Thou art then ready to go to the other shore. Never more shalt thou return to a life that ends in death." The Dhammapada.

Love and shit

Yesterday was a strange day. You ever have those days when you keep trying to convince yourself that everything is fine, that all the crap is just in your head (which, of course is it)?  But then the crap just keeps throwing itself at you – quite literally.  That was yesterday. My boy was home sick (literally) again. The phone kept ringing. The doorbell kept ringing. I kept having to race out into town and then come back to find I’d missed deliveries, missed calls, missed people.  It was a missing day.  And then my brother phoned, from the US, and we hadn’t spoken for ages – and he always phones me from his cell-phone as he drives the highway, pausing every so often to pay a toll. Only yesterday, we’d been on the phone for all of five minutes when the SP came in, looked at me and vomited shit at my feet. 

‘Call me back, Chris,’ I said. ‘Give me ten minutes.’ So he did and I cleaned it up and then he phoned again and then James called, ‘He’s done it again!’ so I sighed and Chris said ‘I’ll give you fifteen.’ And I cleaned up a small dog’s bodyweight in crap.  And then he phoned again and we talked again and he said, ‘How’s work?’ And I laughed.  And he said, ‘So what are you doing?’ So I said ‘Meditating mainly.’ And he didn’t laugh but sounded wistful. ‘I should be doing that,’ he said. ‘And I will. When I have time.’ Which made me sad.

And yesterday I saw a lot of sadness, a lot of pain. I heard a lot of pain. I felt a lot of pain. And, FFS, a dog bit a man in the face in the pub.

And I wasn’t going to blog today.  But here I am.  Because today is a new day. Fresh start. Capital letter.  And I woke up with a song in my head and a feeling that I needed to write this here and now.

Round we go, round and round. Life isn’t a line. It isn’t even a circle. It’s a labyrinth, a many-dimensional labyrinth. The paths bend and turn back on themselves all the time. And you think you’ve learned a lesson only to realise that it’s there, to be learned again, on a different level, in a different way. The Kabbalists say that there are four worlds; that there are trees within trees, overlapping, overlying.

Nothing is ever simple. Every time you think, ‘Aha! That’s it!’, the it changes. J

Of course it does. Life is change. Nothing stays the same. 

Except. Except.

One thing is very simple.

One thing never changes.

One thing remains.

Love.

Unconditional, eternal Love.

Yes, really.

Beyond all grief, all suffering, all surface flurry and drama and angst.  Love.

That is what lies at the heart of the Labyrinth of Light. Glowing, pulsing, a steady beating heart that never stops.  And, every so often, it explodes into blinding pure Light. That connects you to Everything.

And then there is no loss, no pain, no separation.

Have you felt it?  If so, you won’t need my puny words to understand.

If you haven’t, you will just have to trust me. It is there.

Yes, yes, you’re saying. (I can hear you, you know.) You say, we all know love – for friends, for family, for lovers, for animals, for Nature, for money, for whatever. Yeah yeah...

But. Love?

Transcendent and imminent at the same time?  That, above all else, is what I’ve learned in the Labyrinth, in this last year. That is, at heart, the One Thing (for me).

And I can sense you (some of you) going, ‘Ick.’ Soft and woolly, fluffy unicorns and rainbow dolphins. New Age, vapid meaningless words. ‘Love you.’ ‘Love you too.’ 'Love you more.' Lovey lovely.

No.  Hell no.

Love is awesome. Love blows your socks off. Love is bloody smite me sideways with a whacking great sword into seven shades of eternity. There is nothing remotely fluffy unicorn about it.

I’ve written about it before, of course. And doubtless I will again. Because that’s what happens, you walk down the same path many times.

If you did a word cloud of Marek’s books I’m willing to bet the biggest word would be LOVE.  Why?  This, from one of his Authonomy threads…

‘When you feel Unconditional Love, you want everybody else to feel it. And when you see that they don’t bother, too busy abusing their surface minds, you cannot be absolutely happy. Unless you’re a dogged egoist.’

Ah. So much to say. Nothing to say.

It’s Advent. The run-up to Christ Mass. Hmm, come to think of it, a good time to read Pro Vocation. A ‘serious joke’. I wonder when my copy will arrive? :)

Here's the thing...

“The labyrinth is thoroughly known.  We have only to follow the thread of the hero path, and where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god. And where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves. Where we had thought to travel outward, we will come to the centre of our own existence. And where we had thought to be alone, we will be with all the world.”

