musings – Kaspa Thompson

Grief and Climate Change

In our Buddhist community, at the invitation of our local XR group, we dedicate one practice session each month to the living earth. In our most recent session I talked about and made a space for grief, and I’ll share some of those same thoughts here.

Grief

I remember a childhood holiday to Cornwall. We drove down from the West Midlands in our blue-grey Lada and at the end of the journey, after we had set up camp, my dad washed the car windscreen. We had hit so many bugs on the way down, and their splattered bodies were spread across the glass. Last year I drove to Scotland and the windscreen was almost clear.

People older than me might remember having to pull over to wash the windscreen on long journeys, or the moth ‘snowstorm’ that appeared in the headlights of cars driving at night.

You will have your own experiences of the loss: how you used to be woken up the dawn chorus as a child, but now the early mornings are much quieter; a favourite wild place that has been built over; or the loss of people and places to extreme weather events.

I am moved as I write about and name these events. I can feel tears and grief in my stomach wanting to rise up and find expression.

We often shy away from feeling such powerful emotions out of fear that they will overwhelm us. Not wanting to feel this pain is completely understandable, and this denial can prevent us from taking action to support of the living planet.

Understanding our own reluctance to feel grief can allow us to understand why others don’t want to feel this grief and why they don’t take the action we might like them to take.

A Second Kind of Grief

I am a child of the 80s and 90s. We were promised endless material wealth, if only we would work hard. We were fed endless material dreams:

“Get this, buy this, things will make you happy!”
“When you grow up you can choose to spend your money however you want.”
“Travel the world!”

I recently looked into my heart and found a place that grieves for not getting what it wants. A small boy who still wants those promises to be fulfilled, “But you told me I could!” he cries. When I first discovered this about myself I was ashamed. These are not the feelings of a conscientious person. And yet, the feelings we have are the feelings we have. I have found a way to be kind to that part of me, and to allow its grief to find expression.

Again, understanding these places in our own hearts allows us to more deeply understand those others.

Expressing Grief

It’s important to find places to express grief; to find ways of allowing the pain to exist which aren’t overwhelming. When we can acknowledge our deep feelings — anger, blame, hurt and sadness —we allow them to move and shift and change. They become a source of strength rather than a source of fear.

What is it that allows us to process and experience our own grief? It is love.

For me, much of that love comes from my Buddhist faith. Knowing that I am loved and supported by the cosmic Buddhas returns me to a feeling of safety, where I can name and feel powerful feelings without being consumed, overwhelmed or traumatised.

Some of you will have religious higher powers that you can take refuge in like this: God, the Tao, Krishna and so on.

Some of you will have loving communities and relationships where you find this same kind of love. A love that accepts you just as you are.

Some of you will intuit something loving in the natural world: watching a sunset, being in wilderness, looking up at the night sky.

Some of you will find a place inside yourselves that unconditionally loves and accepts yourself and others.

Some of you might find it in professional therapeutic relationships.

Some of you might still be searching for this.

As we find safe spaces to grieve we come to know ourselves more deeply. We discover our pain, and our resistance to pain. We come to know the human condition more deeply.

This knowing is essential for our work in relationship to others. As we process our own deep feelings it is easier to come into relationship to the deep feelings of others, and to find ways of standing together.

And as we find ways of letting grief in, we come into a more intimate relationship with the natural world and are more able to celebrate and champion the diversity and life that still flourishes.

I encourage you to find spaces to grieve in, and to support the grieving process of others. That can only be good for us, and for the living planet.

Podcast episodes on this theme:

One thing you can do to improve your mental health

This is a piece about songlines, and about maps, and about one thing you can do to improve your mental health.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking through a valley on the edge of the Forest of Bowland. I crossed over the river Roeburn at the bottom of the valley, and the woodland opened out into a meadow. There were a few fruit trees here, and some wildflowers scattered through the grasses. Later in the woodland I was struck by the elm flowers on young elm trees, by the bluebells and by the ferns. Birdsong filled my ears, along with the buzzing sounds of bees, wasps and hoverflies.

I was following a human trail. It was crisscrossed with the trails of other animals — deer, I guess and maybe foxes and badgers.

