Systems Analysis - Of a Kind

          The purpose of this pathworking was not to determine whether there was a problem to be addressed, but what the nature of that problem was. In combination with this meditation I carried out a series of contemplations - never easy for me - to elucidate further the nature of my problem.

..........After a while, I once more approached the garden, knocked, and entered. The Gardener walked beside me as once again I walked the familiar path away from the gazebo. I noted that there was something alien about the Gardener but this caused me no concern at all. I approached the point where the Nail was driven into the path, the Nail from which I had seemingly been released. Such symbols will arise from time to time, just like other memories or quotations perhaps, but they must not assume undue importance, dragging me towards a study of symbolic systems. They are not truth, only possible pointers to truth.
          A little further along the path, maybe a step or two, I saw that the pathway was flooded with water. In each flower bed on either side of the path was a small pool. However, the water which was designed to flow down from the left-hand pool to the right-hand pool by means of an underground conduit, was seeping across the path. The conduit appeared to be blocked. I also saw a cleared channel cutting across the path, as if that is how the connection between the pools should or must appear. The channel is invisible under normal conditions just as the Nail is invisible and had [has] to loose the tie that binds my ankle. Thus there seems to be a link between the blocked conduit and the tie to the Nail..........

          Finally, I am beginning to feel what is wrong, or at least what appears to be wrong. To begin with, the 'feel' of my surroundings is different; the Gardener is now somewhat alien, that is different from my normal apprehension of him. The future course of events must take me into stranger realms than I have yet visited. The presence of the Lion, not noted in this current pathworking description, is an indicator of my need for great strength of will, or courage, if I am to clear the blockage and move onwards.
          It was through my contemplative exercises that I began to see that I often take recourse to safe measures that are not taking me where I need to go. Over the years, as I have said elsewhere, I have studied "The Twelve Steps", some Transpersonal Psychology, the Mystical Qabalah as well as some studies into Christianity. All this has been backed by the reading of what others have said in their writings about the psycho-spiritual life, and how their experiences have gelled with mine. And there is a great deal of safety in remaining 'in orbit', so to speak, about the wisdom, knowledge and understanding expressed by others. In other words I need to break free of the 'systems' as laid down by others. That work was all about their experiences, interpreted in ways which they felt led to do. Those experiences were not, and can never be, mine. How beguiling it would be to act the part of a sheep, and follow the shepherd.
          Now it would be foolishness and hubris to discount what others have said, and that is not the way I intend to go. I have gained much from my studies, but they must be used only as stepping stones towards a greater goal, and one of which I am only now beginning to glimpse. To be candid, the thought of breaking free from my past is not one that rests easily and comfortably with me. Where once I might have attacked, now I must persuade; where once I might have used my spiritual weight to barge through obstacles, now I must tread delicately. The risk of pridefulness, and the consequent making of mistakes, is very real. Yet I cannot avoid the conclusion that useful though my past has been, it is no longer enough. There needs to be, yes a breakout, but also a refining of method and approach. The tools that have been used to good effect, must now be modified to deal with a subtler form of experience.
          I may not succeed, but if I refuse to knock, the door will never be opened to me. If I refuse to seek, I will never find. Yet 'success' is not really part of this enterprise. It never has been. That is mere ego-speak. The concept of success is meaningless, and that I must always bear in mind. I must remove my spiritual shoes which block my sense of the holy, and walk barefoot.

Cause or Effect?

          In some manner of other, I must attempt to unravel the many strands that are involved in an inner experience, whilst at the same time retaining as much as possible of the initial, composite, spiritual ambience. By so doing it is hoped that in times to come my posts will contain enough information to supply, at least, an adequate recall of that experience. Unlike a focused, conscious experience in which all 'extraneous' information passes by unnoticed, these inner journeys take place in a changing environment in which one must constantly and deliberately screen out, through meditation, that extraneous information. Yet there is ever an experiential nebulosity in which this process takes place. The attempt to unravel and interpret the information seems, on occasion, to be like extracting a filament of Dark Matter from its normal abode, knowing that in the process something will inevitably be lost in its passage through the veil that separates consciousness and beyond-consciousness. That the results of path-working often appear to materialise in consciousness on a timeline that runs counter to one's expectations, only adds to the confusion of these experiences.*
          I would like now to return to my previous post, "A Problem of Sleeping Consciousness." Bearing in mind that the interpretive ground under one's foot may only be transitory in its firmness, and that everything may change at a moment's notice, I concluded the following. Very far from the state of sleeping appearing to be the "cause" in a cause-and-effect scenario, that state later appeared to be the "effect." Thus the search began, by means of a path-working to find the cause of that effect. (Interestingly, on this occasion and in real time this latter path-working, the effect-ive journey, took place before the causal journey.)