Joseph Campbell

So, where were we? Where was I?  Ah yes. I was telling you what happened a year ago when I went plunging into the labyrinth.  About those neat precise steps I took that changed my life.  You know, the not eating so much thing. The not drinking alcohol thing.  The exercising thing. The meditation thing. The breathing thing.  All pretty average really.  Pick up any self-help or spiritual development book and it will tell you more or less the same stuff, tell you to do more or less the same things. Thing. Isn’t that a wonderful word?

It comes from the Old English, þing. No, no, not 'ping' – the symbol at the front is a ‘thorn’ pronounced ‘th’ (a soft th). You find the same word in Old Norse and proto-Germanic. Originally it meant a meeting or assembly but later on came to mean a being, an entity or a matter (in other words the thing that was discussed at the thing). Even more interestingly, thorn was originally a rune (there are several which were incorporated into Old English).

There are many various readings of Thorn in a runespread but, amongst other things ;) it can mean a gateway, a place where one becomes ready to contact the numinous, the Divine. A place where you are confronted with the true reflection of what is hidden inside.  In one of my rune books it says:

'Visualise yourself standing before a gateway on a hilltop. Your entire life lies out behind you and below. Before you step through, pause and review the past: the learning and the joys, the victories and the sorrows - everything it took to bring you here. Observe it all, bless it all, and release it all. For in letting go of the past, you reclaim your power.

Step through the gateway now.'

(Wow. What a thing! Never underestimate a word, a letter, eh?)

Anyhow.  Let’s pull back a bit here.  Firstly, you’re assuming this change thing was/is a good thing, right? And yes, as far as I’m concerned, it was, it is, hopefully it will be.  But a lot of people, looking in, from other perspectives, would say it was a bloody disaster.  *grin*  It depends what you want, I suppose.  Jung said that the ‘job’ of the first half of one’s life is to find one’s way in the world and the work of the second half is to find meaning; to find oneself, to ‘individuate’ as he put it.  Trouble is, if you’re like me, you’ve spent a whole lifetime putting up barriers to who you are.  I had so many people, so many personae, so many entity-things rattling round inside my head, it wasn’t so much an orchestra as a horrible cacophony of sound – a string quartet playing music wars with a brace of death metal bands, Brian Eno, The Pogues, Hildegard of Bingen and, um, Donovan.

We find ways of moulding ourselves to the world, to fit in, to belong to our various tribes. We validate ourselves with our positions in life; our friends; our work; our status; our 'brand'; our houses; our cars; our holidays; our hobbies.  Some people get it right. They are congruent. Everything fits, more or less neatly. They know who they are and what they’re about. There aren’t too many contradictions; too many paradoxes.

But for me it never really fitted. I love/d spiritual stuff but I hate/d New Age waffle. I love/d nature and ecology and felt hugely strongly (still do) that the environment is THE biggest issue we have (truly, how can it not be?)  – yet I wince/d at the worthy hemp bag/ranty leftwing political stuff.  I love/d writing and reading but didn’t/don't wanna talk about it all the time; didn’t/don't wanna discuss the nuts and bolts, didn’t/don't want to dissect it.  And so on and so forth.  

You know how some people have their ‘thing’? (btw, dontcha just love the way language evolves??) I envied that. I wanted a ‘thing’. So so desperately.  If I had a thing, I thought, everything would be so clear, so simple. Because once you know what you want you can go after that thing single-mindedly, single-heartedly – and with the right prevailing wind, you can get it.  Yeah, pretty much any thing. 

But if you don’t…

Anyhow, there I was, not a clue in the world, wanting a thing but neck deep in muck.  And I stumbled into the labyrinth.  And, as I said in a few posts last year, it really wasn’t a neat walking down an ordered flight of stairs. It was more of a headlong (I typed headless there and really that’s right) stumble, trip and tumble down a rabbit hole.

Did I follow those precise step things I mentioned? Did I hell!  I just went mad, pretty much.  Something or other in my psyche responded to a trigger. What?  I have no idea.  The scrolls to the Labyrinth were burned. I can’t pinpoint the exact thing that prodded me in the back and pushed me down the hole. Oh, okay, the trigger that made me jump.

I stopped eating. I stopped sleeping. I shook all the time. My mind exploded into a thousand fragments and came back with a totally different formation; then exploded again and again and again.  

I scribbled occasional notes in my diary…like this…

12 December

‘I can’t sleep again.  This time, though, it’s different.  I fall into bed at about 1am and crash, only to wake up at 2.30am with my brain fizzing.  It’s like my body and mind are recalibrating themselves.  I can’t eat either:  just don’t feel like it.  All in all, I really do think I’m going ever so slightly crazy.