Humans see in one range of colours, birds and animals in another, insects in another. My view of the forest is from nearly six feet above the ground, a badger’s view is just a few inches from the ground, and the smells are much more significant. All of our experiences of the forest are very different.

A badger’s map of the forest is very different to mine. I want to know where the fences and gates are, and which way the paths go. A badger’s map is about food, and sniffing out the territory of other animals.

Naturalist Charles Foster experimented with a badger’s map of the woods. He slept on the ground, wore a blindfold and learnt to recognise the different smells on the forest floor. Even then his map of the woods would have been subtly different, I’m sure.

And what of a tree’s map of the woods? What does a tree notice? They respond to the seasons, to chemicals that other trees emit, to stress…

Songlines are the songs handed down through Australian aboriginal communities that mark the journeys of the creator gods. The songs are maps, very different to our own, and vast tracts of Australia can be navigated using them. We all have different ways of seeing the world.

What has this got to do with mental health?

The more able we are able to appreciate that others have different experiences, and ways of seeing the world to our own, the more likely we are to have good mental health.

The more we can see that we are not at the centre of the world, the more likely we are to have good mental health.

Good mental health is about landing in reality, and reality is complex. The more we can appreciate that there are many (human and other than human) ways of experiencing the world, the more likely we are to have good mental health, and the more likely we are to behave in ways which are better for the whole plant. And behaving in ways which are good for the whole planet tends to support good mental health.

So that one thing you can do? Begin to appreciate the many different ways of seeing the world.

Surviving Christmas and the New Year

We are moving through the longest nights. What happens at this time of year? In the run up to the longest night we put up our decorations and lights, go to parties and come together as happy families at Christmas time. Or we see others doing that and our own attempt to hold off the dark fails — the winter can be a difficult time of year. More likely we are somewhere in between, with good days and bad days: Holding off the dark with celebrations and light on some days, and other days our mood slipping into something gloomier.

What helps?

It helps to know that feelings come and go. The more deeply we examine our feelings the more obvious it becomes that they are always shifting and changing, even in small ways. When I used to fall into an awful mood one of the worst things was imagining that it would last forever – but when I really examined the evidence? What a revelation. Trusting that things will shift and change has been a comfort for me, personally, in darker times.

It helps to trust that it’s good to do good things, even if they don’t bring results straight away. Your good things will be different to my good things, but for me good things are getting outside, getting up and moving my body somehow, and making wise choices about what I eat, I read and watch. These may not lift you from the worst of moods straight away, but taking care of yourself and others is good to do regardless, and I trust that it helps lay down the conditions for better moods in the future.

As the nights become shorter, and the days become longer and we move past Christmas and into the New Year we move away from parties and to new projects and new resolutions, and the adverts on our TVs and in our magazines change from selling rich sugary foods to selling diets.

Sometimes we get a rush of new energy and plough that into the New Year, lifting ourselves up from where we were before. Sometimes we see all of those advertisements and articles about New Year’s resolutions and become disheartened as we quickly fall into old habits or discover that we don’t have any energy even to start to change.

What helps?

The same kind of things: knowing that feelings come and go, trusting that it’s good to do good things and — importantly — being realistic. There’s no point setting yourself a list of ten great things to do if you only manage a few and then become so disappointed it triggers apathy and feeling terrible. It’s much better to set a few goals that you can meet, and celebrate meeting them.

Sometimes it feels like change isn’t coming, or that the roots of disappointment run deeply. I encourage you to reach out get support. We can feel ashamed of asking for help — but the truth is no one does it on their own, and we all need to lean on other people, sometimes. Call a friend, book an appointment with a therapistor talk to a family member.

The winter can be a wonderful time of year. I’m writing this at the tail end of autumn, there are a few golden leaves left on the trees and the sun is shining brightly. Later on I’ll make a pot of soup, and I’m looking forward to seeing friends later in the week.

I trust that there will be good days, and less good days,and that it’s possible to move gracefully through them all.

If you’d like a little extra support – book a counselling session, or a mindfulness one-to-one with me, and we can explore how things are for you and how to move forward.

