What's To Enjoy?

When I am here, being in the Heartland is an effortless pleasure, constantly in transformation, and surprising in its flavours.

While Egoland has vivid stimuli, exhilarations and enthusiasms as well as panics and frights*, life in the Heartland is not adrenaline-fuelled.  Its joys are subtle and gentle, and it may take time to accustom our palate to its unobtrusive delights.

A parallel might be between the taste of chemically ‘enhanced’ junk food and of fresh, natural food. Fresh food is not addictive, doesn’t engender cravings, the way over-salted and sugared snacks do, and ego does.

(Let me admit that I've done my research on this:  I eat my fair share of crisps and tortilla chips!)

*I was going to add ‘dismay’, and ‘anxiety’ to this list, but then realised that both of these uncomfortable feelings belong ‘On the Way’.  I only began to feel dismay and anxiety once I had gained a sense of the wrongness of Egoland!

Now and again, as I'm writing in my journal in the morning, I become aware of a fresh aspect of living in the Heartland.  When this happens, I try to acknowledge it in words. In fact, this daily activity is the genesis of these Rough Guides.

Such glimmerings of awareness are often so fleeting, and so enmeshed in my own inner 'atmosphere', that most of the time they go unregistered and unarticulated.

Clearly, like dreams, these insights do not need to be expressed in words, to be true and helpful.  They belong to the vast non-verbal universe of our inner experience, our being, to ‘how (= who) we are’.

But because this writing is precisely about areas of life that usually remain implicit, I want to make a short list of some of the ways I have discovered of enjoying living in the Heartland.

So – in no particular order – number 1: savouring the sense of things moving onward, flowing naturally, like a river, with great calm strength, and no need for effort, planning, or any sort of contrivance on my part.

This aspect of enjoying life in the Heartland brings a comforting sense of currents flowing way beneath the surface of events, safely out of sight of manipulative interference, far beyond (or inside) what we can see or think about – a sense of things being taken care of, worked out, in their own necessary and correct way.  The river naturally flows downhill, the way it wants and needs to go.

It seems to me, when I am in this place, that each strand of everybody’s story is proceeding step by step in its own specific unfolding, taking/getting what it needs from each situation, and creating its own next step. I have a reassuring sense of ‘nothing wrong’ – even in the midst of misbehaviour and machinations.

cover of my album, released 2012

The feeling I am describing here doesn’t involve any commentary or analysis – it feels like being borne on the current of the real – borne up, borne along, safe in the river of the real, in what’s happening anyway.

This kind of enjoyment includes feeling free of concerns about how I am being seen, and not speculating about what others are thinking.

In fact, I don't enjoy life in this way unless I stay clear of ego’s nonsense - for example, trying to see myself in the mirror of others’ assessments of me.

Such anxieties come and go, and I expect they always will. But then, surely the Heartland is not just for saints - if there is such a thing as a saint.

I can savour the dignity and grace of life's natural movement, its flow and effectiveness, and feel this pleasure and wonder, in everyday ways – whenever I notice the beauty of the world - including the people - around me

- when I find myself making or doing something that feels just right, when I cook something delicious, or when everything just works, without resistance, all day – when I say the right thing, in the moment, without forethought, and sense a relaxation, a dissolving of tension, or when I hear music that speaks to me.

Number 2 - again, in no particular order: There is a lovely sense of re-entering reality, when I find myself released (real eased) from some long-held (ego-sponsored) delusion. It feels like my load has been lightened. Clarity's lightness is both not heavy, and radiant.

This sense of release and relief is something that happens over and over again, when I am on my path. I feel myself being gently relieved of an oppressive burden, released from misunderstanding that had weighed me down, sitting (unnoticed) on my heart like a stone.

I have learned that lies and half-truths go against our nature, and oppress us, physically – however we push them out of sight, into the shadows of our subconscious.

When this feeling of release comes, I breathe more easily – I have a sense of increased inner spaciousness, and freedom to move.

This releasing, lightening quality of the Heartland is related to the next aspect of enjoying being there, which is

number 3: getting the joke. The enjoyment of humour – of seeing myself with clarity, sensing how deluded I have been, from a freshly reached point of detachment - is one of the Heartland’s choicest, and most attractive delights.

Starting to get the joke that’s on me opens all kinds of ego-padlocks.

When I spot some slander (on life, on myself, on someone else) I’ve been allowing ego to tell me, and see it as nonsense, I am no longer forced to cringe and feel paralysed by self-blame, or driven to righteous complaining and protesting – instead, there is a small explosion of amusement and release, with no loss of face, no shame or humiliation.

The Cosmos doesn’t sneer or jeer, when I catch myself in the act – rather, it beckons me in to share the joke, to experience a mild, detached point of view on my situation that’s been there all along – but held gently, without comment or intervention, and with respect for my need to see things for myself, in my own time, before I can be free of a particular falsehood. Nobody else can get the jokes on me.

This is one of the Heartland's comforts, one of the ways I experience its kindness: no-one but I myself can get the jokes that are on me – not unless I decide to share them, and probably not even then: at least, not with their original relish.

These jokes at my 'expense' are between me and my heart, between me and reality.

And when I ‘get’ one of them – when I see myself with detachment, and understand how misguided and needlessly self-punishing/ oblivious/ sneaky I have been, getting the joke brings with it increased compassion for myself, for I understand, on the inside, exactly how I came to be that way!

I should add here, that until I began to have compassion for myself, I was unable to 'get' any of these jokes.  For while ego was still able to bully me, a harsh, mean tone of voice would immediately kick in, whenever I had a glimmer of clarity about my own misguided behaviour. And that didn't feel at all funny.

So I would slink away from the truth I'd glimpsed, ashamed – trying to hide my own awareness from myself.  As this feat of self-deception was a long-established habit, it was a very easy trick for my ego to pull off.

I know I didn’t start out in life scared or ashamed of my feelings, and needing to deceive myself about them. These are the effects - still common in our culture - of being shamed as children, and having our feelings disregarded and unheard.

So I have had to learn, in adulthood, to stand up to my own ego, my inner 'fixer', who is also an inner traitor, a slanderer and underminer. I've had to practise standing up to my own fear, and standing up for myself, for my true self.

. . . and the scariest thing we will ever do

Is face the fear in ourselves

As I have stopped listening to ego’s mean insinuations about my inadequacies and my consequent need to pretend, or put on a good show to gain affection, so I have gained self-respect and courage to deal calmly with any ego-instigated assaults or trickery.