And I’m plunging down astral pathways, frantically searching.  It’s a multi-dimensional maze, a crazy labyrinth.  It’s like life’s been on hold for years and now I’m suddenly waking up. 

I know that sounds crazy; it probably is crazy.  It’s scary as hell but it feels horribly right.  Even the not sleeping bit.  I’m writing this at 4.30am.  I’ve been awake for two hours.  I’ve read a book already and my eyes are red sore.  I’m shaking, as if all my cells were being rearranged, being put back into the right order. 

Weirdly, it feels good.’

So. Was that a good thing? Is that a good thing? Is that something you’d want to do?  Is that something anyone should do?  Even if it meant you lost four stone? *wink*  

Have you *got* this thing yet? 

By the way (buy the way!) I would hasten to add that this whole bonkers tumbling thing is all my own.  It’s not remotely what my quasi/pseudo/anti-guru recommended. I hold nobody responsible. Nobody. J  Only my self.  My thing. 

How I became a sour-faced spoilsport boring goody-two-shoes

What else did I give up in the Labyrinth?  Yeah, yeah, apart from my sanity (ho ho).  J

Alcohol.  

Jeez, I can hear you (no need to shout, honestly) – what a bloody miserable goody two-shoes she’s becoming.  Now, don’t get me wrong. I love alcohol.  Well, I love spirits. And the spirits love me.  I had my first gin aged about ten and I could probably still drink most guys under the table providing we stuck to the hard stuff. Wine and beer? Not so much. Mix ‘em and it gets pretty nasty. 

Alcohol has run through my life like a narcotic river.  My father was apparently an alcoholic, though a functioning one. I don’t remember him drunk; only sad. But while he went down the pub, my mother went hungry and we didn't get shoes. When he ran out of money, he brewed his own beer and the smell of malt and hops still makes me a bit queasy to this day. Yup, I’m married to a man who makes his living from the stuff – the irony is not lost.

I’ve known a few people who have battled with booze and lost the fight, losing themselves along with their work, their homes, their families, their friends, their dignity. Others came out the other side of the bar and are stronger, more honest people for it. I admire them enormously.  People joke about alcohol - time and again I've heard people laughing their heads off saying, 'Oh, I'm such an alcoholic!' like it's fun, like it's a smart thing. It ain't. It's losing your hair and killing your liver; it's vomit and piss and tears and bloody anguish. Don't ever joke about alcoholism.

Of course not everyone becomes an alcoholic, no matter how much they drink. My second father, Big Black Erik the Aboriginal Viking, drank like a bloody fish and did some pretty wild things under the influence but he could give it up pretty much any time. That was me too.  At that early point in the Labyrinth I don’t think I even talked to Marek about alcohol – he just said he didn’t drink (apart from virtually, of course) but he talks about it in more detail (and with extreme honesty) in Symphonic Bridges.

I can hear the voices again (I really need ear-plugs). Don’t be such a sour-puss, don’t be such a spoilsport.  And again, I’d say, I’m not saying you shouldn’t drink. I’m just telling you what I’ve been up to this last year and why I made the choices I did.

Possessed or pissed? Hard to tell, huh?

When we get drunk we get possessed, we really do.  We let down the barriers. The occultists say that you should never get seriously drunk because your aura becomes leaky and the spirits (yeah) can hop in and hitch a ride. A Jungian would say that being drunk lets out your shadow  (no real surprise that people pick fights or screw around when they're pissed).  A shaman would say you may meet the ally – which can be either very good or very bad (typical bloody shamans – fecking infuriating. But we’ll talk about that later).

Yes she did look like that!

When I think back to the things I did when I was drunk, I really wince.  Admittedly I was young but still….aaghhh.  Taking off petrol caps and tossing in lit matches?  Smart huh?  Jumping into the Thames at midnight in the middle of winter with snow on the ground?  Smashing my fist through a window?  Lying comatose on the floor so a passing log broke my hand in so many places they couldn't even begin to set it? Picking fights with guys four times my size in dodgy clubs? Waking up in a strange bed and talking to a poster of Farrah Fawcett-Major because I hallucinated it as my friend Sig?  Waking up in my own bed with absolutely no idea how I got there because the last thing I could remember was…no, I really couldn’t remember.  I couldn’t even move my head.  All I could do was look directly upwards and watch my bra swinging gently on the overhead light in the breeze from the open window.  I couldn’t even turn my head to see if I had anyone else in bed with me.

When I think back I was bloody lucky I never ended up raped or dead. 