A version of this article appeared in All About Malvern

Autumn and Winter Well-being

This month I was asked to write about coping with the disappearing sun, for our local magazine All About Malvern. This is the article I wrote:

Worcester has disappeared into the mist that is sitting in the Severn Valley. The garden is damp from a wave of rain that passed over the hills. Soon, the sun will dip under the horizon and the dark night will come.

I’m writing this in early September, and it’s not quite evening. The days have been getting noticeably shorter recently, and I am reminded of winter days in my youth when I would walk to work in the dark, walk home in the dark and spend the day longing for natural light rather than the fluorescent glow of the department store I was working in.

As summer draws to a close I also find myself remembering those first days of sunshine this year, after the long snowy winter. The sprits of the whole town seemed to lift when the bright weather arrived.

What can we do to stay happy as the hours of light become less, the temperature cools, and the clouds roll in?

Hygge

Lots of you will have heard of Hygge. Pronounced Hue-guh, this is a Danish word that means something like cosiness. When interviewed by the BBC Susanne Nilson said, “Hygge could be families and friends getting together for a meal, with the lighting dimmed, or it could be time spent on your own reading a good book.”

Maybe we can think of Hygge as creating conditions that help us to relax: Lighting candles, or sitting around a fire (inside or outside), creating a winter evening playlist that slowly gets more and more chilled, or sharing a good meal with friends.

Getting outside

As Arthur Wainwright famously said, “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only unsuitable clothing.” Getting outside means getting vitamin D. It means moving the body, and it means you’re more likely to look at trees. All of these things are really good for you. In cold damp weather I pften feel reluctant to go up onto the hills, but every time I do I feel better afterwards.

Eating well

This summer I’ve been enjoying lots of wonderful salads and Buddha bowls for lunch. Our veg. patch needed plenty of watering but the results were amazing, and it’s been great to go outside pick something and have it on my plate minutes later. Now the earth is turning different things are coming into season, and I’ll be enjoying homemade soups with squash, leeks and other winter goodies.

Sometimes – particularly when I’m on my own – cooking can seem like a chore. But when I eat good food I always feel better.

Community

Maybe it feels easier to meet people when the weather is good, and easier to stay at home on your own on cold dark nights. But we are social beings. We each like different amounts of company, but some company is good for the soul, so host a dinner party, meet a friend for a coffee, or join a book club.

Plan something you enjoy

If the thought of a long dark winter really does lower your mood then make sure you plan some bright spots. Make a date with yourself, or a friend, and put it in your diary. Having something to look forward to in the future can make you feel better right now.

As the weather changes, and the light changes, it can be easy to fall into wishing for the autumn and winter to already be over. All of the suggestions I’ve made today are based on accepting the reality of what is, and finding ways of appreciating and making the most of what is happening right now.

Whether you are a cold weather person or a hot weather person, I hope you have an easy and enjoyable autumn and winter.

Letting go, unravelling and something new

There is a time and a place for most things.

When I started teaching mindfulness classes when we moved to Malvern I was excited to offer them, and I’ve always enjoyed the energy of the groups.

Back in late spring/early summer I took a break from teaching. At the time I imagined this would be a short break but I noticed a reluctance to programme in any more courses, so I gave myself a longer break.

Now – at the end of summer – that reluctance remains.

In his book on vocation, Let Your Life Speak, Parker J. Palmer describes speaking to a Quaker elder about vocation and calling. When is my calling going to appear, He wonders. He talks about how long he’s waited and yet how nothing is calling him forward. The elder tells him that she was born into a Quaker family, and now decades later she has still never heard her calling. Then she pauses for a moment and says that what she has experienced is paths closing off behind her, and that she takes this to be God’s way of showing her the way.

Teaching mindfulness meditation is a path that is closing behind me.

Personally meditation has been a great support, but it’s not my own core practice. My core practice is nembutsu – reciting the name of the Buddha and trusting in the light of unconditional love.

I’m not sure what I might do in that Tuesday evening space yet. I’m not sure if mindfulness will appear in a different form in the future. I am sure that teaching classes in the way that I used to feels like stepping back into an old version of myself.

Earlier this year Brenè Brown wrote about mid-life crisis as an unravelling. She described the process as a letting go of what no longer serves. I don’t think I’m having a mid-life crisis, but I do like the idea of a healthy unravelling, and of letting go of what no longer serves. Letting go of the classes is a part of that.