..........Having entered the Secret Garden, and with the door closed behind me I began to walk along a gravel path in a direction away from the gazebo, noticing as I did so that I was being accompanied, and then led, by a cat. In a number of odd places around the garden, and seemingly placed at random, were statues of the black-cloaked, old man who had previously lighted my way through the fog to the inn. 
          Suddenly, I stumbled and fell on my face on the path. As I attempted to rise, I fell forward again. The cat returned to me and sat looking at my feet, the left one being tied at the ankle to an invisible nail, driven into the path. I have a problem, and that problem is that I have become bound or restricted in some way.
          After mulling the problem over for awhile, and half deciding to let it go, I noticed that the Gardener had reappeared. He stooped down and undid the bonds that tied me to the path. I stood up, looked around in a puzzled way, and discovered that once again I was on the move, but no longer restricted to a two-dimensional landscape. Ghostly doorways appeared in the air above the garden, and I realised that I had indeed become restricted in my thinking. There were more, and more ethereal, dimensions to be explored. 
          I sensed a certain tingling of excitement. Then everything disappeared except for the Gardener who 'stood' beside me, and the cat. Slowly, the cat was replaced by an image of the head of a lion, and I wondered about this transformation, or transfiguration. Perhaps the lion represented an image of which the cat is a manageable reflection, or that the strength I needed was not as great as before. In any case, my time in/above the garden was over for the day..........

          Thus it seems clear, or at least clearer than my original, and opposite, conclusion that my thinking about my inner life has become restricted by what I have studied, what I have become accustomed to. That restriction has led me into a false sense of security, a sense of dreaming whilst thinking I was still awake. Yet still I wished for more, to back up this conclusion. It was with that wish in mind that I undertook a second path-working to confirm my findings, a path-working that I will describe in my next post.

* There are some, including some counselling acquaintances of mine, who say that the investigation of this work in an attempt to discover meaning isn't worth the effort. Some say that it isn't even necessary to make any response. There are more important aspects of life to attend to. I take the view that if there is that within who, or which, is trying to communicate with my consciousness, it is a question, at the very least, of courtesy to try to respond.

A Problem of Sleeping Consciousness

          It is unclear to me whether now is the time to recommence writing. I write for no other reason, therefore, than that I feel a need to stop an apparent inner drift, to refocus, and to put my recent experiences and my thoughts into some sort of order. Only time will tell whether or not I have pre-empted the barely-felt impulses within, whether or not I have given way to some ill-defined fear of arriving too late. I begin this post with a path-working that, although simple to understand at first glance, nevertheless holds much that needs to be investigated.