But hey, you’re saying, that’s all very interesting and didn't we all do crazy things when we were young but now we’re all sensible grown-ups we drink in moderation, don’t we? We chill out with a few glasses of wine after a tough day in the office; we have a civilised G&T at “gin o’clock”. It’s sociable; it’s civilised; it helps us relax and it’s fun.

Well, it depends. It depends how you use alcohol and what you want from it and from your life.

For me, alcohol had become another deadener.  Another way to opt out. Another distraction, another diversion, another way not to face what was going on (or rather what was being denied) in my head, in my life.  It was acting as a narcotic and an analgesic.  When I downed a few glasses of wine it took the edges off; it numbed the tedium.  And I didn’t want that anymore.  I needed to see clearly.  I needed to feel acutely.

Because I was lucky enough not to be addicted to alcohol, my self-prescribed ‘ban’ hasn’t been total. I have had a few drinks this year, for various reasons – once in Stoke Newington; once with Lizzy; once at shabbat in Tel Aviv and once…but that’s another story… J.  And I’m not saying I’ll never drink not never again.  Sometimes it does no harm to disorder the senses a bit, to shake the tree.  But generally, no. 

Have there been consequences for me?  Quite a few…  Let’s have a look…

Advantages of not drinking:

No hangovers

Skin becomes much softer (less de-hydrated)

Eyes become clear and bright – goodbye to that fetching bloodshot look

Tongue loses that furry covering (actually that’s a bit of a disadvantage too as I kinda loved scraping that off).

Mood evens out. Yup, alcohol is a depressant to the central nervous system.

Weight loss. Oh yeah, alcohol packs a hefty calorific punch and you also need to take into account the nibbles you eat while you’re drinking and the big fat takeaway that calls to you as you leave the pub.

People dump you. Seriously, it’s the best way to find out who your real friends are.

You see clearly.

Disadvantages of not drinking:

You see clearly. 

Something about a labyrinth...

Monday. New day, new week (I know weeks are supposed to start on Sunday but really, we all know Monday is where it’s at, right?) So, let's disregard the fact I got two hours' sleep thanks to the usual mix of children, dogs, blood, tears, nightmares and vomit.  

It's a new start.  A new template for the blog.  A new temple dish for words. J

There’s a new driver on James’ bus and this morning he told me that he was 59 and had been effectively thrown on the scrap-heap after years spent in high-powered jobs with the police and charities.  Which rammed home the point that Time passes and I am farting around.  Over the last year, as those who knew me before might have noticed, I’ve been going through changes, big changes.  On all planes – physical, mental, spiritual.  

I had this big plan about books within books and so on but I suspect that was just ego talking.  And, you know, I have become increasingly uncomfortable with me and books; about this whole concept of ‘self-help’ books; about telling people what to do.  Cos you can’t tell people.  Cos you can’t change people.  They can only change themselves.  But people have repeatedly asked me how I changed myself – and that I can tell you. If you're interested.  If not and - really - I don't flatter myself that my Big Fat Mid-Life Crisis is that interesting, then just back quietly out, humming, eh?  No hard feelings, I promise.  

For those who're left, let’s backtrack.  Let’s go back a year, give or take.  

Let’s just say I had hit a landmark number in the birthday stakes, the F number (yes the Big F) and life looked pretty bleak. I sat in my study and felt a wave of deep despair wash over me.  I was fat, unfit, fed up. Every effing F word you could think of.  And a few more besides.

If life is a party then I was at that horrible moment when the music gets turned off.  The bit where coats get put on, the lights are turned up and taxis are called.  After that, as we all know, comes the silence.  The half empty wine glasses.  The stale smell of old perfume, stale beer and sweat.  The ghosts of laughter and music.  The remnants of friendship and loving.  The opportunities passed by.  The regret.

My career had gone down the pan.  I was living in a ridiculous, freezing cold house that had Money Pit etched in letters a mile high over the door.  I had been diagnosed with palindromic rheumatism and some days I could barely walk.  My immune system was shot to pieces and I lurched from one infection to another.  Yes, I had a very dear small family and good friends. Yes, I had a home. Yes, compared to other people, I had no health worries. Yes, I had at least some work. I was lucky. I was lucky. I was lucky. I kept repeating that to myself, over and over, like a mantra.  Yet when I looked forwards all I could see was a slow decline towards death.

I played a game of Spider Solitaire.  Lost.  Played again.  Lost again.  I clicked on Sync but the only new emails were spam.  I glanced through Facebook and winced at the ad messages down the side of the page which seemed to know me and my situation all too well.  Was I short of cash?  Was I depressed?  Did I need a face lift? Did I want to run away from it all?  Yes, yes, yes and yes.  And just piss off, will you?