I hope you can take this as an invitation to let go of what isn’t serving you at the moment, and an invitation to find your own way forwards into something fresh, and supportive.

I’m still offering mindfulness one to ones, working individually with people either with mindfulness or therapeutically gives me a lot of pleasure and satisfaction. When I’m working from that pleasure, satisfaction, and inspiration, the people I’m working with get a much better experience.

I don’t know exactly what the new shape of my life looks like yet. I love running services at the temple, I love putting energy into my new podcast, and I’m looking forward to more closely integrating body-work and ecology with my therapeutic work.

Thanks to everyone that has taken part in classes in the past, and I do hope our paths will cross again sometime.

What about desire?

I’ve just returned from a weekend of silent walking on the Malvern Hills. We walked nine miles south, and camped overnight, and nine miles back the next day. It was in the middle of the heat wave. Walking up to the top of Black Hill, where there is no shade, in the hottest part of the day, was a struggle – but the views at the top were breath-taking. Somehow the hard work and my aching legs made the view even more beautiful than usual, and the cool wind at the top was a real treat.

On a cold day I’d have complained about the cool wind at the top, but in that moment it was perfect. This is often the nature of desire – we long for something to move us out of an uncomfortable situation. Usually after a while the new situation becomes uncomfortable, and we long for something else. How many people have said it’s too hot, that were complaining about the cold a few months ago?

Our desires are inevitably frustrated: we long for a chocolate cake, eat too much and then feel ill, we can’t wait to go on holiday and when we get there we just want to come home again, and we always complain about the weather.

One way out of this is to simply stop wanting things. That sounds like a pretty boring life, and it sounds like an impossible path to walk. It’s far better to get to know what we want, and how our desire works, and take it from there.

If desire is always taking us towards something different from the present moment, sometimes it’s appropriate to look for something to appreciate in the present moment , and sometimes it’s appropriate to ride the wave of desire, knowing that it is not leading you to a place of eternal happiness, but a place that you will want to move from at some point. Maybe I’ll go downstairs and enjoy having a snack. I know that if all I do is eat snacks, I’ll soon be sick of it, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t enjoy the first one.

Getting to know our habit patterns around desire and frustration means that we can also take life a little more light-heartedly. Knowing that desire is a wave that always wants to move forward means we can take its cry of “This one thing will make you happy” with a pinch of salt. We can enjoy where it’s leading us, without being taken in by its impossible promise.

There’s a place for discernment too, of course. Some desires are bound to lead to trouble, some are neutral and some lead to positive, pleasurable places. Learning to say ‘no’ sometimes, is just as important as learning to say ‘yes’. I’m reminded of Achaan Chah saying if the student strays too far to the left, you tell them to go right, and if they stray too far to the right, you tell them to go left. We can say the same about desire. Sometimes it needs keeping an eye on, and sometimes it’s taking us to exactly the right place.

Sometimes self-denial is good full-stop. There are some things that are simply unhelpful to indulge in at all. Sometimes just a period of self-denial is helpful. There’s nothing better than a meal after a fast day, and the lemonade ice-lolly I bought from the ice-cream van, half way through the walk home on a hot, hot Sunday, was the best I’ve ever tasted.

This first appeared in All About Malvern

When things are out of control

Remember when it snowed in February? The temperature dived below zero. On the Wednesday evening of the cold weather the temperature inside the temple started to fall as well. Minutes before our public service I noticed the boiler had cut out. The condensate pip was frozen solid. Whilst Satya led the service, I spent the evening trying to thaw out pipe.

My footsteps crunched on the frozen snow. The cold wind whipped up snow powder from drifts into the air around me. The hot water I was using to thaw the pipe created clouds and clouds of water vapour.

Ten kettles of hot water later and the pipe was as frozen as it was before I had started. I made sure our residents had electric heaters in their rooms, and gave up for the night.

The next day the plumber helped me unplug the pipe from the boiler, we drained the condensation into a bucket in the boiler room, and the heating came back.

Two of our neighbours were without running water.

One of our outside wastepipes froze and a toilet overflowed.

