More Light

The sunlight streamed through the Georgian window casting a rectangular patch of nine lights onto the dining room wall the centre part of which had the crystallised light form of the flower vase which sat on the window-sill

I sat to the side of the window for my morning meditation I listened to a recording of Tibetan Bells and Ocean Waves as I meditated in the warm light knowing that a few hundred yards away stood the cliffs against which the real sea swelled

I know this because yesterday evening we walked out to the cricket field at Sewerby I edged from the boundary line towards the drop though not too close for I am not too fond of heights and know that vertigo or fainting or light-headedness can occur at any moment

Walking around the field we saw a down-at-heel middle-aged man asleep on a seat outside the cricket pavilion we saw him again later in the evening outside our holiday cottage ambling towards the street-light of the road beyond

I did not interrupt his stupor should I have done should I have enquired as to how he had arrived at this situation would it in any way have helped him to shed any more light onto his particular life story

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Sound-Scapes

I find meditating in a group inspirationally energising in point of fact just a week back I was with a small gathering doing a taster meditation in our Old Stables we were listening to music Tibetan Singing Bowls with Ocean Waves (feat. Vidura Barrios) from Vajra Yoga Meditation for Beginners Volume 2

The meditation was to let thoughts come and go as they wished not forcing them in neither forcing them away yet not to focus on them either instead to use your breath and your mantra as a place to gently return to

I found myself in very many places with water being the thread which connected me to the various locations from the Idle Rocks Hotel at St Mawes to Porthminster Beach in St Ives from St Brelades Bay in Jersey to that same islands Corbiere Lighthouse from the wide open sands on the Outer Hebrides to the streams on Dartmoor which flow into the river at Buckfastleigh Abbey

These are the ones I now remember yet I know for sure that there were many many more so it is therefore a meditation which I do wish to return to for I will always have ample desire to be refuelled by nostalgia

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Wasp

It is a good word isn't it wasp
In every which way it seems to take hold of you

Just to look at those four letters arranged as they are
Yes already there is a level of fear attached don't you think
And then as you roll the word over your lips
Your tongue pushing to flush out any residual venom

Yet how could such a small word
Hold claim to such threatening behaviour
Short as the wasp itself is short
When compared to my size ten boot

And how such an uncomplicated word
Can take you to that intricate assembly
How it can raise the black and yellow stripes
How it can raise such imperious buzzing

All of which together raise wide-scale disturbance
As it approaches our outdoor dining-table

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Description

Should I begin with the roof-light
Or the wood-burner
Stood on a slab of Derbyshire stone
Itself supported by small pyramids of wood
Which no doubt Keith made himself
Or maybe the roof-beams
With their bright and rusted fixing bolts
Or the small patch of raw stone
Left without plaster for visual effect
Actually I do need to tell you
That the room has seven walls
Some long some short especially
Those around one of the three doorways
The largest of which is a double
In the style of French Windows
Which look out onto the large garden
Where the leaves waver in the breeze
O and by the way
The ceiling has five surfaces
Two flat three sloping above which
There is only sky
Sky from which the light falls
Sky from which the rain falls
Sky on which I can contemplate
As I look out through the roof-light

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Thought

I thought to go to a quieter place

Gibraltar Point or Theddlethorpe

I have been before to quiet places

Slapton Sands or on top of Dartmoor

I thought that to travel there often

Would be an expense of time of money

Yet I have often travelled for peace

Beggared the expense

Spent all that I had

Instead I thought to stay nearer to home

To create my own quiet space

To sit in my own rooms

To walk through my own gardens

Then I thought what do I own

What might I lay my hands upon

And say yes yes this is mine

It is the one thing which I do own

Or the one thing which I thought I owned

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