..........I knocked on the garden gate, then entered my inner, secret garden, drawing the bolt behind me. From a gazebo to my right emerged a lion who led me along a path towards a pale grey, Gothic-style archway or portal beyond which I could see nothing. We appeared to have risen a little above the garden, with everywhere around us immersed in a fog, or pale grey mist. Passing through the stone archway I saw that the mist had disappeared and that the archway gave access to a long, straight corridor sloping gently upwards and which seemed to consist of a whole set of Gothic archways generating a ribbed, almost organic, look to the corridor. We walked steadily upwards until it seemed that we were cut off from any other place. Finally we halted at the end of the corridor. There was nothing ahead except the reappearance of the foggy void. Momentarily, I felt a large paw in the small of my back as I was pushed unceremoniously into the fog.
          I had expected to fall, yet found myself buoyed up by some unknown force, which gave the semblance of solidity beneath my feet. I then saw that immediately in front of me waited an old man, cloaked in black, who was holding aloft his lantern to light my way. We walked on for some while until I saw that we had entered a medieval town barely visible in the darkened, evening fog. The walls of the buildings seemed to approach and then recede with our passing as, finally, the cobbled road entered a more open area with lights shining dimly but warmly onto the road. To our left appeared a cheery inn with some shop-front windows and a large entrance space, but apparently without any doors. A little to the right of the inn front was a built-over arch leading to a courtyard, big enough for wagons-and-horses.
          I approached the inn, but seeing that the hermit had not followed, turned back towards him. He indicated with a wave of his hand that I must enter the inn, and that he would not be accompanying me any further. Inside, the inn was as foggy, almost spectral, as the road outside. The innkeeper offered me a tumbler of greenish liquid, which I drank, before motioning me towards a nearby flight of stairs, leading upwards to a bedroom. There he unlocked the door and ushered me inside.
          The room was small, but clean and comfortable with a well-sprung double bed. The nearside wall of the room consisted of planks of wood with large gaps between them, offering no privacy and little protection. The open window on the far side of the room looked out onto an inner courtyard lit by the light of a full moon. Nowhere was there any trace of mist or fog. There was also a rather puzzling image of a moon-like disc on the bedroom ceiling. Finding that I was already dressed in night-clothes, I crawled into bed, and lay watching the moon. At some stage I drifted into sleep..........

          It had been clear to me that the path I trod in this psycho-spiritual exercise, led me to a place (or rather, a non-place) somewhere in the 'upper' reaches of my being. There I found myself as "the Sleeper." For some while I was content with that as a simple explanation, hoping that in the sleeping state some form of transfiguration might be taking place at a level beyond my consciousness. Yet as I meditated on the other aspects of this journey, I began to feel a certain unease.
          I will not go into the many twists and turns that my thinking took me; it would seem to serve no useful purpose. It did appear to take an inordinately long time for me to understand how I needed to approach the way I have to deal with the very obvious Tarot images that arose, (and continue to do so) as well as the images relating to the Hebrew alphabet, both of which were present in my past studies of the mystical Qabalah. A total change in my approach is necessary, because I discovered, quite surreptitiously, that in truth the conscious 'I' has been lulled into a state of sleepiness from which it must be roused.
          It would be difficult to overestimate the the dangers and pitfalls, the possibilities for making mistakes, that lie ahead of me; difficult to overestimate the strength of the apparently natural desire to allow consciousness to sleep and dream. Somehow, I must simultaneously both reject and embrace the many 'systems' with which I have made contact, in the hope of discovering the way to the country that lies beyond.

Emergency Treatment

          Today is something of a milestone, compared with recent events. I leaped out of bed - well hardly leaped, more like gingerly emerged - and proceeded to prepare for my morning shower. Alright, so that's no big deal, but the strapping was going to come off my toes, and they would soon be breathing pure, clean air. (The farmers aren't muck-spreading at the moment in our area.) The psychological effect of returning to something resembling normality is a great morale booster. What is more, this is the first day on which I am free of antibiotic eye drops. I have become accustomed to these, and am wondering whether I will experience withdrawal symptoms. My eyes are still a bit scratchy, but no doubt a solution ('scuse the pun)for that will be found soon enough.
          So you see, everything is working out fine. Even my visit to the dentist for emergency treatment yesterday, turned out alright in the end. Ah! You didn't know about that did you? About three weeks ago, one of my fillings broke. A quick call to 'la dentiste', bless her, revealed the bothersome fact that she had no vacancies for three weeks. So for that period I have been carefully guiding the tooth through the many, and dangerous, potentially damaging situations in which it might find itself. There has been no pain at all, so that helped. So yesterday, I took up my trusty crutch/walking-sticks and set off for the dentist.
          Now some months ago, having experienced some pain under one of my lower crowns, the dentist lady removed the wrong crown. I don't know how it happened, but there you are, it did. Well I don't hold grudges, and she is a lovely lady who doesn't stint on the time and effort she puts in on one's treatment. So I have in all magnanimity, forgiven her. Nice, yes? So apart from what I must now laughingly call 'emergency treatment', I suggested she might like to check the crowns now rather than wait until two months time, the original checking date. I hope you're still with me. Well in two months, give or take, it is the wedding anniversary of dear Lucy and myself, and the very last thing I would want is a dental restriction on my ability to enjoy a thoroughly good meal, at some lovely restaurant, at a lovely venue far from home. That's the plan, anyway.
          So let us return to the dentist's surgery. I laid me down on the couch, and she began her probing examination. It felt a little tinglesome, but nothing to worry about just yet. She probed further and further. Now there is a limit to how far one can crawl, on one's back, before falling off the couch beyond one's head. At that moment, I realised that I had been prodded, probed, spiked, broken and otherwise invaded rather too much of late, and it was all becoming rather tedious. Anyway, the dentist halted and said she would give me an anaesthetic. Oh joy! Another needle! Still, it was better than the alternative.
          In went the needle into my top gum, fairly painlessly I have to admit. Then mere moments later, she asked if the anaesthetic had taken effect. To be candid, I didn't really know. I didn't feel that odd, itchy, flaccid numbness that I usually feel at these times, so I said that I wasn't certain. "Never mind," she said (in French), smiling and picking up a drill, "we'll soon find out, won't we?"
          After she had chased me round the surgery for two or three laps, and I found myself trapped between her female assistant and a vast array of instruments which I could not comfortably negotiate, I finally submitted. Well there is a limit to how quickly one can run around a dental surgery on crutches. In any case, Lucy was still sitting quietly and not attempting to come to my rescue. Had she been sitting and knitting, with a waiting basket in front of the couch, I might have been more worried. (An allusion to a bit of French history there!) It was at that moment that I came out of my daydream, and observed that, indeed, the anaesthetic was working. The tooth was filled, and an appointment made for the next visit. Yes, I still have the future of my crowns to sort out. Then off we drove for home.