When the snow began to melt it found its way through the roof above our guest bathroom, dripped onto the floor, and water filled the light fitting.

There is so much that we are not in control of.

A few days later when everything had thawed out, the overflows had been mopped up, and we were all warm again, I felt my body relaxing. I hadn’t even known I was holding tension through the week.

What supports us to feel settled and stable in the midst of chaos?

One thing we can do is be clear about what we are actually in control of. Sometimes in times like this I ask myself, “What can I control, what can I influence, and what is completely outside of my control?” Being clear about what I can do often allows me to let go of worrying about the rest.

Sometimes that isn’t enough and the worry remains. Sometimes we see how little we are in control of and that in itself feels unsettling. What then?

Count your blessings. It’s a cliché, but it really is a powerful antidote to worry and stressful situations. This isn’t about ignoring what’s troubling you, but is about also connecting with what is supportive and good and wholesome.

I remember my friends. I remember the bounty of the natural world that sustains me. I remember Christine who left her house to our Trust in her will, which allowed us to buy this temple building.

We can go further than remembering our blessings and take action to reconnect with them. Talk to our friends, go out in to the natural world or the places that support us.

Think about what already supports and nourishes you, be grateful for those and ask how you can root yourself more deeply in those places, relationships and experiences.

When we feel connected in this way, we are much less likely to be overwhelmed with stress, and much more likely to feel resourced and able to deal with what life throws at us.

This post first appeared as an article in All About Malvern

Great Gratitude – Great Peace

A few days ago my thoughts were wondering all over the place. I was remembering things to do, making lists and composing emails. I was in the middle of walking meditation, where the aim is to remain grounded in the present moment, and instead my mind was jumping wildly from one thought to another.

In walking meditation I sometimes use the sense of touch to bring me back into the present moment. Becoming aware of my feet on the floor grounds me again. On that day of busy thoughts it wasn’t the psychical sensation that lifted me out of my freneticism but a sudden awareness of everything I had received.

The carpet my feet were padding into was donated. The floorboards beneath are two hundred years old, like the building. The hands that created the building are long gone but I am still reaping the benefit of their work. The sun was shining through the tall Georgian windows; I had nothing to do with creating the sun, and yet there it was sustaining me, and the whole world.

Two words came to mind, “just this”. Everything I needed was already there. Everything I needed to be at peace was already there.

When our minds are busy, or we feel disturbed, upset or anxious, we are often focussing on the one thing that has worked its way under our skin, and have forgotten about everything that we already have. Or we are comparing our lives to someone else’s (they always look happy on Facebook), and lose sight of what we have received and are receiving.

Directing our attention back to what we have been given and what already supports us is a great antidote to this, and a great way of finding a little peace. Thinking about what we receive connects us to the whole of the present moment. Instead of only seeing the crack in the windscreen, we remember to see the beautiful view as well. This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t repair the crack, but it can change how we feel and make things easier.

We sometimes use discontent as a motivator. I don’t like this, so I’ll change it. I want to be thinner, or fitter, or earn more money, or whatever, and then we plough energy into accomplishing that goal.

For me the motivation that comes from dissatisfaction is unstainable. I put some energy into the project, and then I feel a little better, and the discontent goes and so the motivation goes, and the project flounders.

When I act from a place of celebrating what I have already the energy continues. There is always something to be thankful for. This morning I made the bed, or, I made it into my office, or I cleared my inbox. Reminding myself of the little victories brings an energy that can carry me into the next thing on my to-do list.

Writing a list of what we have received in the last week, or in the last 24 hours, is a great way of keying ourselves into this kind of awareness. Research has shown that it’s better to spend a longer time writing once a week, than writing a short list each day. Why is this? I think because writing a short list we can become complacent and list the same things over and over again. Writing a longer list encourages us to really interrogate our position. The list of what we have already received is endless.

Try it out for yourselves: think of what you have already received, and see how it makes you feel.

This post originally appeared in All About Malvern magazine

The Importance of Being Yourself

You can hear a lot about selflessness in psychological and spiritual circles “just do what is needed for the other person” or “selflessness means putting your own feelings aside”.

