Good Thing

"Nothing has changed though everything is different,
Maybe just the ways to get high....?"


Lyrics from REBECKA TORNQUIST'S 1995 album, Good Thing.

Rebecka is a Swedish jazz and pop vocalist that i've liked for a while. Pop with a heavy jazz influence. Coincidentally, I discovered the other day that she grew up in Africa, where her father worked for a Swedish foreign aid organisation.

I like the words at the top because they reflect the internal change that happens to so many of us once we make the decision to step onto the path of self-realisation. The point when everything else drops away, that is, and you are bound to turn in the only direction that makes sense....inwards.

My friends and family were very used to seeing me dash about, looking for the next best thing to heaven...

I was either hiking up the highest mountains in a remote corner of the world, or training for a cycle race, or on the tennis court competing, or in a rowing boat speeding up and down the Thames. Or in my earlier days on a rugby pitch (ugggh), on the netball court, playing squash, then tri-athelon was the thing, then half-marathons, then, then, then....

In all cases I was not hearing my screaming joints, my aching muscles or my feelings. Feelings which were there sitting at the front of the class, with arms stretched high in the air, fingers wide, eyebrows raised in anticipation, bottom hitched half off the seat, just crying out to be heard.

The mind was pretty strong, vision was tunnel, and life was about physical action.

Although fun up to a point, (it was certainly my best coping mechanism at the time) the action had become obsessive. A cover up.

Movement was a way to hide my underlying discomfort. It was not so easy to stay still in those days - best keep moving, keep 'doing', keep acheiving...

When we come from a place of scarcity inside, for whatever reason, the focus is on what we can collect, be it degrees, money, houses, cars, people, children, experiences... Life is a series of unconscious reactions as we seek to fill an illusory void.

Finally, perhaps, we are brought to our knees, asking, "why, after these efforts, am I still not enough?"

And so to yoga, where strength and flexibility gradually builds up enough energy to be still. To stop. To face the music. To enquire.

As one of my first yoga teachers told me, "don't just doooooo something, sit there!"

Internal change begins with the ability to be silent and still and to observe reality as it is, without shirking away. (The underlying principle of Vipassana meditation...).

Externally, to the untrained eye, nothing has changed, but to me, everything is different.

Good Thing.