          All these happenings have not blinded me to the fact that I have run into a kind of psycho-spiritual cul-de-sac. Much as I want to write, I am finding that very soon I will be struggling to find anything appropriate to write about. It must be well known what my prime interest is in life, yet more and more it is becoming something that I find less and less able to share. So where I go from here, I do not know. One thing is for sure, I will continue to read your blogs with interest, and comment when I have something to say. Now, I can only wait, and patience is a virtue that I find so difficult to cultivate.

"Once More Into the Breach, Dear Friends......."

          Now it might seem that having written about my experience of surgery on my right eye that there would be nothing of consequence to say about surgery on my left eye. Essentially this is true, but what was very different was the feel of the day.
          It began much as on the previous occasion some six weeks ago. The usual palaver of disinfectant showers and eye drops was gone through, including the tremendously satisfying breakfast of one glass of water. Then off we drove to 'la polyclinique', arriving a little before 10am. The building is a rather low, spread out rather than sprawling affair, sitting in the middle of the French countryside. As its name suggests, it consists of a number of theatres used for various aspects of surgery, and their supporting administrative networks. Anyway, the usual paperwork was quickly dealt with, and having found the correct waiting room without any trouble, we were ushered into a private preparation room. Strictly speaking this was not a private room at all, but one designed for three patients at a time. However, on this occasion, we had the room to ourselves, other patients being shunted into their own communal room.
          Once again I changed into theatre garb, was a little disconcerted by the apparent fragility of the knickers stitching, then helped up onto a waiting trolley as I prepared to meet my fate. Well one has