There is a danger in all of this that we disappear. Not in the good way that the ‘extinguishing’ of nirvana implies, but that we hide ourselves away deep in the shadow because we don’t fit the image of spiritual behaviour that is vaunted in our communities.

We feel something negative, and quickly supress it and lock it away.

In Sunday school we used to sing, “Envy, jealousy, malice, pride – they must never in my heart abide.” I was having all of these feelings. There was no permission to feel them – so away they went. Slowly, I got smaller and smaller. But this was the smallness of a black hole, massively dense.

Where do these dangerous ideals come from? I think spiritually mature people often do put their own feelings to one side, they genuinely let go of resentment, if it arises at all. Dwelling in faith and gratitude they look like these descriptions of saints that are given to us.

I’m just not sure pretending to be a saint really works.

It doesn’t work for the person pretending because all of that supressed stuff has to come out sometime, somewhere. And it doesn’t work for the people around them because real spiritual maturity and personal growth comes out of being in relationship with a real person.

A person who is at ease with themselves has access to all sorts of responses and reactions, they can be creative, spontaneous and lively, and they retain their own character. A person who is at ease with themselves can be genuinely adaptable and flexible. A person who is at ease with themselves accepts encounter and conflict and difference as part of the complex pattern of life.

We might call such a person fully alive.

Being in relationship to a person who is fully alive allows us to find our own edges, and to experience joy and playfulness. It is the perfect condition for becoming fully alive ourselves.

In my spiritual practice, I call people who are fully alive Buddhas. In my therapy practice, I would say the more fully alive the therapist, the better, and also that therapy is relational: in a good therapy session both the client and the therapist become more fully alive.

To more creative living

This year I have been noticing when and how I keep myself from the world. I bury my head in a science fiction novel, or binge watch Marvel series on Netflix. I scroll through news headlines or my Facebook feed.

It’s a habit that keeps me safe. It keeps me out of the possibility of conflict and disappointment. If I’m not meeting people, or doing anything, I can’t let anyone down or upset anyone. It keeps me safe and it limits me. When I’m reading someone else’s words, or watching someone else’s creation I’m not been creative myself. It keeps me in a holding pattern, which is okay, but time passes…

I have hairs growing out of my nose and out of my ears, and suddenly being forty years old seems like a real possibility rather than something that happens to other people. I still can’t finger-pick the Ukulele and I haven’t progressed on the piano at all in the last ten years — I still bash out the same 12 bar blues in C when I sit in front of a keyboard. I have bursts of writing poetry and then retreat back into my dreamy holding state.

I don’t want to discount how much I do engage with the world. Every year I do a little more. Every year it’s a little easier to talk to people. Lots of things that used to be difficult are easy.

And yet — as we slide towards the New Year — I notice this holding pattern more and more.

Many of the wounds that clients come to me to have healed are around contact. They feel too distant from the world, or too close to it and end up feeling mergey or in conflict.

What do I mean by contact? Both emotional and physical touch. Were we held when we cried as infants? Were we held too closely and not allowed to explore the world? Were our own feelings and experiences seen and heard, or were we unseen, or did other people’s feelings override our own?

If we are neglected or overwhelmed with contact at key times we take on certain habit patterns to keep us safe. I took on this holding pattern — this retreating into other worlds.

Much of my work as a therapist is providing the right kind of contact to allow my clients to shift from their own holding patterns into more creative ones. Sometimes this means I provide spaciousness, sometimes closeness. Often we move between the two.

In my own life my therapy training, my relationship with my teacher and my spiritual practice support me and allow me to experiment with moving out of my holding pattern and into more creative ones. I test the waters; putting one toe and then a whole foot into the shifting stream of life. When it feels like too much I come back to the shore. Sometimes, these days, I feel like I am swimming. Sometimes I have a hand, or an arm, or my whole torso on the bank.

Moving into new things often provokes our defensive habit patterns into a strong response at first. They are used to keeping us safe, and — from the point of view of the habit pattern — it’s like watching a child ride their bike without stabilisers for the first time, scary. They want to pull us back into safety.

It takes time to learn to dance. Time and trust in the process. I have my own trust in the process, and I think my clients borrow this trust, from time to time.

Together we move towards creativity, towards spontaneity and liveliness, and to appropriate spaciousness.