Twitter was worse.  Why, I asked myself for the 300^th time, did I torture myself following people who’d made it?  It seemed like all my old colleagues had  moved on, moved up, were successful novelists, editors, businesswomen, doctors, lawyers – or simply content doing absolutely nothing except play tennis and go for lunch.

I had £37 in the bank and a credit card that flinched like a beaten dog every time I plucked it from my purse.

Having gambled six months writing a novel nobody wanted, and finding that all the work I used to do was now being done for free or next to nothing by teenagers, I was all out of answers. 

I was four stone overweight and comfort eating my way through the working day.  I was drinking enough to give my liver a queasy feeling and my doctor to give me dark meaningful stares.  The gym and I were no longer on speaking terms.  I was, in effect, slowly and surely killing myself without taking the effort to throw myself under a bus.

Then I idly clicked on a forum.  It was full of the usual pretentious rubbish, in-fighting and bitching.  But one thread title piqued my curiosity. Something about a labyrinth.

Huh?

I’d always liked labyrinths.  I clicked.  And couldn’t quite believe what I saw.  I can’t remember the exact wording but it was something like.. 

What are you doing?  Why are you slowly committing suicide?

I knew it was ridiculous but it felt like it was talking directly to me.   I paused.  Then another message flashed up.

 Breathe.  Just breathe. 

And I did.  I took one breath.  And then another and another.  And absolutely everything started to change. 

Journeys

I can’t sleep again. This time, though, it’s different. I fall into bed at about 1am and crash, only to wake up at 2.30am with my brain fizzing. It’s like my body and mind are recalibrating themselves. I can’t eat either: just don’t feel like it. All in all, I really do think I’m going ever so slightly crazy.


I’ve given up the booze again. I do it periodically. It’s not like I drink a huge amount anyhow. I stopped drinking wine quite some time back so a stray bottle the other night was a bit of a shock to the senses.

‘But all writers drink,’ said a friend. ‘Or take drugs.’

It reminded me of my first attempt at writing a novel, back in my early twenties when I went to live in the USA. My brother gave me a bottle of a gin and a bag of dope. ‘Disorder the senses,’ he said.

Mine were disordered enough already – by the crashing waves right outside the house; by playing Bach so loud it echoed around my ribs; and by doing way too much esoteric wandering. I could see the auras of trees, of the dogs running after my bicycle – and that was all before I touched a drop of gin.

The book, needless to say, was absolute garbage. But I had the best time. Did some courses in neurolinguistics; pondered teaching ESL; gave up the idea. Spent a lot of time in art galleries and museums; got a serious gym habit; met some great people; never did get much of a tan. 

Travelled straight across the US from Cape Ann, driving west for three days and nights solid, chasing electric storms on trans-state highways. Three of us took it in turns to drive; took it in turns to sleep; took it in turns to keep the one driving awake. Had a blow-out at 80mph, and discovered that time really does slow when adrenalin kicks in. Got pulled over for cat and mouse racing with a Trans-Am. Passed by cities in the night. Diverted to the Badlands because, shit, you have to see the Badlands.  When we reached the coast in Washington state, we kicked off our shoes and ran down to the beach, sat staring in wonder at the sparkling sea – marvelling that it was a different ocean.

We camped in redwood forests and rode with cowboys in the panhandle of Texas; ate wholemeal muffins in hippy cafes in Northern California and sushi in sterile restaurants in LA. My soul shrank from Vegas, so much that I couldn’t leave the motel room. But it soared in San Fran, smiling at sea otters, laughing and swapping dresses with drag queens. Had the biggest fight ever at the Grand Canyon. Gazed at landscapes so large, the horizon curved. Felt tiny, a speck on a small planet spinning in a vast universe which was spinning in infinity.  Felt the dry air of the desert blow over my skin and soothe my soul.

God, I miss the States. God, I miss that freedom.

But, if one can’t travel outwardly, one can still travel inwardly. And I’m plunging down astral pathways, frantically searching. I can see something ahead of me and it's just ever so slightly out of reach.  I run and run and see a glimmer as it chases round a corner.  It’s a multi-dimensional maze, a crazy labyrinth. It’s like life’s been on hold for years and now I’m suddenly waking up.

I know that sounds crazy; it probably is crazy. It’s scary as hell but it feels horribly right. Even the not sleeping bit. I’m writing this at 4.30am. I’ve been awake for two hours. I’ve read a book already and my eyes are red sore. I’m shaking, as if all my cells were being rearranged, being put back into the right order. And I have no idea what happens next.

Weirdly, it feels good.