to have a little drama! Having been through the process once already, I had no concerns whatever about the imminent surgery. Yet as the orderly wheeled me away, I whispered to a smiling Lucy, "I feel nervous." (This experience of nerves, for which I had no conscious reason, was later confirmed when I discovered that my blood pressure was higher than it was when the whole business was finished.) As I travelled deep into the interior of the establishment, I noticed that everything was much lighter than before, as well as being far less crowded. Even the operating theatre itself was lit by natural light from a wall-length set of windows. It was this heightened sense of reality that was so different from before. But I am getting ahead of myself.
          I was determined to check my time-wise progress through the day's events and noted that I had left the preparation area at about 10.30am, the same time as on my previous visit. I arrived at the pre-op waiting area where I waited for five minutes before being wheeled into the theatre. Now this is where things began to go a little weird. The process of being swabbed, disinfected, and hooked up to the Borg Collective (see previous post) took about fifteen minutes. During this period, I and the theatre nurse indulged in a little faltering French and pidgin English discourse. Nothing too profound, you understand, just odd remarks about being, "nice and clean; nice and clean." "Oui!" said I. Well what else could I say? I couldn't actually see the results of her ministrations.
          When all was ready, the masked surgeon approached, peered down into my right eye (the one which had already been 'fixed'). I looked up at him in what I suppose might be called a rather alarmed fashion. In response, his eyes crinkled into a grin as he tapped the cheek under my left eye. I guess that is what passes for surgical humour! Get the patient worried, and it's a fun experience all round for the staff. I didn't find it laughingly funny at the time I can assure you, my sympathising readers. You are sympathising aren't you?
          Once again, the surgeon (he is actually a lovely guy) placed the blue cover over my face, as the machine automatically took my blood pressure - I think. Well one just cannot be certain of anything really. Okay, back to the blue cover. Was the correct window going to open? Was he going to forget and open the right-hand window? This and so many thoughts flooded through my brain. Then I heard a little scratching sound, and the shadow of two curved prongs above the covered left eye. "Steady on sunshine," I thought, "you can poke someone's eye out with those." Well, fortunately, that didn't happen, and the operation began in earnest.
          It seemed to take an inordinately long time to do the business, with copious amounts of cool liquid sloshed in at intervals. One had visions, not literally of course, of boiling humours of the vitreous and aqueous variety, caused by heated lasers being frantically calmed down. Finally came the welcome 'patching and strapping' that heralded the imminent departure from the theatre.
          "  'Alf an 'our you stay 'ere," said the post-op nurse, also solicitously enquiring whether I was in pain. That was a question repeated by other staff from time to time. What was wrong? Was something evident that I was not sharing in? Was I missing out somewhere? But then, sure enough, after 'alf an 'our, I was returned to my private changing room. So what had happened to the passage of time? Had I passed through a time warp? Adding up all my estimates of time passing (based largely on data collected from clocks which I could now see), there was time unaccounted for. Not only had I spent longer in the theatre than before, but also left the clinic an hour earlier than expected. But yet again I am getting ahead of myself.

I arrived back in my private room where, after some delay, my blood pressure was taken again, and I was allowed to get dressed. Somewhere on the way back from surgery I lost my theatre cap. No, you wouldn't have liked it. After another half an hour I was allowed some much needed refreshment. Lord, was I hungry?

          When all was nearly completed, along came another nurse to remove that pointed thing stuck in my wrist. Now I am sorry if the next bit of the proceedings doesn't elicit the mirth that followed the removal of metres of strapping the first time round, but as you can see this time the attaching tape had been applied with a delicacy not experienced heretofore. It was removed with only a sharply indrawn hiss of breath, and I was free. Free!

Update:          I saw the surgeon two days later, and he seemed satisfied with his work. Lucy, on my behalf, did point out that my right still seemed to be 'foggy' from time to time. In the surgeon's opinion, this was because I am English and it's always foggy in England. It just goes to show that you can't keep a good comic down.
          My left eye is recovering more quickly than had my right eye, probably because I am not taking anti-inflammatory eye drops to which I have an allergy. I have dug out an old pair of 'distance' glasses which allows me to read for reasonable periods. Unfortunately, that boon does not extend so readily to the laptop screen. But I have no complaints. All is going well, or was going well until I slipped on our wooden staircase and broke my fourth toe, earlier today. It looked 'orrible until we strapped it to its neighbour, and decently covered it up. So once again I have the chance to say,

"Oh the pain! Oh the agony! But without any loss of fur....only my dignity and mobility.

Oh yes! I forgot! I took the car out for a drive yesterday. That was great!

A Visit to the Theatre

  The time is fast approaching (Feb. 23rd.) when I must submit myself to the tender mercies of my eye surgeon, who will go to work on my left eye. This will mean that although a very large measure of distance sight will be restored to me, both eyes will require spectacles for reading and writing, and of a very different strength from those I currently use. Thus it may be that I will be unable to communicate with you through Gwynt until my eyes settle down, and I obtain new glasses. This forthcoming experience brings to mind, quite vividly, my previous journey to the eye clinic. It happened like this.

