Today, I am trying a new routine, to write my blog before Bedtime Chi Gong, so I can be asleep by midnight. Usually, I writing my blog after Bedtime Chi Gong at 11pm. Then get to sleep by 2am – with my alarm going off at 7.30am! By the afternoon I am exhausted – and been having a two hour nap after lunch.
What a beautiful sunny afternoon and evening it has been! Honey the Dog and I went for a lovely long walk.
Today, I have been reflecting more on what I was struggling with yesterday. My fear of this lock-down coming to the end. At the moment, I live such a quieter stiller life. The city is so much quieter – hardly any cars and so much stiller than it used to be. I remember the early days of this blog and the massive adjustment to the city being still and quiet. It has now become the norm!
You can cross the road without looking for cars or a gap to cross. The main thing you need to worry about is ensuring social distance is kept from everyone, even though some people are not really bothered by it all. But if someone is walking towards you on the pavement, you can just walk into the road, knowing no cars will be there.
Another, thing I have noticed I have enjoyed is stripping back on my expenses as much as possible – no heating for a month, no Netflix, no luxuries. I am enjoying having less attachments.
But mainly I have noticed my mind is slower – there is less chat in my head. As I reflected on an earlier blog, I think that is partly due to not seeing people, not connecting with people (in the real world). I remember how earlier in this lock-down, I wrote how hard it was – but now I am enjoying it. I wrote, I had become aware that just meeting different people, led to giving out energy. Whereas now, this is not there. So I am more in myself and being able to be quieter in myself.
I’ve worked out that some of my fear is losing all this. A fear that the city will return to how it used to me. Hustle and bustle. Everyone rushing around. Trying to fit in walking Honey the Dog around my busy day, rather than an enjoyable leisurely time. The only time I really get outside!
The audible book that I continue to listen to – The Art of Letting Go, by Richard Rohr, touched on this today. He said:
“you cannot serve God and mammon”.
I’ve just looked up the word ‘mammon’ online. And the basic definition of ‘mammon’ is money. Stating that ‘you cannot serve God and mammon’, means a person cannot pursue both material goods and a spiritual well-being.
This comes back to an earlier blog, where I explored and some readers commented, about the word ‘human-being’. Being ‘human’ is the ego and ‘being’ is the ‘spiritual’ aspect of being in the present.
However, Richard Rohr explains it in a clearer way. He says:
“Mammon is not about money, but instead, the system of reward and punishment. The system of buying and selling. Where you get only what you have a right to, what you deserve, what you’ve worked for. It’s an economy of merit. Achieving….”
He goes on to say
“Instead you can live an ‘economy of grace’. Which is not about merit or worthiness, its not about performance and achievement. Its about inherent dignity. Where mutuality becomes possible.
You don’t need to fix it to be happy. You don’t need to change it to be happy. You don’t need to control it, manipulate it.
In the personal mode everything is…what is…what it is…what is.
And before you adjust it, make it, like you want it to be, you receive it. In its ‘is-ness’, in its being.
Before you adjust it, fix it, control it – or even understand it.
I want to say strongly – that it is a different set of ‘I’. That’s a different mind. That’s a different heart.
That’s why mystics can love their enemy, be happy when in poverty and in plenty.
Because they are not evaluating everything, up and down “is this pleasurable? Is this difficult? It just is.
This is a different mind. And we have to be trained into it. But really we have to choose it.”.
I guess, in this lock-down I / we are being forced into this. Moving closing to just being?
Saying that, I saw a dog walker twice today, that I know to say hello to. The first conversation we had passing by, was that he was not enjoying this lock-down and can’t wait for it to finish. The second conversation passing by, he asked how I was getting on with the lock-down. I replied “I am loving it”. I asked him how he was getting on with it – “he said he was hating it, was stuck in the flat all day”.
It’s interesting, how my experience and his are so different. When ultimately, we are in the same situation!
So, how did you get on with the quiz from two days ago – Songs of the 80s? When I told Fi, (our in house blog quiz solver) about the quiz she replied “Yas!! My speciality!” – and sent me the answers a few hours later at 1.30am!
She thinks, she may have made a few up. But here are her answers.
However, there are a few discrepancies to the group who originally posted it. The main one was – ‘I don’t like Mondays’ by The Boomtown Rats’ – but Fi explains, that the ‘Mondays’ on the Calendar are all blue, so it’s Blue Monday by New Order.
I am not good at Quiz’s at all!
I attempted to find my own quiz on the internet and realised how hard it is to edit it to the right size. Here is what I have come up with.
The quality is not so good, apologies. I will be returning to my WhatsApp Group for the next one.
Have a great quote to share with you, but as it is now 21:20 and I need to get ready for Bedtime Chi Gong, it will have to wait till tomorrow. And of course, it may mean you will return to read this again tomorrow 😉
Hope you continue to enjoy my daily reflections on lock-down. Can’t believe it is now Day 15!
See you tomorrow.
With Love
Jim xx