  Having showered, both the evening previously as well as on the morning of the operation, with some cleansing liquid designed to kill off everything except the human recipient of this non-lathering fluid, I received a series of drops of various function from my resident nurse, Lucy. Now apparently, this showering medium was necessary because this part of France is big in pig production, and there was a subsequent risk of taking something rather offensive into the operating theatre. No, not a dirty, squealing pig tucked under one arm, but a bug that said porcine entity might carry. The final set of eye drops was designed to dilate the pupil of my right eye, thus rendering the world with an even further blurred view than has become usual.
  On arrival at 'la polyclinique' at around 10.00 am, and my having had no breakfast except a glass of water, we quickly went through the paper formalities which included, of course, the identification of the next of kin.....just in case! How that brief ceremony does fill one with confidence. We were then conducted to a room where I was asked to remove all my clothing and dress up in a rather fancy set of theatre gear. Now on my only previous visit to a French hospital, I had been gowned in one of those back-to-front items which leaves everything rearwards on view to everyone except the wearer. A mite breezy perhaps, but nothing too draughty. On this occasion the dress was slightly different.
There was again the back-to-front item, but made in a semi-transparent material, in a delicate shade of pale blue, rather than shroud-like, white cotton. I have to say it was most becoming. In addition, I had to don a normal front-to-back version of the same material, thus giving me all-round protection from any passing 'courant d'air' (embarrassing updraft). But that wasn't all. To my eternal satisfaction, if not joy, I was required to wear a rather saucy pair of knickers, made from the same semi-transparent (see through), blue material which kept all my vitals from going a-wandering, peeping out, and embarrassing me, if not the other patients and nurses. Well, I'm a sensitive soul. Finally, I donned some transparent footwear which I can only describe as having a palindromic form. Thus I felt equally ridiculous whichever way round the "shoes" (I can hardly bring myself to grace the objects with such a word) were placed on my feet. Having thus geared myself up for the coming fray, I was sort of placed/shovelled onto a freshly-cleaned and disinfected trolley, and wheeled off into the goodness-knows-where to await my fate.
          At various times, in the dim waiting area, a nurse would come by and either give me a quick scrub with disinfectant or plop a load of drops in my eye, the final one being a local anaesthetic. At one stage, the surgeon came out of the theatre and peered into my eye, grunted in that satisfied way, as when one sits down to the prospect of enjoying a delicious meal.  Moments later I was transferred to a theatre trolley and wheeled into 'the place', the theatre of operations, where I underwent various indignities. First of all, a theatre nurse stripped away my clothing from my left shoulder, stuck little patches all over my chest, presumably because plain old me needed to have my decor spruced up a bit. Well they seemed to serve no other purpose, except to provide amusement when they were pulled off again. She then stuck something needle-like in my left wrist, strapped it up with metres of sticky tape, and connected me to a nearby machine. It was like being assimilated by the Borg.
  Then I had a hood of some description thrust over my face. Thankfully, I am a trusting sort of person, and did not take this treatment as an attack on my being. Just when I thought that, for all my trust, suffocation might be on the cards, I heard a slight tearing sound and a squarish orifice opened in the hood over my eye. Yet more anaesthetic, presumably, to supplement the relaxing fluid passing inwards via the wrist needle, and the periodic, automatic blood pressure measurements.
  From that moment onwards I was entertained by a wondrous experience of psychodelia, interspersed with darkened images of potential, sharpened implements of evil. But what the hell? All I had to do was try to look straight ahead, so that the surgeon didn't need to chase my eye around its orbit. Finally, there was a quick padding up and plaster job, the offering of my thanks to the surgeon - the next of kin form then being redundant - and it was all over. I was wheeled away, transferred from the theatre trolley to another trolley by the simple expedient of having the sheet under me grabbed and deftly tugged, and parked in a waiting hall.
  Now I thought that the best way to conduct myself was to give all the appearance that I was 'compos mentis', and ready to be released immediately. Some hopes! From time to time I was pushed flat and told to wait. Clearly, release was not imminent. Not only that, it was clear that there were other post-surgery individuals there who had been subjected to other, and indescribable procedures. I did notice a strange and nasty smell emanating from a trolley not too distant from me, and a nurse lifting the bottom end of the aluminium-style covering on one patient. Had someone managed to smuggle in a pig after all? No. Even pigs don't smell that badly. It was time to go, fortunately.
  I was wheeled back to a waiting room, where I was assisted from my trolley onto a chair, whilst attempting to keep my legs together. Well there were females in the room. Well you never know, and I was feeling vulnerable. After a few moments, after everyone else had been taken away, Lucy appeared. Oh joy, and the possibility of food and drink! Well it was approaching 3 of-the-clock in the afternoon! But no! After being relieved of my saucy theatre gear, I dressed and indulged in the free refreshment being provided! There was coffee, wonderful, and fruit juice; there was cake (Madeleine) and muffin; finally there was apple compote. The last-mentioned item wasn't too bad, but I can never help slipping a letter 's' into the word thus reducing it to a garden product, useful but inedible.
  Then came the part I had dreaded. The final visit by a nurse awaited me, to remove the endless amount of very sticky tape from my wrist.

"....'Ow do you Ingleesh say eet? Oooh!  Ouch! Oui?...." Too b-----y right, ouch! Oh the pain! Oh the agony! Oh the loss of fur!

It was all over, at last. In a state of pleasant dozy joyousness, I was driven home, knowing that not far into the future, six weeks in fact, more of the same awaited me.

  Well the six weeks is now almost over, and I cannot say I am looking forward to the next phase. The surgery's no problem (I hope) now that I know what to expect. It will be the post-surgery period of being unable to read or write, a period of almost unbearable penance, that will be such a trial. But maybe it won't be too long to wait; I'll just have to wait and see!

What Is the Question?

..........I remember that whilst doing a pathworking some years ago, I found myself walking along a gravel path - in my imagination. To my left was a high, red brick wall with trees growing on the other side, with their branches overhanging the wall and the path. Along the base of the wall all sorts of grasses and weeds were growing freely yet without any apparent need to overwhelm their companion species. The trees made a welcome shade from the hot sunshine. As I walked, it happened that I came across an old door set somewhat skewed by age in the wall, and so well set after many years of existence that I almost missed it. The wood from which the door was constructed was old but sturdy and darkened by some process I could not determine. I reached out to touch the rusty-looking handle, noticing as I did so that the great hinges were also covered with a layer of rust. I gripped the handle, which miraculously turned easily, and pushed gently on the door. The door swung open gently without a trace of resistance, or the expected squeak of protesting metal. I slipped through the open doorway, into an exquisite garden. I closed the door behind me, knowing I would never need to leave that way again..........

          It was suggested very recently by Natalie that rather than 'going to my room' I should perhaps go out into the garden. Her comment did not immediately rouse the memory from its slumbers, but a gently nudge towards awakening had been felt below the surface of my consciousness. Today, during my meditation, the memory of a secret, inner garden visited so long ago, and sadly forgotten for too long, emerged into the light of consciousness. I will not describe that garden in detail, for it is a very personal place for me, except to say that the garden is kept by an old Gardener whom I have had the joy of communicating once in a while. We do not talk, we simply communicate.
          The garden is more than a place in which to relax and let go of the thoughts, sometimes troubling, that seem to be my ever present companions. And already I seem to have reclaimed the garden, complete with its many usages. It is a secret place where I search for questions. Now it may appear strange to be seeking questions rather than taking time out to seek answers that, in the end, are not of any great moment. There are so many questions that one asks, and can ask, yet the really important questions always seem to hide just beyond the corner of one's eyes.
          Of late, my journey has obliged me to come close to glimpses of christianity. And that has served its purpose. Yet it seems to me that all religions and spiritual philosophies are, by their specialist natures, too narrow and restrictive. Neither can it be said that I have been completely comfortable with the recent approach which I have felt necessary to adopt. However, there have been gains for which I am grateful. But now there are changes in the air, and I have little idea what those changes are about. I feel that the realm of psycho-spirituality is one which is too large for anyone to fully grasp or even imagine. As for me, I will continue to try to work out the tiny part that is my privilege to experience.
          I need to let go, not merely to play at letting go in the hope of salving my ego. There is a whole new area of experience waiting to be explored, using those gifts of imagination that have served me well in the past, and are chafing to be set free again. To make use of the words of Shakespeare's, "Richard II", 'pray God I may make haste but (not) come too late.' Oh what I wouldn't give for a measure of patience. What wouldn't I give to know the right questions.